Dennis Faas

Last week, Stan L. Jr. sent in a question which asked what should be done when a program attempts to suddenly "call home" and request a connection to the Internet. Recall: " A few days ago, I was using my computer when all the sudden, I noticed that ... some program decided that it wanted to access the Internet. I tried to cancel the request to connect to the Internet, but the bugger kept coming back asking for a connection. I then decided to try the "3 finger salute" by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL at the same time to bring up Task Manager, but no programs were listed here ... (view more)

Last week, I left you with some thoughts on my LCD Monitor purchasing experience. If you didn't catch the first part of the article, you can read about it here . The article from last week signed off with a cliff-hanger, where I was about to tell ... about some things that I didn't like about my LCD monitor. RE: LCD Native Resolution While I was completely amazed out how crystal clear my LCD monitor was at 1280 x 1024 resolution*, the fact is that the LCD monitor looks crystal-clear *only* at this resolution. This is referred to as the monitor's Native Resolution. Generally speaking, native ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Stan L. write s: " Dear Dennis, A few days ago, I was using my computer when all the sudden, I noticed that some program decided that it wanted to access the Internet. I tried to cancel the request to connect to the Internet, but ... the bugger kept coming back asking for a connection. I then decided to try the "3 finger salute" by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL at the same time to bring up Task Manager, but no programs were listed here that seemed to be "out of the ordinary" that might have been attempting to access the Internet. Is there a program which ... (view more)

I recently purchased a Samsung LCD (model: SyncMaster 760V TFT) for my Desktop behemoth computer. If you didn't already know, LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. The most noticeable features of an LCD monitor is the fact that the screen is ... perfectly flat, has an incredibly clear display, and its "backside" is very thin. Commonly referred to as a "flat screen monitors", LCD displays are most recognizably used in conjunction with a Laptop computer. Having two identical hard drives in RAID format allows me to transfer information to / from the computer 2x as fast (compared ... (view more)

Almost a month ago we were knee-deep in discussion with respect to tracking down a hacker. In short, our ongoing discussion probed possibilities and known methods which might be used to track down a hacker, if one ever attempted to hack into *your* ... computer system. RE: Can I track down a Hacker?, Part 1 , and Can I track down a Hacker?, Part 2 . Shortly after Part 2 was released, I received an email from Dan Daily (editor / webmaster) of Danny's Daily . Dan's comments focused on a proposed supposition, which was sent in from John B. in Part 2 of our Discussion . To recap: John suggested to ... (view more)

Last week's Visitor Feedback question asked, "How how can I tell what programs are taking all my space in my hard drive?" My first thought to this question was to use a minimalist approach, because I believe in "doing things myself" -- providing ... that the proposed solution is relatively simple. If you recall, my answer to the above question was straightforward: right-click on a folder and display its folder Properties, and have Windows display its disk usage. This gives a very general idea as to how much space was being used by an installed program. Fact: Programs that are ... (view more)

My last attempt to show how to remove MSN Messenger from Windows XP appeared to worked fine for me, but I received emails from folks who have MSN Messenger popping up in their face *still* whenever AOL is loaded or whenever there is an update. Death ... to MSN Messenger -- for good. Jeff R. sent me his thoughts and a final solution to remove MSN Messenger from the Windows Registry: " It appears that your previous article is confusing Windows Messenger with MSN Messenger*. These are both separate programs. Windows Messenger is the one that installs with Windows XP. * The "Windows ... (view more)

I was fortunate enough to receive a message from the Product Manager of Alexa, Geoff Mack. His concerns were about our ongoing discussion of whether or not Internet Explorer contains Alexa Spyware . I'd like to take this time now to share his ... concerns. Geoff writes: " Hello, My name is Geoffrey Mack, Product Manager at Alexa, an Amazon.com company. I am writing to disagree with your assertion that the Alexa Toolbar is spyware. First, it is helpful to define Spyware. The definition is here . In short, Spyware is: software that gets on your machine without your permission, and tracks your ... (view more)

Yesterday's Visitor Feedback of the Gazette addressed why two program files ( internat.exe and ptsnoop.exe ) might be present in the Windows msconfig startup. To be honest with you, I have never encountered these programs before. The name ... "internat.exe" seemed to me that it was a purposely misspelled version of the word "Internet" -- most likely misspelled to dupe users into thinking that it was a friendly Internet-related program. In all likelihood, I thought, the program name "internat.exe" could have been a trojan. I was right. Sort of. As always, I use Google ... (view more)