Dennis Faas

With regards to the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette which informed our users of a Data Recovery program called Drive Rescue , I wrote a comment: " If you accidentally delete a file, don't write anything else to your hard drive -- even if you ... are attempting to install Data Recovery software in the first place! Otherwise, the drive may overwrite the area of the data you're attempting to retrieve, making the rescue operation impossible. " Denise R. wrote in with a response to the above comment: " I have Drive Rescue on a floppy for use in recovering files on the C: drive; ... (view more)

I'm sure you've at least heard of Napster, and the more popular Napster-like spin-offs, such as Kazaa, Morpheus Music City, WinMX, and Bearshare. Each program has the ability to swap files with other users around the world. Although Napster is now a ... subscription-based music trading service, it was the first of its kind to offer users free access to thousands of music files at the click of a button. In comparison to Napster, Kazaa goes a step farther by allowing users within its file sharing community to trade not only music files, but movies, programs, and anything else under the sun. Kazaa ... (view more)

Have you ever wondered where you are connected to when you're visiting a web site? Believe it or not, every web site in cyberspace resides on a computer which is physically located somewhere in the world. Each server is "hosted" by a company which ... dictates the configuration of each server, such as: how many web sites reside on each web server, server-to-Internet connection speed, how much information can be transferred per site per month (also known as bandwidth limitations), and the like. Different web-hosting packages are offered by different web-hosting companies and define the ... (view more)

Earlier this week I sent out a very controversial article to a few other online ezines (electronic magazines) in hopes of syndicating the Infopackets Gazette to help increase our readership. If you haven't visited infopackets.com recently, you might ... have missed the intriguing article about Mcafee Anti Virus. The article questioned whether or not McAfee purposely mislead users to purchase an update to their Virus Scan software ($39.95), when in fact, it was not required for some users. The article was an instant hit. It was published on a few major web sites and generated quite a bit of ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Derek C. asks, "How can I load and run WINDOWS 98 and XP on the same computer? " My response: As far as I can remember, Microsoft does not recommend running two different version of Windows on the same hard drive partition (IE: C ... drive for Windows 98 and C drive for Windows XP) because files end up over writing themselves. I personally experienced this -- and WinXP even warns against this during install. The only way to overcome this was to create a new hard drive partition (D drive) by slicing my existing C drive into two separate pieces (a C and a D drive on the ... (view more)

" Increase your download speed with software X! " At some point, you've probably come across a program that claims to download programs faster: Download Accelerator (Speedbit), Marketscore (previously Netsetter), and GetRight (Headlight Software) ... are just a few popular titles. But did you know that these programs do more harm than good? How download speed is effected by a download accelerator When a file is being downloaded, it is sent to your computer using a single connection: you are connected to the web site, and the web site is sending you a file. A download accelerator works ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marty T. write s: " Dear Dennis, I have a bunch of young kids, and they like to compute, play games, etc. Is there any way I can dumb down the PC so they can't wipe out the file system, lose/delete critical files and have their ... own private/personal workspace? Is there something really easy to use for the inexperienced? " My Answer: I did some scouring and found a program to hide programs on your desktop and start menu. The program is called Quick Hide, and it serves two purposes: " First, you can use it as a Boss Key program to instantly hide any non-work ... (view more)

Millions of Internet users got a big shock this week when a popular, free MP3-sharing client, Morpheus Music City, went offline. Before Morpheus became all the rage, Napster was known to the world as the premier music swapping program. What set ... Napster ahead of its competition was its ease of use, and most importantly -- its reliability and transfer speeds. Napster allowed millions of Internet users to locate and share music files through Napster's central computers (also known as "servers"). The Napster servers kept track of who signed in and out of Napster, who had what MP3, and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Victor R. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently bought a CD-RW 24x10x40 drive and have used to to copy two disk without trouble. Lately, I tried to make an audio CD from files that I downloaded from the net. I got up to 75% completion ... and then my computer had a fatal error. The error was 'Vcache (01) +00000fc7 Error: oe: c004E663'; I wasn't sure if my computer was fast enough for the 24 spin recorder, so I tried slowing the speed of the copying process but still received the same error. As another possibility, I turned off the virus protect and all other running programs ... (view more)

A few weeks ago, I was called to do an upgrade on an older, Pentium 200 (P200) MHz computer. The P200 was equipped with an old-style scanner that used a special interface. After a few years of good use, the scanner died and needed to be replaced. ... Since the Pentium 200 did not come equipped with a USB interface (universal serial bus), shopping for a new scanner was difficult. The options were to buy an old-style scanner which used the Parallel Port (Printer Port) as its interface - but this was not a viable option because it was extremely slow and would not meet the demand in an office ... (view more)