XP Repair Site

Microsoft Excel, like most spreadsheets, has a really convenient feature. When you copy any given cell into another cell, Excel will automatically adjust the formula references to other cells so refer to cells in the same relative position.

First, a look at Relative Addressing

In the example below, I copied thte formula in cell C2 into cells C3 through C8.

Excel automatically adjusted the formulas so that each formula referenced cells in the corresponding locations (columns a and b — it changed the row numbers) to the cells referenced by the cell that I was copying.

Continue reading HOWTO: Using Excel - How To Use Absolute Addressing

This week, I received a query from a reader about a warning message he was receiving:

Hi Terry , I was wondering if perhaps you can help me , I have this very annoying adware that occurs EVERYTIME at startup …. not-a-virus:Adware.Win32.BHO.cr Now althugh this doesn’t appeato be causing any problem on my PC and I get delete it , it is still annoying to do this everytime . Is there anything you can suggest to REMOVE this adware from startup . Pls note : I am not computer savvy and my experience is limited , so I would need exact steps If you could help me , it would be greatly appreciated Regards

I’m not familiar with this particular message, but a little quick searching via Google showed that a number of people had posted similar questions on forums — and they all seemed to use

Continue reading Adware Ties into Internet Explorer

My call one Monday evening to Dell Support was met with the ubiquitous automatic answering system, with the standard message that said something like “We are experiencing heavy call volume right now. The best time to call is Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm.” Of course, since this was the tech support group for Dell’s Home & Home Office group, I don’t imagine that very many of those customers call during that time.

That message was the only downside to the whole tech support and repair process!

As I expected and was warned, I waited on hold for a little bit, perhaps 10-15 minutes. It didn’t bother me. I’ve waited longer on hold in earlier years.

Continue reading My Dell Notebook Repair Experience

I received an interesting question from subscriber Maria. She has been using Firefox, as many people do, including me. In this case, she had just upgraded her Internet Explorer to IE7 and was having problems with Outlook Express.

Maria wrote:

Terry, I currently have Fire Fox and Internet Explorer on my computer. I just added the Internet Explorer as a browser after removing it some time ago. Outlook Express is my default email handler. The problem is that in Outlook Express the links don’t open since I added Internet Explorer. [Tech guy] at [a local computer shop] says that it seams like the two are competing I am hoping that you have some ideas as I have tried a few from a Google search.

Fortunately for Maria, I had seen this problem before and thought I knew the answer.

Internet Explorer 7 messes up Outlook Express’ settings if Internet Explorer is not the default web browser when it is installed.

Continue reading Outlook Express Links Don’t Work

Recently, Agnes Brach wrote to me with a question that, eventually, applies to all of us:

Hello Terry,
I enjoy your newsletter very much. I have a question that has been on my mind for a while. I have an old computer which i would like to recycle, but have absolutely no idea how to wipe the machine clean. Could you please give me some ideas of what i can do. Have to tell you that I can work the computer pretty well, but do not have a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the machine.

If you’re going to donate or sell your old computer, or even throw it away, you have a basic decision to make — how bad do you want to wipe out your personal history and data on the drive?

None of the disk wiping systems are convenient, easy nor fast. In order to wipe the disk, they have to overwrite every spot on the disk multiple times with different characters.

Continue reading Preparing An Old Computer to be Recycled