Friday, November 01, 2002 :::
 
XP Administrative Shares

Question: I upgraded my Windows 2000 Professional to Windows XP Home, and now I can't access the administrative shares that I used to in Windows 2000. Why doesn't this work, and is there a fix?

Answer: Microsoft actually disabled the administrative shares because of security implications on Windows XP Home. For those of you who are curious what an administrative share is, it is a shared folder on your system that is invisible to network browsing so that administrators can access your computer, but the regular user wouldn't even know you were there. In previous versions of Windows and in Windows XP Professional, the administrative shares ADMIN$ and Driveletter$ (for each hard drive) are made automatically. The dollar sign is what makes them invisible to regular network browsing. A workaround would be for you to just go to the drive or folder that you want to access via remote, right-click it, and choose Sharing and Security. Just choose "Share this folder" and give it a name. Remember, if you want the network share to be invisible to network browsing, then you need to put a $ on the end of the name. Hopefully this answered your question, and good luck setting up those network shares.

Removing User Login Information in Windows 98

Answer: In Windows 9x, you can remove most of the previous user information by first deleting the user's profile from the Profiles folder under C:\windows. Next, you need to go to Start | Find | Files and Folders, then type "*.pwl" (sans quotes) and click Find. Delete the previous user's PWL (Password Lists) file. Empty your Recycle Bin and then reboot, and that will remove the previous user's login information. If the user created any local data files such as Word documents then they most likely will still be on the machine depending on where the user saved this information. If you are on a home machine, then the easiest way to remove a previous user is to go into the Control Panel, click on Users, and delete the desired user. I would still go through the steps above to confirm that the user's information has been removed

CDR-CDRW COMPATIBILITY ISSUES

Question: I created a CD full of digital pictures for my daughter. The CD works fine on my Windows XP machine at home and on my Windows NT machine at work. However, my daughter's computer will not even recognize the CD. She doesn't have any problems with the computer recognizing any other CD except this one. Is there a way to fix this on my daughter's computer?

Answer: Welcome to the wonderful and sometimes frustrating world of CD creation! I think you have run into a simple problem of CD-to-system incompatibility. Several factors come into play when we are talking about system incompatibility, such as was the CD a CD-R, or a CD-RW? CD-RWs are far less compatible in older machines than CD-Rs are, so you may be able to resolve the issue by copying the data to a CD-R disk. If it already is a CD-R, you may be able to solve this problem by copying the data to a different brand CD-R. I don't know for certain why this happens, but when I first started creating CDs, my car's in-dash JVC CD player would play from every brand CD-R EXCEPT HP CD-Rs, and my Sony 6-disc CD changer would play from just about every brand CD-R EXCEPT Sony CD-Rs. You would think that a Sony CD Player should be able to read its own make of CD-Rs, but that just wasn't the case. I only bring up this story to outline the strange compatibility issues that can arise in CD creation. Try a different brand CD-R and I'm thinking that you will be fine. Keep in mind, though, that if your daughter's computer is really old and can't read ANY CD-Rs, then it is the CD-ROM drive that is out-of-date and incompatible, and it may need to be replaced to allow her to read CD-Rs.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 97-2000 PROBLEM

Question: I am running Microsoft Outlook 2000 as my default e-mail client, but when certain friends send me e-mail I get a Winmail.dat file or a DAT file that start with ATT. I checked with the people with whom I am having this trouble, and they are running Microsoft Outlook too, but Outlook version 97. Why is this happening, and is there a way to fix it?

Answer: This is happening because your friends are using Microsoft Outlook 97, and this problem is caused by where Outlook 2000 looks for something called the TNEF Correlator field. When Outlook 2000 receives a message that contains Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) information, it looks in the message header for the TNEF Correlator field and if it isn't there, then it puts the TNEF information into a DAT file, which is why you are seeing Winmail.dat. Outlook 97 doesn't put the TNEF Correlator field in the message header, so Outlook 2000 is forced to put that data into a DAT file. There are a couple workarounds for this and one is to have your friends send you messages in plain text. They can do this by going up to the Actions menu, selecting "New Mail Message Using," and then clicking "Plain Text." In the new message, they should type your e-mail address and then right-click it and choose properties. Make sure that the "Always send to this recipient in Microsoft Outlook rich-text format" check box is NOT selected, and then click OK. That will make that single message plain text, but you can also make every message that your friend sends to you a plain text message. Your friend will need to go into their Contacts and open up your contact information. From there, your friend will need to double-click your e-mail address and make sure to clear the "Always send to this recipient in Windows Messaging rich-text format" check box. Now, whenever your friend sends you a message, it should come as plain text... and that means no more pesky DAT files!


::: posted by Muhammad at 6:25 AM


 
OUTLOOK 2000 AND EXCEL ATTACHMENT

Question: I have Microsoft Outlook 2000 installed and I can't open Excel files that are e-mailed to me. When I try to double-click and open an Excel file, it never opens and if I minimize Excel then I get this error message: "The system cannot find the file specified." I have also tried opening the file by right-clicking it and saving the file to the Desktop but that doesn't open either. How can I fix my computer so I can open Excel files again?

Answer: I must admit that this question had me beat at first. I couldn't figure out why this was happening, but then I did a search in Microsoft's Knowledge Base and I found the answer to your question. To fix the problem, you need to open Excel, click on the Tools menu and choose Options. On the General tab you need to clear the check box next to "Ignore other applications," and then click OK. After you close Excel, then double-clicking the Excel file should work to open it. This problem occurs because Excel is ignoring something called dynamic data exchange (DDE) commands from Windows. Just follow these instructions, though, and you should be right as rain.


::: posted by Muhammad at 6:18 AM

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