Aunty Virus 29th March 2010
Selena via email asks:
I am hoping you may be able to help me in my search. I have the full set of Handel’s Messiah conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent on long playing 33rpm records. Is there any way these records could be recorded onto CD’s? Here’s hoping you might be able to help or put me in the right direction. Thanking you in anticipation.
Aunty Says:
Very nice piece of music Selena. I have tried a few different programs for this and I’ve found Audiograbber the best of the free ones. You can get it from download.com, and although it looks a bit daunting to begin with, you can be fully operational after about 20 minutes. There are plenty of tutorials on the web and the ‘guide for newbie’s’ section on the audiograbber.org website will get you going. You can connect your record player directly to your PC via the blue ‘line-in’ or the pink ‘mic’ inputs or from an output on you HiFi. An easier option would be to purchase a USB record deck (€50 from ebay) which is pretty much plug and play.
Philip from Benijofar asks:
Hi Aunty, I recently had my Laptop updated to Windows7 and the technician installed a new dial-up 'tu@orange', I was originally using 'Gonuts for free'. The problem is that my dial-up quits after about 20 minutes, this is very often when downloading updates from Windows etc. I never had this problem with Gonuts, how do I re-instate that as my preferred dial-up. My usage of the net does not warrant moving to ADSL.
Aunty Says:
You can create a new dial-up connection by clicking on the network icon in the taskbar (bottom right corner of your screen) and then on 'Open Network and Sharing Center'. Here you can setup a new network connection to connect over your modem. For the Gonuts dialup you used to be able to use 901929200, username free@free and password 123456. I heard somewhere that they had changed this and in the past you could get this information from the www.gonuts4free.com website.
Keith via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I attach an email I keep receiving along with one from hotmail in a similar vein. I have always been advised not to give personal details over the internet. Is this a Scam or not. Your urgent advice would be most helpful.
Aunty Says:
This certainly is a scam Keith. This email is asking for your Windows Live Messenger login name and password which will give the unscrupulous bandidos full access to all your emails and contacts. Never ever give anyone your user account or password details even if the email looks genuine.
Roger via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I am having a problem with my DVD drive. I can play DVDs and I can burn DVDs but I can't erase a disc. The discs are DVD-RW and I did have a box come up saying D: is not accessible incorrect function. Please can you suggest how I can solve this problem. I read your column every week, and find it very interesting and helpful.
Aunty Says:
The only thing I can think of Roger is that your DVD drive isn’t 100% compatible using the brand of re-writable discs you have. I have seen this before and sometimes you can simply re-use the discs by copying over the existing contents rather than erasing them first.
I am hoping you may be able to help me in my search. I have the full set of Handel’s Messiah conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent on long playing 33rpm records. Is there any way these records could be recorded onto CD’s? Here’s hoping you might be able to help or put me in the right direction. Thanking you in anticipation.
Aunty Says:
Very nice piece of music Selena. I have tried a few different programs for this and I’ve found Audiograbber the best of the free ones. You can get it from download.com, and although it looks a bit daunting to begin with, you can be fully operational after about 20 minutes. There are plenty of tutorials on the web and the ‘guide for newbie’s’ section on the audiograbber.org website will get you going. You can connect your record player directly to your PC via the blue ‘line-in’ or the pink ‘mic’ inputs or from an output on you HiFi. An easier option would be to purchase a USB record deck (€50 from ebay) which is pretty much plug and play.
Philip from Benijofar asks:
Hi Aunty, I recently had my Laptop updated to Windows7 and the technician installed a new dial-up 'tu@orange', I was originally using 'Gonuts for free'. The problem is that my dial-up quits after about 20 minutes, this is very often when downloading updates from Windows etc. I never had this problem with Gonuts, how do I re-instate that as my preferred dial-up. My usage of the net does not warrant moving to ADSL.
Aunty Says:
You can create a new dial-up connection by clicking on the network icon in the taskbar (bottom right corner of your screen) and then on 'Open Network and Sharing Center'. Here you can setup a new network connection to connect over your modem. For the Gonuts dialup you used to be able to use 901929200, username free@free and password 123456. I heard somewhere that they had changed this and in the past you could get this information from the www.gonuts4free.com website.
Keith via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I attach an email I keep receiving along with one from hotmail in a similar vein. I have always been advised not to give personal details over the internet. Is this a Scam or not. Your urgent advice would be most helpful.
Aunty Says:
This certainly is a scam Keith. This email is asking for your Windows Live Messenger login name and password which will give the unscrupulous bandidos full access to all your emails and contacts. Never ever give anyone your user account or password details even if the email looks genuine.
Roger via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I am having a problem with my DVD drive. I can play DVDs and I can burn DVDs but I can't erase a disc. The discs are DVD-RW and I did have a box come up saying D: is not accessible incorrect function. Please can you suggest how I can solve this problem. I read your column every week, and find it very interesting and helpful.
Aunty Says:
The only thing I can think of Roger is that your DVD drive isn’t 100% compatible using the brand of re-writable discs you have. I have seen this before and sometimes you can simply re-use the discs by copying over the existing contents rather than erasing them first.
Pat via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I run Office 2003 on XP & I cannot permanently remove the “This copy of Office is not genuine” toolbar. I’ve deleted the toolbar many times & also validated both Windows & Office many times. I’ve even removed the program from Control Panel, scanned with AVG9 etc & re-installed from DVD, all to no avail. Please can you help as it’s driving me crazy?
Aunty Says:
I suspect you have a moody copy of Office there Pat. You will either need to purchase a licensed copy for around €50 from ebay.co.uk, or download the latest Open Office, which is free from sun.com and will quite happily read and write your Microsoft Office documents.
Joe via email asks:
Hi Aunty, avid reader of your column when in Spain and as now, when back in the UK. One question relating to the download of Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware. Do you download as RUN or SAVE and run them daily/weekly.
Aunty Says:
Hi Joe. There are two distinct tasks when downloading and installing a program like Malwarebytes. The first is the initial download of the installation program (usually an .exe file from download.com) and the second is the subsequent installation of Malwarebytes onto your PC. I think the ‘run’ or ‘save’ options you are seeing Joe are appearing just after you’ve agreed to download the installation program, and they are asking you whether you want just start the one-time install of Malwarebytes or save a copy of the installation .exe file to your PC. I always choose ‘save’ as you may need to re-install the program at a later date. Once all this is done then to actually start the Malwarebytes application each week you simply double click on the new icon on your desktop.