Aunty Virus 12th July 2010
Fred via email asks:
Hi there Aunty, I wrote to you recently about my PC’s CPU showing 100% all of the time. I thought that you and your readers would be interested in knowing that I have at long last solved the issue. Amazingly, what it needed was a clean up of the cooling fan above the processor and a clean of the top of the processor itself. I was extremely careful in removing the accumulated dust and now my PC works fine
Aunty Says:
Hello Fred. Thanks for writing in and good to hear you have sorted out the problem. Heat and dust in Spain seems to be a major problem and can permanently damage PCs and laptops if left unchecked. If you’re OK with a screwdriver then most PCs can be accessed through the left hand side panel where you can dislodge and blow out dust that builds up around the processor cooler and memory. Laptops are a little more fiddly but checking and cleaning the visible cooling vents on the sides and underneath can help. I know eNET Computers offer a tune-up and clean-up for around €45 which, according to them, will leave your computer running better than when it was new.
Jack via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I am having dreadful trouble printing pdf files. The graphics are beautiful but any text contained on or within the doc comes out as gobbldygook. I have an HP4000 series printer, and the latest version of Adobe reader 9.3. Can you help? I have reloaded the printer drivers from the supplied disk.
Aunty Says:
Is everything else is printing OK Jack? (i.e. Word or OpenOffice) because if other programs are printing OK then I imagine that this is a driver issue. Maybe try downloading the latest drivers from the HP website, as the software on the CD is normally out of date before the printer leaves the factory. If that doesn’t work maybe revert to an older version of Adobe Reader and see if that cures the problem.
Paul from the UK asks:
Earlier in the year my computer was infected with a win32 virus and my computer would not recognise any of my peripheral hardware. I managed to salvage my files but had to return to factory settings to recover the computer. All is now OK except for my USB external hard drive. The computer will not access it although it registers it with a bleep when I plug it in, the icon does not appear in My Computer. I also recovered the data using Filerecovery which I found on the web. The same problem occurs when I connect the external hard drive to my netbook, with which I have had no other problems. Please advise, is it a gonner or can it recover? Please Email me your thoughts as I have gone back to England for the "summer."
Aunty Says:
It is possible that the drive is physically OK but what is known as the ‘partition’ is seriously corrupted. A good place to start is by right clicking on ‘my computer’ and choose ‘manage’. Click on ‘disk management’ and you should see your USB drive in the list with a status of its health. Let me know what it says and I’ll know the next step.
Ken via email asks:
Hi Aunty, I have had Windows 7 for 6 months now and suddenly when I reboot it takes 45-60 minutes to get from" Windows is starting" to the log on screen. I run Superantispyware daily which usually finds and removes 4 or 5 tracking cookies, I have run AGV & it finds nothing as does Malwarebytes. What can I do to speed things up?
Aunty Says:
45 minutes Ken! How on Earth do you tolerate that? There are a few things I can suggest but you will need to apply some caution and common sense as it is possible to do more harm than good. The first is to see if this is caused by something running on startup and you can do this using the msconfig utility. Click on the ‘start’ button and type msconfig and press the enter/return key (the big key with a bent arrow ?) You should see the System Configuration window appear and a click on the startup tab will display a list of all programs that run automatically when Windows starts. You can untick each one of these, restart your computer and see if solves the problem. If you’re not 100% confident with using msconfig then I would suggest enlisting the help of an expert.
Hi there Aunty, I wrote to you recently about my PC’s CPU showing 100% all of the time. I thought that you and your readers would be interested in knowing that I have at long last solved the issue. Amazingly, what it needed was a clean up of the cooling fan above the processor and a clean of the top of the processor itself. I was extremely careful in removing the accumulated dust and now my PC works fine
Aunty Says:
Hello Fred. Thanks for writing in and good to hear you have sorted out the problem. Heat and dust in Spain seems to be a major problem and can permanently damage PCs and laptops if left unchecked. If you’re OK with a screwdriver then most PCs can be accessed through the left hand side panel where you can dislodge and blow out dust that builds up around the processor cooler and memory. Laptops are a little more fiddly but checking and cleaning the visible cooling vents on the sides and underneath can help. I know eNET Computers offer a tune-up and clean-up for around €45 which, according to them, will leave your computer running better than when it was new.
Jack via email asks:
Dear Aunty, I am having dreadful trouble printing pdf files. The graphics are beautiful but any text contained on or within the doc comes out as gobbldygook. I have an HP4000 series printer, and the latest version of Adobe reader 9.3. Can you help? I have reloaded the printer drivers from the supplied disk.
Aunty Says:
Is everything else is printing OK Jack? (i.e. Word or OpenOffice) because if other programs are printing OK then I imagine that this is a driver issue. Maybe try downloading the latest drivers from the HP website, as the software on the CD is normally out of date before the printer leaves the factory. If that doesn’t work maybe revert to an older version of Adobe Reader and see if that cures the problem.
Paul from the UK asks:
Earlier in the year my computer was infected with a win32 virus and my computer would not recognise any of my peripheral hardware. I managed to salvage my files but had to return to factory settings to recover the computer. All is now OK except for my USB external hard drive. The computer will not access it although it registers it with a bleep when I plug it in, the icon does not appear in My Computer. I also recovered the data using Filerecovery which I found on the web. The same problem occurs when I connect the external hard drive to my netbook, with which I have had no other problems. Please advise, is it a gonner or can it recover? Please Email me your thoughts as I have gone back to England for the "summer."
Aunty Says:
It is possible that the drive is physically OK but what is known as the ‘partition’ is seriously corrupted. A good place to start is by right clicking on ‘my computer’ and choose ‘manage’. Click on ‘disk management’ and you should see your USB drive in the list with a status of its health. Let me know what it says and I’ll know the next step.
Ken via email asks:
Hi Aunty, I have had Windows 7 for 6 months now and suddenly when I reboot it takes 45-60 minutes to get from" Windows is starting" to the log on screen. I run Superantispyware daily which usually finds and removes 4 or 5 tracking cookies, I have run AGV & it finds nothing as does Malwarebytes. What can I do to speed things up?
Aunty Says:
45 minutes Ken! How on Earth do you tolerate that? There are a few things I can suggest but you will need to apply some caution and common sense as it is possible to do more harm than good. The first is to see if this is caused by something running on startup and you can do this using the msconfig utility. Click on the ‘start’ button and type msconfig and press the enter/return key (the big key with a bent arrow ?) You should see the System Configuration window appear and a click on the startup tab will display a list of all programs that run automatically when Windows starts. You can untick each one of these, restart your computer and see if solves the problem. If you’re not 100% confident with using msconfig then I would suggest enlisting the help of an expert.