Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
September 23, 2007

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 3, Number 15 — Sunday, September 23, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2

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IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Can't Delete Emails in Outlook Express
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   More on PCLinuxOS
   4.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   5.   Feedback from Readers
   6.   HOWTO: Stopping Blue Screen of Death Reboots
   7.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter. Click here to subscribe. It's free!

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If you find an email in your Spam folder or Bulk Mail folder that you really want to receive -- be sure to click on their button to reclassify the email in their system. It will help you and it will help others.

1.  Can't Delete Emails in Outlook Express

Reader Jack W. wrote to ask about a problem he was having with Outlook Express:

Terry

Recently my delete feature in my e mail no longer works. This is somewhat of a problem but I have found a way around it. I move the mail to a folder I set up as Trash and the delete works there. I am using Outlook Express and so far I have not located any script that would render the delete button inoperative. A right click and delete does not work either. I do have some degree of computer knowledge and have searched the mail program as well as the registry for a java script and have found none. I have run several AdAware, Housecall, Stinger and many other scans looking for this culprit. For a while I was able to reboot and the delete worked but now that does not do the job. I have ran a registry cleaner also to no avail.
Jack W.

Fortunately, the solution to this problem doesn't require major surgery to Outlook Express or Windows. It's also not a virus or malware problem, at least, probably not...

Outlook Express has a bug that's related to file size of its data file. Once the file gets too big, you can no longer delete emails in the file.

The key word that I used is "in" — I didn't use "from." Jack needed to compact (compress) his email folders in Outlook Express.

Outlook Express, like some other email programs, keeps most of the emails that it receives in one big file.

More importantly for this problem, when you "delete" an email, all you're really doing is to mark the email as deleted.

The first time you delete a particular email, the email remains intact, but OE changes its location to the Deleted Items folder.

The second step is to delete the items from the Deleted Items folder. You might click on the Deleted Items folder and, then, highlight and delete the emails. Or, you could rightt-click on the Deleted Items folder in the Folders section in the left column of the OE window, and pick Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder.

But, neither of these does the final step. The email is still there.

The final step, which you ought to do at least every couple months, is to compress or compact the email folder. In Outlook Express, the process is easy — File > Folder > Compact All Folders.

Related articles:

• Compacting Email Folders
• When I delete an email, it's gone -- right?
• Compacting Outlook Express Email Folders

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2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. This week did not include Patch Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
New version this week. Version 2.0.0.7 was released on September 18, 2007. This was a security update.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
No new version this week. Version 9.23 was released on August 15th. This release of a recommended security upgrade, in addition to having several other changes and bug fixes.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No new version this week. Version 9.0b3 (beta version) was released during the week ending August 18, 2007.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): No new version this week. Version 1.1.4 was released on August 3, 2007. This was primarily a security update.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

The first beta version of v8 (v8.0.0.b1) was released week, available from http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope .

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
No new version this week. Thunderbird version 2.0.0.6 was released on August 1, 2007. This is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): New Version! Version 2.3 was released during the week ending September 22nd. This includes new feature as well as bug fixes.

3.  More on PCLinuxOS

Last week, I had tried PCLinuxOS via the "live CD" route. I downloaded the .ISO image of the CDROM and then used Nero to burn the image onto a CDR.

Many Linux versions are distributed as .ISO imagea, but most of these images are just Install Disks. In the case of PCLinuxOS, and a few others like SimplyMepis, the CD image is actually a bootable, runnable version of Linux. That's right. You can download it for free. You can burn it to a CD. You can boot your computer from the CD. And, you can see what PCLinux is like without ever installing it on your computer.

As I played with it some more, I discovered something that I had missed when I first tried it. PCLinuxOS will start booting and then will stop at a menu that gives the user a number of choices. Like many boot menus, though, this one is on a timer — if you don't respond in time (and I didn't, since I had started the boot and walked away), it selects the default and runs PCLinux from the CD.

I mentioned last week that running any kind of OS from a CD is s l o w. There's a much faster option, though. On the menu, you get the option to load PCLinuxOS into your computer's RAM and run it from there. You're not installing it on your hard drive. Effectively, you'd have a much faster system with a solid state hard drive, at least until you reboot.

PCLinuxOS was amazing and blazing running from memory on my notebook (a three-year-old 1.7GHz Pentium M). After using it for a couple hours, I took the plunge...

PCLinuxOS, like most Linux versions, assumes that you will probably be installing it on a computer that currently runs Windows. Of course, you get a choice to use the entire hard drive, but it also has a wizard that handles shrinking a Windows partition to make room for the main Linux partition and the swap partition that Linux needs (similar in funciton to the swap file that Windows uses).

While I could have followed the wizard through the process, I had done a little Google searching first, looking for how to resize an NTFS partition (they type that Windows XP usually uses). I probably would have done the resizing myself using Partition Magic as I used to, except that I found I had not reinstalled Partition Magic after last year's hard drive failure.

The Google searching turned up, not just information on resizing NTFS using Linux, but I found a perfect article at PCLinuxOS Magazine. I found an article that walked me though the installation step-by-step: Installing PCLinuxOS on a Windows XP hard drive.

The installation went very smoothly. I chose to set up an 8 GB partition for PCLinuxOS. The wizard shrunk my Windows data partition which I had as D: drive (it let me choose between my C: and my D: drives). Then, it created and formatted the newly-freed space to be my new Linux partition.

I was also able to choose which of the Linux boot manager programs I wanted to use — GRUB or LILO. I chose LILO, since I've had more experience with it.

Now, when I boot my computer, the first thing that comes up is the LILO boot menu, which lets me choose between booting PCLinuxOS and booting Windows XP Professional.