------------------------------------------------------------ THE NEW COMPUTER UNIVERSE EZINE The Zine for Newbies (In Business & Computers) 7/4/03 Vol 2 Issue #2 Matthew Zator, Editor, compuniversezine@yahoo.ca Circulation: 450 ------------------------------------------------------------ By subscription only! Welcome to your next issue of "The New Computer Universe". You are receiving this newsletter because you requested a subscription. Unsubscribe instructions are at the end of this newsletter. ------------------------------------------------------------ IN THIS ISSUE ------------------------------------------------------------ => Editor's Forward => Course: What to do when windows won't boot up => Comparing Yahoo! Mail TO MSN's hotmail => Computer Buying Consumer Watch (Where to buy?) * => Business Section: (NEW!)- Scam of the month: The Nygerian Email Letter Scam => Interesting Website Of The Month => How to Be Featured as our Guest Columnist => Classifieds => Coming Next Issue! ------------------------------------------------------------ EDITOR'S FORWARD ------------------------------------------------------------ Hello New & Old Subscribers Alike! Welcome to another issue of computer universe. I hope everyone is having a great start to the summer months. At this time of publication, the sun is out and it is warm. I hope the weather is being kind to all of you too (No Rain!). In this issue I am very excited to say that I am going to debut some "how to" e-books in the coming month and I hope they will help a lot of people in their computer endeavours. Seeing that most of you are probably planning summer vacations, you might not be able to read this issue in its entirety. But I hope you will enjoy reading it after your holidays. *** Another thing I am doing is a LIVE chat that will enable you to ask questions and get them answered on the spot on July 19th at 2 pm PT on my website. If you are going to attend, PLEASE email me at compuniversezine@yahoo.ca with YES in the subject line (I want to know how many people I'm going to talk to, and if it's worth doing) Until next month, I wish you a great, sun filled summer with many great memories. Have A Great Summer, and Happy Reading! Matthew Zator Editor PS: I hope everyone got the survey invitation I sent out yesterday. I really value your opinions, so I hope you will answer it. Also, for new subscribers, if you want to look at old issues, go to the archives at: http://compuniverse.bizhosting.com/archives.html ------------------------------------------------------------ COURSE: What to do when windows won't boot up Otis F. Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------ When Windows fails to boot it is normally caused by the installation of a program or device which caused a conflict with one or more other programs. This will no doubt give you plenty of heartache if you're not certain which program caused Windows to not boot up. If you recently installed a program or application and know where it was installed,you may be in much better shape as for as correcting the error. Here are common ways to correct the problem of your computer not completely booting up or not booting up at all. If your computer will not boot-up at all,hopefully you have made a good emergency boot disk. You can always make a windows startup disk by creating one from another computer running Windows 98 or Me.Perform the following if your computer........ Won't Boot-Up At All FIRST......Put your boot floppy disk in the floppy drive and turn on the PC.On some computers, you may have to access the bios and select the Boot priority to your A: drive.Save any changes and select "Start Computer without CDROM support" and press Enter.Once you are at the A> prompt,type dir c: and press enter. SECOND....If your programs and other files are present,your hard drive is good.Try to repair or restore your system Registry by following the steps below.This may repair Windows,the Config. Sys and autoexec.bat files to where the PC may boot up normally. THIRD......If the above procedure did not correct the problem of your computer not booting up,type in "fdisk /mbr" and press Enter to restore your master boot record.Type "Scandisk C:" to check the hard drive for errors that may have occurred. You can also type "Sys C:" to hopefully restore files needed to boot up your computer. FOURTH......If the above procedures fail to repair your computer,you can repeat the first part of step one above and select "Start Computer With CDROM Support" re-install Windows. Making A Windows XP Bootable Floppy Windows XP users should create a boot disk now by placing a formatted blank diskette in the A: drive, open Windows Explorer to the C:,select Tools,Folder Options ,show Hidden files and and folders,then View Tab. Now you uncheck "Hide Protected Operating System Files (recommended).You will see a warning and click Yes and click OK.Copy the files ntldr,ntdetect.com and boot.ini onto the disk.Remove the disk and label it the Windows XP Boot Disk. After making your boot disk,recheck "Hide protected operating system files and folders (recommended)" in the Folder Options dialog box. To use the disk when Windows XP won't boot,place the disk in the drive,and unto re-booting,the computer, Windows simply bypass the basic boot files on the hard drive and continue to boot up. If The PC Won't Boot Pass Windows FIRST......If your Operating System is Windows Millennium,turn on the computer and immediately press and hold down the CTRL key.Once the startup options appear,release the CTRL key. Select Safe Mode and press Enter.You are now in Windows limited version.If you know what caused your computer not to boot,you can now either change or delete that program. SECOND....Repair your Registry by selecting Start,Run and typing "scanregw /fix" and press enter.This will fix any damage done to the Registry. You can also restore your registry which replaces your current registry with an earlier copy that was backed up by your computer.Click on Start,Run and type "scanregw /restore" and press Enter. To repair your Windows 98 Registry,hold down the CTRL key as you start the PC and select "Command Prompt Only".Type "scanreg /fix" and press Enter and "scanreg/restore" to restore a previousely saved copy of the Registry. If you have Windows XP,press F8 after rebooting the PC should Windows freeze while booting up. You can select "Last Known Good Configuration" after rebooting to allow the computer to boot the last backed up files.And you can choose "Safe Mode" to remove any files you know caused the operating system to hang up. --------------------------------- About the author: Otis F. Cooper is solely dedicated to boosting the knowledge and confidence of every computer user that is serious about knowing computers.Use his informative articles and videos to understand every aspect about the PC.Read more about his formula for pc training at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com ------------------------------------------------------------ COMPARING: Yahoo! Mail to MSN's Hotmail (Which Is Better?) Matthew Zator, Editor ------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Mail MSN's Hotmail Space: 6 MB 2 MB SPAM prevention: Spamguard Junk Folder virus scan for attachments yes yes Review: Yahoo! Mail is a Hotmail was a good very good and reliable service but they've service that has a lot dwindled down to very of space for your email little space that fills and a very good SPAM up fast. They also are prevention system in focusing more on their place. The amount of paid alternative and space allows all messages throwing the Free one to get through. away. Soon, the paid one will be all that's will be all that's left. OVERALL 9/10 5/10 RATING ** The one I would recommend is Yahoo! Mail because of their huge amount of space for a free email service and their spamguard feature. I don't like hotmail because of it's small amount of space and their neglect of the free service. ------------------------------------------------------------ CONSUMER WATCH: Computer Buying (Where to buy?) Matthew Zator, Editor ------------------------------------------------------------ Whenever people buy a computer their first question is, Where am I going to buy it and at what price? In this article, I'm going to recommend where the best place is to buy a quality computer at a good price, and if you should go for the warrenty they're offering. Almost always people go to a big retail outlet like Future Shop to get their computer at a reasonable price. Future Shop is good but their technical support isn't very good. (One of my relatives found out that the hard way) If you are going to buy a computer, ask questions of the sales associates. Like, "When I bring my computer in for servicing, are you going to send it out, or fix it here?" or "How long is the warrenty and does it cover human error?" If you ask these questions and they don't have good answers, they are probably not knowledgable. The store I recommend going to is London Drugs because of their knowledgable staff and technical support. They don't send out your computer, they service it right there. When you buy a computer, they will build it to your specifications with quality parts. Although there are many small computer stores that will do this cheaper, but I would go for London Drugs because they're big and you know the computer parts are quality. With small places, you have no idea where the parts came from and they probably are defective. Don't get me wrong, some places are good, but bigger is always better if you want peace of mind. ------------------------------------------------------------ BUSINESS SECTION Scam of the month: Nygerian Email Letter Scam ------------------------------------------------------------ The scam of the month is the popular nygerian email letter scam that has costed innocent people a lot of money. Here is what happens, The victim gets an email with an urgent phrase in the subject line that makes the person open the email and read it. In the email, a lawyer, friend, or someone that is fleeing a country is writing you to ask you to transfer a substantial amount of money to a foreign bank account (your account) and once it's there, you will get a portion of it for your own use. The letter looks very professional making the victim very susceptable to the scam. They ask you to email them back asap with your answer and your bank account number so they can make the transfer. But of course, they're not making a transfer, they're taking money from your account for their own use. You will find out about it when it's too late. The trouble is that you can't find out who the real person is that's sending you this stuff. Usually it's not a person in a foreign country, they are in your country or somewhere very close. If you get this email, delete it and don't reply to it. This will prevent you from becoming another statistic. The postal address at the top usually is a place in Nygeria or Africa. ------------------------------------------------------------ How to be a guest columnist instructions ------------------------------------------------------------ In the next issue & issues after that, I will feature a guest columnist. So please send me your articles! Email them to, compuniversezine@yahoo.ca with the subject, "Article For EZine" Thanks! ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Interesting Website Of The Month: http:// ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ------------------------------------------------------------ CLASSIFIED ADS ------------------------------------------------------------ Problem Solver Online Is Getting Refitted! In the next month, I will be refitting Problem Solver Online to be a FREE service that has a message board where you can ask all the questions to want about computers or business to me or to any person that is on the internet. It's the best place to get your question answered for FREE. So I hope everyone will try it out. It will probably be accessible about mid July. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Do you like this ezine? Send a copy of it to a friend! *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ------------------------------------------------------------ NEXT ISSUE: The August 2003 Issue ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Another Scam of the month for you to avoid, the transcript of the LIVE chat, winner of the survey contest, course on how to use a search engine, and more! ------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 2003 Matthew Zator ------------------------------------------------------------ Online issues can be found at http://compuniverse.bizhosting.com/archives.html If you want to advertise in this ezine, go to http://compuniverse.bizhosting.com I have very affordable rates! ----------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Zator Editor, Computer Universe EZine & Problem Solver Online compuniversezine@yahoo.ca