Recently answered questions

An easy way to safely remove your USB devices, even iPods. Something weird is going on with Windows Live Mail 2012.

 

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod connected to your computer, you don’t want to just yank that thing out while it’s communicating with iTunes. You can really mess it up that way. (Newer devices can simply be unplugged as long as iTunes isn’t running. If you have an older iPod, always do the Safely Remove procedure.)

A customer contacted me recently because she remembered me telling her that, but couldn’t remember how to remove the device gracefully. Here are a couple of ways.

The normal way

• Move your cursor to the lower right-hand corner of the screen (by the clock) and look for an icon that’s a grey USB plug with a green check mark
• Click once on the icon
• Click on the drive letter for the device you want to remove
• Wait for the popup that says it’s safe to remove the device, then remove it

The iTunes way

In the sidebar on the left part of the iTunes window, click on the Eject button

Another way

Get the free utility called USB Disk Ejector, here: http://quickandeasysoftware.net/software/usb-disk-ejector. This thing is great. It will allow you to eject iDevices, flash drives, external hard drives, memory cards and Firewire disks. It’s fast, it’s portable, it’s easy and it just gets on with it.

You can have it in the Notification Area if you want, or as an icon on your desktop where it’s easier to see. It will often eject disks that Windows can’t eject.

I have been using USB Disk Ejector since XP. It works there, on Vista and on Windows 7, according to the developer. He hasn’t updated it for Windows 8, but I have used it successfully on Window 8 and 8.1

The Sure-fire way

Turn off the computer and remove the device!

 

It’s actually pretty rare to see errors in Windows Live Mail. Quirky behaviour, yes, but actual errors? Rare.

So I was surprised to hear from a customer that she couldn’t open WLM. And I was surprised again a few days later when another customer reported the exact same problem and error message. Maybe there’s something out there that’s breaking WLM 2012 on Windows 8.1.

What they saw when they tried to open up their email was the splash screen for Windows Live Mail 2012, a spinning blue circle, and then a box with this error message:

WINDOWS LIVE MAIL COULD NOT BE STARTED.  IT MAY NOT BE INSTALLED CORRECTLY.  MAKE SURE THAT YOUR DISK IS NOT FULL OR THAT YOU ARE NOT OUT OF MEMORY (0x80041161)

In both cases the program had been working well for some time, and there was plenty of RAM and hard drive real estate available.

Here’s what fixed it:

• Close Windows Live Mail completely
• Close all browsers
• Go to Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs
• Locate Windows Essentials
• DO NOT CLICK ON UNINSTALL! Instead, click on Repair
• Follow the prompts to repair Windows Essentials. It will probably take some time.
• When the repair is finished, restart the computer

Have any of you experienced this? How did you fix it?

 

Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along!

Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna (http://computercarekelowna.com/) a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to [email protected].

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