How To Tips

Two simple tips and one geeky tip for what could have been more complicated situations!

How to get your email on different computers and still save it on your main one:

If you want to use more than one computer for your email, it's easy to keep ALL your email on your main computer while still having access to your email on a second computer. Maybe you want to use a laptop sometimes but usually you use a desktop. Maybe you have an understanding employer and you want to check your personal email on your lunch break at your workplace. Maybe you take a computer with you when you travel, but you want to have all those messages waiting when you get home.

Our first inclination is to look for a program that will transfer email painlessly. But it's even easier than that. When you set up your email account on your "second" computer, make sure you check the "Leave mail on server" box. That way, you'll be able to collect your email in the living room, the RV, out on the deck, at your work, and when you get home and fire up your email program there, you'll collect it all again on your primary computer. You don't have to forward things to yourself, or transfer them from one computer to another. The only inconvenience is that you'll have to read some of your messages twice (including the spam, I guess).

How to erase a CD-RW disk using Windows XP (not MediaPlayer or any other application):

More than one of you is baffled with the new Windows MediaPlayer interface. You don't have to use MediaPlayer or RealPlayer or any other add-on to deal with your rewritable discs. You can just use Windows XP.

Here are the steps:

Place the CD-RW disc in your CD writer.
Click Start My Computer.
Right-click the CD-RW drive icon and select Open from the context menu.
Select "Erase this CD-RW" from the CD Writing Tasks bar in the left-hand pane of Explorer to start the CD Writing Wizard.
Click Next to begin the wizard's erase process. A progress dialog box will display and confirm that XP has erased the files from your CD-RW disc.
Here is a link to the Microsoft "official" page, which provides a slightly less straight-forward way to accomplish this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306641.
This will work with a CD-RW disk. A plain CD-R cannot be erased.

How to avoid buying a new CD/DVD drive when Windows quits recognizing your old one:

And now for the geeky item. Last week I received a call from a relative who was having a problem with a CD/DVD drive. It had been working fine, and "for no reason" Windows stopped recognizing the drive. Separated by 1900 kilometres, we each set off on a frantic online search for drivers until I slowed down for a minute and realized that there were no special drivers for the device. Windows XP generally does a good job of recognizing CD/DVD drives on its own. So what happened?

Then, I did what I should have done in the first place. I asked, "What kind of error message are you seeing in Device Manager?"

Right-clicking on "My Computer", the clicking on "Properties" "Hardware" "Device Manager" brings up a list of the hardware on your system. In this case, Windows recognized the drive, but placed the dreaded "Red X" icon next to it. Double-clicking on that opened up a properties sheet with a "Code 39" in the Status box.

Aha! Possibly a corrupt Registry problem. A Google search brought us to a possible solution in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060 and here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=270008).

The steps are:

Start Run
Type "REGEDIT" (without the quotes)
Save a copy of the Registry
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Class {4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
In the right-hand pane you should see two settings, "Upperfilters" and "Lowerfilters" - Delete those entries
Close REGEDIT
Restart Windows

Once Windows recognizes the device and agrees to deal with it, you might have to reinstall you burner software, media player, or similar program. But luckily we didn't have to do that, and everything worked perfectly on the restart. Easier and lots cheaper than buying and installing a new drive!

Reader Feedback
After last week's column, lots and lots of you wrote with examples of websites and gadgets that you like. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I will pass these along (with appropriate credit!) in coming columns. Who knew that a column called "Foolishness" (http://rlis.com/columns/column90.htm) would generate that much email? Please keep the email coming.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.