Unusual PC Problems…Part 1

To all my students in PC Networks and Troubleshooting, with what I taught you, and with all your questions, you should already know how to diagnose a PC problem based on underlying facts observable. But in my experience, there are still some unusual cases that you never know what the problem is, and the problem is not anywhere in what you have learned in school. I actually have several experiences like that and am going to share each one. Each problem in a series of articles, and hoping you too could also learn from them.

There was a time when I decided to reformat my PC due to a suspected virus problem. My hard disks were filled with files, but since I was running on two hard disks, my plan was to do as follows:

1. Move all files to my data drive, the drive that is not running my operating system and programs.
2. Reformat the drive with the operating system.
3. Reinstall the operating system; reinstall the anti-virus softwares and anti-spyware softwares.
4. Update security updates of the operating system, update anti-virus and anti-spyware data files online.
5. Connect the data drive as slave (Which may still contain the suspected virus) and scan and clean it.

Problem: Now, during the reformat, reformatting as NTFS would not continue.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: Hard drive busted, probably with bad sectors; IDE data cable problem; power supply connector problem; motherboard IDE port busted; or simply loose connections.
What I did: I first check the connections checking if they were loose, they were fine and the problem still existed. I next checked the power supply, then changed the IDE cable, use the other IDE port and each step along the way, I always tested the problem, and the problem still existed. For some reason I decided to format the drive as FAT32, and the problem seem to not exist! Then I decided to install Windows XP and delete partitions and create them as well and format the drive as NTFS, maybe that would do the trick to get it fixed. And after doing that, I was able to reformat as NTFS! No more problems? That’s what I thought.

Problem: Installation would not continue. Error in copying file, each time the error occurred, the file was a different file being copied.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: Hard drive busted, not functioning well; CD ROM drive busted, not reading well, could be dirty; CD ROM IDE data cable problem, CD ROM power cable problem.
What I did: I first checked the CD ROM drive connections, no loose connections. IDE cable was replaced. Power cable seemed to supply power well. I cleaned the CD ROM drive lens using a CD lens cleaner. Each step done, I kept testing; repeating the installation, the error always existed. This made me conclude it is the CD ROM! The CD ROM is busted! Luckily, I have a lot of computers at home; I replaced the CD ROM drive with another CD ROM drive from my other PC that I know is functioning well.

Problem: Installation would still not continue with the new CD ROM! Two CD ROMs tested. For me it was too much of a coincidence that both of my CD ROM drives would be busted at the same time.
Initial Assessment of Possible Causes: The other CD ROM drive is also busted, or the motherboard’s IDE ports are busted.
What I did: For me it was too much of a coincidence that both CD ROM drives got busted at the same time! Although that happened, I was not convinced that that was the problem; most probably it was the motherboard’s IDE ports. Now a sudden rush of grief came into me. Because it meant I have to but a new motherboard and my motherboard had a built-in video and audio chip, so it was like forcing me to change 3 products instead of one. Aside from that, I was using a Pentium III processor on a PGA370 socket, worrying that I would not find a brand new one like that and might be forced to buy a new one, with a new Pentium IV processor which is more expensive!

When I got to PC Domain, my favorite computer shop in SM Fairview, I found the motherboard I was looking for. Brand new and was the last one! Also with built in video and audio. The only problem was it only had one SDRAM slot and not two just like my old one. But I may not be able to find another board for my Pentium III processor so I bought it.

My old motherboard had two 128MB SDRAM memories and I still wanted the power of a 256MB SDRAM. I also had another computer, a Pentium IV with one 256MB SDRAM and its motherboard had two SDRAM slots. So I exchanged their memory, I took the one 256MB SDRAM for the single SDRAM slot motherboard for the Pentium III, and placed the two 128MB SDRAM on the Pentium IV motherboard that did have two SDRAM slots.

Finally! Installation of Windows XP was a success! Everything ran fine, without any problems! It took me a long time to find out that the motherboard was the problem!

Not quite yet…

Problem!

When I decided to also reformat the Pentium IV PC since I did not like the Windows 2003 and decided to go back to Windows XP, installation would not continue. Error in copying files from the CD going to the hard disk!

What’s the cause of the problem readers?

If you say the two 128MB SDRAM, you are correct! The motherboard did not have any problems at all. It was the memory right from the start! I had an old 64MB SDRAM in my PC parts junk, and used it just to verify my claim. And that was it, cause of problem verified! It was the two 128MB SDRAM, and even both of them were busted, not only one.

What do you guess I did?

Of course you’ll say I bought a new memory. But not only that, I bought the more expensive one with a more reliable known brand. What a big role the memory had in copying files from the CD ROM to the hard disk! And from what I knew in the past is that once you pass POST (Power-On-Self-Test) and see a display, nothings wrong with the memory. So if you are going to buy memory, stick with the known brands, like Kingston and Apacer. It will save you from making wrong PC trouble diagnosis.

Unusual PC Problems...Part 2 - click here

Email Client Software Problems...Part 1

Although I believe today, there are more people using free browser-based emails like Yahoo and Hotmail and less POP3 emails, I am still posting this article for the minority since my clients of my own company are part of that minority that all of them usually have the same problem when it comes to POP3 emails.

For those that use POP3 email client softwares like the following:
O Microsoft Outlook
O Microsoft Outlook Express
O Eudora
O Or any other POP3 Email Software

You usually enter the following:

Login, Password, Email, POP3 Server, SMTP Server, Your Name that the recipients see when you send them an email and a Label Name to differentiate one account from another if ever the email software supports multiple accounts.

And all of these values will be given by the company who renders the POP3 service like your ISP or hosting provider.

And most of the time here are the common problems encountered when using these softwares.:

O Virus Infection
O Unread mails because they are so many!
O Mail box gets full.
O You keep on downloading the same messages over and over again.

Now let's tackle them one by one...

Virus Infection

Most of the vulnerable people here are the Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express users since these two have been the most susceptible. Not only because Microsoft makes the worst software in the world, but maybe because it is used by the majority and this is more worth hacking into than any other software brand. The best way to be protected is (1) Always download Windows Updates at http://www.windowsupdate.com and (2) Have a good anti-virus software installed like McAfee, Norton or AVG. I personally use AVG because it is free and is as powerful as Norton and McAfee with free updates as well. Once you have this installed configure it to scan incoming and outgoing emails and that's about it.

Unread mails because they are so many!

Sometimes we receive soooooo many emails, some important, some goes straight to the trash, but since they are so many, we sometimes cannot filter out the important ones over the less important ones. And here are two solutions for that: (1) Use Folders and Inbox Rules and (2) Filter out spam automatically.

Inbox rules also called rules wizard in the newer versions of Outlook and Outlook Express. Eudora has this also along with other email softwares. This feature is good for sorting out emails so they do not become confusing due to the large amount of mail. Although other email softwares have this feature, the procedure I will give is for Outlook or Outlook Express. You might need to find out how to do it with your own email software.

In MS Outlook, click on the Tools menu then Rules Wizard



After clicking on the Rules Wizard menu, you will see something like this:



Click on the New button.

Then leave everything the same and choose Move messages based on content and click on the Next button.



You may choose your own rule, but let's just assume you want to move messages based on who it is coming from, so take out the check box on with specific words in the subject or body, scroll down a bit and place a check on with specific words in the senders address, and in the Rule Description below, click on the specific words and type in the email address of one person you know who always sends you an email, click on Add, then click on the OK button.



Now your back to the old dialog box, click on Next and keep the rule checked at move it to the specified folder and in the Rules Description, click on the word specified and navigate to where you want the emails of this person to go to. Click on New to create a new folder, and name it to the name of the people who owns the email address you typed earlier. Choose the location where you want the new folder to be made and click on OK



You should now see the created new folder, choose that and click on OK.



Back to the Rules Wizard dialog box, click on Next, you'll see the exceptions options, let's skip that first and click on Next again. You will now reach the final step. You could name the rule anything you want and place a check on Run this rule now on messages already in "Inbox". so that the existing emails you receive will already get sorted and click on the Finish button.



Once all your emails are transferred, finally click on OK on the Rules Wizard dialog box and your are done!

Now do the same for all your other friends and their email gets sorted whenever you receive them. This way it is easier to find emails and you could address to the ones that are more important than the others.

But the next problem is we all do get a fair amount of spam mail, and their email addresses change all the time, even content changes all the time and you will make rules forever to keep them out of the way. So what I use is SpamPal, which you could download for free at http://www.spampal.org. Once you download it, their website has instructions on how to install it and follow it to the letter and you'll be able to filter out spam on a folder.

SpamPal checks out IP addresses commonly used by spammers based on the spamlist databases they connect to. Now a word of caution though is not all filtered out as spam will actually be spam, but most of the time it is. And some spammers may also not be detected as spam, although they are. And to fix that, SpamPal has a Whitelist and Blacklist. For email addresses considered as spam but is not spam, add them to the Whitelist and for spam that was not considered spam, add them to the Black list and the next time you receive the emails they will now go to the right places.

Next Problem: Mail box gets full.

Email Client Software Problems...Part 2

This is now the second part of the story on email client software problems, if you haven't read the first part, you may do so by clicking here.

Mail box gets full.

Some people are wondering why their email box is full even if they check their email everyday? And whenever someone is sending them an email, they say it bounces back because the email box is filled! Actually this is how emails work. Once you receive an email it is stored on the email POP3 server. Either on your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or your hosting company. This is what has limited disk space, what ever they offered you, that usually range from 2MB to 25MB and in some cases it may even reach 100MB. Whenever you download your email on your email software, it connects to this disk space and retrieves all the messages. And once you do, they are still there. Once you delete them on your email software, that's when the email software tells the server to deleted them too on the next time you connect and retrieve your emails again.

But what if you want your emails to be deleted automatically once you receive them on your email software? To do this, you must set your email software not to leave mails on the server. Although this could be done on most email client softwares, the procedure I am going to give you is for MS Outlook and Outlook Express. Once you know this it would be a lot easier to figure this out on your own using your own email software.

First is click on Tools then Accounts or Email Accounts.



A dialog box will open and choose View or change existing e-mail accounts, then click on Next.



What will come out is a list of email accounts configured on your email software. If you see tabs there, click on the Mail tab.



Now click on the desired email account and click on Change.

Now click on the More Settings button.



Then with the new window open, go to the Advanced tab and uncheck Leave a copy of messages on the server and click on OK.



Then simply close the Email Accounts dialog box and you're done!

You keep on downloading the same messages over and over again.

Have you ever experienced, downloading all your 100+ emails until you get them all, then the next day, you start downloading 200+ including your emails yesterday! Then the next day you download 300+!

This problem occurs when your email software fails to finish deleting the emails on the server, due to a slow bandwidth connection causing connection timeouts, or unstatble connections of ISPs because of the phone, or whatever reason. Bottomline is that the deleting of emails by the email software and sending the status that emails were downloaded already was not finished.

This usually occurs when you are downloading so many emails. And this usually happens when you do not get to download your emails often. And when this happens eventually your email box gets full. And this is what to do to fix it.

1) Connect and just download all your mails and do nothing else and make it finish downloading and deleting all emails. But if it still doesn't work and for some reason it never finishes and hangs, that's when you do step 2.

2) Connect to your email using your web browsers. Some ISPs give web-based access to your POP3 accounts. Some hosting companies do to. My hosting company offers web-based email for all my clients through http://www.domainname.com/webmail whatever their domain name is. And from there, delete your unimportant emails there. If it goes to a trash folder, delete the contents of the trash folder too. Then check your email again on your email software. That should make email downloading faster and eventually finish downloading all of them on your email software. After doing this, if you still cannot completely download all your emails, I guess it is time to delete all of them. You may not be able to see read them all if you are in a hurry, but it is better than not receiving emails at all forever. If you need to do this, check the next step.

3) You can actually delete all your emails using a web-based email service, but it would be faster if you contact the ISP or hosting company to simply tell them to delete the account and create it again. Some hosting companies like my company gives the client full freedom to delete and create email accounts on their own through their web-based control panel. Once you do this, just create the account again and everything should be running fine again and just check your email more ofter to avoid this to happen all over again.

For questions of having your own POP3 accounts using your own domains like www.yourname.com, feel free to contact me so we could set this up at a very reasonable cheap price. :-) Benj Arriola