Zap PC Annoyances, Part 2
More fixes for what ails your PC and increases your blood pressure.Steve Bass
In addition to writing PC World's Home Office column, Steve Bass is the author of "PC Annoyances." Sign up to have Steve Bass's Home Office Newsletter e-mailed to you each week. Steve Bass, while cynical, is rarely an irritation.
Last week's "Zap PC Annoyances" was Part 1. There's no sense wasting time to tell you what you'll be reading this week, so let's get right to it.
Bust Everyday Annoyances
There are a few more articles in the October special annoyances edition of PC World. The first is Michael Desmond's delicious "Annoyance Busters."
Mike hands you 24 tools and utilities to reduce those everyday pestiferous aggravations. One example is a brilliant tool to boost the way Adobe's Acrobat Reader loads. If there's only one thing you grab from the article, this has got to be the one. For info on the tool, use your browser's Find feature to search for "Painfully Slow Acrobat Loads," right near the top of the story. If you just want the tool Mike recommends for the job, go straight to our Downloads library and grab Adobe Reader SpeedUp v1.28.
Right below the Adobe tip in Mike's article, you'll find "Windows Bulge," which is noteworthy because he found a utility I didn't know about (and now use). XPlite lets you strip out many of the features and modules you don't want--or need--in XP.
Another gem Michael discovered is in "Is Windows Frozen?" On some PCs, the hard drive indicator light doesn't work--or, on cheaper PCs--doesn't even exist. Michael leads you to DiskMon, a small, free utility that shows you if your drive's working or frozen.
Dig This: Have you seen SpaceShipOne yet? It's Burt Rutan's entry for the first private manned space mission. Once you're on the site and like the pix, click on the Gallery link for more great shots. [Thanks to Gabe and Doug.]
XP Aggravations and Fixes
Of course, XP has its share of built-in annoyances. Here are two to chew on.
The Annoyance: You're merrily working in Windows XP when all of a sudden your system freezes.
The Fix: Even though XP is locked up solid, chances are good you can still open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete. In Task Manager, click the Processes tab, choose Explorer.exe, and click End Process. Then select File, New Task (Run), type explorer, and click OK. There's no harm done if it doesn't work; it's a nifty rescue if it does.
The Annoyance: My Aunt Blossom back East is happy as a Jersey clam using a dial-up modem for Internet access. The only problem is, when she's on her computer but not on the Internet, the PC restarts whenever her phone rings. To prevent the unwanted restarts, she has to unplug her modem from the phone line when she's not using the connection, and then reconnect it when she wants to go online. By the way, the restarts never happen when she's already connected to the Internet.
The Fix: It turns out Aunt Blossom's dial-up connection was set to restart her PC every time the phone rings. There are two places to turn this option off, depending on your system. First, open Control Panel, and if you're in Windows XP's Category view, click Performance and Maintenance. In XP, 2000, and Me, select System, Hardware, Device Manager. In Windows 98, choose System, Device Manager. In all versions of Windows, scroll to and open Modems. Right-click your modem and select Properties. Under the Power Management tab, make sure "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" is unchecked.
Note: If you don't have a modem on your PC and subsequently can't find any modem settings, don't fret. You probably have a broadband connection, or you're on a network--so you can go on your merry way.
And BTW, I have XP Pro and Modems isn't an option from Category View/Performance and Main. It is from Classic View.
If you don't see a Power Management tab, this isn't the cause of the restarts, but there's another possibility: Your system's BIOS may be set to trigger a restart when the phone rings. Start by reading Kirk Steers' February 2003 Hardware Tips column, "Tweak Your PC's BIOS Settings the Safe Way." Follow Kirk's directions, and once you're in your PC Setup program, look for options labeled "Power" or "Power Management" (the exact wording varies from system to system). If you see a "Wake Ring-on" option, disable it.
More From the Special Section
A bunch of editors got together in the official PC World lunchroom. They brainstormed about how they make mincemeat out of the drudgery of daily chores. In "All Gain, No Pain," you'll see how to quickly train a software firewall, clean up files and folders, and--my favorite--use a utility called FinePrint to, as the heading says, "Save Paper by Combining Print Jobs" (don't miss this one).
And before I run out of steam, check out the "Hall of Shame & Hall of Fame" and "R U Annoying?" The first article deals with dumb, annoying things and people; the second helps you determine if you (certainly not me) have annoying computing habits.
Application Irritations
Microsoft Office has plenty of irritants and more than its share of annoyances. Here are fixes for two of them.
The Annoyance: I tried an add-in program for Microsoft Outlook a while ago and decided to uninstall it. But no matter what I did, I got an error message saying Outlook's still trying to run the program.
The Fix: The only sure way to remove an add-in utility that doesn't know when to quit is to get help from the vendor. I was able to get rid of the Outlook error on my own, however. Open Outlook and select Tools, Options, Other, Advanced Options. Click Add-In Manager and disable the program that's causing the error by unchecking it. If the program isn't listed there, click OK, choose "COM Add-Ins," and repeat the previous steps.
The Annoyance: Those pain-in-the-neck hyperlinks in Excel worksheets are forever sending me to my browser when all I want to do is select the cell the link's in.
The Fix: The quick and dirty way to select a cell without following the link it contains is to click the cell, hold down the mouse button until the cursor changes to a plus sign, and then let go. The cell is highlighted and your browser stays closed. If you want to remove a link, right-click it and choose Remove Hyperlink. If you never, ever want to see a hyperlink in Excel again, stop the program from automatically converting them: Choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat As You Type, and uncheck "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks."
Next week? More annoyances and fixes, things that'll make your computing day easier, quicker, and oh, so much more fun.