Fixes for Your Computing Woes

A compendium of tips for dealing with the annoyances of computing life, plus how to catch fish with your bare hands.

Steve Bass

Steve Bass writes PC World's monthly "Hassle-Free PC" column and is the author of PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer, available from O'Reilly. He also writes PC World's daily Tips & Tweaks blog. Sign up to have Steve's newsletter e-mailed to you each week. Comments or questions? Send Steve e-mail.

There's no doubt, PC World readers have computing annoyances. That's probably why our most popular features involve solving problems.

I hear tales of woe from readers every day (oh, do I hear tales). This week I've got a slew of questions that many readers face, along with fixes.

AVG's Humongous Files

Q: AVG's free antivirus program creates two huge files, AVG7DB_F.DAT and AVG7QT.DAT. Are they really necessary?

A: Both of the files are needed for AVG's Integrity Check and Quick Test functions. I haven't a clue why they grow in size. Delete them--there's no harm and AVG will re-create them the next time it uses these features.

Log File Collection

Q: Most folks have tons of files with the .log extension. Are those really necessary?

A: They're generally text files that collect information about a specific program. Except for those in the Windows folder, they can be safely deleted. [Thanks for the clarification, John M.] And if you ever have a question about a file name extension, plug it into the FileExt site for an explanation of the file's function.

Forwarding YouTube Videos

Q: A few readers have complained that they watched a YouTube video in one of my blogs and wanted to send the YouTube link to a friend--but couldn't figure out how to do it.

A: Click on the YouTube logo on the lower right corner of any video and it'll bring you to the site. Then grab the link from your browser's address field.

Dig This: It's making the rounds, ladies and gents, the soon-to-be-famous video of two guys catching catfish with their bare hands. It's also known as Catfish Noodling. [Thanks, BB-BJD.]

Dig This, Too: You've got to watch The Day The Routers Died, a well-done musical parody of "American Pie" as performed at a RIPE 55 meeting, a five-day gathering of networking geeks in Amsterdam. (Turn your PC's volume way down.)

Irritating Logos

Q: Most PCs boot with the manufacturer's logo. Unfortunately, you miss out on a lot of troubleshooting and diagnostic information when your system boots.

A: The next time you boot, you'll need to modify the BIOS. Pay attention during the boot-up: The system usually tells you the right key to click. On my PC, it's the F2 key; yours may be Delete or F1. Browse through the various BIOS options until you find something similar to "disable the logo screen," and change the setting to not show the logo.

Fix Long URL Annoyances

Q: I get e-mail with URLs--links to pages--that are broken into multiple lines (links to Google Maps or MapQuest, for instance).

A: I wish everyone would use a service like SnipURL (I've been using it since 2002).

SnipURL is a free Web service turns long URLs into easy-to-use links. For instance, snipurl.com/mktst (no, you don't need the "http://" prefix), a 17-character link, will get you to a Google map with a 186-character URL.

Add a SnipURL icon to your browser's toolbar so when you're at a site with a long URL, all it takes is one click to snip the link down to size. SnipURL also lets you password-protect the link and create a nickname.

But let's say your e-mail correspondent didn't use SnipURL. In that case you might try Chris Sells's UrlRun, a small, handy utility that cleans up spaces and line breaks in links, removes extraneous characters, and then launches the link in your browser.

Dig This: Use Google Map's GeoGreeting to spell it out with buildings--one very cool way to send a greeting.

Dig This, Too: Why not play FetchFido instead of working? It's easy...all you need to do is touch the black squares and avoid the red ones. Ha!

More of the Same

Click over to my November Hassle Free PC for more fixed annoyances.

But wait, there's more. In "Make Random Reboots Tell You What's Up," PC World contributing editor Scott Dunn tells us how to diagnose the cause of PC restarts that come out of the blue.

If that's not enough (it never is, I know), take a look at "The 20 (Mostly Free) Downloads You Can't Do Without." Preston Gralla tells how to cure a sluggish PC, improve your defenses, and have more computing fun with these great programs. Most are freebies, and you can try those that aren't before you put down any cash.

You'll find a bunch more useful downloads on our System Resources Tune-Up page.