Seniors - Tuesday Group

FEBRUARY 2011 - REPORT

Hello Everybody

Opening the meeting we talked about Roger Foulds still being sick and we wish him a speedy recovery.

Thomas said he had used DVD Shrink to try and copy a dvd on to a DVD-R disk, he also used Ashampoo back up program however this asked him for 2 disks and didn't seem to work after the first disk. Peter said he would need a dual layer disk.

Bill said a good free program was "dvdfab" at www.dvdfab.com however finding the free version is not to easy. We then had a general discission on some encoding and burning programs.

I mentioned a problem I had, where quite a number of emails, that I had received over the last year and had been deleted, suddenly reappeared in Thunderbird. I redeleted the emails and the problem has not happened again.

This led to a query on how can you stop people sending you large emails. With Thunderbird as the default, it was pointed out you go to Tools- Account Settings-Disc Space. Then you can set the size of the messages you will receive. We had a general talk about the changing packages that are coming from different ISP's and some possible changes in the future.

Joan raised a problem she was having in that her computer was shutting down and then automatically restarting. She was directed to the following, right click My Computer-Properties-Advanced- Startup and Recovery Settings, here you can make changes to you system when there are unexpected shutdowns. As Joan's computer was just shutting down various comments came from members as to the possible problem, over heating was mentioned. Peter also suggested reseating a machines memory chips. I also had been suffering from impromptu machine shutdowns, Since the meeting I have vacuumed out my machine and I removed my 4 memory chips and reinstalled them and, to date cross fingers, my machine has not shut down.

Olin raised a query regarding this news item. I enclose for your information the following news from the TechRepublic, I received just now: "AutoRun turned off permanently in Windows XP by Microsoft".

I have never heard about this "AutoRun". But this is what I found about it just now: In addition to the numerous security updates released on Patch Tuesday, Microsoft finally turned off AutoRun for Windows Vista and Windows XP. Now programs will not execute automatically when loaded from USB devices like external hard drives or flash drive sticks. This prevents disguised from automatically loading the AutoRun menu when the USB devices are attached. Unfortunately, this also affects legit programs stored on USB storage devices.

Bill had an update on this and I have pasted a link he has sent me so members can update themselves. blogs.technet.com

After the break I gave an overview of a program I had down loaded called "FreeCommander" from http://www.freecommander.com and it's new beta version "FreeCommanderXE" from freecommander.com/fc_beta  These programs are alternatives to the standard windows file manager. I had only down loaded the programs a few days before the meeting so had a limited knowledge of all the features. The program uses a 2 pane view and allows all the normal windows functions. Also you can "pack and unpack" files, take desktop snapshots, easy to use FTP program and DOS window.

There are a number of stand alone programs that do the features far better but here they are all in one place. The main program is very configurable and there are a number of other features. I have not listed however I recommend that members have a look at the programs for themselves and check out the features..  There are very informative help files and also a forum to post queries etc.

I will not be at next month's Tuesday's SIG, which will be run by Peter Collard, but I will run next month's Friday's SIG so hope to see you there.
    Cheers
      Graham Grant