Longtime subscriber Peter wrote recently from the U.K. to ask about an Outlook Express problem he’s having:

Hi Terry, Many thanks for the latest issue of your newsletter, which always arrives here in the UK on a Sunday evening – a great time for reading it through.

My question is: Do you know a way of permanently stopping Outlook Express from compacting all its stored files? Every so often OE pops up a dialog asking if it can do this and if I let it go ahead it then makes a complete pigs mess of all my folders.

Very old deleted e-mails suddenly reappear in the Inbox folder bolded as unread, with dates months before the real latest message, although they drop in after it – so it has apparently also managed to mess up the date sort order, something I thought a computer couldn’t do.

Some other stored messages…

Continue reading Compacting Folders in Email Programs

Subscriber JNC wrote to me to say that he’d been using Acronis True Image for a while and wanted to know about keeping old backups:

I have just completed a total backup via Acronis on my external hard drive. Is there any reason to save previous total backups?
My external (500) hard drive is over 2/3 full.
jnc

I wrote back to JNC to say that I wouldn’t get rid of all of them. I suggested that he keep some recent ones and one or two full backups from the past — including the oldest one he had.

I find that, most of the time, I’m reaching for a backup file or backup image file because my brain messed up, not because of a hardware failure. It’s too easy to change a file and not realize that we haven’t done the change correctly. We find it out later when we try to use the file, or that part of the file. It might be days, weeks or even months later.

Continue reading Keeping Old Hard Drive Backup Files

In a recent article about how I use Acronis True Image to back up of my computer, I wrote about using Acronis True Image to make an image of my C: drive (my C: partition) to an external drive or to another computer, so that I can reinstall it in its entirety. This saves me from having to reinstall Windows, find all my device driver disks, find all my program disks and reinstall the programs, locating and installing all the add-ons that I want to use in Firefox, and many more such tedious tasks.

In a comment on my Terry’s Computer Tips blog, a subscriber requested that I write about how to use Acronis True Image to back up to CDROM’s or to DVD’s, as many people don’t have home networks.

Rather than recreate all the images that are common between the “Schedule Task Wizard” (which I used last week) and the “Create Backup Wizard” that I’m using for the DVD example, I’m just changing the images that are different. (it doesn’t make sense to me to use the scheduler for DVD backups, since I wouldn’t be there to change DVD’s when needed.)

Continue reading Using Acronis True Image to Back Up to DVD’s

Reader Greg H. wrote recently to ask for help solving his inability to access the Usenet newsgroups on Verison’s servers.

For those not familiar with Usenet newsgroups, think of them as a mailing list type of system that has been around for well over 25 years. Rather than emails sent to our computers, though, the postings stored in special servers at the Internet Service Providers or at companies that specialize in serving newsgroups (I use GigaNews as my Usenet newsgroups provider).

The postings to the newsgroups are readable by special newsreader software, but some more ubiquitous software like Outlook Express, Opera and Netscape also read newsgroups. They’re also readable via Google Groups, as are other groups that are available only via Google Groups.

Continue reading Accessing and Reading Usenet Newsgroups

EJ wrote to ask about backing up his computer:

Terry, what program do you use to back up your files

I use two programs routinely.

First, every evening, I use Karen’s Replicator (www.karenware.com, free for personal, non-business use) to copy my data files to another computer across my home network. Not only does this give me a backup copy in case of the inevitable, accidental error (such as editing a file, saving it, and then realizing that I forgot to save it with a different file name), it also gives me a backup in case of a failure of my hard drive.

Replicator lets me set up multiple tasks and specify the day of the week and the time for them to be performed. If I set several for the same time, they will run in the order listed.

I also use Replicator to make a backup of certain files on my hard drive to another location on my hard drive. This gives me an easily accessible copy for that brain-freeze error.

Then, on a weekly basis, I use Acronis True Image Home 11 to make an image of my C: drive. I have True Image set to store that image on another computer on my home network.

Continue reading Backing Up Your Files

One of the first things many people do, when they find that Outlook will let them use different fonts and stationery in their emails, is to start experimenting.

While personal friends may think these are cute, we quickly realize that many others don’t want to all the glitz and glitter — they read emails and mailing lists for information. In some cases, the email programs display all the formatting codes in addition to the text we wrote, so the message effectively becomes unreadable. By he way, these emails are formatted using HTML (the language of web browsers like Internet Explorer) by default.

Fortunately, Outlook allows us to easily…

Continue reading Choosing to Send Plain Text or HTML in Outlook Emails

Sunbelt Software’s VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware does Windows Vista — not just Vista home, not just Vista 32-bit. VIPRE does Vista!

According to the VIPRE requirements page, it supports the following operating systems:
# Windows 2000 SP4 RollUp 1
# Windows Server 2003
# Windows Server 2008
# Windows XP SP1, SP2, SP3 (Home, Pro, Media Center, Tablet) 32 and 64-bit
# Windows Vista+ (All flavors) 32 and 64-bit

Read my review of VIPRE or click here for more information