Jewish World Review Nov. 5, 2003 / 9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5764


Fixing faulty fix eliminates those pesky pop-ups; upgraded my computer system to a Gateway 700XL with Windows XP Home Edition, now unable to open attachments to e-mails arriving into my Outlook Express; lost the ability to "drag" on my Dell computer with Windows ME

By James Coates

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | (KRT) Q. I read one of your recent columns concerning how to remove the annoying pop-ups exploiting holes in the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. I get them all the time but have not been able to eliminate the problem as you said I could.

When I go to "Start," "Run" and type in "services.mcs" as you suggested, I get a message telling me that it "cannot find the file" or "did I type in the command correctly?"

What am I doing wrong?

Tom Dee, Kingston, N.Y.

A. I fear that in my recent decision to attack this awful problem of pop-ups posing as part of Windows when they're nasty ads instead, I managed to garble one reference needed to open the menu to fix the problem. The appropriate command is services.msc--not with the "mcs" ending.

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Anybody afflicted with the Windows Messenger pop-ups can stop them by halting a feature of Windows XP called the Messenger Service. That command of services.msc brings up a menu of dozens of these so-called services, and one can scroll to the one called Messenger and click a Stop command in the panel at the left.

While on the topic, a great friend of this column wrote to report a new tactic. The perpetrators of these pop-ups have found a way to make the window scroll off the top or side of the screen, forcing many people to click on them in an effort to move them.

So let me sound the alarm. Anybody who gets a pop-up with the top off the screen needs to type the Alt + F4 keys to eliminate the box rather than using the mouse. This Alt + F4 (yes, I checked it twice) command is a keyboard shortcut that will shut whatever window is selected at the time it is invoked.

Q. I've recently upgraded my computer system to a Gateway 700XL with Windows XP Home Edition. As a result, I have many new protections against intrusions and viruses. But one is causing a problem.

I'm unable to open attachments to e-mails arriving into my Outlook Express mailbox. This is a terrific barrier on unsolicited e-mails. Yet it's a real problem when someone I know (and trust) sends an attachment. Some of them are important.

When I double-click on the attachment icon in the inbox, a message tells me, "OE removed access to unsafe attachments ..." etc. How can I open attachments I want to see?

Peter Faris, Las Vegas

A. Your Uncle Bill Gates knows what's best, Mr. F., but it wouldn't have hurt him--or the programmers who labor in his financially fecund fields--to tell legions of customers what's going on with this feature in the new versions of Outlook Express. Here's that explanation and the fix:

The antivirus tool you praise and condemn can be found by clicking on Options in the Tools menu of the program's display and looking in the next display for the tab labeled Security. There you will find the various security levels at which the e-mail client can be set, ranging from stringent to downright permissive. Yours is tilted toward stringent, and you will note there is a check mark in the box that orders Outlook Express to block opening attachments that could be virus-laden, which is just about everything.

All you need to do is open a note from a trusted source, and then go to this security tab and remove the check mark from that box. You can then open the desired attachments and afterward recheck the blocker to maintain the protection that you want.

Keep in mind that a lot of our friends can unwittingly nuke our computers by passing along stuff they think is neat, like cute screen savers, slick animations and programs themselves. Even if you know somebody, I'd recommend a high level of caution and suggest that only well-known files such as word processing documents, spreadsheets and photographs be allowed to pass through Uncle Bill's force field.

And even if you trust somebody, don't allow stuff ending in dangerous extensions like .exe, .scr, .bat, .con, .vb and so on.

Q. I have lost the ability to "drag" on my Dell computer with Windows ME. When I drag an icon and release the mouse button, the icon snaps back to its original position. In the control panel in the "taskbar and start menu properties," the "enable dragging and dropping" box is checked. I have unchecked it and rebooted, and it reappears as checked. Any suggestions?

John Bernard @stargate.net.

A. You're hitting the wrong pedal to stop the truck, Mr. B.

That command to enable dragging and dropping is meant to permit things like dragging an icon into a folder by dragging it over the top of the folder's icon and letting go, or opening a file by dragging and dropping it onto an icon for the application that created it.

Your problem lies in another area altogether, a command called "snap to grid" or "align to grid," depending upon the version of Windows. Right-click on the desktop and read the choices in the pop-up menu that appears, and you will find this command ready to be unselected. When unselected, one can move icons anywhere desired, and they will stay where you left them rather than snapping back into orderly columns and rows of a grid.

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James Coates is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Let us know what you think of this column by clicking here.

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