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Greetings my fellow Geeks, loyal readers, and those of you who just happened upon the column by accident!  The tankards of champagne were flowing once again this week at Geek Headquarters, as the entire It’s Geek to Me research team gathered together to celebrate the third anniversary of this humble column.  Yes, believe it or […]

Q: I have a Gateway P-7805U running Windows Vista.  I normally closed the machine and left it in a sleep mode every day.  Recently I had a problem with corrupted files which caused my machine to run slow and sometimes lock up.  With the assistance of a friend we got the machine back in working […]

Q: Up to now, my husband had his desktop about half covered with icons. One day we noticed that the whole desktop was covered with icons. Original icons were duplicated and scattered randomly, and it remains in that condition.  What could cause this, and is it the result of some malicious activity?  Should we take […]

Q: I have an iPhone 3G, and I’m having problems with the audio volume when playing certain game apps.  The game controls show that the sound is turned on, and I have the volume turned all the way up, but I still can’t hear anything.  – Ernie M. Crestview, Fla A: What a great question! […]

Q: “Microsoft Step by Step” book on Windows Vista refers to Windows Ready Boost as an easy means of “improving Your Computer’s Performance”. It states that “some types of USB flash drives can double as memory expansion devices”.  How does one know which type Flash Drive to purchase for additional Windows Ready Boost expansion?  – […]

Q: I was wondering if you have archived your articles somewhere.  I troubleshoot and repair computers and your articles would be very helpful.  – Ken J. Fort Walton Beach, Fla A: Sure Ken.  The column’s home newspaper, the Northwest Florida Daily News maintains a complete archive of every column ever published, available on the free-access […]

Q: About a year ago, I noticed I could not run any videos like “You tube” on my Dell Dimension E521.   Several sites stated  I had to download the latest version of  Adobe Flash Player.  I did this, but did not get the confirmation video that Flash Player was loaded correctly.  Note, I attempted loading […]

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about gmail?  I was thinking of changing my email from Outlook Express to gmail but I don’t know much about it..  – Nancy S. Destin, Fla A: You bet, Nancy, although it is hard to talk about Google’s Gmail and only say “a little”. Anyone who has […]

Q: I often receive emails from my friends containing photos, both embedded and as attachments, and typically have no problem viewing them.  From one person however, the embedded photos display only as blanks with a red x in the corner. These are typically forwarded messages.  This was true under Outlook in Vista and continues under […]

Q: I am unable to use Disk Defragmenter.  I open Disk Defragmenter, click on Defragment and get a message with a big red X in a grey box with a blue border:  “Disk Defragmenter has detected that chkdsk is scheduled to run on the volume (C).  Please run Chkdsk f/.”  – Diana M. Crestview, Fla […]