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Q: I gave my older friend an old laptop with XP on it that she used on a DSL connection with good results until the old unit died. After it died, she purchased an HP laptop with Windows 7. She sends lots of ecards and email is the major uses. Question is the new unit will not load some ecards as is just churns and nothing. The old XP unit would load like “American Greetings” but the new one will not. Is there a switch or something on Win7 that does not allow this kind of action?

– Bobby S.
Crestview, Florida

A: You’re looking in the wrong direction looking toward Windows.  Sites like American Greetings that offer animated greeting cards rely on a free browser plug-in called Flash Player, which is published by Adobe Systems.  At some point, someone installed Adobe Flash on that old XP machine, so it works fine.  But the brand new HP machine would come from the factory with only the basic Internet Explorer installed – not third-party add-ons, like the Flash Player.  Adobe’s Flash Player is easy enough to install.  Just go to tinyurl.com/3wytk4 and follow the prompts.  Remember while you’re doing this that you are installing software on your computer, so don’t rush, and be sure and read all the dialogs that come up (don’t just rapid-fire click next-next-next to get through it).  Many otherwise free software distributions these days bundle another piece of software along with them that you may or may not want to install.  The default is usually to install it unless you uncheck a box along the way, so read carefully.  In this case, the web page linked above has a checkbox that, unless you uncheck it, will automatically install the Google toolbar and Google Chrome, and change your default browser to Chrome.

Q: I enjoy reading and being helped by your comments. Thanks for answering so that we “unGeeks” can understand.  I have two questions. First, I get emails from trusted sources with the following warning: This file originated from an Internet location and might not be safe.  Both sources are reputable and trustworthy.  Next, when I am preparing a numbered list and get to number 10, there is a “set back” almost as if I had hit the Tab key. I can’t remove the “set back”…any suggestions?

– Fran P.
Crestview, Florida

A: You didn’t say, but it sounds like you’re using Outlook 2010.  This version of Outlook introduced a feature called “Protected View” that, well, protects you from files acquired from potentially unsafe locations.  As much as you might personally think a site is “reputable and trustworthy” the honest truth is that anything that comes from anywhere on the Internet is at best suspect until proven otherwise.  This is simply flagging you that the file comes from that morass of criminal cyber-activity, and not from your best friend’s hard drive.  The feature is pretty easy to disable, just follow the procedures at tinyurl.com/8xcujtv.   Be warned!  You are disabling a security feature.  This means you are less protected after you do this, so proceed at your own risk.

Regarding your other problem, I guess you’re talking about MS Word?  It sounds like there is a tab stop set very close to the left edge of the paragraph, and when the list number gets to be two digits wide, it pushes the line’s text beyond the tab stop, and it gets the indented look you mentioned.  It will take a little experimenting to fix.  First, select the entire block of numbered paragraphs, then right-click on the paragraphs and select “Paragraph…” to bring up the Paragraph dialog box.  Make sure the “Indents and Spacing” tab is selected, then in the lower-left corner, choose “Tabs…” to see a list of all the tab settings.  Look for one within 1/4 inch of the margin, select it, and click “Clear”.  If you remove it this way, you’re fixing it for this document only.  To make it permanent for all future documents, click on the “Home” tab, then right-click on the “Normal” style and select “Modify…”.  In the Modify Style dialog that comes up, you’ll see a “Format” button in the lower-left corner.  Click on it, and select “Paragraph”, then follow the instructions above to remove the tab.

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Bonus Web-only Content:

There was some very welcome news in the world of cyber security this week.  Some of you will need a little background to fully understand and appreciate this.

You’ve all heard me lecture on and on about protecting yourself from malware.  One type of malware I’ve mentioned in the past is one that will make your computer into a remotely-controlled zombie slave, referred to as a “bot”, without you even knowing.  A single bot is not very useful, but the people who zombify computers don’t stop at one.  They create huge groups, or networks of thousands of these bots, which are appropriately called botnets.  These botnets are controlled by the bad guys through a centralized computer called a “server” that can be located almost anywhere on the Internet.  By issuing orders through such servers, the Internet bad-guys easily command vast armies of zombie computers that use the bandwidth of the computer’s owner to do such nefarious things as launch denial-of-service attacks, and send SPAM e-mail.  Isn’t that nasty?  Not only are they running software on your computer without your knowledge or permission, but they are using the Internet bandwidth that you are paying for to launch attacks.

Which brings me to this week’s news.  It seems that one of the web’s largest botnets, named “Grum” – which experts estimate might have been responsible for as much as half of all SPAM on the Internet – was brought down by Internet security experts working together from around the world.  Grum’s server computers were in the Netherlands and Panama, making them pretty difficult to locate.  Those machines were shut down on Wednesday, and were soon replaced with new servers in both Russia and the Ukraine (these guys really get around, huh?).  Almost as quickly as the new servers were put online, they were taken down again by the investigating team.

For the short term at least, you may notice a reduction in the amount of SPAM in your inbox.  It may not last though.  There are many of these botnets out there, and with the vacuum that Grum leaves behind, someone will surely find a way to fill it.

Until next week – good luck and happy computing!

– Geek