Q. I have encountered a curious problem with the sleep or power-save settings on my Pentium 4 computer running Windows XP. I’ve had the computer for two years without any problems, but now if my computer is not used for a period of time (I would say a couple of hours), it does not boot up when I power it on.
It does get power, and you can see the hard drive light on the CPU go on. But other than to say “Power Saver Mode,” the monitor remains dark, and the computer just does not boot up. Moving the mouse, hitting the Enter key or hitting Control/Alt/Delete also does nothing.
I can get it to boot up by doing one of two things: holding in the Power Button until the machine turns off or using the reset button on the back of the case. I might also mention that this problem started shortly after a brief power interruption from an electrical storm.
David Budlin, Valrico, Fla.
A. I’m not likely to win any awards from the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but I need to advise you to switch off that environment-protecting power-saver feature. Your problem is a common one caused when the power-saving module and another process running in the background try to do the same thing at the same instant. This causes data to be moved to the same place from both programs, creating a register overrun and, then, lockup.
The conflicts happen because the power-saving module continually checks to see if any keys have been pressed so it can wake up the computer. If something else running in the background accesses the keyboard at the same time, your box goes bye-bye. So many different background processes get set as one uses a computer over time that many computers experience this irritation.
Right-click on the desktop and select Properties. Open the screen-saver tab, where you will find the check boxes to disable the power saver.
A more elegant but much more difficult fix is to shut down all of the processes running in the background and then gradually restore them one by one until you reach the culprit. You can find most–but not all–background processes by clicking on Start and then typing misconfig in the Run box and tapping Enter.
This brings up a display with a tab for Startup. One can open this and obtain a list of a dozen or more processes with check boxes along side. Shutting them down one by one, and then testing the machine, is a huge time drain, which is why I recommend just giving up and disabling the power saver.
Q. I use my computer for spreadsheet/word processing and my e-mail account and was unhappy with Windows XP and reinstalled Windows 98. All of the folders for Outlook and the other stuff were moved to a D: partition of the hard drive. Now, Outlook is blank, without the contacts and saved e-mails.
Is there a way for Outlook to look at the original directory and restore my files? I have tried to look into Tools and even the Help feature without any luck.
Barb Pierce @earthlink.net
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A. It’s reasonably easy, but it does take a bit of digging around inside the machine. The solution requires finding the Outlook data file on the D: partition and then moving it to the C: partition to replace the blank data file you wound up with after the switch.
First of all, find the old data file by using the Search tool under the Start Menu. Change the search location box you will see to the D: partition. Now select a search of files and folders and then use the file name Outlook.pst, which is the name given to the master file that holds data for the Outlook modules.
When the Outlook.pst file comes up, drag it to the desktop, which moves it from the D: to the C: partitions. Repeat the search on the C: drive. When Outlook.pst comes up, give it a right-click and pick rename. Call it xoutlook.pst.
Right-click again and select the choice to open the folder containing the file. Finally, drag the Outlook.pst file into the folder, along with its renamed cousin.
If something goes wrong, you can at least get back to where you are now by renaming the Outlook file to something else and changing xoutlook.pst back to Outlook.pst.
Q. I just got a new computer using Windows XP and installed Symantec’s Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Antivirus. Now my Outlook e-mail outbox is not emptying when I send replies to e-mails. Symantec says to get a Window Service Pack, but Microsoft says that only addresses Windows 2000, not XP.
Michelle [email protected]
A. This can happen with new computers because Outlook needs to be set to point toward a dedicated mail-sending server as well as a server for accepting incoming messages. The sending server is called the SMTP, and the receiving is usually called POP3 or Pop.
So open Outlook and pick Tools and then E-mail Accounts. This opens the e-mail settings, so select the change option and then pick your e-mail account, which will be listed along with a few other connections.
Open the tab in this display for Connections. There you will find boxes to specify the incoming (POP) and outgoing (SMTP) servers. Look at the listing for the incoming server, which probably will be along the lines of pop.earthlink.net or mail.earthlink.net. In the SMTP box below the POP box, type in the corresponding smtp.earthlink.net or mail.earthlink.net.
With a sending server specified, the outbox will empty each time you click the Send/Receive tool in Outlook.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.