Q. I recently entered a stock-picking contest at CNBC. Prior to the start of the contest, I was able to get to the Web site (www.sbfantasyportfolio.com) as well as a few days into the contest. But after a few days I was unable to reach it. I contacted CNBC and was advised that a number of contestants were having difficulty, particularly if they were attempting to get in from home. Contestants who tried to reach the Web site from work were more successful. I have cablevision (Optimum Online) so I’m not trying to reach the site by phone line and I have no trouble with any other Web site. I’d appreciate any help so I can get back into this contest.
Robert Leach, Morristown, N.J.
A. I spent some time testing that stock-picking fantasy site and found that a new but fast-growing nemesis called the pop-up blocker kicks in and stops many folks from getting the page to work. So your disappointment underscores how stuff we want sometimes gets lost by our efforts to avoid nuisances and worse while browsing through Web sites.
Pop-up blockers are wonderful tools that I consider all but essential because of the huge number of advertising schemes, and sometimes hacker mischief, that work by making a small additional window pop up when one reaches a Web page. These gambits are notorious for planting spyware on visitors’ hard drives and even planting worms and virus attacks.
So pop-up blockers got added by a number of players, including Microsoft, which added it to its Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser and the various toolbars from Google, Yahoo, etc.
Another thing that keeps this particular site blocked for some users are various firewalls installed on our computers, like the one built in to Microsoft’s latest versions of Windows XP.
To counter pop-up blockers, instead of just clicking on a hot link as you do with the CNBC site, give the link a right-click and then select the command in the menu that appears to open the link in a new window. This accepts the first pop-up and gets most users to the sites they desire.
If this fails, check the top of the display for a notice that a pop-up was blocked and that you can permit that site to use pop-ups. This isn’t as safe as using the right-click/open in new window sequence.
As to firewalls, to disable the Windows firewall while trying to log on, you can open the My Network Places icon and select Network Connections and then right-click on the icon for whichever port you use to access the Internet. In the menu that this summons, click on the Advanced tab to find the firewall settings. You can specify that the site in question is permitted past the firewall. Other firewall products have similar permission features and are easily found by clicking on the firewall icon.
Q. I read your column regularly but am far from computer savvy, so most of the issues are ones I’m not sure I’ve encountered. I’ve been having a problem with Microsoft Word for quite a while and don’t know how to fix it. It goes like this: When I open Word or finish a document, I get a message that says “Word encountered corruption while opening C:
Program Files …
Normal.dot. Part of this document may be recoverable. Attempt recovery now?” Hitting yes or no does nothing. When I click to cancel, the next message reads, “Replace the Normal.dot now?” Again, neither option resolves it. Finally, the next message reads “Changes to the global template for normal.dot have been made. Save changes?” Again, saving or not saving does not resolve the issue. I have no idea what the issue is. Can you help?
Chris Piatek @aol.com
A. A simple search-and-destroy mission will have you up and flying that word-processing software in short order, C.P. Normal.dot is the name that Microsoft gives to the master template file that establishes the way the program looks and works–things like setting fonts, headers, footers, toolbar displays, screen color, you name it.
When this error message pops up in Word, the auto-fix routines kick in as you are experiencing them, and all too often there is no repair, no matter which of the options given are tried. I suspect this is because the firm’s lawyers have warned that the company could be held liable if it was responsible for destroying key templates used by businesses if the auto fix utterly removed the template. So instead you are told to try to fix the corrupted template when your fix really is to simply find that normal.dot file and delete it.
When that is done, the software will create a brand new normal.dot file that is just like the one in place when Word gets loaded for the first time.
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You need to click on Start and then Search, and then select a search of all files and folders on the computer. Then type in normal.dot and hit Enter. When the normal.dot file appears in the search box, give it a right-click, select rename and then change the name to xxnormal.dot or something else you will remember.
Now when you close Word and restart it, a fresh template will be created and your error messages will stop.
Q. I had a problem with Internet Explorer 6 where I could not longer connect to any secure Web sites. I called Microsoft and paid for 30 minutes of support to fix it. The bad news is that the 30 minutes ran out and Microsoft could only guess that my IE must be corrupted. So I still had the problem.
Along comes your column where you suggested a reader attempt to uninstall IE 6 and install IE 7 to correct a problem he was having with IE 6. I thought this might solve my problem, so I did the same. Now, the IE 7 home page comes up, but it will not allow me to go to any Web sites.
The good news is that Outlook Express works and I am online and able to e-mail with my pleas for help.
Michele Craig @earthlink.net
A. It’s always troubling when a reader encounters a problem after trying something I cover in these columns, Ms. C., so first my apologies. I didn’t hear your conversation with that expensive Microsoft paid support service, but it is clear they failed to show you a fairly common fix for this problem with any version of the Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The index file your browser is using to find Web sites has been corrupted, so you need to clean up several places where past Web sites have been listed.
So click on Tools and Internet Options, and then look for the tools for deleting all of the Temporary Internet Files and history of past sites accessed on the computer. The display is a bit different in version 6 than in the new version 7, but the essentials are there. In version 6 there is a separate item for history; in version 7 it is included with temporary files.
Finally, you need to delete the current list of Web sites in the file called index.dat that is stored in the Temporary Files folder for the Web browser.
To find this file, click on Start and then open the Search option. Select “All Files and Folders” and in the search box this summons type in index.dat and tap Enter. You probably will find several files with this name, so make sure you are looking at the one that resides in the Temporary Internet Files folder. Give it a right-click and rename it xxindex.dat. That will remove the last possible source of your corrupted browser data files and fix the issue.
Keep in mind that you can always go back to the Search tool and find xxindex.dat and rename it index.dat again to check to see that this works.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via 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.