We have been away or busy so things have been hectic, I hope you missed me. Here are a few items I have collected over the past week or two.

This first one is a real keeper, it is a good description of a VERY common problem and how to deal with it. - Chuck

Q:
Lately, whenever I start up my computer, it's as if something has taken over my printer, because it starts to spit out almost blank pieces of paper. Some of them have little special characters on them, but either way, why does it do this? And more importantly, how can I make it stop? Please help me!

A:
So, it sounds like your printer has been "kidnapped" by aliens. Am I right? Well, that may be taking things a little too far, but I bet that's how it feels sometimes. For one thing, it's a mystery as to why this is happening in the first place, but secondly, it's wasting a lot of your printer paper! We just can't have that, now can we? No, sir! So, let's delve a little more into why this might be happening.

It's most likely that your computer and your printer just aren't communicating properly. Even though your computer has not told your printer to print, it still does what it wants to do. So, you end up with several pages of odd looking characters, hearts, smilies and just plain garbage that you don't want!

The reason for this miscommunication goes back to when you first started a print job. When you send a document (or whatever you're printing) to the printer, it is given instructions for a special font or code file, which then translates the information from your document to come out in a readable manner. So, I want you to think back now and see if you can remember a time when you may have interrupted a print job by suddenly turning off the printer or even your computer. I bet you have that moment in time in your mind right now, don't you?!

When you happen to stop the flow of the print job, the printer still goes on to print out the "raw text" from your document, but the results from that are never pretty. When you stopped the printing, the printer lost its code file and basically, had nothing else to do but print out a bunch of gibberish that you just can't understand. It will then continue to do that until you stop it.

So, what can you do to make this madness end? Well, the first thing you should do is check for any queued print jobs. If there are any, there should be a printer icon in your taskbar. It may have a question mark on it, because it doesn't know what to do next. Double click that icon and the printer status box will open. Right click on any pending print jobs and choose Delete to cancel them completely. You can also click on the Print file and choose Cancel All Documents. (By the way, make sure your printer is turned off when you do this part).

Now, you can turn your printer back on and print out a test page to make sure it's working properly. If you're still not satisfied, the next best thing to do is uninstall your printer software and try redoing it. You can uninstall it by going to Start, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and find your printer in the list that comes up. Click on the Remove button and you'll be all set. Next, be sure you restart your computer and then start all over by reinstalling the printer software that came with your printer when you bought it.

Now, if you're still having trouble after you do all of that, you may need to contact some further help. There could be a basic hardware problem or there could be some trouble that lies even further than that. Look in your printer's manual and find a customer support telephone number. Call it! The manufacturers know their printers the best and they should be able to help you get the problem solved for good.

I know, I know all us security pros are often looked upon with disdain. We make [your] job harder“ and come up with policies and rules that make it impossible to do any work.“ On those exaggerated points we can agree to disagree. We have to strike a balance, which can be hard to do at times, and below is just one of many, many reasons why. I wish I could discuss all the Bad Things(tm) that cause us to do the things we have to do, but unfortunately thats not always possible.

A recent YouTube video shows how a simple browser address typo can result in a complete mess from a security standpoint. And in the grand scheme of things, this particular security issue is relatively small.

The dramatic accompaniment music is fun (and superfluous), but the threat is real, and not fun. Imagine how you would respond to this problem. Or would you even respond? Many people just pretend it didnt happen and keep on using their computer. I cant tell you how many times someone has told me, I have a virus on my computer; its been there for a couple months and it keeps getting worse.“

And the whole time they use their computer to do online banking, pay bills, and all those things that should be protected.

Everyone who owns a PC needs a good registry cleaner. They can be invaluable tools for cleaning up your systems registry, freeing up space and helping your whole system run more efficiently. Junk files, such as fragments left behind like forgotten souls from long uninstalled programs, hinder your system's speed with their unnecessary presence.

Well, I used to have a registry cleaner here that I ran as a download of the week a couple of years ago and I would send it out to those having technical support issues with their systems. The program has since gone the way of the dinosaur and I have decided to find a new updated registry cleaner that I would feel comfortable sending to all you WorldStart patrons.

Well, lucky for you, I accomplished my mission and I have a winner. It is called RegScrub XP, which may arguably be the best free registry cleaner on the Web today. This thing can do everything, just short of standing up and whistling "Dixie." Its jam packed with tons of cool features and tools that allow you to completely manage your computer's registry.

RegScrub XP is a registry cleaner that can make even the most novice computer user comfortable cleaning out the "Big R" (your registry). You can have RegScrub XP generate a list of all the junk“ entries in your registry, where you the user, can go through and select the ones you would like the program to remove. What I like about this registry cleaner is the fact that it automatically backs up your registry, giving you a get out of jail“ card, so to speak, if you somehow end up crippling some program on your PC that you use regularly by deleting it from the list of unnecessary items.

I also wanted to mention that the RegScrub XP has a tremendous Help file, which I strongly recommend that all of you read before you start any registry cleaning. The manual explains every feature of the program, including why and how it does what it does. For example, the ever important restore feature or the exclusion list.

I love this program. I did a full scan this morning and found 1,051 problems with my registry (on my test computer). I selected and removed all of them. I didnt even review the list, because I wanted to see how good of a job the program did on its own. Well, let me tell you, I was impressed. I havent had one problem with anything. I did a restore just to see how that worked and again, it was painless and effective. Thats almost as good as cheap and easy, which this is also, coincidentally.

Hope you enjoy the RegScrub XP. I know Ill be sending it out to people who may need it, because in my opinion, you simply cant beat it for the money!

~ Chad

This one is more for the technically inclined and is rather long, but I found it interesting and thought some of you might like it.

By Fred Langa

The CPU wars won't be over any time soon. In the meantime, which CPU chip Intel or AMD is best for Windows?

Benchmarks can help, but the full answer lies elsewhere. I'll cover that, plus crash sleuthing and lots more in today's issue!

Sifting through your CPU choices

Reader Frank Bruni has been using PCs for a long time. But, even experienced users can be brought up short by the plethora of choices in today's Windows-ready PCs:

§ "In the old days, it was easy to keep up with processors a 486 was faster and better than a 386. With the advent of branded processor names, however, this is not as easy as it used to be. I get that a P4 is faster than a P3, but when it comes to evaluating Celerons verses Pentiums, or the offerings from AMD, I'm at a loss. Is there a resource that compares and evaluates processors for Windows PCs in a straightforward way, so that I can compare 'apples to apples'?"

You mean comparing Apples to PCs, don't you? OK, OK, kidding aside, comparing CPUs can, indeed, be confusing. But, one site in particular, Tom's Hardware, has an excellent collection of CPU test results based on benchmarks that are designed to emulate real-world tasks.

To make sense of the test results, focus on the benchmarks that mirror the kinds of activities you most often do on your PC. For example, if you use your PC mostly for office tasks, you might want to look more closely at the benchmark test results involving Word, PowerPoint, and similar applications.

Figure 1. Tom's Hardware offers a huge number of benchmark test results that let you estimate how well a given CPU will handle the kinds of tasks you normally do.

But note: While benchmarks can point you in the right direction, they're not gospel. In fact, small performance differences really don't matter much at all because of human physiology. Most people the mythical "average users" are relatively insensitive to speed differences of less than about 1520%.

I know that sounds hard to believe, but it's true. It's something I've seen time and again in the various PC testing labs with which I've been involved (Byte Magazine, Windows Magazine, NTSL, etc.).

People who live at their PCs all day, every day, are somewhat more sensitive than casual users and can often detect speed differences in the 1015% range. PC testing professionals are the most speed-sensitive of all, and they often can detect differences in the 510% range. Lower than that, and almost everyone needs a stopwatch or other instrumentation to reliably detect PC speed differences. In other words, small speed differences fall below the threshold of human perception and, thus, don't matter a lot.

Plus, in most normal uses, PCs spend the majority of their time waiting for something to happen a keystroke or mouse movement, a bit of data to arrive, or whatever. In between those actions, the PC is sitting there, mostly just twiddling its figurative thumbs. Whether it twiddles slightly faster or slower really doesn't matter much, and has no perceptible effect on the user experience.

All of which adds up to this: It's not worth agonizing over a few percentage points, one way or the other, in performance tests. Unless you're doing something very unusual with your PC, just about any of today's midrange and higher PCs will probably serve you well. Thus, you can focus on other important factors, such as the other components in the system, price, service, the software included with the system, and so on. Small performance differences among and between CPU types simply aren't something that will change your life for better or worse!

Getting to the bottom of system crashes

Reader Tom Crean's PC is experiencing mystery hangs:

§ "I recently started having a problem with a couple of simulation games, which I run from my CD drive. After a few minutes, the games lock up the computer. My question is, how do I determine if this is a drive failure or a software or configuration problem? Is there some easy test available to determine this?"

Tom, I assume you've checked to make sure your system meets the game's requirements for RAM, processor speed, disk space, video card, and so on. If that's all OK, you probably can narrow down the likely causes of the crash by paying very close attention to the PC.

Carefully note what the PC is doing just prior to the crash, and use that as a pointer to the trouble area. For example, if you see or hear a large burst of hard drive activity just before the crash, perhaps you need to adjust your PC's virtual memory. (Information on adjusting all of XP's performance options, including virtual memory, can be found in Knowledge Base article 308417.)

If the problem happens just as the game switches resolutions, for example, that might suggest a problem with the video drivers. In that case, get new drivers from the vendor site. Alternately, if a game setting is asking more from your video system than it can provide, adjust the game settings. And, of course, you might also check any message boards associated with the game to see if others are having the same or similar issues.

If there's no pattern to the crashes other than that a certain amount of time has elapsed, then I'd suspect you have a heat-related hardware problem. Games can stress a PC to its limits.

If your CPU or video-card cooling system is dusty or otherwise compromised, your system can overheat and lock up. Turning the PC off and letting it cool is the temporary fix. The real cure, however, is to make sure your PC's fans are working and that the heat sinks and other internal components (including the CD drive) are dust-free and unobstructed.

PC cooling and especially PC cooling systems with irritatingly noisy fans is a particular bugaboo of mine. I've written extensively in InformationWeek about how to achieve effective, quiet cooling. For PCs, see Cool and Quiet. For laptops, see Curing Laptop Overheating.

I've also covered PC cleaning procedures in Getting The Grunge Out Of Your PC.

Keeping a 2nd PC as a fallback option

After a bad experience, reader Lee Bolman is thinking about having a spare, standby PC available:

§ "When my 8-month-old, still-in-warranty desktop crashed because of a bad power supply, I was reasonably well-protected all the data was backed up, and most data and applications were on my laptop. But, there's stuff I don't want on the laptop in case it ever falls into the wrong hands. So I was cut off, for example, from my financial software.

"My PC vendor wanted me to ship the whole system in for a warranty repair, which meant I'd get it back in a week or two. I paid for the repair locally and got it done in 48 hours. What would it take, I wondered, to have a home fallover system that would be ready to jump into the breach if my primary machine failed?

"A little time with Google suggests that this is the issue of fallover and 'high availability.' But it's not clear that there's a reasonably straightforward way for a home-office setup to have a backup machine ready to go. Any ideas?"

Ideas? You bet! First, note that you can store sensitive data on your laptop with very little risk. Just encrypt the sensitive files and folders and you'll make them immune to just about anything short of a government-level supercomputer, if that!

There are myriad top-notch encryption tools available, as even a casual search will show:

I particularly like the 256-bit AES encryption available in WinZip, because you can simultaneously compress and encrypt any file or group of files.

For an excellent free, open-source, stand-alone encryption tool, TrueCrypt is definitely worth a look.

XP even has a basic encryption feature built in. Although it's not as flexible as the others I've mentioned, it too is AES-based, and provides very good security. (Tech footnote: Windows' encrypting file system was originally based on the weaker DES algorithm, but XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 began the use of 256-bit AES.)

In any case, no matter how you encrypt the files, if you synch the laptop data with your main PC every night, then the absolute worst-case scenario would cost you just one day's data.

As for a "fallover" or "fallback" system, if you're talking about a home-office or small-office setup, I think a true "100% ready-all-the-time" backup PC would be overkill. It just wouldn't be worth the cost and hassle of setting up the hardware (identical to the main PC, ideally) and software (also identical to the main PC, plus sync software to keep both drives identical all the time).

This approach works, but is expensive and cumbersome. It also requires special precautions to ensure that whatever ill befalls the main PC (virus, power spike, fire, flood, theft, etc.) does not simultaneously take down the spare PC.

A much simpler method is to use just about any PC even a cast-off older model no longer capable of full-time use will do. Leave it off most of the time. It doesn't even have to be in the same room or building as the main PC.

If the main PC dies, but its hard drive is intact and operable, you can remove the drive and install it in the spare PC. If the drive isn't operable, and if you're using some form of disk imaging or whole-disk backup on your main PC, you can restore the disk image or backup onto the hard drive of the fallback PC. (For more information on these backup techniques, see my Langa.com article on Fast, Easy Backups.)

Either way disk swap or disk image/backup transplant Windows will complain mightily when it boots up on the backup PC, because it will see different hardware than before. It will immediately ask for and search for the drivers it needs to support the spare PC. Windows will default to generic drivers if the correct model-specific drivers aren't available. (It will also demand re-activation within a short time.)

Be aware that you may have issues if you're using an OEM version of Windows that was preinstalled on a PC, as opposed to a retail Windows package that you installed on a machine yourself. If a motherboard dies, for example, you may not be able to move the operating system to new hardware unless the OEM PC is under warranty by the manufacturer. The hard drive may be tied to that OEM machine for license compliance.

Moving a hard drive may not result in a perfect duplicate of the old system. But Windows, to its credit, will usually get itself up and running on a spare PC at least enough for you to be able to access your important data while the main PC is being fixed.

Remote-control software leaps through firewalls

Sometimes, the best things in life aren't free, and it's well worthwhile to pony up a modest fee for a superior product, as reader Dave Starr suggests:

§ "Good article on remote help in the Jan. 4 newsletter. Another service that I have found especially useful in supporting commercial software clients online is Copilot. It isn't free, and costs $10 per day if used, but it is head and shoulders above most other solutions because it only requires the distant-end 'helpee' to be able to open an e-mail and click a link.

"No other installation actions are required, and (if desired), it also self-uninstalls from the client machine when the session is over. It's worked for me on a number of clients' computers, where the client has stated: 'Oh, we can't use any of the remote-control stuff, our network is too secure.' Well, it wasn't as 'secure' as they thought ;-)"

Thanks, Dave. There are many times when paying $10 to get a solid, bullet-proof remote-control connection to an otherwise-unreachable PC would be an incredible bargain!

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