April 2003 Rocky Report Newsletter--
Internet Security, Pop-up solutions & More!

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Wow, it's a record!  I'm back after only a month!
I've got a lot of great tips on Internet Security, Pop-up
solutions, Sound and Printer tips, EmailStripper,
FavoRipper,  and more for you in this newsletter;
I hope that I touch on some of things you've been
 wondering about.   I've just acquired ADSL internet
connection, and it sure is great!!  I will start out by
addressing a real concern with broadband connections:
Security, always a priority with me.   Next month, I will
talk about the different kinds of DSL options available,
and what they mean to you.  It is always my hope that I
help you all out at sometime with my newsletter.


<Internet Security>

Just got DSL this week and security is one of
the most important issues.   Test your security
at this website, scroll down to the box that
says "TEST MY SHIELDS" AND "PROBE MY PORTS".
You may be in for a big surprise.   Click on
Test my shields first, and then go back to check
the ports .  You dialup internet users are more
secure than broadband users, but all can use a
good firewall. Click on this link to check your security:

https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

You need a Personal Internet Firewall if:

Your computer's files need to be accessed remotely
 across the Internet.

You are operating any sort of Internet server such
 as Personal Web Server.

You use any sort of Internet-based remote control
or remote access program such as PC Anywhere, Laplink,
 or Wingate.

You want to properly and safely monitor your Internet
 connection for intrusion attempts.

You want to preemptively protect yourself from compromise
 by "inside the wall" Trojan horse programs like NetBus  and Back Orifice.

You use your computer for sensitive issues like online banking
bill paying, credit card use.

Norton Personal Firewall is a great protection and will fully integrate with Norton Antivirus software to update together.  Both are good for a year, and then you need to renew the subscription online, and it's very reasonable.

<Popups driving you mad!>

I know this problem well, and it's a big pain these days.  It just pops up from email out of nowhere, websites, and you don't have to have ever visited a porn site.  You could try a website
called   www.download.com , type in "kill popups" in the search, and there are all kinds of popup killer programs in there to SAFELY download.  Many are free or free to try and a minimal cost to buy.  This website is one of the responsible
ones, safe to download things here.  They maintain the
standard for no viruses sent to you when you download.  You can tell by the feedback which ones are really good.

**Keep in mind that the popup killers can render your links
on the internet in WebPages or in email dead.  They
sometimes squash all links, not just popups.  This is a real
problem, as I have experienced it.  If this happens, just exit
the program or turn off the popup killer program, by right-clicking
it or double-clicking it on the taskbar to disable or exit.

I hope this helps!  We're all fighting this battle, and I hope
we win this one.  It will help with those annoying popups that
attack you when you get that UNINVITED porn email.

<Sound Tips>

Recently, I answered a question on a problem with
the sound for music cds.  Here's my advice:

You may need to go into the sound properties and
enable playback, or adjust some settings.
If you have your sound icon on the taskbar, just
right-click on it, and click on "adjust audio properties".
You'll see what I'm talking about, and be sure your sound
card is the one that the playback and recording settings
are using for audio.

If you don't have the sound icon, Go to start, settings,
control panel (for Windows 98, I don't know what operating system you have)
click on the multimedia icon.  Also click on the box "show volume
control on the taskbar". After you have a checkmark there, click OK.

With the sound icon, you can also right-click on  it,
click on Open Volume controls, click on Options,
properties, and enable many other features of your
sound card that you may need, like a microphone, for
instance.

Lastly, it could be a sound card problem, but try these
first before you think of replacing it.

<Printer tips>

When your printer quits, here's some possible solutions:

Try this, it won't hurt your computer or your printer:
While the computer and the printer are on, unplug the
power source from the printer, and then plug it back in.
This will reset your printer.  Now try to print.

If that doesn't do it,  you should remove the printer, uninstall
the printer software and then reinstall it.  Click on start, settings
printers, or the printer icon is always located in the control
panel.  Find your printer, right click on it,or just highlight it, and
click delete.  Click yes is the box that pops up next, asking if
you are sure.  Then restart your computer to reinstall the
printer and software.  Resetting the printer might just do it,though.

And, one other Printer tip, always click on file and print when you print something, rather than the print icon.  That way if you have more than one printer, and you can with fax software, or Adobe Acrobat software installed, even if you only have one actually printer hardware. The default printer is usually  the one to come up, but just in case that setting has changed, file and print gives you control.  You can reset the
printer to be the default printer by right clicking on the printer, and click on "set to default".

<Get rid of the <<<< in an email>

EmailStripper is a free program for cleaning the ">" and other formatting characters out of your emails. It will restore "forwarded" or "replied" emails back to their original state so they're easier to read. It's simple to use, and best of all it's FREE!

http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm

Download EmailStripper now:
Download as a ZIP file (if you have WinZip)
Download the executable if you don't, and
click OPEN at the end of the download.  It's
a great program, just copy and paste your
email into the program, click "strip it", and then
click copy and then paste in your email letter.
To get this program on your desktop, you need
to right-click on the EmailStripper icon, and click
on "send to", and then desktop (create shortcut)
or you can click on copy and then go to the
desktop, and right=click on the desktop, and click
on paste in the menu.  I also do one more thing,
in Windows 98, you can drag the EmailStripper
icon to the taskbar to make it easy to copy and
paste an email you need to clean up.  You can stay
in your email program that way.

<Wow, Convert AOL favorites to IE favorites>

A kind subscriber to the newsletter let me in on this
program.  It's seems to be a great idea.  It seems to
me that you can use it once without buying it for a
no cost solution to the AOL favorites conversion problem.

FavoRipper 5.0
Easily convert your AOL favorites to Internet Explorer favorites.

FavoRipper will leave your AOL favorites intact.
Import hundreds of AOL favorites in less than a minute with 1 click of your mouse.

FavoRipper works with AOL versions 4 - 8.
If using AOL 8.0, just choose version 7 on the choose version screen.

Download FavoRipper 5.0
$19.95 to register, but you'll just need it once, hopefully,
and won't have to register because you're changing to another provider.

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Explorer_Add-ons/FavoRipper.htm

<Missing Spell-check in Outlook Express>

Recently had a email for the solution to the
missing spell-check feature in Outlook Express.
I found a great website to fix this problem.
Here's a good step by step on how to fix the
missing spell-check,

 http://michaelstevenstech.com/spellcheck.htm

Read through all the steps, and you might
want to just download the files that they
have for download to make things easier.

<Xmlparse.dll cannot be found>

If any of you have uninstalled Instant Messenger lately,
you may have experienced this.  When you attempt
to start your computer,  an error message similar
to the following may appear: Xmlparse.dll cannot be found.

This error can occur when you have America
Online Instant Messenger (AIM) in the Startup group.

To resolve this problem, disable AIM or remove AIM
from the Startup group. To disable AIM,  use the following
procedure.

NOTE: Because there are several versions of Microsoft
Windows, the following steps may be different on your
computer. If they are, see your product documentation
to complete these steps.

Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type
msconfig, and then click OK. In the System Configuration
 Utility box, click the Startup tab. Clear all check boxes that
 are associated with AIM, click Apply, and then click OK.
 Restart your computer.

<Outlook Express Tip>

One last thing, if your Outlook Express is giving you grief,
like mine has been lately, go to control panel, (start,
settings, control panel), and click on add/remove programs,
find Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 5.5, and click on it
and then add/remove.  When the menu pops up, click repair.
This will help for a while.  Also, just be sure and click file/save
a lot to cut down on frustration, and it will save a copy of your
work in the Drafts folder just in case your Outlook Express
program crashes.  I repair often.

Well that's it for April's newsletter.  I started budgeting
my time a little better lately, and I'm proud to say that
I've gotten a timely April newsletter done.  Hope you
all like it.  I'll have more tips next month.  Sending a
quarterly newsletter out just didn't seem right.  Besides
I had lots of encouragement to send it out more often
than quarterly, so I'll just try to keep up.  Thank you
to all of you that have subscribed and passed on this
newsletter to your friends and relatives.  Have a great day!!

**********************************************************

I hope these tips have been interesting to you all.
I appreciate all of you.  Remember that I will have all these monthly issues of my newsletter available at my websites, along with other information:

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http://www.internetguideandmore.com

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