Inbox

By DON McALLISTER

Welcome to InBox, where we attempt to answer your internet questions.

* Paul's modem produces a painfully slow internet experience! "Can I speed up pages in the short term while I save for a faster modem than my current 14.4Kbps dinosaur?" he asks.

Disable images from loading, Paul. Eliminating them will produce lightning fast response, but the pages won't be pretty! Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced/Multimedia. Remove the tick from "Show Pictures" then hit Apply/OK. From now you can right click a red cross and select "Show picture" to view it.

* Gabrielle and Grant normally have a list of contacts to the lower left of their messages window, but recently it vanished from existence.

You can easily fix this. Open Outlook Express. Go to View/Layout and tick "Contacts" then OK on your way out.

* Alasdair seems to be inundated with Klez emails daily and the removal patch doesn't seem to stop its entry.

Always combine a program's virus patch with an up-to-date virus scanner Alasdair and you will reduce your chances of infection substantially. Most patches remove viruses, but won't block a new entry attempt.

* "After a hefty repair bill when my computer became infected in April, I'm careful to run the Live Update on Norton AntiVirus when I switch on. Is there anything else I should be doing to fully protect myself?" asks Marjorie.

Keep all your software up to date Marjorie, especially Windows itself. At least once a week go to Start/Windows Update. Microsoft's update page will list all updates and patches available for your Windows, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express installations. Microsoft regularly posts these updates to eliminate bugs and security issues in their software.

* A baffling error message: "A font contains a bad cmap-encoding." That's one of several Heather gets when viewing an Adobe Acrobat document online.

You're using an older version (V3.0 or earlier) of Adobe Acrobat Heather. First uninstall your current version, then download an up-to-date version of Acrobat Reader from Adobe



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