Inbox

By DON McALLISTER

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

No, we're not ignoring your inbox questions.

A server glitch bottlenecked inbox mail for the past two weeks. If I haven't replied to you yet, I will soon. I do apologise for any delay while each item is dealt with over the next few days.

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Finally, Microsoft has fixed that nasty Windows XP Update problem.

The "811493" security patch to fix a slowdown problem in Windows XP is now available through Windows Updates. Let's hope future updates or patches will be extensively tested before release.

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P & B are the latest in a long line of victims of the "Teddy Bear" or "JDBGMGR. EXE" hoax.

The JDBGMGR. EXE file resides on every Windows hard-drive (with its teddy bear icon). It's not an infection, so do not delete it. There are viruses and worms such as "W32. Efortune.31384@mm", "Recory. B" or "Bugbear", that target JDBGMGR. For more information go to Microsoft support and search for Q322993.

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Alena's disk drive is split into two partitions - "C" is full but "D" is empty. "Can I change the partition sizes to make C bigger?" she asks.

You can, Alena, but I advise getting your local expert to do it. If you get it wrong you may cause a nightmare. Or you can search Tucows for "Partition" where demo and shareware programs are listed to assist in this exercise.

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"What is a 'mirror site' and which one should I use?" asks Jill.

Software vendors usually have more than one download site in case the main site is busy or even unavailable, Jill. They call them "mirrors" because they store exactly the same offering at a different location - "mirroring" the original file. Pick a local site or one that's in a time-zone where it's 1am- 6am to get the fastest downloads.


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