InBox

By DON McALLISTER

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

Q. An innocent-looking email titled "Police Investigation" reached Inbox on Monday. Suspecting something amiss, I opened it on what I call my paranoia machine, an isolated machine set up to handle risky tasks. I clicked on the links provided. One was dead, but when the other spat up a server error the antivirus software went wild, with three separate infections identified. It turned out to be an intruder called TrojanByteVerify, designed to capitalise on a known Java security issue in Internet Explorer (support.microsoft.com - search under MS03-011).

A. Now that I've informed the service provider of that location, they should pull it down. But if you receive an email titled Police Investigation DELETE it.

Q. Mary would like to book a holiday at Surfers Paradise. "How can I find the contact details of the Cosmopolitan Apartments?" she asks.

A. Two sure ways, Mary. Type "Cosmopolitan Apartments Surfers Paradise" in Google Search and you'll find a link to its booking page near the top of the results. The quotation marks force the search engine to find the exact phrase between the marks, narrowing the results to the very specific.

Another option is whitepages.com, where almost all phone directories worldwide are listed.

Q. Windows XP fails to shut down and Shirley is getting frustrated.

A. Earlier versions of Windows had this problem when a corrupted file was sitting in the recycle bin, Shirley. Empty the trash and see if this fixes it. Microsoft has a support page titled "Resources to Help Troubleshoot Shutdown Problems in Windows XP".

Q. 'Warning, back up your data immediately and replace your hard disk drive, a failure may be imminent. Press F1 to continue.' I have never seen this before and am not sure what it means," worries Gayle. "Also I have 1,114,112 bytes in bad sectors. Is this anything to worry about?"

A. It is serious, Gayle. Your hard drive is about to die. Get that machine to the local dealer. They will install a new drive and suck out all the old data from the faulty unit.


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