InBox

By DON McALLISTER

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

Q. Elva's vision-impaired friend has the high contrast and big pointers enabled on her PC, but this hides buttons behind the task bar when the boxes are too big to fit on the screen. What's the solution?

A. Windows now includes a tool called "Magnifier" to enlarge everything under the pointer in a separate window. Hit the Windows key and the letter "U", this will start a box called "Utility manager" where a few vision impaired programs can be controlled. There are many other "Accessibility Options" in Windows XP including screen readers and talking word processors. Visit Microsoft.

Q. Jules is another victim of a persistent MSN Messenger starting up when she doesn't want it. In this case, MSN starts with Outlook Express. "How can this be stopped?" she asks.

A. Try this, Jules. Go to Outlook Express/Tools/Options/General and remove the tick from "Automatically logon to Windows Messenger". Another way to remove the MSN Messenger service from XP when there's no entry in Add/Remove programs is to locate SYSOC. INF in c:\Windows\INF folder. (It's a hidden file and folder.) Open it in Notepad and find the line: "msmsgs=msgrocm.dll, OcEntry, msmsgs.inf, hide,7". Remove the word "hide" from the line and save the file. Now there'll be an entry in Add/Remove programs that enables you to completely obliterate it.

Q. "Is it true that Windows Media Player 8 is spying on my music downloads?" Alan's been warned by friends that what he's downloading is traceable within this program.

A. Yes, Alan, it's true. But you can tell it not to spy quite easily. Go to Windows Media Player/Tools/Options/Player. Find the option "Allow internet sites to uniquely identify your player?" and turn it off. In Version 9 this option defaults to off.

Q. Michael needs it to view a Java enabled genealogy site yet Windows XP has no Java Virtual Machine.

A. Legal wrangling with Sun resulted in Microsoft removing Java from its XP operating system. But you can still download it from java-virtual-machine.net/download.html.



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