Additional notes 

Paul mentioned that there is a trojan going around in the iWorks suite for the Mac. See the above link.
Difference between a trojan, virus and worm.

People who meet certain qualifications will be able to file their state taxes for free. See the above link.

URLs that end in .gov are government websites and you have some assurance they're not nefarious (as far a governments go).

Go to donotcall.gov and sign up to prevent unsolicited phone calls.
This site initially came online a few years ago and the records are due to expire, so remember to reapply periodically.

The DTV switch was pushed forward to June 12. Originally it was on Feb 17 which is also the date dedicated to St Claire, the patron saint for television.
People who receive the TV signal by an antenna can get a $40 rebate coupon for a converter.

Ellen called from Auburn. Her email in Outlook Express inbox disappeared. How can she retrieve them?
– This can happen when the emails take up too much space — around 2gig.
– Start using Thunderbird. It will import the Outlook Express emails.
– Use Google with the search term "Outlook Express repair inbox", there are 3rd party programs to repair the Outlook Express file containing all of the inbox mail.
– There something called Inbox Repair Tool.
– In Outlook Express, 'deleted' mail is not actually gone until you purge or compact it.
– When exploring with ways to recover, 1st make copy of the OUTLOOK.PST file so you can put a copy back to the original location and continue exploring. It's IMPORTANT to do all this copying & exploring while the Outlook Express program is closed. More info from a previous show here.
– Sometimes Outlook Express encounters a malformed email and chokes, so do a CHKDSK on the file.

A caller has put together a machine with an external RAID 1 array, he wants to know if the software tool (that came with the drives) for marking bad clusters, has to be run on each drive individually.
– If the drives are controlled by a hardware unit (not by software), chances are high that the formatting utility in the external box will do the marking and the software tool is unnecessary.
– A good RAID array should understand SMART monitoring and give detailed information about disk behaviour.
– If clusters continue to be marked bad over an extended time, that's a degraded drive and SMART should report that to you.
– Mapped out bad clusters are tracked by the hardware unit not the operating system

A caller has a trojan on his Vista machine. His anti-virus program removes it but not completely, it keeps coming back and his protection programs stopped updating themselves.
– Try Spybot or Hijackthis. Go to download.com and get Spybot 1.6.2 (supposed to be the current version as of this date). Do any updates for Spybot and then check (and finally fix) the errors.
– Run Vista in safe mode using the F8 key. Then run AVG in safe mode.
– It may be a rootkit (see previous show here) and AVG can't deal with. Use Fsecure's Blacklight to detect (only) a rootkit. If you find a rootkit make a backup of your data. Boot from the latest version Ubuntu CD (a version of Linux which will write/delete on a NTFS (windows) hard drive). Then you'll be able to delete the troublesome files.

The Microsoft program for rootkits that Paul had trouble remembering is RootKitRevealer. For an example of a rootkit, symptoms to look for and what to do go here.
Additional tools from the Sysinternals suite here: 

Listeners are encouraged to give feedback on the show by email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Support for XP is due to end in a few months. Desktop systems are no longer sold with XP, for the most part. Dell may still have them.
– You can get XP on a small laptop called a netbook.
– If you try to install XP on a Vista machine you may have trouble getting XP drivers for the newer hardware that came with the Vista machines.
– You can install XP on a newer machine and then call Microsoft to transfer the license. But you can only do this if the copy of XP you have is not an OEM version. OEM implies it's a version that is installed by the manufaturer of the computer it came with.
– Put some non-OEM version on the machine anyway (all appropriate disclaimers apply). It will complain that it's an unauthorized copy when you try to activate it and give you an option to buy the license, currently $149. Do this only on a machine that's not critical (e.g. not used for business).

A caller has DSL thru AT&T and a wireless modem with Airport connecting both a Mac & Windows but it stopped working. She tried her neighbor's modem and it worked.
– She reset her modem so she'll need to re-enter the login information.
– A flashing red light or no light implies a fried modem.
– A flashing green light means login info needs to be re-entered
– Toss your modem and share the neighbor's wireless connection

Max from Fair Oaks called and says he was able to get XP on his new Dell Inspiron when he bought it in Oct 2008.
Max also says he bought Spellex (I guess this is it) but it wouldn't work. The company says 1 in 10 installations don't work so he sent it back for refund.

Paul notes that Office 2003 works fine with Vista.

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