Special Announcements For Premium Subscribers

Cloudeight Email Guardian Special Offer: We've teamed with our favorite anti-spyware software. Learn how you can get our Email Guardian Backup Program free with a subscription to the best anti-spyware program on the Internet. Take advantage of this special offer now - click here to learn more!

Cloudeight Smileycons : Our new Christmas Pack, FunPak and Smileycons SuperPak PLUS are now available. To learn more about all our Smileycons Expansion packs please click here. Or click here to learn more about our SuperPak PLUS. Or if you'd like to try Smileycons free please download a free trial version here.

Read The Free Edition And All the Ads: Many of you have written to say you miss some of the products we advertise to our Free Edition subscribers. So for those of you who miss the products we've been advertising to our free subscribers please click here to read the latest free edition complete with the product advertisements. As most of you know we only advertise products and/or services which we have tried and tested ourselves.

To see all our special offers and Premium member's only specials please click here

Reader Comments

A Comment From Mary Ann
Commenting on our Sea of Scum Rant

Oh to remember the days of Blue Mountain and the likes...........Seems I have been a visitor /  member for longer than I was aware - I am a 60-year-old female who loves my computer but didn't know very much until you all came along. Thanks ever so much for being there.

Regarding your rant on honesty and the desire to share - I agree totally. All things that used to be available just because we were all sharing at that time has virtually disappeared. Would be good to have it return but fear that it may not. Keep up the good work, our lives would be devastated without you. Thanks.

(Thanks so much Mary Ann. We appreciate your kind comments and nostalgic "cyber" thoughts!  Thundercloud & Eightball)

A Comment From Bill
Commenting on our Email BackUp Guardian program

This is not a question, but it is a well deserved comment. I purchased your Email Guardian when it came out on the very first day. As with all of your programs and other items, I am a big fan. I have all of your programs and they are great. I have not had any ocassion to use Email Guardian before yesterday, although I keep backups for four days. Yesterday I had a serious problem with my computer. I always panic when this happens because I keep so many of my emails. As it turned out, I had to format my hard drive. After I had put all of my important programs back in, I reinstalled Email Guardian and I could not believe how easy and how quickly your program did it's thing. I have used several backup programs in the past but this one is by far the best, hands down. You guys out did yourselves this time.

Thanks, Bill. We think it's a really great program and a useful one too if saving important email is a priority. Thank you for writing and for supporting Cloudeight!

A Comment From Joyce
Commenting on "Amy's Letter" and our Thanksgiving Rant

Dear Amy:

What a beautiful letter. Thank you for sharing it with all of us. You indeed are a special person.

About 5 years ago I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. My son & daughter-in-law decided I should move to California,so we could have some "Special Time" together. For the last 5 years I have spent the holidays alone, as the kids always had something else to do or somewhere to go. Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving we have been together & they told me they would be with me for Christmas. They had made plans to spend time with their friends either before or after Christmas, but this year & from now on, they will be here for the holidays. After they left, I cried & thought back to my younger years----alone at the holidays, but now I have my "Family" and special memories for me & I hope for them too.

Please, Please do not give up on the holidays---you will always make memories for someone----rather you know it or not. From the sound of your letter, the memories will be great ones for someone & for you too.

I read & reread the "RANT" & had some tears of my own to shed. Sometimes we read or hear something that brings back special memories for us----Thundercloud & Eightball really hit a lot of us, right where we live. I agree, they are, indeed, Special People. So are you Amy, I hope this holiday season you have/make some wonderful memories & may God Bless you & your husband.

Merry Christmas & God's Blessings to you,
Joyce

(Thank you for such beautiful thoughts, Joyce, we are sharing your response with Amy and all of our readers because we think it's so special! Happy Holidays to you! Thundercloud & Eightball)

A Comment From Pearl

This is not a question just a "funny" on me! I read the Internet Explorer Tip in this weeks issue i.e., Open in a new window, in step #2 evidently you made a typo and spelled "shirt", I spent about 5 minutes on my keyboard looking for the key you when suddenly it dawned on me that it should be shift. I was so embarrassed with myself but I also started laughing so hard I had tears running down my face. I have used computers over 15 years and was really trying to find the "shirt" key.. Thank you for a lot of good information every week and a laugh now and then.

(Pearl, the 'Shirt' key is right next to the 'Any' key <grin>. That darn spell checker messed up again! Sorry about the typo. Thanks for the laugh! Thundercloud & Eightball)

This Week's Guest Columnist: Ben Edelman

Ben Edelman is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Economics at Harvard University and a student at the Harvard Law School. He previously studied economics and statistics as a student at Harvard College. Ben's current research agenda includes analyzing methods and effects of spyware, uncovering affiliate commission fraud, evaluating registrations in new TLDs, and examining Internet filtering efforts by governments worldwide. Read the rest of Ben Edelman's Bio here.

Gator's EULA Gone Bad

Gator has recently taken steps to portray itself as a model citizen among what it calls "adware" companies. Gator proudly announced support for California's new anti-spyware law. (But see my criticism of the law as ineffective.) Earlier this year, Gator hired a former FTC staff attorney to serve as Gator's chief privacy officer, participated (PDF) in the FTC's spyware workshop, and even joined CDT's "consumer software working group" committee. (See recommendations document (PDF) signators list, final page.)

Has Gator turned over a new leaf? For insight, I turned to Gator's license agreements, to see how Gator currently presents itself to ordinary users.

It's not often that I sit down to read Gator's license agreements. At 5,936 words, the license stretches to 63 on-screen pages as presented by the current Kazaa installer (bundling Gator). (See screen-shots of the Gator license as presented in June 2004, then requiring 56 on-screen pages.)

(Please click here to read the rest of Mr. Edelman's excellent and well-documented article).

A Question From Linda
You do such a wonderful job on most of my questions that this is the first one. How do I keep my e-mails in OE from opening until I command it to open. When I point on an e-mail now it opens automatically in the preview window. I do not want that. Thank you, Linda

When the preview pane is disabled, you'll need to double-click the message to open it.

A Question From Rita
Hi, I have Windows 98, It is too slow. What can I do to speed it up? Thank You!  Rita

Our Answer
Hi Rita. Hmmm how long have you been reading our newsletters? :-) You are an unfortunate victim of one of the worst spyware/adware programs on the Web. "Name removed due to threat of lawsuit". How do we know? Well, "Name removed due to threat of lawsuit", for some reason, likes to advertise in your browser's tagline. This is the what a Web browser displays to every Web page you visit. This ends up in the server logs so it's a way of bragging. "Name removed due to threat of lawsuit" likes to brag about how many innocent people it has trapped in its tangled web of brightly colored "smileys" and other nefarious 'programs' it gives away "free".

Question From Patricia
A friend of mine just downloaded an instant messaging program called IMVITE which she says is compatible with AIM, MSN, YAHOO and several others. What do you think of this program? She says they pay you money to download their platform and for shopping through them as well. I think you sound advice and I would like to know if I should consider using it. 

Our Answer
Wow. Just a quick glance at their "Privacy Policy" sends shivers down our spines! It's a free program. They pay you money. Something sound strange about that to you? How do you think they're going to "earn" this money to pay you? They have a "No Spyware" graphic on their home page. That's the first sign that someone has accused them of being spyware already..and we assume this is a fairly new program.

Here's just a tidbit from their "privacy policy": "...Therefore, in general, we will only use the information you provide to us for the purpose for which such information was provided. Your information will be used internally by IMVITE, its employees, subcontractors and agents to create an account and store information about our users. We may also use this information to deliver information about our company to you.

Your financial information will be utilized solely for the purpose of billing you for the services you sign up for, or for making payments to you under the terms of the affiliate program or the associate program (as the case may be), and will be disclosed only to valid financial institutions and credit card companies for these purposes. It will never be disclosed to other users of IMVITE under any circumstances.

IMVITE may display targeted advertisements based upon personal information. Advertisers (including ad serving companies) may assume that people who interact with, view, or click on targeted advertisements meet the specific criteria being targeted. Although IMVITE does not provide any personal information to the advertiser when you interact with, view or click on a targeted advertisement, by doing so you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the criteria being targeted by the advertisement.

We're not all that familiar with this program but just those few lines from their "privacy policy" would be enough to make us stay far, far, away from it!

Question from Thea
I'm happy to be on board, and I have been to the forum but so far nothing that was suggested has helped .I have trouble with the default defrag it only goes to 80% then I get told I have inconsistencies in files,that is why the defrag stopped. I have run the start-run-chkdsk several times but still no full defrag.also ran the sfc /scannow but still nothing. Is there a way to get the defrag to run properly again? Thank you.

Our Answer
We're glad to have you aboard, Thea! If anything is running in the background an active virus scan, a program that is scheduled to run such as a backup program, a screen saver or anything that would be actively accessing your hard drive, it may cause Defrag to stop at any point. We would suggest that you try running defrag in "Safe Mode" if you cannot determine what programs are running in the background. Before you resort to running Defrag in "Safe Mode" try this:

Open Taskman (Windows Task Manager) by pressing the Ctrl Alt Delete keys in succession. Disconnect from the Internet. Click the processes tab and shut down all processes running in the background including your anti-virus program, firewall, spyware scanner, etc. The processes you should leave running are: Explorer.exe, winlogon.exe, system, and system idle process. (Before doing this make sure you save any unfinished work because shutting down the wrong process may crash your system). After you have trimmed the programs running in the background to a minimum, try running chkdsk. If it still fails to compete then you'll have to run Defrag in safe mode. To boot into safe mode in Windows XP, reboot your computer and hit the F8 key as soon as Windows begins to load.

Premium NewsByte: US universities are struggling with a rash of dangerous spyware that can snoop on information encrypted using SSL. Experts have warned that the stealthy software, called Marketscore, could intercept a wide range of sensitive information, including passwords and health and financial data. In recent weeks, IT departments at a number of universities issued warnings about problems caused by Marketscore, which promises to speed up web browsing. Security experts said that the program, which routes all user traffic through its own network of servers, posed a real threat to user privacy. Read More

Our Little Rant by Eightball & Thundercloud

Pirates of The Cybersea

We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Maraud and embezzle and even hijack.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

(Yo Ho, Yo Ho ©1967 X. Atencio & George Bruns)

I have always liked the "Pirates of the Caribbean". You know the parrots, the eyepatches and pirates sitting 'round drinking rum by the barrel. I know, it's only a movie or is it a ride at Disney World? Or both? Still, when I was young, I could hear the timbers creaking, the sails billowing, and the waves splashing. I basked in that imaginary Caribbean sun and breathed the salty air. I had a great imagination and I imagined I was a little pirate. I wanted an eyepatch too but never got one. Now it seems I was just a crazy kid. If I told you about a hat I used to wear as a young boy, I'd surely be giving away my age. I think I'll keep that a secret.

Anyway, back to the pirates. Little did I know that years later, a brand new breed of pirates would come 'swashbuckling' onto the scene. They don't wear eyepatches (I don't think) and they probably don't have parrots riding on their shoulders. They don't ride the salty swells; they ride the cyber waves. They might drink rum by the barrel although I doubt it. They are more the "pina colada" in-the-tall-frosty-glass-with-the-umbrella-sticking-out-of-it type. I can just see them in their Hawaiian shirts drinking and chortling with glee as they reminisce about the all the hapless people they've duped. Yo Ho! They're partying with money pilfered from poor unsuspecting souls who really believe in a fairy tale called "The Free Lunch". Yes..these are the new pirates. We call them: "The Pirates Of The Cybersea". Click here to read the "rest of the story"

Reader Submitted "TIP OF THE WEEK" Winner!

Tip submitted by Mae

On the Outlook Express toolbar, click on View and select "hide read messages". Now you can see which ones you haven't read. If you want to be reminded to look at it again, right click the message and choose "mark as unread". Then it will be available without searching all the "read" messages.

Thanks for the handy tip, Mae. We appreciate you sending it.  Send us your favorite Windows tips. If your tip is selected for publication, you'll win a great prize!

Windows XP Advanced Tip
Windows XP Home and Professional

The Many Flavors of Chkdsk

You can fix a lot of problems like bad hard drive sectors and other hard drive errors by running Windows XP chkdsk an specifying parameters for specific functions. To run chkdsk click "Start", "Run" and type in Chkdsk.   Used without parameters, chkdsk displays the status of the disk in the current drive.

For those who want to leap into the more advanced features of Chkdsk you can use parameters to specify functions as long as they are specified in the right syntax.

The correct syntax is:
chkdsk driveletter colon space [/f] [/v] [/r] [/x] [/i] [/c] [/l]

/f : Fixes errors on the disk. The disk must be locked. If chkdsk cannot lock the drive, a message appears that asks you if you want to check the drive the next time you restart the computer. For example if you want to fix errors on your C drive you would type in chkdsk c: /f (note the space between the drive letter and the first / ).

Here are some other parameters you can use. You can specify more than one at at time like: chkdsk c: /f/v/r/x (note the space between the drive and the / ..it's very important.) Also note: You cannot use some of these parameters if your hard drive is not formatted NTFS (in other words if you're using FAT32 you cannot use some of these parameters).

/v : Displays the name of each file in every directory as the disk is checked.

/r : Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. The disk must be locked.

/x : Use with NTFS only. Forces the volume to dismount first, if necessary. All open handles to the drive are invalidated. /x also includes the functionality of /f.

/i : Use with NTFS only. Performs a less vigorous check of index entries, reducing the amount of time needed to run chkdsk.

/c : Use with NTFS only. Skips the checking of cycles within the folder structure, reducing the amount of time needed to run chkdsk.

/l[:size] : Use with NTFS only. Changes the log file size to the size you type. If you omit the size parameter, /l displays the current size.

/?: Displays help at the command prompt.

Outlook Express Tip
(All Versions of Outlook Express, All Versions of Windows)

The Great Corrupters

We've often stated that the "E-mail Virus Scan" was one of the biggest jokes ever foisted upon users of Outlook Express. Gee, and we think it all started with Norton a few years back. Norton started adding an "email scanning" feature to its' Anti-virus" program to give its users a sense of security. We've said many times that email scanning by an anti-virus program is not necessary and causes more trouble than it's worth. Why? Because it's unnecessary in the first place and because anything that interferes with the normal operation of your email client can and does have unwanted side-effects: like slowing down sending and receiving email for instance.

Now we're finally being backed by others. And, it's not only for the reasons we've stated but because running email anti-virus scanners is also the number one cause of file corruption in Outlook Express. It is not necessary to use a virus scanner in your email program (as long as you have a good, updated anti-virus program installed on your system), it can actually damage your Outlook Express folders and messages by corrupting them.

Read this excellent article by Tom Koch, Microsoft MVP. In particular read the section entitled "Vital Irony: The Most Common Cause of Corruption" located near the bottom of that page.

Outlook Express Tip
(Outlook Express 6.0 on Windows XP Service Pack 2 Installed)

Why Microsoft Wants Your Mail In the Compactor

People have asked how to stop the request from Outlook Express to compact messages, and if a user checks "do not show this message again" will let it just compact when OE thinks it needs to be done, or will it stop compacting on demand? The reason for the concern with compacting messages, is that you cannot shut down while compacting is in process or it will corrupt one or all of your Outlook Express message folders. A sudden power outage is the worse case scenario.. I know, I had this happen but luckily I had my mail backed up from the day before so I only lost one day of messages.

Click here to read the rest of the story and learn why Windows XP SP2 prevents you from disallowing folder and message compacting in Outlook Express.

Premium NewsByte: Microsoft published a patch for Internet Explorer on Wednesday, aiming to close a month-old hole that has been used by viruses to spread and by an ad banner attack to compromise PCs. The vulnerability, dubbed the Internet Explorer Elements flaw by Microsoft, had previously been called the iFrame vulnerability. The issue--which does not affect Microsoft's major Windows XP security update, Service Pack 2--could allow an attacker to take control of a victim's PC, if the user is logged on as an administrator. Most home users tend to log onto Windows as administrators. Read More   (Also, see our Premium Alert notice in this newsletter).

Windows XP Tip
(Windows XP Home and Professional)

The Windows XP Default Sound Scheme

Windows XP comes with a really nice new sound scheme, but it's not loaded by default. Why? We don't know!  But we do know how to fire it up.  Here's how: Open Control Panel and navigate to Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices. Then, choose the task titled Change the sound scheme. In the dialog that appears, choose Windows Default for the sound scheme. Windows will ask you whether you want to save the previous scheme, which makes no sense because no scheme was previously loaded (proving once again computers are dumb). So choose No, and then click OK to exit the dialog.

Outlook Express Tip
Outlook Express 5 and 6 / Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP

Add A Find Message Button To Your Outlook Express Toolbar - A Tutorial

You were scheduled for a meeting next Thursday. The boss sent you an email last week to remind you and you forgot to answer her. Now her email is buried in your newer email and you need to find that letter before you risk demotion or worse! What can you do? Add a "Find Button" to your toolbar and find that message! Click here to learn how!

Be Computer Wise Tip
Everyone Who Is Connected to The Internet

We Don't Like To Eat Crow

The past few days we have seen several other newsletters reporting some pretty alarming news. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for everyone else, the news turned out to be not true or badly mis-reported. We all make mistakes but alarming readers with undocumented or poorly-researched claims is irresponsible. We want you to know that we would rather be right than first. Our tip is this: Do your homework. If you read some frightening computer news, maybe something that might require a major change in the the way you use your computer, don't jump just because xyz newsletter says it's so. It may not be. As we've seen in the past few days two supposedly reputable newsletters reported things that were either not true, or only partially true. We make mistakes too, but we do check our sources before we report things to you. We still could be wrong though, so be computer-wise and do your own research too! .

Have Questions, Need Answers? We read every question submitted to us. Please keep them coming! But we cannot answer them all in our newsletters. That's where our Forum comes in handy. Our forum has lots of great people there ready, willing and able to give you help with your computer problems. And, if you're an intermediate or advanced user you're welcome to chip and help other users as well. Everyone is welcome and you're all invited to come visit our Forum. It was created for you to get help or give help to other Information Avenue subscribers. Come visit our forum and browse through the 36,000+ posts and see how helpful our Forum people are! Our forum is located at http://infoave.ipbhost.com/ so come join the great folks who help each other along!  You're welcome to become a forum member too. It's free and private and best of all you'll learn by helping others or by asking questions! Our Cloudeight support forum also has a lot of Windows 98 users, and there's always a lot of conversation and helpful tips no matter what version of windows you are using!

This Week's Site of The Week!

The Secret Guide To Computers

No, this is not some ultra-secret site we stumbled upon, it's an interesting look at many aspects of computers from today and days gone by. You can learn about the proper way to move your computer, installing hardware, and a lot more. If you'd like to learn more about your computer then you'll want to take a look at "The Secret Guide To Computers". It's our Site of the Week!

Premium NewsByte: Google and Mozilla may or may not be working together on a Web browser, but the two are cozier than ever in the latest Firefox release. The search company is newly featured, at center stage, on the default home page of Firefox 1.0, a Web browser based on the Mozilla Foundation's open-source development work and which was made available for free download Tuesday morning.  Read More 

This Week's Freeware Program Of The Week

Wallpaper Master

If you're the kind of person that changes their wallpaper frequently then you'll love this program. And, we're not talking about the kind in your dining room either. We're talking about desktop wallpaper, of course. Wallpaper Master is a highly customizable and easy to use wallpaper changer and manager. It will automatically change your background wallpaper with a large range of options, and is great for indexing large collections. You can have this nifty utility change your wallpaper at whatever interval you specify. This program has a lot of features and it's completely free. (No spyware, No Adware). Click here to learn more about our freeware program of the week - Wallpaper Master.

InfoAve Premium Internet Alerts

New Critical Update for Windows XP Users Who HAVE NOT installed Windows XP SP2

The Microsoft Windows security update for December 2004 is a cumulative security update that resolves a newly discovered issue in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1), a component of Windows. If you have any of the software listed on this page installed on your computer, you should visit the Windows Update Web site to install the related update.

Skip the details and go to Windows Update now

Always be on guard and practice good computer safety precautions. If you're using Windows XP, protect yourself: Install Windows XP SP2. If you're using other versions of Windows keep up-to-date with the latest Windows updates from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ . Make sure you have a good anti-virus program installed and that you have the most recent updates for it. Remember an anti-virus program that is not updated frequently, is as bad or worse than none at all. If you don't have anti-virus protection installed, get it now. You can get great free anti-virus protection from AVAST or AVG.   Don't take chances and don't think you are immune from a computer disaster.can happen to you. It can happen to anyone, even experienced computer users. DO NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS DIRECTLY from an email and never trust links sent in an email without checking out ones that you're suspicious of. If you're not sure, err on the side of caution!