Replies

Hi Rob,

Try this first… go back to Device Manager, expand each device with the yellow exclamation marks then right-click on the device itself. Select the top option, which should be to Update Driver Software….

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Next, select the top option again to Search automatically for updated driver software.

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The search may very well be slow but, if there’s an updated driver available from Microsoft, it will be downloaded from the internet and installed.

If it’s successful for both devices then you won’t have to muck about trying to find the correct drivers manually.

Hope this helps…

The Dell website for the Dell Dimension 5000 doesn’t show drivers for Vista, let alone Win 7, so it’s going to be a case of trying to find drivers elsewhere. Note: You need to let us know whether your new Win 7 Home Premium install is 32-bit or 64-bit.

Audio
The Dell website for the Dell Dimension 5000 shows the audio device is an Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio. Try the latest Dell driver for this audio device, downloadable from here.

If this doesn’t work, try the advice in this blog. I know it’s a different model of Dell but it’s the same audio device (Analog Devices ADI 198x aka SoundMax ADI 198x).

Google Earth
It sounds like you don’t have the correct or best graphics driver. However, the Dell website for the Dell Dimension 5000 shows it came with one of 3 different graphics systems, 2 of them onboard (Intel 82915G/GV/910GL or Intel 915G) and the third was a dedicated card (nVidia 256MB PCI Express x16 GeForce 6800). You haven’t mentioned graphics as a problem, per se, so I guess Win 7 detected the graphics device and installed a built-in driver. Have a look in Device Manager and, under Display adapters, let us know what was detected and whether there are any icons against it (and against any other device).

(DirectX 11 is built-in to Win 7)

Hope this helps…

Use CTRL+B

(or View > Sidebar > Bookmarks)

Hope this helps…

Doug… you’re right!

ROFL

AHK is just the scripting language. Once it’s installed you could use Notepad to write your AHK scripts… but that’s not easy whilst you’re getting the hang of things. Instead, I suggest using SciTE4AutoHotkey as your AHK editor because it also includes a number of tools, including a rudimentary macro recorder.

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You would use the macro recorder to record your keystrokes then save the macro and, finally, add the hotkey you wanted to use (at the top of the script).

Like AHK, SciTE4AutoHotkey is free and can be downloaded from here.

Hope this helps…

Vista includes VBScript (VBScript aka Visual Basic Scripting Edition) by default but VBScript doesn’t include built-in support for hotkeys (aka shortcut keys). Instead you would have to write the VBS script then create a shortcut to it then amend the properties of the shortcut to include a shortcut key.

An alternative is AutoHotkey (aka AHK), a scripting language which – as the name suggests – was originally written for exactly the purpose you need, i.e. hotkeys (but has since grown exponentially in functionality).

An AHK script to do what you want, using the F2 key as the hotkey would be something like:

Code:

#F2::
Run, open “My Example Spreadsheet.xls”
Run, open “My Example Document.doc”
return

The first line assigns the F2 key as the hotkey to run the rest of the script.
The second and third lines open the files you want, e.g. “C:UsersTheodoreMy DocumentsMy Example Document.docx”.
The fourth line just serves to end the action of the hotkey.

Alternatively, you could use something like:

Code:

#F2::
RunWait, “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice14EXCEL.EXE”
Run, “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice14WINWORD.EXE”
return

#F3::
Run, open “My Example Spreadsheet.xls”
return

#F4::
Run, open “My Example Document.doc”
return

In the second example, F2 would start Excel first, wait until it was running then start Word. If you pressed F3 then the example spreadsheet would open and if you pressed F4 then the example document would open.

AutoHotkey can be downloaded from here, documentation is here and has 2 active Support forums – http://www.autohotkey.com/board/%5B/B%5D%5B/url%5D and http://ahkscript.org/boards/%5B/B%5D%5B/url%5D. Both forums offer, in my opinion, excellent support for newcomers to AutoHotkey (AHK).

Hope this helps…

Try this:

[*]Login as root user.
[*]Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal.
[*]Enter sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer then enter the root user password.
[*]Enter y when it asks you if you want to install it and wait for it to install.
[*]Launch Firefox and check that the latest Flash Player has been installed.

Hope this helps…

Hi Jim,

LibreOffice understands both MS Office .doc and .docx formats so you should have no problems importing Word 2003 documents into LibreOffice Writer. In my experience (5 years of using StarOffice then OpenOffice now LibreOffice in both an office and home environment), LibreOffice has rarely had an issue converting an MS Word document properly including formatting. In fact, we have often used LibreOffice to import corrupt MS Word docs that will no longer open in Word, just to repair them.

Whilst the default file format for LibreOffice Writer is .odt, there is nothing to stop you from saving in either .doc or .docx formats if you need to share files with MS Office users. In fact, if you want, you can make one of these formats the default format for saving files (Tools > Options > Load/Save > General > Default file format and ODF settings).

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Scripting
Support for macros written in MS Office’s VBA is currently extremely limited (and improved support is one of the frequent requests in the user community) so, if you rely on macros then you may have issues converting them manually. LibreOffice’s own version of macro scripting is very different and takes some time to get used to.

Java
Some features of LibreOffice require a Java environment, e.g. some Writer Wizards won’t work (Letter, Fax, Agenda and Web Page) without Java (SE 6 or 7) or a JRE installed (1.6 or 1.7) as these haven’t been developed much since the days of StarOffice when Java was used far more. I believe Writer’s MailMerge, LibreOffice Base (especially) and some of the Accessibility tools also require Java. You still appear to need to point LibreOffice to the Java/JRE installation manually (Tools > Options > Advanced > Java options) by selecting which version of Java or JRE is installed.

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As LibreOffice is free there’s no reason why you can’t download and install LibreOffice to see what’s available…

For interest, have a look at LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office for a comparison of features.

Hope this helps…

Try Nir Sofer’s NirCmd. Download it and copy it to C:WindowsSystem32 (so the PATH environment variable can find it) then use a batch file comprising of a command like nircmd.exe setsysvolume 0 in your startup folder (or from the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun key in the registry).

Hope this helps…

No problem… happy to help. Just in case it happens again, here’s what I did:

[*]Opened the document using LibreOffice Writer.
[*]Saved the document as .docx with a new filename.
[*]Word 2010 still wouldn’t open it but a new error showed the problem was with the footnotes.xml file and asked if I wanted to convert it.
[*]I followed the prompts to download a converter.
[*]Downloaded and installed the OOXML Strict Converter for Office 2010.
[*]Word 2010 then opened the document, found errors and used the OOXML Strict Converter for Office 2010 to repair the errors, allowing me to save the document after it was repaired.

Hope this additional info helps as well…

Hope this helps…

VWDRV1 – If it’s not ntkrnlpa.exe causing the problem (which I doubt… but only sfc /scannow will provide the necessary check) then it’s most likely to be a process that’s hooking on to ntkrnlpa.exe. This could possibly be malware but may also be a legitimate process (like anti-malware), hence why I asked what processes are running.

Let’s try and narrow down what caused the crash:
1. Download and run Nir Sofer’s MyEventViewer. (It doesn’t need to be installed.)
2. Click on Logs in the menubar and make sure only Application, HardwareEvents and System are ticked.
3. Click on Options in the menubar then Event Type Filter. Make sure only Error and Warning are ticked.
4. Press F9 to display Advanced Options (or use Options > Advanced Filter).
5. Put a tick in the Show only events created in the following time range checkbox then change the start and end date to the date your PC crashed when you were doing the ripping. Click on the OK button to dismiss the Advanced Options dialog.
6. Click on one of the filtered events to select it then press CTRL+A to select all events.
7. Click File in the menubar then Save Selected Items.
8. Save the file as events.txt to your desktop.
9. Attach the events.txt file to your next post.

Also, please zip up and attach the minidump file you analysed with BlueScreenView (in post #3). It should be stored in the C:WindowsMinidump folder.

PS – You do need to carry out the sfc /scannow test to eliminate ntkrnlpa.exe as the culprit. Let us know the results.
PPS – I had to look at your profile to see your signature. Is that Vista Home Premium? 32-bit or 64-bit?

ntkrnlpa.exe is a core system file (the NT Kernel) so it’s very unlikely that this actually caused the BSOD. To check, do the following:

1. Click on the Start orb, type cmd in the Search programs and files dialog then press the Enter key.
2. When cmd.exe appears in the results list, right-click on it and select Run as administrator from the context menu.
3. When the User Account Control (UAC) dialog appears, click on the Yes button to dismiss it.
4. When the command dialog appears, type sfc /scannow then press the Enter key.

Your PC/laptop will scan all of your Windows’ system files and fix (replace) any that are corrupt. (This will take some time…) If all is well then the scan will complete with something like “Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations’.

However, I very much doubt that a corrupt ntkrnlpa.exe file is the problem here. You need to provide a lot more information, i.e:

a. what OS are you running?
b. what anti-malware do you use?
c. what processes are running.

Hope this helps…

When we can’t use Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) due to physical damage we use a long, narrow cold chisel. Cheap, fast and very effective. Make sure you wear safety gloves and goggles.

Hope this helps…

Download and run Nir Sofer’s BlueScreenView (it doesn’t need to be installed). This will analyse the minidump files created by the BSOD and, in the Caused by column, show the cause of it.

The default view doesn’t show all the columns so you’ll need to scroll the top pane to see the Caused by column.
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You can also do a Google search directly from within the Bugcheck column to narrow down the cause and any solutions that have been found. Just right-click on the BSOD entry in the top pane and choose Google Search – Bug Check+Driver from the context menu that appears.

Hope this helps…