By William LaMartin, Editor, Tampa PC Users Group
My Many Computer Problems: All Solved, I hope
For the past month my computer had seemed to move more slowly than before; most likely because of all the new programs I had recently installed: McAfee Virus Scan, a new version of TextBridge Pro, Via Voice, and Internet Explorer 5.0. I suspected McAfee and IE 5.0 as the main culprits. But the situation was tolerable—just not perfect. Things, however, came to a head when the computer locked up while transferring scanned and OCRed text from TextBridge Pro to Microsoft Word. The lockup occurred when I tried to cancel a McAfee Virus Scan that started up (on schedule) right in the middle of the TextBridge transfer. Obviously, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have done that. When the computer was rebooted and Word started, the response in Word was more than sluggish. If I selected some text and then clicked with the mouse to make it bold, it would be almost 10 seconds before I was able to use the mouse to select more text. This was not tolerable.
My first thought was that the problem might be with the file, since, to create it, I had started TextBridge from a menu button on the Word menu bar and,after scanning in a few pages, had instructed TextBridge to close and put the text into Word. I had used this process several times to place approximately 40 pages of text into Word before the crash. In the past I had noticed a slow response in Word when dealing with large Rich Text Format (RTF) documents opened in Word before they were saved as Word documents. Perhaps this was similar. Unfortunately a check using other documents produced the same very slow response. The proof that something was wrong with Word and not the files was when I opened the same file in Word on my laptop and everything zipped along as it should.
The obvious solution was to reinstall Word. However, a reinstallation did not help, and an uninstall and reinstall did not help. Time now for drastic measures: Eraser97 (see my comments in the December 1998 newsletter). The uninstall of Office 97 and the use of Eraser97, which removed all trace of Office 97 from the registry, and the reinstallation of Office97 did not help. When I reinstalled Word, I kept getting "cannot update registry" warnings. So, I was no better off, and worse, I now had other problems. I knew beforehand that after running Eraser97 I would have to reinstall my two scanners, Personal Web Server and Active Server Pages (ASP), since I had been through something similar before. But this time ASP would not reinstall. It had something to do with the msdasql.dll in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\ole db folder. Couldn't load a library or something.
After some thought, I figured this was probably a Windows file and it could most easily be corrected by reloading Windows. I really didn’t want to reinstall Win 95, since I had added so many patches over the past 2.5 years that it had been on the computer, and I wasn’t sure that any of them would be retained, so I decided to move up to Win 98 on this machine.
After the installation of Win 98, Word loaded and ran very much faster than before, my scanners worked, and everything else seemed OK. ASP could now be reinstalled, and it is working fine in spite of a note at the end of the installation that said "Incorrectly Registered, run regsrv32.exe to register". I would have done that, but I have no idea what file to include with the run regsrv32.exe command. Perhaps there is an Installation Log that I can view and see what process gave the error.
As they say, it is not over until it is over. There were still several more problems ahead to be discovered as I tried to use other programs or different features in programs which I already thought were OK.
First, when I tried to use my HP PhotoSmart photo scanner, it worked fine—except that the instructions were written out in the symbol font. For Example, Insert photograph to be scanned looked like
Insert photograph to be scanned (if you have the symbol font on your computer). As usual, a reinstallation did no good. And I could find no solution for this problem for the moment.Second, when I tried to start Microsoft Publisher 98 to work on this newsletter, I got the message that it couldn’t run because of some missing DLL (Eraser97 strikes again). This was solved by simply reinstalling Publisher 98—the only instance of a simple reinstallation solving one of my recent problems. Furthermore, this also removed the problem of the scanner software using the symbol font for instructions. Figure that one out.
Third, I noticed that after installing Win 98, when the computer booted I got an error message on my HP 4 Plus printer: "22 PAR I/O ERROR". As usual, I turned to
http://search.microsoft.com and found the following:CAUSE: This behavior occurs when the Drvwppqt.vxd virtual device driver is loaded or if you are not using an IEEE 1284 printer cable.
RESOLUTION: To prevent this driver from being loaded, follow these steps: ……omitted material…….
1. Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files Or Folders.
2. In the Named box, type "drvwppqt.vxd" (without the quotation marks), and then
click Find Now.
3. Rename all instances of the file by changing the file name extension. You must change the extension to prevent the driver from being loaded.
Three down; more to go.
Next I started Microsoft Access—at least I tried to. Instead I received the message: "Microsoft Access can't start because there is no license for it on this machine." (As one of my clients said about a similar message,"What do you mean no license? I paid for it, didn’t I?") A reinstallation of Access, as I had begun to realize, didn’t solve the problem. Time to turn again to http://search.microsoft.com, type in some key words and see what came up. Here is the solution (the strangest one yet). I am including most of the details to illustrate how careful Microsoft is in guiding you to the solution.
Certain fonts that are installed by Microsoft Publisher can result in the incorrect registration of Microsoft Access 97 ………omitted material………………...
Follow these steps to correct the registry error:
1. On the Start menu, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders.
2. In the Name box, type "hatten.ttf" (without the quotation marks).
3. In the Look In box, type "C:\Windows\Fonts" (without the quotation marks) or the path to the Fonts folder on your computer.
4. Click the Find Now button to start the search.
5. Under Name, right-click the hatten.ttf file, and click Rename on the menu that appears.
6. Change the name of the file to "hatten.xxx" (without the quotation marks).
7. Minimize (but do not close) the Find dialog box.
8. On the Start Menu, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.
9. In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs.
10. In the Add/Remove Program Properties dialog box, select the Install/Uninstall tab and select Microsoft Office 97, Professional Edition from the program list.
11. Click the Add/Remove button to run Office Setup in Maintenance Mode.
12. In the Microsoft Office 97 Setup dialog box, click Reinstall.
13. Once the reinstallation is finished, click the Find dialog box on the Windows taskbar to maximize it.
14. Under Name, right-click the hatten.xxx file, and click Rename on the menu that appears.
15. Change the name of the file to "hatten.ttf" (without the quotation marks).
Microsoft Access should now be properly registered.
Back to Word. Word, as I noted, was really zipping along now; all the sluggishness was gone. Additionally, a lot of the extras that had been added to it by other programs like TextBridge and ViaVoice (buttons on the menu bar that incorporated these programs with Word) had been removed from the Normal.dot, so it loaded much faster. But an unwelcome wrinkle had been added: When you tried to close a document, you were now confronted with an unfamiliar message box, where the choices were Cancel, Yes, and OK. That should have been Yes, No, and Cancel. Back to http://search.microsoft.com, and, with a bit more searching, this time I found the following (again I include most of the details):
SYMPTOMS: When you attempt to close a file, a dialog box appears with three buttons: Cancel, Yes, and OK. When you click them, the buttons perform functions that you do not expect them to …………….omitted material………..
RESOLUTION: To resolve this problem, replace the Mso97.dll and Mso7enu.dll files on your computer and run the Office 97 SR-1 Patch Setup again. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to display the Close Program dialog box. Click the OSA item and click End Task.
2. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to display the Close Program dialog box. Click the Findfast item and click End Task. Another dialog is displayed. Click End Task. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE again to display the Close Program dialog box. Ensure that Findfast and OSA do not appear in the list. If they do, click the item and click End Task.
3. Insert the Office 97 compact disc into your CD-ROM drive. NOTE: If you have Microsoft Project 98 installed on your computer, insert the Microsoft Project 98 CD-ROM instead of the Microsoft Office 97 CD-ROM.
4. Using Windows Explorer, open the following folder on the CD-ROM drive: <CD-ROM Drive>:\Office where <CD-ROM Drive> is the drive letter for your CD-ROM drive (usually drive D). For example, if your CD-ROM drive letter is D, open the following folder: D:\Office
5. On the View menu, click Options. Click the View tab. Click to select Show All Files. Click OK.
6. Right-click the Mso97.dll file. On the shortcut menu, click Copy.
7. Using Windows Explorer, open the following folder on your hard disk: Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office
8. On the Edit menu, click Paste.
9. Repeat steps 3 through 7. In step 5, copy the Mso7enu.dll file instead of the Mso97.dll file.
10. In Windows Explorer or File Manager, run the patch by double-clicking the Sr1off97.exe file. This step is not necessary if you copied Mso97.dll and Mso7enu.dll from the Project 98 compact disc.
Well, that was quite a list. If you have made it this far into the article, I applaud your fortitude. I think there is a moral to all of this, and it is that "all computer software problems are solvable—if you can just locate the source of an answer." And for Microsoft software, Microsoft probably has the answer at their site. All you have to do is phrase your query correctly.
I strongly recommend that everyone learn how to use the Microsoft search page at http://search.microsoft.com. I find my answers to these technical problems by checking the "Support & the Knowledge Base" radio button when doing the search; you won’t find the answers you need by searching the rest of the Micorosoft site. Of course, another good source of solutions is searching the Usenet newsgroups using a tool like DejaNews, now found at http://www.deja.com.
It will apparently never be over. I just tried to access Windows Help and was informed that "the file hh.exe or one of its components could not be found." But I have seen that message before on my Win 98 laptop, and I now know that the way to fix the problem is to run the Win 98 System File Checker tool and extract that particular file from the Win 98 CD. u