Computer Guide

Removing that most annoying pop up
by George Skarbek - 1st August 2006

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Q: I have Windows XP and even though I have turned off the options, I still get a little window telling me about my wireless status - is available, is not available, etc. I have gone into the immediate menu and also through the control panel - I've managed to stop all other pop-up balloons but not this one - I'm ready to throw the damn thing out the window and return to Macs. Can you help - or, alternately, tell me the best place to sell a slightly damaged PC notebook.

A: I agree with you that this is an annoying feature of Windows.

This disabling can be done but there is no way of disabling balloon notification for just one program. The steps below will disable all balloon pop-ups. As this involves modifying your Registry, read carefully and type carefully.

Click Start, click Run and type Regedit then locate:HKEY-CURRENT-USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Advanced by clicking on the plus signs to navigate down to that key.

Then right-click on Explorer, New and create a new DWORD Value and then name it EnableBalloonTips. Now you must double-click this new entry and give it a value of 0. You must restart Windows for this to take effect.

Q: I believe it is possible to install more than one network interface card into any PC to provide independent local area networks between a group of interconnected PCs. I would like to be able to give a specific application dedicated use of one such network so that it is not adversely affected by "normal" network traffic. How can this be achieved under the Linux and Windows operating systems?

A: Under Windows, this is simple. Just add the second card. I have not tried it with Linux.
However, in general terms, the "normal" traffic does not have much impact on performance and network cards are cheap.

Tip: Use a different model card so that you can tell which card is which in the Control Panel.
If you are in a situation where there is a lot of network traffic, you should buy a 10/100/1000 (gigabit) card and ensure that when your switch/router is replaced that it has some gigabit ports as this can significantly improve performance on a congested circuit.

Q: I would like to send emails with MY MUSIC but my files are too big. How can I do it? Is there a program to use that I could buy to make my files smaller (about 1 MB or less)? Also, when I put my music to a slide/ PowerPoint presentation, I have the same problem - the music files are so large that I cannot email the presentation. Any advice would be much appreciated.

A: The solution will depend on what format your music is stored as. If your music is in an MP3 or similar format that is already compressed, you cannot reduce the file size by much without losing sound quality. However, if your MP3 files have been encoded by using a high bit rate, in some cases the bit rate may be reduced to a value of 96 Kbps (FM quality) without having a noticeable effect on quality and will reduce the file size. Also, you can reduce the sampling frequency from probably 44.1 KHz to 22 KHz (radio quality) and the resulting MP3 file will be reduced to about a third of the original size. I suggest that you experiment with the size/quality settings. If you do not have software with these capabilities, one good shareware program to consider is Goldwave from goldwave.com.

If the music is in a .WAV format, you should convert it to MP3 format as this can reduce the file size to about 10 per cent of the original without noticeable loss of quality. See freedownloadscenter.com/Search/mp3_ripper.html for a large selection of free and shareware programs that can do this.

For much larger files, there are several websites that allow uploading your files for free. Many allow files of more than 100 MB. You simply upload your file and then the website returns a hyperlink to that file's download address. Email that link to people and they can download the file at their leisure. One of the better sites to look at is megaupload.com.

 

If your music is in MP3 format, you have a few other options. You can use a program to split your large file into several small ones for sending via email. There are many such programs. One good one is The File Splitter from dekabyte.com/filesplitter/download.html. It will allow you to specify the size of the split files to whatever you like and provides a simple means for their restoration.

For much larger files, there are several websites that allow uploading your files for free. Many allow files of more than 100 MB. You simply upload your file and then the website returns a hyperlink to that file's download address. Email that link to people and they can download the file at their leisure. One of the better sites to look at is megaupload.com.

Q: I believe it is possible to install more than one network interface card into any PC to provide independent local area networks between a group of interconnected PCs. I would like to be able to give a specific application dedicated use of one such network so that it is not adversely affected by "normal" network traffic. How can this be achieved under the Linux and Windows operating systems?

A: Under Windows, this is simple. Just add the second card. I have not tried it with Linux.

However, in general terms, the "normal" traffic does not have much impact on performance and network cards are cheap.

Tip: Use a different model card so that you can tell which card is which in the Control Panel.

If you are in a situation where there is a lot of network traffic, you should buy a 10/100/1000 (gigabit) card and ensure that when your switch/router is replaced that it has some gigabit ports as this can significantly improve performance on a congested circuit.

 

To look at the e-book in PDF format, Computer Guide, based on these columns click here