(About 2,030 words)

Title: “Suddenly…” OR “I didn’t do anything!” Part 1
Subtitle: Or — a month’s log of a Sun City Anthem Computer Club “house call” doctor
By Charles W, Davis, Newsletter Editor & Webmaster, Sun City Anthem Computer Club, Henderson, NV 
Chas(at)anthemwebs.com 
www.myscacc.org

In working to help Club members and others with their computer problems during the Thursday morning Computer Talk sessions, or more often when making “house calls,” I often hear strange tales that usually involve acts of some gremlin like creature. However, gremlins are more closely related to mechanical problems in aircraft. 

Generally the caller’s comments start with “all of a sudden” or “suddenly” and end with “I didn't’ do anything.” I can only surmise that it was probably one of cartoonist Bill Keane’s ghostly imps “Not Me.” “Nobody” or even “Ida Know.” 

Some recent examples:
“Suddenly…”
One morning a couple of weeks ago, I received a call and the person on the other end of the phone connection was obviously very upset. She exclaimed: “Suddenly all of my desktop icons are gone! I didn’t do anything! Please help me!” 

This situation seemed to be serious. I had never heard of this happening. I didn’t have anything on the calendar for another two hours so I hopped in my 1999 “Sapphire Blue Mica” (marketing division color name of course) Miata for the short drive up the hill to her Tall Mesa Village home. She was right, the icons were indeed missing. A simple right click on the blank desktop, hover over Arrange Icons by: and then click on Show Desktop Icons. This was definitely an act by the “little people.” As I said, I hadn’t heard of this situation before. Therefore, it must have been “Not Me” wishing to get off the hook by whispering in my ear how I might arrive at the solution. Since the club member was in the back room and the house girl had let me in, I quickly left the scene. 

The next day the same lady called and said that her “My Computer” Icon was missing from the desktop. Realizing that it wasn’t the normal desktop shortcut icon, I was puzzled. Not thinking things through, I again slid onto the seat in the Miata and shortly arrived on the scene. Sure enough most icons were visible, but the “My Computer” icon was not in its normal position. It wasn’t immediately visible. I later noticed the top edge of the icon protruding just above the task bar. Once again, I moved the pointer to a blank spot on the desktop, a right click on the mouse and chose Arrange Icons by and chose Name. The My Desktop icon again assumed its prominence at the upper left. She said that she didn’t drag and drop it down there. As I picked up a $20 donation to the Club, I assumed that it must have been “Nobody” and left for home. 

“Suddenly…”
Monday morning is usually the time for the phone calls to begin. On a recent Monday, the caller sheepishly states that “suddenly I can’t access the Internet.” I recognized that the person speaking to me is the same one whose 18 year old granddaughter had placed hundreds of malware programs on his laptop two weeks before. At that time I had suggested a router/firewall so that she could plug her laptop directly to the router with Internet access. He had immediately gone out and purchased and installed one. Oh yes, the granddaughter had been there over the weekend and had brought her own laptop computer. 

The blue Miata once again headed up the hill (from our home in the Valley View Village all destinations seem to be “up the hill.”) to their home in Arroyo Vista Village. In just a few minutes, I found that the dear child didn’t plug the cable into the router as instructed, but had used grandpa’s computer. Since she was an AOL user, she attempted to change Gramps’ Accounts from Cox Cable to AOL dialup and failed. It would have been so easy for her to have just gone to AOL using Internet Explorer. She left for school Sunday evening and didn’t mention a thing to Gramps. That way, she didn’t have to tell on either “Ida Know” or “Not Me.” I picked up the $20 donation to the club and was soon on my way.
An admonition: Set up a Guest Account without Administrative rights. Place a User name and password on the Administrative (your’s) account.

“All of a Sudden…”
“All of a sudden” turns up many times a month and in some unusual situations. Last week, I received a call from a member that was using Microsoft Office Outlook. It seems that she had been entering information into a new contact when “all of a sudden” she couldn’t enter information. She explained that she had been using Outlook and contacts for years and had never had this problem. Since this didn’t seem (to me) that this required immediate attention, I arranged an appointment for the next morning. My Miata and I arrived at her Golf Mesa Village home just as the Grandfather clock guarding the entry was announcing that it was 10:00. Grandfather clocks that I am aware of don’t announce “a.m.” or “p.m.”

She met me at the door and we proceeded to the office and she took her place in front of her computer to show me what was happening. She began keying in the   house number, using the numeric key pad and just as she had said, nothing worked as expected. I immediately saw why this had happened so “suddenly.” Apparently “Nobody” had pressed the Num Lock key thereby turning it off. So as she would enter a house number, things went wild as the 2,4, 6, and 8 keys acted as direction keys, 7 & 9 were Home and Page Up respectively and 1 & 3 were End and Page down. I asked her to press the Num Lock key and “all of a sudden” the problem was resolved. I collected the $20 donation check to the club and was homeward bound — downhill of course. 

“Suddenly…”
On another Monday, I received a call from a member stating that she had recently upgraded to MS Office 2003 and a short time later, suddenly she could no longer access MS Publisher files. This was the result of someone else messing with functions that they should have stayed away from. Support teams at Norton will vow “Not me.” But when the lady was directed to an article titled “How to use Office programs with the Norton Anti-Virus Office plug-in” she was able to resolve the problem as I watched. This article can help you extricate yourself and may be found at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329820/en-us
It is maddening to think that one, nay thousands upon thousands, must jump through hoops because a bunch of programmers at Symantec (Norton) can’t get it right. 

I have never understood their automatic plug-in installation. At least they should tell the user, including a list of possible problems and their resolution, and let them make a decision as to whether to install the plug in. Who needs viruses when “reputable” software manufacturers can do things like this to you?
A long time ago, in computer time, but actually just over a year ago, I stopped paying the extortion money for antivirus software and have used the free AVG antivirus, which is available from http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 

“Suddenly...”
“Suddenly” you can’t open Word or most other Microsoft Office products. This happened because you owned a Hewlett Packard multi-function printer with a flash memory card reader. It seems that a security update messed with the logic for these systems and caused much havoc around the world. A follow-on update was released to affected computers during the 4th week in April. If you are still having the problem, go to Start then Windows Update, download and install all Critical updates. It seems that “Ida Know” visited Microsoft’s Redmond campus…

Suddenly…”
Last week, one of your neighbors in the Valley View Village went to his neighbors stating that his phone went “dead.” On investigation, it was learned that he had ordered and installed a new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system. Some of the equipment had arrived, but due to a transposition of digits when entering the credit card number, the important “Silver” box did not get shipped. “Ida Know” didn't know how the mix up occurred. “Who Knows” stated that the customer probably discarded the silver box with the packaging. However, the land line telephone provider had been notified to discontinue the service. “Dead line!” 

An admonition: Always check the contents of packages to make certain that all components are included before installing anything!
The Federal Communications Commission has a web site that explains most aspects of VoIP: 
http://www.fcc.gov/voip/

Not so “Suddenly…”
This particular call arrived on a Tuesday, so I was surprised to hear: “Suddenly I can send e-mail but I can’t receive any messages. Everything times out. I’ve called Cox Communications and since I use Office Outlook 2003, they weren’t much help.” This phone call came in at a time that Vickie was out and wouldn’t return for a while, so I slid behind the wheel of the Miata and headed for Ridgecrest Village to see what had happened so “suddenly.” 

It took several minutes of attempting to send messages to the owner’s e-mail address. Sure enough the message would be sent, but no incoming messages. After some time it would all time out. The first inbound message would never arrive. I found that there was no Internet access using Internet Explorer. I installed Firefox from my USB Flash memory and was then able to access the internet. At this time clues began to appear one-by-one. 

Norton Internet Security was warning of Firefox accessing the Internet — twice! 
ZoneAlarm was warning of Firefox accessing the Internet!

Oops! Only one program firewall at a time is allowed. Since the member’s Norton subscription was about to expire, I downloaded AVG antivirus to his desktop (free at http://free.grisoft.com), shut off the cable modem, went to uninstall Norton SystemWorks and discovered two versions. I uninstalled both. When I attempted to install AVG antivirus, the program indicated that the version of the Roxio CD creator contained code that was incompatible with AVG, and it provided a link for an update. I installed the update and then successfully installed the AVG antivirus. Then I turned on the cable modem and downloaded updates. I was grateful to the AVG programmers to make that test and inform the user. Suddenly, I decided that I like the AVG antivirus program and its creators even more than in the past.

Now I felt that I could address the original problem. I opened Office Outlook, and it proceeded to download a monstrous movie clip — 9.87MB! It was able to complete the download due to the fact that Norton wasn’t scanning inbound e-mail messages. 

“Suddenly” wasn’t really all that sudden. The second and third firewall programs were installed over a period of time, but the problem didn’t manifest itself until the arrival of the large file. As an aside, it was a clip from a newscast relating the story of an autistic youth that had been the go-fer for a high school basketball team. On the last game of his senior year, the coach (dad) suited him up put him in to play. I believe that I saw through the tears that welled up in my eyes over 21 points racked up — all three pointers. I’m not a sports fan, but am a fan of the underdog! $20 more for the Club’s treasury.

This article was originally published in Bits, PCs & Macs. Bits PCs & Macs is the newsletter of the Sun City Anthem Computer Club. All copies are available online at: http://www.myscacc.org/newsletters.htm  

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.