Solutions

Hotmail trouble when using Outlook XP

Q. I am having a problem with Outlook XP retrieving my e-mail from my Hotmail accounts. I set up the additional e-mail accounts correctly for Hotmail as well as the IMAP and POP e-mail providers I am using. When I click Send/Receive, the program downloads the e-mails. However for the Hotmail accounts, a dialog box always appears asking for the password confirmation. The password is already filled in. Even if I check Remember Password, it still shows up on the next retrieval. At least in Outlook Express I can disable fetching e-mail from selected accounts. I am running Windows 2000 and Office XP.

A. Your problem closely matches a known problem with Outlook 2002 (XP). According to Microsoft, this can occur if you have more than one account configured with the same server name, user name and password. Outlook 2002 checks all accounts simultaneously. Previous versions checked one at a time. Microsoft's recommendation to work around this problem is to configure one of the e-mail accounts not to download messages from the server. To do this: On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive Settings, then click Define Send/Receive Groups. Click the Send/Receive Group that you would like to configure, then click Edit. In the Accounts box, click on one of the duplicate accounts. Click to clear the Receive Mail Items checkbox. Click OK, then click Close.

A troubling Word

Q. When I use the Word application in Microsoft Works the computer freezes and won't restart. I have to turn it off by pulling the plug. I tried uninstalling the software suite and reinstalling, but this didn't work. I would be surprised if it were a virus because I have Norton Antivirus with online updating and it scans the computer everyday, plus I have no other problems with the computer. I don't use many of the functions of the suite such as the spreadsheet, so I have uninstalled it and use WordPad for any documents I want to create. Is there an obvious cause for this problem?

A. I would suspect either a video driver problem or a corrupt application file. Boot into Safe Mode and see if Word works as expected. If so, it is most likely a driver issue. Make sure you have the latest version of your video driver (check the vendor's Web site).

Forgotten TMP location

Q. When I want to look at a Web page's HTML code, I click View, then Source. Lately, when I do this nothing happens. I'm using Internet Explorer, Windows 2000 Professional. Any ideas how I can fix this?

A. It's probably caused by an invalid path for the TMP environment variable, which is where Internet Explorer opens the temporary source file. You would need to go into the Control Panel, System. Click the Environment Tab and check the current directory path of the TMP variable.

Bad hardware, driver or memory

Q. I had a blue screen of death with the error message: PFN_LIST_CORRUPT. I did lots of checking and running in Safe Mode. But I ended up installing a new 120 gigabyte hard drive and reinstalling the original software. I saved my data on the old hard drive and copied it off. Is there a simpler solution?

A. This problem could have been a number of things. You didn't specify if this was a one-time problem or if it reoccurs. PFN is basically the operating system saying the memory stack of a driver is corrupted, the integrity of the system is at stake, so "everyone out of the pool." It could be hardware, a bad software driver or memory.

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