Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Solutions

Help available to make printouts match monitor colors

By JOHN TORRO
Published October 3, 2005

Q. How do I calibrate my system so colors in photos printed by my inkjet will be the same as those I see on my LCD monitor? There's a very noticeable difference in the colors now (Windows XP Home, Canon i560 printer). I bought the $50 Que book on Photoshop 7, but it gives no help on this topic.

A. What you're asking about is referred to as color management using ICC-compliant device profiles. ICC stands for International Color Consortium, the organization that sets color management standards. Your printer may have come with a standard ICC profiling software kit. Check your documentation. Many applications (like Photoshop), along with Windows XP, use profiles to accurately map colors between devices such as your monitor and printer. A good starting point to educate yourself in this area can be found at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/colormanagement.mspx or do a Google search for ICC Profile.

Q. I started getting a dialog (Windows XP Home) to: "Unlock Computer, The computer is in use and has been locked. Only YOUR-4035899EE8\Owner (my Name) or an administrator can unlock the computer. User Name: Owner; Password:_____________. OK.?"This occurs every time the computer sits idle for a while. I have administrator status, and I've tried everything to get rid of this nuisance. I never put a password in when I initially set up the computer. It rejects any password that I use for DSL, etc., so I click on OK and proceed to use the computer in the normal way. Any suggestions as to how I can clear my computer of this?

A. Maybe the screen saver lock got turned on somehow. Try this: From any empty area on the desktop, right-click, select Properties, Screen Saver, and make sure "On Resume, Password Protect" has not been checked.

Q. After a Microsoft Automatic Update this year, all of the users of my XP Home system found that My Documents opened at each logon. As we don't need this file at every logon and our My Documents files are large and take some time to open, I have been looking for a way to prevent the file from opening with each logon. Any help?

A. I'm not sure what causes this particular problem, but the issue is that a registry entry at "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\UserInit" has a double value in it. The value should look like:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe

And not like:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe

If you are comfortable making registry changes and everything that goes along with it backing it up and knowing how to restore it if needed, you can make the change yourself. Don't forget the trailing ','. Otherwise you can just download this automatic script that will make the change for you at this reputable site (www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_desc/xp_mydocsopens.htm)

Q. On some Web sites, I get an annoying beep, or beep, beep, when the pages load. Other sites do not beep. I'm sure it has something to do with a security alert, but I can't figure out what to turn off (Internet Explorer 6.0). I hate this beep.

A. The popup blocker plays an optional sound alert when it blocks a popup. You should see a notification at the top of the page. To turn it off: Tools, Pop-up Blocker, Pop-up Blocker settings, Notifications and Filter Level Options.

[Last modified September 30, 2005, 09:53:03]