Edited

I keep getting E-mails with Blank "From" Fields.They appear to contain nothing except the time sent.Also they contain no attachments

Im using Norton Firewall 2003.Is it this removing parts of the E Mails or some new virus E-Mail

Iain, they are probably spammers trying to see if your email address exists, not much you can do.

Cheers Spaceman

Iain

You could set Outlook to never respond to requests for receive/read receipt.

Yes that would help but a lot of them dont have read reciepts they just see if the mail bounces, some have a hidden link which will check against the spammers site to show that the mail has been opened. There is a product called pocketknofe peek which I use which opens mail as bare information and allows you to look at it in several forms. I use it for this sort of mail.

Spaceman

That sounds interesting, where do you get it?

O, its from here http://www.xintercept.com/

You can look at emails safely from within Outlook Express. Properties, Details tab, Message Source. Do turn off the Preview Pane feature though (View/Layout) since that will open messages if they are highlighted.

Thanks Spaceman I'll check it out.

Have made a hash of installing a 3Com Wireless PC card in my laptop - 'cause I couldn't find my Win 98 CD (now found).

When I boot up now I get messages saying the following files couldn't be found:

vredir.vxd
dfs.vxd
msnp32.dll

and then it says Windows networking couldn't be established. Have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the PC card software but just the same messages. Does anyone know how I can get these back without a complete reinstallation of W98. TIA.

Seymor

First go into network properties and delete any network connection that is trying to use it. Then goto device manager and uninstall the card. Shut down the computer and remove the card then reboot. For good luck do a search for new hardware. Shut down the computer, reinstall the card which with luck will be detected on startup and ask you for the CD's

A tip for anyone with plenty of disk space.

Create a directory called Setup on your C drive and a sub dir called windows XP. Copy your installation CD here and it is always availible when needed.

You can also copy any program CD's to a separate directory under Setup. Most times you can install the program from here which is also far faster.

I want to create a boot up disk.
Im using XP PRO.
So far I have put a Floppy disk in. chosen Format: create a startup disk and done that.
I then changed my bios to boot from A first. It does this then I get a Command prompt (Hope thats the right word) what do I type to see if my Bootup disk is working?
Also can I create a startup on a CD.?
If the above is the totally wrong way of doing it. HELP Please!:-)

Iain

You can't create a boot disk for Win XP. If you are using a FAT32 file system you can create an MSDOS boot disk that will access the hard drive but it will not load XP. You can also find some Lynux based boot disks that will read an NTFS disk.

You can use the recovery console, which is availible at boot or on the installation CD, to fix any Win XP boot problems. This has some powerful utilities but you need to know what you are doing.

If you are using FAT32 file system you would do well to convert to NTFS. Sooner or later it will save your data.

When I have Formatted drive previously It has copied in NTFS.
So if i have probs I use recovery console?
I Have a bit of Knowledge.Dangerous?:-)

You can only format a hard drive in NTFS not floppeis or CD.

Recovery console is a way of accessing XP from a command line when it won't boot. The most used command is probrably "CHKDSK" which is OK. Use caution with any others.

Iain, why do you think you need a boot disk? its not normally needed or advised with w2k onwards?

Optimist, thanks for the help so far, but still struggling. Re my post 1731, I have tried to get into the windows networking stuff, this is what I have:

Using Win 98 in control panel, I have "Network". Click on that brings up three tabs, first is Configuration. In this it says:

Client for Microsoft networks
Microsoft family login
Dial up adapter
TCP/IP

Is one of these the one I want to remove? Sorry for being so thick but I feel I am in a vat of treacle making slow progress at the moment. TIA (again!).

Seymour

Right click network neibourhood and select properties. You should get a list of all your network connections including dial up, LAn and wireless networks (if you have been unlucky enough to aquire any trojan dialers they will also be listed here so it is worth checking). If there are any that connect to your wireless card then delete them - it is possible that the instalation never got that far and therefore there are no connections.

What you are trying to do is get rid of all possible refferences to your wirless card so that when you reinstall it Windows has the best chance of sorting it automatically. Ifg that does not work we will have to find some other way.

Edit I think you may have got to your list by the method I suggested in which case you don't have a connection to the wirless card so don't worry about that stage.