One solution to this is AltMove which is a program that allows you to press the ALT key and then left click the problem window and move it up until you can see the missing buttons.

Auto detection of the character encoding was enabled but didn’t seem to be working – until I messed around with the settings and did this:

• Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Config Editor and make sure that mailnews.force_charset_override is set to false
• Now right click on your Inbox and choose Edit > Folder Properties and make sure that the checkbox “Apply default to all messages in the folder…” is NOT checked.

We’ve had similar problems in previous versions of Windows and knew that the answer was to clear the icon cache. Here’s how you do it in Windows 7:

• Close all Explorer windows and applications
• Press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC to open Windows Task Manager
• Click the Processes tab and locate Explorer.exe on the list of processes
• Right-Click on Explorer.exe and select End Process
• Click File and New Task (Run) and type CMD and click OK
• In the Command Prompt window type each of these lines – pressing Enter/Return after each line:cd %userprofile%\AppData\Local

  del iconcache.db

  exit

• Now back in Task Manager Click File and New Task (Run) and type explorer.exe and click OK – Your icons should now be back to their correct icon.

It seemed that to get a desktop icon to open you had to click once to select it then double-click to open it (in effect making a double-click a triple-click).
I then found if I played around with the visual performance settings i could fix it.

Here’s what I did to fix it in my case:

1. Right click My Computer and select Properties
2. Click Advanced System Settings on the left
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Under Performance Click Settings
5. On the Visual Effects tab ucheck ‘Animate controls and elements inside windows’

The Alpha 2 ISO image is available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-2/ and here’s a quick screencast showing the installing.

The process has been shortened in video editing but only took around 20 minutes from boot-up to final reboot.

An infected PC we recently looked at had been running ZoneAlarm Internet Security – we don’t know the history of how it was infected, if ZoneAlarm was out of date or if the user had simply ignored warnings and ‘allowed’ the infection in but the PC constantly popped up fake virus warnings all directing the user to part with their credit card details to download the fake anti-virus software. Web browsing was randomly redirected to the same fake antivirus site and any attempt to download or install any genuine anti-virus or anti-malware software was intercepted and again redirected to the ‘purchase’ option.

The only solution was to boot the PC from a boot CD so the infection had no chance to load up and then we can scan the hard drive from a clean environment. In this particular case it took us a record 4 different programs to find and eventually remove the trojans and fraud malware.

The safest option probably would be to format and re-install the whole system but with a system with a lot of data, programs, user settings and configurations this was the best way of getting the PC useable quickly. The user can then back up their data, note down all their settings and then re-install should they want to.

Here’s a list of downloadable CD-ROM images available to help in the battle with malware. Most of them can be downloaded and burned directly to a CD-ROM, others need the particular program installing (on a clean PC!) then updating before it creates an ISO image to burn to CD:

Avast BART CD

Avira AntiVir Rescue System

Bit Defender Rescue CD

F-Secure Rescue CD

Kaspersky Rescue CD Download

Panda Security Rescue CD

Spybot Search and Destroy Boot CD

Trinity Rescue Kit

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

After installing WAMP the PC was still running at normal speed with WAMP running but whenever we tried to access a simple website we had set up there was a 4 or 5 second lag before the page was displayed.

We were using a simple html file to test it with so that ruled out there being a problem with PHP or MySQL in WAMP so it was just Apache that were were finding slow to access – either locally or through the other Windows 7 PC.

I thought it may be Windows firewall and when I shut the firewall down then requests to Apache speeded up to normal speed. Obviously running with the firewall down isn’t ideal so I thought it might be related to a problem I had using localhost on Vista.

Eventually I found disabling IPv6 on the WAMP PC’s network adapter fixed the problems. We don’t need to run IPv6 and running both IPv4 and IPv6 along with Windows firewall and Apache must cause a bottleneck somewhere.

The flickering seemed to be worst when there was keyboard or mouse activity so we initially thought that maybe the wireless keyboard and mouse were causing interference with the new monitor. We switched to a wired keyboard and mouse but still had the same problem.

We then swapped monitors with another PC but the problem stayed with the Acer laptop so the screen itself was fine. The laptop’s internal screen was fine but the external monitor was still flickering. We then spent several hours download and installing all the latest drivers on the laptop. W even updated the BIOS but still the screen flickered.

Different screen resolutions and refresh rates made little difference. The flickering varied but was always there. Then we had a breakthrough! – we noticed that when we disconnected the laptop’s power supply the flickering stopped. Faulty power supply we decided, having another power supply nearby we switched power supplies but still the flickering was there. So we tried another laptop with the Acer Aspire 5535′s power supply (the other laptop was also an Acer and the output of the two power supplies matched exactly!!) and had no flickering at all so the problem wasn’t the power supply but the laptop itself.

So we have a laptop which runs perfectly on its own but when attached to an external monitor and only when running on mains power the external monitor flickers.

Then whilst talking to a friend with an electronics background he suggested that the cause could be a ground loop between the laptop and the monitor. So I opened up the monitor’s 3 pin plug and disconnected the earth wire (as the monitor costs less and is easier to replace than the laptop!) and voila! the flickering was cured.

So it seems that the cause may be a badly designed power circuit in the laptop. I don’t know if there’s any kind of filtered sockets or plugs that would prevent a ground loop occurring and the fix I’ve used should be used with caution (seek professional advice if you’re at all unsure!) but it works for us.