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Advice for Using a Digital Camera

Q: Question:I have a Sony camera that prints direct to compact cd. My son over loaded or took to many pictures and now it reads not enough space to finalize. I am unable to down load and use or view these valuable pictures.Is there a way to do this or back up and delete a few shots to retain the balance of the pictures?]

A:If it has a memory card you can take it out of the camera and take it to a Kodak printing station ( Wallgreen, Walmart....) and print the pictures and/or copy them to a CD ROM. Best Buy sells a memory card reader for about $10 which allows you to transfer the picture to your pc or a CD ROM via a USB port.

If there is no memory card, check your camera instruction booklet about how to delete the picture you do not want and see if that solves your problem. If you need an instruction book go to Sony's web site and look for one to download under the support section.

Q:I am having a problem and have called all manufactors relating to this issue, but I cant get a straight answer and they have all done their technical work regarding my probelm to see if it helps. It has not. I am still having the same problem.

Here is my situation on setup.

I have 3 computers, main desktop and 2 laptops. On a wireless DLink 524 router. Never had a problem till............I changed phone companies and went with Vonage for broadband phone use.

Now, the Vonage router is a Linksys Broadband Router. It is conected to the Dlink router. I am on a cable high speed modem. Cable ethernet line is conneted to the Linksys router, then have another enthernet cable going from Linksys to wireless router, then ethernet cable from wireless to cable modem. Set up is correct per Vonage, DLink and Comcast.

Now my phone is a wireless cordless that is a set of 2 handsets with both working off same jack. (GE phone and setup is correct)

Here is my problem.

Since I set up the Vonage router, when I am on any of the computers we are loosing internet connections. Meaning if we are on say aol or msn messenger or a website (which is my job, I work from home and I am a chatmaster) we are being signed off any of the above and then we are signing back on, but its being done automatically.

It seems we are loosing packets of internet connections when we are on the computers. Seems we just cant stay connected. Even though status states we are connected and signal strength is excellent.

Now I was told that the routers are too close together and that my one phone (other is upstairs) are also too close together. Which is true all are within 5 feet of each other.

Now I can move my phone by getting a longer cord. That is no problem. But should I get a different phone just for this area to be safe, if that is part of the problem or if moving it say 20 or 25 ft away will do the trick.

Also, the 2 routers. How can I get them far apart from each other if they are to be coming from the computer? Is there longer ethernet cables of say 20 or 25 ft. I have found none at any computer store that are any longer then the standard ethernet cables you would receive with any device.

Also, if we cant seperate these 2 routers because there is no longer cords, is there a device out there that is for a problem like this so that they can be seperated without the longer cords.

I hope I have explained myself enough so that you understand my problem. I love my hook up the way it is. Everything is wonderful, but I need to make sure I am connected to the internet at all times and this problem is driving me crazy and would so much like to know how I can keep my Vonage and wireless together and stop this problem I am having.

As it stands right now, every nite that I work I have to disconnect my vonage and wireless so that I am able to work with no problems. I have to connect main computer to cable directly. Which is a pain to do every nite. This causes me to have no other computers to use and also no phone service.

Also, I have taken the Vonage away to make sure its not my wireless router. All 3 computers work fine without the vonage router, and we are connected to the internet 100%, no lost data.

I have also just done the vonage with the main computer and still 100% connection. It just seems the problem is when both the wireless router and the broadband router are connected at the same time. And both routers are 100% ok and doing their job. I just believe they are conflicting each other along with the wireless cordless phone.

I know I cant be the only one in the world with a wireless router and a broadband router for home phone service. There has to be a way to fix this.

Please any help you can suggest I would soooo appreciate.

A:

Interference between wireless and phone systems is common. Timeout is a common symptom.

5.8GigaHz/FHSS phones significantly reduce the interference and may solve his problem. Bborrow one for a test o see f it solves teh problem.

Wireless Router

Q: I own a BEFW11S4 2.4GHz 802.11b Linksys Wireless Access Point Router with 4-Port Switch. I recently bought a new laptop with internal Intel Pro/Wireless 2915 (802.11 a/b/g,54Mbps) network card. And guess what : the laptop detects 2 or sometimes 3 wireless connections and none is my router. And my router is two feet away from the laptop. I know none is mine because I unplugged my router. My laptop simply doesn't detect my router at all. So, is any way I can use MY router? --Joni

A: In order to answer your question, I need to ask a couple of my own. Do you have any other wireless devices that can connect to this Linksys wireless access point? This would tell us if the problem is with the wireless access point or your laptop. Since your laptop is detecting other wireless networks, I'm leaning towards the problem being with the wireless access point.

When you installed the wireless access point, did the installation utility run successfully? If not, try configuring it again. A quick install guide for that particular device that I found on the Linksys website is available [download].

Now if we assume that the wireless access point and the laptop are both working as they have been configured, the most probable explanation for this issue is that the SSID Broadcast is set to 'disable' on the wireless access point. What is an SSID Broadcast I hear you ask? This is the wireless access point's equivalent of school children calling out "pick me, pick me!" It is a configuration setting on your wireless access point that is simply set to 'on' or 'off'. Your laptop knows which wireless networks are available to connect to by listening to the SSID Broadcasts that they send out. Any wireless device, such as your laptop or PDA, will detect your wireless access point if the SSID Broadcast is turned on. That way you can simply click on the name of your wireless network when it appears in the list on your laptop, enter the password you setup, and you are connected.

As more and more of the information you need to do business is stored on your computer, regular backups of your hard drive become imperative. Backing up files and data is a simple and inexpensive procedure. A small cash investment and a few days of getting into the habit are all it takes to make certain that you don't "crash" into an electronic brick wall. 

What exactly is a backup?

Making a backup is simply making an electronic copy of your hard drive. If you accidentally delete a file, or delete one and then find that you need it, you can retrieve a copy of it from the backup you made. If your hard drive crashes, you can "restore" a complete copy of your hard drive onto the old one after reformatting, or onto a new one. There are two types of backups: full and incremental. A full backup is simply a complete copy of everything on the hard drive. An incremental backup is a copy of any files which have changed, or any new files added, since the last backup. Most backup systems will use a combination of these two (periodic full backups with regular incremental backups in between).

Burning CD ROM's

Q: I have a Nero CD Burner. Every time I try to burn a CD at any speed it fails and gives me this error message,"buffer underrun error". I have tried removing and adding several versions of Nero without any luck. When using the windows CD writing wizard the burning prosses is successful, but the wizard is not very convenient.

A: A buffer underrun error is a common problem when writing CDs. A buffer underrun error occurs when the CD writer runs out of data to write to the CD. Basically the program writing the CD can not supply enough data to the CD writer drive and an error occurs.

There are several things you can do to correct this problem.

• Close any other programs that you may be running apart from Nero.
• You can increase the size of the buffer in Nero. For example in Nero Express go to Configure -> Ultrabuffer.
• If it has been a long time since you last ran the defrag utility on your hard drive, doing so now will certainly help this problem.
• don't use the maximum burning speed available. Try using one speed down from the maximum. For example if your CD writer can write at 8x, try writing at 4x.

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