techrecovery | (no subject)

May 26, 2004, 12:40AM

HELP LINE
Monitor sideways, and spouse about to be
By JAY LEE
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Q. I left the house the other day, giving my husband strict instructions not to change any settings on the computer. Well, when I got home I found him sitting at the computer desk with the monitor on its side. It turns out he has managed to flip the computer display sideways. I don't know how on earth he managed this, and I have no idea how to fix it. Can you give me any advice? (On the computer; I'll take care of the husband.)

A. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine whose cat leapt onto his keyboard. His computer display turned sideways, and he was at a total loss as to how the cat changed the display. At first he did not even make the correlation between the two events.

What he didn't know is that his video card supported both landscape and portrait modes. This is useful for those who might want more lines of text displayed, like programmers or those who work with a lot of text.

What has happened to your video is the display properties have inadvertently been changed from landscape to portrait mode. The first thing to try is to press Alt-Ctrl-up arrow. This is the hot key combination used to change modes on the fly on the displays that support it.

If that doesn't work, you will need to check the settings for your computer display. To do this, right-click on any blank area on your desktop and select Properties, then the Settings tab. In the advanced area you will find settings that control how your display works. You are looking for mode controls marked horizontal and vertical or portrait and landscape, depending on your video card.

- Q. For the past couple of days I've been getting a pop-up notice as follows: "System Performance Notice, Memory Notice-Warning — Memory leaks can cause slow operation, etc., and lead to crashes." The information regarding this is selling MemTurbo. Is this a legitimate and/or necessary item for Win XP?

A. This is a form of advertising designed to sell software. This software is not a necessary item for XP and, in fact, is probably bad for your computer. This type of ad preys on users who are not very computer savvy and try to use alarmist techniques to get you to buy the product.

Personally, I never buy anything promoted by pop-up ads. For legitimate Microsoft updates and patches, always use windowsupdate.micro
soft.com.

- Q. If the System Restore feature of Windows XP is used, does it have any effect on documents or spreadsheets that were created or modified after the restore-back date? Or on software installed after the restore-back date?

A. System Restore monitors only a core set of specified system and application file types such as exe, dll, etc. It keeps track of the states of these files before system changes are made. System Restore does not monitor any personal data files.

This means that if you restore to a point before an application was installed, you will not lose the application. However, you may need to reinstall the application to have it work correctly. If you are trying to use System Restore to correct a problem with an application, you will need to uninstall that application and then perform the restore.

System Restore will not remove any personal data files.

For more information about System Restore, refer to the Frequently Asked Questions page at www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/faqsrwxp.mspx

Write Jay Lee at helpline@chron.com. Lee co-hosts the weekly radio show Technology Bytes at 8 p.m. Wednesdays on KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston. The program is also available on the Internet at www.geekradio.com. Lee cannot personally answer all questions.