Q. All of a sudden I cannot open JPG photograph attachments on e-mails I receive. I get a box that says, “This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options Control Panel.”
I can get to the Control Panel but don’t have a clue how to create an association. Please help.
Grace Owens, Sebring, Fla.
A. Folks get blindsided by this issue in several different ways, Ms. O, and yours is perhaps the most confusing because the Control Panel is not the best way to fix things when Windows forgets how to open files.
Instead, just find an icon for one of your picture files and give it a right-click. In the pop-up menu this summons, you will find Open at the top and usually you will find Open With option a bit down the list. Pick Open With and you get a display of all of the programs that Windows thinks might work with the file in question.
If you pick Open and the file is not associated with a program, you get an error message and an option to look for a file to associate with JPG pictures so that it will run and display them when an icon is clicked.
In the Browse box that appears you will find a dozen or so choices. Pick the one called the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Select that and then check the box you will see asking if the program should be used every time in the future.
In the unlikely event that you cannot see the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, the drill is more complex and does involve the Control Panel. If that happens, click on Start and Control Panel and then open the one called Folder Options. Pick File Types in the tabbed menu for Folder Options and then scroll down the file types on your computer to the one called JPG. There, select the Advanced button and then pick the line for “open” in the display that appears.
In the box there type in rundll32.exe C:
windows
system32
shimgvw and select Apply. This restores the Picture and Fax Viewer by using one of the dynamic link libraries in Windows. It is very unlikely that it will come to this. But if it does, you now know what to do.
Q. My PC, running Windows XP, often slows to a crawl, and when I check the system performance settings I am told that it is running at 98 percent of capacity. Now my Google desktop search shows many conflicting items with my anti-spyware program that seem to be adding to the slowdown. Help.
James L. Marshall Jr. @ieee.org
A. I doubt very much that fixing this will help your bogged-down computer get much spring back in its step, so let me offer both a fix and a suggestion.
Google’s technical support crew says that this problem of its desktop search program causing conflicts with spyware blockers was discovered shortly after the first version was issued. It was fixed in subsequent versions.
Google advises folks with this issue to uninstall their Google Desktop Search and then reinstall it by downloading a fresh version. The company also advises customers how to keep the index of the contents of their hard drives that let the searches find stuff.
To uninstall Google Desktop Search, click on Start and Control Panel and then open Add/Remove Programs. Google’s stuff will be in the list that comes up, and you can click on it to call up the removal routine. When the box comes up to confirm your desire to wipe the software from the drive look for a check box to keep your index. This will save you from undergoing the sometimes long period of time when the search software indexes all of your hard drive’s content.
Now the suggestion. The kinds of clogged performance vexing you hits users of Windows computers because of all the bits and scraps of data and software that accumulates over months and years of use.
There are many moves to limit the damage, but the reality is that the only real fix is to simply restore the computer to its original out-of-the-box condition every year or so. Nearly all PCs come with a System Restore scheme, and running it will reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.
But everything else is deleted from the hard drive. Everything!
It will erase all of the programs you have loaded onto the computer. Your e-mail messages will be destroyed as well. So will every file you have created over the months or years.
So you need to back up all of your data and make copies of your various settings and Favorites lists and other personal touches. Click on File and then Export in the Windows Internet Explorer or other browser to save a file with your Web favorites that can be restored with an Import tool.
Save your e-mail as well. The various e-mail programs have different built-in saving routines, but I prefer to just open the Inbox and select all of the messages at once and then drag them all into a folder on the desktop. You can back up other folders like the Sent mail and even the Spam folder the same way.
Then I drag the individual e-mail messages back into the proper folder in the e-mail software on the newly restored computer.
It’s a big-time bother to go through all of this, and a lot of folks worry particularly about losing all of the software that they loaded onto the drive over time. But programs can be reinstalled and usually from the discs they came on in the first place. Obviously if one has loaded shareware it’s crucial to save any passwords and activation codes.
I know this is a bother, but if you take my advice and do this system restoration you will be delighted to have that computer as perky as it was the day you brought it home. Every time I do this I remember all of the time I wasted waiting for the once-clogged machine to open files, save files and do other stuff. Over time you spend more time in this kind of waiting than one does restoring the whole ball of wax.
I also like the Fountain of Youth aspect. A personal computer is one of the few companions in one’s life that can be made young again. Believe me, it’s worth the bother.
Q. For years my wife used “The American Talking Heritage Dictionary” without problems until she started getting error messages marked “16 bit Windows System. … the system file is not suitable for running MSDOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose `Close’ to terminate the application.”
It is OK in my other computer. I do not know what else to do to fix this problem. My wife really likes this program for the talking feature.
John Wong @yahoo.com
A. There’s a fix, Mr. W, and it focuses on the amount of data that software pushes in and out of the computer’s innards. Right now we live in a 32-bit world, and with AMD and Intel both pushing for 64 bits your 16-bit dictionary needs to tell the operating system that it’s an old-timer.
This is done by changing the compatibility settings for individual programs. You need to start by finding the icon for the dictionary so you can give it a right-click and make some changes.
So right-click on Start and then pick Explore from the pop-up menu. This brings up the Windows file explorer that lets one find individual files.
Scroll down the list of folders until you find the one for Programs. Open that folder and sort through the subfolders until you find the folder for your dictionary software.
Now find the icon in that folder with the ending .exe, which is the core program. Give it a right-click and look for the tab called Compatibility in the box that pops up. There you will find a check box and drop-down list that lets one change the software to run as though it were compatible with an earlier version of Windows. Pick Windows 95 from the list.
Now the dictionary should run fine. If not, go back to the compatibility settings and fiddle with other settings to reduce the number of colors displayed to 256 and to limit the screen size.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoates@tribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.
