Podcast Show Notes - Kickstartnews Revue

. . . continued from May 29, 2005 Show Notes

Google Search Problems

On or about May 20, 2005 Google did a massive update of its search engine indexing. As happened when Google did this in November 2003, an enormous number of rankings as well as the general accuracy of a wide variety of searches ended up all over the map. It's a real mess. So if you're having trouble these days with the accuracy of some Google search results, send an e-mail to Google's technical support people. It may take a few days, but Google technical support will respond eventually. Write to Google technical support by clicking this link.

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Telephone line access problems while using WinFax can often be traced back to incorrect connections to the fax/modem. The line coming from the telephone company should be plugged into the fax/modem input jack. The line going to your telephone should be plugged into the output jack. Here's a web link with pictures, that will help clear up any problems.

QPS, Inc. (the company) is dead, dead, dead. There's no longer support for the company's products. However, a driver problem or an IRQ problem can often be solved by uninstalling existing drivers and starting over. The first thing to do is to disconnect the drive. If it's external, unplug it from the USB or Firewire port. Whether it's internal or external, you should then go to the Start menu and select Control Panel. Start the System applet and select the Device Manager. Select the QPS drive in the CD/DVD device category and uninstall it. Shut down the computer and remove the internal drive. Boot up without it. Shut down again. Reconnect the external drive. If it's internal, reinstall it making sure the jumpers are set appropriately to Master or Slave. Boot your computer. The correct driver should be detected. If not, use the driver from the CD supplied with the drive. Good luck!

Installing WinZip in Windows XP is just fine, even though XP already contains a very basic sort of unZip functionality. You're much better off with WinZip though. Download the latest version from this site. Read the Kickstartnews WinZip review here.

If you're experiencing apparent driver conflicts which prevent the One-Touch PaperPort software from running, it's likely because you installed all the additional junk supplied on the bundled CD. Whenever you restore a scanner driver, it's usually a good idea to completely uninstall the old stuff first byn using the Windows Add/Remove Programs control panel applet. Then go to the Windows Device Manager and remove everything related to the scanner. Unplug the device from the computer then restart the computer. Reinstall the drivers from the original CD, plug in the scanner and once the drivers and the device is fully recognized (you will see a dialog box on your monitor which says that the installation was successfully completed), restart again and everything should be okay. Here's the Visioneer technical support link for the 8100. Good luck.

We love Retrospect Backup for Windows. It's rock solid, creates reliable backups and works with a wide variety of backup drivers (CDR/RW, DVDR/RW, hard drives, tape drives, etc.). The only problem with Retrospect is its user interface. The best thing to do is to make full use of the built-in Retrospect Backup Wizard. It will walk you through the process. All the Retrospect Backup product tutorials can be found here. Read the entire Kickstartnews review of this excellent backup program.

Here's a great (and detailed) article on Amazon. It's a very good place to start looking for advice on how to go about determining the best computer choices for you and your business.