Question Time

The Age

Tuesday April 15, 2008

George Skarbek

Q Some time last year I read an article about moving the "My Documents" folder to a second hard drive. A volunteer group I work with has a computer with a small C: drive that is full of applications. I can't find how the move is done. Can you help?

N. Tolley

A Getting started is the only hard part. Using Windows Explorer, right-click on My Documents, select Properties and under the Target Folder Location click on the Move button. You will be given a choice of where you wish to store your documents.

Q I believe my favourite email identity has been used recently by spammers. I am being blacklisted - or whatever - as mail sent by that identity is being rejected by the addressees. What can I do?

Name supplied

A You should obtain the full error message and ask your ISP what it means. If it is due to spamming then unfortunately there is nothing that you can do. It is easy to fake an email return address. Spammers pick up real addresses and use them until they become blocked and then they start with another one. The automated anti-spam systems that ISPs use cannot tell if the email is from the real you or from a spammer. They just block it.

All you can do is ask your ISP to give you another ID (there may be a fee) or you can use a free mail account, such as Hotmail or Gmail.

Q I use several USB drives to prevent copying to an incorrect one. Is it possible to have more identification than just the label.

J. Williams

A There are two things you can do: assign a specific drive letter for each device or use a distinctive USB icon.

To assign a drive letter to a USB drive or CD, open Control Panel and select Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. Now when you right-click on the drive you will see a menu to Change Letter.

Ignore any warning messages when altering the drive letter to, say, M for mail, S for spreadsheets etc. And you could give the drive a Label under Properties to further assist in identification.

To create a distinctive USB drive icon, copy an icon to that drive and then use Notepad (found under Accessories) to create a two-line file that reads:

[autorun]

icon=MyIcon.ico

where MyIcon.ico is the name of your icon.

If you do not have any, then you can either search your hard disk for *.ico or use Google to search for "free icons".

Having created that file, you must save it as "Autorun.inf" on to your USB drive.

Note that the quotes in the file name are essential as by default Notepad save files as .txt.

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