If your computer abruptly refuses to play sound, try the following simple steps.

1. First, reboot your computer.
2. Ensure that the computer isn't muted via hardware. Press any external mute buttons, confirm that the speakers are turned on, and turn the volume all the way up. Test by playing a song or using the Sound control panel (click the Sounds tab, select Asterisk, and click Test).
3. If that doesn't work, check Windows. Left-click the volume icon in the system tray and verify that the audio is not muted and is turned up.
4. Right-click the volume icon and click Open Volume Mixer. Ensure that all options are on and turned up.
5. Internal speakers still not working? Plug headphones into the audio jack and test again. If the headphones work, remove them to continue troubleshooting the internal speakers.
6. Right-click the volume icon again and choose Playback devices. Confirm that your audio device (likely 'Speakers') has a green check mark next to it. Click Properties and make sure that 'Use this device (enable)' is selected.

If your sound still doesn't work by this point, you may have a missing or corrupt driver for your audio controller.

1. Uninstall the driver. Open the Device Manager (type device manager at the Start menu search box), go to Sound, video and game controllers, select the audio controller, and press the Delete key.
2. Reboot the system and allow Windows to reinstall the driver, which it should do automatically. If it doesn't, download the driver from your PC maker's site or audio card manufacturer's site, and reinstall it manually.

      Flash drives are virus magnets. This is a generally accepted truth, but today I learned it firsthand.

     As you may recall from my previous post on copying files to flash drives, my wife needed to take a PowerPoint presentation with her to school. The drive was malware-free when it left here--but it came home with a virus! 

     I found this out when I popped the drive into my PC--and Microsoft Security Essentials immediately detected (and removed, thankfully) an extremely dangerous worm. No doubt it had landed there when the missus plugged the drive into one of the school machines. 

     This was a catastrophe barely averted. This particular worm propagates over network connections, so it could have spread very quickly to every system in my house. That's why it's crucial to have reliable anti-virus software installed on all your PCs.

     Okay, but how do you protect your flash drive when it's "out and about"? How can you keep it from getting infected in the first place--or at least remove any sneakyware before it comes home with you?

     My tool of choice: SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scanner. The program requires no installation; you just copy it to your flash drive (see the aforementioned post if you don't know how to do that), then run it whenever you want to check for and remove infections.

     You should also consider running Panda USB Vaccine, which disables a flash drive's Autorun.inf file--a common carrier for malware (including the one that hit me today). Doing so will prevent the drive's Autorun box from appearing when you plug it into your PC, but that's no biggie--you just have to open the drive manually.

Firefox automatically creates backups of your bookmarks and saves the last ten backups for safekeeping. This article describes how to manually back up your bookmarks and how to replace your bookmarks with a backup.

• If your bookmarks suddenly become unavailable in Firefox, see Lost Bookmarks for troubleshooting information.

Manual backup

1. Click the Bookmarks button on the right side of the navigation toolbar (Windows XP: click the Bookmarks menu) and select Show All Bookmarks to open the Library window.
2. In the Library window, click the Import and Backup button and then select Backup.... The Bookmarks backup file name window will appear.

 

3. Select a location to save the backup file.
4. Close the Library window.

Restoring from backups

Caution: Restoring bookmarks from a backup will overwrite your current set of bookmarks with the ones in the backup file.

1. Click the Bookmarks button on the right side of the navigation toolbar (Windows XP: click the Bookmarks menu) and select Show All Bookmarks to open the Library window.
2. In the Library window, click the Import and Backup button and then select Restore.

 

 

       3.  Select the backup from which you want to restore:

• The dated entries are automatic backups.
• Choose File... lets you restore from a manual backup (see above).

 4. After choosing a backup, your bookmarks from that file will be restored. Close the Library window.