The Computer Club Newsletter

July 2003

By Ron Uncapher

The summer meeting format was very successful this month. A moderate number of attendees stayed late while questions from the audience were mostly answered by the members of the club. This format will be repeated for the August meeting. The meeting will start at 6:30 PM on Tuesday, August 5, 2003 at the Yacht Club. In September, thee regular meeting format will resume. After the 6:30 PM Q&A, the regular meeting will convene. The featured speaker will be Mike Broyles. Mike’s topic will be "An Introduction to Photo Shop".

Our president, Howard Jones, wants to pass on some information on hard drive failures.

Is your data backed up? There have been several hard drive failures in the Village in the past week that may reflect a pattern you should be aware of. Fujitsu manufactured both failed drives about 2-3 years ago. The series is MPG3xxx. In June 2003, the Fujitsu drive problem resulted in a class action lawsuit against the company. The law firm of Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLC is handling the suit.

Details of the lawsuit are available at http://www.classactioncounsel.com/fujitsu-litigation.htm . According to reports, the fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units of a range of GB capacities manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already; if not, you should replace it ASAP. If you’re a customer of HP/Compaq, you can visit the "HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program" at http://h30066.www3.hp.com/hddr/site.

Details of the failure cause are available at http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7566 , http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5071  and http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6003 .

The most important message in the preceding paragraph is BACK UP THE IRREPLACEABLE DATA ON YOUR HARD DRIVE, regardless of who manufactured it. You have, or should have, the software for all of your programs so that they can be reloaded should a hard drive fail. Unless you have a "backup copy" of your "My Documents", "My Pictures" (or whatever file you save pictures, data and information in) THE DATA WILL BE LOST – GONE FOREVER, should your hard drive fail. If you have any questions about this warning, come to the Computer Users Club meeting on August 5th at the Yacht Club.

How do you know if you have a Fujitsu hard drive? Go to "START", "Programs", "Accessories", "System Tools", "System Information", "Components", "Storage", "Drives". The data presented should include the Drive Model. Another way to determine your hard drive manufacturer is to download the Belarc Advisor from http://www.belarc.com  ("Free Downloads"). The Belarc Advisor will provide you with a picture of all of your computer hardware and software, including the manufacturer of your hard drive. Print the audit of your computer and file it for future reference.

Howard’s message is a good one. In my case, neither System Information nor Belarc Advisor gave me the names of my hard drives (I have two of them). You may have a "diagnostic screen" that appears when you first boot Windows and before the Windows splash screen appears. This is a black and white screen that shows details of drives and memory. It will detail the name and type of your hard drive(s) and optical (CD) drives. The screen may disappear before you can read it, so be ready to press the PAUSE key while the screen is being displayed. If you do not get the diagnostic screen at startup you will have to go into the system BIOS, which I do not recommend unless you are very knowledgeable about PCs.

For you AOL users who want to download your address book and save it in Outlook Express: I have come across an Internet site that claims to be able to do just that. AOLeave claims to be able to download your AOL address book, favorites list, and email message folders and import them into several different email programs such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora and others. I pass this on for your information. I would not recommend the process for a beginner, but you might be able to get your favorite PC guru to try it for you. Go to this website and try it at your own risk: http://www.aoleave.com/aoleave2.html .

I will leave you with two thoughts: Have you updated your ant virus software this week; beware of the BUGBEAR; and check out the club website at www.TVCUC.org .