Ronniebootwest

Hi everyone! Just a thought, if a computer becomes infected and, as a last resort, the owner decides to restore a previously made full back-up of the infected drive, would that clear all the infection? Or would it be necessary to reformat the drive first and then restore the back-up? Ron

Hi Brian, You are right! Most of us are seriuosly confused about this Spy/Adware problem - exactly why I started this post in the first place! You seem to be suggesting that we ought to install the 'Microsoft Beta-1 A/V Program', Ok can you supply a current link for the download? I notice that the program is in 'Beta' form, have you tried it yet? What about Spybot and Spyware Doctor, these 2 programs seem to be mentioned quite a lot? Ron

Hi Bethan, That is exactly what I wanted, thankyou! A simple little thing but difficult when you don't know about it. Ron

Hi Ken, Thanks for the very useful info that you are emailing me. I am interested in the article on the program called 'Spyware Doctor' Reading about it seems a little to good to be true! Does anyone on the forum have any hands on experience with this program? Can you recommend it, or is it just another of those bogus programs on this subject? Ron

Hi Maureen! I am going to follow your advice contained in 'Clearing the Decks' so I can present my shows in a more professional manner. When creating the new user account and then deleting all the shortcuts on the desktop, I find that the Recyle Bin icon cannot be deleted - is there a way round this? Ron

Ken, thanks for the information - as thorough and detailed as ever! Brian, I am always keen to read your views on all matters and your response to this thread is fantatstic. Bearing in mind, that all other readers of this post will probably not be as 'computer literate' as yourself maybe you would consider supplying 'a novices guide' to just what should be installed on the average home PC (not networked). I am sure this would be useful to a lot of people (myself included). Thanks in advance, on behalf of all of us! Ron

When using PTE most of us will surf around the net very often. This will pick up all kinds of cookies and also lay you wide open to Spyware and pop-up ads. All very dangerous stuff! How many of you use your credit card to pay for web purchases. I have been trying out some 'privacy software packages' to try and keep my computer clean. I am a little confused by some of it though and am worried that such software will delete some of my 'legitimate files' What are your views? Can you suggest (and recommend) any software? I will be glad to hear from you. Ron

I am sure that you will find the method that you are seeking, but I am equally sure that you will not be satisfied with the final quality as compared to an EXE file from PTE. Sadly, the technology to produce DVD from an .avi file has not yet matured. Ron

Hi Marco, thanks for your suggestion and I will certainly have a look at the program you mention. I must say that the price tag of $199 is a little steep and may well put people off. I am working with Granot (Thailand PhotoAlbum) on a utility called 'OrderMe'. This is a very exciting utility that works together with PTE. I think that when iy is finally finished, it will offer any photographer what he needs and it is going to sell for around $25. Now that is a bargain! Ron

Hello Guido, I have read your explanation, but find it a little difficult to understand. However, I have now made a CD that seems to work OK - I just burned both the PTE .exe file and the .pdf file onto the CD. Ron

Hello Alrobin, thanks fro your suggestions. You said: What, exactly, is shown on the "Program name" line in Project Options / Properties for the object you are using to point to the pdf file? You were right, I had a full path inserted there so I took your advice and removed everything except the name of the pdf file, i.e. "Order Form.pdf" I then copied the pdf into the same folder as the slide show exe file and burned both the exe and the pdf onto a CD. It worked just fine! The customer can also 'explore the CD' and then 'double click' the pdf to bring it up on screen. I take your point about the end user being able to print a pdf file, so I will be putting a download link on the CD to enable them to get the latest 'reader' from Adobe. Thanks very much for your help. I will try to email you a short copy of what I have done - I am interested to learn if it wotks on your computer. Ron

I am having difficulty making the Object Editor work for me. Here is what I am trying to do. I am sending a PTE slide show (.exe) to a customer who will select the images that he/she wants to order. The image details are shown on each slide and the customer is required to write the image number on an 'order form' that I will supply. This order form is in pdf format and I am using the PTE Object Editor to run this from a 'button' with the properties set to 'run application or file". The idea is to allow the customer to print this order form by clicking on the button which will be placed on the opening 'intro slide' of the show. It all works fine on my computer but will not work when I burn the whole thing to a CD. It seems obvious to me that the file path that I am using to 'open application or file" is wrong, but I just can't work it out. Can someone help please? Ron

Thanks Mark, for your reply. You may just be right and I might have to resort to using your suggested method. Let's wait and see if any others can come up with a better solution. I will certainly keep you informed of my search in this quest. Ron

Amazing and surprising! 50 people have looked at this thread and yet nobody has any suggestions to make so far. Surely there are some photographers out there who use PTE slide shows to show to their customers! If so, how do your customers select the images that they would like to order? Ron

Does anyone know of a software utility that will allow me to make a PTE Slide Show and then have a customer select which images he/she would like to order by simply clicking on the image. I have seen the one made by Granot but that only extracts a 'slide number' - I want the customer to be able to extract the file description as entered in the PTE 'customise comments' section of the project options. I hope this hasen't confused you all. Ron West

Sad news Ken! The wisdom of back-ups eh! I have learned my lesson - hope you have also learned yours. Give Acronis a go mate! Ron

This utility looks interesting, I haven't noticed it before though. Can someone please explain it's purpose and how it should be used. Ron

Here is a thought! If this slide show had been saved as a 'Template' all the images and music etc woul have been placed in the same folder. Would it then matter if the directory in which the original images were saved - changed??? Ron

Glad to say that I am now 'a very happy chappy' because I took the advice on offer and have now purchased both of the programs listed above. I can now defrag all of my drives with ease (with the consequent speed up of each drive) and have now made a full back up of everything on my computer. I won't be caught out again, that's for sure! Thanks for all the help and advice I recieved. Ron West

Bharkins, hello and thanks ffor the advice on Acronis and Perfect disc. I downloaded the trials for both this morning and have used Perfect Disc to derfag my main C drive. What a difference! my computer now sings along at a rate of knotts I have rarely seen before. With regard to the Acronis software, well it looks very detailed but, I am afraid that I am lost with it at the moment. I am not a computer wizard and so this program is leaving me quite cold. I will get to grips with it though because I MUST MUST MUST backup my data. Tell me, is it wise to make a complete copy of the hard disc or can I just select individual folders? I have 4 hard drives on my computer:- C is the main (internal) drive which holds the OS system and all my programs, D is the second (internal) drive and holds sundry data files, I is an external USB drive and holds all my music and finally, J is another external USB drive and holds all my photo's. I would particularly like to back up drives I & J (music/photo's) - How would I do this using the Acronis software? Ron

Excellent idea Granot, I will be doing the same from now on! Thankyou Ron

Thanks for the replies so far, I appreciate it. Seems that the best solution might be to buy an external drive - saw a Lacie on ebay this afternoon, 350gb and runs on a USB hub - think I might look further into this as a possibilty for both my photo's and also my music files. Ken, your very detailed post is excellent and I will be studying it later to see what I can use. Thanks for taking the time to help. Ron

Thanks for that Lin, good to know that perhaps it was the 'Gremlins' and not my stupidity.

Thankyou Brian (please see my email to you for more detail) I hope that Ken Cox will see this post and respond accordingly. I think that your suggestion about the RAID system might be the way to go. Ron

Here is a question for you technical guys. How many photo's can be stored in a gigabyte of space, assuming an average file size of 30 megabytes? I have a hard drive with 250 gigabytes of storage and really want to store my larger photo files on it - how many will it hold? Maybe someone has a quick formula for calculating this. Ron West