FreewareVista Great Freeware
Freeware and free trials, tips and resources

Oddball Computing Annoyances with possible easy Solutions

This is a list of oddball annoyances in Windows that until you've seen them once or twice, can drive you half way 'round the bend trying to resolve. You may try all manner of things, think you have a virus, etc., etc., end up frustrated and annoyed and ready to give up computers until they come out with "Windows Foolproof". By chance you do a-b-c and suddenly, problem solved. These are also items that tend to fall into that category where you say to yourself emphatically, "I am a stupid computer user".  Take heart, not really stupid at all, these are quite common.

1) You're deleting various items from your Internet Explorer Favorites list and get an error message on one item saying it can't be deleted. Possible Easy Solution: Close Internet Explorer and re-start it, the item will likely be gone - the item was probably "already deleted", it sometimes occurs that a deleted item still appears and won't disappear until the associated application is restarted.

2) You surf to a particular page and then can't use your browser back button. Possible Easy Solution: Hit the browser back button twice in rapid succession, this will often back you out of a site that is using a redirect to keep you on a page.

3) You save an item to a folder and it doesn't appear there. Possible Easy Solution: make sure that all instances of that open folder are closed. After closing it, re-open, Windows will have refreshed the contents and your saved item should appear.

4) Here's a curious one that sent me half way 'round the bend trying to figure it out - I looked high and low on forums, a number of people had a similar problem, but no where did I find a solution that solved the difficulty, the only solace, I wasn't alone.  Here's the problem - my mouse cursor started blinking oddly and wouldn't allow me to highlight and delete or highlight to copy or paste, it worked selectively in some applications and not in others . Also, in some apps I could type text and in others I could not.  As I said I tried a number of things to sort this out, having found others with a similar problem in various forums, there were lots of recommended solutions. I started into reinstalling the software for my Bluetooth keyboard when it hit me...the keyboard runs on batteries. New batteries...problem gone. In today's "high-tech" world, it's easy to forget "the batteries".......

5) Another one that can only fall into the "I feel really dumb" category, this happened to me in trying to set up a wireless connection.  I got a signal (signal strength excellent) but the laptop kept providing an error message saying there was limited connectivity because the IP address wouldn't renew. I tried ipconfig/renew, fiddled with the router, uninstalled the firewall, turned off Windows firewall, all to no avail. The oddball solution? The caps lock button had been turned on when entering the wireless passphrase...always make sure your caps lock is turned off when entering in passwords...

6) Here's another laptop related one - in this case the person's laptop wasn't able to 'see' any wireless network connections. After alot of hair pulling and advanced 'tinkering', no solution in sight. The oddball solution? He hadn't realized there was a botton on the laptop, usually called a 'wireless switch' (sometimes indeed it is cleverly hidden on the laptop, for example as the second function of a key), it enables and disables wireless connectivity. It's hard for a Support Technician to even charge for a service call when the complete solution is..."let me show you this button, all fixed now...."

Good luck and good computing.