So, you have had your new computer for a few months now, and haven’t given much thought to all of those preloaded applications that were included with it. You felt confident that everything was perfect. And then it happens. Your McAfee Security Center tells you that the three month trial period has ended and it is time to pay up if you wish to continue receiving updates!Chances are you don’t want to pay for this program, especially since you have heard about the numerous good quality antivirus programs that are available on the internet for free, provided you are a home user. If this is the case, you are going to need to figure out how to uninstall the McAfee SecurityCenter so that you do not get annoying messages anymore indicating that your trial has expired. This can be a little bit tricky, so we are going to explain how this is done.When you decide that it is time to uninstall McAfee SecurityCenter, there are many other McAfee programs that are affected or involved in the process. They include programs such as McAfee VirusScan, McAfee Personal Firewall Plus, McAfee Privacy Service, McAfee SpamKiller, McAfee Wireless Network Security, McAfee SiteAdvisor, McAfee Data Backup, McAfee Network Manager, McAfee Easy Network and McAfee AntiSpyware. This procedure also only covers the instructions for Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Home. It may be different on other versions of the Windows operating system.

No Comments »

Alright, so you have just received your brand new computer that has been shipped to you from the manufacturer or that you have picked up in a retail store. If it is like most computers, it has been preloaded with a ton of programs. There are probably a few programs that have been included that you are going to enjoy and want to use, but there is once instance in which the software, which has not been completely installed properly can be more of a hassle than it is worth!You have decided that you would like to use the software already installed to burn your very first DVD using that fancy new DVD burner that came with your system. You search through the programs and find among the list, Roxio Sonic DVD Creator software that has been installed on your computer from the manufacturer. Perfect! You double click the icon with anticipation rising as you tear open your new package of burnable DVD’s only to be presented with a window showing that Windows is configuring Sonic Update Manager.No sweat! This is probably just because it is loading up for the first time, right? Well maybe not. Suddenly you are presented with a screen that indicates the feature you are trying to use is on another CD-ROM or removable disk that is not available! Your heart sinks, and things are not looking promising for that shiny new DVD you have in your hand. Your computer is asking you to insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive, that you don’t have! In frustration you select OK even though you do not have the CD it is asking for and finally you are presented with at window that says the installation package for the Sonic Update Manager cannot be found. It tells you to try the installation again, even though you have not been supplied with the software from the manufacturer!The worst part of it all is that after selecting the OK button on this window, the application launches and looks like it may work. However, cancelling out of the error window just brings up more error messages. As long as you have the Roxio Sonic DVD creator software open, the computer just keeps popping up with new error messages over and over again, making the software completely useless.Just take a breath and relax for a moment. There is good news! This is a known problem with the Sonic Update component in the InstallShield Software used by Roxio to package their product and we know how to fix it! The fix for this problem can be downloaded from the makers of InstallShield.There is a solution sold by the makers of InstallShield called FLEXnet Connect. This is a solution that allows vendors to help stay connected with their customers after they install the vendor’s applications. This solution helps vendors offer updates for their applications to customers that have installed them, but it is also recommended that software vendors build in an option to disable automatic update checking. This can often be found in the application’s menu options.If your application does not have this option, Macrovision, the makers of InstallShield have created a tool that can disable the automatic update checking feature. This tool is called the Software Manager. The Software Manager is a utility that will list all the applications that are currently using FLEXnet Connect on your computer and the FLEXnet Connect’s status with that application. Allowing you to disable any applications that are having problems with the FLEXnet Connect features.

4 Comments »

A MIME attachement that is sent with the content type application/octet stream is a binary file that is typically an application or a document that must be opened by a particular application. For example a spreadsheet or word document are two examples of this type of file. If the attachement has an extension associated with it, you can sometimes use that to tell what type of file it is and what kind of program is needed to open that file. For example, a file with the .exe extension associated with it is a program that is executable in either DOS or Windows operating systems. On the other hand, a .doc extenstion would suggest that the file is a Microsoft Word document and needs to be opened in Microsoft Word in order to maintain its formatting.It doesn’t really matter what type of application/octet stream you are talking about, the file is usually not going to be viewable in an email, Usenet or World Wide Web program. If you are using a workstation based client such as Outlook, the program should be able to download the attachment to a folder on your computer. You must then use the proper application that is intended for files of that type in order the view its contents. There are also other file attachments that can be found in emails that will have different sub-types such as application/postscript, application/x-macbinary and application-msword. These files are similar to application/octet stream but apply to specific types of files.An octet generally represents an eight-bit quantity and can range in mathematical value from 0 to 255. In computer networking, an octet is usually the same as a byte, exept on coumputer systems that do not use the same amount of bits in their bytes. Octets are most commonly refer to any of the four bytes of an Ipv4 address. In web browsers, the MIME type application/octet stream refers to a generic HTTP byte stream.

1 Comment »