Business / Technology

Q: We previously ran Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security on each of our PCs. We allowed Internet Security to lapse, so recently renewed and all seemed fine until I tried to download it onto wife's computer. During download, the Norton screen said the new Internet Security conflicted with "another Norton product" and must be uninstalled. We continued the download, only to discover that the uninstall was her Norton 360. I was told later that they were incompatible, and that you cannot run them side-by-side. True?

— Jon Hahn, Woodinville

A: It's generally not a good idea to run two anti-virus programs on the same computer, and virtually all anti-virus programs warn against doing so. Anti-virus programs monitor your computer's behavior for signs of viruses. The problem is that some of those monitoring activities can look like virus activity. So one anti-virus program can appear to another as a virus.

Even if you don't run into conflicts with two anti-virus systems installed, you may see significant decreases in your computer's performance. Anti-virus programs tend to drain resources.

Q: We had our VHS family movie tapes converted to DVDs and would like to make copies of them. Everything I have read says that writing on DVDs with a Sharpie or other instrument is not a good idea since the long-term effects of that are not known. My question is, when I make copies of our DVDs, how do I title them? If it's not a good idea to write on them, is there some other means of identifying the DVDs or does this need to be done professionally? I would like to save the cost of paying someone and do it myself. Thank you very much.

— June

A: Yes, some inks potentially could eat through the coating on the disc. But to be honest, I use Sharpies. After all, you can only count on burned CDs being reliable for three to five years anyway.

If you are concerned, however, there are three options. First, find CD-compatible pens at office-supply stores. Second, use Lightscribe discs to create labeled discs. (This would require having a Lightscribe drive, of course.) Third, buy inkjet printer CD labels.

Q: What's going on? Beginning last week and through this weekend I started getting emails — spam, junk and the like — with no "From" email address or domain name, only some tag line: free this, buy that, etc.

When I tried to block the sender I couldn't because, I was told, "the email address or domain name" is not valid. What's going on?

— Robert Wainger

A: Isn't it frustrating? And it doesn't even matter if there is something in the "from" field, since spammers are always changing that.

A better strategy than using the block-sender feature is to use a spam filter that checks the content of messages. It won't block all spam, and it may snag some legitimate messages, but it will help.

Making a real dent in spam requires a fundamental change in the way the Internet is managed, such as a small per-message charge for emails. I'd be happy to pay a little bit for each sent email if it would eliminate spam.

Q: We are running Windows and consistently have a pop-up saying, "USB device is not recognized. One of the USB devices to this computer has malfunctioned & Windows does not recognize it. Click here." When I follow the directions to the USB hub, it states there is a unused port and an unknown device. In other words, I get nowhere.

Also, we are consistently getting the pop-up stating that Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. What are we doing incorrectly and how do we fix these annoying problems?

— Jeff Montgomery

A: Here's the first thing I'd try: Unplug your computer from its power source. Then restart the computer and see if everything is working better. I can't swear that will work, but the idea is that even when you shut down Windows, not quite everything in the computer powers down. It takes unplugging to completely reset everything. Some users with the problem you report have indicated that this took care of things.

If that doesn't solve the problem, we'll have to look into some more detailed troubleshooting. And it's always possible that the port of the device has gone bad.

As for Internet Explorer, I'd try uninstalling and then reinstalling it.

Questions for Patrick Marshall may be sent by email to pmarshall@seattletimes.com or pgmarshall@pgmarshall.net, or by mail at Q&A/Technology, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/

columnists.