Last weekend I found myself working on a laptop that had numerous problems including it could not boot. After fixing the Master Boot Record(MBR) the computer was able to boot but the mouse was not working. It is fairly easy to navigate around a Windows XP computer without a mouse however right clicking is something that can be missed. Use the information below to right click on a computer that doesn’t have a mouse installed.

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Yesterday when extracting a ZIP file created with WinRAR I received dozens of errors during the process. The file I was extracting was generated from the entire Documents and Settings folder on a Windows XP computer and I was extracting it to the Desktop of another user on another computer. The issue is the fact that the path and/or filename exceeded the 260 characters which is set by WinRAR. Below I show some output from the errors received as well as two tips that should help resolve the problem.

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Often times when I have Windows XP installations which will not boot one of the first things I will try is a check disk from the recovery console. This will often times fix Windows file problems which are preventing Windows from booting properly. In order to do this you will need a Windows XP installation disc.

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Last week I tried a bunch of different methods to try and upgrade a Dell PE650 BIOS. I finally settled on using a floppy disk to upgrade the BIOS however I initially ran into some issues with various floppy drives and floppy disks. One of the issues was an error message I received when attempting to access the floppy disk located within a floppy drive I had just installed on a Windows XP computer. Below I describe the error and how I was able to get past this specific error.

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Last night I was working on upgrading the BIOS on an older Dell Poweredge 650 that I have been using as a PostgreSQL development server. One of the CD’s I needed to create is downloaded from Dell as two parts of an ISO file that needed to be combined so below is information on how to combine the files using the Windows copy command.

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