I hope there's still a Windows XP guru around here somewhere. . . .

My computer was made for me in 1999 by a "screwdriver shop." It was a Pentium II 350MHz with 128 MB RAM, complete with a 17" ViewSonic PS775 monitor, Matrox graphics card, Soundblaster Live sound card, Altec-Lansing speakers complete with sub-woofer, modem—the usual other accouterments. Storage included a CD-ROM drive, a 9.4 GB hard drive, and an LS-120 Superdisk drive (in lieu of a Zip disk, because the LS-120 drive would read/write to both the Superdisk—120 MBs—and regular floppies, whereas the Zip drive could only read/write to Zip disks). Hot stuff in 1999. The operating system was Windows 98, and it had the usual package of home software, including Word 97 which I used a lot.

About ten weeks ago, I sent the computer back to the same shop to be overhauled and updated. The monitor is fine, the CD ROM drive is fine, the LS-120 drive is fine, and I especially love the keyboard. So I just sent the box to the shop. When it came back, it had a new power supply, a new motherboard, and it was a Pentium IV 2.4GHz with 512 MB RAM, a PlexWriter CD-RW drive, and a new 1.44 floppy drive in addition to the LS-120 drive for copying convenience, and I swapped the 9.4 GB hard drive for an 80 GB drive. Hotter than a two-dollar pistol! The operating system is Windows XP.

There is very much about Windows XP that I like. But—my ecstasy is not without blemish.

1. My Canon S630 inkjet printer gets along with it very well, but XP refuses to recognize the existence of my Epson Perfection 1650 scanner. What do I do now?

2. It's very snotty to the LS-120 drive. "My Computer" acknowledges it, and I can read things from the Superdisks, but when I try to save something to a Superdisk, it tells me I can't because the disk is write-protected, which it is not. Like the Betamax, Superdisk drives are superior in every way to Zip disks, but they've been swamped in the marketplace and discontinued. Anything I can do to make the drive fully functional like it used to be?

3. When I tried to use Word 97, it would allow me to write for a few minutes, then it would suddenly give me an error message telling me that it was sorry for the inconvenience, but it was going to have to shut down. Then it would, without allowing me to save what I had written. I futzed around with the compatibility feature, but it didn't help. I remedied this problem by buying and loading Word 2002 (The day it was delivered, MS announced the release of Word 2003!).

4. Now, when it load Word 2002, the first thing I encounter is a little attention-getting ding, and a small window in the middle of the screen telling me

Microsoft Visual Basic
The macros in this project are disabled. Please refer to the online help or documentation
of the host application to determine how to enable them.
                                          OK                               Help

If I click "Help," it takes me to a help screen that provides no help at all. If I click "OK," fortunately the window disappears and I can go to work. What do I need to do to enable macros and get it to quit bugging me, if, indeed, that's what it's really all about?

5. Another thing that makes me snarl is the search feature. I used to use Windows Explorer a lot for file management. There was a "find" command in one of the pull-down menus that allowed me to browse and narrow a search down to a single folder, but not any more. The only search feature I can find is in the "Start" menu, and it won't let you narrow the search down. You have to search the entire hard disk, and with eighty gigabytes to rummage through, it takes awhile. I'm getting awfully good at "Minesweeper" while I wait. And sometimes it fails to find a file that I know damned well is there. Isn't this a step backward, or is there something I don't know?

There's more, but that's about all that comes to mind at the moment. Anybody? Please?

Don Firth