I bought a USB thumb drive but doesn't work on my computer. What can I do to get it to work in Windows 98?

When Windows 98 was released USB had only started to become popular. Soon after the release of Windows 98 SE USB thumb drives started to become popular replacing floppy disks.

Because of the changes after the release of Windows 98 most makers of flash drives gave away drivers for the thumb drives so they would work. Unfortunately with Windows 98 no longer being sold, and the built in support for USB drives in the latest versions of Windows, most USB drives you can buy, do not come drivers.

At times I get a connection speed of 32kb/s on my dial up. I thought I was paying for 56kb/s.

Dial up connection speeds are never a guarantee. When you have a dial up connection you are limited to not only what your modem is able to do, usually 56kb/s, but also what the phone line is capable of as well as how busy the internet is.

56kb/s is actually the maximum theoretical speed but on average you will be lucky to get around the 40kb/s mark.

When you first get on the internet with dial up a window will pop up telling you what the current maximum speed is. 

I'm  getting an error message 691 when I'm trying to get onto my internet connection. Have I done something wrong?

Dial up can be a fickle animal in the world of internet connections. They drop out easily, they tie up your phone line, it doesn't always give you it's maximum speed and they can stop working without warning.

Due to all the settings for your dial up connection being stored on your computer, sometimes the data involved with getting your computer on the internet can get corrupted.  Also if your internet service provider is having problems you can also have your connection affected.

I have a lot of photos. I want to put captions and speech bubble in the photos, can I do it for free?

Years ago when the internet was only a blip on the radar, there were numerous programmes that allowed you to add speech bubble to your pictures. They were expensive and very hard to use.

With the internet becoming larger and able to do more things, if you have an internet connection you can actually make speech bubbles and captions on your photos. If you are on dial up, or do not have easy access to the internet, you can download a programme that will allow you to add captions and speech bubbles with a few clicks. 

My antispyware programme keeps on saying I have Cookies, should I be worried?

In many cases, cookies are not something to be concern with.

A cookie is a small text file that is saved to your computer by a website to save settings for the website including where you went, anything you typed, and even your user name and password for that website.

Many websites use cookies to make your time on their site a better experience however some websites can use cookies for other purposes. 

My computer is making a strange clicking noise, what's going on?

A clicking sound from a computer when it loading something usually means one thing. It means your hard drive is very close to dying.

If you start hearing a clicking sound from your computer you should immediately turn the computer off.

If possible try shutting the computer down properly. No matter how you do it, get the computer turned off as soon as possible if you continue to use the computer you could end up doing major damage to the hard drive. 

I have read about defragmenting a hard drive, but I can't seem to find it on my Mac, can I do it?

The simple answer is not you can't

Apple Macintosh's operating system, OS X, is different to Windows so it is not always stuck with the same problems as the Microsoft programme has. 

The big difference is the way the the programme looks after itself. While Windows is known for breaking up parts of files and storing them randomly on a hard drive OSX is some what more organised and as such doesn't have a major problem with file fragmentation. 

I have forgotten my Windows password, is there a way I can get back into Windows?

I will tell you 2 ways to get access to a computer that you have forgotten the Windows password for. One of them is the easy and safe way, and the way that you should use in normal circumstances. the other one is the the extreme case when there is no other way to get back into Windows. It can also lead to the loss of data.

When ever you get a new computer, or install Windows on a computer you should put a password on the computer to make it somewhat more secure.