E-mail disconnecting
Anna was having problems with her Internet dropping out after checking her e-mail. Outlook Express can be set to hang up after checking e-mail, to change it open Outlook Express; click tools, options, connections and take the tick off "Hang up after sending and receiving."

If you do this it is worth checking in your Internet Options that the computer will hang up after, say, twenty minutes of no Internet use. That way the computer won't stay on for a week after you have checked your e-mail.

Stopping Spam
Norma's Hotmail account is plagued by spam from obscene mail accounts. Unfortunately there is not much you can do about them, Hotmail does have a inbox protector that will reject e-mails based on your preferences and you can set message rules in Outlook and Outlook Express. If you do setup message rules to delete or hide unwanted messages, be careful about the criteria you use: Spammers often use fake or generic addresses, so barring all mail from yahoo.com or mail.com may mean you do not receive message you want.

Defrag not running
The Windows defragment program will stop running and start again if anything tries to write to the hard drive. To overcome this start the computer in Safe Mode, hold the F8 or Control key down as the computer starts. You have to be quick with the timing: If you press it too early you will get a keyboard error, too late and Windows will start in Normal mode. In safe mode, the bare minimum to run Windows is started so you should be able to run Defrag.

Wrong File Associations
Margaret down loaded a file with a sit attachment and when trying to open it, associated it with Adobe Acrobat. A sit file is a compressed file that has been created using Aladdin StuffIt so it is necessary to have Stuffit to open the files. Associations are difficult to change manually, installing Stuffit should fix Margaret's problem but if you have an incorrect file association it is usually easiest to re-install the program you want to be the correct association.

Thank you
A thanks to all those who e-mailed with explanations of what an sit file is. It does illustrate that it is worthwhile checking what you are downloading before agreeing to download it. And, once again, think twice before sending an attachment to somebody.