windows

Question: I have a Pantech Impact P7000 mobile phone. I am wanting to transfer my pictures from my phone to my hp laptop. My search for a data pilot kit has not been successful. I have vista on this laptop. I have Windows photo gallery and also Kodak easy share. Can you help?

Answer: With this particular Pantech phone, you have three options for transferring pictures to your computer:

1. Send as a multimedia message
2. Transfer using Bluetooth
3. Uploading to an HP Snapfish account

To see these options, find the picture folder on your phone by selecting "Menu", then "My Stuff" and then scrolling down to "Pictures".

Open the picture you want to send. Select "Options" and then "Send", and choose from one of the 3 options.

Bluetooth requires that your computer has bluetooth capabilities, and you'll first need to pair (connect) your phone with your computer. Once paired, you'll be able to send each photo to your computer.

One thing that really annoys me are programs that Windows thinks everyone should have running on their system - regardless of whether you want them or not.

Windows Live Messenger is one such program that automatically runs when Windows7 starts up. Messenger is a chat program from Microsoft that runs in the background and consumes precious system resources (memory) and slows down Window's start up routine. It's also an annoying popup when you first start Windows.

Here’s how to disable and turn off auto-start of Windows Live Messenger.

1. Click anywhere on the Messenger login or chat screen and press the "Alt" key to make the menu visible:

2. Click the "Tools" -- "Options" menu.

3. Select "Signin from the left side list of options, and uncheck the "Automatically run Windows Live Messenger when I log into Windows" option.

Save your changes and Windows Live Messenger won't start the next time you restart Windows.

For some reason the Snipping Tool in Windows Vista tends to frequently lock up, resulting in the familiar error message "The Snipping Tool is not working on your computer right now". In fact, it just happened to me so I thought I'd jot down the steps I took to fix the problem.

Microsoft's error messages are not always very helpful, and this is no exception. Restart your computer? Really?

It turns out you can quickly reset this handy screen capture utility without restarting your computer, just by killing the SnippingTool.exe process in your control panel.

Don't let that line of techno-speak scare you away either - it's actually super easy if you follow the steps below:

1. Open your Task Manager by giving your computer the 3-fingered salute (press Ctrl+Alt+Del keys at the same time). Select "Start Task Manager" from the list of options that are displayed.

2. Click the "Processes" tab in the popup dialog, and click on the SnippingTool.exe process.

3. Click the "End Process" button and confirm that you want to kill this service.

4. Start up the Snipping Tool again, which you can find in your Start -- All Programs -- Accessories menu.

A few clicks is all it takes to restart the Snipping Tool and get back to taking screen shots in Windows Vista.