The catch
I suspect I am being targeted by an internet scam, but it's one I haven't heard about. I advertised a dinghy online for £900, and got an offer from the US. He has a client who owes him £3,500, so this client will send me a cashier's cheque for £3,500. I should bank it, then send him the balance of £2,600. It is just too dodgy to be true, but I'm wondering where the fraud is. Nick Orchard
Jack Schofield replies: Since you are an upstanding citizen, your bank happily accepts an impressive-looking cashier's cheque from a US bank. However, one or two weeks later, the bank discovers the cheque is a forgery, and asks for its money back. By this time, you have sent the "overpayment" to the scammer. So, you lose £2,600. The scam is common on eBay with expensive items such as cars, boats and works of art. See www.settlementnegotiation.org/fraud/eBay.html for details.
The US Treasury has issued a warning about counterfeit cashier's cheques bearing the name of Frost National Bank, using a copy of the bank's three horses logo and a facsimile signature of Rebecca Huckabee. Auctionbytes has a useful Online Fraud Resource Center at www.auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/fraud.
Key swap
After re-installing Windows XP Home Edition, some of the keyboard keys were transposed or changed, depriving me of the use of some original symbols. The @ key has changed with the key! Miriam Friedlander
JS: The /@ keyswap is usually a sign you have the American keyboard mapping installed with a UK keyboard. Try pressing Left-shift and Alt and see if they switch back. If not, go to Start|Settings|Control Panel and double-click the Keyboard icon. Make sure you have English (United Kingdom) selected rather than English (United States). If you need to get brutal to make it stick, go to the Control Panel icon for Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options and click on Regional and Language settings. Click the Languages tab, and then the Details button.
Click on the Add button and select English (United Kingdom) from the Input language drop-down menu. Select United Kingdom from the Keyboard layout drop-down menu, and click OK. Select English (United States) and click Remove. (If you get a warning message that says this is currently in use, click OK.) Finally, restart your PC and the UK keyboard mapping should be correctly installed.
Staged delete
Last week you said that "a tilde at the start of the filename means it is a temporary file". So can most files with a name beginning with a tilde be deleted? Years ago I deleted a number of files with names like that, only to find that Windows 95 did not work! Therese Butler
JS: The naming convention in Windows is that temporary files begin with a tilde (~) and have the extension TMP. It should be safe to delete any such files, after restarting your PC. If you want to delete files that don't end in TMP, or that you suspect might be needed, it is safer to do the deletion in stages. Create a new folder called To Be Deleted and move all the unwanted files to that. Use your computer normally for a week or two, and if nothing unexpected happens, you can delete the folder. If you run Windows Me or XP, you could also use the System Restore function to take a snapshot of your set up so that you can go back to it. In fact, it is a good idea to do this before making any major changes.
Backchat
· Rex Last asked about making back-up CDs unreadable. Elanor Nicholls took the idea one step further. "Millions of CDs are sent to overstretched landfill sites. CDs are not bio-degradable but are a valuable source of reusable material. At Business in the Community, we recycle our old discs through a scheme provided for its customers by Beacon Press. Old discs and cases are collected and reprocessed into car reflector lights, alarm boxes, new cases and insulation materials. Those with a creative inclination could also visit www.make-stuff.com/recycling/cd.html."
· Frank Healy wanted to know how to lock an Internet Explorer browser window. Barrie Smith says: "I use Crazy Browser, which uses tabs rather than opening new windows. Just configure the settings so that the new tab is not the active one and you stay on the open tab." Joe Goodden uses another tabbed browser, FlashPeak SlimBrowser, which works the way Frank wants if you go to Tools|Options and check Auto New Window. Crazy Browser and FlashPeak SlimBrowser are based on Internet Explorer. Other readers suggested changing to an alternative tabbed browser such as Opera or Mozilla.
· The saga about making files copied from CD into read/write files continues. Alan Stanton says he now uses Attribute Changer, a free program written and supported by Romain Petges.
· For blogging software, Roger Cornwell says: "We run a small internet design business and have successfully installed the Greymatter package for several clients."
