ASK THE PROS June 2009 bing

June 08, 2009 by shogan in Ask The Pros

Lots of new things for everyone involved with computing these days; new operating systems and browsers, smaller and smaller netbooks with more and more power. Applications that make your phone much more than an interesting ring tone player. It appears nothing is safe from the innovation invasion. You've seen it mentioned everywhere on the Interent. You've seen it on TV, and now you're seeing it in Ask The Pros.

Q. Agnes asks: what is Bing?

A. A loaded question if I ever heard one Agnes. Lets treat this as a multiple choice. That always increases my chance of getting it right.

(A). The begining of the end for Google.
(B). An old dead Crosby
(C). A powerful search engine designed by MS to compete with Google.
(D). Another"gotcha" from Mircosoft.
(E). All of the above.

If you answered (E), all of the above, you would be correct. Bing is Microsoft's new search engine designed to compete with Google. From all accounts it seems to be doing that quite well. Bing is easy to use and a comfortable alternative to Google. I love my Google but found no problem using the new Bing. In fact it's easy to not notice what searh engine is being used.

Q. Richard Asks: I am running a BIY system with a ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, an Intel 9650 CPU, 6-Seagate 1TB internal drives with the first two setup up in a RAID 0 configuration.

Starting about 1 month ago I started to lose my E-Drive (internal)daily. All that it takes to get it back is to reboot the computer, I have attempted to change the drive letter and the same thing happens.

I went into event viewer and under the subsection "warning" found thousands of Event ID 57, Source volmgr, Log system. I have attempted to google this and have not been very successful.

My question is 1) Is this a hardware (drive) problem or is this an operating system problem? 2) Any thoughts on a premanent fix.

A. I hate to answer a question with a question but is this a storage or backup drive? I sure hope so because noise and hard drives don't go well together. Knowing that drives fail more than any other piece of equipment in your system, I would replace the drive immediately, while you have the chance.

Q> Keith J. asks: Is it possible to make a set of backup discs, say DVDs or external hard drive, that would restore a pc to its former state, after replacing the system hard drive, so that no further updating was necessary to bring back all the software, updates and data that were on the original at the time?

A. Thank you for that question Jordan, yes. The program Acronis True Image Home is excellent for that. FREE TRIAL I use the the Clone feature and just clone the complete hard drive to another hard drive. I do it every week so that I'm less likely to loose important data. It's the best.

Thank you folks, keep the questions coming.

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