Paula writes:

<<I ran PC Powerscan to see if there were enough errors on my computer to =
make the rather substantial investment in PC Powerscan. The only error =
it turned up on the trial run was that DLL/OCX/COM was missing. What =
does this mean, and what can/should I do about it? >>

Having never heard of this software, I went to its website.

Having seen it, I may be doing it an injustice, but I'd say : give it a
wide berth and don't waste your money.

This website relies on scare tactics, trying to tell you that your computer
is likley full of "dangerous" files "lurking" to cause trouble at any
moment.  What rubbish!  It's the type of product, all too common, that uses
scare tactics to frighten the unwary into parting with their hard-earned.

Even more intrinsically dangerous, it gives you a "free" trial piece of
software that purports to search out these nasties and gives you a spurious
message that there are things that need fixing so will you please send them
loads of money.  The message you are getting is quite meaningless. When you
look at their "tour" the example given is that there is an orphaned
shortcut.  Hardly life-threatening.

I suspect that the best the "paid" version would do is to hunt for
redundant files such as orphan .dll's, shortcuts and the like.  There is
plenty of very good freeware that will do that for you, and in any event
these are hardly likely to be harmful to your computer, unless you've
accumulated so many that performance is suffering.  But that's only a
matter of regular normal housekeeping, using suitable freeware
utilities.  eg Kevin Solway's excellent "Clean System
Directory"---www.ozemail.com.au/~kevsol/sware.html or run a Google search
for it, most freeware sites have it.

There are also utilities that will clean out orphaned shortcuts (not that
they do any great harm except add some clutter to the system).

If you have Cleansweep, that will do the job of cleaning out those
redundant files.

I distrust sites that rely on scare tactics and gross overselling---this
does both.

As I said, I haven't used the software you mention, but that's my gut
feeling after seeing their blurb.

As for the "Error"

Don Penlington





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