Thomas Wensel wants to install Windows 7 while keeping his older version.

This is a great idea if you have enough spare hard drive space. It allows you to move to the new OS without burning your bridges.

Carla Rowland wants to know how important the refresh rate is when shopping for an HDTV

A 120 or 240hz refresh rate can certainly improve the look of an LCD HDTV, especially when dealing with fast-moving content like sports or action movies. But the difference may not be all that significant.

Buffalo asked the Answer Line forum how to delete a Registry key

I've got a strong temptation not to answer this question. Deleting a Registry key is inherently dangerous. You don't know what you can mess up.

A41202813 asked the Answer Line forum why his once quick PC is slowing down

Brian Colgin read that Windows 7 no longer has Vista's email program, but does it still store contact information?

Alex Goldstein wants to know the best way to adjust a new HDTV.

When you turned on the TV for the first time, did it ask if you'll be using it in a home or a store? Most of the new HDTVs ask that question, which is a good thing. TVs generally leave the factory set up to look good on the showroom floor, which means they look lousy in your home. By simply asking that question and adjusting the set accordingly, the TV solves the most common cause of badly-adjusted television.

Windows turned drive F: into drive G:, so the PC's owner asked the Answer Line forum how to change it back.

Helmut Schwemmer wants to use a very old version of Managing Your Money on a new PC. But the program came on floppy disks.

Although PCs no longer come standard with floppy drives, it's actually not that difficult or expensive to read on old-fashioned diskette (at least the 3.5-inch variety). Both Iomega and LaCie sell external, USB floppy drives for $40 list price. A little bargain hunting can find considerably better deals. (I haven't tested any of these drives, so please don't consider this an endorsement.)

B2CAC asked the Answer Line forum why his laptop couldn't connect wirelessly to his router.

Network problems are the thorniest to resolve. They've been known to reduce my vocabulary to curses so strong they'd embarrass Quentin Tarantino.

Slik asked the Answer Line forum how to save an entire web site offline.

Saving just a page, even with images, is easy. (I'll get to saving a whole site in a moment.) In Firefox, for example, you select File**Save Page As. In the ‘Save as type' field, select Web Page, complete, then save the file. Firefox will save the page as an HTML file, but will also save all the supporting files in a local folder.

Beerbrain asked the Answer Line forum about a mouse cursor that automatically moves to the Yes button when a dialog box opens.

Normally, opening a dialog box does nothing to the mouse cursor. You have to drag the mouse manually to the box.

Alvin Hurd asked if he can restore a Vista backup in XP. I answer both his question and the reverse one: Can one restore an XP backup in Vista?

I've never been a fan of Windows' built-in backup programs. They always come with one or another essential flaw that makes them almost useless--like Vista backup's inability to back up or skip particular folders. And they've often used proprietary archive formats that aren't supported by older--or even newer--versions of Windows.