Cary Dwyer's PC used to boot quickly. Not anymore.

You probably have too many autoloading programs. If a brand-new PC boots slowly, you can bet that the vendor weighted it down with too many bundled programs that load automatically with every boot. If a once-fast PC has developed that problem over time, you've probably added too many of these programs, yourself--perhaps without realizing it.

Lonerlady asked the Answer Line forum about this very insistent program that wants to download itself and protect her computer.

Belialxyn asked the Answer Line forum how to retrieve encrypted files after reinstalling Windows.

Dan Redman's problem is the opposite of Judy Port's. The captions under his XP desktop icons are black, inside ugly gray boxes. He wants to return to the default white text against the wallpaper.

After reading Remove Sensitive Data Before You Sell an Old PC , Joel Edillon wants to know if it's a good idea to physically destroy a hard drive instead of wiping it with special software.

I wouldn't advise it. Who knows what sort of toxins you'd release into your living room by throwing a hard drive into the fireplace. I've heard of people smashing them with a hammer, but I'm not sure that would stop a really determined data thief.

Bobbyd asked the Answer Line forum the best way to back up and restore Firefox bookmarks and settings.

With all its settings and add-ins, Firefox is a wonderfully configurable browser. Yet there's no obvious way to backup any of those configurations, or to move them to a new computer. There isn't even a clear way to save your bookmarks.

Larry Howlett wants to know why the e-mail he downloads on one PC doesn't show up on the other. He uses Outlook on both computers.

Accessing a standard, POP e-mail account on two separate computers is bound to cause problems. When you download the mail, your e-mail client (Outlook in Larry's case) erases the messages on the server. Thus, you end up with a different set of messages on each PC.

DJ Dan Shaughnessy asked for advice on switching from CDs to MP3s.

Don Homan's hard drive crashed the day after his laptop's warranty expired. What should he do?

Besides curse the fates and the laptop manufacturer?

Hans Spring recently replaced his old CRT with an LCD. But text is too small in the new monitor's native resolution.

While it's true that LCDs, unlike CRTs, are hard-wired to a single resolution, they can display lower resolutions by upconverting them. The result won't look as good as a monitor with a native 800x600 resolution, but it won't look bad, either.

Joseph Mott wants to know if he can put applications, specifically Microsoft Office applications like Word and Excel, onto a flash drive.

There are applications you can put on a flash drive, but they must be designed with that in mind. And the Microsoft Office applications were not designed for such portability.

An 11-year-old boy is dead, and too much dependence on GPS may be partly to blame.

No reader question, this time. I just want to step onto my soapbox for a moment.