Troubleshooting

My Text Is Chopped Off

I can't see all the text in a Notepad window. Where did it go?

You must manually turn on word wrap to get the text in a file to wrap around within the window. By default, word wrap is turned off, which can be annoying. The good news is that word wrap is now a persistent setting. After you turn it on and then close Notepad, it should be on the next time you run it. If you need to edit program code, make sure to turn it off, or your program lines will wrap, making editing and analysis of code more confusing.

If you still can't see enough text, remember that Notepad 5.1 now supports font changing for display. Change the display font from the Format menu. Choosing a monospaced font (for example, Courier) might help you line up columns. Choosing a smaller font and/or a proportional font (for example, Times) crams more text into the window.

Adding and Modifying Tab Stops

Inserting and adjusting tab stops in WordPad is a pain. Is there an easy way?

You can easily insert and adjust tabs in WordPad by clicking in the ruler area. Choose View, Ruler to turn on the ruler. Then click in the ruler area where you want to insert a tab stop. You can drag the cursor left and right to see a vertical rule to align the stop. To kill a tab stop, drag it out of the ruler area into the document.

Photos Look Terrible in Paint

I've opened a photo in Paint, and it looks terrible. Why?

You probably have your display set to too few colors. When too few colors are available to the video display, it "bands" the colors, making photos look like a topographic map. Each sharp delineation between similar colors in the picture is called a band, for obvious reasons. Normally, the colors would blend together evenly. But if the video display's driver is set to 16, or even 256 colors, this is too few to render most photographic images properly.

Typically, photos have well over 256 colors. You need thousands (or millions) of colors to display an attractive photograph. As I said earlier, to edit photos in any professional manner, you should use a program designed for photographic retouching. Still, you can cut and paste, do some pixel editing, add text and so forth, with Paint. First, however, check your display settings by right-clicking the desktop, choosing Properties, and then Settings. Make sure you have your system set to run in 16-bit color or higher.

No Sound

I'm adjusting the volume control from the system tray icon, but I just don't get any sound.

Total loss of sound can be caused by myriad goofs, settings, hardware conflicts, or program malfunctions. Troubleshooting your sound system isn't always easy as a result. One tip is in order here: If you're using a laptop computer, ask yourself whether the sound stopped working after you hibernated or suspended the system. I've noticed this problem on several laptops, and this bug might not have been worked out of Windows XP Professional for your sound chip set. Try rebooting the computer, and see whether the sound comes back to life. Another thing to look for is a manual volume control on the computer. Many laptops have a control you can turn or push, that's often found along the right- or left-hand side of the computer itself. Such settings override any settings within Windows. If you have a set of powered speakers attached to your computer, make sure they are plugged into power, and are turned on. I often forget to do this, and then wonder why I have no sound. You should consult other chapters in this book that deal with the Control Panel and the Device Manager for serious problems. If none of the above remedies work, then you might have a bad sound card, or it might need a new device driver.

Paste Command Doesn't Work

I'm sure I placed information on the Clipboard but the Paste command won't work.

The problem is that the destination document doesn't recognize the format of your Clipboard data. You may be able to work around this obstacle by first pasting the data into another application that does accept the information and then copying and pasting from this way-station app into the intended destination document. Alternatively, try saving the selected information to disk in a file format that the destination app can import.

Pasted Data Doesn't Look Right

My pasted data sometimes looks quite different in the destination document than it did in the original.

You might be able to get better results by pasting the data in another format, if the destination application allows this. Look for a command in the destination app such as Edit, Paste Special that lets you select from all the Clipboard formats the application recognizes. Try each format in turn to see which gives the best results.