Q. Whenever I try to burn data onto a CD, my PC does not recognise the blank disc. What is happening?

AR, Nottingham

A. It sounds as though the laser lens assembly in your CD burner is dirty or broken. Find out which with a lens-cleaning kit such as the Philips SVC Lens Cleaner (£9.30 from tinyurl.com/y8dzgfd). This is essentially a CD with some small brushes attached that safely clean the lens. Pop the disc into your CD drive and run through the process and you may find that the problem goes away. If it doesn’t, you’re looking at buying a new CD burner, but these are generic items nowadays that cost less than a tenner.

Q. After reinstalling Windows XP, I ended up with no sound. The Device Manager cannot even find the soundcard, though it worked fine before. What do you suggest?

PS, Buckinghamshire

A. When you reinstall a Windows operating system you usually need to reinstall any specific drivers for your machine. Drivers are small pieces of software that enable Windows to operate the hardware components that make up your PC. You will usually find all the ones you need on the CD that came with the PC (or with the soundcard, if you added that separately). If not, you can usually download and install the correct driver from the website of either your PC maker or the soundcard manufacturer. This rigmarole is the norm for Windows drivers for sound or video cards, so it pays to be prepared before installing a new operating system. I usually gather a full set for my laptop before I begin any such upgrades. Just in case.

Q. My email inbox is constantly jammed with spam. Is there a fix for this or should I just get a new email address?

PKT, via email

A. One option is, as you suggest, to switch email addresses regularly; another is to keep a spare webmail address for public use in, say, internet forums. Some webmail services such as Hotmail (hotmail.com) or GoogleMail (google.co.uk) have good spam filters, and with a bit of jiggery-pokery you can marry up desktop email software such as Outlook so it can send or receive messages via one of these webmail accounts. You can then edit emails even while offline yet still receive the benefits of, say, GoogleMail’s filters.

You can also install a spam filter such as the Spamihilator (free at spamihilator.com), which works with most desktop email software for a PC. It checks messages and removes anything it perceives to be junk mail.

Whichever route you take, I advise you to check your spam folders every so often to see whether any legitimate messages have been junked.

Email your tech queries to dontpanic@sunday-times.co.uk

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