Motive Power® FAQ
Support

How do I capture a screen to illustrate a problem?

How can I tell what version is current?

My computer is acting screwy. How do I find out what is wrong?

I have been getting wierd problems and disk error messages. How do I check them?

How do I capture a screen to illustrate a problem?

Press Alt+PrtScrn to get the active window or PrtScrn to get the whole screen. Next start up Windows Paint, then pick edit and then paste. You should see the screen you captured in Paint. Save the file. If needed, attach the file you just saved to e-mail that you send to support@computerassistance.com

How can I tell what version is current?

Click on version history at the Motive Power web site to find out what version is currently shipping. Each time you start Motive Power it shows you the version number on the sign-in screen. It is your responsibility to keep current by downloading the current update, if any, from this area. If you are an internet supported user, we will send you e-mails about important updates.

My computer is acting screwy. How do I find out what is wrong?

One of the real advances of later versions of Windows is the ability to find out what is wrong with your computer. It is important to follow this procedure right after you have a problem. Look at the system clock in the lower right to get the time of the problem. You will be looking for error messages that occurred at this precise time. Error messages come in three levels: Information, Warning, and Error. We only care about Warnings and Errors.

Here is how it works:

• Right click MyComputer
• Pick Manage
• Click on the + sign in front of Event Viewer
• Click on Application
• Look on the right panel to see if there are any Warning or Error entries that match the time of the problem. If so, click on the line and you will get a detailed error message. You need to copy the text in the description block to e-mail to support. If there are more than a few errors you might want to cut and paste these descriptions into an e-mail if you know how to do that.
• Click on Security and do the same.
• Click on System and do the same.

  Microsoft has made the later operating systems "fail soft". This means that things fail but the machine keeps running if possible. That is why you need to look in event viewer to find errors that occurred but did not cause total machine failure.

I have been getting weird problems and disk error messages. How do I check them?

You need to run a disk scan on your computer. You should run this some time when you don't need the computer. Depending on the speed of the machine and the size of the disk drive, this make take several hours if you pick the thorough option.

Here is how you run a disk scan on Windows 2000/XP.

• Click MyComputer
• Right click your C drive
• Click on Properties
• Click on tools
• Click the Check Now button for Error-checking
• Click both the automatically fix and scan for boxes on the check disk options
• Click start
• Answer Okay or Yes to the a message that tells you it can't run and asks for permission to run it on the next start up
• Restart the computer and the scandisk will run by itself. You will not be able to use the computer until this process is done.
• Make a note of the message on the final screen that tells you what happened during the scan.

Here is how to run a disk scan from Windows 95/98

• Click on Start
• Click on Programs
• Click on Accessories
• Click on System Tools
• Click on Scan disk
• Click on the boxes to fix things automatically
• Click start

The standard scan will take a few minutes and the full scan may take a few hours.