Dear George: "I think I have picked up a virus. I opened an e-mail that said, 'Read Me.' Now my computer is behaving very strangely. I have Norton Antivirus 2001 software on my computer. Why didn't it pick up this virus if that is what happened?" -- Confused

Dear Confused: It appears that you have been infected with the "W32.Nimda.A@mm" mass-mailing worm. There are many reasons why Norton Antivirus may not have detected it. More information regarding this worm is available from Norton by pressing here. Make sure your anti-virus definition files are current. Schedule automatic updates each week. Also, schedule weekly anti-virus scans of all your files.

Open your Norton Antivirus, and then select "Options" at the top of the window. Make sure that all the "recommended" boxes are checked except for those under "File types to scan" under Auto-Protect and Manual Scans. Under those two categories, I recommend checking "All files." It takes a bit longer, but it is worth it. Under the "E-mail Protection" section, if more than one e-mail account is displayed, make sure that the box beside it is checked.

Dear George: "Help! Our total office area is approximately 3,000 square feet. We'd like to install a wireless network system. It should be able to support 10-16 users. Our current wired network for four users is Winproxy. The wire drops for expansion would be cost prohibitive. Our facility is an old house built in the 1930's. Please give me some advise for a small real estate office." -- Unwired

Dear Unwired: Check out http://www.wirelessnetworksonline.com.

Select the "Wireless Network" hyperlink. You can obtain additional information regarding wireless networking by entering "Wireless Network" as a search term in your favorite search utility. While wireless is a good solution to enable multiple users to access the Internet as well as a server in a less costly manner than hard wiring, it does have some limitations. The more you know about them the better the decision you can make.

Dear George: "I attended your Forecast 2002 presentation on 9/15 at the Texas/Louisiana annual meeting in Dallas, Texas. The segment concerning the Kyocera SmartPhone impressed me. You stated that you could send and receive e-mail through that phone. Will it handle more than one e-mail account?" -- Broker

Dear Broker: I manage seven different e-mail accounts on the Kyocera phone I use. The built-in Palm on my phone uses Eudora as the e-mail client. Select the Eudora icon. Next, select the highlighted "Eudora" in the upper left of the next screen. Select "Options" at the top of the next screen displayed. The first selection in the drop-down screen is "New Account." A "step-by-step" new account wizard is the first selection displayed. Alternatively, the second selection takes you to an advanced screen to configure the e-mail account(s) you wish to add.

Dear George: "I delivered a Power Point presentation last month to a local Rotary group. At least, I tried to deliver the Power Point presentation. The projector they provided worked fine during an earlier presentation. When I connected to it, however, I could not get my notebook to display through the projector. The message that was displayed had something to do with the projector not being able to "synchronize." Can you tell me what happened?" -- Out of sync

Dear Out of sync: Most likely the projector was set to display a laptop screen resolution of 800X600 pixels. My guess is that your laptop was set to display at 1024X768 pixels. Before hooking up to the projector, you will want to change your display settings to 800X600. More than likely you will need to reboot your computer with the projector connected anyway, so the display change should be performed before the reboot.

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George Stephens welcomes tech questions for possible use in this column. Send your questions to George via e-mail. Because of the volume of mail received, questions cannot be answered individually.

Published: September 21, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

George C. Stephens, CRB is the Broker of deRaat Stephens, Inc. dba ERA Stephens Properties and the Director of Compliance for eRealty, Inc. Stephens served as 1998 Chairman of the 13,000+ member Houston Association of REALTORS® and is the Vice Chairman of HAR’s wholly owned subsidiary, e-Har, Inc. He is the 2001 Secretary/Treasurer of the 50,000+ member Texas Association of REALTORS® and TAR’s 2002 Chairman-Elect. Stephens holds a Texas Real Estate Broker license as well as a Texas Mortgage Broker License.