Q: I've got an Asif PU motherboard with a P-III 600 chip and 286MB of RAM. It crashes all of the time. I boot, and it crashes. I try to type text, and it crashes. I send e-mail, and it…--E. Fitzgerald, Doctor, MD

A: Forget the motherboard. Get a whole computer.

Q: Why does it take so long for the technical support people to answer the phone? And once I'm talking to a human being, why do they keep putting me on hold?--P. Simon, Callme, AL

A: Technical support technicians are a special breed of individuals, hired for their extensive computer illiteracy and their almost total lack of short-term memory. When you call and are put on hold, chances are that the support staff is in special training on how the Shift key affects typing the letter K. When you are placed on hold, it is because the technician has forgotten how to use the phone.

Q: I use a scanner quite a bit. But every so often, I'll try to scan a document or photo, and I get an error message saying, "Access is denied." It goes on to say something about the document being full or write-protected or some such. What's going on?--B. Holiday, Justsay, MO

A: Clearly, you're trying to scan a write-protected piece of paper, something that a scanner will not allow you to do. Here's why: A scanner starts its work by filling in all of the white space on the sheet of paper with a special device called a number 2 pencil. Once the filling-in background (or FIB) stage is complete, the scanner runs an eraser over the page to remove the markings before actually scanning the document. Since your paper is write-protected, your scanner is not able to complete the all-important FIB stage.

The solution is to remove the page's write-protection. As we all know, you remove a floppy disk's write-protection by setting the little doohickey. Since pieces of paper rarely come with doohickeys, you need a more direct approach, such as crumpling the paper into a little ball, flattening it out again, then ironing it as you would to a cotton shirt. But be aware: Paper burns easier than cotton, so take the precaution of soaking it in water before ironing.

Q: I recently bought a new 20MB hard drive for my 386 (the 40MB drive that came with the machine was getting a little tight). Windows doesn't recognize the drive. I called the vendor (long-distance), and after three hours on hold was told that the company only supports products that work. What can I do?--B. Goodman, Hopeyournot, IL

A: Violent retribution comes to mind, but since the vendor is far enough away to be a long-distance phone call, that's probably not practical. You're better off upgrading the rest of your computer to bring it up to date with your hard drive. But be warned: A modern computer will mean modern software, which takes up a lot of hard drive space, so you may want to upgrade the hard drive, as well. This may force you to buy a new computer.

Q: When I sign off of America OnHold, my modem doesn't actually hang up. The only way I can get my phone line back is to shut down my computer completely. What can I do?--C. Calloway, Itsallabout, ME

A: Try shutting down your computer completely. Actually, fixing the problem may be more complicated. According to my AOH technical contact, the problem is with your modem, your phone line, or what you had for breakfast. The problem could not possibly be with AOH, since it's official company policy that there is no record of this particular problem ever having occurred before.

Q: I've password-protected a portion of my hard drive containing sensitive information. Unfortunately, I had a few too many drinks on the night I set up the password, and now I don't remember it. What should I do?--B. Crosby, Uh, OH

A: Let that be a lesson to you: Don't drink and use disk drives.

Q: I need to buy a new computer, but I want to continue using Windows 95--an OS that is no longer bundled with new computers. What should I do?--L. Armstrong, Caniseeyour, ID

A: Buy a new computer, format the hard drive, install Windows 95 from scratch, then complain to the vendor that your system arrived with an out-of-date OS. Since the vendor will not help you with anything, you'll get to keep the Windows 95 computer.

Q: I have, in the past, written some not-very-flattering things about Bill Gates in private e-mails to friends. Within 24 hours of doing this, Windows always crashes. Is Gates reading my e-mail?--F. Astaire, Aye, OK

A: Bill Gates is far too busy to waste time reading your e-mail--he has a staff for that sort of job. Even so, it's unlikely that anyone on the staff is intentionally crashing your system because of what you say. The fact of the matter is that Gates doesn't need to track who's saying nasty things about him-he can safely presume that everyone is. For that reason, he has built Windows to be, in and of itself, retaliation against the entire world.

Having trouble with your computer? Send a question to Ask Dr. Deeram and you'll really be confused. Any similarity between Dr. Deeram's answers and actual helpful advice is unintended and accidental.

Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector writes about the absurdities of computing life.