Q. I often get the error “A Runtime Error has occurred, do you wish to Debug? Yes or No” while browsing the Internet. Why, and does it matter?

A. I’m going to assume that you’re using Internet Explorer since this error is most common with that browser. Try upgrading to the latest version it, or try another browser like Firefox or Chrome at least to test and see if you get the same message. You can turn off this script debugging in Internet Explorer; for more information on this visit here. Having said that, this message is not normally important, and generally signifies a silly coding error by the person who made the page, and declining the invitation to debug should enable you to carry on browsing.

Q. When I try to log into Windows, I receive a message telling me that my profile cannot be located. What is it, and how can I get it back?

A. Your profile is everything that Windows associates with your individual (user or account) login. This covers everything from your preferences, desktop background, program settings and printer connections to all of your data stored in your My Documents, so it is important to recover your profile. (You will still see a My Documents area even without your profile, because Windows will have created a generic account, but it won't have your data in it.) It may be that your profile has been corrupted. Restoring to an earlier version of your system may solve this. Restart the PC in Safe Mode by rebooting and holding down the F8 key until you see the Windows logo. Assuming that your PC has been set to save System Restore points periodically - the default setting -you can now roll back Windows (your data will be untouched) to an earlier state. If you can remember when this problem started, go back to a date before this. You will find these restore points via System Restore in the Control Panel, or by clicking the Start button and typing "system restore" into the search box. If that doesn't work, Microsoft offers a number of suggestions for more advanced users to have a go at - you might want to enlist the help of a more technical friend - at http://www.tinyurl.com/36r8du

Q. My PC keeps showing the message Virtual memory minimum too low, followed usually by Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. What can I do about this?

A. There are three possible reasons why you are seeing these messages. Firstly, your PC's desktop may be too busy. Strange as it may sound, Windows finds it hard to handle a lot of items stored on the desktop, so move as many as you can into proper folders either in the Start menu or on the hard disk. Secondly, you may be running out of hard disk space. See how full your hard disk is, and if you can delete or archive anything from it. Thirdly, running too many programs at the same time can cause these messages, over-taxing the PC's system resources. Try running fewer programs at one time by closing them, rather than minimising them to the Taskbar. Finally, you could consider adding more RAM. Download the System Scanner from http://www.crucial.com/uk to see if this possible and how much it would cost. Or, of course, it may simply be time to buy a new PC!

Q. My PC crashed recently, and now Word has a problem. When I start it, I receive the error message “Word cannot open this document template”. How do I get things back to normal?

A. I suspect that the crash corrupted one of the files that Word needs to create or open documents. The corrupted file is probably in Word's Startup folder. To find it, close Word and navigate to the Program Files folder on your computer. Open the Microsoft Office folder, then the one called Office (followed by the version number of the Word that you have installed: 10, 11, 12, etc.), and then open the Startup folder. You will see some files that end .dot. Move them out of the folder, but do not delete them at this point. Now restart Word, and hopefully the problem will have been fixed. If it has, you will find that Word has reverted to its default document and font settings. If that is a nuisance, then move the .dot files back into the Startup folder one at a time, restarting Word after each one, to identify the corrupt one(s) which will have to be deleted. If none of this has worked, then uninstall Word, and then reinstall it, but you will need a copy of Microsoft Office to do this, of course.

Q. My Windows laptop keeps showing a message saying “the Device Manager has stopped working”, although the computer seems to function normally, albeit perhaps more slowly, until I restart it. What does the message mean?

A. I suspect that you have some form of video-on-demand software running on your computer, probably an old version of the BBC's iPlayer, or an equivalent such as Sky Go or 4oD. These services used to use third-party software called Kontiki to download the content, and I suspect that it is still active. The latest version of iPlayer, and most other video-on-demand services, no longer use Kontiki. To resolve your problem, you need to uninstall Kontiki, which you can do with a free program called KClean from http://www.tinyurl.com/c9nqyrk. The instructions for its use are at http://www.tinyurl.com/6wju4h6.