Q - My wife and I use Microsoft Outlook software and share an e-mail address but e-mails sent from our home computer always carry my name.

Can we change the name depending on who is sending them but keep a single e-mail account?

A What I think is happening is a service has been set up and you have entered your name in the settings for this service. It would be quite cumbersome to change the name every time you send an e-mail. I would suggest you use both of your names, such as Jane and Joe Smith. To change the name used on the e-mail account, select 'Services' from the 'Tools' menu, highlight the name of your e-mail provider in the list and click the 'Properties' button. Under the heading 'User Information' will be a name field - set it to what you want, then click 'OK' twice. The new name will be used the next time you send an e-mail.

Q I am thinking of buying a DVD drive for my PC. Will this let me watch DVD films?

A Although DVD drives are able to read DVD discs, that doesn't mean they can decode the films and display them on your monitor. This is down to your computer. There are two ways to show the films - either through a special card installed on your machine or through a computer programme which uses software to do the decoding. If your machine is a good one (PII 350mhz or later), your machine should have little trouble showing the films through a software decoder (a good graphics card helps a great deal). The software decoders generally are not as good as the dedicated cards but the films will certainly be watchable. Many good dealers sell drive and decoder card kits - see www.scan.co.uk Q When I turn my computer on I get the message 'Invalid Drive Specification' and the computer locks up. Can you tell me what has happened?

A If you have just installed the drive, it may be you don't have the correct drive specifications in the BIOS or you haven't partitioned and formatted the drive yet. If you have had the drive installed for some time and it was previously working correctly, then the situation could be more serious. In this case, there are two possibilities for the failure. The first and less serious is that the BIOS back-up battery needs replacing, causing your computer to 'forget' its hard disk settings when you turn it off. The second, more serious, problem is the hard disk itself has failed. If this is the case, then without the specialist help of data-recovery experts your data is probably lost and you will need to replace the drive.