Looking for songs in all the wrong places

Q I have somehow developed numerous duplicate and triplicate music files on my hard drive and in my iTunes library. I realized that I had to get rid of them from both places, and experimented with first eliminating duplicate songs from the hard drive. But the song titles remained in iTunes and I was left with the huge project of determining which titles to delete from iTunes.

Is there an easy way to eliminate song files from both the iTunes library and the hard drive?

KENNETH ANDERSEN,

MINNETONKA

A You can delete duplicate songs in both places at once by working through iTunes, but it's a two-step process.

First, in iTunes, go to File and select "display duplicates." Right-click the duplicate song file. From the menu, select "show in Windows Explorer." Delete the file in Windows Explorer, and close Explorer. The song is now gone from your computer.

In iTunes, right-click the duplicate song and select "delete." The song is now gone from iTunes.

Q When I turn on my PC, I get a pop-up called "Photo Gallery" that says, "The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM or other removable disc that is not available." When I hit "cancel," I get "Error 1706 No Valid Source ... The Windows installer cannot continue." I hit cancel until the pop-ups disappear. Any ideas?

SCOTT OLSON, MINNEAPOLIS

A If you want the Photo Gallery program (for viewing or editing photos or movies), download the updated free version called Windows Live Photo Gallery at tinyurl.com/28d4pc8.

If you just want to stop the pop-up, go to "start," choose "run," type "msconfig" and click "OK." On the menu, click the "startup" tab and look through the list of programs for Photo Gallery. Uncheck the box in front of it and click OK.

If these fixes don't work, try a more complicated approach that involves deleting printer files. Find it at tinyurl.com/259lam3.

GAIL WEST, MIAMI

A You can use a disk eraser program that will overwrite the data on your hard disk. That will prevent the original information from being recovered by a future owner of your PC. You can find several of these programs, many of them offering a free trial period, at tinyurl.com/27h9v6x.