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Issue 85 - May 24, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 85th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN
consists of news, tips, thoughts, and contests. There is something
for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there
will be something for you. I am willing to discuss any computer
topic. Email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with any suggestions.
If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come
back for more!
Recommend PCIN to others and be entered in a monthly draw
(May draw is for Mijenix's PowerDesk Utilities 4 Pro) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
I am getting so behind with PCIN things. I work from 7 a.m.
to 3 p.m. on a computer all day and when I get home I feel
like taking a break. I need to figure out the best way to
do all this. If you've emailed me and I haven't replied, I
will.
The things I'm doing at work are very exciting though. I
have a lot of experiences with PCs and most software that
runs on PCs, but now I'm getting a lot of experience working
on enterprise wide software. Very interesting. Some things
are the same, but most things require a different way of looking
at things
Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN during the month of
May, as you will be eligible for a copy of PowerDesk Utilities
4 Pro. You can recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK
B-) Person wearing horn-rimmed glasses
Q:-) Graduate (that is the hat and tassle)
ADN Any Day Now
IOW In Other Words
Get the WWW. Smileys & Acronyms book for the PCIN special
price of $7.00 Cdn (around $5.00 US). You can only get this
price by visiting http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/smileys.shtml
The NEWS
Processor Serial Numbers
Last year Intel released the Pentium III chips and built
into the chips were a serial number. Privacy groups were
protesting because it was possible to track the user on
the Internet by the serial number. Its original purpose
was for IT managers to keep track of their assets.
It has now been announced that Intel will stop stamping
the serial numbers into its chips starting with the new
Willamette chip that will be released later this year.
More Corel Problems
Several months ago it was announced that Corel was going
to merge with Inprise/Borland. This was a very large merger,
and Corel, being the controlling company, was hoping to
use Borland's capital to get further into the Linux market.
Borland also had programming tools for Linux. Well, recently
Corel announced that the merger was off. There wasn't enough
money to make it go. Corel is in a lot of trouble and really
needs to merge with some company to keep alive.
For more info:
http://www.corel.com/news/2000/may/may_16_2000.htm
Hackers vs Clippy - Part II
I had several people email me about the possible security
problem with Microsoft's Office assistant. The problem is
actually with scripts that can be run through the assistant
to demonstrate features of Office. As far as I know, this
is only a problem with Office 2000, not Office 97. For those
of you who want more info, subscriber Judy Wilson emailed
me the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms00-034.asp
The End is Near?
"The judge presiding over Microsoft's antitrust trial
Wednesday said he will not conduct any more hearings regarding
the government's plan to break up Microsoft, indicating
he may be close to issuing a final ruling in the two-year
old antitrust case." The government was asked to revise
its proposal though by Saturday. Microsoft will then have
2 days to respond. The judge may be ready to rule next week
some time.
For more info:
http://cnnfn.com/2000/05/24/technology/microsoft_hearing/
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/05/24/000524hnmsdoj.xml
I NEED HELP
I offer a free help service via email. If you have a question,
you can email me and I will try my best to answer them. I
can answer about most of them, but there are things that I
have never tried or experienced so I don't have an answer.
I post those questions here and see if any of the readers
have any suggestions. I will include all reasonable suggestions
with credit to you.
These are NOT my own questions and they are NOT my answers.
I will NOT check the validity of these comments. That is up
to you. If you do try one of these tips, please let me know
how the suggestions worked out. Did they work or not? Please
send in your questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
Previous Question 1
Our secretary's e-mail in Outlook Express pops up requesting
a password - however no one recalls setting a password or
what the password is. What can we do to get rid of the phantom
password so she can send & retrieve e-mail?
Answers to Question 1
John Hills said, "Quickest way is probably to go into
File - Identities and add a new identity. Problem here is
that none of your old emails and address book will be available
although you could try importing them."
Previous Question 2
Is it okay to re-install Win 98 right over the existing
Win 98? Sometimes things don't seem to work right and I feel
that maybe if I re-installed Win 98 it might supply missing
files etc.? What harm will it do to re-install Win 98
over the Win 98 that's already installed on my computer?
Answers to Question 2
Rob said, "With Windows it is generally better
to do a clean install, in other words reformat the drive or
partition before reinstalling. This will involve reinstalling
most software as well since many programs put files in the
Windows directories and or modify them. Just back up your
important documents, address books, and so on. Perhaps download
the latest drivers for your hardware as well and save them
to removable disks. Actually, installing over top of Windows
may cause some problems if the Win install overwrites files
needed by other software."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "It can do no harm but it will only
replace corrupted or missing files. It will not affect any
errors in your settings like the registry. If you reinstall
from the dos prompt then it will re find drivers and settings
and this sounds like your best bet. But for best results,
save all your data, (My docs, application data, favourites,
etc). Make sure you have all the drivers available for your
devices before you start and reformat your hard drive and
do a fresh install. This should then run windows at its maximum
potential. I always partition a hard drive into two i.e. 90%
drive C and balance for drive D making your CDROM drive E.
Then I copy over win98 directory only on the win98 setup CD
into drive D and install from there. This means that win98
files are always available automatically when windows needs
them and the balance of drive D is useful for a place to keep
your data when you next need to trash windows again."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "You can reinstall over an existing
version of win98. You will have the option to over install
when you boot from the CDROM."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Judy said, "I was told by Microsoft that re-installing
Windows 98 over itself was fine, however the patches would
have to be re-installed. That is what I did, I also did that
once with Windows 98SE."
New Questions
Q1) With all the new devices to add to your systems
now days I was wondering how do I add more USB ports? I have
a scanner and CD writer, digital camera, and desktop camera
I hate to keep plugging and unplugging all the devices all
the time. I saw a hub that has 4 ports but I don't know if
it should be internal or external can you help?
Q2) Is it possible to adjust shared video RAM? My computer
has 8MB shared RAM.
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
Cheap Trick of the Week
**A classy new Recycle Bin**
Previously we've shown how to rename your Recycle Bin, how
to get rid of it, how to get it back and how to add commands
to its context menu. Now, in what's gotta be the last Recycle
Bin trick ever, we show how to redecorate it - that is,
how to change its appearance on your desktop.
Simple, you think. Just right-click on it, select Properties
and click on the...wait a minute, there's no option to change
the icon.
Why Microsoft would think the appearance of a garbage can
is so sacrosanct that they won't let you change it is beyond
us.
But we can outfox them by tweaking Windows' Registry to
change the icon. As usual, if you're new to Registry editing,
check out the instructions and precautions at http://www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html
In the Registry Editor, make your way to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon.
When you click on the subkey DefaultIcon, you should see
one to three string values in the right pane. At least one
will be named Default and you may have two others called
Empty and Full. Their values will be something like "C:\Windows\System\Shell32.dll,
31", or ending with "32". This means the
31st or 32nd icon in the file Shell32.dll is being used
as the Recycle Bin graphic.
To change this, double-click on the name of the string value
(such as Default) and in the Edit String dialogue box enter
the filename and number of the icon you want to use. For
instance, to get a blue triangle, you would enter C:Windows\Moricons.dll,66
and click on OK.
How did we know that the 66th icon in the Moricons.dll file
is a triangle?
On the desktop, we right-clicked on a shortcut (any shortcut),
chose Properties, clicked on the Shortcut tab and again
on the Change Icon button. In the dialogue box, we entered
C:Windows\Moricons.dll as filename and pressed Enter. A
long line of icons appeared and we cursored over 66 places
(counting the first icon as zero) until we found the triangle
design.
Of course, we already knew moricons.dll was a file of icons.
Other such files are Shell32.dll in the System folder and
Iconlib.dll which may be somewhere on your system.
When you've made the changes to your Registry for Default,
Empty and Full, close the Registry Editor. Restart your
computer or press F5 a few times to refresh your desktop.
You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself
for only $9.95 Cdn (about $7.00 US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)
Working in a DOS Window
When you are using a DOS window in Windows 9x, you can
move between a full screen and an actual window by pressing
the Alt key and Enter.
Make Virtual Drives
I just learned this the other way and I think it is quite
cool. Using the SUBST command from the run box or a DOS
box, you can substitute a drive letter in place of a directory
path. For instance, if you always looked in the
C:\windows\command
folder, you could use the command
SUBST N: C:\windows\command
And this would give you a virtual N: drive that would actually
be the contents of your c:\windows\command folder.
I haven't played with this a lot, so I don't know how the
long filenames work, and since this is a virtual drive,
you don't want to try and format it or anything like that.
DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF
PCIN is brought to you by PC Improvements. The opinions expressed
are those of the editor, Graham Wing. PC Improvements and
Graham Wing accept no responsibility for the results obtained
from trying the tips in this newsletter.
- If any of the links are too long to fit on one line,
you may have to cut and paste.
- You can only win one contest every 30 days.
- To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate
links.
- Recommend PCIN to others at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
and be entered in a monthly draw.
- There are only 2 ways to get on the subscriber list.
You have either been subscribed by filling out a subscription
form on any of the pages on my site, or you have requested
FreeHelp from me in the past.
- If you have a web site or run your own newsletter, please
email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have
on my site.
Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All
rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in hole,
or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter
is presented as is.
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