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Issue 92 - July 12, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 1030 Subscribers in 46 Countries ====
Subscribe/Unsubscribe/View Archives at http://www.pcin.net/
Welcome to the 92nd 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.
The July prize will be PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare.
Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
This is going out first thing Wednesday morning. I am just
heading out to Comdex Canada today. I will highlight the show
in next week's PCIN.
A couple of weeks ago a subscriber suggested naming the questions
a little better; something like 92-01 (issue-question#). I
thought this was a very good idea, and it made me then think
that I should make the questions a searchable section of my
web site. If you know of a good cgi/perl script for a Q&A
type section, then please let me know.
Subscriber Jim Bateman recommended PCIN in June and won a
copy of Software602 LAN Suite Lite. Jim doesn't have a network
though, so I gave him another prize. Therefore I have an extra
copy of Lan Suite Lite. If you have a home network or are
looking into setting one up, and you want a program that will
act as a proxy and let all of the computers use one Internet
connector, then email me. And of course, don't forget to recommend
PCIN during July at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
and win a copy of PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare.
And finally, I have set up an HTML version of PCIN that I
will be trying out. It may not start for a couple of weeks,
but I'd like to start anyway. For starters, I anticipate the
content being exactly the same, just in HTML format. As this
is just starting, I'm not promoting it anywhere yet and I
expect there to be several bumps along the way. If you've
like to come along for the ride, then send an email to mailto:pcin-html-request@pcin.net
with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
The NEWS
The FBI Searches Email
"The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is using
a superfast system called Carnivore to covertly search e-mails
for messages from criminal suspects. Essentially a personal
computer stuffed with specialized software, Carnivore represents
a new twist in the federal government's fight to sustain
its snooping powers in the Internet age. But in employing
the system, which can scan millions of e-mails a second,
the FBI has upset privacy advocates and some in the computer
industry."
For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/431355.asp
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37503,00.html
The Toysmart.com Sale
Toysmart.com is one of the many companies recently to go
bankrupt. Subscriber Tony Lowell recently sent me this:
"CNN just ran a piece that TOYSMART.COM had gone bankrupt
and is offering it's Internet customer list along with it's
inventory to pay creditors. Information about birthdays,
children's names etc. can be found in the list. The site
had the usual disclaimers that the personal information
provided would only be used by the site itself. Here in
Canada this was an issue when Eaton's closed. Remember any
corporate data, including customer data, is considered an
asset, normally called good will. In a bankruptcy case this
asset can be sold by the receivers to help pay off the creditors.
The FCC is trying to figure out what to do about this privacy
issue as more and more .COM companies go under. Be very
careful what personal information you provide over the Internet."
More Online Failures
Recently Boo.com, Toysmart.com, and FreeWWWeb have all
declared bankruptcy. The high-tech stocks have fallen quickly.
People are finally coming to their senses and are demanding
profits. The Toronto Star had an article on Tuesday July
11, 2000 that highlighted the http://www.dotcomfailures.com/ and it's
creator. The site is full of links to articles on companies
going under, lawsuits, and other failed ideas.
Napster Goes to Washington
The US Senate is currently holding hearings to "examine
the future of digital music, focusing on whether there is
an upside to downloading." Representatives from Napster,
Metallica, and Gnutella as well as Hillary Rosen, head of
the Recording Industry Association of America are all scheduled
to appear before the committee.
For more info:
http://www.senate.gov/
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/digitalmusic000711.html
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 Questions
Q 91-01)
Is there a limit on the size of hard drive I can put
in my computer? It is about a year old.
A 91-01)
Rob said, "You might consult the Motherboard manufacturer
but there should not be a limit. Some older machines had
limits such as 4.0GB but that is not an issue on recent
machines. The Operating System can impose limits, but
assuming you're using Win32 or *nix it should not be an
issue either."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nick Massey said, "I think you can go up to 20 gig
with most new BIOS's but you are limited with the version
of dos you use. Dos 6.22 will only recognize 2.048 gigs
as a single partition so if you have a 10 gig drive you
will get 5 different partitions. If you can boot with
a win98 boot disk you can get 1 partition that will accommodate
the whole 10 gig and any subsequent large format drives."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Tounoussidis said, "If the parts in your computer
are only 1 year old then there should be not problem in
installing any size hard disk. But in older motherboards
hard drives over 8.4gb are not as easy to install, you
may need a drive overlay program which can normally be
obtained from your hard disk company."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "Shouldn't be a problem with the
size of hard drive on a PC only 1 year old. If there is
a problem then it is more likely to be partition size.
You may need to partition a very large drive in to one
or more partitions (drives)."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "It depends on your bios most motherboards
for the last year will probably go up to 30GB for an IDE
drive. Though you should go to your manufacturer for the
latest bios update that will probably go to 40GB. Otherwise
why not get SCSI if you can afford that way you can have
lots of drives and peripherals."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roger Michaud sent me a very thorough explanation of BIOS
limitations from a text file that comes with various Seagate
hard drive utilities. Neither of us could find this document
on the web though. If you are interested in this sort
of thing, then you can go to http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html
and download the program. You will need to register (visit
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/model_st3.html
to find a drive model #). Once the file is downloaded,
read the readme.txt file. This is a very thorough document.
Q 91-02)
My computer seems to be accessing the A: drive quite
often. I don't do a thing and I hear the floppy drive
make noise. Why is this? Do I have a virus?
A 91-01)
Rob said, "Well if you are not touching anything
then this could be a faulty drive I suppose. The system
could be looking for files in the A drive, perhaps, as
part of a virus scan. But I don't know of any virus that
would cause this by itself."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nick Massey said, "I think you have a "third
party" software installed on your pc that is causing
this to happen. Try uninstalling software till it goes
away. I know this is a pain in the butt but it might be
worth a try. Other wise you will have to re install the
OS."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Will Chatham recommended a great article from the ZDTV
site. The article at http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/answerstips/story/0,3650,2486527,00.html
goes into detail of what the problem could be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "It is more likely a virus checker
that is hunting your A drive."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lyman Spaulding said, "I am no expert, but I have
the same experience, in that A: drive will start at any
time and run for some time. I am quite sure that this
is the Norton Anti-virus program doing a routine check.
That is probably what you are experiencing."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Lowell said, "There are many possibilities depending
on both your hardware and/or software configuration. Shared
USBs, port conflicts, old software, software setups etc.
Here are a few simple tests:
-Obviously take the diskette out of the A-drive assuming
you have a hard Drive.
-If it occurs during boot up check your BIOS drive boot
startup sequence
-Check the SCHEDULER, your mail program, or any other
program that WAKES UP automatically. See where they want
to store data. MS Backup is a prime example. What's the
point of backing up from your hard drive to your hard
drive if your hard drive crashes?
-For diagnostics FORMAT a diskette, before you hear the
noise. After you here the noise, see if any files were
written to the disk then figure out what program wrote
them.
-Write protect a diskette and see if a program complains
that it can't write to the A: drive.
-Temporarily disable A: access through the BIOS or disable
the diskette driver using Windows and see if a program
complains."
New Questions
Q 92-01)
I would like to right click a selected paragraph in a
web page or email message and print just that selection.
Is there a way built-in to Windows or a utility that will
help me do this?
Q 92-02)
How can you disable the automatic shut down (I want to
see the message: It's now safe to shut down) and then
press the power off button? I don't want the system to
power down by itself.
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
**Booting into DOS**
Long before Windows 95 or 98, there was Microsoft's Disk
Operating System, MS-DOS. In fact, DOS is still on your
Windows computer. You can sample it by clicking on Start,
Programs and MS-DOS Prompt. Or you can start your computer
in DOS, by clicking on Start, Shut Down and Restart in MS-DOS
mode.
But if you really prefer DOS, you can start in it every
time you boot your computer.
Open Notepad (click on Start, Programs, Accessories and
Notepad). Select Open from the File menu and change Files
of Type to All Files (*). Then open the file msdos.sys,
which is probably in the C: root directory.
Look for a line that says BootGUI=1 and change it to BootGUI=0
(that's a zero). Save the file with this change.
The next time you start your computer, you'll be launched
into DOS instead of Windows. You can always get back into
Windows by typing exit at the prompt in DOS and pressing
Enter.
602Pro PC Suite 2000 is Free
I have reviewed 602Pro PC Suite before. This is an alternative
to Microsoft Office. At the time I reviewed it, you had
to pay $49.95 for it. Well, I received this on Thursday,
from Premysl Pech, the President of Software602:
Hi Graham
Big news is here..;-)
We released 602Pro PC SUITE 2000 and best part is that this
product is now absolutely free! (Yes, no payments, no advertisement,
no trial, no obligation to register, IT IS FREE!)
Here is press release:
http://www.software602.com/press/press40.html
And here is product info and download:
http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/index.html
Searching Microsoft Support - Part II
Last week I mentioned that you could do a search at the
Microsoft Support site for the product code. The example
I gave was that Outlook 98 articles start with OL98 and
Word 97 articles start with WD97. Subscriber Vincent Hannon
sent me the link http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q242/4/50.ASP
that lists all of the codes.
Not All of the Net is Useless
Over the past little while I have been complaining about
how boring the computer industry has been lately. Subscriber
Johnathon wanted to remind everyone that you could visit
http://www.thehungersite.com/ and http://www.therainforestsite.com/
and "click" a donation. "This is free to
you & me, the donation's are picked up by a number of
business's that cover these 'donation clicks'. Everyone
is allowed only one click per day, but if only 15% of us
actually did this daily, we could eliminate 1000's of acres
being destroyed, & 1000's of people from starving on
a daily basis."
Email-only Device
Last week a subscriber emailed me asking what a good device
for her Elderly mother to use to send email would be. I
just recommended an inexpensive computer with only a few
programs on it so there aren't many problems. The subscriber
kept looking and emailed me again saying she was going to
try MailBug. This device which can be seen at http://www.landel.com/
is a neat little thing. It is only $100 for the thing, and
only $100 for a year of access. If you or a friend are looking
for a quick easy way to access email, then this might be
worth taking a look at.
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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