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Issue 94 - July 26, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 94th 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
Several things have happened over the last couple of weeks
that I have forgotten to mention:
-Lisa and I have a cat, Misty. Well, we got a brand new playmate
for her. We got a 10-week old kitten at the local Humane Society
and named her Joey. Joey looks exactly like Misty, just 10
years younger.
-I got a call from my MasterCard company recently asking me
if I had purchased a computer and had it sent to Romania.
"Uh, no, I don't think so!" I only use this MasterCard
for online purchases, so someone somehow got my information.
I am always very careful, and only purchase from "secure"
sites, so who knows what happened.
-I purchased new Labtec plat speakers and do they sound amazing!
-I purchased a new 64MB ATI Rage Fury MAXX graphics card.
32MB are for regular applications, and the other 32MB (along
with a second chip) are used in 3D rendering. I then purchased
Triple Play 2000 and WOW! With the new speakers and graphics
card, you can really start to see how the computers will be
used more and more for entertainment.
The end of the month is near so don't forget to recommend
PCIN to your friends. The July winner will receive a CD with
PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare on it. You can recommend
PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Copying DVDs
No, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. But a judge
may. "A federal judge overseeing the movie industry's
widely watched case against an Internet publisher has directed
attorneys to submit briefs outlining whether software code
can be considered a legally protected form of speech."
Defendant Eric Corley cracked the code that locks DVDs.
Eight studios are asking for an injunction to stop him from
distributing the code.
For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2607520,00.html
Hyperlinks and Entertainment
In other entertainment related news, with all of the recent
court cases, the issue of whether it is legal to link to
another site is prominent again. If you link to a document
on another site, are you breaking copyright? The recent
lawsuits against Scour.net and Napster are similar. The
entertainment companies say that they don't want to control
the technology, just their own content.
For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2342094.html?tag=st.ne.ron.lthd.ni
Voice over the Internet
If you didn't think that voice over the Internet was anything
important, think again. Microsoft has recently gotten involved
in this area, so you can be sure that it will grow in popularity
much quicker now.
Microsoft has announced that they will team with Net2Phone
to bundle the Net2Phone Internet telephone service with
the free Microsoft Messenger. Users will be able to make
PC-to-PC calls for free anywhere in the world, and in the
US and Canada, PC-to-phone calls will also be free.
For more info:
http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/00/Jul/0721/mu5.htm
Why is there an I NEED HELP section?
A few weeks ago there was a question in the I NEED HELP section
about right-clicking on a web page and printing a selection.
Joan sent this to me. When I answered her email, I couldn't
think of how to do that, but when I put this question in the
I NEED Help section, John Hills, Carlos Roman and Frellie
all gave her the answer she was looking for. Joan was very
appreciative of their time and effort.
This is why I have this part of PCIN. With 1000+ subscribers,
there is enough knowledge among all of us to solve most problems.
Feel free to send in questions, and feel free to answer any.
We all need help at times, and you can be sure that like Joan,
the person in need will be very happy to have found a solution
to the problem.
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 93-01)
When my computer goes to sleep (the screen saver comes
on) it won't wake up. I can't even ctrl, alt and delete
to bring it out. I have to manually turn it off. What
can I do to fix this?
A 93-01)
John Hills said, "Try pressing the escape key (which
probably will not work reading your problem) or try a
different screensaver to see if that is causing the problem
and ideally choose one that came with windows and not
one that came free with a magazine. If that all fails,
try disabling all power saving features in your BIOS and
incur the wrath of the ECO warriors."
Q 93-02)
When I try to shut down by going to start, shut down,
then selecting shutdown. The computer will shut down and
re-boot, all over again. It won't stay off.
A 93-02)
Carlos Roman said, "Somewhere I read that the problem
could reside in the way you have your system power management
configured. Verify that the last thing going to sleep
is your system. If you configured your power management
feature to put to sleep the system first and then monitor
and drives last it is possible you experience this problem.
Hope this solve the problem."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rita Lackie said, "The same thing happened to my
computer and we had to take it in. They were nice and
gave us a new one (a much faster one). May I ask? Was
it a eMachine 433Id? Because they said that they were
having trouble with that model. They gave us the 533 Id
instead. My brother-in-law had the same machine and the
same problem. Good Luck."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "This is caused by disabling fast
shutdown ie as in my answer last week. I believe the affects
of disabling fast shutdown will vary dependant on your
PC having an AT or ATX mainboard (motherboard)."
New Questions
Q 94-01)
Any URLs that are sent to me by ICQ will not open, when
I click on them it says cannot launch web browser, and
I noticed that when I click on the URL in ICQ that it
is greyed out. It was working fine last week and I don't
know what has happened.
Q 94-02)
I'd like to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows
from scratch. Can someone recommend a site that has step-by-step
instructions on how to do this?
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
**Most Excel-ent racing game**
This may replace the game in Excel 97 as the best Easter
egg we've ever seen.
It requires Excel 2000, Internet Explorer 5 and a recent
version of DirectX. (Direct X is probably already on your
system if you play games, but you can also download the
latest version for free from the Microsoft Web site.)
First launch Excel 2000. Under the File menu, select Save
as Web Page and change the name of the file-to-be-saved
to whatever you like, ending with .htm. Click on the Publish
button and in the new dialogue box, check off Add Interactivity.
Click on Publish again.
Close Excel and open IE5. Under File, select Open, hit the
Browse button and find the .htm file you saved from Excel.
The blank spreadsheet will appear on the screen in the browser
window. Scroll down the spreadsheet to row 2000 - this will
take some time. Then click on the number 2000 to highlight
the entire row. Press the Tab key repeatedly to move the
selected cell on the highlighted row across the screen until
the cell in the WC column is selected. (If you go too far,
hold down Shift and press Tab to go back.)
Hold down the Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys and click on the
Microsoft Office logo in the upper left corner of the spreadsheet.
In a few seconds your screen should go black and a car racing
game will materialize.
Use the Arrow keys to drive your car, hit the Spacebar to
fire at cars in front of you, press the O key to drop oil
slicks to foil the cars behind you and, when it gets dark,
press H to turn on your headlights.
Customize Hard Drive Icons
Each hard drive can have it's own icon. You need to create
an AutoRun file, similar to what CD-ROMs have. Here's how:
-Start Notepad
-Type [AUTORUN] on the first line
-In the second line, type ICON="C:\ICONS\DRIVES\CoolIcon.ico"
-Save the files as autorun.inf and save it to the root of
the drive that you want the icon to be changed for.
The file will look something like this:
[AUTORUN]
ICON="C:\ICONS\DRIVES\CoolIcon.ico"
You may have to restart your computer, but the drive will
then have the new icon.
Download Updates to Windows
Although I think generally that the WindowsUpdate site
is a great idea, I think there should be an option to download
the items on their own so you can save them for later. I
know there are ways to do this, but not from the WindowsUpdate
site.
Actually, there is. There is a WindowsUpdate site that is
specifically for companies. There is a short wizard. You
enter the operating system you are referring to and what
types of updates you need, and it will tell you what there
is. This is not as thorough as the regular WindowsUpdate
site, but all of the critical updates are there, as well
as many other updates and drivers. You can check out the
Corporate WindowsUpdate site at http://corporate.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
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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