Issue 127 - March 14, 2001

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
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Welcome to the 127th 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. Recommend PCIN in March and win a Snappy! 4.0. The more you recommend PCIN, the more chances you have to win. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

Not much to tell you about this week. Wait a minute... Yes there is! I am happy to announce that Lisa is pregnant with our first child. We've been married just under 4 years now. She is 3 months along and is due September 18. I tried to get her to type a few words here to you all, but she's too shy.

Don't forget to recommend PCIN in March. The prize is a Snappy! 4.0. This is a device that will let you capture video on your computer. If you don't have a graphics card that has TV or other video in, then this is a great device to have. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

The NEWS

Nothing to :-) About?

"You're about to witness a violation of trademark law:
:-(
That's it. Typing the cutesy emblem of unhappy e-mailers is now the equivalent of setting McDonald's golden arches over your backyard BBQ or distributing pirated copies of Gladiator and calling it your own home movie.
With U.S. trademark registration number 2,347,676, the 'sad' emoticon gets the same trademark protection as a corporate logo or other similar intellectual property."

For more info:
http://www.foxnews.com/foxlife/031301/frowny.sml

Microsoft, eBay combine bids on Net services

"Microsoft and eBay on Monday said they have linked arms to support each other's technologies, aiming to expand their Internet footprints.
As part of the new partnership, the software behemoth and the giant online auctioneer will cooperate on several fronts. eBay plans to support Microsoft's software-as-a-service plan, .Net, and other technology including the Windows 2000 server and Internet-authentication service Microsoft Passport. Microsoft, in turn, will integrate eBay's proprietary online marketplace technology into a number of its Internet properties including Carpoint.com, WebTV, small-business hub bCentral and some Web sites of its MSN Internet service."

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2694854,00.html

Napster: Ruling means no damages

Remember how the MP3.com verdict made them pay $150 million (or some huge number like that)? Well, Napster CEO Hank Barry thinks that if they follow their court ruling, they won't owe a cent.
"In a Monday afternoon conference call, Napster CEO Hank Barry found a bright spot in the company's legal predicament, even as it proceeds with court-ordered filtering designed to whittle away its most valuable music offerings. He contended that the federal appeals court's Feb. 12 ruling in the record industry's case against Napster had done the company a favor, effectively absolving the file-sharing service of any past liability for facilitating copyright infringement."

For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/543694.asp

MOBILE COMPUTING NEWS and NOTES

In Japan, the wireless phone carrier NTT DoCoMo signs up 37,000 new subscribers every day to their wireless web service, i-Mode. Of their 36 million clients, 20 million of them use i-Mode and another 12 million users are shared between two other carriers. This high wireless web penetration in Japan is attributed in part to the low penetration (25 million) of PC's using wired Internet.

Brought to you by Shawn Bremner and The Wireless Web ezine. Sign up by sending a blank email to mailto:wirelessweb-subscribe@topica.com

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 126-01

I had to reformat my PC and now the CD-Rom won't read my photo CD's. All other CD's are fine - programs, games, music. When I put a photo CD in the computer tells me that the drive is not ready or not accessible. Any ideas?

A 126-01

Leeor Geva said, "I'm guessing you used a certain 'photo' program to make the cds for you. Try using a program such as Easy CD Creator to "CLOSE" the CD."
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John Hills said, "I don't really know but in an effort to say something I would check to see if the DMA settings box is ticked in CDROM properties. If it is ticked - untick it, if it is unticked - tick it. Finally, and with reference to a problem last week, you may find you need to install the mainboard drivers on from the mainboard CD particularly if you have a VIA chipset.
During the install, change the DMA checkbox to enable rather than the default disable. Also in SYSTEM properties, Performance, check to ensure that the CD drive is not running in DOS compatibility mode. If it is, you may be installing a DOS CDROM driver in your start up files which needs to be removed."
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dtopp said, "If you have an uninstaller program, uninstall all the software with regard to your Cd Rom drive. If you do not have an uninstaller program, go into Windows Control Panel, then to devices, and uninstall the Cd Rom. Then reboot your machine, and reinstall your device drivers. This should take care of the problem. If your machine still does not see the CD Rom, check your setup program to see if it is listed, then shutdown your machine. Take the cover off and remove the power cable from the CD Rom. Reboot your machine, wait until the desktop shows, and the cursor is blinking at you. Shutdown your machine, reconnect the power cable, and see if Windows sees your CD Rom."
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Chuck said, "You need to reinstall the photo-cd software (probably Kodak)."
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** said, "Normally to view the CD I would assume that you just have to re-install the software that you previously used to read the CD. If you have done this then check to ensure you're cd is clean would be the best bet."

Q 126-02

Is adding RAM to your computer as easy as going out and buying the hardware? And after you buy it, does your system automatically recognize the change? Anything I should look out for?

A 126-02

Leeor Geva said, "Checkout http://www.crucial.com/ Follow the instructions and you will find out exactly what RAM chip you need. It's a great service, especially because different motherboards require different RAM chips. Once you get the price, you may do some comparison-shopping in your local computer store. "Does your system automatically recognize the change?" Yes... it's that easy."
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John Hills said, "In theory, you are right. In practice - a different story. If you can afford it, it is best to ditch your existing memory entirely and purchase a completely new set, which should then be perfectly matched. Stick it in any of the slots and the PC will find it automatically when you boot up. You really do need to make sure the memory modules are pressed really hard into their slots and if you get a series of peeps then they are not seated correctly or one or more of the modules is duff. Memory only fits in one way, so check out the notches amongst the contact plates and compare them with the slots. If you have the motherboard\mainboard manual, check of whether the mainboard is 66, 100, or 133mhz compatible and buy the appropriate memory for that. I.e. PC66, PC100 or PC133 memory modules. This does not apply if your computer was left by the Romans. In this case, take your old memory with you to the shop for someone there to check it out."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kim Kristensen said, "Adding RAM is easy; however, I have had two experiences where I started getting error messages right after adding RAM. The error messages were different, but the point is that adding RAM can cause problems. In my case, both times the RAM was defective. I had installed some other new hardware along with the new RAM and everything pointed to the new hardware as the source of my problems. When I removed the new RAM, the problems went away. When I installed a higher quality, name brand RAM (like Kingston) the problems went away."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George said, "Yes, it is pretty straight forward to install the RAM card yourself. Just ensure you make sure you 'earth yourself' so static electricity does not damage your pc. Leaving the plug in, making sure the switch is tuned off helps too.
Basically, you locate the slot where the card fits, clip it in and off you go. The computer 'sees' the new hardware, so configuring isn't needed, hopefully!"
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Chuck said, "Adding RAM is just that simple. Some older systems will notice the change in total memory and jump into the BIOS settings on the first reboot. All you have to do is exit the BIOS settings in whatever way will save the new memory amount and you are home free. One word of caution, make sure the new memory is the same speed (measured in ms) as the new memory. I spent many hours troubleshooting a computer where the user added 64mb of 60ns memory to an existing 16mb stick of 70 ns memory. On boot the bios recognized the total memory installed, but win95 would not load, nor would it allow reinstall of win95."
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Chris said, "With RAM, you can more or less just buy it an pop it in, as long as you know what type of RAM you need. The best way to check this (assuming you can't find anything in your systems manual), is to check out http://www.crucial.com/ They sell memory, but they have a memory configurator that will tell you what RAM you need based on what model of PC you have. Once you know this you can shop around for the best deal."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "Once you have the RAM in your hot little hands and have the case off, with the computer also off but plugged in...
1) Touch metal part of case, to earth yourself
2) Take power cord from wall out of case, just to be sure
3) Insert ram, make sure clips have been pushed away from each other.
4) Don't worry the ram will only go in one way, line up the dents in the RAM with the bumps on the RAM slots (PS the RAM goes gold-pins side into the slots)
5) Push RAM down till clips click in place (some slips may not actually click)
6) Re-attach power cord and power machine up
7) Watch your extra ram appear on the bios screen :)
8) PS your machine automatically uses the new RAM
9) Have fun with extra speed"
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George Kevorkian said, "Adding the RAM is easy, the most difficult part is recognizing what kind of ram to add. You motherboard manual should indicate what ram is acceptable. If all else fails, remove one of the ram chips you now have, keeping it in foil to keep from ruining it. Take it with you to the store where you want to buy the new chip & tell them to match it, or give you a larger chip of the same size."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon said, "Adding ram depends on your type of computer. If it is branded like Compaq you may need special Compaq memory. Then you may have SIMMs or DIMMs. If it is SIMMs they need to be in pairs usually and may not be compatible with your old ones. Same with DIMMs, if you have single sided memory it may be incompatible with dual sided. Check out what speed your memory is and what brand as it is best to get as good a match as possible."

New Questions

Q 127-01

I use Internet Explorer. How do you get all of the text on a single page when printing Internet material? I often have text truncated along the right hand margin. I've tried adjusting the page settings to like 0 margins but still can't get it all on the page. Is there an Internet setting that says "fit all to page" or something?

Q 127-02

When viewing a folder in Windows Explorer as a Web Page, I used to be able to view previews/thumbnails of BMP, GIF, and JPG files. Now JPG files don't show at all. Is there any way to get this back to the way it was?

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

**The real update date**
The Web site says it's updated daily, but somehow you don't believe the page you're seeing is all that new. How to find the truth?
In the address bar where you usually enter the Web site URL, type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) without spaces and hit Enter.
A window will pop up, telling you the time and date when the page was last revised.

Graham's Comment:
This is a great tip that I have started using quite regularly. There is only 1 drawback. Pages that are dynamically created or that are parsed at load time will show up as the current date. Files with ASP and SHTML are like this, as are others.

Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct

Clearing the Run entries in the Start Menu

Subscribe Joe Crowe sent this in:
"In PCIN issue 126 under Cheap Trick of the Week **No Where Left To Run** on how to remove the entries in Run in the Start menu it mentions to open up the registry to remove the entries in Run MRU. There is a safer and easier way to do this if Tweak UI is installed. Go to Control Panel and click on Tweak UI and then click on the Paranoia tab. In the list of options that appears if you check Clear Run History At Logon, every time the computer is booted the entries will be removed automatically or can be cleared right away by clicking on Clear Selected Items Now. There are other options in there also that when checked will clear entries in Document History, Find Files History, Internet Explorer History, Network Connection History, Telnet History, Last User and Find Computer History. At boot up these entries will be removed automatically if checked. I believe that this is safer than editing the registry especially for less experienced users. Tweak UI works with Windows 95, 95b, 98 and 98se but I don't know about Windows ME or 2000. Tweak UI comes with Windows 98. For Windows 95 users Tweak UI can be downloaded from the Microsoft site or just about any site that offers software downloads. Windows 95 users need Tweak UI version 4.1a. Tweak UI also has other options for fine-tuning Windows."

Microsoft's Tip Pages

I subscribe to a couple of Microsoft newsletters. Most of the time I just skim through them and delete them. Occasionally there is something that I find useful, or that I think you would find useful. Here are a couple that fit into that last category:
Tips for Working Efficently (that is how MS spelled it)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsme/using/workingefficiently/tips/default.asp
The Top 10 Office 2000 Tips & Tricks
http://www.microsoft.com/office/using/tipstricks/tip1.htm

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.

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Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net

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