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Issue 120 - January 24, 2001
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2000
==== 1407 Subscribers in 49 Countries ====
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Welcome to the 120th 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 January and win a copy of the book "The
Unauthorized Guide to Windows ME" by Paul McFedries.
The more you recommend PCIN the more chance you have to win.
Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
I've received a few responses regarding the summer PCIN get
together, but I am still looking for more. If you live close
enough to come to a summer BBQ or something like that, then
please email me to let me know that you are interested. For
those people interested, I'd also like to hear what you'd
be interested in doing/discussing/seeing while hear. Email
me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Lisa and I got our house on Friday and have been working
non-stop to try and get everything moved and setup. Everything
has gone smoothly; just a lot of work. Thanks to everyone
who has wished us well.
I will be moving my computer on Friday, so the computer where
the Niagara Falls wallpaper is on will have a new IP address,
so it may take a few days to get all of the DNS records updated.
If you try to access the pictures over the next week and it
isn't available, try again later.
Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN in the month of January
and have a chance to win a copy of the book "The Unauthorized
Guide to Windows ME" by Paul McFedries. Recommend PCIN
now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Running out of IP Addresses
Whenever you are on the Internet, you have been assigned
an IP address. This is a necessity. Any computer that uses
the Internet actually becomes part of the Internet, and
you must have an IP (Internet Protocol) address in order
to do this. The problem is, this protocol (version 4) has
been around for 20 years, and 20 years ago no one could
have dreamed that we'd have so many devices that access
the Internet. The current protocol supports 4 billion addresses,
and it is projected that by 2005 the numbers will run out.
Since the early 90s, various organizations have been making
proposals on how to fix this problem. The probable answer
is version 6 of this protocol. It will allow for 340,232,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
IP addresses (340 duodecillion, or 34 trillion trillion
trillion, or 3.4 x 10 to the power of 38). This is all pretty
technical, but when (or if) it happens, it could affect
all of us (since we all use IP addresses).
Spreading the Word
From the February 2001 issue of M-Business Magazine, pg
11:
"All over the media these days is the idea of using
church steeples as cell phone antennas. Makes sense: There's
at least one house of God in residential neighborhoods throughout
Europe and North America, and lots of them are pointy on
top.
The Church of England has written all of its parishes, asking
them to consider concealing antennas in their belfries -
for which the churches can expect $7,000 or more per year,
according to London's Guardian newspaper.
However, uptake elsewhere is proving a bit tricky. A year
ago, a church in San Francisco withdrew plans for cell antennas
and its steeple (although other San Francisco Bay Area churches
have, in true Silicon Valley style, welcomed antennas for
cash). And cell phone protestors in Germany have sued local
churches for hosting antennas.
If the church-tower trend does manage to catch on, cash-strapped
local churches might have an easy source of income. If it
fails, well, maybe it just wasn't meant to be.
by Dan Leide"
For more info:
http://www.ipv6.org/
Mafiaboy Pleads Guilty
"The 16-year-old Canadian hacker known only as Mafiaboy
yesterday coughed to bringing down 50 big-name Web sites.
The servers hosting Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and many other high-profile
sites were sent crashing early last year through massive
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.
By April, the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police had tracked the attacker down to
Quebec. The teenager goes by the hacker alias Mafiaboy.
Under Canadian Law his real name cannot be made public.
He was arrested on 15 April 2000, charged four days later
then released on bail.
Yesterday, in a Montreal courtroom, Mafiaboy pleaded guilty
to 50 counts of 'mischief to data'. Two counts, against
CNN.com, were cited in last year's bail-setting trail. Sixty-six
further counts were added to the list at a court hearing
last August. However, ten of them, against a single site,
@Law, were later dropped.
Mafiaboy is expected to be sentenced on 17 April. He faces
up to two years in jail."
For more info:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16211.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 119-01
I have some files on a CDRW that I wish to transfer to
my hard drive. When I try to do so, I get a message that
reads "unable to copy files. The device does not
recognize the command"
I am using a Yamaha CRW 6416SZ SCSI 2 cd writer with and
Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI card.
I have done this exact type of file transfer before with
no problems.
I took the disc to a friend's house and put it in his
cd-rom and had no trouble copying the files at all. I
have updated the CDRW driver, but not the SCSI card driver
or the BIOS (not that brave yet).
A 119-01
Chaz said, "It is obvious, from your own words,
that before your CDRW driver update, all worked fine.
And added to this you mentioned you didn't update the
SCSI card driver that controls the CDRW. My personal first
attempt would be to uninstall the new driver, try again
and see if it works normally again. If so, your new driver
is the problem. This does not mean it is a bad driver.
It just means that the new driver is doing its intended
purpose but, something else (maybe old??) no longer can
communicate with the new data. My next option would be
to finish the full process of driver updates - do the
SCSI card. It is like making something old to be new and
still leaving something else (vital to the process) old
behind to function, beyond its ability, as if it were
new. Above all, if available, read the README file or
other text files that come with the drivers. These will
specify known incompatibilities of model/make and/or drivers
and recommended solutions. Some issues require an "order"
in which to install drivers (first to last).
The problem you described is not uncommon among certain
make/model CDRom and CDRW drives which use Adaptec (and
some others) SCSI instead of IDE/EIDE controlling. I have
a Mitsumi that had done exactly what you described. It
now works great."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "Many things could cause this but
you need to establish whether you can still write to this
device. If you have a CDROM as well, does copying it work
from there? If you cannot write or read, then it could
be the heads need cleaning, or failing that, try uninstalling
the device and reinstalling it. It may also be simply
broken. Sorry, not the most useful answer."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Needleman said, "Is it possible that Adaptec
has the cd-rw locked?
It appears to me you may want to go into the Adaptec web
site and download updates for that program.
Updating the Bios seems rather extreme.
Try reading the cd-rw through windows explorer. From there
you should be able to "copy" files, etc. to
any drive."
Q 119-02
How often should I run defrag?
A 119-02)
Chaz said, "Not knowing the amount of time you spend
on your computer, your frequency of downloads, deletes,
installs/uninstalls, word-processing, databasing, etc.
I generally suggest a minimum of once a week - pick a
day you use it less or not at all. You can manually set
it to be done or have it automated according to any date
and frequency of operation. This usually keeps fragmented
percentages down very low (8-percent, give or take a couple
for example). The "hardly ever used" computer
could go once a month. If you run a business use it for
servicing of any kind, etc, these are issues of great
importance and could keep you making money or else costing
you majorly. In a critical case as this, I defrag mine
any chance I get before Shut Down.
Lastly, I highly recommend backing a Registry backup before
you defrag. Reason is, you will make a known good Registry
backup for a Rescue return should something happen after
your defrag. It DOES happen. Power surge, spikes, power
flickers, or even the Optimization of the drive itself,
can play havoc and lock up your system. Should you ever
experience this (hopefully you never will), you will have
two possible ways to restore your Registry backup."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken Berry said, "It depends on what you do on your
computer and how much you use it. Clean all the Internet
cache, temp folders, un-needed files, dump trash, run
scandisk, restart the computer then defrag. Win 98 defrag
is a little better than it's predecessors in that it looks
at what programs run most often and can move those files
to the front of the drive for quicker access.
Once a week is a good practice but if you want things
really neat and tidy and your computer is routinely on
when you're asleep, defrag every night as a scheduled
task.
Don't forget to clean un-needed files beforehand though.
If you don't you'll create big "holes" in your
hard drive when these files are removed."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "If you are using Win, ME, or 2000,
it isn't necessary as most files are stored reasonably
neatly and not scattered so widely with earlier operating
systems. If you are running out of hard disk space then
defragging should help by giving windows swap file a reasonable
free space to operate."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "run defrag every day and watch
the nice patterns...not. Depending on what you do and
how much data you process from once a week to once a month.
If your machine is struggling and opening a word document
puts a strain on the hard drive then defrag otherwise
don't worry much about it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chuck said, "In my experience defrag does not seem
to improve things if run when the hard drive is less than
5% fragmented. But, for those who want to keep their Hard
Drive squeaky clean and at maximum efficiency, I recommend
defragging whenever the hard drive is 'cleaned'. By cleaning
I mean deleting .tmp files, emptying Cache or Temporary
Internet Files, and uninstalling unused or undesired software.
As a minimum, once a month should keep your hard drive
tweaked."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Needleman said, "I recommend you defrag based
on your usage.
That is, if you use your computer on a daily basis, using
several programs, you may want to set the "task scheduler"
to do an auto defrag once a week while you are sleeping.
Your system will open apps faster, etc."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VJ said, "Only run defrag every 6-8 months, and please
run it over overnight, because when you run defrag, you
CANNOT use the computer at all!"
New Questions
Q 120-01
I checked the "Send E-Mail using plain text only"
box in two addresses in my address book but if I click
on a link to either of them in an e-mail then it still
sends HTML messages. I have to manually change it for
each message. Is there a way to change this? (Using Outlook
Express 5)
Q 120-02
I have recently acquired a pc and wish to dump everything
on it and fdisk it and reload win 98 on, but it does not
boot the 'A' drive first. And I can't get in to the bios
as it is password protected to change the bootable drive,
is there a command I can enter to get it to read the start
up disk, when I need to use the start up disk. Any suggestions?
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
Accessing Your CD-ROM from a Boot Disk
Subscriber Jon sent this to me. I tried it out myself and
it works quite well.
"I do hereby submit this hint/cheat/crack/tip or whatever
you want to call it:
Question: Have you ever reformatted your hard drive just
to find out that you can't get your CD-ROM re-started so
you can re-load windows?
Well my friend let me tell you, this has happened to me
many times. Now here's the solution. "CODECRACKERS"
CD-ROM restarter. Just run this program and it will restart
most CD-ROMs built prior to 2001."
Although the name sounds a little ominous, it is just an
EXE file that you download. When you run it, you need a
floppy disk and it will make a bootdisk that will list dozens
of CD-ROM drives for you to choose from. You can download
this program at http://www2.driverguide.com/uploads/uploads8/9086.html
Symbols Used in Filenames
Since filenames in Windows can be up to 255 characters
long, most people are finding themselves using more symbols
in their filenames than they did in DOS days. A lot of the
symbols could have been used in DOS, but with only 8 character
filenames, most people didn't bother. Below are symbols
that can be used in either DOS or Windows:
$ Dollar sign
% Percent sign
' Apostrophe or closing single quotation mark
` Opening single quotation mark
- Hyphen
@ At sign
{ Left brace
} Right brace
~ Tilde
! Exclamation point
# Number sign
( Left parenthesis
) Right parenthesis
& Ampersand
_ Underscore
^ Caret
Below are symbols that can be used in Windows only:
Space
+ Plus sign
, Comma
; Semicolon
= Equal sign
[ Opening bracket
] Closing bracket
Delete Files Immediately
Well, I may have shared this tip before, but it's a good
one.
One of the very nice features of Windows is that when you
delete a file, it always goes to the Recycle Bin first.
That way, when you realize that you have erased something
you need, you can restore it.
You can, however, delete files without having them first
go to the Recycle Bin. Before you delete, hold down the
Shift key and then delete the file. Instead of being asked
"Are you sure you want to send [filename] to the Recycle
Bin?" you will be asked "Are you sure you want
to delete [filename]?" If you agree to delete the file,
it is gone. There are always ways to get files back, but
it is very difficult. Only use this tip when deleting files
that you are sure you won't need anymore.
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
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All
rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in hole, or in part, as
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