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Issue 136 - May 16, 2001
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
==== 1849 Subscribers in 52 Countries ====
Subscribe/Unsubscribe/View Archives at http://www.pcin.net/
Welcome to the 136th 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 in May and have the most referrals subscribe
and you could win a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Standard.
Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
Several of you responded last week to John Hills request
for PC parts and software. I thought I'd just mention it again,
especially the last part. Subscriber John Hills is working
with Wycombe Youth Action to send computers and software to
needy countries. You may not be able to send him parts unless
you live in or close to England, but sending software is pretty
inexpensive. This software will be sent to Romania and Hungary
and can be used to help people learn English.
If you can help by donating anything, please email John at
mailto:jhills@ukf.net
Don't forget to recommend PCIN in May. You're going to love
the Recommend PCIN prize this month. I am giving away a copy
of Microsoft Office 2000 Standard. You need to visit http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
and recommend PCIN to others. At the end of the month, the
person who had the most people subscribe in May will win the
software. This is a little different than normal. It is usually
a random draw of anyone who recommended PCIN. No we need some
action. These must be new subscribers to be eligible.
The NEWS
WebMD Tallies $1 Billion Quarterly Loss, Sacks 350
"Online healthcare information services provider WebMD
Corp. reported a loss of just under $1.04 billion, or $2.91
per share, in its fiscal first quarter, an improvement on
the previous quarter.
The company on Tuesday said that the result included charges
for restructuring, the integration of acquisitions, and
the termination of a contract with Microsoft.
WebMD also said it was cutting 350 more jobs to bring total
job losses planned for this year to 1,450. These positions
will all be lost during 2001, and the company said about
1,000 staff have been sacked already."
Graham's comment: Oh My! How on earth can a company lose
$1 billion in a quarter?!!
For more info:
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/165475.html
In the Office, You Have No Secrets
"Did you know almost four out of five U.S. companies
now keep tabs on their employees on the job? Yes, your e-mail
is an open book.
Web designer Brian Ragan, 27, never sends personal e-mail
from his work account. Nor does he ever use his work computer
for any personal writing or to store personal documents.
The reason? He has no idea if his company is monitoring
him, 'but I always assume it is,' he says matter-of-factly.
Smart move. A recent survey from the American Management
Assn. (AMA) reported that a surprising 78% of major U.S.
companies now keep tabs on employees by checking their e-mail,
Internet, or telephone connections, or by videotaping them
at work. Active monitoring has skyrocketed in recent years,
up from just 35% in 1997."
For more info:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2001/nf20010510_852.htm
"Spyware" piggybacks on Napster rivals
"As online file traders stream to Napster alternatives,
many find their computers saddled with unwanted piggyback
software that tracks their online movements and feeds them
unwanted advertising.
In efforts to locate revenues from their free services,
companies that create popular programs, including BearShare,
Audio Galaxy Satellite and iMesh, are adding outside pieces
of software that have nothing to do with file trading."
For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5921593.html
Team AMD Tech Tour
Subscriber (also friend and co-worker) Chris Empey went
to an AMD trade show last week and sent me his comments:
"Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Team AMD
Tech Tour event. The event I attended was held in Toronto,
although they have or will be having events in sixteen other
cities, and started with a vendor fair with displays and
information booths set up by some of the leading hardware
producers.
A quick presentation by AMD followed focusing on the production
of their processors and the various uses for the many chips
they produce. Anyone reluctant to try AMD will probably
be shocked to learn they have most likely already used their
chips in other products, including cell phones, automobiles
and even aircraft. NVIDIA followed the introduction with
a discussion on their graphics cards and chipsets, including
their new GeForce3, using .15-micron technology with 57
million transistors, capable of 800 billion operations/second.
Seagate, FIC, DFI, ASUS were all represented, each with
excellent information about their products and their uses
and compatibilities with AMD processors. Microsoft provided
some information on Office XP licensing and AMD finished
of the show with some information on proper system building
techniques. They spent about 15 minutes speaking only about
proper cooling for AMD systems. Did you know that an AMD
Athlon processor uses between 40 and 60 watts of power,
from a heat standpoint, think of a grabbing hold of a standard
incandescent light bulb! They also talked about DDR RAM,
upcoming two processor motherboards and servers and 64-bit
processing.
All of the presentations were excellent, dinner was wonderful
and they gave away a large number of prizes, from duffle
bags to a 19" monitor, Athlon 1.3 GHz processors, motherboards,
DDR Ram and Microsoft products. I have been to several shows
before by various vendors and have never felt like I went
away with a lot of information. I was very impressed by
the Team AMD Tech Tour, it was both informative and entertaining."
I NEED HELP
I offer a free help service via email. If you have questions,
you can email me and I will try my best to answer them. I
can answer most of them myself, 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 135-01
I am just wondering how many parallel ports can a normal
desktop computer have, and possibly, how to configure
it.
(PIII 450, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD, Win98SE, Navigator 4.76)
A 135-01
cnlson said, "I believe they are only limited by
the number of open slots on motherboard and available
IRQs as they do NOT share IRQs as non-legacy hardware
can
Try http://www.lvr.com/parport.htm and http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/kheidens/ppmfaq/khppmfaq.htm
for info."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "I believe the number of physical
parallel ports you can have is governed by the number
of available slots in your PC that you can add i\o cards
in and the number of free IRQs you have left. Whether
PCI steering will allow you to share IRQs for this purpose,
I don't know. I would love to know why you ask this question
as I have a feeling that what ever you want to do, there
is a better way of doing it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "Practically speaking i think that LTP ports
can only use a certain range of addresses and IRQs (interrupts).
But i would guess at about 4 physical ports in the computer
(you can add them in with new PCI, ICA cards which have
only LPT ports, or even old ISA controller cards which
also have COM ports and more.). Don't forget that you
can also get 'switching boxes' that take one LPT input
and have 2+ outputs, and you just chose which device to
use for the moment (of course with this you can still
only use one at a time). As for configuration, there should
be jumpers on the card, which you can set; the data of
your current setup is available in your BIOS. Consult
with your motherboard, and LPT card manuals for further
details."
Q 135-02
I'm having problems with the floppy drive on my pc. It
wouldn't read or open anything, & upon having a look
inside, one of the pins had broken off, a new floppy drive
has been put in, but still the same problem. It either
won't open it because it says the disk has not been formatted,
(but they are) or it cannot read it. Although, on some
disks it will open, say a word doc. & on another (exactly
the same type of disk it won't. Also, you cannot save
on them.
(PII, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD, Win98, Navigator)
A 135-02
Chris Stoneham said, "If you used any floppy disks
in your old (damaged) drive, then you likely will not
be able to read these at all, as they drive could have
damaged them. If you are having the problem with brand
new (preferably pre-formatted) disks, then I would firstly
check all your connections inside the PC (correct cable
connections, cable correct way right (red on pin 1), and
power cable). Still having problems? Boot into DOS and
try copying a file to a new floppy there. If it still
doesn't work, take your new floppy drive back - it's busted.
If that works, but copying in Windows doesn't, try in
safe mode. If it works now, then it's another driver,
or a program in startup that's causing the problem. Try
eliminating these one by one."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
cnlson said, "1) check settings in bios and make
certain that they are setup correctly (3 1/2 or 5 1/4
360k,720k,1.44,2.88mb)
2) Floppies are generally cabled the opposite of hard
drives and CD-ROMs. The red stripe (pin1) faces away from
the power connector
3) Check if there is a jumper setting (most floppies will
NOT have this)
4) Replace cable
5) Check in dos
6) Replace floppy."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "First of all, all the pins on a
floppy drive are not used and some floppies have unused
pins missing and I suspect yours was one of these and
the pin not broken off, unless you found the pin. If you
are right, make sure that the broken pin is still not
stuck in your cable. Things that could be wrong other
than above are as follows.
Cable defective or not pushed fully home on the mainboard.
Wrong size of floppy selected in the BIOS
The protection tab on the floppy disk\s is not closed.
Try these disks in another machine to ensure they are
really formatted.
Unlikely but a defective mainboard.
Possible - a boot virus
Possible - a corrupt master boot record."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kenneth Schaefer said, "Did you replace the cable
when you replaced the floppy drive? That pin missing from
the drive might be stuck in the cable. Is so, it may have
bent the new drive as well. Also, check to ensure that
the cable in on the header of the motherboard correctly.
It is easy on some boards to either turn it around completely,
or miss a row of pins."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "You can test the drive on a friends computer
to double check if you wish, but if the floppy drive is
new (I'm guessing the warranty is about 1 yr), simply
take it back from where you bought it. If it's faulty
law requires you receive a new replacement back."
New Questions
Q 136-01
My menu bar was deleted from IE from a web site I visited.
Now whenever I open IE, I cannot access File, View, Edit,
Favorites, etc.
How can I fix this?
(PII 233, 64MB of RAM, 8 GB HD, Win98, IE5.0)
Q 136-02
Some of my friends forward email to me and they always
come as attachments. It's always the same two friends.
I will not open attachments because even though I know
they are from friends, I have still gotten viruses from
them. And I would like to see their attachments.
Other than the obvious of just deleting them, is there
some way I can receive them not as attachments, or is
it a function of what they are doing? Is there some kind
of setting they have on or off that can be changed?
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
PCIN.net UPDATE
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Some Useful Registry Tips (up to 32 tweaks now)
http://pcin.net/help/articles/registry.shtml
I'm still working to set up a good message/bulletin board
script but am not having much luck. If you have any suggestions,
email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
Cheap Trick of the Week
**Explore from anywhere**
If you're looking at files or folders in My Computer, Windows
Explorer, or almost any other folder, and then realize you
need to open a Web page, you don't need to exit the folder
and open Internet Explorer.
In any folder that offers an address bar, just type the
Web address there, click on Go (or press Enter) and you'll
go straight to the site, provided you are connected to the
Internet.
You should also find that your Internet bookmarks are available
under the Favorites menu.
Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap
Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct/
Desktop Wallpaper
I generally just keep my computer monitor "desktop"
black. I figure that with programs open, I won't see pictures
anyway. But I know that a lot of people like pictures on
their desktop, so check out http://www.macdesktops.com/ for some very
good ones. (Yes, I know it says Mac, but they are just pictures
and can be viewed on any PC).
File Extensions and Associations
I've featured several sites before which lists file extensions,
and which program opens them. Here is a short list of the
sites I know of:
ExtSearch
http://extsearch.com/
File Extensions
http://tomsmart.com/tempext.htm
Filex File Extension List
http://camalott.com/~rebma/filex.html
What Is... Every file format in the world
http://www.ace.net.nz/tech/TechFileFormat.html
File formats, standards, specifications
http://fileformat.virtualave.net/
The Programmer's File Format Collection
http://www.wotsit.org/
And also, if you visit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/win98/assoc.asp
you will find a nice article that tries to help you understand
Windows File Associations.
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 whole, or in part,
as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented
as is.
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