I have recently acquired a PC that runs Windows 98. My previous PC ran on Windows 95, with three hard drives, and I used File Manager extensively to drag and drop files between folders on these drives. I find that Windows 98 does not have File Manager as such, but I am told that it can be activated to produce the File Manager Icon at the top of the screen. Can you please tell me whether this is correct and, if so, how this can be accomplished?
All you need to do is create a shortcut to winfile.exe, which should be in your Windows folder. Drag the file onto the desktop and it will create a shortcut to the File Manager. A tip here -get the File Manager sub-windows arranged the way you want them and make sure Options, Save settings, is ticked before you close it.
I'm a fan - if that's the right word - of File Manager. I find it convenient to open a couple of windows in File Manager to drag and drop things where I please; alter and compare file details at a single click, and so forth. I don't have the time to waste opening windows, nor am I impressed with what I regard as the more limited functionality of Explorer although it will print multiple files and supports longer file names for those who can't be concise.
I've stuck with File Manager/Winfile from 3.3 to Windows 95 to 98 to 98 SE and have started having problems with it: click on an Office-related file and Winfile throws up an error message and closes down. It will open the file clicked on, and it doesn't happen with every file type. This all happened after performing an FDISK and getting a 'fresh start' with Windows 98 SE and Office 2000. I also installed Norton's SystemWorks 2000 from the off, but this had no effect.
I put Windows 98 SE on my old PC - but with Office 97 and it's incredibly slow, but works. I then put Project 2000 on to the machine - and guess what: Winfile trips out when I click on a file. I also notice that WinZip8 doesn't stick its icons on the toolbar of Winfile. Has Winfile now been abandoned, or can it be made to work properly with more recent programs? Perhaps Explorer can be configured to work more like File Manager?
I'm afraid that the Windows File Manager has basically come to the end of its life. It doesn't even ship with Windows 2000, although Microsoft reckons you can get something approaching its functionality by using Windows Explorer and an MMC snap-in called Shared Folders. All is not lost, however, as there are a few File Manager-type programs available on the market, and one of them might do what you want. Check out the applications at these URLs.
Frigate www.winfrigafe.com
Windows Commander
www.ghisler.comNico's Commander
www.nico2000.comSingularity/Singularity 2000:
www.winability.comTurboBrowser 2000
www.filestream.com/turbobrowserIf anyone knows of a stunning File Manager replacement for Windows 98 -or indeed Windows 2000 -please email me and I'll pass on the information.
If I make a shortcut to C:\Windows\Notepad.exe on the desktop and make the 'Start in' property point to a certain folder -for example, D:\Docs -then open Notepad using that shortcut and go to File/Open, the default folder offered will be D:\Docs. However; this only seems to work on my Windows 95 machine. On my wife's Win98 PC this does not work, the File/Open command always defaults to C: \My Documents, no matter what folder is entered in 'Start in'. How can we set up a Notepad shortcut in Win98 to default to a chosen folder for File Open/Save?
Yes this is annoying. It worked in Win95. It worked in Win 3.x. But changed with the advent of the 'My Documents' folder in Windows 98. However, there is a way round it. Right-click in the folder you want to start in, then choose New, Text Document, from the menu. Rename the new file to whatever you want. Right-drag it to the folder of your choice and create a shortcut. Double-click on the shortcut, and the file will open; exactly as a new instance of Notepad, except you'll get 'Name Notepad' instead of 'Untitled Notepad' in the title bar. Go to File, Open and you'll be 'in' the target folder.
ScanDisk doesn't work any more when my computer has to reboot after it crashes. Why has it turned itself off I'm using Windows 98 SE? Isn't this thing supposed to fix problems after a crash? I have to select it separately by going to Accessories I System tools and, well, you know the drill. Will I have to do a re-install to have the thing come on automatically after it's been shut down incorrectly? Do I need it to come on at all?
You won't have to do a re-install, but yes you do need it to come on, especially if there have been disk errors after a system crash. I suspect that what has happened is that an entry in the MSDOS.SYS file has become incorrectly set, so you're going to have to change that. Fortunately, Microsoft has provided a rather nice tool, which can manipulate the one setting in that file which appears to have been turned off, and which affects the automatic running of ScanDisk after a premature system restart. This tool works for all versions of Windows 98 and later (but not for Windows 95 users; I'll explain what they have to do in a moment):
1 Select Run from the Start menu.
2 Type msconfig into the edit box and hit Enter.
3 When the System Configuration Utility launches, select the General tab and then click on the Advanced button.
4 You'l1 see an Advanced Troubleshooting Settings dialog. If you look down the Settings list, you'll see that the fourth item from the bottom is labelled 'Disable ScanDisk after bad shutdown', and it will almost certainly be checked, thus preventing ScanDisk from running after your system crashes. Click in it to clear, then hit OK a couple of times to close the dialogs.
Your problem should now be fixed. As I warned Mr Barber earlier, be careful what you do with this utility as it can cause havoc if the wrong settings get changed accidentally.
For those of you running Windows 95 who find that ScanDisk has suddenly become non-operational, you're going to have to modify the settings in the MSDOS.SYS file directly. This is a hidden, read only system file located in the root drive, so you'll need to change those attributes in order to work on it. Once you have it open, look for the AutoScan = setting under [Options] -its default setting is 1, but if you're having this problem you'll probably find that its been set to 0.
Can you amaze me by helping me with a problem. I have spoken to at least a dozen sources, and no-one can come up with a solution.
I am using Windows 98 SE. For about four months ScanDisk has not run on abrupt power shut down, but it will run normally in both Dos and normal Windows. Any ideas
Many users would like this to happen especially considering Windows 98'5 ability to lock up when shutting down. Anyway, my solution is to use Start,Programs,Accessories,System Tools and System Information. Then use Tools,System Configuration Utility and then Advanced. One entry on this screen says 'Disable ScanDisk after bad shutdown'. I imagine that your entry is ticked, so untick it and click OK. The setting probably won't take effect until the next reboot.
There used to be a program for Windows 3.1 called TrueEffects. This enabled you to add a variety of fills, outlines, shadows and suchlike to any TrueType font and thus create new fonts. These new fonts could be named and saved along with existing fonts to create an infinite number of font permutations. These newly created fonts were then available for use in all applications.
Unfortunately, TrueEffects doesn't work with Windows 95 or later and there doesn't seem to be an upgrade available. I know there are other programs that add special effects to fonts but these just seem to create one-off graphic objects, which can be inserted into a word-processor or DTP program and the additional font features aren't saved for future use. Is there any program equivalent to TrueEffects that will work with later versions of Windows.
Depending on how much you are prepared to pay for a TrueType font editor, there are a couple of solutions. The most capable product on the market seems to be FontLab 3, which is available from a company called Pyrus. Unfortunately it costs $400, but it does seem to do everything you could conceivably want to do with fonts under Windows 95, 98, NT and the Mac. Alternatively Pyrus has a cut-down product called TypeTool, which also seems to offer TrueType font editing capabilities (although it has less functionality in other areas) and costs a more affordable $99. Depending on what level of font editing capabilities you're after and how much you are prepared to pay either product might meet your needs. They are both available as downloadable demos so you can try before you buy. For more information see www.pyrus.com/html/products.htmI.
I've recently upgraded from Adobe PhotoShop
4 to 5.5. I often do retouching work on quite large files, A4 and larger at 300dpi and progress can be slow. Version 4's Quick Edit feature let you work on a small section of an image and then import it back into the larger main image. But this feature isn't present in version 5.5. Is there a plug-in available, or a workaround?Quick Edit is still there, it's just been moved to the optional filters folder in the goodies folder on the PhotoShop 5.5 CD. Just drag the QuickEd.8BP file into the PhotoShop 5.5 plug-ins folder on your hard drive.
We use QuarkXpress
4. 1 to produce an advertisement page for several publications with different page sizes. They don't vary by much, usually no more than 30mm on the depth or width of an A4 page. Is there a simpler way than manually adjusting the advert every time?Save the page as an EPS, create a new document the required size and use the rectangular picture box tool to draw a box the exact size of the page with the top left corner at 0,0. Get picture (Control & E) and then press Control & Shift & F to make it fit the box. You'l1 get slight squeezing or expansion if the new page size isn't the same proportions as the original, but nothing too drastic.
In Windows 98 I get an error message when I try to read a PDF file with Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.05. It says, 'ACRORD 32 caused an invalid page fault in module AFILL32.API'. I uninstalled and re-installed Acrobat with no joy, and then re-installed Windows without uninstalling. Still no joy
I had a look in the Support area on the Adobe Web site, and came up with a URL for you to check out at www.adobecom/support/techdocs/20b16htm. I couldn't find anything else related to your problem there, so if that doesn't help then it looks like you'll have to turn to their paid support for further help. The files in question are the executable for the reader itself (ACRORD32.EXE), and a plug-in (AFILL32.API). The problem would appear to be caused by an incompatibility between the form plug-in, and voices in some text-speech software.
I had Norton Utilities 2000 on my computer, but I had to uninstall it. Disaster. Add/Remove Programs wouldn't work, so I had to do it manually. Now my computer works okay, but I've lost the box with Recycle Bin from under the bin. The bin works okay though.
I suspect that the Utilities probably renamed the Recycle Bin while they were installed, but because they didn't get uninstalled correctly, the nametag has now vanished. To restore it to 'Recycle Bin' requires a trip to the Registry, so please make sure all the relevant files are backed up before proceeding. Once you've done that, head to the Start button, click on it, select the Run option, type regedit in the edit box, and hit the OK button. Once it has loaded, go and look for this Registry key:
HKEY-CLASSES-ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081101 B-9F08-00AA002F954E} You 'l1 see that the default entry in your case is probably blank, so double-click on it, and enter whatever you'd like to appear beneath the Recycle Bin icon in the value field, and then click OK. If you now right-click on the Windows Desktop, and select Refresh from the Properties menu, you should see the name tag reappear.
I'm always opening DOS prompts on my Windows 95 machine in a number of different ways: from the Start menu, from an icon on the desktop, using one of Microsoft's Powertoys and so on.
I'd like to be able to use DOSKEY in every DOS window, but since DOSKEY.COM is useless in the GUI, I don't think it's a good idea to add this to my AUTOEXEC.BAT. Is there a way I can load the program automatically when I open a command prompt regardless of the method I use?
I'd be lost without the DOSKEY -provided ability to scroll back through recent commands and I rely on the program's macros to the point that I sometimes forget they aren't built-in commands. Adding DOSKEY to AUTOEXEC.BAT is by far the easiest solution, especially given the amount of different methods you use for launching MS-DOS prompts.
You can see for yourself that DOSKEY doesn't take up much room. Next time you're at an MS DOS prompt with DOSKEY running, enter MEM/M DOSKEY to see how much memory is allotted. This should be under 5KB, unless you've used the /BUFSIZE switch to substantially enlarge the macro buffer.
I use the MS-DOS prompt a lot, and switch it from windowed to full-screen when I work with it. The strange thing is that sometimes it refuses to go to full screen, or back to windowed, if I've been using it for a while. I can't see why it does this. What is odd is that it doesn't always do it.
It's all down to the keyboard, presuming you're using the < Alt-Enter > key combination to switch between fullscreen and windowed views. There's a known problem whereby you can use the left-hand Alt key a couple of times, and then switch to the right-hand Alt key and it won't work any more. The solution is to only use one or the other, but not both during the same session. Alternatively, use the 'Full Screen' button (if your version of Windows supplies one) to go to full-screen mode, and then switch back using the < Alt-Enter > key combination, with either Alt key.
HIS OWN
I am shopping for a PC for my sister, who types slowly and has a visual impairment, to use Office 97 for a course at Coventry University. A good solution to this problem would seem to lie in speech recognition software, probably Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred edition or IBM ViaVoice Pro (as tested in Shopper 141), along with a larger than 15" monitor.
I would like your advice on the following. The group test in Shopper used a Pentium III with 256Mb Ram, but both the Dragon and IBM Web sites stated low minimum hardware requirements (apart from 64Mb Ram). What system would you recommend for this job? Is speech recognition processor-intensive?
Is there any real advantage in having a flat-screen monitor like an NEC FE700 over an FST monitor? If I buy a PC with an inferior version of ViaVoice bundled with it, is it likely that I can upgrade to the 'Pro' version for a reasonable amount?
Our voice guru confirms that he prefers the Dragon software to IBM's ViaVoice, but by a very slim margin. That preference could be upset by price differences, or the deal for one or the other being sweetened. It would make sense to look for a complete package that included a 'light' (or 'lite') version of either software -you would most certainly expect advantageous pricing if you upgraded to the full version. Unfortunately I timed out waiting for various PR people to return from meetings or just take their phones off voicemail, or I might have been able to give you the prices. Not that I really expect PR people to have this sort of information on them anyway. I also tried the respective Web sites but drew a blank there also. Life's just too short. Admittedly we did throw quite a lot of hardware at the software when we tested the package, but we still put the minimum specification much higher than the software publishers do. The minimum processor for comfortable operation we feel is a Pentium II 350MHz, but the more Ram the better -128Mb is not over the top; the software certainly works more reliably but, yes, it will still work with 64Mb. You can expect to need between 150Mb and 200Mb of hard disk space for the installed and trained-up software to live in. One final point our tester recommends that you use one of the new generation of USB microphones rather than a standard mic plugged into the sound card. Dragon offers one of it's own and we expect Plantronics to be offering appropriate products real soon now.
As regards the monitor, we feel that the advantages offered by LCD screens are low power consumption and considerably smaller footprint on the desktop. I would have thought that your budget would be best disposed of on a decent 19" display (ADI, Samsung, Ilyama, Taxan or Sony). The bigger screen area would be expensive to match with an LCD screen but valuable because of the lower resolution.
I read your recent article explaining the TweakUI functions and tried to find it on my Win98 CD. The CD is 98 second edition and came with a new computer. I can't find the Powertools folder or the TweakUI.Inf file it should contain. Was this file omitted from the second edition, or have I got a cut-down version of Win98SE with the computer? If it really isn't there, can I download it? I tried to find it at Microsoft.com with no joy. Any suggestions?
Unfortunately Microsoft removed it from the Windows 98 Second Edition CD.
It is also pretty hard to find on the Microsoft Web site, as they keep on moving downloads around. You can still download it from the following location: www.microsoft.com/Windows95/downloads/contents/WUToys/W95PwrToysSet
Your useful article on TweakUI (Cover Disc Guide, Shopper 142) was wrong in one respect. The' Add/Remove' tab in TweakUI is not equivalent to 'Add/Remove Programs' in the Windows Control Panel.
The TweakUI facility is there to remove registered programs from the' Add/Remove Programs' list which can't be removed using 'Add/Remove Programs' in Control Panel probably because you've manually deleted them already. Trying to de-register them using 'Add/Remove Programs' in this case will give an error message. The unwanted program can, however, be taken off the list using the TweakUI 'Add/Remove' tab.
In a similar way, TweakUI's 'Control Panel' tab allows you to remove unwanted icons from the Windows Control Panel.
Er, yes. You weren't the only one to make that point
It was great to find out about TweakUI in your November edition ('Windows 101', Shopper 141) and very helpful to find a TweakUI 'Walkthrough' in December (Shopper 143). There is one small problem, however. The relevant readme file in my 'improved' Windows 98 Second Edition says, 'Note: TweakUI has been removed from the Windows 98 Resource Kit. Everything improves worse - especially if it's Microsoft it seems.
On another subject. In September, on a Sunday afternoon, I ordered a rail ticket from Berlin to Dresden on the Internet from German Railways. It arrived first post the following Wednesday. Just try getting a UK train operator to do that!
Is there a way to remove the Network Neighborhood icon from the Desktop?
Yes, you can hide the Network Neighborhood icon from the Desktop tab of TweakUI.
As mentioned before, you can obtain TweakUI free from www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/dowrnloads/powertoys/networking/nttweakUI.asp
However, hiding the icon does have consequences, in that it will prevent Explorer accessing resources via the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) notation. This can, for example, affect Direct Cable Connection, in that the contents of the host computer are not displayed.
TweakUI does warn you about this, however, and supplies additional information.
We have a tiny two-man (sorry, two-person!) office without any room for filing cabinets. Most outgoing documents are sent by fax, directly from the word processor, so there is no paper filing involved. Virtually all of our incoming correspondence is received by a fax machine, and output on paper. The papers are then scanned for filing, but the problem comes when there is a multipage fax or letter. The best solution we have found so far is to use Acrobat writer to make a PDF file, but the process is very complicated and time-consuming.
We intend to purchase a multifunction machine to save space so that, with one piece of equipment and one connection to the PC, it would carry out all of the functions of faxing, scanning and printing, and we hope it will help us to achieve a near-paperless office. We have been in touch with several of the large computer stores as well as the manufacturers of the well-known multifunction machines, but none of them will tell us how the equipment works as far as filing of multipage documents is concerned. In all cases, the hardware departments claim that the software supplied would be suitable, but were unable to go into details, while the software departments all say that it is down to the hardware.
We have been recommended to use PaperPort, PageKeeper and Pagis respectively, but have not been able to have demonstrations to check on the functionality. The 'light' versions will not do what we want. Can you offer any suggestions, please?
I'm not the best person to ask here, it's really a question for the Buyer's Clinic staff at Shopper Labs. Still, here's my tuppence worth: if you used your fax/modem, already being used to send faxes, to receive them too then you wouldn't have to scan them or waste paper on junk faxes. SoftWare such as WinFax from Symantec already includes some document filing features, as does Microsoft' s Outlook. You might also want to look into a service offered by JFAX.com. The company will give you a fax number in any of the cities where it has offices for just US$12 a month. The faxes are then delivered to you by e-mail in a standard Tiff format, which can be viewed and printed in software such as the Kodak Image viewer built into Windows 98. You don't need a separate fax line or a fax machine and can achieve a perfect paperless office. As a bonus you can open fax (and voice mail) numbers for your New York, San Francisco, Paris and Munich 'offices', or any of 60 other cities from Atlanta to Zurich. The company was given a British Telecom/Sunday Times Technology Award (I bet BT didn't realise it was rewarding a competitor!).I have been using the system for over two years and have never had a problem. OK, so you still need to find the right software solution. The multipage faxes are not a problem if received electronically, as the Tiff fax format supports multipage documents. If no other solution to indexing and storing documents works for you, you could develop a small database in Access or Lotus Approach either will allow you to open attached files using any OLE-compliant application.
I have taken over the task of maintaining the software for an industrial weighing machine. The language is QuickBasic 4, which seems to date from the mid-1980s. Although the system works fine in general, the user has asked for some simple upgrades to the user interface, in the main validation of user inputs, as the system has been crashed in the past by putting numbers into character fields and so on. The software runs on a dedicated PC under MSDos 6, and is interfaced to the scales via a COM port.
Although I have quite a lot of programming experience, I have never used QuickBasic before. However, I have found it very easy to read the source code and make the simple modifications that I have been asked to do to date, and so far the user is happy. However, I am looking to the future, as this is likely to turn into a long-term support job -and so I would really welcome your advice.
The user interface commands of QuickBasic 4 are quite limited, and although it is fairly easy to add post-entry validation routines to data entry fields, it is not intuitively easy to build data entry screens to 'modern' standards. Also, I believe that QuickBasic 4 is now an obsolete environment, and I am wondering if there is an upgrade path to a more modern and current language. I have seen references to QuickBasic 4.5. Was that the last variant of QuickBasic, was it significantly different to 4, and where did the language go from there? Did it become Visual Basic?
At the moment the hardware and software are working fine, so I don't want to recommend a change to a Windows environment, as I believe this would require a hardware upgrade. A complete rewrite of the system into another language is also undesirable, so I suppose what I am looking for is a modern environment that can provide a high-quality user interface, will use all the existing code so that it can be gradually upgraded rather than completely rewritten, and will run on old hardware, and MSDos 6. So have you any ideas?
Yes, you are quite right in thinking that QuickBasic 4 is old and outdated. However, the last version was QuickBasic 4.5 (there was also a 'professional' version called PDS 7.1 about the same time) and after that Microsoft lost interest. Visual Basic is not really a replacement but more a completely different object oriented programming product, necessitating an almost complete rewrite of the application. For a while there was a Visual Basic for Dos, but this is no longer in production.
So if you want to maintain and improve this code but still run under Dos, your best bet is the PowerBasic for Dos compiler from www.powerbasic.com. You can also download a shareware version, FirstBasic, based on an older release. PowerBasic was originally marketed by Borland as Turbo Basic, and was the incentive for Microsoft to introduce and improve the QuickBasic series. After Borland gave up trying to compete, the author Bob Zale continued to improve and develop the product. While the built-in user interface is nothing special, there are several third party user interfaces available, including Power Vision from PowerBasic. Powerbasic also has 32-bit versions for use under Windows, and a Linux compiler is promised in future.
I am desperate to get hold of a product called Pro-DJ which was featured in Computer Shopper 140.1 have looked everywhere and cannot locate it. I would greatly appreciate your help.
Obviously you didn't look hard enough! ProDJ, published by The Learning Company, is available on mail order by calling (01664) 481563 or from Staples, The Electronic Boutique or Dixons.
How do you save a file type in WordPad that isn't supported in its File Save As list? In Notepad I used to just type the file name and extension, but I can't seem to get away with that in WordPad as it just appends whatever file format is selected in its own choice list.
You need to enclose the file name and its extension in double quotes: "filename.ext". WordPad will then save the file with that extension, and won't append its own extension onto the file.
I'm running Windows 98 SE and I'm unable to place anything Into the Recycle Bin. I get a
'cannot find specified path' message no matter what I try to put into it. I've looked to see if I've disabled the Recycle Bin, but haven't found any leads.Sounds to me as though your Recycle Bin has become corrupted. Its fixable, but you have to follow a fair number of steps before you can restore it to full file-munching status again' Click the Start button and select Shut Down - Restart to MS.DOS. When Windows has done that, type the following lines at the command prompt, each followed by Enter:
cd\
cd recycled
attrib -r -s -h info2.*
del info2
At this point, your damaged file has been deleted and a new one automatically created. You now need to restart your system, but you want it to boot to Command Prompt Only. So either pop in your Windows Startup disk and use that, or if that's become lost in the mists of time (or was never created), simply wait for your system to complete its Power On Self Test and then hold down the Ctrl key until the Startup menu appears. Then select Command Prompt Only. Type the following lines:
attrib -r -s -h c:\recycled
del tree c:\recycled
(If the problem occurred on a drive other than C, substitute that drive letter in the command lines above). You can now restart your system, and all should be well as the Recycle Bin will be automatically recreated.
I have a 667MHz Pentium III with a 20Gb hard disk running Windows 98 SE. I've never been able to run ScanDisk or Defrag on this computer. Each time I try, I get a message saying that my PC doesn't have enough memory and to close some programs to see if that helps - it doesn't.
There's a known problem whereby if you're running Windows 98 SE (or indeed 98 or ME) on a hard disk larger than 8Gb and you used a third-party disk tool to create your partition, which gave the partition a cluster size of less than 8Kb, then this error will occur. The only fix is to contact the developer of the partitioning software and ask them for a fix. If you require any more details, check out Knowledge Base article Q229I54.
I've upgraded one of my NT4 (SP 6) systems to Windows 2000 Professional SPI. Prior to the upgrade, Windows Media Player 6.4 (WMP) worked fine and would provide continuous play of both video and audio. Following the upgrade to Windows 2000, WMP7 will play for three or four seconds, freeze and then continue for another three or four seconds before freezing again, and so forth.
It does this on both video and audio files, even when played from the hard disk, and makes watching and listening impossible. It appears to be a streaming and buffer problem, but I can't find it or any reference to it on the Microsoft FAQs.
Since WMP7 is having a problem sustaining digital playback from your CD.ROM drive, try turning digital playback off and switching to analog. I suspect you'll find that it will now work, though I'm puzzled why this is affecting video play. To disable digital playback, follow these two steps:
1 Fire up the player, select Tools - Options and then click on the CD Audio tab.
2 Clear the Digital Playback checkbox, then close the dialog.
You should find that your discs will play properly, but you'l1 have lost digital playback and its facilities of Visualisation, SRS Stereo and Equaliser (though that only applies to CDs and not to other multimedia functionality within the player).
I have seen people selling posters with the meaning of first names on them along with other items such as lucky numbers. Have you any idea where I could purchase a CD-Rom containing this kind of information?
Try looking at www.behindthename.com, which is a site dedicated to the etymology and history of first names. There's a message board and a number of links to other sites as well as some information on books and reference sources.
In Shopper 155 we reported that some readers had suggested that an alternative to buying Adobe Acrobat is to create PostScript files and then to convert them to PDF files using Aladdin Ghostscript. According to one reader, the process can be simplified even further by using a piece of freeware called FreePDF. Full instructions and a RedRun printer port are available from FreePDF's creator -ZipGuy -at over.to/freepdf. While he admits (as does the website itself) that the software takes a little configuring it does seem to make PDF creation simpler (and cheaper) than ever.
The subject of PDF creation seems to be a popular one at the moment. If you have anything to add, or any further suggestions to simplify the creation process, please contact us at
clinic@shopperlabs.com.
Is it possible to use PlayStation CDs on a PC?
Possible, yes. Legal, who knows? The Bleem! emulator is a program that enables you to run most of the PSX catalogue.
You can get it for £29.95 from www.bleem.co.uk. Naturally, Sony is highly ticked off by this and is suing Bleem! for copyright violation (as we reported in PCF 105).
When the legal dust settles later this year, Bleem! may be forced to withdraw its emulator but it is highly unlikely that those who have already bought the software would then be prevented from using it. The obvious conclusion is to purchase now rather than later.
I saw the MOPyFish virtual pet screensaver thing in the Toolbox last issue and I downloaded it straight away. The thing is, I am impatient to get the extra tank accessories but I don't do enough printing to earn the MOPy points. Is there any way to cheat? I have looked in the Registry but there is only one key for this program and it doesn't seem to be anything to do with the points total.
The MOP of MOPy stands for Multiple Original Printout and it is the raison d'etre of this little fish. Hewlett Packard, who commissioned the software, wants to tempt office workers into wasting expensive ink cartridges by using their deskjet printers instead of the photocopier to create document copies. Every time you do this, you earn MOPy points, and when you have enough, the fish tank accessories start appearing. You get there eventually even without the printing because you earn 20 points just for keeping your fish alive each day, but it's a slow business this way. Cheating, on the other hand, is a quick, easy and fun way to thwart the attempts of the corporate world to control our lives. Open a DOS box and type the following:
debug c:\mopyfish\brain.dat
e 100 FF FF
w
q
You now have 65,535 points and all three tank accessories.
To get the aphrodisiac fish food, though, you still need to connect to the HP Web site (www.hp.com/go/fish). I haven't figured out quite how to get around this yet.
I saw in PCF108 that a reader was having patience problems with his new MOPy Fish. I did too, until I found the MOPy Fish Points Editor program on the Net. Two clicks and you get all the points you want. I've uploaded a Zip file to my Web site with this program in it, as well as the aphrodisiac fish food. There you go. The link is:
http://homepages.petech.ac.za/~s9961964/mopy.zip Enjoy.Sure, go ahead and download this preposterous utility that requires 408Kjust to change two bytes in one file. But I still say that it's a lot quicker to open a DOS box and type:
debug c:\mopyfish\brain.dat
e 100 FF FF
w
q
When you're striking a blow against corporate behavior modification programs, such as Hewlett Packard's waste time-and ink-printing-stuff you-don't-need just-to-earn-points to-make your-screensaver-prettier scheme, every minute counts.
I know I am not the only person with this problem. So I was wondering if you could tell me how to remove DirectX 7? Although Microsoft claims that DirectX is backwards compatible. I think otherwise because about half of my DirectX 6 games have stopped working since I installed DirectX 7.
Microsoft really doesn't want you to do this! DirectX 7 takes root so deeply that the official de-installation path is to format the disk and reinstall Windows. Several Web sites also claim to have solutions which are less destructive, a couple of which I sampled on a Windows 98 SE installation. Before trying any of these, make sure that your video driver is the latest version, it is possible that this may be your problem. Also, note that these methods may break Windows and, at worst, you could end up having to reformat anyway.
DirectX Uninstaller at www.ebrinkcom/dxun/Direct.htm appeared to get rid of DX7 _or at least it didn't work any more -but the DirectX 6.1 installer was not happy and I couldn't subsequently run DirectX programs without seeing the Blue Screen Of Death.
From www.planetdiablo.de/wummy/dxb/index_ehtml, I download DirectX Buster, another attempt at an uninstaller. Running this on the now broken Windows appeared to do more than DirectX Uninstaller, so I then installed DirectX 6.1 again. BSODs were still in evidence. As a last resort, I ran the Windows set-up program and installed Windows over the top of itself. This retained program settings and so on, and also cured the crashes. The DirectX diagnostic program reported a healthy DirectX 6.1 installation. That's the way to go, then -but entirely at your own risk. DirectX is a complex beast and downgrading is a risky business.
I often use Explorer in Windows 2000. Most of the time I want to view the contents of my D drive. I find it irritating that, when I start Explorer, I have to click first on My Computer and then on D: (The default display is Desktop\My Documents). I discovered that I can get it to go directly to D: on startup by appending 'D:\' onto the command line in the shortcut for Explorer. However, it then displays only the list of files in D: and I don't get the tree-view on the left-hand side in the Folders panel. To see this, I have to click the Folders button. Is there any way to get Explorer to start up displaying the contents of a particular drive and the Folders panel?
No problem. Explorer comes with a variety of switches you can employ to start it up as you like. In your case, the command line you need is: explorer /e,d:\ For an article describing this and many other switches, look in the Microsoft Knowledge Base at Q152457.
I can't get Windows Update to work. It keeps failing with an 'unknown error'. I recall that you discussed this problem many moons ago and it involves deleting all but one file somewhere. I'd be grateful if you could remind me (or point me at a link). This is a Windows 2000 server.
I've actually had this happen to a few people since I gave the original answer, so here it is again. This can occur if the Update site has been updated (irony alert) in some way usually a control update -and you have an old version of that control locked in your cache. To cure this problem you'll have to do a number of things.
From Internet Explorer's Tools menu (View - Menu in Internet Explorer 4), select the Internet Options menu item. Select the General tab and then click on the Delete Files button in the Temporary Internet Files section. Once the files have been deleted, click on the Settings button in the same frame and then on the View Objects button. Look for the CV3 Class file and, if you find one, right-click it, select Remove and then Yes. (If you don't see that file, just move on). Back on the General tab, click on the Clear History button and then on OK. Close down Internet Explorer and launch the Start - Run box.
If you use Windows 9x, type the following in it: regsvr32 /u c:\windows\system\wuv3is.dll
If you use Windows NT/2000, type the following: regsvr32 /u c:\winnt\system32\wuv3is.dll
(With whatever folder name you installed Windows in.)
Now the control has been unregistered from the Registry (which is what the /u switch does), you can delete it from the System folder. If you can't see the file in question, you'll need to switch to the - Show All Files view from Windows Explorers View or Tools menu (depending on what operating system you're using) -select Folder Options and make sure Show all files or Show hidden files or folders is checked in the View tab. Next, also from Windows Explorer, expand the Program Files folder and then double-click on the Windows Update folder. Look for the file WUHISTV3.LOG, right-click it, select Edit and then Invert Selection, and follow that up by hitting the Delete key. This will delete all files except the aforementioned WUHISTV3.LOG file, which you don't want to get rid of as it holds your previous download history from the Update site the last thing you want to lose when updates come along as quickly as Windows ones.
You should find that you'll now be able to access the Update Centre. If you can't, then the problem is either that you have a firewall or similar that is causing a connection problem for you, or you have one of the anti-virus software packages installed that actually try to do battle with Windows Update. You'll find a list of the programs that can cause this problem in the Microsoft Knowledge Base under Q241234. You'll also find a link to an article that discusses the problems caused by some proxy and firewall software in Q241783. I suggest reading the Back Office column in this issue as it provides an interesting insight into Windows Update and its effectiveness.
Underline
I've seen Web sites which have links that aren't underlined until you move your mouse over them, and then they become underlined showing you they're a link. I've been told this can be done in Microsoft FrontPage 2000, but I can't figure out how.
The way to do this is by using a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS): that way, while it will only work with version 4 browsers or better, you'll know that the code will definitely work with FrontPage 2000 and with any HTML editor. The code for the style sheet looks like this (put it in a file called TEST.CSS): a:visited { text-decoration: none} a:link { text-decoration: none} a:link:hover { text-decoration: underline} What you're effectively doing is overriding the link's default setting of being underlined, and you do that for both an unvisited and a visited link. You then add a further line of code that sets the state of the text you'll be referencing to have an underline when the mouse hovers over it.
Now turn your attention to your HTML pages: I suggest you create a test page initially, just to see the effect. The code that references the style sheet is located between the < head > < /head > tags -add that line to any HTML page and you can use the code in the style sheet:
<html>
<head>
<title>My CSS Test Page</title> <meta http-equiv""Content Type"content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/css/test.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<a href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/">PC Pro web
site</a>
</body> </html>
The code that begins with < meta and ends with type "text/css" > should all be written on one line when you create the code in your HTML editor. Note how the following line points to the location of the test.css file: href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/css/test.css"
The advantage of referencing the TEST.CSS file via HTTP is that, if you ever need to move the CSS files, you simply change the URL -you can have your CSS files located almost anywhere on the Web and link to them via an URL. I suggest that you store your CSS files in a folder called CSS on the Web site, as it makes file handling that much simpler.