For Windows NT specific problems click Here
Windows 98 Command Prompt Only Warning
Is there any way to save the settings in the Find results box? It always seems
to display the results in a box, which is too short to see more than three results, and too narrow to see the file details and I grow weary of resizing it each time.No - this is one of those irritations we just have to learn to live with.
I downloaded the DivX;-) codec zip file but what do I do next? There doesn't seem to be an executable or install file.
First you'll need to unzip the file, using a copy of WinZip (from www.winzip.com ). After unzipping, you'll have a bunch of files - right-click on DivX.inf and select Install. Note that since we published the article, the FlasKMPEG encoder site (http://go.to/flaskmpeg) has frequently been unavailable. The authors have announced that they intend to host the site at www.flaskmpeg.net in the future.
What really gets me about acronyms is that your correspondents, like most people, aren't even talking about acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of other words, such as 'Pin' from personal identification number. So LCD, CPU, ISP and all those other lovely initials so beloved by those in IT (ah, this could be one, but most people don't say 'it' do they?) don't qualify as acronyms. I'm sorry if this ruins the old TLA (three-Ietter acronyms) gag, but there you go.
Since you asked (response to 'Word Play', Shopper 157) if there were "any more annoying acronymic abuses out there" I felt compelled to tell you that my annoyance is the misunderstanding in the correspondence over the word 'acronym'. LCD, ISBN, ATM, OEM and so on are not acronyms. They are abbreviations. Acronyms are abbreviations that form words. 'Laser', 'Anzac', 'Radar' and 'Pin' are all acronyms. Your correspondents are not alone in this misuse of the word - the Sunday Times does it all the time.
My friend often shows off his 'Dat tapes' and 'DVD discs', but the one that really annoys me, being an ex-mechanic, is a 'vehicle VIN number' (vehicle vehicle identification number number). Does anyone else know of any more doublerepeated repetitions? It is surprising the number of people who take their car for a 'Ministry of Transport'. They should be taking it for an 'MOT test'. Not that the Ministry of Transport exists any more. It was replaced by the DoT ages ago.
Further to these complaints, I would suggest the following: PCB board (printed circuit board board); PAT test (portable appliance test test). However, to qualify as an acronym, the abbreviation should form a word. The Pocket English Dictionary (one of your very useful cover disc programs) states: "acronym n. word formed from the initial letters of other words (eg laser, Nato). [Greek akron end, onoma name]"
Companies, too, seem to fall foul of TLAs that restate the obvious, so to speak. I can cite a couple of examples in company names. The cable-making arm of British Insulated Callender's Cables was renamed BICC Cables.
The second example concerns a company in the Philips stable called, initially, Mullard Equipment Limited. After a few years this was renamed MEL Equipment Ltd, or in other words Mullard Equipment Limited Equipment Limited.
May I add more wrigglies to the Mb/MiB can of worms? Could the reason for there being no abbreviation for bits (as in Mb) be that a bit is already an abbreviation? Bit is the abbreviation for binary digit. If 'b' (or 'B' for that matter) were the abbreviation for the abbreviation 'bit', of binary digit, then we might just find 'b' being abbreviated to '.' Bit is so short; do we need to abbreviate it further?
MiB stands for mebbibyte and has nothing whatsoever to do with bits (except insofar as it is a multiple of them). I have tried championing this enlightened attempt to rationalise the unit of storage, and rather than being carried shoulder-high through the streets of Rome, my crusade has been met with the chilly wind of puzzled indifference. I have therefore gone back to the inconsistent megabyte in huffy disgust. Regarding the bit, I'm not all that sure that it does need an abbreviation -Kbit and Mbit are in common usage and reasonably clear (although whether the K refers to 1,000 or 1,024 is another matter entirely). On the other hand, byte is only one extra letter and that qualifies for an abbreviation.
I sometimes think that all these acronyms and abbreviations are like the offside rule in football -their main purpose is to add confusion and dispute to a perfectly ordinary, straightforward subject, just to give blokes something to talk about at the pub.
As a new and inexperienced PC user, I need some help and advice concerning a persistent and annoying problem I have with my K6-2/550 system, which has a Soyo 5EMA motherboard and nVidia GeForce 256 graphics card. I am constantly getting Fatal Exception errors.
Typically the following three errors occur together for no apparent reason:
fatal exception
'OE in VxDVMM (01)+', followed by'Shlwapi.dll is linked to missing export GDI32.dll',
followed by a string of gobbledegook (this can also be KERNEL32.dll or USER32.dIl) and 'Explorer has caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown>'.
Shutting the PC down and leaving it for a while usually fixes the problem, in the sense that everything appears to work again for a while, although often I am prompted to restore Active Desktop.
Here is an example of what can happen. I turn on the PC and browse the CD for my Yamaha sound card. The files on the CD are in Word Rich Text Format and simply opening and closing one of these files will cause the following to happen: 'Fatal exception OE in FIOLOG(01 ), press any key' and
'Explorer has caused invalid page fault in module <unknown>', followed by an internal error message, then the common fatal exception 'OE in VxD VMM'. The system crashes, I reboot into Safe Mode to shut down Windows, click on Start and 'Explorer has caused invalid page fault in module COMCTL32.dll'. I close this and get 'Error loading explorer.exe. You must reinstall Windows.'
So I click OK and get 'Shlwapi.dll linked to missing export GDI32.dll'. The system freezes. I press Ctrl-Alt-Del and get: 'Msgsrv32 (not responding)', I click End Task and get 'fatal exception OE in VxD VMM called from VXD VPICD'.
I think you probably get the picture! Oh, there was a fatal exception OE in VxD VWIN (05) and in VXD VFAT as well for good measure and all this from browsing a CD! It is easy for me to duplicate this sometimes with the added bonus of page faults in SHELL32.dll or MSHTML.dll.
Formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows doesn't help; in fact, this has become problematic in that during reinstall the 'Bad fault in MSDos extender' is returned as well as SUWIN error. Disabling the Level I and II cache from the Bios during setup (once reinstating is complete) will allow a clean installation of Windows. My feeling is that my Ram might be dodgy, or maybe the Bios -or I've heard that the AMD K6-2s over 4OOMHz run 'hot', causing signal noise and random fatal OEs of the VMM VxD variety.
These problems, unfortunately, are not uncommon. However, in your case, due to the large number of fatal exception OE messages and the problems during setup, I would agree that the problems are likely to be hardware related. This could be bad Ram, incorrect Bios timings (try a flash Bios update followed by resetting CMos to default values) or even motherboard problems. It could also be a poor-quality power supply or perhaps overheating of the processor (after all, part of the memory circuitry is built into the CPU). Since the graphics card also has memory, these issues also apply to the graphics card. Problems during a Windows setup are almost certainly going to be due to hardware issues, including incorrect Bios settings. Set Bios to defaults, then look for bad memory or problems with the hard disk interface. Disable UDMA if your hard disk is using it. I assume that you are doing a clean Windows install from a floppy startup disk or bootable CD. If not, some anti-virus programs have a Dos components, loaded through the Autoexec.bat or Config.sys file, which can mess up Windows Setup.
You also need to check IRQ assignments. While PCI and AGP cards are supposed to be able to share an IRQ, some cards -or rather their drivers -simply don't want to share. These are likely to be bus-mastering cards, in particular network adaptors, Scsi or busmastering 'UDMA IDE controllers and certain video cards. Changing the IRQ assigned is mainly a matter of moving cards to another slot, though if you don't have sufficient free IRQs then disabling unused built-in peripherals (such as serial port COM2 or USB) may free up additional lRQs. On most motherboards PCI slot 1, next to the AGP slot, shares the same IRQ assignment as the AGP slot, so leave PCI slot 1 empty. This also helps improve cooling of the AGP card.
I do not believe that AMD processors have any inherent problems, provided they have adequate power supply and good cooling. However, they often get the blame for the failings of the cheap systems they are used with, as well as a series of incompatibility issues between VIA chipsets and some 3D AGP graphics cards. If anything is 'running hot', it is much more likely to be the GeForce 256 display chip than your central processor. GeForce cards are notorious for problems resulting from their high power consumption.
It has been said that some motherboards simply don't provide enough power to the AGP slot -certain motherboards just don't get on with GeForce display adaptors. Also, high power consumption produces heat problems which, as I have mentioned before, are exacerbated in a tower configuration since the processor ends up on the underside of an AGP or PCI card. To counter this heat build-up, a fan is desirable: either one set up to blow air over the video chip or an old 486 size fan fitted directly to the chip's heat sink. If your card doesn't include a fan, I'd add one. The other issue is that, while your board is described by Soyo as having an ETEQ chipset, this is simply a VIA design under another name. The ETEQ 6618 is really a VIA VPX/97, the 6628 a VIA VP3 and your 6638 is really a VIA MVP3. VIA does seem to have many problems in its AGP implementation. Some sources claim that this is because VIA refused to license AGP specifications from Intel and designed its own implementation. Whatever it is, VIA AGP drivers have been troublesome and most sources (including VIA) recommend disabling AGP 2x and 4x modes for stability. Surprisingly, disabling these has very little impact on performance they simply aren't much used.
Several versions of VIA AGP drivers have been problem-prone and even current VIA 4-in-1 version 4.25a release includes the troublesome AGP driver version 4.04. The Soyo website's driver page includes both the old 4-in-1 4.17 release (which includes the much more stable 4.03 AGP driver) and the 4.03 AGP driver separately, plus a new release 4.28a, which I haven't seen yet on the VIA website. This includes a new v4.05 AGP driver, which might be worth trying.
You will find a couple of unusual Bios settings on this board (and some other VIA-based boards): the oddly named 'PCI Master Broken Timer' and 'Spread Spectrum Modulated'. Enabling PCI Master Broken Timer can resolve issues with some busmastering PCI cards; it's definitely worth trying.
When enabled, Spread Spectrum Modulated is supposed to reduce EMI emissions, perhaps a factor when other hardware malfunctions. However, enabling it reportedly causes problems with certain types of SDRam memory modules so in most cases you will want it disabled.
It's unfortunate that you didn't include the segment and memory addresses of these errors; these may tie the problem to a known software bug. Alternatively the segment, (or, strictly speaking, memory selector), which is the first four hexadecimal digits, indicates the area of the operating system in which the fault occurred. For example, segment 0028 indicates the memory system -suggesting either a physical hardware problem in memory, cache or controller, perhaps in the virtual memory swap file on the hard disk or some severe corruption in 10w-Ievel ('Ring 0') code of the operating system, such as problems with a device driver that uses direct memory access (DMA). The most likely candidates to use DMA are bus-mastering devices such as networking adaptors, Scsi or UDMA hard disk controllers and video drivers. When you see a message saying 'xxxx is linked to missing export yyyy:hhhh' you usually have a version conflict between these two modules: module xxxx is looking for a function that is not provided by the version of yyyy on your computer. Perhaps one or other of the modules has been replaced by an older version, or one has been updated while the other has not? In this case, however, Shlwapi.dll is finding problems with the core Windows system files GDI32.dll, KerneI32.dll, and User32.dll and it is hard to imagine that you could have the wrong versions of those files. Shlwapi.dll is a component of Internet Explorer (which is needed to handle ActiveX components) so it seems that you may need to reinstall a new copy of Internet Explorer. (Or go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and when you click on Internet Explorer you should get an option to repair). The alternative is that some other fault, such as a memory error or a bug in a low-level driver, is corrupting the program code and then resulting in spurious errors. This is always possible when dealing with problems in these 10w-Ievel routines.
In the end, though, if you have exhausted the possibilities of new drivers, Bios settings and so on, the problems may simply be due to poor hardware. Although Soyo motherboards have a good reputation, many PCs are built with cheap components of somewhat suspect quality. Unfortunately too many PC makers are more concerned about keeping prices down than producing reliable systems. Of course, customers who buy on price alone don't help. If the system is still covered by warranty, or if you have a documented history of these problems ever since the PC was new, insist the maker fixes it. Otherwise, by the time you have replaced case, motherboard, memory, CPU and fan you should have solved the' problem. Perhaps we can persuade the editor to institute a new Shopper award, for 'Computers that deserve to be dropped from the top of a tall building'. I'd start with a good-quality fan (and don't forget one for the video card too), some good-quality memory for the motherboard and a good-quality power supply unit.
How can I convert an S-Video signal to a composite video signal? My laptop has only an S-Video output and my TV will accept only a composite video input. If you hadn't guessed, I want to play DVDs on my laptop and watch them on my TV. I've tried for quite a long time to source such a cable but with no luck.
Almost all graphics cards or laptops that come with an S-Video output should come with a cable to convert the signal into composite video. We can only assume that you weren't supplied with one (perhaps as a result of another second-hand purchase) or you've managed to lose it. As for availability of an S-Video to composite video cable we, like you, are at a loss. If anyone knows a source please contact us at clinic@shopperlabs.com so we can pass the details on.
In the meantime, however, we have a simple fix that should enable you to create a DIY S-Video to composite cable. First you'll need both an S-Video and a composite video cable. These are widely available and shouldn't cost too much. Cut the S-Video cable in the middle, where you will find two shielded wires. Strip back the shielded cables on the half you want to connect to your laptop (or PC) and twist together. Strip back the plastic casing some more to expose the outer shielding. Cut a composite video cable in the middle, where you should find one shielded wire. Strip back this wire and then strip back the outer casing some more. Twist, or solder, your pre-twisted S-Video wires to the composite video wire. Insulate the twisted cables using standard insulating tape. Wrap aluminium foil around the tape to connect together the S-Video cable shielding to the composite video cable shielding. Complete the job by wrapping the exposed aluminium foil section in more insulating tape.
This simple DIY conversion works because the difference between S-Video and composite video is that the former carries the chroma and luminance signals separately. This results in a better-quality output. All you are doing by twisting these signals together is creating a composite signal, which (as the name suggests) carries luminance and chroma together.
I would like to fit an extra cooling fan to my PC. What would you recommend and where do I plug in the fan power supply socket?
The simplest way to do a cooling upgrade is to get hold of one or two case fans that screw into pre-drilled holes in the back or front of your system. Normally one pulls in fresh air, while the other expels nasty hot air. They usually connect to the same power plugs that your drives use and, being low-power, can normally share a cable with an existing hard disk or CD-ROM drive. Fans of fans should head for their local computer fair where models are available from around £5.
How do digital cameras fare when subjected to X-ray or similar security checks at airports? Also how well do they put up with unsympathetic handling or cold and wet conditions?
Putting digital cameras through X-ray machines is as safe as doing it to notebooks, so unless you see a 'no computer' sign, then there shouldn't be any problems. However, the digital camera's many electronic circuits do not like getting wet one bit - check with the manufacturer for humidity and temperature information. Remember also that batteries don't last as long in the cold and that most digital cameras only get a couple of hours per charge, even under ideal conditions.
I tried to create a repair disk using a 3.1/2 in floppy but it reports that the Repair Disk is full. What are these files and how can I back them up in a way that I can recover the information if NT gets itself into a non-bootable state? Are these the files used if the 'last known state' option is used?
This occurs when the size of the files in the %SystemRoot%\Repair folder exceeds the capacity of one floppy disk. This is a very common problem, caused by the pitiful size of the standard floppy disk drive which has been stuck at 1.44MB since the last century. One way round this is to install an ATAPI LS-120 SuperDisk -with a capacity of120MB, Windows NT will have its work cut out filling that! They cost about £60 ex VAT. Another way round this is to store the update of your repair information on your hard disk. In most cases you can use the updated repair information on your hard disk when you repair your Windows NT installation. To do this, use the Update Repair Info option in the Rdisk.exe tool. Make a backup copy of the %SystemRoot%\Repair folder.
You could reduce the number of files copied -if you use RDISK /S -it copies the Sam._ and Security._ database files to your Emergency Rescue Disk (ERD). Simply don't use the /S switch! Check out this document, Q122857, on the Microsoft KnowledgeBase for details of using the RDISK /S and RDISK /S options. Remember: the ERD provides just enough recovery to restore your PC to a bootable state. It isn't a replacement for regular backups.
Maintaining a current ERD is just as important as having a current system backup. Whenever system configuration changes are made you should update your ERD with the RDISK utility. You should also update the repair information and create a new ERD every time you change the system configuration in any significant way.
A friend of a friend has got in touch with me to ask if their system had a virus. Apparently, it has started playing Beethoven's Fur Elise, then it stops for a bit, and then starts up again. Is this a virus? He installed some software off a magazine CD-ROM (not PC Pro), and this has happened.
I must admit I wasn't sure about this one, but a bit of research tells me that your friend's friend can probably relax about a virus, but not about the cause of the music. Apparently, versions of the Award/Unicore BIOS manufactured since 1997 play either 'Fur Elise' or 'It's a Small, Small World' if either the fan on the processor is on its way out, or if the power supply voltage goes out of the accepted tolerances. (Given what might happen with either of those problems, I'd have thought 'Smoke on the Water' might have been more appropriate...)
Every time I boot up, two files are created in my C:\Windows folder. They have names like ffffc31d_{4297DB20-4E9C-11D4-AC820050DA89BB83}.tmp. Where do these files come from and what can I do to eliminate them!
The Machine Debug Manager (MDM), which is used for script debugging in Internet Explorer 4/5, is the source of those files. MDM is also installed with Office 2000 and with the Windows NT Option Pack 4.0. To stop IE from using it, launch Internet Options from IE's menu or from Control Panel. Click on the Advanced tab, find the box labelled Disable script debugging, check it, and then click on OK.
MDM might also be launched as a service at Startup. You can disable it using PC Magazine's Startup Cop utility (download) or use REGEDIT to delete the value named Machine Debug Manager from the key HKEYLOCALMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices.
I can't load any programs under Windows 98 SE. I get an error message that FILES32.VXD can't be found; nothing appears on the Desktop. Do I need to do a complete re-install?
First, get some antivirus software installed on your system, as the Pretty Park virus has infected your system: FILES32.VXD is not a default Windows file, but one installed by the virus. Once you've got the virus out of your system you might find that the problem still persists and that you can't run any files with the EXE file extension. To cure that you're going to have to Tun the Registry. Editor (REGEDIT.EXE) and make some changes to an entry, but since this is also an EXE you'll have to use a trick to get it running.
1 Right.click on the Start button and choose Explore from the popup menu.
2 Navigate to your Windows folder and scroll down the list until you find the file REGEDIT.EXE
3 Select the file with a right.mouse click and then select the Rename menu option.
4 Rename the file to REGEDIT.COM
5 Double-click on the newly renamed file to run the Registry Editor.
6 Look for the following Registry key:
HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE\Software\Classes\Exefile\Shell\Open\Command
7 Double-click on this value: (Default) "FILFS32.vXD""%1 " %*
8 Go to the String edit box and get rid of the FILES32.vXD entry, leaving the string box looking like this:
"%1"%*
9 You now go to this Registry key and do the same thing: HKEYCLASSESROOT\Exefile\Shell\Open\Command The virus doesn't always corrupt this value, so you might not need to modify it.
10 Close down the Registry Editor and then rename the program file back to REGEDIT.EXE.
11 Go to the Start button. Click on it and select the Find menu item.
12 Select the Files or Folders menu option and do a search for FILES32.VXD, and if you find a copy anywhere, delete it.
Your system should now be restored to working condition.
I've now formatted my hard disk twice, and even let the NT 4 Installer format the hard disk as well, but no matter what I do I can't get the system to boot after installing NT 4. The machine was bought second-hand, but I've seen it working. In fact it was running Linux before I had NT 4 Setup delete the partition and create a new one that it formatted. The installation is fine, but it won’t reboot. It just hangs after testing one of the cards. I took all the non-essential cards out of the machine, but it still hangs in the same place -still in the black screen you get when a machine starts with the cursor flashing after the letters 'LI'. What is it trying to load?
I fell foul of this myself when I was given a second-hand hard disk to stick in a machine that I was going to use to test something and then wipe out later on. That disk too had Linux on it, and the clue is there. That 'LI' is part of the word LILO, the Linux boot loader, which sits in the boot record of the hard disk trying to load software that no longer exists since you formatted the disk. The cure is to boot into MS.DOS, and then run FDISK on the hard disk, thus' fdisk/mbr
That /mbr switch cleans up the master boot record, and once you've invoked it NT 4 will load just fine after a reboot.
I have an Athlon/8OO running on an FIC SD II motherboard, fitted with an Elsa Erazor 32Mb DDR graphics card. The OS is Windows 98 SE. Recently I had a problem that required the re-installation of Windows. I had backups of all my data, so this wasn't the disaster it could have been. One of the applications I run is a drawing package that was designed for Word for Windows 3.11, but until the other day was none the worse for that. Until then, the drawing package had given me no problems whatsoever. Now, however, when I open utilities inside the package that open inside their own window the 'embedded' window, if that's the right phrase, can't be dragged anywhere.
It moves about five pixels at a time, then I have to reselect it with the left mouse button and move it another five pixels and so on, until the embedded window is where I want it. I've tried using < spacebar-tab > to use the Move command itself but, again, when I try to move the window with the cursor keys the same problem arises. I've checked all the files against a working copy of this program I have on an older 300MHz Pentium II and there's no obvious difference.
A colleague I spoke to about this remembers the exact same thing happening to him a while back, and says he cured it by changing a Windows (OS) setting. Sadly, though, he can’t for the life of him remember what setting it was. All my other applications seem to be functioning correctly.
Your colleague is right, and there's a setting to cure this. I think the option you want is the one that lets you optionally display the contents of a window while its being dragged. Some programs simply don't support this feature, and while the more modern of them just display a frame without contents (regardless of whether you have the option switched on or not) others created before the option was invented just don't work properly. To turn this option off, right-click on your Desktop, select the Properties menu item and then the Effects tab. If you look at the bottom of the second frame you'll see a checkbox labelled, 'Show window contents while dragging'. I suspect you'll find that its checked. Click in it to clear it and then exit the dialog in the usual manner. If you try dragging a window in your application now, it should work.
I have a copy of NT that I'm trying to install on the same machine as my resident Windows 98 SE, but on a different hard disk. Unfortunately, I don't have any floppy drivers with my software pack. I also wish to be able to boot both operating systems at the same time. Do I need a Boot Manager program to be able to do this, or is this program inherent in either Windows 98 SE or NT?
You don't always get floppy disks with the NT 4 software, but that doesn't matter as you can create them yourself: all you need are three blank disks. Place your NT 4 CD in your CD-ROM drive and do the following:
Go to the Start button, click on it, select the Programs menu option and then MS-DOS Prompt.
Navigate to the drive with your CD in it, and change directory to the i386 folder, thus: cd\i386 (press Enter)
Type the following at the command prompt: winnt /ox
Once you've done that, follow the instructions for creating the three boot floppies.
Its possible to dual-boot Windows 98 and NT 4. The key things to remember are that both operating systems must be on different partitions, and that you should install Windows 98 first. I suggest that you read Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q243896 to help you on your way. There's no need for a thirdparty boot manager - as you'll discover, once the two operating systems are set up, you'll get the option to pick the one you want when you start up your machine.
If I load my Windows 95B CD.ROM I get the message,
'The CD-ROM is from an older version of Windows than the one you're currently using. Setup functionality from the disk will be disabled'. When checking the installed system details via Control Panel I System it's shown as Microsoft Windows 95 4.00 950A. ie. 5500. 2314.1003. It also shows a product number which is the same as the CD-ROM. The CD was supplied with the Dell Dimension XPS H233 PC. 1 haven't installed any other Windows 95 system, and apart from upgrading the hard disk from 4.5Gb to 10Gb (IBM disk that used Ontrack Overlay to overcome the disk size limitation), there have been no other changes. With this current restriction I have problems installing new hardware when it requests loading the Windows 95 CD.There's a known problem whereby if you have Auto insert notification turned on and insert a CD containing the retail version of Windows 95 OSR2, that message will appear. If you turn Auto insert notification off, then the problem won't occur. You should also be able to browse the CD quite happily without that happening, although you'l1 probably get the message appearing when you insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive.
My advice would be to turn Auto insert notification off, and to copy the system files from the CD onto your hard disk, store them in a folder, and then point Windows to the files there when it wants to do an installation. Its much quicker to do that anyway, as it saves you having to hunt about for the CD every time Windows demands that you insert it. To switch off Auto insert notification, follow these steps'
Go to My Computer icon on your Windows Desktop, Right-click on it and select the Properties menu item.
Click on the Device Manager tab when the dialog opens, and then click on the + sign by the CD.ROM entry.
Your CD-ROM drive should appear below it now, so select that and then click on the Properties button below. Click on the Settings tab when the dialog opens, and in the Options frame click in the option box labelled 'Auto insert notification' in order to clear it.
Click the OK button to close the dialog when you're finished. You should now be able to insert the CD in your CD-ROM drive and browse it without the warning message appearing.
Windows 98 Command Prompt Only Warning
Windows 98 users must look out for potential problems when running in the Command Prompt Only mode. This mode is invoked as follows:
Boot from a Windows 98 startup disk
Check Restart in MS-DOS mode in the Shut Down Windows dialog box.
Choose Command Prompt Only or Safe Mode Command Prompt Only from the boot menu
When you're running in this mode, Windows 98 (original or Second Edition) doesn't create the short (8.3) filename alias for a long filename correctly. This bug doesn't occur when you launch an MS-DOS window under Windows 98. Ordinarily, Windows 98 creates an 8.3 alias by eliminating illegal characters, shortening the filename portion to six characters, and appending a tilde and a digit for uniqueness. Aliases for the files Report for January.txt and Report for February.txt, for example, might be Report~1.txt and Report~2.txt.
In Command Prompt Only mode, however, Windows 98 will simply truncate the filename at eight characters. This means that both of the example filenames would be called Reportf.txt, and the second file would overwrite the first one
Avoid using long filenames in Windows 98's Command Prompt Only mode.
When I started my system, Windows 98's Registry Checker reported a problem with the Registry and then announced it was restoring a recent, 'good' copy. Now I can't use any of my applications. My system barely functions at all. What happened, and how can I fix it?
Windows 98's Registry Checker keeps several backups of your Registry in the hidden SysBckup folder (in the Windows folder). They're named rb000.cab, rb00l.cab, and so on. When Registry Checker adds a new backup, it discards the oldest; when a problem needs repairing, Registry Checker restores the newest backup.
On your system, one of those cab files is erroneously marked with a date/time stamp that's in the future, although it was probably recorded long ago. That file never gets discarded, because the other files are marked as older. When Registry Checker restores the incorrectly marked cab file, your Registry is zapped back in time. Any more recently installed programs won't work. Your first step is to identify and delete the rbxxx.cab file that has a spurious future date, so the problem can't happen again. Now launch the newest of the remaining backup files to restore a correct, current copy of the Registry.
I accidentally deleted the RUNDLL32.EXE file and now many functions and programs refuse to work. What can I do to get everything running again?
RUNDLL32.EXE is an essential Windows file, used internally to activate a wide variety of system functions, from formatting floppy disks to handling 'Open with..' on the right-click menu. If the file is missing or corrupted, you'll have big problems.
To recover RUNDLL32.EXE, put your original Windows CD in the CD-ROM drive, open an MS-DOS prompt and navigate to the folder on the CD ROM that contains the setup.cab files. These will be files with sequentially numbered names such as Win98 21.cab, Win98 22.cab, and so forth.
Within that directory, determine the first .cab file name in numerical sequence. Now enter the command extract/LC:\Windows/A win98_21.cab rundl132.exe, replacing Win98-21.cab with the actual lowest_numbered .cab file name. This will extract a fresh copy of Rundll32.exe and put this essential file directly into your Windows folder.
Could you tell me what the default entry for BMP files should be in the Registry? I've had a problem with associations going wrong, and some graphics programs overwriting the values used by other graphics programs.
I've torn my hair out on so many occasions over the selfish way graphics programs grab ownership of the graphics file extensions that I'm surprised I have any left. I think it would be much better if, when you click on an image file you got presented with a list of programs to choose from. Not just have one knock out all the others (usually by dint of having been the last one installed, but that’s a rant for a different forum than this one). Here are the default entries for GIF, JPG and BMP, the most commonly altered file types out there:
GIF files
Key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.gif Value: default
Data: "giffile"
JPG files
Key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg Value: default
Data: "jpegfile"
BMP files
Key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.bmp Value: default
Data: "Paint.Picture"
I've just upgraded my system motherboard MS6117 version 1.1 with an Intel Celeron 333MHz PII processor with 64Mb of RAM. I decided to reformat my hard disk -a 2.5Gb Western Digital Caviar (I did back it up prior to reformatting). I then installed DOS 5. When I try to install Windows 98 SE, it scans my hard disk, then says 'Copying files needed for Windows setup', then I get the following error message:
Standard Mode: Fault outside of MS-DOS Extender
EC=0000 CS=0307 IP=BD9F AX=0277 BX=0356 CX=00E0 DX=00E0 SI=0100 DI=0000 BP=01F4 DS=0277 ES=02FF SS=027F SP=0lE0
Also, this might be a clue, but whenever I load emm386 DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS (in CONFIG.SYS) the machine keeps rebooting itself.
There are a couple of things that can cause this problem - but basically it occurs when the Windows Kernel causes a processor exception at the point of initialisation, and before it can install any of its exception handlers to deal with the problem, thus finding itself incapable of handling the exception alone. There's a long list of items that can cause this to happen, including one that might grab your attention, as it features EMM386.ExE. Basically, the things that can go wrong and cause the error you're seeing are:
HIMEM.SYS can't handle the A20 line.
DOS = HIGH is not working (this relates back to the HIMEM.SYS problem).
Your memory chips have a fault.
The EMM386.EXE NOEMS x = AO0O-EFFF line is missing IN CONFIG.SYS.
Your CMOS is set up wrongly.
Your BIOS is out of date.
Your disks are corrupted.
Your system has a virus. The ones that cause this error are Form, Forms, Noint and Yankee Doodle.
Other possible causes included running DR-DOS or having an incorrectly configured memory manager, but I don't think they could be said to apply in this instance.
I recommend you wade your way through the possible causes above, as I suspect that resolving one of them will cure your fault.
When I boot my PC, a window, apparently left over from a previous Internet session, appears with the line C:\Windows\StartUp\ProgramFiles\Startup\Kak.Hta at the top. I tried many things to delete the window, but it keeps coming back. Do you have any idea where the window comes from? I upgraded to Windows 98 and thought it might go away, but it didn't.
Your system is infected with the KakWorm virus, which takes advantage of the signature feature in Outlook Express to attach itself to all messages sent from the infected machine. Merely reading such a message can infect the recipient's machine.
MSNBC reports that the KakWorm virus has been spread through mass-marketing emails (www.msnbc.com/news/412717.asp). Moreover, Symantec lists Kak Worm as a 'top threat'. You need to get rid of the virus and update your system to close the security leak that this intruder exploits as soon as possible.
To restore your machine to health, first download the latest update from your antivirus program's Web site and verify that the new code does indeed detect and remove KakWorm. Now visit Microsoft's page on the subject, which you will find at www.microsoft.com/ TechNet/security/virus/kakworm.asp. Download and install the security patch described on this page. Finally, once you've fixed the problem on your system, pass this information to all your email correspondents, as you may have inadvertently infected them.
I wanted to add a file type to the ones in the registered list, but I get an error message telling me the file extension is already in use. I've searched through the list from top to bottom, but can't see it. What am I doing wrong?
You’re not doing anything wrong -another file type has already registered the extension you're trying to register which is actually quite common, what with word processors and graphics programs supporting so many different file types. Microsoft Word, for example, registers the RTF file extension, but you won't find it in the list. There is a way to change the program a particular file type is associated with, by following these steps:
Find a file with the extension you want, then click on it with your right mouse button while holding down the Shift key. This will bring up a pop-up menu that has a menu option of 'Open With...'.
You might get asked for a description of the file type; if so fill it in, otherwise just select the program you want associated with the file extension from the list of available programs. Make sure that the' Always use this program to open these files' checkbox is activated, and then hit the OK button.
Your file type will now be associated with the program wanted to use to open it.
I had a troublesome upgrade to Windows ME, and now find that when I try and open the Help file the entire Index page is blank.
The problem is that the HTC file association has gone from the Registry, so you’re going to have to enter the Registry in order to restore it. That means making all the necessary backups of the Registry before starting in on it -I'd suggest using the Backup facility in the System Configuration Editor (MSCONFIG.EXE), then following these steps:
1 Select Run from the Start menu and type 'regedit (without the quotes) in the edit box and then hit the Enter key. When the Registry Editor loads, navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes2 Create a new key, so right-click on the word Classes, select the New menu item and then select the Key menu item. Give the key the name htc
3 Once you've created the key, right-click in the right-hand window and select the String Value menu item. Rename the new key Content Type and then double-click on it to bring up the Edit String dialog.
4 Enter 'text/x-component (without the quotes) into the Value Data edit box, and then click on the OK button. Close the Registry editor. You should be able to view the Index on your Help file once more.
What does it mean if a green question mark appears next to an item in Device Manager? Is it a colour palette problem?
No, there's nothing wrong with your colour palette. The green question mark in Device Manager is new to Windows ME, and it means that the device is running under a Windows-supplied default driver because no dedicated driver for the device could be found. This happens on devices that can be found in the keyboard, mouse and USB hub classes, and is merely to tell you what’s happening. It doesn't mean that the device won't work properly, although that may be the case. If you see a device tagged like that, it will probably be worth your while to check out the Web site of the manufacturer of the device to see if it has any updated drivers for it.
A few months ago, you reported that Microsoft admitted to a bug in Windows 98 System File Checker ('Bug In Windows 98 Tool Can Trash Systems', Newsfile, Shopper 139). This explains two crashes I've had recently. Has the bug been fixed in Windows 98 Second Edition? If not, is there a bug fix available for download?
As reported, the problem arises because the mini.cab file contains a special cut-down version of Windows used during installation. Many of these files have the same names as the full versions. However, SFC sometimes does not have correct information on the source of the files and then according to Microsoft searches cabinet files in Dos directory order. That supposedly causes it to find the mini.cab version first and hence load the wrong version of the file.
Oddly though, on both the original Windows 98 and SE retail version CD disks, the mini.cab file is listed last in Dos directory order. This makes me wonder how often the bug occurs and whether the Microsoft explanation is entirely accurate. For what it's worth, the same article says the bug is fixed in Windows 98 SE, which uses a corrected default.sfc file (though it does not say whether applying the Service Pack will also fix it). The only affected files are comm.drv, gdi.exe, keyboard.drv, krnI386.exe, lzexpand.dll, system.drv, user.exe, ver.dll, vga.drv, and win87em.dll. The versions from mini.cab all have dates in 1996 or 1997 but, when you expand them, they turn out to be files from Windows 3.1.
SFC problems occur most frequently with user.exe followed by gdi.exe and krnI386.exe. Since these three files are the heart of Windows 98, it is no surprise that using a Windows 3.1 version will crash the system. I advise users to be very cautious if SFC suggests replacing any of these three files.
My solution, if you have copied the CAB files to your hard disk as I recommend, is to simply rename mini.cab to mini.old and so prevent SFC from searching it. It will be needed if you have to reinstall Windows from a Dos prompt but can be renamed back to mini.cab as needed.
The article about the shop going bust ('Chip Shopped', Helpfile, Shopper 145) reminded me about a small problem I've had for a while and not done anything about. I live in the Chesterfield area and I used to deal with several local suppliers - namely Extreme Computers, Memax Computers and Insight. Both Extreme and Memax have fallen by the wayside. My problem is that I buy quite a lot of PC equipment and, unless it is DOA or faulty very early, then it's difficult to remember where I bought it.
I bought a 64Mb Dimm PC100 chip, which worked fine for about eight months, then suddenly starting screwing up my machine. It took me ages to suss that it was the Ram, but the supplier (Memax) has now gone bust. How do I get the chip replaced under warranty? The other issue is with a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP which went faulty, and I took it back to Memax who gave me the usual 'It'll be done within 28 days' routine and then promptly went bust. How do I get that or my money back? Your readers ought to have these issues pointed out, as most people can't afford to miss the money even for a little while. I use Shopper as my benchmark and buying bible; when buying from what appear to be very reputable companies who advertise in it, I expect sound business transactions.
Unfortunately, when a computer company goes bust, it is usually well after exhausting all their available lines of credit and they rarely have any significant assets. Any remaining stock still legally belongs to their component suppliers until paid for, and offices and equipment are usually leased. Then there are secured creditors, headed by the taxman. So there will probably be few, if any, assets remaining for distribution to unsecured creditors.
The mail order computer market is extremely competitive and margins razor thin or thinner. It follows that companies offering the lowest prices or promising free extended after-sale support may not be fully covering their costs. Sure, the risks are probably just as high buying from a small local computer store. That's why our Buyers' Guide emphasises the protections available to you -primarily, use of a credit card, so the issuing bank carries the risk.
Usually there is little or no warning before a company goes bust it happens when creditors won't wait any longer. Shopper, however, does try its best to check on its advertisers' stability.
If a company stops advertising in Shopper while still advertising elsewhere, the reason is often a deterioration in their financial condition.
The most unfortunate cases are those where a customer has returned his computer for repair just before the company goes bust. Sometimes you will be able to contact the receiver and he may allow you to retrieve your property if identifiable. Otherwise, you are in the same position as someone who never received the goods they paid for - unless you paid by credit card, you are usually out of luck.
As for the warranty, a 'lifetime warranty' often means the lifetime of the company offering it! Some products will carry a manufacturers warranty -much more useful as this is in addition to your legal rights of redress from the seller. It may cost more but a 'brand name' is often worthwhile. However, brand name computer memory, with lifetime warranty from excellent companies like Kingston or Viking, does carry a substantial price premium.
I have the ODBC problem as mentioned on last month's World Book cover disc. I have read the help file included on the disc and have managed to download the WX1530.exe file with no problem. But the second file (
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/JET35UPD.EXE) cannot be located! Please can you tell me what the filename should be?If you go back to the directory level (in other words omit the JET35UPD.Exe part) you will get a complete list of filenames in this folder. Unfortunately it is rather large (500K) but it does show that there is a new file Jet35sp3.exe dated 6th Oct 1999, which would be after we went to press on that issue. This should contain the updates you need.
My (very) local area suffers from occasional voltage drops (lights visibly dimmed) and more frequently actual power loss. I have no idea whether these are 'invisible' voltage drops. Midland Electricity Board has twice failed to return my help call which was not aimed at complaining, simply at acquiring sensible, non-commercial guidance on how to protect my computer and answer phone, both of which are critical to my work. We recently lost an analogue answer phone on one of our lines and have re-equipped with digital cordless.
Any suggestions please for a technophobe prepared to spend on genuinely worthwhile protection for surge/voltage drop for my computer (PIlI 500MHz) and phone line? Propriety equipment seems to be in the £150-£200 bracket that gives battery backup and surge protection (including phone). So are they worth buying?
If you live in an area that is particularly prone to voltage variation -either drops or surges and your equipment is either expensive, critical or just an object of personal affection, then it makes sense to protect it against the onslaught of obnoxious electricity.
Before investing in a protective device. It is wise to contact your local electricity provider (as you have done) and ask why there seems to be some discrepancy in their service. It may be that there is some temporary work going on that could be interfering with your supply, rather than a long-term problem.
Once you have ascertained that the only way to deal with it is to protect from your end, you have a couple of options.
First, you could buy a small device that sits between the plug and your equipment that blows when there is a dangerous excess of current. This is fine, as they are relatively cheap, but they don't protect against voltage drops, only surges -and you have to replace them after every surge event.
The second option is to buy a Universal Power Supply. These also sit in-between the mains and your equipment, but act as both a battery and surge protector. Though the battery will not last long, it does give you time to shutdown your computer properly and backup important files.
I have a feeling that your analogue answer phone would have been put out of commission by mains current rather than any voltage drop down the phone line, but it is possible that it was the phone power line that caused the problem. As such, I would recommend the APC BackUPS Pro 280 call APS on (0800) 163766 which, at £163.33, provides both spike and voltage drop protection and has an RJ45 socket cover the phone line.
I have a problem with my PC, which has a FIC KA-6110 motherboard with Intel466 MHz Celeron processor, Voodoo 3Dfx 2000, 16Mb video, 64Mb Ram and Windows 98. The system has always been unstable and often crashes because of general protection faults in the DLL Kemel32, page faults, computer restarts and programs that just stop and close down.
I recently bought The Sims, installed it and ran it; it crashed a few times but generally it ran OK. I then tried some of your Windows tips ('Windows Cleaning', Shopper 155 and 156). As a result, The Sims would run out of memory and not run. When I put the swapfile back under Windows control, I could get to the opening game screens but it would just close down. I have put all the settings back to the way they were originally, but now The Sims goes through the opening screen and dumps me as soon as it starts. I have reinstalled it to no avail.
Do you have any suggestions as to what I could try to make my system stable? Would Windows Me help?
Instability can either be caused by hardware problems or by software conflicts. For example, it seems many 3D graphic cards can overheat causing problems. Adding a fan to the graphics card can cure this. Second, make sure you obtain the Service Pack to update your Windows to the SE version as it includes many bug fixes. Also, look for any other updates -especially newer graphics card drivers and the latest version of DirectX.
David Farquhar's 'Windows Cleaning' articles contained a lot of good advice, especially the part about cutting out unnecessary programs at startup, but I believe that his advice regarding the optimisation of the Windows swapfile was seriously flawed. Your experience seems to confirm this. First, adding the line ConservativeSwapFileUsage = 1 may reduce the size of the swapfile, but it will usually slow down your computer. By design, Windows 98 uses the time spent waiting for user input which would otherwise be wasted -to copy unsaved pages of memory to the swapfile. If it runs out of memory (and 64Mb does not go very far these days), it can free up those pages without having to write them out to disk. However, you will get a little more disk activity and your swapfile will need to be larger -at least 4Mb more than the amount of memory available in your system because it needs space to mirror every page of memory to disk, plus an overhead for administration. Only use this option if you have enough memory (256Mb or thereabouts) to be confident your apps will never use it all.
Second, and this is the important bit, you should never limit the maximum size of the swapfile. The only possible outcome is that you will run out of memory! Instead, after defragmenting your hard disk, set the minimum swapfile size to a fairly large value (at least 68Mb and preferably 100 or 132Mb). Setting a minimum size will ensure that at least this part of the swapfile will be in a contiguous area of disk for fast access. If Windows needs more swapfile space, the swapfile can still grow. However, unless you use the ConservativeSwapFileUsage option, the swapfile size should be the total amount of virtual memory you want to access at one time, including the amount of physical memory you have installed.
Setting V cache size limits was useful in Windows 95 because of a bug that prevented Windows from releasing cache space -but not in Windows 98, which fixed this problem.
It would appear that the competition between Microsoft and Novell has spread to time itself. On returning to work on Monday 25th October I noticed that our server, running NoveIl4.11, had reverted back to Greenwich Mean Time the previous Sunday.
When I checked a standalone PC running Windows 95 the time was correct at British Summer Time. Is this another case of Novell getting in first. ..again?
It could well be.
The online music craze continues with thousands of MP3 sites on the Net now. The music industry's response? Secure Digital Music Initiative. The idea behind SDMI is to prevent piracy of music, which should then help to protect artist rights and music company profits. It is a good idea in theory, but I think in practice it will fall flat on its face, and for two reasons.
First, people download MP3 tracks for free and if they do not like the track then they have lost nothing except the connection charges. Downloading and paying for an SDMI track that you end up not liking is simply a waste of time and money and people simply won't do it. I know RealPlayer allows for real-time music streaming, but who is going to do this for every single track?
Secondly, if I have to pay for SDMI music I would prefer to go out and buy the CD instead. Knowing the music companies, they will abuse SDMI so that they increase their profits by charging the same price for the music online as in the shops. The only way SDMI will succeed is for the online music to be priced very cheaply indeed. Alas, I can not see this happening and MP3 will remain King.
But you have to see the Music Company’s point of view, don't you? It's kind of in parallel with that of the musicians - MP3 is being abused by people who are using it as a handy way to pirate music instead of respecting it and using it as a brilliant way to enjoy music that you have paid for.
Looking through some back numbers of Shopper recently, I came across a letter in which the writer exhorted us not to blame Microsoft for all the problems that beset Windows ('Bear Bill No III Will', Letters, Shopper 136).
Fine, I go along with that after experiencing some of the crappy software that is on offer in the market place. But who else, pray, do we blame for the stupid, inept and infantile bootup password system that is supposed to protect our systems from unauthorised access by the sub-nine-year-olds in my family?
I put a password onto my daughters computer and my eight-year-old grandson cracked it in seven seconds flat. Who on earth would have thought that clicking on 'Cancer would cancel the 'Need' for entering the correct password. Surely no-one but a moron would perpetuate that little plum through five versions of Windows - Win95 A,B,C and Win98 Ist and 2nd editions. Can anybody please help? Is there any third party software out there that will do this vital job for me, or alternatively some VB code that will correct Microsoft's stupid omission?
Er, when Microsoft says 'password' it doesn't actually mean password in that keep-out-if-you-don't-get-it-right sense. Not at startup, anyway. If you want to keep young fingers out of your machine there are a host of other ways, including KidDesk which, if we remember correctly, provides a dedicated desktop for youngsters and confines them to an area that's their own.
In December, we asked if readers could suggest a source of good quality CPU fans ('Fanning The Flames', Helpfile, Shopper 142). Someone suggested Maplin electronics, which supplies a range of Cooler Master ball bearing fans made by the Oryx group. He used Maplin part number LX56 and Cooler Master number DP5-5022 with an integral speed sensor, costing around £10.
Arthur Clarke went to the Web and reports excellent service from US supplier
www.3dfx.cool.com. International purchases are charged at only a dollar or two over the US delivery rate. His fan arrived just three days after e-mail order. Dr David Lovering suggests an alternative approach: if you have time and dexterity, you don't even need to replace the fan! Instead, lubricate it with a molybdenum disulphide based grease or oil. MoS2 has dry lubricating properties -it rapidly forms a film over all bearing surfaces. When the volatile hydrocarbon oils are vaporised away in the hot working environment, your fan continues to run smoothly. There is no need even to use a ball bearing-based unit: any cheap sleeve bearing device can be made to last forever (almost). To apply, peel off the label and remove the plastic circlip on the shaft with two fine blades. Remove the fan from spindle, ensuring you don't lose spring thrust washers. Coat the shaft and bearings with a molybdenum disulphide based grease or oil and reassemble. If the fan is an old one which has already failed, be sure to remove the corrosion high spots with finest emery or a cutting polish first.If you really want to know how it works, David says: "Weak van der Waals forces between the crystal planes permit infinite low energy slippage, ie lubrication, while retaining strong attractive forces between atoms in the plane." It was a big promotional thing in the late 1960s and 1970s, but the military had been using it longer. The problem for heavy duty use in cars and aeroplanes is that the 'moly' film can break away locally as flakes under extreme duty, but this is unlikely to happen in a PC fan.
Unfortunately, the Masterphotos Studio and particularly the Hotshots software has taken over all my digital photo images. The Hotshots drumming drives me mad before it allows viewing. It is unfriendly and I want it out of my system.
There does not appear to be an uninstall on the CD so I uninstalled it using Windows 98 Uninstall. Now I can no longer access any of my WinZip files. The Hotshot icon labels are stuck firmly over every image. And I'm extremely annoyed that my collection of about 4,000 images seems to be wrecked.
This is a common problem when installing graphics packages. They all seem to want to associate every possible file extension with themselves. Then, when you uninstall them (using the add/remove programs icon in Control Panel is the right way) they leave the extensions with no application associated with them. Unfortunately, Windows 95/98 didn't think through this uninstall process fully. With a few exceptions, where applications themselves will restore your original associations, there is no way for Windows to hold and hence restore the previous file associations.
Of course, there are several third-party uninstall programs you can buy which monitor all the changes made by an application installation and offer to reverse them for you. These work reasonably well but the process is so complicated that problems almost inevitably occur. What if, say, you have subsequently removed the original application? Unless you remove applications in exactly the opposite order to that which you installed them, it is almost impossible to work out which changes should be reversed and which should not.
To get around this, some applications take it upon themselves to check if they are still associated with their usual file extensions and, if not, offer to change them back. Internet browsers do this. Other applications may have an option to restore file associations.
Usually, however, the simplest solution is to reinstall the application. This will recreate all the original file associations as well as replace any files that have been overwritten subsequently. So, reinstalling Winzip and any graphics applications should clear up the mess for you.
I have two computers, one running Windows 95 and one running Windows 98. My children (one in particular) have been learning about computers at school. Just recently I have been having non-stop trouble recently with both computers. I have found out this is because my son has been altering the settings in control panel. I have two logon accounts set up on the computer -one for me and one for the children.
Is it at all possible to make the whole of control panel inaccessible (ie remove the icon from My Computer and Settings on the start menu) using Regedit? I have had a bit of experience with using Regedit and know the risks of using it and the damage it can cause. I have looked everywhere on the Internet for a solution, but cannot find a way to do it.
What you need is PolEdit -the policy editor. This is one of the tools in the Windows Resource Kit included on later Windows 95 and all Windows 98 CDs (and also downloadable from Microsoft).
This can limit a user in any way you wish for example, preventing them from running any programs other than those on the desktop. Since the Windows user logon security is so weak (essentially the only thing it restricts access to is the passwords file) the policies must apply to all users. Once you have set the restrictions, rename or otherwise hide the poledit.exe file, and hide the CD-Rom somewhere! And you had better hide Regedit too - before your young computer scientists learn how to use that!
Is it possible to get rid of the warning message in Windows 98 that tells me I'm running low on disk space? I know I am, but I don't need constant reminders.
Yes, this is quite simple to do, though you have to make sure you're paying attention to the dialog boxes at the end of the procedure. These are the steps to take on the route to clear your irritation:
Head for the Start button, click on it, select the Programs menu item, then the Accessories menu item, then the System Tools menu item and finally select Disk Cleanup.
Select the drive you want to disable the warning on, click on OK and then go to its Settings tab: look for the 'If this drive runs low in disk space, automatically run Disk Cleanup' checkbox and click in it to clear it.
Click on the OK button and a dialog will appear asking you if you're sure you want to delete files. Obviously, make sure you click No at this point.
This should ensure the warning dialog goes away. For those wondering why you'd ever want to do this, this example is clear enough. He doesn't want to see the dialog popping up all the time, but it's something you'l1 want to disable if you've compressed drives, because Windows 98 will keep on telling you that the host drive is low on space.
Could you please explain why people always see a 'Loading System Policies' message when they log onto their Windows 98 systems. I haven't set system policies up as far as I know, and yet this message appears every time. Have I set the network up wrongly, or is there some other explanation for this?
I wondered about that message dialog every time I saw it too. You'll be pleased to know that it's quite benign, and is in fact the default setting for Windows 9x, which will automatically go and search the network for a policy file whenever it starts up. So why don't you get a dialog saying 'Searching for System Policy' followed by one that says 'Loading System Policies if a policy is actually found'?
I don't have an explanation for that, I'm afraid. You can stop it happening if it really bothers you, but to do so you'll need to install the System Policy Editor, POLEDIT.EXE. To do that, follow these steps:
Place your Windows 98 SE CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive, because you'll need to access its contents. If it autoloads, just ignore it, close the dialog or hold down the Shift key when you place it in the CD.ROM drive to prevent it from autoloading in the first place.
Go to the Start button, click on it, then select the Settings menu option and the Control Panel menu option.
Double-click on the Add/Remove programs icon, then click on the Windows Setup tab.
When it's loaded, click on the Have Disk button at the bottom of the tab page.
Click on the Browse button when the 'Install From Disk' dialog appears, and go to your CD-ROM drive and open the Tools folder.
Next, open the Reskit folder, then the Netadmin folder and finally the Poledit folder.
Select the POLEDIT.INF file, click OK, and then OK again. In the Have Disk dialog you'll see that you now have two entries in the Components Window. Select the second item in the list, the System Policy Editor, and then click on the Install button.
When it's finished click on the OK button to close the Add/Removes dialog.
You can load the System Policy Editor in two ways:
Either click the Start button and navigate to Programs - Accessories - System Tools then select System Policy Editor from the list, or
Hit Start - Run, type poledit into the command line edit box and hit the Enter key.
Once its running, follow these steps:
Go to the File menu, and select the Open Registry menu item.
Double-click on the Local Computer icon, then on Windows 98 Network, and finally on Update.
You'll see a checkbox labelled Remote Update, which you should clear by clicking in it.
Hit OK, select the Save menu option from the File menu and close down the System Policy Editor.
You should now find that the dialog no longer appears when your Windows 9x systems start up, unless of course there really is a System Policy that needs to be loaded.
I've uninstalled a program that's left its entry in Add/Remove programs. How can I get rid of the entry?
It's a FAQ, but it does no harm to answer it again every so often. Removing entries that get left behind in the Add/Remove Programs list is quite simple, but it does involve a trip to the Registry, so make the usual backups before continuing with these steps:
1 Go to the Start button, click on it, select the Run menu item, and type regedit into the edit box, then hit OK.
2 You then want to find the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_LMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
3 Scroll down the list of programs under that key in order to find the one you want, select it in the left-hand list (check the values that appear in the right-hand list box, just to make sure you have the right program) and then delete the entry.
Close down the Registry Editor when you've finished.
I recall being able to view the contents of CAB files just by double-clicking on them. Now, when I try to do that, nothing at all happens. How can I restore my system so that I can view the files again?
You're correct in your recollections, you should be able to view the contents of Cabinet (CAB) files just by double-clicking on them. If you can't, Windows 98 must have lost its file association for them, stolen perhaps by another program on installation and not restored when it was uninstalled. Fortunately, it's easy to restore that association by following these steps:
1 Open Windows Explorer or My Computer, go to the View menu and select the Folder Options menu item.
2 Look for Cabinet in the Registered File Types list, select it and click on Edit, and then select the Open action and click on Edit again.
3 Look for an edit box labelled 'Application Used To Perform Action' and type the following in it: explorer.exe /root, {0CD7A5C0-9F37-11CE-AE65-08002B2E1262},%1
4 Hit a lot of OK buttons to close the dialogs, and the Cabinet file viewing should be restored.
I've recently rebuilt/configured my machine. One of the enhancements was to add a second hard disk. I Ideally, I'd like to have OS and programs on one drive and data on the other. The problem is that My Documents is installed on the same drive as Windows. I'm aware that Windows 98 uses the notion 'My Documents' as a standard element of the OS - on the Desktop, in navigation bars and so on, and I'm assuming that just moving the My Documents directory/folder onto the D drive wont be enough to update the relevant system settings that provide that functionality. Is there any way of installing/(re-) configuring the system to use a My Documents folder from the D drive as default, instead of the C drive?
Indeed there is. To move the My Documents folder, Right-click on the My Documents icon on your Active Desktop and select its Properties menu item. Fill in the details for the target folder or browse to it, and then hit the OK button. I'd recommend making a backup copy of the contents of the My Documents folder (and subfolders) before you make any changes. Its always sensible to back up important data before you do anything that might endanger it in any way, and under Windows 2000 you'll actually be prompted to move the contents of the old folder to the new one. If you choose not to do so, and that wasn't what you intended, you'll find that they've all been hidden at the old location (though they don't actually get deleted from there). Therefore, under Windows 2000, if you get it wrong you'll just have to bring up the Properties window for the folder again and select the Restore Default option to have My Documents move back to where it was originally located, thus restoring access to your files.
Windows 2000 Administrators might be interested to know that you can use folder redirection in Group Policies to change where My Documents appears on a network share, which is quite handy because then when your users save their files to their My Documents folder, they'll actually be saved at a location decided by you, ready for backup.
If you're wondering where the My Documents info is stored in the Registry, it can be found at:
HKEY-CURRENT-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
If you move the My Documents folder somewhere else on your system, the change is recorded at that entry, but a new entry is created at the following location:
HKEY-CURRENT-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User\Shell Folders
That's important to know because if the redirection and change to My Documents was carried out via a Group Policy implemented by a system administrator, the new path appears in this Registry key. However, the option to change the location of the - My Documents folder, will no longer be available to anyone right-clicking on the - My Documents folder, and selecting the Properties menu item.
I've a shortcut on my taskbar to the Work folder within My Documents. This is viewed as a Web page. I'd like to set it up to open by default with the 'folder' view open so that I can easily move documents from place to place; for example from work to upload, or from unzipped to work. However, I can't see a way of doing this.
Each folder can be given its own settings, quite different to those used by other folders. For example, the first thing I do when I run up a new Windows 2000 system is set all my Windows Explorer folders to Detail view, except for the Control Panel folder which I set to Large Icons. I need to ensure that the setting to remember each individual folder's appearance is enabled. You can set your folder to look like whatever you want, but how you do this will depend on which version of Windows you're running. This is the procedure for Windows 98:
Go to the taskbar and open your Work folder, then to its View - Folder Options menu item. You get a choice of views in the General tab. If you want your folders to have individual settings, opt for the Classic or Custom styles because they're the two that let you open a new window for each folder, rather than the Web style which simply changes the current folder to reflect whatever you happen to be looking at. Once you've done that, go to the new tab and check the box that forces each window to remember its own settings, then modify your folder to your preferred view by turning off the ability to view this particular folder as a Web page.
I'm having a problem with a recent installation of Windows ME. After installing it, I ran Scan Disk and Disk Defragmenter. Now, the system hangs at 'External Cache' immediately after the ME logo appears; additionally, the monitor discolours. The only option at this time is to either shut down and restart, or hot-boot the system.
This, of course, causes a Safe Mode start. If I then select normal start, the system boots normally, albeit running Scan Disk. I've been told that this is a not-so-pleasant feature of ME, and unfortunately I've found no fixes for this problem. The system is installed on Digital HiNote Ultra 2000.
This sounds like a BIOS problem to me, and I'd normally recommend you try disabling the external cache in your BIOS to see if that helps. But on looking in the BIOS for my own HiNote VP, I can't see a setting there that would enable to you turn it off. Obviously, you should only do this if you're comfortable working within the system BIOS; otherwise, find someone who is competent to help you (pressing F2 on my system gains me access to the BIOS settings).
I'd also usually suggest that you go and get the latest BIOS upgrade for your system from the manufacturers Web site, but since Digital got taken over by Compaq, there really haven't been any updates. The last BIOS update I could find for your machine was created in 1998, so I don't know if it will do you any good or just make things worse. If you're suicidally curious, it can be found at www4.support.compaq.com/support_database/index/epid75.htm
If it's any help, I have Windows 2000 Professional running reasonably well, if a tad slowly, on my HiNote, and Windows 98 SE ran quite comfortably on it before that, so you might want to consider these as alternatives.
I have a question regarding the default Windows Explorer open setting. When I click on the Windows Explorer icon under Start - Programs - Windows Explorer, the Explorer window is maximised to fill the screen. Is it possible to manually resize this window, close it, then when I open it again it will remember my previous setting? Or do I have to go into the Registry and edit the setting of a specific key?
All you need to do is to just open it, resize it and then close it down, and when you re-open it, it should come back the same size as when you closed it down. However, my personal experience suggests that Explorer (and all the other windows like that in the Windows OS) - seem to have minds of their own, and will often pop up in a size that bears no relationship to anything that might have gone before, and indeed might ever appear in the future.
I have a dual-boot system with Windows 95 and NT 4 Workstation arranged in the following partitions on one disk. Windows 95 on C (FAT 16); data on D (FAT16); Windows NT 4 on E (NTFS).
I'd like to remove Windows 95 completely and reuse the space for NT 4. I want to keep my NT 4 unchanged, as I don't want to re-install it and all my applications. How do I go about removing Windows 95 from the C drive and from the NT 4 boot menu? If everything goes well, I intend to use PartitionMagic to rearrange the partitions so that NT 4 has most of the disk space on the E drive, while the C and D drives can be made into very small partitions.
There's no need to bring PartitionMagic into the fray unless you have a burning ambition to change the size of the C and D partitions. The simplest solution to your problem is to delete the Windows folder on the C drive, along with Program Files on the same drive, and hey presto you've got rid of Windows 95. All you then have to do is modify the BOOT.INI file, which is located in the root of your C drive. You might have to unhide it if, like the one on my NT 4 server, it isn't visible, and you'll definitely need to make it read/write before you can edit it. Then just delete the line that points to Windows 95. Next time you start up your system it should just offer you the NT 4 choices, thus:
Windows NT Workstation 4
Windows NT Workstation 4 (VGA Mode)
Once you've done that, use the NT 4 Disk Administrator tool to convert (not format) the C and D partitions to NTFS, and you'll have a working NT 4 solution achieved with the minimum of effort. This is what you might expect to see when you open the BO0T.INI file in Notepad.
[boot loader] timeout=30
defau1t=multi(0)disk(0)disk(0)partition(1) \WINNT [operating systems]
mu1ti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.0"
mu1ti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.0 [VGA mode] "
/basevideo/sos
C:\="Windows 95"
Simply delete the C:\ = "Windows 95" entry to leave your BOOT.INI file only displaying the NT 4 entries. To edit the BOOT.INI file, the easiest way is:
1 Fire up Windows Explorer, go to the root of your C drive and look for the BOOT.INI file.
2 Right-click on it when you find it and select the Properties menu item from the pop-up menu.
Look at the bottom of the dialog and you'll see the Attributes section. Click in the Read-only checkbox to clear it.
Once you've done that, close the Properties dialog and then double-click on the file to open it into Notepad.
5 Delete the C:\ = "Windows 95" line, then save and close the file.
Right-click on the file again to select it and follow steps one to three above, this time setting the Read-only property to true.
You should now find that your system will only boot into NT 4 and you'll have removed Windows 95 from the system with very little effort. Do check the contents of the Windows 95 Programs Files and any other folder on the C drive that you intend to get rid of before you actually delete it. Just in case there's some data there you need to keep.
I'm running Windows 98 SE on a 500MHz Dell Celeron computer with 64Mb of RAM. The problem is that all the dialog boxes and menus in Windows have lost their default fonts, and instead of little arrows (indicating submenus) I'm getting the number eight. Also, application boxes, Minimise, Maximise and Close icons have all shrunk in size. In addition, applications that contain tick boxes have become corrupt and it's impossible to see whether an option has been selected or not.
I'm not aware of having changed anything in the system or having loaded any new software. Is there anything I can do to restore the system without having to flatten it and reload everything?
Your problem is that the file for the Marlett TrueType font has become damaged (this is a hidden system file by the way, before you rush off to look for it in the Fonts folder). The Marlett font is used to display scroll bar arrows, Maximize and Minimize buttons, option buttons, checkboxes, and various other controls in Windows 95, and gets explicitly loaded by the GDI (Graphics Device Interface) at startup. A TrueType font is used instead of bitmaps for controls in order to enhance the performance of Windows 98 SE. The MARLETT.TTF file is located in the Fonts folder, along with other TrueType fonts; it's hidden but visible in most programs' font list. If the MARLETT.TTF file is damaged or missing, numbers or garbled characters appear in place of these controls.
First of all check that MARLETT.TTF is there and that its Hidden attribute is set
1 In My Computer or Windows Explorer, right-click the MARLETT.TTF file in the Windows \Fonts folder and then click Properties.
2 Click the Hidden checkbox to select it and then click OK. If you need to replace the MARLETT.TTF file, it's located in the WIN98_52.CAB file on the Windows 98 SE CD-ROM. Extract it into the Windows Fonts directory by copying EXTRACT.EXE from the Windows CD (or Disk 1 of the floppy install set) onto your hard disk, and then type the following (assuming you have a CD) at a command prompt:
extract <your cd-rom drive>:\win98_52.cab
marlett.ttf /1 c:\<windows>\fonts
Now set the file's Hidden and System attributes by typing the following:
attrib +s +h c:\windows\fonts\MARLETT
If, after replacing the MARLETT.TTF file, numbers or garbled characters still appear in place of controls, try deleting the ttfcache file in the Windows folder: it will be rebuilt automatically when you restart the computer. Problems with the MARL.ETT.TTF file can also be caused by exceeding, or even approaching, Windows' limit of approximately 1,000 fonts.
In the last couple of days, I have been getting a box appearing on the Taskbar with the words 'Driver memory error'. This appears during the final part of the boot-up, when the clock and volume control icons appear. Sometimes, two boxes appear with the same words but one becomes an error box on the desktop with the following words - cannot import c:\windows\kak.reg Error opening the file.
This keeps appearing on the Start folder even after I remove it. It seems to magically appear a few boots later. The only out-of-the-ordinary things I have done prior to this are.
1. Had a look at a magazine CD with the intention of loading IE5.01 but aborted this.
2. Tried to get rid of the Log Off (me) from the Start button.
3. Run a defrag of HD using Norton Speed Disk.
You missed out one more out-of-the-ordinary thing:
4. Opened an e-mail infected with Kak.
Yes, it is rare in the Helpline that I point the finger of blame unequivocally at a virus (or, as in this case, a worm), but that is what you undoubtedly have. This one spreads by exploiting the fact that two ActiveX classes were erroneously marked by Microsoft as 'safe for scripting'. The Kak worm uses these classes to modify your e-mail signature so that it sends itself with every e-mail that you create. It's fairly new and fortunately does not do anything worse than display rather strange message once a month. To get rid of it you simply need do the following:
1. Delete c:\windows\kak.htm and c:\windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\kak.hta.
2. Delete c:\autoexec.bat and rename ae.kak to autoexec.bat
3. Use regedit to lookup HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
There will be a filename there listed under cAg0u. Delete this from c:\Windows\System.
4. Delete the cAg0u Registry value.
5. Reset your e-mail .sig file.
I've had it twice this month already and I only spotted it because I use an e-mail signature file and I noticed that it wasn't actually being included in my e-mails.
The second time I downloaded the security patch from Windows Update and banished it for good but I predict that this one will spread pretty rapidly.
Er, OK, I've just bought Windows 2000, and I've installed it and everything, and now I can't run any games. This has vexed me to the point of almost ripping every last follicle from my beautifully permed barnet. This mullet took me months to grow. D'oh! I have an AMD K6-2 350, with a Voodoo Banshee and all drivers updated, so why can't I run games that require 3D? When I go to install DirectX it says: The Microsoft DirectX 7.0a setup is not compatible with the version of Windows you are running. That can't be good.
Well, what do you expect if you replace your perfectly good copy of Windows 9x with Windows NT? You didn't fall for that Microsoft 'Let's give an unrelated product a name that makes it sound like an upgrade' line, did you? Windows 2000 was going to be called NT5 but Microsoft (correctly) decided that no one would buy it if they knew what it was. Tricking the customer into buying something he doesn't need is, of course, a well-tried strategy for Microsoft but this is the first time that the gap between what you think you are getting and what you get has been so large.
Microsoft tried to make Win 2000 compatible with all the Win 9x software and failed. Its new plan is to persuade enough people into buying it anyway so that there is a big incentive for software developers to port their back catalogue to Win 2000 and solve the compatibility problem for Microsoft.
I've been using a digital camera lately, and after saving the photos in My Documents (as JPEG files), I've transferred them to a floppy disk, or several floppies, because the average number I can get on a disk is only five. Is this standard? I've tried Compression Agent on the floppies but it's not much help -in fact the amount of free space sometimes reduces after compression.
JPEG files are already highly compressed and, in fact, the compression algorithm is much more efficient than general purpose compression programs. This is partly because it's optimised for photographic images but also because it actually discards a small amount of information (this is usually undetectable to the human eye). WinZip and the Windows Compression Agent both work by looking for commonly occurring sequences of bytes and assigning a single byte value to stand for this sequence. Because the sequences are different for each file, the compressed file must include a dictionary at the start that describes how to translate the file back again. With a file that is already very highly compressed, the space required by this dictionary is more than any savings that can be made by removing the few remaining repeated sequences, and so the file gets larger. If I take a 1,024 x 768 pixel scan of the cover of PCF110, the bitmap is a little under 2.5Mb. Saving this same image in JPEG format drops this to 316K so I'd only get four of those on a floppy. Some image editors, such as Paint Shop Pro, enable you to adjust the degree of compression used, but the higher you go the worse the image quality becomes, and because information is being discarded, you can't reverse the process if you throw away the original file.
Please tell me how to back up the Registry file. What is its filename?
The Registry is not one file but two. They are system.dat and user.dat, both held in c:\windows. To back them up, you just save these files somewhere else. Alternatively, because they are often very big, you can make a back-up of a single branch within the Registry by selecting RegistryExport - Registry File from Regedit. This creates a .reg file containing all the keys hierarchically below the selected one. Double clicking this .reg file re-imports the keys, overwriting any changes you may have made.
I've just discovered a bug in the beta for Windows Millennium. I've also mailed Microsoft about this, and I hope it does something about it before someone with a grudge against the Internet finds out.
The file 'The Internet' is too big for the Recycle Bin. Do you want to permanently delete it?Firstly, finding a bug in a Windows beta is like finding seagulls at the council tip neither difficult nor surprising. Secondly, this phenomenon is by no means unique to Millennium. If anyone else would like to duplicate this error dialog in any version of Windows, here's how to do it:
I. Right-click the Recycle Bin and choose Properties.
2. Adjust the slider control so that the bin only takes up one per cent of the hard disk space.
3. Look for a nice big video file from a game CD-ROM or any other file bigger than one per cent of your hard disk.
4. Copy it to the hard disk but rename it to 'The Internet', 'The Universe, or anyone of a dozen equally hilarious things.
5. Hit [del].
7. Collapse in helpless mirth.
8. E-mail pcfhelpline@futurenet.co.uk and see if Luis is stupid enough to fall for this priceless gag (don't hold your breath).
I am having a mega problem. When I install Windows 95 it installs fine until it resets itself and up comes
"While initializing device IOS:Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer." This happens even when I boot in safe mode. If I install Windows 98 everything works fine but I prefer Windows 95.Then you deserve everything you get. When a new OS version first appears, caution is justifiable and an attitude of cheerful scepticism is perfectly healthy. But Win 98 is now the old, mature version that is itself being usurped by Windows Millennium. If you'd said you didn't want to upgrade to Millennium, I'd have said, "Fair play, don't blame you, I'd do the same myself." But Windows 98?. If you disable Active Desktop (as all right-thinking individuals do) then what remains is simply Win 95 with most of the bugs fixed. True, it takes up a little more disk space and needs a slightly faster processor, but disk space costs about a penny a megabyte, and if you want a small but annoying operating system, why not go right back to DOS? Oh yes, I remember those days, my friend, and they were dark indeed. Men turned on their brothers and unmourned corpses littered the streets.
If you reformat your hard disk, or even just delete the Windows directory, you'll probably find that Win 95 installs OK. But you're turning your back on three years of bug fixes and you'll rue the day, mark my words.
I desperately need to configure my PC to send and receive faxes. I have Win 98, Office and my e-mail works with Outlook.
I know that I just had a go at someone a few questions back for preferring Win 95 over 98 but there is one thing that the former has over its upgrade. For reasons that we can only guess at, Microsoft took the fax utility out of Win 98. It wasn't that it thought that no one would need it any more, because if you had installed it with Win 95, the Win 98 setup routine leaves it intact. But if you don't already have it, Microsoft pretends that it never existed. Perhaps it used to receive a lot of junk faxes or something. Anyway, the only way you can get MS Fax back is by downgrading to Win 95, installing it and then re-upgrading again -hardly a fun way to spend the afternoon.
Personally, I have always used the fax software included in the Supervoice suite that came bundled with my (and virtually everyone else's) modem. It has an annoyingly cutesy interface but it gets the job done. If yours didn't include this, you can download one of the shareware fax utilities from http://winfiles.cnet.com/apps/98/fax.html. And if it's a genuine emergency you could always try one of the Web faxing services around, such as www.tpc.int/tpc_home.html, for example.
Since upgrading our domain to a full Windows 2000 domain, I've noticed that my workstation has started to lose time, sometimes by as much as three minutes an hour. I need accurate times. It never used to do this.
I had the same problem when I switched to a full Windows 2000 with Active Directory all-singing, all-dancing domain. The reason is that all the Windows 2000 PCs in your network, both workstations and servers, look for a SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) server when they start up so they can align their time with it, and as the Domain Controller in a Windows 2000 network is an SNTP server, all the systems automatically take their time from that. The problem is that if that system is losing time, then every PC that talks to the Domain Controller will also show the wrong time and lose the same amount of time each hour.
The solution is to make sure that the Domain Controller is pointed at an external SNTP server that's tied to an atomic clock, and thus will be accurate. Many ISPs provide an SNTP server nowadays, so its well worth talking to your ISP to see if it has one with which you can align your Domain Controller's clock. Once you have the address of the SNTP server you're connecting to, fire up a command prompt on the Domain Controller and type:
c:\> net time /setsntp:<servername> - replacing < servername > with the path to the SNTP server. If you were connecting to the SNTP server at Demon Internet, for example, the command line would look like this: c:\> net time /setsntp:ntp.demon.co.uk
These things only chat every 12 hours or so, so once you've done that you'll want to stop and restart the Windows Time Service to force them to synchronise immediately, like this:
1 Start I Programs I Administrative Tools I Computer Management. When the Computer Management MMC opens, click on the + sign next to the Services and Applications node.
2 Click on the Service node when that appears and scroll down to the bottom of the list until you see the Windows Time service.
3 Right-click on that entry and select Restart from the pop-up menu.
Your Domain Controller should now be linked to the external SNTP server and show matching times. To get your workstation and any other Windows 2000 system to match times, do a restart on the Windows Time service on each machine.
Someone showed me a while ago how to clear the list of items in my Run list on my Windows 98 system, but I can't remember how it was done and I'd like to clear it again.
It requires a tedious trek through the Windows Registry Editor, so take the usual backups in case of disaster and then fire up the RegEdit -from the Start button, click on Run, then type REGEDIT.EXE in the command window and hit Enter. Once the editor opens, find the key HKEY_ CURRENT-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU. Once you get there, delete all the entries listed except for the Default value, and that will clear the list for you.
I'm running Windows 2000 Professional on a homebuilt system with an Athlon 900 on an Abit KT7A motherboard with 256Mb of RAM, a Hercules Prophet II MX graphics card, a 3Com EtherLink XL l0/l00 network card and a C-Media CM8738 sound card. I was looking at the Hercules Web site when I noticed a FAQ about a problem where the graphics card and sound card sharing a single IRQ resulted in poor sound quality. Armed with IRQ settings advice from the site, I went into my Windows 2000 device configuration to check if Windows had my graphics and sound cards sharing an IRQ, and if so to set my sound card to share with a COM port. To my horror, I discovered that Windows 2000 has six devices sharing interrupt II:
Microsoft ACPI-compliant system
3D Prophet II MX
VIA USB Universal Host Controller
VIA USB Universal Host Controller
5 3Com EtherLink XL 10/100 PCI TX NIC(3C905B. TX)
C-Media CM8738 Audio Driver (WDM)
Obviously, Windows 2000 is able to manage this, or none of the devices would be working, but it must be a performance drain. I next discovered that Windows 2000 won't allow me to alter the settings unless it considers that there's a problem. In an attempt to override Windows 2000, I took to the BIOS where I reassigned the IRQ settings -despite this, Windows still has all six devices sharing interrupt II. What's it doing to manage these devices? Is there really a performance problem here, or am I worrying about nothing? How can I force Windows 2000 to allow me to manage these settings myself, the way I was able to in NT and Windows 95/98?
I don't think there's anything to worry about here, although I must admit its more usual to see IRQ 9 being used in this way -as this is done on purpose under Windows 2000. It's quite normal to find PCI devices sharing the same IRQ, especially if your system supports ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), and ACPI support has been enabled in Windows 2000. The reason you can't change the IRQ settings is because Windows 2000 isn't going to let you do that as long as ACPI support is enabled. If you feel that you have to move these devices, you're going to have to first disable ACPI in your computers BIOS, and then move them. But quite honestly, if your system isn't suffering, I suggest you just let it get on with what its doing.
I'm trying to copy some data from a folder in Program Files to another folder on a different drive. For various reasons I have to do this using the Command Prompt, not Windows Explorer. The problem is that every time I type the line and try to run the command, I get an error message that says I've used too many parameters. I can't work out what the problem is, as I'm sure I'm using the correct command. I'm using Windows 98.
The problem is that you can't have spaces in a path name when you're trying to execute a command line, as the interpreter gets to the first space and then stops, decides that there are too many parameters in the command line argument and tells you so. The way to solve it is to enclose each parameter in the pathname that contains spaces within quotes. Thus, if you were trying to copy something from the Program Files folder to, say, the root of the D drive, you'd type a command line that looked like this: xcopy "c:\program files\myfile.doc" d:\