Issue 92 - July 12, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 1030 Subscribers in 46 Countries ====

Subscribe/Unsubscribe/View Archives at http://www.pcin.net/

Welcome to the 92nd issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists of news, tips, thoughts, and contests. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. I am willing to discuss any computer topic. Email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with any suggestions. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!

Recommend PCIN to others and be entered in a monthly draw. The July prize will be PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare. Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

This is going out first thing Wednesday morning. I am just heading out to Comdex Canada today. I will highlight the show in next week's PCIN.

A couple of weeks ago a subscriber suggested naming the questions a little better; something like 92-01 (issue-question#). I thought this was a very good idea, and it made me then think that I should make the questions a searchable section of my web site. If you know of a good cgi/perl script for a Q&A type section, then please let me know.

Subscriber Jim Bateman recommended PCIN in June and won a copy of Software602 LAN Suite Lite. Jim doesn't have a network though, so I gave him another prize. Therefore I have an extra copy of Lan Suite Lite. If you have a home network or are looking into setting one up, and you want a program that will act as a proxy and let all of the computers use one Internet connector, then email me. And of course, don't forget to recommend PCIN during July at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and win a copy of PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare.

And finally, I have set up an HTML version of PCIN that I will be trying out. It may not start for a couple of weeks, but I'd like to start anyway. For starters, I anticipate the content being exactly the same, just in HTML format. As this is just starting, I'm not promoting it anywhere yet and I expect there to be several bumps along the way. If you've like to come along for the ride, then send an email to mailto:pcin-html-request@pcin.net with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

The NEWS

The FBI Searches Email

"The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is using a superfast system called Carnivore to covertly search e-mails for messages from criminal suspects. Essentially a personal computer stuffed with specialized software, Carnivore represents a new twist in the federal government's fight to sustain its snooping powers in the Internet age. But in employing the system, which can scan millions of e-mails a second, the FBI has upset privacy advocates and some in the computer industry."

For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/431355.asp
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37503,00.html

The Toysmart.com Sale

Toysmart.com is one of the many companies recently to go bankrupt. Subscriber Tony Lowell recently sent me this:
"CNN just ran a piece that TOYSMART.COM had gone bankrupt and is offering it's Internet customer list along with it's inventory to pay creditors. Information about birthdays, children's names etc. can be found in the list. The site had the usual disclaimers that the personal information provided would only be used by the site itself. Here in Canada this was an issue when Eaton's closed. Remember any corporate data, including customer data, is considered an asset, normally called good will. In a bankruptcy case this asset can be sold by the receivers to help pay off the creditors. The FCC is trying to figure out what to do about this privacy issue as more and more .COM companies go under. Be very careful what personal information you provide over the Internet."

More Online Failures

Recently Boo.com, Toysmart.com, and FreeWWWeb have all declared bankruptcy. The high-tech stocks have fallen quickly. People are finally coming to their senses and are demanding profits. The Toronto Star had an article on Tuesday July 11, 2000 that highlighted the http://www.dotcomfailures.com/ and it's creator. The site is full of links to articles on companies going under, lawsuits, and other failed ideas.

Napster Goes to Washington

The US Senate is currently holding hearings to "examine the future of digital music, focusing on whether there is an upside to downloading." Representatives from Napster, Metallica, and Gnutella as well as Hillary Rosen, head of the Recording Industry Association of America are all scheduled to appear before the committee.

For more info:
http://www.senate.gov/
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/digitalmusic000711.html

I NEED HELP

I offer a free help service via email. If you have a question, you can email me and I will try my best to answer them. I can answer about most of them, but there are things that I have never tried or experienced so I don't have an answer. I post those questions here and see if any of the readers have any suggestions. I will include all reasonable suggestions with credit to you.
These are NOT my own questions and they are NOT my answers. I will NOT check the validity of these comments. That is up to you. If you do try one of these tips, please let me know how the suggestions worked out. Did they work or not? Please send in your questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net

Previous Questions

Q 91-01)

Is there a limit on the size of hard drive I can put in my computer? It is about a year old.

A 91-01)

Rob said, "You might consult the Motherboard manufacturer but there should not be a limit. Some older machines had limits such as 4.0GB but that is not an issue on recent machines. The Operating System can impose limits, but assuming you're using Win32 or *nix it should not be an issue either."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nick Massey said, "I think you can go up to 20 gig with most new BIOS's but you are limited with the version of dos you use. Dos 6.22 will only recognize 2.048 gigs as a single partition so if you have a 10 gig drive you will get 5 different partitions. If you can boot with a win98 boot disk you can get 1 partition that will accommodate the whole 10 gig and any subsequent large format drives."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Tounoussidis said, "If the parts in your computer are only 1 year old then there should be not problem in installing any size hard disk. But in older motherboards hard drives over 8.4gb are not as easy to install, you may need a drive overlay program which can normally be obtained from your hard disk company."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "Shouldn't be a problem with the size of hard drive on a PC only 1 year old. If there is a problem then it is more likely to be partition size. You may need to partition a very large drive in to one or more partitions (drives)."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "It depends on your bios most motherboards for the last year will probably go up to 30GB for an IDE drive. Though you should go to your manufacturer for the latest bios update that will probably go to 40GB. Otherwise why not get SCSI if you can afford that way you can have lots of drives and peripherals."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roger Michaud sent me a very thorough explanation of BIOS limitations from a text file that comes with various Seagate hard drive utilities. Neither of us could find this document on the web though. If you are interested in this sort of thing, then you can go to http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html and download the program. You will need to register (visit http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/model_st3.html to find a drive model #). Once the file is downloaded, read the readme.txt file. This is a very thorough document.

Q 91-02)

My computer seems to be accessing the A: drive quite often. I don't do a thing and I hear the floppy drive make noise. Why is this? Do I have a virus?

A 91-01)

Rob said, "Well if you are not touching anything then this could be a faulty drive I suppose. The system could be looking for files in the A drive, perhaps, as part of a virus scan. But I don't know of any virus that would cause this by itself."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nick Massey said, "I think you have a "third party" software installed on your pc that is causing this to happen. Try uninstalling software till it goes away. I know this is a pain in the butt but it might be worth a try. Other wise you will have to re install the OS."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Will Chatham recommended a great article from the ZDTV site. The article at http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/answerstips/story/0,3650,2486527,00.html goes into detail of what the problem could be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "It is more likely a virus checker that is hunting your A drive."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lyman Spaulding said, "I am no expert, but I have the same experience, in that A: drive will start at any time and run for some time. I am quite sure that this is the Norton Anti-virus program doing a routine check. That is probably what you are experiencing."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Lowell said, "There are many possibilities depending on both your hardware and/or software configuration. Shared USBs, port conflicts, old software, software setups etc. Here are a few simple tests:
-Obviously take the diskette out of the A-drive assuming you have a hard Drive.
-If it occurs during boot up check your BIOS drive boot startup sequence
-Check the SCHEDULER, your mail program, or any other program that WAKES UP automatically. See where they want to store data. MS Backup is a prime example. What's the point of backing up from your hard drive to your hard drive if your hard drive crashes?
-For diagnostics FORMAT a diskette, before you hear the noise. After you here the noise, see if any files were written to the disk then figure out what program wrote them.
-Write protect a diskette and see if a program complains that it can't write to the A: drive.
-Temporarily disable A: access through the BIOS or disable the diskette driver using Windows and see if a program complains."

New Questions

Q 92-01)

I would like to right click a selected paragraph in a web page or email message and print just that selection. Is there a way built-in to Windows or a utility that will help me do this?

Q 92-02)

How can you disable the automatic shut down (I want to see the message: It's now safe to shut down) and then press the power off button? I don't want the system to power down by itself.

If you have an answer to these questions or have a question of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net

THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF

Cheap Trick of the Week

**Booting into DOS**
Long before Windows 95 or 98, there was Microsoft's Disk Operating System, MS-DOS. In fact, DOS is still on your Windows computer. You can sample it by clicking on Start, Programs and MS-DOS Prompt. Or you can start your computer in DOS, by clicking on Start, Shut Down and Restart in MS-DOS mode.
But if you really prefer DOS, you can start in it every time you boot your computer.
Open Notepad (click on Start, Programs, Accessories and Notepad). Select Open from the File menu and change Files of Type to All Files (*). Then open the file msdos.sys, which is probably in the C: root directory.
Look for a line that says BootGUI=1 and change it to BootGUI=0 (that's a zero). Save the file with this change.
The next time you start your computer, you'll be launched into DOS instead of Windows. You can always get back into Windows by typing exit at the prompt in DOS and pressing Enter.

602Pro PC Suite 2000 is Free

I have reviewed 602Pro PC Suite before. This is an alternative to Microsoft Office. At the time I reviewed it, you had to pay $49.95 for it. Well, I received this on Thursday, from Premysl Pech, the President of Software602:
Hi Graham
Big news is here..;-)
We released 602Pro PC SUITE 2000 and best part is that this product is now absolutely free! (Yes, no payments, no advertisement, no trial, no obligation to register, IT IS FREE!)
Here is press release:
http://www.software602.com/press/press40.html
And here is product info and download:
http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/index.html

Searching Microsoft Support - Part II

Last week I mentioned that you could do a search at the Microsoft Support site for the product code. The example I gave was that Outlook 98 articles start with OL98 and Word 97 articles start with WD97. Subscriber Vincent Hannon sent me the link http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q242/4/50.ASP that lists all of the codes.

Not All of the Net is Useless

Over the past little while I have been complaining about how boring the computer industry has been lately. Subscriber Johnathon wanted to remind everyone that you could visit http://www.thehungersite.com/ and http://www.therainforestsite.com/ and "click" a donation. "This is free to you & me, the donation's are picked up by a number of business's that cover these 'donation clicks'. Everyone is allowed only one click per day, but if only 15% of us actually did this daily, we could eliminate 1000's of acres being destroyed, & 1000's of people from starving on a daily basis."

Email-only Device

Last week a subscriber emailed me asking what a good device for her Elderly mother to use to send email would be. I just recommended an inexpensive computer with only a few programs on it so there aren't many problems. The subscriber kept looking and emailed me again saying she was going to try MailBug. This device which can be seen at http://www.landel.com/ is a neat little thing. It is only $100 for the thing, and only $100 for a year of access. If you or a friend are looking for a quick easy way to access email, then this might be worth taking a look at.

DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF

PCIN is brought to you by PC Improvements. The opinions expressed are those of the editor, Graham Wing. PC Improvements and Graham Wing accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.

  1. If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, you may have to cut and paste.
  2. You can only win one contest every 30 days.
  3. To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate links.
  4. Recommend PCIN to others at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and be entered in a monthly draw.
  5. There are only 2 ways to get on the subscriber list. You have either been subscribed by filling out a subscription form on any of the pages on my site, or you have requested FreeHelp from me in the past.
  6. If you have a web site or run your own newsletter, please email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have on my site.

Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in hole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

PC Improvement News Home Page

PC Improvement News Archive