Issue 85 - May 24, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 85th 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 (May draw is for Mijenix's PowerDesk Utilities 4 Pro) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

I am getting so behind with PCIN things. I work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on a computer all day and when I get home I feel like taking a break. I need to figure out the best way to do all this. If you've emailed me and I haven't replied, I will.

The things I'm doing at work are very exciting though. I have a lot of experiences with PCs and most software that runs on PCs, but now I'm getting a lot of experience working on enterprise wide software. Very interesting. Some things are the same, but most things require a different way of looking at things

Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN during the month of May, as you will be eligible for a copy of PowerDesk Utilities 4 Pro. You can recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK

B-)    Person wearing horn-rimmed glasses
Q:-)   Graduate (that is the hat and tassle)
ADN    Any Day Now
IOW    In Other Words

Get the WWW. Smileys & Acronyms book for the PCIN special price of $7.00 Cdn (around $5.00 US). You can only get this price by visiting http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/smileys.shtml

The NEWS

Processor Serial Numbers

Last year Intel released the Pentium III chips and built into the chips were a serial number. Privacy groups were protesting because it was possible to track the user on the Internet by the serial number. Its original purpose was for IT managers to keep track of their assets.
It has now been announced that Intel will stop stamping the serial numbers into its chips starting with the new Willamette chip that will be released later this year.

More Corel Problems

Several months ago it was announced that Corel was going to merge with Inprise/Borland. This was a very large merger, and Corel, being the controlling company, was hoping to use Borland's capital to get further into the Linux market. Borland also had programming tools for Linux. Well, recently Corel announced that the merger was off. There wasn't enough money to make it go. Corel is in a lot of trouble and really needs to merge with some company to keep alive.

For more info:
http://www.corel.com/news/2000/may/may_16_2000.htm

Hackers vs Clippy - Part II

I had several people email me about the possible security problem with Microsoft's Office assistant. The problem is actually with scripts that can be run through the assistant to demonstrate features of Office. As far as I know, this is only a problem with Office 2000, not Office 97. For those of you who want more info, subscriber Judy Wilson emailed me the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms00-034.asp

The End is Near?

"The judge presiding over Microsoft's antitrust trial Wednesday said he will not conduct any more hearings regarding the government's plan to break up Microsoft, indicating he may be close to issuing a final ruling in the two-year old antitrust case." The government was asked to revise its proposal though by Saturday. Microsoft will then have 2 days to respond. The judge may be ready to rule next week some time.

For more info:
http://cnnfn.com/2000/05/24/technology/microsoft_hearing/
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/05/24/000524hnmsdoj.xml

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 Question 1
Our secretary's e-mail in Outlook Express pops up requesting a password - however no one recalls setting a password or what the password is. What can we do to get rid of the phantom password so she can send & retrieve e-mail?

Answers to Question 1
John Hills said, "Quickest way is probably to go into File - Identities and add a new identity. Problem here is that none of your old emails and address book will be available although you could try importing them."

Previous Question 2
Is it okay to re-install Win 98 right over the existing Win 98? Sometimes things don't seem to work right and I feel that maybe if I re-installed Win 98 it might supply missing files etc.?  What harm will it do to re-install Win 98 over the Win 98 that's already installed on my computer?

Answers to Question 2
Rob said, "With Windows it is generally better to do a clean install, in other words reformat the drive or partition before reinstalling. This will involve reinstalling most software as well since many programs put files in the Windows directories and or modify them. Just back up your important documents, address books, and so on. Perhaps download the latest drivers for your hardware as well and save them to removable disks. Actually, installing over top of Windows may cause some problems if the Win install overwrites files needed by other software."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "It can do no harm but it will only replace corrupted or missing files. It will not affect any errors in your settings like the registry. If you reinstall from the dos prompt then it will re find drivers and settings and this sounds like your best bet. But for best results, save all your data, (My docs, application data, favourites, etc). Make sure you have all the drivers available for your devices before you start and reformat your hard drive and do a fresh install. This should then run windows at its maximum potential. I always partition a hard drive into two i.e. 90% drive C and balance for drive D making your CDROM drive E. Then I copy over win98 directory only on the win98 setup CD into drive D and install from there. This means that win98 files are always available automatically when windows needs them and the balance of drive D is useful for a place to keep your data when you next need to trash windows again."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "You can reinstall over an existing version of win98. You will have the option to over install when you boot from the CDROM."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Judy said, "I was told by Microsoft that re-installing Windows 98 over itself was fine, however the patches would have to be re-installed. That is what I did, I also did that once with Windows 98SE."

New Questions
Q1) With all the new devices to add to your systems now days I was wondering how do I add more USB ports? I have a scanner and CD writer, digital camera, and desktop camera I hate to keep plugging and unplugging all the devices all the time. I saw a hub that has 4 ports but I don't know if it should be internal or external can you help?
Q2) Is it possible to adjust shared video RAM? My computer has 8MB shared RAM.

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

**A classy new Recycle Bin**
Previously we've shown how to rename your Recycle Bin, how to get rid of it, how to get it back and how to add commands to its context menu. Now, in what's gotta be the last Recycle Bin trick ever, we show how to redecorate it - that is, how to change its appearance on your desktop.
Simple, you think. Just right-click on it, select Properties and click on the...wait a minute, there's no option to change the icon.
Why Microsoft would think the appearance of a garbage can is so sacrosanct that they won't let you change it is beyond us.
But we can outfox them by tweaking Windows' Registry to change the icon. As usual, if you're new to Registry editing, check out the instructions and precautions at http://www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html
In the Registry Editor, make your way to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon. When you click on the subkey DefaultIcon, you should see one to three string values in the right pane. At least one will be named Default and you may have two others called Empty and Full. Their values will be something like "C:\Windows\System\Shell32.dll, 31", or ending with "32". This means the 31st or 32nd icon in the file Shell32.dll is being used as the Recycle Bin graphic.
To change this, double-click on the name of the string value (such as Default) and in the Edit String dialogue box enter the filename and number of the icon you want to use. For instance, to get a blue triangle, you would enter C:Windows\Moricons.dll,66 and click on OK.
How did we know that the 66th icon in the Moricons.dll file is a triangle?
On the desktop, we right-clicked on a shortcut (any shortcut), chose Properties, clicked on the Shortcut tab and again on the Change Icon button. In the dialogue box, we entered C:Windows\Moricons.dll as filename and pressed Enter. A long line of icons appeared and we cursored over 66 places (counting the first icon as zero) until we found the triangle design.
Of course, we already knew moricons.dll was a file of icons. Other such files are Shell32.dll in the System folder and Iconlib.dll which may be somewhere on your system.
When you've made the changes to your Registry for Default, Empty and Full, close the Registry Editor. Restart your computer or press F5 a few times to refresh your desktop.

You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself
for only $9.95 Cdn (about $7.00 US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)

Working in a DOS Window

When you are using a DOS window in Windows 9x, you can move between a full screen and an actual window by pressing the Alt key and Enter.

Make Virtual Drives

I just learned this the other way and I think it is quite cool. Using the SUBST command from the run box or a DOS box, you can substitute a drive letter in place of a directory path. For instance, if you always looked in the
C:\windows\command
folder, you could use the command
SUBST N: C:\windows\command
And this would give you a virtual N: drive that would actually be the contents of your c:\windows\command folder.
I haven't played with this a lot, so I don't know how the long filenames work, and since this is a virtual drive, you don't want to try and format it or anything like that.

DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF

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

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

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