Issue 94 - July 26, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 94th 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

Several things have happened over the last couple of weeks that I have forgotten to mention:
-Lisa and I have a cat, Misty. Well, we got a brand new playmate for her. We got a 10-week old kitten at the local Humane Society and named her Joey. Joey looks exactly like Misty, just 10 years younger.
-I got a call from my MasterCard company recently asking me if I had purchased a computer and had it sent to Romania. "Uh, no, I don't think so!" I only use this MasterCard for online purchases, so someone somehow got my information. I am always very careful, and only purchase from "secure" sites, so who knows what happened.
-I purchased new Labtec plat speakers and do they sound amazing!
-I purchased a new 64MB ATI Rage Fury MAXX graphics card. 32MB are for regular applications, and the other 32MB (along with a second chip) are used in 3D rendering. I then purchased Triple Play 2000 and WOW! With the new speakers and graphics card, you can really start to see how the computers will be used more and more for entertainment.

The end of the month is near so don't forget to recommend PCIN to your friends. The July winner will receive a CD with PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare on it. You can recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

The NEWS

Copying DVDs

No, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. But a judge may. "A federal judge overseeing the movie industry's widely watched case against an Internet publisher has directed attorneys to submit briefs outlining whether software code can be considered a legally protected form of speech." Defendant Eric Corley cracked the code that locks DVDs. Eight studios are asking for an injunction to stop him from distributing the code.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2607520,00.html

Hyperlinks and Entertainment

In other entertainment related news, with all of the recent court cases, the issue of whether it is legal to link to another site is prominent again. If you link to a document on another site, are you breaking copyright? The recent lawsuits against Scour.net and Napster are similar. The entertainment companies say that they don't want to control the technology, just their own content.

For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2342094.html?tag=st.ne.ron.lthd.ni

Voice over the Internet

If you didn't think that voice over the Internet was anything important, think again. Microsoft has recently gotten involved in this area, so you can be sure that it will grow in popularity much quicker now.
Microsoft has announced that they will team with Net2Phone to bundle the Net2Phone Internet telephone service with the free Microsoft Messenger. Users will be able to make PC-to-PC calls for free anywhere in the world, and in the US and Canada, PC-to-phone calls will also be free.

For more info:
http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/00/Jul/0721/mu5.htm

Why is there an I NEED HELP section?

A few weeks ago there was a question in the I NEED HELP section about right-clicking on a web page and printing a selection. Joan sent this to me. When I answered her email, I couldn't think of how to do that, but when I put this question in the I NEED Help section, John Hills, Carlos Roman and Frellie all gave her the answer she was looking for. Joan was very appreciative of their time and effort.
This is why I have this part of PCIN. With 1000+ subscribers, there is enough knowledge among all of us to solve most problems. Feel free to send in questions, and feel free to answer any. We all need help at times, and you can be sure that like Joan, the person in need will be very happy to have found a solution to the problem.

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 93-01)

When my computer goes to sleep (the screen saver comes on) it won't wake up. I can't even ctrl, alt and delete to bring it out. I have to manually turn it off. What can I do to fix this?

A 93-01)

John Hills said, "Try pressing the escape key (which probably will not work reading your problem) or try a different screensaver to see if that is causing the problem and ideally choose one that came with windows and not one that came free with a magazine. If that all fails, try disabling all power saving features in your BIOS and incur the wrath of the ECO warriors."

Q 93-02)

When I try to shut down by going to start, shut down, then selecting shutdown. The computer will shut down and re-boot, all over again. It won't stay off.

A 93-02)

Carlos Roman said, "Somewhere I read that the problem could reside in the way you have your system power management configured. Verify that the last thing going to sleep is your system. If you configured your power management feature to put to sleep the system first and then monitor and drives last it is possible you experience this problem. Hope this solve the problem."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rita Lackie said, "The same thing happened to my computer and we had to take it in. They were nice and gave us a new one (a much faster one). May I ask? Was it a eMachine 433Id? Because they said that they were having trouble with that model. They gave us the 533 Id instead. My brother-in-law had the same machine and the same problem. Good Luck."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "This is caused by disabling fast shutdown ie as in my answer last week. I believe the affects of disabling fast shutdown will vary dependant on your PC having an AT or ATX mainboard (motherboard)."

New Questions

Q 94-01)

Any URLs that are sent to me by ICQ will not open, when I click on them it says cannot launch web browser, and I noticed that when I click on the URL in ICQ that it is greyed out. It was working fine last week and I don't know what has happened.

Q 94-02)

I'd like to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. Can someone recommend a site that has step-by-step instructions on how to do this?

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

**Most Excel-ent racing game**
This may replace the game in Excel 97 as the best Easter egg we've ever seen.
It requires Excel 2000, Internet Explorer 5 and a recent version of DirectX. (Direct X is probably already on your system if you play games, but you can also download the latest version for free from the Microsoft Web site.)
First launch Excel 2000. Under the File menu, select Save as Web Page and change the name of the file-to-be-saved to whatever you like, ending with .htm. Click on the Publish button and in the new dialogue box, check off Add Interactivity. Click on Publish again.
Close Excel and open IE5. Under File, select Open, hit the Browse button and find the .htm file you saved from Excel. The blank spreadsheet will appear on the screen in the browser window. Scroll down the spreadsheet to row 2000 - this will take some time. Then click on the number 2000 to highlight the entire row. Press the Tab key repeatedly to move the selected cell on the highlighted row across the screen until the cell in the WC column is selected. (If you go too far, hold down Shift and press Tab to go back.)
Hold down the Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys and click on the Microsoft Office logo in the upper left corner of the spreadsheet.
In a few seconds your screen should go black and a car racing game will materialize.
Use the Arrow keys to drive your car, hit the Spacebar to fire at cars in front of you, press the O key to drop oil slicks to foil the cars behind you and, when it gets dark, press H to turn on your headlights.

Customize Hard Drive Icons

Each hard drive can have it's own icon. You need to create an AutoRun file, similar to what CD-ROMs have. Here's how:
-Start Notepad
-Type [AUTORUN] on the first line
-In the second line, type ICON="C:\ICONS\DRIVES\CoolIcon.ico"
-Save the files as autorun.inf and save it to the root of the drive that you want the icon to be changed for.

The file will look something like this:
[AUTORUN]
ICON="C:\ICONS\DRIVES\CoolIcon.ico"

You may have to restart your computer, but the drive will then have the new icon.

Download Updates to Windows

Although I think generally that the WindowsUpdate site is a great idea, I think there should be an option to download the items on their own so you can save them for later. I know there are ways to do this, but not from the WindowsUpdate site.
Actually, there is. There is a WindowsUpdate site that is specifically for companies. There is a short wizard. You enter the operating system you are referring to and what types of updates you need, and it will tell you what there is. This is not as thorough as the regular WindowsUpdate site, but all of the critical updates are there, as well as many other updates and drivers. You can check out the Corporate WindowsUpdate site at http://corporate.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

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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