Issue 84 - May 17, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 84th 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

Nothing much to talk about his week. Work is going well. Lisa is doing well, too. She is almost fully recovered from her surgery of a few months ago (some of you were asking about this).

I have played with the 602LAN Suite Lite program thoroughly and will have a full review next week. I don't know why I didn't set this up earlier. Having a home network is great. I don't need to fumble with my Zip disks trying to transfer files. I can just copy directly to the other computer. I also have access to the Internet from either machine. Very nice.

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.

SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK

:X    Lips are sealed
:<=   Walrus
OTOH  On The Other Hand
OTT   Over The Top

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

Lycos Sells for $12.5 billion

Terra Networks, a company based in Spain, has agreed to a merger with Lycos for $12.5 billion. Lycos is one of the few web site companies that are actually making money. Terra Networks has been losing money, so they can use Lycos' profits to help them in other areas. The new company will be called Terra Lycos, Inc.

For more info:
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000517/07/net-tech-lycos
http://www.lycos.com/press/terra.html
http://www.terranetworks.com/

More Metallica vs Napster Problems

"Music-swapping software company Napster said today that more than 30,000 of the Metallica fans banned from its service last week for allegedly trading the band's copyrighted songs online have appealed the move, saying they didn't do anything illegal. This sets up a dilemma for Metallica, although the band says it's received appeals on only 17,000 names so far. Under federal copyright law, the band has to individually sue each one of those people or see them reinstated on the service. And that would be a financial and public relations nightmare."

For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1883655.html?dtn.head

Hackers vs Clippy

Clippy, the famous Microsoft Office assistant that looks like a paper clip, and all of his friends have been found to be big security holes on a PC. Certain scripts can be run that work though the office assistant control. Since the Office Assistant is a trusted control on your computer, the scripts that can be run through them can do almost anything to your system. Microsoft has released a patch for it.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2570727,00.html?chkp
t=zdhpnews01

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
I am looking for advice regarding lost files from a LS 120 floppy disc, the files in question are all my digital camera pictures in the last two years, I have managed to retrieve most of them using Norton UnErase but they have all come back as .TXT files so I still cannot view them even after trying 'open with' procedure.

Answers to Question 1
John Hills said, "Long shot I'm afraid but your could try renaming the file with the extension that they had originally e.g. picture.txt is renamed to picture.jpg or picture.bmp or picture.gif or picture.tif. Check the file sizes of the txt file because if they are just a few k then they cannot be picture files."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Randy Lane said, "Try renaming the file's extension from .txt to whatever format your digital camera saves them as."

Previous Question 2
For reasons I do not know, my system icon in the control panel has disappeared completely. The file is still in the system folder, but it won't show in the control panel, nor does anything happen at all when I try to run it.

Answers to Question 2
John Hills said, "The icons in your control panel are ???.cpl files and they will actually open if you click on them in the windows\system directory. cpl stands for control panel something or others.  The one you are missing or is corrupted is creatively entitled sysdm.cpl, as you appear to already know.  Whether it is there or not I am not sure that simply reinstalling the file from system file checker will work.  I had a problem with desk.cpl, which I think is the display icon but system file checker would not reinstall it. Also, reloading windows over the top of windows (from within windows) does not work either.  Maybe re installing windows over the top of your existing windows from the command prompt would."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken Aspinwall said, "Go to http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q197/2/85.asp and follow the instructions. Also (1) open control.ini ( in Windows ) in a text editor and looks under [Don't load] if sysdm.cpl is listed there, delete it. and reboot. (2) It's possible that sysdm.cpl has become corrupted and the solution would be to replace it. If you are running Win 98, run the System File Checker (Start-Run type in: sfc then OK) and checking the box Extract one file from installation disk. Enter sysdm.cpl and follow directions from there."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Randy Lane said, "Try right clicking on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and select "Properties" That is another way to access the system information. If no success, you may have to run set up from your Windows 9X CD and let it go through the install process and that should fix any errors."

New Questions
Q1) 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?
Q2) 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?

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

**Log off, fella**
It's simple to remove that "Log Off" item from above "Shut Down" on Windows' Start menu by tweaking the Registry. (For instructions on editing the Registry, see www.WE-Copute.com/registry.html.)
In the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right-click on Explorer and select New and Binary Value.
Rename the value NoDriveTypeAutoRun. (If there's already one with this name, leave it and go to the next step.) Then double-click on the value to bring up a dialogue box. Enter the figures 95 00 00 00. There may already be four zeros there. The eight digits you add will fall in place after them. You don't need to space them, as they will automatically group themselves into four pairs.
Right-click on Explorer again and create another New Binary Value. This time, name it NoLogOff and edit the value to read 01 00 00 00.
The next time you start Windows, the Log Off option will be gone.

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

Get Screenshots

A couple of weeks ago I shared a tip on how to get screenshots using the PrintScreen key. Well, one of the recent editions of PC Magazine has a free utility called ScreenSeize. It allows you to capture screens, windows, and just portions of windows. All of the different utilities are available at http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/utilities/ and make sure you look around, as there are many other very useful utilities.

Fixing Messed Up Icons

If you find that your icons are showing improperly (wrong icon for the program, etc.) then find the ShellIconCache file in your c:\windows folder and delete it. This is a file that caches copies of the icons. If they start to display wrong, it could be because this file is corrupt or too large.

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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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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