Superseded CDs competition results
Spot the deliberate error
Letterhead space saving
Font of wisdom
Heard it on the grapevine
Flaky floppy
How to frag your files
Teletext for PCs
Introducing the Unitext Teletext Card V1.0
A reply from Denton Carr
Mystery lockups
LH c:\mouse\imouse.com
Mexican jumping screens
The case of the disappearing download
Word 6 Thesaurus not extinct in Windows 95
PIO Mode 4
Mininise icons, start Navigator off-line
Wallpaper on the fly
We had some excellent responses to our Help Screen competition, which asked the musical question: What can you do with old CDs?
George Moore of Kenwood, Queensland had this to suggest:
I place a bit of Blu-Tac about the size of a pea on the inside edge of the centre hold of the disk, and presto, instant wallpaper for my computer den. If ever you find you want to use them again, take a selection down, take the Blu-Tack off, wipe the disk and presto, usable disk again.
Thanks George. Congratulations on the only entry that addresses the crucial environmental question of reclaiming the CDs for active service. Juliet Page of South Australia replied:
Here is a list of my ideas of things to do with superseded CDs:
CD Bird scarecrow for garden vegie path - nail two CDs side by side onto wooden stakes, and paint centres black for eyes. Use one stake in front of each vegie row. Your tomatoes will never feel safer.
Pizza Slicer - need to sand the outside to get razor-sharp edge.
Toast Rack - weld five CDs, vertically spaced 1 to 2cm apart, to any flat surface (eg, Mum's favourite jarrah benchtop) for those special silver-service occasions.
Frisbee - for neighbour's annoying Rottweiler or poodle
Spare wheels - for 1969 Morris Mini (excellent space savers, which also double as great indicators - just hold out window)
"CD Nose Day" - the very fashionable '90s charity fundraiser.
Fish Lures - attach CD to favourite fishing rig, sit back and wait for the bites.
CD Single Barbecues - excellent for those last minute barbies for one. It's solar powered, and fat drains through the conveniently placed hole. Just slip one in your back pocket on your way to work for a quick lunchtime snack.
Hip Hop Sunglasses - they simply speak for themselves.
Well, that's all the madness I could think of.
Madness enough, methinks. Julia Zivanovic, from Amungee Mungee Station, CMB Daly Waters, Northern Territory, has ways of using CDs to ease the isolation and fierce climate of the outback.
Out here in the real outback of Australia, a remote cattle station in the NT where we generate our own power, collect rain water to drink and the nearest town (six houses and the pub - which is also our post office!) is 100K away, we have long been creative in using everyday objects for anything but their original design. Here is my list of imaginative uses for superseded CDs!
1. Use a nail with a large head to affix said CDs on roof to provide heat reflection (essential here in the Territory!)
2. To liven up social functions held in the barn, smash up said CDs and glue pieces onto a football. Suspended from the internal roof of the barn where the mini motor and torch are also attached, it can give the effect of a more expensive city disco glitter ball.
3. When out bush camping a CD can come in handy as a shaving mirror, although it is not recommended as a make up mirror due to its inherent distortion factor.
4. When out of matches the reflective properties of a CD can be utilised to set alight a camp fire (hark back to Scout training here) instead of a magnifying glass. It is however, not recommended that two CDs be rubbed together. You should still use sticks or twigs for that.
5. If you lose the dog's favourite frisbee, a CD painted in a similar colour can be substituted without the dog becoming aware of it (well, they are colour blind you know!).
6. If your local pub is haunted by tourists who play the same song off the CD juke box again and again, arrange with the pub owner to have the offending juke box CD replaced with one of your computer CDs. Even better if its really scratched because the juke box will automatically reject it every time - bliss.
Julia also asks for more articles relevant to women, remote and bush users. You've got a point, Julia. As you'll notice, women and out-of-Sydney users are strongly represented in our competition responses, a clear signal. Please excuse our city parochialism. We'll amend the situation forthwith.
Mrs R. Bronkhurst of St Marys, NSW, was good enough to illustrate her suggestions.
Uses for superseded CDs:
Have them laminated and use them as coasters . . . wow!
Glue the sides together, laminate, and voila!! Table mats!
Hang them on earring wires, and sell them to extreme fashion victims, for a fortune of course.
Make a hanging mobile for computer literate babies
Hang them around a length of pipe for a wind chime - the earring buyers will purchase these for their mothers, no worries.
Sew heaps together and make a CD shift dress for some rising star to wear to a movie premiere! If American Express can . . .
Using secateurs or cutting tool, make jagged edges and sell them to Japanese movie makers as Ninja stars!!
Pass them on to local schools - have you seen the stuff they get kids to make craft from?
Thanks Mrs R, particularly for the useful suggestions on how to turn those CDs not only into exotic weaponry, but also into a paying proposition.
We have three prizes to offer: Studio M Multimedia for Windows 3.1, and two copies of Micrografx Windows Draw 4.0 for Windows 95. Fortunately Mrs R. Bronkhurst uses Windows 3.1 and Juliet Page and Julia Zivanovic use Windows 95, so those prizes have been sent off to the lucky winners. Thanks to Micrografx and Studio M distributor Desktop Utilities for those prizes. Thanks to all the others who replied, and for whose excellent suggestions there was insufficient space.
We also had a response to our Spot The Deliberate Error challenge in our February issue. Avid puzzle solver Gary Makin of Gordon Park, Queensland, suggested that the error in the February issue was in my reply to Simon Goeschl regarding XT clock utilities. I suggested he might try to download the utility from the Australian PC World Web page. Not very likely that you could manage access to the World Wide Web on an XT, says Gary.
Well, this is an interesting point. You can get access to the World Wide Web without having a machine capable of running graphics. I dialled into OzEmail with a character-based terminal program (all right, it was Windows 3.1 Terminal because that was what I had handy, but I wasn't using any graphical aspects of the interface). I selected the Terminal Service, logged in and selected the World Wide Web option from the menu. This runs a text-only Web viewer called Lynx.
I specified http://www.idg.com.au/pc.world, the URL of our PC World home page, and was able to connect to a text-only display of our Web page. It loses a lot in the translation, but you can still move from hyperlink to hyperlink. More like Web wading than Web surfing, but it works. I could move to the shareware page via the hyperlinks, locate the Fixtime file and download it.
There's no reason why you couldn't do this with any text-based communications program on an XT, even with a slow modem. The Web works a lot faster if you ignore the graphics, so it's actually relatively quick. On the other hand, you do need an account with an Internet Service Provider, and why anyone would want to have an ISP account if they had an XT is not clear.
On the whole, Gary's comment seems fair so he wins the prize for February, a selection of puzzle software.
I have to confess that the real deliberate error was in not including a deliberate error in Help Screen. This decision was arrived at on the basis that the errors pretty much take care of themselves, as Gary has so clearly demonstrated. The deliberate error challenge ends here.
Stay tuned for more competitions in forthcoming issues.
Q I wish to check if there could be a simplified solution to what I am doing now. I have a few logos that have been created as .bmp files for inclusion as letterheads, but every time I have to send a letterhead document I need to create the document, pick up this graphic image, position it, print it, remove the graphic and then save the file (as the graphic image would hog disk space, and doesn't need to be saved in the documents anyway).
Could I have a solution wherein I:
(a) create the document
(b) print out the document with the header logos (files created with just the logos in desired position for use with the group of documents required).
c) save the document so that these graphic images are not included in the saved document.
- Rajiv Seth
A I'm sure there's an easier way. In Word for Windows you create a template, containing the graphic. Using OLE you can link the graphics to the template, and not save them in the file.
The way to do this in Word is to insert a frame in the document (this is not necessary, but very helpful for positioning), select the frame, then choose Insert-Picture. You select the picture, then check the Link to file box and uncheck the Save in Document box. The difference in saved size, in my sample document, was 14K for the template with linked graphics versus 366K for the template with embedded graphics.
In WordPerfect 6.1, according to the helpful persons at Digital Helpline, it's a little different. To create a template choose File-New. There's an option to Use WordPerfect to create automated templates. Click on Options to see a list of options including New Template.
To link the graphics file, open the graphics file and copy it to the clipboard. Then in WordPerfect, choose Edit-Paste Special . Choose the Paste Link option, and click OK.
Any word processor or application that supports OLE can probably link to files in this way.
If you can't do a linked graphic, you can create a template, with the graphics correctly positioned. When you create your new documents from the template, you can print them and then delete the graphics from the document before you save it.
Q How can I change the size of the font in the Windows 3.1 Program Manager icons?
- Francois
A Francois, this is one of those delightfully arcane edits of little-known strings in .ini files, surpassed in obscurity only by their successors, the Windows 95 registry. In your Windows directory you'll find a file called WIN.INI. Make a backup copy of WIN.INI before you start to edit it. Now, in Notepad, or any other text editor, open WIN.INI and scroll down to the [desktop] section. Add the following two entries:
IconTitleFaceName=ARIAL NARROW
IconTitleSize=8
You can experiment with the values for IconTitleFaceName and IconTitleSize until you're happy. Each time you change a value, you have to restart Windows to see the result. Font names you can try include Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman or any of the font names you have installed (TrueType, raster or other). To see what fonts you have available, open the Fonts module in Control Panel.
You may wish to change the vertical and horizontal spacing of the icons as well. To do this, add the lines:
IconSpacing=80
IconVerticalSpacing=80
in the [desktop] section. Experiment with the numbers until you're happy.
There are plenty of other places to change fonts in Windows 3.1. The File Manager fonts are stored in the [Settings] section of WINFILE.INI. For example, to change the fonts to Small Fonts:
Face=Small Fonts
Size=7
LowerCase=1
FaceWeight=400
Once again, you can try any installed font shown in the Fonts display in Control Panel. Restart File Manager to see the results.
The font that appears in window title bars and menus can be set in a couple of ways. One way is to edit a line in SYSTEM.INI:
FONTS=VGASYS.FON
You can change this to the file name of any .FON font file in your Windows\System directory.
Tip: Instead of deleting the original FONTS= line, just place a semi-colon in front of it. This "comments it out" - that is, it tells Windows to interpret that line as a note you've placed there rather than as an instruction to it. Now add your new FONTS= line. You can switch between the two by commenting out one or the other.
Instead of editing SYSTEM.INI, you can add a line to the [windows] section in WIN.INI. Use Sysedit to open the file, locate the [windows] section and add the line SystemFont= followed by the font name, such as SystemFont=EGA80WOA.FON. Save WIN.INI, then exit and restart Windows to see how the new font looks. Experiment with different FON files in the \Windows\System directory until you find one you like.
You can change your whole Windows experience this way. The trick is to actually improve things. It's much easier to just make your screen illegible.
Q Recently I have upgraded from Microsoft Multiplan to Excel 5.0 for Windows (3.1), hoping that I would be able to easily handle periods of time that start on one day and finish one or more days later. The reason for wanting this facility is to calculate irrigation quantities applied to grapevines in our vineyard.
Having read the manual, I find no helpful illustration to handle the data in the way that I had hoped for!
An example of what I want to do is given below:
| Grape variety | Date started | Time started | Date finished | Time finished | Time of run (hrs) |
| Shiraz | 14/01/96 | 10:30 PM | 15/01/96 | 7:40 AM | xxxx |
| Chardonnay | 17/01/96 | 10:30 PM | 19/01/96 | 7:40 AM | yyyy |
I prefer not to have columns 3 and/or 5 in more than the 24 hour format, so I need to be able to subtract the values in columns 3 and 5 so that the dates play their part. That is, that xxx=9.166 and yyy = 33.166 (the extra day [24 hours] added in). Hoping that you can suggest a simple solution.
- Nigel R Brand
A Thanks very much for your letter to Help Screen regarding dates and times. The answer to your question is simple, as you hoped.
Excel and other programs express dates and times as serial numbers, with a starting point on a particular date. In the case of Excel, it's midnight on the first of January 1900. In the serial number format, hours and minutes are expressed simply as a decimal fraction of days.
You can enter a date and time in a cell as a single entry. In your example, enter the Date started and Time started as a single entry, say in cell B3:
14-01-96 22:30
and the Date finished and Time finished as a single entry, say in cell D3:
15-01-96 07:40
How these are displayed depends on how you format the cell, but the actual entry in the cells are serial date numbers.
Now, to calculate the duration of the run, just subtract the two. Serial numbers are expressed in days, so to convert to hours you just multiply by 24. Enter the following formula, say in cell F3:
By default, this number is formatted as a date, which is rather silly because subtracting two absolute numbers such as dates gives a relative number, or duration, not a date. To format the cell as a number, right click on the cell, select Format Cells from the pop-up menu, and choose category Number and the Format Code 0.00. If you want to see more than two decimal places, choose category All and the Format Code General. Click OK and you'll see your cell formatted as a decimal number.
If you want to keep your original format, with date and time in separate cells, it's easy to do without having to make a double entry. You just echo the date/time entry in the next cell. For example, to echo the entry in cell B3 in cell C3, just enter the formula in C3:
To format the cells as you wish, right click on the cell, select Format Cells from the pop-up menu, and choose Date format for cell B3 and Time format for cell C3. You can select from a range of format codes in these categories.
I must say that it's a pleasure not only to receive a question that's easy to answer, but to receive it from someone who has succeeded in getting their envelope printing to work so beautifully. Keep that wine fermenting.
Q I use an Osborne 486SX-33 VL Bus computer. The only persistent grievance I have is reading from the floppy disk drive. The computer often fails to read from the floppy disk drive, which leads to problems with installing backups of programs and word processor files. When using Norton Utilities to examine the disks, I sometimes get the message that the FAT table is damaged. So I'm now using multiple copies with enormous quantities of disks to ensure that I can access my backups. Osborne could not help, and I heard that the problem was endemic with that model. What can I do to have reliable access to my disks?
Thank you very much for your assistance.
- Norbert Menke
A Our Test Centre guru Spiro Hionis suggests the following courses of enquiry.
You could have a virus. Get some antiviral software and test your system and some floppy disks that have the problem.
If it's not a virus, it's a hardware problem. Try dusting out the floppy drive (use the blower on a vacuum cleaner). Check the BIOS to see that the floppy drive is configured correctly (as a 1.44Mb, not a 1.2Mb).
For other tests you need another machine with a floppy drive that works, and permission to remove bits and try them out on your machine - be very careful to put them back the right way. Don't remove anything until you've noted how it goes back. Check the cable by trying a cable that you know works. If you can get a working floppy drive, substitute it and see if that works. If your floppy drive has an on-board IDE controller, consider replacing the floppy drive. If your system has an IDE controller card that is separate from the motherboard, substitute a working one. If none of the above works, you may have a motherboard problem - it's not worth persevering with a machine that doesn't work.
You can try calling Gateway 2000 support on 1800 061 591 (Osborne went bankrupt and was taken over by the US firm Gateway 2000).
Q When we bought our system it came with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and DOS 6.2. I used to use Microsoft Defrag often, but when I upgraded to Windows 95, Defrag didn't work. I'm now forced to use the Windows 95 version, and I noticed it doesn't do as good a job as the old defrag. For example, the directories aren't on top of the files any more. Is there anyway I can get Defrag to do this without uninstalling Windows 95?
With Windows 95 most of the old DOS utilities are in the Windows\Command directory, and I've found that a lot of the DOS programs don't work any more. Is there any point in keeping my version of DOS?
If you recommend not to delete DOS, is there anyway I can change the system files so that the computer boots up using DOS 6.2, and not the files from the Windows\Command directory?
- Jordan Spero
A Jordan, thanks very much for your letter to Help Screen. The Microsoft Defrag that came with earlier versions of DOS doesn't work with Windows 95 because of the long filenames in Windows 95. You absolutely cannot use it. Even though you'll be able to use it in Windows 95 DOS mode, you'll wreck your setup because Windows 95 uses long filenames for its own system files - they'll be changed if you run an old defrag, and Windows 95 won't work any more. In particular, you'll lose track of your Start Menu. You have to use the Windows 95 version, which works very well.
I'm interested in your objections to the Windows 95 version. I don't know what you mean by "the directories aren't on top of the files any more".
There's no point in keeping your old version of DOS, unless you want to use the option of booting to your old version of DOS. You can do this by pressing F8 when you start your machine, and selecting the Boot to previous DOS version option from the menu. You can then use any of your old DOS commands, and you won't get the Wrong MS-DOS Version message.
However, you mustn't use any of your old file utilities, because the Windows 95 file system is different and you'll damage it. If you want to replace your utilities, you'll need Windows 95 versions such as the Norton Utilities from Symantec.
Q As with all letters you receive, I am writing to you to pick your brain. My problem is that I would like to attach a teletext decoder to a computer. I am aware of the availability of Faxcast technology, and have contacted the service wholesalers only to find that they want $40,000 to become a retailer of the service. This would allow me to receive the relative data to do what I want to do. On the other hand, I could buy a connection from a current service retailer but this would cost me about $250 to connect and then another $140 per month as a service fee. I did ask the service wholesaler if I could receive the data free of charge until I sort out my idea and see if it will be saleable, and pay the $40,000 to sell the service with my product. Obviously they were not interested.
To cut to the chase, I don't have 40 grand, and I can't throw $140 a month down the drain if it doesn't work. If I could afford the $140 per month to develop the system, I would not think twice. Is it possible to connect a Teletext decoder to a computer and receive the data that is in teletext? If you are aware of where I can get the hardware or software I would love to know.
- Denton Carr
A Thanks very much for your letter to Help Screen. A quick search on the Internet reveals that for $325 you can buy a card from:
Pelican Electronic Developments
PO Box 766
Broadbeach, Queensland 4218
Phone: 61 7 5527 7433
Fax: 61 7 5572 4213
Here's their blurb:
Pelican Electronic Developments is a small Gold Coast operation involved in the development of electronic products for specific markets. Currently we are specialising in teletext based products.
International Version Now Available For PAL Countries
The Unitext decoder card is an advanced teletext processor boasting an impressive array of features unsurpassed by other teletext cards. It will capture the teletext signal from your video or other tuner source hosting a "video out" port or television with a SCART connector and will allow an IBM PC compatible computer to store, display and print teletext information.
Dealer Interest Welcomed And Quantity Pricing Can Be Negotiated
Just a short note to say thank you very much for your extremely quick response to my inquiry regarding teletext. A quick call to Pelican Electronic Developments and I have just what I am after.
- Denton Carr
Q We moved to Melbourne from Auckland in May 1995 and brought with us a 486SX-33 purchased in 1994.
Since then, I have installed a double-speed CD-ROM drive and a further 4Mb or RAM (total of 8Mb). Recently I have had fitted a new 850Mb WD hard drive. As documented thoroughly and very clearly in your publication, I had a problem with my BIOS recognising the new hard disk. The suppliers, a small outlet in Malvern, Melbourne, installed a relevant driver for me and, hey presto!
My three questions are:
I do not have a copy of the hard disk drive on floppy disk. What happens if my hard disk crashes? Where would the drivers be located so I can make a copy for backup?
When I am in Windows I have intermittent problems. When exiting Windows from the Program Manager screen (after exiting all applications), the screen occasionally locks up and I have to perform a warm boot. This only happens about half the time.
Once again only occasionally, when I perform a spellcheck in Word 6, the screen locks and I have to perform a warm boot, losing the file I am working on. Yes, I have learnt to save before performing a spellcheck, but it is still annoying.
Also, any suggestions for streamlining my config.sys and autoexec.bat files to increase my conventional memory?
- Martin Cayzer
A Martin, your hard disk driver would appear in your autoexec.bat or config.sys if it were there. It's not, so perhaps the outlet supplied a BIOS update to get your hard disk to work. You should ask them. They have a far better chance of knowing what they did than I do.
As for your Windows lockups, there's no obvious answer. These sorts of problems are rife in Windows applications. Typically what happens is a Windows application writes to some memory that doesn't belong to it, and causes another application or the system itself to lock up. If you carefully keep track of which applications you're running, you might be able to work out which applications and operations are to blame, but that doesn't always mean you can stop using them.
It's not just badly behaved applications from other vendors, but Microsoft's own applications which are to blame. Word for Windows causes GPFs (general protection faults) or lockups quite regularly. It's particularly a problem if you have low resources. Moving to 8Mb should have improved it. We discussed a product called RamGate in our February 1996 issue that can help solve some of these resources problems (RamGate from Ni-Tech, $89, phone: (02) 9233 6660).
Saving very often is the answer to losing work.
Windows 95 improves things somewhat, but it doesn't eliminate the problem, and it runs somewhat slowly in 8Mb. Windows 95 also fixes a lot of conventional memory problems, because it uses virtual drivers for many things such as the mouse and the CD-ROM driver. You can sometimes totally eliminate AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS and the drivers they load. Your system would be a good candidate for this because it has a true Sound Blaster and a Sony CD-ROM drive, both supported by Windows 95 drivers.
Your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS look pretty tidy. You could try adding an LH in front of the mouse driver line in AUTOEXEC.BAT, to load it in high memory, namely:
If you're not using the mouse in DOS, take the mouse driver out (Windows 3.1 has its own driver). In AUTOEXEC.BAT you should also move the CD driver line:
to a line before the Smartdrv line, so Smartdrv can cache the CD-ROM drive, which should improve performance. Add the CD-ROM letter D: to the end of the Smartdrv line.
Apart from that, there are a couple of ways of getting more DOS conventional memory. You can run memmaker, which attempts to shuffle things around to give you the most possible memory. Make sure you create a startup floppy, with the system on it and copies of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files, before you do so. To do that, take a floppy disk and type the command:
format a: /s
That puts the DOS system files and COMMAND.COM on the disk. Then copy AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to the disk. If you want to be extra safe, go through your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and note all the drivers to which they refer. Then backup those drivers on floppy disk.
Memmaker can often give you a little more memory. To get more conventional memory, I often find the best way is to move CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT lines around manually. Use the command:
mem /c
to see if you have any free upper memory. If you do, and one of the drivers that is not loading into conventional memory is small enough to fit into the free space, maybe shuffling drivers around would help. It's trial and error, but if it's important to you it might be worth it.
Q I had a problem with my computer and I thought you could help me. I run Windows 95 normally every day, but today when I turned on my computer every thing was kind of oversized, the wallpaper was bigger and didn't fit on the screen. The icons were bigger and all the windows are oversized as well. For example, in the Web browser I use all the buttons grew up and, in consequence, the size of the window too. I fixed already the icons and the wallpaper by resizing them, but I couldn't fix the windows. I tried to resize them but the only thing I resized was the border. Every thing inside the windows is still big and I don't know how to fix it.
I'm going to try to describe to you what's going on in my computer.
At the beginning I had a window, let's say 7in wide, in which fit 10 letters from side to side. Now, after every thing grew I have the same window, with the same 10 letters from side to side but bigger (the window and the letters, like 9in), but exactly the same content inside. Another example: when I click the Start popup menu and I made a click in programs file, it used to appear one single column with all my shortcuts, but now it appears two columns with the same number of shortcuts I had but now in two columns because they don't fit in one (and I don't have the large icons). I think the problem can be the resolution of the screen, but I can't fix it.
I'll appreciate very much your help!
By the way I apologise for my terrible English, but I'm not an English speaker. I'm from Mexico City. My name is Emilio and I'm 22 years old. Thanks for everything.
- Emilio Perez
A Thanks Emilio. Your English is fine. Are you e-mailing from Mexico? I suspect your problem is to do with the desktop settings. Right click on a blank space in the desktop, choose Properties from the pop-up menu and choose the Appearance tab. If you look at the Scheme list you may see a few schemes that are described as Large. Maybe you've picked one of those.
Another possibility is that you've changed your resolution. Choose the Settings tab and try moving the Desktop Area slider to choose a higher resolution, which will make windows and fonts look smaller.
Your resolution can change when you run a game. Most games prefer a 640 by 480 pixel, 256 colour display, and they may aggressively change the resolution for you. Well-behaved games return your desktop to its original settings, but there may be some that don't.
Thanks and hasta la vista.
Q Hi Neale, I've just downloaded some of your software and I don't know where it went. Got any suggestions of where it could be?
- Ben Andrew
A Ben, that depends how you downloaded it. If you did it via a recent version of Netscape Navigator, it usually asks you for a download directory. With older software there's sometimes a download or receive directory under the main software directory.
I hope you noted the file name of the file you downloaded. You can then search, manually or automatically. In DOS (or the Run dialogue box in Windows), try this:
dir \*.zip /s > \zipsrch.txt
When the dir command finishes, ZIPSRCH.TXT in your root directory contains a list of all the .zip files in all the directories of the current drive. All the files on our Web site are zip files, so it's a safe bet it has the .zip extension. You can open ZIPSRCH.TXT in Notepad. To browse it in DOS, type:
edit zipsrch.txt
You should be able to find your file that way.
In Windows 95 you can use the Find command. Choose Find from the Start menu, choose the Files or Folders option, and press <F3> from the Start Menu. The good news is that once you find it, you'll know where downloads go in future.
Q I have recently upgraded to Win95 and transferred all my existing Microsoft Office 4.2 goodies to the new OS. A problem has arisen in that I can no longer access the Thesaurus from within WinWord 6.0a (or from anywhere else for that matter). When I click on the Thesaurus to give me some alternative words to the one highlighted, it just tells me the word was not found.
I am a tad concerned about this as I use the Thesaurus a lot when writing my uni assignments.
I might add that the thesaurus worked fine when I had the same software operating under Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
As an aside, I think your section in PC World is as good as or even better than Jan's effort.
- John Kraft
A Thanks John. The Windows 95 Word 6 Thesaurus problem is known. We reported it in our Dec/January 1996 General Q&A Help Screen. We haven't heard of a cure yet, other than upgrading to Word 7 or going back to Win3.1. I'll have another look around. If you're on-line, try the Microsoft Knowledge base at http://www.microsoft.com/KB
I found something by searching in the Word for Windows and Macintosh section with the keywords "thesaurus windows 95". However, I wasn't able to hang around long enough for the information to download. Please let me know if you find anything.
John replied with the following revelation:
Neale, I finally found the fix for this problem. Apparently the Thesaurus won't work with Word6.0a if it is running with a non-US version of Win95. To fix it you have to download a new MSTHES.DLL file from Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://www.microsoft.com/KB), then select Word for Windows or Macintosh in the product window, then in the search window type WD1253.
With any luck and a good line you will then be connected to the file WD1253. It has a bit of text in the beginning and the choice to click and download the file of the same name which is the new MSTHES.DLL required to fix the problem. I have just finished downloading, extracting and installing it, and it works like a dream.
It would be nice if Microsoft could make it easier for users of their products to fix these annoying problems. Regards, and thanks for your initial suggestion.
- John Kraft
Editor's comment: John, this is an amazing discovery of yours. It's great when you ask about a problem that other readers are wondering about too, then solve it yourself. Thanks very much for getting back to me about it.
Q I'm thinking about installing a new 1Gb EIDE Hard Drive that runs in PIO Mode 4, but my motherboard supports only PIO Mode 3. What happens in this situation? Does the drive fall back to PIO Mode 3, or does it operate in plain old IDE mode? I would appreciate any help.
- Uwe Niklas
A Thanks for your letter. PIO Mode 4 is the fastest, but the hard drive should drop back to PIO Mode 3 and work with your motherboard. Check your CMOS settings for a PIO Mode setting, and change it to AUTO if you can.
Q Could you offer your valuable comments on the following issues please:
(a) Does Windows 3.x facilitate time-out to minimise applications to icons so that the icons lie on the chosen wallpaper after the no-activity time specified. If not, could you suggest how this could be achieved. Alternatively, could I have my desktop with the wallpaper of my choice and minimised icons of definable size of the applications that I am interested in (including MS-DOS prompt), ready to fire up?
(b) How do I run Netscape in stand-alone mode.
- Rajiv Seth
A I know of no mechanism in Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 for applications to minimise themselves after a specified period of inactivity, nor of any way of altering the size of icons. Maybe some other readers have come across utilities for this.
If you want the wallpaper of your choice, you just set it in the Control Panel, Desktop app.
To set up Windows to run with a set of applications minimised on the wallpaper or desktop background at startup, place copies of the Program Manager icons for these applications in the Program Manager Startup group. To run them minimised when they start, check the Run Minimized box in the icon setup dialogue box. To see this dialogue box, select the icon and choose File-Properties or press <Alt>+<Enter>.
Don't forget that icons minimised on the desktop represent applications that are taking up memory in your system. You need a lot of memory to tolerate lots of applications, minimised or not. Because Win3.x falls over as soon as you get low on resources, it's often best to put up with the time it takes to fire up applications when you want them, and close them when you're finished.
As an alternative to putting the icons in the Startup menu, you could just collect the applications you regularly use in a single Program Manager group which is always open, so they're easy to get to. The only problem with this scheme is that memory management is poor in Win3.x, and many applications allocate themselves memory which is not returned when you close them. The result is memory leakage if you repeatedly open and close applications, until you run out of resources anyway. This is particularly a problem if an application crashes in Win3.x - even if Windows doesn't fall over completely, there's usually a big chunk of dead memory. The only way to get it back is to restart Windows.
Windows 95 handles this problem better, but not perfectly. Occasionally it's still necessary to restart Windows 95. Win3.x has a great advantage, in that it's quite quick to restart. Win95, always the perfect host, gives you time enough to make a cup of coffee while it starts.
When you ask about running Netscape Navigator in stand-alone mode, I presume you mean off-line, not connected to the Internet.
One way to do this is to associate Navigator with .HTM (hypertext markup language) documents, and then double-click on a .HTM document in Explorer (Win95) or File Manager (Win3.x). You can also start Navigator, press Esc if it puts up a dialogue box requesting you to make a winsock connection, and then use File-Open to open an HTM file on your local hard disk.
Navigator has a kiosk mode, which runs without menus or toolbars. To run in kiosk mode, put a -k at the end of the Netscape command line in your icon, namely:
Netscape.exe - k
Q I am a great fan of PC World magazine. I am becoming deeply interested in computer hardware and software. Now, I own a Pentium 100 with 8Mb of RAM and a 850Mb hard disk. I also have Windows 95 installed. I found it to be very much more useful than Windows 3.x . However, the Windows background is very dull and I wish to paste some graphics on it. I also have a CD-ROM, and it happens that I have a special liking for one of the scenes in a CD movie and wish to have it as the Windows background. But the problem is I do not know how to do so. So I hope that you can advise on the technique. Thanks!
- Aliza Teo
A Thanks for your letter Aliza. It's really very simple to add a background to the Windows 95 desktop. Just right-click on the desktop, and choose Properties in the pop-up menu that appears.
In the Desktop Properties dialogue box, select the Background tab. Now, in the wallpaper section, click the Browse button, and locate your bitmap. It must be in Windows/OS/2 bitmap format, with a .bmp or .dib extension. You can select the Center radio button to place your bitmap in the centre of your screen, or Tile to repeat it in a tiling pattern, filling the screen.
To create a bitmap file, display the image you want on your screen then press the <Print Scrn> key. This puts a copy of the entire screen in the Windows 95 clipboard. Now, start Paint, the small graphics package provided with Windows 95. You can probably find it via the Start Menu by choosing Start-Programs-Accessories . Select Edit-Paste to paste the contents of the clipboard into Paint. Now choose File-Save to save it as a bitmap file.
Choose a bitmap with the same number as, or fewer colours than, the screen resolution you normally use. If you normally use 256 colour resolution, don't use a wallpaper image with millions of colours.
If you get tired of looking at that wallpaper, select another one, or choose (None) from the top of the list to return to the dull old background.
There are various wallpaper managers available as shareware and freeware. There's a nice shareware package called Backdrop that lets you combine graphics to create a combination of a tiling pattern and images, positioned as you wish. A 16-bit program called Papers can run a slideshow, cycling through a selection of bitmap files. Papers works with Windows 95 as well as Windows 3.1. You can download these from our Web page.
Don't forget that all this takes up memory and processor time, so if you start having any problems with programs or performance, removing the wallpaper is a good first move to solve the problem.