Away from little fingers
Macro, schmacro
Back up where?
Who goes there?
Hairless Paintbrush
Q You have previously provided an answer for me regarding childproofing my SOHO PC. One solution was quite feasible, but for one reason and another I have found it unsuitable.
I now wish to ask, in regard to this problem and in general, about hard disk partitioning. I have read about how to do it but I would appreciate any tips as to good and bad points.
I have (and presently only need) a smallish hard disk (120Mb with 47Mb free). Is it possible or practical to run Windows applications on two drives? How might each be accessed; one the easy way and the other more difficult?
My kids are only young and are not yet capable of using File Manager but can mess things up by clicking in the screen randomly. Junior knows to type WIN at the DOS prompt, and then accesses Paintbrush, games and educational programs (DOS and Windows) from a Program Manager Group. The kids are capable of being taught a few simple keyboard commands. I would consider leaving Write and a few other applications on their drive, as I would use ClarisWorks and specific applications on my drive.
Hopefully by the time they are more capable, they will have attained some responsibility and all this will be of little concern. We will all then probably be using another operating system anyway.
PS: Is there some way of stopping the CPU clock falling behind?
- Bill Bradley, Bellevue Hill, NSW
A The bad news is that the solution I gave you before is the only one I have. The good news is that Windows 95 solves the problem with great ease. Windows 95 allows you to set up several sets of user preferences and password protect each one. You can thus configure a complete desktop for the kids that contains only what you want them to access, then freeze it and password protect your own setup.
Dividing the hard disk or using two disks is really no help in this connection, because you can't lock away an entire drive. There's no difficulty about running Windows applications from different logical drives, though, so you could easily use this device to ease the problems of organising the system. Considering the amounts of space gobbled by games, it might be an idea to kill two birds with one stone and apply DoubleSpace or Stacker.
DoubleSpace and Stacker work the same way in that either system always makes two logical drives out of each one you apply it to - one compressed and one uncompressed. If you create, say, a nominal 60Mb compressed drive for the kids, it'll leave 90Mb uncompressed for yourself and Windows's swapfile.
As for the CPU clock, there is a shareware program called Fixtime. It works in a very simple but effective way; it just measures the error of your system clock and applies a correction every time you switch on.
Q Again I appear with a couple of problems, with which I am sure (judging from past experience) you can help - please!
1. I have recently acquired a fax modem, and have a Bitware icon in Windows which, when double-clicked, opens a toolbar. A click on the Bitcom button opens a Bitcom for Windows screen, and a click on the Ring button rings my bulletin board.
I made a Macro recording of the above actions with a shortcut key (<Alt>+<b>), but all I get when using the shortcut is a beep and no action. If, however, I open the recorder window, select the macro from the File menu and then click on Run in the Macro drop-down, it works. Then, after the Ring button has been activated, I cancel the ringing and return to Program Manager with a couple of <Alt>+<F4>s - the shortcut key now works perfectly! It continues to do so even after using another Windows-based program such as MS-Works. Have you any suggestions please?
2. The second item is quite minor but it would be nice to overcome it. If I go straight to Works from C:\> and use <Alt>+<Tab>, I get a full sized Program Manager. If I use <Alt>+<F4> instead, I get Program Manager iconised and need to press <Alt>+<F4> twice more before I get the Exit window. When I first get the icon (after one <Alt>+<F4>) I can maximise Program Manager with <Alt>+<Tab>. Peculiar!
In two of your recent Help Screens - the first and finest section on my reading agenda - I noticed a couple of questions with which I would like to offer some assistance.
A correspondent was asking about the limit of 127 characters in the Path entry in AUTOEXEC.BAT. If he adds the line SET PATH=(followed by the Path) in the CONFIG.SYS file, there is no limitation on the length. Naturally, the Path statement in AUTO-EXEC.BAT should be removed. There is one small snag that is easily overcome. Sometimes, when adding an additional item to the path, it tends to drop down a line, leaving just the word SET in its old line.
The simple cure for this is to press <Home> followed by <Backspace>. When this is used don't forget to reinsert the space between Set and Path which will have disappeared. Another correspondent was inquiring about shortcut keys for umlauts. Here are a couple of very useful shortcuts I have installed. Corresponding with my daughter in England I often discuss the stuff they call weather. This includes boasting about our own weather and typing temperatures.
I have set the shortcut key <Alt>+<o> to load the superscript command, and all I have to do to produce the degrees sign is to press <o> three times, holding down the Alt key on the first and third times.
Another useful shortcut is to assign <Alt>+<4> (the key containing the $) to produce the English £. Just press <Shift>+<4> for dollars and <Alt>+<4> for the pound sign.
Printing an envelope in Word involves opening the Toolbar, clicking on Envelopes and Labels and again on Print in the window that opens. I have recorded a macro of all these actions and allotted the shortcut <Alt>+<e> (for envelopes). This gives me immediate printing and I don't even see the window.
Hope the above proves useful.
- Reg Manus, Willetton, WA
A In order for a Windows Recorder macro to work, Recorder has to be running and the particular file that contains the macro has to be loaded. The easiest way to handle this is to record all macros in the one file, and drag that file into the Startup group. After you do this, select the icon in the Startup group and press <Alt>+<Enter>. This opens the Properties dialogue box for the icon. Check Run Minimised. From now on, all your Recorder macros will work all the time - provided that the objects they operate on are available at the time, of course.
There's another little difficulty with the Recorder that I should warn you about: a macro is unreliable if you use the mouse in recording it. This is because the mouse works with what is visible on the screen. If it needs an object that happens to be concealed behind something else this time, the macro will crash. So if you want good, reliable macros, record everything with keystrokes. Everything can be done without the mouse, as you'll find if you look closely at the window control menu and other menus, not to mention the manual.
The thing to remember about <Alt>+<F4> is that it doesn't just shut down Windows, it shuts down one application at a time first, even if they're minimised. Some major applications even shut down whatever document is open before going on to shut down themselves.
Now, that idea of putting the PATH statement in CONFIG.SYS rather than AUTOEXEC.BAT looks pretty amazing. I have found no mention of it anywhere in the literature I have access to, but it works. I'd love to know where you picked it up!
The official way to deal with the problem of in-sufficient environment space is to include SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /E:512 in your CONFIG.SYS. This sets your environment space to 512 bytes (default is 256), or whatever you specify at the /E: switch.
Thanks for your tips, they're very handy. Let me just point out for the benefit of other readers that the last two refer to WinWord macros. By the way, you can simplify the "degrees" one - record a macro while you do the whole sequence superscript - "o" - back to normal. This lets you enter the degree symbol with a single keystroke.
Q I have a problem that I hope you can help me with. In December last I purchased a program called My Backup by My Software in the US. After using it for a short time, usually between eight and 30 1.44Mb floppies, it will, for no apparent reason, exit Windows and return to the DOS prompt. When Windows is restarted, it shows the error message:
Sound Blaster 16 Error
Incorrect MIDIPORT setting in the SYSTEM.INI file
On inspection of this file, it is found in [drivers] to have changed from Wave=SB16SND.DVR to Wave=MVSPEAKR.DVR, and this is accompanied with distorted sound from the computer speaker and not the stereo speakers. On approach to the local distributors, they in turn referred the problem back to the USA. The suggestion was to reinstall the Sound Blaster program. This I did, but the problem still existed. I then asked one of the local computer experts and he suggested reinstalling Windows from the original disks, again with no solution to the problem. I have included the print-out from Microsoft Diagnostics and hope you can offer some suggestion while I still have some hair left.
- Gordon Maxwell, Merrylands, NSW
A As my hairless old mate, Sherlock Holmes, liked to say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left is the solution, however far-fetched. In this case, if you have the right Sound Blaster driver before running the backup program and the wrong one after, I have to conclude that the backup program takes it on itself to load MVSPEAKR, which is a grotty old sound card substitute dating back to when sound cards were too expensive for hobbyists.
The makers of My Backup may not even know about it. When several programmers re-use program modules created by other programmers for other purposes, you may well get a module that does something really silly only under certain rare circumstances, which is very hard to pick up in debugging.
You don't mention this, but I assume this backup program is a Windows-based one that makes noises to indicate what's happening, and after a while it comes to the routine that installs the wrong driver, which is when Sound Blaster complains.
I can suggest a way to put this theory to the test. Use File-Find in File Manager to search for MV-SPEAKR.* throughout your system (using the wildcard because the installer may rename the source file). If you find any files with this search, delete or rename them. If you now reinstall your Sound Blaster card and run the backup program, you could have three results:
1. The same thing as before happens, in which case I've paddled up the wrong creek again and it's not the backup program that offends.
2. The backup goes smoothly and your Sound Blaster sings like a canary. Grin and heave a sigh of relief.
3. The backup program halts and complains that it can't find the sound driver it wants to install. If this happens, get rid of the backup program. The freebie one (limited to floppy backup) that comes with MS-DOS is very good, anyway.
I see from your system files that you don't have the freebie delete protection installed or anyway activated, so maybe you're not aware that MS-DOS 6.2 comes with Windows utilities for backup, undelete and antivirus. They're easy to install. Put disk 1 of your MS-DOS 6.2 set into drive A:, log on and type setup /e. This tells the setup program that you want to install the utilities. You'll be asked if you want the DOS and/or Windows versions - I recommend choosing Windows Only. When the installation is finished, you'll be able to access the utilities through the File Manager toolbar and menu.
Q I have a problem that I hope you will be able to solve for me. The problem resides in Windows 3.1, namely the username and company name section when loading software from a server to workstation. What we have done is copied each program disk into one directory, so that we load Windows onto a workstation from the server by typing s:\[directory]\setup. The problem occurs when you get to the section of filling in username and company name - only the username comes up and the company name fill-in box is not there.
- David Harper, Sydney
A A network installation assumes that the company name is the same throughout the network, which makes sense. What's happened in your case is that the person doing the server installation entered the company name instead of the user name and left the company name blank.
I have no personal experience of a server installation, so I can't tell you the file where the information resides or whether it's encoded. If you have the Norton Utilities, PC Tools or the like, you can try searching the server's Windows directory (and subdirectories) for a file that contains the string that occupies the user name line, but this method has thorns - there may be several files containing this information, including one or more where it's encoded so you can't find it. The only cure I know that works for sure is to delete and reinstall Windows on the server and fill in the data correctly when prompted. Sorry!
Q Could you help me solve a problem in Windows 3.1 Paintbrush? (The procedures in italics, below, is the only one I don't know how to do.) I would like to:
• draw a thick line
• make a copy of the line
• change the colour of the copy
• change line thickness of the copy to 1/2 that of original
• paste copy back on top of original
The purpose of this exercise is to draw a street map. The thin copy pasted onto an original will give a professional look to small maps. I have seen this technique using Paintbrush described in an Australian computer magazine within the last two years, and I'll be blowed if I can remember the technique or the magazine. Could you please tell me how to execute the procedure in italics.
- Bernie Bloedorn, Alice Springs, NT
A I'm afraid Paintbrush is a little primitive for this sort of job. Mainly, there is no way to change the width of a line once it's been drawn other than deleting pixel by pixel. You can't even copy a line as such, because once Paintbrush has finished a line it becomes part of the background - it's a bitmapped drawing program that stores the image as individual pixels. When you copy in Paintbrush, you copy the selected area regardless of what's in it. This is easy enough with straight objects, but your road had better not have any curves in it.
What you can do to achieve the effect you mention is to draw a narrow filled rectangle, selecting a nice thick border. Select the border colour with the right mouse button but remember to change it back to white if you want to move the rectangle, because otherwise the area where it was will take on the border colour. Unfortunately, this limits you to straight lines, which isn't much good.
What you really need for this sort of work is a vector-based drawing program, where each object you draw retains its identity and can be moved, rotated and edited at any time.
The good news is that you can get one without frightening your bank manager. Micrografx has a package called Graphics Works that gives you an excellent basic vector drawing program, a bitmapped program that knocks spots off Paintbrush and even handles Kodak PhotoCD images, a couple of specialised graphics items (flow charter and org charter, if my memory serves), and a fine collection of TrueType fonts. Ring Micrografx on (02) 415 2642 if your local store doesn't have it.