Avoid clashing winsocks
Tracking down lost friends and family
Getting all the FAQs
Q You have noted that you access the Internet through several different accounts. I can't figure out how to do this. I'd like to use both CompuServe's Internet access and my university's SLIP/PPP connection, but I keep running into conflicts with the different winsocks.
-- Colin Wells
A Windows Socket, or winsock, is a small program that provides a standardised way for Windows to communicate over an Internet SLIP or PPP line. If you're running Windows, you need a winsock to get on the Web.
Most off-the-shelf Internet packages like Netscape Navigator or Chameleon come with a winsock. You can also download one from the Internet or an on-line service and install it yourself a popular one is Trumpet Winsock. Windows 95 has its own, as does CompuServe. You can begin to see where the trouble lies.
Many Internet applications install their own winsock.dll files to the main Windows directory. If you're running Windows 95, the "alien" winsock.dll may overwrite or rename Windows 95's own winsock.dll, disabling Win95's Internet utilities. One example is CompuServe's NetLauncher, although it may be fixed by the time you read this. Also, whenever an application tries to load a file named winsock.dll and that file isn't in the current working directory, your PC will look in the Windows system directory and load the winsock.dll found there.
Windows 95's winsock won't work with certain Internet software, but if you copy a different winsock to the Windows directory, Win95 will notice that a system file has changed and overwrite it with a new copy of its own winsock. You can't win.
The solution is to keep any proprietary winsocks out of Windows' system directory. Copy them instead into the working directories of your Internet dialler. For CompuServe's NetLauncher, that means copying its winsock.dll to c:\cserve\wincim, c:\cserve\cid and c:\cserve\mosaic.
If you are running Windows 95, NetLauncher will have renamed Win95's winsock to something like winsock.old. You'll need to rename it winsock.dll.
If your Internet soft-ware is 32-bit, you'll also have to move wsock32.dll from the Windows system directory to the appropriate application directories, and restore the original to the Windows 95 system directory - that is, rename it from wsock32.old (in the system directory) to wsock32.dll.
If you run Trumpet Winsock, move its win-sock.dll to the working directory for each application containing tcpman.exe.
Finally, if you're running Windows 3.1, delete the locations of your winsock.dll files from autoexec.bat's path statement.
Q Is there any way I can locate on-line a person I've lost track of?
-- Warren Carey
A As private investigators know, most "missing persons" can be found in a phone book someplace. Searches of credit records and motor vehicle registrations are usually a last resort.
However, don't rule out searching the Internet if you think your missing person is a denizen. If they have posted a message to any Usenet newsgroup in the past six months - under a real name you can find it by heading to the DejaNews page at http://www.dejanews.com/
There you can search past Usenet postings for the person's name, pull up any messages they wrote (or are mentioned in) and get an Internet address. Talk about Big Brother!
And who knows - your missing person may have a World Wide Web page. Try entering the person's name into a Web searcher like Lycos (http://www.lycos.com/).
If you want to go one step further, enter the term birth records, death records or military records into any Web searcher. While few such records exist on-line, a smattering of sites are popping up.
For instance, the Genealogical Guide to Ireland page (http://www.bess.tcd.ie/roots/prototype/genweb2.htm) lists references to records on births, deaths, marriages, land holdings and estate settlements in Ireland back to 1821. In the United States, some military academies, historical societies and a few States are putting records on-line.
Frequently asked question files are among the best information sources on the Internet. FAQs summarise advice shared in the thousands of Usenet newsgroups.
Topics range from solving consumer credit woes to staging a cheap wedding. You can read all the Usenet FAQs by pointing your Web walker to http://www.cis.ohiostate.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/top.html This wide-ranging repository also includes hypertext links to other Internet files and sources related to each FAQ.