Patches & Support files - February '98

Updates and fixes from this month's Bug Patrol Column

Rose Vines bring you the latest batch of bugs, fixes and workarounds for DOS 6.2, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and assorted Windows applications.

Riven

Motion sickness
The impressive sequel to Myst had been on the shelves for no more than a month when Broderbund released the first patch to the game. If you've been suffering any of the following problems, you should try installing Riven Updater 1.02:

• QuickTime movies play twice.
• An incorrect movie plays at the boiler and in the sub.
• Difficulty operating the rotating domes.
• Difficulty turning on the light near the water at the end of one of the tunnels.
• Difficulty clicking while full-screen movies are playing

To install the Riven Updater (rivenupdater1_02.exe) you must have Riven 1.0 already installed on your computer. You can get the Updater from www.broderbund.com/support/faqs/faq-riven.html   or take it straight from the PC User Offline CD-ROM.

Riven is undeniably gorgeous, but not perfect. An Updater has been released to fix problems with graphics and video.

Missing limbs
Things can get pretty gruesome in Theme Hospital: there's a bug loose that causes the heads and limbs of doctors and patients to disappear at random. Another bug interferes with hiring and firing: fire a surgeon or psychiatrist that you have trained and you will find that you lose the ability to cure diseases that they managed.

You can glue everyone back together and cure more diseases by installing the patch (th_patch.zip) from www.ea.com/techsupp   (click the Patches button to locate the patch). The patch is also on this month's cover CD-ROM, of course. The same patch adds a few features, including easy and hard levels for the single player game, a multiplayer option, and a 'restart level' option.

To install the patch:

1. Unzip th_patch.zip to a temporary folder.

2. Drag the file instpat.exe into the folder where you installed Theme Hospital.

3. Open the Theme Hospital folder and double-click on instpat.exe. Two files will be added to the folder: dos4gw.exe and hosppat.exe.

4. Double-click hosppat.exe. This program will patch your game.

Bad dates
Lotus Approach (96 and 97 Versions) sometimes balks at creating a date field with a four-digit year, such as DD/MM/YYYY.

The problem is caused by a conflict with Windows 95's Regional Settings. To fix it:

1. Open the Control Panel (Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel) and double-click the Regional Settings icon.

2. In the Regional Settings dialog box, select the Date tab and in the Short Date Style box type DD/MM/YYYY. That should do it.

Scanning to Office apps
If your Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet Pro 1150C won't scan images directly into Microsoft Office 97 applications, then you need a copy of the updated driver. Originally HP released an interim patch to fix this problem, but now Version 2.0 of the OfficeJet Pro scanner incorporates that patch and updates other features of the driver.

You can get the driver for yourself (oj130en.exe -- a hefty nine-megabyte download) from http://hpcc887.external.hp.com:9000/awssnew/ . This page features the new Hewlett-Packard Electronic Support Centre -- worth checking out in itself. Of course, you'll probably find it more convenient to grab the driver from this month's PC User Offline CD-ROM.

More than a .01 upgrade
Like its predecessors, Internet Explorer 4.0 has proved to be less than entirely secure. Microsoft has now released an update, IE 4.01. The company has said the main reason for the update is to introduce a bunch of new accessibility features. That may be so, but there's no doubt that the number of bugs that had already surfaced in the new product warranted an update in themselves. Of course, it sounds better for the company to suggest that the upgrade is to add new features rather than to fix defects.

Regardlessof the reason, the upgrade is definitely worth installing. Not only will it increase the accessibility of the product and plug holes in its security, it also makes the Active Desktop much more stable. If you had problems with an earlier installation, you may well find the upgrade fixes them.

As far as the new features go, the upgrade includes:

• Support for personal style sheets, which allow users to designate that all HTML contents be shown in a larger-than-usual font. IE 4.01 also incorporates a technology called Microsoft Active Accessibility which provides support for third-party screen readers and other aids.
• Support for voice recognition software, providing navigation between links, frames and form controls via spoken commands.
• A reduction in the amount of mouse-clicking required through Hover Select and Single-click activation of all icons in the system, via the Windows Desktop Update.
• Full keyboard access (as opposed to mouse access) to all objects on the Active Desktop
• A revamped HTML Help with keyboard access and much greater user control of Help presentation.
• Full-screen view. Hit the F11 key to remove toolbars and scrollbars and provide maximum space for the Web page.

Version 4.01 also fixes all security problems reported up until the end of November 1997. The upgrade is available from www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/download. You need first to download the IE Setup program and then run Setup to download new components. You won't have to replace your complete IE 4.0 installation -- you can upgrade the outdated components. Note, if you're currently running a preview version of IE 4 or an earlier version of the browser, you will need to uninstall your browser before installing IE 4.01. If you're upgrading from IE 4.0 you won't need to uninstall first.

Previous PC User Offline CD's

Patches and Support files - January '97

Patches and Support files - December '97

Patches and Support files - November '97

Patches and Support files - October '97

Patches and Support files - September '97

Patches and Support files - August '97

Patches and Support files - July '97

Patches and Support files - June '97

Patches and Support files - May '97

Patches and Support files - April '97

Patches and Support files - March '97