PuterGeek.Com News
Issue # 53
ISSN: 1533-1938
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PuterGeek.Com News: ISSN: 1533-1938
Hello Everyone!
First I'd like to say a big "Hello" to all the new subscribers! PuterGeek.Com News now has over 1000 subscribers, and we're growing every day. All you old-timers can skip the next
part...
() Tips for subscribers
I offer free help by...
AOL Instant Messenger (screen name "RPC1962"),
and by phone ( 330-837-2789 ).
Please check the PeterCam (
http://www.putergeek.com/petercam ) to see if I'm home and available. When home I keep strange hours, so if you
see me on the cam... I've available.
I do answer all my email. Sometimes while on the road (I'm a truck driver) it might take 5-10 days, but I promise...I will answer you!
Before emailing me with a question please try searching my website to see if I've already answered your question on a webpage, you can search PuterGeek.Com from almost any page.
Please only email me in "plain text", HTML is pretty but makes the email much larger. Also, please never send me an attachments without checking with me first. On the road I have a
very slow connection and I get a lot of email :-)
() Poll
() The website
Thanks to Fred Langa and Mike Elgan, PuterGeek.Com has been getting hit very hard since the 15th. The website is just now starting to calm down. If you tried visiting the website
during this time and found images that wouldn't load, or forms that wouldn't work....that's why. My server was completely overwhelmed! All pages and forms should work correctly now.
() Horror Stories
Have you got a good 'puter horror story? How about writing it to me via email in a story format? If you do, I'll add it to the Horror section on my website.
http://www.putergeek.com/horror/
() Want to be a Guest Author?
Would you like to write a webpage for PuterGeek.Com? Whether it's a "white paper", a "horror story", or a "blow-by-blow" of your first install of Windows... I'm sure others would like
to read it. Just email me so we can talk about it.
webmaster@putergeek.com
()Langalist Plus!
As most of you know, Fred Langa has put out the Langalist for quite some time and it's a staple for me. I almost always put some of his fine newsletter in the PuterGeek.Com News.
Well now Mr. Langa is also putting out the Langalist Plus! as well. This is a fee based email newsletter that costs $10 US per year. I signed up right away! Please NOTE:
None of the "Plus!" articles will appear in this newsletter.
The Plus! version has all the info of the regular version, plus some extra content, no ads, first shot at special files from time to time (good stuff!), as well as breaking news that Mr. Langa
feels we should know about right away. For more info please point your web browser at
http://www.langa.com/plus.htm
What's $10 bucks? When you'll be getting some 50 issues per year of very good and well presented info? This is a great way to say "Thank you" to a guy that's been helping people for
more years than I've been into 'puters! A few of you have emailed me to ask if I think it's worth signing up for....To me it's a no-brainer! Even if nothing was different but the removal
of ads it would be worth it. Don't you think that Mr. Langa spends a lot of time putting his great newsletter together? Fair is fair! Why should he put all this effort and get
nothing in return? Again, what's $10 bucks? "Nuff said here...
() Now on with the good stuff!
Selected Bumper Stickers
Half of the people in the world are below average
Never hit a man with glasses. Use your fist!
Take my advice, I don't use it anyway
Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again!
Was today really Necessary?
Lottery A tax on people who don't understand statistics
Smash forehead on keyboard to continue
File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
(D)inner not ready (A)bort (R)etry (P)izza
Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
(I love this one!)
Computers can never replace human stupidity
On a tombstone "I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK"
Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy disk?
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)nfluence with large hammer
(A)bort, (R)etry, (P)retend this never happened
All work and no play, will make you a manager
The truth is out there? Anyone know the URL?
Do not disturb. Already disturbed!
Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected become the
expected?
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence
Feel lucky???? Update your software!
In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention
If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
AOL Membership Passes 27 Million
----------------------------------------------------------------
"AOL Time Warner Inc. (AOL) said Tuesday the worldwide membership of its
flagship AOL Internet service has surpassed the 27-million member milestone.
On Christmas Day, the company said, AOL broke its single-day record for
membership growth. gaining more than 70,000 new subscribers worldwide --
over 30 percent more than on Christmas Day 1999. In the U.S., AOL added more
than 56,000 subscribers, and the international AOL services grew by about
14,000 members."
Faster Drives, For Free!
There's a good chance you can speed up your hard drives and your CDs,
CDRs and DVDs--- for free--- via Windows' almost-hidden DMA setting.
Doing so can make your drives as much as 15% faster, and reduce the
load on your CPU by as much as 40%. We first discussed DMA in this
space over a year ago, but despite this easy-to-obtain speed benefit,
some new systems still ship with the older, slower, non-DMA disk and
CD/CDR/DVD access enabled; and many readers who could manually enable
DMA access haven't done so.
Here's the scoop: DMA is "direct memory access" (sometimes also called
"bus mastering") is a way a part of your computer to bypass the CPU
and take a short cut through the system. This can significantly speed
operations.
In Windows, you can see your drives' current DMA settings by right-
clicking on My Computer, then Properties, then Device Manager. Next,
click on Disk Drives, then on your hard drive(s)--- you may see a
nonspecific name such as "Generic IDE Disk Type 01"--- then on
Properties, and then click on the Settings Tab. See if the DMA box is
checked.
Next, follow the same steps for the CDROM(s) listed in your Device
Manager.
Even if you have a system of reasonably recent vintage, there's an
excellent chance you'll see an *UN*checked DMA option in the dialog
box in one or both places. That's because non-DMA drive operations
avoid possible compatibility issues. By choosing slower, more-
conservative settings, system vendors can save themselves some support
calls.
Sorting out whether or not to use DMA on a specific system isn't hard,
but it takes a little explaining, so in order not to rush through the
topic, I've made it the focus of this week's column at WinMag.Com.
Because of the US national holiday Monday, the column will go live
Tuesday, January 16th.
With a full column's worth of space to deal with, we can treat the
subject right: I've already done the homework for you, and will show
you the relevant portions of the Microsoft KnowledgeBase, and bring
you to the DMA-specific portions of the web sites of some large drive
manufacturers. Then, we'll step through the process of enabling--- and
testing!--- DMA access on your system.
If done carefully and right, enabling DMA access can result in a huge
payoff on almost all systems. For example, if you have an older,
slower system, DMA's ability to let parts of your system bypass the
CPU may make things considerably faster.
But even the newest, fastest system can benefit. For example, on my
newest system, a 1.2GHz Athlon box with 256MB of RAM and an Ultra-ATA
hard drive, manually enabling DMA speeded my hard drive read
operations by almost 10MB/sec, and speeded writes by 13MB/sec.
And all for free!
Make a note to drop by the WinMag area tomorrow, Tuesday January 16th,
around midday, and check under the "Explorer" heading on
http://www.winmag.com/columns/ . If you arrive early, you'll see the
previous column on "Time To Upgrade Your Search Engine". In that case,
just try again a little later. If you want to try a direct link, once
the column is posted, it should be at
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/2001/01.htm . (If you arrive
early, the link won't work.)
Hope to see you there tomorrow! Remember, faster hard drives and CDs
may be only a click away!
PuterGeek Strikes Again
Peter Crockett, the webmaster at PuterGeek, is at it again, and has
produced another lively, useful resource page aimed at helping novice
and intermediate users get up to speed on some of the arcana of
computing. He writes:
Since you found my "ScanRegW" page to be helpful to your
readers, I thought I'd tell you about my new webpage on
PuterGeek.Com. It's called "Home Networking Part Two".
http://www.putergeek.com/home_network_2/
This is a step-by-step guide that covers the parts needed,
the pros and cons of using a hub, and a detailed description
of how to set up the network protocols, sharing drives, as
well as sharing printers. This page is rather large in size
(lots of screen shots), but it caters to the novice user.
This web page is also available for download in PDF format
from my download page:
http://www.putergeek.com/downloads/
Thanks, Peter. If you're a novice yourself, or if you know a novice
who could use some coaching, Peter's site is definitely worth a
click.
(NOTE: Ijust had to put this in...hehe - Peter)
MAD about DMA
Wow! What a commotion the current WinMag article on DMA caused! (See
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/2001/02.htm ) Many, many
readers have reported instant speed increases similar to the ones I
reported (5-15%); and all just by clicking on the right choice-box in
Windows.
There have been some interesting side effects, too, such as this note
from reader Ralph Todd:
Your suggestion on turning on the DMA function to increase
the speed speed of various drives had an unexpected
benefit. For weeks I've been unable to defragment my new
20gig Maxtor hard drive due to a dynamic drive overlay that
the software automatically installs. For some reason, when
I turned on the DMA function, it apparently bypassed the
BIOS limitation on my old pentium pro 200 and the norton
utility defragmentation now works perfectly.
But, as the WinMag article said, you have to test to be sure, because
it doesn't work on all machines. And sometimes, the test leads to
further discoveries:
Your advice to activate DMA mirrors my own advice up until
about a month ago. However, a close friend did extensive
tests, timing large transfers from drive to drive, some
IDE, some SCSI (IDE to IDE, IDE to SCSI). He found that
with DMA enabled, the transfers actually took longer (5% or
so) !! (Win98) Of course (I suppose) this is irregular, but
increases in speed cannot be guaranteed !!
In addition, I have encountered troubleshooting guides for
CD writers that request that DMA be disabled if problems
occur. There is obviously more to this than meets the eye.
Perhaps some MoBoards or perhaps chipsets do not respond
properly to DMA transfers.
There was also an issue for certain versions of win95 as
whether to use the MS or Intel Bus Mastering drivers, which
could alter the results. This is not an issue with win98.
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/index.htm
I believe that ALI & VIA chipsets use their own bus
mastering drivers, and of course improved versions from
what windows installs can always be downloaded. --- Greg
Some users of Win95 SR2 and early version of Win98 found something
else, such as:
Check out the article at
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/devdes/idedma.htm It seems
that the good programmers at MS forgot to add a key line in
Windows 98 that allows DMA to be enabled at all. You must
go manually into the inf file Mshdc.inf and under
ESDI_AddReg section add the lines (if you are one of the
lucky ones they may actually be there but in a lot of
systems they are not) HKR,,IDEDMADrive0,3,01 and
HKR,,IDEDMADrive1,3,01 below it in order to enable the
driver.--- mouse51
And some CD/CDR/CDRW users dug out additional info on using DMA with
those drives, like this:
You may want to mention in a followup to your story on
enabling DMA an apparently common problem with CDROM/CDRW.
When DMA is enabled, the Windows 98 Explorer will sometimes
not recognize the drive, even though it shows up in the
System Properties in Control Panel. I spent hours trying to
figure this one out, finally ending up (should have gone
there earlier...) at the MSKnowlege base. You can read all
about it here
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q235/8/59.ASP
Even after reading through the MSKB article it took
some fiddling to get it to work, but now my Plextor CDRW is
working great...*with* DMA. --- Butch Berney
Thanks to all who wrote!
DMA is a hot and complex topic, and well worth checking out. But if you're going
to try modifying the DMA settings on your system, be sure to read
both the current article (
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/2001/02.htm )and the older one
it references (
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/1999/1206.htm
). If you follow the instructions there, odds are you WILL see a
speed increase and you WON'T have trouble. But as the combined
articles fully explain, even if you do have trouble, there are simple
ways to get back to exactly where you were before.
Who wouldn't like 5-15% extra speed for free, and nearly instantly?
Click on over and check it out.
** Just a Reminder**
AERON ENVY?
When they still cost $1000, the executive lust item of two years ago
was the Herman Miller Aeron desk chair.
You know what they looked like; they showed up in every TV show known
to Man. They're those black, hyperadjustable throne things with the
mesh fabric where most chairs have cushioning. Very comfortable. Very
sleek. Very expensive.
Well, La-Z-Boy is now shipping a recliner that it developed with
Microsoft. For $1,049 ($1,299 for vinyl or leather), you can buy the
"Explorer", which comes with a WebTV box, wireless keyboard, power,
telephone and Ethernet connectors, as well as a fold-out tray for
your keyboard or laptop.
There's the usual space for drinks, a remote, and a TV Guide, too. No
word about what this would cost without the WebTV box.
It may not be something you want in your cube, but it's a possibility
for your "home office", right?
X MARKS THE SPOTLIGHT
While we're on the subject of Microsoft, Bill Gates stood up at CES
and finally talked details about the upcoming Xbox game console.
Now it can be told that the Xbox -- at least, the version that will
launch this fall -- will contain a front-loading DVD tray, an
Ethernet port, a 733MHz Intel processor (interestingly, they don't
say Pentium III, so it might be a Celeron or something), 64MB of
memory, and an 8GB hard drive. That's a lot of power for a game
machine. For that matter, it's a pretty fair amount of power for an
office PC.
Prices aren't being mentioned yet.
As an aside, Microsoft's Robbie Bach has the title Chief Xbox
Officer. Do you think that as a resolution for 2001, we can dispense
with the C?O titles?
In a piece about the knee-jerk recycling of baby boomer childhood-culture movie ideas from Hollywood last week, I mentioned that Tom Cruise wants "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" director Ang
Lee to direct Mission Impossible 3. But, alas, my Hollywood spy says the director will be busy on another knee-jerk, recycled baby boomer childhood-culture movie idea: "The Hulk," which is scheduled
for a 2003 release from Universal Pictures.
Reader Web Site of the Week
PuterGeek is dedicated to PC how-to information.
There's a new and virulent version that's appeared in the
last few days, called W97M.Melissa.W. If you open an
infected email attachment it will send out a copy of itself
to 50 people in your Outlook address book. The outgoing
message is headed: Important Message From <your name> .
Then there is 'Melissa X' another new variant that does
similar things, but appears to be a Office for the
Macintosh document. Since Office Mac documents can be read
by Office for Windows there's the opportunity for
cross-platform infection. Only Office 97 or 2000 for
Windows can spread infected documents via mass-mailing to
your address book (because it needs Outlook to do that).
However Macintosh created documents can contain the virus.
It's been a while since the first Melissa and enough time
has past for people to forget about it and for network
administrators to drop their guard. That may explain why
these new variants have been spreading quickly in the last
few days.
And that's not the only virus to be spreading via email in
recent times. Some WOW readers have been infected with the
'Hybris' virus that sends out infected messages usually
with the heading 'Snow White and the Seven dwarves'. A
new variant of this virus picks up email addresses to
infect from the body of an existing message (not just the
FROM address or your address book).
We know some WOW readers are infected because we've been
getting infected messages to addresses only published in
the most recent issue of WOW. Not a problem for us, we
get hundreds of emails each hour so a few more don't count.
Sadly we can't trace these back to their source.
DON'T MAKE US INSTALL INTERNET EXPLORER 5.5!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You know, I thought I was done covering IE 5.5, but every day
that goes by I hear about a new problem that can wreak havoc on
your PC with this minor update to IE 5.0. Folks, do not install
IE 5.5. If you have done so, I suggest you uninstall it. I have
written several times about how to do that. Check the back issues
of Insider for the details:
You've probably noticed that dragging and dropping
objects in Windows 98 does different things at
different times. If you drag a program, Windows
assumes you want to create a shortcut. If you drag a
file, Windows assumes you want to move it. And if you
drag an object from one drive to another, Windows
assumes you want to copy it. If you want to specify
the kind of drag-and-drop operation you want to
perform from the outset, try dragging and dropping
while holding down the right mouse button. You're then
given the choices of Move Here, Copy Here, or Create
Shortcut Here. Just select one of the three, or choose
Cancel to abort the operation.
(NOTE: I ALWAYS use the right-click method!! - peter)
--Problems with your new computer?
If you think a Microsoft product is making it hard for you to get started, check out Microsoft's special "Support for the Holidays" Web site, which is still active and offers step-by-step
troubleshooters, FAQs, and access to support professionals.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/holiday/default.asp
PrintKey 2000 v5.10 [571k] W9x/NT/2k FREE
Unearthed by David Taylor
{Manage your screen shots} Some of you may have noticed I've been providing screenshots for many of the GnomeDOWNLOADS. I figured that folks like to see what they're downloading before actually
doing so. It's kinda like window shopping... or Windows shopping, if you will. So, will you? Anyway, now that I've become a part of the elite "Screen Capture Guild," I'm rather intrigued by this new
program. It lets me take a snapshot of my Desktop or any portion of it. I can then convert the graphic to grayscale, swap colors, apply different hues, or change the size of it. I can also create a
new startup screen. Ya know, capturing screens is fun, but after doing so, I release them back into the wild -- especially when their size is over the legal limit. Darn those wardens.
Search for Microsoft's Keyboard Shortcuts
Unearthed by Peter Meadows
This particular page will help just about anyone who uses Windows (and the most popular Microsoft applications): Access 2000, Access 97, Excel 2000, Internet Explorer 4.0 & 5.0 , Outlook
2000, Outlook 97, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Word 2000, and Word 97. It's pretty much the most definitive listing I've ever seen. "The Microsoft Accessibility Web site provides information about
accessible technology to help improve the lives of people with disabilities by making computers a positive force in employment, education, and recreation. The information on this site benefits people
with disabilities and their friends and family members, people in outreach organizations, educators, and advocates."
Urlgen v2.4e [116k] CMD FREE
"Rips and saves URLs from your pages; can SORT and create a FULL 'Site Search' or pages of links." a) Now you have the option to STRIP an HTML file to make it a 'single' line program. Will help
to stop people from extracting your hard work; b) URL extraction to single files will be automatically sorted in ascending order; c) Now cuts out those 'leading spaces' that some editors add in front
of each line (also removes indents); d) Now you can select the type of URL to extract; g) Now inserts a space character between stripped commands; h) Selection of type of URL extraction - - including
Link Exchange and BANNER/CLICK traders; i) Now corrects anomalies of checking for File size, wrong source file, and others.
() That's all for now!
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Last Revised: 01/19/2001
