April-May - Volume 1, Issue 3

Tips For Succeeding in Common Tasks

Windows 98

Here's a tweaker's tip to help you goad your Windows 98 PC into running a little faster: trick it into thinking it's a network server. On the Desktop, right-click My Computer and select Properties. Click the Performance tab, then File System. If the entry blank next to Typical Role Of This Computer reads Desktop Computer or Mobile Or Docking System, click the Down arrow and choose Network Server. While you're there, click the slider bar next to Read-Ahead Optimization and drag it all the way to the right (Full). Finally, click Apply, OK, Close, and Yes to restart your PC.

Microsoft Office

What if we told you that your Win98 system probably has a little TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident program) running in the background that slows down your system just so you could enjoy a slightly faster launch of any Microsoft Office applications you happen to open? If you find yourself indignant at the very thought, take your rage out upon the sneaky little TSR called Office Startup. Click the Start button and Programs, then Startup. If Office Startup appears among the TSRs in the Startup folder, right-click it and select Cut. Now right-click Disabled Startup Items (or Accessories), click Paste, and reboot your PC.

Eye Strain

Feel like you're getting cross-eyed after a long computing session? Even if you have your monitor set to a fast refresh rate (the number of times the computer redraws the screen per second, measured in hertz) of 75Hz or faster, you should know that your eyes aren't out of the woods yet. It's best to take a short break every so often. Look around the room. Take your time and focus your eyes on distant objects, then closer ones. This will help keep your eyes from fatiguing too quickly. Better still, try to avoid massive computing sessions.

Line up the icons

Here's a simple tip that can clean up your Desktop and keep all of your icons in neat little rows. Right-click any blank section of the Desktop and select Arrange Icons By. On the submenu that pops up, check the option marked Align To Grid. This will line up your icons in a grid pattern no matter how much you move them around.

WinZip 8.0

Use WinZip to create and span a zipped file across two or more diskettes. In the program's Wizard interface, select the Create A New Zip File option and click Next. Type the path and name of the Zip file that you want to create-for example, A:Newzip.zip-and click Next. Now, simply drag and drop the files you want to zip into the Wizard's Select Files window or click the Add Files or Add Folders buttons to locate I have Windows 98 Second Edition and am a real novice at the computing game. On the Desktop, next to the Start button, there used to be two or three buttons; one was a button for Outlook Express and the other for the Desktop. These buttons disappeared, and I used to use them often. How can I get them back?

The area next to the Start button is called the quick-launch area. Close down some running programs to clear space on the taskbar. If you right-click a blank area of your Taskbar, a menu that includes the selection Toolbars will pop up. Select Toolbars, and another submenu appears. If you click Quick Launch, whatever little icons were last on the quick-launch area should appear. If you want to add tiny icons to the quick-launch area, you can generally do so by dragging them from the desktop and dropping them there. But remember that if you make the quick-launch area too big, it'll leave little space for your taskbar buttons.

I forgot my Windows password. How can I get back in?
If you're locked out of Windows, boot your computer using a Windows Startup disk (which requires no password) to get to a DOS-like, preWindows screen (See "The New & Improved Startup Diskette" article in the January 1999 issue of Smart Computing, Vol. 10, Iss. 1.) If you haven't made a startup disk beforehand, you'll have to go to someone else's computer and make one there.

Type the following commands (press the ENTER key after each one): c: , cd windows , dir *.pwl (pwl stands for "password list"). The dir command may reveal one or more files ending with .PWL. The one you want has a name similar to the name under which Windows was installed. For example, if you installed Windows under the name Alexander Censor, the file would be called Alexande.pwl. To run System File Checker, click Start, Programs, and Accessories. Go to System Tools, System Information. At the top of the Microsoft System Information window, click Tools, then System File Checker. Click Start to begin.

System File Checker keeps track of changes made (usually by programs you've installed) to the files that are part of Windows. Sometimes these changes cause problems, and the records that System File Checker keeps can help detect whether such changes might've been the cause of problems. What's more, this can be helpful in doing a complete cleanup if you uninstall a program.

You can run System File Checker after you've installed a new program. If you have it set to "overwrite existing log," that means that each time you install a program, you get a log of what system file changes that program made. After running it, choose its Settings button, go to the Settings tab, and select View Log. You can print out the log and file it with the box of the program you just installed.

Delete this file and reboot the computer. Windows will then ask you to enter a new password. If you leave the password field blank, you won't have to worry about forgetting it again.

Incidentally, this demonstrates how weak the protection of Windows 95 and Windows 98 security passwords is.
How do you run System File Checker? What does it do?