Solution smorgasbord
Win95 passwords and adaptors
Stay on top
Stubborn space
Getting the picture
Sound card incompatibility?
Windows extinguishes multimedia CD
Clobbered CMOS
Clobbered CMOS redux
OS/2 driver needed?
Changing the default boot drive
Change of identity
Find anything in the Office
Long-distance MIDI
Q I could not find any words that other readers have not already used in praise of Help Screen. It is just so great that I have become a PC World subscriber. I have the following questions. Hoping you can help.
1. Can I delete the files *.001, *.002, *.p03, *.x00, *.old, *.new *.bak, *.lst, *.chk, *.ms, *.log, *.bin, *.umb, *.tmp, *.swp, etc, in the directories like DOS, Windows, Temp and the root directory without affecting operation of my system?
2. I have a 486DX2-66 system with 412Mb HDD, a dual-speed Sony CD-ROM drive and Sound Blaster card. I used to play music CDs when I was working on the PC. Last week I deleted all the files on the HDD and reinstalled them. I installed Windows for Workgroups, the CD-ROM and the Sound Blaster first. I then installed MS-Office and could not play music CDs anymore. The system told me that there was no audio track on the CD and could not play it. Could there be anything wrong with an MDA or IRQ after I installed MS-Office?
3. I plan to add a second HDD. As the CD-ROM is becoming more and more popular, do you think it would be better to add a second CD-ROM drive, and can my Sound Blaster handle two drives?
4. I don't know whether I am the first to discover the following problem, which has caused a lot of trouble to my presentations in the last few months. Attached is a printout from Excel 5.0. The two tables are absolutely identical but the pie charts drawn from them are different. The per cent total in the first chart is only 99 per cent because of item 3. The only thing I did to the second chart was making the figures bold. I have tried this on different systems and the results were the same. Can you give me any solution?
- T Luk
A Thank you for the very kind sentiment, T, and for a wide-ranging set of questions.
1. The first question, about deleting files based on their extension, raises some very deep issues and draws us into one of the fundamental flaws not only in Windows 3.1 but in Windows 95.
Microsoft has attempted in both these operating systems to restrict the use of file extensions, so that each file extension corresponds to a precise format. In many cases files with a certain extension are the province of a particular vendor. For example, .cdr files are Corel Draw files; .dbf files are dBase-compatible files; and .wpd files are WordPerfect documents.
This system is riddled with flaws. File extensions are only three characters long, so there can't possibly be enough to cover all the formats and versions of files people want to create. All vendors want to add extensions that mean something, so .doc is very popular, even though Microsoft has attempted to reserve it for Microsoft Word. You can't store information on how to deal with a file in three characters, so the details of how to deal with it have to be known by any application that tries to read the file.
If a program simply assumes that a file is in the correct format because it has the appropriate extension, it may try to process it and crash your system. This used to happen a lot, with Microsoft's applications as well as everybody else's.
Nowadays, poor old programmers have to spend lots of time writing software that reads part of the file, checks to see it has the right format, makes adjustments and conversions for different software versions, and so on and so forth. To do this they have to know the format of many documents, not just the ones created by their own company, so they have to reverse engineer the file formats - a time-consuming and error-prone process.
What I am driving at here is that you can assemble a list of what all the file extensions are supposed to mean, but it won't always be accurate. You can change a file extension yourself any time you like, and so can any other program, and bang goes any hope you have of identifying the file's purpose. Windows 95 nags you when you try to change a file extension, but it doesn't stop you.
This is a massive flaw in an operating system, but we're so used to it in Windows and other operating systems we hardly think about it. The alternative is a more object-oriented system, in which files are objects that contain much more information about themselves.
In Windows 95 the idea seems to be that an object-oriented system is already here. By default, Windows 95 hides file extensions and just shows you an icon, which might give the impression that Windows 95 has secret knowledge of file formats.
However, the Windows 95 Virtual FAT file system uses file extensions as the only real measure of a file's purpose and format, just as Windows 3.1 did. In the Windows 95 registry applications are associated with files by their extension. This means there's not much point in hiding the extension from the user. If you do, the operating system knows something you don't - always a bad idea. To display file extensions, in the My Computer file browser or Windows Explorer, choose View-Options from the menu, click the View tab, and uncheck the "Hide MS-DOS extensions for file types that are registered" box.
So, there is no way in the world you can know what a file is for just by looking at its extension, and no way you can know whether it's safe to delete it. You just have to take an educated guess. It's very dangerous to do sweeping things like deleting all files with a given extension; you really should check each file first, or at least back everything up and be sure you don't mind reinstalling your system.
Here's a likely profile of files with the extensions you mentioned.
.bak: Backup files, created by many applications when a document is edited to preserve the earlier version. Delete if you're confident you don't need the earlier version.
.tmp: Temporary files, created by many appli-cations as scratch areas while processing. Often these are deleted when the processing is finished, but if the application is slackly written, or the system crashes during processing, .tmp files may be left around. Files in TEMP directories are probably also temporary files.
.chk: Created by the DOS chkdsk command, or the Windows 95 Scandisk application, when they discover lost clusters (chunks of hard disk space that are marked as used but don't belong to any file in the File Allocation Table (FAT)). These sometimes contain information lost during a system crash, but usually just contain junk. You can delete them to recover their space, but look at them first in a text or hex editor in case there's something interesting in there.
.log: Log files, created by many utilities to log information during processing. You can delete these unless you need the information. It might be handy to help you debug your system.
.bin: May have been created by DoubleSpace or DriveSpace, and may contain vital information about your compressed disk. Do not delete - repeat: do not delete.
.swp: This could be a Windows temporary swapfile, created by Windows in the course of managing virtual memory. Data in RAM is swapped out to disk to free memory. Delete these while you're running Windows and your system could crash horribly. Delete from DOS and you may also have problems.
.old: Typically an old configuration file that has been renamed by some application which needed to change your configuration files. You can delete these if you're sure you don't want to go back to the old configuration.
.001, .002., .003, etc: These are backups of Windows configuration files, made by Windows when you reconfigure. I delete mine.
2. You've certainly done something to your setup that stops the CD-ROM drive from working properly. Installing software such as Microsoft Office shouldn't have created any hardware conflicts. Try installing the CD-ROM drive and software again. Practice makes perfect.
3. It's a good idea to add a second hard disk when you're running out of space. It means that you won't need to do desperate things like deleting files that may be important. It also saves you compressing your disk and losing all the data when you delete the .bin file.
However, adding a second CD-ROM is a more unusual idea. You can't write to them. If you're running a stand-alone system, you could listen to a music CD while you use the other CD-ROM drive for an application, but if it's a multimedia application, the sounds will clash. If you're on a peer-to-peer network, you could share your CD-ROMs and let someone else use one while you used the other.
You can certainly attach more than one CD-ROM drive to a Sound Blaster card. There are a variety of CD-ROM interfaces: on the Panasonic interface cards, CR563, you can run up to four CD-ROM drives; on a SCSI card you can manage seven; and on a newer IDE type you can run two CD-ROM drives at once. Contact Creative Pacific, phone (02) 9906 8887, for information on your particular card.
Q I have two questions I hope you can help me with:
1. Is it possible to turn off the screen that asks for a password when Win95 starts? I do have a null password, and I do use Win95 in a peer-to-peer network for file and printer sharing.
2. I have a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 15FS display and an Actix video adaptor. Win95 reports a problem with my display settings, such that it has an incorrect adaptor type or the current setting does not work with my hardware. The manual I have for the video board says it is an Actix Graphics Engine 32 VL Plus. The video adaptor card does not have anything written on it other than Actix. I have tried all different settings (from the Actix range of options given by Win95), and I still get the same error. I also know that things are working somewhat fine as my 800 by 600 resolution with 256 colours is working fine. I have tried the SVGA adaptor setting which works find but does not give me 800 by 600. Is Win95 reporting things incorrectly? Is everything fine? Do I need a new driver? Please help. I am not currently using MSN.
- Sinan Koray
A Sinan, you can turn off the log-on dialogue box by blanking out both the password and the user name, but with no user ID you can't log-on to a network. You can also skip the dialogue box as long as you have a blank password and use the Windows log-on as the primary network log-on. Open Network Properties, Configuration tab, and select "Windows log-on" as the primary network log-on.
You also have to disable multiple user profiles, but only if you have enabled them previously. Windows 95 allows you to have multiple user profiles on a single PC, even if it's a stand-alone box. Each user has a user name and password, and can have a personalised desktop. To turn this feature on or off, open the Passwords property sheet in Control Panel. Click on the User Profiles tab, and click the "Users can customize their preferences" radio button.
Many readers in the past have asked how to keep their kids out of the accounting software, and this feature of Windows 95 provides an elegant framework for limiting the range of application choices available to them.
Your graphics adaptor problem is not unheard of. My instinct is that everything is totally dandy - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In a beta version of Windows 95 a yellow warning sign appeared on my Cyrix graphics adaptor in the Control Panel-System Properties-Device Manager tab, but the display worked perfectly. Later, after several reinstallations, I noticed that the yellow warning light had gone away. Mean-while my graphics card plodded on, unimaginatively doing its job without a moment's concern for Windows 95's approval or disapproval. Uncanny, bizarre, X Files material perhaps, but true.
Q We have Windows for Workgroups 3.11 installed on our computers at work, and run Mail and Schedule+. Can you please tell me how to get the icons, when minimised, to always stay on top? When operating Word, Excel, etc, the icons are hidden. We would like to have them automatically stay on top like the MS-Office icons (clock, calculator, etc). Any help you can give would be of assistance.
- Allan Moles
A Unfortunately, the capacity to stay "always on top" has to be written into the application, and neither Mail or Schedule+ has this capability. It's really very difficult to see why they don't, but Microsoft moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
The MS-Office toolbar does have the "always on top" capability. If you have MS-Office, you can add Mail and Schedule+ to the MS-Office toolbar and you'll always be able to switch to them quickly.
However, what I suspect you're after is having a view of the minimised Mail icon at all times, because it changes to show when mail is waiting. Not possible. If you upgrade to Windows 95, minimised applications appear on the Task Bar, which can be visible at all times. But if you want 32-bit versions of your Mail and Schedule+ applications, they won't be the same. The MS-Mail client is superseded by the Exchange client, and Schedule+ doesn't come with Windows 95, it comes with MS Office.
There are shareware and commercial utilities that provide floating toolbars that work much the same as the MS-Office toolbar.
Q Somehow or other, I have a file shown as BEAT 4.DTA which I cannot do anything with. Obviously the space between the BEAT and the 4 is causing the problem. When I look at the file in Xtree, it says the filename is BEAT.DTA, but when I try to copy, move, rename, etc, Xtree tells me the file has changed.
When I try the same actions in File Manager I am told that the file name is BEAT_4.DTA, and File Manager cannot find the file. How can I delete this file, please?
- Rick Kelly
A It sounds like there's a funny character in the file name. It could be anything that DOS doesn't recognise as an allowable character in a file name. How it got there is anybody's guess, but you may be able to get it out using a disk editor. Using an old version of the Norton Disk Editor for DOS (Symantec Norton Utilities 6.01, vintage 1991 from Symantec), I was able to create a file called BEAT 4.DTA, with a space between the BEAT and the 4.
DOS and the Windows File Manager behaved exactly as you described. They could display the file's name, but couldn't recognise commands that used the name. To get rid of the file I just opened up the Directory in the Disk Editor and edited the name by deleting the space. After that I could copy it, move it, delete it or subject it to a wide variety of humiliations, limited only by my imagination.
If you're not terribly interested in the esoteric business of disk editing, there is another way: remove everything else from the directory it's in, then use the DOS deltree command to remove the directory. The deltree command doesn't bother to check file names after you've given it permission to wipe the directory and all its contents.
The deltree command appeared in DOS 6, so if you have an earlier version of DOS, you're back to disk editing.
Q I recently bought a library of images on CD-ROM. The same images were repeated several times in three subdirectories, all in the same format but with different file sizes. Why? Also, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the different graphics file formats, including gif, tif, bmp, tga, jpg and pcx?
- Cliff Steenhoff
A Many CD-ROM image libraries provide images that have been scanned or scaled to different resolutions. This lets you use high-resolution images for printouts and lower-resolution images for on-screen graphics without having to scale the image yourself - a lengthy process. CD-ROM libraries often include greyscale versions of the images as well.
Graphics file formats are generally categorised by the way files are compressed: uncompressed (.bmp, .tga, and some .tif), lossless compression (.pcx, .gif, and other .tif), and lossy compression (JPEG).
Uncompressed files are large because they contain the entire image, making it easy for these graphics files to be read by different programs. For example, Windows' Paintbrush accessory defaults to the bmp format, which can be read by most Windows, OS/2, Macintosh and DOS programs.
"Lossless" compression is another cross-platform standard. Graphics files compressed in this manner yield exactly the same images as the original uncompressed files, but they're smaller - which makes them easier to store or share over e-mail. The compression schemes vary greatly in their efficiency; pcx uses a quick but very inefficient compression scheme, while gif can compress files much more.
JPEG is a lossy compression scheme, which means that some detail is lost in exchange for a smaller file size. Compression ratios of 10:1 and 20:1 often result in an unnoticeable loss of resolution, but a considerable space saving to your hard disk.
You will also encounter another class of graphics formats called metafile formats. These include EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) and WMF (Windows Metafile). Metafile formats are used for precise drawings that may need to be resized. You're more likely to find them in clip art collections than on stock photo discs.
Q I am buying a Pentium system that normally comes equipped with an Orchid 32-bit sound card and a SCSI-2 host adaptor. I'm thinking of asking the vendor to add a Creative Labs Sound Blaster card instead, to make sure that all of my software will run. Is this necessary for compatibility?
- T C Chao
A In general, if you are running software written for a graphical operating environment such as Windows, NT or OS/2 Warp, you need not worry about sound card compatibility problems; the operating system and its drivers will hide any differences between sound cards.
DOS software is more likely to run into compatibility problems with certain cards - mainly lesser-known and less expensive brands. But even if you're running DOS software, don't worry about the Orchid card, since Orchid has a very good track record when it comes to compatibility.
Q I've just upgraded my Packard Bell 2002 Elite computer so that it has 8Mb of RAM and a 1Gb hard drive. When I try to run one of my multimedia titles from Windows, I get a message saying that the computer doesn't have enough memory. Running MemMaker doesn't help. I have no trouble running the title from DOS, however. Why?
- John Campbell
A In general, it's not a good idea to run DOS multimedia software in a Windows DOS session. Besides slowing the program, Windows can rob it of valuable memory, perhaps so much that it will crash or fail to run at all. As you've discovered, the answer is to run the program directly under DOS.
Q I recently tried to install a system password via my system's CMOS setup menu. Something went wrong: a password was installed, but I didn't know what it was. I took the battery out of my computer, hoping it would erase the CMOS settings. It did, but I learned that I must re-enter my hard drive para-meters to get the machine working again. What should I do?
- Mark McCoid
A Some of the latest PC BIOSes can read an IDE drive's parameters directly, so that you don't need to know them. But if there's no autodetect option in your BIOS, you will have to enter the parameters yourself.
The best thing to do is get them from your system vendor. (If the vendor kept records of what was sent to you, this information should be right at hand.) Alternatively, you can call the maker of the disk drive and get the parameters from the company's technical support department.
Q When I start my computer, it gives me the message "Press <F1> to resume; <F2> Setup" before it boots up. Is there a way to bypass this?
- Ken Williams
A This message usually indicates an error in the CMOS setup information. Press <F2> and make sure that all the setup information is correct - particularly the amount of RAM installed and the number and types of drives. Normally, this will eliminate the message. If you still see the message after restarting the computer, your CMOS battery may be dead; try replacing it with a fresh one.
Q My PC uses a DTC VL-Bus IDE card to run its 428Mb and 130Mb Seagate hard drives. The card came with a DOS device driver to make it work with Windows for Workgroups' 32-bit File Access, but I'm using OS/2. Do I need a different device driver to maximise performance under that operating system?
- Michael Rezsutek
A OS/2 will work without a driver if you use any VL-bus IDE card from DTC Technology, but it will work even faster if you add a device driver that activates the full 32-bit VESA local bus interface.
You may be able to find these drivers in the OS/2 section of your favourite on-line service. If you can't find them there, call DTC's BBS at +1 408 942 4010, join Conference 7 (VESA), and download ideos2.zip from file directory 2. To get the complete set of drivers for all operating systems, download the file eidev13.zip.
Q If I accidentally leave a floppy disk in my PS/1's A: drive and turn the computer on, the system ignores the floppy and boots from the hard disk if the floppy isn't bootable. How do I configure my other PCs to do the same?
- Joshua Campbell
A The PS/1, designed for consumers instead of computer professionals, has an especially smart BIOS that can detect a bootable disk. To my knowledge, no other manufacturer has implemented this feature - which must be part of the BIOS to work - so you probably can't add it to your other PCs.
On the other hand, chances are that your other machines can be configured to try booting from the hard disk first, then from the floppy. To find out if this is possible, enter your BIOS's setup program (often accessed by pressing <Delete>, <F2> or some other key at boot time), and look for an option that changes the default boot drive. All current Award BIOSes and Mr. BIOS have this feature, as do many others.
When you install Windows 3.x, it brands itself with the name and company name you enter in the initial dialogue box. Then, selecting Help-About Program Manager shows that the product is licensed to you. This is fine unless you sell your computer or give it to someone else. In that case, you'll want to update the licensing information, or at least remove your name from the machine.
Here's how: select File-Run from Program Manager's menu, enter setup /f on the Command Line (make sure to include a space between setup and /f) and click OK. In the Windows Setup dialogue box, enter a new user name and company name, and then click Continue. Verify that the name is correct, and click Continue again.
When the program asks which components to install, make sure that the check box Set Up Only Windows Components You Select is selected, and deselect the other check boxes. Then keep clicking Continue until you are prompted to put a disk into drive A:. At this prompt, click Exit Setup. At the prompt "Windows is not correctly set up. Are you sure you want to quit Setup?", click Yes. When you reload Windows, the name and company name are updated.
If you're using Windows for Workgroups 3.11, you can't run Windows' setup program this way. However, you can accomplish the same thing by editing the serialno.ini file (in the windows directory) with Notepad. Go to the [mswindows] section and change the user and company names.
- Kevin Davis
Editor's note: The setup /f command is also useful for restoring registration information when you upgrade from Windows 3.1 to a newer version. The upgrade sometimes deletes it.
Since Kevin's procedure shuts down Windows, make sure you save your open files before running setup /f. After running the program, check your win.ini file in the windows directory and make sure the old user name and company name are no longer there. (Depending on which version of Windows you're running, and whether you've ever upgraded, the names could remain in the [MS User Info] section or other places.)
Also, check the ini files of all Windows applications, since they may have been branded as well. Some vendors hide this information so well, you may need to reinstall their applications to update the names.
Locate what you need with Microsoft Office for Windows 95's File Open dialogue box, which you reach by clicking the Open a Document icon on the Office's Shortcut Bar. This dialogue box makes it easy to find all files created in any Office application - Excel, Word, Access or PowerPoint. You can search for files that contain a specific text string, and create more complex, conditional searches that you can save and recall. Office automatically builds text indexes for the files in the background.
When I tried to hook my computer up to a MIDI keyboard to enter music for a multimedia presentation, I discovered that the MIDI cable I purchased with the keyboard was too short to reach the computer. I was about to purchase an entire new MIDI cable when I found a better solution that cost me nothing: the keyboard extension cord that came with my PC. These extension cords, which come with most tower PCs and are available for a few dollars from any computer store, use exactly the same connectors as MIDI.
- Alex Lieber
Editor's note: Sure enough, a PC keyboard extension cord will add a metre to a MIDI cable. The extension cord won't serve as a MIDI cable by itself, since MIDI cables have male connectors at both ends while the extension cord has a male and a female end. But this solution works perfectly if you just need to extend your MIDI connection those last couple of yards. And because the extension cord is coiled, it helps you move the keyboard without tangling cables.
- Brett Glass and Neale Morison