Computerworld 1996 March

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Text File | 1995-05-11 | 37.2 KB | 718 lines

*** Tessler's Nifty Tools (tm) *** "Tessler's Nifty Tools" is a collection of over 35 ultra low cost DOS and Windows (Win95, Win 3.1, and NT) programs for both the casual and power user who desires to increase his/her PC productivity and enjoyment. Many of the unique programs are so incredibly useful that you'll never understand how you lived without them. Many programs have been reviewed in InfoWorld, PC Computing, COMPUTE, Windows Sources, and PC Techniques magazines. Each program is available separately ($19, $29, or $39), as a complete collection, or TNT may be purchased in "mini" packages -each of which addresses the needs of a specific type of user. Each "mini" package offers significant savings over purchasing each program separately. The complete collection offers even more savings. Any one "mini" package: $69 Any two "mini" packages: $119 All three "mini" packages (the complete collection): $159 Add an additional $5 for shipping. Outside of the U.S., add $10 for shipping. (California residents must include state taxes.) Each program has on-line documentation. "Mini" package and complete collection purchases include a printed manual. TNT is distributed only on 3.5" HD disks. U.S. checks, money orders, Visa, MasterCard, and purchase orders (NET 30) are accepted. Returned checks will be charged a $15 processing fee. Corporate and institutional site licenses are available at substantial discounts. Technical support is provided through CompuServe, U.S. Mail, and return telephone calls. Designed and developed by: Gary S. Tessler, P.E. Copyright (c) 1986-1995 by GST at TNT All Rights Reserved. Tessler's Nifty Tools (TNT) 430 Canyon Woods Place Suite A San Ramon, Ca. 94583 CompuServe: 71044,542 Internet: 71044.542@compuserve.com *** THE EXPERTS ARE RAVING ABOUT TNT... *** Tessler's Nifty Tools is the utility package that's different from all the rest. Instead of supplying yet another version of the same familiar programs, TNT gives you unique utilities that let you maintain, fine-tune, and control your system in ways you can't do with anything else. If you want to control your serial port's UART, or modify Windows INI files through a batch file, edit a Windows group file, or check on various Netware operations, TNT is the one package you need. This is one of the most useful and original sets of utilities on the market." -Edward Mendelson Contributing Editor PC Magazine "Change your .INI settings before Windows starts: ...Combining this shutdown program (WrapUp) with two other TNT utilities (CfgCntrl and Grp2Ini) can give you even greater control over your Windows configuration. Gary Tessler ...has cracked the .GRP code and made it accessible to ordinary mortals. He has invented a Group-to-Ini (Grp2Ini) utility, which converts .GRP files into text files, like .INI files. A separate utility converts them back. This is not an easy feat, because the .GRP format contains binary data, which is poorly documented at best." -Infoworld 1/16/95 "TNT's new edition of some much needed tools provides a powerful way to maintain alternate Windows configurations... I especially like DIR2BAT, which writes batch files to carry out commands on any file specification..." -Brian Livingston Infoworld 8/30/93 and 4/11/94 "Now, run any command right before Windows exits -An enterprising developer creates WrapUp for us readers..." -Infoworld 1/9/95 "If you need to configure Windows on the fly, I think you'll find that these programs give you a degree of control that has previously been very difficult to achieve." -PC Computing 11/94 "Vdel - the command that Microsoft forgot." -PC Computing "DOS Application of the Month" 3/94 *** "MINI" PACKAGE DESCRIPTIONS *** Power User, Multiple Configuration & Control Pkg. Cfgcntrl* -Intelligent text file controller for Windows INI, LanManager, Autoexec and Config.sys files. Grp2ini* -Convert a Windows GRP (group) formatted file into a text file for editing. Ifonscrn* -Check if specific characters appear on your screen and act on them by stuffing keystrokes into your application. Ifwait -Beep or buzz your PC's speaker or any LPT port device. Ini2grp* -Convert a Grp2ini text file back into a Windows GRP (group) formatted file. Power User & Programmer's Pkg. Capstat -Determine if your printer is being Netware captured. Chek4dup -Check for duplicate EXE & COM programs. Chkparm -Determine if pathname is drive, directory, filename; new or existing; local or Lan reference. Comspeed -Determine actual modem DTE line speed during a call. Controlp -Control printer echoing ^P within batch files. Dir2bat -Perform a series of commands on a series of files. Dvcpu -Set Desqview's Share-CPU option from the command line. Dvprompt -Embed a Desqview window's switch number in the DOS prompt. Dvrun -Determine if Desqview is running. Feefifo -Enable and control 16550a UART serial chip's FIFOs. Growp -Grow and change your DOS prompt each time you shell to DOS. Rlist -Display or print a portion of a text file. Setbeep -Control the duration of your PC's beep sound or silence your PC. SuperMon* -Track your Windows, Win95, WFW, & NT User, GDI, RAM, & Virtual (Swap) resource usage. Only program of kind in industry. Determine how much memory you should purchase and much much more... Vers* -Set DOS' version better than Setver does. WinRun -Determine if Windows 3.n Enhanced mode is running. Safer & Easier Computing & Multimedia Pkg. Chk4root -Check for a root directory reference & protect DELTREE from deleting every file from your disk! Copywa -Copy files along with their attribute bit. Crtdump -Copy your monitor's text screen to a disk file for editing. Expndtab -Convert tab characters to spaces with document alignment preserved. Parkhead -Park your hard disk(s) before turning off your PC. Pdel -Permanently delete a file so that it can't be recovered. Player -Play a wav or voc format sound file. Prtscrff -Send a formfeed (paper eject) command to your printer whenever you press the Printscreen key. Rwdir -Display files that are read/writable (not read-only). Thot4day -Display a random humorous thought of the day on your monitor. Tune4day -Play a different sound file every time you turn on your PC. Vdel* -Delete files (including read-only files) with verification. WrapUp* -Just as Windows executes your StartUp group's programs, WrapUp allows Windows to execute any programs in your "ShutDown" group right before it exits. Zdir -Determines the size of sub-directories nicer than DIR does. Note: * indicates that this program was reviewed by a major magazine. Ask us for a reprint! *** COLLECTION SUMMARY *** CapStat ($19) (CaptureStatus) determines if your local printer is being Netware captured. Chek4Dup ($19) (CheckForDuplicates) generates a list of files that exist in both .EXE and .COM form. This usually occurs when software is upgraded from a COM format to an EXE format and the old COM version is accidentally left on the system when the new EXE program is put onto the system. DOS will always invoke the COM program before the EXE program so you should delete the older COM program. CfgCntrl ($29) (ConfigController) is an intelligent text (ASCII) file controller. Just what does this mean? Well a bit of history is required to explain this new type of software utility... We created ConfigController to solve common office and home Windows computing problems. Before ConfigController, the typical office had MS-DOS laptop PCs running Windows software and LanManager LAN software that had to have specific LAN device drivers and video drivers installed and activated when the laptop was plugged into its desktop docking station with a LAN card and external video monitor, and a different set of device drivers installed and activated when the laptop was out in the field running remote LAN access software with its internal LCD display which required custom video drivers. The PC "techies" were managing this mess by keeping two copies of Window's configuration files -WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI files and LanManager PROTOCOL.INI files present on each PC -one set for the docking station mode and one set for remote access mode. This didn't work well, for every time the user added/deleted or moved a group on his/her desktop, these changes were never saved to the other set of configuration files. Installing software that modified these configuration files had to manually be added to the other set of configuration files. Maintenance became a total nightmare. Similarly having two separate LanManager PROTOCOL.INI files was just as difficult to maintain. In the home, our users wanted a way to configure Windows in a 'minimal' mode so that their kids would not have access to certain programs on their PC, and then have their 'normal' mode with full program/group access for themselves. Out of these needs was born ConfigController... ConfigController does away with multiple configuration file sets. You only have your single set of standard Window's configuration files and LanManager files to deal with. ConfigController and DOS' batch file capabilities allow you to control all aspects of your configuration files including adding or deleting complete groups of programs to or from your desktop. ChkParm ($19) (CheckParameters) analyzes the file specification and returns via DOS' ERRORLEVEL whether the specification is a drive letter, file or sub-directory, whether it exists or not, and if it is a local reference or a network (remote) reference. Great for use in batch files. ComSpeed ($19) (Com Port Speed) determines the actual baud rate that a COM (serial) port is set to. With today's high speed modems that can adjust their phone line and data rate (speed) automatically, it is often very difficult to determine if your line is operating at the proper rate. Use COMSPEED to check your COM port's data rate after establishing a data connection. ControlP ($19) allows you to turn on screen to printer echoing as if you had pressed Ctrl-P or Ctrl-PrtScr. Read your DOS manual for more information on printer echoing. CopyWA ($19) (Copy with Attributes) will copy files with the source file's attribute copied into the destination file too. Great for preserving your read-only file's attribute when copying them. CrtDump ($19) copies the contents of a text mode video screen to a disk file. Great for preserving screen messages for later review or printing. DelTree-Chk4Root ($19) uses CHK4ROOT to determine if a file specification refers to the root directory. DOS' DELTREE.EXE can easily delete every file on your hard disk. Now use CHK4ROOT to protect yourself... Dir2Bat ($19) (Directory to Batch File) performs a series of commands on a series of files: Will write a listing of files that match your file specification to the file DIR2.BAT. Each file found may be prefixed and suffixed by user provided strings. This batch file will then be able to perform actions to the files. For example, if your C:\ disk contains the following files: list.doc printer.doc readme.doc then the command: DIR2BAT c:\*.doc "attrib -r ! /s" "del !" /f will create a DIR2.BAT file with the following contents: attrib -r c:\list.doc /s del c:\list.doc attrib -r c:\readme.doc /s del c:\readme.doc attrib -r c:\printer.doc /s del c:\printer.doc DvCPU ($19) is a DesqView utility program that is meant to be run right before running a program that requires full usage of the CPU's computing power. It pops up the DesqView window and sets 'Share CPU when in Foreground' to Yes or No depending on the parameter entered. Useful for programs that insist on running in a non-multitasking environment such as voice sampling and digitization programs. DvPrompt ($19) is a DesqView utility program that facilitates easy recalling of your current DOS window's switch number by retrieving and embedding its switch number in its DOS prompt. For example, upon opening and using several DOS windows with command line programs, the user often finds it difficult to remember which window he/she was doing what task in. Since each window has the same DOS prompt, DOS gives him/her no visual clue to the identification of the current window. Will change each DOS window's DOS prompt into the typical form of: 1 C:\> for DesqView switch window #1 2 C:\> for DesqView switch window #2 3 C:\> for DesqView switch window #3 DvRun ($19) is a DesqView utility program that determines if DesqView is running. Useful within batch files. ExpndTab ($19) (Expand Tabs) copies a source file to a destination file with any embedded tabs converted into spaces in the destination file. Document tab alignment is preserved. Great for printers that don't expand tabs correctly or word processors that don't expand tabs into the proper number of on-screen spaces. FeeFifo ($19) enables the FIFO of a 16550A high speed UART chip at the serial COM port specified by you. This allows many non-FIFO aware programs to use and benefit from FIFO serial ports. Growp ($19) (Grow Prompt) grows your DOS prompt each time you shell to DOS. It adds a user specified growth character to the environment's 'PROMPT' string each time another copy of COMMAND.COM is invoked, and removes the growth character when the copy of COMMAND.COM is terminated. Each growth character represents a suspended program in RAM and gives you a visual warning that you should not turn-off your PC before returning to the suspended program and gracefully exiting it. This program is meant to be useful in situations where you invoke COMMAND.COM from within Windows, DesqView, a word-processor or from within a spreadsheet. In this typical scenario, GROWP gives you a visual reminder that you have suspended -not terminated a critical program. This program will also help avoid SMARTDRV write-ahead cache data losses. Grp2Ini-Ini2Grp ($29) (Group file to INI file converter and back) converts encoded (non-text/non-ASCII) Windows 3.0 and 3.1 GRP (group) files into a plain text (ASCII) INI format file for your review and editing. It is considered a pre- processor to the ConfigController program. After Grp2Ini creates the textual INI formatted output file, you can edit it with your word processor or use ConfigController to act on it. Then the companion post-processor Ini2Grp (INI file to group file converter) must be used to reconvert the INI file back into the encoded GRP file format that Windows requires. Grp2Ini-Ini2Grp puts a powerful dimension of Windows configuration control into your hands with or without the use of ConfigController. A 'group' in Windows is a collection of icons (programs). Example Windows groups are: Main, Accessories, Games, and Startup. Example items in a typical 'Main' group are: File-Manager, Control-Panel, Clipboard, and PaintBrush. Grp2Ini reads the encoded GRP file and constructs an INI formatted text file that has a section of information associated with each item in the group. Each section's entries are explained in plain English. You can control every aspect of the complete group's window including its size, location, and name. You can control every aspect of your group's items including each item's name, program name, program location, working directory, short-cut-key, run-minimized state, icon picture (bitmap), icon size, icon colors, and location of the item's icon within the group's window, etc.. Tired of waiting for Windows to start up? Grp2Ini can help. As you add and delete more and more items from a Windows group, your GRP files grows in size. Windows does a poor job of recovering wasted space in your group's GRP file. In fact, Windows does no wasted space recovery. Grp2Ini will automatically remove all wasted space in your GRP files. Just run your GRP file through Grp2Ini- Ini2Grp and notice the file size and speed improvements. This wasted space recovery is similar to disk defragmentation processes. Have you ever wanted to force Windows to load certain programs in your Startup group in a certain order? Before Grp2Ini-Ini2Grp you couldn't. Now you can! Windows loads items in the order that they appear in the GRP file. However, when adding a new item into your group, Windows simply finds puts the item into the first hole it finds. Simply generate the INI output file and move the sections around to suit your needs... If you've ever wanted to 'move' an application from a disk drive to another disk drive (perhaps because your hard disk was filling up and you wanted to rearrange your data), or even to another sub-directory, you were forced to uninstall the application (losing all of your application's settings) and reinstall it in the proper new location all because of Windows' encoded GRP formatted files. With Grp2Ini and Ini2Grp, you simply generate and edit the text INI file replacing the application's paths, locations, and working directories with whatever you want. IfOnScrn ($29) (If On Screen) will examine the video screen for the appearance of up to three case sensitive trigger (search) character strings. Once found, a message box may pop up, and/or user keystrokes may be stuffed into the keyboard buffer including rebooting the PC. IFONSCRN may be run as a TSR (RAM-resident) or as a non-TSR program. Great for detecting how a program terminated if it does not set DOS' ERRORLEVEL. Great for detecting modem, gateway, mail router, and print server failures and then automatically reboot them. IfWait ($19) will beep the screen or the IFBUZZ device either once or will wait until you press any key. It can run in a WAIT mode where the device beeps cyclically until a key is pressed, or in a BEEP mode where it beeps the device once and terminates without a key needing to be pressed. ParkHead ($19) parks an IBM PC 286, 386, 486, Pentium and most compatible PC's hard disks. PDel ($19) permanently deletes a file so that it can't ever be recovered. Player ($19) plays a wave or voc formatted sound file on a Sound Blaster or compatible audio. card. PrtScrFF ($19) (Print Screen with Form Feed) automatically appends a form-feed (paper eject) command to your printer whenever you press the PrintScreen key. Very useful to keep your printer always at its top-of-form position. For laser printers, this saves you from taking the printer off-line, and pressing the PageEject button. RList ($19) (Range List) prints a range of lines from a text (ASCII) file to the screen or printer. RwDir ($19) (Read/Writable Directory Listing) generates a list of non read-only files. Useful to see which files would be deleted when issuing a DEL *.* command. It is recommended to make most of your application programs (programs ending with com, exe, and bat) read-only to minimize the risk of accidental erasure. RWDIR will help you identify the files that might need to be made read- only. SetBeep ($19) is a memory resident program that will set the beep character's (ASCII decimal 7 or control-G) duration to a user specified value or disable it leaving you with a silent PC. The PC's default beep tone duration is 1 second which is too long and annoying for many people. SuperMonitor ($39) Some day, real soon, something terrible is going to happen... Many of your Windows 3.1, WFW, and yes -even your new Windows-95 programs are all going to stop running! Your multiple Windows programs are rapidly eating away at your precious Windows resources -your User, GDI, RAM and Virtual (Swap) resources to be precise... You know this, yet there's nothing you can do! You drop your head and feel a tear trickle down your cheek. Suddenly you hear a roar from above! Look! Up in the sky! Its a bird! No, its a plane! No, its SuperMon-itor to your aid. You're saved! SuperMonitor accurately tracks the following Windows resources: User resource GDI resource Memory (RAM + virtual memory that SysMeter reports) resource RAM (physical memory) resource Virtual Memory resource SuperMonitor is the only program in the industry to tell you what amounts of RAM (physical memory) are being utilized by Windows in general or by a specific program, and what amounts of Virtual memory (swap file) are being utilized! But you say that you already use the Microsoft SDK provided SysMeter program with great success? Well you'll be amazed to hear what's "wrong" with SysMeter... SysMeter has a few fatal flaws that make it a useless program: 1. SysMeter only reports instantaneous snapshots of your systems resource utilizations. Since programs often "grab" many resources for very short moments in time, Windows must be able to provide resources for these peak periods. If it can't do so, your program (or even all of Windows), crashes! If this resource "spike" is very quick (as most are), you may not even be able to notice it flash on SysMeter's screen before it is replaced with the next instantaneous "normal" resource snapshot. Or if you're like us, you've turned your head away to record the past snapshot on a piece of paper while this "spike" snapshot appeared and then disappeared -without you noticing it... 2. SysMeter only reports instantaneous snapshots of your systems resource utilizations during "idle" periods of your system. Think about the implication of this statement! When Windows isn't idle - its busy running your programs which means your precious resources are being allocated and deallocated. This is exactly when you'd want a resource monitor to be tracking your system so that you could catch those potentially fatal or "near death" allocation spikes. During this busy time, SysMeter isn't monitoring your resources. Only during infrequent idle periods (when virtually no resource spikes occur), can SysMeter do its thing... Very scary! Now that you know about the limitations of SysMeter, will you ever use it again? We specifically designed SuperMonitor to catch these resource "spikes". You control SuperMonitor's "sampling" rate. You can dictate that SuperMonitor watch your system as fast as every one millisecond ( 1/1000 of a second) to catch even the shortest lived resource spike! 3. SysMeter can't tell you the resource utilization of a specific Windows program. It only tells you the state of your overall Windows environment. This is good information, but not good enough for SuperMonitor! SuperMonitor is a MDI (multiple document interface) program. Each document is a resource sampling session. By running multiple document sampling sessions and comparing the session results before and after running a specific Windows or DOS "box" program, you can precisely determine the resource utilizations of that specific program... Cool! Not only does SuperMonitor track instantaneous resources usages, but it also automatically records "average" and "maximum/minimum" (worst-case) usages! You can "log" or save these snapshots to a disk file and then import them into your spreadsheet for further analysis or even graph them. Of course, you control precisely what data to log to disk and how frequently to save it to disk. You can even print your screen's data! SuperMonitor was written for: The individual Windows user that wants to keep Windows running smoothly. The computer programmer that wants to easily determine the resource requirements of his/her program under development. The software development company that produces many Windows programs and are concerned that they might produce one more program that when added to the user's Windows desktop of concurrently executing programs, will cause a resource to be depleted, possibly crashing the program or even all of Windows. The corporate desktop hardware standardization engineers that can use SuperMonitor to determine exactly how much physical memory is required to execute their programs before the virtual memory swap file is accessed. This is important for optimal Windows performance. Then they can purchase exactly the optimal amount of RAM memory for their PCs. SuperMonitor is compatible with Windows-95, Windows 3.1 (enhanced mode), Windows-For-WorkGroups, and Windows NT (WOW compatible). Thot4Day ($19) (Thought for a Day) is a unique program that will display varying personalized messages on your PC's computer screen. You, the user can create a list of messages (THOTs) to be displayed by the program. Many Murphy's Law-like thoughts are included. Tune4Day ($19) (Tune for a Day) plays a different sound file from a directory of files every time you run the program. Useful in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to play a new sound every time you turn on your PC. Uses PLAYER. May also be used to run any program with a different filename as its argument from a directory of files. Vdel ($19) (Verify DELetion) asks you if you want to delete file(s) matching your filename. It can delete read-only files too. For each file that VDEL finds, you can configure it to or not to ask you if you want to delete it. Vers ($19) installs itself as a memory-resident program that will set the DOS version(s) to user specified value(s). This is useful when running programs that require a specific DOS version for no useful reason. (Many DOS supplemental programs require specific versions for no legitimate reason). VERS works better than SETVER does. VERS can set both the TRUE and FAKE (SETVER) versions that DOS provides to programs. WinRun ($19) is a DOS utility program that determines if Windows 3.n Enhanced mode is running. Useful within batch files in a DOS box. WrapUp ($29) Windows users have long enjoyed the fact that when you start Windows, you could have Windows automatically start any programs simply by putting the program's icon into the 'StartUp' group. Wouldn't it be great to have a similar 'ShutDown' group that right before Windows exited, it would run these 'WrapUp' type programs automatically for you? Imagine the uses for such a program... You could automatically: - Backup your PC's hard disk(s). - Log out of your PC network (LAN). - Synchronize your laptop PC's hard disk with your desktop PC's hard disk or visa versa. - Access your favorite online stock-quote system and retrieve your latest stock prices. - Send an email message. - Run your communications program and have it autodial your significant other, so you could pick up the telephone and tell him/her that you're on your way home. - Or any DOS program or batch file that can be run from within Windows. - Or anything else for that matter... WrapUp requires Windows 3.0-3.11, Windows-for-Workgroups 3.11, or Win-NT. ZDir ($19) (Size Directory Listing) determines the size of sub-directories nicer than DIR does. <eof>