The Best Shareware of the Year 1997 Winter/The Best Shareware of the Year 1997 Winter.iso/wmcdfaq.txt

Text File | 1996-10-02 | 15.2 KB | 400 lines

*** The Windows Magazine CD FAQ ***

Frequently Asked Questions
Windows Magazine CD

wmcd-faq.txt
Version 4.04, 10/1/96

***

PURCHASE: Where can I get a copy of the CD-ROM?

The quarterly Windows Magazine CD is available at many of the
same fine retail establishments that sell Windows Magazine. You
can also order one disc ($12.95) or a one-year, four-CD
subscription ($39.95) by calling 800-294-0198 (or from outside
the U.S. 904-445-4662 ext. 817).

Each issue always contains the full text of 12 months of WinMag,
including any special issues published during that period; most
of the shareware and freeware mentioned in those issues; and the
latest version of Wintune. Each issue also contains a number of
CD-only features, for example ScreenCam demos of Win100 products
or databases of products covered in the magazine; these features
vary from one issue to the next. In addition, each issue contains
some low-key advertising in the form of trial versions of
applications, multimedia product demos, and online service access
software.

CUSTOMER SERVICE:

If you haven't received a CD you ordered, the one you received is
damaged, or you have a billing problem (e.g. your credit card was
overcharged), please call customer service at 800-829-9831 (or
from outside the U.S. 904-445-4662 ext. 817).

DAMAGED DISCS:

CDs are occasionally damaged at the factory or in shipment.
Depending on the extent and nature of the damage, you may
encounter a wide variety of error messages, or the disc may be
completely unreadable.

If you think your CD might be damaged, here's an easy way to tell
for sure. (Don't try this if there's glue or tape stuck to the
CD.) Start File Manager, click on the icon for your CD-ROM drive,
choose Search from the File menu, and click OK to start the
search.

If you get error messages during the search, or the search goes
doesn't complete or produces nonsensical results, it's a bad
disc, and you should call customer support for a replacement.

If the search completes normally with no error messages, then the
disc is probably good and something else is causing the problems.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT: How do I get technical support?

Due to the low cost of the CD-ROM, we cannot provide one-on-one
technical support via e-mail, telephone, or mail.

A combination FAQ for the WinMag CD and Wintune(R) 2.0 is
available by Internet e-mail answerback. Send a message to
[e-mail] and the latest version will be sent back
automatically. Note that the system will send only one copy per
day to the same e-mail address.

We currently provide direct technical support only through our
forums on CompuServe (G WINMAG, message section 14) and America
Online (keyword WinMag, then choose Message Exchange, then look
in the folder CD_TIPS). Please read through this FAQ completely
and browse messages already in the folder *before* posting there.

To sign up for CompuServe, call 800-848-8199. To access America
Online, install the software from the Fall 1995 CD-ROM (click on
the DEMOS button in the table of contents).

***

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Minimum hardware requirements for the WinMag CD are 4MB RAM,
256-color video card, color monitor, sound card, MS-DOS 3.3 (or
later), and Windows 3.1 or 3.11, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, or
Windows 95.

Some of the disc's features may not work properly under OS/2 or
Windows NT, and no technical support is available for those
platforms.

***

CD-ROM SETUP: How do I install the Fall '95 CD-ROM?

Fall '95: Run the program INSTALL.EXE, in the root directory of
the CD.

CD-ROM SETUP: How do I uninstall the CD-ROM?

The installer keeps a log of everything it adds to the hard drive
and all the changes it makes to .ini files in the file
\winmagcd.f95\install.log. Delete the files listed in the log.

CD-ROM SETUP: Setup doesn't work.

Try running setup from the Start menu's Run command. If that
doesn't work, try disabling any third-party shell enhancements
like Norton Navigator or System Agent, and running Setup again.

CD-ROM SETUP: After running setup, no new icons appear on the
Windows 95 Start menu.

Windows 95 doesn't always update the Start menu after you install
a new application. When this happens, restart Windows 95 and the
icons will appear. (If they don't, you have a more serious and
unusual problem.)

CD-ROM SETUP: When you launch the "Welcome to WinMag CD" icon,
you get a message that says you have to register your software

You don't have to register your WinMag CD. This message is coming
from a browser that you installed (or that was preinstalled when
you bought your system) for which the trial period has expired.
If you delete the browser and reinstall with one of the free
browsers on the CD, you should not get this message.

CD-ROM SETUP: Spry Mosaic, Internet in a Box, Mosaic in a Box,
Compuserve NetLauncher, or other Spry product stops working (Fall
95 CD)

If the Spry Mosaic setup on the Fall '95 CD messes up your
existing Spry installation, you can restore the old settings by
restoring the original INI file (backed up by Spry setup) over
the modified one:

copy c:\windows\airmos.b00 c:\windows\airmos.ini

***

ERROR: Nothing happens when you click on the "Installing a hard
drive" link

This video clip is on the Summer 96 CD. The link was accidentally
copied over to the Fall 96 CD, but the video clip is not on the
disc. (known bug Fall 96)

ERROR: "Helper application not found!" (Netscape) or "Windows
cannot find wmlaunch.exe" (MS Internet Explorer)

You may encounter one of these error messages if you change the
drive letter of your CD-ROM drive after installing a WinMag CD.
Reinstalling the CD may fix the problem. If it doesn't, you'll
need to edit the association for WMLaunch.

- For Netscape Navigator, choose General Preferences from the
Options menu, click on the Helpers tab, scroll down to find the
WMLaunch entry, select it, edit the "Launch the Application"
field to reflect the CD-ROM's new drive letter, and click OK.

- For Microsoft Internet Explorer, open My Computer or Windows
Explorer, and choose Options from the View menu. Switch to the
File Types tab, scroll through the list, and highlight "WinMag CD
File." Click the Edit button, highlight "open" in the Actions
menu, click the Edit button, edit the "Application used to
perform action" field to reflect the CD-ROM's new drive letter,
and click OK, OK, OK.

ERROR: "One of the library files needed to run this program is
damaged. To repair the damage reinstall this program".

This error message is often misleading, since whatever program it
indicates is usually fine. What's actually missing or damaged is
one of the Windows 95's system DLLs, and to fix it you need to
reinstall Windows 95 or one of its components.

ERROR: "WMLaunch: I'm sorry, I can't run the application ...
because I can't find that file."

In the Summer 96 CD, you'll get this error message when you click
on "Click Here to hear this message in Fred's Own Voice!" or
"Click Here to hear this message in Paul's Own Voice!" You can
play those files by opening the Library folder on the CD-ROM and
double-clicking on Fred.wav or Paul.wav. (known bug, Summer 96)

If you get this error message at other times, contact technical
support.

ERROR: The ScreenCam player crashes when you try to run "A
ScreenCam Demonstration of Predict The Future" (Golsolv.exe) or
"A ScreenCam Demonstration of Create Startup Disks"
(Startupd.exe) on the Summer '96 CD

These two ScreenCams from the Summer 96 CD were somehow damaged,
and if you try to run them the ScreenCam player crashes. You
won't be able to play any more ScreenCams until after you restart
Windows. Since this crash can leave your system in an unstable
state, we recommend restarting anyway. (known bug, Summer 96)

ERROR: "EDI Install Pro: Make sure the INF file is not corrupted,
and that it is saved in the proper format."

If you're using CorelSCSI, temporarily replace the CorelCDX
CD-ROM file-system extensions with MSCDEX. Once you have
installed the CD, you can switch back to CorelCDX. Contact Corel
technical support if you need assistance.

ERROR: "Cant' find C:\windows\SWAP.EXE or one of its components."

SWAP.EXE is actually in the WinMag CD directory (by default,
c:\winmagcd.f95). You can fix this problem by editing the Swap
program item's properties to point to the that directory, or by
copying swap.exe from that directory to \windows.

ERROR: "cannot find SCVPLAY1.DLL"

This error message indicates that the Lotus ScreenCam recorder is
installed on your system, which interferes with the operation of
the player-only version on the CD. Open the file
\WINDOWS\AIRMOS.INI with Notepad. Find the this entry in the
[Viewers] section:

screencam=d:\scplayer.exe %s /c

("d:" will match the drive letter of your CD-ROM.) Edit that to
point to the copy of ScreenCam or the ScreenCam player on your
hard drive:

screencam=c:\screncam\scrncam.exe %s /c

or

screencam=c:\screncam\scplayer.exe %s /c

ERROR: "Unable to show Program Manager group ..."

This error message usually means that you've created more groups
than Program Manager can display. Delete some unused groups, or
consoidate icons from several groups into one and delete the
empty groups, then try again.

For more tips on reorganizing your groups, see "Overhauling
Program Manager" from the January 1994 issue. (You can download
the article from our back-issue libraries on Compuserve, the
World Wide Web, and America Online.)

ERROR: "Cannot Run Program: No application is associated with
this file"
- or -
ERROR: "file is too large for Notepad"
- or -
GENERAL: Notepad or Write display garbled nonsense and control
characters

Windows has lost the association between the .HLP extension and
Windows Help. To fix the problem, open the File Manager and
select startup.hlp (or any file with the .hlp extension). Choose
Associate from the File menu, press Tab to move into the
Associate With box, replace whatever is there currently with
"winhelp.exe", and click OK.

ERROR: "Routine not found"

If you get a "routine not found" message, check the properties
for the Program Manager icon(s) you created for Extra's Windows
Help (.hlp) files, and make sure the working directory points to
the root directory of the CD-ROM.

ERROR: "Cannot find CTL3DV2.DLL"

This is caused by a bug in the Lotus Screencam player. (Screencam
is the tool we used to record the onscreen demos.) When you
install the player, it erases the file CTL3DV2.DLL from the
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. That's the DLL that enables 3D
controls. A lot of applications use it (including Microsoft
Office) and may stop working if it is missing. It is NOT shipped
with Windows, it is shipped with applications.

You can stop Screencam from deleting the file by moving it to the
\WINDOWS directory.

If the file has already been deleted, you can copy it from the
\CDL3DV2 directory on the Fall '95 CD-ROM.

ERROR: "This application uses CTL3DV2.DLL which has not been
correctly installed."

Some users have reported getting this error when running
Screencams. Since the demonstrations seem to run correctly, you
can ignore it. If and when we can find a way to get rid of the
message we will add it to this FAQ.

ERROR: "STOP - Couldn't open the database ... PRODUCTS.DBF ..."

The "All the Products" database may not work properly unless the
Windows 95 Regional Settings control panel is set to English
(United States).

ERROR: "FileMaker Pro requires a newer version of CLARIS.DLL.
Please reinstall the FileMaker Pro software." (Summer '95 CD)

The "All the Products" database uses the FileMaker Pro runtime
(FMPUSER.EXE), which may produce this error message if you try to
run it on a PC with FileMaker already installed. To fix the
problem, edit the program item properties for "All the Products"
(select the icon and press Alt-Enter) and change the Command Line
entry to "products.fm".

ERROR: "The temp file PRODUCT[.TMP could not be created on the
disk ..." (Summer '95 CD)

For reasons we've been unable to determine, occasionally the
FileMaker Pro runtime (FMPUSER.EXE) used by the "All the
Products" database gets set to create its temp files on the
CD-ROM. (If you have any insight into why this happens, please
post a message on our Compuserve or America Online forum.)

To fix the problem, first search your hard drive for a CLARIS
directory, which is created whenever you install a Claris
application. (By default it's C:\CLARIS, but you can put it
anywhere you wish). If you don't have one, create a new one.

Then use Notepad to edit the CLARIS.INI file in your WINDOWS
directory. Under the [Claris] section there should be an entry
pointing at your CD-ROM. For example, if your CD-ROM is drive D,
the entry would look like this:

[Claris]
ClarisDirectory=D:\CLARIS

Edit that so it points to the CLARIS directory on your hard
drive. If you put CLARIS in the root of drive C, the correct
entry would be:

[Claris]
ClarisDirectory=C:\CLARIS

Then save CLARIS.INI. "All the Products" should now work
correctly.

ERROR: "The database could not be initialized. PageKeeper will
exit." (WinMag Extra! 1995 Collector's Edition CD)

If you don't let Pagekeeper modify your configuration files, you
need to add the following lines to the end of WIN.INI:

[PageKeeper]
IniFilePath=c:\pagekeep

(If you didn't install PageKeeper in c:\pagekeep, replace it with
the proper path.)

***

GENERAL: can't print

Most programs print by loading an entire file into memory and
printing. Windows Help is unusual in that it reads from the disk
(or CD-ROM) as it prints. If your CD-ROM driver shares IRQ7 with
the printer port, the result is that you can't print out .HLP
files from a CD-ROM.

The best fix we currently know of is to open the Control Panel,
double-click on Printers, click the Connect button, and check the
"Fast Printing Direct To Port" check box. Alternatively, you can
copy the .HLP file to your hard disk and print from that copy.

SCREENCAM DEMOS: No sound

Try turning up the volume using the slider on the ScreenCam tool
palette. Sometimes ScreenCam sets it so low that it's inaudible.

We've found that some sound boards will not play ScreenCam sound
if you start TIPS.HLP with a program item whose working directory
doesn't point to the TIPS.HLP file. The fix is the same as for
"ERROR: Routine Not Found" above.

The Ensoniq Soundscape Wavetable Sound Card may need new drivers
before the sound will work with ScreenCam.

SCREENCAM DEMOS: Gaps/skips in sound playback, sound not
synchronized with video

If you're using Windows 3.1 or real-mode drivers with Windows 95,
try increasing the number of sector buffers by using MSCDEX's /m:
switch. Try /m:12 to start, and keep increasing the value until
the sound plays correctly. For more information, enter "help
mscdex" at a DOS prompt.

PAGEKEEPER: December files missing (WinMag Extra! 1995
Collector's Edition CD)

The PageKeeper database for "All the Words" contains only files
for January through November. To access the December articles,
open WINMAG94.HLP in Windows Help.

***

Wintune(R) is a registered trademark of CMP Publications, Inc.

*****************************************************************