Chairman’s Notes
At
work we have been having speed problems on our Demon ADSL, it is supposed to be
a 2Mbps connection but connection tests on the official www.kbps.com web site indicated speeds varying
between 1.3Mbps and 0.04kbps leading to time outs whilst browsing reminiscent
if a dial up connection. The advantage
of the kbps site is that it gives a report reference that you can email to your
ISP and they can look at the actual report, they normal need 6 tests before
action can be taken.
USB Flash Drives
When you plug a USB flash drive into a PC you can normally
expect it to install as the next free drive letter. Say you have a PC with the hard drive as C:
and the CDROM as D: and you plug in a USB flash drive it will install as E: but
if your PC has a hard drive with 2 partitions and you also have a CDROM and a
CDRW it will install as G:, the hard drive will be C: & :D the optical
drives E: & F:. Windows XP (and
W2000 and NT) give you the option of changing the drive letter of a
device. Windows has a default drive
letter allocation A: is the floppy drive and B: is reserved for a second
floppy. C: is always the first bootable
partition on the master hard drive on IDE interface 0. If you have your hard drive partitioned, then
the second partition becomes D:. When
you come to install a second hard drive, as a slave drive on IDE interface 0
the first partition on this grabs D: pushing the original D: to E: (thus making
any programs loaded on to the old D: inoperable, because short cuts etc are
still looking for thing on D: when they have moved to E:). When your PC arrived, the CDROM was probably
D: but now with three hard drive partitions Windows will have pushed it to F:
In XP go to Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer
Management | Disk Management when it opens the panel top right shows hard
drives USB drives etc. and bottom right shows each drive with its partitions
spread out sideways and CDROMs etc.
Right click the partition or CDROM header and choose Change drive letter
and paths, here you can allocate your drive a permanent letter. You can move your old D: drive from E: back
to D: remembering you have to make D: vacant first or you cannot allocate it to
a different drive.
With your USB drive plugged in you can allocate it to, say,
U: then it will always be U: in this PC unless you allocate a permanent device
to U: which will then be unavailable when you next plug it in. If you then plug your USB drive into a
different PC, if does not appear as U:, go through the procedure above to make
it U:. Now you can set up a backup
script etc. which writes to U: and the USD device will have installed as U: and
be waiting to receive the data which ever PC it is plugged into.
Where have my icons gone
Looking at a blank desktop that used to be populated with
icons? Right click the desktop, hover over Arrange Icons by.. and select Show
Desktop Icons. You can change desktop
properties by right clicking the desktop, selecting Properties then Desktop tab
and Customize Desktop button, add or remove some icons by checking the box or
change the icons. You might like to
uncheck the box ‘Run desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days’ as it tends to do
this at the most inopportune moment.
Does Windows XP refuse to shut down?
When hitting the shut down button has absolutely no effect
first try running Windows in safe mode by hitting F8 at boot up and then
shutting down. If this works it is
probably a device or service that is preventing the shut down. Try MS Knowledge base article 308029 for some
excellent hints.
PC Myths
Taking digital photographs of the sun can damage your
digital camera – TRUE – There is a theoretical risk that the lens focusing the
sun on to the CCD could damage it but there is also the risk to your eyes from
looking at the sun. Taking pictures into
the sun tends to produce very poor results and including the sun in the picture
will make the effect worse. Shade the
lens with your hand to prevent flare in the lens or try to take pictures with
your back to the sun.
You can save money by buying from foreign web sites – TRUE –
It is possible to buy cheaper from abroad, depending on what you are buying,
this is a matter of research. Is it
available cheaper in the
Companies only want to prosecute large scale pirates – FALSE
– There are many stories of large scale pirates being prosecuted but also so
have individuals for minor infringements, especially downloading from the
internet.
There’s no point in buying a 64-bit PC as there is no 64-bit
software to run on it. – FALSE – 64-bit processors are available as is the
64-bit version of windows XP but little software to run on them. There is an
advantage in speed as 32-bit programs are run slightly faster than on a 32-bit
processor. Dual core has now been thrown
into the pot, the Intel Core processor is 32-bit but the Core 2 is 64-bit. There is no great advantage in buying 64-bit
now except that it will future proof your purchase for when the software
becomes mainstream.
Windows XP cannot run old DOS or Windows programs – FALSE –
Getting old DOS or Windows software to run may at first appear impossible but
try using the Program Compatibility Wizard by clicking Start | All Programs |
Accessories and then Program Compatibility Wizard. This will guide you through the process of
getting your old program to run.
You can become infected by a virus simply by visiting a Web
site – TRUE – There are several reasons why the answer is True. Weblinks do not always do the obvious and
just take you to a site when you click a link you may also be giving instructions
to download a virus. If you do download
something from the site it may not be the virus but it may be something that
will download the virus. ActiveX, which
produces the animations and fancy effects on sites when displayed by your
browser may also fool the browser into downloading a virus. Browsers that not fully patched may also run
code contained in an html page and run a virus.
Viruses can also be included in jpeg files and even movies. Moral, use an anti-virus program and a
firewall. The standard firewall for XP
included in SP2 is adequate.
Coloured files
Normal
file names appear as black but by default Windows XP shows compressed files as
blue. If you have chosen to unhide
hidden and system files then normal files show up as grey but hidden compressed
files show as pale blue.
Word
Style Rules
The
way word applies styles can sometimes appear complex. Type a short sentence, highlight it and use
the drop down style list and change the style.
You will observe that the style changes as you would expect. Use Edit | Undo to revert to the previous
style and then highlight just one word and change it to italic. Now highlight the whole sentence again and
change the style with the drop down list.
You will notice that the italic word remains as such rather than the
whole sentence taking on the new style exactly.
If you had made the whole sentence italic then this would have vanished
when you changed the style. Word
recognises that if you have changed a style setting of less than 50% of the
text you want it to stay that way if you apply a new style. If you had changed more than 50% then and
then add a new style you probably want the whole sentence in a uniform style.
Calendar 2006
Club night Wednesday
November 8th 2006
Backup
with drive copy
Dec 13th
2006 to be decided
MCC Committee 2006 - 2007
Contact/Chairman Robert Huggett 01628 623712
RobertVHuggett@aol.com
Treasurer
Dave Grant
Hints & Tips: Alan Everett aeverett@btinternet.com
Web-site Jim Borg-Cardona jimbcuk@aol.com
Editor All contributions
to this Newsletter should be sent to: Robert Huggett, 5 The Points, Maidenhead.
SL6 3AE Tel: 01628
623712 Email: RobertVHuggett@aol.com
(All contributions to be
received 2 weeks before the next meeting to ensure inclusion)
Contributions may be
sent on:3.5’ PC disk in almost any format, E-mail attachment, or hardcopy.
Please Note: Selected items from this Newsletter may also be
published in MCC’s pages on the Internet.
Internet Home Page: http://website.lineone.net/~mcchome
The club meets on the
second Wednesday of each month at the offices of Zinsser Analytic,
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are not necessarily those of the Editor of the Newsletter and/or the
Maidenhead Computer Club Committee. The Editor and the Committee expressly
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