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FAQS! FACTS! FAX!
223 (03/08/00)
TOP
TIP TAMED
I read with great interest your Boot Camp ‘Top Tip’
of July 20th. But on trying the secret utility I get an error message: ‘Cannot
find file hwinfo/ui or one of its components. Make sure path and filename are
correct’. I am using Windows 98 version 2 so could you please explain further
on how to use this facility?
Jacquie Attwood
It does work, honest, however quite a few people had
trouble with this one because they didn’t insert a space between hwinfo and
/ui. To be fair the typeface we use may have caused some doubt so in future
we’ll try and make it clearer.
TASTIER MENUS
Your
solution to George Georgiou's problem of trying to create a 3 column menu is sophisticated (F!F!F! July 20th). I learn from it. However,
I am a simple soul, and I prefer to cheat. Draw a 3-column table, and using
Borders & Shading, choose the 'none' option for all borders. Text flow is
easy to control, and column widths can be altered easily by click/dragging the
borders.
Stewart Keating
Thanks to Stewart and the many other readers who suggested
using Word’s table function to create multiple columns and we have to agree
that it is simpler than our method.
FRENCH
WEATHER
In
response to Carrie Wilson’s request for weather information on south western
France (F!F!F! 20th July) - try Yahoo. The full address for the
site showing Carcassonne is: http://fr.weather.yahoo.com
/8092/index_c.html
or
Yahoo Meteo>France>Villes>Carcassonne
Robert
Rae
I've
found two sites which give temperature and rainfall data throughout the year,
as opposed to short-term forecasts, at www.worldclimate.com
and www.onlineweather.com. They ask for the name of a place, so it
helps to have an atlas to hand. The information frequently states the length of
time that the records have been compiled, often over a century. You can also
call up a map of the area, to check you have the right place! They don't,
however, detail hurricane seasons or humidity.
J.P.H.Turner
That has solved one little problem, thanks to
everyone who responded, but we’re still looking for a source of Scottish
clipart for Alex Doobie, any ideas?
MAIL
ON THE MOVE
Would
you please explain to a novice e-mailer the mechanism by which back-packers
pick up e-mails from home or friends when travelling all over the world?
John
Pryce
The
most popular option is to use one of the many free web-based email services
such as Hotmail and those provided by major search engines, like Yahoo. The
idea is simple, you register with the site, which normally involves giving them
a few basic details about yourself, you choose a password and are allocated an
email address/username i.e. yourname@hotmail.com.
Mail sent to that address is stored in your personal mailbox on the web site’s
server, and this is the crucial point, you can access the web site and your
mailbox from any PC – your own or one in an Internet café in the back of beyond
– as long as it has an Internet connection and standard web browser software.
All you have to do to collect your mail is log onto the web site and key in
your username and password. The only slight drawback is that in exchange for
this ‘free’ service you can expect to receive advertising and a great deal of
‘junk’ email, and you mustn’t let your mailbox lie dormant for more than two or
three months otherwise it will be closed.
DATE
DELETE
Do you know of any method of
deleting files on a relative date or to get rid of files more than one month
old?
Tommy Long
In Windows 95/98 the simplest method is to use Find on
the Start menu (Start > Find > Files or Folders). On the Name and
Location tab select the directory or folder containing the files you wish to
delete then click on the Date tab; enter your date or dates, highlight the
files you want to get rid of and press Delete, but use it carefully, you might
loose something important!
SLACK
STACK
Switching on my computer earlier
this week the screen displayed the following message just before the desktop
screen appeared: ‘There are no spare stack pages. It may be
necessary to increase the setting of 'MinSPs' in system.ini to prevent possible
stack faults. There are currently 3 SPs allocated’. What on earth are stack pages and what if anything should I do about this
message? It has not appeared on subsequent occasions that I have switched on.
Chris Woodrow
This is one of a number of mystifying Windows 95/98 error
messages that pop up from time to time; fortunately there is a way to stop it
appearing again, which we’ll come to in a moment. ‘Spare Stack pages’ are
4-kilobyte chunks of memory that Windows automatically sets aside for
emergencies, to prevent the system from crashing if it unexpectedly runs out of
memory space when loading device drivers. By default Windows allocates 2 spare
stack pages, most of the time two is enough but occasionally – often for no
apparent reason -- it proves insufficient. The solution is to increase the
number of spare stack pages. Open system.ini with Notepad (Start > Programs
> Accessories) click on Open on the File menu, (change Files of type to All
Files) and look for system.ini in the Windows folder. Scroll down the list to
find the section heading ‘[386Enh], it should be fairly close to the top, at
the end of that section add the following line: ‘MinSPs=4’ (without the
inverted commas and there are no spaces), save the file and restart your PC. If
it happens again try increasing the number of spare stack pages further but it
must be in multiples of 4.
SAVE
THE FAVES
I do
weekly or fortnightly back-ups of essential data filed under My Documents on to
my 250Mb Zip Disc. I have an extensive list of favourite web sites listed
in Internet Explorer but don't know how to back-up this list so that the
settings can be restored in the event of total loss of data. Can this be done
and if so how?
David
Reece
Include the
Favorites folder in C:\Windows in your list of back-ups; if your original is
lost or corrupted simply copy the contents of your backup into the Favourites
folder
DATABASE
REQUEST
Can
you or your readers help a newcomer to computing? Firstly, can anyone recommend
a good program for cataloguing a library collection containing around 4000
items? It needs to be fairly sophisticated and offer plenty of access and
search points. Secondly, does anyone know of an on-line service for airline
schedules?
Tim
Hudson
Two
for the price of one… Nominations please for your favourite database programs
and airline web sites. We’ll set the ball rolling by suggesting: http://www.iecc.com/airline/
and http://smilinjack.com/airlines.htm
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