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FAQS!
FACTS! FAX! 225 (17/08/00)
MAIL
ON THE MOVE
In reply to the letter from John Pryce in F!F!F!
(3rd August) regarding travellers collecting emails from abroad, I have another
suggestion. Try www.thatweb.com, simply
sign on, and enter your existing email address and all your emails will be
forwarded to the web site from where you can collect them.
Jackie Holt
An
alternative to Hotmail, where you receive many advertisements in your Inbox, is
Totalise. As well as being a normal email service, deliverable to your Outlook
or Outlook Express email client, you can also check and reply to mail online,
using their web based system, from anywhere in the world. You don't receive
advertisements, except for the occasional announcement.
Brian Roberts, Lancashire
In
response to John Pryce's query he can also access his e-mails without acquiring
a new e-mail address using www.twigger.co.uk and you keep
your ordinary e-mail address. We used it in Goa earlier this year and it
worked well (so long as the local electricity and telephones kept
functioning!).
John Hunt
I see that John Pryce is a Freeserve customer; he
can access his account remotely. He might also like to try www.thatweb.com
Martin Richards
In
your answer to John Pryce's question you forgot to mention that Hotmail (and
probably other web-based email services) also lets you check your POP mail on the
web as well, therefore if your existing email address receives a lot of mail,
you can check this via Hotmail without having to send notification of a new
address to everyone in your address book. As I seem to gain an extra POP
mail address each year, I found this service invaluable when in Sydney last
year and NYC last Easter. Also, the junk mail situation with Hotmail has been
improved considerably by Hotmail's new junk mail filtering system. When
this is enabled mail, which is not addressed directly to you, is consigned to a
junk mail folder, where you can access it if you can be bothered, otherwise it
is deleted after a while.
James Foster
With regard to your query about how to pick up your email, when on the hoof,
I'm an expatriate engineer and use this all the time, try www.mailstart.com, all you have to do is
type in your email address and password. There’s no need for another email
address, no additional passwords, no spam, your messages stay on the server, so
when you get home you can download them all, it's quick and it's simple. The
only disadvantage I've found is it will not handle attachments. Another option
is to check with your ISP to see if they have a roaming service i.e. you dial
up a local number in whatever country you are in, and obtain access to a local
ISP with reciprocal arrangements. This will allow you to access your email and
the www at local call rates. This service is particularly useful for people
like myself, that travel with a laptop, as there is no restriction with
attachments, and you don't have to leave the comfort of the hotel room or a
G&T, and go looking for an internet cafe!
Rob Hendriks
Many
thanks to everyone who wrote in with those handy e-traveller’s tips.
DRIVE TO DISTRACTION
At apparently random intervals my Windows 98 PC
attempts to access the floppy A: drive, even though there is no disc in drive.
Any idea as to the reason, and how can I prevent this happening? It doesn't
appear to cause any noticeable problems, but is disconcerting.
I.M.G
So-called Phantom Drive Access is a common problem
unfortunately there is no single cause. There are four prime suspects, however.
The first is a virus scanner checking your floppy drive, if you have one on
your PC you’ll have to check the program’s setup or Help facilities. Another
possibility is Windows FindFast, which lives in Control Panel; this may have
been set to index your drives automatically. Click on the FindFast icon and if
you see any reference to drive A: highlight and delete it. Programs running in
the background may be responsible, to find out which one press Ctrl + Alt + Del
to bring up the Close Program dialogue box, highlight each program in turn,
click End Task and see if that stops it happening. Lastly check your Recent
Documents folder (Documents on the Start menu) to make sure there are no
references to files stores in the A: drive, if so delete them.
TRASH THE SPLASH
I
know that the Windows shutdown graphics can be found as logos.sys and logow.sys in the Windows 98 folder, but I'm stumped trying to find the file
that contains the graphics of the Windows splash-screen that comes up when the
PC is booted. I would be very grateful if you could point me to the file and
make my PC my own, and not Bill Gates…
Amit Mehta, Peterborough
The opening Windows screen is called LO.sys but it may be hidden away inside a
protected folder so you won’t be able to get at it. However, you can easily
replace it with an image of your choice using Windows Paint or your preferred paint
program. Open the image change the size to 320 x 400 pixels (don’t worry about
the odd shape), give it the name ‘logo.sys’ and save it in the root of the C:
drive as a 256-colour bitmap. Windows will automatically use this instead of
LO.sys, provided the attributes are correct. To revert to the original Windows
splash screen simply delete, remove or rename your logo.sys image.
STACKS
BACK…
I
couldn't believe it when you dealt with the ‘Spare Stack Pages’ error message
in F!F!F! (August 8th). For about two weeks I regularly
had a similar message, and no one knew how to solve it. I followed your
instructions and found the system.ini file and the [386Enh] heading, but what
do I do now? The error message says I have 5 stack pages allocated. I was
a bit confused by your last remark, which says it has to be multiples of
4? I don’t want to wreck my system by typing in the wrong thing.
S.
Scorer, Oakham
Quite
a few readers wrote in to say they too had suffered from this error message and
we’re pleased to say that in almost every case our ‘cure’ worked. Mr Oakam can
be assured that he won’t harm his system provided he follows the instructions
given in F!F!F!, which in his case means typing in the command MinSPs=8, which
is the nearest multiple of 4 to his present setting. If that doesn’t work there
may be another underlying problem and it’s probably worth his while investing
in a system troubleshooting/housekeeping utility, like Nuts and Bolts or
CleanSweep.
SCOTTISH
CLIPART, AT LAST…
I
see from dotcom.telegraph (August 8th) that Alex Doobie is looking
for Scottish Clipart. I have three websites for him to try:
http://cgl.microsoft.com
/clipgallerylive
http://gallery.yahoo.com
www.corbis.com
These should be in everyone’s Favourites list, if they aren't already.
Michelle
Stern
Well done, but can anyone help with this one?
I
would be most grateful if either you, or any of your readers could inform me where I may be able to obtain some British orientated Military Clip Art.
Nigel L Rylatt
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