FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  236 (01/11/00)

JUNIOR AND SENIOR MEDDLERS

I work for a Leonard Cheshire Home, supplying computer facilities for our residents. Because the PCs are available 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, it is impossible to monitor everything that is done. As a result I often find that access to facilities, such as the Internet, have been corrupted overnight and program icons have been removed. This is not deliberate. It is simply people not knowing what they are doing. Is there any way I can stop this happening as it can involve a lot of time to reset the machines.
Andrew Peters

And…

I am having a problem with children at school moving the taskbar to the edges of the screen. We want to lock them into position at the base of the screen - the taskbar, not the children! What can you suggest apart from keep moving it back to the bottom when the little Herbets have messed around with it?
Adrian Joice

Two related problems, one solution. A shareware program called IconLock stores icon and desktop settings, so they can be easily restored if someone tinkers with them. Alternatively the icons and the Taskbar can be locked and password protected; everything still works normally but no changes can be made. The ‘zip’ file is just under 900kbs and can be downloaded from:

http://www.zdnet.com

/pcmag/pctech/content/18/14/ut1814.002.html

MINES LOST!

I used to have Minesweeper on my computer. Then one day, when my daughter opened the game, it opened right at the top end of the desk top, so that she could not access the buttons to select easy or high level etc. We tried holding down the mouse pointer and dragging the game down. Nothing worked.

Dorothy Masih

There’s a couple of things you can try. Change the screen resolution to a lower setting by clicking on the Display icon in Control panel, select the Settings tab and after making a note of the current setting reduce it by moving the slider to the left and this might bring the game’s title bar back onto the screen. If that doesn’t work try re-starting the PC in Safe mode by pressing F8 at boot up, before the ‘Windows 9x is starting’ message appears on the screen. When Windows has finished booting open Minesweeper and it should return to its default location in the top right corner of the screen. Close down and re-boot as normal.

IN A SPIN OVER DISCS

Some time ago I had a CD writer installed on my computer.  It successfully made data backups, etc.  Later, with the help of a shareware program, I copied to CD some old favourite music from LPs and reel-to-reel tapes. These played perfectly on the computer but sometimes seemed to ‘skip’ in the car CD changer. I subsequently bought a domestic DVD player, which also plays CDs, but there is a specific warning against inserting CD-R or CD-RW media. Recently, I decided to buy a domestic CD writer and its instructions say that it is incompatible with the CD-R or CD-RW media sold for use in computers. Specific audio media (at about twice the cost) must be used.

Could you kindly unravel some of this?  For instance: Are there actual physical differences between the ‘computer’ and ‘consumer’ CD-Rs, or is the mystique intended to ensure that a copyright payment is made before music is recorded by private individuals? Does the domestic recorder actually record differently from the ‘writer’ installed in a computer? A computer DVD player seems to have no problem with computer created CD-Rs – why should a domestic DVD player? Can music be recorded on the special audio CD-Rs by a computer in such a way that they will play in domestic and car equipment?

Eric Stride

Wow, you’re getting your money’s worth, here goes… Recordable CDs or CD-Rs sold specifically for audio recording have a special identifier code on them, this is to stop you using cheaper data CD-R discs in domestic CD writer/copy machines. Audio CD-Rs are dearer because they include a copyright fee. You can copy audio CDs on a PC onto data CD-Rs. Some older CD players can’t read CD-Rs and CD-RW (rewritable CDs) because recordable discs have slightly different optical characteristics. A DVD player will play a CD-R/RW containing audio files but the warning is meant to stop you loading discs containing computer data, which could damage the amplifier or speakers to which it is connected. 

IMAGE CONSCIOUS

Can anyone help me to use 'insert' on the page button in Windows Imaging?Every time I try to use it, it is greyed out. Please advise me how to activate it.

Eileen Smart

The Insert command on the Page menu, which is used to insert a scanned image on the page, only becomes active when working with non-bitmap material.

MORE ON BAD SECTORS

I read C. Harrison's letter in F!F!F! (19th October) about fixing bad sectors on hard disks and wondered if you know about a program called SpinRite, which tests hard disks very thoroughly and repairs bad sectors if it can. I have used it successfully on my hard disks. It is non-destructive - it doesn't delete anything from the disk and tries to recover information from damaged sectors if possible. The details are on http://www.grc.com/ which is the web site of Gibson Research Corporation. I have used SpinRite from my Amstrad PC1640 days and also on my 486 and Pentium-based PCs.

George Baldwin

I had a brand new Evesham Atherton PC, pre loaded with ‘GoBack’. Being a careful sort of chap I loaded Norton System Works and went to work. Within a couple of days I had bad sector error messages coming up on the screen.  I ran Scandisk in both Windows and Norton to no avail, the problem kept on occurring.  Eventually the system became unworkable and crashed. I rang Evesham Technical Support and after a couple of false starts the techie came up with the idea of disabling GoBack and reinstalling Norton then switching on GoBack. Norton had caused a conflict with GoBack and they were fighting it out between them causing the error. I tried it, it worked. Based on the error message I had assumed was the disk was faulty.  Not so.

Nigel Pugh

Our thanks for those useful tips.

NUMBERS UP

I have been saving copies of Boot Camp and F!F!F! for some time. You occasionally refer to previous Boot Camp No’s; I can't see any numbers on the ones I have, only the dates they were published.

Derek Waterworth

The numbers disappeared from the printed page some time ago but they continue on this web version of Boot Camp, which hopefully makes them easier to find.

RANDOM REMINDER

I am sure I saw recently a reference to automatically generating random text in Word for test filling, say, a series of linked text boxes - was I dreaming as usual?
Francis Hookham, Cambridge

It wasn’t a dream, simply type ‘=rand()’ (without the inverted commas), press return and three paragraphs containing ‘The quick brown fox…’ three times appears. You can change the amount of text by putting numbers in the brackets, thus =rand(5,6) creates a block of 5 paragraphs each containing 6 sentences.