December 2002 newsletter--Windows Shortcuts,
frequently asked questions from my website, more on dealing with the Out of Memory Messages and
A message from my friend, Bob McElwain on his latest venture.
Friday, December 13, 2002
* Please be assured that I will never sell or share your email addresses with anyone else! I respect
your privacy!*
God Bless America! And Happy New Year!
Hello again!
I'm back to give you some helpful hints on some Windows
utilities that can help out when you get those pesky
error messages. I'm also using this newsletter to post some answers to many recurring questions that I receive through my website,
www.internetguideandmore.com . I'd also like to
share a new program, that you can download for free, that will help you with the "Out of memory" messages that we all get (when you know darned well that you're not out of memory because you have 256 Mb). This program will help your computer's operating system manage your memory much more efficiently.
_____________________________
One more thing, I have a good friend, Bob McElwain, who has several
websites, and he has asked me to let you all know about a neat,
new
site that he has put together for all the "undiscovered and unrecognized
authors out there". I think it could be very exciting, here's Bob's message
to all of you:
___________________
Are You A Good Author? Do You Know Of One?
Have you written a quality fast paced novel or two?
Do you know someone who has? If so, here's an
unbeatable offer.
We publish books in all popular electronic formats
at no charge. There's no contract. And the author
retains all rights. There's no better deal anywhere!
Check it out. Visit <http://actiontales.com/authors>.
(Hard copy publishing available.)
Click on the blue link above to check it out. I highly
recommend it!
Bob is one of the good guys, and if you're looking
for a forum for your book, can't find a big firm to
publish your masterpiece, give him a try. E-books
are the latest thing, and they are here to stay. People
download these stories to their computers, and to their
PDAs and read them. Why not give it a try...:)
_______________________
Now on to the computer stuff...I know some great little
shortcuts to windows solutions that could make a real
difference for you. Say you have a recurring message
that a windows system file is missing, that is popping up
constantly every time you start windows. You can
fix this often times by Clicking on start, run, and type in
sfc, and then click Ok. This is a short cut to the System File
checker. Click on Start, and have your Windows cdrom
handy, unless you have the cab files on your hard drive.
This program will replenish the system file. Great program!
*************************************
The Run Box can be a shortcut to many programs within
Windows. Click on start, run, and the Run box pops up, you
type in a command, and click OK. Try these, they're cool:
1. Type in notepad, and then OK. Notepad will start.
2. Type in WordPad, and then OK...WordPad appears.
3. Scandisk, OK, and Scandisk pops up.
4. Defrag, OK...Defrag pops up.
5. Type Inetwiz, Ok, and the Internet Connection Wizard pops
up to set up your internet connection.
6. Type excel, OK, and the Office program Excel pops up.
7. Type control, Ok, and the Control Panel pops up.
**********************************************
When you need to close a program, or a window, press down the Alt key
and the F4 key at the same time. This will close just about anything, even
your computer.
***********************************************
Hold down the Windows logo key located on the keyboard, and Click
the F1 key to pop up the Windows help menu in a flash. In Internet
Explorer, click on F1 key alone, and get Internet Explorer Help Menu.
***********************************************
You know how your start programs get kind of mixed up after
a while when you add new programs, they are always at the bottom
and then they start being out of any alphabetical order. Well, you
can put most of them in alphabetical order like this:
Open the start menu, click start, programs, and place your mouse
cursor in the programs area, right click, and click on "sort by name"
in the dropdown menu. This will sort most by alphabetically order,
except those Office suite programs from Microsoft that prefer to
stand together toward the bottom of the programs menu.
********************************************
If you have a cd burner or rewriter on your computer, do this:
Make a copy of all your program disks, including your operating
system disk, and recovery disk. I'm not suggesting that you make
these disks for your friends, but make a copy for yourself. You
never know when a disk will break, and then you have no expensive
program to reinstall when you need to. This happened to me, and I'm
passing it on to you, so you are not left diskless like I was...:)
Restart your computer right before you burn a CD will
clear the cache the best. Then, you'll not get an Out of Memory box when you use the program, and life will be sweeter. It's a Windows 98 thing...
***********************************************
Memory caching is the age old problem with Windows of all
versions. I found a program that really helps, and
it's free, Cacheman. Here's the url:
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CACHEMAN
Cacheman is a very good program.
***********************************************
When autorun won't work:
You put your new cdrom in the cdrom drive, and nothing happens. What a dirty trick! Here's the solution:
Click start, run, click on "browse", at the top of the
browse window, find "look in", click on the d: or whatever your cdrom drive
is, and click the + sign ahead of your program, and then click on the
install or setup file (whichever it is) , click Open, and then OK (may be
autorun, click open and then Okay). You can also do like my boys do, and
double-click on the My computer icon, double-click the cdrom drive, and your program will come up.
************************************************
The address mess of changing from AOL to another ISP that allows you to use Outlook or Outlook Express:
Before you abandon AOL make sure that you can export your address book and contact lists to your new ISP. And don't
cancel AOL until you have your new ISP working. There's no easy way to export AOL's Address Book to Outlook Express or Netscape
Mail, but I've found a workaround that will do the job.
Log on to AOL and send a message to everyone in your address book with your
new email info. Copy yourself on this message with your new email address,
Be sure you have to have the new service ordered and activated. Close AOL for good. When you are sure that all is well with this
procedure, uninstall AOL.
Log on to your new ISP. Launch Outlook Express (which comes
preinstalled with Windows), open the message you sent to yourself, select
the Tools menu from inside that message, click on one of the addresses,
click on edit, select all, and then right-click on one of the highlighted
addresses, and in the menu, click on "Add to Address Book" . Like magic, all your old addresses will be safe in your new address book.
***********************************************
Have any of you experienced this stupid PopUp?
******Your Computer is Currently Broadcasting An Internet
IP Address. With This Address, Someone Can Begin
Attacking Your Computer! click OK.**********
You log on to the internet at an IP Address, but that doesn't mean
that a hacker is going to get into your computer. This ad is meant to
shamelessly scare the pants off of you! Don't let it. This is a popup
that is meant to sell you something. I'm not saying that a firewall program
can't give you peace of mind, but this foreboding ad is meant to sell
you something. Don't let it scare you. You can go and download a FREE
firewall program at www.zonelabs.com ,
and it's one of the best. A firewall
program will make you invisible on the internet highway, and your IP
address won't be visible.
***********************************************
IE 6 Service pack 1: I waited, and I'm glad I did. I was getting so many
emails on the horrors people were going through with Internet Explorer 6,
that I was too leery to download it. I finally did download the Ie6 service
pack 1 version, out of desperation, (my newsletter wouldn't send) and it
worked like a charm. I did notice one peculiar thing about it, though,
attachments are prevented from downloading to you, unless you uncheck one security option:
Open Outlook Express, click on tools, options, security tab. Now be sure
that the box is blank, next to the message "Do not allow attachments to be
opened...". If this is checked, it will NOT allow you to open ANY
ATTACHMENTS. Just click in that box to uncheck it.
Just be sure your anti-virus software is updated and working properly, and
you don't have to worry about attachments giving you viruses. This is the only weird default setting that I have noticed.
Just be sure it is unchecked, or you won't be able to open ANY attachments.
You can get to this program download by clicking start and windows
update.
**********************************************
Recurring box at startup:
I ran into something like this with a client's address book. I looked in
the startup menu first, and nothing. I tried, start, run, I typed in
msconfig (this is usually where you can edit startup programs from starting every time you boot your computer), and clicked OK,
and then clicked on startup tab, and found no reference to the
address
book to load at startup. I worked on this computer
a couple times, and finally, I was checking on something in "task
scheduler", and somehow the address book had been entered in there under
scheduled task, and this kept it loading at startup. If you find your
program in there, just delete the task. Address book was set for "start
when windows starts", and so, the address book kept popping up every
time you started the computer.
**********************************************
A funny yp appears in my emails:
This is a known bug if you use HTML without including your message in the reply box. You can fix this (if it bothers you) by
including the message that you are replying to by checking this option in
Tools, options, reply tab, check the box that "includes message".
AOL users usually don't experience this, because they are always sending plain text messages. You have another option in
Outlook Express.
***********************************************
Fast way to fill in the Http:// in Internet Explorer, type in the main
domain name, and then hit ctrl, enter. This will put in the Http://, and
the www. and the .com.
For example: you would type in: internetguideandmore, and then
hold down the ctrl key, and then hit the enter key on the keyboard.
This will complete your website address.
**********************************************
XP is restarting all the time without warning:
If you right click my computer and choose properties then
choose the
advanced tab then click settings under the start up and recovery option you
will see a few options there make sure Write a system event to the system
log is checked and uncheck the automatically restart option this will mean
you can view the blue screen of death not that it'll make sense but it might
give you something further to work on.
XP is programmed to restart instead of freezing or blue
screens.
*********************************************
That's it! I know you'll be reading this one for a while, it's
like an
all day sucker. You might even want to print it and digest it in small
doses. I just wanted to answer some questions that I get often from by website, and now you all know many answers.
Hope all your Holidays are wonderful!
I'll be seeing you next year, 2003!
Happy New year!
I appreciate all of you. Remember that I will have all these
monthly issues
of my newsletter available at my websites, along with other information:
And
Thanks for reading!
If you know of anyone who would like to receive this
newsletter, tell them
to send a blank email to:
I appreciate your asking for the newsletter, but if you would
like to
unsubscribe for any reason,
send a blank email to:
TELL A FRIEND! THANKS!
|
Merry
Christmas, Everybody!