Bug |
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By Beverly Rosenbaum |
Two bugs have been reported in the newly released "gold" version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.
In early August, BugNet reported that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3 beta 2 installed an updated version of the Windows system file COMCTL32.DLL that some applications use to draw and control toolbars. The new IE 3.0 file causes toolbar buttons to be drawn as `disabled' (greyed out) in some applications, including the ActiveX Control Pad, Wordpad, Paintbrush, and several others.
According to Microsoft, the final commercial release of IE3 fixed this problem, but now there is a problem with IE3 replacing other system files which affect at least one other program. According to Quarterdeck, the IE3 installs new versions of ADVAPI32.DLL and OLEAUT32.DLL, which interferes with Quarterdeck CleanSweep 95. If you install IE3, CleanSweep will no longer work. If you replace ADVAPI32.DLL and OLEAUT32.DLL with older versions, CleanSweep will work again, but IE3 won't.
The second problem involves a bug in IE3's cache, and appears to be more widespread. Although the cache worked fine in IE3 beta 2, it doesn't in the new "gold" version of the program. Normally, www browsers load images and pages once from the host server, and then supply them from the user cache thereafter. This substantially speeds page loading. Because this feature is broken in IE3, the performance of the browser is very slow at times.
This problem apparently occurs even though the View | Options | Advanced | Temporary Internet Files | Settings |. Check for newer versions of stored pages' Never radio button is checked. IE3 users also report that the cache problem affects User Name/Password combinations for secure www pages, with the result that they are forced to reenter their User Name and Password again and again, every time they move to a new page within a password protected site, like the Wall Street Journal. Microsoft has acknowledged the cache bug, but at present there is no known work-around or fix.
Printing Problems. There have been reports of printing problems with Windows 95 and a variety of inkjet printers including the Hewlett Packard DeskJet 500, Hewlett Packard DeskJet 1600c, and Canon BJC 800. Commonly, the printer will start to print a page, and then appear to go haywire and spew out garbage characters. According to Microsoft, this may be occurring because data is being sent too "aggressively" to your printer. Microsoft's John Braswel advises going to Control Panel, choosing the Device Manager tab, and changing the printer assignment from ECP to LPT. You can also copy the LPT.VXD file from \drivers\printers\lpt folder on your Windows 95 CD to the \windows\system folder in My Computer. Allow this file to overwrite your current copy, shut down your system, and then restart.
If you install Adobe Acrobat 2.1 and the version of Adobe Type Manager that comes with it on a Windows 3.x system that already has WordPerfect 6 for Windows installed, you may find you can no longer change printers from within WordPerfect. When you try, you may get an error like "updating printer information" followed by WIN2WRS caused a General Protection Fault in module ATM32.DLL... The work-around: Edit your ATM.INI (in your Windows directory) and delete the four lines that start:
AdobeSanMM=
AdobeSerMM=
Save ATM.INI and restart Windows. You may also need to reinstall the Acrobat fonts through the Adobe Type Manager font list.
Win95 Memory Leak. If you open and close a lot of programs especially ones that use Windows sockets like Internet applications you may experience a slow loss of available system memory in Windows 95. After hours of use, this problem can in some cases degrade performance or cause the system to go down. The fix: upgrade your Kernel32 with the file dated April 1996, available for downloading from the Microsoft site, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/krnlupd.htm (290K, self-extracting Zip file, April 11th, 1996).
This update resolves a memory leak which occurs when opening and closing a Socket using the Windows Sockets API. Without this update, running a Windows Sockets application over a long period of time, especially one which opens and closes a large number of sockets, will result in a significant resource drain. This can cause the Windows Swapfile to grow very large, overall deterioration of performance, and over time, possible system instability. This update allows users to better run such applications for long periods of time without loss of system performance and stability, and without requiring users to reboot their computers periodically to free system resources. Users who need to run Windows Sockets applications continuously over long periods of time, especially applications which use a large number of sockets, will benefit from this update.
1.Create a temporary folder (directory) on your hard disk.
2.Click the link "Kernel32 Update."
3.Save the file in the new folder.
4.In that folder, double-click krnlupd.exe to install the program files.
Quarterdeck. Quarterdeck has released fixes for the following bugs in QEMM 8.0: The "Exception 13..." errors, the long delays when using MagnaRAM with caching IDE controllers, and its incompatibility with AutoCAD. The patches are all available on Quarterdeck's www site at http://www.qdeck.com/qdeck/products/QEMM/patch.html .
Lexmark Printing Bug. You may be unable to print on letter-size paper from the lower tray of the Lexmark Optra RX when running WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows under Windows 95 or Windows NT (the paper will load from the upper tray instead). The workaround: change the tray settings for the Windows driver in the Windows Print Manager. Go to Control Panel/Printer/Properties/Setup and set the Paper Source to the lower tray and mark Select for all jobs. Alternately, you can select the WordPerfect PCL printer driver for the Lexmark Optra printer.
HotDog Pro Bug. There is a bug in Sausage Software's popular HTML editor, HotDog Pro 2.071 and 2.08, which prevents it from loading relative URL references when previewing a HTML page in Netscape Navigator or other WWW browsers. If you want the files to preview, you must either enter the full URL ("http://www_ etc."), or set your HotDog temp directory to the directory where the relative references are stored. So, if you keep your images in a subdirectory called "images" and you reference it as <IMG SRC="images/bill.gif">, you'd set your temp directory as /images. To do this in HotDog, go to Tools, Options, File Locations, Temporary Files.
Gateway 2000 Bug. If you try to upgrade some Gateway 2000 PCs to Windows 95 you may get an error message like: Setup Warning G1: Setup cannot run from MS-DOS with EMM386.EXE or other memory managers (such as QEMM or 386Max) running on your computer. The work-around: remove EMM386.EXE (or the similar memory manager) before you run Setup by remarking out the line that references the offending memory manager in your CONFIG.SYS (add REM and then a space to the beginning of the line in question, save your CONFIG.SYS and restart your system), or upgrade the BIOS in your computer.
Tech Impersonators. Although people claiming to be Microsoft techs have been advising FrontPage users to place Perl.exe in the cgi-bin of their Personal Web Servers, Microsoft now acknowledges that this is a very dangerous thing to do, because it can open the user's hard drive to formatting by an intruder. There are two important lessons here: FrontPage doesn't work with Perl, and never put Perl.exe in the cgi-bin directory of a server connected to the World Wide Web, no matter who tells you to.
Netscape 2.02. If you get an error like "Wsock32.dll could not be opened." when you try to launch Netscape Navigator 2.02 under Windows 95, you need to open Windows Explorer and go to the Windows\System folder and rename your wsock32.dll file to something like wsock32.old. Now in Explorer go to Tools, Find, and search for wsock32.* on your hard disk. This will reveal several files. Find one that is 42K (often named wsock32.w95), copy it to your Windows\System folder, and rename it wsock32.dll. After exiting Windows and restarting your system, you should be able to launch Netscape.
WordPerfect Bug. From the "This Is A Feature, Not A Bug Department": There is a practical conflict between Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 and WordPerfect for Windows 7 that results from the fact that both programs make use of the Windows\Favorites folder. Internet Explorer uses it to save Web sites (equivalent to Netscape bookmarks), while WordPerfect uses it in place of the WP6.x QuickList, a list of directories (folders) that are frequently accessed. The problem is that even on a fast Pentium it can take several seconds to access WordPerfect's File Open menu if you have stored a lot of Internet Explorer Favorites there. Apparently the only solution is to temporarily empty the Favorite Places folder, which makes WordPerfect menu access instantaneous, as it should be (and is in every other program). This problem does not occur in Microsoft Word for Windows 7.
These bugs are made available through BugNet Online (http://www.bugnet.com/), PCWorld Online (http://www.pcworld.com) and software vendor sites.
Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member and can be reached via e-mail through the User Journalsection of HALNet.
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