by Tom Lassiter
—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,
Act III, Scene II, Line 75
Do you think old Will could have been referring to Microsoft and the release of Windows 98? Nah, couldn’t be—it was Nostradamus who was the great predictor!
Windows 98 should be on the shelves of your local stores, and maybe even on your PC, by the time you read this, if all goes as scheduled. But then again, with Microsoft, things seldom go as scheduled. I hope it gets out on time, and I hope they show it to us at the June monthly show at the George R. Brown, as scheduled as I write this. If not, we’re in for two disappointments. If so, we’re in for a couple of tasty treats.
The 800+ of us who attended the Microsoft eXtreme event on April 4 at Tinseltown Westchase got a good preview of Windows 98 via a satellite hookup to over 40 cities around the country. I was pleasantly surprised with it. There are a number of new features that I feel will actually make it worthwhile to upgrade.
We all want the latest and greatest; so we can now spend that money we saved last Christmas season when the expected release got delayed. Microsoft borrows from the old Fram oil filter commercials theme – “Pay me now or pay me later!” Later it is and now it is time to pay up and upgrade. Also – they liked their little Win95 release trick so well they are going to pull it again; the Plus Pack is back! Since the magic number of software marketing is “under $100”, they can’t price it high enough so they split it into two products and get you going and coming. Hallelujah!
This column will be changing to include Win98 tips and tricks over the coming months; as more of you make the switch. It may even include some of both during a transition period. But for this month we’ll stick with Win95 tips
Work with Files and Folders in Dialog Boxes
Here is one for which I apologize for not sharing sooner. How many times have you been in a dialog box like OPEN, SAVE AS, etc. and seen a file listed which you should have deleted, renamed, or copied or moved to another folder. Well buckaroos – you can do it from right there. You can work just as if you were in Windows Explorer. Just RIGHT-CLICK on a file to get the same popup menu to cut, copy, delete, rename, etc. You can also RIGHT-CLICK in a blank white area of the dialog box to get the context popup menu to work with folders.
Finding a CAB (No, NOT in NY City – in Win95)
Last week I had an error message popping up that made it appear my MSGSRV32.DLL file was corrupted and I wanted to obtain a clean copy from my Win95 CD-ROM to replace it on my harddrive. Well, those files are in the .CAB files section and if you’ve ever tried to search around in those .CAB files on that CD you know that is not a pretty picture. Cheer up, try the following to save whole bunch of time if it happens to you.
Open Windows Explorer and select your CD-ROM drive (probably D:\) and open the Win95 folder. On the menu bar CLICK TOOLS, FILES OR FOLDERS. On the NAME & LOCATION tab, in the NAMED box type *.CAB. Then CLICK on the ADVANCED tab and in the CONTAINING TEXT box type the name of the file you are seeking (MSGSRV32 in my case above, no extension). Click on the FIND NOW button and it will give you the CAB file containing your desired file (D:\win95-15.cab in my example). You can then copy and paste it to the appropriate location.
Out, Damned Temp Files! Out I Say!
If I’m allowed to quote Shakespeare then surely I may paraphrase his Macbeth also. In the process of opening and closing files in applications, Win95 creates a lot of temporary files in C:\temp and C:\windows\temp. The applications are supposed to delete these when they finish with them; but they don’t always get the job done. An accumulation can build up here—so once in awhile, after closing all running applications, go and delete whatever leftovers you see. Leave the folder and delete any files in them. Or you can add the following last lines to your autoexec.bat file and do it automatically each time you boot up: echo y | del c:\temp\*.* and echo y | del c:\windows\temp\*.*. Some applications also use “tmp” instead of “temp” so right ahead of the ones above you may also want to have these two: set temp=c:\temp and set tmp=c:\temp to redirect either version to c:\temp. All these should be ahead of the very last line, which is probably @ECHO OFF. Who said DOS was dead? It RULES! (Yes, even in Win95).
To Use the Icon Files Described in the February Column
In the February article I pointed out locations for additional icon files (in shell32.dll or pifmgr.dll) if you were tired of your current ones. Some of you needed this additional info to access those files: Double-click on My Computer. CLICK on VIEW, OPTIONS, and FILE TYPES tab. Select the file type for which you wish to change icons. CLICK the EDIT button. CLICK the button (if it is grayed out you can’t change the icon for that file type). CLICK the BROWSE button to either C:\windows\system\shell32.dll or to C:\windows\system\pifmgr.dll. Scroll through the icons until you find one you wish to use for that file type; then CLICK on it and on OK. Back out clicking on the OKs until back to My Computer and close it out.
Until next month – “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow. . .”—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II, Line 184
(Who said redneck Aggies ain’t got no couth?)
Tom Lassiter is a member of the HAL-PC Board of Directors where he serves as Membership Secretary and chairs the Volunteer Committee. Contact him at jamesl@hal-pc.org.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.