dacs.doc electric

Random Access
April 2002

Jim Scheef, moderator

Members who are unable to attend the General Meeting may submit questions to 'askdacs@aol.com' by the day prior to the meeting. We will attempt to get an answer for you. Please provide enough detail, as we will not be able to ask for additional information. Q. I am looking for good software for backing up data from my hard disk to my PC. I have been told to look at NTI Backup Now (from www.ntibackupnow.com). I have a Dell Dimension with Windows 98. A. Veritas Backup MyPC (www.veritas.com) was recommended. You also might consider PowerQuest’s DataKeeper, which comes bundled with DriveImage. (www.powerquest.com) Note that for a full backup, you must use a package that can handle open files as well, such as the Windows Registery. Q. When I backup files to CD, if I restore them, they come back as read-only files. What happened? A. The CD is a read-only media; when they are brought back in by use of Windows Explorer, it sees read-only. You can easily reset to update by selecting the file(s) then right-click and select Properties, and clear the READ ONLY flag. This will be done for you automatically by backup software, but will not happen automatically if you just ‘burned a copy’ of the files to the CD. Q. I tried to install only MS Word from the MS Works Suite, and asked it to only install Word--but it installed the whole suite. Can I get rid of Works? A. It should have installed Word only, if you asked for only Word. However, there are so many shared components (usually DLLs etc.) that it would be risky to uninstall. You might look at the Add/Remove dialog and see if it lets you uninstall selected components by clearing components. One member also suggested looking in Works TOOL; then you look at "Customize Works" and clear out items you don’t want. Q. I am using Outlook Express and would like to print out a copy of the address book. How? A. There isn’t a print mechanism, but what you could do is export it as a .TXT file, then import it into Excel, hide the columns you don’t want to see, then print the columns you want. Q. I put a USB board into the PC, and now when I power up I get a message on the display - "Check Signal." A. This usually means that the video card is not sending a signal to the monitor. The circuitry within the monitor puts the message on the screen. We suspect that when the USB card was put into the machine that the video card was dislodged. Q. I purchased a replacement power supply for my computer--it is 400 watts. It has a strange plug--it doesn’t match the socket on my ATX board. Aren’t all of the plugs the same? A. No, there is now an ATX-2 motherboard that has enhanced power savings features, etc.; it requires a different connector. The additional connectors are used for supplying low-draw devices that can’t be fully turned off when the machine goes into suspend mode, as well as for providing the circuits for re-awakening the machine. You need a standard ATX power supply. Q. I have a Windows 95 machine that just on its own, at random intervals, boots. What could be causing this? A. Many things. A short blip in the power will do it. A program that jumps to address 0 will do it. (This could happen if a program bug put a zero into an address in memory and then a program instruction said ‘jump to the instruction located at address such-and-such.’ This is a very easy bug to create when writing programs. Q. I am having extensive renovations done on my house. Should I ‘wire for the net’ and if so, do I need coax for cable modem, or what other type of wire? A. Even if you have a cable modem connection for your broadband connection to the internet, you don’t want the whole house to be coax. Once you get to the cable modem, the ‘house side’ of cable modem will be CAT-5 twisted pair wire. Put the cable modem in a central location, then run CAT-5 wire to a ‘switch,’ and then run CAT-5 from the switch to each location where you will want to connect a PC. Note that CAT-5 is most definitely not regular telephone wire. For retro-fitting a circuit into an existing wall, the going rate is about $100 per circuit. If the walls are open, the cost will be considerably lower. An alternative is to use wireless--but be aware that the location of your wireless access point may be critical, so that it doesn’t have interference from household plumbing, heating pipes, A/C ducts, etc. If you do have to run coax to the cable modem, be sure to use RG-6, not RG-59 cable.