dacs.doc electric

Random Access
September 2002

Bruce Preseton, 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. A friend sent me an e-mail that has an attachment of type .EMAIL -- What is it, and how do I read it? A. Your friend uses Outlook Express, which sends the message as plain text as well as highly formatted text under MIME encoding, but of type .EML, not .EMAIL. If you receive using Outlook Express it should sense the attachment and display it with all of the fancy formatting, fonts, animations, etc. We have never seen it as .EMAIL -- and wonder if your correspondent somehow changed the extension. Q. I get "pop-ups," or more correctly, "pop-unders" about every 5 minutes when I am browsing the internet. How can I stop them? A. There are several free (or almost free) utilities that will block these nuisance screens. The most common ones are ‘Ad-Aware' from Lavasoft and POW! from AnalogX. Q. I have a Windows 2000 Pro machine networked with Windows 98SE -- now when I start the Windows 98SE machine it insists on asking for a password for the IPC$ share prior to letting me access the files on the Windows 2000 Pro machine. I don't use logons or accounts on the machines. How do I get this working? A. For some reason Windows 2000 Pro has now decided to start enforcing security, probably because at some point you put in a user name and password. You probably are going to have to establish a generic group, and then a generic user with a password and grant rights, then establish this account on the other machine. Then change the password to NULL on the Windows 2000 Pro through the Admin Tools, Computer Management, Local Users and Groups and then change it on the other machine(s). With the NULL password it should cease asking. — Also, make sure that you have the same workgroup name. Q. When I boot my machine, I get error messages (while the boot is still in ‘character mode') that say that I don't have a vfloppy.sys file. Once I hit ENTER the boot proceeds. At one time I had a file named vfloppy.sys on my desktop, and I deleted it. I have not been able to retrieve it, recover it, or determine where it came from. What is or was it, and how do I get it back? A. Normally, files referenced during the boot process reside in either C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM or C:\ WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. (Or C:\ WINNT\SYSTEM or C:\WINNT\ SYSTEM32.) A search of the registry on a machine using REGEDIT at the meeting found a reference to vfloppy.sys file, with the registry entry pointing to the LapLink for Windows installation folder. You confirmed that the machine in question had LapLink installed, but that you hadn't used it since the problem surfaced. Somehow you moved it from the LapLink folder to the desktop and then deleted it. Re-install LapLink. Q. I use ATT.NET, and they have a webmail program that I like. I ran Windows Update, and now it has moved my mail application to Outlook Express, and moved my mail system from webmail to Outlook Express -- without asking me. How do I get it back to webmail? A. Welcome to the world of Microsoft's cavalier attitude towards your system. You probably will have to re-install ATT's product, as it appears to be a case of the most recently installed application being the one that rules. Otherwise, you may have to call AT&T's support -- we are sure that if Microsoft put out a Windows Update that hammers them, they are familiar with how to get it back. Q. I have an HP Photo printer that HP has discontinued. Their site does not provide a driver for it for Windows XP. Windows XP has a driver, but it does not provide nearly the functionality that had been available in Windows Me. What can I do? A. First, re-check the HP site for an XP driver. Failing that, try the Windows 2000 driver if it is present, as the difference is minimal between 2000 and XP. Q. I purchased an HP ‘combination' printer/scanner/fax, and would like to scan some documents into my word processor so that I can edit them. How do I do this? A. The machine should have come with a category of program called OCR -- Optical Character Recognition. Usually this is present as a stand-alone program that got installed when you installed the device. However, other members report that it is present, but not immediately obvious as to how to use it. They said that what you do is scan the image in (often via the FILE then ACQUIRE command sequence), and then tell it to do a "FILE," then "SAVE AS..." and then select "TEXT" to cause it to do the character recognition. You should then do a spell check on it and then proof read the document. If the OCR does, say, 99.9% accuracy, you may get a dropped or mis-interpreted character every 10 lines or so. Q. I use a dial-up internet account - and often have it go dead after a few minutes -- but the icons down by the clock show that I am still connected. If I disconnect, then reconnect, I get in again, for a few minutes. How do I fix this? A. First, make sure that you have the correct settings for your exact modem. Second, make sure that you defeat ‘Call Waiting' if you have that service on your phone -- typically by dialing *70 before you dial. Third, make sure that your phone line is ‘clean' -- there are several test sites - such as http://www.netassoc.net/techstuff/USR_test.htm. Lastly, it may be that your modem is not up to snuff -- see if you can borrow a different modem. Note: A few days later the person reported that replacing the no-name modem bundled with the machine with a better known (but 2nd tier) modem resolved the problem. It is still unknown as to why Windows did not detect and report the loss of connection.