Ask DACS
October 2008

by Jim Scheef

Ask DACS is a question and answer session held at the start of the monthly general meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and by email (AskDACS@dacs.org). Hopefully we find the answers from those present at the meeting.

There were no questions submitted by email this month, so we started with questions from the floor.

Q: The member has recently installed Verizon DSL. After the computer has been on for some time, it seems to slow down. Rebooting restores it to normal. The system is on continuously for several days and then a reboot is required. The machine runs Windows XP and there was no broadband before this.

A: The consensus was that this is not caused by Verizon but is normal Windows behavior. Suggestions included running a “good” hardware firewall (router) and/or a properly configured software firewall. A typical Windows machine running continuously without firewall protection is a botnet dream. An unprotected machine will soon be sending out spam or worse.

Q: In a follow-up question, the same member asked what an “MRU” is. AdAware reported finding these when scanning the disk. They are not flagged as malware.

A: MRU is “most recently used”. These are files that were recently opened in some application. The list should roughly correspond to “My Recent Documents” in the Start menu.

Q: The member reports a problem with Yahoo. He gets a message that “Internet Explorer cannot open this page, followed by the URL.” After pressing enter (the OK button), the page opens normally. How can I eliminate this annoying extra step? The browser is Internet Explorer 7.

A: One member suggested deleting the cookies for the problem website. This seems to clear up a similar problem on his Yahoo home page. Another member suggests that this is a scripting error and recommended switching to Firefox. My own opinion was that the error came from a timeout while loading the page. All this tends to indicate that it is not clear exactly what the problem is, or the solution, if there is one.

Q: How can I automate building complex emails that include content from several sources, like a couple of Word documents, an Excel spreadsheet, and some clip art? Each email is different, pulling pieces from different documents each time. I would like something that would make the copy and paste process easier and faster.

A: Suggestions ranged from the Office Clipboard Organizer (looks like it could be a help), to a Windows macro. While writing this I searched for ‘copy and paste clipboard’ and found an application called Clipboard Express Pro™ (tinyurl.com/nyv9) which is the type of application I suggested. I also found a tutorial “What is Clipboard? This tutorial will give you the answer!” at (tinyurl.com/6rwvnu) which explains how to use the Office clipboard to make copy multiple items (up to 24) to the clipboard and then paste them sequentially, which I believe is exactly what the member wants, however I suspect that the target application must be an Office application which may mean that the email must be prepared in Word. This would be quite easy if you are using Outlook as your email client.

Q: How can I get a count of the files in a Windows Server 2003 directory when the number of files exceeds 100,000? The files are “bad mail” messages that have accumulated over a period of time. Apparently Windows has a limit to the number of files in a directory and does not like it when this limit is exceeded. A lock up or crash can result.

A: Advice came from many sources. “Blow it away,” was one suggestion. Another member suggested using the ‘move’ command to move a few hundred files at a time into new directories to get the number of files below the threshold of instability. The move can be canceled with Ctrl-c after a few seconds.

Q: My email provider (Charter) sent me a message that I have too much email. If I save an email message, does it still exist on the email server? I use WordPerfect Mail (part of Corel Office).

A: The simple answer to the question is “it depends”. Email that is not web-based (i.e.: Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) comes in three standard flavors: POP (post office protocol), IMAP (internet message access protocol) and MAPI (mail application programming interface). MAPI is used only on Microsoft Exchange Server so we are not concerned with it here. POP (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol) is the email most people use with Outlook Express. When you check your email, the messages are copied from the server to your email client and then deleted on the server – unless your email client has the “leave messages on the server” option turned on. This would eventually fill your email space and lead to the notification received by the questioner.

If the email is IMAP (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imap), then by design, the messages stay on the server until you specifically delete them. An optional copy is usually also kept on your computer automatically by the email client when the client synchronizes the client files with the server. If you never delete any messages then eventually your mail space on the server (and possibly your hard drive) will fill and the provider will (hopefully) send you some notification.

To determine how many and which email messages are in your account on the email server, log in and review your account using the webmail interface.

Some additional notes on email: Using an email account from your ISP, such as yourname@charter.net ties you to that ISP. Closing your account at Charter would also cancel the Charter-based email address making it necessary to create a new email account somewhere else. You will repeat this cycle as long as you use ISP-based email addresses. Using an account that is independent of your ISP, frees you from ISP tyranny making it much easier to change ISP (how you connect to the Internet) whenever you see a better deal. Services like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, and AIM Mail all make your email “portable” so it does not matter how or from where you connect to the Internet. These services are gradually abandoning their proprietary interface and moving to standards-based protocols. AOL Mail has been free for about a year and no longer locks you into their proprietary email client. AOL and AIM offer both POP and IMAP so you can use an AOL email address with any email client program. Gmail offers IMAP (they want to keep your email messages on their server as part of their business model. AOL, AIM and Gmail all provide 2G of space in their free accounts – for a normal person this amounts to unlimited space. I use an AIM Mail account for several high-volume email lists and read and manage the messages using Thunderbird, a free, open source, email program that supports IMAP.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a general consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!

Submit any question to: askdacs@dacs.org.