dacs.doc electric

Q. In Quicken how would I store the data on a floppy diskette rather than on the hard disk. I don't mind putting it on the hard disk as long as I can make sure that it has been removed after I've finished.

A. Do Backups from within Quicken, which will put the data onto floppy diskettes. You can then delete the file(s) on the hard drive via Explorer. Another suggestion was to put the data onto a ZIP drive rather than on a hard disk. Quicken will not let you use a normal 1.44MB disk drive at run time, since the files easily get bigger than 1.44MB.

Q. I have a 386 machine with Windows 3.1 and an internal modem. I am using Juno as my mail service. Juno starts to receive mail, then it crashes, causing the machine to reboot. There are 4MB of memory in the machine. I don't have problems when using ProComm for communications. Juno recommended lowering the communications link speed to 9600 baud, but that hasn't helped.

A. One person reported having seen a similar problem under Windows 3.1 when a bad video driver was installed. It was suggested that you try installing a standard VGA driver, or look to see if there is a newer Windows 3.1 video driver available for your display adapter. This is unlikely but worth a shot.

Q. I am having problems uninstalling Internet Explorer 4.0 from my machine. If I click on Uninstall, some of the parts are removed but the icon and various files and folders remain.

A. Reinstall Explorer and tell it to install the optional desktop components. Then do the uninstall. The uninstaller gets upset if it doesn't see all the components it expects to see. This will also happen if you try to delete IE4.0 manually rather than using the uninstall function. A cosmetic method is to use the Tweak UI applette that is part of PowerToys. You might try looking at the Windows Annoyances pages, which can be found at www.creativelement.com or by going to the O'Reily publishing Web site. The Windows Annoyances pages describe how to get around or fix various things in Windows that don't work the way you would expect them to operate. Another site to look at would be www.wopr.com.

Q. At one time I had Windows NT and Windows 95 on my machine with the "dual boot" feature. I have removed Windows NT, but the "dual boot" message still comes up and offers Windows 95.

A. You need to get rid of the Windows NT loader, which is being started by your boot drive's loader. According to Microsoft, the proper way to remove Windows NT from a system is to do the following:

a) Boot from an MS DOS diskette or, better still, from the Emergency Diskette you created under Windows 95.
b) From the A:\ prompt, type SYS C:. This will install DOS boot tracks and system files. The machine is now a "DOS" machine. If you used the Emergency Diskette from Windows 95, then it will be a Windows 95 machine.
c) After the system files are transferred, reboot the machine from the hard disk.
d) Delete the following files and directories (Note, you won't be able to delete files marked as "system" or "read only" until you remove these attributes):

Pc:\pagefile.sys
Pc:\boot.ini
Pc:\nt*.*
Pc:\bootsect.dos
Pc:\<winroot>\SYSTEM32
Pc:\USERS directory
Pc:\TEMP directory
Pc:\WIN32APP directory

e) If you were running Windows 95, you may now reinstall Windows 95 over your previous installation.

Q. What e-mail programs automatically check the Internet mailbox periodically?

A. Eudora Pro, Outlook, and Netscape can all be configured to connect. Eudora Pro will do the dialing. For the others, you might need to get the shareware utility "Dunce" (Dial Up Networking Communications Enhancement), which will provide the "connect" click that the Microsoft Dial-Up Networking Adapter requires.

Q. I use ECI as my ISP, and was using Netscape 4.0. A business associate needed to get into SNET's Internet service. After their installation, which put Netscape 3.0 on the machine, my Netscape 4.0 stopped working. How do I fix it?

A. Reinstall Netscape 4.0. The SNET Netscape 3.0 overwrote components of your 4.0, even though the 4.0 stuff was "newer." Doing an install of 4.0 will fix it, and you will retain your address book, bookmarks, etc.

Q. Can I synchronize the address books in my AOL Mac machine and my AOL PC machine?

A. No. The formats are not quite the same and just different enough to cause a problem. Unfortunately, AOL does not provide an import/export or conversion capability.

Q. I have a Pentium into which I have installed an additional hard drive. Now my CD ROM drive, which had been D:, is H: and all of the installed software no longer finds the CD ROM drive. What can I do?

A. Partition Magic has an application called AppMover, which will search the registry, .INI files, .BAT files, etc. and change references from one drive to another. So you could use this to tell it that what had been D: is now called H:. By the way, you will find the same problem with ZIP drives. For both CD-ROM drives and ZIP drives, you can go into the control panel and specify that you want to use a particular drive letter. I use Y: for the CD-ROM drive on all of my machines, and Z: for the ZIP drive. In this way, no matter how many hard disk drives or partitions I add, or map via networking, the CD-ROM and ZIP drive are always at the same location.

Q. Does Netscape still have a free browser?

A. Yes, Netscape Communicator, which includes the browser and Web authoring tools, is available for free downloading. Communicator Pro, which has the workgroup features such as calendaring is available only via purchase.

Q. I downloaded a HP5L driver for Windows 95. Since I don't know where the download went, I don't know which program to run to "install" the update.

A. The target directory is usually specified in the TOOLS/OPTIONS/PREFERENCES of the browser. If it isn't there, and if you remember the name of the file, you will have to use START/FIND/FILES or FOLDERS, searching My Computer to do a full search.

Q. Does anyone else have problems with Microsoft FAX? It just doesn't seem to be reliable. Is there a better program out there?

A. A large number of attendees recommended that you use WinFAX Pro, from Symantec (formerly Delrina).

Q. I have an external USRobotics modem, which doesn't work the first time that I try to use it.

A. The modem must be turned on when the PC is started, since Windows does the modem initialization string during the boot sequence. You can force the reinitialization by going to My Computer/Control Panel/System/Device Manager and pressing the Refresh button. By the way, you will have a similar problem if you have a scanner and it is not turned on when you start the machine. Again, pressing the Refresh button on the Device Manager page will cause the machine to attempt to initialize all known devices. A quick way to get to the Device Manager is to right-click on My Computer, then select Properties.