dacs.doc electric

Random Access

Instant Replay: July 1999

Bruce Preston, Moderator

 

Q. My wife has an IBM Aptiva, which freezes every once in a while. Even after restarting it will freeze at the Windows clouds-and-flags screen, so I have to reload the operating system. The CD provided requires reformatting the drive. Is there a way to reload--or to repair the problem--that doesn't require complete reformatting?

A. Once you get the machine going, it was suggested that you remove the MS Office Toolbar, since it is grabbing a lot of resources. Now to resolve the problem: First, try to get into Safe Mode by tapping the F8 key several times when the machine powers up (way before you see anything about Windows). Often, just starting in Safe Mode and then restarting the machine will repair problems. Included in 98 is a utility called SCANREG, which can repair your registry or reload a previous version. After you have run it, you can then reinstall from a standard MS Windows 98 CD. You should also create a recovery diskette. You do this from My Computer/Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs. Click the Startup Disk tab and follow the directions to create the emergency recovery diskette, which will let you boot and make repairs. Another suggestion was that the Aptiva only goes into "sleep mode" if you use the power switch on the front. Try to do a full power off by using the switch in the rear of the machine.

Q. I have an old IBM ThinkPad 350. Since I can't find the system diskettes that came with it, I don't have the diskettes with the PCMCIA card support. Does anyone know where I can get the diskettes?

A. Several people offered to provide copies. In addition, you may be able to download the drivers from the IBM site: <http://www.pc.ibm.com/support?page=brand&brand=IBM+ThinkPad%7C ThinkPad+350> or try www.drivers.com, which is a user-supported index to drivers. This site doesn't maintain the drivers but provides links to the sites that do have the appropriate drivers. You need to "register" to use the site, but you may opt out of getting their e-mail newsletter and other notices.

Q. Once in a while the functionality of the buttons on my mouse gets reversed: All of a sudden the normal (left) mouse button takes on the characteristics of the right button. The mouse came with my Gateway machine. Do you have any idea why this happens and how I can prevent it?

A. The only recommendation was to make sure that you have the latest drivers for the mouse.

Q. I put Windows NT Workstation on a machine, placing it on Drive D: and now it won't boot. If I bring up the machine with another OS, I see a file called pagefile.sys on the C: drive. It is 15MB, and I don't have any room left on the drive. Can I get rid of this file?

A. You have inadvertently found the reason for the boot problem. Pagefile.sys is the swap file used by NT. Unless you specify otherwise, it goes on the first partition of the active drive, which is invariably C:. That you put NT on D: doesn't matter--the OS can be anywhere--but the boot tracks (for your boot manager) are on C:, so that's where the swap file went. And since the drive is already full, you don't have enough room for a true swap file, so you lock up. You will need to move the file to another drive, and tell NT that you did so. Take a look in boot.ini, which is a hidden file on C:, and you will probably see a pointer to it. The file should be about four times your physical RAM size. If you are running a memory-intensive application, such as PhotoShop or CorelDraw, you should have a page file of about 200MB.

Q. I am trying to move files from an old machine to a new machine using the "Direct Cable Connection," and although both machines start the application, I can't move any files.

A. A "catch" in Windows 95 Direct Cable Connection (and maybe in 98 too) is that if you are using the serial cable for the direct cable connection, both machines must be on the same serial port, i.e., both on COM1, or both on COM2. This is probably your case. If you can't switch one of the serial ports, then you will need to use the printer port configuration. Even if you can use serial port connections, you probably should use the printer port configuration, which is considerably faster. Make sure that your BIOS settings for the printer port are set to "bidirectional." Get a LapLink cable at any computer store. It will provide the special wiring for a parallel printer port to parallel printer port connection. The cable should cost less than $10. If you are going to be doing a lot of transferring, then you probably should look at getting the LapLink product by Traveling Software, since it is much more powerful than the direct connection. For example, it can synchronize files and/or folders, sending across only those files that have changed. It is wonderful for keeping your notebook drive contents in synch with your desktop machine, and includes sending only the portions of a file that have changed, if possible. There is a version of Laplink for Windows 3.x/Windows 95/Windows 98, and a version for Windows 9x/NT. If you don't have to support Windows 3.x, get the 9x/NT version. Lastly, if this is a one-time-only operation, you might see if someone has a parallel port ZIP disk drive that you can borrow.

Q. In last month's Random Access, it was mentioned that some telephone central offices are still analog. Is there a way to identify which ones? I would like to know so I can determine if I can get ISDN service.

A. The telephone company doesn't publicize this. However, if your local central office isn't digital, they will run the line from the nearest digital office at no additional charge to you.

Q. I have a Pentium 100 machine. Sometimes there is a considerable delay between a mouse movement and the machine actually performing the activity requested (such as moving a scroll bar.) What causes this and how do I fix it?

A. Internally Windows has an "message event queue," which is a list of actions that have been requested. If your applications are doing a lot of work, and/or if you have several applications running in the background, then the queue may be very deep. If you are memory bound, then each time a message is processed, it may be necessary for Windows to swap an application out of memory to the swap file, then bring in the requested application to perform the event, then return to the previous event. You can detect this if your hard disk activity light is on continuously. The first recommendation is to add memory to the machine. Defragment the hard drive. See if you can temporarily remove or disable some background applications. This might improve the situation.


Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, Inc., a consultancy specializing in database technology. In addition to moderating the Random Access sessions during the General Meeting, he is a member of the DACS Board of Directors and is the chair of the DACS MS Access SIG.

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