dacs.doc electric

Random Access

Instant Replay: August 1999

Bruce Preston, Moderator

Q. A recent article in the newspaper said that Office 97 has a security problem, especially with Pentium III’s new features? Could you comment?

A. The most common way to get a virus today is to open an attachment in a received e-mail, which allows a macro virus in the attachment to execute. The best way to prevent this is to open attachments only from people you know, only when you expect the attachment, and probably only after you have confirmed with the sender that he intended to send it. (The Melissa virus sent messages to people on the address book of an infected machine over the sender’s signature with a catchy title worded something like “Here’s the information you asked for.” Make sure that you really did ask for it.) The other potential problem mentioned may arise from remote access maintenance capabilities that allow a hardware manufacturer’s technicians to make changes to your machine. This is common with the HP Pavilion and some IBM Aptiva machines. We suggest disabling it.

Q. My machine had a Connor hard drive, which I replaced with two Maxtor hard drives. I transferred all of my files to the new drives. Now when I open My Computer / Control Panel I get an error message that complains about missing the JCCRSDNU.DLL and another resource .DLL. After I click OK, the control panel opens and all of the partitions are present plus one extra. How do I fix this?

A. There is a reference to a control panel “applette” for some device that you have probably abandoned. The control panel “applettes” are .CPL files. We suggest that you move the one that corresponds to the “extra” one to another location on the machine; then the control panel will no longer attempt to open it, and will thus not bother you with the error messages. In addition to the .CPL files, there could be a registry issue—an entry in the registry asking for the .DLL. The safest way to clean this up is to use a utility program such as Norton Utilities WinDoctor.

Q. I am currently using Windows 95. Should I upgrade to Windows 98 version - “Second Edition” - or should I go out and buy it?

A. For a Windows 95 user, Win98 SE, as it is known, is a very sound investment. It contains all of the improvements that were made between Windows 95 and the original Windows 98, and fixes the things that Windows 98 “broke” or didn’t implement well. (I personally dislike the Active Desktop and associated tie-ins to Internet Explorer 4. Win98 SE supposedly is the same as Win98 with all of the Win98 service packs installed, except that it ships with Internet Explorer 5 rather than IE 4 with all of IE4’s service packs. The best installation is a “clean install, meaning that you will also have to reinstall all of your applications so that the registry is correct. Doing this gets rid of leftover entries in the registry. One of my clients had a problem that got resolved in this way: He had a driver for a Win 3.x tape drive in his system that had not been removed when he went to Window 95, and it caused all sorts of problems. Note that Win98 SE will expect to find a previous version of Windows (3.x, 9x); it will not upgrade a bare “DOS” machine. However, you can satisfy it if you give it the setup disk(s) from a previous version.

Q. Should I load Windows NT 5.0 over my existing Win NT 4.0 w/ five service packs?

A. It is always better to load clean. This is a good reason to have a partition just for the operating system. If you can, put NT 5 into a different partition and then adjust the BOOT.INI to point to the new partition. Yes, doing a clean load (either to an old partition or to a second partition) does mean that you will have to reinstall your applications. (That doesn’t mean that you will loose your data, just that the registry information that tells Windows where to find application components will have to be rebuilt.) Please bear in mind that Windows NT 5 has not been released as of this writing.

Q. Is Windows 98 Y2K compliant?

A. For the most part, yes. You need the service pack 1 if you are running the original Windows 98. In My Computer, select “Regional Settings” and adjust the date display to four Y’s rather than two. Microsoft has a Y2K area on its Website, located off the main page at www.microsoft.com.

Q. I saw a very nice screen saver of a winter village scene with falling snow. Where can I get it?

A. Try www.softseek.com for starters. Be careful, some screen savers have been known to hog system resources and/or crash systems.

Q. I have an HP870C printer on a Windows 98 machine. It prints a blank page on startup.

A. This behavior is seen when you have one or more devices other than a printer attached to the parallel printer port (ZIP drive or scanner, for example). These devices often emulate a SCSI controller and the interrogation software for the drivers often gets misinterpreted by the printer as a request for printing a page, often consisting of only a small black diamond at the top left of the page. Some reported that the problem went away with newer drivers; others reported that defeating the “auto insert notification” property for the ZIP drive cured it.

Q. A display problem: In Control Panel / Display Properties I requested a color depth greater than 256 colors. Upon restart, the system complained and then reset itself to the lowest resolution. How do I fix it?

A. First, you must know that your display adapter can handle the resolution and color depth that you are requesting. (Color depth refers to the number of distinct colors that can be represented. The original PC CGA display had a color depth of only 16 colors, VGA displays bumped it to 256, etc.) For example, at 640x480 resolution, each dot requires 1 byte (256 colors can be defined by 1 byte), so you need 307,200 bytes of video memory. For 16-bit “Hi-Color” color you need 614,400 bytes. Since most video cards come with a minimum of 1MB of memory, a display adapter with this amount of memory can handle this resolution and these two color depths. Now look what happens if you go to 1024x768. For 1024x768 256-color you need 786,432 bytes in your video memory, still within 1MB, but for 16-bit you need 1,572,864 bytes. For more dots on the screen, or more color “depth,” you still need more video memory.

What appears to be happening with your system is that you have asked Windows to configure the adapter for a resolution that requires more memory than is available to the adapter. This could be due to any of the following:

a) the display adapter just doesn’t have the memory—empty sockets on the card;
b) faulty memory in the sockets for the higher memory area (but this would probably manifest itself as black spots on the screen);
c) for machines that use system memory for video memory (typically the case for motherboards with a videoadapter integral to the motherboard), you haven’t reserved enough memory for the video. This is done via the BIOS setup: a machine with 32MB of system memory, for example, may report only 31MB of memory available to the system, with 1MB allocated to video;
d) a faulty display driver. Note that just because Windows permits you to select a resolution doesn’t mean that it is available to you. It may be that your display adapter hardware can support it if it has enough onboard video memory.

Q. I downloaded the wrong Visioneer scanner drivers, and now I can’t put the proper one in.

A. Delete the entire “PaperPort” directory (folder). Delete the scanner from My Computer/Control Panel/System/Device Manager. Shut down the computer and restart. Install the new drivers.

Q. I have a frequent flyer mileage account. I need to delete from a Win 3.1 machine the “cookie” for it that has my old registration number. I can’t find a way to do this.

A. If you are using Netscape, the cookie is in a .TXT file COOKIES.TXT. Move it and Netscape will create a new (empty) file. This of course deletes all of you cookies. Alternatively, I like “Cookie Master 2” downloaded from Ziff-Davis Interactive, or from the author’s site, www.barefootinc.com. I think it was freeware. It understands both IE and Netscape’s cookie structure, and lets you work with individual cookies, letting you see who put it there, who can see it, its contents (good luck on some) and when it is due to expire. I have one cookie from amazon.com that expects to live until 3:01AM, Tuesday Jan 1, 2036. Yeah, right.

Q. I have a problem with AOL e-mail - it deleted my old mail.

A. AOL (and other e-mail systems) provide a mechanism whereby you may read your mail but leave it on the server. This is intended primarily as a convenience for travelers so that they can see their mail by using someone else’s machine or a portable, but then have the real copy in their main machine. The mail provider expects that you download the mail to your real machine as soon as possibl—they are providing a mail service, not a long-term storage facility. It appears that your mail storage exceeded your allocation space, so the old stuff got deleted. Examine the settings for your AOL account, specifically the “Flash Mail” area.

Q. Does Windows 95 have a Y2K problem?

A. Go to www.microsoft.com site, and follow links to their Y2K area for a description. You can find test utilities at Yahoo!, and a very good and free hardware utility at National Software Testing Laboratories. Look for YMARK2000. This is a Read only program; you need to boot to DOS and run it. It does not write anything to your disk but will tell you if you have problems with various chips (BIOS, etc.) in your machine, and what might be done about them. There are various “severity” things found; for example, some machines might have a problem “roll over” to the year 2000, and rolling over to 1900 instead. If you reset the clock (once) on Jan 1, 2000 (or thereafter) they will be OK. Others have problems with leap years, etc., and might require a BIOS change. One user complained that the Symantec Norton 2000 utility did something that he didn’t like: It made changes to his system before it did its analysis.

Random Access

Instant Replay: August 1999

*Bruce Preston, Moderator*
Q. A recent article in the newspaper said that Office 97 has a security problem, especially with Pentium III’s new features? Could you comment? A. The most common way to get a virus today is to open an attachment in a received e-mail, which allows a macro virus in the attachment to execute. The best way to prevent this is to open attachments only from people you know, only when you expect the attachment, and probably only after you have confirmed with the sender that he intended to send it. (The Melissa virus sent messages to people on the address book of an infected machine over the sender’s signature with a catchy title worded something like “Here’s the information you asked for.” Make sure that you really did ask for it.) The other potential problem mentioned may arise from remote access maintenance capabilities that allow a hardware manufacturer’s technicians to make changes to your machine. This is common with the HP Pavilion and some IBM Aptiva machines. We suggest disabling it. Q. My machine had a Connor hard drive, which I replaced with two Maxtor hard drives. I transferred all of my files to the new drives. Now when I open My Computer / Control Panel I get an error message that complains about missing the JCCRSDNU.DLL and another resource .DLL. After I click OK, the control panel opens and all of the partitions are present plus one extra. How do I fix this? A. There is a reference to a control panel “applette” for some device that you have probably abandoned. The control panel “applettes” are .CPL files. We suggest that you move the one that corresponds to the “extra” one to another location on the machine; then the control panel will no longer attempt to open it, and will thus not bother you with the error messages. In addition to the .CPL files, there could be a registry issue—an entry in the registry asking for the .DLL. The safest way to clean this up is to use a utility program such as Norton Utilities WinDoctor. Q. I am currently using Windows 95. Should I upgrade to Windows 98 version - “Second Edition” - or should I go out and buy it? A. For a Windows 95 user, Win98 SE, as it is known, is a very sound investment. It contains all of the improvements that were made between Windows 95 and the original Windows 98, and fixes the things that Windows 98 “broke” or didn’t implement well. (I personally dislike the Active Desktop and associated tie-ins to Internet Explorer 4. Win98 SE supposedly is the same as Win98 with all of the Win98 service packs installed, except that it ships with Internet Explorer 5 rather than IE 4 with all of IE4’s service packs. The best installation is a “clean install, meaning that you will also have to reinstall all of your applications so that the registry is correct. Doing this gets rid of leftover entries in the registry. One of my clients had a problem that got resolved in this way: He had a driver for a Win 3.x tape drive in his system that had not been removed when he went to Window 95, and it caused all sorts of problems. Note that Win98 SE will expect to find a previous version of Windows (3.x, 9x); it will not upgrade a bare “DOS” machine. However, you can satisfy it if you give it the setup disk(s) from a previous version. Q. Should I load Windows NT 5.0 over my existing Win NT 4.0 w/ five service packs? A. It is always better to load clean. This is a good reason to have a partition just for the operating system. If you can, put NT 5 into a different partition and then adjust the BOOT.INI to point to the new partition. Yes, doing a clean load (either to an old partition or to a second partition) does mean that you will have to reinstall your applications. (That doesn’t mean that you will loose your data, just that the registry information that tells Windows where to find application components will have to be rebuilt.) Please bear in mind that Windows NT 5 has not been released as of this writing. Q. Is Windows 98 Y2K compliant? A. For the most part, yes. You need the service pack 1 if you are running the original Windows 98. In My Computer, select “Regional Settings” and adjust the date display to four Y’s rather than two. Microsoft has a Y2K area on its Website, located off the main page at www.microsoft.com. Q. I saw a very nice screen saver of a winter village scene with falling snow. Where can I get it? A. Try www.softseek.com for starters. Be careful, some screen savers have been known to hog system resources and/or crash systems. Q. I have an HP870C printer on a Windows 98 machine. It prints a blank page on startup. A. This behavior is seen when you have one or more devices other than a printer attached to the parallel printer port (ZIP drive or scanner, for example). These devices often emulate a SCSI controller and the interrogation software for the drivers often gets misinterpreted by the printer as a request for printing a page, often consisting of only a small black diamond at the top left of the page. Some reported that the problem went away with newer drivers; others reported that defeating the “auto insert notification” property for the ZIP drive cured it. Q. A display problem: In Control Panel / Display Properties I requested a color depth greater than 256 colors. Upon restart, the system complained and then reset itself to the lowest resolution. How do I fix it? A. First, you must know that your display adapter can handle the resolution and color depth that you are requesting. (Color depth refers to the number of distinct colors that can be represented. The original PC CGA display had a color depth of only 16 colors, VGA displays bumped it to 256, etc.) For example, at 640x480 resolution, each dot requires 1 byte (256 colors can be defined by 1 byte), so you need 307,200 bytes of video memory. For 16-bit “Hi-Color” color you need 614,400 bytes. Since most video cards come with a minimum of 1MB of memory, a display adapter with this amount of memory can handle this resolution and these two color depths. Now look what happens if you go to 1024x768. For 1024x768 256-color you need 786,432 bytes in your video memory, still within 1MB, but for 16-bit you need 1,572,864 bytes. For more dots on the screen, or more color “depth,” you still need more video memory. What appears to be happening with your system is that you have asked Windows to configure the adapter for a resolution that requires more memory than is available to the adapter. This could be due to any of the following: a) the display adapter just doesn’t have the memory—empty sockets on the card; b) faulty memory in the sockets for the higher memory area (but this would probably manifest itself as black spots on the screen); c) for machines that use system memory for video memory (typically the case for motherboards with a videoadapter integral to the motherboard), you haven’t reserved enough memory for the video. This is done via the BIOS setup: a machine with 32MB of system memory, for example, may report only 31MB of memory available to the system, with 1MB allocated to video; d) a faulty display driver. Note that just because Windows permits you to select a resolution doesn’t mean that it is available to you. It may be that your display adapter hardware can support it if it has enough onboard video memory. Q. I downloaded the wrong Visioneer scanner drivers, and now I can’t put the proper one in. A. Delete the entire “PaperPort” directory (folder). Delete the scanner from My Computer/Control Panel/System/Device Manager. Shut down the computer and restart. Install the new drivers. Q. I have a frequent flyer mileage account. I need to delete from a Win 3.1 machine the “cookie” for it that has my old registration number. I can’t find a way to do this. A. If you are using Netscape, the cookie is in a .TXT file COOKIES.TXT. Move it and Netscape will create a new (empty) file. This of course deletes all of you cookies. Alternatively, I like “Cookie Master 2” downloaded from Ziff-Davis Interactive, or from the author’s site, www.barefootinc.com. I think it was freeware. It understands both IE and Netscape’s cookie structure, and lets you work with individual cookies, letting you see who put it there, who can see it, its contents (good luck on some) and when it is due to expire. I have one cookie from amazon.com that expects to live until 3:01AM, Tuesday Jan 1, 2036. Yeah, right. Q. I have a problem with AOL e-mail - it deleted my old mail. A. AOL (and other e-mail systems) provide a mechanism whereby you may read your mail but leave it on the server. This is intended primarily as a convenience for travelers so that they can see their mail by using someone else’s machine or a portable, but then have the real copy in their main machine. The mail provider expects that you download the mail to your real machine as soon as possibl—they are providing a mail service, not a long-term storage facility. It appears that your mail storage exceeded your allocation space, so the old stuff got deleted. Examine the settings for your AOL account, specifically the “Flash Mail” area. Q. Does Windows 95 have a Y2K problem? A. Go to www.microsoft.com site, and follow links to their Y2K area for a description. You can find test utilities at Yahoo!, and a very good and free hardware utility at National Software Testing Laboratories. Look for YMARK2000. This is a Read only program; you need to boot to DOS and run it. It does not write anything to your disk but will tell you if you have problems with various chips (BIOS, etc.) in your machine, and what might be done about them. There are various “severity” things found; for example, some machines might have a problem “roll over” to the year 2000, and rolling over to 1900 instead. If you reset the clock (once) on Jan 1, 2000 (or thereafter) they will be OK. Others have problems with leap years, etc., and might require a BIOS change. One user complained that the Symantec Norton 2000 utility did something that he didn’t like: It made changes to his system before it did its analysis.

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.