An Index to Information on Installing Windows 98

Copyright by Ray Woodcock 2000

Introduction
This is a front end for the 326-page document entitled How I Spent Three
Months Installing Windows 98. (Ill refer to that huge document as the Epic
here.) Point links in this document (e.g., point 100) will take you to sections of
the Epic, while reference links (e.g., PartitionMagic) will let you jump around
among the headings in this document. Bear in mind that How I Spent Three
Months contains errors as well as insights, and that this front end echoes some of
those errors because they still provide useful information.
Note the following:

Because of the size of How I Spent Three Months, links may not work right on
the first try.
Links in this document, which is a complete document, supersede links in the
Three Months document, which was a first draft. That is, you may obtain
useful information by following those links, but be sure to check back here.
You may have better luck getting right to a specific point in Three Months if
you set your browser so that it does not refresh every webpage you visit,
every time you visit it. In Internet Explorer, thats under Tools | Internet
Options | General | Settings. Note that the | symbol divides a command,
menu option, or other choice from the next one. In that example, click on
Tools, look for Internet Options, then look for the General tab, and finally for
the Settings button.
Entries here are generally not redundant. That is, important entries about
one item may appear only under another, and you may find them only by
pursuing the links that appear under the first item. So you may have to use
the See also links and also the links that appear in the individual entries,
because I would remove an item from See also as soon as I wrote an actual
(usually non-redundant) entry that mentioned it. Be sure to click on the
individual word that matters to you, because a single entry may contain links
to several different items.
Although I have tried to arrange the main headings in a logical order, the
quantity of material here can quickly overwhelm you. The links are there to
help. Dont let them take you into deep water when its not really where you
want to be.
It was impossible to arrange everything by precise logic. There are just too
many cross-references.

Note, finally, that I have abbreviated items in some places. For instance, when
HP appears under the Hardware Profile heading, it does not refer to
Hewlett-Packard.

Where To Obtain Files

This document refers to many different programs. Some are commercial
programs on which you can obtain competitive prices through CNET.com or
pricewatch.com. A few are batch files I wrote myself. Some come with
Windows; you can find out which by using Find File. You can probably obtain
most of the others by using the following sources, some of which offer somewhat
useful reviews and/or ratings of the programs: ZDnet.com, Tucows.com,
CNET.com. To search for obscure files, try AltaVista, Fast FTP, Lycos, or Filez. If
you cant get online at present, work through the following steps until you reach
the point where weve got you hooked up and online.
*****
Before Turning the Computer On: A Few Fundamental Hardware Issues
Using Two Computers requires you to configure two sets of hardware items. It
doesnt require twice as much time for software installation, however, because
you can mostly use the same setup on both machines. Having a second
computer, even an inexpensive one, can greatly shorten your downtime when
your main computer fails; this way, you have a way of going online to find out
whats wrong with the main computer. Your second computer can also handle
some tasks that would otherwise tie up your main computer, and can give you a
place to try out questionable software.
If you decide to build one or more computers rather than buy them, you may
save yourself from endless hardware and software headaches over the next few
years by buying a mainstream, highly recommended Motherboard and
Processor. For information on your Processor, try a program like WCPUID.
Also, each time you open your computer, blow out the dust with some
compressed air. Be sure to blow out the dust that collects around the cooling fan
on the Processor. Blowing dust around with your mouth can help some, but you
risk spitting on things; and even if youre really windy, you wont have the same
blowpower. Trust me; I know some people who really blow.

Finally, by Overclocking your CPU and learning how to tinker with your basic
hardware in other ways, you may be able to make a noticeable improvement in
both your computers speed and its risk of malfunctioning.
Using Two Computers
See also AMD, PENTIUM.
Swapped Drives containing DriveImage files to restore Win98: point 58.
PENTIUM
One of the two computers used in testing these various programs.
See also AMD.
AMD
One of the two computers used in testing these various programs.
See also PENTIUM.
Motherboard
See also USB, DMA, Overclocking, AGP, Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem,
PCI Communication Device, IRQ Routing, BIOS, Sound Card, Card, ISA, Soyo,
WCPUID.
Used the Soyo 5EHM in this case; same motherboard comes in different versions:
point 107(a).
Recently replaced: point 59.
Store sold me motherboard with not-for-sale ROM: point 107(a).
Downloadable AGP Driver: point 107(c).
Used the ETEQ 82C6638AT/6629 AGP chipset: point 107(d).
Online manual: point 107(d).
Only needed IRQ Routing Driver and AGP Driver: point 107(g).
Audio effect of positioning Sound Card in slot: point 157.
Had the recommended CE build: point 107(d).
Older motherboards can use newer Drivers: point 107.
Decided I did not need DOS All-in-One Driver: point 107(g).
Upgrading motherboard can cause Disk Translation problem: point 59.
CPU
See Processor.
Processor
Same as CPU.
Different from Word Processor.
See also Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility, WCPUID, Cache, Overclocking.
Use unknown Performance Monitor to decide if you need a faster processor:
point 160.

Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility

See also WCPUID.
Useful only on Intel CPUs: point 245.
Extremely slow installation: point 245.
Provided details about Processor: point 245.
My Processor was too primitive for it: point 245.
Overclocking
Refers to tinkering with Motherboard settings to run CPU faster.
Required a time investment to yield a faster computer: point 134(v).
Would reduce system stability: point 134(v).
Might not yield enough time savings to justify the effort: point 134(v), point 288.
System clock frequency information from WCPUID: point 248.
Could make a real difference in Performance: point 288.
Motherboard was built for it: point 288.
Imposed some additional expense and risk of damage to computer: point 288.
Source of new system bugs: point 288.
Might be fun when I could gamble with the hardware: point 288.
Compressed Air
Highly recommended for cleaning out the inside of the computer whenever you
open it: point 184.
Soyo
See also PCI Communication Device.
Manufactured my Motherboard, the Soyo 5EHM: point 107(d).
No working E-mail address on Soyo website: point 107(g).
Website unclear as to which Drivers I needed: point 107.

Turning on the Computer: What You Notice Before Windows

When you turn on a PC, its BIOS kicks in. The BIOS is based in the ROM on the
Motherboard. Your computer probably gives you a way to go into the BIOS
Setup menu, although you may have to read your owners manual to find out
how to do that if the instructions dont automatically appear on your screen
when you turn the computer on.
BIOS
See also CTBIOS, TweakBIOS, Command Prompt Mode.
Short (I think) for Basic Input/Output System.
Change options through BIOS Setup.
Information available during Startup: point 107(a).
Pause key allows copying information during Startup: point 107(a).
4

BIOS upgrade can affect Disk Translation: point 59.

Hard Disk problem may trigger CMOS checksum error: point 82.
Update by using downloads from Motherboard manufacturers site: point
107(a).
Common reasons to update BIOS: New Hardware, fix bugs that prevent Win98
from running properly, or enable Plug-N-Play features: point 107(a).
BIOS update might prevent CD-ROM Drive / Audio crashes: point 113(f).
BIOS Setup
See also USB, DMA, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, BIOS.
PNP/PCI Configuration option: point 232.
How to change: point 9, point 179.
Contains Power Management setting for Modem IRQ: point 206, point 232, point
281.
Tells computer to look for Startup commands on Floppy or other Drive: point 9.
May not always observe your instructions re disk to boot from: point 9, point 77,
point 79, point 84.
Hard Disk will intervene and not let CD boot if Win98 is bootable from Hard
Disk: point 87.
Will try to boot CD-ROM Drive if no program files on Hard Disk: point 114.
Place to indicate which Drive is primary master: point 81.
Contains Plug-N-Play settings: point 99.
Setting to make bootup faster and riskier: point 118.
Can boot into Real DOS by setting BIOS to boot from Bootable Floppy: point
120(al).
PNP/PCI Configuration settings: point 232.
Advice to leave ACPI setting alone: point 232.
Changed ACPI anyway: point 281.
Legacy settings as opposed to Plug-N-Play: point 281.
Changed settings make system barely able to reboot: point 281.
TweakBIOS
See also Freeware.
Allows you to configure your BIOS: point 134(v).
Reports suggested it might really improve Performance: point 134(v).
Decided it would require more time and instability than I could justify: point
134(v).
ROM
Short for Read-Only Memory.
See also Motherboard.
For practical purposes, not really related to CD-ROM Drive.

Setting Up Your Hard Disk Before Installing Windows

You can make life easier for yourself by setting up a couple of Partitions for
different purposes on your Hard Disk before installing Windows. The classic
program for this purpose is the FDISK program, which is a standard DOS utility.
A better tool is PartitionMagic, which can do things that FDISK cant. For
instance, PartitionMagic can change the sizes of your Partitions without harming
your data. PartitionMagic, too, can run in DOS. After creating a Partition with
FDISK, you need to use Format to make it usable; PartitionMagic includes a
built-in formatting capability.
If you dont yet have DOS installed because, say, its a brand-new Hard Disk,
you will find that the Win98 installation process allows you to create a Win98
Emergency Boot Disk. Using this Floppy Disk with the appropriate BIOS Setup,
you can start your system in a basic DOS mode and can run these DOS-based
tools. Running these programs does not require you to know much about DOS;
the programs tend to simplify things. Your initial run of the Win98 installation
process can be temporary and/or incomplete, if all you want from it is to collect
these tools for setting up the Hard Disk for the real Win98 installation.
Hard Disks rarely fail physically, but their logical layouts can become hopeless
messed up. The Norton Utilities software can cause a lot of problems on a
Windows system, but the longtime favorite Norton Disk Doctor may be superior
to the ScanDisk program that comes with Win98. Either program is able to sort
out at least some of the confusion that might appear in the basic logical structure
of a Hard Disk. SpinRite may be superior to both, but I cannot personally attest
to that, since I have not used it.
You should take a run through a used Hard Disk with some such disk utility
program before beginning to build a new system on it. In the process, you may
come across disk problems that require the use of tools like DISKEDIT or
PARTINFO.EXE. Later, your efforts to recover data from a Hard Disk gone bad
may require an investment in a program like Lost & Found. You may also have
Disk Translation errors calling for special solutions. Finally, if you want to run
Win98 with another Operating System, such as Linux, now is the time to look
into Drive Overlay software like BootMagic, which you may prefer in some cases
to the LILO program that comes with Linux. I think you may still be able to get
BootMagic bundled in with PartitionMagic and perhaps other PowerQuest
programs.
Hard Disk

See also Partition, Defragmenting, Linux, Disk Translation, Real DOS, RAM
Drive, Lost & Found, many other headings.
System Information | Components | Storage calls hard disk generic: point
106.
System allows two primary and two secondary IDE Drives, one of each a master
and the other a slave device: point 171.
Tape Backup Drive used one of the secondary IDE slots: point 171.
DMA settings under Disk Drives: point 113(f).
Used dentists mirror to find model number: point 173.
Proper Driver would eliminate generic Hard Disk indicator: point 107.
Files on Hard Disk are vulnerable to operator error or program malfunction:
point 28.
Not as tough in cold and humidity as a CD: point 28.
Tougher than a CD in direct sunlight: point 28.
Thrashing stopped by rebooting into DOS: point 269(m).
Physical damage may come from power failure or may signify failing disk: point
84.
Lost data might be recoverable by someone who knows what theyre doing:
point 59.
Not sure whether I needed to drill holes through Hard Disk to make it
nonaccessible: point 256(b).
Bad HD source of many freezes: point 81, point 82.
Manufacturers HD diagnostics: point 242(g).
Recommended to use faster hard disk to hold Win98 files: point 256.
Weird experiences with Western Digital: point 256(b).
May have to change jumpers when installing HD: point 256(c).
Weak power supply was probably the cause of HD malfunction: point 256(e).
Error: Cannot copy OMI9: Access is denied: point 258(b).
Zero Fill Utility tests HD and wipes private data: point 290.
Partition
Part or all of a Hard Disk. Partitioning software (e.g., PartitionMagic or FDISK)
divides Hard Disk into one or more primary or extended partitions; extended
partitions contain one or more logical disk Drives. Example: on primary Hard
Disk in my computer, there is a primary partition containing Drive (i.e.,
partition) C and an extended partition, and the extended partition contains two
logical Drives D and E.
See also Drive H (SWAP), Recycle Bin, Hidden Partition, FAT32.
Sizes of Partitions: see MSINFO32.
Minimum Partition size larger in FAT32 than in FAT: point 256(c).
FDISK
See also PartitionMagic, Partition.

Same general GoBack problems as PartitionMagic.

An essential DOS Hard Disk utility: point 5.
Used to check disk: point 19.
Used to set partition active: point 22.
Included on Win98 Emergency Boot Disk.
Used to remove all partitions: point 81.
Used to create logical Drive in extended partition: point 242(e).
Stalled on bad disk with verifying integrity message: point 242(e).
Maybe different results with Win98 version of FDISK: point 242(f).
Reported Type 44 partition as non-DOS: point 256(d).
Used to create FAT16 primary partition: point 256(e).
Used to delete logical Drive with no volume name: point 258(c).
Works in Real DOS only: point 262(b).
Used to create primary partition: point 334.
PartitionMagic
See also Partition, Hidden Partition, Norton AntiVirus 2000, Norton Disk Doctor,
PowerQuest.
Recommended: point 2, point 115.
Created partitions without affecting existing data: point 2.
Provided files worth having on Floppy: point 5(h).
Minimum FAT32 partition size = 260 MB: point 11, point 242(f).
Floppy form: point 16.
Allowed partitioning any time: point 32.
Came with multipurpose Mouse Driver: point 58.
Had to use FDISK instead: point 60, point 81, point 258(c).
Resized partition on the fly: point 60, point 237.
Balked at resizing primary partition: point 60.
Included in the programs in DOS_UTIL folder on Bootable CD: point 64.
Inadequate check of bad disk: point 66.
Hung up on bad disk: point 66.
Provided information on partition sizes: point 77, point 135, point 156(a)
Problem with write-protected Floppy: point 78.
Came with DOS version: point 81, point 115.
Freeze in possible weak power supply situation: point 81.
Required Real DOS: point 82.
May not be able to move itself: point 84.
Very slow at handling bad partition: point 84, point 114.
Used to create BADSPACE partition to isolate bad blocks: point 84.
Had to use Norton Disk Doctor to get PM to work: point 114.
Couldnt cancel out once stuck on bad Drive: point 114.
First non-Microsoft utility installed on new system: point 115.
Came with MagicMover: point 115.

Confusing MagicMover installation: point 115.

Installation of DriveImage and PartitionMagic required 20 MB: point 115.
Could rearrange partitions on the fly: point 168.
Could trash disk if used with Norton AntiVirus 2000: point 195.
Upgrade from version 4.0 may fix NAV 2000 Conflict: point 208.
Didnt fix boot record problem: point 214.
Couldnt use while GoBack was active: point 228, point 237.
Special AUTOEXEC makes DOS version the only option: point 237, point 269(f).
Could hide and unhide partitions: point 239.
Extremely slow in bad sector: point 239.
Could create Linux or HPFS partition: point 242(a).
Created partition in slightly wrong place: point 242(d).
Preferred to use FDISK instead: point 242(f).
GoBack blocked PM even on screwed-up disk: point 256(b).
Must Uninstall GoBack before using PM: point 256(c).
Reported disk locked by GoBack as Type 44: point 256(d).
GoBack (or possibly PM) corrupted a partition: point 256(f), point 258(d).
Froze instead of handling free space after last partition: point 258(c).
Could do numerous things all at once: point 258(c).
Corrupt Directory after PM/GoBack combination: point 258(d).
Had finished when it said it hadnt: point 258(d).
PM killed GoBack historical records: point 269(g).
Error: Partition table error # 108 -- Linux or Disk Translation error: point 59.
Error trying to create batch file: point 60.
Error # 600: Error trying to create batch file: point 78.
Error # 45: CRC error in data -- on bad disk: point 83, point 84.
Partition table error # 121 found: point 114.
Error: Write fault: point 242(d).
Error: The file could not be opened: point 258(d).
Win98 Emergency Boot Disk
See also FDISK, Bootable Floppy, ZIP.
Also known as EBD, Windows Startup Floppy.
Created during Win98 install or from third tab in Add/Remove Programs: point
8.
Files apparently stored in C:\Windows\Command\EBD: point 314(e).
Created RAM Drive as temporary place to hold its utilities: point 65, point
269(l).
Didn't enable the Mouse: point 64.
Didnt fully understand how that floppy worked: point 64.
Incorporated numerous utilities and Drivers: point 57.
I added other utilities: point 57.
Decided against advice of removing Drivers from EBD: point 57.

Ready-made to work with wide variety of CD-ROM Drives: point 8, point 57.
Creates a RAM Drive containing many DOS utilities: point 8.
Problem creating RAM Drive: point 204.
May want to add utilities to EBD: point 8, point 57.
Doesnt contain XCOPY, but maybe thats not important: point 13, point 57.
Was able to make system recognize Yamaha CD-ROM Drive but not boot from it:
point 189.
Norton
See Symantec, Norton Utilities, Norton Disk Doctor, Norton AntiVirus 2000,
Norton SpeedDisk.
Avoided using Norton software generally as source of crashes: point 16, point
300(e).
Made an exception for their No-Install Programs, especially Norton Disk Doctor,
and for Norton AntiVirus 2000.
Norton Disk Doctor
See also GoBack, PartitionMagic, Norton.
Is a No-Install Program.
One of the Norton Utilities: point 78.
Error: Do you want to revive this partition?: point 256(d).
Error: Damaged beyond repair: point 256(f).
Error: Boot Record Program is invalid: point 214.
Detected bad Floppy: point 107(g).
Better in-depth tool than ScanDisk: point 78.
Offered to revive free space not yet assigned to Partition: point 84.
Preferred to use PartitionMagic rather than NDD to revive free space: point 84.
Wasnt sure what effect NDD would have on free space: point 84.
NDD finds and fixed numerous problems and marks many bad blocks: point 84.
Apparently marks bad blocks in a way ScanDisk can detect: point 84.
Unlike ScanDisk, did not offer to move data away from risky part of disk: point
84.
Identified location of bad blocks to be stored in Hidden Partition: point 114.
Made Drive accessible to PartitionMagic: point 114, point 177.
Faster and better than PartitionMagic at scrutinizing bad sectors: point 240.
Had failed to detect problems on a decaying disk: point 114.
Thorough test could take many times longer than standard test: point 176.
Couldnt figure out how to mark whole section of disk as bad: point 240.
Doesnt work just on portions of a partition: point 240.
Had slight problem with Partition that was too small: point 256(c).
DOS version of NDD not comfortable with FAT32 Drive: point 256(e).
Fixed lost cluster and free space problems: point 269(o).
Takes an hour and a half to examine a large partition: point 240.

10

Hidden Partition
See also Norton Disk Doctor.
Can create using PartitionMagic: point 84.
Doesnt disturb order of other Hard Disk letters: point 84.
Used to keep bad disk areas away from active Partitions: point 84, point 114.
Converting to visible Partition: point 242(a).
Symantec
Company that bought Norton Utilities from Peter Norton and, in my opinion,
degraded the quality of a formerly fine set of system tools.
See Symantec WinFax, Norton.
Norton Utilities
See also Norton, Dismantling Drive C.
Avoided using NU because of problems associated with it: point 240.
Might never have installed NU if I had researched complaints first: point 141(d).
Removed from system to keep it from invading everything: point 176.
NU adds troublesome lines to the Registry: point 123.
Performed unwanted operations on disk I was trying to preserve: point 30.
Preferred to use Maintenance Wizard to try to get away from using Norton:
point 105(g).
Norton CrashGuard got lots of complaints from users: point 139(b).
Full installation used 69 MB: point 240.
NU Help doesnt advise on using DISKEDIT: point 240.
Installation process creates emergency boot floppies: point 78.
Emergency boot floppies contain Norton Disk Doctor: point 78.
Some utilities seem to change system workings even when run as Standalones:
point 240.
Run from CD option limited to Norton Disk Doctor, WinDoctor, UnErase, and
WipeInfo: point 240.
NU Standalones: NDIAGS, DISKEDIT, NDD, UNERASE, and UNFORMAT:
point 240.
Nortons System Checker replaced by CHECKLINKS.EXE: point 119(a).
Image option created unwanted Image files on each partition: point 170.
Could not use InCtrl4 to track changes made by NU installation: point 240.
Nortons WIPEINFO removes data from disks: point 256(b).
SpinRite
See also OptOut.
Might have been able to solve special disk problem: point 242(g).
ScanDisk

11

See also GoBack, DriveImage, MSINFO32, Disk Defragmenter, Bootable Floppy,

SCANDSKW, FAT32.
Failed at first to cure DriveImage error # 2005: point 67, point 78.
Runs automatically after improper Shutdown: point 81.
Froze, perhaps due to Registry problem caused by another program: point 125.
Ran very slowly: point 269(o).
Stalled during check of File System: point 84.
Used Norton Disk Doctor instead of SD for faster and better results: point 84.
Offered to move data to safe place but could not do it: point 84.
Might change settings in SCANDISK.INI to do better quality test: point 124.
Task Scheduler runs SD thorough exam on each Partition separately: point
105(g).
Command Line options: point 19, point 84.
Surface scan: point 78.
Custom option: point 78.
Custom option allows you to examine cluster repeatedly: point 124.
Custom option cant coexist with some other Command Line options: point 125.
SD ran a long time: point 78.
Said it fixed the Directory structure: point 78.
Hard Disk problems not detected in ScanDisk: point 78.
Sat for a long time on one cluster: point 84.
Error: encountered a data error while reading the FAT entry for cluster: point
84.
Error: Hard Disk has sustained physical damage: point 84, point 114.
DOS version of SD nearly stalls at same place as Win98 version: point 114.
Increased number of bad clusters in SD suggests that Hard Disk is dying: point
114.
Error: Write fault error reading drive C: point 114.
Ignoring advice to use SD on Partition Formatted by Windows Explorer: point
242(g).
System freezes after running SD on troubled Hard Disk: point 256(d).
Repeated SD freezes suggest the problem is not just a Win98 problem: point 81.
SCANDSKW
Version of ScanDisk designed to run in DOS Box: point 124.
Reformatting
See Format.
Format
See also Bootable Floppy, Disk Translation, GoBack, Windows Explorer, Context
Menu, Norton Utilities, Links Toolbar, FAT32, SYS.COM, ScanDisk, Disk Format,
DIR Command.

12

Format.com is a Command Line program that prepares disks.

Can prepare nonworking Partitions to work with DOS and Windows: point 5(d).
Format.com uses SYS.COM to make a partition bootable: point 5(d).
Wipes out everything on the specified disk: point 5(a), point 86.
Can make disk bootable: point 14.
Determine disk Format through Context Menu option for Properties: point
242(f).
CD Formats: see DriveImage, Easy CD Creator, DirectCD, CD,
File Formats: see PowerDesk, Twain, TIF, JPG, GIF, Help, ZIP, UNZIP, Graphics,
Icon.
Audio Formats: see MP3, WAV, Encoder, Audio CD.
Command Line options for Format.com: point 19.
Format.com error: Trying to recover allocation unit: point 242(e).
Format.com error: Not ready. Format terminated: point 242(e).
Format.com error: Invalid media type: point 242(g).
DISKEDIT
See also DOS Commands.
A DOS utility included with Norton Utilities: point 240.
PARTINFO.EXE
See also MORE.EXE.
Included with PowerQuest products: point 59.
Interesting program; provided information on Hard Disk problems: point 59.
Put a copy of this program onto Super Boot Floppy: point 59.
Lost & Found
Free demo available from PowerQuest website: point 59.
Claims to recover almost any file from any Hard Disk that is still spinning: point
59.
Demo is Shareware; just shows you how it would fix the problem: point 59.
Program that will actually fix the problem costs $70: point 59.
Runs in Windows to create DOS floppies: point 59.
Display reacted weirdly when I first used their floppies: point 59.
Required another Drive to which it would save recovered data: point 59.
Crashed with a "general protection fault" error: point 59.
Finally ran; took half-hour; sure enough, it showed the names of my "lost" files:
point 59.
Disk Translation
See PartitionMagic, BIOS.
The process that allows computer to see Hard Disk larger than 500MB: point 59.
Uses an interface between Hard Disk and BIOS: point 59.

13

Changing DT requires Hard Disk Reformatting: point 59.

Changing DT without Reformatting causes partition table errors: point 59.
Moving Hard Disk to another system can cause DT problem: point 59.
Partition table error may be sign of DT problem: point 59.
Invalid media type error may be sign of DT problem: point 59.
Invalid system disk error may be sign of DT problem: point 59.
Re-detecting Hard Disk can cause DT problem: point 59.
Mis-jumpering Hard Disk might cause DT problem: point 59.
BootMagic
See also PowerQuest.
Allowed me to choose to choose between Win98 and Linux: point 59.
Disk overlay software; runs before Operating System begins: point 59.
Like Drive Overlay software: point 59.
No longer appearing on problem disk: point 59.
Ideas for testing whether BootMagic is the problem: point 59.
Drive Overlay
Also known as disk management software.
Software that allows Operating System to use Hard Disks larger than BIOS
would permit: point 59.
Can cause Disk Translation problem: point 59.
Disk Manager
See Drive Overlay.
Operating System
See DOS, Win98, Linux, MSDOS.SYS, BootMagic, DOS Modes, Drive Overlay,
Real DOS, BOOT_MGR.BAT, Bootable Floppy, X-Setup.
Text files containing printouts of Registry showing current state of system: point
149(b).
Disliked Win98 as an OS: point 342.
From an OS, I wanted clarity, structure, and flexibility: point 342.
I wanted to reinstall OS without having to reinstall everything else: point 342.
Wanted to have all of the files related to a program located in one place: point
342.
Wanted to be able to form a list of files that would change: point 342.
Wanted to stick with a relatively mature OS rather than being on the forefront:
point 344.
Guessed that Microsofts future OS would continue to be somewhat chaotic:
point 345.
I would upgrade to a newer Microsoft OS only when I saw a real benefit from it:
point 345.

14

Linux
See also PartitionMagic, BootMagic.
An Operating System: point 59.
Linux experiment messed up Hard Disk: point 59.
Problem may have been due to bad Hard Disk: point 79.
Ran Win98 on Drive C and Linux on Drive D: point 59.
Decided that I would probably be going towards Linux sometime in the future:
point 59.
Couldnt justify Linux yet; too much Windows-based software that I liked and
needed: point 59.
Linux Partition would have been invisible to Win98: point 242(a).
PowerQuest
See also Mouse.
Makers of BootMagic, PartitionMagic, MagicMover, DriveImage, Lost & Found,
PARTINFO.EXE.
Using their website and tech support: point 59.

Recommended Hard Disk Partitions for Win98

One of the Original Ideas was to put Win98 on Drive C and to put all my other
program files on Drive D. I liked this advice because I had the impression that
Linux was capable of putting different kinds of program files on different Drives.
In the Win98 context, this does not work. Even if you use a specialty program
like X-Setup (which we will get to a bit later) to tell the system to put program
files in D:\Program Files, you will find that some program files still land in
C:\Program Files instead. This means that you can have duplicate folders and
that the main program will be on one Drive while the update lands on the other.
A better approach is to set up Drive D to hold certain folders, mostly unused,
and combine all of your Operating System and program files on Drive C. The
ordinary Win98 installation creates several folders that may become more
familiar as you tinker with your system more. These include
C:\Windows\Command, the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory, the
C:\Windows\INF Folder, and C:\Windows\System.
One of the most important things going on Drive D will be the \WIN98 Folder.
This folder gets used during the initial installation and at times when you are
installing other things. It doesnt change, and it doesnt need to be regularly
backed up, so theres no point putting it on Drive C. As you go on, there may be
a few other examples of items that belong on D.

15

You wont be doing Defragmenting with a program like Disk Defragmenter at

this point. But the knowledge that you will be Defragmenting later may
influence your decisions about Partitions now. For my own purposes, I use a
number of other Partitions. I call them GOBACK, BURNING, AUDIO, DATA,
and SWAP. We will get to the relevant subjects in more detail shortly, but heres
a brief introduction: GoBack is a program that can roll your system back to
where it was a few minutes, hours, or days before. It requires space for the large
file that remembers all this stuff. I put that file in a separate Partition and try to
insulate it from the Disk Defragmenter. BURNING is the size of a CD disc -around 700-800 MB -- and frees me from the need to defragment the stuff that
Im burning onto a CD. I keep Data and Audio separate because Audio files
screw up GoBack while Data files (e.g., word processing files, spreadsheets)
dont, and also because the two require somewhat different Backup treatment.
Finally, Drive H (SWAP) doesnt really need Defragmenting or Backup and can
speed up the system, especially (I believe) if its on a third Hard Disk of its own.

Original Ideas
Reasons for writing this document: point 333.
Putting Windows 98 on a separate partition: point 2.
Having Win98 on its own Partition was supposed to make reinstalling easier:
point 154(d).
Installing important programs first rather than concentrating on stable programs:
point 68.
C:\Program Files
See D:\Program Files, Windows Update, MagicMover, Path.
D:\Program Files
See also Excel 97, MagicMover, FrontPage 2000, FrontPage Express, Windows
Update, Outlook Express.
Tried to steer program file installation to this folder on D instead of C: point 94.
Wanted to arrange files to make it easier to find program files: point 115.
Installation here worked for most programs point 94.
Installation in non-default location confused Excel 97: point 94.
Office 97 insisted on installing many files in C:\Program Files anyway: point
103, point 166(c).
X-Setup steers program file installations to preferred folder: point 103, point
137(m).
Outlook 98 found previous installation in this folder: point 166(b).
Copy of WAB in D:\Program Files doesnt cure error: point 166(a).
Creation of this folder, and moving files to it, was a mistake: point 341.

16

C:\Windows\Command
See also CONFIG.SYS, Win98 Startup Floppy.
Contains System Files and essential utilities: point 5(c), point 5(g).
Contains XCOPY: point 21.
Contains EXTRACT.EXE: point 134(e).
Contains more recent versions of some old utilities: point 139(b).
Combined contents with DOS_UTIL: point 141(q).
Wanted entire contents on Bootable CD: point 141(q).
Is on Path: point 269(h).
Dupeless says EBD subfolder contains duplicates of programs: point 314(d).
Folder contains duplicates of programs found in \WIN98 Folder: point 319.
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory
Used as temporary holding place for TMP Files and Tilde Files: point 120(e).
Used MAINT_WK.BAT to clear it out using DELTREE: point 105(h).
Reasons for clearing out this Directory: point 105(h).
Sometimes contains subfolders that Disk Cleanup does not remove: point 105(h).
Dont clean out when Win98 is active: point 105(h).
Clear out before creating Disk Image File: point 111.
Advice to clear out before Defragmenting: point 122.
C:\Windows\INF Folder
See also Video Card, INF Files.
Common Driver location: point 255(c).
File previously found in this folder vanishes: point 241.
System may not realize that files it needs are in this folder: point 255(c).
C:\Windows\System
See Path, Screen Saver, Process.
\WIN98 Folder
See also Registry.
Also known as Setup Folder: point 137(n).
Copy files from Win98 Upgrade CD to this folder before installing: point 31.
Contains duplicates of programs found elsewhere: point 319.
Distinct from the \WIN98 folder that may exist on some Floppy disks: point
255(c).
Restore Win98 by deleting all else and re-installing from here: point 34.
Installation proceeds by typing SETUP at DOS Prompt: point 35.
Installation requires nothing else except Product Key number: point 35.
Installation of Win98 Upgrade also requires evidence of previous product: point
35.

17

Can supply evidence of previous product by copying \WIN95 folder: point 35.
Files in \WIN98 not affected by downloads and updates: point 50.
Files seemingly copied directly from \WIN98: point 85(a).
Consists mostly of CAB Files: point 85(a), point 319.
X-Setup can set location of \WIN98 Folder after installation: point 137(n).
Subfolders containing useless junk: point 319.
ISP information in OLS subfolder outdated: point 319.
Drive H (SWAP)
See also ScanReg, Properties.
Primarily serves to hold Temporary Internet Files, WIN386.SWP, Cool Edit
Temporary Files, Word 97 AutoRecover files, and other non-permanent
information.
Good role in which to test an iffy disk without endangering files: point 256.
Its place in the overall Partition scheme: point 32.
Would not be backed up: point 145(p).
Putting it last allows putting it on a third Hard Disk: point 44.
Problems on this Partition yield Invalid media type error at Startup: point
242(f).
Disk Defragmenter
See also GoBack, WinBench 99, Power Management, Defragmenting,
DEFRAC.BAT, Norton SpeedDisk, MAINTWIN.BAT.
Improved efficiency: point 306.
Could not run on disks on which programs were running: point 306.
Could slow computer way down: point 306.
Reduce fragmentation by putting Temporary Internet Files in other partition:
point 44.
Found advice regarding DD in Resource Kit Book Online: point 300(b).
Resource Kit Book Online says edit Registry to prevent defrag of certain files:
point 300(f).
Command-line syntax: point 300(g).
Keeps restarting if other programs arent disabled first: point 162.
Syntax for: see Resource Kit Book Online.
Run immediately on reboot: see DEFRAG.REG.
Programs including Screen Saver or e.g., Norton AntiVirus 2000 can interfere:
point 122.
Doesnt work properly: point 122.
Nearly froze up: point 122.
System froze while running DD: point 269(p).
Suggestion to run only in Safe Mode: point 122.
Normal Mode would allow too many other programs to interfere with DD:
point 123.

18

Did not run in Real DOS: point 123.

Suggestion not to make changes automatically: point 122.
Decision that DD had to work automatically: point 123.
Set to work on each disk separately: point 122.
Suggestion to run ScanDisk first: point 122.
Timing difficulty re making ScanDisk work with DD: point 127.
Creating a Screen Saver that wont interfere with DD: point 145(k).
Registry edit to shut off Screen Saver while running DD: point 300(c).
Shutting down processes that might interfere: point 264.
Error: Windows cannot defragment this drive: point 269(o).
Was not clear that I could ever make DD work: point 306.
Defragmenting
See also WinBench 99, Power Management, Temporary Internet Files, Recycle
Bin, C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory, WIN386.SWP, Cool Edit 2000.
Popular defragmenters include Disk Defragmenter and Norton SpeedDisk.
Problems with: see GoBack.
Reducing with Cache settings: point 137(n).
Balked if I had other things running at the same time: point 123.
Keeping the disk nearly totally defragged requires less downtime: point 105(g).
Have to run defragmenter every night to keep disk defragged: point 127, point
141(l).
Theory that DOS defragmenters will mess up Hard Disk: point 123.
While burning CD: point 263.
Norton SpeedDisk
See also GoBack, Defragmenting, Norton.
Balked if I had other things running at the same time: point 123.
More efficient than Disk Defragmenter: point 300(e).

The Win98 Core

There is virtually no end to the number of things we can (and will) say about
Win98, but to keep things on a very simple basis at the start, lets just start with
Win98 itself. The Win98 Upgrade is, of course, a Microsoft product. This index
does not attempt to track all of the references that might conceivably be relevant
to Microsoft, Windows, Win98, or other all-purpose topics.
The core of Win98 includes Internet Explorer. This is not because everyone
always needs the one to run the other. Its just that updates to the one tend to
include some updates to the other. You need Internet Explorer anyway to get
online and update Win98, so I decided to include an introduction to both

19

programs together here. (Updating Win98 and Internet Explorer from the
Windows Update website requires, of course, an online connection, which
requires a connection to an ISP.)
Note, also, that the Epic occasionally mentions Windows 3.1, not because its
important, but because its interface and handling of file names can be a little
different, and because some programs that we may be using are still written for
it.

Microsoft
Too many entries: relevant to the entire document. A few exceptions:
See especially Operating System.
Vaguely concerned that Microsoft could pull the plug on Outlook 98 at any time:
point 98.
Spelling and grammar errors: point 166, point 241.
Guessing at Microsofts future: point 345.
Windows
Windows 98 ordinarily referred to in this document as Win98.
Win98
Occurs too frequently; citations here merely to some interesting items.
Abbreviated name for Windows 98. Similarly, Win95.
See also Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Downloader, Uninstall
Information Folder.
Disk partition structure for W98: point 338.
Needed 600 MB of disk space: point 338.
Previous Windows Updates not the same as those now offered: point 71.
List of files in Win98: point 166(d).
How to save size and location of an open window: point 120(aa).
Save space by deleting unnecessary AVI files: point 320.
CD contains DOS tools: point 141(q).
Uninstalling: point 178.
Does constant reading and writing of certain files: point 12.
Ordinarily can't run from a CD: point 12.
Includes Windows Scripting files: point 137.
All this effort could not extricate some Win98 users from the quagmire: point
341.
I dislike Win98: point 342.
Deciding to make the best of it until something better comes along: point 344,
point 345.
Problems can exist submerged for some time: point 227.

20

Win98 Upgrade
See also \WIN98 Folder.
Apparently allows Win95 files to remain on disk: point 166(d).
Upgrade CD installation seeks proof that you had a previous version of
qualifying software: point 14.
Preferably dont install upgrade on top of Win95: point 14.
TweakUI utilities on Win98 Upgrade CD: point 71.
Recommended not to use TweakUI version found on this CD: point 117.
Explorer
Not the same as Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer
See also AdSubtract, Cold Reboot, Monitor.
Killing Explorer in unresponsive system via Ctrl-Alt-Del revives Start Button:
point 141(q).
One of the most basic programs for a working Win98 system: point 122.
Error: illegal operation: point 105(k).
Error indicating that Explorer was shutting down, but system hadnt crashed:
point 144.
Windows 3.1
Interface: see WinBench 99, Clean System Directory.
May require DOS-style folder names: point 141(o).
I mostly skipped Windows 3.1: point 345.
Internet Explorer
See also Windows Explorer; Favorites; Power Tools; Power Toys; Web Suite; XSetup; Scraps; OptOut; Registry; Offline Browser; Context Menu; MSINFO32,
Temporary Internet Files, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Cache, URL Batch Files, Mouse.
Latest version comes through download: point 15.
Clearing out IE's History and Temporary folders: point 16.
Platinum WorldView addition: point 20.
Moving Temporary Internet Files folder: point 37.
IE started Internet Connection Wizard: point 37.
Ctrl-L opens up box to type a URL into: point 223.
Adjusting IE toolbars and other options: point 37, point 38, point 105(e).
Deleting Temporary Internet Files folder with DELTREE: point 38.
Deleting History folder with DELTREE: point 120(ag).
Setting History option: point 38.
Changing location of IE icon under Start Menu: point 42.
Putting Temporary Internet Files folder into separate partition: point 44.
Subsequent IE updates change previous settings: point 51.
Previous IE updates not the same as those now offered: point 71.

21

IE downloads automatically provide Power Tools: point 71.

Microsoft treated IE and Win98 as two heads, one body: point 72.
Outlook 98 insists on installing old version of IE: point 98.
Outlook 98 actually installs just a few files from the old version: point 98.
Some people upgrade IE after installing Outlook 98: point 98.
Telling OL98 to upgrade only newer avoids installing old IE version: point 98.
Office 97 installation adds ancient IE 3.01 Shortcut: point 105(b).
Go button in IE: point 105(e).
Shut off AutoComplete option in IE to improve speed: point 105(i).
Turn AutoComplete back on because I appreciate it: point 109(i), point 145(a).
Subscriptions now called Offline Viewing: point 109(b).
I decided to keep QuickSearch and Toggle Images programs: point 109(g).
Later decided that I didnt have much use for QuickSearch: point 109(g).
Apt to use IE with several other programs simultaneously: point 113(e).
Change options with TweakUI: point 117.
Update IE Context Menu with IE 5 Web Accessories: point 119(b).
IE 5 Web Accessories duplicate existing functions: point 119(b).
IE 5 Web Accessories clog up Context Menu: point 119(b).
Power Toys was add-on for IE version 4: point 119(b).
Can decorate IE toolbar with IE 5 Toolbar Wallpaper: point 119(b).
Reasons not to use IE 5 Toolbar Wallpaper: point 119(b).
IE 5 Power Tweaks seemed useful: point 119(b).
Web Developer Accessories has useful View Partial Source option: point 119(b).
Web Developer Accessories option for Document Tree confusing: point 119(b).
Cant drag document Scrap from IE to Desktop: point 120(r).
Unable to move History folder: point 120(ag).
IE crashes and I lose my place: point 137.
IE crashes wipe out most traces of sites found after long research: point 297.
Removing Links Folder causes IE malfunctions: point 142.
Synchronize feature downloads all pages cited in website: point 271.
Ctrl-N to open another Browser session: point 307(b).
IE Offline Viewing allows Scheduled downloads of websites: point 307(c).
Offline Viewing allows downloads of websites linked to the target: point 307(c).
Offline Viewing sends E-mail when target website changes: point 307(c).
Synchronize feature downloads hits from search engine: point 307(g).
Synchronizer was fastest way to examine search engine hits: point 307(j).
Synchronizer could not dial automatically unless auto-dial always on: point 322.
IE gets updated through Windows Update website: point 165(e).
Error: Unable to establish a connection: point 200.
ISP
The company that connects you to the Internet.
See also NetLaunch, DUNCE, Connection Keeper, Modem, Password.

22

Short for Internet Service Provider: point 41.

Eager to shut down inactive Internet Connection: point 134(r).
Check pages manually during long downloads to maintain connection: point 48.
Blamed ISP for frequent disconnections: point 113(g).
Set Modem to stay connected to ISP despite carrier interruption: point 265(c).
Did not show all postings to a Newsgroup: point 292.
Using local access number with HyperTerminal: point 113(g).
Internet Connection Wizard
See also Internet Explorer.
Configured Internet Connection through my ISP: point 37.
Ran Hardware Installation Wizard to configure Modem: point 37.
Gave the option of signing up for an Internet mail account: point 37.
Required me to delete existing Dial-Up account so it could re-create it: point 100.
I found answers to some Wizard questions by looking at other computer: point
37.
Outlook 98 ran me through ICW: point 100.
Windows Update
See also Internet Explorer, Updates.com, Fatal Exception, Go!Zilla, Win98,
Windows Media Player, Start | Programs, NetMeeting.
Same as Critical Update: point 165(e).
Source of downloads and upgrades for Win98: point 15, point 49.
Source of DirectX 7.0a update: point 165(e).
Distinct from Windows Update Setup Files: point 215.
Link to WU under Start Menu: point 15.
Probes your Win98 installation for missing items: point 241.
List of updates seems to change after you download one of them: point 48.
Full set of updates for Win98 takes 6 hours to download: point 48.
X-Setup sets system so it appears to be registered for WU: point 137(r).
Registry edit adds multiple WU icons to Start Menu: point 146(e).
Could not remove WU icon from Start | Settings: point 146(e).
Comparison of Registry entries shows change to WU reset counter: point 150.
Updates seemed to be the primary suspect for system instability: point 220.
System freezes right after downloading updates: point 222.
Downloads seemed to have caused problems in Outlook 98: point 225.
Redownloaded updates at least three times: point 229.
After multiple redownloads, updates no longer seem to cause slowdown: point
229.
Decided I needed Outlook Express one time, but not another: point 241, point
242(c).
WU said I had Outlook Express despite thorough attempts to Uninstall it: point
242(c), point 242(h).

23

Uninstalled Outlook 98 to get WU to realize I didnt have Outlook Express:

point 242(c).
WU created duplicate files by apparently reinstalling to C:\Program Files
despite X-Setup instructions to install to D:\Program Files: point 314(c).
Windows Update Setup Files
See also Windows Update.
Something created multiple folders for these files: point 317.
Trying to move these folders: point 317.

Win98 Modes
There is much to know about different ways to run and fix Win98. This subject
of Modes is just an introduction to one of the terms that people use occasionally.
Mode
There are two types of Operating System modes. The Win98 modes are Normal
Mode and Safe Mode. There are also several DOS Modes, including one that
exists only under Win98.
The term mode also gets used in numerous other ways.
See also BIOS.
Normal Mode
The normal operating mode for Win98.
See also Mode, BIOS, Disk Defragmenter, BOOT_MGR.BAT, Startup Menu.
Safe Mode
See also Mode, PCI Communication Device, Monitor, Cold Reboot, Desktop,
Monitor, CD-ROM Driver, WIN Command, Reboot Toolbar, BOOT_MGR.BAT,
File List.
Part of Win98s self-healing process: point 119(c).
Couldnt figure out how to run Disk Defragmenter automatically in SM: point
123.
Might fix problem with vanishing Icons in System Tray: point 316.
Computer sometimes prefers to boot in SM when something went wrong
previously: point 72.
Sometimes boot in SM before Normal Mode just to make sure things are right:
point 84.
Presence of WNBOOTNG.STS Signature file apparently makes system boot in
Safe Mode: point 85(a).
Enter by hitting F8 at Startup Menu: point 105(k).

24

Boot into SM to avoid system reconfiguration for temporary change of hardware:

point 225.
Suggestion to free IRQs by deleting Modem and Communications Ports in SM:
point 234.
A more limited mode than Normal Mode: point 262(b).
Generally intended for Troubleshooting: point 262(b).
Would not allow some aspects of system to run: point 262(b).

Files and Folders

Win98 uses Folders to hold files. DOS calls them Directories instead of Folders.
Either way, the concept is that you start at the Root (which is, perversely, the top)
level of a Drive, and you have folders or directories branching off from there,
each containing zero or more files.
Windows Explorer is the most commonly used Win98 tool for manipulating and
browsing among files and folders. PowerDesk also has an explorer that imitates
and improves upon Windows Explorer. It is an optional add-on to your system - it is not essential -- and the only reason I mention it here is that it is so similar to
Windows Explorer. That, and the fact that it is what I use to ZIP and UNZIP
files, which is something that I had to do one way or another at this stage in the
game.

Folder
Too general to bother cataloging in full detail.
Dragging things to a folder: point 120(s).
Win98 sometimes remembered open folders and recreated them on Reboot:
point 138(c).
Root
Short for root folder or root Directory. Means the beginning folder on a
Partition or disk. Example: the root folder on Drive C appears at the DOS
Prompt as C:\> where the > symbol just means type your command here; the
actual root address in that case is C:\
Different from Rooted Folders: see Windows Explorer.
Windows Explorer
See also Easy CD Creator, PowerDesk, Context Menu, DELTREE, Network
Neighborhood, Start | Settings, Graphics.
Basic file manipulation utility supplied with Windows. Very important.
Not the same as Internet Explorer.

25

View Hidden Files: point 5(a).

Right-click Start Button to open WE, pointing to Start Menu: point 43, point
145(i).
Set to open Start | Programs menu structure: point 146(m).
Toolbar provides arrows allowing back and forward navigation: point 120(aa).
Customizing WE re: file types, views, toolbar: point 43.
System froze when using WE to move files to troubled Hard Disk: point 81.
Status bar indicated size of files in partition: point 103.
Typically used with Office 97 programs: point 113(e).
Might use two sessions of WE for Audio Editing: point 113(e).
Can use to view thumbnail versions of Graphics files: point 113(h).
Cant get thumbnails of documents: point 113(h).
Allows Quick View option on Context Menu: point 113(h).
WE is distinct from Explorer: point 109(d).
Control Panel option on Context Menu: point 112(e).
SendTo option on Context Menu: point 113(c).
Rename file or folder option on Context Menu: point 113(e).
Properties of file or folder option on Context Menu: point 113(e).
Empty Recycle Bin option on Context Menu: point 116(c).
Formatting Disk option on Context Menu: point 242(g).
Use X-Setup to create DOS Prompt Here option: point 137(d).
DOS Prompt Here option on Context Menu: point 141(o).
Making DOS Prompt Here open a bigger window: point 146(k).
Refused to work on failing computer: point 116(k).
Drop-down File Lists when typing new entries: point 118.
Clearing the Most Recently Used (MRU) File Lists: point 118.
Double-clicking on programs in WE runs them: point 119(a).
Find File: point 120(e), point 120(z).
File open option on Context Menu: point 120(m).
Select the View option on menu to set file associations: point 120(m).
Select View option to create option to open TXT file in Word: point 120(m).
Couldnt right-click on Desktop Folder to Create Shortcut: point 120(n).
Doesn't provide selective list of folders: point 120(u).
WE opens automatically in rooted folders: point 120(aa).
Options on how WE opens: point 120(aa).
WEs Explorer View and Open View: point 120(aa).
No immediate need for Rooted Folders: point 120(aa).
Could not get Rooted Folders to work as I wanted: point 120(aa).
Could not move Internet Explorers History folder: point 120(ag).
Copy option works where cut and Paste doesnt: point 120(ag).
Can add Context Menu options via X-Setup: point 137(d).
Didnt succeed where PowerDesk Explorer failed: point 141(q).
Adjusting New (Context Menu Option): point 145(f), point 146(c).

26

Removing Settings from Start Menu removes from WE too: point 146(e).
Changing Context Menu options: point 146(k), point 146(l), point 146(m).
Changing Context Menu for folders required Registry edit: point 146(k).
WE is a Directory shell: point 146(l).
Couldnt delete unwanted Context Menu options: point 146(m).
Deleting unwanted Context Menu items required Registry edit: point 146(m).
Couldnt delete folder while WE was looking at it: point 154(b).
Couldnt see tracks on Audio CDs without CDFS.VXD: point 157(c).
Can copy Audio CD tracks via CDFS.VXD: point 157(c).
File Types option sets default TIF editor: point 224(c).
Added WE to Files Toolbar: point 310.
Error copying file: point 84.
Error: Drive not accessible: point 242(f).
Error: Sharing violation: point 120(ag).
PowerDesk
See also DriveImage, Windows Explorer, DIR Command, Network
Neighborhood, PKZIP.
Has ZIP and UNZIP feature: point 25, point 70, point 135.
Some imperfections; generally pleased with program: point 25.
Has optional DES high-security encryption: point 27, point 135.
Not recommended for backing up entire Hard Disks: point 29.
Used to back up entire Hard Disk: point 269(c).
Have to buy ZipMagic to have command-line ZIP option: point 29.
Considered a must have program: point 70.
Update available online: point 70.
Possible candidate for instability: point 74.
PD configuration data stored in Registry: point 74.
Decided to reinstall despite possibility of instability: point 75.
Can view Graphics files in different ways: point 113(h), point 135.
Can provide graphic view of documents: point 113(h).
Serves as replacement for Windows Explorer: point 120(aa).
Can convert Graphics file Formats: point 120(ad), point 320.
Can view contents of CAB files: point 134(e).
Can extract files from CAB files: point 141(u).
Comes with Size Manager utility: point 134(f).
Can print a list of some or all files in a folder: point 134(x).
Contained many useful tools: point 135.
Won many awards: point 135.
Installation took 18 MB: point 135.
Configurable options: point 135.
Can expand/collapse Drives and folders: point 135.
Can view double panes horizontal and vertical: point 135.

27

Can show filtered File Lists: point 135.

Can show Command Line and open DOS Box: point 135, point 141(c).
Can compare and synchronize folders: point 135, point 141(q).
Can do Find File: point 135, point 146(d).
Can change file Date and Time: point 135.
Made a point of shutting down before installing other software: point 135.
Lacks Address toolbar option of Windows Explorer: point 135, point 141(e).
Crashed: point 139(b).
Used Command Line option to launch GO.BAT: point 139(c).
Had "DOS Prompt Here" Context Menu option: point 141(e).
Apparently not responsible for unresponsive system: point 141(q).
Dual-pane view couldnt accommodate file details: point 141(q).
No FAQ on website re error message: point 144.
More than a year of experience with the program: point 144.
Installation added unwanted Context Menu items: point 146(m).
Unwanted Context Menu items appear in Windows Explorer too: point 146(m).
Could not remove one unwanted Context Menu item: point 146(m), point 196.
Removing Context Menu items provoked Shutdown: point 146(m).
Tech support responded in a few days: point 146(m).
Tech support initially gave bad advice: point 146(n).
Subsequent tech support advice did not work: point 196.
Folder file type opened with PD: point 146(m).
Run by PDEXPLO program: point 146(m).
Error: PDEXPLO not responding: point 224(f).
ZIP feature ignored empty folders: point 168.
Could copy System Files on Hard Disk C while Windows was running: point
210.
No option to copy a Drive: point 210.
Can set to show Hidden Files: point 210.
Not responding error apparently caused by other program: point 224(f).
Provided information on partitions: point 258(b).
Slow copying large files to another partition: point 258(b), point 269(o).
Stalled when trying to copy files with overly long names: point 258(b).
Zipped files faster than DriveImage: point 269(c).
ZIP compression about 55%: point 269(c).
Calculated 500 MB as 500 x 1 MB: point 269(i).
Computer had problems with PD: point 270.
Ran PD as regular program at Startup: point 285.
Used Find File function to locate all batch files referring to wrong disk: point
303(d).
Slow reading from CD: point 309(a).
Used CDex instead of PD to read Audio track from CD: point 309(a).
Shut down after Fatal Exception: point 315.

28

Better than WinDiff for synchronizing folders: point 318.

Directory comparison found duplicate files: point 319.
Could create Bitmap Files for Startup Wallpaper: point 320.
Using PD to move program files may have caused slowness: point 332.
Error message when closing: point 144.
Error: Illegal operation: point 146(m).
Error: Not responding: point 224(f).
Error: Cannot copy: point 258(b).
Size Manager
Created by makers of PowerDesk.
See also TreeSize.
Checks total space used in folders and disks: point 164.
Set up separate Icon to run it: point 135.
Put Icon on Files Toolbar: point 310.
UNZIP
See also PowerDesk, WinZip.
Type of program that decompresses files compressed into ZIP Format: point
5(d).
May be needed for Bootable Floppy: point 5(d).
Can distribute zipped files back to their original locations: point 26.
Can ZIP in Win98 program and unzip in DOS program or vice versa: point 27.
ZIP
See also DriveImage, XCOPY32, PowerDesk, PKZIP, WinZip, Path, Bootable
Floppy, UNZIP.
Error: Error in archive Directory: bad ZIP file: point 287.
Had to delete bad ZIP file in DOS: point 287.
Format into which files may be compressed (.ZIP): point 5(d).
Used to add utilities to Win98 Emergency Boot Disk: point 57.
Can be Passworded: point 27.
Reduces accessibility of individual files: point 25.
Some ZIP programs let you look at the contents of ZIP files: point 25.
Some ZIP programs let you extract individual files from them: point 25.
Some ZIP programs let you add to or otherwise edit ZIP files: point 25.
Thinking through using ZIP as a Backup tool with XCOPY: point 26, point 202,
point 203.
Offered prospect of flexible approach to Backup: point 27.
Advantage over Disk Image File approach: dont have to do entire Partition:
point 27.
Advantage over Disk Image File approach: small ZIP takes less time and space:
point 27.

29

Used to get questionable files out of the way at least temporarily: point 168.
Zipping a 2 GB Partition would be time-consuming: point 256(b).
XCOPY and ZIP system would carry me for weeks between DriveImage
snapshots: point 337.

Essential Utilities
Your system has only begun to come together at this point. Already, however, it
is time to look beyond Microsoft for helpful utilities. Unlike PowerDesk,
mentioned above mostly for its usefulness and its relevance to Windows
Explorer, the following are very important and are well worth their price. All of
these non-Microsoft utilities (including PowerDesk) are very stable and, in my
experience, are likely to cause few, if any, problems on your system. Norton
AntiVirus 2000 is a possible exception, but if so, you have to put up with it unless
you find an antivirus program that you like better. Youll notice that these
programs tend to add an entry to Add/Remove Programs, even if you dont
install them through there. Speaking of which, note that Add/Remove
Programs has a separate tab that you use to add or remove portions of Win98.

Add/Remove Programs
See also Windows Setup Tab, Clean System Directory, CloseAll, System Devices,
IRQ Routing, Uninstall Information Folder, Dismantling Drive C, Win98
Emergency Boot Disk, Visual Basic Runtime.
Place for adding and removing programs generally. This heading does not list
all programs to which this might apply.
Found under Control Panel: point 163.
ARP for Outlook 98 allows Add New Components option: point 225.
ARP for Outlook 98 gives option to completely reinstall or just refresh
installation: point 166(b).
Add New Components leads to Office 98 Component Install Page: point 225.
Used to Uninstall programs: point 141(e), point 146(l).
Used to verify that program is installed: point 195.
Processes used by ARP: point 146(l).
Browsing through ARP for programs to delete to reduce bloat: point 170.
Before using ARP to remove programs, see if they have "Uninstall" Shortcuts or
files: point 170.
Supposed to use ARPs Windows Setup Tab to remove Outlook Express: point
241.
Not sure why Outlook Express doesnt appear on ARPs Windows Setup Tab:
point 242(c).
Program did not appear in ARP; had to use its Uninstall Icon: point 266(e).

30

Windows Setup Tab

See also Outlook 98, Outlook Express.
Found under Add/Remove Programs: point 146(d).
Separate from the ordinary Install/Uninstall option: point 154(c).
Where to add or remove WaveTop or Web TV for Windows: point 39.
Did not show Outloook Express: point 242(h).
Norton AntiVirus 2000
See also GoBack, Norton, Disk Defragmenter.
Inexplicably put non-removable entry on File | New menu: point 312.
Thought NAV was primary suspect for system instability: point 220.
Decided NAV was not primary suspect for system instability: point 221.
Compare antivirus Freeware: point 140(a).
McAfee antivirus program update process baffled me: point 156(a).
Cant go online without good, current antivirus software: point 156(a).
NAV used more than 40 MB of disk space: point 156(a), point 165(c).
Installation added folder I had not authorized: point 156(a).
Uninstall failed to remove folders: point 156(a).
Installation includes LiveAdvisor and LiveUpdate: point 156(a).
NAV can trash Hard Disk with PartitionMagic: point 195.
Probably not the source of problems with Outlook 98: point 225.
Runs POPROXY process: point 278.
Error: error starting program: apparently caused by POPROXY: point 278.
POPROXY problem caused COMCTL32.DLL error message: point 282.
GoBack
See also PartitionMagic, Custom Settings, Audio Editor.
Eliminated need for InCtrl4: point 141(d).
Vastly simplified recovery of previous Registry edits: point 151.
Not directly connected with Backup process: point 203.
Everyone praised GB: point 228.
Description of features: point 228, point 236.
Used to restore deleted files or system: point 228, point 236.
Had enhanced Recycle Bin: point 228.
Stored previous revisions of changed files: point 228.
History (Event Log) wiped out each time you disabled it: point 228.
Created system safe point: point 236.
Useless if Hard Disk was physically useless: point 236.
Ability to roll back changes depended on space allocated to it: point 236.
Had to disable before relocating a Hard Disk: point 236.
Had to Uninstall and reinstall before adding new Hard Disk: point 236.
Not compatible with Win2000: point 236.

31

Incompatible with some disk compressors: point 236.

Boot floppies had to contain GB Drivers: point 236.
Froze during installation movie: point 236.
Event history stored on same Hard Disk as events being tracked: point 238.
User choice of space to set aside for history: point 238.
Must Uninstall and reinstall to change space set aside: point 238.
Manual said program would just step aside for large files: point 238.
Had to leave at least 10 MB free on partition: point 238.
Had to configure separately on each computer: point 238, point 255(b).
Would not install on disk with non-DOS partition: point 239, point 242(a).
Got around bad disk problem with superficial Format: point 243.
Installation involved multiple reboots: point 243.
Cute clock: point 246.
GB with Norton SpeedDisk would trash system without patch: point 246.
GOBACKIO.BIN was main history file: point 246.
GOBACKIO.BIN is a System File: point 269(c).
Event Log showed events and safe points: point 246.
Easy to figure out events: point 246.
Option to revert Drive or resurrect virtual copy of previous situation: point 246.
Option to revert one or both Hard Disks: point 246.
Excluded some items: point 246.
Popped up before any other program on reboot: point 246.
Took a half-minute: point 246.
Might have to make multiple tries to revert successfully: point 246.
System Safe Point was any 10-second period of inactivity: point 246.
Adding items manually to Event Log: point 246.
System would not recognize Hard Disks when booted from Floppy: point 246.
Prevented DriveImage from running: point 254, point 269(a).
Antivirus message was red herring: point 254.
Bootup option to revert, disable, or boot from Floppy: point 254, point 269(l).
Booting with regular Floppy seemed to work fine: point 254.
Disabled GB to boot from Floppy: point 254.
Did not allow re-enabling with different settings: point 255(e).
Supposed to use their Uninstaller: point 255(e).
Had to revise partition sizes before reinstalling: point 255(f).
Unlocked slave Hard Disk by Uninstalling GB: point 256(d).
False bug report due to problem with GoBack itself: point 256(d).
Caused significantly slower reboots: point 256(d).
Caused blue screen errors: point 256(d).
Caused Norton Disk Doctor error message: point 256(d), point 256(f).
Damaged boot record beyond repair: point 256(f).
Required at least 10 MB: point 258(a).
Move data before adjusting partition before installing GB: point 258(b).

32

Corrupted Directory after abortive install: point 258(d).

Changing a large file wiped out Event history: point 258(e).
Relied on it: point 267(d), point 281, point 289, point 319.
Could manually re-enable from DOS Prompt: point 269(a), point 269(m).
DriveImage backup filled with huge GOBACKIO.BIN: point 269(b).
Prevented DriveImage on non-GOBACKIO partitions: point 269(l).
Re-enabling became familiar: point 269(m).
May be responsible for disk thrashing and Mouse slowness: point 269(m).
GB installation trashed by DriveImage: point 269(m).
Manual contained no list of error codes: point 269(m).
Manual mentioned no Command Line options: point 269(n).
Must reboot at least once to disable: point 269(n).
Two running Processes, GBMENU and GBPOLL: point 269(n).
Possible source of Network slowness: point 269(o).
May have caused disk errors: point 269(o).
Disabling GB took half-hour: point 269(o).
Disk geometry error caused near-freeze in ScanDisk: point 269(o).
PrcView shutdown may have caused GB disk problem: point 269(o).
Large file changes may confuse: point 269(o).
One test showed Event Log covered past 40+ hours: point 279, point 281, point
282.
Had to remove recent documents before reverting: point 281.
Successfully reverted: point 281, point 284, point 323.
Many changes reduced log to 12 hours: point 284.
Shut off GB polling: point 291.
GB polling just checked for GB updates: point 291.
Lost Suspend to Disk file on laptop: point 291.
Problems with Gateway computers: point 291.
Only way of shutting down by batch file was to kill Process: point 291.
No way to suspend temporarily during large file changes: point 291.
Could not tell which data files reversion would wipe out: point 294, point 297.
Could revert just one Hard Disk: point 294.
OptOut (coded in assembly language) not logged: point 294.
Should have inserted comment in log before installing a program: point 294.
Log allows filters to reduce details: point 294.
ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter trashed disk covered by GB: point 298.
List of incompatible programs: point 298(a).
Antivirus programs must allow MBR writes: point 298(b).
Defragmenting used up much of GB Event Log: point 298(b).
Fix for Norton SpeedDisk incompatibility: point 298(b).
Confused by disk copies: point 298(b).
Disable antivirus programs during GB installation: point 298(b).
Nearly indispensable: point 300(a).

33

Prevented Defrag from running on GOBACK partitions: point 300(d).

Created separate partitions containing only GOBACKIO.BIN: point 300(d), point
302.
GB website unclear re Norton Utilities: point 300(e).
Modified Registry to keep Defrag away from GOBACKIO.BIN: point 300(f).
Disabled to make DriveImage Disk Image File: point 301.
Allocated much more space to make Event Log go back more hours: point 302.
Event Log went back only 12 hours after allocating 20% of disk: point 302 and
point 323.
Audio editing (Cool Edit 2000) reduced Event Log to 12 hours: point 302.
Opted not to cover a Hard Disk: point 258(a).
Restoring other computer from backup would require GB Uninstallation: point
304.
Batch files for Defragmenting only selected partitions, not GOBACKIO: point
306.
Catching up, slowed down Mouse and other program: point 309(a).
Should allow storage of Hard Disk data on another Hard Disk: point 309(a).
GB slowdown problem exacerbated by Clipboard Pile: point 309(a).
Displayed lost files in one place but not another: point 323.
Forgot to Uninstall GB before running DriveImage: point 334.
Had to use FDISK to rescue trashed GoBack system: point 334.
Caused DriveImage error cannot lock a locked drive: point 334.
Event Log went back 5 days on infrequently used computer: point 335.
Reasonably stable program: point 335.
Need to Uninstall forced reduced use of DriveImage: point 337.
Reduced need for moment-by-moment backup: point 339.
Error: Invalid drive specification when booting from Floppy: point 254.
Error # 58: Unable to write to the boot sector: point 254, point 269(a).
Error: Drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition: point 254.
Error: Third-party disk-partitioning software: point 254.
Error: Detected a Problem With Your System: point 256(d).
Error: Geometry of the disk has been changed: point 258(a), point 269(g).
Error: GoBack (300): run SETUP.EXE from within Windows: point 269(l).
Error: GoBack Install (316): drives are on the same physical Hard Disk: point
269(m).
Error: GB_PROG.EXE can only be run in MS-DOS Mode (code 503): point
269(n).
Error: Unable to revert all of your Hard Disks to the requested time: point
281.
Error: Fatal Exception caused by GB polling: point 291.
Error: Couldnt locate these drives on your system: point 298(b).
Error: GoBack Install (400): 2 copies of the allocation tables on your drive are
different: point 335.

34

Error: Disk activity now going on relates to safely transitioning: point 269(m).

Backup
I use a CD-ROM Drive capable of burning CDs -- commonly called a CD Burner - to make my backups. The subject of CDs is a world unto itself, and Ill get to
that later. Here, I limit myself to the topic of Backup, and not even to that whole
topic, but just to the part that involves creating Disk Image Files using a program
like DriveImage or Norton Ghost.
Backup
See also Network, GoBack, DriveImage, ScanReg, Registry Checker,
SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.DAT, USER.DAT, CAB Files, BAK Files, OLD
Files, Hardware Profile, Links Folder, File-by-File Backup, LFNBACK.EXE, Disk
Image File, Online Storage, OUTLOOK.PST, Audio Editor, CD_PREP.BAT,
Conflict, File List, ZIP, XCOPY.
Backup is any useful copy of data on computer, usually kept for safety, so that
you can restore the data if something happens to the original. May involve
floppy disk, removeable disk, another Hard Disk on same or different computer,
Tape Backup, electronic Memory, printouts, etc.
Some backup software does not capture Registry automatically. But your
backup may be useless for program files (but not data files) if it does not capture
the Registry.
Ideally, keep copy of Registry for each backup of program files: point 204.
Can back up on CD: point 3.
Using multisession CDs: point 269(e).
Some files never change and dont really need frequent backup: point 27.
At the extreme, proper backup would require separate CD for every program
installed: point 203.
Thinking about incremental backup: point 340.
Can save large files in small pieces among multiple floppies via Win98's Backup
utility: point 141.
Lacking incremental backup means redoing everything since last full backup:
point 227.
No clear dividing line between essential and incidental Win98 files on
backup: point 269(d).
Wanted to make frequent, unobtrusive backups: point 337.
Program files and data files require different kinds of backup: point 337.
Backup during the night should provide adequate protection: point 339.
Disk Image File

35

See also GoBack, DriveImage, Easy CD Creator, Slice32, CLR_DOCS.BAT,

CLR_RECY.BAT, Temporary Internet Files, Network, File-by-File Backup, ZIP.
Clear out Start | Documents and Recycle Bin before making DI: point 120(i).
Clear out C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory before making DI: point 16, point 53.
Offers simplicity for regular Backup work: point 3.
Adaptec seems to contemplate File-by-File Backup technique: point 13.
Placed onto Bootable CD with utilities to restore the image: point 64.
Could save on Hard Disk instead of saving on CD: point 111.
Tested by restoring from CD onto which image file was burned: point 116(k).
Could copy image file from one computer to the other via Network: point
116(k).
Shut off Archive Bits manually so I would know what the image file covered:
point 166(f).
DriveImage
See also GoBack, PartitionMagic, PowerQuest.
Recommended: point 2.
Stored many files in one Disk Image File: point 5(f).
Provided files worth having on Bootable Floppy: point 5(h).
Put files in right place automatically as it unpacked image file: point 13.
Ran in DOS so Windows files were not in use: point 17, point 30, point 116(i).
Could edit image file created by DriveImage: point 24.
Required more temporary disk space than smaller ZIP files: point 25.
Not a File-by-File Backup technique: point 26.
Used a take-over-your-machine approach: point 27.
Used to set up basic Win98 system on empty Hard Disk: point 29.
Basic technique for backing up Windows: point 56.
PQDI.EXE was DOS executable form of program: point 58.
Load MOUSE.COM first: point 58.
Options were Create Image, Restore Image, Disk-to-Disk Copy: point 58.
Resulting filename extension was PQI: point 58.
Offered no compression and low (40%) and high (50%) compression: point 58.
Fast mode was very fast: point 58.
Could move PQI image file to other machine by swapping Hard Disks: point 58.
PQI image file different from Easy CD Creator image file: point 61, point 269(f).
Recommend low compression for CDs: point 61.
Included in the programs in DOS_UTIL folder on Bootable CD: point 64.
Ran from DOS_UTIL folder: point 66, point 191.
Deleted and Reformatted existing partition when restoring: point 66, point 179.
Offered to Check for Bad Sectors and Verify Disk Writes: point 66.
Use ScanDisk to fix error # 2005: point 66.
Might use ScanDisk before DriveImage: point 66.
Claimed maximum compression of 50%: point 68.

36

Repeatedly died 98% of the way through a restore: point 78.

False corruption error: point 78.
Required reboot after failed restore efforts: point 78, point 269(m).
Repeated errors when trying to restore: point 78.
Seemed to need to run from disk with some spare space: point 78.
Worked best when run from the Hard Disk: point 86.
Running from separate partition: point 86.
Storing Disk Image File on another partition: point 103.
Not necessary to run from separate partition: point 103.
Allowed me to combine C and D partitions in one image file: point 103.
Ran from Real DOS: point 111.
Store 900 MB in an hour with max compression and verification: point 111.
First non-Microsoft utility installed on new system: point 115.
Attempted to squeeze everything into one CD: point 152.
Ran Cleanup Suite first: point 161.
Existing compressed files reduced compression rate to 61%: point 161.
Could use Disk-to-Disk Copy to get another computer up fast: point 166.
Used Disk-to-Disk Copy: point 169, point 256(f).
PQI file restored successfully: point 174, point 226.
Must restore multiple partitions one at a time: point 179.
Restored in 20 minutes: point 179.
Restored quickly from one Hard Disk to another: point 191, point 204.
Much more stable than HP Colorado Tape Backup: point 201.
Not as precise in terms of File Lists as other Backup approaches: point 202.
Wiped-out Hard Disk C replaced by D: point 204.
Froze 2/3 of the way through a restore: point 204.
Must run from something other than Bootable CD: point 204.
ScanDisk might be irrelevant: point 204.
Restoring PQI file from Hard Disk worked when CD didnt: point 204.
Disliked black box aspect of single image file: point 204.
Copied partitions across Network in two steps: point 214.
Disk-to-disk copy of Hard Disk C failed: point 214.
Nothing in manual on freeze caused by Disk-to-Disk copy of Hard Disk C: point
214.
Stored image file on other partition: point 220.
Message didnt explain there was not enough disk space: point 220, point 236.
Would have prevented manually redoing previous work: point 227.
Exact copy, including items that differed on other computer: point 255(c).
Need not run from a partition other than the one being imaged: point 269(a).
Could have run from RAM Drive: point 269(a).
Achieved 54% compression in practice: point 188, point 269(a).
Need to image entire partitions reduced backup usefulness: point 269(c).
Probably better compression than PowerDesk ZIP: point 269(c).

37

Preserved long filenames regardless of CD Format: point 269(e).

PQI file could hold far more than would fit on one CD: point 269(f).
Must divide oversized PQI image (>650 MB) before burning CD: point 269(h).
Similarity to Norton Ghost: point 2, point 269(h).
Option of splitting oversized PQI image into 2+ files: point 269(h).
Could use Slice32 to split oversized PQI image: point 269(h).
Splitting capabilities of DriveImage Special Edition: point 269(h).
Split oversized PQI into 671mB (640 MB) parts: point 269(l), point 301.
Used Network to move PQI image files to other computer: point 269(m).
Restored from split PQI file: point 269(m).
Manual did not explain error # 29: point 269(m).
Failed restore wiped out Hard Disk C: point 269(m).
Did not show sizes or Dates of files being restored: point 269(m).
Restored seamlessly from multi-part backup: point 269(m), point 334.
Backup of changed folders on C before restoring from PQI file: point 334.
Restore by Floppy reboot where Yamaha CD-ROM Drive not bootable: point
334.
Offered to change partitions as needed during restore: point 336(a).
Need to Uninstall GoBack and reboot reduced usefulness: point 337.
Backup philosophy: occasional DI backups: point 337.
Error # 2005: One or more lost clusters are present: point 66, point 204.
Error # 2004: Invalid cluster was found in a Directory entry: point 78.
Error # 1802: Image file is invalid or corrupted: point 78, point 204.
Error # 29: Cannot lock a locked drive: point 204, point 269(m).
Error # 1805: Error writing to image file: point 220.

Initial Tweaks and Hardware Problems

Device Manager is a sub-option within Control Panel. Youll use both
frequently. You can make them more accessible. One way is to put Control
Panel on the Start Menu and put a shortcut for Device Manager on the Desktop,
with its own Icon. Then go into Device Manager and resolve Exceptions, or at
least the easy ones that just call for Drivers. If you dont have a disk, you can
find drivers in the C:\Windows\INF Folder or online at WinDrivers.com.
Configure your Monitor. You should already have had your Modem working by
now. You will be working with Properties of some items here.
Control Panel
See also Windows Explorer, Dial-Up Networking, Add/Remove Programs,
Monitor, System, Performance, File System, DMA, Sounds, File | New,
Hardware Profile, Screen Saver, Mouse, Modem, Printer, Communications Port.
Found under Start | Settings: point 39, point 145(i).

38

Creating CP Icon for Desktop: point 112(e).

X-Setup can also create CP Icon for Desktop: point 112(e), point 137(c).
CP Icon created by X-Setup didnt work: point 138(d).
Decided to have just one CP Icon, located on Start Menu: point 145(i).
Removed CP Icon from Desktop: point 145(j).
CP elements have CPL extension: point 120(x).
Deciding not retire few CP elements for being unnecessary: point 120(x).
Deciding to retire FINDFAST.CPL for being unnecessary: point 120(x).
X-Setup makes it easy to retire unneeded CP items: point 120(x).
Start Menu
See also Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Find File, Properties, File | New,
Control Panel, Windows Update, Help, Favorites.
Opens up when user clicks Start Button.
Different from Startup Menu.
SM options in virgin Win98 installation: Start | Programs, Start | Favorites,
Start | Documents, Start | Settings, Start | Find, Start | Help, Start | Run, Start
| Log Off, Start | Shut Down.
Can also bring up SM by hitting Ctrl-Esc: point 105(k), point 182.
Rearranged icons on SM: point 102.
TweakUI may be the only way to remove some unwanted items from SM: point
145(f).
Device Manager
See also New (Context Menu Option), System Devices, Network, Serial Port,
DMA, SCSI, Hardware Profile, Desktop Toolbar, Turtle Beach Daytona,
Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem, PCI Communication Device, Monitor,
Network Card, Hardware Troubleshooter, Resource Conflict, Modem, Disk
Drives, Computer | Properties, Communications Port.
Exclamation mark in yellow circle: see Exception.
Right-click on Computer to show IRQs: point 281.
No Sound Card entry: point 212.
Exception for S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device: point 217,
point 234.
Error: Cannot find any free Interrupt Request (IRQ) Resources: point 217.
DM recommends using Hardware Troubleshooter: point 217.
Creating Desktop Shortcut to DM: point 112(e).
IRQs missing from DM: point 281.
System Devices
Subpart of Device Manager.
Provides information on AGP controller: point 325.
Also referred to as system Properties: point 107(g).

39

Driver not in SD may appear in Add/Remove Programs: point 107(g).

Properties
See also Windows Explorer, Start | Shut Down, DOS Batch, Toolbar, Disk
Format, Context Menu, System Devices, Network, DOSKEY, Disk Cache,
Communications Port, Resource Conflict, Modem, Resources, Auto Insert
Notification, IRQ.
Taskbar properties: point 41, point 42.
Recycle Bin properties: point 41.
Drive H (SWAP) properties: point 41.
Properties of Shut Down | Restart in MS-DOS Mode: point 105(l).
DOS Box Icon properties: point 105(l).
DOS Box properties re available RAM: point 105(m).
Change program Icon properties to specify output location: point 120(h).
Change Icon properties to shrink Icon: point 120(l).
Get combined size of many files by selecting all, right-clicking on one: point
134(f).
Change disk properties to Rename disk: point 242(g).
Properties option within Outlook 98 and Outlook Express: point 37.
Place to find DOS filename of file with long filename: point 113(e).
Modem extra settings option: point 265(c).
Enable device option for S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device:
point 281.
Icon
Used too frequently to track every occurrence in this document.
See e.g., Context Menu, Properties, Graphics, Monitor, Start | Programs.
Shrinking eliminates little arrow: point 120(l).
Files and websites containing many icons: point 120(ad).
GIF, JPG, and ICO Formats: point 120(ad).
Creating icons from BMP Files: point 120(ad).
Using Icon Snatcher to search computer for icons: point 120(ad).
X-Setup can display or hide icons on Control Panel: point 137(b).
X-Setup can make Windows Explorer show the Icons that appear inside Control
Panel: point 137(e).
X-Setup can wrap long icon titles: point 137(e).
X-Setup can display more icons when Coolswitching: point 137(g).
Exception
Another word for exclamation mark in yellow circle in Device Manager.
Not the same as Fatal Exception.
Communications Port exception: Resource Conflict: no IRQ: point 232.
Exception caused by no free IRQs: point 234.

40

Driver
See also PartitionMagic, GoBack, AGP, System Devices, Bridge, 32-Bit, Diamond
SupraMax 56i PCI Modem, IRQ Routing, Monitor, S3 Inc. Savage4, Matrox
Mystique, CATROOT, Network Neighborhood, Tape Backup, C:\Windows\INF
Folder, DMA, Bus Master, Twain, FTP, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, SCSI,
Mouse, CD-ROM Drive, CD-ROM Driver, ATAPI_CD.SYS, SSCDROM.SYS,
Bootable CD, Bootable Floppy, Motherboard, Video Card, Creative SoundBlaster
AWE64, Find File, Soyo, Hard Disk, WinDrivers.com.
May be found on Floppy: point 255(c).
Downloaded Drivers needed to Add New Hardware: point 82.
Modem disliked Driver it was supposed to like: point 99.
Modem Drivers loaded from Floppy: point 206.
Advised to skip USB Filter Driver: point 107(f).
Win98 built Driver Information Database when finding New Hardware: point
180.
Booting takes care of some Driver installations: point 259.
Win98 asks for Drivers for New Hardware: point 190.
Modem Diagnostics should say Communication Driver is COMM.DRV: point
206.
WinDrivers.com
Has latest Drivers: point 267(b).
Seemed like a good, professional site: point 309(c).
Made me get Sound Card ID unnecessarily: point 309(c).
Steered me to home page for Creative SoundBlaster AWE64: point 309(c).
Monitor
See also Video Card, Display, Power Management.
Not necessary to configure Monitor to get basic functionality: point 15.
Adjust settings in Control Panel: point 218.
640 x 480 resolution: point 120(l).
800 x 600 resolution shows more: point 218.
Safe Mode may affect Icon location for 800 x 600 resolution: point 146(h).
16-Bit color on Monitor: point 105(k).
Word 97 toolbars that dont fit in one resolution may fit in another: point 102.
Racing horizontal effect not a problem in 640 x 480 mode: point 105(k), point
184.
Set to 640 x 480 in Safe Mode to fix racing effect: point 105(k), point 184, point
206.
Racing horizontal effect recurs: point 192.
Racing horizontal effect was due to loose plug.
Drivers necessary to get right colors and end racing effect: point 105(k).

41

Cheap clone monitor configured as Unknown Monitor: point 218.

Monitor configured in Device Manager: point 218.
Change of settings might put Icons out of line: point 121.
Driver for unknown monitor type included with Win98: point 218.
Included in Hardware Profile: point 219.
Some programs cannot run in less than 256 colors: point 259(c).
Totally blank screen: see Logitech Mouse.
Changing resolution produces Explorer crash: point 105(k).
Video Card
See also AGP, PCIInfo, Matrox Mystique, S3 Inc. Savage4, Add New Hardware.
Also known as Display Adapter: point 218.
Driver found in C:\Windows\INF Folder: point 255(c).
Increase number of colors by updating Video Card Driver: point 259(c).
System recognized Graphics Card even without deliberately installing in: point
105(k).
Display
See also Monitor, Lost & Found, Video Card, Screen Saver.
An option under Control Panel: point 320.
Use this option to specify Wallpaper from Bitmap Files in C:\WINDOWS: point
320.
Resizing to 800 x 600: point 120(aj).
Modem
See also Dial-Up Networking, Internet Connection Wizard, ISP, Symantec
WinFax, PCI Communication Device, BIOS Setup, Cold Reboot, Newcom 33ifxC
Internal Modem, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64, Communications Port,
Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem, SYSTEM.DAT, Office 97, Plug-N-Play, Add
New Hardware, Port, Resource Conflict, Safe Mode, Properties, Internet Tech
Support Diagnostics, IRQ, Resource Conflict.
Error: Unable to establish a connection: point 229, point 232, point 281.
Cant research online without one: point 200.
Installation required modem Driver on Floppy: point 37.
Frequent disconnections might have been fault of phone company: point 113(g).
Checking quality of phone line: point 113(g).
Installation included Serial Wave, Enumerator, Voice PCI: point 182.
Deleting five imaginary modems when I actually had only one: point 182.
Check Device Manager re modem problems: point 281.
Might still work after Warm Reboot but not after Cold Reboot, or vice versa:
point 234.
System couldnt find modem: point 91.

42

Device Manager shows one modem while Properties box shows two: point
265(c).
Search for new Driver in Control Panel | Modem | Properties: point 99, point
206.
Initialization strings can make modem run faster: point 266(g).
Better to have the right Driver than to have an initialization string: point 266(g).
Decide not to update working modem or its Driver: point 266(g), point 267(b).
Deleting Modem under Control Panel and letting system re-recognize: point
181, point 206.
Device Manager shows multiple Modems: point 181, point 195, point 206.
No entry for Modem in Device Manager: point 229, point 232.
No entry for Modem in Control Panel: point 99.
No IRQ for Modem: point 281.
Error 630: the computer is not receiving a response from the modem: point
281.
Have to configure your modem manually unless Win98 does it automatically:
point 15, point 99.
Error: could not detect modem: point 206.
Error: modem failed to respond: point 206.
Trying to fix modem with Diagnostics: point 206.
Manual settings on modem Card: point 206.
Initialization strings: point 265(c).
Improving modem performance via Extra Settings: point 265(c).
AGP
See also Motherboard, PCIInfo.
Information about: see WCPUID.
Installing AGP Driver: point 107(g), point 255(c), point 325.
Information on AGP controller: see System Devices.
Bridge
See point 107(g).
Southbridge: point 107(d).
Skipped PCI bridge Driver: point 107(e), point 182.
Skipped PCI to ISA bridge: point 180, point 255(c).
PCI
See also PCIInfo, Bridge, Audio, PCI Communication Device, Network, Diamond
SupraMax 56i PCI Modem, IRQ Routing, Matrox Mystique, Network Card, USB,
Modem, BIOS Setup.
Unknown PCI device: point 180.
Exception for PCI Multimedia Audio Device because Sound Card not installed:
point 212.

43

PCI devices can share IRQs: point 232.

Replacing ISA Cards with PCI Cards can free up IRQs: point 234.
Replacing ISA Cards with PCI Cards requires free PCI slots: point 281.
Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA): point 255(c).
Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem
Modem used in AMD machine.
See also PCI Communication Device.
Installed SUP2750 PCI Modem Enumerator: point 255(c).
Difficulty installing: point 182.
Device Manager considered it a SupraExpress: point 182.
No installation information on Diamond website: point 182.
Installation CD showed different menus at different times: point 182.
Advised trying a different slot on Motherboard: point 182.
Eventually did Find File (Driver): point 182.
September 1999 Driver update apparently the wrong one: point 325.
Appeared that Driver was built into Win98 but not Win95: point 325.
PCI Communication Device
See also Add New Hardware.
Same as Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem: point 182, point 255(c).
Nothing specific on the subject at the Soyo website: point 182.
Didnt refer to a Motherboard feature: point 182.
Installation advice: Safe Mode | Device Manager, delete items: point 182.
Problems arose after installing from CD or using Network: point 192.
Installation required multiple reboots: point 193.
IRQ Routing
See also Motherboard, USB.
IRQ is short for Interrupt Request: point 107(d).
Referred to as VIA PCI IRQ Routing Miniport Driver: point 107(g).
Driver recommended by chipset manufacturer but not Motherboard
manufacturer: point 107(d).
Problems installing IRQ Routing Driver: point 107(g).
Driver not shown in Add/Remove Programs: point 107(g).
Problems caused by bad Floppy: point 107(g).
S3 Inc. Savage4
Full name: Cardex S3 Savage4 Graphics Adapter by Gainward: point 267(a).
Low price, difficult to Find File (Driver): point 267(a).
Updating Driver increased number of colors available: point 259(c).
Driver installation gave weird message that Drive F was inaccessible: point
267(a).

44

Matrox Mystique
Downloading Drivers: point 218.
Diagnostics require selection of monitor type: point 218.
Erroneously says that old version of DirectX installed: point 218.
A PCI Video Card: point 218.
Tape Backup
See also Hard Disk, DriveImage.
A Backup method involving special digital tape cartridges and internal or
external Tape Drives. Very early PCs (circa 1980) could use audio cassette tapes,
and there are programs that use videotapes, but these methods are unreliable,
slow, and not necessarily cost-effective.
Can chain multiple tapes to form one large backup of a set of programs that
are too large for one tape, at the very real risk that the chain will malfunction:
point 68.
Problems with Bus Master Driver: point 107(b).
Hewlett-Packard 5GB Tape Drive had lost data and imposed hassles: point 171.
HP tape software had utterly ceased to run: point 171.
Could not Uninstall malfunctioning HP tape software: point 171.
Network eliminated need for tape software: point 250.
Driver installed at Startup: point 255(c).
Tape Drive
See Tape Backup.
USB
Short for Universal Serial Bus, I think.
See also Driver.
I didnt plan to use USB: point 107(f).
Deleted PCI to USB connector: point 218.
Turn on OnChip USB and Assign IRQ for USB in BIOS Setup before installing
Win98: point 107(d).
Disabled USB in BIOS Setup to free up an IRQ: point 281.
Tried disabling PCI to USB Universal Host Controller to free up an IRQ: point
217, point 234.
Disabling PCI connector did not free IRQ: point 217, point 234.
Logitech Mouse
Logitech software enables middle button on Logitech Mouse: point 224.
Couldnt use this mouse on other computer because cord was too short: point
224.
Logitech software ran itself before BIOS Setup: point 233.

45

Software was DOS/Win3.1-compatible, i.e., had problems with long Directory

name: point 224.
Software enabled three-button-type functions on 2-button Microsoft
Intellimouse: point 255(c).
Totally blank Monitor seemed to occur after installing Logitech software: point
233.
Is a PS/2 mouse: point 286.
Installation: new M-series device on the COM1 port: point 255(c).
Downloaded upgrade: point 286.
Microsoft Intellimouse
See Mouse, Logitech Mouse.
Mouse
See also PartitionMagic, DriveImage, GoBack, MSIPCSV.EXE, Cleanup Suite,
Context Menu, Tool Tip, Double-click, Logitech Mouse, Win98 Emergency Boot
Disk, Cool Mouse 97, Scrollbar.
Edit Registry to make mouse work more smoothly: point 286.
Serial mouse is mouse connected to Serial Port: point 259(d).
Microsoft Intellimouse is serial mouse: point 286.
Can use PS2Rate to improve mouse Performance: point 286.
Used basic Mouse Driver for Floppy versions of PowerQuest programs: point
58, point 64.
An option under Control Panel: point 120(y).
Speed settings: point 120(y).
Considered using TweakUI to change speed settings: point 286.
Internet Explorer freezes mouse momentarily and then returns to normal: point
223.
Mouse unresponsive on unstable system: point 270.
Barely crawling: point 114.
Cool Mouse 97
Best Freeware Mouse Enhancement, by one opinion: point 140(a).
Can use middle button to roll window up to show just its title bar: point 286.
Can use middle button to bring up a Windows features menu: point 286.
Creative SoundBlaster AWE64
See also WinDrivers.com.
Required manual editing of SYSTEM.INI: point 309(c).
Need to edit SYSTEM.INI manually was disappointing: point 309(c).
Installation process inserted stuff in AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 309(c).
Confusing website information re necessary downloads: point 309(c).
Another page in website less confusing: point 309(c).

46

Successfully installed Drivers: point 255(c).

Installation needed to check CD for the Modem: point 255(c).
Decided to see whether Drivers were to blame for malfunctioning speakers:
point 309(b).
Malfunctioning sound may have been due to use of generic Audio Drivers: point
309(c).
SoundBlaster CD didnt think AMD K6/2 300 chip was at least a Pentium 133:
point 309(c).
Only Creative software I wanted was WaveStudio as backup for other Audio
Editors: point 309(c).
Installing Drivers definitely improved sound: point 309(c).
Printer
See also Direct Cable Connection, TCP/IP.
I used old Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III: point 224(a).
Driver offered for download from HP website was wrong Driver: point 224(a).
Tips available in C:\WINDOWS\PRINTERS.TXT: point 120(z).
Installed via Control Panel | Add Printer: point 145(h).
Registry edit to disable Start | Settings | Printer: point 146(e).
Switch box enabled printing from either computer without shutting down to
swap cables: point 186.
CD-ROM Drive
See also CD-ROM Driver, CD Burner, Yamaha CD-ROM Drive, DirectCD, CDRW, CDSpeed99, CDRIdentifier, Disk Cache, Win98 Emergency Boot Disk, BIOS,
BIOS Setup, Auto Insert Notification.
Wrong Driver eliminates file not found problem on CD: point 179.
Couldnt access it in Safe Mode: point 75.
Hewlett-Packard
See Tape Backup, Printer, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx.
Plug-N-Play
See also Network, 32-Bit, Add New Hardware, BIOS Setup.
Modem jumpers set for PNP system: point 206.
PNP
Same as Plug-N-Play.
Add New Hardware
See also Driver, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx.
Stuck on fact that PCI Communication Device was not yet installed: point 182.
Installing Network Adapter manually: point 184.
Brings up list of items not in Hardware Profile: point 218.
47

Improper Video Card installation triggers ANH: point 218.

Couldnt find Modem: point 182.
Wizard allowed me to add my standard no-brand Modem from a list: point 99.
Searched for non-Plug-N-Play devices: point 99.
Reinstall Modem in ANH: point 200.
Reminded me that S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device was not
installed: point 232.
Tried to add S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device in ANH:
point 234.
Detected that Communications Port needed to be installed: point 281.
Adding Communications Port: point 206.
Wallpaper
See also Bitmap Files, Display, PowerDesk, Internet Explorer.
Same as Control Panel | Display | Background on the Desktop: point 54, point
320.
Hardware Troubleshooter
See also Help.
Indicates that S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device requires
IRQ: point 217.
Confusing message: point 217.
Offered in response to Exception in Device Manager: point 200.
Offered in response to problem under Communications Port: point 232.
Led to page containing advice: point 200.
Asked about System Reserved Conflict: point 200.
System Reserved Conflict led to No Modifications Allowed: point 200.
Suggested ways to free up IRQs: point 234.
Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter
See Hardware Conflict, Hardware Troubleshooter.
32-Bit
See also Network, PrcView, Slice32.
Microsoft recommends using 32-bit rather than 16-bit Drivers: point 184.
Plug-N-Play might not work with 16-bit Driver: point 184.
32-Bit program wont run in DOS: point 269(k).
Communication
See PCI Communication Device, Communications Port.
Communications Port
See also MSD, Exception, Direct Cable Connection, Hardware Troubleshooter,
Add New Hardware, Logitech Mouse.
48

Also known as COM port. See e.g., COM1, COM2, COM3.

An option under Device Manager: point 232.
Found information on CP in Resource Kit Book Online: point 206.
COM ports can share IRQs: point 232.
Modem Conflict with COM3 confused me; I thought Modem used COM3: point
200.
Properties indicate that CP is causing Resource Conflict: point 232.
Modem setup allows only 2 out of 3 COM ports: point 206.
Modem COM port and IRQ: point 206.
Specify Modem COM port under Control Panel: point 206.
Device Manager not recognizing COM port: point 225.
Uninstalling COM ports: point 181.
Was mistake to delete COM port: point 281.
Changing to COM2 did not solve problem: point 206.
Suggestion to disable COM2 to free up an IRQ: point 234, point 281.
Removing COM port may have made system unwilling to reboot: point 281.
Deleting COM port under Device Manager | Ports removed Exception from
Modem: point 200.
Modem using COM3: point 206.
Trying to use an extra-high COM port number: point 206.
COM1
Short name for Communications Port 1.
COM2
Short name for Communications Port 2.
COM3
Short name for Communications Port 3.
Hardware Conflict
See Exception, Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter.
Conflict
See Resource Conflict, Hardware Conflict, PartitionMagic, Version Conflict
Manager, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, Hardware Troubleshooter,
Communications Port, ICQ.
Getting rid of conflicting program in context of Backup: point 202.
IRQ conflicts: point 232.
Resource Conflict
See also Exception, Resources, Conflict.
Device Manager | Properties | Resources shows Modem Conflict: point 200.
Modem Conflict may explain disappearing Modem: point 200.
49

Resources
See also MSINFO32, Active Desktop, Device Manager, TweakUI.
Sometimes used to refer to IRQs: point 232.
Not related to Resource Kit.
An option under Properties: point 200.
Conflicting resources: point 200.
Error: no modifications allowed: point 200.
Use Automatic Settings option: point 200.
Adapter
Generally means something that helps something fit into or work with
something else. In the PC context, most often used as a synonym for Card.
Card
See also PCI, S3 Inc. Savage4, Network, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, SCSI,
CDRIdentifier, Add New Hardware, Video Card, Adapter, Network Card,
Sound Card, CompUSA, Matrox Mystique, Cardware, ISA.
Informal term for circuit board that slides into a socket on a Motherboard.
Sometimes referred to as an Adapter.
Performance
Is an option under Control Panel | System.
See also Aureate Media, Overclocking, DMA, File System, TweakBIOS,
Processor, Mouse, Outlook 98.
Replacing old hardware significantly improved performance and stability: point
59.
Shortcuts could optimize performance: point 105(d).
Difference between performance-enhancing and essential Registry tweaks: point
113(f).
Having two Hard Disks gives significantly better performance: point 256.
Newcom 33ifxC Internal Modem
Has generally seemed to be pretty obscure: 265(c).
New Hardware
See also Add New Hardware, Driver.
System recognizes new hardware when new Hard Disk or Memory are installed:
point 82.
IRQ
See also Device Manager, IRQ Routing, Add New Hardware, PCI, Exception,
BIOS Setup, MSINFO32, Resources, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, SCSI,
Hardware Profile, USB, Turtle Beach Daytona, S3 Legacy Relocator for
50

SonicVibes PCI Audio Device, Hardware Troubleshooter, Conflict,

Communications Port, Safe Mode, Motherboard.
Free up an IRQ by disabling full duplex on Sound Card: point 232.
Computer | Properties identifies IRQ sharing: point 232.
Not using automatic settings for IRQs makes system less flexible: point 232.
Possible to set Modem to use specific IRQs: point 206.
Seemed that sometimes system was unable to assign an IRQ for Modem: point
229.
Interrupt
Same as IRQ. See IRQ Routing.
ISA
See also Bridge, PCI, Network Card, Sound Card.
Short for Industry Standard Architecture. The E in EISA is short for Extended.
Older configuration for add-in Cards. Replaced to some extent, on at least some
Motherboards, by PCI and/or AGP.
System
Is an option under Control Panel.
See also Hardware Profile.
Disks
See Disks and Drives.
Drives
See also Disks and Drives, Tape Drive, CD-ROM Drive, RAM Drive, File System.
Disks and Drives
The two are often synonymous. In some cases, however, Disk means a
physical device. See Floppy, Hard Disk, Compact Disc. In such cases, the
reference is to the medium (e.g., the floppy disk or the compact disc, as distinct
to the piece of hardware -- the drive -- that makes the disk work). In the case of
Hard Disks, of course, the medium is enclosed within the hardware, so a Hard
Disk is essentially the same thing as a Hard Disk Drive or a Hard Drive. A
Drive, by contrast, can be a strictly logical device. For example, if a Hard Disk
consists of two logical Partitions, the system might recognize those Partitions as,
say, Drive C and Drive D.
Disk Drives
Option under Control Panel | System | Device Manager | Disk Drives: see
Hard Disk.
Lists disks as merely Generic IDE Type 47: point 106.
This is the place to enable DMA: point 108.
51

Floppy
Short for floppy disk or floppy disk drive.
See also Bootable Floppy.
Error: "The system cannot read from the specified device": point 85.
Hardware Profile
See also Turtle Beach Daytona, Monitor, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, Add New
Hardware.
Located under System option in Control Panel: point 207.
Not useful merely for corporate system administrators: point 207.
Enables user to alter hardware setup from one computer to the other: point 207,
point 209.
Create separate configuration for separate kinds of computers: point 259(a).
Do this by unchecking box in Device Manager: point 219.
Option: exists in all Hardware Profiles: point 259(d).
Eliminated need for separate Backups of program files on separate computers:
point 209.
Eliminated need for installing some programs on one computer but not the other:
point 209.
Found information on HP in Resource Kit Book Online: point 207.
Items removed from HP have red mark: point 218.
Delete the HPs that dont apply to the specific computer: point 211.
Error: Windows cannot determine what configuration your computer is in:
point 211.
Removed item from HP for lack of an IRQ: point 234.
Choose None to create new configuration: point 255(a).
Troubleshooting
See Troubleshooters, Diagnostic Suite, Safe Mode.
CONFIG.SYS
See also Sysedit, IO.SYS.
Error: cannot open this file: point 120(a).
Applies your preferred setup commands when you boot a Floppy: point 5(b).
Invokes HIMEM.SYS: point 5(c), point 7.
Files invoked tend to be found in C:\Windows\Command: point 5(c).
Should not cite Hard Disk when calling programs from Bootable CD: point 5(c).
Normally resides in the root of Drive C: point 6.
DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS line malfunctions: point 20.
Empty CONFIG.SYS: nothing in it: point 21.
Win98 seemed to ignore CONFIG.SYS line re CD-ROM setup: point 63.
Can replace AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS with MSDOS.BAT: point 118.

52

Fixing Out of Environment Space error: point 120(c).

CONFIG.SYS line to speed up Win98: point 120(c).

Network
Network
See also 32-Bit, Add New Hardware, Cold Reboot, Fast Restart, Direct Cable
Connection, DriveImage, Tape Backup, GoBack, Dial-Up Networking, PCI
Communication Device, TCP/IP, Shared Folders, InfoPager News Service,
IP_Agent, Microsoft Networking, Network Connection, Resource Kit, Disk
Image File, Custom Settings, Bits and Bytes, Microsoft Network, File System,
Network Card, Weak Disconnect, Strong Disconnect, LapLink.
First test of: point 186.
Adjust settings via network Icon under Control Panel: point 181.
DOS alternative: INTERLNK: point 181.
Found information on Ethernet in Resource Kit Book Online: point 184.
Option to do Backup on other computer over Network: point 185.
No Network connection until both machines were running Win98: point 269(k).
Solutions when Network Neighborhood shows no other computer: point 331.
Wingate lets networked computers share Internet Connection: point 140(d).
Settings for Dial-Up Adapter | Properties | Advanced | IP Packet Size: point
145(e).
Can see Shared Folders on other computer via Network: point 186.
Transferred data at rate of about 100 MB per minute: point 186.
Network Password interferes with Automatic Reboot: point 199.
X-Setup cant stop Network Password interference: point 199.
TweakUI stops Network Password interference: point 199, point 216, point 283.
Killing some Processes disables TweakUI setting: point 263.
Unknown force keeps disabling TweakUI setting: point 283, point 305.
Non-TweakUI method of stopping Network Password interference: point 283.
Non-TweakUI method makes other computer inaccessible: point 305.
Used Network to copy Disk Image File to other computer: point 220.
Error: Computer name you specified is already in use: point 255(c).
Each computer on Network must have its own name: point 255(c).
DriveImage Disk Image File restores all computers with same name: point
255(c).
Set different name for computer under Identification tab: point 255(d).
Error: Network error message on website: point 324.
Made it easy to transfer large files: point 193.
Troubleshooting tools include WINIPCFG, PING, ARP, NBTSTAT, NET VIEW,
NETSTAT, TRACERT: point 186.

53

Direct Cable Connection

Also known as DCC.
See also Dial-Up Networking, Network, LapLink.
Advice on how to set it up: point 93.
Security issue: looking for information on protecting Shared Folders: point 93.
Used to move files of ~650 MB: point 111, point 116(k).
With standard Parallel Port connection, moved about 200 MB per hour: point
111.
Crashed both computers when shut down on one unstable end: point 111.
Removing Network Neighborhood from Desktop kills DCC: point 118.
Using one computer to tinker with the other via DCC: point 145(i).
Not working: point 166(g).
Have to make sure each computer has unique ID: point 181.
Settings found in Network tab under Control Panel: point 181.
DCC Troubleshooter not helpful: point 181.
Recognized only two of three Communications Ports: point 181.
Still didnt work after adjusting TCP/IP bindings: point 183.
Had been working pretty well previously: point 183.
Using slower Serial Port instead of Parallel Port made no difference: point 183.
DCC failure led to decision to install Network instead: point 183.
Disadvantage of having to disconnect Printer to use Parallel Port: point 183.
Free -- comes with Win98: point 185.
Doesnt compare well against Network for ease of use: point 185.
Takes 3.5 hours to do transfer that Network does in 7 minutes: point 186.
Slowness not so noticeable on small transfers: point 109(f).
Network Neighborhood
See also Direct Cable Connection.
Removing Desktop Icon disables Drivers in Windows Explorer: point 181.
Registry edit to hide Desktop Icon: point 146(g).
Registry edit to revive Desktop Icon: point 208.
Other computer on Network appears under NN in PowerDesk Explorer: point
185.
Using TweakUI to revive: point 193.
Appears in PowerDesk Explorer without need to Double-click on Icon: point
193.
Serial Port
See also Mouse, Direct Cable Connection.
Unrelated to things that run serially. See e.g., Tape Backup, Diagnostic Suite.
Unrelated to serial numbers.
Slower than Parallel Port for Direct Cable Connection: point 183.
Set SP speed to 115,200 in Device Manager: point 105(c).

54

Parallel Port
Faster than Serial Port for Direct Cable Connection: point 183.
TCP/IP
Adjust TCP/IP bindings to improve security of Shared Folders: point 93.
Adjust bindings to check Client for Microsoft Networks: point 181.
Adjust bindings to check File and Printer sharing: point 181.
Dont check bindings for item labeled VPN Support: point 181.
Checking those boxes was mistaken: point 181.
Wound up checking Client for Microsoft Networks again: point 183.
Shared Folders
See also Direct Cable Connection, TCP/IP.
Security: NetWatcher utility tells you whos accessing shared devices: point 93.
Can see only shared folder from other computer on Network: point 186.
Can go into shared folder by using PowerDesk or Windows Explorer: point 186.
Network Card
See also C:\Windows\INF Folder.
Tried SMC Networks 10 Mbps Ethernet ISA Network Card: point 184.
SMC is Standard Microsystems Corporation in Hauppauge, NY: point 184.
16-Bit Card had only 10 Mbps speed: point 184.
Returned the 16-Bit SMC Network Card: could not get to work: point 184.
Tried LinkSys NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 32-Bit PCI
Plug-N-Play Card: point 185.
Connecting PCs with Category 5 crossover or patch cable: point 185.
32-Bit PCI Cards allowed 100 Mbps speed: point 185.
Far easier installation of 32-Bit Cards: point 185.
Information on Network Cards under Device Manager: point 184.
Works better if you plug in the cable: point 185.
System wants to reinstall PCI Ethernet Controller on Reboot: point 192.
Has green Link light and yellow Activity light: point 185.
PowerDesk doesnt see other computer when its Activity light is not on: point
185.
Dial-Up Networking
See also NetLaunch, DUNCE, Network.
Black-and-white: always dials, or never: point 272.
Most recent version from Updates.com, not Microsoft: point 49, point 110.
May allow simultaneous Modem use with Direct Cable Connection: point 93.
Modem not working with DUN: point 99.
Can add DUN to Control Panel: point 145(i).

55

No harm from accidentally reinstalling latest version: point 223.

Corrected DUN use of wrong modem: point 265(d).
Deleted incorrect modem entry in DUN: point 265(d).
Multiple modems in DUN require manual choice of modem: point 265(d).
Modem error not caused by DUN: point 281.
Strong Disconnect
See also Weak Disconnect.
Occurs when computer cuts Network connection without permission: point
262(a).
Doing it automatically in context of Shutdown or Reboot: point 262(a).
Weak Disconnect
See also Strong Disconnect.
Occurs when computer seeks permission to cut Network connection: point
262(a).
Doing it automatically in context of Shutdown or Reboot: point 262(a).
Needed only Strong Disconnect in DOS Batch options for Reboot Toolbar: point
262(c).
Microsoft Networking
Enter Network Password for: see Network.
Microsoft Network
MN is an ISP, not a Network: point 41.
Shortcut deleted from Desktop: point 41.
Connectivity
See Internet Connection, Network Connection, Direct Cable Connection.
Network Connection
See also Network.
Information regarding: see WINIPCFG and Internet Tech Support Diagnostics.
Different from Internet Connection.
LapLink
Program for connecting one computer to another.
Not needed, given alternatives of Network, Direct Cable Connection, and
INTERLNK: point 250.

Application Programs and Features Included with Win98

56

Win98 comes with a large number of programs. These do things that you might
want to do in the course of your ordinary work. We will talk about how to run
these programs later; right now, the goal is just to introduce them.
First, there are several different kinds of Editors. Win98 comes with a Word
Processor (WordPad), a Text Editor (Notepad), a Graphics editor (Paint),
Microsoft Photo Editor, and an HTML Editor (Frontpage Express), as well as two
different tools to edit the Registry, namely RegEdit and System Policy Editor.
The Windows Updates website gave me current versions of NetMeeting and
Messenger, neither of which was important to me. Win98 also gave me other
little gizmos that had occasional value at best, including Calculator, Character
Map, and Quick Launch. None of these programs allows enough customization
to warrant special attention: they pretty much just get installed and you use
them.
Win98 comes with a bar at the bottom of the screen, the Taskbar, that contains at
least three major areas. At its left end is the Start Button, which we will talk
about later. In the center you see Icons (i.e., little colored symbols) for various
programs or options that you can run, or that already are running. On the right
end is the System Tray, a little indented area that shows a Clock and maybe some
other items. If you hold the Mouse pointer (also known as its cursor) steady,
you see a little note pop to provide more information about the item. This little
note is called a Tool Tip, and you see them frequently in Win98. In addition to
the Clock, the System Tray in a basic Win98 setup also holds an icon for Task
Scheduler. This is a program that lets you run programs at various times
throughout your week, day or night.

Editor
Generally, any program that lets you change contents of files.
See also HTML Editor, Audio Editor, Graphics Editor, System Policy Editor,
System Configuration Editor, Text Editor, RegEdit.
Word Processor
See also Word 97, WordPad, Processor, File Comparison.
May imply a more sophisticated program than a mere Text Editor.
Asked if I wanted to save changes when another program tried to shut it down:
point 141(l).
Text Editor
Examples: Notepad.
Usually more primitive than a Word Processor.

57

WordPad
See also X-Setup, Desktop Toolbar, Desktop Folder.
A Word Processor supplied with Win98.
Specifying Save In location: point 120(h).
Used with PrintScreen to capture screen image: point 134(q).
Used to open TXT files too large for Notepad: point 96.
Sometimes used to open files with the wrong extensions: point 113(c).
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Used to edit multiple DOS Batch files: point 303(d).
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 310.
Notepad
See also Desktop Folder.
A Text Editor supplied with Win98.
Specifying Save In location: point 120(h).
Sometimes used to open files with the wrong extensions: point 113(c).
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 310.
Use X-Setup to enable word-wrap: point 137(l).
Use to create or edit REG Files: point 141(k).
Use to edit SYSTEM.INI: point 145(c).
Paint
Specifying Save In location: point 120(h).
Used with PrintScreen to capture screen image: point 134(q).
Microsoft Photo Editor
See also X-Setup, Scanning, Image Scanning.
Came with Win98 or Office 97: point 224(i).
Specifying Save In location: point 120(h).
Primary program for Graphics editing: point 224(c).
FrontPage Express
Apparently Freeware with Win98 or Internet Explorer: point 154(b).
Used MagicMover to move to D:\Program Files: point 154(b).
RegEdit
See also System Policy Editor.
Edits the Registry.
Get into program through Start | Run: point 146.
System Policy Editor
See also Resource Kit Book Online.

58

A Microsoft program, also known as POLEDIT: point 146(d).

Part of Resource Kit: point 146(d).
Found on Win98 CD: point 146(d).
Tinkering with SPE required restoration of previous Registry: point 148.
Would supposedly simplify Registry editing: point 146(d).
Opened in blank screen: point 146(d).
Purpose apparently to set up a system administrator: point 146(d).
Seemed to require Password at every bootup: point 146(d).
Program Help and online information inadequate: point 146(d).
Seemed to be subset of RegEdit: point 146(d).
Failed to work as I had hoped: point 149(a).
Seemed to have caused change with Password: point 150.
Ultimately Uninstalled it: point 146(d).
Installation seemed to have caused two pops on reboot: point 146(d).
Messenger
See also Updates.com.
Wasn't using Microsoft Messenger: point 145(d).
Didn't want Microsoft Messenger Icon to keep showing up in the System Tray:
point 145(d).
Netscape had obnoxious habit of inserting AOL messenger icon in System Tray:
point 198.
NetMeeting
Available from Windows Update: point 92.
Uses lots of Memory: point 145(d).
Calculator
See also Date and Time.
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 120(f), point 310.
Character Map
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 310.
Quick Launch
Only useful item on QL Toolbar was Show Desktop Icon: point 120(ac).
Copied that Icon to Desktop Folder: point 120(ac).
Taskbar
See also Properties, Toolbar, Start | Settings, Bottom-Edge Toolbar, Start Button,
Clipboard Pile.
Registry edit disables Context Menu: point 146(e).
Context Menu item to create new Toolbar: point 113(e), point 120(f).
Minimize All Windows option: point 120(w).
59

Vanishing Taskbar problem: point 316.

Restoring default Taskbar settings: point 316.
Not responding unless I hit Ctrl-Esc to bring it up: point 224(f).
Use X-Setup to disable Taskbar zoom: point 137(g).
Avoid bringing up Taskbar accidentally by making Scrollbar wider: point 311.
System Tray
See also Web Image Collector, Clock, Clipboard Pile, QUIKTRAY.EXE, Task
Scheduler, Volume Control, Weather1.
Called Systray for short.
One of the most basic programs for a working Win98 system: point 122.
Programs running in ST are constantly available: point 141(h).
Constant availability of programs running in ST is not all good: point 141(h).
Vanishing ST Icons: point 316.
Clock
See also System Tray, Overclocking.
Show Clock option: point 120(p).
Tool Tip gives Date and Time when clock is concealed: point 120(p).
Off by an hour: point 224(f).
Task Scheduler
See also NetLaunch, Date and Time, WEBWEEK.BAT, CLEANUP.BAT,
HOURLY.BAT, MAINTDAY.BAT, ScanDisk.
TS Icon is located in System Tray: point 105(g).
Making TS run items in Real DOS: see MAINT_WK.BAT.
Option of using TS to run CLR_DOCS.BAT repeatedly: point 120(i).
Configuring entries in TS: point 120(k).
Set up to run FREE_RAM.VBS every six hours: point 120(ai).
TS Icon not appearing in System Tray: point 123.
Forced a reboot so that MAINT_WK.BAT could run: point 127, point 130.
Ran MAINTWIN.BAT late in the evening: point 127.
Told TS to run a Shortcut instead of the DOS Batch file: point 130.
Option of telling it not to start unless computer had been idle: point 130.
TS settings: point 141(l).
LastTaskRun information available by using WinDiff: point 150.
Magnifier
Can replace Power Tools Zoom In option: point 119(b).
Disconcerting at first, later preferable: point 119(b).
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 310.
Tool Tip

60

Also known as ToolTip.

See also Toolbar, DOS Prompt Here, Clock.
Popped up if I left cursor pointing for a few seconds: point 113(e).
X-Setup can change TT that appears when you point Mouse at Desktop item:
point 137(r).

Creating Toolbars
Toolbar
Refers both to toolbars within programs (see specific program) and toolbars that
Win98 allows the user to locate at edges of the screen. Distinct from Taskbar.
See also New (Context Menu Option), PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, Internet
Explorer, Scraps Folder, Office 97 Suite, X-Setup, Suites Toolbar, Links Toolbar,
Desktop Toolbar, Toolbars Folder, Main Toolbar, Internet Toolbar, Files Toolbar,
Programs Toolbar, E-mail Toolbar, Cool Edit 2000, Top-Edge Toolbar, BottomEdge Toolbar, Right-Edge Toolbar, Left-Edge Toolbar, Floating Toolbar.
Manipulating: point 105(j), point 109(g), point 113(e), point 120(s), point 120(u),
point 143.
Creating: point 143.
Properties set to Always on Top: point 120(p).
Properties set to Auto Hide: point 120(o).
Dragging, docking: point 120(o), point 120(q), point 120(ac).
Shut off text and title: point 120(ac).
Tool Tip eliminated need for Show Text option: point 143.
Some toolbars contained the best Icons from Start | Programs: point 120(ae).
Toolbars subDirectory under Start | Programs: point 120(p).
With all toolbar Icons the same, had to use text to differentiate them: point
120(ac).
One toolbar can double up with another on same edge of screen: point 120(o).
Squeezing toolbars together produces pull-down menu effect: point 143.
Start Button
See also Windows Explorer, Explorer, Start Menu, Start | Shut Down.
Left-clicking opens Start Menu (as that term is used here).
Right-clicking opens Context Menu: point 146(m).
Right-click to add item to Start Menu: point 145(i).
Located on the Taskbar, at the bottom left corner of the Win98 screen.
Start | Programs
See also Start Menu, Windows Explorer, Toolbar.

61

Reach this item by clicking on Start Button and choosing Programs. Is common
location for program Icons. This heading does not list every program having an
Icon under SP.
Program installation adds Icons here: point 141(o).
Adding subfolders to SP: point 42.
Add Icons to SP: Create Shortcut pointing to programs EXE file: point 141(f).
Can rearrange Icons under this heading: point 115, point 141(o).
One rearrangement of Icons: point 52.
Rearrangement made duplicates when I downloaded updates: point 52.
Editable by Double-clicking on submenu: point 146(m).
Contains link to Windows Update: point 109(g).
Program Uninstallation makes SP Icon no longer able to function: point 115.
Added SP shortcuts to run Command Line programs: point 119(a), point 119(d).
SP shortcuts in lieu of Path entries: point 119(a).
Subfolder used to bury unused SP items: point 119(a).
Contained complete set of program shortcuts: point 143.
Harder to find a specific program in SP than in specialized Toolbars: point 143.
Links Folder
See also Desktop Tools Folder.
Folder located under C:\Windows\Favorites: point 120(ac).
Integral part of Internet Explorer: point 142.
Became basis for Links Toolbar: point 109(g).
Better located other than on Drive C for purposes of Backup: point 142.
Placed by X-Setup on Drive E along with Favorites: point 142.
Decided to put it back on Drive C: point 142.
Contained Icon for Frequented Folder: point 143.
Links Toolbar
See also Links Folder.
Is on Top-Edge Toolbar: point 109(g), point 120(ac), point 120(o).
Icons: point 120(ad).
Format: point 120(ad).
Shared top edge of screen with Programs Toolbar: point 120(ae).
The only Toolbar that creates pull-down menus for its contents: point 120(ac).
Replaced text with Icons to squeeze it onto one line: point 120(ad).
Contained link to Quick Reference Page: point 113(a).
Context Menu
Same as Right-Click on Mouse.
So called because you get a different menu, depending on context -- i.e., on the
type of item clicked.

62

Programs adding CM options: see PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, Internet

Explorer, CloseAll, Taskbar, MultiRen, TreeSize, PrcView.
Changing CM options: see MenuEdit, X-Setup, Registry.
Specific CM options: see Open With, QuickView, New (Context Menu Option),
Properties, SendTo, Rename, Recycle Bin, Create Shortcut, DOS Prompt Here.
Install option when clicking on INF Files: point 109(c).
CM is different for folders versus files in Windows Explorer: point 146(l).
Is the menu that opens when you right-click on something: point 137(d).
Some programs install unwanted CM options: point 141(t).
Have to scroll past unused CM options every time you use CM: point 134(f).
Removing folder CM options removes Start Button CM options: point 146(m).
Registry edit that might affect New (Context Menu Option): point 150.
Shut off Winamp CM options: point 157(b).
CM option to open new session in Internet Explorer: point 307(b).
CM in Registry: point 31, point 146(e), point 146(g) through point 146(j).
CM for Office 97 Shortcut Bar: point 102.
CM for DOS Batch file: point 105(h).
CM for Desktop: point 112(e).
CM for Desktop re Active Desktop: point 145(j).
CM to change Icon: point 113(e).
No CM item to Create Shortcut to Desktop Folder: point 120(n).
Properties | Target leads to installation program: point 141(e).
CM for disk shows Format: see Disk Format.
CM for WebCompass: point 307(i).

Standalone Programs
Standalone
See No-Install Program.
No-Install Program
My term for a program whose installation is just a matter of putting the
programs files where you want them (typically, in a folder of their own), as
distinct from the ordinary Win98 procedure of running through an installation
process that probably makes changes to the Registry. Optionally, you can create
a Shortcut to the program. See point 141(t), point 289.
Examples: WCPUID, PCIInfo, Tiny Wave Editor, URL2HTM, WINIPCFG,
OptOut, SiteSnagger, MenuEdit, Slice32, IP_Agent, WavGlue, PrcView,
RegClean, Delayer, WinDiff, CTBIOS, CDFS.VXD, CDex.
DOS Batch files and other DOS programs are no-install programs. Examples:
Paradox, FDISK.

63

So are other Standalone executables. Example: Norton Disk Doctor, DISKEDIT,

NDIAGS, UNERASE, UNFORMAT. This includes programs that can run from
the Floppy. Examples: PartitionMagic (in the DOS form), DriveImage. Distinct
from Drivers, which are not Standalone -- i.e., which ordinarily just make it
possible for some other program to use a piece of hardware.
Technically, includes programs already installed with Win98. Examples:
ScanReg, WordPad, Notepad, Calculator, Character Map, Paint, Sound Recorder,
Disk Defragmenter, Magnifier, ScanDisk.
Could also include Win98 commands like MSINFO32 and HWINFO.
May also include eFax, Start Manager, CDWav, CDSpeed99, Winamp.
CTBIOS
Partly in German: point 107(a).
A No-Install Program: point 244.
Provided BIOS information not found under MSINFO32 or HWINFO: point 244.
Avoided need to copy BIOS information manually during boot: point 107(a).
SiteSnagger
An Offline Browser: point 307(d).
Is a No-Install Program: point 307(d).
Saves files from a website as a project: point 307(d).
Would get only first level offsite, regardless of levels specified: point 307(d).
No maximum download size setting: point 307(d).
Maximum number of webpages setting: point 307(d).
Option to ignore multimedia files: point 307(d).
Failed to download actual search results pages: point 307(d).
Web Results page did not open: point 307(d).
Had to delete projects manually: point 307(d).
WinDiff
See also PowerDesk, LoadPowerProfile, Files Toolbar, Dupeless, FILELIST.BAT,
Task Scheduler.
A file and Directory comparison tool from the Resource Kit Sampler: point
119(a).
A No-Install Program.
Could stand alone with aid of one additional file from Resource Kit Sampler:
point 119(a).
Recommended tool for File Comparison: point 149(b).
Very useful for comparing copies of Registry: point 150.
Not so useful that it could help me recover two days lost Registry edits: point
151.
Used to compare contents of CD: point 190.
Could compare dissimilar lists after some editing: point 210.

64

Delayer
See also WEBDAILY.BAT.
A No-Install Program: point 141(v).
Could delay the running of a program or run programs repeatedly at certain
intervals: point 141(v).
Had Command Line option: point 141(v).
WavGlue
Combines multiple smaller WAV files into one larger WAV: point 157(e).
A No-Install Program: point 157(e).
Successfully merged parts into 1 GB Audio file: point 157(e).
PrcView
See also GoBack, Cleanup Suite, Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Designed to show all Processes currently running: point 141(f).
Allows user to kill Processes: point 141(f).
A No-Install Program: point 141(f).
Shows useful information about current Processes: point 141(f).
Shows full Path names and other details about DLLs in use: point 141(f).
Seemed mostly to report EXE activity rather than DLL: point 258(b).
Indicates current running applications: point 141(f).
Positive reviews: point 134(h), point 141(f).
Use to see what happens when programs close: point 269(n).
Had Command Line option to kill Processes: point 141(s).
Could kill all Processes, not merely application programs: point 141(s).
Indicates that ADSUB is the AdSubtract program file: point 315.
Context Menu provides multiple options for any Process: point 141(f).
Shows whether process is 16-Bit or 32-Bit: point 141(f).
Could not start because system was not responding: point 282.
Had far more options than CloseAll: point 141(s).
Used to determine which Processes a program uses: point 146(l).
Slice32
See also DriveImage.
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(i).
A 32-Bit program to cut large files into smaller pieces: point 269(k).
Differences between 16-Bit and 32-Bit versions: point 269(k).
Could run from Command Prompt: point 141(i).
Created Splice32 to put pieces back together: point 141(i).
Had worked well for me: point 141(i).
A No-Install Program: point 141(i).
Used it to reduce Disk Image File to fit on two CDs: point 269(j).

65

Could cut large file into equally sized small portions: point 269(j).
Failed to provide onscreen indication of what it was up to: point 269(j).
Took only a few minutes to slice large file: point 269(j).
Could not run without Windows: point 269(k).
Tiny Wave Editor
Created by Yamaha: point 157(h).
Used as temporary Freeware substitute for Cool Edit 2000: point 157(h).
Small and surprisingly capable: point 157(h).
Start Manager
See also ZDNet.com.
Available as separate download or part of WinBench 99: point 158(b).
Used instead of X-Setup for Startup items: point 137(r).
Lets you examine and deal with programs that run on Startup: point 145(d).
More useful than other similar programs: point 158(b).
Similar to MSCONFIG | Startup: point 158(b).
Shows programs that dont appear in MSCONFIG | Startup: point 158(b).
Shows more programs than MSCONFIG | Startup: point 163.
Liked Start Manager more than MSCONFIG | Startup: point 163.
Can run from Command Line: point 158(b).
Runs as a Standalone: point 163.
Part of Cleanup Suite: point 158(b).
Uninstalling: had to delete C:\ZDBENCH folder manually: point 163.
Used SM to remove Clipboard Pile from Startup list: point 224(f).
Used to shut off DirectCD: point 224(k), point 231.
RED.COM
Useful utility: point 5(g), point 57.
Created in 1984, probably by PC Magazine: point 148.
Used to move files to another Directory: point 148.
MDEL.EXE
Freeware that simplifies deletion of files in numerous directories: point 141(r).
Used in CD_PREP.BAT.
DELTREE
See also Internet Explorer, Clipboard Pile, CD_PREP.BAT,
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory.
Used in CLR_DOCS.BAT to clear Start | Documents: point 120(i).
Used in CLR_RECY.BAT to clear Recycle Bin: point 120(i).
May have to run in Real DOS to remove directories: point 120(i).
Used to remove unwanted directories: point 20.

66

Used to get rid of My Documents Folder: point 120(j).

Very much slower than Windows Explorer for deleting large Directory: point
220.
DOSKEY
See also DOSSTART.BAT.
Gives Unix-like ability to use up arrow to repeat previous DOS Commands:
point 20, point 88.
Can specify in DOS Box Properties: point 105(l).
COMMAND.COM
See also Bootable Floppy.
Parameters for and Registry editing: point 146(k).
URL2HTM
A No-Install Program.
Program capable of converting Favorites to URL entries on an HTML page:
point 156(l).
WCPUID
See also Overclocking.
Same idea as, but better than, the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility: point 248.
Provided information about CPU and motherboard: point 248.
Provided information about AGP chipset: point 248, point 325.
PCIInfo
Provides information re PCI and AGP devices: point 252.
Used to find type of Video Card: point 325.
WINIPCFG
Internet utility providing information about Internet Protocol address, Network
Connection, and Internet Connection: point 266.
OptOut
See also GoBack, MSIPCSV.EXE, Go!Zilla.
Freeware that removes Ad-Supported Freeware: point 289.
Scans Registry and files for signs of Ad-Supported Freeware: point 289.
Stops some Internet Explorer crashes: point 297.
Deletes Aureate Media parasite files: point 297.
Written by well-known programmer Steve Gibson: point 289.
Written by author of SpinRite: point 297.
Written in tight, non-bloated assembly code: point 289.
Is a No-Install Program: point 289.
Added to Diagnostic Suite: point 289.
67

Can cause Ad-Supported Freeware to malfunction: point 289.

Impressive program: point 289.
May be Shareware masquerading as Freeware: point 289, point 297.
Caused BSOD upon exit: point 289.
Had second thoughts after using: point 289.
Damaged Go!Zilla: point 293.
Deleted ADVERT.DLL and other Ad files: point 294, point 295.
Deleted MSIPCSV.EXE: point 295.
Search for other programs damaged by OO: point 296.
Could not easily tell which programs OO might have damaged: point 296.
Couldnt find log of programs about to be damaged: point 296.
Linked to GRC.COM: point 297.
GRC not certain Aureate Media had transmitted personal data: point 297.
Finds other spy files added after previous use: point 336(b).
MenuEdit
Created by PC Magazine in 1996: point 141(t).
Intended to remove unwanted Context Menu options: point 141(t).
An alternative to manual Registry editing: point 141(t).
Not certain it would work properly with Win98 Registry: point 141(t).
Worked only on file types, not on folders: point 141(t), point 146(l).
Is a No-Install Program: point 141(t).
Small, convenient, no harm keeping it handy: point 141(t).
CDex
See also PowerDesk, Audio Toolbar, Ripper.
Is a Ripper and also an Encoder: point 157(d).
Settings for: point 157(d).
CDFS.VXD
See also Windows Explorer.
Very small and useful Audio adjustment: point 157(c).
Enabled user to see full contents of Audio CD, not just CDA files: point 157(c).
Is a Ripper without CDDB capability: point 157(d).
Posed virtually no quality problems: point 157(d).
Typical Audio CD contained numerous versions of Audio tracks: point 157(c).
Audio tracks would now appear as WAV files: point 157(c).
Winamp
See also Context Menu.
Changing preferences: point 157(b).
One of the most popular computer Audio players available: point 157(b).
Worked well over a period of months: point 157(b).

68

Installer added unauthorized folder called Mjuice Media Player: point 157(b).
Problems with WA on unstable system: point 270.
Added to Audio Toolbar: point 309(e).
AntiPop
A Command Line program to remove pops from WAV files: point 157(f).
CDSpeed99
Could test data transfer rate and Audio extraction of CD-ROM Drive: point
224(m).
Could verify integrity of CD-R or CD-RW disk: point 224(m).
Showed CD length, CD-ROM speed: point 224(m).
Odd results re amount of data on disk: point 224(m).
Error: incapable of returning error information: point 224(m).
Dupeless
Created by PC Magazine: point 314(a).
Voted one of the best Freeware duplicate File Finders: point 140(a).
Detects duplicates that had the same contents but different names: point 314(a).
Distinguishes duplicates with same names but different contents: point 314(a).
Could add to its list of files and folders that it would not compare: point 314(a).
Took only a few minutes to consider more than 20,000 files: point 314(b).
Did not say whether duplicates could be safely deleted: point 314(c).
Would not sort duplicates by file or Path name: point 314(e).
Would have to reconsider same list of duplicates next time around: point 314(e).
Deleting duplicates caused some problems: point 321.
AdSubtract
See also PrcView.
PC Magazine described as Freeware that would make Web surfing much more
pleasant: point 308.
Can prevent ads from loading in your Web Browser: point 308.
Can block cookies: point 308.
Can exempt five sites from ad-blocking: point 308.
Produced illegal operation error message and Explorer shutdown: point 308.
Free updates required to keep ad-blocking effective: point 308.
Can easily update their database of ads to block: point 308.
Statistics page said it had filtered 900 ads in just 6 websites: point 308.
ExactTime
Created by PC Magazine: point 156(i).
Set system's clock according to exact Time websites: point 156(i).
Runs at bootup, or periodically, or manually: point 156(i).

69

Internet Tech Support Diagnostics

See also Network Connection, Internet Connection.
Came highly recommended: point 266(g).
Provided clear, accurate info and suggestions about Modems and connections:
point 266(g).
There didnt seem to be any Tech Wizard button: point 266(g).
Another little source of information that would probably be useful sometimes:
point 266(g).
CDWav
Splits large WAV files into pieces: point 157(e).

Reliable Installed Programs

Audio Editor
Program that can modify sound files.
See Editor, GoBack, Windows Explorer, Codec, Cool Edit 2000, Tiny Wave
Editor, WAV, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64.
Different from Ripper.
Do Audio and graphics editing on separate Partition: point 32.
Audio work was especially slow; used big separate Partition to speed it up:
point 256.
Couldnt make GoBack work very well with Audio editing: point 258(e).
Didnt really need Backup of Audio files being converted to MP3: point 337.
Sounds
See also Audio.
An option under Control Panel: point 320.
Location for changing Win98s standard noises: point 320.
Disabling all sounds: point 118.
Audio CD
A CD on which sound is recorded in tracks. Not the same as a data CD on which
computer Audio files are loaded. Most common computer Audio (i.e., not Audio
CD) Formats are WAV and MP3.
Copy sound from Audio CD to computer by using a Ripper.
See also Windows Explorer, CDFS.VXD, Auto Insert Notification.
Problem copying track from audio CD to Hard Disk: point 309(a).
Audio
Editing: see GoBack.
Benchmarks: see WinBench 99.
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See also Audio Toolbar, Sound Card, Volume Control, CDFS.VXD, WAV, MP3,
CDSpeed99, BIOS, PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, Winamp, Cacheman,
SweepGen, Codec, Sound Recorder, Encoder, Cool Edit 2000, Windows Media
Player, WavGlue, RealPlayer, Audio Suite, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64, S3
Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device, PCI Multimedia Audio
Device, Turtle Beach Daytona, Motherboard, Audio Editor, Audio CD.
Hard Disk thrashing, pieces of music dropping out: point 268.
MP3
See also VisiTrax, Cool Edit 2000, i-Drive, Codec, Encoder, Audio Editor.
Is a computer-created Audio file, as distinct from Audio CD tracks: point 157(c).
Is a compressed Audio Format, as distinct from WAV files: point 157(d).
MP3 files made from WAV files: point 157(d).
Compresses Audio into much smaller files: point 337.
Codec
See also SweepGen, Sound Recorder.
Short for coder-decoder. May mean same as Encoder.
Blade and LAME are Audio codecs: point 157(d).
Fraunhofer MP3 Codec in Cool Edit 2000 is oriented toward music: point 260(a).
DSP Group Truespeech codec might give best voice compression: point 260(a).
Sound Recorder
See also Cool Edit 2000.
Audio recording program supplied with Win98.
Changing Codec in SR: point 260(a).
Encoder
See also Codec.
Converts regular Audio file to a compressed Format like MP3: point 157(d).
Compressed file takes only 10-20% as much space: point 157(d).
CDDB
See also CDFS.VXD, VisiTrax.
Short for Compact Disc DataBase.
Online, downloadable database of song titles and artists: point 157(d).
Volume Control
See also Audio Toolbar.
Can open by clicking on little yellow speaker in System Tray: point 309(b).
Change settings in VC to get sound from speakers: point 309(b).
Cool Edit 2000

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See also GoBack, Office 97 Shortcut Bar, SweepGen, Codec, Audio Toolbar,
Custom Settings, Tiny Wave Editor.
Cornerstone of my Audio work: point 157(a).
Settings for: point 157(a).
Refused to work on failing computer: point 116(k).
Error: A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system: point
212.
Error caused by PCI Multimedia Audio Device problem: point 212.
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Icon added to Main Toolbar: point 157(a).
Undo option slowed down every editing action in CE2000: point 258(e).
Left large Temporary Files to be cleaned up by MAINTDAY.BAT: point 309(d).
Temporary Files stored on Drive H (SWAP): point 260(c).
Had MP3 recording, editing, playback capability: point 157(a).
Uses high-quality Fraunhofer Codec for MP3 compression: point 157(d).
Use Sound Recorder instead of CE2000 for DSP Group Truespeech Codec: point
260(a).
Can remove Audio noise and other defects: point 260(a).
Used to edit WAV files: point 157(d).
Use of left edge of screen prohibits locating Toolbar there: point 120(q).
Added CE2000 as SendTo option: point 157(a).
Had problems with 1 GB Audio file: point 157(e).
Choice of CE2000 temporary file folder locations: point 260(c), point 304.
No Defragmenting of CE2000 Temporary Files: point 260(c).
Audio editing can be time-consuming: point 268.
Set default Data File Location to be on Drive F: point 303(b).
Different computers required slightly different setups: point 304.
Ripper
A program that copies tracks (which are not computer data files) from Audio
CDs to the computer. Unrelated to WinMag Registry Ripper.
Examples: Exact Audio Copy, CDFS.VXD, CDex.
WAV
See also CDFS.VXD, CDWav, WavGlue, Easy CD Creator, MP3, CDFS.VXD,
Windows Media Player, Sounds, AntiPop.
Is a computer-created Audio file as distinct from regular Audio CDs: point
157(c).
Can use Cool Edit 2000 to edit WAV files: point 157(a).
WAV files not very compressible with ordinary file compression tools: point
269(c).
Win98 standard noises are WAV files stored in C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA: point
320.

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Windows Media Player

See also Audio Toolbar.
Distinct from Mjuice Media Player: see Winamp.
Comes in two versions: point 309(e).
Most recent version from Updates.com, not Microsoft: point 49.
Changing settings on basic version: point 260(b).
Basic version not playing properly: point 260(b).
Basic version used to play a brief sound before opening a DOS Box: point 260(b).
High-powered version not offered at Windows Update: point 109(f).
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Could play WAV files: point 260(b).
Adaptec
See also Bootable CD, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, ASPI, Super Boot Floppy.
Maker of Easy CD Creator, DirectCD, and ASPICHK.
CD
Note the difference between the DOS CD (Change Directory) command and the
CD (Compact Disc). This heading pertains only to the latter.
See especially CD-RW, CDSpeed99, CDRIdentifier, CD Burning Suite, CD-ROM
Driver, CD-ROM Drive, Audio CD, Bootable CD, CD Burner.
See also PartitionMagic; DriveImage; Easy CD Creator; PowerDesk, Windows
Explorer; DirectCD, CompUSA, Backup, DMA, CDFS.VXD, Defragmenting.
CD-R disk ordinarily contains Read-Only Files: point 25.
CD Formats: Joliet, ISO 9660, CD-ROM XA: point 269(e).
CD running Win98 has to remain in the CD-ROM Drive: point 12.
Multisession CD: point 269(e).
Disadvantage of using Disk-at-Once (DAO) option: point 270.
Burning CDs best done from separate Partition: point 33.
Burning CDs can be fairly rapid: point 66.
BTDOSM.SYS error may occur only when booting from CD: point 78, point 80.
Bootable Floppy
Floppy disk capable of booting the Operating System.
See also PartitionMagic, DriveImage, ScanReg, CD-ROM Driver, Bootable CD,
Super Boot Floppy, Win98 Startup Floppy, GoBack.
Essential files are COMMAND.COM, MSDOS.SYS, and IO.SYS: point 5(a).
Bootable Floppy needed to create Bootable CD: see Easy CD Creator.
Runs Startup commands through AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS: point
5(b).
Must edit CONFIG.SYS to run CD-ROM Driver: point 7.

73

Gives you DOS-based tools to make system work even if its screwed up: point
5.
Contains a maximum of 1.44 MB or 2.88 MB of files: point 5.
Files needed to fix a recalcitrant Hard Disk include Format, SYS.COM, and
ScanDisk: point 5(d).
Needs to include UNZIP program if youre including zipped files: point 5(d),
point 5(g).
Getting ZIP files into working shape on newly Formatted Hard Disk: point 5(g).
Pulling together the necessary files, the hard way: point 8.
Easy way to create Bootable Floppy is just to use Win98 Emergency Boot Disk:
point 8.
Win98 Emergency Boot Disk gave better results: point 63.
Have to tell BIOS Setup to boot from Drive A: point 57, point 77.
Trying to make BF larger than 1.44 MB: point 10, point 11.
Bootable CD
See also Easy CD Creator, Super Boot Floppy, CD-RW, CD Burner, SCSI,
PartitionMagic, DriveImage, C:\Windows\Command, RAM Drive.
Requires CD-ROM Driver, MSCDEX.EXE, AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS:
point 7.
Use unlikely name (not RESTORE) for non-bootable part of CD: point 20.
Required adjustments to AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS: point 20.
Need Bootable Floppy to create Bootable CD: point 5.
Adaptec advice on constructing Bootable CD: point 7.
Adaptec advice on Bootable CD causes problems re RESTORE.GIF: point 20.
Might be able to emulate a bootable Hard Disk: point 12.
Useful when Bootable Floppy wont do the job: point 3.
Bootable CD may include files needed both before and after getting DOS Prompt:
point 5(d).
Has two parts: one bootable, one not: point 6.
Bootable part acts as Drive A, and normal Drive A becomes Drive B: point 6.
AUTOEXEC.BAT line with MSCDEX.EXE tells computer where backed-up files
are: point 6.
Non-bootable part of CD is at Drive letter indicated by MSCDEX.EXE: point 6.
Can still see contents of non-bootable CD after booting with the right Floppy:
point 64.
Booting from CD-ROM Drive: point 77.
Primary purpose seems to be to function as glorified Bootable Floppy: point 12.
Error: Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure: point 179.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Freeware with simple installation: point 156(g).

74

Super Boot Floppy

See also PARTINFO.EXE.
My name for a Bootable Floppy that I built from scratch, as distinct from the
Win98 Startup Floppy: point 8.
Adaptec advice on SBF starts me creating Bootable Floppy the hard way: point
5.
AutoRun
See Auto Insert Notification.
Auto Insert Notification
AIN and AutoRun Properties tell system to run recognized programs (such as
Startup.exe or Setup.exe) on program CDs inserted into CD-ROM Drive, or to
play Audio CDs, without requiring any action by the user.
Disabling: point 109(f), point 259(d).
Easy CD Creator
See also DriveImage, Adaptec, ASPICHK.
Can create Bootable CD: point 4.
Bootable CD limited to 1.44 MB: point 11.
Could not create Bootable CD from anything other than a Bootable Floppy:
point 11.
How to burn a Bootable CD: point 18.
Stalled at overly long filenames: point 18.
Counted file sizes differently from Windows Explorer: point 18, point 188.
Did not copy Windows swap file: point 18.
Bootable CD in ISO 9660 Format: point 18.
Could burn Bootable CD in both ISO 9660 and Joliet Formats: point 18.
Puts DriveImage PQI files onto CD in one big lump: point 61.
Option of not closing disk: point 65.
Bootable CD visible as Drive J: point 65.
Merges two WAV files into one: point 157(e).
Installation took less than a minute: point 188.
Installed on machine without CD-RW Drive to fix ASPI problems: point 224(j).
Creates multisession CDs: point 269(e).
Importing sessions in multisession CDs: point 269(e).
Data CD: point 269(e).
Disk full or closed: point 269(e).
Advantages of Joliet versus ISO 9660 Formats: point 269(e).
Disk Image File option: point 269(f).
Multiple CD sets: point 269(f).
Disk fragmentation problems: point 269(f).
Buffer underrun: point 269(f).

75

Using BURNING partition to avoid buffer underrun: point 269(f).

Incapable of splitting 754 MB file to put on two separate CDs: point 269(h).
Copy of DI put on each Bootable CD: point 269(h).
Errors reported by output device: means youve created a Coaster: point 269(p).
CD-RW
Short for Compact Disc ReWritable (or perhaps Read-Writable), as distinct from
ordinary CD-R disks: point 4.
See also Easy CD Creator, DirectCD, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, CDSpeed99,
CD Burner.
Might be able to use as Bootable CD to run Win98: point 12.
Ordinary CD-ROM Drive could not read CD-RW disk: point 111.
SCSI
Short for Small Computer Systems Interface, I believe.
See also Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, CDRIdentifier.
System of connecting devices to computer by chaining one to another, not
requiring separate Adapter Cards or ports for each.
Complexities of installing SCSI devices: point 224(j).
May need special Drivers: point 5(e).
May not support Bootable CD: point 5(e).
SCSI problems could stem from not having latest ASPI modules: point 224(j).
Automatic settings box not checked in Device Manager: point 232.
IRQ used: point 234.
ASPICHK
See also Adaptec.
Short for ASPI Checker: point 224(j).
Intended to see whether you had the most recent ASPI modules: point 224(j).
Running Easy CD Creator fixed ASPICHK problem: point 224(j).
ASPI
See also Easy CD Creator, ASPICHK.
Short for Advanced SCSI Programming Interface: point 224(j).
Fooling Adaptec software into installing latest ASPI modules: point 224(j).
ATAPI_CD.SYS
Supposedly Microsoft's generic CD-ROM Driver: point 7.
Found a copy online: point 20.
Turned out to be a Sony Driver: point 20.
Didnt work with Yamaha CD-ROM Drive: point 20.
CD-ROM Driver
See also SSCDROM.SYS, ATAPI_CD.SYS, CDSpeed99, Bootable CD.
76

Must be on Bootable Floppy in order to use CD-ROM Drive: point 7.

Called by CONFIG.SYS: point 7.
Supposedly enabled in Safe Mode when entered via WIN /D:M command: point
129.
SSCDROM.SYS
Samsung (?) CD-ROM Driver used on my system: point 7.
Didnt work with Yamaha CD-ROM Drive: point 20, point 63.
Yamaha CD-ROM Drive
See also DriveImage, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, GraphicCorp Photo Editor, CD
Burner, CD-ROM Drive, SSCDROM.SYS, ATAPI_CD.SYS, Win98 Emergency
Boot Disk.
I had a Yamaha CD Burner.
Compare Plextor Drives: point 263.
Could handle some disturbance while burning a CD, but not much: point 263.
Firmware upgrade: point 326.
CD Burner
See also CDRIdentifier, DriveImage, Easy CD Creator, Read-Only Files, CD
Burning Suite.
Means a CD-ROM Drive capable of burning data on CD-RW disks: point 4.
My burner was the Yamaha CD-ROM Drive: point 4.
Could not boot from Bootable CD: point 189.
Balks, creates Coaster: point 269(p).
Coaster
See also Easy CD Creator, CD Burner.
CD-R disk burned defectively is good for nothing but to be a beverage coaster:
point 269(p).
What youd expect from a system that has frozen: point 269(p).
Compact Disc
Also known as CD.
See also CDDB, CD-RW, Disks and Drives.
MSCDEX.EXE
See also Bootable CD.
Is, like any .EXE file, an executable program: point 6.
Tells the computer that it's going to be running a CD-ROM Drive: point 6.
DirectCD
See also Start Manager, Adaptec.
Default installation starts automatically at Startup: point 224(k).
77

Allows ordinary file writing and erasing on CD-RW: point 10, point 224(k).
Allows only 530 MB useful space on 650 MB CD: point 10.
CD-ROM Drive may not be able to read DC Formatted CDs: point 10.
UDF Reader allows system to read the disks Formatted with DC: point 224(k).
Graphics Editor
Program that changes the contents of Graphics files.
See Microsoft Photo Editor, Kodak Imaging, GraphicCorp Photo Editor, Editor,
Graphics.
Do Audio and Graphics editing on separate Partition: point 32.
Scanning
General-purpose term for when a program examines files or disks. Also used in
a separate sense for Image Scanning or OCR Scanning.
See also Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, Twain.
Microsoft Photo Editor the best program to scan images into: point 224(i).
Image Scanning
See also Scanning, TextBridge, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, EasyPhoto, GraphicCorp
Photo Editor, Microsoft Photo Editor.
All Win98 image scanning programs used same non-ideal interface: point 224(i).
QuickView
See also Context Menu, X-Setup, ImgView, Graphics.
Quick-viewing multiple files: point 120(z).
TIF
See also Windows Explorer, eFax, GraphicCorp Photo Editor.
A Graphics file Format: point 141(b).
Not to be confused with Temporary Internet Files.
JPG
See also Icon.
A Graphics file Format: point 141(b).
GIF
See also Icon.
A Graphics file Format: point 141(b).
Error: no viewer capable of viewing: point 141(b).
ImgView
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(b).
Installed viewers for Graphics files: point 141(b).
Viewers worked through QuickView: point 141(b).
78

Graphics
See also PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, ImgView, Video Card, Graphics Editor,
Icon, Microsoft Photo Editor.
File Formats: see TIF, GIF, JPG.
Viewable through QuickView: point 141(b).
Use X-Setup to change location of graphics files: point 137(m).
Thumbnail view in Windows Explorer: point 303(b).
Bitmap Files
See also Startup, PowerDesk, Icon, Rename, Kodak Imaging, Clipboard Pile.
Also known as BMP files: point 118.
Win98 chooses Wallpaper from BMP files in C:\WINDOWS: point 320.
Win98 supplies excess BMP files that you can delete: point 320.
Kodak Imaging
Program supplied with Win98 or Internet Explorer download: point 224(i), point
320.
Capable of saving files as Bitmap Files: point 320.
Much faster than GraphicCorp Photo Editor: point 224(i).
OCR Scanning
See also Scanning, TextBridge, WordScan, OmniPage.
Short for Optical Character Recognition.
Use OCR scanning for text documents.
One opinion as to best OCR Freeware: point 140(a).
WordScan
See also TextBridge.
Old DOS-based OCR Scanning program: point 224(h).
OmniPage
See also TextBridge.
Old DOS-based OCR Scanning program: point 224(h).
Added Fax option to Outlook 98: point 102.
TextBridge
OCR Scanning program: point 224(i).
Extremely slow installation: point 224(f), point 224(h), point 231.
Produced better results than WordScan or OmniPage: point 224(h).
Could do Image Scanning, but not as well as programs designed for it: point
224(i).
GraphicCorp Photo Editor
79

See also Kodak Imaging.

Image Scanning program: point 224(i).
Very good program: point 224(i).
Made this my default editor for TIF files: point 224(c).
Ran very slowly on Pentium 233 MMX computer: point 224(i).
Used for more refined editing: point 224(i).
Came with Yamaha CD-ROM Drive: point 224(c).
Hobbled by poor Help files: point 224(c).
Offline Browser
See also SurfSaver, HTTrack, SiteSnagger, WebCopier, Internet Explorer,
Favorites, WebCompass.
Wanted program that would explore hits from search engine results pages: point
307.
HTTrack
Free five-star download from ZDNet.com: point 307(f).
An Offline Browser: point 307(f).
Intended to mirror a website on your Hard Disk: point 307(f).
ZDNet.com mentioned possible Java feature errors: point 307(f).
Better than SurfSaver: point 307(f).
Didnt download hits from search page: point 307(f).
Really liked it: point 307(f).
WinMag Registry Ripper
Unrelated to Ripper.
Sounded potentially useful: point 224(b).
EasyCleaner
A free Registry cleaning program: point 139(b).
Best Freeware Registry cleaner, by one opinion: point 140(a).
One of the best Freeware duplicate File Finders, by one opinion: point 140(a).
Part of Cleanup Suite: point 225.
Included a Clean Registry option: point 225.
Removed invalid references: point 147, point 225, point 315.
Seemed to be actively updated and highly recommended: point 139(b).
Seemed to clean Registry well: point 139(b).
Found unnecessary files: point 139(b).
A cool program: point 139(b).
Found no invalid Registry entries to explain system problem: point 144.
Could not run from Command Line: point 152.
Duplicate files test seemed to run OK: point 139(b).
Duplicate test apparently incomplete; re-run requires 196 hours: point 166(b).

80

Sought replacement for duplicate files test: point 314.

Deciding against other Registry cleaners: point 134(g).
Registry Checker
Same as ScanReg.
See also MSINFO32.
Used to check system: point 116(e).
Can make Backup of Registry: point 151.
Can run by running MSINFO32: point 120(an).
Can run by running Win98 System Information: point 120(an).
No point using RC to back up potentially bad Registry: point 139(b).
Checkers
Created by PC Magazine: point 159(b).
ScanReg
See also Cleanup Suite, Registry, Start | Run.
See also (same as) Registry Checker.
Recommended utility to have handy: point 5(g).
Decided to have a copy on Bootable Floppy: point 57.
Did same thing as RegClean, but better: point 119(d), point 139.
Is the Win98 Registry Checker program: point 119(d).
Comes in DOS and Windows versions: point 124.
Windows version has to switch to DOS to make Registry changes: point 124.
Windows version called SCANREGW: point 147.
Became part of my regular system maintenance: point 139.
Creates Backup of Registry in /backup mode: point 139(b).
Default location for Registry backups is C:\Windows\Sysbckup: point 145(p).
Backups are Hidden Files in C:\Windows\Sysbckup: point 148.
Registry backups would be backed up along with rest of Hard Disk C: point
145(p).
SCANREG.INI determined where Registry backups were kept: point 145(p).
SCANREG.INI determined number of Registry backups: point 120(an).
Changed location of Registry backups to Drive H (SWAP): point 145(p).
Modified DOSSTART.BAT to report on Registry backups: point 145(p).
Ran /restore mode to restore working copy of Registry: point 146(n), point 148,
point 196, point 270.
Ran /fix mode in Real DOS: point 147.
Ran /restore mode in Real DOS: point 148.
Detected and replaced a screwed Registry: point 147.
Copied bad Registry to RBBAD.CAB file in /fix mode: point 147, point 270.
Normally names Registry backups RB001.CAB etc.: point 147.
Names Registry backups in irregular order, e.g., RB002, then RB009: point 147.

81

Restoring previous Registry corrected bad Registry edit: point 148.

Only five backups visible in /restore mode: point 148.
Five visible backups in /restore mode not necessarily most recent: point 149.
Move extra backups to other folder to avoid confusing SR: point 148, point 270.
Fixing problem required several tries restoring previous Registries: point 148.
SR confusingly seemed to change Dates of Registry backups: point 148.
SR oddly created backups much larger than before: point 148.
Creates its own backups folder when necessary: point 242(f).
May not catch all Registry errors: point 270.
May always say it fixed your Registry in /fix mode: point 270.
Absence of RBBAD.CAB file may be acid test of good Registry: point 270.
Sometimes created very large Registry backups: point 270.
WebCompass
See also Context Menu.
Could explore all links on a webpage: point 165(a).
Could determine which links were dead: point 165(a).
Could give a one-line description of live links on a webpage: point 165(a).
Could give longer summary of live links: point 307(i).
No serial number posed installation hassle: point 165(a).
Error on exit: "object is invalid or not set": point 165(a), point 336(b).
Originally by Quarterdeck, purchased by Symantec: point 307(i).
Symantec discontinued WC: point 307(i).
Faster and more explicit for exploring search results pages: point 307(i).
Could be doctored to examine first 200 hits from AltaVista: point 307(i).
Results in Access 97-compatible database: point 307(i).
Difficulties with updates: point 323.
Update difficulties seemed to be caused by MagicMover: point 323, point 336(b).
MSINFO32
See also Internet Explorer, CTBIOS, Processes.
Tools option contains DirectX Diagnostic Tool, Internet Explorer Repair Tool,
Windows Report Tool, Update Wizard Uninstall, System File Checker, Signature
Verification Tool, Registry Checker, Automatic Skip Driver Agent, Dr. Watson,
System Configuration Utility, ScanDisk, Version Conflict Manager.
System Information tool on left side tells Partition sizes: point 106.
Same information as HWINFO: point 145(m).
Hardware Resources option shows IRQs: point 232.
Shows modules loaded and running tasks on system: point 141(f).
HWINFO
See also MSINFO32.
Short for Hardware Diagnostic Tool.

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Provided information on Registry entries: point 145(m).

Provided information on File Attributes: point 145(m).
MSCONFIG
See also MSCONFIG | Startup, System Configuration Utility, Startup Menu.
Can edit CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI.
Can also find it under MSINFO32: point 145(d).
MSCONFIG | Startup
See also Start Manager.
Shows programs that run at Startup: point 39.
System Configuration Utility
Same as MSCONFIG.
System File Checker
Same as SFC.EXE: point 55.
Can extract files from CAB Files: point 141(u).
Searches for corrupt System Files: point 55.
May mess things up by restoring original rather than updated files: point 116(e).
REG Files
See also Notepad, RegClean, DEFRAG.REG, Undo.
Temporary Internet Files
See also Internet Explorer, Defragmenting, X-Setup, TIF.
Advice to clear out before Defragmenting: point 122.
Stored on Drive H (SWAP): point 50, point 242(f).
Removing cookies from: point 53.
Folder comes back to life after deleting: point 53.
Could empty before creating Disk Image File: point 111.
Relocated to another Drive; no longer necessary to empty it out: point 111.
How to clear out TIF from within Internet Explorer: point 168.
Deleted cookies from this folder manually: point 16.
Cacheman
Sets Disk Cache, not Virtual Memory: point 141(n).
Highly spoken of in context of computer Audio: point 141(n).
An all-purpose Memory manager: point 141(n).
Simple, abrupt installation: point 141(n).
Settings for Chunk Size and for caches for Filenames and Directories: point
141(n).
Is Cardware: point 141(n).

83

Cardware
Programs whose creators request a postcard if you like the program: point 330.
See also Cacheman, Exact Audio Copy.
FTP
See also iBackup, WS_FTP.
Short for File Transfer Protocol.
Used Fast FTP site to Find Files (Driver and others) online: point 20, point
224(g).
WS_FTP
Created Temporary Files that HDValet removed: point 141(m).
Limited Edition version is Freeware: point 156(f).
Provided a good way to upload files to my websites via FTP: point 156(f).
Paradox
See also Office 97 Suite, Main Toolbar.
DOS database program I still used sometimes: point 250.
Started by using PDX.BAT: point 250.
EndItAll
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(g).
Better than Ctrl-Alt-Del: point 141(g).
Easy to use: showed actual names of running programs in plain English: point
141(g).
User can mark programs to be shut down: point 141(g).
Better than TaskManager and simpler than PcrView for ordinary purposes:
point 141(g).
No Command Line option: point 141(g).
MultiRen
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(a).
Select multiple files, right-click to Rename all at once: point 141(a).
Command syntax slightly complex: point 141(a).
InCtrl4
See also GoBack, Clean System Directory, Norton Utilities.
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(d).
By one opinion, best Freeware program installation monitor: point 140(c).
Monitored actions taken during program installation: point 141(d).
Set default Data File Location to be on Drive F: point 303(b).
Would tell me how to roll back bad installations: point 141(d).
Reportedly stable and useful: point 141(d).
Tells what files change during Reboot: point 141(d).
84

Better than Find File for detecting changed files: point 141(d).
Supposedly able to monitor execution of any software function: point 141(d).
Produced an invalid file error: point 141(d).
Significantly slowed a programs installation: point 141(e).
Confused by my act of opening a DOS Box during installation: point 141(e).
Gave report on files changed during installation: point 141(e).
Said how Registry changed, but not how files changed: point 141(e).
Seemed mostly informational for purposes of program installation: point 141(e).
Considering EasyUninstall 2000: point 141(e).
Decided I probably wouldn't use it regularly: point 141(e).
Wasnt helpful in another situation: point 146(l).
Freeware
See also Tucows, Hotfiles.com, ZDNet.com, MSIPCSV.EXE, Ad-Supported
Freeware, Aureate Media, PC Magazine.
Is free software.
Generally offered either as genuine attempt to help others, or in hopes that the
program will thereby control the market, or because the programmer also offers
a purchased version with more features.
Example: freeware version of TweakBIOS wont let you save your changes:
point 134(v).
Many of the programs discussed in this document are Freeware. This includes
some not specifically labeled as such.
List of 50 best freeware programs, in one opinion: point 140.
Shareware
Was originally sometimes confused (at least by me) with Freeware.
Now generally means software that is free during a temporary test period.
May not work after test period ends, or may provide irritating reminders to
purchase it: point 289.
Line between Freeware and Shareware sometimes blurred: see e.g., OptOut.
May be difficult to Uninstall properly if user does not purchase: point 289.
Purchased version of software can eliminate problems with Ad-Supported
Freeware.
DOS Prompt Here
See also Windows Explorer, DOSSTART.BAT, Context Menu.
Created by PowerDesk: point 141(e).
Registry edits to adjust this option: point 146(k).
Adjusting Tool Tip name: point 146(k).
Making it open in the right Directory: point 146(k).
Internet Connection

85

See also Internet Explorer, ISP, Internet Connection Wizard, Internet Tech
Support Diagnostics.
Different from Network Connection.
Programs keeping connection alive: see Internet Loafer, Connection Keeper,
Keep It Alive.
Programs making connection faster: see iSpeed, FastNet99.
Multiple computers sharing IC: see Network.
Security of: see IP_Agent.
Information regarding: see WINIPCFG and Internet Tech Support Diagnostics.
File Find
See Find File.
Find File
See also InCtrl4, FINDFAST.CPL.
Search for file* (without quotes) gets all files beginning with the word file;
search for file gets all files containing the word file.
Available from Tools | Find | Files option in Windows Explorer or from Start |
Find: point 145(g).
Creating Shortcut to Find File: point 145(g).
Finding files generally: see PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, Files Toolbar,
WHERE.EXE, WHEREIS, FILEFIND.
Finding specific files: see CabWiz, WIN.COM.
Finding spyware: see OptOut.
Finding duplicate files: see EasyCleaner, Dupeless, MoreSpace.
Finding Drivers online: see FTP.
Finding Drivers for specific hardware: see Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI Modem,
S3 Inc. Savage4, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx.
Using DOS names and file sizes and Dates to find files: point 75.
Renaming a file to make it easier to find: point 253.
Locating files in a special Directory to make them easier to find: point 128(d).
WinMag's Registry Pruner
Showed list of entries in Registry's SharedDLLs list: point 141(j).
Indicated that the files to which these DLLs point no longer exist: point 141(j).
Allowed me to remove those entries: point 141(j).

86

How I Spent Another Three Months Installing Windows 98

by Ray Woodcock
Commenced with some pessimism and a dread of what might be coming
Shortly after Tax Day in the year 2000 A.D.

This may not prove to be the final answer on how to install Windows 98 and
other programs. It may not even be the final answer for me. But its a step ahead
of the previous go-round, when I spent three months at the project and still
wound up with a system that crashed. The long document describing that
process, which I call the Epic, has much more detail on many of these points; it
also tackles some of them in different ways from what Im recommending here.
Under each of the following headings, you will find references to corresponding
sections of the document entitled, An Index to Information on Installing
Windows 98. Those sections, in turn, contain references to specific paragraphs
in the Epic that contain much more detail on relevant topics.

Part One: Basic Windows 98 Installation

For more information see the following Index sections:
Before Turning the Computer On: A Few Fundamental Hardware Issues
Turning on the Computer: What You Notice Before Windows
Setting Up Your Hard Disk Before Installing Windows
Recommended Hard Disk Partitions for Win98
The Win98 Core
Win98 Modes
Files and Folders

There is a vast difference between having a simple Win98 installation and having
one that you can actually use for the many things that people want from their
computers nowadays. Installing Win98 can mean something very simple, if you
want a computer that just sits there. The following paragraphs give you that.
I.1. Save Your Existing Information. I dont just mean your data. You may need
drivers and other files from your existing program setup. You may also need
your password that allows you to log in to your Internet Service Provider
(ISP), and all kinds of other stuff that youve been taking for granted. One way
to keep drivers and other files handy is to have another computer already
running Win98 and/or your existing setup, from which you can copy stuff by
floppy disk and, eventually, by network connection. Another way is to have a

second Hard Disk to which you can copy everything that now exists on your first
hard disk. (If you dont have a second hard disk, you might think about getting
one. It doesnt have to be especially huge or fast, although thats always nice.
Right now, the second hard disk will give you a place to store the stuff from
drive C, but you will begin to see many other ways in which that second drive
can make things much easier.) This is entirely different from the question of
Backup, which you should have in a separate place, not on your computer.
I.2. Install Windows 98 Temporarily. If you already have DOS on your system
or have a Bootable Floppy disk, and can access your CD after booting from that
floppy, and also have a floppy containing FDISK and FORMAT, you may not
need to do this. Otherwise, you might want to run through a quick installation
of Win98 onto drive C. There are four reasons:
(a) Temporary installation will let you create a Bootable Floppy startup disk,
referred to here as the Win98 Emergency Boot Disk. That disk will enable you to
start your system. If you do boot your system with it, it will also create a
temporary RAM Drive and will load programs into that RAM drive. You may
want to copy some of these programs to another floppy disk -- in particular,
FDISK and FORMAT -- if you dont already have them on a floppy. If your
system fails to boot from the floppy drive, check your BIOS Setup and make sure
youre using a boot sequence that begins with drive A.
(b) Once you have a working version of Windows, you can install a temporary
version of PartitionMagic. That will let you create a PartitionMagic floppy. I
suggest doing the same with DriveImage.
(c) This will give you an easy way to copy over the \WIN98 folder from the CD
to your secondary Hard Disk. This anticipates step 5. You may find it very
useful to do this through Win98 if you are having any problems accessing your
CD-ROM Drive when youre in DOS.
(d) If you dont have a disk scanning utility (e.g., ScanDisk or Norton Disk
Doctor), this will give you a chance to copy ScanDisk.exe from
C:\Windows\Command to a floppy disk, just in case your Hard Disk acts up.
I.3. Start Over: Create Clean Partitions. Having more than one Hard Disk will
allow you to move your data back and forth from one to the other while creating
the following partitions, if youre using FDISK. Alternatively, using
PartitionMagic may make that unnecessary, since PartitionMagic can generally
create and manipulate Win98 partitions without disturbing the data on them.
Having more than one hard disk will also make some file transfers significantly
faster.

To simplify the following discussion, I assume that you have two hard disks, and
that they are large enough to accommodate the following partitions:
Master Hard Disk
Drive C: PROGRAMS: at least 1,500 MB: holds Win98 and other program files.
Drive D: STATIC: purpose described below: minimum of 400 MB.
Drive E: GOBACK: purpose described below: perhaps 15-25% of total primary
disk size.
Drive F: DATA: should allow at least 2 GB of free space plus existing data files.
Slave Hard Disk
Drive G: MM: multimedia files: at least several GB free plus existing
multimedia files.
Drive H: BURNING: temporary holding space for materials being burned onto
CD: 750 MB.
Drive I: SWAP: purposes described below: can range from 200 MB to several
GB.
You might enjoy additional improvements in Performance if you put the SWAP
drive on a third hard disk, assuming your power supply can handle it. (If you
start getting occasional problems that you werent getting before, the answer
may be no.) Note, however, that in an IDE system (which is what most PCs use)
you are limited to four devices (a primary and secondary master and slave). This
Partition arrangement assumes you will be using a CD Burner -- that is, a CDROM Drive capable of burning data onto blank CDs; the CD Burner will count as
one of those four devices.
After using FDISK, use FORMAT to make your partitions ready for action.
FDISK is an ugly, black-and-white thing, but its not too complicated; just pay
attention and be very precise in what you do with it, because it can wipe out
everything in no time. In any event, drive C should be the only primary
partition. Otherwise, DOS and Windows may disagree on where drive D and
other drives are located.
If you get partway through installation and cancel out, use FORMAT to wipe off
drive C and start over. Wipe off drive C even if youre using the Win98 Upgrade
CD, because the previous version of Windows (i.e., Windows 3.1 or Win95) can
cause problems later if you leave it there. But again, do be sure, before deleting
that previous version, that you have the previous version of Windows on the
other hard disk or on a floppy or CD somewhere, in case you need some
program files from it.

I.4. Lay a Solid Foundation: Make Sure the Hard Disk Is Good. Win98 comes
with a ScanDisk program that may find and fix problems on the disk. Norton
Disk Doctor seems to be a more thorough product, and is a major exception to
my general dislike of Norton software -- especially when I run it from the floppy
disk that different versions of Norton Utilities creates, or allows me to create
during installation. You should run one of these disk scanning programs before
going to all the trouble of developing a complete Win98 system, so that you
dont discover too late that your bad Hard Disk has trashed everything and you
have to start over.
I.5. Install Windows 98 from Drive D. Drive C will contain your Win98 program
files, but you dont want to install them onto drive C directly from the Win98
CD. Rather, you want to copy them from the CD to drive D, and then install
from drive D to drive C. This method tells your system where to find Win98
program files that were originally on the CD, any time it needs them, and you
wont have to locate and load the Win98 CD every time the system thinks it
needs to copy something from it. These files go onto drive D because that
partition will be devoted to never-changing installation files that will not require
Defragmenting, Backup, or otherwise tinkering with every day. (They will be in
stasis -- hence the name STATIC.)
Drive D doesnt require the full contents of the Win98 CD; it just needs the
contents of the WIN98 folder from the Win98 CD. I have done the installation
without any of the subfolders under that WIN98 folder, but recently I have made
AT&T my ISP, and therefore have preserved the OLS\AT_T subfolder (where I
assume OLS stands for On Line Services). You can use the DOS XCOPY
command to move these contents over from the CD or your secondary hard disk.
(See step 2.) Net result: you should have a folder called D:\WIN98; that folder
should contain a SETUP program; you should be able to run that program by
typing SETUP at the command line from within that folder in DOS; and this
should begin the Win98 installation process.
If youre using the Win98 Upgrade CD, the installation process will ask for
evidence that you had Windows 95 or some other qualifying product. If you
want, you can probably pass through that question by pointing to a D:\WIN95
folder containing the 34 MB worth of files that you could optionally copy over to
drive D from the Windows 95 CD. (It works even if the Win95 CD is just an
upgrade CD.)
Finally, although it is a matter of preference, I install almost every program listed
on the Win98 custom installation option, the exceptions being WebTV (which
apparently doesnt work so well) and Multilanguage Support (which I am fairly
sure I will never need). My rationale is that I would rather have all the programs

installed now than have to install them in dribs and drabs later for in order to
accommodate some program that I didnt originally expect to need. Note that
we are not configuring or customizing anything at all right now. Doing so could
make things very confused later. There will be time for customization -- indeed,
customization is what this is all about -- but not yet.

Part Two: Install the Crucial Utilities

For more information see the following Index sections:
Essential Utilities
Backup
II.1. Install GoBack. This program allows you to take your computer back to a
time in the past -- minutes or hours ago -- when things were working better. The
Epic describes some problems with this program; nevertheless, at this stage it is
essential. It can save you literally days of re-re-reinstallation. If it doesnt start
up when you insert the CD, run Windows Explorer and double-click on the CDs
SETUP file. During installation, use the custom install option and tell GoBack to
use the entire space on drive E (well, all but 11 MB) as the place where it stores
its history. (GoBack tracks events on each hard disk separately, and must store
its information somewhere on the disk that it is tracking.) Also, to help tame the
crazy proliferation of folders in your C:\Program Files folder, you might want to
tell it to install its files in C:\Program Files\Disk Utilities\Wild File\GoBack.
You can then steer other disk-related programs so that they, too, will install in
that Disk Utilities subfolder. In the case of the PENTIUM computer on which I
was first setting this up, my second Hard Disk was just a puny little 1 GB thing
on which I planned to store no important data, so I chose none as the place to
store GoBack data for that second Hard Disk. GoBack can remember anywhere
from a few hours to many weeks, depending on how much space you have
allocated for it and how much file changing your system has experienced (i.e.,
how much GoBack must track). You may want to keep the GoBack log open and
insert notes as youre going along to clarify what youre doing now (e.g.,
Installing NAV). GoBack is not bulletproof, so dont rely on it exclusively, but
it can be very helpful.
II.2. Install AntiVirus Software. I have gone back to using Norton AntiVirus
2000 because McAfee wasnt updating itself properly. Either way, you need to
have some antivirus software installed. This is the one exception to the rule of
installing really solid software first. I have tried to avoid Norton software
because it provokes crashes, but using NAV 2000 is much safer than having a
virus on your system. Once youve installed your antivirus software, use its
update feature to get the latest updates. The leading antivirus software

producers update their software quite frequently; it is almost certain that the
version loaded from your CD or floppy disk wont protect you against the latest
viruses. If you install Norton AntiVirus, I suggest installing it in C:\Program
Files\Symantec\Norton AntiVirus. You may have to use Windows Explorer to
create that folder before installing; my version of NAV 2000 has the brain-dead
inability to create a new folder during installation.
II.3. Go Online and Download the Windows 98 Upgrades. This is not a crucial
utility; it is just the tail end of Part One. Experience suggests postponing it until
after youve installed GoBack and antivirus software, so as to reduce the risk of
losing hours worth of downloads.
To go online, Windows should provide you with an option to enter the Internet
Connection Wizard. If you have an option as to where to install the program
files for your Internet Service Provider (ISP), choose C:\Program
Files\Internet\<ISPname> where <ISPname> is the short name of your ISP.
Hopefully the information you have saved from your old Win98 installation
includes the username, password, and phone number that you use to access your
account at your ISP. Note that the installation process may insert the wrong
username here. You may also have to set up your Modem. See below for more
information on hardware problems.
When you can get online, you can begin downloading. Youll find the download
site at the Windows Update option available under the Start Button. Youll have
fewer things to download if you start with Windows 98 Second Edition, but
youll still have to do some downloading even with Win98SE. If you dont have
Second Edition, the downloads will give you most of it anyway by the time
youre done. At the Windows Update page, click on Product Updates.
Presently, the best way to proceed here may be to skip through all the other
download options and begin with Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Tools.
Its not listed as a Critical Update, but once its on your system, the list of critical
updates will change. No point updating older versions of Internet Explorer that
IE 5.01 will be replacing. Use the Advanced button to download components
now and install later, so that you dont have to re-download if the installation
doesnt work out. These, too, can go onto drive D, in a folder called
D:\Windows Update Setup Files. Once youve downloaded them, click on the
IE5SETUP file to run them. If you forget which items youve installed, IE5SETUP
will show the already installed ones in bold print. Then go back to the Windows
Update site until youve downloaded everything that fits your system.
II.4. DriveImage. Having done a bunch of work to install Win98 and download
its updates, we should make a Backup. DriveImage (or another similar program,
Norton Ghost, which I have not used much) allows you to take a snapshot of an

entire partition and store it in a Disk Image File. Unlike some backup programs,
DriveImage restores your system exactly like it was. This PowerQuest product,
like PartitionMagic, allows you to create a floppy during installation; and like
before, it runs in Real DOS. If the Mouse is not working properly, run the
accompanying mouse program first. Note that DriveImage and PartitionMagic
are not compatible with GoBack. To make a Disk Image File in DriveImage, you
must first disable GoBack, and that wipes out your GoBack history. So if youre
planning to use GoBack to roll your system back in time, do that before using
DriveImage. (You disable GoBack by double-clicking on the Icon in the System
Tray and then choosing Options | Disable GoBack.) (Note that I use the vertical
bar | symbol to divide separate steps in a process. Other people sometimes use
other symbols, such as -->.) If you installed a temporary version of DriveImage
as suggested above, you can now use the floppy rather than reinstalling the
program, and even the floppy will soon be unnecessary.
II.5. PowerDesk. The only thing making this program (or something like it)
crucial right now is the ability to UNZIP compressed files, which you will need
in order to handle important downloads. I might point out that PowerDesk does
have many other abilities as well -- enough, perhaps, to justify its purchase price,
at least if you would rather avoid the hassle of researching and collecting the
various Freeware programs that would be needed to replace it (assuming there
are Freeware programs offering all those functions, which I dont know to be the
case). If you install this program or something like it, you might want to install it
into a new Disk Utilities folder (i.e., C:\Program Files\Disk
Utilities\PowerDesk); youll be using that new folder for numerous other things
eventually. Depending on the version of PowerDesk you are using, you may
find an upgrade on the manufacturers website; it may be accessible through the
programs Help option. Finally, you may want to obtain and install the DES
Encryption Enabler floppy, which was optional with my version.
II.6. Adobe Acrobat Reader. Dont go hunting for this thing; it will find you. Its
just a program that enables you to read PDF files, which includes the users
manuals for many different kinds of software and hardware. When you do
install it, now or later, I suggest installing it in C:\Program
Files\Graphics\Adobe\Acrobat Reader. If you get a chance to upgrade it, do so;
the later versions are better.

Part Three: Set Up the Hardware

For more information see the following Index sections:
Initial Tweaks and Hardware Problems
Network

Backup
We have now set up a basic framework that will allow us to begin shaping the
Win98 environment to fit our needs. The following suggestions are certainly not
the only way to do it, but if you work carefully through these steps, you will pick
up some good ideas that you can then use for other purposes.
III.1. Adjust Recycle Bin. Right-click on this Desktop icon and choose Properties
| Configure drives independently. Click the Do not move files to the Recycle
Bin box for all drives except C (PROGRAMS) and F (DATA). The Recycle Bin
isnt necessary and/or causes problems on the other drives. For example, when
working with Audio files, the Recycle Bin can pop up irritating messages telling
you that your disk is full when its not. If this leaves you without protection on a
key drive -- for example, if you want protection on your Multimedia partition -then you might consider using a customized Backup approach (e.g., doing as
much of your work as possible on CD-RW disks) or allowing huge amounts of
space so you can enable GoBack on your second hard drive.
III.2. Create Temp Folders. You will find it useful to have TEMP folders to serve
as temporary storage locations for files that you dont know what to do with.
The easiest approach, for now, is to create one on each partition except E
(GOBACK). Consider the TEMP folder on drive F (DATA) to be your primary
location for downloads and other transient files; this is a good location because
GoBack and the Recycle Bin will cover it. Create a folder called
F:\Temp\Staging Area. This will be the place to which you unzip the contents
of zipped programs. Keep it empty except for the file you are currently
unzipping. Keep copies of the ZIP files before you unzip them; youll be
surprised at how frequently you need them again. You might put them in a
folder called F:\Temp\Downloads, and then burn them off to a CD when youve
got 500 or 600 MB worth of them.
III.3. Make Control Panel Accessible. You will be going into Control Panel many
times before youre through. This particular tweak is important only in the sense
that it can help reduce your frustration. Control Panel is now going to be one of
the top-level picks on the Start Menu. To make the change, create a new folder
and give it exactly this name: Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD08002B30309D}, without the comma. (For best results, copy and paste that
number rather than typing it.) That will create a Control Panel folder. Move it to
C:\Windows\Start Menu.
III.4. Make Device Manager Accessible. For similar reasons, Device Manager
needs to come out from being buried down in Control Panel | System. For now,
it will be a Desktop icon. Right-click on the Desktop and choose New | Shortcut.

Type C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE SYSDM.CPL,,1 and click Next. Name it

Device Manager. Right-click on it and choose Properties | Change Icon. Handy
sources of icons include these files: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHELL32.DLL,
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\PIFMGR.DLL, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\URL.DLL,
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\COOL.DLL, C:\WINDOWS\MORICONS.DLL, and
C:\WINDOWS\PROGMAN.EXE.
III.5. Resolve Basic Hardware Problems. Install drivers recommended by your
motherboard manufacturer, perhaps downloaded from their website. Go into
Device Manager and look for Exceptions -- yellow circles with black exclamation
marks in them. Select one of them and look at its Properties for an indication of
what needs to be fixed. It may just be a matter of installing Drivers for some
items. They may be available on disks you have lying around, or you may find
them online. (If you browse, note that the OK button will only light up when
youre pointing at a directory that contains potentially useful drivers.) Many
items of hardware require drivers, including the Motherboard, and sometimes
the latest driver can make all the difference. You can also search for drivers in
the C:\Windows\INF Folder, or perhaps its subfolders. (Its a hidden folder, so
you cant browse to it at present; youll have to type it in. Well be changing that
soon.) If that fails, try the Microsoft Windows Update option. You may have to
screw around with various combinations of installing and uninstalling part or all
of the conceivably available and relevant software, reading the owners manual
and other sources of documentation, upgrading your BIOS, changing different
BIOS Setup items to accommodate Legacy rather than Plug-N-Play, using Add
New Hardware, Cold Rebooting, deleting items from Device Manager, editing
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, rearranging Cards in different slots,
removing suspect items of hardware to confirm whether the system works right
without them, playing around with IRQs, retrying whatever you are doing in
common-sense order and also in bass-ackwards order, random order, no order,
etc. Experience suggests the following:

When I buy ultra-cheap hardware, I pay for it in hours of extra installation

and configuration time, sometimes continuing for the life of the product.
The more extreme the suggested solution, the less likely it is to be helpful.
The longer you fool around, the more it proves that youre missing the real
problem. Sometimes advice from the manufacturer or a Newsgroup may be
your only salvation.
Its probably wiser to resolve your hardware problems at this point if you
can, or else you can just forge ahead, ignore the problems you cant figure
out, and expect to be suitably punished later.
Sometimes the most satisfying solution is just to throw away the offending
hardware, buy a replacement, and write a pissed-off letter to the
manufacturer when you finally get your word processor working again.

Note that this part of the process can take days. The Epic contains agonizing
details on some hardware problems. If youre cursed with old or complex
hardware or a recalcitrant system, you may have to spend a lot of time hunting
for the solutions.
III.6. Set Monitor Resolution. Go into Control Panel and set your Monitor to
display a resolution of at least 800 x 600. You may have to install the software
that came with your Display Adapter first. Mine, on one computer, was for a
Matrox card; I installed it in C:\Program Files\Graphics\Matrox. If you dont
change your resolution, browsing websites for important information will
become frustrating as you scroll back and forth, trying to figure out what theyre
saying.
III.7. Set Up Hardware Profile. This is essential if you will be using more than
one computer, and its worth knowing how to do even if you have only one. Go
into Control Panel | System | Hardware Profiles and rename the existing profile.
I did this setup on a computer that I call the PENTIUM machine, so I named my
profile PENTIUM. In Device Manager | Properties, uncheck the box that reads
Exists in all hardware profiles for items that will be unique to that hardware
profile -- that is, that dont exist on all of your machines.
III.8. Install Printer. This will be essential if you need to print program-related
information at one point or another during this process. Do it under Control
Panel | Printers | Add a Printer. Printers are usually connected to LPT1.
III.9. Set Up Network. If you have two computers, make sure they are talking to
each other. A couple of network cards will cost you less than $50, and a network
is an extremely helpful device. After installing Cards and Drivers, you have to
make sure each computer has a unique name under the Control Panel | Network
| Identification tab. You also need Shared Folders -- the fewer the better, for
purposes of keeping your files secure when you go online. I recommend
F:\Temp\Shared for this purpose, to emphasize that it is merely a temporary
clearinghouse. After creating the folder, go into Control Panel | Network |
Configuration and make three changes: (1) Click the Add button and add
Protocol | NetBEUI. (2) Click File and Print Sharing and enable that. (2) Rightclick on F:\Temp\Shared, choose Sharing from the Context Menu, and make the
folder Shared with your preferred Access Type rights. These steps should (a)
require the computer to reboot and (b) put a little hand under F:\Temp\Shared
(as you see it in Windows Explorer) to show that it is shared.

Part Four: Create Toolbars and Organize Start | Programs

10

For more information see the following Index sections:

Creating Toolbars
Note that it may be somewhat easier to work with the following instructions and
suggestions if you configure Windows Explorer and other programs to suit your
working style. For instance, this may make it easier to spot EXE files. This is not
necessary, however. Information on customizing Windows Explorer and other
programs comes later.
IV.1. Create Toolbar Folders. We will be creating a number of toolbars. Each
toolbar needs a folder to contain the icons that will appear on the toolbar. The
Links folder already exists, but you will have to create the others. Create them
under C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other\Toolbars. The toolbar
folders to create are as follows (e.g., for the Online Toolbar, create a folder called
C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other\Toolbars\Online):

Online Toolbar
Audio Toolbar
Desk Tools toolbar
System Tools toolbar
Disk Tools toolbar
Office Tools toolbar
Graphics toolbar

Depending on your screen resolution, you may wind up displaying the full
contents of all of these toolbars (below), or you may instead have to combine
several of them a subfolders under another toolbar folder.
IV.2. Creating Toolbars. You can have toolbars in five general locations: at any
of the four sides of the screen, and also floating anywhere on the screen. A
toolbar can also be Always on Top or not (i.e., always visible or not), and it can
have AutoHide on or off (i.e., it will pop up when you move your mouse to that
edge of the screen, or else it will just be visible there whenever it is on top). I
dont use floating toolbars because they get in my way. To create a toolbar, you
right-click on an empty space on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen and
choose Toolbars | New Toolbar. (You dont have to create a new toolbar for the
four bars that Win98 creates automatically: Links, Address, Desktop, and Quick
Launch; you just turn them on or off.) Once youve clicked on New Toolbar, you
have to browse to the folder (above) that will contain the icons you want to show
on the toolbar. This creates a toolbar on the Taskbar. The Taskbar is the least
ideal place for a toolbar because there are already several other things that want
to appear down there. To move a toolbar to one of the other possible locations,

11

take these steps: (1) Minimize or close all windows, so that you can see the
Desktop. (2) Left-click on the left edge of the toolbar -- where the mouse cursor
turns into a two-headed arrow -- and hold the mouse button down as you drag
the toolbar out onto the Desktop. Release it there. You now have a floating
toolbar that you can resize by dragging the two-headed arrow at any of its
borders. (3) Drag the title bar of the floating toolbar to any of the four sides of
the screen. This works even if there is already a toolbar there -- that is, more than
one toolbar can share the same edge of the screen. You may be able to drag in
one step from the Taskbar directly to the preferred edge of the screen, but keep
the two-step approach in mind in case the one-step approach fails. (4) Tinker
with positioning, dragging it back out onto the Desktop if necessary, until you
have an arrangement you like. Note that you can drag the edge of the toolbar to
make it wider or narrower. (5) Adjust the right-click Context Menu settings for
the toolbar. Here, we will shut off the text and title for all toolbars, and will rely
solely on the different icons to tell us which programs we are running. If your
screen is large enough, you may also prefer to make your toolbars Always on
Top and not AutoHide. AutoHide leaves more screen space available but has the
irritating habit of popping up whenever you accidentally move your mouse too
close to the edge. To change the properties of a toolbar at any time, right-click on
its left edge (or the top edge, for a vertical toolbar) or on any empty space on it.
IV.3. Putting Icons on Toolbars. Each toolbar folder needs to contain the icons
relevant to its subject. I have provided a list, below, to show which icons wound
up in which folders on my computer. (Note that we have not yet installed all of
the relevant programs; the list below is a final list that you may want to check
again later.) We will not be changing these icons much, because it is more
efficient to know exactly where to look for the icon of the program you want to
run. You may or may not prefer to have toolbars jammed with icons. I
recommend not trying to put every program icon on a toolbar, because all those
extra icons will slow down your search for the important ones, and because you
will be able to access your rarely used programs through the Start | Programs
menu. Note that one toolbar may crowd another so that not all its icons show
unless you drag the appropriate toolbars or their edges in the appropriate
direction. You can put icons into folders by either dragging or by cutting and
pasting, working either from folder to folder or from folder to toolbar or vice
versa. Your icons will come from the following sources: (1) You will cut icons
from the Start | Programs menu. You wont leave copies there because duplicate
icons can cause confusion when you update your programs. See below for more
information on raiding the Start | Programs menu. (2) You will copy icons from
other toolbars. In particular, Win98 comes with the Quick Launch toolbar
already running. You will find copies of its icons in the Start | Programs menu,
so you need not raid the Quick Launch toolbar. The one exception is the Show

12

Desktop icon. Once youve raided the Quick Launch toolbar, you can close it.
(3) You will assign icons for new folders and programs that you create.
IV.4. Links Toolbar. You will note that we did not create a folder for the
preexisting Links toolbar. This is because the toolbar is pre-packaged to draw its
contents from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. As that location suggests, the
Links toolbar is supposed to display links to favorite websites. We can use it for
this purpose much more efficiently than Win98 does, however. We will add the
links themselves later. Right now, the interesting thing about the Links toolbar is
that it treats folder icons differently than other toolbars do. If you put a folder
icon in another toolbar and click on that icon, you get a Windows Explorer box
showing you the contents of the folder. You have to double-click on the
preferred icon within that box, and you also have to manually close down the
box when youre done with it. By contrast, a folder icon on the Links toolbar
serves as the top of a pull-down menu. That is, when you click on it, its contents
unfold and you can choose the preferred item with just one more click. This is
not as efficient as having the desired icon directly available on the toolbar, but it
works very well for situations where you are going to have a collection of
programs that may be changing and that can all get lumped under one folder.
For this purpose, create a Frequented folder under
C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. This folder will contain customized links to
websites that you visit frequently. We will address, later, the question of how to
design these customized links. Right now, the Frequented folder can stay empty.
Finally, Win98 supplies a number of favorites in the Links folder. Some of these
links may have some use for you. Cut and paste all of them except Toggle
Images to a subfolder named C:\Windows\Favorites\Links Supplied With
Win98. Cut Toggle Images and paste it onto your Online Toolbar. Finally, note
that you can also get a pull-down menu effect from any toolbar by dragging
another toolbar up against it, so that all that remains of the toolbar is its top icon
and the >> symbol. Clicking on the >> will then give you a pull-down menu.
That can be useful, but some people may find that the >> is too small a target.
IV.5. Edit the Start Menu. Now that you have your important programs on
toolbars, you can organize the ones that remain. The list, below, shows the
ending status of mine. There are two ways to edit the menu. You can edit it
live, or you can edit it canned. Live editing means you select Start |
Programs and then right-click on the individual item and cut, copy, paste, drag,
or delete, as you want. Canned editing means you select Start | Programs and
then double-click on one of the folders (not programs) underneath it, so as to
open up a Windows Explorer page. From here, you can move up, down, and
around to do your cutting, pasting, deleting, etc. Or to open up a slightly
different (and probably better) Windows Explorer view, right-click on the Start
Button and choose Explore, or just navigate to C:\Windows\Start

13

Menu\Programs. Note that editing this menu is an ongoing job, because new
programs will forever be adding new icons to it -- although as your system
matures, there will be much less of that. Ideally, we would not do this
rearranging until all of your programs were installed, but the Catch-22 is that we
need the rearrangement in order to install the programs properly. Moving these
shortcuts will have no effect on program performance, but watch out for rare
occasions or mistakes when someone has put actual program files rather than
mere shortcuts in Start | Programs. You want to move these to a proper location
under C:\Program Files and then create a shortcut to them back here on the Start
Menu. Note that you can edit the Start Menus top level in this way, as I have
done, to remove the Windows Update and PowerDesk items and put them
elsewhere.
IV.6. Arrange Shortcuts. Here is the final arrangement of shortcuts under Start |
Programs on my computer, including items that we have not yet installed at this
stage in the game. Note that this list includes the contents of all toolbars except
the Links toolbar. We have to work through some other concepts before we can
deal with that one.
___[add list]

Part Five: Arrange Drive F (DATA)

For more information see the following Index sections:

The DATA partition will be the most important partition for daily work in most
programs. Both GoBack and our daily backup scheme will cover it. The purpose
here is to organize the folders that drive F will need.
V.1. Create Top-Level Folders. I recommend including the following folders
under the root of F: Spreadsheets, DB (for database tables), Text (for word
processing documents), Graphics (for all sorts of images), Websites (for web
pages that you will copy to your home page online), Messages (for e-mail and
other similar messages), and Temp (see above).
V.2. Make a Backup in the F:\RELOPROG Folder. You dont want to risk losing
all of your work, above, in setting up the Favorites\Links and Toolbars folders.
Therefore, we want to put a copy of these materials into a folder called
RELOPROG (short for RELOcated PROGram-related files). To make sure you
get it all, copy the Favorites and Start Menu folders to RELOPROG manually
now. Later, we will have a batch file that will do this automatically.

14

V.3. Create CMDUTILS and Its Subfolders. To be sure we have all the tools
necessary to revive our system in the event of a problem, we are going to add a
folders worth of troubleshooting utilities to each backup CD. This folder is
called F:\RELOPROG\CMDUTILS. When its done, it should contain the
following subfolders:

CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS. Not all of these are actually DOS programs, but

they all run in a DOS Box and/or in Real DOS. See below for more details.
CMDUTILS\BATCH: will contain DOS batch files that we will be assembling
later.

Note that it will be some time before we have assembled all of these materials.
This list appears here in order to provide a single reference point for all the
contents of CMDUTILS, and to give a full idea of what its all about; but you
cant fully assemble it now, so you will have to refer back to this point later to
make sure it has all come together properly.
V.4. Add to CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS. This folder should contain the following
materials:
Everything from C:\Windows\Command, excluding the EBD subfolder.
(The EBD subfolder contains the files that go onto the Win98 Emergency Boot
Disk, which are duplicates of the contents of the Command folder, in
compressed or uncompressed form.) Were making these duplicates of
program files, which would otherwise be a waste of disk space, because this
will allow us to make sure we have the complete set each time we burn a CD,
without having to go back and collect the set all over again.
Everything from the Norton Utilities emergency floppies, if you have Norton
Utilities. These files should not be duplicates of anything already in the
DOSPROGS folder, but if there are duplicates, tell the computer to keep the
more recent ones. Alternatively, you could put the entire contents of these
disks into in separate subfolders, at the expense of complicating things and
making the programs less accessible.
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\PQ subfolder, containing PowerQuest
programs from the floppy disks mentioned above. Put those programs in
subfolders PQDI for PowerQuest DriveImage and PQMAGIC for
PartitionMagic. Since these programs do most of their work in DOS anyway,
there is no need to reinstall them from the CD. We will just work in DOS
with these program files.
A separate subfolder for each DOS application program that you still use. In
my case, I need only CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\PARADOX.

15

Other useful standalone EXE and COM programs, obtained from the Win98
Resource Kit, miscellaneous downloads, and other sources. Note that, in a
few cases (e.g., Delayer, PrcView) the following list contains the command
line version of the Win98 program that will soon appear in its own folder
under C:\Program Files. The complete list of CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS
executables in my DOSPROGS folder is as follows:
____ [add list of EXE and COM files]

Help files (usually with the HLP extension), in the same folder (i.e.,
CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS) as the programs that refer to them (e.g., NDD.HLP
needs to be with NDD.EXE).
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\DOC subfolder for documentation (usually
DOC or TXT files) accompanying any of the above kinds of programs.
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\SYS subfolder, containing all of the SYS files
(e.g., COUNTRY.SYS) that get into the DOSPROGS folder one way or
another. You arent likely to need them, and you dont want them cluttering
up your DOSPROGS folder when you go browsing through it in search of a
tool, but they are generally small enough to make them worth keeping if you
put them off to the side like this. Toss in accompanying files (e.g.,
DRVSPACE.BIN, to go with DRVSPACE.SYS, since we wont use either of
them but you might want them handy on a CD that gets burned with all this
stuff).

V.5. Add to CMDUTILS\BATCH. This folder should contain the following

materials:

A CMDUTILS\BATCH\QBAS subfolder, containing QBASIC programs that

we will be using. They go under BATCH because well ordinarily use a BAT
file to run them.
The following batch files (more details later):
___list and summary explanation of batch files

V.6. Set Up Other Drive F and G Folders. Programs already installed, and
programs yet to be installed, will be looking for folders on drive F and G in
which to store their data. These programs will take some other action -- most
commonly, resetting themselves to put their data somewhere on drive C instead
-- if those folders do not exist on drive F or G. Thus, it makes sense to create the
folders before configuring the programs. Its not necessary to show every folder
I have on drives F or G on my system; the following are the folders that various
programs look for:

16

___list of program-sought folders on F and G

Part Six: Assemble Standalone Win98 Programs

The standalone programs in F:\RELOPROG\CMDUTILS run best, or perhaps
only, from the command line. There are also some standalone programs that run
only, or perhaps most effectively, in the Win98 graphical environment. In other
words, you want to run some programs from a command line and some by
double-clicking on an icon. This Part addresses the latter.
This does not include all Win98 programs. The focus here is on the programs,
like those in CMDUTILS, that are self-contained -- i.e., that do not have to be
installed into the Win98 Registry in order to run. Installing them consists of
nothing more than moving their program files to an appropriate directory and
perhaps setting up a shortcut to refer to their EXE program. (In one or two cases,
you have to go through more of an installation process, but then you can still
move them around to other folders without using Add/Remove Programs or
otherwise uninstalling and reinstalling them.) That is, they can likely be
installed, at least, without any risk to the stability of your Win98 installation.
These programs need not exist on Drive F. They wont be changing much, and
therefore wont call for frequent backup. All you do is move their program files
to the appropriate folder and then make a shortcut to the executable (usually
EXE) file in that folder and put that shortcut in the appropriate place on your
toolbars or elsewhere in Start | Programs. My list of standalone Win98
programs and folders is as follows:

___[WinDiff -- for this and all others, include the full final path]
WCPUID
PCIInfo
Tiny Wave Editor
URL2HTM
WINIPCFG
OptOut
MenuEdit
EasyCleaner
Slice32
WavGlue
PrcView
Delayer
CTBIOS
CDex

17

CDFS.VXD
CDWav
CDSpeed99
Dupeless
ExactTime
Internet Tech Support Diagnostics
Checkers
HP DeskScan II

Part Seven: Install Your Reliable Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:

The approach taken here is not to install Microsoft programs first, as I once
thought I should, but rather to start with the programs that seem least likely to
cause system problems. Some such programs have already been installed, in
the sense that they do not require any installation: the CMDUTILS files and
standalone programs mentioned above, and the programs included with the full
installation of Win98.
Now we turn to programs that, while requiring standard installation, have
produced little or no system instability for me. Despite their stability, however,
you should make a DriveImage backup of drive C before installing any of these
programs. This is the second DriveImage backup made so far. Make the backup
at this point, before installing any of these programs, even if you have not have
finished with all of the steps presented above. Plan to keep this backup, and the
others mentioned above and below, for at least the next several months. It can
take that long for a problem to worm its way out and destabilize your system.
VII.1. Audio and CD Programs. I choose this category first, not because it is
most important, but because Cool Edit 2000 is so undeniably stable. If you cant
do anything else with your computer, at least you should be able to convert
radio, records, audio CDs, and cassettes to MP3 format using this program. And,
of course, to burn my backups to CD-RW, I needed to install the CD software:
Easy CD Creator and DirectCD. With Cool Edit, I didnt need many other audio
tools, and the ones I did need were standalones I had already installed, above.
Finally, I chose Winamp as my player. I hear others are better, but Winamp still
seems to be the leader, and it has worked well for me.

18

VII.2. Graphics, Scanning, and Image Programs. In my case, I postponed some

of the scanning software because it had experimental elements: (a) I postponed
software related to my scanner, which was an old HP ScanJet IIcx whose SCSI
interface card may have been responsible for some past software
incompatibilities, and (b) OmniPage Pro would install a fax option for Outlook
98, which I considered experimental software. The experimental items get more
attention below; they do not belong in this category of reliable software. Hence,
in this category I installed only these graphics-related programs: ImgView and
GraphicCorp Photo Editor.
VII.3. Internet-Related Programs. In this category, I installed AdSubtract,
HTTrack, Juno (the old version), WebCompass (including downloaded
upgrades), and WS_FTP.
VII.4. System Utilities. The stable ones included the following:

Cacheman
EndItAll
InCtrl4
MultiRen
Seti@Home
WinMag Registry Pruner
WinMag Registry Ripper (not needed if you install the Norton Registry
Editor)

Part Eight: Configure the Installed Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:
Application Programs and Features Included with Win98

The standalone programs generally cannot be configured, but you can configure
some of the programs that came with Win98 and also some that you just
installed. In a few cases, configuration can take some time. It is sometimes
possible to save your configuration settings in such a way that you can restore
them quickly. This will make things easier if, for any reason, you must come
back to this point and try again to create a working system for yourself. Where I
did not bother working out a canned approach to reconfiguration, it is probably
because I have already worked out a configuration (typically, for a standalone
program) and can just copy it over to a new system, or else because I have not
yet tried configuring the program for myself.

19

VIII.1. CMDUTILS. For the most part, standalone programs require no further
configuration, or do not remember the settings you give them.
VIII.2. Norton AntiVirus 2000. Your preferences for NAV 2000 are saved in two
files in the NAV 2000 program folder mentioned above, C:\Program
Files\Symantec\Norton AntiVirus. If you have previously installed and
configured NAV 2000, you can copy these two files to this folder. The files are
NAVOPTS.DAT and NAVSTART.DAT. (Note: I am using all caps for easy
identification of program files, but the actual files on your computer may not be
all caps.)
VIII.3. PowerDesk. When you customize the toolbar in PowerDesk, the changes
are saved in USER.DAT. This file, with SYSTEM.DAT, comprises the Registry, or
at least the most important part of it. If you have a previous Win98 installation
running on a separate computer, you can loot it for the customization settings
you developed previously. If not, you will have to redo the settings this time,
but then you can export those settings from the Registry for future use. (Note
that Registry work is very tricky and can screw up everything. Proceed at your
own risk.) Basically, you use the the BEFORE.TXT and AFTER.TXT comparison
technique at point 150 in the Epic. Note that you can run most of these
Command Line programs -- in this case, RegEdit -- in several different ways,
including Start | Run, MS-DOS Prompt, or by using the command line feature in
PowerDesk.
In this case, working with my old Registry on the other computer, I produced
BEFORE.TXT, then I changed the PowerDesk toolbar, then I produced
AFTER.TXT. The WinDiff comparison highlighted only one change, under the
Toolbar Current Settings heading. This heading appeared under
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Mijenix\PowerDesk\Version3.0\Explorer
Plus. Using the WinMag Registry Ripper, I searched HKEY_USERS for
ExplorerPlus (so as to narrow down the field), deselected all but the one that
matched exactly, and saved it as a file with this name: PowerDesk Toolbar
Settings.REG. (The Norton Registry Editor would do the same thing. An easier
but less selective way was to use RegEdit, find that ExplorerPlus subkey, and
choose Registry | Export Registry File | Selected Branch.) Since it was a REG
file, I could just double-click on it and it would automatically update my
Registry. Trusting to GoBack, I floppied it over to the computer containing my
new installation, tried it, and it worked. I rebooted to double-check, and it was
OK. I now had my customized PowerDesk toolbar, from the old Win98 setup,
working on the new installation. If I ever had to reinstall PowerDesk, this part
would be done in a matter of seconds. I liked to customize PowerDesk in other
ways as well, but it appears that at least some of those changes occur
automatically when you customize Windows Explorer.

20

VIII.4. Windows Explorer. Because of the ways in which this program seems to
interact with Win98, Internet Explorer, and other programs, I could not
confidently use a REG file as above. Instead, I made my preferred changes
manually and will have to do the same again next time. The same was true for
Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
VIII.5. Audio and CD Programs. CDex and Winamp do allow or require some
configuration but, as noted above, these are standalone programs. I had already
configured them and did not pay attention to the files that changed when I did
so, and I dont expect to do so in the future as long as I have previously
configured copies of them that I can move around to where I want them. Cool
Edit 2000 keeps its configuration settings in INI files, also known as
Configuration Settings files, located in the C:\Windows folder. The particular
files are COOL.INI, COOLSYS.INI, and COOLKB2K.INI. Easy CD Creator stores
its settings in the Registry key named
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Adaptec\Easy CD Creator\Settings and,
as above, you can export the changes to a REG file and always have them for
future repeat installations. ___Direct CD Settings___
VIII.6. Other Programs. I postponed tinkering with the graphics, scanning, and
image software for reasons expressed above. I configured Juno by going through
its brief installation process. I configured Cacheman by telling it that I was a
Power User and by making a note to myself to register the program by
sending the author a postcard telling him how much I liked it. I postponed
Seti@Home installation because I wanted to have two different Seti@Home
download accounts, one on each computer; otherwise, they would both be
repeating the same assignments. Some configuration involved setting up DOS
Batch files; I felt those would be better discussed below.

Part Nine: Install and Configure the Riskier Major Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:

There is no sharp line clearly dividing risky programs from the rest, but there are
definitely some programs that tend to mess up the system and others that dont.
Chances are that you will be able to install the following programs without
crashing your system; but over time, these programs will be a lot more likely to
give you problems. Therefore, before installing even one of these programs,
copy your Start | Programs folder to drive F and make another DriveImage

21

backup of drive C. You may also want to make one or more interim backups,
perhaps temporarily on a CD-RW disk, partway through this process. There are
several reasons for making those interim backups: you will be adding a great
many new files to your system; GoBack will probably not be able to keep a
record of them all; and some parts of the process may be too time-consuming to
lose and re-do. Note that the programs discussed here are not all of the
remaining programs; they are the large, risky programs that have a major impact
on the system.
IX.1. Office 97. Install Office from the CD. (I considered switching to StarOffice,
but it doesnt sound like they have their act together yet.) The Office 97 installer
wont ask for proof that you qualify for the upgrade (assuming youre using an
Office 97 upgrade CD rather than the full package) if you have already installed
a previous version of Office, so you might want to copy the old Office 4.3
program disks to drive D (STATIC). After installing from the CD, download and
run as many of the following updates as you need. You can find more details on
them at Microsofts Office Update website. There may even be a few other
downloads there that you could use. The following order of installation seems to
work adequately, where you begin with the updates and fixes that affect all
Office programs, and particularly the Service Releases:

Office 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1)

Office 97 Version Checker
Office 97 Service Release 2b (SR-2b)
Office 97 Converter Pack
Office 97 Document Open Confirmation Tool
Office 97 Euro-Enabled Fonts
Office 97 Forms Security Control Patch
Office 97 Microsoft Draw 98 Add-In
Office 97 ODBC Driver Security Update
Office 97 OfficeArt AutoShapes
Office 97 Sounds
Office 97 Unique Identifier Patch
Office 97 Unique Identifier Removal Tool
Word 97 Hyperlinks Update
Word 97 Leap Year Fix
Word 97 Supplemental Text Converters
Word 97 Template Security Patch
Word 97 Time Management Wizards
Word 97 Viewers
Word 97 Web Authoring Tools Update
Word 97 Web Page Wizard Accessories
Word 97 Weblinks Help File
22

Access 97 Address Book Database

Access 97 Command Bar Wizard
Access 97 Contacts Management Database
Access 97 Exchange and Outlook Wizard
Access 97 Partial Replica Wizard
Access 97 Print Relationships Wizard
Access 97 Snapshot Viewer
Access 97 Web Tracker Database
Access 97 Weblinks Help File
Excel 97 CALL Function Patch
Excel 97 Custom Chart Types Template
Excel 97 Euro Toolbar Button
Excel 97 Personal Budgeter Template
Excel 97 Power Utility Pak
Excel 97 Production Tracking Template
Excel 97 Quattro Pro Converter
Excel 97 Spreadsheet Viewer
Excel 97 SYLK Security Update
Excel 97 Virus Search
Excel 97 Web Connectivity Kit
Excel 97 Weblinks Help File
Excel 97 XLM Macro Update

Your Word 97 configuration settings are saved in C:\Program Files\Microsoft

Office\Templates\Normal.dot after you exit Word, and also in the Registry in
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Word. If you have
AutoCorrect entries, they are in C:\Windows\<username>.acl; for instance,
mine is C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl. You may have other <username> files
in C:\Windows; for example, some of my current Excel settings are saved in Ray
Woodcock8.xlb, and my password list is in Ray Woodcock.pwl. It should be safe
to copy these files over to your new setup.

IX.2. Outlook 98. Although this program is sometimes considered a part of

Office 97, it is quite different on the subject of installation. You download the
setup file from Microsoft, and then use that to download the remainder of the
program rather than copying it from a CD. There no longer seem to be any links
to download Outlook 98 from the Microsoft website, and the setup program no
longer seems to download the bulk of the program automatically. Having
already downloaded that program and saved it to disk, however, I was able to
copy the Outlook 98 Setup folder from the old installation to this new one, and I
23

installed the program from there. Since these setup files did not change, I put
them onto drive D (STATIC) rather than C. I then ran SETUP.EXE from there
and installed the program itself on drive C, followed by these updates:

Outlook 98 Archive Update

Outlook 98 Automated Calendar Template
Outlook 98 E-mail Attachment Security Patch
Outlook 98 E-mail Security Update
Outlook 98 Field Mapping Patch
Outlook 98 Import-Export Date Fix
Outlook 98 Security Patch

Next, go into Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Outlook 98, click on

Add/Remove, choose Add New Components, go online, and select the updates
that fit your needs.
IX.3. FrontPage 2000. You may want to install this program separately, after
installing the Office 97 programs shown above. I found that its online upgrades
tended to screw up the system, and I needed to feel my way through them one at
a time, reversing with GoBack when they appeared not to work right. Also, if
youre using the FP 2000 upgrade CD, you can dispense with the future need for
inserting the FrontPage 98 CD during installation by taking the following steps:
install a bare minimum version of FP 98, delete its GIF, JPG, and HLP files (and
maybe its HTML files) to slim it down some more, temporarily copy the
remainder to drive I (SWAP), use GoBack to revert the system to the time before
you installed FP98, move that FP98 remainder to drive D (STATIC), and point to
drive D when the FP 2000 installer says it cant find any previous installation.
After installing the program, download and install the appropriate updates,
which for me were the following:

FrontPage 2000 HTML Tools

FrontPage 2000 Tutorial

IX.4. Norton Utilities. Depending on your system, the version of Norton, and
the kind of installation, you may find that this set of programs will cause a minor
or major increase in the number of times Win98 crashes. Nevertheless, the
program (or perhaps some other utility program) has a few utilities that may be
essential at times. I recommend installing in C:\Program
Files\Symantec\Norton Utilities. Your installation of Norton AntiVirus might
have given a Symantec folder by now anyway, and I believe the Norton Utilities
installation will create a Symantec folder if you dont already have one, even if
you tell the installer to put the program files somewhere else. One working
installation involves selecting the Custom option and choosing these programs to

24

install (but letting none of them run automatically or in lieu of other programs) ,
and then go online and download any available updates through Live Update:

Norton Connection Doctor

Norton Disk Doctor
Norton File Compare
Norton Registry Editor
Norton Utilities Basefiles
Norton Utilities DOS Applications
SpeedDisk
Live Update

IX.5. X-Setup.
IX.6.

Part Ten: Tweaks

MagicMover

Part Eleven: Batch Files

II.6. Learn to Boot into Real DOS. DOS comes in different flavors. You can do
things in Real DOS that you cant do in Imitation DOS. If you have booted your
system in Win98, however, you can no longer easily run Real DOS programs like
PartitionMagic and FDISK. You can avoid Win98s control in one of two ways:
either boot from a DOS Bootable Floppy or choose the Command Prompt Mode
from the Startup Menu.
To use the Bootable Floppy option, you have to instruct your BIOS Setup to boot
from the floppy. Otherwise, the system will ignore it and will continue to boot
from the Hard Disk (i.e., will boot Win98) as usual. To get into your BIOS Setup,
you reboot your computer and wait for the screen to say something like, Press
DEL to enter Setup. (Note that some computer manufacturers disguise this
somewhat; you may have to check your owners manual.) Your BIOS Setup
should allow you to specify the order in which the computer looks at different
disk drives. To boot from the floppy, which you will probably do only
occasionally, you want drive A (the floppy drive) to be first on the list.

25

To use the Command Prompt Mode option, you need to get into the Startup
Menu. To get that menu, you hit F8 when your computer is nearing the end of
its initial bootup information (for example, it may show you a screen containing
information about your hard disks or other devices). Note that, if GoBack is
enabled on your system, it will advise you at Startup to take other steps before
getting into Real DOS, at least if you want to do it from the floppy. You cant
ignore GoBack if its enabled. If it is disabled, dont re-enable it until youve
finished doing whatever it was that prompted you to disable it in the first place.
Norton Utilities
VisiTrax

26

How I Spent Three Months Installing Windows 98

by Ray Woodcock
A 398-page document
Commenced with great optimism and no idea of what was coming
Shortly after New Years Day in the year 2000 A.D.

OK. This may be a little wild, and it's certainly long and wooly, but I think I
have the whole thing figured out, at least for my system. This is my complete
guide to how I back up a full Windows 98 system on CD-ROM. Even if it doesn't
actually work for you, it might at least provide some useful ideas or information.
The focus here is on program files, not data files; the best backup strategy for one
may not be so hot for the other. Along the way, I have tried to throw in any
relevant DOS or Windows knowledge I may have collected, with an eye toward
helping people who are really stumped.
Why did I start writing something like this? (1) To keep me on track during a
sometimes complicated process that I pursued on a sometimes full-time,
sometimes part-time basis over a period of several weeks, despite being plagued
by Windows crashes and program misbehavior that frequently required me to
take off on long detours to solve related problems. (2) To keep problem-solving
notes for my own future reference -- including the near future, when Windows
might crash and I might have to re-create the solutions I had just painfully
worked out. (3) To share my knowledge of DOS and Windows tinkering and my
useful discoveries. (4) To provide an example of the folly of Windows. (5) To
establish a version of Windows, complete with a user's manual, that could let me
stay with this particular operating system for several years. (6) To keep track of
good ideas for making the computer more efficient, especially with the little
things that may take only an extra second or two but that might be repeated
dozens of times each day. (7) To provide an example of the strengths and
weaknesses of my unusually thorough and/or detailed working style. Basically,
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me, but this happened for
(hopefully) a hundred users through my experience.
In most cases here, my notes are pretty precise, but sometimes there were just too
many things going wrong at once, so I had to break them out into separate tracks
and try to keep up with it all. I think I got most of the details on that stuff as
well, but it may not read as smoothly at those times.
Why This Is Not a Published Book
(1) I am not a computer expert, except maybe in some specific questions that I
pursued. (2) There are enough published books already. (3) Dealing with

publishers is a hassle. Often they do want quality improvements; but more

frequently you go to a huge amount of trouble and have nothing to show for it.
(4) I'm not that interested in the subject. I wanted to write down my steps and
theories, for the benefit of myself and others, but I didn't want to make it a
yearlong project. (5) The subject matter is too irregular. I try to write it all for
newcomers, but in some cases I think newcomers won't be interested, and in
those instances I adopt a more advanced tone. (6) I don't feel like going through
to clean out redundancies, irrelevancies, changes of tone, mood, voice, tense,
number, etc. To hell with it: it's grammatically imperfect, but it's useful.
In figuring out how to achieve my backup goals here, I spent a lot of time and
did some tinkering. In other words, this account may be more suited for the
person who wants to learn more about the whole subject, or who is trying to
accomplish a customized result, and may be less suited for the person who just
wants a quick and dirty three-step guide to the task of backing up on CD. For
that, see e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347537,00.html or
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/story/0,3650,2217085,00.html.
This may be something that some people will print out and stick in a file
somewhere, if they have no way of getting information online when their
computer crashes. This epic goes through a huge number of things that can go
wrong in dealing with hard disks, partitions, Windows 98, and other subjects.
As you will see, it wasn't always quite as simple, in my case, as those summary
Websites make it sound.
My overall goal was to come up with a solid, easily restorable Win98 CD that
would last me for the next several years, until the accumulation of changes in
operating systems (i.e., Windows, Linux, or some other) and in application
software and utilities combined to persuade me that it was time for a major
renovation. Reviews of Microsoft Office 2000 suggested that I need not worry
about upgrading to it. So at this point my plan was mostly to create a base on
which I could just add incrementally to my software collection with occasional
new application programs and utilities.
Overview: Two General Methods
There's more than one way to back up onto CD. Mostly you hear about the
approach that involves making a series of disk images and backing them up on a
series of CDs, 600 MB at a time. I'm sure that approach works well, especially for
large disks. But for my purposes it has two shortcomings. First, my experiences
with tape drives during the past ten or twelve years have left me sour on using a
series of media to do backup. I didn't find that Hewlett-Packard's tape backup
software and hardware worked reliably in that regard. Also, I had times when

the link from one tape to the next would fail, or when one tape would go bad,
and then everything in the series after that would be lost. I'm sure disks are
more reliable than tapes but, as I say, this is the way my preferences run. (For
one user's difficulties with the Seagate backup software, see
http://noccc.org/bytes/articles/v01/331.html.)
My second and more important reason for seeking a different CD approach is
that I hope to break the Windows reinstallation process out into different layers
or phases. I would like to have one CD that contains the basic Windows 98
program files, and another one or two CDs containing program files that I have
added on afterwards. That way, if there's something wrong with the basic
Windows programs, I can reinstall Windows and burn a new CD to back it up,
without disturbing all the dozens of other programs and utilities that I might
install later and back up on a separate CD. (This was inspired by dabbling in
Linux. See
http://ftp.win.tue.nl/math/dw/personalpages/aeb/linux/partitions/partition
_types-2.html.) Likewise, if I download a screwy little utility that winds up
wrecking my whole hard disk, I can quickly reinstall from the Windows 98
backup CD; quickly reinstall my more stable programs (e.g., Cool Edit 2000)
from a mainstream programs backup CD; and I'll be left with relatively little to
reinstall manually.
Initial Preparations
1. AMD computer and Experimental (Backup) Computer. Buy, build, or
borrow, so that you're working with two computers. This is an optional step, of
course, but it really can make a huge difference, and if you have lots of work to
do and find yourself sometimes waiting on one computer to finish, it will pay for
itself eventually. When you have two computers, you can swap hard disks back
and forth, look on one for files that seem to be missing from the other, seek
emergency information online, etc. You just wouldn't believe how much easier
these processes are with a spare computer sitting around. And after you're done
upgrading, you can turn the second computer loose on some project that takes
forever, like compressing huge audio files to MP3; and you'll have it to fall back
on, or raid for parts, when the first one malfunctions.
2. Get PowerQuest's PartitionMagic and DriveImage. (I hear you can also use
Norton's Ghost, but I've found the PowerQuest software to be really great, and I
haven't always had such good luck with Norton's software. I did try out Ghost
later, however. See point 354.) Install these programs even if you're going to be
wiping off your hard disk shortly. Use PartitionMagic ("PM") to create partitions
on the disk where you'll be installing Win98. (For more information, see point
269(f).) If you're careful, you can do this without messing up the material that's

already there. I suggest creating a drive C that will hold your programs and a
drive D for temporary files. I suggest putting temporary files on a separate disk
because I understand they can cause a lot of disk fragmentation. The size of this
drive D will depend on the needs of the programs using it. For instance, Internet
Explorer creates a Temporary Internet Files folder of a size you dictate, and Cool
Edit 2000 can take advantage of large chunks of disk space for its temporary files.
Anyway, if you create new partitions, be sure they're formatted. Also, when
installing PartitionMagic, be sure to take advantage of the option to create a boot
floppy. (For a refinement of some of this advice, see point 44.)
3. Image vs. File-by-File Backup. You have a choice. Your backup CD can
contain a single large disk image file that rolls all your program files into a ball;
or your backup CD can contain individual files. Advantages of the disk-image
approach: the process is much simpler and you can compress up to 50% more
material in the same space. The advantage of the individual-file approach is that
it may give you more flexibility and easier access to your files. I suggest using a
combination of both approaches. That advice may reflect my own reactions to
computer meltdowns. On one hand, I want some basic tools handy; but if I can't
make it work after a couple of hours of fiddling around, eventually I just want to
toss the damn thing out and start over. In other words, for my regular backup
work I want the simplicity of the disk image approach; but for troubleshooting I
want a bootable CD that contains some useful fix-it programs, and that can take
the place of a bootable floppy on those occasions when my floppy drive isn't
working right or isn't being recognized by the system.
First Method: File-by-File
4. Bootable CD Introduction. Here, I'll begin with the individual-file approach.
We'll get to the easier disk-image approach later. (See point 56.) For starters, see
if you can find article no. 990420-0001 in Adaptec's knowledge base. It is entitled,
"How Do I Create a Bootable CD?" Their site is somewhat chaotic, and you may
not be able to find the article (I can't myself, at this moment, and am relying on a
printout); I'll try to summarize it. Basically, to create a bootable CD using
Adaptec's Easy CD Creator program, you need a bootable floppy and some other
files and settings described below. (I'm using Easy CD Creator version 3.5c.
Menu options may differ in other versions. Several other programs seem to have
the same capabilities as Easy CD Creator, and some -- notably CDRWin and
Nero -- appear to have gotten better reactions from some users.) Note that older
machines may not be able to boot from a CD. See
http://www.ora.nsysu.edu.tw/~goldentime/bootcd02.htm. For a more
technical explanation, see
http://www.cdpage.com/Compact_Disc_Variations/bootablecdarticle.htm.
(Later, looking back at this paragraph, I realized that I probably needed to

explain something. I had purchased a Yamaha CRW4416E CD-ROM drive. This

drive was capable of burning data onto blank CD disks, which is why people
call drives like this burners. This particular burner could work with both CDR (CD-recordable) and CD-RW (CD-rewritable) disks. Most of the CDs created
during the process that I am about to describe were plain old CD-Rs. They were
inexpensive and I could use them in any ordinary computer.)
A Bootable Floppy -- The Hard Way
5. Why Start with the Hard Way? To make a bootable CD, you need a bootable
floppy. I'll start with the hard way, for several reasons: that's how I learned the
easy way; I learned the hard way because that's the path that Adaptec's advice
got me started on (see point 4); the easy way doesn't always work; there are some
things you can't do with the easy approach (see point 13); and if you understand
the hard way, you'll understand what you've got (and haven't got) when you use
the easy way (see point 8).
To prepare a bootable floppy the hard way, then, you should begin by realizing
that the purpose of this floppy is to provide you with DOS-based system tools
that will help you make your system work (or will at least help you figure out
what's wrong) no matter how screwed-up it might be. In other words, you want
this floppy to make a lot of good tools available. But it's only a floppy, so you're
under a very serious 1.44 MB limit on what it can hold, unless you happen to
have a 2.88 MB floppy drive. (See point 11.) You must prioritize. Here, then, are
the most important files to include on a good boot floppy, in order of
diminishing importance:
(a) Essential System Files: the visible file (COMMAND.COM) and the two
hidden files (MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS) that exist on a floppy disk that you have
formatted with the command FORMAT A: /S. (If you can't see hidden files on
such floppies, adjust your View | Folder Options in Windows Explorer.) Be
careful with FORMAT -- it wipes out anything that might be in the disk you
specify! You may be able to recover the data in at least some cases. If you have a
disk that has already been formatted, life is easier: you can make it bootable just
by using Windows Explorer and copying these three files to it.
(b) Boot Files: the ones that apply your preferred setup commands when you
boot your floppy. These are CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. You may find
more complex versions of these in C:\ (i.e., the root of your C drive). Here, we'll
be creating fairly simple versions.
(c) Optional System Files: the ones invoked by lines in your Boot Files. For
instance, if you put a line in your CONFIG.SYS that invokes HIMEM.SYS (e.g.,

DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS), then you'd better have a copy of HIMEM.SYS at the

specified location (which would be A: in that example). You can find files in this
category, and in categories (d) and (e), in C:\Windows\Command. (I noticed
online that one authority suggested not using a drive letter in such command
lines, so the one in my CONFIG.SYS just reads DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS -- the
reason being that the drive letter stuff can confuse the system when it boots the
bootable part of the CD as though it were drive A. See point 6.)
(d) Essential Hard Disk Utilities: the files that you may need in order to establish
a beachhead on a hard disk. Categories (a) through (c) involve what happens
when you first boot the machine using your bootable CD, before you even get a
DOS prompt. Now we turn to those categories of files that you have the option
of running anytime at a DOS prompt. First, the programs that you may need to
establish a beachhead on a recalcitrant hard drive, for use when you boot your
CD and find that the hard disk is so unresponsive that you basically need to wipe
it off and start anew. These files are: FDISK, to see whether there are any
working partitions on the hard disk, and to prepare some if not; FORMAT, to
prepare those partitions so they'll work reliably with DOS and Windows files;
and SYS.COM, which FORMAT will use to make a partition bootable (i.e., so that
it will contain the System Files mentioned in point 5(a)). I also decided to include
SCANDISK.EXE and .INI here. You will also need to include your unzip
program (e.g., PKUNZIP) in this category if you're zipping any files, as described
below.
(e) Essential Special-Purpose Files: some users may need SCSI drivers or nonEnglish keyboard files. Again, you may need to include lines in your category
(b) files, above, to refer to these special files. (Note that the Adaptec article (see
point 4) says that not all SCSI controllers and motherboards support booting
from CD-ROM.)
(f) Essential Copying Utilities: the files you need to copy your Windows 98
backup from CD to the hard disk. If we were talking about the disk-image
approach (see point 3), this would be a program like DriveImage, which extracts
hundreds or thousands of individual files from one large disk image file.
Instead, since we're talking about the individual-file approach, you need a tool
that will copy the files one at a time from the CD to the hard disk. This is
XCOPY (or, more precisely, XCOPY.EXE, XCOPY32.EXE, and XCOPY32.MOD).
(g) Optional Utilities: files that may be useful in some special circumstances.
Although there are many such files, and many different ways to use them, I
settled upon this list: BOOTMAGIC (consisting of a half-dozen files installed on
a rescue floppy that BootMagic allows you to create); ATTRIB.EXE, CVT.EXE,
DEBUG.EXE, DELTREE.EXE, DOSKEY.COM, DOWN.COM, EDIT.COM and

.HLP, EXTRACT.EXE, FIND.EXE, LE.EXE, MEM.EXE, MODE.COM,

MORE.COM, NEXT.COM, RED.COM, SCANREG.EXE, SLICE.COM,
SMARTDRV.EXE, SUBST.EXE, SWEEP.COM, and WHEREIS.COM. These files
mostly came from C:\Windows\Command, but may also have filtered into my
collection from Norton Utilities, PC Magazine, and elsewhere over the past
fifteen years. I also included some batch files I had prepared to simplify moving
around the hard disk: UP.BAT, TOP.BAT, and TEMP.BAT.
(h) Additional Utilities That Don't Fit: I would have liked to include additional
programs that are easier to use than some of the above utilities. Unfortunately,
these easier-to-use versions take more space than one floppy boot disk can
accommodate. In this category, I would include files taken from the boot
floppies created by PartitionMagic and DriveImage. (See point 64.)
For our purposes, categories (a) through (e) cannot be compressed into a ZIP file
by using a program like PKZIP, because they must be available and ready to
work at bootup. But once you've used the utilities in category (d) (if necessary)
to create some working space on the hard disk -- in, say, a C:\TEMP directory -you can copy a ZIP file to the hard disk from the boot floppy and can unzip that
file there in C:\TEMP. This ZIP file can contain files described in categories (f)
through (h). (You would zip these files, of course, to cram more of them into the
same amount of space. If you do include some zipped utilities, just be sure to
include a non-zipped copy of the unzip program -- for instance, PKUNZIP -- in
category (d).
6. AUTOEXEC.BAT. We're still working on the hard way to create the bootable
floppy that you'll need in order to create a bootable CD. We must now work
down through the preceding list of files. Most of them are ready-made; only two
require you to do some editing. The first is AUTOEXEC.BAT. Create a plaintext AUTOEXEC.BAT file containing this line: MSCDEX.EXE /D:RESTORE
/L:Z. When you boot with your bootable CD, this line will tell the computer
where your backed-up files are. In other words, your CD will have two parts:
one bootable, one not. The part that is bootable will contain the files listed in
point 5. This bootable part will act as though it, not your floppy drive, is drive
A. Your floppy will become drive B instead. If you already have a drive B, I
believe it will be disregarded. (This is the "Bootable CD-ROM Emulates a Floppy
Diskette" scenario described at
http://www.support.vectra.hp.com/vectrasupport/level4/30bpv03069/30bpv0
3069.html. (If you're curious, the parts of the MSCDEX.EXE line just shown are
as follows: (a) MSCDEX.EXE is, of course (like any .EXE file), an executable
program; it tells the computer that it's going to be running a CD-ROM drive. (b)
RESTORE is the name assigned to the non-bootable part of the bootable CD. (c)
Z is the drive letter where your computer can find the files in the non-bootable

part. To accommodate systems with varying numbers of partitions, you can

leave it at Z, even if you don't have 25 other drives; just remember that your CDROM will temporarily be located at Z, not at F or wherever you normally find it.)
Finally, you can soup up your AUTOEXEC.BAT if you want. For instance,
@ECHO OFF will keep the lines of your AUTOEXEC.BAT from appearing
onscreen when the program runs, and PROMPT $P$G will make your DOS
prompt more informative. (Note that my further experience required me to
make an important change in this AUTOEXEC.BAT file. See point 20.) Note that
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS normally reside in C:\ -- that is, in the root
of your C drive.
7. CONFIG.SYS. The other file that requires you to do some editing is
CONFIG.SYS. According to the instructions from the Adaptec page (see point 4),
you are to create a plain-text CONFIG.SYS file containing these lines:
DEVICE=SSCDROM.SYS /D:RESTORE
LASTDRIVE=Z
SSCDROM.SYS, in that file, is the name of the driver that I have been using on
my CD-ROM drive; I believe it originally got onto my system from a Samsung
drive I had previously, and it has just stayed there even though I have since
switched CD-ROM drives. Your driver may have some other name. To find out
what and where your CD driver is, try looking at your C:\CONFIG.SYS file or
the manual or disk (if any) that came with your CD drive, or at the
manufacturer's Website. It's been recommended that you use Microsoft's generic
ATAPI_CD.SYS driver. See
http://www.ora.nsysu.edu.tw/~goldentime/bootcd02.htm. Anyway, you'll
notice that this step involves two files: CONFIG.SYS and the SSCDROM.SYS (or
whatever) file that it refers to. Similarly, the previous step involves
AUTOEXEC.BAT and the MSCDEX.EXE file that it refers to. So to add to
categories 5(b) and (c), the bootable part of your CD will need to contain at least
these four files. My own CONFIG.SYS also includes DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS,
which obligates me to include HIMEM.SYS in category 5(c). (Note that my
further experience required me to make an important change in this
CONFIG.SYS file. See point 20.)
8. Boot Floppy: Easy Way. Put copies of all the files described in points 5
through 7, into a separate folder. Zip the ones that can be zipped. (See the
bottom of point 5.) Make sure the total contents of the folder are 1.44 MB or less.
(Although floppies are supposedly 1.44 MB, you may find that the amount you
can fit onto a floppy, according to the numbers reported by Windows Explorer,
is actually slightly less than 1.44 MB. In working through these problems, I
didn't experiment with using DriveSpace or a zip program to pack more material

on there that might unpack itself when you need it.) Copy it all (including
hidden files and system files -- see point 5(a)) to a floppy disk; make sure to use a
floppy that you have freshly formatted and scanned, so that you won't discover
at the wrong moment that you are relying on a defective boot disk.
You have now finished with the hard way to create the bootable floppy that
you'll need in order to create a bootable CD. The easy way is to use the startup
floppy that you can create in the course of installing Windows 98. This floppy
goes by various names. The C:\Windows\Command\EBD folder contains, I
believe, the files that go onto that floppy. I assume EBD is short for Emergency
Boot Disk, but the README.TXT file in that folder calls it the Windows 98
Startup Disk. I have also heard it called the Startup Floppy and the Boot
Floppy. Here, Ill refer to it as the Win98 Startup Floppy except when I forget
and call it something else instead.
We'll be installing Win98 (see below); you can make one then; or you can always
come back and make one in Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Startup
Disk. This disk (however you create it) won't have the same utilities as one made
the hard way, but it does have a lot of utilities, and it also has the advantage of
being ready-made to work with a wide variety of CD-ROM drives that you may
own in the present or the future. To run many of the utilities mentioned above
(e.g., FORMAT) with the Win98 Startup Floppy, look for a RAM drive (i.e., one
that exists only temporarily, in your computer's RAM) just one letter before the
letter where your CD-ROM drive is located, and note that the CD-ROM will be
simply the last letter applied to your drives (e.g., somewhere around E or F), not
Z. (See point 6.)
9. Test Your Bootable Floppy. Set your computer's BIOS to boot from the floppy
drive. To do this, reboot your computer and watch the instructions that appear a
few seconds after it starts up. There may be an instruction like "Hit Delete to
enter Setup." In that example, hitting DEL will bring up some choices. Click on
perhaps the second of those choices and look for the item that lets you change
the boot order. It might look like this: C,CDROM,A. Use PageDown or other
keys to make A first; save this change; and reboot. The purpose of this reboot is
to test two things: does the floppy disk boot properly, and can you get programs
that work (including those in your ZIP file, if you created the boot floppy the
hard way)? When you're done testing, reset the BIOS so that it boots from drive
C again. We will soon need to use that drive. Later, though, when the bootable
CD is all set to go, we'll reset the BIOS so that the CD-ROM boots first.
(Depending on your BIOS and your chosen setting, you might not have to do any
of this resetting: it might just go down the list until it finds a bootable disk. It
seems like it should always do that, but I have not found this to be the case.)

10. Idea for a Larger Bootable Floppy. We could now go ahead and create a
bootable CD, but I guess we should first decide what we're going to put on it.
All we've really done is to figure out what belongs in that tiny little 1.44 MB
bootable section. What goes into the other 650 MB or so of free space? (It will be
more like 530 MB, if you use a rewritable CD-RW formatted with a program like
DirectCD to allow ordinary disk writing and erasing. Make sure, however, that
all of your CD-ROM drives can read disks formatted that way.) Really, you
could put anything you wanted in there. The bootable section, ideally, would be
much larger than 1.44 MB, so that you could do more with your bootable CD
than just boot to a DOS prompt. If you could create bootable program CDs for
all of the applications you'd like to run, you could run a computer without a
hard drive or a floppy. CDs might have self-contained program files, and you
might save your work to a RAM disk and, periodically, to a Web server or a page
on the Internet. But that's not the kind of system I have right now, so I haven't
pursued these possibilities.
11. Experiment to Enlarge the Bootable Partition on CD. I began by saying that,
if you want to create a bootable CD, Easy CD Creator requires you to have a
bootable floppy. (See point 4.) I wondered, however, whether I could store more
than a measly 1.44 MB of programs in the bootable section of a CD, so as to do
more interesting things with a bootable CD than merely boot the system. To
experiment with this, I put about 50 MB of files on a separate, bootable partition
called BOOT_CD. (For information on making a partition bootable, see point
5(a).) Then, before I came to the part of the Easy CD Creator process that told me
to insert my bootable floppy into drive A, I opened a separate DOS window and
used the DOS command SUBST A: F:\ where F was my BOOT_CD partition.
This command told the computer to substitute drive F for drive A. (The
command to end the substitution and return the disks to normal is SUBST A:
/D.) I hoped, then, that when Easy CD Creator told me to insert a floppy, I
would hit return, and it would happily insert these 50 MB of files into the
bootable part of my CD. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I just got an
error message, and Easy CD Creator would go no further. That happened even
when I had less than 1.44 MB of files in that BOOT_CD partition. Apparently
SUBST didn't work for these purposes, or else the large partition size (which
PartitionMagic would not shrink below a relatively massive 260 MB) triggered
an alarm in Easy CD Creator. I tried at least to take advantage of the fact that
Easy CD Creator and my computer's BIOS will accept floppy drives up to 2.88
MB -- that is, I reduced the files in BOOT_CD until I had less than 2.88 MB there - but it still didn't work. (The maximum floppy drive size is important because,
when you do boot your bootable CD, you'll discover that the computer sees its
bootable section as drive A, not as drive F or whatever letter your CD-ROM
drive ordinarily uses.) So I was stuck with the 1.44 MB limit.

10

Uses for a Bootable CD

12. Running Windows from CD. This left me feeling that there wasn't much use
for a bootable CD, other than as an emergency startup disk. Researching the
question briefly, I found a page that seemed to confirm this. See
http://www.ozemail.com/~rossstew/drs/sec1.html# bk13. On the other hand, I
also found a page telling how to make a CD that will actually start and run
Windows 98 from the CD by using a RAM drive. See
http://www.heise.de/ct/Service/English.htm/99/11/206/. The concept
appears to be that since you can't make any alterations to the contents of a CD,
you can't do the constant reading and writing of certain files that happens in an
operating system like Windows, so Windows can't run from a CD; but that you
can get around this by setting up a CD that will load Windows and will also copy
its Registry files to a RAM disk, where they can indeed be altered. You have to
work through a somewhat complex setup process to achieve this, however, and
any configuration changes you make during a session will all be lost as soon as
you reboot, because a RAM drive is, of course, purely electronic memory.
(Unless, of course, you could figure out some way to save those configuration
changes to your hard disk and reload them manually or automatically when
Windows reboots.) Another problem is that you apparently can't use the CDROM drive for anything else; taking the CD out of the drive will require you to
reboot. See http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/sanny/bootable_cd_rom.htm.
Without these drawbacks, the idea of having Windows running from a CD,
where it can't get corrupted (except by physical damage to the CD), would be
very tempting. I hear that you can create a bootable CD that will emulate a hard
drive, and I can see how a rewritable CD-RW in that condition (perhaps with
some files write-protected) might make a handy drive C with Windows loaded
on it (especially if it allowed you to load the Windows files to RAM disk so that
you could use the CD-ROM drive for something else), but I have not yet figured
out how to create that kind of bootable CD.
13. Advantages of the File-by-File Approach. The concept of the Adaptec page
(see point 4) seems to have been that you would use the bulk of your CD to make
a file-for-file copy (i.e., not an image copy) of your basic Windows installation,
and would then restore it on a file-by-file basis. This would explain why they
said that you should make sure XCOPY is on your bootable floppy. (See point
5(f).) There's certainly no point using XCOPY with image restore software like
DriveImage, which will put the files in the right place automatically as it unpacks
the image. (XCOPY is a DOS utility that will copy directories and subdirectories
one at a time, from one disk or directory to another. It doesn't investigate or
dismantle massive image files.) (At this point, it surprised me to see that XCOPY
was not on the Win98 Startup Floppy.) This, then, is one advantage of creating
the bootable floppy the hard way. (See point 8.) I can imagine that there might

11

be times when this file-by-file approach would be useful. For instance, if I figure
out that Windows is not booting because of one misbehaving file on my hard
disk, I could easily boot this file-for-file CD and replace that one corrupted file
with a good copy from the CD. Much easier than wiping the hard disk and
restoring from multiple CDs! This thought inspired me to go ahead and
complete this file-for-file copy on bootable CD, following the approach that
Adaptec seems to have had in mind, before trying my hand at the disk image
approach. (For further refinements of the boot floppy, see point 50.)
Perfect Windows on CD
14. Starting Windows from Scratch. Thus, I found myself facing the need for a
pure, pristine copy of Windows 98 that I could record permanently on my
bootable CD, using the file-for-file method. As noted above, my first goal was to
have a CD containing those basic files, as actually installed on my computer,
before adding any application files or anything else that might screw them up.
So now that I had the files I needed from drive C, I was free to wipe drive C
clean and reformat it as a bootable drive. (See point 5.) This time around, I did
not make the mistake of installing Windows 95 and then installing Win98 on top
of it, which was what the concept of "upgrade" had meant to me previously.
(Not to mention that the Win95 installation was itself an upgrade, too, that I had
installed on top of OS/2!) Instead, the preferred approach is evidently to wipe
the disk clean, reboot with your bootable floppy that contains your CD-ROM
driver, go to the drive letter where your CD is located, which depends on which
kind of boot floppy you're using (see point 8), and run the SETUP.EXE program
in the root of the Windows 98 CD. So that's what I did this time around. At
some point, if you're using the upgrade CD, it looks for proof that you had a
previous version of software (Windows, or possibly OS/2 or other operating
systems) that qualifies you to use the less expensive upgrade instead of requiring
the full-blown Windows 98 CD. You'll have to insert a CD or floppy to satisfy
that verification step in the upgrade process. (Note: I subsequently started over
and redid this step and some of the other steps that follow. See points 31 et seq.)
15. Keep It Simple. Don't install anything on your newly wiped hard disk except
Windows 98, and don't do a lot of configuring and tinkering. It's OK to leave
your monitor in 640 x 480 mode with lousy colors. The one thing you do have to
configure is your modem (unless Windows detects it automatically). Then go
online and download the latest upgrades from Microsoft's Windows Update
page. It's easy to find that page: Win98 installs a link to it on your Start menu.
Do all the upgrades that are relevant for your needs, starting with the Critical
Updates and with the serious ones that produce a popup box, when you click on
them, telling you that they must be downloaded and installed by themselves.
These downloads will include Internet Explorer 5. Then consider going to

12

www.updates.com and downloading any other fixes they say you might need.
Now you have a complete Windows system. (Later, I wound up doing more
modem configuration. See point 37.)
16. Other Ways to Adjust Windows Early in the Process. Use your judgment on
how much to configure Windows otherwise. You'll have an opportunity to do
more later. The tradeoff is that, if you push your luck and make a lot of farreaching changes now, you risk spoiling your perfect installation and wasting all
the hours you've spent installing and downloading; but if you don't make any
adjustments, you'll have to make them all again, every time you reinstall
Windows. The changes I'm talking about are those that you'll certainly make at
some point; the only question is whether they will jeopardize your basic rocksolid (ha) Windows installation if you make them now. In my own case, I
decided on several minor steps that seemed best done now, before other
software would get installed and might get confused by any change in the
existing state of affairs. One thing I did was to create a C:\TEMP folder, since I
always use one of those and no harm would be done by creating it. In addition, I
deleted everything from C:\Windows\Temp, so that my CD would not fill with
useless clutter; and for the same reason, I instructed Internet Explorer's options
to clear out its History and Temporary Internet Files ("TIF") folders. I
supplemented that last step by visiting the TIF folder to delete cookies manually.
Also, having gone to www.updates.com (see point 14), I knew that Windows had
installed an outdated version of RealPlayer; but since I disliked RealPlayer, I
went into Start | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and removed REAL.
This would also be a good time to run a surface test or create new partitions (by
using e.g., the PartitionMagic floppy -- see point 2). I wouldn't recommend
installing Norton Utilities or AntiVirus, however; they can add pollution to the
pure, basic Windows installation we're contemplating here. (The second time
around, I adjusted the basic Windows installation somewhat differently. See
point 37.)
17. At this point, I could have installed Easy CD Creator on my fresh, clean hard
drive. I decided not to do that, however. I wasn't worried about the program
causing any problems with my nice new Windows installation, although I
suppose that could be an issue too. Instead, I was concerned about doing my
Windows backup while Windows was running. DriveImage has the advantage
that it reboots the computer into Real DOS before creating its image files, so that
your Windows files are not in use. Easy CD Creator does nothing like this. So I
thought there might be a risk that, no matter how perfect my Windows
installation might be, the CD might fail to capture files that Windows was using
at the time of CD creation. To avoid this, I took the hard drive out of the
computer and hooked it up as a slave drive in the other computer. (See point 1.)
(Configuring as a slave drive involves resetting the jumper on the hard disk, if it

13

has one, and making a change in your BIOS if it doesn't use Auto settings. I
didn't actually use screws to install the drive inside the computer; I just put it on
a stack of books next to the computer and left the case off.) Since Windows
wasn't booting from this master-turned-slave drive, there wasn't a lot of the
usual Windows thrashing around to identify it as new hardware -- that is, it
didn't seem that any important files would be affected -- and I hoped its
Windows files would mostly be inactive while Easy CD Creator was running.
18. Burning a Bootable CD. The rest of the Easy CD Creator approach was, well,
somewhat easy. I shut down all other programs. Then, following the Adaptec
instructions (see point 4), I went into Data Layout and dragged the entire
contents of the drive (we're talking about my slave drive D, now) to the CD
creation area, so as to avoid fragmentation and other problems that might cause
a buffer underrun. (See point 269(f).) Easy CD Creator processed this request
and stalled at a half-dozen cookies in my Temporary Internet Files folder that
had somehow been invisible even though I had instructed Windows Explorer to
show hidden files. I hit the "Change" button to truncate the overly long
filenames for these cookies. (Easy CD Creator's limit is 64 characters per
filename, not counting pathname.) (If it had been real filenames rather than mere
cookies, I would have aborted rather than truncating and would have shortened
the filenames if possible.) I noticed that Easy CD Creator reported that the disk's
contents were only about 300 MB, whereas Windows Explorer was reporting
more like 400-500 MB. The discrepancy seems to have been due to different
methods of counting file sizes (i.e., actual file size versus amount of disk space
allocated) and to the apparent fact that Easy CD Creator was not making a copy
of the large Windows swap file (WIN386.SWP) that had appeared in D:\ after I
brought the hard disk over as a slave. (Too late, I remembered that I had
previously adjusted this machine so that the Windows swap file would go on
drive D; but since it wasn't being recorded to CD, I saw no harm in it.) Finally, I
went into File | CD Layout Properties | General, told the computer to use the
name of WIN98_PURE for my new CD, clicked on Data Settings and changed the
File System to ISO 9660, clicked on Bootable, clicked Properties and made sure
the "Any MS-DOS 8.3 character file names" button was marked, clicked OK,
changed File Types to "Add All Files" (out of sheer paranoia), and clicked OK
again. The program asked me for a bootable floppy, and since I would be
needing XCOPY, I decided to use the floppy that I had created the hard way.
(See point 13.) After copying the files from that floppy into a temporary area and
adding BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN (which were, I guess, the files that
made it bootable), the program brought me back to its main screen and waited.
(Thus, it seems that I could instead have followed the procedure recommended
at www.ozemail.com.au, where they suggest dragging the contents into the CD
creation area (see the top of this point 18) as the last step, not the first.) I clicked
File | Validate Layout, not because I know what that does, but because I always

14

do that before creating a CD. Then I clicked File | Create CD, chose a speed of
2x, clicked Advanced and chose the "Close Session and Leave Disc Open" option
-- after all, I was using only half of the CD -- and then clicked OK. The program
burned the CD without further ado. (At this point, I had not yet come across the
suggestion that you burn the bootable section first, using the required ISO 9660
format, and then come back and burn the rest of the disk in the more popular
Joliet format. See http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq03.html# [3-15]. See point
65. For further information regarding bootable CDs, see
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~rossstew/drs/bootcd.html.)
19. I had an old 1 GB hard disk sitting on the shelf that I had been meaning to
sell. Now I was glad I hadn't. I put aside the hard disk containing the pristine
Windows 98 installation, to serve as a backup in case I wanted to make any
changes, and instead connected the old 1 GB drive to the original computer.
(The covers were off both computers, and were destined to stay off until I had
everything done.) I put the new CD into that machine's CD-ROM drive and
booted, changing the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM. Sure enough, the new CD
did boot properly: when I typed DIR at the DOS prompt for drive A, I saw the
contents described in point 5; and when I switched to drive Z (see point 6), there
appeared to be the original Windows 98 files (shown with truncated 8+3 DOS
filenames). Using the DOS utilities in the bootable part (drive A), I checked drive
C with FDISK and then used FORMAT C: /S/V and also SCANDISK C:
/AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY /SURFACE to prepare it. I created
C:\TEMP, copied my UTILS.ZIP file (see the end of point 5) to that directory and
unzipped it to get XCOPY. I typed Z: and CD \ to make sure my copying would
start from the root of Z; I typed C: and CD \ to make sure that the copied files
and subdirectories would branch off from the root of C; and then I ran XCOPY Z:
C: /S/E, and it began copying files.
Installation Problems: XCOPY
20. In this paragraph, I'm going to describe a technical problem I had. Not
everyone may have this problem; but if anyone else does have it, they might
appreciate hearing about the solutions I tried. There might also be some who
would appreciate this review of numerous DOS commands and utilities. The
problem was like this: XCOPY went for a while, and then stalled at the
\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ folder with the message, "Invalid
device request reading device RESTORE. Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" I hit R for
"Retry" several times, and then tried "Ignore" several times, but the message
repeated. The particular file at which (or after which) XCOPY had stalled was
AXWORL~1.ZIP. Letting the program remain stalled at that point, I removed
the CD from that computer, put it in the other one, and used Windows Explorer
to look at the folder (whose name, without DOS truncation, was "C:\Program

15

Files\PLATINUM technology\WorldView for Internet Explorer." (Note: you'll

see the truncated 8+3 file and directory names, like PROGRA~1 instead of
Program Files, if you use Windows Explorer to look at the DOS-based CD rather
than at a Windows-based directory (such as the matching folder I had on the C
drive of this other computer). Anyway, looking in that WorldView folder on
both drives C and G (the CD-ROM in this other machine), I saw nothing unusual.
I opened a DOS window and typed XCOPY
G:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.* E:\X, where the E:\X folder was a
new one I had created for the occasion. The copy went off without a hitch. I
went online for guidance but found very little. One user suggested that perhaps
there was a loose connection to the floppy drive. I put the CD back in the
original computer and turned it off, checked all the plugs and connectors, and
rebooted from the CD. (I noticed, this time, that the DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS line
in my CONFIG.SYS file (see point 5(c)) malfunctioned, but when I re-rebooted, it
worked fine.) I went to the troublesome
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ folder (using the ChangeDirectory
command, i.e., CD \PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1, although often it's
less frustrating to do it one directory at a time, e.g., CD \PROGRA~1 and then
CD PLATIN~1, etc. -- note carefully how the backslashes are used) and saw that
the next item in the list, after AXWORL~1.ZIP, was a HELP directory. I tried to
copy just this WORLDV~1 folder and its subdirectories, using XCOPY
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.*
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ /S/E. This gave me a "Bad
command or file name" error. Puzzled, I went to drive C, and what to my shock
and horror did I see but that XCOPY had created no folders there! I tried the
original XCOPY command again (see point 19), and belatedly discovered that I
had gotten "Bad command or file name" because I had no PATH statement
pointing to C:\TEMP, where XCOPY resided. I typed PATH A:;C:\TEMP, to
designate the two places were (so far) all my working DOS programs were
located. I ran XCOPY Z: C: /S/E again. Now, another belated discovery: I had
forgotten to re-orient the computer back to the roots of C and Z (see the last
sentence of point 19), so it XCOPYed everything into C:\TEMP, which of course
was exactly not where I wanted my files to go. I used DEL and DELTREE to
clean the unwanted files and directories out of C:\TEMP. Then, reorienting
myself properly, I ran XCOPY again as before. Once again, it stalled at the same
place, and once again, Retry and Ignore did not do the job. This experience, I
realized, was showing me a shortcoming of the file-by-file approach: if one file
goes haywire, the whole rest of the thing is lost -- unless you want to sit there
and XCOPY individual directories, one at a time, skipping the troublesome ones.
Thinking further, I went back and ran XCOPY
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.*
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ again, but this time without the
/S/E switches. This ran fine, which told me that the problem was in the HELP

16

or LIB subdirectories of the WORLDV~1 directory. Tired of retyping all these

long commands, I belatedly ran DOSKEY, which gives you the Unix-like ability
to use the up arrow to choose which previous command you'd like to repeat.
(Type DOSKEY /? for more information; the /? switch works with other DOS
programs too.) I went into the HELP subdirectory and again ran the XCOPY
command just shown, adding HELP\ after WORLDV~1 in both the Z: and C:
parts, so as to copy the HELP folder from Z to C. (Be sure to add the \ after
HELP; otherwise DOS won't know if that's a file or directory name.) (It's OK if a
long command wraps over onto the next line; just don't lose your place or get
confused if it doesn't wrap perfectly.) This, too, ran just fine. I tried it again with
the /S/E switches, and that's when I got the error "Invalid device request"
message. I tried it with the LIB subfolder, and that worked just fine with the
/S/E switches. So I knew my problem was limited to the HELP directory, so I
went back there. I noticed that it contained a sub-subfolder called IMAGES. I
repeated the XCOPY command for this HELP\IMAGES folder, but this time the
XCOPY command failed both with and without the /S/E switches. I tried using
COPY *.* (making sure that I had oriented myself to the proper directories on
both C and Z), and this copied some files and then gave me the "Invalid device
request" error after listing the file named RESTORE.GIF. When I hit fail, DOS
said "Fail on INT 24 - RESTORE.GIF." The XCOPY section of the DOS manual
told me that "INT 24 Error" means that the user aborted from an "INT 24 error
reading or writing disk." I already knew that much: I had indeed aborted (by
hitting Fail) after getting that "Invalid device request" error. Hoping for further
enlightenment, I went online, but there was virtually nothing on "Int 24 error"
anywhere. The best I found -- and it wasn't much -- was at
http://d1.ifmo.ru/library/dosint/24/--.HTM, which did at least give me a
couple of ideas. One idea was to try copying that RESTORE.GIF file
individually. Sure enough, that produced the "Invalid device request" message
too. I tried copying the next file after it on the list, ROLL.GIF, and that worked
just fine. I brought the CD back to the other computer and tried copying
RESTORE.GIF from the CD to another directory. DOS was able to do this with
no difficulty! So apparently it wasn't a problem with the CD or the file; it was
something about that filename on that first computer. Trying another approach,
I tried to go into EDIT, got a "General failure reading drive A," remembered that
the CD was still in the other computer, brought the CD back to this first
computer, and hit Retry. I typed EDIT again, typed the letter X, and tried to save
this new file as C:\TEMP\RESTORE.GIF, thinking that I would then copy it to
the appropriate subdirectory and see what happened. Surprisingly, EDIT gave
me the error message, "Edit was unable to create or access the file
C:\TEMP\RESTORE" (not RESTORE.GIF). I tried again, failed again, and quit. I
verified that there was no pre-existing RESTORE file in C:\TEMP. DIR /AH
showed no hidden files named RESTORE (or anything else) in C:\TEMP or in
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\HELP\IMAGES. I tried a different

17

way to create C:\TEMP\RESTORE, by typing COPY CON:RESTORE, typing

"This is RESTORE" in the file, and then hitting F6 to save it; but that, too, gave me
the "Invalid device request" error. I took the CD back to the other computer and
looked at it in Windows Explorer, but I just could not see anything unusual
about it. Going back to the first computer, I went to the IMAGES subdirectory
on Z and typed COPY RESTORE.GIF C:\TEMP\X, thinking that maybe it would
save the RESTORE file under a different name, but once again I got the "Invalid
device request" message. Wondering if the problem had to do with the way the
computer was booted, I rebooted with the BIOS set to boot from the floppy, and
used the Windows 98 emergency floppy instead of the one I had created the hard
way. (See point 8.) I went to the IMAGES directory on the CD (which was now
drive letter F) and again tried COPY RESTORE.GIF C:\TEMP\X, and it copied!
Apparently the problem lay in the boot disk that I had assembled the hard way.
My first thought went to the SSCDROM.SYS driver I had been using; I wondered
if perhaps I should have replaced it with the ATAPI_CD.SYS driver that others
had recommended. (See point 7.) There didn't seem to be a copy of that driver
anywhere on the hard disk of my other computer, so I tried the Fast FTP site at
http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/?form=medium. I found a copy of ATAPI_CD.SYS
that was only about 18 months old, downloaded it, put it on the floppy, and
went in to edit CONFIG.SYS to refer to it -- and there I discovered my answer!
As shown in points 6 and 7, Adaptec's instructions tell you to design
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS so that the name your computer assigns to
the non-bootable part of the CD will be -- you guessed it -- RESTORE! I went
ahead and replaced the driver, thinking that maybe this generic ATAPI_CD.SYS
driver might save me some headaches in the future; but I also changed the label.
The relevant line in my revised AUTOEXEC.BAT now said MSCDEX.EXE
/D:Z1Z_Z2ZM /L:Z, and my revised CONFIG.SYS now said
DEVICE=ATAPI_CD.SYS /D:Z1Z_Z2ZM. I hoped that very few files would be
named Z1Z_Z2ZM, so perhaps XCOPY would run in peace from now on. Using
this new and improved floppy, I rebooted the original computer. It said that the
ATAPI_CD driver was a Sony driver, that it did not find any drives, and that the
device driver was not installed. So I went back to the other computer, removed
the ATAPI_CD.SYS file from my floppy, restored the SSCDROM.SYS driver, and
changed the CONFIG.SYS line again, so now it read DEVICE=SSCDROM.SYS
/D:Z1Z_Z2ZM. Back to the original computer; reboot with this super floppy; all
goes well; the CD-ROM is recognized as drive Z with a label of Z1Z_Z2ZM. I go
to the troublesome IMAGE directory (see above), try COPY RESTORE.GIF
C:\TEMP\X again, and it works! Since I want to make a fresh start and see if the
whole thing will run all the way through without interruption, I use DELTREE to
wipe out the directories on C (not counting TEMP, which contains XCOPY and
the other programs I'm using); I use DEL to wipe out the other files in the root of
C; I make sure that my PATH statement points to C:\TEMP and that I am at the
root of both C and Z (see above), and then I go back and re-run the original

18

XCOPY Z: C: /S/E. (See point 19). (I think I could have avoided the problem
with being in the wrong part of the disk if I had instead typed XCOPY Z:\ C:\
/S/E (with those two backslashes), but I'm not inclined to experiment with that
now.) The XCOPY process proceeds swimmingly, and at the end it tells me it
has restored over 3,500 files.
21. This paragraph describes another technical problem, and continues in the
general spirit of the previous paragraph. Now that I seemed to have things
working, I was ready for the acid test: would the CD give me a bootable copy of
Windows 98? I removed the CD, rebooted and reset the BIOS to boot from drive
C, and rebooted. I got the error message, "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure.
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." (Ya gotta
love those all-caps messages that make you feel like an idiot who's about to ruin
an expensive computer.) I could not understand why it was saying it was
booting from an ATAPI CD-ROM. I thought maybe the problem was that I had
done a warm reboot. So I tried a cold reboot (shut the power off and wait at least
sixty seconds before turning it back on). As happens so often in life, the failure
message recurred. I put my super-duper boot floppy in and hit Reset. It reboots,
as it did before, and assigns the CD-ROM to drive Z with the label Z1Z_Z2ZM. I
ignore that and go into C:\ to see what's happening with the AUTOEXEC.BAT
and CONFIG.SYS that should have been restored from the CD during the
XCOPY process. I type DIR and see that both files have size zero -- there's
nothing in them. Is that right? I shut down this computer again, hook up the
hard disk on which I originally installed my pristine version of Win98 (see point
19), and boot it. It boots up just fine. I go into Windows Explorer and look at C:.
Yep, its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT also have zero bytes. So that's not
the explanation. Another question comes to mind: did XCOPY bring over the
hidden system files, like IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (see point 5(a))? I shut down,
swap hard disks again, and reboot with the floppy again. I go into C:\ and type
DIR /AH to see a list of hidden files in the root directory. It shows me just the
two that I put there when I formatted drive C as a bootable drive (see point 19).
In my brief look at C:\ on the pristine hard disk a moment earlier (see above),
Windows Explorer had shown me at least a half-dozen hidden files, and a look
on the other computer confirmed that it, too, had a large number of hidden files.
To double-check, I type CD \WINDOWS and then DIR /AH to see if there are
any hidden files in the Windows directory. None on that machine, whereas,
again, C:\Windows on the working Win98 computer has any number of hidden
files and folders. So, OK: somewhere, the hidden files fell through the crack. I
put my bootable CD into the working Win98 computer and use Windows
Explorer to check its contents. Yeah, there are quite a few hidden files in its C:\
root folder and also in its C:\Windows folder. So Easy CD Creator did its job,
and the problem must be in the use of XCOPY. Does it copy hidden files?
XCOPY /? says nothing about hidden files. Then I remember that I have another

19

version of XCOPY, called XCOPY32. (See point 5(f).) I take it on a dry run on
the working Win98 computer: I open a DOS window and type XCOPY32 C:\
C:\X\, to send copies of everything in the root to a specially created junk folder
called X. Then I look at X in Windows Explorer. No hidden files are copied!
What the hell good is that? At the DOS prompt on the working Win98 machine,
I again type XCOPY /?. This time, I get a long listing of all kinds of XCOPY
options, including XCOPY /H, which is supposed to copy hidden and system
files along with everything else. What is this /H? (Note: the list of options is so
long that I have to type XCOPY /? | MORE to read the comments before they
scroll off the screen.) I turn back to the original PC, on which I've been doing all
this XCOPYing and rebooting. On that machine, as just noted, XCOPY /? says
nothing about any /H option. I check the file dates for the versions of XCOPY
on both machines; they are the same. How is this possible? Do you suppose that
the DOS prompt runs one version of XCOPY when it's a DOS box running within
the Windows graphical interface, but a more retarded version of XCOPY when
I've only booted to DOS and haven't yet gotten the graphical interface running?
To check this possibility, I shut down the working Win98 machine and reboot it
with the same floppy as I used to boot the other machine. Sure enough, using
the version of XCOPY in that machine's C:\Windows\Command folder, the
command XCOPY /? says nothing about the /H flag, and when I try to use
XCOPY /H, I get an "Invalid switch - - h" error message, and the same for
XCOPY32. Browsing online, I confirm that this is a known fact that everyone
except me seems to accept. So what do I do about XCOPYing the contents of this
CD to an empty hard disk when I want to restore my system?
22. While trying to find the solution for XCOPY, I came across a comment that
told me I should have set the first partition on my hard disk active when I was
using FDISK. I went back into FDISK, set the partition to active, left FDISK, and
rebooted. This time, the hard disk did boot up. For an instant, it flashed the
colored Windows 98 startup screen. Then it dumped me back at the C: prompt.
But at least I didn't have to boot from the floppy anymore. I tried XCOPY /?
again, but it still gave me just the limited number of options, not including the
one that copies hidden files.
23. As I browsed newsgroup comments, I came up with several concerns about
XCOPY: (a) It was not clear whether I should type XCOPY or XCOPY32 when
working within a Win98 DOS box. Some comments seemed to suggest that
either command would give you XCOPY32 under Win98 and that either
command would give you plain old XCOPY if you had booted in DOS. I decided
that the simple solution was just to type XCOPY32 from now on. (b) A number
of users say that XCOPY -- or, as I'll call it from now on, XCOPY32 -- can screw
up your long filenames. The reason for this seems to be that people are using
XCOPY32 to copy their C drives while Win98 is running. The idea seems to be

20

that, for some reason, XCOPY32 generates a DOS-style short filename, and that
the filename thus generated may differ from the short filename that the
Windows Registry uses. This seems to be more of a rumor than an actual
problem described in any firsthand account, as far as I could tell; besides, I hoped
to have avoided it by hooking up my source disk (i.e., the one from which I was
burning a CD) as drive D rather than C. (See point 18.) (c) Most importantly,
since everyone seems to agree that XCOPY32 will copy long filenames only when
used from within a Win98 DOS box, I had to conclude that I could not use the
CD that I had burned -- at least not for restoring a working Win98 system from
scratch onto a blank hard disk. I could have used ATTRIB to shut off the
troublesome attributes (hidden, system, and read-only) before burning the CD,
but the original concept was that I was going to be backing up a perfect, untinkered-with version of Windows, and this would not have been consistent with
that. (Note: to suppress long or short filenames in a DOS box, use DIR /Z or
DIR /B or DIR /Z /B.)
24. I concluded that XCOPY32 required me to work within a Win98 DOS
window at either the start of the process, before burning the CD, or the end of
the process, when trying to restore. I couldn't think of any special value that
XCOPY32 offered at the start of the process -- I certainly hadn't needed it to burn
the CD -- and my whole goal at the end of the process was to find something that
would create a Win98 installation from scratch on a bare hard disk. I could
imagine that XCOPY32 might be useful for some tasks after I got Win98 set up on
that bare disk, but it seemed clear that, at this stage of the game, XCOPY32 could
not help me.
Alternatives to XCOPY
25. The only way I could see to doctor my files before burning them on the CD,
other than using a disk-image program like DriveImage (see point 2), would be
to use a ZIP program to encapsulate a whole disk, or at least a whole directory,
into a single file with a nice DOS-friendly 8+3 filename (e.g., PROG_DIR.ZIP)
and no troublesome file attributes. Zipping would reduce the accessibility of
individual files, which was part of the original goal; but that might not be a big
deal, since some ZIP programs -- such as PowerDesk, which I use -- allow you to
look at the contents of ZIP files and extract individual files from them (and also
to add to or otherwise edit them, which wouldn't apply if the files in question
were on a read-only CD). I didn't have any experience with editing the single
huge disk image files that DriveImage would produce, so I couldn't say whether
image file editing in DriveImage would be better or worse than using
PowerDesk -- although of course it seemed that the latter would probably be
faster and would demand less temporary hard disk workspace. During at least a
year of frequent usage, I have had some imperfect experiences with PowerDesk

21

in situations not related to the present discussion, but overall I have been pleased
with it, and I cannot say whether other software would have turned in a better
record. That made PowerDesk something of a known quantity.
26. But then how would this ZIP process work? I would zip all of the directories
in a Windows installation into a smallish number of ZIP files -- not too many, so
that I wouldn't have to keep them all straight and spend a lot of time repeating
the same ZIP and UNZIP commands; these ZIP files would get burned onto CD;
I would restore them into a temporary working directory on the blank hard disk
from CD, by using plain old DOS-based XCOPY (or plain old COPY, for that
matter); and then I would unzip them and let their contents distribute
themselves back to their original locations (assuming I would remember, each
time, to give the commands needed to save the full pathnames for the zipped
files). In short, XCOPY32 would be replaced by a hybrid approach that is
definitely more file-by-file than DriveImage but definitely less file-by-file than
XCOPY32.
27. One advantage of the ZIP approach, for me, was the prospect of a flexible
approach to backup. I really didn't want to be in the position of burning two or
more disk image CDs every time I wished to do a complete backup of a 1- or 2GB Windows system with all the application software etc., if -- as seemed likely -there would be some folders that virtually never changed and didn't need to be
repeatedly backed up. This seemed increasingly important as I thought about
the pace at which hard drive sizes were increasing: I definitely did not want to
be in a position of doing 8 GB backups on CD, or of having to invest in a DVD
drive and expensive DVD disks, if this other approach would make the CD-ROM
viable for an extra year or two. As mentioned above in the context of editing,
disk space was another factor that worked in favor of the ZIP approach. It takes
a lot less disk space to hold a ZIP file of a directory, and to work with one
directory at a time, than to make a massive disk image file -- which, as I
understand, must include your entire disk. Also, I thought it might be good to
stay more in touch with periodic developments with my Windows files and my
drive C, and that in this sense the one-shot DriveImage approach might keep me
a little too insulated. In addition, I thought I might get a higher compression
ratio from ZIP programs than from DriveImage -- not that I would know, but just
that I've been very impressed with ZIP compression. Another consideration was
that perhaps it would be best to take two different approaches, at least for the
basic system backups, just in case either one proved to have some kind of defect
that wouldn't emerge until later; so I might wind up wanting to use both
DriveImage and ZIP methods at certain times. Moreover, you can zip files while
running Windows and then can use a different program to unzip them in DOS,
or vice versa, according to the needs of the situation; this would allow some
welcome flexibility when compared to the take-over-your-machine approach of

22

DriveImage. And when we get to the data part of the picture, ZIP files can be
passworded -- I see, for instance, that PowerDesk has recently added DES
encryption.
28. Before going any further, I wondered whether it would be easiest to keep
that old 1 GB hard disk that I had been planning to sell and leave a pure copy of
Windows 98 on it. Whenever I wanted to reinstall Windows, I could just cable it
with another hard drive, boot from DOS, and use DriveImage to copy its entire
contents over to the other disk. I decided against this tempting alternative for
several reasons: (a) I felt I could sell the disk for somewhere in the range of $2550, which made it a lot more expensive than a CD. (b) As long as those Windows
files were on a hard disk, they were vulnerable to operator error or program
malfunction, and in that case I would be back at square one -- unless I wanted to
make a backup of them on CD, which would be a really ironic thing to do. (c)
The Windows installation was only the first stage in my journey. I would still
have to install program disks; I would want CD backups of those installations; so
it seemed that I might as well learn how to do it now and follow the same
approach through the rest of the project. (d) Even though cabling disks together
is not hard, sometimes I would really rather use my CD-ROM drive than get out
the screwdriver and dismantle my computer. (e) A hard disk is tough, but
probably not as tough in cold and humidity as a CD (although probably tougher
in direct sunlight, in case you were planning to leave your Windows 98 backup
sitting on the hood of your car). (f) A hard disk still takes at least a little more
storage space.
29. Looking at the PowerDesk Website, I see that they do not recommend using
PowerDesk or ZipMagic 2000 for backing up hard disks. Also, I have just
discovered that my old DOS unzip programs won't work with the latest ZIP
programs, and I haven't yet come across a good, free DOS zip program. My
options at this point, then, are (a) to buy a program like ZipMagic 2000, which I
think comes with a DOS version as well as the Win98 version, or (b) to accept
that I'm going to have to use DriveImage to set up the basic Windows 98 system
on the empty hard disk, but can then use my Windows-based PowerDesk ZIP
program after that. I accept option (b), which brings us to the question of how to
use a disk image approach instead of the file-based approaches that I've been
talking about for so long.
Starting Over
30. Having had my pure and pristine Windows 98 hard disk cabled as slave to
another machine for several days now, and having watched Norton Utilities and
other programs perform all kinds of evil operations on that pure disk when I
wasn't looking, and having decided that I was going to use DriveImage (which

23

boots into DOS, so that no Windows program files are active during the CD
burn, which means that I need not do my CD burning with the Windows disk
cabled as a slave drive in an alien machine), and furthermore having discovered
that I did not set things up exactly as I might have wished the first time around, I
resolved to start over and reinstall a new and even more pure version of
Windows 98. (This, then, is where I begin to revise the steps suggested in points
14 et seq.)
31. Installing Windows 98 from the Hard Disk. One thing that I did differently,
this second time around, was to prepare to install Win98 from the hard disk. I
have been informed that, if you copy the WIN98 folder from the upgrade CD to
your hard drive, and leave it there, and run SETUP.EXE from there, Windows
will generally look at that WIN98 folder when it needs to consult its original files,
thus saving me the repeated hassle of having Windows tell me to insert the
upgrade CD into the machine, not to mention the frustration of seeing that
Windows then acts as though it can't find what it wants on that CD. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/answerstips/story/0,3650,2336826,00
.html. So while I still had the nearly pure version of Win98 installed on C, I used
Windows Explorer to copy the WIN98 folder to drive C. It later developed that I
might have been able to do this afterwards with X-Setup. (See point 137(n).) I
also heard that you could do it with a direct Registry tweak: in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Se
tup, create a SourcePath item of the String Value type by right-clicking in the
right window, if theres not a SourcePath item already, and set its value equal to
the place where you have put the Windows files. Later, I modified my thinking
about part of this step. (See point 319.)
32. Deciding on a Partition Scheme. Another thing I did before cleaning out the
rest of the hard disk was to make sure I had two hard drives hooked up there,
with the second one serving as a placeholder so that the Windows program files
would all be set up to refer to the proper partitions. I probably could have done
this with just one drive, but since I had that old 1 GB drive sitting around, I went
ahead and cabled it as my second hard disk, and I laid out my partitions on the
two drives so as to resemble the layout on the other computer (referred to here as
my "main" computer), where I was writing these notes and where I do most of
my work. To set up the partitions in FAT32 format (i.e., the more efficient disk
format that first became available for Windows users in Win98), I temporarily
installed PartitionMagic. I used it to create six partitions, trying to set each at a
size that I thought might accommodate its needs (given the relatively small sizes
of the hard drives on this PENTIUM computer), but knowing that I could always
use PartitionMagic to adjust them later. On the first hard drive, I put partitions
C through E. C was the WIN98 partition (1000 MB); D was the PROGRAMS
partition (1700 MB); and E was the DATA partition, for word processing files and

24

other materials that generally do not require constant disk access (300 MB, which
I would probably revise upwards later when I had a clearer idea of how much
space I really needed for C and D). Why did I care about constant disk access?
With your first hard disk busy using Windows and other program files, they say
you are better off spreading out the disk work, which you can do by putting
your active data files on a separate drive. Thus, on the second hard drive, I put
these partitions (all in an extended partition, so their letters would always follow
the partitions on the primary drive): F as my AV partition (a 250 MB placeholder
for the much larger partition I would use on the other machine, where I do my
audio and visual image editing); G for a partition called BURNING (250 MB
now, as a mere placeholder on this tiny 1 GB hard disk, but 700 MB later, on the
other machine) (see point 33); and H for a SWAP partition (500 MB) (see point
44). (For more information on one reason for putting all of the Windows
program files in their own partition, see point 154(d).)
33. Here's a brief explanation of the BURNING partition. I call it BURNING
because it temporarily holds the stuff I burn onto CDs. With a limit of 700 MB,
this partition will hold very little beyond what is actually going onto a CD. That
is, it will not contain many actively used files, and therefore will tend not to
become fragmented. (Fragmentation can cause some CD-burning programs to
stutter and can ruin the CD you were trying to create.) Further reducing the risk
of fragmentation, you have the fact that most of the contents of this partition will
arrive here in ready-to-burn chunks -- that is, you aren't going to do much
editing in this relatively restricted space. Also, by having this partition on a
separate hard drive, you reduce the risk of a stutter when Windows fiddles with
program files on your first hard disk for whatever reason.
34. Once PartitionMagic completed the steps of rearranging the partitions as just
described, I was ready to retrace the steps described in point 14. I rebooted and
set the BIOS to look at drive A; I then rebooted with a bootable floppy (see point
8), making sure that this floppy contained the DOS tools I would be needing, as
described in the following sentences. I checked to insure that I could read files
on the CD-ROM drive, which my floppy had placed at the letter Z. (See point 6.)
I then began hacking and slicing with DELTREE and DEL, removing everything
from drive C except C:\TEMP (where I had unzipped my DOS tools) and the
C:\WIN98 folder. (See point 31.) When those two directories were all that DIR
saw, I typed ATTRIB -H -R -S to expose the hidden, read-only, and system files
in the root directory of drive C and to make them capable of being deleted, and
then I used DEL on them one by one until they were all gone. Then I typed
DELTREE TEMP. As a final check, I typed DIR /AH, and saw that there was still
a hidden RECYCLED directory. So now I had to recreate \TEMP and re-unzip
my DOS tools there in order to use DELTREE on this RECYCLED directory. (I
knew that Windows would soon be recreating the thing, and I didn't see what

25

harm it could do if I left it, but I deleted it anyway, just to be thorough.) Then I
typed DELTREE TEMP and DIR /AH again, and was satisfied that C:\WIN98
was the only thing left on the drive. I took a quick tour of the other partitions,
typing DIR and DIR /AH at each, and concluded that everything was empty. I
removed the CD, rebooted from the floppy, and checked C one more time to
make sure it had nothing other than C:\WIN98. (Note that, by doing a previous
installation of Windows 98 and then erasing it in this way, I had unintentionally
avoided the potentially difficult question of how you would otherwise get the
WIN98 folder from the CD onto the hard drive without using XCOPY and
running into all the problems discussed above, although I suppose you could
work around that difficulty if you had another computer to which you could
copy the WIN98 folder and then burn a CD or copy it over by temporarily
connecting this hard drive to that machine.)
Reinstalling Windows 98
35. I went into C:\WIN98 and typed SETUP. I went through the setup process.
The process never made me refer to anything outside C:\WIN98, except that (a) I
needed the Product Key from the back of the CD jacket and (b) I had to load the
Windows 95 upgrade CD to prove that I was a qualifying upgrader. I was
surprised that the installation did not need the Win98 CD for anything else. The
setup options I chose were as follows: I let the program install to
C:\WINDOWS; I chose the Custom route and selected everything (which I later
regretted -- see point 39); and otherwise I pretty much went with the defaults.
(Later, I found that you can avoid inserting the Win95 CD by copying the
\WIN95 folder over from the Windows 95 CD and browsing to it during the
Win98 installation process.)
36. I contemplated moving the hard disk containing this new installation over to
my AMD machine. After all, that computer had a faster modem, so as to
download the program upgrades more quickly. Also, it had the CD-ROM drive
that was capable of burning CDs. But as I thought about it, I saw several reasons
against this plan (which differs somewhat from the approach described in point
17): (a) If I moved the hard disk over to become drive C on the other machine,
Windows would reconfigure itself for the hardware on that machine, which
meant that it would re-reconfigure itself when I brought the hard disk back to
this other machine to add software. I wanted to keep this first installation as
simple as possible. (b) If I used this hard drive as the C drive in the AMD
machine, I would have to install Easy CD Creator on it. My concept was to
install the application software later, to insulate the basic system from quirks in
that software -- not to mention that I didn't want to have to uninstall or upgrade
this version of Easy CD Creator every time I reinstalled my operating system
over the next couple of years. (c) I don't like to be without a working computer

26

that I can use to check for solutions online, and although I could PROBABLY
reassemble one quickly enough if need be, I was reluctant to tempt fate. (d) I
expected the whole process of installing software to be quite time-consuming,
and I wanted to work on other stuff -- and to be able to continue taking these
notes -- while that was going on. (e) To simplify things, after the installation and
downloads and adjustments were all complete, I could just use the DriveImage
boot floppy to create a disk image file on the H partition of my little 1 GB drive
(see point 32), and could then connect that drive to the AMD machine and burn
the CD from there, when the time to burn arrived.
37. Modem Setup. Leaving the hard disk in the PENTIUM computer, then, I
decided to do my tinkering with Windows before downloading relevant updates
(see point 15), rather than afterwards. I made this decision mostly because I
wanted to put the Temporary Internet Files folder used by Internet Explorer in
the right place to begin with, before going online. Beginning with that task in
mind, I started Internet Explorer, which started the Internet Connection Wizard.
I went through that wizard to configure my Internet connection through my ISP,
and allowed it to run the Hardware Installation Wizard to configure my modem,
which involved supplying a modem driver on a floppy disk; and since I had to
create that floppy by copying the driver from the hard disk on my AMD
machine, I was glad already that I had decided to keep my AMD computer
running! I said OK to the option of signing up for an Internet mail account, even
though I feared it would give me Outlook Express rather than Outlook 98; I did
this because I don't use Outlook Express for e-mail, but I do sometimes use it for
newsgroup browsing. I had to fire up Outlook 98 and Outlook Express on the
other machine (Tools | Accounts | Properties) to make sure I had the right
answers for some of the setup questions. The computer then wanted to go
online, but I selected Work Offline and started making adjustments to Internet
Explorer (View | Internet Options). (Later, I wound up doing more modem
configuration. See point 99. I also found another program for newsgroup
browsing. See point 292.)
38. The changes I made to Internet Explorer were as follows: (a) On the General
tab, I changed the homepage to my preferred, customized search page
(http://www.northernlight.com/nlquery.fcg?dx=1004&qr=&qt=&pu=&qu=&si
=SOURCE%3D1&la=3%3A1&qc=All&d1=&d2=&rv=1&search.x=41&search.y=1
7). (b) Also on the General tab, in the Settings for Temporary Internet Files
("TIF"), I changed to "Never" check for newer versions of stored pages, I told it to
use 50 MB, and tried to put it into the root of SWAP partition H. (See point 32.)
It informed me that I couldn't do that, so I opened Windows Explorer and
created H:\Temporary Internet Files (which apparently would have occurred
automatically if I hadnt bothered -- see point 242(f)), and told Internet Explorer
("IE") to put the TIF folder there. IE informed me that it needed to reboot in

27

order for these changes to take effect. (Note: if Internet Explorer has already
created a TIF folder somewhere, and that folder doesn't go away after you
change your Internet Explorer options for TIF and reboot, you can go into DOS
and use DELTREE to get rid of it. Probably an easier way to do all this is to use
X-Setup. See point 137(n).) (c) My final change on the General tab was to change
History to three days, since I just never look back in time any further than that on
IE. (d) On the Advanced tab, I checked "Browse in a new process" and "Toolbar - Small Icons," and I unchecked "Show Internet Explorer on the Desktop." Then I
closed out of Options. (e) In the main screen, I dragged the Address bar and the
menu bar to the same line as the button bar, so that I had a nearly full-screen
effect with more functionality. (f) In View | Toolbars, I unchecked Text Labels. I
could have made more changes, but I knew I would be downloading an updated
version shortly, and decided that I could take another look at the options after
that. So I closed Internet Explorer and hit Start | Shut Down | Restart to let the
settings take effect.
39. On reboot, I again got an introductory message telling me that my computer
wasn't equipped to run WaveTop, which was one of the options included in the
mass of Windows options I had checked when I selected everything for
installation. To stop this WaveTop message from loading at startup, I went to
Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Windows Setup,
where I unchecked the Web TV for Windows option. This gave me the option of
restarting, which I took. After reboot, I went into Start | Run | msconfig |
Startup, and was pleased to see that the four different WaveTop items that had
appeared there previously were gone.
40. While in Add/Remove Programs, I had noticed that RealPlayer 4.0 was the
only (non-Windows) program shown. I disliked the way RealPlayer had taken
over my desktop when I had downloaded it one time; I preferred other programs
for my audio and video playback; so I elected to remove RealPlayer here.
41. I made some desktop adjustments, as follows: (a) I shut off the Channel Bar.
(b) I right-clicked on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, went into Properties,
and checked Auto Hide and Show Small Icons. (c) I again right-clicked on the
taskbar, and this time selected Toolbars and unchecked Quick Launch. (d) I
right-clicked on Recycle Bin and set its Properties to configure the drives
independently and not to display the delete confirmation dialog box. I left all
drives at the default value of 10% except for SWAP drive H, where I clicked "Do
not move files to the Recycle Bin." (e) I deleted the Outlook Express shortcut, Set
Up the Microsoft Network, My Documents, and Online Services from the
desktop. (The Microsoft network was not a computer networking thing; it was
an Internet connection option. The purpose of the Microsoft Network and
Online Services options was to give the user different ways of connecting to the

28

Internet. I didnt want to become a customer of Microsoft or these other ISPs

(Internet Service Providers) at this point, however.)
42. I right-clicked on the taskbar | Properties | Start Menu Programs |
Advanced, and created three new folders under "Programs": Frequently Used,
Primary Utilities, and Other Programs. Under Other Programs, I created a folder
called "Online." I moved the Internet Explorer and Online Services folders into
that Online folder. I made a copy of the Internet Explorer shortcut (the one
actually pointing to the IE program, not to the IE folder) and put it in Frequently
Used. I moved Accessories and StartUp to become subfolders under Other
Programs. (Note: this rearrangement was premature. See point 51.) Windows
seemed to figure out where StartUp is, even when I buried it several layers
down, but if that had failed I would still have had the option of specifying a
location using X-Setup. (See point 137(n).)
43. I right-clicked on Start and chose Explore. This put me into Windows
Explorer. I unchecked View | as Web Page. I checked View | Details, and I
unchecked View | Toolbars Text Labels. I clicked on the grey part of the
Address area and dragged it up to the right end of the previous line. I went into
View | Folder Options | View and checked "Display the full path in the title
bar," "Show file attributes in Detail View," "Allow all uppercase names," "Show
all files," and "Smooth edges of screen fonts," and I unchecked "Hide file
extensions." Finally, still in Folder Options, I clicked on the "Like Current
Folder" button. To finish the job, I left-clicked on Start | Programs, right-clicked
on MS-DOS Prompt, cut it, and pasted it onto Frequently Used. I repeated the
same steps for Windows Explorer.
44. Setting Virtual Memory. This is disk-based memory, as distinct from RAM.
Basically, as I understand it, you're storing, on disk, a snapshot of what is going
on in a program that is currently active on your computer. Disk-based storage is
much slower than RAM, so you want to do what you can to speed up this disk
storage. In Windows 98, the virtual memory -- that is, the disk storage file -- is a
file named WIN386.SWP. This "swapfile" is one of the frequently-changing files
that can cause fragmentation and slowdowns if you put it on a partition with
other files that you will be using actively. (See points 32-33.) Fortunately, I had
located the SWAP drive last, as drive H (see point 32), thus allowing myself to
add a third hard drive sometime in the future and thereby make the most of the
PCForrest advice to put the swapfile on your least-used hard disk. (Note that
this is a revision of point 2.) See
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/jump/0,3652,2217131,00.html.
Until I had a third hard drive (if ever), I believed that the second hard disk
would still be less busy than the first, where the program files were located; and I
also hoped that, by putting the swapfile (and other temporary files, such as the

29

Temporary Internet Files used by Internet Explorer -- see point 38) into their own
partition, I would reduce their tendency to cause fragmentation. To move the
swapfile to drive H, I followed highly recommended instructions found on the
PCForrest site at www.pcforrest.co.uk/swapfile.htm. As instructed, I went into
Start | Settings | Control Panel | System | Performance | Virtual Memory | Let
me specify my own virtual memory settings. I selected drive H. To designate a
minimum swapfile size, I found the PCForrest advice somewhat inapplicable,
since they envision a setup now, for today's computer usage, whereas I was
preparing a basic Windows setup for the next couple of years. See also
http://epsilon.silicon.net.my/adrian/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/
Swapfile_Optimization_08.htm. The purpose of the minimum is to reduce the
number of times when Windows must recalculate the needed size of the swapfile
and shrink it accordingly. Since I had set drive H at a size of 500 MB and so far
had few other demands on it, and since I had previously noticed that the
swapfile was around 100 MB (see point 18), I decided to set it at a minimum of
100 MB. As almost everyone seems to recommend, I ignored the option to set a
maximum. I told the computer that, yes, I was sure I wanted to do this; I
rebooted; and when I went back into this part of the Control Panel, I saw that, as
promised, the maximum had been set to "no maximum." This information was
greyed out, but PCForrest says this means that Windows is observing your
minimum and maximum settings but is managing the swapfile whenever its size
needs to land somewhere between those extremes. (Note: PCForrest says that
defragmenting the swapfile can help immensely, but that's not an installation
issue and it's not important yet.) I think, but am not certain, that setting your
own swapfile sizes may also allow the defragmenter to defragment the swap file,
which they say is helpful for better system performance.) Later, I learned more
about the Windows swap file. (See point 242(f).)
45. While I was in Control Panel, I clicked on System | Device Manager. I
noticed a trouble mark -- a yellow circle with a black exclamation mark in it -next to a device related to my sound card. I didn't see much reason to configure
the cheap old sound card in this PENTIUM computer, however, since it was not
the one I used for most purposes. I decided to save that part of the installation
for later.
46. Windows installed a default My Documents folder on drive C. I wanted my
data files kept separate from my program files. Windows did not allow me to
simply delete the My Documents folder, however. A comment that I saw in a
newsgroup gave me the impression that TweakUI would allow me to remove
My Documents, but I did not plan to install TweakUI until later. (See point 71.)
So My Documents had to remain for now. Eventually, I found that TweakUI was
not necessary for this. (See point 120(j).)

30

47. As noted earlier (see point 16), the goal of these adjustments was to take care
of things that might be more difficult to do (or undo) later, and also to make
adjustments that I would almost certainly make anyway eventually, without
crossing the line into adjustments that could make the system unstable. The
foregoing adjustments pretty much reflect the way I've been using Windows for
a couple of years now, so I'm comfortable with that aspect of them. As far as I've
been able to determine, none of them threatens system stability. Anyway, I have
decided that the tradeoff is worth it -- there are just too many little adjustments
to make, adding up to hours of reconfiguration, and I would really rather do
them this one time and be done with it, if at all possible.
48. Having set up a basic system to my taste, I went online and downloaded all
the relevant updates again. (See point 15.) Since I didn't want to sully my pure
installation with any kind of Connection Keeper utility, I kept having to check
back and go to some Webpage online, to keep my ISP from disconnecting me for
lack of activity. (They interpret mere downloads as inactivity since, for all they
know, you're just listening to streaming audio.) This time, I noticed that as I
downloaded various Windows updates, the list of updates seemed to change -that, in essence, I was updating the updates. This was fine with me; it was just
interesting. I guess it suggested that Microsoft wasn't necessarily preparing onetime updates that would bring you all the way from the Stone Age to the
Chemical Age in one step. They were giving me the updates in the order in
which they had prepared them, patches on patches. This was my impression of
the situation, anyway. The downloads took at least six hours of pure connection
time; with disconnections and everything, they ran from about 2 PM one day to 7
AM the next day.
49. As noted above (point 15), the places I went to for downloads were (a) the
page to which the Windows Update shortcut took me and (b) updates.com. At
updates.com, I was pleased that there were only three programs that Microsoft's
Windows Update page had not brought up to the most recent version, but I was
somewhat surprised to see that two of those programs were by Microsoft itself!
(The other was Macromedia Shockwave ActiveX Player, whose most recent
upgrade was (judging by the version number) a very minor one, which I decided
to ignore.) Why wouldn't Microsoft give me its most recent versions of Dial-Up
Networking and Windows Media Player? This seemed odd. Just in case ZiffDavis's updates.com site was wrong (and I have found their free utilities to be
very useful and reliable, even if they did shaft me on a magazine subscription
once), I decided to postpone the updates.com part of this enterprise until later.
50. When the downloads were complete, I checked all partitions, to see where
Windows had put files. The only additions to any drives other than C were (a) a
hidden Recycled folder on each drive, (b) an MSDOWNLD.TMP folder on D

31

with nothing in it, and (c) to my satisfaction, a WIN386.SWP file and the
Temporary Internet Files folder on drive H. So I decided not to worry about
doing any sort of CD backup of any disk other than C at this point. I also used
Windows Explorer to glance at the file dates of each file in the C:\WIN98 folder
(the one containing the Windows 98 setup files -- see point 31) and all of its
subfolders. As far as I could see from a quick glance, all files were dated
5/11/98. So evidently the installation process had not changed any of them or
added anything to them. I felt that my DriveImage backup should include this
C:\WIN98 folder; I just wanted to start developing some sense of what was
changing during these various processes.
51. I noticed that the downloads had changed a few things that I had previously
adjusted (see points 38-47), had added some other things that I needed to adjust,
and had generated some temporary files that I did not want to preserve on the
disk image CD that I would soon be burning. Retracing my steps, I began with
Internet Explorer. In Tools | Internet Options | General | Temporary Internet
Files, I clicked on Delete Files, including all offline content. (I noticed that the
TIF folder was still assigned to drive H, so that was good.) I also cleared History
on that screen. On the desktop, I again deleted the shortcut for Outlook Express.
52. Repeating the technique used in point 42, I rearranged my Start menu
programs to suit me. It has seemed easier to do this rearrangement as I go along,
rather than allow the shortcuts to accumulate into an impenetrable forest. But at
this early stage it would have been simpler if I had postponed the previous
rearrangement: the downloads added new versions of some of these shortcuts,
and since I had moved the earlier shortcuts, the download was not able to
update the shortcuts automatically, so I had to figure out manually which
duplicative shortcuts to delete. I wound up with these groups of shortcuts:
Frequently Used (containing just a small number of items, and I intended to keep
it that way), Primary Utilities (containing subfolders for Microsoft Desktop Tools
and Microsoft System Tools), and Other Programs (containing subfolders labeled
Editors, Games, Multimedia (Audio, Video, and Images), Online (Browsers,
Connection Utilities, Email/News/Chat, ISPs, and Webpage Tools), and StartUp.
53. In Windows Explorer, I created a C:\Temp folder. Also, I revisited folders
that I thought might have other junk files that I would not want preserved in my
backup CD. (See point 16.) Specifically, I cleared out C:\Windows\Temp, and I
removed the remaining cookies (which the procedure in point 51 had not
removed) from H:\Temporary Internet Files. That latter step may seem
unnecessary, since I was not going to be backing up drive H at this time, but I
was superstitious about the TIF folder, which I had heard was linked back to
drive C. Checking on that, sure enough, I found that there did now exist a
C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files folder, whereas I'm pretty sure I had

32

checked and there had not been one previously. I rebooted to DOS to delete that
folder, but I couldn't find it. I rebooted to Windows and looked again in
Windows Explorer. Yep, there it was, not hidden or anything. I opened a DOS
window and looked. No TEMPOR~1 folder. I deleted it in Windows Explorer. I
rebooted and looked again in Windows Explorer. It was gone. Would it stay
gone after the next time I went online? I hoped so. (It did.)
54. I revisited the Taskbar (see point 42) with a right click, selected Start Menu
Programs, and cleared the Documents Menu. I revisited Control Panel | System
| Device Manager (see point 45) and saw that the situation had not changed
regarding yellow warning stickers; there was still just the same one, which I
would be working on later. I decided to set Control Panel | Display |
Background | Sandstone and chose the Display | Tile option there; I also set
Control Panel | Display | Screen Saver to my taste.
55. I decided to run some diagnostics. From a shortcut on the Start | Programs
menu, I ran the System Information utility. Under Tools, I ran System File
Checker | Scan for altered files. (Another approach is just to go to Start | Run |
SFC, or run SFC from a command line.) It found no problems. I decided to leave
well enough alone, and exited the System Information utility. It seemed that I
was ready to make my image backup CD.
Creating the CD with DriveImage
56. For purposes of burning my basic Windows setup to CD, I had decided that
DriveImage was the way to go. (See point 29.) This entailed booting from the
DriveImage floppy and capturing the entire Windows 98 hard disk to an image
file. I had plenty of space for that image file on drive D (see point 32), so that's
where I decided to put it.
57. I had not yet come to a definitive boot floppy to use in making the CD
bootable. As noted earlier, I had decided that the Win98 Startup Floppy, was
going to be bootable in the widest variety of CD-ROM drives. (See point 13.) My
objection that this floppy lacked XCOPY had proved to be unimportant, at least
for purposes of a boot floppy that would restore a working copy of Windows 98
onto a bare hard disk. (See point 23(c).) If I took the floppy that I had created the
hard way (see point 8) and removed XCOPY and the various utilities that were
already incorporated into the Win98 Startup Floppy, I found that there really
weren't that many utilities left, and that I could squeeze most of these into a ZIP
file that would fit in the remaining empty space on the Win98 Startup Floppy.
The programs already incorporated into the Win98 Startup Floppy included
ATTRIB, CHKDSK, DEBUG, EDIT, EXTRACT, FDISK, FORMAT, SCANDISK,
and SYS.COM, along with AUTOEXEC, CONFIG, and various drivers.

33

Subtracting these from the list in point 5 left me wondering whether I could find
space for these remaining utilities: BOOTMAGIC, CVT, DELTREE, DOSKEY,
DOWN, FIND, LE, MEM, MODE, MORE, NEXT, RED, SCANREG, SLICE,
SMARTDRV, SUBST, SWEEP, TEMP, TOP, UP, and WHEREIS. I found that if I
deleted the first two -- which I didn't think I'd need anyway -- there was plenty
of room for the rest after zipping. So I zipped them and put them onto the
Win98 Startup Floppy, and this became my state-of-the-art boot floppy, to be
used in making bootable CDs. (It has been suggested that you can delete some of
the drivers on that disk to make room for more utilities, but this defeats the goal
of having something that will boot the widest possible variety of machines.) I
rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from A, and booted this state-of-the-art floppy. It
worked and gave me access to the CD, so I felt that it would do the same when I
burned it into the bootable part of a CD. That is, it seemed likely to make a
bootable CD and to let me restore my disk image from that CD. (See point 11.)
58. I put the DriveImage floppy disk in A (see point 5(h)) and ran the PQDI
program. The mouse was not working. I didn't absolutely need it, but I wanted
it. I exited the program and inserted the PartitionMagic boot floppy. I copied
MOUSE.COM and MOUSE.INI to drive D, and then copied them from there to
the DriveImage floppy. (The PartitionMagic boot floppy uses an old mouse
driver that probably works with just about any mouse.) I rebooted, re-ran PQDI,
and the mouse worked. Back in DriveImage, I chose the Create Image option
(the others were Restore Image and Disk to Disk copy), requested an image of
drive C only, and specified that the output file be D:\C_IMAGE.PQI. I added
some explanatory comments, chose low compression (40%, as compared to high
compression's 50%, but faster), and clicked OK. The thing was very fast -- it was
done in about five minutes. I exited and went to D, and there, sure enough, was
C_IMAGE.PQI, a file of 382 MB. That was small enough to fit on one of the
partitions of my primary slave drive (i.e., the 1 GB hard drive -- see point 32).
Thus, while I was in DOS, I deleted the WIN386.SWP file from drive H (see point
44), knowing that Windows would recreate it on drive H (if I had a drive H
connected) the next time I booted Win98 on my drive C. Then I copied the
C_IMAGE.PQI file from drive D to drive H (on the 1 GB drive) and deleted it
from drive D. I shut down the machine, disconnected this 1 GB drive, connected
it to the AMD computer, moved C_IMAGE.PQI over to the primary hard drive
on that computer, shut it down, disconnected the 1 GB drive again, and turned
my attention to the PENTIUM computer, where I would be installing the
bootable CD that I was about to create on the AMD computer.
59. In this paragraph, I am again dealing with a technical problem that may not
affect most people, but that some may find interesting and that I want to include
to make sure I don't leave out any important details. On the PENTIUM
computer, I disconnected the other hard drive, where I had installed my nice

34

new version of Windows 98, and put it aside. I had now reached a point of
addressing the original problem that had prompted me to seek a reliable method
of installing Windows in the first place. You see, I'd been having some Win98
difficulties on the AMD computer, and those difficulties were starting to worry
me, but at least that computer was still running; but this PENTIUM computer
had been really malfunctioning. In recent weeks I had replaced the
motherboard, the memory, and the floppy drive, and while I could see real
improvements in stability and/or performance with each of those upgrades,
there were still problems with Windows 98 itself. The machine, in its ordinary
configuration (i.e., when I was not fooling around with the old 1 GB hard drive),
had possessed two 3 GB hard drives: one a Fujitsu, and one a Western Digital,
both from 1997. Drive C (the Fujitsu, I believe) had Windows, program files, and
Windows-created data files. I had cleared off drive D (the Western Digital) to
make room for a Linux installation. I had experimented briefly with three
different versions of Linux and had decided that I would probably be going
towards Linux sometime in the future, but that there was just too much
Windows-based software that I liked and needed right now, so that I could not
yet justify the switch to Linux. In order to run Windows on drive C and Linux
on drive D, I had installed PowerQuest's BootMagic program, which had
allowed me to choose which operating system I wanted to boot up. BootMagic
might fall into the category of what's known as "disk overlay" software -- that is,
it might be like various disk manager programs that run before your operating
system begins, and thus allow your operating system to use larger hard drives
than your BIOS would otherwise permit. After my Linux experiment, I had
emptied and reformatted drive D. I could have wiped off drive C too, given my
intention to reinstall Windows from scratch, but I did have a few hours' worth of
work on it that I didn't want to lose. So I had removed drive C and put it aside
(see point 19), and drive D was the one on which I had been doing all this
Windows experimentation, as I've been describing here. Now I was finally ready
to burn a CD that I believed really would be bootable, so that I would be
prepared to reinstall Windows on that original drive C, the Fujitsu. (I wanted to
put it there because I wanted to keep the Western Digital 3 GB disk, on which I
had just finished doing a nice clean Windows installation, as a backup in case
DriveImage or the CD-burning process screwed up somewhere.) All I had to do
was get those few hours' worth of work off my original drive C, so that I could
wipe it clean and try installing Windows from my DriveImage CD.
Unfortunately, when I connected my original drive C and attempted to boot it
up, I got an "Invalid system disk" error. I booted from a floppy, typed DIR C:,
and got an "Invalid media type" error. I ran PQDI from the PartitionMagic
floppy, and it told me I had "partition table error # 108." Browsing online, I
found some indications that this might have been caused by the Linux
installation. I didn't think that was the explanation, though, because as I recalled
the disk had been working right up to the end (although possibly the act of

35

removing Linux knocked a crutch out from under it, or something). The better
explanation came from the PowerQuest page at
http://www.powerquest.com/root/newsltr/news698.html# tip2, where they
said this: "Translation is the process that allows a computer to see drives larger
than 500MB by using an interface between the drive and the BIOS. Once a drive
is formatted under a certain translation it has to stay translated that way. Any
change in the translation will result in a lot of partition table errors including
errors 108 and 110. Changes in translation can be caused by various things, but
the most common are moving a drive from one system to another, upgrading the
motherboard or BIOS, re-detecting the drives in the system, or simply disabling
or enabling a translation mode in a situation where it is either needed or not
needed respectively." I had mis-jumpered the disk just a few moments earlier,
when trying to hook it up, and that may have caused the problem. The Web
page just cited also said that error # 108 could be caused by a drive overlay. I
noticed that, while BootMagic had previously worked just fine when booting this
drive, I was no longer seeing any mention of BootMagic when I tried to boot this
disk. Finally, the PowerQuest Web page said that error # 108 could come from
what they called "true errors," which are sometimes (but not always) hopeless.
The Website suggested running their PARTINFO.EXE program, which was
included with PartitionMagic and other PowerQuest products. I copied it from
the AMD computer onto a floppy and ran it in the troubled PENTIUM computer.
Its output scrolled off the screen, so I copied MORE.COM onto the floppy and
ran it again as PARTINFO | MORE. It said I had errors 108, 109, 110, and 116.
(There wasn't room on my super-duper boot floppy (see point 57) to add this
interesting PARTINFO program, but at least I copied it onto the boot floppy that
I had created the hard way (see point 8).) The PowerQuest Website said I could
call PowerQuest tech support, but it was Sunday and I didn't want to wait until
Monday if I didn't have to. But I decided that I would if necessary, because it
said that the data can usually be recovered by someone who knows what they're
doing. In the meantime, I tried two other PowerQuest solutions. First, to see if
the BootMagic drive overlay was the problem, I followed their advice and tried
to boot without a floppy, hitting SPACE or CTRL when the system said it was
initializing my BootMagic overlay. The thing is, the system never did say
anything about BootMagic. I tried both SPACE and CTRL, with the BIOS set to
boot from both A and C, and it didn't work -- I just got an "Invalid system disk"
error. The other PowerQuest solution was to download a free demo of their Lost
& Found program, which they described in these words: "[A]s long as your disk
is still spinning, Lost & Found can locate and recover almost any file, anywhere
on your disk." The demo would not fix the problem -- for that, I would have to
buy the program -- but it would tell me at least if the problem could be fixed. I
downloaded and tried to run it in Real DOS, only to discover it had to be run in
Windows, but then it turned out that the Windows program created DOS
floppies. (Why didn't they just say so in the first place? Maybe I missed it.)

36

Once I had the floppies set, I booted the PENTIUM computer with them, but my
display reacted weirdly, so I rebooted with another floppy and then restarted the
program with the LF -t option (text mode). The program asked for a serial
number (which was 2453-0000-0000-0001 for this demo). It also required me to
designate a disk and partition to which I would save the files I wanted to save, so
it was good that I had the 1 GB hard drive connected as my primary slave.
Shortly after that, it crashed with a "general protection fault" error. I rebooted
the machine and tried again, and this time it ran. It took about a half-hour to do
its thing with the 3 GB drive and, sure enough, it was able to show me the names
of my "lost" files. I looked on their Website and saw that the program price was
$70. Seventy bucks! For something I've never needed before and probably won't
need again? I selected "Start Recovery" there in the Lost & Found demo and
went through the simulated recovery process. The program looked pretty good,
and I probably would get it if I really needed it. But in the meantime, I had
thought of a way to short-cut some of the work that I would have to do over
again, so I decided against buying the program. Therefore, I was ready to
reformat this hard drive, burn a CD, and see if I could get those two together, the
CD and the drive.
60. The PartitionMagic boot floppy didn't seem to be able to do anything with
this screwed-up 3 GB hard disk, so I used FDISK from the floppy drive to delete
the bad partitions and then used PartitionMagic to match the partition
arrangement I had previously used on the other 3 GB hard drive (see point 32).
The first time around, PartitionMagic gave me an "error trying to create batch
file" message, and I realized that I had flipped the write-protect switch on the
floppy. After I changed the write-protect tab, the program refused to let me type
in the size I wanted for the primary partition, so I created it to fill the disk and
then resized it in a separate PartitionMagic operation.
61. Meanwhile, in the CD-burning department, I had to decide what to do with
the C_IMAGE.PQI file that I had copied to the AMD machine. In general, I
assumed I would still want to use a bootable floppy and create a bootable CD,
using more or less the same procedures as before. (See point 18.) But how was it
supposed to work exactly? I didn't want to use C_IMAGE.PQI as you would
ordinarily use an image file in Easy CD Creator, to create an unpackaged set of
files on the CD -- if I did that, I'd be back in the boat of having to use XCOPY to
move the files from the CD to the empty target disk. (See point 24.) Moreover,
C_IMAGE.PQI didn't seem to be the type of image file (having either a .CIF or
.ISO extension) that Easy CD Creator could use in that way. Evidently
C_IMAGE.PQI would have to go onto the CD exactly as it was, as one big file.
The DriveImage manual confirmed this, and also told me that the Low
Compression option I had chosen for C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 58) was just what
they recommended, presumably for its greater speed.

37

62. Along about this time, I did some experimentation with using CD-RW
erasable disks, in hopes that they would spare me from using up a lot of one-shot
CD-R disks. I found that I could burn some files onto a CD-RW, but the
PENTIUM computer would refuse to read them, even though the AMD
computer could see them just fine; but if I put those same files on a CD-R, the
PENTIUM computer had no problem. I went online and found some comments
suggesting that the CD-RW problem might stem from the old SCSI adapter card
with which I connect my old scanner to the old computer. Since I wasn't quite
ready to throw out the scanner, I decided I'd just have to try to get it right with
CD-R disks, and do without the CD-RWs.
63. I also experimented with the results obtained by booting with my two
different floppies (i.e., the Win98 Startup Floppy, designed for a variety of CDROM drives (see point 57) and my own super boot floppy, with somewhat more
DOS utilities and fewer CD-ROM drivers). I found that if I booted with the
Win98 Startup Floppy, I got consistently good results in attempting to see the
files on the CD, whereas the super boot floppy was not doing so well. I tried
changing the CD-ROM drive reference from Z to I (see points 6 and 32), but that
made no difference. Evidently the SSCDROM.SYS driver on the super boot
floppy was not exactly the right one for this particular CD-ROM drive after all.
(See point 20.) It's what I had in the CONFIG.SYS for this PENTIUM machine,
but apparently Windows 98 had been ignoring that and setting up the CD-ROM
drive in its own preferred way.
64. Before I had completed all this earnest scientific experimentation, I burned a
CD-R with the super boot floppy. I had intended to use the Win98 Startup
Floppy, but I screwed up -- but this is how we make all those great discoveries,
right? This CD wasn't bootable (at least not in the PENTIUM computer), but if I
booted that computer with the Win98 Startup Floppy and then looked at the
contents of this CD, I was able to see them. The contents of this particular CD
included not only the C_IMAGE.PQI file, but also a folder full of DOS utilities. I
had decided to include that folder because of course I would need DriveImage to
restore C_IMAGE.PQI to a blank hard disk, and the DriveImage DOS program
nearly filled a floppy, and I really preferred to use the Win98 Startup Floppy as
the bootable floppy that you insert when creating a bootable CD. (See point 18.)
So I created a DOS_UTIL folder and put all kinds of DOS utilities (including
DriveImage) into it. In other words, this CD had three things: the bootable part,
C_IMAGE.PQI, and the DOS_UTIL folder. To avoid the risk that I might
unthinkingly use old DOS utilities that would permanently truncate my long
filenames, I decided not to take my earlier approach of dragging 50 MB of DOS
utilities en masse to the DOS_UTIL folder. (See point 11.) Instead, when
deciding what to put into DOS_UTIL, I selected the materials that had been

38

useful, or potentially useful, so far. These included (a) the boot disks for
PartitionMagic, DriveImage, and BootMagic, from which I could create a
separate boot floppy if I needed to use the mouse (the Win98 Startup Floppy
didn't enable the mouse, but I didn't want to tinker with its CONFIG.SYS file and
possibly mess it up, because I didn't fully understand everything that floppy did
when it booted up); (b) the utilities on the super floppy I had assembled the hard
way, with the addition of XCOPY and the other files that didn't fit onto a floppy
(see point 57); and (c) the other useful PowerQuest programs I had recently
discovered, namely, PARTINFO and the Lost & Found demo (see point 59).
Although I had inadvertently made this resulting CD non-bootable by using the
bootable floppy, I was still able to gain access to its contents, including both
C_IMAGE.PQI and the DOS_UTIL folder, by booting with the Win98 floppy.
65. I decided to try again, using all my collected wisdom, and see if I could get it
right. I burned a CD-R (not a CD-RW -- see point 62), using the Win98 Startup
Floppy as the bootable floppy (see point 63), and on this CD I put both
C_IMAGE.PQI and the DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64). I also decided to try a
modified version of the two-pass suggestion that I had belatedly heard about
(see the end of point 18): I used a CD-R, but I instructed Easy CD Creator not to
close the disk. This way, I hoped, I would be able to fill the unused 200 MB
remaining at the end of the CD for something. This CD successfully booted and
its contents were visible as drive J. (The Win98 floppy creates a RAM drive as a
temporary place to hold its utilities. See point 8.)
66. Meanwhile, I had been experimenting with the imperfect CD that I had
created on the first try. (See point 64.) I booted the old machine with the Win98
Startup Floppy, looked into the CD, and ran DriveImage (PQDI.EXE) from the
DOS_UTIL folder. It ran fine, including installing the mouse driver. I clicked on
Restore Image, browsed to C_IMAGE.PQI, confirmed that I wanted to restore
my backup of drive C to the drive C partition on this machine, and got the
message (as the manual had warned me) that DriveImage would delete the
existing C partition because DriveImage had to restore into free space. Basically,
it would replace my version of the C partition with its own version, which was
fine with me. I chose all the safest settings: Safe Mode, Check for Bad Sectors,
and Verify Disk Writes. It really didn't take much extra time. The whole thing
looked like it was going to take less then 15 minutes, for 450 MB. Not bad!
Unfortunately, when it was about 95% of the way through, it stalled with this
message: "Error # 2005. One or more lost clusters are present." The DriveImage
manual instructed me to respond to this message by running SCANDISK or
CHKDSK. (Apparently SCANDISK is the better of the two.) I recognized that I
might have made a mistake here: although I had run FDISK and PartitionMagic
(see point 60), and although the latter had supposedly checked the disk, I had not
actually run SCANDISK before restoring from C_IMAGE.PQI. But now, before I

39

could do that, I had to choose between Ignore or Cancel, neither of which was
very appealing. I reasoned that I'd catch the error with SCANDISK, so I chose
Ignore. But the message kept repeating, and after ten tries, I chose Cancel. I
exited the program and clicked on Reboot. The machine wouldn't boot from the
hard disk, so I knew I had some problems. I booted from the floppy and looked
at the hard disk. File not found! Nothing there! I guess when DriveImage says
cancel, it really means Cancel. OK, so I ran SCANDISK on drive C ... no, it was
time for lunch, so I decided to run SCANDISK /ALL /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE
/NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It took quite a while, and when it was done, it
said it had fixed some errors on drive C, so I hoped that was all I needed.
67. As noted in point 65, the seemingly perfect CD booted just fine, and now it
was time to try installing again. Again, I ran PQDI (DriveImage) in DOS_UTIL
(see point 66), and again, it ran pretty quickly -- and again I got Error # 2005! I
ran SCANDISK again. This time, it found tons of things to fix, which seemed
odd on a disk that had no visible or hidden files on it. I went partway with it
and then bailed out and reformatted the disk and ran SCANDISK again, and this
time it found no problems. I ran PQDI once more and, you know, third time's a
charm: it worked! No error messages. It finished and told me it needed to
reboot. I let it reboot in DOS, took a look at drive C, and it looked like my stuff
was there. I set the BIOS to boot from C, and Windows booted without any
problems. It wanted to recognize some new hardware, probably because I had
installed a memory upgrade during this PENTIUM computer's downtime, and
was now working with this other 3 GB hard drive. But then it was done, and it
looked good. As a backup, I made a second copy of the basic CD that I had used
for this installation (see point 65) for offsite storage.
Installing the Applications
68. My software existed in two forms: program CDs that I had purchased, and
software from other sources (primarily floppies and downloads) that I had on the
AMD computer and/or had burned onto CD. In my mind, the software ranged
from those programs that were highly important and reliable, down through
other programs that were important and/or reliable, but not both, and on to
programs that were genuinely unimportant and/or unstable. I decided, in this
second stage of the operation, to install those application programs that were
important, and perhaps to add others that I felt were especially stable even
though not as important, with a special emphasis on programs that would
require a lot of downloading and/or configuring if I had to install them again
from scratch. I would reach my stopping point when I had run out of stable
programs and/or had put approximately 850-900 MB on my PROGRAMS
partition (drive D -- see point 32), whichever came first. I figured that 900 MB
would be about the limit of what I could squeeze on one CD, if DriveImage was

40

correct in claiming a maximum compression rate of 50%. Of course, installing

programs on the PROGRAMS partition would also modify the WIN98 partition
(drive C), so I would make another CD backup of that partition, and this twodisk set would provide the second installment in my attempt to have a fully
backed-up, solid installation of Windows and my applications programs and
utilities. I would not be able to get as much material on these two CDs as if I
recorded them on a continuous two-CD set, but I would also not be vulnerable to
the problems I have experienced in the past with using serial tape backups. (See
introductory comments at the start of this document.)
69. I installed Office 97 first. As with Windows 98, I did not install Office 95 and
then upgrade from it (see point 14); instead, I installed Office 97 from scratch. I
chose to install the full (custom) version of Office, plus some items from the
Office 97 ValuPack (i.e., Animated Cursors, Sounds, and Word Viewer; I also
tried to install TrueType Fonts, but evidently those had gotten installed already,
and the Word 97 Converter installation failed because I did not have an older
version of Word loaded). Whenever the installation programs gave me the
option, I installed these programs to folders on the PROGRAMS drive (D)
instead of C. (See point 32.) I reconfigured the Microsoft Office toolbar to my
liking and removed its "New Office Document" and "Open Office Document"
options from my Start menu; and I moved its Start | Programs icons to a
Microsoft Office folder and also put a couple of those icons in the Frequently
Used list (not learning from my previous mistakes, and therefore was doomed to
repeat them -- see points 42 and 52). I went into each Office program I was using
and configured its options and generated its help database, so as to avoid having
to take those steps repeatedly during future installations. In Word, I also went
into D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates and created a backup copy of
NORMAL.DOT. I created Text and Graphics folders on my DATA partition (E),
moved
D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Clipart to E:\Graphics\Clipart, and told
Word where to look for its Clipart. I also told Word to keep its AutoRecover files
on H:\Temp. I took similar steps with Access and Excel.
70. Before I could finish installing Office 97, I needed to install PowerDesk 98
Utilities, which I considered one of my "must have" programs. (See point 25.) I
needed it now because there had been many updates and patches to Word, Excel,
and other Office 97 programs; I had saved many of those downloads as files on
CD; and I could now spare myself hours of downloading time just by reinstalling
those updates from CD; but since I had saved those downloads in zipped format,
I needed an unzip program to get at them, and PowerDesk 98 had an unzip
feature. I installed it, went online to download its latest update, and configured
it. I sorted through the myriad downloads that I had saved on CD, added some
that were still on my AMD machine and had not yet been burned to CD, and

41

came up with a CD filled with of 648 MB of compressed files to copy over to the
PENTIUM computer -- realizing, as noted in point 69, that not all of them might
fit in this installment. I copied the programs on this CD mostly onto partition E,
with some left over for H (see point 32), and prepared to begin installing them. I
didn't get too far into slicing and dicing, rearranging and adjusting the list of files
to install, before I realized that I would have to shut off the read-only attribute
that somehow got turned on during the CD-burning or file-copying process,
because it was driving me crazy to have to confirm every move, so I used
ATTRIB -R /S for that.
71. If I had had that program-filled CD ready earlier, I would have finished
installing Windows 98 before turning to Microsoft Office and other software. I
had indeed finished installing Win98 as far as Microsoft's official products were
concerned, but I had some other Win98-related utilities that had served me well
and that had seemed stable (or at least as stable as Windows itself), and I had to
finish sorting through my downloads (see point 70) before I could install those
utilities. But when I finished that, I was a little confused. First, some of the
Windows-related utilities that I had downloaded previously seemed, now, to
have been incorporated into the latest Win98 and Internet Explorer updates.
Erring on the side of safety, I deleted all downloads that now seemed
unnecessary. This included the "power tools" that gave me right-click features
like Zoom In and Open Link in New Window -- which, as I say, I had already
gotten somehow. Second, I couldn't find the TweakUI utilities that I thought I
had downloaded, so I went online for information. (At first, the system would
not detect my modem. I gave it a one-minute shutdown and tried again, and
that didn't do it. I went into Control Panel | System | Modem and deleted the
modem. On reboot, the modem worked.) Online, it developed that I probably
didn't download the TweakUI utilities, because I found someone who told me
they were actually on my Windows 98 upgrade CD itself, in the
\Tools\Reskit\Powertoy folder. And then, before I installed them, I saw that
Microsoft's Website was offering a "Power Tweaks" utility, without much of a
description of what was actually in it. It seemed like it might be an update to the
power toys on my Win98 CD, so I opted for the download. After I installed it, I
couldn't tell what difference it might have made, if any; there weren't any
explanatory notes. Moving onwards, I read the README.TXT file
accompanying the Powertoy folder from my Win98 upgrade CD, and its
repeated warnings scared me off. I mean, I had used TweakUI before, and had
really appreciated some of its features, but now I thought maybe I'd better wait
until after I had my application software loaded in a fairly stable state and had
saved that to CD. Now I was nervous, and I hoped I hadn't wrecked my nice
perfect system by plowing ahead and installing that other thing before I had
really thought about it.

42

72. Having gone as far as I was prepared to go with enhancements to Win98 and
Internet Explorer (which Microsoft treated as a sort of two-headed thing growing
out of one body, rather than two distinct programs), I returned to the task of
completing my Office 97 installation. (See point 70.) Again, to verify which of
my downloads I might actually need, I went back to Microsoft's site, this time to
the Office 97 area at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com. First, they had some
general-purpose updates that seemingly applied to all Office 97 products. I
started with the Version Checker, which told me (not surprisingly) that I was at
the base level, and that I would have to run both the SR-1 patch and the SR-2
patch. I happened to have both patches, thus saving myself the time to
download these patches (totaling over 18 MB) on a 28.8 kbps modem. I installed
the first patch and rebooted, as it said; I ran the version checker again and it
confirmed that I still needed to install the second patch. I double-checked at the
Website (above). It said that if I had SR-1 installed, I could go directly to SR-2b,
rather than merely SR-2. I had previously downloaded SR-2b (a 24 MB file) as
well, so I was all set. Sadly, when it rebooted, my nice perfect setup froze at the
Windows introductory screen. Bad news! After waiting several minutes for it to
progress, I manually reset the computer. I booted in Safe Mode -- the computer's
first preference -- and then immediately rebooted into Normal Mode, and this
time it went OK. But I couldn't get the modem to dial out, so I rebooted again -cold, this time. (See point 21.) It froze again. This was certainly no longer a
pure, reliable Windows installation. End of story.
73. It was time to reinstall my software, and that meant I had an opportunity to
test the backup copy I had made of the bootable CD. (See the end of point 67.) I
rebooted the machine, set the BIOS to boot from CD, and rebooted again. It
booted perfectly. I began to realize that I was being a little hasty. Before I could
wipe off these disks and start over, I had to make sure the partitions were all
ready. I booted from drive C into Safe Mode and looked at the disks. Drives E
through H could stay as they were. (See point 32.) They contained all of the
downloads I had copied from the CD. (See point 70.) The only exceptions were
(a) the PowerDesk update, which I had downloaded while I was preparing the
CD (see point 70) but which I had previously downloaded and did now have on
the CD as well and (b) the Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2b patches (see point 72). I
wasn't planning to retry the Power Toys thing (see point 71) until much later in
the game.
74. Postponing PowerDesk. I decided to try to do without PowerDesk for now.
(See point 70.) I wasn't sure what was responsible for my problems, but it and
the Power Toys were the most likely candidates. I tried to figure out which
PowerDesk file had stored my preferences and settings, so that I wouldn't have
to do them over again. To test this, I customized something on the Toolbar and
chose Save Now, and then did a search for the most recently changed file on

43

drives C or D (clicking on the "Time" heading to sort by time), and it turned out
that the settings were stored in C:\WINDOWS\USER.DAT. I'm told that
USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT are your two Win98 Registry files, so I couldn't
very well just put copies of them aside and then reintroduce them after
reinstalling PowerDesk; they would have too many other changes to track. I
tried the same approach for Word 97 and got the same results. So I was going to
have to do my settings over again for all these programs. Moral of the story
(which I'm sure I will learn eventually): the frosting goes on last!
75. If I was going to try to get by without PowerDesk 98, I would need to unzip
the previously saved downloads that I would be installing, and I would need to
do this with PowerDesk 98 before wiping it off the disk. I didn't need to unzip
everything. I would reload PowerDesk eventually, because it really had served
me pretty well so far. It was just a matter of changing the focus slightly and
installing less software, so that maybe both drives C and D would fit onto the
next DriveImage CD. But, oops, a snafu: I had deleted the SR-1 and SR-2b
downloads that I had copied from CD (see point 73) as soon as I had installed
them, so as not to get confused and install them twice, so now I would need to
copy them again from CD ... except that I couldn't access the CD in Safe Mode.
So, OK, I booted the PENTIUM computer from the floppy, and then I thought
that it might be impossible to figure out which files I wanted to copy from the
CD if all I had was the short DOS filenames. But I checked in a DOS window in
the AMD computer and found that DOS did reproduce the long filenames when
you do a DIR listing. But for some reason this wasn't happening on the
PENTIUM computer. Similar short filenames, but no long filenames. So I looked
at the original files on the AMD machine, the ones from which I had burned the
CD full of programs, and used their DOS names and file sizes and dates to find
the equivalent files on the CD in the PENTIUM computer. Ultimately, this
enabled me to copy the Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2b patches onto drive E. I then
unzipped all of the previously saved downloads that I expected to install on this
go-round, which consisted exclusively of Microsoft Office updates.
76. As a last gasp, I moved the Clipart folder back where it had been originally.
(See point 69.) And, you guessed it -- the computer booted just fine in Normal
Mode! To test this, I moved Clipart back again to E:\Graphics and rebooted
again. It booted without a problem. So that wasn't the explanation for the
problems I'd been having. (I later moved it with X-Setup. See point 137(m).) But
now I was in a quandary. Do I reinstall from scratch and be sure I've got it right,
and spend several more hours in the process? Or do I continue from where I am
and make a go of it, investing another ten or twenty hours in an approach that
might be unstable? I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. I really
wanted to get it right. I did not want to ever have to do something like this
again. So in exchange for hopefully never doing it again later, when I wouldn't

44

have a clue of where to begin, I decided I had to do it again now, while it was
relatively fresh in my mind. It was extremely tempting to just let it slide, but I
had gotten so tired of Windows crashes that I thought I really would rather do it
the hard way if there was any reasonable chance that Microsoft's code would be
happier that way. I figured that a purely Microsoft machine -- with Windows 98
and Office but nothing else -- would be about as stable as Windows was going to
get, and that's the route I decided to take.
Comparing Windows 98 Installations
77. I rebooted, using the backup copy of the CD. (See point 67.) Interestingly,
Windows as installed on the hard disk ignored my BIOS instructions to boot first
from the CD-ROM, and instead booted from drive C. I rebooted and set the
BIOS to boot from the Win98 Startup Floppy, and that worked. I ran FORMAT
and SCANDISK on drives C and D. (See point 67.) Then I rebooted to make sure
this backup copy would indeed be bootable when the hard disk was blank,
because that's when I would need it most. An odd thing happened: the
computer said "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure," and the blue-and-white
Windows 98 startup screen with clouds flashed across my monitor, and then it
said "Microsoft Windows 98" and gave me a C prompt. I guess it was booting
from the hard disk that I had formatted with FORMAT C: /S /V. I unhid the
hidden system files on C with ATTRIB -H -S -R and deleted them all, and tried to
reboot from the CD-ROM again. It booted with no problem. Evidently, on my
BIOS at least, the hard disk will take precedence over the CD-ROM whenever
possible, regardless of what you indicate in BIOS Setup.
78. Problem Using DriveImage from Hard Drive. This paragraph, and a halfdozen after it, deal with what appeared to be an interconnected group of
technical problems that may not affect everyone but may be informative
nevertheless. I installed again, running PQDI (DriveImage) from DOS_UTIL.
(See point 67.) This time, I got "Error # 2004. An invalid cluster was found in a
directory entry." Sheesh! Apparently I did not yet have the knack of properly
preparing the hard disk for installation. Or else ... perhaps there was a physical
flaw in the disk? I hadn't run the surface surface scan in SCANDISK. I decided
to rectify that right now. Looking again at the SCANDISK /? options, I very
belatedly realized that perhaps I was supposed to have been running SCANDISK
C: /CUSTOM all this time, instead of using all the other settings I had been
using. (See e.g., point 66.) I tried that, and it seemed to work: it said it was
fixing the directory structure -- the one that, as far as I could tell, hadn't been
broken. Since DriveImage says that it replaces your partition with its own, I
didn't bother reformatting again; I just ran PQDI again and let it roll over the top
of the 411 MB that had been installed a few moments earlier, before the thing
crashed. Once again, it got 98% of the way through the process and gave me

45

Error # 2005. (See point 67.) I tried again with SCANDISK C: /CUSTOM. It ran
a long time, and said it fixed the directory structure (again). Browsing online, I
saw a comment by one user who felt that the FAT32 disk format requires
frequent use of SCANDISK -- as in, every night. Another user's circumstances
sounded somewhat like mine (hard disk several years old, irregular problems on
bootup, little or no trouble detected in SCANDISK), but in more important ways
we were very different (I was not getting the seemingly important "sector not
found" errors, or the message that the computer could not find the FAT
partition). The advice to him, using a drive that was "3+" years old, was to
replace the hard disk. It was something I had contemplated, but I didn't think I
was quite at that point; but I did begin to think that I had done the right thing in
not installing the rest of my software on a possibly unstable hard drive. Another
seemingly knowledgeable person commented that SCANDISK is not an in-depth
tool and there can be numerous deeper problems that it won't detect, such as
instability produced by improper setups and by combining new drives with old
drive controllers or vice versa. I also saw a suggestion to try Norton Disk
Doctor. I eventually realized that the Norton Utilities installation process creates
emergency boot floppies, and that I must have some of them around here
somewhere. I found them and ran Norton Disk Doctor (using the "thorough test"
setting) from Norton rescue floppy no. 2. It found no problems on drive C.
While I was at it, I ran it on drive D, and found no problems there either. I tried
again to install from the CD with DriveImage. This time, I got "Error # 1802.
Image file is invalid or corrupted." I was beginning to think that might indeed be
the problem -- but how could it? I had installed a solid, working copy of
Windows using the other CD, which I had created with the same C_IMAGE.PQI
file that still resided on the hard disk on the AMD machine; the CD burning
process had seemingly gone without a hitch for this CD; and now I was getting
this error message before the thing even tried to install, whereas previously it
had gotten as far as 98% of the way through the installation before crapping out.
The best I could figure was that it was probably just some kind of system
incompatibility between this two-year-old Fujitsu drive and my new
motherboard. I rebooted from the CD and noticed an error message telling me
that BTDOSM.SYS (on the bootable portion of the CD) was corrupted. Had I
been getting that error message each time? The many drivers on the Win98
emergency floppy tended to flash by and I didn't pay much attention to them,
but it seemed like I would have noticed this. I powered down for a minute and
rebooted. No such error message this time. Very strange. Evidently the first
step I had to take, before restoring from CD (or perhaps before any major system
operations) on this computer, would be to do a cold boot. (See point 21.)
Perhaps this boot problem, previously unnoticed, had been responsible for some
of the previous variability in error mesages I was getting from DriveImage. I
looked at drive C and saw nothing on it, and concluded that DriveImage
automatically requires you to do a reboot each time you attempt a restore

46

operation, even if nothing restores. On closer examination, I realized that C was

actually D -- that is, I had thought I was looking at the WIN98 partition, but I was
actually looking at the PROGRAMS partition (see point 32), which told me that
DriveImage had at least proceeded as far as deleting the old C partition in
preparation for installing the new one. I ran PartitionMagic to take another look,
and it confirmed that there was 1 GB of free space before the PROGRAMS
partition. I decided to try DriveImage again. As always, I set it to safe mode
with the maximum verification etc. settings, just to be sure. It didn't give me the
Error # 1802 message this time. Instead, I was back to Error # 2004, which is
where I started this paragraph. OK. This was not working. I rebooted, got the
BTDOSM.SYS error again, powered down for a minute, rebooted, and got no
such error. I tried a different approach: I used PartitionMagic to eliminate the C
partition that DriveImage had created. Or at least I tried to. PartitionMagic took
the command, but when I clicked "Apply," it gave me "Error # 600. Error trying
to create batch file." I assumed the reason was that it could not create the batch
file that would guide this process on the read-only CD disk. I had copied
PartitionMagic to one of the other hard disk partitions, so I ran it from there and
got no such error. I rebooted with no problem, went back to that same hard disk
partition, and ran DriveImage from there, instead of running it from the CDROM, as I had done previously. This time, the disk image restoration was
successful. Very interesting! Maybe the whole problem that I was wrestling
with in this paragraph was just that DriveImage, like PartitionMagic, needs to
have a little room for a batch file or a scratch file or something that it can write to,
during its operation, such that it will work from a hard disk or a floppy but not
necessarily from a CD. (If this last step had failed to restore the Windows files to
C, my only other idea was to copy C_IMAGE.PQI from the CD to drive D and
use DriveImage to install it from there to C. In other words, the question then
would have been whether the image file, as well as the DriveImage program
files, would work better if it were located on something other than the CD.)
79. Possible Hard Disk Problem. I left DriveImage and rebooted from the CD. I
got the BTDOSM.SYS error again, but otherwise the CD proceeded along its
ordinary boot path. This showed me that, at least in my BIOS, the hard disk tries
to override the CD-ROM but not the floppy. (See point 78.) I cold-rebooted and
set the BIOS to boot from drive C, so as to see whether C_IMAGE.PQI really had
reinstalled Windows on this hard drive. Sure enough, I got the blue-and-white
Windows 98 startup screen. But then it froze there, just as it had done before.
(See point 72.) So evidently this problem hadn't been related to the applications
software I was installing on the previous go-round; evidently it was a problem
related to the basic Windows installation. In other words, it seemed that either
the original Windows installation was bad, or that this hard disk wasn't taking it
very well. I belatedly realized that perhaps some of the problems I had had with
XCOPY (see point 20) and Linux (see point 59), and was now having with the

47

Windows installation, might have been due to a hardware problem with the hard
disk, not to mere software imperfections. I was fairly sure (but not positive) that
the Fujitsu hard drive that was now my primary hard disk had also been my
primary hard drive previously. (See point 59.) I didn't know whether a problem
with the drive would be related just to the execution of programs, in which case I
might be able to use this Fujitsu as a secondary hard drive to store data on, or
whether it signaled instead that the drive was failing and should not be used for
data either.
80. A List of Files with FILELIST. Someone online had been kind enough to
create a QBASIC program called FILELIST.BAS (with an accompanying
FILELIST.BAT program to run it) that would let me produce a detailed listing of
every file on my disk, and I had modified it for my purposes. (For details, search
for that on Deja.com, with ray-woodcock@usa.net as author, or -- if this link still
works -- see
http://x41.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=571703537&search=thread&C
ONTEXT=947777113.818872330&HIT_CONTEXT=947777113.818872330&hitnum
=7.) (Note: if you get a "File not found" error, make sure FILELIST.BAT is
pointing to the directory in which you have put FILELIST.BAS. If you don't do
BASIC programming, I understand there are other utilities that may help you
with some of these same processes.) I decided to use this program to compare
the files that had now been restored to this Fujitsu 3 GB hard drive, against the
files that had existed on the original Western Digital 3 GB hard drive from which
I had created C_IMAGE.PQI in the first place. (See point 19.) I put
FILELIST.BAS and FILELIST.BAT onto a floppy on the AMD machine. I warmrebooted the PENTIUM computer from the same Win98 Startup Floppy that I
had used to make the CD bootable. (See point 57.) I didn't get the BTDOSM.SYS
error, so perhaps that was something that occurred only when rebooting from
CD. (See point 78.) I looked at C briefly, and, sure enough, there were a bunch
of files there. I copied the FILELIST programs from the floppy to a folder called
DOS_UTIL on hard drive partition E. (On E, I had put most of the upgrades that
I had brought over from CD. See point 70. DOS_UTIL would eventually migrate
to drive D. See point 103.) I typed EDIT FILELIST.BAS (and later .BAT) to
change these programs slightly so they would read and write from E rather than
C. I typed FILELIST and got a "Bad command or file name" error. I found that I
had not yet brought over a copy of my old 1991 version of QBASIC from the
AMD machine, so I did that and re-ran it. Later, I found a more recent version.
(See point 141(q).) It gave me a listing that contained no long filenames, which
reconfirmed that this was a difference between the so-called "Windows 98" that
existed on these boot floppies and the full-blown Windows 98, whose DOS boxes
and command prompts did produce long filenames.

48

81. Inexplicable Freezes. To produce a good file list, it appeared I would have to
connect the Fujitsu drive to a system capable of booting into full-blown Windows
98. As I say, I had intended, anyway, to compare the Windows installation on
the Fujitsu against the pure installation on the Western Digital. So I decided that
now was a good time to connect the Western Digital as my primary master hard
drive in the BIOS setup, make this Fujitsu my primary slave, and make the 1 GB
drive a secondary slave (with CD-ROM as secondary master) entirely dedicated
to serving as my drive H swap area. (See point 44.) I moved the drives around,
changed their jumpers, recabled them, found that I would need a Y cable for the
power connector because I had run out of power supply lines, fished out the Y
connector that I had obtained at Radio Shack a few years earlier, booted the
system into drive C on the pristine Windows installation without a hitch, and
tried to use Windows Explorer to move the upgrades from SWAP to another
partition. The system froze, and I wondered if it was because I had chosen, as
the target, a partition on the troubled Fujitsu drive. I rebooted; the system went
through SCANDISK to verify that I had not screwed up anything by forcing an
improper shutdown; and then my previously perfect Windows installation froze
before the bootup was complete. I did a cold reboot (see point 21); the system
went into Safe Mode; I immediately rebooted; and it booted successfully in
Normal Mode. I looked at the contents of each partition in Windows Explorer.
They all seemed OK, except the one that had been a target now had no Recycled
folder. I used Windows Explorer to move the files from there to a different
partition. Not all of them would fit. I tried to move the remainder to another
partition, but evidently chose another partition on the Fujitsu drive, because it
froze again. (Needless to say, I was beginning to wonder if the Fujitsu drive was
dying.) It was difficult to tell which partitions were on which drive. The first
two were in alternating order (i.e., C was the first partition on the Western
Digital, D was the first partition on the Fujitsu, etc.), probably because the
partitions on the Fujitsu weren't all logical drives. One of them was a primary
partition, and I understand that can cause this alternating-drive situation. I tried
again, and this time managed to move the files to a partition that did not cause
the system to freeze. Most of them, that is. With 15 seconds left in the move
process, the system froze again. I cold-rebooted and the system ran SCANDISK.
It froze on the SWAP partition (drive H) from which I had been trying to move
files. This presented an interesting thought. Maybe I was having problems with
the older 1 GB Seagate as well as the Fujitsu. I booted from a floppy and looked
at the contents of the Seagate. It showed a DIR listing with no problem. The files
that I had been trying to move appeared to be gone. It looked like they had
arrived in the other partition OK. I started Norton Disk Doctor and told it to
check this SWAP partition. It found no problems. I made a list of the partitions
that contained no files I needed to keep, and then, to simplify things, I went into
the DOS version of PartitionMagic, deleted three partitions, and resized the
remaining partitions to use up the free space. But PartitionMagic and the system

49

froze when it got to the 1 GB Seagate drive. So the freezes were not just a
Windows phenomenon! I cold-rebooted from the floppy and used FDISK to
remove all partitions from the 1 GB drive and create a new logical drive there,
and formatted that 1 GB logical drive with FORMAT /V. I fired up
PartitionMagic again to see how things looked in the wake of its crash a few
minutes earlier. Everything looked OK.
82. Converting and Resizing Partitions. I decided this would be a good time to
convert the primary partition on the Fujitsu drive to logical drives under an
extended partition, so that the drive letters would fall into consecutive order
instead of giving me the alternating-drive problem just mentioned. I did that by
shrinking the size of that primary partition in PartitionMagic, using the extra
space for a logical drive, and then booting into Windows and using Windows
Explorer to move the files from the one to the other. These operations, not
involving the 1 GB drive, caused no freezeup. When I booted into Windows, it
recognized new hardware, probably related to the memory that I had changed
since creating C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 67) or else to the fact that I now had
three hard drives connected. I logged on and registered with Microsoft to
download the needed drivers during this process. I rebooted and got a "CMOS
checksum error" from the BIOS. I hit DEL and changed the BIOS to boot from
the hard disk first. Windows froze during reboot. I shut down the machine and
took out the 1 GB drive. Windows went into Safe Mode on reboot. When it was
done booting, I immediately hit Start | Shut Down | Restart. It booted into
Normal Mode without any further freezing. I clicked on Start | Shut Down |
Restart and held down F8 right after the BIOS recognized the hard disks, so as to
get my choice of the mode in which I wanted to reboot. (Otherwise, it would
ordinarily keep right on going into Windows 98.) I chose 5 ("Command prompt
only"). This gave me Real DOS, the kind that doesn't show long filenames, the
kind you don't get in a DOS box within Windows -- the kind that I think you
have to use to run the DOS versions of PartitionMagic et al. (I was running those
versions simply because I did not yet want to install any more software on my C
drive.) (I hadn't tried it, but I had heard that you could choose Command
prompt and then edit your C:\MSDOS.SYS file -- after turning off its -S -H -R
attributes with ATTRIB (see point 34), and then turning them back on when
you're done -- so that its BootGUI=1 line would instead read BootGUI=0, and if
you do this the default bootup will be DOS rather than Win98. (See point
120(al).) In this case, you can go back into Windows by typing WIN at the
command prompt.) I went to D and confirmed that there were no longer any
files in it. I ran PartitionMagic, deleted that primary partition, and created and
resized partitions as necessary to put me back to the original six-partition
scheme. (See point 32.) I created the H:\TEMP and H:\Temporary Internet Files
directories that Windows would be looking for (see point 44). Also, now that I
had Windows installed on C, and saw that it occupied less than 500 MB of the

50

1,000 MB I had given it, I reduced the size of that partition to 700 MB -- hoping
that C:\Windows\Temp would never need more than 200 MB to spare, or else
that it would know enough to use the SWAP drive if it did -- and reallocated the
rest to the DATA partition on the first hard drive. Since I had no further freezes,
I concluded that the old Seagate 1 GB drive had been the culprit and that it
would not be useful even as a data disk. I labeled it as "probably defective" and
put it on a shelf. That, however, did not fully exonerate the Fujitsu, since the
Seagate had not been connected when I had experienced some of my problems.
(See point 79.)
83. CRC Error. PartitionMagic completed all of the changes just described
except one: when it was resizing the DATA partition on the first hard drive, it
gave me "Error # 45. CRC error in data." This error did not appear in the
manual. It occurred on the Western Digital drive, not the Fujitsu, and it seemed
to occur when PartitionMagic was trying to move files as part of the resizing
task. The files being moved were a small number of program updates. I could
have deleted them and restored them again from the CD (see point 70), but I had
devoted a fair amount of time to sorting them out and rearranging some of them,
and I preferred not to have to do that again.
84. Fixing Bad Sectors with Norton Disk Doctor. I wondered whether some of
the problems I had been having with hard disks pertained not to hardware, but
to a corrupt file. I ran SCANDISK /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY on
drive E, a partition named DATA. It said it had fixed the file allocation tables,
and it paused for quite a while during its check of the file system -- so long, in
fact, that I exited and ran Norton Disk Doctor instead. Norton found the free
space that had not yet been assigned to a partition, and offered to revive it, but I
said no, I'd just as soon leave that to PartitionMagic. Finally, I figured out what
the error was -- PartitionMagic was trying to move itself! I exited
PartitionMagic, copied the PQMAGIC files to another drive, ran PQMAGIC from
there, and, to my surprise, got the same Error # 45. I rebooted to Windows, used
Windows Explorer to move some of these files, and the system froze. I rebooted
and, even though the BIOS was set to look at C first, it looked to the CDROM
and A. I tried again, and the same thing happened. I cold-rebooted, and this
time Windows booted properly. I opened a DOS box and used COPY to make
copies of the files that I was trying to move away from the E partition. It moved
four of the six files I was trying to move, but then it froze and gave me a blue
screen with "Disk Write Error -- Unable to write to disk in drive E. Data or files
may be lost." This led to a Windows "Fatal Exception" screen, so I rebooted.
Again, I had to cold-reboot to get Windows to boot from the hard disk; and even
then, it froze during the boot process. I rebooted from the floppy. At this point I
discovered that I had been confused. The change in drive letters had gotten me
copying files to the troublesome E drive, rather than away from it. When I typed

51

CHKDSK /F at the E: prompt, the system froze. I rebooted and ran SCANDISK
E: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY again, and this time it whipped right
through it. I didn't want to use DOS commands to move many files, because it
seemed that they would eliminate the long filenames. (See point 23(c).) So I
used XCOPY only to move DOS program files, and then DELTREE to remove
those files from E. This part went OK. I rebooted into Windows (Safe Mode)
from the hard disk, immediately rebooted into Normal Mode, and used
Windows Explorer to move the remaining files from E. Within a few seconds, I
got "Error Copying File: Cannot copy [filename]: The system cannot read from
the specified device." I rebooted, hit F8 after the BIOS recognized the hard disks,
and chose "5. Command prompt only." I ran PartitionMagic from the DOS
prompt. This time, I created a separate temporary partition with the free space
on this Western Digital hard disk, so that Norton Disk Doctor would not offer to
revive that space (since I was not sure what effect that might have, but thought it
might involve sticking that free space back into one of the other partitions). The
PartitionMagic operation succeeded and rebooted me; I again chose the
Command prompt option. I saw that the DATA partition was now drive F,
instead of E. I ran Norton Disk Doctor and diagnosed both E (the temporary
partition) and F (the DATA partition), using Norton's normal test (not the
thorough one). It found and fixed numerous problems on the second partition,
and marked many bad blocks. I ran Norton again just to be sure, and this time I
ran it on all partitions on both disks. It detected no other errors. I rebooted into
Windows. I tarried during the boot process, leaving SCANDISK to decide to
start itself and rectify errors that it had identified on drive F. Apparently when
Norton marks bad clusters, it does so in a way that SCANDISK can detect,
whereas SCANDISK was unable to detect these particular bad clusters by itself,
without Norton's aid. SCANDISK did not mark any additional clusters bad and
did not remove Norton's "bad" marking from any. On the other hand, during its
scan, SCANDISK informed me that some data was stored in an area of drive F
that was probably about to fail, and offered to move this data to "an undamaged
area of drive F." I accepted this offer, which Norton had not made. SCANDISK
sat there for a long time on one cluster and then finally said, "ScanDisk
encountered a data error while reading the FAT entry for cluster 16384. This
error prevents ScanDisk from fixing this drive." I okayed out of that and got
another message: "At least one area of drive F has sustained physical damage.
Although such damage might be caused by an isolated incident such as a power
failure, it is often a sign of impending hardware failure. ... You should run
ScanDisk daily for a while; if more physical errors occur, have this drive checked
by a qualified computer hardware technician." So it wasn't clear that I could fix
it by reformatting or other software remedies. But I thought maybe I should try.
I left the program and got an instruction to run ScanDisk for Windows that said,
"Press any key to continue starting Windows." I did this. Windows booted. Not
wanting to alter any more Windows program files than necessary at this stage, I

52

went directly into Windows Explorer and tried again to remove the files from
this DATA partition. The operation succeeded. I rebooted into real DOS with F8
("Command prompt only" -- see above), ran PartitionMagic, and told it to delete
these E and F partitions, create a new E ("DATA") partition, and format it. It took
a long time. I could hear it grinding away, and I knew it was finding bad sectors.
PartitionMagic finished and rebooted. I went back into real DOS, ran Norton
again, and pointed it at E. This time, I set Norton to do five repetitions of Disk
Doctor's "Diagnose Disk" test on the thorough setting, which the computer
estimated would take 3.5 hours. It finished and found no additional problems.
Then I ran Disk Doctor's "Surface Test" on all drives, on the normal setting -- but
I used the thorough setting on E. These tests found no additional problems. I
decided that my drives were probably not failing, that the damage on E (on the
Western Digital) was probably from a one-time event, and that the problems
with the Fujitsu were due more to incompatibility that might render it unusable
for a program disk but still might make it usable for a data disk. I noticed that
the bad blocks on E appeared towards the end of the disk, and I thought to
myself that if that section of the disk produced more bad blocks in future scans, I
could use PartitionMagic to create a separate partition for them in the "Hidden"
format, so as not to disturb the order of my other drive letters.
85. Comparing the CD Against the Original. I now felt confident enough about
my disks to compare what I had gotten from my CD re-installation of Win98
against the original installation located on drive C on the Western Digital disk. I
rebooted into Windows on the hard disk, so as to have access to long filenames.
I deleted all files from C:\Windows\Temp and then emptied the Recycle Bin on
drive C. (The files contained in these two places would just add clutter to what I
was about to do.) Then I opened a DOS box and, using the FILELIST program
(see point 80), I created a list of all files on drive C, which contained the original,
hopefully still somewhat pure, installation of Windows 98 on the Western Digital
drive. (See point 17.) I renamed this list from FILELIST.TXT to WDIGLIST.TXT.
I also created a list of files that I had restored from the CD, that had been on the
primary partition of the Fujitsu drive. (See point 67.) This one was still named
FILELIST.TXT. I typed COPY *.TXT COMBLIST. This gave me one long
COMBLIST file combining the two different file lists. Since the FILELIST
program produces full-path directory listings (e.g.,
G:\FOLDER\FILENAME.DOC), I didn't need to keep the two lists separate to
figure out which files came from which disks; the first letter in each full
pathname (G, in that example) would tell me. I renamed COMBLIST to be
COMBLIST.TXT, copied it to a floppy, carried it to the AMD machine, and tried
to import it into an Excel spreadsheet (choose Files of Type | All Files (or Text
Files) in File | Open). Excel got partway through the process of parsing the file
into separate columns, and then returned the error message, "The system cannot
read from the specified device." It turned out to be a problem with the floppy; I

53

reformatted the floppy and recopied the file, and this time it worked. Excel gave
me a spreadsheet containing a total of 11,538 data lines. To compare, I went to
the PENTIUM computer and ran the command DIR C:\ /S /A/4. This ran for a
while and then summarized by saying that the Western Digital drive, with my
original semi-pure Win98 installation, had a total of 5,772 files containing
427,889,664 bytes in 1,045 directories. I did the same for G: (where the Fujitsu
installation had landed) and got the conclusion that the CD had restored 5,766
files with 532,362,393 bytes in 1,043 directories. The sum of 5,772 plus 5,766 was
11,538, which matched the number of data lines in the Excel spreadsheet. So it
seemed that the spreadsheet did contain a data line for each file on drives C and
G. Turning to that spreadsheet, I added a column heading row. I also inserted
an Index column and numbered it (Edit | Fill | Series, with a 1 in the first cell),
so that I could restore the spreadsheet to the original order in which FILELIST
had produced it. I extracted the drive letter, and the filename without the drive
letter, into separate columns. (In the cells in the drive letter column, put a
formula like this: =LEFT(F2,1), where F is the column containing the filename
and 2 is the number of the row. Then "freeze" that value against subsequent
changes in column F by selecting all the values in this column (hold Shift while
pressing End and then Down) and then hitting Edit | Copy and then Edit | Paste
Special | Values | OK. Create another column for Filename and extract the
filename without the drive letter. (Example: =MID(F2,3,512).) Freeze its values
too.) I sorted the entire table by the Filename column and secondarily by the
Drive column. This put filenames from drives C and G right next to each other,
in the order of C first, G second. I inserted a Column called "Compare" and
entered formulas into it. Then I undertook the following analyses:
(a) Spreadsheet Comparison of Alternating Filenames. I used a formula to verify
that the files listed on drives C and G were alternating. For example, if drive C
had a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT, then drive G should have one too. (Example:
with Drive Letter as the E column and Compare as the F column, the formula in
cell F3 was like this:
=IF(E2="C",IF(E3="G","","ERROR"),IF(E2<>"G","ERROR",IF(E3="C","","ERROR"))
), and I copied that to all cells after F3. Then, to isolate the offending cases, I used
AutoFilter (i.e., select a cell on the table heading row and then use Data | Filter |
Autofilter and select "ERROR" at the arrow button on the Compare column.)
Disregarding files of size zero, this showed the list of files on drive C that did not
appear on drive G, or vice versa. First, I saw why drive G was 100 MB larger
than drive C: it contained a large WIN386.SWP swap file (see point 44) that
could easily be deleted and recreated as needed. On the other hand, drive C
contained several \WINDOWS\CATROOT files that drive G did not contain.
According to http://www.acit.com.tw/acercare/talk98/3/win98.html,
CATROOT contains catalog files that store information regarding your drivers.
You have a catalog file for each driver package. The catalog file contains a

54

Microsoft digital signature confirming that the driver has passed testing by
Windows Hardware Quality Labs. I probably got extra CATROOT files when
Windows installed those extra couple of drivers. (See point 82.) In this sense, the
version of Windows on drive G was more pure (i.e., less hardware-specific) than
the version on drive C. Presumably the same tinkering had caused the creation
of three other files on drive C that did not exist on drive G, namely,
C:\SETUPLOG.TXT, C:\WINDOWS\REGTLIB.EXE, and
C:\WINDOWS\WINFILE.EXE. But that couldn't be, because the file dates were
from long before this past week. I thought, however, that the explanation might
be that Windows extracted these previously existing files from its CAB files in
the C:\WIN98 directory (see point 31), rather than creating them from scratch,
during its setup process. That left just one file on my list of files that appeared on
one drive but not the other. This file, G:\WINDOWS\WNBOOTNG.STS, is a
Signature file that apparently indicates that system startup has failed. If it is
present, Windows 95 (and presumably 98) will boot in Safe Mode. See
http://www.jenntel.com/tech/Win95/gtshoot.htm. Reviewing the
circumstances surrounding the creation of the CD (from which the contents of
drive G were created), it appeared that I had indeed booted the system before
making the CD. (See point 55.) So I couldn't explain the presence of this
WNBOOTNG.STS file, but it didn't worry me by itself, since I recalled being
pretty happy with the state of the Windows installation when I made the image
file and burned the CD. Then, on closer examination, I saw, from the file date,
that this WNBOOTNG.STS file had been created on drive G just a day earlier,
after I had restored from the CD to the Fujitsu. (See point 67.) So it did not
reflect a problem with the CD itself. Perhaps it was created automatically, to flag
Windows system files that have not yet been booted. Finally, having thus
isolated the lines in the spreadsheet that corresponded to files existing on drive C
but not G or vice versa, I created a copy of the spreadsheet, named it
"SYNCLIST.XLS," and deleted these lines from that copy, so as to focus on other
kinds of dissimilarities among the files on drives C and G.
(b) Spreadsheet Analysis of File Sizes. I removed AutoFilter and put a different
formula in the Compare column. This time, I was comparing to make sure that
files with the same full pathnames had the same sizes. (The formula:
=IF(G7<>G6,"",IF(D7=D6,"","ERROR")).) Once again, I AutoFiltered for ERROR.
I ignored (1) CATROOT files (see point 85(a)), (2) the FILELIST.TXT file that
produced the spreadsheet, (3) a few files whose names made clear that they were
related to the installation of my modem (which were hardware-specific files and
therefore would probably change automatically and/or be easy to change (e.g.,
"Standard 33600 bps Modem.log."), (4) the C:\BOOTLOG files that presumably
do nothing more than their name implies, and (5) the
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DB files -- which, I
believe, were Registry files, and therefore understandably changed when I

55

installed my modem. This left me with two C:\WINDOWS files that differed in
size between C and G. Those files were SCHEDLOG.TXT and
SHELLICONCACHE. I wouldn't know, but the names seemed to suggest, again,
that these files were naturally adjusted when I installed the modem or otherwise
tinkered with the hardware. In short, it seemed that the only differences
between C and G in this category were that a bit of installation and adjustment
had occurred on the one disk but not yet on the other.
(c) Spreadsheet Comparison of File Dates. I removed AutoFilter again and put
yet another formula in the Compare column, to detect files that had been
modified on different dates. (I didn't worry about different modification times of
day because the dates seemed likely to capture the differences, given that the two
installations had occurred several days apart.) (Formula:
=IF(G3<>G2,"",IF(B3=B2,"","ERROR")).) Filtering once again for ERROR, I
mostly got files discussed in points (a) and (b). The remaining altered files, all in
C:\WINDOWS, were as follows: NDISLOG.TXT, RAYWOODC.PWL,
SYSTEM.CB and .INI, ttfCACHE, and USER.DAT. At this point, I realized that I
really would not have any way of telling, from this file comparison, if one of
these files were corrupted. Thus, while this file comparison was informative, it
was not giving me total insight.
86. Emptying, Testing, and Restoring the Drive. By this time, I had gone
through numerous gyrations with the formerly pure Windows 98 installation on
my Western Digital drive, seeing it freeze and rebooting into Safe Mode to fix it,
and so forth. (See points 81-85.) If the differences between drives C and G (see
point 85) suggested that there was any corruption on either drive, my bet was
that it would be on C, which had gone through all this turmoil. In other words, I
had now become more confident of the purity of my Windows installation as
captured on CD than I was of the purity of the Windows installation that
presently existed on either of my hard drives. Therefore, I decided to start again
from CD. First, I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from the CD, and emptied off
drive C with FORMAT C: /V, leaving off the /S switch because I did not want to
transfer system files, which would screw up the boot process. (See point 77.)
Then I ran a thorough test on drive C with Norton Disk Doctor (see points 78 and
84); it found no errors. I had learned that DriveImage worked best when run
from the hard drive (see point 78), and it was one of the many DOS utilities that I
had loaded onto another partition (specifically, drive E). (See point 64.) So I ran
DriveImage from that partition to restore C_IMAGE.PQI from the CD to drive C
-- this time using the other of the two copies I had made of the CD holding
C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 67), just to make sure it worked OK. And as far as I
could see, it did.

56

87. The Archive Bit Concept. When DriveImage was done, it wanted to reboot,
so I let it; but I intercepted when the BIOS started to boot and changed the reboot
to the floppy rather than the CD, because of the finding that the hard disk would
intervene and not let the CD boot, if Windows was bootable from the hard disk.
(See point 77.) I intercepted because I wanted an exact list of the files, the way
they were installed from the CD, before letting Windows look at hardware and
configure itself. So I booted from the floppy and ran FILELIST. (See point 80.)
Then I remembered that this list would have no long filenames, and anyway, it
had been created from a CD that captured a Windows installation that itself had
been booted, and that therefore unavoidably had some hardware configuration
information in it. So instead, I tried working with the archive bit approach. The
archive bit, also called the archive attribute, is one of a number of attributes:
read-only, hidden, system, and directory are the others I know about, and I think
there are others besides. Windows and DOS turn on the archive bit whenever a
file is modified. I figured that, if I started with all the archive bits off, then it
would be easy to tell which files had changed after that: they would be the only
ones with archive bits on. This would have helped during the spreadsheet
comparison of file lists (see point 85), at least for purposes of making it easier to
identify the files that had changed during bootup or subsequent tinkering. It
began to seem that I should have changed the archive bit before making the CD.
Then again, I would have been reluctant to tinker with my perfect Windows
installation in this way. So I decided to do it now.
88. DOS Tools to Shut Off Archive Bits. Shutting off the archive bit was not as
easy as it looked at first glance. I started by running ATTRIB -A C:\*.* /S. It ran
for a long time and then began giving me error messages that said "Not resetting
hidden file" for a number of files. Browsing in Deja.com, I found some
indications that the problem might be that these particular files had other file
attributes set, and that in such cases you had to turn all the attributes off at the
same time and then turn the others back on (leaving the archive bit off, of
course). Moreover, some people said that your ATTRIB command had to list
these attributes in a particular order. One person said they had to go in the order
R,A,S,H, but I found that it worked OK if you just followed the order shown by
the DIR /A command (i.e., R,H,S,A, naturally ignoring the D attribute since I
didn't care to change any directories into files!); and other comments suggested
that you just needed to enter them all on the same line, regardless of order.
Anyway, the first file that came up with a "Not resetting hidden file" message
was in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder. This was odd, because then I typed
DIR /AA /S /V /P, and the first directory shown in which there was still a file
with the archive attribute on was the C:\MYDOCU~1 folder. Apparently the /S
command in ATTRIB did not process directories in the same order as in DIR.
Responding to another online tip, I went to
http://oak.oakland.edu/simtel.net/msdos/dirutl.html (other Simtel sites would

57

evidently do too -- just use the power search pages in AltaVista or Northern
Light and look for URL:SIMTEL) and downloaded CHATT.ZIP on the AMD
machine, unzipped it, and transferred it by floppy (only 17K!) to the PENTIUM
machine. The tip was correct: this was a handy, full-screen DOS utility that
simplified the task of changing attributes manually. What I wanted, however,
was an automated way to do it, since DIR C:\*.* /AA /V /S told me that drive C
still had 217 files with the attribute bit set, scattered across dozens of different
folders. (Reminder: DOSKEY simplifies retyping of the same commands. See
point 20.) Hunting for them manually and changing them manually in CHATT
was not my idea of a good time. Tinkering further, I found that my problems
were limited to hidden files. That is, ATTRIB -A would work just fine to shut off
the attribute bit on files that happened to have R or S bits on as well. Thus, the
ones that were causing problems were only those that had both the hidden and
attribute bits set, regardless of how their read-only and system bits were set. I
did this with DIR C:\ /AA /AH /V /S /P. When it showed me a file with both
H and A bits set, I used CTRL-C or CTRL-BREAK to kill the DIR operation and
then used the appropriate set of ATTRIB commands (e.g., ATTRIB -H -A
[filename] followed by ATTRIB +H [filename]). (During this process, I noticed
those seemingly useless MSCREATE.DIR files all over my hard disk that, in the
past, I had felt comfortable deleting, since they had a file size of zero and seemed
to have no purpose. Browsing online, I found that many other users were doing
the same thing. I came across one comment, however, that suggested that
various Microsoft programs use those MSCREATE.DIR files when installing or
updating software. So this was one category of files, with two or three archive
bits set, that I had to deal with even though I might have preferred to delete
them.) This process was very slow, and since it seemed likely that I would want
to tinker with archive bits again someday, I decided to automate it. I did this by
making a modified version of FILELIST (see point 80), called LISTBITS, that
would work with DIR C:\ /AA /AH /V /S. I converted the resulting list of files
(i.e., those files whose A and H attributes were turned on) to a spreadsheet that I
modified using the technique described in point 80. (Note: when using
FILELIST, you may notice that the alignment of items in a DIR listing in a
Windows 98 DOS box is not exactly the same as the alignment of items in a DIR
listing in real DOS -- even when it's the real DOS included with Windows 98.) In
that spreadsheet, I deleted unnecessary columns and sorted the list so that the
files with both hidden and archive bits would be together. Then I modified each
filename on the list so that it now began with ATTRIB -H -A, and for the ones
that actually did have the hidden bits set, I made another set of these lines in
which I changed the -H to a +H, and put that set of lines at the end of the list.
There were two files that my modified FILELIST program had named without
showing any file attributes; I decided to see what the problem was with those
files while fixing their archive bits manually. (I hadn't minded doing this
because I wanted the experience in using BASIC (to program FILELIST and

58

LISTBITS), but as it turned out there were really only a few programs with both
the H and A bits set.) I exported the resulting list to a text file, left Excel,
renamed the text file to be X.BAT, copied it to the PENTIUM computer, and ran
it. It refused to change the bits on a file that also happened to have its system bit
set, telling me that I had to adjust my approach to take account of all four bits (R,
S, H, and A). I revised LISTBITS accordingly, ran it again, and manually shut off
the archive bits on the files that remained, making sure to reset the other bits
after turning off A. I ran LISTBITS once again, and it showed that the only files
left on C with archive bits on were the files created by LISTBITS or FILELIST
themselves.
89. Successful Reboot After Restoring. I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from the
hard disk, and cold-rebooted. Windows loaded successfully. While booting, it
detected certain items of hardware. Immediately after booting, now that I was in
Win98 and had access to long filenames, I opened a DOS window and ran
FILELIST (see point 80), to get a complete reference list of files that I could use
later to determine what files had changed from the original. I saved this as
PURELIST.TXT. I turned off the archive bits for the files that FILELIST itself
created, and then I used LISTBITS to make a separate list of all files that had their
attribute bits on. These bits had gotten turned on during the process of booting
Windows. LISTBITS told me that booting had changed three files, all in the
C:\WINDOWS folder, namely, NDISLOG.TXT, SYSTEM.INI, and
SCHEDLOG.TXT.
Considering Windows 98 Second Edition ("Win98SE") and Windows 2000
90. Win98SE vs. W2K. You might wonder why I did all this work with the
original Windows 98, rather than Win98SE or Windows 2000. Here are my
thoughts on those questions:
(a) I'm sure I would have used Win98SE if I'd had a copy of it on hand when I
started this process. I did not fully and carefully consider it at that time, partly
because the project took shape and assumed larger-than-life dimensions only
after I got into it. In part, I may have been in denial: reinstalling Windows has
always seemed like a true ordeal to me, and I probably just wanted it to be done
with and go away, and therefore was probably not doing my best thinking on the
subject. Of course, I also had no desire to spend money on something I didn't
really need. That's how I saw it, and in some ways it still is.
(b) I had kept vaguely in touch with the general outlines of Win98SE since it had
first emerged in May 1999. The reviewers seemed to be saying that it was
essentially a collection of bug fixes that a person could download for free from
the Windows Update site. See e.g.,

59

http://activewin.com/reviews/software/utils/win98se/win98se_1.shtml and
http://www.rivazone.com/userreview/win98se.html and
http://cwsapps.tower.net.au/reviews/mspacks-ms98se.html. I had been
steadily downloading updates from that site, and therefore didn't feel much
inclination to wipe off my hard disk just for the privilege of reinstalling the same
stuff over again from a Win98SE CD. These reviewers were virtually unanimous
in saying that the person who had already downloaded the latest updates
probably wouldn't gain much by going to Win98SE.
(c) To some extent, I disagree with some of those reviews on one point: if I had
been writing in June 1999, as some of them were, knowing what I know now, I
would probably recommend buying the CD, for a lousy $25, rather than
spending hours to download the same patches and fixes from the Windows
Update site. This recommendation would vary, however, according to whether
the user had a really fast modem, or was tying up his/her primary computer
with these hours of downloads, or was using a Connection Keeper type of utility
to let the whole thing run in the background. (See point 48.)
(d) At this particular point in the game, having worked out the whole process of
copying my Windows installation to CD and restoring it to disk, I had the
belated sense that I really owed it to myself to do it right, all the way through,
and start again from the beginning, with a nice, fresh Win98SE CD and all its bug
fixes. But then I realized that Win98SE, finished in May 1999, did not have all the
latest bug fixes after all. Bugs had continued to surface. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/screensavers/answerstips/story/0,3656,2288864,
00.html. Microsoft had continued to develop fixes on through the end of 1999,
and I had continued to download them. In that respect, Win98SE would be a
step backwards and would have required me to re-download those subsequent
fixes. It was indeed a cleaner solution to start from a CD that had many of these
updates, but it was still not an entirely clean solution.
(e) On the morning when I was writing these words, I was tempted to buy a copy
of Win98SE, in part, because I happened to have a $31.93 credit from the local
CompUSA store, thanks to having returned a floppy drive I didn't need, after
Computer Surplus Outlet in Las Vegas decided to get off their butts and ship the
floppy drive that I had ordered from them a month earlier. (See point 59.) Then
again, I supposed I wasn't actually required to use up the CompUSA credit
immediately. (See point 183.)
(f) I wasn't happy with the system freeze that I got after installing Office 97 SR-1
(see point 92). But so far, that freeze had not recurred, and Win98 on the
PENTIUM computer had stayed up and running for approximately 24 hours
since then. I did not know whether Win98SE would fix any such freeze, or

60

whether Office 97 SR-2b had fixed it, or whether (as something that had
happened the first time around as well -- see point 72) it was just a flaw induced
by SR-1 and/or SR-2b that Windows itself had repaired by drawing on its own
internal backup copy of its Registry files.
(g) I was a bit curious about how the file list would actually change if I installed
Win98SE. I was curious because I had begun to get into this project, even though
in a larger sense it was frustrating the hell out of me. Then again, I could not
provide any clear way in which I would use this knowledge about the change in
the list of installed files, other than possibly to increase my general familiarity
with the files that Windows uses.
(h) The one notable improvement offered in Win98SE that, it seemed, was not
going to be offered as a downloadable Windows update was Internet Connection
Sharing (ICS), which enables two computers to share a single phone line. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/win98_2ed_preview/index.html.
Since I had two computers, this feature interested me. It certainly made more
sense to get it for free as part of Win98SE than to spend $100 or more on a
commercial package that could do this. Then again, I found one reviewer who
said that Win98SE's ICS is useful but it can screw up your Dial-Up Networking.
See http://www.billortlieb.com/ocs/tech.htm. Another reviewer found it
strange that ICS was included in an operating system oriented toward
standalone computer users. See
http://www.zdnet.com/computershopper/stories/reviews/0,7171,2316376,00.h
tml. I looked for freeware that could give me ICS capability on Win98 (not SE)
computers, and eventually found the Proxy program by AnalogX. See
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/proxy.htm. I
downloaded it, but haven't yet tried it. I also found that evidently I would need
to spend $20-30 for Ethernet cards to connect the PCs. I have tentatively decided
that this feature is not really important to me.
(i) One reviewer said that the upgrade from Win98 to Win98SE had taken him
and his customers from two or three freezeups a day to none. See
http://www.integrity.net/review_windows98_2nd.htm. I had still been getting
several freezeups a day in Win98 on the AMD machine, despite having
downloaded all the latest patches and updates. Then again, my number of
freezeups depended heavily on what software I was running. Freezes were
reasonably rare -- days apart -- when I was just doing audio editing in Cool Edit
2000, which was part of my reason for loving that program. The reviewer didn't
say whether he had spent the hours downloading all the latest patches, and it
sounded like he might not have.

61

(k) I realized that some system instability, in either Win98 or Win98SE, might
stem from the problem that I had seen repeatedly mentioned in newsgroups:
Win98 accumulates a lot of useless old files that slow it down and clog its
arteries, and it becomes necessary or advisable to wipe off your hard disk every
year or so and reinstall it -- especially if you're one of those people (like me) who
can't resist downloading lots of freebies and trying them out. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/jump/0,3652,2217117,00.html.
From this perspective, the important thing seemed to be, not to have a slightly
more refined original Windows 98 installation, but to have a solid one, stored on
a CD in a form that would allow me to reinstall with a minimum of pain -- and in
that regard, having done the downloads and configured the system, I was way
ahead of where I would be if I now went back and spent extra days on the whole
process of installing, downloading, configuring, burning a CD, shutting off
archive bits, creating a file list for future reference, etc., as detailed in this essay.
The real point seemed to be that Win98SE would have been a better place to
start, but that in the end I probably wound up in more or less the same place
without it.
(l) Regarding Windows 2000. When I began this project in early January 2000,
Windows 2000 was still a month and a half away from its official release date -which was, I believe, February 17. In the past, Microsoft had sometimes
postponed its release dates, so I was not entirely confident that the February date
would hold. Much more important was the fact that, in my experience,
Microsoft frequently releases its programs to the public in a bug-riddled form
that other software producers would consider beta quality. As the worst
example, I had downloaded Internet Explorer 4.0 immediately after its release -in late 1997, I believe -- and had ultimately had to reformat my hard disk and
reinstall everything from scratch. Generally, I felt that the best approach with
Windows software was to allow everyone else to become furious with it for six to
twelve months, and then install it if it still seems worthwhile -- preferably after
Microsoft has released its first major bug-fixing upgrade or "service release." As
I continued through this project of installing Win98, I came across early reviews
of Win2000. PC Magazine, for example -- which has sometimes seemed to act as
though Microsoft owned it -- praised the new operating system as having
impressive stability. Yet this time, to its credit, PC Mag did not immediately
recommend that everyone upgrade. Rather, they said that it was "very tricky" to
upgrade from Win98 to Win2000 -- in other words, I'd probably wind up doing
another installation from scratch -- and they advised that, unless you're a big
business, you should wait for the rest of the industry to catch up before
switching to Win2000. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/reviews/0,6755,2426065,00.html. That
advice meshed nicely with my own hopes, which were that I would survive with
Win98 until Win2000 reached its maturity (i.e., shortly before Win2002, or

62

whatever the next version would be) and/or until Linux became easy to install
and use. Specifically, as "cons," PC Mag said that, at this point, Win2000
supports fewer peripherals and is more complex. To underscore the fact that
Win2000, so far, was suitable mainly for large businesses, the article focused
primarily on the contrast with Windows NT 4.0; for purposes of that comparison,
it said Win2000 was a great improvement. (But in its role as Microsoft
cheerleader, the PC Mag comparison did not do detailed comparisons of
Win2000 against Linux, the other strong contender for server operating systems.)
In short, given my experience with Microsoft products and particularly its
operating systems, it seemed very premature to consider moving to Win2000. I
should mention that it was even more premature to contemplate Windows ME
("Millenium Edition"), whose first release -- guaranteed to be bug-ridden -would probably not appear until May at the earliest. Meanwhile, Win98 had
reached the height of its maturity: Microsoft had probably developed it as much
as it was going to, thousands of other people had had their way with it, its
weaknesses were well known, etc.
Reinstalling Office 97
91. Installing Office 97 from CD. I was ready to try again to install application
software, following approximately the same procedure as before. Again, I
decided to load the Microsoft software first, hoping that Microsoft felt a special
incentive to make sure that at least its own software was compatible with
Windows. (See point 76.) So I installed Office 97 from scratch, along with
Animated Cursors, Sounds, and Word Viewer from the Office 97 ValuPack,
again installing to the D drive (PROGRAMS) rather than the C drive
(WINDOWS_98) whenever possible. (See point 69.) This time, I decided to save
the task of reconfiguring the Office 97 programs until after I had finished all
downloads and was satisfied that the system seemed reasonably stable. (See
point 74.) It would be a while before I'd get to that stage. (See point 102.) To
install Office 97, I inserted the CD and installed the programs just mentioned.
This installation process wanted me to register with Microsoft, but the
registration program couldn't find my modem, so I used the Windows Update
icon just to make sure the modem still worked OK.
92. Installing Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2 Patches. While I was at the Windows
Update page, I downloaded a few other Windows programs that I hadn't
bothered to get previously -- not tweaks or other experimental programs, but
more mainstream applications like NetMeeting. (I wanted the latest full release,
in case it included any useful bug fixes.) I also went to the Office 97 update
Website at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com to make sure I was still safe in
starting with the SR-1 and SR-2b patches that I had previously downloaded. (See
point 72.) Everything looked the same on that Website, so I went ahead and ran

63

my downloaded copy of SR-1. I rebooted, and the system froze. Evidently my

earlier worries about freezes weren't entirely due to the other tinkering I had
done then. (See point 71.) I realized afterwards that I had forgotten to shut
down the Microsoft Office 97 Shortcut toolbar, so possibly that was a factor. I
did a manual reset, booted into Safe Mode, rebooted immediately into Normal
Mode, and Windows loaded with no problem. I figured that if I had a real
problem, the SR-2b download would fix it or else I would notice it again, as had
happened the last time around. I ran SR-2b, and it finished and rebooted the
system with no further problems. (Later, I found a statement in
C:\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS.TXT indicating that you can't install SR-1 if you've
previously installed Win95, Office 97, and then upgraded to Win98 (in that
order). That didn't precisely apply to me, but it seemed that my problem might
have been related somehow.)
93. Direct Cable Connection. I went back to the Office 97 update Website and
worked through their list of available downloads, running my already
downloaded copies wherever possible and downloading the rest. All told, the
downloads I already had and the ones I was now obtaining gave me nearly 100
patches and updates to install. I had downloaded these most recent ones on the
AMD computer, since it had the faster modem. Now, instead of burning another
CD (see point 70) to transfer them to the PENTIUM computer, I hooked up
Direct Cable Connection ("DCC"). I had done this before, but I couldn't
remember the details. (If you don't already have the right cable, it may make
more sense in some cases to buy an Ethernet card for each computer, at a total
cost of around $40. An Ethernet connection is faster, and it will keep your
parallel ports free. DCC on serial ports is too slow to use except with very small
files.) I found simple, readable Websites on DCC at
http://www.microsoft.com/INSIDER/windows98/articles/netdir.htm and
http://www.myfavoritepc.com/support/tndcc.html. Another good (all-text)
site was at
http://www.ece.rochester.edu:8080/users/qzhu/ebooks/Win98/ch21/ch21.ht
m# Heading4. (Later, I found that that page seemed to have disappeared, but
maybe itll come back.) Helpful sites with screen shots of what you'll be seeing
when you try to install DCC appear at
http://www.kime.net/directcc/directcc95.htm and
http://www.helmig.com/j_helmig/dcc.htm. For more technical details and
FAQs, try http://php.indiana.edu/~jrrricha/dcc1.html and
http://www.tecno.demon.co.uk/dcc/dcc.html. I knew I had once found some
important instructions about protecting your data from prying eyes -- that you
need to take specific steps to prevent people online from looking at your shared
folders -- but at this point I was unable to find much information on it. The
kime.net site says something about it, but not very directly, in its reference to
adjusting the TCP/IP bindings. (I heard that another way to improve security of

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shared drives, at least on a peer-to-peer network (which I didn't have), was to set
the last character of the name of the shared item to be $. Also, Win98 apparently
had a NetWatcher utility that would let you watch who was accessing your
shared devices.) Finally, if you run an updated version of Dial-Up Networking,
you may appreciate what the helmig.com site says about being able to use the
modem and DCC simultaneously.
94. Problems with Excel 97 Downloads. As I was installing the many Office 97
patches, I kept steering the location of program files to drive D (PROGRAMS)
whenever possible. The large majority of the installations presented no
problems. With several of the Excel updates, however, the installation seemed to
go OK, but then, when I took them up on their offer and tried to use them
immediately after installation, I got messages along the lines of "You do not have
Excel SR-1 installed on this computer." I went back to the Office 97 updates
Website and saw nothing pertaining to any program called "Excel SR-1." I felt
confident that this was an older message, and that it referred to what was now
called the Office 97 SR-1 patch. That, however, was no comfort, as I thought I
had already installed that patch. (See point 92.) I went to the Frequently Asked
Questions ("FAQ") page for the SR-2b patch and took its advice to try running
the Office 97 Version Checker. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. This Version Checker
told me that I had Office 97 SR-1 installed, and that I could now run the SR-2
patch -- which, as the FAQ page told me, meant that I could run the SR-2b patch.
This did not shed any light on the "Excel SR-1" messages, but I guessed that at
least it must mean that some of the patches I had installed had messed up the
previous installation of the SR-2b patch. This seemed like it could have been
what happened because of this statement at
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/sr2off97detail.htm: "If
you installed the Word 97 Template Security Patch or the Forms 2.0 Control
Security Patch you must reinstall them after installing the Service Release 2b."
That is, clearly some of these downloads interfered with one another.
95. Downloads That Depend on Other Downloads. It seemed best to continue
installing all my downloads, to the extent possible, and then rerun the SR-2b
patch, considering Microsoft's statement on the subject: they said that, if you
have "previously installed patches and fixes such as the Excel recalculation
patch," the SR-2b patch can be installed over them and "will run on top of them."
See http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. (Apparently there
had been some problems with the original version of SR-2, which seems to have
been released in autumn 1998. Microsoft seems to have withdrawn it and
revamped it, so presumably it was now contained, or was compatible with,
patches that had been introduced in 1999.) So I installed all of the patches and
upgrades that were willing to be installed, with the exception of Outlook-related

65

stuff. (See point 98.) Then I went back through the list and tried again to
reinstall the rest, except for the Word 97 Template Security Patch and the Forms
2.0 Control Security Patch, which were still premature. (See point 94.) This
second time through, I was able to install one or two of the remaining
downloads, including especially the Excel 97 Date Migration Tools, which
apparently had to be installed after other date-related downloads. When I had
finished this second try, aside from the Template Security Patch and the Forms
2.0 Control Security Patch, I was left with just three Excel downloads: the AutoRecalculation Patch, the CALL Function Patch, and the SYLK File Security
Update. These three still insisted on having SR-2 installed. So I ran SR-2b again,
and it said it completed successfully. Then I went back to the Excel downloads
page and requested further information on these three remaining downoads. I
now discovered the following additional information: (a) The AutoRecalculation Patch was already included in SR-2, and therefore also in SR-2b, so
I didn't need it after all. (b) The CALL Function Patch had to be run again after
installing SR-2. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/xl97cfp.htm. (c) The SYLK
update page, too, said that SR-2 had to be installed first. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/Xl8p7pkg.htm. I noticed,
moreover, that the online versions of CALL and SYLK appeared to have file
dates somewhat later than the dates of the copies I had downloaded previously.
So I re-downloaded the CALL Function Patch and the SYLK update.
96. Inconsistent Report by SR-2 Version Checker. Before I ran those last few redownloads or made any other changes, I tried the Version Checker again, and
again it told me that I had only SR-1 installed -- even though I had just installed
SR-2b and had been told it was successful! I went online for enlightenment and
found that I was not the only person having this problem. One possible cause,
someone said, was having another Office 97 program running, but that didn't
apply to me. A better explanation came from someone who said that there was a
bug in the Version Checker, and that (a) you have to re-install SR-1 and SR-2
every time you run Office 97 Setup (which I had not re-done) and (b) you could
find out the actual state of affairs by checking the installation log files, which
were 97SR1_*.TXT and 97SR2_*.LOG. I searched for 97SR*.* and (ignoring the
97SR2CHK*.LOG files) found one copy of 97SR1_0.TXT and two copies of the
other one (97SR2_0.LOG and 97SR2_1.LOG). I opened the 97SR1_0.TXT file in
WordPad and, skipping down to the several different "Results of Application of
Patch File" summaries, found various indications that some patches had been
skipped or ignored for various reasons. Realizing that I didn't care as much
about the SR-1 results as the SR-2 results (because, after all, the Version Checker
had said I had SR-1 installed and was ready for SR-2), I looked at the most recent
SR-2 log, contained in 97SR2_1.LOG. Its filedate and time indicated that it had
been created just a few moments earlier, when I had run SR-2b. Skipping to the

66

bottom of 97SR2_1.LOG, I saw, "The SR2 patch has successfully completed." So

all I really wanted was for Version Checker to say that same thing. In further
browsing, I found a note by one user who said he had even tried extracting
individual components from the SR-2 update and installing them individually,
but still got messages that didn't make sense. The best he could offer was that he
had heard Microsoft was looking into the problem and might eventually issue an
SR-3 update. Another user suggested rebooting and running the SR-2 patch
from within Safe Mode. I did this, and then realized I had forgotten to hit F8
while the machine was booting, and therefore had needlessly re-run the program
in Normal Mode. I rebooted again, hit F8, and ran SR-2b yet again. It had me
reboot again after running, so again I booted into Safe Mode and ran Version
Checker. It still told me I was only at the SR-1 level and was ready to install SR2. Having installed SR-2 enough times, I gave up, rebooted into Normal Mode,
went to the folder that now contained many install logs (such as the
97SR2_1.LOG file mentioned above), and deleted them all except the last one,
which I thought might be useful for something.
97. Installing Remaining Non-Outlook Downloads. I ran the SYLK and CALL
downloads again. The SYLK download ran OK this time. The CALL download,
unfortunately, gave me the same error message. (See points 94-95.) Watching
more carefully, I saw that I first got a message that said the installation had
succeeded, and got the "Patch has failed" message afterwards. So I hoped that
the patch would actually work, and that the the installation program might just
be failing to find something it thought it would need. Then I ran the other two
patches that were supposed to be held until after the SR-2 patch had been
installed, namely, the Forms 2.0 Control Security Patch and the Template
Security Patch. (See point 94.) Both ran without any problem.
98. Searching for an Outlook 98 Installer. Although I was not clear on this, it
seemed that SR-2 or SR-2b could cause problems with Outlook 98. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q191/9/52.ASP. Then
again, Microsoft's Website also said, "The SR-2b patch will recognize Outlook 98
files and leave them intact, but will update the remaining Office 97 installation."
See http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. Regardless, I
decided to save Outlook 98 for last. Having now done as much as I could do
with the other Office 97 patches, I turned to the Outlook 98 SETUP.EXE file that I
had saved from my previous experience with Outlook. As I recalled, Outlook 98
did not give me the option of downloading the entire program and saving it for
future reinstallation; instead, I had to run this SETUP program, and Outlook
would install directly from Microsoft's computers onto mine. I had been vaguely
concerned that this would allow Microsoft to pull the plug on Outlook 98 at any
time, and was relieved to think that my CD imaging plans would now enable me
to make a more permanent copy of the program, albeit in installed (and therefore

67

perhaps not so flexible) form. Anyway, I clicked on the SETUP.EXE program. It

gave me three installation options, and all included Internet Explorer ("IE") 4.01,
which I didn't want because I had installed IE 5.1 during my earlier Windows
installation. (See point 15.) Using the AMD computer, I went online for advice
and saw some comments indicating that some people preferred to postpone their
IE upgrade until after they had installed Outlook 98. On a more encouraging
note, other comments said that, although Outlook 98's SETUP says it's going to
install IE 4.01, it actually just installs a few IE 4.01 files that are linked to Outlook
98, and otherwise leaves your IE 5 installation alone; you just have to be sure to
adjust your IE options to reflect the right mail program. I didn't feel entirely
certain about all this, so I went to the Office 97 updates page
(http://officeupdate.microsoft.com), where I was disturbed to see that there was
no option for downloading a new copy of Outlook 98 SETUP.EXE. Were my
suspicions about Microsoft pulling the plug turning out to be justified? I
searched for Outlook 98 at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp
and didn't find a setup option there either. Along the way, I did find a statement
from Microsoft indicating that I didn't need to install SR-2 before Outlook 98, as
well as a statement that to avoid reinstalling IE 4.01, I should choose "Upgrade
only newer components" during the Outlook 98 installation. This seemed to be
the thing to do, regardless of whether you were installing the full version, the
standard version (which seemed best for me, since I already had most of the
contents of the full version), or the minimal version. See
http://www.microsoft.com/office/archive/olk98brch/specifications.htm. This
was all fine, thank you, but I still didn't have an answer to the most fundamental
question: where would I find that Outlook 98 installation?
99. Modem Difficulties. I decided I'd rather use the old version of Outlook 98's
SETUP.EXE program than none at all, so on the PENTIUM computer, I ran the
copy I had saved as a download 18 months earlier. For some reason, my modem
wasn't working. I went into Control Panel and saw that I didn't even have a
modem listed. I ran the Add New Hardware wizard and elected to add my
standard no-brand modem from a list. I had no idea why the modem had
suddenly disappeared -- must have been something about the installation
process. I rebooted, tried Dial-Up Networking, and found that the modem still
wasn't working. I clicked on its Properties in Control Panel and told it to search
for a new driver in the folder where I was keeping a copy of the driver needed
for this particular modem. Oddly, it didn't think that the driver for this modem
really belonged to this modem. I cold-rebooted, tinkered with some settings in
the Plug-N-Play area of my BIOS, and that still didn't do it. A couple of times
along the way, it asked me if it was OK to remove the device that I had
previously configured as a modem, and since that device wasn't working
anyway, I said sure, why not? I ran the Add New Hardware Wizard again, this
time letting Windows search for non-Plug-N-Play devices. It didn't find any. I

68

eventually configured it by the manual option, and it told me the modem had
been set up successfully. I rebooted, and the modem worked! (Later, I wound
up doing more modem configuration. See point 105(c).)
100. Installing Outlook 98. Continuing the foregoing process (see point 98), I ran
my old SETUP.EXE program and waited eagerly to see if it would still work. It
did. So I don't know what was the story with not being able to find SETUP.EXE
at the Microsoft Website. Maybe their thinking was that, if you already have the
old Outlook 98 installation files on your computer, you must be someone who
would get irritated to discover that you could no longer gain access to your
Outlook 98 information -- at least not easily -- the next time your computer
crashes, unless you've had the wisdom ... genius ... brilliance ... compulsiveness
required to save a copy of SETUP.EXE. Anyway, the installer ran for about an
hour and a half, and then it paused with a message that Setup would probably
fail if I didn't shut down the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar. Before I thought
about it, I shut it down. Next time, I'll take that opportunity to make copies of
the downloaded files before I alter them by installing them. Or maybe I won't
need to: Setup ended with an indication that I could reinstall Outlook 98 in the
future just by running OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE from the D:\OUTLOOK 98
SETUP folder. When I saw that message, I opened Windows Explorer and made
a copy of that folder to another partition before rebooting, just in case that was
indeed a set of files that would be self-installing without further downloading.
Then I clicked OK, and Setup rebooted the machine. I started Outlook 98. It ran
me through an Internet Connection Wizard, which required me, strangely
enough, to delete my existing Dial-Up account so that it could then re-create it;
but then Outlook 98 opened with no problem. I then went back to my list of
downloads and installed the last nine downloads, the ones specifically related to
Outlook 98. (See point 98.)
Adjusting Office 97 and Windows 98 in a Purely Microsoft System
101. Limit: One CD. In all this rebooting, I did not have any more freezes, so I
had less concern about a possibly imperfect Office 97 installation than I had had
the first time around. (See point 92.) I felt more confident, that is, that I could go
ahead and personalize my Office 97 installation with less risk that this effort
would be wasted. (See point 74.) The best way to personalize things, I decided,
would be to proceed in two phases. The first phase would include actions that
should not pose any risk of destabilizing my hopefully pure new Office 97
installation; the second phase would include somewhat riskier actions that,
although potentially risky, I would still rather take care of now than later.
102. Simple Adjustments. I decided to start by retracing my steps from the
previous customization of my Office 97 installation, and then I went forwards

69

from there. Thus, I took the following actions: (a) I rearranged the Office 97
Shortcut Bar, dragging it from the top of the screen to the left side. I right-clicked
on it, chose Customize, and added Desktop and Program bars to its existing
Office 97 bar and rearranged icons within these bars. (Later, I added an Internet
bar in place of the Program bar. See point 109(g). To create that bar, I used
Windows Explorer to create a folder in C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
called Internet; I added relevant shortcuts to that Internet folder; and then I
right-clicked on the Shortcut Bar and chose Customize | Toolbars | Add Toolbar
| Make Toolbar for This Folder, and pointed to my new Internet folder.) I
started to delete some icons, but when it told me that it would delete program
files along with the icons, I canceled that part and just unchecked them, so they
wouldn't be visible on the bar. (b) I rearranged the icons on my Start Menu. (See
point 69 for further information on this step and several of the following steps.)
(c) In Word 97, I went into Tools | Options and configured those options to
match the settings for that program on the AMD computer. Likewise Tools |
AutoCorrect. I told Word to keep its AutoRecover files on H:\Temp, generated
its help database (Help | Contents | Find | Minimize Database Size -- the larger
database options contain a lot of junk and duplicate entries), created a backup
copy of NORMAL.DOT, and was then safe in customizing my toolbars (select
View | Toolbars | Customize and then drag icons from the toolbar into the
document area to get rid of them, or from one toolbar to the other to combine the
buttons I use into just one toolbar). This toolbar customization resulted in some
toolbars whose icons did not all fit on one line in 640 x 480 mode; I had to verify
that they did fit when I finally went to 800 x 600 mode. (See point 121.) (d) In
Access 97, I opened the Northwind sample database to gain access to Tools |
Options and then repeated essentially the same steps as I had taken for Word. I
did approximately the same in Excel 97, Outlook 98 (for e-mail and scheduling),
and Outlook Express (for newgroups). I noticed that I did not yet have all of the
options in Outlook 98 on the PENTIUM computer that I had on the AMD
computer; it appeared that other options had been added, on the AMD machine,
when I had installed certain additional non-Microsoft software (e.g., a fax option
added by the OmniPage scanning program).
103. Pause for Image File. I eventually realized that I could stop after the first
phase to create a DriveImage image file backup of my hard disk partitions. I
wouldn't have to burn it to CD right away; I could just store it on one of my
other partitions. Ultimately, whether I used this image file or a later one, I was
still interested in keeping it all on one CD, rather than incur the risks involved in
spanning it over two CDs. So I still considered 850-900 MB to be my limit. (See
point 68.) When I looked at the status bar in Windows Explorer, I saw that the
approach of telling Office 97 to put its program files on drive D (PROGRAMS)
rather than drive C (WINDOWS_98) had only partially succeeded: there now
seemed to be about 250 MB of files on D, where before there had been none -- but

70

there were also a bunch of new files in C:\Program Files. (It later developed that
perhaps I should have used X-Setup before installing programs, so as to instruct
them all to use D:\Program Files rather than C:\Program Files. See point
137(m).) It dawned on me that my single CD would probably have to contain
separate image files for C and D. I also felt certain that I would want to have my
DOS programs, including DriveImage, located on D with my Windows
programs, although in a separate folder. So I used Windows Explorer to move
those programs to a folder called DOS_UTIL on drive D, and then I meant to
reboot into real DOS (see point 84), but I got distracted and the thing went on
into Windows 98 -- almost. It froze at the Windows startup screen. I thought
maybe this was another example of it freezing after installing Office 97 software
and then snapping out of it and being fine thereafter (see point 101), so I did a
cold reboot into Safe Mode, rebooted immediately into Normal Mode, and all
seemed well. (As an aside, I had noticed that booting had begun to take a lot
longer, ever since I had installed Office 97.) I rebooted into real DOS and started
to run DriveImage from drive D; then I remembered that PartitionMagic had
acted funky when I had previously tried to get it to operate on the disk on which
its own program files were located (see point 84), so I decided to run DriveImage
from the floppy instead. (Later, I tested this fear regarding DriveImage (see
point 269(a)) and found that it did not seem to be justified.) I was pleased to see
that DriveImage allowed me to combine both the C and D partitions in one
image file, which I created on my F partition under the name C_AND_D.PQI.
DriveImage said that I now had a total of about 800 MB in those two partitions.
The resulting image file was about 520 MB, so the DriveImage maximum
compression ratio was about two-thirds when dealing with these program files
(as distinct from data files, which might compress to a greater or lesser extent).
At that rate, the remaining 130 MB on a 650 MB CD would hold another 200 MB
of program files.
104. Installing FrontPage 2000. I rebooted into Windows, with the plan of using
Office 97 for the next several days, so as to refine my basic installation and make
sure, if possible, that it included all Microsoft programs and adjustments. It
seemed that I might be able to get all such programs on one CD. The only
remaining full-bore Microsoft program I possessed was FrontPage 2000. It was
experimental, for me, in the sense that I had only recently acquired it and did not
know for sure that it was really reliable, but all the reviews seemed to be
positive. I thought it might be appropriate to include, if possible, this one
remaining program that would probably do a fair amount of tinkering with my
C (WINDOWS_98) drive. I inserted the FrontPage 2000 upgrade CD (actually,
the first of two; but I had noticed previously, when installing FP 2000 on the
AMD machine, that the basic installation had required only the first CD). It
automatically prepared to install itself, and said that it was updating the
Windows 98 installer, which sounded good. It said it couldn't find the version

71

that I was upgrading from, so I put the accursed FrontPage 98 CD into the CDROM drive, hoping that would be the last time I would ever need that damn
thing, and this allowed me to proceed with the fresh new FrontPage 2000
installation. I chose the Customize option, so that I could tell the installer to put
the files on drive D. The installer seemed to indicate that the whole thing would
require much less than 200 MB. But when I clicked on "Install Now," I saw that it
had been showing me only the 59 MB that would go onto drive D, and not the
other 187 MB that would go onto drive C (my WINDOWS_98 drive). I backed
up a few steps and tried again, using just the default settings under the
Customize option (but still pointing to drive D). It looked like this would take
only about 150 MB total on both drives. It also seemed to include some "Office
Tools" that would be available for other Office 97 programs (e.g., Clip Gallery). I
wondered whether there were also some patches and updates in here that might
duplicate or improve on the various downloads that I had been installing. At
least it gave me an additional reason to think that it had been appropriate to try
to squeeze it into the CD that I expected to burn soon. Anyway, the FrontPage
2000 installation went ahead, and when it was done I saw that I had only 92 MB
of free space left on drive C, but still had over 1,400 MB left on drive D (my
PROGRAMS drive). I didn't expect to be installing another 1.4 GB of programs
on D anytime soon, and I also hoped that there wouldn't be much more material
going onto drive C. Therefore, to allow a little more breathing room on C, I
rebooted into real DOS and ran PartitionMagic to change the disk sizes so that C
was 200 MB larger and D was 200 MB smaller. Then I rebooted into Win98 and
adjusted the options in FrontPage 2000 as above. (See point 102.)
105. Further Adjustments in Windows 98. Before returning to the Office 97
customization process, I decided to bring my Windows installation more fully up
to date, as follows:
(a) I decided not to bring over the Win98 Power Management Troubleshooter
(PMTSHOOT.EXE), even though I had once found it useful, because the
Microsoft site said, "It is important to uninstall Pmtshoot when you are finished
using it." See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q185/9/49.asp.
(b) I removed the very outdated "Setup for Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01"
shortcut from desktop (installed, evidently, during the Office 97 installation
process).
(c) I went into Start | Settings | Control Panel | System | Device Manager |
Modem and set my serial ports to a maximum speed of 115,200. (Later, I wound
up doing more modem configuration. See point 113(g).)

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(d) Following advice found at

http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2183193,00.html and
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347536,00.html, I
added shortcuts for the purpose of optimizing system performance (although
shortcuts to particular documents would have to wait until later, when I had my
ideal Win98 installation doing my regular daily work on a machine with all my
data files present).
(e) Simplify Internet Explorer Toolbars. I right-clicked on the Taskbar at the
bottom of the screen, created a Links toolbar, dragged it up to the top of the
screen, right-clicked it, and turned on Always On Top and Auto-Hide. (The
folder for that bar was at C:\Windows\Favorites.) This enabled me to get rid of
the Links toolbar in Internet Explorer (View | Toolbars | Links). (See point
109(g).) And with that gone, I realized that I could further reduce the complexity
of my IE toolbars by selecting View | Toolbars | Customize and getting rid of
buttons that I never use and by choosing the Small Icons option on that screen. I
also dragged the Address bar up to the Menu bar and right-clicked on the Go
button to get rid of it. According to
http://ie.digitalspider.co.uk/ie5/toolbar_go.html, "The Go button was added
because many users of previous versions were unclear as to the need to press
ENTER after typing an address into the Address Bar in order to proceed. The Go
button is meant to offer a GUI solution to that little problem."
(f) After reviewing some newsgroup postings, I decided against installing
TweakUI and other power toys (see point 71) until a later, more experimental
phase of my reinstallation. (See point 109(c).)
(g) I ran the Maintenance Wizard from the shortcut in the Start | Programs menu
(which points to C:\WINDOWS\TUNEUP.EXE). I used the Weekly option and
set it to defragment my disk at 1 AM every day of the week (except Thursday
and Sunday), since I found that keeping the thing nearly totally defragged is a lot
less painful than waiting for hours while a defragmenter brings my disk back
from the brink. Given my recent hard disk difficulties (see point 84), I decided
on a thorough ScanDisk examination on the first Wednesday (pool & movie
night) of each month at 5 PM. (After finishing this wizard, I came back, doubleclicked on the Task Scheduler icon in the System Tray at the bottom right corner
of my screen, made copies of this thorough disk scan for each of my partitions,
and set each one for a different disk and a different Wednesday or Saturday
night of the month, to allow this very slow operation to finish.) Continuing, I
instructed the wizard to delete unnecessary files on Thursdays at 4:30 AM, and
marked all except the Recycle Bin for deletion (having verified online that TEMP
folders that might be cleaned out in this way would not include TEMP folders
that I myself fill with all kinds of stuff that I don't want deleted). I decided to use

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the Maintenance Wizard for these operations rather than Norton Utilities, which
I own, not because it does a better job, but because I have run into many
incompatibility issues with Norton products and would rather begin with the
assumption that I wouldn't be using Norton in the future.
(h) In D:\DOS_UTIL, I created a batch file called MAINT_WK.BAT with these
lines:
@ECHO OFF
DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\*.*
where the second line cleans out all contents of the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder.
(Later, this batch file would become much larger. See point 124.) I created this
batch file for several reasons: (i) I saw that some users were finding it necessary
to clear out this folder manually; (ii) I have sometimes been instructed to do so
myself in order to remove a source of misbehavior in some programs, and (iii)
apparently the Disk Cleanup program that the Maintenance Wizard runs (see
point 105(g)) does not touch the subfolders that sometimes appear in that TEMP
folder. The times when you do not want to delete the contents of
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP appear to be times when you're active at your computer:
installing new software, for example, or editing a document. Also, apparently
Windows will write-protect a file that is actively used, in which case there's an
additional layer of protection against accidentally deleting the wrong thing. One
other layer of protection: I suddenly realized that I had been running an
automatic deletion line (like the DELTREE line above) in my AUTOEXEC.BAT
file -- that is, it had been running every time I booted up -- without my even
thinking about or realizing what it was doing. If I survived with it happening on
every bootup (which is not recommended, since some installers leave programs
in C:\WINDOWS\TEMP until you reboot and they can finish installing), then I
felt confident doing it just once a week. Having created this batch file, I clicked
on the Task Scheduler icon at the bottom right corner of my screen, doubleclicked on Add a Scheduled Task, and scheduled MAINT_WK.BAT to run on
Thursdays at 4 AM. Later, I realized that this batch file was set to run in a DOS
window, rather than in real DOS, and therefore might not be able to delete the
contents of C:\WINDOWS\TEMP if Windows was meanwhile using some of
those contents. To fix that, I right-clicked on MAINT_WK.BAT and chose
Properties | Program | Advanced | MS-DOS Mode. I left on the "Warn before
entering MS-DOS mode," so as not to kill any overnight jobs I might have
running when this thing went off. I hit OK and checked the "Close on exit" box.
When I saved this, it created a MAINT_WK shortcut. I didn't want that shortcut,
so I deleted it, but that shut off the settings I had just added, so I did them again
and this time I let the icon stay. Next, I went back into Task Scheduler and
looked at the schedule for this thing. If it was going to warn me before

74

proceeding, there was no point running it at 4 AM each Thursday morning. The

better time, I felt, was on Wednesday at 4:00 PM, shortly before I would be
abandoning my computer for an evening of pool and beer. Under the Settings
tab, I changed it to run for a maximum of 10 minutes and I unchecked the box
that required the computer to be idle before the project would begin. The
scenario I envisioned was that the warning would pop up, I would realize I had
to wrap up my work, and I would have a half-hour to do that before I'd be
interfering with the next items on the maintenance schedule. (See point 105(g).)
(i) While browsing online as just described, I came across an indication by
PCForrest (see point 44) that surfing is faster if you shut off the AutoComplete
features in Internet Explorer (Tools | Internet Options | Advanced), so I did
that.
(j) Tip no. 65 at the Weber High School site (see
http://alliance.weber.k12.ut.us/oal/lesson1/win_tods.HTM) told me that I
could drag the bottom edge of the Links toolbar (see point 105(e)) far across the
screen, so that it could keep a large number of Website links ready for instant
reference. I felt I would be needing that space, once I got my Favorites
organized. (See point 109(g).) So I did it.
(k) Display Resize. I saw, in Control Panel | Display | Properties, that my
system had recognized my graphics adapter card even though I had not inserted
the CD to load the software for this particular hardware, thinking that this was
something I did not want to hard-wire into my permanent CD image of my
perfect Windows setup. Since this was a fait accompli, I decided I was safe in
bumping up the resolution to 800 x 600, 16-bit color. When I clicked on Apply, it
told me that I had to restart the computer immediately to avoid making some
programs run improperly. I said OK, reboot then. I got an Explorer message
saying, "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut
down." That was the kind of instability that I really did not want to be seeing.
Worse, when I rebooted, the display was not working properly at all -- there
were just lines racing across the screen. When the hard disk stopped working, I
felt that Windows had probably finished loading, so I used the other computer
for guidance as to which keys to hit when I couldn't read the screen: Ctrl-Esc to
bring up the Start Menu, then U for Shut Down, and then R for Restart, and then
hit Enter. It worked; the computer rebooted. I hit F8 at the bootup and went into
Safe Mode. I reset the display to 640 x 480 and rebooted into Normal Mode. The
display still wasn't working quite right -- it looked more like Safe Mode again -so I did a cold reboot. I then realized it was in 16-color mode, and it looked
better when I reset it to 256 colors. Apparently I had misunderstood the
situation and would have to install those specialized display drivers at some
point after all. I decided to postpone this until I was past the generic phase of

75

setup. (See point 120(aj).)

(l) Customized Imitation DOS. Apparently there are two different places at
which you have to edit files that appear with the DOS prompt, if you want to
change what happens when you go into DOS. To control what happens when
you use Shut Down | Restart in MS-DOS Mode, you right-click on
C:\Windows\Exit to DOS; and to control what happens when you click on one
of the MS-DOS Prompt icons that, in my case, appeared on the Office 97 Shortcut
Bar and on the Start | Programs menu, you right-click on those icons and go into
their Properties. The basic idea for some of the tabs in these Properties was this:
(1) Program tab, Advanced button: in Exit to DOS, the "MS-DOS mode" box is
checked, and in MS-DOS Prompt, the "Suggest MS-DOS" box is checked.
Checking the "MS-DOS mode" box opens up the opportunity to specify a new
configuration. I clicked the Configuration button and selected Disk Cache (to
make it run faster) and Doskey (see point 20) (EMS was already checked), and
then clicked OK twice. (2) Program tab: I changed the Working folder to
C:\TEMP in both cases. Since Exit to DOS was set to run its own
AUTOEXEC.BAT file and the MS-DOS Prompt icon was not, they wouldn't need
(or be able to use) the same batch file. For Exit to DOS, I could have
supplemented the AUTOEXEC.BAT just by editing the lines there under the
Properties | Program | Advanced button, but I preferred to leave the Windows
default as it was and to put my additions in a separate file. So for the Exit to
DOS properties, I specified a batch file called D:\DOS_UTIL\EXIT2DOS.BAT,
and for the MS-DOS Prompt properties, I specified
D:\DOS_UTIL\DOSSTART.BAT. (Regarding DOS_UTIL, see point 64.) The
EXIT2DOS file just needed to supplement the AUTOEXEC, while DOSSTART
needed to replace it. At this point, the only line in EXIT2DOS (aside from the
ubiquitous @echo off, which suppresses screen output) was going to be an
extension to the PATH, like this: PATH %path%;D:\DOS_UTIL. (The %path%
thing is a variable that says, plug in whatever the existing PATH is here.)
DOSSTART was slightly different:
@echo off
prompt $p$g
path c:\windows; c:\windows\command;d:\dos_util
doskey > nul
smartdrv
cls
To continue: (3) In MS-DOS Prompt, I specified QuickEdit and Fast Pasting. I
clicked Apply and OK for both of these Properties boxes. I copied the MS-DOS
Prompt that I had been working on, the one in the Start | Programs menu (in
C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Primary Utilities) to the location of the

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other MS-DOS Prompt that I use, on the Office 97 Shortcut Bar (located in
D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office). I tested all
three places and found that everything worked. (Later, I revised the MS-DOS
Prompt further, to make the DOS box larger. See point 146(k).)
(m) I didn't want to change my SYSTEM.INI file in ways that I didn't fully
understand, but to give myself a reminder of a tip I found at
http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/~bomber/Dos.html# START, I did the following:
select Start | Run | Sysedit, go to the SYSTEM.INI file, find its [386Enh] section,
and enter the following line:
;LocalLoadHigh=1 <-- this line maximizes available RAM in a DOS session
In this case, unlike the PATH statement (see point (l)), the semicolon at the front
makes the line a mere comment and keeps it from actually running or doing
anything. But something I saw elsewhere made me think that DOS already does
this -- oh, I remember, it was the Properties box for the MS-DOS Prompt item,
where one of the tabs will allow you to fiddle with memory. So I doubt I'll ever
actually use this SYSTEM.INI line. So now that I've written it here, I'll have a
way to remember it. So I'm going back in and removing it from SYSTEM.INI.
106. DMA. I kept hearing that I could get substantial performance
improvements by enabling DMA for my hard disks, using Control Panel |
System | Device Manager, but that I should do this only if my hard disks are
Ultra DMA drives. Apparently Win98 just assumes that your drives aren't
DMA-capable until you tell it otherwise. I didn't know if my drives were Ultra
DMA or not. In fact, I wasn't sure I even knew what model they were. I still had
the covers off the computers, so I knew I could go down there with a flashlight
and try to read them at an angle. But I thought this was something I should
know how to do from the keyboard. The first place I looked was Control Panel |
System | Device Manager | Disk Drives, but that listed them as simply "Generic
IDE Type 47." The Microsoft System Information tool (available on a Start |
Programs shortcut or through Start | Run | MSINFO32) just told me the sizes of
my partitions; and if I clicked on Components | Storage on the left side of the
screen, it repeated that these were "generic" drives. (Interestingly, the
Applications section of that screen identified my programs as Word 2000, Excel
2000, etc., leading me to wonder whether a person who upgrades Office 97 with
all the available downloads has most of what's included in Office 2000, much like
a person who downloads everything available for Windows 98 finds him/herself
with Windows 98 Second Edition. (See point 90(b).))
107. Motherboard Drivers. Before I could continue with the DMA question (see
point 108), I had to work through my motherboard driver situation. Browsing, I

77

ran across a posting that seemed to suggest that, if I installed the proper drivers,
I could replace the "generic hard drive" indicator (see point 106) with the actual
identities of my hard drives, and also that I might need the right drivers in order
to make use of DMA. Since both the PENTIUM computer and the AMD machine
were using Soyo 5EHM motherboards, and since I planned to keep those
motherboards for probably as long as I'd be running Windows 98, and since I
could always just upgrade the drivers whenever I got a new motherboard, I
decided to go ahead and install the motherboard drivers on my pure prototype
system. I started to use the CD that had come with the newer version 1.2 of the
motherboard, but then I wondered whether the older of my two Soyo
motherboards would be able to use the newer drivers. Further browsing at the
Soyo site and elsewhere led me to conclude, however, that drivers get updated
for all versions of the 5EHM motherboard at the same time, so the best approach
would be to get the latest drivers and install them now. But which drivers was I
supposed to use? My motherboard used the ETEQ (VIA) chipset, and Soyo's
website had a link to the VIA site. Between the Soyo and VIA sites, I gathered
that there were a number of different downloads that I might want or need:
(a) BIOS Upgrade. The VIA FAQs page talked about BIOS-related information
that I didn't have. To figure out how I could find that information, I followed a
link to http://www.ping.be/bios/numbers.shtml, where they told me that I
could find my BIOS ID number (which would then identify my motherboad, if I
couldn't identify it otherwise) by rebooting and hitting the Pause button to copy
down the number, date, and version information that appear at the bottom of the
screen during bootup. They also offered a downloadable CTBIOS program that
would identify this information without requiring me to reboot and write it
down. I used this download and found that its output was partially in German.
Nevertheless, it wasn't hard to figure out what I needed to know from it.
According to it, both machines were using Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG with
the VP3-586B-8669 //VIA 597VP3 chipset. (Interestingly, the motherboard in the
PENTIUM computer, which was the Soyo 5EHM that I had purchased more
recently, was board version 5EH V1.2-1CA2, while the 5EHM in the AMD
computer (which I had purchased at the Micro Center store in Cambridge, MA)
was identified as "EH-1BA1-BVP ALUATION ROM - NOT FOR SALE." No
kidding.) Armed with this information, I went back to the VIA site. I gathered
that I would have to update my motherboards' BIOSes by using downloads from
the Soyo site. With further information from
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347541,00.html, I
decided that I didn't really need a new BIOS right now and could wait until I ran
into a circumstance like the ones they listed there -- to provide support for new
hardware, to fix bugs that may prevent Win98 from running properly, or to
enable advanced Plug and Play features -- before upgrading.

78

(b) IDE Bus Master Driver. Soyo's site said this driver was necessary to enable
DMA, but that I should not download it because Win98 already contains a bus
master driver from Microsoft. VIA softpedaled the point, saying merely that it
"isn't necessary" to install this driver. VIA also commented on problems that
people were having with their CD writers and tape drives, and provided a way
to uninstall the VIA bus master driver and reinstall the Microsoft default driver.
Conclusion: I definitely did not want to install this driver. Yet the existing bus
master driver wasn't enabling my computer to see anything other than a
"generic" hard disk, and that's the way it stayed.
(c) AGP VXD Driver. In Soyo's words, the purpose of this driver was to "make
ETEQ (VIA) AGP port working properly in Window 95/98. Recommended."
VIA seconded that. VIA also commented that selecting the "normal" speed
option during installation would give greater stability but not as much speed as
the "turbo" option. Needless to say, I decided that I would use the normal option
when I installed this driver on my pure, hopefully stable system. Another issue:
for systems using the Intel 740 graphics chipset, VIA recommended
downloading the latest Intel 740 driver, version 1.5 or later. I believed the
graphics card in the AMD computer, but not the PENTIUM computer, used this
Intel 740 chipset. Therefore, I decided to deal with that issue later. (See point
325.) I went ahead and downloaded the AGP VXD driver and copied it onto a
floppy.
(d) IRQ Routing Driver. On a Web page for all Soyo motherboards using ETEQ
(VIA) chipsets, but not specifically devoted to my motherboard, Soyo said this
was a "recommended" download that would "fix some IRQ assignment issue in
Windows 95/98." (IRQ is short for interrupt request.) This driver was
apparently the same as the "miniport" driver available on the VIA site. VIA said
that this driver was intended for "all VIA chipsets using VT82C586A or
VT82C586B southbridge chips." The Soyo product page for my 5EHM
motherboard said that it used the "ETEQ 82C6638AT/6629 AGP chipset." I
couldn't tell if that was one chipset or two (i.e., the ETEQ plus the 6629 AGP). I
went to the manual page at Soyo's site, but it was just the same as the printed
manual. I did notice something, however: on the diagram that showed the
layout of the motherboard, it showed two separate ETEQ chips. One was labeled
EQ82C6629, and the other was labeled EQ82C6638. Mini-mystery solved. So
evidently VIA did not recommend this routing driver for my motherboard. So
why did Soyo recommend it? Maybe the "southbridge" chips were different
from the EQ chips just mentioned. Browsing, I found a post to someone with a
5EHM, advising him to go ahead with the IRQ routing driver. Another posting
said that the southbridge chip was the one with the VT82C586B number. This
didn't appear on the printed diagram. Something like it (but not the same
number) had appeared on the CTBIOS results. (See point 107(a).) Getting out

79

the flashlight, I was able to peer into both computers without shutting them
down (their covers were still off -- see point 19) and read this number from one
of the ETEQ chips (the other had nothing but a Soyo logo on it):
EQ82C6638CE'98. (Incidentally, I was pleased to see that both computers had
the CE build, which seemed to be the recommended one for this motherboard -a fact of which I had been totally ignorant at the time of purchase.) But I didn't
see anything with southbridge-style numbers. I finally bit the bullet, shut off the
PENTIUM computer, turned it on its side, and looked diligently inside it. I
didn't pull any cables, so maybe they were concealing something, but as far as I
could see there was no chip with a VP3 or VT82C type of number on it. I thought
I had seen something, somewhere on VIA's site, telling me that I didn't need the
IRQ routing driver and ACPI Registry if I was using Windows 98 SE because
Win98SE incorporates those things, but now I couldn't find that page, so maybe I
had gotten the information wrong. Also, I wasn't sure whether I would be
considered to have Win98SE for these purposes, since I had downloaded most of
Win98SE's contents but did not have those portions that existed only on the
Win98SE upgrade CD. (See point 90(b) and (d).) The blanket advice for Win98
users on VIA's FAQ page said that the proper way to install Win98 on systems
using VIA chipset motherboards was as follows: enable USB support in the BIOS
(I checked, and the PENTIUM computer had it, and as far as I could recall it had
had it since before I had installed Win98); install Win98; install the IRQ routing
driver; and then install the AGP driver (if you have an MVP3 or VP3 chipset). So
I concluded that I should go ahead with the IRQ routing driver, although I was
not entirely sure why. This, too, went onto a floppy.
(e) PCI Bridge Patch. According to Soyo, this allowed Win98 to "recognize the
ETEQ (VIA) chipset, power management controller etc." Advice online said to
skip this driver; I did.
(f) USB Filter Driver. This driver will "add more support for USB device,"
according to Soyo. Again, the online advice was to skip this driver, and anyway
I wasn't using USB and didn't plan to, so I ignored this one too.
(g) DOS All-in-One Driver. I had successfully used DOS on these motherboards
without any special drivers installed, and therefore decided that, at present, I did
not need this.
I had wondered whether I was supposed to begin by loading drivers from the
CD that came with the motherboard, and then update those drivers with these
downloads. After learning about the Bus Master driver (see point 107(b)),
however, I decided not to take the risk that the CD might install drivers I didn't
need. Confirming this, I found a couple of postings in which people said that all
you needed, on top of the drivers that came with Win98, was the IRQ Routing

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Driver and the AGP Driver. I tried to install the IRQ Routing Driver, but
unfortunately it would only get as far as saying that it was setting up the
InstallShield Wizard to guide me through setup, and would then dump me back
at Windows Explorer. I hoped that meant that the thing was a quick install -which seemed possible, considering that the unpacked files were only 790 KB
altogether. To find out for sure, I tried but failed to find a working e-mail
address on the Soyo website, so I posted a query online and waited for an
answer. In the meantime, the AGPREADME.TXT file for the AGP Driver told me
not to install it until after I had installed my AGP graphics card driver. Since
only one machine had an AGP graphics card, I postponed this step until later.
(See point 325.) At some point, I noticed that the README.TXT file for the IRQ
Routing Driver said that, before installing Win98, I was supposed to have
enabled "OnChip USB" in the BIOS Chipset Features setup menu, and enable
"Assign IRQ for USB" in the PNP/PCP Configuration Setup menu. That's the
way those features were set at this point; I hoped they had been set that way
when I had installed Windows. A few days later, I had two replies to my query
about the IRQ Routing Driver. One person told me to go into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and look to see whether the driver was listed. I didn't
see it there. Another told me to look for IRQ Steering in "system properties," by
which I guessed he meant Control Panel | System | Device Manager | System
Devices. There, I saw four VIA Tech entries: PCI to ISA bridge, Power
Management Controller, CPU to PCI bridge, and CPU to AGP controller. It
seemed that my IRQ Routing Driver had not loaded and was not going to load,
and possibly that the (or at least someone's) AGP Driver had loaded already. I
made a note to come back and see whether that same VIA Tech V82C598 CPU to
AGP controller was still listed after I installed my AGP Driver. (See point 325.) I
tried to copy the IRQ Routing Driver files to the hard disk and install it from
there, and that's when I found the problem: it was a bad floppy. I verified that
in Norton Disk Doctor on the AMD machine. Then I copied the IRQ Routing
Driver files to another floppy on the AMD machine, copied them to hard disk on
the PENTIUM computer, installed them from there, and the installation ran fine
and indicated that I had installed the VIA PCI IRQ Routing Miniport Driver V1.3A. It still didn't appear in System Devices, but at least it was now listed in
Add/Remove Programs.
108. More DMA. Continuing the DMA inquiry (see point 106), I learned from
the VIA FAQs page that Win98 was UDMA-capable, but that I couldn't use
UDMA 66 unless my hard drives used an 80-pin cable, which they didn't. How
about UDMA 33 -- or, indeed, any DMA? A page at the Soyo website informed
me that installing the right bus master drivers will automatically enable the use
of DMA. I got the right bus master drivers as soon as I installed Win98. (See
point 107(b).) The Soyo site said that you don't have to enable DMA in Control
Panel | System | Device Manager | Disk Drives | Generic IDE Devices |

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Properties | Settings if your motherboard uses a non-Intel chipset, as I thought

the Soyo 5EHM did, and that if DMA is already enabled, you won't even have an
option there to turn on or off. On the PENTIUM computer, however, the DMA
box was still there for both of my hard disks, and it was not checked. Having
arrived at no other way of determining the models of my hard drives, I got down
there with my flashlight and looked at them. Then I went to the manufacturers'
websites and looked for specifics. According to the Fujitsu site, the one 3 GB
drive (model no. MPB3032AT) did support UDMA 33 (i.e., the kind of DMA that
doesn't require the wide 80-pin cable). So I checked the DMA box for that drive.
I got the warning that this can cause undesirable effects with your hardware, and
I said OK. The Western Digital site didn't have any information on the other 3
GB hard disk (model no. WDAC33100-00H), but I found a couple of other sites
that seemed to say that this disk was also UDMA-capable. I clicked the DMA
box, closed out of Control Panel, and rebooted. Windows restarted without any
problems. I had assumed that the hard drives on the AMD machine, being
newer, would surely be DMA-capable if those older 3 GB drives were, and
because of the positioning of the drives, I was not able to read their model
numbers without shutting down the machine and physically removing the
drives, which I declined to do now. (See point 173.) Unfortunately, this was not
the end of the DMA question. (See point 113(f).)
109. More Windows 98 Adjustments. Having taken care of those detailed
problems, I returned to the task of adjusting Win98. (See point 105.) The
additional steps I took were as follows:
(a) Power Management. In Control Panel | Power Management, I chose the
Home/Office Desk power scheme, and set things to shut off after a couple of
hours, leaving it to the screen saver to handle things until then. To give Win98
full control over the power settings, I rebooted, went into the BIOS setup,
enabled APM, disabled all timers (e.g., the ones that power down the hard
disks), and rebooted.
(b) Active Desktop. Long ago, I had shut off this option and ignored it thereafter.
Now I found myself wondering whether I should give it a chance. The site at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie40/gallery/ made it seem
interesting, and it became doubly so when I discovered that there are a large
number of other Active Desktop options out there. But I saw several different
comments indicating that Active Desktop tends to slow down your system,
presumably because your processor is busy updating various desktop items that,
in my case, I will rarely see because I almost always have programs filling the
screen. Then again, I thought I might be more likely to look at the desktop if it
had something worth looking at, and that perhaps the performance hit would
not be great, or would be worth the benefits, or would be something I could

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control by adjusting how often the items on the desktop got updated. Also, I had
used Website subscriptions in an earlier version of Internet Explorer, until they
changed them in some way I didn't like. (This turned out to be Offline Viewing
in more recent versions of Internet Explorer.) It wasn't like I would have to
install or uninstall a program if I changed my mind about Active Desktop.
Browsing, I saw comments from people who had problems with Active Desktop,
but I also saw comments from people who liked it. Some persuasive words
against Active Desktop came from PCForrest, whom I had grown to respect (see
e.g., point 44), stating that "Active Desktop is a huge resource hog, and unreliable
at the best of times." On the other hand, other knowledgeable users seemed to
enjoy and encourage using it. See e.g.,
http://x34.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538298873&CONTEXT=948731789.9116057
9&hitnum=41. I eventually decided that I could get the same thing as Active
Desktop, without the risk of instability, by using a slightly different approach.
(See point 113(a).) I also thought that I might experiment with Active Desktop
sometime later, however. (And if I did, I wanted to remember that you get the
option to save something as active content if you drag it with your right button
from the browser to the desktop.) But I kept hearing bad things about it -- e.g.,
that not even Microsoft employees used it -- so for this item, "later" never came.
(c) TweakUI. By this time, I had heard so many references to TweakUI, and had
come across so many little things that it would fix, that I could see no reason to
postpone it further. In the previous go-round (see point 71), I had worried that it
might have introduced some instability, but many subsequent happy reboots
(see point 101) had persuaded me that that earlier instability had been just a
passing by-product of installing Office 97. I had been using TweakUI for more
than a year on the AMD computer with no ill side-effects, as far as I knew. ZiffDavis, in their typical gushing style, claimed that "While certain parts of Tweak
UI may not work on your machine, we've never heard of anyone losing data or
experiencing system damage because of the utility." I felt a more cautionary
approach was appropriate, given the words of Microsoft itself, in the
README.TXT file accompanying TweakUI -- that "TweakUI ... presents a greater
risk of making changes that will leave Windows in an unusable state." I also
noticed that, although TweakUI was available on the Windows 98 CD (in
\TOOLS\RESKIT\POWERTOY), it was not supported by Microsoft -- the reason
being, apparently, that it was developed by Microsoft programmers for their
own use, not for the public. Moreover, I had run into some comments regarding
possible problems with the program (see e.g.,
http://www.ac.net/~lilesj/tweak.html). So I decided to compromise: I would
install it, in the sense of getting it onto my disk as part of this complete Microsoft
CD that I was planning to burn; but I would not actually use it to adjust any
system settings until later. To install it, I copied the contents of the CD's
POWERTOY folder to a folder called C:\POWER; I right-clicked on the file

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named TWEAKUI.INF, and chose "Install"; I went into Control Panel, to verify
that the TweakUI icon was there; I double-clicked on that icon, just to make sure
that TweakUI would open OK; and then I deleted C:\POWER, which was no
longer needed. (TweakUI is also available for download from various sites, if for
some reason you don't see it on your Win98 CD.) As indicated in the next
paragraph, I pulled back somewhat from this. Later, I dropped it altogether.
(See point 117.) Subsequently, I came back to it cautiously, after all, to a limited
extent. (See point 145(f).)
(d) Resource Kit Sampler. Reading \TOOLS\RESKIT\README.DOC, I
belatedly found that I had been too eager to install TweakUI. It was part of the
Resource Kit ("ResKit") Tools Sampler on the Win98 CD, and now I wished I had
installed it along with the other tools in that Sampler. Since I did not want the
ResKit files scattered around my hard disks, I went into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled TweakUI. Then, trying again, I doubleclicked on \TOOLS\RESKIT\SETUP.EXE. This approach had the drawback of
not loading TweakUI from the hard disk (see point 109(c)), as some had
recommended, but I did not think that was likely to make any real difference;
and now I had the advantage of being able to tell the installer where to put all
these program files. Unfortunately, at this point I got an error message
indicating that Explorer was having problems. (Note that Explorer is distinct
from Windows Explorer. The former is some kind of essential program; the
latter is just a utility for moving files around.) I exited from Setup, coldrebooted, and tried again, hoping that my little TweakUI escapade had not
caused any damage. I designated the DOS-readable (i.e., short) folder name
D:\RESKIT for the location where I wanted the ResKit sampler files installed. As
expected, I noticed during installation that it copied files to drive C as well as D.
The installation completed without any problems. I decided, again, not to tinker
with these tools until later. The installation seemed to draw more files from the
CD than I had expected; I hoped that this would not take me over the limit of
what would fit on the CD that I was planning to burn. Interestingly, there was
not now a TweakUI icon in Control Panel. Instead, I had a Start | Programs icon
for the Tools Management Console, which I had heard was a really great tool
that would somehow help me plug in new utilities in the future. (See point
119(a).)
(e) Window Sizes and Locations. I opened several different programs, one at a
time, and set the sizes and locations I wanted them to use when they were
operating in windows that filled only part of the screen. To do this, I positioned
them the way I wanted them, and then held down the Ctrl key while closing
them, so as to save my settings. The programs for which I did this were Internet
Explorer, Windows Explorer, the MS-DOS Prompt box, and Control Panel.

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(f) Audio Adjustments. For some reason, Windows Media Player had not been
presented as one of the standard Windows 98 downloads. (See point 15.) I had
previously downloaded the latest version to the AMD machine, so I DCC'd it
over from there and installed it on the PENTIUM machine. (See point 93.) Also,
since I didn't always want an audio CD to play as soon as I insert it, I disabled
AutoRun by deselcting Auto Insert Notification in Control Panel | System |
Device Manager | CD-ROM | Properties | Settings. I would do more fiddling
with audio components later. (See point 157.)
(g) Favorites. On my AMD computer, I had collected a number of links to
favorite websites as "Favorites" in Internet Explorer ("IE"). I wanted my
complete setup to include a nicely organized set of these Favorites. After all,
they were the results of many hours of searching online for various bits of
information, and I didn't want to lose them. At this stage in the operation, to
organize them, I wound up spending many hours tinkering with them, using
FrontPage 2000, Word, and Excel. The work was sufficient to test these three
Microsoft Office programs and satisfy me that they were in good working order,
but I don't think it went to the extent of crashing any of these programs or
otherwise messing them up. I stopped partway through the project, when I
decided that all I could do -- indeed, all I really needed to do -- for present
purposes was to set up a few entries in the Links portion of my Favorites folder.
My reasoning went like this: I decided that my Favorites had outgrown their
folder. I had over 1,400 of them, divided into many folders and subfolders
within the C:\Windows\Favorites folder. There was some duplication among
them; it was not always easy to find the one I was looking for; some of them
were no longer working; and while I wanted to preserve the pages that I had
found during my searches, I did not use all of them often enough to remember
precisely what each one was for. What I wanted, instead of a Favorites folder,
was a set of Links pages on my hard disk or, as I preferred, on my website, with
each Links page devoted to a different subject and perhaps dividing its links
among subpages. It would be slightly slower to have to go to a Links web page
instead of pulling down a link from my Favorites list, but on the other hand I
would be able to do things with Links pages that I could not do with Favorites.
For instance, I could rearrange them to put the most frequently used items at the
top, and could add explanatory text to remind me of what the less frequently
used ones were all about, or to point me to the best parts of those pages. (It
would also be one less thing to back up from drive C; instead, it would exist
online, and the original would be on a date drive somewhere, with my other web
pages.) The point is, I now realized I could sort all that out later. All I really
needed to do, right now, was to create links, in my Favorites\Links folder, to
each of the main links category pages that would later appear on my website. I
knew what the main headings would be -- Media & Entertainment, for example,
and Computers (corresponding, in some cases, to the main pages in my website)

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-- and I knew the names of the web pages that would contain them; I just
couldn't go ahead with the full construction of my website quite yet. To start this
process, I went online on the PENTIUM computer and tried out the small
number of web links that the Windows and Office installations had loaded into
my Favorites folder there. In Favorites, I decided to keep Radio Station Guide
and Web Events. Using Windows Explorer, I went into C:\Windows\Favorites
and created a Favorites\Unsorted subfolder. I figured I would be using this for
any future URLs that I wanted to save and, eventually, to add to my Links web
pages. I put the Radio Station Guide and Web Events shortcuts into this folder,
and deleted the MSN shortcut. I went into the Favorites\Links subfolder and
repeated the process. There, I decided to keep the two programs QuickSearch
and Toggle Images, which I had heard could be useful. (Later, I wound up
deciding that I really didnt have much use for QuickSearch. See point 266(d).)
But I decided that the place for them was not on my Links toolbar, since they
weren't websites that I was linking to. Rather, they belonged on an Internet
toolbar that I added to the Office 97 Shortcut Bar. (See point 102.) I verified that
I already had a link to Windows Update on my Start | Programs menu, and then
I deleted it from this Links subfolder. I went online and tried out the other links
that Microsoft had inserted into the Favorites\Links subfolder (e.g., "Microsoft"
and "Channel Guide"). I decided to keep the Microsoft and Windows shortcuts,
at least until I could verify whether I already had similar shortcuts in my full set
of Favorites. I moved these to the Unsorted folder and deleted the rest. "Media"
was the only subfolder I deleted, out of all the subfolders that Microsoft had put
under the Favorites folder -- Channels, Links, Media, or Software Updates -because I had previously heard that deleting the others can screw up your
system. (I had already incorporated the contents of Media into my full Favorites
list on the other machine.) Then I added my half-dozen preferred Links (e.g.,
Yahoo!) from the AMD computer. To do this, I copied the Links folder over on
floppy and inserted the shortcuts from there. All that remained was to add Links
shortcuts for the main Links pages that would appear on my website. For this, I
made a copy of one of the working link shortcuts, changed the URL in that
shortcut to the URL for the home page of my website
(www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3097/), made a copy of that altered
shortcut, changed its name so that it would be the first of my top-level links
pages (i.e., the one containing links to Computers sites), and added the name that
this link page would have (i.e., TOP_LINKS_COMPUTERS.HTM) to the end of
the homepage URL. While I was changing its name, I also thought I might be
able to speed things up a bit, when perusing my Links, if I checked the "Make
this page available offline" box and set the Download tab to go three levels
down, into the subfolders that I would probably be creating under
TOP_LINKS_COMPUTERS.HTM. To prevent this from downloading all of the
web pages listed on these links pages, I unchecked the "Follow links outside of
this page's Web site" box. I also made a note to myself to control the number of

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links to other pages in my own website (e.g., "Home"), so that I wouldn't be

downloading half of my own website every time I synchronized my links. Then
I made copies of this customized Link shortcut and repeated the process for the
other top-level links pages I expected to create (e.g., TOP_LINKS_MEDIA.HTM).
I found that some of these settings didn't take, the first time, so I had to go back
and re-do them. I decided it would probably be easier to find my most
frequently used links that I had brought over from the other computer (e.g.,
Yahoo!) if I put them into a subfolder called "Frequented," so I did that. This
gave me a Links toolbar (see point 105(e) and (j)) whose contents fit nicely into
two rows at the top of my screen, with room to spare. I noticed that, when I
clicked on the Frequented folder, it gave me a nice pull-down menu, and I
thought that I might try to design the top-level Links files on my website so that
they contained nothing but links to subfolders, which I would then somehow
copy into (or duplicate in) my Favorites\Links subfolder, so that perhaps my
Links toolbar would function like a menu bar, with all of the entries on that
toolbar opening up into pull-down menus, giving me two-click access to dozens
of my most frequently used websites. (One advantage would be that I could
then fire up an Internet Explorer session and point it to one of those sites with
just two clicks.) Later, I revised both the Frequented folder and the Favorites
folder. (See point 261.) I also returned, later, to the Favorites project. (See point
327.)
(h) More Power Management. A number of nights had passed during this whole
Win98 installation process, but the previous night's freeze, sometime during or
after the FP2000 link verification process (see point 109(g)) marked the first time
that my pure installation had frozen while sitting overnight. Naturally, I
suspected the changes I had made the previous day, and particularly the power
management changes. (See point 109(a).) I went back into Control Panel |
Power Management and decided to experiment, starting with the System
Standby setting, which I changed to Never. To speed up the test, I changed the
Turn Off Monitor and Turn Off Hard Disks settings to their lowest settings (one
minute and three minutes, respectively). My second try at the link verification
process was still running, so the monitor went off while the hard disks were still
running. I moved the mouse and the monitor came back on. I concluded that
the monitor was probably not to blame, and I put it back to a setting of one hour.
Next, the hard disk setting. At one point, my second try at the link verification
process came to a halt while waiting for input from me (one website needed a
password); and when I provided that input, I could hear the disks spin back up.
So I didn't think the hard disk shutdown had caused the freezeup either, and I
returned their setting to two hours. This left the System Standby setting. It
dawned on me that perhaps I didn't want the system to be on standby after all. I
didn't know whether various programs that I had set to run in the middle of the
night would be able to run if the system was on standby. As I recalled, I had

87

clicked the box that said something like, "Wake the computer to run this
program," but I wasn't sure if that would do the job. Despite these thoughts,
however, I decided to try to make sure there weren't any power management
problems on my system. I was almost tempted to bring over the Power
Management Troubleshooter (see point 105(a)) from the AMD machine and run
it, but then I came across some advice to do just what I had done -- disable
system standby -- and since the freezes were not occurring anymore, and since
the Power Management Troubleshooter had sounded just a tad scary, I decided
to skip it.
(i) Website Passwords. While the Favorites verification process was running (see
point 109(g)), I used Internet Explorer to go to some of my favorite Websites. I
focused specifically on going down my separate list of sites that required a login.
At those sites, I took IE's offer to save my account names and passwords, so that I
wouldn't have to look them up each time I wanted to log into those sites. I also
accepted IE's offer to use AutoComplete, which I realized I did sometimes
appreciate and which I doubted really slowed down my browsing much -- so I
turned it back on, reversing my earlier decision. (See point 105(i).)
110. Latest Downloads. Some days had passed since I had last visited the
Windows Update site (see point 90), and I had never yet visited
www.updates.com to see if there were any other Microsoft downloads for the
software I had installed so far, so I visited those sites now. I had not yet
downloaded Microsoft's Web Folders Internet Publishing Utility, and it sounded
like something I could use, so I downloaded that. At Updates.com, they told me
that I could upgrade to Office 2000, which I knew. They also offered me a slight
upgrade for MSN Messenger Service, which I declined. While checking sites as
part of my Favorites operation (see point 109(g)), I had come across a site that
would not let me proceed without the very latest Macromedia Shockwave
ActiveX Player, so I accepted the Updates.com offer to give me that. The strange
part was that they also offered to give me an upgrade from Microsoft Dial-Up
Networking 98, from version 4.10.1998 to 4.10.2000. Why hadn't Microsoft
offered this? I didn't know. I followed the link, which led to a Microsoft FTP
site, and installed the update from there.
111. Another Disk Image File and CD. I decided that these various operations,
and especially the tinkering I had done in Excel, Word, and FrontPage 2000 as
part of my effort to organize my Favorites (see point 109(g)), had given me
enough opportunity to have at least a preliminary sense that Office 97 was
properly installed and working. (See point 104.) Indeed, I hoped that the work
in FP2000 had not gone to the point of damaging that installation. I didn't think
it had -- there hadn't been any program crashes or reboots in the middle of any
operations -- but it had behaved irregularly enough to raise the question of

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whether I had done sufficient tinkering for now. I had originally planned to
make this go-round the complete and final installation and adjustment of all
things related to Win98 and Office 97. As I had gone further into the subject,
however, I had been surprised at how many more things people had found to do
to those programs, to make them faster or more responsive. Some of those
tweaks were simple and safe, and some were risky and complex, and many were
in between. I was beginning to get nervous, however, at the prospect that all this
work might be lost if I made one false move in one of these alterations. I thought
about taking a break at this point to burn another CD, but then I decided that
was a highly time-consuming operation and that it included the risk of causing a
translation error when I moved my hard disk (on which I would create the image
file) from the PENTIUM computer to the AMD computer, where the CD burner
was located. (See point 59.) The better approach, I decided, was to make another
image file and save it on drive F, with the previous one. That way, unless I
somehow managed to screw up drive F, I would have what I needed to burn a
CD and/or to start over quickly, but I could also continue with my tinkering and
tweaking as long as things continued to work fine. So I created the image file on
F, using the same technique as before. (See point 103.) Specifically, it would be,
once again, an image of drives C and D only. I emptied out the Recycle Bin and
C:\Windows\Temp, since I did not want their contents on any CD that I might
someday burn from this drive image, and also because I had a lot to squeeze into
this image, which would hopefully still be within the 650 MB limit for a CD. (See
point 16.) I didn't bother emptying out the Temporary Internet Files folder
because it was on drive H. (See point 50.) I cleared off the Documents Menu.
(See point 54.) Then I rebooted into real DOS, from the floppy, and ran
DriveImage from the floppy to create the C_D_2.PQI image file on drive F.
DriveImage told me that these C and D partitions contained a total of 891 MB,
which was within my target estimate of what would fit on a CD. (See point 68.)
As before, I chose the Maximum Compression and Verify Disk Writes options. It
took nearly an hour and produced a C_D_2.PQI file of 564 MB, for 63%
compression. This surprised me; if the rate held, I could squeeze more than 1 GB
of program files onto a CD. To make space on F for the next disk images, I
rebooted into Win98 and used Direct Cable Connection (see point 93) to move
my existing image files over to the AMD machine, where I had a little more
space to hold them. (It took about five hours to move them, for a rate of about
200 MB per hour. Also, perhaps because of the increasing instability of the AMD
computer, DCC crashed both computers when I shut it down on the AMD
computer.) And then, realizing that it could be weeks or even months before I
would begin to discover flaws in my Windows installations, I decided to store
C_AND_D.PQI (see point 103) on CD-RW, so that I could go through the full
process of making a bootable CD out of it later if necessary. C_AND_D.PQI
represented a relatively primitive form of the system, and the system had been
stable since then, so I didn't think it would be necessary to go back that far, and

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this way I would save the time and the cost of burning a CD-R for it. But this
C_D_2.PQI image was another story. So far, this was a stable and more
advanced form of the system, and it might well be something I would reinstall.
Since the PENTIUM computer was apparently unable to read CD-RW disks
burned on the AMD machine (see point 62), I burned this one to CD, using the
same approach as before (see point 65), except that (a) I decided not to bother
making a file list for future comparison (see point 80), (b) I went ahead and
closed the disk, and (c) I realized that I had forgotten to shut off the archive bits
before making the image file. This was not a major problem; I just hoped that the
next image file would turn out to be solid and would become my reference
Win98 system.
112. Office 97 Adjustments. Relieved to have made a backup, and to see I still
had lots of space to work with, I did some more tinkering with my Office 97
installation, as follows:
(a) Expanding Abbreviations. One of the best features of Office 97, for me, has
been the ability to set up its programs to expand a few letters to form a whole
word or phrase. For example, I type "nyc" and I get "New York City." If you
change your computer's date to tomorrow (no guarantees on what this might do
to your calendaring programs), and then go into Word and hit Tools |
AutoCorrect and type in a Replace/With entry, and then change the date back to
today and search for all files that were changed tomorrow, you will see that
Office saves these changes in a file called [username].ACL. For example, mine
are saved in C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl. Anyway, I copied this file
(containing my treasured collection of many such abbreviations) over from the
AMD computer to the PENTIUM computer, renamed the existing Ray
Woodcock.acl to be OLD.ACL, moved it to C:\Temp, put this other one in its
place, and tested it by typing "nyc" and a couple of my other abbreviations.
(b) Outlook 98 Journal. I had heard a horror story about how Tools | Options |
Journal in some version of Outlook comes pre-configured to take down a record
of when you edit your files, and if you leave it on, it will produce a huge file that
slows your system down tremendously. I went into Outlook Express and saw no
such option; I went into Outlook 98 and saw something that might have been
what that story was about. Under the heading "Also record files from," I saw
that the boxes were checked for five Office 97 applications: Word, Excel, etc. To
see what would happen, I went to Outlook 98 on the AMD machine, made sure
the box for Word was checked, did the same date trick as in point 112(a),
changed and saved a file in Word, closed Outlook, and then searched to see
which files had been affected on tomorrow's date. (Note: this maneuver kept
freezing up the Date/Time thingie -- I was using the one at the bottom right
corner of the screen -- so that I had to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut it down. I

90

probably should have just used the DATE command in a DOS box instead. I was
glad I was doing this on the AMD machine, whose Windows installation was
going to be replaced soon, and not on my nice, pure PENTIUM machine.) The
file storing this data appeared to be C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Offitems.log, but I wasn't sure. The Journal definitely
did work, though: the Journal folder in Outlook 98 showed which files I edited
tomorrow and how long I was at it. Just the thing to spy on people, I guess. I
went to the PENTIUM computer, turned off all Journal options, and hoped that
would do the trick.
(c) Outlook 98 OUTLOOK.PST. I guess Outlook is considered part of Office,
even though it didn't come on my Office 97 CD. Anyway, on the AMD machine,
Outlook had saved all my e-mail messages in a file called
C:\EXCHANGE\MAILBOX.PST. I don't know if that's the name that Win95
originally gave it, or if I requested that name. On the PENTIUM computer, the
only .PST file was C:\WINDOWS\OUTLOOK.PST. There were two things
about the old MAILBOX.PST that I didn't want to see on the new
OUTLOOK.PST. First, it was too big. It contained all kinds of junk. I figured
that, rather than bring it over to the new setup, I would just archive it or bleed it
of valuable data and delete it, or possibly all of the above. How to do that -- that
was a question for another day. (See point 192.) Right now, I was more
concerned with the other problem: how could I relocate this OUTLOOK.PST file
so that it would be on a data partition, and not on my program partition? I
wanted it to be in a place that would get frequent backups, since new e-mails and
appointments would be going into it every day. My data partitions would get
that kind of backup attention; my program partitions might not. Outlook 98
itself did not seem to offer an option for where the OUTLOOK.PST file would be
located. When I asked online, they said I could just move it anywhere, as long as
Outlook 98 wasn't running. Outlook would ask for its current location, and I
could tell it. So I tried this. I moved OUTLOOK.PST to E:\MESSAGES and
rebooted. I started Outlook 98 and got the message, "The file
C:\WINDOWS\OUTLOOK.PST could not be found." I clicked OK. This opened
a dialog box that gave me a chance to point to E:\MESSAGES\OUTLOOK.PST.
And that seemed to take care of it. I prepared an e-mail and saved it; I closed
Outlook; I looked at E:\Messages; and sure enough, OUTLOOK.PST had been
updated just a moment before, when I saved that message. Done!
(d) Outlook 98 Address Book. Unlike my old e-mail messages, I did want to
bring my Address Book over from the AMD machine. It was a bit premature
right now -- I didn't want to start using Outlook 98 on the PENTIUM computer
as my regular e-mail program yet, and I might be changing entries in my
Address Book between now and the time when I did begin to use the new
Outlook 98 installation (see point 193) -- but I decided I could go ahead with a

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test run, to make sure I knew where the Address Book would be stored. On the
AMD machine, I went into Outlook 98 and selected File | Import and Export |
Export to a File | Next | Personal Folder File | Next | Contacts | Next, named
the exported file C:\TEMP\ADDR_BK.PST, selected Allow Duplicate Items to Be
Created (since I didn't know whether the program would consider contacts to be
"duplicate" even if they involved two different e-mail addresses) and went on
with Finish | No Encryption. The resulting file was small, so I tried to put it on a
floppy, but I got the message that Outlook had locked the file. So I closed
Outlook 98 and tried again. This time it worked. I carried it over to the
PENTIUM computer. There, I went into Outlook 98 and, before anything else, I
had to select the Contacts folder. Then I chose File | Import and Export | Import
from Another Program or File | Next | Personal Folder File (.pst) | Next. I
designated A:\ADDR_BK.PST and chose "Import items into the current folder."
This gave me the message that I had chosen to import into a folder of a different
type, and that the contents would instead be imported into a new folder with the
same name. I said OK, and it worked! It didn't bring over the Contacts\People
subfolder, but I supposed I might have forgotten to check the "include
subfolders" box when exporting. Anyway, it was good enough for a dry run. I
searched for all files modified during the previous day and was able to figure out
that the Address Book was being stored in the same
E:\MESSAGES\OUTLOOK.PST file as the e-mail messages, which was fine with
me.
(e) Office Shortcut Bar and Desktop Icons. I decided to clarify the icons on the
shortcut bars at the left side of my screen. (See point 102.) The toolbar there
actually contained three separate bars: Office, Internet, and Desktop. I decided
that I would find items faster if I had no more than about a half-dozen buttons
per bar. So I moved Internet Explorer and Outlook 98 (my e-mail program) from
the Office bar to the Internet bar. I also decided that, since I wasn't going to use
Active Desktop (see point 113(a)), I would use my desktop as the repository of
system-related shortcuts, and that the Desktop bar should show only those
desktop items that had to do with the system. Thus, I hid or removed some
buttons from the Desktop bar. On the desktop itself, I created a folder called
"Was On Desktop" and dragged the Briefcase into it (and expected to drag others
there in the future). (Instead, I later wound up undoing that and getting rid of
this folder.) I also added some items to the desktop itself and reflected them in
the desktop bar. The first of these was the Control Panel. To make that one, I
went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked on Control Panel (near the bottom of
the list on the left side), chose Create Shortcut, and indicated that it should go on
the desktop. (Later, I found that X-Setup made this easier. See point 137(c). But
then I changed my mind on that and came back to this. See point 138(d).)
Another was the direct shortcut to Device Manager. For that one, I right-clicked
on the desktop, chose New | Shortcut, typed C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE

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SYSDM.CPL,,1 and clicked Next, named it Device Manager, clicked Properties,

and changed its icon. See http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm. (Later, I
deleted both the Control Panel and Device Manager shortcuts from the desktop.
See point 145(i).) To organize my Office Shortcut Bar further, I went into
Windows Explorer, went to the location where these icons were kept
(D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office), and created
some folders and otherwise arranged things, and then I went back to the
Shortcut Bar and hid or moved buttons as I wanted.
113. Still More Windows Adjustments. I returned to the task of digesting the
myriad little tips and ideas I had collected on the subject of how to make Win98
do just what you want. My further adjustments were as follows:
(a) Active Desktop Substitute. I had decided against Active Desktop. (See point
109(b).) Instead, following suggestion no. 4 at
http://x34.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538298873&CONTEXT=948731789.9116057
9&hitnum=41, I decided to develop an HTML page and incorporate the same
kinds of things into it that I would have put onto the Active Desktop. I probably
could have created this page as a strictly local item, stored on my hard disk and
updated there, but then I decided that the most logical time to update it would
be when I was online anyway, and therefore that I should make it part of my
website. This also made the page available for anyone else whose tastes might
match mine and who might prefer to link to my page rather than go to the
trouble of designing their own. The actual design of this page came later. (See
point 327.) All I did at this time was to add an item called "Quick" (short for
"Quick Reference") to my Links toolbar; and in a slightly different approach, I set
the properties of this one to be available offline, to download pages one link
deep, and to follow links outside the page itself. (See point 109(g).)
(b) Mailto Shortcuts. To make a faster way of composing e-mail, I added another
item to my Links toolbar (see point 113(a)) called "E-mail." This item was a
folder containing several different Mailto links. To create a Mailto link, I rightclicked in this folder (using Windows Explorer) and chose New | Shortcut. In
the Command Link blank, I typed the person to whom I wanted the e-mail to go,
such as "mailto:ray-woodcock@usa.net," and then selected Next and named it.
(c) SendTo. On the AMD machine, I had noticed that various utilities had
installed a lot of options on the SendTo choice that comes up when you rightclick on something in Windows Explorer. I modified this list by putting some of
these items in subfolders, and by creating more subfolders for additional items
that I now wanted to install, as follows: (1) Moving Existing SendTos. I created a
subfolder in C:\Windows\SendTo called "Other Destinations," and moved
several of the SendTo options (i.e., Desktop, My Briefcase, and Web Publishing

93

Wizard) to that subfolder. That way, they weren't gone, in case I someday
changed my habits and decided to start using them; but neither were they in my
face every time I used SendTo. (2) Creating New Temp Folder SendTos. I added
several shortcuts to the main SendTo folder, to give me a faster way of moving
things to the Temp folders on each disk (e.g., C:\Temp), since I often use those
folders as a clearinghouse from which I then distribute files elsewhere (e.g.,
review, sort, print, or zip them). To do this, I right-clicked on those Temp folders
in Windows Explorer and selected New | Shortcut. Then I put all those
shortcuts into C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Temp Folders. (3) Creating New
Data File Destination SendTos. I did the same thing as above for data folders
that I knew I would frequently want to send items to (e.g., E:\Spreadsheets and
E:\Text). I also created one for the Favorites\Unsorted folder. (See point
109(g).) (4) Creating New Program SendTos. In
C:\Windows\SendTo\Programs, I put SendTo items for the programs that I
often use to open files that are not commonly associated with them. In
particular, I use Word and Excel, and sometimes WordPad and Notepad, to open
all kinds of files that don't have the right extensions. For instance, I might use
Excel to open a .TXT or .DOC file, if it contains data in a format that Excel can
parse effectively. (The advantage of SendTo over the left-click | shift-right-click
| Open With option, for these situations, is that you don't have to hunt down
through a long list of programs to find the one you want to open the file with.)
In these instances, I created the SendTo item by using the right mouse button to
drag icons over from the subfolders under C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs - the reason being that the New Shortcut approach described above balked at file
or folder names with spaces in them (like "Start Menu"). I also added a copy of
the MS-DOS Prompt icon to this Programs subfolder. I tried sending a DOS
batch file to that prompt, but it didnt run, so I removed the icon. Finally,
applying tip no. 59 from the Weber High School site (see point 105(j)), I went to
the Desktop and created a shortcut to the Recycle Bin. Then I cut that shortcut
from there and pasted it into C:\WINDOWS\SENDTO. This gave me the ability
to delete things by using the Send To right-click option in Windows Explorer. I
didn't expect to use this much at the start, but I had found on the AMD machine
that Windows had reverted to the habit of asking me if I was sure I wanted to
delete a file, even though I had instructed it not to ask me that; someone online
said that this SendTo option would bypass that. (See point 41.)
(d) Drive Speed. Under Control Panel | System | Performance | File System, I
verified that Hard Disk was set to full Read-ahead optimization; I set Floppy
Disk not to search for new floppy drives each time my computer started; and
under CD-ROM, I made sure I was set to the largest cache at Quad-speed. Also,
having heard the same tip several times, I changed the hard disk setting to make
the Typical role of this computer to be a Network Server, which apparently
optimizes Win98's disk caching. Later, I noticed that Cacheman changed this.

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(e) Office 97 Suite. Some projects required me to have several programs open at
once. For example, when I was working through a pile of random stuff that had
suddenly descended upon my desk, I was apt to use an Office 97 suite, consisting
of Word, Excel, Access, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Outlook 98, at
one point or another as I attempted to dig my way out of the mess. Another
example would arise when I did audio editing: I might use Cool Edit, two
different sessions of Windows Explorer, Volume Control, and a mixer. The latter
example was premature (see point 255(c)), but it illustrated that different jobs
may call for a very different set of programs. I decided to create a new toolbar
that would allow me to click on one icon and thereby open an entire suite of
programs at once. This would free me from having to decide whether to include
a lot of icons in my StartUp folder (under Start | Windows), which is convenient
-- but only as long as I'm using the same programs, and not when I want to boot
the computer to do something simple. Since I hadn't yet installed all my audio
programs and other stuff, the Office 97 suite just mentioned was the only suite I
could set up right now; but that would do for starters. First, I created a subfolder
within my modified Start | Programs structure. (See point 42.) In Windows
Explorer, it was at C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other
Programs\Miscellany\Toolbars\Suites. Then I copied icons for all the Office 97
programs just mentioned, from other Start | Programs folders to this one. I also
brought over a copy of the MS-DOS Prompt icon from the Utilities subfolder. I
modified this MS-DOS Prompt item in two ways. First, right-clicked on it and
changed its name to "Office Suite." (Later, back in Windows Explorer, I rightclicked on it and changed its name there too.) Second, while I was in its
Properties, I changed its Properties | Program | Batch File line to point to the
D:\DOS_UTIL folder, where I tended to keep my DOS batch files. (See point 64.)
The specific program that this MS-DOS Prompt would run would be a new
program, which I was about to write, called STE_OFC.BAT (short for Suite:
Office: Batch File). Thus, the Batch File line, in its entirety, read as follows:
D:\DOS_UTIL\STE_OFC.BAT. To create this new STE_OFC.BAT program, I
opened a DOS window, typed UTIL (to invoke my previously defined UTIL.BAT
file that takes me immediately to D:\DOS_UTIL), and typed EDIT
STE_OFC.BAT. That put me into the editor, where I could create this new BAT
file. For its first line, I typed @ECHO OFF. For the next line, I switched to
Windows Explorer, right-clicked on the Word icon there in my Suites subfolder,
copied its Properties | Target line with a Ctrl-C, and pasted it into the second
line (using the clipboard icon at the top of the MS-DOS Prompt window,
although I had thought that my previous settings, including a check mark in the
DOS Prompt's "Quick Edit" box, would enable me to just use Ctrl-V or right-click
to paste -- see point 105(l)). I repeated this copy-and-paste process for each of the
programs whose icons I had copied into the Suites folder (Access, Excel, etc.) -except, of course, for the MS-DOS Prompt that I had renamed Office Suite, and

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that was rapidly becoming the focal point of all this attention. (After all, I didn't
want the program to invoke itself, thus creating an endless loop that would soon
crash the computer, although admittedly you could create some pretty good
practical jokes by tinkering with this.) Now I had six program lines in my
STE_OFC.BAT file. I removed the quotation marks from the starts and ends of
the lines that had them. At the start of each line, I put the word START.
Although I wasn't sure it would make much difference, I rearranged the lines so
that the programs I would be most likely to use would start last (i.e., would wind
up somewhere near the top of the heap). I was almost done. The remaining
problem was that DOS abbreviates long filenames like "Program Files," which
appeared in each of the lines I had just added, such as "START D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE." It abbreviates them down to eight
characters, ending them with a tilde and a number (e.g., "Program Files" might
become "PROGRA~1"). To find out exactly how it was abbreviating them, I
opened another DOS window and used my WHEREIS utility. (See point 5(g).)
(Alternatives to WHEREIS include FILEFIND and DIR, although the latter may
take some hunting before you find the right file, such as the EXCEL.EXE example
just given.) (I later found that I could also have looked in the Properties to get the
DOS filename.) In most cases, there will be only one long filename of its kind in
a given folder, so it will be given the number one. For instance, in the Excel
example, "Program Files" ordinarily becomes PROGRA~1, but if you add
another "Program ..." item to the list, the number might change and EXCEL.EXE
might become PROGRA~2 -- in which case my STE_OFC.BAT program would
be loading the wrong program, or no program at all, and I would have to edit it
to address the new number. In this case, WHEREIS told me that I had to edit the
Excel command line so that it would read like this: START
D:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\OFFICE\EXCEL.EXE. I repeated this process for
each of the lines in my program. (Since several of the programs were in the same
folder on the same drive, I was able to cut and paste duplicate lines and just
change the filenames in several cases -- without all that fuss and muss of using
WHEREIS -- to get this editing job done faster.) Finally, as the last line in
STE_OFC.BAT, I added the simple word EXIT, so that this DOS window would
close when it had done its business. Then I saved and exited the EDIT program
and the DOS window. I tested by double-clicking on my Office Suite icon, and it
worked. I closed all the programs it had opened. Now that I had copied the
Target lines from all these Office 97 icons in my Suites folder, I no longer needed
these icons here, so I deleted them, leaving Office Suite as the sole remaining icon
in the folder. I right-clicked an empty spot on the Taskbar at the bottom of the
screen and selected Toolbars | New Toolbar, called it Suites, and pointed it
toward the C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other
Programs\Miscellany\Suites folder where I had left the Office Suite icon. To
squeeze things into a tight space there on the Taskbar, I right-clicked on the
Office Suite icon and shut off the Show Text and Show Title options. To make it

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recognizable without those words, I right-clicked on the icon itself and chose
Properties | Program | Change Icon, which gave me a bunch of quasi-unique
alternatives. I chose something suitably dorky and vaguely officeish and then
okayed out of there. Then I put the cursor at the dividing line that separated this
new Suites Toolbar from the rest of the Taskbar, and dragged that line so I wasn't
taking up any more space down there than necessary. The icon itself wouldn't
tell me, later, which suite I was loading, but a little Tool Tip popped up to say it
was the Office Suite, if I left my cursor pointing at the icon for a few seconds.
Later, I did more thinking about the Office Suite. (See point 275.)
(f) System File Editing for DMA. Since Registry editing can really screw things
up, I decided I would postpone making internal changes to the Registry or other
Windows files until after I burned the next CD. But then I decided there was a
difference between performance-enhancing (optional) tweaks and required
tweaks. Specifically, the Tweak3D site at
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/harddrive/ told me that, if I was going to turn
on DMA (see point 106), I was also going to have to add the following two lines
to the bottom of the [ESDI_AddReg] section of my
C:\WINDOWS\INF\MSHDC.INF file. Those lines were as follows:
HKR,,IDEDMADrive0,3,01
HKR,,IDEDMADrive1,3,01
I checked to see if everyone agreed that these lines were important and safe.
Apparently the problem in question arises during startup. See
http://www.lucifer1.demon.co.uk/bugrep.htm (last updated 11/11/98). So far,
I wasn't having that problem. "Old Guy," writing at
http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=571745663&CONTEXT=948810240.1975713
797&hitnum=11, said that these lines were to be used only as a last resort, and
that they still might not make DMA work. Old Guy also said that "the operating
system" checks for DMA compatibility anyway and doesn't use DMA if it doesn't
check out properly. I found a Microsoft site on this subject. See
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/hwdev/devdes/idedma.htm. Confusingly, that
site said this: "For Microsoft Windows 98, you just have to enable the driver,
since the fix is already incorporated. In all cases, you must implement the INF
entries described in this article." What's confusing about that is that the word
"driver" does not appear anywhere else in the article, except in some lines of
program code that the article quotes from MSHDC.INF (which is already
installed and does not need to be "implemented"). I looked at my Win98 copy of
MSHDC.INF to see if "the fix" was "already incorporated" on my machine. If "the
fix" refers to the two HKR lines quoted above, then the answer was no, they did
not already appear in my MSHDC.INF file on either computer. The article
referred me to Microsoft article no. QFE513, last updated 10/22/99, but that

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article addressed only a problem in Win95 OSR2. I decided that, when Microsoft
said "you just have to enable the driver," it meant that OEM installers (what's
that stand for -- Original Equipment Manufacturers, maybe -- anyway, the
people who sell computers) had to make sure that MSHDC.INF was included on
the system, and that Win98 incorporated "the fix" in some other file, so that no
adjustment was needed in my case. Since DMA seemed to be working for me
during projects that involved lots of use of Office 97 programs (see point 109(g)),
I didn't see the need for any more fixes. (Note that, if you do make the change
suggested by this Microsoft article, there are additional steps involved in the
process. FYI: if you have "the UDMA CDROM Shutdown Problem," see
http://www.tcecompany.com/tech/udma.htm for more information about
editing MSHDC.INF.) Then again, there was still the fact that the Microsoft page
said, "In all cases, you must implement the INF entries." Did "INF entries" refer
to the HKR lines cited above? At
http://compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/windows/cdrom_udma.html
(last updated 12/27/99), the writer comments on CD-ROM audio crashes. To fix
these crashes, s/he suggests unchecking DMA for the CD-ROM drive, and also
suggests removing the HKR lines -- the very same lines, quoted above, that
others are telling us to add! S/he also says it might help just to update your
system BIOS. (Side note: disabling UDMA in the BIOS unchecks the DMA box
in Control Panel. See
http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566786103&CONTEXT=948810240.1975713
797&hitnum=17.) I happened to run across a test for DMA capability at
http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml# dmatest. This test
involved using DEBUG, which is not something you want to make a mistake
with. I ran it with a0 for the master drive, using the basic 22 setting for DMA
mode 2, and came back with a 00 result, indicating that my master (Western
Digital 3.1 GB) drive was indeed DMA-compatible. I ran it again with b0 for the
slave (Fujitsu) drive and got another 00, so I was finally sure I had DMAcompatible drives. Getting back to the main issue, I found another interpretation
of the Microsoft page cited above at http://www.windowshelp.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml. This site was specifically oriented toward
Win98. It said to go ahead and add the two HKR lines quoted above. I finally
decided that, although I don't read this kind of programming code too clearly,
the purpose of these lines must be just to inform the system that drives 0 and 1
(i.e., your first and second hard drives) are DMA-compatible. That seemed
compatible with the assumption, in this tune-35.shtml page, that you have a
primary and a secondary drive. (See also
http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, where they advocate other changes
as well. That page has no "last revised" date, and may be obsolete, considering
my difficulties with its instructions regarding Hyperterminal. See point 113(g).)
But suddenly I wondered what would happen if I connected that old Seagate 1
GB drive again (see point 81), to copy files back and forth. It was a lot faster to

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switch a hard disk between machines than to cable data back and forth at a rate
of 200 MB per hour. (See point 111.) (I had had problems with the Seagate (see
point 82), but had subsequently thought that perhaps the power supply was
coughing when I asked it to drive three hard disks.) Or what if I used the
Seagate as a secondary slave, where I would locate my Swap files? (See point
44.) The answer from the Microsoft page seemed to be that it would be redetected on reboot, the operating system would detect that it wasn't DMAcapable, and there would be no problem. Anyway, the tide of opinion was
running heavily against Old Guy at this point, so I went ahead and added the
two HKR lines shown above, following the procedure recommended on the
Microsoft page: (1) I modified the MSHDC.INF file by adding the two lines as
indicated above and closed that file; (2) I went into Control Panel | System |
Device Manager | Disk Drives and clicked on each IDE hard disk and then
clicked Remove; (3) I closed Control Panel and rebooted; and (4) I went back into
Control Panel | System | Device Manager | Disk Drives | Properties | Settings,
and there I saw that, this time, unlike before (see point 108), DMA had been
checked automatically during the redetection process.
(g) Modem Fix: Line Quality. I had been blaming my ISP for my frequent
disconnections, but we had only moved to this new location within the past six
months or so, and I slowly realized that the phone company might be to blame.
By now, I had come across a couple of approaches to the problem, and I decided
it was time to try them. First, applying a tip from
http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, I tried to do a test for line quality.
Unfortunately, their instructions did not seem to match what was happening on
my computer. After spending too much time trying to make their apparently
outdated guide work, I got smart and searched for another site. The instructions
at http://www.grso.org/support/printlnt.html did not work either. Finally, I
tried http://www.netassoc.net/techstuff/linetest2.htm. The basic idea, repeated
with variations at all of these sites, was to run HYPERTRM.EXE, cancel its
attempt to dial, and get to a blank screen; then type ATZ and Enter, which
should give you an OK. Then type ATDTXXX-XXXX (where the Xs are your
ISP's local access number). When you get a LOGIN or PASSWORD prompt, you
type +++ and hit Enter. Again, you should get an OK. Then you type AT&V1
exactly like that. (The last character is the number one, not the letter L.) This is
supposed to give you line quality information that these websites interpret as
follows: a value of 25 or more means the modem is sensing excessive line noise.
Run the test at least five times to get a reliable average figure. After many tries, I
finally realized that (1) When you first start up, you have to type your ISP's
phone number and choose the correct modem; (2) I had to repeat the ATZ part
too, and (3) I just had to allow more time after the first LOGIN prompt. I'd get
LOGIN, I'd type +++, and then I'd wait. After it said OK, it would do nothing,
and then was the time to type AT&V1. And then, when I did finally connect and

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get the information, it didn't look anything like the site at

http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, and it didn't have any figure called
"line quality." So I gave up on this thing. (Later, I wound up doing more modem
configuration. See point 181.)
(h) Folder Modifications: Graphics. Using Windows Explorer, I went to the
E:\Graphics folder where I intended to keep images. I right-clicked on it and
chose Properties | General | Enable Thumbnail View. That way, whenever I
selected View | Thumbnails on the Windows Explorer menu bar, I would be able
to see little representations of my actual images. I tried this for folders
containing documents, but it doesn't work. Windows Explorer, unlike
PowerDesk Explorer, doesnt give you a picture of the actual document, just an
icon representing a document, and the process of turning on thumbnails inserts a
hidden DESKTOP.INI that will appear on your file list if you've got Explorer set
to show all files. For viewing the actual documents, apparently you have to
right-click and choose Quick View or use a program like PowerDesk. (See point
135.)
114. ScanDisk Problem. In a previous episode, we had major problems with
drive E. (See point 84.) I thought I had taken care of those problems for the time
being. (See point 85.) Along about this time, I was wrapping up some of the
foregoing adjustments and was going online on the AMD machine to see if there
were any other low-risk tweaks I could be applying at this stage in the game. I
remembered those old problems with drive E and decided to run ScanDisk
(thorough) on it. I don't know if having other programs open was a cause of
what happened next, but for whatever reason I got a message that there wasn't
enough space on drive C to remember what was being changed on drive E. (I
didn't get the exact text of the message, but I think it was something like that.)
This was troubling on two counts: (a) I had more than 250 MB free on C, and (b)
I really didn't want any more problems with E. I tried Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill active
programs, but the system froze, and I wound up having to do a reset. While I
was at it, I made it a cold boot. Then I ran ScanDisk again -- this time, with no
major application programs running. It got most of the way through drive E -back to the neighborhood where the bad sectors had been located previously -and then it stopped. As with the first crash, the mouse was barely crawling. I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del and got no response for several seconds, and then a blue screen
telling me that the system had become unstable. I hit the computer's Reset
button and, although the BIOS was set to boot from C first, it apparently saw no
program files there, because it gave me a message indicating that it couldn't boot
from the CD-ROM (which was set to second in line in the BIOS). I hit Ctrl-AltDel, and this time Win98 booted OK. I hit Shut Down | restart, and I intercepted
and booted into real DOS. I ran SCANDISK E: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE
/NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It slowed down significantly at the same place

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where the Windows version of ScanDisk had stalled, but it didn't die -- leading
me to think that perhaps the Windows version hadn't really died either, but had
just been working very slowly; unfortunately, the Windows version hadn't
reported (or I hadn't asked for) enough information to indicate that it was still
going strong. But I decided that, no, it really had died, because that time it had
been silent, but now, on this DOS rerun, I could hear the disk grinding away.
Anyway, after being stalled for a while, ScanDisk gave me the message that drive
E had sustained physical damage, and then it put me back to the C prompt when
I wasn't looking, before I could get the final tally on the damage. The last I had
seen, it had found a total of four additional bad clusters, out of 157,935. That was
not much, but it was also not good. Coming so soon aftev the very thorough
scrubbing I had given it the last time around, it suggested that the disk was
slowly dying. These new bad clusters were back in that same bad section, so I
decided to go ahead with the plan to create a separate hidden partition for the
damaged area. I tried to run ScanDisk again, but I got "Write fault error reading
drive C." I ran PartitionMagic from the floppy. It was very slow in starting. I
could hear the hard disk (or something) trying again and again to recognize
something. Finally, it started with "Partition table error # 121 found." According
to the manual, this error # 121 was "The first sector of the drive cannot be read." I
left PartitionMagic and ran Norton Disk Doctor (normal test, not thorough) from
D:\DOS_UTIL. It corrected some errors on C and E. On E, it identified the first
bad block as occurring at approximately sector 965,000 out of 1,265,985. That, by
my calculation,was about 76% of the way through drive E. The last bad block
occurred at approximately sector 1,175,000, or about 93% of the way through.
The size of drive E was 618 MB, so it seemed that the bad area began at about 470
MB and ended at about 575 MB. Drive E came at the end of the first hard disk, so
that last piece of about 43 MB would have to stand by itself. I decided it wasn't
worth the bother and that I may as well include it in the hidden partition.
Thanks to Disk Doctor, PartitionMagic was now able to access the drive. I
started PartitionMagic from D:\DOS_UTIL and used it to reduce drive E to 465
MB, leaving a heartbreaking 153 MB of useless space after it. I decided not to
bother putting that free space into a hidden partition; I just let it sit. I ran Norton
Disk Doctor again on E. This time, its normal test identified no errors in the new,
shrunken drive E. I was curious how closely I had calculated the beginning of
the bad part, so I went back into PartitionMagic and converted the free space to a
hidden partition after all. PartitionMagic got a mere 1% through the process
before it began to grind away, trying to recognize and work with the bad sectors.
I tried to cancel it, but it wanted to keep going. When it was done, I ran Norton's
normal test on the new partition, which I had labeled BADSPACE. Sure enough,
Norton showed the first bad sector about 5% of the way through that partition.
So I had wasted, or had allowed a cushion of, about 5% of 153 MB, or 7.7 MB.
Good enough! I went back into PartitionMagic and hid BADSPACE -- i.e.,
partition F -- which allowed the drive letters to go back to where they had been

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before (e.g., H was once again the SWAP partition). (This was a better way to
handle it; with the thing named BADSPACE, I wouldn't later wonder why there
was good free space sitting there unused. Unfortunately, this partition would
pose a quandary later. See point 239.) When PartitionMagic rebooted after
making its change, I didn't stop the system; it went on into Win98 without a
problem. I rebooted into real DOS and ran Disk Doctor on drive E for three
repetitions of its thorough test. It detected no problems. That wasn't necessarily
solid information on a decaying disk -- that's what Norton had said before -- but
since the decay appeared to be occurring at the end, there was some chance that
this disk still had some life left in it.
115. Installing PartitionMagic and DriveImage. By now, I had used these two
programs so frequently over the past year or two, and had had so few problems
with them, that I felt entirely comfortable installing them as important utilities on
my new system. They were the first non-Microsoft products I was installing (or
at least the first ones I was deliberately installing). I made the exception
primarily because I had already been using them anyway, to do things that had
seemed essential in these first stages of my program installation process. But
how much space would they take up? On the AMD machine, I had installed a
valuable little bit of freeware that I use constantly, called TreeSize. (I don't
remember where I got it -- perhaps Hotfiles.com.) I used TreeSize on the
PowerQuest folder containing the program files for PartitionMagic and
DriveImage. It told me that those program files occupied only 20 MB. On the
PENTIUM machine, I typed Start | Run | MSINFO32 and got the system
information that I was now using 600 MB on drive C and 284 MB on drive D.
This told me that I was still well short of my limit of 1 GB. (See point 111.)
Clearly, I had room for 20 MB of PowerQuest files. I installed PartitionMagic
and DriveImage into a PowerQuest folder on drive D (PROGRAMS). On the
AMD machine, I had reached a point of having literally dozens of different
program installation folders, so that it was time-consuming to page up or down
through different directories each time I needed to locate a specific program
folder. I decided to try to arrange my D:\Program Files folder differently this
time around. So far, it contained only a DOS_UTIL folder (see point 80) and a
Microsoft Office folder (see point 91). I reviewed the Program Files folders on
the AMD machine and decided that it would make sense to have a System
Utilities subfolder, so I created one, and that's where I installed the PowerQuest
subfolder. I chose the Custom installation for PartitionMagic, but then decided
not to use the option of installing the DOS version, since I already had that in the
DOS_UTIL folder. I installed DriveImage, and I also installed MagicMover from
the DriveImage CD. Then I rearranged the Start | Programs icons to taste. This
is when I discovered that PartitionMagic had already installed MagicMover, in
its own folder. So I went into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and
uninstalled PowerQuest MagicMover. The uninstall seemed to be complete, but

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the MagicMover folder I had created for the purpose was still there, with one
program file in it. I deleted these. The MagicMover folder under PartitionMagic
was still there, with its program files. I rebooted. The MagicMover shortcut
under Start | Programs was no longer able to locate MagicMover.exe. I clicked
on PowerQuest's Uninstall PartitionMagic icon and uninstalled PartitionMagic;
then I rebooted and reinstalled PartitionMagic from CD. This time, I didn't
install the duplicative MagicMover. I started PartitionMagic; it seemed to run
OK. Within PartitionMagic, I clicked on Tools | MagicMover, and it started OK
too. MagicMover also ran from the program icon. After arranging the icons
again, I ran MSINFO32 again. I wasn't using any more space on C, but I was
using 305 MB on D.
116. Standardizing the CD Image Process. At this point, I might not have made
every possible conservative adjustment to Windows 98 and Office 97, but I had
begun to reach a point of diminishing returns. Most of the adjustments I now
wanted to make, or was now hearing about, would require Registry editing or
other riskier tinkering. I did not intend to do anything that had a genuine
likelihood of screwing things up; nevertheless, the level of risk for some of these
other changes felt like it might be higher. So it seemed like a good time to make
another disk image file. I also thought I would try to standardize my procedure
for preparing such disk images, so as to do it more efficiently than last time. (See
point 111.) The steps I took, at this point, were as follows:
(a) I double-checked to make sure that the Temporary Internet Files folder was
still on drive H, in which case I would not need to empty it out for this CD,
which would be addressing only drives C and D. (See point 53.)
(b) I cleared the Documents menu. (See point 54.) (Later, I discovered that I
could automate this step by running the CLR_DOCS.BAT file. (See point 120(i).)
I automated it fully by calling that file from within the CD_PREP.BAT file shown
in point 116(h). To call the file (i.e., to keep DOS from fully detouring to it and
forgetting the rest of what was in CD_PREP), I used this command: CALL
CLR_DOCS.BAT. I put that command immediately after the lines that cleared
the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder. Eventually, I decided it was more direct and
easier to proofread the file if I just put the actual DELTREE line from CLR_DOCS
into CD_PREP, instead of calling CLR_DOCS.)
(c) In Windows Explorer, I right-clicked on the Recycle Bin and emptied it.
(Later, I discovered that I could automate this step by creating and calling a
CLR_RECY.BAT file, and therefore I added the corresponding lines to
CD_PREP.BAT, as just described. (See point 120(i).))

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(d) I spiffed up drives C and D by running ScanDisk (thorough) and Disk

Defragmenter. (See points 78 and 84.)
(e) To reassure myself that I was backing up a good, working system, I ran the
System File Checker. (See point 55.) While I was at it, I also ran Registry
Checker. Later, I heard that System File Checker can restore original files rather
than updated files, which could mess up anything that you may have updated
through Windows Update (see point 15), so after that I removed SFC from my
bag of tricks.
(f) I rebooted into real DOS and ran the main line from MAINT_WK.BAT (see
point 105(h)) (i.e., DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\*.*). (This, too, later
became a part of CD_PREP.BAT.)
(g) I ran the file-listing program (see point 80), which I had renamed to be
LIST_ALL.BAT. I ran it on drive C, renamed the resulting file list, and ran it
again on drive D -- rediscovering, the hard way, that I had to be careful to type
the backslash after the drive letter. That is, LIST_ALL C:\ would give me a full
file list for drive C, but LIST_ALL C: would give me only the list of files for the
folder that C happened to be set to at that time, plus its subfolders.
(h) To the extent I was able to do it, I automated the task of shutting off the
attribute bits. I did this by building upon the previous experience (see point 88)
to create the following batch file, which I called CD_PREP.BAT:
REM This is CD_PREP.BAT.
REM This file makes lists and changes bits before burning a CD.
REM Get rid of unneeded temp files
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
REM Delete earlier file lists that might get in the way
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
if exist c:\temp\arc_bits del c:\temp\arc_bits
if exist c:\temp\c_bits del c:\temp\c_bits
if exist c:\temp\d_bits del c:\temp\d_bits
REM Try to shut off archive bits in all copies of MSCREATE.DIR
c:
cd \
attrib -r -h -a mscreate.dir /s
attrib +r +h mscreate.dir /s
d:

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cd \
attrib -r -h -a mscreate.dir /s
attrib +r +h mscreate.dir /s
REM Shut off other attribute bits, to the extent possible
attrib -a c:\*.* /s
attrib -a d:\*.* /s
REM Run LISTBITS.BAT to produce list needed to revise CD_ATT.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call listbits c:\
ren filelist.txt c_bits
call listbits d:\
ren filelist.txt d_bits
copy c_bits+d_bits arc_bits
del c_bits
del d_bits
REM Shut off archive bits on hard-core remaining files
call cd_att.bat
After running these various parts separately, I added the DELTREE command
(see point 116(f)) to the start of CD_PREP.BAT. Having switched back and forth
between DOS and Windows a couple of times in the course of getting this right,
preparing the Excel spreadsheet, etc., I ran through the whole process shown
above once more. Then, after running CD_PREP.BAT, I reviewed the resulting
ARC_BITS list as my last step before making the image file, to satisfy myself that
all the archive bits were shut off. The second time through, there were actually
three new files that should have gone on the CD_ATT.BAT, but instead I just
used CHATT.BAT (see point 88) from D:\DOS_UTIL to shut off their archive bits
manually.
(i) Without going back into Windows (which would turn on a bunch of archive
bits all over again), I ran DriveImage to create the image file. Since I was in Real
DOS, I ran DriveImage from the floppy, to avoid the previous problem of trying
to run DriveImage from the drive that I was imaging. (See points 86 and 115.) It
would have been OK to run it from the Windows version too, if I had been in
Windows already and hadn't cared about the archive bits; the Windows-based
version of DriveImage reboots into DOS anyway in order to create its image files
and thus somehow manages to be able to create an image even of the hard disk
on which the Windows version is located. (See points 58, 103, and 115.) To
create my image file that held the contents of drives C and D, I again chose the

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Maximum Compression and Verify Disk Writes options. In about an hour, this
converted my total of 908 MB into an image file of 574 MB, continuing the 63%
compression rate. (See point 111.) I called this image file STEP_116.PQI.
(j) I immediately rebooted into Windows, opened a DOS box, and used this batch
file to create a final file list (which I had to do in Windows in order to get long
filenames):
REM This is END_LIST.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call list_all c:\
ren filelist.txt c_files
call list_all d:\
ren filelist.txt d_files
copy c_files+d_files filelist.txt
del c_files
del d_files
cls
dir
(k) I used Direct Cable Connection to move the final file list and the
STEP_116.PQI image file to the AMD computer. At the rate of 200 MB per hour
(see point 111), it took more than three hours. On the AMD computer, I placed
several items into the partition from which I would be burning the CD: the
STEP_116 image file; the DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64); and the final list of files
from C and D that were compressed into the image file. Then I used Easy CD
Creator and the Windows 98 floppy (see point 8) to make the CD bootable. I
decided not to test it at this point. The Win98 installation on the AMD computer
was fading fast -- in recent days, Windows Explorer, Word 97, and Cool Edit had
refused to work at certain times, as had other minor programs -- and I decided
that the best CD test would be, not to wipe out the nascent installation on the
PENTIUM computer, but instead to wait until the time was ripe and try a new
installation on the AMD machine, using the most recently burned CD and
reverting back to previous CDs if the most recent one didn't produce good
results. Who knew? I might need C and D on the PENTIUM computer to be in
good shape, if no CDs worked: that is, I might have to fall back on using
DriveImage to copy disk images directly from the PENTIUM computer to the
AMD machine.
117. Deciding Against TweakUI. Having made my image backup, I was ready
for more advanced adjustment of my Windows installation. TweakUI was a
Microsoft product designed to customize the Windows experience. Since last

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flirting with TweakUI (see point 109(d)), however, I had learned more about it.
Apparently there were different versions of it, and not all of these versions had
the same glowing reputation with everyone. See
http://www.pcforrest.co.uk/tweakui.htm# foreword. Among other problems,
people had encountered bugs using the tabs for My Computer, New, and IE4
(which also applies to Internet Explorer 5), and with autologon; and the Effects
section was said to be a resource hog. See
http://www.winmag.com/fixes/tweakui.htm. The version to use, it turned out,
was not the version contained in the \Tools\Reskit\Powertoy folder on my
Windows 98 upgrade CD. (See point 71.) Rather, they were recommending an
earlier version. See e.g., http://members.aol.com/axcel216/98-3.htm# TWK98.
(See also http://members.aol.com/axcel216/newtip16.htm# INITBUG and
http://members.aol.com/axcel216/web.htm.) The websites just cited also said,
however, that they would instead recommend X-Setup as a more professional
freeware alternative, unless you're a total beginner, in which case TweakUI
would be simpler to use. (If you do decide to use TweakUI, both of those sites
offer helpful advice, and so does http://newlifewin98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm, which offers a very clear way to tell
which of the Win98 versions of TweakUI you're using. For another helpful site,
see http://www.ora.com/catalog/win98nut/chapter/index.html# ref8. Note
that some TweakUI settings do not function properly and that using them can
cause problems for you. See
http://www.winmag.com/library/1999/0801/sol0060.htm. For a general
overview of TweakUI, see
http://www.pcplus.co.uk/W98Comp/ptoy/tweakui.htm.) For my purposes,
TweakUI was certainly better than editing the Registry by hand, and there sure
were a lot of people (including me) who had gotten a lot of benefit from it; but
now I was curious about X-Setup. In case I ever decided to go back to it, I also
wanted to keep these other references: http://www.ac.net/~lilesj/tweak.html
and http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/IE/WebAccess/default.asp (using
it); http://members.aol.com/axcel216/toy.htm (related notes); and
http://newlife-win98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm.
118. Adjustments Rejected. There seems to be no end to the number of ways in
which you can adjust your system. These are a few possible adjustments that I
did seriously consider and then decided not to bother with: (a) Change the
Win98 startup and shutdown screens: replace LOGO.SYS and LOGOW.SYS in
C:\WINDOWS with other bitmap (.BMP) files renamed to be LOGO.SYS and
LOGOW.SYS. (b) Use a bitmap image as an icon by renaming it to have an .ICO
extension. (c) Speed up your system by disabling all audible feedback from
Windows. To do this, go into Control Panel | Sounds | Schemes and select "No
Sounds." (d) Speed up your bootup process (and make it riskier) by selecting
Quick Power On Self Test (POST) in your BIOS. (e) To make your bootup faster,

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combine all entries from C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and C:\CONFIG.SYS (which, so

far, were tiny to nonexistent on my PENTIUM computer) into one
C:\MSDOS.BAT file. (f) Clear the Windows Explorer MRU (Most Recently
Used?) lists that drop down when you're trying to type new data into a dialog
box. For instructions on this, see
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ARTICLES/Q142/2/98.asp. I
decided that this should be an occasional thing, best done when the lists get too
long to be useful. (g) Apparently deleting Network Neighborhood from your
desktop also removes your ability to use Direct Cable Connection. (See point 93).
For many other possible adjustments, do a search online for pages whose titles
include words like "tips" and "tweaks." A good source is
http://www.winmag.com.
119. Special Windows Downloads. Now that I had once again made a backup, I
was ready to finish off the possibilities for tinkering within Windows and Office
97, using just the materials that Microsoft had provided. I made the following
additional changes:
(a) Resource Kit Sampler. The Win98 ResKit (see point 109(d)) turned out to
have already installed TweakUI. I reviewed the programs offered in the ResKit
and decided I liked some of them. Visiting the ResKit\PowerToy folder
specifically, however, I saw that, of course, the ResKit had installed the buggy
version of TweakUI contained on the Win98 upgrade CD. (See point 117.) I
decided to uninstall ResKit, reinstall it, and then put the files for the
recommended version of TweakUI in place of the ones that ResKit installed. I
didn't know that I would actually use TweakUI, but if I did, it seemed safer to
use the files from the recommended version than from the Win98 CD version.
(Note: When I installed TweakUI through the ResKit, it didn't install a TweakUI
icon in Control Panel. See point 109(c).) While reinstalling ResKit, I decided not
to put it in a special folder, in the root of D, as D:\ResKit. I reached that decision
because, although I liked the looks of the installed ResKit and thought I would
probably use some of its utilities, it didn't seem important enough to clutter up
the root just to make it slightly more DOS-accessible. Apparently it was called a
resource "sampler" because the full version was available on a CD that was
included in a book from Microsoft Press. List price seems to have been $80
originally, dropped to $70, was available at this point for $56 at Amazon.com,
and someone said they got it for $30 at Costco (which, assuming they were
talking about the same book, may have shown a reduced public interest, now
that Win2000 was coming). According to the Amazon.com reviews, there were
things anyone could use here, but it was primarily intended for the network
administrator. Apparently the book (included for free in the ResKit, but not in
printed form) was over 1,700 pages and contained a lot of details about Win98,
but still didn't answer all questions and was somewhat outdated, since it came

108

out before the latest service releases, Internet Explorer installations, etc. It
seemed that the sampler contained about 25 programs, and the full version about
75. I tried to get more information about the sampler from the Microsoft website,
but I (and others, apparently) couldn't find anything on it -- perhaps because we
weren't looking under Microsoft Press. Anyway, it wasn't that important to me.
The general online reaction seemed to be, Why not use this freebie on the Win98
CD? Nobody seemed to be raving about the full package. After reinstalling
ResKit, I rebooted, and got an error message that someone else had complained
about: "Cannot find WIN.COM, unable to continue loading Windows." Then it
put me at the DOS prompt. I looked on the AMD machine. WIN.COM was in
C:\WINDOWS. I used DIR at the DOS prompt and verified that WIN.COM was
in C:\WINDOWS there too. I cold-rebooted and it happened again. I tried to
reboot into Safe Mode; that worked. I examined AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS, since plainly we were getting far enough in the boot process to run
those and get me to a DOS prompt. Sure enough, ResKit had installed a PATH
statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT. This, I believed, was telling the system to look
only at ResKit when it wanted to find WINDOWS.COM. I put a REM in front of
the PATH statement and rebooted successfully in Normal Mode. This PATH
issue raised the question of whether I could dismantle the ResKit and use just the
programs from it that interested me, putting them in an existing folder on my
path (say, DOS_UTIL) rather than have this new addition to my PATH statement
just for a half-dozen utilities I might or might not use. They would be more
convenient that way, and I would be more likely to remember them when I
needed them. As I read through the materials accompanying the ResKit, the
specific programs from the Sampler that seemed most likely to be useful to me
were CHECKLINKS.EXE (finds and eliminates dead links and shortcuts -- a
function provided by Norton's System Checker that might give me one more
reason why I could get by with a minimal Norton installation); CLIPTRAY.EXE
(optimizes and manages the Clipboard); FILEINFO.EXE (provides detailed
information on virtually every file included in Win98 and Internet Explorer 4.0);
LFNBACK.EXE (a long filename backup utility that might help me with some of
the tasks described in this essay); QUIKTRAY.EXE (to organize icons in the
Win98 system tray); TEXTVIEW.EXE (text file viewer); TIMETHIS.EXE
(command-line tool to time how long a command took to execute); WHERE.EXE
(command-line tool to find a specified file); and WINDIFF.EXE (file and
directory comparison tool). For some reason, I couldn't find LFNBACK.EXE -maybe it ran only inside the Tools Management Console that ResKit had
installed -- but the others were all available as seemingly standalone executable
programs. I copied them over to the AMD machine, put them into a temporary
folder, and ran them one at a time. I had a few slight difficulties -- TIMETHIS
and WHERE needed to run from a command line; WINDIFF required an
additional file from the ResKit folder (GUTILS.DLL), which I supplied; likewise,
FILEINFO wanted the WIN98.MFI file -- but otherwise the programs listed

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above all seemed to run OK by double-clicking on them in Windows Explorer.

This meant that the only ones that really belonged in DOS_UTIL were TIMETHIS
and WHERE, so I put copies of those two there. For the rest, I didn't need a
PATH statement; I just needed to create shortcuts to them and put those
shortcuts into a Utilities folder somewhere on the Start | Programs menu. I also
wanted to use the shortcut to the Resource Kit Online Book, since that appeared
to be the 1,700-page monster mentioned above. Other than that, I didn't need the
whole ponderous machinery of the Tools Management Console. I created a new
sub-subfolder in Start | Programs called "Bury These," and I sank the rest of the
ResKit shortcuts in there. The whole ResKit looked to be about 11 MB, so it was
no big deal to leave it on, and that way I'd have TweakUI if I wanted it and
would also be able to revive the ResKit's machinery later if some good excuse
came along.
(b) PowerTweaks. I was ready, at long last, to revisit the PowerToys or
PowerTweaks or whatever they were called -- the other Microsoft things, similar
to TweakUI, that had confused and spooked me earlier. (See point 71.) The goal
was to sort back through the wreckage of that previous attempt and figure out
what I should and should not try to install. As I browsed around Microsoft's
website, I discovered, first, that its PowerToys -- which maybe I had first heard
about several years earlier -- were some kind of Win95 fix-up. Maybe they were
no good and had been phased out, or maybe they had been built into Win98, but
the message was clear enough: they were "not for Windows 98." See
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloaddef.asp?RLD=85. Then, at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/webaccess/, I discovered several tool
collections that were oriented toward Internet Explorer ("IE") rather than Win98;
apparently they were follow-up products that did for IE 5 what PowerToys had
done for IE 4. They were as follows: (1) IE 5 Web Accessories. These basically
seemed to add a bunch of options to your right-click (context) menu when you're
using IE. The thing is, the version of IE that was now newly installed on the
PENTIUM computer already had some of these options, either on the right-click
menu (e.g., Links and Images lists) or (in the case of Quick Search and Image
Toggler) as Favorites. (See point 109(g).) Based on a year or two of experience
with this download on the AMD machine, I felt that the only feature not
presently found on my new Win98 installation, that I would use at least
occasionally, was Zoom In, and I could replace that with the Magnifier that was
one of the Accessibility options included with Win98. (Indeed, the Magnifier
was a little disconcerting at first, but after a few minute I found that I preferred it
over the Zoom feature.) Moreover, I had found that all these options, including
some I didn't want, had tended to clog up the right-click (context) menu. So I
rejected the Web Accessories. (2) IE 5 Toolbar Wallpaper. I quickly ruled this
out. I was trying to get used to the bare minimum of toolbars in IE, and probably
wouldn't notice the difference much; even if I did have the ability to change the

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background on those toolbars, I'd probably choose a solid color to enhance

readability, and as I recalled I could do that just by changing my Display settings
in Control Panel; and as it turned out, X-Setup would allow me to adjust the
toolbar background without needing any additional download. (See point 137.)
(3) IE 5 Power Tweaks. There were three tools in this set, and although they
were pretty minor, I decided I might occasionally benefit from having them, so I
downloaded and installed them. (4) Web Developer Accessories ("WDA"). This
one offered a "View Partial Source" option that would allow me to highlight a
certain portion of a web page and look at its source code. The main benefit -- and
it would be a good one -- would be that I could quickly find out whether the
developer of a web page bothered to put any HTML targets in the text at that
point. If s/he did, I could make sure my links pointed right to that desired spot,
rather than merely to the top of the web page. So I downloaded and installed
this as well. I rebooted after installing, went into IE, and experimented. I found
that the Document Tree option (installed by the WDA, if I'm not mistaken) was
strictly over my head and was just an item of clutter on the right-click (context)
menu. But when I highlighted part of a web page, right-clicked, and chose View
Partial Source, it worked as advertised, and I rejoiced and was exceedingly glad.
It had taken me a while to get back to the point of revisiting the tweaks I had
tried to install earlier (see point 71), but I had a much more solid feeling about
the whole thing this time around.
(c) Illegal Operation. To prepare the PENTIUM computer so I could install the IE
5 Power Tweaks and the Web Developer Accessories as just described, I closed
down all open programs. To close down the Office 97 Shortcut Bar, I used CtrlAlt-Del. This gave me, for possibly the first time on this computer, the message
"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."
Worse, when I hit the Close button, the message did not go away. Hitting CtrlAlt-Del again did not give me an option to close down this message; indeed, it
did nothing at all. Fortunately, when I selected Start | Shut Down | Restart, I
found that Win98 closed itself down gracefully. Not wanting to take any
chances, I ran ScanDisk (standard, drives C and D) and System File Checker.
(See point 116(d) and (e).) I have the sense, or perhaps the superstition, that
Win98 heals itself sometimes just by rebooting (by rebooting into Safe Mode, if
necessary) so after completing these tests successfully, I rebooted. Then I tried
shutting down the Office Shortcut Bar with Ctrl-Alt-Del again. This time it did
not squawk, and I was able to proceed with installing the programs mentioned at
the end of point 119(b).
(d) RegClean. I had seen some positive comments on this program, so I went to
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q147/7/69.asp and
downloaded Microsoft's RegClean 4.1a Registry cleaner. One person
commented that it was not intended for Win98, but that's not what this Microsoft

111

site seemed to say. The instructions there indicated that I could put this
REGCLEAN.EXE in any folder and just click to run it. The instructions said that
the purpose of RegClean was to clean up unnecessary Registry entries that might
pile up over time as you install and uninstall programs. Those entries could
cause crashes and could slow down your system startup. I hoped the freeze I
had just experienced wasn't an example of that, and I felt that I probably didn't
need to run it now, on this new Win98 installation. The instructions also said
that RegClean was not intended to clean up every possible problem with the
Registry, and that the program will not change any Registry entries that it does
not understand or that might be correct. In rare cases, it said, the program can
cause problems; in such cases you need to undo the changes by double-clicking
on the most recent UNDO.REG file, which stores a record of the way things were
before RegClean ran. Anyway, I put REGCLEAN.EXE in C:\WINDOWS and
put a shortcut to it in a Start | Programs subfolder; and now that I was
sufficiently curious about it, I ran it. And what did I get on my screen, but a
dialog for WinZip, the popular zipping (and unzipping) program. I hadn't
installed it; it must have been included with RegClean itself. Anyway, this called
for a slight readjustment. If RegClean was going to consist of a bunch of files,
then I wanted to put it in its own folder called D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\RegClean. So I closed WinZip and did exactly that. Unfortunately,
WinZip couldn't put it into that kind of folder, so I put it back into D:\TEMP and
tried there. That didn't work either. I tried with the copy I had kept on the AMD
machine. It worked OK there. This was odd, but I went with it for now, and just
copied over the unzipped files to the appropriate folder on the PENTIUM
computer. I created a shortcut and double-clicked on it. RegClean ran for a halfminute and then gave me the option of going ahead and fixing errors. This is
where it created the UNDO.REG file. It said it had fixed the errors it had found,
and since it created an Undo file, I assume it did find some. I rebooted, just to
see if my system would still work, and it did. So maybe running RegClean was a
good idea. So I made a note for myself to set up a some sort of reminder that
would trigger this and other maintenance items occasionally. (Later, I found a
9/14/98 ZDNet article saying that most users should avoid RegClean. See
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347539,00.html. But
they swore by it at http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cleanup/, updated
9/25/99, so I go with the latter. Perhaps it was improved in the intervening
year. In a search of newsgroup comments, I found that Win98 users generally
seemed happy with it. But the main point seemed to be that SCANREG did the
same thing, and did it better. (See point 139.) SCANREG is the Win98 Registry
Checker program. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q183/6/03.ASP.) Later, I
decided to remove RegClean. (See point 139(a).)

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120. Still More Windows Adjustments. As I was going through the steps
described above, I came across yet more ways to adjust my system, and I realized
that I had not nearly exhausted the list of non-risky things you can do to Win98.
The tips and ideas I found worthwhile were as follows:
(a) CONFIG.SYS: Cannot Open This File. To begin the next step (see point
120(b)), I went into Start | Run | SYSEDIT. This gave me "System Configuration
Error," followed by this CONFIG.SYS error. But it had opened CONFIG.SYS,
and showed that it was a blank file. I exited the System Configuration Editor
and searched for files named CONFIG.SYS. The system had three: one in
D:\DOS_UTIL, one in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD, and one in a
PartitionMagic subfolder. I opened each in WordPad, and none was a blank file.
So apparently SYSEDIT had looked for a CONFIG.SYS file somewhere else -normally, it would be in C:\ -- and, upon failing to find it, had opened a blank
instead. To check this possibility, I ran SYSEDIT again, looked at the contents of
the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and verified that the AUTOEXEC.BAT file being
opened was located in C:\. Apparently the C:\CONFIG.SYS file had somehow
gotten deleted during all this fooling around. I recalled it being an empty file at
one point, so I copied one of the other CONFIG.SYS files to C:\, opened it, and
emptied it out. I ran SYSEDIT again, and this time it worked. After changing the
File Cache Settings as described in point 120(b), I rebooted, and that worked fine
too.
(b) File Cache Settings. A note I saw somewhere online reminded me that I had
once researched the question of setting a minimum and maximum cache. The
advice now told me to go to Start | Run | Sysedit | SYSTEM.INI, and to search
there for the [vcache] section. I did this on the AMD machine, and found that I
had entered these two settings:
minfilecache=10240
maxfilecache=10240
I don't know where I got those numbers, but I think the general concept was,
again, that you set the cache to just one size so that Windows won't waste a lot of
energy resizing it. (See point 44.) These numbers differed from the numbers
now recommended by this person online, who wanted the minimum cache to be
1024 and the maximum to be 8192. As I recalled, this was something on which
opinions had varied considerably, and it had turned out that the settings should
depend on how much RAM you have available. I decided to go with my own
research, so I put the above cache settings on the PENTIUM computer at 10240.

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(c) CONFIG.SYS Tweaks. That CONFIG.SYS file looked a little naked, so I

decided to dress it up by adding these lines to it, mostly to remind me of these
possibilities if they seemed useful in the future:
REM Use the next line if you get Out of Environment Space errors
REM shell=c:\command.com /p /e:4096
REM Make it larger than 4096 bytes if the messages recur.
REM
REM To speed up Windows, try the next line:
REM stacks=0,0
(d) Deleting GID and FTS Files. I found a suggestion that I should delete files
with GID or FTS extensions. These types, according to the tip, were created by
Windows help programs and would be recreated if needed. There certainly
were dozens of them on each of my computers. As far as I could recall, the
Windows Cleanup Wizard had not mentioned these file types. (See point 105(g).
So was it safe to delete them? One bit of advice was to do it in DOS, so that I
wouldn't be deleting any files that Windows was actively using. That made
sense, but what about the part where it said the system would recreate them?
Probing further, I found an article at
http://web.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/oe1715a.htm in which
they seem to say that these files will be reconstructed as soon as you try to do a
search in a given program's help files again. The author said you might save 2-7
MB by doing this deletion, but my reaction was that I didn't care to sit there
through all those re-creations again. Indeed, that was why I had gone into those
help files to generate indexes in the first place. (See point 69.) So I was not going
to delete the GID and FTS files.
(e) Deleting TMP and Tilde Files. Everyone seemed agreed that, as long as you
aren't working in Windows (and possibly even if you are), you can delete files
with the TMP extension, and you can also delete files whose names begin with a
tilde (i.e., the ~ character). Some people suggested that, if you're nervous about
it, you can delete these files to your Recycle Bin and leave them there a few days
before eliminating them altogether. I didn't like that suggestion, however,
because one large deletion thereafter could fill the Recycle Bin and could brush
those files right out into oblivion. Also, I had found that Word 97 often created
temporary files whose names began with a tilde, and I had sometimes used those
files to recover lost work. Instead of deleting such files or putting them into the
Recycle Bin, I decided to copy them to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP every week, right
after the MAINT_WK.BAT program had cleaned out the previous week's
collection of files from that folder. (See point 105(h).) But then I decided that it
wasn't worth writing and running a whole batch file for this purpose every
week. This probably wouldn't require my attention more than once every month

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or two, and the fastest way to do it was just to do a file-find operation in

Windows Explorer, where I could see exactly what I was deleting and where I
would get a shot at hidden TMP files too. This, too, went onto the list of
maintenance items to perform manually every now and then. I tried to automate
it, using SWEEP.COM to move files from each directory, but I found that
SWEEP.COM gets confused when it gets down into deeply nested subdirectories.
(SWEEP.COM is an old utility that you can still find online. See
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/pcmagvol/vol4n24.zip and point 57. After this effort, I
asked PC Mag if they would be interested in updating it.) Later, I found a way
to put this into MAINT_WK.BAT after all. (See point 124.)
(f) Desktop Tools Folder. I decided it would be helpful to have a toolbar that
gave me quick access to desktop-style tools -- e.g., calculator, WordPad,
magnifier -- that you might have on an ordinary desk. (This isn't what Win98
means by "desktop," but I knew what I meant.) I created the toolbar by rightclicking on the taskbar and creating a new toolbar named Desktop Tools.
Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to drag this toolbar from the taskbar
up to the Links bar at the top of the screen. (See point 105(e).) They said I was
supposed to be able to just drag it up there, but it wouldn't go. I played with it
for quite a while, and then suddenly it worked. I think what I did, in the end,
was to create a shortcut for the folder containing the shortcuts for these desktop
tools, and drag that shortcut down to the taskbar, and then fiddle with it for a
while, and then drag it up to the Links bar. (I figured out the technique later.
See point 120(o).) Then, after all that hard work, I decided I'd rather have it as a
folder with a pull-down menu as part of the Links bar itself. (See point 109(g).)
So I moved the Desktop Tools folder full of shortcuts up to become a subfolder
under the Favorites\Links folder. (Eventually, it landed in a different place. See
point 143.)
(g) Caps Lock Beep. Since I sometimes hit the Caps Lock key without knowing
it, I decided I would like a beep to tell me that I've done it. For this, I went into
Control Panel | Accessibility Options | Keyboard | Toggle Keys. To make sure
the setting would stay on, I went into Accessibility Options | General and
unchecked the Automatic Reset box.
(h) Specifying "Save In" Location. Most of the programs that I used to produce
documents, spreadsheets, and other forms of output had settings that allowed
me to specify the default location where I wanted them to save files unless
instructed otherwise. Four exceptions were Paint, Photo Editor, WordPad, and
Notepad. To specify an output location for these programs, I adjusted their
shortcuts. (It's at times like this that you appreciate not having multiple icons for
the same program scattered around. I later realized I had to do this in the
SendTo folder as well for WordPad and Notepad. (See point 113(c).)) To do this,

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I located the shortcuts. Icons for Paint and Photo Editor were on the Start |
Programs menu, and the other two were on the Desktop Tools button that I had
installed on the Links bar at the top of the screen. (See point 120(f).) In each case,
the change was similar: right-click on the program's shortcut icon, go into
Properties | Shortcut | Start In and set the locations there. In my case, I chose
the TEMP folder on F (AV, short for Audio/Video -- see point 32) for Paint and
Photo Editor, the TEMP folder on E (DATA) for WordPad, and D:\DOS_UTIL
for Notepad.
(i) Clear Documents Automatically. I created a little batch file called
CLR_DOCS.BAT, whose sole purpose was to clean out the Start | Documents
list. The file's sole command line was DELTREE /Y
C:\WINDOWS\RECENT\*.* (which will leave the folder in place and therefore
has a chance of running successfully without the necessity of rebooting to real
DOS). Another approach that someone suggested was to set up a batch file that
would use DELTREE to delete the entire Recent folder, and then set up the
Scheduler (see point 105(g)) to run this batch file every few minutes. If I had
intended CLR_DOCS to be my permanent solution, I would have made a
shortcut to it and/or would have scheduled it to run regularly (or would have
called it from within my AUTOEXEC.BAT); but I expected a tweaking program
to remove the list from my vision (see point 137(h)), so it could stay there if it
wanted, and I made sure there wasn't anything in it before making a CD image
(see point 116(b)). Similarly, I set up a CLR_RECY.BAT file for the Recycled
folder. (See point 116(c).) In this case, however, I used two lines: DELTREE /Y
C:\RECYCLED\*.* plus a similar line for the Recycled Bin on drive D.
(j) Get Rid of "My Documents" Folder. I finally learned how to remove this
turkey. (See point 46.) The key, it seems, was to make sure that each Office 97
program had some other default directory, and to do the deleting in DOS. I had
set other default directories in the programs that I intended to use (see point
102); now I opened a DOS box, typed ATTRIB -S C:\MYDOCU~1, and then
DELTREE C:\MYDOCU~1.
(k) Hourly Maintenance. On reflection, I decided I should set up an
HOURLY.BAT file to run CLR_DOCS (see point 120(i)) every hour, according to
an entry in the Task Scheduler (see point 105(g)). Then, if it turned out that a
tweaking program eliminated the need for CLR_DOCS, no harm would be done:
HOURLY would fire up, find nothing, and go back to sleep, all within one or two
seconds. And this way, while I was on the subject, I would have HOURLY
running and could add more frequently repeated tasks to it anytime I wanted. (I
could schedule each job individually in Task Scheduler, if I wanted, but I saw no
reason to clutter that program with a bunch of separate commands that would

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each require me to go through the same scheduling process, one at a time.) So

far, these were the only lines in HOURLY:
@echo off
REM This file runs other files every hour.
call clr_docs.bat
CLR_DOCS was a good candidate for this because, otherwise, every time I ran
the mouse over the Start | Documents folder, I had a slight delay while
Windows listed all those old documents that I didn't need to see. To put
HOURLY in the Task Scheduler, I used the same procedure as with
MAINT_WK.BAT. (See point 105(h).) For consistency, and to keep these
programs next to each other in file lists, I renamed HOURLY.BAT to be
MAINT_HR.BAT before scheduling it. In Task Scheduler, I ran it through the
wizard, browsed to D:\DOS_UTIL\MAINT_HR.BAT, set it to run daily at 8 AM,
and in the Advanced properties I set the Advanced scheduling to repeat the task
every 60 minutes over a duration of 23 hours and 30 minutes. Back in Windows
Explorer, I right-clicked on MAINT_HR.BAT and set Properties | Program |
Run to minimized, and I checked the "close on exit" box. (I revised MAINT_HR
again later. See point 306.)
(l) Shrink Desktop Icons. I right-clicked on the desktop and chose Properties |
Appearance | Item | Icon and set its size to 16. This was a little too small, so I
tried 24. Then I realized that the monitor was still set to the basic 640 x 480
mode. (See point 15.) I decided to postpone this item until I began to customize
my hardware settings for each of my computers separately, and see then whether
I needed tiny icons. I later heard that any size smaller than 31 causes the little
arrows to disappear from your shortcut icons. Some people consider that good
news, but it disturbs me. I don't mind deleting a shortcut, but I would like some
advance warning before unintentionally deleting an actual executable program.
(m) Multiple File Associations. By default, if I right-clicked on a TXT file in
Windows Explorer and chose Open, it would open in Notepad (unless, if it was
too big, it would open in Wordpad). (I assume it's this way because Notepad
opens so quickly.) I wanted the option to open TXT files in Word 97 as well. To
set this, I went into Windows Explorer | View | Folder Options | File Types. In
the Registered File Types window, I went down to the Text Document entry and
chose Edit | New. On the Action line, I typed "Open in Word." To fill in the
Application line, I couldn't remember offhand exactly where the Word 97
program EXE file was, so I right-clicked on Start and chose Explore, went to the
Word shortcut in the Start menu, right-clicked on it and chose Properties, and
copied the Target from the Shortcut tab there. I didn't know whether to Use
DDE, so I left that box blank. I tried it on a TXT file, and it worked. Later, I

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realized that this duplicated the SendTo option that I had created for Word (see
point 113(c)), and I really didn't need more right-click clutter, so I removed it.
(n) Shortcut to Desktop. "Coolswitching" is the act of using Alt-Tab to switch
from one open window to another. (If you hold Alt-Tab a moment before
releasing, you'll see icons for each program, with a brief descriptive text
underneath, and you'll note that the icons are arranged with the most recently
visited ones coming first.) I heard that you can create an open window
containing the desktop by double-clicking on My Computer to open a window,
making sure View | Toolbar is checked in that window, and clicking on the
yellow folder with the up-arrow on it. This gets you to a window entitled
"Desktop." Now you can coolswitch to this folder, and there's an icon for it on
the taskbar, so you can also use your mouse to get to it. I did this much. The
problem was that the folder would go away each time I would reboot. I knew
there was a simple way to make a permanent shortcut to it, but I couldn't
remember what it was. This wasn't your ordinary folder. I couldn't right-click
on it in Windows Explorer to create a shortcut. So I did it the hard way: I
selected Favorites | Add to Favorites. Then I went into C:\Windows\Favorites
and looked at the new resulting shortcut. Simply enough, it pointed to
C:\Windows\Desktop. Was that what I wanted? To find out, I went to
C:\Windows\Desktop in Windows Explorer, right-clicked on it, and chose
Create Shortcut. It seemed to create a shortcut, but I had no idea where it went.
I searched for all files whose names contained the word "desktop," and found a
"Shortcut to Desktop" in C:\Windows. (Thus, I learned that shortcuts seem to be
created in the parent folder.) I tried this shortcut, and it took me to the folder I
had created, not to the actual desktop -- which explained why it had a plain old
folder icon instead of the shovel icon. So that was the answer. This folder-style
icon was the one that I could put somewhere in the Start menu if I wanted to
have direct access to the desktop folder. By contrast, the shortcut that I had
created in Favorites had the shovel icon, and when I clicked on it, it didn't do
anything: it took me to neither the actual desktop nor the folder, so I deleted it. I
noticed, by the way, that the folder-style shortcut no longer showed me
everything on the desktop, as the original folder had done. It showed items that
I had created, such as the desktop shortcut to Device Manager (see point 112(e)),
but not the items that Win98 put there (e.g., My Computer). I hoped to put this
folder-style shortcut to good use, but I wound up deleting it later. (See point
120(r).)
(o) Toolbar Status Review. At this point, I had three active toolbars: the Links
toolbar, at the top of the screen (see point 109(g)); the Office 97 Shortcut Bar, at
the left side of the screen (see point 102); and the Suites toolbar, occupying a
small part of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (see point 113(e)). I had set
the properties for all of these bars to include Auto Hide, so they weren't visible

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until I moved the mouse cursor over to those edges. The right side of the screen
was still available for a toolbar, but I didn't plan to put one there because I found
that I often moved the mouse too far over to that edge and pulled out the hidden
toolbar, when all I meant to do was click on the horizontal scrollbar. The only
remaining location for a toolbar, other than to double up with an existing
toolbar, was to create a floating toolbar. For this, I had to create a toolbar, drag it
out into the middle of the screen, and position the cursor at its edges to resize it.
I had difficulty dragging toolbars until I discovered that (1) you have to drag
them by clicking on the bar at their left edge and (2) you get better results when
there are no programs maximized -- that is, when you can see the desktop
plainly.
(p) Floating Toolbar. I created a folder called "Always On" in the Toolbars
subdirectory in my Start | Programs folder, and I put one icon in that folder that
I wanted to have visible at all times. This icon was the folder-style desktop icon
that I had just discovered. (See point 120(n).) The purpose of this icon was, I
thought, to give me a place to drag pieces of text to. (See point 120(r).) Then I
created a toolbar for this Always On folder as described above (see point 113(e)),
dragged that toolbar out into the center of the screen, resized it to be as small as
possible, right-clicked to set it to be Always on Top, and dragged it as far down
in the bottom right corner of the screen as I could go without docking it onto a
side or bottom toolbar. It concealed most of the clock there, but if I held the
mouse on the clock for a minute, I'd get a tool tip that gave me the date and time.
I right-clicked on the folder icon and changed it to the desktop shovel icon.
Unfortunately, tiny as it was, the Always On floating toolbar still got in the way
sometimes -- especially once I learned that I could get rid of the clock down in
the system tray at the bottom right corner of the screen -- and that I preferred life
without that clock -- by right-clicking on it, choosing Properties, and unchecking
the "Show Clock" box. (The tiny floating toolbar used by the ICQ chat program
was the only one I had ever found that I could squeeze into space that no
programs would be using; this Always On toolbar at its smallest size (and
without the folder icon, which turned out to be unnecessary) was still several
times larger than that.) I could have customized the Always On toolbar so that it
would not be Always on Top, but that would have made it less accessible as a
place to drag pieces of text to. Eventually, I found a better approach, and thus
deleted this Always On toolbar. (See point 120(r).)
(q) Right- and Left-Edge Toolbar Options. Revisiting the question (see point
120(o)), I found that I had more right-edge toolbar options than I had thought. If
I shut off Auto Hide, the right-edge toolbar would no longer irritate me by
jumping up every time I tried to use the vertical scroll bar. This made the toolbar
permanently visible, but I found that I could drag its left edge to the right, so as
to make it fairly narrow and unobtrusive. And if I made it Always on Top, it

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would always be available to drag things to. (See point 120(r).) Now that I had
cured the pop-up problem on the right edge, I turned to the left edge. The Office
Shortcut Bar (see point 102) was causing problems with none of the programs I
had installed so far, but I knew it would get in the way when I began to use Cool
Edit 2000, which often required me to work with the left edge of the screen. (See
point 157(a).) I saw no reason to resolve the left-edge pop-up problem by setting
the big Office Shortcut Bar to be Always on Top on the left edge of the screen,
thereby taking another, bigger bite out of my available workspace. I could have
moved it to the top of the screen, but it would either obscure or be obscured by
the Links bar I had up there already. (See point 109(g).) I decided to try a
different approach: I right-clicked on it and customized it to be Auto Hide and
not Always on Top, and then I dragged it across to the right edge of the screen.
It docked itself to the right of the permanent right-edge toolbar that I had just
created. Now it would come up only if I moved the cursor to the right, past the
vertical scroll bar and also past the permanent right-edge toolbar. There might
still be times when it would pop up when I didn't want it, but that was less likely
because it was more out of the way now; and even if it did happen, the pop-up
Office Shortcut Bar wasn't so much wider than the permanent right-edge bar that
it would entirely cover both the permanent bar and the vertical scroll bar; so it
might not actually get in my way much at all. (This was not my ultimate
solution to the problem, however. See point 120(ab).)
(r) Dragging Things to the Desktop. I had heard that you could drag a piece of a
document to the desktop and this would create an icon there, and when you
clicked on that icon, it would open up that document and take you back to the
place where you had been in that document. This was my reason for creating the
desktop folder. (See point 120(n).) When I experimented, however, I found that
this was not how it worked on my machine. If I dragged a piece from a Word
document to the desktop, I got a "Document scrap" that consisted only of the
piece I had dragged, not the entire document. I found that this dragging
technique worked with Word and WordPad excerpts, but not with pieces from
Notepad, Excel, Outlook 98, or Internet Explorer. (For the approaches that
failed, copy and paste didn't work either, because right-clicking on the Scraps
toolbar (see paragraph (s), below) always brought up a toolbar-related context
menu (with options like "Show Title"), not a document-related menu (with
options like Cut and Paste).) (Later, I discovered that I was supposed to be
dragging the excerpt with the right mouse button, not the left, and choosing
"Create shortcut here." I did this with the Desktop Folder that I created later, and
it worked just fine. (See point 120(ac).))
(s) Dragging Things to a Folder. The dragging technique just mentioned also
worked when I dragged to a folder instead of to the desktop. A folder seemed
likely to be more useful for me: I usually used my programs in maximized

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windows, and thus rarely saw the desktop. Hence, I created the floating Always
On toolbar. (See point 120(p).) I found, however, that in addition to the
problems I had with floating toolbars, I also had not chosen my folder well. The
document scraps that I dragged to this toolbar were stored in the Toolbars
subfolder under the Start | Programs menu. That subfolder, residing on drive C,
was no place to store documents. So I got rid of it and decided, instead, to create
a folder named E:\Temp\Scraps (drive E was named DATA), and I created a
new Scraps Toolbar based on that folder. This was the permanent right-edge
toolbar described a moment ago. (See point 120(q).) I went into Windows
Explorer; right-clicked on that Scraps folder and created a shortcut to it, which
went into the subfolder's parent directory (i.e., into E:\Temp); dragged that
shortcut to the head of the new Scraps toolbar (i.e., ahead of the document scraps
that I had dragged there during my experimentation); and right-clicked on it and
renamed it "View Scraps." Each scrap added its own little page-like icon to the
Scraps toolbar, but since those icons told me virtually nothing about the scraps, I
decided to use the space for other things. To do this, I moved the Suites toolbar
(see point 113(e)) up right below the Scrap toolbar. This way, if there were any
document scraps in the Scraps folder, the toolbar would have space only to show
a ">>" that I could click on to get those scraps; or I could just click on the Scraps
folder icon to bring up a little window containing the full list of scraps. I could
select them all and open them all at once as separate documents in the programs
from which they had come (i.e., either Word or WordPad). I figured the SendTo
toolbar could keep a folder-style icon (see point 120(u)), since folders was what it
was all about, but I changed the Scraps icon by right-clicking and selecting
Properties | Shortcut | Change Icon. Since I figured I would be constantly
deleting things from this folder, I protected that icon by right-clicking on it and
setting its Properties | General tab so that it would be Read-Only. Finally,
somewhere along the way, I found that although I could not drag text from a
web page to Scraps, I could drag the little icon at the left end of the Internet
Explorer Address bar to Scraps. I figured this would be useful to preserve a
quick way to find a web page I was looking at, at those times when Windows
was looking like it might crash.
(t) SendTo SendTo. In my SendTo folder, I now had subfolders named Folders,
Programs, and Other Destinations. (See point 113(c).) Under Folders, I had an
entry called Temp Folders, and I created a new one called Data Folders, so that I
could quickly send a document directly to the default folders containing e.g., my
Word and Excel files. Under Programs, I had Word, Excel, and other programs.
(See point 120(m).) Under Other Destinations, I now added a folder called
Unsorted. The purpose of this folder was to contain new items that I might
decide to add to my SendTo options, in existing or future folders. (See e.g., point
120(u).) To enable this option, I just created a shortcut to the Unsorted folder,
put it in the Other Destinations folder, and renamed it "Add This Item to

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Unsorted." I used this shortcut to accumulate the list of folders that belonged in
the Data Folders group. The basic idea here is that a destination has to exist in a
SendTo folder before you can send anything there, and this shortcut is the
destination for items (i.e., folders) that don't yet exist in Unsorted.
(u) Folders Toolbar. I began to see a need for another toolbar, one that would
take me to various folders quickly. If I just wanted to send a file to those folders,
I could add a SendTo item (see point 113(c)); but if I wanted to see and work with
their contents, I needed something different. Right now, for instance, I wanted to
get to the SendTo folder so that I could organize the items that I had just added
to the Unsorted subfolder there. (See point 120(t).) I didn't want a complete list
of folders, of course -- Windows Explorer gave me that, and the whole point was
to avoid having to page down through many folders to reach a buried one like
SendTo. I also didn't see any need to create a new list of frequently visited
folders, since I already had a good start on that in the SendTo folder. All I really
needed was another small, one-icon folder on the right toolbar (like the Scraps
folder) that would point to SendTo. (See point 120(s).) The subfolders under
SendTo just contained shortcuts to the actual folders, but these shortcuts worked
fine to get me to the folders themselves. (See point 113(c).) Thus, I created a new
toolbar based on C:\Windows\SendTo and dragged it to the right side, to share
that edge with the Scraps and Suites toolbars. Again, to keep it compact, I
temporarily dragged the Suites toolbar off to float, getting it out of the way; and
then, after I had installed this Folders toolbar, I brought Suites back in as the
bottom toolbar and squeezed it right up against the Folders toolbar.
(v) Dynamic SendTo. I thought it would be handy to have a self-updating list of
most-recently-visited folders in SendTo. The basic idea was to ask a program
like HOURLY.BAT (see point 120(k)) to call some other program, each hour (or
at least each day), that would examine all files on selected disks, take note of the
dates on which they were last revised, make a list of the files that were modified
within the last 72 hours, and produce a list of the folders in which those recently
modified files appeared. I could have done that much by using the information
gathered in LIST_ALL.BAS. (See point 116(g).) The part that I didn't know how
to do, unfortunately, was to automatically convert those folder names into Win98
shortcuts in a folder called C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Most Recent. I record
the idea here nevertheless, in case I later discover a way to automate that last
part of the process.
(w) Screen Saver Shortcuts. Traditionally, I had used Flying through Space as
my screen saver. I thought I might be able to use a shortcut to set my screen
saver, so that I could use one click to change screen savers instead of the multistep process of going into Control Panel | Display. I made a shortcut to
C:\Windows\System\Flying Through Space.scr. Unfortunately, this only

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turned on the screen saver for the moment, and did not change my default screen
saver, so I deleted the shortcut. It would still be useful for someone who just
wants a fast screen saver, although I note that the Office Shortcut Bar already
comes with that feature. Another option would be to right-click on the taskbar
and choose Minimize All Windows.
(x) Removing Extraneous Screen Savers and Control Panel Elements. There were
some screen savers that I felt confident I would never use. Each screen saver was
powered by an SCR file in C:\Windows\System. I sorted the contents of that
folder by clicking on the Type heading and marked the ones I didn't plan on ever
using. Rather than delete them, however, I decided to save them to a
C:\Windows\System\Extraneous Items folder. (As you'll see, that folder name
stands out among the DOS-style names of the other subfolders under
C:\Windows\System.) Similarly, each Control Panel element had a
corresponding CPL file in C:\Windows\System, and there were a few of them
(FindFast, Fonts, Game Controllers, Passwords, and Users) that I didn't think I
would need. These, however, had short filenames and therefore were not as easy
to identify in C:\Windows\System. Also, as I thought about it, I realized that I
had repeatedly had the experience of clicking on some previously unused item in
the Control Panel in order to work out some kind of bug. This, I felt, was not as
innocent as shedding a couple of unused screen savers. I decided not to remove
any Control Panel elements after all, with one exception. Following the advice of
many people, I made an exception for FINDFAST.CPL, which apparently drags
down your system more than it's worth. I added it to the Extraneous Items
folder, and eventually I compressed the contents of that folder into a ZIP file.
Later, I found that X-Setup made it easier to hide or unhide Control Panel items.
(See point 137(b).) Unfortunately, this FindFast item wasn't on their list. So I left
it changed here and didn't use X-Setup for that.
(y) Mouse Speed. I went into Control Panel | Mouse | Buttons and set the
double-click speed slow, because I was sometimes a little slow on the draw with
the mouse and would wind up getting two single clicks (i.e., changing the name
of the file instead of opening it). I also sped up the pointer under the Motion tab
by just one notch. The tradeoff there is that, if you set it too fast, it becomes
harder to get the mouse targeted on small things you want to click on -- it shoots
right past them.
(z) Windows Text Files. Following a suggestion in
http://www.cots.com/html/body_general_1.htm, I searched (in Windows
Explorer, I used Tools | Find | Files) in C:\Windows (but not its subfolders) for
all files ending in TXT. I selected them all, right-clicked on the group of them,
and chose Quick View. This opened a boatload of viewers, some of which
informed me that I couldn't access the file in question. I closed the viewers that

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showed me a file with no useful information for me, including a number of log
files that apparently came into existence during the installation of various
Windows programs. I also closed the ones that were over my head. The
following files remained: PRINTERS.TXT (see point 224(a)) and TIPS.TXT (see
point 120(aa)).
(aa) Rooted Folders. According to TIPS.TXT (see point 120(z)), I could have
created "rooted" folders in Windows Explorer -- that is, I could have doctored a
copy of Explorer so that it would automatically open in a specified folder. The
options were to open Explorer in either Explorer View (showing what you
normally see in Explorer, with folders on the left side and files on the right) or
Open View (showing just the file part). I could even command this rooted folder
to select and/or open a certain item in the specified folder. I had noticed that my
Folders toolbar (see point 120(u)) opened its folders in Open View, whereas I
would have preferred Explorer View, and at first I hoped that maybe this Rooted
Folder concept could change that; but as I thought about it, I didn't see how that
would work, since the Folders toolbar was relying on SendTo shortcuts, which
(as far as I could tell) I couldn't program to open in any special way. Maybe I
could have designed a BASIC program to create a regularly updated set of
rooted folder commands to mirror the latest developments in my set of SendTo
shortcuts, but it didn't seem worth the work. And I really didn't want yet
another set of links to folders lying around. Besides, I had noticed that I could
use the left and right arrows in the folders opened by my Folders toolbar to
accomplish approximately the same thing as I would have accomplished by
opening those folders in full Explorer View. I figured that I'd just have to wait
for some future insight to tell me how I could put rooted folders to any practical
use. Finally, I found that I could not figure out how to tell Windows Explorer to
open up without expanding drive C, which I wanted because half the time I was
going somewhere other than drive C and I didn't like having to collapse it each
time I used WinEx. (Later, I found that PowerDesk's replacement for Windows
Explorer did do what I wanted in this regard, as long as I saved the screen size
and location by holding Ctrl-Shift while clicking on the X in the upper right
corner. Note that this same trick works for some other windows too, but not
necessarily for those that open inside another program. Apparently Windows
can remember only a limited number of settings this way, so you have to redo it
sometimes for some windows.)
(ab) Problems with the Office 97 Shortcut Bar. I rebooted and did a number of
things after repositioning the Office Shortcut Bar on the right edge of my screen.
During these activities, I had no problem with the Office Shortcut Bar. At one
point several days later, however, I found that it was no longer willing to reside
at the extreme right edge of my screen. Instead, it had repositioned itself at the
left edge of the vertical toolbar that ran down the right side of my screen. (See

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point 120(q).) Thus, I had to go through it every time I wanted to hit one of the
buttons on the right edge. I went online and found that other people had had
repeated problems with this shortcut bar's tendency to vanish or otherwise
behave erratically. I tried resizing and moving a couple of the right-edge
toolbars around, but this did not fix the problem. Besides, I didn't want to have
to go through all those steps repeatedly, perhaps many times a day, as some
people were doing. I had never had that problem before; then again, I had never
before tried to position it on the same edge as another toolbar. I had had a
similar problem, though: on the AMD machine, I had found that, when set to
Auto Hide, the toolbar would not come up when I was running Word in fullscreen mode. As I thought about it, I decided that the Office Shortcut Bar had
not been perfect for me. It did present a number of progam icons, but they were
divided among three separate sub-toolbars, and I often had to stop and think for
a minute to remember which of those sub-toolbars contained the icon for the
program I wished to run. (The toolbars I had selected were called Office,
Desktop, and Internet. Other choices were possible. (See point 120(q).) I needed
several toolbars because the program icons I wanted wouldn't all fit on one
toolbar. They might have, if Microsoft hadn't designed the thing to allow a lot of
space for the name of the toolbar (e.g., "Office") running vertically down the
toolbar.) Another problem with the Office Shortcut Bar was that it was actually a
running program. I didn't know whether it dragged down any of the system's
resources, but I did know that it took an extra few seconds to load, each time I
booted the machine, and also that I had to shut it down every time I wanted to
install software or run diagnostics or system repair utilities. For all these
reasons, I decided, instead, to accept the suggestion to shut off the Office
Shortcut Bar. I right-clicked on Start, chose Explore, went into the Start Menu |
Programs subfolder called StartUp, and moved the three icons that Office had
installed there (Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar, and Office
Startup) to another subfolder that I had created to hold StartUp items that I
might want to put back on my StartUp roster someday but did not want to use
now, which I had called Other Startup Icons.
(ac) Replacing Office Shortcut Bar with Desktop Toolbar. Before rebooting, I
consulted the Office Shortcut Bar, to see which program icons I had there and to
decide where else I could put them, now that the Office Shortcut Bar would no
longer be installed automatically. The vertical toolbar at the right edge of the
screen was the obvious candidate: so far, it contained only three icons. (See
point 120(u).) I was not sure it would have space for all these program icons,
however. Instead, I elected to use a divide-and-conquer strategy. For the icons
on the Desktop sub-toolbar (see point 120(ab)), I decided to create my own
Desktop Toolbar. I could have used Win98's Desktop toolbar, but it showed
every item on the desktop, including some that didn't interest me. I hoped that a
tweaking program would eventually hide those items (see point 145(j)), but I did

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not yet know for sure that it would, and in the meantime I didn't want to have to
choose among all those icons every time I used this toolbar. Also, I believed my
own Desktop Toolbar would have several advantages. To create this toolbar, I
went into Windows Explorer and opened the Toolbars subfolder of my Start |
Programs folder. I added a new subfolder there called Desktop. Other had said
that I could right-click in this subfolder, choose New | Shortcut, and type
C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /root to create a folder that would contain
every item on my desktop. As I say, this wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I
tried it anyway. For me, it didn't work. Clicking on the resulting shortcut did
nothing. So I was forced to take the same approach as I had taken the last time I
had worked on this problem (see point 120(n)): I created a shortcut to
C:\Windows\Desktop, renamed it "Win98 Desktop," and put it in this Desktop
subfolder under Start | Programs. As before, this gave me only the items that I
had added to the desktop; for example, it didn't show the Recycle Bin. Its
advantage was that, since it was a folder (or at least a shortcut to one), I could
drag things to it and they would land on the actual desktop. I thought this was
nifty, so I made a copy of this shortcut and put it into my
C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Data Folders folder. (See point 113(c).) Then, to
provide quick access to the Recycle Bin and the other actual desktop items that I
did want to visit occasionally, I did a Tools | Find | Files in Windows Explorer,
searched for "Desktop," and copied the Show Desktop item with the shovel icon
from the Quick Launch Toolbar's folder, because this was really the only icon I
needed from that toolbar. (Later, I found that you can also get to the desktop
quickly by typing Ctrl-Esc and then Alt-M.) Finally, I cut the Desktop Tools
folder (the one containing the calculator etc.) from the Links Toolbar -- that is,
from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links (see point 120(f)), where it really didn't
belong, and pasted it into this Desktop Toolbar folder. It really didn't belong
here either, but I thought maybe the word "Desktop" would eventually make this
seem like the logical place for it. These steps gave me some of what I wanted in
my customized Desktop Toolbar. Now I was ready to create the toolbar itself.
To do this, I right-clicked on the taskbar, chose Toolbars | New Toolbar, and
pointed toward this Desktop subfolder under Start | Programs. I right-clicked
on the newly created Desktop toolbar and shut off its text and title. I dragged
the left edge of this Desktop toolbar up to the top edge of the screen and installed
it next to the Links toolbar. (See point 105(e).) For some reason, I had to do this
in two stages, hauling it first to the middle of the desktop (with all other
windows minimized) and then dragging it from there to the top. Now I made
another discovery: the Desktop Tools folder was not working right. When it
was on the Links Toolbar, it served as the top item in a submenu. That is, if I
clicked on it, a pull-down menu dropped out below it, and I could slide down
and choose the desktop tool I wanted (e.g., calculator). But now, on the Desktop
Toolbar, there was no menu function. If I clicked on it, it would open up a folder
off in the middle of the screen somewhere, and I'd have to go down there to start

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my chosen desktop tool, and then I'd have to come back and close that folder.
The change in behavior seemed to accompany a change of icon. When the
Desktop Tools folder was in the Links Toolbar, it was a plain old folder, but in
the Desktop Toolbar, it became a folder with two colored dots on it. Lacking a
better solution, I dragged the folder back to the Links Toolbar, where once again
it worked as I wanted. The other problem was that I couldn't change the icons
on the folders to make them distinguishable from one another, so I had to restore
the text accompanying the icons and make the toolbar two lines high again.
(ad) Replacing Links Toolbar Text with Icons. In all this tinkering, I had noticed
that the Links Toolbar (see point 109(g)) sometimes got in the way. I had set it to
Auto Hide at the top of the screen, so as to keep it from taking up precious real
estate; but this meant that it popped up every time I moved the cursor too far
that way, which I was doing often enough. I thought it might be less obtrusive if
I could boil its two lines down to one; in that case, it seemed that even if I did
arouse it accidentally, it would be less likely to be in my way: it would just fill
the title bar, which I used only to minimize, maximize, and close windows. At
this point, I had text (e.g., "Health," "Media") next to each website icon on the
Links Toolbar. As I thought about it, I also felt that maybe it would be faster to
identify my web link pages with discrete, colorful icons, each located in its own
place on the Links Toolbar, instead of reading through the list of ten entries on
that bar to find the page I wanted. So for each page, I right-clicked and chose
Web Document | Change Icon, and then selected one that seemed fitting. The
icon files I knew of were all in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and the ones I preferred
were the Windows-style icons in SHELL32.DLL and the less orthodox icons in
PIFMGR.DLL, rather than from the four measly options available in the default
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\URL.DLL. More impressive, it seemed, were the four
billion icons available online. The first site I found offered GIF and JPG icons,
which are better suited for web pages. I downloaded a couple and used
PowerDesk (see point 135) to convert them to ICO format, but the colors were all
messed up; perhaps a different converter would have worked better. I tried
again with a more specialized search in Northern Light (title:(win98 or "win 98"
or "windows 98") and icon) and got several sites that offered files full of free
icons, but without any advance indication of what kinds of icons I was
downloading. The other option was to create my own, which I had heard I could
do just by renaming a bitmap (BMP) file to be an ICO file. I didn't have any
items I thought would be good for icons, however. Eventually, I searched
Hotfiles.com and found Icon Snatcher, a free download that I could use to search
my computer for icons that might be suitable for the job. I started to use Icon
Snatcher, but it looked like I would have to examine hundreds of files
individually in search of the icons they might contain. I bailed out of that and
just chose some reasonably good icons from the three DLLs mentioned above.
Then I right-clicked on the Links Toolbar, removed its text labels, and squeezed

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it down to one line, as I had planned. (Later, I found that I could also search for
icons in C:\WINDOWS\MORICONS.DLL (although many of those had print on
them and seemed related to various software packages, including some old ones)
and in PROGMAN.EXE and COOL.DLL.)
(ae) Replacing Office Shortcut Bar with Programs Toolbar. The Desktop Toolbar
handled some of the functions of the former Office Shortcut Bar (see point
120(ac)), but I did not yet have a complete substitute for that Shortcut Bar. The
next essential ingredient was a Programs Toolbar that would contain program
icons that had formerly been on the Shortcut Bar. The two remaining categories
of icons were the Internet icons and the Office icons. (See point 112(e).) I left the
Office Shortcut Bar icons as I had arranged them in D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office, but I also copied over the ones I wanted to a
new subfolder under my Toolbars folder (see point 113(e)) called
Toolbars\Programs\Main. That is, the toolbar would be based on this
Toolbars\Programs subfolder, and one of the folders listed under it would be
Main. A second one was, of course, Internet. I decided to add a third one for
Utilities. To each of these folders, I added icons for the programs I used
frequently, aiming to keep it down to approximately five icons in each case. This
was not a substitute for the Start | Programs menu; it was a distillation from -- a
simplification of -- the complexity that would exist on that menu when I had
finished installing dozens of different programs. I then created the Programs
toolbar, using the same method as above (see point 120(ac)), shut off its title but
not the text descriptions of the individual items, and dragged it to join the Links
Toolbar at the top of the screen. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with
these items as I'd had with the Desktop Toolbar (see point 120(ac): I couldn't get
them to present pull-down menus. I created a shortcut to the Programs
subfolder and put it in C:\Windows\Favorites\Links, hoping that this would
give me multi-level pulldown menus, but that didn't work; it just opened a
window when I clicked on it. So I moved the folders for clarity -- Main
Programs, Internet Programs, and Utility Programs -- and moved them all to
C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. Of course, that bloated the Links Toolbar. The
only way I could keep all this stuff within two lines on that Toolbar was to move
the Desktop Toolbar down to join the other toolbars on the right side of the
screen (see point 120(q)), and even then I had to shorten some folder names to
squeeze them in. This proved to be unnecessary, however. (See point 121.)
(af) Web Suite. I had created a Suites Toolbar. (See point 113(e).) The purpose of
that toolbar was to give me a single button that, if clicked, would open a number
of programs at the same time. The idea was that some projects required me to
open a predictable set of two, three, or more programs, and that this was an
easier way to get started in those projects. I had added other suites to that
toolbar. (See point 120(o).) By this time, I had realized that I could use another

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suite. This one would be for certain websites. I would not use it every time I
went online, but it would be useful once or twice a day, when I would check up
on the news, weather, and Hotmail e-mail of the morning or afternoon. I created
the toolbar itself in the same general manner as before. This time, the shortcut
pointed at a different DOS batch file, named STE_WEB.BAT. The lines of this
batch file could just be a series of commands like this: START
HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM and START HTTP://WWW.INFO.COM. This
would start a session of Internet Explorer and send it to CNN.COM and then,
immediately, to INFO.COM. But I wanted separate sessions of Internet Explorer
to run, with each ending up on the different pages that I wanted to see. To do
this, I alternated lines, as follows:
START C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE
START HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM
START C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE
START HTTP://WWW.INFO.COM
and so forth. Right now, I added just these two lines, to remind me of how this
thing worked; I figured I'd come back later, when I had the situation all sorted
out with my Favorites, and add more lines then. (See point 261.) I gave it a
unique icon, applied my changes, made it Read-Only, applied my changes again,
clicked OK, made room for it on the right-side toolbar, and there it was.
(ag) Moving the History Folder. I belatedly discovered that I could move the
History folder and that Internet Explorer would figure out a response. Using
Windows Explorer, I tried to move it to drive H, where I had put the Temporary
Internet Files. (See point 38.) It started to do it, but then gave me a sharing
violation error message. Oops. I realized I probably should have attempted to
do this in DOS, where Windows would not be using the History folder. I clicked
on Shut Down | Restart. I got a "This program is not responding" error message.
I clicked OK and rebooted into real DOS. The History folder was hidden, so it
didn't show up on a normal DIR command. After playing around with DIR and
ATTRIB for a while, and getting myself into progressively deeper levels of
hidden directories in C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY, I realized that I might have had
better luck if I'd used a Copy command instead of Cut and Paste in Windows
Explorer. I rebooted into Windows and tried that. It seemed to work. Now I
rebooted back into real DOS, made sure I was at the prompt for drive C, and
typed DELTREE C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY. I rebooted into Windows, went
online, and discovered that Windows now had History folders on both drives C
and H, and was updating them both for my current activity. I went to drive H
and typed DELTREE H:\HISTORY. I rebooted into Windows.
C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY was still there; H:\WINDOWS\HISTORY was gone.
Having returned to my starting point, I gave up.

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(ah) Conceal Cloud Logo. I didn't really mind the blue sky and clouds that filled
my screen when Windows loaded; but now that I had gotten concerned about all
kinds of Windows details, I decided I would rather see what was happening
when Windows was loading. To do this, I added the line "logo=0" (without
quotes) to the [options] section of C:\MSDOS.SYS. (I could also change this
using X-Setup. See point 137(k).) (Technically, editing MSDOS.SYS amounts to
editing your Registry, but I reserve that term for the more intimidating
procedure described in point 146.) I had to shut off its read-only attribute before
doing so and turn it back on afterwards. I rebooted and, as it turned out, I didn't
get any more details than I ordinarily got when booting, just more time to look at
the ones that were already there. I liked it better this way, though, so I left it.
Later, I went back and added the line Bootdelay=0 to remove the two-second
delay from the Windows startup that makes it easier to hit F8 and get into Safe
Mode. I also found out, eventually, that instead of setting logo=0 in
MSDOS.SYS, I could have just hit the Esc key while Windows was booting.
(ai) Freeing Leaked RAM. Applying another tip from
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/harddrive/, I did the following: (1) In
Notepad, on the AMD computer, I typed this: Mystring = Space(80000000).
(That's seven zeros.) (2) I saved the file as C:\TEMP\FREE_RAM.VBS. (3) In
Windows Explorer, I double-clicked on the file. This provoked a lot of hard disk
activity for a minute or so. (4) I noticed that my various program windows (such
as the screen on which I was writing these words) took longer to start back up
afterwards, and I decided that the program had succeeded in cleaning stuff out
of RAM. (5) Otherwise, it seemed to do no harm, so I decided it might be worth
adding to my bag of tricks. I copied it to D:\DOS_UTIL on the PENTIUM
computer and set up a Task Scheduler item (see point 105(g)) to run it once every
six hours, hoping that it would serve me as well as it served the guy at Tweak3D,
who said that it allowed him to keep Win98 running for a week without
rebooting. He recommended playing with the number (it was originally
16000000, he said) to get a setting that was right for your system. Later, I found a
more informative site (but unfortunately lost track of which one it was). This site
called the program FREEMEM.VBS and said the following: (1) You needed at
least version 5.1 of Microsoft Scripting Engines to run VBS scripts like this; MSE
came with Win98. (2) The number in parentheses was the amount by which your
free memory would increase, so you could have different VBS scripts to free
different amounts of memory. (3) The number should not exceed half of your
installed RAM. Since I had at least 64 MB on each computer, I decided that a
reasonable setting would be 24000000. (4) He said to make sure all programs
were closed before running it, but he also said that it would be reasonable to set
Task Scheduler to run it every hour, so I decided to experiment with running it
every six hours unattended and see if I had any problems.

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(aj) Resizing Desktop. I decided to try again to resize the display to 800 x 600.
Last time around, I had gotten a message that the system needed to restart
immediately in order to display things properly, and then it had refused to work
properly when I did restart. (See point 105(k).) This time, I decided that if I got
that message, I would back out of it and revert to 640 x 480 mode. So I went into
Control Panel | Display | Settings and moved the Screen Area slider over to 800
by 600, and clicked OK. No restart message. Just to be sure, I rebooted, and it
came back up fine in 800 x 600 mode.
(ak) Quick Shutdown and Restart. It seemed that, for shutting down and
restarting the computer, there were more ways than met the eye. In addition to
hardware solutions (i.e., turning off the power or hitting the reset button (if any)
on the computer), and the old Ctrl-Alt-Del, and the options that came up when
you hit Start | Shut Down, there was also a fast restart (after selecting Start |
Shut Down | Restart, hold the shift bar down when you click OK), and there
were myriad Win98 programs designed to shut you down in various times and
ways. (Search Hotfiles.com for "shutdown," or see e.g.,
http://www.topfile.com/win/Desktop/Shell_Enhancements/Quick_Shutdown
/.) (See point 128.)
(al) Always Boot in DOS. I did not ordinarily need to work in DOS, so I
ordinarily wanted my machine to boot in Windows. It was not difficult to
accomodate the occasional times when a person needed to boot into real DOS:
you could either set your BIOS to boot from a DOS floppy, or else hit F8 right
after the BIOS does its thing and then choose the Command Line option. On the
other hand, there were going to be a few times when I would need to boot into
DOS, and there was one real advantage to making that, not Windows, the
ordinary bootup. The advantage was simply that I knew how to program DOS
to go on into Windows automatically, and moreover to choose either Safe Mode
or Normal Mode; but I did not know how to program Windows to boot
automatically into DOS or into its own other mode. To set up all these
alternatives the way I wanted, then, I proceeded as follows: (1) I removed the
Read-Only attribute from C:\MSDOS.SYS, went to its [Options] section, changed
the BootGUI line to read BootGUI=0, saved MSDOS.SYS, and restored its ReadOnly attribute. This would make DOS the default operating system. (2) I booted
into DOS and added this line at the beginning of its AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT. That line would guarantee that, upon
booting, DOS would look to the BOOT_MGR file for its next instructions. (3) I
created D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT with just one line in it:
C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM. That would tell the program to load Windows. If
we left things like this, we would just have invented a roundabout way of
booting Win98 Normal Mode. My computer was now set to boot in DOS, but to

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go right on to Win98, just like before. But if I removed or altered the

BOOT_MGR file, it might stay in DOS or go to Safe Mode and do other things.
(Later, I heard that, instead of using AUTOEXEC.BAT, I could have used a
procedure that would have been invisible to users and that users could not have
interrupted, which might have been important if I had been administering a
system for multiple users. According to one source, IO.SYS was the program
that ran CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. After doing that, IO.SYS would
then run WIN.COM. But DOS and Windows would apparently execute BAT
files before COM files. So if you created a file called WIN.BAT, IO.SYS would
execute that WIN.BAT file instead of WIN.COM. You could put your special
commands in WIN.BAT and then have it run WIN.COM, and you could mark it
read-only and hidden just as you might mark AUTOEXEC and the others.)
(am) Refine the DOS Boot with BOOT_MGR. This new BOOT_MGR.BAT file
gave me the option of specifying which mode I wanted to boot in. This way, I
could remove the BOOT_MGR line from AUTOEXEC.BAT, which would dump
me at the DOS prompt; and then I could type BOOT_MGR NM to boot on into
Normal Mode, or BOOT_MGR SM for Safe Mode, or perhaps I could figure out
how to engineer a shortcut in Windows so that, if I clicked on it, it would reboot
and run BOOT_MGR DOS to put me into Real DOS. My new BOOT_MGR.BAT
file looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_MGR.BAT. It lets you boot into different modes.
REM Check for valid input
if %1==DOS goto MAIN
if %1==NM goto MAIN
if %1==SM goto MAIN
echo You didn't specify DOS, NM (normal mode), or SM (safe mode) (all caps).
echo If you let this program continue, you'll go back to the same mode.
pause Hit Ctrl-C to bail out and try again with DOS, NM, or SM.
goto DONE
:MAIN
if %1==DOS call DOSSTART.BAT
if %1==NM call C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM
if %1==SM call C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM /D:M
goto DONE

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:DONE
Note that the DOS option points toward a DOSSTART file, which contains the
commands that were formerly in AUTOEXEC.BAT. (See point 105(l).) I put
them there because I didn't want to run them if I was going right on into Normal
Mode or Safe Mode. (I later found that I had to put the PATH statement back at
the start of AUTOEXEC.BAT after all.) Note, also, that the line involving
WIN.COM /D:M was the command needed to start Safe Mode. For now, the
only other change I made was to change AUTOEXEC.BAT (see point 120(al)) so
that its main line read D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT NM. The last two
letters would insure that the default continued to be Normal Mode. I knew I
could come back later and tinker with it more, if I wanted. (See point 129.) For
right now, it was handy enough to be able to type BOOT_MGR NM or SM to go
directly from DOS to Normal Mode or Safe Mode.
(an) Increase Number of Registry Backups. Tip no. 56 from the Weber High
School site (see point 105(j)) recommends increasing the number of backups that
Registry Checker creates by finding C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI and
changing MaxBackupCopies from 5 to 10. Someone online said that Microsoft
recommends leaving it at the default. I decided to increase it to 8 because there
was one time when I came close to running out of recent backups. (Win98 made
Registry backups automatically -- once a day, I believe -- but you could also
make them manually by going into the Win98 System Information tool (or just
hitting Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Tools) and running Registry Checker.) The
copies of USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT (the two main Registry files) took 10 MB
on my AMD computer, but the additional backups went into compressed CAB
files that took much less space. I had to jump through a couple of hoops to view
more than five or six Registry backups when I needed them, though. (See point
148 and point 149.)
121. Verifying That Office Program Toolbars Fit on One Line. When I had set up
the toolbars in Word, Excel, and other Office 97 programs, I had noticed that my
customized toolbars extended over to a second line in some cases. Now that I
had readjusted the monitor to run in a higher resolution, I needed to verify that
the icons did all fit on one line. They did in every case, and usually with room to
spare.
Problem with Win98 Disk Defragmenter
122. Problem: Disk Defragmenter Near-Freeze. One morning, during the
process of working through the foregoing list of tweaks, I saw that the
PENTIUM computer had seemingly frozen up during the night. As I recall, it
took a minute or two to get it going again. The disk defragmenter had been set

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to run overnight. (See point 105(g).) It had not completed its job, and I had to
bail out of it with Ctrl-Alt-Del. I went online and saw a comment by an MS-MVP
(which is, I believe, a non-Microsoft employee who has somehow become
certified as having sufficient knowledge about various Microsoft programs to
help users with their questions about those programs). His comment began
with, "DEFRAG DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY." At first, I thought he put those
words in all caps to emphasize them, but later I wondered whether this was just
the title of an article he was quoting. He pointed toward Microsoft
Knowledgebase Article no. Q96519, but that turned out to be an article about
running a DOS defragmenter. Other online comments said that you should only
run the Win98 defragmenter in Safe Mode; or only after turning off your
antivirus program or screen saver or perhaps all other programs except Explorer
and Systray; or only after emptying your Temporary Internet Files,
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP, and Recycle Bin; or that, if you're scheduling things to
run automatically, you should allow a half-hour between running the
defragmenter or any other programs; or that you should set the defragmenter to
work on each disk separately; or set power management settings (see point
109(h)) so that they never shut off; or never let the defragmenter (or perhaps they
meant SCANDISK) correct errors automatically; or that the defragmenter that
comes with earlier versions (of Win98? Win95? Internet Explorer 4?) is no good;
or use a DOS defragmenter; or run SCANDISK first; or all of the above.
123. First Attempted Solution: Run Defragmenter Automatically in Safe Mode.
The foregoing advice put me in a quandary. I certainly intended to continue
running my disk repair and defragmentation programs in auto-repair mode:
they took too much time to let them have the computer during the day, and I
sure wasn't going to stay up to babysit them at night. At the same time, I could
see that things were not working out as planned. Previously, on the AMD
machine, Norton's SpeedDisk defragmenting program had balked if I had other
things running at the same time, and now Defragmenter was doing the same
thing. It seemed that I had to set aside perhaps one night a week to do nothing
but run my preferred defragmenter on all hard disks, and hope that it would be
done by morning. (Running Norton's defragmenter was no solution for another
reason: by this time I had seen many comments online indicating that certain
Norton programs caused problems, and that they added lots of potentially
troublesome lines to the Registry, and I myself had had to troubleshoot enough
problems caused by Norton programs under Win95/98, that I wanted to
minimize my reliance on Norton Utilities. (See point 105(g).) So I was doing my
best, here, to arrive at a scheme that would work with Win98's defragmenter.)
Moreover, to insure that my preferred defragmenter would run without
interference by other programs, I pretty much had to run it in DOS or Safe Mode.
Experience suggested that, in Normal Mode, there could be any number of other
nocturnal operations interfering with it. I found that the Win98 Disk

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Defragmenter did not run in Real DOS. (In the view of one writer, this was
good: s/he said that DOS defragmenters will mess up your hard disk.) This left
Safe Mode as the only option. I hoped there would be a way to run
Defragmenter automatically in Safe Mode, but my early options weren't good:
the Task Scheduler icon (see point 105(g)) did not show up in the system tray
(lower right corner of the screen), and it seemed that an AUTOEXEC or other
autostart batch file would be foiled by Safe Mode's habit of giving you an
introductory box that tells you that you're in Safe Mode. For the time being,
then, my weekly maintenance thing was going to involve an automatic DOSbased process, followed by a manual Safe Mode process.
124. Second Attempted Solution: DOS Weekly Maintenance. I decided to set up
DOS so that it would intercept the boot process on Wednesday afternoons
around 5 PM, in order to run a set of maintenance programs. I would need to
come up with some kind of Windows-based utility to force a reboot then. After
running the DOS utilities, the system would automatically go into Normal Mode,
and I would then try to find a way to suppress all other programs and run
Defragmenter automatically. (See point 127.) First, to configure my DOS
maintenance program, I drew upon information presented above and on other
sources. I set up MAINT_WK.BAT to run certain DOS programs, as follows:
@echo off
REM This is MAINT_WK.BAT
REM This file runs maintenance items weekly
REM Delete files in Windows temp directory
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
REM Delete TMP files on all disks
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do dir %%c:\*.tmp /a:-d /b /s >> c:\temp\filelist.txt
del < c:\temp\filelist.txt *.tmp
REM Delete Tilde files on all disks
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do dir %%c:\~*.* /a:-d /b /s >> c:\temp\filelist.txt
del < c:\temp\filelist.txt ~*.*
del c:\temp\filelist.txt
REM Clear the Start--Documents list
deltree /y c:\windows\recent\*.*
REM Empty the Recycled Bins

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for %%c in (c d e f g h) do deltree /y %%c:\recycled\*.*

REM Now the main attractions
call scandisk /custom /all /surface
call scanreg /fix
call scanreg /backup
REM End of file.
For other information on the lines used here, see points 116, 119, and 120. I
wound up revising this program a bit later. (See point 130.) I could have run
SCANDSKW (apparently the version of ScanDisk designed to run in DOS boxes),
but I preferred to work in real DOS to insure that there wouldn't be any other
programs interfering with them, and to minimize the risk of interference by
Win98's power management system. (See point 109(a).) I configured the
/CUSTOM setting of SCANDISK by editing SCANDISK.INI, including
specifically NumPasses, which will set the thing to examine a cluster repeatedly
if you wish. I wondered if maybe this was the secret that had enabled Norton's
Disk Doctor to solve a problem for me that SCANDISK hadn't solved. (See point
78.) I decided to reset NumPasses from 1, where it had been, to 5. In practice,
however, this didn't seem to have any impact on the performance of the surface
scan, which was where Norton's product had excelled. Finally, I wanted to run
SCANREG from real DOS if possible because apparently the Win98 version has
to switch to DOS anyway before it can make changes to the Registry.
125. Registry Problem. In the course of preparing that MAINT_WK.BAT
program, I experimented with SWEEP.COM to delete TMP and Tilde files. (See
point 120(e).) It got into a loop that it didn't seem to be getting out of, so I hit
Ctrl-C to break out. Then, when I experimented with the SCANDISK command
line shown in MAINT_WK.BAT, the system froze halfway through the line in
which it was telling me that /AUTOFIX and /CUSTOM were mutually
exclusive. (Custom covers everything in Autofix, it seems.) I rebooted, tried to
run MAINT_WK again, and found myself in the Microsoft Registry Checker after
a very brief error message of some kind -- it went past too quickly for me to read
it. Eventually, it dawned on me that MAINT_WK was working just fine, at least
as far as the SCANREG command was concerned, but for some reason it had
skipped over the SCANDISK command. SCANREG ran for five or ten minutes
and then quit. Now I tried running just my original SCANDISK line: CALL
SCANDISK /CUSTOM /ALL /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It told
me that /NOSAVE and /NOSUMMARY were mutually exclusive vis-a-vis
/CUSTOM, so I wound up with just the line shown above. This line examined a
little more than 1 GB of disk space per hour.

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126. DOS Maintenance Scheduler. To implement the DOS part of the

MAINT_WK plan (see point 124), I needed a DOS batch file that would detect the
date and time and would run MAINT_WK if the time was between 5 and 6 pm
on a Wednesday. I prepared the following batch file:
@echo off
REM This is WEEKDAY.BAT
REM
REM

It runs WEEKDAY.BAS in order to determine whether it is the right

day and time to run MAINT_WK.BAT.

c:
cd \temp
if exist datetime.tmp del datetime.tmp
if exist doit.bat del doit.bat
echo.| date | find "Current" > datetime.tmp
echo.| time | find "Current" >> datetime.tmp
call qbasic /run d:\dos_util\weekday.bas
call doit.bat
if exist datetime.tmp del datetime.tmp
if exist doit.bat del doit.bat
This called the WEEKDAY.BAS file. The actual contents of that QBASIC
program (see point 80) were as follows:
REM This is WEEKDAY.BAS
REM It runs MAINT_WK.BAT on certain days and times.
DIM dayin AS STRING
DIM hourin AS STRING
DIM hourval AS INTEGER
DIM ampmin AS STRING
DIM marchorder AS STRING
OPEN "c:\temp\datetime.tmp" FOR INPUT AS # 1
OPEN "c:\temp\doit.bat" FOR OUTPUT AS # 2
FOR i% = 1 TO 2
LINE INPUT # 1, linein$

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keypiece$ = MID$(linein$, 17, LEN(linein$))

IF i% = 1 THEN
dayin$ = LEFT$(keypiece$, 3)
END IF
IF i% = 2 THEN
hourin$ = LEFT$(keypiece$, 2)
IF LEFT$(hourin$, 1) = " " THEN
hourin$ = RIGHT$(hourin$, 1)
END IF
hourval = VAL(hourin$)
ampmin$ = RIGHT$(keypiece$, 1)
IF ampmin$ = "p" THEN
hourval = hourval + 12
END IF
END IF
NEXT
marchorder$ = "ECHO Hi"
IF dayin$ = "Wed" THEN
IF hourval = 17 THEN
marchorder$ = "CALL D:\DOS_UTIL\MAINT_WK.BAT"
END IF
END IF
PRINT # 2, marchorder$
CLOSE
SYSTEM
Finally, to make this program run automatically whenever the computer booted
up, I added this line to AUTOEXEC.BAT, immediately before the
BOOT_MGR.BAT command (see point 120(al)): CALL
D:\DOS_UTIL\WEEKDAY.BAT. This scheme would run MAINT_WK.BAT
every time the computer rebooted. According to theory, I would be playing pool
and drinking beer on Wednesday evenings between 5 and 6 PM, and otherwise
the computer would be in the control of these programs I had set up, so there
wouldn't be any reason why WEEKDAY would run more than once a week.
127. Win98 Maintenance Scheduler. Having thought further about it, I decided
that I could not gracefully link my Win98 maintenance schedule (featuring
Defragmenter) to my DOS maintenance schedule (as run by MAINT_WK.BAT).

138

The two needed to operate separately, and Defragmenter really did need to run
every night. I was not certain I could make this happen, given my recent
difficulty with Defragmenter and the advice I had found on that subject (see
point 122), but I hoped that perhaps a weekly doctoring by SCANDISK and
SCANREG would put things in good enough shape for Defragmenter to run
without the necessity of running SCANDISK right before it every night. Not that
there would have been time for that in any event: experience with SCANDISK
and Defragmenter showed that the two of them could consume many hours. So
I turned, now, from my DOS maintenance schedule to the entirely separate
subject of my Win98 maintenance schedule. Again, I wanted this to run
automatically, and to process things one at a time, not beginning the one until
the previous one had finished; again, a batch file seemed like a good solution. I
decided to call this Win98 batch file MAINTWIN. I would then have two entries
in Task Scheduler: one to force a reboot, somehow, at 5 PM on Wednesdays, so
that MAINT_WK could run (see point 124), and the other to start MAINTWIN
late in the evening on every night except Wednesday. I saw the Win98 process
as involving three steps: (a) shut down all running programs, (b) start
Defragmenter, and (c) reboot the system so that I would have a fresh system with
all of my normal startup programs running. The shutdown would ideally be
sensitive, somehow, to the presence of any active processes. That is, I wouldn't
mind if it shut down a program that wasn't doing anything, but I wouldn't want
an automatic shutdown if I had deliberately scheduled a time-intensive task to
run overnight. It took me a while to work this thing out. (See point 131.)
128. Rebooter. I had found utility programs that would do things like shut
down the computer at a certain time, but I wanted to try to do as much as
possible within Win98 itself, rather than add a thousand little single-purpose
utilities. DOS and QBASIC were not sophisticated, but they were stable.
Browsing online, I found several one-line commands that would shut down
Win98 in various ways. The following examples assume that C:\Windows is on
your PATH statement. (To find out, type PATH at a DOS prompt. Since these
would be running in a DOS box in Win98, I verified within that DOS box; real
DOS had an entirely different and irrelevant PATH.) If C:\Windows is not on
your PATH statement, then you may want to fix your PATH or type in the
needed directory names where appropriate. For example, instead of typing
simply RUNDLL32.EXE, you might preface those with C:\WINDOWS. I think
that will also hold true for USER.EXE and SHELL32.DLL.
(a) To shut down the computer (two different commands):
RUNDLL32.EXE USER.EXE,ExitWindows or:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5
(b) To reboot the computer:

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RUNDLL32.EXE USER.EXE,ExitWindowsExec 5 or:

RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(c) To restart Windows without rebooting (fastest but least thorough):
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx or:
@EXIT
(d) To restart Windows in MS-DOS mode, someone said that I could create a
batch file with these two lines: MEM/C/P and EXIT. This didn't make sense to
me, since MEM is just a program that tells you about your memory status. I
didn't know another DOS command that would do this, so for Windows
purposes I just made a copy of the Exit to DOS shortcut I had developed earlier.
(See point 105(l).)
See http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/oe1804a.htm. I
didn't test these extensively, but I imagined that the SHExit commands worked
faster, so I put the one from point (a) into a one-line batch file called
D:\DOS_UTIL\SHUTDOWN.BAT; I put the one from point (b) into a one-line
batch file called REBOOTER.BAT; I put the one from point (c) into a one-line
batch file called RESTART.BAT; and the one from point (d) went into
WINDOSBT.BAT. I didn't suppose I'd have much need for SHUTDOWN, and
RESTART might be handy occasionally, but REBOOTER was about to become
central to my maintenance scheme. (I didn't have to create batch files for these
commands. I could have just created shortcuts incorporating them. See the
ZDNet site just cited for instructions. I wanted a batch file so that I could also
run them from DOS if the mood struck, and also because I like to have my
homemade solutions in my DOS_UTIL folder to find them more easily if I forget
their names someday, and also because I would be needing a batch file to execute
more than just this one command. See point 129.) Later, I found
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q234/2/16.ASP, which
informed me that I could use the command rundll32.exe
shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 6 to restart with force -- i.e., to shut programs
down even if it means losing unsaved data. I put this line into a batch file called
FORCBOOT.BAT. Later, I added another option, REBOOTGO, to this list. (See
point 130.) But eventually I decided that FORCBOOT and REBOOTGO did the
same thing, and I deleted FORCBOOT. That gave me, eventually, a total of five
batch files: SHUTDOWN, REBOOTER, RESTART, WINDOSBT, and
REBOOTGO. Later, I discovered that RESTART would wipe out the TweakUI
setting that allowed me to get through the network logon screen. (See point 199.)
So when I eventually built a toolbar with shortcuts to these different ways of
shutting down or rebooting (see point 138(c)), it had only these options: Shut
Down, Rebooter, MS-DOS Mode (WINDOSBT), and Force Reboot (REBOOTGO).
To that toolbar, I added three options that would allow me to set the mode in

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which the computer would reboot: Safe Mode, Normal Mode, and Real DOS.
These shortcuts ran batch files that looked like this:
@echo off
:: This is BOOTSAFE.BAT
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Safe Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(For more information on BOOTCALL, see point 129.) Later, I substantially
revised some of the batch files shown here. (See point 262.)
129. REBOOTER Plus BOOT_MGR. I now had a way to flesh out BOOT_MGR -or, more precisely, to supersede it. The problem, until now, had been that I had
no automated way to tell BOOT_MGR whether to boot the system in Normal
Mode, Safe Mode, or Real DOS. (See point 120(am).) I just had AUTOEXEC set
to run Normal Mode automatically with the BOOT_MGR NM command, and I
had the option of typing BOOT_MGR SM or BOOT_MGR DOS if I wanted to
boot into one of those two other modes. I could have left it like that, but I
decided things would be simpler if I took a slightly different approach. First, I
modified my real DOS AUTOEXEC.BAT file (available in either real DOS or in a
DOS box, but saved under another name when you run the step-by-step
command prompt bootup). The modification consisted basically of importing
the main lines from BOOT_MGR into AUTOEXEC. Second, I changed those
lines so that, instead of looking for a two- or three-letter command from the
keyboard (i.e., NM, SM, or DOS), they would look at the contents of a file called
D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOTCALL.TXT. So my AUTOEXEC.BAT file now looked like
this:
@echo off
path c:\windows;c:\windows\command;d:\dos_util
call d:\dos_util\weekday.bat
REM Choose which mode to boot in, depending on contents of
BOOTCALL.TXT.
find "Normal Mode" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 c:\windows\win.com
if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE
find "Safe Mode" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 c:\windows\win.com /d:m

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if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE

find "Real DOS" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 d:\dos_util\dosstart.bat
if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE
echo BOOTCALL.TXT doesn't contain a required entry,
echo either "Real DOS" or "Normal Mode" or "Safe Mode."
:DONE
(I did not fully understand this ERRORLEVEL command; it didn't seem to be
working for me like it was supposed to, but this particular configuration seemed
to work.) Next, I created a new BOOT_MGR.BAT to put the proper text into
BOOTCALL.TXT: either "Real DOS" or "Normal Mode" or "Safe Mode." The
lines of this new and improved BOOT_MGR.BAT looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_MGR.BAT.
REM This file inserts an instruction into BOOTCALL.TXT, so that
REM AUTOEXEC.BAT knows which mode to boot into.
:MAIN
if %1==DOS echo Real DOS > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==DOS goto DONE
if %1==NM echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==NM goto DONE
if %1==SM echo Safe Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==SM goto DONE
:BOOBOO
cls
echo You didn't type DOS, NM, or SM to indicate which mode.
:DONE
Later, I added lines to accommodate lowercase commands. I might have
incorporated this file into one of the others that I'm discussing here, but I wanted
it to be available for direct command line use too. In other words, I wanted to

142

have the option of typing BOOT_MGR DOS (or NM, or SM) to prime the pump
for the next reboot, which might not occur until later. (Note the relationship
between this and X-Setup. See point 137(p).) To reduce typing, I created a little
file called BM.BAT whose sole purpose was to run BOOT_MGR. Finally, I
created a BOOT_DOS.BAT file that would tell BOOT_MGR that the system
should reboot in DOS, and then run REBOOTER to restart the computer and let
AUTOEXEC do its thing. BOOT_DOS looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_DOS.BAT.
REM This file tells BOOT_MGR to prepare the computer to boot DOS. It
REM also tells REBOOTGO to reboot the system.
call d:\dos_util\boot_mgr.bat DOS
d:\dos_util\rebootgo.bat
(Later, I created a shortcut to BOOT_DOS.BAT and put it on my Shutdown
toolbar. See point 142.) I didn't need to create similar files for booting into
Win98 in Normal Mode or Safe Mode. To make one of them my new default
operating mode, I could type BM NM or BM SM. If I wanted to proceed on into
one of those modes (regardless of which mode was the default), I could just type
WIN (or WIN /D:M) at the command prompt. (See the relevant lines from
AUTOEXEC, above.) Someone said that if you enter Safe Mode this way (by
WIN /D:M), your CD-ROM drivers will be installed. I did not find this to be the
case.
130. Final Touches on a DOS Weekly Maintenance Batch File. So far,
MAINT_WK.BAT was set to do its thing and then stop at a DOS prompt. I
wanted it to return the system to Normal Mode when it was done. For this, I
changed the program's ending from the lines shown above (see point 124) to the
following:
echo.| call scanreg /fix /backup
REM Set up the reboot scenario
echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
c:\windows\win.com
REM End of file.
The echo thing was there to supply a carriage return, so that SCANREG wouldn't
sit at its final "OK" dialog box, waiting for me to hit the Enter key. The
BOOTCALL line came from BOOT_MGR.BAT. (See point 129.) Once this was

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all taken care of, the only remaining problem regarding MAINT_WK was to
figure out how to get it to run. Task Scheduler would have to trigger a reboot
between 5 and 6 PM on a Wednesday. (See point 124.) Then AUTOEXEC would
call WEEKDAY (see point 126), which would decide whether to call MAINT_WK
or instead to let Windows reboot in Normal Mode. For Task Scheduler to trigger
a reboot on Wednesday at 5 PM, it would need to run REBOOTER. (See point
129.) To make that possible, I went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked on
REBOOTER.BAT, created a shortcut, and set up the options for that shortcut like
I had set up those of the MAINT_WK shortcut. (See point 105(h).) I could have
set the shortcut's Program | Advanced option to "MS-DOS Mode," but then I
realized that this would just make the computer reboot into Win98's DOScompatible mode (i.e., not real DOS), and I had no idea whether REBOOTER
would be able to reboot the computer into real DOS from there. So instead, I
added a warning line to REBOOTER with the PAUSE command. This would
prevent REBOOTER from being an automatic rebooter; so in case I might need
an automatic rebooter, I made a copy of REBOOTER without the PAUSE
command, for immediate rebooting, and called it REBOOTGO. I thought that I
might not need a shortcut to REBOOTER, but I wasn't sure whether Task
Scheduler would run a batch file directly, so I kept the shortcut and told Task
Scheduler to run that at 5:01 PM on Wednesdays. To avoid having it pester me
or interrupt a project underway, I told Task Scheduler not to start it unless the
computer had been idle for at least 15 minutes. While I was in Task Scheduler, I
deleted all the other scheduled tasks that MAINT_WK was replacing. I also
deleted the tasks that MAINTWIN would be replacing, including particularly the
Defragmenter entry that had caused the problem in the first place. (See point
122.)
131. A Win98 Nightly Maintenance Batch File. I had not yet done anything with
MAINTWIN, other than identify its general tasks: kill running programs, start
Defragmenter, and reboot the system so that I would have a fresh start. (See
point 127.) I decided that I could safely kill other tasks if I instructed Task
Scheduler not to start MAINTWIN until after a certain period of inactivity on the
computer. Then MAINTWIN would somehow kill those tasks, run
Defragmenter, and then use REBOOTER to reset a fresh system in Normal Mode.
(See point 128.) But how could MAINTWIN kill running processes? One
possibility would be to use RESTART to do a quick restart of Windows. (See
point 128.) But that would reload and run any program shortcuts I had in my
StartUp folder. I couldn't very well tell my computer to load nothing at startup:
there might be some things, such as my appointment scheduler, that I would
always want to load at bootup except during this overnight maintenance. Again,
I knew there were third-party programs, but I was interested in working out a
Windows-only solution if possible. I went online and got the general message
that this is not something DOS can do. I didn't know if the Windows Scripting

144

Host could do this, but it didn't matter, because I wasn't about to learn how to
use it. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/17/03/os1703.001.html. I was
tempted to cook up a batch file that would temporarily swap contents out of the
StartUp folder and then back in, but that sounded like a kludge. I decided I
should wait and see what was available in third-party programs for this purpose.
And since I was still working here on a nearly pure Microsoft system, that would
have to wait. (See point 141(k).)
132. CD Backup. By now, it had been a long time since I had last made an image
file to record my progress in this whole process. (See point 116.) I chuckled
when I looked back at that effort: at that time, I had believed that I had done
most of what I could do within the limits of keeping my system limited to
Microsoft programs. It wasn't that I had added major new capabilities; I had just
made a lot more of the available materials. Anyway, to make the image file, I
applied the same technique as before and found that I was getting faster at it.
Altering the order slightly, I began with the Win98 utilities (System File Checker,
Registry Checker, and Defragmenter) before going into real DOS to run
CD_PREP.BAT. This time, ARC_BITS showed perhaps twenty hidden files
whose archive bits needed to be turned off manually. This wasn't a crucial task,
but it was probably more important on this backup than on the previous ones:
this would be the final CD burned from a disk image. After this, I would be
using XCOPY to capture just those files that were new or changed since the date
of this one. Every file with an archive bit on after this would go onto the next
CD; the rest would not. So shutting off the archive bits basically prevented me
from doing a duplicate backup of files that would not in fact have changed
between the date of this CD and the date of the next, supplemental one. I ran a
subset of CD_PREP again, just to be sure I had no files left with archive bits still
on. I ran DriveImage from the floppy with the usual maximum/secure settings.
Despite increasing the number of Registry backups and doing all those tweaks,
the total volume of material backed up had somehow increased by only 5 MB
(see point 116(i)), to 913 MB. (Later, I learned that these backups are kept in
compressed CAB files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. When I looked there, I
saw that the backed-up files -- which included WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI,
SYSTEM.DAT, and USER.DAT -- were only about 1.3 MB each. Interestingly, I
also saw that, although I had rebooted many times in recent days, the oldest one
dated from more than a week earlier.) The DriveImage file, called
STEP_132.PQI, was 579 MB, so the compression ratio was still 63%. Since the
boot files and DOS utilities (see point 64) took only about 6 MB on the CD, I still
had a great deal of space left on the CD after all -- perhaps as much as 100 MB, if
the 63% compression rate held. So perhaps this would not be the last
DriveImage CD after all. I rebooted to Windows, ran END_LIST, and used

145

Direct Cable Connection to move the resulting file list and the STEP_132.PQI
image file to the AMD machine, where I burned it onto CD.
Installing System Utilities
133. Decision to Install System Utilities. Using Direct Cable Connection, I
brought over a large number of downloaded programs that I had been storing on
the AMD machine. In the spirit of what I had been doing so far, I decided to
keep on installing and configuring tweak-style programs that required little disk
space but a lot of my time. The idea was that if I could get this time-consuming
stuff all squeezed onto the first CD, it might not be such a big deal to install the
rest from CD or other sources if my XCOPY scheme (see point 132) didn't work
out.
134. Programs Not Installed. Here, I decided to start a list of programs that I
was not going to be installing. I planned to continue adding items to this list
throughout the rest of the installation process. Thus, this list is not limited to
system-related programs. The programs and my reasons for not installing were
as follows:
(a) TweakUI. I was going to use X-Setup instead. (See point 117. But see point
145(f).)
(b) mIRC. I had heard that Internet Relay Chat was a great way to get quick tech
support information, but also that IRC opened up a whole new channel for
hackers to attack your system. I really would have liked to use it, but it didn't
seem worth the risk.
(c) ICQ. This was an alternative to IRC; but although it was more instantaneous
and fun, I had found it to be something of a time-waster, with my friends and I
sitting there typing comments to one another -- which was fun, but didn't last
long. Once the novelty wore off, I found myself mostly just disliking the
occasional ways in which ICQ conflicted with other programs, and I really didn't
use it much. E-mail was better than chat, for purposes of composing my
thoughts or thinking through a problem.
(d) PC Magazine's ShutUp. This is a program that shuts down the computer.
(See point 134(l).) It looks good, and it's free, but it doesn't have a command-line
option, and I needed something I could run from a batch file. (See point 134(l).)
(Later, I recalled that this program had the ability to run programs that the user
might want to run at the last minute before shutting down the computer; I think
that by this point I had decided I would rather do such things through batch
files.)

146

(e) CabView and other Cab File Viewers. PowerDesk (see point 135) had this
capability already. Nevertheless, I went for CabWiz because it was small,
simple, and might provide some functionality that I would appreciate when the
crucial moment came. (See point 141(u).) When that didnt work out (see point
166(d)), I decided that PowerDesk and
C:\WINDOWS\COMMANDS\EXTRACT.EXE would probably do the job for
me.
(f) TreeSize. This was a handy little program that installed itself as a context
menu option. Just right-click on a disk or folder and TreeSize calculates how
much space its contents are taking. You can expand the view into subdirectories.
I liked the right-click convenience, but I decided I would rather not have the
extra item on the context menu, because it was one more thing I had to read and
scroll past when I was trying to find the right selection for many other frequent
context menu operations. Instead, I added a shortcut to PowerDesk's Size
Manager program (see point 135), which did the same things in an arguably
better way and gave me one less little utility to install. The other thing to
remember was that, if I selected a bunch of files, I could get their combined space
by right-clicking on one of them and choosing Properties.
(g) Registry Cleaners. I decided against CleanReg because its README.TXT file
indicated that it had been created in September 1996, leaving me to wonder how
it would fare with the Win98 Registry. Similarly, both RegMaid and Registry
Saver 1.2 appeared to have been created in October 1997. In a quick search on
Hotfiles.com, I found precious few Registry cleaners that had been developed
during the past year; most seemed to be much older. Perhaps a more careful
search would find more. Regarding my reasons for rejecting RegClean, see point
139(a).
(h) Process Viewer 2000. ZDNet gave this one four stars -- but gave five stars to
PrcView. (See point 141(f).) A review at
http://www.rocketdownload.com/Details/Util/prcview.htm gave PrcView
"three smileys" out of an unknown total number possible -- the site doesn't seem
to say -- but I suppose the real point is that the reviewer had nothing bad to say
about it. I did experiment briefly with Process Viewer 2000 on the AMD
computer, but found that while it provided a more colorful interface, it also
provided less information and gave me less of a sense of control.
(i) WinKey. I had no problem finding this program: it got four dudes at
FileDudes; four cows at Tucows; etc. I now saw that it relied on the Windows
Key, i.e., the special-purpose key at the lower left corner of newer keyboards.
See http://www.copernic.com/winkey/. I had thought it would allow me to

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program Ctrl- and Alt- key combinations. One of my two keyboards was old
and did not have the Windows Key. I decided to postpone further consideration
of this program until later, when I might install it on just one machine or might
upgrade my keyboard. Really, I hoped instead to come across a hotkey program
that would let me assign any allowable hotkey and would show me what I (or
my programs) had assigned. Unfortunately, I never came up with a way of
finding a complete listing.
(j) Clipboard Enhancers. I found five free clipboard enhancers that got four or
five stars at ZDNet. They were: AAA (Corsolini); Clip-It!; Clipboard Magic;
Clipboard Pile; and Yankee Clipper Plus. (I did not attempt to do an exhaustive
search; there may have been others.) I wanted, specifically, a clipboard enhancer
that would store graphics and other items as well as text. Since I had previously
tried and failed to get comfortable with two different clipboard enhances, I relied
in part on the ease-of-use description in the reviews at ZDNet. This narrowed
me down to two options: the four-star Clipboard Pile, which could handle BMP
graphics and perhaps others but which did not have the greatest documentation;
or the five-star, easy-to-use Clipboard Magic, which unfortunately (like all the
others) could handle only text. I decided to start with Clipboard Pile. (See point
141(h).) Another approach would have been to obtain QUIKTRAY.EXE from the
Resource Kit folder on the Windows 98 CD (see point 119(a)) and use that to
create a constantly available icon in the system tray for a text file in which I could
put notes. For my purposes, Clipboard Pile turned out to be superior because I
did not have to drag or paste anything; it went into the "clipboard pile" as soon
as I marked and copied it. Later, I found problems with Clipboard Pile. (See
point 315.)
(k) ShortCutter 2.0. The purpose of this program is to look for and remove
broken links among files. The README file left me totally in the dark, and when
I ran it briefly on the AMD computer, it seemed to be asking me if I wanted to
delete various Windows system folders! Or perhaps "seemed to" is the wrong
phrasing: when I killed the program, I got several error messages telling me that
Win98 would not allow me to delete this or that system folder! I could only
wonder what the program had deleted without my knowing about it. Maybe I
misunderstood the program; but if not, this is the worst piece of software I have
seen in a long time.
(l) Auto-Shutdown Programs. I considered Exits 95/98 by Moon in June
Software because it was a five-star free download at Hotfiles.com with
command-line abilities. (See point 134(d).) Others I was considering included
AutoExit, Log Me Out, KillWin, and JustExit. Ultimately, I found better
programs to shut down programs that were in use (see point 141(g)), as distinct
from shutting down the computer itself (see point 128).

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(m) PC Magazine's RunPlus. It looked like I was going to be able to get the
features of this program through a collection of other programs and techniques
described in this document.
(q) Screen Capture Software. On the AMD machine, I had used the free version
of HyperSnap. It had worked OK, but had inserted a "Free Version" notice in the
upper left corner of each image. I can't believe I didn't know this, but it was also
possible to use PrintScreen to capture the entire screen to the clipboard. (I had
yet to experiment with capturing multiple screens to Clipboard Pile. See point
141(h).) I had some trouble with this at first, and maybe that's why I hadn't used
it previously. On my keyboard, the PrintScreen key also had SysRq on it.
PrintScreen was above SysRq, so it looked like you had to use the Shift key to use
PrintScreen. Anyway, when I just hit the key by itself, it worked. I found that I
couldn't paste the image into the Photo Editor program that came with Windows
98 or Office 97, but I could paste it into the free Paint program. They said I could
also paste it into Word or WordPad. The other thing was that they said I could
use Alt-PrintScreen to capture the active window only, instead of the whole
screen.
(r) Connection Keepers. The other part of the download story was keeping your
connection alive while programs were downloading. Maybe Go!Zilla (see point
156(c)) took care of that while it was downloading -- I wasn't too sure about that - but there were times when Go!Zilla wouldn't work. An example would be
downloading Windows updates: the Microsoft site took control of the process
and there wasn't really an opportunity for a third-party utility like Go!Zilla to
stick its nose in there. ZDNet gave Internet Loafer five stars, but it was
shareware; it gave Connection Keeper four stars, but that was shareware too; it
gave Keep It Alive three stars, and it was freeware, but it only pinged one site,
and I suspected that my ISP's eager shutdown software would find something
fishy about that sort of arrangement. So I gave up on this category of software,
at least for now.
(s) Ferret User Power Pack. This was a five-star, 5 MB download that contained a
half-dozen highly rated online tools. These ferrets, which I had not previously
used, were supposedly very good at finding information in different ways, using
multiple search engines for general searches on the Web (WebFerret) or in
newsgroups (NewsFerret), for specific searches within categories (InfoFerret), to
find e-mail addresses (EmailFerret) or phone numbers (PhoneFerret) or IRC
addresses (IRCFerret), or to locate specific files online (FileFerret). I did install
them, although I wasn't sure I needed or wanted them all. I could have installed
them individually. What turned me against them as a group was the absence of
support for Boolean searches. (See point 156(b).) So I uninstalled them.

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(t) Dial-Up Networking (DUN) Enhancements. Dunce (Dial-Up Networking

Connection Enhancement) was supposed to aid in connecting to your ISP, but I
didn't really need that help. It also offered the ability to connect and disconnect
at preset times, but I believed I was going to be able to do that on my own, in
ways that would fit better with my system as I was setting it up. ZDNet gave
Dunce four stars; they gave NetLaunch three. The latter sounded simpler and
not without its virtues, but I didn't see that I needed it either. Later, I changed
my mind on this. (See point 272.)
(u) PC Magazines LFNDir. This program sounded useful -- to be able to do a
DOS-style DIR listing that would show long filenames -- but when I tried to use
it, it informed me that it did not support FAT32 disks -- which is, of course,
precisely the format that Win98 prefers to use.
(v) TweakBIOS. As I learned from this programs homepage at
www.miro.pair.com/tweakbios/, this program came in both freeware and
shareware versions. The freeware version would not allow you to save your
changes. Thus, you would have to reconfigure your BIOS settings after each
reboot. Registration cost $20. I had heard about this program often enough to
suspect that it might really improve performance. Unfortunately, given the
magnitude of this project already, I decided that it belonged in the same category
as overclocking. (See point 288.) That is, it was something that would yield a
faster computer if I wished to devote the time, but it would do so at the expense
of stability and might not yield enough time savings to justify the time invested.
(w) AirEase. The purpose of this program was to track frequent flier mileage.
The idea was that you would enter your miles into the program, and the
program would then tell you how you were doing in light of the latest news
from the various airlines. How would your copy of AirEase get the latest news?
You would download the latest update of the program. How old was the latest
revision of the program, at the time when I considered installing it? Not quite a
year old. Not too impressive.
(x) File List Printing Programs. PowerDesk would allow me to print a list of
some or all files in a folder. (See point 135.) Also, the DOS command DIR would
allow me to print lists of files, for directories and subdirectories, in a wide variety
of formats. (For examples, see the DIR commands used in point 88.) In any
event, I rarely needed printed lists of files. For all these reasons, I did not install
software dedicated to the task of printing file lists.

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Obviously, I did not attempt to list every program in the world that I decided
against. The foregoing list merely discusses some that I had used or at least had
considered seriously.
135. PowerDesk 98. I had found the Mijenix PowerDesk program to contain
many useful tools. (See point 70.) It had won many awards and I could not be
certain that any of my previous concerns were really its fault. (See points 25 and
74.) Anyway, I needed an unzipper before I could install these other programs
that I was about to install, and PowerDesk had one. So I went ahead with it.
Before installing, I ran PartitionMagic for just a moment and got an indication
that I had used 608 MB on drive C and 309 MB on drive D. After installing from
the CD, I rebooted to make sure the program was happy with its new home, and
then installed an update that I had downloaded previously. Then I went back
into PartitionMagic and saw that the amount on C had not changed, but I was
now using 327 MB on D. I had used 18 MB; I still had room for a lot more before
burning another CD. I went into PowerDesk and configured its options to suit
me. For the toolbar, in particular, I decided to show these buttons:
collapse/expand drives and folders, view single and dual (horizontal and
vertical) panes, filter, swap panes, empty recycle bin, open DOS window, go up
one level, go back and forward, find, compare folders, synchronize folders,
create folder and shortcut, show command line, associate file, select, print file
and print list of files, set file date/time, encrypt/decrypt, and set viewer pane
options. Mijenix had mailed me a floppy that would enable DES encryption,
which apparently is a lot more powerful; I loaded this as well. Subsequently,
when installing programs, I decided that PowerDesk was more of a "running
program" than Windows Explorer had been, so I tried to be more careful to shut
it down when installing software that told me to shut down all working
programs; that had never seemed like an issue with Windows Explorer, although
perhaps it should have. (Note: PowerDesk lacks an Address toolbar option. See
point 141(c).) I also set up a separate icon to run the Size Manager utility that
came with PowerDesk. (See point 134(f).)
136. Microsoft Visual Basic Runtime. I had downloaded some utilities from the
WinMag.com site one time, and some of those utilities required this program in
order to run. I had downloaded this program, and now I double-clicked on the
EXE file. It gave a momentary dialog box indicating that it was copying some
files to somewhere, but I couldn't tell exactly where. I looked in Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and didn't see anything listed. I didn't know what that
meant.
137. X-Setup: Plug-Ins. The X-Setup page said that a half-million people had
downloaded it. See http://www.xteq.com/main.html. The first thing I noticed
was that, unlike TweakUI (which Microsoft refused to support), there seemed to

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be a currently active support area at Xteq. See

http://www.xteq.com/support/index.html. Their awards page was quite
impressive: five stars at Hotfiles, six ducks at Nonags, etc. See
http://www.xteq.com/products/xset/awards.html. I downloaded X-Setup and
a bunch of plug-ins and related files, and then wondered how to make it all
work. I started by unzipping and installing the XQ-XSETUP.ZIP file. At 3 MB,
this program was already a lot larger than TweakUI. (See point 117.) The XSetup READ-ME file told me that I needed some Microsoft scripting files, but
that I already had those if I had Win98. As with PowerDesk and other programs
mentioned above, I told the program to install on drive D (PROGRAMS) rather
than on C (WIN98). I had downloaded about twenty add-ins from the X-Setup
site, and now I started through the list. As I unzipped them, I saw that some
required a separate installation, and others just required me to move their
contents (usually an XPL file) to the Plugins subfolder under my X-Setup folder
on D. Some of these programs were add-ons that didn't seem to have a lot to do
with X-Setup which, to my knowledge, was a system utility kind of program like
TweakUI. An example was XShooter, which had no purpose other than let you
set up your computer (or someone else's) so that each time they click on their
screen, an imitation gunshot goes off and a "hole" appears in the page where they
were clicking. A better example might be URL Bandit, which scans every page
you work on and copies URLs from it, so you can have them for reference later.
(I thought this might be useful for those times when I was pursuing something
useful online and suddenly Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer would crash;
but I wouldn't have installed it at this point if it hadn't been affiliated with XSetup.) Some of my downloads said that they would not run without Visual
Basic; the purposes of some were unclear; and when I tried to get back to
www.xteq.com to figure out why I had downloaded them, I found that their
server wasn't functioning. So after a couple of false starts, I decided that I really
should install only the add-ins that I could understand and see some need for.
Apparently X-Setup was a sort of programmer's development environment, or a
mini-operating system, or something more than just a system tweaker. When I
had done what I was going to do with these additional downloads, I started XSetup. It had a Windows Explorer type of interface. Its status bar told me that it
now contained 254 plug-ins with 655 items, 32 wizards with 148 linked plug-ins,
and 27 tools. I went to the top item on the list and hit Shift-* (that's shift-asterisk
on the numeric keypad, a nifty little trick I had just learned while browsing
through endless Win98 tweak websites; it isn't necessary in most cases when
you've got PowerDesk's Expand option (see point 135), but of course I couldn't
use PowerDesk inside X-Setup), and that expanded the entire list of plug-ins.
And now, as I went down through the list of plug-ins, I began to see why people
were so excited about it. The plug-ins that I used, or thought I might use in the
future, were as follows:

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(a) Appearance: Context Menu: Drive Commands. Add one or two commands
to the right-click context menu. These appear only if you right-click a drive. See
paragraph (d), below.
(b) Appearance: Control Panel: General Icons. Display or hide icons. (See point
120(x).)
(c) Appearance: Desktop: Icons. Change or remove names of icons on desktop.
Hide stubborn desktop icons. Add icons to desktop (e.g., Control Panel -- see
point 112(e)).
(d) Appearance: Explorer: Context Menu. Enable QuickView for any file.
Enable "Open With" for any file. (Then I decided not to use this, on the grounds
that I didn't need another item cluttering my right-click context menu and I
knew I could get "Open With" by selecting a file and then using Shift-Right-Click
on it.) Enable DOS Prompt Here for Directories (i.e., you can right-click on a
folder and open a DOS window where the command prompt will be prepositioned at that folder). Add two commands to the context menu for any file
or folder in Windows Explorer.
(e) Appearance: Explorer: Files. Set up to two programs to open DOC files by
default. (This seems inferior to the approach described in point 120(m),
however.) Display CPL files as icon (i.e., have WinEx show the icons that appear
inside the Control Panel).
(f) Appearance: Explorer: Options. Enable fast update. Wrap long icon titles.
(g) Appearance: General: Cool Switch (display more icons when coolswitching);
Effects (set width of borders around windows, enable smooth scrolling, disable
taskbar zoom).
(h) Appearance: Start Menu: Options (disable adding documents to Recent
Documents list -- see point 120(i) -- and set Menu Reaction Speed to 150) ; Visible
Items (hide Favorites, Documents, Log Off, etc. in Start Menu).
(i) Hardware: Modem. Speed up COM ports.
(j) Internet: DUN (set TTL to 64, IPMTU to 576, COM Boost to 2); Internet
Explorer (Appearance: Window Title: change to a single underscore; also clear
typed URLs); Nuke Protection.
(k) Network: Login (change picture shown when booting Windows); Logoff
(enable fast shutdown).

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(l) Program Options: Notepad (enable default word-wrap); Office 97 (enable

quick scrolling in Word).
(m) System: File System: Folders: Data: General (relocate Internet Explorer
Favorites to E:\Favorites, IE downloads to E:\Temp); Media Folders (put
graphics files in E:\Graphics); Office 97 Folders (put Word 97 Clipart in
E:\Graphics\Office 97 Clipart) (see point 76); Program Files Folder (tell
programs to use D:\Program Files). I would still have to move the Clipart to the
new folder manually. That task posed some difficulties. (See point 138(b).)
(n) System: File System: Folders: System: Windows Folder. Set your Setup
folder (e.g., C:\WIN98 -- see point 31), your StartUp folder (see point 42), and
your Temporary Internet Files location (see point 38)). Options: File Allocation
Cache (reduce fragmentation by setting a large cache if you work with large
files).
(o) System: Timeouts: AutoEnd Programs (so hung programs can't keep
Windows from shutting down).
(p) System: Windows 95/98 Boot Options: Advanced Options II: Set the boot
menu -- the one that you get when you hit F8 at startup -- to be displayed for a
certain number of seconds at startup; then tell it which mode (e.g., Command
line) to use. The only setting I changed was to set Def Menu Display for 2
seconds, just in case I had forgotten to run BM with the preferred mode. (See
point 129.) This did not work on my machine. (See point 138(a).)
(r) Others that I found interesting but did not plan to use included these:
Appearance: Desktop: ToolTips (put whatever you want your pop-up ToolTip
to say when you point your mouse cursor at a desktop item); Appearance:
Explorer: Shortcuts (hide the little arrows that appear by default on shortcuts, or
the words "Shortcut to ..."); Appearance: General: Effects (cursor blink rate);
Software: Accessories (clear recent file lists for Wordpad, Photo Editor, etc.);
System: Misc: Windows PID (tells you your Windows product ID number);
System: Startup: AutoRun Services (lets you delete LoadPowerProfile and
SchedulingAgent, which run automatically when you start up; I wanted to use
PC Magazines Start Manager instead (see point 158(b)); System: User Data: MS
Setup Default Names (change your user name) and Windows Update
Registration (set your system so that it appears to be registered, for purposes of
using Windows Update online);

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138. X-Setup Troubleshooting. X-Setup seemed to work, but I had a few kinks to
work out. Some developed immediately, and some came up later. They were as
follows:
(a) General Observations. I discovered, when I was partway through, that I
could have turned on Record Mode to keep track of all these changes and make
them automatically if I needed to do this over again. I made all my changes at
once, without rebooting, and then rebooted once to make them all happen at the
same time. That seemed riskier than doing them one at a time, but it was a lot
faster, and I figured if it trashed the Registry, I wouldn't have used up all my
good backup copies in the process. (Note: you don't have to shut off everything
that's checked in X-Setup. Checkmarks and blanks apply only when you hit the
"Apply Changes" button.) After rebooting, I noticed that the instruction to show
the boot menu for two seconds (see paragraph (p)) did not work (which was
perhaps not surprising, given X-Setup's notice that some such items might not
work in Win98), but there were fewer icons on the desktop and fewer options on
the Start menu, so that was good. Having gone down the long list of plug-ins, I
went through X-Setup's Wizards, but I quickly concluded that they just
presented another way to step through the same options as I had just gotten by
going down the tree view.
(b) Moving the Clipart Folder. A long time before, I had gotten a bit spooked
when moving the Clipart folder had seemed to cause problems. (See point 76.) I
still wasn't eager to go moving Office 97 folders around. But I did like the idea of
having my clipart concentrated in one place, so that all kinds of programs (not
just Office 97) could use it. So I had decided to try again, using X-Setup to move
it. (See point 137(m).) Unfortunately, this did not seem to work. X-Setup's
function here seemed to be limited to telling Word where to look for its clipart.
It did succeed in doing that much. I went into Word's
Tools | Options | File Locations screen and saw that, sure enough, Word was
indeed supposed to be looking, now, for clipart in the E:\Graphics\Office 97
Clipart folder that I had just created. To complete the transition, X-Setup had
told me that I had to move the actual files myself. But from where? When I did a
search, I found that Office 97 had put clipart in two different places, namely,
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Clipart and D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Clipart. Which one was linked with Word 97? To find
out, I copied the contents of both of those existing Clipart folders into my new
E:\Graphics\Office 97 Clipart folder, and then I moved the contents of both of
those folders to D:\Temp. I rebooted (see paragraph (c), below) and went into
Word, but now it failed to find any Clipart. I restored everything back to
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Clipart, but not to the
clipart folder that had been on drive D, and tried again in Word. That did it. So
the C location was the one with the Word clipart files. Why hadn't Word found

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the clipart I had moved to E? I removed the clipart from the C folder back to
D:\Temp again, double-checked the setting in X-Setup, and rebooted. Still no
luck. I went online for guidance and got the impression that, as I had feared, the
C folder was a central clipart place for other Microsoft programs in addition to
Word. I put the contents back into the C and D folders as they had been
originally, deleted the E folder, and quit while I was ahead.
(c) No More Shutdown? The first time I tried to reboot after making my changes
in X-Setup (see paragraph (b), above), I found that I had accidentally removed
the Shut Down option from the Start menu. Then I decided that was not a
problem, since I had intended to set up some shortcuts for my six
reboot/shutdown batch programs (REBOOTER, REBOOTGO, RESTART,
SHUTDOWN, WINDOSBT, and FORCBOOT) anyway, and would prefer to use
them. (See point 128(d).) I decided they had to go into an item in the Links
toolbar, because that was the only toolbar that would allow them to appear on a
pull-down menu. (See point 109(g).) Another option would have been to put
them onto the Start menu somehow, but I didn't know how to do that. I couldn't
just put them into a folder on some other toolbar, because opening that folder
and then clicking on one of these shutdown options might close down the
machine with the folder still open. Sometimes Windows remembered that
folders were open and recreated them on reboot, and I didn't want that to
happen. For the details on this "fix" for the problem created by X-Setup, see
point 142.
(d) Nonworking Control Panel Icon. The Control Panel icon that X-Setup had
placed on the desktop (see point 137(c)) did not work when I double-clicked on
it. I went back into X-Setup, changed this item back the way it had been, and
reinstalled the Control Panel shortcut that I had placed there previously. (See
point 112(e).) This was better anyway, because I had noticed that my desktop
folder on my right-edge toolbar had not shown the Control Panel icon that XSetup had created, presumably because it was no longer behaving like an icon
that I had added to the desktop. (See point 120(ac).)
139. Registry Cleaners. I had previously rejected Microsoft's RegClean in favor
of Microsoft's ScanReg. (See point 119(d).) ScanReg had now become a part of
my regular system maintenance program. (See point 124.) While researching the
issue of Registry cleaning, I had heard about and downloaded several other
programs. The idea seemed to be that the Registry could be huge and complex,
and that it took several different Registry cleaners, each with its own special kind
of competence, to do a really good job of cleaning up the Registry.
(a) RegClean. I had previously installed RegClean, but had decided that ScanReg
was the better solution. (See point 119(d).) Now I decided to remove RegClean.

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This should have been simpler than I made it. The ReadMe.txt file contained no
information on uninstalling, and I didn't see an entry for RegClean in Control
Panel | Add/Remove Programs. Not thinking, I clicked on the file in the
RegClean folder called "Undo PENTIUM 200000128 ..." (a long number). It asked
me if I wanted to restore the information to the Registry. I couldn't imagine why
it was asking me to restore stuff when I was trying to uninstall, i.e., remove, but
since it was four in the morning and I was not entirely awake I said sure, go for
it. As soon as I did, I realized that this was probably a file containing the bad
entries that RegClean had previously gleaned from the Registry. Oops.
RegClean itself, I decided, had never really been "installed" in the first place; it
was just a standalone program that sat on my disk until I felt like running it. So
now I figured I could delete it just as easily, just by wiping out its folder. So
that's what I did.
(b) EasyCleaner 1.71. Unlike most freeware Registry cleaners (see point 134(g)),
this one seemed to be actively maintained. See
http://www.saunalahti.fi/tonihele/. It was recommended by the people at
Tweak3D. (See point 119(d).) Also, in a Deja.com search for "best Registry
cleaner," it came up more than any other except possibly RegClean. (Another
recommended one was Fix-It by Mijenix, the same people who made
PowerDesk, but I didn't feel like paying if I could do the job with good freeware.
Also, there were some complaints that made Fix-It sound a little like Norton's
CrashGuard, which got a lot of bad reactions from users.) I downloaded and
installed EasyCleaner and, now that I had perhaps accidentally reinstalled a
bunch of junk that RegClean had previously removed, I ran EasyCleaner to see
how I liked it. Doing so also seemed timely because, before I had begun fooling
with RegClean as just described, PowerDesk had crashed for some reason. I ran
the Registry Checker to make a backup of the Registry, but it told me that one
had already been made today, and I didn't see much reason to add a confusing
backup of the current, potentially bad Registry to my set of good Registry
backups. (See point 120(an).) Before I had thought of that, I had hit Start | Run
| SCANREG /BACKUP, which also presumably gave me a backup, although at
this point I was not yet certain how to check my list of Registry backup files. (See
point 145(p).) Anyway, in EasyCleaner I started with the Clean Registry button.
It did its thing and reported that I had 172 invalid references. Some of them, I
could plainly see, were references to files that no longer existed. So I hit Select
All and then Delete. Next, I ran the Duplicate Files test. (Note that you can go
into Options to tell the program how it should define "duplicate.") In this case, it
didn't find any that surprised me, but I also knew there were some programs in
my DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64) that were older versions of some files on
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND and were probably not advisable for use under
Win98, so I went into DOS_UTIL, zipped the obsolete programs, and made
subfolders for some of the others. Next, I ran EasyCleaner's search for

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Unnecessary Files. It found eighteen. Most were TMP and BAK files, which I
didn't mind deleting. I selected all and then unselected three or four files that I
wasn't so sure I was ready to delete -- especially including two with archive bits
(N.B.: this cool program actually showed those bit settings) that had been set just
since the time when I had last shut them all off. (See point 132.)
140. Fifty Best Freeware Programs. A discussion on alt.comp.freeware at the
end of 1999 came up with a list of the 50 best freeware programs. See
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566474443&fmt=text. This was hardly an
authoritative source, but I found it interesting. I added two items suggested later
in that discussion and then reduced the list, for my purposes, as follows:
(a) Eliminated because I already had installed, or soon would be installing,
something that worked well enough for my purposes: Best picture file viewer:
IRFANVIEW. Best Text Editor: NOTEPAD+/NOTETAB LITE/STRATUSPAD.
Best graphics editor: THE GIMP. Best newsreader: FREE AGENT. Best email
client: PEGASUS (big) or FOXMAIL (small). Best calendar maker: DAYSEASE
(on disk) CALENDAR CREATOR (on site). Best Registry cleaner: EASY
CLEANER. Best duplicate file finder: EASY CLEANER/DUPELESS. Best archive
utility: EASYZIP2000 / ZIPCENTRAL. Best HTML Editor: ARACHNOPHILIA
(text) XSITE (wysiwyg). Also noteworthy 1STPAGE2000 (ONLY IF you run
Internet Explorer). Best anti-virus: INOCULATEIT PE. Best spreadsheet:
SPHYGMIC SPREADSHEET/STAR OFFICE. Best disk space information tool:
TREESIZE/DISKDATA/STATS99. Best OCR: WOCAR. Best encryption utility:
CITADEL SAFSTORE. Best Word Processor:
WORDWRIGHT/XPERTWORD/STAR OFFICE. Best CD burning utility:
EASYCDPRO 95. Best disk/directory synchronization: MEHUL'S
BACKUP/SYNCHRONIZE IT!. Best disk/file wiper: BCWIPE. Best Mouse
Enhancement: COOL MOUSE 97. (See point 286.)
(b) Eliminated because I didnt want or need such programs: Best translator:
ALTAVISTA (online) DICTIONARY2000 (on disk). Best screensaver maker:
FLASHER (on disk) ALCYONE (to send to others). Best family tree maker:
KINDRED CONNECTIONS. Best CAD program: CADSTD. Best Bible:
THEOPHILOUS (huge) BIBLE PLUS (small). Best chat/on-line tool: ICQ. Best
currency converter: CURRENCY CONVERTER. Best Desktop Security: BLACK
SCREEN/DESKTOP ENFORCER. Best disk/file explorer: FMEDIT98/WINKEY.
Best File Splitter: CHAINSAW/SPLITIT95.
(c) System-Related Programs to Consider Now: Best program installation
monitor: INCTRL4. (See point 141(d).) Best free clipboard-extender: YANKEE
CLIPPER. (See point 134(j).)

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(d) Postponed for Later Consideration, Internet-Related: Best at sharing internet

connection: WINGATE. (Turned out to be designed for networked computers.)
Best Freeware Site : Son Of Spy/Freewarehome. (I tended to use Hotfiles
because they rated the programs, as did Tucows and some others.) Best web
search utility: COPERNIC99. (See point 156(b).) Best netsurfing speed-up etc.:
NAVISCOPE/ISPEED. (See point 156(d).) Best free download aid:
OCTOPUS/GET RIGHT (freeware version). (See point 156(c).) Best webpage
spam & content filter: PROXOMITRON/WEBWASHER. (See point 156(e).) Best
DUN application: NETLAUNCH. (See point 134(t).)
(e) Postponed for Later Consideration, for Graphics Work: Best thumbnail
maker: IRFANVIEW/MY THUMBS. Best graphics button & title maker: DD
TITLE. Best diagram and chart drawing tool: GRIDS. Best screen capture:
PRINTKEY/HARDCOPY. Best image gallery website creator: IMAGEJEN. (See
point 224(i).)
(f) Postponed for Later Consideration, Productivity Division: Best information
management: SKWYRUL PRO/FUNNELVISION. Best lightweight
organizer/PIM: DIGITA ORGANIZER. Best versatile PIM/Organizer/planner:
SIDEKICK95/HJTREEPAD/COMMENCE. Best time/project manager:
MYOCLOCKER/DONE2000. Best planner: SPHYGMIC PLANNER. (Later, I
decided that I probably had the software that I needed along these lines, at least
for the present.)
(g) Postponed Until I Could Figure Out What They Were or for Other Reasons:
Best setup/installation builder: GKSETUP. (Turned out to be for programmers.)
Best cataloguer: CATFISH. (Later found that ZDNet gave it two stars out of five
and only reported 573 downloads.) Best free astronomy prg: ADASTRA. (See
point 159(a).)
141. Assorted System Utilities. In the effort to squeeze as much as possible into a
basic Windows system CD, I decided to install a bunch of minor utilities that
have been useful and didn't seem likely to take up too much space. I began with
a couple that had been on my mind, and then took care of the system-related
freeware programs recommended in point 140(c). The programs I installed were
as follows:
(a) PC Magazine's MultiRen. This handy little free download had been quite
useful for me. I didn't know if its command syntax was the best in the world, but
there were really only three or four things to learn, and once you got onto it, this
was an excellent way to rename multiple files with a right-click.

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(b) PC Magazine's ImgView. I did a search for TIF, GIF, and JPG files, rightclicked on one of each, and chose QuickView. It worked for two out of three, but
for the GIF file I got the message, "There is no viewer capable of viewing GIF
Image files." The readme file for ImgView told me that it might be able to detect
whether there was a viewer already installed for a given file type. I installed
ImgView according to instructions. All boxes were checked, indicating that there
were no QuickView viewers for any of the formats that ImgView covered (i.e.,
GIF, JPG, PCD, PCX, PNG, TGA, and TIF). I installed them all. I tested
QuickView on GIF, TIF, and JPG files, and it worked on all.
(c) GO.BAT. Not really a system utility, but it is relevant now because, now that
I had installed PowerDesk, I had quick access to a command line, just by clicking
the Command Line button on the PowerDesk toolbar as I had customized it.
(See point 135.) With a command line, the quickest way to load Internet Explorer
and reach websites whose names came readily to mind (like Hotfiles.com) was to
prepare GO.BAT and run it. GO contained this one line: START
HTTP://WWW.%1.COM. The "%1" was a variable, a placeholder for whatever
you type after the word GO on the command line. So now it was just GO
HOTFILES to get the Hotfiles website. I believe Internet Explorer provides a
similar function; the advantage here is that you don't even have to have IE
running: GO.BAT itself will start IE and then search for the website.
(d) PC Magazines InCtrl4. It seemed like high time to learn how to use a
program that would monitor the actions taken during the installation of various
programs, so that I could roll them back without having to wipe my hard disk
and begin again with the most recent CD backup I had made. This was the
purpose of PC Magazine's InCtrl4. I installed it and set its default paths to
E:\Temp for reports and H:\Temp for temporary files. It seemed that, basically,
if you wanted it to track an installation, you had to enter the installation file
name in InCtrl4 and let the installation proceed through it. I felt that I might do
this only for some programs. First, if I was installing a major program, I needed
to keep on my newfound attitude of researching the program before installing it,
as I was now doing with everything. If I had done that with the
Norton/Symantec programs that had caused me problems, I might have thought
twice before installing them, or at least might then have felt that it was important
to use InCtrl4 and install nothing else for a while afterwards. Second, if it was a
minor program that people swore by -- such as, for instance, a program from this
list of fifty best freeware programs -- and if it also had good reviews from CNET,
Tucows, ZDNet, or some other similar establishment, I might not worry as much
about installing it through an uninstaller, although it might still be easy and
wise. Third, I probably wouldn't bother doing this with programs that I had
already used for some time. Fourth, I was not going to jump through a lot of
hoops for programs that I was installing shortly after having made a DriveImage

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image file and burning a CD that I could easily use to put me back together if
things did go wrong. PC Mag did not rate its own programs, and I could not
find other reviews of it, but newsgroup comments led me to think that it would
be stable and useful. For example, one person mentioned using it to find files
that had changed when s/he rebooted, and said that it found files that had
changed that Win98's file finder did not report until s/he got down to the
particular folder where the changed file was located. Basically, InCtrl4 was
supposedly able to monitor the execution of any software function. For a
description of my first use of InCtrl4, see the following paragraph. Later, I found
a suggestion for a partial alternative to InCtrl4 that would work when InCtrl4
wasn't active. (See point 149.) Another manual alternative involved looking at
the INF file that accompanied a program that you were about to install; the
AddReg= and DelReg= lines in that file apparently told you what lines were
going to be added to or deleted from the Registry. I also found that GoBack
made InCtrl4 unnecessary for many purposes. (See point 236.) And one time
when I tried using InCtrl4 just to see if a program made Registry changes, it gave
me an Invalid file error. (See point 240.)
(e) Clean System Directory. This free download (CLNSYS.EXE) was a highly
recommended utility for removing unused DLL files which, if numerous, could
take up space and slow the system down. The program would search to see
which programs might be using a DLL and if it found none, it would move the
DLL into temporary storage for later deletion. It apparently focused only on
DLLs in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. To test InCtrl4, I used it during both the
installation and the first run of Clean System Directory. I set it to give a "Disk
contents comparison," which I gathered would be the most thorough report of
what had happened during the installation of Clean System Directory. InCtrl4
slowed down the installation quite a bit -- or so I assume, from the fact that it
took nearly a minute before it even showed me the first installation screen for
Clean System Directory; and it also required maybe two minutes afterwards to
complete its report. InCtrl4 also seemed to have detected the fact that I opened a
DOS box during the installation. I say that because, after the installation had
finished and I had clicked the "Install Complete" button in InCtrl4, it told me that
it was tracking an install program that still seemed to be running. (I opened the
DOS box to copy and paste the full pathname for the folder where I wanted to
install Clean System Directory. I opened a DOS box for this purpose because I
suddenly discovered that PowerDesk, unlike Windows Explorer, did not have an
Address box that I could click on to retrieve this pathname quickly, so I used
PowerDesk's right-click "DOS Prompt Here" option to get the DOS box opened at
the right folder quickly. But now it seemed that my installation report would be
a little fogged up by this extraneous activity going on during the install. When
InCtrl4 was ready, it gave me a "Report Preview" which turned out to contain the
full report. The report said, in brief, that the installation had added one Registry

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key value, changed 14 others, added 16 files and directories, and changed 11 preexisting files. The report had its interesting parts; for example, I had to wonder
why Clean System Directory would change the Office 97 PowerPoint INI
(initialization) file. (There might be a good reason; it just seemed funny.) The
report was saved as a small (3K) file in E:\Temp (see previous paragraph), so I
guess I could have used it to go back and undo the changes. I was not sure about
that, though: it did report what the previous Registry values were and what
they were changed to, but of course it did not report the changes made to those
11 pre-existing files, so I really have no idea whether I could go back and make,
say, the PowerPoint INI file what it used to be. For purposes of program
installation, InCtrl4 seemed mostly informational. If this were more of a concern,
I thought it would be tempting to find out whether, say, the EasyUninstall 2000
program by Mijenix (the people who make PowerDesk -- see point 135) would
do a better job. I decided that, if I were planning to buy another utility suite
now, I'd probably give their new 2000 suite ($60) a whirl. Anyway, it was
somewhat helpful to have the list of folders that had been created or changed,
because it turned out that the Clean System Directory installation interface -which had indeed looked a lot like it was designed for Windows 3.1 -- had not
been able to handle the long directory filenames that I had typed into it, and had
therefore instead installed itself into a new folder called
D:\PROGRAM\SYSTEM U\MISCELLA\CLEAN SY. Time to uninstall! Clean
System Directory didn't have its own uninstaller, so I turned to the one in
Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs. (The InCtrl4 log file was handy here,
because it told me that the Registry had indeed been changed and therefore I
couldn't get away with just deleting the newly installed program files, like I
might have done with e.g., a DOS batch file.) Unfortunately, it didn't show any
record of an installation by Clean System Directory. So how was I supposed to
uninstall the thing? I rebooted and took another look and no, it definitely wasn't
in Add/Remove Programs. There were no uninstall instructions in the
documents accompanying the program. I decided the best approach would be to
delete the wrongly named folder and try again with a DOS-friendly folder name,
hoping that the second installation would cancel out or fix whatever had
happened during the first. I got the reminder that this deletion could impact one
or more registered programs, but I went ahead with it. I rebooted and
reinstalled Clean System Directory. This time, I did it without running InCtrl4.
To get the right DOS-compatible path name, I went to a DOS box and typed DIR
/Z, and then copied and pasted that into the Clean System Directory installation
window. When the installation was done, I looked again in Add/Remove
Programs, and saw that Clean System Directory and CLNSYS etc. still weren't
listed. Whatever. On to the first run of CLNSYS. I ran it through InCtrl4. Only
now, as I was using Start | Programs, did I see that Clean System Directory had
indeed given me an "Uninstall" icon there; I had only looked in the program's
folder on drive D. Oops. Anyway, I started InCtrl4 and told it that the Install

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Program was the same as the program listed as "Target" when I right-clicked on
the Clean System Directory icon in Start | Programs and looked at its Properties.
Clean System Directory ran; it was sort of interesting to watch it count and
examine DLLs; and when it was done, five or ten minutes later, it told me that it
had found that 19 DLLs, occupying 2.8 MB, appeared to be unused. For four of
them, it was able to provide a description. Two of those descriptions involved
Visual Basic. I had downloaded and installed that runtime module in order to
run certain software. (See point 136.) Evidently I hadn't actually installed
anything yet that needed the module, but I figured I probably would a bit later. I
certainly wasn't ready to have its DLLs archived. I saw that two other DLLs also
had names beginning, like these, with the letters "vb" which told me that there
might be other Visual Basic DLLs here. I decided to cancel out of Clean System
Directory and to postpone further use of it until I had a pretty stable and
established system that had been working for a while. I told InCtrl4 that the
"install" was complete, and it prepared its report. It said that the process of
running Clean System Directory had added one Registry key value and had
changed one file. This wasn't too exciting, so I decided I probably wouldn't use
InCtrl4 for this kind of tracking on a regular basis.
(f) PrcView. This program came highly rated. (See point 134(h).) It was
designed to show all processes currently running on the computer, and to give
you the option of shutting them down. (Note: I found that the Resource Kit
Book Online did not define process in its Glossary.) PrcView got five stars at
ZDNet, and I thought it might be useful at times. Plus, it was very small.
Another important plus: it came with a command line version called PV.EXE.
(See point 153.) There was no installation process; I just moved the unzipped
files to a new D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\PrcView folder
(exception: I moved PV.EXE to D:\DOS_UTIL instead) and put a shortcut to
PrcView.exe under Start | Programs. I ran the program once and it showed me a
list of ten processes. (Comparison: at this time, Ctrl-Alt-Del showed me five
running programs, and that list did not include some programs shown on this
PrcView list.) For each process, it showed me a PID (Process ID, I assume), its
Base Priority (e.g., Normal, High), the number of threads it had open, whether it
was 16-bit or 32-bit, and the path where the executable file that triggered it (such
as C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE) was located. Right-clicking on any process
gave me the same options as I got from the Process menu option: Threads,
Module, Heap, Memory, Version, Switch to, Bring to Front, Set Priority, Debug,
or Kill. The View item on the menu gave me the option of showing a Process
Tree (which showed that nine processes were divided into two groups under a
tenth process, i.e., KERNEL32.DLL, and that five processes fell into one of those
subgroups). The Module Usage item under the View option showed the full
pathnames and other details about the DLLs in use. The Applications view
option showed that I had two applications running -- that is, it repeated what the

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taskbar said. There was other information here too. It was basically a nerdy
little tool that would be handy for those desperate late-night emergencies when
you need to know what processes are running on your computer, you barely
understand why you need to know this, and you have no idea how to find out.
(I later decided that Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Software Environment might
actually be more informative under its three headings of 16-bit Modules
Loaded, 32-bit Modules Loaded, and Running Tasks, but it didnt have
PrcViews ability to kill processes.)
(g) PC Magazine's EndItAll. EndItAll was the other half of the PrcView picture.
That one provided the details; this one provided a simple overview. I had used
EndItAll previously and had enjoyed using it. It showed me the actual names of
the running programs in plain English, and let me mark them for shutdown. It
was better than Win98's TaskManager, better than Ctrl-Alt-Del, and simpler than
PcrView for ordinary purposes. (See point 141(s).) It lacked the ability to
automate shutdown from a command line, however. (See point 141(s).)
(h) Clipboard Pile. I selected this one after reviewing several others briefly. (See
point 134(j).) I tested it briefly on the AMD computer and found that I agreed
with ZDNet's assessment, which was that this had the potential to be one of the
best clipboard extenders. Like the others, it ran in the system tray on a
constantly available basis, which was both essential and a minor annoyance. I
was not certain that I would love this program, but it had some prospects for
significantly speeding up some of my tasks, so I felt it would be wise to give it a
good go. Later, I wound up having some problems with it and stopped using it,
at least for the duration of this somewhat sensitive installation project. (See point
224(f).) Ultimately, I uninstalled it. (See point 315.)
(i) PC Magazine's Slice32. Although Chainsaw and Splitit95 might have been
excellent file splitters (see point 140(b)), Slice had the indisputable advantages of
being (1) something I had successfully used for a number of years, (2) something
that I also used infrequently, and therefore didn't plan to spend a lot of time
analyzing, (3) already downloaded and waiting on my PENTIUM computer for
installation, and (4) able to run from the command prompt. Therefore, I installed
Slice32. This involved just moving it to the right folder and creating a shortcut to
it. Another way of saving a large file in pieces among multiple floppies was to
use Win98's Backup utility, but I didn't like it as much. Later, I used Slice32. (See
point 269(i).)
(j) WinMag's Registry Pruner. I had the impression that one Registry cleaner
would find things that another would not. So even though I ran EasyCleaner
(see point 139(b)), I thought there might still be room for WinMag's Registry
Pruner -- which is actively maintained, like EasyCleaner and unlike the others

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that I had considered earlier (see point 134(g)). See

http://www.winmag.com/karen/ptpruner.htm. I downloaded, installed, and
ran it. It showed me a list of 305 entries that evidently appear in the Registry's
SharedDLLs list. It checkmarked 11 of them and told me that the files to which
these DLLs point no longer exist. I could believe that, since the ones I could see
were looking at drive I, my CD-ROM drive, and I had no disk in it. So I clicked
on the "Remove selected entries" button. And that's all this program did. So I
guess it was OK to have it, but no big deal. Just to make sure I hadn't totally
hosed my Registry yet, I rebooted. No worries.
(k) WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix. Apparently Win98 contained a Registry
option that would let you run a program just once, after the next reboot. In other
words, you could turn it on before a reboot, and then come back some other time
and turn it on again before another reboot, and so forth. On reboot, this option
would suspend Win98 until that one program finished running. WinMag took
this and set it so that the first program that would run after reboot would be
Defragmenter. Presto! No more disk interruptions during defragmentation. See
http://www.winmag.com/fixes/defrag.htm. It appeared that I had what I
needed, now, to set up MAINTWIN so that it would run Defragmenter every
night. (See point 131.) I downloaded this file (called DEFRAG.REG), ran it, and
rebooted. The system did indeed begin running Defragmenter before anything
else, as promised. One minor quibble: the screen saver still worked, and caused
the Defragmenter to start over, but presumably that would happen only once
during the Defragmentation -- but what if it ran long enough to let other energysaving features shut down? Anyway, in this case, the defrag operation finished
and the system went on to the dialog box that asked me, "Do you want to quit
Disk Defragmenter?" So my reboots would all go exactly as before, except if I
ran DEFRAG.REG before rebooting. I contacted the guy who wrote the WinMag
thing, and he told me that if I'd just look at the contents of DEFRAG.REG in
Notepad, I would see that I could type in whatever command I wanted. In other
words, (1) Defragmenter wasn't the only program that could run in this isolated
early boot environment, (2) I could make copies of DEFRAG.REG with different
names, containing different commands, and called by different batch files, to
accomplish different things in the early boot environment, and (3) if I did use
DEFRAG.REG for the purpose of calling Defragmenter, I could add other
switches to the command line. Based on comments I found in a newsgroup
posting, I changed the command in DEFRAG.REG to be this: DEFRAG.EXE
/ALL /F /NOPROMPT /DETAILED. The NOPROMPT part would get rid of
that closing dialog box and would boot my system right back up after
MAINTWIN was finished. A while later, I found a way to deal with the Screen
Saver problem. (See point 145(l).) I still had a problem, however, in dealing with
the dialog boxes that prevented this thing from running automatically. (See
point 264.)

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(l) MAINTWIN. Thanks to the Defrag Registry Fix just mentioned, I now had
what I needed for my MAINTWIN daily defragmentation batch file.
MAINTWIN now looked like this:
@echo off
start /w d:\DOS_UTIL\DEFRAG.REG
d:\DOS_UTIL\REBOOTGO
(The /W switch told the system to linger at this START command until
DEFRAG.REG had done its thing.) Of course, I had to put DEFRAG.REG into
DOS_UTIL for this to work. I chose REBOOTGO because it would not require
my presence to hit a button before it even tried to shut things down, as
REBOOTER would do. (See point 130.) But it also would not force a reboot at
the expense of losing data, as FORCBOOT would do. I tested this by opening
Word and typing the letter X into a new document. Without saving it, I ran
REBOOTGO. Word opened a dialog box asking, "Do you want to save the
changes you made to Document 1?" I clicked on Cancel, and that was the end of
REBOOTGO. Next, I tried REBOOTGO again, but this time after saving the
document as file X. REBOOTGO shut down the document and Word and
rebooted without hesitation. This put me on a fine line where I wanted to be:
MAINTWIN wouldn't knock the props out from under me if I happened to be
busily at work but had just saved all my documents; but it also wouldn't trash
the work that the computer might be doing on a long overnight assignment.
Instead, it would wait until morning, when I could save my work, let
REBOOTGO restart the machine, and then run Defragmenter unless I decided I
had no patience for it. In net terms, Defragmenter would run some evenings but
not others, but it would run often enough that I wouldn't have to worry about
fragmentation, and often enough that the defragmenting process would not
usually require hours, as it would otherwise do if I allowed my disks to become
severely fragmented. To finish this up, I created a shortcut for MAINTWIN.BAT,
set it to close on exit (in its Properties | Advanced tab), went into Task
Scheduler, and scheduled it as follows: daily at 9 PM; only start if the computer
has been idle for at least 30 minutes; retry for up to 480 minutes; and wake the
computer to run this task. I didn't have to exclude Wednesday nights, when
MAINT_WK would be running (see point 127), because MAINT_WK would
probably have the computer in Real DOS at that point, so that the Task Schedule
trigger would never even go off on Wednesdays. Later, I decided to take an
entirely different approach to this problem. (See point 264.)
(m) PC Magazine's HDValet. I had previously spent some time considering
which "junk" files I could safely delete. HDValet offered to get rid of the
following file types (usually by deleting them or backing them up to a temporary

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holding folder), and here were my reactions to that offer: (1) No problem:
backup files (BAK and OLD); Borland C++ temporary files; lost cluster files;
Visual Studio temp files; Windows diagnostic files; and WS_FTP temporary files.
(2) Go ahead, for what it's worth: (i) Setup temporary files (i.e.,
MSCREATE.DIR): I was delighted to discover that they could be deleted,
contrary to rumor. (See point 88.) (ii) C:\WINDOWS\TEMP (but not its
subfolders): MAINT_WK did a better job. (See point 124.) (iii) Temporary files
(including tilde and TMP files): HDValet looked like it would do a more
thorough job. (See point 120(e).) I was concerned that it might delete temporary
Word files that I might still need, however, so I would need to be careful when I
ran it. (3) I had good, specific reasons for not wanting some "junk" files to be
deleted: (i) Help temporary files (GID, FTS, and FTG): see point 120(d)). (ii)
Temporary Internet Files: they weren't hurting anything on drive H; I had set up
Internet Explorer to keep that folder to an appropriate size; and as long as I had
them, I didn't have to download them again when I revisited those web pages.
Note that HDValet would also allow me to define other junk file types, if I
wished. HDValet did not have a DOS command-line mode, so I could not build
it into MAINT_WK anyway. It would run from the command line in a DOS box,
but it still required user input to run. I decided that this would complicate my
MAINT_WK scheme, and that I may as well add it to the list of items to run
manually from time to time. (See point 152.) But I also ran it now, just to clean
things up a bit. Interestingly, it defaulted to a Test Mode which told me that, if I
went ahead with it, I would delete 169 junk files and free up 1.9 MB of disk
space. I said go ahead. It told me that one of those 169 files could not be deleted,
and it gave me the option of looking at the log file. Nice and simple. Shortly
afterwards, I saw that the program had created a folder called
D:\HDVAL$$$.$$$. I was not familiar with the dollar-sign usage, except that it
probably indicated a temporary folder that might vanish at some point soon. I
hoped so, or at least that I could delete it, because I did not want something like
that in my root. (Later, I came back and looked at this folder. It turned out to
contain a complete empty copy of my directory structure -- which might be
useful in itself for some purposes. Empty, I say, except for whatever files
HDValet had removed. It wasn't a bad concept -- keep the files in a place where
it's super-easy to figure out where they came from -- but by this point I wasn't
worried anymore about what HDValet had done some time earlier, so I just
deleted this whole folder and figured that HDV could recreate it again next
time.)
(n) Cacheman. Although I had mostly heard this program mentioned (and very
favorably) in the audio context, it sounded like an all-purpose memory manager
that would have general value. Its installation was rather abrupt: it did its thing
and vanished without a word of introduction or explanation. Under its Settings
| Windows 98 menu option, it gave me six scenarios: Standard System, CD

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Writer, Power User, Low Memory System, Multimedia, and Quake 2/Unreal
(i.e., a game-player's machine). I chose Power User. It set values for Minimal
and Maximal Disk Cache, Chunk Size, and Filename and Directory caches.
Again, I had to think that these values would be different on the AMD computer,
which would have more RAM than this PENTIUM computer; in other words, it
looked like I had installed a bit of hardware-specific software prematurely. (But
see point 329.) I clicked on File | Save & Exit and got a reminder from the
creator, asking me to send him/her a postcard if I liked the program. (See point
330.) The reminder also told me that I would have to reboot to finish the
optimization process; and it said that Cacheman changed the disk cache, not
virtual memory. Thus, it did not eliminate the need for the tinkering I had done
with virtual memory earlier. (See point 44.)
(o) PC Magazine's WinBench 99 Version 1.1. This was a relatively large (10 MB)
system utility, but it was able to give information about many aspects of my
computer. The only system utilities I had left to install were information-related,
and I wanted to see if this would eliminate the need for those others. It had a
Windows 3.1-style interface, so I knew I had to use DOS-style folder names to
indicate where I wanted to install it. (See point 141(e).) I opened Windows
Explorer, created the target folder, right-clicked on it, chose DOS Prompt Here,
typed DIR /Z in the DOS box, used the toolbar buttons to copy the resulting
DOS-style filename, pasted it into the WinBench 99 installation screen, closed the
DOS box and WinEx, and proceeded. When the installation was finished, I
clicked on the "All Tests" icon that the program had placed on my Start |
Programs menu. (As always, I rearranged those icons according to my
preferences. Later, I added those that I thought might belong on the quick-start
toolbars I had put at the top of the screen. See point 143.) The tests began by
running Defragmenter again. Somewhere along the line (I stepped away from
the machine), the program ran into problems. When I came back, it reported that
it was missing some files -- PROGRAM and some others. The program had
originally wanted to be installed in a folder right off the root with a short DOSstyle filename; perhaps the long pathname to the place where I was installing it
had confused it. Anyway, I had second thoughts about taking up so much of my
remaining space on the first CD with this hardware-specific program, and
decided to uninstall it and reinstall it again later. (See point 158(a).)
(p) Fax. Only now did I discover that Microsoft Fax was not yet installed. I went
to \TOOLS\OLDWIN95\MESSAGE\US on the Windows 98 CD. There, I
started to read WMS-FAX.TXT. It seemed to say two things that I didn't like:
first, that the program was not updated from Win95 (which I had already
gathered from the OLDWIN95 pathname), and second, that installing it would
require the same old agglomeration of Windows Messaging, Microsoft Mail
Postoffice, and God knew what else, along with an assortment of desktop icons

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and other complexities that, as I recalled, had frustrated me and caused various
incompatibilities or system issues in the past. I did a little searching online and
found that many fax programs are large -- in the vicinity of 10 MB or more.
CallCenter seemed to be one of the most frequently mentioned and highly
regarded freeware fax programs: it got five cows at Tucows
(http://tucows.revealed.net/fax95.html). (Oddly, ZDNet did not seem to be
aware of it.) Thinking of the earlier experience with Microsoft Fax, however, I
decided I would like to avoid installing fax software if possible. After all, I sent
faxes infrequently, I was interested in minimizing the amount of disk space
devoted to software, and I wanted to avoid unnecessary programs which, for all
I knew, might be the source of my next software conflict or crash. So although
there were whole lists of fax freeware at
http://www.freewarehome.com/business/faxing.html and
http://www.savetz.com/fax/, I didn't leap at the opportunity. Rather, I found
some positive comments on Websites through which I could send faxes for free.
See e.g., http://www-usa.tpc.int/tpc_home.html and
http://www7.fax4free.com/home.asp. On the receiving end, there were
programs that allowed you to receive faxes as incoming e-mail. See e.g.,
http://www.jfax.com/gm/ and http://www.efax.com/. I decided I would
prefer to avoid the kind of receiving software that would require me to keep the
phone line free, since I had only one phone line and it was already busy with
phone calls and Internet use. For what I wanted, Fax4Free and eFax looked best
and seemed to be the most highly praised. I signed up with Fax4Free, but I got
the impression that their website was not being entirely up-front with me. For
instance, it seemed to say that I would not have to download software, but then
it turned out that I would have to do so after all; and their introductory e-mail
said they had merged with another company and I would now be getting
somewhat different services than I had expected, whereas their Website said
nothing about this. I started out disliking their site anyway, because it required
me to register before it really gave me any information, and I never did figure
out what I was supposed to do in order to send faxes through them, whereas
eFax's site was open and informative. Besides, eFax was easier to remember. So
I decided to try eFax. Their download was small, about 380 KB. Later, I would
do a little more tinkering (see point 224(n)) and testing (see point 247) of this
program. This seemed to take care of the task of receiving faxes. For sending
faxes, which I virtually never did, I decided I would just use the online form at
www-usa.tpc.int/sendfax.html for now, so I saved that page as a Favorite. Later,
I decided that this was not a good solution for outgoing faxes. (See point 224(n).)
(q) QBASIC and Other Tools on the Win98 CD. I also discovered, at this point,
that the \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS folder on the Win98 CD contained 16 old DOS
programs, all dated 5/11/98. Had they been updated from the versions that I
already had, or had the dates just been changed? I could see that the time had

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come to synchronize (in some sense) the contents of my DOS_UTIL folder (see
point 64) and the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND folder. I started by copying over
the contents of the CD's \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS folder to DOS_UTIL, confirming
an overwrite whenever the former were newer than files contained in the latter.
I got a sharing violation for EMM.386, and then realized that it was because I had
an MS-DOS Prompt window open. But that wasn't it; it persisted after I shut
down that Window. I wondered if it was because I was using PowerDesk for the
operation, so I tried again in Windows Explorer. At this point, the system
became unresponsive. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut off Explorer, which got me a
Start button again; I chose Shut Down and did a cold reboot. Then it worked
fine. I used PowerDesk to compare the contents of DOS_UTIL and
C:\WINDOWS, and deleted several files from the former that (1) existed in the
latter and (2) would not be needed in the DOS_UTIL folder on a bootable CD.
(See point 64.) I repeated the exercise with C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, where
I found 28 duplicative files. PowerDesk was not able to fit the details of these
files into one screen without rearranging panes etc., so I decided it would be
easier to copy the contents of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND into D:\DOS_UTIL,
allowing an overwrite whenever the files were newer and making a note in all
other instances. ANSI.SYS was newer on the AMD machine -- i.e., among the
files that I had copied into DOS_UTIL -- but I allowed an overwrite, reasoning
that I wanted the PENTIUM computer to have its own system files and not those
for some other computer. I used the same logic with XCOPY32.MOD. I did not
allow an overwrite of SCANDISK.INI; for some reason, it appeared that the one I
had been editing (see e.g., point 124) was the one in D:\DOS_UTIL, so I copied it
over to C. Once that was done, another comparison allowed me to delete all
duplicative files from DOS_UTIL, thus reducing some of the growing clutter in
that folder. I just had to remember that, when I began burning bootable CDs on
the new system I was developing, I would want its DOS_UTIL file to include the
contents of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND. (See point 269(h).)
(r) MDEL. This was a little DOS utility that allowed multiple file deletions. I
downloaded it and used it to simplify the deletion of MSCREATE.DIR files in
CD_PREP.BAT (see point 116(h)), now that I knew this was what they did
anyway in PC Magazine's HDValet. (See point 141(m).)
(s) CloseAll. This program provided another way to close things down. (See
point 141(g).) When reviewed by PC Magazine in early 1999, CloseAll could
close only My Computer windows. It was evidently revised since then so that
you could add a "total" switch on the command line and shut down all open
windows. I went through the ordinary installation process and, although I had
read the ReadMe.txt file, had not really comprehended that it would add itself as
a right-click option. No thank you! I sure didn't need a one-click way of wiping
out all my current work. All I really needed was a command-line option, and I

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believed I could get that from just the CLOSEALL.EXE file by itself, since the size
and other features of that file were the same before and after installation. So I
decided I would uninstall the program to get it off my context menu, and would
then just copy the CLOSEALL.EXE back to a suitable directory -- probably
D:\DOS_UTIL. I uninstalled the program through Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs, rebooted, and found that the right-click option was still
there. This prompted me to try editing the Registry to remove it. (See point
146(l).) Eventually, however, I stumbled across a non-Registry way of doing
that. (See point 146(m).) When I was all done with the CloseAll uninstallation
hassle, I copied CLOSEALL.EXE to D:\DOS_UTIL. I typed CLOSEALL TOTAL
on the DOS command line and, what do you know, it worked. It didn't shut
down everything, just the application programs. I mean, the toolbars etc. still
worked. Finally, I created a CLOSEALL.BAT file to contain that command line,
so that I wouldn't lose track of it, because the command CLOSEALL /? didn't
show any information. I also renamed the ReadMe.txt file to be CloseAll.txt and
I put that, too, in DOS_UTIL. Later, I rediscovered that PrcView also had a
command-line option that might do the same thing. (See point 141(f).) Typing
PV /? at the command line revealed far more options than CloseAll offered.
CloseAll was small, so I decided to keep it, but it also seemed that I would
probably rely primarily on PrcView. (See point 153.)
(t) PC Magazine's MenuEdit. The CloseAll episode alerted me to the fact that
some of my wonderful programs had installed unwanted options on my rightclick context menus. I tried using some suggestions that I had gotten online, but
these suggestions did not do the whole job. (See point 146(m).) It now seemed
that I would have to search through the Registry manually, seeking the locations
of entries that added those unwanted context menu options. This did not sound
like the way I wanted things to go. So first I took some advice and downloaded
MenuEdit. Unfortunately, the program dated from 1996. I was not confident
that I could trust it to work properly with my Registry. On the other hand,
ZDNet said it was suitable for Windows 95, so that was at least in the right
neighborhood. Also, installation amounted to nothing more than moving the
executable file to an appropriate folder and creating a shortcut to it. I went
ahead and gave it a try. As its documentation had seemed to suggest, however,
it worked only on file types, not on folders. Nevertheless, it was small and it
might be convenient, and it wasn't going to draw down any system resources
just by sitting there in its folder, so I kept it.
(u) CabWiz. This tiny, free download had, as its only purpose in life, the ability
to display (and/or save to a text file) the contents of any or all Windows CAB
files. CAB files contained Windows program files in a compressed format. (See
point 85(a).) I knew that I had at least one or two other ways to extract files from

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a CAB file, once I knew what I was looking for: PowerDesk (see point 134(e))
and the System File Checker (see point 55).
(v) Cottonwood Software's Delayer. Again, this free utility had the kind of
installation that I preferred for utilities: just copy its files to a folder and make a
shortcut to its EXE file, which I did. The program had the ability to delay the
running of a program or a series of programs (e.g., to load programs in sequence
at startup), or to run programs repeatedly at certain time intervals. I would have
to set up command line instructions for whatever I wanted it to do, which was
fine with me. Right now, I had most of my repeated reminders (e.g., once a day)
running through Outlook 98, and I expected that to continue, but it seemed like
this tiny program might come in useful for some of my batch file work.
142. Add Shutdown Folder to Links Toolbar. I had created the Links toolbar at
the bottom of the screen and had dragged it up to the top. (See point 105(e).)
Then, as noted in point 138(c), I decided to add a Shutdown folder to that
toolbar. This folder would contain a shortcut for each of my shutdown options
(e.g., refresh, reboot immediately, reboot after getting permission, etc.). So I
created shortcuts to each of my six shutdown batch programs and put those
shortcuts into C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Shutdown. Unfortunately, this
Shutdown folder did not automatically appear on the Links toolbar. So how was
I supposed to fix that? Rebooting didn't change anything, and neither did rightclicking on the Links toolbar and selecting Refresh. I found no answers online. I
posted a question to a newsgroup, and in a day or two I had an answer. To make
the folder appear on the toolbar, I dragged it from Windows Explorer to the
desktop, and then dragged it from the desktop to the toolbar. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q171/2/28.ASP. Now I
had a Shutdown folder on the desktop (i.e., in C:\Windows\Desktop), and also
on the toolbar. I didn't want any copies of it on the desktop, so I dragged that
copy back to C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. Meanwhile, where was this other
copy of the Shutdown folder being stored, the copy that appeared on the Links
toolbar? I did a search and found it in E:\Favorites\Links. Say what? Certainly
it made sense to have something as changeable as the Links folder on E (DATA)
rather than on C (WIN98), for purposes of backing it up frequently and avoiding
fragmentation to my operating system drive. (See point 44.) But how did it get
here? [I saw, later, that I had forgotten that I had set it this way in X-Setup.] Last
time I checked, the toolbar was derived from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links.
(See point 120(ae).) The problem I saw, having it on drive E, was that I'd have
two separate Links folders. I figured this would be necessary because Links was
a system folder that, according to what I had heard, you couldn't remove from
C:\Windows\Favorites without causing malfunctions in Internet Explorer; and
this C version of Links would be where Internet Explorer would save new
Favorites. Also, the risk of fragmentation, and the need for backup, would be

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much smaller than normal in my case, because I intended to keep most of my

Favorites in web pages devoted to specific topics (e.g., Media, Computers). (See
point 109(g).) The only Favorites going into Internet Explorer's Favorites folder
would be new ones that I had not yet put into those web pages. These didn't
seem likely to cause much fragmentation or require much backup. So I decided
that, on balance, I should keep the Links folder on C, and should try to create the
Links toolbar from there. I used Windows Explorer to copy E:\Favorites
(including Links and other folders) to C:\Windows\Favorites, and then
rebooted. Sure enough, the toolbar was still there, and now it was reflecting the
contents of C:\Windows\Favorites\Links rather than the no-longer-existing
E:\Favorites\Links folder. To make sure, I changed the names of some
subfolders in the Links folder on C, and the Links toolbar immediately reflected
those changes.
143. Cascading Programs Toolbar. So far, Links was the only toolbar that had
given me a cascading effect. That is, when I moved the mouse to a folder on the
Links toolbar (such as the Shutdown folder described in point 142), the folder
would open up and show me its contents with just a single click; and since I had
my Links toolbar at the top of the screen, the contents would unfold down from
the top in a pull-down menu; and when I clicked on one of them, the toolbar and
the menu would get out of the way. (See point 109(g).) By contrast, when I put a
folder on any other toolbar (such as the one at the right side -- see point 120(q)), it
would not react until I double-clicked on it, and then it would open up a folder
on the desktop that I would then have to close after selecting the item that I
wanted from it. Now, however, thanks to a response to a question I had posed in
a newsgroup, I found that I could get this pull-down menu effect from other
toolbars as well. The how-to guide appeared at
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/serenitymacros/ie5.html. My steps were as
follows: (1) I went to the Toolbars subfolder that I had created under my Start |
Programs folder. There, I created a subfolder called Programs. (2) I created a
new toolbar by right-clicking on the taskbar, choosing Toolbars | New Toolbar,
and navigating to this new Toolbars\Programs subfolder (way down the line
under C:\Windows\Start Menu). (3) I moved this toolbar up to the top of the
screen, and resized it over at the right edge, so that only the word "Programs"
was visible. (It actually took two steps: drag it onto the desktop, and then drag
it up from there.) (4) So far, my Links toolbar contained two types of entries. Its
original purpose was to hold links to web pages on which I planned to put links
to many different Favorites. (See point 109(g).) I wanted those to stay after the
present operation. But besides the ten links to ten different Favorites web pages
(e.g., Media, Computers), on which I planned to organize my Favorites
pertaining to ten different topics (see point 327), I also had a half-dozen folders
there. There were two types of folders. One was the "Frequented" folder, which
contained links to a half-dozen websites that I visited often. I wanted that folder

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to stay with the other items on the Links toolbar. But the rest of the folders on
the Links toolbars contained shortcuts for programs that I wanted to be able to
load quickly. These were programs that I used often, and these folders contained
a select list. Basically, there was a different philosophy here as compared to the
Start | Programs menu: the latter needed to contain my standard, complete set
of shortcuts to all programs that I might care to run, and therefore could be
slower to navigate through, whereas these Links folders were designed for
speedy selection among a small number of frequently used programs. There
were several such folders, named Main Programs, Internet Programs, and Utility
Programs (see point 120(ae)), Desktop Tools (see point 120(f)), and this newly
added Shutdown folder (see point 142). I wasn't crazy about putting these
folders into a different toolbar that might require an additional click, but I
decided to give it a try. So I cut each of the folder icons from the Links toolbar
and pasted them into the new Toolbars\Programs subfolder that I mentioned a
moment ago. I also decided to move the E-mail folder (the one containing fast
links to create e-mail messages to people whom I e-mail often -- see point 113(b))
to that Toolbars\Programs subfolder. This left only the Frequented folder. Since
I had given unique icons to each of the links to my Favorites web pages (e.g.,
Media, Computers), and since tool tips would pop up to show me the meaning of
an icon if I forgot what it stood for, I could now right-click on an empty part of
the Links toolbar and shut off the Show Text option. This made is possible to
drag the bottom edge of the Links toolbar up so that the toolbar would occupy
just one line, which would make it less obtrusive on those occasions when I hit it
by accident. (It was set to Auto Hide.) This left a lot of room for growth, either
by adding more icons on the Links toolbar or by adding another toolbar to share
the top of the screen with it. Meanwhile, over in the top right corner, I had just
the word "Programs" for the Programs toolbar, and accompanying it was a little
">>" indicator. If I clicked on the >> indicator, I now had a set of pull-down (or
should I say roll-out) menus that acted a lot like the Start | Programs option in
the opposite corner of the screen -- with, as I say, a very different philosophy. If I
clicked once on any of these menus, then I was able to click and drag them (but
not their subcomponents) so that the ones I expected to use the most were near
the top of the list. I was thinking of moving this Programs toolbar to the rightedge toolbar, just to see if it would function the same there, and suddenly
realized that I could have figured all this out much earlier, if I had just
contemplated it for a minute, because the >> indicators that appeared under two
of the items that already existed on that right-edge toolbar (namely, the Folders
toolbar (see point 120(u)) and the Scraps toolbar (see point 120(s)), and they
functioned the same way there. Anyway, with all the extra space I now had on
the top toolbar, I decided to make these frequently-used programs more
accessible by putting each of these program folders into its own toolbar. To
make them all fit into the new, slimmer top toolbar, I shortened their names. So
now, instead of a Programs folder and toolbar (or, more precisely, under the

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Programs folder, which I kept under Start | Programs because it made things
more organized), I had folders and toolbars for Desk (Desktop Tools), E (E-mail),
I (Internet Programs), Main (Main Programs), Bye (Shutdown), and Util (Utility
Programs). (I revised the Bye toolbar later. See point 262(c). Likewise the Util
toolbar. See point 310.) I figured it would take me a little while to remember
what the letters meant, but probably not long. (As it turned out, I could have
used a few more letters for each one -- I still had a lot of space to spare on that
top toolbar.) I did it in stages, dragging them all onto the desktop first, and then
onto the top toolbar. In that latter step, I found that they filled in from left to
right. That is, the last one I dragged to the top toolbar would be all the way to
the right. So I began with the ones I wanted to use most often, since this would
put them at the center of the screen (to the right of the first toolbar there, the
Links toolbar). When I was done dragging, I resized them all (except Links) so
that only the letter and the >> indicator showed. Finally, I created a Dummy
toolbar, named "____," to fill the right end of the toolbar, so that the right-edge
toolbar would never obscure a working item, and this was the last one I dragged
to the top toolbar. Now I had the same quick access as before, and without a lot
of folder icons filling an entire second row of the Links toolbar, and I also had a
greater ability to rearrange the icons on these menus. The only drawback was
that I had to look a little harder to navigate the mouse to the little >> indicator
instead of clicking on the former, slightly larger folder icon.
144. PowerDesk Problem: Error Message When Closing. Twice, now, I had
gotten a message indicating that something wasn't working right when I clicked
on the X in the upper right corner of the PowerDesk screen (see point 135) to
close down that program. (During this time, I had also gotten an error message
indicating that Explorer was shutting down, but that hadn't actually crashed the
system; nevertheless, I had rebooted.) I didn't write down the error message that
PowerDesk had provoked; it wasn't occurring regularly; and I couldn't get it to
happen again now. I decided maybe EasyCleaner could help, even though I had
just run it a few hours earlier. (See point 139(b).) It found no invalid Registry
entries, however. I went to the Mijenix website but couldn't find an FAQ there; it
appeared that I would have to call or e-mail them, which were options that I
would normally appreciate but in this case I didn't remember enough about the
problem to do that. I decided to forge ahead with my software installation
process, wait to see if it happened again, and reserve the option of possibly
uninstalling and reinstalling. This error message had not been appearing on the
AMD machine during the year or two that I had been using PowerDesk there, so
I wasn't thinking of trashing the program.
145. Other Tweaks. These adjustments did not require Registry editing. I
started these steps before taking the steps shown in point 146, but the later items
in this point 145 occurred to me only after I had begun the items shown in point

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146.
(a) Auto-Complete in Internet Explorer. I decided to supply information
commonly requested in various websites. I would not actually send this
information without reviewing the website, of course, but this would enable
Internet Explorer to fill in the most likely answers. To do this, I went into
Internet Explorer and selected Tools | Internet Options | Content | My Profile.
All I really filled in was name, address, and phone number, but that seemed
likely to save a lot of typing.
(b) Larger DOS Box. Following instructions from
http://www.chami.com/tips/windows/050298W.html -- which was,
incidentally, one of the most useful and interesting of all tips sites I reviewed
during this whole process -- I opened a DOS box, right-clicked on its title bar,
and set Properties | Screen | Initial Size to 43 lines, and set the dimensions on
the toolbar to be 8 x 12. I closed the box, opened a new one, saw that it was
larger, dragged the box up and left, and dragged its bottom right corner until the
toolbars disappeared. Then I helt Ctrl and Alt while clicking on the X in its
upper right corner. Just like that, a larger and more informative DOS box. I had
opened that box from the toolbar at the top of my screen (see point 143). I copied
that shortcut to the other Start | Programs location where I had a DOS box icon.
(c) Following a tip from TweakHomePC
(http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/top20.html), I used Notepad to add this
line to the [386enh] section of C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI: PageBuffers=32.
The next couple of tips are from that same website.
(d) MSINFO32. I ran MSINFO32 (see the first paragraph of point 146) and chose
Tools | System Configuration Utility | Startup. (I could also have used this to
edit SYSTEM.INI in paragraph (c), above.) I looked for startup programs that
use lots of memory, such as FindFast, Office Startup, System Agent, Active
Movie, and NetMeeting, but found none. I did see, however, that the same
LoadPowerProfile command was listed twice, so I unchecked one of those two
instances. I also unchecked the entry for the Microsoft Messenger there; I had
downloaded and installed it, but I wasn't using it, and I didn't want its icon to
keep showing up in the system tray. This was all very helpful, but I knew there
were other ways to examine and deal with programs that run on startup, either
by editing the Registry (see point 147) or by using the Start Manager utility that
came with PC Magazine's benchmark package (see point 158(b)).
(e) IP Packet Size. In Control Panel | Network, I selected Dial-Up Adapter and
then clicked on Properties | Advanced | IP Packet Size and set Value to Small. I

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did the same for Dial-Up Adapter # 2 (VPN Support).

(f) TweakUI Once More. My attempts to remove unwanted items from the Start
menu (see point 146(c)) led me back to TweakUI as perhaps the only way to deal
with some of them. I looked again at point 117, and decided to review the
"TweakUI Information Page" at http://newlifewin98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm to see which version I had installed.
Then I remembered that it was part of the Resource Kit, so I looked back at point
119(a). This told me that I could get to my installed version of TweakUI through
the Resource Kit Sampler. I went to the PowerToy subfolder there and
compared the file list against the one shown on the TweakUI Information Page to
confirm that I had indeed installed the recommended version. Then I reviewed
http://members.aol.com/axcel216/98-3.htm# TWK98 to see if the New tab in
TweakUI (which was apparently the tab I would be using) had any significant
bugs. It looked OK. I hit the Tools Management Console / Resource Kit icon
under Start | Programs, found TweakUI under Tools A-Z, and saw that the only
thing installed so far for TweakUI was its documentation. Its instructions on
installing TweakUI assumed I was installing the buggy version from the Win98
CD, but the basic idea was the same: right-click on TWEAKUI.INF and choose
install. It told me I needed the program disk, but I just browsed the installer
back to this folder containing TWEAKUI.INF. I closed its little "Introduction"
box and went to Control Panel. There, I saw the TweakUI icon. I decided to
reboot before using it. Then I clicked on the Control Panel icon; used the right
arrow (in the upper right corner of the TweakUI screen); moved directly to the
New tab; unclicked Briefcase, My Documents Folder on Desktop, and Other
Office Documents; clicked Apply and OK; and saw in Windows Explorer that the
New list was now down to just the four items I wanted. I did not care to add any
new items to the File | New list right now, but I made a note to myself to consult
PCForrest's site at http://www.pcforrest.co.uk/tweakui.htm# t98new when I
did.
(g) "Find" Shortcut. Following the very helpful instructions at
http://members.xoom.com/rwbadour/html/tips_a_-_d.html, I opened a Find
box (from either the Start menu or Windows Explorer) and clicked on Save
Search. This gave me an All files.fnd file; I right-clicked on it and made a
shortcut. Then I moved All files.fnd to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and I put the
shortcut into the Desktop Tools toolbar. (See point 109(f).)
(h) Install Printer. Although this was a hardware-specific item, I decided to go
ahead with it, and probably should have done so long before now. I needed to
test some things, and anyway both computers would be using the same printer
for at least the foreseeable future. To add the printer, I went into Control Panel |
Add Printer and provided the requested information.

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(i) Control Panel on Start Menu. Instead of having Control Panel icons on the
desktop, the Start | Settings submenu, and perhaps other places, I decided to
have just one quickly accessible Control Panel location: on the Start Menu itself.
(See point 146(e).) (Again, things are slightly out of order here because I was
pursuing several approaches at once, just trying to get through the welter of tips
and suggestions that people have cooked up; so some parts of point 146 come
before some parts of this point 145. This item is here rather than there because it
did not involve an actual Registry edit.) I used Control Panel often enough to
justify putting it on the Start menu, and as a part of the Start menu it would be
cascading -- that is, I wouldn't have to open or delete a window to find the
Control Panel's components. To create this Start menu item, I right-clicked on
Start and chose Explore. This brought up a session of Windows Explorer with
Start Menu highlighted. Right there I clicked menu items File | New | Folder
and, following instructions, I typed this long name: Control Panel.{21EC20203AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} and hit Enter. (There are other weird items
like that you can add to the Start menu -- just do a search online for at least a part
of that long number to find lists of them.) Then I wanted to rearrange the long
menu of Control Panel icons into submenus. I clicked on Start and then rightclicked on Control Panel and chose Explore. Unfortunately, it was not possible
to create subfolders from this Control Panel entry. Oh, well. A question came to
mind, though, as I was reviewing the Properties of this entry: would it be
possible to enable sharing and then to use Direct Cable Connection to tinker with
this computer's Control Panel from the other computer? Another note: they told
me that I could add other items, like Dial-Up Networking, to this Control Panel,
but I didn't have any special need for that.
(j) Empty Desktop. Around this time, I deleted the Control Panel icon from the
desktop, because I had found a way to make it even more accessible. (See point
145(i).) Having concealed some items with X-Setup (see point 137(c)), this left
three icons: the one for Device Manager (see point 112(e)) and those for My
Computer and Recycle Bin. I had come across instructions for hiding the last
two, and I did decide to move the icon for Device Manager to my Desktop
toolbar (see point 120(ac)); but I decided there was no special reason to do so,
since I had nothing else happening on the desktop at that time. To prepare for
the possibility that I might decide to use Active Desktop (see point 109(b)) at
some point in the future, which would probably be the only thing that would
make me crave an empty desktop, I took the easier approach: I right-clicked on
the desktop and chose Active Desktop | Customize My Desktop | Effects | Hide
icons when the desktop is viewed as a Web page.
(k) Run Screen Savers from Batch Files. It turned out that you could create a
shortcut to an SCR file -- a screen saver -- and that you could run these screen

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saver shortcuts by a batch file command. I decided that I wanted a special screen
saver which would run right at the beginning of my nightly defragmentation -the reason being that, otherwise, the regular screen saver would kick in after 15
minutes and interrupt the defragmentation process temporarily. (See point
145(l).) To create my special screen saver, I made a copy of the Scrolling
Marquee screen saver (C:\Windows\System\Scrolling Marquee.scr). I called it
Defrag Underway.scr. Then I went into Control Panel | Display and configured
its settings so that it would go into action after one minute and would be small
and slow, so as not to drain resources from the defragmentation process. I soon
found, however, that this did not defuse the regular screen saver. My special one
would run for 15 minutes, and then the regular one would kick in and take over
and interrupt the defragmentation process as usual. So creating a special screen
saver hadn't accomplished a thing, so far, other than to give me a nice scrolling
message that said "Defragmentation Underway" during the first 15 minutes of
the defrag process. I really didn't mind the interruption of the defragmentation
all that much. It made the process start over, but theoretically the defragger had
all night anyway. It was mostly the principal of the thing: I wanted to know
how to use specialized screen savers for whatever purpose. I went online and
got the suggestion that I could set up a batch file to temporarily alter the
SYSTEM.INI file so that it would look for a different screen saver, or none at all.
I decided it would be easier to make my batch file swap the regular SYSTEM.INI
with a temporary alternate SYSTEM.INI by swapping their names; and then the
batch file would rename them back to their original selves at the end. This led to
the thought that it would actually be easier to leave poor SYSTEM.INI alone and,
instead, set up batch files that would swap screen saver (SCR) files. I would set
SYSTEM.INI to look for DEFAULT.SCR, but the identity of DEFAULT.SCR
would change as often as I wished. I decided to do this, and I proceeded as
follows:
(1) Rearrange Screen Savers. To keep things straight, I created a Screen Savers
subfolder under C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and moved all my SCR files there. I
had previously placed them into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\Extraneous Items
(see point 120(x)), but now I made that Extraneous Items folder a subfolder
under this Screen Savers folder, the difference being that Screen Savers contained
SCR files that I might actually use and the Extraneous Items folder contained
items that I was just too chicken to delete. I moved the Channel Screen Saver
from C:\WINDOWS to this Extraneous Items folder as well. (Later, I
compressed these items into a ZIP file and deleted the Extraneous Items folder.)
Moving the last screen saver was difficult, since it was the one that was currently
registered in SYSTEM.INI. To do this, I made a copy of it, renamed the copy
DEFAULT.SCR, and set Control Panel to look at DEFAULT.SCR instead of the
other. Now, when I went into Control Panel, I saw only two options for screen
savers: Default or None.

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(2) Screen Saver Changer. To introduce a new SCR file as the default screen
saver, I thought the simplest approach might be to copy that SCR file to a file
named C:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\Default.scr, and then copy it to
C:\Windows\System, thus replacing the Default.scr file that had been there
previously. So at all times, there would be only one SCR file in
C:\Windows\System, and its name would be Default.scr. Note: the settings for
different screen savers (e.g., number of minutes until startup, speed of operation,
colors used) seemed to travel with the SCR files, not with SYSTEM.INI; so if I
wanted a different version of a given screen saver, I needed to take the steps I
had already taken with the Defrag Underway screen saver: make a copy of it,
temporarily put that copy into C:\Windows\System so that the Control Panel |
Display | Screen Saver page could see it, use that page to adjust its settings, save
it, and then move it back to the Screen Saver folder. These observations led to
the following batch files:
@echo off
REM This is SCR_TEMP.BAT
REM This file replaces the existing screen saver with another.
REM Syntax is SCR_TEMP <screen saver filename in quotes>
for %%v in (%1) do set infile=c:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\%%v
copy %infile% c:\Windows\System\Default.scr /y
REM End of file
@echo off
REM This is SCR_ORIG.BAT
REM This file restores the original default screen saver.
set x="c:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\Flying Through Space.scr"
copy %x% c:\Windows\System\Default.scr /y
So at the start of an action, I would call SCR_TEMP with the name of the
preferred screen saver, which I would have set up as described in paragraph (2),
above; and at the end of an action, I would run SCR_ORIG to restore my original
screen saver. The former would use a copy of the preferred temporary screen
saver, so the latter would be free to write over it with a copy of the original.
(l) Screen Saver Solution for MAINTWIN.BAT. I now had a fix for
MAINTWIN.BAT. (See point 141(l).) I changed it so that now DEFRAG.REG
would run the following batch file:
@echo off
REM This is DEFRAG.BAT
REM This file runs things in the early boot environment.

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call SCR_TEMP.BAT "Defrag Underway.scr"

DEFRAG.EXE /ALL /F /NOPROMPT /DETAILED
SCR_ORIG
(m) HWINFO. Win98 came with a Hardware Diagnostic Tool. To see it at work,
and to get its output all in one long text file, you could type HWINFO /UI at the
command prompt. This was the same information as that produced by Start |
Run | MSINFO32; it was just presented differently. (For more information, see
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q185/9/56.asp.) I created a
shortcut to HWINFO, made sure its target included the /UI switch, and put this
shortcut in the System\Information subfolder under Start | Programs. The
output of this program was a color-coded screen display. Green items were
Registry entries; brown items belonged to the Configuration Manager; magenta
were file attributes; blue were warning messages; and red were error messages.
To get rid of the data files that HWINFO produced each time it ran, I added these
lines to CD_PREP.BAT (see point 116(h)):
REM Delete files produced by HWINFO.EXE.
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT attrib -r -h
C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT del C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT
if exist C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD del
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD
(n) Make Help Useful. This seems to have been an original contribution by me -the idea, at least. Or at least I didn't find anyone else who had come up with it
before. People had figured out how to get rid of most of the other items on the
Start menu, but the Help item was pretty much accepted as fixed in stone, which
people regretted because the Windows online help was pretty useless. I
suggested making Start | Help point, instead, to the voluminous manual that
came with the Resource Kit. (See point 119(a).) I posted a newsgroup query on
how to do this, and the answer came back: basically, Windows help manuals are
in the CHM form (which I think is short for "compiled help manual"). The steps
are: (1) Rename the original Win98 help manual, which I found at
C:\WINDOWS\HELP\WINDOWS.CHM. I renamed mine to be Original
Windows.chm. (2) Make a copy of RK98BOOK.CHM from the Resource Kit
(ResKit) folder, and name the copy to be WINDOWS.CHM. (3) Move that copy
to where the original one was, i.e., so that it will now be
C:\WINDOWS\HELP\WINDOWS.CHM. Just out of curiosity, I did a search
for other CHM files on my system, and found that another large one was called
HTMLREF.CHM. I double-clicked on it and it opened up. As its name
suggested, it turned out to be a large guide to advanced HTML programming. I
took a brief look online, wondering if it would be possible for me to create my

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own CHM file. It looked like it would produce really interesting results -- you
could basically have a help file full of links to everything around your hard disk
and on the Internet -- but people were saying that you needed Microsoft's HTML
Help Workshop to do this, and that it was not at all easy to learn. I decided I
really didn't need it enough to fool with it, and that I would stick with using the
Resource Kit manual as my Start | Help option. I clicked on Start | Help just to
make sure it worked, and it did.
(o) Wildcard Link. I added another icon to the Links Toolbar. (See point 143.)
This item incorporated four separate tips that I had gotten from others: (1) You
could open Internet Explorer and send it looking for a specific website just by
typing the right command in the Start | Run box or at a DOS prompt. For
example, START HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM would take me to the CNN site.
(2) You could set up a DOS batch file to run this command automatically. I had
used both of these tips in preparing my Web Suite. (See point 120(af).) (3) You
could use this same command to go to different websites if, instead of typing e.g.,
CNN, you inserted a DOS variable like %1. The command would then be START
HTTP://WWW.%1.COM, and if you put it into a batch file called
WILDCARD.BAT, you would run it by typing WILDCARD CNN to go to the
CNN site, or WILDCARD ABC to go to ABC.COM, etc. (4) You could set up a
shortcut to run a batch file that required user input, such as this
WILDCARD.BAT file, as follows: create WILDCARD.BAT with the line just
shown; create a shortcut to it, and set the shortcut's Properties | Program options
as follows: (i) add a space and then a question mark to the end of the Cmd Line,
(ii) set it to Run Minimized and Close on Exit, and (iii) change its icon to
something snappy. I did this, and then moved the shortcut to the Links Toolbar.
Now, when I would click on my Wildcard icon, I would get a Parameters dialog,
and all I had to type into it was the core name of the website I wanted to visit. I
souped it up a bit by allowing some abbreviations for sites I visited often. The
basic idea was like this:
@echo off
set core=%1
if %core%==Y set core=yahoo
if %core%==y set core=yahoo
start http://www.%core%.com
I thought maybe later, if the need was there, I might add to this by setting it so
that a one-letter abbreviation could work for other types of URLs, i.e., those that
did not begin with HTTP://WWW. and end with .COM. Just one letter would
produce the whole complicated URL. Later, I revised this. (See point 261(f).)

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(p) Relocate SCANREG Backups. I hoped, someday, to have a working backup

tape or CD backup system covering drive C. At present, I was going with the
default location on drive C for my 12 backups of the Registry. (See point 147.)
But there was a problem. My backup system would almost certainly look at
archive bits to determine which files had changed, at least for purposes of
incremental backups. Since these 12 backups would probably be different every
time I backed up, I would probably be spending 10-20 MB of backup space on
making backups of these backups. In other words, it seemed like those backups
should be somewhere other than drive C -- and as I thought about it, that seemed
like it might provide a little more safety too. To fix this, I edited
C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI to change its BackupDirectory line to read
BackupDirectory=H:\Backups. I made sure there was such a thing as an
H:\Backups folder (which may not have been necessary -- see point 242(f)), and
then I exited SCANREG.INI, ran SCANREG /BACKUP, and took a look at
H:\Backups. Sure enough, the folder contained a new RB000.CAB file. I moved
all of the RB*.CAB files (which did indeed total more than 15 MB) from
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP to H:\Backups. (Drive H was my SWAP drive, and
I did not plan to back it up. See point 32.) I felt that, ideally, I should have some
kind of report on things like this, just to let me know that nothing had happened
to the CABs on drive H. As a quick-and-dirty way of accomplishing that, I
inserted these lines at the end of DOSSTART.BAT (see point 105(l)):
:: Make sure my Registry backups are intact
echo Total number of good Registry backups:
dir h:\backups\rb*.cab /b | find /c "rb"
That way, every time I would start DOS or a DOS box, I would get a reminder.
(Later, I thought that I would like, if possible, to revise this file to show the date
of the most recent one, or a list, and put its output all on one line.)
146. Registry Edits. It was time to adjust the Registry to handle issues that XSetup and the other programs discussed above did not address. (In one sense,
this was my first direct Registry editing. See point 120(ah).) Also, some of the
new programs mentioned above had created new opportunities and needs for
adjustment. To edit the Registry, I made sure all other windows were closed.
Then I backed up the Registry by using Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Tools |
Registry Checker | Yes. Then I used Start | Run | REGEDIT to get into the
Registry. Finally, after I was done, I selected Registry | Exit. In some but
perhaps not all cases, as it turned out, I had to reboot to get the changes to take
effect. In this instance, I made the following adjustments:
(a) Eliminate Office 97 Assistants. I had had Office 97 for several years and had
almost never used the animated characters that pop up sometimes when you're

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trying to do something. Once or twice, they had actually been helpful, but in
most cases I had seen them as an annoyance. Certainly I did not think they had
helped me in ways that the Help menu could not. So I took the opportunity to
edit the Registry and shut them off. In the Registry, I went to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\ and
deleted Assistant. I also deleted Assistant at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\8.0\COMMO
N\. I rebooted, went into Word, opened up the Standard toolbar (View |
Toolbars | Standard), clicked on the question mark box, and got plain old Help.
I compared this on the AMD machine, and sure enough, over there the question
mark box still brought up the Assistant.
(b) Rename "Microsoft Internet Explorer." That name shows up when
coolswitching (Alt-Tab) and in other places. I wanted to shorten it to just "IE." I
went back into the Registry and went to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main.
There, I looked at "Window Title" in the right pane. It was indeed a simple
underscore, as I had instructed X-Setup. (See point 137(j).) Yet IE itself was still
showing the full "Microsoft Internet Explorer" title. Maybe something that I had
downloaded from Microsoft since the date of the website from which I was
deriving these tweaks (http://win98central.acauth.com/win98/regtweaks.htm)
had set up the title in an alternate location. Anyway, it looked like this tweak
failed. But then, later, I noticed at times that it seemed to have succeeded.
(c) Remove Items from the File | New List. This tip came from the Windows 98
Unleashed online book at
http://www.usalatino.net/computadoras/win98_frankenbook/chapters/0-67231235-2/ch13/ch13.htm# Heading4. (The next few tips also came from this
page.) In Windows Explorer, I clicked on the File | New menu option. Along
with the several items there that I did use (i.e., new Folder, new Shortcut, new
Text Document, and new Microsoft Word Document), I saw numerous items that
I didn't. These bits of clutter were probably the reason why I never used the File
| New option except to create new folders. To make the File | New menu
option more useful, I decided to start by getting rid of the ones I didn't want.
First, I needed to know which kinds of files they created. So in C:\Temp, I used
File | New and created one item for each of the options I didn't expect to use.
This gave me a bunch of files with names like "New Bitmap Image.bmp."
Without thinking, I included the New My Documents Folder item, and therefore
had to take a moment to go back and repeat the steps I had previously taken in
point 120(j) to get rid of it. (Later, I saw that it was also necessary to repeat the
steps in point 41.) Also, the New Microsoft Office Database item didn't create an
item in C:\Temp; instead, it opened Access and was prepared to create the
database that way, so I just had to remember that Access uses files with an .MDB

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extension. The "Other Office Documents" option also didn't create anything; it
just gave me a choice among scads of templates that I could use to create
something. When I was finished creating new items in C:\Temp, then, I saw that
the kinds of files that I did not want listed on the File | New menu were those
with the following extensions: BMP, HTML, MDB, OBD, PPT, UDL, WAV, XLS;
and there was also the New Briefcase item. I deleted those items, closed all
programs, ran Start | Run | REGEDIT, and clicked on the plus sign next to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. This opened up a list of many different file types. I
went to the first one on my list, BMP, and clicked on the plus sign next to it. This
opened up its list of subkeys. The one I wanted was ShellNew. I could have
deleted it, but I had the impression that this could prevent me from ever adding
it back if I wanted to, so instead I renamed it to ShellNewNope. I did the same
for the others on my list. I didn't see ShellNew options for HTML, OBD, PPT, or
XLS, and of course there was no "New Briefcase" filename extension. The
Windows 98 Unleashed web page didn't say what to do with these. I decided to
experiment -- always a risky thing in the Registry, but I did have a backup, and I
believed I understood the concept. I went back to these items there in the
Registry and looked into their other subkeys. Under HTML, for example, I saw
two subkeys: htmlfile and ShellEx; and under htmlfile I did find a ShellNew
subkey. I renamed it to ShellNewNope and repeated this approach for the others
just listed. This worked for them all, leaving only the New Briefcase item to
wonder about. (Note: for some of these items, there was more than one
ShellNew sub-subkey.) This left the New Briefcase item. I found a ShellNew
entry under .BFC, but this ShellNew item was different from the others: it had a
subkey of its own, called Config. I decided to lock in my gains: I exited,
rebooted, took a look in Windows Explorer, and saw that File | New had lost
weight. What remained was New Briefcase, and also the Other Office
Documents and My Documents Folder items. (The last would apparently
disappear from File | New whenever it was actually installed on the desktop.) I
searched newsgroups in Deja.com and got the impression that the experts just
used TweakUI to handle this. This prompted the TweakUI review described in
point 145(f).
(d) System Policy Editor (POLEDIT). I saw a comment online that made me
think this Microsoft program might simplify some of my Registry editing. I
gathered that the POLEDIT program existed on the Win98 CD, in
TOOLS\RESKIT\NETADMIN\POLEDIT. A search of the PENTIUM computer
turned up POLEDIT.CNT and POLEDIT.HLP in the Resource Kit folder (see
point 145(f), above), but no System Policy Editor. I ran the Resource Kit Console
again, but did not see anything there. I checked the Helmig site at
http://helmig.com/j_helmig/polediti.htm and decided that I did not remember
installing POLEDIT. Following the instructions at that site, I went to the Win98
CD ResKit folder just mentioned, read the POLEDIT.TXT file, and followed its

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installation instructions: use Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs |

Windows Setup, choose Have Disk, and point toward the CD's ResKit folder.
This did not tell me which INF file to choose, GROUPPOL.INF or POLEDIT.INF,
so I chose the latter. Then I selected System Policy Editor, and it ran. I went to
Start | Programs, rearranged my icons, and clicked on System Policy Editor.
This opened POLEDIT in an empty screen. I chose File | Open Policy. It didn't
seem to know where to find any policies. I searched in PowerDesk and found no
POL files on the computer. Reading at
http://www.cadvision.com/redicks/security.htm -- a fairly clear and
informative site -- I got the impression that the primary purpose of POLEDIT
was to set up a system administrator and separate user accounts, where the
system administrator would have full access and the users might not see
individual items, such as the Start menu options that I was trying to get rid of.
This model would not really apply for my purposes, though, because I was both
the administrator and the user, both I and me would be working on the same
computer, and I was not interested in setting up separate user and administrator
passwords that I would have to fiddle with each time I rebooted. Moreover, as I
tried to see how far I could get with it, I found that the options on my screen did
not match those on the website. So I bailed out of that page and tried Microsoft's
own instructions, at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q147/3/81.asp. This was
more like it. Following their guidance (using single or double clicks on various
parts of the icons or lines as needed), I chose File | Open Registry | Local
Computer | Windows 98 Network | Update | Remote Update. I set Update
Mode to Manual and indicated a path of C:\WINDOWS\POLEDIT.POL for my
not-yet-existing system policy file, and then OK. I chose that folder because
POLEDIT.EXE had now been installed in C:\WINDOWS. Next, I chose File |
Save. At this point, the Microsoft site left me hanging. It said, "Select the system
policy settings you want to use." OK, uh ... after playing with POLEDIT's menu
options for a minute, I went to the PC Mag site at
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/uu1513a.htm, but
that was group-oriented too. Eventually, someone reminded me that I had that
huge 1,700-page guide to this stuff that had come with the Resource Kit. (See
point 119(a).) So, being open to suggestions, I looked at that. It told me that I
could use POLEDIT as a direct Registry editor. This did not add anything to
what I already had. Indeed, it looked like this just gave me a subset of the total
number of things that I could do in REGEDIT. So I went into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and removed System Policy Editor. It seemed to do a
pretty good job of uninstalling: I ran a search for poledit or policy, and the only
thing left to delete (aside from the documents that the Resource Kit had installed
previously, which I didn't want to delete) was the Start | Programs shortcut. I
rebooted, and everything looked OK, except that I got two little pops from the
computer's speaker when it had nearly completed rebooting. I rebooted again,

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and it did it again. This eventually provoked a whole troublesetting session that
led to restoring an earlier copy of my Registry and redoing a bunch of steps. I
didn't get to that point until after point 146(h) below, however. In the meantime,
I kept on making more adjustments and hoped it would go away. I have broken
out the troubleshooting process in a separate discussion at point 147.
(e) Removing Help and Settings from Start Menu. A newsgroup search
suggested that there is no way to remove the Help item from the Start menu. I
had better luck with Settings. An MS-MVP advised, in a recent posting, as
follows: go into
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polic
ies\Explorer. This shows options in the right pane. Right-click anywhere in the
right-side pane, choose New | Binary Value, and name it NoSetFolders. In my
case, I screwed it up, so I had to right-click on it and get Modify to continue with
the rest of the process, which was this: type the following numbers and spaces,
as shown: 01 00 00 00. (In my case, I figured I should type this in place of the
0000 that came up in the Value Data box, because that's what other items in this
right-hand pane looked like. But it turned out that I couldn't delete those four
zeros, so I left them and just typed the 01 00 00 00 after them.) Then I clicked OK.
The MS-MVP said this would remove the Control Panel and Printers subfolders
from the Start | Settings menu. Next, he told me to do exactly the same thing for
a different entry in the right-hand pane, except that I was supposed to call this
one NoSetTaskbar. But this was a screwup because, as the Registry Editor
informed me, that one already existed. I looked up the list and, oops, there it
was. So I right-clicked on this New Value # 1 entry that I had just created, and
deleted it. Then I right-clicked on the pre-existing NoSetTaskbar item, chose
Modify, and tried typing in those digits (01 00 00 00) again. This time, the dialog
box looked different; it didn't let me enter spaces; and when I was done, it didn't
show a value of 01 00 00 00 in the Data column; instead, it showed 0x01000000
(16777216). I hadn't written down the previous value, but as I recalled it was
simply 1, and that's what I saw in other items above it on the list, so I modified it
again and set it to be just 1, and now it looked like those other items. (Later, I set
this value to 0, after discovering that it had also removed my ability to right-click
on the taskbar and get options there.) I saved my work and exited the Registry
Editor, counting on my backup to save me if I was wrong. I rebooted with no
problem, went back to Start | Settings, and sure enough, Control Panel and
Printers were gone; but now there was a Windows Update item there on the
Settings submenu, in addition to the Folder Options item that had been there
previously. I dunno; maybe the Windows Update item had been there already
and I just hadn't noticed it. Anyway, being even braver or more foolhardy than
before, I reasoned that perhaps it would all work right if I first deleted the
existing NoSetTaskbar item and then added it back as the MS-MVP advised. I
went into the Registry again, did this, saved and rebooted, went back to the Start

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menu, and saw that Settings was still on the Start menu, and now so was another
new item: a Windows Update icon. They were multiplying! I stamped it out on
the Start menu but could not eradicate it from the Settings submenu. Then I had
another thought: what if removing Settings, with its Folder Options subitem,
also removed Folder Options from Windows Explorer? That would suck. I had
heard something about that sort of thing. I soon found that it was even worse
than that: I no longer had a functioning Control Panel icon anywhere! Time to
restore things to the way they had been before. Only question was, how had
they been? I went back into the Registry and deleted the NoSetFolders item,
exited, and rebooted, and that brought back the Control Panel icons. (Later, I
decided to get rid of these Control Panel icons after all, because I found another
approach I liked better. See point 145(i).) Now, what to do with the
NoSetTaskbar item? I checked the Registry on the AMD machine and saw that it
didn't even have a NoSetTaskbar item, and eventually realized that this was
probably why its Start menu still had a Settings option called "Taskbar & Start
Menu." This same part of the Registry also had a NoClose item, and I guessed
that X-Setup might have created this; it was, in any event, the reason why I had
no Start | Shut Down option. I left it that way, though, because I was fine with
using the "Bye" menu at the top of the screen (see point 143) or, in a pinch, typing
REBOOTGO at the command line (see point 130). (Later, though, I decided to
add it back, which I did by changing the value of NoClose to 0.) I exited the
Registry, rebooted, and saw that the Start Menu looked like it was about as fixed
as I was going to be able to make it. For future reference, the other items for this
part of the Registry were as follows, where you would use 01 00 00 00 if you
wanted to shut off the item (i.e., "Yes, give me NoClose" etc.) or 00 00 00 00 if you
wanted to leave the item on the Start menu:
To remove Documents, name the binary value: NoRecentDocsMenu
To remove Favorites, name the binary value: NoFavoritesMenu
To remove Find, name the binary value: NoFind
To remove Log Off, name the binary value: NoLogOff
To remove Run, name the binary value: NoRun
To disable Shut Down, name the binary value: NoClose
To disable Control Panel and Printer folders, name the binary value:
NoSetFolders
To disable Taskbar context menu, name the binary value: NoTrayContextMenu
(f) "New" Option Missing from Right-Click Context Menu. According to
http://members.xoom.com/rwbadour/html/tips_e_-_p.html, the absence of a
"New" option on the context menu meant that your Registry was damaged. I
wasn't so sure -- although I had seen one sometimes, I didn't recall ever seeing
one on the new Win98 installation that I was putting onto the PENTIUM
computer. Nonetheless, I took the advice and used Start | Run to run this line:

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regsvr32.exe /i shdoc401.dll. (There's a different line for users of Internet

Explorer 4.) I got a dialog informing me that the thing had run successfully, but
God only knew what it had done to my Registry. It didn't do what the MS-MVP
said it would do, as I still did not have a "New" option on my context menu.
(g) Hide Network Neighborhood Icon on Desktop. I went to Start | Run |
REGEDIT and went into this key:
HKEY_USERS\.Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polici
es\Explorer. I right-clicked on the right pane and chose New | DWORD Value,
which I named NoNetHood. I right-clicked on it, selected Modify, typed in the
value 1 (which gave me a result like other items that appeared there in that key),
hit Registry | Exit, and rebooted. (Note: I did this before point 145(j).)
(h) Rearranging Desktop Shortcuts. It looked like I was going to have only a few
desktop shortcuts, and that I probably had most of the ones I was going to have.
Now I decided that I wanted them at the right side of the screen. I decided this
because I had a permanent toolbar on the right side of the screen (see point
120(q)) where I had put my Show Desktop icon (see point 120(ac)). I figured it
would make things a little easier if I only had to move the mouse a tiny bit to go
from the Show Desktop icon to the actual icons that appeared on the desktop.
This involved the following steps: (1) Drag the icons where I wanted them.
There are ways to remove the names of desktop items, or at least rename them to
a blank, but I couldn't find those instructions at this moment (X-Setup only does
some of them). The other thing was that I would have to use two different
procedures to get rid of those names. As I say, there would be one procedure for
the standard desktop items, but then there would probably be some other
procedure for the items that I had added to the desktop. I mean, how do you
have a Control Panel shortcut, appearing in a desktop folder (see point 138(d)),
that has no name? For these reasons, I decided it would be easier -- and perhaps
more functional -- to keep the names with the desktop icons. (2) To keep the
icons where I wanted them after rearranging them, I applied a tip from
http://www.usalatino.net/computadoras/win98_frankenbook/chapters/0-67231235-2/ch13/ch13.htm# Heading12. It went like this: go to the same Registry
key as described in point 146(e), i.e.,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polic
ies\Explorer. Find the NoSaveSettings item in the right pane. If it's not there,
add it by right-clicking in the right pane and choosing New | Binary Value.
Right-click on it, choose modify, and type 00 00 00 00. (This is in addition to the
0000 that you may already see there.) Like other such settings, the alternative is
01 00 00 00. Note: as I soon discovered, Safe Mode would still screw up my
arrangement, forcing me to do a manual rearrangement. I was not certain that it
would have done so if I hadn't had my icons at the extreme right of the screen; it

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seemed that the problem might have been related to the different resolutions
(800 x 600 in Normal Mode, 640 x 480 in Safe Mode).
(i) Always Display Startup Menu. TweakUI could do this, but I did it manually,
starting with advice from
http://malektips.envprogramming.com/98rsw0004.html. The Startup Menu
was not the Start | Programs menu. Rather, the Startup Menu was the one that
came up when you first boot the computer, after your BIOS has finished loading.
The Startup Menu gave you (usually) five choices of how to boot, including
Normal Mode, Safe Mode, and Command Mode (DOS). Normally, to see the
Startup Menu, you had to hit F8 when the BIOS is finishing its loading. But you
could also set it to show up every time you boot. This was appropriate for my
system because there would be times when Win98 wanted to boot in Safe Mode
but would be foiled by my DOS-based boot system. (See point 120(am).) By
showing the Startup Menu, at least I would see that something other than
Normal Mode was highlighted, and could tell the system to boot in the desired
way. To display the Startup Menu, I ran MSCONFIG and chose General |
Advanced | Enable Startup Menu. This created a new problem: now was that
the Startup Menu would ordinarily display itself for 30 seconds before
proceeding on to boot in whatever way it (or I) wanted, unless I told it to
proceed sooner. So if I looked away, it would just be sitting there twiddling its
thumbs for a half-minute. The only solution I knew for this was to go into
TweakUI, select Boot, and set the thing so that it would continue booting after,
say, three seconds. I checked my sources on TweakUI (see point 145(f)) and saw
that the coast was clear, so I went ahead with it. I rebooted and saw that the
timer was now down to three seconds instead of 30. I told it to go into Safe
Mode, but to no avail: the MSDOS setting intervened (see point 120(al)) and
dumped me at the DOS prompt. But then, when I typed WIN, expecting to go
into Normal Mode, the computer did honor my Safe Mode request. It put me
into Safe Mode after all. When I rebooted from Safe Mode, I selected Command
mode at the Startup Menu, but the system ignored that and put me into Normal
Mode, just as it would have done if I hadn't made my system always (or nearly
always) DOS-booting. On reflection, I decided that this was really the ideal state
of affairs: I could control the booting the way I wanted to, except when the
system had a bad desire to go one way or the other, in which case the most I
could do would be to delay the booting into Safe Mode by screwing around at
the DOS prompt for a while before typing WIN.
(j) Speed Up Program Shutdown. Sometimes, I had noticed, it could take a long
time for Windows to shut down a program after I had told it to do so in the CtrlAlt-Del dialog box. To speed this up, I went into
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. I right-clicked in the righthand pane and chose New | String Value. I named it HungAppTimeout. I

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double-clicked on it and entered a value of 1000 milliseconds. I repeated these

steps for another String Value called WaitToKillAppTimeout, giving it, too, a
value of 1000. My advisor told me that the default values for these two strings
were 5000 and 20000 milliseconds, respectively, so I guessed that these string
values were built into the Registry at those values and that what I was doing
here was altering them, not really creating them. Anyway, this seemed likely to
speed things up dramatically. Apparently you could go as low as 1 millisecond,
at the risk of crashing Windows.
(k) Editing Context Menus: Bigger DOS Prompt Here. I had enabled the item
that would give me a "DOS Prompt Here" option whenever I right-clicked on a
folder in Windows Explorer. (See point 137(d).) I noticed, however, that this
option opened a standard-sized DOS window, whereas I had revised my MSDOS Prompt icons elsewhere to open larger DOS windows so that I could see
more lines. (See point 145(b).) Now that I had that feature in some DOS
windows, I was spoiled, and I wanted it in the rest of them. Editing the context
menu options required different procedures, depending on whether you were
dealing with the context menus for file icons, folders, or desktop items. File
options didn't require a Registry edit: you would just go into Windows Explorer,
choose Tools | Folder Options | File Types, select the type of file, click on Edit,
and add or change the kinds of Actions you wanted for that file type. For folder
options like this DOS Prompt Here option, I had to go into the Registry and
choose HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell. There, to add a new item to
the context menu, my online sources of wisdom told me that I would take the
following steps: I would go to the Edit menu item, choose New | Key, type the
name of the item I wanted to add to the list, and hit Enter. Then I would
highlight the new key and choose Edit | New | Key again. I would name this
one "command" and hit Enter. In the right pane, I would double-click on the
default value and type the full path and filename of the application program that
I wanted to associate with that entry. But in my case, I was editing an existing
item, not adding a new one. I noticed that
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell had a subkey called DosHere, and I
could see how the "command" thing just described was working in that case:
Command was a subkey underneath DosHere, and in the right pane I saw that
the Command key did point to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM. There were
some additional parameters with it: it actually said
"C:\WINDOWS\command.com /k cd "%1"" with quotation marks exactly like
that. I wasn't too sure what it all meant, but I thought maybe I could try
tinkering ... at which point I remembered my manners and realized that I had
probably better back up the Registry first. I got out of the Registry, did that (see
the first paragraph of this point 146), and then came back to this DosHere key.
Now I could fiddle around. My idea was to find the location of one of the DOS
Prompt shortcuts that I had set the way I liked, copy it to C:\WINDOWS (so that

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it would be around even if I happened to rearrange my shortcuts), and point this

Registry item to it instead of pointing it to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM. I
didn't know if this was like having a shortcut to a shortcut, and I didn't know if
that was legal, but it's what I tried. I right-clicked on the "Default" word next to
this COMMAND.COM entry there in the Registry and chose Modify. Also, I
opened a session of Windows Explorer, which might not have been wise to do
while the Registry was being edited, but it was what I needed to do. Next
unknown: I wasn't sure I could get by with a long filename for "MS-DOS
Prompt" in this Registry thing. Also, I wanted to signal to myself that this wasn't
your ordinary DOS shortcut. So in Windows Explorer, I shortened the shortcut's
name to C:\WINDOWS\REGPRMT.PIF, and I also typed that same thing into
the Edit String box that had appeared when I chose Modify in the Registry
Editor. I left the Edit String box hanging for a minute, went back to Windows
Explorer, and further edited the Properties for REGPRMT.PIF as follows: (1) In
its Program tab, I saw that it, like the Registry entry, referred to
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM, so I added the /k switch here and I took it
away from the Registry entry because, while /k might have meant a lot to
COMMAND.COM, I was willing to bet that it didn't mean anything to a PIF file.
(2) I was tempted to add a space and a question mark after the /k switch on the
REGPRMT.PIF command line, as I had recently done in with my WILDCARD
icon (see point 145(o)), but then I realized that this would give me a dialog box
asking what folder I wanted to open a DOS prompt for. I didn't want that; I
wanted the right-click DOS Prompt Here selection to do it automatically. So I
went with the "%1" variable approach: I put that, in quotes, on both the Registry
line and the REGPRMT.PIF command line, with a CD in front of the latter. (I had
belatedly figured out that the CD was the ordinary DOS CD (i.e., Change
Directory) command, and that this was how the thing would know which folder
we were going to open a DOS prompt for.) In other words, the command line for
REGPRMT.PIF was now exactly what it had been for the Registry item, as shown
above, except that there wasn't a second set of quotes around it all; and the
command line for the Registry item was now C:\WINDOWS\REGPRMT.PIF
"%1" which, when I hit Enter, became wrapped in another set of quotes, as the
original entry had been. I went back to the REGPRMT.PIF Properties screen,
changed its tooltip name (on the Programs tab) to DOS Box Here, set it to Run
Minimized, and closed it. Then I opened its Properties again, switched to the
General tab, made it read-only, and exited. I closed down Windows Explorer,
exited the Registry, and rebooted. I went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked
on a folder, chose DOS Prompt Here, and got a dialog box that said, "Windows
cannot find REGPRMT.PIF." Well, that was interesting. Its Properties showed
that its MS-DOS name was actually REGPRM~1.PIF; it seemed weird that it was
getting a shortened (tilde ~) filename when its name was only seven letters long.
I copied it, renamed the copy R.PIF, and looked at the Properties for that. Its
DOS filename was RPIF~1.PIF. Bizarre. OK, I deleted R.PIF. I renamed

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REGPRMT.PIF to be REGPRMPT.PIF, since I liked that better. I looked at its

Properties, and now its DOS filename was REGPRM~2.PIF. I thought I
remembered hearing that the Registry kept track of every file that ever was, even
if they were gone, and assigned them these Tilde filenames to keep them all
straight. So what would happen after I ran a registry cleaning program -- would
this file then have the name of REGPRM~1.PIF? I renamed it to DPHERE.PIF
and looked at the Properties again. Now it was DPHERE~1.PIF. OK, I went
back into the Registry, and modified the line to read
C:\WINDOWS\DPHERE~1.PIF "%1" and exited the Registry and tried it
without bothering to reboot. And you know what? It worked! I decided to
change its name back from DOS Box Here, since that's what appeared on the title
line, and I saw that running it minimized instead of Normal was a mistake
because, that way, it appeared only on the taskbar until I brought it back to
regular size. So I fixed those things and I was set. Later, I discovered that it was
always opening this window in C:\Temp, regardless of which folder I clicked on.
The culprit, I found, was that there should not be quotation marks around the %1
after all, in either the Registry or in DPHERE.PIF, and also that I should not have
a line like CD \TEMP in DOSSTART.BAT, which I had set DPHERE.PIF to run
(so that each DOS box would start with DOSKEY running and with the right
PATH statement). (See point 120(am).)
(l) Remove Unwanted Right-Click Options for Files. So now I knew a little about
editing the context menus. (See point 146(k).) I needed that knowledge, because
CloseAll had inserted an entry in the context menu, and that entry persisted after
I used Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the program. (See
point 141(s).) I went to the same HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell
location in the Registry. (Evidently Windows Explorer was a directory shell,
whatever that meant.) I clicked once on Shell and hit the asterisk key on the
numeric keypad on my keyboard, to expand all its subfolders, and I arrowed
down through them, but I didn't see anything that looked relevant to CloseAll. I
decided to try installing CloseAll again, this time through the embrace of InCtrl4.
(See point 141(d).) I exited the Registry, turned on InCtrl4, browsed to the
E:\Temp\Staging Area folder where I had put the CloseAll installation files, set
it to Disk Contents Comparison, and hit Go. InCtrl4 took some time, but when it
was done it gave me a complete report of what had happened during
installation. Now I wanted to produce another report for the uninstallation
process, for purposes of comparison; but I didn't know what program to tell
InCtrl4 to track. I fired up PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saved a copy of its
process view as BEFORE.TXT; I started Add/Remove Programs and saved
another PrcView as AFTER.TXT; I compared them using FC; and from this
comparison of running processes, I concluded that Add/Remove Programs was
using RUNDLL32.EXE and WINOA386.MOD, the latter being short for
Windows Old Applications, I believe. This was pretty murky to me, so I posted

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a question about it online, but nobody snapped to attention within the

increasingly short amounts of time remaining on my patience horizon, so I
forged ahead on my own. I started InCtrl4 again, browsed to
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE on the command line, typed WINOA386.MOD
on the parameters line, and hit go. InCtrl4 ran, all right, but it reported no
changes. So InCtrl4 wasn't going to help me this time around. Fortunately, by
now I had found that I had been making a mistake all along here: everything
that I wanted to remove -- or at least everything that really got in my way -involved the context menu for folders, not files. Also, by this time my attempts
to tinker with folder context menus had incidentally led me to the location of the
CloseAll folder menu item. (See next paragraph.) So I had solved the problem
while trying to do something else. Also, for future reference, by this time I had
downloaded a copy of PC Magazine's MenuEdit utility, which seemed like it
might be useful for some kinds of file- (not folder-) related context menu editing
in the future. (See point 141(t).)
(m) Remove Unwanted Right-Click Options for Folders. PowerDesk, I believe,
was responsible for adding a bunch of new options to my context menus. Some
of those options came up when I right-clicked on folders. This included the Start
button itself which, I was told, would function like any other folder for these
purposes. So if I edited the Registry to remove unwanted options from folder
context menus, they would also disappear from the Start button's context menu.
Anyway, there were evidently two ways to get rid of folder context menu
options. Either you could search the Registry for the name of the individual
menu entry and delete it, or you could edit the Registry so that these options
would become editable through Windows Explorer's View | Folder Options |
File Types menu. The latter sounded safer and more flexible, so I chose that
route. The change was simple enough: in the Registry, go to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder, right-click on EditFlags, choose Modify, and
replace the present value with D2 01 00 00. That's already what it was in my
case, so (duh) it appeared that I could have made the change simply by going
into Windows Explorer's View | Folder Options | File Types menu, as just
described. I bailed out of the Registry and tried that. Once I was there, I hit the
letter F to get to the vicinity of the "Folders" file type. I saw I had two different
folder types: one was "File Folder," which was set to open with Explorer, and the
other was simply "Folder," which was set to open with "PDEXPLO," which I
guessed meant PowerDesk Explorer. I had checked previously and had verified
that the unwanted context menu options appeared in both Windows Explorer
and PowerDesk Explorer. Starting with the "File Folder" type, I clicked on Edit,
but saw that unfortunately there were only two unwanted actions here. I clicked
on the first one, "File Finder," but found that the Remove button did not light up.
Same for the second option, which was simply "Find." I went to the "Folder" (i.e.,
PowerDesk) file type and tried again. Here, there were three options that I

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wanted to remove: PowerDesk, Explore, and CloseAllWindows. (See point

146(l).) Unfortunately, only the CloseAllWindows option was actually
removable. When I did remove it, I saw that it was gone from the context menus
for both Windows Explorer and PowerDesk Explorer -- which suggested that I
was looking for only one set, not two sets, of unwanted context menu options.
The next bit of advice I found online was to go into the Registry, to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell, and delete any offending keys that I
might find there, and also under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\Shell. I had
been in this neighborhood just recently (see point 146(l)), but on a different
mission. This time, I saw keys for File Finder and also for Find. I looked at their
Command subkeys and, sure enough, the one for File Finder pointed to the
PowerDesk program folder. I exited, backed up the Registry, came back in, and
deleted it. Now, Find was a little trickier -- it pointed to Windows Explorer's
EXPLORER.EXE program -- but I realized that this key was just running WinEx
for a particular purpose; I was not actually deleting Windows Explorer. So I
deleted the Find key too. Under the Shell key just mentioned, I found subkeys
for Explore, Open, and PowerDesk. Each of them had a command subkey (see
point 146(k)), which gave me more confidence that I was dealing with the right
kind of item. I deleted the PowerDesk key without much hesitation. Open, I
knew, had to stay. How about Explore? The only time I ever really used it was
to open the Start | Programs menu structure by right-clicking on the Start
button. I decided to copy down the contents of its Command subkey, which
were as follows: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.exe /e,/idlist,%I,%L. I knew, by
now, that I could accomplish the same thing just by going into Start | Programs,
double-clicking on one of the submenus shown there, and navigating within the
Explorer box that would open up for me then. So I deleted Explore too. I exited
the Registry, rebooted, and went into Windows Explorer and PowerDesk to see
how it looked. Well, it was definitely an improvement. The only remaining
objectionable folder context menu item was PowerDesk, which somehow had not
disappeared. I went back into the Registry and used Edit | Find to search for
PowerDesk. I found a bunch of references to PowerDesk, but none referred to
Shell ... until I got back to the same Folder\Shell key as before, and saw that
PowerDesk was back! I deleted it again, but it seemed that PowerDesk knew
how to resuscitate itself. I searched some more and found several Shell keys
under various PowerDesk keys, but since they weren't familiar to me, I left them
alone. I exited the Registry, tried to load PowerDesk before rebooting, and got
an error message indicating that PowerDesk had performed an illegal operation
and would be shut down. I rebooted and tried PowerDesk again. It started this
time, but the PowerDesk context menu item was still there. I gave up and sent
an e-mail to support@mijenix.com. A few days later, they responded.
(n) Bad Advice from Mijenix. Their first answer was along the lines of, "Gee, I
don't know if it is possible to edit the context menu to get rid of that item." I

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tried again and got another reply, from a different person, who said that he had
tried something and it had seemed to work. Not very confidence-inspiring! But
I went with his suggestion, which was to delete this key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerDesk Archive\shell\open\command. I noticed
that there was also a
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerDesk\shell\open\command key (i.e., without
the word "Archive"), and I didn't know for sure what the difference was between
PowerDesk and PowerDesk Archive, but I did it his way. I should have looked
at the context menu before doing this, to make sure I would recognize what had
changed, if anything. As I recalled, "PowerDesk" had been in big bold letters at
the top of the context menu. If so, this had done something: "PowerDesk" now
appeared in normal letters partway down the menu. But I checked on the AMD
machine, whose Registry I had not edited, and that's how it was there too, so
evidently the advice did not accomplish what I had wanted. So what had I done
by deleting that key? I wondered whether I should restore the Registry, just to
be on the safe side; but then I thought I would rather just keep on using
PowerDesk, and if I ran into no difficulties, I would assume that the key deletion
had done some kind of good. By this time, I had worked through the process of
restoring a backup copy of the Registry (see point 147), so I was more or less
prepared when, after rebooting, I got this message: "Windows could not
upgrade one or more system files before starting. Windows may not start or run
properly. If Windows fails to start, run SETUP again. Press any key to
continue." I did so, and the system froze. I rebooted from a floppy, rearranged
the excess CAB files from H:\Backup so that they would not get in the way (see
point 148), ran SCANREG /RESTORE, rebooted without difficulty, and redid the
installations that I had done since making that Registry backup -- which,
fortunately, had been only one hour before. I restored the other CAB files to
H:\Backup and noticed that, even though I was now keeping a dozen backups of
the Registry, they still stretched back only six days and would have extended
back even less than that if I had been making Registry backups as frequently as
my many edits, during these days, would warrant.
Restoring a Backup Copy of the Registry
147. Fixing a Startup "Pop" Problem. To find the source of the two little pops
that I just mentioned, that occurred each time I rebooted, I went into the Startup
tab in MSINFO32 (see point 146(d)) to see if some new program was trying to
start on reboot. Unfortunately, I saw nothing new. Then I ran SYSEDIT (i.e.,
Start | Run | Sysedit) and looked in WIN.INI for lines beginning with Load= or
Run=. Again, no luck. I closed that and ran REGEDIT. They said I was
supposed to look in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ for programs listed under
either the Run or the RunOnce subkeys. Nothing noteworthy in either place.

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Next, I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ and looked at Run,
RunOnce, RunServices, and RunServicesOnce. Apparently the keys just listed
are the ones that control what programs will load at startup. I saw some items
that had appeared during my glance at MSINFO32, but again nothing surprising.
There were a couple of items in subkeys under Run that could conceivably have
been the problem, but I really had no idea what they did, and I wasn't about to
delete them. I was out of my depth. It was time to get out of the Registry and
use my cleanup utilities to maybe get rid of a program that was trying to do
something with the no-longer-existing POLEDIT. The system cleanup utilities
that I had recently reviewed and installed were SCANREG (or its Windows
cousin, SCANREGW), EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)), Clean System Directory
(see point 141(e)), and WinMag's Registry Pruner (see point 141(j)), and I
discovered that I had also forgotten CHECKLINKS (see point 119(a)). I rebooted
into real DOS and ran SCANREG /FIX. Then I came back into Windows and ran
EasyCleaner's "Clean Registry" option. It found eight invalid references, and I
selected them and told it to delete them. I hadn't paid attention when Windows
was rebooting, but now I rebooted to see if I could still hear those two little pops.
I got distracted again during reboot. While in Windows, I took a moment to
change the icons for the Shutdown toolbar (see point 143) so that most of them
(except REBOOTER) would run minimized and would close upon exit. I
rebooted again, and this time the system froze. I cold-rebooted, and this time it
booted into Normal Mode without difficulty. I think the explanation was that
SCANREG detected a screwed Registry and replaced it with a good one. To test
this, I looked at the CAB files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (See point 132.) I
couldn't be certain, but it appeared that my most recent backups were not there.
But no, the more interesting point was that the most recent CAB file was from
just twenty minutes ago, and was named RBBAD.CAB, unlike the others, which
were named RB000.CAB and RB001.CAB and so forth. The other interesting
thing was that there were a total of only nine files there, whereas I had gone back
into SCANREG.INI an hour or two earlier (and had not yet noted the fact here)
and had changed the number of backups to 12. Could that be too great a
number? Was that the problem? I deleted RBBAD.CAB, went to
C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI, changed the line to MaxBackupCopies=10 (see
point 120(an)), saved that file, and rebooted. That wasn't the explanation for the
pops, though, because I heard them again. Since I seemed to have an otherwise
working Registry, I ran Registry Checker (see the first paragraph of point 146)
and made a backup of the Registry. Then I looked again at the CAB files, to be
sure that it had made this backup. It had, but a curious thing was going on: the
program seemed to be cycling through the same numbers rather than adding
new ones. That is, this backup had been saved as RB002.CAB, and the highest
numbered CAB file was still RB008.CAB. I ran Registry Checker again, made
another backup, and took another look. No, this time it had added RB009.CAB.

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I changed the number back to 12 in SCANREG.INI. Now another idea suggested

itself. In each of these reboots, I had left Control Panel open, so that it would
come back up on reboot and remind me of something that I wanted to look at in
it; and each time, I had noticed that only half of its icons had been colored in. I
had assumed that the source of the pops was interfering with the coloring
process, but now I wondered whether it was the other way around. I closed
Control Panel and rebooted. But no, that wasn't it; the pops were still there. I
ran RegistryPruner. It found one item -- FFASTLOG.TXT -- whose linked DLL
no longer existed. I removed it. I ran CHECKLINKS. It found six dead links; I
told it to remove them. I ran Clean System Directory, which now appeared to
duplicate the functions of one or more of the other programs just mentioned; it
did find files that appeared to be unused, but now I remembered that I had
hesitated to turn it loose on the files it couldn't recognize, so I just cancelled out.
Lacking other ideas, I posted a note online and waited for enlightenment. I did
get a response. (See point 148.)
148. Identifying and Using a Previous Copy of the Registry. The advice I got,
about fixing the pops that seemed to come from my tinkering with POLEDIT,
was to run SCANREG /RESTORE in real DOS and restore a copy of the Registry
that dated from before my tinkering with POLEDIT. This seemed like a good
way to free myself from worrying about what damage I might have done by
running another seemingly inappropriate Registry fix as well. (See point 146(f).)
The only problem was that, by that time, I did not remember exactly when I had
done the POLEDIT tinkering. If I restored a copy of the Registry that was too
old, I would lose other, earlier changes as well; but if I restored one that was too
new, the startup pops would still be there, so I would have to do it again with
the next earlier copy of the Registry. I decided that the latter was the better
course of action. I ran SCANREG /RESTORE, but it showed me only five or six
backups, whereas I had set the number to 12. (See point 147.) I canceled and
went to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (Note: this is a hidden folder. It won't
show up in DIR unless you type DIR /AH. Or you can just change directories to
it, i.e., CD \WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP.) There, I saw 12 CAB files, numbered from
RB000 through RB011. I moved the oldest ones to C:\TEMP, leaving five CABs
in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (Note: the CAB files were not numbered
chronologically. For example, RB008.CAB was older than RB002.CAB.) (To
move these CAB files, I used the old DOS utility RED, short for Redirect: RED
RB001.CAB \TEMP. It's RED.COM, dated 11/28/84, and I think it came from
PC Magazine. You can use COPY instead, or maybe you have a MOVE utility
that will accomplish the same thing; and of course you can do it in Windows
Explorer.) After moving those older CABs out of the way, I now saw five recent
registry backups in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was only one from the
present day and one from the previous day. I knew I had had the two-pops
problem on the previous day, but I wasn't sure when, so I started by restoring

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that one. (Use your up and down arrow keys and your Tab key to navigate
here.) SCANREG then made me restart the computer. I did this, went into
Windows, and still got the two pops. I went back into real DOS and tried again.
I saw that I had made three CAB files on the next preceding day, so this time I
instructed SCANREG /RESTORE to use the last of those three. Again I rebooted
into Windows, and again I got the two pops. I tried again with the second of
those three CAB files. Along about this time, I realized that SCANREG was
changing the dates and times of my CAB files, making a holy hash out of them,
so that I would not be able to figure out which of the CAB files contained my
most recent Registry backup. That's how it looked within SCANREG, anyway. I
canceled out and looked at the SYSBCKUP directory in DOS, and saw that what
was really happening was that SCANREG was creating copies of those original
CAB files with today's date. The way to tell them apart was that the copies were
much larger (around 5 MB) than the originals (around 1 MB). SCANREG was
giving the copies new numbers, like RB003.CAB, which happened to be used also
by the CAB files that I had moved to C:\TEMP. So when I brought those files
back from C:\TEMP, they would overwrite these newly created copies. Or,
more to the point, this list of copies was cluttering up the list of originals that
SCANREG was showing me. For all I could tell, I had been re-installing the same
CAB file, last of the three that I had made on the second preceding day. So I
renamed the CAB files that looked like copies to be e.g., RB003.CP1, and moved
them to C:\TEMP. While in DOS, I verified that SCANREG was showing me the
files in the proper order, i.e., that the most recent ones were on top. Just to be
safe, I tried again on the second of those three CAB files, confirmed that it still
gave me the two pops, and then tried the first of the three. No pops! Now I just
had to clean up. I went into C:\TEMP, deleted the CP1 files I had just created,
and moved the CAB files back to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP, letting them
overwrite existing CAB files if necessary. And now I could begin reconstructing
things.
149. Reconstructing After Restoring a Registry Backup. The Registry backup
that succeeded in removing the two pops (see previous paragraph) was more
than 48 hours old, so evidently I was going to be losing two days' worth of
Registry changes. Since I was really doing nothing on the PENTIUM computer
except installing and tinkering with software as described here, I hoped that my
notes in this document would allow me to bring my system back exactly to
where I had taken it, as described in point 146. I could see two different ways of
proceeding at this point:
(a) Having restored the Registry to its condition two days earlier, I could figure
out which of the changes described in point 146 (and earlier) had already been
achieved by that time, and then I could re-do the remaining changes that had not
yet occurred by that time. (Obviously, I would leave out ill-advised steps,

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specifically the POLEDIT tinkering and the MS-MVP advice described in point
146(f), both of which had failed to work as hoped.) One problem with this
approach was that I could not be absolutely certain that I would retrace all of the
steps. Admittedly, this document presents a highly linear description of my
actions, with action A generally coming before action B; but in some cases it has
been necessary to revise earlier notes or otherwise depart from a strict linear
treatment. So starting with point 144, or 146(a), or whatever, might leave out
some steps. Also, it could be potentially time-consuming to figure out where in
the process I had made that Registry backup.
(b) Alternately, I could use an approach that others recommended. The basic
idea was that I would export copies of the Registry as text files, and would then
compare those text files. The copies to compare would be the Registry in its most
recent condition, with all the bells and whistles (including the ones I didn't
want), and the Registry in its stable condition, from two days ago. Whatever else
this approach might be, it would be exact: I would see every single difference
between the two versions of the Registry. WinDiff (see point 119(a)) was the
recommended tool for comparing these files, although they said you could also
use your word processor or even the old FC tool from DOS.
I decided to use the second approach. Following the advice, I went into my new
Registry -- i.e., the one that I had restored from two days ago. (Again, I got there
by using Start | Run | REGEDIT.) I selected My Computer at the top of the lefthand pane and chose Registry | Export Registry File. I saved the file as
C:\TEMP\BEFORE.TXT. I chose that name because, although it was now the
current state of my operating system, it was also two days old. Now I needed to
create AFTER.TXT, using a similar technique. AFTER.TXT would reflect the
most recent version of my operating system, containing all the latest changes -which, I knew, would include the bugs that I wanted to get rid of. To create
AFTER.TXT, I needed to restore today's Registry backup and then export
AFTER.TXT from it, using the steps just described. (Or, more precisely, I needed
to restore the first of today's Registry backups. I had done another after the
moment when I had first begun this whole SCANREG procedure.
Unfortunately, when I rebooted into real DOS, I saw that SCANREG /RESTORE
showed no Registry backups from today. I rebooted into Windows, looked at
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP, and remembered the problem: SCANREG would
show only five or six backups. I would still have expected it to show the most
recent ones, but apparently it didn't always work that way after all. (Maybe
increasing the number of backups beyond the original five (see point 147) caused
SCANREG to become somewhat confused in this regard. To keep SCANREG
focused, I used Windows Explorer to move all RB*.CAB files from
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP to C:\TEMP except for today's first CAB file, from
which I would soon create AFTER.TXT. Then, just to be sure, I created another

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Registry backup of the two-day-old version now installed on the system, from
which I had created BEFORE.TXT. I looked again in Windows Explorer and,
sure enough, there were only two CAB files in SYSBCKUP. Both had today's
date, but as I could tell from the time of day, RB011.CAB was the one from which
AFTER.TXT would come, and RB000.CAB was the one from which BEFORE.TXT
had come. I rebooted into DOS again, ran SCANREG /RESTORE, and was
pleased to see those two were the only CAB files listed. I restored RB011.CAB
and rebooted. Sure enough, the two clicks were back. I went into the Registry
and exported C:\TEMP\AFTER.TXT, and then exited from the Registry.
150. Comparing Copies of the Registry using WINDIFF. Now that I had
BEFORE.TXT and AFTER.TXT, I went into WinDiff (see point 149(b), above),
designated those two as my files to compare, and clicked on the Expand button.
I hadn't liked the program when I first saw it, but now I saw that it highlighted
changes in yellow, and made them really easy to pick out. (Remember, this was
a comparison of text files, so I wasn't in danger of damaging my Registry if I
made changes here.) I hit F7 and F8 to take me backward or forward through the
changes, one at a time. I found several that looked familiar, or at least I could
imagine why they were there. My shorthand descriptions of them were as
follows: MSPRINT (probably involved installing the printer -- see point 145(h));
and a string of numbers under TweakUI (probably related to point 145(f)). The
last one had a line of numbers in red as well as several lines in yellow, and
eventually I decided that red showed BEFORE -- i.e., something deleted -- and
yellow showed AFTER. The idea seemed to be this: the printer thing was new,
so there hadn't been anything on it in BEFORE; but the TweakUI setting actually
amounted to a change from a previous setting, so this had both red and yellow
components. Other changes seemed recognizable and unrelated: a change to
LoadPowerProfile (probably point 145(d)); FFASTLOG (point 147); a deletion of
an empty folder from drive E (no big deal); a change to the Windows Update
reset counter; a change in TaskScheduler's record of the LastTaskRun; and
something involving an Internet Explorer cache setting. There were also some
changes that got my attention. The first of these involved
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ex
plorer\BitBucket. The fact that it pertained to Explorer made it seem like it
might relate to the change that I had been trying to make with the MS-MVP's
advice regarding the New item on my right-click context menu. (See point
146(f).) So that looked like one thing that I might want to undo. Another that
looked suspicious involved a change to a password setting, which sounded like
POLEDIT's work. But when I got to a change involving "Driver Signing," I gave
up. I really had no idea if that would be related to the two-pops problem. I
would have to resolve my Registry problem by using the method described in
point 149(a). Nevertheless, I continued hitting F8 to flip through the remaining
changes, seeking further insight on other changes made in the last two days. If I

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interpreted the Registry correctly, these included changes to the number of

backup copies of the Registry; elimination of the Office Assistants (point 146(a));
changes to ShellNewNope (see point 146(c)); My Documents folder (see point
145(f)); changing IPMTU to 576 (see point 137(j)); and NoSetTaskbar (see point
146(e)). I did find references to SHDOC401, which appeared in the MS-MVP's
advice about the New context menu item that hadn't worked and that I thought
might have been responsible for my problems. (See point 146(f).) Unfortunately,
I didn't know what to do with these. In the end, I decided that all I had really
gotten from this exercise was (1) a rough idea that I would have to re-do all of
my changes since point 145(d) or thereabouts, plus (2) a few items from before
that which I had evidently gone back and redone later, and (3) a new
appreciation for the importance of making frequent Registry backups while
doing this sort of work.
151. Reconstructing Manually. Having rejected the idea that the WinDiff
comparison approach was going to give me a meaningful guide to recovering
two days' worth of Registry edits, I closed WinDiff, deleted BEFORE.TXT and
AFTER.TXT, rebooted into real DOS, ran SCANREG /RESTORE, and restored
RB000.CAB. (See point 148, above.) I rebooted into Windows and returned the
CAB files back from C:\TEMP to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was some
overlap -- the two directories combined now contained more than my limit of 12
backup CAB files -- so I renamed and deleted as seemed appropriate to give
myself a collection that would include the important new ones and would still
have some older ones, just in case. I made another backup using Registry
Checker and wrote down the time, so that now I would know for sure where I
was starting from. Then I went back to point 145(b), as an easy way to figure out
what had been done, and opened a DOS box. It was large, so I knew I had gotten
that far when things started to go south two days earlier. I worked on from
there, point by point, and also revisited the earlier points mentioned in the
preceding paragraph. This time around, since I had to use TweakUI to remove
some of the items from the File | New menu, I decided to use it for all of them
(see point 145(f)) instead of using the manual-edit approach described in point
146(c). Some items (see e.g., point 145(g)) did not have to be redone, since they
did not involve Registry edits in the first place. As I was working through the
process, I realized that the DOS box was an example of this, and therefore that I
might have erred in assuming that I should start redoing my work at point
145(d). (See point 150.) So after re-making the changes just described, I
rebooted, looked at several changes and verified that they seemed to have gone
this time around as they had gone the first time, and then looked back before
145(d) for an earlier item that seemed like to require a Registry edit. As far as I
could tell, however, everything looked good. I made another Registry backup,
and now I was set to move ahead. (Later, I found that GoBack would have vastly

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simplified this whole process. See point 236.) At this point, I resumed Registry
Tweaks, beginning at point 146(i).
Refined Approach for Making a CD Backup
152. Interim Backup. Along about this time, it was a Wednesday evening, which
meant that MAINT_WK ran. (See point 130.) This was the first time that it was
ready to run and I was ready to run it. It ran just fine, and I realized that it had
done a number of the steps that I would ordinarily do before burning a CD
containing a DriveImage image of the system I was setting up. (See point
116(h).) It had been quite a while since I had last prepared a disk image. (See
point 132.) I had held off because I had thought that I would be adding just a
few more little tweaks to a nearly finished disk; I could hardly believe the
amount of work I had done and the number of things I had learned since then. It
seemed high time to make another disk image. I updated CD_PREP and
MAINT_WK to make sure that they were both running the same cleanup
commands, and then removed those commands into a separate CLEANUP.BAT
file called by both CD_PREP and MAINT_WK. I also made a list of new
commands and utilities, discovered or installed since the date of that last disk
image, that had to be run manually (i.e., that I could not fully run from the
command line in a batch file). They were: EasyCleaner (point 139(b)), Registry
Pruner (point 141(j)), HDValet (point 141(m)), and CheckLinks (point 147). I
added lines to CLEANUP.BAT to automate the work that HDValet did,
rendering HDValet unnecessary. I created a temporary batch file to run the parts
of CLEANUP that MAINT_WK had not already run on that Wednesday evening;
I ran that; and then I ran EasyCleaner, Registry Pruner, and CheckLinks. The
resulting batch files were as follows:
:: This is CLEANUP.BAT
:: This file deletes unwanted files.
@echo off
cls
echo Clearing the Start | Documents list ...
deltree /y c:\windows\recent\*.* > nul
echo Deleting earlier file lists that might get in the way ...
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt > nul
if exist c:\temp\arc_bits del c:\temp\arc_bits > nul
if exist c:\temp\c_bits del c:\temp\c_bits > nul
if exist c:\temp\d_bits del c:\temp\d_bits > nul

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echo Deleting files produced by HWINFO.EXE ...

if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT attrib -r -h
C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT > nul
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT del C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT > nul
if exist C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD del
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD > nul
echo Protecting some files before turning MDEL loose on them, per HDValet ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\chklist.dll attrib +r %%c:\chklist.dll /s >
nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\chklist.* /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\rcveak*.cp$ attrib +r %%c:\rcveak*.cp$
/s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.??$ /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\~desktop.* attrib +r %%c:\~desktop.* /s
> nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\~*.* /s > nul
echo Using MDEL to delete certain specific filenames, per HDValet ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\bootlog.prv %%c:\modemdet.txt /h /s >
nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\suhdlg.dat %%c:\system.1st /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\ws_ftp.log /h /s > nul
echo Using MDEL to delete various file types scattered around disks ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\mscreate.dir /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.bak %%c:\*.old %%c:\*.bsc /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ilc %%c:\*.ild %%c:\*.ilf /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ils %%c:\*.tds %%c:\*.--- /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ilk %%c:\*.tmp %%c:\*.~* /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.res %%c:\*.pch %%c:\*.^* /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\file???._dd %%c:\file????._dd /h /s > nul
echo Deleting files in the Windows temp directory ...
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.* > nul
echo Emptying the Recycled Bins ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do deltree /y %%c:\recycled\*.* > nul
*************
@echo off
REM This is MAINT_WK.BAT

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REM This file runs maintenance items weekly

call CLEANUP.BAT
call scandisk /custom /all /surface
echo.| call scanreg /fix /backup
REM Set up the reboot scenario
echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
c:\windows\win.com
*************
REM This is CD_PREP.BAT.
REM This file makes lists and changes bits before burning a CD.
@echo off
call CLEANUP.BAT
REM Shut off other attribute bits, to the extent possible
attrib -a c:\*.* /s
attrib -a d:\*.* /s
REM Run LISTBITS.BAT to produce list needed to revise CD_ATT.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call listbits c:\
ren filelist.txt c_bits
call listbits d:\
ren filelist.txt d_bits
copy c_bits+d_bits arc_bits
del c_bits
del d_bits
REM Shut off archive bits on hard-core remaining files
call cd_att.bat
After running the programs just described, I looked at C:\TEMP\ARC_BITS,
used CHATT to shut off the archive bits for a half-dozen hard-core files whose
bits had not yet gotten shut off, and then ran DriveImage from the floppy with
the usual maximum/secure settings. DriveImage showed that drives C and D
now contained 947 MB, up from the total of 913 MB that I had last time I created
an image of these disks. (See point 132.) This was an amazing thing: as the
adjustments to my system became more complex and time-consuming, the

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amount of additional disk space needed for these adjustments declined. All of
those assorted tweaks and minor utilities had required only about 34 MB. While
the thing was running, I calculated that, if the 63% compression ratio still held,
the resulting DriveImage file (which I called STEP_152.PQI) would be about 597
MB. It was actually only 592 MB, which was on the low side of 63%. So if that
compression ratio continued to hold, and if my limit was 650 MB, I still had room
for about 92 MB in programs. Once again, I rebooted to Windows, ran
END_LIST, and used Direct Cable Connection to move the resulting file list and
the STEP_152.PQI image file to the AMD machine, where I burned it onto CD.
153. Cleanup Suite. To automate the use of the cleanup programs described in
point 152, I added a new item to my Suites toolbar. (See point 120(af).) This
Cleanup Suite would first run PrcView to shut down existing programs. (See
point 141(f).) (PV had the advantage, for this purpose, of being able to shut
down all processes, not merely application programs. Compare CloseAll at
point 141(s).) The batch file looked like this:
@echo off
:: STE_CLEN.BAT
:: Starts in a DOS box; continues to a DOS boot.
:: Opens all my file- and registry-cleaning programs.
cls
echo.
echo The first step is to shut down all processes.
echo.
pause
echo.
pv -k sleep*
echo.
echo Let's also verify which ones should load at startup.
echo.
pause
echo.
start /w D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\UI32\STARTMGR.EXE
cls
echo Several maintenance programs will now run sequentially, starting
echo with Microsoft File Information. MFI will just provide information
echo on a specific file. I suggest leaving this program running
echo while going ahead into the System File Checker.

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echo.
pause
echo.
start d:\program files\system utilities\win98 resource kit\fileinfo.exe
echo Running System File Checker ...
start /w c:\windows\system\sfc.exe
echo.
echo Backing up the Registry ...
start /w scanregw /backup
echo.
:: Run Registry Pruner, CheckLinks, and Easy Cleaner
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\WinMag Registry
Pruner\PTPruner.exe"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Win98 Resource
Kit\Checklinks.exe"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous\EasyCleaner\EasyClea.exe"
:: Run DEFRAG.REG, which sets up Defragmenter to run first after rebooting
echo.| start /w defrag.reg
echo The system will now set itself up to reboot, run SCANDISK and SCANREG,
echo and then return to Windows and run Defragmenter.
echo.
pause
echo.
echo Maintenance > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
d:\dos_util\real_dos.bat
After making this batch file, I created a shortcut to it, put that shortcut in the
Toolbars\Suites folder under Start | Programs, resized the right-side toolbar to
accommodate it, and changed its icon. (See point 113(e).)
Wrapping Up the Full Primary CD
154. Moving Programs to Another Partition. I had originally wanted all my
program files on drive D on my new setup over on the PENTIUM computer, but
some installers had put some program files into C:\Program Files. (See point
103.) PartitionMagic came with a utility called MagicMover. (See point 115.) It
seemed to have the same function as PC Magazine's COA (Change Of Address)

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program: to move program files from one disk to another without making those
programs nonfunctioning. I was definitely interested in this. Now seemed like a
perfect time to experiment: drive C on the AMD machine was withering away,
and would therefore be a good test bed, and I had just made a backup to CD, so I
would be less likely to lose a lot of work if this failed. I decided I would rather
use MagicMover than COA: MagicMover had already been installed as part of
PartitionMagic (see point 115); PowerQuest's products had done a good job for
me so far; it seemed unnecessary to add a second program for this task; and as I
recalled, the documentation for COA made it sound like it might be unable to do
the job sometimes. Later, I found that some of the moves I made at this point in
the game had caused problems. (See point 166 and point 241.)
(a) The Test of MagicMover. I started MagicMover. It scanned drive C on the
AMD machine, and then gave me a treelike list, arranged in two ways:
Applications on Your System (regardless of where they might be) and Scanned
Drives (where I could designate individual folders). The latter was clearly what I
needed. I decided to start with C:\Program Files\Adobe. I clicked on that
folder and hit Next. I typed in the destination path (D:\Program Files\Adobe).
It seemed to run successfully. But then I realized that this was not a good test,
because there was no Adobe folder on the PENTIUM computer. I tried again
with C:\Program Files\Outlook Express, which did exist on both machines. The
MagicMover move of this folder, on the AMD machine, also seemed to work: I
was able to go into Outlook Express, using the shortcut under Start | Programs,
and use it to create a message (although the first time, it was really slow in
getting started). I tried once more with the C:\Program Files\Accessories folder,
which included WORDPAD.EXE. I was using WordPad to write this document,
so I temporarily exited. MagicMover ran and then gave me the message, "Some
files were not deleted from the source folder because they were in use. These
files will be deleted when you reboot your computer. We recommend that you
restart your computer after you are done using PowerQuest MagicMover." I
came back into WordPad just long enough to write these last couple of sentences,
and then I did as requested. When the system rebooted, I started WordPad again
from the shortcut under Start | Programs, and I resumed editing right here as
though nothing had changed. I had been really surprised to see that it was doing
all this Registry editing and program moving in Windows, without a
PartitionMagic-style warning to use no other programs while the operation was
underway. On the PENTIUM computer, I went into DOS and groped my way to
the MagicMover program folder
(D:\PROGRA~1\SYSTEM~1\POWERQ~1\PARTIT~1\UTILITY\MMOVER32)
and ran MAGICMOV.EXE, but it just gave me an error message stating, "This
program cannot be run in DOS mode." I decided that my experiments on the
AMD machine had justified me in trying MagicMover for real on the PENTIUM
machine.

208

(b) Success in Moving Folders from C:\Program Files. There were 28 subfolders
under C:\Program Files. I decided it would take a long time to do each of them
individually. I knew of no reason why I shouldn't at least try them all at once.
MagicMover was the only program running, other than Explorer and Systray. I
selected C:\Program Files. MagicMover spent a minute or two thinking, and
then it said, "The file pointed to by C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DXDIAG.EXE is
located in the Windows directory, or is a standard or integral part of Windows.
This file pointed to by the link file and all related files will be ignored. Press OK
to continue with the analysis." I pressed OK, since that was the only option.
Under "Current Application Folder," MagicMover then said "Unable to
determine a source folder. Multiple application source folders selected." None
of this sounded good, so I backed up and started again, doing one subfolder at a
time. I decided this was better anyway, because now I could put these 28 folders
into a handful of parent folders. This would make it easier to find stuff in
D:\Program Files, and would also acquaint me with the more or less mysterious
folders that all these various programs had dumped into the C drive on the
AMD machine during the past year or two. I started by creating D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Online. I moved the following C:\Program Files folders to that
destination: Chat, Internet Explorer, Messenger, NetMeeting, Online Services,
Outlook Express, Platinum Technology, TV Viewer, Webcast, Web Publish,
Windows Messaging, and Windows Update. Somewhere alone the line, I
realized that perhaps I should have checked out users' comments on
MagicMover in newsgroups. I did so at this point. Accepting that there will
always be a few people having quirky problems in any program, I really saw
nothing to make me worry about MagicMover. The only thing seemed to be that
it could confuse your uninstaller and you might have to delete program files by
hand. That didn't surprise me. What I was more worried about was if upgraders
didn't find the existing installation, but this was a price I was willing to pay for
the sake of having all the programs neatly organized in one Program Files folder.
(Although part of me said that anytime you worry about neatness where there
wasn't any before, you're just asking for trouble.) I also had to delete the origin
folder for Online Services. Eventually, it dawned on me that this might be
because I had Windows Explorer open and looking at that folder while I was
trying to move it. I was surprised that Internet Explorer moved without a
problem, although maybe that detachability (or whatever) was part of
Microsoft's argument in their antitrust case. Anyway, next I started moving
folders to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. The first one, FrontPage (not
Express or 2000), acted funny: it looked like it wasn't going to preserve the
subfolder under it, but was just going to move that subfolder's contents up a
notch so that they would appear directly under the main FrontPage folder
heading. Checking back, I saw that this was exactly what happened with
Platinum Technology. This seemed like a bug in the program, that it would

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reach down through subfolders until it found files; but instead of arguing, I
worked with it by just typing the full directory structure as the destination.
Using this trick where necessary, I moved the following folders to D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office: BNS Applications, FrontPage, FrontPage Express, and
PROPFIX. (I wasnt sure where I had gotten FrontPage Express: it seemed to
have been included with either Win98 or Internet Explorer.) There were also a
couple of empty folders that MagicMover refused to carry over from
C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files. I didn't know if any programs needed
those folders, but just to be on the safe side, I used Windows Explorer to move
them manually. I moved the following folders to D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Other: Accessories, Microsoft Batch 98, Microsoft Visual Studio, Plus!, and
Windows Media Player. Finally, I moved two other miscellaneous Program File
folders from C to various locations on D: Common Files and VTNIRQ.
(c) Folders That MagicMover Did Not Move. After the foregoing moves, there
were still five folders left in C:\Program Files. In every case, MagicMover had
refused to move them to D:\Program Files, giving me this message in each case:
"PowerQuest MagicMover cannot complete the operation because no valid files
were found. This may be because one of the files selected for analysis is on an
unscanned drive. Or, the main application directory could not be determined."
The folders in question were Accessories, Common Files, DIRECTX, MSMQ, and
Uninstall Information. Three of those five folders did indeed move from C to D,
as shown in the list in paragraph (b), above. But they did not move completely:
there were still some files left in some of their subfolders on drive C. In fact, all
five of these folders had at least one file left, and in every case the files left were
DLL files. With two exceptions, there were no files left in any of these folders
except DLL files. The first exception was that in DIRECTX, there was a shortcut
called DxDiag; and when MagicMover tried to move it, the first error message
that came up (before the one just quoted) said this: "The file pointed to by
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DXDIAG.EXE is located in the Windows directory, or
is a standard or integral part of Windows. This file pointed to by the link file and
all related files will be ignored. Press OK to continue with the analysis." Then
OK would bring the other message just quoted. The other exception was that, in
the Uninstall Information folder, there were a number of hidden read-only files.
I went online and found repeated assurances by seemingly knowledgeable
individuals indicating that it was safe to delete this folder. A couple of people
said that there should be an option to remove this folder in Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs, but I didn't find that. I think that suggestion had to do,
instead, with the UNDO files that got installed in C:\ in some cases (perhaps just
when upgrading from a system that previously had Win95 on the disk). There
did seem to be some confusion on the point. Then I realized that maybe I was
looking in the wrong place in Add/Remove Programs: I had been looking at the
Install/Uninstall tab, but now I tried the Windows Setup tab. But that didn't do

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it either. I finally gathered that I could probably delete this folder and then run a
Registry cleanup to get rid of any keys that might be pointing to it. So that's
what I did. But what about these four remaining folders? I e-mailed
PowerQuest tech support. A few days later, I had an answer. They told me to
just move the files using Windows Explorer or else uninstall and reinstall,
pointing to drive D. Since I had already done the latter, I tried the former. I
found that there were still several files that Windows would not allow me to
move, in either Normal Mode or Safe Mode. I could have moved them in real
DOS but I had no idea what damage that might do elsewhere, so I had to accept
that there would continue to exist a rump of a Program Files folder on C.
(d) Implications of Inability to Move Everything. According to one person, this
arrangement of having Windows 98 and nothing else on drive C would make it
easy to reinstall, as long as you kept a copy of your Registry on another disk
(such as my backup on drive H -- see point 145(p)). You would simply clean off
drive C, reinstall Windows to drive C, replace the Registry (i.e., your USER.DAT
and SYSTEM.DAT files) with the backups, and you would be done, without
having to reinstall all your other programs on top of it. In practice, however, I
found that some programs insistence on installing files into the Common Files
folder on drive C (see point 166(c)), and their refusal to let MagicMover move
them to drive D (see point 154(c)), meant that it would not be possible to do this
quite as cleanly as this person suggested -- although perhaps knowing which
programs did that would mean that you would have to reinstall only those
programs after reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, the programs that you
would have to reinstall would probably include some Microsoft programs (see
point 154(b)), and if the balance of those programs had to run over onto drive D,
it seemed like you could have a real mess. It was probably something worth
trying anyway, at the time of a reinstall, if you didnt have a disk imaging
program to do your backups, but I wasnt sure it was actually going to be much
of a help. (I used MagicMover again later. See point 323.)
155. Cram Some More Programs In. I was really amazed that I had been able to
jam so much more into my first CD than I had expected, and that it was still not
full. The mission for this first CD had clearly changed. While I had burned the
earlier CDs to capture a pristine Microsoft-only arrangement, in hopes that this
might be somewhat more stable (see point 68), I had more recently started
thinking in terms of getting as much on there as possible, so as to save me the
work of having to reinstall all that stuff later. This, too, had led to a surprise:
there had been far more system-related tweaks and utilities than I had
anticipated. Now, however, it seemed that I had finished with most of that.
What would I do to fill the remaining 92 MB on this first CD? (See point 152.) I
started by going back to the Windows Update site (see point 15) and the Office
97 Update site (see point 92) and getting any other recent downloads that may

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have materialized since my last visits. Then I turned to the remaining shareware
that I had previously downloaded. I was still not inclined to install programs
that would be hardware-specific; I still wanted to focus on making this CD as
generic as possible. I also did not want to install programs that would belong on
only one computer. Nor did I expect to be able to squeeze in the contents of my
remaining program CDs, and anyway those would be easy enough to install later
if I had to reinstall the system from scratch. No, I felt that I should continue to
focus on the more numerous and potentially complex minor downloads that
would take huge amounts of time to reinstall and that therefore should be on the
final program CD. My remaining downloads fell into three categories: Internetrelated, audio-related (excluding hardware-specific items related to e.g., sound
cards), and miscellany. I decided that I would probably not be able to get it all
in, and that, having already installed Internet Explorer and other online tools, I
should finish up the Internet-related stuff first.
156. Internet-Related Programs. To complement and round out my Internet
capabilities, I installed the following programs:
(a) Norton AntiVirus 2000. I had used McAfee's antivirus program briefly, but
its updating process had baffled me -- or, just as bad, it had had enough bugs to
persuade me not to bother. I could not in good conscience go online without
good, current antivirus software, so this was where I began. Unfortunately,
PartitionMagic told me that this program, by itself, used more than 40 MB of disk
space. I decided it could safely wait until I was ready to begin going online, and
that that could wait until I had finished this first CD; so I uninstalled it and made
a note to myself to reinstall and update it from the Symantec website later. (See
point 165(c).) I decided to take the same approach with other programs that
might require me to go online: install them now, but do the detailed
configuration plus any Internet action later. I noticed, later, that although the
AntiVirus installation had asked me which folder I wanted to install into, there
was also a separate Symantec folder that I had not authorized, and that the
uninstall had failed to remove either this Symantec folder or the one that I had
authorized. I went back into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and saw
that, in addition to uninstalling AntiVirus, I needed to uninstall LiveAdvisor and
LiveUpdate. I did that, rebooted, and saw that the uninstaller still had not
removed the Symantec folder. I left it, however, since it contained only one small
file and I would be using it again soon enough anyway.
(b) Copernic 2000. They had recommended Copernic 99 as the best Web search
utility. (See point 140(d).) By the time I got around to it, it was Copernic 2000.
ZDNet gave it five stars and said it had all the features of other searchers and
also allowed Boolean searches (such as this: ((win98 or "win 98" or "windows
98") near tweakui) and "control panel"). This program would not take care of all

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my searching needs, but it looked interesting, and it was relatively compact at 2.4
MB in its compressed form. I installed this program and several of those listed
below and then had the Registry problem described in point 146(n). After fixing
that problem, I came back and tried to run Copernic 2000 and got an error
message indicating that the system could not find the file that the Start |
Programs shortcut for Copernic was pointing to. This was not surprising, since
that file was not in the earlier Registry that I had restored in solving that Registry
problem. I decided the simplest approach was just to reinstall Copernic right on
top of the previous installation, and that seemed to work OK. I did not configure
it until sometime after I was able to go online, however; and then I wound up
uninstalling it. (See point 266(c).)
(c) Go!Zilla. I had used this program for several months to handle downloads. I
decided to get a program like this when I was trying to download 300 MB Linux
installations. There were several times when I got most of the way through a
huge download and then lost it all and had to start over because of a system
crash or a phone line interruption. Go!Zilla was quite good at saving my
progress up to the point of interruption, and at figuring out whether the
connection could be resumed. I also noticed that Go!Zilla's database would keep
track of as many different download orders as I cared to throw at it, and it would
just keep on processing them two at a time; this was a significant improvement
over Internet Explorer's inclination to try to do them all at once, choke on half of
them, and lose them. I believe GetRight and/or NetVampire were similar; I
already knew how to use this one and it had worked pretty well for me, so I
installed it. Perusing the ReadMe file after installing, I saw that there were other
features I had not used, including the ability to download entire FTP directories
or multiple files from a website in one operation. (An example of the latter, it
seemed, would be a website that offered a dozen different icons or pictures, or
samples of artwork or wallpaper.) Later, however, the Aureate Media problem
prompted me to consider NetVampire instead. (See point 293.)
(d) iSpeed. The purpose of this five-star free download was to optimize your
Internet connection, with potentially dramatic improvements in your browser's
speed. It did this by tweaking various settings in your Internet connection. It
took only about a half megabyte of disk space and installed quickly. Again,
however, I was not able to configure it until later. (See point 265(a).)
(e) Proxomitron. ZDNet gave this five stars, as compared to four for
WebWasher. The Proxomitron features that appealed to me included the
following: eliminate advertising banners and pop-ups; shut off background
images and automatic music; manage cookies; and set specific filters for specific
websites. At about one megabyte, it sounded like space well used -- even if
ZDNet was correct in saying that it could take some work to make it perform to

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its fullest potential. I revisited this program a short time later, but did not
actually attempt to use it for many weeks, for two reasons: there were not many
websites that I currently found really offensive enough to bother rewriting
them so they would be more appealing to me, as this program would allow me
to do, and I also planned to do some webpage creation in the near future and
wanted to be sure that I would be able to see all the annoying mistakes that I
might accidentally or intentionally build into my own pages. Nonetheless, this
looked like a program that had the potential to be fun and very useful, once the
time came for it. (This was the second program that I had to reinstall as
described in point 156(b).)
(f) WS_FTP Limited Edition. This was a program I had used previously. It
provided a good way to upload files to my websites. The most important thing I
could say about it was that I really didn't have much else to say about it. I did
not expect to configure it further until I actually had some web pages to upload.
(See point 327.)
(g) Adobe Acrobat Reader. I did not really want to install this relatively large
program (6.5 MB in compressed form), but there was no doubt that I would soon
run across a website containing a document that I would need it for. There
wasnt much configuration you could do for this one. Somewhere along the line
-- possibly at this point, or perhaps as part of something from Microsoft -- I must
have downloaded the Adobe PDFWriter, which installed itself as a toolbar in
Word and which would apparently provide the ability to save an Adobe PDF file
-- you know, that annoying format that many websites use to present documents
-- to your disk.
(h) Juno. This was an e-mail program that you could use with Juno's own
network of local access numbers nationwide for free e-mail. There were not
many times when I needed it, but there had been a few. I installed an early
version that was small enough to fit onto a floppy in compressed form. I had
found that it worked better than version 3. I went online with it later, but the
process was so simple that I havent saved any notes from it here.
(i) PC Magazine's ExactTime. This utility arguably belonged with the system
utilities installed earlier, except that I still couldn't test it until I went online. (See
point ___.) Its purpose was merely to set the system's clock according to either of
two different exact time website. You could run it every time you ran Windows,
or you could run it periodically, or manually. (See point ___.)
(j) FastNet99. This program, like iSpeed (see point 156(d)), was intended to
speed up your Internet connection, but it did so by focusing on a different
problem. Instead of tweaking your settings, it merely saved the DNS (domain

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naming system) numbers for the websites you would visit. That is, each website
had a DNS number, and when you typed the URL (e.g., www.cnn.com), your
system would first have to look up the DNS number corresponding to that URL.
This program stored the DNS number on your computer, saving that bit of
lookup time. I expected to use this program after I had finished my Favorites
project, so it would be quite a while before I would get back to it. (See point 327.)
(k) Seti@Home. This was a screen saver that did an arguably useful thing while
it was saving your screen: it did calculations on data downloaded from an
astronomy website in Berkeley. The calculations were from a radio telescope
somewhere. The purpose of the calculations was to see if anyone out in the
universe was sending radio signals that we could detect. Since the SETI
(pronounced "seh-tee," and short for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)
people first came up with this idea, they found that millions of people were
willing to share their computers' spare time for purposes of doing these
calculations. So when I was running this screen saver, every couple of weeks I
would have to press a button so that the computer could go online, upload the
results of its calculations to the computer in Berkeley, and download the next
work unit that needed calculations. I had begun to develop a screen saver
scheme (see point 145(k)); later, this one would fit into that scheme. (See point
___.) I wanted to run two separate Seti@Home accounts, one on each machine,
so the actual installation had to wait until I had finished my generic software
installation that was intended to work on both computers and had started
adjusting each computer separately. (See point ___.)
(l) URL2HTM. Earlier, I had begun a project in which all my Favorites would
appear as links on a small number of web pages set up for the purpose. (See
point 109(g).) I had not yet finished that project, but I knew that finishing it
would involve the use of a program that could convert Favorites to URL entries
on an HTML page. This was the purpose of URL2HTM. (See point 327.)
(m) Weather1. This was a self-updating weather program. I installed it now
and, once again, it had to be configured later, when I was all set to go online. But
when I actually considered it later, I decided to uninstall it. (See point 266(e).)
157. Audio Programs. I had a few other Internet-related programs, but I could
not install them until I was ready to go online. I estimated that I could still get a
lot of programs into an image file that would fit on the first program CD, so I
decided to turn to audio programs. (Note: it is also possible to do hardware
tinkering in this area. For example, the quality of your audio cables, speakers,
and other equipment can make a big difference. The only tinkering I did, for
purposes of this project, was to try to apply the advice to position the sound card
far from the power supply and the video card. Unfortunately, there are real

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limits on how much positioning you can do when your motherboard has only
three PCI slots and the brackets that connect your PCI cards to the case alternate
between the left and right sides of the card, such that there may be only one slot
where your sound card actually fits!)
(a) Cool Edit 2000. This was, without question, the cornerstone of my audio
work. This program (and the predecessor, Cool Edit 96) had been a solid
performer for me for months, offering most of the capabilities that I needed, or
expected to need, in audio recording and editing, including MP3 capability. I
installed and configured it before doing anything else in the audio area. (Later, I
discovered that I could have just copied COOL.INI from the AMD machine to
carry over my Cool Edit 2000 settings, instead of all this reconfiguring.) For its
temporary directories, I chose folders called F:\Temp\Cool Edit Primary Temp
and D:\Temp\Cool Edit Secondary Temp. I let it be associated with all audio
file types. In Options | Settings, I set the following tab options: System | Buffer
Size = 6 seconds, 6 buffers; Cache Size 4096; Peaks Cache 512; Asynchronous
Access on; Disable Undo. Data Tab: Downsampling and Upsampling = 400, Preand Post-Filter on. I also changed some View options. I opened a WAV file from
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA, went into Transform | Noise Reduction, hit Get Profile
from Selection, and set the following values: 300 snapshots in profile, 85% noise
reduction level, FFT Size 8192, Precision Factor 7, Smoothing Amount 1,
Transition Width 3. I also brought in my previously defined Cool Edit scripts (an
SCP file) from the AMD machine. Then I selected Close (not OK) to get out of
there. I could not test the program until I had my sound card configured, and
that would not occur until I was done with my generic software installation and
was ready to begin configuring the hardware on my two computers individually.
(See point ___.) I made two other adjustments: I set Cool Edit as an option in the
Programs subfolder under SendTo, so that I could send an audio file directly to
Cool Edit (see point 113(c)), and I added a Cool Edit icon on my Main Programs
toolbar (see point 143). Later, I heard that you could sometimes get a blob of
audio data at the end of a Cool Edit file if you allowed it to save extra
information. To defeat this, I opened a sound file and chose File | Save As and
unchecked the box that said, Save extra non-audio information.
(b) Winamp. This was one of the most popular computer audio players
available. I had used it for some months and it worked just fine for me. I
installed the complete 2 MB version. (This was the third program that I had to
reinstall as described in point 156(b).) The installer added a folder that I had not
authorized, called Mjuice Media Player; I used MagicMover (see point 154) to
move it into my D:\Program Files\Audio folder. I opened Winamp, rightclicked on its title bar, and selected Options | Preferences. Under Setup | File
Types, I selected icons and shut off the Directory Context Menus option. Under

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Setup | Agent, I shut off the system tray icon. Under Options | Display, I shut
off the option to display tooltips.
(c) CDFS.VXD. This was one of the smallest and most useful adjustments I had
heard about in the whole audio enterprise. Ordinarily, the contents of an audio
CD (not one containing computer-created audio files, such as MP3 or WAV files,
but a genuine audio CD like you'd buy in a store) were mostly invisible to
Windows Explorer and other programs. If you used such a program to see those
contents, you would only see a bunch of CDA programs in the root directory of
the CD. Someone, however, had figured out a way to doctor a file called
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\CDFS.VXD so that it would reveal the full
contents of the CD. Typically, after exchanging this doctored version for the
original (which I kept under another name, just in case) and rebooting, you could
use WinEx and other programs to see that the audio CD actually contained two
folders, Mono and Stereo; that each of those contained subfolders 8Bit and 16Bit;
that each of those contained subfolders 11025Hz, 22050Hz, and 44100Hz; and
that each of those contained a full set of the CD's musical tracks (depicted and
handled, now, as WAV files) -- in short, you could see that your CD actually
contained 12 versions of each track on the CD, so that different kinds of players
would still be able to play the songs. I didn't know whether there were actually
12 copies of each song, or if this was just how the revised CDFS.VXD depicted
the contents of the disk, but either way you could now use Windows Explorer to
copy these tracks straight over to your hard disk as WAV files. Not bad for a
simple swap of a single file that your system already had anyway! Later, I did
have a problem with this on one occasion. (See point ___.)
(d) CDex. This program was a "ripper," so called because it was capable of
"ripping" audio tracks from CD. The doctored version of CDFS.VXD (see
previous paragraph) was also a ripper, although it didn't look like one. With any
ripper, there was a risk of errors in the process of bringing audio data into a
computer-recognizable form (e.g., as a WAV file). I had the option of using a
different ripper known as Exact Audio Copy, which would spend as long as it
took to insure that you really did have an exact WAV copy of the data on the CD,
and I did reserve the option of using EAC later; but my tinkering with it had
indicated that it was still not perfect and that it was also somewhat unstable.
(For the record, I believe EAC is Cardware. See point 330.) My best CD-ripping
days were still ahead of me, but so far I had noticed virtually no quality
problems in using CDFS.VXD or CDex to rip tracks from CDs. CDFS.VXD made
the process very easy, but it lacked CDDB capability; that is, CDex had the ability
to look at the registration number on your CD, go online, and download the full
song name, name of the band playing it, track number on the CD, etc. from
www.cddb.com. This could save a lot of typing. So for now, at least, I expected
to make some use of CDex for ripping. I could also have used it for encoding --

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that is, for converting WAV audio files to a high-quality compressed format that
might take only 10-20% as much space per song. The creator of CDex had
recently decided to switch encoders. (An encoder is the program, or the part of a
program, that converts a regular audio file to a compressed format.) Formerly,
he had used an encoding "codec" known as Blade; now he was using one called
LAME (which, as I recall, was short for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder"). LAME
was supposedly pretty good, but it was still not able to produce the high quality
of the Fraunhofer codec that Cool Edit used for conversion into MP3 format.
(See point 157(a).) So my expected scheme went like this: use CDFS.VXD to
copy tracks from CD when I don't care about typing in my own track names, or
else use CDex; edit the WAV files (if necessary) in Cool Edit (and likewise for
WAV files from other sources, such as those that came in from a radio or cassette
deck through the computer's sound card to be stored as WAV files on my hard
disk); and then compress them into MP3 format, again using Cool Edit. In CDex,
I went into Options | Settings and made the following changes to the default: (1)
On the General tab, I enabled Normalize and set it to run whenever the signal
was < 92%; I set the MP3 and Recorded Tracks output directories to be
F:\Music\Compressed and F:\Music\WAV respectively. (2) On the Encoder
tab, I enabled Output Riff WAV MP3 file.
(e) CDWav and WavGlue. The purpose of these two little utilities was,
respectively, to split large WAV files into pieces and to join multiple smaller
WAV files into one larger one. I had used the latter, but not yet the former. The
occasion of using the latter arose when I recorded a three-hour radio show into
one WAV file and then found that, at 1 GB, it was large enough to cause some
problems with Cool Edit. So I split the file from within Cool Edit (not knowing
of CDWav at the time), doctored it in pieces, and then used WavGlue to join
those pieces with no problems. No configuration appeared to be necessary.
(Note: although I had not tried this yet, it sounded like I could also have used
Easy CD Creator to create a merged, or composite, audio track from two or more
WAV files onto a single WAV file on a CD-RW disk and then read the composite
from the CD-RW back to the hard disk.)
(f) AntiPop. This was a command line application. I set up a batch file to run it
without any parameters (including no /? command), which is what it took to
persuade it to show me its command line options. I set up a shortcut to run that
batch file in a DOS box. I hadn't used this little program before, but there had
been a couple of times when I could have used it.
(g) VisiTrax. I had not used this program. Moreover, on the AMD machine, I
had been unable to run it. I had concluded, however, that this fact was probably
due to a problem with the system files on the AMD machine, and not with
VisiTrax itself, based on a prompt reply from its creator when I had e-mailed

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with a description of the problem. I was not certain I would need or use
VisiTrax. My interest in it stemmed largely from the fact that I had a couple of
CDs that were not listed in CDDB (see point 157(d)), and after a bit of checking
around I decided that VisiTrax was apparently one of the best programs capable
of uploading your CD data information to the CDDB database for everyone to
use. (I figured, if I had to type the CDDB data anyway, I may as well share it.)
VisiTrax also had its own database capability -- in fact, that was its strong point -and I thought I might eventually reach a point of wanting something like that to
manage my MP3 recordings. It was not a large program (less than 1 MB) and I
believed it would not be difficult to uninstall if it turned out to be unnecessary.
(See point ___.)
(h) Tiny Wave Editor. I planned to use Cool Edit for my audio editing. At one
point, however, the AMD machine had trashed Cool Edit, which I had had to
reinstall. I did not have time right then to reinstall, and I turned to Tiny Wave
Editor, which I had installed just out of curiosity, based on a recommendation by
Sonic Spot. It turned out to be surprisingly capable, for a program that took only
about 2 MB of disk space (half of which was documentation), and I felt that I
would like to keep a copy of it handy just in case. I guess its performance should
have been no surprise; it was created by Yamaha.
158. Diagnostic Programs. I still had a little space left, and I believed I could
squeeze in the following diagnostic programs. To keep down the space
requirements, I did not plan to run or configure them until later. (See point 162.)
(a) ZDNet's WinBench 99 Version 1.1. I had flirted with this program earlier, but
had uninstalled because it had seemed unnecessary at that point. (See point
141(o).) Or at least I thought I had uninstalled it -- there was no entry for it in
Add/Remove Programs -- but I saw now, as I prepared for reinstallation, that
the previous folder was still there and it still had a lot of stuff in it. I proceeded
with installation the same way as before. The installer detected the previous
installation and volunteered to put the program files there, and I said that would
be fine. Only at this point did I get to the part, described in point 141(o), about
how this program had had problems with long pathnames. I uninstalled again
(sigh), and this time I saw a reason that might have explained why the previous
installation had left some folders behind. Apparently the uninstaller was not
able to verify whether some of the files were being used by other applications. I
installed again in the same place (sigh!), this time to see whether WinBench had
its own uninstaller that would do a more thorough job. (I never did remember to
check for that first when uninstalling.) Surprisingly, I was able to obtain answers
to these mysteries by skimming through the accompanying documentation. I
uninstalled again, deleted the folder and, gritting my teeth, reinstalled in the
default C:\ZDBENCH directory that WinBench preferred. Later, I theorized that

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MagicMover would rearrange file locations and links in ways that ZDBENCH
itself was not able to do. On that assumption, I used MagicMover to move
ZDBENCH to a folder in D:\Programs. Then, after creating the next disk image
backup file, I went back into WinBench and did the complete test, just to make
sure it worked. It did work, but I found it uninteresting, and I uninstalled it.
(See point 162.)
(b) Start Manager. This little program was available as a separate download
from ZDNet.com. It also came included with WinBench 99, and I had found it to
be more useful than other similar programs. (See point 137(r).) It wasn't a
benchmarking or informational tool, so I wasn't sure why it was included, but I
wasn't complaining. Like MSCONFIG | Startup (see point 157(b)), it showed the
programs that ran at startup. The difference was that, as I recalled, there had
been times when this had shown running programs that had not appeared in
MSCONFIG | Startup. The other thing was that, by right-clicking at the shortcut
for this program and looking at its Properties, I was able to find that
C:\ZDBENCH\UI32\STARTMGR.EXE ran it, and I added that line to my
Cleanup Suite (see point 153), so now I could automatically verify which
programs should load at startup.
(c) ZDNet's Audio WinBench 99. As above, I allowed this program to install in
C:\ZDBENCH, at least for now (see point 158(a)), with plans to configure it later;
instead, I uninstalled it later. (See point 162.)
159. Games and Entertainment. I was finally coming to the end of the list of
programs I wanted to install that were neither too hardware-specific to put onto
this generic programs CD nor too large to fit onto this first programs CD. I
installed the following remaining programs:
(a) Adastra. This Swiss confection was the recommended astronomy program.
(See point 140(g).) PC Magazine gave it five stars. I installed and looked at it.
The first usable astronomy program I had seen. Another freeware winner!
(b) PC Magazine's Checkers. ZDNet didn't rate its own software (which includes
that of PC Mag), but I was sure that this game would work for my purposes.
(c) PC Magazine's Foneword/32. This program converted phone numbers to
letters and ran the output through a dictionary to get real words.
(d) Chessvision's Chess. ZDNet gave this program five stars. Unfortunately,
when I went in to make sure Chessvision was set up OK, it immediately
launched into creating a database, which would take more space than my CD
would allow right now. There was no way to cancel out, so I had to let it have its

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way for approximately five minutes. By the time it was done, the 6.5 MB install
program had bloomed to fill 34 MB of disk space. Then again, 22 MB of that
consisted of databases which I would not recreate on a reinstall. So I uninstalled
and reinstalled, but this time I postponed database creation until later. (See point
165(d).)
160. Diagnostic Suite. I created another suite (see point 120(af)), called the
Diagnostic Suite, to open all of my diagnostic programs for troubleshooting. Part
of the idea here was that I had previously used Norton Utilities because I didnt
use other diagnostic tools very often and didnt always remember that I had
them or how to use them. I figured that, if I could have something that would
open them all up automatically, Id be more likely to use them and less likely to
install Norton unnecessarily. The Suite shortcut ran the following batch file:
@echo off
:: STE_DIAG.BAT
cls
echo This program will run a number of tools, including some from
echo Microsoft System Information (MSINFO32). Other tools from
echo MSINFO32 appear in the Cleanup Suite but not here.
echo.
echo Consider starting with the Cleanup Suite. It cleans the
echo Registry and partitions thoroughly. This suite does more
echo specific troubleshooting.
echo.
echo Hit Ctrl-C to exit. Otherwise, continue here to shut down
echo some existing programs and load a bunch of diagnostics.
echo.
pause
echo First, decide which running programs to shut down.
start "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\EndItAll\EndItAll.exe"
echo.
pause
cls
:: *****************************************
:: DOS Window
:: *****************************************
:: Update Wizard Uninstall: not included here.
:: System File Checker: used in Cleanup Suite.

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::
::
::
::
::
::

Signature Verification Tool: not included here.

Registry Checker (SCANREG): used in Cleanup Suite.
ScanDisk: used in Cleanup Suite.
Version Conflict Manager: not included here.
Internet Explorer Repair Tool
This tool doesn't seem to have a command-line option.

echo Note the following:

echo.
echo 1. Dr. Watson will begin tracking what's going on in the system.
echo 2. In Device Manager, you can choose Print / All Devices.
echo 3. Resource Meter will appear in the system tray.
echo 4. You can run Internet Explorer Repair Tool directly from MSINFO32.
echo 5. If memory is scarce, you may have to finish with some utilities
echo before others will start.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: *****************************************
:: Now load the various utilities
:: *****************************************
echo Let's start with the most straightforward ones.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Device Manager
start /w C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE sysdm.cpl,,1
:: System Cleanup
start /w C:\WINDOWS\CLEANMGR.EXE
:: Cacheman
start /w "d:\program files\system utilities\miscellaneous\cacheman
3.60\cacheman.exe"
:: Automatic Skip Driver Agent
start c:\windows\asd.exe
:: Win98 IP Configuration
c:\windows\ipconfig /all | more

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pause
cls
echo Next, some general-purpose informational tools.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Windows Report Tool
start c:\windows\winrep.exe
:: DirectX Diagnostic Tool
start c:\windows\system\dxdiag.exe
:: ZDNet WinBench 99 and AudioWinBench 99
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\WB99\RUNWB.ZDR"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\AUDIOWB99\RUNAUDIOWB.ZDR"
:: Hardware Info Utility
start /w c:\windows\hwinfo.exe
:: MSINFO32 itself -- for information
start "d:\Program Files\Common Files\MSINFO\MSINFO32.EXE"
:: System Configuration Utility
start c:\windows\system\msconfig
cls
echo Finally, some TSRs.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Dr. Watson
start c:\windows\drwatson.exe
:: Resource Meter
start c:\windows\rsrcmtr.exe
:: System Monitor
start c:\windows\sysmon.exe

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:: PrcView
start /w "D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous\PrcView\PrcView.exe"
:: *****************************************
:: End of Story
:: *****************************************
cls
echo Wait here until you're ready to reboot.
echo.
pause
rebootgo
A crude but effective way to stop this batch file would be to hit Ctrl-C (perhaps
more than once) or simply to close the DOS box. I had seen a comment that had
told me to run Performance Monitor. I couldn't find this program, so I didn't run
it; but if I had, apparently a Processor Que Length value of over 20 for long
periods of time, while running ordinary daily programs, would have provided
the diagnostic information that my processor was too weak for the demands I
was placing upon it. Also, picking the Logged \BOOTLOG.TXT option from the
Startup menu would record the status of every step that Windows would take
during the boot process, if the problem I was trying to diagnose was a bootup
problem; the advice was to boot to Safe Mode, open C:\BOOTLOG.TXT, and
search for the word "fail." Later, I discovered that X-Setup (see point 137) offered
a seemingly complete, or at least very long, list of all kinds of diagnostic tools
and other stuff in a grab-bag under its Tools option, and that you could revise
that list under the File | Options selection -- but of course those tools were not
designed to run serially like this Suite.
161. CD Image Backup. I had had other ideas in mind, but around this time I
had a five-day interruption in this process, and when I came back I found that
those thoughts were no longer there. I worked through my notes and made a
few other minor tweaks, described at various places above (usually with a
comment like, "Later, I discovered ..."). Then I made another DriveImage
backup. This time, I began with the Cleanup Suite. (See point 153.) That
eliminated the need to run cleanup commands in CD_PREP, so I modified that
file accordingly. Then I ran it and took the other normal steps to shut off archive
attributes. (See point 152.) I ran DriveImage from the floppy. It showed 1,018
MB. The DriveImage file, STEP_161.PQI, was only 625 MB, yielding 61%
compression. (I suspected that the reason why the compression was improving,
from 63% down to 61%, was that the first CD held a lot of CAB files in the Win98
folder (see point 61), and that those, being already compressed, could not be

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compressed more in DriveImage. In other words, if I hadnt included those CAB

files on drive C, my compression rate might have been more like 50%.) At that
61% rate, this first 650 MB CD could have held another 40 MB in program files.
But I felt that there wasn't much more that wasn't either (a) too voluminous to fit
in that remaining space or (b) too hardware-specific. I rebooted to Windows
Normal Mode and ran END_LIST to get the list of files that would be on this CD.
Yet this turned out to be premature. After more tinkering, I ran this whole
process again to produce what would really be my final version of the first
programs CD, and I deleted the image file that I had created during this point
161. (See point 164.)
Installing the Remaining Non-Hardware-Related Software
162. Installing and Uninstalling ZDNet's WinBench 99 and Audio WinBench 99.
I could not yet install those programs that related to specific pieces of hardware.
First, I wanted to do as much as possible in a more generic form, so that the same
backup CDs would be good for reinstalling Windows on both computers. The
stuff I would be installing now would carry me well beyond the limits of what
one CD could handle. This would call for a strategy for using a second backup
CD. But not yet. (See point 269(d).) First, I needed to load the programs,
starting with these ZDNet benchmark utilities. I had installed them earlier, but
to save disk space had not allowed them to fully unfold and run. (See point
158(a).) Now, when I ran ZDNet's WinBench 99, it began by putting my system
back through Defragmenter, presumably to make sure that its disk test would be
running on a disk that was all ready to do its best. Unfortunately, it did not
disable all other programs, so Defragmenter kept restarting. I finally ran out of
patience -- after all, I had just defragmented the drive! -- and stopped the defrag
process. Sadly, WinBench now said, like before, that it could not find some of its
program files. It really, truly could not be relocated from C:\ZDBENCH! (See
point 158(a).) You'd think I'd learn. OK, so I uninstalled it, and part of me said
that the CD image file I had just made was useless. I reinstalled in the default
C:\ZDBENCH folder, skipped the defrag part again, and ran all tests. There
were 113 tests, and their results really didn't mean anything to me, because they
were just the reports of how long it took the computer to do this or that function.
They weren't comparative reports, like Norton's old system benchmarks had
been, that would tell you how your system shaped up against another -- not
unless you had access to the results of those 113 different tests for that other
computer. They did have results for some other computers in a "sample" file, but
many of those results were "Unknown" or "Error," and there were also many
"Unknown" entries in the table for my own computer. I decided that I would not
use this program -- indeed, that was what I had decided previously, on the AMD
machine, although without going to this extent. I tried to run ZDNet's Audio
WinBench 99, but it would not run without a sound driver installed. I decided to

225

uninstall them both, and then to reinstall the Audio WinBench later, perhaps
only temporarily, when the audio hardware and software was all set up. I felt
that perhaps I would wind up keeping both of these benchmark programs in
uninstalled form, perhaps on a separate CD, or else that I would just redownload the latest versions at some time in the future. (See point ___.) In fact, I
decided that now would be a good time to start a list of programs that I would
not install or keep on my machine, but would keep handy on a separate CD. (See
point ___.) Uninstallation posed a couple other questions, however. (See point
163.)
163. Comparing ZDNet's Start Manager against MSCONFIG. Both Start
Manager (see point 158(b)) and MSCONFIG showed lists of programs that were
set to run at startup. I ran both programs on the AMD machine, which I had by
now put on a diet but which was still flooded with accumulated software (see
point ___). MSCONFIG showed 17 entries, of which 15 were checked as being
set to run and two were unchecked. Start Manager showed 26 entries, of which
15 were checked. In the past, I had decided that I liked Start Manager more for
this purpose, and I stayed with that impression. So before uninstalling the
ZDNet benchmarking programs, I copied STARTMGR.EXE from
C:\ZDBENCH\UI32 to D:\DOS_UTIL. I tried running it as a standalone by
typing D:\DOS_UTIL\STARTMGR.EXE at the prompt in a DOS box, and it ran.
So I kept that copy. I uninstalled through Control Panel | Add/Remove
Programs, and then deleted the C:\ZDBENCH folder. After uninstalling, I
tested STARTMGR again, and it still worked. I also removed the lines pointing
to the ZDNet utilities in my Diagnostic Suite and revised the line pointing to
STARTMGR in my Cleanup Suite. (See point 160.)
164. Another CD Image. When I right-clicked on ZDBENCH in Windows
Explorer and chose Properties, I saw that the whole folder was taking only 12
MB. But I wanted it out of the root of my drive C, and when I did uninstall it,
empty the Recycle Bin, and check the contents of my hard drives in Size Manager
(see point 135), I saw that I now had only 1,004 MB on drives C and D. If a
DriveImage compression ratio of 61% held (see point 161), these drives could
hold 1,066 MB in uncompressed program files. Even at 62%, it would be 1,048. I
had by now realized that there were other programs that I could, and perhaps
should, include on this first programs CD. So I went ahead with installing those
programs, and then I repeated the most recent CD image process (see point 161)
and used this drive image (called STEP_164.PQI) to replace the one that I had
produced then. For a list of the programs I installed at this stage, see point 165(a)
and point 165(b).
165. Installing More Programs. I was able to squeeze additional programs into
my first programs CD and then burn it, as follows:

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(a) WebCompass 2.0. This program had been useful at times. Its greatest
strength, for me, was that it could explore all of the links on a webpage, to
determine which were dead or alive and to give a one-line description of the live
ones. Installation was a bit of a hassle: I couldn't find my serial number. After
much hunting around and realizing that I had probably thrown away the
manual, I remembered that it was hopefully still installed on the AMD machine,
or at least on the backup image that I had made of the programs drive on the
AMD machine. Sure enough, I found and ran WebCompass there, and the serial
number was: 1! One? Apparently I hadn't been able to find it the last time
either, and had just entered this instead. The installer told me that I had entered
an invalid serial number and would be denied tech support, but I felt that this
was OK, so I continued. The installer told me that I had to have Data Access
Objects (DAO) installed, and offered to do that for me. I said OK. When I exited
after installing, I had an "Object is invalid or not set" error message. I ran it
again; it did it again. I had gotten WebCompass to work OK on the AMD
machine, so I decided this was something I would deal with later if, after going
online, it proved to be a problem. (See point 307(i).) (Later, I noticed that I had
this error message on the AMD machine too.) I checked Size Manager, and I was
now up to 1,010 MB on drives C and D. (See point 164.)
(b) Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.0. I had this on CD, courtesy of
Yamaha; it came with my CD-ROM drive. I went for the custom installation
option, which was good, because it wanted to install older versions of Internet
Explorer and Adobe Acrobat Reader. I finished installing; I rebooted; I cleaned
the icons off the desktop and rearranged them under Start | Programs; I emptied
the Recycle Bin; and I saw in Size Manager that I now had 1,063 MB on the disk.
Was I over my limit? (See point 164.) I had to take a shower, so I seized this
opportunity to run DriveImage on drives C and D and just see whether it would
squeeze all this into a 650 MB file. Since space would now be at a premium, I ran
the whole Cleanup process and took all the proper steps for CD creation. (See
point 161.) The process would have taken longer if I had allowed ScanDisk to do
its thing, but instead I skipped through it. DriveImage produced a
STEP_165.PQI file of 646 MB. After going back into Windows and running
END_LIST to create the final file list, I ran Size Manager and saw that the
cleanup process had removed only about 1 MB of junk files. So the official
compression ratio (1,062 MB down to 646 MB) was 61%, and once I sent this PQI
file to the AMD machine by Direct Cable Connection and burned it onto a CD,
my final program CD was officially done, although it didnt happen for a while
yet. (See point 188.) One change this time around: I added a command to
produce a text-file version of the Registry as well, to facilitate future comparisons
in case of backup. (See point ___.) I added this command to CD_PREP.BAT.
(See point ___.)

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(c) Norton AntiVirus 2000. I had begun to install this program before, but had
backed off when I had seen how much space it had taken. (See point 156(a).)
Now, its time had arrived. I installed it, downloaded the latest updates, let it run
its scans, and emptied the Recycle Bin. Size Manager told me that we were now
up to 1,115 MB, so NAV had taken 53 MB. I would wind up installing it again
later. (See point ___.)
(d) Chessvision's Chess. I had previously installed this program but, like the
others just mentioned, had not allowed full configuration to save space. (See
point 159(d).) Now I ran this program to create the databases and see how it
looked. It looked like an amazing chess program, with tons of old chessboard
layouts in its database. But I was no chess master; I just wondered if I could get
the program to play against me, and there wasn't any Help database in the usual
sense. I had to go online. So I did. Their signup form didn't work because I
didn't know my product ID number and couldn't find it in their nonexistent Help
files, so I sent them a frustrated e-mail message asking if I could use their
program to play against the computer or not. Or at least I tried to, but Outlook
98 wasnt cooperating. (See point 166.) I did eventually get that e-mail out and
get an affirmative answer to it. (See point 195.)
(e) Windows Updates. While I was online trying to figure out how to use
Chessvision, Windows Critical Update notified me that I needed some new files
to keep my system up-to-date. I downloaded these updates: German and PanEuropean Lanuage Support, NetMeeting 3 Service Pack 1, Windows Security
Update 1/17/2000, DirectX 7.0a Update, Internet Explorer Security Update
2/9/2000 and IE File Location Update.
166. Problem: Outlook 98 and MagicMover. Along about this time, I attempted
to send an e-mail message. Outlook 98 gave me this error message: "An error
occured [sic] while attempting to open the Windows Address Book. Unable to
find the WAB DLL." When I tried to look for it, Find did not work; then I
discovered that Find would work fine as long as I told it to search all local hard
drives, but that it found nothing when trying to search My Computer. Was that
how it always had been? I couldn't remember. I tried it on the AMD machine
and yes, sure enough, that's how it was there too.
(a) The First Suspect: WAB32.DLL. Searching under local hard drives, then, I
found a bunch of WAB files, but the only ones with DLL extensions were on
drive D. This suggested that it had been among the files I had moved during my
major program moves from C to D. (See point 154.) I went online to find out if
there was a simple fix for this. Comments there indicated that the file I needed
was WAB32.DLL. One guy said that he had fixed it just by extracting it from the

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Windows file called MAILNEWS.CAB and copying it over the existing file. I
tried a variation, copying WAB32.DLL over on floppy disk from the AMD
machine to the PENTIUM computer and putting it in the same D folder as the
one I had already found (in D:\Program Files\Common Files\System). That, by
itself, didn't accomplish anything. I rebooted and tried again, and I still got the
error message when I tried to send an e-mail in Outlook 98 -- that is, when I had
finished writing the message and selected File | Send to put it into the Outbox.
Another person said that there was supposed to be a WAB.DLL file in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. That didn't seem right, however, since I saw no such
file on either the AMD machine or the PENTIUM machine; or maybe it was right,
but for a different kind of Outlook installation (e.g., corporate).
(b) Uninstalling and Reinstalling Outlook 98. Several comments said that the
solution was to uninstall and reinstall Outlook 98. This, I felt, would result in a
mess, since at least some of Outlook's files would be back on C while there might
still be files on D. On the other hand, I thought I might be able to deal with that,
if this would be an easier way than going back and retracing all of my steps since
the CD image that I had made before moving files from C to D. (See point 152.) I
decided to give it a try. I went into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and
clicked on Microsoft Outlook 98. It gave me an option of completely reinstalling
or just refreshing my existing installation. The latter sounded less radical, so I
started with it. It found my previous installation in D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office, which was good. It installed the newer components in about ten seconds
and told me that it was going to reboot. It did; I tried sending an e-mail in
Outlook 98 again; and I got the same error message again. I went back to
Add/Remove Programs and tried a complete uninstall. I realized, too late, that
this might wipe off my reinstallation files and I might have to re-download the
whole enchilada from the Windows Update site. After it was finished, I went to
D:\Outlook 98 Setup and found that a bunch of files were still there. I doubleclicked on OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE and it ran the reinstaller. I specified the
same D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office folder as before. Now it gave me the
option of upgrading only newer items or reinstalling all components -- which
suggested that the uninstall had been none too thorough. I chose the latter.
When it was done, I went back into Outlook 98. This time was worse than
before: I got a message indicating that some things had changed and it was
going to recreate them; that I would have to move materials from my old folders
to the new; that it still could not find the WAB DLL file; and, when I tried to
create a message, that it was starting Word as my e-mail editor. Word! It would
take a half-minute to start every time I wanted to send a message. I changed
back to Rich Text as my default e-mail format, but of course that didn't solve the
original WAB DLL problem. I went into EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)) and told
it to search for duplicate files, just to see if I now had versions of the same
Outlook files on both drives C and D. Apparently I had interrupted its file

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comparison every time before, because this time I let it run for 30 minutes, so that
it could go through the complete list of files on all partitions -- and then it
reported that it was beginning the file comparison and that it estimated this
process would take 196 hours! That was clearly a project for another day, or
week. (See point 314.) I bailed out and considered my options.
(c) Was WAB32.DLL Really the Culprit? Even without the able assistance of
EasyCleaner, I could plainly see that both Microsoft and Symantec had recently
added new folders to C:\Program Files\Common Files. (See point 165.) The
C:\Program Files folder was not going to go away, and apparently my efforts to
make it go away had not only failed but had screwed up Outlook. Yet I could
not be sure of that. Had I tried to send any e-mail messages from the PENTIUM
computer before using MagicMover? Not that I could recall. So I might wipe
out the disk, reinstall from the CD that I had made under point 152, and then
redo all of the steps that I had done since point 152; and after all that, I might still
find that Outlook was not working right. No, I had to try to make a go of it if I
could. The best approach, I felt, was to use the AMD machine as a test bed. I
had reached a point of having enough software to make it a viable work tool,
and by now I had a complete backup of my dysfunctional drive C on the H
partition. (See point ___.)
(d) Files Missing from Windows 98. While I was tinkering with this, I decided to
look at the MAILNEWS.CAB file mentioned above. To look into it, I tried using
CabWiz. (See point 141(u).) I got the error message, "Cannot find
VBRUN300.DLL. Windows needs this file to run D:\Program
Files\System\Utilities\Miscellaneous\CabWiz\cabwiz.exe." A search revealed
that there was no copy of VBRUN300.DLL anywhere on the PENTIUM
computer; but on the AMD machine, VBRUN300.DLL was in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. Very interesting! I hadn't moved anything out of that
SYSTEM folder. Maybe MagicMover wasn't to blame after all. I carried a copy
of VBRUN300.DLL over from the AMD machine to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM,
and tried CabWiz again. It gave me another error message: "File not found:
'CMDIALOG.VBX.'" Sure enough: another file that existed in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM on the AMD machine and nowhere on the PENTIUM
machine. By now, I was wondering what the hell was going on. I floppied over
the CMDIALOG.VBX file, and this time CabWiz worked. Now, as far as I could
recall, CabWiz was a program that I had never used before. I believed that it
probably was not the source of these files that were missing from the PENTIUM
computer. They should have been installed by something else. To verify this, I
went to Bob Cerelli's page at
http://www1.halcyon.com/cerelli/win_file_listing.htm. That website told me
that VBRUN300.DLL was on the Windows 95 file listing, but not the Windows 98
list. So that was it. On the AMD machine, I had left Win95 in place and had

230

installed Win98 as an upgrade, on top of Win95. Evidently the Win98

installation process had seen VBRUN300.DLL as harmless and had left it in place
on the AMD machine, which was why the AMD machine still had a copy of it.
So I was probably safe in having copied it over from the AMD machine. It
seemed that that the creators of CabWiz had been using Win95 systems. But
how many other similar files was I going to need down into the indefinite future,
when I tried running Win95 programs on a Win98 machine? (See point ___.)
(e) Trying the SYSTEM Fix for Outlook 98. Since putting VBRUN300.DLL into
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM had solved part of the problem for CabWiz, I
wondered if it would also solve part of the problem for Outlook 98. I moved
WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common Files\System to
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and, indeed, it did solve part of the problem. This
time, when I tried to send an e-mail message, Outlook 98 gave me the message
that "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem
persists, restart Outlook." I did that, but the message persisted. This time,
however, after I got the error message, I tried instead just to save the e-mail
message. It saved OK -- that is, Outlook 98 put the message into its Drafts folder.
I was able to move it from there to the Outbox. But once again, when I tried to
send it, I got that "unknown error" message. I went online for information. One
person said he had tried the Inbox Repair Tool that comes with Outlook. I hadn't
tried that; I tried it now. It said, "Enter the name of the file you want to scan." I
figured this must refer to a PST file, since I believed that was where e-mail
messages (whether Inbox or otherwise) were stored. I couldn't remember where
my PST file was, so I did a Find for it. Interestingly, it turned out that I had two
OUTLOOK.PST files. One was in E:\Messages, where I had put it. (See point
112(c).) The other was in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
The one in E was far larger, but it had not been accessed for the past four hours,
whereas the one in C had been accessed just a few minutes ago. Clearly, Outlook
98 was trying to use the one in C. Originally, they had advised me to move the
PST file where I wanted it, and they said that Outlook 98 would find it. I already
had it where I wanted it; I just didn't want this other one that the reinstallation
had evidently created. So I shut down Outlook, deleted the PST file from drive
C, and restarted Outlook. It told me that it couldn't find that C version of
OUTLOOK.PST, and gave me an opportunity to redirect its attention to
E:\Messages\OUTLOOK.PST. Just to be safe, I shut Outlook down and
restarted it again. And that was it. That was the whole solution. I created and
sent a message, no problem. (Later, this problem recurred. See point ___.) I
closed Outlook, removed WAB32.DLL from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and tried
to do the same thing again, and I did get the WAB DLL error message this time.
I moved WAB32.DLL to C:\WINDOWS and did not have the problem. So
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM wasn't the only magic folder; WAB32.DLL just had to
be somewhere on the Path that Windows would ordinarily search for its

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command files. This might have explained why there was no WAB32.DLL
problem on the AMD machine; there, the DLL file was in the C:\Program
Files\Common Files\System folder. Later, someone told me that the Registry
keeps a list of paths that will work, in addition to the Path command, and that
these paths are stored at this location in the Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\A
ppPaths. I didnt check that out myself.
(f) Undoing the Outlook Reinstallation. Reinstallation, I knew, often created as
many problems as it solved (or at least it frequently imposed a lot of new
cleanup work that I would have to do to get the program configured the way it
was before I had uninstalled it); that was the case this time. I belatedly realized
that my reinstallation of Outlook would have turned on a large number of
archive bits, and that I would not know which ones. That is, I had been shutting
off the archive bits before making CD image files, such as the most recent one,
STEP_165.PQI. (See point 165(b).) I had done this so I would know that all files
with archive bits turned on would be files that had been modified or added since
the last CD image; modifying or adding files turns on their archive bits. (See
point ___.) Now, unfortunately, since Outlook's archive bits were back on
because of the reinstallation, my next CD backup would include a copy of
Outlook 98 -- a duplicate, since the first program CD already had Outlook on it. I
wasn't sure whether the second archive CD would be full, or whether I would
have this space to spare, but I didn't want to find out the hard way. Besides, I
was going for a pure system here, and a duplicative copy is definitely not purity.
For example, if the reinstallation had put files into a folder different from where
the first installation had put them, then when I restored from CD I would wind
up restoring both sets of files, creating potential incompatibilities that did not
now exist on the original.
(g) Summary of Restore/Test Options. I had several alternatives: (1) I could take
a mass approach, shutting off archive bits for all files that seemed like they must
have been replaced during the reinstallation, such as those in the Outlook 98
folders. I rejected this as too vague and risky. (2) I could do a comparison of old
and new filelists and shut off archive bits for all files that seemed to be identical
on both. I felt that this would work, but that it might be time-consuming. It
would probably involve some batch file work, and it might help me work
through some issues that I would need to understand later, when it came time to
try doing file-by-file backups on CD. (See point ___.) Thus, it was not my
preferred option, but it was a possibility. (3) I could erase drives C and D and
restore from the drive image file STEP_165.PQI. That file was still on drive F on
the PENTIUM machine -- for some reason, Direct Cable Connection was not
working, and of course I had just put the cover back on the PENTIUM machine,
after weeks of leaving it off in case I had to swap hard disks, so I had not yet

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been able to get STEP_165.PQI to the AMD machine to burn a CD. Then, after
restoring from STEP_165.PQI, I would have to redo the rest of point 165 and
point 166. (4) I could move the hard disk over to the AMD machine, copy over
STEP_165.PQI, and use the AMD machine as a test bed, to make sure the CD
burning and restoring process would actually work before endangering my
original installation. This would require me to prepare drives C and D on the
AMD machine so that I would not lose anything important by wiping them clean
and starting over. In this approach, there would be a small but real risk of
translation errors that could screw up one drive or the other. (See point 59.) (5) I
could skip the drive image and instead bring over the hard disk containing the
finished drives C and D, and use DriveImage to do a disk-to-disk copy to set up
drives C and D on the AMD machine. Of course, this would do nothing for the
archive bit problem; this option made sense only if the goal was just to get the
AMD machine up and running as quickly as possible.
Preparing the AMD machine for the Transition
167. Introducing the Task. In reviewing the options just described, I decided
that the only task needed right now was to make sure that STEP_165.PQI was a
valid, working snapshot of the state of drives C and D on the PENTIUM
computer as of point 165(b). To test this without endangering the status of the
PENTIUM computer -- and only incidentally to get the AMD machine in good,
working shape -- I decided to prepare the AMD machine for installation of
STEP_165.PQI. If the installation worked there, I would burn a CD containing
STEP_165.PQI, or perhaps would just use DriveImage to restore the copy of
STEP_165.PQI that now resided on PENTIUM computer drive F to PENTIUM
computer drives C and D. Finally, if all that worked well, I would retrace the
remaining steps in points 165 and 166 (except the ones that had gone wrong).
This would put me in a position to finish configuring my complete system on the
PENTIUM machine.
168. Rearranging Partitions. Using PartitionMagic (see point 2), I set up the
partitions on the AMD computer so that there were six of them and their names
and purposes matched the scheme on the PENTIUM machine. (See point 32.) Of
course, their sizes were not the same -- I had to accommodate existing programs
and data on the AMD machine that did not exist on the PENTIUM computer, not
to mention that the disk sizes themselves were different -- but at least the
framework was there. To complete that framework, I examined the partitions on
the PENTIUM computer that were not represented on my backup CDs (i.e.,
partitions E, F, G, and H), so as to make sure that the similar partitions on the
AMD machine contained the appropriate folders. (For example, when I installed
Word 97 and the other programs from the CD, I wanted Word to find an E:\Text
folder on the AMD computer. See point 69.) As I looked at these other

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partitions, I realized that there were a number of such folders, that some of them
contained INI files or other information -- including especially the
E:\Messages\Outlook.pst file that had just caused me so much grief -- and that
what I really should do was to create a ZIP file containing copies of all those
folders and the files that were supposed to be in them in a fresh new installation.
So I temporarily moved all the extraneous files and folders from drive E to
another partition and made a ZIP copy of the ones that were supposed to be
there. (For H:\Temporary Internet Files, I went into Internet Explorer and chose
Tools | Internet Options | Delete Files; I also chose Clear History while I was
there.) PowerDesk ZIP ignored empty folders, so I made sure that each folder
contained either some files or a subfolder, and in the rest I inserted a one-byte file
named X. I did this one drive at a time and then zipped the ZIP files into one
umbrella ZIP file called EFGH_FOLDERS.ZIP, and added that to the copy of
STEP_165.PQI that, except for this temporary moving back and forth, had been
sitting in F:\TEMP. If space allowed, I wanted to include this ZIP file on the CD
that I would burn for STEP_165. (See point ___.)
169. Disk Copy. Once I had a new H (SWAP) partition (see point 32) on the
AMD machine -- which I had temporarily set up to contain several gigabytes of
empty space -- I used DriveImage to make a disk-to-disk copy (i.e., not a
compressed disk image copy) of drive C to this H partition. Now I was free to
whittle away at drive C, secure in the knowledge that I could recreate it from
drive H if my tinkering caused me any real problems.
170. Reducing Bloat. After point 169, but while I was still completing other steps
described earlier in this document, I began to prowl through drive C on the
AMD machine, searching for things that I could remove. In particular, I went
into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and went down the list of
programs. I did not delete any that I thought I might still use in the days
between now and the time when I would reinstall Windows and my programs
on this machine, and I did not delete any that I did not recognize. Even after
those caveats, I found a surprising number of programs that I could and did
delete. Not all of the uninstallations went smoothly. If I had been planning to
keep this disk running very long, I probably would have looked first to see if the
individual programs had installed "Uninstall" shortcuts on the Start | Programs
menu, or if there were "Uninstall" files in their home folders. I probably also
would have run some cleanup utilities afterwards. (See point 152.) Here, I
achieved my primary mission, which was to reduce the number of programs that
I would have to look at later and wonder if I needed to do anything special to
keep them. One program that I had to uninstall: Norton Utilities, which had a
habit of creating Image files on each disk partition. I didn't think they would
cause any harm; I just wanted to control what was going onto these partitions.

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171. Reducing My Reliance on the Hewlett-Packard 5GB Tape Drive. The HP

tape drive, and the expensive tapes that it required, had been a disappointment.
Recently, I had begun to restore archived materials from backup tapes, and had
found that the HP software and/or hardware had repeatedly fouled up those
materials and that, in some cases, those materials were unrecoverable. I have
documented some of my struggles with this equipment elsewhere. Here, the
point is that I hoped to use CDs to handle most of my backup needs, and to use
the tape backup only for those materials that were either too transient or too
bulky to store on a CD-R or a CD-RW disk. The continued presence of this tape
backup meant that all four of my IDE slots were taken -- primary and secondary
master and slave -- so it appeared that I would not be using the 1 GB Seagate
hard drive to hold my H (SWAP) partition. (See point ___.) Since the HP
software had now utterly ceased to run, I tried to uninstall it, but it was too
tangled to allow me either to uninstall the old or to reinstall a new version on top
of the old. I would have to reinstall it later on the AMD machine. (See point
___.)
172. Making Data Space on the AMD Machine. I cleaned up some data on the
AMD machine and archived it onto CDs. For the data remaining on drives E
through H that was just not yet in shape to go onto CDs, I had these options:
finish it and get it onto CDs (not a viable option because some of the needed
programs were no longer working); or shrink partitions E through H and create
another partition to hold this data (which I decided involved too much fooling
around); or just create "Old" folders -- for example, "Old E" -- and, when I was
ready for the big change, move all of the remaining folders on each partition into
that partition's Old folder. That's the approach I decided on. I had to wait until
the last minute to do it, though, because my existing programs on drive C would
continue to look for their customary data folders, and things would get
confusing if they weren't there. I couldn't do this until I was ready to stop using
the programs on the old version of drive C and install the new ones.
173. DMA on the AMD Machine. Following the advice at point 113(f) and
http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml# dmatest, I checked
to see whether the hard drives on the AMD machine were DMA-capable. The
first test involved figuring out what models of hard disks I had and checking the
manufacturers information, as I had done earlier on the PENTIUM machine.
(See point 108.) Using a little dentists mirror, I was able to crane my flashlight
up inside there (the cover was still off the AMD machine) and verify that the
primary master hard disk was a Maxtor 87000D8 7 GB drive. This, it turns out,
was in the DiamondMax 1750D Ultra DMA family of drives, and as the name
suggested, the disk was indeed Ultra DMA 33 capable. I could see that the
primary slave drive was a Western Digital of some kind, but there wasnt enough
space to see which kind. I could not get close enough with my trusty magnifying

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glass, and the room wasnt big enough to let me use binoculars (why dont they
put labels on the sides of these disks?), so I bit the bullet, shut down the machine,
took the drive partway out, and looked at it. Before shutting down, I took the
advice at the aforementioned website: I clicked the DMA box in Device
Manager, saved, and looked at it after rebooting. The box remained checked for
both drives, so that was the first clue that everything was going to be fine. The
drive, it turns out, was a Western Digital Caviar 102AA 10.2 GB drive. Since the
estimable Western Digital installation manual did not provide specifications for
the drive, I went online and found that this drive would operate at 33 MB per
second in ATA mode but only half that in DMA. I figured that ATA depended
on the motherboard, although I made a note to check it out. (See point ___.)
Anyway, at least it was DMA-capable. So I didnt bother using the DEBUG test
described at point 113(f).
174. The Plan for Restoring Windows from Disk Image CD. As I was planning
out the foregoing steps, I realized that I actually had two different things to test:
I wanted to make sure that DriveImage PQI files really would restore a working
Windows system, and I also wanted to verify that my CD-burning process was
preserving those PQI files in valid, restorable condition. (I had not tested my CD
restore process for a long time. See point 86.) If I restored Windows to the AMD
machine by connecting the hard disk from the PENTIUM machine and restoring
directly from a PQI file on that backup disk, I would not be testing both of those
points. Therefore, while I had the AMD machine all cleaned off -- or at least as
cleaned-off as I could make it -- I decided to try restoring from the most recent
program CD. As I say, I had not been able to get STEP_165.PQI onto CD yet (see
point 166(g)), and I had deleted STEP_161.PQI, so the most recent CD was
STEP_152. (See point 152.) If this restored properly, then I thought maybe I
could get Direct Cable Connection working again and could use that to get
STEP_165.PQI onto the AMD machine without taking the risks and hassle of
swapping hard drives as if they were floppies. Then I could reinstall the CDburning software and burn the STEP_165 CD. I would then use that to reinstall
again to the AMD machine, so as to test what I was about to do on the PENTIUM
computer. If it worked, I could use the CD to restore the PENTIUM machine to a
proper condition for resuming my march toward the goalline on the PENTIUM
computer. (I did consider using the AMD machine for the remaining installation
at this point. It would have been easier, in terms of being able to use the faster
modem for any other needed downloads and then burning onto CD without
using Direct Cable Connection, but I would not have been able to use the AMD
machine for anything else, and that was a luxury that I could afford only on the
PENTIUM computer, which for all I cared could sit there for days without any
action.)

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175. Motherboard Drivers and BIOS Adjustments. For these purposes, I had
already taken care of the motherboard driver situation. (See point 107.) Also, I
had already tinkered with the BIOS on the AMD machine previously. I decided
to postpone further tinkering until I knew more about what, if any, changes I
needed to make. (See point ___.)
176. Hard Disk Formatting. When setting up the hard disks on the PENTIUM
computer, I had had some difficulties. (See point 78.) I wanted to make sure the
primary master drive was all set for what I would be restoring from CD. As I
recalled, I might want to use Norton Disk Doctor for this, because it seemed to
draw more respect as an in-depth disk tool than ScanDisk. (See point 84 and
point 114.) At this time, however, I realized that I had just recently removed
Norton Utilities from the system to keep it from invading everything. (See point
___.) But then I remembered that I had made a complete copy of my drive C on
drive H. (See point 169.) I didn't have to reinstall Norton after all; I just needed
to sort through the executable files on drive H and see which Norton utilities
could run on a standalone basis, called up to serve when needed and then
discreetly dismissed without lingering side effects. (Later, I remembered that I
had also located a working copy of Disk Doctor on the Norton emergency
floppies. See point 78.) That is, Norton executables joined the list of potentially
useful Windows 95 files that I needed to examine before I could discard that
copy of drive C that existed on drive H. (See point 197.) I copied NDD.EXE from
drive H to a floppy, rebooted to real DOS, and used that floppy to examine the
disk. NDD said that a thorough test would take four hours just for drive C, so I
decided to postpone that and do just the normal test, which took less than an
hour for all of the disks. Later, I did a more thorough search for useful Norton
utility standalone programs. (See point 240.)
177. Partitioning. I decided to use PartitionMagic after Norton Disk Doctor just
in case Norton would snag bad sectors that might slow PartitionMagic down. I
now felt that I should make the partitions on both machines the same size. Of
course, the drives on the AMD machine were much larger than those on the
PENTIUM machine, so one of the partitions on each of the two hard drives on
the AMD machine would be much larger than the corresponding partitions on
the PENTIUM machine. On the first hard drive, E (DATA) would be larger, and
on the second one, F (AV) would ultimately be the only larger one. This was an
optional step; I just saw it as a way of making things a bit more uniform. I
couldnt go all the way with this right now, however, because I still had lumps of
data in awkward places on the AMD machine (such as the copy of the old drive
C in H (SWAP) (see point 169), and also because I did not yet know how big I
wanted D (PROGRAMS) to be, not having yet installed all of my programs. For
right now, I decided just to verify that drives C and D would be large enough to

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hold the incoming contents of the CD, and I planned to finish the partitioning job
later. (See point ___.)
178. Final Program Removal. By now, some days had passed since I had copied
drive C to drive H. (See point 169.) Meanwhile, some programs had continued
to add data to drive C. First, Outlook 98 had continued to add incoming e-mail
messages to C:\EXCHANGE\MAILBOX.PST. I copied that file to E:\Old
E\TEMP. I had also made subsequent changes to my Address Book, but I
believed those existed within the PST file. (See point 112(d).) I also wanted to
keep my Word Tools | Autocorrect entries, which were in C:\Windows\Ray
Woodcock.acl; but later I remembered that I had already copied them over. (See
point 112(a).) With that taken care of, I went back to Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and removed program files in approximately the
reverse order as described in this document: hardware-related first, then thirdparty programs, then Office 97 programs, and finally I uninstalled Windows.
Before taking that final step, I used Windows Explorer to go down through drive
C and delete all root-level folders that I no longer expected to need. This process
-- much slower than simply reformatting the disk and starting over -- enabled me
to think about each program and try to remember whether it, like Outlook,
might have stored any data on drive C that I should rescue before continuing.
The mere fact that I had a copy of that data (at least in a dated form) on drive H
did not guarantee that I would remember and rescue it before deleting that stuff
from H. But I admit, when it got down to a relatively small number of programs
remaining on the disk, I was glad to eyeball the list and pull the plug.
179. Restoring from STEP_152 CD. I rebooted, hit DEL, went into the BIOS
settings, changed them to boot from the CD-ROM, and rebooted. I got Boot
from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure. I tried again. Windows loaded in a pathetic
imitation of its former self. I tried a third time, after a cold reboot. OK, the CD
was evidently not bootable. Hadnt I solved this problem earlier? I couldnt
remember the details. The remnants of Windows gave me a Startup Menu; I
selected a Command Mode boot and switched to drive H. It was there. But
drive I: wasnt. As long as the CD wasnt bootable, its contents were invisible
unless I booted with one of the other floppies. I tried setting the BIOS to boot
from drive A, and used the super-floppy that I had developed long ago. (See
point 20.) This worked OK, and now I was able to see the contents of drive I.
And what were those contents? File not found! I put the CD into the CD drive
of the PENTIUM machine and looked at it there. Well, this machine could see
the contents plainly enough. They werent hidden files. What was the
explanation? Maybe it was a driver problem. I rebooted, using the Win98
Startup Floppy. (See point 8.) Well, that made the difference. With the Win98
floppy, there were Windows disk utilities in a ramdisk as drive I, and the
contents of the CD were plainly visible as drive J. But hadnt I used the

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Windows 98 floppy to make this CD bootable? Maybe not -- it looked like I

hadnt bothered to name the CD, so maybe I had been in a rush to burn it and
had screwed up. Well, this was definitely something I was going to have to
eyeball after making the next CD. (See point 188.) Anyway, I loaded
DriveImage from the CD, remembered that there had been some problem with
that (see point ___), but decided to try it anyway. I didnt collect my wits until I
saw DriveImage telling me that there was still data on drives C and D. I exited
and formatted them. I decided not to use the FORMAT /S switch on C, just to
see if DriveImage would restore a fully bootable partition. I ran DriveImage
again and saw that formatting was unnecessary: I had forgotten that DriveImage
wipes out the partition when restoring. Given the temporary nature of this
restoration, I chose the fast restore option. Along about now, I started to get
curious about notes I had taken during any previous restore operations; but if
there had been any, they had been so long ago by now that I had forgotten what
they said. I searched and found the relevant information at point 66. One thing
that was different, this time around, was that I was restoring multiple partitions - which, as it turned out, I had to do one at a time. Also, this time, fortunately, I
didnt get any of the disk errors that I had gotten that time. The whole restore
took less than 20 minutes.
180. Bootstrapping. I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from drive C, removed the
CD and the floppy from the machine, and sat back to watch what happened. The
thing did boot; it had some of the boot difficulties that I remembered from back
at approximately the time when I had burned the STEP_152 CD; but then
Windows started up like I wanted. It built a driver information database, probed
all the fun new hardware that it had to tinker with on the AMD machine, and
then surprised me by asking for a driver for the VIA Tech PCI to ISA Bridge. I
tried hitting Next, but I had no idea where to tell it to look for drivers. I
reviewed my notes and gathered that I was supposed to skip this one, so I hit
Cancel. (See point 107(e).) Then it wanted drivers for a PCI Communication
Device. Maybe this was the one I was supposed to ignore. I didnt know, so I hit
Cancel again. I also canceled out of the VGA adapter installation.
Setting Up an Ethernet Connection
181. Direct Cable Connection Problems. I went right into Direct Cable
Connection and discovered that, unfortunately, the problem I was having with
DCC must have been on the PENTIUM computer with its new software, not on
the AMD machine with its old setup. (See point 166(g).) So this was something
that I would have to fix now and would then have to fix again later, when I
resumed my effort to set up a beautiful Windows installation. (See point ___.)
To fix the problem, I went back to my DCC instructions. (See point 93.) One
problem emerged on the first website listed there: when installing identical

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software to the other machine, I had to make sure that the other machine also
had a unique name. I had named the PENTIUM computer PENTIUM, because
that is the kind of processor I was running in it, but now the AMD machine
thought it was named PENTIUM too. So in Control Panel | Network |
Identification, I changed its name to AMD; and I added that to the list of things
that I would have to configure separately on the two machines. (See point ___.) I
rebooted, canceled through the same hardware installation questions, and tried
DCC again. Unfortunately, that was evidently not the only problem. I clicked
on Help and went into the DCC Troubleshooter, but it was no help. Groping
around, I found that, on the Network tab just mentioned, TCP/IP | Properties |
Bindings showed that neither Client for Microsoft Networks nor File and
printer sharing for Microsoft Networks was checked. I checked them. Vaguely
remembering something about the difference between the TCP/IP item that was
labeled VPN Support and the one that wasnt, I did this only for the one that
wasnt. I took the same steps on both computers. The system needed to reboot,
so I let it. Next time I tried to go online (after finding that I still hadnt solved the
problem), Windows told me that I should not have checked those boxes because
those were the ones, under TCP/IP, that would let others access my system. So I
told the system to uncheck them. After rebooting, I went to
http://www.kime.net/directcc/directcc95.htm and found another problem:
that site said that I had to replace the Network Neighborhood icon on my
desktop, because removing it would disable some of the networking drivers
required to access files in Windows Explorer. I had known this (see point 118(g))
but had forgotten it (see point 146(g)) and now I needed to fix it again by
reversing the steps I had taken to remove it -- i.e., by removing the NoNetHood
value in the Registry (although the kime.net site said TweakUI would do it too; I
just wanted to avoid using TweakUI if I could). But instead of removing it, I
thought maybe I should first try changing its value to 0. That did put the
Network Neighborhood icon back on the desktop, but it didnt solve the
problem. Next, I looked at my modem settings. I had been having irregular
problems with the modem, which sometimes the system would not recognize. I
saw that Device Manager showed three modems. I deleted them all and
rebooted. The system recognized just one modem this time. I rebooted into DOS
and ran MSD (short for MicroSoft Diagnostic), and it told me I had three COM
ports; but Direct Cable Connection recognized only two. I uninstalled the ports
in Device Manager and rebooted. I still wasnt out of the woods, but now I had
to try another approach. (My modem adjustments continued in point 182.) (For
posterity, I note here that it is possible to link computers in DOS by using
INTERLNK, and I believe the companion program (which INTERLNK may
produce) is INTERSVR. Those may come with DOS, or maybe you have to
download them.)

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182. Installing the PCI Communication Device. Turning to the AMD machine, I
thought maybe the Direct Cable Connection problems stemmed from the fact
that I was skipping through several hardware installation questions when I
booted the AMD machine (see point 180), so this time I put in the driver CD that
had come with the motherboard and pointed the installation dialog boxes
toward that. Oddly, once it had the CD, it decided that the best driver was
already on drive C. This didnt work for the PCI Communication Device,
however. I didnt see anything specifically related to that at either my previous
notes on the subject (see point 107) or the Soyo website, so I went to the VIA
website and downloaded what looked the most relevant, the PCI Bridge Patch.
While that was downloading, I decided just to run the driver CD that came with
the Soyo motherboard. I selected all the default items and let er rip. When it
rebooted, the machine identified other hardware too. But the PCI
Communication Device still wasnt installed, and by now the download was
finished, so I tried that; but that wasnt it either. I wanted to try the Windows
Update online option, but I had to have my modem working for that, so I went
into Device Manager, deleted the -- would you believe -- five different modems
that the system had installed there, rebooted, and was surprised that Windows
didnt detect the modem automatically. I went into Control Panel | Add New
Hardware, and found that the mouse froze. I rebooted using Ctrl-Esc to bring up
the Start Menu, went back into the Control Panel, and had exactly the same
experience, except this time I realized the mouse might have been frozen but the
Add New Hardware Wizard was still functional, except that it was just cycling
endlessly, stuck on the fact that the PCI Communication Device was on the list of
Plug-n-Play items that had not yet been installed correctly. Using the keyboard
instead of the mouse, I tried instead telling Windows to search for other items,
not on the list. When it was done, my mouse was working again, but the modem
still wasnt installed and the PCI Communication Device was still a problem.
Coming to my senses, I bailed out of Control Panel and inserted the CD that had
come with my Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI modem. I ran the Setup file that
appeared in its root folder, but that just gave me a foolish screen offering to
install various utilities. No actual modem drivers. I started Add New Hardware
again and steered it toward standard 56K modems, but when I was done the
system still couldnt find the modem. And then -- whats this? -- I found a
modem driver that I had downloaded for this modem previously. The CD
hadnt looked familiar; maybe I had never even used it. I couldnt get Control
Panel to look at this driver, but then I realized I was trying to get it to look at a
zip file. I took it back to the PENTIUM computer, unzipped it, put it on floppy
again, and tried again. Still no luck. It dawned on me that perhaps PCI
Communication Device meant a modem or sound card or something, not a
motherboard thing. In other words, I had been trying to install modem drivers
for the modem, and motherboard drivers for the PCI Communication Device,
but maybe I should have been trying to install modem drivers for the PCI

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Communication Device. But that didnt work either. Going online, I gathered
that a PCI Communication Device definitely was a modem, perhaps specifically a
Winmodem (i.e., one that works only under Windows). I also found this advice:
boot into Safe Mode, go into Device Manager, and delete all serial ports,
modems, the PCI Communication Device, any other duplicate items you see
under those headings, and all other Unknown Devices; and then reboot into
Normal Mode. I did this, but it didnt work. I went back into Device Manager
and saw that at least I didnt have double ports anymore. Device Manager
seemed to be happy to consider my modem a SupraExpress -- that was as close
as I had been able to come to a SupraMax -- but the point is, it wasnt working,
even though the PCI Communication Device error message was gone now. I
deleted that modem and checked the Diamond website. They had specifications
and ways to upgrade (which turned out not to be available for my model), but no
information on installation. I wondered if I had gotten an installation manual
with the thing -- amazing how we can be weaned from paper, isnt it? -- and
found a little brochure foldout that said Win98 would detect the modem on boot
and that, at this point, I should insert the CD that came with the modem. I did
that again, but this time an interesting thing happened: an installation menu
came up instead of the other goofy menu this CD had shown me before.
Evidently you had to wait until the machine asked for your drivers, and only
then insert the CD; but no, it just took me back to that same goofy page. Now
that I had gotten frustrated and walked away and slept, I came back and looked
again, and this time noticed installation information under the online manual
option. But it didnt say anything more than had been on the paper. The only
tech support advice, either way, was to try moving the modem to a different slot
if this one didnt work. This slot had worked previously, so I didnt think that
was the solution. I took the advice to write to techsupt@diamondmm.com, in
hopes that the promised automated reply would somehow enlighten me. But
then a weird thing happened. Having played around in the manual part of the
CD on the AMD machine, I exited and continued with the installation process,
and this time it did find the driver in the root of the CD -- called
I:\WINM2750.INF. It seemed to run just fine -- it installed a Diamond Voice
Modem Serial Wave Device, a SUP2750 PCI Modem Enumerator, and a
SupraMax 56i Voice PCI. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration.
See point 195.)
183. More Direct Cable Connection Troubleshooting. Now that I had the
modem working, I was getting no more hardware installation messages when I
booted the AMD machine. I reviewed my settings in Control Panel | Network
on both machines. Going back to the TCP/IP bindings in particular, I saw that
the PENTIUM computer had unchecked only the File and printer sharing for
Microsoft Networks option, not the Client for Microsoft Networks option, so I
made the AMD machine conform to that. It still didnt work, so now I tried

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using DCC on a serial cable instead of the much faster parallel cable. This did
not work either, so I felt that it was probably not just a hardware thing -- which
seemed unlikely anyway because, even though I had plugged in and unplugged
some cables, I had not done anything strange, and DCC had otherwise been
working pretty well. I hated to give up without getting it to work, but
meanwhile the idea of having an ethernet connection instead of DCC had been
growing on me: it would be much faster and would let me keep the printer
permanently plugged in, which I couldnt do with just one parallel port on each
machine and the necessity of using the parallel cable for DCC -- not unless I had
the money, IRQs, and slots available for a card that might add another parallel
port. Plus, I had that $30 CompUSA gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket.
(See point 90(e).)
184. Ethernet Networking on the PENTIUM computer. I got two 16-bit fullduplex (i.e., can simultaneously send and receive) ISA Ethernet cards, produced
by a company called SMC Networks, for $11 each at CompUSA. They were
advertised as having a speed capacity of 10 Mb (megabits, or about 1 MB) per
second, which was plenty fast enough for my needs. I plugged them in, blew out
the dust that had accumulated during recent months with my new can of
compressed air (highly recommended), ran the cable, and booted the machines.
On the PENTIUM computer, I had a video problem where the screen had a
racing horizontal effect, where you couldnt read it. I went into Safe Mode, set
the resolution to 640 x 480, went into PowerDesk Explorer, and clicked on
Network Neighborhood. This gave me an error message indicating that basically
I couldnt do that. I ran Start | Help, which fired up my sophisticated Help
machine (see point ___), and searched for ethernet. This was probably the first
time I really used this new Help arrangement, and it was very cool. First entry I
got was a troubleshooting entry that told me that Plug 'n' Play might not work
with a 16-bit real-mode driver. The solution, they said, was to run the Plug 'n'
Play cards software setup utility, set the card to non-Plug 'n' Play, go into Device
Manager | Network Adapters, remove my network card, go into Control Panel |
Add New Hardware, and manually reinstall the network adapter. I couldnt
find a software utility with the SMC cards, but on the included CD, which also
contained TurboLinux and God knew else, I did eventually find the
SMCEZConnect folder, which contained the SMC Manuals subfolder, which
contained the Adapters subfolder, which contained about eight subfolders with
names like SMC1208 SERIES. Now, what series of card did I have? The box
didnt say. It just said it was an EZNET-ISA card. I went into Device Manager |
Network Adapters | NE2000 Compatible | Properties and learned nothing. I
tried to go to their website at www.smc.com/eznet, but the modem was unable
to establish a connection. I looked at the manual folders one at a time and found
the following:

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SMC1208 Series: This is the EZ Card 10 Mbps Ethernet PCI card. SMC1211
Series: This appeared to be SMCs EZ Card 10/100 dual-speed PCI network
interface card. SMC1660 Series: a 10 Mbps Ethernet ISA Network card. This
looked like mine, but I wanted to see if there were any others. SMC8022 Series:
an Ethernet PCMCIA Network card. SMC8026 Series: a dual-speed 10/100
Ethernet PCMCIA Network card. SMC8034 Series: a dual-speed 10/100
Ethernet Cardbus Network card capable of full and half duplex. SMC9432
Series: the Etherpower II 10/100 Ethernet PCI Network card. SMC9462 Series:
the Etherpower II 1000 Gigabit PCI Network card.
So, OK, it looked like mine must be the SMC1660. I went back to that one and
saw that it was created in September 1997 by Standard Microsystems
Corporation in Hauppauge, NY. Since I had a single-port model, it seemed that
mine must be the SMC1660T. The manual told me to install by using a DOS
command: INSTALL <destination path>. I wondered if I could do this from a
DOS box. There was no INSTALL program in I:\ so I used Find. It located an
INSTALL.BAT in the SMC Drivers\Ethernet subfolder. I right-clicked on that
folder and selected DOS Prompt Here. To get the full path where I wanted this
software installed, I switched back to PowerDesk, created D:\Program
Files\Hardware\Ethernet, opened another DOS box there, copied its pathname
from its prompt, and put it in quotes in the first DOS box, like this: INSTALL
D:\Program Files\Hardware\Ethernet. It did indeed run, although I had to
use the keyboard rather than the mouse to manipulate it. In the hardware setup,
it said it could not run if there were any network drivers installed. I tried the
software installation, but it gave me a warning that there was not enough space
on the target drive, as it needed another 6,000 bytes. This was very odd. I
changed the name to the DOS format D:\Progra~1\Hardware\Ethernet, and
that got me over the first hurdle, but now Igot another error message that
seemed to be a result, again, of using the DOS box. I rebooted into real DOS but,
after much fooling around, could not get the installation program to work there
either. I went back to the Help source and learned that Microsoft recommends
using 32-bit rather than 16-bit protocols and drivers, but that is about all I
learned. It looked like I would have to learn a fair amount of technical stuff to
make this thing function, and it would function on a non-Plug 'n' Play basis.
Basically, I was in over my head. I tinkered a bit more, but when I started seeing
that everything was produced in 1996 and 1997 and that at least one of the
installers would be making Registry changes, I decided to cash in these cheapo
cards in favor of 32-bit cards, if I could afford them.
185. Fast Ethernet. The lady at CompUSA balked momentarily when I went to
return those retarded network cards, but I did get my refund, and I soon applied
it to two more Ethernet cards. This time, I bought LinkSys Network Everywhere
Fast Ethernet 10/100 cards (model NC100) whose boxes said they were 32-bit

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and Plug 'n' Play. I learned why these, and some of the cards mentioned above,
were called 10/100. It seemed that, if you bought Category 5 (CAT5) cable (a
crossover cable to connect two PCs directly, or a patch cable to connect a PC to a
connection box with other PCs) rather than a Category 3 cable, and if you bought
a 10/100 Ethernet card rather than merely a 10 card, you would have 100BaseTX
capability rather than merely 10BaseT capability -- the difference being that your
data could move as fast as 100 Mbps rather than merely 10 Mbps. I didnt really
need that speed, at least not now, but it seemed to come along with the 32-bit,
Plug 'n' Play capability. So now, with the purchase of a 10-foot crossover cable, I
was up from $23 to about $48. (I could hope to recover some of that, though, by
selling an old T1000 tape drive that I had left in the PENTIUM machine in case I
needed to back up my work there; I could now back it all up via cable to the
AMD machine.) The contrast in installation was also pretty stark. These cards
came with a genuine printed manual that was actually written by a native
speaker of English, and the installation went almost flawlessly: almost, because
(a) each card came with a floppy disk containing drivers, and one of those
floppies didnt work, and (b) when I was done, PowerDesk Explorer still didnt
see the other computer. I thought to myself that it was going to be really ironic if
the need to fix $50 worth of fast Ethernet cards wound up giving me the
motivation I would have needed to get to the bottom of the problem with the
free Direct Cable Connection. But then I solved part of the problem when I
discovered that I had forgotten to plug in the cable. I shut down, did that,
rebooted, and now, as the manual said, the green Link light on the network
cards faceplate was on, on both computers. But the yellow Activity (ACT) light
was on on the PENTIUM computer, but only flickered once while I was looking
at it on the AMD computer. Was this why PowerDesk Explorer didnt show the
other computer under Network Neighborhood? Evidently not: the manual
proceeded to tell me that the way to see if the other computer is detected is to
double-click on the Network Neighborhood desktop icon. When I did that, both
computers showed both the AMD and the PENTIUM machines under the
Network Neighborhood. I dont know if that peek into the Network
Neighborhood desktop icon was the solution, or if it was just hitting F5 (which I
did on at least one of the computers) to refresh the screen, but now I could see
both computers under Network Neighborhood in PowerDesk Explorer. Not too
shabby. I had to say, this whole installation felt like an easy, class act after my
experiments with Direct Cable Connection and those cheap 16-bit network cards.
186. My First Home Network File Transfer. Now for my first test of my new
little network. Sitting at PowerDesk Explorer on the AMD machine (the AMD), I
went into the folder that the network would show me -- that is, the folder that I
had set up as shared -- on the PENTIUM machine. This folder contained
STEP_165.PQI (see point 164), a text copy of the Registry (see point 165(b)), the
filelist, and the zip files that would recreate the needed folders on other drives

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(see point 168). I got a little nervous about letting this thing play with the
STEP_165 file, which I really did want to preserve, so first I made a backup copy
of it on the PENTIUM. Then, sitting at the AMD, I used PowerDesk Explorer to
move the contents of the STEP_165 folder to the AMD. This operation, which
would have taken about 3.5 hours on a parallel cable using Direct Cable
Connection (see point 111) took about seven minutes. I didnt measure it
precisely, and it seemed that my act of writing these words on the PENTIUM
and other disk activity may have affected things or slowed down the operation a
bit, but it appeared that I would have a data transfer rate of somewhere around
100 MB per minute. (Later, I tested the printer from both computers, while the
network was up and running, and found that, with my little switch box, I could
print from either at any time, which was a lot more efficient than shutting down
and recabling every time I wanted to print or transfer files! I also discovered that
Win98 comes with several useful network troubleshooting tools, including
WINIPCFG, PING, ARP, NBTSTAT, NET VIEW, NETSTAT, and TRACERT.)
187. An Incidental Purchase. While I was at CompUSA buying those network
cards, I noticed that they had 100 CDs on sale for less than $50. I didnt need
more CDs right then, although I thought I would eventually, but I did need the
mental freedom of knowing that the price was not going to go up, they were not
going to get more expensive, and I could go ahead and burn the things as need
be to record things the way I wanted them. I anticipated a number of
applications for this freedom, but right now it seemed especially important to be
in the habit of making more, not fewer, disk image CDs as backups while I was
going through this whole process.
Catching Up to Where I Was
188. Burning the CD. Now that I had collected the disk image file and related
files (see point 186) on the AMD computer, where the Yamaha CD-R burner was
located, I had to reinstall Easy CD Creator there temporarily so that I could burn
the CD. This took less than a minute. I rebooted and burned the STEP_165 CD
according to the standard procedure. (See point 18.) This time, I made sure to
use the Win98 Startup Floppy. (See point 179.) What surprised me, as I was
setting up and burning this CD, was that Easy CD Creator and I apparently
werent measuring CD contents in the same way. It reported its used space as
being 659,027.968 bytes, 628.50 MB, and judging from its visual map of the CD
that I was about to burn, apparently the latter number was the one that ruled. So
I still had space for another 20 MB (compressed) of program files on my first
bootable CD; and now that CDs were so cheap, I believed that I probably would
try again to make a definitive first, full program CD. (See point ___.) Also, the
top limit had changed: if my 1,062 MB (see point 165(b)) had boiled down to 629

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MB, then the compression ratio was probably better than 59%, and the CD would
hold at least 1.1 GB.
189. Testing the CDs Bootability. Now I could begin to work my way back out
of this detour. As soon as I verified that the CD was bootable and seemed to
contain the materials cabled over from the PENTIUM machine, I would be able
to delete those materials. (See point 186.) But the boot failed again! (See point
179.) I cold-rebooted and it still failed. If I booted from the floppy, that worked,
and I was able to see the contents of the CD, and it looked like they were there.
So, really, since I didnt plan to make this my final version of the initial program
CD anyway, I could probably proceed with the next step. But I wanted to get
this bootable CD thing straight, so I reviewed my notes. (See point 18.) It looked
like I had done everything right. I wondered if it was a difference between the
Yamaha CD-RW burner that I was trying to boot from now, as compared to the
plain old Lion CD-ROM drive that I was using in the PENTIUM machine. I
closed down the PENTIUM and attempted to boot with the CD from there, and it
worked. So that was it. The Win98 Startup Floppy (unlike my super boot floppy
-- see point ___) was able to boot the system in such a way that it would
recognize the Yamaha CD-ROM, for purposes of reading its contents; but it was
not able to make that CD-ROM self-booting. I posted a question online, asking
whether maybe the Yamaha was just not capable of functioning as a boot drive,
but nobody responded.
190. Testing the CDs Contents by Comparing File Lists. On the AMD machine,
I deleted the STEP_165 files I had used to create the CD. (See point 188.) Then I
rebooted from the floppy and, since I remembered that DriveImage would delete
the partitions anyway (see point 179), I didnt bother reformatting drives C and
D; instead, I just started DriveImage from the floppy and used it to restore from
the STEP_165 CD that I had just created (see point 188). I rebooted, and the new
STEP_165 installation on the AMD booted properly. It got to the point of asking
for drivers for the new hardware it was detecting. I decided not to go through
that whole process. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have booted
immediately to Safe Mode or just DOS, created a file list, and compared that
against the file list on the CD, as a quick way of verifying that everything was
there. As a second-best, I canceled through the hardware installation as quickly
as possible and ran END_LIST (see point 116(j)) in a DOS box in Normal Mode to
get that file list. I renamed that list AFTER.TXT, floppied it over to the
PENTIUM machine, and used WinDiff (see point 150) to compare it against the
filelist (which I now renamed BEFORE.TXT) that I had created via END_LIST
when creating the STEP_165 image. (See point 165(b).) The comparison was
very quick and simple: even allowing for the fact that I had booted the new
installation on the AMD machine, the only changed files were CONFIG,

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SYSTEM, SchedLog, NDISLOG, IOS, USER, RAWDIR, BOOTCALL, and

MAINT_HR.
191. Restoring STEP_165 to the PENTIUM Computer. Having tested the CD, it
seemed that I could do without the backup copy of STEP_165 that I had made on
the PENTIUM machine. (See point 186.) I nearly deleted it, but then decided
that I may as well try something slightly different. So I moved it back to drive F.
Then I removed any useful miscellaneous files I might have temporarily stored
on drives C and D on the PENTIUM machine, including the entire contents of
D:\DOS_UTIL, which contained batch files that I had developed since point 165
and that I did not want to have to retype. I tried to run DriveImage from this
removed copy of DOS_UTIL, but it still needed to run from Real DOS, so I
rebooted from the STEP_165 CD and just ran DriveImage from the copy that
existed on the DOS_UTIL folder on that CD. (See point 64.) I used DriveImage
to restore the versions of drives C and D that existed in the backup copy of
STEP_165 that I had just moved to drive F, rather than the copy that had
subsequently gone on to become the CD. That is, I was restoring from one hard
disk (F) to another (C). The CD restoration process hadnt taken long, and this
seemed to be even faster, even though this time I was using all of DriveImages
safety features, which should have slowed it down. Or not all of the safety
features, at least not for drive C; when doing drive D, I added the Bad Sector
check, and that was somewhat slower. Anyway, when it was done, I rebooted
from drive C, and the installation got to the point of recognizing and adding new
hardware.
192. Retracing My Steps. Finally, it seemed that I could begin to redo the work
that I had already done once. The first thing the computer wanted, on reboot,
was to install the PCI Ethernet Controller. As in point 185, I pointed the installer
toward the install diskette (A:\win98). The installer informed me that I had
more recent versions of some of the files, and of course I opted to keep those
more recent versions. This suggested to me that the Ethernet driver may have
been updated since it was put onto that floppy, so I made a note to myself to look
for an update. The installer finished and rebooted me, and this time I had the
racing horizontal effect that I had experienced in point 184. After resetting the
monitor to VGA in Safe Mode and rebooting, it looked like Windows was going
to be OK, so now I finally did delete the backup of STEP_165 that existed on
drive F on the PENTIUM machine; also, I copied back the newer version of
DOS_UTIL from drive F to drive D. (See point 191.) I would not again
experience the PCI Communication problems and so forth (see point 182) until I
tried installing from CD again onto the AMD machine or using the network -which would happen sooner than I had expected.

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193. A Fresh New Outlook 98. With those steps out of the way, I was able to go
as far back as point 178, where I described how I had rescued some useful data
files from drives C and D on the AMD machine before wiping those disks out.
The files in question included MAILBOX.PST. I had previously decided that I
did not want to bring that huge MAILBOX file over (see point 112(c)), but things
looked different now. For one thing, I had now been out of touch with my
Outlook 98 e-mail and calendar for a day or two, and I didnt want to be
neglecting messages or deadlines. Also, I was storing the PST file in
E:\Messages (see point 166(e)), so it was not going to clutter up the CDs that I
was burning for drives C and D. And now that I had the Ethernet connection, it
would be a snap to move that huge file from the AMD to the PENTIUM
machine. So I rebooted the AMD, installed the PCI Communication driver after
all, and after multiple reboots and skipping through other assorted hardware
messages, I finally got to the desktop on the AMD. I revived Network
Neighborhood -- and, since I was still just doing temporary work on the AMD, I
took the fast route and used TweakUI to do it. (See point 181.) That called for
yet another reboot, but now I had the answer to another question: PowerDesk
Explorer did show the PENTIUM and the AMD under Network Neighborhood
without first making me double-click on the Network Neighborhood icon on the
desktop. (See point 185.) So now I renamed MAILBOX.PST to be
OUTLOOK.PST and transferred it from the AMD to the shared folder on the
PENTIUM, and then moved it to E:\Messages. I started Outlook 98 on the
PENTIUM, and after hitting me with numerous past-due scheduled item
messages, it showed me that I did indeed have my full Outlook capability back. I
downloaded messages. I checked my Address Book, and it was there, so I
deleted the old MAILBOX.PAB file that still existed on the AMD machine. I got
the Unable to find WAB DLL error when trying to respond to an e-mail, so this
time, instead of merely copying WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common
Files\System to C:\Windows\System (see point 166(e)), I actually moved it. I
did this without even leaving Outlook, and it worked fine.
194. Recovering Other Last-Minute Files. During my final shutdown of the old
machine (see point 178), I had also recovered some other files that I thought I
might need again sometime. These included data files, which could stay put for
now, but also some program files: the COOL.INI file, which would hopefully
save me from having to reset my Cool Edit preferences again (see point 157(a)); a
PartitionMagic upgrade that I had recently downloaded; the SETIHOME.INI file
(see point 156(k)); and the lists of files in Windows 95 and 98 (see point 166(d)).
195. Reinstalling Programs Previously Installed. Continuing back up the list of
previous items that I was now doing over again, I tried to run CabWiz and got
the VBRUN300.DLL error, so I copied it and CMDIALOG.VBX over from the old
copy of drive C on AMD\\H (see point 166(d)) to

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PENTIUM\\C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and tried again, and CabWiz ran. I had

not previously tested it, however, and when I tried it now, I found that it still
was not running properly, so I deleted it as well as those two files that I had just
added. (I had to reboot in order to delete CMDIALOG.VBX, because Windows
was still using it.) Continuing back up the list, I downloaded some Windows
updates again. (See point 165(e).) But first, I had to go into Device Manager,
remove the five modems listed there, and reboot. (See point 181.) (Device
Manager wasnt showing multiple ports this time, so I made no port changes.)
(Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration. See point 200.) Next, now
that Outlook 98 was working, I was finally able to e-mail Chessvision and ask if I
could get the program to play against me. (See point 165(e).) They quickly
replied that this was possible. I decided, however, that I really should install this
program on just one computer, and therefore deleted it and decided to install it
later. (See point 209.) Next, I reinstalled Norton AntiVirus 2000 and
downloaded its latest updates. (See point 165(c).) (Incidentally, I hoped I had
digested its README file; it sounded rather sensitive -- for example, it could
trash your hard disk if you were using PartitionMagic with it and chose Repair
instead of Inoculate in some cases.) Finally, I went into Add/Remove
Programs and verified that Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.0 already
resided on the PENTIUM system. (See point (165(b).) In other words, I was now
more or less caught up with the work that I had done previously in attempting to
move my system forward from the state captured in the STEP_165 image file.
(See point 165(b).)
Trying Again for the Definitive Programs CD
196. PowerDesk Tweak. I didnt like the fact that PowerDesk appeared twice
on my right-click folder context menu. I e-mailed the company and obtained
information that, they warned, was undocumented and strictly proceed at your
own risk. The advice was this: first, go into PowerDesk and select Options |
Preferences | General Settings. Go to the bottom of that screen and make sure
that Use PowerDesk to open My Computer and folders is not checked. Then
edit the Registry and go down to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\PowerDesk. Select that PowerDesk item,
right-click it, choose Delete, and then save and exit. This did not work, so I went
into real DOS and used SCANREG /RESTORE to restore the Registry as it had
been before I had made that change, and I e-mailed Mijenix for more advice.
197. Plundering the Old Windows Installation. At first, the CabWiz experience
(see point 166(d)) had made me think that I should do a directory comparison to
find out what other files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM might exist in Win95 but
not in Win98, and perhaps to save them in a separate folder; but then, when it
turned out that CabWiz (designed for Win95) didnt work properly in Win98, I

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reflected on the fact that no other program had required me to use such files, and
I decided that probably the best solution was just to keep the old Win95 CD
handy for any possible future need. On the other hand, the decision to keep
individual Norton utilities handy to run on a standalone basis (see point 176)
inspired me, now, to go through those utilities, in their installed form on AMD
drive H (see point 169), and keep any that I thought I might like to run
individually. Other than the DOS-based Norton Disk Doctor (NDD), however, I
did not find any that interested me and that were also able to run as standalones.
I even supplied one or two of them with the DLLs that they seemed to need, but
they still didnt run right. I decided not to bother with them further unless I was
willing to install them as regular programs, and at this time I didnt seem to need
that. Later, I did a better and more thorough job of this. (See point 240.)
198. Alternate Browser. I wanted an alternate browser. I had rarely used one,
but it had been handy to have one on a few occasions when Internet Explorer
was malfunctioning for one reason or another. I now faced a choice: I could
install Netscape, which in its compressed format (even for a version that was
more than a year old) took 13 MB; or I could install Opera, which took less than 2
MB. Netscape, as I recalled, also had the obnoxious habit of inserting an AOL
messenger icon in my system tray. This seemed like a no-brainer. I installed
Opera. Then it notified me that this was only an evaluation copy and I had 30
days to register. So instead I uninstalled Opera and added my old Netscape
download to the list of programs to keep handy in case of emergency (see point
___), but I installed no other browser.
199. Network Password. Now that I had a network installed, every time I
booted my computer, it said, Enter your network password for Microsoft
Networking. I was just hitting Enter at this screen, but I didnt want to see it at
all, because it was screwing up my automatic rebooting scenarios. (See e.g.,
point 141(k).) I went online and saw a suggestion to use TweakUI. I tried XSetup first (see point 137), but it had options only for NetWare and Windows NT.
So I tried TweakUI. This required me to make changes on the Network tab, and
also to check the Clear last user option on the Paranoia tab. I tried it, without
first bothering to check the notes of problems that people have had with
TweakUI because, frankly, I was getting a little impatient at this point, and it
worked OK. Later, it seemed that I might have gotten it backwards. (See point
283.)
200. Modem Problem: Resource Conflict. Suddenly, my modem had
disappeared. I went into Add New Hardware and reinstalled it, but it came up
with a yellow circle and exclamation mark indicating a hardware conflict. When
I looked at it in Device Manager, Win98 offered to take me through the Windows
98 Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter. I accepted this offer; it led me to a page

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containing some advice. The advice, in my case, was this: in Device Manager,
select the modem and hit Properties | Resources. This showed me that the
modem had a conflict with COM3 (i.e., communications port 3), which confused
me because I thought that was the port that the modem used. The advice page
said, Do you see a box with resource settings or a Set Configuration Manually
button? I assumed that the white box in the center was the resource settings
box, so I clicked on that option on the advice page. Now the troubleshooter
asked me if the conflict was of the System Reserved type. I clicked on No and
got the advice to configure one of the devices to use different resources. To do
this, the advice said, I should click on the Resource Type item that was
conflicting. This wasnt hard to figure out: it had a red circle with a line through
it, like a No Parking sign. I double-clicked on that and got a message that said,
No Modifications Allowed -- Windows will choose settings for this device. To
get around this, the advice was to uncheck the box labeled Use automatic
settings. I was making this exception, tweaking the hardware to suit this
particular modem, because I needed the modem to finish my generic software
installation; I knew I would delete this modem and install another one when it
came time to configure all this for the other computer. (See point ___.) Anyway,
I unchecked the Use automatic settings box and double-clicked on that
conflicting item. I got the message, This resource setting cannot be modified.
Trying a different approach, I went into Device Manager | Ports and deleted the
COM3 port. That immediately removed the exclamation mark from next to the
modem. I tried going online and the modem worked fine. Unfortunately, one or
two boots later, that fell apart: Internet Explorer was no long running properly
by itself; it would give me a combination hourglass/arrow mouse cursor and
would go no further. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw Msipcsv (Not responding).
When I killed that, Internet Explorer still gave me Unable to establish a
connection. I was not able to go online to research the MSIPCSV problem,
because I had not yet set up the modem on the AMD machine either. It was time
for some thought. (My modem tweaking resumed at point 206; I had further gorounds with MSIPCSV, culminating in point 295.)
Review of Overall Backup Philosophy
201. The Original Concept. The purpose, at the outset, was to find a way to back
up Windows 98 on CD-ROM. In one sense, I had figured that out long ago: you
install the software and use DriveImage and/or XCOPY, perhaps with other
software, to make a copy on one or more CDs. (See point 3 and point 25.) What I
had been trying to do, since then, was to develop a more sophisticated method
that would combine two approaches. First, there would be a single CD
containing the core programs I would need on either of my computers. I had
been reluctant to span this across more than one CD. (See Overview at the
beginning of this document.) For sake of argument, however, I could now drop

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that objection, since DriveImage seemed, so far, to be a lot more stable than the
tape backup software had been. (See point 171.) Even so, the basic idea
remained the same: there would be the beginning CD (or more than one), and
then there would be subsequent CDs that would contain all files that had been
added since the original. Restoring Windows 98 would then be a simple matter
of using the first CD, in either computer, supplemented by a second CD that
contained the files specific to that computer, such as that computers specific
modem setup.
202. What About Deleted Files and Subsequent Backups? This original
philosophy had never quite addressed the question of how I would do
subsequent backups of my program partitions C and D. I had vaguely
envisioned a batch file that would detect all subsequently modified files (i.e., all
whose archive bits were on) and might perhaps make copies of them on another
partition, to be included in my regular backups of modified data and program
files. This method would have the problem that it would add new files, but
would not delete old ones. That is, if, for example, I found that file X.DLL was
causing conflicts, and deleted it from C:\WINDOWS, a subsequent restoration
from CD would restore that file along with all the others. The more precise
approach, it seemed, was to create a complete file list at the time of each backup.
Then, if I ever needed to restore from a subsequent CD, I might create a batch file
to compare that file list against the original and perform both additions and
deletions, as appropriate. That is, unless I wanted to use up one or two CDs
every time I did a backup, my subsequent backups would probably create the file
list just described, would use XCOPY to copy the new and modified files to a
temporary folder, would shut off their archive bits, and would use a commandline program to crunch those files automatically into a compressed ZIP file, for
subsequent inclusion in a CD when I had enough of these ZIP files to fill one. In
short, the methods I knew of involved either (a) a simple, simplistic, and more
expensive use of DriveImage (more expensive because I would have to use CD-R
disks, since the PENTIUM computer couldnt read rewritable CD-RW disks) or
(b) a more precise and economical method that would take more time to set up,
be more complex to use, be more configurable to future needs, and yield better
results when dealing with removals from my collection of files as well as
additions to it. Since this sounded like something that might teach me some
useful things for backup of my data files as well as my program files, I decided to
pursue the latter approach.
203. Sample Application. Before going ahead with that approach, I decided to
think through how it might have worked in recent application. My idea was that
I could have taken the following steps at each point after burning that CD (which
actually occurred in point 188, and got restored to the PENTIUM machine in
point 191): (a) Make sure I have a copy of the Registry, a backup, and a list of

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files included in that backup. The starting backup would be the CD just
mentioned. (b) Install a new piece of software, make a copy of the Registry and a
new file list, record the time and date, and make sure I know which Registry
backup corresponds to this change. (c) Continue until I have a problem. (d)
Begin rolling back my steps until the problem disappears. This sounded roughly
like what the GOBACK program was able to do, the difference being that I
intended to tie this into my backup method as well. One problem was that the
list of files would be no good if the actual files had been changed; I would need
an entire disk image for each piece of software I installed. Or , if I was working
with XCOPY, I could just store copies of the newly changed files, perhaps in
zipped format. Of course, this would entail several time-consuming steps after
each software installation: searching for and turning off archive bits, making file
lists, converting those file lists into batch files when it came time to restore, etc.
As a practical matter, I probably would have done this only after taking several
steps, or perhaps before taking one that seemed risky. It would be a question of
which was faster: to start over again from a backup made several hours ago, or
to spend a lot of time making backups every half-hour. Much was unclear; but
since I was frustrated with my repeated setbacks in this whole process, it seemed
wise to try working with this method and see how it turned out.
204. First Step in New Backup Approach: Restoring the Previous Backup. I
began with point 191: save a copy of DOS_UTIL to drive F, and run DriveImage
and restore drives C and D from the CD, this time with a sector check on drive C.
But when I started on drive C, I got a DriveImage error message: cannot lock a
locked drive. (I wasnt entirely surprised to see this, because the last shutdown
of Windows had given me two or three error messages that I had never seen
before.) DriveImage said it needed to reboot, so I did that. As the CD was
rebooting, I saw an error message flit by, but I didnt catch what it was. It
evidently had to do with the attempt, by the Windows startup floppy (which was
what made the CD bootable), to create a RAM disk, because the drive letters had
changed and there was no RAM disk this time. I tried DriveImage again, and it
showed a different list of drive letters, with drive C now appearing to have taken
the place of drive D, and a 900 MB free space appearing before C. I told
DriveImage to restore into that blank space. It got two-thirds of the way through
and froze. Even though I recognized this was a problem I had had before, I did
not immediately go back and read through my notes. (See point 78.) (Those
notes revealed, incidentally, that the error message that had flitted by, which I
did catch eventually, was the same old bogus BTDOSM message.) Instead, I
fooled around with SCANDISK and retrying DriveImage and rebooting and
other things for probably an hour before finally re-discovering that I just had to
run DriveImage from something other than the CD. But no, this didnt do it
either: after another 15 minutes of waiting for the thing to restore, I got Error
# 2005 once more. I thought maybe I hadnt done it right. I had moved the PQDI

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(DriveImage) program files from the CD to the hard disk, but maybe there were
other files that the program needed to be on the hard disk as well. This time, I
ran DriveImage from the copy of the DOS_UTIL folder that I had copied to drive
F. It still didnt work; I got Error # 1802. Trying something different, I copied the
PQI image file from the CD to drive F, cold-rebooted from the super floppy (the
one with drivers that were designed specifically for this CD-ROM drive) rather
than the Win98 Startup Floppy (see point 8), and ran DriveImage from F too.
This combination of factors did finally work. It took quite a while to copy the
image file onto the hard disk, but the restoration from the hard disk went about
50% faster than the restore from the CD.
205. Modification of New Backup Concept. This experience with DriveImage
taught me that, fast as it was, it still took extra time for its compression, and also
that its contents, compressed into one giant PQI file, were in a sort of black box
that might or might not be easy to extract. For the greatest accessibility and
speed, I decided, it might be better to take advantage of the low price of CDs -that is, to burn an uncompressed backup and to try to access it with programs
other than DriveImage. (See point 209.)
Resuming the Forward March
206. Modem Problem Again. When I rebooted the PENTIUM machine in
Windows, it asked for the Ethernet software, so I installed that. (See point 185.)
It then rebooted and, wouldnt you know it, it was 5:01 PM on a Wednesday
afternoon, so CLEANUP.BAT took the system and started running with it! (See
point 105(g).) As soon as I was able to wrest control back from that batch file (by
rebooting with the floppy and changing the time to 6:01 PM), I booted Windows
again and got the racing horizontal screen problem (see point 184), so once again
I booted into Safe Mode, set the adapter to 640 x 480, and rebooted into Normal
Mode. I removed the multiple modems shown in Device Manager and rebooted.
(See point 182.) I went into Control Panel | Modems | Dont detect my modem
| Next | Have Disk. I inserted the modem driver floppy and pointed the
installer to it. It seemed to install the Newcom 33ifxC Internal modem properly.
Amazing how easy these things are when you follow the manual. But the
modem didnt actually work. I rebooted and tried again, but when I tried to dial
out, I still got Could not detect modem. I went into Device Manager | Modem
| Properties | Driver | Update Driver and pointed it toward the updated driver
that I had been using previously. But I still got the Could not detect modem
error. I rebooted and the problem persisted. I went into my super Resource Kit
Help (see point 145(n)) and searched for COM3. MSD (see point 181) told me I
had three COM ports, but the modem setup had given me the choice of only
COM1 and COM2, and apparently COM2 wasnt working for the modem.
ResKit Help told me, first, to go into Control Panel | Modems | General |

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Diagnostics | Driver and verify that the communications driver is COMM.DRV.

Next, it said click on Diagnostics | More Info to make sure Win98 can
communicate with the modem. I was supposed to see that the Port Information
here matched the physical configuration of the modem. But this said that the
modem was at COM1, IRQ 4. I went back to Control Panel | Modem | General
| Properties and changed the port to COM1. I went back to Diagnostics, and this
time it said, The modem failed to respond. ... [V]erify that the interrupt for the
port is properly set. I had been having problems with this old 33.6 kbps modem
throughout this entire process (see e.g., point 99), and was now very close to
buying a new one. I went into Control Panel | Modems | General, deleted the
installed modem, clicked Add | Dont detect my modem | Standard Modem
Type | Standard 33600 bps Modem | Next | COM1 | Next. Then I repeated the
Diagnostics steps just mentioned, and got the same failed to respond results. I
tried changing it to COM2, and got the same result from More Info. I rebooted to
DOS and ran MSD. This time, it reported only two COM ports. (See point 181.)
I rebooted and went into BIOS Setup. Under Power Management, there was a
setting that said, Modem use IRQ and after it, the choice was 3. I tried the NA
setting, theorizing that the hard-and-fast setting of IRQ 3 might be interfering
with the flexibility of Plug n Play. I rebooted and looked at MSD; now it was
seeing only two COM ports. I went into Windows, selected Control Panel |
Modems, removed and reinstalled the Standard 33600 bps Modem, installed it on
COM1, tried Diagnostics | More Info, got failed to respond, tried again with
COM2, and got the same result there. I looked at the modems manual and saw
that it was possible to set the modem to use specific IRQs. I didnt remember
which way I might have configured it when I had bought it several years earlier.
I shut down the computer, opened the case, and looked. The jumpers were set
for a Plug n Play system, so I left them as they were. I rebooted and ran MSD
from real DOS, and now the system was back to seeing three COM ports. I
looked at the manual again and went back through its installation process,
choosing the Newcom 33ifxC Internal modem instead of the Standard 33600 bps
Modem. I noticed something that I might have been doing wrong: the
instructions told me to choose COM4, which I had thought wouldnt apply in my
case because I had only three COM ports; now I realized that perhaps three COM
ports was standard on Win95 (for which this modem had been designed) and
Win98, and I was supposed to choose a number higher than those three, so that I
would not be interfering with their availability for other purposes. I went into
Windows and saw that my act of removing the 336ifxC internal modem within
Control Panel | Modems had not actually worked; both modems were listed. I
removed the Standard 33600 bps Modem and looked at the Diagnostics for the
336ifxC; now it was on COM3. The Driver and More Information buttons
worked OK. I was able to go online. Once again, I honestly could not say what I
had done to fix the thing. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration.
See point 225.)

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207. Hardware Profiles. Rooting around in the ResKit Help had given me an
idea. I had always ignored talk of Hardware Profiles, believing that this was
relevant mostly to corporate system administrators who had numerous systems
to manage and needed a way of keeping them all straight. Now, however, I
realized that I might be able to simplify my own situation by creating separate
profiles for these two computers. That way, I could load everything on the one
computer, copy it over to the other, switch to the other profile, and alter what I
had just loaded so that it would fit that particular computer. To see if this was
possible, I went into ResKit Help. It told me to go into Control Panel | System |
Hardware Profiles | Copy and name it. I called it PENTIUM. Now I would just
disable individual items that belonged on one computer but not the other. (See
point ___.)
208. Continuing the Catch-Up Redux. I was now able to resume the effort to
retrace my steps without re-committing the unknown error that had required me
to restore from the CD and start again. (See point 200.) That is, I now took steps
that seemed fairly safe. I moved the copy of DOS_UTIL back to drive D. (See
point 204.) I moved WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common
Files\System to C:\Windows\System. (See point 193.) Based on the warning
about Norton AntiVirus (see point 195), I installed that PartitionMagic upgrade
that I had downloaded. This wasnt much, but it was a start, and now I was
ready to apply my new backup philosophy. (See point 205.) Finally, I revived
the desktop icon for Network Neighborhood, so that I could use the network; I
used the Registry edit rather than TweakUI for this. (See point 146(g) and point
181.)
209. New Backup Philosophy, Applied. Thanks to the Hardware Profile idea
(see point 207), I was going to give up on the approach of having separate
backup disks for the program files on the AMD and PENTIUM computers. I
thought, now, that I should be able to have just one set of backup disks for both,
with various items of hardware (e.g., different modems or sound cards) disabled
or enabled as appropriate. This would also simplify things by whisking away
the idea that I should try to save program space by installing some programs on
one computer but not on the other. (See e.g., Chessvision at point 195. I did get
Chessvision up and running again in full later. See point 235.) I could go ahead
and install everything and configure it on the PENTIUM, and make a backup,
and then copy it over to the AMD and reconfigure as needed. Before proceeding
with this grand install process, however, I wanted to make a first file-by-file copy
of the present, working state of the programs (drives C and D) in the PENTIUM
machine. That is, I was now going to turn away from the DriveImage
compressed disk image approach and was going to try an uncompressed
approach, so as to avoid the kinds of problems I had had recently and to facilitate

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the new approach I hoped to take toward backups. (See point 205.) Later, I
revisited this backup philosophy. (See point 269.)
210. Using PowerDesk Explorer to Make a Disk Copy. I realized that moving
system files would make the system unstable, and that Windows might simply
prevent some files from being moved. But how about if I was just copying them
instead of moving them? The most straightforward way of making a copy of
drives C and D, I believed, was to use Explorer (either Windows or PowerDesk)
and just make a copy of the entire disk. I decided to start by right-clicking on C
and copying and pasting it to a folder on drive F called DRIVE_C. But there was
no Copy option on drive C itself. So I clicked on drive C and selected all files
and folders in the right-side pane of PowerDesk Explorer. (Of course, this will
work only if youve got Explorer set to show hidden files.) This copy operation
took about five minutes. Then I used LIST_ALL (see point ___) to create file lists
for drive C and for this F:\DRIVE_C folder. The file sizes differed, of course,
because the full pathname of each file in F:\DRIVE_C had to include all those
extra letters (as compared to simply C:). I tried to use WinDiff (see point 149(b))
to compare the two file listings, but that didnt work because, of course, every
line was different. To fix that, I opened F_LIST in Word and did a global
replacement, replacing [space] [space]F:\DRIVE_C\ with [space] [space]C:\. I
tried again with WinDiff, and now saw virtually no differences other than in
some Registry files. Just in case, I made a backup of the Registry as well with
Start | Run | SCANREG /BACKUP; and I went into H:\Backups (see point
145(p)) and relabeled that backup to be Backup Made When I Copied Files to
F. Then I used PowerDesk to copy D to F:\DRIVE_D. (One problem that I did
not worry about at this point: after I had made a copy of drive C to drive H on
the AMD machine (see point ___), it seemed that Windows might be treating
some of the Windows files on drive H as system files -- that is, as it would have
treated them if they were on drive C -- and I didnt know whether something
similar would happen now with this copy of drive C in F:\DRIVE_C.)
211. Hardware Profile at Boot. A new problem: when I rebooted after creating a
new Hardware Profile (see point 207), I got the following message: Windows
cannot determine what configuration your computer is in. Select one of the
following: 1. Original Configuration. 2. PENTIUM. 3. None of the above.
This bootup message would mess up my automatic rebooting schemes (see e.g.,
point ___), so I would need to figure out how to suppress it; but it would have to
wait until later. Later, I found that youre just supposed to delete the ones that
dont apply to the computer in question.
212. Audio Card Installation. I tried recording something in Cool Edit 2000 (see
point 157(a)) on the PENTIUM machine, but I kept getting an error message,
MMSYSTEM002 A device ID has been used that is out of range for your

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system. I couldnt imagine what this meant; then I remembered that Device
Manager still showed a yellow exclamation mark circle next to PCI Multimedia
Audio Device, presumably because I had not yet installed my sound card. Now
that I was working on the concept of having separate hardware profiles for the
PENTIUM and AMD machines, I felt that it would be OK to install the sound
card software for the PENTIUM machine. I unchecked all options in the Turtle
Beach Daytona installer, so that I wouldnt have two different kinds of audio
mixers, two different sets of audio utilities, etc.; I was more interested in the
SoundBlaster software that went with the sound card in the AMD machine,
although frankly I wanted to see if I could get by without either of them. With
this arrangement, the Daytona installer showed that I would be installing only
336 KB of programs; I figured those were probably just the drivers. I got a new
question during this process: the question was whether this installation was
intended only for the PENTIUM hardware profile, to which I said yes. After
finishing the installation, I tried again in Cool Edit and got the same error
message. I saw no sound card entry in Device Manager. The software didnt say
anything about rebooting, but I rebooted anyway, and now I got a message that
the Add New Hardware Wizard was searching for new drivers for the PCI
Multimedia Audio Device. It found and installed a driver on the Daytona CD,
and now it did want to reboot. It found more new hardware this time around,
and for a minute there it looked like it was hung up on the TBS Legacy Relocator
for Daytona PCI Audio Device. It tried again to install the Turtle Beach
applications, but I canceled out of that. I tried again to run Cool Edit, and this
time it worked. I adjusted the Volume Control (the yellow speaker in the system
tray) to put its volume levels at about 50% and to make sure nothing was muted
that I would need, and I concluded that, at least for now, I didnt need the
utilities that the Daytona CD had wanted to install.
Another Look at DOS-Based Backup Techniques
213. Restoring from the Disk Copy. Now that I had copies of drives C and D on
drive F, what could I do with them? I could certainly copy them back, assuming
I had Windows running, but what if the problem was that Windows was dead? I
couldnt use DOS because it would truncate (shorten) long filenames. (See point
23(c).) So if drive C crashed and I needed to restore it, I would be stuck with
DOS, which would copy files from F (or wherever) back to C with different
filenames than I had given them. This would be no problem for those files
whose names were DOS-style 8+3 character names anyway, but it would make a
mess of the rest. But maybe this was the point: Windows system files all did
seem to have short filenames. Could I do a first pass through in DOS, restoring
all files whose names were short, and then another pass, restoring all the rest?
The first pass would restore a bunch of non-system files whose names just
happened to be short, but I didnt see that this would do any harm. I could

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modify LIST_ALL (see point ___) to produce the list of short-named files. Or, as
I soon realized, I could design a batch and QBASIC combination that would
create a complete list of long filenames, and DOS would probably handle them
correctly if they were enclosed in quotation marks. I worked on QBASIC for a
while, but then realized I would also have to generate a list of folders to create.
That is, if I was restoring to a blank disk, DOS would copy files only if the folders
already existed. Another possibility was that XCOPY didnt require that. Before
working with that, I decided to try using the disk copy option in DriveImage.
214. Disk-to-Disk Restore Experiment Using DriveImage. I decided to begin this
experiment by copying the backups that I had made on drive F over to the AMD
machine. (My new network was proving to be very useful!) I cleared off some
partitions so that there was nothing in them (except the Recycled Bin) to make
space for these copies. The DRIVE_C folder (see point 210) went to AMD drive
E, and the DRIVE_D folder went to AMD drive G. I copied all of the contents of
these folders to the root folders on their respective drives. For example, just as
there had been a D:\Program Files folder on the PENTIUM machine, so also now
there was a G:\Program Files folder on the AMD. Then I rebooted to real DOS
and ran DriveImage from the floppy, doing a disk-to-disk copy of drive E to
drive C, and also of drive G to drive D. In the process, as usual, it said it was
basically creating a new partition in place of the existing one. When it was done,
I tried to reboot from drive C. It froze early in the boot process, at the Verifying
DMI Pool Data message. I cold-rebooted and tried again; it froze again. I
booted from the floppy, ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, and relabeled drives
C and D. (DriveImage had given them the names of their sources, e.g., drive C
was named DATA like drive E had been.) This made no difference; it still
wouldnt boot. I ran Norton Disk Doctor from the floppy. (See point 78.) It said,
Boot Record Program is invalid. It offered to fix it, and I accepted, but then it
said, Boot record could not be repaired. I looked in the DriveImage manual,
but I found nothing on any of these subjects.
215. Disk-to-Disk Restore Experiment Using DOS. Continuing the experiment
above (see point 213), I devised some DOS batch files that would create a list of
files to be restored and would create their directories and restore the files into
those directories. For example, given the knowledge that drive C should have a
file named C:\Windows Update Setup Files\ie5setup.exe, these batch files
would create the following: (a) a command to make the directory in which this
file would go: MD C:\Windows Update Setup Files; and (b) a command to
copy the file from its source location to its target location. In this case, that
command would be COPY "E:\Windows Update Setup Files\ie5setup.exe"
"C:\Windows Update Setup Files." The idea was that I could then copy these
batch files to floppy and use them, within DOS, to run down the whole list of
Windows files, restoring them all to where they belonged. The first problem was

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that, the way I designed it, these batch files had to refer to the floppy disk for
every operation, which made them very slow. The second problem was that,
since I had copied PENTIUM drive C to a folder called F:\DRIVE_C, I had to use
Word on the PENTIUM machine to remove the DRIVE_C part from every
filename in the resulting batch files, so that they would restore to the root of
drive C on the AMD machine rather than restoring to a new folder called
C:\DRIVE_C. (If you dont know what I mean, never mind; its not important.)
The third and most significant problem was that there was evidently no way for
DOS to create long directory names. I tried with XCOPY, and that didnt work
even with the quotation marks. In the C:\Windows Update Setup Files
example just given, I was taking advantage of the fact that DOS can deal with
long filenames if you put them in quotes, but working with an existing long file
or directory name was not the same as creating one. I posted a question on this
online ___
Remaining Software Installation
216. Trying Again: TweakUI. Now that I had a file-by-file backup of C on F,
with a copy on the AMD machine, where I could burn it onto CD if necessary, I
decided to risk experiencing the same problems that had forced me to redo again
my recent steps. (See point 200.) First, I set the Network tab in TweakUI to step
automatically through the Network Password requirement, and I set the
Paranoia tab to Clear Last User at Logon. (See point 199.) I rebooted to see if this
had caused those earlier problems.
217. No Free IRQs. I ran Internet Explorer as a test, and while it started OK, it
said it was unable to establish a connection. (For the last time I had received that
message, see point 200.) I went into Device Manager and saw an exception, next
to my S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device, that said, This
device cannot find any free Interrupt Request (IRQ) resources to use. It advised
me to use the Hardware Troubleshooter, which I did. The troubleshooter told
me that the audio device required IRQ resources 5, 7, 10, or 11. It offered to
disable something else, and I chose the Matrox display driver, since I hadnt yet
loaded that anyway (apparently the system had found it on its own); but then the
troubleshooter said that hadnt solved the problem. Instead, I tried the PCI to
USB connector, since I wasnt using USB. At this point, the troubleshooter
seemed to be a bit messed up, since it said, Matrox MGA MystiqueWindows
disabled this device ... -- which is to say, Huh? I re-ran the troubleshooter and
saw that it had indeed disabled the USB thing, but the exception was still there. I
ran the troubleshooter again and decided not to accept its offer to disable the
printer port (LPT1) or the TBS Daytona PCI Audio Device, which I believed I
would need more than this Legacy Relocator. So I went back to Device Manager
and clicked Remove. (I would return to the IRQ issue again later. See point 232.)

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The system rebooted, and froze during the boot process. I rebooted and it did it
again, after running ScanDisk on drive C. I checked the situation in Device
Manager in Safe Mode. There were two versions of the Matrox driver, so I
deleted one. I rebooted in Normal Mode.
218. Display Adapter Configuration. It took a long time to reboot, but
eventually it did it. It told me my display adapter was not configured properly,
so I followed its advice when it said, Click OK to start the Hardware Installation
wizard. It showed me the devices that I had just disabled, each with a red check
on it. I canceled out, went into Device Manager, saw that the PCI to USB
Universal Host Controller was still there, but with a red check on it, so I deleted
that. I went into Add New Hardware, and the system wanted to reinstall that
controller. I let it go ahead. It said it found everything it needed for that
installation, and asked me if I wanted to install anything else. I said no and
rebooted. I got the same display adapter message again, and went back into the
Add New Hardware wizard. The Matrox MGA Mystique was still one of the
items listed with a red check (the other being the PCI Audio Device that I had
deleted -- see point 217). I clicked on that one and got the message, This device
is already installed, but has been removed from this hardware profile. I clicked
to add it back to this hardware profile, and that seemed to satisfy the thing. Now
that we were dealing in specific hardware configurations, I felt that I could
finally add the latest Matrox driver. I went to www.matrox.com and
downloaded and installed it. It came with other monitor software. When I
rebooted, it ran diagnostics and informed me that I had not yet selected a
monitor type, and that I should do this before changing my display settings. It
also erroneously informed me that I had an old version of DirectX installed. I
unchecked the boxes in this diagnostic screen so that they would not run at every
bootup. I went into Device Manager | Monitors and saw that this monitor was
configured as Unknown Monitor, which was about right, since it was a cheap
clone. I selected Properties | Driver | Update Driver and told the Update
Device Driver Wizard to look for a driver in C:\WINDOWS\INF. It informed
me that I already had the best driver installed. I tried searching again in
Microsoft Windows Update online. Again, it informed me that I already had the
best driver loaded. Apparently the Win98 CD came pre-loaded with a perfectly
adequate driver for unknown monitor types. I went to Device Manager |
Display Adapters and saw that it now specified Matrox Mystique PCI. I went
into Control Panel | Display | Settings and set the monitor for 800 x 600, 16-bit
color. It offered to reboot, but I opted to apply the settings without rebooting.
This went OK, and now I could see more material on the screen. It seemed to be
working OK, so I concluded that my display adapter was probably configured
correctly now.

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219. Finishing the PENTIUM Hardware Profile. I went through the other
devices specified in Device Manager and unchecked the box that said Exists in
all hardware profiles (see previous paragraph) in other items of hardware that
allowed it and that existed only on the PENTIUM machine. These were: 33ifxC
internal modem; Unknown Monitor; and Sound, video, and game controllers
(two items).
220. Preparing to Finish the Catch-Up Operation: DriveImage Backup. At long
last, I could try again to re-install the remaining software that I had already
installed once. (See point 195.) There were two items to reinstall, and they were
the ones that seemed most likely to have caused the system instability (see point
200) that had prompted me to reinstall from the previous DriveImage backup CD
(see point 204), namely, Norton AntiVirus 2000 and a number of downloads from
the Microsoft Windows Update website. I decided to reinstall them in that order,
so that I would have antivirus protection before going online again; but I also
decided, first, to make another backup of drives C and D. At this time, I did not
know how I could restore the contents of drive C from a straight file-by-file copy
(see point 213 through point 215). Therefore, a DriveImage disk image file was
the best solution for me. I did not expect this to be any sort of final CD backup,
so I not make any of the preparations I ordinarily made before creating a
DriveImage PQI file. (See point 161.) This was the first disk image I had made
since STEP_165. (See point 165(b).) Since then, I had only made the file-by-file
backup on PENTIUM drive F, as described in point 210. I had subsequently used
the network to copy that backup to the AMD computer. (See point 214.) Since
DriveImage ran in DOS, I could not use DriveImage to create a PQI disk image
directly across the network to the AMD computer. So to make space for my new
disk image, I decided to delete the file-by-file backup from drive F on this
PENTIUM machine. Then, since restoring a drive image from one hard disk to
another seemed both fastest and least troublesome (see point 204), I would just
leave the DriveImage file on drive F, where it would be ready to restore quickly
to drives C and D if needed. I rebooted to real DOS and ran DriveImage from
the floppy (see point 84), after running MOUSE.COM to make sure the mouse
was installed (see point 58). Unfortunately, I got Error # 1805 Error writing to
image file during this process. I quickly realized I had forgotten to actually
delete the DRIVE_C and DRIVE_D folders from F before trying to create the
image, as I had just said I was going to do. Since I was in DOS, I used DELTREE
/Y F:\DRIVE_C to do this. This took a very long time. I tried to boot into Safe
Mode, to use Windows Explorer to delete DRIVE_D, but the system froze. I
rebooted and went into Normal Mode, and there the deletion of F:\DRIVE_D
took just a few minutes. I rebooted into Safe Mode just to be sure I had no
problems there. Finally, back in real DOS, I re-ran DriveImage and had no more
problems creating the STEP_220.PQI image.

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221. End of Catch-Up: Reinstalling Norton AntiVirus 2000 and Windows

Updates. I reran the NAV installation, downloaded the latest AntiVirus updates,
and let it scan the system. Then I went online and downloaded the latest
Windows updates from the Microsoft site. While that was downloading, I
browsed to a number of other websites. I noticed no difficulty in using Internet
Explorer, and I concluded that the previous difficulties that had prompted me to
start over again in the process of installing this software (see point 200) were not
due to Norton AntiVirus 2000.
222. Last Catch-Up Item: Windows Updates. When the Windows updates
finished downloading, they installed themselves, and then Windows wanted to
reboot the system. I said OK, and right then is when I had my first problem.
Previously, shutdown had been happening automatically, but this time it froze at
the screen that said, Windows is shutting down. I cold-rebooted and went
back into Windows Explorer to test it.
223. Latest Updates. In Internet Explorer, I hit Ctrl-L and typed in
www.updates.com, intending to go to that website and download the latest
updates for other programs. (See point 15.) It worked, but as I was typing that
URL, I noticed that the system was very slow in filling in the Ctrl-L dialog box.
When I tried it again a moment later, however, the problem seemed to be gone. I
was on my guard, but so far, it seemed that I could finally move ahead and
install the last of my software. Again, oddly, Updates.com seemed to have
Microsoft updates that had not yet appeared on Microsofts own webpage. (See
point 49.) Then I realized that I had not instructed Updates.com to recheck my
system. Apparently it had been relying on an old impression of my software
situation, because when it checked again, it found a different list. These all
appeared to be minor updates, so I ignored them. During this, I experienced
another glitch: for a moment, apparently as Internet Explorer was trying to
access a website, it seemed to freeze the system so that the mouse did not
respond. But this, too, was only momentary, and it did not recur right away. I
had downloaded and installed the latest Dial-Up Networking from Updates.com
before I had realized I didnt need to, but it didnt seem to matter. Next, I went
back to the Office 97 area at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com. (See point 72.)
The only additional update that I seemed to need from that site was an Office
2000 ODBC Driver Vulnerability Security Update. I installed that. It seemed like
smart software: it detected that FrontPage 2000 was the only Office 2000 product
on my system, and apparently configured itself just for that product. I had to
insert the CD during the installation process, for some reason.
224. Miscellaneous Programs. I hoped that I could now finish installing my
remaining software. The items I installed on the PENTIUM machine were as
follows:

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(a) Printer Driver. From PRINTERS.TXT (see point 120(z)), I got the advice to to
get the latest drivers for my HP LaserJet at
www.hp.com/cposupport/eschome.html. At that website, HP offered a driver
released on May 14, 1999. I didn't know if Updates.com tracked HP printer
drivers -- that is, I didn't know if I already had a driver more recent than this,
and I couldn't find anything -- so I downloaded this driver. When I tried to
install it, however, it turned out to be related to AutoCAD somehow. Since I had
no AutoCAD program, it failed to install properly.
(b) WinMag Registry Ripper. This was a recent download from
www.winmag.com. I didnt have any immediate Registry editing plans, but it
had sounded like a useful program, so I installed it.
(c) GraphicCorp Photo Editor. This program, not to be confused with the
Microsoft Photo Editor (see point 120(h)), came on the CD with the Adaptec
software supplied by Yamaha with my CD-ROM burner. (See point 165(b).)
This gave me a surplusage of graphics programs that I wasnt sure I would ever
need, but it made sense because I was still searching for the one graphics
program that would do it all. This one turned out to be a winner (see point
224(i)), and later I made it the default editor for TIF files by changing View |
Folder Options | File Types for TIF files within Windows Explorer. It was
hobbled by poor help documentation, however, so I concluded that I would
probably still use Microsoft Photo Editor for my primary graphics editing for at
least the near future.
(d) Mouse Software. I had a Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD machine, but I
would install that later. (See point 255(c).) Right now, I wanted to install the
floppies that would enable the middle button on my Logitech mouse on the
PENTIUM machine. (I would have liked to use this mouse on the AMD, but the
dummies at Logitech didnt make the cord long enough!) The Logitech
Mouseware 8.2 software was DOS/Win3.1-compatible, so I had to create the long
Logitech Mouse directory name under D:\Program Files\Hardware in
PowerDesk Explorer before running the Logitech installer.
(e) Installing the Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx Scanner. This HP IIcx scanner was
an old SCSI scanner that came with its own interface card. I had been able to get
it working under Win98 in the past, but it took some work. I had disconnected it
from the PENTIUM machine, but decided that now I should try to get it working
there again. I started by trying to install this Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0 software
that I had gotten on sale. But at this point, I ran into a problem.

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(f) MSIPCSV Not Responding Problem. The message I had gotten previously,
when the computer had become unresponsive (see point 200), after hitting CtrlAlt-Del, had been Msipcsv [Not responding]. I got that message again while
installing the mouse software. (See point 224(d).) I closed that window, and the
computer seemed to return to its normal function. A moment or two later,
however, I noticed that the Taskbar was not rising up when I would move the
mouse down to the bottom of the screen. I hit Ctrl-Esc to bring it up, and after
that it worked. A short time later, however, the system began responding
extremely slowly. This time, it was PDExplo (PowerDesk Explorer) that the
system said was not responding. I cold-rebooted and continued installing
software, as described in point 224. On the first cold-reboot, the system would
not even start; it ran fine on the second one. I ran the Cleanup Suite (see point
153), skipping the disk surface tests. That took several hours, but it stopped the
slowdown. But then, while trying to install the scanner (see point 224(e)), I
noticed that the system clock on the taskbar was off by an hour. I clicked on it
and set the time right, but it wouldnt save, and when I went into Ctrl-Alt-Del to
shut it down, I got the same Msipcsv [Not responding] message again. This
time, and previously, I had noticed that another program marked as Not
responding was Clipboard Pile. (See point 141(h).) I decided to remove
Clipboard Pile from my list of programs that would load on startup. I hadnt
actually put it there, but I found that every time I used it, it put itself there. To
remove it, I used Start Manager. (See point 158(b).) I also shut it down in CtrlAlt-Del; it was a unique one for this purpose, in the sense that it did not actually
show up as a named program; it was the only one that listed itself as having a
blank name. (I didnt know whether that was a bug or just an attempt to be
cute.) This was not the last time that I would find that Clipboard Pile seemed to
cause problems. (See point ___.) After these steps, I was able to set the clock
properly, and Ctrl-Alt-Del showed no programs that were not responding.
(Note: not every program shown as Not responding in Ctrl-Alt-Del is having
genuine problems.) But then the incredible slowness returned when I began to
install the TextBridge scanning software. (See point 224(e).) It occurred before
the installer even finished setting up the InstallShield Wizard. I wondered if it
was a problem with the scanner, so I shut down, unplugged the scanner cable
from the SCSI adapter, and rebooted. Once again, it slowed way down when I
started to install the scanner software. I cold-rebooted and noticed that the
system did not even start to boot. Hardware problem? I tried again and it
booted. Other programs seemed to run OK. (See point 224(j).) I had another
opportunity to consider this MSIPCSV file again later. (See point 295.)
(g) Scanner: A Different Approach. I decided to try installing the scanner the
way I had done before I bought TextBridge. I went into Add New Hardware.
The wizard didnt find the scanner, which I had just plugged in before the most
recent boot, so I said that I wanted to select it from a list. I selected SCSI

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Controllers | Symbios Logic. Previously, this had shown me only two options,
one of which had said it was for HP ScanJets. This time, it showed me many
options, none of which looked familiar. But then I thought maybe I could bypass
that by selecting the Have Disk option. Using the Lycos website called Fast FTP
Search, I had previously searched for, and found, a file called HPISADRV.ZIP
out there on the Internet -- in response to a tip, I believe. I had downloaded and
uncompressed it, and now, after selecting Have Disk, I browsed to the unzipped
folder called 400A. There, the program recognized HP400A.INF as a driver. I
told it to install that. Now the installer filled in a box that indicated that it
recognized this as a Symbios Logic 53C400A (HP Version) SCSI Adapter. It
seemed that perhaps the key was to do this without having yet hooked up the
scanner to the computer. The installer sat there for quite a while and then
offered to go ahead and set up the SCSI adapter with a certain Input/Output
Range and IRQ. I said this would be OK. The last message from the installer
said, To finish installing your hardware, you must shut down your computer,
turn it off, and install the card for your hardware. This was worrisome; the card
had been sitting in the computer all the time. But I went with it, and while the
computer was off, I reconnected the scanner cable and made sure the scanner
was on. On reboot, the system did recognize the HP ScanJet IIcx scanner as an
item of new hardware. The SCSI Controller settings for this scanner adapter in
Device Manager (Input/Output Range of 0280-028F, and Interrupt Request 04)
matched the ones that the installer had mentioned. Done! Later, I would disable
this item in the AMD computers hardware profile. (See point 259(d).)
(h) Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0 OCR Software. Having resolved those scanner
issues, I tried again to install TextBridge. This time, I just let the thing sit there,
stuck somewhere in the throes of the installation process. Eventually, it seemed
to give up: it returned me to my ordinary desktop. But it still seemed to be
wrestling with something; the hard disk was still clicking once in a while. I came
back in 15 minutes and it was ready to start installing. But each button I clicked
took seconds, if not minutes, to react. This was probably why the software was
on sale. I basically spent the evening doing other things, checking in with the
computer every once in a while, and eventually, this way, we worked through all
the steps, and the software was installed. The system rebooted. I ran
TextBridge, and after fiddling for a minute, I got it started on a series of tests to
configure the scanner. It told me that I needed an updated TWAIN driver.
TWAIN, as I understood it, was the feature that allowed a scanner to put its
output directly into a document in Word format, and perhaps also in other
formats. But then, when I told it to save a scanned document in Word format, it
opened Word and pasted it right in there after all. I could quickly see that, for all
its slowness, the quality of this programs text recognition capability was better
than the old WordScan and OmniPage programs I had used previously.

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(i) Image Scanning Software. While TextBridge was good for OCR, and could
scan images, it did not allow me to choose how many dots per inch (DPI) I would
scan for, nor the type of color document or other settings that I was accustomed
to using. I tinkered with Adobe PhotoDeluxe (see point 165(b)), but I did not like
its interface or its lack of options. I had the same reaction, and even more so, to
the EasyPhoto that I had apparently gotten as a freebie along with PhotoDeluxe.
Next, I tried GraphicCorp Photo Editor. (See point 224(c).) It quickly became
obvious that this was a good program. Nevertheless, it ran very slowly on the
PENTIUM machine, with its Pentium 233 MMX chip. The Kodak Imaging
program that came with one of the Windows 98 or Internet Explorer downloads
was much faster; but again, all of these programs seemed to be using the same
Windows scanning interface, which offered limited options. In the end, I
decided that the best approach for me would probably be to scan in Microsoft
Photo Editor, another freebie that came with Windows 98 or Office 97; do my
more refined editing in GraphicCorp Photo Editor; and save the others until I
was certain I would not need them anymore. Finally, at first I decided not to
install Hewlett-Packards old DeskScan II. It just could not compare, in color
accuracy and ease of use, with these other programs. But as I thought about it, I
realized there were several reasons to install it: I had used it for years, was
accustomed to its features, and still had not seen some of those features (such as
the ability to specify the number of dots per inch in your image scans) in any of
these other image scanning packages; and it came with a photocopier program
that would scan and send the output to the printer, although the limited memory
on my old printer did put some limits on the usefulness of that. So I installed
DeskScan II as well. I had previously searched online and had found various
versions of it for download, and had decided on version 2.6 on the basis of some
comment indicating that that was the last version that supported my IIcx
scanner. (See ___.) This version of DeskScan came in a file called SJ137EN.EXE.
When I ran it, it needed to unzip into a DOS-named folder (i.e., it balked at
F:\Temp\Staging Area), so I put it into F:\Temp\DeskScan. It produced four
folders, DISK1 through DISK4. I clicked on SETUP.EXE in DISK1 -- which, as I
saw, contained the HP400A.INF file (see point 224(g)), so apparently this was one
of those cases where I would have saved myself a little work if I had started with
the software rather than the hardware. Setup wanted to install into
C:\DESKSCAN, so I let it. Then, after reboot, I used MagicMover (see point 154)
to move it to D:\Program Files\Images\HP DeskScan II. (I didnt realize it at
the time, but I later discovered that I had left out part of the installation process.
See point 231.) There were other image scanning and editing programs I could
have considered (see point 140(e)), but at this point I did not have any specific
needs in mind that called for me to do anything other than to keep them in mind.
(j) ASPICHK. I believed I had found the reason for the slowdowns and other
odd behavior that seemed to have begun at about the time I began fooling with

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the SCSI scanner. (See e.g., point 224(f).) According to the Datman page at
www.datman.com/tbul/dmtb_028.htm, Adaptec had a program called
ASPICHK, short for ASPI Checker, where ASPI stands for Advanced SCSI
Programming Interface. The most recent version of ASPICHK was released in
December 1999, which was too recent for me to have obtained it. The purpose of
ASPICHK was to see whether you had the most recent version of the ASPI
modules -- which, if not, might explain why you were having SCSI problems.
The most recent version of the ASPI modules was version 4.60. You could
download them from ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/pub/BBS/win95/aspi32_v4-6.exe.
The Datman page said that Adaptec had designed the update so that it would
not ordinarily install itself on systems that did not contain an Adaptec SCSI
adapter. Since my scanner adapter came from Hewlett-Packard or Symbios
Logic, this would be a problem for me. Then again, the Datman page suggested
a simple way to fool the update into installing anyway: instead of specifying
Symbios Logic as the manufacturer of my adapter card (see point 224)(g)), I
could specify Adaptec and choose any Adaptec model, and then the install
would proceed OK. At www.octave.com/techsup/faq.htm# aspilay, they
suggested that the installer would also work if you had Adaptec software
installed. I had intended to install Easy CD Creator (see point 4) on just the
AMD machine, since it was the only one with a CD-burning drive, but now I saw
that it might be better to install it on the PENTIUM and make it available to both
machines. (Note that, if I had had more than one SCSI device on either machine,
I would have had to worry about the order in which I had chained them
together. At www.octave.com/techsup/faq.htm# scanner, they said that the
scanner would have needed to be at a SCSI ID at least two notches higher than
the CD recorder.) Both the Datman page and the octave.com page advised that I
should download ASPICHK.EXE and ASPI32_V4-6.EXE from Adaptec. The
Datman page gave links, so I used those. I ran ASPICHK; it said, ASPI is not
properly installed. Then I installed Easy CD Creator. (See point 224(k).) I ran
ASPICHK again, before even bothering with the ASPI32_V4-6.EXE program, and
it said, ASPI is properly installed and is fully operational. So the Octave.com
site was correct in saying that it was good enough just to install the Adaptec
software, without tinkering with the hardware. I hoped this would be the end of
slowdown problems related to the scanners SCSI adapter.
(k) Easy CD Creator. Given the incentive to install Easy CD Creator now instead
of later (see point 224(j)), I went ahead and did that, putting its program files into
D:\Program Files\CDROM\Easy CD Creator. I also installed Adaptecs
DirectCD (for formatting CD-RW disks so that you can read and write to them
like ordinary hard disks, i.e., without having to go through a burning process)
and UDF Reader (which I knew served some kind of purpose, although I
couldnt remember exactly what until the installer reminded me: it was to allow
the system to read the contents of disks formatted with DirectCD). On reboot, I

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saw that DirectCD was now loading automatically at startup, so I went into Start
Manager (see point 163) and shut that off.
(l) CDRIdentifier. I couldnt remember where I got this little program, but its
purpose was to find information about CD media. I tried it on the PENTIUM
machine, but apparently it would only work on a CD burner (which the AMD
machine had but the PENTIUM did not). It looked interesting, though: it did
supply some information about the Lion CD-ROM drive in the PENTIUM, and
also about the SCSI adapter for the scanner; and it seemed that, in the AMD, it
would also provide information on who manufactured the blank CDs that I
might use, what type of dye they used (i.e., some dyes dont hold up as well as
others), and what recording speeds were appropriate for use with that media. So
I went ahead and installed this potentially useful thing and set up a shortcut to it.
(On reinstallation, I went without it. See point 231.)
(m) CDSpeed99. The documentation for this program, which appeared in an
HTML page, said that it tested the ability of CD-ROM drives in a number of
ways: how quickly they would transfer data, how quickly they could extract
audio tracks (see point 157(c) and point 157(d)), and other things that could
influence the responsiveness of a CD-ROM drive. The program also offered the
ability to verify the integrity of a CD-R or CD-RW disk, containing audio or data.
I installed the program and ran its Transfer Rate Test. It ran for about ten
minutes, apparently going through the entire CD disk that I had inserted. It
reported the CD, which was actually the Adaptec CD used in point 224(k), as
having a length of 65:13:06, which apparently showed how long it would have
taken to play the thing if all its data had been audio data; and it showed an
average speed of 5.29x, so I figured that it had taken about 12.3 minutes (65.25
divided by 5.29) for the test. Then I saw that it was actually reporting the time at
which each test started, which was pretty cool. It said that it aborted its random
seek test because the disks capacity was not at least 70 minutes, which
apparently reflected something funky about the way Adaptec had recorded that
CD. I ran the test again, this time using the CD that I had burned in point 132,
but it, too, was apparently not full enough. (In this case, the average speed was
about 4.6x, suggesting that home-grown CDs might not read quite as fast.) I
tried again with a CD that I knew was absolutely full of MP3 files. Oddly,
however, it reported this CD, too, as having less than 66 minutes of data. Maybe
it meant that the disk needed 70 minutes of empty space? I tried again with a
blank CD, but now it wouldnt give me any menu options at all. I reinserted the
STEP_132 CD and ran the CD Quality Check. The program said, This drive
seems incapable of returning error information. Continue anyway? That
seemed futile, so I took out the CD and decided to try again when I had these
programs all loaded on the AMD machine. (See point ___.)

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(n) eFax. I had previously signed up for this online fax service. (See point
141(p).) Subsequently, they had sent me an e-mail that gave me a free fax
number (which turned out to be located in Ogden, Utah) and a PIN to use to
access my faxes. I had also downloaded the eFax software. Now I ran that
software and got the message, eFax Messenger was successfully installed. As
soon as I clicked OK, the program came to life. I read its introductory blurb and
clicked on its Voice Greeting icon. A little sound player came up and played a
welcome message that mentioned voice messages. I closed the program and
searched for efax, to see where it had installed itself. The answer was, there
were now about a dozen additional files in C:\WINDOWS. I wasnt sure this
was entirely cool -- I really would have rather had the program files in their own
folder -- but I let it slide. For sending faxes, I had previously decided I would
use the service at www-usa.tpc.int/sendfax.html. (See point 141(p).) I went
online now and to that sendfax site -- its actual name was TPC Fax -- and sent a
fax to my eFax number. It came back with an error message that said, The
number you specified is not covered by our service. I figured I would probably
have that problem again, but since I very rarely felt the need to send faxes, I
thought maybe I would wait until the next need arose and see if TPC Fax failed
me again. If it did, I would probably have to bite the bullet and install Microsoft
Fax, with all its baggage (see point 141(e)); but until then, I would leave things as
they were. (Later, I decided on a different solution. See point 247.) For another
way to test eFax, I asked a friend to fax me. Sometime thereafter, I got an e-mail
from eFax with an .EFX file attached. I clicked on it and eFax opened it up. It
was a handwritten note, upside down. The program let me save it as a TIF file,
which I could edit in my graphics editor. (See point 224(c).)
(o) Online Storage. Numerous websites offered to allow me to store some
quantity of material for free. In designing my websites previously, I had seen
that photos and other materials could chew up large amounts of webpage space
quickly. Most web hosts (e.g., Geocities) put limits on how much they would
allow you to store in your personal webpage. I felt that I would almost certainly
want to use one of these online storage sites to hold photos and other bulky
materials. But which one? My browsing suggested that, among those
specifically oriented toward photos, Zing was the most popular, and both it and
PhotoPoint offered unlimited online storage. Driveway.com was a generalpurpose storage space with a limit of 100 MB; i-Drive looked more tempting with
its unlimited storage and the ability to let you upload an entire folder full of
photos or MP3s at once, and its Filo feature would allow me to store a snapshot
of a webpage. Someone said that iBackup (100 MB) and StoragePoint (20 MB)
were the most accessible. The home page of iBackup, at least, told me that I
could use an FTP program (see point 156(f)) to upload numerous files at once.
For that reason, I decided to start with iBackup. Unlike i-Drive, there seemed to
be no need to download any software, although admittedly I wanted to keep the

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i-Drive option in mind, because the ability to store snapshots of web pages
seemed like it might have some uses later. (This item required some follow-up
later. See point ___.)
(p) SweepGen. The purpose of this program was to generate pure, continuous
tones or sound waves. I had briefly used some such tones a few months earlier,
when I was doing sound comparisons of the quality of compressions produced
by MP3 and other audio compression codecs, and I thought perhaps some such
need might arise again. Then again, Cool Edit (see point 157(a)) seemed to have
a similar capability, so I decided not to install this program, but just to keep this
note in case I ever needed to find it again.
Outlook and Windows Problems; Reinstall
225. Outlook 98 Problems Again: Unknown Error. Within the past few hours,
while trying to get into the Address Book in Outlook 98, I had again gotten the
message that "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the
problem persists, restart Outlook." (See point 166(e).) This time, however, it
seemed to need a different solution, since there was only one PST file and it was
in the same place as it had been. I also noticed that the setup program for my
next item of software was running very slowly. I wondered if I was having more
problems with the SCSI interface. (See point 224(j).) At this point, when I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del, it said that RunDLL was not responding. The same happened again
for other programs when I used Ctrl-Alt-Del again. I shut everything down and
rebooted. Evidently one of the programs that I had installed recently had
needed to reboot, and either it had not said so or I had ignored it, because when I
rebooted, the system indicated that it was going through a setup process, as it
ordinarily would do after I installed new software that involved a change to the
Registry. Rebooting did not fix the Outlook problem. I tried the Inbox Repair
Tool provided by Microsoft, pointing it toward the OUTLOOK.PST file. (See
point 166(e).) It ran for quite a while. When it was done, it said, Only minor
inconsistencies were found in this file. Repairing the file is optional. I chose to
repair it anyway. I tried getting into the Outlook 98 Address Book again, and
got the same unknown error message. I went online for advice, searching in
Deja for (ol98 or ol 98 or outlook 98) and address book and unknown
error. I got the following ideas, in order of decreasing relevance: maybe I
should see what would happen if I created a new OUTLOOK.PST; maybe it was
the scanner; or maybe it was Norton AntiVirus, which I had set up to scan emails. While mulling this over, Windows Critical Update notified me that there
were more updates I should be downloading, so I did. After doing that and
rebooting, the Outlook Address Book problem was still there, so I applied the
first of my three options: I shut down Outlook, moved the entire contents of
E:\Messages (see point 112(c)) to another folder, and started Outlook again. It

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gave me a message, The file E:\Messages\Outlook.pst could not be found. I

said OK and let it create a new one. Then I got a confusing message that said,
The location messages are delivered to has changed for this user profile. I
didnt see why it should have changed; I was still having messages sent to
E:\Messages\Outlook.pst, which happened to be a new file. I clicked OK and
tried to go into the Address Book. Again, I got the unknown error message. I
returned the old OUTLOOK.PST to E:\Messages and decided to try the second
alternative: see if I still had the problem without the scanner. The simplest route
I could think of was just to remove the scanner interface card from the computer.
Before doing that, I thought of trying Outlook in Safe Mode. I still got the error
message there. I wasnt sure what this proved, however, so I went ahead and
shut down and took out the scanner card. I rebooted into Safe Mode (so as to
avoid a bunch of potentially unnecessary reconfiguring of my system to take
account of the absence, and then perhaps the renewed presence, of the scanner
card) and tried using the Address Book again. As expected, it made no
difference; the error was still there. I decided that the problem had surfaced well
after my installation of Norton AntiVirus and that it probably was not the cause.
Reviewing my notes, I decided that reinstalling Outlook 98 was probably not
going to solve anything (see point 166(b)), but I wondered if perhaps I had
caused the problem, which had also appeared previously, by moving
WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common Files\System. (See point 166(e).)
I put a copy back there from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and tried Outlook 98
again. The problem was still there. I went back online, this time looking in
websites rather than Deja.com. I found an amusing complaint from a ZDNet
page entitled Office 98 Updating Woes, where they said that it was a Microsoft
problem and that apparently the problem will be repaired in the next few
days. The article was dated 4/29/98. The article did give me the idea,
however, that when I saw Add New Components under Microsoft Outlook 98
in Add/Remove Programs, that might indicate that there were new additions to
the list of components -- in other words, that there might be more to add even if I
had already added everything available previously. I tried this and found
myself looking at a Microsoft Office Update page entitled Microsoft Office 98
Component Install. You know, I used to use these pages all the time, but I had
forgotten they existed. This one offered to determine what Outlook 98
components I had installed. I accepted the offer. It showed me a long list. I
clicked the red arrows at the right ends of each item to get descriptions, and I
decided to install a couple of items. The options I selected were Net Folders, MS
Info, and Office Sounds. None of them seemed to be a patch or fix that
might solve the problem, however, and after they were downloaded and
installed, I found that the Address Book problem persisted. Next, I found a page
pertaining to Outlook 97. It suggested creating a new Personal Folders file, but I
found that Control Panel | Mail on my system did not contain the Services tab
they referred to. Another suggestion on that page was to reboot into real DOS

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and rename nine different files and then go back into Add/Remove Programs
and choose Reinstall. If that failed, they said, I would have to reinstall Windows.
I decided to apply their advice in somewhat different order. First, I went to
Add/Remove Programs and chose Remove Outlook 98. This time, I did a more
thorough job of removing. I removed the D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Outlook 98 folder to another location (just in case I wanted some of its
configuration files later). I ran the Cleanup Suite (see point 153) and skipped
directly to the Link Check Wizard, where I removed the half-dozen Outlookrelated links that came up. Continuing in the Cleanup Suite, I ran the Clean
Registry option in EasyCleaner and found a large number of invalid references to
remove. Before reinstalling Outlook 98, I reinserted the scanner card and made
sure the scanner worked. It didnt seem to have been responsible for the Outlook
problems, but if it had, I thought that maybe this method of installing things in a
different order from the order that I had used last time could help the programs
to become comfortable with one another. Then I went to the Outlook 98 Setup
folder on D: and clicked OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE. I told it to set up a new
Outlook 98 folder in the same location mentioned above, and this time I got the
message, SETUP has determined that the PATH variable is full and cannot
accept any additional statements. Since you have chosen to install Outlook 98 in
a directory different from that in which Microsoft Office is installed ... Outlook 98
will be unable to run. As an alternative, it said, I could make changes to the
PATH variable manually. That didnt seem worth the hassle, so I backed up and
went with the default location of D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. I ran the
program -- this time using the desktop icon, which I did not bother to delete -and was slightly unhappy to see that all of my previous toolbar arrangements
were still there. Evidently I had not done as thorough an uninstallation as I had
thought! Anyway, I tried to open the mailbox icon and, once again, got the
unknown error message. I tried to dial out and got a message that my modem
was not functioning. Presumably the scanner card games had screwed things
up. I went into Device Manager and saw that, of all things, it was not
recognizing COM1. I removed it from this specific PENTIUM configuration and
rebooted. When I was shutting down, I got a Windows fatal exception error, as I
had gotten several times recently. It began to look like my Windows installation
was screwed. One message in Deja.com said something about deleting
MAPI32.DLL and then reinstalling Windows Messaging, and this made me
wonder whether the fault was due to todays downloads from Windows Update.
I found a Microsoft Knowledgebase page that described command-line options
for OUTLOOK.EXE, and I ran OUTLOOK /UNREGSERVER and then
OUTLOOK /REGSERVER to delete and rebuild all Outlook-specific Registry
entries. This happened so quickly that I doubted it had actually worked.
Another suggestion was to run SCANPST.EXE, which I found in D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office, but this turned out to be just the executable file
that ran the Inbox Repair Tool. Having seen still more advice indicating that I

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might have to reinstall Windows, I decided that was probably the direction I
needed to go. (For the next point regarding modem configuration, see point 229.)
226. Preparations for Reinstallation. Before trashing this system and starting
over with my most recent DriveImage backup, called STEP_220.PQI (see point
220), I decided to try it out and make sure it worked. Thus, I copied it over the
network from the PENTIUM machine to drive F on the AMD machine, rebooted
that machine from the floppy, and installed STEP_220.PQI onto drives C and D
there. It worked, so I burned it onto a CD. It was right at the limit -- 655 MB -- so
I didnt include DOS_UTIL (see point ___). I was still able to make it bootable,
though. Meanwhile, I used the copy of STEP_220.PQI remaining on the
PENTIUM machine to restore working versions of drives C and D there.
227. Contemplating Catch-Up Again, Again. I now had to re-do the things that I
had recently done, as described in point 221 through point 225. I started by
verifying that the Address Book in Outlook 98 finally did work correctly. And
whoa, to my surprise, it did not. I got the same unknown error message. (See
point 225.) I tried running the newly reinstalled version of Outlook 98 on the
AMD machine, and I got the same message there. It appeared that the problem
had existed before point 220. So now I faced a tough choice: either I was going
to recreate all of my steps since the previous CD backup, which was back at point
204 or thereabouts (and would hope that, back then at least, there was no such
Outlook problem); or else I was going to forge ahead, ignoring the Outlook 98
problem and just trying to get a working system in place, and hoping that (a) the
Outlook problem was not a harbinger of some larger system problem that would
eventually make it impossible for me to continue and (b) perhaps someone
would even come up with a solution eventually, although apparently they had
failed to do so for two years now. (Nevertheless, I did post the question online.
See point ___.) As I reviewed all of the work that I had done since point 204, and
realized that I was not certain I had even burned a CD at that time, not to
mention the possibility that the Address Book problem had existed even then, I
decided that it was not feasible to retreat that far. It would be better, I believed,
to get rid of Outlook 98 altogether and use some other programs for my
scheduling and e-mail. Thus, it now seemed foolish not to have taken the extra
time to make a DriveImage backup of the state of the art as of point 226, so as to
avoid the now seemingly unnecessary redo of everything at least since point 221.
Then again, I had just recently experienced some other Windows irregularities
(see point 225), so maybe it was just as well that I had decided to take a step back
after all. As I tinkered with Outlook 98 some more, I found that I could use most
of its functions; it was just the Address Book icon on the toolbar, and the CtrlShift-B method of bringing up the Address Book, that would give me the
unknown error message. This was not perfect, but I could live with it, as long
as it was not a harbinger of worse times ahead.

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228. GoBack. I had lately heard of this program. This experience of repeatedly
rolling the system back and nudging it forward, with redundant software
installations and removals, had gotten tedious. In other words, I was now
motivated to research the question of whether I should spend $70 on a program
to do what my backup system was originally supposed to do. (See point 203.)
My research revealed some good news. First, I read four or five reviews, and
everyone raved about this program. You had to disable it before running
PartitionMagic or other partitioning software, but that didnt seem like a major
problem (as long as I remembered to do it). Second, the price seemed to have
dropped quite a bit. I found that I was able to get it for less than $50, including
shipping. Third, it seemed that this might become a useful part of my backup
scheme. I did not fully understand that aspect of the program -- all I understood
for sure was that GoBack would let you roll things back to where they were
minutes, hours, days, or weeks ago (depending on how much stuff youve
deleted and how much disk space youve allocated for GoBack) -- but the backup
possibilities did seem appealing, as compared to the hassle of working with
individual files in an XCOPY approach. (See point 202.) So I ordered the
program; and when it arrived, I built it into my overall setup. (See point ___.)
Later, I had an opportunity to use it in detail. (See point 294.)
229. Catch-up Again, Again: Windows and Norton AntiVirus Update. For at
least the third time, I downloaded the latest Windows updates again, rereinstalled Norton AntiVirus 2000, and downloaded the latest NAV updates.
(See point 221.) Since I would be installing more software, I decided not to
bother with Updates.com until later. (See point ___.) As before, I got a problem
after the Windows downloads. (See point 222.) This time, the problem was a
BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) announcing a Fatal Exception. In subsequent
reboots, however, that problem did not recur, and I also did not have the weird
slowdown problem that I had noticed the last time. (See point 223.) What I did
have, however, was an error message saying, Unable to establish a connection,
when I tried to let NAVs LiveUpdate download the latest updates. (See point
217.) I went into Device Manager and saw that there was no entry for a modem.
I rebooted and got the same message. I cold-rebooted and now the system found
the modem OK. In other words, it was not a case of uninstalled hardware; it
seemed more likely that the system was sometimes unable to assign an IRQ for
the modem, or something like that. I decided to deal with it a bit later. (See
point 232.) Right now, I just downloaded the NAV update.
230. Catch-up Again, Again: Office 97 Updates. I had saved the Office 2000
ODBC Driver Vulnerability Security Update, so I didnt have to re-download
that to install it again. (See point 223.) Next, I tried to find Component Install
websites for all of my Office 97 programs, not just Outlook 98. I did this by

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applying the same approach as I had used for Outlook 98. (See point 225.) That
is, I went into Add/Remove Programs, clicked on Microsoft Office 97, and tried
to see if it would add more stuff. Unfortunately, it just said that I had already
installed everything. (See point 69.) Evidently the Component Install approach
required Active Setup, and it seemed that only Outlook 98 offered that. So I did
the Active Setup thing from Add/Remove Programs just for Outlook 98, as
before. I searched Microsofts website for more information on the relationship
between Component Install and Office 97, but found nothing.
231. Catch-up Again, Again: Other Programs. Some of the programs I had tried
to install recently had turned out to be duds. For this reason, I didnt have to
worry about the printer driver (see point 224(a)) and SweepGen (see point
224(p)). Also, as I thought again about the CDRIdentifier (see point 224(l)), I
wasnt really sure I wanted to bother with it -- which turned out to be a good
thing, because I couldnt find my copy of the download and I also couldnt find it
online. I decided that it probably didnt contain many secrets for me -- I mean, I
already knew I was buying the cheapest CDs I could find -- so I figured Id let it
slide and see if it turned up later. Otherwise, I had kept the files I had
downloaded for the WinMag Registry Ripper (see point 224(b)), CDSpeed99 (see
point 224(m)), and eFax (see point 224(n), so it didnt take long to reinstall them.
From the Adaptec CD, I installed Easy CD Creator, DirectCD, and UDF Reader
(see point 224(k)), as well as GraphicCorp Photo Editor (see point 224(c)). (Later,
I went into Start Manager (see point 158(b)) and told it to keep DirectCD from
starting automatically at bootup.) The Adaptec software took care of the
ASPICHK problem, as I verified by running ASPICHK. (See point 224(j).) From
the Logitech floppies, I installed and configured the mouse software. (See point
224(d).) I installed Xerox TextBridge, which suffered from the same extreme
slowness problems as last time. (See point 224(h).) When I finished that
installation and accepted its offer to reboot the system, I got another Fatal
Exception error. (See point 229.) Finally, I reinstalled DeskScan II version 2.6
and moved it to D:\Program Files as before (see point 224(i)) and configured the
HP IIcx scanner as new hardware. (See point 224(g).) This time, before moving
it to D:\Program Files with MagicMover, I noticed that the program had not
actually added the color copying feature I had been looking for. Rooting around
among the files that I had downloaded nearly a year earlier, when I had been
looking for ScanDesk online, I came across SJ130EN.EXE, the Color Copy Utility.
Once again, I got DISK1 through DISK3 in F:\Temp\HP; I ran SETUP.EXE in
DISK1; and it installed to C:\DESKSCAN. I tested it, and it worked. The last
item to reinstall in my catch-up was iBackup. (See point 224(o).) For some
reason, I had never gotten their e-mail activating my account, and I had to e-mail
them and pursue it later. (See point ___.)
Significant New Problems

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232. Interrupt Requests. I continued to get the unable to establish a

connection message when attempting to go online, such that I had to coldreboot in order to use the modem. (See point 229.) Looking into Device
Manager at these times, I saw an exception next to Communications Port
(COM1). Its Properties indicated that it was causing a resource conflict; it
suggested that I use the Hardware Troubleshooter to resolve it. I had been here
before. (See point 217.) The troubleshooter told me to look at the items
Resources tab, which told me that the conflict was at IRQ 4 -- which, as this
Resources screen said, was where I had just installed the scanner. (See point
224(g).) The troubleshooter said that, since this was not a System Reserved kind
of resource conflict, I could double-click on the conflicting item. I did that and
got the message, No Modifications Allowed. I unchecked the Use automatic
settings box, double-clicked again, and got a box allowing me to specify another
IRQ. As I scrolled through the options there, it said that there were no conflicts
with IRQs 3 or 10. I chose 3 and started to exit without rechecking the Use
automatic settings box. Device Manager told me that this would make the
system less flexible in the future, and I knew that, so I rechecked the automatic
settings box and exited. The exception was still next to COM1. Instead of
changing it, I decided to change the SCSI Controller item in Device Manager that
was causing this problem. I went into its Resouces and was surprised to see that
its Use automatic settings box was not checked. I checked it and exited,
thinking that maybe the problem was that the manual setting assigned by the
SCSI installer was messing with the auto setting used by COM1. During reboot,
I stopped to review the settings in BIOS Setup. Under the Power Management
Setup heading, it said that IRQ 4 was assigned to COM1 and IRQ 3 was for
COM2. Under the PNP/PCI Configuration heading, it said that IRQ 10 was
assigned to ACPI (Advanced Power and Control Interface, whatever that
means). A comment online suggested leaving that one alone. I went back into
Device Manager and saw no exceptions. I went to the top of the list, clicked on
Computer, and selected Properties. (Another useful place to see IRQs: Start |
Run | MSINFO32 | Hardware Resources.) It showed me that COM1 and COM2
were sharing IRQ 3 -- which, as I understood, was feasible for PCI devices, which
apparently included COM ports -- so apparently the PNP/PCI Configuration in
the BIOS Setup was a bit out of touch with the realities, and any power settings I
might have in place in the BIOS for IRQ 4 would instead affect the SCSI scanner
adapter which, as I could see, was the thing that was really using that IRQ.
Going on down the list, I saw more sharing going on at a number of other IRQs.
At this point, I had two IRQ problems: there was no entry for Modem in Device
Manager, and Add New Hardware continued to remind me that the S3 Legacy
Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device was still not installed. (See point
217.) One tip advised that I might be able to free up an IRQ by disabling full
duplex on my sound card, which was fine since I did not expect to need record

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and playback at the same time, but the manual for the Turtle Beach Daytona
sound card provided no information on how I might do that. (Later, I wound up
doing more modem configuration. See point 234.)
233. Totally Blank Screen. I was curious as to how things would look after I
cold-rebooted. The cold reboot took two tries; the first time, I got nothing on the
screen, not even a blinking cursor. Earlier, I had thought this was a hardware
problem. (See point 224(f).) By now, however, I had noticed that I had just
installed the Logitech mouse software (see point 224(d)) shortly before each of
these occurrences, and that that software somehow seemed to run itself even
before the BIOS Setup, at least during a warm reboot. So I guessed that I might
have this problem after each first cold reboot. That is, if I cold-rebooted and then
immediately cold-rebooted again, I would have the problem the first time, but
not the second.
234. Continuing the IRQ Saga. After the cold reboot, I went back into Device
Manager. This time, everything was there. The COM ports were on IRQ 3, the
SCSI adapter was on IRQ 4, and the modem was on IRQ 5. Hoping for the best, I
went into Add New Hardware and tried to add the S3 Legacy Relocator for
SonicVibes PCI Audio Device. (See point 232.) The installer told me that the
device was already installed but had been removed from this hardware profile. I
told it to add it back. Unfortunately, an exception appeared next to it in Device
Manager; Properties told me there were no free IRQs; and the troubleshooter
brought me back to the same list of IRQs (5, 7, 10, or 11) and gave me the same
list of options of other things I could disable in order to make room. I still felt
that I could do without the PCI to USB Universal Host Controller (see point 218),
so I told the troubleshooter to disable that, in hopes that, this time, it would free
up another IRQ. The system rebooted, but did not revert to the no-modem
configuration it had given me after the last warm reboot. (See point 232.) A note
online led me to think that the computer retained settings in memory during
warm reboots, which would explain why a cold reboot could create a new start
and also why the modem would still be working now if it was working before
the warm reboot. Other comments online gave me other ideas for how I might
free up an IRQ. One suggestion, which I didnt intend to pursue right now, was
to replace ISA cards with PCI cards, since the latter can share IRQs and the
former cant. They suggested starting with the video card, but my Matrox
Mystique was a PCI already; another possibility would have been to start with
the 33.6 kbps modem, or (if possible) the SCSI card. The modem became an
especially ripe candidate when I checked the Properties for the S3 Legacy
Relocator and found that it was set to use IRQ 5, which the modem was using. A
seemingly more useful suggestion was to disable COM2, since I wasnt using it.
Then I enabled the PCI to USB Universal Host Controller and the S3 Legacy
Relocator. After reboot, Device Manager still showed an exception next to the S3

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Legacy Relocator, so I re-enabled COM2 and rebooted again. This brought

COM2 back to normal. I concluded that disabling COM2 made sense only if it
was occupying an IRQ all by itself. To get rid of the exception, I disabled the S3
Legacy Relocator, and I was back to my starting point. I went back online and
found more suggestions. One was to go into Safe Mode and delete all modems
and COM ports; I dont know if that was in response to a problem like mine. I
was getting close to giving up, so I went into Deja.com and searched for S3
Legacy Relocator, just to see what I was going to be losing if I kept it disabled. I
didnt find anything new and helpful, so I posted a message and waited. I dont
remember getting anything useful from that, but later I did more modem
tweaking. (See point 247.)
235. Chessvision. When Iwas finally ready to get Chessvision running (see point
209), I read the instructions that they had sent me on how to get the computer to
play against me. To do this, they told me to choose Session | Open, select the tab
that corresponds to your screen resolution, and choose Play against Engine |
Close. This had me looking at a bunch of open chessboards and other windows.
The Assistant was actually useful -- it changed its content as I moved the mouse
around, without even clicking on anything. Next, they said, you choose Options
| Global Settings | Chessboard | Movement | Drag Pieces | OK. This will
allow you to drag the pieces you want to move. One of the windows youre
looking at is the Engine Window. If you click on the lightning bolt on that
window, the engine will make its moves automatically after you move. The
screen in which youre playing is not the one with nothing but question marks in
the name, like B2 ?-? -- its the other one, in my case B1 Veerman, P. I minimized
the other windows and dragged the bottom right corner of this one so it would
be bigger. Chessvisions e-mail also informed me that I could install another
engine by finding the Chessvision Engine Support webpage (apparently
available through the Help item on the menu), going to the homepage for the
preferred engine, download the ZIP file, extract its contents into a subfolder
under the Chessvision\Free\Engines folder, choose Options | Global Settings |
Engine | New, select the EXE file in your new subfolder as the preferred engine,
and select the INI file as the Settings File. I found that the program would take a
few moments sometimes to decide what it wants to do, but it still beat me.
236. GoBack Preview. The program arrived! (See point 228.) They
recommended making a backup before proceeding, and I decided that was good
advice, so I booted real DOS from the floppy, ran DriveImage, and made a disk
image file (STEP_236.PQI on 3/10/2000) without any of the preparations I used
to make for DriveImage backups. (See point 152.) Or at least I tried to; it got
interrupted by Error # 1805, Error writing to image file. Last time I got this, it
was because I ran out of disk space. (See point 220.) I looked at drive F, where I
was trying to make the copy. Yep, sure enough, I had forgotten to delete

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STEP_220.PQI. I did so now, having burned it to CD in the meantime (see point

226), and I also deleted the rump STEP_236.PQI that DriveImage had created
before dying. I tried again in DriveImage, and it worked. I went into Windows
and copied STEP_220.PQI over to the AMD machine. Now I looked at the
GoBack manual. It sounded like I had understood: it could basically restore a
file or a whole system that you had trashed or deleted. The main GoBack screen
showed a clock, a calendar, and a list of events. You would specify a date and
time, and then the list of events would show you the list of events around that
time, centered on the nearest System Safe Point to which you could revert your
system. The list would also show file events (e.g., deleting a file) and shell
execute events (e.g., running a program), so you would be able to see what
exactly was happening around the time of that System Safe Point. You could
add a note to the list too (e.g., you would go into GoBack and type, Im about to
install Windows Updates). And you could filter the list to show you just the
kinds of events you were interested in. The program also had an enhanced sort
of Recycle Bin, including the ability to right-click on a document in Windows
Explorer and choose the Show Revisions option. The main thing to watch for,
for me, was that GoBack started from scratch each time you disabled it, and you
had to disable it anytime you used partitioning software like PartitionMagic or
FDISK. So that would probably be good times to make sure I had a DriveImage
backup. They said that GoBack would tend to make a System Safe Point
whenever your hard disk was idle for at least ten seconds. GoBack seemed to
relate to regular backup like this: GoBack would be useless if your hard disk
became physically useless, and it would be useless for restoring any data other
than what you had worked on in the past few days to a week, depending on how
much space you allocated for it and what kinds of stuff you were doing with
your files. So I would probably have made CD backups using DriveImage
anyway; I just might not have had to manually recreate everything that I had
done since the most recent backup, each time things didnt work out right. As
advised, I read the ReadMe.txt file on the GoBack CD. It told me that I also had
to disable GoBack before moving a hard drive, and that I had to uninstall and
reinstall GoBack if I wanted it to cover a newly added hard disk. Disabling and
re-enabling was just a matter of clicking a single button inside the program. This
version, they said, was not Windows 2000 compatible. They said it worked OK
with file compressors like PKZIP but not with disk compression utilities like
DriveSpace. It worked on an entire hard disk -- that is, if I needed it to restore
my hard disk, it would restore partitions too. A potential problem: they said
that boot floppies had to contain GoBack drivers. This boded ill for my existing
stack of floppies and bootable CDs. I clicked on the CDs Autorun program and
started the five-minute movie that explained how the program worked. The
program seemed to freeze. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill the movie and tried again.
Apparently what had happened was that I had started two different versions of
it, by starting the Watch directly from CD option and then changing my mind

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and choosing the Watch from hard disk option. I tried again with just the hard
disk option; it froze again. I killed the movie and, with a glimmer of concern,
prepared to proceed with installation.
237. Disk Partition Resizing. Before going ahead with GoBack, I realized that
this might be the last time when I would find it convenient, and advisable, to
resize my partitions with PartitionMagic. I had installed most of my programs,
and I could now see that some of the original partitions were larger or smaller
than they needed to be. (I would need to remember to do this before installing
GoBack on the AMD computer too. See point ___.) PartitionMagic informed me
that drive C (WIN98) was using 544 MB out of 901 MB, so I reduced its size to
700 MB; D (PROGRAMS) was using 721 MB out of 1,500 MB, but would need
more space to grow, so I shrank it to 1,000 MB; and I put the balance into E
(DATA), which increased from 465 MB to 1,165 MB. (I still had 153 MB in the
hidden BADSPACE partition at the end of the first hard disk. See point 114.) On
the second hard disk, I decided to shrink H from 1,000 MB to 500 MB, and also to
reduce G (BURNING) to the minimum size of 260 MB (since I didnt actually
have a CD burner on the PENTIUM machine). So G was basically just a
placeholder, a dud. This allowed F to grow from approximately 1,300 MB to
approximately 2,300 MB. Of course, the sizes would be different on the AMD
machine. (See point ___.) After setting up all these sizes in the Windows version
of PartitionMagic, I found that all my funky stuff happening at bootup -- the
Norton AntiVirus scan (see point ___), the choice of hardware configuration (see
point ___), and the customized AUTOEXEC.BAT (see point ___) -- and no doubt
especially the last -- had foiled PartitionMagic from rebooting into DOS and
making its changes there, so I had to try again by running PartitionMagic from
the floppy. This was not really a problem, but I hoped to streamline the bootup
so that the Windows version of PartitionMagic would work too. (See point ___.)
238. GoBacks First, Abortive Installation. With those preparations out of the
way, I resumed the GoBack installation. It showed me the layout of my first
hard disk and allowed me to choose whether I wanted to put the GoBack data in
drive C, D, or E. It suggested using 10% of the space in those three visible
partitions (i.e., using 286 MB), and it suggested carving that out of the 964 MB of
free space on drive E. I thought I should probably allow more than that,
considering how many changes I was making, so I gave it 400 MB. It was
tempting to allow more, but the manual said that I would have to uninstall and
reinstall the program in order to change this number, so I didnt want to be too
grabby. Next, it was the same drill on my second hard drive. Here, I had more
free space, and I would be working with larger files (e.g., sometimes audio
recordings of 500 MB and more). Then again, GoBacks manual said that it
would just step out of the way if the files in question were too large for GoBack
to handle, and I decided that that was probably better than permanently tying up

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a huge chunk of useful disk space. I got an idea: I would put the GoBack space
on drive G, which would otherwise just be wasted disk space that I did not
intend to use on this machine. (See point 237.) Thus, it seemed that perhaps I
should have made it somewhat larger than the absolute minimum. Oh, well.
This would give me a 259 MB space on my second hard drive. Correction: 249
MB: GoBack said I had to leave at least 10 MB free. Before confirming this, I
backed up and changed the setting on the first hard drive to 300 MB, because I
realized that even with all these changes I had been making, it had taken me a
very long time to accumulate enough files and programs to fill a single CD. (See
e.g., point 132.) I would not be using this same layout on the AMD machine, so I
would have to uninstall and reinstall GoBack when the time came to install my
final system there. (See point ___.)
239. Preparing a Bad Drive for GoBack. At this point, GoBack rebooted and
said, You have one or more partitions on disk 1 that GoBack doesnt recognize.
These partitions are preventing GoBack from being able to install on this disk.
That referred, of course, to the hidden BADSPACE partition that I had placed
after drive E to encapsulate an unstable area where I had experienced some bad
sectors and had then come back later to find that there were more bad sectors.
(See point 114.) I clicked OK and got the message, Installation of GoBack has
been aborted. The system rebooted, gave me the option to remove the parts
that had been installed, and rebooted again. I checked Add/Remove Programs
and verified that there was no GoBack entry there; I checked D:\Program Files
and saw that the uninstaller had removed the folder where GoBack had started
to install itself. Now, unless I wanted to do without GoBack, it seemed that I had
to combine the BADSPACE partition into drive E. And would I then find that
GoBack occupied the part where the bad clusters were -- and, if so, would
GoBack allow ScanDisk or Norton Disk Doctor to do extensive surgery there?
And would such surgery safely isolate the bad sectors, or would there be more of
them? I did not know the answers to these questions, but it seemed that I had to
experiment. I booted into real DOS; I used PartitionMagic to make the hidden
partition visible (temporarily, it would be drive F) and to format it. The bad hard
disk saga would continue later. (See point 242(a).)
240. Norton Utilities as Standalones. In PartitionMagic, formatting went very
slowly, as the program scrutinized the bad sectors. I recalled, too late, that it
would have been faster in Norton Disk Doctor, and I would also have liked to
see whether Norton was now finding additional bad sectors, as compared to its
previous work in that partition. (See point 114.) PartitionMagic took perhaps an
hour to work through that little 153 MB partition. When it was done, I ran three
thorough examinations of that partition using Norton Disk Doctor. The first and
third examinations marked additional bad sectors, so I suspected there would be
more in the future, and that I would probably discover them just after they

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ruined some important file for me. Then I remembered that there used to be a
way, in Norton Utilities, to mark a whole section of a disk. On the AMD
machine, at this point, I was running the version of this system captured in
STEP_220.PQI (see point 220), with a couple of other drivers as needed to make
the AMD run. I mention that because I now decided to try experimenting on the
AMD with a Norton Utilities installation. I had diligently avoided installing
Norton Utilities all this time because of various problems associated with it. (See
point 123.) At a certain point, however, I had found that I really needed Norton
Disk Doctor. (See point 176.) Then, just to be thorough, I had plundered my old
installation of Norton Utilities for anything else that I might have been able to
use, but in that search I had not found anything especially useful. (See point
197.) Now I returned to the original Norton Utilities CD to see if there was
anything else I could use. When I ran CDSTART.EXE on that CD, it gave me a
Run Utilities from CD option. Unfortunately, this option allowed only Disk
Doctor, WinDoctor, UnErase, and WipeInfo. As I recalled, however, there was
also supposed to be a program called Disk Edit. Next, I tried the Install option. I
did a minimal, temporary installation on the AMD machine, hoping that this
would give me a version that I could treat as a standalone, i.e., as something that
would not immediately stick its claws into every aspect of my system. I tried
using InCtrl4 (see point 141(d)) to see whether the installation made any Registry
changes, but InCtrl4 gave me an Invalid file error for some reason. Perhaps
Nortons installation was programmed to take control in such a way as to defeat
anything that might interfere with it, and maybe it was seeing InCtrl4 that way.
Approaching the problem from a different angle, I rebooted into real DOS after
finishing the installation and tried running the EXE files in the newly installed
Norton Utilities folder. I found five -- NDIAGS, DISKEDIT, NDD, UNERASE,
and UNFORMAT -- that would run as DOS standalone files. I floppied these
over to the PENTIUM machine. There, I typed DISKEDIT /? for instructions on
my DISKEDIT options. This told me that the command I wanted was DISKEDIT
F: /W. This gave me a screen displaying a lot of information that I didnt really
understand. I turned to the Help file that Norton had installed on the AMD
machine. This told me that DiskEdit was a DOS utility included with Norton
Utilities, but it didnt tell me anything informative about how to use the thing.
Turning back to the PENTIUM machine, I tried the Help option but got the
message that Help was not available. I tried running DiskEdit in a DOS box on
the AMD machine, and Help was available there, so I gathered that I should
have brought over a Help file. I found DISKEDIT.HLP, floppied that over to
D:\DOS_UTIL on the PENTIUM so that I would have it there for future
reference, and tried again. It still didnt tell me how to mark an entire section of
a disk so the computer wouldnt try to use it. I went online for enlightenment
and found none. All I could do was to post a question in Deja.com, which I did.
(See point ___.) In the meantime, while I was in DOS on the PENTIUM machine,
I went ahead and combined this partition, formerly BADSPACE, temporarily

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drive F, into drive E, and hoped for the best. It was either that or put it into a
new permanent drive F, which would change all my references to drives F, G,
and H, with all kinds of ramifications for my later installation on the AMD
machine. Once again, I did this before remembering that the PartitionMagic
operation would take an hour, which in this case was really OK because it was
time for lunch anyway. I could have interrupted it, but at the risk of losing
whatever data I had on drive E. So then I had to run NDD on it again, which
took another hour and a half, now that I was dealing with a much larger
partition. (Norton Disk Doctor doesnt work just on portions of a partition.) To
wrap this up, I went back to the question of whether there were other Norton
programs that I could use on a standalone basis. The minimal Norton
installation on the AMD machine had installed only two other EXE files in the
Norton Utilities folder, namely, NDD32 and SD32. I ran these in a DOS box on
the PENTIUM machine, where I had not installed Norton Utilities -- i.e., where
they would have to stand alone -- and, like before, I found that they would not
run without other files on hand. For now, I decided to keep the DOS utilities,
and I added NDD in place of SCANDISK in the MAINT_WK batch file (see point
124), but I did not feel that the other utilities were important enough to justify
installing Norton Utilities generally. Later, I thought about copying over the
whole NU folder, containing all the Norton utilities and (presumably) their
accompanying files, but it was a 69 MB load, and anyway, my tinkering had
suggested that some of those utilities would grab onto my system and change the
way it worked even when I tried to run them as standalones. I was not sure of
that, but that was how it had seemed, and I just didnt want any more Nortoninduced crashes.
241. Problems with Outlook Express. My unknown error problems in
Outlook 98 (see point 225) made me think that I should consider getting rid of
Outlook 98. I decided to take a look at Outlook Express and try to remember
whether I had liked its e-mail handling abilities; I figured that if Outlook Express
could handle the e-mail, maybe I could find some other program to replace
Outlook 98s calendar and schedule features. I had previously been successful
when I had tried to get into Outlook Express and tinker with its settings. (See
point 102.) Now, however, I got an error message stating, Outlook Express
could not be started. The application was unable to open the Outlook Express
message store. Your computer may be out of memory or your disk is full.
Contact Microsoft support for further assistance. My disk was not full and I
was not out of memory. I wondered if maybe Outlook Express and Outlook 98
were both suffering from the same core problem, whatever it was. When I
clicked OK on that error message, I got another message: Outlook Express
could not be started because MSOE.DLL could not be initialized. Outlook
Express may not be installed correctly. I received the same error when trying to
run Outlook Express on the AMD machine, so the problem was not due merely

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to this recent hard disk tinkering. A search for MSOE.DLL revealed that it was
located in D:\Program Files\Microsoft Online\Outlook Express on both
machines. A search of the old version of drive C -- the one that had existed on
the AMD machine before I began this whole project, and that I had subsequently
copied to drive H (see point 169) -- revealed that, back then, MSOE.DLL had
existed in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express. So although MagicMover had
reported no difficulty in moving various files from C:\Program Files to
D:\Program Files, it now appeared that the move had not been entirely
successful. (See point 154.) The MSOE.DLL error message was not a mere
missing file error message, and there did not exist any C:\Program
Files\Outlook Express folder to which I might have copied it, so I tried to undo
the damage by using MagicMover to return the Outlook Express folder back to
its original location in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express. I verified that the
Outlook Express folder no longer existed on drive D. Then I clicked on the
Outlook Express icon in Start | Programs again, and I got the same two error
messages. I went into Add/Remove Programs and removed Microsoft Outlook
Express 5. On reboot, I got an error message, Could not locate INF file
C:\WINDOWS\INF\MSIMN.INF. A search on the AMD machine did not find
this file. It was puzzling that the system now thought it needed it. I looked into
the C:\Program Files\Outlook Express folder and found that not only did the
folder still exist, but it was still full of files, including one called MSIMN.EXE.
Perhaps this file was telling the system that it needed MSIMN.INF or some
substitute that the uninstall had just removed. I went back into Add/Remove
Programs and saw that Microsoft Outlook Express 5 was still listed there. I used
Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut down everything except Explorer and Systray. I tried
uninstalling through Add/Remove Programs again. After rebooting, I saw that
nothing had changed. I did not see any alternative uninstallation icon in the
Outlook Express folder. I went online for inspiration. According to article
number Q186218 in Microsofts Knowledgebase, I should have used the
Windows Setup tab in Add/Remove Programs to remove Outlook Express. I
tried that now, but the Microsoft Outlook Express box there was already
unchecked. I tried starting Outlook Express again and got the same two error
messages, as though nothing had changed. I went back online, to the Windows
Update page; I allowed that page to probe my system and see what it thought I
lacked; and now, unlike the last time I had come here (see point 229), the page
told me that I needed Outlook Express 5. I downloaded it and rebooted. I tried
running it again, and this time it gave me a different error message. It said, The
Address Book failed to load. Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please
re-install. Pardoning Microsofts ubiquitous comma splice, I clicked OK, and
this did take me into Outlook Express. But the message about the Address Book
sounded like it might be on target on the subject of the problems in Outlook 98 as
well: that is, the problems there, too, had been with the Address Book.

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242. Outlook Express, Outlook 98, and the Bad Hard Disk Partition. I decided to
try resolving my problems with Outlook (see point 241) by straightening out the
iffy situation on my first hard disk. I proceeded as follows:
(a) Deciding to Convert the Hidden Partition to a Visible Drive. I decided that it
was nuts to try to combine the old BADSPACE partition with the good sectors of
my first hard disk. (See point 239.) In response to my newsgroup question as to
whether there might be a way to mark an entire bad section of a partition
manually, I had received several lectures on how important it was not to use a
decaying hard disk. I had replied that I appreciated the concern but this was,
after all, just a spare computer whose primary purpose was to provide a
comfortable retirement for dying parts. I hadnt yet received any further replies.
In the meantime, I decided that what I had to do was to recreate the BADSPACE
partition, not as a hidden partition, but as drive E, with nothing in it but empty
folders as placeholders, so that Word and other programs that expected to find
their default data folders on drive E would still find them there, at least until I
finished setting up this model system and finishing it over on the AMD machine.
(Later, someone suggested another solution that might have done the job: I
could have used PartitionMagic to create a Linux partition there, which would
have been invisible to Windows 98; but later still, I found a GoBack webpage that
said that GoBack would not install on any drive that had an extended DOS
partition that contained a non-DOS partition type. See point 298.)
(b) Relocating OUTLOOK.PST and Other Data. I ran Outlook 98 on the AMD
machine. It gave me the message that The file E:\TEMP\OUTLOOK.PST could
not be found. This confirmed that I had not absentmindedly used Outlook 98 to
store any important messages on the AMD machine in the past few days. Given
that knowledge, I copied the entire E:\Messages folder containing the Address
Book and accompanying files to the AMD machine, and then told Outlook 98 to
look for OUTLOOK.PST in the E:\Messages folder on that machine. It found it
and showed me my current e-mails and schedule items. Confident that I had a
working backup of OUTLOOK.PST, I removed the entire contents of the
E:\Messages folder on the PENTIUM machine to drive F, leaving only an empty
folder. I did the same for all other data folders on drive E, as I should have done
before the hard disk gyrations of recent days. (See point 239.)
(c) Uninstalling Outlook Express. Interestingly, I had left Outlook Express
running during this process, and it prevented me from moving some of the
contents of E:\Messages to drive F until I shut it down, which made me wonder
whether this old OUTLOOK.PST and/or its accompanying files were part of the
problem. I tried running Outlook Express and got the same Address Book
failed to load message. (See point 241.) I then tried to uninstall Outlook
Express again on the Windows Setup tab in Add/Remove Programs. Oddly,

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however, Outlook Express did not appear there this time. Had my act of
removing the contents of E:\Messages crippled it? I went back online to the
Windows Update site and let it probe my machine again. This time, it did not
say that I was lacking Outlook Express. I was stuck: I did have it, as far as the
website that could give it to me was concerned, but I didnt have it as far as the
program that could have uninstalled it was concerned. I copied OUTLOOK.PST
and the other files back to E:\Messages and tried again in Add/Remove
Programs. This made no difference, so I deleted those copies. I removed
C:\Program Files\Outlook Express to drive F and tried the Windows Update
website again. It still thought I had Outlook Express! I went into Add/Remove
Programs, this time using the Install/Uninstall tab instead of the Windows Setup
tab. Outlook Express was still listed there, so I clicked Add/Remove, and that
seemed to do it -- it was not there anymore. The Windows Update page still
thought I had Outlook Express, however, so I went back to Add/Remove
Programs and uninstalled Outlook 98 -- which I was only too happy to do, since
my recent usage had indicated that the failure to find its Address Book was not
the only way in which it had begun to malfunction. I rebooted and went into
Add/Remove Programs. Both Outlook 98 and Outlook Express were gone. I
ran the Cleanup Suite (see point 153) and told it to remove a bunch of dead links
and Registry keys. I went back to the Windows Update website again. It still did
not offer to reinstall Outlook Express.
(d) PartitionMagic and the Bad Space. I rebooted from the floppy and told
PartitionMagic to reconfigure drive E so that it would be called BADSPACE and
would contain a minimal 300 MB at the very end of the first hard drive, where
the bad sectors lay. (See point 114.) (I assumed that PartitionMagic wanted the
size to be 300 MB, rather than the 259 MB or thereabouts that PartitionMagic had
considered minimal on the other hard disk (see point 238), because
PartitionMagic was setting aside 40 MB for bad sectors, although that didnt
seem quite right.) PartitionMagic took its customary hour or more to check that
little space (see point ___), but this time it aborted with a Write fault error. It
had created a drive E with 300 MB, but had put it at the start rather than the end
of the 1,165 MB space that was formerly drive E, or perhaps it had taken it out of
what was formerly drive D. (See point 237.)
(e) Trying FDISK and FORMAT. Now I had to figure out how to move drive E
to the end of that space. I ran the old DOS utility called FDISK (still supplied
with Windows), and selected Create DOS Partition | Create Logical DOS Drive
in the Extended DOS Partition. It said there was 1,020 MB available, and offered
to create a logical drive of that size. I said no, create one of 850 MB. It did that
instantly, calling it drive F. It now offered to create another drive, which would
temporarily be drive G, with 169 MB, and I accepted. This was larger than the
153 MB that BADSPACE had formerly occupied, but I was beginning to think it

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might be just as well to allow a little extra space for growth -- er, decay. I
rebooted and used the FORMAT command at the DOS prompt to format new
drives F and G. It sailed right through drive F. When dealing with the bad
sectors in G, it gave me Trying to recover allocation unit messages, starting at
unit 5,941. It apparently succeeded with that one, and it kept on going for a
while, but finally, when trying to recover allocation unit 25,651, it gave up and
said, Not ready. Format terminated. Just before that, it had said it was 59%
completed. I tried again and got the same thing. I went back into FDISK, deleted
drive G, and instead started to create a new logical drive G of only 99 MB (59% of
169), with the aim of putting the rest into a new drive H. This did not work,
because FDISK interpreted 99 MB to mean 102 MB, which would contain the
troublesome allocation unit 25,651. Sure enough, FDISK stalled with a message,
Verifying drive integrity. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, came back into FDISK, and tried
again, using 95 MB this time instead of 99 MB. The choice of 95 MB resulted in a
98 MB drive G, and for some reason FDISK did not stall when I assigned the
remaining 71 MB to a new drive H. I rebooted -- still booting from the floppy -and ran FORMAT successfully on drive G. But that last 71 MB -- that was the
real struggle. FORMAT still could not get through it. (If getting maximum
usable disk space had been my only goal, maybe I could have created another
partition after this bad space and just ignored the stretch in the middle, but since
my whole partition scheme required me to stay with exactly six partitions, that
solution didnt interest me. Besides, in this case, the damage came near the end
of the disk, so there was not really much useful space after it anyway.)
(f) Examining the New Partitions. I was curious about PartitionMagics refusal to
create a partition of less than 259 MB. I started to reboot into Windows, and
discovered that my choice of drive letters was unfortunate. Drive H had been
my SWAP partition. (See point 32.) That is, Windows needed it. But now, with
my new drive assignments, H was the one that was malfunctioning. At bootup, I
got the message, Invalid media type reading drive H. Abort, Retry, Fail? I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del, booted from the floppy, went into FDISK, deleted drive F, and
created two new drives in its place. The first was 756 MB (which I obtained by
entering 755 MB) and the second was 95 MB which, when combined with the 98
MB of the previous drive G and the 71 MB of the troublesome previous drive H,
would give me 264 MB -- which was above PartitionMagics magical 259 MB
number. At first, FDISK seemed to have created the latter of those two new
drives, the one with 95 MB, as drive I. That is, drive H appeared that it would
remain drive H. But on reboot, the drive letters rearranged themselves so that
the troublesome one was now drive I. I formatted drives F (756 MB) and G (95
MB) with FORMAT. Drive H was now a formatted 98 MB and contained some
bad sectors; I worried that it lay below the 100 MB minimum that I had specified
for the Windows swap file. (See point 44.) I rebooted into Windows. At bootup,
I got the message, Invalid media type reading drive I, but this time I was

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comfortable in choosing Abort. Bootup continued normally. Windows Explorer

showed the contents of the newly created drives F, G, and H, but when I tried to
see the contents of the bad partition I, it said, I:\ is not accessible. A device
attached to the system is not functioning. The only one of the new drives that
had any contents was drive H. Besides a Windows swap file of 75 MB, it
contained a Backups folder, which told me that SCANREG would create its own
backups folder when necessary. (See point 145(p).) Drive H also contained the
Temporary Internet Files folder. I right-clicked on each of the new drives and
saw that only drive F was in the FAT32 format. Evidently I had used the Win98
version of FDISK, and that version had been capable of formatting the drive as
FAT32 (the file allocation format used by Windows 98), but would not or could
not do so for the smaller drives G and H. So perhaps that was why
PartitionMagic had insisted on 259 MB; maybe it would have taken a smaller size
if I hadnt tried to make it FAT32.
(g) Making the Best of a Bad Drive Situation. I went online for more advice.
Someone mentioned that Western Digitals website (like some others) offered
tools that might help. I went to that site (www.westerndigital.com/service/)
and downloaded the users manual for their Data Lifeguard Tools. It sounded
like I didnt need the whole package of tools; their Data Lifeguard Diagnostics
sounded like what I needed (if another diagnostic utility such as SCANDISK,
CHKDISK, or DEFRAG reports errors on the hard drive). I downloaded that
program and put it on a floppy. The manual said it wouldnt wipe out my data,
but that I had to run it in real DOS. I rebooted from the floppy and ran the
DLG_DIAG program. It created a DLGDIAG.EXE file, and I ran that. This
identified my drive as a Western Digital. It told me that the Quick Test was not
available, so I ran the Extended Test. It took about ten minutes and said, One or
more errors were detected. Final code for this drive: 0258. Then it said the
errors were not repairable. It instructed me to contact Western Digital tech
support, which according to the manual meant, The hard drive is damaged
and cannot be restored to a defect-free status, and should be replaced. So the
only thing left to do was to go back into FDISK, delete drives F, G, H, and I, and
replace them with drives F (819 MB) and G (201 MB). I rebooted and formatted
drive F (which showed no bad sectors), but did not bother trying with drive G. I
ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, delete drive F, and added its empty space to
drive E. Now the bad drive was drive F. To insure that I would still have just six
partitions, I used PartitionMagic to delete the rump partition that I had created
earlier on the second hard drive. (See point 237.) I rebooted into Windows and
tried once more to format the bad sectors in drive F (by right-clicking on drive F
in Windows Explorer and choosing Format), if only because the system was now
going to give me that Invalid media type reading drive F message every time I
rebooted. Much to my surprise, Windows Explorer did format that little
partition, in a matter of moments. It advised me to run ScanDisk to verify that

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the disk was capable of storing data safely. My reaction was, No thanks. If
Windows thought this was a valid partition, that might end the Invalid media
type error messages, and that was all I needed. I right-clicked again and
changed its Properties so that F would have the name BADSPACE. Later, I came
across SpinRite by Gibson Research (see point 249), which sounded like it might
have been able to fix this drive, but there was no demo program for me to give it
a whirl, and I sure wasnt going to spend $89 on what might be a one-time need.
(h) Outlook Again. The point of this disk exercise was that maybe hard disk
problems were causing Outlook to be installed improperly. That now appeared
doubtful, but at least it was a variable removed from the picture. I went into
Add/Remove Programs and verified, on the Install/Uninstall tab, that both
versions of Outlook were still gone. I also verified that the Windows Setup tab
did not show Outlook Express. I went back to the Windows Update site, but it
still did not think I needed Outlook Express. I went to D:\Outlook 98 Setup and
ran OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE. I got the same PATH problem as before when I
tried to install it in a folder other than the default (see point 225), so I removed
the D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Outlook 98 folder (putting it instead on
drive G, formerly F, next to the Outlook Express folder there -- see paragraph (c),
above), and went with the default location of D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office.
I got the error message, Setup cannot continue because files are missing from
the installation directory. Please run Setup from the Internet. In a way, this
was good news -- it suggested that I might finally be getting a new start. I ran it
again, and this time it offered to connect me with a website -- which was good,
because otherwise I had no idea of where to look for the online setup. (See point
98.) The online connection downloaded 1.6 MB of files. Just to be sure that the
installation would not seek out the copies of the Outlook 98 and Outlook Express
folders that I had moved to drive F (now drive G), I deleted those copies while
the download was taking place, before it began installing. Also, while it was
downloading, I noticed that it said, Downloading Microsoft Outlook Express.
So maybe I was getting both programs at the same time here. Sure enough, after
rebooting I had icons for both on the desktop. I ran Outlook 98 (known here as
simply Microsoft Outlook). Amazingly, after all the stuff I had removed, it still
remembered my old settings, which by this time was unquestionably bad news.
But no, it wasnt: this time the original Address Book errors no longer existed.
(See point 227.) I could use either Ctrl-Shift-B or the Address Book icon to get
into the Address Book. Oh, great joy! It seemed that perhaps I would install the
old OUTLOOK.PST on one computer, and would gradually whittle it down as
originally planned (see point 112(c)), but would not use that version of Outlook
98 for any new e-mail or schedule entries; and I would have my current running
version on the other computer. Anyway, I exited Outlook 98 and found that
something weird had happened: the Outlook Express icon was gone from the
desktop. Not deterred, I ran it from the icon under Start | Programs. After I

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answered its question as to where it should store its messages (E:\Messages), it,
too, ran OK. That reminded me that I had to move OUTLOOK.PST to
E:\Messages, so I did. I answered the usual questions (see point 112(c)); but this
time, evidently because of Outlook Express, E:\Messages was further subdivided
into News and Mail folders, so I put OUTLOOK.PST into the latter. Once again,
it ran properly.
(i) Updating Outlook 98 and Outlook Express. I went to the Windows Update
site again, and this time it did offer to update me to Outlook Express 5. When
that was done, the system rebooted, and then I went back into Outlook Express
to verify that it still worked. Next, as before, I went into Add/Remove
Programs, selected Microsoft Outlook 98, and chose Add/Remove | Add New
Components, which took me to the Microsoft Office 98 Component Install
website. (See point 225.) I had not noticed before, but now I saw that this page
gave me the option of installing Microsoft Outlook Newsreader, which I had
already installed as part of the Outlook Express installation; in fact, I was not
certain there was even a difference between those two programs. Anyway,
Outlook 98 downloaded the few additional items I wanted, and after rebooting I
went into that and made sure the Address Book was still accessible. It seemed
that I had finally corrected an error that had existed in some unknown number of
recent CD image backups. (See point 225.)
Installing the Final Programs, Finally
243. Second GoBack Installation. I had now removed the hidden partition that
had caused the previous GoBack installation to abort (see point 239), and I had
also reached an allocation of disk space among my various partitions that, I
hoped, would endure for a while. (See point 242(g).) I tried again to install
GoBack, using the same approach as before. (See point 238.) This time, I
accepted its default allocation of about 300 MB per hard disk, taken out of drive
E on the first disk and drive G on the second disk. It finished, rebooted, and
performed various operations and tests on E and G. This was farther than I had
gotten in the process last time, so it appeared that the superficial Windows
format of drive F, a/k/a BADSPACE (see point 242(g)), was good enough to
persuade GoBack that at least F was a valid drive, although no doubt F would
have failed these tests that GoBack was inflicting upon E and G. (I subsequently
found that I had accidentally moved some files to F rather than G; drive F
handled those files without a hitch.) After some more messing around and
rebooting, I got a message that GoBack had installed successfully.
244. CTBIOS. This was the German-language program that nevertheless
provided useful basic information about the BIOS I was running. (See point
107(a).) I did not see similar information in MSINFO32 (see point 145(d)) or

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HWINFO (see point 145(m)). The program required less than 100 KB, so it did
not take much deliberation before deciding to install it -- which consisted, easily
enough, of putting it in a folder under D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous and running a shortcut to it.
245. Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility. This was one utility that I would not
be using on the AMD machine, since it did not have an Intel CPU. Its setup took
a long time to load. I had thought that that sort of slowness was unique to Xerox
TextBridge (see point 224(f)), but now I could see that it was not. Yet for some
reason, it occurred only with certain installation programs, not with them all.
Anyway, after this program had taken 15 minutes or more to install, I checked
and saw that it had filled only 831 KB of disk space. Then I launched it, and it
told me that my processor was an Intel 233 MMX with 16 KB of Level 1 data
cache and 16 KB of Level 1 instruction cache, and no Level 2 cache. The program
was not able to provide frequency measurement for anything other than a
Pentium III. As translated by the help file, the program said this was a Family 5
(fifth generation) processor, lower than the Family 6 processors like Celeron and
Pentium II and III. The program also provided information on the processors
model (4) and stepping (3) that might conceivably be useful for some tech
support purposes. Finally, the program offered a File | Upgrade Utility option
that led me to a website which informed me that I could download a version of
the program that would test Pentium processors up to 800 MHz. In other words,
we were going in the wrong direction. I needed information on a more primitive
processor, not a more advanced one. It seemed that I had the information I was
going to get out of this program, which didnt involve much that I didnt already
know, and now that I had this information, this program was darn near useless.
Later, I found a better alternative. (See point 248.)
246. GoBack in Action. I decided that this was a great opportunity to put
GoBack through its paces. (See point 236.) Instead of just uninstalling the
useless Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility (see point 245), I decided to roll the
system back to a happier time using GoBack. I clicked on the ever-present
GoBack icon in the system tray and chose the option that said, Revert your
entire hard disk to a time in the past. The program opened; the little clock
wound cutely around to show the present moment; and a popup help window
offered to help me revert a hard disk to the way it was in the past. I
wondered, as I read that description, whether this meant that I would have to
revert the first and second hard drives separately, assuming I had been doing
something that affected them both. Before proceeding with that, I also noticed a
pop-up message stating that there was important information available online
for GoBack users who also used Norton SpeedDisk. Since I was still mulling
over the question of what to do with SD32 (see point 240), I went to their website
and downloaded the little patch that would prevent SpeedDisk from moving the

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GOBACKIO.BIN file, which was apparently where GoBack stashed its loot.
(After finishing the other events in this paragraph, I installed it, just in case.)
With that out of the way, I clicked on the revert help item just mentioned. Its
instructions were as follows: choose the reversion date on the onscreen calendar;
choose the reversion time in the digital readout part of the onscreen clock; and
then click the Revert Drive button. I gathered that I would want to shut down
other programs before going too much further. If I didnt know what date or
time I wanted to revert to, I could review the Event Log. As described above (see
point 236), this log showed file and shell events, punctuated by numerous
System Safe Point entries. I maximized the window and Ctrl-Shift clicked on the
X box in the upper right corner to make the thing open maximized next time,
and then I restarted GoBack and looked more closely at this Event Log. It was
really quite easy, and interesting, to see when things had happened. At 11:58:37
AM on this day, I had taken my last step involving CTBIOS. (See point 244.)
Then there was a System Safe Point. Then, at 12:00:01 PM, my hourly
MAINT_HR batch file had run. (See point 120(k).) Then there was another
System Safe Point; and then, at 12:01:10 PM, I had my first Intel Processor
Frequency ID Utility entry. I clicked on the System Safe Point that had occurred
just before that 12:01:10 PM entry, and the onscreen clock cutely wound back to
high noon. Or not exactly: the digital clock under it showed that this safe point
had occurred at 12:00:11 PM. Now I had two options: I could choose Revert
Drive, which would take me back as I intended, or I could choose Create GoBack
Drive, which the manual described as a virtual copy of your hard disk as it
appeared at a selected point in the past. The idea, in that latter case, was that I
would have a representation of my disk as it existed at 12:00:11 PM, and could
presumably pull various files out of it, if I wished, before shutting it down and
proceeding forward from the present time, which was now 1:05 PM. That, I
believed, would be more useful if I had done important work since noon but had
accidentally deleted a file or directory or something. Since I had accomplished
nothing worthwhile since noon, I did not hesitate to wipe away whatever minor
changes might have occurred in the intervening hour. Well, of course I hesitated.
I looked at the Event Log between then and now to confirm that I had pissed
away an hour napping, eating popcorn, and otherwise waiting for the Intel
Processor program to demonstrate its full fatuity. Sticking with my 12:00:11 PM
System Safe Point, I clicked on the Revert Drive option. It asked if it was OK to
restart my drive. Very polite! I said sure. It asked if I wanted to revert all of my
hard disks to that time. So that answered that question. I said no, since I really
could not remember what, if anything, I had done on the other hard disk.
Curious about that, I canceled and went back to the Event Log. I scrolled up and
down, and saw that it seemed to cover events on all partitions. So since I had
been equally useless in all partitions during the past hour, I could have had it roll
everything back at once. Interestingly, though, it didnt show any changes in
H:\Temporary Internet Files (which had probably seen some action when I had

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visited their website a few minutes earlier) or in the Windows swap file, also
located on drive H, which had surely been busy throughout all this time. I
decided to focus on rolling back the one hard drive (i.e., the one containing all
my Windows and program files), but not the other (containing data and these
non-tracked events on drive H). So I clicked on Revert Drive again and told it to
revert only the current drive. But wait -- whats the current drive? Only one
way to find out. I clicked on No, as in, dont revert all the drives at the same
time. The system rebooted. I took this opportunity to read the manual and see
what I had just done. But there was no need to be bookish: GoBacks screen
came up before any other rebooting action (i.e., before Windows 98 began to
boot) and told me that it intended, now, to revert drives C, D, E, and F back to
their state as of 12:00 PM. That sounded good, so I said go ahead. This took
about a half-minute, and then I got a message telling me, If your system does
not successfully start, then try going further back in time. Multiple attempts may
be required to find a good time to revert to. Initiate subsequent reversions by restarting your computer and pressing the SPACE BAR to enter the GoBack
menu. So apparently there are no guarantees about any System Safe Point; its
just a time when the computer settled down long enough for GoBack to take a
snapshot of what was happening. This notice also advised me not to be alarmed
if ScanDisk ran on reboot. I clicked OK and the system rebooted without a
problem. The reboot was even slower than usual, but it worked, and this was
not the only time when that had happened. Taking a cue from the manual, I
started GoBack again and saw, to my disappointment, that it was still opening in
a partial window, not full-screen. I chose Edit | Add Note to Log, and typed,
REMOVED USELESS INTEL PROCESSOR UTILITY. I wanted this entry to
appear right after I had rebooted, but of course the log showed it at the moment
when it actually occurred -- that is, at the end of the list. I exited GoBack and
looked at the root of drive E. Sure enough, GOBACKIO.BIN was a file of 308
MB. The situation was about the same (315 MB) for the GOBACKIO.BIN file on
drive G, even though almost nothing had happened so far on the second hard
drive. Logically enough, GoBack created the files first and asked questions later.
Anyway, the program seemed to have passed this test with flying colors: it was
simple, it was fast, and while CTBIOS was there, the Intel utility was not. I put it
to a test again later. (See point 323.)
247. Symantec WinFax Starter Edition. My previous outgoing fax solution did
not work reliably. (See point 224(n).) After much hesitation, I went back into the
Office 98 Component Install page (see point 225) and installed this Symantec
program. (Later, I realized that this might not have been the same as the
Microsoft Fax program that had seemed likely to install so much extra junk on
my system.) I really didnt see any other way to have good outgoing fax
capability for free; I could only hope that it would not install too much useless
Microsoft junk along with the essential program files. At only 1.9 MB, maybe

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that was not too much of a worry. I decided I would keep eFax (see point ___),
because it gave me a constantly available phone number for incoming faxes,
which wasnt an option on my home phone line. I rebooted and went into
Outlook 98. I got a Welcome to Symantc WinFax Starter Edition message. The
setup was painless. In Outlook 98, I chose Actions | New Fax Message. I wrote
a little test note and tried to send it to myself at my eFax number. I got a
message indicating that I had not configured my modem properly. It led me to a
way to configure my modem, but at first it didnt work, and eventually I just
selected the first type of modem on the list, and that seemed to work. I could not
understand why Outlook 98 seemed to be disconnecting me from the Internet
each time I tried to send the fax, until eventually I realized that faxes are
ordinarily sent by direct dialup, not online, and that the poor program was
trying to get offline so that it could dial eFax and send me my fax. After waiting
a few minutes, I went online and checked my e-mail to see if I had received an
eFax notice yet, but found nothing. I got back offline at 2:29 PM. A half-hour
later, the fax software had not made a move to send the fax, and I had received
no e-mail messages from eFax. Meanwhile, Outlook 98 continued to show the
fax as having been sent at 2:11 PM. I tried again; again the program asked me to
verify the fax number; again it showed a little screen depicting information going
from one computer to somewhere else. I wondered if the program was not able
to detect when I was online and would try only once to send faxes, and would
simply give up after that if I happened to be online at the time. I moved the test
fax back to Outlook 98s Outbox, opened it, and tried resending it. To do this, I
clicked on Actions | Resend and then on File | Send Using | Symantec WinFax.
This yielded a Mail Delivery Error icon down in the bottom right corner of the
screen. The message was, Unable to connect to the server. So apparently I did
have to be online to make this happen. I went online and tried again. I noticed
that the item in the Outbox was in italics, which was how items usually appeared
when they were actually going to be sent. I opened the fax item again and
clicked on File | Send Using again. I got the server error message again. I went
into Tools | Options | Mail Delivery | Accounts and corrected some items for
the Symantec account. This seemed to cause some action. Several things
happened at once, but what I think happened was that the fax item disappeared
from the Outlook 98 Outbook, I got disconnected from my ISP, the icon showing
a communication from one computer to another appeared onscreen, and the
computer dialed the eFax number. Whether the fax went through, I could not
say, other than that its disappearance from the Outbox seemed to suggest so
(although it seemed to me that the same thing had happened before and that no
fax had gone through at that time). Ah, but then I found the answer: I had three
incoming e-mails in Outlook 98, each telling me that my fax had been
undeliverable. It appeared that I was supposed to type a 1 before the 10-digit fax
number! Well, I had wondered about that, and now I had my answer. I tried
again at 3:22 PM. Just a couple of minutes later, I was online and I saw that I had

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received an e-mail from eFax conveying my test fax. It looked like I had a fax
solution. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration. See point 265.)
248. WCPUID. The idea here was the same as the Intel Processor Utility. (See
point 245.) The differences here were that this one actually worked and it
installed in a flash. It gave the same Type, Family, Model, and Stepping
information, but it also identified the platform (Socket 7 (PGA Socket)) and clock
frequency (233.86 MHz); provided a list of about 20 features (e.g., Virtual Mode
Extension, 3DNow) and indicated whether this processor supported them; and
provided information on the AGP chipset (VIA Apollo VP3/MVP3).
249. IP_Agent by Gibson Research. This was a simple little program that, when I
clicked on it, showed me an IP (Internet Protocol) number that turned out to be
my own, and said When you are connected to the Internet press the Test My
Shields button to begin. I did that, and got steered to a website that informed
me that mine was a private network IP that was very secure against typical
threats and discovery from passing Internet scanners. See
http://grc.com/default.htm. I decided that there was really no reason to install
this program, so after running it this one time (which did not require an
installation), I archived it.
250. Paradox for DOS. The PENTIUM machine contained two directories
consisting of DOS programs. One was DOS_UTIL, which I had been using
throughout this whole process, and the other was DOS_PROG. The latter was a
folder that I had placed under D:\Program Files. It contained installed program
files for six old DOS programs that had seemed potentially useful: LapLink,
Paradox, PKZIP, a tape backup utility, Microsoft Word 5.5, and WordPerfect 6.0
for DOS. Now that I had a network connecting the PENTIUM machine to the
AMD, with its CD burner, I no longer expected to need the old T1000 tape
backup unit that still resided in the PENTIUM machine, so I archived this tape
backup software. Similarly, I expected to need the other programs rarely, if at
all, and to be able to run or reinstall them quickly from an archival CD if I did
need them, so I cabled these, too, to the AMD machine. The one exception was
Paradox, which I still used for some purposes. I moved Paradox so that it would
be a subdirectory under DOS_UTIL, and set up a shortcut to it. Somewhere, I
had accumulated the information that Paradox ran best under Windows when I
started it with a batch file like this, which I called PDX.BAT:
___type PDX.BAT
I also added the shortcut to this PDX.BAT file to the Office Suite (see point
113(e)) and to the Main toolbar (see point 120(ae)). Having archived a lot of data
onto CD (see point 172), I was able to make a backup of the remaining data I had

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online, and then (with some hesitation) to move it to drive E on the shaky
Western Digital disk in the PENTIUM machine -- the reason being that I needed
to get those programs functioning in a normal way, and I needed to access some
of my data, in order to wrap up this configuration. So I did that, and configured
Paradox so that it could find the old data tables with which I had used it.
251. CallWaves Internet Answering Machine. ZDNet gave this free program
five stars. The basic idea was this: CallWave would give you a toll-free
forwarding number. (At that particular moment, it was 800-380-4341.) You
would call your phone company, give them that number, and ask them to sign
you up for Busy Call Forwarding from your phone company (which might cost
less than $10 to install and around a dollar a month). Then, when you were
online, Busy Call Forwarding would route incoming phone calls to CallWaves
service center. The service center would play an automated greeting and would
allow the caller to record a message, which CallWave would then download to
your computer and play over your computer speakers. As far as I could tell, this
would not happen in real time -- i.e., you would not get the message quickly
enough to cut your Internet connection and pick up the phone before the person
hung up. CallWave paid for this free service by keeping a little box on your
screen while you were online and playing ads in that box. On my 14 monitor
(and perhaps on any monitor), this box measured about 0.6 x 3.7. The box
would show call information when you received a call and would then alternate
between showing you ads and showing you the information on your most recent
calls. The box was not especially obtrusive, and you could click the X in its
upper right corner to get rid of it -- in which case it would not start again until
you right-clicked the icon in the system tray and told it to log on. I found I had
to get rid of it after shutting down Internet Explorer, because otherwise it stayed
right there on my screen. The shutdown actually required two commands: one
to click on the X in the upper right corner, and then another to tell the dialog box
that yes, you were sure you wanted to get rid of it. You could move the little box
wherever you wanted on the screen, but I couldnt get any part of it to go past
the edges of the screen. If you had a toolbar or taskbar at the top or bottom edge
of the screen, you could partially hide the little box by moving it right to that top
or bottom edge and then clicking on the toolbar or taskbar -- in other words, it
would force you to make an extra click on a blank part of the toolbar or taskbar if
you wanted to see the full contents of those bars, but it would not otherwise
obscure your use of them. I felt that the program would have been more useful if
it had sprung to life automatically whenever I went online, regardless of what
kind of activity I might be pursuing -- be it a browser session, an Outlook 98 email swapping connection, or an FTP upload or download -- and if it had
automatically retired itself when the connection ceased. The connect time was,
after all, the only time when I wanted to see it. I also felt that the program would
have been more desirable if it had stayed out of sight most of the time, hanging

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around and displaying ads for just a few minutes after a phone call. If it had
done that, it would have been more of a novelty, and I would have felt like it had
earned a bit of my attention. Also, the little box would have been better
designed if they had made it fit within the title bar at the top of a full-size screen,
since that was just about the only place where it would not get in the way -- or at
least if they had required it merely to have a certain surface area, and had left it
to the user to decide whether to spread that surface area among one, two, or
more lines of text. The repeated need to start the program, stop the program,
and move the little box out of the way, repeated dozens or hundreds of times a
month (depending on how often one was online, how many calls one tended to
receive, and how important it was to be able to field those calls live), could
begin to make it more cost-effective to spend more on a second phone line and
have all that extra functionality, such as the ability to call out while looking at
something online. After having it on my screen for a week without actually
signing up for the service for the phone company, I decided that I probably could
get used to its permanent presence, but that I really didnt need it and would
rather wait to see what else developed. Therefore, I uninstalled it.
252. PCIInfo. This little standalone freeware program did nothing more than
provide information regarding PCI and AGP devices in your system: their
manufacturer, the type of device, whether they took an IRQ, whether they were
PCI devices, etc. I installed it and made a shortcut to it just in case I would need
to know that sort of thing at some point; I figured I would decide at that time
whether this program provided information not available in other sources of
information I had already installed. (See point 244.)
253. XXCopy. This utility, recommended by someone online, seemed like it
might be useful for my future backup needs, since it (unlike regular XCOPY) was
capable of handling long filenames. (See point ___.) I discarded its unnecessary
batch files for installing and uninstalling (since the process consisted simply of
copying files to the place where I wanted them); I renamed its README.TXT file
to be XXCOPY.TXT so that I would be able to find it, and I moved the relevant
files to DOS_UTIL.
Transition to the AMD Machine: Hardware Changes
254. DriveImage Backup and Data Migration. Having read a number of
comments online about how this hard disk could fail at any time (see point
242(g)), I decided I would be better off if I did the rest of my work on this
configuration on the AMD machine. Accordingly, I emptied out drive E, moving
back the data that I had just recently moved over to the PENTIUM machine. (See
point 250.) Then I tried to make a DriveImage disk image of drives C and D. I
could not get DriveImage to run when I booted from the floppy -- indeed, I

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couldnt get anything to run; I couldnt even get the system to recognize the hard
disks, presumably because GoBack was now controlling them. When I typed C:
at the command prompt, I got Invalid drive specification, and likewise for the
other partitions. Then I tried to reboot in MS-DOS mode (i.e., not in real DOS),
and after I set up the specifications in DriveImage, it gave me Error # 58, Unable
to write to the boot sector. Virus protection software may be running. It was,
of course, and disabling it would have been a solution, but I wanted to see if that
would always be necessary. I booted again in real DOS by selecting Startup
Menu option 5, Command prompt only. I ran DriveImage from a copy of
DOS_UTIL that I was keeping on drive G, so that it would not be on the disk that
it was trying to copy. (See point 103.) Unfortunately, I got Error # 58 there too,
and the computer froze. I did a hard reboot back into Windows, went into
Norton AntiVirus, shut off the options for automatic virus scans at bootup, and
tried again to boot from the floppy. As expected, I still couldnt access the hard
disks; that seemed pretty clearly to be a GoBack problem, not an AntiVirus
problem. This time, however, I used the Windows startup floppy, which I hadnt
used last time. The floppy said, Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not
contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. There are several possible causes. The
cause that seemed most likely was number 2, which read like this: You may be
using third-party disk-partitioning software. If you are using this type of
software, remove the Emergency Boot Disk and restart your computer. Then,
follow the on-screen instructions to start your computer from a floppy disk. I
rebooted into real DOS, and even though I did not notice Norton doing any of its
usual bootup virus scanning, I got the same DriveImage error again. Evidently I
had not properly shut down Norton AntiVirus, or else this too was a GoBack
problem. One thing I had not tried was to take GoBack up on its offer, which
appeared right after the introductory BIOS boot screen. GoBack said, If you are
having PC problems, press the spacebar now. So I rebooted and did that. I got
a GoBack menu offering to Revert Drive (see point 246), or Disable GoBack, or
Boot from floppy with GoBack drivers installed. I didnt have a floppy with
GoBack drivers installed, but I tried it with one of my regular boot floppies. It
booted fine, and I could see the contents of the hard disk partitions. I tried
running DriveImage from the floppy. This time was even worse: the computer
rebooted as soon as I clicked the Finish command to get it to go ahead. I tried
again, running DriveImage from drive G, and got the same result. I had resisted
the idea of disabling GoBack because that would wipe out its Event Log history,
but now I realized that there would be no harm in this, since I did not intend to
carry the GoBack history with me over to the AMD machine anyway -- and, as I
thought about it, the instructions had made it sound like I might not want to
have GoBack in place anyway when I was getting it started on a new disk. (See
point 236.) So I disabled GoBack; it then allowed me to boot from the floppy if I
wanted, which I did. I ran DriveImage from drive G again. This time it worked,

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and I created a file called STEP_254.PQI on 3/14/2000. So GoBack was the

culprit, not Norton AntiVirus.
255. Installing the Nearly Final Configuration on the AMD Machine. I copied
the STEP_254.PQI file over from the PENTIUM machine to the AMD. I booted
into real DOS and used DriveImage on the floppy to install the PQI file onto
drives C and D from its location on drive F, and then rebooted into Windows
and configured the new installation as follows:
(a) Configuration. Immediately at bootup, the system asked me which
configuration to load. (See point 211.) I answered None of the above, because I
wanted to set up a new AMD configuration. I gave this same answer in each of
the subsequent reboots.
(b) GoBack. As soon as I rebooted, GoBack gave me a message that said,
GoBack installation will now continue on your computer. I could have
canceled, but this was what I wanted. Unfortunately, GoBack installed itself on
drives E and G, as it had done on the PENTIUM machine (see point 238); but that
was not going to be appropriate on the AMD machine, where drive G was the
BURNING drive (i.e., the drive where I collected data that I intended to burn
onto CD -- see point 32). GoBacks installation rebooted, and I elected to disable
GoBack again. I would revisit it shortly (see point ___), but first the bootup
process took me into some other issues.
(c) Drivers. Now the computer wanted to install the VIA Tech 82C5868 (PIPC)
PCI to ISA Bridge. Previously, this had baffled me. (See point 180.) I knew,
however, that it had to do with either a motherboard driver, a sound card driver,
a modem driver, or possibly a video driver. I knew that because those were just
about the only drivers that I had not yet installed in a form that would be
relevant to this AMD computer. (That is, I had installed such drivers on the
PENTIUM computer, but of course that computer had different hardware and
this one would require different drivers for its different hardware.) The name
PCI to ISA Bridge told me that I needed to think in terms of which ISA cards I
had in this computer. I knew the modem was PCI and the video card was AGP,
so this narrowed it down to the motherboard or the sound card. Moreover, I had
the same motherboard in the PENTIUM computer, and it hadnt needed this, so I
decided to start by trying the Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Software CD. I
inserted the CD and then came to that part of the driver installation where the
computer offered to let me specify a location. I remembered that many drivers
resided in the C:\WINDOWS\INF folder. (See point 218.) I decided to try that
before trying the CD. Success! It used the MACHINE2.INF driver. Next, it
located the driver for the Hewlett-Packard HP Colorado tape drive, which I still
had installed in the computer. It installed other hardware and paused again at

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the Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet Adapter (NC100) that tied the AMD
computer to the PENTIUM computer. (See point 185.) This driver, I knew, had
to be loaded already, or else the PENTIUM would not have been able to send
files to the AMD on my little Ethernet network all this time. I pointed this one,
too, to C:\WINDOWS\INF, and that worked in part, but the thing still told me
to insert the floppy containing the drivers. I did that and pointed the installer to
A:\WIN98. Next, the installer told me that I had a file being installed that was
older than the file currently on my computer, so I kept the newer one by clicking
Yes. The system rebooted and said, The following error occurred while loading
protocol number 0. Error 38: The computer name you specified is already in use
on the network. To specify a different name, double-click the Network icon in
Control Panel. Of course it had the same name: the DriveImage file had told it
that its name was PENTIUM. I would have to visit Control Panel | Network |
Identification after the drivers were finished loading. Next, the installer said it
was installing a PCI Communication Device. This, I had learned, was the
modem. (See point 182.) I inserted the CD for my Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI
modem and told the installer to look for the driver on the CD-ROM. It installed
the SUP2750 PCI Modem Enumerator. Now it was time for new drivers for the
Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA). This sounded like just a basic driver,
like maybe it was not yet time to use drivers for the AGP video card, so I pointed
toward C:\WINDOWS\INF again. That worked: it selected MSDISP.INF. Then
it rebooted again. Now it installed the monitor and found the Creative sound
card mentioned a moment ago. Surprisingly, it seemed to find drivers for the
sound card without bothering to ask me to insert the CD, whereas it had not
found drivers for the other items when they had existed in C:\WINDOWS\INF.
Next, it wanted the CD for the modem. I inserted that and clicked OK. Stupidly,
it said it couldnt find a file called SUP2750.CAT on drive C, which of course was
not the CD-ROM. I browsed to drive I and poked around until that file name
popped up in the left window. Then it was time for another reboot. Now the
computer detected a new M-series device on the COM1 port. This was the
mouse. This screen allowed me to set the mouse so that, if I held both buttons
down, it would scroll in the direction I was moving the mouse, just like the
middle button on the Logitech mouse I was using on the other computer. (See
point 224(d).) Well, no wonder it was like the Logitech mouse -- as I saw in the
next screen, this was the Logitech MouseWare that I was installing! I didnt
mind -- that third-button effect had not been available before.
(d) Network Identification. As suggested in the previous paragraph, I now went
into Control Panel | Network | Identification and renamed this computer to be
the AMD.
(e) GoBack. I tried to run GoBack, but it just gave me a black-and-white choice
between re-enabling it with its existing settings or not, so I chose the latter, went

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into Add/Remove Programs, and told it to uninstall GoBack. This rebooted me.
While I was sitting there waiting, I decided to check the manual. It said, Be sure
to use the uninstaller provided with GoBack. Oops. But the point of the
message seemed to lie in the next sentence: Do not use a third party
uninstaller. On reboot, I saw that I was indeed using the GoBack uninstaller: I
got a GoBack dialog box telling me that GoBack uninstallation would now
continue. Whew. Some people live their whole lives guessing right; for me it
only works with minor pieces of software. I got the message that GoBack
installation had completed successfully, and then I inserted the CD and
reinstalled it. On this AMD machine, I decided to have it save its
GOBACKIO.BIN files (see point 246) on drives E and H. Both would have lots of
fragmentation anyway, due to constant rewrites: E would be holding my nonaudio, non-visual program data, and H would contain swap files and such. (See
point 32.)
(f) PartitionMagic. Now I came to a halt. The GoBack installer showed me that
the partition sizes on this computer were not at all like they had been on the
other one. I needed to revise them to take account of actual needs. Since this
machine had larger hard drives, I felt that I could probably spare a little more
space on drives C and D than I had spared on the PENTIUM computer (see point
237). I was just about to use PartitionMagic to revise the sizes, when I got
another idea.
256. Major Hard Disk Swapping. Since I had begun using the CD burner (see
point 4), I had found CDs to be a great place to store data. Once you made one
or two copies of something, you didnt need to keep it on your hard disk and
keep backing it up until you were ready to go to work on it. So I was finding
that I needed less hard disk space than I had needed previously. The AMD
machine had two hard drives: one was 7 MB and the other 10 MB. I decided
that I could definitely get by with just the latter. This would free up the 7 MB
disk to replace the dying hard disk in the PENTIUM machine. (See point 242(g).)
But since I understood that I would get significantly better performance if I had
two hard disks in the computer, I decided that I should bring the second 3 MB
hard disk over from the PENTIUM to the AMD. In other words, the PENTIUM
computer would now be losing both of its hard disks. I decided that I could
safely supplement the 7 MB drive that would be going into the PENTIUM by
adding the old 1 GB Seagate hard disk; I could use it as the drive H (SWAP) disk
and would probably not lose anything if its previous problems turned out to be
disk-related rather than power supply-related. (See point 113(f).) (For further
developments, see point 302.) So now it seemed that I was configuring the
wrong drive C in the AMD machine. They say that you should use your faster
hard disk to hold your Windows files, but I found that audio work was
especially slow and I was keen to focus on speeding that up -- which required

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having a big work area on a drive separate from the one holding the Windows
files. So the second 3 GB drive from the PENTIUM was going to become the
primary master -- i.e., the location of drives C and D (and possibly E) on the
AMD -- and the 10 GB drive was going to remain the primary slave. I decided to
take this operation in several steps, as follows:
(a) Remove Useful Data from AMD Drive E. I canceled out of PartitionMagic
(see point 255(f)) and used PowerDesk Explorer to move all of the data files back
from drive E to drive F on the AMD computer. I wouldnt need to reinstall
STEP_254.PQI (see point 254) on this first hard drive, which was a Maxtor
87000D8 7 GB drive. (See point 173.) I had just installed some different drivers
than the PENTIUM machine would need, but I had used none of the above
rather than altering the PENTIUM hardware configuration. (See point 255(a).)
As long as I loaded the PENTIUM configuration, it seemed that the system that I
had installed on the Maxtor drive would be exactly the same as it had been when
I had created the STEP_254.PQI image file.
(b) Trash the Western Digital 3 GB Drive. Next, I prepared to get rid of the
defective primary master hard drive in the PENTIUM machine. (See point
242(g).) This drive was the Western Digital WDAC33100-00H. (See point 108.) I
went to Western Digitals website (www.westerndigital.com) and looked into
their trade-in offer. Along the way, I saw that they were offering a $30 rebate on
their 10.2 GB and larger hard drives. (See
http://www.westerndigital.com/promos/30-reb4.html.) Participating online
vendors included Buy.com, which happened to be the lowest-priced vendor
supplying both a price and a shipping charge in the 10 GB category on CNET
(www.cnet.com). CNET, which tended to list the better-known online vendors,
showed that I could get a 10 GB Western Digital WD102AA EIDE Ultra-ATA/66
Recalled 5400 RPM 9.5 ms Caviar drive from Buy.com for about $115 (shipping
included). I wasnt too sure about that Recalled part, but if the rebate part was
good, this would mean I could get a 10 GB drive for $85 -- or less, if I could use
the trade-in too. Western Digital drives got noticeably more expensive if you
went to higher capacities: about $170 for the 20 GB and $215 for the 27 GB, again
using quotes at CNET (including shipping). I called Western Digital Customer
Service (800-275-4932) and asked about the meaning of Recalled and their
trade-in offer. Getting on the phone was a bad idea for at least two reasons: I
had had only three hours of sleep, and as it turned out the lady had no idea what
Recalled meant, other than that Western Digital had shipped some faulty
drives last autumn and had recalled them and replaced them with good ones.
The lady was very kind when I refused to let her create a file on me and insisted
on finding out simply what the trade-in amount might be. She said it went
according to drive size, and that the amount would be $20 for a 3 GB drive. She
told me to call their Online Store (877-934-6792) for more information. I repeated

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the number to her, and she confirmed it. I called the number and got a
recording, Were sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. I called
Customer Service again and got put on hold. While I was holding, I glanced at
another web page I had opened before getting offline, and saw that I could get a
20 MB Fujitsu or Maxtor drive for about $145. Prices for those manufacturers
seemed to rise more rapidly after that, with the 27 MB drives up in the $180-200
range, so I figured 20 MB would probably be as high as I would go. Eventually
someone answered at Customer Service, and he told me that the proper number
for the Online Store was 877-934-6972. I tried calling that, but I must have
misdialed, because I got the Work from Home center, which would train me to
make money working right at my home. Ask yourself if you are Teachable,
the recording advised. It sounded like I would be purchasing a Decision Package
that would give me three hours worth of materials, complete with the name and
phone number of my Personal Team Leader. They urged me to return the $36
Decision Package for a full refund if I was not serious about making money
because, if I did that, I would be out of their hair, allowing them to concentrate
more fully on people who were serious. I tried dialing again, and this time I did
reach Terry at Western Digitals Online Store. He said the $30 rebate was for
retail purchases, not for purchases through the Online Store; that the best prices
at the Online Store were $185 for a 20 GB drive and $120 for a 10 GB (with
shipping); and that the trade-in deal was through Tech Support and I couldnt
combine it with retail or with an Online Store purchase. To get the trade-in, I
would have to open a Case Number ... oh, Jesus. I called Customer Service
again, but I must have chosen the wrong automated service option, because it
told me to go to their website, and then it hung up on me. I double-checked the
website and found that it told me to call Customer Service for information on
trading in an old drive. I called Customer Service again and received a recording
telling me that I might have to hold for up to ten minutes. I went to the
bathroom, came back, reviewed my information and concluded that, even with a
$30 rebate, a Western Digital 20 GB drive was not price-competitive with Fujitsu
and Maxtor. But how about the 10 GB for only $85? I still wasnt sure what good
the trade-in would be -- I mean, according to Terry at the Online Store had made
it sound like there would not actually be any place that I could use it, which
didnt sound right, so I stayed on hold for a while longer. The original concept
behind all this delay was that I was trying to find out whether I had to go to the
trouble of wiping off the Western Digital drive so that no one would be able to
see my precious data, or whether I could instead just drill a couple of holes
through it and throw it away, but now I realized that it would have been faster
just to wipe the thing regardless. So while I was waiting on hold, I realized that I
may as well start wiping it off. I rebooted from the floppy and was tempted to
run an old copy of Nortons WIPEINFO on it, but then Don came on and told me
that the purpose of a trade-in was to purchase a drive through him directly, and
that the price for a 10 GB drive would be $139 plus shipping. This was not an

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attractive price, so it seemed that wiping the drive was unnecessary after all, as I
would almost certainly bore holes through it anyway just to be on the safe side.
But then I realized that no, that was unnecessary, because there had been no data
on that disk for a long time, it probably hadnt been sensitive data anyway, it had
surely been overwritten by now, and if not, reformatting and then wiping out the
partitions with FDISK should do the job, and this way maybe I would still be
able to sell it to some tinkerer for five dollars. Having formulated that plan, I
decided to do it the other way around, deleting the partitions first (all except the
BADSPACE partition, which was just fine as it was -- God knows, I wasnt
interested in opening that can of worms again) and then formatting them all in
one swell foop. As it turned out, however, I couldnt do that because you cant
delete a primary partition when you have an extended partition. So I wound up
with C, free space, and BADSPACE. I ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, but it
choked on GoBack. So I went into DOS and created a bunch of files full of the
letter X and copied and multiplied them until I had filled the disk, and then I
deleted them, took the drive out of the machine, and put it in a box. So there. I
had managed to use up another hour or so on the process of preparing a
defective drive to be thrown away. And I was still not done with it! (See point
290.)
(c) Install Maxtor 7 GB Drive as Primary Master on PENTIUM Machine. The
Maxtor drive was the primary master drive in the AMD machine, and it would
continue to be so in the PENTIUM machine, so I didnt have to change any
jumpers. Moreover, partitions C and D on the Maxtor already contained the
latest program files all ready to go (see paragraph (a), above). All I needed to do,
before removing it from the AMD machine, was to run PartitionMagic on it and
rearrange its partitions so that it would have drives C, D, E, F, and G. (As noted
above, H would go on the Seagate drive.) I decided to simplify things by putting
1,000 MB in each of drives C (WIN98), D (PROGRAMS), and E (DATA). I put 22
MB in a FAT (not FAT32) partition for drive G (BURNING), which would be a
mere token or placeholder since the PENTIUM machine would not have a CD
burner. Later, when Norton Disk Doctor seemed to have a slight problem with
that, I upped it to 260 MB and made it a FAT32 partition after all. I put the
balance, about 3,400 MB, in drive F (AV). I was able to do this now because I had
not yet re-installed GoBack, which would otherwise have interfered with
PartitionMagic. (See point 255(e).) Then I put the Maxtor drive into the
PENTIUM machine as primary master drive, with the 3 GB Fujitsu model no.
MPB3032AT (see point 108) remaining in its position as primary slave.
(d) Freeing a Slave Locked by GoBack. Unfortunately, GoBack had locked that
Fujitsu drive. When I booted the system, I could not view its contents in DOS or
Windows. FDISK reported it as a Non-DOS partition, and when I looked at it
in PartitionMagic, the program reported it as simply a Type 44 drive that

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PartitionMagic could do nothing with except possibly erase it. (See point 354.)
My notes are a bit sketchy -- neither computer was working at this point -- but I
believe my next step was to reinstall GoBack on the primary master drive, and
now both drives were coming closer to being on the same team. I was still
having problems, however. After I ran ScanDisk on the Fujitsu slave drive, the
system froze with just a blinking cursor showing on the screen. Eventually this
changed to a blue screen with the words, GoBack Detected a Problem With
Your System. (Version 2.1e). Your system has become unstable and will be
rebooted. ... This instability is probably the result of a bug in an application
running on your system, but could also be caused by hardware problems.
GoBack will then scan your disk to verify integrity of its data. Code: gb_ios
(1829). Next, the system rebooted, ran ScanDisk automatically, and froze with a
blinking cursor again. I cold-rebooted from the floppy and continued with that
reboot by pressing the spacebar when GoBack gave me the opportunity. (See
point 254.) Now, at the DOS prompt, I was able to view the contents of both
hard disks, but now PartitionMagic showed both hard disks as being of Type 44.
I rebooted and got that same blue screen from GoBack again. The reboots were
very slow at this point, like the system was working its way through something.
I rebooted again, hit the spacebar, and chose to disable GoBack. Windows
booted, and I hit OK to cancel when GoBack offered to resume its installation.
To verify that the uninstall was complete, I went into Add/Remove Programs
and saw no entry for GoBack. Windows Explorer was now able to read both
disks. I rebooted into DOS, ran Norton Disk Doctor, and still had no problem
with either hard disk, leading me to conclude that the blue screen errors had
been caused by GoBack itself, not by some other program or hardware problem.
As far as I could tell, those blue screens and the underlying conditions did not
actually cause any damage; they were just evidence of an imperfection in the
install or uninstall process. This was when I got the Norton message, A
22.1meg DOS partition has been found, but DOS currently cant access it. Do you
want to revive this partition? (See paragraph (c), above.) I rebooted, ran
Norton again, and got the same message. I ran PartitionMagic. It, too, was now
able to read the partitions. I went into the slave Fujitsu drive and created a
primary partition -- which, as primary, promptly took the letter D, even though
it was on the slave drive, rather than the letter that was next in sequence after all
the letters on the master drive. I also created secondary partitions named
PROGRAMS (which would later be drive D, when I made this the primary
master drive in the AMD machine) and DATA (which would later be E). As on
the Maxtor, I made each of these three partitions 1 GB.
(e) Confirming the Seagate 1 GB Was OK. Earlier, I had had some problems with
the Seagate 1 GB drive, but had suspected that the problems might have been
due to the inability of a weak power supply to support three hard disks at once.
(See point 113(f).) That explanation became even more likely after the tests that I

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now put the Seagate drive through. I connected it to the AMD machine and
disconnected the other drive. I booted in DOS and tested it by itself. At first,
Norton Disk Doctor had a problem with it. The whole disk passed Norton
except the boot record at the start of the drive. Eventually I realized that Norton,
a DOS program, was not comfortable with a FAT32 drive, especially one that I
was still configured, from previous use, as an extended (i.e., not primary)
partition. My notes are a bit weak, but some program, possibly Norton, gave me
an Error # 117, to the effect that the partitions drive letter could not be identified.
To test the disk, then, I ran FDISK, deleted its partition, converted it to one
FAT16 primary partition, and ran Nortons thorough test on it twice that way. It
passed without any further problems. Then I repartitioned it into one extended
FAT32 partition using PartitionMagic.
(f) Copying the Master Setup to the Fujitsu. In DOS, I copied STEP_254.PQI from
the Fujitsu drive, where I had left a copy, to the Maxtor master drive. Then I
realized that I had a better alternative. Instead of having to redo the changes that
I had made since creating the STEP_254.PQI image file (see point 255), I could
use the DriveImage Disk-to-Disk Copy option. I ran DriveImage from the floppy
and thus copied the primary partition on the Maxtor drive to the primary
partition (which was now drive D, but would be drive C when I installed the
Fujitsu as the primary master disk on the AMD machine) on the Fujitsu; I also
copied the first secondary partition on the Maxtor (presently drive E, soon to be
PENTIUM drive D) to the first secondary partition (presently drive I, soon to be
AMD drive D) on the Fujitsu drive. Even if DriveImage had not been a purely
DOS program, I would still have had to do my operations in DOS at this point,
because when I forgot myself and allowed the system to boot into Windows at
one point, I got all kinds of error messages as the various initial configuration
and bootup procedures tried to find the contents of current drive E on the
Fujitsus primary master partition, which of course I was preparing to be a
mirror image of drive C (WIN98), not drive D (PROGRAMS). When I was ready
to copy the contents of the PROGRAMS partition on the Maxtor to the
PROGRAMS partition on the Fujitsu, I realized that I had not made absolutely
sure that there was no data remaining on the former drive F. I could not recall
anything being there, other than a TEMP folder and a copy of this document, but
I was not absolutely sure. But when I checked it in DOS, I saw a corrupted DIR
listing, and when I tested it with Norton Disk Doctor, I got the message that the
boot record was damaged beyond repair. This was a very confusing time, and of
course it occurred at this point when I was very tired, so I cannot be sure of what
happened, but it appeared that either PartitionMagic or GoBack had corrupted a
previously working partition, and since this had not happened to me before in
PartitionMagic, I had to suspect that, unless I had screwed it up myself
somehow, which was entirely possible, the fault may have lay with the
convoluted GoBack install/deinstall process. (This happened again later. See

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point 258(d).) Anyway, now that this corrupted listing seemed to have settled
the matter, I did not worry further about what minor data, if any, I might have
left on the old F drive, which I had now relabeled as PROGRAMS; I just used
DriveImage to fill it with the contents of the Maxtors PROGRAMS partition.
257. Win98 Installation on Two Machines: Similar and Different Steps. I had
now accomplished the changing of partitions that I had been mulling over at
point 255(f). To repeat one more previous step, I could now install GoBack on
the two machines separately. (See point 255(e).) This, like the installation of
different drivers and other steps mentioned above (see point 255), was
something that had to be done differently on the two computers. There would
be other similar steps later. (See point ___.) That is, I could continue to develop
a working, complete Windows 98 installation that I could still store on a CD and
could reinstall on either computer; but even if I remembered to set up on
machine as having a PENTIUM hardware configuration and the other as having
an AMD hardware configuration (see point ___), there would still be steps that I
would have to repeat in slightly different ways on each machine, and the
installation of GoBack was one of them.
258. GoBack Reinstallation. I installed, or reinstalled, GoBack on each computer,
as follows:
(a) Reinstallation on the PENTIUM Computer. In the custom installation
process, GoBack offered to reserve 666 MB on the F (AV) drive, leaving nearly 2
GB of free space in that partition. I accepted that offer. It also offered to set aside
103 MB out of 1,006 MB on the H (SWAP) partition. (See point 256.) I believed I
would sometimes need a good chunk of that partition for Cool Edit temporary
files (see point ___), and I saw no reason to allow GoBack to use up a bunch of
swap space just to track the temporary contents of the SWAP partition. I thought
there might be times when it would catch a Registry backup that I had
accidentally deleted from H:\Backups (see point 145(p)), however, but those
were tiny little affairs of 1-2 MB, so I set the custom setting for the second hard
drive to a mere 5 MB. In reply, GoBack informed me that I had to make it at least
10 MB, so I made it 10 MB. Now it said, For best results, you should reserve at
least 200 MB of space for GoBack. Would you like accept [sic] the smaller
amount anyway? I hoped this meant only that GoBack would not be able to
recall very much of the past with such a small memory, and not that the program
itself would not function OK with a mere 10 MB. I said that this was all I wanted
to allocate for that drive, and the installation proceeded. GoBack had apparently
installed a GOBACKIO.BIN file (see point 246) on the Maxtor drive during the
previous installation (see point 256(d)) and had not removed it when I had
uninstalled GoBack, so now I got this message: GoBack (133): It appears as
though the GOBACKIO.BIN file on disk 1 has been moved to a different

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partition on this disk or the geometry of the disk has been changed. This file will
be deleted since it is no longer valid. I had no problem with that, so I said OK.
And that took care of installing GoBack on the PENTIUM.
(b) Installation on the AMD Machine. Using PowerDesk Explorer and Size
Manager (see point 135), I reviewed the situation on the AMD computer. I had
two hard disks. The first one, as just noted (see point 256(d)), was a Fujitsu with
three 1 GB partitions named C (WIN98), D (PROGRAMS), and E (DATA). The
second hard disk was a Western Digital Caviar 102AA 10.2 GB drive. (See point
173.) I had previously set it up to have the same partition layout as the
PENTIUM machine (or perhaps it was the other way around), with drives F
(AV), G (BURNING), and H (SWAP) (see point 32), but now I saw that its
allocation was not quite what I wanted. Specifically, the SWAP partition, at 2
GB, was twice as large as I wanted or needed it to be. Unfortunately, this was
where I had stored a copy of the previous Win98 installation on the AMD
machine. (See point 169.) Rather than do the partition adjustment first, which
would require Partition to move all that data around, I decided to move the data
to drive F first and then adjust the partition (which, in turn, I had to do before
installing GoBack -- see point 236). I used PowerDesk Explorer for this. It went
very slowly, however, and I wondered whether I should try instead copying it to
drive E and then copying it from there to drive F, on the theory that transfers
from one hard disk to another are much faster than transfers to the same hard
disk, which require the drives head to jump back and forth constantly.
Unfortunately, I could not experiment with this because that old drive C had
swollen into a monstrosity filling nearly 2 GB of disk space, and none of the
partitions on the primary master drive were large enough for that. So I copied
directly from H to F. When I went to bed, the computer was saying that it still
had more than two hours to go. Next morning, I saw that it had stalled on some
overly long items that I had saved as Favorites, apparently because the people
who programmed the websites had given them titles that were a half-mile long
and I had allowed Favorites to save those long titles by default. Next, the
copying process balked with the statement, Cannot copy OMI9: Access is
denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not
currently in use. Well, the disk was not full, so this raised in my mind the
question of whether Windows or some program had been using files in this
supposedly archival folder on drive H. PrcView (see point ___) did not seem to
report any such thing; then again, PrcView seemed mostly to report EXE activity
rather than DLL. This particular OMI9.DLL file appeared to be in the Office
folder. I rebooted and tried again without using any Office-related programs,
but still got the same error message. I decided that I had only needed this old
copy of drive C a couple of times during this whole process, and that I had now
probably reached the point where I didnt need it anymore, so instead of copying
it (which might have worked where cutting and pasting would not), I simply

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deleted the whole thing, so as to be sure that none of my programs would be

using any of these old program files, now or in the future. An alternative would
have been to zip it all into a large ZIP file (or, if it had been on a drive by itself,
using DriveImage to put it into a disk image file), but I didnt feel like spending
the time that it would have taken to do that with a 2 GB folder. Interestingly, it
did not hesitate to delete that OMI9.DLL file, so maybe the problem was
something disk-related after all, perhaps with the size of the subfolder I was
installing on drive F. Anyway, with that gone, I now had far less than 1 GB of
material in the H (SWAP) drive, so I rebooted in real DOS and tried to use
PartitionMagic to shrink it down to 1 GB, allocating the balance to F (AV).
(c) PartitionMagic Problem Fixed with FDISK. On the 10 GB Western Digital
drive on the AMD machine, I noticed an odd free space entry after drive H. I
wanted to move drive H so that it would contain these 730 MB of unused space.
Unfortunately, when I tried to do this in PartitionMagic, the program froze and I
had to reboot. After this happened twice, I reviewed the contents of drive H,
decided that I could safely delete them. To do this, I went into FDISK, changed
to drive 2, displayed its partition information, went into the extended partition,
and saw that drive H was a FAT32 partition containing 2,243 MB. At the main
FDISK menu, I chose Delete Logical DOS Drive in the Extended DOS Partition
and chose H. (Note that if the volume shows no Volume Label, you just hit
Return when it asks you for the Volume Label of the drive you are deleting.)
Without bothering to reboot, I went back into PartitionMagic and created one
large logical partition to fill the free space that was now up to 2,973 MB; I resized
it down to 1,000 MB and formatted it; and I moved the balance up to F by first
moving it to G, resizing G to put its free space at the front, and then resizing F.
(Note that you can do all this in one PartitionMagic session; you just dont hit the
Apply Changes button until youve given all your commands for both disks.)
This all worked OK, and now I had a huge (for me) 8 GB partition in drive F.
Later, I revised this. (See point 269(f).)
(d) Changed Partition Sizes on Fujitsu. Now that my partitions were arranged
the way I wanted, I rebooted into Windows and began the GoBack installation
again. This time, however, I decided that I needed to manage my space on the
first hard drive more carefully: the simplistic solution of putting 1 GB in each of
drives C, D, and E (see point 256(c)) was just not going to work. That is, GoBack
was suggesting that I set aside 308 MB for its GOBACKIO.BIN file in E (DATA),
and I agreed with that suggestion, but under the present arrangement of the
partitions, that would allow me only 400 MB free for data files. I decided to
reboot in DOS and run PartitionMagic again to leave 900 MB in drive C (which
left 248 MB free), 1,000 MB in D (270 MB free), and 1,189 MB in E (914 MB free).
PartitionMagic seemed to finish (although the screen said it was only 96% done),
but it gave me an error message that said, The file could not be opened. I

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wasnt sure what this meant. I exited, intending to run Norton Disk Doctor on
that hard disk, but then I saw that the directory of the drive was all messed up.
This was the same drive that had displayed this problem earlier. (See point
256(f).) Also, I had had that problem a few moments ago on the 10 GB Western
Digital drive. (See paragraph (c), above.) I figured that if it was a disk problem, I
would see evidence of it soon enough in Windows, and that since I had not seen
that problem yet, it might be a problem with PartitionMagic. It could also have
been a GoBack problem: I had only just started the GoBack installation, but then
again I had never experienced this problem in PartitionMagic. Maybe GoBack
had already done things to the disk and was now in a sort of dangerous phase.
They had told me that I had to disable GoBack before using PartitionMagic, but
the problem here was that I had not even installed GoBack yet. Anyway, I
rebooted, and the drive was back to normal. (Note to self: if it looks all screwed
up, reboot before trying to fix it.) I ran Norton Disk Doctor. It told me that the
first hard disk did have partitions of 902 MB (C), 1,000 MB (D), and 1,189 MB (E),
so it looked like PartitionMagic had indeed finished. I told Norton to diagnose
all three of these partitions (not using its thorough test). It found no problems
with any.
(e) Finishing the AMD GoBack Installation. Now that my partitions were
arranged the way I wanted, I ran GoBack again and installed it without further
difficulty. It took the aforementioned 308 MB out of drive E and another 975 MB
out of drive F. That 975 MB was a lot and was more than I would have
preferred, until I thought about it and decided that this would be faster than
enabling Undo in Cool Edit, which would slow down every editing action I took
in Cool Edit; this would slow down nothing and would still give me some extent
of undo-style protection, except with the really large audio files, which I would
just have to remember to keep a backup copy of. Later, however, I saw that,
even when I was working on relatively small WAV files, GoBacks Event Log
recorded a message that said, GoBack logging suspended due to massive file
activity, so it appeared that Undo would sometimes be essential anyway.
Worse, as I looked at that screen, I saw that all logging before that point had
vanished. Changing one large file on drive F had wiped out all of my GoBack
protection on both hard drives! This was not good. As soon as I saw this, I
halted everything and made a current DriveImage backup of the system. (See
point 269.) Plainly, if I intended to continue editing audio files, I was going to
have to remember to suspend GoBacks logging manually if I couldnt find a way
to do it automatically. (See point ___.)
259. Device Manager on the AMD. The process of booting the AMD machine
had taken care of some of the driver installations that needed to occur on that
computer (see point 255(c)), but I had to do a number of other things to get the
hardware situation in order on that computer:

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(a) AMD Hardware Configuration. It was time to move past the None of the
above option at bootup (see point 256(a)) and create an AMD configuration for
the hardware I had already installed and the hardware that I was about to install
or configure. As before (see point 207), I went into Control Panel | System |
Hardware Profiles , I copied the Original Configuration profile, and created a
new profile called AMD. The box said that these profiles selected different
hardware configurations at startup, so I rebooted. Sure enough, a new AMD
option appeared at bootup, so I selected that. Judging from the experience with
the PENTIUM configuration, all the changes that I would make to hardware
from now on (at least during this current session) would apply to the AMD
configuration.
(b) DMA. I wondered whether the slowness I noticed when moving the copy of
old drive C from drive H to drive F on the AMD (see point 258(b)) might have
been at least partly due to DMA not being turned on. (See point 106.) When I
checked in Device Manager, however, I found that the setting was still on, as I
had configured it on the PENTIUM machine with a different hard disk in mind.
On reboot, I found that the box was still unchecked, so I checked it again and
rebooted immediately. It was unchecked again after rebooting. I had thought
the drive was DMA-capable, but my online search had also found that it was
capable of different modes (see point 173), so I assumed it was finding the mode
that suited it best on my system. [On review, Im not sure this paragraph makes
sense, but this is all Ive got on what I did at this stage, so well have to make the
best of it.]
(c) Monitor Driver. All this time, on the AMD machine, I had been getting error
messages from various programs (e.g., Seti@home -- see point 156(k)) at bootup,
telling me that they could not run in less than 256 colors. To fix this, I went into
Device Manager | Display Adapter | Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) |
Properties | Driver | Update Driver (see point 255(c)) and told it to look for a
driver in the files that I had downloaded from the manufacturer. The system
now recognized my video adapter as an S3 Inc. Savage4. It offered to reboot, and
I accepted. I went into Control Panel | Display | Settings and chose 800 x 600
16-bit color. And that took care of it.
(d) Exists in All Hardware Profiles. I went down the list of all items in Device
Manager, looking for a checkbox that said, Exists in all hardware profiles. In
some cases, there was no such box, or it was not checked. In other cases, the box
was checked when it should not have been. I removed those checkmarks in the
following cases (making other changes as well, as noted here): (1) Yamaha
CRW4416E CD-ROM: turn off Auto-insert notification (see point 109(f)). (2) S3
Inc. Savage4 display adapter. (3) Diamond Multimedia SUP2750 PCI Modem

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Enumerator. (4) SupraMax 56i Voice PCI modem. (5) SerialM Serial Mouse. (6)
Symbios Logic 53C400A (HP Version) SCSI Adapter: remove from this hardware
profile (and thus remove a Device Manager exception). (7) Sound, video, and
game controllers: none of them existed in all hardware profiles. After rebooting,
I went down the list of other items just given and found that the exists in all
hardware profiles boxes had remained unchecked for all these items. I also
found, however that the Symbios Logic item was still there, so this time I clicked
on the Remove button for that item and told the system to remove it only from
the AMD configuration.
Internet Connections and Automatic Website Opening
260. Audio Adjustments. This was not related to the Internet; then again, I
didnt know at this point that that would be the direction of the next several
days. Thus, I took several steps to improve the use and performance of my
computer audio software and hardware, as follows:
(a) Sound Recorder Audio Properties. I went into the Sound Recorder program
that came with Windows and set its Edit | Audio Properties | Advanced
Properties (for both Playback and Recording) to use full hardware acceleration
and best quality. Also, someone who seemed to know what they were talking
about said that, for voice recording, you would get your best compression and
quality tradeoff by using the DSP Group Truespeech Software codec. This codec
came with Windows. To use it to compress my audio in Sound Recorder, all I
had to do was to select Save As (after recording a sound), click the Change
button down by the Format box at the bottom of the screen, and select the DSP
Group format option. It seemed likely that, if I was concerned about the quality
of a recording, I would first record the WAV file, perhaps in Sound Recorder or
perhaps in Cool Edit (see point 157(a)), and would edit it in Cool Edit to remove
noise and other defects before compressing it. Cool Edit did not offer a DSP
compression option at this point, and seemed generally more oriented toward
music compression (with its Fraunhofer MP3 codec) rather than voice
compression, so it seemed possible that I would take this tip and try using Sound
Recorder for speech compression of an edited WAV file. (See point ___.)
(b) DOS Sound Playback. To jazz up my DOS boxes, and to remember how to do
this, I added a line to DOSSTART.BAT. (See point 105(l).) The line looked like
this: MPLAYER.EXE /PLAY /CLOSE
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA\JUNGLE~2.WAV. This would play a brief sound
before opening a DOS box. I had actually already set this up on the PENTIUM
machine. Now, to make it work on the AMD machine, I made the following
additional changes in Media Player: I selected Edit | Options, turned on Auto
Rewind, and turned off Border Around Object. For some reason, however, it

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was starting in a Pause mode, which is to say it wasnt playing. Also, when I
tried to run it two times in a row, I got a dialog box indicating that the playback
device was in use elsewhere. Not wanting to bother with this foolishness, I put a
comment mark (REM) in front of the program line just given in DOSSTART.BAT,
hopefully to be revisited sometime in the future when I had run across a
solution.
(c) Cool Edit Temporary File Locations. Now that I had 1,000 MB H (SWAP)
partitions on each computer (see point 258(a)), I created two folders named
E:\Temp\Cool Edit Primary Temp Files and H:\Cool Edit Secondary Temp
Files, and told Cool Edit (Options | Settings | System) to look for these files in
those locations. I chose these locations because Cool Edit advised me to to put
these two locations on separate hard disks if possible. There wasnt all that much
room to spare on drive E (see point 258(d)) as compared to drive F, but I figured
that the two of them combined might do the trick, and that keeping them away
from drive F might reduce the need to constantly defragment that partition,
whose large size could might defragmenting a very time-consuming process.
(d) Audio Suite. Previously, I had set up Suites -- i.e., batch files that would open
a number of pages at once, and that would themselves open up with just one
click on the appropriate icon on the Suites Toolbar. (See point 153.) I now added
another icon and suite to that toolbar. The batch file
(D:\DOS_UTIL\STE_AUD.BAT) looked like this:
___insert STE_AUD.BAT
261. Web Suite, Frequented Folder, and Wildcard Link. By now, experience had
suggested that I revamp the Web Suite, the Frequented folder, and the Wildcard
Link. The Web Suite was the batch file that opened a number of different
sessions of Internet Explorer, so that all I had to do was click on one button to
visit all of the websites I tended to visit each day. (See point 120(af).) The
Frequented folder was the item on the Links Toolbar that would allow me to
open different Websites with just two clicks. (See point 109(g).) The Wildcard
Link was the item on the Links Toolbar that, when I clicked on it, would pop up
a Parameters box, and when I entered one letter into that box (e.g., You") would
take me to the Website represented by that letter (e.g., Yahoo!). (See point
145(o).) The revision I had in mind involved several steps:
(a) Identifying the Entries. I began by locating the contents of each of these three
tools. The Web Suite ran entirely from one batch file called STE_WEB.BAT. The
Frequented folder contained a separate entry for each website that I might want
to visit frequently, all in the C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Frequented folder.
The Wildcard Link ran from a single batch file called WILDCARD.BAT. At the

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beginning, these three sources each referred to somewhat different sets of URLs,
so as I went through the following steps, I found that I had to come back once or
twice and revise the various lists to make sure I had everything I wanted in each
of the tools discussed below.
(b) URL Batch Files. I created a D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS subdirectory. In that
directory, I created a separate batch file for each URL that I might want to build
into any one of these three techniques (i.e., Web Suite, Frequented folder, or
Wildcard Link). Each of these batch files consisted of just one line. For example,
the batch file for Yahoo! (called YAHOO.BAT) consisted of this line: START
/MAX HTTP://WWW.YAHOO.COM. This would simply take an existing
session of Internet Explorer to the designated website (opening a new session of
Internet Explorer to accomplish this, if there werent any already open). I kept
the batch file names to 8+3 format (e.g., the name of the Infospace batch file was
INFOSPAC.BAT) so that it would be easier to know how to refer to them in other
DOS batch files. To make things function predictably in all cases, I decided to
make each of these batch files automatically open a separate session of Internet
Explorer before taking me to the designated website. That is, I would no longer
experience the uncertain outcome that sometimes there would be a new browser
session and sometimes the browser would be pulled away from a page where I
might have wanted it to stay. To do this, I added another line to each of these
batch files, so that the first line now read like this: START
C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE. Some of the URLs were long, and
at first I assumed I had to enclose them in quotation marks, but then I found that
they worked fine without quotes. Thus, for example, to get an advanced Alta
Vista search page that would default to English as its chosen language, I ran that
search page with nothing specified except that language, and then saved the URL
in an AV_ADV.BAT file which looked like this:
:: Opens the Alta Vista advanced search page
:: Abbreviation AVA
start c:\progra~1\intern~1\iexplore.exe
start /max http://www.altavista.com/cgibin/query?pg=aq&q=&r=&kl=en&d0=&d1=&search.x=26&search.y=15
(Note that paragraph (f), believe, makes use of the exact structure of the
comment line shown here.) I visited a number of other websites and applied
similar tricks in order to get just the right URLs for my purposes. Note: when
the URLs contained % symbols, I had to double them up (%%) because DOS
interpreted %, by itself, as the symbol of a variable, or something like that.)

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(c) Creating the Shortcuts. Next, in Windows Explorer, I right-clicked on each of

these batch files and edited their Properties | Program tab as follows: (1)
improve the name (e.g., the DOS name of INFOSPAC would appear, in the
resulting shortcut, as InfoSpace), (2) Run minimized, and (3) Close on exit. Note
that this would minimize the DOS batch file, not the Internet Explorer session
spawned by that batch file. This action created a separate shortcut for each batch
file, stored in the URLs subdirectory in PIF format (e.g.,
D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS\INFOSPAC.PIF). Then I renamed these shortcuts to have
names that would be more informative, but that would continue to sort properly
in the Frequented folder. For example, I wanted the entry for My Deja to come
up next to the entry for Deja Search, so I renamed the My Deja shortcut to be
Deja -- My. I decided to leave the original shortcuts in this URLS folder, so I
would always know where to find them, and would copy them as needed to
other locations.
(d) Web Suite Revision. I opened STE_WEB.BAT and replaced all of its existing
lines with simple START commands that would refer back to the batch files I had
just created. An example was START D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS\WEATHER.BAT. I
did this, of course, only for the websites that I wanted to visit daily, not for every
website for which I now had a URL batch file. Later, I revised this approach
significantly. (See point ___.)
(e) Frequented Folder. Now that I had set up each of the URL batch files to open
a separate browser session, I could use them to avoid a problem I had noticed
with the Frequented folder up to now: sometimes I found that clicking on one of
its items would distract the browser from a website where I wanted it to stay and
would point it instead toward the new site whose icon I had clicked in the
Frequented folder. With the batch file format shown above, I could now have
shortcuts in Frequented that would open a new browser session every time. To
do this, I just copied the shortcuts from D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS that I wanted to
appear in C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Frequented. This list of shortcuts was
not the same as the list that I had used in the Web Suite, since there were some
sites that I would want to visit only once a day and would not need to have in
the Frequented folder, and there were also some frequented items (e.g., search
engines) that I would not want to open until I had some specific need for them.
(f) Wildcard Link. I saw no reason to limit this item to one letter. Allowing more
letters would make it possible for this link to offer an abbreviation for every
website listed in D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS. I built abbreviations into each of the
batch files in that URLS directory, as shown in paragraph (b), above, along with a
final EXIT line that would shut down WILDCARD.BAT after Internet Explorer
had been started and sent to the proper URL. In this way, WILDCARD would
handle all kinds of URLs, not merely to those of the www.X.com format, and if I

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failed to specify an abbreviation, it would show me the list of those that I had
assigned in URL_SHOW.BAT. These programs, in final form, looked like this
(with the actual links going to PIF shortcut files whose Properties were set to
Close on exit):
___insert URL_SHOW.BAT and WILDCARD.BAT
Later, I decided that Wildcard was just a substitute for an organized set of
Favorites and that I probably would not have bothered with it in the first place if
Id had my Favorites up and running (see point 327), so I removed the Wildcard
icon from the Links toolbar.
(g) Run Web Suite Automatically. I decided that the news of the world should be
greeting me every morning -- i.e., that all of these websites I visited each day
should load and be ready for action at the time I estimated I would be ready to
view them, which at this point was 6:30 AM. There were two problems: (1) I
couldnt set the Internet Explorer to dial automatically, because as I had learned
from experience, the thing would then be dialing up in the middle of phone
conversations or whenever the random mood struck. (2) Not really a problem,
but an additional desired feature: some of these websites were online e-mail sites
or otherwise needed a password before they would really be ready to show me
their goods. The latter point was easier to address: all I needed was to turn on
Internet Explorers AutoComplete features in Internet Explorer (Tools | Internet
Options | Advanced) (but see point 105(i)), and then it would fill in my
passwords and take me right to the lists of e-mails or whatever that I wanted to
view. I thought I had already told the thing to stay on (see point 109(i)), but I
saw now that it had gotten turned off somehow. Anyway, I turned it on now,
retried the Web Suite, and that didnt do it. Later, it did work for one of the
passworded websites, but not for the other. I got back to the development of this
Web Suite later. (See point 272.)
(h) Favorites Folder. I found that the Favorites folder was not easy to get to,
mostly because there was so much stuff in C:\Windows that it was a minor
hassle to page down to it and open it up. I thought I had previously used XSetup to relocate it to E:\Favorites (see point 137(m)), but for some reason that,
like some other X-Setup fixes, seemed to have come undone. I could have
redone it in X-Setup, or I could have done the same thing by a Registry edit. (Go
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Expl
orer and make two edits, one in the Shell Folders key and one in the User Shell
Folders key; the edits are to set the Favorites value to the path you want for your
Favorites folder, using two backslashes instead of one (e.g.,
F:\\Temp\\Favorites).) I decided that the number of Favorites in use was too

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small to promote much disk fragmentation, and that it would probably be easier
and safer to leave the Favorites folder where it was. If it turned out that I did
need to get to it frequently, I thought I could probably create a shortcut to it and
put that on the Folders toolbar.
262. Shutdown and Reboot Difficulties. I found that the scheme I had developed
for various kinds of shutdown and rebooting (see point 128) had run into some
problems, as follows:
(a) User Connected to My Computer. The addition of a network (see point 184)
had introduced the problem that my computer would no longer shut down
without first giving me this message: There are 1 user(s) connected to your
computer. Shutting down your computer will disconnect them. Do you want to
continue? Since I didnt know the terminology for these different situations, I
called this one the Weak Disconnect option, whereas a Strong Disconnect would
simply cut that connection without asking me. Further tinkering with the
various command lines introduced in point 128 led me to the following
conclusions:
For a Weak Disconnect followed by a reboot, use this line in a batch file:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(It had previously seemed wise to insert the following lines before the RUNDLL
line:
echo You may now reboot.
pause
but the addition of the network had interposed an additional brake, in the form
of the question regarding other users, as quoted just a moment ago, so there no
longer seemed to be a need for these lines.)
For a Strong Disconnect followed by a reboot, use this line:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
If I had wanted the option of a Weak Disconnect followed by a shutdown, I
would have just created a batch file that would have asked, Are you sure?
before the following option.
For a Strong Disconnect followed by a shutdown, use this line:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5

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In short, the only difference among these lines is the final number: 2, 6, or 5,
respectively.
(b) Reboot Modes: Real DOS, MS-DOS Mode, DOS Box, Normal Mode, or Safe
Mode. All but one of these five options arose within Windows. Real DOS, the
exception, was the basic operating system of PCs since 1981. Even Windows 98
starts with real DOS. Thats why, if you could catch the system right at the start,
when it ran its AUTOEXEC.BAT file, before Windows has fully loaded, you
could insert all kinds of DOS tricks into your system. (See point 120(al).) Some
of the fundamental disk activities discussed in this document (e.g., those
involving FDISK and DriveImage) required Real DOS rather than Windows
because DOS allowed tighter and simpler control of what was happening on the
disk. Turning to the five Windows options just mentioned, MS-DOS Mode and a
DOS Box were essentially the same. They were imitation forms of DOS that
would allow you to do many (but not all) of the things that you could do in real
DOS, and would also allow you to do some things that were beyond the
capabilities of real DOS. The difference between the two was that you would run
a DOS Box without leaving your regular Windows interface, while MS-DOS
Mode required you to reboot into something that looked a lot like plain old DOS
-- and as long as you were in MS-DOS Mode, you could not switch into other
windows. Finally, there were two modes within which you could run Windows.
Normal Mode allowed full access to all of your systems hardware and software
(assuming they were all in proper working order). Safe Mode was a more
limited mode, generally intended for troubleshooting purposes. Safe Mode
would not allow some aspects of your system to run; in exchange, you and the
system would be better able, in some circumstances, to figure out what might be
wrong with your computer.
(c) Choosing a Reboot Mode. In addition to the Strong Disconnect and Weak
Disconnect options discussed in paragraph (a), above, there was the question of
what would happen next, after my system disconnected from the network and
closed down Windows. The Shutdown option, of course, would lead to nothing
at all happening next; but the reboot option would allow you to start Real DOS,
MS-DOS Mode, Normal Mode, or Safe Mode. My experience, during the weeks
between point 128 and now, had suggested that I really had no use for the Weak
Disconnect option: when I clicked on one of those reboot options on the Bye
toolbar (see point 143), I wanted the damn computer to reboot without further
ado. And, as mentioned in paragraph (b), above, I had hardly ever used
Windows MS-DOS Mode (and could reach it by hitting Start | Shutdown
anyway). So in writing the batch file options that would appear on the Bye
toolbar, I found that I really needed only Strong Disconnect options, and that the
next thing after the Strong Disconnect would be either Normal Mode, Safe Mode,
or Real DOS. Those choices required the appropriate instruction to

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BOOT_MGR.BAT. (See point 120(al).) Or, as I thought about it, I could bypass
BOOT_MGR and issue its command directly. Thus, the batch files offered on my
Bye toolbar (which I now renamed the Reboot toolbar) were as follows:
:: SHUTDOWN.BAT
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5
:: BOOTNORM.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Normal Mode
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Normal Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
:: BOOTSAFE.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Safe Mode
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Safe Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
:: BOOTDOS.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Real DOS
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Real DOS > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
(For more information on BOOTCALL.TXT, see point 129.)
263. CD Burning Suite. I had heard that some CD burners (see point 4) were
very sensitive, such that they would ruin the blank CD they were trying to burn
if you disturbed them in the least; and I had heard that some (especially Plextor
drives) were so steady that people bragged of being able to defragment their
hard disks while burning CDs. Mine was somewhere in the middle. Since I had
wasted a few CDs, however, I decided to err on the conservative side. That is,
when I was burning CDs, I tended to shut down anything that posed a risk of
interrupting the CD burner. I decided now to create a Suite (see point 113(e))
that would shut down all likely sources of interference, load the programs I
needed, and then return everything to normal when I was done. Leaving aside
the question of how to set up the icon, the shortcut, and other details regarding
that Suite (see point 261), the main challenge was to program the batch file. To
figure out which processes were running, and then to kill most of them, I used

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PrcView (see point 141(f)), which ran in Real DOS as PV. To figure out which
ones to kill, I used the Win98 FileInfo utility (see point 119(a)): if they werent
listed in that utility, I figured they werent an integral part of Windows 98, and if
they were listed, I had to do a little trial and error to see if the system would
function right without them. While fooling with it, I found that some choices
would disable the TweakUI setting that would bypass the network login dialog
box, so I would have to redo that. (See point 199.) Basically, I left most of the
files running that showed a path of C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM,
except MSTASK.EXE. Also, the desire to have DOS programs run within
Windows in a certain sequence, and then vanish, prompted me to set up several
interrelated files. Heres what I came up with:
___ insert STE_BURN.BAT and the files it calls
264. DEFRAG Redux. Now that I knew it was possible to shut down the
processes that might interfere with CD burning, and still keep Windows running
otherwise, I decided to simplify the DEFRAG situation by applying the same
technique there. In my last look at that situation, I had hit upon the solution of
using a tool that would allow me to reboot the system and then run
Defragmenter before running anything else. (See point 141(k).) In practice, that
approach had a couple of problems. First, the actual usage was tricky. I found
that the program, as I had it set up, would go ahead and reboot regardless of
how I answered the question in the dialog box. (The dialog box Im talking
about was the one that was triggered by the temporary Registry edit that would
allow DEFRAG to run by itself after reboot.) The only difference my answer
made was that it would, or would not, run DEFRAG after rebooting according to
whether I said I wanted that Registry change made or not. I tried changing this
by using a different rebooting command that would ask for my approval before
rebooting, but that wasnt much better because I would still see the dialog box on
top of the DOS box, and would naturally be tempted to answer its question first,
before paying attention to what was in the DOS box. Second, the thing did not
work quite as advertised. On at least one occasion, I had found that some other
program was in fact running while DEFRAG was running, and was provoking it
to start over and try again. And third,the timing was not quite right. For
whatever reason, I had consistently decided not to let the thing start up and do
its defragmenting. The excuse was that I had files open and work half-done, but
that would always be the case. I thought I might be more inclined to let
DEFRAG work if I knew I was going to see it start defragmenting immediately.
Therefore, I designed the following batch file and used this one, not the one
shown in point 141(l), to run Defragmenter, and I scheduled it in Task Scheduler
(see point 105(h)):
___ DEFRAG.BAT and related files

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It still wasnt perfect or pretty, but it worked better, and I figured I could tinker
with it later. I was beginning to get the idea that the DOS tinkering could go on
indefinitely. My main goal at this point was to get the system into good working
shape with a complete set of tools, and this would suffice for that.
265. Modem Tweaks. I had heard about a couple of modem adjustments that I
thought might improve things for me. They were as follows:
(a) iSpeed. I had downloaded this program earlier. (See point 156(d).) Now it
was time to use it. The program had four tabs, some of which contained some
settings that I did not need and/or understand. I started with their Help file.
Along with other advice, it basically told me to start by running a test. To do
this, I was supposed to use an FTP site. It may sound silly, but I didnt know
any, and when I went to the site that they recommended where I could get some
sample FTP ideas, Internet Explorer told me that there was no such page. I
played with it for a little while and then realized that the adjustments I would be
making here were going to apply to the PENTIUM computer as well as the AMD
computer. That is, this was something I was supposed to be doing to each
machine separately, after I had my complete generic software situation worked
out. Then, as I browsed further in the advice at
www.tweak3d.net/tweak/modem/3.shtml, it began to sound like iSpeed was
really just recommended for Windows 95, not Win98, and that it would make
Registry changes that would actually reduce the flexibility of the Win98 settings.
They advised uninstalling iSpeed. I checked online and found other comments
indicating that it had changed some settings for some people in undesirable
ways, and other advice to uninstall it. I decided that it would be wise for me to
distinguish general recommendations (try this program -- it worked for me)
from more specific and seemingly knowledgeable recommendations (iSpeed
will change your MTU settings under Win98 in the following ways ...). Even so,
I was still running across a number of comments indicating that some people had
really gained from this program. I decided to post a question about the state of
the art on whether it was worthwhile or not. A knowledgeable individual, a
frequent contributor to that newsgroup, responded that people who obtained
gains from iSpeed were probably just getting back to where they would have
been if they hadnt fooled with the settings in the first place. I uninstalled it.
(b) Registry Settings. The Tweak3d site also suggested making the following
Registry changes: (1) In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\,
there were items numbered 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Under some of those keys,
there was a value named SLOWNET. They told me to change the value on this
item from 01 to 00 in each of these numbered keys where it appeared. In my

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system, it appeared in 0000, 0001, and 0003. (A setting of 00 means its off; a
setting of 01 means its on.) (2) In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\COMB
UFF, the value of the Start item should be changed to 01. (3) Likewise for the
Start item in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\VCAC
HE.
(c) Modem Initialization Strings. In the olden days, people had to type modem
commands manually. It was still possible to do this, or at least to specify some of
the features that you would have specified if you were doing all this by hand. I
found complete modem initializations strings for many kinds of modems,
including both of mine (and my NewCom modem has generally seemed to be
pretty obscure as far as other people are concerned) at
www.spy.net/%7Edustin/modem/. The suggestions there werent especially
relevant for my needs, but they may be for others. What I found more
interesting was the option of adding S-Registers. To do this, I went into Control
Panel | Modems | Properties | Connection | Advanced | Extra Settings. At this
point, I made an interesting discovery: although Device Manager showed only
the modem that I had installed for this AMD machines hardware profile (see
point 207), this Modems | Properties box was showing the modems for both the
AMD and the PENTIUM machines. So I could configure them both now, instead
of waiting for some later time when I would be making machine-specific
adjustments for the two computers separately. (See point ___.) Anyway, the
Extra Settings entries that I had heard most about and found interesting, and that
I made at this point, were as follows: (1) S10=50. According to my NewCom
modems manual, the S10 register (not to be confused with the Windows 98
Registry) is the Lost carrier hang up delay. Apparently this commonlyrecommended setting of 50 meant that my modem would stay connected to my
ISP, even if the carrier signal was interrupted, for up to five seconds. The
purpose of this setting was, hopefully, to reduce the number of times when I got
disconnected while online. I had been blaming those disconnections on my ISP;
now we would just see. (2) S11=50. Here, the 50 apparently meant milliseconds,
not tenths of a second. The S11 register was the DTMF dialing speed. It seems
that a setting of 50 milliseconds here meant that this would be the amount of
delay between each number dialed. For example, if the number dialed was 5551234, there would be a 50-millisecond delay between the 2 and the 3, etc. This
seemed to be considered a very fast setting; people said that if it didnt work,
your system would just default to the fastest setting that it could actually handle.
(Later, I noticed that this seemed to work on the one modem -- it dialed much
faster than before -- but not on the other.) To type these settings in the Extra
Settings box, I just put a space between them, like this: S10=50 S11=50. Other
settings that I had used in the past, or that seemed potentially useful in the

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future, included these: M1 (sets the modems speaker on just until the carrier is
present) or M0 (speaker always off) (M1 was the default and there were other
options); and S9=[tenths of a second] (Carrier recovery time); S30=[minutes]
(disconnect after inactivity).
(d) Dial-Up Networking (DUN) Adjustment. At this point, I noticed that my
DUN thought it was still using the 33 kbps modem on the PENTIUM machine,
rather than the 56 kbps modem I had in the AMD machine. I went into Dial-Up
Networking and created a separate entry for the 56 kbps modem, and made a
note to myself to make sure that each machine was using the right entry before I
was done. (See point ___.) Then I decided to delete the 33 kbps entry and
recreate it later if necessary, because it was forcing a manual choice and thus was
interfering with some things I was trying to create now in batch files. (See point
___.)
266. Internet Utilities. I had installed some utilities previously and was now
finding more. The following are the ones I considered at this point:
(a) WINIPCFG. This program resided in C:\WINDOWS. If you ran it from a
DOS command prompt or from Start | Run, it would give information about
your online connection and your network connection, including adapter address,
IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, NETBIOS information,
DHCP server, and WINS server. I created a shortcut to it and put it into the
Information folder under Start | Programs.
(b) TRACERT. This program also resided in C:\WINDOWS, and it ran, again,
from the DOS prompt or Start | Run. The description of it I got from somewhere
went like this: Trying to connect to your favorite search engine without
success? Okay, maybe you can't check if your Internet wire (connection) is
broken or not by using a bulb and a couple of batteries. But, you can get a good
idea how close you can get to the site you're trying to reach. I didnt have any
problems at present that warranted the use of it, so I just created another shortcut
so Id be able to find it if I needed it.
(c) Copernic 2000. I had downloaded and installed this program previously, on
the strength of advice from others, and was only now getting back to it. (See
point 156(b).) As I looked at it again, I recognized it; I had worked with its
predecessor a year or two earlier. The program indicated that this freeware
version could search only seven categories of information online, as compared to
the fifty categories you could search with their professional version. PC
Magazine had said that the program had the ability to do Boolean searches, but
when I tried one, I got a popup message that said, You do not have to use
Boolean operators (and, or) since Copernic automatically manages them. The

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only way in which I could see that the program managed them was to give me
the option of searching for all words, any words, or an exact phrase -- a far cry
from being able to search for something like this:
((win98 or win 98 or windows 98) near utility) and (boole* near search)
I had not used the predecessor program much, when it had offered similar
capabilities, and I probably was not going to use this one either, so I uninstalled
it.
(d) QuickSearch. This was an Internet utility that had come with Internet
Explorer, and that I had thought might be useful sometime. (See point 119(b).)
As I looked at it now, however, I realized that I would probably never use it. It
was a simple search tool that would allow me to type e.g., the letter Y, followed
by the thing I was searching for, and immediately get results from Yahoo! Or I
could type AV if I wanted the search to take place in AltaVista instead. This was
a lot like my Wildcard concept. (See point 261(f).) Having all those search
engines at my easy disposal was not all that important to me, however, since I
found it was generally much easier to get hundreds of hits on an Internet search
than to get three hits that were exactly what I wanted; Boolean searches were
much better for the latter. So I moved the QuickSearch icon to a back corner
under Start | Programs, figuring that I would probably never use it. Instead, I
sought a better way to do massive Boolean searches. (See point ___.)
(e) Weather1. This was another program that I had downloaded during my
freeware gold rush. (See point 156(m).) Now that I had worked up my Web
Suite (see point 261) and some other nifty ways to get to relevant websites
quickly, however, I felt that I probably would not actually have much need for a
weather icon that would sit in my system tray and always be ready to tell me the
current weather, when I could instead view The Weather Channel offline and get
a seven-day forecast! So I uninstalled this one too. I had to use their Uninstall
icon to do it; the program was not listed in Add/Remove Programs.
(f) URL Bandit. I had originally downloaded this X-Setup plug-in without really
knowing what it was. (See point 137.) Now that I had a minute to look at it, it
looked kind of interesting. It was just about the simplest thing you could
imagine: no options, no menus, no lists of right- or left-click alternatives. It was
basically a piece of lined note paper that sat on your screen. If you were in
Internet Explorer and you right-clicked on the Address box and chose Copy, the
URL for that page would go onto a line in X-Setup. Then, later, if you left-clicked
on that line in URL Bandit, Internet Explorer would show that page -- the one
from which you had copied the URL. If you right-clicked on that URL in URL
Bandit, the URL would vanish. And thats it. The only way to even find

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information about it was to right-click on the icon in the system tray and follow
its link to the X-Setup website. There, I learned quite a bit more. Basically, the
program would search through anything you put into your clipboard -- that is,
anything that you would select and then Copy -- and would extract all of the
URLs from it. The example they gave was where you would copy a 1 MB
website full of 200 URLs: it would extract them all, each on a separate line. I
tried it with a website and it didnt work, but maybe I just wasnt doing it right.
I thought this program had the potential to be very useful for helping me keep
track of interesting web pages when I was in the middle of a complicated search
and had too many sessions of Internet Explorer open already. So I decided to
use it for a while and see what I thought of it. (See point ___.)
(g) Internet Tech Support Diagnostics (INTCHDGN.ZIP). This program came
highly recommended by someone reputable -- I couldnt remember who at the
time, although I thought possibly PC Magazine -- and claimed to provide the
service of examining my modem and my network and Internet connections and
making some real-world suggestions about how I might improve them. I
installed and ran the program and was pleased at the clear, accurate information
it provided about my modems and connections. It reported some items that I
thought I probably should revisit later, when I was ready to delete some items
that really applied more to just one computer or the other. (See point ___.) I
clicked on the Analyze | Text Format Report option and got an interesting
report. It suggested that I should check with www.56k.com for further
information on how to optimize my modem. I found that that site did contain a
lot of information about upgrading modems, including some words of caution.
Since my system was working OK for now and I was in a conservative mood, I
decided not to go further with upgrading the modem at this time. The Text
Format Report also explained that modem initializations strings, although
perhaps expressing the obvious, may nevertheless make many modems run
faster. (See point 265(c).) Nevertheless, the site said, youre better off with the
right drivers than with a specialized init string. Since I seemed to have
obtained working drivers, I decided it wasnt broke and I wasnt going to fix it.
Next, I clicked on Test Modem in this Internet Tech Support Diagnostics
program. When it was done, it told me that I could click on Tech Wizard and
select the report format I wanted. Oops -- I seemed to have done things out of
order. There didnt seem to be any Tech Wizard button, but I guessed that the
Analyze button mentioned a moment ago had replaced it. I looked at the Text
Report again to see if it had changed. It hadnt. I concluded that this program
provided another little source of information that would probably be useful
sometimes. Later, I finally found a solution to the last of my modem problems.
(See point 281.)
Backup and System Issues

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267. Assorted Programs. I had recently downloaded a few items and took the
opportunity, now, to install them.
(a) Updated Drivers for Cardex S3 Savage4 Graphics Adapter by Gainward. I
had gotten this video card for very little money, and had paid for it in the
struggle to find out who made it, where to get the drivers, etc. (Of course, I
seemed by now to have misplaced that website, although I suspected I did have
it buried in my Favorites somewhere. See point 327.) I now had the drivers, in
any event, and although the driver installation process through Device Manager
gave me a weird message that drive F (where I had unzipped the download)
could not be accessed right now, I persevered.
(b) Other Drivers. I decided not to undertake a thorough search through
WinDrivers.com to make sure I had the latest drivers for all of my equipment.
Things seemed to be working pretty well at this point, and I decided it probably
made more sense to make that kind of search from time to time, as a given piece
of hardware caught my attention, rather than to sit there for hours doing a
thorough inventory of my hardware (see point 145(m)), figuring out whether I
needed new drivers, downloading them, and in some cases jumping through
hoops to install them.
(c) TweakAll. I obtained this program from www.abtonsshed.com/TweakFAQ.html after I saw that PCForrest (see point 44) had
recommended it in a newsgroup posting. It may be a sign of my fatigue with
this project at this point, and my eagerness to get on to other things, that I did
not undertake the detailed review of this program that I had undertaken when
considering TweakUI (see point 109(c)), even though this program was far less
familiar to me. Then again, I did not expect to use much of it, since the advance
comments that I had seen on the website had made me think that I had probably
already found other ways of accomplishing most of the tweaks that this program
offered. I installed it and looked through it. I liked it; I liked the things it
offered; and unless further research should indicate that it has caused significant
problems for some users, I would recommend using it, or the right version of
TweakUI, as a fast way of accomplishing many of the tweaks reviewed here, and
then following up with manual approaches for those that remain. For my
purposes at this stage of the game, I was pleased to have discovered the
program, and was also pleased that it really didnt offer much new to me. It was
a sign that I had begun to wrap up this project.
(d) Other Drivers, Again. Having just said (see paragraph (b)) that I would not
fool with more drivers, I found that I had already downloaded a bunch of them.

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So now I installed them. I pretty much just rammed through them, counting on
GoBack to save me if any of them went bad. (See point 228.) None did.
268. Audio Test. As the drooping energy level of the previous point may
indicate, it was getting to be late in the evening by now. I decided to turn the
computer loose with Cool Edit recording a 60-minute cassette tape. I figured
that, by the time I finished recording, editing, and compressing the songs on that
tape into MP3 format, I would probably have a better idea of whether everything
was functioning properly on the audio side. It actually took more than a day for
me to pursue other activities, returning to the computer occasionally to start it on
the next step in the audio process (record the tape, save it, noise-filter it, edit out
the unwanted songs, save the other songs to individual WAV files, normalize
those individual files, and save them to MP3 format), but everything seemed to
go OK with that tape, except that when I first started recording, I noticed a large
amount of disk thrashing, and had to start over because all that disk activity was
making the disk unable to keep up; that is, it was dropping pieces of the music. I
tried recording another tape, however, and experienced numerous dropouts in
the audio. This was not new --I had experienced it before -- and I attributed it to
the activity of other programs during the recording process. I decided that the
Audio Suite should shut down other processes before proceeding, just as other
Suites were doing, but I did not pursue this until later. (See point ___.)
269. DriveImage Backup. This was the point at which I recognized that GoBack
had ceased logging current events on the computer due to my editing of one
large audio file. (See point 258(e).) Thus, it seemed important to make a backup
at this stage.
(a) Running DriveImage from Drive D. When I rebooted to real DOS and tried to
run DriveImage from the floppy, I got Error # 58. Unable to write to the boot
sector. Virus protection software may be running. Last time around, I had
learned that this was a red herring, and that the problem was due to GoBack, not
AntiVirus. (See point 254.) I took out the floppy and tried running DriveImage
from D:\DOS_UTIL -- or, more precisely, from the PWRQUEST subfolder I had
created under DOS_UTIL. I got Error # 58 again. I rebooted and chose, this time,
to disable GoBack instead of taking the option of booting from the floppy with
GoBack drivers enabled. This was not a significantly faster approach; it took
GoBack a minute to remove its history files. When GoBack was finished, it
informed me that I could manually re-enable it from the DOS prompt by typing
GB_PROG /I. I tried again to run DriveImage from D:. I did this mostly to test
the fear that DriveImage needed to work from a drive other than the one it was
imaging -- a fear that I had expressed some time back (see point 116(i)) and could
not remember actually testing. The program had no problems, so it appeared
that I had been worrying all this time for nothing; I could have enjoyed the

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slightly easier process of running DriveImage from the hard drive rather than the
floppy, although in real DOS in any event. If that had failed, however, I had
wondered whether my results would have been different if I had loaded
DriveImage into a RAM drive (such as the RAM created automatically when I
booted with the Windows emergency floppy) and had run it from there.
Anyway, the STEP_269.PQI file containing drives C and D (which filled 664 MB
and 729 MB, respectively, in their natural uncompressed state) came to 754 MB,
for a compression ratio of 54%. Thus, it appeared that I had been right in
speculating that the early compression rate of 63% had understated DriveImages
compression capability because a much higher percentage of the early backups
had consisted of the already-compressed CAB files in C:\WIN98. (See point
161.)
(b) DriveImage Compression and GoBack. Since this 754 MB PQI file would not
fit on one CD, I decided I may as well make the most of the opportunity by using
these two CDs to back up at least some of my data files too. Thus, I used
DriveImage to make a compressed copy of the data files on drives E and F as
well. At this point, I realized that it was probably just as well that I had disabled
GoBack (see point 269(a)) and had thus wiped out its History files, so that my
image files wouldnt contain copies of those 300 MB files -- which, in this case,
seemed to be useless. But then, after making the image copy of drive E, I decided
to check. Sure enough, there was a 300 MB GOBACKIO.BIN file (see point 246)
on E. Oddly, it bore the date when I had installed it; I guess I would have
expected it to bear the date of the last activity it had monitored. Turning to drive
F, I saw a 998 MB GoBack file there as well. The archive attribute was off for
both files, so presumably an ordinary backup program would not bother with
them (although, given the hugeness of these files, I would want to verify that if I
intended to use XCOPY for my backups), but DriveImage would swallow them
up along with everything else. So when DriveImage compressed the 577 MB of
drive E into a 377 MB file (65% compression) called STEP_268.PQI (3/20/00), it
did so while dealing with the presumably compressed data in GOBACKIO.BIN.
(c) Experimenting with Backup Techniques. I wanted to get the maximum
amount of data on the two CDs, and I was curious about a couple of things, and I
didnt need the AMD machine at that point, so I deleted that unnecessarily bulky
backup of drive E and decided to try again with a different approach. Since
drives E and F would contain most of my data, and would also contain
GOBACKIO.BIN files, I faced these choices: (1) take a risk and see what would
happen if I moved these BIN system files to some other disk temporarily, (2)
include 1.3 GB worth of unnecessary GoBack data every time I did a backup (but
see point 298(b)), (3) use some approach other than the DriveImage technique of
capturing an entire partition to an image file, or (4) find a clean partition that
DriveImage could capture in its entirety. I disliked options (1) and (2). Option

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(3) told me that I should consider using PowerDesks ZIP capability (see point
___) to zip all of the selected contents of drives E and F into two or more ZIP
files, even though Mijenix had said that PowerDesk was not really intended for
this purpose. (See point ___.) Option (4) did not seem possible. The only clean
partition on the machine was drive G (BURNING), which would have to be
enlarged from 700 MB to over 1,300 MB to accommodate a two-CD set. But then
I realized that I could copy the desired files over the network to the PENTIUM
computer and use DriveImage there to compress them, one at a time, into
relatively manageable PQI files. Then again, that had the same problem: GoBack
was installed on both machines, and besides, there would be some hassle and
extra time involved in copying all that data over in uncompressed form and then
moving it back in compressed form. I considered the possibility of altering
GoBack on the PENTIUM so that it would not put GOBACKIO.BIN on drive F,
but then I decided that I had been thinking of the ZIP approach as a significant
part of my backup strategy anyway (see point 202) and that I might as well begin
to get some experience with it and see how it worked. So I marked the desired
files on drive E and used PowerDesk to copy them into a file called
DRIVE_E.ZIP. Without GOBACKIO.BIN, the files being compressed amounted
to only about 265 MB. PowerDesk created the ZIP file in about ten minutes. It
was 146 MB, for a compression rate of 55%. Since DriveImage spoke generally of
a 50% rate and I had experienced a 54% rate even with previously compressed
program files included (see point 269(a)), this was a competitive but not superior
rate of compression, and if you consider the rebooting that DriveImage required,
this ZIP approach was probably at least as fast. I made ZIP copies of some files
on drive F as well, and also included a folder full of uncompressed WAV files
(which wouldnt compress very well), and now my F:\Temp\Backup folder
contained 1.3 GB, enough to fill two CDs. Indeed, depending on how precise
that 1.3 GB figure was (which I got from the folders Properties and also from
Size Manager (see point 135)), I might be slightly over the limit of what two CDs
could hold.
(d) Decision Regarding CD-Burning Technique. Previously, I had thought I
would be able to capture my essential program files on one CD, and had hoped
that there would be a more or less sharp distinction between the contents of that
first CD and the programs or other materials that might go onto a second backup
CD. (See point 162.) But that sharp distinction had never quite materialized. By
now, it was fairly clear that the entire route had consisted of just a series of steps,
and that the only sharp breaks had been those times when, more or less
arbitrarily, I had decided to burn a CD. Eventually, the size of the DriveImage
PQI files that held complete, compressed copies of everything on drives C and D
moved beyond the 650 MB limit, making it impossible to fit it all on one CD. So I
had not tried. The last CD I had burned had been the one containing STEP___.
Since then, I had merely been storing copies of the PQI files on one computer or

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the other, shuttling them back and forth on the network. It now seemed time to
learn how to burn a two-CD set. The next question was which technique to use.
If the 1.3 GB of material to be backed up in this case (see point 269(c)) exceeded
the capacity of two CDs, then the burning process might render the second CD
useless. This seemed like a good opportunity to practice the technique of
burning some material to a CD and then returning to burn more later. I would
start with the 754 MB image of drives C and D (see point 269(a)), and then I
would come back and burn the other contents in subsequent passes, until the
second disk was full.
(e) Multisession CDs. I began by defragmenting drive F. While that was going
on, I used the PENTIUM computer to review the steps in the process in the Easy
CD Creator Help file. Help said this: A multisession CD is an ISO 9660 CD to
which data is added incrementally in more than one session, allowing you to
periodically add and update files and folders to your CD. So it appeared that I
would be using an ISO 9660 CD for this and also for future incremental backups
(see point ___), just as I had used it in the past to create bootable CDs. (See point
18.) The multisession referred, then, to the number of sessions on a single CD,
not to the number of CDs used in the backup process. I already knew, from the
bootable CD experience, that both of my drives could read those multisession
boot CDs, but I decided to test the results of this present effort on both
computers as well because Help said that only multisession CD-ROM drives
can access all the data on a multisession CD. Help also said, You can turn a
single-session CD into a multisession CD at any time by adding another session.
However, its best to decide in advance whether or not your CD will be
multisession, so that you can decide whether to record the first session in CDROM format (also known as Mode 1; see Glossary) or CD-ROM XA format
(Mode 1 or Mode 2). Regardless of which format you use, the second session
must be the same format as the first session. As I read further in Help, it
sounded like the multisession reading problem was mostly a problem for older
CD-ROM drives. They advised me not to mix CD-ROM and CD-ROM XA
formats on the same disk. They also made it sound like the XA format would
have at least a slightly better chance of being recognized as multisession on a
wider variety of CD-ROM drives, and that although plain old CD-ROM was the
standard, CD-ROM XA had better multimedia capabilities. So far, so good.
Things got a little murkier when I began to read the part about importing
sessions. Help said, With multisession CDs, normally you can view only the
files in the most recent session added to the disc; however, you can import
information written in the previous session -- meaning that the most recent
session contains all of the information from the last session written to the CD and
the new information you are adding. The word import was ambiguous: did
it mean that the second session would have to contain a physical repeat of the
material in the first session? Help further told me that I could import a session

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other than the most recent one (whatever this meant) by selecting Import Session
from the Disc menu and choosing the session I wanted to import. Help said that
I would create the first session by following the regular instructions under the
How to Make a Data CD section, being sure to specify Mode 2: CD-ROM XA
under Properties | General, and would likewise apply the regular How to
Make a Data CD instructions for the second session. Fortunately, clearing up
this matter, I had previously printed an Adaptec report (REF# 990416-0049) that
offered the following points: if the CD is full or has been closed, you cant add
more data; otherwise, you set up the second session in the normal way, but when
you choose Automatically Import Previous Session under File | CD Layout
Properties | Data Settings, you are not recopying the previous contents; you are
merely linking the new session to the previous one. This report said, You can
continue to add more sessions to the CD until the CD is full. Just be sure to
import previous sessions (the default setting) so you can read all of the data on
the CD. Excellent. Just what I wanted. The Adaptec report warned, If you
receive a message after telling it to record that asks if you want to add a new
volume, the settings do not match -- that is, your data settings for the new
session are not the same as the settings for the previous session, in which case
you wont be able to read the previous session. So it would be important to use
the same settings consistently. Returning to the Help file under Easy CD
Creator, I learned that ISO 9660 disks would be readable on Macintosh and
Linux, whereas Joliet disks were readable only on Windows and DOS; but Joliet
allowed 64-character filenames while ISO 9660 allowed only eight plus three
letters or numbers plus the underscore (_) character. So since Help confirmed
that I had to use ISO 9660 for bootable CDs, it appeared that I might have a
rough time creating a bootable CD that would also contain my long filenames in
uncompressed form (i.e., not compressed into a DriveImage file with a simple
name like STEP_269.PQI), as I had been considering (see point 209).
(f) Burning a Two-CD Set and the Disc Image Option. While writing this
document, I had not used the Disc Image option in Easy CD Creator. A disc
image file was different from a DriveImage image file. DriveImage would create
a single PQI file that would hold all of the contents of a partition. As I had lately
seen (see point 269(b)), a DriveImage image file could be much larger than the
650 MB capacity of a CD. In other words, DriveImage really had nothing to do
with CDs. I had been burning DriveImage files to CD, but that was no different
than burning any other kind of file to a CD. A disc image, by contrast, was a file
created by Easy CD Creator (or other CD-burning software) to contain exactly
what would go onto a CD, in a format matched to the CDs own format.
Apparently there would be no guarantee that the thing would be defragmented,
especially if you were creating it on a fragmented hard disk, so you would still
want to defragment your disk before burning the CD; but at least the CDburning software would not be reaching all over your hard disk, trying to collect

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all of the files (fragmented or not) that would go onto the CD, desperately
attempting to avoid a buffer underrun (i.e., a situation in which the CD burner,
which demanded a steady supply of data, would briefly run out of data and
would ruin your nice new blank CD, making it good for nothing but a beverage
coaster). I had not much emphasized defragmenting in my previous notes on the
subject of burning CDs (see e.g., point 18) because I had kept the separate
BURNING partition (see point 32) whose sole purpose in life was to hold up to
one CDs worth of data that I would burn onto a hard disk and then delete. That
is, it would be rare for me to be burning fragmented material from BURNING,
since its contents would be fresh new file copies that would not have been
broken up into a thousand pieces by editing or other tinkering. It now appeared,
however, that I would have to defragment before burning each two-CD set, since
the BURNING partition would not hold two CDs worth of material. It seemed
like it might be faster to enlarge BURNING, at least on the AMD machine, where
I had disk space to spare (see point 258(b)), so as to accommodate two CDs, and
then I would not have this problem anymore. The time was propitious; I had not
yet re-enabled GoBack, which would have to be disabled again before I could use
PartitionMagic. (See point 236.) Thus -- having learned that my funky
AUTOEXEC arrangement (see point 120(al)) would cause PartitionMagic to
forget what I had told it to do, if I issued the instructions into the Windows
version and then allowed it to reboot the system itself -- I rebooted into DOS and
told the DOS version of PartitionMagic to enlarge BURNING to 1,350 MB, taking
the needed space from the cavernous drive F (see point 258(c)) and still leaving it
with 7,421 MB. Then I moved the files I planned to put on CD into this partition
and worked from there. This seemed, once again, to eliminate the need to worry
about using the Disc Image option, which I thought was unlikely to be useful in a
multiple-CD context anyway.
(g) GoBack and PartitionMagic. After running PartitionMagic, I rebooted. I
thought that now might be a good time to revive GoBack. Even if it did crap out
on the large-file transactions I was contemplating, it still might save me in a
pinch if the timing was right and/or if I remembered to disable it when I was
working with large files. (See point 258(e).) On reboot, however, GoBack said,
GoBack (133): It appears as though the GOBACKIO.BIN file on disk 2 has been
moved to a different partition on this disk or the geometry of the disk has been
changed. This file will be deleted within it is no longer valid. So regardless of
whether I had disabled GoBack, the use of PartitionMagic to change the
geometry of the disk would wipe out any history that GoBack might have saved.
(h) Planning for Multiple CDs. After rebooting, I moved the contents of
F:\Temp\Backup (see point 269(c)) to the BURNING partition, drive G. Or not
all of them; I started with the 754 MB file I had named STEP_269.PQI (see point
269(b)), thinking that I would burn the others afterwards to experiment with the

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multisession CD technique. (See point 269(e).) There remained one other

question: how was I supposed to tell Easy CD Creator to spread this 754 MB
DriveImage file across two CDs? Experience suggested that if I tried to cram it
into one, Easy CD Creator would not ask me if I wanted to split it up; it would
just reject my attempt to make the CD. One option would have been use the
DriveImage setting that would have allowed me to create the image in multiple
smaller files, but that solution would not work in the present scenario, where I
wanted to back up the entire contents of this F:\Temp\Backup folder (see point
269(c)) -- and of other similar future folders -- without worrying about exactly
how it would get divided. Yet as I looked further into the question, it did not
seem possible to do what I wanted. People recommended using the split option
in DriveImage, the split option in Norton Ghost (see point 2), or else coming
along afterwards and splitting with Slice32 (see point 141(i)), but I was having a
hard time finding backup software that would split up a file to the right sizes to
fill CDs during the actual CD-burning process. (It sounded like this might be
possible in Ghost and/or in the Special Edition of DriveImage, but I didnt
experiment with Ghost and I didnt have the special edition. See point 354.) I
thought there just had to be backup software out there that would do this; then
again, as I mulled it over, I thought I might be better off without it. Using tape
backup, I had experienced the situation where the chaining from one tape to the
next failed, and therefore I lost all of the contents of the second tape. (See point
___.) Maybe it was better not to worry about buying a program that would pose
this risk on CD. I decided to just go ahead with what I had: I would split the
oversize files and put them on two separate CDs manually, filling the second one
with other material if appropriate. Only, reading the material about Norton
Ghost, I decided I should continue to insure that at least a copy of DriveMagic, if
not the entire DOS_UTIL folder, was located on each CD containing the first part
of a PQI file. It seemed safer to copy the entire DOS_UTIL folder, so that I would
have all my DOS tools available in a pinch. Moreover, I decided to include a
copy of the contents of C:\Windows\Command in it. That folder contained a
number of utilities that I frequently ran (e.g., DELTREE, DOSKEY) without
thinking to myself that they were actually not in DOS_UTIL; they ran because
they were on the Path of executable statements on the computer (see point
141(q)), but there wouldnt be any such Command folder if I were restoring from
CD. This folder, which I renamed UTILITY in this context (leaving it as
DOS_UTIL on drive D because God knew I did not want to edit all of the batch
files that now referred to that folder), consumed slightly over 11 MB, so I decided
to limit the first segment of an overly large file to 640 MB.
(i) Disk Math. At this point, I finally took a moment to review my math. There
were eight bits per byte. People mostly used bits to measure transmission rates
(as in e.g., a 28 kilobit per second (kbps) modem), and they used bytes to
measure data storage, including hard disk calculations. Bits were measured in

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standard thousands, but bytes were measured in binary thousands. That is, a
kilobit was 1,000 bits, but a kilobyte was 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 1,024
(i.e., 2 to the eighth power) bytes. Similarly, a megabit was 1,000,000 bits, but a
megabyte was 1,024 x 1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes; and a gigabit was 1 billion bits, but
a gigabyte was 1,024 x 1,048,576 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes. As an additional
source of confusion, you might think of 500 MB as 500 x 1,048,576 = 524,288,000
bytes, but sometimes it seemed that people were thinking of 500 MB as half a
gigabyte, in which case it would be 1,073,741,824 / 2 = 536,870,912 bytes. I
noticed that PowerDesk Explorer used the former definition of a gigabyte -- to it,
500 MB was simply 500 x 1,024 x 1,024. I could verify this by right-clicking on a
large file, choosing Properties, and comparing the number of bytes and MB it
would report as the size of that file. So if I wanted a file containing 640 MB, it
had to contain 671,088,640 (i.e., roughly 671 million) bytes.
(j) SLICE the Oversized Disk Image File. I made a backup copy of STEP_269.PQI
(see point 269(a)) across the network onto the PENTIUM machine. This took
maybe ten minutes. Then I used Slice32 to split the original file into segments of
640 MB and 79 MB. (See point 141(i).) (Fortunately, I was able to specify MB
instead of having to calculate bytes.) The program gave me the option of slicing
the original into chunks of a certain size (in this case, 640 MB) or else two equally
sized portions (which would have worked out, in this case, to around 385 MB
each). (The program would have allowed me to choose how many equally sized
portions I wanted, so I could also have sliced it into maybe 50 or a hundred little
nightmares.) In this case, I chose to slice the file into 640 MB chunks; the
program informed me that this would require two portions. The program did
not provide any onscreen indication of what it was up to; I just had to wait until
the hard disk stopped thrashing around. The slicing took only a few minutes. It
did not alter the original STEP_269.PQI file.
(k) Combining the SLICEd Files. SLICE32 produced three files: STEP_269.P00,
STEP_269.P01, and SPLICE32.EXE, which, as I knew from the old SLICE
program that I had used in DOS, was the utility that would combine these two
pieces back together again when I wanted to use them. This posed a problem,
however: if SPLICE32 was a 32-bit program, as its name implied, would it run
on a system that did not yet have Windows running? After all, restoring from
the DOS prompt was precisely the point of having this DriveImage PQI file in
the first place. I rebooted the AMD machine and tried running SPLICE32 from
the DOS prompt. Sure enough, it gave me the error message, This program
cannot be run in DOS mode. Well, what good was that? According to this
program, I would have to restore Windows before I would be able to restore
Windows! I wondered if I could use SPLICE32 across the network to manipulate
STEP_269, stored on one machine, while using the keyboard on the other
machine; but then I realized that the network connection would not even exist

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until both machines were running Windows. (There might have been a way to
make the connection work in DOS, but the manual for my network cards (see
point 185) did not mention it, and I was not going to research that question now.
See point ___.) Next, I thought of using the old DOS version of SLICE and
SPLICE. The original SLICE, I would soon see, was copyrighted in 1989.
Ordinarily, SPLICE (in either the DOS or Windows version) would not exist until
you ran SLICE, but I had kept a copy of SPLICE from the last time I had run
SLICE, which appeared to have been in May 1997. I floppied it over to the AMD
machine and typed SPLICE. It informed me of the proper syntax, so I used that
information and tried again with SPLICE STEP_269.P00 F:\ and got the error
message that I was supposed to be splicing from removeable media (i.e., the
program was designed primarily to restore a huge file from a bunch of floppies).
I tried again, following the instruction to use the /R option to ignore this
requirement. I got the error message Wrong restore disk, insert number 01,
press any key ... I tried again with the .P01 file, but got the message, File
exists. I didnt know what that meant, so I decided that I probably had to use
the DOS version of SLICE before I could use the DOS version of SPLICE. To
avoid confusion, I deleted the 32-bit P00 and P01 files. Then I tried again, using
the DOS version of SLICE on STEP_269.PQI. The command was SLICE
F:STEP_269.PQI G: /R. Unfortunately, this version did not ask me how big I
wanted the chunks to be, nor how many there should be. It just started in with
the statement, Writing number 01. After a moment, it beeped and said, Next
diskette, Press any key ... I hit Ctrl-C to cancel out of that. I saw, now, that the
program had created a 21 MB file in the root of drive G. Why 21 MB? I had no
idea. It was named STEP_269.P01; that is, it started with file number P01 rather
than P00 as the 32-bit version had done. I wondered if the DOS version of
SPLICE would have worked if I had renamed STEP_269.P00 to be STEP_269.P01.
Since I had deleted that file, however, I would not have the opportunity to
experiment with that. I rebooted into Windows and deleted these various
extraneous copies of STEP_269, SLICE, and SPLICE. I concluded that my present
copy of STEP_269.PQI was useless unless (a) I restored it onto a system that
already had at least a temporarily working copy of Windows or (b) I obtained
some other file-splitting software that would work from the DOS prompt.
Realizing that I had been a bit hasty, I booted into DOS again to see what would
have happened if, instead of hitting Ctrl-C, I had humored the DOS version of
SLICE by Pressing any key -- would it have created another 21 MB file called
STEP_269.P02, and so on until it had slowly worked its way through the 754 MB
file known as STEP_269.PQI? Rethinking that question again, I decided not to
spend all day on that chore but, instead, to try again from the start, using
DriveImage to create a multi-part PQI backup of drives C and D.
(l) DriveImage Multi-Part PQI File. Back in DOS, I ran DriveImage and told it to
save an image of drives C and D to drive F. GoBack was no problem -- that is, I

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did not have to worry about the extra bulk provided by the GOBACKIO.BIN
files -- because they were located on drives E and F. (See point 269(b).) The
DriveImage option to split the disk image file into multiple files was in the
Advanced Options area. It asked for the number of bytes, not megabytes, so I
calculated that as 640 x 1,024 x 1,024, i.e., about 671 million. (See point 269(i).) I
got Error # 58 again, and thus rediscovered the fact that GoBack would be a
problem -- that, in this case, it had to be disabled -- even when I was not backing
up the disk on which its GOBACKIO.BIN files were located. (See point 269(a).)
In lieu of rebooting, I tried using the GB_PROG.EXE file that GoBack had
mentioned earlier. (See point 269(a).) It just opened a screen with this message:
GoBack (300): To make changes to your GoBack installation, please run
SETUP.EXE from within Windows. If you wish to temporarily disable GoBack
or you are having problems starting your system, please reboot and press the
SPACE BAR from the GoBack startup screen. I took the latter approach again
and chose the Boot from Floppy option. I chose to boot from the Windows
Emergency Boot Disk, which created a RAM drive -- i.e., an imitation disk that
existed only in the computers memory. Experimenting, I deleted all files from
that RAM drive and found that its capacity was about 2 MB. I decided to try to
do more with RAM drives later. (See point ___.) I tried running DriveImage
again. Once again, I got Error # 58. This confirmed the experience of point 254: I
could not run DriveImage with GoBack enabled, even if I booted from the floppy
with GoBack drivers; the only way of running DriveImage was to disable
GoBack. I rebooted and did that, and was finally able to run DriveImage as just
described, with a comment in the Image File Comments box saying, First
multipart image. The DriveImage process took about an hour and produced
STEP_269.PQI (671 million bytes) and STEP_269.002 (86 million bytes).
(m) Testing the Split DriveImage Files. I rebooted and re-enabled GoBack. Reenabling GoBack had seemed odd and had irritated me slightly at the outset, but
it was now becoming a more familiar task. I went into Windows and networked
the two STEP_269 files over to the PENTIUM computer. For some reason, this
took an hour. After it was done, the hard disks on both machines kept on
thrashing for several minutes, and the mouse cursor was very slow; I suspected
GoBack was trying to get adjusted to these large file transfers. At other times, it
had given me the message, The disk activity now going on relates to safely
transitioning all disk changes into the file system. It should complete soon.
Perhaps GoBack had also been responsible for the great slowness in networking
these large files to the other computer; maybe it was also responsible for the
thrashing that had occurred at the start of my audio test. (See point 268.)
Anyway, over on the PENTIUM, I rebooted into DOS, and that stopped the
thrashing. I disabled GoBack, started DriveImage from a copy of DOS_UTIL that
I had moved to drive F, and selected its Restore Image option. I browsed to the
folder where I had put the two STEP_269 files. It found only the first one. The

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Image File Comments (see point 269(l)) provided the only way of being sure it
was the right PQI file, since DriveImage did not show file sizes or dates. When I
gave the command to go ahead, DriveImage promptly returned Error # 29:
Cannot lock a locked drive. The DriveImage manual did not explain this error
message. I exited the program. DriveImage gave no option but to reboot, so I
did that. I got the message, Disk Boot Failure. I inserted a boot floppy, and
that worked. I looked at drive C, but the system showed me the contents of
drive D instead. I tried DriveImage from the floppy, and browsed back to drive
F, which had now become drive E, because the system was now showing drive C
as free space. Apparently DriveImage had been able to erase the previous C
partition but had not been able to put anything in its place. This time around,
however, booting from the floppy, it worked fine. I suspected that this was
because, last time, DriveImage had managed to take out GoBack, its enemy,
before dying. Drive C had provided less than half of the total number of
megabytes in the STEP_269 file, so I expected the transition from STEP_269.PQI
to the second partial file, STEP_269.002 (see point 269(l)) to occur sometime
during the restoration of drive D. This raised the question, though: what if drive
C had continued on into the second part -- would DriveImage still be able to
locate a backup of drive D that did not even have a toehold in the first part?
Anyway, the restoration of drive D went without a hitch. I rebooted the
PENTIUM machine and tried to re-enable GoBack. It gave me this message:
GoBack Install (316): You have requested to install GoBack on Drives E:, F:, but
these drives are on the same physical hard disk. If you continue, Goback will use
the first logical drive on this hard disk. Do you want to continue? I was not
sure what that meant; the GoBack manual had no list of error codes. It seemed to
be saying that GoBack would reinstall itself on drive C, which was definitely not
what I wanted. I chose not to continue. It told me that its re-enable had been
aborted. The machine booted into real DOS; I went to the GoBack program
folder and typed GB_PROG (see point 269(l)), but that accomplished nothing. (I
remembered, too late, that I was supposed to type GB_PROG /I.) I rebooted and
tried again to re-enable GoBack, and this time I told it to go ahead and continue
with whatever it was going to do. It indicated that it was Initializing GoBack
structures on Drive E, so I gathered that error message 316 had meant that
GOBACKIO.BIN would be installed on drive E rather than on drive F. I went
into Windows; I had to identify this computer as the PENTIUM rather than the
AMD (see point 181); that required me to reboot; but when I came back to
Windows again, everything seemed good. I deleted all copies of STEP_269 files
from the PENTIUM machine.
(n) Switching GoBack On and Off. (The actions described in this paragraph
occurred somewhat earlier, but I held off on reporting them until now.) Acting
on the suggestion that GoBack had given me regarding the option of turning it
back on by typing GB_PROG /I from the DOS prompt (see point 269(a)), I

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decided to investigate whether there might be other DOS command-line switches

I could use for GoBack. There was nothing in the manual about them. I found
GB_PROG in the GoBack program file folder and tried typing GB_PROG /? for
information, but got the message that GB_PROG.EXE can only be run in MSDOS mode (code 503). I also found that disabling GoBack was not simply a
matter of clicking a button inside the program, as I had gathered from reviewing
the preliminary literature. (See point 236.) After clicking that button, I would
have to reboot, which at this point meant a delay of several minutes. In short, at
least one reboot would be necessary whenever I wanted to disable GoBack. Just
to be sure, I e-mailed the GoBack people at ___, and eventually got from them
the response that ___. Meanwhile, to experiment a bit further, I opened PrcView
(see point 263) and watched what happened when I right-clicked on the GoBack
icon in the system tray and selected the Close option: PrcView showed that
GBMENU.EXE shut down but GBPOLL.EXE stayed active. I went into Start |
Programs and clicked on the GoBack icon to start the program. This started
GBMENU again. I chose the Revert option. That ended GBMENU and started
GBDRIVE, which seemed to be the program that ran the GoBack Event Log. (See
point ___.) I tinkered on the computer for a minute, came back, and saw that the
Event Log was actively tracking events. So clicking Close on the system tray
icon had just gotten rid of the icon. I exited from the Event Log and took another
look at PrcView. GBPOLL was still active. Apparently I would need to kill that
process in order to get GoBack out of my hair without having to reboot first.
(o) Slowness Problems. Back on the AMD machine, I started to move
STEP_269.PQI to the BURNING partition -- which, I suddenly realized, did not
have to be larger than 700 MB after all, since I had not figured out any way to
turn Easy CD Creator loose on anything larger than 650 MB at one time. (See
point 269(f).) I decided to shrink BURNING back to 700 MB at the next
opportunity. I say that I started to move STEP_269.PQI to BURNING; I aborted
that process because PowerDesk Explorer reported that it was going to take 86
minutes. Having had enough of these slowdowns, both on the network and on a
hard drive within a single computer, I decided to find out whether GoBack was
the culprit. This was the point at which I closed the GoBack system tray icon, as
mentioned in the previous paragraph. With GBPOLL still active, I tried moving
STEP_269.PQI to BURNING again. This time, the counter got up to 56 minutes
before starting back down. Four minutes later, it had increased to 77 minutes.
After twelve minutes, when it should have been done, it said it still had 61
minutes to go. I canceled again and used PrcView to kill GBPOLL. The hard
disk thrashing and mouse slowness continued for a few minutes. I tried again to
copy STEP_269.PQI to G (BURNING). PowerDesk Explorer reported that this
would take 86 minutes. I canceled and ran the CD Burning Suite. (See point
263.) At first, the Suite seemed to wipe out a process that was causing the delays:
halfway through, the mouse became more responsive. But then Windows

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Explorer reported that it would still take 86 minutes to move STEP_269.PQI to G.

I sighed and gave up. An hour later, I finally did have the file on drive G. I was
still getting disk activity, though, and the mouse was still slow, so I decided not
to burn the CD yet. Instead, I ran Defragmenter on drive G. I got an error
message: Windows cannot defragment this drive because it contains errors that
must first be repaired. Click Help, carry out the instructions for repairing the
errors, and then try defragmenting the drive again. Well, that was scary. I did
as instructed, but Help just opened up the ResKit CHM file (see point 145(n)) and
said, This page cannot be displayed. I rebooted into real DOS, disabling
GoBack along the way -- which, in this case, took perhaps a half-hour to finish
dismembering itself. I ran Norton Disk Doctor on drive G; it fixed lost cluster
and free space problems. I also took the opportunity to run PartitionMagic and
change the existing partition layout (see point 269(f)) by reducing drive G back to
700 MB. I went into Windows and promptly got the message that ScanDisk was
checking drive F for errors. This, too, went very slowly, presumably because
drive F was around 8 GB now. In fact, it went at a rate of about 1% every two
minutes. I hit the Exit button to skip that. The system did not respond. I
rebooted back to DOS. GoBack gave me its disk geometry error message 133.
(See point 269(g).) Presumably this was the cause of the near-freeze in ScanDisk.
I was not sure this meant I should follow GoBacks recommended way of
disabling it in the future: it did seem to have been screwed up, but then again, I
had previously used the PrcView process-shutdown approach on GoBack
without these problems. Anyway, I went ahead and ran a Norton Disk Doctor
test on F. I bailed out of the surface test; there were no errors otherwise. I went
into Windows smoothly. I concluded that the repeated work with large files
might have confused GoBack, and that its confusion might not have been good
for the hard disk as a whole. I decided to try to pay more attention to when I
would expect to be working with large files, and to disable GoBack at those times
and see how things worked that way.
(p) Burning Multiple CDs. I ran the CD Burning Suite again (see paragraph (o),
above) and used the same process as always to make a bootable CD. (See point
226.) Unfortunately, the CD burner balked with the message, Errors reported
by output device. In other words, I had created a coaster. This really surprised
me: I had no programs running that might have been responsible for that. I ran
Defragmenter on drive G and the system froze completely. Well, now I had
something of an explanation: you cant burn CDs on a system that has frozen. I
cold-rebooted and ran my Diagnostic Suite. (See point 160.) That turned up
nothing, so I ran the Cleanup Suite. (See point 153.) Drive G had gotten slightly
fragmented, but not enough to account for the failed CD. Maybe ScanReg or
some other part of the Cleanup Suite did it, but by the time it was done, the
mouse was not slow anymore and the hard disk had stopped thrashing. I tried
again to burn the CD, and this time it worked. I burned the second one two, no

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problem. I had my backup. I rebooted, re-enabled GoBack, and resumed my

forward progress.
270. Fixing a Bad Backup. Unfortunately, it appeared that the system as I had
backed it up in STEP_269 was not a good one. I was still having problems with
both computers, now that I had installed it on the PENTIUM as well as the AMD
machine. The mouse did not respond on one boot on the AMD and I had to
reboot, and the PENTIUM was having problems with PowerDesk Explorer and
also with Winamp. I decided to set the AMD to use an earlier copy of the
Registry. Using the previous procedure, I went into H:\Backups and moved all
of the Registry backups except a few from the right timeframe (namely, the
morning of the previous day, about 24 hours earlier) into a temporary holding
folder. That way, ScanReg would have less than five to choose from. (See point
148.) As I was doing this move in PowerDesk Explorer, I noticed that there was
indeed an RBBAD.CAB file from the previous evening, when I had run ScanReg
as part of the Cleanup Suite. (See point 269(p).) In wanting to go back to an
earlier Registry, I was assuming that ScanReg will catch and repair many errors
but may not get them all. Then I rebooted into real DOS, ran SCANREG
/RESTORE, selected that copy of the Registry from the previous day, and
rebooted. Returning to DOS, I ran SCANREG /FIX, just to see if it reported any
problems with this newly reinstalled version of the Registry. When it was done,
it said, Windows successfully fixed your Registry, but maybe it always said
that. I looked at H:\Backups and saw no RBBAD.CAB file, so maybe that was
the acid test. Interestingly, the most recently created CAB file there, RB000.CAB,
was 6.1 MB, whereas all the other CAB backups were around 1.5 MB. Anyway,
now that I had restored the Registry, what should I do with it? I ran SCANREG
/BACKUP to make a backup copy, and after rebooting into Windows to get the
network connection going, I copied this new RB001.CAB, also 6.1 MB, to TEMP
folders on both computers. If I hadnt burned the CD in Disk-at-Once (DAO)
mode, which closed the disk, I might have been able to add this file onto the CD
with an explanatory note, but I figured if I tried now Id just get a message telling
me to insert a blank disk. Fortunately, the STEP_269 backup wasnt going to be
my final version, so eventually Id delete this copy of RB001.CAB and Id be fine
-- but if I needed to restore my system in the meantime, Id have to use the
kludge solution of restoring the system from CD and then using ScanReg to
restore this RB001.CAB copy of the Registry.
More Internet and Web Issues
271. Distinguishing the Web Suite and the Automated Website Opener. I had
begun to wonder exactly what I needed from the Web Suite. (See point 261.) I
had thought that I just wanted all of the pages to be open and ready for use when
I arrived in the morning. (See point 261(g).) But further experience with these

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websites had shown me a couple of problems. Some websites -- for example, my

customized Weather Channel and CNN pages -- showed me exactly what I
wanted from them, without any need for further browsing. These, I decided,
could be opened at any time, e.g., 5:00 AM. The computer could then go ahead
and disconnect from the Internet, and I would still have what I needed. But
other websites required more than that. There were a couple of different subproblems here. The first involved passwords. Even if I found a way to get past
their password login screen, the problem would remain that I did not intend to
have the computer stay online from 5 AM to 7 AM, or 9 AM, or whenever I
might be able to pull myself away from whatever I was doing and focus on those
websites. So the machine would have been logged off by the time I actually got
to them, and now I would have to log in again; in short, my earlier login would
have been pointless. I decided, therefore, that passworded websites did not
belong on an automated website opener. Also, I used Deja.com to do most of my
newsgroup browsing. I certainly could set up a Deja link that would open the
proper Deja page automatically, showing me the lists of messages that people
had posted in various newsgroups; but I could not have the computer go further
and decide which individual postings would actually matter to me. I knew there
were programs that would take a website and would download all of the web
pages that that site referred to -- indeed, Internet Explorers synchronize
feature would do that -- but those programs really wouldnt work for my
purposes. Aside from the problem that it was not always easy to set them so that
they would not download either too little or too much material, my newsgroup
browsing experience told me that postings would often point to websites
containing the information I wanted, and would also give me ideas for other
searches that I might want to do at the moment. Moreover, there would be times
when I would be eagerly waiting for information and would want to check a
newsgroup more than once in a day. For all these reasons, I concluded that
newsgroup browsing was another thing that I would do live. Thus, I needed
two separate tools: the automated loader that would run early each morning,
and the Web Suite that would open certain websites only when I gave the
command.
272. WEBDAILY, the Automated Website Opener. I created WEBDAILY by
starting with the Web Suite and fixing some problems in it. First, I noticed that it
was not opening all of the webpages it was supposed to open. At first, I was not
sure why this was happening. I thought it might be because the batch files that I
had created to open these individual pages were not correct. (See point 261(b).)
But the Frequented folder icons were just shortcuts to these same batch files, and
the icons worked fine. (See point 261(e).) I noticed, however, that it took a few
seconds for the pages to open up properly after I clicked on their Frequented
icons, and I thought maybe the problem was that the Web Suite was trying to
open these pages too quickly. So I put these problem pages at the end of the

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STE_WEB.BAT list of websites to open, and slowed down their opening with the
Delayer program. (See point ___.) The other thing was that I wanted to know
how to get the computer to dial up automatically only at the times when I
wanted to. Windows standard Dial-Up Networking (DUN) option seemed to
allow just black or white, always dial automatically or never dial automatically.
To fix this, I downloaded and installed NetLaunch. (See point 134(t).) (I chose
NetLaunch over DUNCE because the latter did not seem to have the flexibility I
needed, and also because its installation asked for my e-mail address and said it
would convey that address to its database, which I feared would mean some
unknown amount of spam e-mail.) I made a copy of STE_WEB.BAT, renamed it
to WEBDAILY.BAT, created a shortcut to it that specified that it would run
minimized and would close on exit, moved the shortcut to the Launch List folder
under the NetLaunch program folder, and told NetLaunch to run that shortcut
daily at 5 AM. Then I found that NetLaunch was running WEBDAILY every
time I went online, regardless of the time of day. To fix that, I removed the
shortcut from the Launch List and experimented with running NetLaunch
commands from the command line. I found that I had to have NetLaunch
enabled; that is, I couldnt remove its icon from the Startup folder or disable that
icon after loading. But as long as it was enabled, I could use NetLaunch
command-line instructions to connect and disconnect from my ISP. This
required me to schedule WEBDAILY through Task Scheduler rather than
through NetLaunchs internal timer, but I decided I would rather have it this
way anyhow. When I was done, the WEBDAILY.BAT file looked like this:
___WEBDAILY.BAT
Originally, I had Task Scheduler run a PIF file -- that is, I created a shortcut to
WEBDAILY and used that instead of calling WEBDAILY directly from Task
Scheduler -- because I wanted the batch file itself to vanish when it was done
loading the webpages. Later, however, I found that this was not necessary if you
set the Properties of the batch file to Close on exit and if the last line of the batch
file was CLS. Also, later, I found that this NetLaunch scheme wasnt working
right.
273. Manual Website Capture from the Scraps Folder. As I had previously
discovered (see point 120(s)), the Address box in Internet Explorer was located
about two inches away from the Scraps Toolbar, and there was a little icon at the
left end of the Address box that I could drag to Scraps to save the URL of the
website I was then viewing. Now, how could I best review those URLs later? I
had learned that the resulting URL file in Scraps was a DOS-readable plain text
file from which I might be able to extract the URL. Thus, I wrote the following
batch file:

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___URLSCRAP.BAT
I started this file at the end of the WEBDAILY batch file shown in point 272 to
automate the process of sweeping out the Scraps folder each day and displaying
any websites that I had seen the previous day but had not had a chance to review
then.
274. Weekly Website Opener. There were other websites that I wanted to visit
occasionally. I decided to repeat the steps shown in point 272 for these sites,
changing things so that they would come up only once a week. My experience
with URLSCRAP (see point 273) nearly persuaded me that the best way to
handle these would be to create a separate folder of Favorites (see point 109(g))
called Weekly Favorites; then something like URLSCRAP could just go through
that folder and open everything in it automatically. But then I remembered that
some of the items in WEBDAILY (see point 272) had not opened properly until I
had introduced a Delayer command on the batch file line that opened them.
Having a URL batch file would also enable me to change my schedule and open
some of these websites at differing times (e.g., if it turned out that one was
updated every Tuesday, and another on the 14th of each month), without having
to create separate folders to hold their various URLs. For these reasons, then, I
decided that I would still prefer to create separate BAT files to open the items
that I wanted to see weekly, and therefore that I would just start with a version
of the WEBDAILY approach called WEBWEEK. I did that, using new BAT files
and PIFs for a couple of URLs that I knew I would visit weekly, and I set up a
Task Scheduler item to run the WEBWEEK.PIF shortcut. I decided to postpone
further work on this item, however, until I had worked through my Favorites
and had a better idea of which sites I wanted to see and when. (See point 327.)
275. Purpose of the Web Suite and Other Suites. The purpose of the Web Suite
had now been reduced to the task of opening websites that required passwords
or that might otherwise call for immediate reaction or further browsing; that is,
the Web Suite toolbar button would allow me to open webpages of daily interest
at whatever time of day seemed appropriate. (See point 271.) In thinking of the
Web Suite this way, I decided, more generally, that the purpose of my Suite
toolbars might be to contain sets of programs that I would probably run, as a
group, on a daily basis. In this light, the Web Suite did have something in
common with the Office Suite (see point 113(e)) and the Audio Suite (see point
260(d)). It seemed far less clear that the CD Burning Suite (see point 263) and the
Cleanup Suite (see point 153) belonged in that same group, since I was likely to
run those suites on more likely a weekly basis, not daily; and it seemed unlikely
that I would run the Diagnostic Suite (see point 160) even that often. These
thoughts suggested that I might review my Suites toolbar, and perhaps other
toolbars as well. Since the Web Suite did seem to fit, however, I decided to

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postpone that general review of toolbars until later. (See point ___.) For right
now, I just adapted the STE_WEB.BAT so that the Web Suite would open the
websites that seemed likely to call for manual effort on my part (i.e., for
passwords, further browsing, etc.). This yielded the following version of
STE_WEB.BAT:
___insert STE_WEB.BAT
For STE_WEB, as for WEBDAILY and WEBWEEK, I would probably add other
items once I had sorted out my Favorites. (See point 327.) I still didnt manage
to get it to dial by itself, though. (See point 322.)
276. Canned Deja Searches. I generally did my newsgroup browsing in
Deja.com. My browsing had led me to use Deja in several different ways: I had
a custom, blank search page that contained my preferences (e.g., for the
preferred language and sort order); I had a canned search that showed my latest
postings, so that I could quickly review them to see whether anyone had
responded (since, at this point, the Deja Tracker feature that would notify me of
such responses was not working); I had a link in the My Deja area (i.e., my
private area in Deja.com) that led to one or two newsgroups that I liked to check
on a daily basis, to see whether anyone had posted anything interesting; and
there were some searches that I ran every few days or so. Going down that list, I
did not need to see my blank search page unless I had a specific search in mind,
and in that event I had a link in the Frequented folder (see point 261(e)) directly
to that page. I found that Deja did an adequate job of displaying the next two
items -- the canned search for my own postings, and the display of recent
postings in newsgroups of interest -- so I just made sure that STE_WEB (see point
275) contained links to the batch file shortcuts that would run those searches
when I was ready to go online. But I was not happy with the Deja output on at
least one other search that I would run periodically, and I decided to try to
improve on that situation.
277. Newsgroup Search for Items Posted in the Last Three Days. In the search
for automated solutions, I wanted a way to run Deja searches that would not
require me to enter the date period manually. That is, I wanted something that
would be smart enough to show me only those postings that were still alive and
kicking. Judging from the times at which other people had reacted to my own
postings, I figured that most of the current discussions in newsgroups would
involve messages that were not more than three days old. Thus, I sought a way
to tell Deja to show me everything that had been posted on a given subject
within the past three days. I didnt intend to create a full-fledged front-end for
Deja; all I wanted was to modify a search I had already made so as to change the
date portion of the search. To do this, I ran the Deja search and saved the URL

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from the Address box in Internet Explorer. Then I created a batch file that would
examine that URL and change its Date component, so as to tell Deja which day
was three days ago. This required me to find a way of doing date calculations.
For example, if its March 1 and I want to search for items posted in the last three
days, the program couldnt just subtract 3 from 1; it would have to know how to
go back into February and count down from 28 (or would it be 29?) days in that
month. From Peter Meyers very informative website at
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/hermetic/cal_stud/jdn.htm, I learned that
the simple way to do this is to convert the date into whats called a Julian date,
which is the number of days that have elapsed since January 1, 4713 B.C.; and I
discovered that the simple way to make this conversion is to download the DOS
and Windows versions of Peter Meyers CALCONV program. (His site also had
tools for calculating dates about six million years in the past or the future, but I
didnt really need that for purposes of downloading newsgroup messages from
the last three days.) I tested CALCONVs output for a couple of different dates
by using the online Julian calculator at
http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/JAVA/JD.html. (Note that the online
calculator also calculated Julian times, where 0.5 meant halfway through the day,
although in this case it was an astronomical calendar, so they started the
calculation at noon rather than midnight). Then, with CALCONV in hand, I
prepared the following batch files:
___insert DEJA3DAY.BAT and supporting files when it works with % signs -question posted online -- should include the latest student loan and bankruptcy
related postings]___
278. Error Message: COMCTL32.DLL. Arriving at the computer one morning, I
saw this message onscreen: Error Starting Program. The COMCTL32.DLL file
cannot start. Check the file to determine the problem. Clicking OK
accomplished nothing; the error message box stayed onscreen. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del
and saw no Not responding indication; the highlighted program at that point
was Inbox - Microsoft Outlook. I closed almost every other process shown in
Ctrl-Alt-Del. When I killed POPROXY, the message disappeared. On reboot, I
went into PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saw that POPROXY ran from the
Norton AntiVirus folder; in fact, it was the only AntiVirus process running. The
computer had been running for several days at this point, which was a regular
marathon for Windows 98, and I thought that perhaps rebooting would solve the
problem. Also, I had recently downloaded an AntiVirus update, and I felt that it
might have contained a bug that would be corrected on a subsequent download.
I decided to wait and see if AntiVirus gave me further difficulties before taking
any action. (See point ___.)

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279. GoBack Log Coverage. Curious about how the Event Log worked in
GoBack (see point 258(e)), I checked to make sure it was running. It was, and it
had now accumulated an Event Log stretching back about 42 hours. (See point
269(o).) I deleted a backup folder containing 400 MB of copies of files on drive F,
waited a minute for GoBack to finish digesting this fact, and saw that this had
not shortened its log much. Evidently the log just recorded the fact that this
folder would be in the Recycle Bin if the program needed it. I would examine
this again shortly. (See point 282.)
280. Outlook 98 Address Book. I had previously had some difficulties with the
Outlook 98 Address Book. (See point 166.) Reversing an earlier decision, I had
decided to keep my bloated old OUTLOOK.PST file. (See point 193.) But then I
ran into Outlook problems again. (See point 227.) I jumped through a lot of
hoops (see point 242) and finally wound up setting aside the old OUTLOOK.PST
and creating a new one. (See point 242(h).) This posed the problem that all of
my scheduling items, e-mail addresses, and other information were in the old
one. In Outlook 98, I went into File | Import and Export | Import Internet Mail
and Addresses | Outlook Express, but I saw the Finish button and realized
that the wizard was not going to let me indicate which folder I wanted to import
from. I tried again, using File | Import and Export | Import from another
program or file | Personal Folder File (.pst), where I was able to point to the old
OUTLOOK.PST file. The importation began. It continued. It took a couple of
hours. I did other things until it finished. (See point 282.)
281. Modem Problems: BIOS Setup Adjustments. While waiting for the AMD
machine to process the Outlook 98 Address Book, I went online on the
PENTIUM computer. Or at least I tried to. I got the message, familiar by now,
that said, Unable to establish a connection. (See point 232.) I made sure the
settings were right in Dial-Up Networking, and there were no modem-related
exceptions in Device Manager. It seemed that I would always receive that
message on the PENTIUM machine, and would always have to cold-reboot to get
rid of it. I might be able to get rid of it by replacing my ISA modem with one
that would fit into a PCI slot, but that would assume that I would have a PCI slot
available, and the alignment of slots on the back of the computer (not wanting to
take the cover off to be sure, and being too lazy to look through hardware
information online) seemed to suggest that the sound card, the video card, and
the network card had filled my three PCI slots. I assumed it would just make it
worse to bring the ISA sound card over from the AMD computer, since then I
would have yet another device incapable of sharing IRQs. Anyway, since I had
to reboot anyway, I decided to change a few things in the BIOS Setup while I was
at it, and see if this would make a difference. It seems like it might have, because
without thinking about it, I forgot to cold-reboot, and yet the modem was
available after a mere warm reboot. The BIOS Setup settings I changed were:

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disable ACPI and USB; set modem to use IRQ 11; set IRQ 11 to Legacy ISA, not
Plug n Play; and change IRQ 15 from Disabled to Primary status. When I came
back to Windows, the modem worked. I checked Device Manager | Computer |
Properties and saw that the modem was indeed happily settled in IRQ 11.
Emboldened, I went to Device Manager and clicked on the S3 Legacy Relocator.
(See point 234.) I selected Properties | Enable Device and got the message, This
device is working properly. Just to be sure, I rebooted. Something seemed to
have killed the TweakUI setting for the network card (see point 263), so I reset
that. Device Manager showed no exceptions, so it looked like these BIOS
adjustments had done the trick. Finally! But not so fast. Soon, I found that the
S3 Legacy Relocator had taken over IRQ 11. Evidently it liked the Legacy setting
I had given to that IRQ. No problem; I rebooted and told the BIOS that the
modem would be in IRQ 5, and that it too would be a Legacy item, not Plug n
Play. On reboot, I saw that the SCSI scanner adapter card (see point 224(e)) had
grabbed IRQ 5. Well, that was logical; it was pretty old, and it probably
preferred a Legacy slot. I tried again, this time telling the BIOS to try putting the
modem in Legacy IRQ 3. Well, it decided not to do that. I saw that Device
Manager | Computer | Properties still showed no modem, and still showed
COM2 in IRQ 3. I tried removing COM2 from Device Manager | Ports, as
someone had once suggested. (See point 234.) At first, the system didnt want to
reboot. When I did a reset and tried again, it brought me back to Windows. This
time, IRQ 3 was simply gone from the list, and the modem was on IRQ 10.
Taking this as a hint, I rebooted, converted IRQ 3 back to PNP, and told the BIOS
Setup to put the modem in Legacy IRQ 10. Well, this was worse. The system
would barely even restart. I had to cold-reboot twice and warm-reboot once or
twice to get back to Windows, and when I got there, I saw that both IRQ 3 and
IRQ 10 were now gone, and the modem still wasnt installed! I tried going
backwards one step, converting IRQ 10 back to PNP and specifying that the
modem would be on IRQ 3, but on reboot both IRQs were still gone. I ran Add
New Hardware, and it detected that COM2 needed to be installed, but before
doing that, I chose the No, the device isnt in the list option. The installer only
gave me two COM port choices -- COM1 or COM2 -- so I figured it had probably
been a mistake to try to get rid of COM2, even though I had previously thought I
was using COM4. (See point 206.) The installer finished, and I looked at Device
Manager again. IRQ 3 was still gone. So was IRQ 10. The list of devices showed
a modem, but right-clicking Computer did not show me any IRQ for it. I tried
dialing out and got this: Error 630: The computer is not receiving a response
from the modem. Check that the modem is plugged in, and if necessary, turn the
modem off, and then turn it back on. Since it was an internal modem, I did this
by rebooting. But after reboot, the modem was still listed, but it still didnt have
an IRQ, and I still couldnt dial out. Suddenly, stimulated by simultaneous
events in point 284, I realized I could use GoBack to rescue me. GoBack
wouldnt have any effect on the BIOS, so before using it I rebooted and set things

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to where they were earlier in this paragraph, before I had changed IRQ 11 to
Legacy and IRQ 15 to Primary. I noticed, on this less heavily used PENTIUM
computer, that GoBacks Event Log went back more than 60 hours. Here was
another odd thing: GoBack is unable to revert all of your hard disks to the
requested time. Would you like to revert just the currently selected hard disk?
I assumed this was because I had set the GoBack history file on the second hard
disk to such a tiny amount that there was nothing there to restore. (See point
___.) I had no problem with that, so I said OK, after first removing this
document and other files I had been working on from that computer, across the
network to the AMD computer. After rebooting, the system worked, the modem
worked, there were no exceptions in Device Manager, all of the IRQs were being
used, COM2 was back, and -- miraculously -- all three of my PCI cards were
sharing IRQ 10.
282. MSGSRV32 (Not Responding). This was different from the MSIPCSV Not
Responding problem. (See point 224(f).) I got this problem when Outlook 98
finished importing the old OUTLOOK.PST. (See point 280.) Or, not exactly.
What happened was that the system was not acting right, so I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del
and saw the message there. I could not start PrcView (see point 141(f)) to figure
out which program was responsible for this, because the system generally was
not responding much; I assumed it was a Windows file. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to
end MSGSRV32, and the system came to life. Outlook spawned a million
Overdue reminder items, which told me that it had successfully imported my old
OUTLOOK.PST and was now expecting me to catch up with all of the scheduled
items that I had not been able to access for the past week or so. I had the
COMCTL32.DLL error message again (see point 278), so I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to
kill POPROXY, and once again that took care of it. I looked at the GoBack Event
Log, to see how the major transfer of the contents of 168 MB worth of old
OUTLOOK.PST data had affected it (see point 279), and was surprised and
pleased to see that its log still extended back to the same point in the past, which
was now about 46 hours ago. (See point 284.) The system was still acting a little
funky, though, and I wound up having to do a hard reboot.
283. Enter Network Password Problem. When I came back, I had to redo the
TweakUI thing for the Enter Network Password dialog box -- the one that said,
Enter your network password for Microsoft Networking -- as I had just done
on the other computer. (See point 281.) I wasnt sure why that thing kept
shutting itself off, so I went online, and it looked like I might have gotten it
backwards. (See point 199.) According to one guy, I was supposed to set
TweakUI | Paranoia | Clear Last User to off, not on -- that is, it was supposed to
be unchecked. (This turned out to be wrong; I had had it right the first time.)
This guy also said you could delete all PWL password files in C:\Windows and
delete any entries under the [Password Lists] section of SYSTEM.INI. I didnt

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like that method as much as his third suggestion, which was as follows: (a)
Check the button in Control Panel | Passwords | User Profiles | All Users; (b)
select Control Panel | Network | Configuration | Primary Network Logon |
Windows Logon; (c) reboot once or twice; and (d) fill in the network password
dialog box when it comes up, which it should do only once more. Using the
PENTIUM machine, I decided to try this option instead of TweakUI this time and
see whether it worked. When I rebooted, it did work, and to my surprise the
network connection with the other computer was still there. I tried the same
thing with the AMD machine, but it froze and I had to reboot. Next time, it was
still there, and I realized that I had hit Enter twice, thus ignoring the message
that told me I would not be asked again if I didnt enter a password. (That is, it
evidently took the Enter key as an indication that I wanted my password to be
the null password, consisting of no password, which is not even null. For further
information on nothingness, review the existentialist philosophy of Martin
Heidegger.) I rebooted again, doing it right, and after that, it all worked OK and
the network connection was still there. I revisited this issue again later. (See
point 305.)
284. OUTLOOK.PST Re-migration. When I looked at Outlook 98 after importing
the big old OUTLOOK.PST file (see point 282), I saw that E:\Messages, where
the OUTLOOK.PST folder was supposed to reside, now contained subfolders
Mail and News, and the Mail folder was where the old one had installed itself.
So now I had to figure out how to combine the small, new OUTLOOK.PST in
E:\Messages with the large, old OUTLOOK.PST in E:\Messages\Mail. But after
rebooting (see point 283), I saw, inside of Outlook 98 that I now had two Personal
Folders, each containing approximately the same subfolders. I decided to try
cutting messages from the folders under one Personal Folder and moving them
to the eponymous folders under the other Personal Folder, starting with the
Inbox. I feared this would create duplicates of all those items; I could only hope
that I would find a way to remove them someday. (See point ___.) Sure enough
-- duplicates! Thousands of them. Access would get rid of them, but Outlook
couldnt. Unfortunately, I had learned previously that you had to use certain
programming techniques in order to export Outlook 98 e-mail messages with
dates to Access format. You could export them without dates easily enough, but
I felt that I would need to export the dates too, partly because Id want to include
the dates in the final archived version of all these e-mail messages, and partly
because Id need the dates to be sure I was eliminating the right duplicates. I
pondered the question of learning the appropriate programming techniques and
returned to it later. (See point ___.) In the meantime, I did not repeat the
mistake of combining duplicate subfolders from these two Personal Folders in
Outlook 98. It took me a while, but I managed to combine the two sets of
subfolders into one, by moving, deleting, etc. I tried to close the one that I had
emptied out, which was higher on the list of the two folders, but I got a message

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saying something like, You cannot close the Personal Folder that contains your
contacts etc. So I tried closing the other one, the one lower on the list, which
now held all my e-mail messages. To my horror, it closed just fine, and vanished
from sight. Apparently I should have done the moving from the lower one to the
higher one. I suddenly remembered that I could use GoBack to revert me to a
point before I began doing all this screwing around and creating duplicate e-mail
entries etc. GoBacks Event Log had now become significantly compressed,
thanks to the large number of large file changes I had made: the log stretched
back only about 12 hours now. (See point 282.) Before using GoBack to revert
back, I looked at the file situation. It told me that I now had one copy of
OUTLOOK.PST and it was over 200 MB. It had been 167 MB before; the
duplicates had evidently bulked it up quite a bit. I decided reverting was just the
thing for me. With GoBack, I went back about an hour and a half and looked at
things then. Everything was good. This time, I combined the subfolders inside
Outlook 98 the other way around, and when I was done, the one Personal Folder
had all of my messages, contacts, etc.; and although Outlook 98 had put some of
its files in E:\Messages and some in E:\Messages\Mail, there were no duplicate
files.
Problems with OptOut and GoBack
285. Startup Folder Additions. I added a copy of the Outlook 98 icon to the
Startup folder under Start | Programs. I set its Properties to run Minimized; I
might want it to open Maximized if I had shut it down and was now restarting it
from the Internet Toolbar (see point 120(ae)), but I didnt need it in my face every
time I rebooted. (I hoped that being minimized wouldnt keep it from popping
up any scheduling reminders I had set in it, though.) While I was at it, I added a
copy of PowerDesk Explorer to the Startup folder and minimized it too.
286. Mouse Tweaks. I had set the mouse speed previously. (See point 120(y).)
Someone had recommended COOL MOUSE 97 as good mouse enhancement
freeware. (See point 140(a).) I hadnt followed that recommendation, but had
instead installed Logitech Mouseware 8.2 for the Logitech mouse on the
PENTIUM computer (see point 224(d)). (I later found that Cool Mouse does offer
an additional feature: you can use the middle button to roll a window up to
show just its title bar; but I decided that minimizing a window to the taskbar was
good enough. Cool Mouse also offered the opportunity to use the middle button
to bring up a Windows features menu, but I figured that (a) I probably had
another way of accessing most of the Windows features I wanted and (b) since
only one of my mice had a middle button, I might not be able to install this as a
standard feature on my system anyway.) Later, I had happily discovered that
the Mouseware software also worked, and enabled two-button scrolling, on the
Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD computer. (See point 255(c).) Now I wanted

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to finish up my mouse tweaking. The only thing I considered using TweakUIs

mouse settings for was to change the speed at which the computer responded to
a double-click, so that my sometimes-retarded double clicks wouldnt be
interpreted as two single clicks (i.e., select this file, and now change its name).
But as I thought about it, I decided that this hadnt been much of a problem
recently, and that I would just as soon not risk that this would be one of the areas
in which TweakUI might have problems. (See point 109(c).) Next, I went to
www.logitech.com and downloaded Mouseware 9.0. I installed it, rebooted, and
went through the same Logitech mouse setup options as when I had installed
Mouseware previously. Next, the site at
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/mouse/2.shtml described how you could use
the PS2Rate program to adjust the mouse sampling rate, which was somewhat
mysterious but evidently led to really noticeable improvements. Since only the
Logitech mouse on the PENTIUM computer was a PS2 mouse, however (the
Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD computer was a serial mouse), I would not
be able to use this program on both computers. Then again, that Tweak3d site
told me that I didnt need to bother with PS2Rate if I had a Logitech mouse.
They provided instructions on a Registry edit that would affect only the Logitech
mouse. Those instructions were as follows: in Start | Run | REGEDIT, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Logitech\MouseWare\CurrentVersion\
Technical\. On the PS2ReportRate item, right-click, choose Modify, and enter 80
or 200. I decided to try 80. Supposedly this was going to make the mouse
operate more smoothly. I made this change on the AMD machine, where I was
making all these changes and where I would be making the next DriveImage
disk image (see point ___); it would be some time, however, before I would have
a chance to test it on the Logitech mouse. (See point ___.)
287. Error in Archive Directory. I had downloaded a zipped copy of QBASIC, or
at least I thought I had. When I tried to look in it or open it, however, I got this
error message. I also found I couldnt delete the file in Windows. Ultimately, I
had to reboot into real DOS and delete it. I didnt try doing it in a DOS box;
perhaps that would have worked as well.
288. Overclocking. After considering it, I decided not to try overclocking my
CPU. I realized that it could make a real difference in performance and that my
Soyo 5EHM motherboard was built for it. My decision was based on the sense
that it would require more time to learn how to do properly, more expense
(primarily for a $20 cooling fan), more risk of damage to my hardware, and more
potential bugs than it was worth. I also thought, however, that I might try it
when my hardware was a little older and I was more willing to gamble with it.
At that point, I felt, overclocking might actually be fun to try.

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289. OptOut and Aureate Media. Around this time, I became aware of a
discovery that people were making, that when you would install or run various
programs that you might download or purchase, there might also be a program
running from a company called Aureate Media, and that this Aureate software
would take information about your and/or your computer and send it back to
some marketing office. People didnt like the idea that this kind of program was
being installed without their realizing it, and that information about them was
being collected in an essentially secret way, and of course they also didnt like
the fact that the Aureate software was evidently causing some kinds of crashes.
Steve Gibson, author of other software I had used (see point 242(g)), created a
piece of freeware called OptOut, which was supposed to enable you to remove
these kinds of spy programs from your system. (He was clearly proud of his
software which, he said, was written in tight assembly-language code and did
not bloat and overload a computers system like much modern software did.) As
I recalled, I had seen the Aureate logo somewhere around my screen at one time
or another, so I decided to download and run this OptOut program. No
installation was necessary; it was just a utility that would run when you clicked
on it. Seeing that, I decided to add it to my Diagnostic Suite. (See point 160.)
When it ran, it first did a Registry scan, and then you could continue to a Deep
Scan that would review your disks for files infected by what it called these
parasite programs. Then it gave me the option of deleting the files and
Registry entries that ran these files. It warned me that this would probably cause
programs to cease functioning if they depended on the Aureate software.
Relying on GoBack to save me if this went really sour, I decided to give it a whirl
and see what programs, if any, did depend on the Aureate software. I clicked on
the Delete Them button. At the end, I was impressed, and I read the other
information provided by Steve Gibson. The program mentioned that it was
time-expiring freeware. I didnt mind this euphemism for shareware, as
long as it wasnt the kind of shareware that got installed, gave me reminder
notices, and then became a bear to uninstall when the free time period was up (if
I then decided not to buy it, which had usually but not always been the case). I
got a Blue Screen of Death from Windows after leaving this OptOut program,
and decided to reboot Windows just to be safe. Evidently this program actually
worked, and for that very reason, I later wound up thinking about using GoBack
to reverse this operation. (See point 294.)
290. Zero Fill Utility. I had not yet thrown away the Western Digital hard disk
that I had found to be hopelessly defective. (See point 256(b).) I had heard about
zero fill utilities but had not been quite sure what they were. By now, however,
in the course of other pursuits, I had found that this kind of utility is something
that goes into a hard disk and attempts to write every bit of it with zeros. This is
good for testing and also for making sure no one else gets your data. I was just
about to download the specific zero fill utility for my drive, assuming I had not

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done so already -- note that each hard disk manufacturer has its own specialized
zero fill utilities -- but then I decided this was a waste of time, and therefore did
not bother.
291. GoBack Bugs and Fixes. People online suggested that, if you were running
GoBack and getting Fatal Exception Error on a blue screen, you should use
MSCONFIG | Startup (or you could use Start Manager -- see point 158(b)) to set
GoBack Polling so that it wouldnt run at startup. In MSCONFIG or Start
Manager, they said, you would also remove the check marks from RUN= and
from Description of Shortcut. I wasnt sure I needed to do this yet, so I held off,
even though the person advocating this solution said that it just had to do with
checking for updates to GoBack, not for anything related to the purposes for
which you would ordinarily want to use GoBack. Someone else said that
GoBack had knocked out the Suspend to Disk file on his laptop, but that he
hardly used that anyway. I responded by posting my GoBack wish list on a
Gateway newsgroup; it sounded like Gateway computers were having a special
problem with GoBack and that some Gateway owners had stopped using it. I
had not succeeded in finding a way to shut down GoBack through a batch file,
other than to simply kill the running processes and hope that this did not confuse
the hard disk. Thus, I had to give up on the idea of turning GoBack on and off
automatically whenever I would run the Audio Suite (see point 260(d)), where I
would almost surely be working with large files that would kill the GoBack
history log. I decided, for now, to experiment with the same approach as that
which I was using in the CD Burning Suite (see point 263), where I just killed the
GoBack processes along with everything else and then took my chances. The
alternative would have been to insert an instruction, at the start of the Audio
Suite, to remind myself to disable GoBack manually (which involved clicking on
the programs icon in the system tray and choosing Options | Disable GoBack,
which would then reboot the system) before proceeding further with that Suite.
292. Missing Newsgroup Posts. Having posted a bunch of notes online, I felt
like Deja.com might be failing to report some of them. I fired up Outlook
Express (see point 37) and looked in one of my favorite newsgroups, to see if OE
would show more posts than Deja did. Well, to my surprise, OE showed less! I
did a Deja search for comments on this phenomenon and found that some people
were saying that this was a problem that involved a flaw in OE and/or a failing
by peoples Internet Service Providers (ISPs). I heard about another newsgroup
reader called Free Agent. ZDNet gave Free Agent a five-star rating, so I
downloaded and installed it. It went online and downloaded a list of
newsgroups from my ISP, and then I searched for posts in that same newsgroup.
I didnt find any more messages than Outlook Express had found, so I concluded
that the problem lay with my ISP, not with OE; and I was more accustomed to

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OE, so I decided I would keep this Free Agent program in reserve and would
probably not use it very often.
293. Invalid Go!Zilla Installation. I had been using Go!Zilla for quite a while.
(See point 156(c).) But now, while trying to do a download, I suddenly got an
Invalid Go!Zilla Installation error message. I thought it was probably caused
by the fact that some other program had malfunctioned during a recent Go!Zilla
download. No problem; I uninstalled Go!Zilla and prepared to reinstall. It
turned out to be not quite that simple. When I tried to reinstall Go!Zilla, I
noticed the Aureate logo in the background. So thats why it wasnt working -OptOut had removed part of its files! (See point 289.) Now I faced a decision:
did I want to reinstall Go!Zilla and risk the crashes and privacy issues that
Aureate supposedly involved; or did I want to search elsewhere for a free
downloader; or should I just stay with the standard Windows way of
downloading, which wasnt perfect but wasnt really bad? ZDNet said that Net
Vampire, too, was ad-supported in its free version. (It seemed that you could
avoid the Aureate problem by buying the paid version of these programs.) I
supposed that Net Vampire, too, probably used Aureate Media. It seemed that I
would have to accept that advertising was going to be the way in which these
people could afford to provide this software for free. Besides, I couldnt recall
that I had had any crashes specifically linked to Aureate. So it seemed that I had
probably just cost myself a lot of extra time, by using the OptOut program to
remove Aureate Media advertising, in the sense that I would now have to
reinstall Go!Zilla and other useful programs that OptOut had damaged. (See
point 289.)
294. Using GoBack under Adverse Conditions. I thought that perhaps I should
roll the system back to the point before I had run OptOut. Unfortunately, I had
done a number of different things since then. As far as I could remember, I had
moved files, written e-mail messages, changed documents, saved Favorites in
Internet Explorer, and performed several other little tasks. If I used GoBack now
to restore the system to the state that it was in before I used OptOut (see point
293), which of these various little tasks would be lost permanently? I probably
wouldnt have to roll back both of my hard drives -- as I recalled, GoBack would
let me roll back just one or the other -- but that wouldnt entirely solve the
problem. I had data on the first hard disk too, in its drives C (WIN98), D
(PROGRAMS), and E (DATA); and if GoBack was going to roll back the program
files on those drives, it would also roll back the data files on those drives. For
instance, I would lose the new additions to C:\Windows\Favorites. I didnt
mind making copies of some data files, and then restoring those files after
GoBack was finished taking the system back in time. The question was, for
which data files would I have to do this? It seemed like it should be easy enough
to answer that question: I would just locate the point on GoBacks Event Log

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where it said that I had run OptOut, and would review the log to see what I had
done since then. I did not want to take my disk back in time any further than
necessary, because I could not be sure what program or data files might be
affected in ways I did not anticipate; then again, I did not want to be too
conservative, working up through the list too slowly, because it could take a long
time to go through a dozen revert-and-reboot efforts. The problem here, I
discovered, was that I could not figure out exactly when I had run OptOut. For
some reason, the GoBack Event Log contained no mention of the actual running
of OptOut. I guessed that maybe OptOuts assembly-language coding (see point
289) meant that OptOut functioned in ways that GoBack could not detect. So the
best I could do was to find the point in GoBacks Event Log when I was trying to
reinstall Go!Zilla. Things probably would have been clearer, there in the Event
Log, if I had been inserting Note entries into log, saying things like Beginning
Go!Zilla Reinstallation. Right before I was ready to proceed with the rollback to
the reinstallation point, I discovered that GoBacks View | Use Filters item was
checked. I unchecked it and found that now I had too much detail. I went into
View | Edit Filters and removed the default entry that said, Dont display file
activity in C:\WINDOWS, and to replace it, thinking of the Registry files
USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT (which changed frequently), I added an entry for
DAT files that said, Dont display file activity for files with these extensions.
Then I rechecked the Use Filters option. I tinkered with the options some more
to focus the Event Log on the stuff that interested me. After thus learning how to
adjust the filters, I realized that I knew now what I was looking for. I was
looking for the time when OptOut changed Go!Zilla. That is, even if there was
no mention of OptOut itself, at least there might be a mention of Go!Zilla. Sure
enough, at 10:10:55 AM, something -- I believed it had to be OptOut -- had
deleted a file named Go!Zilla\Advert.dll, along with several other files with
Ad in their names. (More on GoBack in point 297.)
295. Revisiting MSIPCSV.EXE. Interestingly, at the time when Advert.dll was
deleted, GoBacks Event Log said that the file named
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSIPCSV.EXE was deleted too. Now, the discerning
reader will recall that this MSIPCSV file had appeared in Not responding
dialog boxes several times previously. (See point 200 and point 224(f).) I
wondered if MSIPCSV was a common file that might appear in several different
places around my various drives. I searched for it and found none. There had
been just this one and only copy, and OptOut had seen fit to delete it. (See point
289.) Where did this file come from? I checked the Win98 FileInfo program (see
point 119(a)); it showed no such file in the original Windows 98. I also checked
Bob Cerelli's list of Win98 files. (See point 166(d).) It, too, showed no such file.
So I didnt get MSIPCSV.EXE from Windows. Then again, I had had it for a
while. I checked the last file list that I had prepared while making a DriveImage
backup. (That habit of making file lists had evidently died after the STEP_165

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image backup. See point 165(b).) That list did show a file called MSIPCSV.EXE.
So some other program had added MSIPCSV after the original Windows
installation, and Steve Gibson, who programmed OptOut, had decided that
MSIPCSV was related to Aureate Media or some other spyware. To narrow it
down a bit further, I looked at the previous CD, containing STEP_152.PQI. (See
point 152.) MSIPCSV existed there too. But it did not exist on the file list
accompanying the next previous CD, containing STEP_132.PQI. So MSIPCSV
had come into existence sometime between point 132 and point 152. The
freeware I had installed during that period included X-Setup (see point 137),
EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)), Clean System Directory (see point 141(e)),
PrcView (see point 141(f)), Clipboard Pile (see point 141(h)), Cacheman (see point
141(n)), Fax4Free and eFax (see point 141(p)), CloseAll (see point 141(s)), CabWiz
(see point 141(u)), and Delayer (see point 141(v)), as well as certain programs
from Microsoft, WinMag, and PC Magazine that I doubted were affiliated with
Aureate Media. Although Go!Zilla had displayed a connection with Aureate, it
was not on this list -- that is, I had not installed it until later. (See point 156(c).)
So unless one of these other programs was also connected with Aureate, or
unless I had installed Go!Zilla during this period but had gotten my notes out of
order (which was possible), the MSIPCSV.EXE file seemed like it must have come
from some other kind of spyware. Later, I noticed that OptOut searched for
these files in particular (although I was not clear on whether it deleted them
automatically, examined them before deleting, or merely innoculated some of
them): ADIMAGE.DLL, ADVERT.DLL, ADVERT203.OCX, ADVERTX.OCX,
AMCIS2.DLL, ANADSC.OCX, ANADSCB.OCX, C:\WINDOWS\AMC\*.*,
some or all files in C:\WINDOWS\AMCDL (couldnt tell for sure which ones),
HTMDENG.EXE, IPCCLIENT.DLL, MSIPCSV.EXE, TADIMAGE.DLL, and
TFDE.DLL.
296. Potential Aureate Media Affiliates. I now revisited each of the programs
just listed and ran them briefly, to see whether they all worked or whether,
instead, they gave me strange new error messages as Go!Zilla had done. (See
point 293.) In the latter event, I would suspect that their sudden new failure was
due to the fact that OptOut had just removed some of their program files. I had
uninstalled Fax4Free and CabWiz, so I did not test those. None of the others
seemed to malfunction. eFax displayed some ads, but they seemed to be built
into the program. Unfortunately, I did not have an incoming EFX file to test
eFax on. Perhaps it, or one of these other programs, would display at least
partial failure to function, now, if I used it more extensively. On the other hand,
as I thought about it, I realized that Go!Zilla might have continued to function
after removal of the Aureate stuff. That is, I had quit using Go!Zilla when I had
gotten the surprising message shown in point 293; but as I recalled now, its
download screen had popped up anyway. Perhaps Go!Zilla would have been
able to go ahead and download files for me, and I would have just had to click

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the OK button to get rid of the possibly bogus Invalid installation error
message. Anyway, now it appeared that OptOuts removal of Aureate software
had not deprived me of any of these programs, and I had no idea where
MSIPCSV.EXE had come from, unless perhaps from one of the programs that I
had since uninstalled. Of course, OptOut could have also damaged any number
of other programs that I had installed before point 132 or after point 152 (see
point 295); I would not know unless I ran all those programs. Or, I realized,
OptOut might have offered a log (I couldnt remember for sure), which I might
have reviewed before proceeding with the program, to investigate more
carefully what damage I was about to do. I looked now for a file with a name
like OPTOUT.LOG, but could not find one; evidently the log (if any) had been
available only temporarily.
297. A Choice: Freeware and/or Spyware. I now faced a decision of what to
risk losing. Either I could do a GoBack reversion or I could go ahead from where
I was, having used OptOut to disable some programs. If I did the reversion, I
would risk losing the relatively small number of data file changes that I might
fail to back up (since GoBack would return my system to the time before I had
made those changes); and I would have my freeware and my spyware back in
place; or if I went ahead from this point, I would risk that an unknown (but
hopefully small) number of freeware downloads that had used Aureate Media or
other spyware would no longer function. (For more on GoBack, see point 298.)
On one hand, I had some evidence that MSIPCSV had caused problems for me,
and was linked with the spyware that OptOut had removed (see point 295), and
of course I did not like the concept of software that might be spying on me; on
the other hand, what if it turned out that I had now lost, or would eventually
lose, access to some really important or useful freeware that happened to be
affiliated with Aureate Media or some other spyware? To help me in this
decision, I ran OptOut again and followed the link to Steve Gibsons website at
http://grc.com/optout.htm. There, I saw that he had inserted a new
preliminary statement indicating that he could not be certain whether Aureate
had, or had not, ever actually transmitted personal information about a user back
to Aureates computers. The important word there was personal, as distinct
from demographic. Apparently the whole purpose of Aureate was to transmit
information about the user (whose name and private data (definition not clear)
was probably not communicated), so that Aureate would know which ads to
display on which machines. Or at least that was how Symantec had described
the behavior of Radiate, which seemed to be another name for Aureate. Gibsons
page also provided a link to
www.aureate.com/advertisers/network_members.html, where Aureate gave a
list of the programs currently using its software. That list included Go!Zilla,
NetVampire, and Grafula (see point 299), WebStripper (see point ___), and many
others -- more than 400 programs altogether, according to Steve Gibson. The list

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included some programs that I had installed on the AMD machine before
starting this project but had not reinstalled -- leading to the question of whether
that was how I had gotten MSIPCSV -- i.e., whether I could have accidentally
copied over some files from the old system to the new, or whether the Aureate
software could perhaps have propagated itself from the backup of the old drive
C that I had kept on drive H. (See point 169.) This list told me that there were a
great many ways to catch spyware -- where I use catch in the sense of coming
down with a cold -- but it also told me that, after having downloaded so many
different programs, there were surprisingly few that I had downloaded that were
actually infected. Thus, Aureate seemed like something I could avoid. Yet the
question remained, how important was it to do so? Gibson seemed to have been
backing off, possibly in response to threats of litigation. Of course, given the
reports of legal action recently commenced against DoubleClick, which was
apparently a spyware company that had been accused of crossing some
boundaries in this area, I suspected that the Aureate people would be careful
about actively taking information from peoples private computers, and that
seemed to be the underlying message of Gibsons preliminary statement as well.
My real question, I believed, was this: does this stuff pose a risk of instability to
my system? I had been trying to build a stable system, and I didnt need to
sacrifice that just for the sake of having something like Go!Zilla. Anecdotal
evidence from Gibsons site suggested that users had experienced Internet
Explorer crashes that ceased after they used OptOut. As I recalled, I too had
experienced some such crashes since beginning this project, although I had
grown so used to them in the past few years that I hadnt even bothered
analyzing them in this document. Moreover, I found Internet Explorer crashes to
be far more debilitating than e.g., Word crashes, because while I could set Word
so that it would rarely lose an entire document that I had been working on for a
long time, I had no way of keeping a simple snapshot of the open Internet
Explorer sessions that I might have accumulated, during an hour or more of
browsing. If IE crashed, I would generally have to use Internet Explorers
History function to manually review all of the pages I had opened that day, in
hopes that this would bring me back to everything that I had been searching out
online at the moment of the crash. So the prospect of avoiding Internet Explorer
crashes appealed powerfully to me. Apparently the link with IE existed because
Aureate ran as a parasite on the Internet browser. Some people also seemed to
experience problems with Outlook Express, which was apparently closely related
to IE. Considering Gibsons other software offerings, I gathered that his
approach was to offer OptOut as a temporary piece of freeware, gain much
attention for the issue, and then begin offering OptOut as shareware that would
produce some income for him. Of course, as the programmer of SpinRite, he was
someone worth taking seriously. Nevertheless, seeking opinions that were not
presented on his website, I did a Deja search. Did I get an earful! The opinions
ran overwhelmingly in favor of getting rid of Aureate, even if that meant losing

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some freeware too. I thought some of those reactions might be initial hysteria
against the secrecy aspect of Aureate; I really did not find too many comments
focused on the crash-provoking aspects. Back on the newsgroup available
through Gibsons own website, there were scads of postings, mostly supporting
his general approach. I saw a post from him where he said the OptOut response
had buried him and was costing him quite a bit; I didnt finish reading the
message but it sounded like he thought he might eventually commercialize
OptOut. Under threads labeled Performance Gains and Side Effects, I found
a number of comments indicating that still more people had experienced
performance improvements after removing Aureate. Some people thought that
they could solve the problem just by deleting the ADVERT.DLL file (see point
294), but others said this wasnt enough because Aureate would automatically
reinstall it, or something like that. I decided Id try that approach if I became that
eager to find a way to keep Go!Zilla. Finally, various posts persuaded me to
download AdSubtract from www.adsubtract.com (see point ___), and I also
decided to consider spending $50, someday, to obtain the ComSeal Firewall. In
the meantime, it appeared that my first instinct had been the right one after all: I
was not going to allow Aureate-linked software on my computer, and therefore I
would be moving ahead without first trying to resurrect the previous state of my
machine.
298. Major GoBack Rumor. According to one posting I found during my
browsing, it was important to disable GoBack before attempting to run
SCANDISK or DEFRAG. According to this advice, DEFRAG and/or SCANDISK
would sometimes scramble the GoBack history file (presumably meaning
GOBACKIO.BIN) and would trash the hard disk. I investigated and found a
number of other postings along similar lines. I went to the Knowledgebase at
www.goback.com and found several interesting articles. Those articles
presented the following information:
(a) Software Incompatibility in General. At that point, of the programs tested,
GoBack had compatibility issues with Quarterdeck Clean Sweep, Dr. Solomons
AntiVirus, DriveImage, Norton CleanSweep 2000, Norton Ghost, Norton System
Works, Norton Utilities, Norton Uninstall, Partition Commander,
PartitionMagic, Partition-It, PC-Cillin, QEMM 97, System Commander,
CyberMedia Uninstaller, McAfee Virus Scan, and Virusafe 95.
(b) Specific Problems. For antivirus problems, they suggested setting the
antivirus program so that it would allow writes to the Master Boot Record
(MBR). For the kind of defragmentation problem that arises when the
defragmenter makes extensive changes to the GoBack history (i.e., when you
defragment a badly fragmented disk and discover that this has used up much of
the space allocated for GoBack to track changes on your system), they offered no

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suggestion. For defragmentation problems experienced when you use Norton

SpeedDisk to defragment system files (including GoBacks huge
GOBACKIO.BIN file), they recommended these steps: (1) download a Registry
fix from their site; (2) in Norton SpeedDisk, select Properties | Options |
Customize | Unmoveables and check Hidden and System Files; and (3) if the
problem recurs, disable and then re-enable GoBack. For making a copy or
backup using disk image software (i.e., Ghost or DriveImage), they
recommended the following: (1) boot normally, hit the Spacebar at the GoBack
startup screen, and choose the Boot from Floppy option; (2) make a disk image
in the imaging software (contrary to my previous impression, this image will
include only a blank version of GOBACKIO.BIN); and (3) if you have used the
imaging software to make a backup of one disk to another (i.e., not a compressed
image file), remove the copy because otherwise GoBack will be confused by
finding two instances of what appears to be exactly the same disk. For using
disk imaging software to restore to a disk, they recommend booting directly
from the floppy (i.e., not going through the initial GoBack screen, with the
spacebar and all that), and ignoring the message (which you might not get
anyway) that said, GoBack couldnt locate these drives on your system. For
problems with antivirus software (especially during installation), they
recommended pressing Y if the system seemed to be hung, or else disabling
the antivirus software until the installation was completed.
(c) Conclusion. These suggestions did not hint at the extreme problems
suggested in the rumor, where GoBack and a disk defragmenter could work
together to scramble the hard disk. Indeed, the Norton-related advice seemed to
suggest that there would be fewer problems than if I were just using the
Windows DEFRAG program, since the former had settings that would prevent
system and hidden files from being defragmented. I wondered if I could do the
same kind of thing with the Windows DEFRAG program. (See point 300.)
299. Other Aureate-Affiliated Programs. When I was uninstalling Go!Zilla and
had not yet learned about Aureate (see point 294), I also considered finding some
other program to take Go!Zillas place. One that I downloaded and nearly
installed was Net Vampire. Besides being a popular downloader in its own
right, you could obtain free add-ons called URLPro and Grafula. Both were
good for making lists of the URLs in a website. URLPro, I felt, would be useful
to replace URL Bandit. (See point 266(f).) Grafula was focused specifically on
image files. So if you were looking at a page full of photos or GIF files that you
might want to use on your own website or for some other reason, you could
download a bunch of them in one operation, rather than have to do them one at a
time. Unfortunately, it had developed that all of these programs were affiliated
with Aureate Media. (See point 297.) So I wound up deleting them instead of
installing them. Net result: I had no downloading program other than the one

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that had come with Windows. It had served me well enough; I would rather
cope with its occasional weaknesses than experience more Internet Explorer
crashes; and I could hope that some other alternative would come along. (Later,
I found that I had already installed Net Vampire, apparently sometime during
this whole process, before I knew about the Aureate thing. I uninstalled it and
ran OptOut to clear up any lingering traces from it.)
Defragmentation
300. DEFRAG Revisions. By now, my defragmentation saga was growing rather
long in the tooth, and yet I needed to revisit the subject again:
(a) Recap. Early on, I had set up the Maintenance Wizard to run Windows
Defragmenter at 1 AM every night (see point 105(g)); I had found comments
online indicating that Defragmenter didnt work properly (see point 122); I had
tried, and failed, to find a way to run Defragmenter automatically in Safe Mode
(see point 123); I had tried to figure out how I could run it once a week, at the tail
end of MAINT_WK (see point 124); I had decided to put it into a nightly
maintenance program called MAINTWIN (see point 131) which had ultimately
come to depend on running a Registry edit that would allow a program to run
just once, before anything else, right after rebooting (see point 141(k)); I had
devised a special screen saver arrangement to keep the screen saver from
interrupting the defragmentation process (see point 145(k)); I had found
Defragmenter to work poorly (see point 162); I had eventually learned how to
shut down all running processes and had decided to try that approach with
Defragmenter (see point 264); and now I had learned that, even if the approach
of shutting down all processes worked (which I really hadnt tested much),
defragmentation on a GoBack system posed the risk of screwing things up
royally (see point 298). Given the nearly indispensable status of GoBack, it
seemed that I would be able to defragment my system only on those infrequent
occasions when I could spare the time to take the manual steps of disabling and
re-enabling GoBack.
(b) MAINTWIN Alternative. Following advice I stumbled across in the ResKit
Book (see point 145(n)), I could have set DEFRAG to run after reboot. Then I saw
that this was just another, possibly inferior way of expressing the concept earlier
expressed in the DEFRAG.REG approach. (See point 141(k).) To do this, the
instructions told me to go into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\R
unServicesOnce, create a new string value called Defrag, and set its value to
DEFRAG.EXE or just set it to DEFRAG with, as the manual said, my choice of
command line switches. (See point 300(g).)

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(c) Disable DEFRAG Screen Saver. Since I liked seeing what the Defragmenter
was doing, I decided a better approach was to shut off my screen saver
altogether while DEFRAG was running. To do this, I went into the Registry and
into
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App
lets\Defrag\Settings. There, I created a new string value named
DisableScreenSaver and set its value to Yes. I was not even sure whether I would
continue to use DEFRAG at this point, but I figured it couldnt hurt to try this
approach. To test it, I went into Control Panel | Display | Settings | Screen
Saver, set its value to 1 minute, and ran Defragmenter ... almost. I remembered
the advice about not running Defragmenter while GoBack was running, and
even though I thought I knew a way around this, I decided not to experiment, at
least not yet. (See point ___.)
(d) Protecting GOBACKIO.BIN. It appeared that I should probably not let
DEFRAG run on a partition containing the GoBack history file, GOBACKIO.BIN.
(See point 298(c).) One solution was to create separate partitions on each hard
disk that would contain nothing but GOBACKIO.BIN, and then never run a
defragmenter in such a way as to reach those particular files and/or partitions. I
believed that setting up a batch file that I could trust, and that I would not
second-guess, was likely to be safer than running Defragmenter at very
infrequent times, when I might be preoccupied with other things and might just
run it without thinking. One approach that would work on both computers, and
would not require me to create any additional partitions, was to modify my
existing partition arrangement (see point 269(o)) as follows: drive E would
become the GOBACK partition for hard disk 1, and its data would move to drive
F; drive H would remain the GOBACK location for hard disk 2. For both drives
E and H, their sizes, and the sizes of the GOBACKIO.BIN files they contained,
might be revised. Before proceeding with this, I had to finish a couple other
things. (See point 302.)
(e) Considering Norton. Although I thought I had clicked on the right links on
the GoBack website to try to understand how it was incompatible with Norton
Utilities (see point 298(a)), I did not seem to have a clear picture when I sat down
to write this note. Instead of revisiting the issue, I decided that I was still not at a
point where I felt compelled to use Nortons SpeedDisk rather than the Windows
Defragmenter. I knew that the former was a more efficient program, but I also
feared Norton as a source of crashes, and I thought I would give Defragmenter
one more try before throwing in the towel.
(f) ExcludeFiles. The ResKit manual (see point 145(n)) made me think that I
could protect a file -- say, GOBACKIO.BIN -- by modifying the ExcludeFiles
value in the Registry under

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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\A
pplets\Defrag\AppStartParams. The idea behind this modification would
evidently be to add a slash behind the existing list of files
(SYSTEM.DAT\USER.DAT\SYSTEM.INI\WIN.INI) and just add the name
GOBACKIO.BIN, without any pathname (which, containing a backslash, would
surely confuse things). I didnt see what I really had to lose by experimenting
with this, so I went ahead with it.
(g) DEFRAG and SCANDISK Command Line Switches. In the ResKit manual, I
finally found the command-line syntax for DEFRAG. It was as follows:
defrag [drive:] [/all] [/F] [/U] [/Q] [/noprompt] [/concise] [/detailed]
where, focusing on the ones that matter to me, /all means all drives, /F means
defragment files and free space, /detailed meant show the details, and
/noprompt meant dont stop and display confirmation messages. For
SCANDSKW (the Windows, not DOS, version), the interesting choices for me
were SCANDSKW /A (checks all drives) /N (runs automatically).
301. DriveImage Backup. I prepared to make a backup of drives C, D, and E on
the AMD machine. But I forgot to include drive E, so the backup -- which I
mistakenly called STEP_300.PQI, because both machines were disabled and I was
not able to check this document to see exactly where I was -- contained only
drives C and D. To make the DriveImage backup, I disabled GoBack. Following
the advice in point 298(b), I rebooted, hit the space bar, told GoBack to boot from
the floppy, and ran DriveImage that way. (See point 269(a).) I made a two-part
disk image file, as before, putting 640 MB in the first part and the rest in the
second. (See point 269(l).)
302. Revising Hard Disk Partitions for GoBack. Both machines were disabled at
this time (see point 301) because I had decided to revise GoBack in the same way
on both machines. The revision consisted of using PartitionMagic to change my
disk structure, so that GoBacks history files would be located on separate
partitions that I would not defragment. (See point 300(d).) Using the AMD
machine as an example, the new arrangement would look like this: drive C
(WIN98) would remain a 900 MB partition; drive E would be renamed GOBACK
and would shrink to 700 MB, which was all I felt I needed to provide adequate
GoBack coverage for the 3.1 GB primary hard disk in the AMD computer; and D
(PROGRAMS), using up the remainder of the space available on that hard disk,
would grow to more than 1,400 MB. The second hard disk would continue to
consist of partitions F, G, and H. Drive G (BURNING) would remain unchanged
at 700 MB. I would rename F to be DATA, move the former contents of drive E
to F, shrink F by about 1.5 GB, and move that 1.5 GB to drive H (SWAP). Thus, F

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would now contain about 6.4 GB and H would contain about 2.5 GB. Drive H
would not be named GOBACK, but I would use that additional 1.5 GB for
GOBACKIO.BIN. These GoBack partitions were much larger than the previous
GOBACKIO.BIN files had been; I decided to enlarge them because I had been
disappointed to see that, with GoBacks default settings (putting aside 10% of the
disks total space for GOBACKIO.BIN), GoBack had generally not provided
coverage for the entire past week. The 700 MB partition on AMD drive E took
up more than a fifth of the primary hard disk, and the 1.5 GB space on drive H
would come in at about a sixth of the secondary hard disk. The situation was
different on the PENTIUM computer. Since it had only one hard disk containing
both program and data files, and was using its 1 GB Seagate secondary hard disk
solely to hold the H (SWAP) partition (see point 256), and since that secondary
hard disk didnt need GoBack coverage (see point 258(a)), I converted E into a
GOBACK partition as on the AMD machine, but I made it larger to cover the full
7 GB contents of the Maxtor primary hard disk in the PENTIUM computer. (See
point 256(c).) The final structure was this: drive C (WIN98) (900 MB), D
(PROGRAMS) (1 GB), E (GOBACK) (1 GB), F (DATA) (3.7 GB), and G (7 MB).
Thus, all of my GoBack files were now on drives that I would protect from
defragmentation (see point ___); and except for the tiny 10 MB GoBack file on the
Seagate drive on the PENTIUM machine, all used approximately 15-25% of the
total available space on their disks. Finally, to the extent that I had not already
done so, I uninstalled GoBack and reinstalled it, as required to persuade it to
make use of the new spaces I had arranged for it. (Later, I had other experiences
in which GoBack required some extra changes, concessions, or delays. See point
304 and point 309(a). I also found that Cool Edit generally seemed to reduce
GoBacks Event Log to the last 12 hours or less.)
303. Changes Provoked by Changes in Partitions. This rearrangement of
partitions made drive E no longer available for data files. This had several
ramifications:
(a) My Documents Folder. When I tried to delete E:\Temp on the PENTIUM
machine to make room for a new version of drive E (see point 300(d)), I got the
error message, Temp is your documents folder. It cannot be deleted. If you
wish to delete this folder, first choose another folder to be your documents
folder. I wasnt sure how to deal with this, and I didnt seem to have dealt with
it before, so I decided to ignore it and proceed with my plans, hoping that this
would not cause further problems. So at one point during the PartitionMagic
and GoBack installation/change/reinstallation process, I deleted E:\Temp.
When I was done with everything else, I did a search for documents and found
no My Documents folder on any partition.

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(b) Data File Locations Generally. I could not remember all of the programs that
might have thought that their data files resided on drive E, but for the ones that I
could remember, I opened the program and told it that its default file location
would now be on drive F. The programs for which I made that adjustment
included Microsoft Office programs, InCtrl4 (see point 141(d)), and Cool Edit
(see point 304). I also set F:\Graphics to allow Thumbnail View. (See point
113(g).) I had originally told X-Setup that I wanted my website Favorites on E
(see point 137(m)), but that did not seem to have been happening. Possibly this
change had failed at some time when E had become unavailable. I decided to
revisit that question when I was working through the whole Favorites area. (See
point 142 and point 327.)
(c) Moving OUTLOOK.PST. When I started Outlook 98, I got an error message
stating that The path specified for the file E:\Messages\Mail\outlook.pst is not
valid. (See point 112(c).) Before telling the program that the file had moved to
drive F, I decided to see whether I still needed Outlook files to be located in both
E:\Messages and E:\Messages\Mail. (See point 284.) After a brief review, I
decided that the ones in E:\Messages might also apply to E:\Messages\News,
and therefore should not be moved to E:\Messages\Mail. I went ahead and told
Outlook 98 where OUTLOOK.PST was located, and that seemed to take care of
it.
(d) Batch Files. Using the Tools | Find function in PowerDesk Explorer, I
scanned my batch files for all references to E:. I used SendTo to send the ones
containing those characters to WordPad (see point 113(c)), and used Ctrl-H to
change them to F: where appropriate.
(e) Deleting Scraps Toolbar. In the weeks since I created the Scraps Toolbar, I
had found that I really did not use it very often. (See point 120(s).) Its principle
weakness, for my purposes, was that it really just handled text, not excerpts from
websites or other things that I might drag to it. I also felt that Clipboard Pile (see
point ___), or another program like it, would provide the additional advantage
of capturing things as soon as I copied them, without my having to drag them
anywhere. The elimination of E:\Temp had meant the elimination of the View
Scraps icon from the Scraps Toolbar; now all that remained was to right-click on
that empty toolbar and choose Close.
304. Divergences between the Two Computers. I had already discovered that
the differences between the two computers required me to set up different
hardware configurations for them, and that these different configurations
required different steps during the initial restoration of drives C and D from CD
backup. (See point 259.) The attempt to make GoBack work on these two
different computers, with their different hard disk arrangements, had now

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added another step to that process. Since GoBack would exist on the CD backup,
I would have to restore from the CD, and then, when restoring to the PENTIUM
computer, I would have to uninstall and reinstall GoBack. (See point 302.) As its
manual informed me, I couldnt change the sizes of its GOBACKIO.BIN files in
any other way, and those files would have different sizes on the two computers
as long as the computers had hard disks of different sizes. (See point 302.) Also,
although I was slow in realizing this, I would have to create slight differences in
my Cool Edit setups on the two machines. Cool Edit required primary and
secondary temporary folders, and it recommended putting the primary
temporary folder on a disk other than the program disk, and the secondary
temporary folder on a disk other than the one containing the primary temporary
folder. Since I had just two hard disks in each machine, this would mean the
primary folder would go on the secondary hard disk, and the secondary folder
would go on the primary hard disk. Given the desire to make as much disk
space available to Cool Edit as possible, this persuaded me to set up the primary
and secondary temporary folders as follows: drives F and D on the AMD
computer, and drives H and F on the PENTIUM. Seeing that I would not be
using drive H for this purpose on the AMD later encouraged me to reduce the
size of the H (SWAP) partition further on that machine. (See point ___.) In short,
the differing hard disk sizes had now added GoBack setup and Cool Edit
temporary file locations to the list of things that would require differential
treatment on the two machines. (See point ___.)
305. Lost Network Connection. I had noticed two things about the network
situation on the PENTIUM computer (see point 283): PowerDesk Explorer was
not showing a connection to the AMD computer, and I was still getting the
message at startup that said, Enter Windows Password: Type a name to
identify yourself to Windows. Enter a password if you want to. Tip: If you
dont enter a password, you wont get this prompt again at startup. I thought
maybe the previous fix for the latter problem had stopped working, so I applied
it again and it seemed to work; I stopped getting the message at bootup. The
former problem persisted, however. I knew that I had previously been able to
use the network with this existing arrangement, so I decided to repeat the same
four-step Control Panel process as before. None of the previous settings had
changed, however, so I did not see why the network connection should have
ceased to work. I wondered if the problem lay on the AMD computer instead, so
I checked the settings there. They, too, were unchanged. I rebooted both
machines. Still no network connection. I wondered if maybe the thing had
worked before because I had not cold-rebooted and wiped out the memory of the
connection. For whatever reason, I had to go back to the approach of using
Client for Microsoft Networks (not Windows Logon) as the Primary Network
Logon in Control Panel, using TweakUI to get me past the Microsoft Networking
password box. And that solved it.

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306. Another Try at a DEFRAG Setup. It was not clear that I could, or should,
make the Windows Defragmenter program work. (See point 300(a).) Before
giving up on it and moving to Norton Utilities, however, which would bring its
own new complications (see point 300(e)), I decided to try once more to set up an
arrangement in which DEFRAG would be most likely to succeed. To do this, I
had to bear a couple of things in mind. First, because of GoBack, I could not set
DEFRAG to run on drives E and H. (See point 302.) Also, I knew that I could not
run DEFRAG on drives C or D while programs were running; that
defragmentation could slow the computer way down, even if it was running on
another partition; that defragmentation was much faster and easier if you did it
often; that it wouldnt hurt anything to interrupt it, as long as I did so in a
normal way; that it improved efficiency; and that I should try to squeeze it in
whenever I could. On this basis, I wrote the following DEFRAG batch files,
using the syntax shown in point 300(g); note that this is a modification of
MAINT_HR.BAT (see point 120(k)):
___DEFRAGC and MAINT_HR___
Sure enough, a short time later I saw that MAINT_HR did pop up, run DEFRAG
for a moment on drive G, and then disappear. This was interesting but
somewhat obtrusive, so I decided that, until I had more of a need for
MAINT_HR, I would rename it to be MAINTDAY and would run it just once a
day, at 4:45 AM. I made the appropriate change in Task Scheduler. (I revised
MAINTDAY again later. See point 309(d).)
More Adjustments
307. Offline Browsing. I had found that searching for information online could
be very time-consuming. I might do a search in AltaVista, Northern Light, or
Deja.com, and spend five or ten minutes or more working through a few dozen
hits before finding a website that would provide the specific information I was
looking for. What I really wanted was a program that would go through all of
the 200 or 400 or however many hits that such a search might turn up, download
their entire contents to my computer, and then I could browse among them very
quickly, without waiting for each of them to load.
(a) WebStripper. ZDNet described this program as an easy-to-use ad-supported
product you can use to copy entire Websites to your local hard drive. By the
time I read that, however, I had already begun to install the thing. It was an
immediate turn-off: the first screen that came up, without any gentle
introduction or slick presentation, was a form inquiring about my household
income and other matters. I hit the Esc key, intending to bail out of the whole

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thing; but instead, to my surprise and pleasure, it appeared to go ahead into the
remainder of the installation process. I did cancel out of the installation at that
point, mostly because I was beginning to get tied up in figuring out the Aureate
controversy (see point 297). When the dust settled, I had found that WebStripper
used Aureate, and that had persuaded me not to use it. So I set out, instead, to
find other means of reducing the amount of time I would wait for webpages to
download so I could browse through them. I decided that WebStripper would
not have been much help for my primary need anyway, pertaining to AltaVista
or Northern Light (see above).
(b) Browsing Techniques and Equipment. To some extent, I had learned to
reduce my browsing delay by using multiple browser sessions (e.g., hit Ctrl-N to
open another browser session, or right-click and tell the context menu to open a
link in a new session), so that one or two sessions could be downloading while I
was reviewing a third one. Another software-independent solution would have
been to get a cable modem or other very fast Internet connection. I had begun to
price those options, but so far they still seemed too expensive.
(c) Internet Explorers Offline Viewing. If I saved a website as a Favorite in
Internet Explorer, it gave me a Make available offline option; if I selected that,
it would take me into a wizard that would ask me some questions; and if I
finished with that and then came back and right-clicked on the favorite that I had
changed and opened its Properties, I could set a number of things that would let
me download that site, and others linked to it, at prescheduled times. The
schedule feature allowed me to download the website every X days at a given
time, and optionally to go online to do so if I was not online already; it allowed
me to download a preset number of links deep (i.e., get this page, and the pages
it links to, and the pages that those pages link to ...), and to decide whether to
follow links outside of the website. The last point meant that I could search for a
certain number of levels of links within Deja.com's website, without following
links out to Dejas advertisers. It would allow me to limit the amount of disk
space chewed up by this process; to send myself or someone else an e-mail
notifying them that the targeted site had changed; and to enter my logon name
and password if the site in question required one. It was very tempting to just go
with this Internet Explorer offline viewing feature, but I decided to look at some
of the other offerings.
(d) SiteSnagger. I searched ZDNet and found a number of free offline browser
programs. I was looking for something that would do what Internet Explorers
offline browsing option would do, but I hoped to find something with more
options. I eliminated WebCopier, a free offline viewer, because it was listed on
the Aureate website. I looked first at PC Magazines SiteSnagger. Its installation
consisted simply of moving files to a folder of their own and setting up a

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shortcut. Its concept was that you would save a project which would hold all
of the files that you might download from a website. It had the some of the same
options as Internet Explorer, especially number of levels and follow offsite links.
I liked its offsite option better for my purposes: it would get only the first offsite
page, regardless of the number of levels specified. This sounded like just the
thing for downloading pages from a search results page. It didnt have a
maximum size setting -- i.e., it would seemingly try to download 800 MB if thats
the kind of search you set up -- but it did have a setting for the maximum
number of webpages it would download. It had an option for shutting off
multimedia files, if you didnt want to download sound or video that might add
significantly to the bulk of your download. I experimented by having it
download my recent newsgroup postings through Deja. Unfortunately, it
seemed to download virtually everything from the Deja search results page
except the search results. I tried it with an AltaVista search results page. This
time, it queued more than 200 webpages. When it was done, it showed a page
called Web Results, but double-clicking on it didnt open it up. I decided to try
something else. Later, I noticed that I had to go into the Projects subfolder under
this programs program files folder and manually delete the project data that it
had downloaded there.
(e) SurfSaver. I was familiar with the askSam company that put this together. I
had used the original askSam database back in the 1980s, and it had actually
worked for a certain project. I decided to try this one next partly because of that,
and partly because it sounded like the best of the rest. Unfortunately, when I
started to install, I got the message, Ad-Enabled Software. You are about to
install advertising-enabled software that may make periodic use of your Internet
connection. This program wasnt on the Aureate list (see point 297), but I
decided to try other options first anyway. Later, I found that even though I had
canceled out at this early point, the program had already created folders on my
hard disk that I had to delete manually. The same was true of WebStripper,
above.
(f) HTTrack. This, like SurfSaver, was a freeware download from ZDNet. The
writeup there said that it had a command-line version, but that there could be
errors from some Java-based features. They gave it five stars anyway, and it
looked interesting. I installed it. Like SiteSnagger, it started by asking you for a
Project Name. The ZDNet description had said the purpose of this software was
to mirror a website on your machine, and now it wanted to know what I
wanted to do. Options included several different ways of mirroring, or I could
use it to test the links in my own website to make sure they all worked. It wasnt
too clear, but I gathered that I was supposed to type a location on my computer
as the Base Path and then indicate the URLs that I wanted to include. I tried it
with a Northern Light search results page, but like the others, it just gave me the

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pages of the Northern Light website itself, not the websites that existed
somewhere other than Northern Light. That is, I didnt have what I wanted for
search results pages, but I did have a separate tool that could be useful for
websites that I wanted to explore offline. I really liked the way it put all the
pages in a recognizable location on my disk. Browsing the downloaded website
was a simple matter of going to the downloaded website in Windows Explorer,
looking at the tree structure of the websites pages, and opening one of those
pages in Internet Explorer. If this program later turned out to have problems, I
would reconsider using the SurfSaver program, but otherwise this would be a
keeper.
(g) Internet Explorer Revisited. I had taken a look at this option (see point 307(c))
but had not actually tried it. Now I saved an AltaVista search results page as a
Favorite, told IE to synchronize it, and waited while it downloaded various
linked pages. Like the others I had just been testing, it was slow enough that I
probably would not use it to assist in a spur-of-the-moment search, but it did
succeed in downloading the pages so that I could click on a search results hit and
go to the found page very quickly.
(h) Web Image Collector. This program had the same purpose as Grafula (see
point 299) but, I hoped, without the Aureate Media connection. The idea was
that it would download the image files from a website that I would visit for the
purpose of collecting photos, GIF animations, or other image files. I didnt like
the fact that it put itself into my system tray; there werent that many times when
I needed to download a pageful of images. I looked on it more as an occasional
need that would call for a program I would use occasionally. I also disliked the
little Merlin wizard that came up when I started the program; I had to sit there
while he babbled on about things I already knew. Worse, he stayed onscreen
when I switched to another program -- there he stood, right in the center of the
screen! I didnt like this program. I killed it. The icon vanished from the system
tray, and so did the wizard. Hmm. That wasnt so bad after all. I started it
again. I pointed it toward a page that had some GIF animations I wanted to
download. The wizard continued hopping around the screen, obscuring text I
was trying to read. The downloader said, GIF disabled in beta. To hell with
this. I uninstalled the program, deleted its program folder, and ran OptOut just
to make sure that scummy little guy hadnt sh*t on my disk.
(i) WebCompass. I had purchased this program perhaps a year or two earlier,
had used it occasionally, and had installed it as part of this project. (See point
165(a).) Symantec had purchased Quarterdeck, or at least some of its product
lines, and this was one of them; Symantec had then discontinued this product. It
did not have the best design, but it had some really good features. Basically, I
had to enter a new search topic, start the web search, stop it, and use the right-

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click Add URL option. That was the point at which I could enter the AltaVista
search results page (or whatever URL) that I wanted the thing to explore. From
there, I chose the option to explore links. The program looked into each linked
webpage and gave me a summary. I was able to delete the ones that werent
relevant and explore further links for the others. It was a good deal faster and
more explicit than the other programs, for purposes of downloading links from a
website. I also knew that it saved its results in a database format that could be
made Access-compatible, although I didnt remember exactly how I had done
that. The main benefit for me was that I could enter the URL from one AltaVista
search results page -- usually the second one in a search -- into an Excel
spreadsheet, parse that URL for the number that changed on the third and
subsequent search results page URLs, and mass-produce a whole set of AltaVista
search results URLs that I could then enter into WebCompass and allow it to
explore and summarize the ten websites listed on each of those search results
pages.
(j) Conclusion. WebCompass was useful for examining the titles and
descriptions of the first 200 or so hits in an AltaVista or other similar search, and
for pursuing sublinks from those hits to other websites. Internet Explorers
synchronization feature made it the fastest way to examine the actual websites
listed in a search results page. I wanted to develop it further. (See point ___.)
HTTrack seemed really good for downloading a single website for offline
browsing, and perhaps SiteSnagger was also good for that purpose.
308. AdSubtract. PC Magazine described this as freeware that would make
surfing the Web a much more pleasant experience. The idea was that it would
speed things up a great deal by preventing ads from loading in your Web
browser; you could also block cookies, and set up five sites that were exempt.
When I installed it, it offered to block ads, DoubleClick cookies (see point 297),
and/or all cookies. It defaulted to the first two, and thats where I left it. When
it finished installation, I got an error message saying Explorer: This program
has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. I clicked through
that and took AdSubtract up on its offer to start the program now. I noticed that
it had added an icon to the system tray. I went into its Properties screen and
found the place where it allowed you to select five exempt sites. DoubleClick
was listed as one of them; I saw that exempt meant that the three choices just
mentioned would vary from the norm. In the case of DoubleClick, for example,
the exemption was that the All cookies option was selected. The Advanced tab
seemed to say that the ad-blocking worked on the basis of a database and that
you had to enable free updates to the ad-blocking database or else your adblocking would become less thorough over time. They informed me that the free
update option enabled my computer to send them an anonymous count of the
number of ads blocked. They also allowed me to click on a Report Ads button if

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I found ads that their database did not include; I figured that if lots of people
were doing this, their database must be pretty effective. Finally, they showed me
a Stats tab that would display the count of ads and cookies filtered during my
current online session. I went online, reviewed some newsgroups in Deja.com
and some e-mail, and had no ads after maybe 20 minutes. But I figured I would
eventually. As I thought about it, it seemed that maybe the counter had been
malfunctioning, because didnt Deja normally show banner ads at the top of the
screen? There was just a big white space there now. I began doing other
browsing, and noticed a machine-gun noise coming from my speakers. What
was this? I had selected the Ad Attack and Cookie Cannon sound effects,
and now saw that the Stats page said it had filtered nearly 900 ads! I guess it was
slow in starting, because now it did show a number for Deja. Evidently it
counted all of the ads that might possibly have appeared on your site -- i.e., all in
the queue at a place like Deja -- because I had only visited a half-dozen websites
at this point. Anyway, satisfied that the program seemed to be doing something,
I shut off the sound effects. A few hours later, Windows Update automatically
took my computer to that Microsoft website (see point ___), and I got the
message that if I wanted to use that site, I would have to make it an exempt site.
I got the idea that I would probably use up those five exempt websites pretty
quickly. I said OK, and thats all there was to it. Very simple.
309. Audio Problems and Adjustments.
(a) Slow Reading from CD. I tried to copy a file from an audio CD to my hard
disk. Basically, nothing happened. (I had installed the upgraded CDFS.VXD, so
I was able to read the contents of the CD in Explorer. See point 157(c).)
PowerDesk Explorer said it was copying, but the dialog box said, 13 Minutes
Remaining -- for one song! -- and it did not change. I could hear the CD drive
keep trying to read the file; I could see its light flashing regularly; there was
some hard disk activity; but nothing seemed to be changing. I went to the
restroom; I came back; still the same. I canceled, and the Yamaha CD-ROM drive
kept making the same noise. I was able to play the song OK; it just wasnt
copying. I tried to copy a track from a different audio CD, and that track copied
OK. I thought it must just be something about that particular track, so instead of
using PowerDesk Explorer to copy the file, I used CDex to rip it. (See point
157(d).) CDex paused for several minutes in the middle of the process, with a lot
of hard disk activity going on, and I had the impression that GoBack was trying
to catch up. I decided that GoBack would work a lot better if it were possible to
store the GoBack activity for one hard disk on another, so that GoBack could be
doing its thing while the other disk was finishing your work. Anyway, then the
hard disk activity stopped and CDex sat there, frozen. The mouse moved, but no
toolbars would respond. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw a blank entry with the words
Not responding next to it. I knew that the blank entry was Clipboard Pile,

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which I had recently used. I decided to take measures to control that program;
but for right now I just killed it. (See point ___.) The system immediately began
responding again. I used CDex again, and had more hard disk thrashing for
several minutes -- so I concluded that GoBack was indeed a culprit in this
slowdown -- but at least CDex finished its ripping process this time.
(b) Volume Control Problem. For some reason, the speakers on the AMD
machine went silent at about this time. They would give a little bit of sound
every now and then, but mostly nothing. I thought I should probably start by
making sure I had the updated drivers for the sound card. Turned out that part - but only part -- of the problem was that I had the settings wrong on the Volume
control -- the little yellow speaker in the system tray.
(c) Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Drivers. I was abashed to see that I had
installed only some generic drivers that had come with Windows. (See point
255(c).) Well, no wonder the sound wasnt functioning right! I remembered
now; I had done this because I had wanted to try to get by with just the Turtle
Beach software that I had installed on the PENTIUM. Well, enough of that. I
reinserted the SoundBlaster CD and quickly found that it didnt think my system
with an AMD K6/2 300 chip met its requirements for a computer with at least a
Pentium 133. It was going to install everything except the Creative WaveSynth /
WaveGuide software. Whatever. I told it not to bother with most of the rest of
the options either; I just wanted WaveStudio in case my other two sound editors
werent available for some reason. (See point 157(h).) It gave me some lines that
it said I would have to add manually to my SYSTEM.INI file. This, and the fact
that I had not been able to figure out from the website which of many downloads
I actually needed in order to upgrade my system, both contributed to my general
sense that Creative did not have its act together. So after I finished installing
software from the CD, I installed the SBW9XUP.EXE update. Then I realized this
would be an excellent excuse to visit WinDrivers.com. It seemed like a good,
professional site. They told me that I actually had to look at the sound card to
get an ID number from it. I shut down the AMD computer and did exactly that.
Mine was model CT4500. It turned out that I didnt need this information after
all, because WinDrivers.com next steered me to the Creative download page,
which didnt care which model of the Creative AWE64 SoundBlaster I might
have. This page had changed since the last time I was there, or maybe I just
hadnt found this page. There were only two drivers listed here for me to
download, and one was the SBW9XUP.EXE that I had just installed. So it looked
like I had guessed right on that one. The other was SFMGRUPG.EXE, a
SoundFont Manager installer. I downloaded and installed that too. The sound
was definitely better. It seemed like it might be OK now. Later, I noticed things
flashing by onscreen when I rebooted, and found that the installation process
had inserted various things in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (See point ___.)

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(d) Automatic Cleanup for Cool Edit Temp Files. Cool Edit stored its temporary
files in two different folders. (See point 157(a).) Sometimes, presumably when
the system crashed, Cool Edit would not or could not clean up those temporary
files. Sometimes I had found 500 MB temporary files sitting in there, taking up
space. I now added lines to MAINTDAY.BAT (see point 306) to take care of that.
(e) Audio Toolbar. There was a small number of audio programs that I was
likely to use frequently. I created a toolbar, using the same process as before (see
point 120(o)), named it Audio, put the desired icons on it, and dragged it up to
the top of the screen (see point 143). On this toolbar, I had icons for Cool Edit,
CDex, Winamp, and Volume Control (see point 157), and for Media Player (see
point 109(f)). I had been somewhat uncertain why Media Player was not the
same program as the Windows Media Player I had had before, so I went to
Microsofts website, searched for that full three-word phrase, found version 6.4,
downloaded it, and made that the version of Media Player that appeared on this
toolbar.
310. Other Toolbar Modifications. I changed the Util Toolbar (see point 143) to
be a Files toolbar. It now contained icons for Windows Explorer, Size Manager
(see point 135), DOS Prompt (see point 105(l)), Find (see point 145(g)), and
WinDiff (see point 119(a)). The Desk toolbar (see point 143) became the Desktop
toolbar, and it contained icons for Calculator, Character Map, Clipboard Pile,
Magnifier, Notepad, and Wordpad. I deleted the Scraps Toolbar (see point
120(s)) and the Folders Toolbar (see point 120(u)) because I had rarely used them
and they hadnt worked perfectly. The loss of the Folders Toolbar required me
to do some reconstruction, however, when I cleaned up the SendTo options (see
point 312), and I soon decided to reinstate the Scraps toolbar. (See point 313.)
311. Widen the Scrollbar. I decided that there were too many times when I hit
the taskbar while trying to move the horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the
page. To make the scrollbar a bit wider, I went into Control Panel | Display |
Appearance | Item | Scrollbar and changed its size to 14.
312. Clean Up the SendTo and New File Lists. I had previously rearranged the
SendTo options to suit my taste. (See point 113(c).) I had also removed various
items from the File | New menu. (See point 146(c).) Since then, the addition of
more programs had added new items to these lists. I used the same techniques
to clean them up again. On the File | New menu, I decided to remove the
options that created files with extensions of PDD, GZL, and UDL. I decided to
leave the following: Folder, Shortcut, Text Document, and Microsoft Word
Document. I was unable to remove the Norton AntiVirus Scan entry; I had no
idea why Symantec would have put something like that on a File | New menu.

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When I was done with SendTo, its first level contained Mail Recipient, 3.5
Floppy (A), and Recycle Bin, along with folders named Folders and Programs;
the Folders folder contained shortcuts to DOS_UTIL, F Temp, Graphics, Text,
and WAV; and the Programs folder contained shortcuts to Cool Edit, Excel,
Windows Media Player, Notepad, Word, and WordPad. Finally, I looked at the
right-click context menus to see if I would need to clear items off there too (see
point 141(t) and point 146(l)), but decided I would probably use all of the options
shown there.
313. Scraps Toolbar Revisited. I had created a toolbar to which I could drag
scraps of text (see point 120(s) as well as icons from websites (see point 273). I
had originally based that toolbar on the E:\Temp\Scraps folder, but that location
vanished when I converted E: to be the GOBACK partition. (See point 302.) I
revised my batch files to refer to F: rather than E:, but then I deleted the Scraps
toolbar because I didnt use it much. (See point 310.) The next morning,
however, I arrived to see that the computer had run URLSCRAP, the batch file
that was prepared to sweep through F:\Temp\Scraps and open up any URLs
that I might have stored there during the previous day. (See point 273.) I
decided that this was a legitimate function and that I had enough space for it on
the toolbar on the right side of my screen, so I recreated it as before.
314. Eliminating Duplicate Files. I had begun to use EasyCleaner to identify
duplicate files on my system, but had found that it intended to take nearly 200
hours for the task. (See point 166(b).) Seeking a different approach, I
downloaded a free program called MoreSpace and unzipped it. Its
README.TXT file said it was ad-supported freeware. I was going to check the
Aureate page to try to figure out just which kind of ad-supporting we were
talking about (see point 289), but then I decided that I might still get an increased
risk of system crashes even if it was something other than Aureate. Instead, I
went online and looked for other freeware.
(a) Introducing Dupeless. I found PC Magazines Dupeless and downloaded
that. The README said that this program would detect duplicates that had the
same contents but different names, and would distinguish those that had the
same names but different contents. It said it would also detect earlier versions of
the same DLLs, where such duplication could cause system problems. After
dealing with some problems caused by another program (see point 315), I went
ahead with the Dupeless installation, and then I ran the program. Its options
allowed me to consider file names (with the option of also displaying version
information), file sizes (with the option of comparing contents as well), and the
dates and times when the files were last modified. It allowed me to indicate
which disks I wanted it to consider, including the floppy drive and any disk I
might have in the CD-ROM drive. I chose drives C, D, F, and G. (See point 302.)

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Moreover, it had an Exclusions option that allowed me to add to its list of files
and folders that it would not compare against other files and folders. I couldnt
think of anything to add to that list at this time. Then I started its scan. Of
course, it immediately discovered that G:\UTILITY was a duplicate of
D:\DOS_UTIL. (See point 269(h).) I stopped the program, added G:\UTILITY
to the Exclusions list, and tried again. (Along the way, I accidentally typed G: by
itself and wanted to delete it; it took me a minute or two to find that the Del key
didnt work, the Help file said nothing about how to delete an item, and there
was a button right there (although at the bottom of the screen) that allowed me
to remove a selected item from anywhere on that screen.)
(b) Reviewing Dupeless Results. The scan took only a few minutes to consider
more than 20,000 files. It said it found 1,870 duplicates. It showed a list of files in
alternating groups of yellow and blue background. I thought at first that just the
yellow (highlighted) ones were the duplicates, but then I figured out that the
whole screen was the list of duplicates; it was just alternating colors to help me
see all of the (yellow or blue highlighted) files that it thought might be
duplicates. The program was not case-sensitive: it would list ArtGalry.cag and
ARTGALRY.CAG as potential duplicates. Since the program was looking at file
size as well as name, it might show a group of files named X, each having a size
of 18 bytes, and then a while later it might show another group of files with that
same name, each having a size of 270 bytes, and so forth.
(c) Revising Dupeless Exclusions. Looking down through the list, I decided that
there were some other files I could add to the Exclusions list, such as Desktop.ini
(which defined specialized features for individual folders). There were also
some folders I could exclude, such as the toolbar folders (see point 143), which
contained duplicate copies of icons borrowed from under the Start | Programs
menu. I noticed that Microsoft and other software companies installed
redundant copies of files, but usually I could not tell whether the programs that
used these copies would be smart enough to look elsewhere for them. For
instance, ARTGALRY.CAG existed both in C:\Windows and in
C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft. Could I delete one of them? I knew
of no way to find out. Another category of duplicates consisted of files that I had
previously used MagicMover to relocate from drive C to drive D (see point 154),
and that Windows Update or some other source had apparently reinstalled onto
drive C. To get rid of these unnecessary duplicates, I would soon run
MagicMover again. (See point 317.) I also found a lot of duplicates in various
folders under C:\WIN98\CONTENT. I made a separate project out of dealing
with those too. (See point 319.) Yet another source of duplication existed in a
folder in which I had been storing all of my personal website files, awaiting the
day when I would finish installing Windows 98 and could go to work in
FrontPage 2000. I decided to do at least enough FrontPage work now to reduce

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the number of duplicate files lurking in various backups in the Websites

directory on drive F. (See point 318.)
(d) Running Dupeless Again. After making those changes to the Exclusions list
(including the ones mentioned above but not described until subsequent points,
below), I ran Dupeless again. This time, I was down to 406 duplicates. Much
better! I tuned the list a bit more: (1) I found that Chessvision (see point 159(d))
contained a large number of seemingly duplicate files, and in lieu of trying to
resolve those duplicates, I just marked the Chessvision folder as an exclusion. (2)
I found that I had neglected to try to move the Symantec Shared folder, and one
or two others, from C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files. This would reduce
duplication in some cases because I had copied these folders to D the last time I
had used MagicMover, so the new reinstallations on drive C were duplicates
until I moved them to replace the older versions on D. (3) I had copied some
SoundBlaster AWE64 utilities to a subfolder under DOS_UTIL, but when I
reviewed their ReadMe file, I found that they were not pure DOS utilities after
all, so I zipped and removed them. After these changes, I ran Dupeless a third
time. I now had only 272 duplicates. To reduce the list further, I added
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD (short for Emergency Backup Disk) to the list
of exclusions, since that folder evidently contained copies of the Command files
and was the source of the files that got copied onto Windows emergency boot
floppies. (See point 8.) I deleted C:\SCANDISK.LOG and C:\BOOTLOG.TXT.
Like Chessvision, Adastra (see point 159(a)) contained some duplicates, so I
excluded it too. I knew I had copied numerous files from the Resource Kit (see
point 109(d)) to DOS_UTIL, so I excluded the ResKit folder. I excluded the file
named UNWISE.EXE, since that was the short name for the Wise Uninstaller that
accompanied many different programs. For a similar reason, I excluded
LICENSE.TXT. After a final run, Dupeless showed me just under 200 duplicates,
and a quick run through showed very few general candidates for improvement.
If I wanted to get rid of these remaining duplicates, I would seemingly have to
proceed one by one, figuring out which of them were actually needed.
(e) Searching for a Different Solution. As I looked down through the list, I felt
that Dupeless lacked some features that would have been helpful. First, I could
not click on the heading of a column to sort by filename or pathname. For
example, I would have liked to see just how many copies I had of files by similar
names, even if their sizes or file dates did differ. Also, I realized that I did not
want to have to make these same decisions for several hundred files every time I
ran this program. What I really needed was a version of this program that
would allow me to add previously considered files to the Exclusions list, so that
they would not pop up again. I thought about exporting the list, which Dupeless
would allow, or about redoing the whole thing with DOS batch files and
QBASIC programming, so as to preserve last times list of exclusions for the next

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time, but in the end I decided it wasnt that important. There were indeed some
megabytes tied up in these duplicates, but I wouldnt know how much wasted
space until I did the file-by-file analysis which, as I say, I was not then inclined to
do. One other conclusion I had reached, by now, was that the whole idea of
putting program files on drive D and Windows files on drive C had produced a
lot of extra work for me in terms of the need to use MagicMover and to eliminate
duplicates -- which seemed to be an ongoing need, constantly recreated by
various downloads and updates -- and that I had yet to see enough benefit from
it to justify the hassle.
315. Clipboard Pile Problems. I started the Dupeless installation process, but the
system seemed to be having problems unrelated to Dupeless. I say that because
Ctrl-Alt-Del showed entries for programs that I thought I had closed. I believed
this misbehavior had begun, once again, because I had just finished using
Clipboard Pile. (See point 224(f) and point 309(a).) (I kept using it, despite these
difficulties, because I liked its feature of capturing up to 100 items copied to the
Clipboard. I could just highlight the text and hit Copy (or Ctrl-C) and a copy of
the excerpt would go into this programs list of clippings; and then I could paste
them all at once with a single command.) After killing Clipboard Pile in Ctrl-AltDel, I noticed that Ctrl-Alt-Del also showed a program named ADSUB. I had no
idea what this was. I ran PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saw that this was
AdSubtract. (See point 308.) I had no problem with that. The Startup folder (see
point 113(e)) had no Clipboard Pile entry, and yet Start Manager (see point
158(b)) showed it as a program that was now set to run on startup, even though I
had unchecked the Clipboard Pile box on Start Manager and MSCONFIG in the
past. It seemed that Clipboard Pile made a change to my Registry every time I
ran it, so as to insure that it would load upon startup next time. Instead of
creating a batch program that would automatically kill the Clipboard Pile
process and rewrite that portion of the Registry each time I was done using
Clipboard Pile (see e.g., point 141(k)), I decided to uninstall Clipboard Pile and
search for another clipboard program later. (See point ___.) After uninstalling, I
unchecked that box in Start Manager again. Twice, however, when I tried to
right-click on the Clipboard Pile program folder to delete it, I got a BSOD (Blue
Screen of Death) telling me about a fatal exception 0E, and PowerDesk Explorer
shut down. I restarted PowerDesk Explorer, clicked on the DOS Prompt Here
option (see point 137(d)) at the parent folder above that Clipboard Pile program
folder, and typed DELTREE /Y CLIPBO~1. That took care of it. I ran OptOut
(see point ___) and verified that Clipboard Pile had not added Aureate-related
garbage. I ran EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)) and deleted the invalid Registry
references it found. I returned to Start Manager and saw that it still had a
reference to Clipboard Pile, although the box was still unchecked. I searched the
Registry and found a reference to Clipboard Pile there too. I decided to reboot
and see how things looked after that. Start Manager still showed it, and so did

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the Registry. I referred back to the item that told me that most startup items
appeared in WIN.INI or in just a few areas of the Registry. (See point 147.) I
found a bunch of startup items in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Run, but nothing for Clipboard Pile. It baffled me. I really didnt know how to
get rid of the thing.
316. Vanishing Taskbar and Vanishing System Tray Icons. I noticed that the
taskbar had recently stopped coming up after I rebooted. I was able to get it to
appear by using Alt-Esc or by minimizing all open windows, but I wondered
what was the problem. I had begun researching this issue before deleting
Clipboard Pile, and when I did delete it, I hoped that that would prove to be the
culprit. Just in case, however, I decided to preserve the notes that I had collected
so far on the vanishing taskbar or system tray icons problems. One person
online suggested right-clicking on the taskbar, once I got it to appear, and seeing
what happened if I clicked on the option to restore its default settings. Someone
else said that, at least in one program, the disappearance of buttons from the
taskbar was due to a bug in Win98. Still another suggestion was to reboot in Safe
Mode and allow the taskbar to fix itself. I decided to wait and see whether my
deletion of Clipboard Pile would solve the problem. Later, I decided that
Clipboard Pile probably had been the culprit here.
317. MagicMover Again. I had previously used MagicMover to relocate
program files from drive C to drive D, so that drive C would consist almost
exclusively of Windows program files. (See point 154.) To assist with the
Dupeless comparison (see point 314(c)), I relocated more program files now. I
started within drive D, which had gotten a bit hairy. Keeping in mind the need
to create at least one little file to prevent MagicMover from collapsing empty
subfolders, I relocated the two different Windows Update folders, and the
Windows and Outlook 98 setup folders, located at various places on drives C
and D, to a new D:\Microsoft Setup folder. I also reorganized a lot of other
utilities that I had been just piling up in a Miscellaneous folder. For the
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders subdirectory,
MagicMover said that it found no valid files, which it said was because it could
not determine the main application directory. On the other hand, I couldnt
move one of the files in that folder with PowerDesk Explorer (see point 154(c))
because MagicMover gave me the integral part of Windows error message. So
I left it.
318. A Brief FrontPage 2000 Run. Inspired by the need to reduce the number of
duplicate files on my system during my review of Dupeless (see point 314(c)), I
went into my Websites folder and tried to organize the files there. To do this, I
used WinDiff to compare the two folders that had seemed to contain the most

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duplicates. I then found, however, that the PowerDesk approach described in

point 319 worked better. As it turned out, I did not actually have to run
FrontPage 2000 to make any comparisons or file analyses here, since almost
everything was a matter of totally duplicative directories.
319. Duplicate and Unnecessary Files in C:\WIN98. Also inspired by my
Dupeless adventure (see point 314(c)), I scrutinized the files in the WIN98 folder.
That folder, I knew, was a straight copy of files from the Windows 98 installation
CD. (See point 31.) While there were good reasons for copying most of that
folder, it appeared that this CONTENT subfolder just contained a lot of stuff
related to push content, channels, and other useless Microsoft concepts. The
subfolders under CONTENT had names like Disney, AOL, and Comics. Could I
delete this whole thing? Only one way to find out. Trusting to GoBack, I zipped
the whole folder into CONTENT.ZIP and moved it to F:\TEMP. Gone! 23 MB
and 120 files worth of duplication and waste. (Later, I decided to switch ISPs to
AT&T, and for that purpose it would have been handy to have the AT&T option
under the OLS folder, except that they had revamped their software so much by
then that I wound up downloading a new version anyway.) As I looked at it, I
believed I could also get rid of the C:\WIN98 subfolders named CHANNELS,
OLS, and TOUR. Zipped again! Another 40 MB or more reduced to ashes. This
left nothing but the actual CAB files that I had intended to copy to this
C:\WIN98 location in the first place. Or, not quite. When I looked again, I saw
that C:\WIN98 also contained some programs that surely existed at other places
on the hard disk, such as SCANDISK.EXE. I used a quick directory comparison
in PowerDesk Explorer to mark the ones that existed here and in
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, and then I moved the duplicates to that
COMMAND folder to verify, one by one, that we were talking about files of the
same size and date. If there were going to be other duplicates here, I decided to
wait and find out through the results of the next Dupeless search. (See point
314(d).)
320. Startup Music, Wallpaper, and Space Savers. There were a couple of little
things that I didnt plan to do right now, but thought I might do later. First, to
play its standard noises, Windows looked for WAV files that it stored in
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA. If you had some other sounds that you wanted to use,
you could put those WAV files into that folder and then go into Control Panel |
Sounds and indicate which of these WAV files you wanted to use for what
purpose. On a separate note, Windows looked for BMP (bitmap) files in
C:\Windows. If you had a BMP there, you could make it your wallpaper -- that
is, the image that covered your desktop -- by going into Control Panel | Display
| Background. Thus, if you had a photo you liked, you just needed to use
PowerDesk Explorer to convert it to BMP format (if it wasnt in that format
already), or you could open it with a BMP-capable program like the Kodak

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Imaging program that came with one of the Windows 98 or Internet Explorer
downloads, and save it in BMP format. (See point 224(i).) If space had been at a
premium, I could have reduced the load on drive C by a couple of simple steps.
One would have been to copy the BMP wallpaper files that I didnt plan to use to
another location, or to delete them altogether. That would reduce up to 800 KB,
depending on which ones you removed. Many websites said that another, more
significant step was to remove the AVI (video) files lying around the disk, which
various programs provided as tutorials. Evidently I had already done this,
however, or had somehow been spared the several programs that others had
mentioned, because by this time, when I looked for AVI files, I found only two.
321. File Relocation Problems. The changes wrought in response to Dupeless
(see point 317) began to have ramifications. Once again, I got the unable to find
the WAB DLL error message in Outlook 98. (See point 166.) I searched for
WAB*.DLL and was surprised to see that the only location of WAB32.DLL was in
D:\Program Files\Common Files\System. I had remembered putting a copy in
C:\WINDOWS. (See point 166(e).) There was also a more recent file called
WAB32RES.DLL. I moved the latter from D to C:\WINDOWS, closed Outlook
98, restarted it, and tried again. I still got the message, so I moved WAB32.DLL
as well. That did it. I moved WAB32RES.DLL back to D:\Program
Files\Common Files\System and experienced no further problems. Later, I
wondered if this moving process had also messed up WebCompass. (See point
323.) I also wondered if I kept having this WAB problem because I was restoring
from CD backups that had WAB32.DLL in the wrong place; at the time when I
wondered this, I was in no mood to retrace all the steps to figure out when I had
moved or restored or whatever.
322. Internet Explorer Synchronization. I wanted to set this feature up to work
from a batch file, so that I could tell Task Scheduler to download the relevant
pages every night, without even knowing which pages it would be downloading.
The problem was that I still had not figured out how to tell the computer to dial
manually. (See point 272.) I did not want to turn it loose to dial up
automatically whenever it felt like it, because when I did that it would dial while
I was in the middle of phone conversations. I needed more information, but at
this point I was nearing the end of three months of working on this project, and
was running out of patience, and therefore decided not to explore it further at
present. (See point ___.)
323. WebCompass Update. I had purchased WebCompass some time
previously, and had also downloaded some upgrades while they were still
available. (See point 307(i).) Now I tried to install those upgrades. The first one,
from July 1997 (WC203.EXE), ran fine. The second one, from September 1997
(WC203DB2.EXE), caused an Abnormal program termination error. Now that

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this upgrade had screwed up WebCompass so that it wouldnt run, I went into
GoBack and told it to look for earlier versions of the WC20.EXE file. It didnt
show them. Then I remembered that I could right-click on the file in Windows
Explorer and choose the Show Revisions option that GoBack had added there.
I did this and told it to recover the July 1997 version. It said that that was the
current version that already existed on my hard drive. I tried again with the
November 1996 version shown there. That worked. I tried again to run
WebCompass and still got the termination error. I figured the problem had to be
with one of the other files that had been upgraded. The easiest way, I figured,
was to revert the disk back to its condition of ten minutes earlier. I went to the
GoBack Event Log (see point 246) and easily located the point where I had
started messing around with GoBack. I was mildly surprised to see that it had
actually been more like 20 minutes ago, not 10. To keep things simple, I told it to
revert all of my drives to the requested time. It did this without difficulty, and I
tried again on the upgrade. This time, I first made a backup copy of the
WebCompass program files folder. Then I tried again. After the July 1997
upgrade, I tried running WebCompass. I got the program termination error
even at that point. I restored the earlier version from the zipped file. I ran the
earlier version. It , too, gave me the termination error. I wondered if my earlier
file relocation efforts had messed up this program. (See point 321.) Just out of
curiosity, I looked at the GoBack Event Log, to see whether I could go back to the
previous afternoon, when I had begun the whole MagicMover process. (See
point 317.) I was very surprised to see that GoBacks log went back only to the
morning of the current day. Thus, if my acts of moving files with MagicMover -or, more likely, of manually moving some DLLs -- had messed up my system, I
would have to go back to the last CD backup and hope that worked. That was
back at point 301. This wouldnt be my first option. Why hadnt the additional
large amounts of storage space for WebCompass given it more of a reservoir to
draw on? (See point 302.) I didnt know the answer to that question. My
MagicMover activities hadnt involved huge programs; besides, they had
consisted of simple moves, which you would think GoBack could handle with a
simple entry in an internal list of files. This made me think that, when time
permitted, I should compare GoBack against my other program options. (See
point ___.) Anyway, given the alternatives, I decided to hold onto the
WebCompass situation for now and see if anything else malfunctioned. If it
turned out to be just a problem with WebCompass, I could just uninstall and
reinstall it, and maybe its upgrades too. (See point ___.) Eventually, it dawned
on me that I should probably test every program that I had installed since the
last time I had run MagicMover (see point 154), but I wasnt really sure I wanted
to do all that work.
324. InfoPager News Service. This program would allow you to download
personalized editions of FWKC Reuters international news for free. I wasnt

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too sure what FWKC meant, but of course I had heard of Reuters. I installed it
and twice tried to use it. Both times, I got Network error. Failed to deliver
details. Please try again later. I revisited it later and wound up uninstalling it.
(See point 336(b).)
325. Driver Update. I had not yet installed all of my drivers. Following
instructions that came with the download, I now began to install a September
1999 update for my SupraMax modem. (See point 182.) Windows told me,
however, that the driver was not the right one for this modem. Since the
instructions did not anticipate this notice, I decided that Windows might be
right, and I canceled out of the installation. Next, I reviewed the question of the
AGP driver for my Soyo motherboard. (See the end of point 107.) As instructed
at that point, I reviewed the question of whether I had now installed the AGP
graphics card driver. To do this, I went into Device Manager | System Devices
and saw that I still had a VIA Tech V82C598 CPU to AGP controller. I then used
WCPUID (see point 248) to verify that I had a VIA Apollo VP3/MVP3 AGP
chipset that would support a 2x data transfer rate, which was where I had it set
now (through the BIOS Setup, I believe); and I used PCIInfo (see point 252) to tell
me that I had an S3 VGA adapter. I wasnt sure what to conclude from this. I
had this VIA AGP driver that I had downloaded from Soyo; was I supposed to
use it or not? I decided to unzip it, at least, and see how it looked. It came with a
ReadMe file, so I started there. It told me that Windows 95 users needed
programs named USBSUPP.EXE from Microsoft, DirectX 5.0 or above,
VMM32.VXD, my AGP VGA driver, and VIAGART.VXD. I wasnt sure I needed
to be fooling with a driver update designed for Win95, but then it started
referring to Win9X and I felt like it was probably closer to the modern world
than I had first feared. I knew I had DirectX 7.0 and the AGP VGA driver; I
searched but did not find USBSUPP.EXE; I decided that this might be another
one of those cases where the needed files werent always included with Win95
but were built into Win98; and with that rationale to lean on, I went ahead and
double-clicked on SETUP.EXE. I told it to install in turbo mode; it replied by
finishing and telling me it wanted to restart the computer. Video performance
was noticeably faster.
Trying to End the Project
Note: at this point, I briefly tried to surge through the remaining tasks. After
carrying that effort forward through the following several steps, I decided that
the better approach was to make another interim DriveImage backup and
resume this project after an interruption of several days or weeks, during which I
would take care of other things that I had to do.

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326. Yamaha CD-ROM Firmware Upgrade. Since the CD-ROM was working
fine now, and since I understood that a botched firmware upgrade could damage
your drive, I decided to postpone this upgrade for now. For future reference,
however, the website to obtain the upgrade from was
www.yamahayst.com/techsup/download2.htm.
327. Favorites. I had long promised myself to complete the Links toolbar by
setting up webpages to which those toolbar icons would point. (See e.g., point
109(g).) Unfortunately, I now felt that this entailed a large, separate project.
Therefore, for purposes of setting up Windows 98, those icons would just sit
there without any function until I got those webpages going or decided on some
other existing webpages to point them to.
328. OptOut Opting Out. I had noticed that the time restriction on OptOut (see
point 289) was going to be ending on April 1, which was less than two days
away. Assuming that wasnt just an April Fools joke, which I would be finding
out soon enough, I ran the program one last time, to make sure that my latest
downloads had not once again given me any spyware. Everything seemed to be
fine.
329. Backup. I decided, at present, to limit my backup inquiry to the
DriveImage approach that I had been using throughout. I decided this because I
had achieved the goal itself, which was to figure out how to back up a complete
Windows 98 system on CD-ROM. (See top of this document.) Backup was going
to entail the slightly different question of how to preserve data and program files
on a go-forward basis, as events proceeded to alter that complete, original Win98
system. I felt that this applied, also, to the step of taking this original
configuration from the AMD computer and altering it to fit the different
hardware of the PENTIUM computer. So for right now, I made a DriveImage
backup file called STEP_329.PQI. Later, I decided to do more on the subject of
backup. (See point ___.)
330. Manual Acts. I made a note for myself to send a postcard or other notice to
the creator of Cacheman (see point 141(n)) and any other cardware that I wound
up staying with, when I was certain that I would be keeping these programs. ___
Problems and Their Solution: Doing It Over Again
331. Network Problem. Suddenly, the Network Neighborhood icon in
PowerDesk Explorer showed only the immediate computer -- I mean, on the
AMD computer it showed only the AMD, and the PENTIUM showed only the
PENTIUM. I checked the manual. It said this: Make sure the cables are
connected correctly. Make sure you are getting Link or Activity lights on both

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the Fast Ethernet Card and your hub. Try changing to a new cable that you
know is working. ... Make sure each PC on the network is using the same
workgroup name and protocol. I looked at the lights and saw both on the
PENTIUM, but only one on the AMD, where I had been doing my recent
tinkering. That was the only one of these suggestions that seemed to fit the
situation. I wondered if this meant that the problem was on the AMD.
332. Slowness Problem. I had been inclined to blame GoBack, but for whatever
reason, the AMD computer was repeatedly dragging, especially when I was
working online. The mouse would barely respond at times. I suspected that I
had screwed things up by trying to move programs -- particularly Common Files
items -- with MagicMover and/or PowerDesk Explorer. (See point 317.) These
problems, and the others that I had recently experienced (see point 321 and point
323), told me that I should consider restoring STEP_300.PQI after all. (See point
301.)
333. Document Problems. This document, at this stage, called for a large amount
of work. In part, there were incomplete items: the document contained ___
blanks that needed to be converted into references, or that called for fixes, and
many points, mostly in the first part of the document, did not have explanatory
titles. Also, the document was totally unwieldy: I had hoped to set up
hyperlinks tying together the various points (e.g., the hope was that, when you
saw a reference to point 100, you could click on that point and you would go to
point 100), but that was going to require a lot of additional work. These
thoughts, and others, made me wonder whether I should devote the labor that
would be required to fix this document or should instead write another,
superseding one that would draw upon the material here but would not repeat
the parts that did not bear repeating.
334. Restoring STEP_300. I decided to put the AMD in better working order,
and also to test the viability of the two-CD backup approach, by restoring
STEP_300.PQI on the AMD machine. (See point 301.) This, I hoped, would
eliminate the problems mentioned in point 331 and point 332. To begin, I tried to
think of what files on drives C and D should be protected from the erasure that
would occur once I used DriveImage to restore STEP_300.PQI. The Favorites
folder, to which I had recently added some items, was one example. (See point
303(b).) DOS_UTIL was another. I had the date of the STEP_300.PQI file, and I
decided to search for all files created since then. I sorted these by location,
looking for folders where I might have made changes. This netted
C:\Windows\SendTo. (See point 312.) I made copies of these folders to drive F.
(Later, I found that I should have kept the Toolbar folder too. See point ___.)
Then I rebooted to real DOS, disabling GoBack along the way, ran DriveImage,
and pointed it to the first backup CD. Or tried to. Of course, I hadnt booted

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from the CD, so I didnt have CD-ROM drivers loaded. Since this computer had
the Yamaha CD-ROM, I would be able to boot only from the floppy or the hard
disk, not from a bootable CD. (See point 189.) So I could reboot to DOS from the
floppy and run DriveImage from the floppy that way, or I could reboot to
Windows and copy the PQI files over from CD to hard disk using Windows
Explorer, and then go back into DOS and restore drives C and D from drive F.
Either way, I would have to run DriveImage from a floppy or from some hard
disk partition other than D, since I would be replacing D. The DOS boot floppy
approach sounded more direct; besides, I wanted to see how the DriveImage
process would work with two CDs if, for some reason, I didnt have a spare hard
disk partition. So I rebooted from the floppy, ran DriveImage from the floppy,
and pointed it toward the first CD-ROM. It gave me Error # 29: Cannot lock a
locked drive. I had forgotten that I had to uninstall GoBack before using
DriveImage. I could have formatted drive C, but since GoBack advertised itself
as being able to rescue your disk even when it was wiped out, I feared that it
would still be controlling drive C after the format and, worse, that it might be
confused and might cause damage to other partitions. So I rebooted to
Windows, in order to disable GoBack there. Or at least I tried to. While
DriveImage had not succeeded in giving me a new drive C, at least it had ruined
the old one. So now what was I supposed to do with GoBack? Drive C wouldnt
run, so I had to boot from the floppy. The floppy boot process gave me no
option to revive GoBack. I used FDISK from the floppy to create a primary DOS
partition, and tried again with DriveImage. This time it ran OK. Drive C
restored without a problem. Drive D, however, was where the split came. I
mean, all of drive C fit onto the first CD, but the backup of drive D was partly on
the first CD and partly on the second. This, too, was no problem: when the
restore was about 45% done, I got the message, Change Diskette: Insert disk
number 2 in drive I. And that did it. A few minutes later, my partitions were
restored. I checked them with PartitionMagic to make sure that the partition
sizes were what I wanted. (See point 302.)
335. GoBack Problem. I rebooted into Windows, trying to re-enable GoBack
along the way. GoBack gave me a message that said, GoBack Install (400): The
2 copies of the allocation tables on your drive are different. GoBack wont make
changes to your drive while errors exist. Please run ScanDisk after your
computer boots into Windows. ... If GoBack prompts you about whether to
remove files due to an unsuccessful installation, answer No. I followed this
advice, running ScanDisk on drives C and D. It didnt seem to find anything, or
at least it didnt say anything. I rebooted and tried enabling GoBack again. It
gave me the same message. I rebooted from the floppy and tried running
SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY. I ran the same
command for D. I rebooted from drive C and got the same message again. I
went into Windows and uninstalled GoBack. Then I reinstalled it from the CD. I

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got the same error message again. I went on into Windows. This time, unlike
before, I did get that unsuccessful installation message, and I answered No as
recommended. I figured that the problem must exist somewhere other than
drive C or D, so I ran ScanDisk in Windows on all drives. This provided the
answer: the errors were on drive H. I rebooted and tried again. This time it
worked. I looked on the PENTIUM computer and saw that the GoBack
installation there was now nearly five days old. I decided that, although GoBack
was persnickety and did not always do exactly what I hoped, it was also
reasonably stable and useful, and would be more so if I were combining it with a
better backup procedure. (See point ___.)
336. Catching Up. I now had to redo many of the changes that I had made since
the STEP_300 backup. They were as follows:
(a) Changes That I Did Not Need to Redo. Between point 301 and point 333,
inclusive, several steps were already taken care of. First, the hard disk partitions
(see point 302) remained unchanged by the DriveImage activity, although
DriveImage had offered the opportunity to change them when it was restoring
drives C and D. Also, since I had not tinkered with drive F, data file locations
were still set properly (see point 303(a) and (b)). I recovered the changed batch
files just by deleting D:\DOS_UTIL and replacing it with the copy that I had
stored on drive F (see point 334), thus saving myself the work described in point
303(d), point 306 (except for the scheduling, which I did have to redo now), and
point 309(d). I avoided some false steps that I had made and then regretted (see
point 303(e) and point 317). I did not have to spend much time examining
various offline browsing programs. (See point 307.) This time, I did not delete
the Scraps or Folders toolbar. (See point 310.) Since I had saved the changed
SendTo folder, I was able to restore that without difficulty. (See point 312.) I
didnt have to re-sort my web pages, which were on drive F. (See point 318.)
And, among others, I didnt have the problems described in point 331 and point
332.
(b) Changes I Had to Redo. These included the following: telling Outlook 98
where to find OUTLOOK.PST (see point 303(c)), resetting the Volume Control
(see point 309(b)), and installing the SoundBlaster drivers with the SBW9XUP
and SFMGRUPG updates (see point 309(c)). Also, I had to deal with the network
connection problem again. (See point 305.)
I had to reinstall HTTrack (see point 307(f)), AdSubtract (see point 308), and
Dupeless (see point 314(a)). I added the exclusions for Dupeless again, but this
time without first rearranging files through MagicMover. I saved myself some
hassle (see e.g., point 309(a) and point 316) by uninstalling Clipboard Plus (see
point 315). (Too late, I saw that it did seem to come with an uninstaller that
might have made that process easier.) I had to redo the work that I had

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previously done to create or modify several toolbars. (See point 309(e), point
310, and point 313.) I widened the scrollbar again. (See point 311.) I redid the
changes to the New File list. (See point 312.) I deleted the duplicate files in
C:\WIN98 again. (See point 319.) I tried again on the WebCompass update.
(See point 323.) This time, the first update went fine, and the program ran
normally when I tried it. When I exited the program, I got an Object is invalid
or not set error message, but as I recalled I had always gotten that. I installed
the second update and it, too went fine. I also retried the InfoPager News
Service. (See point 324.) It gave me the same error message as before. I had
been uncomfortable with its requesting my e-mail address before it would finish
installation, supposedly because it needed this to insure delivery, and now I was
beginning to wonder whether the program had originally been good but had
become a way of collecting information for advertisers. I uninstalled the
program. It seemed rather sneaky on uninstall: it wasnt listed in Add/Remove
Programs as InfoPager or as FWKC or as Reuters or anything else I could think
of, and it didnt have an executable uninstaller in its program files folder. I
couldnt figure out what else it might have called itself in Add/Remove
Programs, so I just deleted its program file folder. Finally, I reinstalled the AGP
driver. (See point 325.) I ran OptOut again (see point 328), since there had been
some Aureate Media software on the system when I started this catch-up
operation; it did find one spyware file on the system.
Going Forward; Backing Up
337. Backup Philosophy Revisited. Before making any more drastic changes, I
decided I wanted to master the backup procedure that I would be using in the
future. The right procedure, had it been in place, might have saved me the time
and effort that I had just spent to redo all of the changes that I had made since
the time of the STEP_300 backup. Of course, I deleted the useless STEP_329
backup that I had made since then. (See point 329.) The question for me was,
how could I do frequent, unobtrusive backups? DriveImage was out of the
question: it did a good job of snapshooting the whole system, but the process of
disabling GoBack, rebooting to DOS, and so forth made it very obtrusive, and
therefore not something that would happen very frequently. No, I needed an
entirely separate backup system that would carry me over periods of weeks
between my DriveImage snapshots. I saw no reason to think that this would
involve anything other than the combination of XCOPY and ZIP processes that I
had contemplated much earlier. (See point 203.) The basic outline was that I
would take the DriveImage snapshot, make a list of files backed up, shut off all
their archive bits, and then work from the file list and/or the newly set archive
bits to determine which files I would subsequently XCOPY to some folder and
ZIP for loading onto a CD. (See point 202.) As a refinement on my earlier
thinking, I also believed, now, that I would treat the backup of program files

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entirely differently from my backup of data files. Program files needed to be

handled in a highly organized way; data files could be moved to CD-RW or CDR disk and back to hard disk in whatever haphazard or organized manner
seemed best suited for the subject matter. (For example, since I would probably
intend to reduce a 500 MB audio file containing an entire 45-minute side of an
audio cassette to a set of much smaller MP3 files, I might not back up the 500 MB
audio file at all, assuming that I could always just re-record it from the cassette,
whereas I would not want to make a similar assumption about a program file
that I had originally loaded from a program CD.)
338. Rethinking Partition Structure. It seemed appropriate, at this point, to
record my current thinking on how I should have arranged my partitions. First,
I had decided that I would have preferred to combine drives C and D into one C
(PROGRAMS) partition. (See point 314(e).) At present, on the AMD machine, I
had files totaling 597 MB in C (WIN98) and 752 MB in D (PROGRAMS). The
combined total of 1,349 MB, plus an allowance of at least 200 MB of empty space
for growth, meant that C would need to be at least 1.6 GB. Second, it was clear
that each hard disk needed a GOBACK partition that would be free from any
risk that I would run Defragmenter on it. (See point 300(d).) I hoped to allocate
at least 20% of my disk space to the GoBack partition. (See point 302.) Third, I
wanted a SWAP partition on each hard drive. On the AMD machine, where I
expected to do most of my audio editing, I wanted this partition to be as large as
possible. (See point 304.) Thus, I concluded that the 3 GB primary hard drive on
the AMD machine should be divided into C (PROGRAMS) (1.7 GB), D (SWAP)
(600 MB), and E (GOBACK) (700 MB). On the AMD machine, I had combined
the GOBACK and SWAP functions into one partition on the second hard drive; I
decided to leave it that way, partly because that seemed fine and partly to reduce
the number of things that I would have to change.
339. A Program File Backup Method. With GoBack, I would not ordinarily need
a backup system that would give me a separate ability to restore my system to its
state as of five minutes or one hour ago. There would be an exception for cases
where I was handling large files, where GoBacks Event Log would not be able to
cope. (See point 323.) Hopefully there would be an upgrade to GoBack that
would handle those exceptional situations more gracefully. Regardless, I would
not be willing to develop a system that would do a better job than GoBack in
such cases -- that is, that would save multiple copies of huge files. Basically, if
those files were going to get messed up, I would just have to recreate them from
scratch. Otherwise, when dealing with smaller files, GoBack did a good job for at
least several hours, and probably for several days, into the past. Thus, it seemed
likely that a backup process that ran in the middle of each night would provide
adequate protection. I just needed a batch file that I could tell Task Scheduler to

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run in the middle of each night, that would copy altered files to another
partition, make a list of them, and zip them.
340. A Backup File List. This was the part of the backup process that was a little
vague in my mind. Ideally, I would have a list of all files that would change -including new additions, modifications, and deletions (see point 202), along with
a batch process that would be smart enough to create, restore, and delete exactly
the right files. This seemed to suggest that I would have a full file list
accompanying each backup, and that the file list would provide a quick
explanation for why a given file was, or was not, included in the backup. Of
course, if the file list explained only what had changed since the previous
backup, I would be stuck with an incremental approach that would require me to
go through a series of restorations -- for example, if the full DriveImage backup
occurred on a Sunday, and the system crashed on the following Saturday, I
would have to restore Mondays additions and subtractions, then Tuesdays
changes from Monday, then Wednesdays from Tuesday, etc. Ideally, I thought,
if I could figure out how to do it, I would also have a separate, non-incremental
list that would summarize, as of each nights backup, the full extent of the
changes since the last DriveImage backup; but then I realized that I would still
have to go through each nights backup to get those files whose last change had
occurred sometime during the week and therefore did not appear on the final
pre-crash backup. If I was going to go a very long time between DriveImage
backups, I might want to develop a method for doing an entirely separate
Summary Backup that would capture all of the changes that had occurred
during, say, the past week; but otherwise the incremental, day-by-day approach
would have to do.
341. What To Do Next? I had come to a point where I had major work to do in
order to make this document useful (see point 333), and where I had also come to
see how I had organized the partitions on my system in a way that was
fundamentally imperfect (see point 338), partly because it created minor but
undesirable file duplication between C:\Program Files and D:\Program Files
(see point 317) and partly because it would call for a more complex backup
system that would have to repeat the same backup processes on two separate
drives (see point 340). I had originally set out with multiple purposes in mind.
(See the top of this document.) For purposes of getting my own system set up
and running, I had reached a point of substantial completion; but for purposes of
creating something that would help others who were stuck somewhere in a
Win98 quagmire, I had just created a massive, unwieldy document that might
answer their question or might just bury them in detail and leave them flailing
around, trying to figure out what to do next. The question in my mind, then,
was whether I should work through any remaining important issues in this
Windows installation and then start over, taking a more structured and

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knowledgeable approach to the task of setting up a good, working Windows

system, or should instead just let the thing be for what it was, hope that it helped
some people, and move on to other work I needed to get done.
342. Reactions to Windows 98. By this point, I disliked Windows 98. I had
disliked it previously, but this was different. Previously, I had disliked Win98
because it had frustrated me. A single problem could take hours to resolve, and
those would frequently be hours that I did not have to spare, where I was not
remotely in an operating system frame of mind. The last thing I wanted to do, at
such times, was to drop everything and nurse an ailing computer back to health.
Now, I had the confidence that this would not be the situation for me. I had
multiple backups of an essentially solid, working system. If I just wanted to get
my work done, I could do it. My dislike now was based on the fact that I had
gotten into an operating system mindset and had begun to form a clearer idea of
what I wanted from an operating system. The things I wanted were things like
clarity, structure, and flexibility. For example, I wanted to be able to reinstall the
operating system, if it went bad or if there was an update to it, without being
required to reinstall and configure everything else. I wanted to have all of the
files related to a program located in one place, so that I could move, upgrade, or
remove them without any risk that this would somehow affect other programs. I
wanted to be able to form a list of files that would change, and also to be able to
predict, for any program, what files would change when I undertook some such
move, upgrade, or removal.
343. Thoughts about Other Operating Systems. By this time, my guesses about
Windows 2000 had proved accurate. (See point 90.) Windows 2000 had hit the
market; it had been found to contain serious bugs; Microsoft had issued a Service
Release to fix those bugs; and the Service Release had contained other bugs that
seemed to be even more serious -- to the point of disabling Internet Explorer,
from the way it sounded. Also, my guesses about Linux seemed to have been
substantially accurate (see point 90(l)): there had been a number of comments
and questions about whether the Linux movement would fork -- i.e., would
split into incompatible camps -- and there continued to be informed indications
that Linux still had a ways to go before it would be ready for prime time and also
that Microsoft showed signs of being more of a competitor than had first seemed
likely. Thus, although Linux seemed capable of providing the kind of structure
and clarify I sought in an operating system, I did not know whether that would
in fact be the end result within Linux, nor whether some other successor
operating system might emerge with a superior approach. In the past, I had
made the mistake of leaping for a new product or technology too soon, only to
discover that the rest of the world ultimately decided against it; this time around,
it continued to seem quite possible that a move to Linux would turn out to be
premature. Thus, while I had some ideas for what I wanted from an operating

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system, and did not believe I would get those things from Windows at any time
within the foreseeable future, I was not certain that I really had a practical
alternative.
344. Thoughts about Programming. To some extent, it was still not possible to
do everything I might want to do with a computer system without knowing how
to write programs that would fiddle with the details in just the way I wanted.
My simple little DOS batch scripts and QBASIC programs had reminded me of
just how useful such skills could be. Yet it took time -- and depending on the
language in question, it could take a lot of time -- to become proficient in these
skills. What I really wanted was to find canned software that would take care of
such things for me, perhaps with the option of writing more simple scripts or
programs. Experience suggested that, at my casual level of usage, it could be a
year or more before I would be proficient in a computer language unless I
studied it seriously. That kind of time allocation did not fit with my priorities at
this point. Thus, it was not enough to say that I could have just the kind of
system I wanted if I were willing to invest the time in Visual Basic, or Windows
Scripting Host, or Linux shell programming, or EMACS, or some other language
or tool. I had really spent a lot more time on this particular project than I hoped
to spend on any computer-related projects in the foreseeable future. Consistent
with my decision to stick with a relatively mature operating system rather than
being on the forefront, then, I felt that I would probably be using Windows 98
until something really compelling came along -- and therefore that I would
continue to want to stretch my existing knowledge of DOS and QBASIC until
further notice.
345. Guessing at Microsofts Future Path. I believed that Microsofts future
operating system releases would continue to be somewhat chaotic, and that
attempts to impose order on them would require a lot of work and would often
pose the risk of screwing up some murky part of the Microsoft plan. The marketdriven approach of Microsoft seemed likely to continue to generate great new
capabilities and, at the same time, great new vulnerabilities and frustrations; the
latter would continue to persuade me to upgrade to a newer Microsoft operating
system only when I saw a real benefit from it. Also, my experience with DOS
over the past 18 years had suggested that Windows might have begun to mature
to a point where I could skip over some new generations of the product; indeed,
I had mostly skipped over Windows 3.1. As I had assumed at the start of this
project, then, it still seemed that I might continue to use Win98 for the next two
years or more. And if I did, so would others; indeed, I had been surprised to see
how many people were still using Win95.
346. Conclusions. I could not justify investing large amounts of time to learn a
programming language that might have made Win98 really sing, but I did want

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to finish this project in a way that would (a) give me something to be proud of,
(b) provide guidance in my continued use of Win98 and perhaps during the
installation of a subsequent Windows product, and (c) help other people
understand the problems and solutions that I had worked with during this
project. I had commenced this particular document as a set of partly organized
notes, but the projects size and complexity had led to a tangled web of concepts,
innovations, and discoveries. Now that I had a somewhat clearer idea of what
was involved, my perfectionism and my desire to make this material useful for
myself and for others required me to start this project again from the beginning
and to proceed in a more systematic manner. Thus, I decided that I would not
continue, now, to develop a backup system (see point 340) that would depend on
the existing imperfect division of program files into drives C and D (see point
338); instead, I would clear off the PENTIUM machine and would start again
from the beginning, or at least from a point in this document where things had
still been relatively clear and simple.
Ray Woodcock
March 31, 2000
*****
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * Prepare for possible PC catastrophes by regularly copying
the following files to a second hard drive, removable hard disk or diskette-especially if
you frequently install and uninstall applications. From your root directory (you may find
only some of these), back up AUTOEXEC.BAT, AUTOEXEC.DOS, CONFIG.SYS,
CONFIG.DOS and MSDOS.SYS. From your Windows folder, back up CONTROL.INI,
SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI, as well as the SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT Registry files
(SYSTEM.DAT probably won't fit on a floppy disk).
Maybe change DEFRAGC so it doesn't run if Cool Edit is
actually recording -- assuming I can figure out what process
that might entail. Final index should reference every term,
not just the headings -- includes e.g., Zero Fill Utility.
Tinker with faster RAM settings in BIOS.
May have to undisable things in CONFIG to get Turtle Beach item to get an
IRQ.
Just double-click on SCR file to make screen saver
work. Check metrotix.com every couple of days or week for
new events. Backup batch file needs to back up .WC2 files
in WebCompass directory, also C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl,
also has to save INI files and all other configuration
stuff.
See latest Win98 guide I'm writing for details.
Cleanup thing can get rid of *.CHK files.
Add Documents
folder with subfolders for e.g., Text to the Start menu. I
thought about the idea of having them mail me their Win98 CD
and I'd mail them back a complete working system, but it
probably wouldn't work. Shut off FindFast.

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Try that TrueSpeech thing re compressing speech.

Try
Instant Access in Word to start TextBridge. Maybe set it up
so the ZIP file thing backs up only those files that are
smaller than a certain size and just lists the others, like
the large WAV files.
Maybe it will copy only those that
have changed in the current directory, or the past hour, or
something like that.
Replace ScanDisk with NDD in batch
files.
See Tips about assigning hotkeys.
Will Ghost run
from command line to create mirror automatically every
Wednesday?
Folder for everything from C:
Outlook,
Favorites, Toolbars, DOS_UTIL, etc.
Start doing a manual
weekly check for student loan postings during the last week
-- make this one of the regular items that runs
automatically each week on the new system; direct the
posters to the financial aid newsgroup.
I need to
incorporate thorough Scandisk or NDD. Install Spanish CD on
my computer, make copies, give to Meg.
Try reading ZIP
files with some other ZIP program.
Begin immediately
zipping my backups with DES encryption. Should be a batch
file to do a Registry backup and regular file backup every
day. Before rebooting, the weekly batch file should search
for large files and notify me of what they are because, if
they're large enough, they could screw up the backup plans
and may require separate treatment. This is not a problem
if the DATA partition is small enough. DriveImage file size
can be 690 MB now instead of 640 MB.
I'm doing program
backup on alternating monthly CD-RW -- make sure I have
reminders for that -- it's Set A and Set B.
High-speed
parallel ports are ECP/EPP, and there's also BPP and SPP.
Set up item that takes me on Deja search for other student
loan entries one day a week, to go prospecting for student
loan participants.
Sell old software with manuals when I
get the system up and working properly for a couple of solid
months.
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * You can disable
Windows' log-on password. Open the Passwords in Control
Panel and click on the Change Windows Password button. Type
your old password in the Old Password field. Then tab to the
New Password and Confirm Password fields in turn, and press
only Enter in each one.
>If Windows fails to boot properly, press F8 while it boots
for the
>Windows StartUp menu, and pick the Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT)
>option. It attempts a normal boot but records the status of
every step
>Windows takes during the process. You can use this option
to
>log a failed boot. Then, reboot to Safe mode if necessary
and

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>use a text editor to open BOOTLOG.TXT (in your root

directory).
>Search for "fail" to find the boot steps Windows had
trouble
>with. Failed steps are often excellent clues to the cause
of
>the problem.
Remove the URLs that IE remembers for its AutoComplete
feature by launching RegEdit and going to
HKEY_USERS\Default\Software\Microsoft
\InternetExplorer\TypedURLs. Delete any unwanted URLs.
To put all scheduled tasks on hold without disabling
the scheduler entirely, right-click on the Task Scheduler
icon in the system tray and select Pause Task Scheduler.
Windows launches slower the more programs run automatically
on start-up. Move programs out of your StartUp folder into
a new folder named StartUp Holds. Or remove entries you may
find on the LOAD= or RUN= line in the WIN.INI file. (Open
WIN.INI from your WINDOWS folder using Notepad.) You can
also place a semicolon at the head of either line to prevent
Windows from reading it while preserving your previous
settings.
>Constant warnings about low disk space on your Win98 PC can
>be annoying, especially if they refer to your host drive on
a
>compressed disk. To get rid of the warning, open Disk
Cleanup
>(Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) and click on the
>Settings tab. Deselect the check box labeled "If this drive
>runs low on disk space, automatically run Disk Cleanup,"
then
>click on OK.
>If you open a folder in Details view, and part of the
file/folder
>information isn't visible because the columns are either
>truncated or too wide for the window size, here's a quick
fix:
>Press Ctrl and the Plus (+) key on the numeric keypad. The
>columns will automatically adjust to fit the window or
widen
>to display all the information (if your resolution and
screen
>size are large enough). In an Explorer window, you may need
to
>select the pane first by pressing Tab.

397

Add eBay to daily websites opening.

Consider installing
StarOffice instead of Windows. Batch file should start OL98
(or whatever program I'm using for scheduling) if it's not
running, checking in on it every hour or so.
The two main hard-wired Win98 Desktop icons, My
Computer and Network Neighborhood, will magically
transform into toolbars if you drag them to one of the four
edges of your screen and let go. You can "stack" the two
on the same edge, drag the new toolbars to the taskbar or
drag them to the center of the Desktop to create floating
toolbars.
*****
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * Some applications add themselves to the Context menu's
cascading New menu that appears when you right-click on the Desktop or within a folder.
You may find that even after you've deleted a particular application, it stays on the New
menu. If you want to remove it, launch My Computer, select Options from the View
menu and click on the File Types tab. Find the offending application on the list, select it
and click on the Remove button. Click on Yes when it asks for confirmation.
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * If a new application is accompanied by an information file
(filename.INF), that file may contain Registry-revision instructions. If so, search it for
lines beginning AddReg= and DelReg=. These lines point to the sections of the INF file
that contain those instructions. Review the sections to get an idea of what changes are
about to be made to the Registry.

398

Renish Partition Manager seemed complex. Partition Resizer is offered in

a lot of places. Norton Ghost only gives you a 30-day trial. Partition
Magic is $50-70, but everyone praises it and says they use it a lot more
than they thought they would. After I spent an hour or two tracking
down the different programs and looking at them, I decided that Partition
Magic was probably worth the money.
Disk transition was super-easy. Maxtor software copied everything over
in Win95; much easier than the procedures outlined at various spots
online. Childs play! Advice: check out the Website of the company that
manufactures the disk youre thinking of buying, and see if their
software does all this automatically, and find out what experiences
people are having with it -- its worth it!
Windows 98 CD-ROM was dirty. Right in the middle of installation, it
halted with that frightening blue screen and said that it couldnt read
from it. I breathed on it and used toilet paper to wipe it -- the softest
wipes I had handy -- and that worked. Should have had some of those
camera-lens wipes on hand. The brand-new disk WAS a little dirty -looked like someone had handled it.

Addenda

Postscript
I could not continue to log all of my steps carefully, but I found during the
ensuing weeks that I had additional notes worth remembering. They were as
follows:
347. DriveImage Backup. On March 31, I made a backup called FINAL.PQI. It
was really surprising to me that I was able to do this despite the disk thrashing
that seemed to be caused by GoBack. (See point 348.)
348. GoBack Error: Error Occurred Trying to Run GBDrive.exe. One day, I
tried to run GoBack by clicking on the icon on the system tray, and I received this
error message. I immediately tried to start Word on that same computer in order
to write it down, and got a Windows error message that said, There is not
enough free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then
try again. I quit one program and that did it: I was able to go in and do what I
wanted, which was to see how far back the Event Log was tracking at that point.
Sadly, it was still covering only the past 24 hours. But then I noticed, for the first
time, that the title bar of the display said, GoBack Drive -- Drives C:, D: and E:.
Was there a separate display for the other drives? I had thought for sure that this
Event Log showed events on both disks at the same time. (See point ___.) I
couldnt find out at that exact moment, unfortunately, because GoBack was so
lost in the process of trying to inform itself as to what was happening on my
system -- the disk had been thrashing for quite a while -- that the Event Log was
not even visible. It was just a big grey field on the right side of my screen. When
it did come back into view, however, I clicked on the Files menu option and, sure
enough, there was a choice for drives F:, G: and H:. Unfortunately, the story was
even worse there: GoBack was covering me only for the past six hours! I remind
you that this was the disk on which I had set aside a whopping 1 GB for
GOBACKIO.BIN. (See point ___.) The first entry in the log for this second hard
disk was GoBack logging suspended due to massive file activity. It occurred at
2 AM, telling me that the massive activity in question was the activity of
defragmenting my disk in the middle of the night. In other words, this might
well happen every night! (Later, I found that Nortons SpeedDisk defragmenter
had the same effect.) Meanwhile, the thrashing continued. It had reached a
point at which the hard disk could thrash for 20-30 minutes after I stopped using
the computer. Even rebooting didnt stop the thrashing.
349. Norton Utilities. I wondered whether disk fragmentation was to blame for
the thrashing, so I finished the defragmentation and watched to see whether

there would be more thrashing. This time, I used Nortons SpeedDisk. I got it by
installing a minimal set of Norton Utilities. The first thing I noticed, upon
starting SpeedDisk, was that it began by telling me how much of the disk was
fragmented. This was a notable improvement on Windows Disk Defragmenter,
which just started in and left me guessing. Norton said 67% of drive C was not
fragmented. Well, I thought, 33% fragmentation would certainly cause some
thrashing! Clearly, the Windows defragmenter (which was running every night)
was not keeping up. (I also noticed that the Registry edit that was supposed to
shut off the screen saver during defragmentation was not working. See point
___.) I went ahead with SpeedDisk, and it was done defragging in minutes, not
hours. I left my Defragmenter schedule in place for the time being. (See point
___.) The next morning, Defragmenter was done by the time I got to the
computer. This made me think that perhaps I could just use SpeedDisk
occasionally, if I preferred not to make it my regular defragmenter -- just to let
Defragmenter get back to where it could get the job done overnight. I used the
computer for a while that morning, and then it became unstable, and I had to
reboot. I had the same thing again the next day, and I wondered whether
Nortons installation was responsible for it. During the installation, Norton
Utilities had told me that it closely integrated itself into the Registry; maybe it
had integrated itself in an undesirable way.
350. Funky Installation Alternatives. I thought maybe a better way of installing
Norton Utilities would have been to install the Norton Utilities CD as a separate
partition or virtual CD -- somewhere, I had gotten a CD containing a program
called Norton Virtual Drive that I thought might make this possible -- and then
use the Norton Utilities option of running from that imitation CD, so that it
would not actually install itself into my Registry. I would have uninstalled it and
tried this, but during the installation of Norton Utilities I had gotten a message
telling me, Uninstaller setup failed to initialize. You may be unable to uninstall
this product. Even the minimal installation took 27 MB, which seemed like a lot
-- until I examined the CD with Size Manager (see point 135) and found that it
contained 641 MB. So I decided I probably wouldnt be installing the whole
thing into a virtual CD drive. But then I thought of another angle: why not
install the virtual drive temporarily, use MagicMover (see point 115) to move the
SpeedDisk program to drive D, and then delete the virtual drive? Another
approach would be to just make a copy of the whole Norton Utilities folder that I
had just installed, get rid of the rest of Norton Utilities, and see if I could run the
programs I needed from that folder, as a modification of an approach I had tried
earlier. (See point 197.) Or, as a hybrid of two of these methods, could I use
MagicMover to move SpeedDisk and Norton Disk Doctor out of that folder? I
decided to experiment with these ideas later. (See point 356.)

351. TurboTax99. I got this program for free as part of a software promotion.
Normally, I did taxes by preparing a spreadsheet, but I decided to give this a
whirl. At first, it seemed very easy. One thing that I noticed was more timeconsuming was that I had to type in all of the data from the W2 forms -- the
federal, state, local, Medicare, and Social Security deductions, the pretax
deductions, etc., as well as the addresses of the employers. Typing in data was
easy -- the screen just asked for a few items at a time -- but I didnt like the fact
that the canned presentation put me so far away from the actual tax forms. In
one sense, that was its purpose, but over the years I had gotten used to working
through the forms carefully, with each line reminding me of a deduction or some
other item that I didnt want to forget. You could check the actual tax forms in
TurboTax, but only in a tiny window at the bottom of the screen that I found
pretty difficult to read, and that window didnt give me the same sense that I
understood how the different forms were supposed to fit together. When I got to
the part involving IRAs, I basically had to leave TurboTax, find the actual IRS
publication from another website, and read through it. I had to leave TurboTax
sitting unfinished overnight while I was checking this out, and when I came back
in the morning, I found that the system was unstable. (I dont think TurboTax
was to blame for this.) I quit, rebooted, and came back into TurboTax, but
evidently it didnt have an auto-save feature; I got a message indicating that my
data might be corrupt. I decided to put TurboTax on hold and go back to the
spreadsheet for a while. I realized that, over the years, I had gotten this
spreadsheet to a place where it was fairly well polished, on the federal side.
Where I really needed TurboTax was on the state side. The Massachusetts
income tax forms were incredibly convoluted, even for a simple tax filing.
Unfortunately, that part of TurboTax was not free. The state portion was $30,
and I realized that the people who sold TurboTax were probably quite aware
that a lot of TurboTax Federal users would wind up making that additional state
investment. Fine for them; but by the time I figured this out, I was halfway
through, so I just went ahead with my spreadsheet calculations. I did not like the
fact that TurboTax installed a bunch of icons on my desktop without asking; I
was happy to finish my taxes using the old spreadsheet; so I uninstalled
TurboTax99 and donated it to the public library on April 12, hoping that some
very tardy soul could still use it.
352. GoBack: Further Review. Besides being irritating, the disk thrashing
hampered my systems performance. I found, for instance, that sometimes
letters that I had typed would fail to appear, and that music files I was replaying
would pause until the disk caught up. As noted earlier, I still found that
transferring large files between computers on the network was very much
slower. (See point 269(o).) In this particular occasion, finally, when the
thrashing did not stop, I disabled GoBack. I found that this did stop the
thrashing. Disabling it took approximately 60 minutes; on one previous

occasion, it had taken 90 minutes. I found that the fastest way to disable GoBack
was not to disable it at all; it was, rather, to boot in DOS and use FDISK to wipe
out drive C. Obviously, that drastic solution would make sense only on those
occasions when you planned to reinstall a fresh version of drive C (presumably
from CD); but on those occasions, it could be very much faster. Another faster
alternative was to uninstall GoBack. Either way, disabling was the slowest route.
On a separate subject, after revisiting the Event Log numerous times, I concluded
that, even with approximately 20% of the hard disk devoted to GOBACKIO.BIN,
I could rarely count on a few days of history, and that the history would not go
back beyond the same day when I worked with audio files or defragged. The
GoBack program could have been significantly improved, I believed, if it had
allowed users to choose different modes of operation. One such mode might set
the program to update itself only every so many minutes -- five, or ten, or
whatever the user said. Perhaps the user could choose that option at any time, or
at least it could pop up when the program detected that there were too many
large file changes going on and that a significant portion of the Event Log was
being erased in a vain attempt to keep up. Along those lines, the user might also
be allowed to specify how many days of history s/he would like to preserve, and
the program might then periodically offer suggestions (as to e.g., the size that
GOBACKIO needed to be, or as to the events that were having the most impact)
to guide the user towards achieving that target number of days, or perhaps
GoBack would just automatically adjust itself to try to meet that goal. Another
mode would be to operate only when InstallShield or other installation programs
fire up: at those times, GoBack would write the contents of a temporary backup
folder to the Event Log, so that at least the user would be able to revert to a time
before a bad program installation at any time in the last several days -- which
would be useful because bad installations may be the most frequent reason for
reverting. Users might also appreciate the option of letting GoBack decide to
ignore certain kinds of files -- e.g., large WAV files -- if changes to such files
appeared to be wiping out large chunks of the Event Log.
353. Crashes. The system had crashed or frozen several times in the last two
days -- enough, anyway, to mark quite a difference from the way things had
been previously. I was also getting weird results from familiar old websites -- all
kinds of error messages, delays, etc. I decided to uninstall GoBack, as just
mentioned. Unfortunately, after that hourlong process, I found that it had
trashed my drive C. When I booted from the floppy and typed DIR at the DOS
prompt, drive D and the others looked OK, but the file listing for drive C was
gibberish. I cold-rebooted and the problem persisted. I ran Norton Disk Doctor
from the C prompt and got an Invalid Disk Table error message. I could not
get into my copy of this document -- it was on the same computer -- to see how I
might have dealt with this problem previously. (See point 298(b).) I went ahead
with Norton. Next, it said, The root directory on drive C is damaged beyond

repair. After suitable quantities of jockeying around, Norton gave me four

directories: DIR00000 through DIR00003. I couldnt tell for sure what was in the
others, but DIR00003 seemed to contain everything that had been in the root
directory originally. I decided to use DriveImage from the floppy to make a
copy of it all, along with drive D, onto a PQI image file on drive F, just in case
there turned out to be something I would need from it later. This gave me Error
# 2005: One or more lost clusters are present. I canceled and went back to Disk
Doctor. It said, Analyzing lost chains again, like it had done before. Its
summary said it had found problems on both drives C and D and had fixed
them. I tried DriveImage again. This time it was Error # 501: Cross-linked files
were found. Back to Disk Doctor. It fixed files again. I ran it again until it had
no further problems, and then tried DriveImage again. This time it worked.
Having made the backup on drive F in the form of a file called TEMPC_D.PQI, I
restored fresh versions of drives C and D from the FINAL.PQI CD. (See point
___.) I decided to keep a copy of the FINAL.PQI file on the computer from now
on; ideally, I would have kept it in a partition that would not be backed up (see
point ___), and that probably would not need to be defragmented, but on the
secondary hard drive so that it would be insulated from problems arising on the
primary disk (which it would then step in and replace).
354. Norton Ghost. I had known about this alternative to DriveImage from the
outset. (See point 2.) I dont think I had it at the beginning, though, and I really
liked PowerQuests software. Now, however, I had a couple of needs in mind
that DriveImage could not handle, at least not in my version of it, and I wanted
to see if Ghost was any better. First, while it sounded like GoBack was
incompatible with both Ghost and DriveImage (see point 298(a)), I appreciated
the thought that Ghost might be able to run in Windows mode instead of
requiring a reboot to DOS. In that case, I thought, I might be able to find a way
to disable GoBack sufficiently to run Ghost without so much delay. Second, I
hoped that Ghost had a command-line version, in which case I thought I might
be able to use it automatically to create periodic images of my system. When I
loaded the CD and read its read-me file, I found that it did indeed have a
command-line option. The read-me said, however, that Ghost had to run in
DOS. Oh, well: one out of two wasnt bad. The read-me told me to go to
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/allservices_ghost.html for the
latest version of the program. I did this. It wanted to know what version I had
now. Not having installed the program, I couldnt tell for sure. To install, the
directions said I basically just had to copy the files over from the CD, which I did,
leaving out the ones for speakers of other languages (e.g., GERMAN.DOC). This
gave me about 1.1 MB in documentation and 600 KB in actual program files. I
formatted a bootable floppy and copied the program files to it. I rebooted into
real DOS and belatedly found that, since I had not disabled or uninstalled
GoBack, Ghost could only report the drives as being Type 44 drives, and

therefore could not see the individual partitions on them. (See point 256(d).) I
decided to experiment further with Ghost (see point ___), but first I had to come
to some kind of conclusion about GoBack.
355. Getting Rid of GoBack. One of the GoBack error messages had said
something about GBPROG.EXE being called by AUTOEXEC.BAT. I checked
AUTOEXEC and, sure enough, one of the first lines did call GBPROG. I
commented out that line (by putting a DOS comment indicator, either :: or
REM) in front of it. Then I rebooted to see if GoBack would still load. It did. So
this wasnt the explanation. I tried killing its processes in PrcView, and it kept
on ticking. I went into Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled it. No more
thrashing! Thank God. GoBack could be very useful, but it had interfered so
much with my ordinary work that it was more of a liability than a help. I needed
another backup strategy.
356. Problems. At this point, I suspended further work on the Windows 98
project because I had some work to do. While doing that work, however, I
noticed that the system froze a couple of times, and also that the mouse was
sluggish, especially when using Internet Explorer. It got bad enough that I
finally restored the March 31 version. (See point 347.) I still had sluggishness, so
I restored a March 31 copy of the Registry, which my hard disk still had, thanks
to the dozen Registry backups I kept. (See point 147.) This seemed to work, but
within a few days I discovered that programs werent working. Norton
Antivirus 2000 gave me a message that said, Unable to find valid virus
definitions files. Please reinstall Norton AntiVirus. The scary thing is that it
didnt give me this message until I tried to run a manual scan of an EXE file I had
downloaded; apparently Nortons automatic, constant protection did not go so
far as to tell me when it was not protecting me. Similarly, Microsoft Photo
Editor, which never gave me problems, did now: when I told it to open a JPG
file by double-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer, I got a message that said,
No file format information can be found in the Registry, and when I tried to
open the same file from within Photo Editor, it said, Photo Editor cannot find or
open the file that I designated. I also had a separate problem over on the
PENTIUM machine: I had video lines racing across the screen; I couldnt read
the screen because it appeared to have been reduced and repeated four times
across the screen; but evidently I discovered that this was caused simply by a
loose video plug at the back of the computer. I tried reinstalling the March 31
backup from my PQI file and restoring the old Registry again, but the problems
recurred.
357. Decision. It appeared that my final PQI backup had contained an
imperfect copy of the system. Unfortunately, the next prior copy was back at
point 300; it would take a considerable amount of work in order to repeat all of

the steps since then. I had contemplated the possibility of starting from scratch,
or nearly so, and rebuilding the system in a more efficient way, avoiding at least
some of the mistakes that I had made along the way. It now appeared that fate
was forcing my hand in that direction. Why, after all, should I spend hours or
days retracing my steps from point 300 in order to build an imperfect system,
when I could spend even more hours or days working from somewhere nearer to
the beginning, in order to build a less imperfect system? It was an odd question,
but that was the question I faced. I went online, reviewed some current
information on Linux, and concluded that it was still not seriously in the running
for North American consumers. I decided I really should try again.
Post-Postscript
In the process of further tinkering with the existing setup and/or starting over
and trying the new one, I came up with the following additional problems. The
first several items are holdovers that I had halfway completed before finishing
the above paragraphs; the rest are new problems.
358. Catching Up: Norton Installation Alternative. I had just restored (see point
353) a version of drives C and D that I had made earlier (see point 347). I had to
catch up on changes that I had made since then, beginning with the installation
of Norton Utilities. (See point 349.) This time, however, I experimented with the
alternative methods of installation that I had considered earlier. (See point 350.)
I would be needing other things from the copy of the system that had crashed,
that I had wiped off, as contained in TEMPC_D.PQI (see point 353), so I began by
reinstalling it on the PENTIUM computer so that I could borrow from it.
359. Video Problem. Lines racing across the screen on the PENTIUM machine:
the video cable was loose on back of the computer.
360. Differences between the Two Installations. I killed WEBDAILY and
WEBWEEK on the PENTIUM because I need them to run on only one machine. I
reinstalled Outlook 98 and needed to figure out how to get rid of an extra
Personal Folder. I did need to have the Outlook 98 Contacts folder on the
PENTIUM; just none of the messages and reminders.
361. Cannot Find Server. The PENTIUM modem that tormented me for so long
started in on a new route. It would dial up; but common websites would return
an error message. I checked the same sites at the same time on the AMD
machine and had no such problem. This occurred, by the way, on a brand-new
installation, immediately after downloading some of the latest Windows
updates; and it also occurred when I downloaded those same updates to begin to

build upon the system that I had previously saved in a CD at approximately

point 65.
362. Decisions about Backup. Experience suggested that I might be happiest if I
approached backup on a partition-by-partition basis. Different partitions seemed
to have different backup needs:
(a) Drive C (PROGRAMS) Backup. Drive C had proved to be a fragile and
complex thing. In the past, I had not had much luck with restoring incremental
backups to drive C. The simpler, faster, and more workable approach was,
generally, to wipe off the disk and restore a fresh new installation, rather than to
try to fix the old one. Also, the experiment of putting program files on a separate
drive D had not worked out so well, so drive C would now contain all of my
working program files, Windows and otherwise. Therefore, the approach I
hoped to take from now on was to keep a two-CD backup set containing my
program files. I wasnt sure how often I might update this set -- or, more likely,
two or three different alternating sets -- but it wasnt crucial. For program files,
unlike data files, the need to revert to a backup set that was a couple of weeks
old would not mean that I had lost two weeks work; it would just mean that I
would have to redo some of my program adjustments and tinkering. Ideally, I
would have incremental backups to reduce that but, again, incremental backups
werent something I would count on, or need, for drive C. Indeed, if I could run
GoBack on the first hard disk, it would probably take care of about 90% of the
times when I found the system unstable and wished I could roll things back a
few hours, or a day or so, and restore a working system.
(b) Drive D (STATIC) Backup. Drive D would now hold the WIN98 folder (i.e.,
the one containing all those CAB files), so that it would no longer get in the way
when I was backing up, defragmenting, or revising the C partition. That is, D
would not contain materials that would be fragmenting, increasing in size, or
changing -- hence the name STATIC, as in stasis. It would probably be a small
partition. Present plans did not require any backup, since I could probably
restore its contents from the Win98 upgrade CD or wherever else I had found
those contents, but I probably would keep one backup just to simplify the
process of remembering exactly what had to go where on that partition.
(c) Drive E (GOBACK) Backup. On the PENTIUM machine, things would be a
little different, since I presently had a weird little arrangement there with the 1
GB hard drive serving as a SWAP partition only. Leaving that aside and
focusing on the main AMD machine, I figured I would keep this partition
available for GoBack. I might not always be running it, but at least the capability
would be there. So here I would have another partition that didnt need to be
backed up.

(d) Drive F (DATA) Backup. For reasons addressed below, this partition would
no longer contain audio files. This partition would require frequent backup. If
possible, it would be on a disk on which GoBack was active. I would thus expect
to have full backups of the entire partition every week or so, incremental
backups every day (and perhaps even more frequently, depending on how the
details worked out), and GoBack coverage on a minute-by-minute basis, so that I
would rarely lose hours of work on a spreadsheet, document, or other timeintensive product.
(e) Drive G (AUDIO) Backup. Audio, unlike other data files, had not worked
well with GoBack. Unless I wished to experiment with setting aside some huge
chunk (e.g., 30-50%) of a disk to GoBack, I could not expect it to cover such files.
Nor did I really need it to do so. I usually made backup copies of large audio files
before working on them. Indeed, I did not even need backups in those cases
where the original came from a cassette or CD that I had on hand. The large files
tended not to last long anyway. After a few months of getting used to the CDROM burner and other audio stuff, I had developed a work style in which I
would ordinarily cut the large files up into smaller pieces, compress them into
even smaller MP3 files, and burn them onto CD in relatively short order. I did
not want to set up a system that would insist on spending hours to fill two, three,
or more CDs every week or two, where the materials would not be staying on the
disk anyway. Thus, as far as I could see, backup on drive G would tend to be an
ad hoc affair. If there was any system to it, it would probably focus primarily on
the folders containing MP3s and other finished audio files. I should note that, in
terms of hard disks, the dividing line between the primary master and the
primary slave drive would probably lie between drives F and G, since GoBack
would need to cover partitions C and F but nothing thereafter.
(f) Drive H (BURNING) Backup. Since the only purpose of this partition was to
serve as a temporary staging area for unfragmented materials that were about to
be burned onto CD, I saw no need for a backup plan for it. The only other note
worth making about this partition was that, having obtained some inexpensive
80-minute (700 MB) CD-RW disks at CompUSA, I would probably increase the
size of this partition to around 750 MB.
(g) Drive I (SWAP) Backup. Since this partition held purely temporary files, it
did not need backup. Incidentally, I wanted to keep this partition at around 2.5
GB so that it would continue to accommodate Cool Edit temporary files. I
thought maybe I would keep drives H and I together and eventually try to put
them both onto a third hard drive, for which I would have space and power once
I got rid of the HP tape drive. That way, when I was moving large 700 MB files
to the BURNING partition in order to put them onto a CD (or in order to get

them out of the way temporarily for some other reason), I would be making a
transfer between hard disks, which is apt to be much faster than trying to move
them from one partition to another on the same hard disk.
363. Norton Utilities. I had to uninstall and reinstall the system from CD
because of instability. (See point 357.) When I set it up with a slightly different
backup of the Registry, however, I found it worked pretty well. This made me
wonder whether installing Norton Utilities had made things worse. Subsequent
tinkering suggested, however, that a minimal Norton installation, with
SpeedDisk and Norton Disk Doctor and maybe a few other basics, did not seem
to provoke additional Win98 flakiness.
364. Video Card Problems. After weeks of trying to deal with a problem in
which the video screen on one computer produced nothing but a horizontal
racing effect, I found that the solution required all of the following steps: (a) Go
into Safe Mode, in Device Manager, and delete all video cards. (b) Reboot into
Normal Mode and install the latest AGP driver from the motherboard
manufacturer. (c) Install the latest video card driver from the video card
manufacturer. (d) Use a different monitor.
365.

Batch file backing up Start | Programs on another disk. I thought about doing
the same thing for the DOS_UTIL folder. Precede defragmenter with Norton
Disk Doctor from the command line.
Microphone Balance. Had to mute that in Volume Control in order to shut down
weird noises while working with audio files.
Break DOS_UTIL files into separate subfolders if they dont have to be on path.
Copying thing needs to include INI files modified since the last CD backup.
Point 141(d): Another manual alternative involved looking at the INF file that
accompanied a program that you were about to install; the AddReg= and
DelReg= lines in that file apparently told you what lines were going to be added
to or deleted from the Registry.
Why Windows 98 instead of Linux or Windows 2000 (as of early 2000)?
See point 90, point 343.

10

Why write this document?

See introduction, point 346.
Why is it easier to use two computers for a process like this?
See point 1.
Why is it harder to use two computers for a process like this?
See point 257, point 329.
Why network the computers, if you use two of them?
See point 93, point 185.
Why not use Hewlett-Packard tape backup instead of burning a CD?
See introduction, point 171.
What hard disk partitions did you decide upon?
See point 2, point 237, point 258(d), point 300(d), point 302, point 338.
[Add final batch files and parse all of their contents.]
[Add paragraphs since point 346.]
Installing programs: run through InCtrl4, comment in GoBack log, complete File
List.
Custom Settings
Have to name each computer uniquely on Network tab: point 181.
Each computer requires its own settings to some extent: point 304.
[search for custom]
See also Password,
............ [TweakUI, X-Setup]
Cool Edit 2000 settings saved in COOL.INI: point 157(a).
Cool Edit 2000 scripts saved in SCP file: point 157(a).
Cool Edit 2000 Temporary Files set up differently on 2 computers: point 304.
For Windows Explorer: saved in ___
GoBack setup differs on two different computers: point 304.
Word 97 Normal.dot template: point 102.
Word 97 <username>.acl abbreviations file: point 112(a).
SendTo folder: point 336(a).
Favorites need to be saved when Drive C isnt: point 334.
DOS_UTIL needs to be saved when Drive C isnt: point 334.
OUTLOOK.PST and INI files contain information that I want to keep: point 168.
SETIHOME.INI: point 194.

11

If you start your system and its barely responding, you may need to restore a
previous Registry. Get individual REG files from X-Setup. The Registry gets
fragile, so a restore to a recent one may keep you going for a while longer. Load
Error message results from GoBack; have to save data using DriveImage to
another hard disk (another benefit of having two hard disks) and then wipe it
out and re-install. Need batch file to run Cool Edit and then wipe out batch files
(in DOS) when CE shuts down.
If you have loaded the files from your Windows CD locally or on the network,
use this setting to stop the prompt which asks you to put in your Windows CD
when loading new options. This setting will redirect the system to look in the
directory where the files are loaded instead of automatically looking to the CDROM
drive.
To
set
this
option,
go
to:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup Edit/create
the value "SourcePath" (String Value) and set the value equal to the path where
the Windows files are stored.
>Did the little yellow speaker that controls audio volume
>disappear from your taskbar's system tray? If so, open the
>Multimedia Control Panel. Under the Audio tab, check the
>"Show volume control on the taskbar" option in the
Playback
>section (in Win98, the option is at the bottom of the
dialog
>box). Click on OK, and the yellow speaker should return.
If
>not, try reinstalling your audio driver and then repeat
these
>steps.
Add Cool Edit tutorials as part of the installation process -- download them
through CE's Help | Tutorials option.
When you make modifications to Windows 95 or 98, such as adding new
programs or hardware, the OS always looks in the original source path for the
CAB installation files. If you copy the files to a new location, you can modify the
internal pointer to the directory that contains all of the CABs. Open RegEdit, and
use the Edit/Find command to search for the text string Sourcepath, or go
directly
to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Se
tup. Double-click the Sourcepath entry in the right RegEdit pane and enter the
new location for the Windows 9x installation files.

12

Ask for advice re freeware command-line zipper that will run in Win98.
GoBack: notes should be highlighted and it should be possible to filter just
for them, so you can quickly see where you are, and maybe show up everything
for five minutes on either side of a note.
To make the network work when it stops: DOS prompt commands: ping
PENTIUM solves the problem. Other options are net view, netstat, tracert,
winipcfg.
You can manually extract files from your Windows CD or IE setup CAB files,
which can be very useful when your PC tells you KERNEL32.DLL or another
system file has been corrupted. Win98's System File Checker (SFC.EXE in the
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder) can automatically fix some corrupted files for
you. But Win95 users can also make repairs using the DOS EXTRACT.EXE tool
(in the \WINDOWS\COMMANDS folder). Type EXTRACT /? from a DOS
window to view the syntax requirements and available options for using this
tool. For more detailed information, see Microsoft's Web page "How to Extract
Original
Compressed
Windows
Files"
at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q129/6/05.asp.
If Windows fails to boot properly, press F8 while it boots for the Windows
StartUp menu, and pick the Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT) option. It attempts a
normal boot but records the status of every step Windows takes during the
process. You can use this option to log a failed boot. Then, reboot to Safe mode if
necessary and use a text editor to open BOOTLOG.TXT (in your root directory).
Search for "fail" to find the boot steps Windows had trouble with. Failed steps are
often excellent clues to the cause of the problem.
After installing Windows 98 Second Edition (upgrade or full version) you will
find that there is no Attribute column in Explorer. You can add this column to
Explorer
by
by
launching
RegEdit
and
going
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced and changing the
ShowAttribCol Dword value from 0 to 1 by clicking on it.
> >If you find a graphic you want to use as Desktop
wallpaper,
> >paste it up by right-clicking on the image and selecting
> >Set As Wallpaper.
>Find out exactly what a program does when you install it
by
>using the System File Checker's log feature. After
installing a
13

>program, open the log by launching the System Information

utility
>(Start/Programs/Accessories/System
Tools/System
Information),
>choosing System File Checker from the Tools menu, clicking
on the
>Settings button and then on the View Log button. The log
will tell
>you exactly which files were added to your computer and
which were
>updated with a newer version.
>You can also accomplish the reformatting
>by adding "&fmt=text" to the end of the Deja.com URL.
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * IE 5.0 comes with a new repair tool. To get to it,
launch Add/Remove Programs from your Control Panel. Click on "Microsoft
Internet Explorer 5" in the window of the Install/Uninstall tab, then click on
Add/Remove. Select the "Repair the current installation of Internet Explorer"
radio button. Click on OK.
If your system 'freezes' up; bring up your task manager by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+Dlt; first try to page down on the list and look for 'rundll'. If that is in
your list, highlight it and press endtask. This often will 'jumpstart' your system
back to life. If not you may have to use the task manager to end the current
application you are in. As always, once your system comes back to life: save and
Reboot! -- submitted by Traci Ferrante
If you use the Find command from the Start menu and you are looking for a file
that contains spaces in the name be sure to use "?" as a place holder otherwise
Windows will think you're looking for all instances of the individual words. For
example, if you're looking for your favorite old time mp3, "Home on the Range,"
and you use "home on the range" as the search name you will get every instance
for the words home, on, the, and range, even if the letters of the search words are
buried in another word (i.e on in phone). Enter the search name as
"home?on?the?range" and Windows will find the correct file.
It's not uncommon in Windows to encounter a "File Not Found" error while
booting up. The message indicates that a particular file-usually a DLL or VXD-is
missing. Chances are, the file was improperly removed when you uninstalled an
application. The file may be gone, but one or more lines in your System Registry
or SYSTEM.INI could still be trying to load it. To fix the problem, reboot and
note the exact name of the errant file. From the Windows taskbar, select
Start/Find/Files and Folders to search forthe missing file. If you find it, copy it

14

to your WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder. If you think you might have

moved or renamed a program folder, make a new folder with the old name, and
copy the offending file there. Reboot and see if the message goes away.
For a Web site you've previously visited, you can type an incomplete URL into
Internet Explorer's Address bar, and the browser's AutoComplete feature will fill
in the rest. However, it only searches for entries with .com, .org, and .edu
extensions by default. You can edit the Registry to make it also search for .gov
and
.net
URL
extensions.
Run
Regedit
and
go
to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft
\Internet
Explorer\Main\UrlTemplate. You'll find six strings with these value names and
data: 1 "www.%s.com" 2 "www.%s.edu" 3 "www.%s.org" 4 "%s.com" 5 "%s.edu"
6 "%s.org" Select Edit/New/String Value and add the following values and data:
7 "www.%s.net" 8 "www.%s.gov" 9 "%s.net" 10 "%s.gov"
Do you create shortcuts to Web sites by right-clicking a Web page displayed in
your browser window and choosing "Create Shortcut"? This places a Favorite
shortcut on your desktop, which is handy for a while, but gets messy soon after.
To clean up this mees, make a folder in your Favorites folder
(C:\Windows\Favorites) called "Unfiled." Now create a standard shortcut to this
new folder (C:\Windows\Favorites\Unfiled) and place it in your Send To folder
(C:\Windows\SendTo). To clean up your desktop, just right-click any URL
shortcut on your desktop, choose Send To on the context menu, and select
Favorites to tuck it away in a place where you can find it again. You can even
highlight multiple Favorites and send them off all at once. Next time you're in
Favorites, you can file them in the right locations there.
Install Image Composer.
When you start Windows 98 does an annoying pop up "User/Password
window" always display? Usually this means you've set a password on the PC
during initial setup without knowing this User pop up window would then keep
reappearing everytime you start your PC. If you don't share your computer with
any other Users, do the following to make this window go away. In the
c:\Windows directory, search for a file with the extension of .pwl. Delete this file.
Then reboot. This will reset the pop up User window to appear in a different
format. The window will now say, "if you don't enter a password, this window
will not appear again." The one instruction this User window neglects to give
you is to press the Enter Key instead of pressing the OK button. When you
reboot, the window will not reappear. By going to the Control Panel in the
future, you can always change to multiple Users by clicking on the User's Icon
and following the instructions.

15

Did you know you can drag and drop a folder onto a DOS prompt command line
to quickly open a DOS directory several levels deep without laboriously typing
its pathname? This tip also automatically converts long folder names to the
abbreviated versions DOS uses. Here's how: Open a DOS Windows (Start > Run
> type Command > press Enter). In the DOS window, type "cd" followed by a
single character space. Next, open a folder window, and navigate to the folder
containing the subfolder you want to open as a DOS directory. Now just drag
and drop that subfolder onto the DOS window command line. Click the DOS
window anywhere to select it, and press Enter to open the directory in the DOS
window. (Note: If you have the folder option to display the current folder path in
the Address bar turned on, you can drag and drop the small folder icon from the
Address bar instead.)
Constant warnings about low disk space on your Win98 PC can be annoying,
especially if they refer to your host drive on a compressed disk. To get rid of the
warning, open Disk Cleanup (Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) and
click on the Settings tab. Deselect the check box labeled "If this drive runs low on
disk space, automatically run Disk Cleanup," then click on OK.
>You can change the location of your Favorites folder
>by editing the Registry. Launch RegEdit from the Run
>command line and go to these two entries:
>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
>\CurrentVersion \Explorer\User Shell Folders and,
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
>\CurrentVersion \Explorer\Shell Folders. In each, set the
>Favorites value to the path of your new Favorites folder.
>You must use a double slash instead of a single slash
> when entering the path (for example, C:\\MYNEWFAV).
When adding URLs to the Favorites folder tab, the list lines up and is displayed
accordingly when the Favorites tab is clicked. To sort the list alphabetically, open
the Favorites drop-down box by clicking on the Favorites in the upper bar,
highlight a single entry and Right click on it. Click on Sort by Name
(Alphabetize) and the list lines up by name . -- Submitted by Todd A. Flowers
Save a step the next time you use Internet Explorer to download a file: Rightclick on the file link on the Web page and choose Save/Target As. IE will
automatically open the Save As dialog box with the folder navigator. This lets
you bypass the dialog box verifying that you want to download the file rather
than run it over the Internet.
If you're tired of multiple clicks to get to your floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, or to
the Control Panel, you can put a shortcut on your desktop for instant access.
16

Open My Computer, right-click on your floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, or other

item and select "Create Shortcut" to place an icon on your desktop for instant,
one-click access. You can use this technique for any folder you access frequently
by putting a shortcut on your desktop. Now, your desktop becomes your
operations center with quick access to any application, folder, or file on your PC.
There's an easy way to add accent marks and other special characters to words
like
resume
and
cafe.
Open
the
Character
Map
application
(Start/Programs/Accessories
in
Windows
95,
Start/Programs
/Accessories/System Tools in Win98). If Character Map isn't installed, you can
add it using Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs applet. In the drop-down
list under Font, select the font you're using in your document. In Character Map,
find the character you need, double-click it to add it to the Characters To Copy
field, then click on Copy. Return to your document, place your cursor where
you'd like the character to appear (or select a letter to replace) and press Ctrl+V
to paste the new character.
I always see people backspacing and deleting to change the middle of the
address, for example, www.WINMAG.com. To speed things up, click on the new
address bar so that the entire address is highlighted. Simply type the core of the
address (i.e. winmag) and then push CTL+ENTER. This will automatically add
the WWW. and .COM
--- Assigning KeyShortcut Key Combination (For Win9x) --- You can assign a
Shortcut Key Combination to any shortcut icon --- program or file --- that will
open it instantly, even when you can't see it, or from inside another program,
with a couple of keystrokes. The previous tip about an Instant Lockdown
screensaver will be even quicker if you don't have to first find the icon to click
on. If you right click on any shortcut icon (including the ones on the Start Menu*)
and choose Properties, you can then type a Ctrl+ (any letter) to assign the key
combination. They need to be unique and, of course, something you can
remember.
--- Migrate from Win95 (Win2k) --- Perhaps Microsoft is listening to its critics.
Windows 2000 includes a migration path from Win95, which means most Win32
applications won't require reinstallation when you move from Win95 to
Windows 2000.
TIP OF THE WEEK ------------------------------------------- --- More Tips on Shortcut
Keys (Win9x) --- I've noticed that: 1. For a shortcut key to work, it must be
somewhere that Explorer looks at during system startup, such as the Desktop, or
somewhere in the hierarchy of the Start Menu. 2. I always try a shortcut before
assigning it; if you use a shortcut that is already assigned, then neither one will

17

work, and it's usually an exhaustive search process to find the two. 3. Many
times, I have to restart Windows before a shortcut key will work. 4. The default
seems to be "Ctrl+Alt+key"; I like that better than "Ctrl-key", because it's less
ambiguous (e.g., "Ctrl-c" might not be a good pick). 5. It's not possible (or, at
least, easy) to assign a shortcut key to one of the internal Explorer icons, such as
for Internet Explorer or Outlook. 6. I made a Shortcut with
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 1 in the
command line and use a shortcut key of Ctrl-Alt-\ (it does a shutdown); then,
when Windows gets funny, I have a chance of getting at least a partial shutdown
without having to use the mouse or find the Start/shutdown menu. That,
combined with turning off Windows' hard disk write-caching, means that I lose
much less information from system crashes. (No hard disk write-caching: Start;
Settings; Control Panel; System; Performance tab; File System; Troubleshooting
tab; check Disable Write-behind caching for all drives.) -- submitted by a reader
Find out exactly what a program does when you install it by using the System
File Checker's log feature. After installing a program, open the log by launching
the
System
Information
utility
(Start/Programs/Accessories/System
Tools/System Information), choosing System File Checker from the Tools menu,
clicking on the Settings button and then on the View Log button. The log will tell
you exactly which files were added to your computer and which were updated
with a newer version.
By using simple JavaScript, you can create dynamic links that return visitors to
the last page they viewed. To do this you use the visitor's "history". History is a
list of web sites that an individual browser has visited. Here's the code: <a href="# "
onClick= "history.back(); ">Go Back</a>
Upgrade ZoneAlarm, using its own configuration panel.
Eudora and Netscape Messenger can import Outlook Express mailboxes.
Batch98 in ResKit can gather a current configuration of your machine for instant
re-running.
To clean the context menu, Regedit:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
click the plus sign to see all right-click menu options
PowerDesk 4 is a free download from ontrack.com
A few days after you reinstall from a system backup, make another system
backup. Dont wait too long. Do it as soon as youve finished re-making the
18

updates you had to make to bring the previous backup up-to-date, and do it
while this new reinstallation is still working. This way, you will slowly creep
forward, bringing your latest backups more up-to-date.
Instead of spending all that time reconfiguring, why not spend it setting up
Linux?
Research what has already been written about saving your settings with INI files
etc.
Try using Windows and Outlook update folders instead of re-downloading.
Something on the Windows addiction, to keep it and also the addiction to fix it.
For some perspective, ask yourself whether you would be interested in fixing
bugs in Linux. It probably sounds pretty alien, and that is probably how youll
look back on the Windows fixation too.
Another way to improve reliability is to keep stuff off your computer, e.g., keep
your e-mail at a site like Hotmail.
The first question about Linux is not whether everyone else thinks it has
surpassed or will surpass Windows. The first question is whether it has attained
permanent viability in the sense of keeping up and giving you a long-term
solution. That much seems likely, and not asking that is the mistake I made at
the start of 2000: I was asking whether Windows would be defeated.
Reasons to use Linux as a base: partial independence from Microsoft, increase
pressure on Microsoft and reduce its profits and power over the software
industry, opportunity to do things in Linux for which there is no Windows
counterpart.
Lack of RAM is a real possibility for causing all kinds of system problems.
Use Delayer to ping the ISP occasionally to keep it from disconnecting.
Whistler wont run on any computer other than the one originally activated. It
will contain a product key that limits it to that computer. Even if it turns out to
be breakable, or if Microsoft doesnt do it that way this time around, the point is
they could.
The choice of operating system is one of those things that we want the public, not
corporate profit, to decide. It's like a national park or the delivery of the mail.

19

xcopy /t /e creates the directory structure without the files -- use to recreate
from scratch
Another reason to have a separate hard drive is you can swap drives to move
data from one machine to another without Windows files getting in the way -two separate sets of Windows confusing the system.
PowerDesk is now free at http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/
When you type a URL in the Address Bar it gets added to a listing that can be
accessed by clicking on the down arrow at the right side of the address bar. You
can remove the URLs listed in the Address Bar pull-down listing by launching
RegEdit
and
going
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Default\Software
\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\TypedURLs. Delete any URLs you don't want
viewed.
--- Disable Password Caching (IE 5) --- Internet Explorer has the ability to
remember the passwords you use to log on to certain Web sites. To disable this
feature -- called Password Caching -- open the Registry editor and drill down to
the
key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Internet Settings. Right-click the white space in the left pane and
select
New/DWORD
Value.
Give
the
new
value
the
name
DisablePasswordCaching and set the value to 0x00000001. --- Add Notepad to
the SendTo Menu (Win9x) --- Add Notepad (C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE) to
your SendTo menu, so you can quickly view the contents of text files that don't
have a TXT extension. This is helpful for opening text-based files without having
to first access the "Open With" dialog. Just right-click on the file and select
SendTo>Notepad. READER TIP OF THE WEEK --------------------------------------------- Reinstall the Volume Control Icon (Win98) --- If you have inadvertantly lost
your volume control icon from the task bar, you may reinstall it by going to
Start>Settings>Control Panel>Multimedia and Check off the block ON [X] that
says SHOW volume control on the taskbar. And Presto, the volume control icon
will be back for you to use. Please keep in mind that all Multimedia software or
Hardware may not support this option. In that case your sound board probably
has a volume control wheel on it.
To encrypt e-mail in Windows use sigaba at pcworld.com/news/sigaba or sigaba.com. At
pcworld.com/downloads/top5/dec2000: Motherboard Monitor, DLL Show, Memory Cleanter,
Backup Maker. To see webbug in action: mackraz.com/trickybit/readreceipt. Half.com re book
on editing Win98 registry, whichever one people on Deja recommend. Deja search for REG files:
REGEDIT4.

20

Additional Notes for Windows Article

GoBack Error: Error Occurred Trying to Run GBDrive.exe. One day, I tried to
run GoBack by clicking on the icon on the system tray, and I received this error
message. I immediately tried to start Word on that same computer in order to
write it down, and got a Windows error message that said, There is not enough
free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try
again. I quit one program and that did it: I was able to go in and do what I
wanted, which was to see how far back the Event Log was tracking at that point.
Sadly, it was still covering only the past 24 hours. But then I noticed, for the first
time, that the title bar of the display said, GoBack Drive -- Drives C:, D: and E:.
Was there a separate display for the other drives? I had thought for sure that this
Event Log showed events on both disks at the same time. (See point ___.) I
couldnt find out at that exact moment, unfortunately, because GoBack was so
lost in the process of trying to inform itself as to what was happening on my
system -- the disk had been thrashing for quite a while -- that the Event Log was
not even visible. It was just a big grey field on the right side of my screen. When
it did come back into view, however, I clicked on the Files menu option and, sure
enough, there was a choice for drives F:, G: and H:. Unfortunately, the story was
even worse there: GoBack was covering me only for the past six hours! I remind
you that this was the disk on which I had set aside a whopping 1 GB for
GOBACKIO.BIN. (See point ___.) The first entry in the log for this second hard
disk was GoBack logging suspended due to massive file activity. It occurred at
2 AM, telling me that the massive activity in question was the activity of
defragmenting my disk in the middle of the night. In other words, this might
well happen every night!
Norton Utilities. I wondered whether disk fragmentation was to blame for the
thrashing, so I finished the defragmentation and watched to see whether there
would be more thrashing. This time, I used Nortons SpeedDisk. I got it by
installing a minimal set of Norton Utilities. The first thing I noticed, upon
starting SpeedDisk, was that it began by telling me how much of the disk was
fragmented. This was a notable improvement on Windows Disk Defragmenter,
which just started in and left me guessing. Norton said 67% of drive C was not
fragmented. Well, I thought, that would certainly cause some thrashing!
Clearly, the Windows defragmenter (which was running every night) was not
keeping up. (I also noticed that the Registry edit that was supposed to shut off
the screen saver during defragmentation was not working. See point ___.) I
went ahead with SpeedDisk, and it was done defragging in minutes, not hours.
Sure enough, I saw much less thrashing after that. So it wasnt primarily a
GoBack problem, at least not this time. I left my Defragmenter schedule in place
for the time being. (See point ___.) The next morning, Defragmenter was done
by the time I got to the computer. This made me think that perhaps I could just

use SpeedDisk occasionally, if I preferred not to make it my regular

defragmenter -- just to let Defragmenter get back to where it could get the job
done overnight. I used the computer for a while that morning, and then it
became unstable, and I had to reboot. I had the same thing again the next day,
and I wondered whether Nortons installation was responsible for it. During the
installation, Norton Utilities had told me that it closely integrated itself into the
Registry; maybe it had integrated itself in an undesirable way. I thought maybe
a better way of installing it would have been to install the Norton Utilities CD as
a separate partition or virtual CD -- somewhere, I had gotten a CD containing a
program called Norton Virtual Drive that I thought might make this possible -and then use the Norton Utilities option of running from that imitation CD, so
that it would not actually install itself into my Registry. I would have
uninstalled it and tried this, but during the installation of Norton Utilities I had
gotten a message telling me, Uninstaller setup failed to initialize. You may be
unable to uninstall this product. Even the minimal installation took 27 MB,
which seemed like a lot -- until I examined the CD with Size Manager (see point
___) and found that it contained 641 MB. So I decided I probably wouldnt be
installing the whole thing into a virtual CD drive. But then I thought of another
angle: why not install the virtual drive temporarily, use MagicMover (see point
___) to move the SpeedDisk program to drive D, and then delete the virtual
drive? Another approach would be to just make a copy of the whole Norton
Utilities folder that I had just installed, get rid of the rest of Norton Utilities, and
see if I could run the programs I needed from that folder, as a modification of an
approach I had tried earlier. (See point ___.) I decided to experiment with these
approaches later. (See point ___.)
TurboTax99. I got this program for free as part of a software promotion.
Normally, I did taxes by preparing a spreadsheet, but I decided to give this a
whirl. At first, it seemed very easy. One thing that I noticed was more timeconsuming was that I had to type in all of the data from the W2 forms -- the
federal, state, local, Medicare, and Social Security deductions, the pretax
deductions, etc., as well as the addresses of the employers. Typing in data was
easy -- the screen just asked for a few items at a time -- but I didnt like the fact
that the canned presentation put me so far away from the actual tax forms. In
one sense, that was its purpose, but over the years I had gotten used to working
through the forms carefully, with each line reminding me of a deduction or some
other item that I didnt want to forget. You could check the actual tax forms in
TurboTax, but only in a tiny window at the bottom of the screen that I found
pretty difficult to read, and that window didnt give me the same sense that I
understood how the different forms were supposed to fit together. When I got to
the part involving IRAs, I basically had to leave TurboTax, find the actual IRS
publication from another website, and read through it. I had to leave TurboTax
sitting unfinished overnight while I was checking this out, and when I came back

in the morning, I found that the system was unstable. (I dont think TurboTax
was to blame for this.) I quit, rebooted, and came back into TurboTax, but
evidently it didnt have an auto-save feature; I got a message indicating that my
data might be corrupt. I decided to put TurboTax on hold and go back to the
spreadsheet for a while. I realized that, over the years, I had gotten this
spreadsheet to a place where it was fairly well polished, on the federal side.
Where I really needed TurboTax was on the state side. The Massachusetts
income tax forms were incredibly convoluted, even for a simple tax filing.
Unfortunately, that part of TurboTax was not free. The state portion was $30,
and I realized that the people who sold TurboTax were probably quite aware
that a lot of TurboTax Federal users would wind up making that additional state
investment. Fine for them; but by the time I figured this out, I was halfway
through, so I just went ahead with my spreadsheet calculations. I did not like the
fact that TurboTax installed a bunch of icons on my desktop without asking; I
was happy to finish my taxes using the old spreadsheet; so I uninstalled it and
donated it to the public library on April 12.
Relocating Frequently Used Program Data Files. I had previously moved the
Messages folder used by Outlook Express and Outlook 98 to drive F. (See point
___.) I had had a couple of reasons for doing so. For one thing, I knew that
frequently changing files could contribute to fragmentation, and certainly the
files holding my e-mail messages would change frequently. Also, if I had left
those files on drive C, then I would have lost my most recent messages each time
I wiped off drive C and reinstalled my program files from the CD. The same
would be true for the Favorites that I might save in Internet Explorer. I had set
things so that the Favorites folder would be on another drive (see point ___), but
for some reason that setting had not taken hold, so now I did it again. Another
mistake I had made had been to wipe drive C without saving my custom settings
for all the icons and subfolders I had created and arranged under the Start |
Programs option. The folder containing those items was C:\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs. The folder itself would be saved with my most recent CD
backup but, again, changes since the date of that CD would be gone if I wiped
the disk and reinstalled. I didnt know any way of relocating that folder to
another drive

Revised Approach to Defragmentation. I altered my defragmentation scheme so

that it would run Norton SpeedDisk from the command line instead of using
Defragmenter. Also, since Defragmenter had hung up several times with an
indication that I had disk problems that needed to be fixed before it could run, I
preceded it by running Norton Disk Doctor from the command line.

GoBack: Further Review.

After revisiting the Event Log numerous times, I concluded that, even with
approximately 20% of the hard disk devoted to GOBACKIO.BIN,

... results of using Norton overnight re the number of hours contained in

GoBacks log ...

... It did seem that FREE_RAM.VBS worked. One time, for instance, I was getting
computer messages telling me there was not enough memory available to open a
certain program; then it turned 7:00 and suddenly the memory was there.
Later, I noticed that the Deja.com ads were back, so I contacted the AdSubtract
people ...

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123Search
3d Anarchy
3D-FTP
3rd block
Abe's FTP Client
Abe's Image Viewer
Abe's MP3 Finder
Abe's Picture Finder
Abe's SMB Client
Access Diver III
Acorn Email
AcqURL
ActionOutline Light 1.6
Active 'Net
Add URL
Add/Remove Plus!
Address Rover 98
Admiral VirusScanner
Advanced Call Center
Advanced Maillist Verify
AdWizard
Alive and Kicking
alphaScape QuickPaste
ASP1-A3
Auction Explorer
Aureate Group Mail
Aureate SpamKiller
AutoFTP PRO
AutoWeb
AxelCD
Beatle
Binary Boy
BinaryVortex
Blue Engine
BookSmith : Original
buddyPhone 2
Calypso E-mail
CamGrab
Capture Express 2000
Cascoly Screensaver
CDDB-Reader
CDMaster32
ChanStat
Charity Banner
Cheat Machine
Check4New
ChinMail
Clabra clipboard viewer
Classic Peg Solitaire
ComTry Music Downloader
Crystal FTP
CSE HTML Validator Lite
CuteFTP 3.0
CuteFTP 3.0 beta
CuteFTP/Tripod
CuteMX
CutePage
Danzig Pref Engine
DateTime
Delphi Component Test
Delphi Tester
Dialer 2000
DigiBand NewsWatch
DigiCams - The WebCam Viewer
Digital Postman

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DirectUpdate
DL-Mail Pro 2000
DNScape
Doorbell 1.18
Download Minder 1.5
Download Wonder
DownLoader v.1.1
Dwyco Video Conferencing
EasySeeker
EmmaSoft ChatCat
EmmaSoft dBrow
EmmaSoft KeepLan
EmmaSoft Soundz
EnvoyMail
EZ-Forms FREE
File Mag-Net
FileSplit
Folder Guard Jr.
FourTimes
Free Picture Harvester
Free Solitaire
Free Spades
Free Submitter Pro
FreeImageEditor
FreeIRC
FreeNotePad
FreeSite
FreeWebBrowser
FreeWebMail
FreeZip!
FTPEditor
GetRight
Go!Zilla
Go!Zilla WebAttack
GovernMail
Grafula
Gunther's PasswordSentry
HangWeb
hesci Private Label
HTML Translator
HTTP Proxy-Spy
Huey v1.8 Color Picker
Iban Technologies IP Tools 3.1
Idyle GimmIP
Idyle GimmIP
iFind Graphics
imageN
Infinite Patience
InfoBlast
InnovaClub
InstallZIP
Internet Tree
Internetrix
InterWebWord Companion
JetCar
JFK Research
jIRC
JOC Email Checker
JOC Web Finder
JOC Web Spider
KVT Diplom
LapLink FTP
LineSoft Download
LOL Chat
LOL Chat

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Mail Them
Meracl FontMap
Meracl ImageMap Generator
Midnight Oil Solitaire
MirNik Internet Finder
More Space 99
MouseAssist
MP3 Album Finder
MP3 Fiend
MP3 Grouppie
MP3 Mag-Net
MP3 Renamer
Mp3 Stream Recorder
MP3INFO-Editor
MultiSender
Music Genie
MX Inspector BIG AD
My Genie Patriots
My Genie SE
My GetRight
NeatFTP
Net CB
Net Scan 2000
Net Vampire
Net-A-Car Feature Car Screensaver
NetAnts
NetBoard
Netbus Pro 2.10
NetCaptor 5.0
Netman Downloader
NetNak
NetSuck 3.10.5
NetTime Thingy
Network Assistant
NeuroStock
NewsBin
NewsShark
NewsWire
NfoNak
NotePads+
Notificator 1.0b
Octopus
Pattern Book
People Seek 98
Personal Search Agent
Photocopier
PicPluck
Pictures In News
Ping Thingy
PingMaster
Planet.Billboard
Planet.MP3Find
PMS
ProtectX 3
ProxyChecker
QuadSucker/Web
Quadzle Puzzles
QuikLink Autobot
QuikLink Explorer
QuikLink Explorer Gold Edition
QuoteWatch
QWallet
Real Estate Web Site Creator
Recipe Review
ReGet 1.6

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Resume Detective
RingSurf
RoboCam 1.10
Rosemary's Weird Web World
SaberQuest Page Burner
SBJV
SBWcc
Scout's Game
ScreenFIRE
ScreenFIRE - FileKing
ScreenFlavors
Sea Battle
Shizzam
Simple Submit
SimpleFind
SimpleSubmit v1.0
SK-111
Smart 'n Sticky
SmartBoard 200 FREE Edition
SmartSum calculator
SonicMail
Sound Agent
Space Central Screen Saver
Splash! Siterave
StartDrive
Static FTP
StockBrowser
Subscriber
SunEdit 2K
SuperIDE
Sweep
SweepsWinner
Text Transmogrifier
The Mapper
TheNet
TI-FindMail
TIFNY
Total Finger
Total Whois
Trade Site Creator
TWinExplorer Standard
TypeWriter 1.0
UK Phone Codes
Vagabond's Realm
VeriMP3
Vertigo QSearch
Virtual Access
Visual Cyberadio
Visual Surfer
VOG Backgammon Main
VOG Backgammon Table
VOG Chess Main
VOG Chess Table
VOG Reversi Main
VOG Reversi Table
VOG Shell
VOG Shell
VOG Shell History
W3Filer
Web Coupon
Web Page Authoring Software
Web Registrant PRO
Web Resume
Web SurfACE
WEB2SMS

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WebCamVCR
WebCopier
Web-N-Force
WebSaver
Website Manager
WebStripper
WebType
WhoIs Thingy
Win A Lotto
WinEdit 2000
Word+
Wordwright
WorldChat Client
Worm
www.devgames.com
xBlock
Your ESP Test
Zion
Zip Express 2000

Building a Future with Windows and Linux

Copyright Raymond L. Woodcock 2000
Introduction
Lets say your computer just crashed. Maybe you lost work that had taken hours
to prepare; maybe files got wiped out; or maybe its just the inconvenience of
having to reboot, try to re-create where you were, and hopefully get back up to
speed without too much delay. Lets say, moreover, that you were running
Windows at the time. (Im concentrating, here, on Windows 95, 98, and ME, but
many of these remarks apply to other versions as well.)
Crashes occur commonly in Windows. You may be blessed with a machine or a
configuration that hasnt crashed much lately; you may do simple tasks that
rarely challenge the machine; Microsoft may be improving Windows so that it
doesnt crash as often. Yet there is this nagging sense that, if you challenge the
machine or run out of luck, you too will take your turn on the merry-go-round of
seeking technical support, fiddling with settings, and perhaps even uninstalling
and reinstalling Windows and all of your programs, hoping that this drastic step
will solve the problem without wiping out your data in the process.
At such times, a persons mind naturally turns to the question of whether
Windows is the way to go. People talk a lot about Linux these days. In this
book, we will try to get you going from a standstill. We will talk about ways of
improving your system so that it crashes less, and so that you can recover more
quickly when it does crash. And we will look at the role that Linux can play in
making your system more reliable without requiring you to earn a degree in
computer science.
In case you were wondering, I do not have a degree in computer science. Im a
lawyer by training, but mostly I work as a writer. I have been using computers,
PC and otherwise, since the late 1970s. The approach I will take here is to
present the most direct route to a solution. On every point, you will find people
who disagree with what I say, and you will also find a great deal of additional
information online. I encourage you to explore that additional information.
More knowledge can help you. But here, the focus is on keeping it very simple
and straightforward.

Chapter 1
Recovering from Disaster
Windows has crashed, or has given you a scary error message. Now what?
1. Backups.
Everyone knows youre supposed to make a backup of your work. If you have
made changes that you dont want to lose, back them up. You can backup using
a variety of different media. If your backup medium is reliable and fast, you can
store your data somewhere other than your hard disk. This may make your data
safer (if e.g., you keep one copy of your backup in a safe deposit box); it may
reduce the amount of material you must back up every day or week; and it may
minimize the risk of loss when/if the computer or the hard disk does crash.
a. Problem: Choice of Media
(1) Floppy. Backing up on floppy is slow, but it can be OK if youre working
with smallish files. Floppies go bad more frequently than other kinds of media,
however, and they are more vulnerable to getting lost, misplaced, stolen,
damaged, or corrupted by paper clips or screwdrivers that you didnt realize
were magnetic.
(2) Tape. Backing up on tape has the advantage of holding massive amounts of
material, if you buy the right drive and tapes. The prices of blank tapes can be
low per megabyte, but they still seem expensive when youre spending $30 for a
blank computer tape while you can buy the best quality tape for your VCR for a
fraction of that. Tape backup has the disadvantage of being relatively
inaccessible: the software has to wind the tape back and forth to find a file, and it
can take some time to restore. Your data essentially goes into a black box, and
you hope it will come out. Data on tapes can be difficult to recover if the tape
experiences any problems. While a hard disk utility may help you recover part
or all of your data from a corrupted drive, you may find that you have to send a
corrupted tape out to a company that specializes in data recovery, exposing your
private data to others and costing yourself a considerable amount of money and
time. Tape drive software varies; I found that, for my purposes, the quality of
Hewlett-Packards tape software actually deteriorated over the years. Tape does
have the advantage, over floppies, of allowing you to schedule your backups to
occur in the middle of the night.
There are other tape options, but they are not recommended. For instance, you
can back up your computer on your VCR, but people havent had the best

experience with speed or quality taking that route. In the late 1970s and early
1980s, people were backing up their PCs using audio cassette recorders, and that
wasnt a fast or reliable solution either.
(3) Hard Disk. You can find software solutions that will copy your files
automatically from one hard disk to another in the wee hours, just like tape. You
can also use programs like Norton Ghost or PowerQuest DriveImage to make a
complete, compressed snapshot of your hard disk onto another drive, although
at present this disk image process is not easy to automate, and it works only for
an entire drive. You can also use ZIP programs (e.g., PKZIP or ZipMagic, or the
ZIP feature in Windows ME) to copy an entire drive, or specific files, to a
compressed file in the ZIP format, on the same hard disk or onto another one.
You can extract specific files from these compressed image and ZIP files,
although some programs may make this task slightly confusing by listing all of
the backed-up files in alphabetical order without displaying the folders that
originally contained them.
One drawback of hard disk backup is that your backups are more vulnerable.
For instance, a virus may think nothing of jumping from drive C, containing
your original data, to drive D, your backup hard disk. Also, misbehaving
programs or operator error can mess up the contents of your backup hard drive
just as quickly as they can affect the primary drive. Needless to say, fire or theft
will affect both hard disks at the same time. If you are comfortable with the
relatively easy task of temporarily installing a second hard disk, copying
everything to it, and then taking it out of your computer and storing it in your
safe deposit box or other offsite location, however, you may find that a second
hard disk is a fast and easy way to store many gigabytes of information offsite.
(Just be aware that, infrequently, existing or newly added hard disks do get
corrupted during the installation and/or removal process!) In some situations,
you may also want to remember that hard disks, like tapes and floppies, can be
corrupted or erased by heat, radiation, or magnetism.
(4) Compact Disc. I recommend using CDs to back up your system. This option
will require you to buy a CD burner -- that is, a CD drive capable of recording
onto CD. CDs are now very inexpensive, especially if you use CD-Rewritable
(CD-RW) disks that you can erase and re-use. Nowadays, most computers can
read CDs, and an increasing number can read CD-RWs. This means you can take
your work with you and can also get back up to speed quickly after a disaster.
These are not advantages enjoyed by magneto-optical drives, ZIP and JAZ
drives, and other kinds of removeable media. CDs have the drawbacks of being
easy to swipe, misplace, or damage. (Kinds of potential damage include
excessive sunshine, scratches, and marking with a heavy permanent marker
whose chemicals will corrupt the disc.) When dealing with files larger than the

typical CD limit of 650 MB, you can save across several CDs, but this may
sometimes not be a joy. DVD is another CD-like format with greater capacity,
but DVD recorders are still expensive; it is also not yet clear how the market will
shake out among various formats. In a few years, when a standard emerges and
becomes common and affordable, DVD (and especially DVD recorders/players
that can read and write CDs) will probably replace CD as my recommendation -unless another, better technology emerges in the meantime.
(5) Another Computer. In some ways, using another computer to back up your
data via a network connection is like using a hard disk (above) for that purpose.
Unless you have a special antivirus arrangement in place between the two
computers, a virus might migrate to that second computer as easily as it would
migrate to a second hard drive. On the other hand, a separate computer may be
located elsewhere, and may thus not be vulnerable to fire or theft in the primary
location. The network connection will probably be slower, but the transmission
may occur in the background and may not interfere with your ability to get work
done on the primary computer. There may also be security issues -- for example,
if the other computer on which you are storing your data is one of the free
websites set up for the purpose. Such websites (and other network backup
solutions) have the advantage of making your data available to you wherever
you go, and drawback of making that data equally available to hackers. The
websites in question may offer their own software; they may require no special
software; or you might use programs like InterBack or Island CodeWorks
Internet Backup, available at standard download locations like Hotfiles.com,
Tucows.com, and Davecentral.com.
b. Problem: When to Back Up
You can back up your work constantly. For instance, you might set a program to
copy all recently changed data files to a second hard disk or another computer
every five minutes. There might be a problem of overwriting similarly named
files, although perhaps not if you were using, say, a word processing program
capable of producing numbered backups. An example would be if you were
doing some word processing on a file named FILE.DOC, and if your word
processor could produce a backup named FILE.1, and then, five minutes later,
FILE.2, and so forth.
Or you can back up your work virtually never. In this case, of course, you lose
everything if you get a virus, a fire, a thief, a disk error, a mistake, etc. Many
people operate this way until the first (or second, or third) time they lose a huge
amount of work. After that, they begin to see that at least some kind of backup is
advisable.

Any backup is better than no backup. An automatic backup is better than a

manual backup, because it will occur even when you are busy with something
else. But an automatic backup is worse than a manual backup if the automatic
backup fails to function properly. For instance, if your automatic backup system
is not sensitive to the existence of a new folder or directory on your hard disk, it
may proceed on, happily backing up the old folders, giving you the impression
that everything is working fine, until that terrible day when you realize that, on
your backups, the new directory simply doesnt exist. Another example arises
when you experience problems with the relevant software (for example, the
software that reminds you to make a backup, or that makes a backup
automatically); in those cases, you may not always remember, or be able, to make
automatic backups. Thus, in a somewhat chaotic environment, you might
actually be better served by a manual system that physically forces you to make
a backup. An example might be a manual logout procedure at days end that
requires you to write down the number of the disk on which you made the days
backup.
Lets consider, in more detail, the example given a moment ago, involving
FILE.DOC, FILE.1, FILE.2, etc. If your word processor creates generational
backup files like this, your working hard disk will contain all the backups you
need. The purpose of a separate backup system would be merely to preserve
these generational backup files so that, at any point, you could go back to the
FILE.23 backup created at 5:28 PM on November 17. Once you had copied these
generational backup files to your backup system, you could delete them from
your working hard disk. You would need to remember, however, to put aside
the backup medium (tape, for instance, or CD-RW) so that you would not
accidentally overwrite it with other, more recent data. The problem, as you can
see, is that when you are working with larger files or larger amounts of data, you
can fill up a great many disks or tapes in short order.
Therefore, you must decide how frequently to back up. If you never back up,
you dont fill your tapes or disks, but you also have no protection. If you back
up constantly, you might need a separate building to house all the tapes or disks
you will produce. You will need a second job so that you can afford all those
backup disks, and you will spend all your productive time managing your
backups.
The best answer on how frequently to back up may depend upon your subjective
decisions about several factors. The first factor is size. If you are working with
large files that will quickly fill your backup media, you will probably find
yourself forced to back up less frequently. For instance, a piece of digital video
that would entirely fill a 650 MB CD-RW might not be easy to back up every five
minutes. This realization might affect your work style. You might find, in this

example, that the best thing is to open up the video clip, do all of the editing you
intend to do, and then be done with it and make just the one, complete backup of
it.
Another factor is difficulty, or interference. If your budget forces you to use
floppy disks to back up your data, you will probably not make backups very
often unless you are working on very small files. The same is true if you are
backing up to another computer and you find that the network connection is
unreliable. If your backup solution can run in the background without
interfering with your ongoing work, or if it can run at night without colliding
with disk utilities or other programs that may also be running at night, or if it
otherwise proceeds without distracting you, thats good -- provided, again, that
it is really doing as good and complete a job as you would do if you were
overseeing the process manually. If, on the other hand, your backup solution
requires you to shut down all other programs and give the backup program
complete control of your machine, you will probably not do backups as often.
This is the situation with disk imaging software, such as PowerQuests
DriveImage or Norton Ghost: it does an excellent job of capturing the current
state of a Windows system, but it can do this only if you reboot into DOS (so that
no Windows programs are running) and then create the disk image there.
A third factor is the reconstruction scenario. A common way of doing backups is
to make one full backup of a disk and then to follow that with some number of
incremental backups. These incremental backups contain only the files that have
changed since the time of the full backup. This approach has the advantage of
not requiring as much time or as many disks or tapes as you would require if
you made a full backup every time. Since a single full backup can take hours on
some systems, this can be an important factor. The incremental approach focuses
on your changed files, and thus can make it easy enough to find and restore a
single lost or corrupted file. If, however, your problem is that your entire disk
needs to be restored, this incremental system will have two drawbacks. First,
you will have to restore your full backup, and then restore each of your
incremental backups, in order. You cannot skip any of the incremental backups
unless you have some way of knowing that all of the files on it have been
changed again on a more recent incremental backup; otherwise, you will be
skipping the most recent form of some changed file. If it has been a while since
you have done a full backup, you may find that this reconstruction scenario is
very time-consuming. Even when you are done with it, you will also find the
second problem, which is that your backup probably does not indicate which
files have been deleted. If, for instance, you have merged FILE X and FILE Y to
create a new FILE Z, and have then deleted FILE X and FILE Y, you will find that
your complete reconstruction contains all of the files you backed up at any time,
including not only FILE Z but also the outmoded FILE X and FILE Y. Unless you

have some way of constantly tracking which files you have deleted, you will now
have to go back through your data and determine which files are duplicative and
potentially confusing.
Ideally, you will make backups; you will make them regularly, as part of a
system that will make irregularities obvious to you; you will have some easy way
of manually verifying, now and then, that you and your system are indeed
backing up everything that you want backed up; you will be able to do all this
without excessive interference with your ongoing work; and you will be able to
restore a complete and non-confusing set of your data files after a disaster.
c. Problem: What to Back Up
Some users will find that a single backup method solves all of their problems.
Others may prefer a divide-and-conquer strategy. Here are some thoughts on
the latter:
(1) Offline Data. If your data is on your hard disk, then you have to back it up to
protect against the things that can happen to hard disks. You may feel safer if
you transfer that data to a couple of offline copies (on e.g., CDs), and store one
copy in a secure location (e.g., a safe deposit box, or a safe bolted to your floor).
Also, if all of your sensitive data is on your hard disk, then it is all potentially
available to a thief who steals your computer or to a hacker who invades your
system while you are online. The theft problem exists even if you store your data
offline but a thief may not be so interested in stealing a stack of CDs or tapes, and
you can also make that more difficult by keeping them in a more secure location.
By removing data to an offline location, you can make it more secure and can
reduce the amount of time and the number of disks required to make backups
and to restore your system after a crash.
(2) Offline Programs. It may seem obvious that a program file must be on your
computer in order for your computer to use it. It may be worth keeping a few
exceptions in mind, though. First, some programs can run from the original
program CD. With a CD drive capable of burning CDs, you can make a backup
of the original program CD, use the copy, and protect the original from daily
wear and tear. Similar thoughts apply to programs that you can easily retrieve
or run from a website. Second, DOS utilities and some Windows program files
can be run from any location. If they are not installed in the Windows sense -that is, if you can simply run them without going through an installation process
that makes changes in the core group of Windows operating system files known
as the Registry -- then you could just as easily run them from a CD (or perhaps
even a floppy). In that case, it may not seem essential to keep them on your hard
disk, where you will probably have to back them up. Third, some program files

are used on an infrequent and predictable basis. The Windows installation files
are an example. The original Windows installation, and later hardware
installations, will go more smoothly if you copy the Windows installation files to
a separate place on your hard disk. (See ___.) Once that is done, those files will
not change. You can leave them as they are, maybe make one or two backups of
them just in case, and otherwise exempt them from your backup system
thereafter.
(3) Online Data. This is the most important concern of a backup system. You
should back up your data as often and as carefully as circumstances permit. See
point b, above, for more details.
(4) Online Programs. At first blush, it may seem unnecessary to make a backup
of your installed programs. After all, you already have those programs on the
original program CDs or floppy disks. You may even have made backups of
those originals. Nevertheless, a backup is probably a good idea. A typical
Windows installation can be quite complex and can require many days to
recreate in full if you must start from scratch. You install Windows, and then
you go online and download Critical Updates and other fixes from Microsoft.
You install Office or other productivity software, and you download important
updates and fixes from Microsoft or whoever makes that software. You
download and install other miscellaneous programs. You go into each of these
programs and set them up to save your files in certain locations, to display the
screen in certain ways, and so forth. Along the way, you may find that you cant
remember how to make it like it used to be, in which case you never really
recover from your crash. Rather than go through all these steps, it can be very
helpful to burn a CD or otherwise create a complete and reliable copy of a
working Windows program installation. When you do this, make sure that your
software is capturing a working version. I can testify from personal experience
that, at one time, Hewlett-Packards tape software seemed to be saving a
working Windows installation but, when I needed it, that installation did not
work. If time and circumstances permit, it might be wise to do a dry run,
reinstalling the backup onto some computer and verifying that it does function
properly. Note, incidentally, that while a program backup can save you many
hours of tedious reconstruction, it may not be perfect. Windows can conceal
defects for indefinite periods, so that a program installation that seemed to be
functioning well at the time when you made a backup may suddenly misbehave
when you restore and try to run that backup. You will probably find, in any
event, that you will not need to make program backups very often; it may be
good enough to make one after any significant, time-consuming change to the
programs on your computer.
d. Problem: How to Back Up

If you buy a tape backup or other device dedicated to the process of backing up
your data, you may find all the information you need in the owners manual for
that device. If you instead use a backup medium that has many other purposes
in addition to data backup -- examples would include a separate hard disk, a
stack of floppy disks, and a drive capable of burning CDs -- then you will
probably have to figure out a backup technique that works with that device.
In the latter case, a useful approach is to start by learning how to use the device
as it was intended. If it burns CDs, then find out how to burn a CD. Once you
have that information, you can begin to work on ways to streamline the process.
The following are a few suggestions that may help:
(1) Systematize Your Timing. If you feel that you need to make a full backup of
your data every week, then set things up to make that easier. For instance, you
might set daily, weekly, and/or monthly reminders on your computer, and you
might get yourself some blank CD-RW disks and label them to indicate what
youll be putting on them (e.g., Thursday Night Weekly Backup). If you have
large files or other materials that you want to back up on a more irregular basis,
you might set up separate reminders and disks for them.
(2) Structure Your Hard Drive. Suppose you plan to back up your word
processing files every day, to back up your relatively unchanging database files
every week, and not to back up your more voluminous MP3 files at all because
you already have a copy of them on CD. Backups will be simpler if you create
separate partitions -- that is, separate logical drives -- on your hard disk, and put
these different kinds of data into separate places. (An alternative would be
merely to create separate folders for them.) Then you can arrange your backup
system to address the different kinds of data at the appropriate times. This will
also make it easier to keep track of which kinds of data are consuming space on
your drive.
(3) Automate the Process. There are programs like WinRescue, available at
locations like Hotfiles.com and the other sites mentioned above, that can
automate the process of backing up your program files. On the data side,
specialized backup software (for tape drives or otherwise) may automate the
process; examples include Second Copy, Zip Backup, Backup Plus, DataKeeper,
and Backup 2001. Another option is to take advantage of any knowledge that
you (or an acquaintance) may have in the area of writing DOS batch files, VB
scripts, or other scripts or programs that can manipulate files. For instance, you
might set Windows Task Scheduler to run a script every night at 2 AM. This
script might copy only those files that have changed since the last time -- that is,
it might search for and copy files whose archive bit is turned on, and it might

then turn off that archive bit. You could customize this script to ignore certain
files or folders whose contents are too large or do not need to be backed up. The
script might copy the changed files to a CD-RW disk that has been formatted in
Direct CD format so that it will behave like an ordinary hard disk. You could
then come out in the morning, remove the CD-RW from the CD drive, and your
backup process would be done. A ZIP program that allows you to provide
instructions from the command line may allow a similar result. Instead of using
a CD-RW, you could also direct the copies to a separate folder or hard disk, and
could separately tell your tape backup or other device to copy everything on that
folder or disk at a certain time of day. In any event, you may find it useful to set
up a script or program to display the comparative contents of the source and
target drives, or otherwise to verify that the backup system is functioning as
expected; there are nasty surprises waiting in store for those who assume too
much of a backup system.
(4) Dont Fight the System. If you are banging your head against a wall, you may
need to spend some time and/or money and develop a more satisfactory backup
solution. Crazy as it may seem, some products, manufacturers, or media simply
fail where it seems obvious that they should succeed. Do not lose sight of the
fact that backup is probably not your main reason for having a computer.
2. Recovery.
If your system crashed and you had a backup, youre probably on your way to
recovering your data and getting on with your life. If, on the other hand, you
have no backup system, or if your backup system failed, or if it did not cover the
disk or folder on which you stored the critical data, or if the data arrived just
today and your backup system did not have a chance to save it, then you may
need something else.
A useful first step is to determine whether someone else still has the lost data or
file. In addition to the actual sender or creator, you might check your network
server or e-mail provider to see whether they have already deleted the file.
If that doesnt work, the data might still exist somewhere else on your computer.
One place to look is the Recycled Bin. To anticipate this kind of problem in the
future, make sure your Recycled properties (right-click on the Recycled Bin) are
set in such a way as to save as many of your files as possible, for as long as
possible, without interfering with your ability to get work done. Another place
to look is the C:\Windows\Temp folder, where things sometimes get stored.
Note that third-party programs like Norton Utilities can enhance your Recycled
Bin in useful ways.

10

Also, remember that deleted files are not necessarily gone. When you delete a
file from a disk, your computer may simply erase the directory entry that tells
where the data is located. The data itself may still be on the disk, in which case
you (or others) can use Norton Utilities and other disk tools to restore the deleted
file very easily. Even a disk that has been thoroughly formatted, erased, or
corrupted can contain electronic traces that some specialized programs can
reconstruct. For instance, you might find that PowerQuests Lost & Found, or
Nortons Image, are able to do amazing things with messed-up hard disks.
Other programs in this category include Directory Snoop and Recover98. In
short, whenever you delete files, accidentally or otherwise, you should hesitate
before assuming that the data is really gone. It may help to look into such
programs before the day of disaster, however, because some of them work only if
you have set them up and allowed them to create their own structures on your
system prior to the crash.
A more comprehensive solution appears in programs like Adaptecs GoBack or
PowerQuests Second Chance. GoBack, for instance, sets aside a portion of your
hard disk and uses that space to track everything that changes on your system.
The program can then restore your system, or a single file, to its condition at a
given point in the past. The amount of history remembered by GoBack depends
on how busy your hard disk has been and the size of the files being changed. If
you allocate several hundred megabytes of disk space for GoBack, if your files
are small, and if you change them infrequently, then GoBack may well remember
the condition of your disk at every moment for the past month; but if you are
working frequently with large files and cannot allocate gigabytes, GoBacks
memory may last for only a few minutes or may simply go blank for failure to
keep up. GoBack does slow down your computer somewhat, especially when
working with large files. It is incompatible with some forms of disk imaging
software (see point 1.b, above), and in the worst case the mere attempt to use
such software on a system using GoBack can trash your hard disk to the point
that you must entirely wipe it out and start over. That is especially worrisome
because a person might get distracted and forget, at one time or another, that the
process of uninstalling GoBack requires several steps and multiple reboots.
Second Chance is similar, but it does not make a continuous backup of all
changed files. Instead, it allows the user to set up to 24 times per day at which
the system will make an automatic backup, in addition to manual backups
whenever the user requests one. This snapshot approach seems likely to increase
the number of days of history that a user can store within a given amount of disk
space. Moreover, Second Chance seems less likely to balk at large files. GoBack
and Second Chance appear to be competing closely at this point, so both will
probably show further improvements. GoBack has moved from one company or
department to another several times within the recent past, however. For that

11

reason, and because of PowerQuests more impressive track record in producing

other highly useful, high-quality programs (e.g., BootMagic, DriveImage, and
PartitionMagic), it seems reasonable at present to give Second Chance a slight
edge.
Windows ME (unlike Windows 95 and 98) has a feature called System Restore. It
functions like Second Chance and GoBack, but as its name suggests, it covers
only system files. Moreover, it works only if Windows is already running,
whereas Second Chance and GoBack will restore all of your data and program
files to their previous condition even if Windows wont start. In fact, GoBack
may be able to put you back to your previous state even after you accidentally
reformat your hard disk. Not surprisingly, there appear to have been some user
problems installing and using Windows ME. As of press time, it appears
prudent to acquire a program like Second Chance or GoBack regardless of the
version of Windows being used.
3. The Registry.
Advice on how to fix a malfunctioning Windows system often leads the user
through several specific steps and then turns to the general advice to wipe out
and reinstall Windows. Before taking that very time-consuming step -- which, in
many cases, will not solve the problem! -- you might just try restoring an earlier
version of your Registry. This will require you to reinstall programs and remake
settings that you have made since the date of that earlier Registry, but that may
not be such a great price to pay for a working system. Even if this does not
completely solve the problem, it may help you limp onwards for a few hours or
days, so as to get past a crisis point and find the time for the more complete
overhaul.
Windows automatically makes backup copies of the Registry and stores them in
C:\Windows\Sysbckup. If you want to force Windows to make another backup,
you can reboot to DOS and type SCANREG /RESTORE. As with most
command-line programs, you can also run this one from a DOS prompt within
Windows, or from the Start | Run command option, but in this case Windows
will just tell you that you have to run it from real DOS. Also, as usual, you can
type SCANREG /? and get an explanation of other options this command allows
you to select.
The Registry backups are in the form of RB???.CAB, where ??? typically consists
of the numbers 000, 001, 002, etc. You can adjust the default number of five
Registry backups stored on your system, but a better approach may be to rename
a good backup so that it sits aside from those five backups. For instance, in
addition to the five RB???.CAB files created by Windows, you may have one or

12

two with names like RBGOOD.CAB or RB_SEPT.CAB. Note, however, that

SCANREG /RESTORE will not see those versions, so you will have to change
their names back to the RB???.CAB format before trying to restore them. The
DOS command for deleting an existing RB001.CAB is DEL RB001.CAB, and the
DOS command to rename files is, for instance, REN RBGOOD.CAB RB001.CAB.
If you would prefer to avoid even that limited amount of DOS work, you might
consider a program that manages Registry backups and restores, such as
Emergency Recovery System, CoreSave, or RegMedic.

13

Chapter 2
Making Windows More Stable
While you may not be able to rewrite an operating system like Windows, you
can certainly take advantage of techniques that may make it less likely to crash or
misbehave. This chapter relates a few techniques that may prove helpful.
1. Choose a Good Version of Windows.
It seems that a majority of users consider the later versions of Windows to be the
stabler ones. Thus, many who used Windows 95 found that things were better in
Windows 98, and many using Windows 98 improved their situations by
upgrading at least to Windows 98 SE (short for Second Edition). Most users
also seem to find it helpful to go to the Windows Update website and download
fixes that came into existence too late to make it onto the Windows CD.
There are some exceptions. Some users complain that later versions of Windows
are less stable. This may be true, for their purposes. They may be running a
program that has not been updated to run well on the later versions, or they may
not be aware of free or non-free updates that would enable them to continue to
use that favorite program on a later version of Windows. To explore this
possibility further, it might be helpful to visit websites like Updates.com, which
can scan your PC and advise on the availability of more recent versions of your
programs. In case there is some other problem with the later version of
Windows -- if, for instance, Microsoft decides to release an update that badly
misbehaves, as Microsoft has done at times in the past -- it would be advisable to
have a working backup of your program disk before proceeding.
When updating Windows, bear in mind that Microsoft now treats Internet
Explorer as a more or less integral part of the operating system. Thus, while it
may not seem obvious that you should take advantage of an Internet Explorer
upgrade offered at the Windows Update website, you may find that this upgrade
does solve some of your problems.
Finally, when installing Windows, do so from a clean installation -- that is, start
with an empty hard disk -- even if you are using an upgrade version. It may
seem that an upgrade should upgrade an existing system, but many people
have reported difficulties with Windows when adding a newer version on top of
an existing version. The installation process will ask you to insert your previous
Windows CD to prove that you qualify for the upgrade; you need not have
Windows actually installed on the hard disk in order to proceed with the
upgrade.

14

2. Upgrade and Update Your System.

In some cases, it can be unwise to switch to a more up-to-date program,
technique, or piece of hardware. You will have more problems if you are on the
cutting edge, experimenting with stuff that has not yet been put through its
paces by thousands or millions of users. Even with a popular program, you
should not be surprised if you seem to be the first person who has had a problem
with a certain hardware and/or software combination. There are so many
possible combinations now, and so many different ways to use those
combinations, that it is not always difficult to be the only one who understands
what youre trying to complain about.
On the other hand, there are often good reasons for updating a program,
technique, or piece of hardware. The later version may eliminate errors that
appeared in the earlier version, or may cooperate with more kinds of hardware
or software. In addition to the Updates.com site just mentioned, you may find it
helpful to visit the websites for the manufacturers of your hardware and
software, to see if they have produced any new drivers, programs, or other
materials that might help resolve your problem.
Hardware upgrades can be very helpful in some cases. A program may seem to
have crashed, when in fact the system is running just fine but your video card or
some other aspect of your system is not keeping up. Insufficient memory can
cause programs to misbehave; some of the resulting error messages may indicate
a memory problem, but some may not. A cranky motherboard or CPU can cause
all kinds of random problems. You may be able to get helpful hardware-related
information by reviewing Windows own Control Panel | Device Manager to see
whether there are any device conflicts. You might also use the MSINFO32
program which, like SCANREG (above), can run from the DOS prompt or from
Start | Run. There are other programs for purposes of providing hardware
diagnostic information; an example is HMonitor, available at Hotfiles.com.
Another approach: use a spare computer in which to test components one at a
time. If all else fails, you might ask yourself whether one component is
particularly old or oddball. Sooner or later, it seems, almost every item of
hardware becomes a speed bump on the highway of progress.
To some extent, you can trust your instincts in the troubleshooting process. For
instance, the computer might say that the problem is with your printer, but if
you never had a printer problem until you installed a new program yesterday,
you might reasonably believe that the problem is actually with the new program.
Generally, it may help to start with things that you know to be wrong, and then
see what problems remain after those things have been set right. When working

15

with a particularly frustrating problem, you may be glad for the fact that you are
using something like GoBack, or that you have a reliable backup of your
Windows program drive as recommended above. You can get excellent
troubleshooting advice from Websites and newsgroups (see the Discussions area
at Deja.com), but even people who seem to be experts are sometimes mistaken,
so proceed with caution.
3. Use Good Programs.
You cannot know for sure from the way a program installs, or from the looks of
its manual; but if you get the feeling that a program was thrown together by
someone who was not all that interested in it, you should not be surprised if you
get funky, unpredictable results. It is often true that a commercial product is
superior to a free one -- after all, those people are making their living from this
product -- but it is also quite possible for a company to be coasting on its laurels,
milking the customer for more than the product is worth. Even companies that
once had great reputations for reliability and service have been sold to other
corporations, or taken over by other managers, who do not share the founders
preoccupation with quality. An example would be Norton Utilities, whose Disk
Doctor earned great fame but whose subsequent CrashGuard product seemed to
cause more system crashes than it solved. It can be very worthwhile to go online
and explore opinions and bug reports before investing in a program that you
badly want to be as good as it sounds.
Ideally, a person would learn just one program, and that program would do
everything in the world. You would not have to find, buy, install, and learn
many different kinds of programs. Unfortunately, big programs that try to do
many things seem to bring a greater risk of problems. It is wonderful, for
example, to use Microsoft Word and to see how many different kinds of things it
can do. Word is a mature product, and many of its bugs have been worked out.
Yet in the worst case, you may have to uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Office,
and then re-download and reinstall dozens of upgrades from Microsofts Office
Update website, in order to get Word working properly after some inexplicable
problem afflicts it. Or perhaps the real worst case is the Word macro virus that
takes advantage of Words own power to destroy your system.
Depending on whether they have had experiences like that, some people will
define a good program as being one that is reasonably stable and can do many
things, while others will define a good program as being one that is simple and
reliable when one attempts to acquire, install, update, configure, learn, use, and
fix it. In one sense, it is not simpler to replace an all-purpose program like Word
with several single-purpose programs; but in another sense it is simpler. The
final decision in the matter will have to depend on the users preferences.

16

Over time, you will discover that some of your programs crash frequently, while
others do not seem to crash at all. The crashes may stem from some built-in
instability in your system, and may not appear on other systems. If, however,
you have worked with your programs for a longer period of time, before and
after repeated reinstallations and re-tries, and if certain kinds of behavior persist,
you may become fairly confident that you do understand the extent to which a
particular program is unreliable. Again, you can save a lot of trouble by going
online to learn about the experiences that others have had, paying particular
attention to people who can comment in detail about problems that concern you;
and you can improve your situation by attempting to weed out programs that, in
your experience or others, do not perform stably.
4. Avoid the Fancy Stuff.
The very nature of computers opens up new possibilities. It can be difficult to
restrain oneself from latching onto all kinds of innovations and plugging them
into ones computer. For some people, the innovations are the latest, relatively
untested version of a game program; for others, there is a new, free utility that
does something interesting or useful; still others will enjoy the opportunity to
tweak the Registry so as to make Windows function in a slightly better way. All
of these are potential sources of trouble.
Windows is a fundamentally unreliable operating system. It is becoming
increasingly reliable, and that is good. But it is certainly not at the place where a
person can plug any fool thing into it and be confident that the system will work
smoothly. Worse, the problems created by some gizmo that you install today
may not crop up for weeks, or even months. All of this tends to enforce a
mentality that says Hold back! Wait! rather than This is great! Lets explore!
While encouraging creativity and curiosity in some ways, this built-in worry can
make Windows a somewhat restrictive and even oppressive environment.
It is possible to experiment with innovations. The backup and disaster recovery
techniques mentioned above may improve stability for the person who does
experiment. Also, it may be helpful to maintain different systems for different
purposes. One way of doing this is to have more than one computer, using one
as your conservative machine with only the essential software and another as
your test machine. On the latter machine, you might not store much important
data, and you might be more willing to reinstall the operating system from
backup two or three times a day, if thats what your experiments require.
Another way to have different systems for different purposes is simply to keep
different image backups (see above) of the hard disk containing Windows: one
backup of a conservative version, one backup of a conservative version plus Wild

17

Program No. 1, and so forth. It can take a little time to restore from backup, but
this may be a reasonable compromise that still allows you some creative
flexibility.
5. Use Stability-Enhancing Tools and Techniques.
Previously, I mentioned Nortons CrashGuard. While the actual product caused
a great deal of disappointment, the concept was good: create a utility that keeps
an eye on what Windows is doing, and that interrupts Windows before it can
crash -- giving the user enough time, at least, to save his/her work before the
system goes down. Other programs that have a similar concept and that may
serve better in some cases include PC Medic and StayAlive 2000.
PC Medic also has the ability to fix hard disk problems, such as cross-linked files
and lost clusters. Other programs performing that function include the excellent
Norton Disk Doctor and the less powerful ScanDisk that comes with Windows.
These hard disk problems occur so frequently in Windows that all users should
be familiar at least with ScanDisk, and should be aware of the option of running
down to the local computer store (or downloading a demo from Hotfiles.com) to
obtain one of these more sophisticated disk-fix programs if ScanDisk fails to do
the job.
Another kind of hard disk problem that appears very frequently in Windows
(but not in Linux) is hard drive fragmentation. Pieces of a single file may be
scattered in numerous locations across a hard disk. Defragmenting programs
pull the pieces back together. Besides increasing the speed with which your
computer can access the files data, these programs reduce the likelihood of
crashes caused when Windows confuses itself with the complexity of its own file
allocation system. Defragmenting should be done frequently. It can be timeconsuming, and other computer operations may interrupt it, so it is a good
candidate for scheduling during the quiet hours in the middle of the night, either
through the programs own built-in scheduler or (if possible) through Windows
Task Scheduler. Norton SpeedDisk is a good defragmenter, and like Disk
Doctor, it comes as a part of Norton Utilities. Other defragmenters include
PerfectDisk and Diskeeper. Windows itself comes with a slow defragmenter.
Turning from the hard disks functioning to its contents, there are many
programs intended to fix various ways in which Windows system files can
become corrupted. GoBack and Second Chance (above) provide this service,
although there is always the risk that, by the time you discover that your system
is having problems, the most recent working state of the computer will have
disappeared from those programs recollections. A backup (above) can also
provide this service; the concept of these Windows fixers is to solve the problem

18

without requiring hours to restore from backup, figure out which most recent
program installation or adjustment caused the problem, and re-do all other
recent installations and adjustments.
A separate category of system-fix programs consists of those that deal with
invalid file and folder references within the Registry. Such programs include
NBG Clean Registry, Perfect Companion, and EasyCleaner. The other half of
that task is to remove unwanted files to which there are no longer any such
references -- files, for example, that should have been removed during a
programs uninstall process but were instead left orphaned on your disk.
Programs addressing that need include Uninstall Manager, Nortons
CleanSweep, McAfee Quick Clean, and Uninstall Cleaner, among many others.
Another category of system fix-it utility focuses on protecting your Registry from
possible unwanted changes by viruses or ill-behaved programs. It is impossible
to know in advance all of the ways in which desirable program installations and
activities might attempt to alter the Registry, so most tools in this category are of
a more informational nature: they notify you when something is trying to
change the Registry, and give you the option of allowing or preventing this
change. Programs in this category include Greyware Registry Rearguard, PC
Magazines InCtrl, and Norton Registry Tracker. Programs like Security Wizard
take this in a more security-oriented direction by broadening the extent to which
various elements of your system can be placed off-limits; the utility called TestRun creates a separate working copy of your Registry that you can use to boot
and run the system when you plan to be doing more risky work with your
system.
Windows itself offers a System File Checker, which you can access by running
the MSINFO32 program and selecting its Tools option. The problem with this
particular tool is that it offers to restore original versions of system files, thus
eliminating valuable and worthwhile changes that you and your recently
installed programs may have made. Windows also offers a way to reduce
unwanted complexity on your system by controlling which programs run when
you start your computer. This option appears under the Startup tab in
MSINFO32s System Configuration Utility. After using that utility, however,
you may agree that a better option is to use a third-party tool for this purpose,
such as the excellent (and free) Start Manager program that comes with ZDNets
WinBench.
These comments address some of the most important categories of problems
arising on Windows systems. But new problems and solutions arise on a daily
basis. In many cases, the process of solving a system problem is a highly
individualized affair, in which you will get the best results by seeking advice

19

from knowledgeable individuals at tech support lines or by submitting your

problem to a newsgroup (which you can access by using Outlook Express or the
Discussions area at Deja.com).
As these comments suggest, you can spend more time trying to recreate, protect,
or fine-tune your system -- or even trying to make it work at all -- than actually
getting work done on it. Nor do these stability-oriented comments present the
full picture on the subject of Windows tips and tweaks. People with a sense of
adventure may want to explore the seemingly endless supply of Windows
suggestions and ideas available at innumerable websites, in newsgroup
suggestions, and in freely available downloads. To find a handful of these
websites quickly, Northernlight.com offers a convenient way to search for those
sites whose titles include such words as tip or tweak along with Windows
98 (or whatever version you are using). As a fast way of getting to many of
those tweaks, you can try out multipurpose tinkering programs like TweakUI,
Tweaki, Tweak-Me, and Xteq X-Setup.
It can be difficult to guess, in advance, which tweaks and bits of advice will turn
out to be helpful on a particular users computer. Newsgroup discussions are
littered with instances in which a person has tried all of the proffered tips and is
no better off -- indeed, may even be worse off than before. Before taking any
specific tip or suggestion to heart, it may be helpful to make sure your system is
set up to bounce back after a bit of experimentation. Second Chance, GoBack,
and other programs discussed above may help in this regard. You might also
want to do further reading on websites and newsgroups, to learn more about
that particular suggestion and to see whether other suggestions have produced
better results.
It is somewhat easier to offer more general suggestions. One such suggestion is
this: in general, do not attempt to solve hardware problems with software. You
can uninstall and reinstall Windows all day long, and that wont change a thing
if the culprit is a dysfunctional motherboard. Before proceeding on any
troubleshooting or stabilizing mission, make sure your hardware is in good
order. Do a cold reboot -- that is, shut down Windows, turn the computer off,
and leave it off for at least a full sixty seconds. You will be amazed at the
number of baffling problems you can solve with a simple cold reboot. Make sure
your cables are plugged in, your adapter cards and chips are properly seated in
their motherboard sockets, and your hard disk cables have not come unattached
from the motherboard or the hard disks.
Another stability suggestion is to make sure you know who is using your
computer and what they are doing on it. You will have enough variables in your
computing life without attempting to guess how the changes made by some

20

other person may be confusing the situation. Similarly, to protect yourself

against outside interference, make sure you have antivirus software installed,
properly configured, and updated, and run it on your system to see whether a
virus has crept in unnoticed. You might also consider installing a firewall
program like ZoneAlarm to protect you against hackers when you are online,
especially (but not only) if you use an always-online connection, such as a
cable or DSL modem.
Generally speaking, you probably should not pretend that you dont have a
problem when the system is telling you that you do. When you see your mouse
acting erratically, when your video screen fails to display properly, or when your
system otherwise acts up, it will usually be wiser to fix the problem than to try to
ignore it. Finding the right fix may not always be easy, and it may be a real
distraction from your work, but it may still be better than having the system fail
outright when you really need it.
In short, the tools and techniques reviewed in this chapter do not, and cannot,
provide you with a simple upward path toward a more improved Windows
system. As the CrashGuard example illustrates, even a utility intended to
improve your systems stability can have unintended effects, and the risks of
instability increase when the fix-it action verges closer to the Registry -- which is,
in many cases, the very thing that most needs fixing. People have worked very
hard, and some have made fortunes, in the effort to make Windows a better
operating system, but we cannot yet report that their task is finished.
Over a period of months or years of working with Windows, and of
experimenting with these various means of improving your systems stability,
you will probably find that some things work better than others with your
particular system and your own work style. The standard tools described in this
chapter and in the previous chapter may go a long way toward giving you a
Windows system that may crash only a few times each week (or less, if you
rarely run programs that challenge that system), rather than crashing one or
more times per day.

21

Chapter 3
A Windows Installation
The easiest to make the transition to Linux -- and also the easiest way not to make
the transition (that is, to stay with Windows) -- is to develop a good, basic
Windows installation that you can fall back on. Applying the ideas presented in
the previous chapter, we will now demonstrate one way of creating and
preserving such an installation.
1. Preliminary Suggestions.
Your life will be happier if you have two computers, joined together by a simple
and inexpensive Ethernet network connection, and if at least one of those
computers has a CD burner or other device that you can use to make backups
that both machines can read. An alternative is at least to have access to a friends
computer to which you can connect yours in a pinch. This suggested scheme is
not essential, but it is very helpful. The second machine may require some
additional setup effort unless it is in all respects identical to the first. But it is
worth it to be able to use one computer to go online for help, or to download
useful materials, when the other computer malfunctions.
Another optional, but helpful, hardware decision is to install two hard drives in
your computer(s). The second hard drive may be worthwhile for several
different reasons:

If you store your data on one drive and your programs on another, then you
may simplify your backup procedure, and you may also diminish the risk
that everything will be wiped out through a single computer (or human)
error. This can be especially important if you use programs that affect the
partitions on your hard disk.

You can use a second drive as a swap drive, where Windows (and some
application programs, such as Cool Edit 2000) temporarily store data in order
to speed up their operations.

If you decide to set up a dual-boot system, you can make life easier by using
one hard disk as your Windows drive and the other hard disk as your Linux
drive.

If you are starting with Windows 95, you should consider buying either the
Windows 98 Second Edition Update CD or the Windows ME Update CD. For
most purposes, Windows 95 is far less stable than those more recent versions. If

22

you are starting with Windows 98, you can download most of the Windows 98
Second Edition fixes and updates for free from the Microsoft Windows Update.
Those additions significantly improve Windows 98.
The drawback of
downloading them is that there are quite a number of them; it is much faster,
easier, and more reliable to work from a CD; and the fixes and updates may not
always be there when you need them. Instead of upgrading from Windows 98 to
Windows 98 Second Edition, you might instead upgrade to Windows ME, in
hopes that it will be more stable and its new System Restore feature will save you
the expense of buying a program like GoBack or Second Chance. (See chapter 1.)
2. Save Your Data.
If you are working with a computer that already contains useful data, go no
further until you have gotten that data out of harms way. The procedures
described below may not actually destroy that data, but lets not take chances.
Back up the data, or move it to another computer, or if nothing else, move it onto
a separate hard disk drive, take that drive out of the computer, and put it on a
shelf until this all blows over. (Note: on rare occasions, the mere act of installing
or removing a hard disk can wipe out the data on that or other hard disks. Thats
why I say, if nothing else. Removing a hard disk is not an act of desperation; it
is just slightly riskier than a normal backup.)
Also, make sure you have made copies of your important program-related data.
Unless you have made a fresh backup of your Windows programs and are
willing to reinstall that backup in order to extract the useful data from it, you
may find it easier to take this step now. Useful information to copy from your
Windows drive C may include your Internet Explorer Favorites (ordinarily saved
in C:\Windows\Favorites), your Microsoft Office autocorrect entries (saved, in
my case, in files with names like C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl), scripts and
DOS batch files and other command-line tools that you may have shoved into
drive C somewhere, your custom settings for various programs (frequently
saved in .INI files within those programs folders, which may appear in
C:\Program Files), and possibly even your Start Menu (C:\Windows\Start
Menu), if you have customized that.
3. Set Up Your Partitions.
A partition is roughly the same as a logical disk drive. It is logical in the sense
that it acts like a physical hard disk, but you can have several partitions or logical
drives on one physical drive.
Here is an example. Windows installs itself onto your hard disk, and it calls that
hard disk drive C. Your drive C represents a physical hard disk, and it also

23

represents a partition referred to, in Windows, as drive C. If you have a second

hard disk, Windows will recognize that as drive D. Likewise, if you have only
one hard disk, but you decide to separate it into two partitions, Windows will
recognize the first one as drive C and the second one as drive D. For basic
purposes, Windows doesnt care whether drive D shares the hard disk with
drive C or is instead on an entirely separate hard disk.
DOS (including the DOS built into Windows) comes with a program for creating
partitions. This program is called FDISK. It is not too hard to use, once you get
onto it, but like many DOS programs it is pwrl

(A partition is something that acts like a physical hard disk drive, even though it
may actually take up only a part of a physical drive.) Examples of such
programs include GoBack, FDISK, PartitionMagic, and Linuxs LILO.

3. Install the Basics.

24

Chapter 4
About Windows and Linux
We may have our experiences with Windows; we may be hearing various things
about Linux; but the question of whether to leave the one and migrate to the
other is a lot like the question of whether we should look forward to life after
death. We may know some people who have crossed that line; we may hear
good things about what they must be experiencing; but those who come back to
tell what its like seem to offer conflicting stories about Paradise or the Inferno,
and we suspect that their tales depend on the kind of person they were before
they made the transition. The mission of this chapter is to do at least a little
better than that.
1. The Legacy of Windows Instability.
The previous chapters have emphasized the question of how one can get ones
Windows system back to normal and keep it that way. Only at the end of those
chapters did we come to the realization that, even at its best, Windows has been
remarkably crash-prone. Take a seemingly stable Windows system, add one
emergency power outage (e.g., when someone accidentally kicks out the plug) or
one misbehaved program (whose misbehavior may not become evident for some
weeks or months into the future), and suddenly you have a user who may have
lost a great deal of potentially irreplaceable work, who may have to spend hours
(if not days or weeks) fixing and reconstructing things, or who may not find a
solution and may thus live indefinitely with a half-functioning system.
Relying on what weve heard, we may recommend Windows rather than Linux
for people who are not very computer-literate. But when we speak about
malfunctioning computers, the more accurate assessment may be that a person
must have computer literacy either way; the difference may just be that Linux
requires you to be computer-literate before your work can start, while Windows
requires you to become computer-literate after your work jerks to a halt.
Certainly Windows has not been a reliable operating system that one could
unequivocally recommend to any novice user without an accompanying list of
technical support numbers or websites.
Windows does seem to have become more reliable with each subsequent version,
from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to 98 to ME. Nevertheless, this Windows 9x
series of personal operating systems has remained far too flaky for corporate use
-- as illustrated by the addition, to Windows ME, of the GoBack-like feature
known as System Restore, which was designed to help people deal with the
systems frequent crashes. For business users, Microsoft recommended skipping

25

Windows ME and upgrading instead to Windows 2000. In words found at one

Microsoft website, Windows 95 and Windows 98 can be upgraded to Windows
2000 Professional, so regardless of whether your business currently runs one of
those operating systems or Windows NT Workstation, you should upgrade to
Windows 2000 Professional to get rock-solid reliability and other business
benefitsno matter what size your organization.
Previously, for those corporate system administrators who would have gone (or
stayed) with Unix or some other industrial-grade operating system rather than
using Windows 95 or 98, Microsoft developed Windows NT. When NT arrived,
initial reports praised it for being virtually crash-proof. Yet for Windows NT, as
for all other versions of Windows, Microsoft eventually came out with numerous
Service Packs -- that is, free downloadable upgrades containing a large number
of Recommended and Critical updates. The security-oriented components of
these Service Packs attempted to plug the many loopholes that malicious hackers
had exploited, or could have exploited, in the NT operating system. Other
components of these Service Packs included fixes, debuggers, and informational
tools for system hangups, crashes, file corruption, and other maladies familiar to
the ordinary Windows user.
When Windows 2000 Professional arrived on the scene, Microsoft said that it
would be 50 times more reliable than Windows 98 and 17 times more reliable
than Windows NT Workstation 4.0.
Thus Microsoft joined users and
independent studies in acknowledging that Windows NT, Microsofts previous
rock-solid operating system, was indeed somewhat shaky. Given a similar
track record on the Windows 9x side, it is now possible to find literally
thousands of online questions, comments, and expressions of frustration and
outrage on the subject of reliability. By this time, however, the reliability in
question is not merely that of the individual operating systems, but of the
corporation that creates them.
Is Microsoft credible? That question has two parts. Some users cast a suspicious
eye toward the moral standards of the corporation, and the executives within it,
who, years ago, muscled aside operating systems (e.g., Apple and IBMs OS/2)
with greater actual or potential stability, in order to give us this thing called
Windows. Others turn their doubt in the direction of capability; their question is
whether Microsoft, even if armed with the purest intentions, would be able to
turn its Windows concept into a secure, reliable operating system.
It seems unlikely that Microsoft will soon recast itself as an admirable
corporation in the eyes of those who already consider it the Great Satan. It
would certainly help, however, if users could come to believe that Microsofts
statements about its products do present a trustworthy picture of the future. In

26

that case, even those who now struggle with uncooperative Windows
installations might be persuaded to hold out until the day when a better solution
arrives.
As just noted, Windows 2000 seems to be more reliable than Windows NT. Yet
Windows 2000 has not been the solution for users of Windows 9x. In the
language quoted above, Microsoft did recommend that business users abandon
Windows 9x. But home users, and numerous business users as well, have balked
at the greater hardware requirements, higher cost, and increased complexity and
installation difficulty of Windows 2000, and also at the fact that Windows 2000
does not run much of the hardware and software that many home users (and
business users) want to run.
Nor is Windows 2000 perfectly reliable. As noted above, Microsoft claimed that
the program is fifty times more reliable than Windows NT. This sounds very
good, but it also sounds like an admission that Windows 2000 is not infinitely
more reliable. Also, shortly after the arrival of Windows 2000, Microsoft once
again issued a Service Pack, describing it as something that adds the latest
compatibility, setup, reliability, and security updates to Windows 2000.
Microsoft thus confirmed that, as some users reported, Windows 2000
installations did indeed crash sometimes. Nevertheless, at this point it begins to
seem possible that some version of Windows might be reliable enough for most
users.
2. The Schedule for New Versions of Windows.
In recent years, Microsoft has promised that it would eventually merge the
corporate (NT/2000) line of Windows operating systems with the personal (9x)
line. In the year 2000, we finally began to hear about a specific version of
Windows that would someday combine the stability of Windows 2000 with the
advantages of Windows 9x. The so-called code name for that forthcoming
version was Whistler. The estimated arrival time for Whistler was mid- to late
2001. Those familiar with Microsofts overly optimistic estimates, and with its
history of offering multiple Service Packs to fix bugs in its newly released
software, did not expect to see a reasonably settled version of Whistler before
mid- 2002. The creation of Microsoft Office 2002 suggested that Whistler would
most likely be named Windows 2002.
Whistler, it turned out, would have several versions, with the larger and more
complete corporate and server versions being more expensive than the simplified
personal version.
Early reviewers expected Whistler to produce some
incompatibilities and crashes because it would be the first attempt to run
Windows 9x programs in an NT-style corporate operating system. Users -- and

27

especially those who upgraded to Whistler soon after its release -- would
probably experience some delays and confusion in the attempt to find thirdparty drivers and software versions compatible with the new operating system.
As it had done before, Microsoft was once again doing its best to make sure that
its own software would run on the new operating system -- better, perhaps, than
any remaining competitors software would run. Even so, experience suggested
that some users would find that the weak point of Whistler would be, not the
operating system itself, but the fact that their preferred software would
malfunction or crash for unforeseen reasons. While Internet Explorer had settled
down somewhat in recent years, it had caused major problems in the past, and
one could not be entirely sure that the new version accompanying Whistler
would be entirely stable.
Meanwhile, corporate users were getting the impression that Whistler would be
a relatively superficial upgrade of Windows 2000, with most of Microsofts
energy going toward the effort to simplify the transition from Windows ME to
Whistler. That observation expressed both sides of the situation facing the users
of Windows 9x: they could have gotten a head start on Whistler by upgrading to
Windows 2000, but most decided not to because they believed that the consumer
version of Whistler, at least, would be simpler, less expensive, less hardwareintensive, and less complicated than Windows 2000, and more capable of
running the hardware and software they needed.
It seemed likely, in general, that the more complicated and demanding Whistler
system would be no faster, and perhaps even slower, than Windows 9x on a
typical consumers computer. It also seemed likely that, to attain a reasonable
speed of performance, the basic Whistler computer would be more expensive
than a basic Windows 9x computer.
Sophisticated users of Windows 2000 may enjoy its greater power. On the other
hand, simple folk may find Windows 9x not to be simple enough. As an attempt
to please everyone, Whistler may frustrate both groups to some extent. On the
complexity side, Windows 2000 contains between 30 and 48 million lines of code,
more than twice as many as Unix or other mainframe operating systems. In
those terms, at least, it seemed likely that the final version of Whistler would not
be smaller or simpler than Windows 2000.
Even on the level of large corporations, there has been some hesitation about
investing in the potentially expensive transition from Windows NT to Windows
2000 -- especially when there are, as yet, relatively few people with the skills
required to master the newer, more complicated operating system. This
corporate hesitation to jump quickly, combined with the challenge of creating a
version of Windows 2000 that could replace Windows 9x, suggested that the

28

primary early emphasis of Whistler would be on its role as the new consumer
(not corporate) operating system, and that the majority of its first customers
would be former Windows 9x users seeking greater stability.
Finally, while one might not want to rely too much on the comparison, a
minimum of three years passed between the arrival Microsofts last
groundbreaking operating systems (Windows 95 and NT) and the emergence of
their successors (Windows 98 and 2000). At this writing, it certainly did not
seem likely that Backcomb, the next anticipated version of Windows, would
arrive before 2005.
3. A Bit of Linux History and Philosophy.
Philosophy is a scary word that suggests endless, fruitless debates. But in
many cases, the actual experience in philosophical discussion is that we quickly
learn how radically one persons attitude differs from anothers. In that spirit, it
might be helpful to take a brief look at the roots of Linux.
Bell Labs created Unix in 1971. Unix became the primary operating system on
large computers -- which were pretty much the only computers until the early
1980s. In 1985, GNU was born. GNU is short for GNUs Not Unix, a name
that may give some flavor of the sometimes geeky, sometimes wry, but definitely
non-corporate ambiance of the Unix world. As the name suggested, GNU was
not Unix, but it was similar enough that you needed the name to remind you that
it was somewhat different.
One important feature of GNU was that its creator, Richard Stallman, was also a
great believer in free software. Eventually, Stallman created the GNU General
Public License, which has been used by many other software developers in the
intervening years to insure that their software, too, would remain free no matter
where it might be distributed. Again, to convey the spirit of the thing, here is a
quote from Stallmans GNU Manifesto, written in 1985:
Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software.
It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict
with other programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. The
fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of programs;
marketing arrangements now typically used essentially forbid programmers to
treat others as friends. The purchaser of software must choose between friendship
and obeying the law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is more important.
But those who believe in law often do not feel at ease with either choice. They
become cynical and think that programming is just a way of making money.

29

By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be

hospitable to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an example
to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a
feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For
about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness that money
cannot replace.
The freedom envisioned by Stallman was a dynamic one. People would not idly
tap the best they could find without contributing anything in return. Rather, the
availability of free software would enable them to be more productive than they
would be if they had to postpone their computing until they could afford to buy
the software they needed. Programmers would compete, not to create
unnecessary, redundant programs that might somehow seize more market share,
but to offer features and capabilities that existing programs did not offer.
Stallman acknowledged that his vision of free software might mean reduced
income for programmers -- not because programmers could not charge for their
software, but because free meant freely distributed, not free of charge. To
clarify this, here is an excerpt from the GNU General Public License:
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share
and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to
guarantee your freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the
software is free for all its users. ...
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you
receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software
or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these
things. ...
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee,
you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure
that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these
terms so they know their rights.
Source code is, of course, the basic computer program as written by the
programmers, before it is compiled into machine-readable object code.
Keeping the source code open means making it possible for any programmer to
look at the guts of your program and copy it, fiddle with it, or improve it. Open
Source is thus a key part of the concept of software freedom; its advocates see it
as a continuation of the scientific mentality that, until recent years, always
encouraged scientists to publish their findings as quickly as possible (rather than
30

trying to patent and exploit their discoveries for their own personal gain) so that
other scientists could quickly learn and build upon their work.
In 1991, twenty years after the creation of Unix, a Finnish computer science
student named Linus Torvalds released his first version of an operating system
under the GNU General Public License. He called this operating system Linux,
in honor of himself. Within a few years, several hundred thousand programmers
and others had become contributors to the development of this system. By the
late 1990s, Linux had made great headway in the market for operating systems
used on central server computers, and people were seriously discussing the
possibility that Linux might also overtake Windows as the predominant desktop
PC operating system.
As noted above, Linux remained free, but the GNU license did not prohibit
companies from selling it. In 1999, several Linux companies became public
corporations. Amazingly, however, while selling their Linux packages for a
profit, such companies -- RedHat, for instance -- continued to offer complete
Linux downloads for free, not only from their own servers but also from
numerous mirror sites around the world. Indeed, Red Hat even created a
separate nonprofit organization to support and promote Open Source software.
RedHat is the source of one version or flavor of Linux. There are numerous
others, including Corel, Mandrake, Debian, Caldera, SuSE, TurboLinux, and
Slackware. Like RedHat, most if not all of these are available for free download
(although, as a practical matter, it can be easier to obtain and install the software
if you instead buy it on a CD).
4. The Linux Mentality.
There is, in truth, not just one Linux mentality. Some Linux users are hard-core
computer experts who have never had much interest in ease-of-use, much less
what they consider Microsofts brain-dead concept of it; users of this sort have
been known to argue that Linux should not become more Windows-like -- that is,
more confused and crash-prone -- merely to appeal to the masses. On the other
extreme, some Linux users are recent Windows users who ran out of patience
with Windows; these persons work with Linux may largely consist of attempts
to make it look and act like a stable version of Windows. Discussions among
Linux people frequently include heated debates about the purposes and
directions that Linux should take.
You will also not find just one commonly shared Linux mentality if you
participate in Linux-related newsgroups or chat rooms. If you watch such
discussions for a while, you will see some mutually rewarding conversations and
some mutually frustrating fights. Assuming you ask a reasonable question in a

31

reasonable way, you may get an irritated response from a person who does not
consider your question reasonable enough, or a useless response from someone
who thinks you should be asking a different question, or a helpful reply from
someone who actually answers the question. This is not unique to Linux: you
will probably experience similar things in other forums, although it seems
possible that the computer-oriented forums may contain a higher percentage of
precision-oriented gearheads who will have little patience for imprecise
newcomers.
Linux is, at present, not as easy to install and use as Windows. This is true not
only because most of us know Windows and therefore consider Linux somewhat
alien, but also because Windows is produced by a corporation that always keeps
at least one eye on marketability and popular appeal (for which ease of use is
essential), while to a considerable extent Linux is produced by a loose association
of people who are interested in perfection, not profit. One might be tempted to
say that those who pursue perfection are unlikely to meet deadlines, but this
would not be a particularly trenchant observation when the alternative is to
choose Microsoft and its legendary delays. There is one important difference,
however: when the Linux world is slow to deliver an upgrade, it is because they
are finding it hard to complete it properly; but when Microsoft is slow to deliver
an upgrade, there is the additional possibility that users are not being told the
complete story -- that, for some profit-related reason, Microsoft has decided not
to allocate as many resources to the task as promised, or has chosen to sell as
many copies as possible of Version 1 before finally rolling out Version 2.
Linux is very stable. There are Linux users who have not had to reboot their
computers for years. To date, Linux has been more stable than Windows because
Linux has been designed by people who have wanted an operating system that
would work properly. The Windows people have wanted this too, but they have
had to compromise their search for quality in order to appeal to as many
different kinds of users as possible. Windows has offered simplicity, color,
variety, experimentation, fun, and anything else that might help to persuade the
overwhelming number of American computer users that Windows could give
them what they wanted from a computer.
Although it may seem backwards, you could say that Linux, the revolutionary
new operating system, is actually the more conservative system. Unlike
Windows, which has stimulated a deluge of programs from innumerable
backyard programmers who may or may not know what they are doing, and
whose programs have all been capable of crashing the computer at any moment,
Linux has been relatively strict and demanding in its concept of what is
permitted.

32

For years, Microsoft has focused upon extending the reach of Windows into new
areas, and has been content to let peoples consumers crash, wiping out countless
hours of hard work. Indeed, in the early days, we heard the slogan, Windows
isnt done until Lotus wont run -- that is, we heard that Microsoft programmers
were deliberately constructing Windows in such a way that it would crash when
a user attempted to run a program sold by Lotus or some other competitor.
Whether there was any such deliberate attempt, the slogan did reflect the actual
experience of many users who found that programs like Lotus 1-2-3 would no
longer work so well on their computers.
While successive versions of Windows 9x have improved stability to some
extent, a quick visit to online discussion groups at any time during recent years
would show a large number of people who have continued to hate Windows for
its crashes, and Microsoft for charging them for new versions of Windows that
would supposedly fix the problems that Microsoft itself had created -- and that
would then fail to fix those problems after all. Well before the Justice
Department sought to convict Microsoft of illegal monopolistic behavior, there
were numerous books presenting critical accounts of Microsofts behavior over
the years, at the expense of their competitors and, ultimately, of the public.
Consumers have put up with this state of affairs primarily because, for the most
part, they have not been aware of any real alternative to Windows.
As discussed above, however, Microsoft has lately become much more interested
in the fact that peoples computers have been crashing all these years. There
cannot be much doubt about the source of this newfound concern. Whatever its
imperfections, Linux and its philosophy have arrived like a breath of fresh air.
Suddenly, it seems, consumers do have the option of a genuinely stable
operating system, and now their decision is whether to take the time and effort
required to make the switch from Windows.
At this point, Windows and Linux are like two boys who hang out together.
Windows has always been the wild, flamboyant one, always dreaming up new
things to try, and Linux is the more stable one, always struggling with the
question of whether to follow along or whether, instead, to stick to the straight
and narrow path and stay out of trouble. As that metaphor suggests, Linux is
indeed conflicted in its own mind, with some of its devotees leaning in the
direction of making Linux easier to use, while other Linux flavors (e.g., Debian)
hew closely to the gospel and shun actions that are merely flashy and
fashionable.

33

Chapter 5
What It Is Like to Install and Use Linux
To provide some sense of what a Windows 9x user might experience during the
migration to Linux, this chapter traces through the basic steps.
1. Acquiring Linux.
The would-be Linux user must first decide which flavor of Linux s/he wishes
to use. This is the first shock: there is no such thing as simply Linux. Some
brands, like RedHat, are especially popular; others, like Corel, are relative
newcomers who emphasize their ease of installment; and still others, notably
Debian, are most committed to the philosophy of free software. Each flavor of
Linux has its own true believers, along with a good number of other people who
are not sure that the choice of version is such a big deal, especially for a beginner.
Thus, rather than explore the nuances of the various alternatives, this chapter
will simply proceed with Debian, whose full name is Debian GNU/Linux. The
Debian part of the name comes from the names of Ian Murdock, Debians
creator, and his wife Deb. The GNU part honors the large contribution made to
Debians collected software by the GNU people.
You can obtain Debian in several different ways: download it from Debian.org
or one of the mirror sites, buy a book with a Debian CD in it, copy it from a
friend, or buy a Debian CD for five bucks from one of the many organizations
that offer it for sale. All are equally legal. Knowledgeable people recommend
starting with a CD rather than the online download, and experience suggests that
a book is a good idea as well, so

DO IT BOTH WAYS -- DUAL-BOOT AND VMWARE. NEITHER WIN4LIN OR

VMWARE CAN WRITE TO CD-R OR CD-RW DRIVES.

34

Chapter 6
Predictions
Foretelling the future can be an amusing game. The effort here, however, is not
to amuse, but to advise the person who is trying to make a choice between
operating systems. Nobody knows what will happen, but the thoughts
presented above may support some reasonable estimates of how things might
turn out.
1. Philosophy.
People who have rejected Microsoft seem to have a greater-than-average
fondness for the Open Source philosophy. If Microsoft (or the branch of
Microsoft that produces Windows) became a company in which people could
have faith, this source of Open Source devotees might dry up. On the other
hand, if Microsoft continues to alienate people with expensive, bug-ridden
products, Open Source will probably continue to derive support from a growing
number of individuals who subscribe to the ABM (Anything But Microsoft)
philosophy.
Microsoft is a maturing company. It seems to have become more user-friendly
and less arrogant than it was five or ten years ago. Nevertheless, its sloppy,
adventurous, exploitive, market-oriented streak will die hard. It seems likely
that the company will continue to inspire new adversaries who will join and
support Open Source. This applies to frustrated competitors and angry
American consumers; but it may also apply someday, for instance, to Chinese
citizens who presently use Windows because they can obtain it on the black
market, and whose attitude toward Linux might change markedly if ever the
Chinese authorities enforced international treaties and cracked down on that
black market.
Having said that, it is important to remember that the primary philosophy
behind Linux is not a merely negative and rejectionist. People believe in Linux
because they want to share the results of their efforts with anyone who can
benefit from them. They like the feeling of working together to advance
humanity, one step at a time. There is a tremendous sense of freedom behind it,
a sense that one is not working against politics or big money, but against genuine
problems, and that those problems (unlike political or economic barriers) can be
overcome with enough hard work and ingenuity -- and that one is, perhaps, not
dependent upon black-box kinds of solutions from technical support people who
may or may not care very much about ones particular situation. In the Microsoft
model, bugs get fixed if the corporation considers them important. In the Linux

35

model, bugs tend to get fixed when they arise, because everyone shares the goal
of making Linux as good as possible. This is the kind of movement that some
people can hardly help wanting to support in one way or another.
2. Availability of Software.
History may eventually say otherwise, but for now it seems that relatively few
people are philosophical about their computers. Even among those who do
come to understand and praise the Open Source movement, some may be
motivated by the desire to get something for nothing, rather than by a genuine
desire to contribute time, effort, or money to the effort.
In the near term, at least, it seems likely that profit, not a philosophical vision,
will guide some majority of programmers and software companies. Thus, for at
least the next several years, software producers will probably continue to focus
their efforts on developing products that will run on the huge number of
Windows computers, rather than on the relatively small number of Linux
computers. That, however, is not the end of the story:

Some Windows utilities are designed to solve problems that do not even exist
in Linux, or that are much less of a problem than in Windows. Examples
include disk defragmenters, crash-protection tools, and antivirus utilities.

An increasing number of Windows-based programs, and especially the major

ones, are now available in Linux versions.

As long as Microsoft programs like Word and Excel are produced by the
company that produces Windows, there may not be an official Linux version
of such programs, but there may be acceptable substitutes. For instance,
Suns StarOffice suite of programs is a close imitation of Microsoft Office,
except to the extent that users customize Office by using Microsofts Visual
Basic (although even in that regard, there is some likelihood that Linux will
eventually support VB). StarOffice is available in both Windows and Linux
versions, to ease the transition to Linux. And StarOffice is free. Or, if you
prefer, you can buy Corels WordPerfect Office suite.

There have been a number of efforts -- some quite successful -- to find ways of
running Windows software on Linux. We will look at some of those
approaches shortly.

In this regard, Linux appears to be catching up, not falling further behind. This
should not be surprising. For one thing, there are more programmers around the
world working on Linux and Open Source software than there are employed by
36

Microsoft; and besides, it is generally easier to keep up than to lead, since the
leader is the one who may lose time going down blind alleys. (This is not to say
that Linux leads in nothing; it is only to observe that, if we are speaking only of
Windows compatibility, Linux does enjoy some advantages. There are, of
course, thousands of programs written specifically for Linux, of which thousands
are available at no cost.)
It seems possible that Microsoft will take steps to complicate these catch-up
efforts of Linux programmers. Such complications might slow down Linux
progress, but so far the trend is in Linux favor. Even if Microsoft could find a
way to prevent Linux from running future versions of Microsoft programs, at
some point one might doubt that masses of people would spend large sums to
acquire a newer version of a mature Microsoft program that will not run on
Linux, when they are getting along reasonably well with an older version that
has most of the features they consider important.
3. Price.
An upgrade to Windows ME cost about $50 in early 2001. The full version cost
about $180. The program would install easily enough in most cases, but if the
user did want more insight into the operating system, a decent how-to book
would cost perhaps $30-40 extra. Corporate users faced prices of $190, if they
qualified for an upgrade to Windows 2000, or $280, if they had to buy a full
version. Not surprisingly, many corporate users of Linux have cited its free or
inexpensive availability as a significant factor in their decisions.
Meanwhile, as noted above, Linux was available for free. Users who preferred to
buy a CD could obtain one for less than $10 including shipping, and might
supplement it with a how-to manual for another $30-40. Those who wanted to
buy the complete, deluxe package from a company like RedHat might expect to
spend around $80, although such packages tended to include numerous other
programs (such as StarOffice) in addition to the operating system.
It seems likely that Microsoft will price its products to maximize its profits. This
probably means that the company will set the prices of its operating systems as
high as it can without driving people away to Linux. While Microsoft occupies a
commanding lead, it may not feel much pressure to compete with Linux on
price. Certainly the price for Windows 2000 just cited does not suggest that
Microsoft has lowered prices in response to Linuxs headway in the corporate
market. In short, the price for consumer and corporate versions of Whistler will
probably remain at todays levels unless Linux makes major inroads into the
share of the market now controlled by Microsoft.

37

The price for the operating system itself is not the full story. As with Linux, there
is a considerable amount of useful free software available for Windows users. To
a large extent, however, the old freeware movement within Windows has been
converted to a shareware movement, in which the user who downloads an
interesting program can use it for only a brief period before having to purchase
it. It is also likely that most Windows users will have to purchase additional
programs. For instance, chapter 2 recommends programs like Norton Utilities,
Norton AntiVirus, and PowerQuests Second Chance to take care of problems
caused by malfunctions in Windows 9x. The combined street price of those
programs in early 2001, with shipping, was more than $120. Other extremely
useful utilities, not mentioned in chapter 2 and apparently not included in
Whistler, include a partitioning tool like PartitionMagic and disk imaging
software like Norton Ghost or DriveImage.
While one might hope for great things from Whistler, Microsofts operating
system updates so far have created more rather than fewer opportunities for
third parties who sell problem-fixing utilities for Windows. Also, as noted in
chapter 2, even when Microsoft has included fix-it programs in Windows (e.g.,
its Defragmenter and ScanDisk tools), they have been weaker than third-party
solutions. It might be overly optimistic to hope that Whistler would eliminate
the need for such tools. One might hope at least that users who have already
acquired such tools to use on Windows 9x would not need to purchase updated
versions for Whistler, but that seems unlikely in the case of programs like Norton
Utilities.
One other price factor to consider is the cost of more advanced hardware to run
Whistler. Those millions of lines of code require considerable amounts of
memory and power. For instance, while Microsoft recommended a minimum of
16 MB to run Windows 98, a user might easily find that, even at 64 MB, there
would be some limits on the computers ability to process ordinary tasks at a
reasonable rate of speed. Microsoft recommended 32 MB for Windows ME and
64 MB for Windows 2000, although again one might want to double or
quadruple the actual RAM in a system in order to use the computer as intended.
Similarly, while Microsoft recommended a minimum of a 486DX/66 or basic
Pentium computer for Windows 98, even a Pentium 233 would be quite slow at
some fairly ordinary tasks, and the same is true for the minimal processors
Microsoft recommends for its more recent operating systems. If Whistler were
merely an upgrade of Windows 2000, then possibly its demands would stay the
same as Windows 2000 or rise modestly, but the task of concealing the programs
complexity from home users may impose an additional performance penalty.
Against all that, the minimal system requirements for recent versions of Linux
are 4 MB of RAM and at least a 386 processor. Linux people boast that Linux is

38

programmed much more tightly than Windows, so that it will run much faster
on a given hardware configuration. In any event, it seems likely that, for a user
switching an existing computer from Windows to Linux any time within the next
several years, a hardware upgrade will be more of an option than a necessity.
4. Stability.
There will be versions of Linux that follow the troublemaker too closely, possibly
injuring the Linux reputation for solid reliability. We should not be surprised,
for example, if a strange version of Linux now available, which is designed to
run on top of Windows 98, will crash whenever Windows 98 crashes.
Also, while standard Linux might remain virtually crashproof, its success will
probably attract the attention of more programmers who do not write stable
programs. The operating system itself may survive most or all of the odd things
that people throw at it, but it is not clear that a given program will be any more
reliable in Linux than it would be in Windows. Further, while it is not remotely
as easy to find a virus-friendly loophole in Linux as in Windows, it is still
possible. And some Linux programs are known to conflict with others, although
the fact that the conflicts are known tends to help a person choose his/her
software wisely. In short, as the phrasing of this paragraph indicates, Linux is
still in an entirely different league from Windows 9x and NT, and it may still
offer superior security and stability even when Whistler does emerge.
On the other hand, Microsoft is a huge, rich company. It is far and away the
established market leader, and it has the resources it needs to attain most of its
important goals. Its sudden decision to make real progress toward stability in
Windows 2000 and Whistler suggest that the cries of injured users will diminish
if Whistler becomes a popular replacement for Windows 9x. Windows users
who have toughed it out until the second half of 2002 may find that stability is no
longer an important factor in favor of Linux. Or if we define stability as
including anything that might upset ones progress toward ones goals, the
question might be this: at what point does the upset caused by installing and
learning Linux exceed the upset caused by toughing it out, buying additional
hardware, and purchasing a new version of Windows to solve ones problems?
The question is too general to answer definitively, but perhaps the remainder of
this chapter will suggest some relevant thoughts.
5. Simplicity.

6. Timing and Market Share.

39

presumably the risk of crashes may fluctuate according to the things, foreseeable
or otherwise, that people will attempt to do with their computers in years to
come.

40

A nifty trick for comparing two .WAV files is to use the "Mix Paste" feature in Cool Edit.
Extract a track twice, then use Mix Paste to copy an inverted version of one file on top of the
other. The two sound files will cancel each other out wherever they are identical, and have little
spikes where they are different. This can be useful for seeing if the problems are only on one
channel or are happening at regular intervals. You need to make sure though that both files start
at the same place though. If your CD-ROM drive doesn't always extract from the start of the
block, you will need to adjust the files so they line up.

If you just want to see if the files are the same, use the DOS File Compare command, with the
"binary" switch set: FC /B FILE1.WAV FILE2.WAV.
*******************
From http://www.adaptec.com/support/faqs/multisession.html:
On a multisession data disc, each track of data is recorded in a single session which is closed
after the track is recorded. When the session is closed, a session lead-out is written which allows
a CD-ROM player to recognize the session and read data from it. Writing the session lead-out,
and a lead-in preparing for a new session you'll write in future, takes up space on the disc: 22
megabytes for the first session, 13 megabytes for each subsequent session.
When you record the first session on a disc, the names and addresses of the files recorded are
written in the file system for that session. When you add more files in a subsequent session, a
complete new file system is written for the new session, but it can include references to files
recorded in the previous session; this is known as linked multisession. The actual files already
on disc do not have to be written again in the new session; only their addresses are included in
the new session's file system. These addresses can be carried forward in additional sessions, so
that all files recorded in previous sessions are shown as if they were part of the latest session.
When linking data between sessions, you can virtually "overwrite" an older version of a file
already recorded on disc by writing a newer version of the same file (with an identical filename
and directory path) in a new session. The link to the previous version of the file is lost, but the
file itself is still on disc, and you can get it back again if you need it.

It is possible to record multiple sessions on a disc without linking the data between the
sessions, so that the data in session stands alone, as if it had been recorded on a separate CD.
This is sometimes referred to as a multi-volume disc. In this case, if you need to access
sessions other than the last, you will need to use the Session Selector utility in Easy CD
Creator Deluxe.
I dont have deluxe, do I?

*********************

http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/senate/com-e/educ-e/13eva-e.htm

Computer Tips
To control modem volume, go into Control Panel | Modems | Connection
| Advanced | Extra Settings and put M0 (speaker off) through M4
(speaker loud, not yet tried).
To avoid connection problems in Internet Explorer, dont have more than
one WINSOCK.DLL (which should be in C:\Windows) and not more than
one WSOCK32.DLL (which should be in C:\Windows\System) on the
computer.
To print full long names of files, use DOS command: DIR /B > PRN.
Control Panel | System | Performance | Graphics: a conservative setting
may save me lots of hassles.

What To Do When the Computer Crashes

Dont try fooling with tape restoring. It doesnt work well, if at all. The
exceptions are individual files that I massage back in, e.g., the Wordab
files. Restore everything from tape and CD.
After restoring from disk and CD, download upgrades on Microsoft Office
and Norton Utilities. Reconfigure Norton Trashcan.
To set Access up so it imports Paradox tables, install the Paradox import
option from the Office 97 CD, ValuPack subdirectory.
If I reinstall the tape backup software and I dont see any file sets there,
and just that "Ereg" folder, then I can re-create the file sets as follows:
Run C:\WINDOWS\BACKUP\hpbackup.exe /recreate
To restore previous versions of the registry, run scanreg /restore from
the Run window.

The Process of Recovering My Computer

from a file dated 8/1/97

I need HIMEM and all that to speed up the tape restoring process, so those have to get
on drive C: first, and then I can run the tape backup for the rest. Those files I can
keep on the boot floppy.
Re: HP 5GB tape drive: see e-mail I received on 9/29/98 regarding
steps I might be able to benefit from.
Im just curious. When Ive got nothing to lose, try FDISK /MBR (maybe
without the space).
The Windows Tools Autocorrect (WORDAB) file is C:\Windows\Ray
Woodcock.acl
The folders C:\Programs and C:\Program Files\Utilities -- Miscellaneous
can be moved en masse, as long as I dont mind manually reestablishing
shortcut links to them all wherever I put them next (which is ultimately
an argument for putting them back where they were).
Re Word Macro Viruses
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q134/7/27.asp
Given that I have Award BIOS 4.51P6 or 4.51PG, go into BIOS, into
PNP/PCI Config, find desired interrupt for "the card" (modem?), and
change its setting from PCI/ISA PNP to Legacy ISA.
HINT: Find Your IP Settings
Finding your network setting through Windows can be a challenge. The best way to do it is to go to Start |
Run and type in
winipcfg
This undocumented program will give you all the info you need if you're having a network problem or not
connecting correctly to your ISP.
Win Opens the Start menu. Win + F1 Displays pop-up menu for the selected object. Win + E
Starts Explorer. Win + F Finds files or folders. Ctrl + Win + F Finds computer. Win + M Minimizes
all windows. Shift + Win + M Restores minimized windows. Win + R Displays run-dialog box. Win
+ Tab Cycles through taskbar buttons. Win + Break Cycles through taskbar buttons.

Windows Start-up Mystery Solved!

This is in response to the item "Managing Windows Start-Up" in the User-to-User column of May 5, 1998.
In addition to the somewhat sneaky method of putting a program in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, in RunServices, or
in Win.ini, there's an even sneakier method used by some installation programs. Programs named in values

under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run will also run

at start-up. It took me quite a while to figure out where Netscape 4 had planted AOL Instant Messenger!
David Wallenstein
Brooklyn, New York
As noted in the earlier article, many programs and utilities install themselves to run automatically when
your computer starts. If you want to prevent such a program from running at start-up, you must first find
the command that launches it. The command may be in the StartUp submenu under Programs in the Start
menu. In that case, preventing it from launching is as simple as moving it to a different submenu. If it's
found in the Load= or Run= line of Win.ini, you can comment out the line by prefixing a semicolon. And if
it appears in the list of values for the Run or RunServices keys mentioned above, you can disable its
launching by editing the value data and prefixing REM to the command. You should always disable these
start-up commands rather than deleting them, on the chance that you'll need to restore them.
A number of readers wrote in to say that they'd checked all three areas, found nothing, but still had
unwanted programs running at start-up. This tip solves that little mystery. Run RegEdit, navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and examine the righthand pane of RegEdit's display. Each named value defines a program that will run at start-up; the data for
the value contains the command line. As before, to prevent such a program from running, prefix its data
string with REM rather than deleting it. This key is functional in Windows 95, Windows 98 beta, Windows
NT 4, and Windows NT 5 beta.
Compacting makes a new copy of the database with the contents rearranged on-disk. Any space made
available by deletions is returned to the operating system, so the database that emerges from compacting is
usually smaller. It's a good idea to compact periodically even if you're not concerned about restoring space,
because compacting the database can improve performance. For example, searches often perform better,
because Access rearranges your possibly fragmented data into contiguous pages.
To compact your database, select the File menu and choose Compact Database (in Access 97 select the
Tools menu, choose Database Utilities, and choose Compact Database). Note that Access needs enough
available disk space to store two copies of your database temporarily; otherwise the compact operation will
fail.
After designing my Microsoft Access database, I deleted all of the test records. Now, I need to reset the
counter field to 0. How do I do this easily in Office 95?
Dennis Tretiak
via the Internet
You have to compact the database after deleting all of your test records. First, back up your database. Then
start Access, and if a database automatically opens, close it. Next, select the Tools menu, select Database
Utilities, and then choose Compact Database.
Does it drive you crazy when that image file you just got opens up in Microsoft Paint or Lview Pro instead
of in your preferred image editor? Here's how you can make sure that never happens again:
In Explorer, select a file of the type you want to change. Hold down the Shift key, right-click on the
selection, and choose Open With. In the dialog box that pops up, select the program you want to use to
open the file type. Check "Always use this program to open this file," click OK, and off you go.

Run msinfo32 and msconfig as troubleshooters.

To see whether your phone line can accommodate 56kbps modems, use
Hyperterminal accessory to dial 888-877-9248. Type line instead of
your first name and test instead of your last name. It will test your
phone line to see if it can handle 56kbps. If it wont, you can complain to
the phone company.

hwinfo /ui gives lots of detailed information about my system.

When the Matrox drivers arent working and the whole screen goes by in
a dizzy blur of color, go into Control Panel and get rid of the Matrox
driver. Itll default back to a basic VGA.
C:\WINDOWS\DOSREP will run in DOS, if necessary, to prepare a
status report of a Win98 problem that I can then e-mail to MS for help.
Display troubleshooter (with links to other Microsoft troubleshooters):
http://support.microsoft.com/support/tshoot/tshooterlist.asp?TPR=w98

If CD player stops autostarting with audio disks but still autostarts with
program disks, see
http://x31.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=480841802&search=thread&CONTEXT=937576770.9869
72164&HIT_CONTEXT=937575546.981598240&HIT_NUM=6&hitnum=4
Did you know that if you double-click the right border of a column's header in Explorer that the column
will automatically size itself based on the widest text in the column? Well, if you think THAT is cool,
instead of double clicking on each column border, simply press CTRL and the Plus key on your keypad
simultaneously. Doing this will automatically resize ALL the columns. Isn't that better?

To make DirectCD work, you may need to disable Win98 UDF.

MSCONFIG | Advanced | Disable UDF.
To eliminate dud entries from MSCONFIG | Startup, look especially in
Run | regedit |
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsof\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Run- and other directories right there ending with a dash.
MSD is a disagnostic program.
Use SETVER, a DOS command, to fix the incorrect DOS version error.

Coping with Windows

Copyright Ray Woodcock 2001
Introduction
There are now two primary varieties of Windows operating systems. One is the
Windows NT/2000 category. People using that category of Windows system
have some, but not all, of the problems addressed in this book. The other
category, and the main focus of this book, is the Windows 9x category, which
includes Windows 95 and Windows 98. For purposes of this book, it also
includes Windows Millenium Edition (a/k/a ME), even though the name does
not begin with a 9, because Windows ME is a relatively minor upgrade from
Windows 98.
People generally want Windows 9x to be stable, to make sense, and to do things
that would help them get their work done. Many who have used Windows 9x
have lost large amounts of time and effort to achieve such goals. Some have
reached a point of frustration at which they no longer believe that Windows can
do such things.
This book provides some tools by which to do the best we can with Windows. I
will move more quickly in some parts of this book than others. Unfortunately, it
is sometimes necessary to be most abbreviated with the most complex problems.
As I have sadly discovered in recent years, one can write a book-length solution
to a single technical problem, and of course it wont get published, for the very
good reason that only three people in the world will actually read it. So instead
of hoping to provide full details on every technical issue, the effort here is to
sketch out solutions clearly enough that those few individuals who are indeed
bogged down in those issues will at least have a new set of questions and can
move one step further down their road.
Along with other tools and solutions, this book mentions many programs. In
many cases, such programs are available for download on the Internet. For
details on where and how to obtain programs, see chapter ___, section ___.
The fact that I mention a program does not mean that I guarantee it. I certainly
attempt to share relevant knowledge that I may have accumulated about a given
program, but the requirements of space and time limit the total number of details
I can provide about any one program. I heartily recommend doing further
research before betting the farm on any particular program. My goal here is
mainly to throw out ideas that may help people who are having problems. I
absolutely cannot guarantee that any particular program will work well for
anyones particular need.

Conventions, adopted for the sake of brevity:

I may refer to file extensions (e.g., URL) without putting a period before
them.

I may not always say whether a specific program is case-sensitive in its

treatment of file names or extensions. I capitalize some file names and
extensions for clarity; beware of situations in which a search or entry requires
you to distinguish upper- and lowercase.

Whenever possible, I recommend free programs rather than programs you

must purchase, assuming the free program appears to be competent for the
intended purpose. Note, however, that sometimes free programs become
nonfree and vice versa.

If I dont provide the full URL for <website>, assume that it is

www.<website>.com.

Chapter 1
Save Your Soul
The person reading this book is, most likely, already using Windows 9x. Before
starting to create a new Windows scheme, then, lets do what we can to clean up
the old one.
1. Organize Your Favorites Permanently.
The moment we proceed to install a new Windows system, we will wipe out all
of the Favorites (i.e., bookmarks) that you may have accumulated under Internet
Explorer. To protect this set of gems you have culled from the Internet, lets save
those Favorites, get them out of the way for now, and make them available
whenever you might need them in the future.
First, to save them, copy them from their standard location at
C:\Windows\Favorites to some other location. You can copy the whole folder at
once. Even if you take none of the other suggestions I am about to offer
regarding Favorites, at least this step may allow you to copy your saved set of
Favorites back to C:\Windows\Favorites after you have completed a new,
working Windows installation. You may decide to save them in a compressed
ZIP format in order to avoid the possibility of confusing one set of Favorites with
another, to save disk space and simplify file operations, and to protect them in
case any of the following suggestions changes them in a way you dont like.
Useful ZIP programs include ___ and ___.
Next, to keep your Favorites out of the way so that you dont have to repeat the
step just described, and so that you wont lose them if Windows dies suddenly,
lets consider permanently moving the Favorites folder to another folder or to a
different hard disk on your computer. (We will talk further about second hard
disks and other hardware issues in chapter ___.) Your Favorites will still look
and act the same, but they will be saved in a location other than drive C.
You can make this and many other changes to Windows by using multipurpose
tweaking programs. Popular examples include TweakUI, Tweaki, Tweak-Me,
and the very capable Xteq X-Setup. Such programs, and many of the others
mentioned in this book, are available (often for free) at standard download
locations. See chapter ___, section ___ for more information on where to acquire
such programs.
The changes made by these tweaking programs frequently involve edits to the
Windows Registry, which is the collection of system files that tell Windows

about a great many aspects of your system (including hardware, installed

programs, etc.). A mistake in the Registry editing process can ruin your
Windows installation. We will review Registry editing in some detail in chapter
___, section ___.
I should mention, in passing, that there are a number of tools that will let you
play with your Favorites in other ways. While these programs do not necessarily
improve crash protection or recovery, and therefore are not entirely relevant
here, they may still be useful, fun, or interesting. Examples include Databites,
which allows you to assign different icons to each of your Favorites; Syncit,
which is one of many programs that allow you to synchronize your Favorites
and/or your Netscape Bookmarks with other Favorites and/or Bookmarks; PC
Magazines FavOrg, which will let you boil your links down to mere icons, so as
to squeeze as many as possible onto one screen; and URLMenu, which lets you
display your Favorites on the Taskbar. (An example of a URL (short for Uniform
Resource Locator) is http://www.contact.com.) For more information on
the Taskbar, see chapter ___, section ___.
To preserve your Favorites and keep them out of harms way in the event of
future Windows crashes, a useful alternative is to move them off your computer
altogether by saving them as a Links page online. You might even make that
your Internet browsers home page. Then, no matter what happens to your
computer, and no matter what operating system you run, those Favorites will
still be there, waiting for you (and anyone else) to use them. A faster-loading
and more private alternative is to save that Favorites page, not on the Internet,
but on your own computer -- but to save it in a location that gets backed up
frequently and/or that wont vanish when your Windows installation crashes.
For more information on backup, see chapter ___, section ___.
Either way, you do not need to learn how to write HTML code to create a basic
webpage. There are programs that will automatically convert your collection of
Favorites into HTML code.
Examples include URL2HTM, FavtoHTML,
akFavorites, and URL To HTML. The resulting page will be all ready to save
somewhere on your own computer or to upload to your personal website. You
may decide, however, that you would like to improve the looks of the page, or
would like to put the links closer together or otherwise tinker with it. In that
case, you may discover that basic HTML editing is relatively easy and is useful
for other purposes. Chapter ___, section ___ contains further information on
creating and editing webpages.
Many people will find that the resulting Links page (or pages, if you have
divided your Favorites into categories and have run them through the HTMLcreation program separately) look nice but are somewhat inflexible. For instance,

what if you would like to add new Favorites to various categories on that page?
You will have two options: either add these new items to the various categories
manually, or else run your whole collection of Favorites (including the new ones)
back through the HTML-creation program (see previous paragraph) and then reedit the resulting page(s) to include all the nice frills you had already set up once.
Either approach will get tiresome very quickly if you add new Favorites
frequently.
People who have many Favorites, or who want to keep their Favorites
organized, might appreciate the option of putting them all into a database that
they could then sort by category (e.g., Shopping), or by URL (to reduce
unnecessary duplication), or by name (so that e.g., all news organization
websites are referred to, first, by the word News, as in News--CNN).
Instead of sorting Favorites by manually cutting and pasting them from one
Links subfolder to another, a person could easily change the Category names
shown in the database for many Favorites simultaneously. In this approach, the
master list would not consist of the original set of Favorites; rather, the master
list would exist in this table, and the challenge would be to get Favorites into this
table and then to get a Links webpage out of it. This approach gives greater
flexibility and requires more skills -- but skills of a type that a non-programmer
can develop without too much difficulty. I have used this particular problem as
a skills example in chapter ___, section ___.
Many people save Favorites just in case. They are not certain that they will ever
have the time to revisit that particular Favorite website, but they would like to
keep some way of finding it if the need arises. A solution that may work well for
such people is to move all Favorites to some other folder and then copy back just
a few. Although you may have a dozen links to various news websites, you
might be happy if your Favorites folder contains just one called News, which
may point to CNN or NBC or whatever website you prefer for your news. Then,
even if a Windows crash wipes out your Favorites folder, you wont lose your
main stash of Favorites; youll just have to re-create a relatively small number of
them, and that may require nothing more than selecting them from the backup
folder and copying them back to C:\Windows\Favorites. Unlike the Links page
option described above, this approach eliminates the opportunity, but also
perhaps the need, to provide detailed commentary on each particular Favorite.
Along those same lines, there are easier ways to select a Favorite than to open
Internet Explorer, click on the Favorites button, and scroll down to the one you
want. A Favorite is just a kind of Shortcut, as you will discover if you right-click
on one of the URL files in C:\Windows\Favorites and select Create Shortcut.
You could easily skip the Internet Explorer Favorites button, choosing instead to
locate your preferred Favorites on toolbars. This approach might allow you to

open Internet Explorer and be at your desired location with just one click. The
subject of toolbars will be useful for other purposes as well; see chapter ___,
section ___. Or if you dont intend to put your Favorites on an HTML page as
described above, you could put a shortcut to your Favorites folder on a toolbar
and use that shortcut whenever you wanted to use or rearrange your Favorites.
Even if you aspire to the kind of fancy Favorites website described above, this
might be a useful, relatively easy first step in that direction.
If you find that you always open certain Favorites at the same time, or at a
certain time of day, you could replace many links with one. That is, you could
combine all of those Favorites into one DOS batch file and put a shortcut to that
file on a toolbar, or set Windows Task Scheduler to run it when you need it. A
sample of such a batch file appears in Appendix ___, section ___, and a review of
Task Scheduler appears in chapter ___, section ___. (This suggestion raises the
fact that Favorites may not be the only customized bits of information that could
vanish from your C drive because of a Windows disaster; you could also lose
batch files, program settings, and all kinds of other data that you may have
entered over the weeks or months, as you tried to make Windows work the way
you wanted. Chapter ___, section ___ contains more on limits and alternatives to
backup for this purpose.)
As another possibility, you can save the entire page of your favorite websites.
You can do this online, by saving them to websites designed for the purpose. An
example is the www.i-drive.com website, whose Filo program saves webpages as
you see them. (See chapter ___, section ___.) Or you can do it offline, either
using the File | Save As option or the Favorites | Add to Favorites | Make
Available Offline option in Internet Explorer. As before, you could create
shortcuts and use toolbars to reach these pages later.
Finally, in some cases the best solution may be to focus more on prevention than
cure -- to recognize, that is, that the best way to reduce the mess and complexity
of the Favorites problem might be to save fewer Favorites. Here are a few
closing thoughts along those lines:

As you will see if you spend much time online, the Internet already has a
great many Links pages. Your links page, if you publicize it, will probably
draw more attention if you treat your links as something special. A few good
ones, with explanations of how you use them, can be more valuable than a
long list of unexplained links. It is possible to use programs like Link Crafter
to convert search results into a links page quickly, but the page will probably
be more useful after editing.

Everything on your computer requires work. If you save a Favorite, you

might have to sort it into a subfolder; eventually it might become a dead link;
and if you build it into a webpage, eventually you might have to edit that
webpage to correct or remove the dead reference. You may not want to save
Favorites unless you can, and will, find and use them.

If you do organize your Favorites, you might want to set up a To Be

Reviewed subfolder, and put your new Favorites in there, so that they do not
interfere with your other, more organized and established Favorites.

When you save a Favorite, give it a clear, descriptive title. Drawback: this
may make it harder to detect that you have saved the same link twice under
two different names. Then again, if you dont catch that redundancy, it may
be just as well that you have two different links to that apparently important
page.

Start with a consolidated set of Favorites -- that is, make sure

C:\Windows\Favorites contains them all. If you are not going to use a
database to organize them, you might find that arranging them into
subfolders is easier if you use Windows Explorer rather than the Organize
Favorites option in Internet Explorer. Programs like Doubles may help
identify some duplicates.

Know what you already have. The more you organize and use them, the less
likely it is that you will add many unnecessary, duplicative, redundant
Favorites.

2. x
[Finish my own Favorites before proceeding.]

Chapter ___
Learn Helpful Tools and Techniques
Certain tools and techniques can improve your ability to respond to various sorts
of Windows needs and crises. This chapter reviews some that may be especially
helpful.
1. Know How to Get Help.
Beginning closest to home, your computer has a good deal of information.
Needless to say, most programs have a Help feature and a manual (or at least a
README file). If you are not finding help within the program itself, see if there
is a manual in the set of shortcuts that were probably added to your Start |
Programs collection when you installed the program. The program or the
manual may point to the manufacturers website, where you may find FAQs,
discussion groups, and contact phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
If the Help feature of Windows is mostly useless for your purposes, you can soup
it up. Windows help manuals are stored in files with the CHM extension. The
standard Windows help manual is C:\Windows\Help\Windows.chm. Rename
it to be Original Windows.chm. Now search your original Windows program
disk for a file called RK98BOOK.CHM. The RK stands for Resource Kit,
abbreviated as ResKit, and thats why you might find this file in the
\Tools\ResKit\Help folder. Copy this RK98BOOK.CHM file to become your
new C:\Windows\Help\Windows.chm. Now the Help feature will open this
monster. Similarly, you can search for and double-click on other CHM files
included with Windows, such as HTMLREF.CHM. (Unfortunately, it is not yet
easy to use Microsofts HTML Help Workshop to create your own CHM files.)
Do not underestimate the value of books. Sometimes a well-written manual,
lying open next to the computer, can save hours. Used books are inexpensive at
places like Amazon.com and eBay.com. If you have a spare computer or are
working on a non-critical problem (if, for instance, your computer problem does
not require much rebooting), you can also consult useful websites as you go
along (or, if you know in advance what the problem is going to be, you can print
out those pages for reference). To find the best websites, become familiar with
different kinds of search engines.
Advanced searches in Google.com,
AltaVista.com, and NorthernLight.com, to name a few, each have their own
advantages. Frequently, you will find targeted information very much more
quickly and easily with an advanced rather than basic search.

Word-of-mouth will also point out useful websites. Often, the best source for
word-of-mouth commentary is the newsgroup. Unlike a chat room, in which the
comments come and go quickly (and are often on subjects that have nothing to
do with the putative purpose of the chat room), newsgroup postings are
permanently stored at at Deja.com. You will probably have a very different
impression of newsgroups if you use Deja rather than a newsreader program like
Outlook Express or Free Agent, which tend to create more of a chat-like
environment.
One special kind of chat arises in the world of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or, to
a lesser extent, ICQ. These chat channels offer some opportunity for more
serious discussion. For some products and services, you can now get real-time
tech support, especially on ICQ, instead of having to wait for a tech support
person to answer your call or reply to your e-mail. At one point, IRC was known
to provide a security breach through which malevolent hackers could attack
your system; it may be worth investigating the latest status of this medium to
determine whether those problems have evaporated.
2. Learn Where to Acquire Files and Programs.
Innumerable websites offer various kinds of software for download. Freeware
means a program that never requires payment. Shareware means a program
that you can use free for a while, but if you keep using it past a certain point, you
are expected or required to purchase it. Assuming similar levels of quality,
freeware is better not merely because it costs nothing, but also for the important
reason that you do not want to have the hassle, and the potential instability, of
beginning to rely on a piece of shareware that you think you might use, and then
being forced to uninstall it and start over again if it turns out to be good enough
to keep around for occasional needs, but not good enough to buy.
To find freeware, search Nonags.com or do a power search at ZDNets
Hotfiles.com, specifying the keyword free. Other sources of downloads
include Softseek.com, which is another ZDNet site with a different interface, as
well as Shareware.cnet.com, Tucows.com, and Davecentral.com. You can also
use search engines (above) to flush out particular programs, or to figure out what
people use for particular kinds of tasks. Including the word review in the Title
box of a search engines advanced search can help you find what the
professionals are saying about a particular program.
In other cases, you may be searching for a particular file. Once, for instance, I
knew that I needed a file named SJ137EN.EXE. I knew that because HewlettPackard no longer needed to be supporting my old HP ScanJet IIcx scanner, and
a certain newsgroup posting had indicated that SJ137EN.EXE might solve my

problems. There are several ways to find a specific file like this. One is to enter
its name on the text or URL lines of an advanced search engine page. While that
might not find the file itself, at least it might tell you what it is or where to look
for it. Another method is to let a downloading program like Go!Zilla search for
it, or a master searching program like [___?Webferret?___]. Still another is to use
a website that specializes in searches for filenames. Lycos.com is an example,
particularly (but not only) in its FTP search area; likewise, AltaVista.com has a
filename search option. Of course, you can also do a Deja.com search for it, to
see which newsgroups have been talking about it lately.
Generally, the downloads mentioned in this book are available by simply
clicking on the proper links at various websites. Infrequently, you may instead
have to download using FTP. Certain upgrades to Windows can make it easier
to work with FTP. For more information on Windows upgrades, see chapter ___,
section ___. You may also want to obtain an FTP program like ___ or ___. Such
programs are useful for uploading files en masse to your personal website (if you
have one) as well as for downloading.
3. Consider Learning a Little DOS.
DOS was the primary operating system on non-Apple PCs throughout most of
the 1980s and early 1990s. Windows 9x (as distinct from Windows NT/2000)
was built on DOS, which means that DOS still provides the most fundamental
work area for certain things on which Windows depends. For example, if you
would like to divide your hard disk into two partitions, you will probably have
to exit from Windows and do it from the DOS command line or from a DOSbased program like PartitionMagic.
Surprisingly, it is still possible to do certain things more easily in DOS than in
Windows. Casual DOS users may not always get that impression from their first
visits to DOS newsgroups (e.g., alt.msdos.batch) or websites (e.g., ___), where the
level of discussion can be intimidating. But if you focus on the basics, you will
find that DOS has a fairly small set of commands, you can learn them pretty
quickly, and you can do a lot with them. There are things to watch out for -- for
instance, the way in which DOS handles long filenames -- but if you test the
water before plunging in, you may be pleasantly surprised at the handy things
you can do with DOS.
For instance, if you know that DOS will give you instructions if you type /? or
/h after a command or if you type HELP <commandname>, and you use this
knowledge to see how the DIR command works (that is, by typing HELP DIR or
DIR /?), you may quickly discover that DIR can give you a listing of every file
in a folder. And if you know that adding > PRN to a command (example: DIR

/S > PRN) sends the output to the printer, and if you know that > FILE.TXT
sends the output to a file called FILE.TXT, then you have an easy, handy way of
creating and printing lists of files. Appendix ___ contains a guide to other basic
DOS commands that you may find useful.
Although the Bourne-Again SHell (BASH) in Linux is different from DOS, and
more powerful, both DOS and BASH do share some common origins and even
some similar commands. You may find that DOS provides a relatively simple
and immediate way to get a start into basic command-line work like that which
you may hope to do in Linux at some later date.
4. Use Combinations of Programs to Massage Your Data.
Anyone seeking a more stable Windows computer should know that complexity
can cause problems. One way to keep things simple is to avoid installing or
using unnecessary programs. You may find this easier to do if you know what
programs you already have, and if you know how to use them. Seemingly
similar programs may have somewhat different abilities, and sometimes you
may be able to combine those abilities to solve a problem that might otherwise
have seemed to call for you to download and install yet another program.
For example, Windows comes with EDIT, Notepad, and WordPad. WordPad is
a basic word processor with some formatting capabilities. Notepad is a mere
editor, with seemingly no purpose other than to enter or edit text. And EDIT is
even more basic: it is an editor that can run only in DOS. Each of the higher
programs has advantages: WordPad can handle larger files and do more with
them than Notepad, and Notepad, unlike EDIT, allows you to cut and paste data
from one window to another. These comments would seem to suggest that a
person should rarely use Notepad and never use EDIT.
But as it turns out, each of these programs has its strengths. You can use EDIT to
create a DOS batch file that may get your computer back on its feet, at a time
when Windows (and therefore Notepad and WordPad) will not run. You can
use Notepad to strip out HTML codes, thus quickly converting website text to
plain text for other uses. Finally, if you have Word, you may still prefer
WordPad at times when Word is acting up, running slowly, or demanding too
much computer memory.
Those are examples of how a simple program can sometimes earn a place in your
toolbox. It is neither desirable nor possible to make all programs handle data the
same way -- even when those programs are partners in the same suite. In Excel,
for instance, you might appreciate the ability to tell the program to move to the
next cell when you hit the Enter key, while the users of Word might rarely use

such a feature and might not appreciate having it as one more item of clutter on
the programs menus. Add up several examples like that, and a person could
reasonably conclude that, for some data entry tasks, they should start with Excel
and then move the data over to Word later.
If you would like a more concrete and detailed example, see chapter ___, section
___ for a step-by-step description of how a non-programmer can use a
combination of basic tools to solve part of the Favorites problem posed in
chapter 1, section 1.
5. Consider Learning a Little Programming.
I once worked at a large law firm whose secretaries were all programmers. They
did not realize they were programmers; they did not consider themselves
programmers; and yet that is exactly what they were. The firms computer
system was based on Unix, and there was not yet any graphical user interface
like Windows to make things simple; so if these secretaries wanted to copy a
document, or save a document, they had to use basic Unix commands. The
surprising discovery, for some people in the programming department, was that
eventually some of these secretaries became quite adept at using Unix in
different ways, and they complained bitterly when someone tried to make them
adapt to the mind-numbing, roundabout techniques that a user-friendly
graphical interface required.
I offer that story as a way of saying that programmers are not the only ones who
write programs. Anyone who writes scripts, macros, or other ways of
automating a process is essentially writing a program. The difference between
programmers and the rest of us is not that they write programs and we dont; it
is merely that they write programs by starting with something called a
programming language, while the rest of us write programs by opening a
word processor or a DOS window and designing a macro or script to run in it.
In the Windows world, programming languages fall into two groups. On one
hand, there is Visual Basic; and on the other hand, there are all the others. The
difference is that Microsoft wants you to use Visual Basic, and Microsoft offers
several incentives to do so. First, if you are looking for an up-to-date
replacement for DOS, Microsoft will give you a free download of its Windows
Scripting Host, which uses a somewhat simplified VBScript language based on
Microsofts Visual Basic. Second, if you use Microsoft Office, you will discover
that some of its constituent programs (notably Word, Excel, and Access) allow
you to use the flavor known as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to
automate various tasks.

Some people who thus become familiar with the general ideas of Visual Basic
will be tempted to spend a few hundred dollars on a full package of Microsofts
Visual Basic. As the price suggests, Visual Basic is not so basic anymore. As
with Windows and Office, Microsoft has chosen to develop the original BASIC
language in the direction of adding more features and power. This has made
Visual Basic a heavy-duty programming language that is neither the first choice
of most professional programmers nor a highly accessible tool for beginning
programmers.
If you do learn a computer (or natural) language, you may use it for decades to
come. But who will support and develop it during all those years? A language
controlled by a single corporation, or by any other restricted group, may wither
up and die at the whim of the organization; or it may take off in directions that
increase the companys cash flow at the expense of what the user really needs.
This is a significant disadvantage of Microsofts Visual Basic, as compared to
other languages. A person who is frustrated with Windows may not be
especially eager to commit him/herself to an unknown future with a computing
language controlled and developed by Microsoft.
Visual Basic is undoubtedly the predominant BASIC flavor running under
Windows. It is also designed with particular attention to the needs of people
who are running Windows. If you would instead prefer a lighter version of
BASIC at a fraction of the price, using more generic commands that will be
equally available and useful in other operating systems, you might consider
something like Liberty BASIC and Basic+ Standard, or simply QBASIC. (See
chapter ___, section ___.)
Better yet, you might take a hint from the programmers and forget about BASIC
altogether. Among the many other programming languages, some of the most
frequently mentioned include C++ and Java. Beginners might find Perl to be an
especially powerful, lightweight way of accomplishing miscellaneous tasks, with
special abilities in the text manipulation department. The ActivePerl version runs
under Windows and is presently free. With Perl and these other languages, you
will have the advantage of being able to transport your concepts, and the
programs you write, from Windows to Linux, if you do decide to make that
switch. For an example of how a Perl script can automate and simplify a process,
see chapter ___, section ___.
6. Learn to Create Websites.
Learning to create a website involves two steps. First, you prepare a page that is
ready to post on the Web, and then you post it. To prepare a page, you can use
simple tools that shield you from the complexities of the HTML code in which

webpages are written, or you can write pages in raw HTML code, or you can mix
the two. To post the page, again, you can use simple tools designed for that
purpose.
For basic uses, HTML is not really a language. It is just a set of formatting codes
or commands, like those used in a typical word processing program. For
instance, you insert the <u> command to start underlining text and the </u>
command to stop it. HTML can get a lot more complicated than that; then again,
so can a word processor. Decent webpage preparation programs attempt to
shield you from the complexities of HTML source code, but also offer you the
option of tinkering with that source code if the need arises. Numerous websites
offer advice in the basics of HTML; examples include ___.
Programs designed to create webpages include Microsofts FrontPage (including
the Express version that comes free with Windows), and also the tools available
at some websites that host personal websites. You can find others by doing a
Hotfiles.com Power Search for programs with HTML in their title and free in
their description.
Visual HTML and HTML-Kit are respectable current
examples. Hosting websites include Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, Xoom, and
Hypermart. You can find others through a search for free web pages on
Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). You can also edit HTML pages in WYSIWYG mode
in Word, and in source code mode by opening the file in WordPad. Note, also,
that some websites require no HTML from you at all; an example would be a
hosting website that is designed solely to display photographs, such as Zing or
PhotoPoint (or PostMyPic, for short-term use with e.g., eBay auctions), not to
mention the various websites available for general-purpose online file storage.
(See chapter ___, section ___.)
To post the page, the first thing you need is a website willing to accept it. You
can set up free websites at the hosting sites just mentioned, or you can register a
domain name directly at ___. If you dont mind paying the initial registration fee
plus the annual fee plus the monthly cost of hosting (which is widely available
through many hosting sites, including some of those just mentioned), your site
may be more visible and more readily searchable. Note, however, that even
some free hosts now offer somewhat personalized domain names.
Once you have a page to post and a website to post it on, the last step is to
transfer the page from your computer to the website. (This is not necessary if
you want to keep the page local -- that is, if you just needed an HTML page that
you plan to use from its location on your own computer. An example of this
would be the local version of the Links page described in chapter 1, section 1.)
To upload the page to a website, you can use the uploading tools available at that
site (if any) or in some versions of FrontPage. For this purpose and others, it can

be very useful to have an FTP program like WS_FTP LE or ___, which will allow
you to upload or download files en masse in a very straightforward way.
7. Learn to Save, Restore, and Edit the Registry.
Like most of the suggestions in this book, this one is optional. Making a mistake
with your Registry can mess up your Windows installation. Then again, so can a
variety of other mistakes. The user who proceeds with some degree of caution
will probably find that a certain basic familiarity with the Registry is a very
useful thing. And while some people may say that Registry editing is only for
experts, the fact is that, with few exceptions, you edit your Registry every time
you install or run a program on Windows. The difference between editing it
yourself and letting some screwball programmer edit your Registry may be that,
in fact, you will do a better job. (If a programs installation files include an INF
file, you can review that for AddReg= and DelReg= lines; those lines will contain
Registry edits that will occur during installation. The bad news is, you probably
wont have any idea whether those edits are advisable.)
In other words, it may be better to make a single Registry edit that will give you
a needed capability than to install a whole program that, you hope, will
accomplish that same purpose. In discussing Registry edits, we do approach the
line where we are making a Windows installation more complex rather than
simpler. It is up to the individual user to read the following paragraphs, learn
how the editing process works and what it can do, and then decide where to
draw that line for his/her own purposes.
The Registry consists of a set of files that lies at the heart of Windows. These files
contain instructions that Windows consults frequently; also, the contents of these
files change frequently while you use Windows. The most significant files in the
Registry are SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT, both of which are stored in the
C:\Windows folder. SYSTEM.DAT, in particular, can be in the range of 5 MB,
which is several times longer than a typical book. Other files that people may or
may not consider part of the Registry include ___.
You can, and before making any changes you should, back up your Registry.
Without ignoring your ordinary backup system, people who speak of a Registry
backup may be talking about what happens when you run the Registry Checker
program included with Windows. You can activate this program in several
ways. At a DOS prompt, you can get its command options by typing SCANREG
/? or, if you are running DOS within Windows (as distinct from Real DOS), you
can go directly to its backup option by typing SCANREGW. Like most DOS
commands, you can also run these options by choosing Start | Run and typing
that same command in the box there. The Registry Checker is also available as

one of the Tools offered through the MSINFO32 program which, like SCANREG,
can be run either from a Windows DOS prompt or from Start | Run.
Windows makes its own frequent backups of the Registry, but you can tell
Windows to make backups whenever you want. You can also change other
aspects of the Registry backup by editing C:\Windows\SCANREG.INI. For one
thing, you can change the number of Registry backups kept, which may be useful
if your system is making backups so frequently that it is overwriting previous
good ones. To restore a Registry backup, you will have to run SCANREG
/RESTORE in Real DOS. SCANREG will see your Registry backup only if (a) that
backup is located in the target directory specified in SCANREG.INI and (b) only
if there are not too many such backups there and (c) only if it bears a standard
Registry backup name like RB001.CAB. You may want to store extraneous
backups in a subdirectory below that target directory.
In a perfect world, you could keep a perfect Registry backup under a name that
will not be overwritten by some later Registry backup, such as RBGOOD1.CAB;
you could make a copy of that perfect backup into a standard name like
RB001.CAB; and when you restored that backup using SCANREG, you would be
back to a system that ran as well as when you first saved that perfect backup. In
this perfect world, you would then store RBGOOD1.CAB in some location away
from drive C, so that you would not lose it if drive C got wiped out.
The real world is a slightly different place. In practice, you probably wont get
much value from Registry backups that didnt grow up together with the
Windows installation to which they refer, so you may as well save your Registry
backups in C:\Windows\SYSBCKUP. That way, if you keep a total backup of
your Windows installation, it will include the Registry backups that are relevant
to it. And while restoring a previous Registry backup can often help a faltering
Windows installation survive another day, you will probably discover that not
even a seemingly perfect Registry backup always works as well the second time
around.
Anyway, when you have finished making a backup of your Registry, you can
proceed to edit it. There are two ways to do this. One is to open the Registry
and edit it directly. This is something like opening a document and editing it in
your favorite word processor. The other option is to run a REG file, which
contains an instruction that will be written to the Registry without requiring you
to open and edit the Registry manually. This is something like running a word
processor macro that opens and changes a file automatically. The REG file
advantage is that, if that file contains valid instructions, it is faster and more
reliable, because it always works the same way. A couple of advantages of this
approach are that it wont pass on any typographical errors and it will let you

automate the process of restoring your favorite settings if you must reinstall
Windows.
You can use REG files created by others, or you can create your own. Some REG
files created by others exist in exactly that form, with a .REG extension. Using
online search tools mentioned in section 2, above (including especially Deja.com),
you can search for files with that extension or containing the word REGEDIT4,
which begins each REG file. When using REG files created by others, make sure
they were created for your version of Windows.
You can also generate REG files on the fly when you use X-Setup in Record
mode. X-Setup is capable of making hundreds of specific adjustments to
Windows. You can capture each of those adjustments separately (which could be
very time-consuming), or you can make them all at once (which means you
wont have the flexibility to decide which ones you want to use. Probably the
best approach lies somewhere between those extremes, taking several passes
with X-Setup to make, first, the most important or obvious changes, or all the
changes pertaining to a particular program.
Note that some X-Setup adjustments involve something other than a
straightforward Registry edit. The resulting REG file will describe those other
steps.
The file might say, for example, that X-Setup has edited
C:\Windows\WIN.INI or some other system file; or it might say that it has
deleted an item from the Registry rather than adding an item. Strictly speaking,
you could automate those steps if you wanted to go to the trouble. You could
use DOS batch commands to alter the system file, and it is indeed possible to
write a REG file to delete an item. To delete a key, add a hyphen just inside the
left bracket; and to delete a value, add a hyphen at the end. Here are examples:
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\URL
History]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\URL
History]
"URL_7"=To create your own REG files, first figure out what you want to do. A quick
search online for Windows Registry tips or tweaks will start you down the
road of finding endless numbers of ways in which you can dress up or revise
your Windows installation. Be careful to choose those that are specifically
designed for your version of Windows.
The tips and tweaks that require Registry edits will frequently provide specific
codes that you can type into the Registry. To be sure that those instructions fit,

you probably should not try to create REG files from scratch. Instead, make the
Registry edit as recommended, and then export the resulting change. To make a
Registry edit, you can run REGEDIT, the Registry editing tool that comes with
Windows, or you can use a third-party Registry editor. To run REGEDIT, just
type it at Start | Run; and to save your change, select the Registry | Export
option. There are many third-party alternatives, including those available at
WinMag, the Norton Registry Editor (if you buy Norton Utilities), and the
freebies ___; these third-party alternatives generally claim to be better, faster, or
safer than REGEDIT in one way or another.
Once youve created your REG files, you can run them (thereby changing the
Registry) just by clicking on them in Windows. You can also run them from
within a DOS batch file. A batch file thus allows you to configure multiple
aspects of your system at once; it also gives you the option of changing the
combination of tweaks that you apply at any given time.
Although we have been speaking here of tips and tweaks in general, this books
focus is on those Registry changes that will increase your systems stability
and/or your ability to recover after a Windows crash.

Chapter ___
Specific Tasks
In other parts of this book, it was not always possible to provide full details on
how to solve a specific problem or perform a particular task. This chapter
provides some of those details.
1. Convert Favorites to a Webpage.
In chapter 1, section 1, we saw a practical example of a problem in which it might
be useful to combine multiple tools. Lets say you have a large set of Favorites
saved in Internet Explorer. You would like to put them onto a webpage so they
are no longer vulnerable when you have to wipe out your C drive and reinstall
Windows. How do you do this?
The discussion in chapter 1 suggested two different ways of displaying Favorites:
either show them as a simple list, or add comments and details. Lets assume we
have the latter goal here. Lets also assume that we would like to organize and
automate the whole process to the extent possible. That is, we want a solution
that will not require us to cut and paste each Favorite manually into a webpage.
The question then becomes, how can we automate the production of HTML code
from these Favorites?
A good first step is to find out whether someone else has already written a
program to solve this problem and has posted it at a download site. (See chapter
___, section ___.) In this case, lets say you have searched and found nothing
with the features and price you would prefer.
Lets begin, then, with the task of converting the Favorites to another format.
Each Favorite is actually a URL file composed of plain ASCII characters. ASCII
text contains no formatting codes, and is thus readable in virtually any
Windows-based editor, including WordPad, Notepad, and EDIT. You can also
display the contents of a plain ASCII file by typing this command at a DOS
prompt: TYPE <filename> where the filename may be abbreviated. Example:
if I type DIR at a DOS prompt and see a list of files including WELCOM~1.URL
(which might be short for a Favorite called Welcome to Peters Homepage), I
can see the contents of that file by typing TYPE WELCOM~1.URL. (Note that
C:\Windows\Favorites is a hidden folder. To see its contents in DOS, use DIR
/AD or simply switch to it (example: CD \WINDOWS\FAVORITES).)
Since the contents of the Favorite (URL) file are in plain ASCII, we can use
several different approaches to extract those contents and put them into a
different format. Given our goal of automating the process, lets not use the

approach of using an editor, opening each URL file, and extracting its contents
manually. Instead, lets take advantage of the fact that you can concatenate (i.e.,
combine) plain ASCII files with a simple DOS command like this: COPY *.URL
CONCAT.TXT. Since the asterisk serves as a wildcard, that command combines
the contents of all URL files into one file called CONCAT.TXT, located in the same
folder as the URL files. (Note: as always, rather than work on your original set
of Favorites, and risk making an error that could delete or ruin them, you might
want to copy them all to a working folder somewhere, and work on the copies.
A quick way of doing this, even if they are in separate subfolders, is to use the
Find function in Windows to search for all *.URL files on all disks, and then copy
them from the Find screen to your target folder.)
As you will see, the first problem with using the COPY command just suggested
is that CONCAT.TXT contains extraneous stuff. To get rid of that clutter, we can
use two special symbols in DOS: the pipe (that is, the | character) and the
redirect (in this case, the > symbol). That very nearly exhausts the DOS supply
of special characters. As I say, DOS is relatively simple!
How can we use these symbols here? If you type HELP FIND or FIND /? at
the DOS prompt or look at an online DOS command reference regarding
pipes, we might conclude that we can filter out the unnecessary stuff by using
these three commands:
TYPE CONCAT.TXT | FIND /V /I "BASEURL=" > CONCAT.TXT
TYPE CONCAT.TXT | FIND /V /I "ORIGURL=" > CONCAT.TXT
TYPE CONCAT.TXT | FIND /I "URL=" > CONCAT.TXT
The first two TYPE commands save everything back into CONCAT.TXT except the
lines that contains the useful (but, for our purposes, unnecessary and potentially
confusing) BASEURL and ORIGURL lines. Then the third TYPE command saves
only the line containing the URL itself. Now if we type TYPE CONCAT.TXT, we
see that CONCAT.TXT contains nothing but those URLs.
This raises a new problem: we dont have the nice English name (e.g., Help
Site) that explains what the link (e.g., http://www.help.com) is. That
explanation appears in the name of the URL file, not in its contents. You can see
that filename (in its long, Windows version, not the short DOS version) by typing
DIR *.URL /B. You can save the list of filenames to a file by typing that same
command but sending the output to the file, like this: DIR *.URL /B >
FILELIST.TXT.
Now the long filenames are in FILELIST.TXT and the URLs are in
CONCAT.TXT. Fortunately, DOS processes these commands in the same order in
both cases, so you can import both text files separately into Excel (using the Files

| Open option and setting the File Type to be Text Files or All Files), or open
them in Word. Either way, you can then cut and paste the two files contents
into adjacent columns. (If you use the Word approach, use legal size paper
landscape settings with tiny fonts so that long URLs fit on one line.) Finally,
clean up the URL column by removing URL= from the start of each cell. You
can use a Word macro or an Excel formula to do this. An example of an Excel
formula for this purpose, assuming your list is in column A, would be an entry in
column B using the MID function, like this: =MID(A1,5,LEN(A1)). Finally, if
you use a formula like that, remove its dependence on the adjacent column by
using Edit | Copy and then Edit | Paste Special.
Remember, we have deliberately chosen to apply a quick and dirty solution,
making the most of our existing programs with a relatively small addition to our
knowledge, rather than learning a whole programming language or buying a
specialized program to perform this little task. Whenever using this sort of
solution, you should double-check that the names and URLs line up correctly,
and verify that the thing is working as you intend. If one list is incomplete,
check to see if the process is stopping with a file whose name contains an
unusual character, such as the rights reserved (R in a circle) character. If so,
delete that character from the filename. Also delete strange starting characters
that will keep the item from alphabetizing properly. Then try again.
To finish automating this part of the project, we can create a plain text file with a
BAT extension, with a name like FAV2URL.BAT , to combine each of the
command lines shown above. (You might want to precede it with two lines to
clear the way for CONCAT.TXT and FILELIST.TXT, like this: IF EXIST
CONCAT.TXT DEL CONCAT.TXT, just to make sure that preexisting files dont
confuse the issue. Another starting line might be simply ECHO OFF, to reduce
the amount of noisy information the program sends to your video screen.)
Once we have that, typing FAV2URL at a DOS prompt will run the program
through all its steps. Note: FAV2URL.BAT, like all DOS batch files, will not run
unless it is in the same folder as the files it is working on. The frequently used
exception is to put the batch file in some other folder and specify that folder with
a PATH statement. You can check out PATH in more detail in an online guide to
DOS, or by typing HELP PATH at the DOS prompt. The brief idea is that, if you
type PATH at a DOS prompt, you can see where the system is now looking for its
instructions. If you put FAV2URL.BAT in one of the directories shown at that
PATH statement, it will run without having to be present in the folder containing
the batch files.
You are now all set to create a spreadsheet or database containing not only these
two fields (Website Name and URL) but also other fields for Website Category,

Comments, Date Last Checked, or whatever appeals to you. You can also use
your spreadsheet or database to identify and eliminate duplicates and to
standardize the titles you use for your favorite links. (One way to use a
spreadsheet for this purpose is to add a formula in an adjacent column that
compares a cell to the one above it, after sorting; the formula can show an X if the
two are identical, and can show nothing if they are not.) To generate categories
automatically, it might help to save the Website Name column as a separate
spreadsheet in Space Delimited form, so as to separate each of the words used,
and then do some sorting and counting of words to come up with a list of
keywords that you can use to identify Favorites relating to e.g., your Computers
heading.
The final step is to convert these materials into HTML code for insertion into a
webpage. (HTML codes ordinarily appear inside of angle brackets, also known
as greater than and less than symbols. An example is </a>.) In a
spreadsheet, you can use text manipulation formulas, or in a word processor,
you can use macros, to combine the title of the Favorite with its URL to form a
link. (Again, save your work at this point, before making this change, so that
you will still have your database with separate fields for the title and the URL.)
A finished example, including HTML codes, might look like this:
<a href="http://www.health.com">Health Page</a>
For instance, in an Excel spreadsheet, if the title (Health Page) is in column A
and the URL is in column B, a sample formula in column C to combine the two
might be ="<a href='"&B2&"'>"&A2&"</a>" using a single quote instead
of a double quote [how do you enter a quotation mark in Excel????___], taking
care not to let Excel convert your quotation marks to smart quotes, which are not
pure ASCII.
Since Word and Excel may treat this sort of thing as a finished link, rather than as
raw HTML code, you might find it easier to paste the results into WordPad and
copy from there to the program you are using to create webpages -- especially
since Word can mess things up by converting your regular quotes to smart
quotes, which are not ASCII characters, if you have smart quotes enabled.
Before going to a lot of trouble to comment on and organize Favorites to defunct
websites, you might try pasting your finished HTML links into a webpage and
running the link-checking feature of FrontPage (or of a freebie like ___) to
identify and eliminate dead links. Finally, you might decide to present your
Favorites in a table or as a merged word processor document.
2. Convert a Webpage to Favorites.

Suppose someone has the opposite problem. They have an HTML page
containing links, and they would like to extract each of those links as a distinct
Favorite. How can they do this with readily available tools?
As the foregoing discussion implies, an HTML page is written in ASCII text.
That is, if you use TYPE or a DOS editor like EDIT, you will see no weird
characters -- nothing beyond the ordinary HTML code described above. This
means that, if you have multiple HTML pages whose links you would like to
handle all at once, you can start by concatenating them into one large
CONCAT.TXT file, using the same method as before: COPY *.HTM CONCAT.TXT.
(Again, you should be working on copies, not on your original files, and you
should be working in an otherwise empty folder to avoid unnecessary confusion
and damage to other programs or data.)
Unlike before, however, the lines in this CONCAT.TXT will break (i.e., end) at
unpredictable locations. One solution proceeds as follows:
1. Open CONCAT.TXT in Word or some other word processor capable of
recognizing line-break characters. In Word, the Enter character is the ^p
character. (In some documents, but not this one, you may need to look for the
line-break character ^l.) Search for that character followed by a space, and
replace it with just that character -- in other words, remove all spaces beginning a
line. Re-run this search until theyre all gone. Do the same for ^p preceded by a
space, to eliminate all line-ending spaces. When all line-starting and line-ending
spaces are removed, search for all instances of ^p< (that is, of lines that begin
with a < symbol) and replace them with @# @ or some other set of characters that
does not appear anywhere else in the document. (Search first to be sure.) Now
search for all remaining instances of ^p. These are the instances where text is
carrying over from a previous line -- that is, standard HTML lines all begin with
< symbols. Replace these ^p occurrences with a plain old space. Now replace
@# @ (or whatever) with <^p. This will give you regular lines that all begin with
< except where Word wraps overly long lines. (Word wraps, as distinct from
line breaks, are not a problem.) If you import the file into Excel at this point,
Excel will interpret it as a webpage and will not display the ugly source code we
desire. To prevent this, replace all occurrences of < with a set of symbols that
does not otherwise appear in the document (e.g., @# @ ). Now save and close the
file. Be sure to save it in pure text mode, without any Word formatting.
2. Open CONCAT.TXT in Excel. Be sure to indicate, in the Files of Type box,
that you are looking for Text files. This will take you to the Text Import Wizard.
Choose Delimited and Tab, because if all has gone well there should not be any
tabs in this file. Your results will appear in column A. Do a search and replace
to convert your special characters (e.g., @# @) back to the < symbol. Do

additional searches to replace each of the following HTML codes with nothing at
all: <b>, </b>, <u>, </u>, <i>, </i>, and <br>. Then, in cell B1, put this
formula:
=FIND("a href=",A1).
In cell C1, put this formula:
=MID(A1,B1,LEN(A1))&"</a>".
In cell D1, put this formula:
=FIND("</a>",C1)+3. In cell E1, put this formula: ="<"&MID(C1,1,D1).
Finally, in cell F1, put this formula: =FIND("://",E1) and copy these
formulas down from cells B1 through F1 down to every row in the spreadsheet.
Make the cell entries independent and permanent by selecting the entire
spreadsheet, going to cell A1, and using Edit | Copy and then Edit | Paste
Special | Values. Sort on column C. (Unless otherwise specified, all sorts are in
ascending order.) Delete all rows whose column C entry says # VALUE!
because, as inspection will probably show, these rows are very unlikely to
contain anything that could be a URL. (You will probably want to widen your
columns so that you can see their contents.) Now sort on column E, and inspect
the rows at the top and bottom of the spreadsheet whose column F entry says
# VALUE! In most cases, these rows can be deleted because their URLs will
mean nothing without the context of the webpages in which they were originally
located. Unless you know you want to keep links to HTML files on your
computer, you can probably also delete rows whose column E entries refer to
file:///; and if you want to preserve e-mail addresses that you might have
saved as Favorites, you may not want to delete the ones at the bottom that refer
to a mailto: address. You may also see some at the top or bottom of the
spreadsheet that have been saved as simply www entries; these may work fine
if you add http:// to them. When you are finished, delete all columns except
column E.
You now have the set of URLs that you have extracted from those HTML pages.
If you would merely like to add these URLs to your database of Favorites (see
section 1, above), your work is nearly done. For that purpose, you should write
formulas, like those in the previous paragraph, to separate the URL and the
descriptive name of the Favorite into separate columns, which you can later
combine as shown in section 1.
On the other hand, if you need to go further and produce individual Favorites
for each of these URLs, you can choose manual or automated approaches. One
manual approach is to use a batch file that will open all of your Favorite
websites, one after another. For an example of such a batch file, see section 3.
When that batch file has finished running, you can use the back arrow and the
Add to Favorites option in Internet Explorer to add all of these links manually,
one after another, to your collection of Favorites. You might also use this
technique to open up your Favorite sites in order, so that you can then go down
the list in your Favorites database and add comments, comparing the website

displayed in your Internet Explorer window against the title and URL shown in
your database window.
A more automated solution to the task of producing Favorites from your
database is to put the Favorites names and URLs into a word processing merge
data file, merge them into entries that look like the contents of a URL file, and
then write a macro that will save those contents under the given name. An
example of the merged output might look like this:
Health Page
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.health.com
Modified=6014C71BE561BF015C
Your macro would thus move this out of the merged file to a separate new
document, cut Health Page from the top line, delete that line altogether, paste
Health Page into the file name box, save the file, and return to the top of the
merged document. If Word insists on saving it as a TXT file rather than a URL,
you can download and install PC Magazines free MultiRen (Multiple Rename)
utility to rename your files en masse after you have finished, or you can just use
the DOS command REN *.TXT *.URL to rename them all at once. [Try this
and make sure it works.]
3. Open a Series of Websites All At Once.
Sections 1 and 2 explain how to get a list of URLs. You can copy that list into a
WordPad document, save it as text only with a BAT extension (for example,
URLS.BAT), reopen it with the WordPad option set to No Wrap to verify that
each line begins with something like http:// and then use a merge or a searchand-replace to convert it to a batch file that looks like this:
start c:\progra~1\micros~2\intern~1\iexplore.exe
start /max http://www.altavista.com
Save that as a text file (without Word formatting commands) with a BAT
extension and you can run it by double-clicking on it in Windows Explorer.
If you want each website to open in a separate session of Internet Explorer, then
repeat
both
of
these
lines
for
each
URL,
replacing
http://www.altavista.com with your other URLs by using search-andreplace or a merge. Warning: you wont get too far in this approach before your
system runs out of memory, because each Internet Explorer session takes RAM.
Alternately, you can use the first line just once, and then run a whole series of
lines like start /max http://www.altavista.com for each of your URLs.

In this approach, after the batch file has completed running (which may take a
while), you can then use Internet Explorers back arrow to visit them in reverse
order, one after another. You can use a similar approach to run shortcuts that
refer to individual URLs, except then you may want to download and use
Cottonwood Softwares Delayer utility to give each PIF (i.e., shortcut) file the
time it needs to run properly.
In the two-line example just shown, the first line assumes that your copy of
Internet Explorer (i.e., IEXPLORE.EXE) is located at the folder with this DOS
pathname: c:\progra~1\micros~2\intern~1\. If that doesnt seem to be
working, right-click on the icon that you normally click on to start Internet
Explorer, choose Properties | Shortcut, and copy the full name of the Target,
including quotation marks. Windows DOS (as distinct from real DOS -- see the
Glossary) will run DOS commands just fine if they contain long pathnames in
quotation marks, like this one you have just copied. So you can paste that into
the batch file instead of the short pathname just shown.

You can put your Favorites webpages on your Links Toolbar (in Windows
and/or in Internet Explorer), if you have that toolbar turned on, and you can
change the Properties of each of these links to display a unique icon. For
example, you might use an icon of an apple to refer to your Health web links
page.
backup includes uploading files to a file-storage website
As noted above, we will later discuss the ways in which a separate hard disk and
a good backup system can help. Yet a backup system can sometimes be
surprisingly irrelevant. Lets say, for instance, that you have a problem with
Windows, you have tried everything to fix it, and everyone is advising you that
you have no alternative but to reinstall it from scratch. So you do that. Then you
realize that when you reinstalled Windows, you wiped out all of your DOS batch
files, your settings for Outlook and Microsoft Office, your Favorites, and all those
other program configurations. For some programs, reconfiguration could take

hours. Well, you think to yourself, no problem: Ill just get those settings and
other materials from the backup. But where, exactly, will you look for them?
Most people really are not too sure where to begin on a project like that. So will
they reinstall the defective version just to go prowling around in it (assuming
this is possible), hoping to find the configuration information that they cannot or
should not have to reinvent from scratch?
Let there be no doubt: backup is important. The message here is simply not to
trust magic-bullet solutions. If you have important data, dont just assume that a
backup program will take care of it. Instead, make sure it is available when and
where you need it. Do back it up, but dont bury that backup in a failed
Windows installation that you have no intention of reinstalling and using.
Instead, set up a folder for just this purpose, and keep a special, easily available
backup of that folder. I call mine ReloProg, which is short for Relocated
Programs. This folder will contain all kinds of stuff that will make it much easier
to reinstall and reconfigure Windows and your preferred programs. For starters,
it should contain a copy of your Favorites.
Of course, many peoples Favorites change constantly, and they may not want to
keep making backup copies. Fortunately, this is something that you can
automate. The task of making an offline backup of your ReloProg folder
depends on your decisions about backup, but at least the system can take care of
the part that involves copying your Favorites folder to your ReloProg folder.
Appendix ___ contains a DOS batch file for this purpose.
WinRescue may be an alternative to GoBack.

2. [Perl for the same thing]

************************************************

Under each of the following headings, you will find references to corresponding
sections of the document entitled, An Index to Information on Installing
Windows 98. Those sections, in turn, contain references to specific paragraphs
in the Epic that contain much more detail on relevant topics.

Part One: Basic Windows 98 Installation

For more information see the following Index sections:
Before Turning the Computer On: A Few Fundamental Hardware Issues
Turning on the Computer: What You Notice Before Windows
Setting Up Your Hard Disk Before Installing Windows
Recommended Hard Disk Partitions for Win98
The Win98 Core
Win98 Modes
Files and Folders

There is a vast difference between having a simple Win98 installation and having
one that you can actually use for the many things that people want from their
computers nowadays. Installing Win98 can mean something very simple, if you
want a computer that just sits there. The following paragraphs give you that.
I.1. Save Your Existing Information. I dont just mean your data. You may need
drivers and other files from your existing program setup. You may also need
your password that allows you to log in to your Internet Service Provider
(ISP), and all kinds of other stuff that youve been taking for granted. One way
to keep drivers and other files handy is to have another computer already
running Win98 and/or your existing setup, from which you can copy stuff by
floppy disk and, eventually, by network connection. Another way is to have a
second Hard Disk to which you can copy everything that now exists on your first
hard disk. (If you dont have a second hard disk, you might think about getting
one. It doesnt have to be especially huge or fast, although thats always nice.
Right now, the second hard disk will give you a place to store the stuff from
drive C, but you will begin to see many other ways in which that second drive
can make things much easier.) This is entirely different from the question of
Backup, which you should have in a separate place, not on your computer.
I.2. Install Windows 98 Temporarily. If you already have DOS on your system
or have a Bootable Floppy disk, and can access your CD after booting from that
floppy, and also have a floppy containing FDISK and FORMAT, you may not
need to do this. Otherwise, you might want to run through a quick installation
of Win98 onto drive C. There are four reasons:

(a) Temporary installation will let you create a Bootable Floppy startup disk,
referred to here as the Win98 Emergency Boot Disk. That disk will enable you to
start your system. If you do boot your system with it, it will also create a
temporary RAM Drive and will load programs into that RAM drive. You may
want to copy some of these programs to another floppy disk -- in particular,
FDISK and FORMAT -- if you dont already have them on a floppy. If your
system fails to boot from the floppy drive, check your BIOS Setup and make sure
youre using a boot sequence that begins with drive A.
(b) Once you have a working version of Windows, you can install a temporary
version of PartitionMagic. That will let you create a PartitionMagic floppy. I
suggest doing the same with DriveImage.
(c) This will give you an easy way to copy over the \WIN98 folder from the CD
to your secondary Hard Disk. This anticipates step 5. You may find it very
useful to do this through Win98 if you are having any problems accessing your
CD-ROM Drive when youre in DOS.
(d) If you dont have a disk scanning utility (e.g., ScanDisk or Norton Disk
Doctor), this will give you a chance to copy ScanDisk.exe from
C:\Windows\Command to a floppy disk, just in case your Hard Disk acts up.
I.3. Start Over: Create Clean Partitions. Having more than one Hard Disk will
allow you to move your data back and forth from one to the other while creating
the following partitions, if youre using FDISK. Alternatively, using
PartitionMagic may make that unnecessary, since PartitionMagic can generally
create and manipulate Win98 partitions without disturbing the data on them.
Having more than one hard disk will also make some file transfers significantly
faster.
To simplify the following discussion, I assume that you have two hard disks, and
that they are large enough to accommodate the following partitions:
Master Hard Disk
Drive C: PROGRAMS: at least 1,500 MB: holds Win98 and other program files.
Drive D: STATIC: purpose described below: minimum of 400 MB.
Drive E: GOBACK: purpose described below: perhaps 15-25% of total primary
disk size.
Drive F: DATA: should allow at least 2 GB of free space plus existing data files.
Slave Hard Disk

Drive G: MM: multimedia files: at least several GB free plus existing

multimedia files.
Drive H: BURNING: temporary holding space for materials being burned onto
CD: 750 MB.
Drive I: SWAP: purposes described below: can range from 200 MB to several
GB.
You might enjoy additional improvements in Performance if you put the SWAP
drive on a third hard disk, assuming your power supply can handle it. (If you
start getting occasional problems that you werent getting before, the answer
may be no.) Note, however, that in an IDE system (which is what most PCs use)
you are limited to four devices (a primary and secondary master and slave). This
Partition arrangement assumes you will be using a CD Burner -- that is, a CDROM Drive capable of burning data onto blank CDs; the CD Burner will count as
one of those four devices.
After using FDISK, use FORMAT to make your partitions ready for action.
FDISK is an ugly, black-and-white thing, but its not too complicated; just pay
attention and be very precise in what you do with it, because it can wipe out
everything in no time. In any event, drive C should be the only primary
partition. Otherwise, DOS and Windows may disagree on where drive D and
other drives are located.
If you get partway through installation and cancel out, use FORMAT to wipe off
drive C and start over. Wipe off drive C even if youre using the Win98 Upgrade
CD, because the previous version of Windows (i.e., Windows 3.1 or Win95) can
cause problems later if you leave it there. But again, do be sure, before deleting
that previous version, that you have the previous version of Windows on the
other hard disk or on a floppy or CD somewhere, in case you need some
program files from it.
I.4. Lay a Solid Foundation: Make Sure the Hard Disk Is Good. Win98 comes
with a ScanDisk program that may find and fix problems on the disk. Norton
Disk Doctor seems to be a more thorough product, and is a major exception to
my general dislike of Norton software -- especially when I run it from the floppy
disk that different versions of Norton Utilities creates, or allows me to create
during installation. You should run one of these disk scanning programs before
going to all the trouble of developing a complete Win98 system, so that you
dont discover too late that your bad Hard Disk has trashed everything and you
have to start over.
I.5. Install Windows 98 from Drive D. Drive C will contain your Win98 program
files, but you dont want to install them onto drive C directly from the Win98

CD. Rather, you want to copy them from the CD to drive D, and then install
from drive D to drive C. This method tells your system where to find Win98
program files that were originally on the CD, any time it needs them, and you
wont have to locate and load the Win98 CD every time the system thinks it
needs to copy something from it. These files go onto drive D because that
partition will be devoted to never-changing installation files that will not require
Defragmenting, Backup, or otherwise tinkering with every day. (They will be in
stasis -- hence the name STATIC.)
Drive D doesnt require the full contents of the Win98 CD; it just needs the
contents of the WIN98 folder from the Win98 CD. I have done the installation
without any of the subfolders under that WIN98 folder, but recently I have made
AT&T my ISP, and therefore have preserved the OLS\AT_T subfolder (where I
assume OLS stands for On Line Services). You can use the DOS XCOPY
command to move these contents over from the CD or your secondary hard disk.
(See step 2.) Net result: you should have a folder called D:\WIN98; that folder
should contain a SETUP program; you should be able to run that program by
typing SETUP at the command line from within that folder in DOS; and this
should begin the Win98 installation process.
If youre using the Win98 Upgrade CD, the installation process will ask for
evidence that you had Windows 95 or some other qualifying product. If you
want, you can probably pass through that question by pointing to a D:\WIN95
folder containing the 34 MB worth of files that you could optionally copy over to
drive D from the Windows 95 CD. (It works even if the Win95 CD is just an
upgrade CD.)
Finally, although it is a matter of preference, I install almost every program listed
on the Win98 custom installation option, the exceptions being WebTV (which
apparently doesnt work so well) and Multilanguage Support (which I am fairly
sure I will never need). My rationale is that I would rather have all the programs
installed now than have to install them in dribs and drabs later for in order to
accommodate some program that I didnt originally expect to need. Note that
we are not configuring or customizing anything at all right now. Doing so could
make things very confused later. There will be time for customization -- indeed,
customization is what this is all about -- but not yet.

Part Two: Install the Crucial Utilities

For more information see the following Index sections:
Essential Utilities
Backup

II.1. Install GoBack. This program allows you to take your computer back to a
time in the past -- minutes or hours ago -- when things were working better. The
Epic describes some problems with this program; nevertheless, at this stage it is
essential. It can save you literally days of re-re-reinstallation. If it doesnt start
up when you insert the CD, run Windows Explorer and double-click on the CDs
SETUP file. During installation, use the custom install option and tell GoBack to
use the entire space on drive E (well, all but 11 MB) as the place where it stores
its history. (GoBack tracks events on each hard disk separately, and must store
its information somewhere on the disk that it is tracking.) Also, to help tame the
crazy proliferation of folders in your C:\Program Files folder, you might want to
tell it to install its files in C:\Program Files\Disk Utilities\Wild File\GoBack.
You can then steer other disk-related programs so that they, too, will install in
that Disk Utilities subfolder. In the case of the PENTIUM computer on which I
was first setting this up, my second Hard Disk was just a puny little 1 GB thing
on which I planned to store no important data, so I chose none as the place to
store GoBack data for that second Hard Disk. GoBack can remember anywhere
from a few hours to many weeks, depending on how much space you have
allocated for it and how much file changing your system has experienced (i.e.,
how much GoBack must track). You may want to keep the GoBack log open and
insert notes as youre going along to clarify what youre doing now (e.g.,
Installing NAV). GoBack is not bulletproof, so dont rely on it exclusively, but
it can be very helpful.
As an alternative to GoBack, you can use Test-Run (free) to create a test version
of your Registry before installing a new program. The problem, in both cases, is
that problems with new programs, and with the Registry, can take too long to
crop up, although certainly this could be helpful at least for programs that are
obviously flawed. Another protection against that latter problem, however, is
just to use programs that come highly recommended.

II.2. Install AntiVirus Software. I have gone back to using Norton AntiVirus
2000 because McAfee wasnt updating itself properly. Either way, you need to
have some antivirus software installed. This is the one exception to the rule of
installing really solid software first. I have tried to avoid Norton software
because it provokes crashes, but using NAV 2000 is much safer than having a
virus on your system. Once youve installed your antivirus software, use its
update feature to get the latest updates. The leading antivirus software
producers update their software quite frequently; it is almost certain that the
version loaded from your CD or floppy disk wont protect you against the latest
viruses. If you install Norton AntiVirus, I suggest installing it in C:\Program
Files\Symantec\Norton AntiVirus. You may have to use Windows Explorer to

create that folder before installing; my version of NAV 2000 has the brain-dead
inability to create a new folder during installation.
II.3. Go Online and Download the Windows 98 Upgrades. This is not a crucial
utility; it is just the tail end of Part One. Experience suggests postponing it until
after youve installed GoBack and antivirus software, so as to reduce the risk of
losing hours worth of downloads.
To go online, Windows should provide you with an option to enter the Internet
Connection Wizard. If you have an option as to where to install the program
files for your Internet Service Provider (ISP), choose C:\Program
Files\Internet\<ISPname> where <ISPname> is the short name of your ISP.
Hopefully the information you have saved from your old Win98 installation
includes the username, password, and phone number that you use to access your
account at your ISP. Note that the installation process may insert the wrong
username here. You may also have to set up your Modem. See below for more
information on hardware problems.
When you can get online, you can begin downloading. Youll find the download
site at the Windows Update option available under the Start Button. Youll have
fewer things to download if you start with Windows 98 Second Edition, but
youll still have to do some downloading even with Win98SE. If you dont have
Second Edition, the downloads will give you most of it anyway by the time
youre done. At the Windows Update page, click on Product Updates.
Presently, the best way to proceed here may be to skip through all the other
download options and begin with Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Tools.
Its not listed as a Critical Update, but once its on your system, the list of critical
updates will change. No point updating older versions of Internet Explorer that
IE 5.01 will be replacing. Use the Advanced button to download components
now and install later, so that you dont have to re-download if the installation
doesnt work out. These, too, can go onto drive D, in a folder called
D:\Windows Update Setup Files. Once youve downloaded them, click on the
IE5SETUP file to run them. If you forget which items youve installed, IE5SETUP
will show the already installed ones in bold print. Then go back to the Windows
Update site until youve downloaded everything that fits your system.
II.4. DriveImage. Having done a bunch of work to install Win98 and download
its updates, we should make a Backup. DriveImage (or another similar program,
Norton Ghost, which I have not used much) allows you to take a snapshot of an
entire partition and store it in a Disk Image File. Unlike some backup programs,
DriveImage restores your system exactly like it was. This PowerQuest product,
like PartitionMagic, allows you to create a floppy during installation; and like
before, it runs in Real DOS. If the Mouse is not working properly, run the

accompanying mouse program first. Note that DriveImage and PartitionMagic

are not compatible with GoBack. To make a Disk Image File in DriveImage, you
must first disable GoBack, and that wipes out your GoBack history. So if youre
planning to use GoBack to roll your system back in time, do that before using
DriveImage. (You disable GoBack by double-clicking on the Icon in the System
Tray and then choosing Options | Disable GoBack.) (Note that I use the vertical
bar | symbol to divide separate steps in a process. Other people sometimes use
other symbols, such as -->.) If you installed a temporary version of DriveImage
as suggested above, you can now use the floppy rather than reinstalling the
program, and even the floppy will soon be unnecessary.
II.5. PowerDesk. The only thing making this program (or something like it)
crucial right now is the ability to UNZIP compressed files, which you will need
in order to handle important downloads. I might point out that PowerDesk does
have many other abilities as well -- enough, perhaps, to justify its purchase price,
at least if you would rather avoid the hassle of researching and collecting the
various Freeware programs that would be needed to replace it (assuming there
are Freeware programs offering all those functions, which I dont know to be the
case). If you install this program or something like it, you might want to install it
into a new Disk Utilities folder (i.e., C:\Program Files\Disk
Utilities\PowerDesk); youll be using that new folder for numerous other things
eventually. Depending on the version of PowerDesk you are using, you may
find an upgrade on the manufacturers website; it may be accessible through the
programs Help option. Finally, you may want to obtain and install the DES
Encryption Enabler floppy, which was optional with my version.
II.6. Adobe Acrobat Reader. Dont go hunting for this thing; it will find you. Its
just a program that enables you to read PDF files, which includes the users
manuals for many different kinds of software and hardware. When you do
install it, now or later, I suggest installing it in C:\Program
Files\Graphics\Adobe\Acrobat Reader. If you get a chance to upgrade it, do so;
the later versions are better.

Part Three: Set Up the Hardware

For more information see the following Index sections:
Initial Tweaks and Hardware Problems
Network
Backup
We have now set up a basic framework that will allow us to begin shaping the
Win98 environment to fit our needs. The following suggestions are certainly not

the only way to do it, but if you work carefully through these steps, you will pick
up some good ideas that you can then use for other purposes.
III.1. Adjust Recycle Bin. Right-click on this Desktop icon and choose Properties
| Configure drives independently. Click the Do not move files to the Recycle
Bin box for all drives except C (PROGRAMS) and F (DATA). The Recycle Bin
isnt necessary and/or causes problems on the other drives. For example, when
working with Audio files, the Recycle Bin can pop up irritating messages telling
you that your disk is full when its not. If this leaves you without protection on a
key drive -- for example, if you want protection on your Multimedia partition -then you might consider using a customized Backup approach (e.g., doing as
much of your work as possible on CD-RW disks) or allowing huge amounts of
space so you can enable GoBack on your second hard drive.
III.2. Create Temp Folders. You will find it useful to have TEMP folders to serve
as temporary storage locations for files that you dont know what to do with.
The easiest approach, for now, is to create one on each partition except E
(GOBACK). Consider the TEMP folder on drive F (DATA) to be your primary
location for downloads and other transient files; this is a good location because
GoBack and the Recycle Bin will cover it. Create a folder called
F:\Temp\Staging Area. This will be the place to which you unzip the contents
of zipped programs. Keep it empty except for the file you are currently
unzipping. Keep copies of the ZIP files before you unzip them; youll be
surprised at how frequently you need them again. You might put them in a
folder called F:\Temp\Downloads, and then burn them off to a CD when youve
got 500 or 600 MB worth of them.
III.3. Make Control Panel Accessible. You will be going into Control Panel many
times before youre through. This particular tweak is important only in the sense
that it can help reduce your frustration. Control Panel is now going to be one of
the top-level picks on the Start Menu. To make the change, create a new folder
and give it exactly this name: Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD08002B30309D}, without the comma. (For best results, copy and paste that
number rather than typing it.) That will create a Control Panel folder. Move it to
C:\Windows\Start Menu.
III.4. Make Device Manager Accessible. For similar reasons, Device Manager
needs to come out from being buried down in Control Panel | System. For now,
it will be a Desktop icon. Right-click on the Desktop and choose New | Shortcut.
Type C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE SYSDM.CPL,,1 and click Next. Name it
Device Manager. Right-click on it and choose Properties | Change Icon. Handy
sources of icons include these files: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHELL32.DLL,
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\PIFMGR.DLL, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\URL.DLL,

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\COOL.DLL, C:\WINDOWS\MORICONS.DLL, and

C:\WINDOWS\PROGMAN.EXE.
III.5. Resolve Basic Hardware Problems. Install drivers recommended by your
motherboard manufacturer, perhaps downloaded from their website. Go into
Device Manager and look for Exceptions -- yellow circles with black exclamation
marks in them. Select one of them and look at its Properties for an indication of
what needs to be fixed. It may just be a matter of installing Drivers for some
items. They may be available on disks you have lying around, or you may find
them online. (If you browse, note that the OK button will only light up when
youre pointing at a directory that contains potentially useful drivers.) Many
items of hardware require drivers, including the Motherboard, and sometimes
the latest driver can make all the difference. You can also search for drivers in
the C:\Windows\INF Folder, or perhaps its subfolders. (Its a hidden folder, so
you cant browse to it at present; youll have to type it in. Well be changing that
soon.) If that fails, try the Microsoft Windows Update option. You may have to
screw around with various combinations of installing and uninstalling part or all
of the conceivably available and relevant software, reading the owners manual
and other sources of documentation, upgrading your BIOS, changing different
BIOS Setup items to accommodate Legacy rather than Plug-N-Play, using Add
New Hardware, Cold Rebooting, deleting items from Device Manager, editing
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, rearranging Cards in different slots,
removing suspect items of hardware to confirm whether the system works right
without them, playing around with IRQs, retrying whatever you are doing in
common-sense order and also in bass-ackwards order, random order, no order,
etc. Experience suggests the following:

When I buy ultra-cheap hardware, I pay for it in hours of extra installation

and configuration time, sometimes continuing for the life of the product.
The more extreme the suggested solution, the less likely it is to be helpful.
The longer you fool around, the more it proves that youre missing the real
problem. Sometimes advice from the manufacturer or a Newsgroup may be
your only salvation.
Its probably wiser to resolve your hardware problems at this point if you
can, or else you can just forge ahead, ignore the problems you cant figure
out, and expect to be suitably punished later.
Sometimes the most satisfying solution is just to throw away the offending
hardware, buy a replacement, and write a pissed-off letter to the
manufacturer when you finally get your word processor working again.

Note that this part of the process can take days. The Epic contains agonizing
details on some hardware problems. If youre cursed with old or complex

hardware or a recalcitrant system, you may have to spend a lot of time hunting
for the solutions.
III.6. Set Monitor Resolution. Go into Control Panel and set your Monitor to
display a resolution of at least 800 x 600. You may have to install the software
that came with your Display Adapter first. Mine, on one computer, was for a
Matrox card; I installed it in C:\Program Files\Graphics\Matrox. If you dont
change your resolution, browsing websites for important information will
become frustrating as you scroll back and forth, trying to figure out what theyre
saying.
III.7. Set Up Hardware Profile. This is essential if you will be using more than
one computer, and its worth knowing how to do even if you have only one. Go
into Control Panel | System | Hardware Profiles and rename the existing profile.
I did this setup on a computer that I call the PENTIUM machine, so I named my
profile PENTIUM. In Device Manager | Properties, uncheck the box that reads
Exists in all hardware profiles for items that will be unique to that hardware
profile -- that is, that dont exist on all of your machines.
III.8. Install Printer. This will be essential if you need to print program-related
information at one point or another during this process. Do it under Control
Panel | Printers | Add a Printer. Printers are usually connected to LPT1.
III.9. Set Up Network. If you have two computers, make sure they are talking to
each other. A couple of network cards will cost you less than $50, and a network
is an extremely helpful device. After installing Cards and Drivers, you have to
make sure each computer has a unique name under the Control Panel | Network
| Identification tab. You also need Shared Folders -- the fewer the better, for
purposes of keeping your files secure when you go online. I recommend
F:\Temp\Shared for this purpose, to emphasize that it is merely a temporary
clearinghouse. After creating the folder, go into Control Panel | Network |
Configuration and make three changes: (1) Click the Add button and add
Protocol | NetBEUI. (2) Click File and Print Sharing and enable that. (2) Rightclick on F:\Temp\Shared, choose Sharing from the Context Menu, and make the
folder Shared with your preferred Access Type rights. These steps should (a)
require the computer to reboot and (b) put a little hand under F:\Temp\Shared
(as you see it in Windows Explorer) to show that it is shared.

Part Four: Create Toolbars and Organize Start | Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:
Creating Toolbars

Note that it may be somewhat easier to work with the following instructions and
suggestions if you configure Windows Explorer and other programs to suit your
working style. For instance, this may make it easier to spot EXE files. This is not
necessary, however. Information on customizing Windows Explorer and other
programs comes later.
IV.1. Create Toolbar Folders. We will be creating a number of toolbars. Each
toolbar needs a folder to contain the icons that will appear on the toolbar. The
Links folder already exists, but you will have to create the others. Create them
under C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other\Toolbars. The toolbar
folders to create are as follows (e.g., for the Online Toolbar, create a folder called
C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other\Toolbars\Online):

Online Toolbar
Audio Toolbar
Desk Tools toolbar
System Tools toolbar
Disk Tools toolbar
Office Tools toolbar
Graphics toolbar

Depending on your screen resolution, you may wind up displaying the full
contents of all of these toolbars (below), or you may instead have to combine
several of them a subfolders under another toolbar folder.
IV.2. Creating Toolbars. You can have toolbars in five general locations: at any
of the four sides of the screen, and also floating anywhere on the screen. A
toolbar can also be Always on Top or not (i.e., always visible or not), and it can
have AutoHide on or off (i.e., it will pop up when you move your mouse to that
edge of the screen, or else it will just be visible there whenever it is on top). I
dont use floating toolbars because they get in my way. To create a toolbar, you
right-click on an empty space on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen and
choose Toolbars | New Toolbar. (You dont have to create a new toolbar for the
four bars that Win98 creates automatically: Links, Address, Desktop, and Quick
Launch; you just turn them on or off.) Once youve clicked on New Toolbar, you
have to browse to the folder (above) that will contain the icons you want to show
on the toolbar. This creates a toolbar on the Taskbar. The Taskbar is the least
ideal place for a toolbar because there are already several other things that want
to appear down there. To move a toolbar to one of the other possible locations,
take these steps: (1) Minimize or close all windows, so that you can see the
Desktop. (2) Left-click on the left edge of the toolbar -- where the mouse cursor
turns into a two-headed arrow -- and hold the mouse button down as you drag

the toolbar out onto the Desktop. Release it there. You now have a floating
toolbar that you can resize by dragging the two-headed arrow at any of its
borders. (3) Drag the title bar of the floating toolbar to any of the four sides of
the screen. This works even if there is already a toolbar there -- that is, more than
one toolbar can share the same edge of the screen. You may be able to drag in
one step from the Taskbar directly to the preferred edge of the screen, but keep
the two-step approach in mind in case the one-step approach fails. (4) Tinker
with positioning, dragging it back out onto the Desktop if necessary, until you
have an arrangement you like. Note that you can drag the edge of the toolbar to
make it wider or narrower. (5) Adjust the right-click Context Menu settings for
the toolbar. Here, we will shut off the text and title for all toolbars, and will rely
solely on the different icons to tell us which programs we are running. If your
screen is large enough, you may also prefer to make your toolbars Always on
Top and not AutoHide. AutoHide leaves more screen space available but has the
irritating habit of popping up whenever you accidentally move your mouse too
close to the edge. To change the properties of a toolbar at any time, right-click on
its left edge (or the top edge, for a vertical toolbar) or on any empty space on it.
IV.3. Putting Icons on Toolbars. Each toolbar folder needs to contain the icons
relevant to its subject. I have provided a list, below, to show which icons wound
up in which folders on my computer. (Note that we have not yet installed all of
the relevant programs; the list below is a final list that you may want to check
again later.) We will not be changing these icons much, because it is more
efficient to know exactly where to look for the icon of the program you want to
run. You may or may not prefer to have toolbars jammed with icons. I
recommend not trying to put every program icon on a toolbar, because all those
extra icons will slow down your search for the important ones, and because you
will be able to access your rarely used programs through the Start | Programs
menu. Note that one toolbar may crowd another so that not all its icons show
unless you drag the appropriate toolbars or their edges in the appropriate
direction. You can put icons into folders by either dragging or by cutting and
pasting, working either from folder to folder or from folder to toolbar or vice
versa. Your icons will come from the following sources: (1) You will cut icons
from the Start | Programs menu. You wont leave copies there because duplicate
icons can cause confusion when you update your programs. See below for more
information on raiding the Start | Programs menu. (2) You will copy icons from
other toolbars. In particular, Win98 comes with the Quick Launch toolbar
already running. You will find copies of its icons in the Start | Programs menu,
so you need not raid the Quick Launch toolbar. The one exception is the Show
Desktop icon. Once youve raided the Quick Launch toolbar, you can close it.
(3) You will assign icons for new folders and programs that you create.

IV.4. Links Toolbar. You will note that we did not create a folder for the
preexisting Links toolbar. This is because the toolbar is pre-packaged to draw its
contents from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. As that location suggests, the
Links toolbar is supposed to display links to favorite websites. We can use it for
this purpose much more efficiently than Win98 does, however. We will add the
links themselves later. Right now, the interesting thing about the Links toolbar is
that it treats folder icons differently than other toolbars do. If you put a folder
icon in another toolbar and click on that icon, you get a Windows Explorer box
showing you the contents of the folder. You have to double-click on the
preferred icon within that box, and you also have to manually close down the
box when youre done with it. By contrast, a folder icon on the Links toolbar
serves as the top of a pull-down menu. That is, when you click on it, its contents
unfold and you can choose the preferred item with just one more click. This is
not as efficient as having the desired icon directly available on the toolbar, but it
works very well for situations where you are going to have a collection of
programs that may be changing and that can all get lumped under one folder.
For this purpose, create a Frequented folder under
C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. This folder will contain customized links to
websites that you visit frequently. We will address, later, the question of how to
design these customized links. Right now, the Frequented folder can stay empty.
Finally, Win98 supplies a number of favorites in the Links folder. Some of these
links may have some use for you. Cut and paste all of them except Toggle
Images to a subfolder named C:\Windows\Favorites\Links Supplied With
Win98. Cut Toggle Images and paste it onto your Online Toolbar. Finally, note
that you can also get a pull-down menu effect from any toolbar by dragging
another toolbar up against it, so that all that remains of the toolbar is its top icon
and the >> symbol. Clicking on the >> will then give you a pull-down menu.
That can be useful, but some people may find that the >> is too small a target.
IV.5. Edit the Start Menu. Now that you have your important programs on
toolbars, you can organize the ones that remain. The list, below, shows the
ending status of mine. There are two ways to edit the menu. You can edit it
live, or you can edit it canned. Live editing means you select Start |
Programs and then right-click on the individual item and cut, copy, paste, drag,
or delete, as you want. Canned editing means you select Start | Programs and
then double-click on one of the folders (not programs) underneath it, so as to
open up a Windows Explorer page. From here, you can move up, down, and
around to do your cutting, pasting, deleting, etc. Or to open up a slightly
different (and probably better) Windows Explorer view, right-click on the Start
Button and choose Explore, or just navigate to C:\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs. Note that editing this menu is an ongoing job, because new
programs will forever be adding new icons to it -- although as your system
matures, there will be much less of that. Ideally, we would not do this

rearranging until all of your programs were installed, but the Catch-22 is that we
need the rearrangement in order to install the programs properly. Moving these
shortcuts will have no effect on program performance, but watch out for rare
occasions or mistakes when someone has put actual program files rather than
mere shortcuts in Start | Programs. You want to move these to a proper location
under C:\Program Files and then create a shortcut to them back here on the Start
Menu. Note that you can edit the Start Menus top level in this way, as I have
done, to remove the Windows Update and PowerDesk items and put them
elsewhere.
IV.6. Arrange Shortcuts. Here is the final arrangement of shortcuts under Start |
Programs on my computer, including items that we have not yet installed at this
stage in the game. Note that this list includes the contents of all toolbars except
the Links toolbar. We have to work through some other concepts before we can
deal with that one.
___[add list]

Part Five: Arrange Drive F (DATA)

For more information see the following Index sections:

The DATA partition will be the most important partition for daily work in most
programs. Both GoBack and our daily backup scheme will cover it. The purpose
here is to organize the folders that drive F will need.
V.1. Create Top-Level Folders. I recommend including the following folders
under the root of F: Spreadsheets, DB (for database tables), Text (for word
processing documents), Graphics (for all sorts of images), Websites (for web
pages that you will copy to your home page online), Messages (for e-mail and
other similar messages), and Temp (see above).
V.2. Make a Backup in the F:\RELOPROG Folder. You dont want to risk losing
all of your work, above, in setting up the Favorites\Links and Toolbars folders.
Therefore, we want to put a copy of these materials into a folder called
RELOPROG (short for RELOcated PROGram-related files). To make sure you
get it all, copy the Favorites and Start Menu folders to RELOPROG manually
now. Later, we will have a batch file that will do this automatically.
V.3. Create CMDUTILS and Its Subfolders. To be sure we have all the tools
necessary to revive our system in the event of a problem, we are going to add a

folders worth of troubleshooting utilities to each backup CD. This folder is

called F:\RELOPROG\CMDUTILS. When its done, it should contain the
following subfolders:

CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS. Not all of these are actually DOS programs, but

they all run in a DOS Box and/or in Real DOS. See below for more details.
CMDUTILS\BATCH: will contain DOS batch files that we will be assembling
later.

Note that it will be some time before we have assembled all of these materials.
This list appears here in order to provide a single reference point for all the
contents of CMDUTILS, and to give a full idea of what its all about; but you
cant fully assemble it now, so you will have to refer back to this point later to
make sure it has all come together properly.
V.4. Add to CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS. This folder should contain the following
materials:
Everything from C:\Windows\Command, excluding the EBD subfolder.
(The EBD subfolder contains the files that go onto the Win98 Emergency Boot
Disk, which are duplicates of the contents of the Command folder, in
compressed or uncompressed form.) Were making these duplicates of
program files, which would otherwise be a waste of disk space, because this
will allow us to make sure we have the complete set each time we burn a CD,
without having to go back and collect the set all over again.
Everything from the Norton Utilities emergency floppies, if you have Norton
Utilities. These files should not be duplicates of anything already in the
DOSPROGS folder, but if there are duplicates, tell the computer to keep the
more recent ones. Alternatively, you could put the entire contents of these
disks into in separate subfolders, at the expense of complicating things and
making the programs less accessible.
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\PQ subfolder, containing PowerQuest
programs from the floppy disks mentioned above. Put those programs in
subfolders PQDI for PowerQuest DriveImage and PQMAGIC for
PartitionMagic. Since these programs do most of their work in DOS anyway,
there is no need to reinstall them from the CD. We will just work in DOS
with these program files.
A separate subfolder for each DOS application program that you still use. In
my case, I need only CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\PARADOX.
Other useful standalone EXE and COM programs, obtained from the Win98
Resource Kit, miscellaneous downloads, and other sources. Note that, in a
few cases (e.g., Delayer, PrcView) the following list contains the command
line version of the Win98 program that will soon appear in its own folder

under C:\Program Files. The complete list of CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS

executables in my DOSPROGS folder is as follows:
____ [add list of EXE and COM files]

Help files (usually with the HLP extension), in the same folder (i.e.,
CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS) as the programs that refer to them (e.g., NDD.HLP
needs to be with NDD.EXE).
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\DOC subfolder for documentation (usually
DOC or TXT files) accompanying any of the above kinds of programs.
A CMDUTILS\DOSPROGS\SYS subfolder, containing all of the SYS files
(e.g., COUNTRY.SYS) that get into the DOSPROGS folder one way or
another. You arent likely to need them, and you dont want them cluttering
up your DOSPROGS folder when you go browsing through it in search of a
tool, but they are generally small enough to make them worth keeping if you
put them off to the side like this. Toss in accompanying files (e.g.,
DRVSPACE.BIN, to go with DRVSPACE.SYS, since we wont use either of
them but you might want them handy on a CD that gets burned with all this
stuff).

V.5. Add to CMDUTILS\BATCH. This folder should contain the following

materials:

A CMDUTILS\BATCH\QBAS subfolder, containing QBASIC programs that

we will be using. They go under BATCH because well ordinarily use a BAT
file to run them.
The following batch files (more details later):
___list and summary explanation of batch files

V.6. Set Up Other Drive F and G Folders. Programs already installed, and
programs yet to be installed, will be looking for folders on drive F and G in
which to store their data. These programs will take some other action -- most
commonly, resetting themselves to put their data somewhere on drive C instead
-- if those folders do not exist on drive F or G. Thus, it makes sense to create the
folders before configuring the programs. Its not necessary to show every folder
I have on drives F or G on my system; the following are the folders that various
programs look for:
___list of program-sought folders on F and G

Part Six: Assemble Standalone Win98 Programs

The standalone programs in F:\RELOPROG\CMDUTILS run best, or perhaps

only, from the command line. There are also some standalone programs that run
only, or perhaps most effectively, in the Win98 graphical environment. In other
words, you want to run some programs from a command line and some by
double-clicking on an icon. This Part addresses the latter.
This does not include all Win98 programs. The focus here is on the programs,
like those in CMDUTILS, that are self-contained -- i.e., that do not have to be
installed into the Win98 Registry in order to run. Installing them consists of
nothing more than moving their program files to an appropriate directory and
perhaps setting up a shortcut to refer to their EXE program. (In one or two cases,
you have to go through more of an installation process, but then you can still
move them around to other folders without using Add/Remove Programs or
otherwise uninstalling and reinstalling them.) That is, they can likely be
installed, at least, without any risk to the stability of your Win98 installation.
These programs need not exist on Drive F. They wont be changing much, and
therefore wont call for frequent backup. All you do is move their program files
to the appropriate folder and then make a shortcut to the executable (usually
EXE) file in that folder and put that shortcut in the appropriate place on your
toolbars or elsewhere in Start | Programs. My list of standalone Win98
programs and folders is as follows:

___[WinDiff -- for this and all others, include the full final path]
WCPUID
PCIInfo
Tiny Wave Editor
URL2HTM
WINIPCFG
OptOut
MenuEdit
EasyCleaner
Slice32
WavGlue
PrcView
Delayer
CTBIOS
CDex
CDFS.VXD
CDWav
CDSpeed99
Dupeless

ExactTime
Internet Tech Support Diagnostics
Checkers
HP DeskScan II

Part Seven: Install Your Reliable Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:

The approach taken here is not to install Microsoft programs first, as I once
thought I should, but rather to start with the programs that seem least likely to
cause system problems. Some such programs have already been installed, in
the sense that they do not require any installation: the CMDUTILS files and
standalone programs mentioned above, and the programs included with the full
installation of Win98.
Now we turn to programs that, while requiring standard installation, have
produced little or no system instability for me. Despite their stability, however,
you should make a DriveImage backup of drive C before installing any of these
programs. This is the second DriveImage backup made so far. Make the backup
at this point, before installing any of these programs, even if you have not have
finished with all of the steps presented above. Plan to keep this backup, and the
others mentioned above and below, for at least the next several months. It can
take that long for a problem to worm its way out and destabilize your system.
VII.1. Audio and CD Programs. I choose this category first, not because it is
most important, but because Cool Edit 2000 is so undeniably stable. If you cant
do anything else with your computer, at least you should be able to convert
radio, records, audio CDs, and cassettes to MP3 format using this program. And,
of course, to burn my backups to CD-RW, I needed to install the CD software:
Easy CD Creator and DirectCD. With Cool Edit, I didnt need many other audio
tools, and the ones I did need were standalones I had already installed, above.
Finally, I chose Winamp as my player. I hear others are better, but Winamp still
seems to be the leader, and it has worked well for me.
VII.2. Graphics, Scanning, and Image Programs. In my case, I postponed some
of the scanning software because it had experimental elements: (a) I postponed
software related to my scanner, which was an old HP ScanJet IIcx whose SCSI
interface card may have been responsible for some past software
incompatibilities, and (b) OmniPage Pro would install a fax option for Outlook

98, which I considered experimental software. The experimental items get more
attention below; they do not belong in this category of reliable software. Hence,
in this category I installed only these graphics-related programs: ImgView and
GraphicCorp Photo Editor.
VII.3. Internet-Related Programs. In this category, I installed AdSubtract,
HTTrack, Juno (the old version), WebCompass (including downloaded
upgrades), and WS_FTP.
VII.4. System Utilities. The stable ones included the following:

Cacheman
EndItAll
InCtrl4
MultiRen
Seti@Home
WinMag Registry Pruner
WinMag Registry Ripper (not needed if you install the Norton Registry
Editor)

Part Eight: Configure the Installed Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:
Application Programs and Features Included with Win98

The standalone programs generally cannot be configured, but you can configure
some of the programs that came with Win98 and also some that you just
installed. In a few cases, configuration can take some time. It is sometimes
possible to save your configuration settings in such a way that you can restore
them quickly. This will make things easier if, for any reason, you must come
back to this point and try again to create a working system for yourself. Where I
did not bother working out a canned approach to reconfiguration, it is probably
because I have already worked out a configuration (typically, for a standalone
program) and can just copy it over to a new system, or else because I have not
yet tried configuring the program for myself.
VIII.1. CMDUTILS. For the most part, standalone programs require no further
configuration, or do not remember the settings you give them.
VIII.2. Norton AntiVirus 2000. Your preferences for NAV 2000 are saved in two
files in the NAV 2000 program folder mentioned above, C:\Program

Files\Symantec\Norton AntiVirus. If you have previously installed and

configured NAV 2000, you can copy these two files to this folder. The files are
NAVOPTS.DAT and NAVSTART.DAT. (Note: I am using all caps for easy
identification of program files, but the actual files on your computer may not be
all caps.)
VIII.3. PowerDesk. When you customize the toolbar in PowerDesk, the changes
are saved in USER.DAT. This file, with SYSTEM.DAT, comprises the Registry, or
at least the most important part of it. If you have a previous Win98 installation
running on a separate computer, you can loot it for the customization settings
you developed previously. If not, you will have to redo the settings this time,
but then you can export those settings from the Registry for future use. (Note
that Registry work is very tricky and can screw up everything. Proceed at your
own risk.) Basically, you use the the BEFORE.TXT and AFTER.TXT comparison
technique at point 150 in the Epic. Note that you can run most of these
Command Line programs -- in this case, RegEdit -- in several different ways,
including Start | Run, MS-DOS Prompt, or by using the command line feature in
PowerDesk.
In this case, working with my old Registry on the other computer, I produced
BEFORE.TXT, then I changed the PowerDesk toolbar, then I produced
AFTER.TXT. The WinDiff comparison highlighted only one change, under the
Toolbar Current Settings heading. This heading appeared under
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Mijenix\PowerDesk\Version3.0\Explorer
Plus. Using the WinMag Registry Ripper, I searched HKEY_USERS for
ExplorerPlus (so as to narrow down the field), deselected all but the one that
matched exactly, and saved it as a file with this name: PowerDesk Toolbar
Settings.REG. (The Norton Registry Editor would do the same thing. An easier
but less selective way was to use RegEdit, find that ExplorerPlus subkey, and
choose Registry | Export Registry File | Selected Branch.) Since it was a REG
file, I could just double-click on it and it would automatically update my
Registry. Trusting to GoBack, I floppied it over to the computer containing my
new installation, tried it, and it worked. I rebooted to double-check, and it was
OK. I now had my customized PowerDesk toolbar, from the old Win98 setup,
working on the new installation. If I ever had to reinstall PowerDesk, this part
would be done in a matter of seconds. I liked to customize PowerDesk in other
ways as well, but it appears that at least some of those changes occur
automatically when you customize Windows Explorer.
VIII.4. Windows Explorer. Because of the ways in which this program seems to
interact with Win98, Internet Explorer, and other programs, I could not
confidently use a REG file as above. Instead, I made my preferred changes

manually and will have to do the same again next time. The same was true for
Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
VIII.5. Audio and CD Programs. CDex and Winamp do allow or require some
configuration but, as noted above, these are standalone programs. I had already
configured them and did not pay attention to the files that changed when I did
so, and I dont expect to do so in the future as long as I have previously
configured copies of them that I can move around to where I want them. Cool
Edit 2000 keeps its configuration settings in INI files, also known as
Configuration Settings files, located in the C:\Windows folder. The particular
files are COOL.INI, COOLSYS.INI, and COOLKB2K.INI. Easy CD Creator stores
its settings in the Registry key named
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Adaptec\Easy CD Creator\Settings and,
as above, you can export the changes to a REG file and always have them for
future repeat installations. ___Direct CD Settings___
VIII.6. Other Programs. I postponed tinkering with the graphics, scanning, and
image software for reasons expressed above. I configured Juno by going through
its brief installation process. I configured Cacheman by telling it that I was a
Power User and by making a note to myself to register the program by
sending the author a postcard telling him how much I liked it. I postponed
Seti@Home installation because I wanted to have two different Seti@Home
download accounts, one on each computer; otherwise, they would both be
repeating the same assignments. Some configuration involved setting up DOS
Batch files; I felt those would be better discussed below.

Part Nine: Install and Configure the Riskier Major Programs

For more information see the following Index sections:

There is no sharp line clearly dividing risky programs from the rest, but there are
definitely some programs that tend to mess up the system and others that dont.
Chances are that you will be able to install the following programs without
crashing your system; but over time, these programs will be a lot more likely to
give you problems. Therefore, before installing even one of these programs,
copy your Start | Programs folder to drive F and make another DriveImage
backup of drive C. You may also want to make one or more interim backups,
perhaps temporarily on a CD-RW disk, partway through this process. There are
several reasons for making those interim backups: you will be adding a great
many new files to your system; GoBack will probably not be able to keep a

record of them all; and some parts of the process may be too time-consuming to
lose and re-do. Note that the programs discussed here are not all of the
remaining programs; they are the large, risky programs that have a major impact
on the system.
IX.1. Office 97. Install Office from the CD. (I considered switching to StarOffice,
but it doesnt sound like they have their act together yet.) The Office 97 installer
wont ask for proof that you qualify for the upgrade (assuming youre using an
Office 97 upgrade CD rather than the full package) if you have already installed
a previous version of Office, so you might want to copy the old Office 4.3
program disks to drive D (STATIC). After installing from the CD, download and
run as many of the following updates as you need. You can find more details on
them at Microsofts Office Update website. There may even be a few other
downloads there that you could use. The following order of installation seems to
work adequately, where you begin with the updates and fixes that affect all
Office programs, and particularly the Service Releases:

Office 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1)

Office 97 Version Checker
Office 97 Service Release 2b (SR-2b)
Office 97 Converter Pack
Office 97 Document Open Confirmation Tool
Office 97 Euro-Enabled Fonts
Office 97 Forms Security Control Patch
Office 97 Microsoft Draw 98 Add-In
Office 97 ODBC Driver Security Update
Office 97 OfficeArt AutoShapes
Office 97 Sounds
Office 97 Unique Identifier Patch
Office 97 Unique Identifier Removal Tool
Word 97 Hyperlinks Update
Word 97 Leap Year Fix
Word 97 Supplemental Text Converters
Word 97 Template Security Patch
Word 97 Time Management Wizards
Word 97 Viewers
Word 97 Web Authoring Tools Update
Word 97 Web Page Wizard Accessories
Word 97 Weblinks Help File
Access 97 Address Book Database
Access 97 Command Bar Wizard
Access 97 Contacts Management Database

Access 97 Exchange and Outlook Wizard

Access 97 Partial Replica Wizard
Access 97 Print Relationships Wizard
Access 97 Snapshot Viewer
Access 97 Web Tracker Database
Access 97 Weblinks Help File
Excel 97 CALL Function Patch
Excel 97 Custom Chart Types Template
Excel 97 Euro Toolbar Button
Excel 97 Personal Budgeter Template
Excel 97 Power Utility Pak
Excel 97 Production Tracking Template
Excel 97 Quattro Pro Converter
Excel 97 Spreadsheet Viewer
Excel 97 SYLK Security Update
Excel 97 Virus Search
Excel 97 Web Connectivity Kit
Excel 97 Weblinks Help File
Excel 97 XLM Macro Update

Your Word 97 configuration settings are saved in C:\Program Files\Microsoft

Office\Templates\Normal.dot after you exit Word, and also in the Registry in
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Word. If you have
AutoCorrect entries, they are in C:\Windows\<username>.acl; for instance,
mine is C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl. You may have other <username> files
in C:\Windows; for example, some of my current Excel settings are saved in Ray
Woodcock8.xlb, and my password list is in Ray Woodcock.pwl. It should be safe
to copy these files over to your new setup.

IX.2. Outlook 98. Although this program is sometimes considered a part of

Office 97, it is quite different on the subject of installation. You download the
setup file from Microsoft, and then use that to download the remainder of the
program rather than copying it from a CD. There no longer seem to be any links
to download Outlook 98 from the Microsoft website, and the setup program no
longer seems to download the bulk of the program automatically. Having
already downloaded that program and saved it to disk, however, I was able to
copy the Outlook 98 Setup folder from the old installation to this new one, and I
installed the program from there. Since these setup files did not change, I put
them onto drive D (STATIC) rather than C. I then ran SETUP.EXE from there
and installed the program itself on drive C, followed by these updates:

Outlook 98 Archive Update

Outlook 98 Automated Calendar Template
Outlook 98 E-mail Attachment Security Patch
Outlook 98 E-mail Security Update
Outlook 98 Field Mapping Patch
Outlook 98 Import-Export Date Fix
Outlook 98 Security Patch

Next, go into Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Outlook 98, click on

Add/Remove, choose Add New Components, go online, and select the updates
that fit your needs.
IX.3. FrontPage 2000. You may want to install this program separately, after
installing the Office 97 programs shown above. I found that its online upgrades
tended to screw up the system, and I needed to feel my way through them one at
a time, reversing with GoBack when they appeared not to work right. Also, if
youre using the FP 2000 upgrade CD, you can dispense with the future need for
inserting the FrontPage 98 CD during installation by taking the following steps:
install a bare minimum version of FP 98, delete its GIF, JPG, and HLP files (and
maybe its HTML files) to slim it down some more, temporarily copy the
remainder to drive I (SWAP), use GoBack to revert the system to the time before
you installed FP98, move that FP98 remainder to drive D (STATIC), and point to
drive D when the FP 2000 installer says it cant find any previous installation.
After installing the program, download and install the appropriate updates,
which for me were the following:

FrontPage 2000 HTML Tools

FrontPage 2000 Tutorial

IX.4. Norton Utilities. Depending on your system, the version of Norton, and
the kind of installation, you may find that this set of programs will cause a minor
or major increase in the number of times Win98 crashes. Nevertheless, the
program (or perhaps some other utility program) has a few utilities that may be
essential at times. I recommend installing in C:\Program
Files\Symantec\Norton Utilities. Your installation of Norton AntiVirus might
have given a Symantec folder by now anyway, and I believe the Norton Utilities
installation will create a Symantec folder if you dont already have one, even if
you tell the installer to put the program files somewhere else. One working
installation involves selecting the Custom option and choosing these programs to
install (but letting none of them run automatically or in lieu of other programs) ,
and then go online and download any available updates through Live Update:

Norton Connection Doctor

Norton Disk Doctor
Norton File Compare
Norton Registry Editor
Norton Utilities Basefiles
Norton Utilities DOS Applications
SpeedDisk
Live Update

IX.5. X-Setup.
IX.6.

Part Ten: Tweaks

MagicMover

Part Eleven: Batch Files

II.6. Learn to Boot into Real DOS. DOS comes in different flavors. You can do
things in Real DOS that you cant do in Imitation DOS. If you have booted your
system in Win98, however, you can no longer easily run Real DOS programs like
PartitionMagic and FDISK. You can avoid Win98s control in one of two ways:
either boot from a DOS Bootable Floppy or choose the Command Prompt Mode
from the Startup Menu.
To use the Bootable Floppy option, you have to instruct your BIOS Setup to boot
from the floppy. Otherwise, the system will ignore it and will continue to boot
from the Hard Disk (i.e., will boot Win98) as usual. To get into your BIOS Setup,
you reboot your computer and wait for the screen to say something like, Press
DEL to enter Setup. (Note that some computer manufacturers disguise this
somewhat; you may have to check your owners manual.) Your BIOS Setup
should allow you to specify the order in which the computer looks at different
disk drives. To boot from the floppy, which you will probably do only
occasionally, you want drive A (the floppy drive) to be first on the list.
To use the Command Prompt Mode option, you need to get into the Startup
Menu. To get that menu, you hit F8 when your computer is nearing the end of

its initial bootup information (for example, it may show you a screen containing
information about your hard disks or other devices). Note that, if GoBack is
enabled on your system, it will advise you at Startup to take other steps before
getting into Real DOS, at least if you want to do it from the floppy. You cant
ignore GoBack if its enabled. If it is disabled, dont re-enable it until youve
finished doing whatever it was that prompted you to disable it in the first place.
Norton Utilities
VisiTrax
There are three ways of doing Registry edits. You can do them manually by
opening the Registry, screwing it up, and crashing your system; you can use a
multipurpose tweaking program like Xteqs X-Setup, TweakUI, Tweaki, or
Tweak-Me to adjust this and other aspects of your system; or you can run a
canned REG file that provides a direct editing command to the Registry. To
avoid the risk of the first option, and the hassle of describing it in detail each
time, this book will take the approach, whenever possible, of giving you simple
REG files that you can run to make the suggested changes automatically.

How I Spent Three Months Installing Windows 98

by Ray Woodcock
A 326-page document
Commenced with great optimism and no idea of what was coming
Shortly after New Years Day in the year 2000 A.D.
OK. This may be a little wild, and it's certainly long and wooly, but I think I
have the whole thing figured out, at least for my system. This is my complete
guide to how I back up a full Windows 98 system on CD-ROM. Even if it doesn't
actually work for you, it might at least provide some useful ideas or information.
The focus here is on program files, not data files; the best backup strategy for one
may not be so hot for the other. Along the way, I have tried to throw in any
relevant DOS or Windows knowledge I may have collected, with an eye toward
helping people who are really stumped.
Why did I start writing something like this? (1) To keep me on track during a
sometimes complicated process that I pursued on a sometimes full-time,
sometimes part-time basis over a period of several weeks, despite being plagued
by Windows crashes and program misbehavior that frequently required me to
take off on long detours to solve related problems. (2) To keep problem-solving
notes for my own future reference -- including the near future, when Windows
might crash and I might have to re-create the solutions I had just painfully
worked out. (3) To share my knowledge of DOS and Windows tinkering and my
useful discoveries. (4) To provide an example of the folly of Windows. (5) To
establish a version of Windows, complete with a user's manual, that could let me
stay with this particular operating system for several years. (6) To keep track of
good ideas for making the computer more efficient, especially with the little
things that may take only an extra second or two but that might be repeated
dozens of times each day. (7) To provide an example of the strengths and
weaknesses of my unusually thorough and/or detailed working style. Basically,
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me, but this happened for
(hopefully) a hundred users through my experience.
In most cases here, my notes are pretty precise, but sometimes there were just too
many things going wrong at once, so I had to break them out into separate tracks
and try to keep up with it all. I think I got most of the details on that stuff as
well, but it may not read as smoothly at those times.
Why This Is Not a Published Book
(1) I am not a computer expert, except maybe in some specific questions that I
pursued. (2) There are enough published books already. (3) Dealing with
publishers is a hassle. Often they do want quality improvements; but more

frequently you go to a huge amount of trouble and have nothing to show for it.
(4) I'm not that interested in the subject. I wanted to write down my steps and
theories, for the benefit of myself and others, but I didn't want to make it a
yearlong project. (5) The subject matter is too irregular. I try to write it all for
newcomers, but in some cases I think newcomers won't be interested, and in
those instances I adopt a more advanced tone. (6) I don't feel like going through
to clean out redundancies, irrelevancies, changes of tone, mood, voice, tense,
number, etc. To hell with it: it's grammatically imperfect, but it's useful.
In figuring out how to achieve my backup goals here, I spent a lot of time and
did some tinkering. In other words, this account may be more suited for the
person who wants to learn more about the whole subject, or who is trying to
accomplish a customized result, and may be less suited for the person who just
wants a quick and dirty three-step guide to the task of backing up on CD. For
that, see e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347537,00.html or
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/story/0,3650,2217085,00.html.
This may be something that some people will print out and stick in a file
somewhere, if they have no way of getting information online when their
computer crashes. This epic goes through a huge number of things that can go
wrong in dealing with hard disks, partitions, Windows 98, and other subjects.
As you will see, it wasn't always quite as simple, in my case, as those summary
Websites make it sound.
My overall goal was to come up with a solid, easily restorable Win98 CD that
would last me for the next several years, until the accumulation of changes in
operating systems (i.e., Windows, Linux, or some other) and in application
software and utilities combined to persuade me that it was time for a major
renovation. Reviews of Microsoft Office 2000 suggested that I need not worry
about upgrading to it. So at this point my plan was mostly to create a base on
which I could just add incrementally to my software collection with occasional
new application programs and utilities.
Overview: Two General Methods
There's more than one way to back up onto CD. Mostly you hear about the
approach that involves making a series of disk images and backing them up on a
series of CDs, 600 MB at a time. I'm sure that approach works well, especially for
large disks. But for my purposes it has two shortcomings. First, my experiences
with tape drives during the past ten or twelve years have left me sour on using a
series of media to do backup. I didn't find that Hewlett-Packard's tape backup
software and hardware worked reliably in that regard. Also, I had times when
the link from one tape to the next would fail, or when one tape would go bad,

and then everything in the series after that would be lost. I'm sure disks are
more reliable than tapes but, as I say, this is the way my preferences run. (For
one user's difficulties with the Seagate backup software, see
http://noccc.org/bytes/articles/v01/331.html.)
My second and more important reason for seeking a different CD approach is
that I hope to break the Windows reinstallation process out into different layers
or phases. I would like to have one CD that contains the basic Windows 98
program files, and another one or two CDs containing program files that I have
added on afterwards. That way, if there's something wrong with the basic
Windows programs, I can reinstall Windows and burn a new CD to back it up,
without disturbing all the dozens of other programs and utilities that I might
install later and back up on a separate CD. (This was inspired by dabbling in
Linux. See
http://ftp.win.tue.nl/math/dw/personalpages/aeb/linux/partitions/partition
_types-2.html.) Likewise, if I download a screwy little utility that winds up
wrecking my whole hard disk, I can quickly reinstall from the Windows 98
backup CD; quickly reinstall my more stable programs (e.g., Cool Edit 2000)
from a mainstream programs backup CD; and I'll be left with relatively little to
reinstall manually.
Initial Preparations
1. AMD computer and Experimental (Backup) Computer. Buy, build, or
borrow, so that you're working with two computers. This is an optional step, of
course, but it really can make a huge difference, and if you have lots of work to
do and find yourself sometimes waiting on one computer to finish, it will pay for
itself eventually. When you have two computers, you can swap hard disks back
and forth, look on one for files that seem to be missing from the other, seek
emergency information online, etc. You just wouldn't believe how much easier
these processes are with a spare computer sitting around. And after you're done
upgrading, you can turn the second computer loose on some project that takes
forever, like compressing huge audio files to MP3; and you'll have it to fall back
on, or raid for parts, when the first one malfunctions.
2. Get PowerQuest's PartitionMagic and DriveImage. (I hear you can also use
Norton's Ghost, but I've found the PowerQuest software to be really great, and I
haven't always had such good luck with Norton's software. I did try out Ghost
later, however. See point 354.) Install these programs even if you're going to be
wiping off your hard disk shortly. Use PartitionMagic ("PM") to create partitions
on the disk where you'll be installing Win98. (For more information, see point
269(f).) If you're careful, you can do this without messing up the material that's
already there. I suggest creating a drive C that will hold your programs and a

drive D for temporary files. I suggest putting temporary files on a separate disk
because I understand they can cause a lot of disk fragmentation. The size of this
drive D will depend on the needs of the programs using it. For instance, Internet
Explorer creates a Temporary Internet Files folder of a size you dictate, and Cool
Edit 2000 can take advantage of large chunks of disk space for its temporary files.
Anyway, if you create new partitions, be sure they're formatted. Also, when
installing PartitionMagic, be sure to take advantage of the option to create a boot
floppy. (For a refinement of some of this advice, see point 44.)
3. Image vs. File-by-File Backup. You have a choice. Your backup CD can
contain a single large disk image file that rolls all your program files into a ball;
or your backup CD can contain individual files. Advantages of the disk-image
approach: the process is much simpler and you can compress up to 50% more
material in the same space. The advantage of the individual-file approach is that
it may give you more flexibility and easier access to your files. I suggest using a
combination of both approaches. That advice may reflect my own reactions to
computer meltdowns. On one hand, I want some basic tools handy; but if I can't
make it work after a couple of hours of fiddling around, eventually I just want to
toss the damn thing out and start over. In other words, for my regular backup
work I want the simplicity of the disk image approach; but for troubleshooting I
want a bootable CD that contains some useful fix-it programs, and that can take
the place of a bootable floppy on those occasions when my floppy drive isn't
working right or isn't being recognized by the system.
First Method: File-by-File
4. Bootable CD Introduction. Here, I'll begin with the individual-file approach.
We'll get to the easier disk-image approach later. (See point 56.) For starters, see
if you can find article no. 990420-0001 in Adaptec's knowledge base. It is entitled,
"How Do I Create a Bootable CD?" Their site is somewhat chaotic, and you may
not be able to find the article (I can't myself, at this moment, and am relying on a
printout); I'll try to summarize it. Basically, to create a bootable CD using
Adaptec's Easy CD Creator program, you need a bootable floppy and some other
files and settings described below. (I'm using Easy CD Creator version 3.5c.
Menu options may differ in other versions. Several other programs seem to have
the same capabilities as Easy CD Creator, and some -- notably CDRWin and
Nero -- appear to have gotten better reactions from some users.) Note that older
machines may not be able to boot from a CD. See
http://www.ora.nsysu.edu.tw/~goldentime/bootcd02.htm. For a more
technical explanation, see
http://www.cdpage.com/Compact_Disc_Variations/bootablecdarticle.htm.
(Later, looking back at this paragraph, I realized that I probably needed to
explain something. I had purchased a Yamaha CRW4416E CD-ROM drive. This

drive was capable of burning data onto blank CD disks, which is why people
call drives like this burners. This particular burner could work with both CDR (CD-recordable) and CD-RW (CD-rewritable) disks. Most of the CDs created
during the process that I am about to describe were plain old CD-Rs. They were
inexpensive and I could use them in any ordinary computer.)
A Bootable Floppy -- The Hard Way
5. Why Start with the Hard Way? To make a bootable CD, you need a bootable
floppy. I'll start with the hard way, for several reasons: that's how I learned the
easy way; I learned the hard way because that's the path that Adaptec's advice
got me started on (see point 4); the easy way doesn't always work; there are some
things you can't do with the easy approach (see point 13); and if you understand
the hard way, you'll understand what you've got (and haven't got) when you use
the easy way (see point 8).
To prepare a bootable floppy the hard way, then, you should begin by realizing
that the purpose of this floppy is to provide you with DOS-based system tools
that will help you make your system work (or will at least help you figure out
what's wrong) no matter how screwed-up it might be. In other words, you want
this floppy to make a lot of good tools available. But it's only a floppy, so you're
under a very serious 1.44 MB limit on what it can hold, unless you happen to
have a 2.88 MB floppy drive. (See point 11.) You must prioritize. Here, then, are
the most important files to include on a good boot floppy, in order of
diminishing importance:
(a) Essential System Files: the visible file (COMMAND.COM) and the two
hidden files (MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS) that exist on a floppy disk that you have
formatted with the command FORMAT A: /S. (If you can't see hidden files on
such floppies, adjust your View | Folder Options in Windows Explorer.) Be
careful with FORMAT -- it wipes out anything that might be in the disk you
specify! You may be able to recover the data in at least some cases. If you have a
disk that has already been formatted, life is easier: you can make it bootable just
by using Windows Explorer and copying these three files to it.
(b) Boot Files: the ones that apply your preferred setup commands when you
boot your floppy. These are CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. You may find
more complex versions of these in C:\ (i.e., the root of your C drive). Here, we'll
be creating fairly simple versions.
(c) Optional System Files: the ones invoked by lines in your Boot Files. For
instance, if you put a line in your CONFIG.SYS that invokes HIMEM.SYS (e.g.,
DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS), then you'd better have a copy of HIMEM.SYS at the

specified location (which would be A: in that example). You can find files in this
category, and in categories (d) and (e), in C:\Windows\Command. (I noticed
online that one authority suggested not using a drive letter in such command
lines, so the one in my CONFIG.SYS just reads DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS -- the
reason being that the drive letter stuff can confuse the system when it boots the
bootable part of the CD as though it were drive A. See point 6.)
(d) Essential Hard Disk Utilities: the files that you may need in order to establish
a beachhead on a hard disk. Categories (a) through (c) involve what happens
when you first boot the machine using your bootable CD, before you even get a
DOS prompt. Now we turn to those categories of files that you have the option
of running anytime at a DOS prompt. First, the programs that you may need to
establish a beachhead on a recalcitrant hard drive, for use when you boot your
CD and find that the hard disk is so unresponsive that you basically need to wipe
it off and start anew. These files are: FDISK, to see whether there are any
working partitions on the hard disk, and to prepare some if not; FORMAT, to
prepare those partitions so they'll work reliably with DOS and Windows files;
and SYS.COM, which FORMAT will use to make a partition bootable (i.e., so that
it will contain the System Files mentioned in point 5(a)). I also decided to include
SCANDISK.EXE and .INI here. You will also need to include your unzip
program (e.g., PKUNZIP) in this category if you're zipping any files, as described
below.
(e) Essential Special-Purpose Files: some users may need SCSI drivers or nonEnglish keyboard files. Again, you may need to include lines in your category
(b) files, above, to refer to these special files. (Note that the Adaptec article (see
point 4) says that not all SCSI controllers and motherboards support booting
from CD-ROM.)
(f) Essential Copying Utilities: the files you need to copy your Windows 98
backup from CD to the hard disk. If we were talking about the disk-image
approach (see point 3), this would be a program like DriveImage, which extracts
hundreds or thousands of individual files from one large disk image file.
Instead, since we're talking about the individual-file approach, you need a tool
that will copy the files one at a time from the CD to the hard disk. This is
XCOPY (or, more precisely, XCOPY.EXE, XCOPY32.EXE, and XCOPY32.MOD).
(g) Optional Utilities: files that may be useful in some special circumstances.
Although there are many such files, and many different ways to use them, I
settled upon this list: BOOTMAGIC (consisting of a half-dozen files installed on
a rescue floppy that BootMagic allows you to create); ATTRIB.EXE, CVT.EXE,
DEBUG.EXE, DELTREE.EXE, DOSKEY.COM, DOWN.COM, EDIT.COM and
.HLP, EXTRACT.EXE, FIND.EXE, LE.EXE, MEM.EXE, MODE.COM,

MORE.COM, NEXT.COM, RED.COM, SCANREG.EXE, SLICE.COM,

SMARTDRV.EXE, SUBST.EXE, SWEEP.COM, and WHEREIS.COM. These files
mostly came from C:\Windows\Command, but may also have filtered into my
collection from Norton Utilities, PC Magazine, and elsewhere over the past
fifteen years. I also included some batch files I had prepared to simplify moving
around the hard disk: UP.BAT, TOP.BAT, and TEMP.BAT.
(h) Additional Utilities That Don't Fit: I would have liked to include additional
programs that are easier to use than some of the above utilities. Unfortunately,
these easier-to-use versions take more space than one floppy boot disk can
accommodate. In this category, I would include files taken from the boot
floppies created by PartitionMagic and DriveImage. (See point 64.)
For our purposes, categories (a) through (e) cannot be compressed into a ZIP file
by using a program like PKZIP, because they must be available and ready to
work at bootup. But once you've used the utilities in category (d) (if necessary)
to create some working space on the hard disk -- in, say, a C:\TEMP directory -you can copy a ZIP file to the hard disk from the boot floppy and can unzip that
file there in C:\TEMP. This ZIP file can contain files described in categories (f)
through (h). (You would zip these files, of course, to cram more of them into the
same amount of space. If you do include some zipped utilities, just be sure to
include a non-zipped copy of the unzip program -- for instance, PKUNZIP -- in
category (d).
6. AUTOEXEC.BAT. We're still working on the hard way to create the bootable
floppy that you'll need in order to create a bootable CD. We must now work
down through the preceding list of files. Most of them are ready-made; only two
require you to do some editing. The first is AUTOEXEC.BAT. Create a plaintext AUTOEXEC.BAT file containing this line: MSCDEX.EXE /D:RESTORE
/L:Z. When you boot with your bootable CD, this line will tell the computer
where your backed-up files are. In other words, your CD will have two parts:
one bootable, one not. The part that is bootable will contain the files listed in
point 5. This bootable part will act as though it, not your floppy drive, is drive
A. Your floppy will become drive B instead. If you already have a drive B, I
believe it will be disregarded. (This is the "Bootable CD-ROM Emulates a Floppy
Diskette" scenario described at
http://www.support.vectra.hp.com/vectrasupport/level4/30bpv03069/30bpv0
3069.html. (If you're curious, the parts of the MSCDEX.EXE line just shown are
as follows: (a) MSCDEX.EXE is, of course (like any .EXE file), an executable
program; it tells the computer that it's going to be running a CD-ROM drive. (b)
RESTORE is the name assigned to the non-bootable part of the bootable CD. (c)
Z is the drive letter where your computer can find the files in the non-bootable
part. To accommodate systems with varying numbers of partitions, you can

leave it at Z, even if you don't have 25 other drives; just remember that your CDROM will temporarily be located at Z, not at F or wherever you normally find it.)
Finally, you can soup up your AUTOEXEC.BAT if you want. For instance,
@ECHO OFF will keep the lines of your AUTOEXEC.BAT from appearing
onscreen when the program runs, and PROMPT $P$G will make your DOS
prompt more informative. (Note that my further experience required me to
make an important change in this AUTOEXEC.BAT file. See point 20.) Note that
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS normally reside in C:\ -- that is, in the root
of your C drive.
7. CONFIG.SYS. The other file that requires you to do some editing is
CONFIG.SYS. According to the instructions from the Adaptec page (see point 4),
you are to create a plain-text CONFIG.SYS file containing these lines:
DEVICE=SSCDROM.SYS /D:RESTORE
LASTDRIVE=Z
SSCDROM.SYS, in that file, is the name of the driver that I have been using on
my CD-ROM drive; I believe it originally got onto my system from a Samsung
drive I had previously, and it has just stayed there even though I have since
switched CD-ROM drives. Your driver may have some other name. To find out
what and where your CD driver is, try looking at your C:\CONFIG.SYS file or
the manual or disk (if any) that came with your CD drive, or at the
manufacturer's Website. It's been recommended that you use Microsoft's generic
ATAPI_CD.SYS driver. See
http://www.ora.nsysu.edu.tw/~goldentime/bootcd02.htm. Anyway, you'll
notice that this step involves two files: CONFIG.SYS and the SSCDROM.SYS (or
whatever) file that it refers to. Similarly, the previous step involves
AUTOEXEC.BAT and the MSCDEX.EXE file that it refers to. So to add to
categories 5(b) and (c), the bootable part of your CD will need to contain at least
these four files. My own CONFIG.SYS also includes DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS,
which obligates me to include HIMEM.SYS in category 5(c). (Note that my
further experience required me to make an important change in this
CONFIG.SYS file. See point 20.)
8. Boot Floppy: Easy Way. Put copies of all the files described in points 5
through 7, into a separate folder. Zip the ones that can be zipped. (See the
bottom of point 5.) Make sure the total contents of the folder are 1.44 MB or less.
(Although floppies are supposedly 1.44 MB, you may find that the amount you
can fit onto a floppy, according to the numbers reported by Windows Explorer,
is actually slightly less than 1.44 MB. In working through these problems, I
didn't experiment with using DriveSpace or a zip program to pack more material
on there that might unpack itself when you need it.) Copy it all (including

hidden files and system files -- see point 5(a)) to a floppy disk; make sure to use a
floppy that you have freshly formatted and scanned, so that you won't discover
at the wrong moment that you are relying on a defective boot disk.
You have now finished with the hard way to create the bootable floppy that
you'll need in order to create a bootable CD. The easy way is to use the startup
floppy that you can create in the course of installing Windows 98. This floppy
goes by various names. The C:\Windows\Command\EBD folder contains, I
believe, the files that go onto that floppy. I assume EBD is short for Emergency
Boot Disk, but the README.TXT file in that folder calls it the Windows 98
Startup Disk. I have also heard it called the Startup Floppy and the Boot
Floppy. Here, Ill refer to it as the Win98 Startup Floppy except when I forget
and call it something else instead.
We'll be installing Win98 (see below); you can make one then; or you can always
come back and make one in Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Startup
Disk. This disk (however you create it) won't have the same utilities as one made
the hard way, but it does have a lot of utilities, and it also has the advantage of
being ready-made to work with a wide variety of CD-ROM drives that you may
own in the present or the future. To run many of the utilities mentioned above
(e.g., FORMAT) with the Win98 Startup Floppy, look for a RAM drive (i.e., one
that exists only temporarily, in your computer's RAM) just one letter before the
letter where your CD-ROM drive is located, and note that the CD-ROM will be
simply the last letter applied to your drives (e.g., somewhere around E or F), not
Z. (See point 6.)
9. Test Your Bootable Floppy. Set your computer's BIOS to boot from the floppy
drive. To do this, reboot your computer and watch the instructions that appear a
few seconds after it starts up. There may be an instruction like "Hit Delete to
enter Setup." In that example, hitting DEL will bring up some choices. Click on
perhaps the second of those choices and look for the item that lets you change
the boot order. It might look like this: C,CDROM,A. Use PageDown or other
keys to make A first; save this change; and reboot. The purpose of this reboot is
to test two things: does the floppy disk boot properly, and can you get programs
that work (including those in your ZIP file, if you created the boot floppy the
hard way)? When you're done testing, reset the BIOS so that it boots from drive
C again. We will soon need to use that drive. Later, though, when the bootable
CD is all set to go, we'll reset the BIOS so that the CD-ROM boots first.
(Depending on your BIOS and your chosen setting, you might not have to do any
of this resetting: it might just go down the list until it finds a bootable disk. It
seems like it should always do that, but I have not found this to be the case.)

10. Idea for a Larger Bootable Floppy. We could now go ahead and create a
bootable CD, but I guess we should first decide what we're going to put on it.
All we've really done is to figure out what belongs in that tiny little 1.44 MB
bootable section. What goes into the other 650 MB or so of free space? (It will be
more like 530 MB, if you use a rewritable CD-RW formatted with a program like
DirectCD to allow ordinary disk writing and erasing. Make sure, however, that
all of your CD-ROM drives can read disks formatted that way.) Really, you
could put anything you wanted in there. The bootable section, ideally, would be
much larger than 1.44 MB, so that you could do more with your bootable CD
than just boot to a DOS prompt. If you could create bootable program CDs for
all of the applications you'd like to run, you could run a computer without a
hard drive or a floppy. CDs might have self-contained program files, and you
might save your work to a RAM disk and, periodically, to a Web server or a page
on the Internet. But that's not the kind of system I have right now, so I haven't
pursued these possibilities.
11. Experiment to Enlarge the Bootable Partition on CD. I began by saying that,
if you want to create a bootable CD, Easy CD Creator requires you to have a
bootable floppy. (See point 4.) I wondered, however, whether I could store more
than a measly 1.44 MB of programs in the bootable section of a CD, so as to do
more interesting things with a bootable CD than merely boot the system. To
experiment with this, I put about 50 MB of files on a separate, bootable partition
called BOOT_CD. (For information on making a partition bootable, see point
5(a).) Then, before I came to the part of the Easy CD Creator process that told me
to insert my bootable floppy into drive A, I opened a separate DOS window and
used the DOS command SUBST A: F:\ where F was my BOOT_CD partition.
This command told the computer to substitute drive F for drive A. (The
command to end the substitution and return the disks to normal is SUBST A:
/D.) I hoped, then, that when Easy CD Creator told me to insert a floppy, I
would hit return, and it would happily insert these 50 MB of files into the
bootable part of my CD. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I just got an
error message, and Easy CD Creator would go no further. That happened even
when I had less than 1.44 MB of files in that BOOT_CD partition. Apparently
SUBST didn't work for these purposes, or else the large partition size (which
PartitionMagic would not shrink below a relatively massive 260 MB) triggered
an alarm in Easy CD Creator. I tried at least to take advantage of the fact that
Easy CD Creator and my computer's BIOS will accept floppy drives up to 2.88
MB -- that is, I reduced the files in BOOT_CD until I had less than 2.88 MB there - but it still didn't work. (The maximum floppy drive size is important because,
when you do boot your bootable CD, you'll discover that the computer sees its
bootable section as drive A, not as drive F or whatever letter your CD-ROM
drive ordinarily uses.) So I was stuck with the 1.44 MB limit.

Uses for a Bootable CD

12. Running Windows from CD. This left me feeling that there wasn't much use
for a bootable CD, other than as an emergency startup disk. Researching the
question briefly, I found a page that seemed to confirm this. See
http://www.ozemail.com/~rossstew/drs/sec1.html# bk13. On the other hand, I
also found a page telling how to make a CD that will actually start and run
Windows 98 from the CD by using a RAM drive. See
http://www.heise.de/ct/Service/English.htm/99/11/206/. The concept
appears to be that since you can't make any alterations to the contents of a CD,
you can't do the constant reading and writing of certain files that happens in an
operating system like Windows, so Windows can't run from a CD; but that you
can get around this by setting up a CD that will load Windows and will also copy
its Registry files to a RAM disk, where they can indeed be altered. You have to
work through a somewhat complex setup process to achieve this, however, and
any configuration changes you make during a session will all be lost as soon as
you reboot, because a RAM drive is, of course, purely electronic memory.
(Unless, of course, you could figure out some way to save those configuration
changes to your hard disk and reload them manually or automatically when
Windows reboots.) Another problem is that you apparently can't use the CDROM drive for anything else; taking the CD out of the drive will require you to
reboot. See http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/sanny/bootable_cd_rom.htm.
Without these drawbacks, the idea of having Windows running from a CD,
where it can't get corrupted (except by physical damage to the CD), would be
very tempting. I hear that you can create a bootable CD that will emulate a hard
drive, and I can see how a rewritable CD-RW in that condition (perhaps with
some files write-protected) might make a handy drive C with Windows loaded
on it (especially if it allowed you to load the Windows files to RAM disk so that
you could use the CD-ROM drive for something else), but I have not yet figured
out how to create that kind of bootable CD.
13. Advantages of the File-by-File Approach. The concept of the Adaptec page
(see point 4) seems to have been that you would use the bulk of your CD to make
a file-for-file copy (i.e., not an image copy) of your basic Windows installation,
and would then restore it on a file-by-file basis. This would explain why they
said that you should make sure XCOPY is on your bootable floppy. (See point
5(f).) There's certainly no point using XCOPY with image restore software like
DriveImage, which will put the files in the right place automatically as it unpacks
the image. (XCOPY is a DOS utility that will copy directories and subdirectories
one at a time, from one disk or directory to another. It doesn't investigate or
dismantle massive image files.) (At this point, it surprised me to see that XCOPY
was not on the Win98 Startup Floppy.) This, then, is one advantage of creating
the bootable floppy the hard way. (See point 8.) I can imagine that there might

be times when this file-by-file approach would be useful. For instance, if I figure
out that Windows is not booting because of one misbehaving file on my hard
disk, I could easily boot this file-for-file CD and replace that one corrupted file
with a good copy from the CD. Much easier than wiping the hard disk and
restoring from multiple CDs! This thought inspired me to go ahead and
complete this file-for-file copy on bootable CD, following the approach that
Adaptec seems to have had in mind, before trying my hand at the disk image
approach. (For further refinements of the boot floppy, see point 50.)
Perfect Windows on CD
14. Starting Windows from Scratch. Thus, I found myself facing the need for a
pure, pristine copy of Windows 98 that I could record permanently on my
bootable CD, using the file-for-file method. As noted above, my first goal was to
have a CD containing those basic files, as actually installed on my computer,
before adding any application files or anything else that might screw them up.
So now that I had the files I needed from drive C, I was free to wipe drive C
clean and reformat it as a bootable drive. (See point 5.) This time around, I did
not make the mistake of installing Windows 95 and then installing Win98 on top
of it, which was what the concept of "upgrade" had meant to me previously.
(Not to mention that the Win95 installation was itself an upgrade, too, that I had
installed on top of OS/2!) Instead, the preferred approach is evidently to wipe
the disk clean, reboot with your bootable floppy that contains your CD-ROM
driver, go to the drive letter where your CD is located, which depends on which
kind of boot floppy you're using (see point 8), and run the SETUP.EXE program
in the root of the Windows 98 CD. So that's what I did this time around. At
some point, if you're using the upgrade CD, it looks for proof that you had a
previous version of software (Windows, or possibly OS/2 or other operating
systems) that qualifies you to use the less expensive upgrade instead of requiring
the full-blown Windows 98 CD. You'll have to insert a CD or floppy to satisfy
that verification step in the upgrade process. (Note: I subsequently started over
and redid this step and some of the other steps that follow. See points 31 et seq.)
15. Keep It Simple. Don't install anything on your newly wiped hard disk except
Windows 98, and don't do a lot of configuring and tinkering. It's OK to leave
your monitor in 640 x 480 mode with lousy colors. The one thing you do have to
configure is your modem (unless Windows detects it automatically). Then go
online and download the latest upgrades from Microsoft's Windows Update
page. It's easy to find that page: Win98 installs a link to it on your Start menu.
Do all the upgrades that are relevant for your needs, starting with the Critical
Updates and with the serious ones that produce a popup box, when you click on
them, telling you that they must be downloaded and installed by themselves.
These downloads will include Internet Explorer 5. Then consider going to

www.updates.com and downloading any other fixes they say you might need.
Now you have a complete Windows system. (Later, I wound up doing more
modem configuration. See point 37.)
16. Other Ways to Adjust Windows Early in the Process. Use your judgment on
how much to configure Windows otherwise. You'll have an opportunity to do
more later. The tradeoff is that, if you push your luck and make a lot of farreaching changes now, you risk spoiling your perfect installation and wasting all
the hours you've spent installing and downloading; but if you don't make any
adjustments, you'll have to make them all again, every time you reinstall
Windows. The changes I'm talking about are those that you'll certainly make at
some point; the only question is whether they will jeopardize your basic rocksolid (ha) Windows installation if you make them now. In my own case, I
decided on several minor steps that seemed best done now, before other
software would get installed and might get confused by any change in the
existing state of affairs. One thing I did was to create a C:\TEMP folder, since I
always use one of those and no harm would be done by creating it. In addition, I
deleted everything from C:\Windows\Temp, so that my CD would not fill with
useless clutter; and for the same reason, I instructed Internet Explorer's options
to clear out its History and Temporary Internet Files ("TIF") folders. I
supplemented that last step by visiting the TIF folder to delete cookies manually.
Also, having gone to www.updates.com (see point 14), I knew that Windows had
installed an outdated version of RealPlayer; but since I disliked RealPlayer, I
went into Start | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and removed REAL.
This would also be a good time to run a surface test or create new partitions (by
using e.g., the PartitionMagic floppy -- see point 2). I wouldn't recommend
installing Norton Utilities or AntiVirus, however; they can add pollution to the
pure, basic Windows installation we're contemplating here. (The second time
around, I adjusted the basic Windows installation somewhat differently. See
point 37.)
17. At this point, I could have installed Easy CD Creator on my fresh, clean hard
drive. I decided not to do that, however. I wasn't worried about the program
causing any problems with my nice new Windows installation, although I
suppose that could be an issue too. Instead, I was concerned about doing my
Windows backup while Windows was running. DriveImage has the advantage
that it reboots the computer into Real DOS before creating its image files, so that
your Windows files are not in use. Easy CD Creator does nothing like this. So I
thought there might be a risk that, no matter how perfect my Windows
installation might be, the CD might fail to capture files that Windows was using
at the time of CD creation. To avoid this, I took the hard drive out of the
computer and hooked it up as a slave drive in the other computer. (See point 1.)
(Configuring as a slave drive involves resetting the jumper on the hard disk, if it

has one, and making a change in your BIOS if it doesn't use Auto settings. I
didn't actually use screws to install the drive inside the computer; I just put it on
a stack of books next to the computer and left the case off.) Since Windows
wasn't booting from this master-turned-slave drive, there wasn't a lot of the
usual Windows thrashing around to identify it as new hardware -- that is, it
didn't seem that any important files would be affected -- and I hoped its
Windows files would mostly be inactive while Easy CD Creator was running.
18. Burning a Bootable CD. The rest of the Easy CD Creator approach was, well,
somewhat easy. I shut down all other programs. Then, following the Adaptec
instructions (see point 4), I went into Data Layout and dragged the entire
contents of the drive (we're talking about my slave drive D, now) to the CD
creation area, so as to avoid fragmentation and other problems that might cause
a buffer underrun. (See point 269(f).) Easy CD Creator processed this request
and stalled at a half-dozen cookies in my Temporary Internet Files folder that
had somehow been invisible even though I had instructed Windows Explorer to
show hidden files. I hit the "Change" button to truncate the overly long
filenames for these cookies. (Easy CD Creator's limit is 64 characters per
filename, not counting pathname.) (If it had been real filenames rather than mere
cookies, I would have aborted rather than truncating and would have shortened
the filenames if possible.) I noticed that Easy CD Creator reported that the disk's
contents were only about 300 MB, whereas Windows Explorer was reporting
more like 400-500 MB. The discrepancy seems to have been due to different
methods of counting file sizes (i.e., actual file size versus amount of disk space
allocated) and to the apparent fact that Easy CD Creator was not making a copy
of the large Windows swap file (WIN386.SWP) that had appeared in D:\ after I
brought the hard disk over as a slave. (Too late, I remembered that I had
previously adjusted this machine so that the Windows swap file would go on
drive D; but since it wasn't being recorded to CD, I saw no harm in it.) Finally, I
went into File | CD Layout Properties | General, told the computer to use the
name of WIN98_PURE for my new CD, clicked on Data Settings and changed the
File System to ISO 9660, clicked on Bootable, clicked Properties and made sure
the "Any MS-DOS 8.3 character file names" button was marked, clicked OK,
changed File Types to "Add All Files" (out of sheer paranoia), and clicked OK
again. The program asked me for a bootable floppy, and since I would be
needing XCOPY, I decided to use the floppy that I had created the hard way.
(See point 13.) After copying the files from that floppy into a temporary area and
adding BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN (which were, I guess, the files that
made it bootable), the program brought me back to its main screen and waited.
(Thus, it seems that I could instead have followed the procedure recommended
at www.ozemail.com.au, where they suggest dragging the contents into the CD
creation area (see the top of this point 18) as the last step, not the first.) I clicked
File | Validate Layout, not because I know what that does, but because I always

do that before creating a CD. Then I clicked File | Create CD, chose a speed of
2x, clicked Advanced and chose the "Close Session and Leave Disc Open" option
-- after all, I was using only half of the CD -- and then clicked OK. The program
burned the CD without further ado. (At this point, I had not yet come across the
suggestion that you burn the bootable section first, using the required ISO 9660
format, and then come back and burn the rest of the disk in the more popular
Joliet format. See http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq03.html# [3-15]. See point
65. For further information regarding bootable CDs, see
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~rossstew/drs/bootcd.html.)
19. I had an old 1 GB hard disk sitting on the shelf that I had been meaning to
sell. Now I was glad I hadn't. I put aside the hard disk containing the pristine
Windows 98 installation, to serve as a backup in case I wanted to make any
changes, and instead connected the old 1 GB drive to the original computer.
(The covers were off both computers, and were destined to stay off until I had
everything done.) I put the new CD into that machine's CD-ROM drive and
booted, changing the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM. Sure enough, the new CD
did boot properly: when I typed DIR at the DOS prompt for drive A, I saw the
contents described in point 5; and when I switched to drive Z (see point 6), there
appeared to be the original Windows 98 files (shown with truncated 8+3 DOS
filenames). Using the DOS utilities in the bootable part (drive A), I checked drive
C with FDISK and then used FORMAT C: /S/V and also SCANDISK C:
/AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY /SURFACE to prepare it. I created
C:\TEMP, copied my UTILS.ZIP file (see the end of point 5) to that directory and
unzipped it to get XCOPY. I typed Z: and CD \ to make sure my copying would
start from the root of Z; I typed C: and CD \ to make sure that the copied files
and subdirectories would branch off from the root of C; and then I ran XCOPY Z:
C: /S/E, and it began copying files.
Installation Problems: XCOPY
20. In this paragraph, I'm going to describe a technical problem I had. Not
everyone may have this problem; but if anyone else does have it, they might
appreciate hearing about the solutions I tried. There might also be some who
would appreciate this review of numerous DOS commands and utilities. The
problem was like this: XCOPY went for a while, and then stalled at the
\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ folder with the message, "Invalid
device request reading device RESTORE. Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" I hit R for
"Retry" several times, and then tried "Ignore" several times, but the message
repeated. The particular file at which (or after which) XCOPY had stalled was
AXWORL~1.ZIP. Letting the program remain stalled at that point, I removed
the CD from that computer, put it in the other one, and used Windows Explorer
to look at the folder (whose name, without DOS truncation, was "C:\Program

Files\PLATINUM technology\WorldView for Internet Explorer." (Note: you'll

see the truncated 8+3 file and directory names, like PROGRA~1 instead of
Program Files, if you use Windows Explorer to look at the DOS-based CD rather
than at a Windows-based directory (such as the matching folder I had on the C
drive of this other computer). Anyway, looking in that WorldView folder on
both drives C and G (the CD-ROM in this other machine), I saw nothing unusual.
I opened a DOS window and typed XCOPY
G:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.* E:\X, where the E:\X folder was a
new one I had created for the occasion. The copy went off without a hitch. I
went online for guidance but found very little. One user suggested that perhaps
there was a loose connection to the floppy drive. I put the CD back in the
original computer and turned it off, checked all the plugs and connectors, and
rebooted from the CD. (I noticed, this time, that the DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS line
in my CONFIG.SYS file (see point 5(c)) malfunctioned, but when I re-rebooted, it
worked fine.) I went to the troublesome
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ folder (using the ChangeDirectory
command, i.e., CD \PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1, although often it's
less frustrating to do it one directory at a time, e.g., CD \PROGRA~1 and then
CD PLATIN~1, etc. -- note carefully how the backslashes are used) and saw that
the next item in the list, after AXWORL~1.ZIP, was a HELP directory. I tried to
copy just this WORLDV~1 folder and its subdirectories, using XCOPY
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.*
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ /S/E. This gave me a "Bad
command or file name" error. Puzzled, I went to drive C, and what to my shock
and horror did I see but that XCOPY had created no folders there! I tried the
original XCOPY command again (see point 19), and belatedly discovered that I
had gotten "Bad command or file name" because I had no PATH statement
pointing to C:\TEMP, where XCOPY resided. I typed PATH A:;C:\TEMP, to
designate the two places were (so far) all my working DOS programs were
located. I ran XCOPY Z: C: /S/E again. Now, another belated discovery: I had
forgotten to re-orient the computer back to the roots of C and Z (see the last
sentence of point 19), so it XCOPYed everything into C:\TEMP, which of course
was exactly not where I wanted my files to go. I used DEL and DELTREE to
clean the unwanted files and directories out of C:\TEMP. Then, reorienting
myself properly, I ran XCOPY again as before. Once again, it stalled at the same
place, and once again, Retry and Ignore did not do the job. This experience, I
realized, was showing me a shortcoming of the file-by-file approach: if one file
goes haywire, the whole rest of the thing is lost -- unless you want to sit there
and XCOPY individual directories, one at a time, skipping the troublesome ones.
Thinking further, I went back and ran XCOPY
Z:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\*.*
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\ again, but this time without the
/S/E switches. This ran fine, which told me that the problem was in the HELP

or LIB subdirectories of the WORLDV~1 directory. Tired of retyping all these

long commands, I belatedly ran DOSKEY, which gives you the Unix-like ability
to use the up arrow to choose which previous command you'd like to repeat.
(Type DOSKEY /? for more information; the /? switch works with other DOS
programs too.) I went into the HELP subdirectory and again ran the XCOPY
command just shown, adding HELP\ after WORLDV~1 in both the Z: and C:
parts, so as to copy the HELP folder from Z to C. (Be sure to add the \ after
HELP; otherwise DOS won't know if that's a file or directory name.) (It's OK if a
long command wraps over onto the next line; just don't lose your place or get
confused if it doesn't wrap perfectly.) This, too, ran just fine. I tried it again with
the /S/E switches, and that's when I got the error "Invalid device request"
message. I tried it with the LIB subfolder, and that worked just fine with the
/S/E switches. So I knew my problem was limited to the HELP directory, so I
went back there. I noticed that it contained a sub-subfolder called IMAGES. I
repeated the XCOPY command for this HELP\IMAGES folder, but this time the
XCOPY command failed both with and without the /S/E switches. I tried using
COPY *.* (making sure that I had oriented myself to the proper directories on
both C and Z), and this copied some files and then gave me the "Invalid device
request" error after listing the file named RESTORE.GIF. When I hit fail, DOS
said "Fail on INT 24 - RESTORE.GIF." The XCOPY section of the DOS manual
told me that "INT 24 Error" means that the user aborted from an "INT 24 error
reading or writing disk." I already knew that much: I had indeed aborted (by
hitting Fail) after getting that "Invalid device request" error. Hoping for further
enlightenment, I went online, but there was virtually nothing on "Int 24 error"
anywhere. The best I found -- and it wasn't much -- was at
http://d1.ifmo.ru/library/dosint/24/--.HTM, which did at least give me a
couple of ideas. One idea was to try copying that RESTORE.GIF file
individually. Sure enough, that produced the "Invalid device request" message
too. I tried copying the next file after it on the list, ROLL.GIF, and that worked
just fine. I brought the CD back to the other computer and tried copying
RESTORE.GIF from the CD to another directory. DOS was able to do this with
no difficulty! So apparently it wasn't a problem with the CD or the file; it was
something about that filename on that first computer. Trying another approach,
I tried to go into EDIT, got a "General failure reading drive A," remembered that
the CD was still in the other computer, brought the CD back to this first
computer, and hit Retry. I typed EDIT again, typed the letter X, and tried to save
this new file as C:\TEMP\RESTORE.GIF, thinking that I would then copy it to
the appropriate subdirectory and see what happened. Surprisingly, EDIT gave
me the error message, "Edit was unable to create or access the file
C:\TEMP\RESTORE" (not RESTORE.GIF). I tried again, failed again, and quit. I
verified that there was no pre-existing RESTORE file in C:\TEMP. DIR /AH
showed no hidden files named RESTORE (or anything else) in C:\TEMP or in
C:\PROGRA~1\PLATIN~1\WORLDV~1\HELP\IMAGES. I tried a different

way to create C:\TEMP\RESTORE, by typing COPY CON:RESTORE, typing

"This is RESTORE" in the file, and then hitting F6 to save it; but that, too, gave me
the "Invalid device request" error. I took the CD back to the other computer and
looked at it in Windows Explorer, but I just could not see anything unusual
about it. Going back to the first computer, I went to the IMAGES subdirectory
on Z and typed COPY RESTORE.GIF C:\TEMP\X, thinking that maybe it would
save the RESTORE file under a different name, but once again I got the "Invalid
device request" message. Wondering if the problem had to do with the way the
computer was booted, I rebooted with the BIOS set to boot from the floppy, and
used the Windows 98 emergency floppy instead of the one I had created the hard
way. (See point 8.) I went to the IMAGES directory on the CD (which was now
drive letter F) and again tried COPY RESTORE.GIF C:\TEMP\X, and it copied!
Apparently the problem lay in the boot disk that I had assembled the hard way.
My first thought went to the SSCDROM.SYS driver I had been using; I wondered
if perhaps I should have replaced it with the ATAPI_CD.SYS driver that others
had recommended. (See point 7.) There didn't seem to be a copy of that driver
anywhere on the hard disk of my other computer, so I tried the Fast FTP site at
http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/?form=medium. I found a copy of ATAPI_CD.SYS
that was only about 18 months old, downloaded it, put it on the floppy, and
went in to edit CONFIG.SYS to refer to it -- and there I discovered my answer!
As shown in points 6 and 7, Adaptec's instructions tell you to design
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS so that the name your computer assigns to
the non-bootable part of the CD will be -- you guessed it -- RESTORE! I went
ahead and replaced the driver, thinking that maybe this generic ATAPI_CD.SYS
driver might save me some headaches in the future; but I also changed the label.
The relevant line in my revised AUTOEXEC.BAT now said MSCDEX.EXE
/D:Z1Z_Z2ZM /L:Z, and my revised CONFIG.SYS now said
DEVICE=ATAPI_CD.SYS /D:Z1Z_Z2ZM. I hoped that very few files would be
named Z1Z_Z2ZM, so perhaps XCOPY would run in peace from now on. Using
this new and improved floppy, I rebooted the original computer. It said that the
ATAPI_CD driver was a Sony driver, that it did not find any drives, and that the
device driver was not installed. So I went back to the other computer, removed
the ATAPI_CD.SYS file from my floppy, restored the SSCDROM.SYS driver, and
changed the CONFIG.SYS line again, so now it read DEVICE=SSCDROM.SYS
/D:Z1Z_Z2ZM. Back to the original computer; reboot with this super floppy; all
goes well; the CD-ROM is recognized as drive Z with a label of Z1Z_Z2ZM. I go
to the troublesome IMAGE directory (see above), try COPY RESTORE.GIF
C:\TEMP\X again, and it works! Since I want to make a fresh start and see if the
whole thing will run all the way through without interruption, I use DELTREE to
wipe out the directories on C (not counting TEMP, which contains XCOPY and
the other programs I'm using); I use DEL to wipe out the other files in the root of
C; I make sure that my PATH statement points to C:\TEMP and that I am at the
root of both C and Z (see above), and then I go back and re-run the original

XCOPY Z: C: /S/E. (See point 19). (I think I could have avoided the problem
with being in the wrong part of the disk if I had instead typed XCOPY Z:\ C:\
/S/E (with those two backslashes), but I'm not inclined to experiment with that
now.) The XCOPY process proceeds swimmingly, and at the end it tells me it
has restored over 3,500 files.
21. This paragraph describes another technical problem, and continues in the
general spirit of the previous paragraph. Now that I seemed to have things
working, I was ready for the acid test: would the CD give me a bootable copy of
Windows 98? I removed the CD, rebooted and reset the BIOS to boot from drive
C, and rebooted. I got the error message, "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure.
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." (Ya gotta
love those all-caps messages that make you feel like an idiot who's about to ruin
an expensive computer.) I could not understand why it was saying it was
booting from an ATAPI CD-ROM. I thought maybe the problem was that I had
done a warm reboot. So I tried a cold reboot (shut the power off and wait at least
sixty seconds before turning it back on). As happens so often in life, the failure
message recurred. I put my super-duper boot floppy in and hit Reset. It reboots,
as it did before, and assigns the CD-ROM to drive Z with the label Z1Z_Z2ZM. I
ignore that and go into C:\ to see what's happening with the AUTOEXEC.BAT
and CONFIG.SYS that should have been restored from the CD during the
XCOPY process. I type DIR and see that both files have size zero -- there's
nothing in them. Is that right? I shut down this computer again, hook up the
hard disk on which I originally installed my pristine version of Win98 (see point
19), and boot it. It boots up just fine. I go into Windows Explorer and look at C:.
Yep, its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT also have zero bytes. So that's not
the explanation. Another question comes to mind: did XCOPY bring over the
hidden system files, like IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (see point 5(a))? I shut down,
swap hard disks again, and reboot with the floppy again. I go into C:\ and type
DIR /AH to see a list of hidden files in the root directory. It shows me just the
two that I put there when I formatted drive C as a bootable drive (see point 19).
In my brief look at C:\ on the pristine hard disk a moment earlier (see above),
Windows Explorer had shown me at least a half-dozen hidden files, and a look
on the other computer confirmed that it, too, had a large number of hidden files.
To double-check, I type CD \WINDOWS and then DIR /AH to see if there are
any hidden files in the Windows directory. None on that machine, whereas,
again, C:\Windows on the working Win98 computer has any number of hidden
files and folders. So, OK: somewhere, the hidden files fell through the crack. I
put my bootable CD into the working Win98 computer and use Windows
Explorer to check its contents. Yeah, there are quite a few hidden files in its C:\
root folder and also in its C:\Windows folder. So Easy CD Creator did its job,
and the problem must be in the use of XCOPY. Does it copy hidden files?
XCOPY /? says nothing about hidden files. Then I remember that I have another

version of XCOPY, called XCOPY32. (See point 5(f).) I take it on a dry run on
the working Win98 computer: I open a DOS window and type XCOPY32 C:\
C:\X\, to send copies of everything in the root to a specially created junk folder
called X. Then I look at X in Windows Explorer. No hidden files are copied!
What the hell good is that? At the DOS prompt on the working Win98 machine,
I again type XCOPY /?. This time, I get a long listing of all kinds of XCOPY
options, including XCOPY /H, which is supposed to copy hidden and system
files along with everything else. What is this /H? (Note: the list of options is so
long that I have to type XCOPY /? | MORE to read the comments before they
scroll off the screen.) I turn back to the original PC, on which I've been doing all
this XCOPYing and rebooting. On that machine, as just noted, XCOPY /? says
nothing about any /H option. I check the file dates for the versions of XCOPY
on both machines; they are the same. How is this possible? Do you suppose that
the DOS prompt runs one version of XCOPY when it's a DOS box running within
the Windows graphical interface, but a more retarded version of XCOPY when
I've only booted to DOS and haven't yet gotten the graphical interface running?
To check this possibility, I shut down the working Win98 machine and reboot it
with the same floppy as I used to boot the other machine. Sure enough, using
the version of XCOPY in that machine's C:\Windows\Command folder, the
command XCOPY /? says nothing about the /H flag, and when I try to use
XCOPY /H, I get an "Invalid switch - - h" error message, and the same for
XCOPY32. Browsing online, I confirm that this is a known fact that everyone
except me seems to accept. So what do I do about XCOPYing the contents of this
CD to an empty hard disk when I want to restore my system?
22. While trying to find the solution for XCOPY, I came across a comment that
told me I should have set the first partition on my hard disk active when I was
using FDISK. I went back into FDISK, set the partition to active, left FDISK, and
rebooted. This time, the hard disk did boot up. For an instant, it flashed the
colored Windows 98 startup screen. Then it dumped me back at the C: prompt.
But at least I didn't have to boot from the floppy anymore. I tried XCOPY /?
again, but it still gave me just the limited number of options, not including the
one that copies hidden files.
23. As I browsed newsgroup comments, I came up with several concerns about
XCOPY: (a) It was not clear whether I should type XCOPY or XCOPY32 when
working within a Win98 DOS box. Some comments seemed to suggest that
either command would give you XCOPY32 under Win98 and that either
command would give you plain old XCOPY if you had booted in DOS. I decided
that the simple solution was just to type XCOPY32 from now on. (b) A number
of users say that XCOPY -- or, as I'll call it from now on, XCOPY32 -- can screw
up your long filenames. The reason for this seems to be that people are using
XCOPY32 to copy their C drives while Win98 is running. The idea seems to be

that, for some reason, XCOPY32 generates a DOS-style short filename, and that
the filename thus generated may differ from the short filename that the
Windows Registry uses. This seems to be more of a rumor than an actual
problem described in any firsthand account, as far as I could tell; besides, I hoped
to have avoided it by hooking up my source disk (i.e., the one from which I was
burning a CD) as drive D rather than C. (See point 18.) (c) Most importantly,
since everyone seems to agree that XCOPY32 will copy long filenames only when
used from within a Win98 DOS box, I had to conclude that I could not use the
CD that I had burned -- at least not for restoring a working Win98 system from
scratch onto a blank hard disk. I could have used ATTRIB to shut off the
troublesome attributes (hidden, system, and read-only) before burning the CD,
but the original concept was that I was going to be backing up a perfect, untinkered-with version of Windows, and this would not have been consistent with
that. (Note: to suppress long or short filenames in a DOS box, use DIR /Z or
DIR /B or DIR /Z /B.)
24. I concluded that XCOPY32 required me to work within a Win98 DOS
window at either the start of the process, before burning the CD, or the end of
the process, when trying to restore. I couldn't think of any special value that
XCOPY32 offered at the start of the process -- I certainly hadn't needed it to burn
the CD -- and my whole goal at the end of the process was to find something that
would create a Win98 installation from scratch on a bare hard disk. I could
imagine that XCOPY32 might be useful for some tasks after I got Win98 set up on
that bare disk, but it seemed clear that, at this stage of the game, XCOPY32 could
not help me.
Alternatives to XCOPY
25. The only way I could see to doctor my files before burning them on the CD,
other than using a disk-image program like DriveImage (see point 2), would be
to use a ZIP program to encapsulate a whole disk, or at least a whole directory,
into a single file with a nice DOS-friendly 8+3 filename (e.g., PROG_DIR.ZIP)
and no troublesome file attributes. Zipping would reduce the accessibility of
individual files, which was part of the original goal; but that might not be a big
deal, since some ZIP programs -- such as PowerDesk, which I use -- allow you to
look at the contents of ZIP files and extract individual files from them (and also
to add to or otherwise edit them, which wouldn't apply if the files in question
were on a read-only CD). I didn't have any experience with editing the single
huge disk image files that DriveImage would produce, so I couldn't say whether
image file editing in DriveImage would be better or worse than using
PowerDesk -- although of course it seemed that the latter would probably be
faster and would demand less temporary hard disk workspace. During at least a
year of frequent usage, I have had some imperfect experiences with PowerDesk

in situations not related to the present discussion, but overall I have been pleased
with it, and I cannot say whether other software would have turned in a better
record. That made PowerDesk something of a known quantity.
26. But then how would this ZIP process work? I would zip all of the directories
in a Windows installation into a smallish number of ZIP files -- not too many, so
that I wouldn't have to keep them all straight and spend a lot of time repeating
the same ZIP and UNZIP commands; these ZIP files would get burned onto CD;
I would restore them into a temporary working directory on the blank hard disk
from CD, by using plain old DOS-based XCOPY (or plain old COPY, for that
matter); and then I would unzip them and let their contents distribute
themselves back to their original locations (assuming I would remember, each
time, to give the commands needed to save the full pathnames for the zipped
files). In short, XCOPY32 would be replaced by a hybrid approach that is
definitely more file-by-file than DriveImage but definitely less file-by-file than
XCOPY32.
27. One advantage of the ZIP approach, for me, was the prospect of a flexible
approach to backup. I really didn't want to be in the position of burning two or
more disk image CDs every time I wished to do a complete backup of a 1- or 2GB Windows system with all the application software etc., if -- as seemed likely -there would be some folders that virtually never changed and didn't need to be
repeatedly backed up. This seemed increasingly important as I thought about
the pace at which hard drive sizes were increasing: I definitely did not want to
be in a position of doing 8 GB backups on CD, or of having to invest in a DVD
drive and expensive DVD disks, if this other approach would make the CD-ROM
viable for an extra year or two. As mentioned above in the context of editing,
disk space was another factor that worked in favor of the ZIP approach. It takes
a lot less disk space to hold a ZIP file of a directory, and to work with one
directory at a time, than to make a massive disk image file -- which, as I
understand, must include your entire disk. Also, I thought it might be good to
stay more in touch with periodic developments with my Windows files and my
drive C, and that in this sense the one-shot DriveImage approach might keep me
a little too insulated. In addition, I thought I might get a higher compression
ratio from ZIP programs than from DriveImage -- not that I would know, but just
that I've been very impressed with ZIP compression. Another consideration was
that perhaps it would be best to take two different approaches, at least for the
basic system backups, just in case either one proved to have some kind of defect
that wouldn't emerge until later; so I might wind up wanting to use both
DriveImage and ZIP methods at certain times. Moreover, you can zip files while
running Windows and then can use a different program to unzip them in DOS,
or vice versa, according to the needs of the situation; this would allow some
welcome flexibility when compared to the take-over-your-machine approach of

DriveImage. And when we get to the data part of the picture, ZIP files can be
passworded -- I see, for instance, that PowerDesk has recently added DES
encryption.
28. Before going any further, I wondered whether it would be easiest to keep
that old 1 GB hard disk that I had been planning to sell and leave a pure copy of
Windows 98 on it. Whenever I wanted to reinstall Windows, I could just cable it
with another hard drive, boot from DOS, and use DriveImage to copy its entire
contents over to the other disk. I decided against this tempting alternative for
several reasons: (a) I felt I could sell the disk for somewhere in the range of $2550, which made it a lot more expensive than a CD. (b) As long as those Windows
files were on a hard disk, they were vulnerable to operator error or program
malfunction, and in that case I would be back at square one -- unless I wanted to
make a backup of them on CD, which would be a really ironic thing to do. (c)
The Windows installation was only the first stage in my journey. I would still
have to install program disks; I would want CD backups of those installations; so
it seemed that I might as well learn how to do it now and follow the same
approach through the rest of the project. (d) Even though cabling disks together
is not hard, sometimes I would really rather use my CD-ROM drive than get out
the screwdriver and dismantle my computer. (e) A hard disk is tough, but
probably not as tough in cold and humidity as a CD (although probably tougher
in direct sunlight, in case you were planning to leave your Windows 98 backup
sitting on the hood of your car). (f) A hard disk still takes at least a little more
storage space.
29. Looking at the PowerDesk Website, I see that they do not recommend using
PowerDesk or ZipMagic 2000 for backing up hard disks. Also, I have just
discovered that my old DOS unzip programs won't work with the latest ZIP
programs, and I haven't yet come across a good, free DOS zip program. My
options at this point, then, are (a) to buy a program like ZipMagic 2000, which I
think comes with a DOS version as well as the Win98 version, or (b) to accept
that I'm going to have to use DriveImage to set up the basic Windows 98 system
on the empty hard disk, but can then use my Windows-based PowerDesk ZIP
program after that. I accept option (b), which brings us to the question of how to
use a disk image approach instead of the file-based approaches that I've been
talking about for so long.
Starting Over
30. Having had my pure and pristine Windows 98 hard disk cabled as slave to
another machine for several days now, and having watched Norton Utilities and
other programs perform all kinds of evil operations on that pure disk when I
wasn't looking, and having decided that I was going to use DriveImage (which

boots into DOS, so that no Windows program files are active during the CD
burn, which means that I need not do my CD burning with the Windows disk
cabled as a slave drive in an alien machine), and furthermore having discovered
that I did not set things up exactly as I might have wished the first time around, I
resolved to start over and reinstall a new and even more pure version of
Windows 98. (This, then, is where I begin to revise the steps suggested in points
14 et seq.)
31. Installing Windows 98 from the Hard Disk. One thing that I did differently,
this second time around, was to prepare to install Win98 from the hard disk. I
have been informed that, if you copy the WIN98 folder from the upgrade CD to
your hard drive, and leave it there, and run SETUP.EXE from there, Windows
will generally look at that WIN98 folder when it needs to consult its original files,
thus saving me the repeated hassle of having Windows tell me to insert the
upgrade CD into the machine, not to mention the frustration of seeing that
Windows then acts as though it can't find what it wants on that CD. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/answerstips/story/0,3650,2336826,00
.html. So while I still had the nearly pure version of Win98 installed on C, I used
Windows Explorer to copy the WIN98 folder to drive C. It later developed that I
might have been able to do this afterwards with X-Setup. (See point 137(n).) I
also heard that you could do it with a direct Registry tweak: in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Se
tup, create a SourcePath item of the String Value type by right-clicking in the
right window, if theres not a SourcePath item already, and set its value equal to
the place where you have put the Windows files. Later, I modified my thinking
about part of this step. (See point 319.)
32. Deciding on a Partition Scheme. Another thing I did before cleaning out the
rest of the hard disk was to make sure I had two hard drives hooked up there,
with the second one serving as a placeholder so that the Windows program files
would all be set up to refer to the proper partitions. I probably could have done
this with just one drive, but since I had that old 1 GB drive sitting around, I went
ahead and cabled it as my second hard disk, and I laid out my partitions on the
two drives so as to resemble the layout on the other computer (referred to here as
my "main" computer), where I was writing these notes and where I do most of
my work. To set up the partitions in FAT32 format (i.e., the more efficient disk
format that first became available for Windows users in Win98), I temporarily
installed PartitionMagic. I used it to create six partitions, trying to set each at a
size that I thought might accommodate its needs (given the relatively small sizes
of the hard drives on this PENTIUM computer), but knowing that I could always
use PartitionMagic to adjust them later. On the first hard drive, I put partitions
C through E. C was the WIN98 partition (1000 MB); D was the PROGRAMS
partition (1700 MB); and E was the DATA partition, for word processing files and

other materials that generally do not require constant disk access (300 MB, which
I would probably revise upwards later when I had a clearer idea of how much
space I really needed for C and D). Why did I care about constant disk access?
With your first hard disk busy using Windows and other program files, they say
you are better off spreading out the disk work, which you can do by putting
your active data files on a separate drive. Thus, on the second hard drive, I put
these partitions (all in an extended partition, so their letters would always follow
the partitions on the primary drive): F as my AV partition (a 250 MB placeholder
for the much larger partition I would use on the other machine, where I do my
audio and visual image editing); G for a partition called BURNING (250 MB
now, as a mere placeholder on this tiny 1 GB hard disk, but 700 MB later, on the
other machine) (see point 33); and H for a SWAP partition (500 MB) (see point
44). (For more information on one reason for putting all of the Windows
program files in their own partition, see point 154(d).)
33. Here's a brief explanation of the BURNING partition. I call it BURNING
because it temporarily holds the stuff I burn onto CDs. With a limit of 700 MB,
this partition will hold very little beyond what is actually going onto a CD. That
is, it will not contain many actively used files, and therefore will tend not to
become fragmented. (Fragmentation can cause some CD-burning programs to
stutter and can ruin the CD you were trying to create.) Further reducing the risk
of fragmentation, you have the fact that most of the contents of this partition will
arrive here in ready-to-burn chunks -- that is, you aren't going to do much
editing in this relatively restricted space. Also, by having this partition on a
separate hard drive, you reduce the risk of a stutter when Windows fiddles with
program files on your first hard disk for whatever reason.
34. Once PartitionMagic completed the steps of rearranging the partitions as just
described, I was ready to retrace the steps described in point 14. I rebooted and
set the BIOS to look at drive A; I then rebooted with a bootable floppy (see point
8), making sure that this floppy contained the DOS tools I would be needing, as
described in the following sentences. I checked to insure that I could read files
on the CD-ROM drive, which my floppy had placed at the letter Z. (See point 6.)
I then began hacking and slicing with DELTREE and DEL, removing everything
from drive C except C:\TEMP (where I had unzipped my DOS tools) and the
C:\WIN98 folder. (See point 31.) When those two directories were all that DIR
saw, I typed ATTRIB -H -R -S to expose the hidden, read-only, and system files
in the root directory of drive C and to make them capable of being deleted, and
then I used DEL on them one by one until they were all gone. Then I typed
DELTREE TEMP. As a final check, I typed DIR /AH, and saw that there was still
a hidden RECYCLED directory. So now I had to recreate \TEMP and re-unzip
my DOS tools there in order to use DELTREE on this RECYCLED directory. (I
knew that Windows would soon be recreating the thing, and I didn't see what

harm it could do if I left it, but I deleted it anyway, just to be thorough.) Then I
typed DELTREE TEMP and DIR /AH again, and was satisfied that C:\WIN98
was the only thing left on the drive. I took a quick tour of the other partitions,
typing DIR and DIR /AH at each, and concluded that everything was empty. I
removed the CD, rebooted from the floppy, and checked C one more time to
make sure it had nothing other than C:\WIN98. (Note that, by doing a previous
installation of Windows 98 and then erasing it in this way, I had unintentionally
avoided the potentially difficult question of how you would otherwise get the
WIN98 folder from the CD onto the hard drive without using XCOPY and
running into all the problems discussed above, although I suppose you could
work around that difficulty if you had another computer to which you could
copy the WIN98 folder and then burn a CD or copy it over by temporarily
connecting this hard drive to that machine.)
Reinstalling Windows 98
35. I went into C:\WIN98 and typed SETUP. I went through the setup process.
The process never made me refer to anything outside C:\WIN98, except that (a) I
needed the Product Key from the back of the CD jacket and (b) I had to load the
Windows 95 upgrade CD to prove that I was a qualifying upgrader. I was
surprised that the installation did not need the Win98 CD for anything else. The
setup options I chose were as follows: I let the program install to
C:\WINDOWS; I chose the Custom route and selected everything (which I later
regretted -- see point 39); and otherwise I pretty much went with the defaults.
(Later, I found that you can avoid inserting the Win95 CD by copying the
\WIN95 folder over from the Windows 95 CD and browsing to it during the
Win98 installation process.)
36. I contemplated moving the hard disk containing this new installation over to
my AMD machine. After all, that computer had a faster modem, so as to
download the program upgrades more quickly. Also, it had the CD-ROM drive
that was capable of burning CDs. But as I thought about it, I saw several reasons
against this plan (which differs somewhat from the approach described in point
17): (a) If I moved the hard disk over to become drive C on the other machine,
Windows would reconfigure itself for the hardware on that machine, which
meant that it would re-reconfigure itself when I brought the hard disk back to
this other machine to add software. I wanted to keep this first installation as
simple as possible. (b) If I used this hard drive as the C drive in the AMD
machine, I would have to install Easy CD Creator on it. My concept was to
install the application software later, to insulate the basic system from quirks in
that software -- not to mention that I didn't want to have to uninstall or upgrade
this version of Easy CD Creator every time I reinstalled my operating system
over the next couple of years. (c) I don't like to be without a working computer

that I can use to check for solutions online, and although I could PROBABLY
reassemble one quickly enough if need be, I was reluctant to tempt fate. (d) I
expected the whole process of installing software to be quite time-consuming,
and I wanted to work on other stuff -- and to be able to continue taking these
notes -- while that was going on. (e) To simplify things, after the installation and
downloads and adjustments were all complete, I could just use the DriveImage
boot floppy to create a disk image file on the H partition of my little 1 GB drive
(see point 32), and could then connect that drive to the AMD machine and burn
the CD from there, when the time to burn arrived.
37. Modem Setup. Leaving the hard disk in the PENTIUM computer, then, I
decided to do my tinkering with Windows before downloading relevant updates
(see point 15), rather than afterwards. I made this decision mostly because I
wanted to put the Temporary Internet Files folder used by Internet Explorer in
the right place to begin with, before going online. Beginning with that task in
mind, I started Internet Explorer, which started the Internet Connection Wizard.
I went through that wizard to configure my Internet connection through my ISP,
and allowed it to run the Hardware Installation Wizard to configure my modem,
which involved supplying a modem driver on a floppy disk; and since I had to
create that floppy by copying the driver from the hard disk on my AMD
machine, I was glad already that I had decided to keep my AMD computer
running! I said OK to the option of signing up for an Internet mail account, even
though I feared it would give me Outlook Express rather than Outlook 98; I did
this because I don't use Outlook Express for e-mail, but I do sometimes use it for
newsgroup browsing. I had to fire up Outlook 98 and Outlook Express on the
other machine (Tools | Accounts | Properties) to make sure I had the right
answers for some of the setup questions. The computer then wanted to go
online, but I selected Work Offline and started making adjustments to Internet
Explorer (View | Internet Options). (Later, I wound up doing more modem
configuration. See point 99. I also found another program for newsgroup
browsing. See point 292.)
38. The changes I made to Internet Explorer were as follows: (a) On the General
tab, I changed the homepage to my preferred, customized search page
(http://www.northernlight.com/nlquery.fcg?dx=1004&qr=&qt=&pu=&qu=&si
=SOURCE%3D1&la=3%3A1&qc=All&d1=&d2=&rv=1&search.x=41&search.y=1
7). (b) Also on the General tab, in the Settings for Temporary Internet Files
("TIF"), I changed to "Never" check for newer versions of stored pages, I told it to
use 50 MB, and tried to put it into the root of SWAP partition H. (See point 32.)
It informed me that I couldn't do that, so I opened Windows Explorer and
created H:\Temporary Internet Files (which apparently would have occurred
automatically if I hadnt bothered -- see point 242(f)), and told Internet Explorer
("IE") to put the TIF folder there. IE informed me that it needed to reboot in

order for these changes to take effect. (Note: if Internet Explorer has already
created a TIF folder somewhere, and that folder doesn't go away after you
change your Internet Explorer options for TIF and reboot, you can go into DOS
and use DELTREE to get rid of it. Probably an easier way to do all this is to use
X-Setup. See point 137(n).) (c) My final change on the General tab was to change
History to three days, since I just never look back in time any further than that on
IE. (d) On the Advanced tab, I checked "Browse in a new process" and "Toolbar - Small Icons," and I unchecked "Show Internet Explorer on the Desktop." Then I
closed out of Options. (e) In the main screen, I dragged the Address bar and the
menu bar to the same line as the button bar, so that I had a nearly full-screen
effect with more functionality. (f) In View | Toolbars, I unchecked Text Labels. I
could have made more changes, but I knew I would be downloading an updated
version shortly, and decided that I could take another look at the options after
that. So I closed Internet Explorer and hit Start | Shut Down | Restart to let the
settings take effect.
39. On reboot, I again got an introductory message telling me that my computer
wasn't equipped to run WaveTop, which was one of the options included in the
mass of Windows options I had checked when I selected everything for
installation. To stop this WaveTop message from loading at startup, I went to
Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Windows Setup,
where I unchecked the Web TV for Windows option. This gave me the option of
restarting, which I took. After reboot, I went into Start | Run | msconfig |
Startup, and was pleased to see that the four different WaveTop items that had
appeared there previously were gone.
40. While in Add/Remove Programs, I had noticed that RealPlayer 4.0 was the
only (non-Windows) program shown. I disliked the way RealPlayer had taken
over my desktop when I had downloaded it one time; I preferred other programs
for my audio and video playback; so I elected to remove RealPlayer here.
41. I made some desktop adjustments, as follows: (a) I shut off the Channel Bar.
(b) I right-clicked on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, went into Properties,
and checked Auto Hide and Show Small Icons. (c) I again right-clicked on the
taskbar, and this time selected Toolbars and unchecked Quick Launch. (d) I
right-clicked on Recycle Bin and set its Properties to configure the drives
independently and not to display the delete confirmation dialog box. I left all
drives at the default value of 10% except for SWAP drive H, where I clicked "Do
not move files to the Recycle Bin." (e) I deleted the Outlook Express shortcut, Set
Up the Microsoft Network, My Documents, and Online Services from the
desktop. (The Microsoft network was not a computer networking thing; it was
an Internet connection option. The purpose of the Microsoft Network and
Online Services options was to give the user different ways of connecting to the

Internet. I didnt want to become a customer of Microsoft or these other ISPs

(Internet Service Providers) at this point, however.)
42. I right-clicked on the taskbar | Properties | Start Menu Programs |
Advanced, and created three new folders under "Programs": Frequently Used,
Primary Utilities, and Other Programs. Under Other Programs, I created a folder
called "Online." I moved the Internet Explorer and Online Services folders into
that Online folder. I made a copy of the Internet Explorer shortcut (the one
actually pointing to the IE program, not to the IE folder) and put it in Frequently
Used. I moved Accessories and StartUp to become subfolders under Other
Programs. (Note: this rearrangement was premature. See point 51.) Windows
seemed to figure out where StartUp is, even when I buried it several layers
down, but if that had failed I would still have had the option of specifying a
location using X-Setup. (See point 137(n).)
43. I right-clicked on Start and chose Explore. This put me into Windows
Explorer. I unchecked View | as Web Page. I checked View | Details, and I
unchecked View | Toolbars Text Labels. I clicked on the grey part of the
Address area and dragged it up to the right end of the previous line. I went into
View | Folder Options | View and checked "Display the full path in the title
bar," "Show file attributes in Detail View," "Allow all uppercase names," "Show
all files," and "Smooth edges of screen fonts," and I unchecked "Hide file
extensions." Finally, still in Folder Options, I clicked on the "Like Current
Folder" button. To finish the job, I left-clicked on Start | Programs, right-clicked
on MS-DOS Prompt, cut it, and pasted it onto Frequently Used. I repeated the
same steps for Windows Explorer.
44. Setting Virtual Memory. This is disk-based memory, as distinct from RAM.
Basically, as I understand it, you're storing, on disk, a snapshot of what is going
on in a program that is currently active on your computer. Disk-based storage is
much slower than RAM, so you want to do what you can to speed up this disk
storage. In Windows 98, the virtual memory -- that is, the disk storage file -- is a
file named WIN386.SWP. This "swapfile" is one of the frequently-changing files
that can cause fragmentation and slowdowns if you put it on a partition with
other files that you will be using actively. (See points 32-33.) Fortunately, I had
located the SWAP drive last, as drive H (see point 32), thus allowing myself to
add a third hard drive sometime in the future and thereby make the most of the
PCForrest advice to put the swapfile on your least-used hard disk. (Note that
this is a revision of point 2.) See
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/jump/0,3652,2217131,00.html.
Until I had a third hard drive (if ever), I believed that the second hard disk
would still be less busy than the first, where the program files were located; and I
also hoped that, by putting the swapfile (and other temporary files, such as the

Temporary Internet Files used by Internet Explorer -- see point 38) into their own
partition, I would reduce their tendency to cause fragmentation. To move the
swapfile to drive H, I followed highly recommended instructions found on the
PCForrest site at www.pcforrest.co.uk/swapfile.htm. As instructed, I went into
Start | Settings | Control Panel | System | Performance | Virtual Memory | Let
me specify my own virtual memory settings. I selected drive H. To designate a
minimum swapfile size, I found the PCForrest advice somewhat inapplicable,
since they envision a setup now, for today's computer usage, whereas I was
preparing a basic Windows setup for the next couple of years. See also
http://epsilon.silicon.net.my/adrian/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/
Swapfile_Optimization_08.htm. The purpose of the minimum is to reduce the
number of times when Windows must recalculate the needed size of the swapfile
and shrink it accordingly. Since I had set drive H at a size of 500 MB and so far
had few other demands on it, and since I had previously noticed that the
swapfile was around 100 MB (see point 18), I decided to set it at a minimum of
100 MB. As almost everyone seems to recommend, I ignored the option to set a
maximum. I told the computer that, yes, I was sure I wanted to do this; I
rebooted; and when I went back into this part of the Control Panel, I saw that, as
promised, the maximum had been set to "no maximum." This information was
greyed out, but PCForrest says this means that Windows is observing your
minimum and maximum settings but is managing the swapfile whenever its size
needs to land somewhere between those extremes. (Note: PCForrest says that
defragmenting the swapfile can help immensely, but that's not an installation
issue and it's not important yet.) I think, but am not certain, that setting your
own swapfile sizes may also allow the defragmenter to defragment the swap file,
which they say is helpful for better system performance.) Later, I learned more
about the Windows swap file. (See point 242(f).)
45. While I was in Control Panel, I clicked on System | Device Manager. I
noticed a trouble mark -- a yellow circle with a black exclamation mark in it -next to a device related to my sound card. I didn't see much reason to configure
the cheap old sound card in this PENTIUM computer, however, since it was not
the one I used for most purposes. I decided to save that part of the installation
for later.
46. Windows installed a default My Documents folder on drive C. I wanted my
data files kept separate from my program files. Windows did not allow me to
simply delete the My Documents folder, however. A comment that I saw in a
newsgroup gave me the impression that TweakUI would allow me to remove
My Documents, but I did not plan to install TweakUI until later. (See point 71.)
So My Documents had to remain for now. Eventually, I found that TweakUI was
not necessary for this. (See point 120(j).)

47. As noted earlier (see point 16), the goal of these adjustments was to take care
of things that might be more difficult to do (or undo) later, and also to make
adjustments that I would almost certainly make anyway eventually, without
crossing the line into adjustments that could make the system unstable. The
foregoing adjustments pretty much reflect the way I've been using Windows for
a couple of years now, so I'm comfortable with that aspect of them. As far as I've
been able to determine, none of them threatens system stability. Anyway, I have
decided that the tradeoff is worth it -- there are just too many little adjustments
to make, adding up to hours of reconfiguration, and I would really rather do
them this one time and be done with it, if at all possible.
48. Having set up a basic system to my taste, I went online and downloaded all
the relevant updates again. (See point 15.) Since I didn't want to sully my pure
installation with any kind of Connection Keeper utility, I kept having to check
back and go to some Webpage online, to keep my ISP from disconnecting me for
lack of activity. (They interpret mere downloads as inactivity since, for all they
know, you're just listening to streaming audio.) This time, I noticed that as I
downloaded various Windows updates, the list of updates seemed to change -that, in essence, I was updating the updates. This was fine with me; it was just
interesting. I guess it suggested that Microsoft wasn't necessarily preparing onetime updates that would bring you all the way from the Stone Age to the
Chemical Age in one step. They were giving me the updates in the order in
which they had prepared them, patches on patches. This was my impression of
the situation, anyway. The downloads took at least six hours of pure connection
time; with disconnections and everything, they ran from about 2 PM one day to 7
AM the next day.
49. As noted above (point 15), the places I went to for downloads were (a) the
page to which the Windows Update shortcut took me and (b) updates.com. At
updates.com, I was pleased that there were only three programs that Microsoft's
Windows Update page had not brought up to the most recent version, but I was
somewhat surprised to see that two of those programs were by Microsoft itself!
(The other was Macromedia Shockwave ActiveX Player, whose most recent
upgrade was (judging by the version number) a very minor one, which I decided
to ignore.) Why wouldn't Microsoft give me its most recent versions of Dial-Up
Networking and Windows Media Player? This seemed odd. Just in case ZiffDavis's updates.com site was wrong (and I have found their free utilities to be
very useful and reliable, even if they did shaft me on a magazine subscription
once), I decided to postpone the updates.com part of this enterprise until later.
50. When the downloads were complete, I checked all partitions, to see where
Windows had put files. The only additions to any drives other than C were (a) a
hidden Recycled folder on each drive, (b) an MSDOWNLD.TMP folder on D

with nothing in it, and (c) to my satisfaction, a WIN386.SWP file and the
Temporary Internet Files folder on drive H. So I decided not to worry about
doing any sort of CD backup of any disk other than C at this point. I also used
Windows Explorer to glance at the file dates of each file in the C:\WIN98 folder
(the one containing the Windows 98 setup files -- see point 31) and all of its
subfolders. As far as I could see from a quick glance, all files were dated
5/11/98. So evidently the installation process had not changed any of them or
added anything to them. I felt that my DriveImage backup should include this
C:\WIN98 folder; I just wanted to start developing some sense of what was
changing during these various processes.
51. I noticed that the downloads had changed a few things that I had previously
adjusted (see points 38-47), had added some other things that I needed to adjust,
and had generated some temporary files that I did not want to preserve on the
disk image CD that I would soon be burning. Retracing my steps, I began with
Internet Explorer. In Tools | Internet Options | General | Temporary Internet
Files, I clicked on Delete Files, including all offline content. (I noticed that the
TIF folder was still assigned to drive H, so that was good.) I also cleared History
on that screen. On the desktop, I again deleted the shortcut for Outlook Express.
52. Repeating the technique used in point 42, I rearranged my Start menu
programs to suit me. It has seemed easier to do this rearrangement as I go along,
rather than allow the shortcuts to accumulate into an impenetrable forest. But at
this early stage it would have been simpler if I had postponed the previous
rearrangement: the downloads added new versions of some of these shortcuts,
and since I had moved the earlier shortcuts, the download was not able to
update the shortcuts automatically, so I had to figure out manually which
duplicative shortcuts to delete. I wound up with these groups of shortcuts:
Frequently Used (containing just a small number of items, and I intended to keep
it that way), Primary Utilities (containing subfolders for Microsoft Desktop Tools
and Microsoft System Tools), and Other Programs (containing subfolders labeled
Editors, Games, Multimedia (Audio, Video, and Images), Online (Browsers,
Connection Utilities, Email/News/Chat, ISPs, and Webpage Tools), and StartUp.
53. In Windows Explorer, I created a C:\Temp folder. Also, I revisited folders
that I thought might have other junk files that I would not want preserved in my
backup CD. (See point 16.) Specifically, I cleared out C:\Windows\Temp, and I
removed the remaining cookies (which the procedure in point 51 had not
removed) from H:\Temporary Internet Files. That latter step may seem
unnecessary, since I was not going to be backing up drive H at this time, but I
was superstitious about the TIF folder, which I had heard was linked back to
drive C. Checking on that, sure enough, I found that there did now exist a
C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files folder, whereas I'm pretty sure I had

checked and there had not been one previously. I rebooted to DOS to delete that
folder, but I couldn't find it. I rebooted to Windows and looked again in
Windows Explorer. Yep, there it was, not hidden or anything. I opened a DOS
window and looked. No TEMPOR~1 folder. I deleted it in Windows Explorer. I
rebooted and looked again in Windows Explorer. It was gone. Would it stay
gone after the next time I went online? I hoped so. (It did.)
54. I revisited the Taskbar (see point 42) with a right click, selected Start Menu
Programs, and cleared the Documents Menu. I revisited Control Panel | System
| Device Manager (see point 45) and saw that the situation had not changed
regarding yellow warning stickers; there was still just the same one, which I
would be working on later. I decided to set Control Panel | Display |
Background | Sandstone and chose the Display | Tile option there; I also set
Control Panel | Display | Screen Saver to my taste.
55. I decided to run some diagnostics. From a shortcut on the Start | Programs
menu, I ran the System Information utility. Under Tools, I ran System File
Checker | Scan for altered files. (Another approach is just to go to Start | Run |
SFC, or run SFC from a command line.) It found no problems. I decided to leave
well enough alone, and exited the System Information utility. It seemed that I
was ready to make my image backup CD.
Creating the CD with DriveImage
56. For purposes of burning my basic Windows setup to CD, I had decided that
DriveImage was the way to go. (See point 29.) This entailed booting from the
DriveImage floppy and capturing the entire Windows 98 hard disk to an image
file. I had plenty of space for that image file on drive D (see point 32), so that's
where I decided to put it.
57. I had not yet come to a definitive boot floppy to use in making the CD
bootable. As noted earlier, I had decided that the Win98 Startup Floppy, was
going to be bootable in the widest variety of CD-ROM drives. (See point 13.) My
objection that this floppy lacked XCOPY had proved to be unimportant, at least
for purposes of a boot floppy that would restore a working copy of Windows 98
onto a bare hard disk. (See point 23(c).) If I took the floppy that I had created the
hard way (see point 8) and removed XCOPY and the various utilities that were
already incorporated into the Win98 Startup Floppy, I found that there really
weren't that many utilities left, and that I could squeeze most of these into a ZIP
file that would fit in the remaining empty space on the Win98 Startup Floppy.
The programs already incorporated into the Win98 Startup Floppy included
ATTRIB, CHKDSK, DEBUG, EDIT, EXTRACT, FDISK, FORMAT, SCANDISK,
and SYS.COM, along with AUTOEXEC, CONFIG, and various drivers.

Subtracting these from the list in point 5 left me wondering whether I could find
space for these remaining utilities: BOOTMAGIC, CVT, DELTREE, DOSKEY,
DOWN, FIND, LE, MEM, MODE, MORE, NEXT, RED, SCANREG, SLICE,
SMARTDRV, SUBST, SWEEP, TEMP, TOP, UP, and WHEREIS. I found that if I
deleted the first two -- which I didn't think I'd need anyway -- there was plenty
of room for the rest after zipping. So I zipped them and put them onto the
Win98 Startup Floppy, and this became my state-of-the-art boot floppy, to be
used in making bootable CDs. (It has been suggested that you can delete some of
the drivers on that disk to make room for more utilities, but this defeats the goal
of having something that will boot the widest possible variety of machines.) I
rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from A, and booted this state-of-the-art floppy. It
worked and gave me access to the CD, so I felt that it would do the same when I
burned it into the bootable part of a CD. That is, it seemed likely to make a
bootable CD and to let me restore my disk image from that CD. (See point 11.)
58. I put the DriveImage floppy disk in A (see point 5(h)) and ran the PQDI
program. The mouse was not working. I didn't absolutely need it, but I wanted
it. I exited the program and inserted the PartitionMagic boot floppy. I copied
MOUSE.COM and MOUSE.INI to drive D, and then copied them from there to
the DriveImage floppy. (The PartitionMagic boot floppy uses an old mouse
driver that probably works with just about any mouse.) I rebooted, re-ran PQDI,
and the mouse worked. Back in DriveImage, I chose the Create Image option
(the others were Restore Image and Disk to Disk copy), requested an image of
drive C only, and specified that the output file be D:\C_IMAGE.PQI. I added
some explanatory comments, chose low compression (40%, as compared to high
compression's 50%, but faster), and clicked OK. The thing was very fast -- it was
done in about five minutes. I exited and went to D, and there, sure enough, was
C_IMAGE.PQI, a file of 382 MB. That was small enough to fit on one of the
partitions of my primary slave drive (i.e., the 1 GB hard drive -- see point 32).
Thus, while I was in DOS, I deleted the WIN386.SWP file from drive H (see point
44), knowing that Windows would recreate it on drive H (if I had a drive H
connected) the next time I booted Win98 on my drive C. Then I copied the
C_IMAGE.PQI file from drive D to drive H (on the 1 GB drive) and deleted it
from drive D. I shut down the machine, disconnected this 1 GB drive, connected
it to the AMD computer, moved C_IMAGE.PQI over to the primary hard drive
on that computer, shut it down, disconnected the 1 GB drive again, and turned
my attention to the PENTIUM computer, where I would be installing the
bootable CD that I was about to create on the AMD computer.
59. In this paragraph, I am again dealing with a technical problem that may not
affect most people, but that some may find interesting and that I want to include
to make sure I don't leave out any important details. On the PENTIUM
computer, I disconnected the other hard drive, where I had installed my nice

new version of Windows 98, and put it aside. I had now reached a point of
addressing the original problem that had prompted me to seek a reliable method
of installing Windows in the first place. You see, I'd been having some Win98
difficulties on the AMD computer, and those difficulties were starting to worry
me, but at least that computer was still running; but this PENTIUM computer
had been really malfunctioning. In recent weeks I had replaced the
motherboard, the memory, and the floppy drive, and while I could see real
improvements in stability and/or performance with each of those upgrades,
there were still problems with Windows 98 itself. The machine, in its ordinary
configuration (i.e., when I was not fooling around with the old 1 GB hard drive),
had possessed two 3 GB hard drives: one a Fujitsu, and one a Western Digital,
both from 1997. Drive C (the Fujitsu, I believe) had Windows, program files, and
Windows-created data files. I had cleared off drive D (the Western Digital) to
make room for a Linux installation. I had experimented briefly with three
different versions of Linux and had decided that I would probably be going
towards Linux sometime in the future, but that there was just too much
Windows-based software that I liked and needed right now, so that I could not
yet justify the switch to Linux. In order to run Windows on drive C and Linux
on drive D, I had installed PowerQuest's BootMagic program, which had
allowed me to choose which operating system I wanted to boot up. BootMagic
might fall into the category of what's known as "disk overlay" software -- that is,
it might be like various disk manager programs that run before your operating
system begins, and thus allow your operating system to use larger hard drives
than your BIOS would otherwise permit. After my Linux experiment, I had
emptied and reformatted drive D. I could have wiped off drive C too, given my
intention to reinstall Windows from scratch, but I did have a few hours' worth of
work on it that I didn't want to lose. So I had removed drive C and put it aside
(see point 19), and drive D was the one on which I had been doing all this
Windows experimentation, as I've been describing here. Now I was finally ready
to burn a CD that I believed really would be bootable, so that I would be
prepared to reinstall Windows on that original drive C, the Fujitsu. (I wanted to
put it there because I wanted to keep the Western Digital 3 GB disk, on which I
had just finished doing a nice clean Windows installation, as a backup in case
DriveImage or the CD-burning process screwed up somewhere.) All I had to do
was get those few hours' worth of work off my original drive C, so that I could
wipe it clean and try installing Windows from my DriveImage CD.
Unfortunately, when I connected my original drive C and attempted to boot it
up, I got an "Invalid system disk" error. I booted from a floppy, typed DIR C:,
and got an "Invalid media type" error. I ran PQDI from the PartitionMagic
floppy, and it told me I had "partition table error # 108." Browsing online, I
found some indications that this might have been caused by the Linux
installation. I didn't think that was the explanation, though, because as I recalled
the disk had been working right up to the end (although possibly the act of

removing Linux knocked a crutch out from under it, or something). The better
explanation came from the PowerQuest page at
http://www.powerquest.com/root/newsltr/news698.html# tip2, where they
said this: "Translation is the process that allows a computer to see drives larger
than 500MB by using an interface between the drive and the BIOS. Once a drive
is formatted under a certain translation it has to stay translated that way. Any
change in the translation will result in a lot of partition table errors including
errors 108 and 110. Changes in translation can be caused by various things, but
the most common are moving a drive from one system to another, upgrading the
motherboard or BIOS, re-detecting the drives in the system, or simply disabling
or enabling a translation mode in a situation where it is either needed or not
needed respectively." I had mis-jumpered the disk just a few moments earlier,
when trying to hook it up, and that may have caused the problem. The Web
page just cited also said that error # 108 could be caused by a drive overlay. I
noticed that, while BootMagic had previously worked just fine when booting this
drive, I was no longer seeing any mention of BootMagic when I tried to boot this
disk. Finally, the PowerQuest Web page said that error # 108 could come from
what they called "true errors," which are sometimes (but not always) hopeless.
The Website suggested running their PARTINFO.EXE program, which was
included with PartitionMagic and other PowerQuest products. I copied it from
the AMD computer onto a floppy and ran it in the troubled PENTIUM computer.
Its output scrolled off the screen, so I copied MORE.COM onto the floppy and
ran it again as PARTINFO | MORE. It said I had errors 108, 109, 110, and 116.
(There wasn't room on my super-duper boot floppy (see point 57) to add this
interesting PARTINFO program, but at least I copied it onto the boot floppy that
I had created the hard way (see point 8).) The PowerQuest Website said I could
call PowerQuest tech support, but it was Sunday and I didn't want to wait until
Monday if I didn't have to. But I decided that I would if necessary, because it
said that the data can usually be recovered by someone who knows what they're
doing. In the meantime, I tried two other PowerQuest solutions. First, to see if
the BootMagic drive overlay was the problem, I followed their advice and tried
to boot without a floppy, hitting SPACE or CTRL when the system said it was
initializing my BootMagic overlay. The thing is, the system never did say
anything about BootMagic. I tried both SPACE and CTRL, with the BIOS set to
boot from both A and C, and it didn't work -- I just got an "Invalid system disk"
error. The other PowerQuest solution was to download a free demo of their Lost
& Found program, which they described in these words: "[A]s long as your disk
is still spinning, Lost & Found can locate and recover almost any file, anywhere
on your disk." The demo would not fix the problem -- for that, I would have to
buy the program -- but it would tell me at least if the problem could be fixed. I
downloaded and tried to run it in Real DOS, only to discover it had to be run in
Windows, but then it turned out that the Windows program created DOS
floppies. (Why didn't they just say so in the first place? Maybe I missed it.)

Once I had the floppies set, I booted the PENTIUM computer with them, but my
display reacted weirdly, so I rebooted with another floppy and then restarted the
program with the LF -t option (text mode). The program asked for a serial
number (which was 2453-0000-0000-0001 for this demo). It also required me to
designate a disk and partition to which I would save the files I wanted to save, so
it was good that I had the 1 GB hard drive connected as my primary slave.
Shortly after that, it crashed with a "general protection fault" error. I rebooted
the machine and tried again, and this time it ran. It took about a half-hour to do
its thing with the 3 GB drive and, sure enough, it was able to show me the names
of my "lost" files. I looked on their Website and saw that the program price was
$70. Seventy bucks! For something I've never needed before and probably won't
need again? I selected "Start Recovery" there in the Lost & Found demo and
went through the simulated recovery process. The program looked pretty good,
and I probably would get it if I really needed it. But in the meantime, I had
thought of a way to short-cut some of the work that I would have to do over
again, so I decided against buying the program. Therefore, I was ready to
reformat this hard drive, burn a CD, and see if I could get those two together, the
CD and the drive.
60. The PartitionMagic boot floppy didn't seem to be able to do anything with
this screwed-up 3 GB hard disk, so I used FDISK from the floppy drive to delete
the bad partitions and then used PartitionMagic to match the partition
arrangement I had previously used on the other 3 GB hard drive (see point 32).
The first time around, PartitionMagic gave me an "error trying to create batch
file" message, and I realized that I had flipped the write-protect switch on the
floppy. After I changed the write-protect tab, the program refused to let me type
in the size I wanted for the primary partition, so I created it to fill the disk and
then resized it in a separate PartitionMagic operation.
61. Meanwhile, in the CD-burning department, I had to decide what to do with
the C_IMAGE.PQI file that I had copied to the AMD machine. In general, I
assumed I would still want to use a bootable floppy and create a bootable CD,
using more or less the same procedures as before. (See point 18.) But how was it
supposed to work exactly? I didn't want to use C_IMAGE.PQI as you would
ordinarily use an image file in Easy CD Creator, to create an unpackaged set of
files on the CD -- if I did that, I'd be back in the boat of having to use XCOPY to
move the files from the CD to the empty target disk. (See point 24.) Moreover,
C_IMAGE.PQI didn't seem to be the type of image file (having either a .CIF or
.ISO extension) that Easy CD Creator could use in that way. Evidently
C_IMAGE.PQI would have to go onto the CD exactly as it was, as one big file.
The DriveImage manual confirmed this, and also told me that the Low
Compression option I had chosen for C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 58) was just what
they recommended, presumably for its greater speed.

62. Along about this time, I did some experimentation with using CD-RW
erasable disks, in hopes that they would spare me from using up a lot of one-shot
CD-R disks. I found that I could burn some files onto a CD-RW, but the
PENTIUM computer would refuse to read them, even though the AMD
computer could see them just fine; but if I put those same files on a CD-R, the
PENTIUM computer had no problem. I went online and found some comments
suggesting that the CD-RW problem might stem from the old SCSI adapter card
with which I connect my old scanner to the old computer. Since I wasn't quite
ready to throw out the scanner, I decided I'd just have to try to get it right with
CD-R disks, and do without the CD-RWs.
63. I also experimented with the results obtained by booting with my two
different floppies (i.e., the Win98 Startup Floppy, designed for a variety of CDROM drives (see point 57) and my own super boot floppy, with somewhat more
DOS utilities and fewer CD-ROM drivers). I found that if I booted with the
Win98 Startup Floppy, I got consistently good results in attempting to see the
files on the CD, whereas the super boot floppy was not doing so well. I tried
changing the CD-ROM drive reference from Z to I (see points 6 and 32), but that
made no difference. Evidently the SSCDROM.SYS driver on the super boot
floppy was not exactly the right one for this particular CD-ROM drive after all.
(See point 20.) It's what I had in the CONFIG.SYS for this PENTIUM machine,
but apparently Windows 98 had been ignoring that and setting up the CD-ROM
drive in its own preferred way.
64. Before I had completed all this earnest scientific experimentation, I burned a
CD-R with the super boot floppy. I had intended to use the Win98 Startup
Floppy, but I screwed up -- but this is how we make all those great discoveries,
right? This CD wasn't bootable (at least not in the PENTIUM computer), but if I
booted that computer with the Win98 Startup Floppy and then looked at the
contents of this CD, I was able to see them. The contents of this particular CD
included not only the C_IMAGE.PQI file, but also a folder full of DOS utilities. I
had decided to include that folder because of course I would need DriveImage to
restore C_IMAGE.PQI to a blank hard disk, and the DriveImage DOS program
nearly filled a floppy, and I really preferred to use the Win98 Startup Floppy as
the bootable floppy that you insert when creating a bootable CD. (See point 18.)
So I created a DOS_UTIL folder and put all kinds of DOS utilities (including
DriveImage) into it. In other words, this CD had three things: the bootable part,
C_IMAGE.PQI, and the DOS_UTIL folder. To avoid the risk that I might
unthinkingly use old DOS utilities that would permanently truncate my long
filenames, I decided not to take my earlier approach of dragging 50 MB of DOS
utilities en masse to the DOS_UTIL folder. (See point 11.) Instead, when
deciding what to put into DOS_UTIL, I selected the materials that had been

useful, or potentially useful, so far. These included (a) the boot disks for
PartitionMagic, DriveImage, and BootMagic, from which I could create a
separate boot floppy if I needed to use the mouse (the Win98 Startup Floppy
didn't enable the mouse, but I didn't want to tinker with its CONFIG.SYS file and
possibly mess it up, because I didn't fully understand everything that floppy did
when it booted up); (b) the utilities on the super floppy I had assembled the hard
way, with the addition of XCOPY and the other files that didn't fit onto a floppy
(see point 57); and (c) the other useful PowerQuest programs I had recently
discovered, namely, PARTINFO and the Lost & Found demo (see point 59).
Although I had inadvertently made this resulting CD non-bootable by using the
bootable floppy, I was still able to gain access to its contents, including both
C_IMAGE.PQI and the DOS_UTIL folder, by booting with the Win98 floppy.
65. I decided to try again, using all my collected wisdom, and see if I could get it
right. I burned a CD-R (not a CD-RW -- see point 62), using the Win98 Startup
Floppy as the bootable floppy (see point 63), and on this CD I put both
C_IMAGE.PQI and the DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64). I also decided to try a
modified version of the two-pass suggestion that I had belatedly heard about
(see the end of point 18): I used a CD-R, but I instructed Easy CD Creator not to
close the disk. This way, I hoped, I would be able to fill the unused 200 MB
remaining at the end of the CD for something. This CD successfully booted and
its contents were visible as drive J. (The Win98 floppy creates a RAM drive as a
temporary place to hold its utilities. See point 8.)
66. Meanwhile, I had been experimenting with the imperfect CD that I had
created on the first try. (See point 64.) I booted the old machine with the Win98
Startup Floppy, looked into the CD, and ran DriveImage (PQDI.EXE) from the
DOS_UTIL folder. It ran fine, including installing the mouse driver. I clicked on
Restore Image, browsed to C_IMAGE.PQI, confirmed that I wanted to restore
my backup of drive C to the drive C partition on this machine, and got the
message (as the manual had warned me) that DriveImage would delete the
existing C partition because DriveImage had to restore into free space. Basically,
it would replace my version of the C partition with its own version, which was
fine with me. I chose all the safest settings: Safe Mode, Check for Bad Sectors,
and Verify Disk Writes. It really didn't take much extra time. The whole thing
looked like it was going to take less then 15 minutes, for 450 MB. Not bad!
Unfortunately, when it was about 95% of the way through, it stalled with this
message: "Error # 2005. One or more lost clusters are present." The DriveImage
manual instructed me to respond to this message by running SCANDISK or
CHKDSK. (Apparently SCANDISK is the better of the two.) I recognized that I
might have made a mistake here: although I had run FDISK and PartitionMagic
(see point 60), and although the latter had supposedly checked the disk, I had not
actually run SCANDISK before restoring from C_IMAGE.PQI. But now, before I

could do that, I had to choose between Ignore or Cancel, neither of which was
very appealing. I reasoned that I'd catch the error with SCANDISK, so I chose
Ignore. But the message kept repeating, and after ten tries, I chose Cancel. I
exited the program and clicked on Reboot. The machine wouldn't boot from the
hard disk, so I knew I had some problems. I booted from the floppy and looked
at the hard disk. File not found! Nothing there! I guess when DriveImage says
cancel, it really means Cancel. OK, so I ran SCANDISK on drive C ... no, it was
time for lunch, so I decided to run SCANDISK /ALL /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE
/NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It took quite a while, and when it was done, it
said it had fixed some errors on drive C, so I hoped that was all I needed.
67. As noted in point 65, the seemingly perfect CD booted just fine, and now it
was time to try installing again. Again, I ran PQDI (DriveImage) in DOS_UTIL
(see point 66), and again, it ran pretty quickly -- and again I got Error # 2005! I
ran SCANDISK again. This time, it found tons of things to fix, which seemed
odd on a disk that had no visible or hidden files on it. I went partway with it
and then bailed out and reformatted the disk and ran SCANDISK again, and this
time it found no problems. I ran PQDI once more and, you know, third time's a
charm: it worked! No error messages. It finished and told me it needed to
reboot. I let it reboot in DOS, took a look at drive C, and it looked like my stuff
was there. I set the BIOS to boot from C, and Windows booted without any
problems. It wanted to recognize some new hardware, probably because I had
installed a memory upgrade during this PENTIUM computer's downtime, and
was now working with this other 3 GB hard drive. But then it was done, and it
looked good. As a backup, I made a second copy of the basic CD that I had used
for this installation (see point 65) for offsite storage.
Installing the Applications
68. My software existed in two forms: program CDs that I had purchased, and
software from other sources (primarily floppies and downloads) that I had on the
AMD computer and/or had burned onto CD. In my mind, the software ranged
from those programs that were highly important and reliable, down through
other programs that were important and/or reliable, but not both, and on to
programs that were genuinely unimportant and/or unstable. I decided, in this
second stage of the operation, to install those application programs that were
important, and perhaps to add others that I felt were especially stable even
though not as important, with a special emphasis on programs that would
require a lot of downloading and/or configuring if I had to install them again
from scratch. I would reach my stopping point when I had run out of stable
programs and/or had put approximately 850-900 MB on my PROGRAMS
partition (drive D -- see point 32), whichever came first. I figured that 900 MB
would be about the limit of what I could squeeze on one CD, if DriveImage was

correct in claiming a maximum compression rate of 50%. Of course, installing

programs on the PROGRAMS partition would also modify the WIN98 partition
(drive C), so I would make another CD backup of that partition, and this twodisk set would provide the second installment in my attempt to have a fully
backed-up, solid installation of Windows and my applications programs and
utilities. I would not be able to get as much material on these two CDs as if I
recorded them on a continuous two-CD set, but I would also not be vulnerable to
the problems I have experienced in the past with using serial tape backups. (See
introductory comments at the start of this document.)
69. I installed Office 97 first. As with Windows 98, I did not install Office 95 and
then upgrade from it (see point 14); instead, I installed Office 97 from scratch. I
chose to install the full (custom) version of Office, plus some items from the
Office 97 ValuPack (i.e., Animated Cursors, Sounds, and Word Viewer; I also
tried to install TrueType Fonts, but evidently those had gotten installed already,
and the Word 97 Converter installation failed because I did not have an older
version of Word loaded). Whenever the installation programs gave me the
option, I installed these programs to folders on the PROGRAMS drive (D)
instead of C. (See point 32.) I reconfigured the Microsoft Office toolbar to my
liking and removed its "New Office Document" and "Open Office Document"
options from my Start menu; and I moved its Start | Programs icons to a
Microsoft Office folder and also put a couple of those icons in the Frequently
Used list (not learning from my previous mistakes, and therefore was doomed to
repeat them -- see points 42 and 52). I went into each Office program I was using
and configured its options and generated its help database, so as to avoid having
to take those steps repeatedly during future installations. In Word, I also went
into D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates and created a backup copy of
NORMAL.DOT. I created Text and Graphics folders on my DATA partition (E),
moved
D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Clipart to E:\Graphics\Clipart, and told
Word where to look for its Clipart. I also told Word to keep its AutoRecover files
on H:\Temp. I took similar steps with Access and Excel.
70. Before I could finish installing Office 97, I needed to install PowerDesk 98
Utilities, which I considered one of my "must have" programs. (See point 25.) I
needed it now because there had been many updates and patches to Word, Excel,
and other Office 97 programs; I had saved many of those downloads as files on
CD; and I could now spare myself hours of downloading time just by reinstalling
those updates from CD; but since I had saved those downloads in zipped format,
I needed an unzip program to get at them, and PowerDesk 98 had an unzip
feature. I installed it, went online to download its latest update, and configured
it. I sorted through the myriad downloads that I had saved on CD, added some
that were still on my AMD machine and had not yet been burned to CD, and

came up with a CD filled with of 648 MB of compressed files to copy over to the
PENTIUM computer -- realizing, as noted in point 69, that not all of them might
fit in this installment. I copied the programs on this CD mostly onto partition E,
with some left over for H (see point 32), and prepared to begin installing them. I
didn't get too far into slicing and dicing, rearranging and adjusting the list of files
to install, before I realized that I would have to shut off the read-only attribute
that somehow got turned on during the CD-burning or file-copying process,
because it was driving me crazy to have to confirm every move, so I used
ATTRIB -R /S for that.
71. If I had had that program-filled CD ready earlier, I would have finished
installing Windows 98 before turning to Microsoft Office and other software. I
had indeed finished installing Win98 as far as Microsoft's official products were
concerned, but I had some other Win98-related utilities that had served me well
and that had seemed stable (or at least as stable as Windows itself), and I had to
finish sorting through my downloads (see point 70) before I could install those
utilities. But when I finished that, I was a little confused. First, some of the
Windows-related utilities that I had downloaded previously seemed, now, to
have been incorporated into the latest Win98 and Internet Explorer updates.
Erring on the side of safety, I deleted all downloads that now seemed
unnecessary. This included the "power tools" that gave me right-click features
like Zoom In and Open Link in New Window -- which, as I say, I had already
gotten somehow. Second, I couldn't find the TweakUI utilities that I thought I
had downloaded, so I went online for information. (At first, the system would
not detect my modem. I gave it a one-minute shutdown and tried again, and
that didn't do it. I went into Control Panel | System | Modem and deleted the
modem. On reboot, the modem worked.) Online, it developed that I probably
didn't download the TweakUI utilities, because I found someone who told me
they were actually on my Windows 98 upgrade CD itself, in the
\Tools\Reskit\Powertoy folder. And then, before I installed them, I saw that
Microsoft's Website was offering a "Power Tweaks" utility, without much of a
description of what was actually in it. It seemed like it might be an update to the
power toys on my Win98 CD, so I opted for the download. After I installed it, I
couldn't tell what difference it might have made, if any; there weren't any
explanatory notes. Moving onwards, I read the README.TXT file
accompanying the Powertoy folder from my Win98 upgrade CD, and its
repeated warnings scared me off. I mean, I had used TweakUI before, and had
really appreciated some of its features, but now I thought maybe I'd better wait
until after I had my application software loaded in a fairly stable state and had
saved that to CD. Now I was nervous, and I hoped I hadn't wrecked my nice
perfect system by plowing ahead and installing that other thing before I had
really thought about it.

72. Having gone as far as I was prepared to go with enhancements to Win98 and
Internet Explorer (which Microsoft treated as a sort of two-headed thing growing
out of one body, rather than two distinct programs), I returned to the task of
completing my Office 97 installation. (See point 70.) Again, to verify which of
my downloads I might actually need, I went back to Microsoft's site, this time to
the Office 97 area at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com. First, they had some
general-purpose updates that seemingly applied to all Office 97 products. I
started with the Version Checker, which told me (not surprisingly) that I was at
the base level, and that I would have to run both the SR-1 patch and the SR-2
patch. I happened to have both patches, thus saving myself the time to
download these patches (totaling over 18 MB) on a 28.8 kbps modem. I installed
the first patch and rebooted, as it said; I ran the version checker again and it
confirmed that I still needed to install the second patch. I double-checked at the
Website (above). It said that if I had SR-1 installed, I could go directly to SR-2b,
rather than merely SR-2. I had previously downloaded SR-2b (a 24 MB file) as
well, so I was all set. Sadly, when it rebooted, my nice perfect setup froze at the
Windows introductory screen. Bad news! After waiting several minutes for it to
progress, I manually reset the computer. I booted in Safe Mode -- the computer's
first preference -- and then immediately rebooted into Normal Mode, and this
time it went OK. But I couldn't get the modem to dial out, so I rebooted again -cold, this time. (See point 21.) It froze again. This was certainly no longer a
pure, reliable Windows installation. End of story.
73. It was time to reinstall my software, and that meant I had an opportunity to
test the backup copy I had made of the bootable CD. (See the end of point 67.) I
rebooted the machine, set the BIOS to boot from CD, and rebooted again. It
booted perfectly. I began to realize that I was being a little hasty. Before I could
wipe off these disks and start over, I had to make sure the partitions were all
ready. I booted from drive C into Safe Mode and looked at the disks. Drives E
through H could stay as they were. (See point 32.) They contained all of the
downloads I had copied from the CD. (See point 70.) The only exceptions were
(a) the PowerDesk update, which I had downloaded while I was preparing the
CD (see point 70) but which I had previously downloaded and did now have on
the CD as well and (b) the Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2b patches (see point 72). I
wasn't planning to retry the Power Toys thing (see point 71) until much later in
the game.
74. Postponing PowerDesk. I decided to try to do without PowerDesk for now.
(See point 70.) I wasn't sure what was responsible for my problems, but it and
the Power Toys were the most likely candidates. I tried to figure out which
PowerDesk file had stored my preferences and settings, so that I wouldn't have
to do them over again. To test this, I customized something on the Toolbar and
chose Save Now, and then did a search for the most recently changed file on

drives C or D (clicking on the "Time" heading to sort by time), and it turned out
that the settings were stored in C:\WINDOWS\USER.DAT. I'm told that
USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT are your two Win98 Registry files, so I couldn't
very well just put copies of them aside and then reintroduce them after
reinstalling PowerDesk; they would have too many other changes to track. I
tried the same approach for Word 97 and got the same results. So I was going to
have to do my settings over again for all these programs. Moral of the story
(which I'm sure I will learn eventually): the frosting goes on last!
75. If I was going to try to get by without PowerDesk 98, I would need to unzip
the previously saved downloads that I would be installing, and I would need to
do this with PowerDesk 98 before wiping it off the disk. I didn't need to unzip
everything. I would reload PowerDesk eventually, because it really had served
me pretty well so far. It was just a matter of changing the focus slightly and
installing less software, so that maybe both drives C and D would fit onto the
next DriveImage CD. But, oops, a snafu: I had deleted the SR-1 and SR-2b
downloads that I had copied from CD (see point 73) as soon as I had installed
them, so as not to get confused and install them twice, so now I would need to
copy them again from CD ... except that I couldn't access the CD in Safe Mode.
So, OK, I booted the PENTIUM computer from the floppy, and then I thought
that it might be impossible to figure out which files I wanted to copy from the
CD if all I had was the short DOS filenames. But I checked in a DOS window in
the AMD computer and found that DOS did reproduce the long filenames when
you do a DIR listing. But for some reason this wasn't happening on the
PENTIUM computer. Similar short filenames, but no long filenames. So I looked
at the original files on the AMD machine, the ones from which I had burned the
CD full of programs, and used their DOS names and file sizes and dates to find
the equivalent files on the CD in the PENTIUM computer. Ultimately, this
enabled me to copy the Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2b patches onto drive E. I then
unzipped all of the previously saved downloads that I expected to install on this
go-round, which consisted exclusively of Microsoft Office updates.
76. As a last gasp, I moved the Clipart folder back where it had been originally.
(See point 69.) And, you guessed it -- the computer booted just fine in Normal
Mode! To test this, I moved Clipart back again to E:\Graphics and rebooted
again. It booted without a problem. So that wasn't the explanation for the
problems I'd been having. (I later moved it with X-Setup. See point 137(m).) But
now I was in a quandary. Do I reinstall from scratch and be sure I've got it right,
and spend several more hours in the process? Or do I continue from where I am
and make a go of it, investing another ten or twenty hours in an approach that
might be unstable? I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. I really
wanted to get it right. I did not want to ever have to do something like this
again. So in exchange for hopefully never doing it again later, when I wouldn't

have a clue of where to begin, I decided I had to do it again now, while it was
relatively fresh in my mind. It was extremely tempting to just let it slide, but I
had gotten so tired of Windows crashes that I thought I really would rather do it
the hard way if there was any reasonable chance that Microsoft's code would be
happier that way. I figured that a purely Microsoft machine -- with Windows 98
and Office but nothing else -- would be about as stable as Windows was going to
get, and that's the route I decided to take.
Comparing Windows 98 Installations
77. I rebooted, using the backup copy of the CD. (See point 67.) Interestingly,
Windows as installed on the hard disk ignored my BIOS instructions to boot first
from the CD-ROM, and instead booted from drive C. I rebooted and set the
BIOS to boot from the Win98 Startup Floppy, and that worked. I ran FORMAT
and SCANDISK on drives C and D. (See point 67.) Then I rebooted to make sure
this backup copy would indeed be bootable when the hard disk was blank,
because that's when I would need it most. An odd thing happened: the
computer said "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure," and the blue-and-white
Windows 98 startup screen with clouds flashed across my monitor, and then it
said "Microsoft Windows 98" and gave me a C prompt. I guess it was booting
from the hard disk that I had formatted with FORMAT C: /S /V. I unhid the
hidden system files on C with ATTRIB -H -S -R and deleted them all, and tried to
reboot from the CD-ROM again. It booted with no problem. Evidently, on my
BIOS at least, the hard disk will take precedence over the CD-ROM whenever
possible, regardless of what you indicate in BIOS Setup.
78. Problem Using DriveImage from Hard Drive. This paragraph, and a halfdozen after it, deal with what appeared to be an interconnected group of
technical problems that may not affect everyone but may be informative
nevertheless. I installed again, running PQDI (DriveImage) from DOS_UTIL.
(See point 67.) This time, I got "Error # 2004. An invalid cluster was found in a
directory entry." Sheesh! Apparently I did not yet have the knack of properly
preparing the hard disk for installation. Or else ... perhaps there was a physical
flaw in the disk? I hadn't run the surface surface scan in SCANDISK. I decided
to rectify that right now. Looking again at the SCANDISK /? options, I very
belatedly realized that perhaps I was supposed to have been running SCANDISK
C: /CUSTOM all this time, instead of using all the other settings I had been
using. (See e.g., point 66.) I tried that, and it seemed to work: it said it was
fixing the directory structure -- the one that, as far as I could tell, hadn't been
broken. Since DriveImage says that it replaces your partition with its own, I
didn't bother reformatting again; I just ran PQDI again and let it roll over the top
of the 411 MB that had been installed a few moments earlier, before the thing
crashed. Once again, it got 98% of the way through the process and gave me

Error # 2005. (See point 67.) I tried again with SCANDISK C: /CUSTOM. It ran
a long time, and said it fixed the directory structure (again). Browsing online, I
saw a comment by one user who felt that the FAT32 disk format requires
frequent use of SCANDISK -- as in, every night. Another user's circumstances
sounded somewhat like mine (hard disk several years old, irregular problems on
bootup, little or no trouble detected in SCANDISK), but in more important ways
we were very different (I was not getting the seemingly important "sector not
found" errors, or the message that the computer could not find the FAT
partition). The advice to him, using a drive that was "3+" years old, was to
replace the hard disk. It was something I had contemplated, but I didn't think I
was quite at that point; but I did begin to think that I had done the right thing in
not installing the rest of my software on a possibly unstable hard drive. Another
seemingly knowledgeable person commented that SCANDISK is not an in-depth
tool and there can be numerous deeper problems that it won't detect, such as
instability produced by improper setups and by combining new drives with old
drive controllers or vice versa. I also saw a suggestion to try Norton Disk
Doctor. I eventually realized that the Norton Utilities installation process creates
emergency boot floppies, and that I must have some of them around here
somewhere. I found them and ran Norton Disk Doctor (using the "thorough test"
setting) from Norton rescue floppy no. 2. It found no problems on drive C.
While I was at it, I ran it on drive D, and found no problems there either. I tried
again to install from the CD with DriveImage. This time, I got "Error # 1802.
Image file is invalid or corrupted." I was beginning to think that might indeed be
the problem -- but how could it? I had installed a solid, working copy of
Windows using the other CD, which I had created with the same C_IMAGE.PQI
file that still resided on the hard disk on the AMD machine; the CD burning
process had seemingly gone without a hitch for this CD; and now I was getting
this error message before the thing even tried to install, whereas previously it
had gotten as far as 98% of the way through the installation before crapping out.
The best I could figure was that it was probably just some kind of system
incompatibility between this two-year-old Fujitsu drive and my new
motherboard. I rebooted from the CD and noticed an error message telling me
that BTDOSM.SYS (on the bootable portion of the CD) was corrupted. Had I
been getting that error message each time? The many drivers on the Win98
emergency floppy tended to flash by and I didn't pay much attention to them,
but it seemed like I would have noticed this. I powered down for a minute and
rebooted. No such error message this time. Very strange. Evidently the first
step I had to take, before restoring from CD (or perhaps before any major system
operations) on this computer, would be to do a cold boot. (See point 21.)
Perhaps this boot problem, previously unnoticed, had been responsible for some
of the previous variability in error mesages I was getting from DriveImage. I
looked at drive C and saw nothing on it, and concluded that DriveImage
automatically requires you to do a reboot each time you attempt a restore

operation, even if nothing restores. On closer examination, I realized that C was

actually D -- that is, I had thought I was looking at the WIN98 partition, but I was
actually looking at the PROGRAMS partition (see point 32), which told me that
DriveImage had at least proceeded as far as deleting the old C partition in
preparation for installing the new one. I ran PartitionMagic to take another look,
and it confirmed that there was 1 GB of free space before the PROGRAMS
partition. I decided to try DriveImage again. As always, I set it to safe mode
with the maximum verification etc. settings, just to be sure. It didn't give me the
Error # 1802 message this time. Instead, I was back to Error # 2004, which is
where I started this paragraph. OK. This was not working. I rebooted, got the
BTDOSM.SYS error again, powered down for a minute, rebooted, and got no
such error. I tried a different approach: I used PartitionMagic to eliminate the C
partition that DriveImage had created. Or at least I tried to. PartitionMagic took
the command, but when I clicked "Apply," it gave me "Error # 600. Error trying
to create batch file." I assumed the reason was that it could not create the batch
file that would guide this process on the read-only CD disk. I had copied
PartitionMagic to one of the other hard disk partitions, so I ran it from there and
got no such error. I rebooted with no problem, went back to that same hard disk
partition, and ran DriveImage from there, instead of running it from the CDROM, as I had done previously. This time, the disk image restoration was
successful. Very interesting! Maybe the whole problem that I was wrestling
with in this paragraph was just that DriveImage, like PartitionMagic, needs to
have a little room for a batch file or a scratch file or something that it can write to,
during its operation, such that it will work from a hard disk or a floppy but not
necessarily from a CD. (If this last step had failed to restore the Windows files to
C, my only other idea was to copy C_IMAGE.PQI from the CD to drive D and
use DriveImage to install it from there to C. In other words, the question then
would have been whether the image file, as well as the DriveImage program
files, would work better if it were located on something other than the CD.)
79. Possible Hard Disk Problem. I left DriveImage and rebooted from the CD. I
got the BTDOSM.SYS error again, but otherwise the CD proceeded along its
ordinary boot path. This showed me that, at least in my BIOS, the hard disk tries
to override the CD-ROM but not the floppy. (See point 78.) I cold-rebooted and
set the BIOS to boot from drive C, so as to see whether C_IMAGE.PQI really had
reinstalled Windows on this hard drive. Sure enough, I got the blue-and-white
Windows 98 startup screen. But then it froze there, just as it had done before.
(See point 72.) So evidently this problem hadn't been related to the applications
software I was installing on the previous go-round; evidently it was a problem
related to the basic Windows installation. In other words, it seemed that either
the original Windows installation was bad, or that this hard disk wasn't taking it
very well. I belatedly realized that perhaps some of the problems I had had with
XCOPY (see point 20) and Linux (see point 59), and was now having with the

Windows installation, might have been due to a hardware problem with the hard
disk, not to mere software imperfections. I was fairly sure (but not positive) that
the Fujitsu hard drive that was now my primary hard disk had also been my
primary hard drive previously. (See point 59.) I didn't know whether a problem
with the drive would be related just to the execution of programs, in which case I
might be able to use this Fujitsu as a secondary hard drive to store data on, or
whether it signaled instead that the drive was failing and should not be used for
data either.
80. A List of Files with FILELIST. Someone online had been kind enough to
create a QBASIC program called FILELIST.BAS (with an accompanying
FILELIST.BAT program to run it) that would let me produce a detailed listing of
every file on my disk, and I had modified it for my purposes. (For details, search
for that on Deja.com, with ray-woodcock@usa.net as author, or -- if this link still
works -- see
http://x41.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=571703537&search=thread&C
ONTEXT=947777113.818872330&HIT_CONTEXT=947777113.818872330&hitnum
=7.) (Note: if you get a "File not found" error, make sure FILELIST.BAT is
pointing to the directory in which you have put FILELIST.BAS. If you don't do
BASIC programming, I understand there are other utilities that may help you
with some of these same processes.) I decided to use this program to compare
the files that had now been restored to this Fujitsu 3 GB hard drive, against the
files that had existed on the original Western Digital 3 GB hard drive from which
I had created C_IMAGE.PQI in the first place. (See point 19.) I put
FILELIST.BAS and FILELIST.BAT onto a floppy on the AMD machine. I warmrebooted the PENTIUM computer from the same Win98 Startup Floppy that I
had used to make the CD bootable. (See point 57.) I didn't get the BTDOSM.SYS
error, so perhaps that was something that occurred only when rebooting from
CD. (See point 78.) I looked at C briefly, and, sure enough, there were a bunch
of files there. I copied the FILELIST programs from the floppy to a folder called
DOS_UTIL on hard drive partition E. (On E, I had put most of the upgrades that
I had brought over from CD. See point 70. DOS_UTIL would eventually migrate
to drive D. See point 103.) I typed EDIT FILELIST.BAS (and later .BAT) to
change these programs slightly so they would read and write from E rather than
C. I typed FILELIST and got a "Bad command or file name" error. I found that I
had not yet brought over a copy of my old 1991 version of QBASIC from the
AMD machine, so I did that and re-ran it. Later, I found a more recent version.
(See point 141(q).) It gave me a listing that contained no long filenames, which
reconfirmed that this was a difference between the so-called "Windows 98" that
existed on these boot floppies and the full-blown Windows 98, whose DOS boxes
and command prompts did produce long filenames.

81. Inexplicable Freezes. To produce a good file list, it appeared I would have to
connect the Fujitsu drive to a system capable of booting into full-blown Windows
98. As I say, I had intended, anyway, to compare the Windows installation on
the Fujitsu against the pure installation on the Western Digital. So I decided that
now was a good time to connect the Western Digital as my primary master hard
drive in the BIOS setup, make this Fujitsu my primary slave, and make the 1 GB
drive a secondary slave (with CD-ROM as secondary master) entirely dedicated
to serving as my drive H swap area. (See point 44.) I moved the drives around,
changed their jumpers, recabled them, found that I would need a Y cable for the
power connector because I had run out of power supply lines, fished out the Y
connector that I had obtained at Radio Shack a few years earlier, booted the
system into drive C on the pristine Windows installation without a hitch, and
tried to use Windows Explorer to move the upgrades from SWAP to another
partition. The system froze, and I wondered if it was because I had chosen, as
the target, a partition on the troubled Fujitsu drive. I rebooted; the system went
through SCANDISK to verify that I had not screwed up anything by forcing an
improper shutdown; and then my previously perfect Windows installation froze
before the bootup was complete. I did a cold reboot (see point 21); the system
went into Safe Mode; I immediately rebooted; and it booted successfully in
Normal Mode. I looked at the contents of each partition in Windows Explorer.
They all seemed OK, except the one that had been a target now had no Recycled
folder. I used Windows Explorer to move the files from there to a different
partition. Not all of them would fit. I tried to move the remainder to another
partition, but evidently chose another partition on the Fujitsu drive, because it
froze again. (Needless to say, I was beginning to wonder if the Fujitsu drive was
dying.) It was difficult to tell which partitions were on which drive. The first
two were in alternating order (i.e., C was the first partition on the Western
Digital, D was the first partition on the Fujitsu, etc.), probably because the
partitions on the Fujitsu weren't all logical drives. One of them was a primary
partition, and I understand that can cause this alternating-drive situation. I tried
again, and this time managed to move the files to a partition that did not cause
the system to freeze. Most of them, that is. With 15 seconds left in the move
process, the system froze again. I cold-rebooted and the system ran SCANDISK.
It froze on the SWAP partition (drive H) from which I had been trying to move
files. This presented an interesting thought. Maybe I was having problems with
the older 1 GB Seagate as well as the Fujitsu. I booted from a floppy and looked
at the contents of the Seagate. It showed a DIR listing with no problem. The files
that I had been trying to move appeared to be gone. It looked like they had
arrived in the other partition OK. I started Norton Disk Doctor and told it to
check this SWAP partition. It found no problems. I made a list of the partitions
that contained no files I needed to keep, and then, to simplify things, I went into
the DOS version of PartitionMagic, deleted three partitions, and resized the
remaining partitions to use up the free space. But PartitionMagic and the system

froze when it got to the 1 GB Seagate drive. So the freezes were not just a
Windows phenomenon! I cold-rebooted from the floppy and used FDISK to
remove all partitions from the 1 GB drive and create a new logical drive there,
and formatted that 1 GB logical drive with FORMAT /V. I fired up
PartitionMagic again to see how things looked in the wake of its crash a few
minutes earlier. Everything looked OK.
82. Converting and Resizing Partitions. I decided this would be a good time to
convert the primary partition on the Fujitsu drive to logical drives under an
extended partition, so that the drive letters would fall into consecutive order
instead of giving me the alternating-drive problem just mentioned. I did that by
shrinking the size of that primary partition in PartitionMagic, using the extra
space for a logical drive, and then booting into Windows and using Windows
Explorer to move the files from the one to the other. These operations, not
involving the 1 GB drive, caused no freezeup. When I booted into Windows, it
recognized new hardware, probably related to the memory that I had changed
since creating C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 67) or else to the fact that I now had
three hard drives connected. I logged on and registered with Microsoft to
download the needed drivers during this process. I rebooted and got a "CMOS
checksum error" from the BIOS. I hit DEL and changed the BIOS to boot from
the hard disk first. Windows froze during reboot. I shut down the machine and
took out the 1 GB drive. Windows went into Safe Mode on reboot. When it was
done booting, I immediately hit Start | Shut Down | Restart. It booted into
Normal Mode without any further freezing. I clicked on Start | Shut Down |
Restart and held down F8 right after the BIOS recognized the hard disks, so as to
get my choice of the mode in which I wanted to reboot. (Otherwise, it would
ordinarily keep right on going into Windows 98.) I chose 5 ("Command prompt
only"). This gave me Real DOS, the kind that doesn't show long filenames, the
kind you don't get in a DOS box within Windows -- the kind that I think you
have to use to run the DOS versions of PartitionMagic et al. (I was running those
versions simply because I did not yet want to install any more software on my C
drive.) (I hadn't tried it, but I had heard that you could choose Command
prompt and then edit your C:\MSDOS.SYS file -- after turning off its -S -H -R
attributes with ATTRIB (see point 34), and then turning them back on when
you're done -- so that its BootGUI=1 line would instead read BootGUI=0, and if
you do this the default bootup will be DOS rather than Win98. (See point
120(al).) In this case, you can go back into Windows by typing WIN at the
command prompt.) I went to D and confirmed that there were no longer any
files in it. I ran PartitionMagic, deleted that primary partition, and created and
resized partitions as necessary to put me back to the original six-partition
scheme. (See point 32.) I created the H:\TEMP and H:\Temporary Internet Files
directories that Windows would be looking for (see point 44). Also, now that I
had Windows installed on C, and saw that it occupied less than 500 MB of the

1,000 MB I had given it, I reduced the size of that partition to 700 MB -- hoping
that C:\Windows\Temp would never need more than 200 MB to spare, or else
that it would know enough to use the SWAP drive if it did -- and reallocated the
rest to the DATA partition on the first hard drive. Since I had no further freezes,
I concluded that the old Seagate 1 GB drive had been the culprit and that it
would not be useful even as a data disk. I labeled it as "probably defective" and
put it on a shelf. That, however, did not fully exonerate the Fujitsu, since the
Seagate had not been connected when I had experienced some of my problems.
(See point 79.)
83. CRC Error. PartitionMagic completed all of the changes just described
except one: when it was resizing the DATA partition on the first hard drive, it
gave me "Error # 45. CRC error in data." This error did not appear in the
manual. It occurred on the Western Digital drive, not the Fujitsu, and it seemed
to occur when PartitionMagic was trying to move files as part of the resizing
task. The files being moved were a small number of program updates. I could
have deleted them and restored them again from the CD (see point 70), but I had
devoted a fair amount of time to sorting them out and rearranging some of them,
and I preferred not to have to do that again.
84. Fixing Bad Sectors with Norton Disk Doctor. I wondered whether some of
the problems I had been having with hard disks pertained not to hardware, but
to a corrupt file. I ran SCANDISK /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY on
drive E, a partition named DATA. It said it had fixed the file allocation tables,
and it paused for quite a while during its check of the file system -- so long, in
fact, that I exited and ran Norton Disk Doctor instead. Norton found the free
space that had not yet been assigned to a partition, and offered to revive it, but I
said no, I'd just as soon leave that to PartitionMagic. Finally, I figured out what
the error was -- PartitionMagic was trying to move itself! I exited
PartitionMagic, copied the PQMAGIC files to another drive, ran PQMAGIC from
there, and, to my surprise, got the same Error # 45. I rebooted to Windows, used
Windows Explorer to move some of these files, and the system froze. I rebooted
and, even though the BIOS was set to look at C first, it looked to the CDROM
and A. I tried again, and the same thing happened. I cold-rebooted, and this
time Windows booted properly. I opened a DOS box and used COPY to make
copies of the files that I was trying to move away from the E partition. It moved
four of the six files I was trying to move, but then it froze and gave me a blue
screen with "Disk Write Error -- Unable to write to disk in drive E. Data or files
may be lost." This led to a Windows "Fatal Exception" screen, so I rebooted.
Again, I had to cold-reboot to get Windows to boot from the hard disk; and even
then, it froze during the boot process. I rebooted from the floppy. At this point I
discovered that I had been confused. The change in drive letters had gotten me
copying files to the troublesome E drive, rather than away from it. When I typed

CHKDSK /F at the E: prompt, the system froze. I rebooted and ran SCANDISK
E: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY again, and this time it whipped right
through it. I didn't want to use DOS commands to move many files, because it
seemed that they would eliminate the long filenames. (See point 23(c).) So I
used XCOPY only to move DOS program files, and then DELTREE to remove
those files from E. This part went OK. I rebooted into Windows (Safe Mode)
from the hard disk, immediately rebooted into Normal Mode, and used
Windows Explorer to move the remaining files from E. Within a few seconds, I
got "Error Copying File: Cannot copy [filename]: The system cannot read from
the specified device." I rebooted, hit F8 after the BIOS recognized the hard disks,
and chose "5. Command prompt only." I ran PartitionMagic from the DOS
prompt. This time, I created a separate temporary partition with the free space
on this Western Digital hard disk, so that Norton Disk Doctor would not offer to
revive that space (since I was not sure what effect that might have, but thought it
might involve sticking that free space back into one of the other partitions). The
PartitionMagic operation succeeded and rebooted me; I again chose the
Command prompt option. I saw that the DATA partition was now drive F,
instead of E. I ran Norton Disk Doctor and diagnosed both E (the temporary
partition) and F (the DATA partition), using Norton's normal test (not the
thorough one). It found and fixed numerous problems on the second partition,
and marked many bad blocks. I ran Norton again just to be sure, and this time I
ran it on all partitions on both disks. It detected no other errors. I rebooted into
Windows. I tarried during the boot process, leaving SCANDISK to decide to
start itself and rectify errors that it had identified on drive F. Apparently when
Norton marks bad clusters, it does so in a way that SCANDISK can detect,
whereas SCANDISK was unable to detect these particular bad clusters by itself,
without Norton's aid. SCANDISK did not mark any additional clusters bad and
did not remove Norton's "bad" marking from any. On the other hand, during its
scan, SCANDISK informed me that some data was stored in an area of drive F
that was probably about to fail, and offered to move this data to "an undamaged
area of drive F." I accepted this offer, which Norton had not made. SCANDISK
sat there for a long time on one cluster and then finally said, "ScanDisk
encountered a data error while reading the FAT entry for cluster 16384. This
error prevents ScanDisk from fixing this drive." I okayed out of that and got
another message: "At least one area of drive F has sustained physical damage.
Although such damage might be caused by an isolated incident such as a power
failure, it is often a sign of impending hardware failure. ... You should run
ScanDisk daily for a while; if more physical errors occur, have this drive checked
by a qualified computer hardware technician." So it wasn't clear that I could fix
it by reformatting or other software remedies. But I thought maybe I should try.
I left the program and got an instruction to run ScanDisk for Windows that said,
"Press any key to continue starting Windows." I did this. Windows booted. Not
wanting to alter any more Windows program files than necessary at this stage, I

went directly into Windows Explorer and tried again to remove the files from
this DATA partition. The operation succeeded. I rebooted into real DOS with F8
("Command prompt only" -- see above), ran PartitionMagic, and told it to delete
these E and F partitions, create a new E ("DATA") partition, and format it. It took
a long time. I could hear it grinding away, and I knew it was finding bad sectors.
PartitionMagic finished and rebooted. I went back into real DOS, ran Norton
again, and pointed it at E. This time, I set Norton to do five repetitions of Disk
Doctor's "Diagnose Disk" test on the thorough setting, which the computer
estimated would take 3.5 hours. It finished and found no additional problems.
Then I ran Disk Doctor's "Surface Test" on all drives, on the normal setting -- but
I used the thorough setting on E. These tests found no additional problems. I
decided that my drives were probably not failing, that the damage on E (on the
Western Digital) was probably from a one-time event, and that the problems
with the Fujitsu were due more to incompatibility that might render it unusable
for a program disk but still might make it usable for a data disk. I noticed that
the bad blocks on E appeared towards the end of the disk, and I thought to
myself that if that section of the disk produced more bad blocks in future scans, I
could use PartitionMagic to create a separate partition for them in the "Hidden"
format, so as not to disturb the order of my other drive letters.
85. Comparing the CD Against the Original. I now felt confident enough about
my disks to compare what I had gotten from my CD re-installation of Win98
against the original installation located on drive C on the Western Digital disk. I
rebooted into Windows on the hard disk, so as to have access to long filenames.
I deleted all files from C:\Windows\Temp and then emptied the Recycle Bin on
drive C. (The files contained in these two places would just add clutter to what I
was about to do.) Then I opened a DOS box and, using the FILELIST program
(see point 80), I created a list of all files on drive C, which contained the original,
hopefully still somewhat pure, installation of Windows 98 on the Western Digital
drive. (See point 17.) I renamed this list from FILELIST.TXT to WDIGLIST.TXT.
I also created a list of files that I had restored from the CD, that had been on the
primary partition of the Fujitsu drive. (See point 67.) This one was still named
FILELIST.TXT. I typed COPY *.TXT COMBLIST. This gave me one long
COMBLIST file combining the two different file lists. Since the FILELIST
program produces full-path directory listings (e.g.,
G:\FOLDER\FILENAME.DOC), I didn't need to keep the two lists separate to
figure out which files came from which disks; the first letter in each full
pathname (G, in that example) would tell me. I renamed COMBLIST to be
COMBLIST.TXT, copied it to a floppy, carried it to the AMD machine, and tried
to import it into an Excel spreadsheet (choose Files of Type | All Files (or Text
Files) in File | Open). Excel got partway through the process of parsing the file
into separate columns, and then returned the error message, "The system cannot
read from the specified device." It turned out to be a problem with the floppy; I

reformatted the floppy and recopied the file, and this time it worked. Excel gave
me a spreadsheet containing a total of 11,538 data lines. To compare, I went to
the PENTIUM computer and ran the command DIR C:\ /S /A/4. This ran for a
while and then summarized by saying that the Western Digital drive, with my
original semi-pure Win98 installation, had a total of 5,772 files containing
427,889,664 bytes in 1,045 directories. I did the same for G: (where the Fujitsu
installation had landed) and got the conclusion that the CD had restored 5,766
files with 532,362,393 bytes in 1,043 directories. The sum of 5,772 plus 5,766 was
11,538, which matched the number of data lines in the Excel spreadsheet. So it
seemed that the spreadsheet did contain a data line for each file on drives C and
G. Turning to that spreadsheet, I added a column heading row. I also inserted
an Index column and numbered it (Edit | Fill | Series, with a 1 in the first cell),
so that I could restore the spreadsheet to the original order in which FILELIST
had produced it. I extracted the drive letter, and the filename without the drive
letter, into separate columns. (In the cells in the drive letter column, put a
formula like this: =LEFT(F2,1), where F is the column containing the filename
and 2 is the number of the row. Then "freeze" that value against subsequent
changes in column F by selecting all the values in this column (hold Shift while
pressing End and then Down) and then hitting Edit | Copy and then Edit | Paste
Special | Values | OK. Create another column for Filename and extract the
filename without the drive letter. (Example: =MID(F2,3,512).) Freeze its values
too.) I sorted the entire table by the Filename column and secondarily by the
Drive column. This put filenames from drives C and G right next to each other,
in the order of C first, G second. I inserted a Column called "Compare" and
entered formulas into it. Then I undertook the following analyses:
(a) Spreadsheet Comparison of Alternating Filenames. I used a formula to verify
that the files listed on drives C and G were alternating. For example, if drive C
had a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT, then drive G should have one too. (Example:
with Drive Letter as the E column and Compare as the F column, the formula in
cell F3 was like this:
=IF(E2="C",IF(E3="G","","ERROR"),IF(E2<>"G","ERROR",IF(E3="C","","ERROR"))
), and I copied that to all cells after F3. Then, to isolate the offending cases, I used
AutoFilter (i.e., select a cell on the table heading row and then use Data | Filter |
Autofilter and select "ERROR" at the arrow button on the Compare column.)
Disregarding files of size zero, this showed the list of files on drive C that did not
appear on drive G, or vice versa. First, I saw why drive G was 100 MB larger
than drive C: it contained a large WIN386.SWP swap file (see point 44) that
could easily be deleted and recreated as needed. On the other hand, drive C
contained several \WINDOWS\CATROOT files that drive G did not contain.
According to http://www.acit.com.tw/acercare/talk98/3/win98.html,
CATROOT contains catalog files that store information regarding your drivers.
You have a catalog file for each driver package. The catalog file contains a

Microsoft digital signature confirming that the driver has passed testing by
Windows Hardware Quality Labs. I probably got extra CATROOT files when
Windows installed those extra couple of drivers. (See point 82.) In this sense, the
version of Windows on drive G was more pure (i.e., less hardware-specific) than
the version on drive C. Presumably the same tinkering had caused the creation
of three other files on drive C that did not exist on drive G, namely,
C:\SETUPLOG.TXT, C:\WINDOWS\REGTLIB.EXE, and
C:\WINDOWS\WINFILE.EXE. But that couldn't be, because the file dates were
from long before this past week. I thought, however, that the explanation might
be that Windows extracted these previously existing files from its CAB files in
the C:\WIN98 directory (see point 31), rather than creating them from scratch,
during its setup process. That left just one file on my list of files that appeared on
one drive but not the other. This file, G:\WINDOWS\WNBOOTNG.STS, is a
Signature file that apparently indicates that system startup has failed. If it is
present, Windows 95 (and presumably 98) will boot in Safe Mode. See
http://www.jenntel.com/tech/Win95/gtshoot.htm. Reviewing the
circumstances surrounding the creation of the CD (from which the contents of
drive G were created), it appeared that I had indeed booted the system before
making the CD. (See point 55.) So I couldn't explain the presence of this
WNBOOTNG.STS file, but it didn't worry me by itself, since I recalled being
pretty happy with the state of the Windows installation when I made the image
file and burned the CD. Then, on closer examination, I saw, from the file date,
that this WNBOOTNG.STS file had been created on drive G just a day earlier,
after I had restored from the CD to the Fujitsu. (See point 67.) So it did not
reflect a problem with the CD itself. Perhaps it was created automatically, to flag
Windows system files that have not yet been booted. Finally, having thus
isolated the lines in the spreadsheet that corresponded to files existing on drive C
but not G or vice versa, I created a copy of the spreadsheet, named it
"SYNCLIST.XLS," and deleted these lines from that copy, so as to focus on other
kinds of dissimilarities among the files on drives C and G.
(b) Spreadsheet Analysis of File Sizes. I removed AutoFilter and put a different
formula in the Compare column. This time, I was comparing to make sure that
files with the same full pathnames had the same sizes. (The formula:
=IF(G7<>G6,"",IF(D7=D6,"","ERROR")).) Once again, I AutoFiltered for ERROR.
I ignored (1) CATROOT files (see point 85(a)), (2) the FILELIST.TXT file that
produced the spreadsheet, (3) a few files whose names made clear that they were
related to the installation of my modem (which were hardware-specific files and
therefore would probably change automatically and/or be easy to change (e.g.,
"Standard 33600 bps Modem.log."), (4) the C:\BOOTLOG files that presumably
do nothing more than their name implies, and (5) the
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DB files -- which, I
believe, were Registry files, and therefore understandably changed when I

installed my modem. This left me with two C:\WINDOWS files that differed in
size between C and G. Those files were SCHEDLOG.TXT and
SHELLICONCACHE. I wouldn't know, but the names seemed to suggest, again,
that these files were naturally adjusted when I installed the modem or otherwise
tinkered with the hardware. In short, it seemed that the only differences
between C and G in this category were that a bit of installation and adjustment
had occurred on the one disk but not yet on the other.
(c) Spreadsheet Comparison of File Dates. I removed AutoFilter again and put
yet another formula in the Compare column, to detect files that had been
modified on different dates. (I didn't worry about different modification times of
day because the dates seemed likely to capture the differences, given that the two
installations had occurred several days apart.) (Formula:
=IF(G3<>G2,"",IF(B3=B2,"","ERROR")).) Filtering once again for ERROR, I
mostly got files discussed in points (a) and (b). The remaining altered files, all in
C:\WINDOWS, were as follows: NDISLOG.TXT, RAYWOODC.PWL,
SYSTEM.CB and .INI, ttfCACHE, and USER.DAT. At this point, I realized that I
really would not have any way of telling, from this file comparison, if one of
these files were corrupted. Thus, while this file comparison was informative, it
was not giving me total insight.
86. Emptying, Testing, and Restoring the Drive. By this time, I had gone
through numerous gyrations with the formerly pure Windows 98 installation on
my Western Digital drive, seeing it freeze and rebooting into Safe Mode to fix it,
and so forth. (See points 81-85.) If the differences between drives C and G (see
point 85) suggested that there was any corruption on either drive, my bet was
that it would be on C, which had gone through all this turmoil. In other words, I
had now become more confident of the purity of my Windows installation as
captured on CD than I was of the purity of the Windows installation that
presently existed on either of my hard drives. Therefore, I decided to start again
from CD. First, I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from the CD, and emptied off
drive C with FORMAT C: /V, leaving off the /S switch because I did not want to
transfer system files, which would screw up the boot process. (See point 77.)
Then I ran a thorough test on drive C with Norton Disk Doctor (see points 78 and
84); it found no errors. I had learned that DriveImage worked best when run
from the hard drive (see point 78), and it was one of the many DOS utilities that I
had loaded onto another partition (specifically, drive E). (See point 64.) So I ran
DriveImage from that partition to restore C_IMAGE.PQI from the CD to drive C
-- this time using the other of the two copies I had made of the CD holding
C_IMAGE.PQI (see point 67), just to make sure it worked OK. And as far as I
could see, it did.

87. The Archive Bit Concept. When DriveImage was done, it wanted to reboot,
so I let it; but I intercepted when the BIOS started to boot and changed the reboot
to the floppy rather than the CD, because of the finding that the hard disk would
intervene and not let the CD boot, if Windows was bootable from the hard disk.
(See point 77.) I intercepted because I wanted an exact list of the files, the way
they were installed from the CD, before letting Windows look at hardware and
configure itself. So I booted from the floppy and ran FILELIST. (See point 80.)
Then I remembered that this list would have no long filenames, and anyway, it
had been created from a CD that captured a Windows installation that itself had
been booted, and that therefore unavoidably had some hardware configuration
information in it. So instead, I tried working with the archive bit approach. The
archive bit, also called the archive attribute, is one of a number of attributes:
read-only, hidden, system, and directory are the others I know about, and I think
there are others besides. Windows and DOS turn on the archive bit whenever a
file is modified. I figured that, if I started with all the archive bits off, then it
would be easy to tell which files had changed after that: they would be the only
ones with archive bits on. This would have helped during the spreadsheet
comparison of file lists (see point 85), at least for purposes of making it easier to
identify the files that had changed during bootup or subsequent tinkering. It
began to seem that I should have changed the archive bit before making the CD.
Then again, I would have been reluctant to tinker with my perfect Windows
installation in this way. So I decided to do it now.
88. DOS Tools to Shut Off Archive Bits. Shutting off the archive bit was not as
easy as it looked at first glance. I started by running ATTRIB -A C:\*.* /S. It ran
for a long time and then began giving me error messages that said "Not resetting
hidden file" for a number of files. Browsing in Deja.com, I found some
indications that the problem might be that these particular files had other file
attributes set, and that in such cases you had to turn all the attributes off at the
same time and then turn the others back on (leaving the archive bit off, of
course). Moreover, some people said that your ATTRIB command had to list
these attributes in a particular order. One person said they had to go in the order
R,A,S,H, but I found that it worked OK if you just followed the order shown by
the DIR /A command (i.e., R,H,S,A, naturally ignoring the D attribute since I
didn't care to change any directories into files!); and other comments suggested
that you just needed to enter them all on the same line, regardless of order.
Anyway, the first file that came up with a "Not resetting hidden file" message
was in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder. This was odd, because then I typed
DIR /AA /S /V /P, and the first directory shown in which there was still a file
with the archive attribute on was the C:\MYDOCU~1 folder. Apparently the /S
command in ATTRIB did not process directories in the same order as in DIR.
Responding to another online tip, I went to
http://oak.oakland.edu/simtel.net/msdos/dirutl.html (other Simtel sites would

evidently do too -- just use the power search pages in AltaVista or Northern
Light and look for URL:SIMTEL) and downloaded CHATT.ZIP on the AMD
machine, unzipped it, and transferred it by floppy (only 17K!) to the PENTIUM
machine. The tip was correct: this was a handy, full-screen DOS utility that
simplified the task of changing attributes manually. What I wanted, however,
was an automated way to do it, since DIR C:\*.* /AA /V /S told me that drive C
still had 217 files with the attribute bit set, scattered across dozens of different
folders. (Reminder: DOSKEY simplifies retyping of the same commands. See
point 20.) Hunting for them manually and changing them manually in CHATT
was not my idea of a good time. Tinkering further, I found that my problems
were limited to hidden files. That is, ATTRIB -A would work just fine to shut off
the attribute bit on files that happened to have R or S bits on as well. Thus, the
ones that were causing problems were only those that had both the hidden and
attribute bits set, regardless of how their read-only and system bits were set. I
did this with DIR C:\ /AA /AH /V /S /P. When it showed me a file with both
H and A bits set, I used CTRL-C or CTRL-BREAK to kill the DIR operation and
then used the appropriate set of ATTRIB commands (e.g., ATTRIB -H -A
[filename] followed by ATTRIB +H [filename]). (During this process, I noticed
those seemingly useless MSCREATE.DIR files all over my hard disk that, in the
past, I had felt comfortable deleting, since they had a file size of zero and seemed
to have no purpose. Browsing online, I found that many other users were doing
the same thing. I came across one comment, however, that suggested that
various Microsoft programs use those MSCREATE.DIR files when installing or
updating software. So this was one category of files, with two or three archive
bits set, that I had to deal with even though I might have preferred to delete
them.) This process was very slow, and since it seemed likely that I would want
to tinker with archive bits again someday, I decided to automate it. I did this by
making a modified version of FILELIST (see point 80), called LISTBITS, that
would work with DIR C:\ /AA /AH /V /S. I converted the resulting list of files
(i.e., those files whose A and H attributes were turned on) to a spreadsheet that I
modified using the technique described in point 80. (Note: when using
FILELIST, you may notice that the alignment of items in a DIR listing in a
Windows 98 DOS box is not exactly the same as the alignment of items in a DIR
listing in real DOS -- even when it's the real DOS included with Windows 98.) In
that spreadsheet, I deleted unnecessary columns and sorted the list so that the
files with both hidden and archive bits would be together. Then I modified each
filename on the list so that it now began with ATTRIB -H -A, and for the ones
that actually did have the hidden bits set, I made another set of these lines in
which I changed the -H to a +H, and put that set of lines at the end of the list.
There were two files that my modified FILELIST program had named without
showing any file attributes; I decided to see what the problem was with those
files while fixing their archive bits manually. (I hadn't minded doing this
because I wanted the experience in using BASIC (to program FILELIST and

LISTBITS), but as it turned out there were really only a few programs with both
the H and A bits set.) I exported the resulting list to a text file, left Excel,
renamed the text file to be X.BAT, copied it to the PENTIUM computer, and ran
it. It refused to change the bits on a file that also happened to have its system bit
set, telling me that I had to adjust my approach to take account of all four bits (R,
S, H, and A). I revised LISTBITS accordingly, ran it again, and manually shut off
the archive bits on the files that remained, making sure to reset the other bits
after turning off A. I ran LISTBITS once again, and it showed that the only files
left on C with archive bits on were the files created by LISTBITS or FILELIST
themselves.
89. Successful Reboot After Restoring. I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from the
hard disk, and cold-rebooted. Windows loaded successfully. While booting, it
detected certain items of hardware. Immediately after booting, now that I was in
Win98 and had access to long filenames, I opened a DOS window and ran
FILELIST (see point 80), to get a complete reference list of files that I could use
later to determine what files had changed from the original. I saved this as
PURELIST.TXT. I turned off the archive bits for the files that FILELIST itself
created, and then I used LISTBITS to make a separate list of all files that had their
attribute bits on. These bits had gotten turned on during the process of booting
Windows. LISTBITS told me that booting had changed three files, all in the
C:\WINDOWS folder, namely, NDISLOG.TXT, SYSTEM.INI, and
SCHEDLOG.TXT.
Considering Windows 98 Second Edition ("Win98SE") and Windows 2000
90. Win98SE vs. W2K. You might wonder why I did all this work with the
original Windows 98, rather than Win98SE or Windows 2000. Here are my
thoughts on those questions:
(a) I'm sure I would have used Win98SE if I'd had a copy of it on hand when I
started this process. I did not fully and carefully consider it at that time, partly
because the project took shape and assumed larger-than-life dimensions only
after I got into it. In part, I may have been in denial: reinstalling Windows has
always seemed like a true ordeal to me, and I probably just wanted it to be done
with and go away, and therefore was probably not doing my best thinking on the
subject. Of course, I also had no desire to spend money on something I didn't
really need. That's how I saw it, and in some ways it still is.
(b) I had kept vaguely in touch with the general outlines of Win98SE since it had
first emerged in May 1999. The reviewers seemed to be saying that it was
essentially a collection of bug fixes that a person could download for free from
the Windows Update site. See e.g.,

http://activewin.com/reviews/software/utils/win98se/win98se_1.shtml and
http://www.rivazone.com/userreview/win98se.html and
http://cwsapps.tower.net.au/reviews/mspacks-ms98se.html. I had been
steadily downloading updates from that site, and therefore didn't feel much
inclination to wipe off my hard disk just for the privilege of reinstalling the same
stuff over again from a Win98SE CD. These reviewers were virtually unanimous
in saying that the person who had already downloaded the latest updates
probably wouldn't gain much by going to Win98SE.
(c) To some extent, I disagree with some of those reviews on one point: if I had
been writing in June 1999, as some of them were, knowing what I know now, I
would probably recommend buying the CD, for a lousy $25, rather than
spending hours to download the same patches and fixes from the Windows
Update site. This recommendation would vary, however, according to whether
the user had a really fast modem, or was tying up his/her primary computer
with these hours of downloads, or was using a Connection Keeper type of utility
to let the whole thing run in the background. (See point 48.)
(d) At this particular point in the game, having worked out the whole process of
copying my Windows installation to CD and restoring it to disk, I had the
belated sense that I really owed it to myself to do it right, all the way through,
and start again from the beginning, with a nice, fresh Win98SE CD and all its bug
fixes. But then I realized that Win98SE, finished in May 1999, did not have all the
latest bug fixes after all. Bugs had continued to surface. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/screensavers/answerstips/story/0,3656,2288864,
00.html. Microsoft had continued to develop fixes on through the end of 1999,
and I had continued to download them. In that respect, Win98SE would be a
step backwards and would have required me to re-download those subsequent
fixes. It was indeed a cleaner solution to start from a CD that had many of these
updates, but it was still not an entirely clean solution.
(e) On the morning when I was writing these words, I was tempted to buy a copy
of Win98SE, in part, because I happened to have a $31.93 credit from the local
CompUSA store, thanks to having returned a floppy drive I didn't need, after
Computer Surplus Outlet in Las Vegas decided to get off their butts and ship the
floppy drive that I had ordered from them a month earlier. (See point 59.) Then
again, I supposed I wasn't actually required to use up the CompUSA credit
immediately. (See point 183.)
(f) I wasn't happy with the system freeze that I got after installing Office 97 SR-1
(see point 92). But so far, that freeze had not recurred, and Win98 on the
PENTIUM computer had stayed up and running for approximately 24 hours
since then. I did not know whether Win98SE would fix any such freeze, or

whether Office 97 SR-2b had fixed it, or whether (as something that had
happened the first time around as well -- see point 72) it was just a flaw induced
by SR-1 and/or SR-2b that Windows itself had repaired by drawing on its own
internal backup copy of its Registry files.
(g) I was a bit curious about how the file list would actually change if I installed
Win98SE. I was curious because I had begun to get into this project, even though
in a larger sense it was frustrating the hell out of me. Then again, I could not
provide any clear way in which I would use this knowledge about the change in
the list of installed files, other than possibly to increase my general familiarity
with the files that Windows uses.
(h) The one notable improvement offered in Win98SE that, it seemed, was not
going to be offered as a downloadable Windows update was Internet Connection
Sharing (ICS), which enables two computers to share a single phone line. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/win98_2ed_preview/index.html.
Since I had two computers, this feature interested me. It certainly made more
sense to get it for free as part of Win98SE than to spend $100 or more on a
commercial package that could do this. Then again, I found one reviewer who
said that Win98SE's ICS is useful but it can screw up your Dial-Up Networking.
See http://www.billortlieb.com/ocs/tech.htm. Another reviewer found it
strange that ICS was included in an operating system oriented toward
standalone computer users. See
http://www.zdnet.com/computershopper/stories/reviews/0,7171,2316376,00.h
tml. I looked for freeware that could give me ICS capability on Win98 (not SE)
computers, and eventually found the Proxy program by AnalogX. See
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/proxy.htm. I
downloaded it, but haven't yet tried it. I also found that evidently I would need
to spend $20-30 for Ethernet cards to connect the PCs. I have tentatively decided
that this feature is not really important to me.
(i) One reviewer said that the upgrade from Win98 to Win98SE had taken him
and his customers from two or three freezeups a day to none. See
http://www.integrity.net/review_windows98_2nd.htm. I had still been getting
several freezeups a day in Win98 on the AMD machine, despite having
downloaded all the latest patches and updates. Then again, my number of
freezeups depended heavily on what software I was running. Freezes were
reasonably rare -- days apart -- when I was just doing audio editing in Cool Edit
2000, which was part of my reason for loving that program. The reviewer didn't
say whether he had spent the hours downloading all the latest patches, and it
sounded like he might not have.

(k) I realized that some system instability, in either Win98 or Win98SE, might
stem from the problem that I had seen repeatedly mentioned in newsgroups:
Win98 accumulates a lot of useless old files that slow it down and clog its
arteries, and it becomes necessary or advisable to wipe off your hard disk every
year or so and reinstall it -- especially if you're one of those people (like me) who
can't resist downloading lots of freebies and trying them out. See e.g.,
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/howto/jump/0,3652,2217117,00.html.
From this perspective, the important thing seemed to be, not to have a slightly
more refined original Windows 98 installation, but to have a solid one, stored on
a CD in a form that would allow me to reinstall with a minimum of pain -- and in
that regard, having done the downloads and configured the system, I was way
ahead of where I would be if I now went back and spent extra days on the whole
process of installing, downloading, configuring, burning a CD, shutting off
archive bits, creating a file list for future reference, etc., as detailed in this essay.
The real point seemed to be that Win98SE would have been a better place to
start, but that in the end I probably wound up in more or less the same place
without it.
(l) Regarding Windows 2000. When I began this project in early January 2000,
Windows 2000 was still a month and a half away from its official release date -which was, I believe, February 17. In the past, Microsoft had sometimes
postponed its release dates, so I was not entirely confident that the February date
would hold. Much more important was the fact that, in my experience,
Microsoft frequently releases its programs to the public in a bug-riddled form
that other software producers would consider beta quality. As the worst
example, I had downloaded Internet Explorer 4.0 immediately after its release -in late 1997, I believe -- and had ultimately had to reformat my hard disk and
reinstall everything from scratch. Generally, I felt that the best approach with
Windows software was to allow everyone else to become furious with it for six to
twelve months, and then install it if it still seems worthwhile -- preferably after
Microsoft has released its first major bug-fixing upgrade or "service release." As
I continued through this project of installing Win98, I came across early reviews
of Win2000. PC Magazine, for example -- which has sometimes seemed to act as
though Microsoft owned it -- praised the new operating system as having
impressive stability. Yet this time, to its credit, PC Mag did not immediately
recommend that everyone upgrade. Rather, they said that it was "very tricky" to
upgrade from Win98 to Win2000 -- in other words, I'd probably wind up doing
another installation from scratch -- and they advised that, unless you're a big
business, you should wait for the rest of the industry to catch up before
switching to Win2000. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/reviews/0,6755,2426065,00.html. That
advice meshed nicely with my own hopes, which were that I would survive with
Win98 until Win2000 reached its maturity (i.e., shortly before Win2002, or

whatever the next version would be) and/or until Linux became easy to install
and use. Specifically, as "cons," PC Mag said that, at this point, Win2000
supports fewer peripherals and is more complex. To underscore the fact that
Win2000, so far, was suitable mainly for large businesses, the article focused
primarily on the contrast with Windows NT 4.0; for purposes of that comparison,
it said Win2000 was a great improvement. (But in its role as Microsoft
cheerleader, the PC Mag comparison did not do detailed comparisons of
Win2000 against Linux, the other strong contender for server operating systems.)
In short, given my experience with Microsoft products and particularly its
operating systems, it seemed very premature to consider moving to Win2000. I
should mention that it was even more premature to contemplate Windows ME
("Millenium Edition"), whose first release -- guaranteed to be bug-ridden -would probably not appear until May at the earliest. Meanwhile, Win98 had
reached the height of its maturity: Microsoft had probably developed it as much
as it was going to, thousands of other people had had their way with it, its
weaknesses were well known, etc.
Reinstalling Office 97
91. Installing Office 97 from CD. I was ready to try again to install application
software, following approximately the same procedure as before. Again, I
decided to load the Microsoft software first, hoping that Microsoft felt a special
incentive to make sure that at least its own software was compatible with
Windows. (See point 76.) So I installed Office 97 from scratch, along with
Animated Cursors, Sounds, and Word Viewer from the Office 97 ValuPack,
again installing to the D drive (PROGRAMS) rather than the C drive
(WINDOWS_98) whenever possible. (See point 69.) This time, I decided to save
the task of reconfiguring the Office 97 programs until after I had finished all
downloads and was satisfied that the system seemed reasonably stable. (See
point 74.) It would be a while before I'd get to that stage. (See point 102.) To
install Office 97, I inserted the CD and installed the programs just mentioned.
This installation process wanted me to register with Microsoft, but the
registration program couldn't find my modem, so I used the Windows Update
icon just to make sure the modem still worked OK.
92. Installing Office 97 SR-1 and SR-2 Patches. While I was at the Windows
Update page, I downloaded a few other Windows programs that I hadn't
bothered to get previously -- not tweaks or other experimental programs, but
more mainstream applications like NetMeeting. (I wanted the latest full release,
in case it included any useful bug fixes.) I also went to the Office 97 update
Website at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com to make sure I was still safe in
starting with the SR-1 and SR-2b patches that I had previously downloaded. (See
point 72.) Everything looked the same on that Website, so I went ahead and ran

my downloaded copy of SR-1. I rebooted, and the system froze. Evidently my

earlier worries about freezes weren't entirely due to the other tinkering I had
done then. (See point 71.) I realized afterwards that I had forgotten to shut
down the Microsoft Office 97 Shortcut toolbar, so possibly that was a factor. I
did a manual reset, booted into Safe Mode, rebooted immediately into Normal
Mode, and Windows loaded with no problem. I figured that if I had a real
problem, the SR-2b download would fix it or else I would notice it again, as had
happened the last time around. I ran SR-2b, and it finished and rebooted the
system with no further problems. (Later, I found a statement in
C:\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS.TXT indicating that you can't install SR-1 if you've
previously installed Win95, Office 97, and then upgraded to Win98 (in that
order). That didn't precisely apply to me, but it seemed that my problem might
have been related somehow.)
93. Direct Cable Connection. I went back to the Office 97 update Website and
worked through their list of available downloads, running my already
downloaded copies wherever possible and downloading the rest. All told, the
downloads I already had and the ones I was now obtaining gave me nearly 100
patches and updates to install. I had downloaded these most recent ones on the
AMD computer, since it had the faster modem. Now, instead of burning another
CD (see point 70) to transfer them to the PENTIUM computer, I hooked up
Direct Cable Connection ("DCC"). I had done this before, but I couldn't
remember the details. (If you don't already have the right cable, it may make
more sense in some cases to buy an Ethernet card for each computer, at a total
cost of around $40. An Ethernet connection is faster, and it will keep your
parallel ports free. DCC on serial ports is too slow to use except with very small
files.) I found simple, readable Websites on DCC at
http://www.microsoft.com/INSIDER/windows98/articles/netdir.htm and
http://www.myfavoritepc.com/support/tndcc.html. Another good (all-text)
site was at
http://www.ece.rochester.edu:8080/users/qzhu/ebooks/Win98/ch21/ch21.ht
m# Heading4. (Later, I found that that page seemed to have disappeared, but
maybe itll come back.) Helpful sites with screen shots of what you'll be seeing
when you try to install DCC appear at
http://www.kime.net/directcc/directcc95.htm and
http://www.helmig.com/j_helmig/dcc.htm. For more technical details and
FAQs, try http://php.indiana.edu/~jrrricha/dcc1.html and
http://www.tecno.demon.co.uk/dcc/dcc.html. I knew I had once found some
important instructions about protecting your data from prying eyes -- that you
need to take specific steps to prevent people online from looking at your shared
folders -- but at this point I was unable to find much information on it. The
kime.net site says something about it, but not very directly, in its reference to
adjusting the TCP/IP bindings. (I heard that another way to improve security of

shared drives, at least on a peer-to-peer network (which I didn't have), was to set
the last character of the name of the shared item to be $. Also, Win98 apparently
had a NetWatcher utility that would let you watch who was accessing your
shared devices.) Finally, if you run an updated version of Dial-Up Networking,
you may appreciate what the helmig.com site says about being able to use the
modem and DCC simultaneously.
94. Problems with Excel 97 Downloads. As I was installing the many Office 97
patches, I kept steering the location of program files to drive D (PROGRAMS)
whenever possible. The large majority of the installations presented no
problems. With several of the Excel updates, however, the installation seemed to
go OK, but then, when I took them up on their offer and tried to use them
immediately after installation, I got messages along the lines of "You do not have
Excel SR-1 installed on this computer." I went back to the Office 97 updates
Website and saw nothing pertaining to any program called "Excel SR-1." I felt
confident that this was an older message, and that it referred to what was now
called the Office 97 SR-1 patch. That, however, was no comfort, as I thought I
had already installed that patch. (See point 92.) I went to the Frequently Asked
Questions ("FAQ") page for the SR-2b patch and took its advice to try running
the Office 97 Version Checker. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. This Version Checker
told me that I had Office 97 SR-1 installed, and that I could now run the SR-2
patch -- which, as the FAQ page told me, meant that I could run the SR-2b patch.
This did not shed any light on the "Excel SR-1" messages, but I guessed that at
least it must mean that some of the patches I had installed had messed up the
previous installation of the SR-2b patch. This seemed like it could have been
what happened because of this statement at
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/sr2off97detail.htm: "If
you installed the Word 97 Template Security Patch or the Forms 2.0 Control
Security Patch you must reinstall them after installing the Service Release 2b."
That is, clearly some of these downloads interfered with one another.
95. Downloads That Depend on Other Downloads. It seemed best to continue
installing all my downloads, to the extent possible, and then rerun the SR-2b
patch, considering Microsoft's statement on the subject: they said that, if you
have "previously installed patches and fixes such as the Excel recalculation
patch," the SR-2b patch can be installed over them and "will run on top of them."
See http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. (Apparently there
had been some problems with the original version of SR-2, which seems to have
been released in autumn 1998. Microsoft seems to have withdrawn it and
revamped it, so presumably it was now contained, or was compatible with,
patches that had been introduced in 1999.) So I installed all of the patches and
upgrades that were willing to be installed, with the exception of Outlook-related

stuff. (See point 98.) Then I went back through the list and tried again to
reinstall the rest, except for the Word 97 Template Security Patch and the Forms
2.0 Control Security Patch, which were still premature. (See point 94.) This
second time through, I was able to install one or two of the remaining
downloads, including especially the Excel 97 Date Migration Tools, which
apparently had to be installed after other date-related downloads. When I had
finished this second try, aside from the Template Security Patch and the Forms
2.0 Control Security Patch, I was left with just three Excel downloads: the AutoRecalculation Patch, the CALL Function Patch, and the SYLK File Security
Update. These three still insisted on having SR-2 installed. So I ran SR-2b again,
and it said it completed successfully. Then I went back to the Excel downloads
page and requested further information on these three remaining downoads. I
now discovered the following additional information: (a) The AutoRecalculation Patch was already included in SR-2, and therefore also in SR-2b, so
I didn't need it after all. (b) The CALL Function Patch had to be run again after
installing SR-2. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/xl97cfp.htm. (c) The SYLK
update page, too, said that SR-2 had to be installed first. See
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/Xl8p7pkg.htm. I noticed,
moreover, that the online versions of CALL and SYLK appeared to have file
dates somewhat later than the dates of the copies I had downloaded previously.
So I re-downloaded the CALL Function Patch and the SYLK update.
96. Inconsistent Report by SR-2 Version Checker. Before I ran those last few redownloads or made any other changes, I tried the Version Checker again, and
again it told me that I had only SR-1 installed -- even though I had just installed
SR-2b and had been told it was successful! I went online for enlightenment and
found that I was not the only person having this problem. One possible cause,
someone said, was having another Office 97 program running, but that didn't
apply to me. A better explanation came from someone who said that there was a
bug in the Version Checker, and that (a) you have to re-install SR-1 and SR-2
every time you run Office 97 Setup (which I had not re-done) and (b) you could
find out the actual state of affairs by checking the installation log files, which
were 97SR1_*.TXT and 97SR2_*.LOG. I searched for 97SR*.* and (ignoring the
97SR2CHK*.LOG files) found one copy of 97SR1_0.TXT and two copies of the
other one (97SR2_0.LOG and 97SR2_1.LOG). I opened the 97SR1_0.TXT file in
WordPad and, skipping down to the several different "Results of Application of
Patch File" summaries, found various indications that some patches had been
skipped or ignored for various reasons. Realizing that I didn't care as much
about the SR-1 results as the SR-2 results (because, after all, the Version Checker
had said I had SR-1 installed and was ready for SR-2), I looked at the most recent
SR-2 log, contained in 97SR2_1.LOG. Its filedate and time indicated that it had
been created just a few moments earlier, when I had run SR-2b. Skipping to the

bottom of 97SR2_1.LOG, I saw, "The SR2 patch has successfully completed." So

all I really wanted was for Version Checker to say that same thing. In further
browsing, I found a note by one user who said he had even tried extracting
individual components from the SR-2 update and installing them individually,
but still got messages that didn't make sense. The best he could offer was that he
had heard Microsoft was looking into the problem and might eventually issue an
SR-3 update. Another user suggested rebooting and running the SR-2 patch
from within Safe Mode. I did this, and then realized I had forgotten to hit F8
while the machine was booting, and therefore had needlessly re-run the program
in Normal Mode. I rebooted again, hit F8, and ran SR-2b yet again. It had me
reboot again after running, so again I booted into Safe Mode and ran Version
Checker. It still told me I was only at the SR-1 level and was ready to install SR2. Having installed SR-2 enough times, I gave up, rebooted into Normal Mode,
went to the folder that now contained many install logs (such as the
97SR2_1.LOG file mentioned above), and deleted them all except the last one,
which I thought might be useful for something.
97. Installing Remaining Non-Outlook Downloads. I ran the SYLK and CALL
downloads again. The SYLK download ran OK this time. The CALL download,
unfortunately, gave me the same error message. (See points 94-95.) Watching
more carefully, I saw that I first got a message that said the installation had
succeeded, and got the "Patch has failed" message afterwards. So I hoped that
the patch would actually work, and that the the installation program might just
be failing to find something it thought it would need. Then I ran the other two
patches that were supposed to be held until after the SR-2 patch had been
installed, namely, the Forms 2.0 Control Security Patch and the Template
Security Patch. (See point 94.) Both ran without any problem.
98. Searching for an Outlook 98 Installer. Although I was not clear on this, it
seemed that SR-2 or SR-2b could cause problems with Outlook 98. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q191/9/52.ASP. Then
again, Microsoft's Website also said, "The SR-2b patch will recognize Outlook 98
files and leave them intact, but will update the remaining Office 97 installation."
See http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2faq.htm. Regardless, I
decided to save Outlook 98 for last. Having now done as much as I could do
with the other Office 97 patches, I turned to the Outlook 98 SETUP.EXE file that I
had saved from my previous experience with Outlook. As I recalled, Outlook 98
did not give me the option of downloading the entire program and saving it for
future reinstallation; instead, I had to run this SETUP program, and Outlook
would install directly from Microsoft's computers onto mine. I had been vaguely
concerned that this would allow Microsoft to pull the plug on Outlook 98 at any
time, and was relieved to think that my CD imaging plans would now enable me
to make a more permanent copy of the program, albeit in installed (and therefore

perhaps not so flexible) form. Anyway, I clicked on the SETUP.EXE program. It

gave me three installation options, and all included Internet Explorer ("IE") 4.01,
which I didn't want because I had installed IE 5.1 during my earlier Windows
installation. (See point 15.) Using the AMD computer, I went online for advice
and saw some comments indicating that some people preferred to postpone their
IE upgrade until after they had installed Outlook 98. On a more encouraging
note, other comments said that, although Outlook 98's SETUP says it's going to
install IE 4.01, it actually just installs a few IE 4.01 files that are linked to Outlook
98, and otherwise leaves your IE 5 installation alone; you just have to be sure to
adjust your IE options to reflect the right mail program. I didn't feel entirely
certain about all this, so I went to the Office 97 updates page
(http://officeupdate.microsoft.com), where I was disturbed to see that there was
no option for downloading a new copy of Outlook 98 SETUP.EXE. Were my
suspicions about Microsoft pulling the plug turning out to be justified? I
searched for Outlook 98 at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp
and didn't find a setup option there either. Along the way, I did find a statement
from Microsoft indicating that I didn't need to install SR-2 before Outlook 98, as
well as a statement that to avoid reinstalling IE 4.01, I should choose "Upgrade
only newer components" during the Outlook 98 installation. This seemed to be
the thing to do, regardless of whether you were installing the full version, the
standard version (which seemed best for me, since I already had most of the
contents of the full version), or the minimal version. See
http://www.microsoft.com/office/archive/olk98brch/specifications.htm. This
was all fine, thank you, but I still didn't have an answer to the most fundamental
question: where would I find that Outlook 98 installation?
99. Modem Difficulties. I decided I'd rather use the old version of Outlook 98's
SETUP.EXE program than none at all, so on the PENTIUM computer, I ran the
copy I had saved as a download 18 months earlier. For some reason, my modem
wasn't working. I went into Control Panel and saw that I didn't even have a
modem listed. I ran the Add New Hardware wizard and elected to add my
standard no-brand modem from a list. I had no idea why the modem had
suddenly disappeared -- must have been something about the installation
process. I rebooted, tried Dial-Up Networking, and found that the modem still
wasn't working. I clicked on its Properties in Control Panel and told it to search
for a new driver in the folder where I was keeping a copy of the driver needed
for this particular modem. Oddly, it didn't think that the driver for this modem
really belonged to this modem. I cold-rebooted, tinkered with some settings in
the Plug-N-Play area of my BIOS, and that still didn't do it. A couple of times
along the way, it asked me if it was OK to remove the device that I had
previously configured as a modem, and since that device wasn't working
anyway, I said sure, why not? I ran the Add New Hardware Wizard again, this
time letting Windows search for non-Plug-N-Play devices. It didn't find any. I

eventually configured it by the manual option, and it told me the modem had
been set up successfully. I rebooted, and the modem worked! (Later, I wound
up doing more modem configuration. See point 105(c).)
100. Installing Outlook 98. Continuing the foregoing process (see point 98), I ran
my old SETUP.EXE program and waited eagerly to see if it would still work. It
did. So I don't know what was the story with not being able to find SETUP.EXE
at the Microsoft Website. Maybe their thinking was that, if you already have the
old Outlook 98 installation files on your computer, you must be someone who
would get irritated to discover that you could no longer gain access to your
Outlook 98 information -- at least not easily -- the next time your computer
crashes, unless you've had the wisdom ... genius ... brilliance ... compulsiveness
required to save a copy of SETUP.EXE. Anyway, the installer ran for about an
hour and a half, and then it paused with a message that Setup would probably
fail if I didn't shut down the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar. Before I thought
about it, I shut it down. Next time, I'll take that opportunity to make copies of
the downloaded files before I alter them by installing them. Or maybe I won't
need to: Setup ended with an indication that I could reinstall Outlook 98 in the
future just by running OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE from the D:\OUTLOOK 98
SETUP folder. When I saw that message, I opened Windows Explorer and made
a copy of that folder to another partition before rebooting, just in case that was
indeed a set of files that would be self-installing without further downloading.
Then I clicked OK, and Setup rebooted the machine. I started Outlook 98. It ran
me through an Internet Connection Wizard, which required me, strangely
enough, to delete my existing Dial-Up account so that it could then re-create it;
but then Outlook 98 opened with no problem. I then went back to my list of
downloads and installed the last nine downloads, the ones specifically related to
Outlook 98. (See point 98.)
Adjusting Office 97 and Windows 98 in a Purely Microsoft System
101. Limit: One CD. In all this rebooting, I did not have any more freezes, so I
had less concern about a possibly imperfect Office 97 installation than I had had
the first time around. (See point 92.) I felt more confident, that is, that I could go
ahead and personalize my Office 97 installation with less risk that this effort
would be wasted. (See point 74.) The best way to personalize things, I decided,
would be to proceed in two phases. The first phase would include actions that
should not pose any risk of destabilizing my hopefully pure new Office 97
installation; the second phase would include somewhat riskier actions that,
although potentially risky, I would still rather take care of now than later.
102. Simple Adjustments. I decided to start by retracing my steps from the
previous customization of my Office 97 installation, and then I went forwards

from there. Thus, I took the following actions: (a) I rearranged the Office 97
Shortcut Bar, dragging it from the top of the screen to the left side. I right-clicked
on it, chose Customize, and added Desktop and Program bars to its existing
Office 97 bar and rearranged icons within these bars. (Later, I added an Internet
bar in place of the Program bar. See point 109(g). To create that bar, I used
Windows Explorer to create a folder in C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
called Internet; I added relevant shortcuts to that Internet folder; and then I
right-clicked on the Shortcut Bar and chose Customize | Toolbars | Add Toolbar
| Make Toolbar for This Folder, and pointed to my new Internet folder.) I
started to delete some icons, but when it told me that it would delete program
files along with the icons, I canceled that part and just unchecked them, so they
wouldn't be visible on the bar. (b) I rearranged the icons on my Start Menu. (See
point 69 for further information on this step and several of the following steps.)
(c) In Word 97, I went into Tools | Options and configured those options to
match the settings for that program on the AMD computer. Likewise Tools |
AutoCorrect. I told Word to keep its AutoRecover files on H:\Temp, generated
its help database (Help | Contents | Find | Minimize Database Size -- the larger
database options contain a lot of junk and duplicate entries), created a backup
copy of NORMAL.DOT, and was then safe in customizing my toolbars (select
View | Toolbars | Customize and then drag icons from the toolbar into the
document area to get rid of them, or from one toolbar to the other to combine the
buttons I use into just one toolbar). This toolbar customization resulted in some
toolbars whose icons did not all fit on one line in 640 x 480 mode; I had to verify
that they did fit when I finally went to 800 x 600 mode. (See point 121.) (d) In
Access 97, I opened the Northwind sample database to gain access to Tools |
Options and then repeated essentially the same steps as I had taken for Word. I
did approximately the same in Excel 97, Outlook 98 (for e-mail and scheduling),
and Outlook Express (for newgroups). I noticed that I did not yet have all of the
options in Outlook 98 on the PENTIUM computer that I had on the AMD
computer; it appeared that other options had been added, on the AMD machine,
when I had installed certain additional non-Microsoft software (e.g., a fax option
added by the OmniPage scanning program).
103. Pause for Image File. I eventually realized that I could stop after the first
phase to create a DriveImage image file backup of my hard disk partitions. I
wouldn't have to burn it to CD right away; I could just store it on one of my
other partitions. Ultimately, whether I used this image file or a later one, I was
still interested in keeping it all on one CD, rather than incur the risks involved in
spanning it over two CDs. So I still considered 850-900 MB to be my limit. (See
point 68.) When I looked at the status bar in Windows Explorer, I saw that the
approach of telling Office 97 to put its program files on drive D (PROGRAMS)
rather than drive C (WINDOWS_98) had only partially succeeded: there now
seemed to be about 250 MB of files on D, where before there had been none -- but

there were also a bunch of new files in C:\Program Files. (It later developed that
perhaps I should have used X-Setup before installing programs, so as to instruct
them all to use D:\Program Files rather than C:\Program Files. See point
137(m).) It dawned on me that my single CD would probably have to contain
separate image files for C and D. I also felt certain that I would want to have my
DOS programs, including DriveImage, located on D with my Windows
programs, although in a separate folder. So I used Windows Explorer to move
those programs to a folder called DOS_UTIL on drive D, and then I meant to
reboot into real DOS (see point 84), but I got distracted and the thing went on
into Windows 98 -- almost. It froze at the Windows startup screen. I thought
maybe this was another example of it freezing after installing Office 97 software
and then snapping out of it and being fine thereafter (see point 101), so I did a
cold reboot into Safe Mode, rebooted immediately into Normal Mode, and all
seemed well. (As an aside, I had noticed that booting had begun to take a lot
longer, ever since I had installed Office 97.) I rebooted into real DOS and started
to run DriveImage from drive D; then I remembered that PartitionMagic had
acted funky when I had previously tried to get it to operate on the disk on which
its own program files were located (see point 84), so I decided to run DriveImage
from the floppy instead. (Later, I tested this fear regarding DriveImage (see
point 269(a)) and found that it did not seem to be justified.) I was pleased to see
that DriveImage allowed me to combine both the C and D partitions in one
image file, which I created on my F partition under the name C_AND_D.PQI.
DriveImage said that I now had a total of about 800 MB in those two partitions.
The resulting image file was about 520 MB, so the DriveImage maximum
compression ratio was about two-thirds when dealing with these program files
(as distinct from data files, which might compress to a greater or lesser extent).
At that rate, the remaining 130 MB on a 650 MB CD would hold another 200 MB
of program files.
104. Installing FrontPage 2000. I rebooted into Windows, with the plan of using
Office 97 for the next several days, so as to refine my basic installation and make
sure, if possible, that it included all Microsoft programs and adjustments. It
seemed that I might be able to get all such programs on one CD. The only
remaining full-bore Microsoft program I possessed was FrontPage 2000. It was
experimental, for me, in the sense that I had only recently acquired it and did not
know for sure that it was really reliable, but all the reviews seemed to be
positive. I thought it might be appropriate to include, if possible, this one
remaining program that would probably do a fair amount of tinkering with my
C (WINDOWS_98) drive. I inserted the FrontPage 2000 upgrade CD (actually,
the first of two; but I had noticed previously, when installing FP 2000 on the
AMD machine, that the basic installation had required only the first CD). It
automatically prepared to install itself, and said that it was updating the
Windows 98 installer, which sounded good. It said it couldn't find the version

that I was upgrading from, so I put the accursed FrontPage 98 CD into the CDROM drive, hoping that would be the last time I would ever need that damn
thing, and this allowed me to proceed with the fresh new FrontPage 2000
installation. I chose the Customize option, so that I could tell the installer to put
the files on drive D. The installer seemed to indicate that the whole thing would
require much less than 200 MB. But when I clicked on "Install Now," I saw that it
had been showing me only the 59 MB that would go onto drive D, and not the
other 187 MB that would go onto drive C (my WINDOWS_98 drive). I backed
up a few steps and tried again, using just the default settings under the
Customize option (but still pointing to drive D). It looked like this would take
only about 150 MB total on both drives. It also seemed to include some "Office
Tools" that would be available for other Office 97 programs (e.g., Clip Gallery). I
wondered whether there were also some patches and updates in here that might
duplicate or improve on the various downloads that I had been installing. At
least it gave me an additional reason to think that it had been appropriate to try
to squeeze it into the CD that I expected to burn soon. Anyway, the FrontPage
2000 installation went ahead, and when it was done I saw that I had only 92 MB
of free space left on drive C, but still had over 1,400 MB left on drive D (my
PROGRAMS drive). I didn't expect to be installing another 1.4 GB of programs
on D anytime soon, and I also hoped that there wouldn't be much more material
going onto drive C. Therefore, to allow a little more breathing room on C, I
rebooted into real DOS and ran PartitionMagic to change the disk sizes so that C
was 200 MB larger and D was 200 MB smaller. Then I rebooted into Win98 and
adjusted the options in FrontPage 2000 as above. (See point 102.)
105. Further Adjustments in Windows 98. Before returning to the Office 97
customization process, I decided to bring my Windows installation more fully up
to date, as follows:
(a) I decided not to bring over the Win98 Power Management Troubleshooter
(PMTSHOOT.EXE), even though I had once found it useful, because the
Microsoft site said, "It is important to uninstall Pmtshoot when you are finished
using it." See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q185/9/49.asp.
(b) I removed the very outdated "Setup for Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01"
shortcut from desktop (installed, evidently, during the Office 97 installation
process).
(c) I went into Start | Settings | Control Panel | System | Device Manager |
Modem and set my serial ports to a maximum speed of 115,200. (Later, I wound
up doing more modem configuration. See point 113(g).)

(d) Following advice found at

http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2183193,00.html and
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347536,00.html, I
added shortcuts for the purpose of optimizing system performance (although
shortcuts to particular documents would have to wait until later, when I had my
ideal Win98 installation doing my regular daily work on a machine with all my
data files present).
(e) Simplify Internet Explorer Toolbars. I right-clicked on the Taskbar at the
bottom of the screen, created a Links toolbar, dragged it up to the top of the
screen, right-clicked it, and turned on Always On Top and Auto-Hide. (The
folder for that bar was at C:\Windows\Favorites.) This enabled me to get rid of
the Links toolbar in Internet Explorer (View | Toolbars | Links). (See point
109(g).) And with that gone, I realized that I could further reduce the complexity
of my IE toolbars by selecting View | Toolbars | Customize and getting rid of
buttons that I never use and by choosing the Small Icons option on that screen. I
also dragged the Address bar up to the Menu bar and right-clicked on the Go
button to get rid of it. According to
http://ie.digitalspider.co.uk/ie5/toolbar_go.html, "The Go button was added
because many users of previous versions were unclear as to the need to press
ENTER after typing an address into the Address Bar in order to proceed. The Go
button is meant to offer a GUI solution to that little problem."
(f) After reviewing some newsgroup postings, I decided against installing
TweakUI and other power toys (see point 71) until a later, more experimental
phase of my reinstallation. (See point 109(c).)
(g) I ran the Maintenance Wizard from the shortcut in the Start | Programs menu
(which points to C:\WINDOWS\TUNEUP.EXE). I used the Weekly option and
set it to defragment my disk at 1 AM every day of the week (except Thursday
and Sunday), since I found that keeping the thing nearly totally defragged is a lot
less painful than waiting for hours while a defragmenter brings my disk back
from the brink. Given my recent hard disk difficulties (see point 84), I decided
on a thorough ScanDisk examination on the first Wednesday (pool & movie
night) of each month at 5 PM. (After finishing this wizard, I came back, doubleclicked on the Task Scheduler icon in the System Tray at the bottom right corner
of my screen, made copies of this thorough disk scan for each of my partitions,
and set each one for a different disk and a different Wednesday or Saturday
night of the month, to allow this very slow operation to finish.) Continuing, I
instructed the wizard to delete unnecessary files on Thursdays at 4:30 AM, and
marked all except the Recycle Bin for deletion (having verified online that TEMP
folders that might be cleaned out in this way would not include TEMP folders
that I myself fill with all kinds of stuff that I don't want deleted). I decided to use

the Maintenance Wizard for these operations rather than Norton Utilities, which
I own, not because it does a better job, but because I have run into many
incompatibility issues with Norton products and would rather begin with the
assumption that I wouldn't be using Norton in the future.
(h) In D:\DOS_UTIL, I created a batch file called MAINT_WK.BAT with these
lines:
@ECHO OFF
DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\*.*
where the second line cleans out all contents of the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder.
(Later, this batch file would become much larger. See point 124.) I created this
batch file for several reasons: (i) I saw that some users were finding it necessary
to clear out this folder manually; (ii) I have sometimes been instructed to do so
myself in order to remove a source of misbehavior in some programs, and (iii)
apparently the Disk Cleanup program that the Maintenance Wizard runs (see
point 105(g)) does not touch the subfolders that sometimes appear in that TEMP
folder. The times when you do not want to delete the contents of
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP appear to be times when you're active at your computer:
installing new software, for example, or editing a document. Also, apparently
Windows will write-protect a file that is actively used, in which case there's an
additional layer of protection against accidentally deleting the wrong thing. One
other layer of protection: I suddenly realized that I had been running an
automatic deletion line (like the DELTREE line above) in my AUTOEXEC.BAT
file -- that is, it had been running every time I booted up -- without my even
thinking about or realizing what it was doing. If I survived with it happening on
every bootup (which is not recommended, since some installers leave programs
in C:\WINDOWS\TEMP until you reboot and they can finish installing), then I
felt confident doing it just once a week. Having created this batch file, I clicked
on the Task Scheduler icon at the bottom right corner of my screen, doubleclicked on Add a Scheduled Task, and scheduled MAINT_WK.BAT to run on
Thursdays at 4 AM. Later, I realized that this batch file was set to run in a DOS
window, rather than in real DOS, and therefore might not be able to delete the
contents of C:\WINDOWS\TEMP if Windows was meanwhile using some of
those contents. To fix that, I right-clicked on MAINT_WK.BAT and chose
Properties | Program | Advanced | MS-DOS Mode. I left on the "Warn before
entering MS-DOS mode," so as not to kill any overnight jobs I might have
running when this thing went off. I hit OK and checked the "Close on exit" box.
When I saved this, it created a MAINT_WK shortcut. I didn't want that shortcut,
so I deleted it, but that shut off the settings I had just added, so I did them again
and this time I let the icon stay. Next, I went back into Task Scheduler and
looked at the schedule for this thing. If it was going to warn me before

proceeding, there was no point running it at 4 AM each Thursday morning. The

better time, I felt, was on Wednesday at 4:00 PM, shortly before I would be
abandoning my computer for an evening of pool and beer. Under the Settings
tab, I changed it to run for a maximum of 10 minutes and I unchecked the box
that required the computer to be idle before the project would begin. The
scenario I envisioned was that the warning would pop up, I would realize I had
to wrap up my work, and I would have a half-hour to do that before I'd be
interfering with the next items on the maintenance schedule. (See point 105(g).)
(i) While browsing online as just described, I came across an indication by
PCForrest (see point 44) that surfing is faster if you shut off the AutoComplete
features in Internet Explorer (Tools | Internet Options | Advanced), so I did
that.
(j) Tip no. 65 at the Weber High School site (see
http://alliance.weber.k12.ut.us/oal/lesson1/win_tods.HTM) told me that I
could drag the bottom edge of the Links toolbar (see point 105(e)) far across the
screen, so that it could keep a large number of Website links ready for instant
reference. I felt I would be needing that space, once I got my Favorites
organized. (See point 109(g).) So I did it.
(k) Display Resize. I saw, in Control Panel | Display | Properties, that my
system had recognized my graphics adapter card even though I had not inserted
the CD to load the software for this particular hardware, thinking that this was
something I did not want to hard-wire into my permanent CD image of my
perfect Windows setup. Since this was a fait accompli, I decided I was safe in
bumping up the resolution to 800 x 600, 16-bit color. When I clicked on Apply, it
told me that I had to restart the computer immediately to avoid making some
programs run improperly. I said OK, reboot then. I got an Explorer message
saying, "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut
down." That was the kind of instability that I really did not want to be seeing.
Worse, when I rebooted, the display was not working properly at all -- there
were just lines racing across the screen. When the hard disk stopped working, I
felt that Windows had probably finished loading, so I used the other computer
for guidance as to which keys to hit when I couldn't read the screen: Ctrl-Esc to
bring up the Start Menu, then U for Shut Down, and then R for Restart, and then
hit Enter. It worked; the computer rebooted. I hit F8 at the bootup and went into
Safe Mode. I reset the display to 640 x 480 and rebooted into Normal Mode. The
display still wasn't working quite right -- it looked more like Safe Mode again -so I did a cold reboot. I then realized it was in 16-color mode, and it looked
better when I reset it to 256 colors. Apparently I had misunderstood the
situation and would have to install those specialized display drivers at some
point after all. I decided to postpone this until I was past the generic phase of

setup. (See point 120(aj).)

(l) Customized Imitation DOS. Apparently there are two different places at
which you have to edit files that appear with the DOS prompt, if you want to
change what happens when you go into DOS. To control what happens when
you use Shut Down | Restart in MS-DOS Mode, you right-click on
C:\Windows\Exit to DOS; and to control what happens when you click on one
of the MS-DOS Prompt icons that, in my case, appeared on the Office 97 Shortcut
Bar and on the Start | Programs menu, you right-click on those icons and go into
their Properties. The basic idea for some of the tabs in these Properties was this:
(1) Program tab, Advanced button: in Exit to DOS, the "MS-DOS mode" box is
checked, and in MS-DOS Prompt, the "Suggest MS-DOS" box is checked.
Checking the "MS-DOS mode" box opens up the opportunity to specify a new
configuration. I clicked the Configuration button and selected Disk Cache (to
make it run faster) and Doskey (see point 20) (EMS was already checked), and
then clicked OK twice. (2) Program tab: I changed the Working folder to
C:\TEMP in both cases. Since Exit to DOS was set to run its own
AUTOEXEC.BAT file and the MS-DOS Prompt icon was not, they wouldn't need
(or be able to use) the same batch file. For Exit to DOS, I could have
supplemented the AUTOEXEC.BAT just by editing the lines there under the
Properties | Program | Advanced button, but I preferred to leave the Windows
default as it was and to put my additions in a separate file. So for the Exit to
DOS properties, I specified a batch file called D:\DOS_UTIL\EXIT2DOS.BAT,
and for the MS-DOS Prompt properties, I specified
D:\DOS_UTIL\DOSSTART.BAT. (Regarding DOS_UTIL, see point 64.) The
EXIT2DOS file just needed to supplement the AUTOEXEC, while DOSSTART
needed to replace it. At this point, the only line in EXIT2DOS (aside from the
ubiquitous @echo off, which suppresses screen output) was going to be an
extension to the PATH, like this: PATH %path%;D:\DOS_UTIL. (The %path%
thing is a variable that says, plug in whatever the existing PATH is here.)
DOSSTART was slightly different:
@echo off
prompt $p$g
path c:\windows; c:\windows\command;d:\dos_util
doskey > nul
smartdrv
cls
To continue: (3) In MS-DOS Prompt, I specified QuickEdit and Fast Pasting. I
clicked Apply and OK for both of these Properties boxes. I copied the MS-DOS
Prompt that I had been working on, the one in the Start | Programs menu (in
C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Primary Utilities) to the location of the

other MS-DOS Prompt that I use, on the Office 97 Shortcut Bar (located in
D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office). I tested all
three places and found that everything worked. (Later, I revised the MS-DOS
Prompt further, to make the DOS box larger. See point 146(k).)
(m) I didn't want to change my SYSTEM.INI file in ways that I didn't fully
understand, but to give myself a reminder of a tip I found at
http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/~bomber/Dos.html# START, I did the following:
select Start | Run | Sysedit, go to the SYSTEM.INI file, find its [386Enh] section,
and enter the following line:
;LocalLoadHigh=1 <-- this line maximizes available RAM in a DOS session
In this case, unlike the PATH statement (see point (l)), the semicolon at the front
makes the line a mere comment and keeps it from actually running or doing
anything. But something I saw elsewhere made me think that DOS already does
this -- oh, I remember, it was the Properties box for the MS-DOS Prompt item,
where one of the tabs will allow you to fiddle with memory. So I doubt I'll ever
actually use this SYSTEM.INI line. So now that I've written it here, I'll have a
way to remember it. So I'm going back in and removing it from SYSTEM.INI.
106. DMA. I kept hearing that I could get substantial performance
improvements by enabling DMA for my hard disks, using Control Panel |
System | Device Manager, but that I should do this only if my hard disks are
Ultra DMA drives. Apparently Win98 just assumes that your drives aren't
DMA-capable until you tell it otherwise. I didn't know if my drives were Ultra
DMA or not. In fact, I wasn't sure I even knew what model they were. I still had
the covers off the computers, so I knew I could go down there with a flashlight
and try to read them at an angle. But I thought this was something I should
know how to do from the keyboard. The first place I looked was Control Panel |
System | Device Manager | Disk Drives, but that listed them as simply "Generic
IDE Type 47." The Microsoft System Information tool (available on a Start |
Programs shortcut or through Start | Run | MSINFO32) just told me the sizes of
my partitions; and if I clicked on Components | Storage on the left side of the
screen, it repeated that these were "generic" drives. (Interestingly, the
Applications section of that screen identified my programs as Word 2000, Excel
2000, etc., leading me to wonder whether a person who upgrades Office 97 with
all the available downloads has most of what's included in Office 2000, much like
a person who downloads everything available for Windows 98 finds him/herself
with Windows 98 Second Edition. (See point 90(b).))
107. Motherboard Drivers. Before I could continue with the DMA question (see
point 108), I had to work through my motherboard driver situation. Browsing, I

ran across a posting that seemed to suggest that, if I installed the proper drivers,
I could replace the "generic hard drive" indicator (see point 106) with the actual
identities of my hard drives, and also that I might need the right drivers in order
to make use of DMA. Since both the PENTIUM computer and the AMD machine
were using Soyo 5EHM motherboards, and since I planned to keep those
motherboards for probably as long as I'd be running Windows 98, and since I
could always just upgrade the drivers whenever I got a new motherboard, I
decided to go ahead and install the motherboard drivers on my pure prototype
system. I started to use the CD that had come with the newer version 1.2 of the
motherboard, but then I wondered whether the older of my two Soyo
motherboards would be able to use the newer drivers. Further browsing at the
Soyo site and elsewhere led me to conclude, however, that drivers get updated
for all versions of the 5EHM motherboard at the same time, so the best approach
would be to get the latest drivers and install them now. But which drivers was I
supposed to use? My motherboard used the ETEQ (VIA) chipset, and Soyo's
website had a link to the VIA site. Between the Soyo and VIA sites, I gathered
that there were a number of different downloads that I might want or need:
(a) BIOS Upgrade. The VIA FAQs page talked about BIOS-related information
that I didn't have. To figure out how I could find that information, I followed a
link to http://www.ping.be/bios/numbers.shtml, where they told me that I
could find my BIOS ID number (which would then identify my motherboad, if I
couldn't identify it otherwise) by rebooting and hitting the Pause button to copy
down the number, date, and version information that appear at the bottom of the
screen during bootup. They also offered a downloadable CTBIOS program that
would identify this information without requiring me to reboot and write it
down. I used this download and found that its output was partially in German.
Nevertheless, it wasn't hard to figure out what I needed to know from it.
According to it, both machines were using Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG with
the VP3-586B-8669 //VIA 597VP3 chipset. (Interestingly, the motherboard in the
PENTIUM computer, which was the Soyo 5EHM that I had purchased more
recently, was board version 5EH V1.2-1CA2, while the 5EHM in the AMD
computer (which I had purchased at the Micro Center store in Cambridge, MA)
was identified as "EH-1BA1-BVP ALUATION ROM - NOT FOR SALE." No
kidding.) Armed with this information, I went back to the VIA site. I gathered
that I would have to update my motherboards' BIOSes by using downloads from
the Soyo site. With further information from
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347541,00.html, I
decided that I didn't really need a new BIOS right now and could wait until I ran
into a circumstance like the ones they listed there -- to provide support for new
hardware, to fix bugs that may prevent Win98 from running properly, or to
enable advanced Plug and Play features -- before upgrading.

(b) IDE Bus Master Driver. Soyo's site said this driver was necessary to enable
DMA, but that I should not download it because Win98 already contains a bus
master driver from Microsoft. VIA softpedaled the point, saying merely that it
"isn't necessary" to install this driver. VIA also commented on problems that
people were having with their CD writers and tape drives, and provided a way
to uninstall the VIA bus master driver and reinstall the Microsoft default driver.
Conclusion: I definitely did not want to install this driver. Yet the existing bus
master driver wasn't enabling my computer to see anything other than a
"generic" hard disk, and that's the way it stayed.
(c) AGP VXD Driver. In Soyo's words, the purpose of this driver was to "make
ETEQ (VIA) AGP port working properly in Window 95/98. Recommended."
VIA seconded that. VIA also commented that selecting the "normal" speed
option during installation would give greater stability but not as much speed as
the "turbo" option. Needless to say, I decided that I would use the normal option
when I installed this driver on my pure, hopefully stable system. Another issue:
for systems using the Intel 740 graphics chipset, VIA recommended
downloading the latest Intel 740 driver, version 1.5 or later. I believed the
graphics card in the AMD computer, but not the PENTIUM computer, used this
Intel 740 chipset. Therefore, I decided to deal with that issue later. (See point
325.) I went ahead and downloaded the AGP VXD driver and copied it onto a
floppy.
(d) IRQ Routing Driver. On a Web page for all Soyo motherboards using ETEQ
(VIA) chipsets, but not specifically devoted to my motherboard, Soyo said this
was a "recommended" download that would "fix some IRQ assignment issue in
Windows 95/98." (IRQ is short for interrupt request.) This driver was
apparently the same as the "miniport" driver available on the VIA site. VIA said
that this driver was intended for "all VIA chipsets using VT82C586A or
VT82C586B southbridge chips." The Soyo product page for my 5EHM
motherboard said that it used the "ETEQ 82C6638AT/6629 AGP chipset." I
couldn't tell if that was one chipset or two (i.e., the ETEQ plus the 6629 AGP). I
went to the manual page at Soyo's site, but it was just the same as the printed
manual. I did notice something, however: on the diagram that showed the
layout of the motherboard, it showed two separate ETEQ chips. One was labeled
EQ82C6629, and the other was labeled EQ82C6638. Mini-mystery solved. So
evidently VIA did not recommend this routing driver for my motherboard. So
why did Soyo recommend it? Maybe the "southbridge" chips were different
from the EQ chips just mentioned. Browsing, I found a post to someone with a
5EHM, advising him to go ahead with the IRQ routing driver. Another posting
said that the southbridge chip was the one with the VT82C586B number. This
didn't appear on the printed diagram. Something like it (but not the same
number) had appeared on the CTBIOS results. (See point 107(a).) Getting out

the flashlight, I was able to peer into both computers without shutting them
down (their covers were still off -- see point 19) and read this number from one
of the ETEQ chips (the other had nothing but a Soyo logo on it):
EQ82C6638CE'98. (Incidentally, I was pleased to see that both computers had
the CE build, which seemed to be the recommended one for this motherboard -a fact of which I had been totally ignorant at the time of purchase.) But I didn't
see anything with southbridge-style numbers. I finally bit the bullet, shut off the
PENTIUM computer, turned it on its side, and looked diligently inside it. I
didn't pull any cables, so maybe they were concealing something, but as far as I
could see there was no chip with a VP3 or VT82C type of number on it. I thought
I had seen something, somewhere on VIA's site, telling me that I didn't need the
IRQ routing driver and ACPI Registry if I was using Windows 98 SE because
Win98SE incorporates those things, but now I couldn't find that page, so maybe I
had gotten the information wrong. Also, I wasn't sure whether I would be
considered to have Win98SE for these purposes, since I had downloaded most of
Win98SE's contents but did not have those portions that existed only on the
Win98SE upgrade CD. (See point 90(b) and (d).) The blanket advice for Win98
users on VIA's FAQ page said that the proper way to install Win98 on systems
using VIA chipset motherboards was as follows: enable USB support in the BIOS
(I checked, and the PENTIUM computer had it, and as far as I could recall it had
had it since before I had installed Win98); install Win98; install the IRQ routing
driver; and then install the AGP driver (if you have an MVP3 or VP3 chipset). So
I concluded that I should go ahead with the IRQ routing driver, although I was
not entirely sure why. This, too, went onto a floppy.
(e) PCI Bridge Patch. According to Soyo, this allowed Win98 to "recognize the
ETEQ (VIA) chipset, power management controller etc." Advice online said to
skip this driver; I did.
(f) USB Filter Driver. This driver will "add more support for USB device,"
according to Soyo. Again, the online advice was to skip this driver, and anyway
I wasn't using USB and didn't plan to, so I ignored this one too.
(g) DOS All-in-One Driver. I had successfully used DOS on these motherboards
without any special drivers installed, and therefore decided that, at present, I did
not need this.
I had wondered whether I was supposed to begin by loading drivers from the
CD that came with the motherboard, and then update those drivers with these
downloads. After learning about the Bus Master driver (see point 107(b)),
however, I decided not to take the risk that the CD might install drivers I didn't
need. Confirming this, I found a couple of postings in which people said that all
you needed, on top of the drivers that came with Win98, was the IRQ Routing

Driver and the AGP Driver. I tried to install the IRQ Routing Driver, but
unfortunately it would only get as far as saying that it was setting up the
InstallShield Wizard to guide me through setup, and would then dump me back
at Windows Explorer. I hoped that meant that the thing was a quick install -which seemed possible, considering that the unpacked files were only 790 KB
altogether. To find out for sure, I tried but failed to find a working e-mail
address on the Soyo website, so I posted a query online and waited for an
answer. In the meantime, the AGPREADME.TXT file for the AGP Driver told me
not to install it until after I had installed my AGP graphics card driver. Since
only one machine had an AGP graphics card, I postponed this step until later.
(See point 325.) At some point, I noticed that the README.TXT file for the IRQ
Routing Driver said that, before installing Win98, I was supposed to have
enabled "OnChip USB" in the BIOS Chipset Features setup menu, and enable
"Assign IRQ for USB" in the PNP/PCP Configuration Setup menu. That's the
way those features were set at this point; I hoped they had been set that way
when I had installed Windows. A few days later, I had two replies to my query
about the IRQ Routing Driver. One person told me to go into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and look to see whether the driver was listed. I didn't
see it there. Another told me to look for IRQ Steering in "system properties," by
which I guessed he meant Control Panel | System | Device Manager | System
Devices. There, I saw four VIA Tech entries: PCI to ISA bridge, Power
Management Controller, CPU to PCI bridge, and CPU to AGP controller. It
seemed that my IRQ Routing Driver had not loaded and was not going to load,
and possibly that the (or at least someone's) AGP Driver had loaded already. I
made a note to come back and see whether that same VIA Tech V82C598 CPU to
AGP controller was still listed after I installed my AGP Driver. (See point 325.) I
tried to copy the IRQ Routing Driver files to the hard disk and install it from
there, and that's when I found the problem: it was a bad floppy. I verified that
in Norton Disk Doctor on the AMD machine. Then I copied the IRQ Routing
Driver files to another floppy on the AMD machine, copied them to hard disk on
the PENTIUM computer, installed them from there, and the installation ran fine
and indicated that I had installed the VIA PCI IRQ Routing Miniport Driver V1.3A. It still didn't appear in System Devices, but at least it was now listed in
Add/Remove Programs.
108. More DMA. Continuing the DMA inquiry (see point 106), I learned from
the VIA FAQs page that Win98 was UDMA-capable, but that I couldn't use
UDMA 66 unless my hard drives used an 80-pin cable, which they didn't. How
about UDMA 33 -- or, indeed, any DMA? A page at the Soyo website informed
me that installing the right bus master drivers will automatically enable the use
of DMA. I got the right bus master drivers as soon as I installed Win98. (See
point 107(b).) The Soyo site said that you don't have to enable DMA in Control
Panel | System | Device Manager | Disk Drives | Generic IDE Devices |

Properties | Settings if your motherboard uses a non-Intel chipset, as I thought

the Soyo 5EHM did, and that if DMA is already enabled, you won't even have an
option there to turn on or off. On the PENTIUM computer, however, the DMA
box was still there for both of my hard disks, and it was not checked. Having
arrived at no other way of determining the models of my hard drives, I got down
there with my flashlight and looked at them. Then I went to the manufacturers'
websites and looked for specifics. According to the Fujitsu site, the one 3 GB
drive (model no. MPB3032AT) did support UDMA 33 (i.e., the kind of DMA that
doesn't require the wide 80-pin cable). So I checked the DMA box for that drive.
I got the warning that this can cause undesirable effects with your hardware, and
I said OK. The Western Digital site didn't have any information on the other 3
GB hard disk (model no. WDAC33100-00H), but I found a couple of other sites
that seemed to say that this disk was also UDMA-capable. I clicked the DMA
box, closed out of Control Panel, and rebooted. Windows restarted without any
problems. I had assumed that the hard drives on the AMD machine, being
newer, would surely be DMA-capable if those older 3 GB drives were, and
because of the positioning of the drives, I was not able to read their model
numbers without shutting down the machine and physically removing the
drives, which I declined to do now. (See point 173.) Unfortunately, this was not
the end of the DMA question. (See point 113(f).)
109. More Windows 98 Adjustments. Having taken care of those detailed
problems, I returned to the task of adjusting Win98. (See point 105.) The
additional steps I took were as follows:
(a) Power Management. In Control Panel | Power Management, I chose the
Home/Office Desk power scheme, and set things to shut off after a couple of
hours, leaving it to the screen saver to handle things until then. To give Win98
full control over the power settings, I rebooted, went into the BIOS setup,
enabled APM, disabled all timers (e.g., the ones that power down the hard
disks), and rebooted.
(b) Active Desktop. Long ago, I had shut off this option and ignored it thereafter.
Now I found myself wondering whether I should give it a chance. The site at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie40/gallery/ made it seem
interesting, and it became doubly so when I discovered that there are a large
number of other Active Desktop options out there. But I saw several different
comments indicating that Active Desktop tends to slow down your system,
presumably because your processor is busy updating various desktop items that,
in my case, I will rarely see because I almost always have programs filling the
screen. Then again, I thought I might be more likely to look at the desktop if it
had something worth looking at, and that perhaps the performance hit would
not be great, or would be worth the benefits, or would be something I could

control by adjusting how often the items on the desktop got updated. Also, I had
used Website subscriptions in an earlier version of Internet Explorer, until they
changed them in some way I didn't like. (This turned out to be Offline Viewing
in more recent versions of Internet Explorer.) It wasn't like I would have to
install or uninstall a program if I changed my mind about Active Desktop.
Browsing, I saw comments from people who had problems with Active Desktop,
but I also saw comments from people who liked it. Some persuasive words
against Active Desktop came from PCForrest, whom I had grown to respect (see
e.g., point 44), stating that "Active Desktop is a huge resource hog, and unreliable
at the best of times." On the other hand, other knowledgeable users seemed to
enjoy and encourage using it. See e.g.,
http://x34.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538298873&CONTEXT=948731789.9116057
9&hitnum=41. I eventually decided that I could get the same thing as Active
Desktop, without the risk of instability, by using a slightly different approach.
(See point 113(a).) I also thought that I might experiment with Active Desktop
sometime later, however. (And if I did, I wanted to remember that you get the
option to save something as active content if you drag it with your right button
from the browser to the desktop.) But I kept hearing bad things about it -- e.g.,
that not even Microsoft employees used it -- so for this item, "later" never came.
(c) TweakUI. By this time, I had heard so many references to TweakUI, and had
come across so many little things that it would fix, that I could see no reason to
postpone it further. In the previous go-round (see point 71), I had worried that it
might have introduced some instability, but many subsequent happy reboots
(see point 101) had persuaded me that that earlier instability had been just a
passing by-product of installing Office 97. I had been using TweakUI for more
than a year on the AMD computer with no ill side-effects, as far as I knew. ZiffDavis, in their typical gushing style, claimed that "While certain parts of Tweak
UI may not work on your machine, we've never heard of anyone losing data or
experiencing system damage because of the utility." I felt a more cautionary
approach was appropriate, given the words of Microsoft itself, in the
README.TXT file accompanying TweakUI -- that "TweakUI ... presents a greater
risk of making changes that will leave Windows in an unusable state." I also
noticed that, although TweakUI was available on the Windows 98 CD (in
\TOOLS\RESKIT\POWERTOY), it was not supported by Microsoft -- the reason
being, apparently, that it was developed by Microsoft programmers for their
own use, not for the public. Moreover, I had run into some comments regarding
possible problems with the program (see e.g.,
http://www.ac.net/~lilesj/tweak.html). So I decided to compromise: I would
install it, in the sense of getting it onto my disk as part of this complete Microsoft
CD that I was planning to burn; but I would not actually use it to adjust any
system settings until later. To install it, I copied the contents of the CD's
POWERTOY folder to a folder called C:\POWER; I right-clicked on the file

named TWEAKUI.INF, and chose "Install"; I went into Control Panel, to verify
that the TweakUI icon was there; I double-clicked on that icon, just to make sure
that TweakUI would open OK; and then I deleted C:\POWER, which was no
longer needed. (TweakUI is also available for download from various sites, if for
some reason you don't see it on your Win98 CD.) As indicated in the next
paragraph, I pulled back somewhat from this. Later, I dropped it altogether.
(See point 117.) Subsequently, I came back to it cautiously, after all, to a limited
extent. (See point 145(f).)
(d) Resource Kit Sampler. Reading \TOOLS\RESKIT\README.DOC, I
belatedly found that I had been too eager to install TweakUI. It was part of the
Resource Kit ("ResKit") Tools Sampler on the Win98 CD, and now I wished I had
installed it along with the other tools in that Sampler. Since I did not want the
ResKit files scattered around my hard disks, I went into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled TweakUI. Then, trying again, I doubleclicked on \TOOLS\RESKIT\SETUP.EXE. This approach had the drawback of
not loading TweakUI from the hard disk (see point 109(c)), as some had
recommended, but I did not think that was likely to make any real difference;
and now I had the advantage of being able to tell the installer where to put all
these program files. Unfortunately, at this point I got an error message
indicating that Explorer was having problems. (Note that Explorer is distinct
from Windows Explorer. The former is some kind of essential program; the
latter is just a utility for moving files around.) I exited from Setup, coldrebooted, and tried again, hoping that my little TweakUI escapade had not
caused any damage. I designated the DOS-readable (i.e., short) folder name
D:\RESKIT for the location where I wanted the ResKit sampler files installed. As
expected, I noticed during installation that it copied files to drive C as well as D.
The installation completed without any problems. I decided, again, not to tinker
with these tools until later. The installation seemed to draw more files from the
CD than I had expected; I hoped that this would not take me over the limit of
what would fit on the CD that I was planning to burn. Interestingly, there was
not now a TweakUI icon in Control Panel. Instead, I had a Start | Programs icon
for the Tools Management Console, which I had heard was a really great tool
that would somehow help me plug in new utilities in the future. (See point
119(a).)
(e) Window Sizes and Locations. I opened several different programs, one at a
time, and set the sizes and locations I wanted them to use when they were
operating in windows that filled only part of the screen. To do this, I positioned
them the way I wanted them, and then held down the Ctrl key while closing
them, so as to save my settings. The programs for which I did this were Internet
Explorer, Windows Explorer, the MS-DOS Prompt box, and Control Panel.

(f) Audio Adjustments. For some reason, Windows Media Player had not been
presented as one of the standard Windows 98 downloads. (See point 15.) I had
previously downloaded the latest version to the AMD machine, so I DCC'd it
over from there and installed it on the PENTIUM machine. (See point 93.) Also,
since I didn't always want an audio CD to play as soon as I insert it, I disabled
AutoRun by deselcting Auto Insert Notification in Control Panel | System |
Device Manager | CD-ROM | Properties | Settings. I would do more fiddling
with audio components later. (See point 157.)
(g) Favorites. On my AMD computer, I had collected a number of links to
favorite websites as "Favorites" in Internet Explorer ("IE"). I wanted my
complete setup to include a nicely organized set of these Favorites. After all,
they were the results of many hours of searching online for various bits of
information, and I didn't want to lose them. At this stage in the operation, to
organize them, I wound up spending many hours tinkering with them, using
FrontPage 2000, Word, and Excel. The work was sufficient to test these three
Microsoft Office programs and satisfy me that they were in good working order,
but I don't think it went to the extent of crashing any of these programs or
otherwise messing them up. I stopped partway through the project, when I
decided that all I could do -- indeed, all I really needed to do -- for present
purposes was to set up a few entries in the Links portion of my Favorites folder.
My reasoning went like this: I decided that my Favorites had outgrown their
folder. I had over 1,400 of them, divided into many folders and subfolders
within the C:\Windows\Favorites folder. There was some duplication among
them; it was not always easy to find the one I was looking for; some of them
were no longer working; and while I wanted to preserve the pages that I had
found during my searches, I did not use all of them often enough to remember
precisely what each one was for. What I wanted, instead of a Favorites folder,
was a set of Links pages on my hard disk or, as I preferred, on my website, with
each Links page devoted to a different subject and perhaps dividing its links
among subpages. It would be slightly slower to have to go to a Links web page
instead of pulling down a link from my Favorites list, but on the other hand I
would be able to do things with Links pages that I could not do with Favorites.
For instance, I could rearrange them to put the most frequently used items at the
top, and could add explanatory text to remind me of what the less frequently
used ones were all about, or to point me to the best parts of those pages. (It
would also be one less thing to back up from drive C; instead, it would exist
online, and the original would be on a date drive somewhere, with my other web
pages.) The point is, I now realized I could sort all that out later. All I really
needed to do, right now, was to create links, in my Favorites\Links folder, to
each of the main links category pages that would later appear on my website. I
knew what the main headings would be -- Media & Entertainment, for example,
and Computers (corresponding, in some cases, to the main pages in my website)

-- and I knew the names of the web pages that would contain them; I just
couldn't go ahead with the full construction of my website quite yet. To start this
process, I went online on the PENTIUM computer and tried out the small
number of web links that the Windows and Office installations had loaded into
my Favorites folder there. In Favorites, I decided to keep Radio Station Guide
and Web Events. Using Windows Explorer, I went into C:\Windows\Favorites
and created a Favorites\Unsorted subfolder. I figured I would be using this for
any future URLs that I wanted to save and, eventually, to add to my Links web
pages. I put the Radio Station Guide and Web Events shortcuts into this folder,
and deleted the MSN shortcut. I went into the Favorites\Links subfolder and
repeated the process. There, I decided to keep the two programs QuickSearch
and Toggle Images, which I had heard could be useful. (Later, I wound up
deciding that I really didnt have much use for QuickSearch. See point 266(d).)
But I decided that the place for them was not on my Links toolbar, since they
weren't websites that I was linking to. Rather, they belonged on an Internet
toolbar that I added to the Office 97 Shortcut Bar. (See point 102.) I verified that
I already had a link to Windows Update on my Start | Programs menu, and then
I deleted it from this Links subfolder. I went online and tried out the other links
that Microsoft had inserted into the Favorites\Links subfolder (e.g., "Microsoft"
and "Channel Guide"). I decided to keep the Microsoft and Windows shortcuts,
at least until I could verify whether I already had similar shortcuts in my full set
of Favorites. I moved these to the Unsorted folder and deleted the rest. "Media"
was the only subfolder I deleted, out of all the subfolders that Microsoft had put
under the Favorites folder -- Channels, Links, Media, or Software Updates -because I had previously heard that deleting the others can screw up your
system. (I had already incorporated the contents of Media into my full Favorites
list on the other machine.) Then I added my half-dozen preferred Links (e.g.,
Yahoo!) from the AMD computer. To do this, I copied the Links folder over on
floppy and inserted the shortcuts from there. All that remained was to add Links
shortcuts for the main Links pages that would appear on my website. For this, I
made a copy of one of the working link shortcuts, changed the URL in that
shortcut to the URL for the home page of my website
(www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3097/), made a copy of that altered
shortcut, changed its name so that it would be the first of my top-level links
pages (i.e., the one containing links to Computers sites), and added the name that
this link page would have (i.e., TOP_LINKS_COMPUTERS.HTM) to the end of
the homepage URL. While I was changing its name, I also thought I might be
able to speed things up a bit, when perusing my Links, if I checked the "Make
this page available offline" box and set the Download tab to go three levels
down, into the subfolders that I would probably be creating under
TOP_LINKS_COMPUTERS.HTM. To prevent this from downloading all of the
web pages listed on these links pages, I unchecked the "Follow links outside of
this page's Web site" box. I also made a note to myself to control the number of

links to other pages in my own website (e.g., "Home"), so that I wouldn't be

downloading half of my own website every time I synchronized my links. Then
I made copies of this customized Link shortcut and repeated the process for the
other top-level links pages I expected to create (e.g., TOP_LINKS_MEDIA.HTM).
I found that some of these settings didn't take, the first time, so I had to go back
and re-do them. I decided it would probably be easier to find my most
frequently used links that I had brought over from the other computer (e.g.,
Yahoo!) if I put them into a subfolder called "Frequented," so I did that. This
gave me a Links toolbar (see point 105(e) and (j)) whose contents fit nicely into
two rows at the top of my screen, with room to spare. I noticed that, when I
clicked on the Frequented folder, it gave me a nice pull-down menu, and I
thought that I might try to design the top-level Links files on my website so that
they contained nothing but links to subfolders, which I would then somehow
copy into (or duplicate in) my Favorites\Links subfolder, so that perhaps my
Links toolbar would function like a menu bar, with all of the entries on that
toolbar opening up into pull-down menus, giving me two-click access to dozens
of my most frequently used websites. (One advantage would be that I could
then fire up an Internet Explorer session and point it to one of those sites with
just two clicks.) Later, I revised both the Frequented folder and the Favorites
folder. (See point 261.) I also returned, later, to the Favorites project. (See point
327.)
(h) More Power Management. A number of nights had passed during this whole
Win98 installation process, but the previous night's freeze, sometime during or
after the FP2000 link verification process (see point 109(g)) marked the first time
that my pure installation had frozen while sitting overnight. Naturally, I
suspected the changes I had made the previous day, and particularly the power
management changes. (See point 109(a).) I went back into Control Panel |
Power Management and decided to experiment, starting with the System
Standby setting, which I changed to Never. To speed up the test, I changed the
Turn Off Monitor and Turn Off Hard Disks settings to their lowest settings (one
minute and three minutes, respectively). My second try at the link verification
process was still running, so the monitor went off while the hard disks were still
running. I moved the mouse and the monitor came back on. I concluded that
the monitor was probably not to blame, and I put it back to a setting of one hour.
Next, the hard disk setting. At one point, my second try at the link verification
process came to a halt while waiting for input from me (one website needed a
password); and when I provided that input, I could hear the disks spin back up.
So I didn't think the hard disk shutdown had caused the freezeup either, and I
returned their setting to two hours. This left the System Standby setting. It
dawned on me that perhaps I didn't want the system to be on standby after all. I
didn't know whether various programs that I had set to run in the middle of the
night would be able to run if the system was on standby. As I recalled, I had

clicked the box that said something like, "Wake the computer to run this
program," but I wasn't sure if that would do the job. Despite these thoughts,
however, I decided to try to make sure there weren't any power management
problems on my system. I was almost tempted to bring over the Power
Management Troubleshooter (see point 105(a)) from the AMD machine and run
it, but then I came across some advice to do just what I had done -- disable
system standby -- and since the freezes were not occurring anymore, and since
the Power Management Troubleshooter had sounded just a tad scary, I decided
to skip it.
(i) Website Passwords. While the Favorites verification process was running (see
point 109(g)), I used Internet Explorer to go to some of my favorite Websites. I
focused specifically on going down my separate list of sites that required a login.
At those sites, I took IE's offer to save my account names and passwords, so that I
wouldn't have to look them up each time I wanted to log into those sites. I also
accepted IE's offer to use AutoComplete, which I realized I did sometimes
appreciate and which I doubted really slowed down my browsing much -- so I
turned it back on, reversing my earlier decision. (See point 105(i).)
110. Latest Downloads. Some days had passed since I had last visited the
Windows Update site (see point 90), and I had never yet visited
www.updates.com to see if there were any other Microsoft downloads for the
software I had installed so far, so I visited those sites now. I had not yet
downloaded Microsoft's Web Folders Internet Publishing Utility, and it sounded
like something I could use, so I downloaded that. At Updates.com, they told me
that I could upgrade to Office 2000, which I knew. They also offered me a slight
upgrade for MSN Messenger Service, which I declined. While checking sites as
part of my Favorites operation (see point 109(g)), I had come across a site that
would not let me proceed without the very latest Macromedia Shockwave
ActiveX Player, so I accepted the Updates.com offer to give me that. The strange
part was that they also offered to give me an upgrade from Microsoft Dial-Up
Networking 98, from version 4.10.1998 to 4.10.2000. Why hadn't Microsoft
offered this? I didn't know. I followed the link, which led to a Microsoft FTP
site, and installed the update from there.
111. Another Disk Image File and CD. I decided that these various operations,
and especially the tinkering I had done in Excel, Word, and FrontPage 2000 as
part of my effort to organize my Favorites (see point 109(g)), had given me
enough opportunity to have at least a preliminary sense that Office 97 was
properly installed and working. (See point 104.) Indeed, I hoped that the work
in FP2000 had not gone to the point of damaging that installation. I didn't think
it had -- there hadn't been any program crashes or reboots in the middle of any
operations -- but it had behaved irregularly enough to raise the question of

whether I had done sufficient tinkering for now. I had originally planned to
make this go-round the complete and final installation and adjustment of all
things related to Win98 and Office 97. As I had gone further into the subject,
however, I had been surprised at how many more things people had found to do
to those programs, to make them faster or more responsive. Some of those
tweaks were simple and safe, and some were risky and complex, and many were
in between. I was beginning to get nervous, however, at the prospect that all this
work might be lost if I made one false move in one of these alterations. I thought
about taking a break at this point to burn another CD, but then I decided that
was a highly time-consuming operation and that it included the risk of causing a
translation error when I moved my hard disk (on which I would create the image
file) from the PENTIUM computer to the AMD computer, where the CD burner
was located. (See point 59.) The better approach, I decided, was to make another
image file and save it on drive F, with the previous one. That way, unless I
somehow managed to screw up drive F, I would have what I needed to burn a
CD and/or to start over quickly, but I could also continue with my tinkering and
tweaking as long as things continued to work fine. So I created the image file on
F, using the same technique as before. (See point 103.) Specifically, it would be,
once again, an image of drives C and D only. I emptied out the Recycle Bin and
C:\Windows\Temp, since I did not want their contents on any CD that I might
someday burn from this drive image, and also because I had a lot to squeeze into
this image, which would hopefully still be within the 650 MB limit for a CD. (See
point 16.) I didn't bother emptying out the Temporary Internet Files folder
because it was on drive H. (See point 50.) I cleared off the Documents Menu.
(See point 54.) Then I rebooted into real DOS, from the floppy, and ran
DriveImage from the floppy to create the C_D_2.PQI image file on drive F.
DriveImage told me that these C and D partitions contained a total of 891 MB,
which was within my target estimate of what would fit on a CD. (See point 68.)
As before, I chose the Maximum Compression and Verify Disk Writes options. It
took nearly an hour and produced a C_D_2.PQI file of 564 MB, for 63%
compression. This surprised me; if the rate held, I could squeeze more than 1 GB
of program files onto a CD. To make space on F for the next disk images, I
rebooted into Win98 and used Direct Cable Connection (see point 93) to move
my existing image files over to the AMD machine, where I had a little more
space to hold them. (It took about five hours to move them, for a rate of about
200 MB per hour. Also, perhaps because of the increasing instability of the AMD
computer, DCC crashed both computers when I shut it down on the AMD
computer.) And then, realizing that it could be weeks or even months before I
would begin to discover flaws in my Windows installations, I decided to store
C_AND_D.PQI (see point 103) on CD-RW, so that I could go through the full
process of making a bootable CD out of it later if necessary. C_AND_D.PQI
represented a relatively primitive form of the system, and the system had been
stable since then, so I didn't think it would be necessary to go back that far, and

this way I would save the time and the cost of burning a CD-R for it. But this
C_D_2.PQI image was another story. So far, this was a stable and more
advanced form of the system, and it might well be something I would reinstall.
Since the PENTIUM computer was apparently unable to read CD-RW disks
burned on the AMD machine (see point 62), I burned this one to CD, using the
same approach as before (see point 65), except that (a) I decided not to bother
making a file list for future comparison (see point 80), (b) I went ahead and
closed the disk, and (c) I realized that I had forgotten to shut off the archive bits
before making the image file. This was not a major problem; I just hoped that the
next image file would turn out to be solid and would become my reference
Win98 system.
112. Office 97 Adjustments. Relieved to have made a backup, and to see I still
had lots of space to work with, I did some more tinkering with my Office 97
installation, as follows:
(a) Expanding Abbreviations. One of the best features of Office 97, for me, has
been the ability to set up its programs to expand a few letters to form a whole
word or phrase. For example, I type "nyc" and I get "New York City." If you
change your computer's date to tomorrow (no guarantees on what this might do
to your calendaring programs), and then go into Word and hit Tools |
AutoCorrect and type in a Replace/With entry, and then change the date back to
today and search for all files that were changed tomorrow, you will see that
Office saves these changes in a file called [username].ACL. For example, mine
are saved in C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl. Anyway, I copied this file
(containing my treasured collection of many such abbreviations) over from the
AMD computer to the PENTIUM computer, renamed the existing Ray
Woodcock.acl to be OLD.ACL, moved it to C:\Temp, put this other one in its
place, and tested it by typing "nyc" and a couple of my other abbreviations.
(b) Outlook 98 Journal. I had heard a horror story about how Tools | Options |
Journal in some version of Outlook comes pre-configured to take down a record
of when you edit your files, and if you leave it on, it will produce a huge file that
slows your system down tremendously. I went into Outlook Express and saw no
such option; I went into Outlook 98 and saw something that might have been
what that story was about. Under the heading "Also record files from," I saw
that the boxes were checked for five Office 97 applications: Word, Excel, etc. To
see what would happen, I went to Outlook 98 on the AMD machine, made sure
the box for Word was checked, did the same date trick as in point 112(a),
changed and saved a file in Word, closed Outlook, and then searched to see
which files had been affected on tomorrow's date. (Note: this maneuver kept
freezing up the Date/Time thingie -- I was using the one at the bottom right
corner of the screen -- so that I had to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut it down. I

probably should have just used the DATE command in a DOS box instead. I was
glad I was doing this on the AMD machine, whose Windows installation was
going to be replaced soon, and not on my nice, pure PENTIUM machine.) The
file storing this data appeared to be C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Offitems.log, but I wasn't sure. The Journal definitely
did work, though: the Journal folder in Outlook 98 showed which files I edited
tomorrow and how long I was at it. Just the thing to spy on people, I guess. I
went to the PENTIUM computer, turned off all Journal options, and hoped that
would do the trick.
(c) Outlook 98 OUTLOOK.PST. I guess Outlook is considered part of Office,
even though it didn't come on my Office 97 CD. Anyway, on the AMD machine,
Outlook had saved all my e-mail messages in a file called
C:\EXCHANGE\MAILBOX.PST. I don't know if that's the name that Win95
originally gave it, or if I requested that name. On the PENTIUM computer, the
only .PST file was C:\WINDOWS\OUTLOOK.PST. There were two things
about the old MAILBOX.PST that I didn't want to see on the new
OUTLOOK.PST. First, it was too big. It contained all kinds of junk. I figured
that, rather than bring it over to the new setup, I would just archive it or bleed it
of valuable data and delete it, or possibly all of the above. How to do that -- that
was a question for another day. (See point 192.) Right now, I was more
concerned with the other problem: how could I relocate this OUTLOOK.PST file
so that it would be on a data partition, and not on my program partition? I
wanted it to be in a place that would get frequent backups, since new e-mails and
appointments would be going into it every day. My data partitions would get
that kind of backup attention; my program partitions might not. Outlook 98
itself did not seem to offer an option for where the OUTLOOK.PST file would be
located. When I asked online, they said I could just move it anywhere, as long as
Outlook 98 wasn't running. Outlook would ask for its current location, and I
could tell it. So I tried this. I moved OUTLOOK.PST to E:\MESSAGES and
rebooted. I started Outlook 98 and got the message, "The file
C:\WINDOWS\OUTLOOK.PST could not be found." I clicked OK. This opened
a dialog box that gave me a chance to point to E:\MESSAGES\OUTLOOK.PST.
And that seemed to take care of it. I prepared an e-mail and saved it; I closed
Outlook; I looked at E:\Messages; and sure enough, OUTLOOK.PST had been
updated just a moment before, when I saved that message. Done!
(d) Outlook 98 Address Book. Unlike my old e-mail messages, I did want to
bring my Address Book over from the AMD machine. It was a bit premature
right now -- I didn't want to start using Outlook 98 on the PENTIUM computer
as my regular e-mail program yet, and I might be changing entries in my
Address Book between now and the time when I did begin to use the new
Outlook 98 installation (see point 193) -- but I decided I could go ahead with a

test run, to make sure I knew where the Address Book would be stored. On the
AMD machine, I went into Outlook 98 and selected File | Import and Export |
Export to a File | Next | Personal Folder File | Next | Contacts | Next, named
the exported file C:\TEMP\ADDR_BK.PST, selected Allow Duplicate Items to Be
Created (since I didn't know whether the program would consider contacts to be
"duplicate" even if they involved two different e-mail addresses) and went on
with Finish | No Encryption. The resulting file was small, so I tried to put it on a
floppy, but I got the message that Outlook had locked the file. So I closed
Outlook 98 and tried again. This time it worked. I carried it over to the
PENTIUM computer. There, I went into Outlook 98 and, before anything else, I
had to select the Contacts folder. Then I chose File | Import and Export | Import
from Another Program or File | Next | Personal Folder File (.pst) | Next. I
designated A:\ADDR_BK.PST and chose "Import items into the current folder."
This gave me the message that I had chosen to import into a folder of a different
type, and that the contents would instead be imported into a new folder with the
same name. I said OK, and it worked! It didn't bring over the Contacts\People
subfolder, but I supposed I might have forgotten to check the "include
subfolders" box when exporting. Anyway, it was good enough for a dry run. I
searched for all files modified during the previous day and was able to figure out
that the Address Book was being stored in the same
E:\MESSAGES\OUTLOOK.PST file as the e-mail messages, which was fine with
me.
(e) Office Shortcut Bar and Desktop Icons. I decided to clarify the icons on the
shortcut bars at the left side of my screen. (See point 102.) The toolbar there
actually contained three separate bars: Office, Internet, and Desktop. I decided
that I would find items faster if I had no more than about a half-dozen buttons
per bar. So I moved Internet Explorer and Outlook 98 (my e-mail program) from
the Office bar to the Internet bar. I also decided that, since I wasn't going to use
Active Desktop (see point 113(a)), I would use my desktop as the repository of
system-related shortcuts, and that the Desktop bar should show only those
desktop items that had to do with the system. Thus, I hid or removed some
buttons from the Desktop bar. On the desktop itself, I created a folder called
"Was On Desktop" and dragged the Briefcase into it (and expected to drag others
there in the future). (Instead, I later wound up undoing that and getting rid of
this folder.) I also added some items to the desktop itself and reflected them in
the desktop bar. The first of these was the Control Panel. To make that one, I
went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked on Control Panel (near the bottom of
the list on the left side), chose Create Shortcut, and indicated that it should go on
the desktop. (Later, I found that X-Setup made this easier. See point 137(c). But
then I changed my mind on that and came back to this. See point 138(d).)
Another was the direct shortcut to Device Manager. For that one, I right-clicked
on the desktop, chose New | Shortcut, typed C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE

SYSDM.CPL,,1 and clicked Next, named it Device Manager, clicked Properties,

and changed its icon. See http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm. (Later, I
deleted both the Control Panel and Device Manager shortcuts from the desktop.
See point 145(i).) To organize my Office Shortcut Bar further, I went into
Windows Explorer, went to the location where these icons were kept
(D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office), and created
some folders and otherwise arranged things, and then I went back to the
Shortcut Bar and hid or moved buttons as I wanted.
113. Still More Windows Adjustments. I returned to the task of digesting the
myriad little tips and ideas I had collected on the subject of how to make Win98
do just what you want. My further adjustments were as follows:
(a) Active Desktop Substitute. I had decided against Active Desktop. (See point
109(b).) Instead, following suggestion no. 4 at
http://x34.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538298873&CONTEXT=948731789.9116057
9&hitnum=41, I decided to develop an HTML page and incorporate the same
kinds of things into it that I would have put onto the Active Desktop. I probably
could have created this page as a strictly local item, stored on my hard disk and
updated there, but then I decided that the most logical time to update it would
be when I was online anyway, and therefore that I should make it part of my
website. This also made the page available for anyone else whose tastes might
match mine and who might prefer to link to my page rather than go to the
trouble of designing their own. The actual design of this page came later. (See
point 327.) All I did at this time was to add an item called "Quick" (short for
"Quick Reference") to my Links toolbar; and in a slightly different approach, I set
the properties of this one to be available offline, to download pages one link
deep, and to follow links outside the page itself. (See point 109(g).)
(b) Mailto Shortcuts. To make a faster way of composing e-mail, I added another
item to my Links toolbar (see point 113(a)) called "E-mail." This item was a
folder containing several different Mailto links. To create a Mailto link, I rightclicked in this folder (using Windows Explorer) and chose New | Shortcut. In
the Command Link blank, I typed the person to whom I wanted the e-mail to go,
such as "mailto:ray-woodcock@usa.net," and then selected Next and named it.
(c) SendTo. On the AMD machine, I had noticed that various utilities had
installed a lot of options on the SendTo choice that comes up when you rightclick on something in Windows Explorer. I modified this list by putting some of
these items in subfolders, and by creating more subfolders for additional items
that I now wanted to install, as follows: (1) Moving Existing SendTos. I created a
subfolder in C:\Windows\SendTo called "Other Destinations," and moved
several of the SendTo options (i.e., Desktop, My Briefcase, and Web Publishing

Wizard) to that subfolder. That way, they weren't gone, in case I someday
changed my habits and decided to start using them; but neither were they in my
face every time I used SendTo. (2) Creating New Temp Folder SendTos. I added
several shortcuts to the main SendTo folder, to give me a faster way of moving
things to the Temp folders on each disk (e.g., C:\Temp), since I often use those
folders as a clearinghouse from which I then distribute files elsewhere (e.g.,
review, sort, print, or zip them). To do this, I right-clicked on those Temp folders
in Windows Explorer and selected New | Shortcut. Then I put all those
shortcuts into C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Temp Folders. (3) Creating New
Data File Destination SendTos. I did the same thing as above for data folders
that I knew I would frequently want to send items to (e.g., E:\Spreadsheets and
E:\Text). I also created one for the Favorites\Unsorted folder. (See point
109(g).) (4) Creating New Program SendTos. In
C:\Windows\SendTo\Programs, I put SendTo items for the programs that I
often use to open files that are not commonly associated with them. In
particular, I use Word and Excel, and sometimes WordPad and Notepad, to open
all kinds of files that don't have the right extensions. For instance, I might use
Excel to open a .TXT or .DOC file, if it contains data in a format that Excel can
parse effectively. (The advantage of SendTo over the left-click | shift-right-click
| Open With option, for these situations, is that you don't have to hunt down
through a long list of programs to find the one you want to open the file with.)
In these instances, I created the SendTo item by using the right mouse button to
drag icons over from the subfolders under C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs - the reason being that the New Shortcut approach described above balked at file
or folder names with spaces in them (like "Start Menu"). I also added a copy of
the MS-DOS Prompt icon to this Programs subfolder. I tried sending a DOS
batch file to that prompt, but it didnt run, so I removed the icon. Finally,
applying tip no. 59 from the Weber High School site (see point 105(j)), I went to
the Desktop and created a shortcut to the Recycle Bin. Then I cut that shortcut
from there and pasted it into C:\WINDOWS\SENDTO. This gave me the ability
to delete things by using the Send To right-click option in Windows Explorer. I
didn't expect to use this much at the start, but I had found on the AMD machine
that Windows had reverted to the habit of asking me if I was sure I wanted to
delete a file, even though I had instructed it not to ask me that; someone online
said that this SendTo option would bypass that. (See point 41.)
(d) Drive Speed. Under Control Panel | System | Performance | File System, I
verified that Hard Disk was set to full Read-ahead optimization; I set Floppy
Disk not to search for new floppy drives each time my computer started; and
under CD-ROM, I made sure I was set to the largest cache at Quad-speed. Also,
having heard the same tip several times, I changed the hard disk setting to make
the Typical role of this computer to be a Network Server, which apparently
optimizes Win98's disk caching. Later, I noticed that Cacheman changed this.

(e) Office 97 Suite. Some projects required me to have several programs open at
once. For example, when I was working through a pile of random stuff that had
suddenly descended upon my desk, I was apt to use an Office 97 suite, consisting
of Word, Excel, Access, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Outlook 98, at
one point or another as I attempted to dig my way out of the mess. Another
example would arise when I did audio editing: I might use Cool Edit, two
different sessions of Windows Explorer, Volume Control, and a mixer. The latter
example was premature (see point 255(c)), but it illustrated that different jobs
may call for a very different set of programs. I decided to create a new toolbar
that would allow me to click on one icon and thereby open an entire suite of
programs at once. This would free me from having to decide whether to include
a lot of icons in my StartUp folder (under Start | Windows), which is convenient
-- but only as long as I'm using the same programs, and not when I want to boot
the computer to do something simple. Since I hadn't yet installed all my audio
programs and other stuff, the Office 97 suite just mentioned was the only suite I
could set up right now; but that would do for starters. First, I created a subfolder
within my modified Start | Programs structure. (See point 42.) In Windows
Explorer, it was at C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other
Programs\Miscellany\Toolbars\Suites. Then I copied icons for all the Office 97
programs just mentioned, from other Start | Programs folders to this one. I also
brought over a copy of the MS-DOS Prompt icon from the Utilities subfolder. I
modified this MS-DOS Prompt item in two ways. First, right-clicked on it and
changed its name to "Office Suite." (Later, back in Windows Explorer, I rightclicked on it and changed its name there too.) Second, while I was in its
Properties, I changed its Properties | Program | Batch File line to point to the
D:\DOS_UTIL folder, where I tended to keep my DOS batch files. (See point 64.)
The specific program that this MS-DOS Prompt would run would be a new
program, which I was about to write, called STE_OFC.BAT (short for Suite:
Office: Batch File). Thus, the Batch File line, in its entirety, read as follows:
D:\DOS_UTIL\STE_OFC.BAT. To create this new STE_OFC.BAT program, I
opened a DOS window, typed UTIL (to invoke my previously defined UTIL.BAT
file that takes me immediately to D:\DOS_UTIL), and typed EDIT
STE_OFC.BAT. That put me into the editor, where I could create this new BAT
file. For its first line, I typed @ECHO OFF. For the next line, I switched to
Windows Explorer, right-clicked on the Word icon there in my Suites subfolder,
copied its Properties | Target line with a Ctrl-C, and pasted it into the second
line (using the clipboard icon at the top of the MS-DOS Prompt window,
although I had thought that my previous settings, including a check mark in the
DOS Prompt's "Quick Edit" box, would enable me to just use Ctrl-V or right-click
to paste -- see point 105(l)). I repeated this copy-and-paste process for each of the
programs whose icons I had copied into the Suites folder (Access, Excel, etc.) -except, of course, for the MS-DOS Prompt that I had renamed Office Suite, and

that was rapidly becoming the focal point of all this attention. (After all, I didn't
want the program to invoke itself, thus creating an endless loop that would soon
crash the computer, although admittedly you could create some pretty good
practical jokes by tinkering with this.) Now I had six program lines in my
STE_OFC.BAT file. I removed the quotation marks from the starts and ends of
the lines that had them. At the start of each line, I put the word START.
Although I wasn't sure it would make much difference, I rearranged the lines so
that the programs I would be most likely to use would start last (i.e., would wind
up somewhere near the top of the heap). I was almost done. The remaining
problem was that DOS abbreviates long filenames like "Program Files," which
appeared in each of the lines I had just added, such as "START D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE." It abbreviates them down to eight
characters, ending them with a tilde and a number (e.g., "Program Files" might
become "PROGRA~1"). To find out exactly how it was abbreviating them, I
opened another DOS window and used my WHEREIS utility. (See point 5(g).)
(Alternatives to WHEREIS include FILEFIND and DIR, although the latter may
take some hunting before you find the right file, such as the EXCEL.EXE example
just given.) (I later found that I could also have looked in the Properties to get the
DOS filename.) In most cases, there will be only one long filename of its kind in
a given folder, so it will be given the number one. For instance, in the Excel
example, "Program Files" ordinarily becomes PROGRA~1, but if you add
another "Program ..." item to the list, the number might change and EXCEL.EXE
might become PROGRA~2 -- in which case my STE_OFC.BAT program would
be loading the wrong program, or no program at all, and I would have to edit it
to address the new number. In this case, WHEREIS told me that I had to edit the
Excel command line so that it would read like this: START
D:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\OFFICE\EXCEL.EXE. I repeated this process for
each of the lines in my program. (Since several of the programs were in the same
folder on the same drive, I was able to cut and paste duplicate lines and just
change the filenames in several cases -- without all that fuss and muss of using
WHEREIS -- to get this editing job done faster.) Finally, as the last line in
STE_OFC.BAT, I added the simple word EXIT, so that this DOS window would
close when it had done its business. Then I saved and exited the EDIT program
and the DOS window. I tested by double-clicking on my Office Suite icon, and it
worked. I closed all the programs it had opened. Now that I had copied the
Target lines from all these Office 97 icons in my Suites folder, I no longer needed
these icons here, so I deleted them, leaving Office Suite as the sole remaining icon
in the folder. I right-clicked an empty spot on the Taskbar at the bottom of the
screen and selected Toolbars | New Toolbar, called it Suites, and pointed it
toward the C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Other
Programs\Miscellany\Suites folder where I had left the Office Suite icon. To
squeeze things into a tight space there on the Taskbar, I right-clicked on the
Office Suite icon and shut off the Show Text and Show Title options. To make it

recognizable without those words, I right-clicked on the icon itself and chose
Properties | Program | Change Icon, which gave me a bunch of quasi-unique
alternatives. I chose something suitably dorky and vaguely officeish and then
okayed out of there. Then I put the cursor at the dividing line that separated this
new Suites Toolbar from the rest of the Taskbar, and dragged that line so I wasn't
taking up any more space down there than necessary. The icon itself wouldn't
tell me, later, which suite I was loading, but a little Tool Tip popped up to say it
was the Office Suite, if I left my cursor pointing at the icon for a few seconds.
Later, I did more thinking about the Office Suite. (See point 275.)
(f) System File Editing for DMA. Since Registry editing can really screw things
up, I decided I would postpone making internal changes to the Registry or other
Windows files until after I burned the next CD. But then I decided there was a
difference between performance-enhancing (optional) tweaks and required
tweaks. Specifically, the Tweak3D site at
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/harddrive/ told me that, if I was going to turn
on DMA (see point 106), I was also going to have to add the following two lines
to the bottom of the [ESDI_AddReg] section of my
C:\WINDOWS\INF\MSHDC.INF file. Those lines were as follows:
HKR,,IDEDMADrive0,3,01
HKR,,IDEDMADrive1,3,01
I checked to see if everyone agreed that these lines were important and safe.
Apparently the problem in question arises during startup. See
http://www.lucifer1.demon.co.uk/bugrep.htm (last updated 11/11/98). So far,
I wasn't having that problem. "Old Guy," writing at
http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=571745663&CONTEXT=948810240.1975713
797&hitnum=11, said that these lines were to be used only as a last resort, and
that they still might not make DMA work. Old Guy also said that "the operating
system" checks for DMA compatibility anyway and doesn't use DMA if it doesn't
check out properly. I found a Microsoft site on this subject. See
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/hwdev/devdes/idedma.htm. Confusingly, that
site said this: "For Microsoft Windows 98, you just have to enable the driver,
since the fix is already incorporated. In all cases, you must implement the INF
entries described in this article." What's confusing about that is that the word
"driver" does not appear anywhere else in the article, except in some lines of
program code that the article quotes from MSHDC.INF (which is already
installed and does not need to be "implemented"). I looked at my Win98 copy of
MSHDC.INF to see if "the fix" was "already incorporated" on my machine. If "the
fix" refers to the two HKR lines quoted above, then the answer was no, they did
not already appear in my MSHDC.INF file on either computer. The article
referred me to Microsoft article no. QFE513, last updated 10/22/99, but that

article addressed only a problem in Win95 OSR2. I decided that, when Microsoft
said "you just have to enable the driver," it meant that OEM installers (what's
that stand for -- Original Equipment Manufacturers, maybe -- anyway, the
people who sell computers) had to make sure that MSHDC.INF was included on
the system, and that Win98 incorporated "the fix" in some other file, so that no
adjustment was needed in my case. Since DMA seemed to be working for me
during projects that involved lots of use of Office 97 programs (see point 109(g)),
I didn't see the need for any more fixes. (Note that, if you do make the change
suggested by this Microsoft article, there are additional steps involved in the
process. FYI: if you have "the UDMA CDROM Shutdown Problem," see
http://www.tcecompany.com/tech/udma.htm for more information about
editing MSHDC.INF.) Then again, there was still the fact that the Microsoft page
said, "In all cases, you must implement the INF entries." Did "INF entries" refer
to the HKR lines cited above? At
http://compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/windows/cdrom_udma.html
(last updated 12/27/99), the writer comments on CD-ROM audio crashes. To fix
these crashes, s/he suggests unchecking DMA for the CD-ROM drive, and also
suggests removing the HKR lines -- the very same lines, quoted above, that
others are telling us to add! S/he also says it might help just to update your
system BIOS. (Side note: disabling UDMA in the BIOS unchecks the DMA box
in Control Panel. See
http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566786103&CONTEXT=948810240.1975713
797&hitnum=17.) I happened to run across a test for DMA capability at
http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml# dmatest. This test
involved using DEBUG, which is not something you want to make a mistake
with. I ran it with a0 for the master drive, using the basic 22 setting for DMA
mode 2, and came back with a 00 result, indicating that my master (Western
Digital 3.1 GB) drive was indeed DMA-compatible. I ran it again with b0 for the
slave (Fujitsu) drive and got another 00, so I was finally sure I had DMAcompatible drives. Getting back to the main issue, I found another interpretation
of the Microsoft page cited above at http://www.windowshelp.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml. This site was specifically oriented toward
Win98. It said to go ahead and add the two HKR lines quoted above. I finally
decided that, although I don't read this kind of programming code too clearly,
the purpose of these lines must be just to inform the system that drives 0 and 1
(i.e., your first and second hard drives) are DMA-compatible. That seemed
compatible with the assumption, in this tune-35.shtml page, that you have a
primary and a secondary drive. (See also
http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, where they advocate other changes
as well. That page has no "last revised" date, and may be obsolete, considering
my difficulties with its instructions regarding Hyperterminal. See point 113(g).)
But suddenly I wondered what would happen if I connected that old Seagate 1
GB drive again (see point 81), to copy files back and forth. It was a lot faster to

switch a hard disk between machines than to cable data back and forth at a rate
of 200 MB per hour. (See point 111.) (I had had problems with the Seagate (see
point 82), but had subsequently thought that perhaps the power supply was
coughing when I asked it to drive three hard disks.) Or what if I used the
Seagate as a secondary slave, where I would locate my Swap files? (See point
44.) The answer from the Microsoft page seemed to be that it would be redetected on reboot, the operating system would detect that it wasn't DMAcapable, and there would be no problem. Anyway, the tide of opinion was
running heavily against Old Guy at this point, so I went ahead and added the
two HKR lines shown above, following the procedure recommended on the
Microsoft page: (1) I modified the MSHDC.INF file by adding the two lines as
indicated above and closed that file; (2) I went into Control Panel | System |
Device Manager | Disk Drives and clicked on each IDE hard disk and then
clicked Remove; (3) I closed Control Panel and rebooted; and (4) I went back into
Control Panel | System | Device Manager | Disk Drives | Properties | Settings,
and there I saw that, this time, unlike before (see point 108), DMA had been
checked automatically during the redetection process.
(g) Modem Fix: Line Quality. I had been blaming my ISP for my frequent
disconnections, but we had only moved to this new location within the past six
months or so, and I slowly realized that the phone company might be to blame.
By now, I had come across a couple of approaches to the problem, and I decided
it was time to try them. First, applying a tip from
http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, I tried to do a test for line quality.
Unfortunately, their instructions did not seem to match what was happening on
my computer. After spending too much time trying to make their apparently
outdated guide work, I got smart and searched for another site. The instructions
at http://www.grso.org/support/printlnt.html did not work either. Finally, I
tried http://www.netassoc.net/techstuff/linetest2.htm. The basic idea, repeated
with variations at all of these sites, was to run HYPERTRM.EXE, cancel its
attempt to dial, and get to a blank screen; then type ATZ and Enter, which
should give you an OK. Then type ATDTXXX-XXXX (where the Xs are your
ISP's local access number). When you get a LOGIN or PASSWORD prompt, you
type +++ and hit Enter. Again, you should get an OK. Then you type AT&V1
exactly like that. (The last character is the number one, not the letter L.) This is
supposed to give you line quality information that these websites interpret as
follows: a value of 25 or more means the modem is sensing excessive line noise.
Run the test at least five times to get a reliable average figure. After many tries, I
finally realized that (1) When you first start up, you have to type your ISP's
phone number and choose the correct modem; (2) I had to repeat the ATZ part
too, and (3) I just had to allow more time after the first LOGIN prompt. I'd get
LOGIN, I'd type +++, and then I'd wait. After it said OK, it would do nothing,
and then was the time to type AT&V1. And then, when I did finally connect and

get the information, it didn't look anything like the site at

http://www.super7.net/tips/Default.htm, and it didn't have any figure called
"line quality." So I gave up on this thing. (Later, I wound up doing more modem
configuration. See point 181.)
(h) Folder Modifications: Graphics. Using Windows Explorer, I went to the
E:\Graphics folder where I intended to keep images. I right-clicked on it and
chose Properties | General | Enable Thumbnail View. That way, whenever I
selected View | Thumbnails on the Windows Explorer menu bar, I would be able
to see little representations of my actual images. I tried this for folders
containing documents, but it doesn't work. Windows Explorer, unlike
PowerDesk Explorer, doesnt give you a picture of the actual document, just an
icon representing a document, and the process of turning on thumbnails inserts a
hidden DESKTOP.INI that will appear on your file list if you've got Explorer set
to show all files. For viewing the actual documents, apparently you have to
right-click and choose Quick View or use a program like PowerDesk. (See point
135.)
114. ScanDisk Problem. In a previous episode, we had major problems with
drive E. (See point 84.) I thought I had taken care of those problems for the time
being. (See point 85.) Along about this time, I was wrapping up some of the
foregoing adjustments and was going online on the AMD machine to see if there
were any other low-risk tweaks I could be applying at this stage in the game. I
remembered those old problems with drive E and decided to run ScanDisk
(thorough) on it. I don't know if having other programs open was a cause of
what happened next, but for whatever reason I got a message that there wasn't
enough space on drive C to remember what was being changed on drive E. (I
didn't get the exact text of the message, but I think it was something like that.)
This was troubling on two counts: (a) I had more than 250 MB free on C, and (b)
I really didn't want any more problems with E. I tried Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill active
programs, but the system froze, and I wound up having to do a reset. While I
was at it, I made it a cold boot. Then I ran ScanDisk again -- this time, with no
major application programs running. It got most of the way through drive E -back to the neighborhood where the bad sectors had been located previously -and then it stopped. As with the first crash, the mouse was barely crawling. I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del and got no response for several seconds, and then a blue screen
telling me that the system had become unstable. I hit the computer's Reset
button and, although the BIOS was set to boot from C first, it apparently saw no
program files there, because it gave me a message indicating that it couldn't boot
from the CD-ROM (which was set to second in line in the BIOS). I hit Ctrl-AltDel, and this time Win98 booted OK. I hit Shut Down | restart, and I intercepted
and booted into real DOS. I ran SCANDISK E: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE
/NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It slowed down significantly at the same place

where the Windows version of ScanDisk had stalled, but it didn't die -- leading
me to think that perhaps the Windows version hadn't really died either, but had
just been working very slowly; unfortunately, the Windows version hadn't
reported (or I hadn't asked for) enough information to indicate that it was still
going strong. But I decided that, no, it really had died, because that time it had
been silent, but now, on this DOS rerun, I could hear the disk grinding away.
Anyway, after being stalled for a while, ScanDisk gave me the message that drive
E had sustained physical damage, and then it put me back to the C prompt when
I wasn't looking, before I could get the final tally on the damage. The last I had
seen, it had found a total of four additional bad clusters, out of 157,935. That was
not much, but it was also not good. Coming so soon aftev the very thorough
scrubbing I had given it the last time around, it suggested that the disk was
slowly dying. These new bad clusters were back in that same bad section, so I
decided to go ahead with the plan to create a separate hidden partition for the
damaged area. I tried to run ScanDisk again, but I got "Write fault error reading
drive C." I ran PartitionMagic from the floppy. It was very slow in starting. I
could hear the hard disk (or something) trying again and again to recognize
something. Finally, it started with "Partition table error # 121 found." According
to the manual, this error # 121 was "The first sector of the drive cannot be read." I
left PartitionMagic and ran Norton Disk Doctor (normal test, not thorough) from
D:\DOS_UTIL. It corrected some errors on C and E. On E, it identified the first
bad block as occurring at approximately sector 965,000 out of 1,265,985. That, by
my calculation,was about 76% of the way through drive E. The last bad block
occurred at approximately sector 1,175,000, or about 93% of the way through.
The size of drive E was 618 MB, so it seemed that the bad area began at about 470
MB and ended at about 575 MB. Drive E came at the end of the first hard disk, so
that last piece of about 43 MB would have to stand by itself. I decided it wasn't
worth the bother and that I may as well include it in the hidden partition.
Thanks to Disk Doctor, PartitionMagic was now able to access the drive. I
started PartitionMagic from D:\DOS_UTIL and used it to reduce drive E to 465
MB, leaving a heartbreaking 153 MB of useless space after it. I decided not to
bother putting that free space into a hidden partition; I just let it sit. I ran Norton
Disk Doctor again on E. This time, its normal test identified no errors in the new,
shrunken drive E. I was curious how closely I had calculated the beginning of
the bad part, so I went back into PartitionMagic and converted the free space to a
hidden partition after all. PartitionMagic got a mere 1% through the process
before it began to grind away, trying to recognize and work with the bad sectors.
I tried to cancel it, but it wanted to keep going. When it was done, I ran Norton's
normal test on the new partition, which I had labeled BADSPACE. Sure enough,
Norton showed the first bad sector about 5% of the way through that partition.
So I had wasted, or had allowed a cushion of, about 5% of 153 MB, or 7.7 MB.
Good enough! I went back into PartitionMagic and hid BADSPACE -- i.e.,
partition F -- which allowed the drive letters to go back to where they had been

before (e.g., H was once again the SWAP partition). (This was a better way to
handle it; with the thing named BADSPACE, I wouldn't later wonder why there
was good free space sitting there unused. Unfortunately, this partition would
pose a quandary later. See point 239.) When PartitionMagic rebooted after
making its change, I didn't stop the system; it went on into Win98 without a
problem. I rebooted into real DOS and ran Disk Doctor on drive E for three
repetitions of its thorough test. It detected no problems. That wasn't necessarily
solid information on a decaying disk -- that's what Norton had said before -- but
since the decay appeared to be occurring at the end, there was some chance that
this disk still had some life left in it.
115. Installing PartitionMagic and DriveImage. By now, I had used these two
programs so frequently over the past year or two, and had had so few problems
with them, that I felt entirely comfortable installing them as important utilities on
my new system. They were the first non-Microsoft products I was installing (or
at least the first ones I was deliberately installing). I made the exception
primarily because I had already been using them anyway, to do things that had
seemed essential in these first stages of my program installation process. But
how much space would they take up? On the AMD machine, I had installed a
valuable little bit of freeware that I use constantly, called TreeSize. (I don't
remember where I got it -- perhaps Hotfiles.com.) I used TreeSize on the
PowerQuest folder containing the program files for PartitionMagic and
DriveImage. It told me that those program files occupied only 20 MB. On the
PENTIUM machine, I typed Start | Run | MSINFO32 and got the system
information that I was now using 600 MB on drive C and 284 MB on drive D.
This told me that I was still well short of my limit of 1 GB. (See point 111.)
Clearly, I had room for 20 MB of PowerQuest files. I installed PartitionMagic
and DriveImage into a PowerQuest folder on drive D (PROGRAMS). On the
AMD machine, I had reached a point of having literally dozens of different
program installation folders, so that it was time-consuming to page up or down
through different directories each time I needed to locate a specific program
folder. I decided to try to arrange my D:\Program Files folder differently this
time around. So far, it contained only a DOS_UTIL folder (see point 80) and a
Microsoft Office folder (see point 91). I reviewed the Program Files folders on
the AMD machine and decided that it would make sense to have a System
Utilities subfolder, so I created one, and that's where I installed the PowerQuest
subfolder. I chose the Custom installation for PartitionMagic, but then decided
not to use the option of installing the DOS version, since I already had that in the
DOS_UTIL folder. I installed DriveImage, and I also installed MagicMover from
the DriveImage CD. Then I rearranged the Start | Programs icons to taste. This
is when I discovered that PartitionMagic had already installed MagicMover, in
its own folder. So I went into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and
uninstalled PowerQuest MagicMover. The uninstall seemed to be complete, but

the MagicMover folder I had created for the purpose was still there, with one
program file in it. I deleted these. The MagicMover folder under PartitionMagic
was still there, with its program files. I rebooted. The MagicMover shortcut
under Start | Programs was no longer able to locate MagicMover.exe. I clicked
on PowerQuest's Uninstall PartitionMagic icon and uninstalled PartitionMagic;
then I rebooted and reinstalled PartitionMagic from CD. This time, I didn't
install the duplicative MagicMover. I started PartitionMagic; it seemed to run
OK. Within PartitionMagic, I clicked on Tools | MagicMover, and it started OK
too. MagicMover also ran from the program icon. After arranging the icons
again, I ran MSINFO32 again. I wasn't using any more space on C, but I was
using 305 MB on D.
116. Standardizing the CD Image Process. At this point, I might not have made
every possible conservative adjustment to Windows 98 and Office 97, but I had
begun to reach a point of diminishing returns. Most of the adjustments I now
wanted to make, or was now hearing about, would require Registry editing or
other riskier tinkering. I did not intend to do anything that had a genuine
likelihood of screwing things up; nevertheless, the level of risk for some of these
other changes felt like it might be higher. So it seemed like a good time to make
another disk image file. I also thought I would try to standardize my procedure
for preparing such disk images, so as to do it more efficiently than last time. (See
point 111.) The steps I took, at this point, were as follows:
(a) I double-checked to make sure that the Temporary Internet Files folder was
still on drive H, in which case I would not need to empty it out for this CD,
which would be addressing only drives C and D. (See point 53.)
(b) I cleared the Documents menu. (See point 54.) (Later, I discovered that I
could automate this step by running the CLR_DOCS.BAT file. (See point 120(i).)
I automated it fully by calling that file from within the CD_PREP.BAT file shown
in point 116(h). To call the file (i.e., to keep DOS from fully detouring to it and
forgetting the rest of what was in CD_PREP), I used this command: CALL
CLR_DOCS.BAT. I put that command immediately after the lines that cleared
the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder. Eventually, I decided it was more direct and
easier to proofread the file if I just put the actual DELTREE line from CLR_DOCS
into CD_PREP, instead of calling CLR_DOCS.)
(c) In Windows Explorer, I right-clicked on the Recycle Bin and emptied it.
(Later, I discovered that I could automate this step by creating and calling a
CLR_RECY.BAT file, and therefore I added the corresponding lines to
CD_PREP.BAT, as just described. (See point 120(i).))

(d) I spiffed up drives C and D by running ScanDisk (thorough) and Disk

Defragmenter. (See points 78 and 84.)
(e) To reassure myself that I was backing up a good, working system, I ran the
System File Checker. (See point 55.) While I was at it, I also ran Registry
Checker. Later, I heard that System File Checker can restore original files rather
than updated files, which could mess up anything that you may have updated
through Windows Update (see point 15), so after that I removed SFC from my
bag of tricks.
(f) I rebooted into real DOS and ran the main line from MAINT_WK.BAT (see
point 105(h)) (i.e., DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\*.*). (This, too, later
became a part of CD_PREP.BAT.)
(g) I ran the file-listing program (see point 80), which I had renamed to be
LIST_ALL.BAT. I ran it on drive C, renamed the resulting file list, and ran it
again on drive D -- rediscovering, the hard way, that I had to be careful to type
the backslash after the drive letter. That is, LIST_ALL C:\ would give me a full
file list for drive C, but LIST_ALL C: would give me only the list of files for the
folder that C happened to be set to at that time, plus its subfolders.
(h) To the extent I was able to do it, I automated the task of shutting off the
attribute bits. I did this by building upon the previous experience (see point 88)
to create the following batch file, which I called CD_PREP.BAT:
REM This is CD_PREP.BAT.
REM This file makes lists and changes bits before burning a CD.
REM Get rid of unneeded temp files
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
REM Delete earlier file lists that might get in the way
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
if exist c:\temp\arc_bits del c:\temp\arc_bits
if exist c:\temp\c_bits del c:\temp\c_bits
if exist c:\temp\d_bits del c:\temp\d_bits
REM Try to shut off archive bits in all copies of MSCREATE.DIR
c:
cd \
attrib -r -h -a mscreate.dir /s
attrib +r +h mscreate.dir /s
d:

cd \
attrib -r -h -a mscreate.dir /s
attrib +r +h mscreate.dir /s
REM Shut off other attribute bits, to the extent possible
attrib -a c:\*.* /s
attrib -a d:\*.* /s
REM Run LISTBITS.BAT to produce list needed to revise CD_ATT.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call listbits c:\
ren filelist.txt c_bits
call listbits d:\
ren filelist.txt d_bits
copy c_bits+d_bits arc_bits
del c_bits
del d_bits
REM Shut off archive bits on hard-core remaining files
call cd_att.bat
After running these various parts separately, I added the DELTREE command
(see point 116(f)) to the start of CD_PREP.BAT. Having switched back and forth
between DOS and Windows a couple of times in the course of getting this right,
preparing the Excel spreadsheet, etc., I ran through the whole process shown
above once more. Then, after running CD_PREP.BAT, I reviewed the resulting
ARC_BITS list as my last step before making the image file, to satisfy myself that
all the archive bits were shut off. The second time through, there were actually
three new files that should have gone on the CD_ATT.BAT, but instead I just
used CHATT.BAT (see point 88) from D:\DOS_UTIL to shut off their archive bits
manually.
(i) Without going back into Windows (which would turn on a bunch of archive
bits all over again), I ran DriveImage to create the image file. Since I was in Real
DOS, I ran DriveImage from the floppy, to avoid the previous problem of trying
to run DriveImage from the drive that I was imaging. (See points 86 and 115.) It
would have been OK to run it from the Windows version too, if I had been in
Windows already and hadn't cared about the archive bits; the Windows-based
version of DriveImage reboots into DOS anyway in order to create its image files
and thus somehow manages to be able to create an image even of the hard disk
on which the Windows version is located. (See points 58, 103, and 115.) To
create my image file that held the contents of drives C and D, I again chose the

Maximum Compression and Verify Disk Writes options. In about an hour, this
converted my total of 908 MB into an image file of 574 MB, continuing the 63%
compression rate. (See point 111.) I called this image file STEP_116.PQI.
(j) I immediately rebooted into Windows, opened a DOS box, and used this batch
file to create a final file list (which I had to do in Windows in order to get long
filenames):
REM This is END_LIST.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call list_all c:\
ren filelist.txt c_files
call list_all d:\
ren filelist.txt d_files
copy c_files+d_files filelist.txt
del c_files
del d_files
cls
dir
(k) I used Direct Cable Connection to move the final file list and the
STEP_116.PQI image file to the AMD computer. At the rate of 200 MB per hour
(see point 111), it took more than three hours. On the AMD computer, I placed
several items into the partition from which I would be burning the CD: the
STEP_116 image file; the DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64); and the final list of files
from C and D that were compressed into the image file. Then I used Easy CD
Creator and the Windows 98 floppy (see point 8) to make the CD bootable. I
decided not to test it at this point. The Win98 installation on the AMD computer
was fading fast -- in recent days, Windows Explorer, Word 97, and Cool Edit had
refused to work at certain times, as had other minor programs -- and I decided
that the best CD test would be, not to wipe out the nascent installation on the
PENTIUM computer, but instead to wait until the time was ripe and try a new
installation on the AMD machine, using the most recently burned CD and
reverting back to previous CDs if the most recent one didn't produce good
results. Who knew? I might need C and D on the PENTIUM computer to be in
good shape, if no CDs worked: that is, I might have to fall back on using
DriveImage to copy disk images directly from the PENTIUM computer to the
AMD machine.
117. Deciding Against TweakUI. Having made my image backup, I was ready
for more advanced adjustment of my Windows installation. TweakUI was a
Microsoft product designed to customize the Windows experience. Since last

flirting with TweakUI (see point 109(d)), however, I had learned more about it.
Apparently there were different versions of it, and not all of these versions had
the same glowing reputation with everyone. See
http://www.pcforrest.co.uk/tweakui.htm# foreword. Among other problems,
people had encountered bugs using the tabs for My Computer, New, and IE4
(which also applies to Internet Explorer 5), and with autologon; and the Effects
section was said to be a resource hog. See
http://www.winmag.com/fixes/tweakui.htm. The version to use, it turned out,
was not the version contained in the \Tools\Reskit\Powertoy folder on my
Windows 98 upgrade CD. (See point 71.) Rather, they were recommending an
earlier version. See e.g., http://members.aol.com/axcel216/98-3.htm# TWK98.
(See also http://members.aol.com/axcel216/newtip16.htm# INITBUG and
http://members.aol.com/axcel216/web.htm.) The websites just cited also said,
however, that they would instead recommend X-Setup as a more professional
freeware alternative, unless you're a total beginner, in which case TweakUI
would be simpler to use. (If you do decide to use TweakUI, both of those sites
offer helpful advice, and so does http://newlifewin98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm, which offers a very clear way to tell
which of the Win98 versions of TweakUI you're using. For another helpful site,
see http://www.ora.com/catalog/win98nut/chapter/index.html# ref8. Note
that some TweakUI settings do not function properly and that using them can
cause problems for you. See
http://www.winmag.com/library/1999/0801/sol0060.htm. For a general
overview of TweakUI, see
http://www.pcplus.co.uk/W98Comp/ptoy/tweakui.htm.) For my purposes,
TweakUI was certainly better than editing the Registry by hand, and there sure
were a lot of people (including me) who had gotten a lot of benefit from it; but
now I was curious about X-Setup. In case I ever decided to go back to it, I also
wanted to keep these other references: http://www.ac.net/~lilesj/tweak.html
and http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/IE/WebAccess/default.asp (using
it); http://members.aol.com/axcel216/toy.htm (related notes); and
http://newlife-win98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm.
118. Adjustments Rejected. There seems to be no end to the number of ways in
which you can adjust your system. These are a few possible adjustments that I
did seriously consider and then decided not to bother with: (a) Change the
Win98 startup and shutdown screens: replace LOGO.SYS and LOGOW.SYS in
C:\WINDOWS with other bitmap (.BMP) files renamed to be LOGO.SYS and
LOGOW.SYS. (b) Use a bitmap image as an icon by renaming it to have an .ICO
extension. (c) Speed up your system by disabling all audible feedback from
Windows. To do this, go into Control Panel | Sounds | Schemes and select "No
Sounds." (d) Speed up your bootup process (and make it riskier) by selecting
Quick Power On Self Test (POST) in your BIOS. (e) To make your bootup faster,

combine all entries from C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and C:\CONFIG.SYS (which, so

far, were tiny to nonexistent on my PENTIUM computer) into one
C:\MSDOS.BAT file. (f) Clear the Windows Explorer MRU (Most Recently
Used?) lists that drop down when you're trying to type new data into a dialog
box. For instructions on this, see
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ARTICLES/Q142/2/98.asp. I
decided that this should be an occasional thing, best done when the lists get too
long to be useful. (g) Apparently deleting Network Neighborhood from your
desktop also removes your ability to use Direct Cable Connection. (See point 93).
For many other possible adjustments, do a search online for pages whose titles
include words like "tips" and "tweaks." A good source is
http://www.winmag.com.
119. Special Windows Downloads. Now that I had once again made a backup, I
was ready to finish off the possibilities for tinkering within Windows and Office
97, using just the materials that Microsoft had provided. I made the following
additional changes:
(a) Resource Kit Sampler. The Win98 ResKit (see point 109(d)) turned out to
have already installed TweakUI. I reviewed the programs offered in the ResKit
and decided I liked some of them. Visiting the ResKit\PowerToy folder
specifically, however, I saw that, of course, the ResKit had installed the buggy
version of TweakUI contained on the Win98 upgrade CD. (See point 117.) I
decided to uninstall ResKit, reinstall it, and then put the files for the
recommended version of TweakUI in place of the ones that ResKit installed. I
didn't know that I would actually use TweakUI, but if I did, it seemed safer to
use the files from the recommended version than from the Win98 CD version.
(Note: When I installed TweakUI through the ResKit, it didn't install a TweakUI
icon in Control Panel. See point 109(c).) While reinstalling ResKit, I decided not
to put it in a special folder, in the root of D, as D:\ResKit. I reached that decision
because, although I liked the looks of the installed ResKit and thought I would
probably use some of its utilities, it didn't seem important enough to clutter up
the root just to make it slightly more DOS-accessible. Apparently it was called a
resource "sampler" because the full version was available on a CD that was
included in a book from Microsoft Press. List price seems to have been $80
originally, dropped to $70, was available at this point for $56 at Amazon.com,
and someone said they got it for $30 at Costco (which, assuming they were
talking about the same book, may have shown a reduced public interest, now
that Win2000 was coming). According to the Amazon.com reviews, there were
things anyone could use here, but it was primarily intended for the network
administrator. Apparently the book (included for free in the ResKit, but not in
printed form) was over 1,700 pages and contained a lot of details about Win98,
but still didn't answer all questions and was somewhat outdated, since it came

out before the latest service releases, Internet Explorer installations, etc. It
seemed that the sampler contained about 25 programs, and the full version about
75. I tried to get more information about the sampler from the Microsoft website,
but I (and others, apparently) couldn't find anything on it -- perhaps because we
weren't looking under Microsoft Press. Anyway, it wasn't that important to me.
The general online reaction seemed to be, Why not use this freebie on the Win98
CD? Nobody seemed to be raving about the full package. After reinstalling
ResKit, I rebooted, and got an error message that someone else had complained
about: "Cannot find WIN.COM, unable to continue loading Windows." Then it
put me at the DOS prompt. I looked on the AMD machine. WIN.COM was in
C:\WINDOWS. I used DIR at the DOS prompt and verified that WIN.COM was
in C:\WINDOWS there too. I cold-rebooted and it happened again. I tried to
reboot into Safe Mode; that worked. I examined AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS, since plainly we were getting far enough in the boot process to run
those and get me to a DOS prompt. Sure enough, ResKit had installed a PATH
statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT. This, I believed, was telling the system to look
only at ResKit when it wanted to find WINDOWS.COM. I put a REM in front of
the PATH statement and rebooted successfully in Normal Mode. This PATH
issue raised the question of whether I could dismantle the ResKit and use just the
programs from it that interested me, putting them in an existing folder on my
path (say, DOS_UTIL) rather than have this new addition to my PATH statement
just for a half-dozen utilities I might or might not use. They would be more
convenient that way, and I would be more likely to remember them when I
needed them. As I read through the materials accompanying the ResKit, the
specific programs from the Sampler that seemed most likely to be useful to me
were CHECKLINKS.EXE (finds and eliminates dead links and shortcuts -- a
function provided by Norton's System Checker that might give me one more
reason why I could get by with a minimal Norton installation); CLIPTRAY.EXE
(optimizes and manages the Clipboard); FILEINFO.EXE (provides detailed
information on virtually every file included in Win98 and Internet Explorer 4.0);
LFNBACK.EXE (a long filename backup utility that might help me with some of
the tasks described in this essay); QUIKTRAY.EXE (to organize icons in the
Win98 system tray); TEXTVIEW.EXE (text file viewer); TIMETHIS.EXE
(command-line tool to time how long a command took to execute); WHERE.EXE
(command-line tool to find a specified file); and WINDIFF.EXE (file and
directory comparison tool). For some reason, I couldn't find LFNBACK.EXE -maybe it ran only inside the Tools Management Console that ResKit had
installed -- but the others were all available as seemingly standalone executable
programs. I copied them over to the AMD machine, put them into a temporary
folder, and ran them one at a time. I had a few slight difficulties -- TIMETHIS
and WHERE needed to run from a command line; WINDIFF required an
additional file from the ResKit folder (GUTILS.DLL), which I supplied; likewise,
FILEINFO wanted the WIN98.MFI file -- but otherwise the programs listed

above all seemed to run OK by double-clicking on them in Windows Explorer.

This meant that the only ones that really belonged in DOS_UTIL were TIMETHIS
and WHERE, so I put copies of those two there. For the rest, I didn't need a
PATH statement; I just needed to create shortcuts to them and put those
shortcuts into a Utilities folder somewhere on the Start | Programs menu. I also
wanted to use the shortcut to the Resource Kit Online Book, since that appeared
to be the 1,700-page monster mentioned above. Other than that, I didn't need the
whole ponderous machinery of the Tools Management Console. I created a new
sub-subfolder in Start | Programs called "Bury These," and I sank the rest of the
ResKit shortcuts in there. The whole ResKit looked to be about 11 MB, so it was
no big deal to leave it on, and that way I'd have TweakUI if I wanted it and
would also be able to revive the ResKit's machinery later if some good excuse
came along.
(b) PowerTweaks. I was ready, at long last, to revisit the PowerToys or
PowerTweaks or whatever they were called -- the other Microsoft things, similar
to TweakUI, that had confused and spooked me earlier. (See point 71.) The goal
was to sort back through the wreckage of that previous attempt and figure out
what I should and should not try to install. As I browsed around Microsoft's
website, I discovered, first, that its PowerToys -- which maybe I had first heard
about several years earlier -- were some kind of Win95 fix-up. Maybe they were
no good and had been phased out, or maybe they had been built into Win98, but
the message was clear enough: they were "not for Windows 98." See
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloaddef.asp?RLD=85. Then, at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/webaccess/, I discovered several tool
collections that were oriented toward Internet Explorer ("IE") rather than Win98;
apparently they were follow-up products that did for IE 5 what PowerToys had
done for IE 4. They were as follows: (1) IE 5 Web Accessories. These basically
seemed to add a bunch of options to your right-click (context) menu when you're
using IE. The thing is, the version of IE that was now newly installed on the
PENTIUM computer already had some of these options, either on the right-click
menu (e.g., Links and Images lists) or (in the case of Quick Search and Image
Toggler) as Favorites. (See point 109(g).) Based on a year or two of experience
with this download on the AMD machine, I felt that the only feature not
presently found on my new Win98 installation, that I would use at least
occasionally, was Zoom In, and I could replace that with the Magnifier that was
one of the Accessibility options included with Win98. (Indeed, the Magnifier
was a little disconcerting at first, but after a few minute I found that I preferred it
over the Zoom feature.) Moreover, I had found that all these options, including
some I didn't want, had tended to clog up the right-click (context) menu. So I
rejected the Web Accessories. (2) IE 5 Toolbar Wallpaper. I quickly ruled this
out. I was trying to get used to the bare minimum of toolbars in IE, and probably
wouldn't notice the difference much; even if I did have the ability to change the

background on those toolbars, I'd probably choose a solid color to enhance

readability, and as I recalled I could do that just by changing my Display settings
in Control Panel; and as it turned out, X-Setup would allow me to adjust the
toolbar background without needing any additional download. (See point 137.)
(3) IE 5 Power Tweaks. There were three tools in this set, and although they
were pretty minor, I decided I might occasionally benefit from having them, so I
downloaded and installed them. (4) Web Developer Accessories ("WDA"). This
one offered a "View Partial Source" option that would allow me to highlight a
certain portion of a web page and look at its source code. The main benefit -- and
it would be a good one -- would be that I could quickly find out whether the
developer of a web page bothered to put any HTML targets in the text at that
point. If s/he did, I could make sure my links pointed right to that desired spot,
rather than merely to the top of the web page. So I downloaded and installed
this as well. I rebooted after installing, went into IE, and experimented. I found
that the Document Tree option (installed by the WDA, if I'm not mistaken) was
strictly over my head and was just an item of clutter on the right-click (context)
menu. But when I highlighted part of a web page, right-clicked, and chose View
Partial Source, it worked as advertised, and I rejoiced and was exceedingly glad.
It had taken me a while to get back to the point of revisiting the tweaks I had
tried to install earlier (see point 71), but I had a much more solid feeling about
the whole thing this time around.
(c) Illegal Operation. To prepare the PENTIUM computer so I could install the IE
5 Power Tweaks and the Web Developer Accessories as just described, I closed
down all open programs. To close down the Office 97 Shortcut Bar, I used CtrlAlt-Del. This gave me, for possibly the first time on this computer, the message
"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."
Worse, when I hit the Close button, the message did not go away. Hitting CtrlAlt-Del again did not give me an option to close down this message; indeed, it
did nothing at all. Fortunately, when I selected Start | Shut Down | Restart, I
found that Win98 closed itself down gracefully. Not wanting to take any
chances, I ran ScanDisk (standard, drives C and D) and System File Checker.
(See point 116(d) and (e).) I have the sense, or perhaps the superstition, that
Win98 heals itself sometimes just by rebooting (by rebooting into Safe Mode, if
necessary) so after completing these tests successfully, I rebooted. Then I tried
shutting down the Office Shortcut Bar with Ctrl-Alt-Del again. This time it did
not squawk, and I was able to proceed with installing the programs mentioned at
the end of point 119(b).
(d) RegClean. I had seen some positive comments on this program, so I went to
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q147/7/69.asp and
downloaded Microsoft's RegClean 4.1a Registry cleaner. One person
commented that it was not intended for Win98, but that's not what this Microsoft

site seemed to say. The instructions there indicated that I could put this
REGCLEAN.EXE in any folder and just click to run it. The instructions said that
the purpose of RegClean was to clean up unnecessary Registry entries that might
pile up over time as you install and uninstall programs. Those entries could
cause crashes and could slow down your system startup. I hoped the freeze I
had just experienced wasn't an example of that, and I felt that I probably didn't
need to run it now, on this new Win98 installation. The instructions also said
that RegClean was not intended to clean up every possible problem with the
Registry, and that the program will not change any Registry entries that it does
not understand or that might be correct. In rare cases, it said, the program can
cause problems; in such cases you need to undo the changes by double-clicking
on the most recent UNDO.REG file, which stores a record of the way things were
before RegClean ran. Anyway, I put REGCLEAN.EXE in C:\WINDOWS and
put a shortcut to it in a Start | Programs subfolder; and now that I was
sufficiently curious about it, I ran it. And what did I get on my screen, but a
dialog for WinZip, the popular zipping (and unzipping) program. I hadn't
installed it; it must have been included with RegClean itself. Anyway, this called
for a slight readjustment. If RegClean was going to consist of a bunch of files,
then I wanted to put it in its own folder called D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\RegClean. So I closed WinZip and did exactly that. Unfortunately,
WinZip couldn't put it into that kind of folder, so I put it back into D:\TEMP and
tried there. That didn't work either. I tried with the copy I had kept on the AMD
machine. It worked OK there. This was odd, but I went with it for now, and just
copied over the unzipped files to the appropriate folder on the PENTIUM
computer. I created a shortcut and double-clicked on it. RegClean ran for a halfminute and then gave me the option of going ahead and fixing errors. This is
where it created the UNDO.REG file. It said it had fixed the errors it had found,
and since it created an Undo file, I assume it did find some. I rebooted, just to
see if my system would still work, and it did. So maybe running RegClean was a
good idea. So I made a note for myself to set up a some sort of reminder that
would trigger this and other maintenance items occasionally. (Later, I found a
9/14/98 ZDNet article saying that most users should avoid RegClean. See
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,347539,00.html. But
they swore by it at http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cleanup/, updated
9/25/99, so I go with the latter. Perhaps it was improved in the intervening
year. In a search of newsgroup comments, I found that Win98 users generally
seemed happy with it. But the main point seemed to be that SCANREG did the
same thing, and did it better. (See point 139.) SCANREG is the Win98 Registry
Checker program. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q183/6/03.ASP.) Later, I
decided to remove RegClean. (See point 139(a).)

120. Still More Windows Adjustments. As I was going through the steps
described above, I came across yet more ways to adjust my system, and I realized
that I had not nearly exhausted the list of non-risky things you can do to Win98.
The tips and ideas I found worthwhile were as follows:
(a) CONFIG.SYS: Cannot Open This File. To begin the next step (see point
120(b)), I went into Start | Run | SYSEDIT. This gave me "System Configuration
Error," followed by this CONFIG.SYS error. But it had opened CONFIG.SYS,
and showed that it was a blank file. I exited the System Configuration Editor
and searched for files named CONFIG.SYS. The system had three: one in
D:\DOS_UTIL, one in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD, and one in a
PartitionMagic subfolder. I opened each in WordPad, and none was a blank file.
So apparently SYSEDIT had looked for a CONFIG.SYS file somewhere else -normally, it would be in C:\ -- and, upon failing to find it, had opened a blank
instead. To check this possibility, I ran SYSEDIT again, looked at the contents of
the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and verified that the AUTOEXEC.BAT file being
opened was located in C:\. Apparently the C:\CONFIG.SYS file had somehow
gotten deleted during all this fooling around. I recalled it being an empty file at
one point, so I copied one of the other CONFIG.SYS files to C:\, opened it, and
emptied it out. I ran SYSEDIT again, and this time it worked. After changing the
File Cache Settings as described in point 120(b), I rebooted, and that worked fine
too.
(b) File Cache Settings. A note I saw somewhere online reminded me that I had
once researched the question of setting a minimum and maximum cache. The
advice now told me to go to Start | Run | Sysedit | SYSTEM.INI, and to search
there for the [vcache] section. I did this on the AMD machine, and found that I
had entered these two settings:
minfilecache=10240
maxfilecache=10240
I don't know where I got those numbers, but I think the general concept was,
again, that you set the cache to just one size so that Windows won't waste a lot of
energy resizing it. (See point 44.) These numbers differed from the numbers
now recommended by this person online, who wanted the minimum cache to be
1024 and the maximum to be 8192. As I recalled, this was something on which
opinions had varied considerably, and it had turned out that the settings should
depend on how much RAM you have available. I decided to go with my own
research, so I put the above cache settings on the PENTIUM computer at 10240.

(c) CONFIG.SYS Tweaks. That CONFIG.SYS file looked a little naked, so I

decided to dress it up by adding these lines to it, mostly to remind me of these
possibilities if they seemed useful in the future:
REM Use the next line if you get Out of Environment Space errors
REM shell=c:\command.com /p /e:4096
REM Make it larger than 4096 bytes if the messages recur.
REM
REM To speed up Windows, try the next line:
REM stacks=0,0
(d) Deleting GID and FTS Files. I found a suggestion that I should delete files
with GID or FTS extensions. These types, according to the tip, were created by
Windows help programs and would be recreated if needed. There certainly
were dozens of them on each of my computers. As far as I could recall, the
Windows Cleanup Wizard had not mentioned these file types. (See point 105(g).
So was it safe to delete them? One bit of advice was to do it in DOS, so that I
wouldn't be deleting any files that Windows was actively using. That made
sense, but what about the part where it said the system would recreate them?
Probing further, I found an article at
http://web.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/oe1715a.htm in which
they seem to say that these files will be reconstructed as soon as you try to do a
search in a given program's help files again. The author said you might save 2-7
MB by doing this deletion, but my reaction was that I didn't care to sit there
through all those re-creations again. Indeed, that was why I had gone into those
help files to generate indexes in the first place. (See point 69.) So I was not going
to delete the GID and FTS files.
(e) Deleting TMP and Tilde Files. Everyone seemed agreed that, as long as you
aren't working in Windows (and possibly even if you are), you can delete files
with the TMP extension, and you can also delete files whose names begin with a
tilde (i.e., the ~ character). Some people suggested that, if you're nervous about
it, you can delete these files to your Recycle Bin and leave them there a few days
before eliminating them altogether. I didn't like that suggestion, however,
because one large deletion thereafter could fill the Recycle Bin and could brush
those files right out into oblivion. Also, I had found that Word 97 often created
temporary files whose names began with a tilde, and I had sometimes used those
files to recover lost work. Instead of deleting such files or putting them into the
Recycle Bin, I decided to copy them to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP every week, right
after the MAINT_WK.BAT program had cleaned out the previous week's
collection of files from that folder. (See point 105(h).) But then I decided that it
wasn't worth writing and running a whole batch file for this purpose every
week. This probably wouldn't require my attention more than once every month

or two, and the fastest way to do it was just to do a file-find operation in

Windows Explorer, where I could see exactly what I was deleting and where I
would get a shot at hidden TMP files too. This, too, went onto the list of
maintenance items to perform manually every now and then. I tried to automate
it, using SWEEP.COM to move files from each directory, but I found that
SWEEP.COM gets confused when it gets down into deeply nested subdirectories.
(SWEEP.COM is an old utility that you can still find online. See
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/pcmagvol/vol4n24.zip and point 57. After this effort, I
asked PC Mag if they would be interested in updating it.) Later, I found a way
to put this into MAINT_WK.BAT after all. (See point 124.)
(f) Desktop Tools Folder. I decided it would be helpful to have a toolbar that
gave me quick access to desktop-style tools -- e.g., calculator, WordPad,
magnifier -- that you might have on an ordinary desk. (This isn't what Win98
means by "desktop," but I knew what I meant.) I created the toolbar by rightclicking on the taskbar and creating a new toolbar named Desktop Tools.
Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to drag this toolbar from the taskbar
up to the Links bar at the top of the screen. (See point 105(e).) They said I was
supposed to be able to just drag it up there, but it wouldn't go. I played with it
for quite a while, and then suddenly it worked. I think what I did, in the end,
was to create a shortcut for the folder containing the shortcuts for these desktop
tools, and drag that shortcut down to the taskbar, and then fiddle with it for a
while, and then drag it up to the Links bar. (I figured out the technique later.
See point 120(o).) Then, after all that hard work, I decided I'd rather have it as a
folder with a pull-down menu as part of the Links bar itself. (See point 109(g).)
So I moved the Desktop Tools folder full of shortcuts up to become a subfolder
under the Favorites\Links folder. (Eventually, it landed in a different place. See
point 143.)
(g) Caps Lock Beep. Since I sometimes hit the Caps Lock key without knowing
it, I decided I would like a beep to tell me that I've done it. For this, I went into
Control Panel | Accessibility Options | Keyboard | Toggle Keys. To make sure
the setting would stay on, I went into Accessibility Options | General and
unchecked the Automatic Reset box.
(h) Specifying "Save In" Location. Most of the programs that I used to produce
documents, spreadsheets, and other forms of output had settings that allowed
me to specify the default location where I wanted them to save files unless
instructed otherwise. Four exceptions were Paint, Photo Editor, WordPad, and
Notepad. To specify an output location for these programs, I adjusted their
shortcuts. (It's at times like this that you appreciate not having multiple icons for
the same program scattered around. I later realized I had to do this in the
SendTo folder as well for WordPad and Notepad. (See point 113(c).)) To do this,

I located the shortcuts. Icons for Paint and Photo Editor were on the Start |
Programs menu, and the other two were on the Desktop Tools button that I had
installed on the Links bar at the top of the screen. (See point 120(f).) In each case,
the change was similar: right-click on the program's shortcut icon, go into
Properties | Shortcut | Start In and set the locations there. In my case, I chose
the TEMP folder on F (AV, short for Audio/Video -- see point 32) for Paint and
Photo Editor, the TEMP folder on E (DATA) for WordPad, and D:\DOS_UTIL
for Notepad.
(i) Clear Documents Automatically. I created a little batch file called
CLR_DOCS.BAT, whose sole purpose was to clean out the Start | Documents
list. The file's sole command line was DELTREE /Y
C:\WINDOWS\RECENT\*.* (which will leave the folder in place and therefore
has a chance of running successfully without the necessity of rebooting to real
DOS). Another approach that someone suggested was to set up a batch file that
would use DELTREE to delete the entire Recent folder, and then set up the
Scheduler (see point 105(g)) to run this batch file every few minutes. If I had
intended CLR_DOCS to be my permanent solution, I would have made a
shortcut to it and/or would have scheduled it to run regularly (or would have
called it from within my AUTOEXEC.BAT); but I expected a tweaking program
to remove the list from my vision (see point 137(h)), so it could stay there if it
wanted, and I made sure there wasn't anything in it before making a CD image
(see point 116(b)). Similarly, I set up a CLR_RECY.BAT file for the Recycled
folder. (See point 116(c).) In this case, however, I used two lines: DELTREE /Y
C:\RECYCLED\*.* plus a similar line for the Recycled Bin on drive D.
(j) Get Rid of "My Documents" Folder. I finally learned how to remove this
turkey. (See point 46.) The key, it seems, was to make sure that each Office 97
program had some other default directory, and to do the deleting in DOS. I had
set other default directories in the programs that I intended to use (see point
102); now I opened a DOS box, typed ATTRIB -S C:\MYDOCU~1, and then
DELTREE C:\MYDOCU~1.
(k) Hourly Maintenance. On reflection, I decided I should set up an
HOURLY.BAT file to run CLR_DOCS (see point 120(i)) every hour, according to
an entry in the Task Scheduler (see point 105(g)). Then, if it turned out that a
tweaking program eliminated the need for CLR_DOCS, no harm would be done:
HOURLY would fire up, find nothing, and go back to sleep, all within one or two
seconds. And this way, while I was on the subject, I would have HOURLY
running and could add more frequently repeated tasks to it anytime I wanted. (I
could schedule each job individually in Task Scheduler, if I wanted, but I saw no
reason to clutter that program with a bunch of separate commands that would

each require me to go through the same scheduling process, one at a time.) So

far, these were the only lines in HOURLY:
@echo off
REM This file runs other files every hour.
call clr_docs.bat
CLR_DOCS was a good candidate for this because, otherwise, every time I ran
the mouse over the Start | Documents folder, I had a slight delay while
Windows listed all those old documents that I didn't need to see. To put
HOURLY in the Task Scheduler, I used the same procedure as with
MAINT_WK.BAT. (See point 105(h).) For consistency, and to keep these
programs next to each other in file lists, I renamed HOURLY.BAT to be
MAINT_HR.BAT before scheduling it. In Task Scheduler, I ran it through the
wizard, browsed to D:\DOS_UTIL\MAINT_HR.BAT, set it to run daily at 8 AM,
and in the Advanced properties I set the Advanced scheduling to repeat the task
every 60 minutes over a duration of 23 hours and 30 minutes. Back in Windows
Explorer, I right-clicked on MAINT_HR.BAT and set Properties | Program |
Run to minimized, and I checked the "close on exit" box. (I revised MAINT_HR
again later. See point 306.)
(l) Shrink Desktop Icons. I right-clicked on the desktop and chose Properties |
Appearance | Item | Icon and set its size to 16. This was a little too small, so I
tried 24. Then I realized that the monitor was still set to the basic 640 x 480
mode. (See point 15.) I decided to postpone this item until I began to customize
my hardware settings for each of my computers separately, and see then whether
I needed tiny icons. I later heard that any size smaller than 31 causes the little
arrows to disappear from your shortcut icons. Some people consider that good
news, but it disturbs me. I don't mind deleting a shortcut, but I would like some
advance warning before unintentionally deleting an actual executable program.
(m) Multiple File Associations. By default, if I right-clicked on a TXT file in
Windows Explorer and chose Open, it would open in Notepad (unless, if it was
too big, it would open in Wordpad). (I assume it's this way because Notepad
opens so quickly.) I wanted the option to open TXT files in Word 97 as well. To
set this, I went into Windows Explorer | View | Folder Options | File Types. In
the Registered File Types window, I went down to the Text Document entry and
chose Edit | New. On the Action line, I typed "Open in Word." To fill in the
Application line, I couldn't remember offhand exactly where the Word 97
program EXE file was, so I right-clicked on Start and chose Explore, went to the
Word shortcut in the Start menu, right-clicked on it and chose Properties, and
copied the Target from the Shortcut tab there. I didn't know whether to Use
DDE, so I left that box blank. I tried it on a TXT file, and it worked. Later, I

realized that this duplicated the SendTo option that I had created for Word (see
point 113(c)), and I really didn't need more right-click clutter, so I removed it.
(n) Shortcut to Desktop. "Coolswitching" is the act of using Alt-Tab to switch
from one open window to another. (If you hold Alt-Tab a moment before
releasing, you'll see icons for each program, with a brief descriptive text
underneath, and you'll note that the icons are arranged with the most recently
visited ones coming first.) I heard that you can create an open window
containing the desktop by double-clicking on My Computer to open a window,
making sure View | Toolbar is checked in that window, and clicking on the
yellow folder with the up-arrow on it. This gets you to a window entitled
"Desktop." Now you can coolswitch to this folder, and there's an icon for it on
the taskbar, so you can also use your mouse to get to it. I did this much. The
problem was that the folder would go away each time I would reboot. I knew
there was a simple way to make a permanent shortcut to it, but I couldn't
remember what it was. This wasn't your ordinary folder. I couldn't right-click
on it in Windows Explorer to create a shortcut. So I did it the hard way: I
selected Favorites | Add to Favorites. Then I went into C:\Windows\Favorites
and looked at the new resulting shortcut. Simply enough, it pointed to
C:\Windows\Desktop. Was that what I wanted? To find out, I went to
C:\Windows\Desktop in Windows Explorer, right-clicked on it, and chose
Create Shortcut. It seemed to create a shortcut, but I had no idea where it went.
I searched for all files whose names contained the word "desktop," and found a
"Shortcut to Desktop" in C:\Windows. (Thus, I learned that shortcuts seem to be
created in the parent folder.) I tried this shortcut, and it took me to the folder I
had created, not to the actual desktop -- which explained why it had a plain old
folder icon instead of the shovel icon. So that was the answer. This folder-style
icon was the one that I could put somewhere in the Start menu if I wanted to
have direct access to the desktop folder. By contrast, the shortcut that I had
created in Favorites had the shovel icon, and when I clicked on it, it didn't do
anything: it took me to neither the actual desktop nor the folder, so I deleted it. I
noticed, by the way, that the folder-style shortcut no longer showed me
everything on the desktop, as the original folder had done. It showed items that
I had created, such as the desktop shortcut to Device Manager (see point 112(e)),
but not the items that Win98 put there (e.g., My Computer). I hoped to put this
folder-style shortcut to good use, but I wound up deleting it later. (See point
120(r).)
(o) Toolbar Status Review. At this point, I had three active toolbars: the Links
toolbar, at the top of the screen (see point 109(g)); the Office 97 Shortcut Bar, at
the left side of the screen (see point 102); and the Suites toolbar, occupying a
small part of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (see point 113(e)). I had set
the properties for all of these bars to include Auto Hide, so they weren't visible

until I moved the mouse cursor over to those edges. The right side of the screen
was still available for a toolbar, but I didn't plan to put one there because I found
that I often moved the mouse too far over to that edge and pulled out the hidden
toolbar, when all I meant to do was click on the horizontal scrollbar. The only
remaining location for a toolbar, other than to double up with an existing
toolbar, was to create a floating toolbar. For this, I had to create a toolbar, drag it
out into the middle of the screen, and position the cursor at its edges to resize it.
I had difficulty dragging toolbars until I discovered that (1) you have to drag
them by clicking on the bar at their left edge and (2) you get better results when
there are no programs maximized -- that is, when you can see the desktop
plainly.
(p) Floating Toolbar. I created a folder called "Always On" in the Toolbars
subdirectory in my Start | Programs folder, and I put one icon in that folder that
I wanted to have visible at all times. This icon was the folder-style desktop icon
that I had just discovered. (See point 120(n).) The purpose of this icon was, I
thought, to give me a place to drag pieces of text to. (See point 120(r).) Then I
created a toolbar for this Always On folder as described above (see point 113(e)),
dragged that toolbar out into the center of the screen, resized it to be as small as
possible, right-clicked to set it to be Always on Top, and dragged it as far down
in the bottom right corner of the screen as I could go without docking it onto a
side or bottom toolbar. It concealed most of the clock there, but if I held the
mouse on the clock for a minute, I'd get a tool tip that gave me the date and time.
I right-clicked on the folder icon and changed it to the desktop shovel icon.
Unfortunately, tiny as it was, the Always On floating toolbar still got in the way
sometimes -- especially once I learned that I could get rid of the clock down in
the system tray at the bottom right corner of the screen -- and that I preferred life
without that clock -- by right-clicking on it, choosing Properties, and unchecking
the "Show Clock" box. (The tiny floating toolbar used by the ICQ chat program
was the only one I had ever found that I could squeeze into space that no
programs would be using; this Always On toolbar at its smallest size (and
without the folder icon, which turned out to be unnecessary) was still several
times larger than that.) I could have customized the Always On toolbar so that it
would not be Always on Top, but that would have made it less accessible as a
place to drag pieces of text to. Eventually, I found a better approach, and thus
deleted this Always On toolbar. (See point 120(r).)
(q) Right- and Left-Edge Toolbar Options. Revisiting the question (see point
120(o)), I found that I had more right-edge toolbar options than I had thought. If
I shut off Auto Hide, the right-edge toolbar would no longer irritate me by
jumping up every time I tried to use the vertical scroll bar. This made the toolbar
permanently visible, but I found that I could drag its left edge to the right, so as
to make it fairly narrow and unobtrusive. And if I made it Always on Top, it

would always be available to drag things to. (See point 120(r).) Now that I had
cured the pop-up problem on the right edge, I turned to the left edge. The Office
Shortcut Bar (see point 102) was causing problems with none of the programs I
had installed so far, but I knew it would get in the way when I began to use Cool
Edit 2000, which often required me to work with the left edge of the screen. (See
point 157(a).) I saw no reason to resolve the left-edge pop-up problem by setting
the big Office Shortcut Bar to be Always on Top on the left edge of the screen,
thereby taking another, bigger bite out of my available workspace. I could have
moved it to the top of the screen, but it would either obscure or be obscured by
the Links bar I had up there already. (See point 109(g).) I decided to try a
different approach: I right-clicked on it and customized it to be Auto Hide and
not Always on Top, and then I dragged it across to the right edge of the screen.
It docked itself to the right of the permanent right-edge toolbar that I had just
created. Now it would come up only if I moved the cursor to the right, past the
vertical scroll bar and also past the permanent right-edge toolbar. There might
still be times when it would pop up when I didn't want it, but that was less likely
because it was more out of the way now; and even if it did happen, the pop-up
Office Shortcut Bar wasn't so much wider than the permanent right-edge bar that
it would entirely cover both the permanent bar and the vertical scroll bar; so it
might not actually get in my way much at all. (This was not my ultimate
solution to the problem, however. See point 120(ab).)
(r) Dragging Things to the Desktop. I had heard that you could drag a piece of a
document to the desktop and this would create an icon there, and when you
clicked on that icon, it would open up that document and take you back to the
place where you had been in that document. This was my reason for creating the
desktop folder. (See point 120(n).) When I experimented, however, I found that
this was not how it worked on my machine. If I dragged a piece from a Word
document to the desktop, I got a "Document scrap" that consisted only of the
piece I had dragged, not the entire document. I found that this dragging
technique worked with Word and WordPad excerpts, but not with pieces from
Notepad, Excel, Outlook 98, or Internet Explorer. (For the approaches that
failed, copy and paste didn't work either, because right-clicking on the Scraps
toolbar (see paragraph (s), below) always brought up a toolbar-related context
menu (with options like "Show Title"), not a document-related menu (with
options like Cut and Paste).) (Later, I discovered that I was supposed to be
dragging the excerpt with the right mouse button, not the left, and choosing
"Create shortcut here." I did this with the Desktop Folder that I created later, and
it worked just fine. (See point 120(ac).))
(s) Dragging Things to a Folder. The dragging technique just mentioned also
worked when I dragged to a folder instead of to the desktop. A folder seemed
likely to be more useful for me: I usually used my programs in maximized

windows, and thus rarely saw the desktop. Hence, I created the floating Always
On toolbar. (See point 120(p).) I found, however, that in addition to the
problems I had with floating toolbars, I also had not chosen my folder well. The
document scraps that I dragged to this toolbar were stored in the Toolbars
subfolder under the Start | Programs menu. That subfolder, residing on drive C,
was no place to store documents. So I got rid of it and decided, instead, to create
a folder named E:\Temp\Scraps (drive E was named DATA), and I created a
new Scraps Toolbar based on that folder. This was the permanent right-edge
toolbar described a moment ago. (See point 120(q).) I went into Windows
Explorer; right-clicked on that Scraps folder and created a shortcut to it, which
went into the subfolder's parent directory (i.e., into E:\Temp); dragged that
shortcut to the head of the new Scraps toolbar (i.e., ahead of the document scraps
that I had dragged there during my experimentation); and right-clicked on it and
renamed it "View Scraps." Each scrap added its own little page-like icon to the
Scraps toolbar, but since those icons told me virtually nothing about the scraps, I
decided to use the space for other things. To do this, I moved the Suites toolbar
(see point 113(e)) up right below the Scrap toolbar. This way, if there were any
document scraps in the Scraps folder, the toolbar would have space only to show
a ">>" that I could click on to get those scraps; or I could just click on the Scraps
folder icon to bring up a little window containing the full list of scraps. I could
select them all and open them all at once as separate documents in the programs
from which they had come (i.e., either Word or WordPad). I figured the SendTo
toolbar could keep a folder-style icon (see point 120(u)), since folders was what it
was all about, but I changed the Scraps icon by right-clicking and selecting
Properties | Shortcut | Change Icon. Since I figured I would be constantly
deleting things from this folder, I protected that icon by right-clicking on it and
setting its Properties | General tab so that it would be Read-Only. Finally,
somewhere along the way, I found that although I could not drag text from a
web page to Scraps, I could drag the little icon at the left end of the Internet
Explorer Address bar to Scraps. I figured this would be useful to preserve a
quick way to find a web page I was looking at, at those times when Windows
was looking like it might crash.
(t) SendTo SendTo. In my SendTo folder, I now had subfolders named Folders,
Programs, and Other Destinations. (See point 113(c).) Under Folders, I had an
entry called Temp Folders, and I created a new one called Data Folders, so that I
could quickly send a document directly to the default folders containing e.g., my
Word and Excel files. Under Programs, I had Word, Excel, and other programs.
(See point 120(m).) Under Other Destinations, I now added a folder called
Unsorted. The purpose of this folder was to contain new items that I might
decide to add to my SendTo options, in existing or future folders. (See e.g., point
120(u).) To enable this option, I just created a shortcut to the Unsorted folder,
put it in the Other Destinations folder, and renamed it "Add This Item to

Unsorted." I used this shortcut to accumulate the list of folders that belonged in
the Data Folders group. The basic idea here is that a destination has to exist in a
SendTo folder before you can send anything there, and this shortcut is the
destination for items (i.e., folders) that don't yet exist in Unsorted.
(u) Folders Toolbar. I began to see a need for another toolbar, one that would
take me to various folders quickly. If I just wanted to send a file to those folders,
I could add a SendTo item (see point 113(c)); but if I wanted to see and work with
their contents, I needed something different. Right now, for instance, I wanted to
get to the SendTo folder so that I could organize the items that I had just added
to the Unsorted subfolder there. (See point 120(t).) I didn't want a complete list
of folders, of course -- Windows Explorer gave me that, and the whole point was
to avoid having to page down through many folders to reach a buried one like
SendTo. I also didn't see any need to create a new list of frequently visited
folders, since I already had a good start on that in the SendTo folder. All I really
needed was another small, one-icon folder on the right toolbar (like the Scraps
folder) that would point to SendTo. (See point 120(s).) The subfolders under
SendTo just contained shortcuts to the actual folders, but these shortcuts worked
fine to get me to the folders themselves. (See point 113(c).) Thus, I created a new
toolbar based on C:\Windows\SendTo and dragged it to the right side, to share
that edge with the Scraps and Suites toolbars. Again, to keep it compact, I
temporarily dragged the Suites toolbar off to float, getting it out of the way; and
then, after I had installed this Folders toolbar, I brought Suites back in as the
bottom toolbar and squeezed it right up against the Folders toolbar.
(v) Dynamic SendTo. I thought it would be handy to have a self-updating list of
most-recently-visited folders in SendTo. The basic idea was to ask a program
like HOURLY.BAT (see point 120(k)) to call some other program, each hour (or
at least each day), that would examine all files on selected disks, take note of the
dates on which they were last revised, make a list of the files that were modified
within the last 72 hours, and produce a list of the folders in which those recently
modified files appeared. I could have done that much by using the information
gathered in LIST_ALL.BAS. (See point 116(g).) The part that I didn't know how
to do, unfortunately, was to automatically convert those folder names into Win98
shortcuts in a folder called C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Most Recent. I record
the idea here nevertheless, in case I later discover a way to automate that last
part of the process.
(w) Screen Saver Shortcuts. Traditionally, I had used Flying through Space as
my screen saver. I thought I might be able to use a shortcut to set my screen
saver, so that I could use one click to change screen savers instead of the multistep process of going into Control Panel | Display. I made a shortcut to
C:\Windows\System\Flying Through Space.scr. Unfortunately, this only

turned on the screen saver for the moment, and did not change my default screen
saver, so I deleted the shortcut. It would still be useful for someone who just
wants a fast screen saver, although I note that the Office Shortcut Bar already
comes with that feature. Another option would be to right-click on the taskbar
and choose Minimize All Windows.
(x) Removing Extraneous Screen Savers and Control Panel Elements. There were
some screen savers that I felt confident I would never use. Each screen saver was
powered by an SCR file in C:\Windows\System. I sorted the contents of that
folder by clicking on the Type heading and marked the ones I didn't plan on ever
using. Rather than delete them, however, I decided to save them to a
C:\Windows\System\Extraneous Items folder. (As you'll see, that folder name
stands out among the DOS-style names of the other subfolders under
C:\Windows\System.) Similarly, each Control Panel element had a
corresponding CPL file in C:\Windows\System, and there were a few of them
(FindFast, Fonts, Game Controllers, Passwords, and Users) that I didn't think I
would need. These, however, had short filenames and therefore were not as easy
to identify in C:\Windows\System. Also, as I thought about it, I realized that I
had repeatedly had the experience of clicking on some previously unused item in
the Control Panel in order to work out some kind of bug. This, I felt, was not as
innocent as shedding a couple of unused screen savers. I decided not to remove
any Control Panel elements after all, with one exception. Following the advice of
many people, I made an exception for FINDFAST.CPL, which apparently drags
down your system more than it's worth. I added it to the Extraneous Items
folder, and eventually I compressed the contents of that folder into a ZIP file.
Later, I found that X-Setup made it easier to hide or unhide Control Panel items.
(See point 137(b).) Unfortunately, this FindFast item wasn't on their list. So I left
it changed here and didn't use X-Setup for that.
(y) Mouse Speed. I went into Control Panel | Mouse | Buttons and set the
double-click speed slow, because I was sometimes a little slow on the draw with
the mouse and would wind up getting two single clicks (i.e., changing the name
of the file instead of opening it). I also sped up the pointer under the Motion tab
by just one notch. The tradeoff there is that, if you set it too fast, it becomes
harder to get the mouse targeted on small things you want to click on -- it shoots
right past them.
(z) Windows Text Files. Following a suggestion in
http://www.cots.com/html/body_general_1.htm, I searched (in Windows
Explorer, I used Tools | Find | Files) in C:\Windows (but not its subfolders) for
all files ending in TXT. I selected them all, right-clicked on the group of them,
and chose Quick View. This opened a boatload of viewers, some of which
informed me that I couldn't access the file in question. I closed the viewers that

showed me a file with no useful information for me, including a number of log
files that apparently came into existence during the installation of various
Windows programs. I also closed the ones that were over my head. The
following files remained: PRINTERS.TXT (see point 224(a)) and TIPS.TXT (see
point 120(aa)).
(aa) Rooted Folders. According to TIPS.TXT (see point 120(z)), I could have
created "rooted" folders in Windows Explorer -- that is, I could have doctored a
copy of Explorer so that it would automatically open in a specified folder. The
options were to open Explorer in either Explorer View (showing what you
normally see in Explorer, with folders on the left side and files on the right) or
Open View (showing just the file part). I could even command this rooted folder
to select and/or open a certain item in the specified folder. I had noticed that my
Folders toolbar (see point 120(u)) opened its folders in Open View, whereas I
would have preferred Explorer View, and at first I hoped that maybe this Rooted
Folder concept could change that; but as I thought about it, I didn't see how that
would work, since the Folders toolbar was relying on SendTo shortcuts, which
(as far as I could tell) I couldn't program to open in any special way. Maybe I
could have designed a BASIC program to create a regularly updated set of
rooted folder commands to mirror the latest developments in my set of SendTo
shortcuts, but it didn't seem worth the work. And I really didn't want yet
another set of links to folders lying around. Besides, I had noticed that I could
use the left and right arrows in the folders opened by my Folders toolbar to
accomplish approximately the same thing as I would have accomplished by
opening those folders in full Explorer View. I figured that I'd just have to wait
for some future insight to tell me how I could put rooted folders to any practical
use. Finally, I found that I could not figure out how to tell Windows Explorer to
open up without expanding drive C, which I wanted because half the time I was
going somewhere other than drive C and I didn't like having to collapse it each
time I used WinEx. (Later, I found that PowerDesk's replacement for Windows
Explorer did do what I wanted in this regard, as long as I saved the screen size
and location by holding Ctrl-Shift while clicking on the X in the upper right
corner. Note that this same trick works for some other windows too, but not
necessarily for those that open inside another program. Apparently Windows
can remember only a limited number of settings this way, so you have to redo it
sometimes for some windows.)
(ab) Problems with the Office 97 Shortcut Bar. I rebooted and did a number of
things after repositioning the Office Shortcut Bar on the right edge of my screen.
During these activities, I had no problem with the Office Shortcut Bar. At one
point several days later, however, I found that it was no longer willing to reside
at the extreme right edge of my screen. Instead, it had repositioned itself at the
left edge of the vertical toolbar that ran down the right side of my screen. (See

point 120(q).) Thus, I had to go through it every time I wanted to hit one of the
buttons on the right edge. I went online and found that other people had had
repeated problems with this shortcut bar's tendency to vanish or otherwise
behave erratically. I tried resizing and moving a couple of the right-edge
toolbars around, but this did not fix the problem. Besides, I didn't want to have
to go through all those steps repeatedly, perhaps many times a day, as some
people were doing. I had never had that problem before; then again, I had never
before tried to position it on the same edge as another toolbar. I had had a
similar problem, though: on the AMD machine, I had found that, when set to
Auto Hide, the toolbar would not come up when I was running Word in fullscreen mode. As I thought about it, I decided that the Office Shortcut Bar had
not been perfect for me. It did present a number of progam icons, but they were
divided among three separate sub-toolbars, and I often had to stop and think for
a minute to remember which of those sub-toolbars contained the icon for the
program I wished to run. (The toolbars I had selected were called Office,
Desktop, and Internet. Other choices were possible. (See point 120(q).) I needed
several toolbars because the program icons I wanted wouldn't all fit on one
toolbar. They might have, if Microsoft hadn't designed the thing to allow a lot of
space for the name of the toolbar (e.g., "Office") running vertically down the
toolbar.) Another problem with the Office Shortcut Bar was that it was actually a
running program. I didn't know whether it dragged down any of the system's
resources, but I did know that it took an extra few seconds to load, each time I
booted the machine, and also that I had to shut it down every time I wanted to
install software or run diagnostics or system repair utilities. For all these
reasons, I decided, instead, to accept the suggestion to shut off the Office
Shortcut Bar. I right-clicked on Start, chose Explore, went into the Start Menu |
Programs subfolder called StartUp, and moved the three icons that Office had
installed there (Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar, and Office
Startup) to another subfolder that I had created to hold StartUp items that I
might want to put back on my StartUp roster someday but did not want to use
now, which I had called Other Startup Icons.
(ac) Replacing Office Shortcut Bar with Desktop Toolbar. Before rebooting, I
consulted the Office Shortcut Bar, to see which program icons I had there and to
decide where else I could put them, now that the Office Shortcut Bar would no
longer be installed automatically. The vertical toolbar at the right edge of the
screen was the obvious candidate: so far, it contained only three icons. (See
point 120(u).) I was not sure it would have space for all these program icons,
however. Instead, I elected to use a divide-and-conquer strategy. For the icons
on the Desktop sub-toolbar (see point 120(ab)), I decided to create my own
Desktop Toolbar. I could have used Win98's Desktop toolbar, but it showed
every item on the desktop, including some that didn't interest me. I hoped that a
tweaking program would eventually hide those items (see point 145(j)), but I did

not yet know for sure that it would, and in the meantime I didn't want to have to
choose among all those icons every time I used this toolbar. Also, I believed my
own Desktop Toolbar would have several advantages. To create this toolbar, I
went into Windows Explorer and opened the Toolbars subfolder of my Start |
Programs folder. I added a new subfolder there called Desktop. Other had said
that I could right-click in this subfolder, choose New | Shortcut, and type
C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /root to create a folder that would contain
every item on my desktop. As I say, this wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I
tried it anyway. For me, it didn't work. Clicking on the resulting shortcut did
nothing. So I was forced to take the same approach as I had taken the last time I
had worked on this problem (see point 120(n)): I created a shortcut to
C:\Windows\Desktop, renamed it "Win98 Desktop," and put it in this Desktop
subfolder under Start | Programs. As before, this gave me only the items that I
had added to the desktop; for example, it didn't show the Recycle Bin. Its
advantage was that, since it was a folder (or at least a shortcut to one), I could
drag things to it and they would land on the actual desktop. I thought this was
nifty, so I made a copy of this shortcut and put it into my
C:\Windows\SendTo\Folders\Data Folders folder. (See point 113(c).) Then, to
provide quick access to the Recycle Bin and the other actual desktop items that I
did want to visit occasionally, I did a Tools | Find | Files in Windows Explorer,
searched for "Desktop," and copied the Show Desktop item with the shovel icon
from the Quick Launch Toolbar's folder, because this was really the only icon I
needed from that toolbar. (Later, I found that you can also get to the desktop
quickly by typing Ctrl-Esc and then Alt-M.) Finally, I cut the Desktop Tools
folder (the one containing the calculator etc.) from the Links Toolbar -- that is,
from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links (see point 120(f)), where it really didn't
belong, and pasted it into this Desktop Toolbar folder. It really didn't belong
here either, but I thought maybe the word "Desktop" would eventually make this
seem like the logical place for it. These steps gave me some of what I wanted in
my customized Desktop Toolbar. Now I was ready to create the toolbar itself.
To do this, I right-clicked on the taskbar, chose Toolbars | New Toolbar, and
pointed toward this Desktop subfolder under Start | Programs. I right-clicked
on the newly created Desktop toolbar and shut off its text and title. I dragged
the left edge of this Desktop toolbar up to the top edge of the screen and installed
it next to the Links toolbar. (See point 105(e).) For some reason, I had to do this
in two stages, hauling it first to the middle of the desktop (with all other
windows minimized) and then dragging it from there to the top. Now I made
another discovery: the Desktop Tools folder was not working right. When it
was on the Links Toolbar, it served as the top item in a submenu. That is, if I
clicked on it, a pull-down menu dropped out below it, and I could slide down
and choose the desktop tool I wanted (e.g., calculator). But now, on the Desktop
Toolbar, there was no menu function. If I clicked on it, it would open up a folder
off in the middle of the screen somewhere, and I'd have to go down there to start

my chosen desktop tool, and then I'd have to come back and close that folder.
The change in behavior seemed to accompany a change of icon. When the
Desktop Tools folder was in the Links Toolbar, it was a plain old folder, but in
the Desktop Toolbar, it became a folder with two colored dots on it. Lacking a
better solution, I dragged the folder back to the Links Toolbar, where once again
it worked as I wanted. The other problem was that I couldn't change the icons
on the folders to make them distinguishable from one another, so I had to restore
the text accompanying the icons and make the toolbar two lines high again.
(ad) Replacing Links Toolbar Text with Icons. In all this tinkering, I had noticed
that the Links Toolbar (see point 109(g)) sometimes got in the way. I had set it to
Auto Hide at the top of the screen, so as to keep it from taking up precious real
estate; but this meant that it popped up every time I moved the cursor too far
that way, which I was doing often enough. I thought it might be less obtrusive if
I could boil its two lines down to one; in that case, it seemed that even if I did
arouse it accidentally, it would be less likely to be in my way: it would just fill
the title bar, which I used only to minimize, maximize, and close windows. At
this point, I had text (e.g., "Health," "Media") next to each website icon on the
Links Toolbar. As I thought about it, I also felt that maybe it would be faster to
identify my web link pages with discrete, colorful icons, each located in its own
place on the Links Toolbar, instead of reading through the list of ten entries on
that bar to find the page I wanted. So for each page, I right-clicked and chose
Web Document | Change Icon, and then selected one that seemed fitting. The
icon files I knew of were all in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and the ones I preferred
were the Windows-style icons in SHELL32.DLL and the less orthodox icons in
PIFMGR.DLL, rather than from the four measly options available in the default
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\URL.DLL. More impressive, it seemed, were the four
billion icons available online. The first site I found offered GIF and JPG icons,
which are better suited for web pages. I downloaded a couple and used
PowerDesk (see point 135) to convert them to ICO format, but the colors were all
messed up; perhaps a different converter would have worked better. I tried
again with a more specialized search in Northern Light (title:(win98 or "win 98"
or "windows 98") and icon) and got several sites that offered files full of free
icons, but without any advance indication of what kinds of icons I was
downloading. The other option was to create my own, which I had heard I could
do just by renaming a bitmap (BMP) file to be an ICO file. I didn't have any
items I thought would be good for icons, however. Eventually, I searched
Hotfiles.com and found Icon Snatcher, a free download that I could use to search
my computer for icons that might be suitable for the job. I started to use Icon
Snatcher, but it looked like I would have to examine hundreds of files
individually in search of the icons they might contain. I bailed out of that and
just chose some reasonably good icons from the three DLLs mentioned above.
Then I right-clicked on the Links Toolbar, removed its text labels, and squeezed

it down to one line, as I had planned. (Later, I found that I could also search for
icons in C:\WINDOWS\MORICONS.DLL (although many of those had print on
them and seemed related to various software packages, including some old ones)
and in PROGMAN.EXE and COOL.DLL.)
(ae) Replacing Office Shortcut Bar with Programs Toolbar. The Desktop Toolbar
handled some of the functions of the former Office Shortcut Bar (see point
120(ac)), but I did not yet have a complete substitute for that Shortcut Bar. The
next essential ingredient was a Programs Toolbar that would contain program
icons that had formerly been on the Shortcut Bar. The two remaining categories
of icons were the Internet icons and the Office icons. (See point 112(e).) I left the
Office Shortcut Bar icons as I had arranged them in D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\Shortcut Bar\Office, but I also copied over the ones I wanted to a
new subfolder under my Toolbars folder (see point 113(e)) called
Toolbars\Programs\Main. That is, the toolbar would be based on this
Toolbars\Programs subfolder, and one of the folders listed under it would be
Main. A second one was, of course, Internet. I decided to add a third one for
Utilities. To each of these folders, I added icons for the programs I used
frequently, aiming to keep it down to approximately five icons in each case. This
was not a substitute for the Start | Programs menu; it was a distillation from -- a
simplification of -- the complexity that would exist on that menu when I had
finished installing dozens of different programs. I then created the Programs
toolbar, using the same method as above (see point 120(ac)), shut off its title but
not the text descriptions of the individual items, and dragged it to join the Links
Toolbar at the top of the screen. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with
these items as I'd had with the Desktop Toolbar (see point 120(ac): I couldn't get
them to present pull-down menus. I created a shortcut to the Programs
subfolder and put it in C:\Windows\Favorites\Links, hoping that this would
give me multi-level pulldown menus, but that didn't work; it just opened a
window when I clicked on it. So I moved the folders for clarity -- Main
Programs, Internet Programs, and Utility Programs -- and moved them all to
C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. Of course, that bloated the Links Toolbar. The
only way I could keep all this stuff within two lines on that Toolbar was to move
the Desktop Toolbar down to join the other toolbars on the right side of the
screen (see point 120(q)), and even then I had to shorten some folder names to
squeeze them in. This proved to be unnecessary, however. (See point 121.)
(af) Web Suite. I had created a Suites Toolbar. (See point 113(e).) The purpose of
that toolbar was to give me a single button that, if clicked, would open a number
of programs at the same time. The idea was that some projects required me to
open a predictable set of two, three, or more programs, and that this was an
easier way to get started in those projects. I had added other suites to that
toolbar. (See point 120(o).) By this time, I had realized that I could use another

suite. This one would be for certain websites. I would not use it every time I
went online, but it would be useful once or twice a day, when I would check up
on the news, weather, and Hotmail e-mail of the morning or afternoon. I created
the toolbar itself in the same general manner as before. This time, the shortcut
pointed at a different DOS batch file, named STE_WEB.BAT. The lines of this
batch file could just be a series of commands like this: START
HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM and START HTTP://WWW.INFO.COM. This
would start a session of Internet Explorer and send it to CNN.COM and then,
immediately, to INFO.COM. But I wanted separate sessions of Internet Explorer
to run, with each ending up on the different pages that I wanted to see. To do
this, I alternated lines, as follows:
START C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE
START HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM
START C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE
START HTTP://WWW.INFO.COM
and so forth. Right now, I added just these two lines, to remind me of how this
thing worked; I figured I'd come back later, when I had the situation all sorted
out with my Favorites, and add more lines then. (See point 261.) I gave it a
unique icon, applied my changes, made it Read-Only, applied my changes again,
clicked OK, made room for it on the right-side toolbar, and there it was.
(ag) Moving the History Folder. I belatedly discovered that I could move the
History folder and that Internet Explorer would figure out a response. Using
Windows Explorer, I tried to move it to drive H, where I had put the Temporary
Internet Files. (See point 38.) It started to do it, but then gave me a sharing
violation error message. Oops. I realized I probably should have attempted to
do this in DOS, where Windows would not be using the History folder. I clicked
on Shut Down | Restart. I got a "This program is not responding" error message.
I clicked OK and rebooted into real DOS. The History folder was hidden, so it
didn't show up on a normal DIR command. After playing around with DIR and
ATTRIB for a while, and getting myself into progressively deeper levels of
hidden directories in C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY, I realized that I might have had
better luck if I'd used a Copy command instead of Cut and Paste in Windows
Explorer. I rebooted into Windows and tried that. It seemed to work. Now I
rebooted back into real DOS, made sure I was at the prompt for drive C, and
typed DELTREE C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY. I rebooted into Windows, went
online, and discovered that Windows now had History folders on both drives C
and H, and was updating them both for my current activity. I went to drive H
and typed DELTREE H:\HISTORY. I rebooted into Windows.
C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY was still there; H:\WINDOWS\HISTORY was gone.
Having returned to my starting point, I gave up.

(ah) Conceal Cloud Logo. I didn't really mind the blue sky and clouds that filled
my screen when Windows loaded; but now that I had gotten concerned about all
kinds of Windows details, I decided I would rather see what was happening
when Windows was loading. To do this, I added the line "logo=0" (without
quotes) to the [options] section of C:\MSDOS.SYS. (I could also change this
using X-Setup. See point 137(k).) (Technically, editing MSDOS.SYS amounts to
editing your Registry, but I reserve that term for the more intimidating
procedure described in point 146.) I had to shut off its read-only attribute before
doing so and turn it back on afterwards. I rebooted and, as it turned out, I didn't
get any more details than I ordinarily got when booting, just more time to look at
the ones that were already there. I liked it better this way, though, so I left it.
Later, I went back and added the line Bootdelay=0 to remove the two-second
delay from the Windows startup that makes it easier to hit F8 and get into Safe
Mode. I also found out, eventually, that instead of setting logo=0 in
MSDOS.SYS, I could have just hit the Esc key while Windows was booting.
(ai) Freeing Leaked RAM. Applying another tip from
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/harddrive/, I did the following: (1) In
Notepad, on the AMD computer, I typed this: Mystring = Space(80000000).
(That's seven zeros.) (2) I saved the file as C:\TEMP\FREE_RAM.VBS. (3) In
Windows Explorer, I double-clicked on the file. This provoked a lot of hard disk
activity for a minute or so. (4) I noticed that my various program windows (such
as the screen on which I was writing these words) took longer to start back up
afterwards, and I decided that the program had succeeded in cleaning stuff out
of RAM. (5) Otherwise, it seemed to do no harm, so I decided it might be worth
adding to my bag of tricks. I copied it to D:\DOS_UTIL on the PENTIUM
computer and set up a Task Scheduler item (see point 105(g)) to run it once every
six hours, hoping that it would serve me as well as it served the guy at Tweak3D,
who said that it allowed him to keep Win98 running for a week without
rebooting. He recommended playing with the number (it was originally
16000000, he said) to get a setting that was right for your system. Later, I found a
more informative site (but unfortunately lost track of which one it was). This site
called the program FREEMEM.VBS and said the following: (1) You needed at
least version 5.1 of Microsoft Scripting Engines to run VBS scripts like this; MSE
came with Win98. (2) The number in parentheses was the amount by which your
free memory would increase, so you could have different VBS scripts to free
different amounts of memory. (3) The number should not exceed half of your
installed RAM. Since I had at least 64 MB on each computer, I decided that a
reasonable setting would be 24000000. (4) He said to make sure all programs
were closed before running it, but he also said that it would be reasonable to set
Task Scheduler to run it every hour, so I decided to experiment with running it
every six hours unattended and see if I had any problems.

(aj) Resizing Desktop. I decided to try again to resize the display to 800 x 600.
Last time around, I had gotten a message that the system needed to restart
immediately in order to display things properly, and then it had refused to work
properly when I did restart. (See point 105(k).) This time, I decided that if I got
that message, I would back out of it and revert to 640 x 480 mode. So I went into
Control Panel | Display | Settings and moved the Screen Area slider over to 800
by 600, and clicked OK. No restart message. Just to be sure, I rebooted, and it
came back up fine in 800 x 600 mode.
(ak) Quick Shutdown and Restart. It seemed that, for shutting down and
restarting the computer, there were more ways than met the eye. In addition to
hardware solutions (i.e., turning off the power or hitting the reset button (if any)
on the computer), and the old Ctrl-Alt-Del, and the options that came up when
you hit Start | Shut Down, there was also a fast restart (after selecting Start |
Shut Down | Restart, hold the shift bar down when you click OK), and there
were myriad Win98 programs designed to shut you down in various times and
ways. (Search Hotfiles.com for "shutdown," or see e.g.,
http://www.topfile.com/win/Desktop/Shell_Enhancements/Quick_Shutdown
/.) (See point 128.)
(al) Always Boot in DOS. I did not ordinarily need to work in DOS, so I
ordinarily wanted my machine to boot in Windows. It was not difficult to
accomodate the occasional times when a person needed to boot into real DOS:
you could either set your BIOS to boot from a DOS floppy, or else hit F8 right
after the BIOS does its thing and then choose the Command Line option. On the
other hand, there were going to be a few times when I would need to boot into
DOS, and there was one real advantage to making that, not Windows, the
ordinary bootup. The advantage was simply that I knew how to program DOS
to go on into Windows automatically, and moreover to choose either Safe Mode
or Normal Mode; but I did not know how to program Windows to boot
automatically into DOS or into its own other mode. To set up all these
alternatives the way I wanted, then, I proceeded as follows: (1) I removed the
Read-Only attribute from C:\MSDOS.SYS, went to its [Options] section, changed
the BootGUI line to read BootGUI=0, saved MSDOS.SYS, and restored its ReadOnly attribute. This would make DOS the default operating system. (2) I booted
into DOS and added this line at the beginning of its AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT. That line would guarantee that, upon
booting, DOS would look to the BOOT_MGR file for its next instructions. (3) I
created D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT with just one line in it:
C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM. That would tell the program to load Windows. If
we left things like this, we would just have invented a roundabout way of
booting Win98 Normal Mode. My computer was now set to boot in DOS, but to

go right on to Win98, just like before. But if I removed or altered the

BOOT_MGR file, it might stay in DOS or go to Safe Mode and do other things.
(Later, I heard that, instead of using AUTOEXEC.BAT, I could have used a
procedure that would have been invisible to users and that users could not have
interrupted, which might have been important if I had been administering a
system for multiple users. According to one source, IO.SYS was the program
that ran CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. After doing that, IO.SYS would
then run WIN.COM. But DOS and Windows would apparently execute BAT
files before COM files. So if you created a file called WIN.BAT, IO.SYS would
execute that WIN.BAT file instead of WIN.COM. You could put your special
commands in WIN.BAT and then have it run WIN.COM, and you could mark it
read-only and hidden just as you might mark AUTOEXEC and the others.)
(am) Refine the DOS Boot with BOOT_MGR. This new BOOT_MGR.BAT file
gave me the option of specifying which mode I wanted to boot in. This way, I
could remove the BOOT_MGR line from AUTOEXEC.BAT, which would dump
me at the DOS prompt; and then I could type BOOT_MGR NM to boot on into
Normal Mode, or BOOT_MGR SM for Safe Mode, or perhaps I could figure out
how to engineer a shortcut in Windows so that, if I clicked on it, it would reboot
and run BOOT_MGR DOS to put me into Real DOS. My new BOOT_MGR.BAT
file looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_MGR.BAT. It lets you boot into different modes.
REM Check for valid input
if %1==DOS goto MAIN
if %1==NM goto MAIN
if %1==SM goto MAIN
echo You didn't specify DOS, NM (normal mode), or SM (safe mode) (all caps).
echo If you let this program continue, you'll go back to the same mode.
pause Hit Ctrl-C to bail out and try again with DOS, NM, or SM.
goto DONE
:MAIN
if %1==DOS call DOSSTART.BAT
if %1==NM call C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM
if %1==SM call C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM /D:M
goto DONE

:DONE
Note that the DOS option points toward a DOSSTART file, which contains the
commands that were formerly in AUTOEXEC.BAT. (See point 105(l).) I put
them there because I didn't want to run them if I was going right on into Normal
Mode or Safe Mode. (I later found that I had to put the PATH statement back at
the start of AUTOEXEC.BAT after all.) Note, also, that the line involving
WIN.COM /D:M was the command needed to start Safe Mode. For now, the
only other change I made was to change AUTOEXEC.BAT (see point 120(al)) so
that its main line read D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOT_MGR.BAT NM. The last two
letters would insure that the default continued to be Normal Mode. I knew I
could come back later and tinker with it more, if I wanted. (See point 129.) For
right now, it was handy enough to be able to type BOOT_MGR NM or SM to go
directly from DOS to Normal Mode or Safe Mode.
(an) Increase Number of Registry Backups. Tip no. 56 from the Weber High
School site (see point 105(j)) recommends increasing the number of backups that
Registry Checker creates by finding C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI and
changing MaxBackupCopies from 5 to 10. Someone online said that Microsoft
recommends leaving it at the default. I decided to increase it to 8 because there
was one time when I came close to running out of recent backups. (Win98 made
Registry backups automatically -- once a day, I believe -- but you could also
make them manually by going into the Win98 System Information tool (or just
hitting Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Tools) and running Registry Checker.) The
copies of USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT (the two main Registry files) took 10 MB
on my AMD computer, but the additional backups went into compressed CAB
files that took much less space. I had to jump through a couple of hoops to view
more than five or six Registry backups when I needed them, though. (See point
148 and point 149.)
121. Verifying That Office Program Toolbars Fit on One Line. When I had set up
the toolbars in Word, Excel, and other Office 97 programs, I had noticed that my
customized toolbars extended over to a second line in some cases. Now that I
had readjusted the monitor to run in a higher resolution, I needed to verify that
the icons did all fit on one line. They did in every case, and usually with room to
spare.
Problem with Win98 Disk Defragmenter
122. Problem: Disk Defragmenter Near-Freeze. One morning, during the
process of working through the foregoing list of tweaks, I saw that the
PENTIUM computer had seemingly frozen up during the night. As I recall, it
took a minute or two to get it going again. The disk defragmenter had been set

to run overnight. (See point 105(g).) It had not completed its job, and I had to
bail out of it with Ctrl-Alt-Del. I went online and saw a comment by an MS-MVP
(which is, I believe, a non-Microsoft employee who has somehow become
certified as having sufficient knowledge about various Microsoft programs to
help users with their questions about those programs). His comment began
with, "DEFRAG DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY." At first, I thought he put those
words in all caps to emphasize them, but later I wondered whether this was just
the title of an article he was quoting. He pointed toward Microsoft
Knowledgebase Article no. Q96519, but that turned out to be an article about
running a DOS defragmenter. Other online comments said that you should only
run the Win98 defragmenter in Safe Mode; or only after turning off your
antivirus program or screen saver or perhaps all other programs except Explorer
and Systray; or only after emptying your Temporary Internet Files,
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP, and Recycle Bin; or that, if you're scheduling things to
run automatically, you should allow a half-hour between running the
defragmenter or any other programs; or that you should set the defragmenter to
work on each disk separately; or set power management settings (see point
109(h)) so that they never shut off; or never let the defragmenter (or perhaps they
meant SCANDISK) correct errors automatically; or that the defragmenter that
comes with earlier versions (of Win98? Win95? Internet Explorer 4?) is no good;
or use a DOS defragmenter; or run SCANDISK first; or all of the above.
123. First Attempted Solution: Run Defragmenter Automatically in Safe Mode.
The foregoing advice put me in a quandary. I certainly intended to continue
running my disk repair and defragmentation programs in auto-repair mode:
they took too much time to let them have the computer during the day, and I
sure wasn't going to stay up to babysit them at night. At the same time, I could
see that things were not working out as planned. Previously, on the AMD
machine, Norton's SpeedDisk defragmenting program had balked if I had other
things running at the same time, and now Defragmenter was doing the same
thing. It seemed that I had to set aside perhaps one night a week to do nothing
but run my preferred defragmenter on all hard disks, and hope that it would be
done by morning. (Running Norton's defragmenter was no solution for another
reason: by this time I had seen many comments online indicating that certain
Norton programs caused problems, and that they added lots of potentially
troublesome lines to the Registry, and I myself had had to troubleshoot enough
problems caused by Norton programs under Win95/98, that I wanted to
minimize my reliance on Norton Utilities. (See point 105(g).) So I was doing my
best, here, to arrive at a scheme that would work with Win98's defragmenter.)
Moreover, to insure that my preferred defragmenter would run without
interference by other programs, I pretty much had to run it in DOS or Safe Mode.
Experience suggested that, in Normal Mode, there could be any number of other
nocturnal operations interfering with it. I found that the Win98 Disk

Defragmenter did not run in Real DOS. (In the view of one writer, this was
good: s/he said that DOS defragmenters will mess up your hard disk.) This left
Safe Mode as the only option. I hoped there would be a way to run
Defragmenter automatically in Safe Mode, but my early options weren't good:
the Task Scheduler icon (see point 105(g)) did not show up in the system tray
(lower right corner of the screen), and it seemed that an AUTOEXEC or other
autostart batch file would be foiled by Safe Mode's habit of giving you an
introductory box that tells you that you're in Safe Mode. For the time being,
then, my weekly maintenance thing was going to involve an automatic DOSbased process, followed by a manual Safe Mode process.
124. Second Attempted Solution: DOS Weekly Maintenance. I decided to set up
DOS so that it would intercept the boot process on Wednesday afternoons
around 5 PM, in order to run a set of maintenance programs. I would need to
come up with some kind of Windows-based utility to force a reboot then. After
running the DOS utilities, the system would automatically go into Normal Mode,
and I would then try to find a way to suppress all other programs and run
Defragmenter automatically. (See point 127.) First, to configure my DOS
maintenance program, I drew upon information presented above and on other
sources. I set up MAINT_WK.BAT to run certain DOS programs, as follows:
@echo off
REM This is MAINT_WK.BAT
REM This file runs maintenance items weekly
REM Delete files in Windows temp directory
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
REM Delete TMP files on all disks
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do dir %%c:\*.tmp /a:-d /b /s >> c:\temp\filelist.txt
del < c:\temp\filelist.txt *.tmp
REM Delete Tilde files on all disks
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do dir %%c:\~*.* /a:-d /b /s >> c:\temp\filelist.txt
del < c:\temp\filelist.txt ~*.*
del c:\temp\filelist.txt
REM Clear the Start--Documents list
deltree /y c:\windows\recent\*.*
REM Empty the Recycled Bins

for %%c in (c d e f g h) do deltree /y %%c:\recycled\*.*

REM Now the main attractions
call scandisk /custom /all /surface
call scanreg /fix
call scanreg /backup
REM End of file.
For other information on the lines used here, see points 116, 119, and 120. I
wound up revising this program a bit later. (See point 130.) I could have run
SCANDSKW (apparently the version of ScanDisk designed to run in DOS boxes),
but I preferred to work in real DOS to insure that there wouldn't be any other
programs interfering with them, and to minimize the risk of interference by
Win98's power management system. (See point 109(a).) I configured the
/CUSTOM setting of SCANDISK by editing SCANDISK.INI, including
specifically NumPasses, which will set the thing to examine a cluster repeatedly
if you wish. I wondered if maybe this was the secret that had enabled Norton's
Disk Doctor to solve a problem for me that SCANDISK hadn't solved. (See point
78.) I decided to reset NumPasses from 1, where it had been, to 5. In practice,
however, this didn't seem to have any impact on the performance of the surface
scan, which was where Norton's product had excelled. Finally, I wanted to run
SCANREG from real DOS if possible because apparently the Win98 version has
to switch to DOS anyway before it can make changes to the Registry.
125. Registry Problem. In the course of preparing that MAINT_WK.BAT
program, I experimented with SWEEP.COM to delete TMP and Tilde files. (See
point 120(e).) It got into a loop that it didn't seem to be getting out of, so I hit
Ctrl-C to break out. Then, when I experimented with the SCANDISK command
line shown in MAINT_WK.BAT, the system froze halfway through the line in
which it was telling me that /AUTOFIX and /CUSTOM were mutually
exclusive. (Custom covers everything in Autofix, it seems.) I rebooted, tried to
run MAINT_WK again, and found myself in the Microsoft Registry Checker after
a very brief error message of some kind -- it went past too quickly for me to read
it. Eventually, it dawned on me that MAINT_WK was working just fine, at least
as far as the SCANREG command was concerned, but for some reason it had
skipped over the SCANDISK command. SCANREG ran for five or ten minutes
and then quit. Now I tried running just my original SCANDISK line: CALL
SCANDISK /CUSTOM /ALL /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY /SURFACE. It told
me that /NOSAVE and /NOSUMMARY were mutually exclusive vis-a-vis
/CUSTOM, so I wound up with just the line shown above. This line examined a
little more than 1 GB of disk space per hour.

126. DOS Maintenance Scheduler. To implement the DOS part of the

MAINT_WK plan (see point 124), I needed a DOS batch file that would detect the
date and time and would run MAINT_WK if the time was between 5 and 6 pm
on a Wednesday. I prepared the following batch file:
@echo off
REM This is WEEKDAY.BAT
REM
REM

It runs WEEKDAY.BAS in order to determine whether it is the right

day and time to run MAINT_WK.BAT.

c:
cd \temp
if exist datetime.tmp del datetime.tmp
if exist doit.bat del doit.bat
echo.| date | find "Current" > datetime.tmp
echo.| time | find "Current" >> datetime.tmp
call qbasic /run d:\dos_util\weekday.bas
call doit.bat
if exist datetime.tmp del datetime.tmp
if exist doit.bat del doit.bat
This called the WEEKDAY.BAS file. The actual contents of that QBASIC
program (see point 80) were as follows:
REM This is WEEKDAY.BAS
REM It runs MAINT_WK.BAT on certain days and times.
DIM dayin AS STRING
DIM hourin AS STRING
DIM hourval AS INTEGER
DIM ampmin AS STRING
DIM marchorder AS STRING
OPEN "c:\temp\datetime.tmp" FOR INPUT AS # 1
OPEN "c:\temp\doit.bat" FOR OUTPUT AS # 2
FOR i% = 1 TO 2
LINE INPUT # 1, linein$

keypiece$ = MID$(linein$, 17, LEN(linein$))

IF i% = 1 THEN
dayin$ = LEFT$(keypiece$, 3)
END IF
IF i% = 2 THEN
hourin$ = LEFT$(keypiece$, 2)
IF LEFT$(hourin$, 1) = " " THEN
hourin$ = RIGHT$(hourin$, 1)
END IF
hourval = VAL(hourin$)
ampmin$ = RIGHT$(keypiece$, 1)
IF ampmin$ = "p" THEN
hourval = hourval + 12
END IF
END IF
NEXT
marchorder$ = "ECHO Hi"
IF dayin$ = "Wed" THEN
IF hourval = 17 THEN
marchorder$ = "CALL D:\DOS_UTIL\MAINT_WK.BAT"
END IF
END IF
PRINT # 2, marchorder$
CLOSE
SYSTEM
Finally, to make this program run automatically whenever the computer booted
up, I added this line to AUTOEXEC.BAT, immediately before the
BOOT_MGR.BAT command (see point 120(al)): CALL
D:\DOS_UTIL\WEEKDAY.BAT. This scheme would run MAINT_WK.BAT
every time the computer rebooted. According to theory, I would be playing pool
and drinking beer on Wednesday evenings between 5 and 6 PM, and otherwise
the computer would be in the control of these programs I had set up, so there
wouldn't be any reason why WEEKDAY would run more than once a week.
127. Win98 Maintenance Scheduler. Having thought further about it, I decided
that I could not gracefully link my Win98 maintenance schedule (featuring
Defragmenter) to my DOS maintenance schedule (as run by MAINT_WK.BAT).

The two needed to operate separately, and Defragmenter really did need to run
every night. I was not certain I could make this happen, given my recent
difficulty with Defragmenter and the advice I had found on that subject (see
point 122), but I hoped that perhaps a weekly doctoring by SCANDISK and
SCANREG would put things in good enough shape for Defragmenter to run
without the necessity of running SCANDISK right before it every night. Not that
there would have been time for that in any event: experience with SCANDISK
and Defragmenter showed that the two of them could consume many hours. So
I turned, now, from my DOS maintenance schedule to the entirely separate
subject of my Win98 maintenance schedule. Again, I wanted this to run
automatically, and to process things one at a time, not beginning the one until
the previous one had finished; again, a batch file seemed like a good solution. I
decided to call this Win98 batch file MAINTWIN. I would then have two entries
in Task Scheduler: one to force a reboot, somehow, at 5 PM on Wednesdays, so
that MAINT_WK could run (see point 124), and the other to start MAINTWIN
late in the evening on every night except Wednesday. I saw the Win98 process
as involving three steps: (a) shut down all running programs, (b) start
Defragmenter, and (c) reboot the system so that I would have a fresh system with
all of my normal startup programs running. The shutdown would ideally be
sensitive, somehow, to the presence of any active processes. That is, I wouldn't
mind if it shut down a program that wasn't doing anything, but I wouldn't want
an automatic shutdown if I had deliberately scheduled a time-intensive task to
run overnight. It took me a while to work this thing out. (See point 131.)
128. Rebooter. I had found utility programs that would do things like shut
down the computer at a certain time, but I wanted to try to do as much as
possible within Win98 itself, rather than add a thousand little single-purpose
utilities. DOS and QBASIC were not sophisticated, but they were stable.
Browsing online, I found several one-line commands that would shut down
Win98 in various ways. The following examples assume that C:\Windows is on
your PATH statement. (To find out, type PATH at a DOS prompt. Since these
would be running in a DOS box in Win98, I verified within that DOS box; real
DOS had an entirely different and irrelevant PATH.) If C:\Windows is not on
your PATH statement, then you may want to fix your PATH or type in the
needed directory names where appropriate. For example, instead of typing
simply RUNDLL32.EXE, you might preface those with C:\WINDOWS. I think
that will also hold true for USER.EXE and SHELL32.DLL.
(a) To shut down the computer (two different commands):
RUNDLL32.EXE USER.EXE,ExitWindows or:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5
(b) To reboot the computer:

RUNDLL32.EXE USER.EXE,ExitWindowsExec 5 or:

RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(c) To restart Windows without rebooting (fastest but least thorough):
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx or:
@EXIT
(d) To restart Windows in MS-DOS mode, someone said that I could create a
batch file with these two lines: MEM/C/P and EXIT. This didn't make sense to
me, since MEM is just a program that tells you about your memory status. I
didn't know another DOS command that would do this, so for Windows
purposes I just made a copy of the Exit to DOS shortcut I had developed earlier.
(See point 105(l).)
See http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/oe1804a.htm. I
didn't test these extensively, but I imagined that the SHExit commands worked
faster, so I put the one from point (a) into a one-line batch file called
D:\DOS_UTIL\SHUTDOWN.BAT; I put the one from point (b) into a one-line
batch file called REBOOTER.BAT; I put the one from point (c) into a one-line
batch file called RESTART.BAT; and the one from point (d) went into
WINDOSBT.BAT. I didn't suppose I'd have much need for SHUTDOWN, and
RESTART might be handy occasionally, but REBOOTER was about to become
central to my maintenance scheme. (I didn't have to create batch files for these
commands. I could have just created shortcuts incorporating them. See the
ZDNet site just cited for instructions. I wanted a batch file so that I could also
run them from DOS if the mood struck, and also because I like to have my
homemade solutions in my DOS_UTIL folder to find them more easily if I forget
their names someday, and also because I would be needing a batch file to execute
more than just this one command. See point 129.) Later, I found
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q234/2/16.ASP, which
informed me that I could use the command rundll32.exe
shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 6 to restart with force -- i.e., to shut programs
down even if it means losing unsaved data. I put this line into a batch file called
FORCBOOT.BAT. Later, I added another option, REBOOTGO, to this list. (See
point 130.) But eventually I decided that FORCBOOT and REBOOTGO did the
same thing, and I deleted FORCBOOT. That gave me, eventually, a total of five
batch files: SHUTDOWN, REBOOTER, RESTART, WINDOSBT, and
REBOOTGO. Later, I discovered that RESTART would wipe out the TweakUI
setting that allowed me to get through the network logon screen. (See point 199.)
So when I eventually built a toolbar with shortcuts to these different ways of
shutting down or rebooting (see point 138(c)), it had only these options: Shut
Down, Rebooter, MS-DOS Mode (WINDOSBT), and Force Reboot (REBOOTGO).
To that toolbar, I added three options that would allow me to set the mode in

which the computer would reboot: Safe Mode, Normal Mode, and Real DOS.
These shortcuts ran batch files that looked like this:
@echo off
:: This is BOOTSAFE.BAT
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Safe Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(For more information on BOOTCALL, see point 129.) Later, I substantially
revised some of the batch files shown here. (See point 262.)
129. REBOOTER Plus BOOT_MGR. I now had a way to flesh out BOOT_MGR -or, more precisely, to supersede it. The problem, until now, had been that I had
no automated way to tell BOOT_MGR whether to boot the system in Normal
Mode, Safe Mode, or Real DOS. (See point 120(am).) I just had AUTOEXEC set
to run Normal Mode automatically with the BOOT_MGR NM command, and I
had the option of typing BOOT_MGR SM or BOOT_MGR DOS if I wanted to
boot into one of those two other modes. I could have left it like that, but I
decided things would be simpler if I took a slightly different approach. First, I
modified my real DOS AUTOEXEC.BAT file (available in either real DOS or in a
DOS box, but saved under another name when you run the step-by-step
command prompt bootup). The modification consisted basically of importing
the main lines from BOOT_MGR into AUTOEXEC. Second, I changed those
lines so that, instead of looking for a two- or three-letter command from the
keyboard (i.e., NM, SM, or DOS), they would look at the contents of a file called
D:\DOS_UTIL\BOOTCALL.TXT. So my AUTOEXEC.BAT file now looked like
this:
@echo off
path c:\windows;c:\windows\command;d:\dos_util
call d:\dos_util\weekday.bat
REM Choose which mode to boot in, depending on contents of
BOOTCALL.TXT.
find "Normal Mode" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 c:\windows\win.com
if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE
find "Safe Mode" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 c:\windows\win.com /d:m

if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE

find "Real DOS" d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if not errorlevel=1 d:\dos_util\dosstart.bat
if not errorlevel=1 goto DONE
echo BOOTCALL.TXT doesn't contain a required entry,
echo either "Real DOS" or "Normal Mode" or "Safe Mode."
:DONE
(I did not fully understand this ERRORLEVEL command; it didn't seem to be
working for me like it was supposed to, but this particular configuration seemed
to work.) Next, I created a new BOOT_MGR.BAT to put the proper text into
BOOTCALL.TXT: either "Real DOS" or "Normal Mode" or "Safe Mode." The
lines of this new and improved BOOT_MGR.BAT looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_MGR.BAT.
REM This file inserts an instruction into BOOTCALL.TXT, so that
REM AUTOEXEC.BAT knows which mode to boot into.
:MAIN
if %1==DOS echo Real DOS > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==DOS goto DONE
if %1==NM echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==NM goto DONE
if %1==SM echo Safe Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
if %1==SM goto DONE
:BOOBOO
cls
echo You didn't type DOS, NM, or SM to indicate which mode.
:DONE
Later, I added lines to accommodate lowercase commands. I might have
incorporated this file into one of the others that I'm discussing here, but I wanted
it to be available for direct command line use too. In other words, I wanted to

have the option of typing BOOT_MGR DOS (or NM, or SM) to prime the pump
for the next reboot, which might not occur until later. (Note the relationship
between this and X-Setup. See point 137(p).) To reduce typing, I created a little
file called BM.BAT whose sole purpose was to run BOOT_MGR. Finally, I
created a BOOT_DOS.BAT file that would tell BOOT_MGR that the system
should reboot in DOS, and then run REBOOTER to restart the computer and let
AUTOEXEC do its thing. BOOT_DOS looked like this:
@echo off
REM This is BOOT_DOS.BAT.
REM This file tells BOOT_MGR to prepare the computer to boot DOS. It
REM also tells REBOOTGO to reboot the system.
call d:\dos_util\boot_mgr.bat DOS
d:\dos_util\rebootgo.bat
(Later, I created a shortcut to BOOT_DOS.BAT and put it on my Shutdown
toolbar. See point 142.) I didn't need to create similar files for booting into
Win98 in Normal Mode or Safe Mode. To make one of them my new default
operating mode, I could type BM NM or BM SM. If I wanted to proceed on into
one of those modes (regardless of which mode was the default), I could just type
WIN (or WIN /D:M) at the command prompt. (See the relevant lines from
AUTOEXEC, above.) Someone said that if you enter Safe Mode this way (by
WIN /D:M), your CD-ROM drivers will be installed. I did not find this to be the
case.
130. Final Touches on a DOS Weekly Maintenance Batch File. So far,
MAINT_WK.BAT was set to do its thing and then stop at a DOS prompt. I
wanted it to return the system to Normal Mode when it was done. For this, I
changed the program's ending from the lines shown above (see point 124) to the
following:
echo.| call scanreg /fix /backup
REM Set up the reboot scenario
echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
c:\windows\win.com
REM End of file.
The echo thing was there to supply a carriage return, so that SCANREG wouldn't
sit at its final "OK" dialog box, waiting for me to hit the Enter key. The
BOOTCALL line came from BOOT_MGR.BAT. (See point 129.) Once this was

all taken care of, the only remaining problem regarding MAINT_WK was to
figure out how to get it to run. Task Scheduler would have to trigger a reboot
between 5 and 6 PM on a Wednesday. (See point 124.) Then AUTOEXEC would
call WEEKDAY (see point 126), which would decide whether to call MAINT_WK
or instead to let Windows reboot in Normal Mode. For Task Scheduler to trigger
a reboot on Wednesday at 5 PM, it would need to run REBOOTER. (See point
129.) To make that possible, I went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked on
REBOOTER.BAT, created a shortcut, and set up the options for that shortcut like
I had set up those of the MAINT_WK shortcut. (See point 105(h).) I could have
set the shortcut's Program | Advanced option to "MS-DOS Mode," but then I
realized that this would just make the computer reboot into Win98's DOScompatible mode (i.e., not real DOS), and I had no idea whether REBOOTER
would be able to reboot the computer into real DOS from there. So instead, I
added a warning line to REBOOTER with the PAUSE command. This would
prevent REBOOTER from being an automatic rebooter; so in case I might need
an automatic rebooter, I made a copy of REBOOTER without the PAUSE
command, for immediate rebooting, and called it REBOOTGO. I thought that I
might not need a shortcut to REBOOTER, but I wasn't sure whether Task
Scheduler would run a batch file directly, so I kept the shortcut and told Task
Scheduler to run that at 5:01 PM on Wednesdays. To avoid having it pester me
or interrupt a project underway, I told Task Scheduler not to start it unless the
computer had been idle for at least 15 minutes. While I was in Task Scheduler, I
deleted all the other scheduled tasks that MAINT_WK was replacing. I also
deleted the tasks that MAINTWIN would be replacing, including particularly the
Defragmenter entry that had caused the problem in the first place. (See point
122.)
131. A Win98 Nightly Maintenance Batch File. I had not yet done anything with
MAINTWIN, other than identify its general tasks: kill running programs, start
Defragmenter, and reboot the system so that I would have a fresh start. (See
point 127.) I decided that I could safely kill other tasks if I instructed Task
Scheduler not to start MAINTWIN until after a certain period of inactivity on the
computer. Then MAINTWIN would somehow kill those tasks, run
Defragmenter, and then use REBOOTER to reset a fresh system in Normal Mode.
(See point 128.) But how could MAINTWIN kill running processes? One
possibility would be to use RESTART to do a quick restart of Windows. (See
point 128.) But that would reload and run any program shortcuts I had in my
StartUp folder. I couldn't very well tell my computer to load nothing at startup:
there might be some things, such as my appointment scheduler, that I would
always want to load at bootup except during this overnight maintenance. Again,
I knew there were third-party programs, but I was interested in working out a
Windows-only solution if possible. I went online and got the general message
that this is not something DOS can do. I didn't know if the Windows Scripting

Host could do this, but it didn't matter, because I wasn't about to learn how to
use it. See
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/17/03/os1703.001.html. I was
tempted to cook up a batch file that would temporarily swap contents out of the
StartUp folder and then back in, but that sounded like a kludge. I decided I
should wait and see what was available in third-party programs for this purpose.
And since I was still working here on a nearly pure Microsoft system, that would
have to wait. (See point 141(k).)
132. CD Backup. By now, it had been a long time since I had last made an image
file to record my progress in this whole process. (See point 116.) I chuckled
when I looked back at that effort: at that time, I had believed that I had done
most of what I could do within the limits of keeping my system limited to
Microsoft programs. It wasn't that I had added major new capabilities; I had just
made a lot more of the available materials. Anyway, to make the image file, I
applied the same technique as before and found that I was getting faster at it.
Altering the order slightly, I began with the Win98 utilities (System File Checker,
Registry Checker, and Defragmenter) before going into real DOS to run
CD_PREP.BAT. This time, ARC_BITS showed perhaps twenty hidden files
whose archive bits needed to be turned off manually. This wasn't a crucial task,
but it was probably more important on this backup than on the previous ones:
this would be the final CD burned from a disk image. After this, I would be
using XCOPY to capture just those files that were new or changed since the date
of this one. Every file with an archive bit on after this would go onto the next
CD; the rest would not. So shutting off the archive bits basically prevented me
from doing a duplicate backup of files that would not in fact have changed
between the date of this CD and the date of the next, supplemental one. I ran a
subset of CD_PREP again, just to be sure I had no files left with archive bits still
on. I ran DriveImage from the floppy with the usual maximum/secure settings.
Despite increasing the number of Registry backups and doing all those tweaks,
the total volume of material backed up had somehow increased by only 5 MB
(see point 116(i)), to 913 MB. (Later, I learned that these backups are kept in
compressed CAB files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. When I looked there, I
saw that the backed-up files -- which included WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI,
SYSTEM.DAT, and USER.DAT -- were only about 1.3 MB each. Interestingly, I
also saw that, although I had rebooted many times in recent days, the oldest one
dated from more than a week earlier.) The DriveImage file, called
STEP_132.PQI, was 579 MB, so the compression ratio was still 63%. Since the
boot files and DOS utilities (see point 64) took only about 6 MB on the CD, I still
had a great deal of space left on the CD after all -- perhaps as much as 100 MB, if
the 63% compression rate held. So perhaps this would not be the last
DriveImage CD after all. I rebooted to Windows, ran END_LIST, and used

Direct Cable Connection to move the resulting file list and the STEP_132.PQI
image file to the AMD machine, where I burned it onto CD.
Installing System Utilities
133. Decision to Install System Utilities. Using Direct Cable Connection, I
brought over a large number of downloaded programs that I had been storing on
the AMD machine. In the spirit of what I had been doing so far, I decided to
keep on installing and configuring tweak-style programs that required little disk
space but a lot of my time. The idea was that if I could get this time-consuming
stuff all squeezed onto the first CD, it might not be such a big deal to install the
rest from CD or other sources if my XCOPY scheme (see point 132) didn't work
out.
134. Programs Not Installed. Here, I decided to start a list of programs that I
was not going to be installing. I planned to continue adding items to this list
throughout the rest of the installation process. Thus, this list is not limited to
system-related programs. The programs and my reasons for not installing were
as follows:
(a) TweakUI. I was going to use X-Setup instead. (See point 117. But see point
145(f).)
(b) mIRC. I had heard that Internet Relay Chat was a great way to get quick tech
support information, but also that IRC opened up a whole new channel for
hackers to attack your system. I really would have liked to use it, but it didn't
seem worth the risk.
(c) ICQ. This was an alternative to IRC; but although it was more instantaneous
and fun, I had found it to be something of a time-waster, with my friends and I
sitting there typing comments to one another -- which was fun, but didn't last
long. Once the novelty wore off, I found myself mostly just disliking the
occasional ways in which ICQ conflicted with other programs, and I really didn't
use it much. E-mail was better than chat, for purposes of composing my
thoughts or thinking through a problem.
(d) PC Magazine's ShutUp. This is a program that shuts down the computer.
(See point 134(l).) It looks good, and it's free, but it doesn't have a command-line
option, and I needed something I could run from a batch file. (See point 134(l).)
(Later, I recalled that this program had the ability to run programs that the user
might want to run at the last minute before shutting down the computer; I think
that by this point I had decided I would rather do such things through batch
files.)

(e) CabView and other Cab File Viewers. PowerDesk (see point 135) had this
capability already. Nevertheless, I went for CabWiz because it was small,
simple, and might provide some functionality that I would appreciate when the
crucial moment came. (See point 141(u).) When that didnt work out (see point
166(d)), I decided that PowerDesk and
C:\WINDOWS\COMMANDS\EXTRACT.EXE would probably do the job for
me.
(f) TreeSize. This was a handy little program that installed itself as a context
menu option. Just right-click on a disk or folder and TreeSize calculates how
much space its contents are taking. You can expand the view into subdirectories.
I liked the right-click convenience, but I decided I would rather not have the
extra item on the context menu, because it was one more thing I had to read and
scroll past when I was trying to find the right selection for many other frequent
context menu operations. Instead, I added a shortcut to PowerDesk's Size
Manager program (see point 135), which did the same things in an arguably
better way and gave me one less little utility to install. The other thing to
remember was that, if I selected a bunch of files, I could get their combined space
by right-clicking on one of them and choosing Properties.
(g) Registry Cleaners. I decided against CleanReg because its README.TXT file
indicated that it had been created in September 1996, leaving me to wonder how
it would fare with the Win98 Registry. Similarly, both RegMaid and Registry
Saver 1.2 appeared to have been created in October 1997. In a quick search on
Hotfiles.com, I found precious few Registry cleaners that had been developed
during the past year; most seemed to be much older. Perhaps a more careful
search would find more. Regarding my reasons for rejecting RegClean, see point
139(a).
(h) Process Viewer 2000. ZDNet gave this one four stars -- but gave five stars to
PrcView. (See point 141(f).) A review at
http://www.rocketdownload.com/Details/Util/prcview.htm gave PrcView
"three smileys" out of an unknown total number possible -- the site doesn't seem
to say -- but I suppose the real point is that the reviewer had nothing bad to say
about it. I did experiment briefly with Process Viewer 2000 on the AMD
computer, but found that while it provided a more colorful interface, it also
provided less information and gave me less of a sense of control.
(i) WinKey. I had no problem finding this program: it got four dudes at
FileDudes; four cows at Tucows; etc. I now saw that it relied on the Windows
Key, i.e., the special-purpose key at the lower left corner of newer keyboards.
See http://www.copernic.com/winkey/. I had thought it would allow me to

program Ctrl- and Alt- key combinations. One of my two keyboards was old
and did not have the Windows Key. I decided to postpone further consideration
of this program until later, when I might install it on just one machine or might
upgrade my keyboard. Really, I hoped instead to come across a hotkey program
that would let me assign any allowable hotkey and would show me what I (or
my programs) had assigned. Unfortunately, I never came up with a way of
finding a complete listing.
(j) Clipboard Enhancers. I found five free clipboard enhancers that got four or
five stars at ZDNet. They were: AAA (Corsolini); Clip-It!; Clipboard Magic;
Clipboard Pile; and Yankee Clipper Plus. (I did not attempt to do an exhaustive
search; there may have been others.) I wanted, specifically, a clipboard enhancer
that would store graphics and other items as well as text. Since I had previously
tried and failed to get comfortable with two different clipboard enhances, I relied
in part on the ease-of-use description in the reviews at ZDNet. This narrowed
me down to two options: the four-star Clipboard Pile, which could handle BMP
graphics and perhaps others but which did not have the greatest documentation;
or the five-star, easy-to-use Clipboard Magic, which unfortunately (like all the
others) could handle only text. I decided to start with Clipboard Pile. (See point
141(h).) Another approach would have been to obtain QUIKTRAY.EXE from the
Resource Kit folder on the Windows 98 CD (see point 119(a)) and use that to
create a constantly available icon in the system tray for a text file in which I could
put notes. For my purposes, Clipboard Pile turned out to be superior because I
did not have to drag or paste anything; it went into the "clipboard pile" as soon
as I marked and copied it. Later, I found problems with Clipboard Pile. (See
point 315.)
(k) ShortCutter 2.0. The purpose of this program is to look for and remove
broken links among files. The README file left me totally in the dark, and when
I ran it briefly on the AMD computer, it seemed to be asking me if I wanted to
delete various Windows system folders! Or perhaps "seemed to" is the wrong
phrasing: when I killed the program, I got several error messages telling me that
Win98 would not allow me to delete this or that system folder! I could only
wonder what the program had deleted without my knowing about it. Maybe I
misunderstood the program; but if not, this is the worst piece of software I have
seen in a long time.
(l) Auto-Shutdown Programs. I considered Exits 95/98 by Moon in June
Software because it was a five-star free download at Hotfiles.com with
command-line abilities. (See point 134(d).) Others I was considering included
AutoExit, Log Me Out, KillWin, and JustExit. Ultimately, I found better
programs to shut down programs that were in use (see point 141(g)), as distinct
from shutting down the computer itself (see point 128).

(m) PC Magazine's RunPlus. It looked like I was going to be able to get the
features of this program through a collection of other programs and techniques
described in this document.
(q) Screen Capture Software. On the AMD machine, I had used the free version
of HyperSnap. It had worked OK, but had inserted a "Free Version" notice in the
upper left corner of each image. I can't believe I didn't know this, but it was also
possible to use PrintScreen to capture the entire screen to the clipboard. (I had
yet to experiment with capturing multiple screens to Clipboard Pile. See point
141(h).) I had some trouble with this at first, and maybe that's why I hadn't used
it previously. On my keyboard, the PrintScreen key also had SysRq on it.
PrintScreen was above SysRq, so it looked like you had to use the Shift key to use
PrintScreen. Anyway, when I just hit the key by itself, it worked. I found that I
couldn't paste the image into the Photo Editor program that came with Windows
98 or Office 97, but I could paste it into the free Paint program. They said I could
also paste it into Word or WordPad. The other thing was that they said I could
use Alt-PrintScreen to capture the active window only, instead of the whole
screen.
(r) Connection Keepers. The other part of the download story was keeping your
connection alive while programs were downloading. Maybe Go!Zilla (see point
156(c)) took care of that while it was downloading -- I wasn't too sure about that - but there were times when Go!Zilla wouldn't work. An example would be
downloading Windows updates: the Microsoft site took control of the process
and there wasn't really an opportunity for a third-party utility like Go!Zilla to
stick its nose in there. ZDNet gave Internet Loafer five stars, but it was
shareware; it gave Connection Keeper four stars, but that was shareware too; it
gave Keep It Alive three stars, and it was freeware, but it only pinged one site,
and I suspected that my ISP's eager shutdown software would find something
fishy about that sort of arrangement. So I gave up on this category of software,
at least for now.
(s) Ferret User Power Pack. This was a five-star, 5 MB download that contained a
half-dozen highly rated online tools. These ferrets, which I had not previously
used, were supposedly very good at finding information in different ways, using
multiple search engines for general searches on the Web (WebFerret) or in
newsgroups (NewsFerret), for specific searches within categories (InfoFerret), to
find e-mail addresses (EmailFerret) or phone numbers (PhoneFerret) or IRC
addresses (IRCFerret), or to locate specific files online (FileFerret). I did install
them, although I wasn't sure I needed or wanted them all. I could have installed
them individually. What turned me against them as a group was the absence of
support for Boolean searches. (See point 156(b).) So I uninstalled them.

(t) Dial-Up Networking (DUN) Enhancements. Dunce (Dial-Up Networking

Connection Enhancement) was supposed to aid in connecting to your ISP, but I
didn't really need that help. It also offered the ability to connect and disconnect
at preset times, but I believed I was going to be able to do that on my own, in
ways that would fit better with my system as I was setting it up. ZDNet gave
Dunce four stars; they gave NetLaunch three. The latter sounded simpler and
not without its virtues, but I didn't see that I needed it either. Later, I changed
my mind on this. (See point 272.)
(u) PC Magazines LFNDir. This program sounded useful -- to be able to do a
DOS-style DIR listing that would show long filenames -- but when I tried to use
it, it informed me that it did not support FAT32 disks -- which is, of course,
precisely the format that Win98 prefers to use.
(v) TweakBIOS. As I learned from this programs homepage at
www.miro.pair.com/tweakbios/, this program came in both freeware and
shareware versions. The freeware version would not allow you to save your
changes. Thus, you would have to reconfigure your BIOS settings after each
reboot. Registration cost $20. I had heard about this program often enough to
suspect that it might really improve performance. Unfortunately, given the
magnitude of this project already, I decided that it belonged in the same category
as overclocking. (See point 288.) That is, it was something that would yield a
faster computer if I wished to devote the time, but it would do so at the expense
of stability and might not yield enough time savings to justify the time invested.
(w) AirEase. The purpose of this program was to track frequent flier mileage.
The idea was that you would enter your miles into the program, and the
program would then tell you how you were doing in light of the latest news
from the various airlines. How would your copy of AirEase get the latest news?
You would download the latest update of the program. How old was the latest
revision of the program, at the time when I considered installing it? Not quite a
year old. Not too impressive.
(x) File List Printing Programs. PowerDesk would allow me to print a list of
some or all files in a folder. (See point 135.) Also, the DOS command DIR would
allow me to print lists of files, for directories and subdirectories, in a wide variety
of formats. (For examples, see the DIR commands used in point 88.) In any
event, I rarely needed printed lists of files. For all these reasons, I did not install
software dedicated to the task of printing file lists.

Obviously, I did not attempt to list every program in the world that I decided
against. The foregoing list merely discusses some that I had used or at least had
considered seriously.
135. PowerDesk 98. I had found the Mijenix PowerDesk program to contain
many useful tools. (See point 70.) It had won many awards and I could not be
certain that any of my previous concerns were really its fault. (See points 25 and
74.) Anyway, I needed an unzipper before I could install these other programs
that I was about to install, and PowerDesk had one. So I went ahead with it.
Before installing, I ran PartitionMagic for just a moment and got an indication
that I had used 608 MB on drive C and 309 MB on drive D. After installing from
the CD, I rebooted to make sure the program was happy with its new home, and
then installed an update that I had downloaded previously. Then I went back
into PartitionMagic and saw that the amount on C had not changed, but I was
now using 327 MB on D. I had used 18 MB; I still had room for a lot more before
burning another CD. I went into PowerDesk and configured its options to suit
me. For the toolbar, in particular, I decided to show these buttons:
collapse/expand drives and folders, view single and dual (horizontal and
vertical) panes, filter, swap panes, empty recycle bin, open DOS window, go up
one level, go back and forward, find, compare folders, synchronize folders,
create folder and shortcut, show command line, associate file, select, print file
and print list of files, set file date/time, encrypt/decrypt, and set viewer pane
options. Mijenix had mailed me a floppy that would enable DES encryption,
which apparently is a lot more powerful; I loaded this as well. Subsequently,
when installing programs, I decided that PowerDesk was more of a "running
program" than Windows Explorer had been, so I tried to be more careful to shut
it down when installing software that told me to shut down all working
programs; that had never seemed like an issue with Windows Explorer, although
perhaps it should have. (Note: PowerDesk lacks an Address toolbar option. See
point 141(c).) I also set up a separate icon to run the Size Manager utility that
came with PowerDesk. (See point 134(f).)
136. Microsoft Visual Basic Runtime. I had downloaded some utilities from the
WinMag.com site one time, and some of those utilities required this program in
order to run. I had downloaded this program, and now I double-clicked on the
EXE file. It gave a momentary dialog box indicating that it was copying some
files to somewhere, but I couldn't tell exactly where. I looked in Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and didn't see anything listed. I didn't know what that
meant.
137. X-Setup: Plug-Ins. The X-Setup page said that a half-million people had
downloaded it. See http://www.xteq.com/main.html. The first thing I noticed
was that, unlike TweakUI (which Microsoft refused to support), there seemed to

be a currently active support area at Xteq. See

http://www.xteq.com/support/index.html. Their awards page was quite
impressive: five stars at Hotfiles, six ducks at Nonags, etc. See
http://www.xteq.com/products/xset/awards.html. I downloaded X-Setup and
a bunch of plug-ins and related files, and then wondered how to make it all
work. I started by unzipping and installing the XQ-XSETUP.ZIP file. At 3 MB,
this program was already a lot larger than TweakUI. (See point 117.) The XSetup READ-ME file told me that I needed some Microsoft scripting files, but
that I already had those if I had Win98. As with PowerDesk and other programs
mentioned above, I told the program to install on drive D (PROGRAMS) rather
than on C (WIN98). I had downloaded about twenty add-ins from the X-Setup
site, and now I started through the list. As I unzipped them, I saw that some
required a separate installation, and others just required me to move their
contents (usually an XPL file) to the Plugins subfolder under my X-Setup folder
on D. Some of these programs were add-ons that didn't seem to have a lot to do
with X-Setup which, to my knowledge, was a system utility kind of program like
TweakUI. An example was XShooter, which had no purpose other than let you
set up your computer (or someone else's) so that each time they click on their
screen, an imitation gunshot goes off and a "hole" appears in the page where they
were clicking. A better example might be URL Bandit, which scans every page
you work on and copies URLs from it, so you can have them for reference later.
(I thought this might be useful for those times when I was pursuing something
useful online and suddenly Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer would crash;
but I wouldn't have installed it at this point if it hadn't been affiliated with XSetup.) Some of my downloads said that they would not run without Visual
Basic; the purposes of some were unclear; and when I tried to get back to
www.xteq.com to figure out why I had downloaded them, I found that their
server wasn't functioning. So after a couple of false starts, I decided that I really
should install only the add-ins that I could understand and see some need for.
Apparently X-Setup was a sort of programmer's development environment, or a
mini-operating system, or something more than just a system tweaker. When I
had done what I was going to do with these additional downloads, I started XSetup. It had a Windows Explorer type of interface. Its status bar told me that it
now contained 254 plug-ins with 655 items, 32 wizards with 148 linked plug-ins,
and 27 tools. I went to the top item on the list and hit Shift-* (that's shift-asterisk
on the numeric keypad, a nifty little trick I had just learned while browsing
through endless Win98 tweak websites; it isn't necessary in most cases when
you've got PowerDesk's Expand option (see point 135), but of course I couldn't
use PowerDesk inside X-Setup), and that expanded the entire list of plug-ins.
And now, as I went down through the list of plug-ins, I began to see why people
were so excited about it. The plug-ins that I used, or thought I might use in the
future, were as follows:

(a) Appearance: Context Menu: Drive Commands. Add one or two commands
to the right-click context menu. These appear only if you right-click a drive. See
paragraph (d), below.
(b) Appearance: Control Panel: General Icons. Display or hide icons. (See point
120(x).)
(c) Appearance: Desktop: Icons. Change or remove names of icons on desktop.
Hide stubborn desktop icons. Add icons to desktop (e.g., Control Panel -- see
point 112(e)).
(d) Appearance: Explorer: Context Menu. Enable QuickView for any file.
Enable "Open With" for any file. (Then I decided not to use this, on the grounds
that I didn't need another item cluttering my right-click context menu and I
knew I could get "Open With" by selecting a file and then using Shift-Right-Click
on it.) Enable DOS Prompt Here for Directories (i.e., you can right-click on a
folder and open a DOS window where the command prompt will be prepositioned at that folder). Add two commands to the context menu for any file
or folder in Windows Explorer.
(e) Appearance: Explorer: Files. Set up to two programs to open DOC files by
default. (This seems inferior to the approach described in point 120(m),
however.) Display CPL files as icon (i.e., have WinEx show the icons that appear
inside the Control Panel).
(f) Appearance: Explorer: Options. Enable fast update. Wrap long icon titles.
(g) Appearance: General: Cool Switch (display more icons when coolswitching);
Effects (set width of borders around windows, enable smooth scrolling, disable
taskbar zoom).
(h) Appearance: Start Menu: Options (disable adding documents to Recent
Documents list -- see point 120(i) -- and set Menu Reaction Speed to 150) ; Visible
Items (hide Favorites, Documents, Log Off, etc. in Start Menu).
(i) Hardware: Modem. Speed up COM ports.
(j) Internet: DUN (set TTL to 64, IPMTU to 576, COM Boost to 2); Internet
Explorer (Appearance: Window Title: change to a single underscore; also clear
typed URLs); Nuke Protection.
(k) Network: Login (change picture shown when booting Windows); Logoff
(enable fast shutdown).

(l) Program Options: Notepad (enable default word-wrap); Office 97 (enable

quick scrolling in Word).
(m) System: File System: Folders: Data: General (relocate Internet Explorer
Favorites to E:\Favorites, IE downloads to E:\Temp); Media Folders (put
graphics files in E:\Graphics); Office 97 Folders (put Word 97 Clipart in
E:\Graphics\Office 97 Clipart) (see point 76); Program Files Folder (tell
programs to use D:\Program Files). I would still have to move the Clipart to the
new folder manually. That task posed some difficulties. (See point 138(b).)
(n) System: File System: Folders: System: Windows Folder. Set your Setup
folder (e.g., C:\WIN98 -- see point 31), your StartUp folder (see point 42), and
your Temporary Internet Files location (see point 38)). Options: File Allocation
Cache (reduce fragmentation by setting a large cache if you work with large
files).
(o) System: Timeouts: AutoEnd Programs (so hung programs can't keep
Windows from shutting down).
(p) System: Windows 95/98 Boot Options: Advanced Options II: Set the boot
menu -- the one that you get when you hit F8 at startup -- to be displayed for a
certain number of seconds at startup; then tell it which mode (e.g., Command
line) to use. The only setting I changed was to set Def Menu Display for 2
seconds, just in case I had forgotten to run BM with the preferred mode. (See
point 129.) This did not work on my machine. (See point 138(a).)
(r) Others that I found interesting but did not plan to use included these:
Appearance: Desktop: ToolTips (put whatever you want your pop-up ToolTip
to say when you point your mouse cursor at a desktop item); Appearance:
Explorer: Shortcuts (hide the little arrows that appear by default on shortcuts, or
the words "Shortcut to ..."); Appearance: General: Effects (cursor blink rate);
Software: Accessories (clear recent file lists for Wordpad, Photo Editor, etc.);
System: Misc: Windows PID (tells you your Windows product ID number);
System: Startup: AutoRun Services (lets you delete LoadPowerProfile and
SchedulingAgent, which run automatically when you start up; I wanted to use
PC Magazines Start Manager instead (see point 158(b)); System: User Data: MS
Setup Default Names (change your user name) and Windows Update
Registration (set your system so that it appears to be registered, for purposes of
using Windows Update online);

138. X-Setup Troubleshooting. X-Setup seemed to work, but I had a few kinks to
work out. Some developed immediately, and some came up later. They were as
follows:
(a) General Observations. I discovered, when I was partway through, that I
could have turned on Record Mode to keep track of all these changes and make
them automatically if I needed to do this over again. I made all my changes at
once, without rebooting, and then rebooted once to make them all happen at the
same time. That seemed riskier than doing them one at a time, but it was a lot
faster, and I figured if it trashed the Registry, I wouldn't have used up all my
good backup copies in the process. (Note: you don't have to shut off everything
that's checked in X-Setup. Checkmarks and blanks apply only when you hit the
"Apply Changes" button.) After rebooting, I noticed that the instruction to show
the boot menu for two seconds (see paragraph (p)) did not work (which was
perhaps not surprising, given X-Setup's notice that some such items might not
work in Win98), but there were fewer icons on the desktop and fewer options on
the Start menu, so that was good. Having gone down the long list of plug-ins, I
went through X-Setup's Wizards, but I quickly concluded that they just
presented another way to step through the same options as I had just gotten by
going down the tree view.
(b) Moving the Clipart Folder. A long time before, I had gotten a bit spooked
when moving the Clipart folder had seemed to cause problems. (See point 76.) I
still wasn't eager to go moving Office 97 folders around. But I did like the idea of
having my clipart concentrated in one place, so that all kinds of programs (not
just Office 97) could use it. So I had decided to try again, using X-Setup to move
it. (See point 137(m).) Unfortunately, this did not seem to work. X-Setup's
function here seemed to be limited to telling Word where to look for its clipart.
It did succeed in doing that much. I went into Word's
Tools | Options | File Locations screen and saw that, sure enough, Word was
indeed supposed to be looking, now, for clipart in the E:\Graphics\Office 97
Clipart folder that I had just created. To complete the transition, X-Setup had
told me that I had to move the actual files myself. But from where? When I did a
search, I found that Office 97 had put clipart in two different places, namely,
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Clipart and D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Clipart. Which one was linked with Word 97? To find
out, I copied the contents of both of those existing Clipart folders into my new
E:\Graphics\Office 97 Clipart folder, and then I moved the contents of both of
those folders to D:\Temp. I rebooted (see paragraph (c), below) and went into
Word, but now it failed to find any Clipart. I restored everything back to
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Clipart, but not to the
clipart folder that had been on drive D, and tried again in Word. That did it. So
the C location was the one with the Word clipart files. Why hadn't Word found

the clipart I had moved to E? I removed the clipart from the C folder back to
D:\Temp again, double-checked the setting in X-Setup, and rebooted. Still no
luck. I went online for guidance and got the impression that, as I had feared, the
C folder was a central clipart place for other Microsoft programs in addition to
Word. I put the contents back into the C and D folders as they had been
originally, deleted the E folder, and quit while I was ahead.
(c) No More Shutdown? The first time I tried to reboot after making my changes
in X-Setup (see paragraph (b), above), I found that I had accidentally removed
the Shut Down option from the Start menu. Then I decided that was not a
problem, since I had intended to set up some shortcuts for my six
reboot/shutdown batch programs (REBOOTER, REBOOTGO, RESTART,
SHUTDOWN, WINDOSBT, and FORCBOOT) anyway, and would prefer to use
them. (See point 128(d).) I decided they had to go into an item in the Links
toolbar, because that was the only toolbar that would allow them to appear on a
pull-down menu. (See point 109(g).) Another option would have been to put
them onto the Start menu somehow, but I didn't know how to do that. I couldn't
just put them into a folder on some other toolbar, because opening that folder
and then clicking on one of these shutdown options might close down the
machine with the folder still open. Sometimes Windows remembered that
folders were open and recreated them on reboot, and I didn't want that to
happen. For the details on this "fix" for the problem created by X-Setup, see
point 142.
(d) Nonworking Control Panel Icon. The Control Panel icon that X-Setup had
placed on the desktop (see point 137(c)) did not work when I double-clicked on
it. I went back into X-Setup, changed this item back the way it had been, and
reinstalled the Control Panel shortcut that I had placed there previously. (See
point 112(e).) This was better anyway, because I had noticed that my desktop
folder on my right-edge toolbar had not shown the Control Panel icon that XSetup had created, presumably because it was no longer behaving like an icon
that I had added to the desktop. (See point 120(ac).)
139. Registry Cleaners. I had previously rejected Microsoft's RegClean in favor
of Microsoft's ScanReg. (See point 119(d).) ScanReg had now become a part of
my regular system maintenance program. (See point 124.) While researching the
issue of Registry cleaning, I had heard about and downloaded several other
programs. The idea seemed to be that the Registry could be huge and complex,
and that it took several different Registry cleaners, each with its own special kind
of competence, to do a really good job of cleaning up the Registry.
(a) RegClean. I had previously installed RegClean, but had decided that ScanReg
was the better solution. (See point 119(d).) Now I decided to remove RegClean.

This should have been simpler than I made it. The ReadMe.txt file contained no
information on uninstalling, and I didn't see an entry for RegClean in Control
Panel | Add/Remove Programs. Not thinking, I clicked on the file in the
RegClean folder called "Undo PENTIUM 200000128 ..." (a long number). It asked
me if I wanted to restore the information to the Registry. I couldn't imagine why
it was asking me to restore stuff when I was trying to uninstall, i.e., remove, but
since it was four in the morning and I was not entirely awake I said sure, go for
it. As soon as I did, I realized that this was probably a file containing the bad
entries that RegClean had previously gleaned from the Registry. Oops.
RegClean itself, I decided, had never really been "installed" in the first place; it
was just a standalone program that sat on my disk until I felt like running it. So
now I figured I could delete it just as easily, just by wiping out its folder. So
that's what I did.
(b) EasyCleaner 1.71. Unlike most freeware Registry cleaners (see point 134(g)),
this one seemed to be actively maintained. See
http://www.saunalahti.fi/tonihele/. It was recommended by the people at
Tweak3D. (See point 119(d).) Also, in a Deja.com search for "best Registry
cleaner," it came up more than any other except possibly RegClean. (Another
recommended one was Fix-It by Mijenix, the same people who made
PowerDesk, but I didn't feel like paying if I could do the job with good freeware.
Also, there were some complaints that made Fix-It sound a little like Norton's
CrashGuard, which got a lot of bad reactions from users.) I downloaded and
installed EasyCleaner and, now that I had perhaps accidentally reinstalled a
bunch of junk that RegClean had previously removed, I ran EasyCleaner to see
how I liked it. Doing so also seemed timely because, before I had begun fooling
with RegClean as just described, PowerDesk had crashed for some reason. I ran
the Registry Checker to make a backup of the Registry, but it told me that one
had already been made today, and I didn't see much reason to add a confusing
backup of the current, potentially bad Registry to my set of good Registry
backups. (See point 120(an).) Before I had thought of that, I had hit Start | Run
| SCANREG /BACKUP, which also presumably gave me a backup, although at
this point I was not yet certain how to check my list of Registry backup files. (See
point 145(p).) Anyway, in EasyCleaner I started with the Clean Registry button.
It did its thing and reported that I had 172 invalid references. Some of them, I
could plainly see, were references to files that no longer existed. So I hit Select
All and then Delete. Next, I ran the Duplicate Files test. (Note that you can go
into Options to tell the program how it should define "duplicate.") In this case, it
didn't find any that surprised me, but I also knew there were some programs in
my DOS_UTIL folder (see point 64) that were older versions of some files on
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND and were probably not advisable for use under
Win98, so I went into DOS_UTIL, zipped the obsolete programs, and made
subfolders for some of the others. Next, I ran EasyCleaner's search for

Unnecessary Files. It found eighteen. Most were TMP and BAK files, which I
didn't mind deleting. I selected all and then unselected three or four files that I
wasn't so sure I was ready to delete -- especially including two with archive bits
(N.B.: this cool program actually showed those bit settings) that had been set just
since the time when I had last shut them all off. (See point 132.)
140. Fifty Best Freeware Programs. A discussion on alt.comp.freeware at the
end of 1999 came up with a list of the 50 best freeware programs. See
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566474443&fmt=text. This was hardly an
authoritative source, but I found it interesting. I added two items suggested later
in that discussion and then reduced the list, for my purposes, as follows:
(a) Eliminated because I already had installed, or soon would be installing,
something that worked well enough for my purposes: Best picture file viewer:
IRFANVIEW. Best Text Editor: NOTEPAD+/NOTETAB LITE/STRATUSPAD.
Best graphics editor: THE GIMP. Best newsreader: FREE AGENT. Best email
client: PEGASUS (big) or FOXMAIL (small). Best calendar maker: DAYSEASE
(on disk) CALENDAR CREATOR (on site). Best Registry cleaner: EASY
CLEANER. Best duplicate file finder: EASY CLEANER/DUPELESS. Best archive
utility: EASYZIP2000 / ZIPCENTRAL. Best HTML Editor: ARACHNOPHILIA
(text) XSITE (wysiwyg). Also noteworthy 1STPAGE2000 (ONLY IF you run
Internet Explorer). Best anti-virus: INOCULATEIT PE. Best spreadsheet:
SPHYGMIC SPREADSHEET/STAR OFFICE. Best disk space information tool:
TREESIZE/DISKDATA/STATS99. Best OCR: WOCAR. Best encryption utility:
CITADEL SAFSTORE. Best Word Processor:
WORDWRIGHT/XPERTWORD/STAR OFFICE. Best CD burning utility:
EASYCDPRO 95. Best disk/directory synchronization: MEHUL'S
BACKUP/SYNCHRONIZE IT!. Best disk/file wiper: BCWIPE. Best Mouse
Enhancement: COOL MOUSE 97. (See point 286.)
(b) Eliminated because I didnt want or need such programs: Best translator:
ALTAVISTA (online) DICTIONARY2000 (on disk). Best screensaver maker:
FLASHER (on disk) ALCYONE (to send to others). Best family tree maker:
KINDRED CONNECTIONS. Best CAD program: CADSTD. Best Bible:
THEOPHILOUS (huge) BIBLE PLUS (small). Best chat/on-line tool: ICQ. Best
currency converter: CURRENCY CONVERTER. Best Desktop Security: BLACK
SCREEN/DESKTOP ENFORCER. Best disk/file explorer: FMEDIT98/WINKEY.
Best File Splitter: CHAINSAW/SPLITIT95.
(c) System-Related Programs to Consider Now: Best program installation
monitor: INCTRL4. (See point 141(d).) Best free clipboard-extender: YANKEE
CLIPPER. (See point 134(j).)

(d) Postponed for Later Consideration, Internet-Related: Best at sharing internet

connection: WINGATE. (Turned out to be designed for networked computers.)
Best Freeware Site : Son Of Spy/Freewarehome. (I tended to use Hotfiles
because they rated the programs, as did Tucows and some others.) Best web
search utility: COPERNIC99. (See point 156(b).) Best netsurfing speed-up etc.:
NAVISCOPE/ISPEED. (See point 156(d).) Best free download aid:
OCTOPUS/GET RIGHT (freeware version). (See point 156(c).) Best webpage
spam & content filter: PROXOMITRON/WEBWASHER. (See point 156(e).) Best
DUN application: NETLAUNCH. (See point 134(t).)
(e) Postponed for Later Consideration, for Graphics Work: Best thumbnail
maker: IRFANVIEW/MY THUMBS. Best graphics button & title maker: DD
TITLE. Best diagram and chart drawing tool: GRIDS. Best screen capture:
PRINTKEY/HARDCOPY. Best image gallery website creator: IMAGEJEN. (See
point 224(i).)
(f) Postponed for Later Consideration, Productivity Division: Best information
management: SKWYRUL PRO/FUNNELVISION. Best lightweight
organizer/PIM: DIGITA ORGANIZER. Best versatile PIM/Organizer/planner:
SIDEKICK95/HJTREEPAD/COMMENCE. Best time/project manager:
MYOCLOCKER/DONE2000. Best planner: SPHYGMIC PLANNER. (Later, I
decided that I probably had the software that I needed along these lines, at least
for the present.)
(g) Postponed Until I Could Figure Out What They Were or for Other Reasons:
Best setup/installation builder: GKSETUP. (Turned out to be for programmers.)
Best cataloguer: CATFISH. (Later found that ZDNet gave it two stars out of five
and only reported 573 downloads.) Best free astronomy prg: ADASTRA. (See
point 159(a).)
141. Assorted System Utilities. In the effort to squeeze as much as possible into a
basic Windows system CD, I decided to install a bunch of minor utilities that
have been useful and didn't seem likely to take up too much space. I began with
a couple that had been on my mind, and then took care of the system-related
freeware programs recommended in point 140(c). The programs I installed were
as follows:
(a) PC Magazine's MultiRen. This handy little free download had been quite
useful for me. I didn't know if its command syntax was the best in the world, but
there were really only three or four things to learn, and once you got onto it, this
was an excellent way to rename multiple files with a right-click.

(b) PC Magazine's ImgView. I did a search for TIF, GIF, and JPG files, rightclicked on one of each, and chose QuickView. It worked for two out of three, but
for the GIF file I got the message, "There is no viewer capable of viewing GIF
Image files." The readme file for ImgView told me that it might be able to detect
whether there was a viewer already installed for a given file type. I installed
ImgView according to instructions. All boxes were checked, indicating that there
were no QuickView viewers for any of the formats that ImgView covered (i.e.,
GIF, JPG, PCD, PCX, PNG, TGA, and TIF). I installed them all. I tested
QuickView on GIF, TIF, and JPG files, and it worked on all.
(c) GO.BAT. Not really a system utility, but it is relevant now because, now that
I had installed PowerDesk, I had quick access to a command line, just by clicking
the Command Line button on the PowerDesk toolbar as I had customized it.
(See point 135.) With a command line, the quickest way to load Internet Explorer
and reach websites whose names came readily to mind (like Hotfiles.com) was to
prepare GO.BAT and run it. GO contained this one line: START
HTTP://WWW.%1.COM. The "%1" was a variable, a placeholder for whatever
you type after the word GO on the command line. So now it was just GO
HOTFILES to get the Hotfiles website. I believe Internet Explorer provides a
similar function; the advantage here is that you don't even have to have IE
running: GO.BAT itself will start IE and then search for the website.
(d) PC Magazines InCtrl4. It seemed like high time to learn how to use a
program that would monitor the actions taken during the installation of various
programs, so that I could roll them back without having to wipe my hard disk
and begin again with the most recent CD backup I had made. This was the
purpose of PC Magazine's InCtrl4. I installed it and set its default paths to
E:\Temp for reports and H:\Temp for temporary files. It seemed that, basically,
if you wanted it to track an installation, you had to enter the installation file
name in InCtrl4 and let the installation proceed through it. I felt that I might do
this only for some programs. First, if I was installing a major program, I needed
to keep on my newfound attitude of researching the program before installing it,
as I was now doing with everything. If I had done that with the
Norton/Symantec programs that had caused me problems, I might have thought
twice before installing them, or at least might then have felt that it was important
to use InCtrl4 and install nothing else for a while afterwards. Second, if it was a
minor program that people swore by -- such as, for instance, a program from this
list of fifty best freeware programs -- and if it also had good reviews from CNET,
Tucows, ZDNet, or some other similar establishment, I might not worry as much
about installing it through an uninstaller, although it might still be easy and
wise. Third, I probably wouldn't bother doing this with programs that I had
already used for some time. Fourth, I was not going to jump through a lot of
hoops for programs that I was installing shortly after having made a DriveImage

image file and burning a CD that I could easily use to put me back together if
things did go wrong. PC Mag did not rate its own programs, and I could not
find other reviews of it, but newsgroup comments led me to think that it would
be stable and useful. For example, one person mentioned using it to find files
that had changed when s/he rebooted, and said that it found files that had
changed that Win98's file finder did not report until s/he got down to the
particular folder where the changed file was located. Basically, InCtrl4 was
supposedly able to monitor the execution of any software function. For a
description of my first use of InCtrl4, see the following paragraph. Later, I found
a suggestion for a partial alternative to InCtrl4 that would work when InCtrl4
wasn't active. (See point 149.) Another manual alternative involved looking at
the INF file that accompanied a program that you were about to install; the
AddReg= and DelReg= lines in that file apparently told you what lines were
going to be added to or deleted from the Registry. I also found that GoBack
made InCtrl4 unnecessary for many purposes. (See point 236.) And one time
when I tried using InCtrl4 just to see if a program made Registry changes, it gave
me an Invalid file error. (See point 240.)
(e) Clean System Directory. This free download (CLNSYS.EXE) was a highly
recommended utility for removing unused DLL files which, if numerous, could
take up space and slow the system down. The program would search to see
which programs might be using a DLL and if it found none, it would move the
DLL into temporary storage for later deletion. It apparently focused only on
DLLs in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. To test InCtrl4, I used it during both the
installation and the first run of Clean System Directory. I set it to give a "Disk
contents comparison," which I gathered would be the most thorough report of
what had happened during the installation of Clean System Directory. InCtrl4
slowed down the installation quite a bit -- or so I assume, from the fact that it
took nearly a minute before it even showed me the first installation screen for
Clean System Directory; and it also required maybe two minutes afterwards to
complete its report. InCtrl4 also seemed to have detected the fact that I opened a
DOS box during the installation. I say that because, after the installation had
finished and I had clicked the "Install Complete" button in InCtrl4, it told me that
it was tracking an install program that still seemed to be running. (I opened the
DOS box to copy and paste the full pathname for the folder where I wanted to
install Clean System Directory. I opened a DOS box for this purpose because I
suddenly discovered that PowerDesk, unlike Windows Explorer, did not have an
Address box that I could click on to retrieve this pathname quickly, so I used
PowerDesk's right-click "DOS Prompt Here" option to get the DOS box opened at
the right folder quickly. But now it seemed that my installation report would be
a little fogged up by this extraneous activity going on during the install. When
InCtrl4 was ready, it gave me a "Report Preview" which turned out to contain the
full report. The report said, in brief, that the installation had added one Registry

key value, changed 14 others, added 16 files and directories, and changed 11 preexisting files. The report had its interesting parts; for example, I had to wonder
why Clean System Directory would change the Office 97 PowerPoint INI
(initialization) file. (There might be a good reason; it just seemed funny.) The
report was saved as a small (3K) file in E:\Temp (see previous paragraph), so I
guess I could have used it to go back and undo the changes. I was not sure about
that, though: it did report what the previous Registry values were and what
they were changed to, but of course it did not report the changes made to those
11 pre-existing files, so I really have no idea whether I could go back and make,
say, the PowerPoint INI file what it used to be. For purposes of program
installation, InCtrl4 seemed mostly informational. If this were more of a concern,
I thought it would be tempting to find out whether, say, the EasyUninstall 2000
program by Mijenix (the people who make PowerDesk -- see point 135) would
do a better job. I decided that, if I were planning to buy another utility suite
now, I'd probably give their new 2000 suite ($60) a whirl. Anyway, it was
somewhat helpful to have the list of folders that had been created or changed,
because it turned out that the Clean System Directory installation interface -which had indeed looked a lot like it was designed for Windows 3.1 -- had not
been able to handle the long directory filenames that I had typed into it, and had
therefore instead installed itself into a new folder called
D:\PROGRAM\SYSTEM U\MISCELLA\CLEAN SY. Time to uninstall! Clean
System Directory didn't have its own uninstaller, so I turned to the one in
Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs. (The InCtrl4 log file was handy here,
because it told me that the Registry had indeed been changed and therefore I
couldn't get away with just deleting the newly installed program files, like I
might have done with e.g., a DOS batch file.) Unfortunately, it didn't show any
record of an installation by Clean System Directory. So how was I supposed to
uninstall the thing? I rebooted and took another look and no, it definitely wasn't
in Add/Remove Programs. There were no uninstall instructions in the
documents accompanying the program. I decided the best approach would be to
delete the wrongly named folder and try again with a DOS-friendly folder name,
hoping that the second installation would cancel out or fix whatever had
happened during the first. I got the reminder that this deletion could impact one
or more registered programs, but I went ahead with it. I rebooted and
reinstalled Clean System Directory. This time, I did it without running InCtrl4.
To get the right DOS-compatible path name, I went to a DOS box and typed DIR
/Z, and then copied and pasted that into the Clean System Directory installation
window. When the installation was done, I looked again in Add/Remove
Programs, and saw that Clean System Directory and CLNSYS etc. still weren't
listed. Whatever. On to the first run of CLNSYS. I ran it through InCtrl4. Only
now, as I was using Start | Programs, did I see that Clean System Directory had
indeed given me an "Uninstall" icon there; I had only looked in the program's
folder on drive D. Oops. Anyway, I started InCtrl4 and told it that the Install

Program was the same as the program listed as "Target" when I right-clicked on
the Clean System Directory icon in Start | Programs and looked at its Properties.
Clean System Directory ran; it was sort of interesting to watch it count and
examine DLLs; and when it was done, five or ten minutes later, it told me that it
had found that 19 DLLs, occupying 2.8 MB, appeared to be unused. For four of
them, it was able to provide a description. Two of those descriptions involved
Visual Basic. I had downloaded and installed that runtime module in order to
run certain software. (See point 136.) Evidently I hadn't actually installed
anything yet that needed the module, but I figured I probably would a bit later. I
certainly wasn't ready to have its DLLs archived. I saw that two other DLLs also
had names beginning, like these, with the letters "vb" which told me that there
might be other Visual Basic DLLs here. I decided to cancel out of Clean System
Directory and to postpone further use of it until I had a pretty stable and
established system that had been working for a while. I told InCtrl4 that the
"install" was complete, and it prepared its report. It said that the process of
running Clean System Directory had added one Registry key value and had
changed one file. This wasn't too exciting, so I decided I probably wouldn't use
InCtrl4 for this kind of tracking on a regular basis.
(f) PrcView. This program came highly rated. (See point 134(h).) It was
designed to show all processes currently running on the computer, and to give
you the option of shutting them down. (Note: I found that the Resource Kit
Book Online did not define process in its Glossary.) PrcView got five stars at
ZDNet, and I thought it might be useful at times. Plus, it was very small.
Another important plus: it came with a command line version called PV.EXE.
(See point 153.) There was no installation process; I just moved the unzipped
files to a new D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\PrcView folder
(exception: I moved PV.EXE to D:\DOS_UTIL instead) and put a shortcut to
PrcView.exe under Start | Programs. I ran the program once and it showed me a
list of ten processes. (Comparison: at this time, Ctrl-Alt-Del showed me five
running programs, and that list did not include some programs shown on this
PrcView list.) For each process, it showed me a PID (Process ID, I assume), its
Base Priority (e.g., Normal, High), the number of threads it had open, whether it
was 16-bit or 32-bit, and the path where the executable file that triggered it (such
as C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE) was located. Right-clicking on any process
gave me the same options as I got from the Process menu option: Threads,
Module, Heap, Memory, Version, Switch to, Bring to Front, Set Priority, Debug,
or Kill. The View item on the menu gave me the option of showing a Process
Tree (which showed that nine processes were divided into two groups under a
tenth process, i.e., KERNEL32.DLL, and that five processes fell into one of those
subgroups). The Module Usage item under the View option showed the full
pathnames and other details about the DLLs in use. The Applications view
option showed that I had two applications running -- that is, it repeated what the

taskbar said. There was other information here too. It was basically a nerdy
little tool that would be handy for those desperate late-night emergencies when
you need to know what processes are running on your computer, you barely
understand why you need to know this, and you have no idea how to find out.
(I later decided that Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Software Environment might
actually be more informative under its three headings of 16-bit Modules
Loaded, 32-bit Modules Loaded, and Running Tasks, but it didnt have
PrcViews ability to kill processes.)
(g) PC Magazine's EndItAll. EndItAll was the other half of the PrcView picture.
That one provided the details; this one provided a simple overview. I had used
EndItAll previously and had enjoyed using it. It showed me the actual names of
the running programs in plain English, and let me mark them for shutdown. It
was better than Win98's TaskManager, better than Ctrl-Alt-Del, and simpler than
PcrView for ordinary purposes. (See point 141(s).) It lacked the ability to
automate shutdown from a command line, however. (See point 141(s).)
(h) Clipboard Pile. I selected this one after reviewing several others briefly. (See
point 134(j).) I tested it briefly on the AMD computer and found that I agreed
with ZDNet's assessment, which was that this had the potential to be one of the
best clipboard extenders. Like the others, it ran in the system tray on a
constantly available basis, which was both essential and a minor annoyance. I
was not certain that I would love this program, but it had some prospects for
significantly speeding up some of my tasks, so I felt it would be wise to give it a
good go. Later, I wound up having some problems with it and stopped using it,
at least for the duration of this somewhat sensitive installation project. (See point
224(f).) Ultimately, I uninstalled it. (See point 315.)
(i) PC Magazine's Slice32. Although Chainsaw and Splitit95 might have been
excellent file splitters (see point 140(b)), Slice had the indisputable advantages of
being (1) something I had successfully used for a number of years, (2) something
that I also used infrequently, and therefore didn't plan to spend a lot of time
analyzing, (3) already downloaded and waiting on my PENTIUM computer for
installation, and (4) able to run from the command prompt. Therefore, I installed
Slice32. This involved just moving it to the right folder and creating a shortcut to
it. Another way of saving a large file in pieces among multiple floppies was to
use Win98's Backup utility, but I didn't like it as much. Later, I used Slice32. (See
point 269(i).)
(j) WinMag's Registry Pruner. I had the impression that one Registry cleaner
would find things that another would not. So even though I ran EasyCleaner
(see point 139(b)), I thought there might still be room for WinMag's Registry
Pruner -- which is actively maintained, like EasyCleaner and unlike the others

that I had considered earlier (see point 134(g)). See

http://www.winmag.com/karen/ptpruner.htm. I downloaded, installed, and
ran it. It showed me a list of 305 entries that evidently appear in the Registry's
SharedDLLs list. It checkmarked 11 of them and told me that the files to which
these DLLs point no longer exist. I could believe that, since the ones I could see
were looking at drive I, my CD-ROM drive, and I had no disk in it. So I clicked
on the "Remove selected entries" button. And that's all this program did. So I
guess it was OK to have it, but no big deal. Just to make sure I hadn't totally
hosed my Registry yet, I rebooted. No worries.
(k) WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix. Apparently Win98 contained a Registry
option that would let you run a program just once, after the next reboot. In other
words, you could turn it on before a reboot, and then come back some other time
and turn it on again before another reboot, and so forth. On reboot, this option
would suspend Win98 until that one program finished running. WinMag took
this and set it so that the first program that would run after reboot would be
Defragmenter. Presto! No more disk interruptions during defragmentation. See
http://www.winmag.com/fixes/defrag.htm. It appeared that I had what I
needed, now, to set up MAINTWIN so that it would run Defragmenter every
night. (See point 131.) I downloaded this file (called DEFRAG.REG), ran it, and
rebooted. The system did indeed begin running Defragmenter before anything
else, as promised. One minor quibble: the screen saver still worked, and caused
the Defragmenter to start over, but presumably that would happen only once
during the Defragmentation -- but what if it ran long enough to let other energysaving features shut down? Anyway, in this case, the defrag operation finished
and the system went on to the dialog box that asked me, "Do you want to quit
Disk Defragmenter?" So my reboots would all go exactly as before, except if I
ran DEFRAG.REG before rebooting. I contacted the guy who wrote the WinMag
thing, and he told me that if I'd just look at the contents of DEFRAG.REG in
Notepad, I would see that I could type in whatever command I wanted. In other
words, (1) Defragmenter wasn't the only program that could run in this isolated
early boot environment, (2) I could make copies of DEFRAG.REG with different
names, containing different commands, and called by different batch files, to
accomplish different things in the early boot environment, and (3) if I did use
DEFRAG.REG for the purpose of calling Defragmenter, I could add other
switches to the command line. Based on comments I found in a newsgroup
posting, I changed the command in DEFRAG.REG to be this: DEFRAG.EXE
/ALL /F /NOPROMPT /DETAILED. The NOPROMPT part would get rid of
that closing dialog box and would boot my system right back up after
MAINTWIN was finished. A while later, I found a way to deal with the Screen
Saver problem. (See point 145(l).) I still had a problem, however, in dealing with
the dialog boxes that prevented this thing from running automatically. (See
point 264.)

(l) MAINTWIN. Thanks to the Defrag Registry Fix just mentioned, I now had
what I needed for my MAINTWIN daily defragmentation batch file.
MAINTWIN now looked like this:
@echo off
start /w d:\DOS_UTIL\DEFRAG.REG
d:\DOS_UTIL\REBOOTGO
(The /W switch told the system to linger at this START command until
DEFRAG.REG had done its thing.) Of course, I had to put DEFRAG.REG into
DOS_UTIL for this to work. I chose REBOOTGO because it would not require
my presence to hit a button before it even tried to shut things down, as
REBOOTER would do. (See point 130.) But it also would not force a reboot at
the expense of losing data, as FORCBOOT would do. I tested this by opening
Word and typing the letter X into a new document. Without saving it, I ran
REBOOTGO. Word opened a dialog box asking, "Do you want to save the
changes you made to Document 1?" I clicked on Cancel, and that was the end of
REBOOTGO. Next, I tried REBOOTGO again, but this time after saving the
document as file X. REBOOTGO shut down the document and Word and
rebooted without hesitation. This put me on a fine line where I wanted to be:
MAINTWIN wouldn't knock the props out from under me if I happened to be
busily at work but had just saved all my documents; but it also wouldn't trash
the work that the computer might be doing on a long overnight assignment.
Instead, it would wait until morning, when I could save my work, let
REBOOTGO restart the machine, and then run Defragmenter unless I decided I
had no patience for it. In net terms, Defragmenter would run some evenings but
not others, but it would run often enough that I wouldn't have to worry about
fragmentation, and often enough that the defragmenting process would not
usually require hours, as it would otherwise do if I allowed my disks to become
severely fragmented. To finish this up, I created a shortcut for MAINTWIN.BAT,
set it to close on exit (in its Properties | Advanced tab), went into Task
Scheduler, and scheduled it as follows: daily at 9 PM; only start if the computer
has been idle for at least 30 minutes; retry for up to 480 minutes; and wake the
computer to run this task. I didn't have to exclude Wednesday nights, when
MAINT_WK would be running (see point 127), because MAINT_WK would
probably have the computer in Real DOS at that point, so that the Task Schedule
trigger would never even go off on Wednesdays. Later, I decided to take an
entirely different approach to this problem. (See point 264.)
(m) PC Magazine's HDValet. I had previously spent some time considering
which "junk" files I could safely delete. HDValet offered to get rid of the
following file types (usually by deleting them or backing them up to a temporary

holding folder), and here were my reactions to that offer: (1) No problem:
backup files (BAK and OLD); Borland C++ temporary files; lost cluster files;
Visual Studio temp files; Windows diagnostic files; and WS_FTP temporary files.
(2) Go ahead, for what it's worth: (i) Setup temporary files (i.e.,
MSCREATE.DIR): I was delighted to discover that they could be deleted,
contrary to rumor. (See point 88.) (ii) C:\WINDOWS\TEMP (but not its
subfolders): MAINT_WK did a better job. (See point 124.) (iii) Temporary files
(including tilde and TMP files): HDValet looked like it would do a more
thorough job. (See point 120(e).) I was concerned that it might delete temporary
Word files that I might still need, however, so I would need to be careful when I
ran it. (3) I had good, specific reasons for not wanting some "junk" files to be
deleted: (i) Help temporary files (GID, FTS, and FTG): see point 120(d)). (ii)
Temporary Internet Files: they weren't hurting anything on drive H; I had set up
Internet Explorer to keep that folder to an appropriate size; and as long as I had
them, I didn't have to download them again when I revisited those web pages.
Note that HDValet would also allow me to define other junk file types, if I
wished. HDValet did not have a DOS command-line mode, so I could not build
it into MAINT_WK anyway. It would run from the command line in a DOS box,
but it still required user input to run. I decided that this would complicate my
MAINT_WK scheme, and that I may as well add it to the list of items to run
manually from time to time. (See point 152.) But I also ran it now, just to clean
things up a bit. Interestingly, it defaulted to a Test Mode which told me that, if I
went ahead with it, I would delete 169 junk files and free up 1.9 MB of disk
space. I said go ahead. It told me that one of those 169 files could not be deleted,
and it gave me the option of looking at the log file. Nice and simple. Shortly
afterwards, I saw that the program had created a folder called
D:\HDVAL$$$.$$$. I was not familiar with the dollar-sign usage, except that it
probably indicated a temporary folder that might vanish at some point soon. I
hoped so, or at least that I could delete it, because I did not want something like
that in my root. (Later, I came back and looked at this folder. It turned out to
contain a complete empty copy of my directory structure -- which might be
useful in itself for some purposes. Empty, I say, except for whatever files
HDValet had removed. It wasn't a bad concept -- keep the files in a place where
it's super-easy to figure out where they came from -- but by this point I wasn't
worried anymore about what HDValet had done some time earlier, so I just
deleted this whole folder and figured that HDV could recreate it again next
time.)
(n) Cacheman. Although I had mostly heard this program mentioned (and very
favorably) in the audio context, it sounded like an all-purpose memory manager
that would have general value. Its installation was rather abrupt: it did its thing
and vanished without a word of introduction or explanation. Under its Settings
| Windows 98 menu option, it gave me six scenarios: Standard System, CD

Writer, Power User, Low Memory System, Multimedia, and Quake 2/Unreal
(i.e., a game-player's machine). I chose Power User. It set values for Minimal
and Maximal Disk Cache, Chunk Size, and Filename and Directory caches.
Again, I had to think that these values would be different on the AMD computer,
which would have more RAM than this PENTIUM computer; in other words, it
looked like I had installed a bit of hardware-specific software prematurely. (But
see point 329.) I clicked on File | Save & Exit and got a reminder from the
creator, asking me to send him/her a postcard if I liked the program. (See point
330.) The reminder also told me that I would have to reboot to finish the
optimization process; and it said that Cacheman changed the disk cache, not
virtual memory. Thus, it did not eliminate the need for the tinkering I had done
with virtual memory earlier. (See point 44.)
(o) PC Magazine's WinBench 99 Version 1.1. This was a relatively large (10 MB)
system utility, but it was able to give information about many aspects of my
computer. The only system utilities I had left to install were information-related,
and I wanted to see if this would eliminate the need for those others. It had a
Windows 3.1-style interface, so I knew I had to use DOS-style folder names to
indicate where I wanted to install it. (See point 141(e).) I opened Windows
Explorer, created the target folder, right-clicked on it, chose DOS Prompt Here,
typed DIR /Z in the DOS box, used the toolbar buttons to copy the resulting
DOS-style filename, pasted it into the WinBench 99 installation screen, closed the
DOS box and WinEx, and proceeded. When the installation was finished, I
clicked on the "All Tests" icon that the program had placed on my Start |
Programs menu. (As always, I rearranged those icons according to my
preferences. Later, I added those that I thought might belong on the quick-start
toolbars I had put at the top of the screen. See point 143.) The tests began by
running Defragmenter again. Somewhere along the line (I stepped away from
the machine), the program ran into problems. When I came back, it reported that
it was missing some files -- PROGRAM and some others. The program had
originally wanted to be installed in a folder right off the root with a short DOSstyle filename; perhaps the long pathname to the place where I was installing it
had confused it. Anyway, I had second thoughts about taking up so much of my
remaining space on the first CD with this hardware-specific program, and
decided to uninstall it and reinstall it again later. (See point 158(a).)
(p) Fax. Only now did I discover that Microsoft Fax was not yet installed. I went
to \TOOLS\OLDWIN95\MESSAGE\US on the Windows 98 CD. There, I
started to read WMS-FAX.TXT. It seemed to say two things that I didn't like:
first, that the program was not updated from Win95 (which I had already
gathered from the OLDWIN95 pathname), and second, that installing it would
require the same old agglomeration of Windows Messaging, Microsoft Mail
Postoffice, and God knew what else, along with an assortment of desktop icons

and other complexities that, as I recalled, had frustrated me and caused various
incompatibilities or system issues in the past. I did a little searching online and
found that many fax programs are large -- in the vicinity of 10 MB or more.
CallCenter seemed to be one of the most frequently mentioned and highly
regarded freeware fax programs: it got five cows at Tucows
(http://tucows.revealed.net/fax95.html). (Oddly, ZDNet did not seem to be
aware of it.) Thinking of the earlier experience with Microsoft Fax, however, I
decided I would like to avoid installing fax software if possible. After all, I sent
faxes infrequently, I was interested in minimizing the amount of disk space
devoted to software, and I wanted to avoid unnecessary programs which, for all
I knew, might be the source of my next software conflict or crash. So although
there were whole lists of fax freeware at
http://www.freewarehome.com/business/faxing.html and
http://www.savetz.com/fax/, I didn't leap at the opportunity. Rather, I found
some positive comments on Websites through which I could send faxes for free.
See e.g., http://www-usa.tpc.int/tpc_home.html and
http://www7.fax4free.com/home.asp. On the receiving end, there were
programs that allowed you to receive faxes as incoming e-mail. See e.g.,
http://www.jfax.com/gm/ and http://www.efax.com/. I decided I would
prefer to avoid the kind of receiving software that would require me to keep the
phone line free, since I had only one phone line and it was already busy with
phone calls and Internet use. For what I wanted, Fax4Free and eFax looked best
and seemed to be the most highly praised. I signed up with Fax4Free, but I got
the impression that their website was not being entirely up-front with me. For
instance, it seemed to say that I would not have to download software, but then
it turned out that I would have to do so after all; and their introductory e-mail
said they had merged with another company and I would now be getting
somewhat different services than I had expected, whereas their Website said
nothing about this. I started out disliking their site anyway, because it required
me to register before it really gave me any information, and I never did figure
out what I was supposed to do in order to send faxes through them, whereas
eFax's site was open and informative. Besides, eFax was easier to remember. So
I decided to try eFax. Their download was small, about 380 KB. Later, I would
do a little more tinkering (see point 224(n)) and testing (see point 247) of this
program. This seemed to take care of the task of receiving faxes. For sending
faxes, which I virtually never did, I decided I would just use the online form at
www-usa.tpc.int/sendfax.html for now, so I saved that page as a Favorite. Later,
I decided that this was not a good solution for outgoing faxes. (See point 224(n).)
(q) QBASIC and Other Tools on the Win98 CD. I also discovered, at this point,
that the \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS folder on the Win98 CD contained 16 old DOS
programs, all dated 5/11/98. Had they been updated from the versions that I
already had, or had the dates just been changed? I could see that the time had

come to synchronize (in some sense) the contents of my DOS_UTIL folder (see
point 64) and the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND folder. I started by copying over
the contents of the CD's \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS folder to DOS_UTIL, confirming
an overwrite whenever the former were newer than files contained in the latter.
I got a sharing violation for EMM.386, and then realized that it was because I had
an MS-DOS Prompt window open. But that wasn't it; it persisted after I shut
down that Window. I wondered if it was because I was using PowerDesk for the
operation, so I tried again in Windows Explorer. At this point, the system
became unresponsive. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut off Explorer, which got me a
Start button again; I chose Shut Down and did a cold reboot. Then it worked
fine. I used PowerDesk to compare the contents of DOS_UTIL and
C:\WINDOWS, and deleted several files from the former that (1) existed in the
latter and (2) would not be needed in the DOS_UTIL folder on a bootable CD.
(See point 64.) I repeated the exercise with C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, where
I found 28 duplicative files. PowerDesk was not able to fit the details of these
files into one screen without rearranging panes etc., so I decided it would be
easier to copy the contents of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND into D:\DOS_UTIL,
allowing an overwrite whenever the files were newer and making a note in all
other instances. ANSI.SYS was newer on the AMD machine -- i.e., among the
files that I had copied into DOS_UTIL -- but I allowed an overwrite, reasoning
that I wanted the PENTIUM computer to have its own system files and not those
for some other computer. I used the same logic with XCOPY32.MOD. I did not
allow an overwrite of SCANDISK.INI; for some reason, it appeared that the one I
had been editing (see e.g., point 124) was the one in D:\DOS_UTIL, so I copied it
over to C. Once that was done, another comparison allowed me to delete all
duplicative files from DOS_UTIL, thus reducing some of the growing clutter in
that folder. I just had to remember that, when I began burning bootable CDs on
the new system I was developing, I would want its DOS_UTIL file to include the
contents of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND. (See point 269(h).)
(r) MDEL. This was a little DOS utility that allowed multiple file deletions. I
downloaded it and used it to simplify the deletion of MSCREATE.DIR files in
CD_PREP.BAT (see point 116(h)), now that I knew this was what they did
anyway in PC Magazine's HDValet. (See point 141(m).)
(s) CloseAll. This program provided another way to close things down. (See
point 141(g).) When reviewed by PC Magazine in early 1999, CloseAll could
close only My Computer windows. It was evidently revised since then so that
you could add a "total" switch on the command line and shut down all open
windows. I went through the ordinary installation process and, although I had
read the ReadMe.txt file, had not really comprehended that it would add itself as
a right-click option. No thank you! I sure didn't need a one-click way of wiping
out all my current work. All I really needed was a command-line option, and I

believed I could get that from just the CLOSEALL.EXE file by itself, since the size
and other features of that file were the same before and after installation. So I
decided I would uninstall the program to get it off my context menu, and would
then just copy the CLOSEALL.EXE back to a suitable directory -- probably
D:\DOS_UTIL. I uninstalled the program through Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs, rebooted, and found that the right-click option was still
there. This prompted me to try editing the Registry to remove it. (See point
146(l).) Eventually, however, I stumbled across a non-Registry way of doing
that. (See point 146(m).) When I was all done with the CloseAll uninstallation
hassle, I copied CLOSEALL.EXE to D:\DOS_UTIL. I typed CLOSEALL TOTAL
on the DOS command line and, what do you know, it worked. It didn't shut
down everything, just the application programs. I mean, the toolbars etc. still
worked. Finally, I created a CLOSEALL.BAT file to contain that command line,
so that I wouldn't lose track of it, because the command CLOSEALL /? didn't
show any information. I also renamed the ReadMe.txt file to be CloseAll.txt and
I put that, too, in DOS_UTIL. Later, I rediscovered that PrcView also had a
command-line option that might do the same thing. (See point 141(f).) Typing
PV /? at the command line revealed far more options than CloseAll offered.
CloseAll was small, so I decided to keep it, but it also seemed that I would
probably rely primarily on PrcView. (See point 153.)
(t) PC Magazine's MenuEdit. The CloseAll episode alerted me to the fact that
some of my wonderful programs had installed unwanted options on my rightclick context menus. I tried using some suggestions that I had gotten online, but
these suggestions did not do the whole job. (See point 146(m).) It now seemed
that I would have to search through the Registry manually, seeking the locations
of entries that added those unwanted context menu options. This did not sound
like the way I wanted things to go. So first I took some advice and downloaded
MenuEdit. Unfortunately, the program dated from 1996. I was not confident
that I could trust it to work properly with my Registry. On the other hand,
ZDNet said it was suitable for Windows 95, so that was at least in the right
neighborhood. Also, installation amounted to nothing more than moving the
executable file to an appropriate folder and creating a shortcut to it. I went
ahead and gave it a try. As its documentation had seemed to suggest, however,
it worked only on file types, not on folders. Nevertheless, it was small and it
might be convenient, and it wasn't going to draw down any system resources
just by sitting there in its folder, so I kept it.
(u) CabWiz. This tiny, free download had, as its only purpose in life, the ability
to display (and/or save to a text file) the contents of any or all Windows CAB
files. CAB files contained Windows program files in a compressed format. (See
point 85(a).) I knew that I had at least one or two other ways to extract files from

a CAB file, once I knew what I was looking for: PowerDesk (see point 134(e))
and the System File Checker (see point 55).
(v) Cottonwood Software's Delayer. Again, this free utility had the kind of
installation that I preferred for utilities: just copy its files to a folder and make a
shortcut to its EXE file, which I did. The program had the ability to delay the
running of a program or a series of programs (e.g., to load programs in sequence
at startup), or to run programs repeatedly at certain time intervals. I would have
to set up command line instructions for whatever I wanted it to do, which was
fine with me. Right now, I had most of my repeated reminders (e.g., once a day)
running through Outlook 98, and I expected that to continue, but it seemed like
this tiny program might come in useful for some of my batch file work.
142. Add Shutdown Folder to Links Toolbar. I had created the Links toolbar at
the bottom of the screen and had dragged it up to the top. (See point 105(e).)
Then, as noted in point 138(c), I decided to add a Shutdown folder to that
toolbar. This folder would contain a shortcut for each of my shutdown options
(e.g., refresh, reboot immediately, reboot after getting permission, etc.). So I
created shortcuts to each of my six shutdown batch programs and put those
shortcuts into C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Shutdown. Unfortunately, this
Shutdown folder did not automatically appear on the Links toolbar. So how was
I supposed to fix that? Rebooting didn't change anything, and neither did rightclicking on the Links toolbar and selecting Refresh. I found no answers online. I
posted a question to a newsgroup, and in a day or two I had an answer. To make
the folder appear on the toolbar, I dragged it from Windows Explorer to the
desktop, and then dragged it from the desktop to the toolbar. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q171/2/28.ASP. Now I
had a Shutdown folder on the desktop (i.e., in C:\Windows\Desktop), and also
on the toolbar. I didn't want any copies of it on the desktop, so I dragged that
copy back to C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. Meanwhile, where was this other
copy of the Shutdown folder being stored, the copy that appeared on the Links
toolbar? I did a search and found it in E:\Favorites\Links. Say what? Certainly
it made sense to have something as changeable as the Links folder on E (DATA)
rather than on C (WIN98), for purposes of backing it up frequently and avoiding
fragmentation to my operating system drive. (See point 44.) But how did it get
here? [I saw, later, that I had forgotten that I had set it this way in X-Setup.] Last
time I checked, the toolbar was derived from C:\Windows\Favorites\Links.
(See point 120(ae).) The problem I saw, having it on drive E, was that I'd have
two separate Links folders. I figured this would be necessary because Links was
a system folder that, according to what I had heard, you couldn't remove from
C:\Windows\Favorites without causing malfunctions in Internet Explorer; and
this C version of Links would be where Internet Explorer would save new
Favorites. Also, the risk of fragmentation, and the need for backup, would be

much smaller than normal in my case, because I intended to keep most of my

Favorites in web pages devoted to specific topics (e.g., Media, Computers). (See
point 109(g).) The only Favorites going into Internet Explorer's Favorites folder
would be new ones that I had not yet put into those web pages. These didn't
seem likely to cause much fragmentation or require much backup. So I decided
that, on balance, I should keep the Links folder on C, and should try to create the
Links toolbar from there. I used Windows Explorer to copy E:\Favorites
(including Links and other folders) to C:\Windows\Favorites, and then
rebooted. Sure enough, the toolbar was still there, and now it was reflecting the
contents of C:\Windows\Favorites\Links rather than the no-longer-existing
E:\Favorites\Links folder. To make sure, I changed the names of some
subfolders in the Links folder on C, and the Links toolbar immediately reflected
those changes.
143. Cascading Programs Toolbar. So far, Links was the only toolbar that had
given me a cascading effect. That is, when I moved the mouse to a folder on the
Links toolbar (such as the Shutdown folder described in point 142), the folder
would open up and show me its contents with just a single click; and since I had
my Links toolbar at the top of the screen, the contents would unfold down from
the top in a pull-down menu; and when I clicked on one of them, the toolbar and
the menu would get out of the way. (See point 109(g).) By contrast, when I put a
folder on any other toolbar (such as the one at the right side -- see point 120(q)), it
would not react until I double-clicked on it, and then it would open up a folder
on the desktop that I would then have to close after selecting the item that I
wanted from it. Now, however, thanks to a response to a question I had posed in
a newsgroup, I found that I could get this pull-down menu effect from other
toolbars as well. The how-to guide appeared at
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/serenitymacros/ie5.html. My steps were as
follows: (1) I went to the Toolbars subfolder that I had created under my Start |
Programs folder. There, I created a subfolder called Programs. (2) I created a
new toolbar by right-clicking on the taskbar, choosing Toolbars | New Toolbar,
and navigating to this new Toolbars\Programs subfolder (way down the line
under C:\Windows\Start Menu). (3) I moved this toolbar up to the top of the
screen, and resized it over at the right edge, so that only the word "Programs"
was visible. (It actually took two steps: drag it onto the desktop, and then drag
it up from there.) (4) So far, my Links toolbar contained two types of entries. Its
original purpose was to hold links to web pages on which I planned to put links
to many different Favorites. (See point 109(g).) I wanted those to stay after the
present operation. But besides the ten links to ten different Favorites web pages
(e.g., Media, Computers), on which I planned to organize my Favorites
pertaining to ten different topics (see point 327), I also had a half-dozen folders
there. There were two types of folders. One was the "Frequented" folder, which
contained links to a half-dozen websites that I visited often. I wanted that folder

to stay with the other items on the Links toolbar. But the rest of the folders on
the Links toolbars contained shortcuts for programs that I wanted to be able to
load quickly. These were programs that I used often, and these folders contained
a select list. Basically, there was a different philosophy here as compared to the
Start | Programs menu: the latter needed to contain my standard, complete set
of shortcuts to all programs that I might care to run, and therefore could be
slower to navigate through, whereas these Links folders were designed for
speedy selection among a small number of frequently used programs. There
were several such folders, named Main Programs, Internet Programs, and Utility
Programs (see point 120(ae)), Desktop Tools (see point 120(f)), and this newly
added Shutdown folder (see point 142). I wasn't crazy about putting these
folders into a different toolbar that might require an additional click, but I
decided to give it a try. So I cut each of the folder icons from the Links toolbar
and pasted them into the new Toolbars\Programs subfolder that I mentioned a
moment ago. I also decided to move the E-mail folder (the one containing fast
links to create e-mail messages to people whom I e-mail often -- see point 113(b))
to that Toolbars\Programs subfolder. This left only the Frequented folder. Since
I had given unique icons to each of the links to my Favorites web pages (e.g.,
Media, Computers), and since tool tips would pop up to show me the meaning of
an icon if I forgot what it stood for, I could now right-click on an empty part of
the Links toolbar and shut off the Show Text option. This made is possible to
drag the bottom edge of the Links toolbar up so that the toolbar would occupy
just one line, which would make it less obtrusive on those occasions when I hit it
by accident. (It was set to Auto Hide.) This left a lot of room for growth, either
by adding more icons on the Links toolbar or by adding another toolbar to share
the top of the screen with it. Meanwhile, over in the top right corner, I had just
the word "Programs" for the Programs toolbar, and accompanying it was a little
">>" indicator. If I clicked on the >> indicator, I now had a set of pull-down (or
should I say roll-out) menus that acted a lot like the Start | Programs option in
the opposite corner of the screen -- with, as I say, a very different philosophy. If I
clicked once on any of these menus, then I was able to click and drag them (but
not their subcomponents) so that the ones I expected to use the most were near
the top of the list. I was thinking of moving this Programs toolbar to the rightedge toolbar, just to see if it would function the same there, and suddenly
realized that I could have figured all this out much earlier, if I had just
contemplated it for a minute, because the >> indicators that appeared under two
of the items that already existed on that right-edge toolbar (namely, the Folders
toolbar (see point 120(u)) and the Scraps toolbar (see point 120(s)), and they
functioned the same way there. Anyway, with all the extra space I now had on
the top toolbar, I decided to make these frequently-used programs more
accessible by putting each of these program folders into its own toolbar. To
make them all fit into the new, slimmer top toolbar, I shortened their names. So
now, instead of a Programs folder and toolbar (or, more precisely, under the

Programs folder, which I kept under Start | Programs because it made things
more organized), I had folders and toolbars for Desk (Desktop Tools), E (E-mail),
I (Internet Programs), Main (Main Programs), Bye (Shutdown), and Util (Utility
Programs). (I revised the Bye toolbar later. See point 262(c). Likewise the Util
toolbar. See point 310.) I figured it would take me a little while to remember
what the letters meant, but probably not long. (As it turned out, I could have
used a few more letters for each one -- I still had a lot of space to spare on that
top toolbar.) I did it in stages, dragging them all onto the desktop first, and then
onto the top toolbar. In that latter step, I found that they filled in from left to
right. That is, the last one I dragged to the top toolbar would be all the way to
the right. So I began with the ones I wanted to use most often, since this would
put them at the center of the screen (to the right of the first toolbar there, the
Links toolbar). When I was done dragging, I resized them all (except Links) so
that only the letter and the >> indicator showed. Finally, I created a Dummy
toolbar, named "____," to fill the right end of the toolbar, so that the right-edge
toolbar would never obscure a working item, and this was the last one I dragged
to the top toolbar. Now I had the same quick access as before, and without a lot
of folder icons filling an entire second row of the Links toolbar, and I also had a
greater ability to rearrange the icons on these menus. The only drawback was
that I had to look a little harder to navigate the mouse to the little >> indicator
instead of clicking on the former, slightly larger folder icon.
144. PowerDesk Problem: Error Message When Closing. Twice, now, I had
gotten a message indicating that something wasn't working right when I clicked
on the X in the upper right corner of the PowerDesk screen (see point 135) to
close down that program. (During this time, I had also gotten an error message
indicating that Explorer was shutting down, but that hadn't actually crashed the
system; nevertheless, I had rebooted.) I didn't write down the error message that
PowerDesk had provoked; it wasn't occurring regularly; and I couldn't get it to
happen again now. I decided maybe EasyCleaner could help, even though I had
just run it a few hours earlier. (See point 139(b).) It found no invalid Registry
entries, however. I went to the Mijenix website but couldn't find an FAQ there; it
appeared that I would have to call or e-mail them, which were options that I
would normally appreciate but in this case I didn't remember enough about the
problem to do that. I decided to forge ahead with my software installation
process, wait to see if it happened again, and reserve the option of possibly
uninstalling and reinstalling. This error message had not been appearing on the
AMD machine during the year or two that I had been using PowerDesk there, so
I wasn't thinking of trashing the program.
145. Other Tweaks. These adjustments did not require Registry editing. I
started these steps before taking the steps shown in point 146, but the later items
in this point 145 occurred to me only after I had begun the items shown in point

146.
(a) Auto-Complete in Internet Explorer. I decided to supply information
commonly requested in various websites. I would not actually send this
information without reviewing the website, of course, but this would enable
Internet Explorer to fill in the most likely answers. To do this, I went into
Internet Explorer and selected Tools | Internet Options | Content | My Profile.
All I really filled in was name, address, and phone number, but that seemed
likely to save a lot of typing.
(b) Larger DOS Box. Following instructions from
http://www.chami.com/tips/windows/050298W.html -- which was,
incidentally, one of the most useful and interesting of all tips sites I reviewed
during this whole process -- I opened a DOS box, right-clicked on its title bar,
and set Properties | Screen | Initial Size to 43 lines, and set the dimensions on
the toolbar to be 8 x 12. I closed the box, opened a new one, saw that it was
larger, dragged the box up and left, and dragged its bottom right corner until the
toolbars disappeared. Then I helt Ctrl and Alt while clicking on the X in its
upper right corner. Just like that, a larger and more informative DOS box. I had
opened that box from the toolbar at the top of my screen (see point 143). I copied
that shortcut to the other Start | Programs location where I had a DOS box icon.
(c) Following a tip from TweakHomePC
(http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/top20.html), I used Notepad to add this
line to the [386enh] section of C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI: PageBuffers=32.
The next couple of tips are from that same website.
(d) MSINFO32. I ran MSINFO32 (see the first paragraph of point 146) and chose
Tools | System Configuration Utility | Startup. (I could also have used this to
edit SYSTEM.INI in paragraph (c), above.) I looked for startup programs that
use lots of memory, such as FindFast, Office Startup, System Agent, Active
Movie, and NetMeeting, but found none. I did see, however, that the same
LoadPowerProfile command was listed twice, so I unchecked one of those two
instances. I also unchecked the entry for the Microsoft Messenger there; I had
downloaded and installed it, but I wasn't using it, and I didn't want its icon to
keep showing up in the system tray. This was all very helpful, but I knew there
were other ways to examine and deal with programs that run on startup, either
by editing the Registry (see point 147) or by using the Start Manager utility that
came with PC Magazine's benchmark package (see point 158(b)).
(e) IP Packet Size. In Control Panel | Network, I selected Dial-Up Adapter and
then clicked on Properties | Advanced | IP Packet Size and set Value to Small. I

did the same for Dial-Up Adapter # 2 (VPN Support).

(f) TweakUI Once More. My attempts to remove unwanted items from the Start
menu (see point 146(c)) led me back to TweakUI as perhaps the only way to deal
with some of them. I looked again at point 117, and decided to review the
"TweakUI Information Page" at http://newlifewin98.server101.com/tweakui_info.htm to see which version I had installed.
Then I remembered that it was part of the Resource Kit, so I looked back at point
119(a). This told me that I could get to my installed version of TweakUI through
the Resource Kit Sampler. I went to the PowerToy subfolder there and
compared the file list against the one shown on the TweakUI Information Page to
confirm that I had indeed installed the recommended version. Then I reviewed
http://members.aol.com/axcel216/98-3.htm# TWK98 to see if the New tab in
TweakUI (which was apparently the tab I would be using) had any significant
bugs. It looked OK. I hit the Tools Management Console / Resource Kit icon
under Start | Programs, found TweakUI under Tools A-Z, and saw that the only
thing installed so far for TweakUI was its documentation. Its instructions on
installing TweakUI assumed I was installing the buggy version from the Win98
CD, but the basic idea was the same: right-click on TWEAKUI.INF and choose
install. It told me I needed the program disk, but I just browsed the installer
back to this folder containing TWEAKUI.INF. I closed its little "Introduction"
box and went to Control Panel. There, I saw the TweakUI icon. I decided to
reboot before using it. Then I clicked on the Control Panel icon; used the right
arrow (in the upper right corner of the TweakUI screen); moved directly to the
New tab; unclicked Briefcase, My Documents Folder on Desktop, and Other
Office Documents; clicked Apply and OK; and saw in Windows Explorer that the
New list was now down to just the four items I wanted. I did not care to add any
new items to the File | New list right now, but I made a note to myself to consult
PCForrest's site at http://www.pcforrest.co.uk/tweakui.htm# t98new when I
did.
(g) "Find" Shortcut. Following the very helpful instructions at
http://members.xoom.com/rwbadour/html/tips_a_-_d.html, I opened a Find
box (from either the Start menu or Windows Explorer) and clicked on Save
Search. This gave me an All files.fnd file; I right-clicked on it and made a
shortcut. Then I moved All files.fnd to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and I put the
shortcut into the Desktop Tools toolbar. (See point 109(f).)
(h) Install Printer. Although this was a hardware-specific item, I decided to go
ahead with it, and probably should have done so long before now. I needed to
test some things, and anyway both computers would be using the same printer
for at least the foreseeable future. To add the printer, I went into Control Panel |
Add Printer and provided the requested information.

(i) Control Panel on Start Menu. Instead of having Control Panel icons on the
desktop, the Start | Settings submenu, and perhaps other places, I decided to
have just one quickly accessible Control Panel location: on the Start Menu itself.
(See point 146(e).) (Again, things are slightly out of order here because I was
pursuing several approaches at once, just trying to get through the welter of tips
and suggestions that people have cooked up; so some parts of point 146 come
before some parts of this point 145. This item is here rather than there because it
did not involve an actual Registry edit.) I used Control Panel often enough to
justify putting it on the Start menu, and as a part of the Start menu it would be
cascading -- that is, I wouldn't have to open or delete a window to find the
Control Panel's components. To create this Start menu item, I right-clicked on
Start and chose Explore. This brought up a session of Windows Explorer with
Start Menu highlighted. Right there I clicked menu items File | New | Folder
and, following instructions, I typed this long name: Control Panel.{21EC20203AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} and hit Enter. (There are other weird items
like that you can add to the Start menu -- just do a search online for at least a part
of that long number to find lists of them.) Then I wanted to rearrange the long
menu of Control Panel icons into submenus. I clicked on Start and then rightclicked on Control Panel and chose Explore. Unfortunately, it was not possible
to create subfolders from this Control Panel entry. Oh, well. A question came to
mind, though, as I was reviewing the Properties of this entry: would it be
possible to enable sharing and then to use Direct Cable Connection to tinker with
this computer's Control Panel from the other computer? Another note: they told
me that I could add other items, like Dial-Up Networking, to this Control Panel,
but I didn't have any special need for that.
(j) Empty Desktop. Around this time, I deleted the Control Panel icon from the
desktop, because I had found a way to make it even more accessible. (See point
145(i).) Having concealed some items with X-Setup (see point 137(c)), this left
three icons: the one for Device Manager (see point 112(e)) and those for My
Computer and Recycle Bin. I had come across instructions for hiding the last
two, and I did decide to move the icon for Device Manager to my Desktop
toolbar (see point 120(ac)); but I decided there was no special reason to do so,
since I had nothing else happening on the desktop at that time. To prepare for
the possibility that I might decide to use Active Desktop (see point 109(b)) at
some point in the future, which would probably be the only thing that would
make me crave an empty desktop, I took the easier approach: I right-clicked on
the desktop and chose Active Desktop | Customize My Desktop | Effects | Hide
icons when the desktop is viewed as a Web page.
(k) Run Screen Savers from Batch Files. It turned out that you could create a
shortcut to an SCR file -- a screen saver -- and that you could run these screen

saver shortcuts by a batch file command. I decided that I wanted a special screen
saver which would run right at the beginning of my nightly defragmentation -the reason being that, otherwise, the regular screen saver would kick in after 15
minutes and interrupt the defragmentation process temporarily. (See point
145(l).) To create my special screen saver, I made a copy of the Scrolling
Marquee screen saver (C:\Windows\System\Scrolling Marquee.scr). I called it
Defrag Underway.scr. Then I went into Control Panel | Display and configured
its settings so that it would go into action after one minute and would be small
and slow, so as not to drain resources from the defragmentation process. I soon
found, however, that this did not defuse the regular screen saver. My special one
would run for 15 minutes, and then the regular one would kick in and take over
and interrupt the defragmentation process as usual. So creating a special screen
saver hadn't accomplished a thing, so far, other than to give me a nice scrolling
message that said "Defragmentation Underway" during the first 15 minutes of
the defrag process. I really didn't mind the interruption of the defragmentation
all that much. It made the process start over, but theoretically the defragger had
all night anyway. It was mostly the principal of the thing: I wanted to know
how to use specialized screen savers for whatever purpose. I went online and
got the suggestion that I could set up a batch file to temporarily alter the
SYSTEM.INI file so that it would look for a different screen saver, or none at all.
I decided it would be easier to make my batch file swap the regular SYSTEM.INI
with a temporary alternate SYSTEM.INI by swapping their names; and then the
batch file would rename them back to their original selves at the end. This led to
the thought that it would actually be easier to leave poor SYSTEM.INI alone and,
instead, set up batch files that would swap screen saver (SCR) files. I would set
SYSTEM.INI to look for DEFAULT.SCR, but the identity of DEFAULT.SCR
would change as often as I wished. I decided to do this, and I proceeded as
follows:
(1) Rearrange Screen Savers. To keep things straight, I created a Screen Savers
subfolder under C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and moved all my SCR files there. I
had previously placed them into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\Extraneous Items
(see point 120(x)), but now I made that Extraneous Items folder a subfolder
under this Screen Savers folder, the difference being that Screen Savers contained
SCR files that I might actually use and the Extraneous Items folder contained
items that I was just too chicken to delete. I moved the Channel Screen Saver
from C:\WINDOWS to this Extraneous Items folder as well. (Later, I
compressed these items into a ZIP file and deleted the Extraneous Items folder.)
Moving the last screen saver was difficult, since it was the one that was currently
registered in SYSTEM.INI. To do this, I made a copy of it, renamed the copy
DEFAULT.SCR, and set Control Panel to look at DEFAULT.SCR instead of the
other. Now, when I went into Control Panel, I saw only two options for screen
savers: Default or None.

(2) Screen Saver Changer. To introduce a new SCR file as the default screen
saver, I thought the simplest approach might be to copy that SCR file to a file
named C:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\Default.scr, and then copy it to
C:\Windows\System, thus replacing the Default.scr file that had been there
previously. So at all times, there would be only one SCR file in
C:\Windows\System, and its name would be Default.scr. Note: the settings for
different screen savers (e.g., number of minutes until startup, speed of operation,
colors used) seemed to travel with the SCR files, not with SYSTEM.INI; so if I
wanted a different version of a given screen saver, I needed to take the steps I
had already taken with the Defrag Underway screen saver: make a copy of it,
temporarily put that copy into C:\Windows\System so that the Control Panel |
Display | Screen Saver page could see it, use that page to adjust its settings, save
it, and then move it back to the Screen Saver folder. These observations led to
the following batch files:
@echo off
REM This is SCR_TEMP.BAT
REM This file replaces the existing screen saver with another.
REM Syntax is SCR_TEMP <screen saver filename in quotes>
for %%v in (%1) do set infile=c:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\%%v
copy %infile% c:\Windows\System\Default.scr /y
REM End of file
@echo off
REM This is SCR_ORIG.BAT
REM This file restores the original default screen saver.
set x="c:\Windows\System\Screen Savers\Flying Through Space.scr"
copy %x% c:\Windows\System\Default.scr /y
So at the start of an action, I would call SCR_TEMP with the name of the
preferred screen saver, which I would have set up as described in paragraph (2),
above; and at the end of an action, I would run SCR_ORIG to restore my original
screen saver. The former would use a copy of the preferred temporary screen
saver, so the latter would be free to write over it with a copy of the original.
(l) Screen Saver Solution for MAINTWIN.BAT. I now had a fix for
MAINTWIN.BAT. (See point 141(l).) I changed it so that now DEFRAG.REG
would run the following batch file:
@echo off
REM This is DEFRAG.BAT
REM This file runs things in the early boot environment.

call SCR_TEMP.BAT "Defrag Underway.scr"

DEFRAG.EXE /ALL /F /NOPROMPT /DETAILED
SCR_ORIG
(m) HWINFO. Win98 came with a Hardware Diagnostic Tool. To see it at work,
and to get its output all in one long text file, you could type HWINFO /UI at the
command prompt. This was the same information as that produced by Start |
Run | MSINFO32; it was just presented differently. (For more information, see
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q185/9/56.asp.) I created a
shortcut to HWINFO, made sure its target included the /UI switch, and put this
shortcut in the System\Information subfolder under Start | Programs. The
output of this program was a color-coded screen display. Green items were
Registry entries; brown items belonged to the Configuration Manager; magenta
were file attributes; blue were warning messages; and red were error messages.
To get rid of the data files that HWINFO produced each time it ran, I added these
lines to CD_PREP.BAT (see point 116(h)):
REM Delete files produced by HWINFO.EXE.
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT attrib -r -h
C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT del C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT
if exist C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD del
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD
(o) Wildcard Link. I added another icon to the Links Toolbar. (See point 143.)
This item incorporated four separate tips that I had gotten from others: (1) You
could open Internet Explorer and send it looking for a specific website just by
typing the right command in the Start | Run box or at a DOS prompt. For
example, START HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM would take me to the CNN site.
(2) You could set up a DOS batch file to run this command automatically. I had
used both of these tips in preparing my Web Suite. (See point 120(af).) (3) You
could use this same command to go to different websites if, instead of typing e.g.,
CNN, you inserted a DOS variable like %1. The command would then be START
HTTP://WWW.%1.COM, and if you put it into a batch file called
WILDCARD.BAT, you would run it by typing WILDCARD CNN to go to the
CNN site, or WILDCARD ABC to go to ABC.COM, etc. (4) You could set up a
shortcut to run a batch file that required user input, such as this
WILDCARD.BAT file, as follows: create WILDCARD.BAT with the line just
shown; create a shortcut to it, and set the shortcut's Properties | Program options
as follows: (i) add a space and then a question mark to the end of the Cmd Line,
(ii) set it to Run Minimized and Close on Exit, and (iii) change its icon to
something snappy. I did this, and then moved the shortcut to the Links Toolbar.
Now, when I would click on my Wildcard icon, I would get a Parameters dialog,

and all I had to type into it was the core name of the website I wanted to visit. I
souped it up a bit by allowing some abbreviations for sites I visited often. The
basic idea was like this:
@echo off
set core=%1
if %core%==Y set core=yahoo
if %core%==y set core=yahoo
start http://www.%core%.com
I thought maybe later, if the need was there, I might add to this by setting it so
that a one-letter abbreviation could work for other types of URLs, i.e., those that
did not begin with HTTP://WWW. and end with .COM. Just one letter would
produce the whole complicated URL. Later, I revised this. (See point 261(f).)
(p) Relocate SCANREG Backups. I hoped, someday, to have a working backup
tape or CD backup system covering drive C. At present, I was going with the
default location on drive C for my 12 backups of the Registry. (See point 147.)
But there was a problem. My backup system would almost certainly look at
archive bits to determine which files had changed, at least for purposes of
incremental backups. Since these 12 backups would probably be different every
time I backed up, I would probably be spending 10-20 MB of backup space on
making backups of these backups. In other words, it seemed like those backups
should be somewhere other than drive C -- and as I thought about it, that seemed
like it might provide a little more safety too. To fix this, I edited
C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI to change its BackupDirectory line to read
BackupDirectory=H:\Backups. I made sure there was such a thing as an
H:\Backups folder (which may not have been necessary -- see point 242(f)), and
then I exited SCANREG.INI, ran SCANREG /BACKUP, and took a look at
H:\Backups. Sure enough, the folder contained a new RB000.CAB file. I moved
all of the RB*.CAB files (which did indeed total more than 15 MB) from
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP to H:\Backups. (Drive H was my SWAP drive, and
I did not plan to back it up. See point 32.) I felt that, ideally, I should have some
kind of report on things like this, just to let me know that nothing had happened
to the CABs on drive H. As a quick-and-dirty way of accomplishing that, I
inserted these lines at the end of DOSSTART.BAT (see point 105(l)):
:: Make sure my Registry backups are intact
echo Total number of good Registry backups:
dir h:\backups\rb*.cab /b | find /c "rb"

That way, every time I would start DOS or a DOS box, I would get a reminder.
(Later, I thought that I would like, if possible, to revise this file to show the date
of the most recent one, or a list, and put its output all on one line.)
146. Registry Edits. It was time to adjust the Registry to handle issues that XSetup and the other programs discussed above did not address. (In one sense,
this was my first direct Registry editing. See point 120(ah).) Also, some of the
new programs mentioned above had created new opportunities and needs for
adjustment. To edit the Registry, I made sure all other windows were closed.
Then I backed up the Registry by using Start | Run | MSINFO32 | Tools |
Registry Checker | Yes. Then I used Start | Run | REGEDIT to get into the
Registry. Finally, after I was done, I selected Registry | Exit. In some but
perhaps not all cases, as it turned out, I had to reboot to get the changes to take
effect. In this instance, I made the following adjustments:
(a) Eliminate Office 97 Assistants. I had had Office 97 for several years and had
almost never used the animated characters that pop up sometimes when you're
trying to do something. Once or twice, they had actually been helpful, but in
most cases I had seen them as an annoyance. Certainly I did not think they had
helped me in ways that the Help menu could not. So I took the opportunity to
edit the Registry and shut them off. In the Registry, I went to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\ and
deleted Assistant. I also deleted Assistant at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\8.0\COMMO
N\. I rebooted, went into Word, opened up the Standard toolbar (View |
Toolbars | Standard), clicked on the question mark box, and got plain old Help.
I compared this on the AMD machine, and sure enough, over there the question
mark box still brought up the Assistant.
(b) Rename "Microsoft Internet Explorer." That name shows up when
coolswitching (Alt-Tab) and in other places. I wanted to shorten it to just "IE." I
went back into the Registry and went to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main.
There, I looked at "Window Title" in the right pane. It was indeed a simple
underscore, as I had instructed X-Setup. (See point 137(j).) Yet IE itself was still
showing the full "Microsoft Internet Explorer" title. Maybe something that I had
downloaded from Microsoft since the date of the website from which I was
deriving these tweaks (http://win98central.acauth.com/win98/regtweaks.htm)
had set up the title in an alternate location. Anyway, it looked like this tweak
failed. But then, later, I noticed at times that it seemed to have succeeded.
(c) Remove Items from the File | New List. This tip came from the Windows 98
Unleashed online book at

http://www.usalatino.net/computadoras/win98_frankenbook/chapters/0-67231235-2/ch13/ch13.htm# Heading4. (The next few tips also came from this
page.) In Windows Explorer, I clicked on the File | New menu option. Along
with the several items there that I did use (i.e., new Folder, new Shortcut, new
Text Document, and new Microsoft Word Document), I saw numerous items that
I didn't. These bits of clutter were probably the reason why I never used the File
| New option except to create new folders. To make the File | New menu
option more useful, I decided to start by getting rid of the ones I didn't want.
First, I needed to know which kinds of files they created. So in C:\Temp, I used
File | New and created one item for each of the options I didn't expect to use.
This gave me a bunch of files with names like "New Bitmap Image.bmp."
Without thinking, I included the New My Documents Folder item, and therefore
had to take a moment to go back and repeat the steps I had previously taken in
point 120(j) to get rid of it. (Later, I saw that it was also necessary to repeat the
steps in point 41.) Also, the New Microsoft Office Database item didn't create an
item in C:\Temp; instead, it opened Access and was prepared to create the
database that way, so I just had to remember that Access uses files with an .MDB
extension. The "Other Office Documents" option also didn't create anything; it
just gave me a choice among scads of templates that I could use to create
something. When I was finished creating new items in C:\Temp, then, I saw that
the kinds of files that I did not want listed on the File | New menu were those
with the following extensions: BMP, HTML, MDB, OBD, PPT, UDL, WAV, XLS;
and there was also the New Briefcase item. I deleted those items, closed all
programs, ran Start | Run | REGEDIT, and clicked on the plus sign next to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. This opened up a list of many different file types. I
went to the first one on my list, BMP, and clicked on the plus sign next to it. This
opened up its list of subkeys. The one I wanted was ShellNew. I could have
deleted it, but I had the impression that this could prevent me from ever adding
it back if I wanted to, so instead I renamed it to ShellNewNope. I did the same
for the others on my list. I didn't see ShellNew options for HTML, OBD, PPT, or
XLS, and of course there was no "New Briefcase" filename extension. The
Windows 98 Unleashed web page didn't say what to do with these. I decided to
experiment -- always a risky thing in the Registry, but I did have a backup, and I
believed I understood the concept. I went back to these items there in the
Registry and looked into their other subkeys. Under HTML, for example, I saw
two subkeys: htmlfile and ShellEx; and under htmlfile I did find a ShellNew
subkey. I renamed it to ShellNewNope and repeated this approach for the others
just listed. This worked for them all, leaving only the New Briefcase item to
wonder about. (Note: for some of these items, there was more than one
ShellNew sub-subkey.) This left the New Briefcase item. I found a ShellNew
entry under .BFC, but this ShellNew item was different from the others: it had a
subkey of its own, called Config. I decided to lock in my gains: I exited,
rebooted, took a look in Windows Explorer, and saw that File | New had lost

weight. What remained was New Briefcase, and also the Other Office
Documents and My Documents Folder items. (The last would apparently
disappear from File | New whenever it was actually installed on the desktop.) I
searched newsgroups in Deja.com and got the impression that the experts just
used TweakUI to handle this. This prompted the TweakUI review described in
point 145(f).
(d) System Policy Editor (POLEDIT). I saw a comment online that made me
think this Microsoft program might simplify some of my Registry editing. I
gathered that the POLEDIT program existed on the Win98 CD, in
TOOLS\RESKIT\NETADMIN\POLEDIT. A search of the PENTIUM computer
turned up POLEDIT.CNT and POLEDIT.HLP in the Resource Kit folder (see
point 145(f), above), but no System Policy Editor. I ran the Resource Kit Console
again, but did not see anything there. I checked the Helmig site at
http://helmig.com/j_helmig/polediti.htm and decided that I did not remember
installing POLEDIT. Following the instructions at that site, I went to the Win98
CD ResKit folder just mentioned, read the POLEDIT.TXT file, and followed its
installation instructions: use Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs |
Windows Setup, choose Have Disk, and point toward the CD's ResKit folder.
This did not tell me which INF file to choose, GROUPPOL.INF or POLEDIT.INF,
so I chose the latter. Then I selected System Policy Editor, and it ran. I went to
Start | Programs, rearranged my icons, and clicked on System Policy Editor.
This opened POLEDIT in an empty screen. I chose File | Open Policy. It didn't
seem to know where to find any policies. I searched in PowerDesk and found no
POL files on the computer. Reading at
http://www.cadvision.com/redicks/security.htm -- a fairly clear and
informative site -- I got the impression that the primary purpose of POLEDIT
was to set up a system administrator and separate user accounts, where the
system administrator would have full access and the users might not see
individual items, such as the Start menu options that I was trying to get rid of.
This model would not really apply for my purposes, though, because I was both
the administrator and the user, both I and me would be working on the same
computer, and I was not interested in setting up separate user and administrator
passwords that I would have to fiddle with each time I rebooted. Moreover, as I
tried to see how far I could get with it, I found that the options on my screen did
not match those on the website. So I bailed out of that page and tried Microsoft's
own instructions, at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q147/3/81.asp. This was
more like it. Following their guidance (using single or double clicks on various
parts of the icons or lines as needed), I chose File | Open Registry | Local
Computer | Windows 98 Network | Update | Remote Update. I set Update
Mode to Manual and indicated a path of C:\WINDOWS\POLEDIT.POL for my
not-yet-existing system policy file, and then OK. I chose that folder because

POLEDIT.EXE had now been installed in C:\WINDOWS. Next, I chose File |

Save. At this point, the Microsoft site left me hanging. It said, "Select the system
policy settings you want to use." OK, uh ... after playing with POLEDIT's menu
options for a minute, I went to the PC Mag site at
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/uu1513a.htm, but
that was group-oriented too. Eventually, someone reminded me that I had that
huge 1,700-page guide to this stuff that had come with the Resource Kit. (See
point 119(a).) So, being open to suggestions, I looked at that. It told me that I
could use POLEDIT as a direct Registry editor. This did not add anything to
what I already had. Indeed, it looked like this just gave me a subset of the total
number of things that I could do in REGEDIT. So I went into Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and removed System Policy Editor. It seemed to do a
pretty good job of uninstalling: I ran a search for poledit or policy, and the only
thing left to delete (aside from the documents that the Resource Kit had installed
previously, which I didn't want to delete) was the Start | Programs shortcut. I
rebooted, and everything looked OK, except that I got two little pops from the
computer's speaker when it had nearly completed rebooting. I rebooted again,
and it did it again. This eventually provoked a whole troublesetting session that
led to restoring an earlier copy of my Registry and redoing a bunch of steps. I
didn't get to that point until after point 146(h) below, however. In the meantime,
I kept on making more adjustments and hoped it would go away. I have broken
out the troubleshooting process in a separate discussion at point 147.
(e) Removing Help and Settings from Start Menu. A newsgroup search
suggested that there is no way to remove the Help item from the Start menu. I
had better luck with Settings. An MS-MVP advised, in a recent posting, as
follows: go into
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polic
ies\Explorer. This shows options in the right pane. Right-click anywhere in the
right-side pane, choose New | Binary Value, and name it NoSetFolders. In my
case, I screwed it up, so I had to right-click on it and get Modify to continue with
the rest of the process, which was this: type the following numbers and spaces,
as shown: 01 00 00 00. (In my case, I figured I should type this in place of the
0000 that came up in the Value Data box, because that's what other items in this
right-hand pane looked like. But it turned out that I couldn't delete those four
zeros, so I left them and just typed the 01 00 00 00 after them.) Then I clicked OK.
The MS-MVP said this would remove the Control Panel and Printers subfolders
from the Start | Settings menu. Next, he told me to do exactly the same thing for
a different entry in the right-hand pane, except that I was supposed to call this
one NoSetTaskbar. But this was a screwup because, as the Registry Editor
informed me, that one already existed. I looked up the list and, oops, there it
was. So I right-clicked on this New Value # 1 entry that I had just created, and
deleted it. Then I right-clicked on the pre-existing NoSetTaskbar item, chose

Modify, and tried typing in those digits (01 00 00 00) again. This time, the dialog
box looked different; it didn't let me enter spaces; and when I was done, it didn't
show a value of 01 00 00 00 in the Data column; instead, it showed 0x01000000
(16777216). I hadn't written down the previous value, but as I recalled it was
simply 1, and that's what I saw in other items above it on the list, so I modified it
again and set it to be just 1, and now it looked like those other items. (Later, I set
this value to 0, after discovering that it had also removed my ability to right-click
on the taskbar and get options there.) I saved my work and exited the Registry
Editor, counting on my backup to save me if I was wrong. I rebooted with no
problem, went back to Start | Settings, and sure enough, Control Panel and
Printers were gone; but now there was a Windows Update item there on the
Settings submenu, in addition to the Folder Options item that had been there
previously. I dunno; maybe the Windows Update item had been there already
and I just hadn't noticed it. Anyway, being even braver or more foolhardy than
before, I reasoned that perhaps it would all work right if I first deleted the
existing NoSetTaskbar item and then added it back as the MS-MVP advised. I
went into the Registry again, did this, saved and rebooted, went back to the Start
menu, and saw that Settings was still on the Start menu, and now so was another
new item: a Windows Update icon. They were multiplying! I stamped it out on
the Start menu but could not eradicate it from the Settings submenu. Then I had
another thought: what if removing Settings, with its Folder Options subitem,
also removed Folder Options from Windows Explorer? That would suck. I had
heard something about that sort of thing. I soon found that it was even worse
than that: I no longer had a functioning Control Panel icon anywhere! Time to
restore things to the way they had been before. Only question was, how had
they been? I went back into the Registry and deleted the NoSetFolders item,
exited, and rebooted, and that brought back the Control Panel icons. (Later, I
decided to get rid of these Control Panel icons after all, because I found another
approach I liked better. See point 145(i).) Now, what to do with the
NoSetTaskbar item? I checked the Registry on the AMD machine and saw that it
didn't even have a NoSetTaskbar item, and eventually realized that this was
probably why its Start menu still had a Settings option called "Taskbar & Start
Menu." This same part of the Registry also had a NoClose item, and I guessed
that X-Setup might have created this; it was, in any event, the reason why I had
no Start | Shut Down option. I left it that way, though, because I was fine with
using the "Bye" menu at the top of the screen (see point 143) or, in a pinch, typing
REBOOTGO at the command line (see point 130). (Later, though, I decided to
add it back, which I did by changing the value of NoClose to 0.) I exited the
Registry, rebooted, and saw that the Start Menu looked like it was about as fixed
as I was going to be able to make it. For future reference, the other items for this
part of the Registry were as follows, where you would use 01 00 00 00 if you
wanted to shut off the item (i.e., "Yes, give me NoClose" etc.) or 00 00 00 00 if you
wanted to leave the item on the Start menu:

To remove Documents, name the binary value: NoRecentDocsMenu

To remove Favorites, name the binary value: NoFavoritesMenu
To remove Find, name the binary value: NoFind
To remove Log Off, name the binary value: NoLogOff
To remove Run, name the binary value: NoRun
To disable Shut Down, name the binary value: NoClose
To disable Control Panel and Printer folders, name the binary value:
NoSetFolders
To disable Taskbar context menu, name the binary value: NoTrayContextMenu
(f) "New" Option Missing from Right-Click Context Menu. According to
http://members.xoom.com/rwbadour/html/tips_e_-_p.html, the absence of a
"New" option on the context menu meant that your Registry was damaged. I
wasn't so sure -- although I had seen one sometimes, I didn't recall ever seeing
one on the new Win98 installation that I was putting onto the PENTIUM
computer. Nonetheless, I took the advice and used Start | Run to run this line:
regsvr32.exe /i shdoc401.dll. (There's a different line for users of Internet
Explorer 4.) I got a dialog informing me that the thing had run successfully, but
God only knew what it had done to my Registry. It didn't do what the MS-MVP
said it would do, as I still did not have a "New" option on my context menu.
(g) Hide Network Neighborhood Icon on Desktop. I went to Start | Run |
REGEDIT and went into this key:
HKEY_USERS\.Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polici
es\Explorer. I right-clicked on the right pane and chose New | DWORD Value,
which I named NoNetHood. I right-clicked on it, selected Modify, typed in the
value 1 (which gave me a result like other items that appeared there in that key),
hit Registry | Exit, and rebooted. (Note: I did this before point 145(j).)
(h) Rearranging Desktop Shortcuts. It looked like I was going to have only a few
desktop shortcuts, and that I probably had most of the ones I was going to have.
Now I decided that I wanted them at the right side of the screen. I decided this
because I had a permanent toolbar on the right side of the screen (see point
120(q)) where I had put my Show Desktop icon (see point 120(ac)). I figured it
would make things a little easier if I only had to move the mouse a tiny bit to go
from the Show Desktop icon to the actual icons that appeared on the desktop.
This involved the following steps: (1) Drag the icons where I wanted them.
There are ways to remove the names of desktop items, or at least rename them to
a blank, but I couldn't find those instructions at this moment (X-Setup only does
some of them). The other thing was that I would have to use two different
procedures to get rid of those names. As I say, there would be one procedure for
the standard desktop items, but then there would probably be some other

procedure for the items that I had added to the desktop. I mean, how do you
have a Control Panel shortcut, appearing in a desktop folder (see point 138(d)),
that has no name? For these reasons, I decided it would be easier -- and perhaps
more functional -- to keep the names with the desktop icons. (2) To keep the
icons where I wanted them after rearranging them, I applied a tip from
http://www.usalatino.net/computadoras/win98_frankenbook/chapters/0-67231235-2/ch13/ch13.htm# Heading12. It went like this: go to the same Registry
key as described in point 146(e), i.e.,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polic
ies\Explorer. Find the NoSaveSettings item in the right pane. If it's not there,
add it by right-clicking in the right pane and choosing New | Binary Value.
Right-click on it, choose modify, and type 00 00 00 00. (This is in addition to the
0000 that you may already see there.) Like other such settings, the alternative is
01 00 00 00. Note: as I soon discovered, Safe Mode would still screw up my
arrangement, forcing me to do a manual rearrangement. I was not certain that it
would have done so if I hadn't had my icons at the extreme right of the screen; it
seemed that the problem might have been related to the different resolutions
(800 x 600 in Normal Mode, 640 x 480 in Safe Mode).
(i) Always Display Startup Menu. TweakUI could do this, but I did it manually,
starting with advice from
http://malektips.envprogramming.com/98rsw0004.html. The Startup Menu
was not the Start | Programs menu. Rather, the Startup Menu was the one that
came up when you first boot the computer, after your BIOS has finished loading.
The Startup Menu gave you (usually) five choices of how to boot, including
Normal Mode, Safe Mode, and Command Mode (DOS). Normally, to see the
Startup Menu, you had to hit F8 when the BIOS is finishing its loading. But you
could also set it to show up every time you boot. This was appropriate for my
system because there would be times when Win98 wanted to boot in Safe Mode
but would be foiled by my DOS-based boot system. (See point 120(am).) By
showing the Startup Menu, at least I would see that something other than
Normal Mode was highlighted, and could tell the system to boot in the desired
way. To display the Startup Menu, I ran MSCONFIG and chose General |
Advanced | Enable Startup Menu. This created a new problem: now was that
the Startup Menu would ordinarily display itself for 30 seconds before
proceeding on to boot in whatever way it (or I) wanted, unless I told it to
proceed sooner. So if I looked away, it would just be sitting there twiddling its
thumbs for a half-minute. The only solution I knew for this was to go into
TweakUI, select Boot, and set the thing so that it would continue booting after,
say, three seconds. I checked my sources on TweakUI (see point 145(f)) and saw
that the coast was clear, so I went ahead with it. I rebooted and saw that the
timer was now down to three seconds instead of 30. I told it to go into Safe
Mode, but to no avail: the MSDOS setting intervened (see point 120(al)) and

dumped me at the DOS prompt. But then, when I typed WIN, expecting to go
into Normal Mode, the computer did honor my Safe Mode request. It put me
into Safe Mode after all. When I rebooted from Safe Mode, I selected Command
mode at the Startup Menu, but the system ignored that and put me into Normal
Mode, just as it would have done if I hadn't made my system always (or nearly
always) DOS-booting. On reflection, I decided that this was really the ideal state
of affairs: I could control the booting the way I wanted to, except when the
system had a bad desire to go one way or the other, in which case the most I
could do would be to delay the booting into Safe Mode by screwing around at
the DOS prompt for a while before typing WIN.
(j) Speed Up Program Shutdown. Sometimes, I had noticed, it could take a long
time for Windows to shut down a program after I had told it to do so in the CtrlAlt-Del dialog box. To speed this up, I went into
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. I right-clicked in the righthand pane and chose New | String Value. I named it HungAppTimeout. I
double-clicked on it and entered a value of 1000 milliseconds. I repeated these
steps for another String Value called WaitToKillAppTimeout, giving it, too, a
value of 1000. My advisor told me that the default values for these two strings
were 5000 and 20000 milliseconds, respectively, so I guessed that these string
values were built into the Registry at those values and that what I was doing
here was altering them, not really creating them. Anyway, this seemed likely to
speed things up dramatically. Apparently you could go as low as 1 millisecond,
at the risk of crashing Windows.
(k) Editing Context Menus: Bigger DOS Prompt Here. I had enabled the item
that would give me a "DOS Prompt Here" option whenever I right-clicked on a
folder in Windows Explorer. (See point 137(d).) I noticed, however, that this
option opened a standard-sized DOS window, whereas I had revised my MSDOS Prompt icons elsewhere to open larger DOS windows so that I could see
more lines. (See point 145(b).) Now that I had that feature in some DOS
windows, I was spoiled, and I wanted it in the rest of them. Editing the context
menu options required different procedures, depending on whether you were
dealing with the context menus for file icons, folders, or desktop items. File
options didn't require a Registry edit: you would just go into Windows Explorer,
choose Tools | Folder Options | File Types, select the type of file, click on Edit,
and add or change the kinds of Actions you wanted for that file type. For folder
options like this DOS Prompt Here option, I had to go into the Registry and
choose HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell. There, to add a new item to
the context menu, my online sources of wisdom told me that I would take the
following steps: I would go to the Edit menu item, choose New | Key, type the
name of the item I wanted to add to the list, and hit Enter. Then I would
highlight the new key and choose Edit | New | Key again. I would name this

one "command" and hit Enter. In the right pane, I would double-click on the
default value and type the full path and filename of the application program that
I wanted to associate with that entry. But in my case, I was editing an existing
item, not adding a new one. I noticed that
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell had a subkey called DosHere, and I
could see how the "command" thing just described was working in that case:
Command was a subkey underneath DosHere, and in the right pane I saw that
the Command key did point to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM. There were
some additional parameters with it: it actually said
"C:\WINDOWS\command.com /k cd "%1"" with quotation marks exactly like
that. I wasn't too sure what it all meant, but I thought maybe I could try
tinkering ... at which point I remembered my manners and realized that I had
probably better back up the Registry first. I got out of the Registry, did that (see
the first paragraph of this point 146), and then came back to this DosHere key.
Now I could fiddle around. My idea was to find the location of one of the DOS
Prompt shortcuts that I had set the way I liked, copy it to C:\WINDOWS (so that
it would be around even if I happened to rearrange my shortcuts), and point this
Registry item to it instead of pointing it to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM. I
didn't know if this was like having a shortcut to a shortcut, and I didn't know if
that was legal, but it's what I tried. I right-clicked on the "Default" word next to
this COMMAND.COM entry there in the Registry and chose Modify. Also, I
opened a session of Windows Explorer, which might not have been wise to do
while the Registry was being edited, but it was what I needed to do. Next
unknown: I wasn't sure I could get by with a long filename for "MS-DOS
Prompt" in this Registry thing. Also, I wanted to signal to myself that this wasn't
your ordinary DOS shortcut. So in Windows Explorer, I shortened the shortcut's
name to C:\WINDOWS\REGPRMT.PIF, and I also typed that same thing into
the Edit String box that had appeared when I chose Modify in the Registry
Editor. I left the Edit String box hanging for a minute, went back to Windows
Explorer, and further edited the Properties for REGPRMT.PIF as follows: (1) In
its Program tab, I saw that it, like the Registry entry, referred to
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM, so I added the /k switch here and I took it
away from the Registry entry because, while /k might have meant a lot to
COMMAND.COM, I was willing to bet that it didn't mean anything to a PIF file.
(2) I was tempted to add a space and a question mark after the /k switch on the
REGPRMT.PIF command line, as I had recently done in with my WILDCARD
icon (see point 145(o)), but then I realized that this would give me a dialog box
asking what folder I wanted to open a DOS prompt for. I didn't want that; I
wanted the right-click DOS Prompt Here selection to do it automatically. So I
went with the "%1" variable approach: I put that, in quotes, on both the Registry
line and the REGPRMT.PIF command line, with a CD in front of the latter. (I had
belatedly figured out that the CD was the ordinary DOS CD (i.e., Change
Directory) command, and that this was how the thing would know which folder

we were going to open a DOS prompt for.) In other words, the command line for
REGPRMT.PIF was now exactly what it had been for the Registry item, as shown
above, except that there wasn't a second set of quotes around it all; and the
command line for the Registry item was now C:\WINDOWS\REGPRMT.PIF
"%1" which, when I hit Enter, became wrapped in another set of quotes, as the
original entry had been. I went back to the REGPRMT.PIF Properties screen,
changed its tooltip name (on the Programs tab) to DOS Box Here, set it to Run
Minimized, and closed it. Then I opened its Properties again, switched to the
General tab, made it read-only, and exited. I closed down Windows Explorer,
exited the Registry, and rebooted. I went into Windows Explorer, right-clicked
on a folder, chose DOS Prompt Here, and got a dialog box that said, "Windows
cannot find REGPRMT.PIF." Well, that was interesting. Its Properties showed
that its MS-DOS name was actually REGPRM~1.PIF; it seemed weird that it was
getting a shortened (tilde ~) filename when its name was only seven letters long.
I copied it, renamed the copy R.PIF, and looked at the Properties for that. Its
DOS filename was RPIF~1.PIF. Bizarre. OK, I deleted R.PIF. I renamed
REGPRMT.PIF to be REGPRMPT.PIF, since I liked that better. I looked at its
Properties, and now its DOS filename was REGPRM~2.PIF. I thought I
remembered hearing that the Registry kept track of every file that ever was, even
if they were gone, and assigned them these Tilde filenames to keep them all
straight. So what would happen after I ran a registry cleaning program -- would
this file then have the name of REGPRM~1.PIF? I renamed it to DPHERE.PIF
and looked at the Properties again. Now it was DPHERE~1.PIF. OK, I went
back into the Registry, and modified the line to read
C:\WINDOWS\DPHERE~1.PIF "%1" and exited the Registry and tried it
without bothering to reboot. And you know what? It worked! I decided to
change its name back from DOS Box Here, since that's what appeared on the title
line, and I saw that running it minimized instead of Normal was a mistake
because, that way, it appeared only on the taskbar until I brought it back to
regular size. So I fixed those things and I was set. Later, I discovered that it was
always opening this window in C:\Temp, regardless of which folder I clicked on.
The culprit, I found, was that there should not be quotation marks around the %1
after all, in either the Registry or in DPHERE.PIF, and also that I should not have
a line like CD \TEMP in DOSSTART.BAT, which I had set DPHERE.PIF to run
(so that each DOS box would start with DOSKEY running and with the right
PATH statement). (See point 120(am).)
(l) Remove Unwanted Right-Click Options for Files. So now I knew a little about
editing the context menus. (See point 146(k).) I needed that knowledge, because
CloseAll had inserted an entry in the context menu, and that entry persisted after
I used Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the program. (See
point 141(s).) I went to the same HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell
location in the Registry. (Evidently Windows Explorer was a directory shell,

whatever that meant.) I clicked once on Shell and hit the asterisk key on the
numeric keypad on my keyboard, to expand all its subfolders, and I arrowed
down through them, but I didn't see anything that looked relevant to CloseAll. I
decided to try installing CloseAll again, this time through the embrace of InCtrl4.
(See point 141(d).) I exited the Registry, turned on InCtrl4, browsed to the
E:\Temp\Staging Area folder where I had put the CloseAll installation files, set
it to Disk Contents Comparison, and hit Go. InCtrl4 took some time, but when it
was done it gave me a complete report of what had happened during
installation. Now I wanted to produce another report for the uninstallation
process, for purposes of comparison; but I didn't know what program to tell
InCtrl4 to track. I fired up PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saved a copy of its
process view as BEFORE.TXT; I started Add/Remove Programs and saved
another PrcView as AFTER.TXT; I compared them using FC; and from this
comparison of running processes, I concluded that Add/Remove Programs was
using RUNDLL32.EXE and WINOA386.MOD, the latter being short for
Windows Old Applications, I believe. This was pretty murky to me, so I posted
a question about it online, but nobody snapped to attention within the
increasingly short amounts of time remaining on my patience horizon, so I
forged ahead on my own. I started InCtrl4 again, browsed to
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE on the command line, typed WINOA386.MOD
on the parameters line, and hit go. InCtrl4 ran, all right, but it reported no
changes. So InCtrl4 wasn't going to help me this time around. Fortunately, by
now I had found that I had been making a mistake all along here: everything
that I wanted to remove -- or at least everything that really got in my way -involved the context menu for folders, not files. Also, by this time my attempts
to tinker with folder context menus had incidentally led me to the location of the
CloseAll folder menu item. (See next paragraph.) So I had solved the problem
while trying to do something else. Also, for future reference, by this time I had
downloaded a copy of PC Magazine's MenuEdit utility, which seemed like it
might be useful for some kinds of file- (not folder-) related context menu editing
in the future. (See point 141(t).)
(m) Remove Unwanted Right-Click Options for Folders. PowerDesk, I believe,
was responsible for adding a bunch of new options to my context menus. Some
of those options came up when I right-clicked on folders. This included the Start
button itself which, I was told, would function like any other folder for these
purposes. So if I edited the Registry to remove unwanted options from folder
context menus, they would also disappear from the Start button's context menu.
Anyway, there were evidently two ways to get rid of folder context menu
options. Either you could search the Registry for the name of the individual
menu entry and delete it, or you could edit the Registry so that these options
would become editable through Windows Explorer's View | Folder Options |
File Types menu. The latter sounded safer and more flexible, so I chose that

route. The change was simple enough: in the Registry, go to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder, right-click on EditFlags, choose Modify, and
replace the present value with D2 01 00 00. That's already what it was in my
case, so (duh) it appeared that I could have made the change simply by going
into Windows Explorer's View | Folder Options | File Types menu, as just
described. I bailed out of the Registry and tried that. Once I was there, I hit the
letter F to get to the vicinity of the "Folders" file type. I saw I had two different
folder types: one was "File Folder," which was set to open with Explorer, and the
other was simply "Folder," which was set to open with "PDEXPLO," which I
guessed meant PowerDesk Explorer. I had checked previously and had verified
that the unwanted context menu options appeared in both Windows Explorer
and PowerDesk Explorer. Starting with the "File Folder" type, I clicked on Edit,
but saw that unfortunately there were only two unwanted actions here. I clicked
on the first one, "File Finder," but found that the Remove button did not light up.
Same for the second option, which was simply "Find." I went to the "Folder" (i.e.,
PowerDesk) file type and tried again. Here, there were three options that I
wanted to remove: PowerDesk, Explore, and CloseAllWindows. (See point
146(l).) Unfortunately, only the CloseAllWindows option was actually
removable. When I did remove it, I saw that it was gone from the context menus
for both Windows Explorer and PowerDesk Explorer -- which suggested that I
was looking for only one set, not two sets, of unwanted context menu options.
The next bit of advice I found online was to go into the Registry, to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Shell, and delete any offending keys that I
might find there, and also under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\Shell. I had
been in this neighborhood just recently (see point 146(l)), but on a different
mission. This time, I saw keys for File Finder and also for Find. I looked at their
Command subkeys and, sure enough, the one for File Finder pointed to the
PowerDesk program folder. I exited, backed up the Registry, came back in, and
deleted it. Now, Find was a little trickier -- it pointed to Windows Explorer's
EXPLORER.EXE program -- but I realized that this key was just running WinEx
for a particular purpose; I was not actually deleting Windows Explorer. So I
deleted the Find key too. Under the Shell key just mentioned, I found subkeys
for Explore, Open, and PowerDesk. Each of them had a command subkey (see
point 146(k)), which gave me more confidence that I was dealing with the right
kind of item. I deleted the PowerDesk key without much hesitation. Open, I
knew, had to stay. How about Explore? The only time I ever really used it was
to open the Start | Programs menu structure by right-clicking on the Start
button. I decided to copy down the contents of its Command subkey, which
were as follows: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.exe /e,/idlist,%I,%L. I knew, by
now, that I could accomplish the same thing just by going into Start | Programs,
double-clicking on one of the submenus shown there, and navigating within the
Explorer box that would open up for me then. So I deleted Explore too. I exited
the Registry, rebooted, and went into Windows Explorer and PowerDesk to see

how it looked. Well, it was definitely an improvement. The only remaining

objectionable folder context menu item was PowerDesk, which somehow had not
disappeared. I went back into the Registry and used Edit | Find to search for
PowerDesk. I found a bunch of references to PowerDesk, but none referred to
Shell ... until I got back to the same Folder\Shell key as before, and saw that
PowerDesk was back! I deleted it again, but it seemed that PowerDesk knew
how to resuscitate itself. I searched some more and found several Shell keys
under various PowerDesk keys, but since they weren't familiar to me, I left them
alone. I exited the Registry, tried to load PowerDesk before rebooting, and got
an error message indicating that PowerDesk had performed an illegal operation
and would be shut down. I rebooted and tried PowerDesk again. It started this
time, but the PowerDesk context menu item was still there. I gave up and sent
an e-mail to support@mijenix.com. A few days later, they responded.
(n) Bad Advice from Mijenix. Their first answer was along the lines of, "Gee, I
don't know if it is possible to edit the context menu to get rid of that item." I
tried again and got another reply, from a different person, who said that he had
tried something and it had seemed to work. Not very confidence-inspiring! But
I went with his suggestion, which was to delete this key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerDesk Archive\shell\open\command. I noticed
that there was also a
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerDesk\shell\open\command key (i.e., without
the word "Archive"), and I didn't know for sure what the difference was between
PowerDesk and PowerDesk Archive, but I did it his way. I should have looked
at the context menu before doing this, to make sure I would recognize what had
changed, if anything. As I recalled, "PowerDesk" had been in big bold letters at
the top of the context menu. If so, this had done something: "PowerDesk" now
appeared in normal letters partway down the menu. But I checked on the AMD
machine, whose Registry I had not edited, and that's how it was there too, so
evidently the advice did not accomplish what I had wanted. So what had I done
by deleting that key? I wondered whether I should restore the Registry, just to
be on the safe side; but then I thought I would rather just keep on using
PowerDesk, and if I ran into no difficulties, I would assume that the key deletion
had done some kind of good. By this time, I had worked through the process of
restoring a backup copy of the Registry (see point 147), so I was more or less
prepared when, after rebooting, I got this message: "Windows could not
upgrade one or more system files before starting. Windows may not start or run
properly. If Windows fails to start, run SETUP again. Press any key to
continue." I did so, and the system froze. I rebooted from a floppy, rearranged
the excess CAB files from H:\Backup so that they would not get in the way (see
point 148), ran SCANREG /RESTORE, rebooted without difficulty, and redid the
installations that I had done since making that Registry backup -- which,
fortunately, had been only one hour before. I restored the other CAB files to

H:\Backup and noticed that, even though I was now keeping a dozen backups of
the Registry, they still stretched back only six days and would have extended
back even less than that if I had been making Registry backups as frequently as
my many edits, during these days, would warrant.
Restoring a Backup Copy of the Registry
147. Fixing a Startup "Pop" Problem. To find the source of the two little pops
that I just mentioned, that occurred each time I rebooted, I went into the Startup
tab in MSINFO32 (see point 146(d)) to see if some new program was trying to
start on reboot. Unfortunately, I saw nothing new. Then I ran SYSEDIT (i.e.,
Start | Run | Sysedit) and looked in WIN.INI for lines beginning with Load= or
Run=. Again, no luck. I closed that and ran REGEDIT. They said I was
supposed to look in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ for programs listed under
either the Run or the RunOnce subkeys. Nothing noteworthy in either place.
Next, I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ and looked at Run,
RunOnce, RunServices, and RunServicesOnce. Apparently the keys just listed
are the ones that control what programs will load at startup. I saw some items
that had appeared during my glance at MSINFO32, but again nothing surprising.
There were a couple of items in subkeys under Run that could conceivably have
been the problem, but I really had no idea what they did, and I wasn't about to
delete them. I was out of my depth. It was time to get out of the Registry and
use my cleanup utilities to maybe get rid of a program that was trying to do
something with the no-longer-existing POLEDIT. The system cleanup utilities
that I had recently reviewed and installed were SCANREG (or its Windows
cousin, SCANREGW), EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)), Clean System Directory
(see point 141(e)), and WinMag's Registry Pruner (see point 141(j)), and I
discovered that I had also forgotten CHECKLINKS (see point 119(a)). I rebooted
into real DOS and ran SCANREG /FIX. Then I came back into Windows and ran
EasyCleaner's "Clean Registry" option. It found eight invalid references, and I
selected them and told it to delete them. I hadn't paid attention when Windows
was rebooting, but now I rebooted to see if I could still hear those two little pops.
I got distracted again during reboot. While in Windows, I took a moment to
change the icons for the Shutdown toolbar (see point 143) so that most of them
(except REBOOTER) would run minimized and would close upon exit. I
rebooted again, and this time the system froze. I cold-rebooted, and this time it
booted into Normal Mode without difficulty. I think the explanation was that
SCANREG detected a screwed Registry and replaced it with a good one. To test
this, I looked at the CAB files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (See point 132.) I
couldn't be certain, but it appeared that my most recent backups were not there.
But no, the more interesting point was that the most recent CAB file was from

just twenty minutes ago, and was named RBBAD.CAB, unlike the others, which
were named RB000.CAB and RB001.CAB and so forth. The other interesting
thing was that there were a total of only nine files there, whereas I had gone back
into SCANREG.INI an hour or two earlier (and had not yet noted the fact here)
and had changed the number of backups to 12. Could that be too great a
number? Was that the problem? I deleted RBBAD.CAB, went to
C:\WINDOWS\SCANREG.INI, changed the line to MaxBackupCopies=10 (see
point 120(an)), saved that file, and rebooted. That wasn't the explanation for the
pops, though, because I heard them again. Since I seemed to have an otherwise
working Registry, I ran Registry Checker (see the first paragraph of point 146)
and made a backup of the Registry. Then I looked again at the CAB files, to be
sure that it had made this backup. It had, but a curious thing was going on: the
program seemed to be cycling through the same numbers rather than adding
new ones. That is, this backup had been saved as RB002.CAB, and the highest
numbered CAB file was still RB008.CAB. I ran Registry Checker again, made
another backup, and took another look. No, this time it had added RB009.CAB.
I changed the number back to 12 in SCANREG.INI. Now another idea suggested
itself. In each of these reboots, I had left Control Panel open, so that it would
come back up on reboot and remind me of something that I wanted to look at in
it; and each time, I had noticed that only half of its icons had been colored in. I
had assumed that the source of the pops was interfering with the coloring
process, but now I wondered whether it was the other way around. I closed
Control Panel and rebooted. But no, that wasn't it; the pops were still there. I
ran RegistryPruner. It found one item -- FFASTLOG.TXT -- whose linked DLL
no longer existed. I removed it. I ran CHECKLINKS. It found six dead links; I
told it to remove them. I ran Clean System Directory, which now appeared to
duplicate the functions of one or more of the other programs just mentioned; it
did find files that appeared to be unused, but now I remembered that I had
hesitated to turn it loose on the files it couldn't recognize, so I just cancelled out.
Lacking other ideas, I posted a note online and waited for enlightenment. I did
get a response. (See point 148.)
148. Identifying and Using a Previous Copy of the Registry. The advice I got,
about fixing the pops that seemed to come from my tinkering with POLEDIT,
was to run SCANREG /RESTORE in real DOS and restore a copy of the Registry
that dated from before my tinkering with POLEDIT. This seemed like a good
way to free myself from worrying about what damage I might have done by
running another seemingly inappropriate Registry fix as well. (See point 146(f).)
The only problem was that, by that time, I did not remember exactly when I had
done the POLEDIT tinkering. If I restored a copy of the Registry that was too
old, I would lose other, earlier changes as well; but if I restored one that was too
new, the startup pops would still be there, so I would have to do it again with
the next earlier copy of the Registry. I decided that the latter was the better

course of action. I ran SCANREG /RESTORE, but it showed me only five or six
backups, whereas I had set the number to 12. (See point 147.) I canceled and
went to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (Note: this is a hidden folder. It won't
show up in DIR unless you type DIR /AH. Or you can just change directories to
it, i.e., CD \WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP.) There, I saw 12 CAB files, numbered from
RB000 through RB011. I moved the oldest ones to C:\TEMP, leaving five CABs
in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. (Note: the CAB files were not numbered
chronologically. For example, RB008.CAB was older than RB002.CAB.) (To
move these CAB files, I used the old DOS utility RED, short for Redirect: RED
RB001.CAB \TEMP. It's RED.COM, dated 11/28/84, and I think it came from
PC Magazine. You can use COPY instead, or maybe you have a MOVE utility
that will accomplish the same thing; and of course you can do it in Windows
Explorer.) After moving those older CABs out of the way, I now saw five recent
registry backups in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was only one from the
present day and one from the previous day. I knew I had had the two-pops
problem on the previous day, but I wasn't sure when, so I started by restoring
that one. (Use your up and down arrow keys and your Tab key to navigate
here.) SCANREG then made me restart the computer. I did this, went into
Windows, and still got the two pops. I went back into real DOS and tried again.
I saw that I had made three CAB files on the next preceding day, so this time I
instructed SCANREG /RESTORE to use the last of those three. Again I rebooted
into Windows, and again I got the two pops. I tried again with the second of
those three CAB files. Along about this time, I realized that SCANREG was
changing the dates and times of my CAB files, making a holy hash out of them,
so that I would not be able to figure out which of the CAB files contained my
most recent Registry backup. That's how it looked within SCANREG, anyway. I
canceled out and looked at the SYSBCKUP directory in DOS, and saw that what
was really happening was that SCANREG was creating copies of those original
CAB files with today's date. The way to tell them apart was that the copies were
much larger (around 5 MB) than the originals (around 1 MB). SCANREG was
giving the copies new numbers, like RB003.CAB, which happened to be used also
by the CAB files that I had moved to C:\TEMP. So when I brought those files
back from C:\TEMP, they would overwrite these newly created copies. Or,
more to the point, this list of copies was cluttering up the list of originals that
SCANREG was showing me. For all I could tell, I had been re-installing the same
CAB file, last of the three that I had made on the second preceding day. So I
renamed the CAB files that looked like copies to be e.g., RB003.CP1, and moved
them to C:\TEMP. While in DOS, I verified that SCANREG was showing me the
files in the proper order, i.e., that the most recent ones were on top. Just to be
safe, I tried again on the second of those three CAB files, confirmed that it still
gave me the two pops, and then tried the first of the three. No pops! Now I just
had to clean up. I went into C:\TEMP, deleted the CP1 files I had just created,
and moved the CAB files back to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP, letting them

overwrite existing CAB files if necessary. And now I could begin reconstructing
things.
149. Reconstructing After Restoring a Registry Backup. The Registry backup
that succeeded in removing the two pops (see previous paragraph) was more
than 48 hours old, so evidently I was going to be losing two days' worth of
Registry changes. Since I was really doing nothing on the PENTIUM computer
except installing and tinkering with software as described here, I hoped that my
notes in this document would allow me to bring my system back exactly to
where I had taken it, as described in point 146. I could see two different ways of
proceeding at this point:
(a) Having restored the Registry to its condition two days earlier, I could figure
out which of the changes described in point 146 (and earlier) had already been
achieved by that time, and then I could re-do the remaining changes that had not
yet occurred by that time. (Obviously, I would leave out ill-advised steps,
specifically the POLEDIT tinkering and the MS-MVP advice described in point
146(f), both of which had failed to work as hoped.) One problem with this
approach was that I could not be absolutely certain that I would retrace all of the
steps. Admittedly, this document presents a highly linear description of my
actions, with action A generally coming before action B; but in some cases it has
been necessary to revise earlier notes or otherwise depart from a strict linear
treatment. So starting with point 144, or 146(a), or whatever, might leave out
some steps. Also, it could be potentially time-consuming to figure out where in
the process I had made that Registry backup.
(b) Alternately, I could use an approach that others recommended. The basic
idea was that I would export copies of the Registry as text files, and would then
compare those text files. The copies to compare would be the Registry in its most
recent condition, with all the bells and whistles (including the ones I didn't
want), and the Registry in its stable condition, from two days ago. Whatever else
this approach might be, it would be exact: I would see every single difference
between the two versions of the Registry. WinDiff (see point 119(a)) was the
recommended tool for comparing these files, although they said you could also
use your word processor or even the old FC tool from DOS.
I decided to use the second approach. Following the advice, I went into my new
Registry -- i.e., the one that I had restored from two days ago. (Again, I got there
by using Start | Run | REGEDIT.) I selected My Computer at the top of the lefthand pane and chose Registry | Export Registry File. I saved the file as
C:\TEMP\BEFORE.TXT. I chose that name because, although it was now the
current state of my operating system, it was also two days old. Now I needed to
create AFTER.TXT, using a similar technique. AFTER.TXT would reflect the

most recent version of my operating system, containing all the latest changes -which, I knew, would include the bugs that I wanted to get rid of. To create
AFTER.TXT, I needed to restore today's Registry backup and then export
AFTER.TXT from it, using the steps just described. (Or, more precisely, I needed
to restore the first of today's Registry backups. I had done another after the
moment when I had first begun this whole SCANREG procedure.
Unfortunately, when I rebooted into real DOS, I saw that SCANREG /RESTORE
showed no Registry backups from today. I rebooted into Windows, looked at
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP, and remembered the problem: SCANREG would
show only five or six backups. I would still have expected it to show the most
recent ones, but apparently it didn't always work that way after all. (Maybe
increasing the number of backups beyond the original five (see point 147) caused
SCANREG to become somewhat confused in this regard. To keep SCANREG
focused, I used Windows Explorer to move all RB*.CAB files from
C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP to C:\TEMP except for today's first CAB file, from
which I would soon create AFTER.TXT. Then, just to be sure, I created another
Registry backup of the two-day-old version now installed on the system, from
which I had created BEFORE.TXT. I looked again in Windows Explorer and,
sure enough, there were only two CAB files in SYSBCKUP. Both had today's
date, but as I could tell from the time of day, RB011.CAB was the one from which
AFTER.TXT would come, and RB000.CAB was the one from which BEFORE.TXT
had come. I rebooted into DOS again, ran SCANREG /RESTORE, and was
pleased to see those two were the only CAB files listed. I restored RB011.CAB
and rebooted. Sure enough, the two clicks were back. I went into the Registry
and exported C:\TEMP\AFTER.TXT, and then exited from the Registry.
150. Comparing Copies of the Registry using WINDIFF. Now that I had
BEFORE.TXT and AFTER.TXT, I went into WinDiff (see point 149(b), above),
designated those two as my files to compare, and clicked on the Expand button.
I hadn't liked the program when I first saw it, but now I saw that it highlighted
changes in yellow, and made them really easy to pick out. (Remember, this was
a comparison of text files, so I wasn't in danger of damaging my Registry if I
made changes here.) I hit F7 and F8 to take me backward or forward through the
changes, one at a time. I found several that looked familiar, or at least I could
imagine why they were there. My shorthand descriptions of them were as
follows: MSPRINT (probably involved installing the printer -- see point 145(h));
and a string of numbers under TweakUI (probably related to point 145(f)). The
last one had a line of numbers in red as well as several lines in yellow, and
eventually I decided that red showed BEFORE -- i.e., something deleted -- and
yellow showed AFTER. The idea seemed to be this: the printer thing was new,
so there hadn't been anything on it in BEFORE; but the TweakUI setting actually
amounted to a change from a previous setting, so this had both red and yellow
components. Other changes seemed recognizable and unrelated: a change to

LoadPowerProfile (probably point 145(d)); FFASTLOG (point 147); a deletion of

an empty folder from drive E (no big deal); a change to the Windows Update
reset counter; a change in TaskScheduler's record of the LastTaskRun; and
something involving an Internet Explorer cache setting. There were also some
changes that got my attention. The first of these involved
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ex
plorer\BitBucket. The fact that it pertained to Explorer made it seem like it
might relate to the change that I had been trying to make with the MS-MVP's
advice regarding the New item on my right-click context menu. (See point
146(f).) So that looked like one thing that I might want to undo. Another that
looked suspicious involved a change to a password setting, which sounded like
POLEDIT's work. But when I got to a change involving "Driver Signing," I gave
up. I really had no idea if that would be related to the two-pops problem. I
would have to resolve my Registry problem by using the method described in
point 149(a). Nevertheless, I continued hitting F8 to flip through the remaining
changes, seeking further insight on other changes made in the last two days. If I
interpreted the Registry correctly, these included changes to the number of
backup copies of the Registry; elimination of the Office Assistants (point 146(a));
changes to ShellNewNope (see point 146(c)); My Documents folder (see point
145(f)); changing IPMTU to 576 (see point 137(j)); and NoSetTaskbar (see point
146(e)). I did find references to SHDOC401, which appeared in the MS-MVP's
advice about the New context menu item that hadn't worked and that I thought
might have been responsible for my problems. (See point 146(f).) Unfortunately,
I didn't know what to do with these. In the end, I decided that all I had really
gotten from this exercise was (1) a rough idea that I would have to re-do all of
my changes since point 145(d) or thereabouts, plus (2) a few items from before
that which I had evidently gone back and redone later, and (3) a new
appreciation for the importance of making frequent Registry backups while
doing this sort of work.
151. Reconstructing Manually. Having rejected the idea that the WinDiff
comparison approach was going to give me a meaningful guide to recovering
two days' worth of Registry edits, I closed WinDiff, deleted BEFORE.TXT and
AFTER.TXT, rebooted into real DOS, ran SCANREG /RESTORE, and restored
RB000.CAB. (See point 148, above.) I rebooted into Windows and returned the
CAB files back from C:\TEMP to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was some
overlap -- the two directories combined now contained more than my limit of 12
backup CAB files -- so I renamed and deleted as seemed appropriate to give
myself a collection that would include the important new ones and would still
have some older ones, just in case. I made another backup using Registry
Checker and wrote down the time, so that now I would know for sure where I
was starting from. Then I went back to point 145(b), as an easy way to figure out
what had been done, and opened a DOS box. It was large, so I knew I had gotten

that far when things started to go south two days earlier. I worked on from
there, point by point, and also revisited the earlier points mentioned in the
preceding paragraph. This time around, since I had to use TweakUI to remove
some of the items from the File | New menu, I decided to use it for all of them
(see point 145(f)) instead of using the manual-edit approach described in point
146(c). Some items (see e.g., point 145(g)) did not have to be redone, since they
did not involve Registry edits in the first place. As I was working through the
process, I realized that the DOS box was an example of this, and therefore that I
might have erred in assuming that I should start redoing my work at point
145(d). (See point 150.) So after re-making the changes just described, I
rebooted, looked at several changes and verified that they seemed to have gone
this time around as they had gone the first time, and then looked back before
145(d) for an earlier item that seemed like to require a Registry edit. As far as I
could tell, however, everything looked good. I made another Registry backup,
and now I was set to move ahead. (Later, I found that GoBack would have vastly
simplified this whole process. See point 236.) At this point, I resumed Registry
Tweaks, beginning at point 146(i).
Refined Approach for Making a CD Backup
152. Interim Backup. Along about this time, it was a Wednesday evening, which
meant that MAINT_WK ran. (See point 130.) This was the first time that it was
ready to run and I was ready to run it. It ran just fine, and I realized that it had
done a number of the steps that I would ordinarily do before burning a CD
containing a DriveImage image of the system I was setting up. (See point
116(h).) It had been quite a while since I had last prepared a disk image. (See
point 132.) I had held off because I had thought that I would be adding just a
few more little tweaks to a nearly finished disk; I could hardly believe the
amount of work I had done and the number of things I had learned since then. It
seemed high time to make another disk image. I updated CD_PREP and
MAINT_WK to make sure that they were both running the same cleanup
commands, and then removed those commands into a separate CLEANUP.BAT
file called by both CD_PREP and MAINT_WK. I also made a list of new
commands and utilities, discovered or installed since the date of that last disk
image, that had to be run manually (i.e., that I could not fully run from the
command line in a batch file). They were: EasyCleaner (point 139(b)), Registry
Pruner (point 141(j)), HDValet (point 141(m)), and CheckLinks (point 147). I
added lines to CLEANUP.BAT to automate the work that HDValet did,
rendering HDValet unnecessary. I created a temporary batch file to run the parts
of CLEANUP that MAINT_WK had not already run on that Wednesday evening;
I ran that; and then I ran EasyCleaner, Registry Pruner, and CheckLinks. The
resulting batch files were as follows:

:: This is CLEANUP.BAT
:: This file deletes unwanted files.
@echo off
cls
echo Clearing the Start | Documents list ...
deltree /y c:\windows\recent\*.* > nul
echo Deleting earlier file lists that might get in the way ...
if exist c:\temp\filelist.txt del c:\temp\filelist.txt > nul
if exist c:\temp\arc_bits del c:\temp\arc_bits > nul
if exist c:\temp\c_bits del c:\temp\c_bits > nul
if exist c:\temp\d_bits del c:\temp\d_bits > nul
echo Deleting files produced by HWINFO.EXE ...
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT attrib -r -h
C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT > nul
if exist C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT del C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.DAT > nul
if exist C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD del
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\HWINFOD.VXD > nul
echo Protecting some files before turning MDEL loose on them, per HDValet ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\chklist.dll attrib +r %%c:\chklist.dll /s >
nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\chklist.* /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\rcveak*.cp$ attrib +r %%c:\rcveak*.cp$
/s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.??$ /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do if exist %%c:\~desktop.* attrib +r %%c:\~desktop.* /s
> nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\~*.* /s > nul
echo Using MDEL to delete certain specific filenames, per HDValet ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\bootlog.prv %%c:\modemdet.txt /h /s >
nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\suhdlg.dat %%c:\system.1st /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\ws_ftp.log /h /s > nul
echo Using MDEL to delete various file types scattered around disks ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\mscreate.dir /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.bak %%c:\*.old %%c:\*.bsc /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ilc %%c:\*.ild %%c:\*.ilf /h /s > nul

for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ils %%c:\*.tds %%c:\*.--- /h /s > nul

for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.ilk %%c:\*.tmp %%c:\*.~* /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\*.res %%c:\*.pch %%c:\*.^* /h /s > nul
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do mdel %%c:\file???._dd %%c:\file????._dd /h /s > nul
echo Deleting files in the Windows temp directory ...
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.* > nul
echo Emptying the Recycled Bins ...
for %%c in (c d e f g h) do deltree /y %%c:\recycled\*.* > nul
*************
@echo off
REM This is MAINT_WK.BAT
REM This file runs maintenance items weekly
call CLEANUP.BAT
call scandisk /custom /all /surface
echo.| call scanreg /fix /backup
REM Set up the reboot scenario
echo Normal Mode > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
c:\windows\win.com
*************
REM This is CD_PREP.BAT.
REM This file makes lists and changes bits before burning a CD.
@echo off
call CLEANUP.BAT
REM Shut off other attribute bits, to the extent possible
attrib -a c:\*.* /s
attrib -a d:\*.* /s
REM Run LISTBITS.BAT to produce list needed to revise CD_ATT.BAT
c:
cd \temp
call listbits c:\
ren filelist.txt c_bits
call listbits d:\

ren filelist.txt d_bits

copy c_bits+d_bits arc_bits
del c_bits
del d_bits
REM Shut off archive bits on hard-core remaining files
call cd_att.bat
After running the programs just described, I looked at C:\TEMP\ARC_BITS,
used CHATT to shut off the archive bits for a half-dozen hard-core files whose
bits had not yet gotten shut off, and then ran DriveImage from the floppy with
the usual maximum/secure settings. DriveImage showed that drives C and D
now contained 947 MB, up from the total of 913 MB that I had last time I created
an image of these disks. (See point 132.) This was an amazing thing: as the
adjustments to my system became more complex and time-consuming, the
amount of additional disk space needed for these adjustments declined. All of
those assorted tweaks and minor utilities had required only about 34 MB. While
the thing was running, I calculated that, if the 63% compression ratio still held,
the resulting DriveImage file (which I called STEP_152.PQI) would be about 597
MB. It was actually only 592 MB, which was on the low side of 63%. So if that
compression ratio continued to hold, and if my limit was 650 MB, I still had room
for about 92 MB in programs. Once again, I rebooted to Windows, ran
END_LIST, and used Direct Cable Connection to move the resulting file list and
the STEP_152.PQI image file to the AMD machine, where I burned it onto CD.
153. Cleanup Suite. To automate the use of the cleanup programs described in
point 152, I added a new item to my Suites toolbar. (See point 120(af).) This
Cleanup Suite would first run PrcView to shut down existing programs. (See
point 141(f).) (PV had the advantage, for this purpose, of being able to shut
down all processes, not merely application programs. Compare CloseAll at
point 141(s).) The batch file looked like this:
@echo off
:: STE_CLEN.BAT
:: Starts in a DOS box; continues to a DOS boot.
:: Opens all my file- and registry-cleaning programs.
cls
echo.
echo The first step is to shut down all processes.
echo.
pause

echo.
pv -k sleep*
echo.
echo Let's also verify which ones should load at startup.
echo.
pause
echo.
start /w D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\UI32\STARTMGR.EXE
cls
echo Several maintenance programs will now run sequentially, starting
echo with Microsoft File Information. MFI will just provide information
echo on a specific file. I suggest leaving this program running
echo while going ahead into the System File Checker.
echo.
pause
echo.
start d:\program files\system utilities\win98 resource kit\fileinfo.exe
echo Running System File Checker ...
start /w c:\windows\system\sfc.exe
echo.
echo Backing up the Registry ...
start /w scanregw /backup
echo.
:: Run Registry Pruner, CheckLinks, and Easy Cleaner
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\WinMag Registry
Pruner\PTPruner.exe"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Win98 Resource
Kit\Checklinks.exe"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous\EasyCleaner\EasyClea.exe"
:: Run DEFRAG.REG, which sets up Defragmenter to run first after rebooting
echo.| start /w defrag.reg
echo The system will now set itself up to reboot, run SCANDISK and SCANREG,
echo and then return to Windows and run Defragmenter.
echo.
pause

echo.
echo Maintenance > d:\dos_util\bootcall.txt
d:\dos_util\real_dos.bat
After making this batch file, I created a shortcut to it, put that shortcut in the
Toolbars\Suites folder under Start | Programs, resized the right-side toolbar to
accommodate it, and changed its icon. (See point 113(e).)
Wrapping Up the Full Primary CD
154. Moving Programs to Another Partition. I had originally wanted all my
program files on drive D on my new setup over on the PENTIUM computer, but
some installers had put some program files into C:\Program Files. (See point
103.) PartitionMagic came with a utility called MagicMover. (See point 115.) It
seemed to have the same function as PC Magazine's COA (Change Of Address)
program: to move program files from one disk to another without making those
programs nonfunctioning. I was definitely interested in this. Now seemed like a
perfect time to experiment: drive C on the AMD machine was withering away,
and would therefore be a good test bed, and I had just made a backup to CD, so I
would be less likely to lose a lot of work if this failed. I decided I would rather
use MagicMover than COA: MagicMover had already been installed as part of
PartitionMagic (see point 115); PowerQuest's products had done a good job for
me so far; it seemed unnecessary to add a second program for this task; and as I
recalled, the documentation for COA made it sound like it might be unable to do
the job sometimes. Later, I found that some of the moves I made at this point in
the game had caused problems. (See point 166 and point 241.)
(a) The Test of MagicMover. I started MagicMover. It scanned drive C on the
AMD machine, and then gave me a treelike list, arranged in two ways:
Applications on Your System (regardless of where they might be) and Scanned
Drives (where I could designate individual folders). The latter was clearly what I
needed. I decided to start with C:\Program Files\Adobe. I clicked on that
folder and hit Next. I typed in the destination path (D:\Program Files\Adobe).
It seemed to run successfully. But then I realized that this was not a good test,
because there was no Adobe folder on the PENTIUM computer. I tried again
with C:\Program Files\Outlook Express, which did exist on both machines. The
MagicMover move of this folder, on the AMD machine, also seemed to work: I
was able to go into Outlook Express, using the shortcut under Start | Programs,
and use it to create a message (although the first time, it was really slow in
getting started). I tried once more with the C:\Program Files\Accessories folder,
which included WORDPAD.EXE. I was using WordPad to write this document,
so I temporarily exited. MagicMover ran and then gave me the message, "Some
files were not deleted from the source folder because they were in use. These

files will be deleted when you reboot your computer. We recommend that you
restart your computer after you are done using PowerQuest MagicMover." I
came back into WordPad just long enough to write these last couple of sentences,
and then I did as requested. When the system rebooted, I started WordPad again
from the shortcut under Start | Programs, and I resumed editing right here as
though nothing had changed. I had been really surprised to see that it was doing
all this Registry editing and program moving in Windows, without a
PartitionMagic-style warning to use no other programs while the operation was
underway. On the PENTIUM computer, I went into DOS and groped my way to
the MagicMover program folder
(D:\PROGRA~1\SYSTEM~1\POWERQ~1\PARTIT~1\UTILITY\MMOVER32)
and ran MAGICMOV.EXE, but it just gave me an error message stating, "This
program cannot be run in DOS mode." I decided that my experiments on the
AMD machine had justified me in trying MagicMover for real on the PENTIUM
machine.
(b) Success in Moving Folders from C:\Program Files. There were 28 subfolders
under C:\Program Files. I decided it would take a long time to do each of them
individually. I knew of no reason why I shouldn't at least try them all at once.
MagicMover was the only program running, other than Explorer and Systray. I
selected C:\Program Files. MagicMover spent a minute or two thinking, and
then it said, "The file pointed to by C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DXDIAG.EXE is
located in the Windows directory, or is a standard or integral part of Windows.
This file pointed to by the link file and all related files will be ignored. Press OK
to continue with the analysis." I pressed OK, since that was the only option.
Under "Current Application Folder," MagicMover then said "Unable to
determine a source folder. Multiple application source folders selected." None
of this sounded good, so I backed up and started again, doing one subfolder at a
time. I decided this was better anyway, because now I could put these 28 folders
into a handful of parent folders. This would make it easier to find stuff in
D:\Program Files, and would also acquaint me with the more or less mysterious
folders that all these various programs had dumped into the C drive on the
AMD machine during the past year or two. I started by creating D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Online. I moved the following C:\Program Files folders to that
destination: Chat, Internet Explorer, Messenger, NetMeeting, Online Services,
Outlook Express, Platinum Technology, TV Viewer, Webcast, Web Publish,
Windows Messaging, and Windows Update. Somewhere alone the line, I
realized that perhaps I should have checked out users' comments on
MagicMover in newsgroups. I did so at this point. Accepting that there will
always be a few people having quirky problems in any program, I really saw
nothing to make me worry about MagicMover. The only thing seemed to be that
it could confuse your uninstaller and you might have to delete program files by
hand. That didn't surprise me. What I was more worried about was if upgraders

didn't find the existing installation, but this was a price I was willing to pay for
the sake of having all the programs neatly organized in one Program Files folder.
(Although part of me said that anytime you worry about neatness where there
wasn't any before, you're just asking for trouble.) I also had to delete the origin
folder for Online Services. Eventually, it dawned on me that this might be
because I had Windows Explorer open and looking at that folder while I was
trying to move it. I was surprised that Internet Explorer moved without a
problem, although maybe that detachability (or whatever) was part of
Microsoft's argument in their antitrust case. Anyway, next I started moving
folders to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. The first one, FrontPage (not
Express or 2000), acted funny: it looked like it wasn't going to preserve the
subfolder under it, but was just going to move that subfolder's contents up a
notch so that they would appear directly under the main FrontPage folder
heading. Checking back, I saw that this was exactly what happened with
Platinum Technology. This seemed like a bug in the program, that it would
reach down through subfolders until it found files; but instead of arguing, I
worked with it by just typing the full directory structure as the destination.
Using this trick where necessary, I moved the following folders to D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office: BNS Applications, FrontPage, FrontPage Express, and
PROPFIX. (I wasnt sure where I had gotten FrontPage Express: it seemed to
have been included with either Win98 or Internet Explorer.) There were also a
couple of empty folders that MagicMover refused to carry over from
C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files. I didn't know if any programs needed
those folders, but just to be on the safe side, I used Windows Explorer to move
them manually. I moved the following folders to D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Other: Accessories, Microsoft Batch 98, Microsoft Visual Studio, Plus!, and
Windows Media Player. Finally, I moved two other miscellaneous Program File
folders from C to various locations on D: Common Files and VTNIRQ.
(c) Folders That MagicMover Did Not Move. After the foregoing moves, there
were still five folders left in C:\Program Files. In every case, MagicMover had
refused to move them to D:\Program Files, giving me this message in each case:
"PowerQuest MagicMover cannot complete the operation because no valid files
were found. This may be because one of the files selected for analysis is on an
unscanned drive. Or, the main application directory could not be determined."
The folders in question were Accessories, Common Files, DIRECTX, MSMQ, and
Uninstall Information. Three of those five folders did indeed move from C to D,
as shown in the list in paragraph (b), above. But they did not move completely:
there were still some files left in some of their subfolders on drive C. In fact, all
five of these folders had at least one file left, and in every case the files left were
DLL files. With two exceptions, there were no files left in any of these folders
except DLL files. The first exception was that in DIRECTX, there was a shortcut
called DxDiag; and when MagicMover tried to move it, the first error message

that came up (before the one just quoted) said this: "The file pointed to by
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DXDIAG.EXE is located in the Windows directory, or
is a standard or integral part of Windows. This file pointed to by the link file and
all related files will be ignored. Press OK to continue with the analysis." Then
OK would bring the other message just quoted. The other exception was that, in
the Uninstall Information folder, there were a number of hidden read-only files.
I went online and found repeated assurances by seemingly knowledgeable
individuals indicating that it was safe to delete this folder. A couple of people
said that there should be an option to remove this folder in Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs, but I didn't find that. I think that suggestion had to do,
instead, with the UNDO files that got installed in C:\ in some cases (perhaps just
when upgrading from a system that previously had Win95 on the disk). There
did seem to be some confusion on the point. Then I realized that maybe I was
looking in the wrong place in Add/Remove Programs: I had been looking at the
Install/Uninstall tab, but now I tried the Windows Setup tab. But that didn't do
it either. I finally gathered that I could probably delete this folder and then run a
Registry cleanup to get rid of any keys that might be pointing to it. So that's
what I did. But what about these four remaining folders? I e-mailed
PowerQuest tech support. A few days later, I had an answer. They told me to
just move the files using Windows Explorer or else uninstall and reinstall,
pointing to drive D. Since I had already done the latter, I tried the former. I
found that there were still several files that Windows would not allow me to
move, in either Normal Mode or Safe Mode. I could have moved them in real
DOS but I had no idea what damage that might do elsewhere, so I had to accept
that there would continue to exist a rump of a Program Files folder on C.
(d) Implications of Inability to Move Everything. According to one person, this
arrangement of having Windows 98 and nothing else on drive C would make it
easy to reinstall, as long as you kept a copy of your Registry on another disk
(such as my backup on drive H -- see point 145(p)). You would simply clean off
drive C, reinstall Windows to drive C, replace the Registry (i.e., your USER.DAT
and SYSTEM.DAT files) with the backups, and you would be done, without
having to reinstall all your other programs on top of it. In practice, however, I
found that some programs insistence on installing files into the Common Files
folder on drive C (see point 166(c)), and their refusal to let MagicMover move
them to drive D (see point 154(c)), meant that it would not be possible to do this
quite as cleanly as this person suggested -- although perhaps knowing which
programs did that would mean that you would have to reinstall only those
programs after reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, the programs that you
would have to reinstall would probably include some Microsoft programs (see
point 154(b)), and if the balance of those programs had to run over onto drive D,
it seemed like you could have a real mess. It was probably something worth
trying anyway, at the time of a reinstall, if you didnt have a disk imaging

program to do your backups, but I wasnt sure it was actually going to be much
of a help. (I used MagicMover again later. See point 323.)
155. Cram Some More Programs In. I was really amazed that I had been able to
jam so much more into my first CD than I had expected, and that it was still not
full. The mission for this first CD had clearly changed. While I had burned the
earlier CDs to capture a pristine Microsoft-only arrangement, in hopes that this
might be somewhat more stable (see point 68), I had more recently started
thinking in terms of getting as much on there as possible, so as to save me the
work of having to reinstall all that stuff later. This, too, had led to a surprise:
there had been far more system-related tweaks and utilities than I had
anticipated. Now, however, it seemed that I had finished with most of that.
What would I do to fill the remaining 92 MB on this first CD? (See point 152.) I
started by going back to the Windows Update site (see point 15) and the Office
97 Update site (see point 92) and getting any other recent downloads that may
have materialized since my last visits. Then I turned to the remaining shareware
that I had previously downloaded. I was still not inclined to install programs
that would be hardware-specific; I still wanted to focus on making this CD as
generic as possible. I also did not want to install programs that would belong on
only one computer. Nor did I expect to be able to squeeze in the contents of my
remaining program CDs, and anyway those would be easy enough to install later
if I had to reinstall the system from scratch. No, I felt that I should continue to
focus on the more numerous and potentially complex minor downloads that
would take huge amounts of time to reinstall and that therefore should be on the
final program CD. My remaining downloads fell into three categories: Internetrelated, audio-related (excluding hardware-specific items related to e.g., sound
cards), and miscellany. I decided that I would probably not be able to get it all
in, and that, having already installed Internet Explorer and other online tools, I
should finish up the Internet-related stuff first.
156. Internet-Related Programs. To complement and round out my Internet
capabilities, I installed the following programs:
(a) Norton AntiVirus 2000. I had used McAfee's antivirus program briefly, but
its updating process had baffled me -- or, just as bad, it had had enough bugs to
persuade me not to bother. I could not in good conscience go online without
good, current antivirus software, so this was where I began. Unfortunately,
PartitionMagic told me that this program, by itself, used more than 40 MB of disk
space. I decided it could safely wait until I was ready to begin going online, and
that that could wait until I had finished this first CD; so I uninstalled it and made
a note to myself to reinstall and update it from the Symantec website later. (See
point 165(c).) I decided to take the same approach with other programs that
might require me to go online: install them now, but do the detailed

configuration plus any Internet action later. I noticed, later, that although the
AntiVirus installation had asked me which folder I wanted to install into, there
was also a separate Symantec folder that I had not authorized, and that the
uninstall had failed to remove either this Symantec folder or the one that I had
authorized. I went back into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and saw
that, in addition to uninstalling AntiVirus, I needed to uninstall LiveAdvisor and
LiveUpdate. I did that, rebooted, and saw that the uninstaller still had not
removed the Symantec folder. I left it, however, since it contained only one small
file and I would be using it again soon enough anyway.
(b) Copernic 2000. They had recommended Copernic 99 as the best Web search
utility. (See point 140(d).) By the time I got around to it, it was Copernic 2000.
ZDNet gave it five stars and said it had all the features of other searchers and
also allowed Boolean searches (such as this: ((win98 or "win 98" or "windows
98") near tweakui) and "control panel"). This program would not take care of all
my searching needs, but it looked interesting, and it was relatively compact at 2.4
MB in its compressed form. I installed this program and several of those listed
below and then had the Registry problem described in point 146(n). After fixing
that problem, I came back and tried to run Copernic 2000 and got an error
message indicating that the system could not find the file that the Start |
Programs shortcut for Copernic was pointing to. This was not surprising, since
that file was not in the earlier Registry that I had restored in solving that Registry
problem. I decided the simplest approach was just to reinstall Copernic right on
top of the previous installation, and that seemed to work OK. I did not configure
it until sometime after I was able to go online, however; and then I wound up
uninstalling it. (See point 266(c).)
(c) Go!Zilla. I had used this program for several months to handle downloads. I
decided to get a program like this when I was trying to download 300 MB Linux
installations. There were several times when I got most of the way through a
huge download and then lost it all and had to start over because of a system
crash or a phone line interruption. Go!Zilla was quite good at saving my
progress up to the point of interruption, and at figuring out whether the
connection could be resumed. I also noticed that Go!Zilla's database would keep
track of as many different download orders as I cared to throw at it, and it would
just keep on processing them two at a time; this was a significant improvement
over Internet Explorer's inclination to try to do them all at once, choke on half of
them, and lose them. I believe GetRight and/or NetVampire were similar; I
already knew how to use this one and it had worked pretty well for me, so I
installed it. Perusing the ReadMe file after installing, I saw that there were other
features I had not used, including the ability to download entire FTP directories
or multiple files from a website in one operation. (An example of the latter, it
seemed, would be a website that offered a dozen different icons or pictures, or

samples of artwork or wallpaper.) Later, however, the Aureate Media problem

prompted me to consider NetVampire instead. (See point 293.)
(d) iSpeed. The purpose of this five-star free download was to optimize your
Internet connection, with potentially dramatic improvements in your browser's
speed. It did this by tweaking various settings in your Internet connection. It
took only about a half megabyte of disk space and installed quickly. Again,
however, I was not able to configure it until later. (See point 265(a).)
(e) Proxomitron. ZDNet gave this five stars, as compared to four for
WebWasher. The Proxomitron features that appealed to me included the
following: eliminate advertising banners and pop-ups; shut off background
images and automatic music; manage cookies; and set specific filters for specific
websites. At about one megabyte, it sounded like space well used -- even if
ZDNet was correct in saying that it could take some work to make it perform to
its fullest potential. I revisited this program a short time later, but did not
actually attempt to use it for many weeks, for two reasons: there were not many
websites that I currently found really offensive enough to bother rewriting
them so they would be more appealing to me, as this program would allow me
to do, and I also planned to do some webpage creation in the near future and
wanted to be sure that I would be able to see all the annoying mistakes that I
might accidentally or intentionally build into my own pages. Nonetheless, this
looked like a program that had the potential to be fun and very useful, once the
time came for it. (This was the second program that I had to reinstall as
described in point 156(b).)
(f) WS_FTP Limited Edition. This was a program I had used previously. It
provided a good way to upload files to my websites. The most important thing I
could say about it was that I really didn't have much else to say about it. I did
not expect to configure it further until I actually had some web pages to upload.
(See point 327.)
(g) Adobe Acrobat Reader. I did not really want to install this relatively large
program (6.5 MB in compressed form), but there was no doubt that I would soon
run across a website containing a document that I would need it for. There
wasnt much configuration you could do for this one. Somewhere along the line
-- possibly at this point, or perhaps as part of something from Microsoft -- I must
have downloaded the Adobe PDFWriter, which installed itself as a toolbar in
Word and which would apparently provide the ability to save an Adobe PDF file
-- you know, that annoying format that many websites use to present documents
-- to your disk.

(h) Juno. This was an e-mail program that you could use with Juno's own
network of local access numbers nationwide for free e-mail. There were not
many times when I needed it, but there had been a few. I installed an early
version that was small enough to fit onto a floppy in compressed form. I had
found that it worked better than version 3. I went online with it later, but the
process was so simple that I havent saved any notes from it here.
(i) PC Magazine's ExactTime. This utility arguably belonged with the system
utilities installed earlier, except that I still couldn't test it until I went online. (See
point ___.) Its purpose was merely to set the system's clock according to either of
two different exact time website. You could run it every time you ran Windows,
or you could run it periodically, or manually. (See point ___.)
(j) FastNet99. This program, like iSpeed (see point 156(d)), was intended to
speed up your Internet connection, but it did so by focusing on a different
problem. Instead of tweaking your settings, it merely saved the DNS (domain
naming system) numbers for the websites you would visit. That is, each website
had a DNS number, and when you typed the URL (e.g., www.cnn.com), your
system would first have to look up the DNS number corresponding to that URL.
This program stored the DNS number on your computer, saving that bit of
lookup time. I expected to use this program after I had finished my Favorites
project, so it would be quite a while before I would get back to it. (See point 327.)
(k) Seti@Home. This was a screen saver that did an arguably useful thing while
it was saving your screen: it did calculations on data downloaded from an
astronomy website in Berkeley. The calculations were from a radio telescope
somewhere. The purpose of the calculations was to see if anyone out in the
universe was sending radio signals that we could detect. Since the SETI
(pronounced "seh-tee," and short for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)
people first came up with this idea, they found that millions of people were
willing to share their computers' spare time for purposes of doing these
calculations. So when I was running this screen saver, every couple of weeks I
would have to press a button so that the computer could go online, upload the
results of its calculations to the computer in Berkeley, and download the next
work unit that needed calculations. I had begun to develop a screen saver
scheme (see point 145(k)); later, this one would fit into that scheme. (See point
___.) I wanted to run two separate Seti@Home accounts, one on each machine,
so the actual installation had to wait until I had finished my generic software
installation that was intended to work on both computers and had started
adjusting each computer separately. (See point ___.)
(l) URL2HTM. Earlier, I had begun a project in which all my Favorites would
appear as links on a small number of web pages set up for the purpose. (See

point 109(g).) I had not yet finished that project, but I knew that finishing it
would involve the use of a program that could convert Favorites to URL entries
on an HTML page. This was the purpose of URL2HTM. (See point 327.)
(m) Weather1. This was a self-updating weather program. I installed it now
and, once again, it had to be configured later, when I was all set to go online. But
when I actually considered it later, I decided to uninstall it. (See point 266(e).)
157. Audio Programs. I had a few other Internet-related programs, but I could
not install them until I was ready to go online. I estimated that I could still get a
lot of programs into an image file that would fit on the first program CD, so I
decided to turn to audio programs. (Note: it is also possible to do hardware
tinkering in this area. For example, the quality of your audio cables, speakers,
and other equipment can make a big difference. The only tinkering I did, for
purposes of this project, was to try to apply the advice to position the sound card
far from the power supply and the video card. Unfortunately, there are real
limits on how much positioning you can do when your motherboard has only
three PCI slots and the brackets that connect your PCI cards to the case alternate
between the left and right sides of the card, such that there may be only one slot
where your sound card actually fits!)
(a) Cool Edit 2000. This was, without question, the cornerstone of my audio
work. This program (and the predecessor, Cool Edit 96) had been a solid
performer for me for months, offering most of the capabilities that I needed, or
expected to need, in audio recording and editing, including MP3 capability. I
installed and configured it before doing anything else in the audio area. (Later, I
discovered that I could have just copied COOL.INI from the AMD machine to
carry over my Cool Edit 2000 settings, instead of all this reconfiguring.) For its
temporary directories, I chose folders called F:\Temp\Cool Edit Primary Temp
and D:\Temp\Cool Edit Secondary Temp. I let it be associated with all audio
file types. In Options | Settings, I set the following tab options: System | Buffer
Size = 6 seconds, 6 buffers; Cache Size 4096; Peaks Cache 512; Asynchronous
Access on; Disable Undo. Data Tab: Downsampling and Upsampling = 400, Preand Post-Filter on. I also changed some View options. I opened a WAV file from
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA, went into Transform | Noise Reduction, hit Get Profile
from Selection, and set the following values: 300 snapshots in profile, 85% noise
reduction level, FFT Size 8192, Precision Factor 7, Smoothing Amount 1,
Transition Width 3. I also brought in my previously defined Cool Edit scripts (an
SCP file) from the AMD machine. Then I selected Close (not OK) to get out of
there. I could not test the program until I had my sound card configured, and
that would not occur until I was done with my generic software installation and
was ready to begin configuring the hardware on my two computers individually.
(See point ___.) I made two other adjustments: I set Cool Edit as an option in the

Programs subfolder under SendTo, so that I could send an audio file directly to
Cool Edit (see point 113(c)), and I added a Cool Edit icon on my Main Programs
toolbar (see point 143). Later, I heard that you could sometimes get a blob of
audio data at the end of a Cool Edit file if you allowed it to save extra
information. To defeat this, I opened a sound file and chose File | Save As and
unchecked the box that said, Save extra non-audio information.
(b) Winamp. This was one of the most popular computer audio players
available. I had used it for some months and it worked just fine for me. I
installed the complete 2 MB version. (This was the third program that I had to
reinstall as described in point 156(b).) The installer added a folder that I had not
authorized, called Mjuice Media Player; I used MagicMover (see point 154) to
move it into my D:\Program Files\Audio folder. I opened Winamp, rightclicked on its title bar, and selected Options | Preferences. Under Setup | File
Types, I selected icons and shut off the Directory Context Menus option. Under
Setup | Agent, I shut off the system tray icon. Under Options | Display, I shut
off the option to display tooltips.
(c) CDFS.VXD. This was one of the smallest and most useful adjustments I had
heard about in the whole audio enterprise. Ordinarily, the contents of an audio
CD (not one containing computer-created audio files, such as MP3 or WAV files,
but a genuine audio CD like you'd buy in a store) were mostly invisible to
Windows Explorer and other programs. If you used such a program to see those
contents, you would only see a bunch of CDA programs in the root directory of
the CD. Someone, however, had figured out a way to doctor a file called
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\CDFS.VXD so that it would reveal the full
contents of the CD. Typically, after exchanging this doctored version for the
original (which I kept under another name, just in case) and rebooting, you could
use WinEx and other programs to see that the audio CD actually contained two
folders, Mono and Stereo; that each of those contained subfolders 8Bit and 16Bit;
that each of those contained subfolders 11025Hz, 22050Hz, and 44100Hz; and
that each of those contained a full set of the CD's musical tracks (depicted and
handled, now, as WAV files) -- in short, you could see that your CD actually
contained 12 versions of each track on the CD, so that different kinds of players
would still be able to play the songs. I didn't know whether there were actually
12 copies of each song, or if this was just how the revised CDFS.VXD depicted
the contents of the disk, but either way you could now use Windows Explorer to
copy these tracks straight over to your hard disk as WAV files. Not bad for a
simple swap of a single file that your system already had anyway! Later, I did
have a problem with this on one occasion. (See point ___.)
(d) CDex. This program was a "ripper," so called because it was capable of
"ripping" audio tracks from CD. The doctored version of CDFS.VXD (see

previous paragraph) was also a ripper, although it didn't look like one. With any
ripper, there was a risk of errors in the process of bringing audio data into a
computer-recognizable form (e.g., as a WAV file). I had the option of using a
different ripper known as Exact Audio Copy, which would spend as long as it
took to insure that you really did have an exact WAV copy of the data on the CD,
and I did reserve the option of using EAC later; but my tinkering with it had
indicated that it was still not perfect and that it was also somewhat unstable.
(For the record, I believe EAC is Cardware. See point 330.) My best CD-ripping
days were still ahead of me, but so far I had noticed virtually no quality
problems in using CDFS.VXD or CDex to rip tracks from CDs. CDFS.VXD made
the process very easy, but it lacked CDDB capability; that is, CDex had the ability
to look at the registration number on your CD, go online, and download the full
song name, name of the band playing it, track number on the CD, etc. from
www.cddb.com. This could save a lot of typing. So for now, at least, I expected
to make some use of CDex for ripping. I could also have used it for encoding -that is, for converting WAV audio files to a high-quality compressed format that
might take only 10-20% as much space per song. The creator of CDex had
recently decided to switch encoders. (An encoder is the program, or the part of a
program, that converts a regular audio file to a compressed format.) Formerly,
he had used an encoding "codec" known as Blade; now he was using one called
LAME (which, as I recall, was short for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder"). LAME
was supposedly pretty good, but it was still not able to produce the high quality
of the Fraunhofer codec that Cool Edit used for conversion into MP3 format.
(See point 157(a).) So my expected scheme went like this: use CDFS.VXD to
copy tracks from CD when I don't care about typing in my own track names, or
else use CDex; edit the WAV files (if necessary) in Cool Edit (and likewise for
WAV files from other sources, such as those that came in from a radio or cassette
deck through the computer's sound card to be stored as WAV files on my hard
disk); and then compress them into MP3 format, again using Cool Edit. In CDex,
I went into Options | Settings and made the following changes to the default: (1)
On the General tab, I enabled Normalize and set it to run whenever the signal
was < 92%; I set the MP3 and Recorded Tracks output directories to be
F:\Music\Compressed and F:\Music\WAV respectively. (2) On the Encoder
tab, I enabled Output Riff WAV MP3 file.
(e) CDWav and WavGlue. The purpose of these two little utilities was,
respectively, to split large WAV files into pieces and to join multiple smaller
WAV files into one larger one. I had used the latter, but not yet the former. The
occasion of using the latter arose when I recorded a three-hour radio show into
one WAV file and then found that, at 1 GB, it was large enough to cause some
problems with Cool Edit. So I split the file from within Cool Edit (not knowing
of CDWav at the time), doctored it in pieces, and then used WavGlue to join
those pieces with no problems. No configuration appeared to be necessary.

(Note: although I had not tried this yet, it sounded like I could also have used
Easy CD Creator to create a merged, or composite, audio track from two or more
WAV files onto a single WAV file on a CD-RW disk and then read the composite
from the CD-RW back to the hard disk.)
(f) AntiPop. This was a command line application. I set up a batch file to run it
without any parameters (including no /? command), which is what it took to
persuade it to show me its command line options. I set up a shortcut to run that
batch file in a DOS box. I hadn't used this little program before, but there had
been a couple of times when I could have used it.
(g) VisiTrax. I had not used this program. Moreover, on the AMD machine, I
had been unable to run it. I had concluded, however, that this fact was probably
due to a problem with the system files on the AMD machine, and not with
VisiTrax itself, based on a prompt reply from its creator when I had e-mailed
with a description of the problem. I was not certain I would need or use
VisiTrax. My interest in it stemmed largely from the fact that I had a couple of
CDs that were not listed in CDDB (see point 157(d)), and after a bit of checking
around I decided that VisiTrax was apparently one of the best programs capable
of uploading your CD data information to the CDDB database for everyone to
use. (I figured, if I had to type the CDDB data anyway, I may as well share it.)
VisiTrax also had its own database capability -- in fact, that was its strong point -and I thought I might eventually reach a point of wanting something like that to
manage my MP3 recordings. It was not a large program (less than 1 MB) and I
believed it would not be difficult to uninstall if it turned out to be unnecessary.
(See point ___.)
(h) Tiny Wave Editor. I planned to use Cool Edit for my audio editing. At one
point, however, the AMD machine had trashed Cool Edit, which I had had to
reinstall. I did not have time right then to reinstall, and I turned to Tiny Wave
Editor, which I had installed just out of curiosity, based on a recommendation by
Sonic Spot. It turned out to be surprisingly capable, for a program that took only
about 2 MB of disk space (half of which was documentation), and I felt that I
would like to keep a copy of it handy just in case. I guess its performance should
have been no surprise; it was created by Yamaha.
158. Diagnostic Programs. I still had a little space left, and I believed I could
squeeze in the following diagnostic programs. To keep down the space
requirements, I did not plan to run or configure them until later. (See point 162.)
(a) ZDNet's WinBench 99 Version 1.1. I had flirted with this program earlier, but
had uninstalled because it had seemed unnecessary at that point. (See point
141(o).) Or at least I thought I had uninstalled it -- there was no entry for it in

Add/Remove Programs -- but I saw now, as I prepared for reinstallation, that

the previous folder was still there and it still had a lot of stuff in it. I proceeded
with installation the same way as before. The installer detected the previous
installation and volunteered to put the program files there, and I said that would
be fine. Only at this point did I get to the part, described in point 141(o), about
how this program had had problems with long pathnames. I uninstalled again
(sigh), and this time I saw a reason that might have explained why the previous
installation had left some folders behind. Apparently the uninstaller was not
able to verify whether some of the files were being used by other applications. I
installed again in the same place (sigh!), this time to see whether WinBench had
its own uninstaller that would do a more thorough job. (I never did remember to
check for that first when uninstalling.) Surprisingly, I was able to obtain answers
to these mysteries by skimming through the accompanying documentation. I
uninstalled again, deleted the folder and, gritting my teeth, reinstalled in the
default C:\ZDBENCH directory that WinBench preferred. Later, I theorized that
MagicMover would rearrange file locations and links in ways that ZDBENCH
itself was not able to do. On that assumption, I used MagicMover to move
ZDBENCH to a folder in D:\Programs. Then, after creating the next disk image
backup file, I went back into WinBench and did the complete test, just to make
sure it worked. It did work, but I found it uninteresting, and I uninstalled it.
(See point 162.)
(b) Start Manager. This little program was available as a separate download
from ZDNet.com. It also came included with WinBench 99, and I had found it to
be more useful than other similar programs. (See point 137(r).) It wasn't a
benchmarking or informational tool, so I wasn't sure why it was included, but I
wasn't complaining. Like MSCONFIG | Startup (see point 157(b)), it showed the
programs that ran at startup. The difference was that, as I recalled, there had
been times when this had shown running programs that had not appeared in
MSCONFIG | Startup. The other thing was that, by right-clicking at the shortcut
for this program and looking at its Properties, I was able to find that
C:\ZDBENCH\UI32\STARTMGR.EXE ran it, and I added that line to my
Cleanup Suite (see point 153), so now I could automatically verify which
programs should load at startup.
(c) ZDNet's Audio WinBench 99. As above, I allowed this program to install in
C:\ZDBENCH, at least for now (see point 158(a)), with plans to configure it later;
instead, I uninstalled it later. (See point 162.)
159. Games and Entertainment. I was finally coming to the end of the list of
programs I wanted to install that were neither too hardware-specific to put onto
this generic programs CD nor too large to fit onto this first programs CD. I
installed the following remaining programs:

(a) Adastra. This Swiss confection was the recommended astronomy program.
(See point 140(g).) PC Magazine gave it five stars. I installed and looked at it.
The first usable astronomy program I had seen. Another freeware winner!
(b) PC Magazine's Checkers. ZDNet didn't rate its own software (which includes
that of PC Mag), but I was sure that this game would work for my purposes.
(c) PC Magazine's Foneword/32. This program converted phone numbers to
letters and ran the output through a dictionary to get real words.
(d) Chessvision's Chess. ZDNet gave this program five stars. Unfortunately,
when I went in to make sure Chessvision was set up OK, it immediately
launched into creating a database, which would take more space than my CD
would allow right now. There was no way to cancel out, so I had to let it have its
way for approximately five minutes. By the time it was done, the 6.5 MB install
program had bloomed to fill 34 MB of disk space. Then again, 22 MB of that
consisted of databases which I would not recreate on a reinstall. So I uninstalled
and reinstalled, but this time I postponed database creation until later. (See point
165(d).)
160. Diagnostic Suite. I created another suite (see point 120(af)), called the
Diagnostic Suite, to open all of my diagnostic programs for troubleshooting. Part
of the idea here was that I had previously used Norton Utilities because I didnt
use other diagnostic tools very often and didnt always remember that I had
them or how to use them. I figured that, if I could have something that would
open them all up automatically, Id be more likely to use them and less likely to
install Norton unnecessarily. The Suite shortcut ran the following batch file:
@echo off
:: STE_DIAG.BAT
cls
echo This program will run a number of tools, including some from
echo Microsoft System Information (MSINFO32). Other tools from
echo MSINFO32 appear in the Cleanup Suite but not here.
echo.
echo Consider starting with the Cleanup Suite. It cleans the
echo Registry and partitions thoroughly. This suite does more
echo specific troubleshooting.
echo.
echo Hit Ctrl-C to exit. Otherwise, continue here to shut down

echo some existing programs and load a bunch of diagnostics.

echo.
pause
echo First, decide which running programs to shut down.
start "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\Miscellaneous\EndItAll\EndItAll.exe"
echo.
pause
cls
:: *****************************************
:: DOS Window
:: *****************************************
::
::
::
::
::
::
::
::

Update Wizard Uninstall: not included here.

System File Checker: used in Cleanup Suite.
Signature Verification Tool: not included here.
Registry Checker (SCANREG): used in Cleanup Suite.
ScanDisk: used in Cleanup Suite.
Version Conflict Manager: not included here.
Internet Explorer Repair Tool
This tool doesn't seem to have a command-line option.

echo Note the following:

echo.
echo 1. Dr. Watson will begin tracking what's going on in the system.
echo 2. In Device Manager, you can choose Print / All Devices.
echo 3. Resource Meter will appear in the system tray.
echo 4. You can run Internet Explorer Repair Tool directly from MSINFO32.
echo 5. If memory is scarce, you may have to finish with some utilities
echo before others will start.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: *****************************************
:: Now load the various utilities
:: *****************************************
echo Let's start with the most straightforward ones.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Device Manager

start /w C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE sysdm.cpl,,1

:: System Cleanup
start /w C:\WINDOWS\CLEANMGR.EXE
:: Cacheman
start /w "d:\program files\system utilities\miscellaneous\cacheman
3.60\cacheman.exe"
:: Automatic Skip Driver Agent
start c:\windows\asd.exe
:: Win98 IP Configuration
c:\windows\ipconfig /all | more
pause
cls
echo Next, some general-purpose informational tools.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Windows Report Tool
start c:\windows\winrep.exe
:: DirectX Diagnostic Tool
start c:\windows\system\dxdiag.exe
:: ZDNet WinBench 99 and AudioWinBench 99
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\WB99\RUNWB.ZDR"
start /w "D:\Program Files\System Utilities\ZDNet
Benchmarks\AUDIOWB99\RUNAUDIOWB.ZDR"
:: Hardware Info Utility
start /w c:\windows\hwinfo.exe
:: MSINFO32 itself -- for information
start "d:\Program Files\Common Files\MSINFO\MSINFO32.EXE"
:: System Configuration Utility
start c:\windows\system\msconfig

cls
echo Finally, some TSRs.
echo.
pause
echo.
:: Dr. Watson
start c:\windows\drwatson.exe
:: Resource Meter
start c:\windows\rsrcmtr.exe
:: System Monitor
start c:\windows\sysmon.exe
:: PrcView
start /w "D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous\PrcView\PrcView.exe"
:: *****************************************
:: End of Story
:: *****************************************
cls
echo Wait here until you're ready to reboot.
echo.
pause
rebootgo
A crude but effective way to stop this batch file would be to hit Ctrl-C (perhaps
more than once) or simply to close the DOS box. I had seen a comment that had
told me to run Performance Monitor. I couldn't find this program, so I didn't run
it; but if I had, apparently a Processor Que Length value of over 20 for long
periods of time, while running ordinary daily programs, would have provided
the diagnostic information that my processor was too weak for the demands I
was placing upon it. Also, picking the Logged \BOOTLOG.TXT option from the
Startup menu would record the status of every step that Windows would take
during the boot process, if the problem I was trying to diagnose was a bootup
problem; the advice was to boot to Safe Mode, open C:\BOOTLOG.TXT, and
search for the word "fail." Later, I discovered that X-Setup (see point 137) offered
a seemingly complete, or at least very long, list of all kinds of diagnostic tools
and other stuff in a grab-bag under its Tools option, and that you could revise

that list under the File | Options selection -- but of course those tools were not
designed to run serially like this Suite.
161. CD Image Backup. I had had other ideas in mind, but around this time I
had a five-day interruption in this process, and when I came back I found that
those thoughts were no longer there. I worked through my notes and made a
few other minor tweaks, described at various places above (usually with a
comment like, "Later, I discovered ..."). Then I made another DriveImage
backup. This time, I began with the Cleanup Suite. (See point 153.) That
eliminated the need to run cleanup commands in CD_PREP, so I modified that
file accordingly. Then I ran it and took the other normal steps to shut off archive
attributes. (See point 152.) I ran DriveImage from the floppy. It showed 1,018
MB. The DriveImage file, STEP_161.PQI, was only 625 MB, yielding 61%
compression. (I suspected that the reason why the compression was improving,
from 63% down to 61%, was that the first CD held a lot of CAB files in the Win98
folder (see point 61), and that those, being already compressed, could not be
compressed more in DriveImage. In other words, if I hadnt included those CAB
files on drive C, my compression rate might have been more like 50%.) At that
61% rate, this first 650 MB CD could have held another 40 MB in program files.
But I felt that there wasn't much more that wasn't either (a) too voluminous to fit
in that remaining space or (b) too hardware-specific. I rebooted to Windows
Normal Mode and ran END_LIST to get the list of files that would be on this CD.
Yet this turned out to be premature. After more tinkering, I ran this whole
process again to produce what would really be my final version of the first
programs CD, and I deleted the image file that I had created during this point
161. (See point 164.)
Installing the Remaining Non-Hardware-Related Software
162. Installing and Uninstalling ZDNet's WinBench 99 and Audio WinBench 99.
I could not yet install those programs that related to specific pieces of hardware.
First, I wanted to do as much as possible in a more generic form, so that the same
backup CDs would be good for reinstalling Windows on both computers. The
stuff I would be installing now would carry me well beyond the limits of what
one CD could handle. This would call for a strategy for using a second backup
CD. But not yet. (See point 269(d).) First, I needed to load the programs,
starting with these ZDNet benchmark utilities. I had installed them earlier, but
to save disk space had not allowed them to fully unfold and run. (See point
158(a).) Now, when I ran ZDNet's WinBench 99, it began by putting my system
back through Defragmenter, presumably to make sure that its disk test would be
running on a disk that was all ready to do its best. Unfortunately, it did not
disable all other programs, so Defragmenter kept restarting. I finally ran out of
patience -- after all, I had just defragmented the drive! -- and stopped the defrag

process. Sadly, WinBench now said, like before, that it could not find some of its
program files. It really, truly could not be relocated from C:\ZDBENCH! (See
point 158(a).) You'd think I'd learn. OK, so I uninstalled it, and part of me said
that the CD image file I had just made was useless. I reinstalled in the default
C:\ZDBENCH folder, skipped the defrag part again, and ran all tests. There
were 113 tests, and their results really didn't mean anything to me, because they
were just the reports of how long it took the computer to do this or that function.
They weren't comparative reports, like Norton's old system benchmarks had
been, that would tell you how your system shaped up against another -- not
unless you had access to the results of those 113 different tests for that other
computer. They did have results for some other computers in a "sample" file, but
many of those results were "Unknown" or "Error," and there were also many
"Unknown" entries in the table for my own computer. I decided that I would not
use this program -- indeed, that was what I had decided previously, on the AMD
machine, although without going to this extent. I tried to run ZDNet's Audio
WinBench 99, but it would not run without a sound driver installed. I decided to
uninstall them both, and then to reinstall the Audio WinBench later, perhaps
only temporarily, when the audio hardware and software was all set up. I felt
that perhaps I would wind up keeping both of these benchmark programs in
uninstalled form, perhaps on a separate CD, or else that I would just redownload the latest versions at some time in the future. (See point ___.) In fact, I
decided that now would be a good time to start a list of programs that I would
not install or keep on my machine, but would keep handy on a separate CD. (See
point ___.) Uninstallation posed a couple other questions, however. (See point
163.)
163. Comparing ZDNet's Start Manager against MSCONFIG. Both Start
Manager (see point 158(b)) and MSCONFIG showed lists of programs that were
set to run at startup. I ran both programs on the AMD machine, which I had by
now put on a diet but which was still flooded with accumulated software (see
point ___). MSCONFIG showed 17 entries, of which 15 were checked as being
set to run and two were unchecked. Start Manager showed 26 entries, of which
15 were checked. In the past, I had decided that I liked Start Manager more for
this purpose, and I stayed with that impression. So before uninstalling the
ZDNet benchmarking programs, I copied STARTMGR.EXE from
C:\ZDBENCH\UI32 to D:\DOS_UTIL. I tried running it as a standalone by
typing D:\DOS_UTIL\STARTMGR.EXE at the prompt in a DOS box, and it ran.
So I kept that copy. I uninstalled through Control Panel | Add/Remove
Programs, and then deleted the C:\ZDBENCH folder. After uninstalling, I
tested STARTMGR again, and it still worked. I also removed the lines pointing
to the ZDNet utilities in my Diagnostic Suite and revised the line pointing to
STARTMGR in my Cleanup Suite. (See point 160.)

164. Another CD Image. When I right-clicked on ZDBENCH in Windows

Explorer and chose Properties, I saw that the whole folder was taking only 12
MB. But I wanted it out of the root of my drive C, and when I did uninstall it,
empty the Recycle Bin, and check the contents of my hard drives in Size Manager
(see point 135), I saw that I now had only 1,004 MB on drives C and D. If a
DriveImage compression ratio of 61% held (see point 161), these drives could
hold 1,066 MB in uncompressed program files. Even at 62%, it would be 1,048. I
had by now realized that there were other programs that I could, and perhaps
should, include on this first programs CD. So I went ahead with installing those
programs, and then I repeated the most recent CD image process (see point 161)
and used this drive image (called STEP_164.PQI) to replace the one that I had
produced then. For a list of the programs I installed at this stage, see point 165(a)
and point 165(b).
165. Installing More Programs. I was able to squeeze additional programs into
my first programs CD and then burn it, as follows:
(a) WebCompass 2.0. This program had been useful at times. Its greatest
strength, for me, was that it could explore all of the links on a webpage, to
determine which were dead or alive and to give a one-line description of the live
ones. Installation was a bit of a hassle: I couldn't find my serial number. After
much hunting around and realizing that I had probably thrown away the
manual, I remembered that it was hopefully still installed on the AMD machine,
or at least on the backup image that I had made of the programs drive on the
AMD machine. Sure enough, I found and ran WebCompass there, and the serial
number was: 1! One? Apparently I hadn't been able to find it the last time
either, and had just entered this instead. The installer told me that I had entered
an invalid serial number and would be denied tech support, but I felt that this
was OK, so I continued. The installer told me that I had to have Data Access
Objects (DAO) installed, and offered to do that for me. I said OK. When I exited
after installing, I had an "Object is invalid or not set" error message. I ran it
again; it did it again. I had gotten WebCompass to work OK on the AMD
machine, so I decided this was something I would deal with later if, after going
online, it proved to be a problem. (See point 307(i).) (Later, I noticed that I had
this error message on the AMD machine too.) I checked Size Manager, and I was
now up to 1,010 MB on drives C and D. (See point 164.)
(b) Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.0. I had this on CD, courtesy of
Yamaha; it came with my CD-ROM drive. I went for the custom installation
option, which was good, because it wanted to install older versions of Internet
Explorer and Adobe Acrobat Reader. I finished installing; I rebooted; I cleaned
the icons off the desktop and rearranged them under Start | Programs; I emptied
the Recycle Bin; and I saw in Size Manager that I now had 1,063 MB on the disk.

Was I over my limit? (See point 164.) I had to take a shower, so I seized this
opportunity to run DriveImage on drives C and D and just see whether it would
squeeze all this into a 650 MB file. Since space would now be at a premium, I ran
the whole Cleanup process and took all the proper steps for CD creation. (See
point 161.) The process would have taken longer if I had allowed ScanDisk to do
its thing, but instead I skipped through it. DriveImage produced a
STEP_165.PQI file of 646 MB. After going back into Windows and running
END_LIST to create the final file list, I ran Size Manager and saw that the
cleanup process had removed only about 1 MB of junk files. So the official
compression ratio (1,062 MB down to 646 MB) was 61%, and once I sent this PQI
file to the AMD machine by Direct Cable Connection and burned it onto a CD,
my final program CD was officially done, although it didnt happen for a while
yet. (See point 188.) One change this time around: I added a command to
produce a text-file version of the Registry as well, to facilitate future comparisons
in case of backup. (See point ___.) I added this command to CD_PREP.BAT.
(See point ___.)
(c) Norton AntiVirus 2000. I had begun to install this program before, but had
backed off when I had seen how much space it had taken. (See point 156(a).)
Now, its time had arrived. I installed it, downloaded the latest updates, let it run
its scans, and emptied the Recycle Bin. Size Manager told me that we were now
up to 1,115 MB, so NAV had taken 53 MB. I would wind up installing it again
later. (See point ___.)
(d) Chessvision's Chess. I had previously installed this program but, like the
others just mentioned, had not allowed full configuration to save space. (See
point 159(d).) Now I ran this program to create the databases and see how it
looked. It looked like an amazing chess program, with tons of old chessboard
layouts in its database. But I was no chess master; I just wondered if I could get
the program to play against me, and there wasn't any Help database in the usual
sense. I had to go online. So I did. Their signup form didn't work because I
didn't know my product ID number and couldn't find it in their nonexistent Help
files, so I sent them a frustrated e-mail message asking if I could use their
program to play against the computer or not. Or at least I tried to, but Outlook
98 wasnt cooperating. (See point 166.) I did eventually get that e-mail out and
get an affirmative answer to it. (See point 195.)
(e) Windows Updates. While I was online trying to figure out how to use
Chessvision, Windows Critical Update notified me that I needed some new files
to keep my system up-to-date. I downloaded these updates: German and PanEuropean Lanuage Support, NetMeeting 3 Service Pack 1, Windows Security
Update 1/17/2000, DirectX 7.0a Update, Internet Explorer Security Update
2/9/2000 and IE File Location Update.

166. Problem: Outlook 98 and MagicMover. Along about this time, I attempted
to send an e-mail message. Outlook 98 gave me this error message: "An error
occured [sic] while attempting to open the Windows Address Book. Unable to
find the WAB DLL." When I tried to look for it, Find did not work; then I
discovered that Find would work fine as long as I told it to search all local hard
drives, but that it found nothing when trying to search My Computer. Was that
how it always had been? I couldn't remember. I tried it on the AMD machine
and yes, sure enough, that's how it was there too.
(a) The First Suspect: WAB32.DLL. Searching under local hard drives, then, I
found a bunch of WAB files, but the only ones with DLL extensions were on
drive D. This suggested that it had been among the files I had moved during my
major program moves from C to D. (See point 154.) I went online to find out if
there was a simple fix for this. Comments there indicated that the file I needed
was WAB32.DLL. One guy said that he had fixed it just by extracting it from the
Windows file called MAILNEWS.CAB and copying it over the existing file. I
tried a variation, copying WAB32.DLL over on floppy disk from the AMD
machine to the PENTIUM computer and putting it in the same D folder as the
one I had already found (in D:\Program Files\Common Files\System). That, by
itself, didn't accomplish anything. I rebooted and tried again, and I still got the
error message when I tried to send an e-mail in Outlook 98 -- that is, when I had
finished writing the message and selected File | Send to put it into the Outbox.
Another person said that there was supposed to be a WAB.DLL file in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. That didn't seem right, however, since I saw no such
file on either the AMD machine or the PENTIUM machine; or maybe it was right,
but for a different kind of Outlook installation (e.g., corporate).
(b) Uninstalling and Reinstalling Outlook 98. Several comments said that the
solution was to uninstall and reinstall Outlook 98. This, I felt, would result in a
mess, since at least some of Outlook's files would be back on C while there might
still be files on D. On the other hand, I thought I might be able to deal with that,
if this would be an easier way than going back and retracing all of my steps since
the CD image that I had made before moving files from C to D. (See point 152.) I
decided to give it a try. I went into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and
clicked on Microsoft Outlook 98. It gave me an option of completely reinstalling
or just refreshing my existing installation. The latter sounded less radical, so I
started with it. It found my previous installation in D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office, which was good. It installed the newer components in about ten seconds
and told me that it was going to reboot. It did; I tried sending an e-mail in
Outlook 98 again; and I got the same error message again. I went back to
Add/Remove Programs and tried a complete uninstall. I realized, too late, that
this might wipe off my reinstallation files and I might have to re-download the

whole enchilada from the Windows Update site. After it was finished, I went to
D:\Outlook 98 Setup and found that a bunch of files were still there. I doubleclicked on OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE and it ran the reinstaller. I specified the
same D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office folder as before. Now it gave me the
option of upgrading only newer items or reinstalling all components -- which
suggested that the uninstall had been none too thorough. I chose the latter.
When it was done, I went back into Outlook 98. This time was worse than
before: I got a message indicating that some things had changed and it was
going to recreate them; that I would have to move materials from my old folders
to the new; that it still could not find the WAB DLL file; and, when I tried to
create a message, that it was starting Word as my e-mail editor. Word! It would
take a half-minute to start every time I wanted to send a message. I changed
back to Rich Text as my default e-mail format, but of course that didn't solve the
original WAB DLL problem. I went into EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)) and told
it to search for duplicate files, just to see if I now had versions of the same
Outlook files on both drives C and D. Apparently I had interrupted its file
comparison every time before, because this time I let it run for 30 minutes, so that
it could go through the complete list of files on all partitions -- and then it
reported that it was beginning the file comparison and that it estimated this
process would take 196 hours! That was clearly a project for another day, or
week. (See point 314.) I bailed out and considered my options.
(c) Was WAB32.DLL Really the Culprit? Even without the able assistance of
EasyCleaner, I could plainly see that both Microsoft and Symantec had recently
added new folders to C:\Program Files\Common Files. (See point 165.) The
C:\Program Files folder was not going to go away, and apparently my efforts to
make it go away had not only failed but had screwed up Outlook. Yet I could
not be sure of that. Had I tried to send any e-mail messages from the PENTIUM
computer before using MagicMover? Not that I could recall. So I might wipe
out the disk, reinstall from the CD that I had made under point 152, and then
redo all of the steps that I had done since point 152; and after all that, I might still
find that Outlook was not working right. No, I had to try to make a go of it if I
could. The best approach, I felt, was to use the AMD machine as a test bed. I
had reached a point of having enough software to make it a viable work tool,
and by now I had a complete backup of my dysfunctional drive C on the H
partition. (See point ___.)
(d) Files Missing from Windows 98. While I was tinkering with this, I decided to
look at the MAILNEWS.CAB file mentioned above. To look into it, I tried using
CabWiz. (See point 141(u).) I got the error message, "Cannot find
VBRUN300.DLL. Windows needs this file to run D:\Program
Files\System\Utilities\Miscellaneous\CabWiz\cabwiz.exe." A search revealed
that there was no copy of VBRUN300.DLL anywhere on the PENTIUM

computer; but on the AMD machine, VBRUN300.DLL was in

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. Very interesting! I hadn't moved anything out of that
SYSTEM folder. Maybe MagicMover wasn't to blame after all. I carried a copy
of VBRUN300.DLL over from the AMD machine to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM,
and tried CabWiz again. It gave me another error message: "File not found:
'CMDIALOG.VBX.'" Sure enough: another file that existed in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM on the AMD machine and nowhere on the PENTIUM
machine. By now, I was wondering what the hell was going on. I floppied over
the CMDIALOG.VBX file, and this time CabWiz worked. Now, as far as I could
recall, CabWiz was a program that I had never used before. I believed that it
probably was not the source of these files that were missing from the PENTIUM
computer. They should have been installed by something else. To verify this, I
went to Bob Cerelli's page at
http://www1.halcyon.com/cerelli/win_file_listing.htm. That website told me
that VBRUN300.DLL was on the Windows 95 file listing, but not the Windows 98
list. So that was it. On the AMD machine, I had left Win95 in place and had
installed Win98 as an upgrade, on top of Win95. Evidently the Win98
installation process had seen VBRUN300.DLL as harmless and had left it in place
on the AMD machine, which was why the AMD machine still had a copy of it.
So I was probably safe in having copied it over from the AMD machine. It
seemed that that the creators of CabWiz had been using Win95 systems. But
how many other similar files was I going to need down into the indefinite future,
when I tried running Win95 programs on a Win98 machine? (See point ___.)
(e) Trying the SYSTEM Fix for Outlook 98. Since putting VBRUN300.DLL into
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM had solved part of the problem for CabWiz, I
wondered if it would also solve part of the problem for Outlook 98. I moved
WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common Files\System to
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and, indeed, it did solve part of the problem. This
time, when I tried to send an e-mail message, Outlook 98 gave me the message
that "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem
persists, restart Outlook." I did that, but the message persisted. This time,
however, after I got the error message, I tried instead just to save the e-mail
message. It saved OK -- that is, Outlook 98 put the message into its Drafts folder.
I was able to move it from there to the Outbox. But once again, when I tried to
send it, I got that "unknown error" message. I went online for information. One
person said he had tried the Inbox Repair Tool that comes with Outlook. I hadn't
tried that; I tried it now. It said, "Enter the name of the file you want to scan." I
figured this must refer to a PST file, since I believed that was where e-mail
messages (whether Inbox or otherwise) were stored. I couldn't remember where
my PST file was, so I did a Find for it. Interestingly, it turned out that I had two
OUTLOOK.PST files. One was in E:\Messages, where I had put it. (See point
112(c).) The other was in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

The one in E was far larger, but it had not been accessed for the past four hours,
whereas the one in C had been accessed just a few minutes ago. Clearly, Outlook
98 was trying to use the one in C. Originally, they had advised me to move the
PST file where I wanted it, and they said that Outlook 98 would find it. I already
had it where I wanted it; I just didn't want this other one that the reinstallation
had evidently created. So I shut down Outlook, deleted the PST file from drive
C, and restarted Outlook. It told me that it couldn't find that C version of
OUTLOOK.PST, and gave me an opportunity to redirect its attention to
E:\Messages\OUTLOOK.PST. Just to be safe, I shut Outlook down and
restarted it again. And that was it. That was the whole solution. I created and
sent a message, no problem. (Later, this problem recurred. See point ___.) I
closed Outlook, removed WAB32.DLL from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and tried
to do the same thing again, and I did get the WAB DLL error message this time.
I moved WAB32.DLL to C:\WINDOWS and did not have the problem. So
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM wasn't the only magic folder; WAB32.DLL just had to
be somewhere on the Path that Windows would ordinarily search for its
command files. This might have explained why there was no WAB32.DLL
problem on the AMD machine; there, the DLL file was in the C:\Program
Files\Common Files\System folder. Later, someone told me that the Registry
keeps a list of paths that will work, in addition to the Path command, and that
these paths are stored at this location in the Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\A
ppPaths. I didnt check that out myself.
(f) Undoing the Outlook Reinstallation. Reinstallation, I knew, often created as
many problems as it solved (or at least it frequently imposed a lot of new
cleanup work that I would have to do to get the program configured the way it
was before I had uninstalled it); that was the case this time. I belatedly realized
that my reinstallation of Outlook would have turned on a large number of
archive bits, and that I would not know which ones. That is, I had been shutting
off the archive bits before making CD image files, such as the most recent one,
STEP_165.PQI. (See point 165(b).) I had done this so I would know that all files
with archive bits turned on would be files that had been modified or added since
the last CD image; modifying or adding files turns on their archive bits. (See
point ___.) Now, unfortunately, since Outlook's archive bits were back on
because of the reinstallation, my next CD backup would include a copy of
Outlook 98 -- a duplicate, since the first program CD already had Outlook on it. I
wasn't sure whether the second archive CD would be full, or whether I would
have this space to spare, but I didn't want to find out the hard way. Besides, I
was going for a pure system here, and a duplicative copy is definitely not purity.
For example, if the reinstallation had put files into a folder different from where
the first installation had put them, then when I restored from CD I would wind

up restoring both sets of files, creating potential incompatibilities that did not
now exist on the original.
(g) Summary of Restore/Test Options. I had several alternatives: (1) I could take
a mass approach, shutting off archive bits for all files that seemed like they must
have been replaced during the reinstallation, such as those in the Outlook 98
folders. I rejected this as too vague and risky. (2) I could do a comparison of old
and new filelists and shut off archive bits for all files that seemed to be identical
on both. I felt that this would work, but that it might be time-consuming. It
would probably involve some batch file work, and it might help me work
through some issues that I would need to understand later, when it came time to
try doing file-by-file backups on CD. (See point ___.) Thus, it was not my
preferred option, but it was a possibility. (3) I could erase drives C and D and
restore from the drive image file STEP_165.PQI. That file was still on drive F on
the PENTIUM machine -- for some reason, Direct Cable Connection was not
working, and of course I had just put the cover back on the PENTIUM machine,
after weeks of leaving it off in case I had to swap hard disks, so I had not yet
been able to get STEP_165.PQI to the AMD machine to burn a CD. Then, after
restoring from STEP_165.PQI, I would have to redo the rest of point 165 and
point 166. (4) I could move the hard disk over to the AMD machine, copy over
STEP_165.PQI, and use the AMD machine as a test bed, to make sure the CD
burning and restoring process would actually work before endangering my
original installation. This would require me to prepare drives C and D on the
AMD machine so that I would not lose anything important by wiping them clean
and starting over. In this approach, there would be a small but real risk of
translation errors that could screw up one drive or the other. (See point 59.) (5) I
could skip the drive image and instead bring over the hard disk containing the
finished drives C and D, and use DriveImage to do a disk-to-disk copy to set up
drives C and D on the AMD machine. Of course, this would do nothing for the
archive bit problem; this option made sense only if the goal was just to get the
AMD machine up and running as quickly as possible.
Preparing the AMD machine for the Transition
167. Introducing the Task. In reviewing the options just described, I decided
that the only task needed right now was to make sure that STEP_165.PQI was a
valid, working snapshot of the state of drives C and D on the PENTIUM
computer as of point 165(b). To test this without endangering the status of the
PENTIUM computer -- and only incidentally to get the AMD machine in good,
working shape -- I decided to prepare the AMD machine for installation of
STEP_165.PQI. If the installation worked there, I would burn a CD containing
STEP_165.PQI, or perhaps would just use DriveImage to restore the copy of
STEP_165.PQI that now resided on PENTIUM computer drive F to PENTIUM

computer drives C and D. Finally, if all that worked well, I would retrace the
remaining steps in points 165 and 166 (except the ones that had gone wrong).
This would put me in a position to finish configuring my complete system on the
PENTIUM machine.
168. Rearranging Partitions. Using PartitionMagic (see point 2), I set up the
partitions on the AMD computer so that there were six of them and their names
and purposes matched the scheme on the PENTIUM machine. (See point 32.) Of
course, their sizes were not the same -- I had to accommodate existing programs
and data on the AMD machine that did not exist on the PENTIUM computer, not
to mention that the disk sizes themselves were different -- but at least the
framework was there. To complete that framework, I examined the partitions on
the PENTIUM computer that were not represented on my backup CDs (i.e.,
partitions E, F, G, and H), so as to make sure that the similar partitions on the
AMD machine contained the appropriate folders. (For example, when I installed
Word 97 and the other programs from the CD, I wanted Word to find an E:\Text
folder on the AMD computer. See point 69.) As I looked at these other
partitions, I realized that there were a number of such folders, that some of them
contained INI files or other information -- including especially the
E:\Messages\Outlook.pst file that had just caused me so much grief -- and that
what I really should do was to create a ZIP file containing copies of all those
folders and the files that were supposed to be in them in a fresh new installation.
So I temporarily moved all the extraneous files and folders from drive E to
another partition and made a ZIP copy of the ones that were supposed to be
there. (For H:\Temporary Internet Files, I went into Internet Explorer and chose
Tools | Internet Options | Delete Files; I also chose Clear History while I was
there.) PowerDesk ZIP ignored empty folders, so I made sure that each folder
contained either some files or a subfolder, and in the rest I inserted a one-byte file
named X. I did this one drive at a time and then zipped the ZIP files into one
umbrella ZIP file called EFGH_FOLDERS.ZIP, and added that to the copy of
STEP_165.PQI that, except for this temporary moving back and forth, had been
sitting in F:\TEMP. If space allowed, I wanted to include this ZIP file on the CD
that I would burn for STEP_165. (See point ___.)
169. Disk Copy. Once I had a new H (SWAP) partition (see point 32) on the
AMD machine -- which I had temporarily set up to contain several gigabytes of
empty space -- I used DriveImage to make a disk-to-disk copy (i.e., not a
compressed disk image copy) of drive C to this H partition. Now I was free to
whittle away at drive C, secure in the knowledge that I could recreate it from
drive H if my tinkering caused me any real problems.
170. Reducing Bloat. After point 169, but while I was still completing other steps
described earlier in this document, I began to prowl through drive C on the

AMD machine, searching for things that I could remove. In particular, I went
into Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and went down the list of
programs. I did not delete any that I thought I might still use in the days
between now and the time when I would reinstall Windows and my programs
on this machine, and I did not delete any that I did not recognize. Even after
those caveats, I found a surprising number of programs that I could and did
delete. Not all of the uninstallations went smoothly. If I had been planning to
keep this disk running very long, I probably would have looked first to see if the
individual programs had installed "Uninstall" shortcuts on the Start | Programs
menu, or if there were "Uninstall" files in their home folders. I probably also
would have run some cleanup utilities afterwards. (See point 152.) Here, I
achieved my primary mission, which was to reduce the number of programs that
I would have to look at later and wonder if I needed to do anything special to
keep them. One program that I had to uninstall: Norton Utilities, which had a
habit of creating Image files on each disk partition. I didn't think they would
cause any harm; I just wanted to control what was going onto these partitions.
171. Reducing My Reliance on the Hewlett-Packard 5GB Tape Drive. The HP
tape drive, and the expensive tapes that it required, had been a disappointment.
Recently, I had begun to restore archived materials from backup tapes, and had
found that the HP software and/or hardware had repeatedly fouled up those
materials and that, in some cases, those materials were unrecoverable. I have
documented some of my struggles with this equipment elsewhere. Here, the
point is that I hoped to use CDs to handle most of my backup needs, and to use
the tape backup only for those materials that were either too transient or too
bulky to store on a CD-R or a CD-RW disk. The continued presence of this tape
backup meant that all four of my IDE slots were taken -- primary and secondary
master and slave -- so it appeared that I would not be using the 1 GB Seagate
hard drive to hold my H (SWAP) partition. (See point ___.) Since the HP
software had now utterly ceased to run, I tried to uninstall it, but it was too
tangled to allow me either to uninstall the old or to reinstall a new version on top
of the old. I would have to reinstall it later on the AMD machine. (See point
___.)
172. Making Data Space on the AMD Machine. I cleaned up some data on the
AMD machine and archived it onto CDs. For the data remaining on drives E
through H that was just not yet in shape to go onto CDs, I had these options:
finish it and get it onto CDs (not a viable option because some of the needed
programs were no longer working); or shrink partitions E through H and create
another partition to hold this data (which I decided involved too much fooling
around); or just create "Old" folders -- for example, "Old E" -- and, when I was
ready for the big change, move all of the remaining folders on each partition into
that partition's Old folder. That's the approach I decided on. I had to wait until

the last minute to do it, though, because my existing programs on drive C would
continue to look for their customary data folders, and things would get
confusing if they weren't there. I couldn't do this until I was ready to stop using
the programs on the old version of drive C and install the new ones.
173. DMA on the AMD Machine. Following the advice at point 113(f) and
http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-35.shtml# dmatest, I checked
to see whether the hard drives on the AMD machine were DMA-capable. The
first test involved figuring out what models of hard disks I had and checking the
manufacturers information, as I had done earlier on the PENTIUM machine.
(See point 108.) Using a little dentists mirror, I was able to crane my flashlight
up inside there (the cover was still off the AMD machine) and verify that the
primary master hard disk was a Maxtor 87000D8 7 GB drive. This, it turns out,
was in the DiamondMax 1750D Ultra DMA family of drives, and as the name
suggested, the disk was indeed Ultra DMA 33 capable. I could see that the
primary slave drive was a Western Digital of some kind, but there wasnt enough
space to see which kind. I could not get close enough with my trusty magnifying
glass, and the room wasnt big enough to let me use binoculars (why dont they
put labels on the sides of these disks?), so I bit the bullet, shut down the machine,
took the drive partway out, and looked at it. Before shutting down, I took the
advice at the aforementioned website: I clicked the DMA box in Device
Manager, saved, and looked at it after rebooting. The box remained checked for
both drives, so that was the first clue that everything was going to be fine. The
drive, it turns out, was a Western Digital Caviar 102AA 10.2 GB drive. Since the
estimable Western Digital installation manual did not provide specifications for
the drive, I went online and found that this drive would operate at 33 MB per
second in ATA mode but only half that in DMA. I figured that ATA depended
on the motherboard, although I made a note to check it out. (See point ___.)
Anyway, at least it was DMA-capable. So I didnt bother using the DEBUG test
described at point 113(f).
174. The Plan for Restoring Windows from Disk Image CD. As I was planning
out the foregoing steps, I realized that I actually had two different things to test:
I wanted to make sure that DriveImage PQI files really would restore a working
Windows system, and I also wanted to verify that my CD-burning process was
preserving those PQI files in valid, restorable condition. (I had not tested my CD
restore process for a long time. See point 86.) If I restored Windows to the AMD
machine by connecting the hard disk from the PENTIUM machine and restoring
directly from a PQI file on that backup disk, I would not be testing both of those
points. Therefore, while I had the AMD machine all cleaned off -- or at least as
cleaned-off as I could make it -- I decided to try restoring from the most recent
program CD. As I say, I had not been able to get STEP_165.PQI onto CD yet (see
point 166(g)), and I had deleted STEP_161.PQI, so the most recent CD was

STEP_152. (See point 152.) If this restored properly, then I thought maybe I
could get Direct Cable Connection working again and could use that to get
STEP_165.PQI onto the AMD machine without taking the risks and hassle of
swapping hard drives as if they were floppies. Then I could reinstall the CDburning software and burn the STEP_165 CD. I would then use that to reinstall
again to the AMD machine, so as to test what I was about to do on the PENTIUM
computer. If it worked, I could use the CD to restore the PENTIUM machine to a
proper condition for resuming my march toward the goalline on the PENTIUM
computer. (I did consider using the AMD machine for the remaining installation
at this point. It would have been easier, in terms of being able to use the faster
modem for any other needed downloads and then burning onto CD without
using Direct Cable Connection, but I would not have been able to use the AMD
machine for anything else, and that was a luxury that I could afford only on the
PENTIUM computer, which for all I cared could sit there for days without any
action.)
175. Motherboard Drivers and BIOS Adjustments. For these purposes, I had
already taken care of the motherboard driver situation. (See point 107.) Also, I
had already tinkered with the BIOS on the AMD machine previously. I decided
to postpone further tinkering until I knew more about what, if any, changes I
needed to make. (See point ___.)
176. Hard Disk Formatting. When setting up the hard disks on the PENTIUM
computer, I had had some difficulties. (See point 78.) I wanted to make sure the
primary master drive was all set for what I would be restoring from CD. As I
recalled, I might want to use Norton Disk Doctor for this, because it seemed to
draw more respect as an in-depth disk tool than ScanDisk. (See point 84 and
point 114.) At this time, however, I realized that I had just recently removed
Norton Utilities from the system to keep it from invading everything. (See point
___.) But then I remembered that I had made a complete copy of my drive C on
drive H. (See point 169.) I didn't have to reinstall Norton after all; I just needed
to sort through the executable files on drive H and see which Norton utilities
could run on a standalone basis, called up to serve when needed and then
discreetly dismissed without lingering side effects. (Later, I remembered that I
had also located a working copy of Disk Doctor on the Norton emergency
floppies. See point 78.) That is, Norton executables joined the list of potentially
useful Windows 95 files that I needed to examine before I could discard that
copy of drive C that existed on drive H. (See point 197.) I copied NDD.EXE from
drive H to a floppy, rebooted to real DOS, and used that floppy to examine the
disk. NDD said that a thorough test would take four hours just for drive C, so I
decided to postpone that and do just the normal test, which took less than an
hour for all of the disks. Later, I did a more thorough search for useful Norton
utility standalone programs. (See point 240.)

177. Partitioning. I decided to use PartitionMagic after Norton Disk Doctor just
in case Norton would snag bad sectors that might slow PartitionMagic down. I
now felt that I should make the partitions on both machines the same size. Of
course, the drives on the AMD machine were much larger than those on the
PENTIUM machine, so one of the partitions on each of the two hard drives on
the AMD machine would be much larger than the corresponding partitions on
the PENTIUM machine. On the first hard drive, E (DATA) would be larger, and
on the second one, F (AV) would ultimately be the only larger one. This was an
optional step; I just saw it as a way of making things a bit more uniform. I
couldnt go all the way with this right now, however, because I still had lumps of
data in awkward places on the AMD machine (such as the copy of the old drive
C in H (SWAP) (see point 169), and also because I did not yet know how big I
wanted D (PROGRAMS) to be, not having yet installed all of my programs. For
right now, I decided just to verify that drives C and D would be large enough to
hold the incoming contents of the CD, and I planned to finish the partitioning job
later. (See point ___.)
178. Final Program Removal. By now, some days had passed since I had copied
drive C to drive H. (See point 169.) Meanwhile, some programs had continued
to add data to drive C. First, Outlook 98 had continued to add incoming e-mail
messages to C:\EXCHANGE\MAILBOX.PST. I copied that file to E:\Old
E\TEMP. I had also made subsequent changes to my Address Book, but I
believed those existed within the PST file. (See point 112(d).) I also wanted to
keep my Word Tools | Autocorrect entries, which were in C:\Windows\Ray
Woodcock.acl; but later I remembered that I had already copied them over. (See
point 112(a).) With that taken care of, I went back to Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs and removed program files in approximately the
reverse order as described in this document: hardware-related first, then thirdparty programs, then Office 97 programs, and finally I uninstalled Windows.
Before taking that final step, I used Windows Explorer to go down through drive
C and delete all root-level folders that I no longer expected to need. This process
-- much slower than simply reformatting the disk and starting over -- enabled me
to think about each program and try to remember whether it, like Outlook,
might have stored any data on drive C that I should rescue before continuing.
The mere fact that I had a copy of that data (at least in a dated form) on drive H
did not guarantee that I would remember and rescue it before deleting that stuff
from H. But I admit, when it got down to a relatively small number of programs
remaining on the disk, I was glad to eyeball the list and pull the plug.
179. Restoring from STEP_152 CD. I rebooted, hit DEL, went into the BIOS
settings, changed them to boot from the CD-ROM, and rebooted. I got Boot
from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure. I tried again. Windows loaded in a pathetic

imitation of its former self. I tried a third time, after a cold reboot. OK, the CD
was evidently not bootable. Hadnt I solved this problem earlier? I couldnt
remember the details. The remnants of Windows gave me a Startup Menu; I
selected a Command Mode boot and switched to drive H. It was there. But
drive I: wasnt. As long as the CD wasnt bootable, its contents were invisible
unless I booted with one of the other floppies. I tried setting the BIOS to boot
from drive A, and used the super-floppy that I had developed long ago. (See
point 20.) This worked OK, and now I was able to see the contents of drive I.
And what were those contents? File not found! I put the CD into the CD drive
of the PENTIUM machine and looked at it there. Well, this machine could see
the contents plainly enough. They werent hidden files. What was the
explanation? Maybe it was a driver problem. I rebooted, using the Win98
Startup Floppy. (See point 8.) Well, that made the difference. With the Win98
floppy, there were Windows disk utilities in a ramdisk as drive I, and the
contents of the CD were plainly visible as drive J. But hadnt I used the
Windows 98 floppy to make this CD bootable? Maybe not -- it looked like I
hadnt bothered to name the CD, so maybe I had been in a rush to burn it and
had screwed up. Well, this was definitely something I was going to have to
eyeball after making the next CD. (See point 188.) Anyway, I loaded
DriveImage from the CD, remembered that there had been some problem with
that (see point ___), but decided to try it anyway. I didnt collect my wits until I
saw DriveImage telling me that there was still data on drives C and D. I exited
and formatted them. I decided not to use the FORMAT /S switch on C, just to
see if DriveImage would restore a fully bootable partition. I ran DriveImage
again and saw that formatting was unnecessary: I had forgotten that DriveImage
wipes out the partition when restoring. Given the temporary nature of this
restoration, I chose the fast restore option. Along about now, I started to get
curious about notes I had taken during any previous restore operations; but if
there had been any, they had been so long ago by now that I had forgotten what
they said. I searched and found the relevant information at point 66. One thing
that was different, this time around, was that I was restoring multiple partitions - which, as it turned out, I had to do one at a time. Also, this time, fortunately, I
didnt get any of the disk errors that I had gotten that time. The whole restore
took less than 20 minutes.
180. Bootstrapping. I rebooted, set the BIOS to boot from drive C, removed the
CD and the floppy from the machine, and sat back to watch what happened. The
thing did boot; it had some of the boot difficulties that I remembered from back
at approximately the time when I had burned the STEP_152 CD; but then
Windows started up like I wanted. It built a driver information database, probed
all the fun new hardware that it had to tinker with on the AMD machine, and
then surprised me by asking for a driver for the VIA Tech PCI to ISA Bridge. I
tried hitting Next, but I had no idea where to tell it to look for drivers. I

reviewed my notes and gathered that I was supposed to skip this one, so I hit
Cancel. (See point 107(e).) Then it wanted drivers for a PCI Communication
Device. Maybe this was the one I was supposed to ignore. I didnt know, so I hit
Cancel again. I also canceled out of the VGA adapter installation.
Setting Up an Ethernet Connection
181. Direct Cable Connection Problems. I went right into Direct Cable
Connection and discovered that, unfortunately, the problem I was having with
DCC must have been on the PENTIUM computer with its new software, not on
the AMD machine with its old setup. (See point 166(g).) So this was something
that I would have to fix now and would then have to fix again later, when I
resumed my effort to set up a beautiful Windows installation. (See point ___.)
To fix the problem, I went back to my DCC instructions. (See point 93.) One
problem emerged on the first website listed there: when installing identical
software to the other machine, I had to make sure that the other machine also
had a unique name. I had named the PENTIUM computer PENTIUM, because
that is the kind of processor I was running in it, but now the AMD machine
thought it was named PENTIUM too. So in Control Panel | Network |
Identification, I changed its name to AMD; and I added that to the list of things
that I would have to configure separately on the two machines. (See point ___.) I
rebooted, canceled through the same hardware installation questions, and tried
DCC again. Unfortunately, that was evidently not the only problem. I clicked
on Help and went into the DCC Troubleshooter, but it was no help. Groping
around, I found that, on the Network tab just mentioned, TCP/IP | Properties |
Bindings showed that neither Client for Microsoft Networks nor File and
printer sharing for Microsoft Networks was checked. I checked them. Vaguely
remembering something about the difference between the TCP/IP item that was
labeled VPN Support and the one that wasnt, I did this only for the one that
wasnt. I took the same steps on both computers. The system needed to reboot,
so I let it. Next time I tried to go online (after finding that I still hadnt solved the
problem), Windows told me that I should not have checked those boxes because
those were the ones, under TCP/IP, that would let others access my system. So I
told the system to uncheck them. After rebooting, I went to
http://www.kime.net/directcc/directcc95.htm and found another problem:
that site said that I had to replace the Network Neighborhood icon on my
desktop, because removing it would disable some of the networking drivers
required to access files in Windows Explorer. I had known this (see point 118(g))
but had forgotten it (see point 146(g)) and now I needed to fix it again by
reversing the steps I had taken to remove it -- i.e., by removing the NoNetHood
value in the Registry (although the kime.net site said TweakUI would do it too; I
just wanted to avoid using TweakUI if I could). But instead of removing it, I
thought maybe I should first try changing its value to 0. That did put the

Network Neighborhood icon back on the desktop, but it didnt solve the
problem. Next, I looked at my modem settings. I had been having irregular
problems with the modem, which sometimes the system would not recognize. I
saw that Device Manager showed three modems. I deleted them all and
rebooted. The system recognized just one modem this time. I rebooted into DOS
and ran MSD (short for MicroSoft Diagnostic), and it told me I had three COM
ports; but Direct Cable Connection recognized only two. I uninstalled the ports
in Device Manager and rebooted. I still wasnt out of the woods, but now I had
to try another approach. (My modem adjustments continued in point 182.) (For
posterity, I note here that it is possible to link computers in DOS by using
INTERLNK, and I believe the companion program (which INTERLNK may
produce) is INTERSVR. Those may come with DOS, or maybe you have to
download them.)
182. Installing the PCI Communication Device. Turning to the AMD machine, I
thought maybe the Direct Cable Connection problems stemmed from the fact
that I was skipping through several hardware installation questions when I
booted the AMD machine (see point 180), so this time I put in the driver CD that
had come with the motherboard and pointed the installation dialog boxes
toward that. Oddly, once it had the CD, it decided that the best driver was
already on drive C. This didnt work for the PCI Communication Device,
however. I didnt see anything specifically related to that at either my previous
notes on the subject (see point 107) or the Soyo website, so I went to the VIA
website and downloaded what looked the most relevant, the PCI Bridge Patch.
While that was downloading, I decided just to run the driver CD that came with
the Soyo motherboard. I selected all the default items and let er rip. When it
rebooted, the machine identified other hardware too. But the PCI
Communication Device still wasnt installed, and by now the download was
finished, so I tried that; but that wasnt it either. I wanted to try the Windows
Update online option, but I had to have my modem working for that, so I went
into Device Manager, deleted the -- would you believe -- five different modems
that the system had installed there, rebooted, and was surprised that Windows
didnt detect the modem automatically. I went into Control Panel | Add New
Hardware, and found that the mouse froze. I rebooted using Ctrl-Esc to bring up
the Start Menu, went back into the Control Panel, and had exactly the same
experience, except this time I realized the mouse might have been frozen but the
Add New Hardware Wizard was still functional, except that it was just cycling
endlessly, stuck on the fact that the PCI Communication Device was on the list of
Plug-n-Play items that had not yet been installed correctly. Using the keyboard
instead of the mouse, I tried instead telling Windows to search for other items,
not on the list. When it was done, my mouse was working again, but the modem
still wasnt installed and the PCI Communication Device was still a problem.
Coming to my senses, I bailed out of Control Panel and inserted the CD that had

come with my Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI modem. I ran the Setup file that
appeared in its root folder, but that just gave me a foolish screen offering to
install various utilities. No actual modem drivers. I started Add New Hardware
again and steered it toward standard 56K modems, but when I was done the
system still couldnt find the modem. And then -- whats this? -- I found a
modem driver that I had downloaded for this modem previously. The CD
hadnt looked familiar; maybe I had never even used it. I couldnt get Control
Panel to look at this driver, but then I realized I was trying to get it to look at a
zip file. I took it back to the PENTIUM computer, unzipped it, put it on floppy
again, and tried again. Still no luck. It dawned on me that perhaps PCI
Communication Device meant a modem or sound card or something, not a
motherboard thing. In other words, I had been trying to install modem drivers
for the modem, and motherboard drivers for the PCI Communication Device,
but maybe I should have been trying to install modem drivers for the PCI
Communication Device. But that didnt work either. Going online, I gathered
that a PCI Communication Device definitely was a modem, perhaps specifically a
Winmodem (i.e., one that works only under Windows). I also found this advice:
boot into Safe Mode, go into Device Manager, and delete all serial ports,
modems, the PCI Communication Device, any other duplicate items you see
under those headings, and all other Unknown Devices; and then reboot into
Normal Mode. I did this, but it didnt work. I went back into Device Manager
and saw that at least I didnt have double ports anymore. Device Manager
seemed to be happy to consider my modem a SupraExpress -- that was as close
as I had been able to come to a SupraMax -- but the point is, it wasnt working,
even though the PCI Communication Device error message was gone now. I
deleted that modem and checked the Diamond website. They had specifications
and ways to upgrade (which turned out not to be available for my model), but no
information on installation. I wondered if I had gotten an installation manual
with the thing -- amazing how we can be weaned from paper, isnt it? -- and
found a little brochure foldout that said Win98 would detect the modem on boot
and that, at this point, I should insert the CD that came with the modem. I did
that again, but this time an interesting thing happened: an installation menu
came up instead of the other goofy menu this CD had shown me before.
Evidently you had to wait until the machine asked for your drivers, and only
then insert the CD; but no, it just took me back to that same goofy page. Now
that I had gotten frustrated and walked away and slept, I came back and looked
again, and this time noticed installation information under the online manual
option. But it didnt say anything more than had been on the paper. The only
tech support advice, either way, was to try moving the modem to a different slot
if this one didnt work. This slot had worked previously, so I didnt think that
was the solution. I took the advice to write to techsupt@diamondmm.com, in
hopes that the promised automated reply would somehow enlighten me. But
then a weird thing happened. Having played around in the manual part of the

CD on the AMD machine, I exited and continued with the installation process,
and this time it did find the driver in the root of the CD -- called
I:\WINM2750.INF. It seemed to run just fine -- it installed a Diamond Voice
Modem Serial Wave Device, a SUP2750 PCI Modem Enumerator, and a
SupraMax 56i Voice PCI. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration.
See point 195.)
183. More Direct Cable Connection Troubleshooting. Now that I had the
modem working, I was getting no more hardware installation messages when I
booted the AMD machine. I reviewed my settings in Control Panel | Network
on both machines. Going back to the TCP/IP bindings in particular, I saw that
the PENTIUM computer had unchecked only the File and printer sharing for
Microsoft Networks option, not the Client for Microsoft Networks option, so I
made the AMD machine conform to that. It still didnt work, so now I tried
using DCC on a serial cable instead of the much faster parallel cable. This did
not work either, so I felt that it was probably not just a hardware thing -- which
seemed unlikely anyway because, even though I had plugged in and unplugged
some cables, I had not done anything strange, and DCC had otherwise been
working pretty well. I hated to give up without getting it to work, but
meanwhile the idea of having an ethernet connection instead of DCC had been
growing on me: it would be much faster and would let me keep the printer
permanently plugged in, which I couldnt do with just one parallel port on each
machine and the necessity of using the parallel cable for DCC -- not unless I had
the money, IRQs, and slots available for a card that might add another parallel
port. Plus, I had that $30 CompUSA gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket.
(See point 90(e).)
184. Ethernet Networking on the PENTIUM computer. I got two 16-bit fullduplex (i.e., can simultaneously send and receive) ISA Ethernet cards, produced
by a company called SMC Networks, for $11 each at CompUSA. They were
advertised as having a speed capacity of 10 Mb (megabits, or about 1 MB) per
second, which was plenty fast enough for my needs. I plugged them in, blew out
the dust that had accumulated during recent months with my new can of
compressed air (highly recommended), ran the cable, and booted the machines.
On the PENTIUM computer, I had a video problem where the screen had a
racing horizontal effect, where you couldnt read it. I went into Safe Mode, set
the resolution to 640 x 480, went into PowerDesk Explorer, and clicked on
Network Neighborhood. This gave me an error message indicating that basically
I couldnt do that. I ran Start | Help, which fired up my sophisticated Help
machine (see point ___), and searched for ethernet. This was probably the first
time I really used this new Help arrangement, and it was very cool. First entry I
got was a troubleshooting entry that told me that Plug 'n' Play might not work
with a 16-bit real-mode driver. The solution, they said, was to run the Plug 'n'

Play cards software setup utility, set the card to non-Plug 'n' Play, go into Device
Manager | Network Adapters, remove my network card, go into Control Panel |
Add New Hardware, and manually reinstall the network adapter. I couldnt
find a software utility with the SMC cards, but on the included CD, which also
contained TurboLinux and God knew else, I did eventually find the
SMCEZConnect folder, which contained the SMC Manuals subfolder, which
contained the Adapters subfolder, which contained about eight subfolders with
names like SMC1208 SERIES. Now, what series of card did I have? The box
didnt say. It just said it was an EZNET-ISA card. I went into Device Manager |
Network Adapters | NE2000 Compatible | Properties and learned nothing. I
tried to go to their website at www.smc.com/eznet, but the modem was unable
to establish a connection. I looked at the manual folders one at a time and found
the following:
SMC1208 Series: This is the EZ Card 10 Mbps Ethernet PCI card. SMC1211
Series: This appeared to be SMCs EZ Card 10/100 dual-speed PCI network
interface card. SMC1660 Series: a 10 Mbps Ethernet ISA Network card. This
looked like mine, but I wanted to see if there were any others. SMC8022 Series:
an Ethernet PCMCIA Network card. SMC8026 Series: a dual-speed 10/100
Ethernet PCMCIA Network card. SMC8034 Series: a dual-speed 10/100
Ethernet Cardbus Network card capable of full and half duplex. SMC9432
Series: the Etherpower II 10/100 Ethernet PCI Network card. SMC9462 Series:
the Etherpower II 1000 Gigabit PCI Network card.
So, OK, it looked like mine must be the SMC1660. I went back to that one and
saw that it was created in September 1997 by Standard Microsystems
Corporation in Hauppauge, NY. Since I had a single-port model, it seemed that
mine must be the SMC1660T. The manual told me to install by using a DOS
command: INSTALL <destination path>. I wondered if I could do this from a
DOS box. There was no INSTALL program in I:\ so I used Find. It located an
INSTALL.BAT in the SMC Drivers\Ethernet subfolder. I right-clicked on that
folder and selected DOS Prompt Here. To get the full path where I wanted this
software installed, I switched back to PowerDesk, created D:\Program
Files\Hardware\Ethernet, opened another DOS box there, copied its pathname
from its prompt, and put it in quotes in the first DOS box, like this: INSTALL
D:\Program Files\Hardware\Ethernet. It did indeed run, although I had to
use the keyboard rather than the mouse to manipulate it. In the hardware setup,
it said it could not run if there were any network drivers installed. I tried the
software installation, but it gave me a warning that there was not enough space
on the target drive, as it needed another 6,000 bytes. This was very odd. I
changed the name to the DOS format D:\Progra~1\Hardware\Ethernet, and
that got me over the first hurdle, but now Igot another error message that
seemed to be a result, again, of using the DOS box. I rebooted into real DOS but,

after much fooling around, could not get the installation program to work there
either. I went back to the Help source and learned that Microsoft recommends
using 32-bit rather than 16-bit protocols and drivers, but that is about all I
learned. It looked like I would have to learn a fair amount of technical stuff to
make this thing function, and it would function on a non-Plug 'n' Play basis.
Basically, I was in over my head. I tinkered a bit more, but when I started seeing
that everything was produced in 1996 and 1997 and that at least one of the
installers would be making Registry changes, I decided to cash in these cheapo
cards in favor of 32-bit cards, if I could afford them.
185. Fast Ethernet. The lady at CompUSA balked momentarily when I went to
return those retarded network cards, but I did get my refund, and I soon applied
it to two more Ethernet cards. This time, I bought LinkSys Network Everywhere
Fast Ethernet 10/100 cards (model NC100) whose boxes said they were 32-bit
and Plug 'n' Play. I learned why these, and some of the cards mentioned above,
were called 10/100. It seemed that, if you bought Category 5 (CAT5) cable (a
crossover cable to connect two PCs directly, or a patch cable to connect a PC to a
connection box with other PCs) rather than a Category 3 cable, and if you bought
a 10/100 Ethernet card rather than merely a 10 card, you would have 100BaseTX
capability rather than merely 10BaseT capability -- the difference being that your
data could move as fast as 100 Mbps rather than merely 10 Mbps. I didnt really
need that speed, at least not now, but it seemed to come along with the 32-bit,
Plug 'n' Play capability. So now, with the purchase of a 10-foot crossover cable, I
was up from $23 to about $48. (I could hope to recover some of that, though, by
selling an old T1000 tape drive that I had left in the PENTIUM machine in case I
needed to back up my work there; I could now back it all up via cable to the
AMD machine.) The contrast in installation was also pretty stark. These cards
came with a genuine printed manual that was actually written by a native
speaker of English, and the installation went almost flawlessly: almost, because
(a) each card came with a floppy disk containing drivers, and one of those
floppies didnt work, and (b) when I was done, PowerDesk Explorer still didnt
see the other computer. I thought to myself that it was going to be really ironic if
the need to fix $50 worth of fast Ethernet cards wound up giving me the
motivation I would have needed to get to the bottom of the problem with the
free Direct Cable Connection. But then I solved part of the problem when I
discovered that I had forgotten to plug in the cable. I shut down, did that,
rebooted, and now, as the manual said, the green Link light on the network
cards faceplate was on, on both computers. But the yellow Activity (ACT) light
was on on the PENTIUM computer, but only flickered once while I was looking
at it on the AMD computer. Was this why PowerDesk Explorer didnt show the
other computer under Network Neighborhood? Evidently not: the manual
proceeded to tell me that the way to see if the other computer is detected is to
double-click on the Network Neighborhood desktop icon. When I did that, both

computers showed both the AMD and the PENTIUM machines under the
Network Neighborhood. I dont know if that peek into the Network
Neighborhood desktop icon was the solution, or if it was just hitting F5 (which I
did on at least one of the computers) to refresh the screen, but now I could see
both computers under Network Neighborhood in PowerDesk Explorer. Not too
shabby. I had to say, this whole installation felt like an easy, class act after my
experiments with Direct Cable Connection and those cheap 16-bit network cards.
186. My First Home Network File Transfer. Now for my first test of my new
little network. Sitting at PowerDesk Explorer on the AMD machine (the AMD), I
went into the folder that the network would show me -- that is, the folder that I
had set up as shared -- on the PENTIUM machine. This folder contained
STEP_165.PQI (see point 164), a text copy of the Registry (see point 165(b)), the
filelist, and the zip files that would recreate the needed folders on other drives
(see point 168). I got a little nervous about letting this thing play with the
STEP_165 file, which I really did want to preserve, so first I made a backup copy
of it on the PENTIUM. Then, sitting at the AMD, I used PowerDesk Explorer to
move the contents of the STEP_165 folder to the AMD. This operation, which
would have taken about 3.5 hours on a parallel cable using Direct Cable
Connection (see point 111) took about seven minutes. I didnt measure it
precisely, and it seemed that my act of writing these words on the PENTIUM
and other disk activity may have affected things or slowed down the operation a
bit, but it appeared that I would have a data transfer rate of somewhere around
100 MB per minute. (Later, I tested the printer from both computers, while the
network was up and running, and found that, with my little switch box, I could
print from either at any time, which was a lot more efficient than shutting down
and recabling every time I wanted to print or transfer files! I also discovered that
Win98 comes with several useful network troubleshooting tools, including
WINIPCFG, PING, ARP, NBTSTAT, NET VIEW, NETSTAT, and TRACERT.)
187. An Incidental Purchase. While I was at CompUSA buying those network
cards, I noticed that they had 100 CDs on sale for less than $50. I didnt need
more CDs right then, although I thought I would eventually, but I did need the
mental freedom of knowing that the price was not going to go up, they were not
going to get more expensive, and I could go ahead and burn the things as need
be to record things the way I wanted them. I anticipated a number of
applications for this freedom, but right now it seemed especially important to be
in the habit of making more, not fewer, disk image CDs as backups while I was
going through this whole process.
Catching Up to Where I Was

188. Burning the CD. Now that I had collected the disk image file and related
files (see point 186) on the AMD computer, where the Yamaha CD-R burner was
located, I had to reinstall Easy CD Creator there temporarily so that I could burn
the CD. This took less than a minute. I rebooted and burned the STEP_165 CD
according to the standard procedure. (See point 18.) This time, I made sure to
use the Win98 Startup Floppy. (See point 179.) What surprised me, as I was
setting up and burning this CD, was that Easy CD Creator and I apparently
werent measuring CD contents in the same way. It reported its used space as
being 659,027.968 bytes, 628.50 MB, and judging from its visual map of the CD
that I was about to burn, apparently the latter number was the one that ruled. So
I still had space for another 20 MB (compressed) of program files on my first
bootable CD; and now that CDs were so cheap, I believed that I probably would
try again to make a definitive first, full program CD. (See point ___.) Also, the
top limit had changed: if my 1,062 MB (see point 165(b)) had boiled down to 629
MB, then the compression ratio was probably better than 59%, and the CD would
hold at least 1.1 GB.
189. Testing the CDs Bootability. Now I could begin to work my way back out
of this detour. As soon as I verified that the CD was bootable and seemed to
contain the materials cabled over from the PENTIUM machine, I would be able
to delete those materials. (See point 186.) But the boot failed again! (See point
179.) I cold-rebooted and it still failed. If I booted from the floppy, that worked,
and I was able to see the contents of the CD, and it looked like they were there.
So, really, since I didnt plan to make this my final version of the initial program
CD anyway, I could probably proceed with the next step. But I wanted to get
this bootable CD thing straight, so I reviewed my notes. (See point 18.) It looked
like I had done everything right. I wondered if it was a difference between the
Yamaha CD-RW burner that I was trying to boot from now, as compared to the
plain old Lion CD-ROM drive that I was using in the PENTIUM machine. I
closed down the PENTIUM and attempted to boot with the CD from there, and it
worked. So that was it. The Win98 Startup Floppy (unlike my super boot floppy
-- see point ___) was able to boot the system in such a way that it would
recognize the Yamaha CD-ROM, for purposes of reading its contents; but it was
not able to make that CD-ROM self-booting. I posted a question online, asking
whether maybe the Yamaha was just not capable of functioning as a boot drive,
but nobody responded.
190. Testing the CDs Contents by Comparing File Lists. On the AMD machine,
I deleted the STEP_165 files I had used to create the CD. (See point 188.) Then I
rebooted from the floppy and, since I remembered that DriveImage would delete
the partitions anyway (see point 179), I didnt bother reformatting drives C and
D; instead, I just started DriveImage from the floppy and used it to restore from
the STEP_165 CD that I had just created (see point 188). I rebooted, and the new

STEP_165 installation on the AMD booted properly. It got to the point of asking
for drivers for the new hardware it was detecting. I decided not to go through
that whole process. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have booted
immediately to Safe Mode or just DOS, created a file list, and compared that
against the file list on the CD, as a quick way of verifying that everything was
there. As a second-best, I canceled through the hardware installation as quickly
as possible and ran END_LIST (see point 116(j)) in a DOS box in Normal Mode to
get that file list. I renamed that list AFTER.TXT, floppied it over to the
PENTIUM machine, and used WinDiff (see point 150) to compare it against the
filelist (which I now renamed BEFORE.TXT) that I had created via END_LIST
when creating the STEP_165 image. (See point 165(b).) The comparison was
very quick and simple: even allowing for the fact that I had booted the new
installation on the AMD machine, the only changed files were CONFIG,
SYSTEM, SchedLog, NDISLOG, IOS, USER, RAWDIR, BOOTCALL, and
MAINT_HR.
191. Restoring STEP_165 to the PENTIUM Computer. Having tested the CD, it
seemed that I could do without the backup copy of STEP_165 that I had made on
the PENTIUM machine. (See point 186.) I nearly deleted it, but then decided
that I may as well try something slightly different. So I moved it back to drive F.
Then I removed any useful miscellaneous files I might have temporarily stored
on drives C and D on the PENTIUM machine, including the entire contents of
D:\DOS_UTIL, which contained batch files that I had developed since point 165
and that I did not want to have to retype. I tried to run DriveImage from this
removed copy of DOS_UTIL, but it still needed to run from Real DOS, so I
rebooted from the STEP_165 CD and just ran DriveImage from the copy that
existed on the DOS_UTIL folder on that CD. (See point 64.) I used DriveImage
to restore the versions of drives C and D that existed in the backup copy of
STEP_165 that I had just moved to drive F, rather than the copy that had
subsequently gone on to become the CD. That is, I was restoring from one hard
disk (F) to another (C). The CD restoration process hadnt taken long, and this
seemed to be even faster, even though this time I was using all of DriveImages
safety features, which should have slowed it down. Or not all of the safety
features, at least not for drive C; when doing drive D, I added the Bad Sector
check, and that was somewhat slower. Anyway, when it was done, I rebooted
from drive C, and the installation got to the point of recognizing and adding new
hardware.
192. Retracing My Steps. Finally, it seemed that I could begin to redo the work
that I had already done once. The first thing the computer wanted, on reboot,
was to install the PCI Ethernet Controller. As in point 185, I pointed the installer
toward the install diskette (A:\win98). The installer informed me that I had
more recent versions of some of the files, and of course I opted to keep those

more recent versions. This suggested to me that the Ethernet driver may have
been updated since it was put onto that floppy, so I made a note to myself to look
for an update. The installer finished and rebooted me, and this time I had the
racing horizontal effect that I had experienced in point 184. After resetting the
monitor to VGA in Safe Mode and rebooting, it looked like Windows was going
to be OK, so now I finally did delete the backup of STEP_165 that existed on
drive F on the PENTIUM machine; also, I copied back the newer version of
DOS_UTIL from drive F to drive D. (See point 191.) I would not again
experience the PCI Communication problems and so forth (see point 182) until I
tried installing from CD again onto the AMD machine or using the network -which would happen sooner than I had expected.
193. A Fresh New Outlook 98. With those steps out of the way, I was able to go
as far back as point 178, where I described how I had rescued some useful data
files from drives C and D on the AMD machine before wiping those disks out.
The files in question included MAILBOX.PST. I had previously decided that I
did not want to bring that huge MAILBOX file over (see point 112(c)), but things
looked different now. For one thing, I had now been out of touch with my
Outlook 98 e-mail and calendar for a day or two, and I didnt want to be
neglecting messages or deadlines. Also, I was storing the PST file in
E:\Messages (see point 166(e)), so it was not going to clutter up the CDs that I
was burning for drives C and D. And now that I had the Ethernet connection, it
would be a snap to move that huge file from the AMD to the PENTIUM
machine. So I rebooted the AMD, installed the PCI Communication driver after
all, and after multiple reboots and skipping through other assorted hardware
messages, I finally got to the desktop on the AMD. I revived Network
Neighborhood -- and, since I was still just doing temporary work on the AMD, I
took the fast route and used TweakUI to do it. (See point 181.) That called for
yet another reboot, but now I had the answer to another question: PowerDesk
Explorer did show the PENTIUM and the AMD under Network Neighborhood
without first making me double-click on the Network Neighborhood icon on the
desktop. (See point 185.) So now I renamed MAILBOX.PST to be
OUTLOOK.PST and transferred it from the AMD to the shared folder on the
PENTIUM, and then moved it to E:\Messages. I started Outlook 98 on the
PENTIUM, and after hitting me with numerous past-due scheduled item
messages, it showed me that I did indeed have my full Outlook capability back. I
downloaded messages. I checked my Address Book, and it was there, so I
deleted the old MAILBOX.PAB file that still existed on the AMD machine. I got
the Unable to find WAB DLL error when trying to respond to an e-mail, so this
time, instead of merely copying WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common
Files\System to C:\Windows\System (see point 166(e)), I actually moved it. I
did this without even leaving Outlook, and it worked fine.

194. Recovering Other Last-Minute Files. During my final shutdown of the old
machine (see point 178), I had also recovered some other files that I thought I
might need again sometime. These included data files, which could stay put for
now, but also some program files: the COOL.INI file, which would hopefully
save me from having to reset my Cool Edit preferences again (see point 157(a)); a
PartitionMagic upgrade that I had recently downloaded; the SETIHOME.INI file
(see point 156(k)); and the lists of files in Windows 95 and 98 (see point 166(d)).
195. Reinstalling Programs Previously Installed. Continuing back up the list of
previous items that I was now doing over again, I tried to run CabWiz and got
the VBRUN300.DLL error, so I copied it and CMDIALOG.VBX over from the old
copy of drive C on AMD\\H (see point 166(d)) to
PENTIUM\\C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and tried again, and CabWiz ran. I had
not previously tested it, however, and when I tried it now, I found that it still
was not running properly, so I deleted it as well as those two files that I had just
added. (I had to reboot in order to delete CMDIALOG.VBX, because Windows
was still using it.) Continuing back up the list, I downloaded some Windows
updates again. (See point 165(e).) But first, I had to go into Device Manager,
remove the five modems listed there, and reboot. (See point 181.) (Device
Manager wasnt showing multiple ports this time, so I made no port changes.)
(Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration. See point 200.) Next, now
that Outlook 98 was working, I was finally able to e-mail Chessvision and ask if I
could get the program to play against me. (See point 165(e).) They quickly
replied that this was possible. I decided, however, that I really should install this
program on just one computer, and therefore deleted it and decided to install it
later. (See point 209.) Next, I reinstalled Norton AntiVirus 2000 and
downloaded its latest updates. (See point 165(c).) (Incidentally, I hoped I had
digested its README file; it sounded rather sensitive -- for example, it could
trash your hard disk if you were using PartitionMagic with it and chose Repair
instead of Inoculate in some cases.) Finally, I went into Add/Remove
Programs and verified that Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.0 already
resided on the PENTIUM system. (See point (165(b).) In other words, I was now
more or less caught up with the work that I had done previously in attempting to
move my system forward from the state captured in the STEP_165 image file.
(See point 165(b).)
Trying Again for the Definitive Programs CD
196. PowerDesk Tweak. I didnt like the fact that PowerDesk appeared twice
on my right-click folder context menu. I e-mailed the company and obtained
information that, they warned, was undocumented and strictly proceed at your
own risk. The advice was this: first, go into PowerDesk and select Options |
Preferences | General Settings. Go to the bottom of that screen and make sure

that Use PowerDesk to open My Computer and folders is not checked. Then
edit the Registry and go down to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\PowerDesk. Select that PowerDesk item,
right-click it, choose Delete, and then save and exit. This did not work, so I went
into real DOS and used SCANREG /RESTORE to restore the Registry as it had
been before I had made that change, and I e-mailed Mijenix for more advice.
197. Plundering the Old Windows Installation. At first, the CabWiz experience
(see point 166(d)) had made me think that I should do a directory comparison to
find out what other files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM might exist in Win95 but
not in Win98, and perhaps to save them in a separate folder; but then, when it
turned out that CabWiz (designed for Win95) didnt work properly in Win98, I
reflected on the fact that no other program had required me to use such files, and
I decided that probably the best solution was just to keep the old Win95 CD
handy for any possible future need. On the other hand, the decision to keep
individual Norton utilities handy to run on a standalone basis (see point 176)
inspired me, now, to go through those utilities, in their installed form on AMD
drive H (see point 169), and keep any that I thought I might like to run
individually. Other than the DOS-based Norton Disk Doctor (NDD), however, I
did not find any that interested me and that were also able to run as standalones.
I even supplied one or two of them with the DLLs that they seemed to need, but
they still didnt run right. I decided not to bother with them further unless I was
willing to install them as regular programs, and at this time I didnt seem to need
that. Later, I did a better and more thorough job of this. (See point 240.)
198. Alternate Browser. I wanted an alternate browser. I had rarely used one,
but it had been handy to have one on a few occasions when Internet Explorer
was malfunctioning for one reason or another. I now faced a choice: I could
install Netscape, which in its compressed format (even for a version that was
more than a year old) took 13 MB; or I could install Opera, which took less than 2
MB. Netscape, as I recalled, also had the obnoxious habit of inserting an AOL
messenger icon in my system tray. This seemed like a no-brainer. I installed
Opera. Then it notified me that this was only an evaluation copy and I had 30
days to register. So instead I uninstalled Opera and added my old Netscape
download to the list of programs to keep handy in case of emergency (see point
___), but I installed no other browser.
199. Network Password. Now that I had a network installed, every time I
booted my computer, it said, Enter your network password for Microsoft
Networking. I was just hitting Enter at this screen, but I didnt want to see it at
all, because it was screwing up my automatic rebooting scenarios. (See e.g.,
point 141(k).) I went online and saw a suggestion to use TweakUI. I tried XSetup first (see point 137), but it had options only for NetWare and Windows NT.

So I tried TweakUI. This required me to make changes on the Network tab, and
also to check the Clear last user option on the Paranoia tab. I tried it, without
first bothering to check the notes of problems that people have had with
TweakUI because, frankly, I was getting a little impatient at this point, and it
worked OK. Later, it seemed that I might have gotten it backwards. (See point
283.)
200. Modem Problem: Resource Conflict. Suddenly, my modem had
disappeared. I went into Add New Hardware and reinstalled it, but it came up
with a yellow circle and exclamation mark indicating a hardware conflict. When
I looked at it in Device Manager, Win98 offered to take me through the Windows
98 Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter. I accepted this offer; it led me to a page
containing some advice. The advice, in my case, was this: in Device Manager,
select the modem and hit Properties | Resources. This showed me that the
modem had a conflict with COM3 (i.e., communications port 3), which confused
me because I thought that was the port that the modem used. The advice page
said, Do you see a box with resource settings or a Set Configuration Manually
button? I assumed that the white box in the center was the resource settings
box, so I clicked on that option on the advice page. Now the troubleshooter
asked me if the conflict was of the System Reserved type. I clicked on No and
got the advice to configure one of the devices to use different resources. To do
this, the advice said, I should click on the Resource Type item that was
conflicting. This wasnt hard to figure out: it had a red circle with a line through
it, like a No Parking sign. I double-clicked on that and got a message that said,
No Modifications Allowed -- Windows will choose settings for this device. To
get around this, the advice was to uncheck the box labeled Use automatic
settings. I was making this exception, tweaking the hardware to suit this
particular modem, because I needed the modem to finish my generic software
installation; I knew I would delete this modem and install another one when it
came time to configure all this for the other computer. (See point ___.) Anyway,
I unchecked the Use automatic settings box and double-clicked on that
conflicting item. I got the message, This resource setting cannot be modified.
Trying a different approach, I went into Device Manager | Ports and deleted the
COM3 port. That immediately removed the exclamation mark from next to the
modem. I tried going online and the modem worked fine. Unfortunately, one or
two boots later, that fell apart: Internet Explorer was no long running properly
by itself; it would give me a combination hourglass/arrow mouse cursor and
would go no further. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw Msipcsv (Not responding).
When I killed that, Internet Explorer still gave me Unable to establish a
connection. I was not able to go online to research the MSIPCSV problem,
because I had not yet set up the modem on the AMD machine either. It was time
for some thought. (My modem tweaking resumed at point 206; I had further gorounds with MSIPCSV, culminating in point 295.)

Review of Overall Backup Philosophy

201. The Original Concept. The purpose, at the outset, was to find a way to back
up Windows 98 on CD-ROM. In one sense, I had figured that out long ago: you
install the software and use DriveImage and/or XCOPY, perhaps with other
software, to make a copy on one or more CDs. (See point 3 and point 25.) What I
had been trying to do, since then, was to develop a more sophisticated method
that would combine two approaches. First, there would be a single CD
containing the core programs I would need on either of my computers. I had
been reluctant to span this across more than one CD. (See Overview at the
beginning of this document.) For sake of argument, however, I could now drop
that objection, since DriveImage seemed, so far, to be a lot more stable than the
tape backup software had been. (See point 171.) Even so, the basic idea
remained the same: there would be the beginning CD (or more than one), and
then there would be subsequent CDs that would contain all files that had been
added since the original. Restoring Windows 98 would then be a simple matter
of using the first CD, in either computer, supplemented by a second CD that
contained the files specific to that computer, such as that computers specific
modem setup.
202. What About Deleted Files and Subsequent Backups? This original
philosophy had never quite addressed the question of how I would do
subsequent backups of my program partitions C and D. I had vaguely
envisioned a batch file that would detect all subsequently modified files (i.e., all
whose archive bits were on) and might perhaps make copies of them on another
partition, to be included in my regular backups of modified data and program
files. This method would have the problem that it would add new files, but
would not delete old ones. That is, if, for example, I found that file X.DLL was
causing conflicts, and deleted it from C:\WINDOWS, a subsequent restoration
from CD would restore that file along with all the others. The more precise
approach, it seemed, was to create a complete file list at the time of each backup.
Then, if I ever needed to restore from a subsequent CD, I might create a batch file
to compare that file list against the original and perform both additions and
deletions, as appropriate. That is, unless I wanted to use up one or two CDs
every time I did a backup, my subsequent backups would probably create the file
list just described, would use XCOPY to copy the new and modified files to a
temporary folder, would shut off their archive bits, and would use a commandline program to crunch those files automatically into a compressed ZIP file, for
subsequent inclusion in a CD when I had enough of these ZIP files to fill one. In
short, the methods I knew of involved either (a) a simple, simplistic, and more
expensive use of DriveImage (more expensive because I would have to use CD-R
disks, since the PENTIUM computer couldnt read rewritable CD-RW disks) or

(b) a more precise and economical method that would take more time to set up,
be more complex to use, be more configurable to future needs, and yield better
results when dealing with removals from my collection of files as well as
additions to it. Since this sounded like something that might teach me some
useful things for backup of my data files as well as my program files, I decided to
pursue the latter approach.
203. Sample Application. Before going ahead with that approach, I decided to
think through how it might have worked in recent application. My idea was that
I could have taken the following steps at each point after burning that CD (which
actually occurred in point 188, and got restored to the PENTIUM machine in
point 191): (a) Make sure I have a copy of the Registry, a backup, and a list of
files included in that backup. The starting backup would be the CD just
mentioned. (b) Install a new piece of software, make a copy of the Registry and a
new file list, record the time and date, and make sure I know which Registry
backup corresponds to this change. (c) Continue until I have a problem. (d)
Begin rolling back my steps until the problem disappears. This sounded roughly
like what the GOBACK program was able to do, the difference being that I
intended to tie this into my backup method as well. One problem was that the
list of files would be no good if the actual files had been changed; I would need
an entire disk image for each piece of software I installed. Or , if I was working
with XCOPY, I could just store copies of the newly changed files, perhaps in
zipped format. Of course, this would entail several time-consuming steps after
each software installation: searching for and turning off archive bits, making file
lists, converting those file lists into batch files when it came time to restore, etc.
As a practical matter, I probably would have done this only after taking several
steps, or perhaps before taking one that seemed risky. It would be a question of
which was faster: to start over again from a backup made several hours ago, or
to spend a lot of time making backups every half-hour. Much was unclear; but
since I was frustrated with my repeated setbacks in this whole process, it seemed
wise to try working with this method and see how it turned out.
204. First Step in New Backup Approach: Restoring the Previous Backup. I
began with point 191: save a copy of DOS_UTIL to drive F, and run DriveImage
and restore drives C and D from the CD, this time with a sector check on drive C.
But when I started on drive C, I got a DriveImage error message: cannot lock a
locked drive. (I wasnt entirely surprised to see this, because the last shutdown
of Windows had given me two or three error messages that I had never seen
before.) DriveImage said it needed to reboot, so I did that. As the CD was
rebooting, I saw an error message flit by, but I didnt catch what it was. It
evidently had to do with the attempt, by the Windows startup floppy (which was
what made the CD bootable), to create a RAM disk, because the drive letters had
changed and there was no RAM disk this time. I tried DriveImage again, and it

showed a different list of drive letters, with drive C now appearing to have taken
the place of drive D, and a 900 MB free space appearing before C. I told
DriveImage to restore into that blank space. It got two-thirds of the way through
and froze. Even though I recognized this was a problem I had had before, I did
not immediately go back and read through my notes. (See point 78.) (Those
notes revealed, incidentally, that the error message that had flitted by, which I
did catch eventually, was the same old bogus BTDOSM message.) Instead, I
fooled around with SCANDISK and retrying DriveImage and rebooting and
other things for probably an hour before finally re-discovering that I just had to
run DriveImage from something other than the CD. But no, this didnt do it
either: after another 15 minutes of waiting for the thing to restore, I got Error
# 2005 once more. I thought maybe I hadnt done it right. I had moved the PQDI
(DriveImage) program files from the CD to the hard disk, but maybe there were
other files that the program needed to be on the hard disk as well. This time, I
ran DriveImage from the copy of the DOS_UTIL folder that I had copied to drive
F. It still didnt work; I got Error # 1802. Trying something different, I copied the
PQI image file from the CD to drive F, cold-rebooted from the super floppy (the
one with drivers that were designed specifically for this CD-ROM drive) rather
than the Win98 Startup Floppy (see point 8), and ran DriveImage from F too.
This combination of factors did finally work. It took quite a while to copy the
image file onto the hard disk, but the restoration from the hard disk went about
50% faster than the restore from the CD.
205. Modification of New Backup Concept. This experience with DriveImage
taught me that, fast as it was, it still took extra time for its compression, and also
that its contents, compressed into one giant PQI file, were in a sort of black box
that might or might not be easy to extract. For the greatest accessibility and
speed, I decided, it might be better to take advantage of the low price of CDs -that is, to burn an uncompressed backup and to try to access it with programs
other than DriveImage. (See point 209.)
Resuming the Forward March
206. Modem Problem Again. When I rebooted the PENTIUM machine in
Windows, it asked for the Ethernet software, so I installed that. (See point 185.)
It then rebooted and, wouldnt you know it, it was 5:01 PM on a Wednesday
afternoon, so CLEANUP.BAT took the system and started running with it! (See
point 105(g).) As soon as I was able to wrest control back from that batch file (by
rebooting with the floppy and changing the time to 6:01 PM), I booted Windows
again and got the racing horizontal screen problem (see point 184), so once again
I booted into Safe Mode, set the adapter to 640 x 480, and rebooted into Normal
Mode. I removed the multiple modems shown in Device Manager and rebooted.
(See point 182.) I went into Control Panel | Modems | Dont detect my modem

| Next | Have Disk. I inserted the modem driver floppy and pointed the
installer to it. It seemed to install the Newcom 33ifxC Internal modem properly.
Amazing how easy these things are when you follow the manual. But the
modem didnt actually work. I rebooted and tried again, but when I tried to dial
out, I still got Could not detect modem. I went into Device Manager | Modem
| Properties | Driver | Update Driver and pointed it toward the updated driver
that I had been using previously. But I still got the Could not detect modem
error. I rebooted and the problem persisted. I went into my super Resource Kit
Help (see point 145(n)) and searched for COM3. MSD (see point 181) told me I
had three COM ports, but the modem setup had given me the choice of only
COM1 and COM2, and apparently COM2 wasnt working for the modem.
ResKit Help told me, first, to go into Control Panel | Modems | General |
Diagnostics | Driver and verify that the communications driver is COMM.DRV.
Next, it said click on Diagnostics | More Info to make sure Win98 can
communicate with the modem. I was supposed to see that the Port Information
here matched the physical configuration of the modem. But this said that the
modem was at COM1, IRQ 4. I went back to Control Panel | Modem | General
| Properties and changed the port to COM1. I went back to Diagnostics, and this
time it said, The modem failed to respond. ... [V]erify that the interrupt for the
port is properly set. I had been having problems with this old 33.6 kbps modem
throughout this entire process (see e.g., point 99), and was now very close to
buying a new one. I went into Control Panel | Modems | General, deleted the
installed modem, clicked Add | Dont detect my modem | Standard Modem
Type | Standard 33600 bps Modem | Next | COM1 | Next. Then I repeated the
Diagnostics steps just mentioned, and got the same failed to respond results. I
tried changing it to COM2, and got the same result from More Info. I rebooted to
DOS and ran MSD. This time, it reported only two COM ports. (See point 181.)
I rebooted and went into BIOS Setup. Under Power Management, there was a
setting that said, Modem use IRQ and after it, the choice was 3. I tried the NA
setting, theorizing that the hard-and-fast setting of IRQ 3 might be interfering
with the flexibility of Plug n Play. I rebooted and looked at MSD; now it was
seeing only two COM ports. I went into Windows, selected Control Panel |
Modems, removed and reinstalled the Standard 33600 bps Modem, installed it on
COM1, tried Diagnostics | More Info, got failed to respond, tried again with
COM2, and got the same result there. I looked at the modems manual and saw
that it was possible to set the modem to use specific IRQs. I didnt remember
which way I might have configured it when I had bought it several years earlier.
I shut down the computer, opened the case, and looked. The jumpers were set
for a Plug n Play system, so I left them as they were. I rebooted and ran MSD
from real DOS, and now the system was back to seeing three COM ports. I
looked at the manual again and went back through its installation process,
choosing the Newcom 33ifxC Internal modem instead of the Standard 33600 bps
Modem. I noticed something that I might have been doing wrong: the

instructions told me to choose COM4, which I had thought wouldnt apply in my

case because I had only three COM ports; now I realized that perhaps three COM
ports was standard on Win95 (for which this modem had been designed) and
Win98, and I was supposed to choose a number higher than those three, so that I
would not be interfering with their availability for other purposes. I went into
Windows and saw that my act of removing the 336ifxC internal modem within
Control Panel | Modems had not actually worked; both modems were listed. I
removed the Standard 33600 bps Modem and looked at the Diagnostics for the
336ifxC; now it was on COM3. The Driver and More Information buttons
worked OK. I was able to go online. Once again, I honestly could not say what I
had done to fix the thing. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration.
See point 225.)
207. Hardware Profiles. Rooting around in the ResKit Help had given me an
idea. I had always ignored talk of Hardware Profiles, believing that this was
relevant mostly to corporate system administrators who had numerous systems
to manage and needed a way of keeping them all straight. Now, however, I
realized that I might be able to simplify my own situation by creating separate
profiles for these two computers. That way, I could load everything on the one
computer, copy it over to the other, switch to the other profile, and alter what I
had just loaded so that it would fit that particular computer. To see if this was
possible, I went into ResKit Help. It told me to go into Control Panel | System |
Hardware Profiles | Copy and name it. I called it PENTIUM. Now I would just
disable individual items that belonged on one computer but not the other. (See
point ___.)
208. Continuing the Catch-Up Redux. I was now able to resume the effort to
retrace my steps without re-committing the unknown error that had required me
to restore from the CD and start again. (See point 200.) That is, I now took steps
that seemed fairly safe. I moved the copy of DOS_UTIL back to drive D. (See
point 204.) I moved WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common
Files\System to C:\Windows\System. (See point 193.) Based on the warning
about Norton AntiVirus (see point 195), I installed that PartitionMagic upgrade
that I had downloaded. This wasnt much, but it was a start, and now I was
ready to apply my new backup philosophy. (See point 205.) Finally, I revived
the desktop icon for Network Neighborhood, so that I could use the network; I
used the Registry edit rather than TweakUI for this. (See point 146(g) and point
181.)
209. New Backup Philosophy, Applied. Thanks to the Hardware Profile idea
(see point 207), I was going to give up on the approach of having separate
backup disks for the program files on the AMD and PENTIUM computers. I
thought, now, that I should be able to have just one set of backup disks for both,

with various items of hardware (e.g., different modems or sound cards) disabled
or enabled as appropriate. This would also simplify things by whisking away
the idea that I should try to save program space by installing some programs on
one computer but not on the other. (See e.g., Chessvision at point 195. I did get
Chessvision up and running again in full later. See point 235.) I could go ahead
and install everything and configure it on the PENTIUM, and make a backup,
and then copy it over to the AMD and reconfigure as needed. Before proceeding
with this grand install process, however, I wanted to make a first file-by-file copy
of the present, working state of the programs (drives C and D) in the PENTIUM
machine. That is, I was now going to turn away from the DriveImage
compressed disk image approach and was going to try an uncompressed
approach, so as to avoid the kinds of problems I had had recently and to facilitate
the new approach I hoped to take toward backups. (See point 205.) Later, I
revisited this backup philosophy. (See point 269.)
210. Using PowerDesk Explorer to Make a Disk Copy. I realized that moving
system files would make the system unstable, and that Windows might simply
prevent some files from being moved. But how about if I was just copying them
instead of moving them? The most straightforward way of making a copy of
drives C and D, I believed, was to use Explorer (either Windows or PowerDesk)
and just make a copy of the entire disk. I decided to start by right-clicking on C
and copying and pasting it to a folder on drive F called DRIVE_C. But there was
no Copy option on drive C itself. So I clicked on drive C and selected all files
and folders in the right-side pane of PowerDesk Explorer. (Of course, this will
work only if youve got Explorer set to show hidden files.) This copy operation
took about five minutes. Then I used LIST_ALL (see point ___) to create file lists
for drive C and for this F:\DRIVE_C folder. The file sizes differed, of course,
because the full pathname of each file in F:\DRIVE_C had to include all those
extra letters (as compared to simply C:). I tried to use WinDiff (see point 149(b))
to compare the two file listings, but that didnt work because, of course, every
line was different. To fix that, I opened F_LIST in Word and did a global
replacement, replacing [space] [space]F:\DRIVE_C\ with [space] [space]C:\. I
tried again with WinDiff, and now saw virtually no differences other than in
some Registry files. Just in case, I made a backup of the Registry as well with
Start | Run | SCANREG /BACKUP; and I went into H:\Backups (see point
145(p)) and relabeled that backup to be Backup Made When I Copied Files to
F. Then I used PowerDesk to copy D to F:\DRIVE_D. (One problem that I did
not worry about at this point: after I had made a copy of drive C to drive H on
the AMD machine (see point ___), it seemed that Windows might be treating
some of the Windows files on drive H as system files -- that is, as it would have
treated them if they were on drive C -- and I didnt know whether something
similar would happen now with this copy of drive C in F:\DRIVE_C.)

211. Hardware Profile at Boot. A new problem: when I rebooted after creating a
new Hardware Profile (see point 207), I got the following message: Windows
cannot determine what configuration your computer is in. Select one of the
following: 1. Original Configuration. 2. PENTIUM. 3. None of the above.
This bootup message would mess up my automatic rebooting schemes (see e.g.,
point ___), so I would need to figure out how to suppress it; but it would have to
wait until later. Later, I found that youre just supposed to delete the ones that
dont apply to the computer in question.
212. Audio Card Installation. I tried recording something in Cool Edit 2000 (see
point 157(a)) on the PENTIUM machine, but I kept getting an error message,
MMSYSTEM002 A device ID has been used that is out of range for your
system. I couldnt imagine what this meant; then I remembered that Device
Manager still showed a yellow exclamation mark circle next to PCI Multimedia
Audio Device, presumably because I had not yet installed my sound card. Now
that I was working on the concept of having separate hardware profiles for the
PENTIUM and AMD machines, I felt that it would be OK to install the sound
card software for the PENTIUM machine. I unchecked all options in the Turtle
Beach Daytona installer, so that I wouldnt have two different kinds of audio
mixers, two different sets of audio utilities, etc.; I was more interested in the
SoundBlaster software that went with the sound card in the AMD machine,
although frankly I wanted to see if I could get by without either of them. With
this arrangement, the Daytona installer showed that I would be installing only
336 KB of programs; I figured those were probably just the drivers. I got a new
question during this process: the question was whether this installation was
intended only for the PENTIUM hardware profile, to which I said yes. After
finishing the installation, I tried again in Cool Edit and got the same error
message. I saw no sound card entry in Device Manager. The software didnt say
anything about rebooting, but I rebooted anyway, and now I got a message that
the Add New Hardware Wizard was searching for new drivers for the PCI
Multimedia Audio Device. It found and installed a driver on the Daytona CD,
and now it did want to reboot. It found more new hardware this time around,
and for a minute there it looked like it was hung up on the TBS Legacy Relocator
for Daytona PCI Audio Device. It tried again to install the Turtle Beach
applications, but I canceled out of that. I tried again to run Cool Edit, and this
time it worked. I adjusted the Volume Control (the yellow speaker in the system
tray) to put its volume levels at about 50% and to make sure nothing was muted
that I would need, and I concluded that, at least for now, I didnt need the
utilities that the Daytona CD had wanted to install.
Another Look at DOS-Based Backup Techniques

213. Restoring from the Disk Copy. Now that I had copies of drives C and D on
drive F, what could I do with them? I could certainly copy them back, assuming
I had Windows running, but what if the problem was that Windows was dead? I
couldnt use DOS because it would truncate (shorten) long filenames. (See point
23(c).) So if drive C crashed and I needed to restore it, I would be stuck with
DOS, which would copy files from F (or wherever) back to C with different
filenames than I had given them. This would be no problem for those files
whose names were DOS-style 8+3 character names anyway, but it would make a
mess of the rest. But maybe this was the point: Windows system files all did
seem to have short filenames. Could I do a first pass through in DOS, restoring
all files whose names were short, and then another pass, restoring all the rest?
The first pass would restore a bunch of non-system files whose names just
happened to be short, but I didnt see that this would do any harm. I could
modify LIST_ALL (see point ___) to produce the list of short-named files. Or, as
I soon realized, I could design a batch and QBASIC combination that would
create a complete list of long filenames, and DOS would probably handle them
correctly if they were enclosed in quotation marks. I worked on QBASIC for a
while, but then realized I would also have to generate a list of folders to create.
That is, if I was restoring to a blank disk, DOS would copy files only if the folders
already existed. Another possibility was that XCOPY didnt require that. Before
working with that, I decided to try using the disk copy option in DriveImage.
214. Disk-to-Disk Restore Experiment Using DriveImage. I decided to begin this
experiment by copying the backups that I had made on drive F over to the AMD
machine. (My new network was proving to be very useful!) I cleared off some
partitions so that there was nothing in them (except the Recycled Bin) to make
space for these copies. The DRIVE_C folder (see point 210) went to AMD drive
E, and the DRIVE_D folder went to AMD drive G. I copied all of the contents of
these folders to the root folders on their respective drives. For example, just as
there had been a D:\Program Files folder on the PENTIUM machine, so also now
there was a G:\Program Files folder on the AMD. Then I rebooted to real DOS
and ran DriveImage from the floppy, doing a disk-to-disk copy of drive E to
drive C, and also of drive G to drive D. In the process, as usual, it said it was
basically creating a new partition in place of the existing one. When it was done,
I tried to reboot from drive C. It froze early in the boot process, at the Verifying
DMI Pool Data message. I cold-rebooted and tried again; it froze again. I
booted from the floppy, ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, and relabeled drives
C and D. (DriveImage had given them the names of their sources, e.g., drive C
was named DATA like drive E had been.) This made no difference; it still
wouldnt boot. I ran Norton Disk Doctor from the floppy. (See point 78.) It said,
Boot Record Program is invalid. It offered to fix it, and I accepted, but then it
said, Boot record could not be repaired. I looked in the DriveImage manual,
but I found nothing on any of these subjects.

215. Disk-to-Disk Restore Experiment Using DOS. Continuing the experiment

above (see point 213), I devised some DOS batch files that would create a list of
files to be restored and would create their directories and restore the files into
those directories. For example, given the knowledge that drive C should have a
file named C:\Windows Update Setup Files\ie5setup.exe, these batch files
would create the following: (a) a command to make the directory in which this
file would go: MD C:\Windows Update Setup Files; and (b) a command to
copy the file from its source location to its target location. In this case, that
command would be COPY "E:\Windows Update Setup Files\ie5setup.exe"
"C:\Windows Update Setup Files." The idea was that I could then copy these
batch files to floppy and use them, within DOS, to run down the whole list of
Windows files, restoring them all to where they belonged. The first problem was
that, the way I designed it, these batch files had to refer to the floppy disk for
every operation, which made them very slow. The second problem was that,
since I had copied PENTIUM drive C to a folder called F:\DRIVE_C, I had to use
Word on the PENTIUM machine to remove the DRIVE_C part from every
filename in the resulting batch files, so that they would restore to the root of
drive C on the AMD machine rather than restoring to a new folder called
C:\DRIVE_C. (If you dont know what I mean, never mind; its not important.)
The third and most significant problem was that there was evidently no way for
DOS to create long directory names. I tried with XCOPY, and that didnt work
even with the quotation marks. In the C:\Windows Update Setup Files
example just given, I was taking advantage of the fact that DOS can deal with
long filenames if you put them in quotes, but working with an existing long file
or directory name was not the same as creating one. I posted a question on this
online ___
Remaining Software Installation
216. Trying Again: TweakUI. Now that I had a file-by-file backup of C on F,
with a copy on the AMD machine, where I could burn it onto CD if necessary, I
decided to risk experiencing the same problems that had forced me to redo again
my recent steps. (See point 200.) First, I set the Network tab in TweakUI to step
automatically through the Network Password requirement, and I set the
Paranoia tab to Clear Last User at Logon. (See point 199.) I rebooted to see if this
had caused those earlier problems.
217. No Free IRQs. I ran Internet Explorer as a test, and while it started OK, it
said it was unable to establish a connection. (For the last time I had received that
message, see point 200.) I went into Device Manager and saw an exception, next
to my S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device, that said, This
device cannot find any free Interrupt Request (IRQ) resources to use. It advised

me to use the Hardware Troubleshooter, which I did. The troubleshooter told

me that the audio device required IRQ resources 5, 7, 10, or 11. It offered to
disable something else, and I chose the Matrox display driver, since I hadnt yet
loaded that anyway (apparently the system had found it on its own); but then the
troubleshooter said that hadnt solved the problem. Instead, I tried the PCI to
USB connector, since I wasnt using USB. At this point, the troubleshooter
seemed to be a bit messed up, since it said, Matrox MGA MystiqueWindows
disabled this device ... -- which is to say, Huh? I re-ran the troubleshooter and
saw that it had indeed disabled the USB thing, but the exception was still there. I
ran the troubleshooter again and decided not to accept its offer to disable the
printer port (LPT1) or the TBS Daytona PCI Audio Device, which I believed I
would need more than this Legacy Relocator. So I went back to Device Manager
and clicked Remove. (I would return to the IRQ issue again later. See point 232.)
The system rebooted, and froze during the boot process. I rebooted and it did it
again, after running ScanDisk on drive C. I checked the situation in Device
Manager in Safe Mode. There were two versions of the Matrox driver, so I
deleted one. I rebooted in Normal Mode.
218. Display Adapter Configuration. It took a long time to reboot, but
eventually it did it. It told me my display adapter was not configured properly,
so I followed its advice when it said, Click OK to start the Hardware Installation
wizard. It showed me the devices that I had just disabled, each with a red check
on it. I canceled out, went into Device Manager, saw that the PCI to USB
Universal Host Controller was still there, but with a red check on it, so I deleted
that. I went into Add New Hardware, and the system wanted to reinstall that
controller. I let it go ahead. It said it found everything it needed for that
installation, and asked me if I wanted to install anything else. I said no and
rebooted. I got the same display adapter message again, and went back into the
Add New Hardware wizard. The Matrox MGA Mystique was still one of the
items listed with a red check (the other being the PCI Audio Device that I had
deleted -- see point 217). I clicked on that one and got the message, This device
is already installed, but has been removed from this hardware profile. I clicked
to add it back to this hardware profile, and that seemed to satisfy the thing. Now
that we were dealing in specific hardware configurations, I felt that I could
finally add the latest Matrox driver. I went to www.matrox.com and
downloaded and installed it. It came with other monitor software. When I
rebooted, it ran diagnostics and informed me that I had not yet selected a
monitor type, and that I should do this before changing my display settings. It
also erroneously informed me that I had an old version of DirectX installed. I
unchecked the boxes in this diagnostic screen so that they would not run at every
bootup. I went into Device Manager | Monitors and saw that this monitor was
configured as Unknown Monitor, which was about right, since it was a cheap
clone. I selected Properties | Driver | Update Driver and told the Update

Device Driver Wizard to look for a driver in C:\WINDOWS\INF. It informed

me that I already had the best driver installed. I tried searching again in
Microsoft Windows Update online. Again, it informed me that I already had the
best driver loaded. Apparently the Win98 CD came pre-loaded with a perfectly
adequate driver for unknown monitor types. I went to Device Manager |
Display Adapters and saw that it now specified Matrox Mystique PCI. I went
into Control Panel | Display | Settings and set the monitor for 800 x 600, 16-bit
color. It offered to reboot, but I opted to apply the settings without rebooting.
This went OK, and now I could see more material on the screen. It seemed to be
working OK, so I concluded that my display adapter was probably configured
correctly now.
219. Finishing the PENTIUM Hardware Profile. I went through the other
devices specified in Device Manager and unchecked the box that said Exists in
all hardware profiles (see previous paragraph) in other items of hardware that
allowed it and that existed only on the PENTIUM machine. These were: 33ifxC
internal modem; Unknown Monitor; and Sound, video, and game controllers
(two items).
220. Preparing to Finish the Catch-Up Operation: DriveImage Backup. At long
last, I could try again to re-install the remaining software that I had already
installed once. (See point 195.) There were two items to reinstall, and they were
the ones that seemed most likely to have caused the system instability (see point
200) that had prompted me to reinstall from the previous DriveImage backup CD
(see point 204), namely, Norton AntiVirus 2000 and a number of downloads from
the Microsoft Windows Update website. I decided to reinstall them in that order,
so that I would have antivirus protection before going online again; but I also
decided, first, to make another backup of drives C and D. At this time, I did not
know how I could restore the contents of drive C from a straight file-by-file copy
(see point 213 through point 215). Therefore, a DriveImage disk image file was
the best solution for me. I did not expect this to be any sort of final CD backup,
so I not make any of the preparations I ordinarily made before creating a
DriveImage PQI file. (See point 161.) This was the first disk image I had made
since STEP_165. (See point 165(b).) Since then, I had only made the file-by-file
backup on PENTIUM drive F, as described in point 210. I had subsequently used
the network to copy that backup to the AMD computer. (See point 214.) Since
DriveImage ran in DOS, I could not use DriveImage to create a PQI disk image
directly across the network to the AMD computer. So to make space for my new
disk image, I decided to delete the file-by-file backup from drive F on this
PENTIUM machine. Then, since restoring a drive image from one hard disk to
another seemed both fastest and least troublesome (see point 204), I would just
leave the DriveImage file on drive F, where it would be ready to restore quickly
to drives C and D if needed. I rebooted to real DOS and ran DriveImage from

the floppy (see point 84), after running MOUSE.COM to make sure the mouse
was installed (see point 58). Unfortunately, I got Error # 1805 Error writing to
image file during this process. I quickly realized I had forgotten to actually
delete the DRIVE_C and DRIVE_D folders from F before trying to create the
image, as I had just said I was going to do. Since I was in DOS, I used DELTREE
/Y F:\DRIVE_C to do this. This took a very long time. I tried to boot into Safe
Mode, to use Windows Explorer to delete DRIVE_D, but the system froze. I
rebooted and went into Normal Mode, and there the deletion of F:\DRIVE_D
took just a few minutes. I rebooted into Safe Mode just to be sure I had no
problems there. Finally, back in real DOS, I re-ran DriveImage and had no more
problems creating the STEP_220.PQI image.
221. End of Catch-Up: Reinstalling Norton AntiVirus 2000 and Windows
Updates. I reran the NAV installation, downloaded the latest AntiVirus updates,
and let it scan the system. Then I went online and downloaded the latest
Windows updates from the Microsoft site. While that was downloading, I
browsed to a number of other websites. I noticed no difficulty in using Internet
Explorer, and I concluded that the previous difficulties that had prompted me to
start over again in the process of installing this software (see point 200) were not
due to Norton AntiVirus 2000.
222. Last Catch-Up Item: Windows Updates. When the Windows updates
finished downloading, they installed themselves, and then Windows wanted to
reboot the system. I said OK, and right then is when I had my first problem.
Previously, shutdown had been happening automatically, but this time it froze at
the screen that said, Windows is shutting down. I cold-rebooted and went
back into Windows Explorer to test it.
223. Latest Updates. In Internet Explorer, I hit Ctrl-L and typed in
www.updates.com, intending to go to that website and download the latest
updates for other programs. (See point 15.) It worked, but as I was typing that
URL, I noticed that the system was very slow in filling in the Ctrl-L dialog box.
When I tried it again a moment later, however, the problem seemed to be gone. I
was on my guard, but so far, it seemed that I could finally move ahead and
install the last of my software. Again, oddly, Updates.com seemed to have
Microsoft updates that had not yet appeared on Microsofts own webpage. (See
point 49.) Then I realized that I had not instructed Updates.com to recheck my
system. Apparently it had been relying on an old impression of my software
situation, because when it checked again, it found a different list. These all
appeared to be minor updates, so I ignored them. During this, I experienced
another glitch: for a moment, apparently as Internet Explorer was trying to
access a website, it seemed to freeze the system so that the mouse did not
respond. But this, too, was only momentary, and it did not recur right away. I

had downloaded and installed the latest Dial-Up Networking from Updates.com
before I had realized I didnt need to, but it didnt seem to matter. Next, I went
back to the Office 97 area at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com. (See point 72.)
The only additional update that I seemed to need from that site was an Office
2000 ODBC Driver Vulnerability Security Update. I installed that. It seemed like
smart software: it detected that FrontPage 2000 was the only Office 2000 product
on my system, and apparently configured itself just for that product. I had to
insert the CD during the installation process, for some reason.
224. Miscellaneous Programs. I hoped that I could now finish installing my
remaining software. The items I installed on the PENTIUM machine were as
follows:
(a) Printer Driver. From PRINTERS.TXT (see point 120(z)), I got the advice to to
get the latest drivers for my HP LaserJet at
www.hp.com/cposupport/eschome.html. At that website, HP offered a driver
released on May 14, 1999. I didn't know if Updates.com tracked HP printer
drivers -- that is, I didn't know if I already had a driver more recent than this,
and I couldn't find anything -- so I downloaded this driver. When I tried to
install it, however, it turned out to be related to AutoCAD somehow. Since I had
no AutoCAD program, it failed to install properly.
(b) WinMag Registry Ripper. This was a recent download from
www.winmag.com. I didnt have any immediate Registry editing plans, but it
had sounded like a useful program, so I installed it.
(c) GraphicCorp Photo Editor. This program, not to be confused with the
Microsoft Photo Editor (see point 120(h)), came on the CD with the Adaptec
software supplied by Yamaha with my CD-ROM burner. (See point 165(b).)
This gave me a surplusage of graphics programs that I wasnt sure I would ever
need, but it made sense because I was still searching for the one graphics
program that would do it all. This one turned out to be a winner (see point
224(i)), and later I made it the default editor for TIF files by changing View |
Folder Options | File Types for TIF files within Windows Explorer. It was
hobbled by poor help documentation, however, so I concluded that I would
probably still use Microsoft Photo Editor for my primary graphics editing for at
least the near future.
(d) Mouse Software. I had a Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD machine, but I
would install that later. (See point 255(c).) Right now, I wanted to install the
floppies that would enable the middle button on my Logitech mouse on the
PENTIUM machine. (I would have liked to use this mouse on the AMD, but the
dummies at Logitech didnt make the cord long enough!) The Logitech

Mouseware 8.2 software was DOS/Win3.1-compatible, so I had to create the long

Logitech Mouse directory name under D:\Program Files\Hardware in
PowerDesk Explorer before running the Logitech installer.
(e) Installing the Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx Scanner. This HP IIcx scanner was
an old SCSI scanner that came with its own interface card. I had been able to get
it working under Win98 in the past, but it took some work. I had disconnected it
from the PENTIUM machine, but decided that now I should try to get it working
there again. I started by trying to install this Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0 software
that I had gotten on sale. But at this point, I ran into a problem.
(f) MSIPCSV Not Responding Problem. The message I had gotten previously,
when the computer had become unresponsive (see point 200), after hitting CtrlAlt-Del, had been Msipcsv [Not responding]. I got that message again while
installing the mouse software. (See point 224(d).) I closed that window, and the
computer seemed to return to its normal function. A moment or two later,
however, I noticed that the Taskbar was not rising up when I would move the
mouse down to the bottom of the screen. I hit Ctrl-Esc to bring it up, and after
that it worked. A short time later, however, the system began responding
extremely slowly. This time, it was PDExplo (PowerDesk Explorer) that the
system said was not responding. I cold-rebooted and continued installing
software, as described in point 224. On the first cold-reboot, the system would
not even start; it ran fine on the second one. I ran the Cleanup Suite (see point
153), skipping the disk surface tests. That took several hours, but it stopped the
slowdown. But then, while trying to install the scanner (see point 224(e)), I
noticed that the system clock on the taskbar was off by an hour. I clicked on it
and set the time right, but it wouldnt save, and when I went into Ctrl-Alt-Del to
shut it down, I got the same Msipcsv [Not responding] message again. This
time, and previously, I had noticed that another program marked as Not
responding was Clipboard Pile. (See point 141(h).) I decided to remove
Clipboard Pile from my list of programs that would load on startup. I hadnt
actually put it there, but I found that every time I used it, it put itself there. To
remove it, I used Start Manager. (See point 158(b).) I also shut it down in CtrlAlt-Del; it was a unique one for this purpose, in the sense that it did not actually
show up as a named program; it was the only one that listed itself as having a
blank name. (I didnt know whether that was a bug or just an attempt to be
cute.) This was not the last time that I would find that Clipboard Pile seemed to
cause problems. (See point ___.) After these steps, I was able to set the clock
properly, and Ctrl-Alt-Del showed no programs that were not responding.
(Note: not every program shown as Not responding in Ctrl-Alt-Del is having
genuine problems.) But then the incredible slowness returned when I began to
install the TextBridge scanning software. (See point 224(e).) It occurred before
the installer even finished setting up the InstallShield Wizard. I wondered if it

was a problem with the scanner, so I shut down, unplugged the scanner cable
from the SCSI adapter, and rebooted. Once again, it slowed way down when I
started to install the scanner software. I cold-rebooted and noticed that the
system did not even start to boot. Hardware problem? I tried again and it
booted. Other programs seemed to run OK. (See point 224(j).) I had another
opportunity to consider this MSIPCSV file again later. (See point 295.)
(g) Scanner: A Different Approach. I decided to try installing the scanner the
way I had done before I bought TextBridge. I went into Add New Hardware.
The wizard didnt find the scanner, which I had just plugged in before the most
recent boot, so I said that I wanted to select it from a list. I selected SCSI
Controllers | Symbios Logic. Previously, this had shown me only two options,
one of which had said it was for HP ScanJets. This time, it showed me many
options, none of which looked familiar. But then I thought maybe I could bypass
that by selecting the Have Disk option. Using the Lycos website called Fast FTP
Search, I had previously searched for, and found, a file called HPISADRV.ZIP
out there on the Internet -- in response to a tip, I believe. I had downloaded and
uncompressed it, and now, after selecting Have Disk, I browsed to the unzipped
folder called 400A. There, the program recognized HP400A.INF as a driver. I
told it to install that. Now the installer filled in a box that indicated that it
recognized this as a Symbios Logic 53C400A (HP Version) SCSI Adapter. It
seemed that perhaps the key was to do this without having yet hooked up the
scanner to the computer. The installer sat there for quite a while and then
offered to go ahead and set up the SCSI adapter with a certain Input/Output
Range and IRQ. I said this would be OK. The last message from the installer
said, To finish installing your hardware, you must shut down your computer,
turn it off, and install the card for your hardware. This was worrisome; the card
had been sitting in the computer all the time. But I went with it, and while the
computer was off, I reconnected the scanner cable and made sure the scanner
was on. On reboot, the system did recognize the HP ScanJet IIcx scanner as an
item of new hardware. The SCSI Controller settings for this scanner adapter in
Device Manager (Input/Output Range of 0280-028F, and Interrupt Request 04)
matched the ones that the installer had mentioned. Done! Later, I would disable
this item in the AMD computers hardware profile. (See point 259(d).)
(h) Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0 OCR Software. Having resolved those scanner
issues, I tried again to install TextBridge. This time, I just let the thing sit there,
stuck somewhere in the throes of the installation process. Eventually, it seemed
to give up: it returned me to my ordinary desktop. But it still seemed to be
wrestling with something; the hard disk was still clicking once in a while. I came
back in 15 minutes and it was ready to start installing. But each button I clicked
took seconds, if not minutes, to react. This was probably why the software was
on sale. I basically spent the evening doing other things, checking in with the

computer every once in a while, and eventually, this way, we worked through all
the steps, and the software was installed. The system rebooted. I ran
TextBridge, and after fiddling for a minute, I got it started on a series of tests to
configure the scanner. It told me that I needed an updated TWAIN driver.
TWAIN, as I understood it, was the feature that allowed a scanner to put its
output directly into a document in Word format, and perhaps also in other
formats. But then, when I told it to save a scanned document in Word format, it
opened Word and pasted it right in there after all. I could quickly see that, for all
its slowness, the quality of this programs text recognition capability was better
than the old WordScan and OmniPage programs I had used previously.
(i) Image Scanning Software. While TextBridge was good for OCR, and could
scan images, it did not allow me to choose how many dots per inch (DPI) I would
scan for, nor the type of color document or other settings that I was accustomed
to using. I tinkered with Adobe PhotoDeluxe (see point 165(b)), but I did not like
its interface or its lack of options. I had the same reaction, and even more so, to
the EasyPhoto that I had apparently gotten as a freebie along with PhotoDeluxe.
Next, I tried GraphicCorp Photo Editor. (See point 224(c).) It quickly became
obvious that this was a good program. Nevertheless, it ran very slowly on the
PENTIUM machine, with its Pentium 233 MMX chip. The Kodak Imaging
program that came with one of the Windows 98 or Internet Explorer downloads
was much faster; but again, all of these programs seemed to be using the same
Windows scanning interface, which offered limited options. In the end, I
decided that the best approach for me would probably be to scan in Microsoft
Photo Editor, another freebie that came with Windows 98 or Office 97; do my
more refined editing in GraphicCorp Photo Editor; and save the others until I
was certain I would not need them anymore. Finally, at first I decided not to
install Hewlett-Packards old DeskScan II. It just could not compare, in color
accuracy and ease of use, with these other programs. But as I thought about it, I
realized there were several reasons to install it: I had used it for years, was
accustomed to its features, and still had not seen some of those features (such as
the ability to specify the number of dots per inch in your image scans) in any of
these other image scanning packages; and it came with a photocopier program
that would scan and send the output to the printer, although the limited memory
on my old printer did put some limits on the usefulness of that. So I installed
DeskScan II as well. I had previously searched online and had found various
versions of it for download, and had decided on version 2.6 on the basis of some
comment indicating that that was the last version that supported my IIcx
scanner. (See ___.) This version of DeskScan came in a file called SJ137EN.EXE.
When I ran it, it needed to unzip into a DOS-named folder (i.e., it balked at
F:\Temp\Staging Area), so I put it into F:\Temp\DeskScan. It produced four
folders, DISK1 through DISK4. I clicked on SETUP.EXE in DISK1 -- which, as I
saw, contained the HP400A.INF file (see point 224(g)), so apparently this was one

of those cases where I would have saved myself a little work if I had started with
the software rather than the hardware. Setup wanted to install into
C:\DESKSCAN, so I let it. Then, after reboot, I used MagicMover (see point 154)
to move it to D:\Program Files\Images\HP DeskScan II. (I didnt realize it at
the time, but I later discovered that I had left out part of the installation process.
See point 231.) There were other image scanning and editing programs I could
have considered (see point 140(e)), but at this point I did not have any specific
needs in mind that called for me to do anything other than to keep them in mind.
(j) ASPICHK. I believed I had found the reason for the slowdowns and other
odd behavior that seemed to have begun at about the time I began fooling with
the SCSI scanner. (See e.g., point 224(f).) According to the Datman page at
www.datman.com/tbul/dmtb_028.htm, Adaptec had a program called
ASPICHK, short for ASPI Checker, where ASPI stands for Advanced SCSI
Programming Interface. The most recent version of ASPICHK was released in
December 1999, which was too recent for me to have obtained it. The purpose of
ASPICHK was to see whether you had the most recent version of the ASPI
modules -- which, if not, might explain why you were having SCSI problems.
The most recent version of the ASPI modules was version 4.60. You could
download them from ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/pub/BBS/win95/aspi32_v4-6.exe.
The Datman page said that Adaptec had designed the update so that it would
not ordinarily install itself on systems that did not contain an Adaptec SCSI
adapter. Since my scanner adapter came from Hewlett-Packard or Symbios
Logic, this would be a problem for me. Then again, the Datman page suggested
a simple way to fool the update into installing anyway: instead of specifying
Symbios Logic as the manufacturer of my adapter card (see point 224)(g)), I
could specify Adaptec and choose any Adaptec model, and then the install
would proceed OK. At www.octave.com/techsup/faq.htm# aspilay, they
suggested that the installer would also work if you had Adaptec software
installed. I had intended to install Easy CD Creator (see point 4) on just the
AMD machine, since it was the only one with a CD-burning drive, but now I saw
that it might be better to install it on the PENTIUM and make it available to both
machines. (Note that, if I had had more than one SCSI device on either machine,
I would have had to worry about the order in which I had chained them
together. At www.octave.com/techsup/faq.htm# scanner, they said that the
scanner would have needed to be at a SCSI ID at least two notches higher than
the CD recorder.) Both the Datman page and the octave.com page advised that I
should download ASPICHK.EXE and ASPI32_V4-6.EXE from Adaptec. The
Datman page gave links, so I used those. I ran ASPICHK; it said, ASPI is not
properly installed. Then I installed Easy CD Creator. (See point 224(k).) I ran
ASPICHK again, before even bothering with the ASPI32_V4-6.EXE program, and
it said, ASPI is properly installed and is fully operational. So the Octave.com
site was correct in saying that it was good enough just to install the Adaptec

software, without tinkering with the hardware. I hoped this would be the end of
slowdown problems related to the scanners SCSI adapter.
(k) Easy CD Creator. Given the incentive to install Easy CD Creator now instead
of later (see point 224(j)), I went ahead and did that, putting its program files into
D:\Program Files\CDROM\Easy CD Creator. I also installed Adaptecs
DirectCD (for formatting CD-RW disks so that you can read and write to them
like ordinary hard disks, i.e., without having to go through a burning process)
and UDF Reader (which I knew served some kind of purpose, although I
couldnt remember exactly what until the installer reminded me: it was to allow
the system to read the contents of disks formatted with DirectCD). On reboot, I
saw that DirectCD was now loading automatically at startup, so I went into Start
Manager (see point 163) and shut that off.
(l) CDRIdentifier. I couldnt remember where I got this little program, but its
purpose was to find information about CD media. I tried it on the PENTIUM
machine, but apparently it would only work on a CD burner (which the AMD
machine had but the PENTIUM did not). It looked interesting, though: it did
supply some information about the Lion CD-ROM drive in the PENTIUM, and
also about the SCSI adapter for the scanner; and it seemed that, in the AMD, it
would also provide information on who manufactured the blank CDs that I
might use, what type of dye they used (i.e., some dyes dont hold up as well as
others), and what recording speeds were appropriate for use with that media. So
I went ahead and installed this potentially useful thing and set up a shortcut to it.
(On reinstallation, I went without it. See point 231.)
(m) CDSpeed99. The documentation for this program, which appeared in an
HTML page, said that it tested the ability of CD-ROM drives in a number of
ways: how quickly they would transfer data, how quickly they could extract
audio tracks (see point 157(c) and point 157(d)), and other things that could
influence the responsiveness of a CD-ROM drive. The program also offered the
ability to verify the integrity of a CD-R or CD-RW disk, containing audio or data.
I installed the program and ran its Transfer Rate Test. It ran for about ten
minutes, apparently going through the entire CD disk that I had inserted. It
reported the CD, which was actually the Adaptec CD used in point 224(k), as
having a length of 65:13:06, which apparently showed how long it would have
taken to play the thing if all its data had been audio data; and it showed an
average speed of 5.29x, so I figured that it had taken about 12.3 minutes (65.25
divided by 5.29) for the test. Then I saw that it was actually reporting the time at
which each test started, which was pretty cool. It said that it aborted its random
seek test because the disks capacity was not at least 70 minutes, which
apparently reflected something funky about the way Adaptec had recorded that
CD. I ran the test again, this time using the CD that I had burned in point 132,

but it, too, was apparently not full enough. (In this case, the average speed was
about 4.6x, suggesting that home-grown CDs might not read quite as fast.) I
tried again with a CD that I knew was absolutely full of MP3 files. Oddly,
however, it reported this CD, too, as having less than 66 minutes of data. Maybe
it meant that the disk needed 70 minutes of empty space? I tried again with a
blank CD, but now it wouldnt give me any menu options at all. I reinserted the
STEP_132 CD and ran the CD Quality Check. The program said, This drive
seems incapable of returning error information. Continue anyway? That
seemed futile, so I took out the CD and decided to try again when I had these
programs all loaded on the AMD machine. (See point ___.)
(n) eFax. I had previously signed up for this online fax service. (See point
141(p).) Subsequently, they had sent me an e-mail that gave me a free fax
number (which turned out to be located in Ogden, Utah) and a PIN to use to
access my faxes. I had also downloaded the eFax software. Now I ran that
software and got the message, eFax Messenger was successfully installed. As
soon as I clicked OK, the program came to life. I read its introductory blurb and
clicked on its Voice Greeting icon. A little sound player came up and played a
welcome message that mentioned voice messages. I closed the program and
searched for efax, to see where it had installed itself. The answer was, there
were now about a dozen additional files in C:\WINDOWS. I wasnt sure this
was entirely cool -- I really would have rather had the program files in their own
folder -- but I let it slide. For sending faxes, I had previously decided I would
use the service at www-usa.tpc.int/sendfax.html. (See point 141(p).) I went
online now and to that sendfax site -- its actual name was TPC Fax -- and sent a
fax to my eFax number. It came back with an error message that said, The
number you specified is not covered by our service. I figured I would probably
have that problem again, but since I very rarely felt the need to send faxes, I
thought maybe I would wait until the next need arose and see if TPC Fax failed
me again. If it did, I would probably have to bite the bullet and install Microsoft
Fax, with all its baggage (see point 141(e)); but until then, I would leave things as
they were. (Later, I decided on a different solution. See point 247.) For another
way to test eFax, I asked a friend to fax me. Sometime thereafter, I got an e-mail
from eFax with an .EFX file attached. I clicked on it and eFax opened it up. It
was a handwritten note, upside down. The program let me save it as a TIF file,
which I could edit in my graphics editor. (See point 224(c).)
(o) Online Photo Storage.
(p) SweepGen. The purpose of this program was to generate pure, continuous
tones or sound waves. I had briefly used some such tones a few months earlier,
when I was doing sound comparisons of the quality of compressions produced
by MP3 and other audio compression codecs, and I thought perhaps some such

need might arise again. Then again, Cool Edit (see point 157(a)) seemed to have
a similar capability, so I decided not to install this program, but just to keep this
note in case I ever needed to find it again.
Outlook and Windows Problems; Reinstall
225. Outlook 98 Problems Again: Unknown Error. Within the past few hours,
while trying to get into the Address Book in Outlook 98, I had again gotten the
message that "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the
problem persists, restart Outlook." (See point 166(e).) This time, however, it
seemed to need a different solution, since there was only one PST file and it was
in the same place as it had been. I also noticed that the setup program for my
next item of software was running very slowly. I wondered if I was having more
problems with the SCSI interface. (See point 224(j).) At this point, when I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del, it said that RunDLL was not responding. The same happened again
for other programs when I used Ctrl-Alt-Del again. I shut everything down and
rebooted. Evidently one of the programs that I had installed recently had
needed to reboot, and either it had not said so or I had ignored it, because when I
rebooted, the system indicated that it was going through a setup process, as it
ordinarily would do after I installed new software that involved a change to the
Registry. Rebooting did not fix the Outlook problem. I tried the Inbox Repair
Tool provided by Microsoft, pointing it toward the OUTLOOK.PST file. (See
point 166(e).) It ran for quite a while. When it was done, it said, Only minor
inconsistencies were found in this file. Repairing the file is optional. I chose to
repair it anyway. I tried getting into the Outlook 98 Address Book again, and
got the same unknown error message. I went online for advice, searching in
Deja for (ol98 or ol 98 or outlook 98) and address book and unknown
error. I got the following ideas, in order of decreasing relevance: maybe I
should see what would happen if I created a new OUTLOOK.PST; maybe it was
the scanner; or maybe it was Norton AntiVirus, which I had set up to scan emails. While mulling this over, Windows Critical Update notified me that there
were more updates I should be downloading, so I did. After doing that and
rebooting, the Outlook Address Book problem was still there, so I applied the
first of my three options: I shut down Outlook, moved the entire contents of
E:\Messages (see point 112(c)) to another folder, and started Outlook again. It
gave me a message, The file E:\Messages\Outlook.pst could not be found. I
said OK and let it create a new one. Then I got a confusing message that said,
The location messages are delivered to has changed for this user profile. I
didnt see why it should have changed; I was still having messages sent to
E:\Messages\Outlook.pst, which happened to be a new file. I clicked OK and
tried to go into the Address Book. Again, I got the unknown error message. I
returned the old OUTLOOK.PST to E:\Messages and decided to try the second
alternative: see if I still had the problem without the scanner. The simplest route

I could think of was just to remove the scanner interface card from the computer.
Before doing that, I thought of trying Outlook in Safe Mode. I still got the error
message there. I wasnt sure what this proved, however, so I went ahead and
shut down and took out the scanner card. I rebooted into Safe Mode (so as to
avoid a bunch of potentially unnecessary reconfiguring of my system to take
account of the absence, and then perhaps the renewed presence, of the scanner
card) and tried using the Address Book again. As expected, it made no
difference; the error was still there. I decided that the problem had surfaced well
after my installation of Norton AntiVirus and that it probably was not the cause.
Reviewing my notes, I decided that reinstalling Outlook 98 was probably not
going to solve anything (see point 166(b)), but I wondered if perhaps I had
caused the problem, which had also appeared previously, by moving
WAB32.DLL from D:\Program Files\Common Files\System. (See point 166(e).)
I put a copy back there from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and tried Outlook 98
again. The problem was still there. I went back online, this time looking in
websites rather than Deja.com. I found an amusing complaint from a ZDNet
page entitled Office 98 Updating Woes, where they said that it was a Microsoft
problem and that apparently the problem will be repaired in the next few
days. The article was dated 4/29/98. The article did give me the idea,
however, that when I saw Add New Components under Microsoft Outlook 98
in Add/Remove Programs, that might indicate that there were new additions to
the list of components -- in other words, that there might be more to add even if I
had already added everything available previously. I tried this and found
myself looking at a Microsoft Office Update page entitled Microsoft Office 98
Component Install. You know, I used to use these pages all the time, but I had
forgotten they existed. This one offered to determine what Outlook 98
components I had installed. I accepted the offer. It showed me a long list. I
clicked the red arrows at the right ends of each item to get descriptions, and I
decided to install a couple of items. The options I selected were Net Folders, MS
Info, and Office Sounds. None of them seemed to be a patch or fix that
might solve the problem, however, and after they were downloaded and
installed, I found that the Address Book problem persisted. Next, I found a page
pertaining to Outlook 97. It suggested creating a new Personal Folders file, but I
found that Control Panel | Mail on my system did not contain the Services tab
they referred to. Another suggestion on that page was to reboot into real DOS
and rename nine different files and then go back into Add/Remove Programs
and choose Reinstall. If that failed, they said, I would have to reinstall Windows.
I decided to apply their advice in somewhat different order. First, I went to
Add/Remove Programs and chose Remove Outlook 98. This time, I did a more
thorough job of removing. I removed the D:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Outlook 98 folder to another location (just in case I wanted some of its
configuration files later). I ran the Cleanup Suite (see point 153) and skipped
directly to the Link Check Wizard, where I removed the half-dozen Outlook-

related links that came up. Continuing in the Cleanup Suite, I ran the Clean
Registry option in EasyCleaner and found a large number of invalid references to
remove. Before reinstalling Outlook 98, I reinserted the scanner card and made
sure the scanner worked. It didnt seem to have been responsible for the Outlook
problems, but if it had, I thought that maybe this method of installing things in a
different order from the order that I had used last time could help the programs
to become comfortable with one another. Then I went to the Outlook 98 Setup
folder on D: and clicked OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE. I told it to set up a new
Outlook 98 folder in the same location mentioned above, and this time I got the
message, SETUP has determined that the PATH variable is full and cannot
accept any additional statements. Since you have chosen to install Outlook 98 in
a directory different from that in which Microsoft Office is installed ... Outlook 98
will be unable to run. As an alternative, it said, I could make changes to the
PATH variable manually. That didnt seem worth the hassle, so I backed up and
went with the default location of D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. I ran the
program -- this time using the desktop icon, which I did not bother to delete -and was slightly unhappy to see that all of my previous toolbar arrangements
were still there. Evidently I had not done as thorough an uninstallation as I had
thought! Anyway, I tried to open the mailbox icon and, once again, got the
unknown error message. I tried to dial out and got a message that my modem
was not functioning. Presumably the scanner card games had screwed things
up. I went into Device Manager and saw that, of all things, it was not
recognizing COM1. I removed it from this specific PENTIUM configuration and
rebooted. When I was shutting down, I got a Windows fatal exception error, as I
had gotten several times recently. It began to look like my Windows installation
was screwed. One message in Deja.com said something about deleting
MAPI32.DLL and then reinstalling Windows Messaging, and this made me
wonder whether the fault was due to todays downloads from Windows Update.
I found a Microsoft Knowledgebase page that described command-line options
for OUTLOOK.EXE, and I ran OUTLOOK /UNREGSERVER and then
OUTLOOK /REGSERVER to delete and rebuild all Outlook-specific Registry
entries. This happened so quickly that I doubted it had actually worked.
Another suggestion was to run SCANPST.EXE, which I found in D:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office, but this turned out to be just the executable file
that ran the Inbox Repair Tool. Having seen still more advice indicating that I
might have to reinstall Windows, I decided that was probably the direction I
needed to go. (For the next point regarding modem configuration, see point 229.)
226. Preparations for Reinstallation. Before trashing this system and starting
over with my most recent DriveImage backup, called STEP_220.PQI (see point
220), I decided to try it out and make sure it worked. Thus, I copied it over the
network from the PENTIUM machine to drive F on the AMD machine, rebooted
that machine from the floppy, and installed STEP_220.PQI onto drives C and D

there. It worked, so I burned it onto a CD. It was right at the limit -- 655 MB -- so
I didnt include DOS_UTIL (see point ___). I was still able to make it bootable,
though. Meanwhile, I used the copy of STEP_220.PQI remaining on the
PENTIUM machine to restore working versions of drives C and D there.
227. Contemplating Catch-Up Again, Again. I now had to re-do the things that I
had recently done, as described in point 221 through point 225. I started by
verifying that the Address Book in Outlook 98 finally did work correctly. And
whoa, to my surprise, it did not. I got the same unknown error message. (See
point 225.) I tried running the newly reinstalled version of Outlook 98 on the
AMD machine, and I got the same message there. It appeared that the problem
had existed before point 220. So now I faced a tough choice: either I was going
to recreate all of my steps since the previous CD backup, which was back at point
204 or thereabouts (and would hope that, back then at least, there was no such
Outlook problem); or else I was going to forge ahead, ignoring the Outlook 98
problem and just trying to get a working system in place, and hoping that (a) the
Outlook problem was not a harbinger of some larger system problem that would
eventually make it impossible for me to continue and (b) perhaps someone
would even come up with a solution eventually, although apparently they had
failed to do so for two years now. (Nevertheless, I did post the question online.
See point ___.) As I reviewed all of the work that I had done since point 204, and
realized that I was not certain I had even burned a CD at that time, not to
mention the possibility that the Address Book problem had existed even then, I
decided that it was not feasible to retreat that far. It would be better, I believed,
to get rid of Outlook 98 altogether and use some other programs for my
scheduling and e-mail. Thus, it now seemed foolish not to have taken the extra
time to make a DriveImage backup of the state of the art as of point 226, so as to
avoid the now seemingly unnecessary redo of everything at least since point 221.
Then again, I had just recently experienced some other Windows irregularities
(see point 225), so maybe it was just as well that I had decided to take a step back
after all. As I tinkered with Outlook 98 some more, I found that I could use most
of its functions; it was just the Address Book icon on the toolbar, and the CtrlShift-B method of bringing up the Address Book, that would give me the
unknown error message. This was not perfect, but I could live with it, as long
as it was not a harbinger of worse times ahead.
228. GoBack. I had lately heard of this program. This experience of repeatedly
rolling the system back and nudging it forward, with redundant software
installations and removals, had gotten tedious. In other words, I was now
motivated to research the question of whether I should spend $70 on a program
to do what my backup system was originally supposed to do. (See point 203.)
My research revealed some good news. First, I read four or five reviews, and
everyone raved about this program. You had to disable it before running

PartitionMagic or other partitioning software, but that didnt seem like a major
problem (as long as I remembered to do it). Second, the price seemed to have
dropped quite a bit. I found that I was able to get it for less than $50, including
shipping. Third, it seemed that this might become a useful part of my backup
scheme. I did not fully understand that aspect of the program -- all I understood
for sure was that GoBack would let you roll things back to where they were
minutes, hours, days, or weeks ago (depending on how much stuff youve
deleted and how much disk space youve allocated for GoBack) -- but the backup
possibilities did seem appealing, as compared to the hassle of working with
individual files in an XCOPY approach. (See point 202.) So I ordered the
program; and when it arrived, I built it into my overall setup. (See point ___.)
Later, I had an opportunity to use it in detail. (See point 294.)
229. Catch-up Again, Again: Windows and Norton AntiVirus Update. For at
least the third time, I downloaded the latest Windows updates again, rereinstalled Norton AntiVirus 2000, and downloaded the latest NAV updates.
(See point 221.) Since I would be installing more software, I decided not to
bother with Updates.com until later. (See point ___.) As before, I got a problem
after the Windows downloads. (See point 222.) This time, the problem was a
BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) announcing a Fatal Exception. In subsequent
reboots, however, that problem did not recur, and I also did not have the weird
slowdown problem that I had noticed the last time. (See point 223.) What I did
have, however, was an error message saying, Unable to establish a connection,
when I tried to let NAVs LiveUpdate download the latest updates. (See point
217.) I went into Device Manager and saw that there was no entry for a modem.
I rebooted and got the same message. I cold-rebooted and now the system found
the modem OK. In other words, it was not a case of uninstalled hardware; it
seemed more likely that the system was sometimes unable to assign an IRQ for
the modem, or something like that. I decided to deal with it a bit later. (See
point 232.) Right now, I just downloaded the NAV update.
230. Catch-up Again, Again: Office 97 Updates. I had saved the Office 2000
ODBC Driver Vulnerability Security Update, so I didnt have to re-download
that to install it again. (See point 223.) Next, I tried to find Component Install
websites for all of my Office 97 programs, not just Outlook 98. I did this by
applying the same approach as I had used for Outlook 98. (See point 225.) That
is, I went into Add/Remove Programs, clicked on Microsoft Office 97, and tried
to see if it would add more stuff. Unfortunately, it just said that I had already
installed everything. (See point 69.) Evidently the Component Install approach
required Active Setup, and it seemed that only Outlook 98 offered that. So I did
the Active Setup thing from Add/Remove Programs just for Outlook 98, as
before. I searched Microsofts website for more information on the relationship
between Component Install and Office 97, but found nothing.

231. Catch-up Again, Again: Other Programs. Some of the programs I had tried
to install recently had turned out to be duds. For this reason, I didnt have to
worry about the printer driver (see point 224(a)) and SweepGen (see point
224(p)). Also, as I thought again about the CDRIdentifier (see point 224(l)), I
wasnt really sure I wanted to bother with it -- which turned out to be a good
thing, because I couldnt find my copy of the download and I also couldnt find it
online. I decided that it probably didnt contain many secrets for me -- I mean, I
already knew I was buying the cheapest CDs I could find -- so I figured Id let it
slide and see if it turned up later. Otherwise, I had kept the files I had
downloaded for the WinMag Registry Ripper (see point 224(b)), CDSpeed99 (see
point 224(m)), and eFax (see point 224(n), so it didnt take long to reinstall them.
From the Adaptec CD, I installed Easy CD Creator, DirectCD, and UDF Reader
(see point 224(k)), as well as GraphicCorp Photo Editor (see point 224(c)). (Later,
I went into Start Manager (see point 158(b)) and told it to keep DirectCD from
starting automatically at bootup.) The Adaptec software took care of the
ASPICHK problem, as I verified by running ASPICHK. (See point 224(j).) From
the Logitech floppies, I installed and configured the mouse software. (See point
224(d).) I installed Xerox TextBridge, which suffered from the same extreme
slowness problems as last time. (See point 224(h).) When I finished that
installation and accepted its offer to reboot the system, I got another Fatal
Exception error. (See point 229.) Finally, I reinstalled DeskScan II version 2.6
and moved it to D:\Program Files as before (see point 224(i)) and configured the
HP IIcx scanner as new hardware. (See point 224(g).) This time, before moving
it to D:\Program Files with MagicMover, I noticed that the program had not
actually added the color copying feature I had been looking for. Rooting around
among the files that I had downloaded nearly a year earlier, when I had been
looking for ScanDesk online, I came across SJ130EN.EXE, the Color Copy Utility.
Once again, I got DISK1 through DISK3 in F:\Temp\HP; I ran SETUP.EXE in
DISK1; and it installed to C:\DESKSCAN. I tested it, and it worked. The last
item to reinstall in my catch-up was iBackup. (See point 224(o).) For some
reason, I had never gotten their e-mail activating my account, and I had to e-mail
them and pursue it later. (See point ___.)
Significant New Problems
232. Interrupt Requests. I continued to get the unable to establish a
connection message when attempting to go online, such that I had to coldreboot in order to use the modem. (See point 229.) Looking into Device
Manager at these times, I saw an exception next to Communications Port
(COM1). Its Properties indicated that it was causing a resource conflict; it
suggested that I use the Hardware Troubleshooter to resolve it. I had been here
before. (See point 217.) The troubleshooter told me to look at the items

Resources tab, which told me that the conflict was at IRQ 4 -- which, as this
Resources screen said, was where I had just installed the scanner. (See point
224(g).) The troubleshooter said that, since this was not a System Reserved kind
of resource conflict, I could double-click on the conflicting item. I did that and
got the message, No Modifications Allowed. I unchecked the Use automatic
settings box, double-clicked again, and got a box allowing me to specify another
IRQ. As I scrolled through the options there, it said that there were no conflicts
with IRQs 3 or 10. I chose 3 and started to exit without rechecking the Use
automatic settings box. Device Manager told me that this would make the
system less flexible in the future, and I knew that, so I rechecked the automatic
settings box and exited. The exception was still next to COM1. Instead of
changing it, I decided to change the SCSI Controller item in Device Manager that
was causing this problem. I went into its Resouces and was surprised to see that
its Use automatic settings box was not checked. I checked it and exited,
thinking that maybe the problem was that the manual setting assigned by the
SCSI installer was messing with the auto setting used by COM1. During reboot,
I stopped to review the settings in BIOS Setup. Under the Power Management
Setup heading, it said that IRQ 4 was assigned to COM1 and IRQ 3 was for
COM2. Under the PNP/PCI Configuration heading, it said that IRQ 10 was
assigned to ACPI (Advanced Power and Control Interface, whatever that
means). A comment online suggested leaving that one alone. I went back into
Device Manager and saw no exceptions. I went to the top of the list, clicked on
Computer, and selected Properties. (Another useful place to see IRQs: Start |
Run | MSINFO32 | Hardware Resources.) It showed me that COM1 and COM2
were sharing IRQ 3 -- which, as I understood, was feasible for PCI devices, which
apparently included COM ports -- so apparently the PNP/PCI Configuration in
the BIOS Setup was a bit out of touch with the realities, and any power settings I
might have in place in the BIOS for IRQ 4 would instead affect the SCSI scanner
adapter which, as I could see, was the thing that was really using that IRQ.
Going on down the list, I saw more sharing going on at a number of other IRQs.
At this point, I had two IRQ problems: there was no entry for Modem in Device
Manager, and Add New Hardware continued to remind me that the S3 Legacy
Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device was still not installed. (See point
217.) One tip advised that I might be able to free up an IRQ by disabling full
duplex on my sound card, which was fine since I did not expect to need record
and playback at the same time, but the manual for the Turtle Beach Daytona
sound card provided no information on how I might do that. (Later, I wound up
doing more modem configuration. See point 234.)
233. Totally Blank Screen. I was curious as to how things would look after I
cold-rebooted. The cold reboot took two tries; the first time, I got nothing on the
screen, not even a blinking cursor. Earlier, I had thought this was a hardware
problem. (See point 224(f).) By now, however, I had noticed that I had just

installed the Logitech mouse software (see point 224(d)) shortly before each of
these occurrences, and that that software somehow seemed to run itself even
before the BIOS Setup, at least during a warm reboot. So I guessed that I might
have this problem after each first cold reboot. That is, if I cold-rebooted and then
immediately cold-rebooted again, I would have the problem the first time, but
not the second.
234. Continuing the IRQ Saga. After the cold reboot, I went back into Device
Manager. This time, everything was there. The COM ports were on IRQ 3, the
SCSI adapter was on IRQ 4, and the modem was on IRQ 5. Hoping for the best, I
went into Add New Hardware and tried to add the S3 Legacy Relocator for
SonicVibes PCI Audio Device. (See point 232.) The installer told me that the
device was already installed but had been removed from this hardware profile. I
told it to add it back. Unfortunately, an exception appeared next to it in Device
Manager; Properties told me there were no free IRQs; and the troubleshooter
brought me back to the same list of IRQs (5, 7, 10, or 11) and gave me the same
list of options of other things I could disable in order to make room. I still felt
that I could do without the PCI to USB Universal Host Controller (see point 218),
so I told the troubleshooter to disable that, in hopes that, this time, it would free
up another IRQ. The system rebooted, but did not revert to the no-modem
configuration it had given me after the last warm reboot. (See point 232.) A note
online led me to think that the computer retained settings in memory during
warm reboots, which would explain why a cold reboot could create a new start
and also why the modem would still be working now if it was working before
the warm reboot. Other comments online gave me other ideas for how I might
free up an IRQ. One suggestion, which I didnt intend to pursue right now, was
to replace ISA cards with PCI cards, since the latter can share IRQs and the
former cant. They suggested starting with the video card, but my Matrox
Mystique was a PCI already; another possibility would have been to start with
the 33.6 kbps modem, or (if possible) the SCSI card. The modem became an
especially ripe candidate when I checked the Properties for the S3 Legacy
Relocator and found that it was set to use IRQ 5, which the modem was using. A
seemingly more useful suggestion was to disable COM2, since I wasnt using it.
Then I enabled the PCI to USB Universal Host Controller and the S3 Legacy
Relocator. After reboot, Device Manager still showed an exception next to the S3
Legacy Relocator, so I re-enabled COM2 and rebooted again. This brought
COM2 back to normal. I concluded that disabling COM2 made sense only if it
was occupying an IRQ all by itself. To get rid of the exception, I disabled the S3
Legacy Relocator, and I was back to my starting point. I went back online and
found more suggestions. One was to go into Safe Mode and delete all modems
and COM ports; I dont know if that was in response to a problem like mine. I
was getting close to giving up, so I went into Deja.com and searched for S3
Legacy Relocator, just to see what I was going to be losing if I kept it disabled. I

didnt find anything new and helpful, so I posted a message and waited. I dont
remember getting anything useful from that, but later I did more modem
tweaking. (See point 247.)
235. Chessvision. When Iwas finally ready to get Chessvision running (see point
209), I read the instructions that they had sent me on how to get the computer to
play against me. To do this, they told me to choose Session | Open, select the tab
that corresponds to your screen resolution, and choose Play against Engine |
Close. This had me looking at a bunch of open chessboards and other windows.
The Assistant was actually useful -- it changed its content as I moved the mouse
around, without even clicking on anything. Next, they said, you choose Options
| Global Settings | Chessboard | Movement | Drag Pieces | OK. This will
allow you to drag the pieces you want to move. One of the windows youre
looking at is the Engine Window. If you click on the lightning bolt on that
window, the engine will make its moves automatically after you move. The
screen in which youre playing is not the one with nothing but question marks in
the name, like B2 ?-? -- its the other one, in my case B1 Veerman, P. I minimized
the other windows and dragged the bottom right corner of this one so it would
be bigger. Chessvisions e-mail also informed me that I could install another
engine by finding the Chessvision Engine Support webpage (apparently
available through the Help item on the menu), going to the homepage for the
preferred engine, download the ZIP file, extract its contents into a subfolder
under the Chessvision\Free\Engines folder, choose Options | Global Settings |
Engine | New, select the EXE file in your new subfolder as the preferred engine,
and select the INI file as the Settings File. I found that the program would take a
few moments sometimes to decide what it wants to do, but it still beat me.
236. GoBack Preview. The program arrived! (See point 228.) They
recommended making a backup before proceeding, and I decided that was good
advice, so I booted real DOS from the floppy, ran DriveImage, and made a disk
image file (STEP_236.PQI on 3/10/2000) without any of the preparations I used
to make for DriveImage backups. (See point 152.) Or at least I tried to; it got
interrupted by Error # 1805, Error writing to image file. Last time I got this, it
was because I ran out of disk space. (See point 220.) I looked at drive F, where I
was trying to make the copy. Yep, sure enough, I had forgotten to delete
STEP_220.PQI. I did so now, having burned it to CD in the meantime (see point
226), and I also deleted the rump STEP_236.PQI that DriveImage had created
before dying. I tried again in DriveImage, and it worked. I went into Windows
and copied STEP_220.PQI over to the AMD machine. Now I looked at the
GoBack manual. It sounded like I had understood: it could basically restore a
file or a whole system that you had trashed or deleted. The main GoBack screen
showed a clock, a calendar, and a list of events. You would specify a date and
time, and then the list of events would show you the list of events around that

time, centered on the nearest System Safe Point to which you could revert your
system. The list would also show file events (e.g., deleting a file) and shell
execute events (e.g., running a program), so you would be able to see what
exactly was happening around the time of that System Safe Point. You could
add a note to the list too (e.g., you would go into GoBack and type, Im about to
install Windows Updates). And you could filter the list to show you just the
kinds of events you were interested in. The program also had an enhanced sort
of Recycle Bin, including the ability to right-click on a document in Windows
Explorer and choose the Show Revisions option. The main thing to watch for,
for me, was that GoBack started from scratch each time you disabled it, and you
had to disable it anytime you used partitioning software like PartitionMagic or
FDISK. So that would probably be good times to make sure I had a DriveImage
backup. They said that GoBack would tend to make a System Safe Point
whenever your hard disk was idle for at least ten seconds. GoBack seemed to
relate to regular backup like this: GoBack would be useless if your hard disk
became physically useless, and it would be useless for restoring any data other
than what you had worked on in the past few days to a week, depending on how
much space you allocated for it and what kinds of stuff you were doing with
your files. So I would probably have made CD backups using DriveImage
anyway; I just might not have had to manually recreate everything that I had
done since the most recent backup, each time things didnt work out right. As
advised, I read the ReadMe.txt file on the GoBack CD. It told me that I also had
to disable GoBack before moving a hard drive, and that I had to uninstall and
reinstall GoBack if I wanted it to cover a newly added hard disk. Disabling and
re-enabling was just a matter of clicking a single button inside the program. This
version, they said, was not Windows 2000 compatible. They said it worked OK
with file compressors like PKZIP but not with disk compression utilities like
DriveSpace. It worked on an entire hard disk -- that is, if I needed it to restore
my hard disk, it would restore partitions too. A potential problem: they said
that boot floppies had to contain GoBack drivers. This boded ill for my existing
stack of floppies and bootable CDs. I clicked on the CDs Autorun program and
started the five-minute movie that explained how the program worked. The
program seemed to freeze. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill the movie and tried again.
Apparently what had happened was that I had started two different versions of
it, by starting the Watch directly from CD option and then changing my mind
and choosing the Watch from hard disk option. I tried again with just the hard
disk option; it froze again. I killed the movie and, with a glimmer of concern,
prepared to proceed with installation.
237. Disk Partition Resizing. Before going ahead with GoBack, I realized that
this might be the last time when I would find it convenient, and advisable, to
resize my partitions with PartitionMagic. I had installed most of my programs,
and I could now see that some of the original partitions were larger or smaller

than they needed to be. (I would need to remember to do this before installing
GoBack on the AMD computer too. See point ___.) PartitionMagic informed me
that drive C (WIN98) was using 544 MB out of 901 MB, so I reduced its size to
700 MB; D (PROGRAMS) was using 721 MB out of 1,500 MB, but would need
more space to grow, so I shrank it to 1,000 MB; and I put the balance into E
(DATA), which increased from 465 MB to 1,165 MB. (I still had 153 MB in the
hidden BADSPACE partition at the end of the first hard disk. See point 114.) On
the second hard disk, I decided to shrink H from 1,000 MB to 500 MB, and also to
reduce G (BURNING) to the minimum size of 260 MB (since I didnt actually
have a CD burner on the PENTIUM machine). So G was basically just a
placeholder, a dud. This allowed F to grow from approximately 1,300 MB to
approximately 2,300 MB. Of course, the sizes would be different on the AMD
machine. (See point ___.) After setting up all these sizes in the Windows version
of PartitionMagic, I found that all my funky stuff happening at bootup -- the
Norton AntiVirus scan (see point ___), the choice of hardware configuration (see
point ___), and the customized AUTOEXEC.BAT (see point ___) -- and no doubt
especially the last -- had foiled PartitionMagic from rebooting into DOS and
making its changes there, so I had to try again by running PartitionMagic from
the floppy. This was not really a problem, but I hoped to streamline the bootup
so that the Windows version of PartitionMagic would work too. (See point ___.)
238. GoBacks First, Abortive Installation. With those preparations out of the
way, I resumed the GoBack installation. It showed me the layout of my first
hard disk and allowed me to choose whether I wanted to put the GoBack data in
drive C, D, or E. It suggested using 10% of the space in those three visible
partitions (i.e., using 286 MB), and it suggested carving that out of the 964 MB of
free space on drive E. I thought I should probably allow more than that,
considering how many changes I was making, so I gave it 400 MB. It was
tempting to allow more, but the manual said that I would have to uninstall and
reinstall the program in order to change this number, so I didnt want to be too
grabby. Next, it was the same drill on my second hard drive. Here, I had more
free space, and I would be working with larger files (e.g., sometimes audio
recordings of 500 MB and more). Then again, GoBacks manual said that it
would just step out of the way if the files in question were too large for GoBack
to handle, and I decided that that was probably better than permanently tying up
a huge chunk of useful disk space. I got an idea: I would put the GoBack space
on drive G, which would otherwise just be wasted disk space that I did not
intend to use on this machine. (See point 237.) Thus, it seemed that perhaps I
should have made it somewhat larger than the absolute minimum. Oh, well.
This would give me a 259 MB space on my second hard drive. Correction: 249
MB: GoBack said I had to leave at least 10 MB free. Before confirming this, I
backed up and changed the setting on the first hard drive to 300 MB, because I
realized that even with all these changes I had been making, it had taken me a

very long time to accumulate enough files and programs to fill a single CD. (See
e.g., point 132.) I would not be using this same layout on the AMD machine, so I
would have to uninstall and reinstall GoBack when the time came to install my
final system there. (See point ___.)
239. Preparing a Bad Drive for GoBack. At this point, GoBack rebooted and
said, You have one or more partitions on disk 1 that GoBack doesnt recognize.
These partitions are preventing GoBack from being able to install on this disk.
That referred, of course, to the hidden BADSPACE partition that I had placed
after drive E to encapsulate an unstable area where I had experienced some bad
sectors and had then come back later to find that there were more bad sectors.
(See point 114.) I clicked OK and got the message, Installation of GoBack has
been aborted. The system rebooted, gave me the option to remove the parts
that had been installed, and rebooted again. I checked Add/Remove Programs
and verified that there was no GoBack entry there; I checked D:\Program Files
and saw that the uninstaller had removed the folder where GoBack had started
to install itself. Now, unless I wanted to do without GoBack, it seemed that I had
to combine the BADSPACE partition into drive E. And would I then find that
GoBack occupied the part where the bad clusters were -- and, if so, would
GoBack allow ScanDisk or Norton Disk Doctor to do extensive surgery there?
And would such surgery safely isolate the bad sectors, or would there be more of
them? I did not know the answers to these questions, but it seemed that I had to
experiment. I booted into real DOS; I used PartitionMagic to make the hidden
partition visible (temporarily, it would be drive F) and to format it. The bad hard
disk saga would continue later. (See point 242(a).)
240. Norton Utilities as Standalones. In PartitionMagic, formatting went very
slowly, as the program scrutinized the bad sectors. I recalled, too late, that it
would have been faster in Norton Disk Doctor, and I would also have liked to
see whether Norton was now finding additional bad sectors, as compared to its
previous work in that partition. (See point 114.) PartitionMagic took perhaps an
hour to work through that little 153 MB partition. When it was done, I ran three
thorough examinations of that partition using Norton Disk Doctor. The first and
third examinations marked additional bad sectors, so I suspected there would be
more in the future, and that I would probably discover them just after they
ruined some important file for me. Then I remembered that there used to be a
way, in Norton Utilities, to mark a whole section of a disk. On the AMD
machine, at this point, I was running the version of this system captured in
STEP_220.PQI (see point 220), with a couple of other drivers as needed to make
the AMD run. I mention that because I now decided to try experimenting on the
AMD with a Norton Utilities installation. I had diligently avoided installing
Norton Utilities all this time because of various problems associated with it. (See
point 123.) At a certain point, however, I had found that I really needed Norton

Disk Doctor. (See point 176.) Then, just to be thorough, I had plundered my old
installation of Norton Utilities for anything else that I might have been able to
use, but in that search I had not found anything especially useful. (See point
197.) Now I returned to the original Norton Utilities CD to see if there was
anything else I could use. When I ran CDSTART.EXE on that CD, it gave me a
Run Utilities from CD option. Unfortunately, this option allowed only Disk
Doctor, WinDoctor, UnErase, and WipeInfo. As I recalled, however, there was
also supposed to be a program called Disk Edit. Next, I tried the Install option. I
did a minimal, temporary installation on the AMD machine, hoping that this
would give me a version that I could treat as a standalone, i.e., as something that
would not immediately stick its claws into every aspect of my system. I tried
using InCtrl4 (see point 141(d)) to see whether the installation made any Registry
changes, but InCtrl4 gave me an Invalid file error for some reason. Perhaps
Nortons installation was programmed to take control in such a way as to defeat
anything that might interfere with it, and maybe it was seeing InCtrl4 that way.
Approaching the problem from a different angle, I rebooted into real DOS after
finishing the installation and tried running the EXE files in the newly installed
Norton Utilities folder. I found five -- NDIAGS, DISKEDIT, NDD, UNERASE,
and UNFORMAT -- that would run as DOS standalone files. I floppied these
over to the PENTIUM machine. There, I typed DISKEDIT /? for instructions on
my DISKEDIT options. This told me that the command I wanted was DISKEDIT
F: /W. This gave me a screen displaying a lot of information that I didnt really
understand. I turned to the Help file that Norton had installed on the AMD
machine. This told me that DiskEdit was a DOS utility included with Norton
Utilities, but it didnt tell me anything informative about how to use the thing.
Turning back to the PENTIUM machine, I tried the Help option but got the
message that Help was not available. I tried running DiskEdit in a DOS box on
the AMD machine, and Help was available there, so I gathered that I should
have brought over a Help file. I found DISKEDIT.HLP, floppied that over to
D:\DOS_UTIL on the PENTIUM so that I would have it there for future
reference, and tried again. It still didnt tell me how to mark an entire section of
a disk so the computer wouldnt try to use it. I went online for enlightenment
and found none. All I could do was to post a question in Deja.com, which I did.
(See point ___.) In the meantime, while I was in DOS on the PENTIUM machine,
I went ahead and combined this partition, formerly BADSPACE, temporarily
drive F, into drive E, and hoped for the best. It was either that or put it into a
new permanent drive F, which would change all my references to drives F, G,
and H, with all kinds of ramifications for my later installation on the AMD
machine. Once again, I did this before remembering that the PartitionMagic
operation would take an hour, which in this case was really OK because it was
time for lunch anyway. I could have interrupted it, but at the risk of losing
whatever data I had on drive E. So then I had to run NDD on it again, which
took another hour and a half, now that I was dealing with a much larger

partition. (Norton Disk Doctor doesnt work just on portions of a partition.) To

wrap this up, I went back to the question of whether there were other Norton
programs that I could use on a standalone basis. The minimal Norton
installation on the AMD machine had installed only two other EXE files in the
Norton Utilities folder, namely, NDD32 and SD32. I ran these in a DOS box on
the PENTIUM machine, where I had not installed Norton Utilities -- i.e., where
they would have to stand alone -- and, like before, I found that they would not
run without other files on hand. For now, I decided to keep the DOS utilities,
and I added NDD in place of SCANDISK in the MAINT_WK batch file (see point
124), but I did not feel that the other utilities were important enough to justify
installing Norton Utilities generally. Later, I thought about copying over the
whole NU folder, containing all the Norton utilities and (presumably) their
accompanying files, but it was a 69 MB load, and anyway, my tinkering had
suggested that some of those utilities would grab onto my system and change the
way it worked even when I tried to run them as standalones. I was not sure of
that, but that was how it had seemed, and I just didnt want any more Nortoninduced crashes.
241. Problems with Outlook Express. My unknown error problems in
Outlook 98 (see point 225) made me think that I should consider getting rid of
Outlook 98. I decided to take a look at Outlook Express and try to remember
whether I had liked its e-mail handling abilities; I figured that if Outlook Express
could handle the e-mail, maybe I could find some other program to replace
Outlook 98s calendar and schedule features. I had previously been successful
when I had tried to get into Outlook Express and tinker with its settings. (See
point 102.) Now, however, I got an error message stating, Outlook Express
could not be started. The application was unable to open the Outlook Express
message store. Your computer may be out of memory or your disk is full.
Contact Microsoft support for further assistance. My disk was not full and I
was not out of memory. I wondered if maybe Outlook Express and Outlook 98
were both suffering from the same core problem, whatever it was. When I
clicked OK on that error message, I got another message: Outlook Express
could not be started because MSOE.DLL could not be initialized. Outlook
Express may not be installed correctly. I received the same error when trying to
run Outlook Express on the AMD machine, so the problem was not due merely
to this recent hard disk tinkering. A search for MSOE.DLL revealed that it was
located in D:\Program Files\Microsoft Online\Outlook Express on both
machines. A search of the old version of drive C -- the one that had existed on
the AMD machine before I began this whole project, and that I had subsequently
copied to drive H (see point 169) -- revealed that, back then, MSOE.DLL had
existed in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express. So although MagicMover had
reported no difficulty in moving various files from C:\Program Files to
D:\Program Files, it now appeared that the move had not been entirely

successful. (See point 154.) The MSOE.DLL error message was not a mere
missing file error message, and there did not exist any C:\Program
Files\Outlook Express folder to which I might have copied it, so I tried to undo
the damage by using MagicMover to return the Outlook Express folder back to
its original location in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express. I verified that the
Outlook Express folder no longer existed on drive D. Then I clicked on the
Outlook Express icon in Start | Programs again, and I got the same two error
messages. I went into Add/Remove Programs and removed Microsoft Outlook
Express 5. On reboot, I got an error message, Could not locate INF file
C:\WINDOWS\INF\MSIMN.INF. A search on the AMD machine did not find
this file. It was puzzling that the system now thought it needed it. I looked into
the C:\Program Files\Outlook Express folder and found that not only did the
folder still exist, but it was still full of files, including one called MSIMN.EXE.
Perhaps this file was telling the system that it needed MSIMN.INF or some
substitute that the uninstall had just removed. I went back into Add/Remove
Programs and saw that Microsoft Outlook Express 5 was still listed there. I used
Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut down everything except Explorer and Systray. I tried
uninstalling through Add/Remove Programs again. After rebooting, I saw that
nothing had changed. I did not see any alternative uninstallation icon in the
Outlook Express folder. I went online for inspiration. According to article
number Q186218 in Microsofts Knowledgebase, I should have used the
Windows Setup tab in Add/Remove Programs to remove Outlook Express. I
tried that now, but the Microsoft Outlook Express box there was already
unchecked. I tried starting Outlook Express again and got the same two error
messages, as though nothing had changed. I went back online, to the Windows
Update page; I allowed that page to probe my system and see what it thought I
lacked; and now, unlike the last time I had come here (see point 229), the page
told me that I needed Outlook Express 5. I downloaded it and rebooted. I tried
running it again, and this time it gave me a different error message. It said, The
Address Book failed to load. Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please
re-install. Pardoning Microsofts ubiquitous comma splice, I clicked OK, and
this did take me into Outlook Express. But the message about the Address Book
sounded like it might be on target on the subject of the problems in Outlook 98 as
well: that is, the problems there, too, had been with the Address Book.
242. Outlook Express, Outlook 98, and the Bad Hard Disk Partition. I decided to
try resolving my problems with Outlook (see point 241) by straightening out the
iffy situation on my first hard disk. I proceeded as follows:
(a) Deciding to Convert the Hidden Partition to a Visible Drive. I decided that it
was nuts to try to combine the old BADSPACE partition with the good sectors of
my first hard disk. (See point 239.) In response to my newsgroup question as to
whether there might be a way to mark an entire bad section of a partition

manually, I had received several lectures on how important it was not to use a
decaying hard disk. I had replied that I appreciated the concern but this was,
after all, just a spare computer whose primary purpose was to provide a
comfortable retirement for dying parts. I hadnt yet received any further replies.
In the meantime, I decided that what I had to do was to recreate the BADSPACE
partition, not as a hidden partition, but as drive E, with nothing in it but empty
folders as placeholders, so that Word and other programs that expected to find
their default data folders on drive E would still find them there, at least until I
finished setting up this model system and finishing it over on the AMD machine.
(Later, someone suggested another solution that might have done the job: I
could have used PartitionMagic to create a Linux partition there, which would
have been invisible to Windows 98; but later still, I found a GoBack webpage that
said that GoBack would not install on any drive that had an extended DOS
partition that contained a non-DOS partition type. See point 298.)
(b) Relocating OUTLOOK.PST and Other Data. I ran Outlook 98 on the AMD
machine. It gave me the message that The file E:\TEMP\OUTLOOK.PST could
not be found. This confirmed that I had not absentmindedly used Outlook 98 to
store any important messages on the AMD machine in the past few days. Given
that knowledge, I copied the entire E:\Messages folder containing the Address
Book and accompanying files to the AMD machine, and then told Outlook 98 to
look for OUTLOOK.PST in the E:\Messages folder on that machine. It found it
and showed me my current e-mails and schedule items. Confident that I had a
working backup of OUTLOOK.PST, I removed the entire contents of the
E:\Messages folder on the PENTIUM machine to drive F, leaving only an empty
folder. I did the same for all other data folders on drive E, as I should have done
before the hard disk gyrations of recent days. (See point 239.)
(c) Uninstalling Outlook Express. Interestingly, I had left Outlook Express
running during this process, and it prevented me from moving some of the
contents of E:\Messages to drive F until I shut it down, which made me wonder
whether this old OUTLOOK.PST and/or its accompanying files were part of the
problem. I tried running Outlook Express and got the same Address Book
failed to load message. (See point 241.) I then tried to uninstall Outlook
Express again on the Windows Setup tab in Add/Remove Programs. Oddly,
however, Outlook Express did not appear there this time. Had my act of
removing the contents of E:\Messages crippled it? I went back online to the
Windows Update site and let it probe my machine again. This time, it did not
say that I was lacking Outlook Express. I was stuck: I did have it, as far as the
website that could give it to me was concerned, but I didnt have it as far as the
program that could have uninstalled it was concerned. I copied OUTLOOK.PST
and the other files back to E:\Messages and tried again in Add/Remove
Programs. This made no difference, so I deleted those copies. I removed

C:\Program Files\Outlook Express to drive F and tried the Windows Update

website again. It still thought I had Outlook Express! I went into Add/Remove
Programs, this time using the Install/Uninstall tab instead of the Windows Setup
tab. Outlook Express was still listed there, so I clicked Add/Remove, and that
seemed to do it -- it was not there anymore. The Windows Update page still
thought I had Outlook Express, however, so I went back to Add/Remove
Programs and uninstalled Outlook 98 -- which I was only too happy to do, since
my recent usage had indicated that the failure to find its Address Book was not
the only way in which it had begun to malfunction. I rebooted and went into
Add/Remove Programs. Both Outlook 98 and Outlook Express were gone. I
ran the Cleanup Suite (see point 153) and told it to remove a bunch of dead links
and Registry keys. I went back to the Windows Update website again. It still did
not offer to reinstall Outlook Express.
(d) PartitionMagic and the Bad Space. I rebooted from the floppy and told
PartitionMagic to reconfigure drive E so that it would be called BADSPACE and
would contain a minimal 300 MB at the very end of the first hard drive, where
the bad sectors lay. (See point 114.) (I assumed that PartitionMagic wanted the
size to be 300 MB, rather than the 259 MB or thereabouts that PartitionMagic had
considered minimal on the other hard disk (see point 238), because
PartitionMagic was setting aside 40 MB for bad sectors, although that didnt
seem quite right.) PartitionMagic took its customary hour or more to check that
little space (see point ___), but this time it aborted with a Write fault error. It
had created a drive E with 300 MB, but had put it at the start rather than the end
of the 1,165 MB space that was formerly drive E, or perhaps it had taken it out of
what was formerly drive D. (See point 237.)
(e) Trying FDISK and FORMAT. Now I had to figure out how to move drive E
to the end of that space. I ran the old DOS utility called FDISK (still supplied
with Windows), and selected Create DOS Partition | Create Logical DOS Drive
in the Extended DOS Partition. It said there was 1,020 MB available, and offered
to create a logical drive of that size. I said no, create one of 850 MB. It did that
instantly, calling it drive F. It now offered to create another drive, which would
temporarily be drive G, with 169 MB, and I accepted. This was larger than the
153 MB that BADSPACE had formerly occupied, but I was beginning to think it
might be just as well to allow a little extra space for growth -- er, decay. I
rebooted and used the FORMAT command at the DOS prompt to format new
drives F and G. It sailed right through drive F. When dealing with the bad
sectors in G, it gave me Trying to recover allocation unit messages, starting at
unit 5,941. It apparently succeeded with that one, and it kept on going for a
while, but finally, when trying to recover allocation unit 25,651, it gave up and
said, Not ready. Format terminated. Just before that, it had said it was 59%
completed. I tried again and got the same thing. I went back into FDISK, deleted

drive G, and instead started to create a new logical drive G of only 99 MB (59% of
169), with the aim of putting the rest into a new drive H. This did not work,
because FDISK interpreted 99 MB to mean 102 MB, which would contain the
troublesome allocation unit 25,651. Sure enough, FDISK stalled with a message,
Verifying drive integrity. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, came back into FDISK, and tried
again, using 95 MB this time instead of 99 MB. The choice of 95 MB resulted in a
98 MB drive G, and for some reason FDISK did not stall when I assigned the
remaining 71 MB to a new drive H. I rebooted -- still booting from the floppy -and ran FORMAT successfully on drive G. But that last 71 MB -- that was the
real struggle. FORMAT still could not get through it. (If getting maximum
usable disk space had been my only goal, maybe I could have created another
partition after this bad space and just ignored the stretch in the middle, but since
my whole partition scheme required me to stay with exactly six partitions, that
solution didnt interest me. Besides, in this case, the damage came near the end
of the disk, so there was not really much useful space after it anyway.)
(f) Examining the New Partitions. I was curious about PartitionMagics refusal to
create a partition of less than 259 MB. I started to reboot into Windows, and
discovered that my choice of drive letters was unfortunate. Drive H had been
my SWAP partition. (See point 32.) That is, Windows needed it. But now, with
my new drive assignments, H was the one that was malfunctioning. At bootup, I
got the message, Invalid media type reading drive H. Abort, Retry, Fail? I hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del, booted from the floppy, went into FDISK, deleted drive F, and
created two new drives in its place. The first was 756 MB (which I obtained by
entering 755 MB) and the second was 95 MB which, when combined with the 98
MB of the previous drive G and the 71 MB of the troublesome previous drive H,
would give me 264 MB -- which was above PartitionMagics magical 259 MB
number. At first, FDISK seemed to have created the latter of those two new
drives, the one with 95 MB, as drive I. That is, drive H appeared that it would
remain drive H. But on reboot, the drive letters rearranged themselves so that
the troublesome one was now drive I. I formatted drives F (756 MB) and G (95
MB) with FORMAT. Drive H was now a formatted 98 MB and contained some
bad sectors; I worried that it lay below the 100 MB minimum that I had specified
for the Windows swap file. (See point 44.) I rebooted into Windows. At bootup,
I got the message, Invalid media type reading drive I, but this time I was
comfortable in choosing Abort. Bootup continued normally. Windows Explorer
showed the contents of the newly created drives F, G, and H, but when I tried to
see the contents of the bad partition I, it said, I:\ is not accessible. A device
attached to the system is not functioning. The only one of the new drives that
had any contents was drive H. Besides a Windows swap file of 75 MB, it
contained a Backups folder, which told me that SCANREG would create its own
backups folder when necessary. (See point 145(p).) Drive H also contained the
Temporary Internet Files folder. I right-clicked on each of the new drives and

saw that only drive F was in the FAT32 format. Evidently I had used the Win98
version of FDISK, and that version had been capable of formatting the drive as
FAT32 (the file allocation format used by Windows 98), but would not or could
not do so for the smaller drives G and H. So perhaps that was why
PartitionMagic had insisted on 259 MB; maybe it would have taken a smaller size
if I hadnt tried to make it FAT32.
(g) Making the Best of a Bad Drive Situation. I went online for more advice.
Someone mentioned that Western Digitals website (like some others) offered
tools that might help. I went to that site (www.westerndigital.com/service/)
and downloaded the users manual for their Data Lifeguard Tools. It sounded
like I didnt need the whole package of tools; their Data Lifeguard Diagnostics
sounded like what I needed (if another diagnostic utility such as SCANDISK,
CHKDISK, or DEFRAG reports errors on the hard drive). I downloaded that
program and put it on a floppy. The manual said it wouldnt wipe out my data,
but that I had to run it in real DOS. I rebooted from the floppy and ran the
DLG_DIAG program. It created a DLGDIAG.EXE file, and I ran that. This
identified my drive as a Western Digital. It told me that the Quick Test was not
available, so I ran the Extended Test. It took about ten minutes and said, One or
more errors were detected. Final code for this drive: 0258. Then it said the
errors were not repairable. It instructed me to contact Western Digital tech
support, which according to the manual meant, The hard drive is damaged
and cannot be restored to a defect-free status, and should be replaced. So the
only thing left to do was to go back into FDISK, delete drives F, G, H, and I, and
replace them with drives F (819 MB) and G (201 MB). I rebooted and formatted
drive F (which showed no bad sectors), but did not bother trying with drive G. I
ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, delete drive F, and added its empty space to
drive E. Now the bad drive was drive F. To insure that I would still have just six
partitions, I used PartitionMagic to delete the rump partition that I had created
earlier on the second hard drive. (See point 237.) I rebooted into Windows and
tried once more to format the bad sectors in drive F (by right-clicking on drive F
in Windows Explorer and choosing Format), if only because the system was now
going to give me that Invalid media type reading drive F message every time I
rebooted. Much to my surprise, Windows Explorer did format that little
partition, in a matter of moments. It advised me to run ScanDisk to verify that
the disk was capable of storing data safely. My reaction was, No thanks. If
Windows thought this was a valid partition, that might end the Invalid media
type error messages, and that was all I needed. I right-clicked again and
changed its Properties so that F would have the name BADSPACE. Later, I came
across SpinRite by Gibson Research (see point 249), which sounded like it might
have been able to fix this drive, but there was no demo program for me to give it
a whirl, and I sure wasnt going to spend $89 on what might be a one-time need.

(h) Outlook Again. The point of this disk exercise was that maybe hard disk
problems were causing Outlook to be installed improperly. That now appeared
doubtful, but at least it was a variable removed from the picture. I went into
Add/Remove Programs and verified, on the Install/Uninstall tab, that both
versions of Outlook were still gone. I also verified that the Windows Setup tab
did not show Outlook Express. I went back to the Windows Update site, but it
still did not think I needed Outlook Express. I went to D:\Outlook 98 Setup and
ran OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE. I got the same PATH problem as before when I
tried to install it in a folder other than the default (see point 225), so I removed
the D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Outlook 98 folder (putting it instead on
drive G, formerly F, next to the Outlook Express folder there -- see paragraph (c),
above), and went with the default location of D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office.
I got the error message, Setup cannot continue because files are missing from
the installation directory. Please run Setup from the Internet. In a way, this
was good news -- it suggested that I might finally be getting a new start. I ran it
again, and this time it offered to connect me with a website -- which was good,
because otherwise I had no idea of where to look for the online setup. (See point
98.) The online connection downloaded 1.6 MB of files. Just to be sure that the
installation would not seek out the copies of the Outlook 98 and Outlook Express
folders that I had moved to drive F (now drive G), I deleted those copies while
the download was taking place, before it began installing. Also, while it was
downloading, I noticed that it said, Downloading Microsoft Outlook Express.
So maybe I was getting both programs at the same time here. Sure enough, after
rebooting I had icons for both on the desktop. I ran Outlook 98 (known here as
simply Microsoft Outlook). Amazingly, after all the stuff I had removed, it still
remembered my old settings, which by this time was unquestionably bad news.
But no, it wasnt: this time the original Address Book errors no longer existed.
(See point 227.) I could use either Ctrl-Shift-B or the Address Book icon to get
into the Address Book. Oh, great joy! It seemed that perhaps I would install the
old OUTLOOK.PST on one computer, and would gradually whittle it down as
originally planned (see point 112(c)), but would not use that version of Outlook
98 for any new e-mail or schedule entries; and I would have my current running
version on the other computer. Anyway, I exited Outlook 98 and found that
something weird had happened: the Outlook Express icon was gone from the
desktop. Not deterred, I ran it from the icon under Start | Programs. After I
answered its question as to where it should store its messages (E:\Messages), it,
too, ran OK. That reminded me that I had to move OUTLOOK.PST to
E:\Messages, so I did. I answered the usual questions (see point 112(c)); but this
time, evidently because of Outlook Express, E:\Messages was further subdivided
into News and Mail folders, so I put OUTLOOK.PST into the latter. Once again,
it ran properly.

(i) Updating Outlook 98 and Outlook Express. I went to the Windows Update
site again, and this time it did offer to update me to Outlook Express 5. When
that was done, the system rebooted, and then I went back into Outlook Express
to verify that it still worked. Next, as before, I went into Add/Remove
Programs, selected Microsoft Outlook 98, and chose Add/Remove | Add New
Components, which took me to the Microsoft Office 98 Component Install
website. (See point 225.) I had not noticed before, but now I saw that this page
gave me the option of installing Microsoft Outlook Newsreader, which I had
already installed as part of the Outlook Express installation; in fact, I was not
certain there was even a difference between those two programs. Anyway,
Outlook 98 downloaded the few additional items I wanted, and after rebooting I
went into that and made sure the Address Book was still accessible. It seemed
that I had finally corrected an error that had existed in some unknown number of
recent CD image backups. (See point 225.)
Installing the Final Programs, Finally
243. Second GoBack Installation. I had now removed the hidden partition that
had caused the previous GoBack installation to abort (see point 239), and I had
also reached an allocation of disk space among my various partitions that, I
hoped, would endure for a while. (See point 242(g).) I tried again to install
GoBack, using the same approach as before. (See point 238.) This time, I
accepted its default allocation of about 300 MB per hard disk, taken out of drive
E on the first disk and drive G on the second disk. It finished, rebooted, and
performed various operations and tests on E and G. This was farther than I had
gotten in the process last time, so it appeared that the superficial Windows
format of drive F, a/k/a BADSPACE (see point 242(g)), was good enough to
persuade GoBack that at least F was a valid drive, although no doubt F would
have failed these tests that GoBack was inflicting upon E and G. (I subsequently
found that I had accidentally moved some files to F rather than G; drive F
handled those files without a hitch.) After some more messing around and
rebooting, I got a message that GoBack had installed successfully.
244. CTBIOS. This was the German-language program that nevertheless
provided useful basic information about the BIOS I was running. (See point
107(a).) I did not see similar information in MSINFO32 (see point 145(d)) or
HWINFO (see point 145(m)). The program required less than 100 KB, so it did
not take much deliberation before deciding to install it -- which consisted, easily
enough, of putting it in a folder under D:\Program Files\System
Utilities\Miscellaneous and running a shortcut to it.
245. Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility. This was one utility that I would not
be using on the AMD machine, since it did not have an Intel CPU. Its setup took

a long time to load. I had thought that that sort of slowness was unique to Xerox
TextBridge (see point 224(f)), but now I could see that it was not. Yet for some
reason, it occurred only with certain installation programs, not with them all.
Anyway, after this program had taken 15 minutes or more to install, I checked
and saw that it had filled only 831 KB of disk space. Then I launched it, and it
told me that my processor was an Intel 233 MMX with 16 KB of Level 1 data
cache and 16 KB of Level 1 instruction cache, and no Level 2 cache. The program
was not able to provide frequency measurement for anything other than a
Pentium III. As translated by the help file, the program said this was a Family 5
(fifth generation) processor, lower than the Family 6 processors like Celeron and
Pentium II and III. The program also provided information on the processors
model (4) and stepping (3) that might conceivably be useful for some tech
support purposes. Finally, the program offered a File | Upgrade Utility option
that led me to a website which informed me that I could download a version of
the program that would test Pentium processors up to 800 MHz. In other words,
we were going in the wrong direction. I needed information on a more primitive
processor, not a more advanced one. It seemed that I had the information I was
going to get out of this program, which didnt involve much that I didnt already
know, and now that I had this information, this program was darn near useless.
Later, I found a better alternative. (See point 248.)
246. GoBack in Action. I decided that this was a great opportunity to put
GoBack through its paces. (See point 236.) Instead of just uninstalling the
useless Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility (see point 245), I decided to roll the
system back to a happier time using GoBack. I clicked on the ever-present
GoBack icon in the system tray and chose the option that said, Revert your
entire hard disk to a time in the past. The program opened; the little clock
wound cutely around to show the present moment; and a popup help window
offered to help me revert a hard disk to the way it was in the past. I
wondered, as I read that description, whether this meant that I would have to
revert the first and second hard drives separately, assuming I had been doing
something that affected them both. Before proceeding with that, I also noticed a
pop-up message stating that there was important information available online
for GoBack users who also used Norton SpeedDisk. Since I was still mulling
over the question of what to do with SD32 (see point 240), I went to their website
and downloaded the little patch that would prevent SpeedDisk from moving the
GOBACKIO.BIN file, which was apparently where GoBack stashed its loot.
(After finishing the other events in this paragraph, I installed it, just in case.)
With that out of the way, I clicked on the revert help item just mentioned. Its
instructions were as follows: choose the reversion date on the onscreen calendar;
choose the reversion time in the digital readout part of the onscreen clock; and
then click the Revert Drive button. I gathered that I would want to shut down
other programs before going too much further. If I didnt know what date or

time I wanted to revert to, I could review the Event Log. As described above (see
point 236), this log showed file and shell events, punctuated by numerous
System Safe Point entries. I maximized the window and Ctrl-Shift clicked on the
X box in the upper right corner to make the thing open maximized next time,
and then I restarted GoBack and looked more closely at this Event Log. It was
really quite easy, and interesting, to see when things had happened. At 11:58:37
AM on this day, I had taken my last step involving CTBIOS. (See point 244.)
Then there was a System Safe Point. Then, at 12:00:01 PM, my hourly
MAINT_HR batch file had run. (See point 120(k).) Then there was another
System Safe Point; and then, at 12:01:10 PM, I had my first Intel Processor
Frequency ID Utility entry. I clicked on the System Safe Point that had occurred
just before that 12:01:10 PM entry, and the onscreen clock cutely wound back to
high noon. Or not exactly: the digital clock under it showed that this safe point
had occurred at 12:00:11 PM. Now I had two options: I could choose Revert
Drive, which would take me back as I intended, or I could choose Create GoBack
Drive, which the manual described as a virtual copy of your hard disk as it
appeared at a selected point in the past. The idea, in that latter case, was that I
would have a representation of my disk as it existed at 12:00:11 PM, and could
presumably pull various files out of it, if I wished, before shutting it down and
proceeding forward from the present time, which was now 1:05 PM. That, I
believed, would be more useful if I had done important work since noon but had
accidentally deleted a file or directory or something. Since I had accomplished
nothing worthwhile since noon, I did not hesitate to wipe away whatever minor
changes might have occurred in the intervening hour. Well, of course I hesitated.
I looked at the Event Log between then and now to confirm that I had pissed
away an hour napping, eating popcorn, and otherwise waiting for the Intel
Processor program to demonstrate its full fatuity. Sticking with my 12:00:11 PM
System Safe Point, I clicked on the Revert Drive option. It asked if it was OK to
restart my drive. Very polite! I said sure. It asked if I wanted to revert all of my
hard disks to that time. So that answered that question. I said no, since I really
could not remember what, if anything, I had done on the other hard disk.
Curious about that, I canceled and went back to the Event Log. I scrolled up and
down, and saw that it seemed to cover events on all partitions. So since I had
been equally useless in all partitions during the past hour, I could have had it roll
everything back at once. Interestingly, though, it didnt show any changes in
H:\Temporary Internet Files (which had probably seen some action when I had
visited their website a few minutes earlier) or in the Windows swap file, also
located on drive H, which had surely been busy throughout all this time. I
decided to focus on rolling back the one hard drive (i.e., the one containing all
my Windows and program files), but not the other (containing data and these
non-tracked events on drive H). So I clicked on Revert Drive again and told it to
revert only the current drive. But wait -- whats the current drive? Only one
way to find out. I clicked on No, as in, dont revert all the drives at the same

time. The system rebooted. I took this opportunity to read the manual and see
what I had just done. But there was no need to be bookish: GoBacks screen
came up before any other rebooting action (i.e., before Windows 98 began to
boot) and told me that it intended, now, to revert drives C, D, E, and F back to
their state as of 12:00 PM. That sounded good, so I said go ahead. This took
about a half-minute, and then I got a message telling me, If your system does
not successfully start, then try going further back in time. Multiple attempts may
be required to find a good time to revert to. Initiate subsequent reversions by restarting your computer and pressing the SPACE BAR to enter the GoBack
menu. So apparently there are no guarantees about any System Safe Point; its
just a time when the computer settled down long enough for GoBack to take a
snapshot of what was happening. This notice also advised me not to be alarmed
if ScanDisk ran on reboot. I clicked OK and the system rebooted without a
problem. The reboot was even slower than usual, but it worked, and this was
not the only time when that had happened. Taking a cue from the manual, I
started GoBack again and saw, to my disappointment, that it was still opening in
a partial window, not full-screen. I chose Edit | Add Note to Log, and typed,
REMOVED USELESS INTEL PROCESSOR UTILITY. I wanted this entry to
appear right after I had rebooted, but of course the log showed it at the moment
when it actually occurred -- that is, at the end of the list. I exited GoBack and
looked at the root of drive E. Sure enough, GOBACKIO.BIN was a file of 308
MB. The situation was about the same (315 MB) for the GOBACKIO.BIN file on
drive G, even though almost nothing had happened so far on the second hard
drive. Logically enough, GoBack created the files first and asked questions later.
Anyway, the program seemed to have passed this test with flying colors: it was
simple, it was fast, and while CTBIOS was there, the Intel utility was not. I put it
to a test again later. (See point 323.)
247. Symantec WinFax Starter Edition. My previous outgoing fax solution did
not work reliably. (See point 224(n).) After much hesitation, I went back into the
Office 98 Component Install page (see point 225) and installed this Symantec
program. (Later, I realized that this might not have been the same as the
Microsoft Fax program that had seemed likely to install so much extra junk on
my system.) I really didnt see any other way to have good outgoing fax
capability for free; I could only hope that it would not install too much useless
Microsoft junk along with the essential program files. At only 1.9 MB, maybe
that was not too much of a worry. I decided I would keep eFax (see point ___),
because it gave me a constantly available phone number for incoming faxes,
which wasnt an option on my home phone line. I rebooted and went into
Outlook 98. I got a Welcome to Symantc WinFax Starter Edition message. The
setup was painless. In Outlook 98, I chose Actions | New Fax Message. I wrote
a little test note and tried to send it to myself at my eFax number. I got a
message indicating that I had not configured my modem properly. It led me to a

way to configure my modem, but at first it didnt work, and eventually I just
selected the first type of modem on the list, and that seemed to work. I could not
understand why Outlook 98 seemed to be disconnecting me from the Internet
each time I tried to send the fax, until eventually I realized that faxes are
ordinarily sent by direct dialup, not online, and that the poor program was
trying to get offline so that it could dial eFax and send me my fax. After waiting
a few minutes, I went online and checked my e-mail to see if I had received an
eFax notice yet, but found nothing. I got back offline at 2:29 PM. A half-hour
later, the fax software had not made a move to send the fax, and I had received
no e-mail messages from eFax. Meanwhile, Outlook 98 continued to show the
fax as having been sent at 2:11 PM. I tried again; again the program asked me to
verify the fax number; again it showed a little screen depicting information going
from one computer to somewhere else. I wondered if the program was not able
to detect when I was online and would try only once to send faxes, and would
simply give up after that if I happened to be online at the time. I moved the test
fax back to Outlook 98s Outbox, opened it, and tried resending it. To do this, I
clicked on Actions | Resend and then on File | Send Using | Symantec WinFax.
This yielded a Mail Delivery Error icon down in the bottom right corner of the
screen. The message was, Unable to connect to the server. So apparently I did
have to be online to make this happen. I went online and tried again. I noticed
that the item in the Outbox was in italics, which was how items usually appeared
when they were actually going to be sent. I opened the fax item again and
clicked on File | Send Using again. I got the server error message again. I went
into Tools | Options | Mail Delivery | Accounts and corrected some items for
the Symantec account. This seemed to cause some action. Several things
happened at once, but what I think happened was that the fax item disappeared
from the Outlook 98 Outbook, I got disconnected from my ISP, the icon showing
a communication from one computer to another appeared onscreen, and the
computer dialed the eFax number. Whether the fax went through, I could not
say, other than that its disappearance from the Outbox seemed to suggest so
(although it seemed to me that the same thing had happened before and that no
fax had gone through at that time). Ah, but then I found the answer: I had three
incoming e-mails in Outlook 98, each telling me that my fax had been
undeliverable. It appeared that I was supposed to type a 1 before the 10-digit fax
number! Well, I had wondered about that, and now I had my answer. I tried
again at 3:22 PM. Just a couple of minutes later, I was online and I saw that I had
received an e-mail from eFax conveying my test fax. It looked like I had a fax
solution. (Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration. See point 265.)
248. WCPUID. The idea here was the same as the Intel Processor Utility. (See
point 245.) The differences here were that this one actually worked and it
installed in a flash. It gave the same Type, Family, Model, and Stepping
information, but it also identified the platform (Socket 7 (PGA Socket)) and clock

frequency (233.86 MHz); provided a list of about 20 features (e.g., Virtual Mode
Extension, 3DNow) and indicated whether this processor supported them; and
provided information on the AGP chipset (VIA Apollo VP3/MVP3).
249. IP_Agent by Gibson Research. This was a simple little program that, when I
clicked on it, showed me an IP (Internet Protocol) number that turned out to be
my own, and said When you are connected to the Internet press the Test My
Shields button to begin. I did that, and got steered to a website that informed
me that mine was a private network IP that was very secure against typical
threats and discovery from passing Internet scanners. See
http://grc.com/default.htm. I decided that there was really no reason to install
this program, so after running it this one time (which did not require an
installation), I archived it.
250. Paradox for DOS. The PENTIUM machine contained two directories
consisting of DOS programs. One was DOS_UTIL, which I had been using
throughout this whole process, and the other was DOS_PROG. The latter was a
folder that I had placed under D:\Program Files. It contained installed program
files for six old DOS programs that had seemed potentially useful: LapLink,
Paradox, PKZIP, a tape backup utility, Microsoft Word 5.5, and WordPerfect 6.0
for DOS. Now that I had a network connecting the PENTIUM machine to the
AMD, with its CD burner, I no longer expected to need the old T1000 tape
backup unit that still resided in the PENTIUM machine, so I archived this tape
backup software. Similarly, I expected to need the other programs rarely, if at
all, and to be able to run or reinstall them quickly from an archival CD if I did
need them, so I cabled these, too, to the AMD machine. The one exception was
Paradox, which I still used for some purposes. I moved Paradox so that it would
be a subdirectory under DOS_UTIL, and set up a shortcut to it. Somewhere, I
had accumulated the information that Paradox ran best under Windows when I
started it with a batch file like this, which I called PDX.BAT:
___type PDX.BAT
I also added the shortcut to this PDX.BAT file to the Office Suite (see point
113(e)) and to the Main toolbar (see point 120(ae)). Having archived a lot of data
onto CD (see point 172), I was able to make a backup of the remaining data I had
online, and then (with some hesitation) to move it to drive E on the shaky
Western Digital disk in the PENTIUM machine -- the reason being that I needed
to get those programs functioning in a normal way, and I needed to access some
of my data, in order to wrap up this configuration. So I did that, and configured
Paradox so that it could find the old data tables with which I had used it.

251. CallWaves Internet Answering Machine. ZDNet gave this free program
five stars. The basic idea was this: CallWave would give you a toll-free
forwarding number. (At that particular moment, it was 800-380-4341.) You
would call your phone company, give them that number, and ask them to sign
you up for Busy Call Forwarding from your phone company (which might cost
less than $10 to install and around a dollar a month). Then, when you were
online, Busy Call Forwarding would route incoming phone calls to CallWaves
service center. The service center would play an automated greeting and would
allow the caller to record a message, which CallWave would then download to
your computer and play over your computer speakers. As far as I could tell, this
would not happen in real time -- i.e., you would not get the message quickly
enough to cut your Internet connection and pick up the phone before the person
hung up. CallWave paid for this free service by keeping a little box on your
screen while you were online and playing ads in that box. On my 14 monitor
(and perhaps on any monitor), this box measured about 0.6 x 3.7. The box
would show call information when you received a call and would then alternate
between showing you ads and showing you the information on your most recent
calls. The box was not especially obtrusive, and you could click the X in its
upper right corner to get rid of it -- in which case it would not start again until
you right-clicked the icon in the system tray and told it to log on. I found I had
to get rid of it after shutting down Internet Explorer, because otherwise it stayed
right there on my screen. The shutdown actually required two commands: one
to click on the X in the upper right corner, and then another to tell the dialog box
that yes, you were sure you wanted to get rid of it. You could move the little box
wherever you wanted on the screen, but I couldnt get any part of it to go past
the edges of the screen. If you had a toolbar or taskbar at the top or bottom edge
of the screen, you could partially hide the little box by moving it right to that top
or bottom edge and then clicking on the toolbar or taskbar -- in other words, it
would force you to make an extra click on a blank part of the toolbar or taskbar if
you wanted to see the full contents of those bars, but it would not otherwise
obscure your use of them. I felt that the program would have been more useful if
it had sprung to life automatically whenever I went online, regardless of what
kind of activity I might be pursuing -- be it a browser session, an Outlook 98 email swapping connection, or an FTP upload or download -- and if it had
automatically retired itself when the connection ceased. The connect time was,
after all, the only time when I wanted to see it. I also felt that the program would
have been more desirable if it had stayed out of sight most of the time, hanging
around and displaying ads for just a few minutes after a phone call. If it had
done that, it would have been more of a novelty, and I would have felt like it had
earned a bit of my attention. Also, the little box would have been better
designed if they had made it fit within the title bar at the top of a full-size screen,
since that was just about the only place where it would not get in the way -- or at
least if they had required it merely to have a certain surface area, and had left it

to the user to decide whether to spread that surface area among one, two, or
more lines of text. The repeated need to start the program, stop the program,
and move the little box out of the way, repeated dozens or hundreds of times a
month (depending on how often one was online, how many calls one tended to
receive, and how important it was to be able to field those calls live), could
begin to make it more cost-effective to spend more on a second phone line and
have all that extra functionality, such as the ability to call out while looking at
something online. After having it on my screen for a week without actually
signing up for the service for the phone company, I decided that I probably could
get used to its permanent presence, but that I really didnt need it and would
rather wait to see what else developed. Therefore, I uninstalled it.
252. PCIInfo. This little standalone freeware program did nothing more than
provide information regarding PCI and AGP devices in your system: their
manufacturer, the type of device, whether they took an IRQ, whether they were
PCI devices, etc. I installed it and made a shortcut to it just in case I would need
to know that sort of thing at some point; I figured I would decide at that time
whether this program provided information not available in other sources of
information I had already installed. (See point 244.)
253. XXCopy. This utility, recommended by someone online, seemed like it
might be useful for my future backup needs, since it (unlike regular XCOPY) was
capable of handling long filenames. (See point ___.) I discarded its unnecessary
batch files for installing and uninstalling (since the process consisted simply of
copying files to the place where I wanted them); I renamed its README.TXT file
to be XXCOPY.TXT so that I would be able to find it, and I moved the relevant
files to DOS_UTIL.
Transition to the AMD Machine: Hardware Changes
254. DriveImage Backup and Data Migration. Having read a number of
comments online about how this hard disk could fail at any time (see point
242(g)), I decided I would be better off if I did the rest of my work on this
configuration on the AMD machine. Accordingly, I emptied out drive E, moving
back the data that I had just recently moved over to the PENTIUM machine. (See
point 250.) Then I tried to make a DriveImage disk image of drives C and D. I
could not get DriveImage to run when I booted from the floppy -- indeed, I
couldnt get anything to run; I couldnt even get the system to recognize the hard
disks, presumably because GoBack was now controlling them. When I typed C:
at the command prompt, I got Invalid drive specification, and likewise for the
other partitions. Then I tried to reboot in MS-DOS mode (i.e., not in real DOS),
and after I set up the specifications in DriveImage, it gave me Error # 58, Unable
to write to the boot sector. Virus protection software may be running. It was,

of course, and disabling it would have been a solution, but I wanted to see if that
would always be necessary. I booted again in real DOS by selecting Startup
Menu option 5, Command prompt only. I ran DriveImage from a copy of
DOS_UTIL that I was keeping on drive G, so that it would not be on the disk that
it was trying to copy. (See point 103.) Unfortunately, I got Error # 58 there too,
and the computer froze. I did a hard reboot back into Windows, went into
Norton AntiVirus, shut off the options for automatic virus scans at bootup, and
tried again to boot from the floppy. As expected, I still couldnt access the hard
disks; that seemed pretty clearly to be a GoBack problem, not an AntiVirus
problem. This time, however, I used the Windows startup floppy, which I hadnt
used last time. The floppy said, Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not
contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. There are several possible causes. The
cause that seemed most likely was number 2, which read like this: You may be
using third-party disk-partitioning software. If you are using this type of
software, remove the Emergency Boot Disk and restart your computer. Then,
follow the on-screen instructions to start your computer from a floppy disk. I
rebooted into real DOS, and even though I did not notice Norton doing any of its
usual bootup virus scanning, I got the same DriveImage error again. Evidently I
had not properly shut down Norton AntiVirus, or else this too was a GoBack
problem. One thing I had not tried was to take GoBack up on its offer, which
appeared right after the introductory BIOS boot screen. GoBack said, If you are
having PC problems, press the spacebar now. So I rebooted and did that. I got
a GoBack menu offering to Revert Drive (see point 246), or Disable GoBack, or
Boot from floppy with GoBack drivers installed. I didnt have a floppy with
GoBack drivers installed, but I tried it with one of my regular boot floppies. It
booted fine, and I could see the contents of the hard disk partitions. I tried
running DriveImage from the floppy. This time was even worse: the computer
rebooted as soon as I clicked the Finish command to get it to go ahead. I tried
again, running DriveImage from drive G, and got the same result. I had resisted
the idea of disabling GoBack because that would wipe out its Event Log history,
but now I realized that there would be no harm in this, since I did not intend to
carry the GoBack history with me over to the AMD machine anyway -- and, as I
thought about it, the instructions had made it sound like I might not want to
have GoBack in place anyway when I was getting it started on a new disk. (See
point 236.) So I disabled GoBack; it then allowed me to boot from the floppy if I
wanted, which I did. I ran DriveImage from drive G again. This time it worked,
and I created a file called STEP_254.PQI on 3/14/2000. So GoBack was the
culprit, not Norton AntiVirus.
255. Installing the Nearly Final Configuration on the AMD Machine. I copied
the STEP_254.PQI file over from the PENTIUM machine to the AMD. I booted
into real DOS and used DriveImage on the floppy to install the PQI file onto

drives C and D from its location on drive F, and then rebooted into Windows
and configured the new installation as follows:
(a) Configuration. Immediately at bootup, the system asked me which
configuration to load. (See point 211.) I answered None of the above, because I
wanted to set up a new AMD configuration. I gave this same answer in each of
the subsequent reboots.
(b) GoBack. As soon as I rebooted, GoBack gave me a message that said,
GoBack installation will now continue on your computer. I could have
canceled, but this was what I wanted. Unfortunately, GoBack installed itself on
drives E and G, as it had done on the PENTIUM machine (see point 238); but that
was not going to be appropriate on the AMD machine, where drive G was the
BURNING drive (i.e., the drive where I collected data that I intended to burn
onto CD -- see point 32). GoBacks installation rebooted, and I elected to disable
GoBack again. I would revisit it shortly (see point ___), but first the bootup
process took me into some other issues.
(c) Drivers. Now the computer wanted to install the VIA Tech 82C5868 (PIPC)
PCI to ISA Bridge. Previously, this had baffled me. (See point 180.) I knew,
however, that it had to do with either a motherboard driver, a sound card driver,
a modem driver, or possibly a video driver. I knew that because those were just
about the only drivers that I had not yet installed in a form that would be
relevant to this AMD computer. (That is, I had installed such drivers on the
PENTIUM computer, but of course that computer had different hardware and
this one would require different drivers for its different hardware.) The name
PCI to ISA Bridge told me that I needed to think in terms of which ISA cards I
had in this computer. I knew the modem was PCI and the video card was AGP,
so this narrowed it down to the motherboard or the sound card. Moreover, I had
the same motherboard in the PENTIUM computer, and it hadnt needed this, so I
decided to start by trying the Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Software CD. I
inserted the CD and then came to that part of the driver installation where the
computer offered to let me specify a location. I remembered that many drivers
resided in the C:\WINDOWS\INF folder. (See point 218.) I decided to try that
before trying the CD. Success! It used the MACHINE2.INF driver. Next, it
located the driver for the Hewlett-Packard HP Colorado tape drive, which I still
had installed in the computer. It installed other hardware and paused again at
the Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet Adapter (NC100) that tied the AMD
computer to the PENTIUM computer. (See point 185.) This driver, I knew, had
to be loaded already, or else the PENTIUM would not have been able to send
files to the AMD on my little Ethernet network all this time. I pointed this one,
too, to C:\WINDOWS\INF, and that worked in part, but the thing still told me
to insert the floppy containing the drivers. I did that and pointed the installer to

A:\WIN98. Next, the installer told me that I had a file being installed that was
older than the file currently on my computer, so I kept the newer one by clicking
Yes. The system rebooted and said, The following error occurred while loading
protocol number 0. Error 38: The computer name you specified is already in use
on the network. To specify a different name, double-click the Network icon in
Control Panel. Of course it had the same name: the DriveImage file had told it
that its name was PENTIUM. I would have to visit Control Panel | Network |
Identification after the drivers were finished loading. Next, the installer said it
was installing a PCI Communication Device. This, I had learned, was the
modem. (See point 182.) I inserted the CD for my Diamond SupraMax 56i PCI
modem and told the installer to look for the driver on the CD-ROM. It installed
the SUP2750 PCI Modem Enumerator. Now it was time for new drivers for the
Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA). This sounded like just a basic driver,
like maybe it was not yet time to use drivers for the AGP video card, so I pointed
toward C:\WINDOWS\INF again. That worked: it selected MSDISP.INF. Then
it rebooted again. Now it installed the monitor and found the Creative sound
card mentioned a moment ago. Surprisingly, it seemed to find drivers for the
sound card without bothering to ask me to insert the CD, whereas it had not
found drivers for the other items when they had existed in C:\WINDOWS\INF.
Next, it wanted the CD for the modem. I inserted that and clicked OK. Stupidly,
it said it couldnt find a file called SUP2750.CAT on drive C, which of course was
not the CD-ROM. I browsed to drive I and poked around until that file name
popped up in the left window. Then it was time for another reboot. Now the
computer detected a new M-series device on the COM1 port. This was the
mouse. This screen allowed me to set the mouse so that, if I held both buttons
down, it would scroll in the direction I was moving the mouse, just like the
middle button on the Logitech mouse I was using on the other computer. (See
point 224(d).) Well, no wonder it was like the Logitech mouse -- as I saw in the
next screen, this was the Logitech MouseWare that I was installing! I didnt
mind -- that third-button effect had not been available before.
(d) Network Identification. As suggested in the previous paragraph, I now went
into Control Panel | Network | Identification and renamed this computer to be
the AMD.
(e) GoBack. I tried to run GoBack, but it just gave me a black-and-white choice
between re-enabling it with its existing settings or not, so I chose the latter, went
into Add/Remove Programs, and told it to uninstall GoBack. This rebooted me.
While I was sitting there waiting, I decided to check the manual. It said, Be sure
to use the uninstaller provided with GoBack. Oops. But the point of the
message seemed to lie in the next sentence: Do not use a third party
uninstaller. On reboot, I saw that I was indeed using the GoBack uninstaller: I
got a GoBack dialog box telling me that GoBack uninstallation would now

continue. Whew. Some people live their whole lives guessing right; for me it
only works with minor pieces of software. I got the message that GoBack
installation had completed successfully, and then I inserted the CD and
reinstalled it. On this AMD machine, I decided to have it save its
GOBACKIO.BIN files (see point 246) on drives E and H. Both would have lots of
fragmentation anyway, due to constant rewrites: E would be holding my nonaudio, non-visual program data, and H would contain swap files and such. (See
point 32.)
(f) PartitionMagic. Now I came to a halt. The GoBack installer showed me that
the partition sizes on this computer were not at all like they had been on the
other one. I needed to revise them to take account of actual needs. Since this
machine had larger hard drives, I felt that I could probably spare a little more
space on drives C and D than I had spared on the PENTIUM computer (see point
237). I was just about to use PartitionMagic to revise the sizes, when I got
another idea.
256. Major Hard Disk Swapping. Since I had begun using the CD burner (see
point 4), I had found CDs to be a great place to store data. Once you made one
or two copies of something, you didnt need to keep it on your hard disk and
keep backing it up until you were ready to go to work on it. So I was finding
that I needed less hard disk space than I had needed previously. The AMD
machine had two hard drives: one was 7 MB and the other 10 MB. I decided
that I could definitely get by with just the latter. This would free up the 7 MB
disk to replace the dying hard disk in the PENTIUM machine. (See point 242(g).)
But since I understood that I would get significantly better performance if I had
two hard disks in the computer, I decided that I should bring the second 3 MB
hard disk over from the PENTIUM to the AMD. In other words, the PENTIUM
computer would now be losing both of its hard disks. I decided that I could
safely supplement the 7 MB drive that would be going into the PENTIUM by
adding the old 1 GB Seagate hard disk; I could use it as the drive H (SWAP) disk
and would probably not lose anything if its previous problems turned out to be
disk-related rather than power supply-related. (See point 113(f).) (For further
developments, see point 302.) So now it seemed that I was configuring the
wrong drive C in the AMD machine. They say that you should use your faster
hard disk to hold your Windows files, but I found that audio work was
especially slow and I was keen to focus on speeding that up -- which required
having a big work area on a drive separate from the one holding the Windows
files. So the second 3 GB drive from the PENTIUM was going to become the
primary master -- i.e., the location of drives C and D (and possibly E) on the
AMD -- and the 10 GB drive was going to remain the primary slave. I decided to
take this operation in several steps, as follows:

(a) Remove Useful Data from AMD Drive E. I canceled out of PartitionMagic
(see point 255(f)) and used PowerDesk Explorer to move all of the data files back
from drive E to drive F on the AMD computer. I wouldnt need to reinstall
STEP_254.PQI (see point 254) on this first hard drive, which was a Maxtor
87000D8 7 GB drive. (See point 173.) I had just installed some different drivers
than the PENTIUM machine would need, but I had used none of the above
rather than altering the PENTIUM hardware configuration. (See point 255(a).)
As long as I loaded the PENTIUM configuration, it seemed that the system that I
had installed on the Maxtor drive would be exactly the same as it had been when
I had created the STEP_254.PQI image file.
(b) Trash the Western Digital 3 GB Drive. Next, I prepared to get rid of the
defective primary master hard drive in the PENTIUM machine. (See point
242(g).) This drive was the Western Digital WDAC33100-00H. (See point 108.) I
went to Western Digitals website (www.westerndigital.com) and looked into
their trade-in offer. Along the way, I saw that they were offering a $30 rebate on
their 10.2 GB and larger hard drives. (See
http://www.westerndigital.com/promos/30-reb4.html.) Participating online
vendors included Buy.com, which happened to be the lowest-priced vendor
supplying both a price and a shipping charge in the 10 GB category on CNET
(www.cnet.com). CNET, which tended to list the better-known online vendors,
showed that I could get a 10 GB Western Digital WD102AA EIDE Ultra-ATA/66
Recalled 5400 RPM 9.5 ms Caviar drive from Buy.com for about $115 (shipping
included). I wasnt too sure about that Recalled part, but if the rebate part was
good, this would mean I could get a 10 GB drive for $85 -- or less, if I could use
the trade-in too. Western Digital drives got noticeably more expensive if you
went to higher capacities: about $170 for the 20 GB and $215 for the 27 GB, again
using quotes at CNET (including shipping). I called Western Digital Customer
Service (800-275-4932) and asked about the meaning of Recalled and their
trade-in offer. Getting on the phone was a bad idea for at least two reasons: I
had had only three hours of sleep, and as it turned out the lady had no idea what
Recalled meant, other than that Western Digital had shipped some faulty
drives last autumn and had recalled them and replaced them with good ones.
The lady was very kind when I refused to let her create a file on me and insisted
on finding out simply what the trade-in amount might be. She said it went
according to drive size, and that the amount would be $20 for a 3 GB drive. She
told me to call their Online Store (877-934-6792) for more information. I repeated
the number to her, and she confirmed it. I called the number and got a
recording, Were sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. I called
Customer Service again and got put on hold. While I was holding, I glanced at
another web page I had opened before getting offline, and saw that I could get a
20 MB Fujitsu or Maxtor drive for about $145. Prices for those manufacturers
seemed to rise more rapidly after that, with the 27 MB drives up in the $180-200

range, so I figured 20 MB would probably be as high as I would go. Eventually

someone answered at Customer Service, and he told me that the proper number
for the Online Store was 877-934-6972. I tried calling that, but I must have
misdialed, because I got the Work from Home center, which would train me to
make money working right at my home. Ask yourself if you are Teachable,
the recording advised. It sounded like I would be purchasing a Decision Package
that would give me three hours worth of materials, complete with the name and
phone number of my Personal Team Leader. They urged me to return the $36
Decision Package for a full refund if I was not serious about making money
because, if I did that, I would be out of their hair, allowing them to concentrate
more fully on people who were serious. I tried dialing again, and this time I did
reach Terry at Western Digitals Online Store. He said the $30 rebate was for
retail purchases, not for purchases through the Online Store; that the best prices
at the Online Store were $185 for a 20 GB drive and $120 for a 10 GB (with
shipping); and that the trade-in deal was through Tech Support and I couldnt
combine it with retail or with an Online Store purchase. To get the trade-in, I
would have to open a Case Number ... oh, Jesus. I called Customer Service
again, but I must have chosen the wrong automated service option, because it
told me to go to their website, and then it hung up on me. I double-checked the
website and found that it told me to call Customer Service for information on
trading in an old drive. I called Customer Service again and received a recording
telling me that I might have to hold for up to ten minutes. I went to the
bathroom, came back, reviewed my information and concluded that, even with a
$30 rebate, a Western Digital 20 GB drive was not price-competitive with Fujitsu
and Maxtor. But how about the 10 GB for only $85? I still wasnt sure what good
the trade-in would be -- I mean, according to Terry at the Online Store had made
it sound like there would not actually be any place that I could use it, which
didnt sound right, so I stayed on hold for a while longer. The original concept
behind all this delay was that I was trying to find out whether I had to go to the
trouble of wiping off the Western Digital drive so that no one would be able to
see my precious data, or whether I could instead just drill a couple of holes
through it and throw it away, but now I realized that it would have been faster
just to wipe the thing regardless. So while I was waiting on hold, I realized that I
may as well start wiping it off. I rebooted from the floppy and was tempted to
run an old copy of Nortons WIPEINFO on it, but then Don came on and told me
that the purpose of a trade-in was to purchase a drive through him directly, and
that the price for a 10 GB drive would be $139 plus shipping. This was not an
attractive price, so it seemed that wiping the drive was unnecessary after all, as I
would almost certainly bore holes through it anyway just to be on the safe side.
But then I realized that no, that was unnecessary, because there had been no data
on that disk for a long time, it probably hadnt been sensitive data anyway, it had
surely been overwritten by now, and if not, reformatting and then wiping out the
partitions with FDISK should do the job, and this way maybe I would still be

able to sell it to some tinkerer for five dollars. Having formulated that plan, I
decided to do it the other way around, deleting the partitions first (all except the
BADSPACE partition, which was just fine as it was -- God knows, I wasnt
interested in opening that can of worms again) and then formatting them all in
one swell foop. As it turned out, however, I couldnt do that because you cant
delete a primary partition when you have an extended partition. So I wound up
with C, free space, and BADSPACE. I ran PartitionMagic from the floppy, but it
choked on GoBack. So I went into DOS and created a bunch of files full of the
letter X and copied and multiplied them until I had filled the disk, and then I
deleted them, took the drive out of the machine, and put it in a box. So there. I
had managed to use up another hour or so on the process of preparing a
defective drive to be thrown away. And I was still not done with it! (See point
290.)
(c) Install Maxtor 7 GB Drive as Primary Master on PENTIUM Machine. The
Maxtor drive was the primary master drive in the AMD machine, and it would
continue to be so in the PENTIUM machine, so I didnt have to change any
jumpers. Moreover, partitions C and D on the Maxtor already contained the
latest program files all ready to go (see paragraph (a), above). All I needed to do,
before removing it from the AMD machine, was to run PartitionMagic on it and
rearrange its partitions so that it would have drives C, D, E, F, and G. (As noted
above, H would go on the Seagate drive.) I decided to simplify things by putting
1,000 MB in each of drives C (WIN98), D (PROGRAMS), and E (DATA). I put 22
MB in a FAT (not FAT32) partition for drive G (BURNING), which would be a
mere token or placeholder since the PENTIUM machine would not have a CD
burner. Later, when Norton Disk Doctor seemed to have a slight problem with
that, I upped it to 260 MB and made it a FAT32 partition after all. I put the
balance, about 3,400 MB, in drive F (AV). I was able to do this now because I had
not yet re-installed GoBack, which would otherwise have interfered with
PartitionMagic. (See point 255(e).) Then I put the Maxtor drive into the
PENTIUM machine as primary master drive, with the 3 GB Fujitsu model no.
MPB3032AT (see point 108) remaining in its position as primary slave.
(d) Freeing a Slave Locked by GoBack. Unfortunately, GoBack had locked that
Fujitsu drive. When I booted the system, I could not view its contents in DOS or
Windows. FDISK reported it as a Non-DOS partition, and when I looked at it
in PartitionMagic, the program reported it as simply a Type 44 drive that
PartitionMagic could do nothing with except possibly erase it. (See point 354.)
My notes are a bit sketchy -- neither computer was working at this point -- but I
believe my next step was to reinstall GoBack on the primary master drive, and
now both drives were coming closer to being on the same team. I was still
having problems, however. After I ran ScanDisk on the Fujitsu slave drive, the
system froze with just a blinking cursor showing on the screen. Eventually this

changed to a blue screen with the words, GoBack Detected a Problem With
Your System. (Version 2.1e). Your system has become unstable and will be
rebooted. ... This instability is probably the result of a bug in an application
running on your system, but could also be caused by hardware problems.
GoBack will then scan your disk to verify integrity of its data. Code: gb_ios
(1829). Next, the system rebooted, ran ScanDisk automatically, and froze with a
blinking cursor again. I cold-rebooted from the floppy and continued with that
reboot by pressing the spacebar when GoBack gave me the opportunity. (See
point 254.) Now, at the DOS prompt, I was able to view the contents of both
hard disks, but now PartitionMagic showed both hard disks as being of Type 44.
I rebooted and got that same blue screen from GoBack again. The reboots were
very slow at this point, like the system was working its way through something.
I rebooted again, hit the spacebar, and chose to disable GoBack. Windows
booted, and I hit OK to cancel when GoBack offered to resume its installation.
To verify that the uninstall was complete, I went into Add/Remove Programs
and saw no entry for GoBack. Windows Explorer was now able to read both
disks. I rebooted into DOS, ran Norton Disk Doctor, and still had no problem
with either hard disk, leading me to conclude that the blue screen errors had
been caused by GoBack itself, not by some other program or hardware problem.
As far as I could tell, those blue screens and the underlying conditions did not
actually cause any damage; they were just evidence of an imperfection in the
install or uninstall process. This was when I got the Norton message, A
22.1meg DOS partition has been found, but DOS currently cant access it. Do you
want to revive this partition? (See paragraph (c), above.) I rebooted, ran
Norton again, and got the same message. I ran PartitionMagic. It, too, was now
able to read the partitions. I went into the slave Fujitsu drive and created a
primary partition -- which, as primary, promptly took the letter D, even though
it was on the slave drive, rather than the letter that was next in sequence after all
the letters on the master drive. I also created secondary partitions named
PROGRAMS (which would later be drive D, when I made this the primary
master drive in the AMD machine) and DATA (which would later be E). As on
the Maxtor, I made each of these three partitions 1 GB.
(e) Confirming the Seagate 1 GB Was OK. Earlier, I had had some problems with
the Seagate 1 GB drive, but had suspected that the problems might have been
due to the inability of a weak power supply to support three hard disks at once.
(See point 113(f).) That explanation became even more likely after the tests that I
now put the Seagate drive through. I connected it to the AMD machine and
disconnected the other drive. I booted in DOS and tested it by itself. At first,
Norton Disk Doctor had a problem with it. The whole disk passed Norton
except the boot record at the start of the drive. Eventually I realized that Norton,
a DOS program, was not comfortable with a FAT32 drive, especially one that I
was still configured, from previous use, as an extended (i.e., not primary)

partition. My notes are a bit weak, but some program, possibly Norton, gave me
an Error # 117, to the effect that the partitions drive letter could not be identified.
To test the disk, then, I ran FDISK, deleted its partition, converted it to one
FAT16 primary partition, and ran Nortons thorough test on it twice that way. It
passed without any further problems. Then I repartitioned it into one extended
FAT32 partition using PartitionMagic.
(f) Copying the Master Setup to the Fujitsu. In DOS, I copied STEP_254.PQI from
the Fujitsu drive, where I had left a copy, to the Maxtor master drive. Then I
realized that I had a better alternative. Instead of having to redo the changes that
I had made since creating the STEP_254.PQI image file (see point 255), I could
use the DriveImage Disk-to-Disk Copy option. I ran DriveImage from the floppy
and thus copied the primary partition on the Maxtor drive to the primary
partition (which was now drive D, but would be drive C when I installed the
Fujitsu as the primary master disk on the AMD machine) on the Fujitsu; I also
copied the first secondary partition on the Maxtor (presently drive E, soon to be
PENTIUM drive D) to the first secondary partition (presently drive I, soon to be
AMD drive D) on the Fujitsu drive. Even if DriveImage had not been a purely
DOS program, I would still have had to do my operations in DOS at this point,
because when I forgot myself and allowed the system to boot into Windows at
one point, I got all kinds of error messages as the various initial configuration
and bootup procedures tried to find the contents of current drive E on the
Fujitsus primary master partition, which of course I was preparing to be a
mirror image of drive C (WIN98), not drive D (PROGRAMS). When I was ready
to copy the contents of the PROGRAMS partition on the Maxtor to the
PROGRAMS partition on the Fujitsu, I realized that I had not made absolutely
sure that there was no data remaining on the former drive F. I could not recall
anything being there, other than a TEMP folder and a copy of this document, but
I was not absolutely sure. But when I checked it in DOS, I saw a corrupted DIR
listing, and when I tested it with Norton Disk Doctor, I got the message that the
boot record was damaged beyond repair. This was a very confusing time, and of
course it occurred at this point when I was very tired, so I cannot be sure of what
happened, but it appeared that either PartitionMagic or GoBack had corrupted a
previously working partition, and since this had not happened to me before in
PartitionMagic, I had to suspect that, unless I had screwed it up myself
somehow, which was entirely possible, the fault may have lay with the
convoluted GoBack install/deinstall process. (This happened again later. See
point 258(d).) Anyway, now that this corrupted listing seemed to have settled
the matter, I did not worry further about what minor data, if any, I might have
left on the old F drive, which I had now relabeled as PROGRAMS; I just used
DriveImage to fill it with the contents of the Maxtors PROGRAMS partition.

257. Win98 Installation on Two Machines: Similar and Different Steps. I had
now accomplished the changing of partitions that I had been mulling over at
point 255(f). To repeat one more previous step, I could now install GoBack on
the two machines separately. (See point 255(e).) This, like the installation of
different drivers and other steps mentioned above (see point 255), was
something that had to be done differently on the two computers. There would
be other similar steps later. (See point ___.) That is, I could continue to develop
a working, complete Windows 98 installation that I could still store on a CD and
could reinstall on either computer; but even if I remembered to set up on
machine as having a PENTIUM hardware configuration and the other as having
an AMD hardware configuration (see point ___), there would still be steps that I
would have to repeat in slightly different ways on each machine, and the
installation of GoBack was one of them.
258. GoBack Reinstallation. I installed, or reinstalled, GoBack on each computer,
as follows:
(a) Reinstallation on the PENTIUM Computer. In the custom installation
process, GoBack offered to reserve 666 MB on the F (AV) drive, leaving nearly 2
GB of free space in that partition. I accepted that offer. It also offered to set aside
103 MB out of 1,006 MB on the H (SWAP) partition. (See point 256.) I believed I
would sometimes need a good chunk of that partition for Cool Edit temporary
files (see point ___), and I saw no reason to allow GoBack to use up a bunch of
swap space just to track the temporary contents of the SWAP partition. I thought
there might be times when it would catch a Registry backup that I had
accidentally deleted from H:\Backups (see point 145(p)), however, but those
were tiny little affairs of 1-2 MB, so I set the custom setting for the second hard
drive to a mere 5 MB. In reply, GoBack informed me that I had to make it at least
10 MB, so I made it 10 MB. Now it said, For best results, you should reserve at
least 200 MB of space for GoBack. Would you like accept [sic] the smaller
amount anyway? I hoped this meant only that GoBack would not be able to
recall very much of the past with such a small memory, and not that the program
itself would not function OK with a mere 10 MB. I said that this was all I wanted
to allocate for that drive, and the installation proceeded. GoBack had apparently
installed a GOBACKIO.BIN file (see point 246) on the Maxtor drive during the
previous installation (see point 256(d)) and had not removed it when I had
uninstalled GoBack, so now I got this message: GoBack (133): It appears as
though the GOBACKIO.BIN file on disk 1 has been moved to a different
partition on this disk or the geometry of the disk has been changed. This file will
be deleted since it is no longer valid. I had no problem with that, so I said OK.
And that took care of installing GoBack on the PENTIUM.

(b) Installation on the AMD Machine. Using PowerDesk Explorer and Size
Manager (see point 135), I reviewed the situation on the AMD computer. I had
two hard disks. The first one, as just noted (see point 256(d)), was a Fujitsu with
three 1 GB partitions named C (WIN98), D (PROGRAMS), and E (DATA). The
second hard disk was a Western Digital Caviar 102AA 10.2 GB drive. (See point
173.) I had previously set it up to have the same partition layout as the
PENTIUM machine (or perhaps it was the other way around), with drives F
(AV), G (BURNING), and H (SWAP) (see point 32), but now I saw that its
allocation was not quite what I wanted. Specifically, the SWAP partition, at 2
GB, was twice as large as I wanted or needed it to be. Unfortunately, this was
where I had stored a copy of the previous Win98 installation on the AMD
machine. (See point 169.) Rather than do the partition adjustment first, which
would require Partition to move all that data around, I decided to move the data
to drive F first and then adjust the partition (which, in turn, I had to do before
installing GoBack -- see point 236). I used PowerDesk Explorer for this. It went
very slowly, however, and I wondered whether I should try instead copying it to
drive E and then copying it from there to drive F, on the theory that transfers
from one hard disk to another are much faster than transfers to the same hard
disk, which require the drives head to jump back and forth constantly.
Unfortunately, I could not experiment with this because that old drive C had
swollen into a monstrosity filling nearly 2 GB of disk space, and none of the
partitions on the primary master drive were large enough for that. So I copied
directly from H to F. When I went to bed, the computer was saying that it still
had more than two hours to go. Next morning, I saw that it had stalled on some
overly long items that I had saved as Favorites, apparently because the people
who programmed the websites had given them titles that were a half-mile long
and I had allowed Favorites to save those long titles by default. Next, the
copying process balked with the statement, Cannot copy OMI9: Access is
denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not
currently in use. Well, the disk was not full, so this raised in my mind the
question of whether Windows or some program had been using files in this
supposedly archival folder on drive H. PrcView (see point ___) did not seem to
report any such thing; then again, PrcView seemed mostly to report EXE activity
rather than DLL. This particular OMI9.DLL file appeared to be in the Office
folder. I rebooted and tried again without using any Office-related programs,
but still got the same error message. I decided that I had only needed this old
copy of drive C a couple of times during this whole process, and that I had now
probably reached the point where I didnt need it anymore, so instead of copying
it (which might have worked where cutting and pasting would not), I simply
deleted the whole thing, so as to be sure that none of my programs would be
using any of these old program files, now or in the future. An alternative would
have been to zip it all into a large ZIP file (or, if it had been on a drive by itself,
using DriveImage to put it into a disk image file), but I didnt feel like spending

the time that it would have taken to do that with a 2 GB folder. Interestingly, it
did not hesitate to delete that OMI9.DLL file, so maybe the problem was
something disk-related after all, perhaps with the size of the subfolder I was
installing on drive F. Anyway, with that gone, I now had far less than 1 GB of
material in the H (SWAP) drive, so I rebooted in real DOS and tried to use
PartitionMagic to shrink it down to 1 GB, allocating the balance to F (AV).
(c) PartitionMagic Problem Fixed with FDISK. On the 10 GB Western Digital
drive on the AMD machine, I noticed an odd free space entry after drive H. I
wanted to move drive H so that it would contain these 730 MB of unused space.
Unfortunately, when I tried to do this in PartitionMagic, the program froze and I
had to reboot. After this happened twice, I reviewed the contents of drive H,
decided that I could safely delete them. To do this, I went into FDISK, changed
to drive 2, displayed its partition information, went into the extended partition,
and saw that drive H was a FAT32 partition containing 2,243 MB. At the main
FDISK menu, I chose Delete Logical DOS Drive in the Extended DOS Partition
and chose H. (Note that if the volume shows no Volume Label, you just hit
Return when it asks you for the Volume Label of the drive you are deleting.)
Without bothering to reboot, I went back into PartitionMagic and created one
large logical partition to fill the free space that was now up to 2,973 MB; I resized
it down to 1,000 MB and formatted it; and I moved the balance up to F by first
moving it to G, resizing G to put its free space at the front, and then resizing F.
(Note that you can do all this in one PartitionMagic session; you just dont hit the
Apply Changes button until youve given all your commands for both disks.)
This all worked OK, and now I had a huge (for me) 8 GB partition in drive F.
Later, I revised this. (See point 269(f).)
(d) Changed Partition Sizes on Fujitsu. Now that my partitions were arranged
the way I wanted, I rebooted into Windows and began the GoBack installation
again. This time, however, I decided that I needed to manage my space on the
first hard drive more carefully: the simplistic solution of putting 1 GB in each of
drives C, D, and E (see point 256(c)) was just not going to work. That is, GoBack
was suggesting that I set aside 308 MB for its GOBACKIO.BIN file in E (DATA),
and I agreed with that suggestion, but under the present arrangement of the
partitions, that would allow me only 400 MB free for data files. I decided to
reboot in DOS and run PartitionMagic again to leave 900 MB in drive C (which
left 248 MB free), 1,000 MB in D (270 MB free), and 1,189 MB in E (914 MB free).
PartitionMagic seemed to finish (although the screen said it was only 96% done),
but it gave me an error message that said, The file could not be opened. I
wasnt sure what this meant. I exited, intending to run Norton Disk Doctor on
that hard disk, but then I saw that the directory of the drive was all messed up.
This was the same drive that had displayed this problem earlier. (See point
256(f).) Also, I had had that problem a few moments ago on the 10 GB Western

Digital drive. (See paragraph (c), above.) I figured that if it was a disk problem, I
would see evidence of it soon enough in Windows, and that since I had not seen
that problem yet, it might be a problem with PartitionMagic. It could also have
been a GoBack problem: I had only just started the GoBack installation, but then
again I had never experienced this problem in PartitionMagic. Maybe GoBack
had already done things to the disk and was now in a sort of dangerous phase.
They had told me that I had to disable GoBack before using PartitionMagic, but
the problem here was that I had not even installed GoBack yet. Anyway, I
rebooted, and the drive was back to normal. (Note to self: if it looks all screwed
up, reboot before trying to fix it.) I ran Norton Disk Doctor. It told me that the
first hard disk did have partitions of 902 MB (C), 1,000 MB (D), and 1,189 MB (E),
so it looked like PartitionMagic had indeed finished. I told Norton to diagnose
all three of these partitions (not using its thorough test). It found no problems
with any.
(e) Finishing the AMD GoBack Installation. Now that my partitions were
arranged the way I wanted, I ran GoBack again and installed it without further
difficulty. It took the aforementioned 308 MB out of drive E and another 975 MB
out of drive F. That 975 MB was a lot and was more than I would have
preferred, until I thought about it and decided that this would be faster than
enabling Undo in Cool Edit, which would slow down every editing action I took
in Cool Edit; this would slow down nothing and would still give me some extent
of undo-style protection, except with the really large audio files, which I would
just have to remember to keep a backup copy of. Later, however, I saw that,
even when I was working on relatively small WAV files, GoBacks Event Log
recorded a message that said, GoBack logging suspended due to massive file
activity, so it appeared that Undo would sometimes be essential anyway.
Worse, as I looked at that screen, I saw that all logging before that point had
vanished. Changing one large file on drive F had wiped out all of my GoBack
protection on both hard drives! This was not good. As soon as I saw this, I
halted everything and made a current DriveImage backup of the system. (See
point 269.) Plainly, if I intended to continue editing audio files, I was going to
have to remember to suspend GoBacks logging manually if I couldnt find a way
to do it automatically. (See point ___.)
259. Device Manager on the AMD. The process of booting the AMD machine
had taken care of some of the driver installations that needed to occur on that
computer (see point 255(c)), but I had to do a number of other things to get the
hardware situation in order on that computer:
(a) AMD Hardware Configuration. It was time to move past the None of the
above option at bootup (see point 256(a)) and create an AMD configuration for
the hardware I had already installed and the hardware that I was about to install

or configure. As before (see point 207), I went into Control Panel | System |
Hardware Profiles , I copied the Original Configuration profile, and created a
new profile called AMD. The box said that these profiles selected different
hardware configurations at startup, so I rebooted. Sure enough, a new AMD
option appeared at bootup, so I selected that. Judging from the experience with
the PENTIUM configuration, all the changes that I would make to hardware
from now on (at least during this current session) would apply to the AMD
configuration.
(b) DMA. I wondered whether the slowness I noticed when moving the copy of
old drive C from drive H to drive F on the AMD (see point 258(b)) might have
been at least partly due to DMA not being turned on. (See point 106.) When I
checked in Device Manager, however, I found that the setting was still on, as I
had configured it on the PENTIUM machine with a different hard disk in mind.
On reboot, I found that the box was still unchecked, so I checked it again and
rebooted immediately. It was unchecked again after rebooting. I had thought
the drive was DMA-capable, but my online search had also found that it was
capable of different modes (see point 173), so I assumed it was finding the mode
that suited it best on my system. [On review, Im not sure this paragraph makes
sense, but this is all Ive got on what I did at this stage, so well have to make the
best of it.]
(c) Monitor Driver. All this time, on the AMD machine, I had been getting error
messages from various programs (e.g., Seti@home -- see point 156(k)) at bootup,
telling me that they could not run in less than 256 colors. To fix this, I went into
Device Manager | Display Adapter | Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) |
Properties | Driver | Update Driver (see point 255(c)) and told it to look for a
driver in the files that I had downloaded from the manufacturer. The system
now recognized my video adapter as an S3 Inc. Savage4. It offered to reboot, and
I accepted. I went into Control Panel | Display | Settings and chose 800 x 600
16-bit color. And that took care of it.
(d) Exists in All Hardware Profiles. I went down the list of all items in Device
Manager, looking for a checkbox that said, Exists in all hardware profiles. In
some cases, there was no such box, or it was not checked. In other cases, the box
was checked when it should not have been. I removed those checkmarks in the
following cases (making other changes as well, as noted here): (1) Yamaha
CRW4416E CD-ROM: turn off Auto-insert notification (see point 109(f)). (2) S3
Inc. Savage4 display adapter. (3) Diamond Multimedia SUP2750 PCI Modem
Enumerator. (4) SupraMax 56i Voice PCI modem. (5) SerialM Serial Mouse. (6)
Symbios Logic 53C400A (HP Version) SCSI Adapter: remove from this hardware
profile (and thus remove a Device Manager exception). (7) Sound, video, and
game controllers: none of them existed in all hardware profiles. After rebooting,

I went down the list of other items just given and found that the exists in all
hardware profiles boxes had remained unchecked for all these items. I also
found, however that the Symbios Logic item was still there, so this time I clicked
on the Remove button for that item and told the system to remove it only from
the AMD configuration.
Internet Connections and Automatic Website Opening
260. Audio Adjustments. This was not related to the Internet; then again, I
didnt know at this point that that would be the direction of the next several
days. Thus, I took several steps to improve the use and performance of my
computer audio software and hardware, as follows:
(a) Sound Recorder Audio Properties. I went into the Sound Recorder program
that came with Windows and set its Edit | Audio Properties | Advanced
Properties (for both Playback and Recording) to use full hardware acceleration
and best quality. Also, someone who seemed to know what they were talking
about said that, for voice recording, you would get your best compression and
quality tradeoff by using the DSP Group Truespeech Software codec. This codec
came with Windows. To use it to compress my audio in Sound Recorder, all I
had to do was to select Save As (after recording a sound), click the Change
button down by the Format box at the bottom of the screen, and select the DSP
Group format option. It seemed likely that, if I was concerned about the quality
of a recording, I would first record the WAV file, perhaps in Sound Recorder or
perhaps in Cool Edit (see point 157(a)), and would edit it in Cool Edit to remove
noise and other defects before compressing it. Cool Edit did not offer a DSP
compression option at this point, and seemed generally more oriented toward
music compression (with its Fraunhofer MP3 codec) rather than voice
compression, so it seemed possible that I would take this tip and try using Sound
Recorder for speech compression of an edited WAV file. (See point ___.)
(b) DOS Sound Playback. To jazz up my DOS boxes, and to remember how to do
this, I added a line to DOSSTART.BAT. (See point 105(l).) The line looked like
this: MPLAYER.EXE /PLAY /CLOSE
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA\JUNGLE~2.WAV. This would play a brief sound
before opening a DOS box. I had actually already set this up on the PENTIUM
machine. Now, to make it work on the AMD machine, I made the following
additional changes in Media Player: I selected Edit | Options, turned on Auto
Rewind, and turned off Border Around Object. For some reason, however, it
was starting in a Pause mode, which is to say it wasnt playing. Also, when I
tried to run it two times in a row, I got a dialog box indicating that the playback
device was in use elsewhere. Not wanting to bother with this foolishness, I put a
comment mark (REM) in front of the program line just given in DOSSTART.BAT,

hopefully to be revisited sometime in the future when I had run across a

solution.
(c) Cool Edit Temporary File Locations. Now that I had 1,000 MB H (SWAP)
partitions on each computer (see point 258(a)), I created two folders named
E:\Temp\Cool Edit Primary Temp Files and H:\Cool Edit Secondary Temp
Files, and told Cool Edit (Options | Settings | System) to look for these files in
those locations. I chose these locations because Cool Edit advised me to to put
these two locations on separate hard disks if possible. There wasnt all that much
room to spare on drive E (see point 258(d)) as compared to drive F, but I figured
that the two of them combined might do the trick, and that keeping them away
from drive F might reduce the need to constantly defragment that partition,
whose large size could might defragmenting a very time-consuming process.
(d) Audio Suite. Previously, I had set up Suites -- i.e., batch files that would open
a number of pages at once, and that would themselves open up with just one
click on the appropriate icon on the Suites Toolbar. (See point 153.) I now added
another icon and suite to that toolbar. The batch file
(D:\DOS_UTIL\STE_AUD.BAT) looked like this:
___insert STE_AUD.BAT
261. Web Suite, Frequented Folder, and Wildcard Link. By now, experience had
suggested that I revamp the Web Suite, the Frequented folder, and the Wildcard
Link. The Web Suite was the batch file that opened a number of different
sessions of Internet Explorer, so that all I had to do was click on one button to
visit all of the websites I tended to visit each day. (See point 120(af).) The
Frequented folder was the item on the Links Toolbar that would allow me to
open different Websites with just two clicks. (See point 109(g).) The Wildcard
Link was the item on the Links Toolbar that, when I clicked on it, would pop up
a Parameters box, and when I entered one letter into that box (e.g., You") would
take me to the Website represented by that letter (e.g., Yahoo!). (See point
145(o).) The revision I had in mind involved several steps:
(a) Identifying the Entries. I began by locating the contents of each of these three
tools. The Web Suite ran entirely from one batch file called STE_WEB.BAT. The
Frequented folder contained a separate entry for each website that I might want
to visit frequently, all in the C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Frequented folder.
The Wildcard Link ran from a single batch file called WILDCARD.BAT. At the
beginning, these three sources each referred to somewhat different sets of URLs,
so as I went through the following steps, I found that I had to come back once or
twice and revise the various lists to make sure I had everything I wanted in each
of the tools discussed below.

(b) URL Batch Files. I created a D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS subdirectory. In that

directory, I created a separate batch file for each URL that I might want to build
into any one of these three techniques (i.e., Web Suite, Frequented folder, or
Wildcard Link). Each of these batch files consisted of just one line. For example,
the batch file for Yahoo! (called YAHOO.BAT) consisted of this line: START
/MAX HTTP://WWW.YAHOO.COM. This would simply take an existing
session of Internet Explorer to the designated website (opening a new session of
Internet Explorer to accomplish this, if there werent any already open). I kept
the batch file names to 8+3 format (e.g., the name of the Infospace batch file was
INFOSPAC.BAT) so that it would be easier to know how to refer to them in other
DOS batch files. To make things function predictably in all cases, I decided to
make each of these batch files automatically open a separate session of Internet
Explorer before taking me to the designated website. That is, I would no longer
experience the uncertain outcome that sometimes there would be a new browser
session and sometimes the browser would be pulled away from a page where I
might have wanted it to stay. To do this, I added another line to each of these
batch files, so that the first line now read like this: START
C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\IEXPLORE.EXE. Some of the URLs were long, and
at first I assumed I had to enclose them in quotation marks, but then I found that
they worked fine without quotes. Thus, for example, to get an advanced Alta
Vista search page that would default to English as its chosen language, I ran that
search page with nothing specified except that language, and then saved the URL
in an AV_ADV.BAT file which looked like this:
:: Opens the Alta Vista advanced search page
:: Abbreviation AVA
start c:\progra~1\intern~1\iexplore.exe
start /max http://www.altavista.com/cgibin/query?pg=aq&q=&r=&kl=en&d0=&d1=&search.x=26&search.y=15
(Note that paragraph (f), believe, makes use of the exact structure of the
comment line shown here.) I visited a number of other websites and applied
similar tricks in order to get just the right URLs for my purposes. Note: when
the URLs contained % symbols, I had to double them up (%%) because DOS
interpreted %, by itself, as the symbol of a variable, or something like that.)
(c) Creating the Shortcuts. Next, in Windows Explorer, I right-clicked on each of
these batch files and edited their Properties | Program tab as follows: (1)
improve the name (e.g., the DOS name of INFOSPAC would appear, in the
resulting shortcut, as InfoSpace), (2) Run minimized, and (3) Close on exit. Note
that this would minimize the DOS batch file, not the Internet Explorer session

spawned by that batch file. This action created a separate shortcut for each batch
file, stored in the URLs subdirectory in PIF format (e.g.,
D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS\INFOSPAC.PIF). Then I renamed these shortcuts to have
names that would be more informative, but that would continue to sort properly
in the Frequented folder. For example, I wanted the entry for My Deja to come
up next to the entry for Deja Search, so I renamed the My Deja shortcut to be
Deja -- My. I decided to leave the original shortcuts in this URLS folder, so I
would always know where to find them, and would copy them as needed to
other locations.
(d) Web Suite Revision. I opened STE_WEB.BAT and replaced all of its existing
lines with simple START commands that would refer back to the batch files I had
just created. An example was START D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS\WEATHER.BAT. I
did this, of course, only for the websites that I wanted to visit daily, not for every
website for which I now had a URL batch file. Later, I revised this approach
significantly. (See point ___.)
(e) Frequented Folder. Now that I had set up each of the URL batch files to open
a separate browser session, I could use them to avoid a problem I had noticed
with the Frequented folder up to now: sometimes I found that clicking on one of
its items would distract the browser from a website where I wanted it to stay and
would point it instead toward the new site whose icon I had clicked in the
Frequented folder. With the batch file format shown above, I could now have
shortcuts in Frequented that would open a new browser session every time. To
do this, I just copied the shortcuts from D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS that I wanted to
appear in C:\Windows\Favorites\Links\Frequented. This list of shortcuts was
not the same as the list that I had used in the Web Suite, since there were some
sites that I would want to visit only once a day and would not need to have in
the Frequented folder, and there were also some frequented items (e.g., search
engines) that I would not want to open until I had some specific need for them.
(f) Wildcard Link. I saw no reason to limit this item to one letter. Allowing more
letters would make it possible for this link to offer an abbreviation for every
website listed in D:\DOS_UTIL\URLS. I built abbreviations into each of the
batch files in that URLS directory, as shown in paragraph (b), above, along with a
final EXIT line that would shut down WILDCARD.BAT after Internet Explorer
had been started and sent to the proper URL. In this way, WILDCARD would
handle all kinds of URLs, not merely to those of the www.X.com format, and if I
failed to specify an abbreviation, it would show me the list of those that I had
assigned in URL_SHOW.BAT. These programs, in final form, looked like this
(with the actual links going to PIF shortcut files whose Properties were set to
Close on exit):

___insert URL_SHOW.BAT and WILDCARD.BAT

Later, I decided that Wildcard was just a substitute for an organized set of
Favorites and that I probably would not have bothered with it in the first place if
Id had my Favorites up and running (see point 327), so I removed the Wildcard
icon from the Links toolbar.
(g) Run Web Suite Automatically. I decided that the news of the world should be
greeting me every morning -- i.e., that all of these websites I visited each day
should load and be ready for action at the time I estimated I would be ready to
view them, which at this point was 6:30 AM. There were two problems: (1) I
couldnt set the Internet Explorer to dial automatically, because as I had learned
from experience, the thing would then be dialing up in the middle of phone
conversations or whenever the random mood struck. (2) Not really a problem,
but an additional desired feature: some of these websites were online e-mail sites
or otherwise needed a password before they would really be ready to show me
their goods. The latter point was easier to address: all I needed was to turn on
Internet Explorers AutoComplete features in Internet Explorer (Tools | Internet
Options | Advanced) (but see point 105(i)), and then it would fill in my
passwords and take me right to the lists of e-mails or whatever that I wanted to
view. I thought I had already told the thing to stay on (see point 109(i)), but I
saw now that it had gotten turned off somehow. Anyway, I turned it on now,
retried the Web Suite, and that didnt do it. Later, it did work for one of the
passworded websites, but not for the other. I got back to the development of this
Web Suite later. (See point 272.)
(h) Favorites Folder. I found that the Favorites folder was not easy to get to,
mostly because there was so much stuff in C:\Windows that it was a minor
hassle to page down to it and open it up. I thought I had previously used XSetup to relocate it to E:\Favorites (see point 137(m)), but for some reason that,
like some other X-Setup fixes, seemed to have come undone. I could have
redone it in X-Setup, or I could have done the same thing by a Registry edit. (Go
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Expl
orer and make two edits, one in the Shell Folders key and one in the User Shell
Folders key; the edits are to set the Favorites value to the path you want for your
Favorites folder, using two backslashes instead of one (e.g.,
F:\\Temp\\Favorites).) I decided that the number of Favorites in use was too
small to promote much disk fragmentation, and that it would probably be easier
and safer to leave the Favorites folder where it was. If it turned out that I did
need to get to it frequently, I thought I could probably create a shortcut to it and
put that on the Folders toolbar.

262. Shutdown and Reboot Difficulties. I found that the scheme I had developed
for various kinds of shutdown and rebooting (see point 128) had run into some
problems, as follows:
(a) User Connected to My Computer. The addition of a network (see point 184)
had introduced the problem that my computer would no longer shut down
without first giving me this message: There are 1 user(s) connected to your
computer. Shutting down your computer will disconnect them. Do you want to
continue? Since I didnt know the terminology for these different situations, I
called this one the Weak Disconnect option, whereas a Strong Disconnect would
simply cut that connection without asking me. Further tinkering with the
various command lines introduced in point 128 led me to the following
conclusions:
For a Weak Disconnect followed by a reboot, use this line in a batch file:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
(It had previously seemed wise to insert the following lines before the RUNDLL
line:
echo You may now reboot.
pause
but the addition of the network had interposed an additional brake, in the form
of the question regarding other users, as quoted just a moment ago, so there no
longer seemed to be a need for these lines.)
For a Strong Disconnect followed by a reboot, use this line:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
If I had wanted the option of a Weak Disconnect followed by a shutdown, I
would have just created a batch file that would have asked, Are you sure?
before the following option.
For a Strong Disconnect followed by a shutdown, use this line:
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5
In short, the only difference among these lines is the final number: 2, 6, or 5,
respectively.
(b) Reboot Modes: Real DOS, MS-DOS Mode, DOS Box, Normal Mode, or Safe
Mode. All but one of these five options arose within Windows. Real DOS, the
exception, was the basic operating system of PCs since 1981. Even Windows 98

starts with real DOS. Thats why, if you could catch the system right at the start,
when it ran its AUTOEXEC.BAT file, before Windows has fully loaded, you
could insert all kinds of DOS tricks into your system. (See point 120(al).) Some
of the fundamental disk activities discussed in this document (e.g., those
involving FDISK and DriveImage) required Real DOS rather than Windows
because DOS allowed tighter and simpler control of what was happening on the
disk. Turning to the five Windows options just mentioned, MS-DOS Mode and a
DOS Box were essentially the same. They were imitation forms of DOS that
would allow you to do many (but not all) of the things that you could do in real
DOS, and would also allow you to do some things that were beyond the
capabilities of real DOS. The difference between the two was that you would run
a DOS Box without leaving your regular Windows interface, while MS-DOS
Mode required you to reboot into something that looked a lot like plain old DOS
-- and as long as you were in MS-DOS Mode, you could not switch into other
windows. Finally, there were two modes within which you could run Windows.
Normal Mode allowed full access to all of your systems hardware and software
(assuming they were all in proper working order). Safe Mode was a more
limited mode, generally intended for troubleshooting purposes. Safe Mode
would not allow some aspects of your system to run; in exchange, you and the
system would be better able, in some circumstances, to figure out what might be
wrong with your computer.
(c) Choosing a Reboot Mode. In addition to the Strong Disconnect and Weak
Disconnect options discussed in paragraph (a), above, there was the question of
what would happen next, after my system disconnected from the network and
closed down Windows. The Shutdown option, of course, would lead to nothing
at all happening next; but the reboot option would allow you to start Real DOS,
MS-DOS Mode, Normal Mode, or Safe Mode. My experience, during the weeks
between point 128 and now, had suggested that I really had no use for the Weak
Disconnect option: when I clicked on one of those reboot options on the Bye
toolbar (see point 143), I wanted the damn computer to reboot without further
ado. And, as mentioned in paragraph (b), above, I had hardly ever used
Windows MS-DOS Mode (and could reach it by hitting Start | Shutdown
anyway). So in writing the batch file options that would appear on the Bye
toolbar, I found that I really needed only Strong Disconnect options, and that the
next thing after the Strong Disconnect would be either Normal Mode, Safe Mode,
or Real DOS. Those choices required the appropriate instruction to
BOOT_MGR.BAT. (See point 120(al).) Or, as I thought about it, I could bypass
BOOT_MGR and issue its command directly. Thus, the batch files offered on my
Bye toolbar (which I now renamed the Reboot toolbar) were as follows:
:: SHUTDOWN.BAT
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 5

:: BOOTNORM.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Normal Mode
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Normal Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
:: BOOTSAFE.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Safe Mode
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Safe Mode > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
:: BOOTDOS.BAT
:: Reboots immediately and puts computer in Real DOS
d:
cd \dos_util
echo Real DOS > bootcall.txt
RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
(For more information on BOOTCALL.TXT, see point 129.)
263. CD Burning Suite. I had heard that some CD burners (see point 4) were
very sensitive, such that they would ruin the blank CD they were trying to burn
if you disturbed them in the least; and I had heard that some (especially Plextor
drives) were so steady that people bragged of being able to defragment their
hard disks while burning CDs. Mine was somewhere in the middle. Since I had
wasted a few CDs, however, I decided to err on the conservative side. That is,
when I was burning CDs, I tended to shut down anything that posed a risk of
interrupting the CD burner. I decided now to create a Suite (see point 113(e))
that would shut down all likely sources of interference, load the programs I
needed, and then return everything to normal when I was done. Leaving aside
the question of how to set up the icon, the shortcut, and other details regarding
that Suite (see point 261), the main challenge was to program the batch file. To
figure out which processes were running, and then to kill most of them, I used
PrcView (see point 141(f)), which ran in Real DOS as PV. To figure out which
ones to kill, I used the Win98 FileInfo utility (see point 119(a)): if they werent
listed in that utility, I figured they werent an integral part of Windows 98, and if
they were listed, I had to do a little trial and error to see if the system would
function right without them. While fooling with it, I found that some choices
would disable the TweakUI setting that would bypass the network login dialog

box, so I would have to redo that. (See point 199.) Basically, I left most of the
files running that showed a path of C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM,
except MSTASK.EXE. Also, the desire to have DOS programs run within
Windows in a certain sequence, and then vanish, prompted me to set up several
interrelated files. Heres what I came up with:
___ insert STE_BURN.BAT and the files it calls
264. DEFRAG Redux. Now that I knew it was possible to shut down the
processes that might interfere with CD burning, and still keep Windows running
otherwise, I decided to simplify the DEFRAG situation by applying the same
technique there. In my last look at that situation, I had hit upon the solution of
using a tool that would allow me to reboot the system and then run
Defragmenter before running anything else. (See point 141(k).) In practice, that
approach had a couple of problems. First, the actual usage was tricky. I found
that the program, as I had it set up, would go ahead and reboot regardless of
how I answered the question in the dialog box. (The dialog box Im talking
about was the one that was triggered by the temporary Registry edit that would
allow DEFRAG to run by itself after reboot.) The only difference my answer
made was that it would, or would not, run DEFRAG after rebooting according to
whether I said I wanted that Registry change made or not. I tried changing this
by using a different rebooting command that would ask for my approval before
rebooting, but that wasnt much better because I would still see the dialog box on
top of the DOS box, and would naturally be tempted to answer its question first,
before paying attention to what was in the DOS box. Second, the thing did not
work quite as advertised. On at least one occasion, I had found that some other
program was in fact running while DEFRAG was running, and was provoking it
to start over and try again. And third,the timing was not quite right. For
whatever reason, I had consistently decided not to let the thing start up and do
its defragmenting. The excuse was that I had files open and work half-done, but
that would always be the case. I thought I might be more inclined to let
DEFRAG work if I knew I was going to see it start defragmenting immediately.
Therefore, I designed the following batch file and used this one, not the one
shown in point 141(l), to run Defragmenter, and I scheduled it in Task Scheduler
(see point 105(h)):
___ DEFRAG.BAT and related files
It still wasnt perfect or pretty, but it worked better, and I figured I could tinker
with it later. I was beginning to get the idea that the DOS tinkering could go on
indefinitely. My main goal at this point was to get the system into good working
shape with a complete set of tools, and this would suffice for that.

265. Modem Tweaks. I had heard about a couple of modem adjustments that I
thought might improve things for me. They were as follows:
(a) iSpeed. I had downloaded this program earlier. (See point 156(d).) Now it
was time to use it. The program had four tabs, some of which contained some
settings that I did not need and/or understand. I started with their Help file.
Along with other advice, it basically told me to start by running a test. To do
this, I was supposed to use an FTP site. It may sound silly, but I didnt know
any, and when I went to the site that they recommended where I could get some
sample FTP ideas, Internet Explorer told me that there was no such page. I
played with it for a little while and then realized that the adjustments I would be
making here were going to apply to the PENTIUM computer as well as the AMD
computer. That is, this was something I was supposed to be doing to each
machine separately, after I had my complete generic software situation worked
out. Then, as I browsed further in the advice at
www.tweak3d.net/tweak/modem/3.shtml, it began to sound like iSpeed was
really just recommended for Windows 95, not Win98, and that it would make
Registry changes that would actually reduce the flexibility of the Win98 settings.
They advised uninstalling iSpeed. I checked online and found other comments
indicating that it had changed some settings for some people in undesirable
ways, and other advice to uninstall it. I decided that it would be wise for me to
distinguish general recommendations (try this program -- it worked for me)
from more specific and seemingly knowledgeable recommendations (iSpeed
will change your MTU settings under Win98 in the following ways ...). Even so,
I was still running across a number of comments indicating that some people had
really gained from this program. I decided to post a question about the state of
the art on whether it was worthwhile or not. A knowledgeable individual, a
frequent contributor to that newsgroup, responded that people who obtained
gains from iSpeed were probably just getting back to where they would have
been if they hadnt fooled with the settings in the first place. I uninstalled it.
(b) Registry Settings. The Tweak3d site also suggested making the following
Registry changes: (1) In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\,
there were items numbered 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Under some of those keys,
there was a value named SLOWNET. They told me to change the value on this
item from 01 to 00 in each of these numbered keys where it appeared. In my
system, it appeared in 0000, 0001, and 0003. (A setting of 00 means its off; a
setting of 01 means its on.) (2) In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\COMB
UFF, the value of the Start item should be changed to 01. (3) Likewise for the
Start item in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\VCAC
HE.
(c) Modem Initialization Strings. In the olden days, people had to type modem
commands manually. It was still possible to do this, or at least to specify some of
the features that you would have specified if you were doing all this by hand. I
found complete modem initializations strings for many kinds of modems,
including both of mine (and my NewCom modem has generally seemed to be
pretty obscure as far as other people are concerned) at
www.spy.net/%7Edustin/modem/. The suggestions there werent especially
relevant for my needs, but they may be for others. What I found more
interesting was the option of adding S-Registers. To do this, I went into Control
Panel | Modems | Properties | Connection | Advanced | Extra Settings. At this
point, I made an interesting discovery: although Device Manager showed only
the modem that I had installed for this AMD machines hardware profile (see
point 207), this Modems | Properties box was showing the modems for both the
AMD and the PENTIUM machines. So I could configure them both now, instead
of waiting for some later time when I would be making machine-specific
adjustments for the two computers separately. (See point ___.) Anyway, the
Extra Settings entries that I had heard most about and found interesting, and that
I made at this point, were as follows: (1) S10=50. According to my NewCom
modems manual, the S10 register (not to be confused with the Windows 98
Registry) is the Lost carrier hang up delay. Apparently this commonlyrecommended setting of 50 meant that my modem would stay connected to my
ISP, even if the carrier signal was interrupted, for up to five seconds. The
purpose of this setting was, hopefully, to reduce the number of times when I got
disconnected while online. I had been blaming those disconnections on my ISP;
now we would just see. (2) S11=50. Here, the 50 apparently meant milliseconds,
not tenths of a second. The S11 register was the DTMF dialing speed. It seems
that a setting of 50 milliseconds here meant that this would be the amount of
delay between each number dialed. For example, if the number dialed was 5551234, there would be a 50-millisecond delay between the 2 and the 3, etc. This
seemed to be considered a very fast setting; people said that if it didnt work,
your system would just default to the fastest setting that it could actually handle.
(Later, I noticed that this seemed to work on the one modem -- it dialed much
faster than before -- but not on the other.) To type these settings in the Extra
Settings box, I just put a space between them, like this: S10=50 S11=50. Other
settings that I had used in the past, or that seemed potentially useful in the
future, included these: M1 (sets the modems speaker on just until the carrier is
present) or M0 (speaker always off) (M1 was the default and there were other
options); and S9=[tenths of a second] (Carrier recovery time); S30=[minutes]
(disconnect after inactivity).

(d) Dial-Up Networking (DUN) Adjustment. At this point, I noticed that my

DUN thought it was still using the 33 kbps modem on the PENTIUM machine,
rather than the 56 kbps modem I had in the AMD machine. I went into Dial-Up
Networking and created a separate entry for the 56 kbps modem, and made a
note to myself to make sure that each machine was using the right entry before I
was done. (See point ___.) Then I decided to delete the 33 kbps entry and
recreate it later if necessary, because it was forcing a manual choice and thus was
interfering with some things I was trying to create now in batch files. (See point
___.)
266. Internet Utilities. I had installed some utilities previously and was now
finding more. The following are the ones I considered at this point:
(a) WINIPCFG. This program resided in C:\WINDOWS. If you ran it from a
DOS command prompt or from Start | Run, it would give information about
your online connection and your network connection, including adapter address,
IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, NETBIOS information,
DHCP server, and WINS server. I created a shortcut to it and put it into the
Information folder under Start | Programs.
(b) TRACERT. This program also resided in C:\WINDOWS, and it ran, again,
from the DOS prompt or Start | Run. The description of it I got from somewhere
went like this: Trying to connect to your favorite search engine without
success? Okay, maybe you can't check if your Internet wire (connection) is
broken or not by using a bulb and a couple of batteries. But, you can get a good
idea how close you can get to the site you're trying to reach. I didnt have any
problems at present that warranted the use of it, so I just created another shortcut
so Id be able to find it if I needed it.
(c) Copernic 2000. I had downloaded and installed this program previously, on
the strength of advice from others, and was only now getting back to it. (See
point 156(b).) As I looked at it again, I recognized it; I had worked with its
predecessor a year or two earlier. The program indicated that this freeware
version could search only seven categories of information online, as compared to
the fifty categories you could search with their professional version. PC
Magazine had said that the program had the ability to do Boolean searches, but
when I tried one, I got a popup message that said, You do not have to use
Boolean operators (and, or) since Copernic automatically manages them. The
only way in which I could see that the program managed them was to give me
the option of searching for all words, any words, or an exact phrase -- a far cry
from being able to search for something like this:
((win98 or win 98 or windows 98) near utility) and (boole* near search)

I had not used the predecessor program much, when it had offered similar
capabilities, and I probably was not going to use this one either, so I uninstalled
it.
(d) QuickSearch. This was an Internet utility that had come with Internet
Explorer, and that I had thought might be useful sometime. (See point 119(b).)
As I looked at it now, however, I realized that I would probably never use it. It
was a simple search tool that would allow me to type e.g., the letter Y, followed
by the thing I was searching for, and immediately get results from Yahoo! Or I
could type AV if I wanted the search to take place in AltaVista instead. This was
a lot like my Wildcard concept. (See point 261(f).) Having all those search
engines at my easy disposal was not all that important to me, however, since I
found it was generally much easier to get hundreds of hits on an Internet search
than to get three hits that were exactly what I wanted; Boolean searches were
much better for the latter. So I moved the QuickSearch icon to a back corner
under Start | Programs, figuring that I would probably never use it. Instead, I
sought a better way to do massive Boolean searches. (See point ___.)
(e) Weather1. This was another program that I had downloaded during my
freeware gold rush. (See point 156(m).) Now that I had worked up my Web
Suite (see point 261) and some other nifty ways to get to relevant websites
quickly, however, I felt that I probably would not actually have much need for a
weather icon that would sit in my system tray and always be ready to tell me the
current weather, when I could instead view The Weather Channel offline and get
a seven-day forecast! So I uninstalled this one too. I had to use their Uninstall
icon to do it; the program was not listed in Add/Remove Programs.
(f) URL Bandit. I had originally downloaded this X-Setup plug-in without really
knowing what it was. (See point 137.) Now that I had a minute to look at it, it
looked kind of interesting. It was just about the simplest thing you could
imagine: no options, no menus, no lists of right- or left-click alternatives. It was
basically a piece of lined note paper that sat on your screen. If you were in
Internet Explorer and you right-clicked on the Address box and chose Copy, the
URL for that page would go onto a line in X-Setup. Then, later, if you left-clicked
on that line in URL Bandit, Internet Explorer would show that page -- the one
from which you had copied the URL. If you right-clicked on that URL in URL
Bandit, the URL would vanish. And thats it. The only way to even find
information about it was to right-click on the icon in the system tray and follow
its link to the X-Setup website. There, I learned quite a bit more. Basically, the
program would search through anything you put into your clipboard -- that is,
anything that you would select and then Copy -- and would extract all of the
URLs from it. The example they gave was where you would copy a 1 MB

website full of 200 URLs: it would extract them all, each on a separate line. I
tried it with a website and it didnt work, but maybe I just wasnt doing it right.
I thought this program had the potential to be very useful for helping me keep
track of interesting web pages when I was in the middle of a complicated search
and had too many sessions of Internet Explorer open already. So I decided to
use it for a while and see what I thought of it. (See point ___.)
(g) Internet Tech Support Diagnostics (INTCHDGN.ZIP). This program came
highly recommended by someone reputable -- I couldnt remember who at the
time, although I thought possibly PC Magazine -- and claimed to provide the
service of examining my modem and my network and Internet connections and
making some real-world suggestions about how I might improve them. I
installed and ran the program and was pleased at the clear, accurate information
it provided about my modems and connections. It reported some items that I
thought I probably should revisit later, when I was ready to delete some items
that really applied more to just one computer or the other. (See point ___.) I
clicked on the Analyze | Text Format Report option and got an interesting
report. It suggested that I should check with www.56k.com for further
information on how to optimize my modem. I found that that site did contain a
lot of information about upgrading modems, including some words of caution.
Since my system was working OK for now and I was in a conservative mood, I
decided not to go further with upgrading the modem at this time. The Text
Format Report also explained that modem initializations strings, although
perhaps expressing the obvious, may nevertheless make many modems run
faster. (See point 265(c).) Nevertheless, the site said, youre better off with the
right drivers than with a specialized init string. Since I seemed to have
obtained working drivers, I decided it wasnt broke and I wasnt going to fix it.
Next, I clicked on Test Modem in this Internet Tech Support Diagnostics
program. When it was done, it told me that I could click on Tech Wizard and
select the report format I wanted. Oops -- I seemed to have done things out of
order. There didnt seem to be any Tech Wizard button, but I guessed that the
Analyze button mentioned a moment ago had replaced it. I looked at the Text
Report again to see if it had changed. It hadnt. I concluded that this program
provided another little source of information that would probably be useful
sometimes. Later, I finally found a solution to the last of my modem problems.
(See point 281.)
Backup and System Issues
267. Assorted Programs. I had recently downloaded a few items and took the
opportunity, now, to install them.

(a) Updated Drivers for Cardex S3 Savage4 Graphics Adapter by Gainward. I

had gotten this video card for very little money, and had paid for it in the
struggle to find out who made it, where to get the drivers, etc. (Of course, I
seemed by now to have misplaced that website, although I suspected I did have
it buried in my Favorites somewhere. See point 327.) I now had the drivers, in
any event, and although the driver installation process through Device Manager
gave me a weird message that drive F (where I had unzipped the download)
could not be accessed right now, I persevered.
(b) Other Drivers. I decided not to undertake a thorough search through
WinDrivers.com to make sure I had the latest drivers for all of my equipment.
Things seemed to be working pretty well at this point, and I decided it probably
made more sense to make that kind of search from time to time, as a given piece
of hardware caught my attention, rather than to sit there for hours doing a
thorough inventory of my hardware (see point 145(m)), figuring out whether I
needed new drivers, downloading them, and in some cases jumping through
hoops to install them.
(c) TweakAll. I obtained this program from www.abtonsshed.com/TweakFAQ.html after I saw that PCForrest (see point 44) had
recommended it in a newsgroup posting. It may be a sign of my fatigue with
this project at this point, and my eagerness to get on to other things, that I did
not undertake the detailed review of this program that I had undertaken when
considering TweakUI (see point 109(c)), even though this program was far less
familiar to me. Then again, I did not expect to use much of it, since the advance
comments that I had seen on the website had made me think that I had probably
already found other ways of accomplishing most of the tweaks that this program
offered. I installed it and looked through it. I liked it; I liked the things it
offered; and unless further research should indicate that it has caused significant
problems for some users, I would recommend using it, or the right version of
TweakUI, as a fast way of accomplishing many of the tweaks reviewed here, and
then following up with manual approaches for those that remain. For my
purposes at this stage of the game, I was pleased to have discovered the
program, and was also pleased that it really didnt offer much new to me. It was
a sign that I had begun to wrap up this project.
(d) Other Drivers, Again. Having just said (see paragraph (b)) that I would not
fool with more drivers, I found that I had already downloaded a bunch of them.
So now I installed them. I pretty much just rammed through them, counting on
GoBack to save me if any of them went bad. (See point 228.) None did.
268. Audio Test. As the drooping energy level of the previous point may
indicate, it was getting to be late in the evening by now. I decided to turn the

computer loose with Cool Edit recording a 60-minute cassette tape. I figured
that, by the time I finished recording, editing, and compressing the songs on that
tape into MP3 format, I would probably have a better idea of whether everything
was functioning properly on the audio side. It actually took more than a day for
me to pursue other activities, returning to the computer occasionally to start it on
the next step in the audio process (record the tape, save it, noise-filter it, edit out
the unwanted songs, save the other songs to individual WAV files, normalize
those individual files, and save them to MP3 format), but everything seemed to
go OK with that tape, except that when I first started recording, I noticed a large
amount of disk thrashing, and had to start over because all that disk activity was
making the disk unable to keep up; that is, it was dropping pieces of the music. I
tried recording another tape, however, and experienced numerous dropouts in
the audio. This was not new --I had experienced it before -- and I attributed it to
the activity of other programs during the recording process. I decided that the
Audio Suite should shut down other processes before proceeding, just as other
Suites were doing, but I did not pursue this until later. (See point ___.)
269. DriveImage Backup. This was the point at which I recognized that GoBack
had ceased logging current events on the computer due to my editing of one
large audio file. (See point 258(e).) Thus, it seemed important to make a backup
at this stage.
(a) Running DriveImage from Drive D. When I rebooted to real DOS and tried to
run DriveImage from the floppy, I got Error # 58. Unable to write to the boot
sector. Virus protection software may be running. Last time around, I had
learned that this was a red herring, and that the problem was due to GoBack, not
AntiVirus. (See point 254.) I took out the floppy and tried running DriveImage
from D:\DOS_UTIL -- or, more precisely, from the PWRQUEST subfolder I had
created under DOS_UTIL. I got Error # 58 again. I rebooted and chose, this time,
to disable GoBack instead of taking the option of booting from the floppy with
GoBack drivers enabled. This was not a significantly faster approach; it took
GoBack a minute to remove its history files. When GoBack was finished, it
informed me that I could manually re-enable it from the DOS prompt by typing
GB_PROG /I. I tried again to run DriveImage from D:. I did this mostly to test
the fear that DriveImage needed to work from a drive other than the one it was
imaging -- a fear that I had expressed some time back (see point 116(i)) and could
not remember actually testing. The program had no problems, so it appeared
that I had been worrying all this time for nothing; I could have enjoyed the
slightly easier process of running DriveImage from the hard drive rather than the
floppy, although in real DOS in any event. If that had failed, however, I had
wondered whether my results would have been different if I had loaded
DriveImage into a RAM drive (such as the RAM created automatically when I
booted with the Windows emergency floppy) and had run it from there.

Anyway, the STEP_269.PQI file containing drives C and D (which filled 664 MB
and 729 MB, respectively, in their natural uncompressed state) came to 754 MB,
for a compression ratio of 54%. Thus, it appeared that I had been right in
speculating that the early compression rate of 63% had understated DriveImages
compression capability because a much higher percentage of the early backups
had consisted of the already-compressed CAB files in C:\WIN98. (See point
161.)
(b) DriveImage Compression and GoBack. Since this 754 MB PQI file would not
fit on one CD, I decided I may as well make the most of the opportunity by using
these two CDs to back up at least some of my data files too. Thus, I used
DriveImage to make a compressed copy of the data files on drives E and F as
well. At this point, I realized that it was probably just as well that I had disabled
GoBack (see point 269(a)) and had thus wiped out its History files, so that my
image files wouldnt contain copies of those 300 MB files -- which, in this case,
seemed to be useless. But then, after making the image copy of drive E, I decided
to check. Sure enough, there was a 300 MB GOBACKIO.BIN file (see point 246)
on E. Oddly, it bore the date when I had installed it; I guess I would have
expected it to bear the date of the last activity it had monitored. Turning to drive
F, I saw a 998 MB GoBack file there as well. The archive attribute was off for
both files, so presumably an ordinary backup program would not bother with
them (although, given the hugeness of these files, I would want to verify that if I
intended to use XCOPY for my backups), but DriveImage would swallow them
up along with everything else. So when DriveImage compressed the 577 MB of
drive E into a 377 MB file (65% compression) called STEP_268.PQI (3/20/00), it
did so while dealing with the presumably compressed data in GOBACKIO.BIN.
(c) Experimenting with Backup Techniques. I wanted to get the maximum
amount of data on the two CDs, and I was curious about a couple of things, and I
didnt need the AMD machine at that point, so I deleted that unnecessarily bulky
backup of drive E and decided to try again with a different approach. Since
drives E and F would contain most of my data, and would also contain
GOBACKIO.BIN files, I faced these choices: (1) take a risk and see what would
happen if I moved these BIN system files to some other disk temporarily, (2)
include 1.3 GB worth of unnecessary GoBack data every time I did a backup (but
see point 298(b)), (3) use some approach other than the DriveImage technique of
capturing an entire partition to an image file, or (4) find a clean partition that
DriveImage could capture in its entirety. I disliked options (1) and (2). Option
(3) told me that I should consider using PowerDesks ZIP capability (see point
___) to zip all of the selected contents of drives E and F into two or more ZIP
files, even though Mijenix had said that PowerDesk was not really intended for
this purpose. (See point ___.) Option (4) did not seem possible. The only clean
partition on the machine was drive G (BURNING), which would have to be

enlarged from 700 MB to over 1,300 MB to accommodate a two-CD set. But then
I realized that I could copy the desired files over the network to the PENTIUM
computer and use DriveImage there to compress them, one at a time, into
relatively manageable PQI files. Then again, that had the same problem: GoBack
was installed on both machines, and besides, there would be some hassle and
extra time involved in copying all that data over in uncompressed form and then
moving it back in compressed form. I considered the possibility of altering
GoBack on the PENTIUM so that it would not put GOBACKIO.BIN on drive F,
but then I decided that I had been thinking of the ZIP approach as a significant
part of my backup strategy anyway (see point 202) and that I might as well begin
to get some experience with it and see how it worked. So I marked the desired
files on drive E and used PowerDesk to copy them into a file called
DRIVE_E.ZIP. Without GOBACKIO.BIN, the files being compressed amounted
to only about 265 MB. PowerDesk created the ZIP file in about ten minutes. It
was 146 MB, for a compression rate of 55%. Since DriveImage spoke generally of
a 50% rate and I had experienced a 54% rate even with previously compressed
program files included (see point 269(a)), this was a competitive but not superior
rate of compression, and if you consider the rebooting that DriveImage required,
this ZIP approach was probably at least as fast. I made ZIP copies of some files
on drive F as well, and also included a folder full of uncompressed WAV files
(which wouldnt compress very well), and now my F:\Temp\Backup folder
contained 1.3 GB, enough to fill two CDs. Indeed, depending on how precise
that 1.3 GB figure was (which I got from the folders Properties and also from
Size Manager (see point 135)), I might be slightly over the limit of what two CDs
could hold.
(d) Decision Regarding CD-Burning Technique. Previously, I had thought I
would be able to capture my essential program files on one CD, and had hoped
that there would be a more or less sharp distinction between the contents of that
first CD and the programs or other materials that might go onto a second backup
CD. (See point 162.) But that sharp distinction had never quite materialized. By
now, it was fairly clear that the entire route had consisted of just a series of steps,
and that the only sharp breaks had been those times when, more or less
arbitrarily, I had decided to burn a CD. Eventually, the size of the DriveImage
PQI files that held complete, compressed copies of everything on drives C and D
moved beyond the 650 MB limit, making it impossible to fit it all on one CD. So I
had not tried. The last CD I had burned had been the one containing STEP___.
Since then, I had merely been storing copies of the PQI files on one computer or
the other, shuttling them back and forth on the network. It now seemed time to
learn how to burn a two-CD set. The next question was which technique to use.
If the 1.3 GB of material to be backed up in this case (see point 269(c)) exceeded
the capacity of two CDs, then the burning process might render the second CD
useless. This seemed like a good opportunity to practice the technique of

burning some material to a CD and then returning to burn more later. I would
start with the 754 MB image of drives C and D (see point 269(a)), and then I
would come back and burn the other contents in subsequent passes, until the
second disk was full.
(e) Multisession CDs. I began by defragmenting drive F. While that was going
on, I used the PENTIUM computer to review the steps in the process in the Easy
CD Creator Help file. Help said this: A multisession CD is an ISO 9660 CD to
which data is added incrementally in more than one session, allowing you to
periodically add and update files and folders to your CD. So it appeared that I
would be using an ISO 9660 CD for this and also for future incremental backups
(see point ___), just as I had used it in the past to create bootable CDs. (See point
18.) The multisession referred, then, to the number of sessions on a single CD,
not to the number of CDs used in the backup process. I already knew, from the
bootable CD experience, that both of my drives could read those multisession
boot CDs, but I decided to test the results of this present effort on both
computers as well because Help said that only multisession CD-ROM drives
can access all the data on a multisession CD. Help also said, You can turn a
single-session CD into a multisession CD at any time by adding another session.
However, its best to decide in advance whether or not your CD will be
multisession, so that you can decide whether to record the first session in CDROM format (also known as Mode 1; see Glossary) or CD-ROM XA format
(Mode 1 or Mode 2). Regardless of which format you use, the second session
must be the same format as the first session. As I read further in Help, it
sounded like the multisession reading problem was mostly a problem for older
CD-ROM drives. They advised me not to mix CD-ROM and CD-ROM XA
formats on the same disk. They also made it sound like the XA format would
have at least a slightly better chance of being recognized as multisession on a
wider variety of CD-ROM drives, and that although plain old CD-ROM was the
standard, CD-ROM XA had better multimedia capabilities. So far, so good.
Things got a little murkier when I began to read the part about importing
sessions. Help said, With multisession CDs, normally you can view only the
files in the most recent session added to the disc; however, you can import
information written in the previous session -- meaning that the most recent
session contains all of the information from the last session written to the CD and
the new information you are adding. The word import was ambiguous: did
it mean that the second session would have to contain a physical repeat of the
material in the first session? Help further told me that I could import a session
other than the most recent one (whatever this meant) by selecting Import Session
from the Disc menu and choosing the session I wanted to import. Help said that
I would create the first session by following the regular instructions under the
How to Make a Data CD section, being sure to specify Mode 2: CD-ROM XA
under Properties | General, and would likewise apply the regular How to

Make a Data CD instructions for the second session. Fortunately, clearing up

this matter, I had previously printed an Adaptec report (REF# 990416-0049) that
offered the following points: if the CD is full or has been closed, you cant add
more data; otherwise, you set up the second session in the normal way, but when
you choose Automatically Import Previous Session under File | CD Layout
Properties | Data Settings, you are not recopying the previous contents; you are
merely linking the new session to the previous one. This report said, You can
continue to add more sessions to the CD until the CD is full. Just be sure to
import previous sessions (the default setting) so you can read all of the data on
the CD. Excellent. Just what I wanted. The Adaptec report warned, If you
receive a message after telling it to record that asks if you want to add a new
volume, the settings do not match -- that is, your data settings for the new
session are not the same as the settings for the previous session, in which case
you wont be able to read the previous session. So it would be important to use
the same settings consistently. Returning to the Help file under Easy CD
Creator, I learned that ISO 9660 disks would be readable on Macintosh and
Linux, whereas Joliet disks were readable only on Windows and DOS; but Joliet
allowed 64-character filenames while ISO 9660 allowed only eight plus three
letters or numbers plus the underscore (_) character. So since Help confirmed
that I had to use ISO 9660 for bootable CDs, it appeared that I might have a
rough time creating a bootable CD that would also contain my long filenames in
uncompressed form (i.e., not compressed into a DriveImage file with a simple
name like STEP_269.PQI), as I had been considering (see point 209).
(f) Burning a Two-CD Set and the Disc Image Option. While writing this
document, I had not used the Disc Image option in Easy CD Creator. A disc
image file was different from a DriveImage image file. DriveImage would create
a single PQI file that would hold all of the contents of a partition. As I had lately
seen (see point 269(b)), a DriveImage image file could be much larger than the
650 MB capacity of a CD. In other words, DriveImage really had nothing to do
with CDs. I had been burning DriveImage files to CD, but that was no different
than burning any other kind of file to a CD. A disc image, by contrast, was a file
created by Easy CD Creator (or other CD-burning software) to contain exactly
what would go onto a CD, in a format matched to the CDs own format.
Apparently there would be no guarantee that the thing would be defragmented,
especially if you were creating it on a fragmented hard disk, so you would still
want to defragment your disk before burning the CD; but at least the CDburning software would not be reaching all over your hard disk, trying to collect
all of the files (fragmented or not) that would go onto the CD, desperately
attempting to avoid a buffer underrun (i.e., a situation in which the CD burner,
which demanded a steady supply of data, would briefly run out of data and
would ruin your nice new blank CD, making it good for nothing but a beverage
coaster). I had not much emphasized defragmenting in my previous notes on the

subject of burning CDs (see e.g., point 18) because I had kept the separate
BURNING partition (see point 32) whose sole purpose in life was to hold up to
one CDs worth of data that I would burn onto a hard disk and then delete. That
is, it would be rare for me to be burning fragmented material from BURNING,
since its contents would be fresh new file copies that would not have been
broken up into a thousand pieces by editing or other tinkering. It now appeared,
however, that I would have to defragment before burning each two-CD set, since
the BURNING partition would not hold two CDs worth of material. It seemed
like it might be faster to enlarge BURNING, at least on the AMD machine, where
I had disk space to spare (see point 258(b)), so as to accommodate two CDs, and
then I would not have this problem anymore. The time was propitious; I had not
yet re-enabled GoBack, which would have to be disabled again before I could use
PartitionMagic. (See point 236.) Thus -- having learned that my funky
AUTOEXEC arrangement (see point 120(al)) would cause PartitionMagic to
forget what I had told it to do, if I issued the instructions into the Windows
version and then allowed it to reboot the system itself -- I rebooted into DOS and
told the DOS version of PartitionMagic to enlarge BURNING to 1,350 MB, taking
the needed space from the cavernous drive F (see point 258(c)) and still leaving it
with 7,421 MB. Then I moved the files I planned to put on CD into this partition
and worked from there. This seemed, once again, to eliminate the need to worry
about using the Disc Image option, which I thought was unlikely to be useful in a
multiple-CD context anyway.
(g) GoBack and PartitionMagic. After running PartitionMagic, I rebooted. I
thought that now might be a good time to revive GoBack. Even if it did crap out
on the large-file transactions I was contemplating, it still might save me in a
pinch if the timing was right and/or if I remembered to disable it when I was
working with large files. (See point 258(e).) On reboot, however, GoBack said,
GoBack (133): It appears as though the GOBACKIO.BIN file on disk 2 has been
moved to a different partition on this disk or the geometry of the disk has been
changed. This file will be deleted within it is no longer valid. So regardless of
whether I had disabled GoBack, the use of PartitionMagic to change the
geometry of the disk would wipe out any history that GoBack might have saved.
(h) Planning for Multiple CDs. After rebooting, I moved the contents of
F:\Temp\Backup (see point 269(c)) to the BURNING partition, drive G. Or not
all of them; I started with the 754 MB file I had named STEP_269.PQI (see point
269(b)), thinking that I would burn the others afterwards to experiment with the
multisession CD technique. (See point 269(e).) There remained one other
question: how was I supposed to tell Easy CD Creator to spread this 754 MB
DriveImage file across two CDs? Experience suggested that if I tried to cram it
into one, Easy CD Creator would not ask me if I wanted to split it up; it would
just reject my attempt to make the CD. One option would have been use the

DriveImage setting that would have allowed me to create the image in multiple
smaller files, but that solution would not work in the present scenario, where I
wanted to back up the entire contents of this F:\Temp\Backup folder (see point
269(c)) -- and of other similar future folders -- without worrying about exactly
how it would get divided. Yet as I looked further into the question, it did not
seem possible to do what I wanted. People recommended using the split option
in DriveImage, the split option in Norton Ghost (see point 2), or else coming
along afterwards and splitting with Slice32 (see point 141(i)), but I was having a
hard time finding backup software that would split up a file to the right sizes to
fill CDs during the actual CD-burning process. (It sounded like this might be
possible in Ghost and/or in the Special Edition of DriveImage, but I didnt
experiment with Ghost and I didnt have the special edition. See point 354.) I
thought there just had to be backup software out there that would do this; then
again, as I mulled it over, I thought I might be better off without it. Using tape
backup, I had experienced the situation where the chaining from one tape to the
next failed, and therefore I lost all of the contents of the second tape. (See point
___.) Maybe it was better not to worry about buying a program that would pose
this risk on CD. I decided to just go ahead with what I had: I would split the
oversize files and put them on two separate CDs manually, filling the second one
with other material if appropriate. Only, reading the material about Norton
Ghost, I decided I should continue to insure that at least a copy of DriveMagic, if
not the entire DOS_UTIL folder, was located on each CD containing the first part
of a PQI file. It seemed safer to copy the entire DOS_UTIL folder, so that I would
have all my DOS tools available in a pinch. Moreover, I decided to include a
copy of the contents of C:\Windows\Command in it. That folder contained a
number of utilities that I frequently ran (e.g., DELTREE, DOSKEY) without
thinking to myself that they were actually not in DOS_UTIL; they ran because
they were on the Path of executable statements on the computer (see point
141(q)), but there wouldnt be any such Command folder if I were restoring from
CD. This folder, which I renamed UTILITY in this context (leaving it as
DOS_UTIL on drive D because God knew I did not want to edit all of the batch
files that now referred to that folder), consumed slightly over 11 MB, so I decided
to limit the first segment of an overly large file to 640 MB.
(i) Disk Math. At this point, I finally took a moment to review my math. There
were eight bits per byte. People mostly used bits to measure transmission rates
(as in e.g., a 28 kilobit per second (kbps) modem), and they used bytes to
measure data storage, including hard disk calculations. Bits were measured in
standard thousands, but bytes were measured in binary thousands. That is, a
kilobit was 1,000 bits, but a kilobyte was 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 1,024
(i.e., 2 to the eighth power) bytes. Similarly, a megabit was 1,000,000 bits, but a
megabyte was 1,024 x 1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes; and a gigabit was 1 billion bits, but
a gigabyte was 1,024 x 1,048,576 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes. As an additional

source of confusion, you might think of 500 MB as 500 x 1,048,576 = 524,288,000

bytes, but sometimes it seemed that people were thinking of 500 MB as half a
gigabyte, in which case it would be 1,073,741,824 / 2 = 536,870,912 bytes. I
noticed that PowerDesk Explorer used the former definition of a gigabyte -- to it,
500 MB was simply 500 x 1,024 x 1,024. I could verify this by right-clicking on a
large file, choosing Properties, and comparing the number of bytes and MB it
would report as the size of that file. So if I wanted a file containing 640 MB, it
had to contain 671,088,640 (i.e., roughly 671 million) bytes.
(j) SLICE the Oversized Disk Image File. I made a backup copy of STEP_269.PQI
(see point 269(a)) across the network onto the PENTIUM machine. This took
maybe ten minutes. Then I used Slice32 to split the original file into segments of
640 MB and 79 MB. (See point 141(i).) (Fortunately, I was able to specify MB
instead of having to calculate bytes.) The program gave me the option of slicing
the original into chunks of a certain size (in this case, 640 MB) or else two equally
sized portions (which would have worked out, in this case, to around 385 MB
each). (The program would have allowed me to choose how many equally sized
portions I wanted, so I could also have sliced it into maybe 50 or a hundred little
nightmares.) In this case, I chose to slice the file into 640 MB chunks; the
program informed me that this would require two portions. The program did
not provide any onscreen indication of what it was up to; I just had to wait until
the hard disk stopped thrashing around. The slicing took only a few minutes. It
did not alter the original STEP_269.PQI file.
(k) Combining the SLICEd Files. SLICE32 produced three files: STEP_269.P00,
STEP_269.P01, and SPLICE32.EXE, which, as I knew from the old SLICE
program that I had used in DOS, was the utility that would combine these two
pieces back together again when I wanted to use them. This posed a problem,
however: if SPLICE32 was a 32-bit program, as its name implied, would it run
on a system that did not yet have Windows running? After all, restoring from
the DOS prompt was precisely the point of having this DriveImage PQI file in
the first place. I rebooted the AMD machine and tried running SPLICE32 from
the DOS prompt. Sure enough, it gave me the error message, This program
cannot be run in DOS mode. Well, what good was that? According to this
program, I would have to restore Windows before I would be able to restore
Windows! I wondered if I could use SPLICE32 across the network to manipulate
STEP_269, stored on one machine, while using the keyboard on the other
machine; but then I realized that the network connection would not even exist
until both machines were running Windows. (There might have been a way to
make the connection work in DOS, but the manual for my network cards (see
point 185) did not mention it, and I was not going to research that question now.
See point ___.) Next, I thought of using the old DOS version of SLICE and
SPLICE. The original SLICE, I would soon see, was copyrighted in 1989.

Ordinarily, SPLICE (in either the DOS or Windows version) would not exist until
you ran SLICE, but I had kept a copy of SPLICE from the last time I had run
SLICE, which appeared to have been in May 1997. I floppied it over to the AMD
machine and typed SPLICE. It informed me of the proper syntax, so I used that
information and tried again with SPLICE STEP_269.P00 F:\ and got the error
message that I was supposed to be splicing from removeable media (i.e., the
program was designed primarily to restore a huge file from a bunch of floppies).
I tried again, following the instruction to use the /R option to ignore this
requirement. I got the error message Wrong restore disk, insert number 01,
press any key ... I tried again with the .P01 file, but got the message, File
exists. I didnt know what that meant, so I decided that I probably had to use
the DOS version of SLICE before I could use the DOS version of SPLICE. To
avoid confusion, I deleted the 32-bit P00 and P01 files. Then I tried again, using
the DOS version of SLICE on STEP_269.PQI. The command was SLICE
F:STEP_269.PQI G: /R. Unfortunately, this version did not ask me how big I
wanted the chunks to be, nor how many there should be. It just started in with
the statement, Writing number 01. After a moment, it beeped and said, Next
diskette, Press any key ... I hit Ctrl-C to cancel out of that. I saw, now, that the
program had created a 21 MB file in the root of drive G. Why 21 MB? I had no
idea. It was named STEP_269.P01; that is, it started with file number P01 rather
than P00 as the 32-bit version had done. I wondered if the DOS version of
SPLICE would have worked if I had renamed STEP_269.P00 to be STEP_269.P01.
Since I had deleted that file, however, I would not have the opportunity to
experiment with that. I rebooted into Windows and deleted these various
extraneous copies of STEP_269, SLICE, and SPLICE. I concluded that my present
copy of STEP_269.PQI was useless unless (a) I restored it onto a system that
already had at least a temporarily working copy of Windows or (b) I obtained
some other file-splitting software that would work from the DOS prompt.
Realizing that I had been a bit hasty, I booted into DOS again to see what would
have happened if, instead of hitting Ctrl-C, I had humored the DOS version of
SLICE by Pressing any key -- would it have created another 21 MB file called
STEP_269.P02, and so on until it had slowly worked its way through the 754 MB
file known as STEP_269.PQI? Rethinking that question again, I decided not to
spend all day on that chore but, instead, to try again from the start, using
DriveImage to create a multi-part PQI backup of drives C and D.
(l) DriveImage Multi-Part PQI File. Back in DOS, I ran DriveImage and told it to
save an image of drives C and D to drive F. GoBack was no problem -- that is, I
did not have to worry about the extra bulk provided by the GOBACKIO.BIN
files -- because they were located on drives E and F. (See point 269(b).) The
DriveImage option to split the disk image file into multiple files was in the
Advanced Options area. It asked for the number of bytes, not megabytes, so I
calculated that as 640 x 1,024 x 1,024, i.e., about 671 million. (See point 269(i).) I

got Error # 58 again, and thus rediscovered the fact that GoBack would be a
problem -- that, in this case, it had to be disabled -- even when I was not backing
up the disk on which its GOBACKIO.BIN files were located. (See point 269(a).)
In lieu of rebooting, I tried using the GB_PROG.EXE file that GoBack had
mentioned earlier. (See point 269(a).) It just opened a screen with this message:
GoBack (300): To make changes to your GoBack installation, please run
SETUP.EXE from within Windows. If you wish to temporarily disable GoBack
or you are having problems starting your system, please reboot and press the
SPACE BAR from the GoBack startup screen. I took the latter approach again
and chose the Boot from Floppy option. I chose to boot from the Windows
Emergency Boot Disk, which created a RAM drive -- i.e., an imitation disk that
existed only in the computers memory. Experimenting, I deleted all files from
that RAM drive and found that its capacity was about 2 MB. I decided to try to
do more with RAM drives later. (See point ___.) I tried running DriveImage
again. Once again, I got Error # 58. This confirmed the experience of point 254: I
could not run DriveImage with GoBack enabled, even if I booted from the floppy
with GoBack drivers; the only way of running DriveImage was to disable
GoBack. I rebooted and did that, and was finally able to run DriveImage as just
described, with a comment in the Image File Comments box saying, First
multipart image. The DriveImage process took about an hour and produced
STEP_269.PQI (671 million bytes) and STEP_269.002 (86 million bytes).
(m) Testing the Split DriveImage Files. I rebooted and re-enabled GoBack. Reenabling GoBack had seemed odd and had irritated me slightly at the outset, but
it was now becoming a more familiar task. I went into Windows and networked
the two STEP_269 files over to the PENTIUM computer. For some reason, this
took an hour. After it was done, the hard disks on both machines kept on
thrashing for several minutes, and the mouse cursor was very slow; I suspected
GoBack was trying to get adjusted to these large file transfers. At other times, it
had given me the message, The disk activity now going on relates to safely
transitioning all disk changes into the file system. It should complete soon.
Perhaps GoBack had also been responsible for the great slowness in networking
these large files to the other computer; maybe it was also responsible for the
thrashing that had occurred at the start of my audio test. (See point 268.)
Anyway, over on the PENTIUM, I rebooted into DOS, and that stopped the
thrashing. I disabled GoBack, started DriveImage from a copy of DOS_UTIL that
I had moved to drive F, and selected its Restore Image option. I browsed to the
folder where I had put the two STEP_269 files. It found only the first one. The
Image File Comments (see point 269(l)) provided the only way of being sure it
was the right PQI file, since DriveImage did not show file sizes or dates. When I
gave the command to go ahead, DriveImage promptly returned Error # 29:
Cannot lock a locked drive. The DriveImage manual did not explain this error
message. I exited the program. DriveImage gave no option but to reboot, so I

did that. I got the message, Disk Boot Failure. I inserted a boot floppy, and
that worked. I looked at drive C, but the system showed me the contents of
drive D instead. I tried DriveImage from the floppy, and browsed back to drive
F, which had now become drive E, because the system was now showing drive C
as free space. Apparently DriveImage had been able to erase the previous C
partition but had not been able to put anything in its place. This time around,
however, booting from the floppy, it worked fine. I suspected that this was
because, last time, DriveImage had managed to take out GoBack, its enemy,
before dying. Drive C had provided less than half of the total number of
megabytes in the STEP_269 file, so I expected the transition from STEP_269.PQI
to the second partial file, STEP_269.002 (see point 269(l)) to occur sometime
during the restoration of drive D. This raised the question, though: what if drive
C had continued on into the second part -- would DriveImage still be able to
locate a backup of drive D that did not even have a toehold in the first part?
Anyway, the restoration of drive D went without a hitch. I rebooted the
PENTIUM machine and tried to re-enable GoBack. It gave me this message:
GoBack Install (316): You have requested to install GoBack on Drives E:, F:, but
these drives are on the same physical hard disk. If you continue, Goback will use
the first logical drive on this hard disk. Do you want to continue? I was not
sure what that meant; the GoBack manual had no list of error codes. It seemed to
be saying that GoBack would reinstall itself on drive C, which was definitely not
what I wanted. I chose not to continue. It told me that its re-enable had been
aborted. The machine booted into real DOS; I went to the GoBack program
folder and typed GB_PROG (see point 269(l)), but that accomplished nothing. (I
remembered, too late, that I was supposed to type GB_PROG /I.) I rebooted and
tried again to re-enable GoBack, and this time I told it to go ahead and continue
with whatever it was going to do. It indicated that it was Initializing GoBack
structures on Drive E, so I gathered that error message 316 had meant that
GOBACKIO.BIN would be installed on drive E rather than on drive F. I went
into Windows; I had to identify this computer as the PENTIUM rather than the
AMD (see point 181); that required me to reboot; but when I came back to
Windows again, everything seemed good. I deleted all copies of STEP_269 files
from the PENTIUM machine.
(n) Switching GoBack On and Off. (The actions described in this paragraph
occurred somewhat earlier, but I held off on reporting them until now.) Acting
on the suggestion that GoBack had given me regarding the option of turning it
back on by typing GB_PROG /I from the DOS prompt (see point 269(a)), I
decided to investigate whether there might be other DOS command-line switches
I could use for GoBack. There was nothing in the manual about them. I found
GB_PROG in the GoBack program file folder and tried typing GB_PROG /? for
information, but got the message that GB_PROG.EXE can only be run in MSDOS mode (code 503). I also found that disabling GoBack was not simply a

matter of clicking a button inside the program, as I had gathered from reviewing
the preliminary literature. (See point 236.) After clicking that button, I would
have to reboot, which at this point meant a delay of several minutes. In short, at
least one reboot would be necessary whenever I wanted to disable GoBack. Just
to be sure, I e-mailed the GoBack people at ___, and eventually got from them
the response that ___. Meanwhile, to experiment a bit further, I opened PrcView
(see point 263) and watched what happened when I right-clicked on the GoBack
icon in the system tray and selected the Close option: PrcView showed that
GBMENU.EXE shut down but GBPOLL.EXE stayed active. I went into Start |
Programs and clicked on the GoBack icon to start the program. This started
GBMENU again. I chose the Revert option. That ended GBMENU and started
GBDRIVE, which seemed to be the program that ran the GoBack Event Log. (See
point ___.) I tinkered on the computer for a minute, came back, and saw that the
Event Log was actively tracking events. So clicking Close on the system tray
icon had just gotten rid of the icon. I exited from the Event Log and took another
look at PrcView. GBPOLL was still active. Apparently I would need to kill that
process in order to get GoBack out of my hair without having to reboot first.
(o) Slowness Problems. Back on the AMD machine, I started to move
STEP_269.PQI to the BURNING partition -- which, I suddenly realized, did not
have to be larger than 700 MB after all, since I had not figured out any way to
turn Easy CD Creator loose on anything larger than 650 MB at one time. (See
point 269(f).) I decided to shrink BURNING back to 700 MB at the next
opportunity. I say that I started to move STEP_269.PQI to BURNING; I aborted
that process because PowerDesk Explorer reported that it was going to take 86
minutes. Having had enough of these slowdowns, both on the network and on a
hard drive within a single computer, I decided to find out whether GoBack was
the culprit. This was the point at which I closed the GoBack system tray icon, as
mentioned in the previous paragraph. With GBPOLL still active, I tried moving
STEP_269.PQI to BURNING again. This time, the counter got up to 56 minutes
before starting back down. Four minutes later, it had increased to 77 minutes.
After twelve minutes, when it should have been done, it said it still had 61
minutes to go. I canceled again and used PrcView to kill GBPOLL. The hard
disk thrashing and mouse slowness continued for a few minutes. I tried again to
copy STEP_269.PQI to G (BURNING). PowerDesk Explorer reported that this
would take 86 minutes. I canceled and ran the CD Burning Suite. (See point
263.) At first, the Suite seemed to wipe out a process that was causing the delays:
halfway through, the mouse became more responsive. But then Windows
Explorer reported that it would still take 86 minutes to move STEP_269.PQI to G.
I sighed and gave up. An hour later, I finally did have the file on drive G. I was
still getting disk activity, though, and the mouse was still slow, so I decided not
to burn the CD yet. Instead, I ran Defragmenter on drive G. I got an error
message: Windows cannot defragment this drive because it contains errors that

must first be repaired. Click Help, carry out the instructions for repairing the
errors, and then try defragmenting the drive again. Well, that was scary. I did
as instructed, but Help just opened up the ResKit CHM file (see point 145(n)) and
said, This page cannot be displayed. I rebooted into real DOS, disabling
GoBack along the way -- which, in this case, took perhaps a half-hour to finish
dismembering itself. I ran Norton Disk Doctor on drive G; it fixed lost cluster
and free space problems. I also took the opportunity to run PartitionMagic and
change the existing partition layout (see point 269(f)) by reducing drive G back to
700 MB. I went into Windows and promptly got the message that ScanDisk was
checking drive F for errors. This, too, went very slowly, presumably because
drive F was around 8 GB now. In fact, it went at a rate of about 1% every two
minutes. I hit the Exit button to skip that. The system did not respond. I
rebooted back to DOS. GoBack gave me its disk geometry error message 133.
(See point 269(g).) Presumably this was the cause of the near-freeze in ScanDisk.
I was not sure this meant I should follow GoBacks recommended way of
disabling it in the future: it did seem to have been screwed up, but then again, I
had previously used the PrcView process-shutdown approach on GoBack
without these problems. Anyway, I went ahead and ran a Norton Disk Doctor
test on F. I bailed out of the surface test; there were no errors otherwise. I went
into Windows smoothly. I concluded that the repeated work with large files
might have confused GoBack, and that its confusion might not have been good
for the hard disk as a whole. I decided to try to pay more attention to when I
would expect to be working with large files, and to disable GoBack at those times
and see how things worked that way.
(p) Burning Multiple CDs. I ran the CD Burning Suite again (see paragraph (o),
above) and used the same process as always to make a bootable CD. (See point
226.) Unfortunately, the CD burner balked with the message, Errors reported
by output device. In other words, I had created a coaster. This really surprised
me: I had no programs running that might have been responsible for that. I ran
Defragmenter on drive G and the system froze completely. Well, now I had
something of an explanation: you cant burn CDs on a system that has frozen. I
cold-rebooted and ran my Diagnostic Suite. (See point 160.) That turned up
nothing, so I ran the Cleanup Suite. (See point 153.) Drive G had gotten slightly
fragmented, but not enough to account for the failed CD. Maybe ScanReg or
some other part of the Cleanup Suite did it, but by the time it was done, the
mouse was not slow anymore and the hard disk had stopped thrashing. I tried
again to burn the CD, and this time it worked. I burned the second one two, no
problem. I had my backup. I rebooted, re-enabled GoBack, and resumed my
forward progress.
270. Fixing a Bad Backup. Unfortunately, it appeared that the system as I had
backed it up in STEP_269 was not a good one. I was still having problems with

both computers, now that I had installed it on the PENTIUM as well as the AMD
machine. The mouse did not respond on one boot on the AMD and I had to
reboot, and the PENTIUM was having problems with PowerDesk Explorer and
also with Winamp. I decided to set the AMD to use an earlier copy of the
Registry. Using the previous procedure, I went into H:\Backups and moved all
of the Registry backups except a few from the right timeframe (namely, the
morning of the previous day, about 24 hours earlier) into a temporary holding
folder. That way, ScanReg would have less than five to choose from. (See point
148.) As I was doing this move in PowerDesk Explorer, I noticed that there was
indeed an RBBAD.CAB file from the previous evening, when I had run ScanReg
as part of the Cleanup Suite. (See point 269(p).) In wanting to go back to an
earlier Registry, I was assuming that ScanReg will catch and repair many errors
but may not get them all. Then I rebooted into real DOS, ran SCANREG
/RESTORE, selected that copy of the Registry from the previous day, and
rebooted. Returning to DOS, I ran SCANREG /FIX, just to see if it reported any
problems with this newly reinstalled version of the Registry. When it was done,
it said, Windows successfully fixed your Registry, but maybe it always said
that. I looked at H:\Backups and saw no RBBAD.CAB file, so maybe that was
the acid test. Interestingly, the most recently created CAB file there, RB000.CAB,
was 6.1 MB, whereas all the other CAB backups were around 1.5 MB. Anyway,
now that I had restored the Registry, what should I do with it? I ran SCANREG
/BACKUP to make a backup copy, and after rebooting into Windows to get the
network connection going, I copied this new RB001.CAB, also 6.1 MB, to TEMP
folders on both computers. If I hadnt burned the CD in Disk-at-Once (DAO)
mode, which closed the disk, I might have been able to add this file onto the CD
with an explanatory note, but I figured if I tried now Id just get a message telling
me to insert a blank disk. Fortunately, the STEP_269 backup wasnt going to be
my final version, so eventually Id delete this copy of RB001.CAB and Id be fine
-- but if I needed to restore my system in the meantime, Id have to use the
kludge solution of restoring the system from CD and then using ScanReg to
restore this RB001.CAB copy of the Registry.
More Internet and Web Issues
271. Distinguishing the Web Suite and the Automated Website Opener. I had
begun to wonder exactly what I needed from the Web Suite. (See point 261.) I
had thought that I just wanted all of the pages to be open and ready for use when
I arrived in the morning. (See point 261(g).) But further experience with these
websites had shown me a couple of problems. Some websites -- for example, my
customized Weather Channel and CNN pages -- showed me exactly what I
wanted from them, without any need for further browsing. These, I decided,
could be opened at any time, e.g., 5:00 AM. The computer could then go ahead
and disconnect from the Internet, and I would still have what I needed. But

other websites required more than that. There were a couple of different subproblems here. The first involved passwords. Even if I found a way to get past
their password login screen, the problem would remain that I did not intend to
have the computer stay online from 5 AM to 7 AM, or 9 AM, or whenever I
might be able to pull myself away from whatever I was doing and focus on those
websites. So the machine would have been logged off by the time I actually got
to them, and now I would have to log in again; in short, my earlier login would
have been pointless. I decided, therefore, that passworded websites did not
belong on an automated website opener. Also, I used Deja.com to do most of my
newsgroup browsing. I certainly could set up a Deja link that would open the
proper Deja page automatically, showing me the lists of messages that people
had posted in various newsgroups; but I could not have the computer go further
and decide which individual postings would actually matter to me. I knew there
were programs that would take a website and would download all of the web
pages that that site referred to -- indeed, Internet Explorers synchronize
feature would do that -- but those programs really wouldnt work for my
purposes. Aside from the problem that it was not always easy to set them so that
they would not download either too little or too much material, my newsgroup
browsing experience told me that postings would often point to websites
containing the information I wanted, and would also give me ideas for other
searches that I might want to do at the moment. Moreover, there would be times
when I would be eagerly waiting for information and would want to check a
newsgroup more than once in a day. For all these reasons, I concluded that
newsgroup browsing was another thing that I would do live. Thus, I needed
two separate tools: the automated loader that would run early each morning,
and the Web Suite that would open certain websites only when I gave the
command.
272. WEBDAILY, the Automated Website Opener. I created WEBDAILY by
starting with the Web Suite and fixing some problems in it. First, I noticed that it
was not opening all of the webpages it was supposed to open. At first, I was not
sure why this was happening. I thought it might be because the batch files that I
had created to open these individual pages were not correct. (See point 261(b).)
But the Frequented folder icons were just shortcuts to these same batch files, and
the icons worked fine. (See point 261(e).) I noticed, however, that it took a few
seconds for the pages to open up properly after I clicked on their Frequented
icons, and I thought maybe the problem was that the Web Suite was trying to
open these pages too quickly. So I put these problem pages at the end of the
STE_WEB.BAT list of websites to open, and slowed down their opening with the
Delayer program. (See point ___.) The other thing was that I wanted to know
how to get the computer to dial up automatically only at the times when I
wanted to. Windows standard Dial-Up Networking (DUN) option seemed to
allow just black or white, always dial automatically or never dial automatically.

To fix this, I downloaded and installed NetLaunch. (See point 134(t).) (I chose
NetLaunch over DUNCE because the latter did not seem to have the flexibility I
needed, and also because its installation asked for my e-mail address and said it
would convey that address to its database, which I feared would mean some
unknown amount of spam e-mail.) I made a copy of STE_WEB.BAT, renamed it
to WEBDAILY.BAT, created a shortcut to it that specified that it would run
minimized and would close on exit, moved the shortcut to the Launch List folder
under the NetLaunch program folder, and told NetLaunch to run that shortcut
daily at 5 AM. Then I found that NetLaunch was running WEBDAILY every
time I went online, regardless of the time of day. To fix that, I removed the
shortcut from the Launch List and experimented with running NetLaunch
commands from the command line. I found that I had to have NetLaunch
enabled; that is, I couldnt remove its icon from the Startup folder or disable that
icon after loading. But as long as it was enabled, I could use NetLaunch
command-line instructions to connect and disconnect from my ISP. This
required me to schedule WEBDAILY through Task Scheduler rather than
through NetLaunchs internal timer, but I decided I would rather have it this
way anyhow. When I was done, the WEBDAILY.BAT file looked like this:
___WEBDAILY.BAT
Originally, I had Task Scheduler run a PIF file -- that is, I created a shortcut to
WEBDAILY and used that instead of calling WEBDAILY directly from Task
Scheduler -- because I wanted the batch file itself to vanish when it was done
loading the webpages. Later, however, I found that this was not necessary if you
set the Properties of the batch file to Close on exit and if the last line of the batch
file was CLS. Also, later, I found that this NetLaunch scheme wasnt working
right.
273. Manual Website Capture from the Scraps Folder. As I had previously
discovered (see point 120(s)), the Address box in Internet Explorer was located
about two inches away from the Scraps Toolbar, and there was a little icon at the
left end of the Address box that I could drag to Scraps to save the URL of the
website I was then viewing. Now, how could I best review those URLs later? I
had learned that the resulting URL file in Scraps was a DOS-readable plain text
file from which I might be able to extract the URL. Thus, I wrote the following
batch file:
___URLSCRAP.BAT
I started this file at the end of the WEBDAILY batch file shown in point 272 to
automate the process of sweeping out the Scraps folder each day and displaying

any websites that I had seen the previous day but had not had a chance to review
then.
274. Weekly Website Opener. There were other websites that I wanted to visit
occasionally. I decided to repeat the steps shown in point 272 for these sites,
changing things so that they would come up only once a week. My experience
with URLSCRAP (see point 273) nearly persuaded me that the best way to
handle these would be to create a separate folder of Favorites (see point 109(g))
called Weekly Favorites; then something like URLSCRAP could just go through
that folder and open everything in it automatically. But then I remembered that
some of the items in WEBDAILY (see point 272) had not opened properly until I
had introduced a Delayer command on the batch file line that opened them.
Having a URL batch file would also enable me to change my schedule and open
some of these websites at differing times (e.g., if it turned out that one was
updated every Tuesday, and another on the 14th of each month), without having
to create separate folders to hold their various URLs. For these reasons, then, I
decided that I would still prefer to create separate BAT files to open the items
that I wanted to see weekly, and therefore that I would just start with a version
of the WEBDAILY approach called WEBWEEK. I did that, using new BAT files
and PIFs for a couple of URLs that I knew I would visit weekly, and I set up a
Task Scheduler item to run the WEBWEEK.PIF shortcut. I decided to postpone
further work on this item, however, until I had worked through my Favorites
and had a better idea of which sites I wanted to see and when. (See point 327.)
275. Purpose of the Web Suite and Other Suites. The purpose of the Web Suite
had now been reduced to the task of opening websites that required passwords
or that might otherwise call for immediate reaction or further browsing; that is,
the Web Suite toolbar button would allow me to open webpages of daily interest
at whatever time of day seemed appropriate. (See point 271.) In thinking of the
Web Suite this way, I decided, more generally, that the purpose of my Suite
toolbars might be to contain sets of programs that I would probably run, as a
group, on a daily basis. In this light, the Web Suite did have something in
common with the Office Suite (see point 113(e)) and the Audio Suite (see point
260(d)). It seemed far less clear that the CD Burning Suite (see point 263) and the
Cleanup Suite (see point 153) belonged in that same group, since I was likely to
run those suites on more likely a weekly basis, not daily; and it seemed unlikely
that I would run the Diagnostic Suite (see point 160) even that often. These
thoughts suggested that I might review my Suites toolbar, and perhaps other
toolbars as well. Since the Web Suite did seem to fit, however, I decided to
postpone that general review of toolbars until later. (See point ___.) For right
now, I just adapted the STE_WEB.BAT so that the Web Suite would open the
websites that seemed likely to call for manual effort on my part (i.e., for

passwords, further browsing, etc.). This yielded the following version of

STE_WEB.BAT:
___insert STE_WEB.BAT
For STE_WEB, as for WEBDAILY and WEBWEEK, I would probably add other
items once I had sorted out my Favorites. (See point 327.) I still didnt manage
to get it to dial by itself, though. (See point 322.)
276. Canned Deja Searches. I generally did my newsgroup browsing in
Deja.com. My browsing had led me to use Deja in several different ways: I had
a custom, blank search page that contained my preferences (e.g., for the
preferred language and sort order); I had a canned search that showed my latest
postings, so that I could quickly review them to see whether anyone had
responded (since, at this point, the Deja Tracker feature that would notify me of
such responses was not working); I had a link in the My Deja area (i.e., my
private area in Deja.com) that led to one or two newsgroups that I liked to check
on a daily basis, to see whether anyone had posted anything interesting; and
there were some searches that I ran every few days or so. Going down that list, I
did not need to see my blank search page unless I had a specific search in mind,
and in that event I had a link in the Frequented folder (see point 261(e)) directly
to that page. I found that Deja did an adequate job of displaying the next two
items -- the canned search for my own postings, and the display of recent
postings in newsgroups of interest -- so I just made sure that STE_WEB (see point
275) contained links to the batch file shortcuts that would run those searches
when I was ready to go online. But I was not happy with the Deja output on at
least one other search that I would run periodically, and I decided to try to
improve on that situation.
277. Newsgroup Search for Items Posted in the Last Three Days. In the search
for automated solutions, I wanted a way to run Deja searches that would not
require me to enter the date period manually. That is, I wanted something that
would be smart enough to show me only those postings that were still alive and
kicking. Judging from the times at which other people had reacted to my own
postings, I figured that most of the current discussions in newsgroups would
involve messages that were not more than three days old. Thus, I sought a way
to tell Deja to show me everything that had been posted on a given subject
within the past three days. I didnt intend to create a full-fledged front-end for
Deja; all I wanted was to modify a search I had already made so as to change the
date portion of the search. To do this, I ran the Deja search and saved the URL
from the Address box in Internet Explorer. Then I created a batch file that would
examine that URL and change its Date component, so as to tell Deja which day
was three days ago. This required me to find a way of doing date calculations.

For example, if its March 1 and I want to search for items posted in the last three
days, the program couldnt just subtract 3 from 1; it would have to know how to
go back into February and count down from 28 (or would it be 29?) days in that
month. From Peter Meyers very informative website at
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/hermetic/cal_stud/jdn.htm, I learned that
the simple way to do this is to convert the date into whats called a Julian date,
which is the number of days that have elapsed since January 1, 4713 B.C.; and I
discovered that the simple way to make this conversion is to download the DOS
and Windows versions of Peter Meyers CALCONV program. (His site also had
tools for calculating dates about six million years in the past or the future, but I
didnt really need that for purposes of downloading newsgroup messages from
the last three days.) I tested CALCONVs output for a couple of different dates
by using the online Julian calculator at
http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/JAVA/JD.html. (Note that the online
calculator also calculated Julian times, where 0.5 meant halfway through the day,
although in this case it was an astronomical calendar, so they started the
calculation at noon rather than midnight). Then, with CALCONV in hand, I
prepared the following batch files:
___insert DEJA3DAY.BAT and supporting files when it works with % signs -question posted online -- should include the latest student loan and bankruptcy
related postings]___
278. Error Message: COMCTL32.DLL. Arriving at the computer one morning, I
saw this message onscreen: Error Starting Program. The COMCTL32.DLL file
cannot start. Check the file to determine the problem. Clicking OK
accomplished nothing; the error message box stayed onscreen. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del
and saw no Not responding indication; the highlighted program at that point
was Inbox - Microsoft Outlook. I closed almost every other process shown in
Ctrl-Alt-Del. When I killed POPROXY, the message disappeared. On reboot, I
went into PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saw that POPROXY ran from the
Norton AntiVirus folder; in fact, it was the only AntiVirus process running. The
computer had been running for several days at this point, which was a regular
marathon for Windows 98, and I thought that perhaps rebooting would solve the
problem. Also, I had recently downloaded an AntiVirus update, and I felt that it
might have contained a bug that would be corrected on a subsequent download.
I decided to wait and see if AntiVirus gave me further difficulties before taking
any action. (See point ___.)
279. GoBack Log Coverage. Curious about how the Event Log worked in
GoBack (see point 258(e)), I checked to make sure it was running. It was, and it
had now accumulated an Event Log stretching back about 42 hours. (See point
269(o).) I deleted a backup folder containing 400 MB of copies of files on drive F,

waited a minute for GoBack to finish digesting this fact, and saw that this had
not shortened its log much. Evidently the log just recorded the fact that this
folder would be in the Recycle Bin if the program needed it. I would examine
this again shortly. (See point 282.)
280. Outlook 98 Address Book. I had previously had some difficulties with the
Outlook 98 Address Book. (See point 166.) Reversing an earlier decision, I had
decided to keep my bloated old OUTLOOK.PST file. (See point 193.) But then I
ran into Outlook problems again. (See point 227.) I jumped through a lot of
hoops (see point 242) and finally wound up setting aside the old OUTLOOK.PST
and creating a new one. (See point 242(h).) This posed the problem that all of
my scheduling items, e-mail addresses, and other information were in the old
one. In Outlook 98, I went into File | Import and Export | Import Internet Mail
and Addresses | Outlook Express, but I saw the Finish button and realized
that the wizard was not going to let me indicate which folder I wanted to import
from. I tried again, using File | Import and Export | Import from another
program or file | Personal Folder File (.pst), where I was able to point to the old
OUTLOOK.PST file. The importation began. It continued. It took a couple of
hours. I did other things until it finished. (See point 282.)
281. Modem Problems: BIOS Setup Adjustments. While waiting for the AMD
machine to process the Outlook 98 Address Book, I went online on the
PENTIUM computer. Or at least I tried to. I got the message, familiar by now,
that said, Unable to establish a connection. (See point 232.) I made sure the
settings were right in Dial-Up Networking, and there were no modem-related
exceptions in Device Manager. It seemed that I would always receive that
message on the PENTIUM machine, and would always have to cold-reboot to get
rid of it. I might be able to get rid of it by replacing my ISA modem with one
that would fit into a PCI slot, but that would assume that I would have a PCI slot
available, and the alignment of slots on the back of the computer (not wanting to
take the cover off to be sure, and being too lazy to look through hardware
information online) seemed to suggest that the sound card, the video card, and
the network card had filled my three PCI slots. I assumed it would just make it
worse to bring the ISA sound card over from the AMD computer, since then I
would have yet another device incapable of sharing IRQs. Anyway, since I had
to reboot anyway, I decided to change a few things in the BIOS Setup while I was
at it, and see if this would make a difference. It seems like it might have, because
without thinking about it, I forgot to cold-reboot, and yet the modem was
available after a mere warm reboot. The BIOS Setup settings I changed were:
disable ACPI and USB; set modem to use IRQ 11; set IRQ 11 to Legacy ISA, not
Plug n Play; and change IRQ 15 from Disabled to Primary status. When I came
back to Windows, the modem worked. I checked Device Manager | Computer |
Properties and saw that the modem was indeed happily settled in IRQ 11.

Emboldened, I went to Device Manager and clicked on the S3 Legacy Relocator.

(See point 234.) I selected Properties | Enable Device and got the message, This
device is working properly. Just to be sure, I rebooted. Something seemed to
have killed the TweakUI setting for the network card (see point 263), so I reset
that. Device Manager showed no exceptions, so it looked like these BIOS
adjustments had done the trick. Finally! But not so fast. Soon, I found that the
S3 Legacy Relocator had taken over IRQ 11. Evidently it liked the Legacy setting
I had given to that IRQ. No problem; I rebooted and told the BIOS that the
modem would be in IRQ 5, and that it too would be a Legacy item, not Plug n
Play. On reboot, I saw that the SCSI scanner adapter card (see point 224(e)) had
grabbed IRQ 5. Well, that was logical; it was pretty old, and it probably
preferred a Legacy slot. I tried again, this time telling the BIOS to try putting the
modem in Legacy IRQ 3. Well, it decided not to do that. I saw that Device
Manager | Computer | Properties still showed no modem, and still showed
COM2 in IRQ 3. I tried removing COM2 from Device Manager | Ports, as
someone had once suggested. (See point 234.) At first, the system didnt want to
reboot. When I did a reset and tried again, it brought me back to Windows. This
time, IRQ 3 was simply gone from the list, and the modem was on IRQ 10.
Taking this as a hint, I rebooted, converted IRQ 3 back to PNP, and told the BIOS
Setup to put the modem in Legacy IRQ 10. Well, this was worse. The system
would barely even restart. I had to cold-reboot twice and warm-reboot once or
twice to get back to Windows, and when I got there, I saw that both IRQ 3 and
IRQ 10 were now gone, and the modem still wasnt installed! I tried going
backwards one step, converting IRQ 10 back to PNP and specifying that the
modem would be on IRQ 3, but on reboot both IRQs were still gone. I ran Add
New Hardware, and it detected that COM2 needed to be installed, but before
doing that, I chose the No, the device isnt in the list option. The installer only
gave me two COM port choices -- COM1 or COM2 -- so I figured it had probably
been a mistake to try to get rid of COM2, even though I had previously thought I
was using COM4. (See point 206.) The installer finished, and I looked at Device
Manager again. IRQ 3 was still gone. So was IRQ 10. The list of devices showed
a modem, but right-clicking Computer did not show me any IRQ for it. I tried
dialing out and got this: Error 630: The computer is not receiving a response
from the modem. Check that the modem is plugged in, and if necessary, turn the
modem off, and then turn it back on. Since it was an internal modem, I did this
by rebooting. But after reboot, the modem was still listed, but it still didnt have
an IRQ, and I still couldnt dial out. Suddenly, stimulated by simultaneous
events in point 284, I realized I could use GoBack to rescue me. GoBack
wouldnt have any effect on the BIOS, so before using it I rebooted and set things
to where they were earlier in this paragraph, before I had changed IRQ 11 to
Legacy and IRQ 15 to Primary. I noticed, on this less heavily used PENTIUM
computer, that GoBacks Event Log went back more than 60 hours. Here was
another odd thing: GoBack is unable to revert all of your hard disks to the

requested time. Would you like to revert just the currently selected hard disk?
I assumed this was because I had set the GoBack history file on the second hard
disk to such a tiny amount that there was nothing there to restore. (See point
___.) I had no problem with that, so I said OK, after first removing this
document and other files I had been working on from that computer, across the
network to the AMD computer. After rebooting, the system worked, the modem
worked, there were no exceptions in Device Manager, all of the IRQs were being
used, COM2 was back, and -- miraculously -- all three of my PCI cards were
sharing IRQ 10.
282. MSGSRV32 (Not Responding). This was different from the MSIPCSV Not
Responding problem. (See point 224(f).) I got this problem when Outlook 98
finished importing the old OUTLOOK.PST. (See point 280.) Or, not exactly.
What happened was that the system was not acting right, so I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del
and saw the message there. I could not start PrcView (see point 141(f)) to figure
out which program was responsible for this, because the system generally was
not responding much; I assumed it was a Windows file. I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to
end MSGSRV32, and the system came to life. Outlook spawned a million
Overdue reminder items, which told me that it had successfully imported my old
OUTLOOK.PST and was now expecting me to catch up with all of the scheduled
items that I had not been able to access for the past week or so. I had the
COMCTL32.DLL error message again (see point 278), so I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to
kill POPROXY, and once again that took care of it. I looked at the GoBack Event
Log, to see how the major transfer of the contents of 168 MB worth of old
OUTLOOK.PST data had affected it (see point 279), and was surprised and
pleased to see that its log still extended back to the same point in the past, which
was now about 46 hours ago. (See point 284.) The system was still acting a little
funky, though, and I wound up having to do a hard reboot.
283. Enter Network Password Problem. When I came back, I had to redo the
TweakUI thing for the Enter Network Password dialog box -- the one that said,
Enter your network password for Microsoft Networking -- as I had just done
on the other computer. (See point 281.) I wasnt sure why that thing kept
shutting itself off, so I went online, and it looked like I might have gotten it
backwards. (See point 199.) According to one guy, I was supposed to set
TweakUI | Paranoia | Clear Last User to off, not on -- that is, it was supposed to
be unchecked. (This turned out to be wrong; I had had it right the first time.)
This guy also said you could delete all PWL password files in C:\Windows and
delete any entries under the [Password Lists] section of SYSTEM.INI. I didnt
like that method as much as his third suggestion, which was as follows: (a)
Check the button in Control Panel | Passwords | User Profiles | All Users; (b)
select Control Panel | Network | Configuration | Primary Network Logon |
Windows Logon; (c) reboot once or twice; and (d) fill in the network password

dialog box when it comes up, which it should do only once more. Using the
PENTIUM machine, I decided to try this option instead of TweakUI this time and
see whether it worked. When I rebooted, it did work, and to my surprise the
network connection with the other computer was still there. I tried the same
thing with the AMD machine, but it froze and I had to reboot. Next time, it was
still there, and I realized that I had hit Enter twice, thus ignoring the message
that told me I would not be asked again if I didnt enter a password. (That is, it
evidently took the Enter key as an indication that I wanted my password to be
the null password, consisting of no password, which is not even null. For further
information on nothingness, review the existentialist philosophy of Martin
Heidegger.) I rebooted again, doing it right, and after that, it all worked OK and
the network connection was still there. I revisited this issue again later. (See
point 305.)
284. OUTLOOK.PST Re-migration. When I looked at Outlook 98 after importing
the big old OUTLOOK.PST file (see point 282), I saw that E:\Messages, where
the OUTLOOK.PST folder was supposed to reside, now contained subfolders
Mail and News, and the Mail folder was where the old one had installed itself.
So now I had to figure out how to combine the small, new OUTLOOK.PST in
E:\Messages with the large, old OUTLOOK.PST in E:\Messages\Mail. But after
rebooting (see point 283), I saw, inside of Outlook 98 that I now had two Personal
Folders, each containing approximately the same subfolders. I decided to try
cutting messages from the folders under one Personal Folder and moving them
to the eponymous folders under the other Personal Folder, starting with the
Inbox. I feared this would create duplicates of all those items; I could only hope
that I would find a way to remove them someday. (See point ___.) Sure enough
-- duplicates! Thousands of them. Access would get rid of them, but Outlook
couldnt. Unfortunately, I had learned previously that you had to use certain
programming techniques in order to export Outlook 98 e-mail messages with
dates to Access format. You could export them without dates easily enough, but
I felt that I would need to export the dates too, partly because Id want to include
the dates in the final archived version of all these e-mail messages, and partly
because Id need the dates to be sure I was eliminating the right duplicates. I
pondered the question of learning the appropriate programming techniques and
returned to it later. (See point ___.) In the meantime, I did not repeat the
mistake of combining duplicate subfolders from these two Personal Folders in
Outlook 98. It took me a while, but I managed to combine the two sets of
subfolders into one, by moving, deleting, etc. I tried to close the one that I had
emptied out, which was higher on the list of the two folders, but I got a message
saying something like, You cannot close the Personal Folder that contains your
contacts etc. So I tried closing the other one, the one lower on the list, which
now held all my e-mail messages. To my horror, it closed just fine, and vanished
from sight. Apparently I should have done the moving from the lower one to the

higher one. I suddenly remembered that I could use GoBack to revert me to a

point before I began doing all this screwing around and creating duplicate e-mail
entries etc. GoBacks Event Log had now become significantly compressed,
thanks to the large number of large file changes I had made: the log stretched
back only about 12 hours now. (See point 282.) Before using GoBack to revert
back, I looked at the file situation. It told me that I now had one copy of
OUTLOOK.PST and it was over 200 MB. It had been 167 MB before; the
duplicates had evidently bulked it up quite a bit. I decided reverting was just the
thing for me. With GoBack, I went back about an hour and a half and looked at
things then. Everything was good. This time, I combined the subfolders inside
Outlook 98 the other way around, and when I was done, the one Personal Folder
had all of my messages, contacts, etc.; and although Outlook 98 had put some of
its files in E:\Messages and some in E:\Messages\Mail, there were no duplicate
files.
Problems with OptOut and GoBack
285. Startup Folder Additions. I added a copy of the Outlook 98 icon to the
Startup folder under Start | Programs. I set its Properties to run Minimized; I
might want it to open Maximized if I had shut it down and was now restarting it
from the Internet Toolbar (see point 120(ae)), but I didnt need it in my face every
time I rebooted. (I hoped that being minimized wouldnt keep it from popping
up any scheduling reminders I had set in it, though.) While I was at it, I added a
copy of PowerDesk Explorer to the Startup folder and minimized it too.
286. Mouse Tweaks. I had set the mouse speed previously. (See point 120(y).)
Someone had recommended COOL MOUSE 97 as good mouse enhancement
freeware. (See point 140(a).) I hadnt followed that recommendation, but had
instead installed Logitech Mouseware 8.2 for the Logitech mouse on the
PENTIUM computer (see point 224(d)). (I later found that Cool Mouse does offer
an additional feature: you can use the middle button to roll a window up to
show just its title bar; but I decided that minimizing a window to the taskbar was
good enough. Cool Mouse also offered the opportunity to use the middle button
to bring up a Windows features menu, but I figured that (a) I probably had
another way of accessing most of the Windows features I wanted and (b) since
only one of my mice had a middle button, I might not be able to install this as a
standard feature on my system anyway.) Later, I had happily discovered that
the Mouseware software also worked, and enabled two-button scrolling, on the
Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD computer. (See point 255(c).) Now I wanted
to finish up my mouse tweaking. The only thing I considered using TweakUIs
mouse settings for was to change the speed at which the computer responded to
a double-click, so that my sometimes-retarded double clicks wouldnt be
interpreted as two single clicks (i.e., select this file, and now change its name).

But as I thought about it, I decided that this hadnt been much of a problem
recently, and that I would just as soon not risk that this would be one of the areas
in which TweakUI might have problems. (See point 109(c).) Next, I went to
www.logitech.com and downloaded Mouseware 9.0. I installed it, rebooted, and
went through the same Logitech mouse setup options as when I had installed
Mouseware previously. Next, the site at
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/mouse/2.shtml described how you could use
the PS2Rate program to adjust the mouse sampling rate, which was somewhat
mysterious but evidently led to really noticeable improvements. Since only the
Logitech mouse on the PENTIUM computer was a PS2 mouse, however (the
Microsoft Intellimouse on the AMD computer was a serial mouse), I would not
be able to use this program on both computers. Then again, that Tweak3d site
told me that I didnt need to bother with PS2Rate if I had a Logitech mouse.
They provided instructions on a Registry edit that would affect only the Logitech
mouse. Those instructions were as follows: in Start | Run | REGEDIT, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Logitech\MouseWare\CurrentVersion\
Technical\. On the PS2ReportRate item, right-click, choose Modify, and enter 80
or 200. I decided to try 80. Supposedly this was going to make the mouse
operate more smoothly. I made this change on the AMD machine, where I was
making all these changes and where I would be making the next DriveImage
disk image (see point ___); it would be some time, however, before I would have
a chance to test it on the Logitech mouse. (See point ___.)
287. Error in Archive Directory. I had downloaded a zipped copy of QBASIC, or
at least I thought I had. When I tried to look in it or open it, however, I got this
error message. I also found I couldnt delete the file in Windows. Ultimately, I
had to reboot into real DOS and delete it. I didnt try doing it in a DOS box;
perhaps that would have worked as well.
288. Overclocking. After considering it, I decided not to try overclocking my
CPU. I realized that it could make a real difference in performance and that my
Soyo 5EHM motherboard was built for it. My decision was based on the sense
that it would require more time to learn how to do properly, more expense
(primarily for a $20 cooling fan), more risk of damage to my hardware, and more
potential bugs than it was worth. I also thought, however, that I might try it
when my hardware was a little older and I was more willing to gamble with it.
At that point, I felt, overclocking might actually be fun to try.
289. OptOut and Aureate Media. Around this time, I became aware of a
discovery that people were making, that when you would install or run various
programs that you might download or purchase, there might also be a program
running from a company called Aureate Media, and that this Aureate software
would take information about your and/or your computer and send it back to

some marketing office. People didnt like the idea that this kind of program was
being installed without their realizing it, and that information about them was
being collected in an essentially secret way, and of course they also didnt like
the fact that the Aureate software was evidently causing some kinds of crashes.
Steve Gibson, author of other software I had used (see point 242(g)), created a
piece of freeware called OptOut, which was supposed to enable you to remove
these kinds of spy programs from your system. (He was clearly proud of his
software which, he said, was written in tight assembly-language code and did
not bloat and overload a computers system like much modern software did.) As
I recalled, I had seen the Aureate logo somewhere around my screen at one time
or another, so I decided to download and run this OptOut program. No
installation was necessary; it was just a utility that would run when you clicked
on it. Seeing that, I decided to add it to my Diagnostic Suite. (See point 160.)
When it ran, it first did a Registry scan, and then you could continue to a Deep
Scan that would review your disks for files infected by what it called these
parasite programs. Then it gave me the option of deleting the files and
Registry entries that ran these files. It warned me that this would probably cause
programs to cease functioning if they depended on the Aureate software.
Relying on GoBack to save me if this went really sour, I decided to give it a whirl
and see what programs, if any, did depend on the Aureate software. I clicked on
the Delete Them button. At the end, I was impressed, and I read the other
information provided by Steve Gibson. The program mentioned that it was
time-expiring freeware. I didnt mind this euphemism for shareware, as
long as it wasnt the kind of shareware that got installed, gave me reminder
notices, and then became a bear to uninstall when the free time period was up (if
I then decided not to buy it, which had usually but not always been the case). I
got a Blue Screen of Death from Windows after leaving this OptOut program,
and decided to reboot Windows just to be safe. Evidently this program actually
worked, and for that very reason, I later wound up thinking about using GoBack
to reverse this operation. (See point 294.)
290. Zero Fill Utility. I had not yet thrown away the Western Digital hard disk
that I had found to be hopelessly defective. (See point 256(b).) I had heard about
zero fill utilities but had not been quite sure what they were. By now, however,
in the course of other pursuits, I had found that this kind of utility is something
that goes into a hard disk and attempts to write every bit of it with zeros. This is
good for testing and also for making sure no one else gets your data. I was just
about to download the specific zero fill utility for my drive, assuming I had not
done so already -- note that each hard disk manufacturer has its own specialized
zero fill utilities -- but then I decided this was a waste of time, and therefore did
not bother.

291. GoBack Bugs and Fixes. People online suggested that, if you were running
GoBack and getting Fatal Exception Error on a blue screen, you should use
MSCONFIG | Startup (or you could use Start Manager -- see point 158(b)) to set
GoBack Polling so that it wouldnt run at startup. In MSCONFIG or Start
Manager, they said, you would also remove the check marks from RUN= and
from Description of Shortcut. I wasnt sure I needed to do this yet, so I held off,
even though the person advocating this solution said that it just had to do with
checking for updates to GoBack, not for anything related to the purposes for
which you would ordinarily want to use GoBack. Someone else said that
GoBack had knocked out the Suspend to Disk file on his laptop, but that he
hardly used that anyway. I responded by posting my GoBack wish list on a
Gateway newsgroup; it sounded like Gateway computers were having a special
problem with GoBack and that some Gateway owners had stopped using it. I
had not succeeded in finding a way to shut down GoBack through a batch file,
other than to simply kill the running processes and hope that this did not confuse
the hard disk. Thus, I had to give up on the idea of turning GoBack on and off
automatically whenever I would run the Audio Suite (see point 260(d)), where I
would almost surely be working with large files that would kill the GoBack
history log. I decided, for now, to experiment with the same approach as that
which I was using in the CD Burning Suite (see point 263), where I just killed the
GoBack processes along with everything else and then took my chances. The
alternative would have been to insert an instruction, at the start of the Audio
Suite, to remind myself to disable GoBack manually (which involved clicking on
the programs icon in the system tray and choosing Options | Disable GoBack,
which would then reboot the system) before proceeding further with that Suite.
292. Missing Newsgroup Posts. Having posted a bunch of notes online, I felt
like Deja.com might be failing to report some of them. I fired up Outlook
Express (see point 37) and looked in one of my favorite newsgroups, to see if OE
would show more posts than Deja did. Well, to my surprise, OE showed less! I
did a Deja search for comments on this phenomenon and found that some people
were saying that this was a problem that involved a flaw in OE and/or a failing
by peoples Internet Service Providers (ISPs). I heard about another newsgroup
reader called Free Agent. ZDNet gave Free Agent a five-star rating, so I
downloaded and installed it. It went online and downloaded a list of
newsgroups from my ISP, and then I searched for posts in that same newsgroup.
I didnt find any more messages than Outlook Express had found, so I concluded
that the problem lay with my ISP, not with OE; and I was more accustomed to
OE, so I decided I would keep this Free Agent program in reserve and would
probably not use it very often.
293. Invalid Go!Zilla Installation. I had been using Go!Zilla for quite a while.
(See point 156(c).) But now, while trying to do a download, I suddenly got an

Invalid Go!Zilla Installation error message. I thought it was probably caused

by the fact that some other program had malfunctioned during a recent Go!Zilla
download. No problem; I uninstalled Go!Zilla and prepared to reinstall. It
turned out to be not quite that simple. When I tried to reinstall Go!Zilla, I
noticed the Aureate logo in the background. So thats why it wasnt working -OptOut had removed part of its files! (See point 289.) Now I faced a decision:
did I want to reinstall Go!Zilla and risk the crashes and privacy issues that
Aureate supposedly involved; or did I want to search elsewhere for a free
downloader; or should I just stay with the standard Windows way of
downloading, which wasnt perfect but wasnt really bad? ZDNet said that Net
Vampire, too, was ad-supported in its free version. (It seemed that you could
avoid the Aureate problem by buying the paid version of these programs.) I
supposed that Net Vampire, too, probably used Aureate Media. It seemed that I
would have to accept that advertising was going to be the way in which these
people could afford to provide this software for free. Besides, I couldnt recall
that I had had any crashes specifically linked to Aureate. So it seemed that I had
probably just cost myself a lot of extra time, by using the OptOut program to
remove Aureate Media advertising, in the sense that I would now have to
reinstall Go!Zilla and other useful programs that OptOut had damaged. (See
point 289.)
294. Using GoBack under Adverse Conditions. I thought that perhaps I should
roll the system back to the point before I had run OptOut. Unfortunately, I had
done a number of different things since then. As far as I could remember, I had
moved files, written e-mail messages, changed documents, saved Favorites in
Internet Explorer, and performed several other little tasks. If I used GoBack now
to restore the system to the state that it was in before I used OptOut (see point
293), which of these various little tasks would be lost permanently? I probably
wouldnt have to roll back both of my hard drives -- as I recalled, GoBack would
let me roll back just one or the other -- but that wouldnt entirely solve the
problem. I had data on the first hard disk too, in its drives C (WIN98), D
(PROGRAMS), and E (DATA); and if GoBack was going to roll back the program
files on those drives, it would also roll back the data files on those drives. For
instance, I would lose the new additions to C:\Windows\Favorites. I didnt
mind making copies of some data files, and then restoring those files after
GoBack was finished taking the system back in time. The question was, for
which data files would I have to do this? It seemed like it should be easy enough
to answer that question: I would just locate the point on GoBacks Event Log
where it said that I had run OptOut, and would review the log to see what I had
done since then. I did not want to take my disk back in time any further than
necessary, because I could not be sure what program or data files might be
affected in ways I did not anticipate; then again, I did not want to be too
conservative, working up through the list too slowly, because it could take a long

time to go through a dozen revert-and-reboot efforts. The problem here, I

discovered, was that I could not figure out exactly when I had run OptOut. For
some reason, the GoBack Event Log contained no mention of the actual running
of OptOut. I guessed that maybe OptOuts assembly-language coding (see point
289) meant that OptOut functioned in ways that GoBack could not detect. So the
best I could do was to find the point in GoBacks Event Log when I was trying to
reinstall Go!Zilla. Things probably would have been clearer, there in the Event
Log, if I had been inserting Note entries into log, saying things like Beginning
Go!Zilla Reinstallation. Right before I was ready to proceed with the rollback to
the reinstallation point, I discovered that GoBacks View | Use Filters item was
checked. I unchecked it and found that now I had too much detail. I went into
View | Edit Filters and removed the default entry that said, Dont display file
activity in C:\WINDOWS, and to replace it, thinking of the Registry files
USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT (which changed frequently), I added an entry for
DAT files that said, Dont display file activity for files with these extensions.
Then I rechecked the Use Filters option. I tinkered with the options some more
to focus the Event Log on the stuff that interested me. After thus learning how to
adjust the filters, I realized that I knew now what I was looking for. I was
looking for the time when OptOut changed Go!Zilla. That is, even if there was
no mention of OptOut itself, at least there might be a mention of Go!Zilla. Sure
enough, at 10:10:55 AM, something -- I believed it had to be OptOut -- had
deleted a file named Go!Zilla\Advert.dll, along with several other files with
Ad in their names. (More on GoBack in point 297.)
295. Revisiting MSIPCSV.EXE. Interestingly, at the time when Advert.dll was
deleted, GoBacks Event Log said that the file named
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSIPCSV.EXE was deleted too. Now, the discerning
reader will recall that this MSIPCSV file had appeared in Not responding
dialog boxes several times previously. (See point 200 and point 224(f).) I
wondered if MSIPCSV was a common file that might appear in several different
places around my various drives. I searched for it and found none. There had
been just this one and only copy, and OptOut had seen fit to delete it. (See point
289.) Where did this file come from? I checked the Win98 FileInfo program (see
point 119(a)); it showed no such file in the original Windows 98. I also checked
Bob Cerelli's list of Win98 files. (See point 166(d).) It, too, showed no such file.
So I didnt get MSIPCSV.EXE from Windows. Then again, I had had it for a
while. I checked the last file list that I had prepared while making a DriveImage
backup. (That habit of making file lists had evidently died after the STEP_165
image backup. See point 165(b).) That list did show a file called MSIPCSV.EXE.
So some other program had added MSIPCSV after the original Windows
installation, and Steve Gibson, who programmed OptOut, had decided that
MSIPCSV was related to Aureate Media or some other spyware. To narrow it
down a bit further, I looked at the previous CD, containing STEP_152.PQI. (See

point 152.) MSIPCSV existed there too. But it did not exist on the file list
accompanying the next previous CD, containing STEP_132.PQI. So MSIPCSV
had come into existence sometime between point 132 and point 152. The
freeware I had installed during that period included X-Setup (see point 137),
EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)), Clean System Directory (see point 141(e)),
PrcView (see point 141(f)), Clipboard Pile (see point 141(h)), Cacheman (see point
141(n)), Fax4Free and eFax (see point 141(p)), CloseAll (see point 141(s)), CabWiz
(see point 141(u)), and Delayer (see point 141(v)), as well as certain programs
from Microsoft, WinMag, and PC Magazine that I doubted were affiliated with
Aureate Media. Although Go!Zilla had displayed a connection with Aureate, it
was not on this list -- that is, I had not installed it until later. (See point 156(c).)
So unless one of these other programs was also connected with Aureate, or
unless I had installed Go!Zilla during this period but had gotten my notes out of
order (which was possible), the MSIPCSV.EXE file seemed like it must have come
from some other kind of spyware. Later, I noticed that OptOut searched for
these files in particular (although I was not clear on whether it deleted them
automatically, examined them before deleting, or merely innoculated some of
them): ADIMAGE.DLL, ADVERT.DLL, ADVERT203.OCX, ADVERTX.OCX,
AMCIS2.DLL, ANADSC.OCX, ANADSCB.OCX, C:\WINDOWS\AMC\*.*,
some or all files in C:\WINDOWS\AMCDL (couldnt tell for sure which ones),
HTMDENG.EXE, IPCCLIENT.DLL, MSIPCSV.EXE, TADIMAGE.DLL, and
TFDE.DLL.
296. Potential Aureate Media Affiliates. I now revisited each of the programs
just listed and ran them briefly, to see whether they all worked or whether,
instead, they gave me strange new error messages as Go!Zilla had done. (See
point 293.) In the latter event, I would suspect that their sudden new failure was
due to the fact that OptOut had just removed some of their program files. I had
uninstalled Fax4Free and CabWiz, so I did not test those. None of the others
seemed to malfunction. eFax displayed some ads, but they seemed to be built
into the program. Unfortunately, I did not have an incoming EFX file to test
eFax on. Perhaps it, or one of these other programs, would display at least
partial failure to function, now, if I used it more extensively. On the other hand,
as I thought about it, I realized that Go!Zilla might have continued to function
after removal of the Aureate stuff. That is, I had quit using Go!Zilla when I had
gotten the surprising message shown in point 293; but as I recalled now, its
download screen had popped up anyway. Perhaps Go!Zilla would have been
able to go ahead and download files for me, and I would have just had to click
the OK button to get rid of the possibly bogus Invalid installation error
message. Anyway, now it appeared that OptOuts removal of Aureate software
had not deprived me of any of these programs, and I had no idea where
MSIPCSV.EXE had come from, unless perhaps from one of the programs that I
had since uninstalled. Of course, OptOut could have also damaged any number

of other programs that I had installed before point 132 or after point 152 (see
point 295); I would not know unless I ran all those programs. Or, I realized,
OptOut might have offered a log (I couldnt remember for sure), which I might
have reviewed before proceeding with the program, to investigate more
carefully what damage I was about to do. I looked now for a file with a name
like OPTOUT.LOG, but could not find one; evidently the log (if any) had been
available only temporarily.
297. A Choice: Freeware and/or Spyware. I now faced a decision of what to
risk losing. Either I could do a GoBack reversion or I could go ahead from where
I was, having used OptOut to disable some programs. If I did the reversion, I
would risk losing the relatively small number of data file changes that I might
fail to back up (since GoBack would return my system to the time before I had
made those changes); and I would have my freeware and my spyware back in
place; or if I went ahead from this point, I would risk that an unknown (but
hopefully small) number of freeware downloads that had used Aureate Media or
other spyware would no longer function. (For more on GoBack, see point 298.)
On one hand, I had some evidence that MSIPCSV had caused problems for me,
and was linked with the spyware that OptOut had removed (see point 295), and
of course I did not like the concept of software that might be spying on me; on
the other hand, what if it turned out that I had now lost, or would eventually
lose, access to some really important or useful freeware that happened to be
affiliated with Aureate Media or some other spyware? To help me in this
decision, I ran OptOut again and followed the link to Steve Gibsons website at
http://grc.com/optout.htm. There, I saw that he had inserted a new
preliminary statement indicating that he could not be certain whether Aureate
had, or had not, ever actually transmitted personal information about a user back
to Aureates computers. The important word there was personal, as distinct
from demographic. Apparently the whole purpose of Aureate was to transmit
information about the user (whose name and private data (definition not clear)
was probably not communicated), so that Aureate would know which ads to
display on which machines. Or at least that was how Symantec had described
the behavior of Radiate, which seemed to be another name for Aureate. Gibsons
page also provided a link to
www.aureate.com/advertisers/network_members.html, where Aureate gave a
list of the programs currently using its software. That list included Go!Zilla,
NetVampire, and Grafula (see point 299), WebStripper (see point ___), and many
others -- more than 400 programs altogether, according to Steve Gibson. The list
included some programs that I had installed on the AMD machine before
starting this project but had not reinstalled -- leading to the question of whether
that was how I had gotten MSIPCSV -- i.e., whether I could have accidentally
copied over some files from the old system to the new, or whether the Aureate
software could perhaps have propagated itself from the backup of the old drive

C that I had kept on drive H. (See point 169.) This list told me that there were a
great many ways to catch spyware -- where I use catch in the sense of coming
down with a cold -- but it also told me that, after having downloaded so many
different programs, there were surprisingly few that I had downloaded that were
actually infected. Thus, Aureate seemed like something I could avoid. Yet the
question remained, how important was it to do so? Gibson seemed to have been
backing off, possibly in response to threats of litigation. Of course, given the
reports of legal action recently commenced against DoubleClick, which was
apparently a spyware company that had been accused of crossing some
boundaries in this area, I suspected that the Aureate people would be careful
about actively taking information from peoples private computers, and that
seemed to be the underlying message of Gibsons preliminary statement as well.
My real question, I believed, was this: does this stuff pose a risk of instability to
my system? I had been trying to build a stable system, and I didnt need to
sacrifice that just for the sake of having something like Go!Zilla. Anecdotal
evidence from Gibsons site suggested that users had experienced Internet
Explorer crashes that ceased after they used OptOut. As I recalled, I too had
experienced some such crashes since beginning this project, although I had
grown so used to them in the past few years that I hadnt even bothered
analyzing them in this document. Moreover, I found Internet Explorer crashes to
be far more debilitating than e.g., Word crashes, because while I could set Word
so that it would rarely lose an entire document that I had been working on for a
long time, I had no way of keeping a simple snapshot of the open Internet
Explorer sessions that I might have accumulated, during an hour or more of
browsing. If IE crashed, I would generally have to use Internet Explorers
History function to manually review all of the pages I had opened that day, in
hopes that this would bring me back to everything that I had been searching out
online at the moment of the crash. So the prospect of avoiding Internet Explorer
crashes appealed powerfully to me. Apparently the link with IE existed because
Aureate ran as a parasite on the Internet browser. Some people also seemed to
experience problems with Outlook Express, which was apparently closely related
to IE. Considering Gibsons other software offerings, I gathered that his
approach was to offer OptOut as a temporary piece of freeware, gain much
attention for the issue, and then begin offering OptOut as shareware that would
produce some income for him. Of course, as the programmer of SpinRite, he was
someone worth taking seriously. Nevertheless, seeking opinions that were not
presented on his website, I did a Deja search. Did I get an earful! The opinions
ran overwhelmingly in favor of getting rid of Aureate, even if that meant losing
some freeware too. I thought some of those reactions might be initial hysteria
against the secrecy aspect of Aureate; I really did not find too many comments
focused on the crash-provoking aspects. Back on the newsgroup available
through Gibsons own website, there were scads of postings, mostly supporting
his general approach. I saw a post from him where he said the OptOut response

had buried him and was costing him quite a bit; I didnt finish reading the
message but it sounded like he thought he might eventually commercialize
OptOut. Under threads labeled Performance Gains and Side Effects, I found
a number of comments indicating that still more people had experienced
performance improvements after removing Aureate. Some people thought that
they could solve the problem just by deleting the ADVERT.DLL file (see point
294), but others said this wasnt enough because Aureate would automatically
reinstall it, or something like that. I decided Id try that approach if I became that
eager to find a way to keep Go!Zilla. Finally, various posts persuaded me to
download AdSubtract from www.adsubtract.com (see point ___), and I also
decided to consider spending $50, someday, to obtain the ComSeal Firewall. In
the meantime, it appeared that my first instinct had been the right one after all: I
was not going to allow Aureate-linked software on my computer, and therefore I
would be moving ahead without first trying to resurrect the previous state of my
machine.
298. Major GoBack Rumor. According to one posting I found during my
browsing, it was important to disable GoBack before attempting to run
SCANDISK or DEFRAG. According to this advice, DEFRAG and/or SCANDISK
would sometimes scramble the GoBack history file (presumably meaning
GOBACKIO.BIN) and would trash the hard disk. I investigated and found a
number of other postings along similar lines. I went to the Knowledgebase at
www.goback.com and found several interesting articles. Those articles
presented the following information:
(a) Software Incompatibility in General. At that point, of the programs tested,
GoBack had compatibility issues with Quarterdeck Clean Sweep, Dr. Solomons
AntiVirus, DriveImage, Norton CleanSweep 2000, Norton Ghost, Norton System
Works, Norton Utilities, Norton Uninstall, Partition Commander,
PartitionMagic, Partition-It, PC-Cillin, QEMM 97, System Commander,
CyberMedia Uninstaller, McAfee Virus Scan, and Virusafe 95.
(b) Specific Problems. For antivirus problems, they suggested setting the
antivirus program so that it would allow writes to the Master Boot Record
(MBR). For the kind of defragmentation problem that arises when the
defragmenter makes extensive changes to the GoBack history (i.e., when you
defragment a badly fragmented disk and discover that this has used up much of
the space allocated for GoBack to track changes on your system), they offered no
suggestion. For defragmentation problems experienced when you use Norton
SpeedDisk to defragment system files (including GoBacks huge
GOBACKIO.BIN file), they recommended these steps: (1) download a Registry
fix from their site; (2) in Norton SpeedDisk, select Properties | Options |
Customize | Unmoveables and check Hidden and System Files; and (3) if the

problem recurs, disable and then re-enable GoBack. For making a copy or
backup using disk image software (i.e., Ghost or DriveImage), they
recommended the following: (1) boot normally, hit the Spacebar at the GoBack
startup screen, and choose the Boot from Floppy option; (2) make a disk image
in the imaging software (contrary to my previous impression, this image will
include only a blank version of GOBACKIO.BIN); and (3) if you have used the
imaging software to make a backup of one disk to another (i.e., not a compressed
image file), remove the copy because otherwise GoBack will be confused by
finding two instances of what appears to be exactly the same disk. For using
disk imaging software to restore to a disk, they recommend booting directly
from the floppy (i.e., not going through the initial GoBack screen, with the
spacebar and all that), and ignoring the message (which you might not get
anyway) that said, GoBack couldnt locate these drives on your system. For
problems with antivirus software (especially during installation), they
recommended pressing Y if the system seemed to be hung, or else disabling
the antivirus software until the installation was completed.
(c) Conclusion. These suggestions did not hint at the extreme problems
suggested in the rumor, where GoBack and a disk defragmenter could work
together to scramble the hard disk. Indeed, the Norton-related advice seemed to
suggest that there would be fewer problems than if I were just using the
Windows DEFRAG program, since the former had settings that would prevent
system and hidden files from being defragmented. I wondered if I could do the
same kind of thing with the Windows DEFRAG program. (See point 300.)
299. Other Aureate-Affiliated Programs. When I was uninstalling Go!Zilla and
had not yet learned about Aureate (see point 294), I also considered finding some
other program to take Go!Zillas place. One that I downloaded and nearly
installed was Net Vampire. Besides being a popular downloader in its own
right, you could obtain free add-ons called URLPro and Grafula. Both were
good for making lists of the URLs in a website. URLPro, I felt, would be useful
to replace URL Bandit. (See point 266(f).) Grafula was focused specifically on
image files. So if you were looking at a page full of photos or GIF files that you
might want to use on your own website or for some other reason, you could
download a bunch of them in one operation, rather than have to do them one at a
time. Unfortunately, it had developed that all of these programs were affiliated
with Aureate Media. (See point 297.) So I wound up deleting them instead of
installing them. Net result: I had no downloading program other than the one
that had come with Windows. It had served me well enough; I would rather
cope with its occasional weaknesses than experience more Internet Explorer
crashes; and I could hope that some other alternative would come along. (Later,
I found that I had already installed Net Vampire, apparently sometime during

this whole process, before I knew about the Aureate thing. I uninstalled it and
ran OptOut to clear up any lingering traces from it.)
Defragmentation
300. DEFRAG Revisions. By now, my defragmentation saga was growing rather
long in the tooth, and yet I needed to revisit the subject again:
(a) Recap. Early on, I had set up the Maintenance Wizard to run Windows
Defragmenter at 1 AM every night (see point 105(g)); I had found comments
online indicating that Defragmenter didnt work properly (see point 122); I had
tried, and failed, to find a way to run Defragmenter automatically in Safe Mode
(see point 123); I had tried to figure out how I could run it once a week, at the tail
end of MAINT_WK (see point 124); I had decided to put it into a nightly
maintenance program called MAINTWIN (see point 131) which had ultimately
come to depend on running a Registry edit that would allow a program to run
just once, before anything else, right after rebooting (see point 141(k)); I had
devised a special screen saver arrangement to keep the screen saver from
interrupting the defragmentation process (see point 145(k)); I had found
Defragmenter to work poorly (see point 162); I had eventually learned how to
shut down all running processes and had decided to try that approach with
Defragmenter (see point 264); and now I had learned that, even if the approach
of shutting down all processes worked (which I really hadnt tested much),
defragmentation on a GoBack system posed the risk of screwing things up
royally (see point 298). Given the nearly indispensable status of GoBack, it
seemed that I would be able to defragment my system only on those infrequent
occasions when I could spare the time to take the manual steps of disabling and
re-enabling GoBack.
(b) MAINTWIN Alternative. Following advice I stumbled across in the ResKit
Book (see point 145(n)), I could have set DEFRAG to run after reboot. Then I saw
that this was just another, possibly inferior way of expressing the concept earlier
expressed in the DEFRAG.REG approach. (See point 141(k).) To do this, the
instructions told me to go into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\R
unServicesOnce, create a new string value called Defrag, and set its value to
DEFRAG.EXE or just set it to DEFRAG with, as the manual said, my choice of
command line switches. (See point 300(g).)
(c) Disable DEFRAG Screen Saver. Since I liked seeing what the Defragmenter
was doing, I decided a better approach was to shut off my screen saver
altogether while DEFRAG was running. To do this, I went into the Registry and
into

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App
lets\Defrag\Settings. There, I created a new string value named
DisableScreenSaver and set its value to Yes. I was not even sure whether I would
continue to use DEFRAG at this point, but I figured it couldnt hurt to try this
approach. To test it, I went into Control Panel | Display | Settings | Screen
Saver, set its value to 1 minute, and ran Defragmenter ... almost. I remembered
the advice about not running Defragmenter while GoBack was running, and
even though I thought I knew a way around this, I decided not to experiment, at
least not yet. (See point ___.)
(d) Protecting GOBACKIO.BIN. It appeared that I should probably not let
DEFRAG run on a partition containing the GoBack history file, GOBACKIO.BIN.
(See point 298(c).) One solution was to create separate partitions on each hard
disk that would contain nothing but GOBACKIO.BIN, and then never run a
defragmenter in such a way as to reach those particular files and/or partitions. I
believed that setting up a batch file that I could trust, and that I would not
second-guess, was likely to be safer than running Defragmenter at very
infrequent times, when I might be preoccupied with other things and might just
run it without thinking. One approach that would work on both computers, and
would not require me to create any additional partitions, was to modify my
existing partition arrangement (see point 269(o)) as follows: drive E would
become the GOBACK partition for hard disk 1, and its data would move to drive
F; drive H would remain the GOBACK location for hard disk 2. For both drives
E and H, their sizes, and the sizes of the GOBACKIO.BIN files they contained,
might be revised. Before proceeding with this, I had to finish a couple other
things. (See point 302.)
(e) Considering Norton. Although I thought I had clicked on the right links on
the GoBack website to try to understand how it was incompatible with Norton
Utilities (see point 298(a)), I did not seem to have a clear picture when I sat down
to write this note. Instead of revisiting the issue, I decided that I was still not at a
point where I felt compelled to use Nortons SpeedDisk rather than the Windows
Defragmenter. I knew that the former was a more efficient program, but I also
feared Norton as a source of crashes, and I thought I would give Defragmenter
one more try before throwing in the towel.
(f) ExcludeFiles. The ResKit manual (see point 145(n)) made me think that I
could protect a file -- say, GOBACKIO.BIN -- by modifying the ExcludeFiles
value in the Registry under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\A
pplets\Defrag\AppStartParams. The idea behind this modification would
evidently be to add a slash behind the existing list of files
(SYSTEM.DAT\USER.DAT\SYSTEM.INI\WIN.INI) and just add the name

GOBACKIO.BIN, without any pathname (which, containing a backslash, would

surely confuse things). I didnt see what I really had to lose by experimenting
with this, so I went ahead with it.
(g) DEFRAG and SCANDISK Command Line Switches. In the ResKit manual, I
finally found the command-line syntax for DEFRAG. It was as follows:
defrag [drive:] [/all] [/F] [/U] [/Q] [/noprompt] [/concise] [/detailed]
where, focusing on the ones that matter to me, /all means all drives, /F means
defragment files and free space, /detailed meant show the details, and
/noprompt meant dont stop and display confirmation messages. For
SCANDSKW (the Windows, not DOS, version), the interesting choices for me
were SCANDSKW /A (checks all drives) /N (runs automatically).
301. DriveImage Backup. I prepared to make a backup of drives C, D, and E on
the AMD machine. But I forgot to include drive E, so the backup -- which I
mistakenly called STEP_300.PQI, because both machines were disabled and I was
not able to check this document to see exactly where I was -- contained only
drives C and D. To make the DriveImage backup, I disabled GoBack. Following
the advice in point 298(b), I rebooted, hit the space bar, told GoBack to boot from
the floppy, and ran DriveImage that way. (See point 269(a).) I made a two-part
disk image file, as before, putting 640 MB in the first part and the rest in the
second. (See point 269(l).)
302. Revising Hard Disk Partitions for GoBack. Both machines were disabled at
this time (see point 301) because I had decided to revise GoBack in the same way
on both machines. The revision consisted of using PartitionMagic to change my
disk structure, so that GoBacks history files would be located on separate
partitions that I would not defragment. (See point 300(d).) Using the AMD
machine as an example, the new arrangement would look like this: drive C
(WIN98) would remain a 900 MB partition; drive E would be renamed GOBACK
and would shrink to 700 MB, which was all I felt I needed to provide adequate
GoBack coverage for the 3.1 GB primary hard disk in the AMD computer; and D
(PROGRAMS), using up the remainder of the space available on that hard disk,
would grow to more than 1,400 MB. The second hard disk would continue to
consist of partitions F, G, and H. Drive G (BURNING) would remain unchanged
at 700 MB. I would rename F to be DATA, move the former contents of drive E
to F, shrink F by about 1.5 GB, and move that 1.5 GB to drive H (SWAP). Thus, F
would now contain about 6.4 GB and H would contain about 2.5 GB. Drive H
would not be named GOBACK, but I would use that additional 1.5 GB for
GOBACKIO.BIN. These GoBack partitions were much larger than the previous
GOBACKIO.BIN files had been; I decided to enlarge them because I had been

disappointed to see that, with GoBacks default settings (putting aside 10% of the
disks total space for GOBACKIO.BIN), GoBack had generally not provided
coverage for the entire past week. The 700 MB partition on AMD drive E took
up more than a fifth of the primary hard disk, and the 1.5 GB space on drive H
would come in at about a sixth of the secondary hard disk. The situation was
different on the PENTIUM computer. Since it had only one hard disk containing
both program and data files, and was using its 1 GB Seagate secondary hard disk
solely to hold the H (SWAP) partition (see point 256), and since that secondary
hard disk didnt need GoBack coverage (see point 258(a)), I converted E into a
GOBACK partition as on the AMD machine, but I made it larger to cover the full
7 GB contents of the Maxtor primary hard disk in the PENTIUM computer. (See
point 256(c).) The final structure was this: drive C (WIN98) (900 MB), D
(PROGRAMS) (1 GB), E (GOBACK) (1 GB), F (DATA) (3.7 GB), and G (7 MB).
Thus, all of my GoBack files were now on drives that I would protect from
defragmentation (see point ___); and except for the tiny 10 MB GoBack file on the
Seagate drive on the PENTIUM machine, all used approximately 15-25% of the
total available space on their disks. Finally, to the extent that I had not already
done so, I uninstalled GoBack and reinstalled it, as required to persuade it to
make use of the new spaces I had arranged for it. (Later, I had other experiences
in which GoBack required some extra changes, concessions, or delays. See point
304 and point 309(a). I also found that Cool Edit generally seemed to reduce
GoBacks Event Log to the last 12 hours or less.)
303. Changes Provoked by Changes in Partitions. This rearrangement of
partitions made drive E no longer available for data files. This had several
ramifications:
(a) My Documents Folder. When I tried to delete E:\Temp on the PENTIUM
machine to make room for a new version of drive E (see point 300(d)), I got the
error message, Temp is your documents folder. It cannot be deleted. If you
wish to delete this folder, first choose another folder to be your documents
folder. I wasnt sure how to deal with this, and I didnt seem to have dealt with
it before, so I decided to ignore it and proceed with my plans, hoping that this
would not cause further problems. So at one point during the PartitionMagic
and GoBack installation/change/reinstallation process, I deleted E:\Temp.
When I was done with everything else, I did a search for documents and found
no My Documents folder on any partition.
(b) Data File Locations Generally. I could not remember all of the programs that
might have thought that their data files resided on drive E, but for the ones that I
could remember, I opened the program and told it that its default file location
would now be on drive F. The programs for which I made that adjustment
included Microsoft Office programs, InCtrl4 (see point 141(d)), and Cool Edit

(see point 304). I also set F:\Graphics to allow Thumbnail View. (See point
113(g).) I had originally told X-Setup that I wanted my website Favorites on E
(see point 137(m)), but that did not seem to have been happening. Possibly this
change had failed at some time when E had become unavailable. I decided to
revisit that question when I was working through the whole Favorites area. (See
point 142 and point 327.)
(c) Moving OUTLOOK.PST. When I started Outlook 98, I got an error message
stating that The path specified for the file E:\Messages\Mail\outlook.pst is not
valid. (See point 112(c).) Before telling the program that the file had moved to
drive F, I decided to see whether I still needed Outlook files to be located in both
E:\Messages and E:\Messages\Mail. (See point 284.) After a brief review, I
decided that the ones in E:\Messages might also apply to E:\Messages\News,
and therefore should not be moved to E:\Messages\Mail. I went ahead and told
Outlook 98 where OUTLOOK.PST was located, and that seemed to take care of
it.
(d) Batch Files. Using the Tools | Find function in PowerDesk Explorer, I
scanned my batch files for all references to E:. I used SendTo to send the ones
containing those characters to WordPad (see point 113(c)), and used Ctrl-H to
change them to F: where appropriate.
(e) Deleting Scraps Toolbar. In the weeks since I created the Scraps Toolbar, I
had found that I really did not use it very often. (See point 120(s).) Its principle
weakness, for my purposes, was that it really just handled text, not excerpts from
websites or other things that I might drag to it. I also felt that Clipboard Pile (see
point ___), or another program like it, would provide the additional advantage
of capturing things as soon as I copied them, without my having to drag them
anywhere. The elimination of E:\Temp had meant the elimination of the View
Scraps icon from the Scraps Toolbar; now all that remained was to right-click on
that empty toolbar and choose Close.
304. Divergences between the Two Computers. I had already discovered that
the differences between the two computers required me to set up different
hardware configurations for them, and that these different configurations
required different steps during the initial restoration of drives C and D from CD
backup. (See point 259.) The attempt to make GoBack work on these two
different computers, with their different hard disk arrangements, had now
added another step to that process. Since GoBack would exist on the CD backup,
I would have to restore from the CD, and then, when restoring to the PENTIUM
computer, I would have to uninstall and reinstall GoBack. (See point 302.) As its
manual informed me, I couldnt change the sizes of its GOBACKIO.BIN files in
any other way, and those files would have different sizes on the two computers

as long as the computers had hard disks of different sizes. (See point 302.) Also,
although I was slow in realizing this, I would have to create slight differences in
my Cool Edit setups on the two machines. Cool Edit required primary and
secondary temporary folders, and it recommended putting the primary
temporary folder on a disk other than the program disk, and the secondary
temporary folder on a disk other than the one containing the primary temporary
folder. Since I had just two hard disks in each machine, this would mean the
primary folder would go on the secondary hard disk, and the secondary folder
would go on the primary hard disk. Given the desire to make as much disk
space available to Cool Edit as possible, this persuaded me to set up the primary
and secondary temporary folders as follows: drives F and D on the AMD
computer, and drives H and F on the PENTIUM. Seeing that I would not be
using drive H for this purpose on the AMD later encouraged me to reduce the
size of the H (SWAP) partition further on that machine. (See point ___.) In short,
the differing hard disk sizes had now added GoBack setup and Cool Edit
temporary file locations to the list of things that would require differential
treatment on the two machines. (See point ___.)
305. Lost Network Connection. I had noticed two things about the network
situation on the PENTIUM computer (see point 283): PowerDesk Explorer was
not showing a connection to the AMD computer, and I was still getting the
message at startup that said, Enter Windows Password: Type a name to
identify yourself to Windows. Enter a password if you want to. Tip: If you
dont enter a password, you wont get this prompt again at startup. I thought
maybe the previous fix for the latter problem had stopped working, so I applied
it again and it seemed to work; I stopped getting the message at bootup. The
former problem persisted, however. I knew that I had previously been able to
use the network with this existing arrangement, so I decided to repeat the same
four-step Control Panel process as before. None of the previous settings had
changed, however, so I did not see why the network connection should have
ceased to work. I wondered if the problem lay on the AMD computer instead, so
I checked the settings there. They, too, were unchanged. I rebooted both
machines. Still no network connection. I wondered if maybe the thing had
worked before because I had not cold-rebooted and wiped out the memory of the
connection. For whatever reason, I had to go back to the approach of using
Client for Microsoft Networks (not Windows Logon) as the Primary Network
Logon in Control Panel, using TweakUI to get me past the Microsoft Networking
password box. And that solved it.
306. Another Try at a DEFRAG Setup. It was not clear that I could, or should,
make the Windows Defragmenter program work. (See point 300(a).) Before
giving up on it and moving to Norton Utilities, however, which would bring its
own new complications (see point 300(e)), I decided to try once more to set up an

arrangement in which DEFRAG would be most likely to succeed. To do this, I

had to bear a couple of things in mind. First, because of GoBack, I could not set
DEFRAG to run on drives E and H. (See point 302.) Also, I knew that I could not
run DEFRAG on drives C or D while programs were running; that
defragmentation could slow the computer way down, even if it was running on
another partition; that defragmentation was much faster and easier if you did it
often; that it wouldnt hurt anything to interrupt it, as long as I did so in a
normal way; that it improved efficiency; and that I should try to squeeze it in
whenever I could. On this basis, I wrote the following DEFRAG batch files,
using the syntax shown in point 300(g); note that this is a modification of
MAINT_HR.BAT (see point 120(k)):
___DEFRAGC and MAINT_HR___
Sure enough, a short time later I saw that MAINT_HR did pop up, run DEFRAG
for a moment on drive G, and then disappear. This was interesting but
somewhat obtrusive, so I decided that, until I had more of a need for
MAINT_HR, I would rename it to be MAINTDAY and would run it just once a
day, at 4:45 AM. I made the appropriate change in Task Scheduler. (I revised
MAINTDAY again later. See point 309(d).)
More Adjustments
307. Offline Browsing. I had found that searching for information online could
be very time-consuming. I might do a search in AltaVista, Northern Light, or
Deja.com, and spend five or ten minutes or more working through a few dozen
hits before finding a website that would provide the specific information I was
looking for. What I really wanted was a program that would go through all of
the 200 or 400 or however many hits that such a search might turn up, download
their entire contents to my computer, and then I could browse among them very
quickly, without waiting for each of them to load.
(a) WebStripper. ZDNet described this program as an easy-to-use ad-supported
product you can use to copy entire Websites to your local hard drive. By the
time I read that, however, I had already begun to install the thing. It was an
immediate turn-off: the first screen that came up, without any gentle
introduction or slick presentation, was a form inquiring about my household
income and other matters. I hit the Esc key, intending to bail out of the whole
thing; but instead, to my surprise and pleasure, it appeared to go ahead into the
remainder of the installation process. I did cancel out of the installation at that
point, mostly because I was beginning to get tied up in figuring out the Aureate
controversy (see point 297). When the dust settled, I had found that WebStripper
used Aureate, and that had persuaded me not to use it. So I set out, instead, to

find other means of reducing the amount of time I would wait for webpages to
download so I could browse through them. I decided that WebStripper would
not have been much help for my primary need anyway, pertaining to AltaVista
or Northern Light (see above).
(b) Browsing Techniques and Equipment. To some extent, I had learned to
reduce my browsing delay by using multiple browser sessions (e.g., hit Ctrl-N to
open another browser session, or right-click and tell the context menu to open a
link in a new session), so that one or two sessions could be downloading while I
was reviewing a third one. Another software-independent solution would have
been to get a cable modem or other very fast Internet connection. I had begun to
price those options, but so far they still seemed too expensive.
(c) Internet Explorers Offline Viewing. If I saved a website as a Favorite in
Internet Explorer, it gave me a Make available offline option; if I selected that,
it would take me into a wizard that would ask me some questions; and if I
finished with that and then came back and right-clicked on the favorite that I had
changed and opened its Properties, I could set a number of things that would let
me download that site, and others linked to it, at prescheduled times. The
schedule feature allowed me to download the website every X days at a given
time, and optionally to go online to do so if I was not online already; it allowed
me to download a preset number of links deep (i.e., get this page, and the pages
it links to, and the pages that those pages link to ...), and to decide whether to
follow links outside of the website. The last point meant that I could search for a
certain number of levels of links within Deja.com's website, without following
links out to Dejas advertisers. It would allow me to limit the amount of disk
space chewed up by this process; to send myself or someone else an e-mail
notifying them that the targeted site had changed; and to enter my logon name
and password if the site in question required one. It was very tempting to just go
with this Internet Explorer offline viewing feature, but I decided to look at some
of the other offerings.
(d) SiteSnagger. I searched ZDNet and found a number of free offline browser
programs. I was looking for something that would do what Internet Explorers
offline browsing option would do, but I hoped to find something with more
options. I eliminated WebCopier, a free offline viewer, because it was listed on
the Aureate website. I looked first at PC Magazines SiteSnagger. Its installation
consisted simply of moving files to a folder of their own and setting up a
shortcut. Its concept was that you would save a project which would hold all
of the files that you might download from a website. It had the some of the same
options as Internet Explorer, especially number of levels and follow offsite links.
I liked its offsite option better for my purposes: it would get only the first offsite
page, regardless of the number of levels specified. This sounded like just the

thing for downloading pages from a search results page. It didnt have a
maximum size setting -- i.e., it would seemingly try to download 800 MB if thats
the kind of search you set up -- but it did have a setting for the maximum
number of webpages it would download. It had an option for shutting off
multimedia files, if you didnt want to download sound or video that might add
significantly to the bulk of your download. I experimented by having it
download my recent newsgroup postings through Deja. Unfortunately, it
seemed to download virtually everything from the Deja search results page
except the search results. I tried it with an AltaVista search results page. This
time, it queued more than 200 webpages. When it was done, it showed a page
called Web Results, but double-clicking on it didnt open it up. I decided to try
something else. Later, I noticed that I had to go into the Projects subfolder under
this programs program files folder and manually delete the project data that it
had downloaded there.
(e) SurfSaver. I was familiar with the askSam company that put this together. I
had used the original askSam database back in the 1980s, and it had actually
worked for a certain project. I decided to try this one next partly because of that,
and partly because it sounded like the best of the rest. Unfortunately, when I
started to install, I got the message, Ad-Enabled Software. You are about to
install advertising-enabled software that may make periodic use of your Internet
connection. This program wasnt on the Aureate list (see point 297), but I
decided to try other options first anyway. Later, I found that even though I had
canceled out at this early point, the program had already created folders on my
hard disk that I had to delete manually. The same was true of WebStripper,
above.
(f) HTTrack. This, like SurfSaver, was a freeware download from ZDNet. The
writeup there said that it had a command-line version, but that there could be
errors from some Java-based features. They gave it five stars anyway, and it
looked interesting. I installed it. Like SiteSnagger, it started by asking you for a
Project Name. The ZDNet description had said the purpose of this software was
to mirror a website on your machine, and now it wanted to know what I
wanted to do. Options included several different ways of mirroring, or I could
use it to test the links in my own website to make sure they all worked. It wasnt
too clear, but I gathered that I was supposed to type a location on my computer
as the Base Path and then indicate the URLs that I wanted to include. I tried it
with a Northern Light search results page, but like the others, it just gave me the
pages of the Northern Light website itself, not the websites that existed
somewhere other than Northern Light. That is, I didnt have what I wanted for
search results pages, but I did have a separate tool that could be useful for
websites that I wanted to explore offline. I really liked the way it put all the
pages in a recognizable location on my disk. Browsing the downloaded website

was a simple matter of going to the downloaded website in Windows Explorer,

looking at the tree structure of the websites pages, and opening one of those
pages in Internet Explorer. If this program later turned out to have problems, I
would reconsider using the SurfSaver program, but otherwise this would be a
keeper.
(g) Internet Explorer Revisited. I had taken a look at this option (see point 307(c))
but had not actually tried it. Now I saved an AltaVista search results page as a
Favorite, told IE to synchronize it, and waited while it downloaded various
linked pages. Like the others I had just been testing, it was slow enough that I
probably would not use it to assist in a spur-of-the-moment search, but it did
succeed in downloading the pages so that I could click on a search results hit and
go to the found page very quickly.
(h) Web Image Collector. This program had the same purpose as Grafula (see
point 299) but, I hoped, without the Aureate Media connection. The idea was
that it would download the image files from a website that I would visit for the
purpose of collecting photos, GIF animations, or other image files. I didnt like
the fact that it put itself into my system tray; there werent that many times when
I needed to download a pageful of images. I looked on it more as an occasional
need that would call for a program I would use occasionally. I also disliked the
little Merlin wizard that came up when I started the program; I had to sit there
while he babbled on about things I already knew. Worse, he stayed onscreen
when I switched to another program -- there he stood, right in the center of the
screen! I didnt like this program. I killed it. The icon vanished from the system
tray, and so did the wizard. Hmm. That wasnt so bad after all. I started it
again. I pointed it toward a page that had some GIF animations I wanted to
download. The wizard continued hopping around the screen, obscuring text I
was trying to read. The downloader said, GIF disabled in beta. To hell with
this. I uninstalled the program, deleted its program folder, and ran OptOut just
to make sure that scummy little guy hadnt sh*t on my disk.
(i) WebCompass. I had purchased this program perhaps a year or two earlier,
had used it occasionally, and had installed it as part of this project. (See point
165(a).) Symantec had purchased Quarterdeck, or at least some of its product
lines, and this was one of them; Symantec had then discontinued this product. It
did not have the best design, but it had some really good features. Basically, I
had to enter a new search topic, start the web search, stop it, and use the rightclick Add URL option. That was the point at which I could enter the AltaVista
search results page (or whatever URL) that I wanted the thing to explore. From
there, I chose the option to explore links. The program looked into each linked
webpage and gave me a summary. I was able to delete the ones that werent
relevant and explore further links for the others. It was a good deal faster and

more explicit than the other programs, for purposes of downloading links from a
website. I also knew that it saved its results in a database format that could be
made Access-compatible, although I didnt remember exactly how I had done
that. The main benefit for me was that I could enter the URL from one AltaVista
search results page -- usually the second one in a search -- into an Excel
spreadsheet, parse that URL for the number that changed on the third and
subsequent search results page URLs, and mass-produce a whole set of AltaVista
search results URLs that I could then enter into WebCompass and allow it to
explore and summarize the ten websites listed on each of those search results
pages.
(j) Conclusion. WebCompass was useful for examining the titles and
descriptions of the first 200 or so hits in an AltaVista or other similar search, and
for pursuing sublinks from those hits to other websites. Internet Explorers
synchronization feature made it the fastest way to examine the actual websites
listed in a search results page. I wanted to develop it further. (See point ___.)
HTTrack seemed really good for downloading a single website for offline
browsing, and perhaps SiteSnagger was also good for that purpose.
308. AdSubtract. PC Magazine described this as freeware that would make
surfing the Web a much more pleasant experience. The idea was that it would
speed things up a great deal by preventing ads from loading in your Web
browser; you could also block cookies, and set up five sites that were exempt.
When I installed it, it offered to block ads, DoubleClick cookies (see point 297),
and/or all cookies. It defaulted to the first two, and thats where I left it. When
it finished installation, I got an error message saying Explorer: This program
has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. I clicked through
that and took AdSubtract up on its offer to start the program now. I noticed that
it had added an icon to the system tray. I went into its Properties screen and
found the place where it allowed you to select five exempt sites. DoubleClick
was listed as one of them; I saw that exempt meant that the three choices just
mentioned would vary from the norm. In the case of DoubleClick, for example,
the exemption was that the All cookies option was selected. The Advanced tab
seemed to say that the ad-blocking worked on the basis of a database and that
you had to enable free updates to the ad-blocking database or else your adblocking would become less thorough over time. They informed me that the free
update option enabled my computer to send them an anonymous count of the
number of ads blocked. They also allowed me to click on a Report Ads button if
I found ads that their database did not include; I figured that if lots of people
were doing this, their database must be pretty effective. Finally, they showed me
a Stats tab that would display the count of ads and cookies filtered during my
current online session. I went online, reviewed some newsgroups in Deja.com
and some e-mail, and had no ads after maybe 20 minutes. But I figured I would

eventually. As I thought about it, it seemed that maybe the counter had been
malfunctioning, because didnt Deja normally show banner ads at the top of the
screen? There was just a big white space there now. I began doing other
browsing, and noticed a machine-gun noise coming from my speakers. What
was this? I had selected the Ad Attack and Cookie Cannon sound effects,
and now saw that the Stats page said it had filtered nearly 900 ads! I guess it was
slow in starting, because now it did show a number for Deja. Evidently it
counted all of the ads that might possibly have appeared on your site -- i.e., all in
the queue at a place like Deja -- because I had only visited a half-dozen websites
at this point. Anyway, satisfied that the program seemed to be doing something,
I shut off the sound effects. A few hours later, Windows Update automatically
took my computer to that Microsoft website (see point ___), and I got the
message that if I wanted to use that site, I would have to make it an exempt site.
I got the idea that I would probably use up those five exempt websites pretty
quickly. I said OK, and thats all there was to it. Very simple.
309. Audio Problems and Adjustments.
(a) Slow Reading from CD. I tried to copy a file from an audio CD to my hard
disk. Basically, nothing happened. (I had installed the upgraded CDFS.VXD, so
I was able to read the contents of the CD in Explorer. See point 157(c).)
PowerDesk Explorer said it was copying, but the dialog box said, 13 Minutes
Remaining -- for one song! -- and it did not change. I could hear the CD drive
keep trying to read the file; I could see its light flashing regularly; there was
some hard disk activity; but nothing seemed to be changing. I went to the
restroom; I came back; still the same. I canceled, and the Yamaha CD-ROM drive
kept making the same noise. I was able to play the song OK; it just wasnt
copying. I tried to copy a track from a different audio CD, and that track copied
OK. I thought it must just be something about that particular track, so instead of
using PowerDesk Explorer to copy the file, I used CDex to rip it. (See point
157(d).) CDex paused for several minutes in the middle of the process, with a lot
of hard disk activity going on, and I had the impression that GoBack was trying
to catch up. I decided that GoBack would work a lot better if it were possible to
store the GoBack activity for one hard disk on another, so that GoBack could be
doing its thing while the other disk was finishing your work. Anyway, then the
hard disk activity stopped and CDex sat there, frozen. The mouse moved, but no
toolbars would respond. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw a blank entry with the words
Not responding next to it. I knew that the blank entry was Clipboard Pile,
which I had recently used. I decided to take measures to control that program;
but for right now I just killed it. (See point ___.) The system immediately began
responding again. I used CDex again, and had more hard disk thrashing for
several minutes -- so I concluded that GoBack was indeed a culprit in this
slowdown -- but at least CDex finished its ripping process this time.

(b) Volume Control Problem. For some reason, the speakers on the AMD
machine went silent at about this time. They would give a little bit of sound
every now and then, but mostly nothing. I thought I should probably start by
making sure I had the updated drivers for the sound card. Turned out that part - but only part -- of the problem was that I had the settings wrong on the Volume
control -- the little yellow speaker in the system tray.
(c) Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Drivers. I was abashed to see that I had
installed only some generic drivers that had come with Windows. (See point
255(c).) Well, no wonder the sound wasnt functioning right! I remembered
now; I had done this because I had wanted to try to get by with just the Turtle
Beach software that I had installed on the PENTIUM. Well, enough of that. I
reinserted the SoundBlaster CD and quickly found that it didnt think my system
with an AMD K6/2 300 chip met its requirements for a computer with at least a
Pentium 133. It was going to install everything except the Creative WaveSynth /
WaveGuide software. Whatever. I told it not to bother with most of the rest of
the options either; I just wanted WaveStudio in case my other two sound editors
werent available for some reason. (See point 157(h).) It gave me some lines that
it said I would have to add manually to my SYSTEM.INI file. This, and the fact
that I had not been able to figure out from the website which of many downloads
I actually needed in order to upgrade my system, both contributed to my general
sense that Creative did not have its act together. So after I finished installing
software from the CD, I installed the SBW9XUP.EXE update. Then I realized this
would be an excellent excuse to visit WinDrivers.com. It seemed like a good,
professional site. They told me that I actually had to look at the sound card to
get an ID number from it. I shut down the AMD computer and did exactly that.
Mine was model CT4500. It turned out that I didnt need this information after
all, because WinDrivers.com next steered me to the Creative download page,
which didnt care which model of the Creative AWE64 SoundBlaster I might
have. This page had changed since the last time I was there, or maybe I just
hadnt found this page. There were only two drivers listed here for me to
download, and one was the SBW9XUP.EXE that I had just installed. So it looked
like I had guessed right on that one. The other was SFMGRUPG.EXE, a
SoundFont Manager installer. I downloaded and installed that too. The sound
was definitely better. It seemed like it might be OK now. Later, I noticed things
flashing by onscreen when I rebooted, and found that the installation process
had inserted various things in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (See point ___.)
(d) Automatic Cleanup for Cool Edit Temp Files. Cool Edit stored its temporary
files in two different folders. (See point 157(a).) Sometimes, presumably when
the system crashed, Cool Edit would not or could not clean up those temporary

files. Sometimes I had found 500 MB temporary files sitting in there, taking up
space. I now added lines to MAINTDAY.BAT (see point 306) to take care of that.
(e) Audio Toolbar. There was a small number of audio programs that I was
likely to use frequently. I created a toolbar, using the same process as before (see
point 120(o)), named it Audio, put the desired icons on it, and dragged it up to
the top of the screen (see point 143). On this toolbar, I had icons for Cool Edit,
CDex, Winamp, and Volume Control (see point 157), and for Media Player (see
point 109(f)). I had been somewhat uncertain why Media Player was not the
same program as the Windows Media Player I had had before, so I went to
Microsofts website, searched for that full three-word phrase, found version 6.4,
downloaded it, and made that the version of Media Player that appeared on this
toolbar.
310. Other Toolbar Modifications. I changed the Util Toolbar (see point 143) to
be a Files toolbar. It now contained icons for Windows Explorer, Size Manager
(see point 135), DOS Prompt (see point 105(l)), Find (see point 145(g)), and
WinDiff (see point 119(a)). The Desk toolbar (see point 143) became the Desktop
toolbar, and it contained icons for Calculator, Character Map, Clipboard Pile,
Magnifier, Notepad, and Wordpad. I deleted the Scraps Toolbar (see point
120(s)) and the Folders Toolbar (see point 120(u)) because I had rarely used them
and they hadnt worked perfectly. The loss of the Folders Toolbar required me
to do some reconstruction, however, when I cleaned up the SendTo options (see
point 312), and I soon decided to reinstate the Scraps toolbar. (See point 313.)
311. Widen the Scrollbar. I decided that there were too many times when I hit
the taskbar while trying to move the horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the
page. To make the scrollbar a bit wider, I went into Control Panel | Display |
Appearance | Item | Scrollbar and changed its size to 14.
312. Clean Up the SendTo and New File Lists. I had previously rearranged the
SendTo options to suit my taste. (See point 113(c).) I had also removed various
items from the File | New menu. (See point 146(c).) Since then, the addition of
more programs had added new items to these lists. I used the same techniques
to clean them up again. On the File | New menu, I decided to remove the
options that created files with extensions of PDD, GZL, and UDL. I decided to
leave the following: Folder, Shortcut, Text Document, and Microsoft Word
Document. I was unable to remove the Norton AntiVirus Scan entry; I had no
idea why Symantec would have put something like that on a File | New menu.
When I was done with SendTo, its first level contained Mail Recipient, 3.5
Floppy (A), and Recycle Bin, along with folders named Folders and Programs;
the Folders folder contained shortcuts to DOS_UTIL, F Temp, Graphics, Text,
and WAV; and the Programs folder contained shortcuts to Cool Edit, Excel,

Windows Media Player, Notepad, Word, and WordPad. Finally, I looked at the
right-click context menus to see if I would need to clear items off there too (see
point 141(t) and point 146(l)), but decided I would probably use all of the options
shown there.
313. Scraps Toolbar Revisited. I had created a toolbar to which I could drag
scraps of text (see point 120(s) as well as icons from websites (see point 273). I
had originally based that toolbar on the E:\Temp\Scraps folder, but that location
vanished when I converted E: to be the GOBACK partition. (See point 302.) I
revised my batch files to refer to F: rather than E:, but then I deleted the Scraps
toolbar because I didnt use it much. (See point 310.) The next morning,
however, I arrived to see that the computer had run URLSCRAP, the batch file
that was prepared to sweep through F:\Temp\Scraps and open up any URLs
that I might have stored there during the previous day. (See point 273.) I
decided that this was a legitimate function and that I had enough space for it on
the toolbar on the right side of my screen, so I recreated it as before.
314. Eliminating Duplicate Files. I had begun to use EasyCleaner to identify
duplicate files on my system, but had found that it intended to take nearly 200
hours for the task. (See point 166(b).) Seeking a different approach, I
downloaded a free program called MoreSpace and unzipped it. Its
README.TXT file said it was ad-supported freeware. I was going to check the
Aureate page to try to figure out just which kind of ad-supporting we were
talking about (see point 289), but then I decided that I might still get an increased
risk of system crashes even if it was something other than Aureate. Instead, I
went online and looked for other freeware.
(a) Introducing Dupeless. I found PC Magazines Dupeless and downloaded
that. The README said that this program would detect duplicates that had the
same contents but different names, and would distinguish those that had the
same names but different contents. It said it would also detect earlier versions of
the same DLLs, where such duplication could cause system problems. After
dealing with some problems caused by another program (see point 315), I went
ahead with the Dupeless installation, and then I ran the program. Its options
allowed me to consider file names (with the option of also displaying version
information), file sizes (with the option of comparing contents as well), and the
dates and times when the files were last modified. It allowed me to indicate
which disks I wanted it to consider, including the floppy drive and any disk I
might have in the CD-ROM drive. I chose drives C, D, F, and G. (See point 302.)
Moreover, it had an Exclusions option that allowed me to add to its list of files
and folders that it would not compare against other files and folders. I couldnt
think of anything to add to that list at this time. Then I started its scan. Of
course, it immediately discovered that G:\UTILITY was a duplicate of

D:\DOS_UTIL. (See point 269(h).) I stopped the program, added G:\UTILITY

to the Exclusions list, and tried again. (Along the way, I accidentally typed G: by
itself and wanted to delete it; it took me a minute or two to find that the Del key
didnt work, the Help file said nothing about how to delete an item, and there
was a button right there (although at the bottom of the screen) that allowed me
to remove a selected item from anywhere on that screen.)
(b) Reviewing Dupeless Results. The scan took only a few minutes to consider
more than 20,000 files. It said it found 1,870 duplicates. It showed a list of files in
alternating groups of yellow and blue background. I thought at first that just the
yellow (highlighted) ones were the duplicates, but then I figured out that the
whole screen was the list of duplicates; it was just alternating colors to help me
see all of the (yellow or blue highlighted) files that it thought might be
duplicates. The program was not case-sensitive: it would list ArtGalry.cag and
ARTGALRY.CAG as potential duplicates. Since the program was looking at file
size as well as name, it might show a group of files named X, each having a size
of 18 bytes, and then a while later it might show another group of files with that
same name, each having a size of 270 bytes, and so forth.
(c) Revising Dupeless Exclusions. Looking down through the list, I decided that
there were some other files I could add to the Exclusions list, such as Desktop.ini
(which defined specialized features for individual folders). There were also
some folders I could exclude, such as the toolbar folders (see point 143), which
contained duplicate copies of icons borrowed from under the Start | Programs
menu. I noticed that Microsoft and other software companies installed
redundant copies of files, but usually I could not tell whether the programs that
used these copies would be smart enough to look elsewhere for them. For
instance, ARTGALRY.CAG existed both in C:\Windows and in
C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft. Could I delete one of them? I knew
of no way to find out. Another category of duplicates consisted of files that I had
previously used MagicMover to relocate from drive C to drive D (see point 154),
and that Windows Update or some other source had apparently reinstalled onto
drive C. To get rid of these unnecessary duplicates, I would soon run
MagicMover again. (See point 317.) I also found a lot of duplicates in various
folders under C:\WIN98\CONTENT. I made a separate project out of dealing
with those too. (See point 319.) Yet another source of duplication existed in a
folder in which I had been storing all of my personal website files, awaiting the
day when I would finish installing Windows 98 and could go to work in
FrontPage 2000. I decided to do at least enough FrontPage work now to reduce
the number of duplicate files lurking in various backups in the Websites
directory on drive F. (See point 318.)

(d) Running Dupeless Again. After making those changes to the Exclusions list
(including the ones mentioned above but not described until subsequent points,
below), I ran Dupeless again. This time, I was down to 406 duplicates. Much
better! I tuned the list a bit more: (1) I found that Chessvision (see point 159(d))
contained a large number of seemingly duplicate files, and in lieu of trying to
resolve those duplicates, I just marked the Chessvision folder as an exclusion. (2)
I found that I had neglected to try to move the Symantec Shared folder, and one
or two others, from C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files. This would reduce
duplication in some cases because I had copied these folders to D the last time I
had used MagicMover, so the new reinstallations on drive C were duplicates
until I moved them to replace the older versions on D. (3) I had copied some
SoundBlaster AWE64 utilities to a subfolder under DOS_UTIL, but when I
reviewed their ReadMe file, I found that they were not pure DOS utilities after
all, so I zipped and removed them. After these changes, I ran Dupeless a third
time. I now had only 272 duplicates. To reduce the list further, I added
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD (short for Emergency Backup Disk) to the list
of exclusions, since that folder evidently contained copies of the Command files
and was the source of the files that got copied onto Windows emergency boot
floppies. (See point 8.) I deleted C:\SCANDISK.LOG and C:\BOOTLOG.TXT.
Like Chessvision, Adastra (see point 159(a)) contained some duplicates, so I
excluded it too. I knew I had copied numerous files from the Resource Kit (see
point 109(d)) to DOS_UTIL, so I excluded the ResKit folder. I excluded the file
named UNWISE.EXE, since that was the short name for the Wise Uninstaller that
accompanied many different programs. For a similar reason, I excluded
LICENSE.TXT. After a final run, Dupeless showed me just under 200 duplicates,
and a quick run through showed very few general candidates for improvement.
If I wanted to get rid of these remaining duplicates, I would seemingly have to
proceed one by one, figuring out which of them were actually needed.
(e) Searching for a Different Solution. As I looked down through the list, I felt
that Dupeless lacked some features that would have been helpful. First, I could
not click on the heading of a column to sort by filename or pathname. For
example, I would have liked to see just how many copies I had of files by similar
names, even if their sizes or file dates did differ. Also, I realized that I did not
want to have to make these same decisions for several hundred files every time I
ran this program. What I really needed was a version of this program that
would allow me to add previously considered files to the Exclusions list, so that
they would not pop up again. I thought about exporting the list, which Dupeless
would allow, or about redoing the whole thing with DOS batch files and
QBASIC programming, so as to preserve last times list of exclusions for the next
time, but in the end I decided it wasnt that important. There were indeed some
megabytes tied up in these duplicates, but I wouldnt know how much wasted
space until I did the file-by-file analysis which, as I say, I was not then inclined to

do. One other conclusion I had reached, by now, was that the whole idea of
putting program files on drive D and Windows files on drive C had produced a
lot of extra work for me in terms of the need to use MagicMover and to eliminate
duplicates -- which seemed to be an ongoing need, constantly recreated by
various downloads and updates -- and that I had yet to see enough benefit from
it to justify the hassle.
315. Clipboard Pile Problems. I started the Dupeless installation process, but the
system seemed to be having problems unrelated to Dupeless. I say that because
Ctrl-Alt-Del showed entries for programs that I thought I had closed. I believed
this misbehavior had begun, once again, because I had just finished using
Clipboard Pile. (See point 224(f) and point 309(a).) (I kept using it, despite these
difficulties, because I liked its feature of capturing up to 100 items copied to the
Clipboard. I could just highlight the text and hit Copy (or Ctrl-C) and a copy of
the excerpt would go into this programs list of clippings; and then I could paste
them all at once with a single command.) After killing Clipboard Pile in Ctrl-AltDel, I noticed that Ctrl-Alt-Del also showed a program named ADSUB. I had no
idea what this was. I ran PrcView (see point 141(f)) and saw that this was
AdSubtract. (See point 308.) I had no problem with that. The Startup folder (see
point 113(e)) had no Clipboard Pile entry, and yet Start Manager (see point
158(b)) showed it as a program that was now set to run on startup, even though I
had unchecked the Clipboard Pile box on Start Manager and MSCONFIG in the
past. It seemed that Clipboard Pile made a change to my Registry every time I
ran it, so as to insure that it would load upon startup next time. Instead of
creating a batch program that would automatically kill the Clipboard Pile
process and rewrite that portion of the Registry each time I was done using
Clipboard Pile (see e.g., point 141(k)), I decided to uninstall Clipboard Pile and
search for another clipboard program later. (See point ___.) After uninstalling, I
unchecked that box in Start Manager again. Twice, however, when I tried to
right-click on the Clipboard Pile program folder to delete it, I got a BSOD (Blue
Screen of Death) telling me about a fatal exception 0E, and PowerDesk Explorer
shut down. I restarted PowerDesk Explorer, clicked on the DOS Prompt Here
option (see point 137(d)) at the parent folder above that Clipboard Pile program
folder, and typed DELTREE /Y CLIPBO~1. That took care of it. I ran OptOut
(see point ___) and verified that Clipboard Pile had not added Aureate-related
garbage. I ran EasyCleaner (see point 139(b)) and deleted the invalid Registry
references it found. I returned to Start Manager and saw that it still had a
reference to Clipboard Pile, although the box was still unchecked. I searched the
Registry and found a reference to Clipboard Pile there too. I decided to reboot
and see how things looked after that. Start Manager still showed it, and so did
the Registry. I referred back to the item that told me that most startup items
appeared in WIN.INI or in just a few areas of the Registry. (See point 147.) I
found a bunch of startup items in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Run, but nothing for Clipboard Pile. It baffled me. I really didnt know how to
get rid of the thing.
316. Vanishing Taskbar and Vanishing System Tray Icons. I noticed that the
taskbar had recently stopped coming up after I rebooted. I was able to get it to
appear by using Alt-Esc or by minimizing all open windows, but I wondered
what was the problem. I had begun researching this issue before deleting
Clipboard Pile, and when I did delete it, I hoped that that would prove to be the
culprit. Just in case, however, I decided to preserve the notes that I had collected
so far on the vanishing taskbar or system tray icons problems. One person
online suggested right-clicking on the taskbar, once I got it to appear, and seeing
what happened if I clicked on the option to restore its default settings. Someone
else said that, at least in one program, the disappearance of buttons from the
taskbar was due to a bug in Win98. Still another suggestion was to reboot in Safe
Mode and allow the taskbar to fix itself. I decided to wait and see whether my
deletion of Clipboard Pile would solve the problem. Later, I decided that
Clipboard Pile probably had been the culprit here.
317. MagicMover Again. I had previously used MagicMover to relocate
program files from drive C to drive D, so that drive C would consist almost
exclusively of Windows program files. (See point 154.) To assist with the
Dupeless comparison (see point 314(c)), I relocated more program files now. I
started within drive D, which had gotten a bit hairy. Keeping in mind the need
to create at least one little file to prevent MagicMover from collapsing empty
subfolders, I relocated the two different Windows Update folders, and the
Windows and Outlook 98 setup folders, located at various places on drives C
and D, to a new D:\Microsoft Setup folder. I also reorganized a lot of other
utilities that I had been just piling up in a Miscellaneous folder. For the
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders subdirectory,
MagicMover said that it found no valid files, which it said was because it could
not determine the main application directory. On the other hand, I couldnt
move one of the files in that folder with PowerDesk Explorer (see point 154(c))
because MagicMover gave me the integral part of Windows error message. So
I left it.
318. A Brief FrontPage 2000 Run. Inspired by the need to reduce the number of
duplicate files on my system during my review of Dupeless (see point 314(c)), I
went into my Websites folder and tried to organize the files there. To do this, I
used WinDiff to compare the two folders that had seemed to contain the most
duplicates. I then found, however, that the PowerDesk approach described in
point 319 worked better. As it turned out, I did not actually have to run

FrontPage 2000 to make any comparisons or file analyses here, since almost
everything was a matter of totally duplicative directories.
319. Duplicate and Unnecessary Files in C:\WIN98. Also inspired by my
Dupeless adventure (see point 314(c)), I scrutinized the files in the WIN98 folder.
That folder, I knew, was a straight copy of files from the Windows 98 installation
CD. (See point 31.) While there were good reasons for copying most of that
folder, it appeared that this CONTENT subfolder just contained a lot of stuff
related to push content, channels, and other useless Microsoft concepts. The
subfolders under CONTENT had names like Disney, AOL, and Comics. Could I
delete this whole thing? Only one way to find out. Trusting to GoBack, I zipped
the whole folder into CONTENT.ZIP and moved it to F:\TEMP. Gone! 23 MB
and 120 files worth of duplication and waste. (Later, I decided to switch ISPs to
AT&T, and for that purpose it would have been handy to have the AT&T option
under the OLS folder, except that they had revamped their software so much by
then that I wound up downloading a new version anyway.) As I looked at it, I
believed I could also get rid of the C:\WIN98 subfolders named CHANNELS,
OLS, and TOUR. Zipped again! Another 40 MB or more reduced to ashes. This
left nothing but the actual CAB files that I had intended to copy to this
C:\WIN98 location in the first place. Or, not quite. When I looked again, I saw
that C:\WIN98 also contained some programs that surely existed at other places
on the hard disk, such as SCANDISK.EXE. I used a quick directory comparison
in PowerDesk Explorer to mark the ones that existed here and in
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, and then I moved the duplicates to that
COMMAND folder to verify, one by one, that we were talking about files of the
same size and date. If there were going to be other duplicates here, I decided to
wait and find out through the results of the next Dupeless search. (See point
314(d).)
320. Startup Music, Wallpaper, and Space Savers. There were a couple of little
things that I didnt plan to do right now, but thought I might do later. First, to
play its standard noises, Windows looked for WAV files that it stored in
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA. If you had some other sounds that you wanted to use,
you could put those WAV files into that folder and then go into Control Panel |
Sounds and indicate which of these WAV files you wanted to use for what
purpose. On a separate note, Windows looked for BMP (bitmap) files in
C:\Windows. If you had a BMP there, you could make it your wallpaper -- that
is, the image that covered your desktop -- by going into Control Panel | Display
| Background. Thus, if you had a photo you liked, you just needed to use
PowerDesk Explorer to convert it to BMP format (if it wasnt in that format
already), or you could open it with a BMP-capable program like the Kodak
Imaging program that came with one of the Windows 98 or Internet Explorer
downloads, and save it in BMP format. (See point 224(i).) If space had been at a

premium, I could have reduced the load on drive C by a couple of simple steps.
One would have been to copy the BMP wallpaper files that I didnt plan to use to
another location, or to delete them altogether. That would reduce up to 800 KB,
depending on which ones you removed. Many websites said that another, more
significant step was to remove the AVI (video) files lying around the disk, which
various programs provided as tutorials. Evidently I had already done this,
however, or had somehow been spared the several programs that others had
mentioned, because by this time, when I looked for AVI files, I found only two.
321. File Relocation Problems. The changes wrought in response to Dupeless
(see point 317) began to have ramifications. Once again, I got the unable to find
the WAB DLL error message in Outlook 98. (See point 166.) I searched for
WAB*.DLL and was surprised to see that the only location of WAB32.DLL was in
D:\Program Files\Common Files\System. I had remembered putting a copy in
C:\WINDOWS. (See point 166(e).) There was also a more recent file called
WAB32RES.DLL. I moved the latter from D to C:\WINDOWS, closed Outlook
98, restarted it, and tried again. I still got the message, so I moved WAB32.DLL
as well. That did it. I moved WAB32RES.DLL back to D:\Program
Files\Common Files\System and experienced no further problems. Later, I
wondered if this moving process had also messed up WebCompass. (See point
323.) I also wondered if I kept having this WAB problem because I was restoring
from CD backups that had WAB32.DLL in the wrong place; at the time when I
wondered this, I was in no mood to retrace all the steps to figure out when I had
moved or restored or whatever.
322. Internet Explorer Synchronization. I wanted to set this feature up to work
from a batch file, so that I could tell Task Scheduler to download the relevant
pages every night, without even knowing which pages it would be downloading.
The problem was that I still had not figured out how to tell the computer to dial
manually. (See point 272.) I did not want to turn it loose to dial up
automatically whenever it felt like it, because when I did that it would dial while
I was in the middle of phone conversations. I needed more information, but at
this point I was nearing the end of three months of working on this project, and
was running out of patience, and therefore decided not to explore it further at
present. (See point ___.)
323. WebCompass Update. I had purchased WebCompass some time
previously, and had also downloaded some upgrades while they were still
available. (See point 307(i).) Now I tried to install those upgrades. The first one,
from July 1997 (WC203.EXE), ran fine. The second one, from September 1997
(WC203DB2.EXE), caused an Abnormal program termination error. Now that
this upgrade had screwed up WebCompass so that it wouldnt run, I went into
GoBack and told it to look for earlier versions of the WC20.EXE file. It didnt

show them. Then I remembered that I could right-click on the file in Windows
Explorer and choose the Show Revisions option that GoBack had added there.
I did this and told it to recover the July 1997 version. It said that that was the
current version that already existed on my hard drive. I tried again with the
November 1996 version shown there. That worked. I tried again to run
WebCompass and still got the termination error. I figured the problem had to be
with one of the other files that had been upgraded. The easiest way, I figured,
was to revert the disk back to its condition of ten minutes earlier. I went to the
GoBack Event Log (see point 246) and easily located the point where I had
started messing around with GoBack. I was mildly surprised to see that it had
actually been more like 20 minutes ago, not 10. To keep things simple, I told it to
revert all of my drives to the requested time. It did this without difficulty, and I
tried again on the upgrade. This time, I first made a backup copy of the
WebCompass program files folder. Then I tried again. After the July 1997
upgrade, I tried running WebCompass. I got the program termination error
even at that point. I restored the earlier version from the zipped file. I ran the
earlier version. It , too, gave me the termination error. I wondered if my earlier
file relocation efforts had messed up this program. (See point 321.) Just out of
curiosity, I looked at the GoBack Event Log, to see whether I could go back to the
previous afternoon, when I had begun the whole MagicMover process. (See
point 317.) I was very surprised to see that GoBacks log went back only to the
morning of the current day. Thus, if my acts of moving files with MagicMover -or, more likely, of manually moving some DLLs -- had messed up my system, I
would have to go back to the last CD backup and hope that worked. That was
back at point 301. This wouldnt be my first option. Why hadnt the additional
large amounts of storage space for WebCompass given it more of a reservoir to
draw on? (See point 302.) I didnt know the answer to that question. My
MagicMover activities hadnt involved huge programs; besides, they had
consisted of simple moves, which you would think GoBack could handle with a
simple entry in an internal list of files. This made me think that, when time
permitted, I should compare GoBack against my other program options. (See
point ___.) Anyway, given the alternatives, I decided to hold onto the
WebCompass situation for now and see if anything else malfunctioned. If it
turned out to be just a problem with WebCompass, I could just uninstall and
reinstall it, and maybe its upgrades too. (See point ___.) Eventually, it dawned
on me that I should probably test every program that I had installed since the
last time I had run MagicMover (see point 154), but I wasnt really sure I wanted
to do all that work.
324. InfoPager News Service. This program would allow you to download
personalized editions of FWKC Reuters international news for free. I wasnt
too sure what FWKC meant, but of course I had heard of Reuters. I installed it
and twice tried to use it. Both times, I got Network error. Failed to deliver

details. Please try again later. I revisited it later and wound up uninstalling it.
(See point 336(b).)
325. Driver Update. I had not yet installed all of my drivers. Following
instructions that came with the download, I now began to install a September
1999 update for my SupraMax modem. (See point 182.) Windows told me,
however, that the driver was not the right one for this modem. Since the
instructions did not anticipate this notice, I decided that Windows might be
right, and I canceled out of the installation. Next, I reviewed the question of the
AGP driver for my Soyo motherboard. (See the end of point 107.) As instructed
at that point, I reviewed the question of whether I had now installed the AGP
graphics card driver. To do this, I went into Device Manager | System Devices
and saw that I still had a VIA Tech V82C598 CPU to AGP controller. I then used
WCPUID (see point 248) to verify that I had a VIA Apollo VP3/MVP3 AGP
chipset that would support a 2x data transfer rate, which was where I had it set
now (through the BIOS Setup, I believe); and I used PCIInfo (see point 252) to tell
me that I had an S3 VGA adapter. I wasnt sure what to conclude from this. I
had this VIA AGP driver that I had downloaded from Soyo; was I supposed to
use it or not? I decided to unzip it, at least, and see how it looked. It came with a
ReadMe file, so I started there. It told me that Windows 95 users needed
programs named USBSUPP.EXE from Microsoft, DirectX 5.0 or above,
VMM32.VXD, my AGP VGA driver, and VIAGART.VXD. I wasnt sure I needed
to be fooling with a driver update designed for Win95, but then it started
referring to Win9X and I felt like it was probably closer to the modern world
than I had first feared. I knew I had DirectX 7.0 and the AGP VGA driver; I
searched but did not find USBSUPP.EXE; I decided that this might be another
one of those cases where the needed files werent always included with Win95
but were built into Win98; and with that rationale to lean on, I went ahead and
double-clicked on SETUP.EXE. I told it to install in turbo mode; it replied by
finishing and telling me it wanted to restart the computer. Video performance
was noticeably faster.
Trying to End the Project
Note: at this point, I briefly tried to surge through the remaining tasks. After
carrying that effort forward through the following several steps, I decided that
the better approach was to make another interim DriveImage backup and
resume this project after an interruption of several days or weeks, during which I
would take care of other things that I had to do.
326. Yamaha CD-ROM Firmware Upgrade. Since the CD-ROM was working
fine now, and since I understood that a botched firmware upgrade could damage
your drive, I decided to postpone this upgrade for now. For future reference,

however, the website to obtain the upgrade from was

www.yamahayst.com/techsup/download2.htm.
327. Favorites. I had long promised myself to complete the Links toolbar by
setting up webpages to which those toolbar icons would point. (See e.g., point
109(g).) Unfortunately, I now felt that this entailed a large, separate project.
Therefore, for purposes of setting up Windows 98, those icons would just sit
there without any function until I got those webpages going or decided on some
other existing webpages to point them to.
328. OptOut Opting Out. I had noticed that the time restriction on OptOut (see
point 289) was going to be ending on April 1, which was less than two days
away. Assuming that wasnt just an April Fools joke, which I would be finding
out soon enough, I ran the program one last time, to make sure that my latest
downloads had not once again given me any spyware. Everything seemed to be
fine.
329. Backup. I decided, at present, to limit my backup inquiry to the
DriveImage approach that I had been using throughout. I decided this because I
had achieved the goal itself, which was to figure out how to back up a complete
Windows 98 system on CD-ROM. (See top of this document.) Backup was going
to entail the slightly different question of how to preserve data and program files
on a go-forward basis, as events proceeded to alter that complete, original Win98
system. I felt that this applied, also, to the step of taking this original
configuration from the AMD computer and altering it to fit the different
hardware of the PENTIUM computer. So for right now, I made a DriveImage
backup file called STEP_329.PQI. Later, I decided to do more on the subject of
backup. (See point ___.)
330. Manual Acts. I made a note for myself to send a postcard or other notice to
the creator of Cacheman (see point 141(n)) and any other cardware that I wound
up staying with, when I was certain that I would be keeping these programs. ___
Problems and Their Solution: Doing It Over Again
331. Network Problem. Suddenly, the Network Neighborhood icon in
PowerDesk Explorer showed only the immediate computer -- I mean, on the
AMD computer it showed only the AMD, and the PENTIUM showed only the
PENTIUM. I checked the manual. It said this: Make sure the cables are
connected correctly. Make sure you are getting Link or Activity lights on both
the Fast Ethernet Card and your hub. Try changing to a new cable that you
know is working. ... Make sure each PC on the network is using the same
workgroup name and protocol. I looked at the lights and saw both on the

PENTIUM, but only one on the AMD, where I had been doing my recent
tinkering. That was the only one of these suggestions that seemed to fit the
situation. I wondered if this meant that the problem was on the AMD.
332. Slowness Problem. I had been inclined to blame GoBack, but for whatever
reason, the AMD computer was repeatedly dragging, especially when I was
working online. The mouse would barely respond at times. I suspected that I
had screwed things up by trying to move programs -- particularly Common Files
items -- with MagicMover and/or PowerDesk Explorer. (See point 317.) These
problems, and the others that I had recently experienced (see point 321 and point
323), told me that I should consider restoring STEP_300.PQI after all. (See point
301.)
333. Document Problems. This document, at this stage, called for a large amount
of work. In part, there were incomplete items: the document contained ___
blanks that needed to be converted into references, or that called for fixes, and
many points, mostly in the first part of the document, did not have explanatory
titles. Also, the document was totally unwieldy: I had hoped to set up
hyperlinks tying together the various points (e.g., the hope was that, when you
saw a reference to point 100, you could click on that point and you would go to
point 100), but that was going to require a lot of additional work. These
thoughts, and others, made me wonder whether I should devote the labor that
would be required to fix this document or should instead write another,
superseding one that would draw upon the material here but would not repeat
the parts that did not bear repeating.
334. Restoring STEP_300. I decided to put the AMD in better working order,
and also to test the viability of the two-CD backup approach, by restoring
STEP_300.PQI on the AMD machine. (See point 301.) This, I hoped, would
eliminate the problems mentioned in point 331 and point 332. To begin, I tried to
think of what files on drives C and D should be protected from the erasure that
would occur once I used DriveImage to restore STEP_300.PQI. The Favorites
folder, to which I had recently added some items, was one example. (See point
303(b).) DOS_UTIL was another. I had the date of the STEP_300.PQI file, and I
decided to search for all files created since then. I sorted these by location,
looking for folders where I might have made changes. This netted
C:\Windows\SendTo. (See point 312.) I made copies of these folders to drive F.
(Later, I found that I should have kept the Toolbar folder too. See point ___.)
Then I rebooted to real DOS, disabling GoBack along the way, ran DriveImage,
and pointed it to the first backup CD. Or tried to. Of course, I hadnt booted
from the CD, so I didnt have CD-ROM drivers loaded. Since this computer had
the Yamaha CD-ROM, I would be able to boot only from the floppy or the hard
disk, not from a bootable CD. (See point 189.) So I could reboot to DOS from the

floppy and run DriveImage from the floppy that way, or I could reboot to
Windows and copy the PQI files over from CD to hard disk using Windows
Explorer, and then go back into DOS and restore drives C and D from drive F.
Either way, I would have to run DriveImage from a floppy or from some hard
disk partition other than D, since I would be replacing D. The DOS boot floppy
approach sounded more direct; besides, I wanted to see how the DriveImage
process would work with two CDs if, for some reason, I didnt have a spare hard
disk partition. So I rebooted from the floppy, ran DriveImage from the floppy,
and pointed it toward the first CD-ROM. It gave me Error # 29: Cannot lock a
locked drive. I had forgotten that I had to uninstall GoBack before using
DriveImage. I could have formatted drive C, but since GoBack advertised itself
as being able to rescue your disk even when it was wiped out, I feared that it
would still be controlling drive C after the format and, worse, that it might be
confused and might cause damage to other partitions. So I rebooted to
Windows, in order to disable GoBack there. Or at least I tried to. While
DriveImage had not succeeded in giving me a new drive C, at least it had ruined
the old one. So now what was I supposed to do with GoBack? Drive C wouldnt
run, so I had to boot from the floppy. The floppy boot process gave me no
option to revive GoBack. I used FDISK from the floppy to create a primary DOS
partition, and tried again with DriveImage. This time it ran OK. Drive C
restored without a problem. Drive D, however, was where the split came. I
mean, all of drive C fit onto the first CD, but the backup of drive D was partly on
the first CD and partly on the second. This, too, was no problem: when the
restore was about 45% done, I got the message, Change Diskette: Insert disk
number 2 in drive I. And that did it. A few minutes later, my partitions were
restored. I checked them with PartitionMagic to make sure that the partition
sizes were what I wanted. (See point 302.)
335. GoBack Problem. I rebooted into Windows, trying to re-enable GoBack
along the way. GoBack gave me a message that said, GoBack Install (400): The
2 copies of the allocation tables on your drive are different. GoBack wont make
changes to your drive while errors exist. Please run ScanDisk after your
computer boots into Windows. ... If GoBack prompts you about whether to
remove files due to an unsuccessful installation, answer No. I followed this
advice, running ScanDisk on drives C and D. It didnt seem to find anything, or
at least it didnt say anything. I rebooted and tried enabling GoBack again. It
gave me the same message. I rebooted from the floppy and tried running
SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY. I ran the same
command for D. I rebooted from drive C and got the same message again. I
went into Windows and uninstalled GoBack. Then I reinstalled it from the CD. I
got the same error message again. I went on into Windows. This time, unlike
before, I did get that unsuccessful installation message, and I answered No as
recommended. I figured that the problem must exist somewhere other than

drive C or D, so I ran ScanDisk in Windows on all drives. This provided the

answer: the errors were on drive H. I rebooted and tried again. This time it
worked. I looked on the PENTIUM computer and saw that the GoBack
installation there was now nearly five days old. I decided that, although GoBack
was persnickety and did not always do exactly what I hoped, it was also
reasonably stable and useful, and would be more so if I were combining it with a
better backup procedure. (See point ___.)
336. Catching Up. I now had to redo many of the changes that I had made since
the STEP_300 backup. They were as follows:
(a) Changes That I Did Not Need to Redo. Between point 301 and point 333,
inclusive, several steps were already taken care of. First, the hard disk partitions
(see point 302) remained unchanged by the DriveImage activity, although
DriveImage had offered the opportunity to change them when it was restoring
drives C and D. Also, since I had not tinkered with drive F, data file locations
were still set properly (see point 303(a) and (b)). I recovered the changed batch
files just by deleting D:\DOS_UTIL and replacing it with the copy that I had
stored on drive F (see point 334), thus saving myself the work described in point
303(d), point 306 (except for the scheduling, which I did have to redo now), and
point 309(d). I avoided some false steps that I had made and then regretted (see
point 303(e) and point 317). I did not have to spend much time examining
various offline browsing programs. (See point 307.) This time, I did not delete
the Scraps or Folders toolbar. (See point 310.) Since I had saved the changed
SendTo folder, I was able to restore that without difficulty. (See point 312.) I
didnt have to re-sort my web pages, which were on drive F. (See point 318.)
And, among others, I didnt have the problems described in point 331 and point
332.
(b) Changes I Had to Redo. These included the following: telling Outlook 98
where to find OUTLOOK.PST (see point 303(c)), resetting the Volume Control
(see point 309(b)), and installing the SoundBlaster drivers with the SBW9XUP
and SFMGRUPG updates (see point 309(c)). Also, I had to deal with the network
connection problem again. (See point 305.)
I had to reinstall HTTrack (see point 307(f)), AdSubtract (see point 308), and
Dupeless (see point 314(a)). I added the exclusions for Dupeless again, but this
time without first rearranging files through MagicMover. I saved myself some
hassle (see e.g., point 309(a) and point 316) by uninstalling Clipboard Plus (see
point 315). (Too late, I saw that it did seem to come with an uninstaller that
might have made that process easier.) I had to redo the work that I had
previously done to create or modify several toolbars. (See point 309(e), point
310, and point 313.) I widened the scrollbar again. (See point 311.) I redid the
changes to the New File list. (See point 312.) I deleted the duplicate files in

C:\WIN98 again. (See point 319.) I tried again on the WebCompass update.
(See point 323.) This time, the first update went fine, and the program ran
normally when I tried it. When I exited the program, I got an Object is invalid
or not set error message, but as I recalled I had always gotten that. I installed
the second update and it, too went fine. I also retried the InfoPager News
Service. (See point 324.) It gave me the same error message as before. I had
been uncomfortable with its requesting my e-mail address before it would finish
installation, supposedly because it needed this to insure delivery, and now I was
beginning to wonder whether the program had originally been good but had
become a way of collecting information for advertisers. I uninstalled the
program. It seemed rather sneaky on uninstall: it wasnt listed in Add/Remove
Programs as InfoPager or as FWKC or as Reuters or anything else I could think
of, and it didnt have an executable uninstaller in its program files folder. I
couldnt figure out what else it might have called itself in Add/Remove
Programs, so I just deleted its program file folder. Finally, I reinstalled the AGP
driver. (See point 325.) I ran OptOut again (see point 328), since there had been
some Aureate Media software on the system when I started this catch-up
operation; it did find one spyware file on the system.
Going Forward; Backing Up
337. Backup Philosophy Revisited. Before making any more drastic changes, I
decided I wanted to master the backup procedure that I would be using in the
future. The right procedure, had it been in place, might have saved me the time
and effort that I had just spent to redo all of the changes that I had made since
the time of the STEP_300 backup. Of course, I deleted the useless STEP_329
backup that I had made since then. (See point 329.) The question for me was,
how could I do frequent, unobtrusive backups? DriveImage was out of the
question: it did a good job of snapshooting the whole system, but the process of
disabling GoBack, rebooting to DOS, and so forth made it very obtrusive, and
therefore not something that would happen very frequently. No, I needed an
entirely separate backup system that would carry me over periods of weeks
between my DriveImage snapshots. I saw no reason to think that this would
involve anything other than the combination of XCOPY and ZIP processes that I
had contemplated much earlier. (See point 203.) The basic outline was that I
would take the DriveImage snapshot, make a list of files backed up, shut off all
their archive bits, and then work from the file list and/or the newly set archive
bits to determine which files I would subsequently XCOPY to some folder and
ZIP for loading onto a CD. (See point 202.) As a refinement on my earlier
thinking, I also believed, now, that I would treat the backup of program files
entirely differently from my backup of data files. Program files needed to be
handled in a highly organized way; data files could be moved to CD-RW or CDR disk and back to hard disk in whatever haphazard or organized manner

seemed best suited for the subject matter. (For example, since I would probably
intend to reduce a 500 MB audio file containing an entire 45-minute side of an
audio cassette to a set of much smaller MP3 files, I might not back up the 500 MB
audio file at all, assuming that I could always just re-record it from the cassette,
whereas I would not want to make a similar assumption about a program file
that I had originally loaded from a program CD.)
338. Rethinking Partition Structure. It seemed appropriate, at this point, to
record my current thinking on how I should have arranged my partitions. First,
I had decided that I would have preferred to combine drives C and D into one C
(PROGRAMS) partition. (See point 314(e).) At present, on the AMD machine, I
had files totaling 597 MB in C (WIN98) and 752 MB in D (PROGRAMS). The
combined total of 1,349 MB, plus an allowance of at least 200 MB of empty space
for growth, meant that C would need to be at least 1.6 GB. Second, it was clear
that each hard disk needed a GOBACK partition that would be free from any
risk that I would run Defragmenter on it. (See point 300(d).) I hoped to allocate
at least 20% of my disk space to the GoBack partition. (See point 302.) Third, I
wanted a SWAP partition on each hard drive. On the AMD machine, where I
expected to do most of my audio editing, I wanted this partition to be as large as
possible. (See point 304.) Thus, I concluded that the 3 GB primary hard drive on
the AMD machine should be divided into C (PROGRAMS) (1.7 GB), D (SWAP)
(600 MB), and E (GOBACK) (700 MB). On the AMD machine, I had combined
the GOBACK and SWAP functions into one partition on the second hard drive; I
decided to leave it that way, partly because that seemed fine and partly to reduce
the number of things that I would have to change.
339. A Program File Backup Method. With GoBack, I would not ordinarily need
a backup system that would give me a separate ability to restore my system to its
state as of five minutes or one hour ago. There would be an exception for cases
where I was handling large files, where GoBacks Event Log would not be able to
cope. (See point 323.) Hopefully there would be an upgrade to GoBack that
would handle those exceptional situations more gracefully. Regardless, I would
not be willing to develop a system that would do a better job than GoBack in
such cases -- that is, that would save multiple copies of huge files. Basically, if
those files were going to get messed up, I would just have to recreate them from
scratch. Otherwise, when dealing with smaller files, GoBack did a good job for at
least several hours, and probably for several days, into the past. Thus, it seemed
likely that a backup process that ran in the middle of each night would provide
adequate protection. I just needed a batch file that I could tell Task Scheduler to
run in the middle of each night, that would copy altered files to another
partition, make a list of them, and zip them.

340. A Backup File List. This was the part of the backup process that was a little
vague in my mind. Ideally, I would have a list of all files that would change -including new additions, modifications, and deletions (see point 202), along with
a batch process that would be smart enough to create, restore, and delete exactly
the right files. This seemed to suggest that I would have a full file list
accompanying each backup, and that the file list would provide a quick
explanation for why a given file was, or was not, included in the backup. Of
course, if the file list explained only what had changed since the previous
backup, I would be stuck with an incremental approach that would require me to
go through a series of restorations -- for example, if the full DriveImage backup
occurred on a Sunday, and the system crashed on the following Saturday, I
would have to restore Mondays additions and subtractions, then Tuesdays
changes from Monday, then Wednesdays from Tuesday, etc. Ideally, I thought,
if I could figure out how to do it, I would also have a separate, non-incremental
list that would summarize, as of each nights backup, the full extent of the
changes since the last DriveImage backup; but then I realized that I would still
have to go through each nights backup to get those files whose last change had
occurred sometime during the week and therefore did not appear on the final
pre-crash backup. If I was going to go a very long time between DriveImage
backups, I might want to develop a method for doing an entirely separate
Summary Backup that would capture all of the changes that had occurred
during, say, the past week; but otherwise the incremental, day-by-day approach
would have to do.
341. What To Do Next? I had come to a point where I had major work to do in
order to make this document useful (see point 333), and where I had also come to
see how I had organized the partitions on my system in a way that was
fundamentally imperfect (see point 338), partly because it created minor but
undesirable file duplication between C:\Program Files and D:\Program Files
(see point 317) and partly because it would call for a more complex backup
system that would have to repeat the same backup processes on two separate
drives (see point 340). I had originally set out with multiple purposes in mind.
(See the top of this document.) For purposes of getting my own system set up
and running, I had reached a point of substantial completion; but for purposes of
creating something that would help others who were stuck somewhere in a
Win98 quagmire, I had just created a massive, unwieldy document that might
answer their question or might just bury them in detail and leave them flailing
around, trying to figure out what to do next. The question in my mind, then,
was whether I should work through any remaining important issues in this
Windows installation and then start over, taking a more structured and
knowledgeable approach to the task of setting up a good, working Windows
system, or should instead just let the thing be for what it was, hope that it helped
some people, and move on to other work I needed to get done.

342. Reactions to Windows 98. By this point, I disliked Windows 98. I had
disliked it previously, but this was different. Previously, I had disliked Win98
because it had frustrated me. A single problem could take hours to resolve, and
those would frequently be hours that I did not have to spare, where I was not
remotely in an operating system frame of mind. The last thing I wanted to do, at
such times, was to drop everything and nurse an ailing computer back to health.
Now, I had the confidence that this would not be the situation for me. I had
multiple backups of an essentially solid, working system. If I just wanted to get
my work done, I could do it. My dislike now was based on the fact that I had
gotten into an operating system mindset and had begun to form a clearer idea of
what I wanted from an operating system. The things I wanted were things like
clarity, structure, and flexibility. For example, I wanted to be able to reinstall the
operating system, if it went bad or if there was an update to it, without being
required to reinstall and configure everything else. I wanted to have all of the
files related to a program located in one place, so that I could move, upgrade, or
remove them without any risk that this would somehow affect other programs. I
wanted to be able to form a list of files that would change, and also to be able to
predict, for any program, what files would change when I undertook some such
move, upgrade, or removal.
343. Thoughts about Other Operating Systems. By this time, my guesses about
Windows 2000 had proved accurate. (See point 90.) Windows 2000 had hit the
market; it had been found to contain serious bugs; Microsoft had issued a Service
Release to fix those bugs; and the Service Release had contained other bugs that
seemed to be even more serious -- to the point of disabling Internet Explorer,
from the way it sounded. Also, my guesses about Linux seemed to have been
substantially accurate (see point 90(l)): there had been a number of comments
and questions about whether the Linux movement would fork -- i.e., would
split into incompatible camps -- and there continued to be informed indications
that Linux still had a ways to go before it would be ready for prime time and also
that Microsoft showed signs of being more of a competitor than had first seemed
likely. Thus, although Linux seemed capable of providing the kind of structure
and clarify I sought in an operating system, I did not know whether that would
in fact be the end result within Linux, nor whether some other successor
operating system might emerge with a superior approach. In the past, I had
made the mistake of leaping for a new product or technology too soon, only to
discover that the rest of the world ultimately decided against it; this time around,
it continued to seem quite possible that a move to Linux would turn out to be
premature. Thus, while I had some ideas for what I wanted from an operating
system, and did not believe I would get those things from Windows at any time
within the foreseeable future, I was not certain that I really had a practical
alternative.

344. Thoughts about Programming. To some extent, it was still not possible to
do everything I might want to do with a computer system without knowing how
to write programs that would fiddle with the details in just the way I wanted.
My simple little DOS batch scripts and QBASIC programs had reminded me of
just how useful such skills could be. Yet it took time -- and depending on the
language in question, it could take a lot of time -- to become proficient in these
skills. What I really wanted was to find canned software that would take care of
such things for me, perhaps with the option of writing more simple scripts or
programs. Experience suggested that, at my casual level of usage, it could be a
year or more before I would be proficient in a computer language unless I
studied it seriously. That kind of time allocation did not fit with my priorities at
this point. Thus, it was not enough to say that I could have just the kind of
system I wanted if I were willing to invest the time in Visual Basic, or Windows
Scripting Host, or Linux shell programming, or EMACS, or some other language
or tool. I had really spent a lot more time on this particular project than I hoped
to spend on any computer-related projects in the foreseeable future. Consistent
with my decision to stick with a relatively mature operating system rather than
being on the forefront, then, I felt that I would probably be using Windows 98
until something really compelling came along -- and therefore that I would
continue to want to stretch my existing knowledge of DOS and QBASIC until
further notice.
345. Guessing at Microsofts Future Path. I believed that Microsofts future
operating system releases would continue to be somewhat chaotic, and that
attempts to impose order on them would require a lot of work and would often
pose the risk of screwing up some murky part of the Microsoft plan. The marketdriven approach of Microsoft seemed likely to continue to generate great new
capabilities and, at the same time, great new vulnerabilities and frustrations; the
latter would continue to persuade me to upgrade to a newer Microsoft operating
system only when I saw a real benefit from it. Also, my experience with DOS
over the past 18 years had suggested that Windows might have begun to mature
to a point where I could skip over some new generations of the product; indeed,
I had mostly skipped over Windows 3.1. As I had assumed at the start of this
project, then, it still seemed that I might continue to use Win98 for the next two
years or more. And if I did, so would others; indeed, I had been surprised to see
how many people were still using Win95.
346. Conclusions. I could not justify investing large amounts of time to learn a
programming language that might have made Win98 really sing, but I did want
to finish this project in a way that would (a) give me something to be proud of,
(b) provide guidance in my continued use of Win98 and perhaps during the
installation of a subsequent Windows product, and (c) help other people

understand the problems and solutions that I had worked with during this
project. I had commenced this particular document as a set of partly organized
notes, but the projects size and complexity had led to a tangled web of concepts,
innovations, and discoveries. Now that I had a somewhat clearer idea of what
was involved, my perfectionism and my desire to make this material useful for
myself and for others required me to start this project again from the beginning
and to proceed in a more systematic manner. Thus, I decided that I would not
continue, now, to develop a backup system (see point 340) that would depend on
the existing imperfect division of program files into drives C and D (see point
338); instead, I would clear off the PENTIUM machine and would start again
from the beginning, or at least from a point in this document where things had
still been relatively clear and simple.
Ray Woodcock
March 31, 2000
*****
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * Prepare for possible PC catastrophes by regularly copying
the following files to a second hard drive, removable hard disk or diskette-especially if
you frequently install and uninstall applications. From your root directory (you may find
only some of these), back up AUTOEXEC.BAT, AUTOEXEC.DOS, CONFIG.SYS,
CONFIG.DOS and MSDOS.SYS. From your Windows folder, back up CONTROL.INI,
SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI, as well as the SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT Registry files
(SYSTEM.DAT probably won't fit on a floppy disk).
Maybe change DEFRAGC so it doesn't run if Cool Edit is
actually recording -- assuming I can figure out what process
that might entail. Final index should reference every term,
not just the headings -- includes e.g., Zero Fill Utility.
Tinker with faster RAM settings in BIOS. May have to undisable things in CONFIG to get Turtle Beach item to get an
IRQ. Just double-click on SCR file to make screen saver
work. Check metrotix.com every couple of days or week for
new events. Backup batch file needs to back up .WC2 files
in WebCompass directory, also C:\Windows\Ray Woodcock.acl,
also has to save INI files and all other configuration
stuff. See latest Win98 guide I'm writing for details.
Cleanup thing can get rid of *.CHK files. Add Documents
folder with subfolders for e.g., Text to the Start menu. I
thought about the idea of having them mail me their Win98 CD
and I'd mail them back a complete working system, but it
probably wouldn't work. Shut off FindFast.
Try that TrueSpeech thing re compressing speech. Try
Instant Access in Word to start TextBridge. Maybe set it up

so the ZIP file thing backs up only those files that are
smaller than a certain size and just lists the others, like
the large WAV files. Maybe it will copy only those that
have changed in the current directory, or the past hour, or
something like that. Replace ScanDisk with NDD in batch
files. See Tips about assigning hotkeys. Will Ghost run
from command line to create mirror automatically every
Wednesday? Folder for everything from C: Outlook,
Favorites, Toolbars, DOS_UTIL, etc. Start doing a manual
weekly check for student loan postings during the last week
-- make this one of the regular items that runs
automatically each week on the new system; direct the
posters to the financial aid newsgroup. I need to
incorporate thorough Scandisk or NDD. Install Spanish CD on
my computer, make copies, give to Meg. Try reading ZIP
files with some other ZIP program. Begin immediately
zipping my backups with DES encryption. Should be a batch
file to do a Registry backup and regular file backup every
day. Before rebooting, the weekly batch file should search
for large files and notify me of what they are because, if
they're large enough, they could screw up the backup plans
and may require separate treatment. This is not a problem
if the DATA partition is small enough. DriveImage file size
can be 690 MB now instead of 640 MB. I'm doing program
backup on alternating monthly CD-RW -- make sure I have
reminders for that -- it's Set A and Set B. High-speed
parallel ports are ECP/EPP, and there's also BPP and SPP.
Set up item that takes me on Deja search for other student
loan entries one day a week, to go prospecting for student
loan participants. Sell old software with manuals when I
get the system up and working properly for a couple of solid
months. * * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * You can disable
Windows' log-on password. Open the Passwords in Control
Panel and click on the Change Windows Password button. Type
your old password in the Old Password field. Then tab to the
New Password and Confirm Password fields in turn, and press
only Enter in each one.
>If Windows fails to boot properly, press F8 while it boots
for the
>Windows StartUp menu, and pick the Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT)
>option. It attempts a normal boot but records the status of
every step
>Windows takes during the process. You can use this option
to
>log a failed boot. Then, reboot to Safe mode if necessary
and
>use a text editor to open BOOTLOG.TXT (in your root
directory).
>Search for "fail" to find the boot steps Windows had
trouble

>with. Failed steps are often excellent clues to the cause

of
>the problem.
Remove the URLs that IE remembers for its AutoComplete
feature by launching RegEdit and going to
HKEY_USERS\Default\Software\Microsoft
\InternetExplorer\TypedURLs. Delete any unwanted URLs.
To put all scheduled tasks on hold without disabling
the scheduler entirely, right-click on the Task Scheduler
icon in the system tray and select Pause Task Scheduler.
Windows launches slower the more programs run automatically
on start-up. Move programs out of your StartUp folder into
a new folder named StartUp Holds. Or remove entries you may
find on the LOAD= or RUN= line in the WIN.INI file. (Open
WIN.INI from your WINDOWS folder using Notepad.) You can
also place a semicolon at the head of either line to prevent
Windows from reading it while preserving your previous
settings.
>Constant warnings about low disk space on your Win98 PC can
>be annoying, especially if they refer to your host drive on
a
>compressed disk. To get rid of the warning, open Disk
Cleanup
>(Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) and click on the
>Settings tab. Deselect the check box labeled "If this drive
>runs low on disk space, automatically run Disk Cleanup,"
then
>click on OK.
>If you open a folder in Details view, and part of the
file/folder
>information isn't visible because the columns are either
>truncated or too wide for the window size, here's a quick
fix:
>Press Ctrl and the Plus (+) key on the numeric keypad. The
>columns will automatically adjust to fit the window or
widen
>to display all the information (if your resolution and
screen
>size are large enough). In an Explorer window, you may need
to
>select the pane first by pressing Tab.
Add eBay to daily websites opening. Consider installing
StarOffice instead of Windows. Batch file should start OL98

(or whatever program I'm using for scheduling) if it's not

running, checking in on it every hour or so.
The two main hard-wired Win98 Desktop icons, My
Computer and Network Neighborhood, will magically
transform into toolbars if you drag them to one of the four
edges of your screen and let go. You can "stack" the two
on the same edge, drag the new toolbars to the taskbar or
drag them to the center of the Desktop to create floating
toolbars.
*****
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * Some applications add themselves to the Context menu's
cascading New menu that appears when you right-click on the Desktop or within a folder.
You may find that even after you've deleted a particular application, it stays on the New
menu. If you want to remove it, launch My Computer, select Options from the View
menu and click on the File Types tab. Find the offending application on the list, select it
and click on the Remove button. Click on Yes when it asks for confirmation.
* * T I P O F T H E D A Y * * If a new application is accompanied by an information file
(filename.INF), that file may contain Registry-revision instructions. If so, search it for
lines beginning AddReg= and DelReg=. These lines point to the sections of the INF file
that contain those instructions. Review the sections to get an idea of what changes are
about to be made to the Registry.
Chapter
The Choice of Windows or Linux
I expect Windows 2002 to have problems. I expect Microsoft to continue to play
games with it. They may be games designed to encourage you to upgrade, or
games designed to frustrate other manufacturers software, or whatever.
You can back up specialized data on drive C with specialized programs. An
example is WyvernWorks Backup ICQ (free), which saves your contact list and
other information from the ICQ chat program.
How to install programs: make sure to read their README files first.

Appendix ___
DOS Commands
C:
CD \

CD \WINDOWS
CD WINDOWS

Move to drive C
Move to the top (confusingly called the root) of the directory
tree found on the current drive, which may be drive C or some
other drive
Change to the Windows folder found at the root of the current
drive
Change to the Windows subfolder (if any) found beneath the
current folder

Glossary
Real DOS
Windows DOS
HyperText Markup Language
HTML
World Wide Web
Web
Internet
WWW
WYSIWIG
Upload
Download
FTP
Command Line: Start | Run or DOS etc.

websites available for general-purpose online file storage: Driveway.com; iDrive (which lets you make a backup of a preferred website); and iBackup.
Put an asterisk next to the names of programs that dont require installation, and
explain that convention at the start of the book.
Consider learning more about Accessibility | Mouse Keys.
Upgrading Windows means having to buy new antivirus software etc. each time.

Use the Yearend 2000 / January 2001 backup of drive C as the one to restore and
dismantle for purposes of figuring out what all a person has to do in order to
reinstall Windows. That is the version of drive C that does the best job of
working properly and also containing many tweaks.
TuffTest by Windsor Technologies is a low-level hardware diagnostic for $10.
People should be able to exchange these databases of Favorites. Maybe facilitate
that before or through the book.
You can occasionally ping your ISP to keep it from disconnecting, using Delayer.
Dont install Cool Edit 2000 1.1. Just stay with 1.0.

Easier way to extract files from CABs:

>1. Click Start menu, click Run.
>2. In the Open line, type "msconfig" (without the quotation mark).
>3. On General tab, click Extract File.
>4. In the "Extract one file from installation disk", type the
>filename, and then
>
click Start.
>1.
In the "Restore from" box, type the path that point to Windows
>Me Installation
>
CDROM. For example: "D:\Win9x" (without the quotation marks).
>7. In the "Save file in" you can save the files in a folder.
>8. Click OK, and then click Close.

This text was in a document called Hacked Parts, last opened May 19, 2000.
I suspect these materials were put into other manuscripts, but I dont really
know.

10. Idea for a Larger Bootable Floppy. We could now go ahead and create a
bootable CD, but I guess we should first decide what we're going to put on it.
All we've really done is to figure out what belongs in that tiny little 1.44 MB
bootable section. What goes into the other 650 MB or so of free space? Really,
you could put anything you wanted in there. The bootable section, ideally,
would be much larger than 1.44 MB.
11. Experiment to Enlarge the Bootable Partition on CD. Then, before I came to
the part of the process that told me to insert my bootable floppy into drive A, I
used the DOS command SUBST A: F:\ where F was my BOOT_CD partition.
This command told the computer to substitute drive F for drive A. (The
command to end the substitution and return the disks to normal is SUBST A:
/D.)
12. Running Windows from CD. This left me feeling that there wasn't much use
for a bootable CD, other than as an emergency startup disk.
15. Keep It Simple. Don't install anything on your newly wiped hard disk except
Windows 98, and don't do a lot of configuring and tinkering. The one thing you
do have to configure is your modem (unless Windows detects it automatically).
16. Other Ways to Adjust Windows Early in the Process. Use your judgment on
how much to configure Windows otherwise. You'll have an opportunity to do
more later. The tradeoff is that, if you push your luck and make a lot of farreaching changes now, you risk spoiling your perfect installation and wasting all
the hours you've spent installing and downloading; but if you don't make any
adjustments, you'll have to make them all again, every time you reinstall
Windows. The changes I'm talking about are those that you'll certainly make at
some point; the only question is whether they will jeopardize your basic rocksolid (ha) Windows installation if you make them now. In my own case, I
decided on several minor steps that seemed best done now, before other software
would get installed and might get confused by any change in the existing state of
affairs. One thing I did was to create a C:\TEMP folder, since I always use one of
those and no harm would be done by creating it. This would also be a good time
to run a surface test or create new partitions (by using e.g., the PartitionMagic
floppy -- see point 2).

19. I had an old 1 GB hard disk sitting on the shelf that I had been meaning to
sell. Now I was glad I hadn't. I put aside the hard disk containing the pristine
Windows 98 installation, to serve as a backup in case I wanted to make any
changes, and instead connected the old 1 GB drive to the original computer.
(The covers were off both computers, and were destined to stay off until I had
everything done.) I put the new CD into that machine's CD-ROM drive and
booted. Sure enough, the new CD did boot properly: ... for drive A, I saw the
contents described in point 5; and when I switched to drive Z (see point 6), there
appeared to be the original Windows 98 files (shown with truncated 8+3 DOS
filenames). I typed Z: and CD \ to make sure my copying would start from the
root of Z; I typed C: and CD \ to make sure that the copied files and
subdirectories would branch off from the root of C; and then I ran XCOPY Z: C:
/S/E, and it began copying files.
21. Would the CD give me a bootable copy of Windows 98? I removed the CD
and rebooted. I got the error message, "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure.
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." I could not
understand why it was saying it was booting from an ATAPI CD-ROM. I put my
super-duper boot floppy in and hit Reset. It reboots, as it did before, and assigns
the CD-ROM to drive Z with the label Z1Z_Z2ZM. I put my bootable CD into the
working Win98 computer and check its contents.
22. While trying to find the solution for XCOPY, I came across a comment that
told me I should have set the first partition on my hard disk active when I was
using FDISK. I went back into FDISK, set the partition to active, left FDISK, and
rebooted. This time, the hard disk did boot up. For an instant, it flashed the
colored Windows 98 startup screen. Then it dumped me back at the C: prompt.
32. Deciding on a Partition Scheme. Another thing I did before cleaning out the
rest of the hard disk was to make sure I had two hard drives hooked up there,
with the second one serving as a placeholder so that the Windows program files
would all be set up to refer to the proper partitions. I probably could have done
this with just one drive, but since I had that old 1 GB drive sitting around, I went
ahead and cabled it as my second hard disk, and I laid out my partitions on the
two drives so as to resemble the layout on the other computer (referred to here as
my "main" computer), where I was writing these notes and where I do most of
my work. I used PartitionMagic to create six partitions, trying to set each at a
size that I thought might accommodate its needs (given the relatively small sizes
of the hard drives on this PENTIUM computer), but knowing that I could always
use PartitionMagic to adjust them later. On the first hard drive, I put partitions C
through E. C was the WIN98 partition (1000 MB); D was the PROGRAMS
partition (1700 MB); and E was the DATA partition, for word processing files and
other materials that generally do not require constant disk access (300 MB, which

I would probably revise upwards later when I had a clearer idea of how much
space I really needed for C and D). Why did I care about constant disk access?
With your first hard disk busy using Windows and other program files, they say
you are better off spreading out the disk work, which you can do by putting your
active data files on a separate drive. Thus, on the second hard drive, I put these
partitions (all in an extended partition, so their letters would always follow the
partitions on the primary drive): G for a partition called BURNING (250 MB
now, as a mere placeholder on this tiny 1 GB hard disk, but 700 MB later, on the
other machine) (see point 33).
33. Here's a brief explanation of the BURNING partition. I call it BURNING
because it temporarily holds the stuff I burn onto CDs. With a limit of 700 MB,
this partition will hold very little beyond what is actually going onto a CD. That
is, it will not contain many actively used files, and therefore will tend not to
become fragmented. (Fragmentation can cause some CD-burning programs to
stutter and can ruin the CD you were trying to create.) Further reducing the risk
of fragmentation, you have the fact that most of the contents of this partition will
arrive here in ready-to-burn chunks -- that is, you aren't going to do much
editing in this relatively restricted space. Also, by having this partition on a
separate hard drive, you reduce the risk of a stutter when Windows fiddles with
program files on your first hard disk for whatever reason.
34. Once PartitionMagic completed the steps of rearranging the partitions as just
described, I was ready to retrace the steps described in point 14. I rebooted. I
checked to insure that I could read files on the CD-ROM drive, which my floppy
had placed at the letter Z. (See point 6.)
37. Modem Setup. Leaving the hard disk in the PENTIUM computer, then, I
decided to do my tinkering with Windows before downloading relevant updates
(see point 15), rather than afterwards.
47. As noted earlier (see point 16), the goal of these adjustments was to take care
of things that might be more difficult to do later, and also to make adjustments
that I would almost certainly make anyway eventually, without crossing the line
into adjustments that could make the system unstable. The foregoing
adjustments pretty much reflect the way I've been using Windows for a couple of
years now, so I'm comfortable with that aspect of them. As far as I've been able
to determine, none of them threatens system stability. Anyway, I have decided
that the tradeoff is worth it -- there are just too many little adjustments to make,
adding up to hours of reconfiguration, and I would really rather do them this
one time and be done with it, if at all possible.

51. I noticed that the [Windows Update] downloads had changed a few things
that I had previously adjusted (see points 38-47), had added some other things
that I needed to adjust.
59. I disconnected the other hard drive, where I had installed my nice new
version of Windows 98, and put it aside. I had now reached a point of
addressing the original problem that had prompted me to seek a reliable method
of installing Windows in the first place. You see, I'd been having some Win98
difficulties on the AMD computer, and those difficulties were starting to worry
me, but at least that computer was still running; but this PENTIUM computer
had been really malfunctioning. There were still problems with Windows 98
itself. The machine, in its ordinary configuration (i.e., when I was not fooling
around with the old 1 GB hard drive), had possessed two 3 GB hard drives: one
a Fujitsu, and one a Western Digital, both from 1997. Drive C (the Fujitsu, I
believe) had Windows, program files, and Windows-created data files.
66. Meanwhile, I had been experimenting with the imperfect CD that I had
created on the first try. (See point 64.) . It really didn't take much extra time.
The whole thing looked like it was going to take less then 15 minutes, for 450
MB. Not bad!
68. My software existed in two forms: program CDs that I had purchased, and
software from other sources (primarily floppies and downloads) that I had on the
AMD computer and/or had burned onto CD. In my mind, the software ranged
from those programs that were highly important and reliable, down through
other programs that were important and/or reliable, but not both, and on to
programs that were genuinely unimportant and/or unstable. I decided, in this
second stage of the operation, to install those application programs that were
important, and perhaps to add others that I felt were especially stable even
though not as important, with a special emphasis on programs that would
require a lot of downloading and/or configuring if I had to install them again
from scratch. I would reach my stopping point when I had run out of stable
programs and/or had put approximately 850-900 MB on my PROGRAMS
partition (drive D -- see point 32), whichever came first. Of course, installing
programs on the PROGRAMS partition would also modify the WIN98 partition
(drive C), so I would make another CD backup of that partition, and this twodisk set would provide the second installment in my attempt to have a fully
backed-up, solid installation of Windows and my applications programs and
utilities. I would not be able to get as much material on these two CDs as if I
recorded them on a continuous two-CD set.
69. I put a couple of Office 97 icons in the Frequently Used list.

70. I sorted through the myriad downloads that I had saved on CD, added some
that were still on my AMD machine and had not yet been burned to CD, and
came up with a CD filled with of 648 MB of compressed files to copy over to the
PENTIUM computer -- realizing, as noted in point 69, that not all of them might
fit in this installment. I copied the programs on this CD mostly onto partition E,
with some left over for H (see point 32), and prepared to begin installing them.
71. Microsoft's Website was offering a "Power Tweaks" utility, without much of a
description of what was actually in it. After I installed it, I couldn't tell what
difference it might have made, if any; there weren't any explanatory notes.
Moving onwards, I read the README.TXT file accompanying the Powertoy
folder, and its repeated warnings scared me off.
77. The computer said "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure," and the blue-andwhite Windows 98 startup screen with clouds flashed across my monitor, and
then it said "Microsoft Windows 98" and gave me a C prompt.
78. Another user's circumstances sounded somewhat like mine (hard disk several
years old, irregular problems on bootup), but in more important ways we were
very different (I was not getting the seemingly important "sector not found"
errors, or the message that the computer could not find the FAT partition). The
advice to him, using a drive that was "3+" years old, was to replace the hard disk.
It was something I had contemplated, but I didn't think I was quite at that point;
but I did begin to think that I had done the right thing in not installing the rest of
my software on a possibly unstable hard drive. I tried again to install from the
CD with DriveImage. I rebooted from the CD and noticed an error message
telling me that BTDOSM.SYS (on the bootable portion of the CD) was corrupted.
I powered down for a minute and rebooted. No such error message this time.
Very strange. On closer examination, I realized that C was actually D -- that is, I
had thought I was looking at the WIN98 partition, but I was actually looking at
the PROGRAMS partition (see point 32), which told me that DriveImage had at
least proceeded as far as deleting the old C partition in preparation for installing
the new one. I ran PartitionMagic to take another look, and it confirmed that
there was 1 GB of free space before the PROGRAMS partition. I rebooted, got the
BTDOSM.SYS error again, powered down for a minute, rebooted, and got no
such error.
79. Possible Hard Disk Problem. I rebooted from the CD. I got the
BTDOSM.SYS error again, but otherwise the CD proceeded. I rebooted to see
whether C_IMAGE.PQI really had reinstalled Windows on this hard drive. Sure
enough, I got the blue-and-white Windows 98 startup screen. But then it froze
there, just as it had done before. (See point 72.) So evidently this problem hadn't
been related to the applications software I was installing on the previous go-

round; evidently it was a problem related to the basic Windows installation. In

other words, it seemed that either the original Windows installation was bad, or
that this hard disk wasn't taking it very well. I belatedly realized that perhaps
some of the problems I had had with XCOPY and was now having with the
Windows installation, might have been due to a hardware problem with the hard
disk, not to mere software imperfections. I was fairly sure (but not positive) that
the Fujitsu hard drive that was now my primary hard disk had also been my
primary hard drive previously. (See point 59.) I didn't know whether a problem
with the drive would be related just to the execution of programs, in which case I
might be able to use this Fujitsu as a secondary hard drive to store data on, or
whether it signaled instead that the drive was failing and should not be used for
data either.
80. I rebooted from the floppy. I didn't get the BTDOSM.SYS error, so perhaps
that was something that occurred only when rebooting from CD. (See point 78.)
81. Inexplicable Freezes. I had intended, anyway, to compare the Windows
installation on the Fujitsu against the pure installation on the Western Digital. So
I decided that now was a good time to connect the Western Digital as my
primary master, make this Fujitsu my primary slave, and make the 1 GB drive a
secondary slave (with CD-ROM as secondary master) entirely dedicated to
serving as my drive H swap area. (See point 44.) I moved the drives around,
changed their jumpers, recabled them, found that I would need a Y cable for the
power connector because I had run out of power supply lines, fished out the Y
connector that I had obtained at Radio Shack a few years earlier, booted the
system into drive C on the pristine Windows installation without a hitch, and
tried to move the upgrades from drive H to another partition. The system froze,
and I wondered if it was because I had chosen, as the target, a partition on the
troubled Fujitsu drive. I rebooted; and then my previously perfect Windows
installation froze before the bootup was complete. I rebooted. I tried to move the
files to another partition, but evidently chose another partition on the Fujitsu
drive, because it froze again. (Needless to say, I was beginning to wonder if the
Fujitsu drive was dying.) It was difficult to tell which partitions were on which
drive. The first two were in alternating order (i.e., C was the first partition on the
Western Digital, D was the first partition on the Fujitsu, etc.), probably because
the partitions on the Fujitsu weren't all logical drives. One of them was a
primary partition, and I understand that can cause this alternating-drive
situation. I tried again, and this time managed to move the files to a partition
that did not cause the system to freeze. Most of them, that is. With 15 seconds
left in the move process, the system froze again.
82. Converting and Resizing Partitions. I decided this would be a good time to
convert the primary partition on the Fujitsu drive to logical drives under an

extended partition, so that the drive letters would fall into consecutive order
instead of giving me the alternating-drive problem just mentioned. I did that by
shrinking the size of that primary partition in PartitionMagic, using the extra
space for a logical drive, and then booting into Windows and moving the files
from the one to the other. These operations, not involving the 1 GB drive, caused
no freezeup. Windows froze during reboot. I and took out the 1 GB drive. I
immediately rebooted without any further freezing. ... In DOS, I went to D and
confirmed that there were no longer any files in it. I ran PartitionMagic, deleted
that primary partition, and created and resized partitions as necessary to put me
back to the original six-partition scheme. (See point 32.) Now that I had
Windows installed on C, and saw that it occupied less than 500 MB of the 1,000
MB I had given it, I reduced the size of that partition to 700 MB and reallocated
the rest to the DATA partition on the first hard drive. Since I had no further
freezes, I concluded that the old Seagate 1 GB drive had been the culprit and that
it would not be useful even as a data disk. I labeled it as "probably defective"
and put it on a shelf. That, however, did not fully exonerate the Fujitsu, since the
Seagate had not been connected when I had experienced some of my problems.
(See point 79.)
84. I rebooted to Windows, moved some of these files, and the system froze. I
tried again, and the same thing happened. I rebooted. It froze during the boot
process. I rebooted from the floppy. At this point I discovered that I had been
confused. The change in drive letters had gotten me copying files to the
troublesome E drive, rather than away from it. When I typed CHKDSK /F at the
E: prompt, the system froze. I didn't want to use DOS commands to move many
files, because it seemed that they would eliminate the long filenames. (See point
23(c).) I rebooted and moved the remaining files from E. Within a few seconds, I
got "Error Copying File: Cannot copy [filename]: The system cannot read from
the specified device." This time, I created a separate temporary partition with the
free space on this Western Digital hard disk. The operation succeeded and
rebooted me; I again chose the Command prompt option. I saw that the DATA
partition was now drive F, instead of E. I rebooted into Windows. ...
PartitionMagic finished. ... I decided that my drives were probably not failing,
that the damage on E (on the Western Digital) was probably from a one-time
event, and that the problems with the Fujitsu were due more to incompatibility
that might render it unusable for a program disk but still might make it usable
for a data disk.
86. Emptying, Testing, and Restoring the Drive. By this time, I had gone
through numerous gyrations with the formerly pure Windows 98 installation on
my Western Digital drive. If the differences between drives C and G (see point
85) suggested that there was any corruption on either drive, my bet was that it
would be on C, which had gone through all this turmoil. In other words, I had

now become more confident of the purity of my Windows installation as

captured on CD than I was of the purity of the Windows installation that
presently existed on either of my hard drives. Therefore, I decided to start again
from CD.
89. While booting, Windows detected certain items of hardware.
95. Downloads That Depend on Other Downloads. I installed all of the patches
and upgrades that were willing to be installed, with the exception of Outlookrelated stuff. (See point 98.)
97. Installing Remaining Non-Outlook Downloads. I ran the SYLK downloads
again. The SYLK download ran OK this time. I ran the other two patches that
were supposed to be held until after the SR-2 patch had been installed, namely,
the Forms 2.0 Control Security Patch and the Template Security Patch. (See point
94.) Both ran without any problem.
98. I turned to the Outlook 98 SETUP.EXE file that I had saved from my previous
experience with Outlook. As I recalled, Outlook 98 did not give me the option of
downloading the entire program and saving it for future reinstallation; instead, I
had to run this SETUP program, and Outlook would install directly from
Microsoft's computers onto mine. I was relieved to think that my CD imaging
plans would now enable me to make a more permanent copy of the program,
albeit in installed (and therefore perhaps not so flexible) form.
99. Modem Difficulties. I decided I'd rather use the old version of Outlook 98's
SETUP.EXE program than none at all, so on the PENTIUM computer, I ran the
copy I had saved as a download 18 months earlier. For some reason, my modem
wasn't working. I went into Control Panel and saw that I didn't even have a
modem listed. I had no idea why the modem had suddenly disappeared -- must
have been something about the installation process. ... A couple of times along
the way, it asked me if it was OK to remove the device that I had previously
configured as a modem, and since that device wasn't working anyway, I said
sure, why not? ... I eventually configured it by the manual option, and it told me
the modem had been set up successfully. I rebooted, and the modem worked!
(Later, I wound up doing more modem configuration. See point 105(c).)
100. Installing Outlook 98. Continuing the foregoing process (see point 98), I ran
my old SETUP.EXE program and waited eagerly to see if it would still work. It
did. So I don't know what was the story with not being able to find SETUP.EXE
at the Microsoft Website. Maybe their thinking was that, if you already have the
old Outlook 98 installation files on your computer, you must be someone who
would get irritated to discover that you could no longer gain access to your

Outlook 98 information -- at least not easily -- the next time your computer
crashes, unless you've had the wisdom ... genius ... brilliance ... compulsiveness
required to save a copy of SETUP.EXE. Anyway, the installer ran for about an
hour and a half. Setup ended with an indication that I could reinstall Outlook 98
in the future just by running OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE from the D:\OUTLOOK
98 SETUP folder. When I saw that message, I made a copy of that folder to
another partition before rebooting, just in case that was indeed a set of files that
would be self-installing without further downloading. Then I clicked OK, and
Setup rebooted the machine. Then Outlook 98 opened with no problem. I then
went back to my list of downloads and installed the last nine downloads, the
ones specifically related to Outlook 98. (See point 98.)
105.(d) Shortcuts to particular documents would have to wait until later, when I
had my ideal Win98 installation doing my regular daily work on a machine with
all my data files present.
109(d) Tools Management Console, which I had heard was a really great tool that
would somehow help me plug in new utilities in the future. (See point 119(a).)
I decided to keep QuickSearch and Toggle Images programs: point 109(g).
Later decided that I didnt have much use for QuickSearch: point 109(g).
113.(e) DOS abbreviates long filenames like "Program Files," which appeared in
each of the lines I had just added. It abbreviates them down to eight characters,
ending them with a tilde and a number (e.g., "Program Files" might become
"PROGRA~1"). In most cases, there will be only one long filename of its kind in
a given folder, so it will be given the number one. For instance, in the Excel
example, "Program Files" ordinarily becomes PROGRA~1, but if you add another
"Program ..." item to the list, the number might change and EXCEL.EXE might
become PROGRA~2 -- in which case my program would be loading the wrong
program, or no program at all, and I would have to edit it to address the new
number. I repeated this process for each of the lines in my program. (Since
several of the programs were in the same folder on the same drive, I was able to
copy duplicate lines and just change the filenames in several cases to get this
editing job done faster.)
113.(f) Registry editing can really screw things up. ... I wondered what would
happen if I connected that old Seagate 1 GB drive again (see point 81), to copy
files back and forth. It was a lot faster to switch a hard disk between machines
than to cable data back and forth at a rate of 200 MB per hour. (See point 111.) (I
had had problems with the Seagate (see point 82), but had subsequently thought
that perhaps the power supply was coughing when I asked it to drive three hard
disks.) Or what if I used the Seagate as a secondary slave, where I would locate

my Swap files? (See point 44.)

113.(g) Modem Fix: Line Quality. Unfortunately, their instructions did not seem
to match what was happening on my computer. ... The basic idea, repeated with
variations at all of these sites, was to run HYPERTRM.EXE....
118. Speed up your system by disabling all audible feedback from Windows. To
do this, go into Control Panel | Sounds | Schemes and select "No Sounds."
119.(b) PowerTweaks. I was ready, at long last, to revisit the PowerToys or
PowerTweaks or whatever they were called -- the other Microsoft things that had
confused and spooked me earlier. (See point 71.) The goal was to sort back
through the wreckage of that previous attempt and figure out what I should and
should not try to install. As I browsed around Microsoft's website, I discovered,
first, that its PowerToys -- which maybe I had first heard about several years
earlier -- were some kind of Win95 fix-up. Maybe they were no good and had
been phased out, or maybe they had been built into Win98, but the message was
clear enough: they were "not for Windows 98." See
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloaddef.asp?RLD=85.
119.(c) Illegal Operation. To prepare the PENTIUM computer so I could install
the IE 5 Power Tweaks and the Web Developer Accessories as just described, I
closed down all open programs.
120. Still More Windows Adjustments. As I was going through the steps
described above, I came across yet more ways to adjust my system, and I realized
that I had not nearly exhausted the list of non-risky things you can do to Win98.
The tips and ideas I found worthwhile were as follows:
120. (d) Deleting GID and FTS Files. I found a suggestion that I should delete
files with GID or FTS extensions. These types, according to the tip, were created
by Windows help programs and would be recreated if needed. There certainly
were dozens of them on each of my computers. As far as I could recall, the
Windows Cleanup Wizard had not mentioned these file types. (See point 105(g).
So was it safe to delete them? One bit of advice was to do it in DOS, so that I
wouldn't be deleting any files that Windows was actively using. That made
sense, but what about the part where it said the system would recreate them?
Probing further, I found an article in which they seem to say that these files will
be reconstructed as soon as you try to do a search in a given program's help files
again. The author said you might save 2-7 MB by doing this deletion, but my
reaction was that I didn't care to sit there through all those re-creations again.
Indeed, that was why I had gone into those help files to generate indexes in the
first place. (See point 69.) So I was not going to delete the GID and FTS files.

10

120. (g) Caps Lock Beep. Since I sometimes hit the Caps Lock key without
knowing it, I decided I would like a beep to tell me that I've done it. For this, I
went into Control Panel | Accessibility Options | Keyboard | Toggle Keys. To
make sure the setting would stay on, I went into Accessibility Options | General
and unchecked the Automatic Reset box.
: point 120(n) "Coolswitching" is the act of using Alt-Tab to switch from one
open window to another. (If you hold Alt-Tab a moment before releasing, you'll
see icons for each program, with a brief descriptive text underneath, and you'll
note that the icons are arranged with the most recently visited ones coming first.)
120. (ad) I found Icon Snatcher, a free download that I could use to search my
computer for icons that might be suitable for the job. I started to use Icon
Snatcher, but it looked like I would have to examine hundreds of files
individually in search of the icons they might contain. I bailed out of that and
just chose some reasonably good icons from the three DLLs mentioned above.
120(aj) I decided to try again to resize the display to 800 x 600. Last time around,
I had gotten a message that the system needed to reboot immediately in order to
display things properly, and then it had refused to work properly when I did
reboot. (See point 105(k).) This time, I decided that if I got that message, I would
back out of it and revert to 640 x 480 mode. So I went into Control Panel |
Display | Settings and moved the Screen Area slider over to 800 by 600, and
clicked OK. No reboot message. Just to be sure, I rebooted, and it came back up
fine in 800 x 600 mode.
128(d) I could use the command rundll32.exe shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 6 to
reboot with force -- i.e., to shut programs down even if it means losing unsaved
data.
130. Once this was all taken care of, the only remaining problem regarding
MAINT_WK was to figure out how to get it to run. [For Task Scheduler] to
trigger a reboot on Wednesday at 5 PM, it would need to run REBOOTER. I
added a warning line to REBOOTER with the PAUSE command. This would
prevent REBOOTER from being an automatic rebooter; so in case I might need
an automatic rebooter, I made a copy of REBOOTER without the PAUSE
command, for immediate rebooting, and called it REBOOTGO.
131. How could I kill running processes? I got the general message that this is
not something DOS can do.

11

134. (g) Registry Cleaners. I decided against CleanReg because its README.TXT
file indicated that it had been created in September 1996, leaving me to wonder
how it would fare with the Win98 Registry. Similarly, both RegMaid and
Registry Saver 1.2 appeared to have been created in October 1997. I found
precious few Registry cleaners that had been developed during the past year;
most seemed to be much older. Perhaps a more careful search would find more.
134. (i) WinKey. I now saw that it relied on the Windows Key, i.e., the specialpurpose key at the lower left corner of newer keyboards. I had thought it would
allow me to program Ctrl- and Alt- key combinations. One of my two keyboards
was old and did not have the Windows Key. I decided to postpone further
consideration of this program until later, when I might install it on just one
machine or might upgrade my keyboard. Really, I hoped instead to come across
a hotkey program that would let me assign any allowable hotkey and would
show me what I (or my programs) had assigned. Unfortunately, I never came up
with a way of finding a complete listing.
134. (w) AirEase. The purpose of this program was to track frequent flier
mileage. The idea was that you would enter your miles into the program, and
the program would then tell you how you were doing in light of the latest news
from the various airlines. How would your copy of AirEase get the latest news?
You would download the latest update of the program. How old was the latest
revision of the program, at the time when I considered installing it? Not quite a
year old. Not too impressive.
137. X-Setup: Plug-Ins. The X-Setup page said that a half-million people had
downloaded it. See http://www.xteq.com/main.html. The first thing I noticed
was that there seemed to be a currently active support area at Xteq. See
http://www.xteq.com/support/index.html. Their awards page was quite
impressive: five stars [at Hotfiles], six ducks at Nonags, etc. See
http://www.xteq.com/products/xset/awards.html. I downloaded X-Setup and
a bunch of plug-ins and related files, and then wondered how to make it all
work. I started by installing the XQ-XSETUP.ZIP file. The X-Setup READ-ME
file told me that I needed some Microsoft scripting files, but that I already had
those if I had Win98. I had downloaded about twenty add-ins from the X-Setup
site, and now I started through the list. I saw that some required a separate
installation, and others just required me to move their contents (usually an XPL
file) to the Plugins subfolder under my X-Setup folder on D. Some of these
programs were add-ons that didn't seem to have a lot to do with X-Setup. An
example was XShooter, which had no purpose other than let you set up your
computer (or someone else's) so that each time they click on their screen, an
imitation gunshot goes off and a "hole" appears in the page where they were
clicking. Some of my downloads said that they would not run without Visual

12

Basic; the purposes of some were unclear; and when I tried to get back to
www.xteq.com to figure out why I had downloaded them, I found that their
server wasn't functioning. So after a couple of false starts, I decided that I really
should install only the add-ins that I could understand and see some need for.
When I had done what I was going to do with these additional downloads, I
started X-Setup. It had a Windows Explorer type of interface. Its status bar told
me that it now contained 254 plug-ins with 655 items, 32 wizards with 148 linked
plug-ins, and 27 tools. As I went down through the list of plug-ins, I began to see
why people were so excited about it. The plug-ins that I used, or thought I might
use in the future, were as follows:
X-Setup can display or hide icons on Control Panel: point 137(b).
X-Setup can set up to two programs to open DOC files by default: point 137(e).
X-Setup can make Windows Explorer show the Icons that appear inside Control
Panel: point 137(e).
X-Setup can enable fast update: point 137(e).
X-Setup can wrap long icon titles: point 137(e).
X-Setup can display more icons when coolswitching: point 137(g).
X-Setup can set width of borders around windows: point 137(g).
X-Setup can enable smooth scrolling: point 137(g).
X-Setup can disable adding documents to Recent Documents list: point 137(h).
X-Setup can set Menu Reaction Speed to 150: point 137(h).
X-Setup can speed up Communication Ports: point 137(i).
X-Setup can change Dial-Up Networking settings: point 137(j).
X-Setup can provide IRC Nuke Protection: point 137(j).
X-Setup can change picture shown at Startup: point 137(k).
X-Setup can set Startup Menu to be displayed for a certain number of seconds:
point 137(p).
X-Setup can set default Startup Menu choice (did not work on my machine):
point 137(p).
X-Setup can hide little arrows that appear by default on shortcuts: point 137(r).
X-Setup can hide the words "Shortcut to ...": point 137(r).
X-Setup can set cursor blink rate: point 137(r).
X-Setup can find your Windows product ID number: point 137(r).
X-Setup can change your user name: point 137(r).
138(a). X-Setup. General Observations. I discovered, when I was partway
through, that I could have turned on Record Mode to keep track of all these
changes and make them automatically if I needed to do this over again. I made
all my changes at once, without rebooting, and then rebooted once to make them
all happen at the same time. That seemed riskier than doing them one at a time,
but it was a lot faster, and I figured if it trashed the Registry, I wouldn't have
used up all my good backup copies in the process. (Note: you don't have to shut

13

off everything that's checked in X-Setup. Checkmarks and blanks apply only
when you hit the "Apply Changes" button.) After rebooting, I noticed that the
instruction to show the boot menu for two seconds (see paragraph (p)) did not
work (which was perhaps not surprising, given X-Setup's notice that some such
items might not work in Win98). Having gone down the long list of plug-ins, I
went through X-Setup's Wizards, but I quickly concluded that they just
presented another way to step through the same options as I had just gotten by
going down the tree view.
139. Registry Cleaners. While researching the issue of Registry cleaning, I had
heard about and downloaded several other programs. The idea seemed to be
that the Registry could be huge and complex, and that it took several different
Registry cleaners, each with its own special kind of competence, to do a really
good job of cleaning up the Registry.
141. (i) Another way of saving a large file in pieces among multiple floppies was
to use Win98's Backup utility, but I didn't like it as much.
141.(l) I chose REBOOTGO because it would not require my presence to hit a
button before it even tried to shut things down, as REBOOTER would do. (See
point 130.) But it also would not force a reboot at the expense of losing data, as
FORCBOOT would do.
Sharing violation leads to unresponsive system: point 141(q).
145. Other Tweaks. These adjustments did not require Registry editing. I
started these steps before taking the steps shown in point 146, but the later items
in this point 145 occurred to me only after I had begun the items shown in point
146.
146. To edit the Registry, I made sure all other windows were closed. After I was
done, I selected Registry | Exit. In some but perhaps not all cases, as it turned
out, I had to reboot to get the changes to take effect.
Registry edit to remove Start | Documents: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Find: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Log Off: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Run: point 146(e).
Registry edit to disable Start | Settings | Control Panel: point 146(e).
146.(n) Bad Advice from Mijenix. Registry edit provoked this situation: I had
worked through the process of restoring a backup copy of the Registry (see point
147), so I was more or less prepared when, after rebooting, I got this message: If

14

Windows fails to start, run SETUP again. Press any key to continue." I did so,
and the system froze. I rebooted from a floppy, rearranged the excess backups
from H:\Backup so that they would not get in the way (see point 148). I restored
the other Registry backups to H:\Backup and noticed that, even though I was
now keeping a dozen backups of the Registry, they still stretched back only six
days and would have extended back even less than that if I had been making
Registry backups as frequently as my many edits, during these days, would
warrant.
147. Fixing a Startup "Pop" Problem. To find the source of the two little pops
that I just mentioned, that occurred each time I rebooted, I was supposed to look
in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ for programs listed under
either the Run or the RunOnce subkeys. Nothing noteworthy in either place.
Next, I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ and looked at Run,
RunOnce, RunServices, and RunServicesOnce. Apparently the keys just listed
are the ones that control what programs will load at startup. There were a couple
of items in subkeys under Run that could conceivably have been the problem,
but I really had no idea what they did, and I wasn't about to delete them. I was
out of my depth. I hadn't paid attention when Windows was rebooting, but now
I rebooted to see if I could still hear those two little pops. I got distracted again
during reboot. I rebooted again, and this time the system froze. I rebooted, and
this time it booted without difficulty. In each of these reboots, I had left Control
Panel open, so that it would come back up on reboot and remind me of
something that I wanted to look at in it; and each time, I had noticed that only
half of its icons had been colored in. I had assumed that the source of the pops
was interfering with the coloring process, but now I wondered whether it was
the other way around. I closed Control Panel and rebooted. But no, that wasn't
it; the pops were still there.
148. I saw 12 Registry backup files, numbered from RB000 through RB011. I
moved the oldest ones to C:\TEMP, leaving five in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP.
(Note: the files were not numbered chronologically. For example, RB008.CAB
was older than RB002.CAB.) After moving those older CABs out of the way, I
now saw five recent registry backups in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was
only one from the present day and one from the previous day. I knew I had had
the two-pops problem on the previous day, but I wasn't sure when, so I started
by restoring that one. (Use your up and down arrow keys and your Tab key to
navigate here.)
149(a) Having restored the Registry to its condition two days earlier, I could
figure out which of the changes described in point 146 (and earlier) had already

15

been achieved by that time, and then I could re-do the remaining changes that
had not yet occurred by that time. One problem with this approach was that I
could not be absolutely certain that I would retrace all of the steps. Admittedly,
this document presents a highly linear description of my actions, with action A
generally coming before action B; but in some cases it has been necessary to
revise earlier notes or otherwise depart from a strict linear treatment. So starting
with point 144, or 146(a), or whatever, might leave out some steps. Also, it could
be potentially time-consuming to figure out where in the process I had made that
Registry backup.
151. I rebooted into Windows and returned the Registry backups back from
C:\TEMP to C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP. There was some overlap -- the two
directories combined now contained more than my limit of 12 backup files -- so I
[renamed and] deleted as seemed appropriate to give myself a collection that
would include the important new ones and would still have some older ones,
just in case.
154.(d) Implications of Inability to Move Everything. According to one person,
this arrangement of having Windows 98 and nothing else on drive C would
make it easy to reinstall, as long as you kept a copy of your Registry on another
disk (such as my backup on drive H -- see point 145(p)). You would simply clean
off drive C, reinstall Windows to drive C, replace the Registry with the backups,
and you would be done, without having to reinstall all your other programs on
top of it.
155. While I had burned the earlier CDs to capture a pristine Microsoft-only
arrangement, in hopes that this might be somewhat more stable (see point 68), I
had more recently started thinking in terms of getting as much on there as
possible, so as to save me the work of having to reinstall all that stuff later. This,
too, had led to a surprise: there had been far more system-related tweaks and
utilities than I had anticipated. Now, however, it seemed that I had finished with
most of that.
156. (g) Adobe Acrobat Reader. I did not really want to install this relatively
large program (6.5 MB in compressed form), but there was no doubt that I would
soon run across a website containing a document that I would need it for. There
wasnt much configuration you could do for this one.
167. Introducing the Task. In reviewing the options just described, I decided
that the only task needed right now was to make sure that STEP_165.PQI was a
valid, working snapshot of the state of drives C and D on the PENTIUM
computer as of point 165(b). To test this without endangering the status of the
PENTIUM computer -- and only incidentally to get the AMD machine in good,

16

working shape -- I decided to prepare the AMD machine for installation of

STEP_165.PQI. Finally, if all that worked well, I would retrace the remaining
steps in points 165 and 166 (except the ones that had gone wrong). This would
put me in a position to finish configuring my complete system on the PENTIUM
machine.
168. Rearranging Partitions. Using PartitionMagic (see point 2), I set up the
partitions on the AMD computer so that there were six of them and their names
and purposes matched the scheme on the PENTIUM machine. (See point 32.) Of
course, their sizes were not the same -- I had to accommodate existing programs
and data on the AMD machine that did not exist on the PENTIUM computer, not
to mention that the disk sizes themselves were different -- but at least the
framework was there. To complete that framework, I examined the partitions on
the PENTIUM computer that were not represented on my backup CDs (i.e.,
partitions E, F, G, and H), so as to make sure that the similar partitions on the
AMD machine contained the appropriate folders.
171. I hoped to use CDs to handle most of my backup needs, and to use the tape
backup only for those materials that were either too transient or too bulky to
store on a CD.
172. Making Data Space on the AMD Machine. I cleaned up some data on the
AMD machine and archived it onto CDs. For the data remaining on drives E
through H that was just not yet in shape to go onto CDs, I had these options:
finish it and get it onto CDs (not a viable option because some of the needed
programs were no longer working); or shrink partitions E through H and create
another partition to hold this data (which I decided involved too much fooling
around); or just create "Old" folders -- for example, "Old E" -- and, when I was
ready for the big change, move all of the remaining folders on each partition into
that partition's Old folder. That's the approach I decided on. I had to wait until
the last minute to do it, though, because my existing programs on drive C would
continue to look for their customary data folders, and things would get
confusing if they weren't there. I couldn't do this until I was ready to stop using
the programs on the old version of drive C and install the new ones.
177. I now felt that I should make the partitions on both machines the same size.
Of course, the drives on the AMD machine were much larger than those on the
PENTIUM machine, so one of the partitions on each of the two hard drives on
the AMD machine would be much larger than the corresponding partitions on
the PENTIUM machine. On the first hard drive, E (DATA) would be larger, and
on the second one, F (AV) would ultimately be the only larger one. This was an
optional step; I just saw it as a way of making things a bit more uniform. I
couldnt go all the way with this right now, however, because I still had lumps of

17

data in awkward places on the AMD machine (such as the copy of the old drive
C in drive H (see point 169), and also because I did not yet know how big I
wanted D (PROGRAMS) to be, not having yet installed all of my programs. For
right now, I decided just to verify that drives C and D would be large enough to
hold the incoming contents of the CD, and I planned to finish the partitioning job
later. (See point ___.)
179. I got Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure. I tried again. I tried a third
time. OK, the CD was evidently not bootable. Hadnt I solved this problem
earlier? I couldnt remember the details. As long as the CD wasnt bootable, its
contents were invisible unless I booted with one of the other floppies.
180. Bootstrapping. I booted from drive C. The thing did boot; it had some of
the boot difficulties that I remembered from back at approximately the time
when I had burned the STEP_152 CD; but then Windows started up like I
wanted.
185. Hitting F5 to refresh the screen.
189. Testing the CDs Bootability. Now I could begin to work my way back out
of this detour. As soon as I verified that the CD was bootable and seemed to
contain the materials cabled over from the PENTIUM machine, I would be able
to delete those materials. (See point 186.) But the boot failed again! (See point
179.) I rebooted and it still failed. If I booted from the floppy, that worked, and I
was able to see the contents of the CD, and it looked like they were there.
194. Recovering Other Last-Minute Files. During my final closedown of the old
machine (see point 178), I had also recovered some other files that I thought I
might need again sometime. These included data files, which could stay put for
now, but also some program files: a PartitionMagic upgrade that I had recently
downloaded; the SETIHOME.INI file (see point 156(k)); and the lists of files in
Windows 95 and 98 (see point 166(d)).
200. ... Unfortunately, one or two boots later, that fell apart: Internet Explorer
was no long running properly by itself. Later, it still gave me Unable to
establish a connection.
201. The Original Concept. The purpose, at the outset, was to find a way to back
up Windows 98 on CD-ROM. In one sense, I had figured that out long ago: you
install the software and use DriveImage and/or XCOPY, perhaps with other
software, to make a copy on one or more CDs. (See point 3 and point 25.) What I
had been trying to do, since then, was to develop a more sophisticated method
that would combine two approaches. First, there would be a single CD

18

containing the core programs I would need on either of my computers. I had

been reluctant to span this across more than one CD. (See Overview at the
beginning of this document.) The basic idea remained the same: there would be
the beginning CD (or more than one), and then there would be subsequent CDs
that would contain all files that had been added since the original. Restoring
Windows 98 would then be a simple matter of using the first CD, in either
computer, supplemented by a second CD that contained the files specific to that
computer, such as that computers specific modem setup.
206. Modem Problem Again. I rebooted and tried again, but when I tried to dial
out, I still got Could not detect modem. ... Next, it said click on Diagnostics |
More Info to make sure Win98 can communicate with the modem. I was
supposed to see that the Port Information here matched the physical
configuration of the modem. ..... I went back to Diagnostics, and this time it
said, The modem failed to respond. ... [V]erify that the interrupt for the port is
properly set. I had been having problems with this old 33.6 kbps modem
throughout this entire process (see e.g., point 99), and was now very close to
buying a new one. .... Then I repeated the Diagnostics steps just mentioned, and
got the same failed to respond results..... I looked at the modems manual and
saw that it was possible to set the modem to use specific IRQs. I didnt
remember which way I might have configured it when I had bought it several
years earlier. I shut down the computer, opened the case, and looked. ... I left
them as they were. I noticed something that I might have been doing wrong: the
instructions told me to choose COM4, which I had thought wouldnt apply in my
case because I had only three COM ports; now I realized that perhaps three COM
ports was standard on Win95 (for which this modem had been designed) and
Win98, and I was supposed to choose a number higher than those three, so that I
would not be interfering with their availability for other purposes. I went into
Windows and saw that my act of removing the 336ifxC internal modem within
Control Panel | Modems had not actually worked; both modems were listed.
210. Using PowerDesk Explorer to Make a Disk Copy. But there was no Copy
option on drive C itself. So I clicked on drive C and selected all files and folders
in the right-side pane of PowerDesk Explorer. This copy operation took about
five minutes.
213. Restoring from the Disk Copy. Now that I had copies of drives C and D on
drive F, what could I do with them? I could certainly copy them back, assuming
I had Windows running, but what if the problem was that Windows was dead? I
couldnt use DOS because it would truncate (shorten) long filenames. (See point
23(c).) So if drive C crashed and I needed to restore it, I would be stuck with
DOS, which would copy files from F (or wherever) back to C with different
filenames than I had given them. This would be no problem for those files

19

whose names were DOS-style 8+3 character names anyway, but it would make a
mess of the rest. [But Windows system files all did seem to have short
filenames.] Could I do a first pass through in DOS, restoring all files whose
names were short, and then another pass, restoring all the rest? I could modify
LIST_ALL (see point ___) to produce the list of short-named files. I then realized
I would also have to generate a list of folders to create. That is, if I was restoring
to a blank disk, DOS would copy files only if the folders already existed.
Another possibility was that XCOPY didnt require that.
215. Disk-to-Disk Restore Experiment Using DOS. Continuing the experiment
above (see point 213), I devised some DOS batch files that would create a list of
files to be restored and would create their directories and restore the files into
those directories. The idea was that I could then copy these batch files to floppy
and use them, within DOS, to run down the whole list of Windows files,
restoring them all to where they belonged. The first problem was that, the way I
designed it, these batch files had to refer to the floppy disk for every operation,
which made them very slow. The second problem was that, since I had copied
PENTIUM drive C to a folder called F:\DRIVE_C, I had to remove the DRIVE_C
part from every filename in the resulting batch files, so that they would restore to
the root of drive C on the AMD machine rather than restoring to a new folder
called C:\DRIVE_C. (If you dont know what I mean, never mind; its not
important.) I tried with XCOPY, and that didnt work even with the quotation
marks. DOS can deal with long filenames if you put them in quotes, but working
with an existing long file name was not the same as creating one.
223. Latest Updates. In Internet Explorer, I hit Ctrl-L and typed in
www.updates.com. It worked, but as I was typing that URL, I noticed that the
system was very slow in filling in the Ctrl-L dialog box. When I tried it again a
moment later, however, the problem seemed to be gone. I was on my guard, but
so far, it seemed that I could finally move ahead and install the last of my
software.
224(b) WinMag Registry Ripper. This was a recent download from
www.winmag.com. I didnt have any immediate Registry editing plans, but it
had sounded like a useful program, so I installed it.
224(f) I closed that window, and the computer seemed to return to its normal
function. A short time later, however, the system began responding extremely
slowly. This time, it was PDExplo (PowerDesk Explorer) that the system said
was not responding.
225. Outlook 98 Problems Again: Unknown Error. Within the past few hours,
while trying to get into the Address Book in Outlook 98, I had again gotten the

20

message that "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the
problem persists, restart Outlook." (See point 166(e).) I noticed that the setup
program for my next item of software was running very slowly. I rebooted.
Evidently one of the programs that I had installed recently had needed to reboot,
and either it had not said so or I had ignored it, because when I rebooted, the
system indicated that it was going through a setup process, as it ordinarily
would do after I installed new software that involved a change to the Registry.
Rebooting did not fix the Outlook problem. ... I went online for advice. I got the
following ideas, in order of decreasing relevance: ... The Outlook Address Book
problem was still there, so I applied the first of my three options: I shut down
Outlook, moved the entire contents of E:\Messages (see point 112(c)) to another
folder, and started Outlook again. I got a confusing message that said, The
location messages are delivered to has changed for this user profile. I didnt see
why it should have changed. I clicked OK and tried to go into the Address Book.
Again, I got the unknown error message. I tried using the Address Book
again. As expected, it made no difference; the error was still there. I decided that
reinstalling Outlook 98 was probably not going to solve anything (see point
166(b)). I went back online. I found a page pertaining to Outlook 97. .... If
[another suggestion] failed, they said, I would have to reinstall Windows. I
decided to apply their advice in somewhat different order. First, [after removing
Outlook 98], I went to the Outlook 98 Setup folder on D: and clicked OUTLOOK
98 SETUP.EXE. ... I tried to open the mailbox icon and, once again, got the
unknown error message. I tried to dial out and got a message that my modem
was not functioning. .... It began to look like my Windows installation was
screwed. One message said something about deleting MAPI32.DLL and then
reinstalling Windows Messaging. I found a Microsoft Knowledgebase page that
described command-line options for OUTLOOK.EXE, and I ran OUTLOOK
/UNREGSERVER and then OUTLOOK /REGSERVER to delete and rebuild all
Outlook-specific Registry entries. This happened so quickly that I doubted it had
actually worked. Having seen still more advice indicating that I might have to
reinstall Windows, I decided that was probably the direction I needed to go.
227. Contemplating Catch-Up Again, Again. I now had to re-do the things that I
had recently done, as described in point 221 through point 225. I started by
verifying that the Address Book in Outlook 98 finally did work correctly. And
whoa, to my surprise, it did not. I got the same unknown error message. (See
point 225.) I tried running the newly reinstalled version of Outlook 98 on the
AMD machine, and I got the same message there. It appeared that the problem
had existed before point 220. So now I faced a tough choice: either I was going
to recreate all of my steps since the previous CD backup, which was back at point
204 or thereabouts (and would hope that, back then at least, there was no such
Outlook problem); or else I was going to forge ahead, ignoring the Outlook 98
problem and just trying to get a working system in place, and hoping that (a) the

21

Outlook problem was not a harbinger of some larger system problem that would
eventually make it impossible for me to continue and (b) perhaps someone
would even come up with a solution eventually, although apparently they had
failed to do so for two years now. (Nevertheless, I did post the question online.
See point ___.) As I reviewed all of the work that I had done since point 204, and
realized that I was not certain I had even burned a CD at that time, not to
mention the possibility that the Address Book problem had existed even then, I
decided that it was not feasible to retreat that far.
229. No entry for modem; I rebooted and now the system found the modem OK.
In other words, it seemed that the system was sometimes unable to assign an
IRQ for the modem, or something like that.
240. I went ahead and combined this partition, formerly BADSPACE,
temporarily drive F, into drive E, and hoped for the best. It was either that or put
it into a new permanent drive F, which would change all my references to drives
F, G, and H, with all kinds of ramifications for my later installation on the AMD
machine. Once again, I did this before remembering that the PartitionMagic
operation would take an hour, which in this case was really OK because it was
time for lunch anyway. I could have interrupted it, but at the risk of losing
whatever data I had on drive E.
241. Problems with Outlook Express. My unknown error problems in
Outlook 98 (see point 225) made me think that I should consider getting rid of
Outlook 98. I had previously been successful when I had tried to get into
Outlook Express and tinker with its settings. (See point 102.) Now, however, I
got an error message stating, Outlook Express could not be started. The
application was unable to open the Outlook Express message store. ... your disk
is full. Contact Microsoft support for further assistance. My disk was not full. I
wondered if maybe Outlook Express and Outlook 98 were both suffering from
the same core problem, whatever it was. ... I tried running it again, and this time
it gave me a different error message. It said, The Address Book failed to load.
Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please re-install. I clicked OK, and
this did take me into Outlook Express. But the message about the Address Book
sounded like it might be on target on the subject of the problems in Outlook 98 as
well: that is, the problems there, too, had been with the Address Book.
242. Outlook Express, Outlook 98, and the Bad Hard Disk Partition. I decided to
try resolving my problems with Outlook (see point 241) by straightening out the
iffy situation on my first hard disk. I proceeded as follows:

22

242.(a) I decided that it was nuts to try to combine the old BADSPACE partition
with the good sectors of my first hard disk. (See point 239.) I had received
several lectures on how important it was not to use a decaying hard disk.
242. (c) I had left Outlook Express running during this process, and it prevented
me from moving some of the contents of E:\Messages to drive F until I shut it
down.
242.(d) PartitionMagic and the Bad Space. I rebooted from the floppy and told
PartitionMagic to reconfigure drive E so that it would be called BADSPACE and
would contain a minimal 300 MB at the very end of the first hard drive, where
the bad sectors lay. (See point 114.) (I assumed that PartitionMagic wanted the
size to be 300 MB, rather than the 259 MB or thereabouts that PartitionMagic had
considered minimal on the other hard disk (see point 238), because
PartitionMagic was setting aside 40 MB for bad sectors, although that didnt
seem quite right.)
242(e) I ran the old DOS utility called FDISK (still supplied with Windows), and
selected Create DOS Partition | Create Logical DOS Drive in the Extended DOS
Partition. It said there was 1,020 MB available, and offered to create a logical
drive of that size. I said no, create one of 850 MB. It did that instantly, calling it
drive F. It now offered to create another drive, which would temporarily be
drive G, with 169 MB, and I accepted. This was larger than the 153 MB that
BADSPACE had formerly occupied, but I was beginning to think it might be just
as well to allow a little extra space for growth -- er, decay.
242.(f) Examining the New Partitions. I was curious about PartitionMagics
refusal to create a partition of less than 259 MB. Disk problem error: not
accessible. A device attached to the system is not functioning.
242.(g) Making the Best of a Bad Drive Situation. I went online for more advice.
Someone mentioned that Western Digitals website (like some others) offered
tools that might help. I went to that site (www.westerndigital.com/service/)
and downloaded the users manual for their Data Lifeguard Tools. It sounded
like I didnt need the whole package of tools; their Data Lifeguard Diagnostics
sounded like what I needed (if another diagnostic utility reports errors on the
hard drive). I downloaded that program and put it on a floppy. The manual
said it wouldnt wipe out my data. I rebooted from the floppy and ran the
DLG_DIAG program. It created a DLGDIAG.EXE file, and I ran that. This
identified my drive as a Western Digital. It told me that the Quick Test was not
available, so I ran the Extended Test. It took about ten minutes and said, One or
more errors were detected. Final code for this drive: 0258. Then it said the
errors were not repairable. It instructed me to contact Western Digital tech

23

support, which according to the manual meant, The hard drive is damaged
and cannot be restored to a defect-free status, and should be replaced.
242.(h) Outlook Again. The point of this disk exercise was that maybe hard disk
problems were causing Outlook to be installed improperly. That now appeared
doubtful, but at least it was a variable removed from the picture. I went to
D:\Outlook 98 Setup and ran OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE. ... I got the error
message, Setup cannot continue because files are missing from the installation
directory. Please run Setup from the Internet. In a way, this was good news -it suggested that I might finally be getting a new start. I ran it again, and this
time it offered to connect me with a website -- which was good, because
otherwise I had no idea of where to look for the online setup. (See point 98.) The
online connection downloaded 1.6 MB of files. Just to be sure that the
installation would not seek out the copies of the Outlook 98 and Outlook Express
folders that I had moved to drive F (now drive G), I deleted those copies while
the download was taking place, before it began installing. Also, while it was
downloading, I noticed that it said, Downloading Microsoft Outlook Express.
So maybe I was getting both programs at the same time here. Sure enough, after
rebooting I had icons for both. I ran Outlook 98 (known here as simply
Microsoft Outlook). Amazingly, after all the stuff I had removed, it still
remembered my old settings, which by this time was unquestionably bad news.
But no, it wasnt: this time the original Address Book errors no longer existed.
(See point 227.) I could use either Ctrl-Shift-B or the Address Book icon to get
into the Address Book. Oh, great joy! I ran it from the icon [under Start |
Programs]. After I answered its question as to where it should store its messages
(E:\Messages), it, too, ran OK.
243. (I subsequently found that I had accidentally moved some files to F rather
than G; drive F handled those files without a hitch.)
253. XXCopy. This utility, recommended by someone online, seemed like it
might be useful for my future backup needs, since it (unlike regular XCOPY) was
capable of handling long filenames.
255. Installing the Nearly Final Configuration on the AMD Machine. I copied
the STEP_254.PQI file over from the PENTIUM machine to the AMD:
(a) Configuration. Immediately at bootup, the system asked me which
configuration to load. (See point 211.) I answered None of the above, because I
wanted to set up a new AMD configuration. I gave this same answer in each of
the subsequent reboots.

24

256. Major Hard Disk Swapping. I had found CDs to be a great place to store
data. Once you made one or two copies of something, you didnt need to keep it
on your hard disk and keep backing it up until you were ready to go to work on
it. So I was finding that I needed less hard disk space than I had needed
previously. The AMD machine had two hard drives: one was 7 MB and the
other 10 MB. I decided that I could definitely get by with just the latter. This
would free up the 7 MB disk to replace the dying hard disk in the PENTIUM
machine. (See point 242(g).) I decided that I could safely supplement the 7 MB
drive that would be going into the PENTIUM by adding the old 1 GB Seagate
hard disk as drive H. So now it seemed that I was configuring the wrong drive C
in the AMD machine. They say that you should use your faster hard disk to hold
your Windows files. So the second 3 GB drive from the PENTIUM was going to
become the primary master -- i.e., the location of drives C and D (and possibly E)
on the AMD -- and the 10 GB drive was going to remain the primary slave. I
decided to take this operation in several steps, as follows:
256(a) I had used none of the above rather than altering the PENTIUM
hardware configuration.
256.(b) Trash the Western Digital 3 GB Drive. Next, I prepared to get rid of the
defective primary master hard drive in the PENTIUM machine. (See point
242(g).) This drive was the Western Digital WDAC33100-00H. (See point 108.) I
went to Western Digitals website (www.westerndigital.com) and looked into
their trade-in offer. Along the way, I saw that they were offering a $30 rebate on
their 10.2 GB and larger hard drives. (See
http://www.westerndigital.com/promos/30-reb4.html.) I could get a 10 GB
Western Digital WD102AA EIDE Ultra-ATA/66 Recalled 5400 RPM 9.5 ms
Caviar drive from Buy.com for about $115 (shipping included). I wasnt too sure
about that Recalled part, but if the rebate part was good, this would mean I
could get a 10 GB drive for $85 -- or less, if I could use the trade-in too. Western
Digital drives got noticeably more expensive if you went to higher capacities:
about $170 for the 20 GB and $215 for the 27 GB. I called Western Digital
Customer Service (800-275-4932) and asked about the meaning of Recalled and
their trade-in offer. Getting on the phone was a bad idea for at least two reasons:
I had had only three hours of sleep, and as it turned out the lady had no idea
what Recalled meant, other than that Western Digital had shipped some faulty
drives last autumn and had recalled them and replaced them with good ones.
The lady was very kind when I refused to let her create a file on me and insisted
on finding out simply what the trade-in amount might be. She said it went
according to drive size, and that the amount would be $20 for a 3 GB drive. She
told me to call their Online Store (877-934-6792) for more information. I repeated
the number to her, and she confirmed it. I called the number and got a
recording, Were sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. I called

25

Customer Service again and got put on hold. While I was holding, I glanced at
another web page I had opened before getting offline, and saw that I could get a
20 MB Fujitsu or Maxtor drive for about $145. Prices for those manufacturers
seemed to rise more rapidly after that, with the 27 MB drives up in the $180-200
range, so I figured 20 MB would probably be as high as I would go. Eventually
someone answered at Customer Service, and he told me that the proper number
for the Online Store was 877-934-6972. I tried calling that, but I must have
misdialed, because I got the Work from Home center, which would train me to
make money working right at my home. Ask yourself if you are Teachable,
the recording advised. It sounded like I would be purchasing a Decision
Package that would give me three hours worth of materials, complete with the
name and phone number of my Personal Team Leader. They urged me to return
the $36 Decision Package for a full refund if I was not serious about making
money because, if I did that, I would be out of their hair, allowing them to
concentrate more fully on people who were serious. I tried dialing again, and
this time I did reach Terry at Western Digitals Online Store. He said the $30
rebate was for retail purchases, not for purchases through the Online Store; that
the best prices at the Online Store were $185 for a 20 GB drive and $120 for a 10
GB (with shipping); and that the trade-in deal was through Tech Support and I
couldnt combine it with retail or with an Online Store purchase. To get the
trade-in, I would have to open a Case Number ... oh, Jesus. I called Customer
Service again, but I must have chosen the wrong automated service option,
because it told me to go to their website, and then it hung up on me. I doublechecked the website and found that it told me to call Customer Service for
information on trading in an old drive. I called Customer Service again and
received a recording telling me that I might have to hold for up to ten minutes. I
went to the bathroom, came back, reviewed my information and concluded that,
even with a $30 rebate, a Western Digital 20 GB drive was not price-competitive
with Fujitsu and Maxtor. But how about the 10 GB for only $85? I still wasnt
sure what good the trade-in would be -- I mean, according to Terry at the Online
Store had made it sound like there would not actually be any place that I could
use it, which didnt sound right, so I stayed on hold for a while longer. The
original concept behind all this delay was that I was trying to find out whether I
had to go to the trouble of wiping off the Western Digital drive so that no one
would be able to see my precious data, or whether I could instead just drill a
couple of holes through it and throw it away, but now I realized that it would
have been faster just to wipe the thing regardless. Then Don came on and told
me that the purpose of a trade-in was to purchase a drive through him directly,
and that the price for a 10 GB drive would be $139 plus shipping. This was not
an attractive price. ... I couldnt do that because you cant delete a primary
partition when you have an extended partition. So I went into DOS and created a
bunch of files full of the letter X and copied and multiplied them until I had filled
the disk, and then I deleted them, took the drive out of the machine, and put it in

26

a box. So there. I had managed to use up another hour or so on the process of

preparing a defective drive to be thrown away. And I was still not done with it!
(See point 290.)
256.(c) Install Maxtor 7 GB Drive as Primary Master on PENTIUM Machine. The
Maxtor drive was the primary master drive in the AMD machine, and it would
continue to be so in the PENTIUM machine, so I didnt have to change any
jumpers. Moreover, partitions C and D on the Maxtor already contained the
latest program files all ready to go (see paragraph (a), above). All I needed to do,
before removing it from the AMD machine, was to run PartitionMagic on it and
rearrange its partitions so that it would have drives C, D, E, F, and G. (As noted
above, H would go on the Seagate drive.) I decided to simplify things by putting
1,000 MB in each of drives C (WIN98), D (PROGRAMS), and E (DATA). I put the
balance, about 3,400 MB, in drive F (AV). Then I put the Maxtor drive into the
PENTIUM machine as primary master drive, with the 3 GB Fujitsu model no.
MPB3032AT (see point 108) remaining in its position as primary slave.
256.(d) Freeing a Slave Locked by GoBack. I believe my next step was to reinstall
GoBack on the primary master drive, and now both drives were coming closer to
being on the same team. I was still having problems, however. I rebooted from
the floppy and continued with that reboot by pressing the spacebar when
GoBack gave me the opportunity. (See point 254.) Now PartitionMagic showed
both hard disks as being of Type 44. I rebooted and got that same [blue screen]
from GoBack again. I went into the slave Fujitsu drive and created a primary
partition -- which, as primary, promptly took the letter D, even though it was on
the slave drive, rather than the letter that was next in sequence after all the letters
on the master drive.
256.(e) Confirming the Seagate 1 GB Was OK. Earlier, I had had some problems
with the Seagate 1 GB drive, but had suspected that the problems might have
been due to the inability of a weak power supply to support three hard disks at
once. (See point 113(f).) That explanation became even more likely after the tests
that I now put the Seagate drive through. I connected it to the AMD machine
and disconnected the other drive. I booted in DOS and tested it by itself.
258(b) The copying process balked with the statement, Cannot copy OMI9:
Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the
file is not currently in use. Well, the disk was not full, so this raised in my mind
the question of whether Windows or some program had been using files in this
supposedly archival folder on drive H. This particular OMI9.DLL file appeared
to be in the Office folder. I rebooted and tried again without using any Officerelated programs, but still got the same error message. I decided that I had only
needed this old copy of drive C a couple of times during this whole process, and

27

that I had now probably reached the point where I didnt need it anymore, so
instead of copying it (which might have worked where cutting and pasting
would not), I simply deleted the whole thing, so as to be sure that none of my
programs would be using any of these old program files, now or in the future. ...
Interestingly, it did not hesitate to delete that OMI9.DLL file, so maybe the
problem was something disk-related after all, perhaps with the size of the
subfolder I was installing on drive F.
258.(e) Finishing the AMD GoBack Installation. Now that my partitions were
arranged the way I wanted, I ran GoBack again and installed it without further
difficulty. It took the aforementioned 308 MB out of drive E and another 975 MB
out of drive F. That 975 MB was a lot and was more than I would have
preferred, until I thought about it and decided that this would slow down
nothing and would still give me some extent of undo-style protection.
265.(c) Modem Initialization Strings. In the olden days, people had to type
modem commands manually. It was still possible to do this, or at least to specify
some of the features that you would have specified if you were doing all this by
hand. I found complete modem initializations strings for many kinds of
modems, including both of mine at www.spy.net/%7Edustin/modem/. The
suggestions there werent especially relevant for my needs, but they may be for
others. What I found more interesting was the option of adding S-Registers. The
Extra Settings entries that I had heard most about and found interesting, and that
I made at this point, were as follows: (1) S10=50. The S10 register (not to be
confused with the Windows 98 Registry) is the Lost carrier hang up delay. (2)
S11=50. Here, the 50 apparently meant milliseconds, not tenths of a second. The
S11 register was the DTMF dialing speed. It seems that a setting of 50
milliseconds here meant that this would be the amount of delay between each
number dialed. For example, if the number dialed was 555-1234, there would be
a 50-millisecond delay between the 2 and the 3, etc. This seemed to be
considered a very fast setting; people said that if it didnt work, your system
would just default to the fastest setting that it could actually handle. (Later, I
noticed that this seemed to work on the one modem -- it dialed much faster than
before -- but not on the other.) To type these settings in the Extra Settings box, I
just put a space between them, like this: S10=50 S11=50. Other settings that I
had used in the past, or that seemed potentially useful in the future, included
these: M1 (sets the modems speaker on just until the carrier is present) or M0
(speaker always off) (M1 was the default and there were other options); and
S9=[tenths of a second] (Carrier recovery time); S30=[minutes] (disconnect after
inactivity).
266(b) TRACERT. This program also resided in C:\WINDOWS. The description
of it I got from somewhere went like this: Trying to connect to your favorite

28

search engine without success? Okay, maybe you can't check if your Internet
wire (connection) is broken or not by using a bulb and a couple of batteries. But,
you can get a good idea how close you can get to the site you're trying to reach.
I didnt have any problems at present that warranted the use of it, so I just
created another shortcut so Id be able to find it if I needed it.
267(c) TweakAll. Recommended by knowledgeable people online. I did not
expect to use much of it, since the advance comments that I had seen on the
website had made me think that I had probably already found other ways of
accomplishing most of the tweaks that this program offered. I installed it and
looked through it. I liked it; I liked the things it offered; and unless further
research should indicate that it has caused significant problems for some users, I
would recommend following up with manual approaches for those that remain.
For my purposes at this stage of the game, I was pleased to have discovered the
program, and was also pleased that it really didnt offer much new to me. It was
a sign that I had begun to wrap up this project.
A fast way of accomplishing many tweaks: point 267(c).
269. (c) Experimenting with Backup Techniques. I wanted to get the maximum
amount of data on the two CDs, and I was curious about a couple of things, and I
didnt need the AMD machine at that point, so I deleted that unnecessarily bulky
backup of drive E and decided to try again with a different approach. Since
drives E and F would contain most of my data, and would also contain
GOBACKIO.BIN files, I faced these choices: (1) take a risk and see what would
happen if I moved [these BIN system files] to some other disk temporarily, (2)
include 1.3 GB worth of unnecessary GoBack data every time I did a backup (but
see point 298(b)), (3) use some approach other than DriveImage, or (4) find a
clean partition that DriveImage could capture in its entirety. I disliked options
(1) and (2). I marked the desired files on drive E and used PowerDesk to copy
them into a file called DRIVE_E.ZIP. Without GOBACKIO.BIN, the files being
compressed amounted to only about 265 MB. ... Now my F:\Temp\Backup
folder contained 1.3 GB, enough to fill two CDs.
269.(d) Decision Regarding CD-Burning Technique. Previously, I had thought I
would be able to capture my essential program files on one CD, and had hoped
that there would be a more or less sharp distinction between the contents of that
first CD and the programs or other materials that might go onto a second backup
CD. (See point 162.) But that sharp distinction had never quite materialized. By
now, it was fairly clear that the entire route had consisted of just a series of steps,
and that the only sharp breaks had been those times when, more or less
arbitrarily, I had decided to burn a CD.

29

269.(i) Disk Math. At this point, I finally took a moment to review my math.
There were eight bits per byte. People mostly used bits to measure transmission
rates (as in e.g., a 28 kilobit per second (kbps) modem), and they used bytes to
measure data storage, including hard disk calculations. Bits were measured in
standard thousands, but bytes were measured in binary thousands. That is, a
kilobit was 1,000 bits, but a kilobyte was 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 1,024
(i.e., 2 to the eighth power) bytes. Similarly, a megabit was 1,000,000 bits, but a
megabyte was 1,024 x 1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes; and a gigabit was 1 billion bits, but
a gigabyte was 1,024 x 1,048,576 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes. As an additional
source of confusion, you might think of 500 MB as 500 x 1,048,576 = 524,288,000
bytes, but sometimes it seemed that people were thinking of 500 MB as half a
gigabyte, in which case it would be 1,073,741,824 / 2 = 536,870,912 bytes. So if I
wanted a file containing 640 MB, it had to contain 671,088,640 (i.e., roughly 671
million) bytes.
270. Fixing a Bad Backup. Unfortunately, it appeared that the system as I had
backed it up in STEP_269 was not a good one. I was still having problems with
both computers, now that I had installed it on the PENTIUM as well as the AMD
machine. I decided to set the AMD to use an earlier copy of the Registry. If I
hadnt burned the CD in Disk-at-Once (DAO) mode, which closed the disk, I
might have been able to add this Registry backup onto the CD with an
explanatory note, but I figured if I tried now Id just get a message telling me to
insert a blank disk. Fortunately, the STEP_269 backup wasnt going to be my
final version, so eventually Id delete this copy of RB001.CAB and Id be fine -but if I needed to restore my system in the meantime, Id have to use the kludge
solution of restoring the system from CD and then restore this RB001.CAB copy
of the Registry.
More Internet and Web Issues
282. I had the COMCTL32.DLL error message again (see point 278), so I killed
POPROXY, and once again that took care of it.
284. I saw, inside of Outlook 98 that I now had two Personal Folders, each
containing approximately the same subfolders. I decided to try cutting messages
from the folders under one Personal Folder and moving them to the eponymous
folders under the other Personal Folder, starting with the Inbox. This created
thousands of duplicates. I did not repeat the mistake of combining duplicate
subfolders from these two Personal Folders in Outlook 98. It took me a while,
but I managed to combine the two sets of subfolders into one, by moving,
deleting, etc. I tried to close the one that I had emptied out, which was higher on
the list of the two folders, but I got a message saying something like, You
cannot close the Personal Folder that contains your contacts etc. So I tried

30

closing the other one, the one lower on the list, which now held all my old
messages. To my horror, it closed just fine, and vanished from sight. Apparently
I should have done the moving from the lower one to the higher one. I looked at
the file situation.
290. Zero Fill Utility. I had not yet thrown away the Western Digital hard disk
that I had found to be hopelessly defective. (See point 256(b).) I had heard about
zero fill utilities but had not been quite sure what they were. By now, however,
in the course of other pursuits, I had found that this kind of utility is something
that goes into a hard disk and attempts to write every bit of it with zeros. This is
good for testing and also for making sure no one else gets your data. I was just
about to download the specific zero fill utility for my drive, assuming I had not
done so already -- note that each hard disk manufacturer has its own specialized
zero fill utilities -- but then I decided this was a waste of time, and therefore did
not bother.
297. I decided to consider spending $50, someday, to obtain the ComSeal
Firewall.
303. Changes Provoked by Changes in Partitions. This rearrangement of
partitions made drive E no longer available for data files. This had several
ramifications:
304. Divergences between the Two Computers. I had already discovered that
the differences between the two computers required me to set up different
hardware configurations for them, and that these different configurations
required different steps during the initial restoration of drives C and D from CD
backup. (See point 259.)
320. If space had been at a premium, I could have reduced the load on drive C by
a couple of simple steps. One would have been to remove the AVI (video) files
lying around the disk, which various programs provided as tutorials.
337. Backup Philosophy Revisited. Before making any more drastic changes, I
decided I wanted to master the backup procedure that I would be using in the
future. The right procedure, had it been in place, might have saved me the time
and effort that I had just spent to redo all of the changes that I had made since
the time of the STEP_300 backup. Of course, I deleted the useless STEP_329
backup that I had made since then. (See point 329.) The question for me was,
how could I do frequent, unobtrusive backups? ... As a refinement on my earlier
thinking, I also believed, now, that I would treat the backup of program files
entirely differently from my backup of data files. Program files needed to be
handled in a highly organized way; data files could be moved to [CD] and back

31

to hard disk in whatever haphazard or organized manner seemed best suited for
the subject matter.
339. It seemed likely that a backup process that ran in the middle of each night
would provide adequate protection.
341. What To Do Next? I had come to a point where I had major work to do in
order to make this document useful (see point 333) ... For purposes of getting my
own system set up and running, I had reached a point of substantial completion;
but for purposes of creating something that would help others who were stuck
somewhere in a Win98 quagmire, I had just created a massive, unwieldy
document that might answer their question or might just bury them in detail and
leave them flailing around, trying to figure out what to do next. The question in
my mind, then, was whether I should work through any remaining important
issues in this Windows installation and then start over, taking a more structured
and knowledgeable approach to the task of setting up a good, working Windows
system, or should instead just let the thing be for what it was, hope that it helped
some people, and move on to other work I needed to get done.
342. Reactions to Windows 98. By this point, I disliked Windows 98. I had
disliked it previously, but this was different. Previously, I had disliked Win98
because it had frustrated me. A single problem could take hours to resolve, and
those would frequently be hours that I did not have to spare. The last thing I
wanted to do, at such times, was to drop everything and nurse an ailing
computer back to health. Now, I had the confidence that this would not be the
situation for me. I had multiple backups of an essentially solid, working system.
If I just wanted to get my work done, I could do it.
344. Thoughts about Programming. To some extent, it was still not possible to
do everything I might want to do with a computer system without knowing how
to write programs that would fiddle with the details in just the way I wanted.
What I really wanted was to find canned software that would take care of such
things for me, perhaps with the option of writing more simple scripts or
programs. Experience suggested that, at my casual level of usage, it could be a
year or more before I would be proficient in a computer language unless I
studied it seriously. That kind of time allocation did not fit with my priorities at
this point. Thus, it was not enough to say that I could have just the kind of
system I wanted if I were willing to invest the time in Visual Basic, or Windows
Scripting Host, or Linux shell programming, or EMACS, or some other language
or tool. I had really spent a lot more time on this particular project than I hoped
to spend on any computer-related projects in the foreseeable future. I would
probably be using Windows 98 until something really compelling came along --

32

and therefore that I would continue to want to stretch my existing knowledge [of
DOS and QBASIC] until further notice.
345. my experience with DOS over the past 18 years had suggested that
Windows might have begun to mature to a point where I could skip over some
new generations of the product. As I had assumed at the start of this project,
then, it still seemed that I might continue to use Win98 for the next two years or
more. And if I did, so would others; indeed, I had been surprised to see how
many people were still using Win95.

33

Hotkeys
Click on the Start button and bring up the Start menu. When the menu is up, your
screen saver won't launch.

When you use Win98's Send To feature (right-click on the item, thenselect Send To
from the Context menu) to place something on a floppy disk or on a drive other than
your C: drive, the file is copied. To move it, hold down the Shift key while clicking
on the Send To item.
If you want to copy a file from one folder on your hard drive to another (ex. you want to
keep a copy of a specific file in an archive folder) hold down the Ctrl key while you drag
and drop the file to the new folder.

If you hold down your SHIFT key while double clicking on an application icon, it will
be started in minimized mode.

If you want documents and programs you double-click on to open in the

background, rather than in the foreground, hold the Ctrl key when you doubleclick.

Hold down the Ctrl key while you double-click on folders. If you've set up your
folders to open a new window each time you double-click on a folder, it will just
show you the new level in the same window. If you've set up your folders to open
in the same window, it will open a new one.

If you open a folder in Details view, and part of the file/folder information isn't visible
because the columns are either truncated or too wide for the window size, here's a quick
fix: Press Ctrl and the Plus (+) key on the numeric keypad.

If you wish you had a Windows Key on your keyboard but you don't, and you don't want
to shell out money for a new keyboard when your existing one is perfectly fine, then
make one. All you must do to complete the operation is the Keyboard Remap Kernel Toy
and your Right Ctrl or Right Alt key.
You can download the Kernel Toy for keyboard remapping from this Microsoft web
page.

Just click the Windows 95 Keyboard Remap link. Download the file to any location of
your choice, then open Keyremap.exe to extract its contents.
Right-click the Keyremap.inf file and select install.
Next, open the Control Panel, open Keyboard properties, and select the Remap tab.
Under Right-hand Side, select the key you want to use--such as Right Alt--in the lefthand box. In the right-hand box (still under Right-hand Side), select Windows. Click OK,
and you now have a Windows key. To test it press the key you used once and the start
menu pops up."
See http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wutoys/w95kerneltoy/

Use WinKey for this.

Switch active DOS program between full screen and window operation Alt+Enter
Put the active window on the clipboard
Alt+Print Screen
Minimize active window
Alt+Spacebar+N
Reduce window size
Alt+Spacebar+R
Enlarge window
Alt+Spacebar+X
Displays an alternate context menu
Ctrl+Right Click
In Explorer:
Switches between panes
F6
Go to the parent folder
Backspace
Go To Folder
Ctrl+G
Scroll without moving selection
Ctrl+Arrow key
Expand everything under selection Num Lock+Asterisk (on numeric keypad)
Collapse selection
Num Lock+Minus sign (on numeric keypad)
Expand selection
Num Lock+Plus sign (on numeric keypad)

A shortcut for choosing a new program to be used with a certain file type is to hold
the Shift key while right-clicking on a file, and choose Open With... from the context
menu.

TASK
Open an Explorer window
Open the Run dialog
Open the System Properties
Find: All Files

SHORTCUT
WinKey+E
WinKey+R
WinKey+Pause
WinKey+F

Find: Computer
Minimize all open windows
Undo minimize all open windows
Cycle through taskbar program buttons
Open Windows Help

WinKey+Ctrl+F
WinKey+M
WinKey+Shift+M
WinKey+Tab
WinKey+F1

For keyboard aficionados: Win+d is the fastest way yet to switch to the desktop (with a
win95 keyboard, of course).

The fastest way to minimize all the windows on your desktop is to press Ctrl+Esc,
then Alt+M.

Instead of clicking on Start/Shut Down to exit Win95, try this: Hit Alt+F4 and press
Enter when you're prompted with the Shut Down dialog box.

A quick way to access the properties of a selected icon or menu item simply press
Alt+Enter.

When you press Ctrl+Esc and then R you will launch the Run dialog box or you can press
Win+R

To minimize an open window press Alt+Space. this brings up the control menu.

Q: Is there a keyboard shortcut to add a Web page to my Favorites?

A: Yes. Press CTRL+D and your wish is a Windows command.

2.1.5 System planning worksheet.

General
Processor:
Mfg:
Motherboard:
Chip Set:
Mouse:
Type:
Hard disk drives:
CD-ROM:
Video Card:
RAM:
Monitor:
Max scan rate:

Pentium 233 MMX

Intel
Biostar 8500TVD
Intel VX
Belkin
Serial Port COM 1 (ttyS0)
C: 3.2GB IDE Boot Win98
D: 3.1GB IDE Boot Linux
Lion IDE/ATAPI
Trident Super VGA 512 KB
64 MB
KFC, unknown model, 800 x 600
Unknown

Machine-Specific Steps

BIOS Tweaks. I took the following steps on each machine separately

IDE Hard Disk Detection - This part of the BIOS Setup will detect your hard
disks for you; and you can save the configuration. If you configure your hard
drives here, you will not have to let your BIOS auto-detect the drives every time
you boot up, which will save you time.
Standard BIOS Setup Menu - This part of the BIOS Setup will confirm that all of
the hard disks are configured. If you're sure you're not using a certain drive, turn
off auto-detection and save yourself some time. CDROM drives usually do not
need to be configured for Windows and your computer to identify them.
AGP Aperture Size - This number will set the maximum amount of memory that
can be accessed by the AGP graphics card. It is recommended that you set this to
1/4 or 1/2 of your total system memory, unless instructed otherwise by your
graphics card manual. If you receive odd errors when executing OpenGL
applications, consider setting this value back to its default setting.

Video BIOS Shadow - This feature will "shadow" (or copy) the basic BIOS
functions of your video card to memory in order to keep them present at all
times. The CPU then reads those functions much quicker than before. This leads
to a large performance increase when enabled. Disable if your video card manual
tells you otherwise or you see a performance drop.
DRAM Data Integrity Mode - This option allows you to choose between ECC
and Non-ECC memory. Most machines now use Non-ECC so choose this option.
System BIOS Cacheable (also called System BIOS Shadow)- This will copy your
main BIOS code to RAM and increase performance a great deal if enabled.
However, this can cause problems with certain video cards and or memory
conflicts. Test both settings and decide which is best for you. If you see no
problems with it enabled, leave it on for a nice performance increase.
Video BIOS Cacheable - This is the same as above, only relating to your video
card's BIOS instead of your motherboard BIOS. If you see no problems, this will
give a large performance increase for any video intensive applications when
enabled. Disable if you encounter problems or performance decreases. Test both
settings. Consult your video card manual for more information.

Video RAM Cacheable - Enabling this will cause the CPU to cache all reading
and writing from your video card's RAM. Enabling this will usually result in a
performance increase. Just like all settings, test both methods and decide which is
best for you.
8 Bit I/O Recovery Time - This option sets the wait time that is added to an 8 bit
ISA instruction originated by PCI. Your motherboard should already be set to the
default value. Increasing this value will lengthen the delay. Decreasing will
shorten the delay. Setting this value to 0 or NA will remove the delay. This is for
optimal performance but may cause some problems.
16 Bit I/O Recovery Time - This option sets the wait time that is added to a 16 bit
ISA instruction originated by PCI. Your motherboard should already be set to the
default value. Increasing this value will lengthen the delay. Decreasing will
shorten the delay. Setting this value to 0 or NA will remove the delay. This is for
optimal performance but may cause some problems.
AGP Aperture Size - The AGP aperture size specified in your motherboard is the
maximum available memory to an AGP card. The default is probably 64 MB.
Setting this higher than your system memory may result in poor performance or
excessive memory usage. Try setting this value to anywhere from 25% to 100% of
your memory, unless otherwise specified in your video card manual.
SDRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay, SDRAM PreCharge Time, SDRAM CAS Latency
Time - These options vary greatly from motherboard to motherboard, so I'm
going to have to be vague here. Setting this to "fast" or a lower number will result
in better performance. Setting it to "slow" or a higher number will result in lower
performance. This can cause problems with many types of ram so test different
settings before deciding on a choice.
CPU Warning Temperature - If your motherboard supplies a CPU temperature
sensor, you will have this option. Enabling will result in an alarm when your
CPU reaches a certain temperature. This is very valuable for overclockers or
anyone with a hot PC.
If you are experience incompatibilities or odd performance issues, make sure to
check your motherboard's homepage for the latest BIOS flash.

If you are experience incompatibilities or odd performance issues, make sure to

check your motherboard's homepage for the latest BIOS flash. Flashing the BIOS
is very simple. You simply create a boot disk with the flash utility and ROM
data. Reboot your computer from the disk. At the DOS prompt, run the program

as specified. This will flash your BIOS. After restarting your computer, you're
ready to go.

When configuring your new motherboard it is a good idea to enable USB

support in the BIOS setup even if you don't have any USB peripherals. In
Windows 95 OSR2 and above it is required for the AGP port. It is especially
important to do so for MVP3 chipset (rev "CD") owners who may want to use
i740 or G-200 based AGP video cards as the flash BIOS upgrade necessary to use
these devices properly can prevent enabling USB support after installation.
I ran a CD-ROM cleaning laser disk in each of the two machines. I dont know
where I got it or how long I had had it, but I read that this kind of thing could
dramatically improve your CD-ROM disks speed. This disk had little brushes
on the underside, and evidently its program caused the CD-ROMs laser to try to
read that part of the disk so that these little brushes would brush off the lens.
The cleaning program took maybe a minute or two and then played a little song
to prove that my CD-ROM was really clean. I honestly had no idea whether it
had made any difference at all, but it seemed that it probably must have.
Dont want it to ask which hardware configuration. Windows cannot
determine what configuration your computer is in. Select one of the following:
1. Original Configuration. 2. PENTIUM. 3. None of the above. Message
online says Im stuck with it. So I have to back up the final system with both
profiles, then delete the nonapplicable profiles from the respective machines and
begin backing them up separately after that.
set modem to separate speed
Remove Windows Update Setup Files folder. I have them on other CDs.
remove AVI files?
Cacheman adjustments -- see point 141(n)

Before beginning the machine-specific changes:

___. Backup. I had considered various ideas and tried various approaches on the subject of
how best to back up this system. Now that I had completed the system, it was time to review
the ideas and come up with the best approach.
(a) Review of Backup Philosophy. I had previously thought that I might use XCOPY for all
CDs after the first one or two. (See point 201.) To facilitate this, I had thought that my files
might be most accessible if I burned them onto CD in uncompressed form. (See point 205.) I
had subsequently learned that I would have to be careful to use Joliet, not ISO 9660, format on
the CD if I wanted to preserve long filenames. (See point 269(e).) I would have preferred to
use PowerDesks ZIP feature because it supported DES encryption, which was apparently very
hard to crack. (See point 135.) Unfortunately, as I had verified by e-mail from PowerDesk, it
was not possible
My new backup philosophy (see point 205) needed to be revised again. Make ZIP files from
the command line? Does XCOPY of individual programs make them read-only? Does CD
copy delete short filenames (only in ISO?)? Use LFNBK to defeat that?
PENTIUM: get rid of SoundBlaster entries in AUTOEXEC. Dont have Outlook 98 autostart at
bootup.

I have a situation in which some DriveImage image files restore and some do not. I
created them all in the same way, on the same computer. I have been using DriveImage
without this kind of problem for more than a year now. The hard disk is not the culprit.
(See the notes written below, which I prepared before discovering that the problem varied
from one image file to another.)
I would be delighted to discover a way to use these presently nonworking image files.
*****
Background:
After thorough disk scans with ScanDisk and with Norton Disk Doctor, DriveImage 2.0
still gives me Error #2004, "An invalid cluster was found in a directory entry." If I ignore
that error, it recurs; and if I continue to click on Ignore, I eventually get Error #983, "Too
many errors found, process halted."
This problem arises regardless of whether I am restoring an image file from CD to hard
disk, from one partition to another on the same hard disk, or from one hard disk to
another within the same computer.
There is nothing on the hard disk other than the image file and the partition(s) created by
PartitionMagic or FDISK. As always, I am running DriveImage itself in real DOS from a
floppy, not from DriveImage files on any hard disk.
One of the two hard disks previously held GoBack. I have subsequently removed and
uninstalled GoBack, however. I have deleted and recreated all partitions in both
PartitionMagic and FDISK. I have tried to install from, or to, both the Maxtor drive
previously covered by GoBack and the Seagate drive that was never covered by GoBack.
I have run Maxtor's advanced (factory re-certification) test on the Maxtor drive on which
GoBack was installed. The disk has passed the test with no problems.
At this point, I am at a loss to understand this recurrent Error #2004. I will appreciate any
light you can shed.
Regards -Ray Woodcock

Testing Noise on the Phone Line

Now test the quality of your connection. To do this, you'll need a terminal
communications program that allows you to issue modem commands while
you're connected. NCSA Telnet is a perfect application to use since it's freeware
and readily available online.
To test the connection, use the terminal communications program to call your
ISP. When you're connected, enter three plus signs (+++). Then issue the AT%Q
command. The modem will return a number between 1 and 127, which indicates
the level of noise currently on the line. A reading of 15 or lower means you're in
good shape regarding line noise, so the problem lies elsewhere. A reading of 50 is
high enough to put you in danger of getting disconnected.
At this stage, if you're sure you have line noise, the next step is to determine
what's causing it. A good test is to call a few local bulletin boards in different
telephone exchanges. Getting good connections here will establish that the noise
isn't originating from your own line.
a line noise filter, a small device that plugs into your phone line is another
possible solution for line noise. You can purchase a line noise filter at your local
computer or electronics store.

Tips

To disable low disk space notification for a specific drive:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then
click Disk Cleanup.
2. In the Drives box, click the drive for which you want to disable low disk space
notification, and then click OK.
3. Click the Settings tab.
4. Click to clear the "If this drive runs low on disk space, automatically run Disk
Cleanup" check box, and then click OK.
5. When you are prompted "Are you sure you want to delete files," click No.

Ever start to save a new file and realize that it really didn't fit in any of the folders you
already have? Don't go out to explorer or winfile to create a new folder for it, simply
select the Create New Folder from the menu bar on the Save As dialog box of your
Win95 application.

You can print out the type fonts by opening the Control Panel, double-clicking on the
Fonts icon, choose the font you want to print and then clicking on the Print button.

To restart taskbar, use Control-Alt-Del to remove Windows Explorer but dont accept
shutdown, just say End Task.

For more information on CONFIG.SYS options, see C:\WINDOWS\CONFIG.TXT.

Use DriveSpace for diskettes! Just remember that if you need to format them in
the future, you must do so from the DriveSpace utility.

You can't enlarge BMP files using Paint, but you can use WordPad or Exchange to do it.

Click on the toolbar's Background button to set a DOS window to run in background.
You can then open a second MS-DOS Prompt and execute commands while the other
DOS app runs.

To draw a perfect circle, open the Paint applet, click on the ellipse icon and hold down
the Shift key. Youll get a perfect circle every time.

How to see if your system is REALLY locked up. Press either the CAPS-LOCK or
NUM-LOCK, and verify the light goes on and off for that key. If so, the shell is still
active, only the program running is hung.

If you have multiple directories to change to such as:

MyNewYorkOfficeFilesFolder\AGroup\Outbox
you can use:
CD myn*\a*\o*

Assuming that the file you're about to print is called my_chart.prn and your printer is
connected to LPT1: (parallel port number one), type:
COPY my_chart.prn LPT1 /B

If one of your 16bit Windows programs is crashing often or if you

suspect it is causing other 16bit Windows programs to stop
responding, try giving it it's own memory space.
Select the shortcut of the 16bit Windows program in question and go
to it's properties ("Right click | Properties"). Go to the
"Shortcut" tab and make sure "Run in Separate Memory Space" is
checked.

Did you know that you can drag and drop file names to the "Command Prompt" or "DOS
Prompt?" For example, if you have a long file name to type, simply drag and drop that
file from the File Manager or Explorer to the Command Prompt and Windows will do the
typing for you.

DIR C: D:
View directory of drive C and D at the same time.

DIR /S /B
Get a list of files in the current and sub directories with their full path name
(directory name + file name).
DIR /X
View the short (8.3 DOS file name) and the long name of files in the current
directory.
DIR /A
Display all the files in the current directory including hidden and system files.

Here's a way to drop objects on programs that are hiding behind other programs:
1. Drag the object over to your target program's icon in the task bar, but don't drop it
quite yet.
2. Wait a few seconds until Windows automatically opens the target program (which
used to be hidden) for you, and drop the object as usual.

If you're getting tired of seeing the same icon for Folders, try this:
Double click on "My Computer"
Select "View | Options"
Select "File Types" tab
Highlight "Folder" from the "Registered file types" list
Click on "Edit"
Change the icon by clicking on "Change Icon" button

To change a folder icon displayed in Explorer, use Notepad to create a new text file with
the following lines:
[.ShellClassInfo]
ICONFILE=Drive:\Path\Icon Filename.Extension,Number
and save it as DESKTOP.INI into the folder (directory) you want to change the icon for.
Replace the "Drive" string above with a valid drive letter, and "Path" with your icon's
folder name.
"Icon Filename" can be anything you want, but the "Extension" must be one of the
following: .ICO, .ICL, .DLL or .EXE.
If you choose an icon library with the .DLL or .EXE extension (these usually contain
more than one icon), you need to specify the position of the icon displayed by inserting a
comma (,) followed by the icon's "Number". Example:
ICON=C:\Icons\Icons.dll,3
Now you need to change DESKTOP.INI's attributes to "hidden". Run this command from
any DOS prompt:
ATTRIB +H DESKTOP.INI
You also need to change your selected folder's attributes to "system", by running:
ATTRIB +S C:\MYFOLDER

Press F5 to refresh your desktop when done.

Now start Explorer and check out your new "folder look".
NOTE: This tip works ONLY with Windows 95/NT4 with Internet Explorer 4.0+ with
the shell integration enabled or with Windows 98/NT5.

This technique detects the presence of Windows 9x in a DOS batch (.BAT) file, useful
for preventing crashes, if your batch file needs to run ONLY from native MS-DOS, or
ONLY from a Windows DOS box/session, i.e. while manipulating the Registry with
REGEDIT.EXE (example):
MEM /C | FIND /I "vmm32" > NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO OK
ECHO Windows detected!
EXIT
:OK
Save these lines as DETWIN.BAT, or place them in batch files before the lines that
depend on Windows presence/absence to run."
NOTES:
Both MEM.EXE and FIND.EXE need to reside in a directory on your path (default is
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND for Win9x and C:\DOS for Win/WfWG 3.1x) for this to
work.
Windows/WfWG 3.1x users: replace the "vmm32" string above with "win386".
Another batch technique used to detect if Windows is running (single line):
SET | FIND "winbootdir" | IF ERRORLEVEL=1 ECHO Windows not detected!
Save line above as DETWIN.BAT (or any other .BAT name), place it in a directory in
your path (specified in your Autoexec.bat or Config.sys), or paste it into batch files
depending on Windows detection to run certain commands (i.e. temporary
directories/files "cleaners" using DELTREE, DEL).
NOTE: Windows/WfWG 3.1x users: replace the "winbootdir" string above with
"windir".

DISABLING DUN'S AUTO DISCONNECT SETTING. There are several places in the
system where the auto disconnect setting can be set. Strangely enough, tracking registry
changes made in these various places reveals that a single setting is not involved-multiple different registry entires are made. Therefore, it appears the only way to disable
(or enable) the function is to make the changes in all the areas mentioned below. I am
describing areas on a W98 SE machine so your settings may be a little different if you
have a different system:
Control panel, Internet, connections, settings, advanced
Control panel, Modem, properties, connection
Control panel, System, device manager, modem, specific modem, properties, connection
Explorer, DUN folder, right click ISP connection, properties, configure, connections

FLOPPY DRIVE RANDOMLY GRINDS. Open the registry editor and do a find
on: A:\ but before deleting the entry, export the key so you can restore the registry
should problems occur. Most likely a reference will be in an MRU key. Be sure to
use F3 to continue the search as there could be multiple entries. Here is a PC Mag
article on other causes:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/solutions/uu1617a.htm

REMOVING OBSOLETE ENTRIES FROM ADD/REMOVE SCREEN, CONTROL

PANEL. Reinstall the program and then uninstall it. As alternatives, use Tweak UI,
Add/Remove tab or open the registry to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Uninstall.
Many (but possibly not all) of the programs are listed in the left-hand panel--highlight the
program to be removed and delete it. In either case, the program is removed from the list-any other registry entries pertaining to it will remain.

Type the following: start "c:\directory\Shortcut to Someprog.exe.lnk", where

c:\directory is the full path containing the shortcut, and Shortcut to Someprog.exe.lnk is
the filename of the shortcut.

In DOS, the "*" wildcard normally displays files which match the leading characters
before the * symbol. With the DOS underneath Windows 98, you can use this wildcard to
match all of the files which match the trailing characters as well.

Print the Contents Of Any Folder

Open Notepad and type DIR >LPT1 (assuming your printer is connected to
LPT1). Save the text file into your WINDOWS\COMMAND folder and name it
PRINTDIR.BAT. Find the file in Explorer, right-click on it and select Properties.
Click on the Program tab, turn on the Close on Exit option, choose Minimized
from the Run list and click on OK. Next, run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
Open the My Computer\ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ Directory\shell. Select New
from the Edit menu, and then select Key. Type Print for the name of this new key
and press Enter. Highlight the new Print key, select New from the Edit menu and
then select Key again. Type Command for the name of this new key and press
Enter. Double-click on the (default) value in the right pane and type C:

\WINDOWS\COMMAND\PRINTDIR.BAT. From now on, when you right-click on

a folder icon, you can click on Print to print its contents.

You may find that even after you've deleted a particular application, it stays on the New
menu. If you want to remove it, launch My Computer, select Options from the View
menu and click on the File Types tab. Find the offending application on the list, select it
and click on the Remove button.

When I figure out how to get a list of active hotkeys:

Assign hotkeys to your most frequently used programs. Right-click on a program
and select Properties. Click on the Shortcut tab; in the Shortcut Key field type in the
hotkey combination you want to assign, then click on OK. Assigning a hotkey this
way will allow you to switch to the program if it's already running on your Desktop.
A shortcut's hotkey combination will launch a program only if it's on the Start
menu or the Desktop.

Find out what hotkeys are free, and then assign a hotkey to each program I use a lot. To
create a hotkey, first create a shortcut to it (if there isn't one), right-click on the shortcut
to bring up the Properties dialog box and click on the Shortcut tab. Click once in the
Shortcut Key field, enter your hotkey assignment.

IMAGES: Change wallpaper. Also: So you're thinking, it wouldn't look right if you
change exit screens without changing the startup screen...
Load LOGOS.SYS file in your Windows directory (C:\Windows for example) into
Paint Brush or any other bitmap editor. Once you finish editing, save it as LOGO.SYS in
your Windows directory.

Some applications add themselves to the Context menu's cascading New menu that
appears when you right-click on the Desktop or within a folder. You may find that even
after you've deleted a particular application, it stays on the New menu. If you want to
remove it, launch My Computer, select Options from the View menu and click on the
File Types tab. Find the offending application on the list, select it and click on the
Remove button. Click on Yes when it asks for confirmation.

Maybe reduce hardware acceleration in Control Panel to work out video

problems. See C:\Windows\Display.txt for other ideas.

Clearing Recently Used Items

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ARTICLES/Q142/2/98.asp to clear the
Explorer Most Recently Used lists.
To clear the AutoComplete history for forms, goto Tools, Internet Options... and select
the Content tab. Press the AutoComplete button to see all the options, including how to
clear your AutoComplete history.
Clearing the dropdown Address box list
The addresses stored here are ones that you have actually typed in, rather than following
a link etc. To empty the list, you just need to clear your History - goto View, Internet
Options and click the Clear History button

Unsorted

VisiTrax
Problem with System Files prevents VT from running: point 157(g).
Supposedly able to upload song information to CDDB: point 157(g).
Had database for managing MP3 recordings: point 157(g).

Configuration Tools
Power Management
See also Real DOS, BIOS Setup.
Monitor PM settings: point 109(h).
Monitor PM settings probably not responsible for crash: point 109(h).
PM troubleshooter PMTSHOOT useful but must be Uninstalled: point 105(a).
Home/Office Desk power scheme: point 109(a).
PM seemed responsible for first crash of new Win98 system: point 109(h).
Experiments with PM: point 109(h).
Disabling System Standby seemed to fix PM problems: point 109(h).
Disabling Hard Disk shutdown one way of curing Defragmenting problems:
point 122.
Scrollbar
See also Taskbar.
Refers to vertical and horizontal bars at right and bottom edges of screen that
allow you to use Mouse to scroll down through a page.
Adjust settings under Control Panel | Display: point 311.
Screen Saver
See also SYSTEM.INI, Office 97 Shortcut Bar, Rename, Disk Defragmenter,
WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix, MAINTWIN.BAT.
An option under Display option under Control Panel: point 54, point 300(c).
Shortcut to run SS: point 120(w).
Removing extraneous SS: point 120(x).
Each SS is powered by an SCR file in C:\Windows\System: point 120(x).
Each Control Panel element had a corresponding CPL file in
C:\Windows\System: point 120(x).
Run SS from DOS Batch file: point 145(k).
SS run from DOS Batch file does not displace default SS: point 145(k).
Rearranging SS: point 145(k).
DOS Batch files to change default SS: point 145(k).
Seti@Home SS: point 156(k).

Scraps
See also Toolbar, Word 97.
Save webpage URL by dragging Icon from Internet Explorer Address bar: point
120(s).
URLSCRAP.BAT automatically restarts websites saved in Scraps: point 273.
Toolbar based on this folder: point 120(s).
Deleted because I didnt use it very often: point 303(e).
Reinstalled because I decided I liked it after all: point 313.
Web Suite
See also WEBDAILY.BAT, NetLaunch, Frequented Folder.
WS is batch file that opens websites automatically: point 120(af), point 261(d).
Batch file to open a list of websites automatically: point 261(g).
DOS command to start new Internet Explorer session: point 120(af).
DOS command to point to specific website: point 120(af).
Start Internet Explorer toward any site with GO.BAT: point 141(c).
Make GO.BAT run from clickable icon with WILDCARD.BAT: point 145(o).
Define abbreviations to make WILDCARD.BAT find sites faster: point 145(o).
Delete WILDCARD approach in favor of organized Favorites: point 261(f).
QuickSearch replaces WILDCARD approach: point 266(d).
QuickSearch inferior to Boolean Search: point 266(d).
URLS folder containing batch files for separate websites: point 261(b).
Shortcuts to DOS Batch files for separate websites: point 261(c).
Failed to open some sites: point 272.
Difference between WS (works on command) and automation: point 271.
Automated website opener not the solution for Passworded sites: point 271.
Automated website opener not ideal for search results sites: point 271.
Led to creation of WEBDAILY.BAT: point 272.
Likely to use it frequently: point 275.
Could add other items after sorting out Favorites: point 275.
Contains links to DOS Batch files that run canned Deja.com searches: point 276.
NetLaunch
See also WEBDAILY.BAT, DUNCE, Dial-Up Networking.
Supposed to aid in connecting to ISP: point 134(t).
Didnt work as intended: point 272, point 275.
Had to schedule through Task Scheduler: point 272.
Had command-line options: point 272.
Only three stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(t).
Sounded simpler than DUNCE: point 134(t).
Voted best Dial-Up Networking Freeware: point 140(d).
Macromedia Shockwave ActiveX Player

See also Updates.com.

Website that required Player: point 110.
Chessvision
Free chess program: point 159(d).
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 156(e).
Immediately created big database when I started it: point 159(d).
Bloomed from 6.5 MB to 34 MB during 5 minutes of database creation: point
159(d).
Looked like an amazing program: point 165(d).
Had to go online for Help: point 165(d).
Online Help didnt help except via E-mail: point 165(d).
Tech support responded a few days later: point 195.
How to set program so I would play against computer: point 235.
Program beat me: point 235.
Installed program contained many duplicate files: point 314(d).
Cleanup Suite
See also Start Manager, DriveImage.
Automatically verifies which programs should load at Startup: point 158(b).
Put onto Suites Toolbar: point 153.
Runs PrcView to shut down existing programs: point 153.
Took several hours to run: point 224(f).
Stopped slowdown problem: point 224(f).
Skipped directly to Link Check Wizard part of suite: point 225.
Included EasyCleaner: point 225.
Removed dead links and Registry keys: point 242(c).
Included ScanReg: point 269(p).
Fixed Mouse slowness problem: point 269(p).
Stopped Hard Disk from thrashing: point 269(p).
I would run suite weekly, not daily: point 275.
Link Check Wizard
See also Cleanup Suite.
Used to remove links related to Outlook 98: point 225.
CallCenter
See also ZDNet.com.
Frequently mentioned, highly regarded Freeware Fax program: point 141(p).
Foneword/32
Created by PC Magazine: point 159(c).
Converts phone numbers to letters and runs output dictionary: point 159(c).

Change of Address
Also known as COA: point 154.
Created by PC Magazine: point 154.
Same function as MagicMover: point 154.
Moved program files without making them malfunction: point 154.
Sounded like it might not always be able to do the job: point 154.
Fatal Exception
See also BSOD, Clipboard Pile.
Win98 error: point 84.
Suggested that my Win98 installation was screwed: point 225.
Windows Update downloads cause FE: point 229.
PrintScreen
Better than HyperSnap for capturing screen image: point 134(q).
Can Paste image into Paint, Word, or WordPad: point 134(q).
Use Alt-PrintScreen to capture active window only: point 134(q).
SYSTEM.INI
See also Password, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64.
Used Notepad to add PageBuffers entry: point 145(c).
Changes during reboot: point 89.
Included in Registry Backup: point 132.
Edit to maximize available RAM during a DOS session: point 105(m).
Edit to specify File Cache: point 120(b).
Can edit using System Configuration Utility: point 145(d).
Change SYSTEM.INI to look for different Screen Saver: point 145(k).
Didnt seem to contain settings for individual Screen Saver: point 145(k).
WIN.INI
See also MSCONFIG, Sysedit.
Included in Registry Backup: point 132.
Can trigger programs to run at Startup: point 147.
SYSTEM.DAT
Included in Registry backup: point 132.
SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT are the main Registry files: point 74.
Located in C:\Windows: point 85(b).
Changed when I changed my Modem: point 85(b).
USER.DAT
Included in Registry backup: point 132.
SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT are the main Registry files: point 74.
4

Startup Menu
Different from Start Menu: point 146(i).
Menu at Startup allowing choice of Normal Mode, Safe Mode, Command
Prompt Mode: point 146(i).
F8 right after BIOS start gives choice of Mode: point 82, point 84, point 146(i).
Forgetting to hit F8 gets you back in the Mode you were in before: point 96.
MSCONFIG can set it to appear at every bootup: point 146(i).
Ordinarily displayed for 30 seconds before proceeding: point 146(i).
TweakUI could set to proceed after any number of seconds: point 146(i).
Logged mode recorded Win98 bootup steps: point 160.
BOOT_MGR.BAT circumvents SM: point 146(i).
File Cache
See also SYSTEM.INI.
Set to fixed size so Win98 wont waste time resizing it: point 120(b).
Differing recommendations as to ideal size: point 120(b).
Sysedit
Use to edit SYSTEM.INI: point 105(m).
Also opens WIN.INI and PROTOCOL.INI.
Attempt to use produces system configuration error: point 120(a).
Opens AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files: point 120(a).
System Configuration Editor
Same as Sysedit.
CAB Files
See also PowerDesk, ScanReg, \WIN98 Folder.
Are files containing compressed Win98 program files: point 85(a), point 141(u).
Used to store Registry Backups too: point 132.
Can also extract files from CAB files with EXTRACT.EXE: point 134(e).
MSGSRV32
Produced not responding error in Ctrl-Alt-Del: point 282.
Problem arose after importing old OUTLOOK.PST into Outlook 98: point 282.
System came to life after killing this process: point 282.
Open With
See also Context Menu, SendTo.
Get it through X-Setup: point 137(d).
Thought I could get it with Shift-Right-Click: point 137(d).
MSDOS.SYS
5

See also Bootable Floppy, Registry.

An essential, Hidden File, also a System File: point 5(a).
Found in Root of Drive C: point 82.
Had to turn off MSDOS.SYS File Attributes before editing it: point 82.
Edit BootGUI= to set default Operating System to DOS or Win98: point 82, point
120(al).
Edit logo= to eliminate clouds picture that appears at Startup: point 120(ah).
Add Bootdelay=0 to remove two-second delay from Startup: point 120(ah).
Hidden Files
See XCOPY, File Attributes, Recycle Bin, DIR Command, Archive Bit, ARC_BITS,
Uninstall Information Folder, Hidden Folder, PowerDesk, ScanReg, MSDOS.SYS,
ATTRIB.EXE.
Are visible in Windows Explorer if its set to show them: point 210.
Can provoke a misleading file not found error: point 179.
View using Windows Explorer: point 21.
Deleting hidden TMP Files: point 120(e).
Uninstall Information Folder
Contained a number of Hidden Files that were also Read-Only Files: point
154(c).
Safe to delete this folder: point 154(c).
Supposedly an option to remove folder in Add/Remove Programs: point 154(c).
MagicMover could not move: point 154(c).
Ultimately deleted it and then ran program to clean up Registry: point 154(c).
Undo
An option in many programs, often by Ctrl-Z (or redo with Ctrl-Y).
Files or folders installed on Drive C after upgrading from Win95: point 154(c).
Undo RegClean changes by Double-clicking on most recent REG File: point
119(d), point 139(a).
Option in Cool Edit 2000: point 157(a).
MSCREATE.DIR
See also CD_PREP.BAT.
Apparently Microsoft software creates these files all over the disk.
Microsoft supposedly uses these files when updating software: point 88.
Files are difficult to delete because they have multiple File Attributes set: point
88.
People commonly delete these files: point 88.
HDValet deletes these files throughout the disk: point 141(r).
QBASIC

See also FILELIST.BAT.

Can edit QBASIC program files using EDIT.
Version of BASIC programming language included with Win98: point 141(q).
Error: bad command or file name: QBASIC missing: point 80.
Not sophisticated, but stable: point 128.
Updated version available on Win98 CD: point 141(q).
Could produce list of long Filenames: point 213.
Simple programming skills can be very useful: point 344.
CATROOT
A folder that contains catalog files storing information regarding Drivers: point
85(a).
Apparently added to disk when Win98 installs Drivers: point 85(a).
Start | Documents
See also Start Menu, CLR_DOCS.BAT, Disk Image File.
Same as Documents Menu.
Cleared it out frequently by using CLR_DOCS.BAT: point 120(k).
Failure to clear it out resulted in delay: point 120(k).
Documents Menu
Same as Start | Documents.
Clearing DM manually: point 54, point 111.
CALL Command
Allows one DOS Batch file to run another without becoming detoured: point
116(b).
Works only in Real DOS. In Imitation DOS, use START Command instead.
START Command
Allows one DOS Batch file to run another batch file or other program.
Runs only in Imitation DOS. Compare CALL Command.
Used in Office 97 Suite: point 113(e).
Pause START with /W switch: point 141(l).
TMP Files
See also Hidden Files, HDValet.
Safe to delete in Real DOS: point 120(e).
Alternative to deletion: move to Recycle Bin: point 120(e).
Better alternative: use MAINT_WK.BAT to move to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
Directory: point 120(e).
SWEEP.COM performed poorly for this purpose: point 125.
Tilde Files
7

Temporary Files whose names begin with tilde (~) character.

Same basic deletion issues as TMP Files.
Tilde files created by Word 97 could contain important data: point 120(e).
My Documents Folder
See also DELTREE.
Win98 installed automatically: point 46.
Deleted icon from Desktop: point 41.
Cant simply delete MDF: point 46.
Could delete MDF using TweakUI: point 46.
Can delete if every Office 97 program has some other default Directory: point
120(j).
Somehow E:\Temp became MDF: point 303(a).
Couldnt delete E:\Temp until I chose another MDF: point 303(a).
Deleted E:\Temp (in DOS?) and then had no MDF: point 303(a).
WIN386.SWP
Is the Windows swapfile used for Virtual Memory: point 44.
Advice: put it on least-used Hard Disk: point 44.
Best location is on secondary Hard Disk on a two-disk system: point 44.
Decided to put it on Drive H (SWAP): point 44.
Can cause fragmentation and slowdowns if not located on separate Partition:
point 44.
Defragmenting this file can help immensely: point 44.
Win98 recreates it if deleted: point 58.
Virtual Memory
See also WIN386.SWP, Cacheman.
Is disk-based Memory, much slower than RAM: point 44.
How to specify amount of VM: point 44.
Specify amount of VM in order to speed up system: point 44.
Specified minimum but not maximum: point 44.
Disk Cleanup
Utility included with Win98.
Does inadequate job of cleaning out C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory.
INF Files
See also Context Menu, DMA, TweakUI, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, Creative
SoundBlaster AWE64.
Often found in C:\Windows\INF Folder.
Contain lines that add or remove items from Registry: point ___.
Editing INF file lines that add or remove items from Registry: point 113(f).

Bus Master
See also Tape Backup.
BM Driver necessary to enable DMA: point 107(b).
BM Driver already built into Win98: point 107(b).
Decided not to take risk of installing wrong Drivers: point 107(g).
Internet Protocol
Also known as IP: point 249.
See also IP_Agent.
Is a number to which Internet addresses (e.g., www.cnn.com) are translated:
point 249.
Information on IP address available from WINIPCFG: point 266(a).
Clipart Folder
Moving to another location: point 69, point 138(b).
Office 97 put Clipart in two different places: point 138(b).
Moved back to where it was originally: point 76.
Moving CF wasnt reason for problems with booting: point 76.
Moved CF with X-Setup: point 76.
Twain
Feature allowing Scanning directly into Word 97 and other File Formats: point
224(h).
Need for updated Twain Driver didnt prevent it from working: point 224(h).
Adobe PDFWriter
Must have been Freeware download from somewhere: point 156(g).
Installed itself as a toolbar in Word 97: point 156(g).
Apparently allowed user to save Adobe PDF file to disk: point 156(g).
FrontPage 2000
Had gotten good reviews: point 104.
Seemed to offer Office Tools for use by Office 97 programs: point 104.
Basic installation required only first of two FP2000 CDs: point 104.
Said it was updating the Win98 installer: point 104.
FP2000 upgrade required me to insert accursed FP98 CD: point 104.
Installation took more than 200 MB of disk space: point 104.
Irregular behavior suggested FP2000 may have messed up Office 97: point 111.
Distinct from FrontPage Express: point 154(b).
Used MagicMover to move to D:\Program Files: point 154(b).
WIN Command
See also DOS Commands, CD-ROM Driver.
9

Runs WIN.COM: point 120(am).

Starts Win98: point 82, point 129.
WIN /D:M starts Win98 in Safe Mode: point 129.
WIN.COM
Error: "Cannot find WIN.COM, unable to continue loading Windows": point
119(a).
Located in C:\WINDOWS: point 119(a).
Execute by typing WIN Command: point 120(am).
Hidden Folder
See also Folder.
Visible in DIR Command only with DIR /AH: point 148.
Can use CD (Change Directory) command to get into it: point 148.
System Files
See also XCOPY, File Attributes, VisiTrax, GoBack, ATTRIB.EXE,
C:\Windows\Command, PowerDesk, System File Checker.
List of: point 5(a).
Partition containing these files may be bootable: point 5(d).
Presence of these files affects Boot process: point 86.
Error: Could not upgrade one or more system files: point 146(n).
Win98 may use inappropriate system files on other disks: point 210.
Have short filenames: point 213.
iSpeed
See also Advice.
Five-star Freeware: point 156(d).
Considered by some to be best web surfing speedup Freeware: point 140(d).
Supposed to test by using FTP site: point 265(a).
FTP site they recommended didnt exist: point 265(a).
Supposed to dramatically improve Internet Connection speed: point 156(d).
Tweaked settings in Internet Connection: point 156(d).
Took only about a half megabyte of disk space and installed quickly: point
156(d).
Did not understand all settings: point 265(a).
Recommended for Win95, not Win98: point 265(a).
Would make undesirable Win98 Registry changes: point 265(a).
Win98 users had bad experiences: point 265(a).
Read-Only Files
See also Uninstall Information Folder, CD, ATTRIB.EXE, IO.SYS.
RO File Attributes got turned on while burning CD or copying files: point 70.

10

ATTRIB.EXE
See also Spreadsheet, DOS Batch.
Command Line program that turns File Attributes on or off: point 23.
Can change multiple File Attributes for many files at once: point 70, point 77.
Error: "not resetting hidden file": point 88.
Does not process directories in same order as DIR command: point 88.
Archive Bit no problem for non-Hidden Files that are Read-Only Files: point 88.
Changing Archive Bits on System Files: point 88.
CHATT.EXE
See also ARC_BITS.
Free download: point 88.
DOS Program for changing File Attributes manually: point 88.
Displays File Attributes within a Directory.
Shows other attributes not ordinarily used: volume label and subDirectory.
Turns individual File Attributes on or off: point 88.
Ferret User Power Pack
Not related to Budweiser commercials.
Five-star Freeware online search tools: point 134(s).
Not used because they lack Boolean Search support: point 134(s).
Rename
See also Context Menu, MultiRen, X-Setup, Windows Explorer, Registry,
Properties, Real DOS.
Can also rename by selecting item and using F2.
Can rename Desktop items to be blanks: point 146(h).
Rename Bitmap Files to be Icon files for Startup and Shutdown: point 118.
Rename DOS Batch file: point 116(g).
Rename SendTo item: point 120(t).
Rename Screen Saver: point 145(k).
Rename OUTLOOK.PST: point 193.
File | New (Option in Windows Explorer)
See also Registry, Norton AntiVirus 2000.
Used TweakUI to remove New Briefcase option: point 145(f).
Used TweakUI to remove New My Documents Folder option: point 145(f).
Used TweakUI to remove New Other Office Documents option: point 145(f).
Use TweakUI to remove other items from this list: point 146(c), point 151.
Removing more items later: point 312.
Kept Folder, Shortcut, Text Document, Microsoft Word Document options: point
312.

11

Adding new items to this list: point 145(f).

Used to add Control Panel to Start Menu: point 145(i).
Can use to add other items to Start Menu: point 145(i).
SendTo
See also Windows Explorer, New (Context Menu Option), Excel 97, Word 97,
Cool Edit 2000, Rename, DOS Box, Desktop Folder, Custom Settings.
Advantage of SendTo over Open With: point 113(c).
Programs added to SendTo options: point 113(c), point 312.
Added SendTo items for commonly used data folders: point 113(c).
Could use this list of often-used folders for other purposes: point 120(u).
Dynamic SendTo idea: self-updating list of most recently visited folders: point
120(v).
Programs had installed a lot of SendTo options: point 113(c).
Subfolders on SendTo list for Programs, Folders, etc.: point 113(c), point 120(t).
Rearranging SendTo options: point 113(c).
Option to send items to Temp Folders: point 113(c).
SendTo Recycle Bin enables deletion by using SendTo: point 113(c).
SendTo SendTo: point 120(t), point 120(aa).
First level contained Mail Recipient, 3.5 Floppy, Recycle Bin, and Folders: point
312.
Rooted Folder
See also Windows Explorer, Root, New (Context Menu Option).
Limits on the concept: point 120(aa).
Disk Cache
See also File System, Cacheman.
Re: DOS Box cache: see Properties.
Distinct settings for Hard Disk and CD-ROM Drive: point 113(d).
Cache
See also File Cache, Disk Cache.
Use X-Setup to set File Allocation Cache: point 137(n).
For Internet Explorer: point 150.
Processor cache: point 245.
VCACHE change in Registry: point 265(b).
StartUp Folder
See also X-Setup, Clipboard Pile.
Contains Shortcuts for programs to run at Startup: point 131.
Located under Start | Programs: point 42.
Win98 finds folder even when buried: point 42.

12

Icons installed in SF by Office 97: point 120(ab).

Moving unwanted Startup items to Other StartUp Icons folder: point 120(ab).
Ordinarily expect to have some programs run from SF: point 131.
Could swap items out of folder and then back in: point 131.
Added Outlook 98 Icon to SF: point 285.
Start | Favorites
See also Start Menu, Favorites.
Start | Settings
See also Start Menu, MS-MVP, Windows Update, Printer.
Registry edit to remove Settings option from Start Menu: point 146(e).
Removing Start | Settings also removes Folder Options from Windows Explorer:
point 146(e).
Removing Start | Settings removes all instances of Control Panel: point 146(e).
Start | Settings contains Taskbar and Start Menu option: point 146(e).
Start | Find
See also Start Menu.
Functionally the same as Find File.
Fix-It
Registry cleaner from Mijenix, makers of PowerDesk.
Complaints made it sound like Norton CrashGuard: point 139(b).
CHECKLINKS.EXE
See also Norton Utilities.
Finds and eliminates dead Links and Shortcuts: point 119(a).
Part of the Resource Kit Sampler: point 119(a).
Found dead Links: point 147.
Start | Run
See also Start Menu.
Runs executable programs, e.g., ScanReg (point 210), Registry Checker (point
146), RegEdit (point 146).
Start | Log Off
See also Start Menu.
Start | Shut Down
See also Properties, Cold Reboot, Restart Windows, Reboot Toolbar.
Refers to a proper Shutdown method: click on Shut Down option on Start
Button.
Can also bring up this option by hitting Ctrl-Esc and then U: point 105(k).
13

X-Setup changes removed this option from Start Menu: point 138(c).
Registry edit also removes this option from Start Menu: point 146(e).
BAK Files
Backup copies of files automatically created by some programs.
Automatically removed by HDValet: point 141(m).
OLD Files
Backup copies of files automatically created by some programs.
Automatically removed by HDValet: point 141(m).
CloseAll
Provided a way to kill Processes: point 141(s).
Could kill all application programs when run from Command Line: point 141(s).
Command Line version stored in DOS_UTIL: point 141(s).
Provided dangerous one-click way of wiping out current work: point 141(s).
Uninstalled it to get dangerous option off Context Menu: point 141(s).
Bad option remains after Uninstall via Add/Remove Programs: point 146(l).
Edited Registry to remove bad option: point 141(s).
Decided to use PrcView instead for most purposes: point 141(s).
QUIKTRAY.EXE
Ran in System Tray: point 134(j).
Organized System Tray Icons: point 119(a).
Came from the Resource Kit Sampler: point 134(j).
Created a text file in which I could put notes: point 134(j).
Internet Loafer
Shareware that keeps Internet Connection alive: point 134(r).
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(r).
Connection Keeper
See also Internet Loafer, Keep It Alive.
Shareware that keeps Internet Connection alive: point 134(r).
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(r).
WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix
Actually useful for anything, not just Defragmenting: point 141(k).
Suspends all else and lets you run a program just once, after next reboot: point
141(k).
Set up DEFRAG.REG to run this fix: point 141(k).
Didnt actually disable Screen Saver: point 141(k).
DEFRAG.REG
14

See also REG Files.

Ran Disk Defragmenter through WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix: point 141(k).
Used special command for Disk Defragmenter: point 141(k).
Stored DEFRAG.REG in DOS_UTIL: point 141(l).
Didnt actually work too well: point 264.
Another way of approaching same thing via Registry edit: point 300(b).
FREE_RAM.VBS
Purpose was to free leaked RAM: point 120(ai).
Scheduled through Task Scheduler: point 120(ai).
Might be able to run it every hour: point 120(ai).
Kept one guys computer running for a week without rebooting: point 120(ai).
Tinker with number according to system RAM: point 120(ai).
Also known as FREEMEM.VBS: point 120(ai).
Requires Microsoft Scripting Engines (which comes with Win98) : point 120(ai).
Supposed to close all running programs before using, but I didnt: point 120(ai).
LoadPowerProfile
See also X-Setup.
Listed twice in list of Startup programs: point 145(d).
Change pointed out by WinDiff: point 150.
MagicMover
See also WinBench 99, WebCompass, Uninstall Information Folder, Office 97,
FrontPage 2000, FrontPage Express, E-mail, PowerQuest, WAB.
Preferred over Change of Address: point 154.
Installed as part of PartitionMagic: point 115, point 154.
No need for duplicate installation from DriveImage CD: point 115.
Moved program files successfully from C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files:
point 154(a).
Programs insisting on using C:\Program Files meant duplicate program files:
point 314(e).
Couldnt run in Real DOS: point 154(a).
Error: file is a standard or integral part of Windows: point 154(b), point
154(c), point 317.
Error: unable to determine a source folder : point 154(b), point 317.
Users comments gave me little cause for worry about MagicMover: point
154(b).
Goal of using MM was to have all programs neatly organized: point 154(b).
Bug in which MM collapses empty parent folders: point 154(b), point 317.
Refused to move some things: point 154(c).
Advice to move those things manually: point 154(c).
Moving program files seemed to slow down Outlook Express: point 154(a).

15

Moving program files seemed to cause general system slowness: point 332.
Some programs insisted on installing into Common Files folder on C:\Program
Files: point 154(d).
Moving files with MM might have been reason for WAB problem: point 166(c).
File move might have been partly unsuccessful even though MM didnt say so:
point 241.
Moving files back again didnt fix problem: point 241.
Created mess when Uninstalling and reinstalling a program I had moved: point
166(b).
DESKTOP.INI
Created by Windows Explorer when you set Thumbnail view: point 113(h).
CompUSA
Allowed me to trade up in Network Cards: point 185.
Gift certificate: point 183.
Cheap CDs work OK: point 187.
BSOD
Abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death.
Announced Fatal Exception: point 227, point 229, point 231.
Announced Disk Write Error: point 84.
Downloader
See also Go!Zilla, NetVampire, Grafula, Offline Browser, Windows Update,
Favorites.
Win98 comes with acceptable downloader: point 293.
Win98 downloader chokes when you have too many downloads: point 156(c).
Diagnostic Suite
See also OptOut, Serial Port, DOS Box.
Purpose was to open all diagnostic programs for Troubleshooting: point 160.
Runs its programs one after another: point 160.
Used to fix frozen system: point 269(p).
Seemed unlikely that I would use it much: point 275.
X-Setup offers long, revisable list of diagnostic tools: point 160.
HTML Editor
Program that edits HyperText Markup Language to produce webpages.
The program in question may also have other features for assembling or linking
webpages.
See also 1stPage 2000, FrontPage 2000.
Links Pages
16

Set of web pages containing organized links from Favorites: point 109(g).
Would have explanatory text for each link: point 109(g).
Made Links Pages available for offline browsing: point 109(g).
Would contain nothing but links to subfolders, giving cascading menus: point
109(g).
Links
Used to refer to hotlinks to websites; also used in very different sense to indicate
links among programs such that, if the link is broken or the file is missing, one
program may not properly trigger another and therefore may not run as
expected.
See also ShortCutter, CHECKLINKS.EXE.
FILEINFO.EXE
See also Process.
Part of Resource Kit Sampler: point 119(a).
Provides detailed information on virtually every file in Win98: point 119(a).
Lists all files that are an integral part of Win98: point 263.
Could almost stand alone: point 119(a).
Similar list available online: point 295.
Frequented Folder
See also Links Folder.
Contained frequently used links: point 109(g), point 143, point 261(a).
Gave me a nice pull-down menu: point 109(g).
Used URL Batch Files: point 261(e).
Didnt exactly match list of Shortcuts in Web Suite: point 261(e).
Favorites
See also Web Suite, WEBWEEK.BAT, Office 97, Start | Favorites,
WEBDAILY.BAT, Custom Settings.
Provide links to websites in Internet Explorer: point 109(g).
Used X-Setup to put default Data File Location on Drive F: point 137(m), point
303(b).
Registry edit to do the same thing: point 261(h).
X-Setup relocation of Favorites failed: point 261(h), point 303(b).
X-Setup can hide Favorites in Start Menu: point 137(h).
Were the results of many hours of searching online: point 109(g).
Stopped this project after setting up a few entries in Links Folder: point 109(g).
Needed to be organized: point 109(g).
Decided to create set of Links Pages to replace Favorites for most purposes:
point 109(g).

17

Links Pages would reduce need to back up Favorites folder on Drive C: point
109(g).
Unsorted subfolder would hold Favorites pending relocation into Links Pages:
point 142.
Used to Create Shortcut to Desktop Folder: point 120(n).
Creation of Favorites pages would involve use of URL2HTM: point 156(l).
Ultimately decided Favorites was a large, separate project: point 327.
Removing Favorites from Start Menu: point 146(e).
Buried among other things in C:\Windows: point 261(h).
Should include Weekly Favorites -- sites to open once a week: point 274.
Weekly Favorites
Favorite websites to visit once a week: point 274.
Could use something like URLSCRAP.BAT to open all listed sites: point 274.
Command Prompt Mode
Different from Command Line.
See DOS Modes, Real DOS, Startup Menu.
DOS
Too many references to track them here. See DOS Modes.
A 16-Bit Operating System: see 32-Bit.
Not sophisticated, but relatively stable: point 128.
Cant kill running Win98 Processes: point 131.
DOS Window
Same as DOS Box.
MS-DOS Prompt
Formal Win98 term for what most users call the DOS Box.
Distinct from DOS Prompt.
MEM
See also MS-DOS Mode.
Program that tells you about your Memory status: point 128(d).
DOS Box
Begin by reading DOS Modes regarding error and confusion.
See also Properties, PowerDesk, SYSTEM.INI, Windows Media Player,
LISTBITS.BAT, DOSKEY, InCtrl4, Imitation DOS, DOS Prompt, Files Toolbar,
DOSSTART.BAT, DIR Command, SCANDSKW, END_LIST.BAT.
Increasing box size to 43 lines: point 145(b).
Closing box may stop the program it is running: point 160.
Can close by typing EXIT: point 113(e).
18

Does not run its own AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 105(l).

Modified for Office 97 Suite: point 113(e).
Added as SendTo option, but that didnt work: point 113(c).
Using XCOPY and XCOPY32 within a DB: point 23.
Can open multiple DBs at the same time: point 113(e).
Used entirely different Path from Real DOS: point 128.
Sharing violation for EMM.386 not due to DB: point 141(q).
Shortcut to run DOS Batch file in a DB: point 157(f).
Unlike MS-DOS Mode, DOS Box runs within regular Windows interface: point
262(b).
XCOPY32
Will copy long filenames only when used from within a DOS Box: point 23.
Had to use it within DOS Box at start or end of CD Backup process: point 24.
Apparently gives you XCOPY32 under Win98 and plain old XCOPY in Real
DOS: point 23.
Said to screw up your long filenames when used to copy C Drives in Imitation
DOS: point 23.
Generates short filename that may differ from short filename used by Registry:
point 23.
Combined with ZIP program to create somewhat File-by-File Backup: point 26.
File-by-File Backup
See also DriveImage, XCOPY32, File List.
Keeps individual files distinct rather than combining them into larger Disk
Image File: point 3.
Gives more flexibility and easier access to files: point 3.
Allows restoring one misbehaving program file easily: point 13.
If one file goes haywire in XCOPY process, the whole rest of the thing may be
lost: point 20.
Imitation DOS
Begin by reading DOS Modes regarding error and confusion.
My term for any use of DOS under Win98 other than Real DOS.
Includes DOS Box and MS-DOS Mode.
See also DIR Command, CALL Command, START Command, XCOPY32,
FILELIST.BAT.
DOS Modes
There are two modes: Real DOS and Imitation DOS.
Real DOS is so called because it is a direct descendant of the original DOS and
does not require Windows in order to function.

19

You get into Real DOS by booting from a Bootable Floppy or Bootable CD on
which DOS is the Operating System, or by choosing Command Prompt Mode
from the Startup Menu on a Win98 system.
Information relevant to Real DOS is clustered under the Real DOS heading rather
than under the Command Prompt Mode heading.
You get into Imitation DOS by opening a DOS Box, or by rebooting a Win98
system into a state in which it functions as DOS, known as MS-DOS Mode. Both
the DOS Box and MS-DOS Mode occur within Win98, rather than being distinct
from it as in the case of Real DOS: point 262(b).
Some programs will run only in Real DOS, and some only in Imitation DOS.
Programs that will run in either mode may not run precisely the same in one as
in the other: point 262(b).
Note: while editing this document, I noticed that some incorrect references
seemed to have crept in regarding the DOS Modes. I could not be certain of this,
but there may be a few mixups where the reference should be to Real DOS rather
than to Imitation DOS, or vice versa. I believe, but am not certain, that such
references will occur primarily in the See also lines of a few entries in this
document. The context of the resulting reference should indicate whether the
reference is, in fact, mistaken.
MS-DOS Mode
Begin by reading DOS Modes regarding error and confusion.
See also Shut Down | Restart, Properties, Reboot Toolbar, Automatic Reboot.
Is a type of Imitation DOS, but looks like Real DOS: point 262(b).
Not the same as a DOS Box: entered only by rebooting: point 262(c).
Cant switch into other windows from MS-DOS Mode: point 262(b).
Reference in GoBack apparently refers to Real DOS.
Entering by using MEM: point 128(d).
Is an option on DOS Batch programs Properties: point 130.
Real DOS
Begin by reading DOS Modes regarding error and confusion.
See also ScanReg, DIR Command, TMP Files, BIOS Setup, DOS Box, XCOPY,
XCOPY32, Disk Defragmenter, CALL Command, Task Scheduler, MagicMover,
MS-DOS Mode, DOS Prompt, MAINT_WK.BAT, DOS Batch, Mode, Reboot
Toolbar.
Available under Win98 via Startup Menu Option 5 (Command Prompt Mode):
point 82, point 146(i).
Hard Disk diagnostics and fundamental utilities generally run under Real DOS
rather than Imitation DOS: see e.g., PartitionMagic, DriveImage, DELTREE,
FDISK, MSD, point 242(g), point 262(b).
Work in RD to avoid interference by Power Management or other programs:
point 124.

20

AUTOEXEC.BAT would run BOOT_MGR.BAT to put me into Real DOS: point

120(am).
Command Prompt Mode saves Real DOS AUTOEXEC under another name:
point 129.
Sometimes have to rename files in Real DOS rather than Imitation DOS: point
225.
Was the basic Operating System of PCs since 1981: point 262(b).
Win98 starts with real DOS: point 262(b).
RD allowed tighter and simpler control of what was happening on the disk:
point 262(b).
MSD
Short for MicroSoft Diagnostic: point 181.
Runs from Real DOS; shows available Communications Ports: point 181, point
206.
Exit to DOS
See also DOS Box.
Runs its own AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 105(l).
FAT32
See also Norton Disk Doctor, LFNDir, GoBack.
Efficient Disk Format that first became available for in Win98: point 32.
Used PartitionMagic to set up Partitions in FAT32 Format: point 32.
Said to require daily use of ScanDisk: point 78.
RAM Drive
See also DriveImage, Win98 Emergency Boot Disk.
Exists only in Memory: point 269(l).
Purely an electronic Drive; loses all information when you shut off the computer:
point 12.
Idea of using RD with Bootable CD: point 12.
Making a CD that will run Win98 from CD by using RD: point 12.
Using RD in lieu of Hard Disk: point 10.
SYS.COM
See Bootable Floppy, Format.
ResKit
See Resource Kit.
Resource Kit
See also System Policy Editor, Resource Kit Book Online.
Also known as ResKit.
21

Not clearly related to Resources.

Primarily intended for the Network administrator: point 119(a).
Not free, unlike Resource Kit Sampler: point 119(a).
Copying files from CD produces duplicate files on Hard Disk: point 314(d).
Installed Path statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT re WINDOWS.COM: point 119(a).
Nobody seemed to be raving about the full-blown Resource Kit: point 119(a).
Resource Kit Sampler
See also CHECKLINKS.EXE, CLIPTRAY.EXE, WinDiff, FILEINFO.EXE,
QUIKTRAY.EXE, TweakUI, LFNBACK.EXE, TEXTVIEW.EXE, TIMETHIS.EXE,
WHERE.EXE.
Is a reduced version of Resource Kit: point 119(a).
Contained about 25 of the 75 programs available in the full Resource Kit: point
119(a).
Installation makes system unable to start Win98: point 119(a).
Dismantled RKS and used just the programs from it that interested me: point
119(a).
Didn't need ponderous machinery of the Tools Management Console: point
119(a).
LFNBACK.EXE
One of the Resource Kit Sampler programs I thought I might use: point 119(a).
A long filename Backup utility: point 119(a).
Couldn't find in Resource Kit Sampler: point 119(a).
TEXTVIEW.EXE
One of the Resource Kit Sampler programs I thought I might use: point 119(a).
A text file viewer: point 119(a).
Available as a Standalone executable program: point 119(a).
TIMETHIS.EXE
One of the Resource Kit Sampler programs I thought I might use: point 119(a).
Could Time how long a command took to execute: point 119(a).
Available as a Command Line program: point 119(a).
WHERE.EXE
One of the Resource Kit Sampler programs I thought I might use: point 119(a).
Tool to Find File: point 119(a).
Available as a Command Line program: point 119(a).
Alternatives include WHEREIS, FILEFIND, DIR Command: point 113(e).
WHEREIS
Tool to Find File: point 113(e).
Alternatives include WHERE.EXE, FILEFIND, DIR Command: point 113(e).
22

Required me to use DOS form of filename to search: point 113(e).

Had Command Line option.
FILEFIND
Tool to Find File: point 113(e).
Alternatives include WHERE.EXE, WHEREIS, DIR Command: point 113(e).
Visual Basic Runtime
Needed in order to run some programs: point 136.
Available as free download: point 136.
Installation not explicit, not listed in Add/Remove Programs: point 136.
CALCONV
See also Date and Time.
Comes in DOS and Windows versions: point 277.
Calculates Julian Dates: point 277.
IO.SYS
See also Read-Only Files, Bootable Floppy.
An essential, hidden system file: point 5(a).
Runs CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and WIN.INI: point 120(al).
Will execute WIN.BAT (if found) instead of WIN.COM: point 120(al).
Can have WIN.BAT instead of AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 120(al).
Can make WIN.BAT read-only and hidden: point 120(al).
Path
See also Start | Programs, Dupeless, C:\Windows\Command, PrcView, WAB,
Resource Kit, DOSSTART.BAT, Process, DOS Box.
Indicates locations of executable programs so that user need not indicate full
Directory name before running an executable program located in those
directories: see point 269(h).
In AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 105(l).
Something like this appears necessary in Win98 as well as DOS: see WAB.
Win98 path seems to include C:\Windows, C:\Windows\System, and
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System: point 166(e).
Registry location for all paths recognized by Win98: point 166(e).
Find out which directories are on path: point 128.
Path problem provoked alternate solution for Resource Kit Sampler: point
119(a).
Absence of path statement gives Bad command or file name error: point 20.
Sample path statement designating all places where DOS programs were located:
point 20.
Need to tell ZIP program to save full path names: point 26.

23

Boot path of CD: point 79.

Assuming that C:\Windows is on path statement: point 128.
Type Directory names manually if they arent on path: point 128.
Outlook 98 error: path variable is full and cannot accept any additional
statements: point 225.
Fixing that error by using default C:\Program Files location for program files:
point 242(h).
Error: path specified for [OUTLOOK.PST] is not valid: point 303(c).
DOS Prompt
See also GoBack, PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, \WIN98 Folder,
AUTOEXEC.BAT, DOSSTART.BAT, DOS Prompt Here, EDIT, Bootable CD,
Root.
The C:\> prompter (which may look different on some systems) that tells you
that DOS is waiting for you to enter a command on the Command Line. See e.g.,
point 242(e).
Distinct from MS-DOS Prompt.
Change by typing PROMPT at the prompt.
Exists in DOS regardless of whether DOS was opened by Real DOS, DOS Box,
Exit to DOS, etc.
Bootable CD boots to a DOS prompt: point 10.
DIR is typed at the DOS prompt: point 19.
Where DOS Batch files may terminate: point 130, point 146(i).
Use of DIR and similar commands at DP allows view of contents of Hard Disk:
point 256(d).
PIF File
Same as Shortcut.
File List
See also DriveImage, PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, FILELIST.BAT,
Spreadsheet, END_LIST.BAT, DIR Command.
Keeping files from changing until list is produced: boot in Safe Mode or DOS:
point 190.
Needed Win98 for FL with long filenames: point 81.
LIST_ALL.BAT provided FL: point 116(g), point 210.
Programs to produce FL: point 134(x).
Printed lists rarely needed: point 134(x).
Complete FL provides more precise Backup method: point 202.
Keeping copy of FL when burning a Backup CD: point 203.
One of several time-consuming steps involved in a File-by-File Backup: point
203.

24

Use with or instead of Archive Bit to determine which files need Backup: point
337.
Backup concept was a little vague: point 340.
Backup process would ideally have updated list of when files changed: point
340.
Password
See also Web Suite, System Policy Editor, Network, ZIP.
Some contained in SYSTEM.INI: point 283.
Some in PWL files in C:\Windows: point 283.
Logging in to ISP without a Browser: point 113(g).
Control Panel entry I didnt think I would need: point 120(x).
PWL file is a system password file I want to keep: point 85(c).
Archive Bit
See also File Attributes, DIR Command, LISTBITS.BAT, ARC_BITS, Spreadsheet,
Date and Time, CD_PREP.BAT, ATTRIB.EXE, Disk Image File, File List.
Archive bits turn on when files are changed: point 87.
Turning off AB for Hidden Files: point 88.
Using Date instead of AB to determine which files changed: point 112(a).
Methods of setting Archive Bits manually to reflect a previous state: point
166(g).
Bit
See also 32-Bit, Slice32, Network Card, PrcView, DOS, Archive Bit, File
Attributes, Bits and Bytes.
Smallest unit of data measurement.
MORE.EXE
A DOS tool that controls output so the user sees only one screenful of
information at a time.
Example: see use of the MORE filter with pipe Symbol in point 21.
Used with PARTINFO.EXE: point 59.
EDIT
DOS Program useful for editing DOS Batch files and QBASIC programs: point
80, point 113(e).
Primitive predecessor was EDLIN.
Or create DOS Batch files by typing COPY CON:<filename> at DOS Prompt:
point 20.
Debug
See also DMA.
Ancient, primitive, dangerous DOS tool: point 113(f).
25

FastNet99
Sped up Internet Connection by saving DNS numbers for sites: point 156(j).
Create Shortcut
See also Windows Explorer, Start | Programs, Favorites, Context Menu.
Shortcuts seem to be created in parent folder: point 120(n).
Paste
See also Windows Explorer, PrintScreen, Clipboard Pile, Context Menu.
Can also paste by using Ctrl-V: point 113(e).
TEMP Folders
Created on various Partitions for miscellaneous purposes: point 53, point 82.
Often used as SendTo clearinghouse to distribute files elsewhere: point 113(c).
Browser
See AdSubtract, URL Batch Files, Password, Internet Explorer, Offline Browser.
Maintenance Wizard
See Norton Utilities.
Temporary Files
See also Help, Drive H (SWAP), Custom Settings, MAINTDAY.BAT, Tilde Files,
WS_FTP.
Temporary Files Folders or Partition used by Internet Explorer and Cool Edit
2000: point 2.
Windows Update downloads generated temporary files I did not want to
preserve: point 51.
DLL
See Clean System Directory, PrcView, WAB, WinMag's Registry Pruner.
File Comparison
See also Spreadsheet, WinDiff.
Synchronize folders: see PowerDesk.
Can compare files using Word Processor: point 149(b).
Can compare files using DOS Command FC: point 146(l), point 149(b).
Comparing text files containing contents of Registry: point 149(b).
TweakUI
See also Start Menu, Startup Menu, File | New, Fast Restart, My Documents
Folder, Network Neighborhood, Network, Process, Custom Settings, Win98
Upgrade.
26

Comes with Win98: point 71.

Install and tinker with TUI as part of Resource Kit Sampler: point 109(d), point
145(f).
Installation from Resource Kit Sampler did not install Icon on Control Panel:
point 109(d).
Some versions of TUI are liked, some disliked: point 117.
Resource Kit Sampler installed the buggy version of TUI: point 119(a).
Found in PowerToy folder on CD; also available for download: point 109(c).
Microsoft said TUI presents a risk of leaving Win98 in an unusable state: point
109(c).
A fast way of accomplishing many little tweaks: point 109(c), point 267(c).
Many happy reboots after initial worry about TUI: point 109(c).
Had been using TUI for more than a year with no ill side-effects: point 109(c).
Appears as Icon in Control Panel: point 145(f).
Used TWEAKUI.INF to install TweakUI: point 145(f).
Has Mouse settings: point 286.
Installation: point 109(c).
Worried that installation might have screwed up Win98 installation: point 71.
Bugs in tabs for autologon, My Computer, New (Context Menu Option), Internet
Explorer: point 117.
Effects section said to be a Resource hog: point 117.
Not supported by Microsoft: point 109(c).
Some settings do not function properly: point 117.
Websites to check re TUI bugs and suggestions: point 145(f).
ZDNet.com overstated TUIs safety: point 109(c).
Recommend X-Setup as a more professional alternative: point 117.
Simpler than X-Setup: point 117.
Better than editing the Registry by hand: point 117.
Decided to use X-Setup instead to the extent possible: point 134(a).
Smaller than X-Setup: point 137.
Uninstall
See also Win98, Uninstall Information Folder, Start | Programs, Start Manager,
Norton AntiVirus 2000, MagicMover, Windows Update, WAB, GoBack, InCtrl4,
Add/Remove Programs, Shareware, Windows Setup Tab, Communications Port,
Outlook 98, Outlook Express,
Specific programs uninstalled and left off system thereafter include these:
CallWave, System Policy Editor, WinBench 99, Clean System Directory, Copernic
2000, Power Management, CabWiz, Tape Backup, InfoPager News Service,
CloseAll, Clipboard Pile, RegClean, Fax4Free.
Uninstalling sometimes leaves files behind: point 115, point 156(a).
Uninstalling hardware: see Add New Hardware.

27

Newsgroup
See also ISP, Deja.com, Newsreader, Outlook 98, Outlook Express.
Download list of newsgroups from ISP: point 292.
Obtain help with Toolbar problem in a day or two: point 142.
Source of program recommendations: point 267(c).
Memory
See also Cold Reboot, Virtual Memory, Cacheman, MEM, RAM Drive, ROM,
New Hardware, Backup, Cache.
Programs using lots of Memory include NetMeeting, FINDFAST.CPL, Office
Startup, System Agent, Active Movie: point 145(d).
Erroneous Outlook Express error: computer may be out of memory: point
241.
Double-click
Refers to two rapid left clicks on the Mouse.
See also Windows Explorer, Undo, Network Neighborhood, Start | Programs.
DOS_UTIL
See also CloseAll, DEFRAG.REG, C:\Windows\Command, Custom Settings.
Folder containing numerous batch files and others that you could run from the
Command Line.
Could run PartitionMagic and DriveImage from Floppy or from DOS_UTIL:
point 78.
Added to DOS utilities collection from Win98 Upgrade: point 141(q).
Placed entire DOS_UTIL folder on Bootable CD: point 269(h).
Old DOS utilities might permanently truncate long filenames: point 64.
Command Line
Generally, files with extensions of .EXE, .COM, and .BAT (i.e., DOS Batch files)
will run from the Command Line. So may some others.
See also Start Manager, GoBack, PowerDesk, EasyCleaner, DOS Prompt, Start |
Programs, CloseAll, PrcView, ATTRIB.EXE, HDValet, EndItAll, Delayer,
Command Prompt Mode, TIMETHIS.EXE, WHERE.EXE, WHEREIS, FILEFIND,
ScanDisk, Format, DOS_UTIL, DOS Commands, AntiPop.
COPY Command
See also EDIT.
Error: Invalid device request: point 20.
System freezes during COPY operation: point 84.
Directory
DOS directories are the same as Win98 folders.
DOS cant create long directory names: point 215.
28

DIR Command
See also ATTRIB.EXE, FILELIST.BAT, Hidden Folder, DOS Prompt.
Note: this item is not exhaustively cross-referenced. I plan to supersede it, at
least in part, by developing a set of DOS Batch files with explanatory comments
that will show it in action.
Aligns items differently in Real DOS and Imitation DOS: point 88.
DIR /Z produces DOS-style filename: point 141(o).
DIR /AH shows hidden Recycled Directory: point 34.
View Hidden Files using DIR /AH: point 20, point 21.
Order of File Attributes shown by DIR /A: point 88.
DIR C:\*.* /AA /V /S shows how many files have Archive Bit on: point 88.
DIR C:\ /AA /AH /V /S /P shows Hidden Files with Archive Bits on : point
88.
Interrupt DIR scrolling with Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break: point 88.
Corrupted listing: see Reboot.
Suppressing long or short filenames in a DOS Box: point 23.
Reproduces long filenames in a DOS Box: point 75.
Alternatives include WHERE.EXE, WHEREIS, FILEFIND: point 113(e).
DIR Command allows printing File Lists in wide variety of Formats: point
134(x).
DOS Commands
See also XCOPY, Hidden Files, DIR Command, WIN Command, DOS Batch,
CALL Command, START Command, Date and Time, DOSKEY.
Note: this item is not exhaustively cross-referenced. I plan to supersede it, at
least in part, by developing a set of DOS Batch files with explanatory comments
that will show it in action.
Use quotes for long filenames: point 184.
CD command: point 146(k).
Use /? or /H (e.g., DISKEDIT /?) to get Command Line instructions: point 240.
SUBST command to make the system think one disk is another: point 11.
Exits 95/98
An auto-Shutdown program: point 134(l).
Five-star Freeware with command-line abilities: point 134(l).
Decided instead to use programs that shut down Processes: point 134(l).
Date
See Date and Time.
Time
See Date and Time.

29

Date and Time

Scheduling: see Internet Explorer, Task Scheduler, OUTLOOK.PST, Outlook 98,
X-Setup, Task Scheduler.
See also DriveImage, PowerDesk, ScanReg, Spreadsheet, WEEKDAY.BAT, Find
File, ExactTime, TIMETHIS.EXE, Outlook 98.
Do date and time calculations with Julian calculator: point 277. See also
CALCONV.
Fooling the system: see DOS Batch, Archive Bit.
Fooling the system can freeze up the Clock: point 112(b).
Comparing disks based on file dates: see Spreadsheet.
Can adjust with DOS Date and Time commands: point 112(b).
Computer | Properties
See also Properties, IRQ.
Option under Device Manager: point 281.
Shortcut
See also Internet Explorer, Web Suite, New (Context Menu Option), Context
Menu, Office 97 Shortcut Bar, Find File, No-Install Program, DOS Batch, Create
Shortcut, Microsoft Network, File | New (Option in Windows Explorer), StartUp
Folder, Start | Programs, CHECKLINKS.EXE, Task Scheduler, Add/Remove
Programs, Desktop, Links, Frequented Folder, DOS Box, Device Manager, Screen
Saver, Performance, PIF File.
Tilde (~) in shortened filename: point 146(k).
X-Setup can hide little arrows that appear by default on shortcuts: point 137(r).
X-Setup can hide the words "Shortcut to ...": point 137(r).
XCOPY
See also ZIP, C:\Windows\Command, Win98 Emergency Boot Disk, DOS Box,
File-by-File Backup.
Use /H switch to copy Hidden Files and System Files: point 21.
DOS version of XCOPY doesnt copy Hidden Files: point 21.
OK to use for moving DOS program files; they have short names: point 84.
Apparently behaves much the same as XCOPY32: point 23.
Using XCOPY as part of Backup scheme: point 26.
Has to be on Bootable Floppy if doing File-by-File Backup: point 13.
Is a DOS utility that will copy directories and subdirectories one at a time: point
13.
Doesn't investigate or dismantle Disk Image Files: point 13.
Error: Invalid device request: might stem from loose Floppy connection:
point 20.
Did not copy stuff when it seemed to be doing so: point 20.

30

Copied into wrong Directory when I gave the wrong command: point 20.
Problem when filename and Directory name are same: point 20.
Restore process proceeds swimmingly: point 20.
Can work with existing long filenames but cant create them: point 215.
Replacement program XXCOPY can handle long filenames better: point 253.
File Attributes
See also DIR Command, HWINFO, Reset, MSDOS.SYS, MSCREATE.DIR,
Hidden Files, System Files, Read-Only Files.
Also known as file Bits.
Characteristics of a given file that affect how programs will treat the file.
Ordinary list of attributes: hidden, system, read-only, and archive: point 87.
Can change attributes by using ATTRIB.EXE or CHATT.EXE (see).
Win98 and DOS turn on the Archive Bit whenever a file is modified: point 87.
Shut off hidden, system, and read-only attributes in order to delete files: point
34.
Must turn off multiple attributes at the same time: point 88.
Have to turn off Hidden Files attribute to turn off Archive Bit: point 88.
Bits and Bytes
Network context: 10 mbps and 100 mbps: see Network.
Calculating megabytes and other relevant numbers: point 269(i), point 269(l).
Filename
Too general to bother cataloging in full detail. A few interesting instances: see
DriveImage, Easy CD Creator, DIR Command, XCOPY32, DOS_UTIL.
See also QBASIC, Cacheman.
DOS Batch files can handle long filenames enclosed in quotation marks: point
213.
Error: Fail on INT 24 - RESTORE.GIF: point 20.
Programs with Windows 3.1 type interface balk at installation in folders with
long names. See e.g., Clean System Directory.
DOS abbreviation of long filenames: point 113(e).
Installation
See also individual programs.
Some installations create log files in C:\Windows: point 120(z).
New (Context Menu Option)
See also Windows Explorer, MS-MVP, Registry, TweakUI.
New Shortcut to Device Manager: point 112(e).
New Shortcut to create Mailto link: point 112(e).
New Shortcut to SendTo folders: point 113(c).

31

New Shortcut to create Rooted Folder in Windows Explorer: point 120(ac).

New Toolbar: point 113(e), point 120(ac).
Data File Location
See Cool Edit 2000, InCtrl4, Favorites.
Startup
See also MSDOS.SYS, PowerDesk, Start Manager, MSCONFIG | Startup,
DirectCD, Cleanup Suite, Startup Menu, StartUp Folder, WIN.INI, Startup Menu,
Win98 Startup Floppy, X-Setup, LoadPowerProfile, Registry, Bootable Floppy,
BIOS, Drive H (SWAP), Startup Folder, AUTOEXEC.BAT, Shutdown.
General term referring to things happening when computer start.
Hit Esc to eliminate clouds picture that appears at Startup: point 120(ah).
Change pictures that appear at startup and Shutdown: point 118.
Distinct from Office Startup, which uses lots of Memory: point 145(d).
X-Setup can change picture shown at Startup: point 137(k).
Fixing little audible pops at Startup by using earlier version of Registry: point
147, point 149.
Boot
See Startup, Bootable Floppy, System Files.
Boot Error: Verifying DMI Pool Data freeze caused by DriveImage: point 214.
Boot Error: Disk Boot Failure after DriveImage restore failure: point 269(m).
Dismantling Drive C
See also Custom Settings.
Concept: program disk contains useful information to sort through, test,
examine, and save before wiping out Drive and installing new set of programs
on Drive C.
CabWiz experience stimulated thought on this project: point 197.
Outlook 98 saves new contacts, E-mails etc. to Drive C unless redirected: point
178
Used Add/Remove Programs to remove programs in reverse order: point 178.
Norton Utilities that could stand alone should be kept: point 176.
The only keepable Norton Utilities program was Norton Disk Doctor: point 197.
New Norton Utilities installation had other Standalones: see Norton Utilities.
Old copy of Drive C provided information on where files used to be: point 241.
Process
See also GoBack, PrcView, Process Viewer 2000, MSINFO32, CloseAll,
MAINTWIN.BAT, CD Burning Suite.
Not defined in Resource Kit Book Online: point 141(f).

32

Apparently means any major or minor program that might be running; generally
far more processes running than programs visible in Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Killing some processes disables TweakUI setting: see Network.
Decided I could safely kill processes not listed in FILEINFO.EXE: point 263.
Experimented to see whether I could kill Processes that were listed: point 263.
Tended not to kill those with Path of C:\WINDOWS or C:\Windows\System:
point 263.
Could safely kill MSTASK.EXE: point 263.
ComSeal Firewall
Provides improved online security for $50: point 297.
TRACERT
Allows you to figure out where your Internet Connection to website breaks
down: point 266(b).
AirEase
Freeware to track frequent flier miles: point 134(w).

33

Ways to Turn the Computer Off and On

Shutdown
See also ShutUp, Reboot Toolbar, Strong Disconnect, Weak Disconnect,
PowerDesk, Strong Disconnect, Weak Disconnect, DMA, Start | Shut Down,
Rename, ScanDisk.
Generic term for any kind of system shutdown, proper or not.
Lower-case shutdown used in this document for shutting down individual
programs.
DOS Batch files that shut down Win98 politely or impolitely: point 128(a), point
128(d).
Change pictures that appear at Startup and shutdown: point 118.
Myriad Win98 programs designed to shutdown in various times and ways:
point 120(ak).
One-minute shutdown same as Cold Reboot: point 71.
X-Setup can enable fast shutdown: point 137(k).
X-Setup can auto-end programs so hung programs can't prevent shutdown:
point 137(o).
Cold Reboot
See also Reboot, Warm Reboot, Shutdown.
Method: if possible, use Start | Shut Down first. Then turn computer off, let it
sit for at least one minute, then turn back on. Solves many minor problems.
Necessary to eliminate settings that computer otherwise retains in Memory:
point 234.
Good first step in dealing with persistently malfunctioning system: point 78.
Doesnt always solve problems: point 71, point 72, point 79, point 99, point
119(a), point 179, etc.
Cold reboot wasnt relevant : point 105(k).
Done (with good results) after system freezes: point 81, point 147, point 222, etc.
Done (with good results) after system becomes unresponsive: point 141(q).
Done to get system to boot from Hard Disk: point 84.
Done after indication of problems in Explorer: point 109(d).
Chose Safe Mode manually after Cold Reboot: point 103.
System responded by booting properly: point 84, point 89.
System responded by booting in Safe Mode automatically: point 81.
May take more than one try: point 224(f), point 233, point 281.
Seemed necessary to get system to recognize Modem: point 229, point 232.
Modem worked OK without it: point 281.
Resolved unable to establish a connection message from Modem: point 281.
May have wiped out computers Memory of Network connection: point 305.

34

Warm Reboot
See Reboot.
Power Down
Shutting off computers power switch.
Automatic Reboot
Term used here to mean a Reboot that is an expected part of a larger scheme.
Typically, some other program runs before or after the Reboot. The Reboot may
put the system into a different mode (e.g., MS-DOS Mode), may clear away other
unwanted programs before running the desired program, or may set the system
back to normal after running the desired program.
See also Network.
Reboot
Occurs too frequently to track fully. A few useful instances follow.
Means to restart computer. Can be done by hardware or software.
Same as Warm Reboot unless specified otherwise.
See also Cold Reboot, Modem, Safe Mode, Office 97, Strong Disconnect, Weak
Disconnect, InCtrl4.
Computer remembers settings for as long as one minute after Power Down:
point 234.
Fixes corrupted Directory listing: point 258(d).
Sometimes a reboot fixes a problem: point 22.
Reset
May mean Reboot, especially if done by using the Reset button on the computer.
Term is often used in connection with changing BIOS Setup.
File Attributes are often set and reset.
Can be used for a wide variety of other settings.
Shut Down | Restart
See Restart Windows.
Restart Windows
See also Fast Restart.
Restart is also used in other ways, e.g., to restart a program: point 166(e).
Term is used right here to mean Start | Shut Down | Restart.
Restart in this context means Reboot: point 82, point 154(a).
Error in this context: This program is not responding: point 120(ag).
Can also bring up this option by hitting Ctrl-Esc and then U, R, Enter: point
105(k).
DOS Batch file for this purpose: point 128(b).

35

Fast Restart
Same as steps to Restart Windows, but hold shift bar down when hitting Enter or
clicking OK: point 120(ak).
Restarts Windows without rebooting.
DOS Batch file for this purpose: point 128(c).
DOS Batch file wipes out TweakUI setting that gets through Network logon:
point 128.
Hard Reboot or Hard Reset
Infrequently used term that may mean a Reboot accomplished by hardware, i.e.,
by turning power off and back on, or by hitting reset button on computer.

36

Audio
Exact Audio Copy
Is Cardware: point 157(d).
Is a Ripper: point 157(d).
Took all the time in the world if necessary to rip tracks perfectly: point 157(d).
Impressive in its way but not stable: point 157(d).
SweepGen
Freeware that created pure sound tones for Audio testing: point 224(p).
Tones would have been useful for testing Codec quality: point 224(p).
Decided not to install it if Cool Edit 2000 would do the same job: point 224(p).
S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device
See also Add New Hardware, Turtle Beach Daytona, Device Manager, Hardware
Troubleshooter, Properties.
Not installed because of IRQ problem: point 232.
Search for whether I would be missing anything without it: point 234.
PCI Multimedia Audio Device
See PCI, Cool Edit 2000, Turtle Beach Daytona.
Turtle Beach Daytona
See also PCI Multimedia Audio Device.
Installed only for PENTIUM Hardware Profile: point 212.
Installed S3 Legacy Relocator for SonicVibes PCI Audio Device: see Device
Manager.
Manual provided no information on disabling full duplex: point 232.
Sound Card
See also PCI, Cool Edit 2000, Turtle Beach Daytona, Creative SoundBlaster
AWE64, Audio, Device Manager, WinDrivers.com.
Installation: point 212.
Installed minimal software to avoid duplicate functions: point 212.
Positioning of SC in Motherboard to reduce noise: point 157.
Exception next to SC device: point 45.
ISA SC would be unable to share IRQs: point 281.
RealPlayer
See also Updates.com.
I disliked it and removed it: point 16.
Had apparently gotten installed with Win98: point 40.
It had once taken over my Desktop: point 40.
37

Preferred other programs for Audio and video: point 40.

38

Online and Browsing Tools

SurfSaver
Free download from ZDNet.com: point 307(f).
Created by askSam: point 307(e).
Is Ad-Supported Freeware: point 307(e).
Installation created folders on Hard Disk despite abort: point 307(e).
Had to delete files installed abortively by hand: point 307(e).
Started by asking for project name: point 307(f).
WebWasher
Freeware that removes ads etc. from website you view: point 156(e).
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 156(e).
Highly praised Freeware website spam and content filter: point 140(d).
Proxomitron
Freeware that removes ads etc. from website you view: point 156(e).
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 156(e).
Highly praised Freeware website spam and content filter: point 140(d).
Could eliminate advertising banners and pop-ups: point 156(e).
Could shut off background images and automatic music: point 156(e).
Could manage cookies: point 156(e).
Could set specific filters for specific websites: point 156(e).
Might require some work to perform to fullest potential: point 156(e).
Decided not to invest the time to learn how to use it now: point 156(e).
Had potential to be fun and useful: point 156(e).
URL Bandit
See also NetVampire.
Was supposed to automatically copy URLs from every website: point 137.
Didnt actually work for me: point 266(f).

39

CDs and CD-ROMs

CDRIdentifier
Program provided information about SCSI Adapter for Hewlett-Packard ScanJet
IIcx: point 224(l).
Would only work on CD Burner: point 224(l).
Provided information about CD-ROM Drive: point 224(l).
Would tell who manufactured dyes used in CDs: point 224(l).
Lost my copy of it: point 231.
Decided I didnt really need it anyway: point 231.

40

Faxing
eFax
Apparently a No-Install Program.
Could not tell whether it was an Aureate Media affiliate: point 296.
Displayed some ads: point 296.
Allowed you to receive Fax as incoming E-mail: point 141(p).
Would not require keeping phone line free: point 141(p).
Looked like one of the best Freeware incoming Fax programs: point 141(p).
Website was open and informative: point 141(p).
eFax easy to remember: point 141(p).
Small download: point 141(p).
After signup, they sent me free Fax number and PIN: point 224(n).
Free Fax number not available from free Fax sending site: point 224(n).
Voice message capability: point 224(n).
Disliked it for installing itself in C:\Windows: point 224(n).
Successfully tested by having friend fax me: point 224(n).
eFax allowed me to save incoming Fax as editable TIF file: point 224(n).
Successfully tested: point 247.
Decided to keep this program: point 247.
TPC Fax
Also known as SendFax: point 224(n).
Positive comments on: point 141(p).
Online form for sending Fax: point 141(p), point 224(n).
Couldnt send fax to eFax free fax number: point 224(n).
Preferred over Microsoft Fax, with all its baggage, if possible: point 224(n).
Decided TPC was not a good solution: point 141(p).
Fax
See also eFax, TPC Fax, Microsoft Fax, Symantec WinFax, CallCenter, OmniPage.
Reasons for deciding against installing Fax software: point 141(p).
Lists of Fax Freeware: point 141(p).
Praise for websites allowing free faxing: point 141(p).
Decision to avoid Fax software that required available phone line: point 141(p).
Fax4Free
Fax Freeware that would not require me to keep phone line free: point 141(p).
Highly praised: point 141(p).
Website did not seem entirely up-front: point 141(p).
Would have to download software: point 141(p).
Merged with another company and now offered somewhat different services
than expected: point 141(p).

41

Website required me to register before it gave me any information: point 141(p).

Never did figure out how to send faxes through F4F: point 141(p).
Uninstalled it: point 296.
Microsoft Fax
See also TPC Fax.
Not automatically installed with Win98: point 141(p).
Win98 version not updated from Win95: point 141(p).
Required complex programs that had caused problems before: point 141(p).
Made me want to avoid Fax software altogether: point 141(p).
Not the same as Symantec WinFax: point 247.
Symantec WinFax
Available through Office 98 Component Install Page: point 247.
Only option I had for good, free outgoing Fax capability: point 247.
Reasonably compact, painless setup: point 247.
Used through Outlook 98: point 247.
Required Modem reconfiguration: point 247.
Confusing method of sending Fax: point 247.
No explanation of what it was doing: point 247.
Outlook 98 said SW fax had been sent when it hadnt: point 247.
Error: Unable to connect to the server: point 247.
Account information correction solved part of problem: point 247.
Fax undeliverable because I forgot to dial 1 before number: point 247.

42

Microsoft Office
Office 97
Components included Word 97, Access 97, Excel 97: point 69.
See also Outlook 98, Internet Explorer, Office 97 Shortcut Bar, My Documents
Folder, Monitor, FrontPage 2000, X-Setup, Clipart Folder, Startup.
Installed Microsofts Office 97 before other software on theory that it would be
most compatible with Microsofts Win98: point 76, point 91, point 104.
Customizing: point 69, point 102.
Postponing customization until system seems stable to avoid having to redo:
point 91.
Verifying that customized toolbars fit on one line: point 121.
Downloading and installing patches and upgrades: point 72, point 223, point
230.
Installed upgrade without installing previous version first: point 69.
Installed some items from ValuPack: point 69, point 91.
Tried to install to D:\Program Files whenever possible: point 69, point 115.
O97 components are included in Office 97 Suite: point 113(e).
Office 97 SR-1, SR-2, SR-2b patches: point 72, point 94.
Office 97 Version Checker indicated which patch was installed: point 72, point
94.
Version Checker gave incoherent report: point 96.
SR-2 patch had problems: point 95.
Couldnt get program to acknowledge that I had installed SR-2: point 96.
Downloaded patches and updates interfered with one another: point 94.
Unlike before, system froze repeatedly after installing patches: point 72, point
92.
System later seemed to stop freezing: point 103, point 109(c), point 111.
Couldnt register with Microsoft: system couldnt find Modem: point 91.
Dont install Win95, then Office 97, then Win98, in that order: point 92.
Nearly 100 patches and updates to work through: point 93.
SR-2b patch leaves Outlook 98 files intact but updates Office 97 otherwise: point
98.
Postponed Outlook 98 until after finishing with the rest of Office 97: point 98.
System seemed stable enough to customize again: point 101.
Reboot much slower since adding Office 97: point 103.
Office 97 added some Favorites to my collection: point 109(g).
Registry edit to eliminate Office 97 Assistants: point 146(a).
Using MagicMover to move Microsoft Office program folder: point 154(b).
AutoCorrect entries saved in <username>.acl: point 178.
Changed default file locations to Drive F: point 303(b).
Spreadsheet

43

See also FILELIST.BAT.

Created by spreadsheet program, e.g., Excel 97.
Used to convert File List produced by LISTBITS.BAT into DOS Batch file: point
88.
Used to compare files on two disks: point 85(a).
Comparing files based on file Dates: point 85(c).
Attention to Archive Bits would have made File Comparison easier: point 87.
Default location for spreadsheets was E:\Spreadsheets: point 113(c).
Best Freeware spreadsheet: point 140(a).
Access 97
See also WebCompass, Outlook 98.
Configuring: point 69, point 102.
Downloaded patches apparently applied to this and all other Office 97
components.
Excel 97
See also D:\Program Files.
Configuring: point 69.
Downloaded patches apparently applied to this and all other Office 97
components.
Special problems with downloaded patches and updates: point 95, point 97.
Certain order in which to install downloaded patches: point 95.
Sometimes used to open files with the wrong extensions: point 113(c).
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Weird reference to Excel SR-1: point 94.
Set up SendTo option so I could send files directly to Spreadsheet folder: point
120(t).
Set up SendTo option so I could send file directly to Excel to open: point 120(t).
Word 97
See also Office 97, Custom Settings, X-Setup, Adobe PDFWriter, Twain, File |
New.
Used with PrintScreen to capture screen image: point 134(q).
Refused to work on failing computer: point 116(k).
Downloaded patches apparently applied to this and all other Office 97
components.
Certain order in which to install downloaded patches: point 95.
Sometimes used to open files with the wrong extensions: point 113(c).
Added to list of SendTo programs: point 113(c).
Customizing: point 102.
Put AutoRecover files on Drive H (SWAP): point 102.

44

Set up SendTo option so I could send files directly to documents folder: point
120(t).
Set up SendTo option so I could send file directly to Word to open: point 120(t).
Drag excerpt to Desktop to save document Scrap: point 120(r).
Compare best Freeware Word Processor: point 140(a).
Chosen as default E-mail editor by Outlook 98: point 166(b).
Slow E-mail editor: point 166(b).
Folder specified as default document folder needed to exist: point 168, point
242(a).
Used to edit multiple DOS Batch commands: point 210, point 215.
Microsoft Word
See also Word 97.
DOS version, MW 5.5, stored on archival CD in case I ever needed it: point 250.
Office 97 Shortcut Bar
See also Context Menu, Toolbar, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Help, Main Toolbar.
Customizing: point 102, point 112(e).
Always on Top and Auto-Hide options: point 120(q).
Installation puts icon into StartUp Folder: point 120(ab).
Adding toolbars to: point 109(g).
Had to shut down before installing Outlook 98: point 100.
Failure to shut it down before installation may have caused problems: point 92.
Contained a Desktop Toolbar: point 112(e).
Location where bar icons were stored: point 112(e).
Docked at left side of screen: point 120(o).
Would get in the way of Cool Edit 2000: point 120(q).
Decided not to set to Always on Top: point 120(q).
Includes Screen Saver Shortcut: point 120(w).
Failed to remain at extreme right edge of screen: point 120(ab).
Other people had problems with bars erratic behavior: point 120(ab).
Failed to come up when running Word 97 while set to Auto-Hide: point 120(ab).
Dividing icons among multiple toolbars slowed down use of them: point
120(ab).
Designed to allow too much space for toolbar name: point 120(ab).
Took time to load whenever I rebooted: point 120(ab).
Decided to shut it off: point 120(ab).
Replaced it with new Programs Toolbar and Desktop Toolbar (see).
Office 98 Component Install Page
See also Symantec WinFax.
Offered to determine what Outlook 98 components were installed: point 225.
Apparently required Active Setup: point 230.

45

Not available for Office 97 programs: point 230.

Unclear relationship between Component Install and Office 97: point 230.
Offered option of installing Outlook Express: point 242(i).

46

Hotkeys and Tricks

Accessibility
See Hotkeys, Magnifier, Caps Lock Beep.
Caps Lock Beep
Set system to beep when you accidentally hit CapsLock button: point 120(g).
Hotkeys
Keys that allow user to open files or do other operations just by hitting a few
keys.
Not explored; hoped for program that would provide full list of all assigned
hotkeys: point 134(i).
WinKey provides some hotkeys within Win98: point 134(i).
F5 refreshes the screen: point 185.
Asterisk
Key on numeric keypad expands all subfolders: point 146(l).
May have to use Shift-Asterisk for that: point 137.
Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break
Interrupts operation of DOS programs and commands: point 88, point 125, point
160.
Ctrl-C within a Windows program copies to Clipboard: point 315.
Backslash
Tricky use of in DOS commands, regarding directories: point 116(g).
Note carefully how backslash is used: point 20.
Be sure to add the \ after Help: point 20.
Coolswitch
See also Icon.
The act of using Alt-Tab to switch from one open window to another: point
120(n).
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Hit the Ctrl key, the Alt key, and the Del key all at the same time. Hitting it once
in DOS reboots the computer. Hitting it once in Windows gives you a box that
lets you close down individual programs or the whole computer. Hitting it twice
in Windows bypasses the box and reboots the computer.
See also MSIPCSV.EXE, MSGSRV32, Process, EndItAll, Explorer, Clipboard Pile.
Used Ctrl-Alt-Del to close Office 97 Shortcut Bar: point 119(c).
Error: This program has performed an illegal operation: point 119(c).
Had to reboot after illegal operation error: point 119(c).
47

No such error next time: point 119(c).

Used Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut down other programs: point 112(b), point 122, point
278.
System froze while using Ctrl-Alt-Del: point 114.
No response for several seconds, then system unstable error: point 114.
Could take a long time to shut down a program: point 146(j).
Edit Registry to speed up program shutdown: point 146(j).
Can reboot system: point 120(ak).
Shows running programs, but fewer than PrcView: point 141(f).
Useful to show programs that are not responding: point 224(f).
Error: not responding does not always mean having problems: point 224(f).
One program after another not responding; ultimately reboot: point 225.
Shut down everything except Explorer and Systray: point 241.
Still showed entries for programs I had tried to close: point 315.
Symbol
See also Backslash, MORE.EXE.
| is generally used here to divide one step from another.
| in DOS means pipe: it sends output from the left side of | to the right side of
|.

48

Online Storage and Web Hosts

Online Storage
See Geocities, Zing, PhotoPoint, Driveway.com, i-Drive, iBackup.
PhotoPoint
An Online Storage website offering unlimited storage: point 224(o).
Driveway.com
General-purpose Online Storage website with 100 MB limit: point 224(o).
i-Drive
Website offering unlimited Online Storage: point 224(o).
User can upload entire folder of photos or MP3s at once: point 224(o).
Requires user to download software in advance: point 224(o).
Filo feature allows user to store snapshot of webpage: point 224(o).
iBackup
Accessible Online Storage website with 100 MB limit: point 224(o).
Allows user to use FTP program to upload numerous files at once: point 224(o).
Did not require user to download software in advance: point 224(o).
Didnt receive E-mail confirming that account was opened: point 231.
Zing
Most popular Online Storage site oriented toward photos: point 224(o).
Offered unlimited Online Storage: point 224(o).
Geocities
A Website Host that limited the users Online Storage: point 224(o).
Location of my website: point 109(g).
Website Host
See also Geocities.
A website under which users create their own websites: point 224(o).

49

Scanning and Graphics

DeskScan II
DOS-based Image Scanning program supplied with Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx
in early 1990s.
Color accuracy and ease of use inferior to other Image Scanning programs: point
224(i).
Had features not found in undesirable Win98 image scan interface: point 224(i).
Came with photocopier program: point 224(i).
Installation of photocopier utility: point 231.
Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx
See also Scanning, CDRIdentifier.
Find File and install it (HP400A.INF Driver): point 224(g).
Another location for Driver: point 224(i).
Old SCSI scanner that came with its own interface Card: point 224(e).
Previous installation had taken some work: point 224(e).
Add New Hardware wizard didnt find it: point 224(g).
Installed manually as SCSI Controllers | Symbios Logic: point 224(g).
Adapter was Symbios Logic 53C400A (HP Version) SCSI Adapter: point 224(g).
Disabled in Hardware Profile of computer not having SCSI Adapter: point
224(g), point 259(d).
SCSI Adapter may have caused problems with CD-RW disks: point 62.
Odd system behavior began when I installed SCSI Adapter: point 224(j).
Adaptec may have designed update not to work with HP hardware: point 224(j).
Was apparently not responsible for problems with Outlook 98: point 225.
Removing and reinserting SCSI Adapter screwed things up: point 225.
Caused IRQ Conflicts: point 232.
BIOS Setup settings affect SCSI Adapter: point 232.

50

Clipboard
WinZip
Is popular ZIP and UNZIP program: point 119(d).
Came along with RegClean: point 119(d).
Couldnt put extracted files into folder of my choice: point 119(d).
Clipboard
See also Clip-It!, Clipboard Magic, Clipboard Pile, Yankee Clipper Plus, Ctrl-C or
Ctrl-Break, CLIPTRAY.EXE, QUIKTRAY.EXE.
AAA (Corsolini)
Free Clipboard enhancer program: point 134(j).
Four or five stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Could handle only text: point 134(j).
Clip-It!
Free Clipboard enhancer program: point 134(j).
Four or five stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Could handle only text: point 134(j).
Clipboard Magic
Free Clipboard enhancer program: point 134(j).
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Good ease-of-use rating from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Could handle only text: point 134(j).
Yankee Clipper Plus
By one opinion, best Freeware Clipboard enhancer program: point 134(j), point
140(c).
Four or five stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Could handle only text: point 134(j).
Clipboard Pile
See also MSIPCSV.EXE, Start Manager, GoBack.
Free Clipboard enhancer program: point 134(j).
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
Good ease-of-use rating from ZDNet.com: point 134(j).
My first choice, based on ZDNet.com description: point 134(j).
Was able to capture up to 100 items copied to the Clipboard: point 315.
Allowed user to Paste up to 100 items at once: point 315.
Unique advantage: no need to drag or Paste: point 134(j).
Potential to be one of the best: point 141(h).
Did not add Aureate Media files to my disk: point 315.
51

Attempts to Uninstall trigger Fatal Exception: point 315.

Kept reinstalling itself as a StartUp program: point 315.
Had to use DELTREE to Uninstall: point 315.
Added to Desktop Toolbar list of programs: point 310.
Uniquely, CP shows no filename in Ctrl-Alt-Delete -- just a blank: point 224(f).
Caused malfunction in Ctrl-Alt-Del: point 315.
Was probable cause of vanishing Taskbar and System Tray Icons: point 316.
Capable of handling Bitmap Files: point 134(j).
Did not have the greatest documentation: point 134(j).
Ran in System Tray: point 141(h).
Had problems with CP and ultimately Uninstalled it: point 141(h).
Removed it from Startup: point 224(f).
Reinstalled itself as a Startup program after I had removed it: point 224(f).
Could not figure out how to get rid of it: point 315.
Overlooked fact that it did have an Uninstaller: point 336(b).
CLIPTRAY.EXE
Came from the Resource Kit Sampler: point 119(a).
Optimizes and manages the Clipboard: point 119(a).

52

E-mail
Juno
E-mail Freeware: point 156(h).
Nationwide system of local access numbers: point 156(h).
Needed only occasionally: point 156(h).
Early version fit onto one Floppy: point 156(h).
Simple installation process: point 156(h).
E-mail
See also Mailto, ICQ, Internet Explorer, eFax, Word 97, E-mail Toolbar,
Dismantling Drive C, Outlook Express, Juno, OUTLOOK.PST.
Contacting companies via e-mail: see Chessvision, iBackup, Soyo.
Duplicate e-mail addresses in Outlook 98: point 112(d).
Mail option under Control Panel: point 225.
Mailto
See also New (Context Menu Option).
Used to create faster way of creating E-mail message: point 112(e).
OUTLOOK.PST
See also MSGSRV32, Rename, Path, Custom Settings.
File containing E-mail and Address Book used by Outlook 98 and perhaps
Outlook Express.
Importing old OP: point 282.
Importing E-mail into Outlook 98 from old OP file took hours: point 280.
Saved all E-mail messages in MAILBOX.PST or OP: point 112(c).
Saved its Address Book in OP: point 112(d).
OP needs frequent Backup: point 112(c).
Error caused by existence of two OP files: point 166(e).
Reinstallation created a second OP file: point 166(e).
Delete wrong copy of OP to make Outlook 98 look for the one you want it to use:
point 166(e).
Old OP installed itself in Mail folder: point 284.
Can steer Outlook 98 to where OP is located: point 112(c), point 242(b).
Importing and exporting OP: point 112(d), point 284.
Maybe create a new OP to fix a difficult problem: point 225.
Error: OUTLOOK.PST could not be found: point 225.
Old OP might have been part of the problem: point 242(c).
All my Schedule items were in the old OP: point 280.
Duplicate messages made OP significantly larger: point 284.
Mail

53

See E-mail, Internet Connection Wizard, SendTo, OUTLOOK.PST, Outlook

Express.
Address Book
See also OUTLOOK.PST.
WAB Icon on Outlook 98 toolbar gave unknown error message: point 225,
point 227.
After fixing WAB problem in Outlook 98, problem was there again: point 227.
Open WAB with Ctrl-Shift-B command: point 227.
One folder contains Address Book and other files: point 242(b).
Address Book problems fixed: point 242(h).
WAB
See also E-mail.
Short for Windows Address Book: point 166.
Error: unable to find the WAB DLL: point 166.
WAB DLL means WAB32.DLL: point 166(a).
Errors apparently provoked by moving DLLs to D:\Program Files: point 166(a).
Error not fixed by Uninstalling and reinstalling Outlook 98: point 166(b).
Outlook 98 apparently needs to find WAB in Path: point 166(e), point 193.
Errors in Outlook 98 caused by using MagicMover: point 166(a).
Outlook 98
Outlook 98 and Outlook Express problems were too extensive and recurrent to
track them all here. The following are only an indication of the general nature of
the problems experienced.
See also Internet Explorer, Symantec WinFax, Add/Remove Programs, Office 97
Shortcut Bar, Outlook Express, D:\Program Files, Dismantling Drive C, Internet
Connection Wizard, Word 97, Rename, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, StartUp
Folder, Windows Update, Norton AntiVirus 2000, WAB, Address Book, E-mail,
Properties, WAB, OUTLOOK.PST.
Very similar to Outlook Express, but lacks its Newsgroup reader feature.
Customizing: point 102.
Sometimes treated like part of Office 97: point 112(c).
Not downloadable through Office 97 website: point 98.
Could have made copies of downloads when installation paused: point 100.
Copies of downloads may have been unnecessary: point 100.
Installation starts from downloaded SETUP file: point 98.
Download no longer appeared available at Microsoft website: point 100.
Can reinstall just by running OUTLOOK 98 SETUP.EXE: point 100.
Uncertain impact of Office 97 SR-2b patch: point 98.
Office 98 Component Install Page download did not resolve problem: point 225.
Much of data readable in Access 97: point 284.

54

Programming required to export E-mail entries with Dates to Access 97: point
284.
Incapable of eliminating duplicate E-mail entries: point 284.
Spawned many overdue items after killing unresponsive MSGSRV32: point 282.
Non-Microsoft features added by other programs: point 102.
Fax option added by OmniPage: point 102.
Journal feature can track activities in Office 97 programs: point 112(b).
Journal can grow to become a Performance-killing monster: point 112(b).
Uninstallation not thorough: point 166(b).
Difficult to Uninstall the program completely: point 225.
OL98 unable to run because installed in non-default Directory: point 225.
Leaves SETUP.EXE program on the computer: point 166(b).
Had to use Add/Remove rather than Windows Setup Tab to get rid of it: point
242(c).
Error: messaging interface has returned an unknown error: point 166(e).
Could save E-mail but not send it: point 166(e).
Would be better to replace OL98 with some other E-mail and Scheduling
program: point 227.
Decided to use OL98 on one machine to whittle down old E-mail accumulation:
point 242(h).
Installed its message files in two different folders: point 284, point 303(c).
Inexplicable problems in OL98 lead to conclusion that I might have to reinstall
Win98: point 225.
Inexplicable problems in OL98 make me think about getting rid of it: point 241.
Problems combining two personal folders into one: point 284.
Inbox Repair Tool
Same as SCANPST.EXE: point 225.
Asked for name of PST file to scan: point 166(e).
Ran for quite a while: point 225.
Didnt resolve unknown error message: point 225.
Newsreader
Any program capable of reading messages in Newsgroups.
See also Free Agent, Outlook Express, Deja.com.
Outlook Express
See primarily Outlook 98.
See also Aureate Media, Free Agent, Windows Update, MagicMover,
Add/Remove Programs, Properties, OUTLOOK.PST.
Closely related to Internet Explorer: point 297.
Very similar to Outlook 98, but lacks its calendar feature.
Customizing: point 102.

55

Not used for E-mail: point 37.

Sometimes used for Newsgroup browsing: point 37.
Downloaded list of Newsgroups: point 292.
May have failed to show all postings to a Newsgroup: point 292.
Same difficulty in Uninstalling as with Outlook 98: point 241.
Couldnt get it to either install or Uninstall: point 242(c).
Had to use Add/Remove rather than Windows Setup Tab to get rid of it: point
242(c).
OE couldnt locate MSOE.DLL moved via MagicMover to D:\Program Files:
point 241.
Considered using OE to replace Outlook 98 for E-mail: point 241.
OE divides Messages folder into Mail and News subfolders: point 242(h).
Error: Outlook Express could not be started: point 241.
Error: Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please re-install: point 241.

56

Hard Disk Performance

DMA
See also INF Files.
Said to improve Disk Performance substantially: point 106.
Set under Device Manager: point 106.
Win98 assumes Hard Disk is not DMA-compatible: point 106.
Advice for and against fixing MSHDC.INF for DMA: point 113(f).
Confusing advice from Microsoft: point 113(f).
Win98 apparently incorporates the MSHDC.INF fix: point 113(f).
UDMA CD-ROM Shutdown Problem: point 113(f).
Disabling UDMA in BIOS Setup unchecks DMA box in Control Panel: point
113(f).
DMA box remains checked; first clue that Drive is DMA-capable: point 173.
Box apparently unchecks itself if not DMA-capable: point 259(b).
Need correct Motherboard Bus Master Driver to use DMA: point 107.
Installing correct Bus Master Driver enables DMA automatically: point 108.
UDMA-66 requires 80-pin cable: point 108.
Disk Drives setting not necessary for non-Intel chipset: point 108.
Warning that DMA setting can cause undesirable effects: point 108.
Obtaining information about Disk Drives DMA capability from websites: point
108.
Test for DMA capability using Debug: point 113(f).
Disable DMA on CD-ROM to stop CD-ROM crashes: point 113(f).
DMA enabled automatically during redetection: point 113(f).
Not responsible for one instance of slowness: point 259(b).
File System
Is an option under Control Panel | System | Performance.
Use to set optimal speed for Drives: point 113(d).
Improve Performance by setting typical role to be Network Server: point 113(d).
Cacheman changes typical role setting for Disk Cache: point 113(d).
Checked by ScanDisk: point 84.
Options under X-Setup: point 137(m), point 137(n).

57

Toolbars and Suites

Floating Toolbar
See also ICQ.
Distinct from Top-Edge Toolbar, Bottom-Edge Toolbar, Right-Edge Toolbar, LeftEdge Toolbar.
Creating: point 120(o).
Sits out in middle of screen somewhere: point 120(p).
Gets in the way no matter how small it is: point 120(p).
Eventually got rid of it: point 120(p).
Bottom-Edge Toolbar
Toolbars on bottom edge occupy a portion of Taskbar: point 120(o).
Created Toolbar at bottom and dragged to become Top-Edge Toolbar: point 142.
Right-Edge Toolbar
See also Office 97 Shortcut Bar.
Options selected: Auto Hide and Always on Top: point 120(q).
Decided to put Show Desktop Icon on it: point 120(q).
Drawback of using: point 120(o).
Left-Edge Toolbar
See Office 97 Shortcut Bar, Cool Edit 2000.
Shutdown Toolbar
See Reboot Toolbar.
Reboot Toolbar
See also Weak Disconnect, Folder.
Formerly called Bye Toolbar: point 262(c).
Formerly called Shutdown Toolbar: point 142.
Originally offered numerous Shutdown options: point 142.
Offered options for Reboot into Normal Mode, Safe Mode, or Real DOS: point
262(c).
No option for MS-DOS Mode because rarely used: point 262(c).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Alternative to Start | Shut Down: point 138(c), point 146(e).
Changed Icons so they would run minimized and close on exit: point 147.
E-mail Toolbar
Contained links to create quick E-mail messages: point 143.
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.

58

Desktop Toolbar
See also Toolbar.
Based on Desktop Folder: point 120(ac).
Located under Start | Programs: point 120(ac).
Contained links to programs: point 120(f), point 310.
Became partial replacement for Office 97 Shortcut Bar: point 120(ac).
Made my own instead of using Win98s Desktop Toolbar: point 120(ac).
Win98s Desktop Toolbar showed every Desktop icon: point 120(ac).
My DT showed Device Manager Icon: point 145(j).
Top-Edge Toolbar
See also Toolbar, Bottom-Edge Toolbar, Links Toolbar.
Programs Toolbar
Became replacement for Office 97 Shortcut Bar: point 120(ae).
Contained sub-Toolbars: see Main Toolbar, Online Toolbar, Files Toolbar,
Reboot Toolbar, E-mail Toolbar, Audio Toolbar, Desktop Toolbar.
Shared Top-Edge Toolbar with Links Toolbar: point 120(ae).
Difficulty getting toolbar to offer pull-down menus: point 120(ae).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Main Toolbar
See also Toolbar, Cool Edit 2000.
Contained some Icons from Office 97 Shortcut Bar: point 120(ae).
Stored Icons in subfolder under Toolbars Folder: point 120(ae).
One of the Toolbars contained in the Programs Toolbar: point 120(ae).
Contained Icon for Paradox: point 250.
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Folders Toolbar
Getting to SendTo folder quickly via Folders Toolbar: point 120(u).
Ultimately deleted: wasnt working right, rarely used: point 310.
Toolbars Folder
See also Toolbar.
Location for folders for Main Toolbar, Internet Toolbar, Files Toolbar: point
120(ae).
Audio Toolbar
See also Winamp.
Included Icons for Cool Edit 2000, CDex, Volume Control, and Media Player:
point 309(e).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 309(e).

59

Internet Toolbar
See also Toolbar.
Stored Icons in subfolder under Toolbars Folder: point 120(ae).
One of the Toolbars contained in the Programs Toolbar: point 120(ae).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Files Toolbar
See also Windows Explorer, Toolbars Folder, Toolbar.
Contained Icons for Size Manager, DOS Box, Find File, and WinDiff: point 310.
Was originally the Utilities Toolbar: point 310.
Stored Icons in subfolder under Toolbars Folder: point 120(ae).
One of the Toolbars contained in the Programs Toolbar: point 120(ae).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Suites Toolbar
See also Cleanup Suite, Suites, Toolbar.
Concept: should start sets of programs that I would run daily: point 275.
Office 97 Suite
See also Suites, Access 97, START Command, DOS Box.
Consisted of a half-dozen Office 97 programs: point 113(e).
Ran from STE_OFC.BAT: point 113(e).
Creating Toolbar for: point 113(e).
Contained Icon for Paradox: point 250.
Would probably run on a daily basis: point 275.
CD Burning Suite
See also Audio Suite.
Not likely to use it frequently: point 275.
Used DOS Batch files to kill Processes that might interrupt the CD Burner: point
263.
Would then load the CD burning programs: point 263.
Would return everything to normal when CDs were done: point 263.
Suites
See also Suites Toolbar, Office 97 Suite, Web Suite, Cleanup Suite, Diagnostic
Suite, Audio Suite.
Concept: click on one icon and open numerous related programs: point 113(e),
point 260(d).
Audio Suite
Creating: point 260(d).
Likely to use it frequently: point 275.
Should shut down other Processes as e.g., CD Burning Suite did: point 268.
60

STE_OFC.BAT
DOS Batch file that ran Office 97 Suite: point 113(e).

61

Sources of Help on Your Computer

There are a few sources of help on your computer that may save you the time
and hassle of going online and searching there. The main point here is that I
discovered it was possible to replace the ordinary Help option on the Start Menu
(designated here as Start | Help, to indicate that you click on the Start Button
and then choose Help) with the more detailed and informative Resource Kit
Book Online.

Start | Help
See also Start Menu, Help.
Nobody could figure out how to make it useful: point 145(n).
Can be made to point to any CHM file: point 145(n).
Idea to make it point to Resource Kit Book Online: point 145(n).
Resource Kit Book Online
See also Communications Port, Hardware Profile, Network.
Provided a bit of information on System Policy Editor: point 146(d).
Apparently a book from Microsoft Press: point 119(a).
Included for free with Resource Kit: point 119(a).
Over 1,700 pages about Win98: point 119(a).
Partially outdated: did not address latest updates in Win98: point 119(a).
Changed Start | Help to point to this book: point 145(n).
Automatic Win98 help confused when Start | Help points here: point 269(o).
Provided command-line syntax for Disk Defragmenter: point 300(g).
Help
See also Start | Help, Troubleshooters, Backslash.
Inadequate help: see Chessvision, System Policy Editor, Norton Utilities.
Win98 Help manuals are in CHM Format: point 145(n).
Cant remove Help from Start Menu: point 146(e).
Creating CHM files requires Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop: point 145(n).
HTMLREF.CHM in Win98 is large guide to advanced HTML: point 145(n).
Generated Help files for Office 97 programs at first opportunity: point 69.
Advice to generate minimal Help files: point 102.
Office 97 Assistants add nothing to Help: point 146(a).
Help Temporary Files use GID, FTS, and FTG extensions: point 120(d), point
141(m).
Tips available in C:\WINDOWS\TIPS.TXT and other TXT files: point 120(z).
Troubleshooters

62

See Help, Direct Cable Connection,

Troubleshooter, Device Manager.

Power

Management,

Hardware

Sources of Programs and Help Online

PC Magazine
See also SWEEP.COM, ShutUp, RunPlus, InCtrl4, ImgView, MultiRen, LFNDir,
EndItAll, Slice32, HDValet, MenuEdit, RED.COM, Change of Address,
ExactTime, Checkers, Foneword/32, Dupeless.
Also known as PCMag and PC Mag.
Owned by ZDNet.com.
Source of Freeware for many years: point 5(g).
Source of reviews: point 141(s).
Did not rate its own programs: point 141(d).
MS-MVP
Person certified as having knowledge about Microsoft programs: point 122.
Advice pointed toward incorrect website: point 122.
Advice re New (Context Menu Option) didnt work: point 146(f).
Confusing advice re Start | Settings: point 146(e).
Boolean Search
See also Web Suite, Copernic 2000, Deja.com, Ferret User Power Pack.
Examples of: point 156(b), point 225.
Updates.com
See also Dial-Up Networking.
Source of updates: point 15.
Run by ZDNet.com: point 49.
UC showed that Windows installed outdated version of RealPlayer: point 16.
Contained Microsoft updates not found on Windows Update page: point 49.
Contained Macromedia Shockwave update: point 49, point 110.
Contained MSN Messenger update: point 110.
Postponed use of UC in case of error: point 49.
Told me to buy Office 2000: point 110.
Failure to have UC recheck system produces misleading information: point 223.
ZDNet.com
Owns Hotfiles.com and PC Magazine.
Responsible for Updates.com: point 49.
Created WinBench 99, Audio WinBench 99, Start Manager.

63

See also NetLaunch; DUNCE; Updates.com; Process Viewer 2000; PrcView; AAA
(Corsolini); Clip-It!; Clipboard Magic; Clipboard Pile; Yankee Clipper Plus;
Internet Loafer; Connection Keeper; Keep It Alive; Catfish; Copernic 2000;
Proxomitron; WebWasher; Chessvision; CallWave; Free Agent; NetVampire;
WebStripper; SurfSaver; HTTrack; TweakUI.
Source of useful, reliable, free utilities: point 49.
Shafted me on magazine subscription once: point 49.
Source of tech support: point 31, point 44, point 105(d), point 107(a), point
120(d), point 128, point 131, point 146(d).
Recommended not using RegClean: point 119(d).
I relied on their ease-of-use descriptions: point 134(j).
Good source of reviews, along with CNET and Tucows: point 141(d).
Oddly failed to carry top-rated CallCenter: point 141(p).
Didnt rate its own software (including that of PC Mag): point 159(b).
Said Outlook 98 problem would be solved in a few days in April 1998; still exists:
point 225.
Searched ZDNet.com for Freeware: point 307(d).
Hotfiles.com
See also ZDNet.com.
Carried Freeware by PC Magazine and others: point 140(d).
Useful because they rated programs, like Tucows: point 140(d).
Source of many programs discussed in this document; individual programs not
listed here.
Deja.com
See also Boolean Search, Web Suite.
Source of tech support information: point 88, point 146(c).
Searching websites instead of Deja: point 225.
Setting up canned Deja searches: point 276.
Canned search for all Newsgroup posts on specific topic in past 3 days: point
277.
Browsing through search results could be time-consuming: point 307.
CNET
Good source of reviews, along with ZDNet.com and Tucows: point 141(d).
Good source of prices for software: point 256(b).
Tended to list better-known vendors: point 256(b).
Tucows
Good source of reviews, along with ZDNet.com and CNET: point 141(d).
Useful because they rated programs, like Hotfiles.com: point 140(d).

64

Desktop Stuff
Desktop Folder
See also Windows Explorer, Context Menu, Recycle Bin, Quick Launch, Device
Manager.
Distinct from Desktop Tools Folder.
Folder showing contents of Desktop: point 120(n).
Shortcut to DF put into SendTo: point 120(ac).
Shortcut led to the folder, not to the Desktop itself: point 120(n).
Could drag Word and WordPad excerpts there: point 120(r).
Dragging things there put them on the actual Desktop: point 120(ac).
Could not drag Notepad, Excel, or Outlook 98 excerpts there: point 120(r).
Made the folder permanent by using Favorites: point 120(n).
Folder not the same as what you get with the Show Desktop Icon: point 120(n).
Folder only showed Icons that I had created: point 138(d).
Desktop Toolbar based on this folder: point 120(ac).
Contained Show Desktop Icon: point 120(ac).
Briefcase
See also Desktop, File | New.
Originally dragged into another folder; later undid that: point 112(e).
A SendTo option: point 113(c).
Recycle Bin
See also GoBack, Windows Explorer, Properties, DIR Command, Disk Image File,
DELTREE, TMP Files, Properties.
Fancy name for folder that stores deleted stuff. Eventually fills up and some of
the deleted stuff gets tossed permanently. Enhanced by programs like Norton
Utilities in such a way as to no longer work properly when using e.g., Cool Edit
2000.
Delete files by using SendTo RB to avoid are you sure question: point 113(c).
Emptying: point 116(c).
DOS Batch file to automate emptying: point 116(c).
Recycled Directory is hidden: point 34, point 50.
Exists on each Partition: point 50.
Advice to clear out before Defragmenting: point 122.
Recycled Directory disappears from Partition to which I was moving files: point
81.
Not emptying RB to give deleted files a slightly longer life: point 105(g).
Empty RB to keep unnecessary stuff off CD: point 111.
Desktop Folder didnt show RB: point 120(ac).
Could have hidden the RB Icon: point 145(j).

65

RB Icon was one of the few I left on the Desktop: point 145(j).
Recycled
See Recycle Bin.
Show Desktop
See also Desktop, Desktop Folder, Quick Launch.
Icon that looks like a shovel: point 120(ac).
Put Icon on Right-Edge Toolbar: point 146(h).
Desktop
See also Internet Explorer, Context Menu, Desktop Toolbar, Desktop Folder,
Active Desktop, My Documents Folder, My Computer, Rename, X-Setup,
Control Panel.
Decided to use Desktop to store system-related Shortcuts: point 112(e).
Get to Desktop quickly by using Ctrl-Esc | Alt-More or Show Desktop: point
120(ac).
X-Setup changes appearance of Icons: point 137(c).
Decided to locate Icons at right side of Desktop: point 146(h).
Used Registry edit to keep Icons where I put them: point 146(h).
Safe Mode would still screw up Icon arrangement: point 146(h).
Shut off Channel Bar: point 41.
Deleting unwanted Desktop Icons: point 41.
Decided to leave a few Icons on Desktop: point 145(j).
Desktop Tools Folder
Distinct from Desktop Folder.
Originally located under Links Folder: point 120(f).
Squeezed it with other Toolbars so only text showed: point 143.
Active Desktop
See also Context Menu.
Seemed interesting: point 109(b).
Some had problems with AD; others liked it: point 109(b).
Slows down your system and puts a load on your Processor: point 109(b).
A huge Resource hog and unreliable at the best of times: point 109(b).
Not even Microsoft employees used it: point 109(b).
Unlikely to use it much because I rarely see the Desktop: point 109(b).
There are many AD options: point 109(b).
Decided on another approach that would give same benefits with fewer
drawbacks: point 113(a).
Created Quick Reference Page instead: point 113(a).
Quick Reference Page
66

An HTML page containing items that I would have added to Active Desktop:
point 113(a).
Added QRP to Links Toolbar: point 113(a).
My Computer
See also TweakUI.
Doesnt mean everything on my computer: point 166.
Instructions for hiding Desktop Icon: point 145(j).

67

Tweaks
X-Setup
See also Windows Explorer, Start Manager, Notepad, \WIN98 Folder,
D:\Program Files, Network, Clipart Folder, Favorites, Cache, Graphics, File
System, Windows Update, Diagnostic Suite, Links Folder, Control Panel,
Desktop, Tool Tip, Start | Shut Down, BOOT_MGR.BAT, Taskbar, Shutdown.
General introduction: point 137.
Favorably reviewed: point 137.
Is Freeware: point 117.
Is a sort of mini-Operating System: point 137.
A system utility kind of program like TweakUI: point 137.
Relocates Temporary Internet Files folder: point 38, point 137(n).
Specifies alternate location for StartUp Folder: point 42, point 137(n).
Adjusts Internet Explorer toolbar background: point 119(b).
Changes Internet Explorer title bar: point 137(j).
Relocates Internet Explorer Favorites and downloads: point 137(m).
Deletes LoadPowerProfile and SchedulingAgent from Startup: point 137(r).
Adds commands of your choice to Context Menu for Drives only: point 137(a).
Enables QuickView and Open With for any file: point 137(d).
Clears lists of recently used files in WordPad, Microsoft Photo Editor, etc.: point
137(r).
Can change clouds picture that appears at Startup: point 120(ah).
Office 97 tweaks include quick scrolling in Word 97: point 137(l).
Relocates Word 97 Clipart folder: point 137(m).
Unclear procedure for relocating Word97 Clipart folder: point 138(b).
Renames some but not all Desktop Icons: point 146(h).
Can set up to two programs to open DOC files by default: point 137(e).
Can enable fast update: point 137(e).
Can set width of borders around windows: point 137(g).
Can enable smooth scrolling: point 137(g).
Can disable adding documents to Recent Documents list: point 137(h).
Can set Menu Reaction Speed to 150: point 137(h).
Can speed up Communication Ports: point 137(i).
Can change Dial-Up Networking settings: point 137(j).
Can provide IRC Nuke Protection: point 137(j).
Can set Startup Menu to be displayed for a certain number of seconds: point
137(p).
Can set default Startup Menu choice (did not work on my machine): point
137(p).
Can set cursor blink rate: point 137(r).
Can find your Windows product ID number: point 137(r).

68

Can change your user name: point 137(r).

Record Mode will redo all these changes automatically if necessary: point 138(a).
How to use X-Setup: point 138(a).
Some X-Setup options dont work: point 138(a).
Wizards just present another way to do the same thing: point 138(a).
Registry
See also GoBack, Windows Explorer, ScanReg, System Policy Editor, Disk
Defragmenter, EasyCleaner, MenuEdit, Taskbar, MS-MVP, Context Menu,
CloseAll, DOS Prompt Here, Mouse, Ctrl-Alt-Del, CD_PREP.BAT, SWEEP.COM,
Office 97, INF Files, iSpeed, Cache, Windows Update, Start | Settings, Norton
Utilities, Start | Shut Down, DEFRAG.REG, WinDiff, Path, Desktop, Favorites,
Operating System.
Edit to tell system where to look for WIN98 Folder: point 31.
Edit to remove unwanted File | New items: point 146(c).
Experimentation risky: point 146(c).
Back up before editing: point 146(k).
Files in default Backup: SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.DAT, USER.DAT:
point 132.
Backups kept in CAB files in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP: point 132.
Backup files took 10 MB normally but much less in CAB files: point 120(an).
Edit to change or remove Context Menu items: point 146(k), point 146(l).
Edit to Rename Internet Explorer open session: point 146(b.)
Edit to examine and deal with programs that run on Startup: point 145(d).
Lack of New (Context Menu Option) may not prove damaged Registry: point
146(f).
Importance of making frequent Registry backups: point 150.
Keeps track of every file that ever was: point 146(k).
Editing MSDOS.SYS is technically Registry editing: point 120(ah).
Edit to remove/restore Network Neighborhood Icon from Desktop: point 181.
Unnecessary Registry entries can cause crashes and slow down Startup: point
119(d).
Registry edit to remove Start | Documents: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Find: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Log Off: point 146(e).
Registry edit to remove Start | Run: point 146(e).
Registry edit to disable Start | Settings | Control Panel: point 146(e).
Registry backups stretched back only six days: point 146(n).
PowerToy
See also TweakUI.
PowerTweaks offered by Microsoft somewhat scary: point 71.
PowerToys were a Win95 add-on: point 119(b).

69

Tweaks
Much of this document deals with various kinds of tweaks, or adjustments.
See e.g., TweakUI, PowerToy, X-Setup, Registry, TweakAll.
As adjustments became more complex and time-consuming, amount of
additional disk space needed to store these adjustments in a Disk Image File
declined: point 152.
Power Tools
See also Internet Explorer, Magnifier.
Include option to Zoom In: point 71.
Include option to Open Link in New Window: point 71.
Power Toys
See also Internet Explorer, Power Tools.
Tried installing but couldnt tell what it did: point 71.
TweakAll
A fast way of accomplishing many tweaks: point 267(c).
Nothing new over e.g., TweakUI and X-Setup: point 267(c).

70

Batch Files
WEBDAILY.BAT
See also Web Suite.
Automated website opener: point 272.
Used Delayer to get websites to open: point 272.
Used NetLaunch to dial just when I wanted: point 272.
Could add other items after sorting out Favorites: point 275.
WEBWEEK.BAT
Based on WEBDAILY.BAT: point 274.
Used DOS Batch files leading to websites visited weekly: point 274.
Run by Task Scheduler: point 274.
Could add other items after sorting out Favorites: point 275.
Postponed further work until Favorites were sorted out: point 274.
ARC_BITS
Produced by CD_PREP.BAT: point 116(h).
Showed Hidden Files with Archive Bits still on: point 132.
Used CHATT.BAT after this to reset Archive Bits manually: point 116(h).
CD_PREP.BAT
See also ARC_BITS.
Automates task of shutting off Archive Bits: point 116(h).
Locates files whose Archive Bits are still on: point 132.
Calls CLR_DOCS.BAT: point 116(b).
Incorporates DELTREE line from CLR_DOCS.BAT: point 116(f).
Uses MDEL.EXE to delete MSCREATE.DIR files: point 141(r).
Runs same CLEANUP.BAT commands as MAINT_WK.BAT: point 152.
Produces text-file version of Registry to facilitate Backup: point 165(b).
CLEANUP.BAT
Contains cleanup commands used by MAINT_WK.BAT and CD_PREP.BAT:
point 152.
Automates the work of HDValet: point 152.
Set in Task Scheduler to run at 5 PM on Wednesdays: point 206.
Fooling system into not running it at 5 PM on the wrong Wednesday: see DOS
Batch.
FILELIST.BAT
See also LISTBITS.BAT, PowerDesk, Windows Explorer, Spreadsheet.
Runs a QBASIC program called FILELIST.BAS: point 80.
Uses DIR Command to produce detailed listing of every file on disk: point 80.
71

Used to compare files on disk now and previously: point 80, point 85.
File List includes long filenames only in Imitation DOS: point 80, point 87.
LISTBITS.BAT
Is a modified version of FILELIST.BAT: point 88.
Assists in creation of DOS Batch file to shut off Archive Bits: point 88.
Still had to turn off some Archive Bits manually: point 88.
Used in DOS Box immediately after booting into Win98: point 89.
CLR_DOCS.BAT
See also CD_PREP.BAT, DELTREE.
Clears Start | Documents: point 116(b), point 120(i).
Run before creating Disk Image File: point 120(i).
Decided to run it every hour through HOURLY.BAT: point 120(k).
HOURLY.BAT
Ran CLR_DOCS.BAT: point 120(k).
Scheduled to run every hour through Task Scheduler: point 120(k).
Renamed to be MAINT_HR.BAT: point 120(k).
Could have served as model for dynamic SendTo: see SendTo.
MAINT_HR.BAT
Previously named HOURLY.BAT: point 120(k).
Ran DEFRAGC.BAT: point 306.
Mildly obtrusive during some of its hourly appearances: point 306.
Renamed MAINTDAY.BAT and run once daily: point 306.
Scheduled to run every hour through Task Scheduler: point 120(k).
MAINTDAY.BAT
Previously named MAINT_HR.BAT: point 306.
Scheduled to run every day through Task Scheduler: point 306.
Automatically deleted Temporary Files abandoned by Cool Edit 2000: point
309(d).
DEFRAGC.BAT
Runs Disk Defragmenter: point 306.
Run hourly by MAINT_HR.BAT: point 306.
CLR_RECY.BAT
See also CD_PREP.BAT, DELTREE.
Run before creating Disk Image File: point 120(i).
URLSCRAP.BAT
See Scraps, Favorites.
72

GO.BAT
See PowerDesk.
MAINTWIN.BAT
See also Task Scheduler.
Screen Saver solution: point 145(l).
Purpose was to run maintenance programs automatically: point 127.
Had to shut down other Processes: point 127, point 131.
Had to run Disk Defragmenter with no other programs running: point 127.
Had to reboot system after running Disk Defragmenter: point 127.
Used WinMag's Defrag Registry Fix to do all this: point 141(k).
Set MAINTWIN so it wouldnt shut down if I was in middle of something: point
141(l).
URL Batch Files
See also Frequented Folder.
Set up each UBF to open a separate session of Internet Explorer: point 261(e).
Separate sessions kept Browser targeted on preferred websites: point 261(e).
END_LIST.BAT
See also Safe Mode.
Ran in a DOS Box to produce File List: point 190.
Creates final File List with long filenames when run in DOS Box: point 116(j).
BOOT_MGR.BAT
Provided automated way to boot into Normal Mode, Safe Mode, or Real DOS:
point 129.
Invoked at the start of AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 120(al).
Made Real DOS the ordinary Operating System: point 120(al).
BM allowed the option of telling AUTOEXEC.BAT to go right on into Win98:
point 120(al).
BM allowed system to boot automatically into Normal Mode or Safe Mode:
point 120(am).
Could reset default boot mode with simple DOS command: point 129.
Alternative to BM: point 120(al).
Real DOS option points toward DOSSTART.BAT: point 120(am).
Relationship between BM and X-Setup: point 129.
Ignores choices made on Startup Menu: point 146(i).
AUTOEXEC.BAT
See also PartitionMagic, DOS Box, Exit to DOS, Path, Sysedit, Creative
SoundBlaster AWE64, MSCONFIG, Bootable Floppy, Bootable CD,
DOSSTART.BAT, BOOT_MGR.BAT, Resource Kit.
73

Applies your preferred setup commands when you boot a Floppy: point 5(b).
Should not cite Hard Disk when calling programs from Bootable CD: point 5(c).
Normally resides in the root of Drive C: point 6.
Empty AUTOEXEC.BAT: nothing in it: point 21.
Can replace AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS with MSDOS.BAT: point 118.
Run by IO.SYS: point 120(al).
Need an AUTOEXEC.BAT on bootable part of Bootable CD: point 6.
Can contain line making your DOS Prompt more informative: point 6.
Available in either Real DOS or in a DOS Box: point 129.
Had to contain Path statement: point 120(am).
Added line to make WEEKDAY.BAT run automatically at Startup: point 126.
WEEKDAY.BAT
Called by AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 126, point 130.
Did Date and Time calculations; ran MAINT_WK.BAT on Wednesdays: point
126.
DOS Batch
See also WEBWEEK.BAT, Recycle Bin, Shortcut, Restart Windows, Fast Restart,
WordPad, Shutdown, CALL Command, CLEANUP.BAT, STE_OFC.BAT, EDIT,
Weak Disconnect, Word 97, Rename, ShutUp, Task Scheduler, CD Burning Suite,
Shutdown, Screen Saver.
Note: this item is not exhaustively cross-referenced. I plan to supersede it, at
least in part, by developing a set of DOS Batch files with explanatory comments
that will show it in action.
Generally includes files whose names end in .BAT.
Purpose of batch file is to run a series of DOS Commands automatically.
Forcing batch file to run in Real DOS: point 105(h).
Setting Properties creates PIF Shortcut: point 105(h).
Deleting PIF Shortcut changes batch file Properties: point 105(h).
Set Properties to run batch file minimized and close on exit: point 120(k).
Use Spreadsheet to create large batch file running ATTRIB.EXE: point 88.
Fooling the system to not run batch file set to run at certain Time: point 206.
DOS and Win98 apparently execute BAT files before COM files: point 120(al).
DB file makes it possible to run some Win98 programs from DOS: point 128(d).
DOSSTART.BAT
See also ScanReg, BOOT_MGR.BAT.
Triggered by DOS Prompt Here: point 146(k).
Runs Path and DOSKEY: point 146(k).
Plays sound when opening DOS Box: point 260(b).
Contains the commands that were formerly in AUTOEXEC.BAT: point 120(am).

74

MAINT_WK.BAT
Not thoroughly presented here because I expect to redo the program.
See also CD_PREP.BAT, CLEANUP.BAT, TMP Files, WEEKDAY.BAT.
Configuring Task Scheduler to run MWB in Real DOS: point 105(h).
Did a better job than HDValet with C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory: point
141(m).
Getting it to return system to Normal Mode after running: point 130.

75

Programs I Decided Not to Use

DUNCE
See also NetLaunch.
Supposed to aid in connecting to ISP: point 134(t).
Offered ability to connect and disconnect at preset times: point 134(t).
Seemed unnecessary: point 134(t).
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(t).
Dial-Up Networking assistant: point 272.
Not as flexible as NetLaunch: point 272.
Invasive signup is a turnoff: point 272.
Free Agent
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 292.
Highly praised Freeware newsreader: point 140(a).
Looked OK but saw no reason to use it instead of Outlook Express: point 292.
CallWave
A free Internet answering machine program: point 251.
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 251.
Gave user a toll-free forwarding number: point 251.
Phone companys Busy Call Forwarding would use that number: point 251.
CW would download incoming calls and play over computer speakers: point
251.
Ad-Supported Freeware: point 251.
Always visible in small floating box onscreen: point 251.
Floating box not especially obtrusive: point 251.
Disliked having to shut off manually after going offline: point 251.
Should have started automatically whenever I went online: point 251.
Should have stayed out of sight most of the time: point 251.
Got in the way: point 251.
Ultimately Uninstalled it: point 251.
MoreSpace
Duplicate File Finder: point 314.
Is Ad-Supported Freeware: point 314.
WinBench 99
See also ZDNet.com, Start Manager.
Large (10 MB) utility created by PC Magazine: point 141(o).
Gave information about many aspects of system: point 141(o).
Consisted of 113 tests: point 162.
Tests didnt mean much to me: point 162.
76

Used Windows 3.1 type of interface: point 141(o).

Started by running Disk Defragmenter: point 141(o), point 162.
Did not disable other programs; Disk Defragmenter kept restarting: point 162.
Installation into folder with long filename doesnt work: point 141(o).
Had to reinstall to Uninstall properly: point 158(a).
Had to reinstall in unwanted default folder: point 158(a).
Was able to use MagicMover to relocate in preferred folder: point 158(a).
Didnt work after MagicMover relocated it: point 162.
Ultimately found it uninteresting and Uninstalled it: point 158(a).
Same basic story for Audio WinBench 99: point 158(c).
Thought maybe I should keep them handy for special needs: point 162.
Copernic 2000
Five stars from ZDNet.com: point 156(b).
Recommended as best Freeware Web search utility: point 140(d), point 156(b).
ZDNet.com said it allowed Boolean Search: point 156(b), point 266(c).
No real Boolean Search capability: point 266(c).
Would not take care of all my searching needs: point 156(b).
Freeware version could search only seven categories: point 266(c).
Uninstalled it: point 266(c).
CabWiz
Tiny, free download intended only for displaying contents of CAB files: point
141(u).
Error: cannot find VBRUN300.DLL: point 166(d).
Error: file not found: CMDIALOG.VBX: point 166(d).
Apparently needed files found only in Win95: point 166(d).
Did not run properly: point 195.
Uninstalled it: point 296.
IP_Agent
See also Internet Connection.
Programmed by maker of OptOut.
Is a No-Install Program: point 249.
Can determine your Internet Protocol: point 249.
Says a private Network IP is secure against prying scanners: point 249.
InfoPager News Service
Website that consistently gives Network error message: point 324, point
336(b).
Wondered if it was just a device to collect information for advertisers: point
336(b).
Difficult to Uninstall: point 336(b).

77

PKZIP
Able to compress files into ZIP files: point 5(g).
Not needed, given PowerDesk ZIP capability: point 250.
TreeSize
Installed itself as Context Menu option: point 134(f).
Liked the right-click convenience: point 134(f).
Used it constantly: point 115.
Calculates how much space disk contents are taking: point 134(f).
Can expand the view into subdirectories: point 134(f).
Size Manager did the same things in an arguably better way: point 134(f).
One of the best Freeware disk space information tools, in one opinion: point
140(a).
HDValet
See also WS_FTP, MAINT_WK.BAT, BAK Files, OLD Files.
Created by PC Magazine: point 141(m).
Indicates that it is safe to delete MSCREATE.DIR files: point 141(r).
Automated and rendered unnecessary by CLEANUP.BAT: point 152.
Deletes TMP Files and Tilde Files: point 141(m).
Cleans out C:\WINDOWS\TEMP Directory: point 141(m).
Allows user to define junk file types for deletion: point 141(m).
Lacks a Command Line option: point 141(m).
Moved junk files to shadow Directory structure in case user wants to restore:
point 141(m).
ShutUp
Created by PC Magazine: point 134(d).
Runs programs before Shutdown: point 134(d).
Arguably better replaced by DOS Batch files: point 134(d).
LFNDir
Created by PC Magazine: point 134(u).
Allowed user to do a DOS-style DIR listing showing long filenames: point
134(u).
Didnt support FAT32 disks: point 134(u).
RunPlus
Created by PC Magazine: point 134(m).
Unnecessary: point 134(m).
SWEEP.COM
See also TMP Files.
78

Old utility created by PC Magazine: point 120(e).

Repeats same command in each Directory: point 120(e).
Gets confused by deeply nested subdirectories: point 120(e), point 125.
May have screwed up Registry: point 125.
Catfish
Freeware cataloging program: point 140(g).
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 140(g).
Process Viewer 2000
Freeware with same purpose as PrcView.
Four stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(h).
Colorful interface: point 134(h).
Provided less information and gave less of a sense of control: point 134(h).
RegClean
See also ZDNet.com, ScanReg, Undo, WinZip.
Same as Microsoft's RegClean 4.1a Registry Cleaner: point 119(d).
A No-Install Program: point 119(d), point 139(a).
Recommended by a number of users: point 139(b).
Win98 users generally seemed happy with it: point 119(d).
Not clear whether it was intended for Win98: point 119(d).
Purpose was to clean up unnecessary Registry entries: point 119(d).
Was not intended to clean up every possible Registry problem: point 119(d).
Would not change any Registry entries that it does not understand: point 119(d).
Can cause problems: point 119(d).
Gave me the option of fixing errors: point 119(d).
System still worked after RC fixed errors: point 119(d).
Recommended by one website: point 119(d).
UNDO.REG stores the way things were before RegClean ran: point 119(d).
Mistakenly clicked UNDO.REG when trying to Uninstall: point 139(a).
Eventually decided to remove it: point 119(d).
Couldnt find information on Uninstalling: point 139(a).
Keep It Alive
Freeware that keeps Internet Connection alive: point 134(r).
Three stars from ZDNet.com: point 134(r).
Only pings one site: point 134(r).
Weather1
Self-updating weather program: point 156(m).
Not much need for weather icon that sat in System Tray: point 266(e).
1stPage 2000
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Best Freeware HTML Editor, by one opinion, for Internet Explorer users: point
140(a).
ShortCutter
Program designed to find and remove broken links among files: point 134(k).
Apparently prepared to delete Win98 system folders!: point 134(k).
The worst piece of software I had seen in a long time: point 134(k).
ICQ
Conflicted with other programs: point 134(c).
More instantaneous and fun than IRC: point 134(c).
Something of a time-waster: point 134(c).
Didn't use it much once the novelty wore off: point 134(c).
Not as good as E-mail for composing thoughts or thinking through a problem:
point 134(c).
Least obtrusive Floating Toolbar I ever found: point 120(p).
Best online chat Freeware, in one opinion: point 140(b).
IRC
Short for Internet Relay Chat.
See also ICQ.
mIRC was a program enabling me to use IRC: point 134(b).
IRC was a great way to get quick tech support information: point 134(b).
IRC opened up a way for hackers to attack your system: point 134(b).
FINDFAST.CPL
See also Screen Saver, Control Panel, Find File.
Apparently drags down your system more than it's worth: point 120(x).
Uses lots of Memory: point 145(d).
Opera
A Shareware Browser: point 198.
Smaller than Netscape; initially preferred as alternate Browser: point 198.
Netscape
See also Messenger, Opera.
A Browser: point 198.
Decided to keep it handy in case of need, but not to install: point 198.
Adastra
Called the best Freeware astronomy program: point 140(g).
Dupeless says Adastras folders contain duplicate files: point 314(d).
Five stars from PC Magazine: point 159(a).
Version I got said it's not Freeware.
80

Adobe PhotoDeluxe
Image Scanning program: point 224(i).
Came with Yamaha CD-ROM Drive: point 165(b).
Standard installation would install wrong version of Internet Explorer: point
165(b).
Didnt like interface or lack of options: point 224(i).
EasyPhoto
Image Scanning program: point 224(i).
Didnt like interface or lack of options: point 224(i).
MSIPCSV.EXE
See also OptOut.
Error: Not responding: point 200.
Error arises after Ctrl-Alt-Del: point 200, point 224(f).
Error arises while installing Mouse software: point 224(f).
Error arises when Clipboard Pile is also not responding: point 224(f).
Not a part of the original Win98: point 295.
Part of Ad-Supported Freeware: point 295.
Could not figure out where it came from: point 296.
Wondered whether it propagated itself from other programs: point 297.
Go!Zilla
See also OptOut, Downloader.
Used it for quite a while: point 156(c), point 293.
Valuable for handling 300 MB downloads: point 156(c).
Good at resuming download from point of interruption: point 156(c).
Good at keeping track of many requested downloads: point 156(c).
Could download entire FTP directories: point 156(c).
Might also be able to function like Connection Keeper: point 134(r).
Windows Update site foiled GZ: point 134(r).
Strange new error: Invalid Go!Zilla installation: point 293, point 296.
Was Aureate Media Ad-Supported Freeware: point 293.
Might have been able to continue functioning after OptOut: point 296.
Not worth sacrificing stable system for: point 297.
NetVampire
A Downloader.
Apparently similar to Go!Zilla: point 156(c).
Was Aureate Media Ad-Supported Freeware: point 293, point 297.
Was popular: point 299.
URLPro add-on could replace URL Bandit: point 299.

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Grafula was an add-on: point 299.

Grafula
A Downloader.
See also NetVampire, Web Image Collector.
Was Aureate Media Ad-Supported Freeware: point 297.
Could download numerous image files at once: point 299.
Web Image Collector
Same purpose as Grafula: point 307(h).
Irritatingly installed itself in System Tray: point 307(h).
Irritating little Merlin wizard figure wouldnt go away: point 307(h).
Couldnt download GIF files: point 307(h).
WebStripper
Was Aureate Media Ad-Supported Freeware: point 297, point 307(a).
Installation immediately asked my household income: point 307(a).
Installation created folders on Hard Disk despite abort: point 307(e).
Probably would not have been useful for my primary need: point 307(a).
Had to delete files installed abortively by hand: point 307(e).
WebCopier
An Offline Browser: point 307(d).
Was Aureate Media Ad-Supported Freeware: point 297, point 307(a).
Aureate Media
See also OptOut, Go!Zilla, NetVampire, Grafula, eFax.
Also known as Radiate: point 297.
A major company behind Ad-Supported Freeware: point 307(e).
Transmits marketing data about you: point 289, point 307(e).
Focus said to be on demographic, not personal, data: point 297.
Also called spyware: point 297.
Installed without notice to user: point 289.
Supposedly triggered crashes and privacy issues: point 289, point 293.
Said to cause crashes in Outlook Express: point 297.
Didnt immediately remember any AM-caused crashes: point 293.
Performance improvements after removing AM: point 297.
Discussed by Symantec: point 297.
List of more than 400 programs using: point 297.
Surprisingly few of my programs used it: point 297.
Cant remove just by deleting ADVERT.DLL: point 297.
Ad-Supported Freeware
See also Aureate Media.
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Can avoid by using purchased, not freeware, versions of programs: point 293.
Decision of whether to accept spying in exchange for free programs: point 297.
DoubleClick online ad company sued for crossing boundaries: point 297.
Opinions overwhelmingly against spyware: point 297.
Clean System Directory
See also InCtrl4.
Used Windows 3.1 type of interface: point 141(e).
Attempt to install into folder with long filename failed: point 141(e).
Highly recommended Freeware for removing unused DLLs: point 141(e).
Installation oddly changed Office 97 PowerPoint INI file: point 141(e).
Installation did not list program in Add/Remove Programs: point 141(e).
Could not Uninstall through Add/Remove Programs: point 141(e).
Seemed to include no Uninstall instructions: point 141(e).
Found 19 unused DLLs for deletion: point 141(e).
Could not rely on it to accurately target DLLs I didnt need: point 141(e).

83

Installing Windows 98
By manually installing those Windows updates, the Windows Updates website
dropped from saying 46 minutes to saying 29 minutes to install some
components.
Copy C:\Program Files\Windows Update to D: after finishing downloads.
You have to shut Win98 down and restart and keep restarting until it shuts down
and restarts automatically.
Two parts of Win98 installation: basic functionality (e.g., scan, word processing)
and tweaks.
I started with Device Manager and then went to the Internet Connection folder. I
basically worked through the folders now found on STATIC, although not in
alphabetical order.
Maybe delete WinFax cover sheets that take up a lot of space in the Norton
SystemWorks folder.
Took about three days to get basic Win98 functionality installed and ordinary
programs running.
Im using STATIC for programs that dont need a Registry entry, that I install just
by creating a shortcut to them.