 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group More helpful hints George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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- If you wish to remove all documents from your Startup menu in Windows 95
then right-click on the Task bar, click Properties, Start Menu Programs and click on the Clear button.
- If you are working at night and do not wish to disturb your family with
Windows noises, then to mute all Windows 95 sounds, click on the speaker icon on the Task bar and check the
Mute box. Remember to un-check in the morning.
- The Windows 95 registry files should be backed up at regular intervals.
From the DOS box, when in your destination folder, type XCOPY C:\WINDOWS\*.DA? /H
- Have you ever looked for help in the Windows 95 Help and did not find what
you were after? Microsoft sells a book called Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit for $100. This book is
thicker than the phone directory and has a lot of additional information about Windows 95. However, instead
of purchasing it, anyone who has installed Windows 95 from a CD-ROM has that full book, with diagrams and
screen dumps, on their CD-ROM. It is not copied onto the hard disk during installation, but can be copied
onto your hard disk or accessed from the CD-ROM. The file is called Win95rk and is in a folder called
\Admin\Reskit\Helpfile on the CD-ROM. Microsoft does not appear to advertise this.
- To make a shortcut to any program just right-click on the program from
Windows Explorer and then drag that shortcut onto the desktop.
- When you have Windows Explorer open, pressing the F3 key will bring up the
Find dialog box immediately. This is very handy if you don't have the Windows key on your keyboard.
- It is quite easy to copy text from a DOS program and use that text in a
Windows 95 program. Run the DOS program in a window, not full screen. Press Alt+Enter if it appears in full
screen and you can adjust the size of the window and text. Click on the Mark icon (that's the dotted line
box) and highlight the text that you want, then click on the Copy icon (you cannot use Ctrl+C in this case).
Then open the Windows application and use Edit, Paste (or Ctrl+V) to import that DOS text.
- If searching for some elusive piece of information try www.dogpile.com.
This is a meta-search engine that submits your query, in the correct format, to numerous search engines.
- When searching the Web using Altavista you can limit the search to
Australian sites by adding host:.au in the search field.
- To see how many bytes you have received via the Internet in any session,
just move your cursor over the modem icon on the task bar and pause for a few seconds. Most diallers have
this minimised icon there by default.
- If you write long e-mail letters, use your word processor as it has timed
backups, spell check, possibly grammar checking and many other useful extras. Also, you won't use up your
online time. When finished, just cut & paste into the e-mail program.
- If you are running Windows 95 and don't have the Win key on your keyboard,
you can still get to your desktop quickly by right-clicking once on the Task bar and selecting Minimise All
Windows.
- In Word, after you have loaded an existing document, you can go straight to where you left off last time by pressing Shift+F5.
