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elcome. I am a magician and this is my computer page. What? You've never heard of a Magician who uses a PC? How odd! I would think that logic alone would suffice to explain it. How else can one have a truly LARGE Spell book, and the components lists, where else can one put them?
But Enough of that, This is not a page about me, but about computers.
First of all, one must remember not to let the magic smoke out of his/her computer. This smoke permits operation and must remain inside. That said, we go on to more arcane subjects,such as applications.(Always Remember that magic spells are at best a trifle unreliable and should be used with care and only when necessary. Also remember that the formula for spells is very precise, don't forget the spaces, commas, periods and blank lines.)
First, a word about Back ups.If it's not convenient to back up everything (if you have only a floppy disk drive, for example), at least back up files you create, such as personal and business files and tax records, spreadsheets, manuscripts, and other important documents. You should have a duplicate copy of these in case of a computer problem.
You might want to ask about a tape backup system or a high-capacity drive, such as a CD-R, DVD-R, or Zip drive. For a reasonable price (especially considering the value of your data), you can back up everything in an hour or two.
BASIC SPELLS---
Here's a desktop shortcut that allows you to shut down with one click: Right-click the desktop;
select New, Shortcut; in the Command Line text box, type
rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindows
and click Next; name the shortcut Shut Down, then click Finish. You
can use a similar technique to create a Restart shortcut. Just follow
the steps above, but in the Command Line text box, type
rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindowsexec
And of course, you'll want to name the shortcut Restart.
To Find F3
You can press F3 from the desktop or
any Explorer window to open Find (focused on that folder). If you're
more of a mouse person, another way to open Find is to right-click the
folder or drive you want to search and select Find. Again, Find will
open with the focus on that folder.
SET PROPERTIES FOR QUICK LAUNCH ICONS
Did you know that every icon in the Quick Launch toolbar is nothing
but a shortcut? (The Quick Launch toolbar is the row of icons to the
right of the Start button, by default.) That means you can set the
properties for each, just as you would any other shortcut.
For example, suppose you want Internet Explorer to open maximized
every time. Right-click the Internet Explorer icon (on the Quick
Launch toolbar) and select Properties. On the Shortcut tab, next to Run, click the down arrow and select Maximized. Click OK, and the next time you click that icon, Internet Explorer will take over the entire screen.
(Tip: Follow these steps to make any application shortcut open the target program in a normal, maximized, or minimized window.)
To create a cascading DUN (dial-up
networking) folder, right-click the Start button, select Open, and in
the resulting Start Menu window, select File, New, Folder. Type exactly
DUN.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}
(to name the folder), then press Enter. (Tip: There's no space between
the period and the opening bracket.)
The result? An empty folder. The trick is, you need to add items
manually by dragging them over from the original folder and dropping
them inside the new one on the Start menu. A little bit of extra work,
but the end result is worth it.
NT Section
GETTING RID OF FINDFAST
Here's a question we see rather frequently: You've installed Microsoft Office, and now you would like to get rid of FindFast. How do you do this?
You can remove FindFast from your Start Up folder, but this won't
quite finish the job. To do it right, click Start, Settings, Control
Panel. When Control Panel opens, double-click the FindFast icon.
In FindFast, click an entry and choose Index, Delete Index. Repeat the process for each of your index listings. After you have deleted all
the index listings, choose Index, Close, Stop.
Finally, right-click Start and choose Open. Double-click Programs and
then double-click Start Up. Delete the FindFast entry and restart your
computer.
KEEP THE FILES ON YOUR HARD DISK
It is possible to expand the entire contents of the i386 folder on the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 installation disc to a local hard disk This will help if you want to copy files into my current installation.
To expand the files to your hard disk, insert the installation disc in the CD-ROM drive and open a Command Prompt window. At the prompt, type
d:\i386\winnt32 /t:c /x
and press Enter. When the Windows NT 4.0 Upgrade/Installation dialog
box opens, click Options. Deselect the check box labeled Create Boot
Floppy Disks and click OK to close the dialog box. Now click Continue
to expand all the files to the C: drive. After all the files expand,
you'll get a dialog box asking if you want to restart. In this dialog
box, click Exit To Windows NT.
At this point, all your expanded Windows NT Workstation 4.0 files
appear in a folder on drive C: named $win_nt$.~ls. Change the name to
something like NT; you now have a folder on your hard disk with all
the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 files expanded.
POWER SHUTDOWN IN WINDOWS NT WORKSTATION 4.0
How to get Windows NT Workstation 4.0 to power down on shutdown like Windows 95/98.
In your tip Automatic Power Off on Shutdown. You might need to modify the Registry (depending on your
default) to reflect the autoshutdown switch by setting
PowerDownAfterShutdown to 1."
To modify the Registry (be cautious as always when altering the Registry), click Start, Run, type
regedit
and press Enter. When RegEdit opens, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\
CurrentVersion\Winlogon.
Double-click PowerDownAfterShutdown and set it to 1. If you don't have the entry, right-click in the RegEdit right pane and choose New, String Value and name it PowerDownAfterShutdown.
Set it to 1 and choose Registry, Exit to close RegEdit. When you restart the computer, your new setting will take effect. The next time you shut down, you should get the power-off feature if your system supports it. Also, you need to replace Hal.dll with Hal.dll.softex from the Service Pack 5 disc. Copy Hal.dll.softex to your \Winnt\System32 folder. Rename the original Hal.dll to Hal.xxx and then rename Hal.dll.softex to Hal.dll.
This works on Dell models after Gxpro (Pentium-200 Pro). Also it works for Service Pack 4 users. There is a hal.dll.softex in the Service Pack 4 40-bit and 128-bit versions. I do know that the file doesn't work on IBM ThinkPad models 600 and 600e.
If you lose Command.com in NT, and need to restore it, just insert the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 installation CD into the drive and enter
expand d:\i386\command.co_ %systemroot%\system32\command.com
at the Command Prompt to copy a new Command.com to the system."
RUNNING CONTROL PANEL APPLETS FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT
If you are working with the Command Prompt and need to open a Control Panel, you can open the applet from the command line. All you have to do is enter
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL + the applet you need
and press Enter.
Since you sometimes need to access the Control Panel while in the Command Prompt window, you can write a batch file to do the job. You can write it using Notepad. When you save the file, be sure to use the
.bat extension. You can even call the batch file control.bat.
@echo off
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL %1.cpl
Choose File, Save As, and name the file control.bat. Now you can enter
control desk
and press Enter to open the Display Properties dialog box.
"Here is a list of the app names to enter when using control.bat.
Accessibility: access
Add/Remove Programs: appwiz
Display: desk
Joystick:joy
Mouse: main
Multimedia: mmsys
Modems: modem
Regional Settings: intl
System: sysdm
Time/Date: timedate.cpl
Maybe someday we won't have to use the Command Prompt window as much
as we do now, but for the present, Control.bat has proven very
convenient for me.
SAVING THE ENTIRE REGISTRY
One way to make sure you don't lose the Registry is to make a complete
backup using RegEdit. As always, proceed with caution when editing the
Registry--we can't guarantee the results.
To do this, click Start, Run, type
regedit
and press Enter. When RegEdit opens, choose Registry, Export Registry
File. When the dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled All
and name your file RegBack. Click Save to create the Registry file and
close the dialog box. Choose Registry, Exit to close RegEdit.
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