Computer Tips & Tricks
Using two monitors 
You can install two display adapters (AGP or PCI) and connect them to two
monitors to increase screen display area. First, install a single display
adapter with its drivers. Shut down Windows, install the second card and start
the machine. When you turn on your system, Windows will recognise the new video
card and the attached monitor and install drivers for both. You'll then be prompted
to restart your system. You'll see both your video cards in the Device Manager
tree once the drivers are installed. If everything is functioning correctly, as
Windows is loading, you'll see a message that reads "If you can read
this..." on the second monitor. Once Windows loads, right-click on the
desktop and click on Properties and then the Settings tab. You'll now see two
monitors in the middle of the page. Click on the second monitor icon. When you
do so, a message box prompts you to enable the second monitor. To continue,
click Yes. Make sure that the monitor icons correctly represent your actual
monitor's physical positions. The icons' positions control how you drag icons
and windows from one monitor to the other. Right-click on the first monitor
icon and select the Identify command from the shortcut menu. If the monitor
icons are in the wrong positions, simply click on one of them and drag it to
the correct position. After you're finished, click Apply.
Adding items to Send To
Send To is an option available when you right click any file in Windows. It can
greatly simplify file management, especially routine tasks. 1. Browse to the
\Windows\Send To Folder using Windows Explorer. 2. Right-click an empty space
on the window and click on New > Shortcut. 3. In the Create Shortcut window,
enter the source of the program or the directory (e.g. C:\My Documents\) in the
Command line box. 4. Click Next and Finish to create the shortcut. You can use
the Send To feature not only for copying or moving files, but also for quickly
opening files with programs they are not associated with. For example, you
could create a shortcut to Notepad and send any ASCII text file (like .HTM
files) to Notepad. Similarly, you could use a shortcut to an image viewing
program to quickly view images.
SPEED UP YOUR MODEM
Even if your modem is apparently working well, the baud rate of your COM Port
might not allow you to reach top-speed. To improve your port's speed: 1. Click
Start > Settings > Control Panel > System. 2. Click the Device Manager
tab, and click on the "+" sign next to Ports (COM & LPT). 3.
Select the port your modem uses, click Properties, then click the Port Settings
tab and set the Bits per second to 115200 bps. That way you won't have a sort
of filter on the Port.
Trace the route
A great utility included with Windows 98 is a program called Trace Route. Open
a DOS window and type tracert . The location name can be any IP address or
Internet domain like tracert www.chip-india.com. The program will then trace the
route from your Internet service provider to that location, and show you every
server along the way. This could be useful for when you can't connect to a site
- it will show you if some server is down along the way
Redialing
Dial-Up Networking provides for automatic redial. 1. Open Dial-Up Networking.
2. Select your connection. 3. From the menu select Connections > Settings.
4. Enable Redial, select the number of times to redial and Click OK
Speed-up your Connecting
time
To Speed-up the time it takes for Dial Up Networking to establish a connection
with your ISP: 1. Open Dial-Up Networking. 2. Right-click your connection and
choose Properties. 3. On the Server Types Tab, under Advanced Options, make
sure that the check-box for Log on to network is unchecked. 4. Under Allowed
network protocols select only TCP/IP and uncheck NetBEUI & IPX/SPX
Stay Connected
If you get disconnected frequently, try this extra modem setting: 1. Open
Control Panel > Modems. 2. From Modems select Properties, select the Connection
Tab and click the Advanced button. 3. In the Extra settings dialogue box, enter
ATS10=250.
Icon spacing and Resizing
Changing icon size & spacing is handy if you have a desktop clustered with
dozens of icons. 1. Right-click on the Desktop Choose Properties from the
context menu. On the Appearance tab look in the Item list box. 2. Once you find
Icon you can choose the size from the Size box. 3. Similarly, locate Icon Spacing
(Horizontal) and Icon Spacing (Vertical) and you can choose different values
for each. 4. Once you are satisfied, click OK to exit the dialog box. 5. Press
F5 to refresh the Desktop.
Select your Monitor
Windows 98 might not always detect your Monitor accurately. This affects
display and refresh rates. To select your monitor manually: 1. Right-click on
the Desktop. 2. Choose Properties from the context menu. On the Settings tab
press the Advanced button. Select the Monitor tab. If your monitor is not
listed (correctly) here, click on Change. 3. Select your Monitor from the list,
or if you have a driver disk for your monitor, select have Disk. 4. Click
Apply, and follow any other instructions on screen.
Change the Refresh rate of
your Graphics Adapter
Refresh rate of your monitor determines how fast the screen is updated.
Generally, the higher refresh rate the monitor can support, the better. Optimum
refresh rates can be set manually for flicker-free display, if Windows hasn’t
already configured it. Right-click on the Desktop, click on Properties and open
Settings > Advanced > Adapter. Depending on your graphics card and
monitor, you will get different choices for the refresh rate. Click on Apply
after setting the appropriate refresh rate. Click through the warning messages
to change the refresh rate. If, for some reason the display becomes garbled,
don’t do anything ? Windows will restore the original refresh rate.
Opening files with multiple
programs
To be able to open a file with more than one program, do the following: 1.
Select Start > Settings > Folder Options > File Types. 2. Locate the
file type you want to work with and double click it. 3. In the Edit File Type
dialog that opens, you will see a box marked Actions. This is where Windows 98
stores the various actions that can be implemented on a particular file type.
4. To add an entry, click New. In the New Action dialog box, type the name of
the action in the Action box. Use the Browse button to find the Application
that you want to open the file with. 5. The action that is set as default would
be carried out when you double click the file. Other actions will be available
on right-clicking the file.
ASSOCIATIONS IN A JIFFY
To associate files of a certain type with a different program, hold down the
Shift key while right-clicking on a file of that type and click on Open With...
from the context menu. Select the program you want to open files of this type
with and enable Always use this program to open this type of file. Henceforth,
the file will always open with this program when double-clicked.
Adding a File Type to the
'New' Menu
When you right-click on the desktop or in Windows Explorer, the New menu lists
many options of registered file types. Clicking on any of these creates a blank
file of that type. You can add more items to the New menu. 1. In the program
that creates the file type you wish to add, create a blank document with any
preferences you wish to use and save it. 2. Copy this file to \Windows\ShellNew
? this is a hidden folder. 3. Start the Registry Editor. 4. Open
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and locate the extension for the file type you wish to add to
the New menu. 5. Right-click and click on New > Key from the context menu.
Name it ShellNew. 6. Within this key, create a String Value and name it
FileName. 7. Double-click the string and modify it to be the filename of the
blank template you created, including the extension. 8. Exit the registry
editor and restart Windows.
Back to old ways
In Windows 98, when a menu is too tall to fit on your screen, you will see a
scroll arrow at the bottom, allowing you to scroll further down. In Windows 95,
a second menu would appear next to the first, where the entries which would
otherwise not fit on your screen would be displayed. For Windows 95 like
behaviour in Windows 98: 1. Start the Registry Editor. 2. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Advanced.
3. Right-click an open area in the right pane and select New > String Value.
4. Name it StartMenuScrollPrograms. 5. Double-click this entry and add the
value false. 6. Exit the registry editor. To restore Windows 98 behavior,
simply change the value of StartMenuScrollPrograms to true.
Window and Menu Animations
One of the desktop enhancements built into Windows 98 is the animation
displayed when you minimise and maximise windows or when displaying menus.
Disabling this makes navigating Windows a lot faster. Open the Desktop
Properties dialog by right-clicking any blank area of the desktop and clicking
on Properties. Disable Animate windows, menus and lists from the Effects tab.
F8 free start-ups
Instead of hastily clicking on F8 at StartUp to display the start up menu, you
can configure it to open automatically. 1. Use Explorer and locate Msdos.sys in
the root directory ? it is a hidden file. 2. Maintain a copy of the Msdos.sys
file in case of an error. 3. Open a command prompt window and strip the file’s
attributes by typing attrib –h –s c:\msdos.sys 4. Edit the file in Notepad.
Under the [Options] section, type: BootMenu=1 BootMenuDefault=1 BootMenuDelay=x
where x is the delay in seconds. Default value for x is 30. 5. Save the file.
6. Again, open a command prompt window and reset the file’s attributes by
typing attrib +h +s c:\msdos.sys
Arrow-free Shortcuts
Shortcut icons have a small curved arrow in the lower-left corner. To remove
the arrow, follow these instructions: 1. Start the Registry Editor. 2. Locate
the keys HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile. 3. Delete the
value IsShortcut under both these keys. 4. Close the Registry Editor and
restart Windows. You can also do this using TweakUI.
Automatic Logon
You can have Windows log on automatically every time you start Windows. 1. Open
the Registry Editor. 2. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Winlogon 3. Add
the following String values. AutoAdminLogon DefaultPassword DefaultUserName 4.
Double-click each of them to enter their respective data. Set the value of
AutoAdminLogon to 1. Enter your user name and password in the DefaultUserName
and DefaultPassword items respectively. You can also do this using TweakUI.
Instant Shut Down or
Restart
To shut down or restart Windows with one mouse click: 1. Right-click the
Desktop and select New > Shortcut. 2. In the Command line box type:
C:\WINDOWS\rundll.exe user.exe,ExitWindows (for shut down)
C:\WINDOWS\rundll.exe user.exe,ExitWindowsExec (for restart) 3. Click Next,
name it appropriately and click on Finish to create the shortcut. Be careful,
clicking on the shortcuts will not ask for any confirmation before shutting
down.
Reclaim CD-ROM Cache
If you do not use the CD-ROM drive very often, you could very well reclaim some
precious memory. This could be especially useful for low-end computers. 1.
Right click on My Computer and click on Properties. 2. Click File System from
the Performance tab. 3. From the CD-ROM tab, you can configure the amount of
cache that is assigned to the drive. Adjust the slider according to your needs.
The minimum amount is 64KB and the maximum is 1238KB. 4. Changing the Optimise
access pattern for drop-down selection also affects the amount of memory used
(maximum for Quad-speed or higher and minimum for No read-ahead).
A clean Run
To remove unwanted items from the Run menu: 1. Start the Registry Editor. 2.
Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU.
3. Delete the entries that you do not want on the Run menu. 4. Close the
Registry Editor and Restart Windows. Note: Do not delete the (Default) or
MRUList values.
Permanently delete files
To permanently Delete files without moving them to the Recycle Bin, hold down
the Shift key while pressing Delete. To stop using recycle bin altogether,
right-click the Recycle Bin and click on Properties. On the Global Tab, select
Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. If you enable Configure drives
independently, you can set this up for the drives you want to.
Dummy entries in Add/Remove
Programs list
Sometimes, even after programs are uninstalled, or due to the files being
deleted instead of a uninstalled, the entry in the Add/Remove Programs list
does not get deleted. To remove it from the list: 1. Start the Registry Editor.
2. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall.
3. Delete the program entry here. You can also use TweakUI to do this.
Windows 98 Easter Egg
1. Right-click an empty space on your Desktop, and select New > Shortcut
from the context menu. 2. In the Command line field, type the following line,
exactly as it appears: "C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Microsoft\WELCOME\WELDATA.EXE" You_are_a_real_rascal 3. Click Next
and then Finish. 4. Edit the Properties for this shortcut. Change the Run field
to Minimized. Also, make sure that the Start in field shows
“C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME”. 5. Double-click the shortcut
and enjoy the Easter Egg.
Preview Media Files
Internet Explorer 4 and allow previewing media files (wav, mid, avi, mov, mpg)
in Windows Explorer. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to \Windows\Web, and open
Folder.htt in Notepad. Look for wantMedia = false and replace this with
wantMedia = true. You should now be able to preview media files in folders that
are viewed as a web page.
Optimising the Windows 98
Registry
Windows 98 compresses the registry by default at restart if it finds that there
is more than 500KB of empty space in the registry. This is controlled by the
line Optimize=1 in the Scanreg.ini file in the \Windows directory. To compress
the registry manually: 1. Restart in MS-DOS mode. 2. At the MS-DOS prompt, type
scanreg/backup. This will backup your registry. 3. Now type scanreg /opt. 4.
Scanreg will compress the registry.
Preview Images
You can preview your Image files by viewing the folder they are in as "Web
View". From the Windows Explorer menu, select View > as Web page. A
better way to preview images is as thumbnails instead of icons. To enable this
view in Windows Explorer, right-click the folder you want to preview and click
on Properties. Check the box against Enable thumbnail view and click Ok to exit
the dialog box. Now, from the View menu, select Thumbnails.
A clean registry
A computer's registry accumulates a lot of corrupted, unused, and unnecessary
registry keys, especially if keys are not removed when you uninstall a program.
As a result, you may begin to experience problems and your machine might
function slower than expected. The latest version of Microsoft's RegClean could
delete a lot of such registry junk. You can download this from
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/REGCLEAN.EXE.
System Configuration
A very useful tool included with Win98 is the System Configuration Utility.
Select Start > Run and type msconfig in the Open box to launch the
application. The System Configuration Utility makes fiddling with programs to
launch at Startup or editing autoexec.bat, config.sys etc. a lot easier. The
System Configuration Utility also allows you to create a backup of your system
files ? it would be a good idea to use this before you begin making changes. Be
careful with what you enable or disable. Do not touch anything that you may not
understand.
Optimising the Swap File
With most resource hungry applications today, the RAM is not enough to hold all
its data. Windows uses a portion of the hard disk as RAM, constantly swapping
data between the RAM and the hard disk as required. The speed of your hard disk
is nearly 1000 times slower than that of your main memory. Inefficient use of
the swap file could considerably slow down your system to a very great extent.
One of the best ways to speed up the swap file usage is to create a permanent
swap file. In a permanent swap file, the file used for swapping information has
a fixed size and location on your hard disk. When a temporary swap file is
used, the location and size of the file is determined by the application being
used and is not predictable. Also, since a temporary swap file is constantly
written to and is not fixed in size, it would be highly fragmented across the
partition that holds it. A better option is to create the swap file on a
dedicated partition on your hard disk. By doing this, the swap file will never
be fragmented since that partition is only being utilised by the swap file
itself. You can configure the swap file size and location from Control Panel
> System > Performance > Virtual Memory. The size of the swap file
should be around 2.5 times the amount of RAM on the system.
Direct Memory Access
The advantage of using Direct Memory Access (DMA) with IDE CD-ROM and disk
drives is that it lowers CPU usage during I/O transfers. This drastically
improves performance when using these devices. Ensure that your drive supports
DMA before making these changes, otherwise it could lead to unpredictable
results. To use DMA: 1. Open Control Panel > System > Device Manager. 2.
Click the + sign next to the Disk drives entry. 3. Select the drive you want to
enable DMA for and click Properties. 4. On the Settings tab, there should be a
DMA check box. You can enable this to enable DMS for the drive. Note: If there
is no check box (or it is greyed out), your motherboard chipset does not
support the feature. If the check box is not checked after you restart your
system, your hard disk probably has been automatically disabled again because
the hard disk may not support DMA. If you are unable to restart Windows after
the change is applied, boot to Safe Mode and disable DMA from here.
Improve Removable Disk
Drive Performance
Windows 98 gives you the option to use write-behind caching to improve the
performance of removable disk drives. 1. Open Control Panel > System >
Performance and click on File System. 2. Check the Enable write-behind caching
on all removable disk drives check box under the Removable Disk tab and click
OK. Note: If this results in a problem with disk operations, uncheck the Enable
write-behind caching on all removable disk drives check box.
Change the Typical role of
your computer
If you have 24MB or more RAM, you can optimise performance by selecting
Network server as the typical role of your computer. 1. Open Control Panel >
System > Performance > File System. 2. On the Hard Disk Tab, select Network
Server as Typical role of this computer. The setting you use controls the size
of various internal data structures used by the 32-bit file access driver
(VFAT). When you use the Mobile Or Docking System setting, VFAT allocates
memory to record the 16 most recently accessed folders and the 337 most
recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 4KB of memory. When you
use the Desktop Computer setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 32 most
recently accessed folders and the 677 most recently accessed files. This
consumes approximately 8KB of memory. When you use the Network Server setting,
VFAT allocates memory to record the 64 most recently accessed folders and the
2729 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 16KB of memory.
MS Office memory hoggers
A typical installation of MS Office installs Find Fast, an indexing utility
that loads at startup. This hogs system resources by regularly indexing the
entire hard disk(s). You can improve performance of your computer by removing
Find Fast from your StartUp folder. To reclaim the space used by the Find Fast
index, open Control Panel > Find Fast, select your hard drive(s) and from
the Index menu, click on Delete Index. When you've deleted your Index, click on
Close and Stop from the Index menu. Another item installed in the StartUp
folder is named Microsoft Office. This does nothing apart from loading all MS
Office libraries at startup to speed up launching of any Office applications.
Since this is not necessary, you can delete this shortcut, too.
Restart only Windows
When restarting Windows, you don’t always need to go through the BIOS
initialisation and POST. Instead of simply clicking on Restart from the Shut
Down Windows dialog box, hold down the Shift key as you click on Ok. This will
restart only Windows. This is particularly useful when you change some registry
entries or a few system settings.
Stop Automatic Dialling
Many Internet applications or software are often set to automatically
dial up and connect. To stop automatic dialling, open Control Panel >
Internet Options. Under the Connections tab, enable Never dial a connection.
Automatic maintenance
The Windows Maintenance Wizard can automate a lot of the routine system
maintenance tasks. To open this wizard, choose Start > Programs >
Accessories > System Tools > Maintenance Wizard. It sets up the Task
Scheduler to regularly run Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.
Customise the Start menu
You can customise the start menu to show only certain items. Open the Registry
Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
To remove the Run command, create a new DWORD value and name it NoRun.
Double-click it and change it’s value to 1. To remove the Documents folder,
create a new DWORD value and name it NoRecentDocsMenu. Double-click it and
change it’s value to 1. To remove the Favorites folder, create a new DWORD
value and name it NoFavoritesMenu. Double-click it and change it’s value to 1.
To remove the Log Off … command, create a new DWORD value and name it NoLogOff.
Double-click it and change it’s value to 1. Restart Windows once you are
finished.
Clean Desktop
To hide all the icons on your Desktop, open the Registry Editor and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer.
Add a DWORD value and name it NoDesktop. Change it’s value to 1. Close the
Registry Editor and restart Windows.
Bitmaps as icons
You can preview bitmaps (.BMP files) as icons in Explorer instead of the
default icon of the application it is associated with. Open the Registry Editor
and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture\DefaultIcon. Double-click the
Default string and change it’s value to ‘%1’ (without double-quotes). Close the
Registry Editor and restart Windows.
ToolTips
To disable ToolTips in Windows, open the Registry Editor and navigate to
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Double-click UserPreferencemask and
change its value to 3E 00 00 00. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows
