Ted opened the meeting on time (finished on time as well :-), the meeting
was attended by at least 35 members - more drifted in later.
1. Wolf said that our funds situation is "healthy".
Portable drives:
 Wolf said that his search for portable media for his laptop and
desktop continued. Per various newsgroups, there have been some bad
experiences with Orb drives - seems as though the mechanics are a little
fragile. Several writers were on their third drives. The (US) Orb help
people are "very nice and polite" but completely overwhelmed by the
problems. One writer mentioned bad experiences with Iomega Jazz drives and
commented that their help was overwhelmed like Orb's but very impolite.
JohnS suggested Wolf investigate a removable IDE drive box as plug packs are
not a problem, configured for parallel (printer) port interface. 8/99
2. New members suggestion:
Gloria suggested that each newcomer to CnC be offered a "buddy" or "link"
person (generally an experienced member of the group), who could explain how
we operate, and help with tuition or problem solving for a "dedicated" 15
minutes prior to the meetings - usually for 3 or more meetings.  It was
agreed by all to be a good idea and G. will work up into a single page
"procedure" document. MikeD suggested that formality should be minimised,
and John S commented that it should be kept to 15 mins, as many of the
longer term members enjoyed the socialising aspects of the group, and often
helped 4 or more members before the meeting. 8/99
3. New members:
JimD - has a super new system and is looking for guidance and enlightenment.
PaulH - is a long time computer user. He recently had a problem where only
partial Web pages were being downloaded. Eventually it was found to be
caused by PCillin anti-virus software - he changed to InoculateIT and the
web page loading problems went away. MikeD remarked that "TaskInfo" software
is very useful for tracking down this type of fault - he had some "world
time" software which was using 10% of CPU time!. JohnS noted that he found
that McAffee accessed his registry 10 times per SECOND by using "RegMon"
from www.ntinternals.com 8/99
4. Download Accellerators:
RogerL ran some tests with "DownloadAccelerator" and found that it did not
speed up downloads at all - the general concensus was that this software is
a good device for pushing advertising onto users. Roger is now using
"iSpeed" software which is very small and seems to work well. It seems this
software is a variation on the old TCP/IP optimising software that was
popular when W95 DUN was not optimised for the Internet (only for
Intra-nets), but "iSpeed" has a twist which is an optimise button - this may
enable near "real time" parameter tweaking. JohnK noted that his download
dropouts seem to have increased using "iSpeed". 8/99
5. Backups in Office97:
MikeP has Office97 set for "always create Backup", but has noticed that both
Word and Excel occasionally revert to "fast save". MervC suggests that "fast
save" should be turned off as it appends changes to the end of the document
rather than resaving the whole document. No one was able to say why the
settings should occasionally change - but AlanM remarked that MS Office
programs could load different setting depending on the type of file Open
used. I.E. Different options if document was double clicked from File
manager, or from the file menu within Word or other MS Office software.
Everyone noted that full "manual" saves should be a regular habit.  I.E.
Give the file a name shortly after opening, then use CTRL-S regularly.  8/99
6. Elizabeth mentioned that Anne Ginnan had experienced a bad fall and would
not be able to attend CnC for 4-6 weeks. Get well soon Anne!
Maintenance Wizard:
Elizabeth is experiencing "file not able to be copied onto itself" errors
when using the W98 maintenance wizard. RogerL suggested that this could be
caused by non-standard mouse double click speeds and other mouse parameters.
Merv suggested My Computer|Control Panel|Mouse|Basics Tab and select
"defaults".
InoculateIT:
 Elizabeth also asked how you could see if InoculateIT is "working".
Suggestions ranged from "the icon in the tray has a status pop-up", to
"double click the tray icon and scan a complete drive", through to " enable
the scan 100 files at Windows startup option". It was generally agreed that
many hard disks contained 50,000 or more files, so the last option will take
quite a while to scan a complete drive!
Long boot time:
 E. also noted that her system often took 3 mins or more to boot W98. While
this is not excessive for some systems she observed that during the "long
boots" an icon for C:\Program files\... appeared in the task bar - what
program is that? No ideas how to find it as the normal tools (CTRL-ALT-DEL,
TaskInfo, etc.) will not work while Windows is loading. JohnS suggested a
check of START|Programs|StartUp might help to pin it down, but other
programs could start via the registry, Win.ini files - etc. 8/99
7. W98 Find options:
JohnS mentioned that his Find menu had more items than just Files and
Folders. In fact his Find menu has the following items
    a. Files and Folders..... (as normal - don't forget the advanced
options!)
    b. Computer.... (Finds computers on an Intranet)
    c. E-mail addresses..... (Uses E-Mail Ferret software)
    d. People..... (uses various Web search databases such as Bigfoot,
Infospace, etc.).
    e. On the Internet..... (Invokes MSIE5 search system)
If my memory serves me correctly - most of these were included when W98 was
installed.
Specialised search engines:
JohnS mentioned www.infospace.com for worldwide white pages and reverse
phone number look up (USA only?). Also www.scour.net for Multimedia files
(Audio, video and pictures). www.arribavista.com for Picture files, and
www.mp3meta.com and http://mp3.lycos.com for MP3 music files.
Maestro Woomera modem:
JohnS mentioned he had heard nothing from Maestro after his impassioned
E-mail plea for a "reference" Woomera modem for the group. A follow up
E-mail was met with a similar silence. John will phone them and if nothing
positive - buy elsewhere. 8/99
8. W3.11 Internet connection:
New member Elenor has not been able to get connected for E-mail in Basic
access using her W3.11 system. She only received an instruction sheet from
the group - not the W3.1X floppy disk kit - said she was told that the
floppy kit only applied to W95! Everyone suggested that she ask for the
floppy disk kit. 8/99
9. Disappearing Hard drives:
Rod continues to have problems with some partitions of his Master (Primary)
hard drive. This only started to happen when he reconfigured his old hard
drive as slave to the new drive (master) on the primary IDE port. Despite
new cables and many checks he has now lost all files on one partition and is
starting to have files repaired by Scandisk on his new C: drive - not a good
scenario. Various suggestions were made re configurations, including having
the new drive as the only drive on the Primary port, the old drive as the
master on the Secondary port, with the CDROM as the slave drive on the
Secondary port - but his Windows will not recognise the CDROM drive (no one
asked if the BIOS recognised the CDROM - or if Bios had been configured). As
the two HDDs are different manufacturers - there may be compatibility
problems. JohnS described his config where his old HDD is removable and only
used for backup purposes when the CDROM is not required. 8/99
10. New 8.4 Gb drive:
Ann has brought a new Fujitsu 8.4Gb drive - will it work with her old 1.7Gb
Fujitsu drive? General consensus - not necessarily. The problem is not
always incompatibilities between manufacturers, but different IDE and Ultra
IDE specs, etc. Try them and see - but be prepared to mix and match primary
and Secondary ports, master and slave configurations.
Two Printers on one PC:
Anne has brought a new Cannon colour printer but wants to continue to use
her old HP printer for B & W. Several people suggested an A/B parallel
printer switch box (about $20 from the markets). Merv stated that she should
be sure to buy a 25 connector  "male to male" cable - not the cheaper RS232
cable which often only has 5 (or more) conductors. There was another
suggestion to buy a dual parallel ports card which could change printers
from
the desktop - but that would involve installing the new card (and drivers).
Windows can cope with multiple drivers for multiple printers O.K. - but the
correct
printer must be selected in Windows as well as the switch moved on the box!
8/99
11. PCUG Committee:
AlanM noted that nominations for the new committee have closed and 3 CnC
members have been elected unopposed as insufficient nominations were
received. There is still at least one vacancy on the committee.
CDROM drives:
Alan also mentioned that the centre CDROM burner had proved to be rather
fragile and had to be replaced. It turned out that it generally worked when
the "close drawer" button was used - but not if the tray was just pushed in.
Most agreed that CDROM drive buttons should always be used (unless the
coffee mug is sitting in the holder :-). 8/99
12. Word97 and Excel close down Times:
Kevin noted that one of his systems closes those programs much faster than
the other - he has cleared *.tmp files, etc. No real answers except to
compare the various options between systems. 8/99
13. Web pages "not available":
BobT has this problem - particularly with the National Gallery
www.nga.gov.au (or is that www.nga.com.au ?) site. Sounds suspiciously like
the well known "sibling" problem - clicking on the "reload" button or "shift
reload" should fix it.
Low connect speed:
Bob also noted that various 56Kbs modem users on different phone lines at
"The Ridgeway" village could only get 28.8Kbs connect speeds. It was
suggested that Telstra should be contacted to check the lines to the Scullin
exchange. 8/99
14. W3.1 to W95 Upgrade:
George's Grand daughter cannot upgrade her machine in Melbourne from W3.1X
to W95 - the CDROM is "not recognised". MervC offered a "special" boot
floppy, JohnS a spare CDROM disk. 8/99
15. CnC Newsgroup threading:
Jeff stated that his Outlook Express would not thread the CnC newsgroups
topics and that he had to read the messages on line. JohnS suggested that in
View|Current View|"View messages by Conversation" is selected, and that the
Newsgroup download options should be set to "synchronise new messages only"
by right clicking the newsgroup name in the folders window and selecting
"Synchronise settings" for off-line use. 8/99
16. Y2K worries:
Nigel asked - should he be worried? JohnS said NO, unless he had "mission
critical" date dependant files. If he wanted to test his system the "quick
and dirty" check could be made. Set system date to 31 Dec 1999, time to
23:58 - Power down and wait 3 minutes - power up and observe that Date and
Time have "rolled over" correctly. There are also many shareware programs
for more extensive tests. If any tests fail - do not Panic! It may only
involve a date/time reset on 1st Jan 2000, and perhaps an incorrect leap
year for 2000. The worst case is that system date time may need to be reset
after every boot after the 1st Jan. All this assumes no date dependant
files. 8/99

The meeting closed on time....... JS
P.S. After the meeting Wolf said that the group has received a nice "Thank
you" from the Australian Cancer Society, for our support of "Australia's
Biggest Morning Tea" - back in May.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From John Saxon in fine Wintry Canberra
http://www.pcug.org.au/~jsaxon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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