Minutes of the Meeting held 15 May 2001



From: "Rod Blackburn" 
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 18:16:55 +1000

Sorry about the lateness this week. My wife and I were unexpectedly invited
away for the weekend before I got this done.

1. Trojans - GregB
Greg reported receiving a trojan horse program that lookad as though it was
passing passwords to a site in the US. The program hadn't been trapped by
his virus checker. Nevertheless the advice remains: keep your virus checker
up to date.
2. a. Spool32 - RodB
I complained about Spool32 frequently performing illegal operations and
thereby forcing the need for a reboot if I wished to do any printing. Terry
said this is a well known problem and he has removed it from his system by
incorporating run=spool32.exe in win.ini.
    b. GSview
I reported that using GSview from Ghostgum in conjunction with Ghostprint
produced a pdf file that looked excellent on screen, but could not be
printed.
OwenC makes the following comment: I went to the fineprint  site
http://www.fineprint.com and downloaded the PDFprinter, Fine Print
PDFFactory.
The first two items I tried it on failed in some respect, but since then I
have
done about 20 print jobs through the program and declare it to be a winner.
It's
fantastic.
As Terry suggested, get it now before they start charging for it.
I (that is Rod) also subsequently downloaded PDFFactory. On the same
document as above it did not create a satisfactory pdf for viewing. It was
more convenient to use.
    c. Text from web
Sometimes it appears not to be possible to cut and paste text direct from a
web site. I was able to bypass this by viewing the source and cutting the
text from that.
Other members asked how to keep IE history permanently. It was suggested
that "save for offline viewing" does this effectively.
3. HP710 printer driver - TerryB
The HP710 printer driver seems to limit the performance of Word. It's a
common problem that has no known solution.
4. Win95 drivers & steering wheel - TrevorF
Trevor supplied the following: The item I raised today about the PC problems
after having a Puma GT game controller installed to the games port has now
been solved.
The problem was that after turning the machine on it would freeze
showing the Logo.sys file. Doing a step by step boot everything went
fine until the "loading Windows Drivers" message appeared and it would
stick on to the normal logo.sys appeared and nothing further would
happen.
I took the suggestion by Merv and others of taking it apart and
removing and cleaning most items and reseating them. I didn't go to
the step of cleaning the edge connectors with pencil eraser. Put
everything back together and plugged it all in and it booted normally
to Windows95.
5. a. No connection - RodS
Problems connecting to TIP. TIP had been having problems.
    b.10% Defrag
Why does defrag seem to hang at 10%? It is trying to put the things you have
used most frquently since the last defrag into advantageous positions on the
disk. Make sure that all other activity is turned off when defragging, so
the process doesn't keep trying to restart itself.
    c. Phones
How could a home phone be called by the same person's mobile if the mobile
was switched off.  Most likely answer is that the mobile was redirected to
the home number.
6. HP Scanjet 5100 Series - DavidL
David has not got access to some install software needed for an HP 5100
scanner. Can anyone help? There doesn't appear to be any support for that
particular scanner on HP's web site.
In passing , MikeD said that the 16v power supply for his OptikPro scanner
had failed and he was having great difficulty finding a replacement.
7. Ellis Island records - Joan
Ellis Island records are not necessarily immigration records. They are
passenger manifests. If requesting information from the site a five digit
postcode is required. Suggestion was to use Oz code plus one arbitrary
digit. Maybe just use 90210.
8. Deleting Network password - Leigh
Remove .pwl file and at Windows start up cancel the password request screen.
9. a. www.vmyths.com
Jeff said: I reported falling for a warning about a virus that does not
exist, and worse, circulating the warning to C&C. Since being reprimanded
(very nicely) he has received the same warning again from a very large
circulation list. So he advises all to be aware of hoaxes or virus myths and
to check for such with www.vmyths.com or
www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/virtual.card.2.html.
Warnings about non-viruses become like pyramid schemes and waste time and
resources and so are not harmless. As stated in the Symantec site "Please
ignore any messages regarding this hoax and do not pass on messages. Passing
on messages about the hoax only serves to further propagate it."
    b. Digital photos
Jeff was impressed by the quality of digital photos taken by Jim on a
bushwalk, but does not think they are quite as good as would be obtained by
scanning a conventional film photo and printing, using the scanner and
printer he has been enthusing about lately. Of course digital photos are
much more convenient if you have a good printer.



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