Meeting 16 January 2001


CnC 16 Jan 2001
RodB presiding - 31 attending. JohnS Note correlator (No substitute for
JennyL :-)).
1. Jim J. URL for RegCleaner. Inaccessible partition.
Ed: Regcleaner homepage is http://www.jv16.org/
2. Deiter. Nev Anderson greetings.
3.  BrendanC. PCUG type organisations.
Asked - Are there other PCUGs in Australia and in other countries?  Answer;
Yes, throughout Australia and the rest of the world.  To locate one in any
given location try www.apcug.org and search by city.
4. Kryn. Click of death. ZIP drive. Cure??
5. JimJ Mk2. Bruce Bramhall Canberra times.
6. MikeD: a. Photo "Extra film print" & b.MultiKey Keyboard $23
7. AllanM TIP scripts
8. JeffC. Reminder & Windows Media player 7.
Jeff gave a reminder and a tip.
1. Reminder: Close programs and the screen saver before commencing to
defrag. Close practically everything, but NOT Explorer and Systray, by using
Ctrl+Alt+Delete (he had forgotten to do this with a recent defrag and
consequently wasted a lot of time).
2. Tip: To improve quality and avoid crackling in the sound when playing a
music CD using Windows Media Player 7 untick the box for Digital playback
found under Tools/Options/CD Audio.
Ed's Note:
M$ Media Player 7 and above default to "digital" playback mode for audio
CDs. Instead of using the normal CDROM reader to Soundcard "analog" audio
cable the digital mode appears to convert the CD data to Wav format "on the
fly" - the CD audio volume control on your sound card mixer no longer works,
and CD audio volume is controlled via the WAV volume control which is now
shared with system sounds (no individual control). To sweeten the deal, M$
throw in all sorts of visual patterns in time to the music - these only work
with digital playback. You need a powerful system to use digital playback
without buffer/cache filling breaks or "crackling" - more so with
"visualisations". The cynical side of me suspects that this is all part of
an M$ (plus Recording industry) plot to wean us off analog playback so that
fiendish copyright protection schemes can be implemented.....
9. ElizabethW. How to get German + French characters.
Elizabeth wrote: "I am sorry that I used the wrong terminology last Tuesday.
What I meant,
was that I actually tried out Margo's last missive and found only East
European characters  which was no help to me.  Margo promised today to look
into the matter and come up with a possible answer.  Otherwise it may just
be easiest to write as I have done without accents and to add them when
re-reading what I wrote."
RodB wrote: "As promised here is the description of the Character Map
program and how to
use it to advantage." and attached "Using the Character Map to create
accented and other characters.
    Windows provides a useful program called Character Map, which displays
all the characters available for each font installed. Character Map also
allows individual characters to be selected and copied into documents thus
enabling the correct presentation of foreign phrases. This process is
slightly laborious and may not be an adequate solution for the production of
large volumes of foreign language text.
    Character map is in the directory "Windows" under the name
"charmap.exe". It is useful to have an icon for it in the task bar, so that
it can be called when necessary while creating a document. It displays a
7x32 array of characters for the font selected from the drop down list. When
a character has been highlighted the keystroke (or strokes) to generate it
appear in the lower right of the window (for example, the Yen sign (₯) is
shown as "Alt+0165"). The character can also be selected and it will then
appear in the "Characters to copy" field in the upper right of the window.
More than one character can be selected. After characters have been selected
the copy button is activated and if pressed the characters will then be
available for pasting into the document being created. When creating a
foreign language document using this method it might be useful and quicker
to create a block of suitable characters (perhaps "ΰηθικλ" for French) that
can be temporarily kept handy in the document for copying individually as
required. Don't forget the keystrokes "Ctrl+C" and "Ctrl+V" make copying and
pasteing a whole lot quicker.
    For regularly used characters (£ might be an example) it is easier to
remember the keystrokes and use them whenever required. Do this by holding
down the Alt key while at the same time using the numeric keypad to enter
the digits (Num Lock must be on). When the Alt key is released the character
will appear in the document."
10. JohnS - vanishing Comm ports.
Recounted a recent case history. Tried replacing a faulty internal 56Kb
Modem on and "old" system with an old external modem. Removed internal O.K.
Connected external and installed driver O.K. - Windows modem diagnostic
"could not open Comm port" despite all indications in Device manager etc.
being good. Tried a re-boot and noticed BIOS reporting only one Comm port!
Tried enabling 2nd Comm port in CMOS - no Comm port options available.
Opened case & found Comm ports were installed via Multi I/O ISA card not on
the MB - obviously Comm 2 had been disabled via Jumpers on the undocumented
card to avoid conflicts with internal modem {:-(( Jumper numbered JP1 to
JP12 - very illuminating - but all jumpers except for 3 were "On". Tried
enabling the 3 "off" ones in turn. The third one enabled Comm 2! Moral: Keep
all documentation - insist the dealer supplies documentation for
motherboard, all cards, all peripherals.
11. Trevor. Fan noise
12. LeighD. Software power down.
13. AnneL. Printer problem
Anne, who has a Cannon colour printer, mentioned that she had replaced the
small black and colour cartridges with a large black one and was now getting
a message from the printer every time she sought to print anything that it
had detected that she had a monochrome cartridge installed and telling her
how to reinstall the colour one unless she wished to use the one installed.
She asked for advice on how to get rid of this message and was told to go
into Start, Settings, Printer, and Properties and change the default.  This
solved the problem.


Return to the Index or the Coffee and Chat Page