The first meeting for the year turned out to be a big one with
25 or people joining in for a lively mornings discussion.

Problems
	Janet had lost her Windows Explorer in Win 95 and wondered how
to get it back. The general advice was simply to reload it, although
Jim Hume promised to look up his manual, and see if there were a more
elegant way of doing things

	Kryn, from Caldwell, had lost Command.com, and sought advice
as to how to get his computer going again. Luckily he had a Boot disk,
and was advised to boot up from this disk and the copy command.com
back into the root directory.

	Peter Hodge was about to get the latest version of Netscape,
32 bit version and wanted to know if it was OK to just write over his
old copy of Netscape. This was all right, but it was suggested he make
a complete copy of his existing Netscape before doing so.

	Ken Meadows had a program from the PC Users magazine CD Rom
that kept giving a GPF. This was a Rockford business card program and
some discussion followed as to the fix. One was not to print any
graphic with the card, the other was to look at the video system, as
an upgrade on another members machine had fixed an identical problem.
Also, to test if the video driver is at fault, it was suggested to try
the standard Window 640x480 driver, if that worked the video driver
would most likely be at fault.
	
General
	The Software Shop came up in discussion, good service, but
this led to Gloria telling about the Zip Drive she obtained from them.
There have been many reviews of Zip Drive lately and there is no need
to repeat them here , other than to say as an alternative to an
additional hard drive, it very seriously warrants consideration.

	A sorry story was related about one poor soul whose wife
crashed his car one day, then lightning destroyed the modem and
computer the next. More lightning facts then surfaced;
1.  20% of all telephone faults on the South Coast are caused by
lightning.
2.  If you construct a well earthed lightning arrester, the area of
protection is cone shape with a subtended angle of 30 degrees. Make
sure your equipment is within this cone.
3.  A copy of a message from Genealogy Australia was submitted,
purporting to claim that Telstra will install a lightning arrester in
the nearest junction box to your phone, and for free. Some doubt was
expressed as to the generosity of Telstra.
4.  Disconnecting your modem was still the cheapest and most effective
measure.

	Valerie described her horrors of trying to run some CD ROMs in
windows and eventually gave up, used the DOS program instead and found
it was 1000% better. Another member reported the same and concluded it
was a memory problem.

	Emil Joseph gave a rundown on the US communication bill, he
has posted a report in tip.general on the matter. Essentially, given
the dearth of interest and understanding our politicians and
legislatures have on the matter, Emil believes that it will become a
model for Australia.

FOR SALE   FOR SALE   FOR SALE
	Darrell Burkey described how he installed an Internet set up
on a Mac. Piece of cake, but to do so he had to purchase an Internet
book which he now wishes to sell for about $40. Anyone wanting more
details can contact Darrell at      dburkey@pcug.org.au


Thanks to Jocelyne for the eaties.  Very nice and very nice of you.

Geoff Mierisch and Derrick Boyd had birthdays  Geoff was there but
Derrick elected to stay at home and celebrate the event with his
Canberra family.  

Next meeting, all going well will be 20 Feb 96


Owen

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