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July Mailbag: part 2 of 2Toronto Star Fast Forward column for July 16/98 Back to White Pages main article index © Copyright, Myles White, 1998 Tip of the Week: Local reboot Our first questions this week came from a dozen different readers. Early in June we talked about fixing the problem that can occur when the Windows 95 dialler's "Save Password" option doesn't seem to work and also about how to change the Windows 95 logon procedure so that entering a password (or at least hitting [Enter]) isn't required. That brought a flood of mail from people who would love to have a Save Password box on their dialler that wasn't greyed out and inaccessible, as well as a separate flood from people who couldn't make my suggestion about eliminating the Windows Logon work. To review: Sometimes something clobbers the dialup networking password file(s) in Windows. If the Save Password box on your dialler is visible and you place a check mark in it, but it keeps asking you for your password that's most likely what's happened. Use Find from the Start Menu to look in C:\Windows for a file named <username>.PWL. The "<username>" portion of the filename will be the same as the name you typed into the User line of your system's DialUp Settings dialogue box (Right-click on the Internet Explorer Icon on the desktop, choose Properties, then the Connection tab, then Settings). When you find the correct PWL file, don't delete it. Rename it to something you can remember such as <username>.$PWL or <username>.PW$. The next time you dial out, the "Save Password" box will still be blank, but when you enter your password and check off the Save box this time, it should be the last time you have to do it. If the Save Password line is greyed out, you have to add another step. Open Control Panel and double-click on the Network icon. Under Configuration (the default opening), you need to add the Client for Microsoft Networks protocol (have your Win95/98 CD ready). This is the element that provides the password caching needed to invoke the Save Password item in the dialler. Getting rid of the Windows Logon also involves the Network icon in Control Panel and that you have the Client for Microsoft Networks installed. Below the box that shows which components are already active is a drop-down list under Primary Network Logon. Select Windows Logon, then click OK until you're out of the dialogues. Restart the system and the password box should no longer appear. If it is persistent, however, then there's one more item to check. Back to Control Panel. This time, double-click on the Passwords icon. In the Passwords Properties dialogue, select the User Profiles tab. There are two primary choices. One lets all users of the system use the same preference and desktop settings. The other allows individual users to customize their preferences and desktop settings. If this second box is checked, the password dialogue will always come up when you start Windows because that's how it chooses which settings to present. Please note that these tips and solutions are intended for individual end users and families who don't need or want passwords. They are not intended for corporate/business users. (There, maybe this disclaimer will stop some corporate IT -- information technology -- supervisors from yelling at me about the troubles my tips cause them when employees use them to customize their systems at work. Gee folks, lighten up a little, will ya?) Our Letter of the Month (and winner of an autographed copy of How to Avoid Buying a New Computer) comes from Bob McWhinnie of Brampton, who writes: "In a recent article entitled "Buying a Computer: CPUs and You" (May 16/98), you spoke about Graphic Controllers and in particular, the AGP boards. You stated, "Pass on AGP boards for now." "Could you please explain your concerns for these cards? I'm just trying to do my homework before a new computer purchase." AGP (accelerated graphics port) is like MMX (multimedia extensions); Both require operating system-level support <italic>and<italic> special code in software applications to wake them up. Operating system-level support has only just arrived in Windows 98. At present, AGP graphics controllers, when benchmarked against PCI (peripheral component interconnect) versions of the same product show no difference in speed. It's only when AGP-enabled software titles start shipping that we'll see any reportable results and find out whether the AGP graphics controllers are worth the effort and additional cost. The second reason for my concern is that it takes hardware manufacturers time to get new technology right. When VESA (Video Electronic Standards Association), then PCI local bus graphics controllers first arrived, it took nearly nine months before anyone could detect any difference in performance while the manufacturers figured out how to optimize both the hardware and software technologies involved. So, I'm all in favour of new purchasers looking toward the future when buying a new computer and making sure they get a Pentium II system with an AGP slot on the motherboard, but I'm not so keen on suggesting they run right out and put an AGP controller in the slot if the price differential is substantial. Virus Alert???Maybe it's because summer is the silly season, but for some reason, I've been getting an increased number of phony virus warnings hitting my mailbox. So perhaps it's time to remind one and all about virus hoaxes. The warnings, variously named Virus Alert or Virus Watch, are all similar in nature. They suggest that if you open an e-mail message with any one of several names in the subject line (Email, Good Times, Budsaver, PenPal, Pen Pal Greetings, Join the Crew, Win a Holiday, Deeyenda, Free Money, and my personal favourite, Undeliverable Mail or Return to Sender), bad things will happen to your hard drive. "Send this to everyone in your address book." says one version of the warning. "Delete your address book and reformat your hard drive if you open one of these," says another. Despite the warnings, these "viruses" do not exist. The purpose of the "warning" is to sow confusion among new Internet e-mail users. If you pass these messages on, you'll simply do what the originator wanted you to do in the first place: unnecessarily alarm your correspondents and look foolish in the bargain. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may also frown upon you officially if you're caught. A virus cannot be contained in the text portion of an e-mail message. Period. However, after this article saw print, some idiots did find a way to embed inimical commands in the Attachment line. The commands had to exceed 200 characters. Since the discovery of this, Microsoft and Netscape have both issued patches to fix the security hole. Check with their Web sites (Eudora was not affected by this particular bug). True, if there's an executable program or formatted Word or Excel document in the message as a binary attachment, either could contain a virus, but you can only trigger it by running the program or loading the document into Word or Excel -- and all such attachments should be checked by anti-virus software. However, even though your e-mail program will automatically decode these attachments (from MIME or other encoding schemes that allow them to travel over the Internet), none of the current e-mail programs will automatically run programs or load documents into applications unless you specifically set up a filter to prompt them to do so (don't). If you want more information on virus hoaxes, there are several sources, including, but not limited to: Symantec's Anti-Virus Research Center (SARC) www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html (includes links to other hoax sites) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at www.ncsa.com/services/consortia/anti-virus/alerthoax.html. You'll also learn about other hoaxes, such as: 3b Trojan (alias PKZIP Virus), AOL4Free Virus, Baby New Year Virus, BUDDYLST.ZIP, Bud Frog, Death69, FatCat Virus, Ghost, Hairy Palms Virus, Irina, Red Alert, Time Bomb and the World Domination Hoax. Tip of the WeekLocal RebootYou can't stop Windows 95 or Windows 98 software from crashing occasionally, but you can prevent a crash from locking down your entire system (not always, but usually), by using the Local Reboot feature. When an application locks up on you, simply issue the familiar three-finger salute -- by pressing the [Ctrl][Alt][Del] key combination. When the Close Program dialogue box appears, the hung application is usually highlighted and will have the phrase "(Not responding)" appended to it. If it's not already highlighted, select the application you want to close and click End Task. Usually, the application will close without further prompting, but sometimes a confirmation dialog box will appear. If this happens, just click End Task again to close the hung program. This should allow you to save documents being held by other programs, but the next thing you'll want to do is to restart Windows (Start Menu, Shutdown) because it may now be unstable. Even if Windows isn't creaky, you'll wan to restart in order to refresh the memory that the crashed application most likely took with it when it died as well as clearing out any program stubs remaining in memory that may prevent you from trying to run the program again. 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