At 07:07 PM 10/1/98 -0500, Ira J. Lund wrote: > >I would think that it is something fishy about these computers, since I >just tried the exact same thing and it works fine on my computer - and I >suspect that it will work fine or more than 95% of Window 95s. This is not >a freeze-up that I believe I have any control over. Must have something to >do with specific computer configurations or some wierd version of Win95. > Ira, it has to do with both Win95 AND OTHER programs installed. Win95 is so flaky I am surprised these things don't happen more often. Win95 has terrible problems with .dll files (among others) that are installed by other programs. I have been having problems with Explorer, of all things, not Internet Explorer, but the main operant of Win95. It flakes out on me a couple of times a day. Found out that when QuickTime is installed, it installs some files that replace some basic Win95 files. Now these QT files are SUPPOSED to be 100% compatible, but unfortunately Win95 doesn't think so, or at least sometimes it doesn't think so. These files effect not only Win95 itself, but many other programs, so when a user is having problems with, say CFT for example, it is not CFT that is the culprit, but Win95 getting confused when some .dll file is called on to perform and that basic .dll is one replaced by some other program. Am I making sense? I know what I want to say but it isn't coming out right. Other programs that cause disaster with about 10% of Win95 users are Norton AntiVirus and McAfee Scan. There is no problem with these two programs themselves, they run perfectly. But, other programs in Win95 go haywire when either Norton or McAfee are in- stalled. This was discovered by contacting Microsoft and I was told that some users can't even run Win95 with these antivirus programs installed. I removed Norton BEFORE installing Win95 because I just didn't need it. I removed McAfee Scan this week after putting up with deadly system crashes long enough. Had a clean operating system ever since. While I'm here and on the subject, BEWARE OF PROGRAMS THAT CLEAN YOUR SYSTEM, DELETE DUPLICATES, DO "BEHIND THE SCENE" REPAIR & MAINTENANCE, ETC. There are a dozen or so major utilities that purport to do these things and just about every one of them will mess up one's system sooner or later. The worse is "Nuts and Bolts". Don't mean to bad-mouth it, but it is a killer on some systems. Two friends installed it and it not only deleted many critical files, it rearranged directories, moved files hither and yon, and just generally made a re-install of Win95 necessary. I wish to make it clear that these utilities work fine on MOST systems -- it's just that if your system happens to be setup in a vulnerable manner, these utilities CAN and MAY wreck it. Even the latest Beta of Netscape, and it IS a great improvement, does things that some systems don't like. >From experience, here is my advice BEFORE PERMANENTLY INSTALLING ANY PROGRAM OR UTILITY: Use the latest Beta of Winzip (no, it hasn't caused any problems itself that I know of). Install programs via Winzip. It allows you to "temporarily" install a program in a temp directory somewhere, try it out, see if it will work on your system, see if it causes any conflicts with other programs, etc. If the new program causes problems or you just don't like it, tell WinZip to get rid of it, files, directories, registry settings, and all. If there are no problems with the new program and you want to keep it, go ahead and let WinZip remove the temporary one, then install it permanently. This will get rid of some very, very bad headaches. The latest free Beta of Winzip can be found at: http://www.winzip.com If you are already a registered user of WinZip 6.X, the 7.X Beta will install over the 6.X and keep all your settings and keep your registration data. To recap, 99.9999% of the time when you are finding these anomalies in CFT, it is not caused by CFT, but by some conflict on your system. How many of you have taken the time to go to the web and download the latest updates for your video drivers? Sound card drivers? Microsoft's updates for many, many files and utilities for Win95? There were tons of bugs in the original Win95 and in OSR1 and OSR2. On the MS web site you can find new drivers for just about all your hardware and software. Get them!!!!! Just because you bought a new video card yes- terday doesn't mean that the driver files that come with it on a CD are up to date. The card may be a year or two old. You don't know how long it has been since it was manufactured. Same for sound cards, especially Creative Sound Blaster. I bought a new video card recently and couldn't use the drivers that came with it! Had to go to the MS web site and download the latest drivers for the card. Yes, they were right there waiting for me. I'll stop boring you. Good night. SgtGeorge Listowner