---- Original Message ----- From: "Spring" ~*~ When nothing onscreen moves except the mouse pointer, the computer is frozen up solid. Try the following approaches, in the following order, to correct the problem: * Press Esc twice. This often doesn't work, but try it anyway. * Press Ctrl, Alt, and Delete all at the same time. You'll see an error message that lists the names of currently running programs -- including the one that's not responding. Click the name of the program that's causing the mess and click the End Task button. If that still doesn't work, try clicking the Shut Down button that's next to the End Task button or pressing Ctrl, Alt, and Delete again. That shuts down your computer and lets you start over. * Push the computer's reset button. * Turn off the computer, wait 30 seconds, and then turn it on again. Don't ever flip the computer off and on again quickly. Doing so can damage its internal organs. ~~~~~ ~*~ Where you left off When you open a saved file in Microsoft Word, the cursor appears at the beginning of the document. However, there is a quick and easy way to jump ahead to where you left off in the file. Hold down the Shift key and press F5. The cursor will go back to where it was before you saved the document. ~*~ How to put an address bar in the taskbar. Windows 98 has a cool feature that lets you put an address bar for web sites or even your hard drive on the taskbar. Just right click a blank area of the taskbar. Then, from the menu that appears, point to 'Toolbars' and click Address. You can now type a URL into this 'always on' line and if you're online, you'll be whisked to the website address of your choice via the browser that's set as your default page reader. ~*~ If you want an easier way to start your saver, assign a shortcut to it. Here's how: 1. Right-click the screen saver shortcut on your desktop 2. You should see a "Shortcut Key" field. Type whatever letter you want to assign to it. "S" is probably a good choice. That's it. Hit CRTL-ALT-S and your screen saver should start. Great way to hide what you're doing in a hurry (and, yes, this does work for other shortcuts too). ~*~ This tip applies to Windows 98. The Maintenance Wizard schedules important system maintenance tasks such as the Disk Defragmenter tool, ScanDisk, and the Disk Cleanup tool. These are tasks that you should do on a regular basis but that you probably don't do as often as you should. Essentially, the Maintenance Wizard provides an easy way to add tasks to the Scheduled Tasks folder. To run the Maintenance Wizard: 1. Click Start. 2. Select Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Maintenance Wizard. 3. Select the setup option radio button you prefer. (Use the Express option for the quickest setup.) 4. Click Next. 5. Select the time period (nights, days, evenings) for the routine maintenance items. 6. Click Next to continue. 7. To run the maintenance items when you complete the task, select the following check box: When I click Finish, perform each scheduled task for the first time. 8. Click Finish to complete the task. ~*~ This tip applies to Windows Me. In addition to the automatic creation of the My Documents folder, Windows Me also creates a folder called My Pictures. If you work with image files, you probably want to save images in the My Pictures folder, which is a subfolder under the My Documents folder. The My Pictures folder offers a real advantage compared to any other folder as your image file storage location. My Pictures includes a simple image viewer program that enables you to view, zoom, rotate, or print the contents of an image file. You can see much more detail than you can easily see in the thumbnail view of a file. ~*~ Cleaning Documents Menu One of the seldom used features of Windows 98, is the button in the Taskbar Properties, which is labled 'Documents menu'. You can get to Task-bar Properties, by right-clicking on a blank spot in the task-bar, and clicking on properties. Click on the 'Clear' button, to remove the contents of the Documents menu and other personal history files. This is a handy one when someone else may be going to be using your computer. ~*~ Replacing Text To replace text in a word processor, the usual course is to highlight the text, press the Delete key, and type in the new text. But here's a quicker way: After highlighting some text that you'd like to replace, immediately begin typing in replacement text. Your first keystroke deletes the highlighted text just as if you had pressed Delete. ~*~ Sharing Web page addresses is fun and useful, but why only send the URL when you can send the full page? To send the entire contents of a Web page including images with Netscape, choose Send Page from the File menu while looking at the page. This opens a new email message with the page already attached. All left for you to do is inserting the recipients and sending the message. ~*~ Defragging Tip: When it comes to defragging your computer, keep in mind--More often is better. If you wait for long periods of time to defrag, and depending on your disks capacity, it could take hours to perform a successful defrag. Even though Windows allows you to perform tasks while a defrag is in progress, it is futile to do so. If you choose "Details" before you start a defrag, you can see that making keystrokes of any kind while defragging is writing changes to your hard drive, thus starting the process all over again. Just close all running programs and avoid your computer while defragging. ~*~ Hide Start Menu Folders: If you want to temporarily hide some start menu items to reduce a little clutter, it is simple to do. Here's how: 1) Right-click the folder of choice. 2) When a resulting popup menu appears, choose "Properties". 3) Change the attribute to "Hidden". To change that folder back, follow the steps above and change the attribute back to its original form. ~*~ No Delete Confirmation You delete a file, and your computer prompts you asking if you want to delete the file. Well d-uh, didn't you just tell it you wanted to delete it? It's an extra step each time you delete a file, a step I find unnecessary. Supposedly it keeps you from accidentally deleting files. How many times have you accidentally deleted a file? If you said none, you might want to turn off that confirmation step. If you do accidentally delete a file, you can still find it in the recycle bin and restore it from there. To turn off the Recycle Bin's delete confirmation prompt: 1) Right-click the Recycle Bin 2) Select Properties from the pop-up menu. 3) On the Global tab uncheck box for Display delete confirmation. 4) Click the Apply button and click OK. Now you won't have to do the two-step tango when you delete files. ~*~ If you want to keep a permanent record of a Web page, one way to do so is to print a copy of the page. Simply choose File, Print. To print all the pages from a Web site, select the Print All Linked Documents check box in the Print dialog box. Use this option with care -- some sites can include hundreds of pages! To print a list of the links on a page, select the Print Table of Links check box. This can be especially effective if you select a small portion of the page, because you can then have a printout that shows primarily the links. ~~~~~~ ~*~ *<:-) Santa Claus 8-) wearing sunglasses B:-) sunglasses on head B8-) sunglasses everywhere @:-) curly hair <@:-) curly hair, wearing clown hat :-{#} braces #:-) hair is a mess <#:-) clown hat on top of messy hair d:-) wearing baseball cap :-)</////> wearing tie O:-) angel ~*~ Most Internet users run into those times when their provider's number is busy, so they have to dial up again and again. Did you know Windows can redial automatically for you? 1. Double-click on My Computer. 2. Double-click on Dial-Up Networking. 3. Open Connections + Settings. 4. Click on the General tab. 5. Click on Redial and dictate how many times you want the redialing. 5 to 10 is a good value. 6. Click on OK. Now when you dial, Windows will give you more chances to connect. ~*~ Screen Setting On The Taskbar To get a quick look at your screen settings, first right-click on the desktop, click Properties to bring up the Display Properties Menu, then click on the Settings tab, and click Advanced. Now check the Show Settings icon on Taskbar option, and a small icon will appear on your Taskbar, giving you a quicker view of your display properties, settings, and potential changes you might want to make. ~*~ Netscape Imports If you've been using Microsoft Internet Explorer and you decide to migrate to Navigator 6, you won't lose all your IE Favorites. Netscape will import them as Bookmarks. To distribute your IE Favorites in the Bookmarks folder, click Manage Bookmarks and drag the saved sites to their new folders. IE will also import Netscape Bookmarks as IE Favorites. ~*~ Do you have a difficult time reading the description under your Desktop icons? Does the font seem just a bit too small? Well, not to worry. It's a snap to change it! 1. Right-click a blank area of your Desktop and select Properties from the resulting menu. 2. Click the Appearance tab and select "Icon" from the "Item" drop down box (should be the second drop down box). 3. You should now see a "Font" drop down box below the one you were just playing with. You can adjust the size from the "Size" drop down box next to it. Just FYI - "Times New Roman" and "Arial" tend to be a couple of the most "readable" fonts, so you may want to change the font to one of those. Finally, note that you can also adjust the size of your desktop icons on that screen by using the top "Size" box. So, if you want 'em bigger, just arrow up. If you would prefer a smaller bunch of icons, click the down arrow.