Rupert Neethling With the arrival of Windows Millennium, home users are asking themselves whether they should shell out yet another couple of hundred rand for an upgrade. However, if you’re among those who would rather see how long they can keep on going with what they’ve got, you may be pleased to hear that with a little digging you can squeeze a fair bit of additional value from Windows 98. The list of hidden Windows goodies featured here is far from complete; rather, it contains selected, comparatively less well- known items that can make your life behind the keyboard a little easier. Some of these items are tucked away inside the Accessories folder in your Start menu. To find them, click on Start, Programs and then Accessories. If you haven’t checked out your Accessories since Windows 95, you’ll find that they’ve been beefed up quite a bit. Disk Cleanup, for example, can delete temporary files, flush the Recycle Bin, clean out cached Internet files and more – all in one fell swoop. You can also set it to clean up automatically as soon as your personal computer runs low on disk space. The Maintenance Wizard can even automatically run Disk Cleanup, ScanDisk and Defrag at times of your choice. Users with a default Windows configuration may find that some tools were not installed on their systems. One of these is the Magnifier, which acts like a magnifying glass to enlarge selected areas for easier viewing. To install it, go to your Control Panel, click Add/Remove Programs, Windows Setup, Accessibility and then check Accessibility Tools. Another such feature is Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), which enables you to share a single Internet connection over a network. To install it on the machine that connects to the Net, go to Windows Setup, click on Internet Tools and place a check mark next to Internet Connection Sharing. After installation, run ICS and you’ll be instructed on how to set it up on the other machine(s) on your network. Buried three folders deep on the Windows 98 SE CDROM is a folder called “desktop”. You’ll find it inside “reskit”, which is itself inside “tools”. The desktop folder offers gems such as “chklnks”, which can identify and delete all shortcuts on your Start menu that link to files or programs that are no longer on your computer. QuickTray will let you minimise to the system tray (next to the clock) any programs that previously could only be minimised to the taskbar. And ClipTray lets you store multiple clipboard entries (as well as multiple clipboards), thus considerably enhancing the old one-clip-at- a-time Windows clipboard. While you’re browsing the CDROM, also take a look at the “demos” folder under “cdsample”. It boasts games such as 3D pinball, golf, Age of Empires, Monster Truck Madness and Motocross Madness. Ever wonder what that “Run …” command on your Start menu is good for? For one thing, it’s the easiest way to access many of the utilities that are present on your machine but absent from the Start menu. The oft-neglected Run command is a handy shortcut for launching programs. For instance, you can open your e-mail program as follows: click Start, then Run, type in mailto:
[email protected] (where [email protected] is your recipient’s e-mail address) and click on OK. Not only will a new e-mail message window open automatically, but your recipient’s address will already be entered in the “To:” field. You can do the same for your browser (simply type in a www address). If you want in-depth information about the way all the hardware inside your system is configured, click Start and then Run, type in hwinfo /ui (exactly as shown) and click OK. If you ever experience tech problems such as hardware conflicts, you may be able to give your supplier a better idea of the problem by saving and sending them the data retrieved by hwinfo. What hwinfo does for hardware, Dr Watson does for software. Launch drwatson using the Start/Run sequence and it will place itself in your system tray. Double-click on it and it will diagnose your system and report back on problems across a range of software-related categories. For one-stop access to the files that govern the way your system starts up, click on Run, type in msconfig and click OK. This lets you fine-tune not only how Windows starts up, but also lets you decide which programs may run automatically on start-up. Note: do not edit or change anything if you’re not absolutely sure of what you’re doing. There could be unforeseen problems, including not being able to get back into Windows when you restart.
When you’re online and/or doing network troubleshooting, you may need to find out your computer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address. Windows reveals this to you by means of a little tool called “Winipcfg”. To launch it, click Start, Run, type in winipcfg and click OK. Another Internet tool accessed in this way is netstat. If you’re online and want to know the Net addresses of the computers that yours is in contact with, type in netstat -n 10 (exactly as shown). This may help you to track down the source of suspicious outside communication with your computer.
Finally, there’s Windows Update: while not exactly hidden, it’s easily overlooked. And while some are uncomfortable with the idea, the Web-based Windows Update facility is the quickest, most convenient way to determine which parts of your operating system need updating and to then update them automatically. This facility is smart enough to offer only those updates that are required by your system. From important security patches to browser enhancements, you’ll find it at www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com.