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Front Range PC Users Group Newsletter k-Byte |
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| v. 19, n. 3/4 March/April 2002 | Users Helping Users |
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Contents 1 State of the Group - Rick Mattingly 2 About k-Byte 3 February/March Meeting Reports - Mike Meyer 4 Free Internet Discussion Group 5 Scam of the Year - Rick Mattingly 7 Font Wars - Elise Moss 8 Alternative Image Formats 10 Keep Web Snoops at Bay - Steve Bass 11 File Naming Rules 11 Computer Terminology Explained 13 Power For Pennies-Surge Protectors 14 Calendar of Events 16 April/May Calendars 18 Membership Application 20 SeaTools Disc Diagnostic Software - Rick Mattingly 21 Backing Up Your Hard Drive - Gene Barlow 25 CD Backups - Ron Ingraham 28 Backup Your ISP 30 Trading Post 31 FRPCUG Contacts - Groucho Marx State of the Group by Rick Mattingly For those members of who may not be aware, FRPCUG is incorporated with the State of Colorado as a non-profit, educational corporation. As such, one of our goals is to provide community educational services. Our relationship with the Fort Collins Senior Center (FCSC) provides an excellent forum to meet the aims of our incorporation. We provide instructors from our membership for computer-related classes at FCSC. FCSC charges a minimal fee to attendees of these classes with the funds being used for upkeep of the fine FCSC facilities. In exchange, we get our great monthly meeting space provided at no cost. This relationship is truly a win-win situation. Now, with that said, I ask that more of our members consider assisting with the instruction program at FCSC. At present FRPCUG is providing instruction on the following topics: Beginning Windows, Advanced Windows, Microsoft Word and Quicken. FCSC would appreciate instruction on other related topics as well. To date, we have had just enough volunteers to squeak by in meeting our training committment. We need more FRPCUG members to step forward and assist with this program. Remember, you do not need to be an expert in any of the topics of instruction. In fact, as an assistant instructor, you get of training yourself for free. Hopefully, in time you will then be in a position to assist further by becoming a primary instructor. If we can organize enough volunteers for this program we will be able to spread out the workload for everyone involved, as well as provide for backup in the event of schedule conflicts. I must say that I have never learned any subject better than that which I have instructed. It has been a great experience for me instructing at FCSC as the attendees have always been very interested in the subject of the instruction. So - come on FRPCUG members. Step up and assist your club. Everyone involved, including yourself, will gain from the experience. Published bi-monthly, k-Byte is the official newsletter of the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group (FRPCUG): our mailing address is PMB 152, 305 W. Magnolia, Fort Collins, Colorado 80521. Opinions expressed in k-Byte are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the group or its members. Publication of information in k-Byte constitutes no guarantee of accuracy. Use of any information found in this publication is at the sole risk of the user. Neither k-Byte, nor its officers, nor k-Byte, nor its editors or contributors assume any liability for damages resulting from use of information in this publication. Submissions Articles, letters and short items of interest on computer-related topics are welcome and encouraged. All items submitted for publication are subject to editing. Send your contribution to the editor via e-mail attachment or submit on disk. If you have questions about a submission, please contact the editor for information. Copyright k-Byte is copyrighted ă2000 by the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group. Unless otherwise noted, other nonprofit users groups may reprint or quote from any articles appearing in k-Byte without prior permission, provided that proper author and publication credits are given and that a copy of the publication in which the article appears is sent at no cost to k-Byte at the above mailing address. User groups wishing to exchange newsletters with FRPCUG are invited to send a copy of their newsletter together with an exchange request. IBM PC, OS/2, Compaq, MS-DOS, UNIX, Windows and other trademarks occasionally mentioned in k-Byte are registered trademarks of International Business Machines, Inc., Compaq Corporation, Microsoft, Digital Research, AT&T or their owners respectively. Neither FRPCUG nor its newsletter k-Byte are connected in any way with any manufacturer or seller. We, however, gratefully acknowledge sponsorship of our group by Data Service Center, Jim Becker, owner. Advertising Classified advertising is free to members for non-business ads. See “Trading Post” for pricing for camera-ready display ads. Charges for ad makeup from sketches, etc., are available on request. Deadline for camera-ready and classified ads is listed in the Calendar of Upcoming Events. Deadline for ad-makeup is the same as for articles. About FRPCUG FRPCUG is an independent nonprofit computer society, open to anyone interested in MS-DOS, OS/2, or UNIX microcomputers. Its purpose is to provide an educational and scientific forum of mutual benefit for members of the micro-computer community. FRPCUG holds a monthly meeting and conducts various special interest groups (SIGS) and seminars. Members have voting privileges, subscription to k-Byte newsletter, SIGs and selected seminars. Annual dues are $25 for individual/family membership and $50 for corporate/group membership. February Meeting Report by Mike Meyer 28 people attended the February meeting. During the Announcements Period, President Rick Mattingly mentioned that several computer courses will be offered at the Senior Center during March and April. Any assistance from the membership with helping to teach these courses will be much appreciated, as it benefits the club, as well. Our monthly meeting room is provided to us by the Senior Center free of charge. Jack Linder then requested that everyone check the club roster sheet to see if their e-mail addresses and other info are correct. Mike Yoder, who is an independent contractor for HP and a member of FRPCUG, was our principal speaker for the Main Program. He provided an interesting and lively discussion, covering some of the new HP hardware and software products soon to arrive on the market. He demonstrated one of their new pocket-size digital cameras, which is expected to retail at around $300 and should be available in March of this year. HP also will have a new type of scanner available soon, although it wasn't quite ready for Mike's presentation. He then demonstrated a Beta version of the new software written in HTML and JAVA script. It is intended to work with HP's new cameras, printers, and scanners (3500 series, or higher), so separate programs won't be needed for each product. It requires IE Vers. 4.0 or higher and should work with Microsoft's WIN 98 (SE) or higher operating systems. The retail version, which is expected to use hard disk space very efficiently, should be available in 26 languages by about June of this year. During the Open Forum Period, Rick once again discussed the Windows web-site capabilities, including the updates location. Also discussed at some length was Windows XP (copy protection, customization, functionality with older programs, profiles, and reliability). (The March Main Program will cover this new product, if all the material arrives here safely from Microsoft). Other topics discussed were cleaning HP scanners properly and graphic file formats (importation into files and subsequent manipulation). March Meeting Report by Rick Mattingly for Mike Meyer Club Secretary Mike Meyer had a meeting conflict for the March meeting-so Rick Mattingly here filling in for Mike. 35 people were in attendance for the March meeting. Rick Mattingly announced a new software product, GobeProductive, a very interesting approach to an integrated office package. Product flyers and special discount coupons were available for attendees. The product literature and discount coupons will again be available at the April meeting. This product will be reviewed for a future edition of the newsletter. The presentation this evening was provided by members Don Anderson and Will Horton. Don and Will gave a very informative live demonstration of the new Windows XP operating system. Both Dona and Will stated that their personal experience with Windows XP has been positive to date. During the Open Forum discussion Will Horton described in detail how he has configured his computer system with two hard drives and how he is backing up to the second drive with Norton Ghost. Norton Ghost generates a compact mirror image of the primary drive and, due to the fact that the backup is being made directly hard drive to hard, is extremely fast. Will is also using Norton Ghost to generate a backup to CD-RW. Norton Ghost, a software product from Symantec, is one product that will do this. Another is Drive Image from PowerQuest. One advantage of the current version of Drive Image is that it will operate directly from Windows, rather than requiring a boot to DOS. This allows for unattended, automated backup operations. Hard drives are comparatively quite inexpensive at this time, making this method of backup very viable. A very informative meeting and a good time was had by all. JYM Information Systems and the Barnes & Noble Book Store on South College Avenue in Fort Collins are sponsoring a monthly "Internet Safari" discussion group. This group meets at 7 PM in the Barnes & Noble Book Store the first Monday of each month. This is an open discussion and we examine current issues involving the Internet, how to use the Internet and subjects raised by those present. This group is open to the public without cost or obligation. This is a good chance learn how others are using the Internet. by Rick Mattingly This is the story of a scam recently exposed that just has to be the tip of a very nasty iceberg. This scam has to do with 1-800 numbers. You know, those legitimate toll-free lines which are most often used by honest businesses to provide toll-free telephone access to customers. There are literally thousands of 1-800 lines in use around the country today. Well, it seems that regulators who set up the rules for the 1-800 system responded to telephone providers who complained that 1-800 calls placed from pay telephones generated no revenue for the owners of the pay phone equipment. So, it was decided that a 1-800 call placed from any pay phone would automatically result in a charge of 26 cents to the owner of the 1-800 number with proceeds credited to the owner of the pay phone. Hmmm - seems reasonable and innocent enough. That is, until a 1-800 line business owner recently puzzled over the fact that his monthly phone bill consistently indicated several charges for calls from different pay phone lines, always short in duration. He wondered why so many people would access his 1-800 line from a pay phone. Checking back over bills from past months revealed that the situation was not unusual, as there were such charges each and every month which he had simply never noticed before as they were buried amongst all the other entries on his bill. Now the businessman was really intrigued and he started backtracking the physical location of the pay phones involved. He was shocked when he discovered that multiple calls were made from the same pay phones located at the same address in Nevada. What in the world was going on! The result of this story is that the businessman had discovered yet another scam which is staggering in lost revenue to legitimate businesses across the country. In this case, the trail led to an individual in Nevada who had legally purchased 20 pay phone lines. However, these twenty line were not connected to publicly accessed pay phones. Instead, they are connected to a computerized dialing system which is programmed to continuously call thousands of 1-800 lines around the country. Each call lasts only one minute and then automatically disconnects. How clever! Each call generates a piddling 26 cents for the owner of the pay phone lines. But, wait a minute. Let's do a some math here. Twenty phone lines generating 26 cents per minute twenty four hours per day non-stop. This little scam is generating a staggering $2,733,120.00 each year for the owner of the phony pay phone lines! All for nothing in return to the businesses paying the bill while the scammer is out playing non-stop golf all day or whatever it is that scam slime do with their time while you and I are working. The businessman who uncovered this scheme soon found out that his individual total loss for the past year were small enough that legal action against the one scammer he uncovered (there has to be more!) would be cost prohibitive. But, that's not the only problem. The bigger problem is that he found that there is no explicate law against this scam! Undoubtedly, the scammer involved already was aware of this fact. The businessman is now attempting to generate enough interest to fund a class action lawsuit. You know, now that I think of it, each month I notice that I always have several unanswered calls on my cellular phone bill. Unanswered calls that are charged to my account. I wonder! Somebody get a rope. DIZCLAIMER Spellum errurrrs, mizpelled namez & mizuse of Ingalish are the responsibillite of Spell Chuck & the board of directors who push to got thiz thing out on time. The editors 'aint gon'na be held liable. If, in readin this newsletter, you get the message, be satisfied with what ya got! by Elise Moss The three fonts that you can always guarantee will be present on any Windows computer are Arial (sans-serif), TimesNewRoman (serif) and Courier (fixed-width). If you often send your AutoCAD drawings out to other users, use these fonts. Otherwise they may have problems reading your annotations. If you insist on using a different font, make sure you keep a zip file of all your special fonts and include them with any drawings you send out. To gather your fonts into a zip file, open the Fonts directory under your Control Panel. Drag the special font onto your desktop Right click on the font and select 'Add to Zip' to add to an existing zip file or 'Zip' to start a new zip file. You can download WINZIP for free from www.winzip.com. Elise Moss is President of the Silicon Valley AutoCAD Power Users PO Box 62515 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 www.power.org "The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." - Mark Twain Research on Spreadsheet Errors Using a spreadsheet can be hazardous to your company's bottom line. It's far too easy to simply assume that your spreadsheet produces accurate results every single time. If you use the results of a spreadsheet to make a major decision, it's especially important to make sure that the formulas return accurate and meaningful results. Researchers have conducted quite a few studies that deal with spreadsheet errors. Generally, these studies have found that between 20 and 40 percent of all spreadsheets contain some type of error. If this type of research interests you, why not check out the Spreadsheet Research (SSR) Web site maintained by Ray Panko of the University of Hawaii. Dummies Daily [http://www.dummiesdaily.com] Cool, Man! One of the easiest and cheapest ways to prolong the life of your CPU is to make sure that it stays cool. Windows is a very CPU-intensive operating system, and adding heat to the equation just makes things worse. Most new CPUs have a CPU fan already built in. Always make sure that your computer has plenty of air flowing around it, and that nothing is blocking the cooling fan in the back. Heat is your computer's worst enemy--next to a nosy dog. - Michael Vincent EMAZING.com A Tip From ACDSee (ACD Systems) Have you noticed how many formats that many image-editing programs will let you save you images as? There are dozens of other three-lettered file extensions out there, but most of us save our photographs as JPEGs. However, for certain purposes, these alternate file formats are the way to go. Here is a look at some of the other file formats out there: Portable Network Graphics (.PNG): This image format is a good option to replace GIF images. It is lossless, meaning that it keeps your images very high quality, and offers greater compression than a GIF. Also, it allows transparent areas within an image and the ability to tell files to load sequentially. Tagged Image File Format (.TIF): This image format is good when you want to keep your images very high quality. Although it results in higher image file sizes, it is lossless and will keep your image looking amazing while still offering moderate compression. A good idea is to keep your original image saved as a TIFF and then save a copy as a smaller format before e-mailing it or sharing it on the web. Keep in mind that many web browsers, especially older versions, will not be able to display all image formats, so before posting an image to the web it is best to save it as a GIF or JPEG. An interesting article out of CES today from the Compact Flash Association has confirmed that the irradiation process the U.S. Postal Service is using to sanitize mail against anthrax can not only destroy the data on flash storage (and other semiconductors) but can leave them unusable. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0201/02010803mailcleaningzap.asp Bill Popejoy Computer Users Group of Greeley February 2002 by Steve Bass Source: SWIPCC THROUGHPUT, El Paso, TX Let's say you invite me over for dinner. While you're busy in the kitchen, I'm hiding eavesdropping devices by the TV, next to the mail slot, and under the bed. Once I'm gone, I observe your behavior without your knowing it. You think this is a little far-fetched. Right? Nope, something similar is likely happening right now via your PC. You're going to be ticked off when I describe how companies and individuals trample on your privacy. Rest assured, I know of a few nifty tools to combat these invasions. A show of hands: How many of you use GoZilla, RealPlayer's RealDownLoad, PkZip for Windows, or older versions of GetRight? Ad-sponsored versions of these and similar programs are often called 'spyware.' Such programs put tracking applets on your PC to manage their ads. Even if you uninstall the programs, the tracking applets may stick around, passing data about your computing habits back to their servers. For a better understanding of the spy bug problem, visit Steve Gibson's site ( "Programming is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." A filename can be up to 255 characters, including spaces. This enables you (finally) to give meaningful names to your files. You can't, however, use any of the following characters in your filenames: \ (slash) ? (question mark) : (colon) * (asterisk) " (quote) < (less than) > (greater than) | (vertical bar) You can use uppercase and lowercase letters in your names to improve readability. The filenames aren't case-sensitive, however. If you have a file named My 1999 Budget and try to save another file with the name MY 1999 BUDGET, Excel asks whether you want to overwrite the original file. If you plan to share your files with others using operating systems pre-dating Windows 95, you should make sure that the filename is no longer than eight characters, with no spaces. Otherwise, the filename will appear rather strange. For example, a file named My 1999 Budget will appear as MY1999~1.XLS, because Windows assigns every file an eight-character filename to be compatible with pre-Windows 95 operating systems. from rec.humor Printed in the October 1997 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter Alpha -- Software undergoes alpha testing as a first step in getting user feedback. Alpha is Latin for "doesn't work." Beta -- Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it's released. Beta is Latin for "still doesn't work." Computer -- Instrument of torture. The first computer was invented by Roger "Duffy" Billingsly, a British scientist. In a plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler, Duffy disguised himself as a German ally and offered his invention as a gift to the surly dictator. The plot worked. On April 8,1945, Adolf became so enraged at the "Incompatible File Format" error message that he shot himself. The war ended soon after Hitler's death, and Duffy began working for IBM. CPU -- Central propulsion unit. The CPU is the computer's engine. It consists of a hard drive, an interface card and a tiny spinning wheel that's powered by a running rodent - a gerbil if the machine is a 286, a ferret if it's a 386 and a ferret on speed if it's a 486. Default Directory -- Black hole. Default directory is where all files that you need disappear to. Error message -- Terse, baffling remark used by programmers to place blame on users for the program's shortcomings. File -- A document that has been saved with an unidentifiable name. It helps to think of a file as something stored in a file cabinet - except when you try to remove the file, the cabinet gives you an electric shock and tells you the file format is unknown. Hardware -- Collective term for any computer-related object that can be kicked or battered. Help -- The feature that assists in generating more questions. When the help feature is used correctly, users are able to navigate through a series of Help screens and end up where they started from without learning anything. Input/Output -- Information is input from the keyboard as intelligible data and output to the printer as unrecognizable junk. Interim Release -- A programmer's feeble attempt at repentance. Memory -- Of computer components, the most generous in terms of variety, and the skimpiest in terms of quantity. Printer -- A joke in poor taste. A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light. Programmers -- Computer avengers. Once members of that group of high school nerds who wore tape on their glasses, played Dungeons and Dragons, and memorized Star Trek episodes; now millionaires who create "user-friendly" software to get revenge on whoever gave them noogies. Reference Manual -- Object that raises the monitor to eye level. Also used to compensate for that short table leg. Scheduled Release Date -- A carefully calculated date determined by estimating the actual shipping date and subtracting six months from it. User-Friendly -- Of or pertaining to any feature, device or concept that makes perfect sense to a programmer. Users -- Collective term for those who stare vacantly at a monitor. Users are divided into three types: novice, intermediate and expert. Novice Users -- People who are afraid that simply pressing a key might break their computer. Intermediate Users -- People who don't know how to fix their computer after they've just pressed a key that broke it. Expert Users -- People who break other people's computers. This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an International organization. from the Jacksonville PCUG www.pcug-jax.org/ - Jan 2001 Florida is the lightning capitol of the world. Unfortunately, lightning strikes can cause electrical surges on electrical, phone and television wires. In some circumstances a lightning strike can cause an electrical surge on your home's wiring, even if the lightning did not strike your home or the power lines! There are things you can do to help prevent damage to your electronics by electrical surges. What can I do to protect my electronic devices from electrical surges? Be certain your house is properly wired and properly grounded. The National Electric Code requires that there be one and only one grounding point for your home: the electrical system ground. All telephone and cable television systems must be grounded to that same ground point. Install point-of-use surge suppressors. Install a surge protector device for sensitive electronic device in your home that you feel is valuable enough to protect. It is crucial that all incoming lines to a device be protected with surge suppression devices. If your computer has an uninterruptible power supply, (UPS), it may have surge suppression built-in. However, it may not have telephone line protection for the modem. Check product literature. Install a main service entrance lightning arrestor. Main service entrance lightning arrestors can divert strong electrical surges that come in on the electrical wires. However, these devices DO NOT replace point-of-use surge suppressors. What features should I look for in a good point-of-use surge suppressor? - Be sure to purchase a device that has all the types of connections you need. For example, if you are purchasing one for your computer, be sure to get one with a telephone connection for the modem. For VCRs and televisions, get a surge suppressor with cable television connections (CATV jacks). Remember, ALL connections to the outside world MUST be protected against electrical surges or your equipment can be damaged or destroyed. Look for a surge suppressor that meets UL 1449 standards. Underwriters Laboratories tests devices for their performance as a surge suppressor. Other UL standards may simply indicate a device is electrically safe to use and may have no bearing on its performance as a surge suppressor. Look for models with three-way protection. This means that all three of the wires in a device will be protected. Often, this will be noted as Lines protected: L-N, L-G, N-G. This means Line to Neutral, Line to Ground, and Neutral to Ground. Choose a model that has a Clamping Voltage of 330V. The clamping voltage denotes when the device actually starts working. When a surge of electricity comes in that is 330 volts or higher, the device will clamp, (switch on) to divert the surge energy away from the protected device. Generally, the closer the clamping voltage is to 330 volts, the better. Try to find a model with a Joule rating of 300 joules or higher. The joule rating is an indicator of how much energy the suppressor can handle before failing. Therefore, it is an indicator of how long a life expectancy the unit may have. Unfortunately, not all manufacturers calculate the joule rating the same way. Different calculations can result in widely different joule ratings. It is probably best to get a suppressor with a Maximum Surge Current rating of 10,000A or higher. This is the amperage rating for the device. There is also a Maximum Surge Voltage rating which will almost always be 6,000V, but then even the regular outlets in your home wiring system will arc over at 6,000 volts. So, maximum surge voltage rating is not very important. Maximum Surge Current ratings are important and can vary greatly. Many models are rated at 4,000 to 6,000 amps. Even experts disagree, but it seems prudent to choose a model rated at 10,000 amps or higher. - IMPORTANT NOTICE - FRPCUG meetings are held at the Fort Collins Senior Center. Check below for directions to the Senior Center. April General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, April 2 at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 8:30 Visual Day Planner-Rick Mattingly will provide a live demonstration of this excellent calendar application. 8:30 - 8:45 Break 8:45 - 9:30 Open Forum May General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, May 7 at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Nominations for 2002 Officer Elections in December 7:30 - 8:45 Wireless Networking-Networking the home or small business without wiring. 8:45 - 9:00 Break 9:00 - 9:30 Open Forum See you at the meetings! Directions The Fort Collins Senior Center is located at 1200 Raintree Drive. This site is situated at the northwest corner of the Shields and West Drake intersection, on the north side of the Raintree Shopping Center. Check the marquee at the main entrance for directions to the specific meeting room. Up-Coming SIG's, Seminars and Meetings Board Meeting FRPCUG's executive board meets on Wednesday of the week following the General Forum Meeting at 7:00 p.m. All members are welcome and are encouraged to attend. These meetings are held at the offices of JYM Information Systems: 311 S College Avenue in Fort Collins. LINUX SIG This SIG, supports LINUX and other non-Windows operating systems for PC compatible hardware. This includes all distributions of LINUX, the BE Operating system, and OS2. These meetings are held at the offices of JYM Information Systems: 311 S College Avenue in Fort Collins. For more information contact Chuck McJilton at 493-2987 or email linuxsig@jymis.com. Northern Front Range Netware Users Group NFRNUG meets at 5:30 pm on the second Wednesday of each month at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife building, 2101 Oakridge Drive in Fort Collins. NFRNUG meetings are open to any users that are involved with Novell networking products and integration of other networking products into the Novell environment (Unix, NT, Mac, etc.). Contact Jim Stephens at 303-541-3376 or jcsteph@concentric.net or contact Chuck Kluko at 970-663-4770 or c.kluko@ix.netcom.com for further membership information. Yearly dues are $000.00 (yes, FREE) with pizza and pop served at 5:00 pm prior to meeting. Saturday labs and training sessions open to NRFNUG members only, space is limited. Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group Meets on the second Tuesday of 'odd' months at NCAR in Boulder. Meetings start at 7:00 pm, but members are encouraged to arrive at 6:30 pm for informal networking and refreshments. NCAR is located in Boulder at 1850 Table Mesa Drive. For more information see the RMIUG Web site at: http://www.rmiug.org/. Telecommuncation SIG The Telecommunications SIG covers topics related to computer communications hardware and software including modems, xDSL, networking, ISDN and the Internet. The meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the third Thursdays of each month at the offices of JYM Information Systems: 311 S College Avenue in Fort Collins. For more information contact Chuck McJilton at 493-2987 or email telecomsig@jymis.com. Web Design SIG If you're an HTML author/WEB page designer, or would like to learn, contact SIG coordinator Doug Boicourt at 495-6949 or e-mail db@jymis.com for the date and location of the next SIG meeting. Internet Safari This free Internet discussion group meets the first Monday of each month at the Barnes and Noble book store 4045 S. College. This group covers any topics and questions relating to using the Internet and is open to beginners and experienced Internet users. Meetings start at 7:00PM. For more information call JYM Information Systems at 416-9286 or email info@jymis.com. Upcoming FRPCUG Meetings Along with presentations of new hardware and software, we will certainly continue to present tips, hints, solutions, as well as what is new with Public Domain and Shareware offerings. If you have ideas for presentations which you would like to see at future General Forum meetings or seminars, please let us know. We would appreciate the input and opportunity to improve your meetings. Know of a another computer-related meeting in our area? Please let us know so we can post it here. 1 April Fools Day 2 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00PM 7 Daylight Savings Time Begins 10 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00PM NRFNUG Meeting 5:00PM 18 Telcomm SIG 7:00PM 25 LINUX SIG 7:00PMMay 2002 7 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00PM 12 Mother's Day 15 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00PM NRFNUG Meeting 5:00PM 16 Telcomm SIG 7:00PM 18 Armed Forces Day 23 LINUX SIG 7:00PM 27 Memorial Day by Rick Mattingly There is nothing quite like a hard drive failure to ruin your whole day. Especially if you have been ignoring the repeated warnings to back up, back up your system! With hard drives the question is not if it will fail but rather when. Hard drives are mechanical devices with rapidly moving parts which are subject to intensive wear. As a mechanical device, it will eventually fail. Five years from now - or tomorrow! Be that as it may, Seagate Technology, Inc., long-time manufacturers of quality hard drives, recently revealed that their records indicate that a staggering 40% of hard drives returned for repair are found to be not defective. The experienced problem was actually the result of an issue with the format of the drive, the operating system or software installed, or corrupted data. In an effort to address this issue Seagate has developed a software utility to diagnose suspected hard drives problems. This utility is titled "SeaTools Disc Diagnostic" and it is free. SeaTools Disc Diagnostic is available in multiple languages and versions are available for Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000/XP, Red Hat Linux 6.2/7, Solaris 2.5/7/8 and Netware 4/5. SeaTools Disc Diagnostic will also diagnose any make of IDE or SCSI hard drive, not just Seagate models. Seagate's own description of the utility reads as follows: "The SeaTools Disc Diagnostic software is simple and speedy to operate. When a user suspects a problem with a PC system or hard drive, the customer simply runs SeaTools from a floppy drive. The SeaTools interface is intuitive, requiring just a few keystrokes from the user and no technical knowledge. SeaTools will immediately help the consumer, support technician or PC maker understand whether the disc drive is having problems or if a problem lies elsewhere in the computer system." To obtain your own copy of SeaTools Disc Diagnostic visit the Seagate Web site at http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ctools_eula.html. Complete the simple license agreement, download the software and install to a floppy disk. Note that there is also a detailed user manual available on the SeaTools Disc Diagnostic Web page in PDF file format. Right-click on this link and choose to Save File. You may then view the manual at your leisure off-line using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have the Reader visit the Adobe Web site and download your free copy. SeaTools Disc Diagnostic is quick, non-destructive, easy to use and very informative. You do not need technical knowledge to use it. Simply run the utility from the floppy disk and follow the graphic prompts. Note that Seagate is also offering a free companion utility titled "Seagate Tape Diagnostic Version 2.0" which will diagnose the condition of tape drives, also available is multiple operating system flavors. SeaTools Disc Diagnostic is a great little utility which will give you the peace of mind of knowing that your hard drive is good operating condition or it may save the day by pinpointing a failing hard drive in time to take remedial action. Take advantage of Seagate's free offer today! All I need now is a computer. And a ten-year-old kid to teach me how to use it. - Fletch (Chevy Chase) in Fletch Lives by Gene Barlow User Group Relations Copyrighted January 2002 Your computer hard drive is very important: Your hard drive is the heart of your computer system. It contains your Windows operating system, which is the master control program of your computer. It also contains all of your application programs that help you do productive things with your computer. But, most importantly, it contains all the data files that you create using your application programs. These data files are the most valuable part of your computer and the hardest to replace if something should happen to your hard drive. Yes, your hard drive will fail on you someday: Your hard drive is a mechanical device that spins constantly and is certain to wear out. The life of a hard drive is only 2-3 years. If you are lucky, your drive may last you 4 or 5 years, but it could go out in just 6 months. It is not a question of if your hard drive will fail, but it's a question of when it will fail. All you can do is to be ready when it does fail by having a copy of all of the files on your hard drive saved away from your computer. Then you can replace the failed drive with an empty new drive and put all of the files on the new hard drive. This lets you be back up and running in a mater of minutes instead of days or weeks rebuilding your drive. This process is called backing up and restoring your hard drive and is the topic of this article. What files should you backup: One of the first decisions you must make is what files need to be backed up to adequately protect you. I consider your data files as the most important ones to backup. Your data files are those files that you create using your application programs. If you use Quicken, then the data file that needs to be backed up contains all of your financial records entered into Quicken. If you research your genealogy, then the database of your ancestors that you've collected for years is the important data file that must be backed up. If you correspond extensively using E-mail, then the folders of your E-mail correspondence needs to be backed up. You should plan on backing up your data files at least daily. The second most important thing to backup is your entire hard drive and all of the files on it. This includes your Windows operating system as well as all of your application programs. By backing up the entire hard drive, you will not have to rebuild your system from scratch, but will be able to quickly get your system back up and running again. Some would suggest that you really don't need to backup your operating system and application programs because you can always reload them from the CDs they came on. While this is mostly true, you need to consider how much time this will take you to reinstall the operating system and all of the applications you own. Then, how long will it take you to download all of the software patches and add-ons that you have added to your system. Finally, how long will it take you to enter all of the special settings that you must do to have your system work exactly as you like it to. To this lengthy time, consider how you can recover the many programs and files for which you do not have a CD. I think when you consider all of these factors, you'll agree that having a backup of your entire hard drive is a wise investment of your time. You should plan on backing up your entire hard drive on a monthly basis. What media is best for backup: The next question you need to consider is what is the best media to backup your files from your hard drive. A few years ago, tape backup systems were the most popular backup media. The only problem with these tape systems was that they were very slow. Backing up a 1-2GB hard drive in a couple of hours was reasonable, but backing up today's 40GB hard drives to tape would take too long. You would not do it often enough to be usable. The next popular backup media to come along were the removable disk cartridge drives. These were much faster than tape, but the cartridges tended to be expensive. For example, a 40GB hard drive would need 10-20 Jazz (2GB) cartridges to backup the entire drive. At $100 each, you would need to invest over $2,000 in cartridges to backup your entire drive. Writing to blank CDs promises to be one of the best backup media today, but even the fastest drives are slow and it takes many blank CDs to backup a large hard drive. So, what is the best media to backup a 40GB hard drive today? Another 40GB hard drive! Hard drives are much faster than tape and are even faster than the disk cartridge systems. You can backup an entire 40GB hard drive in less than an hour or so. Since it is fast, you'll tend to backup your system more often and this means better protection for you. Hard drives are also very inexpensive to purchase. If you watch prices carefully, you can get a 40GB hard drive for $99 or less. I would plan on having an extra hard drive for backup purposes for each hard drive that you save data on. What type of backup software is available: There are two very different backup utilities on the market today -- File backup utilities and Partition backup utilities. File backup utilities are by far the most common. These utilities backup individual files one at a time. They can also be used to restore individual files to your hard drive. A good feature of File backup utilities is that they can select individual files from all parts of your hard drive. This is great for picking and choosing your important data files to backup. On the other hand, File backup utilities tend to be quite slow in backing up your entire hard drive and you would need to make many extra steps in rebuilding your hard drive partitions in case of a total failure. That is where Partition backup utilities have the advantage. Partition backup utilities backup entire partitions and all the files contained in them. Some of these Partition backup utilities work at the lowest hardware level and are very fast. Restoring a partition to an empty hard drive using a partition backup utility will create and format partitions as it restores the partition file. PowerQuest Corporation has an excellent backup software package that contains both a File backup utility and a Partition backup utility combined in one product. This product is called Drive Image and has a list price of $69.95. The File backup utility in this product is called DataKeeper and is designed to backup your individual data files on a frequent basis. The Partition backup utility in the product is called Drive Image and is designed to backup your entire hard drive every month or so. Let's take a look at how these two utilities can be used to backup your system. Backing up your important Data files: As mentioned earlier, the data files on your system are the most important files on your computer. They are also the hardest to replace if something should happen to your hard drive. Backing up your data files should be your first objective in establishing a good backup plan for your system. Data files change daily and need to be backed up on a daily basis. Using PowerQuest's DataKeeper utility, you can select all of your important data files from various part of your hard drive. If you have spent a little preparation in organizing your hard drive, you may already have all of your data files collected together in the same partition. This makes it easier to identify and backup these important data files. DataKeeper will let you backup all of your data files or backup only those that have changed since the last backup. You can also compress the backup files to about half their original size when you save them to conserve space. You can backup an individual file up to 99 times without replacing an earlier backup copy of that file. This gives you the ability to keep multiple backup versions of a data file as it is being developed. If you need to see the file, as it was several versions ago, you can do so with DataKeeper. It will backup these files to any device having a standard drive letter, such as a special backup partition on a hard drive or a removable cartridge drive. If you create your data file backups on a hard drive, try to place them on another hard drive than the one the original data files are stored on. Also, you should copy these backup files to a blank CD every month so that you will have some removable media that you can store away from your computer. One of the best features of DataKeeper is its ability to monitor the import data files that you select and to automatically backup a file as soon as it is changes. Using this monitoring approach, you never have to think about backing up your data files since this is done for you automatically. It also assures that you have a backup of these important files that is current to the last minute or so. This is a powerful feature of DataKeeper and one that I would highly recommend using. Backing up your entire hard drive: The second most important part of your backup plan is to backup your entire hard drive at least once a month. Having this backup in place will protect you from a major failure of your entire hard drive. Using PowerQuest's Drive Image to backup your entire hard drive you have two approaches to select from. Let's look at each of these approaches separately. The first full-drive backup approach is to use Drive Image to copy all of the partitions from your main hard drive to a backup hard drive. Both hard drives must be installed on the same computer system to do this approach. Using Drive Image's Disk-to-Disk Copying facility, you copy the partitions from your main drive to the backup drive, one at a time. When Drive Image copies a partition, it creates a new partition on the backup drive, so the drive can be empty of partitions before you start the process. Also, copying a partition copies not only the partition, but also all of the hidden files, system files, and other files contained in the partition to the backup hard drive. So, when you finish copying all of the partitions from your main drive to the backup drive, you have an exact duplicate of your main drive that could be used if your main drive failed. After copying all of the partitions to your backup hard drive, you need to disconnect the backup drive and remove it from your computer system. You should store the drive away from your computer, so that if anything happens to your computer, your backup drive will not be affected, too. Once a month, you'll need to retrieve this backup hard drive and insert and connect it back into your computer and repeat the backing up of all of your partitions, then remove it again from your computer. If something should happen to your main hard drive, simply get your backup hard drive and replace your main hard drive with the backup drive, setting it as a master drive, and you should be able to immediately start your computer and have it run. To simplify the frequent removal and replacement of your backup hard drive, you can purchase a hard drive rack mounting system from your computer store for about $25 that will let you remove and insert the drive without removing the covers of your computer. The second full-drive backup approach is to use Drive Image to cross backup one hard drive to another. With this approach, you install and leave both hard drives in your computer all the time. For this approach to work, you'll need to setup a large backup partition at the end of each of the two hard drives. PowerQuest's PartitionMagic utility is the best way to create these backup partitions on your hard drives. Once the two drives are in place with a large backup partition on each of them, you can use Drive Image to create condensed image files of entire partitions and store them on the backup partition of the other hard drive. To make this a little easier to understand, let's look at a simple example. You have two hard drives and the following partitions on each of the two hard drives: Drive 1: C: partition (Contains your Operating System) D: partition (A backup partition) Drive 2: E: partition (Contains your Application Programs) F: partition (Contains your Data Files) G: partition (A backup partition) Using Drive Image, create an image files of your entire C: partition and all of its contents on your G: backup partition. Then, using Drive Image, create an image file of your E: and F: partitions on your D: backup partition. These image files represent the entire partition and all of their active content. These image files can be condensed by 40-50% to save room on your backup partition. Notice that we save the images from one hard drive to the other hard drive's backup partition and visa-versa. Hence, we call this the cross backup approach. Once a month, you'd repeat this cross backup approach from one drive to the other until you fill up the backup partition. Then you'd delete the oldest image file to make room for the new image file to be stored in your backup partition. If either of your hard drives should fail on you, all you have to do is to remove the failed drive and place an empty new drive in its place. Then using Drive Image, you find the latest condensed image of the partitions on the failed drive on the other drive's backup partition and restore that image to recreate the partitions and all of their content on the empty drive. This lets you be back up and running your computer in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks rebuilding your system. If the drive that failed was your first drive containing your operating system, that is no problem. You can boot Drive Image from a DOS diskette and quickly rebuild your operating system partitions from the second drive's backup partition. What if both hard drives fail together: While it is rare, it is possible for both of your hard drives to fail at the same time, thus leaving you without either of your backup partitions to use to rebuild the other hard drive. For example, your computer could be burned in a fire or taken by a thief. In these cases, you'd loose not only your main drive, but your backup images as well. So, you need to make some special provisions to guard against these situations. I'd recommend that every 3 months, after you have backed up your partitions using the cross backup approach, you use Drive Image's ImageExplorer to split your condensed image file into multiple segments that will fit on blank CDs. Drive Image will burn these image segments on multiple CDs for you or you can use the CD burning utility that came with your CD-R/RW drive. While this may take a while to do, it will give you an inexpensive removable backup of your entire hard drive that you can store away from your computer. I would repeat this process of creating backup CDs of your entire hard drive every 3 months or so. Summary: If you follow the suggestions in this article, then you will have a comprehensive backup plan that will protect both your important data files as well as your entire hard drive. You must make sure that you follow the time intervals suggested so that your backups are current enough to be usable. PowerQuest's Drive Image product, a second hard drive, and a CD-R/RW drive are all the software and hardware you need to run this backup plan. A second hard drive and a CD-R/RW drive can both be purchased for about $100 each. Faster models are available for only a few dollar more. User group members can purchase Drive Image at the user group price of $35 by accessing a secure web order form at www.ugr.com/order/. You will need to enter the name of your user group and the special code UGNL02. I wish you success in setting up your backup plan. Gene Barlow User Group Relations Voice: 801-796-7370 PO Box 275 Email: barlow@ugr.com Orem, UT 84059-0275 Web: www.ugr.com This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an International organization to which this user group belongs. PEBCAK -- Computer customer support acronym for "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard." by Ron Ingraham The best way to back up your entire hard drive (assuming it stores several gigs of material) is to use Power Quest's Drive Image Pro. This is a fast, reliable and easy program to use and it has a built-in compression capability. It works with MMC 2 compliant CD recordable or CR-R Rewritable drives, as well as ZIP drives attached to a USB port. At $2.00 or less apiece for 650 MB of storage, CDs are considerably less expensive than JAZ drives. Be sure to store your CDs in a safe place however. They aren't as durable as JAZ or Zip disks. The Digital Viking newsletter, January 2002 Jim Becker of Data Service Center provided the following information: Computer Recycling Day, Saturday April 27th, 9 'til 2 The City of Fort Collins Natural Resources Department has partnered with Larimer County, the City of Loveland, Waste-Not Recycling, and Weld County Partners to host a one-day-only recycling event for old computers. Residents and small businesses (25 employees or fewer), can get rid of their obsolete computer hardware on Saturday April 27th, from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. at the Steele's Market parking lot, 1001 E. Harmony Road. A small fee will be charged per monitor to help cover recycling costs; other computer items will be accepted at no charge. Jim "I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult." - Rita Rudner 10 EASY STEPS OK, now how many of you would know ALL the pertinent settings for re-establishing a connection to your ISP if your system crashed, corrupted some NETWORK information, or some other similar catastrophe occurred? Of course you can call your ISP and have them talk you through the process; and I'm sure some of you have had to do that. You could print out all that information, or get screen shots of all the windows and dialog boxes you need to utilize to re-establish the connection. But, there's a cleaner and quicker way to do it. How about a BACKUP disk copy of the information? And be sure to keep it current AND on a diskette, not on the computer hard drive. Well, you could keep it on the hard drive. If you have more than ONE hard drive in your computer. It is unlikely that multiple hard drive catastrophe will occur. Hopefully not anyway. Ok, one solution is to use ...uuuugh....REGEDIT. Yeah, I know, you're grimacing at the thought of using this potentially hazardous utility. But it's really not that difficult a process IF you just do what I'll describe you won't be making ant changes to the registry and it will be safe. At this time I insert my disclaimer about whatever you do is not my fault, etc. etc.. from the lower left corner of the WINDOWS 95/98 screen. In the RUN window type With that out of the way, here's what you do. Select the START and then RUN in REGEDIT when the "OPEN" dialog appears and then press ENTER (or click OK.) You are now in the REGISTRY. Look in the list of HKEYs and find HKEY_CURRENT_USER; click the PLUS sign next to it and the list of subkeys will drop down for viewing. Select RemoteAccess and click the icon folder for RemoteAccess so it is highlighted. Now select Registry from the menu at the top of the window you are in (the Registry Editor), select Export Registry File. When the Export Registry File dialog box appears, enter the name of your ISP in the "Filename" dialog window---for example, USWEST. The file will be saved as USWEST.REG. Notice just below where you enter the name it shows the "File of type": as Registration Files. And below that the "Export Range Dialog shows the "Selected branch" as HKEY_CURRENT_USER\RemoteAccess. Check that your window shows this to verify you have the correct HKEY being saved. Next, choose a location for the file (this could be on a diskette in A:, or on a different hard drive in your system.) You can select the location by clicking the down pointing triangle next to the "Save in" dialog window near the top of the window and selecting the destination drive letter. Just make sure it is NOT on the hard drive that WINDOWS is installed on. My system has THREE physical drives and 19 different drive letters--C: through S:. You may only have ONE physical drive; in which case you must save the file to a FLOPPY DISK, not your hard drive. Save the file. Close the Save As dialog box. [10]To close RegEdit, choose Registry, Exit or click the X in the upper right corner of the window. To restore your ISP settings, all you have to do is double-click the file (USWEST.REG for this example) on the disk or hard drive where it was saved. It will be automatically be merged with the Registry. This process will not save any of your passwords so be sure you have them stored in a safe place. Now that wasn't so difficult after all, was it. And since you were only exporting information OUT of the registry in the save process, there is not a potential of damaging the REGISTRY. Questions, contact me at lmshatraw@qwest.net. April issue of CCUG newsletter CURIOUS FACTS The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to test telex/twx communications). Members: Place your FREE ad here! About Trading Post k-Byte runs classified ads in Trading Post for three consecutive issues. Trading Post ads up to 10 lines (or 70 words) long are free to FRPCUG members: $5 for non-members. To place an ad in Trading Post contact Will Horton at 223-2154 or email whorton@will-design.com. Commercial Advertising Specifications (Monthly rate) Full Page (8 1/2” X 7”) $30 Half Page (3 1/4” X 7”) $20 One Third Page (3” X 4”) $15 Business Card (2 3/4” X 1 1/2”) $ 5 We offer a substantial discount for repeat ads and continuing contracts. For additional charge, we will design your ad for you. Contact Will Horton for information on this service at 223-2154 or email whorton@will-design.com. |
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