Hi Ken,
This post has nothing to do with the colors of the links, but is in response to a comment you made about not editing the registry. I guess it is more on the general topic of computer learning.
Why not regedit? My office landlord installed Norton Utilities and had problems with the interaction with Windows 95 (thank you Bill Gates?) and was unable to uninstall it on his own. Norton faxed him directions, which including editing the registry. It is the blind leading the blind, but I am the resident guru, whenever I am in residence, that is. So I was able to uninstall it for him.
Not that I am any great shakes at computers - - my all-star boo-boo occurred about ten years ago, back when I had a 20 mb hard drive on a 286 (dos 3.0 I think), I was trying to clear out unwanted files and deleted command.com and io.sys. And I never had made a boot disk! Ha! Top that!
Ok, I can top it! I tried using a boot disk from another computer, that had a completely different FAT! Oh, my god. You know, I finally did get it to work again. I had to buy installer's dos, which only came in 3.5 diskettes, and switch the cables on the A and B drive, and so on.
So, I am very aware that you can really screw up if you don't know what you are doing.
I have a subscription to PCNovice (now "Smart Computing") very good for ordinary people. Also the Dummies books are good.
My big complaint is that my favorite programs, e.g., WordPerfect 8 and Netscape don't interact well with Windows 95. I just gave up on Winfax Pro. I put in Windows 98, it seems a little better, but I have not put it to the acid test. The acid test is when I have to file a brief by 4:00 p.m. that day, and I get frantic, and then hit the wrong key sequence, and try to recover. Norton used to save me, but it doesn't seem to work with Windows 95. A couple of months ago I completely lost a brief when I tried to back it up. The computer locked up, and finally I had to reboot, and it wasn't there. My secretary faxed the earlier version to me, and I used Calera and redid it, and tried to save it again (I make a practice of saving before spell-checking, because I have had problems with the computer eating a document when spell-checking it). Well, this time the computer ate it before I spell-checked it.
Nothing like trying to open a file and seeing little happy faces.
A real computer maven would know what I did wrong, but I don't let it get to me. Just like I don't mind continually making wrong turns when I am driving in unfamiliar places. I am one of those people who only really learn from their mistakes. I'll get there eventually!
See you,
CobaltBlue |
