Computer Info – January 29, 2003
This Week’s Meeting
Wes said that he would probably attempt to drive the steam locomotive in Train Simulator. We will be bringing in our computer with Windows XP. So ask questions about Windows XP and we will try to solve/look at them together. We can take a look at using Internet Explorer and it’s Favorites listing to let us save the location of our data that is on our hard drive so that we can quickly locate it.
EasyWrite
EasyWrite is the new standard for dragging and dropping to CD-RW and DVD+RW , as initiated by the Mount Rainier group formed by Microsoft, Compaq, Sony and Philips. EasyWrite combines the simplicity of a floppy disk and the large storage capacity of CD. EasyWrite provides the easiest way now available to store, move and share large quantities of information.
EasyWrite is fast. Take a new CD-RW disc out of the box, insert it to the drive, and within seconds you can start dragging and dropping data. The drive handles formatting in the background so you are not disturbed by it. Even if you eject the disc before background formatting is completed, the disc is still readable in all MultiRead CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. Current CD-RW applications can take more than half-an-hour to format the disc before you can start writing data.
When you take a CD that was written by EasyWrite to another computer, if that computer does not have the EasyWrite technology installed on it – the first thing the CD will do, is install it for you.
Shortcut key in Word
Did you know that when you out an existing Word document, if you press the Shift-F5 – it takes you to the last place you were in a Word document. This can help you remember where you were editing the document last.
Another Internet Provider that was mentioned last week
Last week, Ray mentioned another internet provider named Senior Globe. You can check them out at http://www.seniorglobe.com
The cost is $9.95 a month (they also have discounts for paying by the year) – unlimited service – 24/7 tech support – local numbers – and you can pay by check.
Bed & Breakfast Inns Online
This site lets you search a directory of more than 4000 B&B inns. It has a picture of each one and describes the inn’s history. If you are a snowbird, you can check out the Snowbird Routes map. It also offers recipes that have been collected from inn owners.
Interesting Computer Troubleshooting This Week
Code 23
We had decided to reformat this hard drive (which was running Windows 98 and had 16 bit high color choice for the video display). As long as we were reformatting, we thought we would upgrade it to Windows ME. The installation of Windows ME went very smoothly and installed without any errors. But when we went to change to more colors for the video display, we found out that it only had a setting for 16 colors – and sixteen colors does not even give you a good looking desktop. When trying to re-install the graphics drivers, we were given this Code 23 error message.
This display adapter is functioning
correctly. (Code 23)
The problem is with the main display adapter. Fix the main display adapter, and
then this display adapter will work.
So our next question was “What is a main display adapter?” It turns out that the motherboard had integrated graphics that were disabled by jumper settings on the motherboard – and a graphics card had been added. It turns out that the motherboard with the onboard graphics was not compatible with Windows ME -- therefore we reformatted again and this time installed Windows 98 – no problem with the video then.
Old CD drive
Again we were getting ready to reformat a hard drive. But before beginning the reformat, you want to be sure that you have drivers for your CD drive so that you can access it in order to install a new version of Windows.
We always start off with a Windows Start-Up floppy and choose Start With CD-Rom Support. This will normally give you a driver so that you can access the CD drive. But in this case, it couldn’t find one. Well, we have started to rely on the Windows Start-Up disk – and have almost forgotten how to do it manually. First step was determining the brand and model of the CD drive (since the cover was off of the computer, we could read the model of the CD drive – Sony CDU33A). Next you take this information to the internet and start a search. We located the information at http://www.drivers.com-- and downloaded the drivers. Now we had to somehow let our startup disk know that we had the drivers. Editing of autoexec.bat and config.sys had to be done.