Windows Watcher

Windows product activation and MS product support ... by Tom S. Bair, Jr.

Microsoft published "Desktop Product Lifecycle Guidelines" which allow you to calculate the dates after which MS will no longer provide support for various products. You can see these documents for yourself at http://www.microsoft.com /windows/lifecycleconsumer.asp and http://support.microsoft.com/di rectory/discontinue.asp.

What this means is that as of January 2002, Microsoft will no longer provide support for DOS and all versions of Windows from Windows 95 back. Windows 98 and Windows NT will lose their support on June 30th, 2003. Microsoft states that from now on, all new MS products will have a basic three-year life for full support, and a one-year period of partial support.

If we follow the calculations of this guideline, we discover that Windows XP will no longer be actively supported in the year 2005. Fred Langa brings up an extremely interesting point in his newsletter concerning Windows Product Activation (WPA) and MS Product Support. (See the full text of his newsletter at http://www.langa.com/newsl etters/2001/2001-09-06.htm.)

To quote Fred, "...what would happen when/if WPA kicked in due to a reinstall or system upgrade" (after product support by Microsoft ended)? "It's not clear from the Microsoft documentation whether or not Product Re-activation services will still be continued for a nonsupported product. If not, the XP software will only work for 30 days before the WPA 'reduced functionality' mode kicks in. Then, you either must upgrade to a newer, supported version of the software, or do another full reinstall of the old software -- and another, and another -- every 30 days."

Makes you think? Now let's look at Fred's "extremely interesting point." "Building on this...WPA, combined with an arbitrarily finite product lifecycle, is actually a way for Microsoft to continue moving users towards a subscription model, where you must renew or upgrade your software on a schedule that Microsoft determines, rather than at a time of your own choosing."

Has Microsoft discovered a way to artificially create a demand for products they supply? And what happens if this nifty but dirty tactic spreads to other industries? Will we be forced to purchase a new car... say, every five years? For more discussion of this topic, see Ted Mittelstaedt's column in this issue of Computer Bits.

Recover A Missing Task Bar

[95/98/SE/ME] Have you tried to resize your Task Bar and accidentally taken it below the bottom of your screen? No matter how hard you try, you just can't grab the top of the bar from the bottom with your mouse. Below is a method to recover that Task Bar using your keyboard.

1. Press the [Ctrl] and [Esc] keys at the same time. This causes both the Task Bar and the Start menu to pop up.
2. Hit the [Esc] key to make the Start menu disappear.
3. Press and hold down the [Alt] key, then hit the Spacebar. A small menu will pop up, from which you will select the Size option by hitting the [S] key.
4. Press your Up-arrow key once or twice. Your Task Bar will again appear on the bottom of your screen. Using your mouse, click on the Task Bar to lock it in place.

Display Comments in Explorer

[ME] Being able to display the Comment field in Windows Explorer for Word and Excel files is a very useful feature. If your documents folder is crowded with files, reading a short description of each file can speed up locating that certain file you want to work on.

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Click on 'View' in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
3. Click on 'Details' in the resulting pop-up menu.
4. In the Display window of Explorer, you will see a description bar at the top, listing Name, Size, Type, etc... Right-click on that bar.
5. In the pop-up menu, click on 'More...' at the bottom of the menu.
6. A Column Settings window will open up. Scroll down the list of column names to 'Comment.' Click on the box to the left of it, causing a checkmark to appear in the box.
7. Click the 'OK' button.

By right-clicking on a Word or Excel file, you can then click on Properties, and Summary. Select the Comment field and enter in a short description for the file. When finished, you'll notice the description you entered is now displayed in Explorer.

Using Your Own Sounds

[95/98/SE/ME/2K] Are you getting bored of listening to the same old system sounds emitting from your PC? Have you ever made your own WAV file, or downloaded one which you thought was a really neat sound? Want to use it in Windows?

1. Use Windows Explorer to move your self-created or downloaded WAV files to the C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA folder. When done, close Explorer.
2. Click on the 'Start' button, highlight 'Settings', and click on 'Control Panel.'
3. Select 'Sounds and Multimedia' (or 'Sounds' in Windows 95).
4. Scan the list and find something you want to change the associated sound to.
5. Click the 'Browse' button and navigate to your file in C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA.
6. Click on the WAV file you want to use.
7. You can sample the sound by clicking on the box with the right-facing arrow (play button). If you are happy with your selection, then click the 'Apply' button.
8. If you feel the sound doesn't match the event, then return to step 5 and repeat.

A tip to keep in mind is not to use long length sound files for frequently occurring events. Remember, you will be hearing some of these sounds many hundreds of times in the next month.

Forcing Boot up to Safe Mode

[95/98/SE/ME/XP] If Windows ever encounters a problem that it cannot solve itself, it will boot into a special startup configuration called Safe Mode. This mode boots your system with the bare bones essentials that are needed to make your PC work so you can troubleshoot the problem.

Nothing is loaded from the Registry. No third party drivers are loaded either. Only the most basic video driver that supports a 640X480 and 16-color mode is loaded.

But Windows isn't perfect, as most of us know. What happens when you install a new video card and your system crashes? Or worse, the PC works until you try to do a basic Windows function, and then it crashes? You find yourself in a position of not being able to undo your changes. Below is a method to force Windows into Safe Mode during boot up, so that you may change drivers, and troubleshoot settings.

1. Turn your computer on.
2. After the BIOS screen pops up (black screen with lots of white letters telling you what your system settings are) hold down the [Ctrl] key.
3. A menu will appear with a few boot options, one of them being Safe Mode. Choose this option.

Single-click Menu Items

[98/SE/ME] I found this tip several months ago on the Themestream website by an author who called him or herself Terry. I wish I could give better credit to "Terry," but it seems Themestream is now defunct. I think you will like this rather simple tip.

When choosing something from a Windows menu, you usually follow the most logical course:

1. Click on the option along the program's top which results in a drop-down menu.
2. Then click on the desired item from the drop-down menu.

You can reduce this to a single click:

1. When you click somewhere to open a menu, keep holding down your mouse button.
2. When the menu drops down, slide the mouse pointer until it rests over the item you want.

Practice it a bit and it will become natural .

Updates

[Palm] If you recall, September's Computer Bits published my article "PDA Web Resources." Since we don't have a Personal Digital Assistant columnist for me to pass this updated information on to, I decided to include it at the end of this column.

There's a superb application called PZ (downloadable from the PalmGear website) that allows you to compress databases and remove single databases or programs without associated files and vice versa. You can also rename single databases, sort them according to date, size etc....and it also shows the code of the program the database belongs to. And it's freeware!

Tom continues to make us nervous with his 'Laptop Anti-theft Nuclear Device' (LAND) research, so we've attempted to distract him with the latest Redhat Linux release.