Click HERE to return to PCWriter's Home Page.

Windows Watcher

Cutting edge two years ago, affordable today ... by Tom S. Bair, Jr.

I am lucky in that I have a next-door neighbor with a degree in electrical engineering who is as curious about the workings of computers as I am. I enjoy it when Sandy pops in to ponder a point with me.

Just yesterday Sandy and I were talking about how the replacement/upgrade component prices have spun downward as each year passed. We also wondered just what the lifespan of a replacement/upgrade component was.

Owning a complete set of Computer Bits magazines dating back to 1997, I decided we could do a bit of research on our musings. Our first step was to decide upon items that would have been new in 1997 and continue to be offered today. Then we would be able to map the annual price drop of the items.

To my surprise, no replacement/upgrade components lasted six or even five years. Only one item charted out a complete four years: a 64 MB SDRAM PC100 DIMM memory module. In February 1999 it sold for $93.00. The price dropped 12 months later to $85.00. So if a consumer waited for only one year, they would save $8.00.

But wait! In February 2001, another year later, the price of this DIMM plummeted to a mere $24.00! So consumers who waited two years before upgrading their memory saved a whopping $69.00. However, 12 months later the price only dropped to the current $16.00 per DIMM.

Of course, most readers will remember the glut of foreign memory dumped on the open market in 2001, causing memory to lose more than three times its retail value. CPUs lost less than half their retail value during the same period of time. (As referenced by an AMD K6-2 550 Mhz. 3D CPU selling for $108.00 in February 2000 and $73.00 in February 2001. The same CPU now sells for $38.00).

After a few hours of tossing these figures around, we seemed to agree that a person got the best bang for the bucks when keeping their technology at a two-year-old level. What was cutting-edge brand-new two years ago is what is most affordable today. It would be interesting to see if this theory held up a year from now.

Programs At Top Of Start Menu

[XP] You may have noticed that Microsoft has given Windows XP's Start menu not only a new look but also new behavior. By default, the Start menu shows up as a wide panel that automatically adjusts the listing to show your most recently used programs. But what if you want to make a program stay on the Start menu permanently? You can do so by pinning the program to the top area of the Start menu, where it won't be bumped off by other programs, even if you use some other programs more often.

1. If the program you wish to list permanently in the Start menu isn't already on the lower area of the Program Listings on the Start menu, launch and exit the program to add it there.
2. Right-click the program icon.
3. Left-click on 'Pin to Start menu' in the pop-up command menu.
4. The program will be moved permanently to the top section of the Program Listings. If you wish to remove the program from the listings, you only need to right-click the program icon and click on 'Unpin from Start menu.'

Start Menu Sorts

[ME] Nancy Ahern sent me email with a request to solve a rather interesting problem. Seems that whenever she made a change to the Start menu, Windows ME would no longer automatically sort the Program Listings. Instead, it just added new programs installed to the bottom of the listing. She would have to manually drag the new programs into their proper location and drop them there to maintain an alphabetical listing.

Could I figure out how to get Windows ME to once again automatically sort the Program Listings in alphabetical order without actually reinstalling ME? This was a challenge which proved to have a simple solution:

1. Click on the Start button.
2. Right-click on any program in the Program Listing.
3. Click on 'Sort by Name' in the pop-up command menu.

Show When Accessed

[XP] I discovered an interesting thing while tweaking with Windows Explorer. You can add a "last accessed" column to your Details view of Explorer. This allows you to know when a folder or file was last accessed by an application running under Windows or by Windows itself. Here's how to set it up:

1. Run Windows Explorer.
2. Click on your hard drive icon.
3. Click on 'View' at the top command menu.
4. In the drop-down box, click on 'Details'.
5. Right-click on the column header of the files list. It's the sectioned bar with the words "Name," "Size," "Type," etc.
6. In the drop-down box, click on the word 'More...' at the bottom of the box.
7. A 'Choose Details' window will pop up. Click on the checkbox next to "Date Accessed." Verify a checkmark has appeared in the checkbox.
8. Click on the 'OK' button.

No Hot-Swapping In NT4

[NT] Guy Ruffin plugs in and unplugs his Windows ME laptop's PCMCIA network card while the system is turned on all the time at home. Yet when he tries to do this at work with his NT4 laptop, it tends to freeze up or crash. Why?

Unlike Windows 98, SE, ME, and XP, Windows NT does not support hot-swapping of PC Card/PCMCIA devices. (Hot-swapping is plugging in or unplugging cards or devices while the computer is turned on). This is because NT loads all the device drivers for all hardware at startup. Changing the hardware configuration while NT is up and running tends to cause NT to experience an electronic confidence crises.

Whenever plugging in or unplugging devices on NT based computers, make sure they are powered off first. Please note that Windows 2000, which is NT4's replacement, does not experience this problem.

Bug Report

Sherry Anglin of Internet Security Systems contacted me to report that BlackICE Defender has a problem which allows an attacker to intentionally crash or take control of a computer running the program when the attacker sends a specific series of packets known as a Ping Flood. The affected versions are as follows:

BlackICE Defender 2.9 on Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP

BlackICE Defender for Server 2.9 on Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP

She reports you can download a product update to solve this bug at: http://www.iss.net/support/consumer/BI_downloads.php

If you are unable to download the update for any reason, you can use the workaround below to protect your system running BlackICE Defender. Note that these instructions are for 2K and XP, as those are the only two operating systems involved.

1. Click on the 'Start' button.
2. Highlight 'My Computer' and click on your C drive in the pop-up menu.
3. In the resulting Explorer window, click on 'Program Files.'
4. Click on 'Network ICE folder.
5. Click on the 'BlackICE folder.
6. Locate and click on the firewall.ini file.
7. NotePad will open the file for editing. Locate the [MANUAL ICMP ACCEPT] section.
8. Type in the following line at the bottom of the section: REJECT, 8:0,ICMP, 2001-10-15 20:28:53, PERPETUAL, 4000, BIGUI
9. Click on 'File.'
10. Click on 'Save.'
11. Exit NotePad.
12. The next time you open BlackICE, click 'OK' when the following pop-up window appears: "A configuration file change was detected."

If you are a corporate customer or if you just want more details on this vulnerability, you can reference the 'X-Force Alert' at:http://xforce.iss.net/alerts/advise109.php

About the Author

Please feel free to email the author with your comments about this article: Tom S. Bair, Jr.