Click HERE to return to PCWriter's Home Page.

Windows Watcher

Placing a pagefile in RAM ... by Tom S. Bair, Jr.

I received an interesting email from Jack V. Klein (y2kbytes@t-online.de) concerning research he is doing. I'll let Jack explain it via his email.

I've been looking for a particular windows trick for XP now that 2 GB's of memory is now affordable. Specifically, I want to create and use some sort of drive totally made up of RAM and select that location as my pagefile.

I seem to be at a loss of figuring a way of doing this with XP. It would be a great Windows performance trick. I mean taken together: a fast CPU, Ultra ATA 100 hard drives, 128 MB video cards, DSL to T1 network/internet performance, and a RAM pagefile (RAMBUS or even just plain old fast DRAM). Performance jumps in leaps and bounds. True PC performance would be at its max.

I know you can say you can't create a pagefile without some loss to various XP data dump features and a few minor other losses; however, if the pagefile were RAM or even mirrored on the hard drive, then you could kill two birds with one stone. Available RAM pagefile with hard write to the HD, but only pulling data from the memory. Kind of like a RAM HD stripping.

Can Jack improve his computer's performance by placing his pagefile in RAM? I tend to think not.

Here's why. When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed to complete your current task, XP uses HD space to simulate system RAM. This is known as 'virtual memory,' and often called the 'pagefile.' The default size of the pagefile created during installation of Windows XP is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your PC. The Memory Manager in XP tracks which items are being used and which items of data are inactive at present, and moves the inactive ones to the pagefile.

If a RAM drive is created (and used for the system's pagefile), then the RAM used for this will be taken away from XP. The system will end up with less RAM and will need a correspondingly larger pagefile to compensate. Either the RAM drive will flood out and crash the system, or the Memory Manager will enter an endless loop of attempting to compensate for the conflict in memory.

Note that I speak from experience with past versions of Windows. I have not as yet tinkered with this on XP. So I could be wrong. Jack and I would like to hear from the many power-users in the Computer Bits readership. What are your thoughts? Your ideas? You can email both of us, and I'll try to do a follow up on this topic in a future column.

Text To Speech

[XP] Want Windows to read dialog boxes to you? XP has a new feature called Text To Speech which does just that.

1. Click on the 'Start' button.
2. Click on 'Control Panel.'
3. Click on 'Speech' icon.
4. In the "Text to Speech" properties dialog box, click on the down arrow next to 'Voice selection' and click on "Microsoft Sam."
5. Click on the 'Preview Voice' button and adjust your speaker volume. You may also adjust how slow or fast the voice speaks using the slider control in 'Voice speed.'
6. . Click the 'OK' button.

Adjust Text With Mouse Wheel

[ME/XP/2K] This tip works in Outlook Express, Microsoft Word, WordPad, and other programs. You can make your text size larger or smaller by using the wheel button on your Wheel Mouse.

1. Hold down the 'Ctrl' key.
2. Turn the wheel to change the size of the text.
3. When you have the desired size, release the 'Ctrl' key.

Enlarge Web Print

[IE6] There are many websites with very small hard-to-read type. To enlarge the font so it is readable, do the following:

1. In Internet Explorer, click on 'View' in the menu at the top of the window.
2. Highlight 'Text Size' and click on 'Largest.'

There may be times when this will fail to work because website designers have locked in their font sizes. To get around this:

1. Click on 'Tools' in the menu at the top of the window.
2. Click on 'Internet Options.'
3. Click on the 'General' tab.
4. Click on the 'Accessibility' button.
5. Under the "Formatting" section (top of window), click on the checkbox next to "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages."
6. Click the 'OK' button.
7. Click the 'OK' button again.

Some Web pages will not look right, and even may jumble or smear their letters. If you run across a Web page with this problem, then you will have to perform the above 7 steps and uncheck the checkbox.

Definition Of Desktop

[All Versions] In last month's column I defined the meaning of GUI. I decided to include a definition of a common computer term in each column, as a service to the new users among us. This month, I will explain what "The Desktop" is.

After Windows boots up, you see a basic background containing shortcut icons to programs and files. At the bottom of the Desktop is the Taskbar, with a Start button on the left side of the bar.

You can change the default appearance of your Desktop by adding patterns, wallpaper, and changing the color scheme. To do so, right-click on an empty area of the Desktop and click on 'Properties.' Start with the Appearance tab, and experiment.

Creating Passwords Update

[All Versions] Steve Jensen of Forest Grove, OR (hometown of Computer Bits) writes, "Creating secure passwords is always difficult. Using a set of toy dice and Arnold G. Reinhold's Diceware word list and method, you can create various passwords and passphrases". Steve also sent along the URL to Mr. Reinhold's interesting website. For another excellent password creation method, navigate your browser to http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware. html

I've also heard from a Clackamas County deputy who generates a password by dealing himself a hand of five cards from a deck. As an example, let's pretend the following five cards are dealt:
Queen of Hearts
5 of Diamonds
Jack of Clubs
7 of Clubs
Ace of Spades

You would translate Aces to equal 1 and 10s to equal zero. All other face cards equal their number value. On Jacks, Queens, and Kings, you would use the first letter of the card; either J, Q, or K followed by the first letter of the suite. Aces are 1 plus the first letter of the suite. Using the example of five cards above, you generate a password of:

QH5JC71S

To understand how this password was generated, study the list below:
QH = Queen of Hearts
5 = 5 of Diamonds
JC = Jack of Clubs
7 = 7 of Clubs
1S = Ace of Spades

I think this is a very nifty way to generate a random password. I am really impressed with the ease of use of the system as well.

Virus Alert

[All Systems] The winner of this Summer's Bad Boy Virus has to go to KLEZ. Not only is this virus infecting computers all over the world; it is also spoofing computers which aren't infected. This is causing a great deal of confusion among every day email users.

If you receive an email from the postmaster of your own domain reporting a bounced message, do not open the attached file. It is the KLEZ virus. Using its own SMTP engine, the KLEZ virus is attempting to spoof you into believing that you tried to send email and the delivery attempt failed. Delete any messages of this type from your email program.

If you fear you are infected by KLEZ, you can download a free KLEZ virus removal tool from the Symantec website: http://securityresponse.Symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.klez.removal.tool.html. Be sure to read the instructions located on the webpage concerning the use and operation of this tool.

Correction

This correction concerns the tip, Remove Splash Screen in IE6 appearing in the July 2002 Windows Watcher column. I identified this tip as working for both Windows ME and XP versions. In step 6, I instructed you to type in a line for a Registry file. That line will work for Windows ME versions. Brian Day has sent me the entry for systems running Windows XP. It is as follows:

6. Type [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{680A50A3-BDBD-4639-90E5-21B33BB60BCF}\S oftware\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0]

Many thanks to Brian for catching my elusive slip! I'd like to offer my apologies to any XP users who experienced troubles in applying this tip to their system.

About the Author

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