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Windows 95

File Management

Win95 will not let you have files named with extended ASCII characters. If you reboot to plain DOS and rename a file so that it contains an extended ASCII character, DOS programs and functions will handle it just fine ... but when you reboot to Windows, you can't touch the file or folder that you renamed. Any attempts to read, copy, move, delete, rename, or do anything to the file will result in the message Cannot find x; the file x was moved or removed.

This is a simple way to play a trick on a fellow geek, or a good "Access Denied" trick to keep a non-geek from deleting or modifying a file you don't want them to.

This does not work in Win98; MS fixed Win98 so that it can handle extended characters.

Easier driver location for upgrades

Don't you hate it when you're installing something and Windows always ask for the CD for the system files that are normally under c:\windows\system or c:\windows\options\cabs? Well, you can actually change this problem by modifying a Registry key.

If you go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT VERSION\SETUP, you will see a key named SourcePath. If you right-click on this key and choose modify, under Value data you can change it to c:\windows\system or c:\windows\options\cabs. This is mainly for those systems that have just been reinstalled. This has saved me a lot of headaches, believe me.

This is primarily for Windows 95, because in 98 when you install a new device it normally asks you where the drivers are and you check the box or type in the path.

This tip definitely helps when installing or reinstalling protocols and COM ports. I normally change it to use the c:\windows\system because the system files are already there, and when you change it to c:\windows\options\cabs it gives you that older File being copied box and you have to hit Yes on the Keep the current file prompt.

Crashproofing?

This one is so obvious, I'm continually amazed by the number of people who don't use it.

Are you tired of cleaning up after crashes? Corrupted swapfiles; hordes of tempfiles in the \Windows directory; root directory entry overflow due to too many "recovered" files ... that sort of thing.

Solution: partition your drive. Use Ranish's Partition Manager (part.exe) to create a 1 GB FAT32 primary partition at the front of the drive. Then, create a 2 GB FAT32 primary partition at the rear of the drive. Then make a new FAT32 primary partition out of the remaining middle chunk. Finally, set the *rear* partition to be active, save the partition table to a floppy, and reboot with your bootflop. Install Win95; it will see the *rear* 2 GB partition as its C: drive. Format D: (the front partition) and E: (the middle). Label them as TEMP and DATA.

Then configure Windows in this manner: set the virtual memory to be a *permanent* swapfile on the D: drive. Disable write-behind caching for all drives (a basic safety precaution). Create a new folder: D:\TEMP. Edit the autoexec.bat to SET TEMP=D:\TEMP and SET TMP=D:\TEMP. Reboot.

You now have: one place to delete all the trashfiles from; one contiguous swapfile permanently, located right at the very front of the drive for fastest possible access; and importantly, a whole drive all by itself, to store all data in--*apart* from the OS and progfiles (VERY handy for backing things up easily).

Oh, and by the way ... you *do* back up your sys/prog as a disk image, don't you? So it can be written to a CDR and instantly restored with the help of your ever-handy bootfloppy? Well ... FAT32CP (FAT32 Copy) is a handy little program for that sort of disk-imaging thing; I've found it to be reliable. And lastly, never forget to put Gordon Haff's old DOS-based DF.COM on your bootfloppy, along with PKZip/UnZip and LIST.COM--those things are absolutely invaluable!!

Better peace of mind, and happier computing.

This may be a bit obvious, but since Notepad doesn't have a ReadMe you may not notice this.

If you open Notepad and then select any file that is small enough to be opened by Notepad (<50 KB, I think) you can drag this file into Notepad and it will try to show you what the contents are. This is useful for editing files in games and HTML files.

Notepad not showing you the "special ASCII" characters in a document?

Add the MS-DOS Editor (file is called edit.com) to the SendTo folder.

1) Do a Find for EDIT.COM
2) Create a shortcut in the SendTo folder in the <windir>. In Win9x, SendTo is in C:\Windows; on NT this exists in your folder in <windir>\Profiles.

To use the MS-DOS editor, simply right-click a document, select SendTo, and choose MS-DOS Editor.

This also works in NT4. Funny that on NT it's called MS-DOS editor as well . . . makes you think.