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Windows 2000 Windows 98 Windows 95 Windows NT Linux Palm Macintosh Beos |
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Windows 98 |
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Internet |
| Combating
disconnects
Get disconnected from your ISP frequently? Try this: Go to Modems in Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel) From Modems select Properties, then the Connection tab Click the Advanced button In the Extra settings dialogue line, enter S10=50 This will force the modem to stay connected without a carrier for up to 5 seconds. Manipulating AIM Buddy Lists You can (sort of) control other people's Buddy Lists in AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). You can have whatever screenname and groupname you want appear on someone else's Buddy List. Type CLICK HERE (or something enticing) in the message box, highlight it, then click the link button. Then for the Hyperlink URL: type aim:addbuddy?screenname=X&groupname=Y, where X is the name you want to have show up and Y is the group name you want it to fall under. For instance: aim:addbuddy?screenname=IAmTheKing&groupname=CoolestPeople As long as the message recipient clicks the link, the name and groupname you set up will appear on his or her Buddy List. Note: if you put in a screenname that isn't active, the group will show up in the Online tab but the screen name won't; both will show up in the List Setup tab, though. Auto-cleaning temp and cookie files I've had Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher on my machine for a while, and I'm getting sick and tired of cleaning out my Windows\Temp directory whenever my machine crashes, so I set up a batch file that is the first thing that executes from my StartUp group. While I was at it, I made a few lines that will delete my cookies every time I reboot, because I'm getting a little paranoid. Anyway, the batch file looks like this: deltree/y
c:\windows\temp The last thing you need to do is go to the Properties of the file and choose Close on exit under the Program tab. You'll never have to worry about those temp files--or cookies, for that matter. ICQ LAN Database Sharing This allows a user to have one ICQ database shared between MULTIPLE computers, which allows a user to decide which computer to use for ICQ and not worry about having two separate contact lists. _________________
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_______________________________ ______
If you are really smart and want to do this on multiple computers, you can export a registry file and modify it to change the following settings.
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It's complete. Now you can run ICQ on either computer and it will load up the SAME database files. _____ I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT RUN TWO COPIES OF ICQ AT THE SAME WITH THE SAME DATABASE. THIS CAN RESULT IN DATA LOSS! CREATE A DIFFERENT DATABASE FOR EACH CLENT.
Portable dial-up networking If you want to take your dial-up networking connection info with you when you work on another computer, there's a simpler way than writing down all the telephone info and passwords. All the necessary information is stored in the Windows Registry.
All your dial-up info is now on the disk. Go to the machine you want to work on, run Regedit again, and import the file. Since you only copied the Dial-up Networking portion, you won't mess with any of the other settings. Checking your connection speed Did you ever wonder if your new cable or DSL connection is really performing up to par? Well, log on to this MSN site that tells you your actual line speed relative to a 56K, ISDN, T1, T2, etc. Modem users will find it useful, too. Run it several times to get an average measurement. http://www.computingcentral.com/topics/bandwidth/speedtest50.asp Speeding up your modem connection Two little tweaks to speed up your connection to the Internet (if you're using a dial-up modem, that is): First, go to Start >> Settings >> Control Panel Then double-click the Modems icon and click the Properties button. Click the Connection tab, then the Advanced... button. You'll then see Extra settings with a white box underneath it. Type S11=50 in that box. That makes the dial tone go from 100 milliseconds (the default) to 50 milliseconds. Not a lot, but everything helps, right? :) You can also speed up the connection to your ISP by telling your modem to connect only using TCP/IP. Double-click on My Computer, then Dial-up Networking. Right-click on the connection to your ISP and then choose Properties. Click the Server Types tab and go to the Allowed network protocols: section. Make sure that only TCP/IP is checked, NOT NetBEUI or IPX/SPX Compatible. That will make the connection to your ISP get established faster. Speeding up Internet Explorer If you want to hog a bit more bandwidth and get your pages to load quicker, try this little Registry hack that will open more connections to a server when you're trying to load a page. For Win2000: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\InternetSettings Look for the following keys:
Adjust the values to higher number. For Win9x: You may have to create the values on some systems. Just create two new 'DWORD's as above. The default values are 2 and 4 respectively, which is the HTTP 1.1 standard. If you want an MS explanation of the whole
thing, try: Beefing up Internet Explorer If you're running IE5, you can go to this page on the Microsoft website and look at all the accessories you can dowload for free, including:
These four are from MS, but not really supported:
Adjusting Internet Explorer pop-up window sizes I'm sure we've all been to websites where when you click a link it opens a new browser window instead of using the already open one. Sometimes those new windows are really small or too big. You can get the pop-up windows back to normal size in Internet Explorer by doing this:
The ubiquitous Favorites icon This only works with webpages viewed through Internet Explorer. When you added Geek.com pages to your Favorites folder, you may have noticed the little GEEK icon that appears next to the site title. That is called the "favorites icon" and can easily be added to your website.
That's it--now you can be a GEEK too. EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information and a different way to generate the icon, you can check out favicon.com (that's what we did to get that little Geek icon workin') Paging with the wheel mouse in IE5 -- Revised In Win 98 IE 5, to go forward or backward pages with the mouse wheel is Shift + Mouse wheel movement. The trick posted says to use the CTRL key, but using the CTRL key changes the text size. Paging with the wheel mouse in IE5 If you are using a wheel mouse in IE5 you can go back a page by holding the CTRL key and moving the mouse wheel back one click. Two clicks move you back two pages, etc. If you want to go forward you do the same, only move the wheel forward. More Trace Routes and Ping (long!) The tracert command is the best method we have of telling how well we are connecting to something on the Internet. Tracert basically uses ping to make its measurements. Ping is an even simpler way to tell whether you can connect to a site. For example: C:\WINDOWS>ping www.ugeek.com If you type this under Windows 95, 98 or NT (or Linux, Unix, etc.), ping will try to contact the site www.ugeek.com 4 times (or more for Unix) and give you a list of times in ms (milliseconds) that it took for the site to respond. Type "ping" by itself for a list of switches you can use with ping. On fast networks or T1's you should get times between <10ms and 20ms. That's pretty good. On cable modems and ADSL, anything under 50ms is good. For 56K modems, as long as you're under 200ms, you're doing OK. If it is taking longer to contact a site, FTP server, or router, then there may be a communications problem in between. That's where tracert really comes in handy. So, now if I do a tracert to www.ugeek.com, I can see how many servers or routers I'm passing through to get there (referred to as hops). Let's take a look: C:\WINDOWS>tracert www.ugeek.com 1 59 ms 119 ms 61 ms 192.168.20.1 So, we see that it takes me 21 hops to get to the ugeek.com server. That's a lot, considering I live within 20 miles of it. But then, you may find that most trips to sites take about 20 hops. Now, if you look at the ms times, you see that I got no timeouts - which is good. Tracert puts an asterisk (*) instead of a ms rating for timeouts. Also, to find out all the tracert switches, just type "tracert" by itself at the command prompt. If you have trouble contacting a server, look for a particular router along the way where the slowdown starts (usually ms times of 300ms or more and some * action as well). Then, if the router has a name such as "blah.exodus.net," you can go to www.exodus.net and send them an e-mail about it. Important Note: Not all web servers and routers will respond to pings or tracerts. If you are ping'ing a site behind a firewall, such as www.microsoft.com, you will get timeouts. That doesn't mean that there is a problem, it just means that Microsoft is being smart and blocking pings. As well, it affects tracert's. If you tracert to a site that you can contact fine, and you hit a point where you get a bunch of "* * *" responses, then you probably are hitting a firewall. Another Note: Some routers are programmed to respond slowly to pings, so a high ms rating at one point of a tracert isn't a problem, unless it's slowing down the rest of the route. Then again, if a router is so taxed that the ISP has to put ping at a lower priority, you may be heading for trouble anyway. There you have it - tracert and ping, the only commands that keep me sane on the Internet, and even then, they leave much to be desired. On the plus side, they are built into the OS, so use them. Also, be careful about ping'ing and tracert'ing government sites. Ping can be used as a "denial of service" attack, so try to leave the government alone, or you may get your priviledges revoked. Ping can also be misused with the dreaded "ping of death" where you send a server a ping that is too large for it to handle and crash it. Of course, I only tell you this so that you won't do it by accident and get into trouble. Take care, and be the master of your web connection! Included with Windows 98 is a program called Trace Route. Open a DOS window and type tracert
location name. The location name can be any IP address or
number, for example: The program will then trace the route from your Internet provider to that location and show you every computer system along the way. Watch as you jump from coast to coast and over oceans via satellites and high speed connections instantly. Also very useful for when you can't connect to a site--it will show you if something is down along the way.
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