Welcome to the Unpublished Tips Corner of MicroMetric's TipSheet, the monthly newsletter targeted at addressing the needs of our customers. Since we are constantly collecting more tips than we have room for in the published TipSheet, we have opened this area for the one's that haven't been used yet. As they are published, the tip number will change from the unpublished one used here to the sequential published one. These unpublished tips have been gathered in groups of no more than 100, for ease of viewing.
To boot to an older version of DOS, if one is still on your system, after the boot screen says 'Starting Windows 95', press the key. Of course, if you don't still have an older DOS version, this will not work.
To boot in Safe Mode (without network support, special graphics, or access to most peripherals), after the boot screen says 'Starting Windows 95', press the key. If you are having system lockups during booting, this is normally the forst troubleshooting step.
To boot in Safe Mode with network support (no special graphics, or access to most peripherals), after the boot screen says 'Starting Windows 95', press the key.
To present a menu of boot options, after the boot screen says 'Starting Windows 95', press the key. A menu of all possible book options will be displayed. Highlight the desired option, and press .
Keep you fingers on the keyboard as much as possible. Press [CTRL][ESC] to bring up the Start menu, followed by the first letter of the menu option you want.
HELP. Accessable from the Start Menu, it searches for words and phrases, in addition to topics. With its guided tours, tips, how-tos, troubleshooting advice, and "Click here" buttons to step you through operations, it puts Windows 3.x's Help to shame.
Windows 95 can recognize and automatically configure Plug and Play hardware - sound cards, CD-ROM drives, and the like - with little user intervention. It also helps with older cards, but don't expect mircles.
Used to DOS. Windows 95 comes with a new DOS - Version 7. It includses a new Start command, workable copy and paste, improved performance of applications in a DOS window and automatic scaling of TrueType fonts.
Looking to move an active window but don't feel like using that silly mouse? Simply hold down the Alt key while you press the Spacebar, type the letter 'M,' and you'll see a four-pointed arrow appear in the title bar of the active window. Now just use your arrow keys to move that window left, right, up or down; or use two at once, to move it diagonally. (Tip: This is extra-handy if you've dragged most of a window, including all of its title bar, off the screen.) When you get it exactly where you want it, hit Enter, and the cursor keys drop the window. To undo a move, hit Esc before hitting Enter, and that window will jump back to where it started.
You've probably done lots of copying, cutting and pasting in your lifetime, but have you thought about where those items go in between the cut (or copy) and paste? Windows 95 sends the item you cut or copy--text, graphics, files, whatever--to the Clipboard. For an up-close and personal look, open a file in Word Pro, select some text or a graphic, and click the Copy icon. Now choose Programs under Start, click Accessories, and finally, select Clipboard Viewer. Is the text or graphic you just copied staring you in the face? You betcha. Try one more test: With the Clipboard Viewer still open, select something else in the Word Pro document (again, text or graphic), click the Copy icon, and watch as the Clipboard Viewer boots out the old contents and welcomes the new.
If you think you might use the Clipboard's contents again, save it as a .CLP file. Just like an application, the Clipboard keeps .CLP files around so you can use them again and again. With the Clipboard Viewer open, pull down the File menu, choose Save As, and in the resulting dialog box, give the current Clipboard contents a name. Click OK, and the .CLP file's been saved. Whenever you need that item in the future, just call up the .CLP file in the Clipboard Viewer, (choose Open under File, select that file, and click Yes to confirm that you want to clear the Clipboard's contents), and paste to your heart's content. It's like cutting or copying that item again except you don't have to do all the traipsing around to find it.
Windows 95 thinks it's important that the Clipboard's contents be available at a moment's notice, so it keeps them in its very short-term storage area or in memory. Our point being? If you've copied something large to the Clipboard, and you won't be needing it again, then get it out of there. Select something really small, such as a word, or even a single letter, and copy it to the Clipboard. In usual Clipboard style, it'll wipe out its current contents, thereby freeing up memory.
Want to have immediate access to a particular spot in a Word document? Then bookmark it with a specialized Windows 95 shortcut. Shortcuts typically take you to the beginning of a document, but if you know this one little trick, you can set one up to take you to a specific area of text. First, downsize the application window holding your document, so you can see the desktop behind it. Now, select the area of text you'd like to come back to, and, using the right mouse button, click and drag it out onto the desktop (you could also drag it to the Start menu or to a folder). Let go, choose Create Document Shortcut Here, and you've got yourself a bookmark. The title tells you the exact text it represents. (If you want, rename it to include the name of the file it came from.) When you double-click your bookmark, the file it came from opens (unless it's already open), and you're whisked straight to the area of text it represents. Service with a smile!
If you aren't a member of the AutoPlay Club (in other words, your audio CDs don't play automatically when you put them in your CD-ROM drive), you can still join up by knocking out that tedious step of clicking the Play button once the CD Player opens. After one quick setting change, opening the CD Player will automatically start the music. In the Windows Explorer, find the shortcut (not the EXE file) that you use to start the CD Player (probably the one in the Start menu), click it with the right mouse button, and choose Properties. See the Target line? Place your cursor at the end of the text there, type a space, then type /PLAY. Click OK, and you'll never have to click the CD Player's Play button again. Just pop in your CD and start the CD Player.
Windows 95 doesn't think to remove an item from the New list (the one you get if you click on the desktop or in a folder with the right mouse button and choose New), even if you delete the application it refers to. Not a big deal, though. You can remove these items yourself. All it takes is a quick trip to the File Types tab. In a Windows 95 window (not an application window), pull down the View menu, choose Options, and click the File Types tab. Now scroll down the list until you see the file type that represents the item you'd like to remove from the New list, select it, and click the Remove button. You'll get a message asking you if you're sure that's what you want to do. Click Yes, and say good-bye and good riddance to that New list item.
A couple of tips ago, we showed you how to temporarily disable your CD-ROM's AutoPlay feature (assuming you're lucky enough to have it) by holding down Shift after you pop an audio CD into the drive. For the more permanent-minded in the bunch, here's how to turn AutoPlay off altogether: Hold down Alt and double-click My Computer to open the System Properties dialog box. Click the Device Manager tab; double-click the CD-ROM drive in the list of device types; select your CD-ROM drive by name; click the Properties button; click the Settings tab; and, finally, deselect Auto insert notification. Whew! Oh, yes, and click OK--twice. (By the way, if the Auto insert notification option is grayed out, you don't have AutoPlay capability--this tip isn't for you. If it isn't grayed out and isn't selected, now you know why your AutoPlay wasn't working! Select it, click OK twice, and join the club.)
Are you responsible for the deployment and/or installation of Windows 95 in your office? Are you simply dying to know more about the Windows 95 Architecture? Does the word "Registry" make you drool? Then you need the Windows 95 Resource Kit, available on the installation CD (among other places, as we'll get to). Designed mainly for administrators, the Resource Kit is loaded with technical information about Windows 95. To get your very own copy of the Resource Kit, pop your Windows 95 installation CD into your computer; use Explorer to navigate your way to D:\ADMIN\RESKIT\HELPFILE, then copy WIN95RK.HLP and WIN95RK.CNT to your C:\WINDOWS\HELP folder. Create a shortcut to the WIN95RK.HLP file (such as in the System Tools folder of your Start menu), and you've got instant access to those help files, should the mood strike. Select the shortcut, and, boy, will you have your reading cut out for you!
Paint's eraser tool is more complex than it seems. It doesn't really "erase" anything. It simply colors an area with a different color--the background color, to be exact--just like most other Paint tools. So it only creates the illusion of erasing. Did you know that you can change the color the eraser uses (change the background color really)? For example, you might change it to green to erase a purple line drawn on a green area. Just click any color in the palette with the right mouse button, and you'll see the bottom of the two overlapping squares at the edge of the color palette change to that color. Try using the eraser now, and it's a new hue.
You can use the eraser to wipe out one specific color in your drawing, ignoring everything else around it. Using the same technique, you can change all the elements of one color to another one. Either way, just pick your color, and right-mouse it! With the eraser tool selected, click the color you'd like to erase or change with the left mouse button. Now use the right mouse button to click the color you want to replace it with. (Don't click anything if you want to "erase" the color; in other words, leave the drawing's current background color selected. The background color is indicated by the bottom of the two overlapping squares at the edge of the color palette.) Once you've selected your new color (or background), use the right mouse button to drag the eraser over the color you're trying to erase or change. It won't touch anything but that one color! Pretty slick, eh?
To remove the StartUp logo (the Windows 95 logo with the cloud background) from your Windows 95 boot, add the statement 'LOGO=0' to the [Options] section of your MSDOS.SYS file. (You can make the change in Notepad. MSDOS.SYS is right on your hard drive. Save your change, and whatever you do, don't mess with anything else in that file!)
In our last tip, we showed you how to remove the Windows 95 StartUp logo, which means that any time you start Windows 95, you'll see what's really happening (all those descriptions scrolling past you). Want to slow things down a bit to see exactly what's going on? Just press Pause on your keyboard, and the whole thing screeches to a halt. When you're finished reading, hit any key on your keyboard to start it up again. (Of course, you can pause the boot even if you haven't removed the logo screen. You just won't see much!)