Tips & TidBITS
©
by Caroline Horton
This article was conceived and written from the mile high city of Colorado Springs. The oxygen is a little thin up here so do not blame me for the thin article.
Seems that Gateway 2000 is being shopped around - Compaq sniffed around but walked away dissatisfied. Micron is also on the block - HP or one of the Japanese companies might buy them.
Recently I had the opportunity to work (literally) on a Gateway, and found that Gateway’s tech support is not very supportive. Seems the system was shipped with the modem set to use COM1 and IRQ4. Sounds okay - but it also grabbed IRQ5(?). This is a rare condition that is found on some Gateway’s preventing their owners from playing DOS games from within Windows 95. Here is the solution to correct the problem - this was not provided by Gateway, they could not fix the problem!
The sound card was configured for IRQ10 - bad news. There is no way the sound card can run in true Sound Blaster emulation at IRQ10. A true Sound Blaster card likes IRQ5 and DOS games will accept either IRQ5 or IRQ7. There is one problem with IRQ7, that is the default IRQ for printer port 1 (LPT1). It is possible to configure your sound card to IRQ7, because you might not print anything while playing a game.
Configuring your sound card to IRQ10 will also grab, an IRQ that your system’s BIOS uses occasionally. This can result in an unstable system. This setting resulted in the Windows games playing sound normally but his DOS games would not start because they could not find a sound card. The modem also acted flaky - being set to use two (2), IRQ’s confused it. Sometimes it would work normally other times you received error messages.
When a signal is send to COM1 - COM4, which use IRQ 4 and IRQ 3 respectively, they use a specific address to get there. The computer could not reach the modem through IRQ5 because the address was not in the acceptable range for the modem. (Viscous circle, huh?)
To correct the problem it was a simple matter of clicking on START, CONTROL PANEL, and SYSTEMS. Once you are viewing the SYSTEM PROPERTIES, you simply select the DEVICE MANAGER tab and the VIEW DEVICES BY OPTION. This produces a complete listing of all the devices connected to your system.
Simply select the modem and then choose the options PROPERTIES and RESOURCES and turn off then automatic configuration option. You then have to select the box SETTINS BASED ON and change from BASIC CONFIGURATION 0000 to BASIC CONFIGURATION 0001. Click on the CHANGE SETTINGS button and reset the modem to IRQ4 (COM1) manually. The next step was to select the sound card, choose the options PROPERTIES, and RESOURCES and turn off then automatic configuration option. You then have to select the box SETTINS BASED ON and change from BASIC CONFIGURATION 0000 to BASIC CONFIGURATION 0001. Click on the CHANGE SETTINGS button and reset the sound card to IRQ5 manually.
After all this is completed you exit the DIALOG boxes by selecting the OK buttons.
Once you have shut down all of the dialog boxes, it is necessary to restart your system - be sure to shut down Windows correctly. When your system restarts the correct settings will exist for your sound card.
You may be experiencing the problem about DOS games not running under Windows 95. If you have a Gateway check out this solution, if you do not have a Gateway check out the settings for your sound card using the above process.
An unsual bug exists in Word for Windows 97. If you enter the word "zzzz" in your document the spell checker will flag it as misspelled. The spelling correction offered is "sex", that must be why people smile in their sleep!
When you install, uninstall, and reinstall programs on your computer, registry entries are created, modified, and/or deleted. Over time, your computer's registry may begin to contain corrupted, unused, and unnecessary registry keys, especially if the entries are not removed when you uninstall a program. As a result, you may begin to experience problems when using OLE to embed objects or Automation to control other programs.
People keep talking about ways to clean your
REGISTRY file, here is a solution provided by Microsoft itself!The program from Microsoft is called RegClean, and the utility is designed to clean up unnecessary registry entries in your registry. RegClean originally was included with Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 and is also available for download from the Microsoft web site. We have uploaded it to the CNYPCUG BBS for download also - it is a free utility from Microsoft and is therefore licensed by Microsoft!
The name of the file is RegCln41.exe (size: 412699 bytes).The RegClean utility, which was originally supplied with Microsoft Visual Basic version 4.0 for Windows, has been updated. The current version of RegClean is 4.1 and this Microsoft utility is available for downloading free of charge. The self-extracting download file is RegCln41.EXE, and contains a ReadMe.TXT and RegClean.EXE file.
When you run RegClean, it creates a file with the following name: Undo
The Undo file contains the registry entries that were removed by the RegClean program. You can view the saved file by right-clicking the file and clicking Edit on the shortcut menu. If you have any problems after editing your registry file they can be restored by double-clicking the
Undo command.Check out either of our web sites at
HTTP://WWW.SOLUTIONSUNLIMITEDOFNY.COM or HTTP://WWW.WEB-CONSULTANTS.COM - if you want to read any of our past articles, or would like more tips and hints. We will also be providing direct links for hardware and software manufacturers - which provide free downloadable upgrades. We have provided means for your questions and answers. Please feel free to visit our sites - they are being upgraded daily (if you have any suggestions, please feel free to post them).Also when you visit our sites and read one of our articles the HYPERLINKS (addresses) listed above and in other articles will be active. What this provides - is simply clicking on then will automatically take you to the site listed!
Sorry about the short column this month - the call of the wild is too tempting.
