C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XVIII: NUMBER 2 MARCH, 2003
NEXT MEETING: March 18, 2003 6:00PM KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: LINDA FALCON ON BERNINA COMPUTERIZED HOME SEWING MACHINES
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) Officers, Helplines, S.I.G.s
(2) President's Corner Charles Barney
(3) S.I.G. for Novices Amy Malicki
(4) Editor's Comments Dick Trissel
(5) Web Wanderings Gil Smith
(6) Systems S.I.G. Dick Trissel
(7) Bootable CDs Dick Trissel
(8) Books Added To The Library Barbara Godwin
(9) CD Burning Part 2 Dick Trissel
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OFFICERS HELPLINES
President Juno
Charles Barney 937-1240 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
cbarney@lightspeed.net Gs5081@aol.com
Vice President Windows 95/98/ME/XP & VoiceControl
Richard Holmes 938-0622 Amy Malicki 925-5780
holmesr1@juno.com amymal@juno.com
Secretary and Book Librarian Hardware & DOS
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yung.bag@verizon.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer AOL
Gerry Miller 934-1396 Frank Maciel 922-2318
2741 Banyan Way frm8198@aol.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
Gmiller@pronet.net
Disk Librarian
Sharon Allen 928-2209
sallen4060@aol.com
Publicity Help With Any Problem
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com wd64acj@netzero.net
Newsletter Editor Visual Basic
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Gerald Miller 934-1396
rtrissel@juno.com Gmiller@pronet.net
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (S.I.G.s)
Novice (6:00pm) Systems (5:45pm)
Amy Malicki Dick Trissel
amymal@juno.com rtrissel@juno.com
CCCC Membership is $15 for twelve months ($20 family). For this you
receive:
Monthly newsletter
EXTRA4C E-mail Messages
Access to the clubs software library
Disk of the month (usually for $1)
Helpline support
Monthly presentation
Valuable door prizes
Question and answer sessions
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CCCC Page 2 March 2003
PRESIDENT'S CORNER
by Charles Barney
A cozy group of 54 were in attendance at the February 18th meeting of the
4Cs. Not too crowded, not too thin. Just about right!
Joining us were new members Joe and Lena Roberts. Welcome to our user
group! It is our sincere wish that you will enjoy and benefit from the
meetings and grow to feel comfortable participating in the discussions. We
are an unpretentious bunch and encourage all members to ask any questions
they may have and to share their own knowledge as well. Sharing - that's
really the basic glue that binds us all together.
Kevin Walters of Comstar Computers was gracious enough to accept a short-
notice invitation and came to speak at the meeting. This was Kevin's 4th
annual appearance at our group and, as he always manages to do, led a
lively and diversified dialogue with the audience in a question-and-answer
format. The topic that seemed to generate the greatest interest on the
floor was that of computer security, or protecting yourself from the
various bugaboos encountered on the Internet. Kevin told us that over the
past year, he figures that he has billed customers thousands of dollars to
correct their computer problems caused by viruses and the like. He stressed
that today we need to be proactive in defending ourselves. Up-to-date anti-
virus software, firewalls, spyware detectors, and email spam filtering
techniques are all available tools in our arsenal to shield us from the
onslaught.
The happy members who walked away with door prizes included Carter Jones -
Ream of Premium Ink Jet Paper, Ken Stiffler - ACDSee 5.0 Image Management
Program, Bob Sanford - Gel Wrist Support Mouse Pad, Fred Adams - King Sol
Solitaire 400 Game Collection, and (STOP THE PRESSES!) Dick Trissel -
Microsoft Zoo Tycoon Game with Dinosaur Expansion Pack.
Called for a prize but conspicuously not present were Phil Grycel, Jim
Burress, Russ Connors, John Simko, Donald Rowe, and Bob Meldau.
One member said at the meeting that when he did a Google search for his
name on the Internet, it came up in a 4Cs newsletter list of no-shows
missing out on a door prize! Now, you don't want that to be your claim to
fame do you? Hint: Come to the meetings!
We plan to have something a little different for you at the March 18th
meeting. Linda Falcon of Santa Maria Sewing and Vac is scheduled to show us
some of the latest technology integrating computers with that old household
standby, the sewing machine. This isn't your mother's Singer! It should be
fascinating. I'll see you at the clubhouse.- Charles
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CCCC Page 3 March 2003
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (S.I.G.) FOR NOVICES
By Amy L. Malicki
This "NEW" six o'clock session meets in one of the smaller clubrooms. It
is intended to provide answers to new user questions.
We will talk about more Mouse and Keystroke Commands, opening and Closing
programs, and Saving and Finding files.
There will not be an overhead projector. However, there will be
instruction sheets with space to make notes about the subjects being
discussed and a Glossary of basic computer terms.
The Agenda is just to provide some direction and will be adjusted to fill
the needs of those attending.
Future sessions will cover Saving to a floppy disk, Zip drives and (CD's if
you have XP)
Bring your questions, even if you are not a novice, and I will try to
answer them
__________________________________________________________________________
If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it will always be
yours. If it doesn't come back, it was never yours to begin with. But, if
it just sits in your living room, messes up your stuff, eats your food,
uses your telephone, takes your money, and doesn't appear to realize that
you had set it free... You either married it or gave birth to it.
I read this article that said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too
much, impulse buying, and driving too fast. Are they kidding? That's my
idea of a perfect day.
My mind not only wanders, it sometimes leaves completely.
Sometimes I think I understand everything, then I regain consciousness.
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CCCC Page 4 March 2003
EDITOR'S COMMENTS
by Dick Trissel
Now that the dust has settled and the smoke cleared, the CCCC membership,
as of this writing, is at 93 (counting spouses). It was 94 this time last
year, and then grew to 109 (including those that during the year moved
away, passed on, or just passed).
After the February presentation I was asked to publish the speakers
business address, etc. He is:
Kevin Walters
Comstar Computers
2530-E So. Broadway
Santa Maria
805-349-0095
comstar@comstar-computers.com
Be sure to tell him you are a CCCC member for the discount.
There's been a feature added to the club's Web site
(http://member.apcug.org/fourseas). At the bottom of the home page is a
"hit" counter that registers the number of visitors since 11 February 2003
(about 130 as of this writing). If you click on it, you can then choose
from a large list of options to display the information about the visitors
- who (the domain), where (time zone), how (operating system and browser
used), and more. Try it - it's interesting. And, it's free.
I know other clubs read the copies of the CCCC newsletter that's on our Web
site because I get e-mail from them acknowledging that they are including
some of our articles in their newsletters - particularly product reviews
and technical articles.
Every once in while I get a "bounce" from a member's e-mail address when I
send out the EXTRA4C bulletins. Usually it is either a Hotmail, MSN, or
Earthlink server. This doesn't speak well for the reliability of these
ISPs. I just now read that MSN deliberately stopped their e-mail for a
short time a while ago. E-mail sent to MSN or Hotmail during that time was
lost forever.
I used to re-send the bulletin, and it usually went through the next time.
So, I know it is a temporary situation. However, that person probably lost
other e-mail. So, be forewarned, I'm not doing the re-sending anymore
I apologize for the cookie volunteers for the date error in the February
newsletter. It even got by my proofreader. I noticed no one complained,
though. I guess they were afraid that if they did they would get the job.
You betcha!
Let's try it again...
__________________________________________________________________________
MARCH COOKIES
Thanks in advance to the March "Cookies" volunteers:
Ben Middleton and Cherri & Richard Holmes.
__________________________________________________________________________
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CCCC Page 5 March 2003
WEB WANDERINGS
By Gil Smith
THE MOTLEY FOOL
The ultimate site for financial advice is here for you now. Hot topics on
the site right now are Real Estate the Easy Way, How to Invest $100 or
less, Surviving Family Finance, and much more. This site has advice on
everything from refinancing your mortgage to repairing your credit. Not
only that, you can find business tips from a financial stance as well.
There is a fabulous How-To section that has a ton of information. If you
have a financial question, there's most likely a solution for it on this
site. Hope this one helps out your pocket books.
http://www.fool.com/
THE DIGITAL DAILY
This is the official site for the Internal Revenue Service (cue scary
background music). Here you will find up to date tax information, tax
help, information on tax scams and frauds, and the ability to file online.
What laws have changed since you filed last year? Do you qualify for
terrorism-related relief? Would you like a job at the IRS? At this site
you can find all of this out and more. It's never too early to start
thinking about your taxes, so click here and get a head start.
http://www.irs.gov/
THE QUOTATION PAGE
"A rose is a rose is a. . .er. umm, I forget." Can't you remember all of a
famous quote? Do you need quotes for a web page or a speech? Do you just
like quotes? Well then this site is for you. This site boasts being the
oldest quotation site on the web with its original start up date of 1994.
With many featured topics and over 15,000 quotes, you will probably find
what you're looking for. Even more fantastic, there is even a search
engine that you can use by keyword or author. Have a literary day!
http://www.quotationspage.com/
U.S. CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION
Another one for all of us consumers! This site has all the recent U.S.
recalls that were issued for safety. You'll want to bookmark or put this
one in your favorites so that you can keep up with it. But it isn't just
for recalls! You can also find safety information here. You'll appreciate
the "4 Kids" section which talks about safety for your children. Please
check out the recalls and this kid's section if you have children or
grandchildren. The recalls on the page the day I checked it out were
mostly toys, and baby products. Don't let your kids get hurt by an unsafe
product. There is also a section for you to report an unsafe product.
http://www.cpsc.gov/
EPICURIOUS
Yeah I know, right now you're wondering what the heck a site with the name
of Epicurious is about. Well, let me tell you. It's all about food. And
surfing this site made me hungry. You will like this site because, other
than the fantastic content, it has a fabulous and easy navigation system.
Just scroll over the words on the top and then down to the topic you'd like
to check out. You can choose from Home, Eat, Drink, Learn, Shop, Recipes,
Restaurants, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, TV, and Forums. Hours of exploration
and fabulous food
fun, get hungry and enjoy!
http://eat.epicurious.com/
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CCCC Page 6 March 2003
SYSTEMS S.I.G.
by Dick Trissel
We started the February session with a brief discussion about how some of
the new computers are not going to have 3.5in. floppy drives installed.
This could be a problem for someone like me that still uses floppies for
file archiving and transfer. With three computer systems (8 hard drive
systems), I do a lot of transferring from one system to another. Of
course, the new systems have USB ports, and there are USB floppy drives
available.
Another "improvement" to some of the new computers is the use of a "hidden"
partition on the hard drive. This contains the installable operating
system image (instead of an operating system CD). Supposedly, this is to
aid the tech. rep. in troubleshooting your computer. He can just tell you
to reinstall the system. Of course, that puts the computer back the way it
was when you bought it. Ain't that neat?
One person had a problem with their browser automatically dialing. This
may be due to an improper setting in the browser. In Internet Explorer /
Tools / Internet Options / Connections there are three options to control
this:
o Never dial a connection
o Dial whenever a network connection
is not present
o Always dial my default connection
Be sure the first one is the only one selected (unless you really want the
others).
It was announced that the Norton Professional 2003 (usually $100) is
available under some conditions with a $40 discount, and another $30, and
another $20. I missed how and where you get these discounts, but I think
it is at the Norton Web site. And one discount was if you were upgrading.
However, someone said it was available at a discount at Costco.
The question came up of how to install a new large hard drive and copy the
old drive operating system to it. One member has just finished doing that.
After trying a few other methods that didn't work, he finally used
PowerQuest DriveImage and PartitionMagic to get what he wanted. Be
careful. The options in DriveImage are not that clear about retaining
access to the operating system on the old source drive. In this case, the
old drive C:/ partition ended up "hidden", and had to be unhidden and have
the master boot record rewritten.
The free anti-virus program AVG from http://www.Grisoft.com was lauded. It
seems to do the job. You can't fault the price, and the updates are free
and easily downloaded (self-installed, if you choose).
The question was posed as to whether you need to do anything special to
close a CD when making a copy using the CD Copier option of a CD burning
program. No--nothing is required by the user.
Then there was a question of formatting CDs for packet writing (drag and
drop like a floppy). Yes, they must be formatted. CD-R discs only take a
minute to format. A CD-RW disc will take from 25 to 35 minutes to format.
Once a CD-R is formatted, it cannot be used for any other purpose.
However, a formatted CD-RW disc can be erased which puts it back to its
original form. To erase a formatted CD-RW in Easy CD Creator version 4,
you must go to C:\Program Files\Adaptec\DirectCD and double click
CDEraser.exe.
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CCCC Page 7 March 2003
BOOTABLE CDS by Dick Trissel
What is a bootable CD and who cares? A bootable CD is a CD that
automatically boots up an operating system when you turn on your computer,
provided certain conditions are met. The value of this CD is that you can
start your computer even if the Windows operating system won't boot up so
that you can troubleshoot the problem.
How does this differ from a bootable floppy? None--only the media is
different. So why not just use a floppy? There are several reasons.
There is a size limit to a floppy such that only a certain amount of
utility programs can be on it. Of course, you can have more than one
floppy. The integrity of CDs is much greater than floppies. A recent
development may also influence the use of CDs over floppies--some new
computers don't have floppy disk drives!
Presently there are two ways to make a bootable CD. One is a free
downloadable file that makes an Emergency Boot CD (EBCD). Actually, there
are two versions--the EBCDlite (3.4MB) and the EBCDpro (15MB). Here's the
promo:
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http://www.ebcd.i-am.ru/
Emergency Boot CD v0.3 Lite (W9x/2k/XP FREE)
EBCD is a bootable CD for system recovery that comes with a set of
utilities for backup, restore, repair, and low-level administration. Create
backup copies of a working system so it can be restored, if necessary (we
hope not!). The program can copy and move files, perform emergency boots,
recover the master hard drive boot record, reallocate disk space, change
passwords, and recover deleted files and data. There are two versions: Lite
and Pro, and both are free.
EBCD Pro contains more software and therefore it has bigger size. EBCD Lite
is "truncated" version of EBCD Pro.
The content of these distributions is the following:
Software Size EBCD Lite EBCD Pro
DOS v7.10 external commands 835 K + +
Console versions of archivers 670 K - +
Volkov Commander 4.99.8 200 K + +
VC viewing tools 3.8 M - +
Powerquest PartitionMagic 6.0 1.4 M - +
Norton Ghost PE 635 K - +
NU : Norton Diskedit 773 K - +
NU : Norton Wipeinfo 165 K + +
NU : Norton Unformat 465 K + +
Floppy Disk Reanimator 50 K + +
WinNT/2000/XP boot disk 1.4 M + +
Rescue Linux 5.3 M - +
Linux: NT password recovery 1.4 M + +
XOSL: eXtended operating system loader 1.5 M + +
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I have copies of the EBCD programs and/or the bootable CDs made from these
programs for those that don't want to or can't do the download.
The second way is to make your own bootable CD using a floppy or a floppy
image and a CD burning program such as Easy CD Creator CreateCD using the
Data CD / New / Bootable CD option (see the CreateCD Help for Bootable CD).
In Windows 9X/ME the emergency recovery startup bootable floppy is made
from the Windows utility by going to:
Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs / Startup Disk. If
you have a real Windows operating system (OS) CD, click on Create Disk and
then follow the Create Disk instructions. Otherwise, type in the path on
your hard drive for the OS image. Or, get a startup floppy for your
particular OS from someone (like me).
A simple emergency boot floppy can be made by formatting it with the
command: format a: /s (or choose Copy System Files from Windows Format
option) and then add any utilities you want to the floppy. This floppy
will be specific to your particular computer configuration.
Making an emergency boot floppy for Windows XP is much different and too
much to outline here. Some XP systems come with an emergency boot CD.
Now that you have a bootable CD there is one other requirement you need to
have to be able to test it. You need the computer BIOS boot order option
set to try to boot from the CD drive before it tries the hard drive. After
you've tested the CD you can set the BIOS to whatever order you prefer.
Accessing the BIOS and setting this boot order is different for most
computers--even from the same manufacturer depending on model and age. If
you don't know how to access the BIOS then just make your boot disc and
hope it works when you need it.
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CCCC Page 8 March 2003
BOOKS ADDED TO LIBRARY By Barbara Godwin
Two new books have been added to the library this month. They are:
How to do Everything with your Digital Camera.
Windows XP Inside Out.
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CCCC Page 9 March 2003
CD BURNING PART 2
by Dick Trissel
There are three types of CD discs for burning ("burning" is the term for
writing because of the heat required in the process). The two we are
concerned with is the CD-R (Recordable) and CD-RW (Re-Writable). The music
CD is only needed for special burning equipment and will not be discussed
here.
The CD-R disc comes ready to be written on in the CD copy mode or in the
multi-session mode. It must be formatted to be used for packet writing
(drag and drop like a floppy disk). The formatting is a one minute
operation that only reserves space for the directory.
A CD-R disc can be added to after previous writings, only if it is
terminated properly after each writing. In the multi-session mode (using a
"layout"), using the TAO (track-at-once) option and choosing not to close
the disc, will allow additional sessions.
A formatted CD-R disc can be written to many times depending on which
option is chosen when the "eject" is done. There are three options. One
is "Leave as is". This allows writing to the disc later, deleting
files/folders, renaming the disc-everything you would do with a floppy
disk. However, it can only be read in a CD burner.
The second CD-R option lets you close the disc, but allows you to make it
writable again. This uses 15 megabytes of disc space each time. The disc
can only be read in a computer multi-read CD player.
The third option closes the disc permanently (can't write to it again), but
it can be read in any CD player.
Even though formatted CD-R discs can be used like floppy disks, they will
eventually fill up - any apparent rewriting is really using up more space.
The CD-RW disc comes ready to be written on in the CD copy mode or in the
multi-session mode. It must be formatted to be used for packet writing
(drag and drop like a floppy disk). The formatting is a 25 to 35 minute
operation because it actual writes to the entire disc and takes up about
130 megabytes of disc space. However, a formatted CD-RW disc (or any CD-RW
disc) can be erased, which puts it back to the "off-the-shelf" form.
The same rules apply for a CD-RW disc using the multi-session mode as for a
CD-R disc.
Just like a CD-R disc, a formatted CD-RW disc allows writing to the disc,
deleting files/folders, renaming the disc-everything you would do with a
floppy disk. Unlike a CD-R disc, a CD-RW disc formatted for packet writing
(drag and drop) has only one eject mode. It can be read in any computer
multi-read CD player, but not in any other CD player.
Because CD-RW discs can be erased (totally recoverable) I prefer them over
CD-R discs whenever possible. Not only can I correct mistakes in data
recording, I can easily transfer very large files to others. Also, they
are recommended for system and data backups because they can be recycled.
If you are willing to do the rebate thing, and are watching the ads, you
can get CD-R discs for a few pennies each. CD-RW discs on sale can be
bought for about 50 cents each in packages of 25 - enough for a lifetime
for most of us
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