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NEWSLETTER June 1996
Meets 4th Sunday of each month, 7:00 pm
Note Change of Location
Veteran's Memorial Hospital, Room 1613A
Corner of Robie and Jubilee Road, Halifax, N.S.
23 June Meeting
Opening Topics - Windows Feature
- Question and Answer
Feature Event - Networking Computers
Live demo, speakers from the society
Announcements:
Disk Library Report
The latest on the library - by Thane MacLean
Windows95 Registry - Bill Marchant
The Newsletter - A few notes about what goes into this document
GENERAL INFORMATION
This document is mailed to all paid up members and to anyone who
has attended a meeting within the past three months. Yearly
membership dues are $15.00. The text of the newsletter is
available on Chebucto Community Net and local bulletin boards.
Society Mailing Address -
P.O. Box 185 Stn. Main, Dartmouth N.S., B2Y 3Y3
Executive
Chairperson - David Potter
Vice-Chair - Bill Marchant
Secretary/Newsletter Editor - Colin Stuart
Treasurer - Garth Bennett
Disk Librarian - Thayne MacLean
and also Norman DeForest, Henry Hill, Arthur Layton, Rob
MacCara, Andy Cornwall, George Richards, and Diane Smith
Notes on the Annual General Meeting, 4 June 1996
Members in attendance: Colin Stuart, Henry Hill, Norman Deforest, Bill Marchant, David Potter, Thane McLean.
For the next Meeting, June 23
A Networking Demonstration using Novell and Windows for Work Groups.
The financial report for the year's activities will be published in the June Newsletter. Action by Colin
Stuart, Treasurer.
Next years general meetings will start at 6:30 pm, with the first 45 minutes devoted to items of particular
interest to novices.
Fund raising: We would like to be able to hold a raffle for a computer system. Take a table at flea
markets to sell tickets. Members to sell tickets to the general public. Aim for the draw to take place by
Christmas. Action by David Potter.
The monthly newspaper ads do not appear to be attracting many new members, and will be dropped.
The club needs several members who are willing to become members of the executive. there are
several good jobs going begging at the moment. In particular, we would like a volunteer for Chairman.
Action by David Potter and others.
Essay contest: We would like to hold an essay contest for students, to provide more input to our
Newsletter, and to encourage the participation of more people in the affairs of the club. Action by Bill
Marchant.
The regular monthly meetings of the
Society will be held in Room 1613A of the Veteran's Memorial
Hospital (VMH) at the corner of Robie Street and Jubilee Road,
Halifax. The planning meetings will be held in a different room
in the same building. These facilities are provided at no cost
to the Society.
There is underground parking available at the VMH at a cost of
$1.10 /hour. For anyone who wishes to use it, the elevator from
the parking area takes you directly to the lobby. The parking
bill is paid to the concessionaire in the lobby when you go to
return to your car. There is also parking available on the
nearby streets. Both Robie Street and Summer Street have parking
meters, and at our meeting time on Sunday evening they are most
likely to be uncontested by others.
Society Address Change
Please note the new mailing address for the Society:
P.O. Box 185, Stn. Main
Dartmouth, N.S.
B2Y 3Y3
Membership Expiry Dates
For those of you who are not already aware, the membership expiry
dates are printed in the upper right corner of your newsletter
mailing label. If you wish to continue to receive this
newsletter and know what interesting meetings are coming up, you
either have to renew ($15 per year) or come to the meetings and
put your name on the list that is passed around.
DELPHI
The Metro Halifax Delphi Developers Group meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm.
The meetings are held at the CCL Group Building 2669 Dutch Village Road, Halifax.
Further information may be obtained from Dave Hackett at 835-3894,
CIS:71650,2646 or from Carey Rolfe at 462 4551 or e-mail rolfe@ra.isisnet.com.
OS/2 Users Group
This group meets sometimes on the second Wednesday of the month
at Purdy's Wharf Tower Two. For information contact Donovan Long
at 422 1975 or by e-mail at tsst@isisnet.com.
Advertising and Want Ads
We don't charge for small individual want ads. That is any
Society member or other interested person with some computer
related item that they wish to sell, trade, or give away can
contact the editor to place an ad in the newsletter. We would
expect that more commercially oriented advertising provide the
Society with some remuneration for carrying the ad.
An ad will normally only appear once but let me know if you need
it repeated. Ads can be given to me at meetings or give me a
call two weeks to ten days before the next general meeting
(newsletter deadline).
Disk Library Report
June 1996
Thayne MacLean
Well we have come to the end of another Year and "Summer Break"
is upon us. I wish to Thank all those who have contributed to
the Disk Library and Hope that Everyone has a Safe and
Enjoyable Summer.
At the June Meeting I Will have Copies of the Following Disk's.
2. Virus Scan from McAfee (Dated May 1996) (Latest!!)
Dos and Windows(3x) Versions, PLUS Win95 Version!!!
3. Another Windows Communications Program."Telemate for Windows"
4. PLUS... 'Whatever I Can Find Before the 23rd??'
In the Fall I plan on Trying several New thing's with the
Library. For example Including a Monthly Feature in the News
Letter each Month. This could take the form of 1. A Short
Explanation of an Interesting Program. 2. Interesting Internet
Sites (Including Address!!) 3.??????????!!!!!
Any Idea's that you might have would be Greatly Appreciated.
If I can be of any assistance to you over the summer or if you
require a certain piece of software.
The Windows 95 Registry
by Bill Marchant
At the May meeting I talked about how to change some of the entries in the Windows
95 Registry using the REGEDIT.EXE program. I was asked how to make a backup of
the registry files in case something goes wrong with the editing process. This article will
answer that question which I didn't have time to talk about at the meeting.
Windows 95 uses a structure called the Registry to take the place of the *.INI files which
were used by Windows 3.1, (Windows 95 still knows how to use *.INI files so programs
that use them will run correctly). The registry keeps track of hardware and software
configurations. Each time a change is made, the registry is updated.
The registry is actually a database consisting of several files, but organized into six KEY
branches. These are: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT], [HKEY_USERS],
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER], [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE],
[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIGURATION] and [HKEY_DYN_DATA]
You can see these branch names by executing the program REGEDIT.EXE which is
found in the C:\Windows folder. (This assumes that you are using the C: drive and you
are using the default name Windows, for the Windows 95 files). Each branch can be
expanded by clicking the + sign adjacent to its name, and further + signs can be clicked
until the entire tree structure is revealed.
Two hidden, system, read-only files make up the registry. They are SYSTEM.DAT and
USER.DAT. these are binary files and cannot be easily read with an ASCII editor, so
you need REGEDIT to examine them.
Many changes to the registry are made through dialog boxes called up by the
configuration option on the floating menu. That's the one you get when you right click
on an object. Some things, like changing the size of the double-click-box require the
use of REGEDIT.
Each time you start or restart your computer, Windows 95 makes backup copies of
System.dat and User.dat. These are called System.da0 and User.da0. (The final
character of the extension is a zero). If windows fails to start, you can use the backup
files from the last successful start to enable your recovery.
There is also another System.dat backup file called System.1st. It is in the root
directory of your boot drive. It was made when windows 95 was first installed, and
contains the configuration of your computer as it was at that time. It is possible to copy
System.1st to System.dat if required, when there is no other way to start windows.
If Windows 95 fails to start properly, it will revert to SAFE mode. If you have never seen
this, don't worry, it will be obvious when it happens. The word SAFE appears in the
four corners of the screen. It means that the System.da0 and User.da0 files that were
created at the previous successful start are intact.
The process for restoring the Registry is outlined in the Trouble Shooting Annex of the
Windows 95 manual. I will paraphrase it here, and add a few comments of my own.
When you start your computer you have undoubtedly noticed the message "Starting
Windows 95" on the screen. When you see this message, press and release the F8
key. This will bring up a menu of eight choices (which are also described in the Trouble
Shooting Appendix). The selection you want on this occasion is number 6 (Command
Prompt Only). A DOS prompt will appear. The DOS commands which you need in
order to accomplish the following things are also available. In fact, if you have a path in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, you will find that the path is valid.
FIRST: Enter CD C:\WINDOWS
This will put you in the correct folder (directory). Of course, if you are using a different
drive letter or folder name, you must enter the correct one.
SECOND: Enter ATTRIB *.DA*
This will enable you to see the four System and User files. It will show that they are
System, Hidden and Read-Only. To copy them, you must first remove these attributes.
THIRD: Enter ATTRIB -S -H -R filename.ext
for each file where filename.ext is System.dat, System.da0, User.dat and User.da0.
FOURTH: Enter COPY SYSTEM.DA0 SYSTEM.DAT and COPY USER.DA0 USER.DAT
FIFTH: Restart the computer.
You can also make extra backup copies of System.dat and User.dat on a floppy disk.
They will require just over 700 Kbytes of space. The S H and R attributes must be
removed in order to use the copy command. If you make changes to your computer
configuration after these backups are made, and you subsequently restore the backed
up version, the computer configuration will revert to its previous condition.
In the unlikely event that both the *.dat and *.da0 files on your hard disk are damaged,
you may have sufficient other damage that restoring from a floppy will be of little help.
(Reinstalling windows may be called for). On the other hand, if you plan to use
REGEDIT.EXE to change some aspect of your registry, a floppy disk backup of these
two files is a very sensible precaution.
Newsletter Articles
We are almost always in need of good articles. We tend to have
many of the same people producing articles which is fine, but
sometimes we can run out of ideas. It is always interesting to
hear from some of the other members from time to time. If anyone
has something that they feel would make a good article, an
interesting story to tell, or even a good meeting topic, please
don't hesitate to pass it on.
You can submit articles in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI
Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect.
What is the best way to get an article to me? Various ways are
available. You can bring it to a meeting or give me a call and
upload it to me. If you are on the Chebucto FreeNet, Internet,
or any type of e-mail system that has a gateway to the Internet,
you can send something to me via the Internet to where I work -
stuartce@ednet.ns.ca.
or
hlfxtrad.educ.stuartce@gov.ns.ca
It does work, but if you are sending a file attachment to your
message to me at the gov.ns.ca address, it should be UUencoded
and not a mime attachment. The ednet email works fine with
regular mime encoding and I think it is a bit quicker than the
gov.ns.ca address.
Newsletter Production Notes
For those who may be interested, the newsletter is formatted with
WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 running on either a Pentium 75 or
120. Both have 16 megs of RAM.
Much of the clipart used is from Novell (formerly WordPerfect)
Presentations 3.0 which comes as part of the Perfect Office
Suite. The only problem is that there isn't a printed list of
the images so you have to root' around a bit.
The original was printed at 600 dots per inch resolution on a HP
Laserjet 4 Plus. The main body of the newsletter is set in 10
point Palatino with the article headings being 14 point bold.
The title on the first page is ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic
19.2 and 16 points.
There were about 65 copies produced this month of which around 50
were mailed out. Any extra copies from the previous few month's
issues that I have will be brought to the next meeting for those
who are new to the group or may not be in regular attendance.
I do have a complete set of all the previous newsletters and if
someone wanted to look through these, let me know and I can bring
them to the next meeting.
MEETING SCHEDULE - 95/96
The dates for this year's meetings are listed below.
The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8
days) after the general meeting. They are also located at the
Veteran's Hospital. Anyone is welcome to assist in the planning
of future meetings or events.
Any changes to the scheduled dates will be announced where
possible at the regular monthly meetings and/or in this
newsletter.
Have a good summer and any suggestions for topics for next season would be appreciated.
Forward to: August 1995 Newsletter
