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12/96 Win Tips

Win95 Tips of the Month

Make Boot-Up Faster

Win95 pauses for about two seconds during boot-up to give you the opportunity to press a start-up key such as F8. But you can remove the pause and make boot-up faster by opening the MSDOS.SYS file in Notepad and adding the entry BootDelay=0 to the [Options] section.

Your Disk ToolBox

Most of us use the Start menu to find ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter or Backup. But there's a better way. In My Computer, right-click on a drive and select Properties. Click on the Tools tab. Here you'll get information on the last time you performed each of the three disk operations, with launch buttons for each.
Tung Nguyen via America Online

'Paint' .JPGs and .GIFs

If you've installed Microsoft Plus, you can open and edit .JPG and .GIF files in Paint, the applet that comes with Windows 95. Just select Open from Paint's File menu and select "All Files" in the Files of Type box. Double-click on the .JPG or .GIF of your choice.
Stephanie Odom via the Internet

A Smooth Move

When you drag and drop a file, you are moving, copying or making a shortcut to that file, depending on where you're dragging it from and dropping it to. Look at the lower right corner of the icon you're dragging, right before you let go of the mouse button, to find out what it's going to do. A plus sign means the file will be copied. An arrow means you'll create a shortcut. If you see nothing, the file will be moved.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!

Temporarily remove the Win95 screen that pops up during boot-up by pressing the Escape key. You'll see what's going on behind the Win95 curtain . . .

20/20 Hindsight

There's a utility in the \OTHER\MISC\LOGVIEW folder of your Win95 CD called LOGVIEW.EXE, which brings up in one place your ScanDisk, Calllog, Modemdet and Ndislog files, and lets you edit them. These files can be helpful when you're troubleshooting some parts of your system. You can place LOGVIEW anywhere on your hard disk, or just leave it on the CD.
Lucas Bravo via the Internet

Good Memories

If you ever want to know what's happening with your system's use of memory, just select Run from the Start menu, type MEM and press the Enter key.

Take a .CAB

If you install, uninstall and reinstall Win95 components often-and if you have 34MB to burn-copy all the .CAB files from the Win95 folder of your CD to a folder on your hard disk. When you install components, just point to the contents of the new folder.
Jeff Wyman, Bremerton, Wash.

Easy File Associations

Here's an easy way to change file associations. Click on a document to select it, then hold the Shift key while right-clicking on it and select "Open with" from the Context menu. In the Open With dialog, make sure there's a check mark in the "Always use this program to open this type of file" box, then double-click on an application in the Choose window. Once you've done this, the box might be checked by default the next time the dialog comes up.
Chong Lee Khoo via the Internet

Whose Fault Was It?

Tell Win95 to record the misdeeds of poorly designed applications by launching Tweak UI, clicking on the Paranoia tab and selecting the item at the bottom: "Log application errors to FAULTLOG .TXT." In the future, you can read the .TXT file to find out what's going on. If you don't have Tweak UI, you can download it from the WinMag Free Win95 Software page (http://www.winmag.com/win95/software.htm).

Here's a Tip Tip!

Find the ultimate collection of Win95 tips at http://www.winmag.com/win95/m1.htm. At the top of the page, you'll see the Win95 Tip of the Day. Below that, you'll find every tip we've ever published in WinTips, plus all the tips from our 2,000 Tips issue.


Got a hot tip? Send it to melgan@cmp.com or Mike Elgan, Windows Magazine, One Jericho Plaza, Jericho, NY 11753.

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