A Evening of weather With Doug Iverson Channel 23
Contents
1. But wait this is getting more compli cated Next you find instructions on how to obtain the System Commander 7 up date Fill out and submit the online Download Request Form You will need your serial number to complete the form For DOS users only click on the DOS Version Download Request Form After you have successfully completed the form you will be able to download the update file sc703_us exe Note While not critical for Windows 9x Me users please rename the file C SC SC7 EXE to SC7OLD EXE before running the sc703 us exe update program If you fail to do so the older SC7 EXE utility program will not be updated This last bulleted item really raised my eyebrows If it is not critical why go through this whole process Well since I am a fairly tolerant and understanding individual I filled out the online form to see where all this would lead me My 56K modem had a good day and it took only 13 minutes for the download And in order to follow all pro cedures I sent another E mail to the Sup port team to find out how to interpret the Critical designation referred to in the note The following answer arrived on the next day Dear Customer The reason it is not Critical is that you will probably not have to start over with the oldest file Even if you do have to the latest update will update the original file utility program when it is applied The good person who wrote that message completely ignored m2. A Publication of the Kern PC Users Group A Evening of weather With Doug Iverson Channel 23 Meteorologist Volume 21 Number 03 KERN INDEPEMDENT PC USERS GROUP PUG Board Members President Rhonda Pierce 363 0771 Pierce27 earthlink net Past President Bill Peacock 328 0180 bpeacock pacbell net Vice President Rick Daney rddstewy aol com Secretary Tony Rizos 872 5622 trizos ncinternet net Treasurer William Lowell 664 1244 wlowell bce cc ca us Director Steve Garcia sgarcia bak rr com Director Caroline Corser 871 9201 Cmcorser pacbell net Director Stuart Ree 589 6172 rsrcomp pacbell net Director Dr Leonard Liss 663 8834 lissmd earthlink net Newsletter Editor David Chalmers dcechal pacbell net Education SIG Coord Rick Daney Kipug Webmaster Sarah Perelli Minetti The following rates are for one insertion in the KIPUG newsletter All copy must be received camera ready no later than the 15th day of any given month for publication in the following month s newsletter Camera ready copy should be submitted to Bits amp Bytes c o Dave Chalmers P O Box 2780 Bakersfield CA 93303 KIPUG members who have computer related items for sale or trade or who have information they would like to share with other members may do so FREE of charge as space permits Ads larger than business card size are subject to 50 of normal advertising fees Non members are subject to the normal advertising f
3. Class _ Stamp Here P O Box 2780 Bakersfield CA We are on the web at anne Your Address Here Sarah Perelli Minetti Webmaster Meetings are held on the second Thursday of the month at the Kern Superintendent of Schools Building 17th and L streets Downtown Meeting Time is 7 pm March 03 Page 12
4. KIPUG is a nonprofit organization of computer users novices experts professionals and hobbyists KIPUG welcomes all new members interested in computers A General Meeting is held on the second Thursday of the month at the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Building City Center at 17th and L streets in Bakersfield Meetings run from 7 00 PM until 9 00 PM and include a business meeting along with product demonstrations door prizes and a drawing Membership Information and Benefits General Meetings are open to the public free of charge The public and guests are welcome but certain benefits apply to members only To become a member complete the form above and mail your check to KIPUG Member Benefits Include A monthly newsletter Bits amp Bytes a place to publish your articles Free ads to buy or sell computer items One free month s business card ad for corporate members Web Site with free Listserv and access to the newsletter on line User group product discounts and special offers Networking with computer enthusiasts who share common interests Special Interest Groups SIGs to help you solve problems All general memberships are family memberships bring the family Eligibility for door prizes and vendor giveaways Product evaluation review program write an evaluation keep the product eeoeeeeegege ege ee Visit KIPUG s Web Site http www kipug org March 03 Pagel 1 lt a KIP G _ First
5. day Dear Customer You don t say what version of SC7 you have This is a false error message It should have been corrected by the v7 03 update If you do not have v7 03 installed download it from our website If you have installed it let me know and we ll con tinue working on this issue I am beginning to feel as if I am writing the script for a cyber soap opera BTW what is a false error message In my answer to the last customer support mes sage I mentioned that I have been very patient for one week now but would love to receive a solution to this software problem Let s see what tomorrow s mail might bring Here comes the answer Dear Customer It means that we are detecting something in the BIOS that appears to be a drive overlay such as EZDrive or EZBios but as we discuss this we find that you have never had a drive overlay installed Therefore we are displaying an error mes sage that is false We are aware of this issue we don t know at this point what is triggering this error message in some cases it seems to be related to Western Digital hard drives but that is not true in your case The issue is in Engineering and they will have a solution and a new up date soon I m sorry it is turning into such an inconvenience for you The only way I can narrow down the possibilities is to have you try the latest update v7 03 and gather as much information as possible OK now I know at least where the prob l
6. ees Business Card 5 00 Quarter Page 15 00 Third Page 20 00 Half Page 30 00 Full Page 60 00 ADVERTISERS KIPUG will mail your direct computer user targeted mail advertisement fully prepared for mailing including postage to our entire membership at a reasonable fee For more information please contact Rhonda Pierce President at pierce27 earthlink net March 03 Page 2 T b e of The Editor Sez Our next meeting is going to be a little different C on t en t S We are going to get an evening of weather by Doug Keep Your Hard Drive pg 4 Iverson from Channel 23 We will also get a tour at the station and see how computers are used at the New OS pg 6 station Weather prediction is one of the areas where computing power is used to the max Our paper this time is composed of completely for eign content Unfortunately there were no offerings this time from members I m now ex perimenting with a new video board ATI Tech nologies has a combo video tv tuner board It s called the 9700 All in Wonder Pro I m looking forward to recording some tapes I have and converting them to DVD The whole area of video is new to me The software out there is in some ways at the beginning The state of DVD recording reminds me when CD re corders were the state of the art Remember early CD recording I know some of you out th
7. em is located namely in the engineering department for this software But doesn t the last sentence sound a bit ridiculous They sent me that update and it does NOT work I dispatched another E mail for an explanation on the last part and when this update will be available for customers like me Here is the answer Dear Customer I should have been more clear QA is nar rowing the cause s of this problem and March 03 Page9 PC Network Services 2525 M Street Bakersfield California 93301 661 637 2174 fax 661 325 9120 email pcns pcnetsrv com Specializing in small business home business computer and network service A Network Novell Microsoft Intel APC HP Computer Associates Corel Symantec Altec A Authorized Service Center Custom built workstations and servers Computer and Laptop Repair PC Network Services specializes in bringing qualified certified service at an affordable price We build me dium to high end workstations and custom servers We also repair and upgrade your computer along with repairing your laptop We setup and support small medium business home office networks We also take trade ins Engineering is writing an update that will correct it them It was necessary to see if v7 03 will install or not Several drive overlay issues were fixed in v7 03 and yours may have been one of them We are being told about a month for the up date Doesn t this sound as if I have been a guinea pig fo
8. ere re member those days Ed March 03 Page3 Keep your Hard Drive Driv ing by Chris Doyle Ontrack Here s a quick quiz What takes a licking yet keeps on ticking Right your hard drive The truth is that hard disks manu factured in the last few years last longer than that old clunker you re using as a doorstop Here s the surprise You can squeeze a longer life maybe even keep a faulty drive truck ing with a few easy tips The silent killer of hard drives is heat especially high speed SCSI drives My recommendation Use a hard drive cooling fan with all hard drives You can buy them direct at http www 3dfxcool com or at FRY s I have cooling fans for both my IDE and SCSI drives In the lab we have cooling fans on the drives at all times Optimize your hard drive on a daily basis As much as a pain this may be for some optimizing your drive has several benefits Besides optimizing the files this process also catches many minor prob lems that may manifest themselves into a major problem later Examples Cross linked or orphan files Another good reason is that if you do have a problem accessing data on your drive when a utility is run such as Nor Cd ton nuts and bolts tiramisu the chances of recovery are much higher if the drive has been optimized recently By the way Mijenix http www mijenix com makes a great utility to perform this func tion lt lt Smi
9. le gt gt Without questions you must run SpinRite on all of your drives once a quarter at number five the highest This is a per sonal recommendation Steve Gibson s utility is excellent and will find many if not all surface defects before they mani fest themselves further Trouble in Paradise also known as TIP is an excel lent tool for Zip disks Should I mention backing up your data on a regular basis Do it often early and often and early Examining your power supply is critical It s not too difficult to tax a power supply in some systems if they are fully loaded If possible I recommend you make sure that the systems have a decent power sup ply at least 250 watts or more PC Power and Cooling makes the best Also make sure that your hard drives have their own independent power connection not shared by other devices An uninterrupti ble Power Supply UPS is another good idea and don t sweat these things are much more reasonably priced then in the past March 03 Page 4 Many people ask whether it s best to keep your computer running all the time or better to turn it off and on My recom mendation is turn your computer on in the morning and off at night I also think that disabling all power saving devices is best for hard drives Forcing a hard drive on a desktop PC to spin down every 15 min of inactivity and then waiting a minute or two to spin up is worse than turning the computer off and
10. may never be necessary they March 03 Page 6 provide a safety net should you experi ence serious bugs or problems that over write critical areas on your hard disk I was not quite sure whether to add an additional hard drive on my machine and facilitating a clean install or simply to upgrade from my Windows 98 SE One of our club members Bill Wolf sug gested the use of a helpful automatic preparation software package for adding operating systems It s called System Commander and widely recognized for quality and reliability You can find more information and other related operating system management products on the com pany s Web site at http www v com com The product can be directly purchased from VCOM for 69 95 OK I got their software and installed it on my computer I should have said I was trying to install it Seconds into that process a window popped up and in formed me System Commander has de tected a disk manager program such as EZ BIOS or Ontrack installed on your system These programs will not operate properly if System Commander is in stalled The installation will be can celled So I checked to see if I had any of them but did not Obviously something else was hold ing me up But what The extensive 200 pages user manual for version 7 might give me the answer Right Not exactly In chapter 9 Troubleshooting or anywhere else nothing refers to my first problem Contacting Technical Su
11. n against any non profit group using the article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given to the author This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups APCUG an international Organization Preparing your Computer for a New Operating System By Guenter Schoett Fallbrook CC email schott tbf com An easy and safe way to add and manage a new OS with System Commander 7 I have been debating for some time now how best to install the new Windows XP Professional operating system on my computer Reading various articles and technical newsletters can be a virtual ad venture and impress upon you the four most important facts before jumping into the arena 1 Read all instructions very carefully and follow them 2 Back up your system because exten sive changes will be made to your hard disk 3 Make a bootable diskette for your current OS To create a new bootable floppy disk click on Start Settings Con trol Panel and then the Add Remove Pro gram s icon Now click on the startup Disk tab at the top and select Create Disk You may be asked to insert the Windows OS CD When you have a startup disk it allows you to start your computer run diagnostic programs and fix many problems 4 Clean up your machine s hard drive by deleting unnecessary memory hogs and run Scan Disk followed by defrag mentation Although the backup and boot diskette
12. on Never ever move the computer while it is up and running Try telling that to laptop users Any blow to the computer tt tips over is dropped an inch or more and that bump gets transmitted directly to the hard drive Most of the time it will cause a minor head crash Worst case It will cause bad things to happen No don t ask But you ll be calling Ontrack to get an estimate lt lt smile gt gt Don t forget about static when handing drives The newest and highest perform ing drives come with hushed tones please Giant MR Heads They re lt M gt extremely sensitive to static On track has redone all of our static proce dures to handle this technology and I can tell you from first hand experience that static will kill drives dead Drives that make clicking thunking or grinding noise are experiencing a me chanical problem of some sort No sur prise huh But each time the drive is powered up the more that damage is oc curring on the drive If data recovery is needed in this case please please please the less you do to the drive powering up or using utilities the more data we can recover And the faster we can recover it If you think you have a problem with a drive try going to the manufacturers Web site Download the specific utility they make to check the drive Since the utility comes from the manufacturer they know how to check specific issues with their drives Here are some examples Q
13. pport was my next step On page 195 of the manual you are encouraged to check the index to see if you can save yourself a phone call Also mentioned is a troubleshooting as sistance program called SCIN which allows you to press F1 or Alt H in most places to get context sensitive help Un fortunately the program had not been installed as I mentioned above and I couldn t take advantage of that lifeline OK let s go to the Website lt www v com com support gt and seek help I entered details about my problem sent it as an E mail and was informed that a support technician was going to respond within 3 days and often much sooner The answer came the following day It read Dear Customer Downloading and installing v7 03 should solve that problem This was an error that was corrected in v7 03 Good So I went back to the company Website and tried to locate version 7 03 Could not find it but instead discovered the System Commander 7 Maintenance Release page which indicates what you will need to update System Commander 7 March 03 Page7 System Commander 7 in stalled on your computer System Commander 7 Serial number 2 blank formatted 1 44MB diskettes The Update file sc703_us exe Download size approximately 4 2 MB Holy Moses I said wouldn t it be much easier to just let you download an update file In my case this wouldn t have worked anyway because I was unable to install this software in the first place
14. r this vendor Well I still want to finish this article and review the working edition and if everything goes well the conclusion of this dramatic de velopment will appear in next month edition of our news magazine Would have loved to install Windows XP by now but this has to wait for another month I guess Guenther Schoett is the editor of the Fall brook Commputer club as well as I be lieve the Advertising Director If you use his article please send him an email to let him know Thanks There is no restriction against any non profit group using the article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given to the author This article is brought to you by the Editorial Commit tee of the Association of Personal Com puter User Groups APCUG an Interna tional organization to which this user group belongs March 03 Page 10 Annual Dues 30 00 Mail to mEKIP UG Membership Application PO Box 2780 Bakersfield CA 93303 Please Print Clearly This application is New Renewal Address Change I ma T m Willing to Beginner Serve ona committee Intermediate Assist the Editor Advanced Help at Meetings Ct a a Hobbyist Joina SIG Professional Do Whatever State Zip 4 The Software I use is Home Phone WIN 95 WIN 2000 ME Business Phone WIN 98 WINNT WIN98 SE Other E mail The Kern Independent PC Users Group
15. uantum QDPS IBM DFT Western Digital WD Diag Maxtor MaxDiag I think Ontrack s Data Advisor This tool will work with all drives And it s probably the safest tool to use to check a drive Here s a tip for tinkers users that do a lot of testing of drives In many cases it s very difficult to get rid of a hard drive after installing a particular operating sys tem or file system type That s especially true when using programs such as System Commander Try booting up with Ontrack s Disk Man ager The utility has a feature that will write zeros to every sector of the drive This puts the drive back into the shape it was when it came from the factory After the process is done it s easy to partition March 03 Page5 and format the drive Don t forget though that this will destroy all informa tion on the drive Here s one for all of you SCSI users lurk ing out there including me Keep your drivers current Driver and BIOS updates for your SCSI card can make a world of difference in how your drive performs Don t forget to make sure you follow the specifications for cabling and termina tion Okay now that you have some new tools for preserving your hard drive I have some bad news I saw a 40GB drive ad vertised at FRYs for 29 99 after rebate lt lt just kidding gt gt OnTrack s Chris Doyle loves to hear hard drives happily humming You can reach him at CDoyle ontrack com There is no restrictio
16. y initial question of how to rename that important original file that still resided on the CD and not on my hard drive Obviously another message had to be dispatched in which I stated that the techi person completely by passed this problem and that I could not see how this response could help me I then suggested that we cut this run around game and they should send me a new CD that included the up date and will allow me to install System Commander This was Friday evening Here is the answer that came Monday morning Dear Customer Here is the latest full copy See attached March 03 Page 8 file SystemCommander7 exe Hurrah no more problem Think again Just as it happened originally with version 7 02 the installer quit a few seconds into the installation procedure and a similar mes sage appeared on my monitor screen System Commander has detected the EZ BIOS disk manager on your system This program will not operate properly if System Commander is installed The in stallation will be cancelled Am I lucky or what So again I went back to searching my computer by entering EZ BIOS disk manager into the search box 172 an swers popped up but unfortunately none included EZ BIOS I had copied the in stallation message with Printkey 2000 and sent it together with the entire list of file names to the technical support team and repeated my request for help Here is what I received the following day which was Tues
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