***WINDOWS*** (Click here for Internet Tips)

Configuring your SendTo menu in Windows NT
In Windows NT (as well as Windows 9x), when you right-click on a file, you'll see a SendTo menu that includes shortcuts to various locations such as a floppy disk. You can customize the SendTo menu to include shortcuts to just about anything, including applications or folders. To add to your SendTo menu, begin by running Windows NT Explorer and accessing the path \winnt\profiles\user_name\SendTo. Next, in the right-hand pane, right-click. From the shortcut menu, choose New | Shortcut. When prompted for the Command Line, type the name of the application or the folder you want on your SendTo menu (or use the Browse button to find it). Finally, name the shortcut as you want it to appear on your SendTo menu.
If you add a folder to your SendTo menu, you can then send a file to this folder simply by right-clicking on the file, choosing SendTo | shortcut_name. Note that when you "send" a file, you're actually moving that file. If you want to copy the file instead of moving it, hold down the [Ctrl] key when you choose the folder name on your SendTo menu.
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Saving searches on your desktop
Do you frequently use the Windows 95 Find feature to search for certain types of files? If you repeatedly search for the same file types, you may find it helpful to save your search criteria to your desktop. When you need to perform the search again, you can simply double-click on the shortcut and, with no additional input, your results will appear.
Let's say that you frequently search for DOC and TXT files. To do this, you'd usually click the Start button, select Find, and then click the Files Or Folders command. When the Find: All Files dialog box appears, key in the criteria for your search. For our example, just type *.doc, *.txt in the Named text box. When you're satisfied with your search criteria, click the Find Now button, and the results appear at the bottom of the dialog box.
At this point, pull down the File menu and select the Save Search command. This will create a shortcut on your desktop named All Files.fnd (you can rename the file if you want). Now when you double-click on the shortcut, Find auto-matically performs a new search with the saved criteria.
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Windows NT 4.0 RAS servers in a Windows 2000 network
By default, the Windows NT 4.0 Remote Access Service (RAS) uses the LocalSystem account to log on with NULL credentials (no username or password) and query the SAM database to determine users' dial-in permissions and properties. In a pure Windows NT network with PDCs and BDCs, you won't have any problems because the service will be allowed access to users' account information.
However, if you're running a mixed environment with Windows NT RAS servers, Windows NT 4.0 domain controllers, and Windows 2000 domain controllers, your users might experience intermittent problems when dialing in to the network. Here's why: Active Directory on the Windows 2000 domain controllers won't accept a NULL session from Windows NT RAS (or any other service) for querying attributes of an Active Directory object, in this case the attributes of a user object (a user's dial-in permissions). So if Windows NT RAS queries a Windows 2000 domain controller, the log-on request will fail, and users will be denied remote access to your network. However, if the RAS service queries a Windows NT domain controller, log-on will succeed as long as the user is allowed remote access. Unfortunately you can't guarantee that the RAS service will choose a Windows NT domain controller instead of a Windows 2000 domain controller.
There are a few solutions to this problem. The easiest one is to upgrade your Windows NT RAS servers to Windows 2000 as early as possible. You can also put your RAS servers on a BDC so the RAS service can query the BDC's local SAM database. If neither of these solutions is possible, you need to temporarily weaken Active Directory permissions to allow everyone to read object attributes. You can do this in one of two ways:
* If you identify the need to relax Active Directory security before you create your first Windows 2000 domain controller, during the Active Directory Installation Wizard--the wizard you use to install Active Directory on a Windows 2000 server, thus making it a Windows 2000 domain controller--you can choose to make permissions compatible with pre-Windows 2000 servers. As a result, the built-in special identity Everyone will be added to the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible local group. The LocalSystem account will then be able to read user attributes in Active Directory, but so will just about everybody else!
* If you've already promoted your domain controllers, you can add Everyone to the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access group using a net command. The synax is net localgroup "pre-windows 2000 compatible access" everyone /add.
As soon as you've upgraded your Windows NT RAS servers to Windows 2000, you can remove Everyone from the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access group, either by opening the group in Active Directory Users And Computers or typing net localgroup "pre-windows 2000 compatible access" everyone /delete at a command prompt. Before you weaken Active Directory security, you want to carefully consider the impact of granting everyone read access to user object attributes. In addition, when you no longer have Windows NT RAS servers, you should immediately remove Everyone from the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access group.
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Display a map to an Outlook Express contact's address
If a contact card has an address entered, you can use your Internet connection and Outlook Express to create a map to the address. You must be connected to the Internet for this feature to work.
Open the contact card and choose the Home tab. Then, click the View Map button. The map opens in your default browser using Expedia.com. Click the taskbar button for your browser to see the map.
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Forcing a Group Policy Refresh
If you're implementing Group Policies, you might have noticed that there's a delay between when you create or change a policy and when it gets applied. You can force Windows 2000 to refresh its group policies by using the following command in a Command Prompt window (or in the Run dialog box):
Secedit /refreshpolicy [machine_policy | user_policy]
Use machine_policy if you've made changes that apply to the Computer Configuration node; use user_policy if you've made changes that apply to the User Configuration node.
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Using the Bcc Field in Outlook Express
Want to Send a broadcast email message to a group of friends, but don't want them all to see each others email addresses? If you're using Outlook Express, the task is as easy as Bcc, which stands for blind carbon copy. To use the Bcc feature, open a New Message window, pull down the View menu, and select the All Headers command. When you do, you'll see the Bcc field added to the New Message window. Now, just put your email address in the To field and the addresses of all the people you want to send the message to in the Bcc field.
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Using Find to sort by file extension
As you know, Windows 95 classifies files by their file type. As such, when you're using the Details view in either Windows Explorer or My Computer, you can click the Type column header to sort the files by their file type. However, sometimes you may actually want to sort files by their file extension rather than their file type. Keep in mind that while sorting by file type and extension may yield similar results, they're not exactly the same. Fortunately, you can use Find to sort files by their file extension.
It's easy to think of Find only as a tool for quickly locating lost files. However, Find is actually a great file management tool. To see how this works, let's return to our example of working with TXT files in the Windows folder. Once you launch Find, click the Browse button, select the Windows folder in the Browse For Folder window, and click OK. Now, simply type *.txt in the Named text box, and click the Find Now button. When you do, Find searches the Windows folder and displays all the TXT files in the utility's file pane. At this point, you've actually filtered out all the files in the Windows folder except the TXT files.
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Big Files
If you are hurting for disk space, one way to quickly narrow down the biggest offenders is a neat trick in the "Find" tool. Go to the "Find" option in the Start menu and click the Advanced tab. You can select files by their size, and set an "At Least" and then choose a large file size like 5000 KB. Now you can search for the biggest files to see whether you still need them. However, if you are not sure it is safe to delete these files, then leave them alone. When deleting files, let them sit in the recycle bin for a while, just in case problems arise and you need to bring them back.
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Top 10 Tips for Tinkering with Your PC
*Backup. Backing up your entire hard disk might be impractical, but make sure all your data files, customization files, Registry, and application configuration files are backed up. Don't just do it once--make it a regular habit.
*Make sure you have up-to-date Windows start-up disks (Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Startup Disk). Be sure to have copies of all of your device drivers handy as well.
*Store your user names and passwords on paper and keep them somewhere safe. If you forget your Windows password, having it in a file on your PC won't help you.
*The Windows Registry is not something to be fooled with unless you have some experience using it already. Even if you are familiar with the Registry, you should be extremely careful not to stray from the task at hand or you'll risk severely damaging your system.
*Did we mention that you should back up your PC?
*Partition your hard disk. Put your data files on a separate volume from your operating system and programs. Put a copy of your operating system on a separate hard disk as well: It will make backups and reinstallation of software much easier.
*Paste a copy of each program's serial number to its CD jewel case, or use a permanent marker to write the number on the CD itself (on the label side!).
*If you're on a network, keep a copy of all your network settings (for example, IP address, DNS, gateway, network card settings, and so on) handy.
*If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you have no compelling reason to open the case or upgrade your operating system or applications, don't.
*No kidding, we really mean it: Backup is important.
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Restoring the Windows NT DHCP database
Windows NT stores the DHCP databases in the \winnt\system32\dhcp folder. By default, Windows NT backs up the DHCP databases every 60 minutes-and stores them in the \winnt\system32\dhcp\backup\jet\new folder. If you run into problems with your DHCP database files, you can manually restore the files by first stopping the DHCP Server service and then performing either of the following steps:
--Copy the backup copies of the database files from the \winnt\system32\dhcp\backup\jet\new folder to the \winnt\system32\dhcp folder and restart the DHCP Server service.
--Change the value of \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DHCPServer\Parameters\RestoreFlag to 1 and restart the DHCP Server service. The DHCP server will then restore the database files automatically-and reset this key's value to 0.
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Pinging multiple computers simultaneously
As an administrator of a TCP/IP-based network, on occasion you might find it necessary to ping several computers on your network. For example, you might want to ping multiple computers in order to identify which IP addresses are currently in use. An easy way to ping multiple computers on the same subnet is to use the FOR command. Consider the following command:
FOR /L %g IN (1,1,254) DO ping -n 2 200.200.200.%g
In English, this command states that we want to "do" the ping command as long as the %g variable is within the range from 1 to 254. We specify the range for %g by using the syntax (start, step, end). Start indicates the starting value for %g (1 in this example), step indicates the number with which we want to increment %g (1 in our example), and end indicates the number at which we want to stop pinging. We've also limited the number of pings to 2 by using -n 2 (instead of the typical 4 for each computer).
When you run this command, you'll see that your computer pings the following IP addresses:
200.200.200.1
200.200.200.2
200.200.200.3
...
200.200.200.254
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Creating shortcuts in the Network Neighborhood
If you're connected to a network, chances are good that you have shortcuts to various network resources on your desktop. However, you can cut down on desktop clutter and keep your network shortcuts more organized if you place them in the Network Neighborhood. Keep in mind that you can't copy the existing network shortcuts from your desktop to the Network Neighborhood--you must create new network shortcuts. To do so, connect to a network resource, use the right mouse button to drag a folder, file, computer or even a printer icon to the Network Neighborhood icon. When you drop the icon, Windows 98 displays the Shortcut dialog box. To continue, click Yes. Now, when you need to quickly connect to network resources, you can easily find them in the Network Neighborhood. Then, you can easily rename the shortcuts with a more descriptive title.
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Calculating folder size
How many times have you looked at a group of folders in Windows Explorer and wondered how much hard disk space the files in those folders use? Of course you could open each folder, check the amount of space used, and then use Calculator to add up the total. Fortunately, you don't have to resort to such manual tactics. Just select the folders you're curious about by holding down [Ctrl] as you click each folder. Once you've selected the folders, simply right-click any one folder and select Properties. When you do, you'll see a generic Properties dialog box. You'll see Windows 95 counting the number of files and folders at the top of the dialog box and adding up total disk space in the Size row.
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Assigning hotkeys to your applications
Windows NT enables you to assign hotkey combinations to your favorite applications. For example, you can assign the hotkey combination [Ctrl][Alt][C} to the Calculator so that it will pop up whenever you press that combination of keys. Use the following steps to assign hotkeys:
1. Right-click on the Start menu and choose either Explore or Explore All Users. Choosing Explore All Users enables you to modify the shortcuts that are the same for all users on your computer.
2. Browse your Start menu's folders until you find the shortcut for the application for which you want to assign hotkeys (or create the necessary shortcut).
3. Right-click on the application shortcut and choose Properties.
4. Click in the Shortcut Key text box, and then press the combination of keys you want to use as your hotkeys for that application. (Note: Windows NT automatically forces your hotkeys to include [Ctrl] and [Alt].)
5. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box for your application.
You can now launch this application by pressing its hotkeys.
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Changing a File Association
Have you ever accidentally configured a file to open with the wrong program? Or wanted to open a file with a program other than the one it's associated with? If so, here's an easy way to change it. Begin by opening Windows Explorer and accessing the folder with the file. Hold down the Shift key, and then right-click on the file. You should now see an "Open With" option on your menu, and you can now choose the program with which you want to open the file!
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Restarting Windows 95 in Safe mode
To restart your system in Safe mode, access the Shut Down windows dialog box by selecting Shut Down from the Start menu. Then, select the Restart The Computer? option button and click Yes. The system then restarts. When the Starting Windows 95 message appears on your screen, press [F5]. You system will then start in Safe mode.
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Repairing icons
As you may know, in order to improve performance when loading icons into the user interface, Windows 98 keeps track of all the icons currently in use in a single file called ShellIconCache. If the ShellIconCache file becomes corrupted, the icons used in the user interface will become scrambled. For example, you may discover that your icons are all black or have mysteriously changed. You can quickly set things straight by selecting Rebuild Icons from the dropdown list on TweakUI's Repair tab.
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***INTERNET*** (Click here for Windows Tips)

Quickly changing page names across a FrontPage Web
Have you ever needed to change a Web page name across many pages in your Web? (When we moved our company's 1001-page Web to a UNIX server, I had to change a single folder's name across the Web to satisfy the UNIX server's taste for case-sensitivity.)
To make such a change as easy and painless as possible when it occurs in the HTML coding, follow these steps:
1. Open the FrontPage Web and choose Replace from the Edit menu.
2. Type the old page name in the Find What text box and the new page name in the Replace With text box.
3. Enable the All Pages radio button and the Match Case and Find In HTML check boxes.
4. Click the Find In Web button and watch as FrontPage displays a counter that relays the growing tally of the number of files checked versus the number of files in your Web.
5. Double-click the first listed page and follow the onscreen instructions to begin the replacement process.
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Change Your Netscape Home Page
Way back in June we told you how to change your home page -- the page that opens first when you start your browser -- in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It's just as easy in Netscape, however. At the top, just click on "Edit," and then "Preferences." In the Home Page box, you'll find the address of the page your browser currently has open. If you want to use it, click "Use Current Page." If you want to use a different page, just navigate the browser to it, and then click "Use Current Page." Every time you start your browser, that page will pop up. There's also a "Browse" button that lets you choose a page you've already saved as a home page. Your home page choices are limited only by the number of pages on the Internet.
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Links Pages
If you start saving pages for future reference as Netscape Bookmarks or Internet Explorer Favorites, you see that they pile up pretty quickly. Why not let someone else do it? Chances are good that someone has already scoured the Web and amassed a collection of relevant links in the topic you're interested in. Sports, the weather, recipes, health, auto repair, high-energy physics, gossip columnists, jokes -- just about anything under the sun. Searching for links usually works great. For example, take cosmology -- the study of the nature and origin of the universe. In your favorite search engine, search for "cosmology" and "links." Chances are you'll turn up several sites full of links that have already been collected. Just bookmark the links page and you've got a handy reference site. Some people keep their links pages up to date, but others don't check for dead links very often. If all the links on a page are from, say, 1998, look for a more current page.
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What is a Proxy Server?
A proxy server is essentially a buffer between the user's computer and the server computer (the real server). If you have a proxy server, all requests to the real server and all responses from it are routed through the proxy server. The proxy server caches Web pages that have been requested so that other users requesting the same documents can retrieve them faster.
For many users, this function results in both the real server and the Internet itself handling a lot less traffic. The proxy server can also be used to filter requests, so that objectionable sites and other possibly inappropriate information can be blocked from the user.
Your ISP probably uses a proxy server (it may even use a large array of them), and you can tell your browser to use it through the Options dialog in ie or the Preferences dialog in Navigator. If you don't use the proxy server, you are connecting directly to the Internet, which can be the better choice if your proxy service, for whatever reason, slows down.
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Navigating FrontPage's Hyperlinks view
Hyperlinks view in FrontPage lets you see at a glance which pages link to (and are linked from) a selected page. While the view is simpler to use than most, it includes some useful features on its less-than-obvious shortcut menus.
If you right-click on a page icon in Hyperlinks view, you'll see a shortcut menu that lets you open the selected page, delete it, add a task related to it or view its properties. This menu also includes a Move To Center command, which makes the page the new focus of Hyperlinks view.
If you right-click anywhere in Hyperlinks view other than on a page icon, you'll see a different shortcut menu--one that controls what sorts of links appear in the view. For example, you can toggle the display of hyperlinks to images, internal hyperlinks (i.e., links to bookmarks) and repeated hyperlinks. In FrontPage 2000, you can also toggle between viewing page titles and page URLs.
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Change your FrontPage Hit Counter images
If you like FrontPage's Hit Counter component, but are tired of the small selection of counter styles the program includes, you should visit this Web site: www.alberta-ca.com/front_page/counters.htm. Here you can download more than two dozen new counters, each with its own distinct look and feel.
To use your new counter, import your downloaded counter image--which includes all 10 digits--into your Web. Then, in the Hit Counter Properties dialog box, select the Custom Picture option. Type the pathname of the image file (e.g., images/newcounter.gif) and click OK.
You can use counters from other sources as well, or create your own, but note that the counter image must contain all 10 digits in order from 0 through 9. Counters that put the digits in a different order--or that store each digit in a separate file--won't work with FrontPage.
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Keep visitors coming back to your Web site with these user-interface guidelines
A consistent page layout reinforces a Web site's predictability and familiarity--qualities people like. To build an effective page layout, focus on these areas:
* Alignment: Use left-justification (or the appropriate justification for other languages) and white space
* Proximity: Group related items together; put the equivalent of a blank line between logical groupings. For instance, you might group account information, such as Account ID, ZIP code and email address, separate from password and password verification fields.
* Repetition: Repeat certain aspects throughout the site
* Feedback: Provide visual and textual feedback, preferably above those areas that may be troublesome
* Follow established conventions for graphical user interfaces
* Make buttons the same size; present them in the same order and in the same areas on a form.
* Minimize attention-getting techniques
You'll find style sheets an excellent means of enforcing consistency. Style sheets let you make changes to a Web site's design with a single template file rather than by modifying hundreds of content pages. Of course, there are sometimes browser-compatibility issues when using style sheets. The biggest advantage to this approach is that it lets you enforce consistency by incorporating the guidelines and rules from your style guide directly into style sheets.
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Expedite browser startup with an offline home page
If you don't have the luxury of a cable modem, T1 or DSL Internet connection, you know how irksome it can be to wait idly as your browser loads your default home page during startup. Subscriber Ken Williams [kenwill@Eng.Auburn.EDU] suggests creating a Web page using Notepad or a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as FrontPage, and storing it on your hard drive. To quickly access your favorite sites, be sure to add their URLs to your offline Web page. When you've finished creating the page, save it on your hard drive and configure your browser to use the file as its default home page. Your browser will open much faster and all your favorite sites are just a click away. Check out Ken's sample page by going to http://www.shieldvideo.com/portal.html and then clicking on the shieldvideo.com link.
To change the default home page in Internet Explorer, select File | Open from the menu bar and then click the Browse button. Locate and double-click on the offline HTML page you'd like to point to, and then click OK to open the page in Internet Explorer. Next, choose Tools | Internet Options from the menu bar and click on the General tab if it isn't already active. Click the Use Current button in the Home Page area, and click OK. To change the default home page in Netscape Navigator, select Edit | Preferences from the menu bar and click on the Navigator category. Click the Browse button in the Home Page area, locate and double-click on the offline page you'd like to point to, and then click OK. If you're a Netscape Navigator user, you can use your Bookmarks list as an offline home page simply by pointing to the bookmark.htm file stored in your Netscape user folder.
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Condense code with JavaScript's literal array notation
Chances are, you probably create JavaScript arrays with the new Array() keyword. However, under certain circumstances JavaScript provides an even easier way to create an array. When you create an array for which your code supplies the literal values, you can simply surround the list in brackets ([ ]). For instance, suppose your code created an array like so:
jams = new Array("grape", "cherry", "peach");
Instead, you can use the condensed notation:
jams = ["grape", "cherry", "peach"];
When JavaScript comes across this notation, it automatically builds a zero-indexed array of these items.
To create a multidimensional array, simply nest the literal notation lists within another, as in
cavemen = [["Fred", "Flintstone"], ["Wilma", "Flintstone"], ["Barney", "Rubble"]]
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Detect and repair FrontPage problems
FrontPage, like its Office 2000 cousins, includes a feature called Detect And Repair (on the Help menu) that detects problems with your installation and repairs them automatically. If FrontPage won't even start up, however, this feature may seem useless to you.
Actually, however, you can still detect and repair problems. Here's how. Open the Windows Control Panel (Start | Settings | Control Panel) and double-click on the Add/Remove Programs icon. Locate Microsoft Office 2000 (or FrontPage 2000) in the scrolling list box and click Add/Remove. Doing so doesn't remove the program. Instead, it launches the Office 2000 Maintenance application, which allows you to repair or reinstall the program.
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