Q: What is the latest version of Windows 98?

Milt Hull: No Service Packs have yet been issued for Windows 98, so there's only one version.

Ken Hopkins: You can, however, click on the "System Update" option and download four hours worth of patches from Microsoft. It is like Internet Explorer 4.0 that comes with Windows. They have a version 5.0 available for download, if you want to upgrade. Windows 98, Version II, is supposed to be available sometime this summer.

Q: My Internet Explorer is always performing illegal operations and crashing. I thought when I upgraded to Windows 98 that I would be rid of the problem. This also happened under Windows 95 and OSR2. It is not much different under Windows98. Do you know what that problem is?

Ken Hopkins: It could be many things. Did you do a clean install — formatted the disk and did a fresh install?

Milt Hull: You could also have a bad DLL. You can install a new operating system and install an old piece of software that overwrites a DLL with an older version of that DLL. That will give you a GPF every time.

It's the desktop dialog box. Your desktop theme will be controlled by that and if it crashes you get just a plain screen.

Ken Hopkins: I would try reinstalling Internet Explorer and seeing if that fixes the problem.

Also, about once every 3 months I get a message about a stack overflow saying I should try increasing my "something" in the SYSTEM.INI. Of course, that does not exist now so I have no idea what they're talking about.

Ken Hopkins: That is an old program. The program causing the error is an old Windows 3.1 program. It is in the Registry somewhere. Do a "word search" for it in the Registry.

Q: My computer is a Pentium II 233 mhz, 32 mb, and is less than a year old. The monitor is an old Super VGA. While typing in my word processor, Claris Works, rows of small dots started appearing. As time went on, more and more rows of dots appeared, eventually making it impossible to read the text. Upon existing Claris Works, I found the dots appearing in other programs as well. Rebooting cleared the dots, but after a while they started appearing again.

Milt Hull: Run a virus checker. If no problems, then right click on the Desktop, select Properties, Settings, Change Display type, and reset resolution to plain VGA. Reboot and see if you still have the problem. If not, update your video driver. If you do, shut down then unplug and replug all connector cables and graphics card. If the problem occurs after the PC is warm rather than when it's first turned on, you may have a hardware failure.

Q: For several years I enjoyed getting the rebates from the major computer stores that happened to be very close to us. In 96/97, I had 100% success getting the rebates. Suddenly, in 1998 I found that 8 to 10 didn't come back at all! Calling on the telephone is next to impossible on a subject like that. Are there others who are having trouble getting rebates or was it just a bad run of luck? I'm going to try to figure out a way to get the group together to solve that and just wondered if there were others.

Milt Hull: One of the reasons we do not have copy protection is because the user groups, back in 1983 and 1984, got together and shot down the industry with respect to copy protection. We basically drove the industry to do away with copy protection.

Ken Hopkins: Rebates are the same thing. User groups have power. It may not be just our group that we need to involve. It may be that we need to get all the groups involved.

Q: I have a 3.8 Gig hard drive. I have Windows 95 now but will be running indows 98. What is the best backup system to buy?

Milt Hull: Windows 98 has a backup program. You can use floppies, Zip or Jazz drives, or a DAT tape drive. I recommend DAT (Digital Audio Tape), but it's very expensive. It is the most reliable though. I have tried Ditto drives and the new T-4000 drives but nothing outperforms a DAT drive.

Audience: We just installed an STDP 7000 on our server for about $550.

Q: Microsoft has acknowledged that a USB keyboard or mouse will not allow you to boot into safe mode. According to their web site, their recommended fix is to use an ordinary mouse.

Mark Nabor: In addition, if you change devices while your machine is off and turn it on, it will not find them. You have to power the machine with the old keyboard or mouse attached, then plug in the USB and let them be detected. Then you can power down and detach the older style equipment and you will be okay. Do it any other way and you will have problems.

Q.: A recent news article described a program that will allow anyone who has the software to put "comments" on any Web site, on any page. What do you think of it?

Ken Hopkins: There is such a program. It's like electronic graffiti. You can put a "comment" on any Web page and anyone who is running the "comment" program can see it. You can also setup private groups so only people in the group can look at the comments or you can make them private to yourself, so that when you go back to the Web page you see your own comments. You can then see if you've looked at those pages before. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. The comments actually reside on the program vendor's server. The comments have a potential for good, but also the chance for abuse.

Milt Hull: The comments do not affect the actual page. Someone has to be running the same software in order to see them.

Audience: Can you remove them?

Ken Hopkins: At this point you can't even remove your own comments.

Q: I have a problem with the System Doctor tool from Norton Utilities 4.0 under Windows 98. When I access my floppy drive in any way my computer locks up. But if I close the System Doctor, the problem goes away.

Milt Hull: Have you checked Symantec's Web site to see if there is an upgrade or patch for that?

There was no such patch as of a couple of weeks ago.

Audience: Make sure you don't have your floppy drive enabled as one of the drives to monitor in your System Doctor settings. Otherwise it's going to look at it occasionally.

Milt Hull: You could always try uninstalling and reinstalling. You may have, without meaning to, enabled a setting that is causing this. There are many possibilities.

If I close System Doctor down, everything works fine. I didn't have this problem with 3.0. Then I upgraded to 4.0.

Milt Hull: I would check the Web site again, then uninstall and reinstall with a fresh copy.

Q: My question is regarding these voice communication packages available over the Internet. Talking on the phone with someone who lives in England is expensive after the first five minutes. I've heard of one called Powwow and was wondering if anyone has installed it or one of the other ones. How well do they work? Are they worth putting on your computer?

Milt Hull: In reality, what these programs provide is a subset of teleconferencing, without the video part. It actually works very well, but remember the slowest pipe determines the speed, so you may get some jumpiness in the voice and so forth. Otherwise it works very well with a 56K modem. I've seen it actually work on a 28.8K modem. We had a demonstration here about a year and a half ago.

What are some of the other communication packages for computers?

Ken Hopkins: There are lots of them. Go to Hotfiles.com and look for voice conferencing. New ones pop up every week. I think NetMeeting is free with Internet Explorer. You may already have it on your system and not be aware of it.

Milt Hull: By default it's not installed though. You can go into Settings, Control Panel, "Add and Remove Programs", and add that feature.

Milt Hull: It is a teaser, a trailer; remember it is still a beta. There are a lot of functions in the Outlook product. Every product shines, but every product dies on that date. To get rid of it, you do a full uninstall. Then you have the option to upgrade from there or you can go back to your Office 97, if that is what you have. If you do have Office 97, you will love this product.

Ken Hopkins: You can also install it in a separate directory so that you have Office 97 as well as Office 2000.

Milt Hull: But I do not recommend that. Outlook will overwrite it; there are various other problems you will have. Either go full bore or don't. But a lot of people do not know that Publisher 2000, FrontPage, and PhotoDraw are with Office 2000. They will also expire, but are separate programs with separate upgrades. So you really have three additional programs in the Suite.

Q: Does anyone have any personal recommendations on speech recognition software?

Milt Hull: Speech technology is starting to become better and better. Bill Gates stated that of all the people who buy speech recognition, only about 30-40% use it after several months. But that is an improvement over last year. I would like to plug Phillips Corporation, which is a company that does a lot of research behind the scenes before they even announce anything. They have a product called FreeSpeech that is pretty phenomenal. I highly recommend it.

Q: I have a friend who is having difficulty getting Dragon Dictate Point and Speak to recognize sound on an IBM Aptiva 166. Any thoughts?

Ken Hopkins: First, you have to see if the microphone will record at all. Laptops are really strange and sometimes you need special adapters. I had to buy a special adapter to make it work on my laptop. If you can make it work on the Recorder, then you have a chance to make the speech part work.

The mike that came with the computer - everything works.

Ken Hopkins: Unless it is a headset, it won't work.

For some reason, it will not recognize the sound card.

Audience Member: You might want to look at the IBM Web site. There may be a patch or something.

Q: Is there a program called "XTree Gold" that is compatible with Windows 95?

Yes. There is also an XTree Gold clone called ZTreeWin that you should check out. It is at www.ztree.com.

Q: I'm having trouble getting anything close to 56K from my 56K modem. The telephone company says I have old copper wiring in Carmichael. If I add fiber optic cable to my house, will that help?

Milt Hull: That's a completely different technology. If you add fiber optic cable to your house, then you basically have to add a cable modem.

Let's not say to my house. Let us say to my neighborhood. They're saying we are lucky to get 28.8K on anything!

Milt Hull: Let me explain the technology. A modem basically is a modulator - demodulator. When you pick up your telephone you're talking analog. Or, your computer, which is digital, sends data to your modem which converts the signal to analog. Either way it's analog until it goes to the local switch which may be nearby, across the street, or 4 miles down the road. The local switch, converts it to digital. At that point it may be bounced off a satellite, run down a fiber link, or go clear around the world, but it is all digital. When it hits the other switch, it gets converted back to analog. The modem on the other end (assuming a data link) then demodulates it back to digital and passes the data to the computer running, say, a Web server. Analog to digital; digital back to analog. Cell technology and ISDN technology are both digital all the way. The limitation is how many twists you have in the wire and how far away you are from the switch, because you can only push digital a certain distance. If you have less twists, like pretty old copper wire, you're never going to get 56K. The best you're going to get, the maximum for older copper, is 28.8K. So it depends on where you are at. And, keep in mind that your neighborhood may have good wiring, but you could be calling up an ISP that does not have very good copper. You may have a restriction on that end!

Q: Is there any way to complain to the telephone company?

Milt Hull: Sure. For $900 they will clean up your line.

Ken Hopkins: The problem is the telephone company only guarantees you a voice line, not a data line. Unless you are going to pay for something special, that is what you get.

Audience: It could be the modem you use. I have had problems with my Hayes modem, thinking I was getting 28.8K but I wasn't.

Milt Hull: Everything should be upgraded to V.90.

Ken Hopkins: It is worth checking when you have a particular problem in your household. Outside you have a little jack that connects into the phone. Disconnect your house from the whole system. Plug into there directly and see if you get a good clean signal. If you do, then the problem is in your household wiring and you have to get somebody in to fix that. That is very possible, especially in older homes.

Q: I have a direct line with only my modem on it. The telephone company admits that we have bad lines in Carmichael. I am just trying to find some way to convince them to fix it. They tell me it's only guaranteed for a certain quality.

Milt Hull: They will check your POTS line and tell you it is clean technically, but they won't really check it for modems unless you pay the $900.

Audience: Are you sure that your ISP supports V.90?

They say they do.

Milt Hull: I have actually talked to many ISP's. They have problems with the older US Robotics modems that have not been upgraded to V.90. Acer modems and Winmodems have tons of problems with them; stay away from those. Just about any modem now with V.90 technology is supported very well.

I used the computer in Portland, dialed into my ISP in town, and got 37K. In town I can only get 26.4/28.0K.

Milt Hull: Keep in mind that the ISP's might have older technology and when they upgrade you start having hang-ups, disconnects and so forth. You have to talk to them about what they have.

I did a test through US Robotics and called a long distance number. It took about 14 seconds. I tried it with two separate computers and two different modems. It was able to tell me how fast my connection was. In both cases it was very accurate.

Ken Hopkins: You can find out about that at their Web page.

Milt Hull: Who here has DSL? DSL works with a different technology. They install a POTS splitter that uses the same phone line. You can actually talk while its working. Pacific Bell uses ADSL which is 384Kbps on the up-link and 1.5Mbps on the down-link. The Roseville Telephone company is going to SDSL, to be available in late June. Roseville will be then have a faster up-link, equal both ways.

One comment for the fellow who was having line trouble: when I first installed ISDN out where I live, it wouldn't work. It turned out they had an old POTS amplifier that was a couple of blocks away and we could not get any better than 28.8K. As soon as they rerouted me I got everything fine. I have tried putting a telephone into that and it works fine too. Even the volume is fine. But you said that if you can get ISDN you can get DSL?

Milt Hull: Let's put it this way. They have amplifiers for ISDN technology. So, if you're past the 17,000 foot distance limitation they can amplify that signal. They do not have an amplifier for DSL yet, but they say they will in August. There is a Web site called pacbell.net/dsl that has an availability table. You can enter your phone number and see when DSL will be available. I have installed it for a lot of companies and really like the technology.