Q: With NETSCAPE, I could have several windows open at the same time while searching on the Internet. Can I do that with Microsoft INTERNET EXPLORER?

Ken Hopkins: Sure. Click on File and select New Window. It will copy the window you are in, set another address, and display it. I think EXPLORER chokes at about ten windows.

Milt Hull: Actually, it's twelve windows, but that has to do with resources. You can tweak it all the way up to twenty.

I've also gotten feedback from people saying that when you start running those two [at the same time], you're getting into real problems. True?

Ken Hopkins: It's do-able, but you'll probably want a faster Internet link.

Q: I'm using OFFICE 2000'S OUTLOOK 2000. It has a feature where you can specify your free and busy times on a calendar. Does that require the MICROSOFT EXCHANGE server or are there other ways to do it?

Milt Hull: You're right. You'd need a Post Office in order to store that information. Its purpose is for when you want someone else to be able to see your "calendar" so, for instance, they could schedule a meeting with you and not conflict with some prior meeting arrangement. It's really for a workgroup or corporate environment. An EXCHANGE server is one place where calendaring information can be housed so it can be shared.

So you can't just specify a directory on an ISP's server?

Milt Hull: In the old WINDOWS 95, there was a Workgroup Post Office, which would do the same sort of thing. Or, if you go really far back, there was MICROSOFT MAIL, Versions 3 and 3.2, which I would NOT recommend. But, here again, sharing your calendar only makes sense today in a corporate environment. To do that, you have to have a Post Office somewhere.

Q: I'm helping someone install a Canon scanner. We got the scanner installed fine; the Control Panel recognizes it. The TWAIN driver has been set up. The problem is with the software, Adobe PHOTOSHOP, which came bundled with the scanner. When I scan in the picture, it appears in the editing window but I can't, apparently, save or print the picture from there.

Frank Leonard: What happens when you do a "Save As"?

Once I get into the Editing window, there's no way to click on Okay. I can edit the image or close the window. Once I close the window, the image can't be found in the document window. When I go to Save or Print, it can't find the current document. It's the Adobe software.

Audience: I can't remember where, but there's a weird way of saving it.
Audience: Find the "Place File" selection.
Audience: I had the same problem. I noticed that everything was grayed out. The only way was either to click off the object then click back on it or try some other method. Then when you go to the Menu bar, look for Export.

Q: When viewing JPEG images with INTERNET EXPLORER 4, the colors appear blurred. This also happens when viewing moving video.

Milt Hull: A lot of display adapters are only set for 256 colors, so your palette is being stolen...

I've changed it to 32,000 colors and it still comes out blurred. GIFs come out okay, but JPEGs and videos don't.

Milt Hull: Your video driver is almost, but not quite, correct. I saw this when ATI came out with a Rage II adapter.

I was thinking of getting a Matrox Millennium.

Milt Hull: The Millennium has very good support. Make sure it's not an OEM board though. Make sure it's one from Matrox. Then get the latest driver from Matrox to match that board.

Q: I'm using NETSCAPE 4.6 in a corporate environment and trying to just drag the bookmark over to the Bookmark File. Every time I try to do that, it causes a crash indicating the program has performed an illegal operation.

Frank Leonard: When you're getting those Illegal Functions and General Protection Faults, you have a program that is stepping on memory and that's not good. You might uninstall and re-install NETSCAPE. You might also try dropping down the resolution on your video. There could be a whole lot of stuff going on. MEMTURBO has helped me out a lot. It's a piece of shareware that I've found to be very helpful. [See The Deals Guy's column for more on MEMTURBO.-Ed.] Start with the easiest things and get harder. Dump the TEMP directory. Look at your video driver. Re-install Netscape. You could have a lot of things going on. Look to see what programs are running. Do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to get your task list up. Dump some of that stuff and see if the problem goes away. You don't have to go to EXPLORER.

Q: Back in the days when I had Win95 on my system, there was MEMMAKER. It did all kinds of neat things. You could Load High, for instance. So, then you had a whole lot more of that 640K available. My system died here a couple of weeks ago. I formatted the C drive and went back to re-installing from scratch. Now, frequently I get an error message: "Can't open that program. You have too many programs open." even if I don't have ANY open yet. It says I don't have enough memory but I've got 256 meg of memory!

Milt Hull: Do you have anything in your CONFIG.SYS?

I don't recall. Not much.

Milt Hull: Get rid of it. It will be optimized by itself. Have WINDOWS 98 take care of everything. It will open more files. The FILES= statement, by default in WINDOWS 95, specified a value of 70. If someone changes that to FILES=20, which was the old setting for MS-DOS, you're not going to have enough room to open that many files. Windows itself opens almost that many, with the Dynamic Link Libraries and all. Unless you absolutely have to have a 16-bit driver for a CD-ROM that's not compatible or some other kind of video booster, don't add anything to your CONFIG.SYS. Examine all the driver statements in your CONFIG.SYS and do away with everything you were used to in the DOS environment.

Q: When I try to install PROCD, a telephone directory program, onto my home computer, I get a message that says: "Can't install. Not enough room." on a 6-gig hard drive that clearly has adequate room.

Ken Hopkins: It's a program error. They didn't anticipate the size of the hard drives we have today, so they have a math overflow. You actually have to use up the space-get the free space down smaller-and then it'll work. There's no way, that I'm aware of, to fool the machine.

Milt Hull: Yeah, there is.

Tim Cardozo: You can use PARTITION MAGIC to temporarily reduce the size of a partition so that the amount of free space is less than one Gig. That way the pro- gram's calculation for free space won't produce an apparently negative number.

Milt Hull: That's a good suggestion, but before you do it, why not call the company and ask them for a patch to fix the darn thing?

I tried that, but after 35 minutes on the phone I gave up. I'll try again.

Milt Hull: E-mail works. Have you ever noticed that if you have a 2, 6, or 10 Gig hard drive and you do a right click on the drive to see Properties, it shows you the full amount of space and free space on the drive? But, in other cases, such as when you're installing software, it shows you less than what's available? That software was written for older hardware. It doesn't know anything past one Gig. It's just a matter of time, though, 'til this problem is eliminated, what with hard drives getting really huge while prices keep dropping.