While our meeting room was in escrow, our last meeting (October) was held at the home of VP Dennis Richardson. Dennis and his wife Karen welcomed us to their home and managed to squeeze everyone into the living room with a foot or two to spare.

The first item of business was the election of officers. President Ron Steers was re-elected. Dennis Richards, VP, declined to run for another term, so Rich Davis was elected to serve in this position. T.R. McKee agreed to stay on for awhile as Treasurer. Mike Evans is stepping aside as meeting recorder and, despite Ron's best arm twisting, no one would step forward to assume the responsibility. A secretary has yet to be identified.

The evening's presentation featured the third in our series of presentations for building a new personal computer. Last month, James Frolich and Mike Evans demonstrated the procedures for building a new computer and setting up the ROM BIOS.

This month, James endeavored to walk everyone through an installation of Windows 98SE. James began by showing how to create a bootable floppy disk that would enable access to his computer's CD-ROM. Several members jumped in with references to a Web site that will create boot disks for any occasion. James used his newly created boot disk to start the computer and use DOS's FDISK.EXE to set up partitions on his hard drive. This was a smaller hard drive so he set up one active DOS partition using FAT 16, which used all the free space on the disk. Next, he formatted the disk with the /S option to transfer the system and make his new C drive bootable. After his last reboot, James inserted the Windows 98SE CD-ROM and initiated Windows Setup. Instead of choosing the "Typical" installation mode, James selected "Custom" install and, in the ensuing steps, was able to go through the Windows Setup options one by one.

It was surprising to find out how many members always selected the "Typical" mode. Members who did began to see how much of Windows was simply never installed on their computers. Fortunately, James was able to show them how to add components using the Add/Remove Programs switch in the Control Panel. After all the selections were made, Windows 98 kicked into Copy mode and the group took a gossip break. Most of the gossip focused on the latest personnel moves in Redmond and there was some sharing on news of the latest and greatest products just hitting the market shelves.

When the program was finished copying files, James took the members through the other setup processes (e.g., modems, printers, etc.), and wrapped up by examining Windows's Device Manager for conflicts.

The next meeting of the Orangevale chapter should be back at our regular meeting place at the Church of Religious Science in Orangevale, 6035 Main Avenue, between Greenback Lane and Madison Avenue. Please join us, guests are always welcome.