Q: I have a dinosaur-era computer. It is a Vendex Head-Start unit advertised by the now-departed professional wrestler “King Kong Bundy” of the mid-’80s. It is not Y2K-ready.
My problem is that my new Gateway computer has no 5 -inch drive to load my old floppies.
What should I do? I don’t want to use my employer’s computer because many of these files are confidential and I would not want any backup system to save them.
John A. Viramontes @gateway.net
A: If King Kong Bundy put me in a headlock and demanded I solve your quandary, here’s what I would do, Mr. V: I would fire up that Gateway and use the Web browser to log on to www.laplink.com, where you will find for $110 a package called Laplink V for DOS.
This superb product includes cables to link your antique 486 PC to the Gateway using either the parallel or serial ports. The included software then lets you use the mouse to call up files on your old machine and move them to the new machine.
You can either move the files from floppies inserted in the 5 -inch drive on the Bundy box or, if they are on the hard drive, from there. They will appear on your Windows desktop on the Gateway Pentium in a matter of seconds.
Laplink is sold by Travelling Software Inc., which has been solving problems like yours since the dawn of the personal computing movement. The Laplink DOS product is among a large line of offerings that work wonders linking computers together for file transfers, file synchronization, Internet file sharing and remote control of one computer by another.
Q: For the past few months, I have had a computer problem. When I start my computer, a small dialog box pops up. Title: PAINT. The message is: C:
m.bmp was not found.
I click the button: OK, and I am working with no problems. How can I simply eliminate this?
Richard Zimnochow, San Jose, Calif.
A: We don’t know what mystery process is running in the background of your machine that wants to look at a picture called m.bmp, but it’s almost a mortal lock that you can fool the machine by simply creating a picture in the Windows Paintbox and then saving it under the name m.bmp in the C: directory.
So click on the Start button and then Accessories and, finally, Paint. When the software comes up, draw a couple of lines or something and then click on File/Save as and select the C: directory and type in the m.bmp filename.
Next time you boot up, your rogue software will find the m.bmp picture and leave you alone. Although this is not a fix for whatever glitch is at work, it will save you from that annoying dialog box popping up every time you start a computing session.
Q: I have wondered for a long time how one can make a hard copy of a disk directory using the old DOS commands. I can open the DOS window but the commands I try don’t work. What is the command line to use?
I would appreciate it very much if you could give further directions for us newer users, or note some software that would print the directory.
Barbara Holland @cybertime.net
A: Before Windows existed, PC users were required to type in instructions in the so-called command line to handle chores that Windows now does much better, such as moving files, copying files, finding programs and otherwise doing computer housekeeping.
In the case of displaying directories for later printing so that one has a compete list of all the stuff on a computer, the old DOS commands are better than the Windows’ procedure invoked under the Find Files/Folders on the Start menu.
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To bypass Windows and copy all the directories on your machine, open the DOS Window by clicking on Start, then Accessories and then the icon marked DOS.
Now type C: and press enter to take you to your computer’s main (also called Root) directory. Now type dir /s list.txt
This command will scan every directory and subdirectory on your computer and write a file called list.txt in the C: directory holding all that information.
You then open your list.txt file in a word processor and view everything on the computer. Much of this data will be of little interest because it includes meaningless computer files that are part of various programs, but you also will have a full listing of all of the documents you have created on the machine.
Because the information is in a text file, you can easily edit away the meaningless stuff and keep the valuable listings.
Q: Two embarrassingly simple questions: 1. What is a “cookie”? 2. How do you “bookmark” a page? Thanks.
John Amato @corecomm.com
A: Two embarassingly simple answers, Mr. A.
1. Cookies are files created on your hard drive when you visit certain Web sites that use the cookie files during later visits to customize the stuff you get.
Cookies can include information that you voluntarily provide, such as your passwords, preferences for what sort of pages are displayed when you drop by and even data about you, such as your age, your income and education.
2. Depending upon your Web browser, bookmarks are set by clicking on a command called Favorites or Bookmarks on the tool bar.
When you have called up a site you want to add to your list for instant retrieval during later visits, click on the toolbar and click on the prompt to Add the page to your list.
Next time you want that page, just click Favorites or Bookmarks and scroll down to the one you want.
Q: I recently upgraded my PC at work to Windows 98 as my OS. On my old PC, I used a Windows accessory called Cardfile. The files are saved with a .crd extension. This accessory does not appear to be available in Windows 98.
The closest accessory to Cardfile seems to be Address Book. When I try to import my .crd file into Address Book, it doesn’t appear to accept the .crd format.
I have copied the .crd files to the hard drive of my new PC, but when I try to open them from Windows Explorer, Windows 98 doesn’t recognize the .crd format.
Is there any way I can convert the .crd files to a format usable on Windows 98?
Kenneth A. Wood @yahoo.com
A: You need a brilliant little shareware program called Jot + Notes from King Stairs Software. It was designed to act as a replacement for that nifty little Cardfile program.
Microsoft abandoned Cardfile several years ago in order to pressure customers to buy costlier contact software like Outlook, thus taking away a wonderful program for keeping simple telephone/address contacts. Go to www.kingstairs.com/jot and download Jot Cardfile. This small program will import those .crd files you moved onto your new computer and, if you want, will act as a fine replacement for Cardfile on your new machine.
If you’re adamant about moving the data into Outlook or other software instead, the King Stairs shareware program will export it into the .csv format used by spreadsheets and readable by almost any address software around, including all those you have already mentioned.
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Contact Jim Coates at [email protected]. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60611.
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