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1-15-04
Last week we backed up
important data (My Documents, Email, Address Book, Favorites etc.). This week, we’ll restore that same data
to both 9x and XP systems.
The two are very similar
other than one glaring difference.
9x and XP handle Read Only files (files burned to CD-R) in completely
different fashion. XP automatically
removes the Read Only attribute when files are copied from CD to the hard
drive. 9x operating systems do not,
so they must be altered manually.
This is important because documents or email databases cannot be altered
if they are marked Read Only.
Let’s start with
9x…
First you’ll want to make a
new folder on your freshly formatted drive and call it Backup or something. Now open your backup CD or other media
and, while holding down the <Ctrl>, click on the Favorites, Address Book,
My Documents and Outlook Express folders (plus any others you may have
saved). This selects all
folders. Release the <Ctrl>
key and right click on any folder.
Click Copy, then browse to your new Backup folder and click Edit and
Paste. That will copy all of the
folders to the hard drive, obviously.
Now for the fun stuff ;)
Open one of the folders, say Favorites, and click on View and Details. Note that changes the way the files are
displayed. Now click on View and
Folder Options (Tools and Folder Options in ME). Click the View tab and click Like
Current Folder. Click OK when asked
if you want the all the folders to be displayed this way, then click OK again
and you’re ready to begin altering and moving your
files.
Lets start by changing the
Read Only attribute in each folder.
While you’re in the Favorites folder click on the very first listed
file. Scroll down to the last file
and, holding the <Shift> key, click on that file. That selects all files. Now right click on any selected file and
choose properties. In the section
at the bottom of the General page uncheck the box by Read-only, then click Apply
and OK.
Repeat in every folder. Keep in mind that if the folders contain
subfolders, like My Pictures inside My Documents, you’ll need to follow the same
procedure in each of those subfolders.
Now to move the data. Copying the files back to the correct
places on the hard drive is a little different than backing up. Instead of copying folder and all,
you’ll need to copy just the contents of the folder. You’ll want to start with Favorites,
Address Book and My Documents. Open
each folder and follow the same steps for changing the attributes only this time
you’ll want to click on Copy rather than Properties when you right click after
selecting all the files. Then
browse to each destination folder (C:\Windows\Favorites, C:\Windows\Application
Data\Microsoft\Address Book and C:\My Documents) and click Edit and Paste for
each set of files.
Outlook Express is
different. To get your messages
back in you’ll need to import them through the program rather than just copy
them. Go ahead and set your email
account up, then in OE you’ll click on File, Import and Messages. Click on Microsoft Outlook Express 6 and
click Next, then click the dot next to Import mail from an OE6 store directory
and click OK. Click the Browse
button and browse to the Outlook Express folder in the Backup folder. Click OK and Next. The default selection is to import all
folders. Click Next and your email
will be added to the new OE database.
You can skip most of the
copy from CD to hard drive and ALL of the attribute changes for XP. You can copy everything to the proper
folders, although you WILL need to change the View to Details in a folder on the
CD then change the settings to view all folders that way (XP is like ME, it will
be Tools and Folder Options to make all folders use the Details format). Also, since some of the folders you’ll
be working are hidden in XP you’ll need to go to Tools and Folder Options, click
the View tab and choose Show Hidden and System files.
The destination folders for
XP are C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Favorites, C:\Documents and
Settings\User Name\My Documents and C:\Documents and Settings\User
Name\Application Data\Address Book.
You will still need to copy the Outlook Express folder from the CD to the
hard drive, however, because Outlook Express will not import read only
files.
I realize all of the Copy
and Paste and creating folders and changing attributes sounds confusing to some
of you. That’s expected, especially
if you’re new to PCs. If you have
any questions about the procedure at all you can email me with them, or send
your question to bob@iglou.com to get ask the
entire team.
Regardless, remember that if
you don’t do regular backups you WILL lose important data. It may not be tomorrow or next week or
even next year but it WILL happen…
Stay safe and we’ll see you
next week…
Kevin Mefford,
Editor
Hello
once again to all of our 84Online subscribers! I see that cigarette sales are
up…somebody out there is slipping!
Just
a little humor for you before this week’s download tip, which is brought to you
courtesy of Mozilla. These are the same folks that bring Netscape to your
doorstep.
Actually
this week’s download tip is what I like to call a two-fer, meaning you’ll get
two downloads this week for the price of one.
The
first is a new web browser for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users. Whichever
platform you are using, be sure to download the correct version! The web browser
is called Firebird, and it’s available at http://www.mozilla.org
Some
of the features it boasts are tabbed-browsing and popup blocking. This means
that instead of multiple buttons in the taskbar, you’ll have one for Firebird
and there will be tabs in the upper portion of the window with page titles so
that you can easily navigate from one open page to the next. This is a feature
that I first saw in Opera, another web browser. There are more features and you
can get all the info you need at http://mozilla.org/products/firebird.
Also
from Mozilla is a companion email client called Thunderbird. Great for both
email and newsgroups, this little application has features that help you block
spam. More info is available at http://mozilla.org/products/thunderbird.
Both
of these programs will be easy for current Netscape/Mozilla users to migrate to,
so if you are, or once were a Netscape user, you might be interested in giving
‘em a try!
Thanks
again for subscribing and keep them ideas comin’!
Troy
Overton
America Online, in an
attempt to save its dwindling membership, announced Wednesday that it will begin
offering complete movie downloads through Movielink. If you’re an AOL member, know that there
are a few caveats involved:
http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5144195.html?tag=nefd_top
While the RIAA continues to
sue people who use peer-to-peer file sharing software to download music, a
programmer in New York thinks he has found a way to make your file sharing
habits completely untraceable:
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32632.html
The Bagle worm may be coming
to a computer near you. Find out
what to look for:
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32628.html
In case you haven’t heard,
someone’s buying stuff online.
According to Jupiter Research, online sales will reach $117 billion in
the US by 2008. That’s 5% of all
retail purchases:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040120S0014
Fred Langa, of langa.com
fame, claims that up to 40% of all e-mail never reaches its destination. What does this mean for us? Fred’s pretty long-winded but this
article’s worth the read:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17300016
Got a local tech story
that's not getting enough attention? Send it my
way.
Matthew
Dattilo
In the months since I've
been contributing my Linux desktop articles I have been trying to demonstrate to
newsletter subscribers that there is an alternative to both Windows and Mac
operating systems. While I still
believe that Linux is ready for the desktop, I had an interesting experience
recently that I felt was necessary to share.
Are Linux
distributions ready for the desktop?
As I mentioned in a past
newsletter Novell recently acquired the #2 Linux vendor, SuSE. I had tried SuSE back in 2000 when I
worked as an editor for TechRepublic but was unimpressed with it as a Linux
distribution. But, as a result of
the Novell purchase, my interest in SuSE had been renewed so I decided to give
version 9.0 a shot. After all, it
had been almost 4 years since I tried the last version of SuSE. I'm about to stun you all ... I HATED
IT.
After installing SuSE 9.0, I
feel that I must express the following information:
1. Each Linux distribution is
unique in the way it handles itself.
Different vendors choose to provide
Linux in their own unique way. As a
result, different Linux distributions will contain different software that
others don't. If they do use the
same software there's a high probability that the software versions will be
different.
Also different distributions go about installing software in
different ways. Fedora, as an example, uses programs like APT and YUM to
download and install software.
SuSE, on the other hand, uses a program called YaST to install
software. While these programs
basically do the same functions as the other, they work in completely different
ways.
2. Different distributions will
detect hardware differently.
Since Linux is open source, Linux
distributors can modify the software in their versions of Linux in any way that
they see fit. They can provide a
modified version of the Linux kernel, as an example. This modified version of the kernel may
better detect certain computer hardware better than another distribution with
the same kernel.
As an example, Fedora found and installed all of my
computer hardware with no problems at all.
However, when trying out SuSE, it didn't detect the proper mouse nor
could it detect the proper monitor.
I have friends who have had the complete opposite experience of mine:
SuSE found all of their hardware but Fedora would have problems.
3. Make sure that you install
ALL of the software that comes with your choice of Linux
distribution.
Since Linux distributions have a choice of software, they
also have the choice of what default software will be used for an
installation. Take the desktop as
an example. Fedora defaults to the
Gnome desktop. SuSE defaults to
KDE. If you don't install all of
the software available on the CDs that came with your distribution, you may be
stuck with a desktop environment that you don't like.
Case in point: I choose not to install all of the
software when I was doing my SuSE installation. After I had completed the setup I found
that I was stuck with KDE. Since
I'm a Gnome person I found this unacceptable and had to go about the task of
getting all of Gnome installed.
Since this was post installation it was harder to do, as I had to track
down all of the packages I needed to complete the install.
4. Don't stop at one version of
Linux just because you don't like it.
Okay, so you decided to give Linux
a try and after installing it you absolutely hate it. That doesn't mean that you should
immediately give up and head back to Windows. Given the first three statements above,
there's a good chance that there is a Linux distribution out there with your
name on it.
Yes, it may not be my favorite distribution, which is
Fedora. It may not even be
SuSE. Heck, you might decide that
you like Gentoo better because it gives you more control of the installation
procedure, or you may like Lycoris because it more closely resembles Windows XP
than the rest of the Linux distributions out on the
market.
So what's the lesson learned
here? Well, I learned that while I
love Linux I don't love every Linux distribution. I have found a distribution that fits my
needs and I find easy to work with.
Does that mean that everyone else out there will love Linux? Probably not. Does that mean that there's a Linux for
everyone? Again, probably not. But unless you're willing to give a few
distributions a try, you may never know.
Visit LinuxISO.org and
distrowatch.com for a list of different Linux distributions. You might just be surprised how many
different versions are available.
Visit their Web sites; look at their screen shots. If you see any that look interesting,
give them a shot.
Ed
Engelking
This article was written on
OpenOffice Writer, a free word processing program for Windows, Mac and Linux
that is completely compatible with Microsoft Office. Try it today at http://www.openoffice.org/.
Q: I want to know how to erase web searches
from Google. It appears that
all of my searches throughout the many
years on line are still listed in my
Google and other search engines. Can
this history be erased or deleted each
year?
A: To clear your search history for all
search engines click on Tools and
Internet Options in Internet
Explorer. Click on the Content tab and click
the AutoComplete button at
the bottom. When the next window opens click on the Clear Forms
button. Click OK and OK again, then close the browser and reopen it.
Voila, your search history is gone.
To clear the history
from the Google Toolbar just click the Google logo
and click Clear Search
History. I find it handy to leave some of my search
terms in the
history, so I use a little free tool called GooDelete from
http://www.soft411.com/company/PPP-Infotech-Ltd/GooDelete-History.htm.
This program allows you to delete any entry you want without dumping the whole
nine yards.
Hope that helps and
thanks for listening (and reading) ;)
Kevin
Mefford
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please email them to bob@iglou.com.
Copyright 2004, The 84
Online Team. All rights reserved.
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