" I have thoroughly gone from cover
to cover and find it the most useful little computer book I have
ever had. This book gets right to the point in easy-to-read language
that anyone can understand."
Carol Eagles, Blind River, ON
jimeagl@enoreo.on.ca (about the the previous edition)
So what are Cheap Tricks?
Do you know how to make your computer run faster without buying
or downloading anything? Or how to turn Excel into a car
racing game? How to eliminate items you don’t use (like Log off)
from your Start menu? How to find out your chips real speed — not
just what the manufacturer claims? How to decorate your browser? How
to fix a mixed-up text file with just a couple of clicks? Almost 400
more secrets like this are revealed to you in The Little
Black Book of Cheap Tricks 2001.
"One of the best books out today
covering just about every tip and trick that make computing so much
fun."
Suppose you want your computer to run a job but you can’t stick
around until it’s done in order to turn it off afterwards. You can
use this trick to have it shut down, say, an hour or two later.
In Windows 98 or Millennium Edition, click on the Start button,
Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Scheduled Tasks. Double-click
on Add Scheduled Task and then click on Next. Browse in the Windows
directory until you find the file RUNDLL.EXE and select it.
In the next window, pick "One time only" and click on
Next. Choose the time you want to shut down and click Next and then
Finish.
But this won’t work yet.
Double-click on the task you’ve created and, in the window that
appears, change RUNDLL.EXE to c:\Windows\RUNDLL.EXE
user.exe,exitWindows (there’s only one space in the command –
before user – and those are backslashes around the first Windows).
Click on OK and now your computer is ready to shut down on schedule.
Some users may find that this trick works better if they use
RUNDLL32.EXE in the command instead of RUNDLL.EXE or if they type \system\user,exitWindows
instead of user.exe,exitWindows.
"Just wanted to say how much I
enjoyed your book. I am a night school teacher and used your cheap
tricks to make my Windows 98 class more interesting."
Here’s a nasty but harmless trick to play on a friend — make
their drives disappear from the My Computer folder! Or do it to your
own system, if you simply want to get rid of some icons.
In the Registry, work your way to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
In the right pane, right-click and select New and DWORD value. When
the value appears in the right pane, rename it NoDrives and
double click on it to open its Edit DWORD Value window. Enter 3FFFFFF
in the space provided and make sure Hexidecimal is selected. Click OK.
The next time the computer is restarted, My Computer will have no
drive icons in it.
After your friend has torn out her hair, you can confess your prank
and go back to the Registry to delete the NoDrives value. Reboot and
everything will be back to normal.
But we wouldn’t let your friend get her hands on your
computer for a while.
"This book has been a real treasure
trove of hints and tricks to play with. It is definitely worth the
price of the book and has provided some fun as well."
You install a shareware program with good intentions, but you don’t
get around to trying it out until after it expires. So you have to
download it all over again, right?
Wrong. If you still have the installation file, you can just
reinstall it.
Oops, this doesn’t seem to work — the program is still timing
out. Now you’re really forced to go back to the Web to download it
again, right?
Wrong again. The programmer has probably made the shareware create
a small file on your system to record the first installation date. You’ll
find it somewhere on your computer with an ".ini" extension.
Don’t confuse it with other .ini files your computer needs. If you
can’t tell from the file name, you can open the file with a text
editor and see if the contents give you a clue — just be sure not to
resave it.
If you find the proper .ini file, you can just delete it and
reinstall the program. If you can’t find the .ini file, the
programmer may have hidden the installation date in Window’s
Registry. If you know your way around the Registry you can look for
and delete this entry in there.
"I was VERY happy with the Little
Black Book, which I find very handy when I am after a solution to a
'puting problem, or an easier way to do something on the 'puter that
seems complicated to me, still a tad confused, even after five or so
years of computing! The way that the Little Black Book explains, in
PLAIN ENGLISH, all of the Cheap Tricks is really convenient for me,
as I don't speak fluent 'puter-ese."
Sheldon Sturges, Phoenix, AZ
shell824@uswest.net
Pet sounds
In the Windows version of Adobe Acrobat 4.0 or Acrobat
Reader 4.0, open the Help menu and select About Plug-ins. In the
Macintosh version, find About Plug-ins under the Apple menu. In the
submenu choose Acrobat Forms. In the About Acrobat Forms window, hold
down the Ctrl key and click on the Credits button. You’ll hear the
animal bark, see a paw appear and find the button turns to Woof.
Now go through the same steps (in Adobe Acrobat only, not Reade)
with the Acrobat Annotations plug-in. A different creature makes its
appearance in sight and sound.
Wondering what idiotic software developers spend their time
programming such useless tricks into applications? Try the same trick
with the Self-Sign Signatures plug-in.
State of your connection
You can discover just what servers you're connected to while on the
World Wide Web by invoking the “netstat” command.
While connected to the Internet, click on the Start button and Run.
In the space provided type netstat and click OK. Up will pop
a list in an MS-DOS window that shows the servers you are connected to
and the state of the connection.
"Little Black Book Of Cheap
Tricks is simply 'a must have' handbook for anyone who wants to
take absolute full advantage of the many (albeit less publicized)
programming features and benefits of the Windows 98 operating
system. The Little Black Book is the quintessential Windows 98 guide
for both the 'newbie' and 'leet' computer enthusiast, or for anyone
who wants to quickly and to safely capitalize on Microsoft's
powerful regedit.exe utility to customize their desktops, increase
their computer's speed and efficiency under Windows, or to fully and
completely utilize the dozens of excellent application features in
Windows 98. I'd recommend The Little Black Book Of Cheap Tricks to
anyone, if for no other reason than it is the type of book that
you'll come to use again and again."
