The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Ask George George Skarbek |
Scrolling is too fast
Question:
In Internet Explorer when scrolling, the bars have the annoying habit of
suddenly racing. I can't seem to find an answer to this in Internet options, (it
seems to be worse on some sites than others). Is there a solution to this?
Answer:
I am well aware of the problem but despite searching I have not found a
suitable answer. I tend to scroll by pressing the Space bar to go down a page
and Shift + Space to move up. To scroll down many pages just hold the space bar
and the scrolling will be very quick but probably not as fast as in your case.
Another way, if you prefer to use the mouse, is to click and hold the vertical
scroll bar and drag it down at your desired speed.
Having an accurate clock
Question:
I wonder if you can tell me if Win XP still gets its "time" from some
authentic website, and
if not, howl can be sure my computer clock is set accurately. For years I relied
on a great programme called Accuset, but about a year ago Telstra decided to
discontinue availability of its atomic clock (because it wanted to give its
clients the best service possible?)
Answer:
Although the clock in the computer should be reasonably accurate comparable
to a cheap watch, there is no standard for the accuracy of the PC clocks.
Fortunately to have it permanently accurate is very easy to achieve. Right-click
the time display on
the bottom right-hand side of the taskbar, select Adjust Date/Time, then click
on the Internet Time tab, and for the time server select time. windows.com. From
then your computer should always have the
correct time as it will synchronise weekly. You can manually synchronise only by
using
Update Now.
Am I getting what I paid for?
Question:
I was recently upgraded to a Telstra Bigpond ADSL 1500/256 kbps plan from a
Bigpond ADSL 512/128 kbps plan. As it doesn't seem any quicker I queried whether
I could actually receive 1500/256 at my address. Telstra replied that they were
"... unable to tell you what speeds are achievable at your address."
Is there any way for me check what speeds are being achieved please? I'm
concerned I may
be paying at lot extra for no advantage.
Answer:
Your internet speed is limited by many factors. Not only the modem and your
ISP, but also the phone line quality, the
congestion on the Internet and the load and bandwidth allocated to the remote
server that you
are visiting. If say, 1000 users, are visiting a popular site and downloading
image or software, then on your plan the remote server should be able to supply
1,500,000 kbps. As the cost of providing such bandwidth is
significant, the actual bandwidth will be a lot less and you will
not be able to use your full bandwidth even if there was no other congestion on
the Internet. Doubling your download Internet speed will not double your actual
download speed in most cases.
The best way to determine your maximum speed is to eliminate as many variables
as possible. Start by e-mailing yourself a large file, preferably over 2 MB.
While this is being uploaded open the Task Manager by right-clicking on the
taskbar and then select the Networking tab. A few seconds the sending is
completed, check mail and then observe the network utilisation during download. If
you have a 100 MHz network card and you are downloading at 1,500 kbps (1.5 Mbps) plan
you should see a maximum of 1.5% utilisation.
Downloading your mail means that you should be unaffected kr any other Internet
problems as you are receiving a file directly from your ISP, and most likely from
the cache so even the disk performance at the other end is not relevant. If your
actual speed is noticeably less then you should contact Bigpond and ask for an
explanation.
There are also many sites that will give you an accurate report your broadband
speed. See http://www.speedtest.net/ for one such server. I am on a 10 Mbit/sec cable and my speed
varied around six to eight Mbit/sec. A typical test a weekend shows 8 Mbit/sec
but at peak periods it can drop. You should run this, or similar tests a times
and if all are well down the Bigpond.
Booting up order
Question:
I have decided to partition my laptop hard drive with Vista on D: and XP on C: Is
there a string that I can add to the boot.ini to make XP boot first rather than last?
Is there another way?
Answer:
I would not suggest trying a manual hack in Vista as there are easier ways.
The easiest is to download the free program EasyBCD from:
http://www.neosmart.net/. There also is a program that comes with Vista, called Bcdedit. Unfortunately
Bcdedit is not easy to follow as it has very many options but experienced users
may like its versatility. See the Microsoft site
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/bcdedit_reff.mspx for all the commands, but unless you have
moderate computer experience you will it hard to decide what commands are
important and what parameters to use. Below are the contents a sample BAT file
that I have created for my own use to overcome the same problems as yours. It
renames my XP and Vista headings, sets the order to display XP and the last line
makes XP the default operating system.
bcdedit /set {legacy} Description "Windows XP"
bcdedit /set {current} description "Vista Ultimate"
bcdedit.exe /displayorder {legacy} {current}
bcdedit /default {legacy}
You can either type each
command from a DOS box or use Notepad and enter all four lines and save it in
some folder as "MyFix.bat" and then double-click on it to run that file. Note
that the quotes are essential for saving otherwise it will be saved as .txt.
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