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Porcupine's Win95 Tips

Do's And Don'ts


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The following are a number of tips to help improve your Windows 95 setup
They are all very simple and reversible if you're not Totally Happy

A Word on Virtual Memory

This is a well disputed matter and you will all have your preferences, I always let Windows manage my Virtual Memory. People will tell you that the best way is to have a permanent contiguous area allocated as virtual memory and they're right. It is the best way to manage virtual memory, my view of Windows 95 is that its a bit childish and will have tantrums if you don't let it manage it. Windows 95 certainly isn't clever enough to work without Virtual Memory even if you have 32MB of Ram. The best way is to 'suck it and see'. If you have lots of disk space make it permanent and allocate at least 30 MB, if you haven't got lots of space let Windows manage it and always keep your disk well defragmented.

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Control Panel - System

Double-click on System icon in Control Panel
Select Performance and File system
Select Hard Disk and set Typical Role to 'Network Server', and 'Full Read Ahead' with slider.
Select CD-ROM and set Supplemental Cache to 'Large', and Optimise Access Pattern to type of CD-ROM you have.
Select OK

Select Graphics
Set Acceleration to 'Full'
Select OK

Select Virtual Memory
Set Windows to manage all your Virtual Memory

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Control Panel - Display


For Swapping between resolutions without having to restart Windows, change the 'Color Palette' setting in Display to a value that is supported by all the resolution settings (eg 256 color). Now when you change you resolution it will only take 10 secs (if that) as Windows no longer needs to restart!

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Control Panel - Sounds/Mouse

Use your sounds to your advantage. Add Click.wav to 'open' and 'close' programs. Now when Windows is busy you'll know it hasn't 'crashed' or 'hung'. You'll be able to hear it opening and closing files/programs in the background and know just to wait.

You can do the same with the Mouse by selecting a different pointer for 'Busy' and 'Background'.

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Restarting Windows Without a Reboot

Make a Dos Batch file (eg reboot.bat) include in it:

@echo off
echo Restarting Windows
win

Create a shortcut to this Batch file and set the 'Program' to 'close on exit' and under Advanced select 'MS-Dos mode', 'Warn before entering' and 'Use current Config..'.

This should solve it and gives you the option to bottle out if you select the wrong icon.

Beware you may need to edit your Dosstart.bat file to prevent Win95 from rebooting your PC as it tries to restart. (see below).

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MS-Dos Mode Setting

When Windows exits to MS-Dos mode it normally takes your 'MSCDEX' and 'MOUSE' settings from your original installation and only loads them then. If you later want to change what to load when entering MS-Dos mode all you have to do is edit the DOSSTART.BAT file under your Windows directory, and hey-presto!

I Just leave a message like:

echo Welcome To Your MS-Dos Session Type Cdrom for Cdrom's and Mouse

Then create a batch file called 'Cdrom' and add your 'MSCDEX' and 'MOUSE' lines, now you can control what happens when entering MS-Dos mode and Windows will never reboot the machine when you want to return to Win95

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Your Start Menu

Why not go to Explorer and find your Start Menu under your Windows directory! Thats all it is a list of Folders and Shortcuts. The Folders are your Program Groups and Shortcuts are your Group Icons. You can now customise you start menu by creating or moving your shortcuts around.

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Your SendTo Menu

To aid your Start Menu you can add a SendTo shortcut to your Right Click on the mouse. Create a folder called 'General' under Start Menu in your Windows directory. Now go to your SendTo directory also under Windows in explorer. Copy and paste an existing Shortcut (eg Briefcase) now right click on the Shortcut to Briefcase and select Properties, now edit the Shortcut tab and change it to "C:\Windows\Start Menu\General" theres no need for a 'start in' entry and then select 'OK'. Now click once on the shortcut to briefcase and press F2 and change its name to 'Start Menu'.

Now you can go to any directory, copy and paste a shortcut of the executable and then 'SendTo Start Menu' with a right click of the mouse and careful selection.

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Get Some Power Toys

Power Toys is produced by Microsoft as another add-on to Win95. If you haven't got a copy then click on this (it can also be found on the CD with Personal Computer World - October96).

Power Toys 95 - 204K

It gives you a selection of Taskbar Icons when you start up to help control your desktop!

Copy the unzipped file to an empty directory (must beless than 8 letters), then double click to extract.
Find the file 'install.inf', right click on it and select Install from the menu.

QuickRes
Takes you to your Display settings in Control Panel.

DeskTop
When you've got lots of windows open this lets you click on the taskbar for access to your desktop icons.

Mixer Control
Self explanatory really

Tweak UI
The cream of the selection. Its a nice icon in Control Panel that lets you hack at Windows 95. and this is what you can do with it:

General
Choose how quickly your menus should open

Explorer
Choose whether you want the arrow to appear in the shortcut icon or to look like any normal icon.

Desktop
Choose which permanent icons appear on your desktop, ever wondered how to get rid of that 'Inbox' icon from exchange!

New
Select which new documents can be created from a right click on the mouse.

Add/Remove
Pretty much the same as Control Panel icon

Boot - The best
Allows you to boot into Dos6.22 with F4 on Boot up, have or remove the windows splash screen on start up (see the bottom for a hack for that too), careful with the GUI selection tickbox though.

Repair
Best left alone if your a new user

Paranoia
Lets you empty the recent 'Documents' and 'Find' history's on the start menu. Now no-one will know you were there and what you looked at!!

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Splash Screen Hack

Hack the splash screen for Windows 95 start up. Run this program then copy a file (BMP) to C:\Logo.sys (it needs to be 320x400 to be displayed correctly)

Splash Hacker - 8K

Extract the exe file from the zip and run it.

Try this one for a size

Splash Sample - 21K

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Shutdown Screen Hack

Hack the shutdown screen for Windows 95 shutdown. You can edit two files in your Windows directory called 'logos.sys' and 'logow.sys'. Use Paint to open and edit these files to your taste. Or you can unzip the file below to your windows directory (backing up your old ones first) as a basic example.

Shutdown samples - 4K

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