Christianb

Hi I'm not sure I understand your problem? Which may or may not be monitor related. Do you know the difference between a normal window state and a maximized one? In a normal window state a particular window will occupy some fraction of the screen in a maximized state a window will take up the whole screen minus the taskbar area if you have that set up to be omnipresent. There is nothing wrong with a program or your monitor if it displays in a maximized state. Quite to the contrary a maximized program is maximizing it's work area. This will allow it to display as many things as possible or use as large of fonts, pictures, and controls as possible in the your current screen's resolution. Some people (in my opinion novices) like to have their programs not take up the whole screen. If you are one of them just double-click the title bar and the program should change into a medial or normal windowstate which would cause the program to take up a smaller portion of the screen. The other possibility is that you do in fact a monitor issue. You might check your manuals and make sure that your monitor isn't set at a refresh rate and or color depth that isn't supported by your monitor and or video card. Also you could just have a bad monitor did you call NEC and describe your problem? Good Luck, Christian

Hi nebulus, Thanks for sending me the link. I still think I would be more likely to take a class, but it's nice to know that there is a free book out there. Nonetheless I'll add it to my C++ bookmarks so that if I'm ever so inclined I can take a look. -Christian

Granted if I really cared, I could just sit there and step through the code until I understood it, but who has time for that? I'd must rather take an introductory C programming course and then just play around from there. That's the same thing I did with VB. I've only had one VB programming class and I've been coding in VB for 5 years now. I can do plenty that most professionals can't, and I'm sure many of them could say the same about me. Cheers, Christian

Hi Nebulus, Yes the open source part is cool, but I'm a VB programmer and so it's not really that big of deal for me since I hardly know a lick of C. The C I know would be API Calls and logic manipulation, not syntax. For example I understand the flow of looping code, but I wouldn't know how to do it in C. For the most part that limits me to being able to change values, paths, and strings, all of which aren't terribly exciting. Unless I wanted to change a keyboard shortcut in a program and that was the only way . So I take it you are able to read the source. Yes it is cool to get a more honest and complete report of what the new features are/aren't in a build. Cheers, Christian

Hi Nebulus, I thought I mispelled that when I was writing it, but thought about other things and didn't check immediately. . Well I'm glad you have a browser that you feel is working for you. I'm also suprised that you find Mozilla more stable, but it may very well be. It's also good that the browser you like is freeware. Happy Mozilla-ing. -Christian

Nebulous, Sometimes you can have a corrupt cache, favorites, or cookies and the next version might trip on it more than the last. Did you start with a clean copy? or move the cookies, cache, and favorites away temporarily for diagnostic purposes? -Christian

Hi Nebulous, My question for you would be what version vs what version. 5.0 is on SP3 and 5.5 is still on Sp2. Are we comparing apples to oranges? Although I will admit that 5.5 is probably less stable than 5.0 simply because there's more code and more chaos accordingly. If you tried anything less than the latest 5.5 Sp2 perhaps you never really experienced 5.5. As you read above I wait until the end of release cycles rather than the beginning. I also haven't noticed any serious stability problems. When/where is it crashing for you? If you can give me exact the repro steps to generate the crash I'm happy to try them on my system and see if the problem isn't endemic to your computer. Good Luck Amigo, Christian

Thanks Pmistry. I'll have to check them all out when I get some free time. -Christian

Hi sentme_mail, One would have to assume that the problem is related to IE 6. Personally I let everyone else test Microsoft's titles for them and wait until the next version is already out before adopting the previous version. So I won't be using IE 6 until until IE 7 comes out. I'm happy with IE 5.5 for now. If there are better features in IE6 or Outlook Express 6 I simply don't know what I'm missing, nor will I care until v7 is released. That way I can enjoy the features without quite so many bugs. Good Luck Mon, Christian

Hey Gang, I just got a message from Windows saying you've held down shift 5 times and sticky keys has been enabled.... I told it to ignore that sticky key combo and that put a keyboard tray icon in my system tray . I would like to, if possible, disable the sticky keys service if there is one or a way of doing it. I'm not disabled and nor are any of my friends that use my computer (all that's a matter of opinion )and it's probably eating CPU cycles. For the record I did get the Stick Keys icon out of my system tray. Also that's a really ugly sticky keys tray icon. Thanks, Christian Blackburn

Hi Adam, No problem man. Your mistake looked easy to make. Inf, Ini what the difference? -Christian

How did you like the film. It would seem that it got very low ratings ? -Christian

Hi Clutch, Thanks for the info I'll trade you her name for a copy of the screenshot . We'll actually I couldn't find a picture of her with her name on it maybe you'll remember the character's name? Read through the list of characters and their real names. This is the chick though right?: Christian's Future Wifey

Hi Guys, I know this is slightly off topic, but who cares nobody ever stays on topic anyways . Who is that gorgeous hottie on your desktop? I used to have Jennifer Lopez on my desktop and I couldn't get any work done, but perhaps I could put a picture of that gal somewhere else in the house . Thanks, Christian

Hi Adam, I guess I failed to pay close enough attention to details and didn't use your extact syntax: ,n instead I used ,,n but that worked fine too. I was able to uninstall tons of stupid windows components. I still have to do some thing to get the fax service to uninstall, because it wouldn't let me even after I enabled that as an uninstall option. I think I'll just remove the printer and disable the service and then maybe it'll let me remove the files too in Add/Remove. I nixed imaging, minesweaper - the world's most lame game, word pad, hyperterminal, dialer, and chat. I'm all set. Thanks Again Amigo, Christian

Who makes your CD-RW and is it working at the moment?

Hi Tom-Boy, I think I may have just found your problem. Why don't you try not installing DirectX 9 and see what happens? There is absolutely no need to have the latest version of directX until you have a game that actually uses it's updated features. In the mean time it'll just slow down your system and presumably degrade stability as more code means more complexity, greater choas, and additional processing. First I would try uninstalling DirectX and if that doesn't fix it then you might try re-installing and not using DX9. You may even want to try DX8.0a vs DX8.1 since they have a different feature set and that could be part of the problem. Good Luck, Christian

Hi DosFreak, Thank you very much for the URLs. By the way what the hell has happened to FreeDos are they about to collapse or something? There hasn't been a new build in ages. Do you know anything about that? Thanks, Christian

Hi Adam, I just tried your suggestion in Win2K and there were any files named "sysoc.ini" or "sys0c.ini". I couldn't find any files named "sys*.ini" or files containing hide in the WINNT folder that were OS related. Can you very that file name for me? Thanks, Christian

I'll tell you a funny story I used to work at MS and we had these two guys there that were unbelievably lazy. We all rejoiced when they were canned. One of them was my friend Jon, he got hired on in the Accessibilities group as a lab manager and get this his bos was blind. I thought it was perfect for him and I knew he'd never, intentionally anyways, leave that job. However it would seem that some of his sight-having co-workers caught on to his laziness and had him canned just the same. Now he's back at MS again on a third job, maybe he's learned his lesson I don't know . -Christian

Hi Adam, Rock On! Thanks Adam. I can understand that Microsoft is worried about getting sued in relation to accesibility, but that does mean we're all disabled and all should have to have that stuff running . Thanks Amigo, Christian

Hi. No I've never had that problem. What version of Outlook Express are you using? I have used just about every version between 4.0 Sp1 and 5.5 Sp2. Perhaps newer versions of IE have a default outgoing e-mail address. Or if you set your reply value to a different address Outlook Express may be accomo[censored] those settings a little too well to and causing it to change the from address to your Reply-to setting. When you're writing an e-mail there's a from drop down list box just below the Toolbar. Before you send something out just make sure it's coming from the right address. If the behavior is just too dog gone annoying then revert back to a previous version of Outlook Express (may not be possible if you're using WinXP). Good Luck, Christian Blackburn

First off service packs are extremely important if you don't want people to hack your system. We no longer live in an age where the only way to get virusses is by downloaded a questionable application off a bulletin board. Rather people can use programs they wrote to try every IP address until they find a sucker, and then do anything and everything they want to that system. Hackers keep finding new holes in it windows and it's perpetually up[censored] interfaces. Although Linux would have the same problem if people used it and or knew how to develop for it. The only protection is to stay recent on "known" security flaws so that the ammount of known holes will be greatly reduced. Since most hackers just use known flaws. As far as your HDs failing, that should have absolutely nothing to do with your SP. It probably means you own an IBM, WD, Maxtor or Fujitsu drive. If it's any of the following tell me the size and speed and I might be able to be more help. Also if you're HD is new it would behoove you to use a newer SP, because the older SPs don't support a EIDE caache size larger than 2MB. If your IDE interface is serial that may be your problem, that's bleeding edge technology and I wouldn't expect it to work right just yet. Personally I'm going to wait another year or two before adopting that technology. As for the fact that your system won't boot, you'll have to be more specific as to your error messages and what you did last. My guess is either you're installing corrupt drivers/software or you have a hardware failure of some sort. Judging by the severity of your descriptions you may have a bad HD and your power supply is probably tits up . Anyways your probably is almost guaranteeably not related to the SP level. Do you have a non-onboard IDE COntroller or Raid controller? That could also be problematic, especially if you haven't installed updated drivers specific to your device that supports SP3. Good Luck, Christian

Hi Guys, Thanks for mentioning this. I don't have Windows XP, but 2000 ain't much different any ways. What is a good website that would have both of these programs? And perpetual news regarding updates? Also is there a Glide Emulator for DOS? I doubt it, almost nobody can program in DOS anymore. It's very difficult, too low level. However I would love to play Descent 2 and Tomb Raider one using Glide . Thanks, Christian

In any event I think we're both arguing a moot point. Zip Drives are over. Thank God! -Christian