files

Finally! After all the trouble and hassle with the last host, I think I've finally found a permanent home for the infopackets.com web site and virtual-host friends who are sharing this dedicated server. A brief, but very interesting (hellish) ... synopsis entails: Some time near the end of October 2002: It was decided that I needed to get another dedicated server to handle all the traffic that comes through the infopackets web server. October 30, 2002: After being reassured by a "knowledgeable" web-hosting sales representative that infopackets.com and its high demand for bandwidth could ... (view more)

Last week's Visitor Feedback question asked, "How how can I tell what programs are taking all my space in my hard drive?" My first thought to this question was to use a minimalist approach, because I believe in "doing things myself" -- providing ... that the proposed solution is relatively simple. If you recall, my answer to the above question was straightforward: right-click on a folder and display its folder Properties, and have Windows display its disk usage. This gives a very general idea as to how much space was being used by an installed program. Fact: Programs that are ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Victor V. writes: " Dear Dennis, I love your newsletters and read them every time I receive it. I have a question for you and I hope you can help. Can you tell me how can I tell what programs are taking all my space in my hard ... drive and how to remove them? I am running out of space! " My Response: To get a general idea of what is installed on your system, you could start with the Add / Remove programs in the Control Panel. Here you will find a list of installed programs. Since all programs are installed to folders (99.99% of the time, anyway), you can then attempt ... (view more)

There's lots o' interesting news to tell you in this issue of the Gazette. Recall that October 16th's issue of the Gazette proposed the question of whether or not Kazaa (Sharman Networks) implemented some sort of cap on bandwidth (downloads). I ... received a few suggestions from our readers, and without further adieu, let me attempt coordinate some of their thoughts. Kooby writes: " I updated to Kazaa v2 to find this new thing called a kazaa participation level. Because I have a cable modem (high speed internet) with only mediocre upload speed, I don't share any files with other Kazaa ... (view more)

If you share files online the Internet (trading MP3s, movies, software), you have undoubtedly already heard of Kazaa -- maybe even Kazaa Lite . In a nutshell Kazaa uses its own P2P (peer to peer) technology which allow users across the Internet to ... share files online. The last time I checked, there were about 2.2 million users online Kazaa, sharing some 5 million files. That's a lot of files. I'm not going to get into the complexities of how things work, because I've already discussed that in a previous issue of the Infopackets Gazette. Kazaa is free software which gets its funding from the ... (view more)

Since we're on the hot topic of hackers and hacking lately, I thought I'd share with you another great resource that Eric B. sent me. The web site is called myNetWatchman . The myNetWatchman program (agent) gives users a heads-up that they have a ... security problem, if their system becomes infected with an Internet Worm virus. There's also some super-cool reading on their web site (RE: ' Windows Forensics ') which shows how multiple non-hostile applications combined can lead to a hacking threat. I'm not going into great detail because I don't want to spoil it for you; however, I will say that ... (view more)

Last week I received a question, "How do I retrieve files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin ?" Since then, I received a few really good suggestions from a few Infopackets Readers. The first one comes from Rick K. His answer was very ... complete -- much more than mine was -- which is also why his suggestion * might * be a over the heads of some readers. I've edited Rick's response a bit and have also added a few comments of my own in an attempt to clear any technical jargon. Infopackets Reader Rick K. writes: " The Recycle Bin is an attempt to copy what Apple does, which ... (view more)

This past Sunday, I loaded up Outlook Express only to find that my Inbox was flooded with emails from people that I didn't know, inviting me to install a "cool" screen saver which was conveniently file-attached to the email. The email messages ... varied in topic. Most of the file attachments ended in .SCR, some of them ended in .EXE. How nice. Of course, I know better than to open an email attachment from someone I don't know, because 99.999% of the time it contains a virus. If you know a little bit about computers, you might know that a file that has the extension .SCR is generally a ... (view more)

Last week, I received a question pertaining to a free Windows backup program. I took this opportunity to ask the readers of the Infopackets Gazette newsletter, and received MANY suggestions. So, without further adieu, here are some top picks: ... Karen's Power Tools: Replicator : Replicator copies from any source to any destination; it works with ZIP, CD-R, and HD. It can be set to freshen files that are updated/deleted and can be set for unattended operation. Required: Visual Basic 6.0 . My Own Backup (MOB) : A flexible piece of software that allows for Disk Spanning (CD-R backups). Some ... (view more)

Have you ever flashed your BIOS? The BIOS is a chip built onto a circuit board that contains a set of instructions. The instructions are responsible for controlling the device and how it interacts with other peripherals. For example: a main board ... (motherboard) contains a BIOS (CMOS) which stores information about your computer, such as the size of your hard drive, COM ports, buffers, and the like. Flashing a BIOS simply means to update the code of the BIOS instruction. This is done with two separate pieces of software: the BIOS flashing program, and the BIOS update itself. The BIOS flashing ... (view more)