Dr. Pournelle:

I have to agree with what you wrote in your latest View, that earlier versions of Windows were a LOT easier to use. In fact, I am still using Workgroups 3.11, with some 32-bit add-in drivers (--sure wish I had the old Helix Multimedia Cloaking drivers, though). I simply do not have the time to suffer through all the types of problems you report. My next OS will most likely be Linux, probably the Caldera distribution of 2.0.2.

Then again ...my local cable TV company is offering Internet access. The uplink is through an ordinary analog modem (for me, this would be my 3Com/USR 56K/x2 external desktop modem). The downlink comes at 512kbps through the cable TV box into my 10mbps Ethernet card.

My and my wife’s computers already talk to each other through such Ethernet cards and a cheap hub. And, I can dial up an ordinary 56K local ISP too. Ah, but how does one arrange so that Netscape (Navigator 3, I’d prefer) talks out through the modem but listens through the Ethernet card?

The cable TV company’s answer is: you must use Windows 9x. Given that, it’s just a few-minute snap to set up. If you use any other OS, they will lease you the cable TV box with RJ-45 jack which provides the downstream Ethernet packets, and issue you an analog dialup password, but they won’t give you a hand setting it up—you’re welcome to try, but you’re on your own.

But I don’t wanna buy into the Windows 9x sw-- ...uh, upgrade cycle. I want to be able to perform the magic using Workgroups. Then, eventually, Linux.

Can someone supply/point me to instructions on how to arrange this? Formerly I was going over an ISDN line to a dialup provider in Germany using Netscape Nav 3 over Workgroups, so I know about things like the FOSSIL emulator, the ISDN packet driver, the settings in Trumpet Winsock, the CAPI drivers, and Com3Protocol=, Com3BufferSize=, netheapsize= and the like in system.ini. My profoundest thanks will go to whoever can guide me to the next higher level. Your M.O. BTW is in my pocket, going in the mail first thing tomorrow AM.

I’ve just become a new, stunned user of Dragon’s Naturally Speaking (or Naturally Bloated since it sures gobbled up all my free disk space and my 64 Megs of RAM fast enough). One of the first "professional" tasks I’m trying with Dragon is committing a micro-cassette taped interview with a 70-year-old amateur astronomer to text for an upcoming article in our Royal Astronomical Society of Canada / Ottawa Centre’s newsletter (I’m its editor).

I have the micro-cassette recorder output coming into a headset, while the headset’s microphone is going into my sound card and on to the Dragon app. As the fellow I interviewed on the tape speaks into my ear (and the microphone doesn’t pick this up, of course), I paraphrase what he says out loud and Dragon dutifully interprets it into a text window. The results are unbelievable.

As this is the first real attempt to use Dragon, I’m also taking the time to "train" it when it doesn’t understand certain words (especially astronomical terms). If I pronounce properly and speak entire sentences at a time (thus giving Dragon plenty of context to use), the application is just awesome! I did my first run last night and I am completely amazed at how much of the interview I’ve gotten down into text.

I’m only now exploring your "CURRENT VIEW" pages on your website, and I’m amazed at the solid amounts of text you produce each day. I realize you write for a living (my being editor for my Centre’s newsletter is just a part-time, one hairy week-end a month thing), but I wondered if you’ve considered using Dragon to produce the bulk of your writings.

I should do a search of your site to see if you’ve already written about Dragon, and if you have, well, just consider this email as one praising an amazing application (uh, if you have the hardware for it, though)! I, for one, do not mind Intel pushing faster and faster processors on us, for if there’s one app that needs it, with professional uses (to heck with games here), it’s speech recognition. That technology is finally here and available for anyone within reach of a relatively modest motherboard &; CPU upgrade (let’s hope PII prices plummet now with the PIII available)...

Jerry,

I’m running Outlook 98 with the Internet Mail only option, and have lots of .PST files open. For exactly the reason you want it - in case of a crash of the .PST file.

The "secret" is to go to the File menu, select "New", and drop to the bottom of the menu where it says "Personal Folders File (.pst)". Pick it, create a filename, and then assign a descriptive name to it. These folders will appear below your regular folder lists, as a separate "root" if you want to call it that.

An obvious candidate for this is your "All" folder - put it in a separate .PST file, maybe even on a file server other than your mail PC. And distribute other things as needed. For example, I have a "Correspondence" file, a "Newsletter" file, a "Microsoft Subs" file, etc.

Just some data points on outlook.

(I am using the terms "internet mail only" and "workgroup" to describe the two versions of outlook 98. I forget what terms that the installation uses so I will use these ones instead)

(1) the outlook pst file format has been for me a very reliable place to store mail. In hundreds of installations, I have had problems only once, and that was due to a bad sector. Most of the mail was recoverable after running the scanpst utility.

(2) the inbox repair tool is scanpst.exe. It is basically the same utility that has existed since the later ms mail days and win 3.1.

The current scanpst.exe that works with outlook is the same program that got installed with the "exchange client 4.0" that first appeared with the initial version of windows 95. I don’t remember if the program at that time was automatically added to the accessories menu. The outlook 97 installation did add it in.

(3) install the workgroup version of outlook. You won’t regret it (more than you might already do :) I break up my mail files into several files and it is easier to manage that way. Changing from the internet mail only to workgroup should not be a problem.

I have mistakenly in the past installed the internet mail only option and then reran the installation to install the workgroup option. I have not lost my settings. (but I do advice writting down your settings anyways, outlook has lots of other ways to cause you to loose your settings, especially when you are copying profiles; I guess it is an undocumented feature of outlook.)

If you have installed the fax option, that might cause problems when you switch

from internet only to workgroup. You might want to remove it first if you have

it installed. It is not supported under the workgroup edition

(4) I have not found any tools to automate the compacting of PST files. Maybe I have not looked hard enough.

You can initiate the compacting yourself (sorry if you already know this) by right clicking on the PST file, choosing properties, clicking on the advanced button and selecting compact now. This is for 98 workgroup. There is also a button for calculating the folder sizes. I can compare this against the actual size of the PST file to determine how much slack space there is in use.

If this option is not available under the internet only version, it can be

accessed through Start menu, control panel, mail, show profiles, select your

correct profile (you probably have only one), select your personal folder,

properties, compact now

Personally, I find having to do this myself to be a headache. I want the system to handle it automatically... wait, maybe it does? A couple of weeks ago, I moved 150MB of mail out of my 300MB PST file just to see what will happen if I don’t compact the mail file.

My 300MB PST file has actually shrunk to (let me check...) 197MB and it is still shrinking. As new mail is added to the PST file, somehow Outlook has been doing a little bit of housekeeping and compacting the file a little bit each time as new mail is added. I just keep emptying the trash and Outlook keeps doing the rest.

Perhaps you don’t have to worry too much about compacting the PST file then? I now will only do it after deleting a significant portion of the messages from the PST file.

(5) I still like outlook 98 (not 97) in spite of the problems I find with the program. We can fault Microsoft for creating buggy software, but it is hard to fault them for their overall usability.

I hope you find some of this informative.

Jerry, I’ve been reading your W98 page related on your site.

I’ve got something to add:

I’ve been spending the last week to install W98 on my system (a P120, 40Mb ram, HD 1,7Gb, S3 Virge DX) without success.

I don’t get any trouble installing it, because it seems it copies all it needs on the hard drive, but when it comes to introducing the installation code, it tells me msgsrv32.exe has caused a fault in pidgen.dll and offers me to kill it.

I do it (‘cause it’s the only thing I can do) and the only thing I earn is a lonely mouse pointer, wandering in an empty desktop.

I tried to install from a backup copy of my cd.

Nothing.

Well, if you’ve found something similar, will you help me?

Jerry-

I am running Win98 and Outlook 98. I can export the entire "Personal Folders" to a backup file while outlook is running as follows:

Click File on the menu bar, click Import and Export, select Export to a file, click Next, select the Personal folder file (.pst), click Next, select the highest level Personal Folders, check Include subfolders, Click Next, enter the desired path and file name (mine defaults to a backup.pst file in a windows subdirectory), choose the desired duplicates handling option, click Finish. It’s not real fast, but it works for me.

To compact the empty space in the Personal Folders file (outlook.pst), in the folder list right click the Personal Folders (highest level), click Properties for "Personal Folders", click Advanced..., click Compact Now. Voila!

Good Luck.

I guess reader comments so far mean you probably won’t have to contact Microsoft about Outlook after all.

If you do, I wish you would add 2 items to your list.

Pidgen.dll is involved in validating the CD-Key when installing Win 98.

Incidentally, what earthly use does the CD-Key serve? If you have the CD, you have the key. If you’ve copied the CD, surely you’ve copied the key too!

regards

>pidgen.dll

A little bit of looking on the web reveals that pidgen.dll is indeed a bona-fide windows component, distributed in precopy1.cab. As such, it is a resource used in the installation procedure--in fact, one finds it cited in the illegal instructions that circulate around about how to hack WIN 98 to bypass the product key. If it's not found on installed systems, I suppose the install routine deletes it when done.

A bad one could undoubtably cause installation havoc.

I saw the remark in the view about restarting in order to get chkdsk to actually fix the file. I should have remembered that, sorry! You asked about why it runs like that. I can’t answer completely, but I do know that NT chkdsk must dismount the drive in order to fix (as in /f) it. That means that you can run chkdsk /f x: as long an no process is accessing drive x. Since the system drive is always accessed by the system while the system is running, it cannot be dismounted, and thefore chkdsk cannot fix it. Instead, it tells you that it can schedule autochk for the next boot if you want.

There is a theme here: The reason you cannot backup an Outlook PST while Outlook is running is that Outlook opens the PST as an ordinary disk file for exclusive access. Consequently, no other process, including your backup program or even another instance of Outlook on an another computer can access it.

That last fact is quite a consternation for Lockheed Martin users. Many of the engineers are matrixed to several projects, and may visit several workstations. The problem is that they like to be able to access thier mail from any machine that they are using. This is complicated by our legal department’s requirement that e-mail cannot be kept on e-mail servers for longer than 90 days. You would think that the solution would be to hot the user’s PST’s on file servers, but noooo. PST’s can only be access by one computer at a time, so if you leave you e-mail client up on one machine, you can’t open your PST from any other.

I’m not sure that you can fault Microsoft since you wouldn’t want to allow multiple write access to an ordinary file, no matter how smart Outlook is. In that case, you need a client/server PST (...which would be an Exchange server ;-) I could see the possibility of being clever about it, and allowing read-only access to second and subsequent opens, but that would be an architectural change to Outlook, and not likely to get high priority over bug fixes. Also, switching to non-exclusive read access when not writing may still cause you backup program to skip the file (they generally skip all open files).

There is a musch better solution to this problem, but I’m going to devote another letter to that.

Sorry if this is tiresome,

Greetings, Dr. Pournelle.

I am a regular purchaser of your fiction - just finished re-reading "Lucifer’s Hammer" - and often check your web site. Since the discussion has hit on Linux several times, I thought I’d chime in.

In the normal work world, I have responsibility for my locations network infrastructure and services. We have been using Linux for several years for a variety of tasks. Here’s a quick run down:

Our internal web and e-mail services are provided by an obsolete Sun SPARC 2 with 32 Mb of memory and 1.4 Gb of disk space. At one time, this was a hot CAD platform. I resurrected it 1.5 years ago for its present duty, and it has been flawless since. Uptime is measured in months - its reboot cycle is based on when we have to move it, since no one really wants to provide space for it. The only hiccups are when people receive really large e-mail attachments, on the order of 20-30 Mb. Since the machines physical memory is pretty low, processing huge MIME attachments really slows things to a crawl, but even then it doesn’t crash.

Our internal DNS server is another SPARC 2, although this one has a Weitek clock-doubled CPU and 64 Mb of memory. Again, its reboot cycle is based on when we have to move it for floor space changes.

Our primary activity at this location is product design for the Automotive industry. Just as we supply assemblies to the big 2.5 US car companies, we have suppliers of small components. Most of these companies are small enough that the automotive-mandated CAD and communication setups are out of their reach monetarily. This results in our having to provide part data to them in IGES form. To accomplish this, we set up a bulletin board system on a cast-off PC running Linux, and named it Datatrans. Since this system was available, and since PC hardware is cheap, its capabilities and tasks are all out of proportion to the money we spent on it. Currently, Datatrans is a two-line BBS, print server for a network of 30 various Unix systems and Windows PC’s, plot server for the same, and intermittent dial-in server for remote network maintenance. It also supports one of those quick workarounds that becomes semi-permanent - when two $30k Hewlett Packard workstations were shy of disk space, we added a 3 Gb hard drive to Datatrans and set it up for NFS sharing. Again, uptime on this system is measured in months. The only problems it has evidenced have been hardware failures. Not bad for a Pentium 100 with 32 Mb of RAM!

We’ve recently added a database server running Linux and MySQL to replace a FoxPro application running on a Novell server. This machine has some horsepower - dual Pentium II’s at 400 Mhz, 256 Mb of memory, mirrored 4.5 Gb ultrawide SCSI drives, and a partridge in a pear tree. A full Red Hat install and configure runs in under 15 minutes - I know because we’ve tried several Linux distributions on it. We have comparable systems running Windows NT that take upwards of 2 hours to install and configure. The system’s speed is incredible, and it’s stability has been fabulous - four weeks, new applications, and zero hiccups.

I could go on for quite a while - we are one department of a relatively large company that uses other operating systems for the tasks listed above, at greater cost and with lower reliability. I’m also ignoring the Corel NetWinder this is being composed on, and the Linux-based network monitoring and X-Windows terminals we use. Hopefully, my point came across in all this long-winded blather. Linux certainly requires considerable Unix expertise, but we already had that. In the right situations, it is absolutely magical.

Chuck Stuart [stuartc@desctr.buddcompany.com]

Chuck Stuart The Budd Company

Supv., Structural Design Design Center

W98 install problems: missing msgsrv2.exe and pidgen.dll

Jerry;

I meant to write this up a while ago but have never gotten around to it. Now I wish I had. I may have saved some trouble.

I recently had to reformat/reinstall on my system due to a full C drive (which wasn’t cured by uninstalling software) and other system instabilities. I thought while I was at it, I would fdisk my c drive as FAT32. Alas, the install would not work, exhibiting many of the same problems described by Meotto Auro [meotto@cli.di.unipi.it]. After the first reboot during the install various files would be missing or I would get errors about invalid format, etc.

After several tries, I re-fdisk’ed as FAT16. The install went off without a hitch. I was then able to use the Drive Converter to change to FAT32 and have been running without problems since. [Note: Drive Converter is not installed by default. You must select custom install, go into system tools and select it].

I have no explaination, but I too am running older hardware (P166, 2G boot hd, 9G hd divided into 5 partitions due to bios limitation, 128M ram). It seems too incredible to think that Microsofts own W98 install program chokes on FAT32, which makes me think it may have something to do with older drive/controller/bios.

==

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

How is this for a little Outlook problem: Suddenly Outlook will not download an email over about 8k for me any longer! I get a message that the email is "too large to be cached" and "only header is downloaded." For the life of me I can’t figure out how to change this, as far as I can tell there is no way to increase the cache. If you or anyone seeing this has a clue about this I’d love to know.

scanpst.exe tool in the \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office folder (also

accessible as the "Inbox Repair Tool). It found a bunch of errors in the

main .pst file, which it repaired. The error went away and OL started

working normally.

Robert Bruce Thompson

It seems that the word ‘undelete’ is also a registered trademark.

The boys at sysinternals.com have run into their own problem.

Which explains why their NTFS file undelete program has been renamed to "FunDelete for Windoes NT".

Cheers.

ckuhlman@Bix.Com