F.A.Q. This page contains answers to common questions handled by our support staff, along with some tips and tricks that we have found useful and presented here as questions. Note: In these answers we will follow a few shorthand conventions for describing user-interface procedures. Key combinations will be presented like this: Ctrl+Alt+Delete, which means that you should press and hold down the Control key, the Alt key, and the Delete key at the same time. Menu selections will be presented like this: File->Open, which means that you should open the File menu, and then make the Open selection. How do I Ping on the Internet ? Where can I find information ... ? How do I set up Maintenance Scheduler ... ? Where is all of my free space on my hard drive... ? What is WHOIS ... ? What is this web cache ... ? How do I test the speed of my DSL? How do I check my memory on the computer? How do I copy my Favorites and transfer them to another browser or computer? How to add a new hard drive! How do I use the "Print Screen function on the keyboard? Can I make my calendar open when I first start my computer? Understanding Ctrl-Alt-Del and what can be removed.           How do I ping on the Internet ? Ping is a utility that sends packets of information to another computer, displays the official web site address in numbers, and then gives you the information about the time it takes for your packets to go out the other computer and then return to you.  To use this utility go to start and click on run. In the dialogue box type in the command "ping" followed by a web site address, and press Enter. Example Ping www.direct-conect.com and press Enter. Next type in tracert www.direct-conect.com  and press Enter. This will tell you how many hops it takes to make the trip back to your computer.    Back to Top Where do I find Information ? You can find just about any type of information on the Internet. One of the best places is to start is at one of the search engine. There are many search engine to use but here are a few to get you started off. Yahoo is the biggest of the search engines,  but don't limited yourself to just it. You will see that there are many others that are geared to certain fields. Try ALTA VISTA, NBCI, MSN.   How do I set up Maintenance Scheduler? START * PROGRAMS * ACCESSORIES * SYSTEMS  TOOLS * MAINTENANCE WIZARD. The maintenace wizard tool lets you schedule disk housekeeping chores so that they run automatically and in the background. This wizard will speed  up your most frequently used programs. Check your hard disk for errors, and delete unnecessary files from the hard disk. If you schedule these events to take place at night, be sue to leave your computer on so that the schedule can take place.   Where is all of my free space on my hard drive..?  Windows uses the recycle bin to make deleting files easy. The recycle bin moves files to a special area on the hard drive where they remain until you clean out the bin. In order to reclaim the space you must empty the recycle bin. To do so right click on the recycle bin and select Empty Bin from the shortcut menu. The files that have been hanging around will be deleted and you now have back the disk space that these files were using. What is WHOIS ? This information is especially valuable if you own a domain name because with the WHOIS database you can verify the accuracy of the information appearing in the database.  Internet domain names must be registered with InterNic. Take a look at the WHOIS database at http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois for information like this on any domian. You can also find the information going straight to www.networksolutions.com as well as Cheap Domain RegistrationDomain Registration- Register your domain names for only $8.95, transfer them for only $7.75! Free parking, free URL forwarding, free domain name generator software, and more..  What is this web cache..? The idea behind cache is to open programs fast because they are stored on the hard drive which is much faster than having to retrieve them again using your modem. If you frequently visit the same web site you should increase the amount of hard drive space reserved by your browser for cache. Unless you have low hard drive space, 10MB reserved for browser cache will yield performance on the net. For Netscape 4.0 -  1. Under the Edit menu, select Options and chose Advanced tab. 2. Click the Dish Cache to 10,000 and save For Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0- 1. Under the View menu select Options and then chose the General tab. 2. In the Temporary Internet Files dialog box, click on Settings. 3. Drag the Amount of disk space to use slider switch to a size between 8 MB and 10 MB. If you spend most of your Web surfing time without returning to the same sites very often, its a good idea to flush out, purge the memory cache during a web session How do I Test the speed of my DSL ? Do the following from a DOS prompt (or an FTP program if you are on a Macintosh) Type what you see in red in these instructions. Microsoft (R) Windows 98 (C) Copyright Microsoft Corp 1981-1999. C:\WINDOWS\Desktop>ftp www.cari.net Connected to www.cari.net. 220 ProFTPD 1.2 Opre3 server (ProFTPD Default Installation) [216.98.128.94] User (www.cari.net:(none)): anonymous 331 Anonymous login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password:****** (you will not see the password as you type it in.) ftp. binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> get cc32d474.exe 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for cc32d474.exe (20005654 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. ftp: 20005654 bytes received in 23 seconds 835.31 Kbytes/sec. ftp> The number in bold green is the approximate speed of your DSL. P.S. The file will be downloaded to the directory indicated by the DOS prompt. How do I check my computers memory ? The best way to check RAM on your computer is to open DOS command, type in the following command:   mem /c The computer should show you how much memory your computer has + one extra to allow for the "extended memory". Export your Favorites (Internet Explorer 5) If you have access to more than one computer (say one at work and another at home) and you'd like the same Favorites list on both of them, you're in luck. You can export your Favorites list as an HTML file, copy it to your second computer, and then import the file into Internet Explorer or open the file in another browser. To import the file in IE 5, pull down the File menu and choose Import and Export. Step through the wizard and select Export, then pick the Favorites file you want to export and the file you want to export it to.   How to add a new hard drive. Figuring that you know the basics and know how to remove the case and exchange the hard drive we will proceed to the technical side on how to set up you new hard drive. You need to have your emergency disk that you should have or have created from windows 98. If you are adding the new drive to a newer motherboard then your motherboard should auto detect the hard drive. If working with an older hard drive then you will need to access the motherboard BIOS settings. This differs from motherboard to motherboard, but you normally hit a key during start-up. The screen tells which key to use when it first begins to boot up. Usually you will see something such as "F2 to enter setup". You will access the motherboard Bios by  using this command and then instructing the motherboard the configuration of the new hard drive that you are installing. If you are installing a replacement hard drive then make sure that the new hard drives jumper settings are set as MASTER and not SLAVE. After this has been completed you are ready to partition the hard drive. You will start this by rebooting the computer with the emergency disk in the A: drive. You will need to use the command called "FDISK" This command is a very powerful command.  WARNING,  if your hard drive has information on it, using FDISK will erase all information on the hard drive. The FDISK command should be on your copy of the emergency disk. At the A prompt type in fdisk and a selection will appear. The first option in this menu is "Create a DOS partition or logical DOS drive." which you should select, followed by another menu, with the option to "Create Primary DOS Partition." When asked if you want to use the maximum space available for this partition, press the Y key for yes unless you want to divide the hard drive into several logical DOS drives, in which case press N. If you are setting up more than one DOS partition, you will be asked how much space you want to specify. After the message "Primary DOS Partition Created" appears, press the Escape key to return to the  main menu and select "Create  Extended DOS Partition, followed by  "Create Logical DOS Drive(s) in the extended DOS Partition." Fdisk supplies the corresponding values, which you confirm until the entire space on the hard drive has been assigned to logical drives. Press Escape to return to the main menu and chose "Set active partition." Select the primary partition, which now becomes your C drive, where your operating system will reside. Press Escape twice to exit "Fdisk". After running "Fdisk," you will be prompted to reboot your system. Remove the emergency boot disk for the A drive, then reboot. When rebooting the computer , type "FORMAT C:" without the quotation marks. After a few minutes, the formatting will be completed and you will be ready to install your operating system. How do I use the "Print Screen function on the keyboard? The print screen is a hold over from the old days of DOS. To use the print screen function you are copy an image of the screen and it is being placed in the Windows clipboard. To print it open a blank document in Word or a graphics program and choose Paste from the Edit menu. That will insert the screen image that you saved. From here all you need to do is press print from the program you are using. Can I make my calendar open when I first start my computer?   You can make the Microsoft Works Calendar open when first starting your computer by doing the following: Click the Windows button, point to Settings and choose Taskbar and Start Menu. Now tab over to Advanced, click on Add, then click on Browse. In the folder directory, double click on Program files, then double click on MSWorks, then double click on Calendar. Double click on the file named MSWKSCAL.EXE, then click Next. Scroll down until you see the folder called Startup, select it, then click Next again, then  click finish. Now the calendar will load each time Windows starts. Understanding the Ctrl-Alt-Del function  The three finger salute as it is commonly referred to shows programs that are running in the background of your computer. These are applications that get installed you add programs to your computer. Over time these add up and begin to slow down the computer. The bulk of these programs install icons in the tool tray. Although these programs my be annoying they do not consume huge amounts of memory. But if you want to clean up the tool tray here is a way to do just that. We will use the "mscofig" to clean up this mess and get you back some extra resources. Click on the start and then run, then type msconfig in the command box that pops up. You will see a menu with an option of load startup group items. Remove the check beside that and you can reboot with a clean tool tray.  Together Direct Conect & Auto Web Design offers quality Internet services at affordable prices. Don’t waste any more of your valuable time. Call Direct Connect today and we will take care of the rest!  For more information about our services please see our pricing list or e mail us a "QUICK QUOTE" . We will gladly reply within 24 hours.