Jewish World Review July 29, 2003 / 29 Tamuz, 5763

Display quality may suffer with Web accelerator; typing symbols not on keyboard; programs were not uninstalled correctly, now what?

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | (KRT) Q. I am a faithful reader of your column, and now it's time for me to ask for help. I recently downloaded a two-week trial of the ISP Highstream.net and its Internet accelerator. I noticed that the quality of graphics was somewhat compromised after downloading the software, and after a few days I canceled my trial. I've removed all the Highstream and Internet accelerator software from my computer, but some of the graphics are still a little blurry. How do I fix this?

Sharon McCormack@yahoo.com

A. Your problem will become more common as providers of dial-up Internet service scramble for ways to speed performance to counter the rush by customers to faster cable and DSL service.

Highstream uses a scheme developed by Propel Software to speed up the display of Web pages downloaded using telephone modems mostly by storing its customers most frequently used pages in highly compressed form on its own servers. But one part of the plan is to give users the option to decrease the resolution and color depth on their computers to accelerate display performance.

That degraded display comes if a user cuts back the resolution and/or the number of colors used to paint the screen. A third factor can be the refresh rate, measured in hertz, or cycles per second, ranging from as slow as 50 to 75 and above.

Likewise, color depth can be a superlow four colors, while the highest-quality displays use hundreds of thousands of different possible hues. Pictures are sharpest at maximum colors and highest refresh rates, but the machine must work much harder and thus move slower to use the top settings.

Another factor is the number of pixels across and down the screen, which generally run as low as 640-by-480 and as high as 1,280-by-1,024 and up.

To restore your settings, right-click on the desktop and pick Properties and then open the Settings tab. You will find a slider bar for moving resolution from 640 upward and a drop-down menu for color depth. Look for a tab for Monitor to change the refresh rate if desired. I prefer to set the colors to maximum available and set the resolution at 1,024. Refresh rates vary for different monitors and it's best to check the manuals before changing them.

Q. Since I am a novice on the PC, each week I read your column with interest. I have learned a lot. But I really would appreciate knowing how to make the cent sign. And would you happen to know how to make the degree sign?

Thanks and keep writing odds and ends about the PCs.

Martha R. Teesdale@avolve.net

A. Give someone a fish and you've provided a single meal. Teach someone how to fish and there will be dinner every night. That thought springs from your note recalling a past item that showed readers how to insert the cent symbol by holding down the Alt key and then tapping 0162 using the numeric pad on the right side of the keyboard. To add the degree symbol for either temperatures or geometric angles, you tap 0176 with the Alt held down. Likewise Alt + 0169 produces a copyright symbol, . For some systems, users need to make sure the Num Lock key is engaged.

These special characters and dozens more can be created in Windows using a module called the Character Map. Click Start then Programs/Accessories and System Tools to run it.

The module displays the entire alphabet in any of the fonts loaded onto a PC, including the large number of available characters that are not assigned to any key on the keyboard. You can click any desired character and then copy it for pasting in whatever document it is needed. Or you can look in the lower right corner of the display for the Alt key sequence to produce the character during live typing. Memorizing the codes for commonly used special characters such as cents or copyright is far faster than going through the clip-and-paste routine.

Now instead of asking somebody for the code for an individual character, you can fish for any character you want on your own.

Q. One of my computers at home has Windows 98, so it's clearly an older computer. Over the years, many programs have been installed and removed. However, for some reason or another, there are a decent amount that were just deleted, as opposed to being properly uninstalled. But these programs are still listed in the Add/Remove Programs function of the Control Panel. How do I remove them from that list?

Greg Bartlett @hotmail.com

A. When a user attempts to get rid of installed software in Windows by manually deleting the files and folders associated with the program, the problem now vexing you sets in because of safety features, Mr. B.

One reason is that many programs use the same boilerplate files called libraries to do their stuff and by manually deleting programs it is possible to remove libraries still needed by other programs. So the Add/Remove Control Panel keeps a record of where all of the boilerplate support files are located and notes whether other programs use these files.

When you click to remove a program that somebody tried to deep-six by hand, the software detects that files and folders on its list are missing. It doesn't continue to prevent spoiling other programs by deleting needed files.

Programs often plaster large numbers of files all over the place, so the only way to get the Add/Remove Control Panel to do its stuff is to haul out the CDs for those hand-deleted programs and reinstall the unwanted software. Once the software is reinstalled, the Control Panel will make quick work of properly deleting it. An alternative is to download utility software such as the $20 Add/Remove Plus 2003 program by Aurelitec Inc. (Aurelitec.com)

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James Coates is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Let us know what you think of rthis column by clicking here.