Parrot noises
After reinstalling Windows 98, I cannot turn off the modem as previously, and have to listen to a squawking parrot every time I log on. It is annoying me beyond reason! Peter Huxtable
Pd.Huxtable@btinternet.com

Jack Schofield replies: I like listening to modem connections. The sounds tell you that you are getting through, and that you have not accidentally been redirected to a nursery school in Nicaragua. However, turning the noise off may not be as simple as you might think.

First, go to Start|Settings| Control Panel and double-click the Modems icon. Click the Properties button, and on the General tab you will see a slider that lets you adjust the speaker volume from Off to High. This may even work. With many external and older modems, however, this won't affect connections you have already set up, so you have to change these separately.

Double-click the My Computer icon on the desktop, then double-click the Dial-Up Networking folder. Right-click on the icon for the connection you want to silence - BT Internet, or whatever - and select Properties. Click on the button marked Configure, and you will see a tabbed dialogue box featuring another speaker volume slider. This one will work almost every time.

If it doesn't, we have to get technical. Go back to the Control Panel, double-click the Modems icon, and select Properties as before. This time, click on the Connection tab, and then the Advanced button. You will find a box called Extra settings, which lets you send instructions directly to the modem. Type AT M0 in the box and OK your way out. This should silence even the most uncooperative modem.

DOS in Me
I have bought a new computer with the Windows Me operating system and the DOS prompt is nowhere to be found. This is bad news because I can no longer use my old DOS programs and games. I have read about creating a boot disk to solve the problem, but when I boot my computer the floppy drive is not checked and Windows loads. Have you any ideas? Sachin Nagar
sachdn@hotmail.com

JS: A PC can start up using various devices, and it checks each in turn. In the past, PCs usually checked A:, the floppy drive, first. However, this can lead to problems when you accidentally leave a floppy disk in the drive, especially if it has a virus on it. The solu tion is to start from C:.

To get your PC to start from a floppy, you can change the order in which it looks at drives. This means entering Setup, which is often done by pressing the Del key as your machine starts. The instructions are shown on the screen at the time, or can be found in the motherboard manual.

Another idea is to patch Windows Me to bring back the missing DOS access. A patch has been written by Reines, and is available at www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000 I have not tried this myself.

As always, you should have a reliable back-up of your system before making significant changes to Windows.

More Me
I have a copy of Windows Me to upgrade my Windows 98, because I understand that Me is more reliable. If I install it, will it affect my ISP installation? Stephen Robertson
diy3@dircon.co.uk

JS: If your version of Windows 98 works fine and does what you want then there is no real reason to upgrade to Me. The American adage applies: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I installed and then uninstalled Me without it affecting my ISP settings in Windows 98SE, and the upgrade seems to work well, but bear in mind that accidents can happen. However, Windows Me is slower than Windows 98SE, and I did not find it more reliable.

Bin hassles
I have three hard drive partitions (C:, D:, E:) on my PC. Although these are set up so the Recycle Bin has different "shares" of each drive, they do not seem to be independent of each other: emptying one throws out the trash from them all. Is it possible to empty just one partition? Terry Cannon
Terry.Cannon2@ ukgateway.net

JS: I don't know of a utility that will add this feature to Windows 9x - perhaps a reader does? There is, however, a workaround. Remem ber, the Recycle Bin works much like any another folder. Open it by double-clicking its icon, and select View|Details, if this is not already selected. Click on the heading marked Original Location, and as usual, the files will be sorted by location. Now you can highlight all the files for a particular drive. Right-click with the mouse, select Delete, and that will delete them. I agree this is not as handy as having separate bins, but there does not seem to be much demand for that facility.

Write back Ask Jack is now a year old, and the best thing about it, for me, has been the flood of helpful email from readers telling me things I did not know. I have learned a lot, for which I thank you.

Many readers would like to protect certain files or password-protect their systems. I like Encrypted Magic Folders, but Barry Newton bpnewton@stargate2000.freeserve.co.uk suggests Quick:Crypt. He says: "Once installed, you right-click on a file, and the usual menu that drops down now includes Encrypt. When you click on this it asks for a password. When you have entered the password, it confirms the file has been encrypted and that's that." For details, see www.littlebigware.co.uk/quickcrypt.htm

For password protection, Giles Turnbull giles@gorjuss.com suggests trying SysLock, "a small app that you can set to run on start-up. It allows Windows to boot, but won't let you access anything until you have entered a password." SysLock is distributed as shareware: see www.optionscomputer.com/software/ syslock.shtml

Back again
Finally, a lot of you wrote in about the keyboard command equivalent to the Back button in Internet Explorer. What I wrote was intended to imply that Alt-left arrow performed the same function as the back button, while Alt-right arrow did the same as the forward button. Unfortunately this is not what was printed.

I was surprised that most people who wrote in also mentioned that pressing the Backspace key also does the same as clicking the Back button. But no one mentioned that Shift-Backspace does the same as clicking the Forward button, though this is the logical corollary. I provided the Alt-arrow key answer because it seems more logical, and it is easier to see that if Alt-left arrow takes you back, then Alt-right arrow should take you forward.