Fill it?
I've seen some adverts for ink cartridge refill kits. Have you, or any of your readers, any experience of the efficacy of these?
TedConstable@onetel.net.uk
JS: Some printers now cost little more than their ink cartridges, the idea being that once you have the hardware, the company will make its money on the consumables. Printer manufacturers also argue that getting the best results depends on the printer, ink and paper all working together - though often, quality may not matter. Is the trade-off worth making? I don't know, I haven't tried refills. What do you think?
Kill dat
Every so often I empty the cookies folder but there is one file that I cannot delete: index.dat. I don't appear to be able to open it either. How can I get rid of it?
TrevorAdams@ntlworld.com
JS: Index.dat is protected because it is always in use by Windows. You can read what is inside it by copying it (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V) and then loading the copy into a text editor or word processor such as Microsoft Word. (For example, press F2, change the .dat to .doc and double-click the file.) To delete index.dat in Windows 9x, first, delete all your cookies from Windows. Next, go to Start|Shut down| Restart in DOS mode and delete the file in DOS before Windows starts. If your PC restarts with the prompt C:\Windows then the commands to do this will be: cd cookies dir del index.dat Press enter after each command. (The dir is just to make sure you are in the right directory. Don't blame me if you delete Windows by mistake!) Finally, turn off the power and restart your PC. There is another index.dat file in the Temporary Internet Files folder. You can delete that in the same way.
Bad defrag
I am using Windows 95a and have had problems defragmenting my hard drive. When I run Defrag, I get a message saying Windows cannot access part of this drive and to run Scandisk (thorough). It then gives an ID No of DEFRAG006.
Laurie Goldberg
laurie.goldberg@virgin.net
JS: According to the Microsoft Knowledge Base, the error message means defrag was not able to write to part of your hard drive, so these must be bad sectors, which can no longer be used for storing data. The thorough scan should map out these sectors so they are not used. If this does not work, your PC may have an antique virus such as Keydrop, which protects itself by claiming that the sectors it is occupying are bad when they are not. Click here for a cure.
New printer
I mainly use WordPerfect 5.1 and Windows 3.1, and after my old printer failed, I bought a Hewlett Packard DeskJet 660C. WordPerfect does not have a driver for this printer, which means that the only font I can use is Courier 10pt. and any enhancements I include do not get printed.
Kenneth Clegg
Filey
JS: You can download a driver from the Corel Web site at but the best approach is to go to corel.com and type 660c in the search box. Alternatively, there are new printer drivers at columiba.edu. Another good source of drivers is drivershq.com.
Don't delete
The hard drive on my PC, running Windows Me, has a hidden directory called _restore/temp which takes up more than a gigabyte of space and has some 60,000 files in it! What purpose do they serve, and can I safely delete them?
MarkMansley@claros.co.uk
JS: These files are kept by the PC Health system. If your PC goes wrong, this lets you take the system back to an earlier stage using Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System Restore. This is worth having, and you should not attempt to delete the folder.
To reduce the amount of space this takes up, go to Start|Settings|Control Panel|System, click the Performance tab, and click the File System button. There you will find a slider that controls the amount of disk space used. On my PC, 200MB is the minimum.
If you would like to disable System Restore, click the Troubleshooting tab on the same dialogue box (File System Properties). Tick the bottom box, marked Disable System Restore.
