Pound notes
The pound sign does not travel well on my email. I use Shift-3, which works fine on the outgoing copy of my email but is delivered as a hash sign. Writing GB pounds is a pain, as almost every email I send needs a pound sign. Bob O'Hara
searcher@dircon.co.uk
Jack Schofield replies: You should never attempt to send a pound sterling sign via email because there is no guarantee it will arrive as one, and a strong chance that it will lead to confusion. It may arrive as a hash sign or, worse, as =A3, leading to gross errors where the 3 is added to the start of a price. The correct way to send a pound sign is to use GBP, as defined in the ISO 4217 international standard. (Many people use UKP, which is wrong: apparently Ukraine wanted UK as well.) The general rule is to use the standard country abbreviation and the first letter of the currency name, such as JPY for Japan's Yen. See www.xe.com/iso4217.htm for a list. It is wrong to use a currency symbol in email, even if that symbol is included on your keyboard. Do not use the Euro symbol if you have one: use EUR instead. Do not use the $ sign: only USD incontrovertibly distinguishes between American and numerous dollar currencies.
Music notes
Can you point me at starter sources of information about using MP3 systems and doing music generally on the internet?
Sean Grainger
Sean.Grainger@express.co.uk
JS: There are two good FAQs about MP3 files at www.mp3-faq.org and http://webhome.idirect.com/~nuzhathl/mp3-faq.html. For links to a wide range of music resources, try Ken Davies's Music Web Hunter at www.dmamusic.org/kendavies/musicwebhunter. General sites are a matter of taste but www.sonicnet.com and www.rollingstone.com are good places to start.
Risky business
I know how tdelete records of websites, so there is almost no record of me visiting a website at a particular time. However, the USER.DAT contains information of past visited sites. As the file is read-only, I cannot edit it, and if I try, the computer suffers terrible effects, ie it does not start properly.
Nick Rabbitts
nick.rabbitts@ukgateway.net
JS: Don't touch that file! Your whole Windows system depends on User.dat and System.dat, which make up the system registry. These files are so important that Windows keeps its own backup copies, but you should make extra ones. See http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q256/4/19.ASP. To edit the Registry, go to Start|Run, type regedit in the box and click OK. Use the search command to search for www and that should find data such as lists of web addresses you have typed in, for example. You can highlight unwanted entries and delete them by pressing the Delete key.
In general, however, I recommend leaving the Registry alone apart from running a Microsoft utility called RegClean. For help with that, see www.createwindow.com/wininfo/regclean.htm
Stop start
I have had lots of problems with the company that supplied my new PC. A continuing irritant is that company's name appearing on the Microsoft Windows 98 start-up screen - the one with the flying window - when the PC is switched on. Can I edit this screen to remove the company name?
Allister Forrest
allister.forrest@lineone.net
JS: The Windows splash screen, as it is called, is commonly stored as the logo.sys file. If you can find logo.sys, make a backup copy of it. You can then edit it in Microsoft Paint or, preferably, something like Paint Shop Pro. If you cannot find a copy of logo.sys, or cadge a copy from someone else, you could always create your own splash screen.
However, it must be a 256-colour Windows bitmap (bmp) file, 320 pixels wide by 400 pixels high, and be in C:\ or the C:\Windows directory. Since the image will be displayed at 640 by 480 pixels, you will have to use the Stretch/Skew settings in Paint, or start with a VGA screen image and resize or "resample" it to 320 by 400. Once you get a taste for this, you may want to change the logow.sys (waiting to shutdown) and logos.sys (safe to turn off) files. Go to Tweak Central (see http://tweakcentral.com/t002.htm#9x_mod) for details of the splash screens in different versions of Windows.
Out of key
The @ and the " on my keyboard have swapped places. How can I persuade them to swap back again?
Brian Conlin
Brian@conlin31.freeserve.co.uk
JS: Try pressing Left shift-Alt and see if they switch back. If not, go to Start|Settings|Control Panel and double-click the Keyboard icon. Make sure you have English (United Kingdom) selected rather than English (United States).
Switched
The Start button of my laptop was on the left hand bottom corner of the screen and the time read-out was on the right. Now the start button has gone to the top left hand corner and the time reading has gone to the bottom left hand corner. How I can reset these buttons?
Jagdish
jagchdin@aol.com
JS: It is not obvious but you can drag the Taskbar (with the Start button and time) to whichever side of the screen you want. Position the mouse cursor at the top edge so you can see two opposing arrows, tug down at 45 degrees and drag the Taskbar to the bottom of the screen. You may need a few goes, but it works.
Catch up
I caught the tail end of your advice in the issue dated August 9, but missed the original article dated July 26. Any chance of receiving full instructions please?
Cyril Ball
cyril.ball@btinternet.com
JS: It has sometimes been hard to find Ask Jack columns on the Guardian Unlimited website. However, the most recent ones are now linked from the Netnews section at www.theguardian.com/internetnews
Backchat
Recently I have been recommending Topica to people who had been using Microsoft's Listbot to run mailing lists. Kingsley Marshall sales@vinyl-net.com thought it would be easier to take the upgrade to bCentral's Listbuilder as advertised on the Listbot service. However, Kingsley says, "the online form demands a valid US state before it will accept payment - being in the UK, this didn't work". He was then given a phone number that would not connect from the UK. "I have now written over 10 emails in addition to faxing the company (as they requested), used their live online support, and attempted phoning three separate numbers as advised by their tech support," he says. He cannot find anyone bothered to sort out this simple problem, and has given in. He is now trying MailKing www.mailking.com.
