-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- PCM Online August 1995 - BBSCON Edition SOLUTIONS Contents: [] Customizing Windows 95: Your Personal Logo Screen [] How Much Free Space? A quick way to check disk space Entire contents copyright 1995 by Falsoft, Inc. PCM -- The Premier Personal Computer Magazine -- is intended for the private use and pleasure of its subscribers, and reproduction by any means is prohibited. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Customizing Windows 95 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ YOUR PERSONAL LOGO SCREEN So you just got that neat Windows 95 package and now you want to do some customizing? How about your own personal logo screen? Here's how. The standard logo for Win95 is included in a file called MSDOS.SYS. You can't do anything about that, but if you prepare a different logo and set it up just right, Win95 will replace the "standard" logo with your own when you boot up Windows. The simple way to do this is to create a 320x400 256-color bitmap (extension .BMP) file, draw, import graphics or do anything else you want with it, and then save it to the root directory of Drive C. Rename the file LOGO.SYS. Restart Win95 and you will see your file displayed on the screen as Win95 prepares to run. Looks a little jagged, doesn't it? Well, that's because Win95 stretches the bitmap to fit your screen. You can't eliminate all of the jaggedness, but you can fix some of it simply by creating the same file in 800x600 256-color mode, saving it, and then bringing it back in and resizing it to 320x400. That file will look a little squinched up, but it will size out to 320x400 with fewer jagged edges when Win95 runs than if you create the file in 320x400 in the first place. Note 1: if you want to keep the clouds as a background, there is a file on the Win95 CD called "clouds" that has this graphic. You can use it as a background to whatever you use for your main design. Note 2: some of the 16-bit graphic design programs (such as Picture Publisher 5.0, not the Win95 version) will append the appropriate extension to your save file in Win95 even if you have specified the extension in the "Save" or "Save As" dialog box. When this happens, you can get a filename that looks something like NEWLOGO.BMP.BMP. This is logical because, remember, Win95 supports long filenames, which can include spaces and punctuation. If this happens to you, just rename the file from the Explorer and, next time you save, do not specify the extension in the dialog box. Note 3: not satisfied with just changing the logo onscreen? Then you can also edit the two logoff screens as well, the one that asks you to wait while Win95 shuts down, and the one that tells you it is safe to turn off your computer. These two files are named LOGOW.SYS and LOGOS.SYS (even though they are .BMP files) and are located in the Win95 directory. A word to the wise: make backup copies of these files before you try to change or overwrite them. -=------------- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -------------=- How Much Free Space? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DETERMINE YOUR FREE STORAGE SPACE Keeping tabs on the available disk space on all your drives can be tough, especially if you have a lot of drives. But when you're trying to install a new program, you've got to know where there's room to put it. One method of determining available drive space is to run CHKDSK on each drive. Unfortunately this process is time-consuming because the entire disk is checked to ensure its integrity. It also requires a lot of typing. If you have NDOS, you can reduce the amount of time required by CHKDSK by running FREESPC on each drive, but this still requires a lot of typing. FREESPC (a really handy utility!) provides a quick and easy way to determine the amount of free space available on each drive. Just type FREESPC and press ENTER. FREESPC shows you the size of each drive, its available free space, and the percentage of free space. The capacity and free space are indicated in numbers of bytes. Do note that although FREESPC does not check floppy drives (drives A and B) and network drives, it does check all other local drives -- including removable media such as SyQuest and Bernoulli drives, and CD- ROM drives. Although checking CD-ROM drives is somewhat useless since you can't directly write to a CD, we found it easier to simply include CD-ROM drives. This is because DOS treats a CD-ROM drive just like any other type of removable media. Error checking is also built-in, so you won't see the dreaded "Retry, Abort, Fail" message if you don't have a disk in a removable-media drive. In such a case, FREESPC traps the error and bypasses that drive with no further ado. -=------------=- T-H-E E-N-D F-O-R N-O-W -=------------=-