In Windows 95, you cannot use hot keys to run applications located on the desktop. You can use hot keys to run only those applications located in the Applications folder. To start an application that is located on the desktop, double-click its icon.
If you try to add an application to the Start menu by dragging the application's icon to the Start button, you may receive a message that says that you cannot create a shortcut. The message prompts you to place the shortcut on the desktop. This message appears if the Start Menu directory is corrupted or deleted.
This creates a new Start Menu folder. If you continue to receive an error message when dragging items to the Start button, delete the Start Menu directory in My Computer or Windows Explorer, and then repeat this procedure.
Windows 95 never displays the .LNK extension, even if you choose Show All Files on the View tab of the Options dialog box in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
Windows 95 does not support MS-DOS – based or Windows 3.1 – based utilities that perform direct disk writes. Direct disk writes using the MS-DOS read sector (INT 26h) or absolute read sector (INT 13h) interfaces will fail unless the application has locked the volume for exclusive use. For information, see Chapter 20, "Disks and File Systems."
If you cannot print from an application, you can bypass spooling by sending printer output to a file and then dragging that file to a printer. For information about printing to a file, see Chapter 23, "Printing and Fonts."
Whenever you maximize an application, Windows 95 resizes the window so it does not cover the taskbar. However, if an application maximizes itself by using screen metrics to resize its window to take up the entire screen, the taskbar may be obscured. Because this type of application commonly has problems with the taskbar, Windows 95 hides the taskbar when this occurs, giving the application the entire screen. To display the taskbar, manually resize the application's window or minimize the application. To display the Start menu, press ctrl+esc.
Applications that require maximum available conventional memory should not be run on compressed drives. You might need to run such applications in MS-DOS Mode.
To restore Windows 95, shut down and restart the computer, and then press F8 when the Starting Windows 95 message appears. In the Windows 95 Startup menu, select the option named Previous Version of MS-DOS. (This option does not appear unless you edit the MSDOS.SYS file, as described in Chapter 6, "Setup Technical Discussion.") Remove the following lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT by typing REM before them:
REM cd c:\windows\command
REM call c:\windows\command\<game.exe>
REM c:\windows\win.com/wxRemove the following line in CONFIG.SYS by typing REM:
REM DOS=SINGLEApplications that depend on the system font to be a certain size may truncate the text on menus and other screen elements if the text is larger than the default setting. This may occur if users customize their screen fonts. To resolve this problem, right-click the desktop, and then click Properties. Click the Appearance tab, and then, in the Scheme list, click Windows Standard.
Some Windows 3.1 applications hook into the desktop so they can be aware of all the events that take place there. When all applications were minimized in Windows 3.1, the desktop was the background area. In Windows 95, however, the background area is always covered by the new Windows 95 shell. Applications that subclass the old desktop no longer monitor any activity. If such applications attempt to draw on the old background, images will appear on the new desktop, but they will conflict with images that the Windows 95 interface draws there. Users will be unable to interact with the images such applications draw.
This problem typically occurs with screen background/wallpaper applications and with replacement user interfaces, typically located in the StartUp folder. These types of applications may also be started by run= or load= lines in WIN.INI.
To resolve this problem, remove the application from the StartUp folder or remove its entry in the WIN.INI file. Or obtain a version of the application designed for Windows 95.
Because of cooperative multitasking in Windows 3.1, Program Manager was always guaranteed to respond within a few seconds of a DDE message. For that reason, many setup applications set the DDE timeout to a very short interval. In some cases, Windows 95 may be unable to process the DDE request in the same time period due to preemptive multitasking. Setup applications may be unable to create an application group or shortcuts for this reason. If this occurs, you can manually add folders and shortcuts to the Programs menu. For more information, see online Help.
If Windows components are inadvertently deleted from the Programs menu, you can rebuild the menu. When you do, Windows 95 searches for installed components and adds shortcuts for them to the Programs menu. Before you rebuild the Programs menu, you must rename the setup.old file to setup.ini file. To rebuild the Programs menu, click the Start button, click Run, and then type grpconv -s in the Open box.
For information about manually rebuilding the Programs menu, see online Help. For more information about grpconv, see Chapter 6, "Setup Technical Discussion."
If you are saving a file in Notepad or WordPad and you specify a filename extension that has not been associated with an application, Notepad or WordPad will append the default filename extension to the end of the filename. Notepad uses the extension .TXT, and WordPad uses the extension .DOC.
To save a file using a filename extension that is not in the Registry, enclose the filename in quotation marks.