This article offers a selection of very useful resources for computer users. General sources of information are given here that are platform independent. The software cited here is freeware and, unless noted otherwise, applies to Windows 95/98 and/or Windows NT 4.0.
To view this page in its entirety please see " Where to Get What" at
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/access/win95/PennStateStuff
/Where95&NT.htm.
Year 2000 Resources
Official Penn State Year 2000 Pages:
http://www.psu.edu/Year2000/
IBM and Microsoft Operating System and Application
Program Y2K Fixes:
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/year2000/PCFixes.htm
Year 2000 and Your PC, Where the Tire Hits the
Road:
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/year2000/
PSU-NSTL/pcy2k.htm.
Virus Information
Free for Personal Use Windows 9x/NT Virus Detectors/Removers
Note: No virus remover is any better than its virus data base which must be kept up to date by regular downloading, suggest checking at least monthly.
F-PROT for Windows 95/98 recognizes long file names but runs
as a DOS program (using a file protected boot diskette) since it's not safe to
run a virus checker from a potentially infected system. Also has a
virus stopper, F-Stopw for Windows
95/98. Can be used on Windows NT to scan for Macro viruses. Please
see http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/virus/
or ftp://ftp.complex.is/pub/ and get any
fp-???.zip and macrdef*.zip files (if present).
F-PROT is free only for personal use. For institutional/commercial use
see the zip file member, ORDER.TXT. The latest version of F-PROT and
it's companion virus files is also available
from the PSU FTP server at
ftp://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/dos/virus. Directions for making an
independent boot diskette to run F-Prot may be found at
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/dos/virus/fp-psu.txt
.
Innoculate/It Personal Edition versions are available for Windows 9x/NT. Easily installed/uninstalled. Free for personal use. Virus Data Base updates free, by Computer Associates: http://antivirus.cai.com/
Some Key Virus Web Pages
CERT - Software Engineering, Research, and
Testing:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/
DataFellows:
http://www.datafellows.com/
ICSA - Internet Security and Assurance:
http://www.icsa.net/services/consortia/anti-virus
/lab.shtml
National Institutes of Standards Technology (NIST):
http://www.metro.ch/avpve/
Symantec AntiVirus research Center:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/
Virus Bulletin:
http://www.virusbtn.com/
Virus Pages: Good source of vendors, pointers, information on
computer viruses:
http://cac.psu.edu/~santoro/cac/virus.html
Virus Hoax Information - Kept very current, read this before you
perpetrate an alert:
http://kumite.com/myths/
Freeware/shareware
(Runs under both Windows 95 AND NT unless otherwise specified).
Collections:
http://www.netlib.org/
http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/
http://www.jumbo.com/
http://www.software.com/
http://www.download.com/
http://cws.internet.com/32menu.html
http://www.zdnet.com/
Acrobat Reader:
View/print/search Adobe Acrobat files:
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
Compare: Fast Compare of two (binary) files. Source/help(.TXT)
and .EXE are at:
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/ger/fortran/hdk/compare.txt
CSDIFF - Smart Compare of two text or MS Word files. Very nice
visual compare screen at:
http://www.componentsoftware.com/csdiff/dlcsdiff.htm.
ERU/ERD Emergency Recovery of critical files (including
Registry) utility. Windows 9x ONLY. Sources are: Windows 95 CD-ROM
OTHER/MISC/ERU and Web pages:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q139/4/37.asp
and http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/LNP192.asp
.
For Windows NT 4, please see:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/ntworkstation/serviceware
/ntw40/e9jvwnuo4.asp.
GhostScript - Displays, Prints, scales Adobe Postscript files. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html
HyperSnap - Screen capturing tool; can capture any region and save in 20 different graphic formats. Also can be run as Batch command to convert one graphic format to another. See http://www.hyperionics.com/
RealPlayer G2 - Displays audio and video files in a variety of formats. http://www.real.com/ and click on the FREE link button. Note that if you choose "Search" at http://www.psu.edu/ and choose "Search the Penn State WWW" for keyword: RealAudio, there are lots of clips you can tune into with this program. Two versions, free (G2) and commercial (G2 PLUS), are available.
RegClean - Microsoft utility for Windows 95/NT (Windows 98 has
its own utility for this) to "clean up"
the Registry; see Question 4.4.4 at
http://hannah.jentronix.com/win95/faq/.
I recommend running SCANDISK and REGCLEAN at least biweekly and DEFRAG at least monthly. For RegClean please see http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/LNP195.asp or http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/dp3049.asp .
Search Engines - Looking for programs via searches at
Microsoft's home page(s) occasionally does not come up with the right match. This
is because Microsoft is constantly changing their home page(s). If
you know what you're looking for (e.g., say REGCLEAN) and don't get
a match at Microsoft, try using another independent search engine like:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/ (Microsoft
Support/Knowledge Base) or
http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/ (CMU's Search
Engine) or http://www.altavista.com/ (Digital's
Search Engine)
or http://www.excite.com/ (Magellan Search Engine). For a menu of
many search engines see:
http://home.netscape.com/escapes/search/ntsrchrnd-1.html
(Netscpe's collection of Search Engines). For more information on Search
Engines in general see:
http://calafia.com/webmasters/ and
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ . Finally, the best for last, see
Meta Crawler, a search engine that searches several other search engines
simultaneously:
http://www.go2net.com/search.html
ZIP and UNZIP for Windows 95/NT (from
INFOZIP):
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/UnZip.html.
KEDIT - POWERFUL COMMERCIAL ASCII
EDITOR FOR WINDOWS 9x/NT:
http://www.kedit.com/
Recommended combination of tools for program development is Kedit for Windows and CSDIFF.
Windows 9x/NT Information
Microsoft Knowledge Base is a good place to start searching for new Windows information. Click "Knowledge Base" bullet at the Web page: http://search.microsoft.com/us/default.asp. Then type in your search phrase.
Windows Updates:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/default.asp
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/default2.htm
For the Microsoft Windows 9x/NT Media Player see
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/default.asp
Windows Audio and Media Resources:
http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/%7Egprice/audio.htm
Windows NT FAQ, the best source for NT technical information not found elsewhere. Check out the "Links" link for pointers to other Windows 9x/NT Web pages. The FAQ subscription box and the FAQ itself is located at: http://www.ntfaq.com/
Windows 95 Annotated File Listing: what system function is carried out by what Windows 95 (not NT) file. Please see: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/14/17/sp1417.001.html
Windows 95 Annoyances:
http://www.annoyances.org/win95/
Windows 95 Resource Kit Help: On Windows 95 CD-ROM as folder: \Admin\Reskit\Helpfile\ Copy/Paste the two files: win95rk.cnt & win95rk.hlp to any Win95 directory (E.g., C:\WINDOWS\HELP). These files are also available at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/default.asp. Click on "Resource Kit Tools" and then download the item: "Complete Windows 95 Resource Kit Help file." If you download from the Web instead of copying from CD-ROM, just install the downloaded .EXE file by double-clicking from Windows 95 Explorer.
Windows 95 Support Assistant, which is a Help file, may be obtained via: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/default.asp
Click on "Support Tools" and then download "Windows 95
Support Assistant" from there. Install the downloaded file,
assist.exe via Windows 95 Explorer.