I just posted a new utility on my home page, completely unrelated to audio or the empeg. But since this BBS has a pretty good cross-section of users with different systems, I would be grateful if some of you would try it out and see if it works for you.

The software is called "Fud" (explanation of the name is in the readme), and it's a little system tray utility for controlling your Windows screen saver. It can be found at my software page.

I came up with the idea (which my friend Steve inititally implemented before handing it over to me for refinement) because I often want to screensaver-lock my NT workstation when I walk away from it. This utility lets you control whether the screen saver is off or on, as well as launching it instantly, without a tedious trip to the display control panel.

Sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how much work it is to get the screen saver to launch in secured mode under NT. In the end, I had to use brute force and a blunt instrument. More details in the Readme file.

If anyone can try it out (especially on Win2000 and WinME) and let me know how its features (especially launching a password-protected screen saver) work on those OS's, I'd be grateful.

I've actually been using this program for over a year, and the version I just posted is five months old. I was holding it back until I could get it to work under Win2000 since my initital tests indicated a problem with that OS. So recently, I got the chance to check it under Win2000 and all was well. I don't know why I had trouble with my prior tests, so I'm kind of anxious to see if anyone else has trouble under that OS.

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Tony Fabris

Sorry to be so off topic in replying to your post, but has anyone here tried ME? It doesn't look all that different to me (at least what I can see on the box). It looks more like Win 98 Plus version 2. Sort of like it has some new features (the ones they mention on the box sounded completely useless to me), but wasn't really a new revision of the OS.

Does it have lots of bug fixes or something?

Oh, and please don't get into an OS debate over this, it's just a question.

ps-tried your program Tony- I like it.

DiGNAN

I ran a few betas and the final, and wasn't impressed. It can slow systems down about 10% compaired to 98 on the same system. Many beta testers were calling it Win 98 Third Edition. Personally, it's not worth the upgrade. If it comes with a new PC, then I have no problem with it (except for the fact that I use and love 2000 for all the time I run Windows).

The biggest feature I can think of in it that may be useful is System Restore, but it won't pull you out of all mistakes. GoBack from WildFile (err, Adaptec now) can allow recovery from everything including a format c:, and offers many more features like file revision retrieval, and more.

Um Tony, why don't you just use the old 3 fingered salute (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and then hit "Enter" to lock the workstation? Is probably even faster than starting your program from the system tray and the screen saver will come on all by itself after the time you have set for it. Don't need a password on the screen saver.

(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [for sale]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 6GB blue)

Um Tony, why don't you just use the old 3 fingered salute (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and then hit "Enter" to lock the workstation?

Yes, that works on NT. However, I bounce between several workstations (I'm a sysadmin), some of which are running 95 or 98.

Plus, there are other advantages to my little program. For example, I have the screen saver timeout set to 2 minutes in case I leave my workstation and forget to lock it. But if I'm playing a short movie or a flash animation on the PC, I want to temporarily shut off the screen saver without that tedious trip to the display properties box.

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Tony Fabris

No problems under win2k for me...
Nice install, extract binary and run. No registry settings or install-programs; I wish all M$ software was like this

Frank van Gestel

Nice install, extract binary and run. No registry settings or install-programs.

Thanks. I try to keep to that model- it doesn't make sense for a little utility to have all that baggage.

Funny thing is, I write installers for a living, it's part of my job where I work. I have written some of the most convoluted, complicated installers you've ever seen. My last project- get this- was to install a special intranet web site into MS Internet Information Server. Setting all the permissions, setting the application spaces, all of the sub-web stuff, assigning IPs and ports numbers, etc. That way, the admin simply has to run "setup" on our CD and all the messy details are taken care of for him. You have no idea how tough it is to get that stuff working in a C++ DLL...

Anyway, that's probably the reason all my utility programs are installer-free. I spend my workdays having to take our company's convoluted software and write messy installers for it, so I make sure my software is simple enough so that it doesn't need the installer.

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Tony Fabris

What would make life really easy for installers would be a virtual filesystem driver as to where a subdir in the FAT/NTFS filesystem can be a symlink to the registry.
This way you could extract a zip file into a directory and registry entries would be automatically created.
Removal would also be simple : remove the subdir and registry entries pointed by the symlink would be deleted too.
I know that MS-software also write in MS-specific keys, but this has always been a faulty design I think. The same goes for software which overwrites DLL's in the system directory and not to mention the lack of version control in DLL's

Frank van Gestel