A couple of weeks back, I took delivery of a new Gateway computer. It is the fifth Gateway we have had in 10 years. All of those have not gone to me. My son received one when he graduated from college and my daughter received one for Christmas in 1999. Only the first one, a 386, has been relegated to the garage. The others are still being used, although the Pentium 166 is now used mainly for programs that I didn't care to install on newer machines. And it is the one with the original HP IIc scanner that will accept legal size documents.

The new computer is now networked with four other computers in the house, and therein lies a good part of this article—getting the network and printing to work properly after adding the new computer.

My first Gateway was a 33 MHz 386 computer with, I think, four MB of RAM, a 120 MB hard drive and a 14" monitor. This computer is an 1.9 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM and an 80 GB HD with a CD writer and a DVD. It has two USB ports in the back and two in the front. These computers now come standard with 15" flat screen LCD monitors. I think these two computers cost about the same amount. And 2001 dollars are worth a lot less than 1991 dollars.

One strange thing is that the speakers with the new computer don’t seem to have an on/off switch. However, the 1991 computer didn’t even come with a sound card or modem. They were purchased later.

To install Win XP or, as in my case since it was already installed, on first time use requires the authentication process that you have heard so much about (to keep you from putting it on more than one computer). The process is painless if you are connected to the Internet.

After getting set up and connected to the network, the first thing I wanted to do was copy data files from all the other computers on the network. There was no problem accessing the files on the Windows 98 computer and the Windows 98 SE computer, but the Windows Me computer posed a problem. I could see the new Win XP computer from the Win Me computer but not the other way. So I could have copied the files, but I wanted to solve the problem of not being able to get the Win Me computer into the Network Places of the Win XP computer.

With some fiddling, I discovered I could do it if the drive on the Me computer wasn’t password protected but not if protected. I then traced the problem to the Me computer having a name with a space in it. Apparently XP doesn’t like spaces but they are OK in Me & 98. One problem solved.

I next noted what had been mentioned in the press about Java and XP. Larry Anders sent me an URL that had some JAVA applet on it. Before Internet Explorer 6.0, which comes with XP, could run the applet, I had to download the 5 MB Java Virtual Machine. No trouble over a cable modem, but it is still not clear to me why Microsoft didn’t include this feature. Some say it is their dislike of Sun Microsystems, but there may be more to it than that.

I ordered a new copy of Microsoft Office XP Professional with the computer, since you save a little money this way. I have copies of Office 95, 97, 2000, and XP. So why did I need another? Well, I wanted to put XP on the new computer, and under the new rules of Microsoft (actually the old rules now being enforced by the authentication process) you can only put your Office XP on a desktop and a laptop, and my other copy of Office XP was already on a desktop. So that was one set of programs that I didn’t have to install, but they did have to be authenticated just like Windows XP. Now they are bound to that computer. Next I need to install my other major programs.

They were Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator and Acrobat, Microsoft Visual Basic and FrontPage and Borland’s Delphi. Also other programs like TextBridge Pro scanning software and the Family TreeMaker program. I am leaving Quicken on my second computer and will get a new version of FrontPage before installing it. I am still using FrontPage 98 and need to move up to FP 2002. These are the main programs I use.

Then there was the hardware to be installed: a USB HP ScanJet 5730 flatbed Scanner and my Canon G1 digital camera. I also wanted to eventually attach an HP 4 Plus printer and an Alps MD 1300 printer to the new computer. Finally, I wanted to move my HP PhotoSmart photo scanner from the older Gateway that I was moving to another room to the newer Compaq that would be my second computer. Much of this meant new drivers would have to be found

While installing either the USB drivers or the application software for my Canon G1 digital camera, I got a message something to the effect that the software or hardware didn’t meet the Windows XP logo and that if I proceeded I might destabilize my computer. I had already read up on this, and Canon said it was OK to ignore the warning. I did, and the camera and its software work fine in Windows XP Pro.

The USB HP ScanJet 5730c installed with no problem. However, the second time I tried to use it, it wouldn’t work. So I went to the HP site and found out that I needed to download a patch. I did this and it has worked fine since. I really do appreciate being able to get updated drivers from the Internet.

Additionally, XP picked up the three printers already on the LAN. But, as you will see later, all is not well with XP and printing over the network—at least for me.

Borland's Delphi 5 installed with no problem, as did Visual Basic 6 with its service pack 5. TextBridge Pro 98 installed OK but wouldn't install a menu item in Word. The Instant Access that, I believe, is supposed to do this produced an error—Win XP did not like it at all. These sorts of features almost never work in an operating system more than one version removed from the one it was written for. So for the time being, I can't invoke TextBridge from Word. I have to run TextBridge, do the scan and OCR and save it as an RTF file, which I then open in Word. Perhaps it is time to upgrade TextBridge—now owned by ScanSoft. Except they do not yet have an XP version. I do note that they have a "special" version of their OmniPage Pro 11 described as a Microsoft Special for $299.99. I think I will pass on that. It is really too feature rich. I will wait on the new version of their TextBridge Pro.

By the way, the OCR was almost instantaneous on this 1.8 GHz machine. Anyway, Office XP has Scanning and OCR functionality built-in as Office Document Imaging. However, using Microsoft Office Document Imaging, I got an error when I tried to send a scanned and OCR-ed page to Word: "The server threw an exception." If I simply copied the OCR-ed text and then pasted it into Word there was no problem. Could this have had something to do with installing TextBridge? No! It is Norton Antivirus (I have more than one problem with Norton AV and Office).

I only discovered the solution to this problem the next day when I started opening Word documents and watched how long it took to open them. I noticed a message at the bottom of the screen to the effect that a virus scan was being requested. Well I went into Norton 2002 and shut down this feature, since on a Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz computer you shouldn't have to wait 30 seconds for a short Word document to open. Now the documents open fast.

After doing that I recalled the problem with Office Imaging not being able to insert OCR-ed text into Word, and immediately suspected Norton. I tried the Office Imaging again. Now everything worked as advertised. Antivirus software is very necessary to our lives, but it can also be very bothersome. And I think Norton could do a little better in checking on compatibility. It is not like Microsoft Office is just any out-of-the-way product.

Norton caused a similar problem in creating this newsletter in Microsoft Publisher. If I tried to edit an article in the Publisher document using Microsoft Word, I received an error message about Windows not having enough memory. I knew from experience that this was caused by Norton. And, as I have written in a previous newsletter, I knew Norton’s solution of un-registering the officeav.dll did no good. However, a check of my old friend http://www.deja.com/usenet provided the solution that seems to have escaped Norton: Turn off Script Blocking in Norton AV.

A pleasant surprise in Win XP was that Note pad has a new default font and that it now remembers the directory you last used. I really got irritated in the past when NotePad would always go first to Windows.

Now let’s talk a little about networking. Win XP and networking apparently presents a problem for a sub collection of users. If you want evidence, go to the Usenet newsgroup Microsoft.public.windowsxpnetwork_web. You have to get it from the news server msnews.microsoft.com.

As mentioned before, I had a bit of trouble getting the XP computer to see the Win Me computer, but it was nothing major. I should note that only TCP/IP needs to be used for networking with XP, and all of my computers use only that protocol and work fine—with the exception that it can take 20 to 30 seconds for the XP computer to see the folders of the other computers. Going the other way is almost instantaneous. Many people report this situation.

A more troubling problem when I first set up the network was that the XP computer would take forever to print to the printers attached to other computers on the network. For example, when I would print from Word on the XP computer, it would take 30 seconds for the print dialog box to appear, then another 30 seconds for Word to background print a three word document, then a final 30 seconds to send it to the printer. If I attached the printer to the XP computer, all of this was almost instantaneous.

A worse effect of this network printing problem was that, as I discovered, it caused Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator to take 100 seconds to load. I solved this problem by creating a dummy default printer on the XP computer. Then not only did the Adobe applications open very fast, there was no longer any delay in the printer dialog box appearing in Word. Unfortunately, if I really wanted to print, I needed to select a printer on the network—and this would again take time. But at least the Adobe applications would open quickly.

I never did speed this network printing much (I discovered a service called TCP/IP Print Server in XP's computer management section, and it did seem to help) and would like to know a solution. My solution was to connect my HP LaserJet 4 plus and Alps printers to the new XP computer. Now it prints fast to them, and my other computers print quickly over the network. I still have to wait to print over the network to my daughter’s HP DeskJet.

Much to my surprise there is still a command prompt. And you have to use it to find your network settings. Win XP doesn’t have the program WinIpcfg. It does have IPconfig, which you run from the command prompt in a "DOS" Window—even though there is no DOS. You can get the command prompt in Accessories or by simply typing cmd in the Run text box. And what I like about this type of DOS window is that it has a vertical scroll bar so that you don’t lose a record of what you have done as more text is added, as happens in the Win 98. Finally, you can select all the text in this window, copy it and paste it into a program like Notepad or Word. This would be useful for those who want a list of files in a particular directory.

Win XP has a built in faxing program that seems to work quite well. I was able to send faxes of Word documents and then receive faxes. What is missing is the ability to scan a document from within the FAX console and then send it as a FAX. However, if you have a program that will do a black and white scan at 200 dpi, you can simply scan from this program and then print to the FAX driver. Since this computer has the Microsoft Office XP Document Imaging tool, I use this to acquire the scanned image then print from it to the XP FAX driver.

The FAX Console has an In Box, an Out Box and a Sent Items box along with a built-in viewer. It is not as full featured as WinFAX Pro, but it is quite good. By the way, I think to use WinFAX Pro with XP you will have to purchase the newest version of the program for around $100.

I wanted to add my laptop to the network, so I needed to find some more space. The router only accommodated four network connections, and they were all taken. But I had an old 10 mbs, four port hub with an additional uplink port. So I unplugged the oldest computer from the router, connected the hub's uplink port to that now free port on the router and then connected the disconnected computer to one port on the hub and the laptop to another port on the hub. The laptop could see the other four computers on the network and all could see it except the new XP computer. So all I had to do now was set up a network place on the XP computer for the C drive on the laptop. The wizard found the laptop and asked for the password for the C drive, and I clicked on OK–and nothing happened. The exact situation as I had encountered earlier in setting up the C drive on my Compaq computer as a network place for the new Gateway XP computer. And the cause of the problem was the same—a space in the name of the computer. I took out the space from the name of the laptop, rebooted the laptop and used the network place wizard again on the XP computer, and this time when I clicked OK I was presented with the file structure of the C drive on the laptop. Success.

With everything working, it was time to move some computers. The oldest of the three computers in this room was relegated to a back room of the house and the newest computer took its place. The oldest flatbed scanner, the HP ScanJet IIc accompanied the old Gateway computer to the back room. The HP 4 Plus printer and the Alps MD-1300 were connected to the new Gateway, and, as I said, that did away with the delay in printing over the network from the XP computer. A new driver for the Alps was required.

I took the old Iomega parallel 100 MB drive from the banished Gateway and installed it on the Compaq computer after first going to the Iomega site and getting the latest drivers. I only use the Iomega for backups of important data that I don't want to bother with putting on a CD. Years back, though, it was my main backup medium.

There were two jobs remaining. The first, to see if I could install the HP PhotoSmart Photo scanner on the Compaq. This scanner uses a SCSI interface, and it was daisy chained to the HP IIc flatbed scanner that was banished along with the old Gateway. I have a relatively new HP 5370C scanner connected to the new Gateway with a USB cable. HP provided a proprietary SCSI card with the photo scanner and I never used it since I daisy chained it. Now I need to install a SCSI card in the Compaq computer for the scanner. HP tells you where to go to get updated drivers for the card. Once there you find that the manufacturer, while providing the drivers for Win Me and Win 2000, says that they will not support them and suggests you buy a new PCI card that they guarantee will work in Win Me. I downloaded the driver for the card and also have 80 MB of updated application software I downloaded from HP for the photo scanner and gave it a try. To make a long story short: It didn’t work—possibly due to an error on my part.

Anyway, I purchased a new SIIG PCI SCSI card. It installed fine using a built-in Windows driver. I installed the Photo Scanner software—and again got the same error message as before when I tried to run the software. But this time I did a little thinking: I had Windows search for new hardware. It found an unknown device. I had it install it—and low and behold it discovered it was an HP Photo Scanner with a number I can’t remember. Now the scanner with its new and better software is working fine on the Win Me Compaq computer.

One final problem. After the move, I discovered that the old Gateway in the other room connected to the hub by 75’ of network cable could no longer see the other computers’ folders, even though they could see its folders. It could browse the Internet and ping the other computers. I suspected the problem was the old hub—and it was. Replacing the hub with a new Linksys four port switch made everything right.

I am out of space—but not problems and solutions. u