Delphi Programs In the past I have made reference to the programming language Delphi from Borland. I find it a nice complement to Visual Basic, since, unlike VB, for fairly simple programs it allows you to create applications that don’t require an installation package to install the program. Of course, you can also use Delphi to create just as complicated a program as you would in VB.

I have posted some of these programs to my lamartin.com web site at http://www.lamartin.com/vb/delphi_examples.htm. Here are their descriptions.

Automated Browser Log Run this program, and while you surf the web it will keep track of everywhere you go. When you're finished you can save the log file. Of course, Windows provides a history of where you go also, but you can't save it to a text file.

Share a Network Clipboard I work with two or three computers arrayed around my swivel chair, which is on rollers. While working on one computer, I frequently want to send some text to one of the other computers. My former way of doing this was to copy the text to Computer A's clipboard, open up Microsoft Notepad, paste the text into it and save this clipboard file to Computer B's hard drive over the network. That is inconvenient. This program speeds up the process. Simply run the program on Computer A and Computer B, then a mouse click on each computer gets the copied text transferred.

This program is not meant as a substitute for the Windows accessory, WinPopup. WinPopup will transfer only a small amount of unformatted text. This program will allow the transfer of large amounts of formatted text.

Get Blocked Email Senders List Microsoft Outlook Express has a blocked email senders list to which you can add either an email address or an entire domain from which you wish to have the messages automatically put in the Deleted folder. You can, of course, view this list in Outlook Express, but as the list gets large (mine is now over 500) it is not convenient to view it as presented--especially since it is not alphabetical. This program captures that list, orders it alphabetically and allows you to copy it to the clipboard. One advantage of this is checking if there is someone on that list that shouldn't be there. The program depends on finding this list at a certain place in the registry, which may vary for different versions of Outlook Express. It does automatically find the listing for different identities using the same computer. I would be interested in any feedback on the program for those using Win NT/2000 or other versions than 5.0 or 5.5 of Outlook Express. I have tested it with win 98/ME and Outlook Express 5.0/5.5.

WHOIS Search This program performs a WHOIS search for Internet domain name registration. However, life is not as simple as it used to be. Now you need to first do a search using whois.crsnic.net to get the Registrar of the domain, then, if you want more details, do a second search using the WHOIS server of the Registrar of the domain. Of course, the same information may be obtained by doing the search using your WWW browser to do the search. This program just simplifies the process.

Get List of Files in Directory With this program when you select a drive and directory on your computer, the list of files in the selected directory is displayed. You can then print the entire list to your printer, copy the entire list to the clipboard, or copy selected items to the clipboard. This solves the problem of Windows not providing such a feature (although, if you can recall the method, a list can be gotten in DOS).

Lost CDs about six months back, I needed an Office 2000 CD to add a feature to the Office 2000 suite installed on one of my computers, and I couldn’t find the CD. I tore the house apart for several days to no effect. I then contacted Microsoft via email to try and get a free replacement (I provided documentation). Finally a fellow said he could take care of that and asked for my mailing address. I provided the address, but nothing ever came in the mail. Follow-up emails to the fellow went unanswered. Microsoft has a number, 800-360-7561, to call for replacement software, so I called it, provided documentation that I owned the Office 2000 Professional suite, gave them my credit card number for an approximate $28 charge and then received the CD in the mail a few days later. Pretty good service.

Except that it was Office 2000 Premium instead of Professional. Well, I didn’t want to bother them by telling them that they had really sent me Office 2000 Pro plus FrontPage 2000. I already had FrontPage, so it wasn’t like I was getting something I didn’t already have. Unfortunately when I used the Premium CD and tried to add features to Office Professional, the add/remove program told me it wanted an Office 2000 Professional CD and would go no further.

Another call to Microsoft produced a replacement Office 2000 Professional CD sent via one day air. You can’t beat that for service.

This illustrates one result of Microsoft’s new attempt to cut down on piracy. It is obvious why you would need a CD to add features, although it is not all that obvious—except to cut down on piracy—why you need the Professional version instead of the Premium since the Word, Excel and Access programs are the same for both versions. What will shock you, though, is that if you want to uninstall Microsoft Office 2000, you may also need the original CDs to be able to uninstall. It is all tied up with the new installation method of using Windows Installer to handle both the installation and the de-installation. I haven’t experienced this myself so I don’t know if it is always the case, but there are certainly more than a few people in the Office Usenet newsgroups who claim to have run into the problem. So don’t lose those CDs.

Cmdninst On Start-up, my Windows Me computer sometimes hangs, and CTRL-ALT-DEL shows the file cmdninst is causing the problem. The only solution is to reboot, then everything is OK. According to Microsoft, "Cmdninst.exe is the Configuration Manager Device Installer launcher. Along with the Windows Configuration Manager (Configmg), Cmdninst.exe is a component that drives the process of detecting and installing devices and their nodes in the hardware tree along with the allocation of resources." They say that problems are caused by outdated device drivers on the system. Not knowing what driver might be outdated, I simply chose to restore the file cmdninst.exe to see if that would help—so far it has. (but as this is put on the Internet, the problem has returned) u