
From: gordonf@vcn.bc.ca (Gordon Fecyk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.compatibility.win95,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Windows 95 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers Part 13 of 14
Followup-To: comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.compatibility.win95
Date: 14 May 1996 01:49:58 GMT
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Summary: These postings list many questions asked in said newsgroups,
         and answers them as best as I can.  I make references to other
         Web sites and FAQs when appropriate.  Visit the WWW home of
         this FAQ (http://www.intouch.bc.ca/win95) for the appropriate
         links.  This section is the 13th one: Microsoft Plus!
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Archive-name: windows/win95/faq/part13
Last-Modified: 1996/04/29
URL: http://www.intouch.bc.ca/win95/faq13.htm

13) Microsoft Plus (tm) add-on for 
Win95 

What is Microsoft Plus and why do I care? 
How do I use... 
...System Agent? 
But Norton Anti-Virus (tm) already installed a scheduler! 
But F-Prot Anti-Virus (tm) already installed a scheduler! 
But Colorado Backup (tm) already installed a scheduler! 
How can I use System Agent instead of those other 
schedulers? 
Why should I use System Agent instead of those other 
schedulers? 
Top ten reasons why System Agent is cool to use 
...Internet Explorer and Setup Wizard? 
Why should I get Internet Explorer 2.0? 
...DriveSpace 3? 
Is it safe to use Norton Utilities for Win95 with DriveSpace 
3? 
...Desktop themes? 
How do I make my own theme and save it? 
Where can I get more themes? 
Why do all the themes I downloaded take up so much hard 
drive space? 
How did Microsoft replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc 
icons? 
How can I do it? 
...the "Visual Enhancements"? 
How do I remove the Visual Enhancements? 
...Dial-up Networking Server? 
...3D Pinball? 
How come 3D pinball doesn't play any music or sound 
effects? 
Top ten things missing from Microsoft Plus 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What is Microsoft Plus and why do I care? 

MS Plus! is all the stuff that Microsoft should've included in Win95, 
but decided they wanted to make you pay more for them. OK, it's 
really a bunch of add-ons designed for high powered computers ('486 
machines and Pentiums) to make your system run a little smoother and 
look a little nicer. Kerep in mind that the Plus stuff is for high powered 
computers, which was probably the biggest reason MS didn't include 
this stuff with the operating system. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use System Agent? 

System Agent is a little scheduler that runs programs at certain times. 
It's quite handy because it already schedules disk maintanence 
processes, so all you have to do is keep your computer turned on and 
it keeps itself clean. 

To install System Agent, install MS Plus. A little icon shows up in the 
SysTray; the place with the date and time in it on the Taskbar. 
Double-click it to bring up the System Agent manager. You will see 
four programs already scheduled (five, if you installed DriveSpace 3) 
which will scan your hard drives, de-fragment them, check for low 
disk space, and re-compress any DriveSpace 3 drives you have. 

You can bring up properties for these programs, and change their 
settings and their scheduled run times. System Agent-Aware 
programs will offer special "Scheduled settings" requesters if you 
change their settings from here. 

You can also add new programs to this list. Hit Program/Schedule 
new program. Hit Browse to search for the program you want to run, 
or type its command line in the box. NOTE: Programs with long 
filenames or directory names belong in quotes, like "C:\Program 
Files\Plus!\RunMe.EXE" /parameter1 for example. Bring up 
properties for the included programs for examples. 

Any clickable object in Explorer can run from System Agent, 
including DOS .PIF files and even documents. I specify "PIF" 
because it's better to specify a DOS program's settings and use the 
PIF as the object to run. Win 3.1 and Win95 programs and 
documents will have their icons appear in this window. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

But Norton Anti-Virus (tm)/F-Prot Anti-Virus (tm)/Colorado 
Backup (tm) already installed a scheduler! 

So? You paid for System Agent when you bought MS Plus. Use it. I 
get a real kick out of people who run three different schedulers and 
then complain that their system swaps to the hard drive so often. 
They're a waste of memory. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How can I use System Agent instead of those other 
schedulers? 

First you will need to remove the other schedulers. The three I 
mentioned all insert an icon in the Startup group in your Start Menu. 
They're easy enough to remove; here's how to remove Start Menu 
items. 

Second, read up on the programs you want to schedule. The three I 
mentioned all have instructions for running them from a command line, 
for example, Norton Anti-Virus will scan all local hard drives by 
running: 

NAVW32.EXE /L

The /L means "local". Be sure to test this command line from a DOS 
session; Win95 DOS sessions can run Windows programs, and the 
START command in a DOS session can launch documents. 

Third, Hit the Program menu in System Agent Manager and select 
"Schedule new program". In the "Program to run" box, type in the 
command line that makes your program run (like the NAVW32 /L 
example above). Tell the program to run minimized if you wish. 

Last, select "When to run..." and pick a time for this program to run. 
Be careful not to overlap programs; you don't want an Anti-Virus 
scan to happen while running ScanDisk, for example. The System 
Agent Manager shows the last started and stopped times of all 
scheduled programs, so use this as a guide for adding new programs 
and preventing overlap. 

For another example, Win95's built in Backup lets you launch the 
backup set rather than the program. Just open the Full System 
Backup from Backup, which enables Registry back-up, then select 
the files or drives you want to back up. Pick your target (usually your 
tape drive), pick your options, and save the backup set with a unique 
name. Finally, schedule this backup set to run (by including the .FST 
itself; not the program, and don't include a START command; there's 
no need) in System Agent. Colorado Backup works much the same 
way. Other back-up programs will have different commands to use; 
experiment from a DOS prompt to get the commands right. 

Why should I use System Agent instead of those other 
schedulers? 

Is this a rehtorical question? You paid for it when you bought MS 
Plus. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Top ten reasons why System Agent is cool to use 

10) It takes practically no memory 

9) It can stop scheduled programs if you start using your computer 

8) It can run stuff on start up if you don't like Startup groups (Great 
for User Profile users) 

7) It's always running (except in Safe Mode) 

6) It's easy to schedule programs to run 

5) It keeps your hard drives clean by running ScanDisk for you 

4) It knows when you're on batteries (notebooks) and won't run big 
programs if you're on batteries 

3) It can wake you up in the morning (heh heh... just schedule a 
.WAV file to play every day at 6:00 AM) 

2) You don't need a Pentium to use it (heh heh) 

1) It comes with all the other cool stuff in MS Plus 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use Internet Explorer and Setup Wizard? 

When you re-start the computer after installing Plus, you'll notice an 
obvious "The Internet" icon staring at you. Open it. This launches the 
Internet Setup Wizard. I won't get redundant, so to make it short & 
sweet, get an answer sheet from your service provider with answers 
to these questions: 

Access phone number 
Login name and login password 
DNS server addresses 
Gateway address (if using default gateway, ignore this) 
E-MAIL address 
POP3 server login name and password (Usually same as dial-up 
login name and password) 
POP3 server name (usually mail.somewhere.com or something like 
that) 
Also SMTP server name for outgoing mail (if it's not the same as 
the POP server) 

Check out the detailed Setup Wizard Instructions for the rest of the 
details. The wizard will add all the needed Win95 networking 
components to get you hooked to The Internet. 

Why should I get Internet Explorer 2.0? 

Well, It's free, has a lot of things missing from the web browser 
included in Plus, and it's a direct upgrade. Visit the Internet Explorer 
Home Page. 

After you run the Internet Setup Wizard you could get a different 
browser instead, like NCSA Mosaic, and the auto-dialer and stuff will 
still work with it. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use DriveSpace 3? 

No point in being redundant... check out the Disk Compression 
Section. 

Is it safe to use Norton Utilities for Win95 with DriveSpace 
3? 

I don't trust it, even though Symantec swears by it. Contrary to 
popular belief, Microsoft's ScanDisk and Defrag (You know; those 
programs that MS pirated off Symantec?) work just fine on 
DriveSpace 3 drives, keeping them clean, especially if you schedule 
these programs to run regularly with System Agent. 

Notice though, that Plus comes with replacement versions of 
ScanDisk and Defrag, so that's enough to scare me from third party 
disk maintanence tools... MS must've changed something fundamental 
with DriveSpace 3. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use Desktop Themes? 

Be sure to install at least one theme from the included Plus themes to 
enable themes in general, otherwise Plus Setup won't install any theme 
support. You can always hand-delete the components of the theme 
and retain theme support. 

From here, you can use a theme from the included list, or download a 
favorite from www.windows95.com. 

How do I make my own theme and save it? 

To make your own theme, make your own custom changes to the 
desktop scheme, colour scheme, sound scheme, mouse pointers, and 
screen saver, using the Properties sheets or control panel programs 
for each. Once you're satisfied with your work, run the new Themes 
control panel and "Save As..." to create a .theme file. 

You may also change the icons for My Computer, Net 
Neighborhood, and Recycle Bin. Bring up Display properties and hit 
the Plus! tab to change them. 

You should store all the custom icons, animated pointers, sounds, 
screen saver, and bitmaps in C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes so your 
theme users can install the theme easily. If you use a custom font, 
include instructions on copying the font to the Windows\Fonts folder. 
Batch files can use the Win95 START command if necessary. 

Where can I get more themes? 

www.windows95.com has a well regulated themes section. I'm sure 
other major FTP sites will also carry Plus themes. 

Usually a custom theme has a special installation procedure; you have 
to install a font, copy a screen saver to your Windows directory, copy 
a bitmap to your Windows directory, etc, for use in the theme. All of 
these options (except custom fonts) can go anywhere in the hard 
drive, so C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes is a good place to keep 
them. 

Why do all the themes I downloaded take up so much hard 
drive space? 

Be warned: a typical theme is about  to 1 MB in size, and that's the 
compressed size! 

Be reasonable; pick a theme after you browsed all the themes you 
wanted to see, and delete the components of the others. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How did Microsoft replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc 
icons? 

This is actually quite "cool" how they did this. Explorer has Registry 
entries for each icon type it displays, and grabs that icon type from an 
.ICO or .DLL file when it starts. It usually grabs them from 
SHELL32.DLL. 

Plus Themes also support these Shell icons, though they don't 
document them. Look for a library file labeled COOL.DLL (I'm not 
making this up!) and QuickView it, or try changing the icon for any 
shortcut and use COOL.DLL as the source for the new icon. There 
are icons in that library to replace all the normal Shell icons. Theme 
support also includes replacing the SHELL32 icons with these COOL 
ones. 

You won't notice any changes to the icons until you use 65 thousand 
or 16 million colour modes; then the system over-writes COOL.DLL 
with a HiColor version. The HiColor icons really stand out compared 
to the 256 colour ones. NOTE: If you ever have to re-install 
Win95, Setup will restore thr original SHELL32 icons; you'll need 
to re-install Plus to restore the COOL icons. 

Theme support does not include directly modifying these icons, but 
you could do some searching with REGEDIT (if you feel 
adventureous) for the key "DefaultIcon" in any of the 
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID sections. There is a DefaultIcon 
key for most of those. 

How can I replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc icons? 

This is a theory, but it is possible based on the COOL.DLL stuff last 
section. COOL.DLL is really a 16-bit library (QuickView it to see for 
yourself). So, it is possible to edit COOL.DLL with a Win 3.1 icon 
editor that supports library files (such as Borland's resource editor for 
Win 3.1 which comes with Turbo C++), or copy it and replace all the 
icons. This is safer than Registry hacking, and it's easier to transport 
with your theme. 

Once you do that, save it with the name COOL.DLL and replace the 
one in your SYSTEM directory with this one. You will need to 
re-start Win95 for this to take effect. You will need to replace the 
Computer, Net Hood, and Recycle Bin icons the normal way, but the 
icons can come from the COOL.DLL replacement you make up. 

NOTE: Every time I see the file "COOL.DLL" I think of an AVI file 
Microsoft distributed with their VidTest 1.0 package, which had Bill 
Gates saying "Cool!" at the end of it. Look for COOL.AVI in the MS 
Multimedia Demo CD-ROM, or in VidTest. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use the "Visual Enhancements"? 

Check out the Plus! tab in Display Properties. This tab shows up 
when you install the enhancements from Plus Setup. From here, you 
can enable full window drag (which drags the contents of a window 
instead of an outline), wallpaper scaling, font smoothing, etc. 

Many of these options only work on fast computers with faster video 
cards. Don't attempt to use these on a computer less than a '486 with 
some kind of high speed video (VESA local bus, PCI) and a proper 
video driver for Win95. Font Smoothing only works on 65 thousand 
or 16 million colour displays; it uses gray shades to fill in the jagged 
edges of large point sizes, and really isn't necessary if you use 
TrueType a lot. 

How do I remove the Visual Enhancements? 

Just turn them off in Display Properties, on the Plus! tab. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use the Dial-up Networking Server? 

Make sure you install Dial-up Networking before you install Plus. If 
you choose the dial-up server, you will see a new "Dial-up server" 
entry in the Connections menu. Dial-up server works with Win95 
(PPP) dial-up clients, and Windows for Workgroups (RAS) clients. 
Check out the Dial-up server Details. 

From here, select a modem (all the modems appeare as tabs in this 
requester) and enable or disable caller access. If you use User Level 
Security you can allow particular users on this dial-in connection, or 
you can install a password. You may only enable one modem as a 
dial-in modem; Microsoft had to disable this functionality so it doesn't 
kill sales of NT server. Heh heh 

The dial-up server uses the same bindings as the dial-up connections, 
so you need to install the Dial-up Adapter and protocols for it in your 
Network Properties. It will automatically use all protocols available to 
it for PPP clients, but only use NetBEUI for RAS clients. 

The server also acts as a NetBIOS and IPX router to any network it's 
connected to, and there's no way to turn off routing. Administrators: If 
you don't want your users to open up your network to the world, 
disable all Win95 dial-up servers through system policies. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I use 3D Pinball? 

Use? Play, you mean. Just install it from Plus Setup. You'll find the 
icon for it in your Games group on your Start Menu, along with the 
other classic time wasters like Minesweeper, etc. 

How come 3D pinball doesn't play any music or sound 
effects? 

Most likely because you don't have a sound card, but if you do, turn 
on the Music and Sound from the game's Options menu. 

Music won't play unless you have a working MIDI device installed. 
This works by default on cards with Win95 drivers, but Win 3.1 
drivers require special MIDI mapper tuning. Gravis Ultrasound users 
will have to manually load a patch map into the GUS's memory before 
3D Pinball will play music. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Top ten things missing from Microsoft Plus 

10) IMAP4 client for Exchange instead of POP3 

9) Internet Explorer 2.0 

8) Nice method to replace any Shell icon 

7) Hardware interface to coffee pot, to start it from System Agent 
(Right after it plays a .WAV file for a wake-up alarm!) 

6) Method of starting a dial-up connection from System Agent (Any 
ideas here?) 

5) Win95 admin tools for NT and NetWare networks (The NT 
resource kit does have Win95 admin tools though) 

4) Good TCP/IP control utility for setting RTU, TTL, etc 

3) Internet Idioms for Exchange 

2) A proper Marijuana plant icon for the Recycle Bin in the 60's 
theme 

1) A TCP/IP router for the Dial-up Server 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Back to Table of Contents]

