Tips & Traps

Reducing Monitor Moiré

Moiré appears as an unsightly wavy pattern on your screen. The easiest way to reduce moiré is to use the monitor’s built in moiré cancellation device, usually accessible through the onscreen display. Some monitors have the option of turning this control completely on or off, while others allow you to fine-tune it.

You can also try changing resolution and increasing color bit depth. Higher resolutions are more prone to moiré. The patterns are less noticeable with higher numbers of colors, where dithering is less prevalent.

Avoid using dim colored backgrounds. Also try increasing the contrast or brightness slightly. Adjust the monitor’s focus just so that moiré is reduced but the image is not blurred. You can also try changing the size of the display image slightly.

Although most instances of moiré patterns are attributed to the monitor, they can also result from cross talk in the video chip on your graphics board. If a noise signal is being passed from one wire to another and interrupts the desirable signal, moiré patterns are produced on the display. If your graphics board is relatively old, you may want to consider replacing it.

Finally, check to make sure that there are no nearby electrical devices that generate magnetic fields (ie. other monitors, fans, fluorescent lights, speakers). These may cause the picture to display with wave patterns similar to moiré disturbance.

Keeping the Install Directory for NT Online

Everything you need to install Windows NT, install hardware and repair the system is kept on the NT CD in a directory called \I386. If you keep the install directory on your hard drive, you’ll never have to hunt for your Windows NT install disk.

Copy the I386 folder to your hard drive and install NT from there. Then NT will always refer to that folder when reinstalling or looking for drivers.

If you need to reformat your hard drive or if you have already installed NT off the CD, then you’ll need to do a registry edit.

Copy the I386 directory to your hard disk. Then open Regedit and locate the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.

On the right side of the Regedit window, SourcePath will be set to d:\i386\ or whatever letter you’re using for your CD-ROM. Change the drive letter to the disk where you keep the I386 directory. Note that you can also use this hack when you relocate the I386 directory on your network as well.

Sharing a Single Computer

If you have one machine that many people use, you can have Windows NT clear the log-in name every time it restarts. By default, NT displays the log-in name of the last person who used a particular machine. You eliminate this by using RegEdit to modify this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Subkey\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Select ReportBootOK and Edit/New/ String Value from the menu. Type “DontDisplayLastUserName,” double click on it and set its value to 1.

Eliminating the Blue Screen of Death!

Tired of seeing the Blue Screen of Death? The computer techies over at http://planetx.com/linebackn/news/bsod.html will give you a Blue Screen of Death control panel.

OK, so it can’t keep windows from crashing, but you can at least change the color from blue to pink, purple or chartreuse.

Journaling File Systems

A journaling file system keeps track of any changes made to files stored on disk. It does this in a separate file or journal. When files are written and deleted from magnetic disk, the changes are generally made only on the disk’s directory. The files on the disk are left untouched, at least until they are overwritten by new data. A journaling file system formalizes this feature.

The practical upshot is that if a system crashes, the journal can help recreate the data on the disk up to the time of the crash. Without a journaling file system, you can only repair a magnetic disk up to the time of the last backup. If a disk volume is used very heavily, recreating the last several hours after a backup can be complex and expensive.

Another advantage is that a journaled file system can be backed up while it is in use. Without a journal, disk volumes have to be taken off-line. With a journal, the file system is frozen during the backup process and User activity is recorded in the journal. After the backup, the changes made in the journal are applied to the main volume. A system administrator knows exactly when the backup is made and, if there’s a crash, knows exactly to what point in time files will have to be manually restored.

Document management systems, with their heavy reliance on databases, can especially benefit from journaling file systems. Databases are always vulnerable to data losses due to crashes. Furthermore, being able to backup a file system while it is “live” helps in those shops where 24-hour up time is a must.