Share Programs the Easy Way on a Multiuser PC

I share a PC with other family members. We each have a user name and password. Sometimes when I install a program, it's available only to me. How do I make it available to everyone?

Visubalan Nandakumar, San Marcos, Texas

Any installed program is available to everyone. The problem is that the shortcuts to the programs aren't on everyone's Start menu. I'll tell you how to add the shortcuts, and I have some other application-sharing tips as well.

To make your applications available to everyone using the PC, open Windows Explorer and select your default Start Menu folder. If you're using Windows 98 or Me, it's probably C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. In Windows 2000 or XP, the path is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs. Click the Windows Start button, select Programs ( All Programs in XP), and choose the program or submenu you want to add to everyone's Start menu. Right-click and drag the shortcut to the open Explorer window, and select Copy Here.

If you use Windows 2000 or XP, that's all you need to do. But with Windows 98 and Me, each user (other than yourself) must perform one more task. Select Start, Settings, Control Panel, double-click the Users icon, and choose his or her user name. Then click Change Settings and uncheck Start Menu in the Items box. Click OK and Close. Now choose Start, Log Off [your name], and log back on. Reopen the Personalized Items Settings dialog box, and this time check rather than uncheck the Start Menu option.

Why the silly routine? Windows creates a different Start Menu folder for each user, as well as a generic, all-user Start Menu. With Windows 98 and Me, the Start Menu option described above controls whether you see your own Start Menu or the generic one. (To be sure, you can get rid of this whole problem by having everyone unclick the option--but they'll also lose their personalized Start menus.) When a user's Start menu is turned on after being off, Windows copies everything from its generic Start menu to the person's own menu, making it a combination of what was in both menus.

So how do you install a new program in Windows 98 and Me so that everyone can access it? First, log off as yourself, and at the log-on dialog box, click Cancel. Windows will come up, but since you aren't logged on as a particular user, you'll see the default Start menu. Install the application, and follow the instructions above for copying the generic Start menu onto the personalized Start menu of each user.

With Windows 2000 and XP, installing an application for everyone must be done via an Administrator account. In fact, people without such accounts may not be able to install anything. Some programs automatically become available to all accounts on a multiuser PC when the administrator installs them, but others don't. The best applications will ask you as part of the installation process whether you want everyone to have access to them. If a program you want to share appears only on your Start menu, follow the instructions above to place a shortcut to it on the Start menus of other users.

Send your questions to answer@pcworld.com. Answer Line pays $50 for published items. You'll find Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector's humorous writing at www.thelinkinspector.com.

Download, Interrupted

When something interrupts a file download in Internet Explorer, the second try always starts again from zero rather than from where the first attempt left off. Is there any way I can make IE resume interrupted downloads at the point where the first try failed?

Mohammed Osman, Toronto

Internet Explorer doesn't support resumed downloads, but plenty of download-management utilities do. These programs may provide this feature only when the site you're downloading from supports it--but luckily, most major download sites offer such support.

My favorite resume-capable download manager (taking price into consideration, of course), is the free, ad-supported version of SpeedBit's Download Accelerator Plus (the Premium version costs a steep $30). Once installed, DAP comes up whenever you click a download link in IE, Netscape, or Opera, and thereafter it controls the entire download (see FIGURE 1). SpeedBit says that the program can also improve download performance, though I didn't notice a change. You can download DAP from

DAP will resume downloads interrupted by anything other than a system crash. SpeedBit also offers a for-cost subscription feature--Always Resume--that continues downloads interrupted from any site, even ones that don't support resume.

Is That Computer Legit?

I'm about to buy a used computer. Is there any way for me to make sure it's not stolen?

Eduardo Ribeiro, via the Internet

There's no way to be certain, but it wouldn't hurt to check the Stolen Computer Registry. At this site, you enter a description of a particular computer, including the machine's serial number, and the service tells you if it has been reported stolen.

How does a computer get into the registry? Insurance companies, police departments, and regular users report it. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about the service, so the list is by no means comprehensive. The service's executive director, Robert J. Zises, estimates that the registry identifies about 100,000 stolen computers. What's the total number of stolen computers? According to Zises, it's impossible to know. "Many are stolen from companies that are self-insured and don't report the theft," Zises says. He adds that there are "estimates of $10 billion worth [of losses] a year."

There's no fee for entering a stolen computer into the database or for searching the list. You do have to fill out a registration form--and unfortunately there's no privacy policy. Zises assured me, however, that the service does not use identifiable information except to help return a computer to the rightful owner.

Clean Msconfig

How do I delete unchecked startup items in the Startup tab of Win 98's Msconfig? The list is swollen with programs I don't want to run at start-up.

Jeff Szymanski, Greendale, Wisconsin

To see msconfig's list of autostarting programs, select Start, Run, type msconfig, press Enter, and click the Startup tab. Unchecking an item will keep it from loading automatically each time you boot, but it won't remove the program from the list. Some maintenance tasks require that you visually scan the list, so removing unwanted programs makes a lot of sense.

Deleting items from Msconfig's Startup list requires editing the Registry, so make sure your Registry is backed up before you start tinkering. Go to May's " Step-By-Step: Care and Feeding of the Windows Registry" for complete instructions.

Once you've finished backing up the Registry, select Start, Run, enter regedit, and press Enter. Navigating the left pane of the Registry Editor as if it were Windows Explorer, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run-. Note the hyphen (-) at the end of the address (believe me, you do not want to go to \CurrentVersion\Run). Once there, you can delete any listing in the right pane.

You may be able to identify several other unchecked start-up items in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

RunServices-. Once again, note that final hyphen.

If you're using Windows XP, there's one more place that you can look. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig\startupfolder. This time, however, don't bother with the right pane. Instead, look for keys (the Registry term for folders) below startupfolder in the left pane.

Turn Images Into Icons

How do I transform a.gif file into an.ico file so that I can use it in Windows as an icon?

Ken Linder, Dallas

Before you convert an image into an icon, you have to be aware of the visual limitations of an icon. You can discern only so much of an image in a space that's 32 pixels high by 32 pixels wide. Furthermore, your version of Windows, the way you have Windows set up, and the limitations of the program you use to convert the image may prevent you from getting the exact colors you want.

Your image is probably larger than 32 by 32 pixels. If so, you'll have to shrink it or crop it--or do a little of both. Just about any graphics program can do the job, including Windows' built-in Paint program, though ol' Paint isn't the best tool for shrinking or cropping.

For the conversion itself, I recommend Pinxy's Picture to Icon Converter (see FIGURE 2), a free program by Arifin Isawiseman that helps with the cropping, though colors do not always convert properly.

Ontrack's $30 PowerDesk Pro 4 or 5 gives you another option. When you view an image file in that program's file viewer, you can right-click the viewer pane and select Convert Picture. One of the file types you can convert the image to is.ico. The picture has to be 32 by 32 pixels beforehand, however. Get PowerDesk Pro from Ontrack or from PCWorld.com's Downloads.

Defrag Automatically

You probably already know how to create a shortcut and set up a task in Windows' Task Scheduler. You might even know how to write a batch file. But if you want that shortcut, task, or batch file to defrag your hard drive automatically, you'll need a command line that automatically loads, runs, and then exits Disk Defragmenter. In Windows 98 and Me, the command is defrag c: /noprompt. In Windows XP, it's defrag c. For Windows 2000, you need the free, downloadable AutoDeFrag program from MorphaSys.