You Have Questions? I Have Answers

More map sites, plus tricks for deleting files and optical illusions.

Steve Bass

Steve Bass writes the "Hassle-Free PC" column in PC World's print edition and is the author of PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer, available from O'Reilly. Sign up to have Steve Bass's Tips and Tweaks newsletter e-mailed to you each week. Comments or questions? Send Steve e-mail.

It's midsummer and some of you don't have much to do--so you spend time writing and sending e-mail to me. And then there are the editors who take e-mail and forward it to me like a hot potato.

On one hand, this creates extra work for me. On the other, it's a good thing because it proves that someone besides my relatives is reading "Tips & Tweaks."

So this week I present answers to your questions, plus some reader recommendations.

Maps, Maps, and More Maps

Y'all like maps--that's pretty obvious from all the e-mail I received after "Maps for Fun and Business" hit the Web.

Google Earth. Tons of you complained that I didn't mention Google Earth. This one's a stunner--and a time killer. Our uberboss, Harry McCracken, describes it in detail in his blog, "First Impressions: Google's Amazing Earth." Unfortunately, you can't have it: The Google folks pulled the beta. Too many people accessing it, they said. There may still be a way for you to get it, though. Read through the comments at Harry's follow-up blog. You could also try going to a mirror site. And when you do get a copy, I promise, you'll kill an hour or more playing with it (which is why this column's being filed late).

Mapdex. Jeremy Bartley wrote to tell me about Mapdex, a "GeoGoogle" for map servers. Jeremy is the assistant GIS Coordinator and Geoinformatics Project Lead of the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas (hey, I get paid by the word). He explained that Mapdex uses roughly 1550 servers, serving 26,000 map services, containing more than 400,000 GIS layers, and covering more than 3,250,000 columns.

ESRI Conference. It's too late this year, but mark your maps for the next "Virtual Woodstock for digital mapmakers from 110 countries around the globe." It's the ESRI International User Conference for GIS geeks (meaning "geographic information system").

Dig This: Your boss just called and you need something to do while you pretend to be listening. Try Playing With Fire, a harder-than-it-looks Flash game. Use your arrow keys to navigate--and get out of the way when you use the semicolon to drop a bomb. [Thanks, Samuel H.]

WhoLockMe and ForceDel

Some of you had trouble using WhoLockMe and ForceDel, the pair of tools I mention in the cleverly titled "Tool of the Month" sidebar in my "Hassle-Free PC" column for the July PC World magazine. These tools give you a way to delete files or folders that refuse to go into the bit bucket.

The problem is that with just 120 words to work with in print, there's no way I can provide detailed instructions. So below are longish step-by-steps.

ForceDel. This program needs to run from a Command window. Here's how to use it.

Using Window Explorer, navigate to the C: drive and create a new folder named Tools.

Unzip ForceDel to that folder. If you know what you're doing, you can stick the program anywhere you want, but you'll need to navigate to that folder later on.

You need to know the full pathway to the folder where the files you want to delete reside. (Hey, I didn't say this was going to be fast, or even fun.) You can find that out in Windows Explorer by right-clicking on the file name and choosing Properties.

Copy everything in the Target field. If a portion of the data is in quotes, copy just the part within the quotes (but not the quotes). For example, you may see "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" /p /noload; in this case, you'd just copy C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe.

ForceDel runs from a DOS command window, so you'll need to go to the Start menu, choose Run, and type in CMD.

Now you need to navigate to the folder where ForceDel resides. If you put it in Tools, type CD \Tools.

In the CMD box, type ForceDel, add a space, and paste the location of the target file. For instance, ForceDel C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe

If you did everything correctly, ForceDel will tell you the file's been deleted. If the file is locked and not deletable, you'll need to use WhoLockMe.

WhoLockMe: Sometimes a file is locked by Windows. It could be because it's a Word doc that's open (as in my example below), a file that's part of an uninstall routine, or perhaps a virus or Trojan horse.

Unzip WhoLockMe into a handy folder (say, uh, Tools, or C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe). Make sure all these files are in that folder: WhoLockMe.dll, WhoLockMe.exe, Install.bat, and Uninstall.bat.

From Windows Explorer, double-click on Install.bat and let it do what it needs to do. (If you ever need to uninstall the program, double-click Uninstall.bat.)

In Windows Explorer, right-click on the locked file and choose WhoLockMe. (The tool works only on files that are locked. Nothing will happen if you click on an unlocked file.)

To delete the locked file, you'll need to kill the program (called a process) that's locking the file. In my example, it's Word, so in the WhoLockMe dialog box I'd highlight Word and click Kill Process.

Dig This: Many of you wrote to say you enjoyed the optical illusions that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Here's another, in which you watch a swarm of moving dots. Use the up and down arrow keys to change the background luminance--and be sure to keep track of the rotation. [Thanks, Tom.]

That Video Won't Play

Those of you who were able to view all the videos from "Summer Time Wasters" were happy. But many of you weren't, because some of the videos wouldn't play correctly--or at all. I have a solution, one that will rid you of all your video woes. It's the K-lite Codec Pack. Details are in August's "Hassle-Free PC" column (scroll to "Codec Conundrum").

I have a couple of other K-lite installation tips. During installation, select "decode only" (that should be in the first screen) and make sure to select the Indeo driver to get this obscure but important codec. BTW, the installation removes old, outdated codecs, installs newer ones, and leaves any existing and standard codecs on your PC untouched.

OTOH, Bruce F. suggested downloading the VLC media player, a player he loves because, he says, it comes with "all the codecs for every media format out there (not just video)." You can download a copy from the VideoLAN site.

Dig This: Check out these pictures and the story of a Continental Airlines mishap in which a jet ran into the terminal. I suspect it was really someone from the cleaning crew screwing around in the cockpit.