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The Windows GUI is full of columns (e.g., the Details column in Explorer or the columns in an Excel spreadsheet) that, at times, display only part of their information. Although you can manually resize the columns to fit in all the data, you can quickly resize columns to accommodate the widest cell or list item.
To make the column width fit the contents of the columns, double-click the boundary to the right of the column heading (i.e., where you manually resize the column). This spot is where your cursor turns into a vertical line with an arrow pointing outward on each side.
This resizing technique seems to work in all Windows programs, although not always in the same way. The technique usually resizes the column according to the widest data item, but sometimes it resizes according to the column header. I have tested this technique in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95 only.
—Gilford Grijt
i.grijt@cc.ruu.nl
Watch Out for Unwanted Connections
I have a home office with Windows NT Server 4.0 and NT Workstation 4.0, Service Pack 3 (SP3). I'm connected to my company's main LAN and the Internet via an Ascend Pipeline 25-Px ISDN router with a dial-on-demand connection. On my phone bill recently, I noticed that I was being charged for more phone connections than I thought I made. But the phone company wasn't at fault; my system was. When I checked the dial-in logs of the remote router, I discovered up to 100 connections a day, although I typically went online only about 10 times a day. I discovered several reasons for the extra online connections.
Extra connections occurred when I logged on to the workstation (no reboot, just a simple logon). Before having the router, I used a modem and Remote Access Service (RAS) for Internet access. I never removed the service, so at every logon, the Remote Access Autodial Manager used the default gateway to try to connect to several sites listed in the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\RasAuto. To stop these extra connections, I simply disabled the Remote Access Autodial Manager service.
Extra connections occurred when I used Microsoft Word 97. It stores document templates as Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) filenames, so whenever I opened a document that someone else created at a different location, Word accessed the template on the original server. Office 97 SR1 offers a Registry key to disable the use of UNC names. Although disabling this key works for most paths in Word, it doesn't work for the template path. Instead, I now clear the template path whenever I transfer a document from a remote location.
Extra connections occurred because some pages on one of my public Web sites had links to my test server at home. This problem was easy to fix. I simply removed those links.
Extra connections occurred every time I rebooted the server. NT's Network Monitor revealed that no more packets were going to the router anymore, but the router still went online when I rebooted. This problem remained even after I disconnected the network cable between the server and the router. I discovered the problem had to do with Pipeline 25. To configure Pipeline 25, you use a serial cable and a terminal program. Whenever the server starts, it sends a signal to all ports. For some reason, Pipeline 25 opens a connection on my machine. To stop these extra connections, I now keep the serial cable disconnected. I connect the cable only when I have to configure the router, which rarely happens.
Despite my efforts, I still have a few extra connections. The remaining connections are broadcast packets looking for MYGROUP. They originate from a customer in the same Class-C network. The customer is running a single Primary Domain Controller (PDC) connected to the Internet via an ISDN card. If the customer manually opens an online connection when a browser broadcast occurs (usually every 12 minutes), packets are sent to my server. Although the customer changed several settings on the remote server and set the MasterPeriodicity value to 19 days in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters, the broadcasts continue. I found out that the frequency of this problem increases if both sites are in the same domain and both sites have Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS), Domain Name System (DNS), and Backup Domain Controller (BDC) servers.
If you're using a router with dial-on-demand and you have to pay for the phone bill, you need to make sure you have no unwanted connections. If you do, at least you now know where to start looking to track down their source.
—Peter Hahndorf
pete@optinet.de