Maybe it's just me, but I'm not clear on what you're asking. If your machine doesn't have USB slots built into the motherboard, doesn't have the USB option in the BIOS or isn't 95B or so, then you can't have USB support on that machine with that OS. USB add-in cards are not an option. USB support under 95 was a bit flakey at best. A bit more info here As far as ports, there are only so many kinds. USB looks like no other, PS2, serial and LPT are pretty standard, although you may have the old 25 pin serial for use with old hardware. Unless you have an integrated soundcard, what else is there? Ether card? All will be in the BIOS, if actually present on your mobo. For backups, best would be a 2nd hard drive, short of installing a burner (which might be problematic on a minimal system). Also network options (NIC or parallel port connection to another machine) I use 95 almost exclusively - and Internet Explorer almost never (Opera) - my security issues are statistically zero. Of course, AV, HJT! and Spybot - just for peace of mind. If you can't reach the titlebar to double-click to max a window, might consider Fanix Fullscreen - I find it indispensible. Might consider changing the screen resolution, if possible - that might clear things up. Not sure what type of OS upgrade you're proposing - conventional wisdom is to perform a clean install, but that's not a hard & fast rule. Depending, should have the option to reverse - although that's no guarantee. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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I'm glad my advice was of help! Here's an idea for the resizing problem: Are you sure that it isn't the monitor that has to be resized? I have many machines with Windows 95, and their positions on the screen keep changing (from bootup to start screen to the actual OS). Try giving that a go and post back what you find.

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Jboy, thanks. I took down all your info and will see if I can get some guidance from some friend or acquaintance with it. I think I may be in over my head. Somehow as much as I love tinkering with PCs, and know more than the average person, I guess it's still not much. At least as far as inner workings and stuff. For example I guess I don't have the base terminology to make it clear what I was asking... I was asking how to know *if* mine is the type that can support limited USB. Besides the ports and w95 'B' version, I wasn't ruled out yet and I didn't know what else I'd need to have/look for. For example, what my BIOS supports or how to find out. I know nothing about BIOS, or add-on cards, so my level of understanding (and potentially misunderstanding) the principles being discussed was probably not clear. But your advice will be good to have on hand for digging further, and I will definitely check out your links. (I need my windows to be smaller and/or centered; not maximized/bigger; but maybe the program at your link will cover all sizing issues.) Sarahhh, how would I adjust windows via the monitor? That I don't know how to do either! But I have had two monitors on this thing -- with both of them being "peers" with the computer as far as when they were originally built -- and this outsized and/or uncentered window problem has always existed. How do I check if it's the monitor? None of the knobs helped... Thanks as always everyone! :^ )

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With Win95, the best you can hope for would be limited USB support. If your machine fails to meet any of the requirements outlined earlier, even that is beyond your grasp. More simply, if it's not 95B and/or if you don't have any motherboard USB ports, you can't. Fanix Fullscreen (among other things) allows you to grab a window and move it even if you can't see the title bar - although you could use the keyboard shortcut: ALT-space and then M to move a window What sarahhh and I are both suggesting (I believe) is that you change yur screen resolution to something larger - say 800x600 if you're currently running 640x480 - that would cause everything on the desktop to 'get small' This may not be possible if your hardware doesn't support a higher res. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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Good morning! No go yet (but read on for a possible clue...), and this morning I saw that there will be some outsized windows I can’t find a work-around for or use at all. This was the case before and after I tried your suggestions: I changed resolution all the way to 1024 x 768, (and set it to recognize my particular monitor, tho this happened with another type too), but all it does is make the exact same phenomenon happen on a smaller scale. Now I just have a big solid-colored border on the right and bottom, outside the unreachable areas. Alt-space-M also just drags the same phenomenon bigger or smaller. (Having seen that, I assume there's no point in trying the suggested sizing program). Anyway I tried to go to a website this morning and found I couldn't use it at all. On some sites, like this one, scroll bars are reachable on the right and bottom, so that I can still use them, although it's annoying because *no* web page is ever just centered right. On some others, no scroll bars are visible (and dragging doesn't change that), but I can arrow down to read the site. But now, I see that on others, neither of these will help. It's like putting a fixed frame or bracket on a picture. Imagine if you had a web page or program open and all of it was perfectly viewable on your screen. THEN, you took a bracket or frame (with a toolbar and gray borders painted on it), and laid it on top of the window. So that (at least) the right-hand perimeter and sometimes the bottom of the page were chopped off. If you make the window bigger or smaller it makes no difference -- you just have a different *sized* instance of a window with a bracket laid over it so that you can't reach things. On the site in question, all I could do was read the area that opened right in front of my face. No scroll bars in view; couldn't read anything towards the right or the bottom; arrow or page down didn't do anything; alt-space-m and dragging only change the size of the problem. It's my window borders themselves that are laying on top of the pages wrong and chopping things off, just like a frame on a picture would do (and with as many options for viewing what the frame is covering). It's like what's *inside* the 'bracket' needs to get smaller—it doesn’t match with the border size (but also sometimes the border itself is cut off! And all this happens only on *some* programs and web pages). There is some kind of program installed on this computer called “S3 Refresh” or “S3 Color Control.” I wonder if that could have something to do with it, because its tab appears in Control Panel > Display, and in addition to the Settings tab, it also displays screen resolution sizes. It has slots for sizes from 640 x 480 to 1600 x 1200 (although under Settings the max is 1024 x 768). Each slot is set to Optimum, but the choices are listed in hz, like 60 hz and up; and also choices for Adapter Default and a few with (e.g.) 43 hz Interlaced. When I tried changing my Setting to 1024 x 768, first I left all those slots at Optimum, then I tried Adapter Default, and neither helped. Beyond that I have no idea what the other choices mean (and each requires restart....). Does this give any clues? Sorry to go on and on but I want to be sure I convey exactly what this looks like and what is happening! Crossing my fingers that someone will have another thing I can try? Thanks for hanging in there!

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P.S.: This S3 Color Control/Refresh thing is located in C:/windows/system, and this is *all* it says when I click on its little purple Help book icon: "S3 Color Control Help The S3 Color Control program controls in this dialog box allow you to adjust the Hue, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast for YUV video overlays. YUV video overlays are often used when playing MPG files." There is *no* further info, and no controls for it beyond what I described in my last post as appearing in Control Panel > Display. No option to just try turning it off -- I only see an Add/Remove Program option for it in Control Panel. On its Control Panel > Display tab, the only things displayed are those resolution size slots, then a Change Configuration button, which is how you change what's in those slots (e.g. hz, as described previously).

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Ok - I wasn't 'getting' what you were describing. This occurs in all or most windows? Purely spec, but it could be a problem with the common controls. If you have it, might try M$ TweakUI and under 'repair' select - 'repair system files' to see if that helps. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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It only happens with some windows, but not randomly to the *same* programs -- either a given program is always right or always wrong. Like Microsoft programs (e.g. Office) seem to display right (but IE doesn't, if that can even be called a program). Not sure if all MS progs would, and other manufacturer's stuff often doesn't. As far as browser windows, none of those ever open so that all areas are viewable, although *sometimes* the controls to navigate to them are in reach. Maybe there are actually two separate issues involved, because this is how it appears to break down: When it happens with programs, the right hand side and/or bottom of the windows are actually cut off by the edge of the monitor screen. Nothing can be done about it, and dragging the left hand side only enlarges the left hand side, but brings nothing else into view. When it happens with browser windows, the entire 'bracket' around the window is in view; it's the page contained within it that is too big and is cut off around the edges, with nothing being effective and/or reachable to bring those areas into view (scroll, arrow, tab, drag, alt-space-m, etc.). I'll go look at the Tweak site. Maybe if I can't tell if my problem is addressed in its capabilities or not, I'll try emailing them and hope they respond. I've put this thing through a lot over the last few days guessing about how to shape it up, some of it probably unwise, and should be conservative now (but none of that caused *this* problem. It has always existed as far as I know, and I inherited this used machine in 2001 myself). Thanks, hoping Tweak does the trick! :^ )

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TweakUI is a useful application - once and a while, M$ does things right - but it can only do so much. The fixes it offers are things you could do yourself, if you had the knowledge and patience. Email them? Sure... I guess. Sometimes installing new software will overwrite Windows system files with older versions. I'm guessing this has happened to your 'common controls' which determine how windows are displayed. If that's not it - well, no harm - it's still a good app. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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Yeah, I didn't realize when I last posted that Tweak was a M$ program -- forget the part about emailing them! And I see that the program specifically says it never was supported, just a frill. I was thinking it was a paid utility from some other manufacturer. I guess I could hunt down a forum where people talk about Tweak, but will probably just go for it soon. Your speculation about what happened to my 'controls' sounds logical. There will probably be no making real sense of this thing anymore. Just toying with the Control Panel > Settings > color and screen size displays was making it behave very strangely and threateningly. Here's an unrelated question: I found that there are Start item controls in Spybot, so was experimenting with turning some off to ease the pressure on my old 'friend.' Recall that this was an inherited office computer, which had other original users and was on a network at times. Tons of remnants of unused and mysterious old programs remain, and I have taken off what I could figure out. I see that there were still 19 start entries for RunOnce, not pointing to particular programs in the viewable areas of the entry lines but just to places like c:\programs... followed by c:\windows\system... I turned them all off, and I'm still running. I'm not a developer or anything, just word processing, emailing and net browsing really. From what I read on the web, it looks like those kind of entries don't need to be there unless you just Add/Removed or installed something. But mine stayed there after reboots with no changes made... Would you guess that they were probably things I didn't need? (I know there is RunOnce-related spyware, but I'm not looking that far yet... Not all diagnostics run on Win 95 and what minimal I've tried said clear...) Pushing my luck even more (I think you may have replied on a firewall thread of mine before my other computer died): I put sygate's free firewall on this machine for good measure, tho I connect via dial up now. I think it is just never going to play nicely with it. Most freezes and crashes came back up with something about sygate's file allocation size being complained of in my Norton scandisk-type utility. So -- is ZA 4.5 likely to be more universally simple and friendly (I know there are too many problems with 5.x versions right now). Or is there another good, small, free one you'd recommend? Thanks, if you're still there! :^ )

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Well, it is just spec on my part concerning your problem with Windows.. er, windows - but that doesn't sound like 'normal' behaviour. Sure, it doesn't hurt to use msconfig, Spybot or any of the other apps to reduce startup clutter - as long as you don't disable anything important. Also useful is jv16 Power Tools - freeware version available from OldVersion or the standalone RegCleaner Now I use the registry cleaner in Fix-It Utilities, but it's a commercial product - as well, the latest version requires 98 (I think) Don't have a lot of experience with firewalls - they are a must-have if you're on broadband though. ZA, enjoys a good reputation (at least, until v5), but can be a bear to uninstall sometimes. Tiny is also reputed to be good, but perhaps not as 'user friendly' - check with S&V, those folks will be more familiar. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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Thanks for everything, and yep, will post new threads on some of the peripheral stuff for good measure! :^ )

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Hope you get everything setup to your satisfaction. good luck We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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