I often pest against some files Windows leaves on my computer, especially .gid files. As I hate wasting clusters as much as I get easily annoyed stumbling upon "automatic erasers" with a 25$ registration fee, here's how to write your own in 3 minutes. Okay... I think that Windows98 will do that, but for us Win95 users who are left in the cold, here's an easy way to do it.

1. As del does not (and most probably never will) support recursion, you must first grab a Unix-compatible rm for DOS such as this one which is easy to use and is located on the simtel archive. However, if you're a purist, you can get a "real" rm from GNU here along with other utilities such as cp, ls, and friends.

2. Edit a batch file which spans all your disks and directories while deleting unwanted files using rm's -R and -f options. Here is an example:

@echo off
rem Weekly Windoze 95 PC Maintenance
rem
rem Start by deleting all *.gid files
rem
echo Deleting .gid files...
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v c:\*.gid
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v d:\*.gid
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v f:\*.gid

echo Deleting mscreate.dir files...
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v c:\mscreate.dir
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v d:\mscreate.dir
f:\dosutils\rm -R -f -v f:\mscreate.dir

4. Add the pif to your task scheduler to run it once a week.

Using the atomtime utility described in the freeware area as well as rasdial95 (a command-line dial-up networking interface) and a sleep utility, you can easily set up a job on your scheduler that sets your PC clock once in a week. Simply launch a batch file such as the following.

The sleep is needed as atomtime returns to the command line before it has finished synchronizing the clock. Keep in mind that the autoUpdate parameter is case-sensitive.

F:\dosutils\"RasDial95" "Internet Access" login password
f:\"program files"\atomtime\atomtime autoUpdate
sleep 00:00:15
F:\dosutils\"RasDial95" "Internet Access" /DISCONNECT

Keeping updated bookmarks on your home page

If you would like to have an up-to-date bookmark file (or any other text file, for the matter), you can easily upload it automatically using the bare ftp client that comes with Windows 95 as it supports scripting.

1. Simply create a script named book.txt like this one. bozo is your login and clown is your password:

bozo
clown
cd user_html
put "c:\program files\netscape\users\parallax\bookmark2.htm"

2. Each time you log on the net, launch ftp like this:

ftp -s:book.txt ftp.clown.com

You can also use special tools to launch the ftp client each time you log on the internet, but I prefer to run it once a while when I think about it. Logging on an ftp server each time I connect to the net is useless.

Extra: If you would like to send multiple files easily, you can use the prompt command to prevent mput from asking you a confirmation for each file. Here is an example:

bozo
clown
cd user_html
prompt
mput "c:\program files\netscape\users\parallax\*.*"
 
 

Sending voice messages to your e-mail account

This is not really related to Windows 95. It needs a voice mail program that save voice messages in independent files. If you're not concerned, you can skip this one.

Suppose you're out of town for two weeks and would like to receive your voice mail without spending a few bucks dialing home. Well, if you have access to an e-mail account, you can receive them by e-mail. You'll need rasdial95, a command-line interface to dial-up networking, as well as postie, a command-line mail tool (unix gurus will find it similar to mailx).

Write a batch file similar to this one. It is designed to be used with Rapidcomm voice which saves its voice files in GSM format. It should give you the whole idea. I haven't tried this yet, but it should work in theory.

c:
cd\"Program Files"\"Rapidcomm voice"\inbox
rem -- First, we dial the "internet access" connection (use the name you've given to
rem -- your DUN connectoid)
rem
f:\dosutils\rasdial95 "internet access" login password

rem -- Is there any voice message?
rem
if exist *.gsm goto send
goto end

:send
rem -- If some voice files exist, send them by e-mail and move them to the "archive"
rem -- directory (which *must* exist!)
rem
f:\dosutils\postie -host:mail.server.com -to:receiver@mail.com
                   -s:Your daily voice messages -dir:*.gsm -from:sender@mail.com
move *.gsm archive

:end

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