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222 lines
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HTML
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<title>Installing Microsoft & Linux LG #30</title>
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</HEAD>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#A000A0"
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ALINK="#FF0000">
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">Installing Microsoft & Linux</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:pagey@home.com">Manish P. Pagey</a></H4>
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</center>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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This is a story about my struggles setting up a new laptop computer to
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boot two different operating systems. And how I discovered the extent to
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which Microsoft and IE4 are lacking. Hopefully, someone will learn from this
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experience and think twice before installing IE4 on there machine.
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<P>
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The first operating system that I wanted to install on the machine was
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Linux (a free, UNIX like operating system which can teach Microsoft a
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million or two things about what a stable operating system is supposed
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to be like). I booted the computer using the Linux boot disks, inserted
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the Linux CD-ROM into the CD drive and finished the installation in less
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than thirty minutes. Everything was up and running including the network
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using a PCMCIA network card. Linux comes with a program called LILO
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which allows one to decide which operating system to boot when the
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system is powered up. This was also installed without any problems.
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<P>
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The next task was to install Windows 95 on another partition of the same
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disk. That is where my nightmare began. (Of course, you may ask why I
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wanted to do this in the first place. Because I am stupid, thats why).
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The developers at Microsoft have no regard for other operating systems
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and have been living in their shells for so long that they could not
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imagine having two operating systems on the same computer. In any case,
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after booting from the Windows 95 setup disk, the setup program kept
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insisting on destroying all partitions from the disk before installing
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the "operating system". It gave me only two choices: Let it partition
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the disk again or Exit setup.
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<P>
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My first choice was to exit setup and try to trick it into installing
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Win95 on a DOS partition that was already present. So, I went to the
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"A:>" prompt (LOL) and fired up fdisk. I could see the DOS partition and
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hence I could format the "C:" drive. I was hoping that after I format
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the "C:" drive and then try installing Win95 from "Disk 1" instead of
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the "Setup Disk", everything will work fine. So, I formatted the C:
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drive and started the "setup" program from "Disk 1". Everything seemed
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to work fine till the third disk and once again the setup program
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refused to proceed; this time because of a similar reason which I do not
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recall.
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<P>
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I was kinda stuck at this point because if I let the Win95 setup program
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to repartition the disk, it will gobble up the whole disk and would not
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leave any space for the second operating system. The other option was to
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use the DOS fdisk utility to destroy all partitions on the disk and
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create a new partition for installing Win95 and install Win95 before
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installing Linux. That is the path I took.
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<P>
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So, I destroyed my perfectly working Linux partition and installation
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and created a new partition to install Win95. This time, the setup
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program worked without any problems and installed the Win95 operating
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system on the first partition on the disk. In a few minutes after that I
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had Linux running once again on the second partition and reinstalled
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LILO to choose the operating system during startup.
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<P>
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As before, I had no trouble getting the network up and running on the
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Linux OS. So, I decided to setup the networking on the Win95 side. Guess
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what, the driver that Win95 installed to access the PCMCIA cards was not
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working properly. I had to try different drivers (and reboot the machine
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every time I selected a new driver) and get the correct one by trial and
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error. (I did the obvious things such as look up the documentation for
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the computer and install the driver corresponding to the documentation,
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but that did not work. I had to use a driver that conflicted with the
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documentation in order for Win95 to access the PCMCIA cards correctly.
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On the other hand, the driver that Linux was using was consistent with
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the documentation). Finally, after a long struggle and several million
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reboots, I got Win95 to see my PCMCIA cards. Linux came with the driver
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for the Ethernet card that I was using but Win95 had to use the floppy
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disk provided by the manufacturer (and they say that Win95 supports more
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hardware).
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<P>
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I have been exposed to all this hype about IE4.0 and such. So, I decided
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that instead of using the good old Netscape Communicator, I will give
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IE4.0 a test drive. (Once again, you may ask why I would do such a
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stupid thing. Now that I have gone through this torture that I am
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describing, I must say that I will never attempt to give a Microsoft
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product a test drive just because Microsoft says its good. What was I
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thinking ?). I have a fast connection to the Internet and hence, the
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obvious way to install IE4.0 was to download it from the Microsoft home
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page. You would love what happened next.
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<P>
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My local network is behind a firewall. In order to access the Internet,
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we need to use SOCKS proxy service provided by the local gateway
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machine. This is not something that is very uncommon in the present
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corporate networks (in fact, this might even be the most common
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configuration). Coming back to my attempt at installing IE4.0, I clicked
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on "The Internet" icon sitting on the desktop and went through the
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process of setting up the network properties for the machine. After all
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the setup was done, I was hoping for it to bring up a browser window for
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me. But I realized that the first time you click on this program, it
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only performs the setup. You have to run it again to start the browser.
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I am not sure why it was set up this way, but I will ignore this for the
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time being as there are more important things for me to complain about.
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After bringing up this ancient version of Internet Explorer, I wanted to
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setup the address of the proxy server so that I could access the
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Internet and go to Microsoft's home page. Aha !! The Internet Explorer
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that was packaged with my version of Win95 does not understand proxies.
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This meant that sitting there I had no way to access the Internet
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through my proxy server. I knew that Netscape could do this. So the only
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way to get IE4.0 on my machine was to install Netscape first !!!!! Even
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getting Netscape was not easy from within Win95. I had to reboot the
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machine into Linux. Since Linux came with client programs to access
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Socks proxy servers, I could get to the Netscape FTP site and download
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the Communicator for Win95. I rebooted the machine into Win95 and
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installed Netscape without any problem. I set the preferences for
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Netscape so that it knew about my proxy server and everything was
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running fine as far as accessing the Internet is concerned.
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<P>
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I used Netscape to download the "ie4setup" file from the Microsoft home
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page and fired it up. I will give you one guess to tell me if it worked.
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You are right !!! It did not even come close to working. The ie4setup
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file does nothing more than connecting to another server and downloading
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a bunch of files that are required to install IE4.0. Since I am behind a
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firewall, it could not find the server. It would be fine if it returned
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back in a few seconds and told me that it could not find the server. But
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that would be the right thing to do and Microsoft just cannot do any
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such thing. Instead, the ie4setup program made me glare at a rotating
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globe for fifteen minutes before giving up the search for the server.
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After not finding the server, the programmer had half a brain cell to
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ask the user for the address of a proxy server. However, this feature of
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the setup program does not support SOCKS proxy (I tried putting the
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address of my proxy server but it did not work). Thanks to the people at
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NEC not all was lost yet.
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<P>
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I remembered reading about the program SocksCap32 which allows Win95
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programs to access the Internet though a SOCKS proxy server. So I fired
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up Netscape again and downloaded/installed SocksCap32. After starting
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ie4setup through SocksCap32, it could access the servers and started
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downloading the rest of the files that are necessary to install IE4.0.
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Just before starting to download these files, it gave me an option of
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either saving these files on disk or directly installing IE4.0. I had
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little patience left at this time, so I chose the latter. The ie4setup
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downloaded all the files correctly and started the installation process.
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<P>
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The installation process continued correctly until about 75% of
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installation was complete. At this point, I had to leave the computer
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and go away for several hours. I was hoping that when I come back, this
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installation will be over. (I am sure you are laughing at me right now).
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<P>
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I came back after about three hours and the installation process had
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reached 78% !!!!!!! I waited for a few minutes to see if it was doing
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anything. There was no disk activity and hence I concluded that the
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program had crashed or hung up. So I clicked on the "Cancel" button to
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stop the installation. It came up with a window which said that the
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"cancellation" process will take several minutes and that I should not
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reboot the machine because that might leave the machine in an
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inconsistent state (whatever that means). So I waited for it to finish
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the job. There was no disk activity for half an hour which is also when
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my patience ran out. I rebooted the machine. When it came up in Win95,
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it had installed IE4.0 but not many of its components. I was not sure
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what was going on but soon realized that since the ie4setup was run
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under SocksCap32, it must have started the rest of the setup under
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SocksCap32 too. And, knowing Microsoft, it may not have been designed to
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work under the SocksCap32 libraries.
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<P>
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This meant that I should have stored the files downloaded by ie4setup on
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the disk and started the setup without using SocksCap32. So, I fired up
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ie4setup through SocksCap32 once again and downloaded all the files to
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my disk. After that, I started the setup program from these downloaded
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files and IE4.0 was installed on the machine without any more problems
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in just a few minutes. Whew.
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<P>
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Great. Now that I have IE4.0 and Outlook Express 98 installed on my
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machine, I should start using them. I started up IE4.0 and set it up to
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use the proxy server. It worked just fine and I could access the
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Internet. So far so good. Now, I needed to setup my mail account. So, I
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clicked on the "Mail" button which started up Outlook Express. It asked
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me for my email address, mail server name etc. in order to setup the
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mail account. After that, I tried to check for new mail. And nothing. It
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brought up a window in which it displayed a message that it was trying
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to connect to my mail server but stopped in a minute with an error
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saying that the connection to the server had failed !! My POP3 mail
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server is outside the local network. Which means that one has to get to
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it through the SOCKS server. Netscape has no problem doing this but at
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this point, I have not found any way to setup Outlook Express to do
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this. And this is when I decided to give up completely on IE4.0/Outlook
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Express/Win95. I am back to using good old reliable Netscape.
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<P>
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I am not sure if anyone in the Linux community will benefit from this but I am
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sure some of the people "on the other side" can learn something from it.
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<P>
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--Pagey
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Manish P. Pagey <BR>
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Published in Issue 30 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 1998</H5></center>
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