Usenet and newsgroups in a nutshell. Read all about it!

The best way to help you grasp the concept of newsgroups is probably to compare them to something which you're more familiar with. So, just to make sure we're on the same page, picture an all singing, all dancing state of the art forum. Got that? Now mentally remove all the graphics, the pretty emoticons, avatars, signature graphics, the whole shebang really. Now take away the community spirit, the personal touch and the sense of organisation and what you're left with is pretty much the essence of a newsgroup.

They've been around since the beginning of time (at least in internet terms), silently lurking in the background with all the pizzazz of a day out in Scunthorpe - the fact that they exist at all often escapes people's notice until they've been using the net for quite some time. As you can tell I'm not the world's biggest fan of newsgroups, but even I have to admit they do still have a lot to offer. What they do, they do well. They're functional, nothing more. You can get in, get what you want quickly and effortlessly and get out again all in the blink of a weary net surfer's eye, which makes them perfect for leeches and lurkers. Personally I happen to believe that there should be more to online communities than quickie downloads, but then everyone's entitled to their own opinion aren't they.

If it helps to put things in perspective, you can think of newsgroups as public notice boards where anyone and everyone can come along, read what has already been written in addition to writing their own messages which can then be pinned up alongside all the other notes. Each notice board contains messages concerning one or a handful of very specific topics that can be as diverse as the people who use them. The conglomeration of all the individual newsgroups, which literally number tens of thousands, comprise what is known as 'Usenet'.

Luckily for us, each individual newsgroup isn't left to swim alone in the sea of information that is the net - they are grouped together by their general theme and named accordingly to make them easier to locate. Take the 'rec.toys.lego' newsgroup for example. The prefix 'rec' places the group squarely in the recreation category. As we move from left to right we are given more specific hierarchical information which helps us to get a feel for what the group is all about. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the people participating in this newsgroup will be especially interested, or even dangerously obsessed with that timeless kid's past time, building things out of plastic interconnecting bricks.

Most newsgroup prefixes are fairly self explanatory, which is handy because it means that you don't need to consult a newsgroup manual to work out what sort of theme any particular group is concerned with. Newsgroups prefixed with 'alt' for instance, are designated as alternative discussion arenas, whereas the prefix 'news' indicates that a group is specifically tailored to the discussion of the Usenet system itself.

One of the largest categorical divisions, however, is marked with the prefix 'binaries'. You can expect the subscribers of any newsgroup with such a prefix to be most interested in downloading encoded text files, which once decoded can be used in a myriad of different ways. These transformed text files can range from pictures and movies to music and software. The ability to effortlessly harvest this seemingly boundless content represents one of newsgroup's greatest appeals.

Amongst the decipherable text messages you will receive via your newsgroup reader you will find segments of larger files encoded as what appear to be gibberish ascii characters. These can be split up to enable them to be transferred over the net via limited capacity newsgroup servers - this is why they are considered an especially suitable medium for the distribution for spanned, compressed archives.

So how do you reap the benefits of these miraculous resources? First of all you're going to need what's known as a newsgroup reader - Forte Agent available from www.forteinc.com is a particularly good specimen. Alternatively, if you're happy to lay out the welcome mat for malware and let it run riot on your system you can use Outlook Express, which more than likely you will already have installed. If this is the case, all you have to do to get started is visit the menu bar at the top of your screen, select the 'tools' option and click on 'accounts'. From within the ensuing dialog box prod the 'add' button and select 'news' from the expanding options menu.

Outlook Express being the inquisitive creature that it is will now ask you which news (or NNTP) server you would like to use to connect to Usenet. Ideally you would want to use the one provided by your ISP - since this is included in the monthly price you're paying for internet access, at least in theory it should be superior to the free ones available elsewhere. The name of your ISP's news server is nearly always the name of your ISP prefixed with the word 'news' or 'nntp' separated by a dot. For instance, if your ISP is Freeserve, the server name you need to enter into Outlook Express would be 'news.freeserve.net' - if in doubt check the FAQs on your ISP's home page.

My tightwad ISP doesn't provide an NNTP server, so now what? You might want to consider subscribing to an independent news server. Last time I checked, eight-ish dollars a month was the average you could expect to pay for such a service. If protecting your anonymity whilst posting messages to newsgroups is of concern to you, you might like to look into the unmonitored options these companies offer.

Otherwise shop around for a more advanced newsgroup reader - one equipped with built-in privacy protection features. Keep an eye open for the keyword 'proxy' as you explore your newsgroup reader's help files and you won't go far wrong. That said, many proxies aren't really anonymous at all despite their claims to be. To make sure you know which category yours falls into before using it you can perform an anonymity status check using the proxy tools cited in my anonymity tutorial.

A spot of Googling will soon reveal that a minuscule number of public news servers are provided free of charge, whilst the majority have to be paid for. Since almost anything freely available online is going to be highly sought after, you can expect the free servers to be oversubscribed and infuriatingly slow. Nonetheless, if you're prepared to accept this drawback and embrace a freebie server, I would advise you to visit dmoz's list of free NNTP news servers to see what is on offer.

So you've decided which news server to use, now what? You will be prompted to type in the name and email address you would like to be displayed alongside your posts, if you intend to make any. It is probably wise to use a fake name and/or email address here to maintain your anonymity and prevent your inbox from filling up with the spam of unscrupulous newsgroup email address harvesters. Alternatively, you may want to consider using a 'spam only' email address so that people can still get in touch with you if necessary. Whatever you decide, enter this information now and click 'OK' to progress to the next stage.

With these precursors out of the way, Outlook will ask you if you would like to download a list of all the newsgroups available for subscription. Select 'yes' and wait a moment or two while the information is processed. Decisions, decisions, which ones to choose? Tough isn't it? One way of selecting a newsgroup you wish to join is to scan through the names of all the groups sequentially until you find an interesting sounding one, but this is likely to take you all day. A better way is to narrow down the list using keywords, just as you would when using a search engine to filter out irrelevant web sites.

If you're in the fortunate position of already knowing the names of the newsgroups you would like to subscribe to you can tap in a partial address; if they are supported by your newsgroup server, Outlook Express will automatically fill in the remaining nodes of the address for you. Yet if your ISP is especially over zealous with regard to censorship, don't be surprised if no matches are found at all. If, for legal reasons, the newsgroups you wish to join aren't supported by your ISP you will have to go in search of an uncensored third party server.

Once you've found a selection of groups you wish to participate in, simply click on each one while holding down the control key and poke the 'subscribe' button to add them to your short list. If you glance in the direction of your inbox and then cast your eyes downwards slightly you will see that your newsgroup server has been appended to the bottom of the list of folders, and underneath that is a list of the newsgroups you are currently subscribed to. If you select one of these and click on the 'synchronise' button, a pre-designated number of message headers will be downloaded and placed in the area where the body of your emails usually appear. Note that it is only the headers you are downloading at this stage, not the contents of the messages or the encoded 'attachments'. To read one of these messages simply click on the header and wait for the message body to download.

Having lurked in one of your chosen groups for a while you will get a feel for the sort of subjects considered to be 'on-topic'. When you're ready to contribute to the discussions or share a file or two with the other subscribers all you have to do is click on the 'new post' button, type in a subject title, the body of your message and attach any files you want to upload using the 'attach' button.

Surprisingly enough, the final stage involves hitting the 'send' button. If you wish to 'cross-post' - post to multiple newsgroups simultaneously that is - enter the names of all the newsgroups you wish to contribute to into the newsgroup field - separated with commas - and press 'send' in the usual manner.

But enough chat, you want to download the latest digital delicacies, right? Well to do this you are going to have to get to grips with the encoded gibberish text files we spoke of earlier. These aren't really attachments in the usual sense of the word, but since visualising them as such will likely aid your understanding of the process I won't split hairs.

If a message is accompanied with an attachment, a paperclip icon will appear adjacent to the message subject line along with the size in kilobytes of the attached file. Attachments are actually binary files that have been encoded using the UUENCODE format, which to the naked eye looks like scrambled text. This is because to use these attachments as they were intended to be used they first have to be decoded and combined (if they are spanned across multiple posts).

To save an attachment contained within a single post simply select 'save as' from the 'file' menu and choose a place to store it. On the other hand, if the file you want to keep is a multi part attachment you will have to select all the messages the file is spanned across using the left mouse button and control key and select 'combine and decode' from the 'message' menu. Whenever you do this you will be asked to arrange the files in sequential order using the up and down arrows. Complete this task and all that remains to be done is to 'OK' the operation and choose a place to store the resultant decoded file.

Other operations you may wish to perform include replying to a post while quoting the author, and contacting the author privately via email. To perform the former, click on the header of the message you want to reply to, press the right mouse button and click on the 'reply to group' button - a new, pre-formatted message window will surface complete with a quoted text appendage to inform other subscribers what it is you are referring to. To execute the latter task, right-click on the message posted by the person you want to contact, press the right mouse button and select 'reply to sender'.

That just about covers the basics of using a news reader to browse the Usenet archives. Congratulations - that's another new skill you've added to your inventory. Some people hate installing extra software that must be regularly maintained and upgraded unless it is absolutely essential to do so. If you're especially opposed to the idea of using a software client to visit your favourite newsgroups, you'll be delighted to know that you can achieve the same ends by visiting a web based Usenet service instead. News reader or web site? The choice is yours.

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I want to backup one of my original CDs. How can I tell whether or not it has been copyright protected?

You can sometimes guess what method of protection has been implemented manually by looking at the contents or the physical structure of a CD, but a much more accurate way would be to use ClonyXXL. This completely free utility will automatically detect the presence of a multitude of different protection systems and report its findings in an easy to understand format. Once you have this vital information at your fingertips, you can enter it into Clone CD to produce a perfect backup.

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Web media divining - tools of the trade

The advent of the widespread availability of fast internet connections, coupled with an abundance of cheap web space has allowed artists, musicians, movie directors and software programmers to distribute their respective works online rather than via more traditional hard-copy mediums. To take full advantage of all the web has to offer it is necessary to seek out and get to grips with a number of essential tools. Amongst these are decompression programs, a download manager, an FTP client and a firewall.

In the realm of computing you are never short of software options; there are literally thousands of equivalent programs available in every category you could possibly imagine, and they're all a mere click of the mouse away. What I've attempted to do here is to narrow down this vast range of options into a more manageable selection. The ones I've chosen are considered the staple diet of the digerati, but they're not everyone's cup of char. If you find that you don't agree with my choices you don't have to stick with them, just pop along to your favourite shareware site, find the search box, tap in a few relevant keywords and take your pick. The world's your lobster... or something.

Getting X from A to B

The first item on the check list is known as a download manager. These go synonymously with internet foraging and are vital in that they allow you to resume broken downloads of bulky files and can handle large numbers of files unsupervised. Assuming you're not completely new to the internet you've probably become accustomed to downloading files using the built-in download manager (if you can call it that) of your internet browser. This is fine for small, single file downloads, but is about as much use as an inflatable dart board for transferring anything else. As an example, imagine trying to download a series of weekly, or even daily, podcasts. You would begin by clicking on the first file (hands slap foreheads across the globe in astonishment!), your browser would then open a dialog box to allow you to choose a suitable location to store your downloaded file and then it would begin transferring.

If this process is interrupted due to a failed connection you would have to begin downloading the file again from the first byte - unfortunately internet browsers have very short memories so can't remember what they were doing just a few seconds ago! Some servers are so flaky you could find yourself caught up in an aeonian start-error-restart loop. Not much fun to put it lightly!

Once the first file has downloaded successfully you would then have to click on the next one and wait for that to begin transferring and so on and so forth for each of the remaining files. I don't think you need me to tell you how infuriatingly slow this whole task can be. This is where download managers step into the breach to save you from slipping into a download induced state of insanity. What these do is allow you to queue a series of files and transfer them sequentially, freeing you from your former computer baby-sitting purgatory to do something more interesting, safe in the knowledge that when you return, your computer will still be happily chugging away without the need for any further intervention from you.

Instead of getting caught up in a mind-numbing click-wait-click loop you can set your download manager to transfer a specific number of files simultaneously (two is a sensible number if you have a slow connection). Once the first file has safely landed in your downloads directory, the next file in the queue will begin transferring automatically until the entire list has been purged. Best of all though, if the connection with the server you are downloading from is broken you won't have to begin again from square one. Your download manager will simply reconnect, erase the last few bytes which have been downloaded (because they may have become corrupt) and will resume the transfer without even breaking into a sweat.

As you know, dial-up modem connections are very fickle things and can spontaneously be broken for a multitude of different reasons. Not to worry though, this problem has also been anticipated and can be counteracted with the help of your download manager's auto reconnect system. Assuming you have informed your download manager which dial-up account you wish to reconnect to should your connection be lost, it will automatically attempt to dial into the service in the event of any problems. But that's not all they can do. When your download task is complete, providing you have ticked the relevant boxes, your computer will automatically disconnect from the internet and shutdown - now that's what I call hands-free computing!

For a long time, amongst people in the know, Gozilla and Getright were ubiquitously assumed to be the cream of the crop, but now the download manager market is no longer a two horse race. Hot on their heels, Flashget has overnight managed to claw back a substantial proportion of the user base shared by Getright and Gozilla. While Flashget takes all the usual duties of a download manager in its stride, where it really starts to break down the boundaries is in the speed department. Whereas most download managers will open a single connection to a file and keep on plugging away at it until it is complete regardless of the server's transfer rate, Flashget will open multiple connections to various servers allowing a single file to be downloaded much quicker. These multiple connections, known as 'jets' in Flashget Land, are assigned with a particular portion of a file to download. Jet 1 for example, could be downloading the first third of a file while jet 2 downloads the second third and jet 3 downloads the final third.

Flashget attempts to locate the fastest servers, known as mirrors, where the files are stored and will subsequently connect to a selection of them to maximise the bandwidth utilisation of your connection. When all the segments have been transferred they are automatically glued back together to form the whole file. In fact, Flashget is so good at its job that using it leads paradoxically to a situation where trying to surf the web while simultaneously downloading feels like treading treacle, but then it would be ridiculous to complain that the transfer speeds are too fast! Incidentally, your download speeds can be restricted so as to prevent Flashget from interfering with your surfing habits. I'm sure the circularity of this compromise is obvious by now. Nonetheless, the option is always there if you want it.

Another area where Flashget makes new ground is its file tracking logs. These are so comprehensive you are always kept informed of what is happening as it happens. If a particular file is causing problems, by taking a swift glance at the server logs you can diagnose the error instantly and take remedial action. This is especially useful if you have left your computer downloading while you get on with something else or go out for the night. If you were using a lesser download manager you would be left completely in the dark as to where the problem lies, but with Flashget the logs are always available for viewing after the event.

Almost unique to Flashget is the ability to download all the files linked from a specific web page with a few measly clicks of the mouse. Subsequent to installing Flashget a new context sensitive item is added to your right click menu. This 'download all by Flashget' option does exactly what it says on the tin. When selected, a menu pops up in front of the web page you are currently browsing allowing you to deselect the files you don't want to download. These will include images which make up the design of the page, amongst other nonessential elements. In a similar vein, where Flashget really comes into its own is when transferring files from web space accounts that have been opened for the sole purpose of hosting downloads. Under these circumstances these will be the only files stored in this location so there is no need to separate the wheat from the chaff, making Flashget's incredibly efficient 'download all' option an even more impressive time saver!

Like Getright and Gozilla, Flashget has its own FTP client built-in to the program. The difference, however, lies in the intuitive nature of Flashget's FTP browser interface which makes navigating FTP sites a breeze. For instance, if you are browsing through several FTP sites consecutively Flashget keeps a record of where you've been so that you can return to these sites with a single click. This hierarchical treelike structure is implemented throughout the client so that you can always see whereabouts in the FTP site you are currently situated. It's a simple arrangement, yet one which makes all the difference. Moreover, Flashget's reconnect system is the most reliable I've used to date. Nearly all modern download managers support this function, nevertheless, many of them tend to crash if asked to reconnect to the internet more than a handful of times. Luckily for us, Flashget's redial feature works time after time. Ultimately, the one and only thing to let the side down is the spyware which automatically plants itself into your system when you first install Flashget. Fortunately this can be swept clear using a spyware removal utility such as Ad-Aware (see the anonymity tutorial for further info).

So there's my top download manager tip. Whether you choose to use it is up to you of course. Other people will tell you that Flashget is awful and will stick to their guns no matter what. Because you will hear so many contradictory predilections, it is advisable to try all of these programs and then choose the one that suits you best, as using lots of them concurrently is likely to be a source of conflict. If none of these programs appeal, consider trying Forty Software's Download Wonder or Download Accelerator Plus from Speedbit to investigate some of the alternatives.

Alternative pathways

Next in the lineup is the humble FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. An FTP client is used to gain access to remote computers known as FTP sites - another excellent source of freeware, graphics, movies, music, you name it! You can think of these as segregated chunks of space on the other people's hard drives which have been designated as a kind of 'share zone'. If you want to keep things simple you can use your download manager's built-in FTP browser to see what's on offer. These will allow you to download files from FTP sites, but not return the favour - that is upload files. For this task you need a fully functional, standalone FTP client.

All the ins and outs of FTP clients will be explained in much greater detail in a later tutorial so I won't delve any deeper into the topic here. For now it will suffice to say that an FTP client is an invaluable addition to your software arsenal so go and find one now even if you don't plan to use it immediately. In my humble opinion the best FTP client available is Bullet Proof FTP - it's reliable, intuitive and looks good to boot.

The decompression chamber

Thirdly, several decompression tools will be necessary to 'unzip' your archive files. Two of the best and most widely used of these are Winzip and Winace.

Winzip deals almost exclusively with files that have a zip extension. It can handle many other obscure formats, though the majority of these you are very unlikely to ever encounter during your net traversals. Winace on the other hand is capable of decompressing ace, rar and zip files in addition to all the other common compression formats.

Winrar is another indispensable archiving tool every file seeker should equip him or herself with. Although Winace can handle rar archives as well as its own homegrown format, it cannot create new rar archives; for this task you will need Winrar. Apart from this fairly obvious impasse, Winrar is much better at handling rar archives as you would expect seeing as this is precisely what the program was designed for.

It isn't absolutely imperative to install all three of these programs - you could get by with Winrar alone for example, however, each program has its own strengths and weaknesses and to get the best of both worlds (well three worlds actually) it makes sense to use different programs for different tasks. As you would expect, Winzip's most impressive party trick is opening, extracting and creating zip archives so if you are planning to take advantage of all three programs you should associate zip files with Winzip exclusively. The same goes for Winace and Winrar, so associate ace files with Winace and rar files with Winrar. You will be guided through this very simple process by fool-proof wizards following the installation of each program so don't worry about locating the relevant options yourself.

You may be wondering at this stage why three different programs are necessary in the first place. Well this is due to the fact that there is no single, standard format for compressing computer files; some people swear by rar, while others favour zip - you haven't a snowball's chance in hell of getting everyone to agree on a de facto standard, and so to keep our options open we must equip ourselves with as many programs as it takes to process each kind of file.

All three of the most popular compression formats can be spanned across a designated number of archives. This used to be common practice when it was impossible to shoehorn complete archives onto individual, removable media such as floppy disks, or freebie web space accounts. Nowadays this feature is less useful seeing as DVD writer ownership is rapidly becoming the norm. Nevertheless, for historical purposes if nothing else, I'll explain how the various data chunks comprising a spanned archive can be glued back together and decompressed below.

Baffled by data squishing and de-squishing be you not young Jedi. Read on and the compression pool will become much less murky as we go along. You now have the necessary kit in your itinerary so that's a good start.

The finer details

I take it you've downloaded one of these mysterious 'zip' file creatures and are wondering what on earth do you do with it now. Well first you need to understand a little bit about compression. You can think of a zip file, for instance, as an empty beer can (stay with me on this one, all will become clear). While the can is intact you can store the full capacity of liquid in it, however, it takes up a lot of space and is awkward to carry around (it's a king-size specimen, OK?). Now if you put on your size twelve Doc Martins and crush it under your foot, you can no longer store the same amount of liquid in it, yet it is much smaller and easier to carry around. When you want to pour the liquid back into it again, the can is stretched back to its former shape (I'm well aware that you're likely to shred your hands into a bloody pulp in the attempt, but you get the gist I'm sure).

This, in essence is what a compressed archive does. Zip files can consist of a cornucopia of file formats numbering anywhere between one and thousands. If these files were not all held together in a compressed format you would have to click on each one individually in order to download them - this is inconvenient and time consuming to say the least! Also, because the files would be in their expanded, ready to use state they would inevitably take much longer to download. This is where Winzip, Winrar and Winace come in very handy:

If a file has a zip extension I would normally advise using Winzip to extract it since this is the task the program was primarily designed for, but this is far from convenient when you have a large set of files to decompress sequentially. This is why I'd recommend using Winrar to extract the whole shebang simultaneously instead. To get started, open the folder containing the files you have just downloaded, drag a box around all the zip files (using the control key if you need to single out particular files), and then right-click one of them. Select 'extract here' from the context menu and wait while all the files are decompressed.

If when you installed Winrar you didn't agree to have the 'extract here' et al commands added to your context menu, you can achieve the same goal by opening Winrar and browsing for the files that way instead. Once you've located them, drag a box around the whole set and click on the 'extract' button, choose a place to put them and click 'OK'. It is best to choose a separate folder to store the files contained in each archive set otherwise you will soon find yourself swimming in a chaotic sea of orphan files, not knowing which ones belong to which program (or whatever you happen to have downloaded).

Quite often zip archives contain identically named .diz (short for description) text files designed to be read by FTP server software to establish the contents of compressed archives - the information harvested is used to create easily searchable catalogues. These files are far less useful to the end user at this stage, so if prompted to overwrite them click 'yes' to proceed (if your archives are part of a set they will likely be duplicates in any case).

Spanned archives

To complicate matters these can take any one of the following forms...

1. An ace file followed by a series of c?? files.

2. A rar file followed by a series of r?? files.

3. A series of files with sequentially numbered extensions without an initial ace or rar file i.e. .001 followed by .002, .003 and so on.

4. A rar file followed by a series of sequentially numbered files as in the case above.

5. A series of files all with the identical extension, rar. In this case it is the body of the filename which differentiates the files in the set. For example, the first file will be labelled volname.part001.rar, the second file will be labelled volname.part002.rar and so on.

The question marks in the first two file formats represent a series of sequentially ascending numbers, which form a mutually dependent set of files. C?? files are associated with ace archives, whereas 0?? and r?? files are associated with rar archives. These files cannot be decompressed with Winzip so you can close that down for the time being.

If after unzipping, what you are presented with is an ace file followed by a series of c?? files you will need to use Winace to extract them. On the other hand, if you are faced with scenario 2, 3, 4 or 5 from the list above you are best advised to use Winrar to extract them. Although, in theory, Winace can handle both ace and rar formats, sometimes it reports pseudo CRC errors when processing the latter file type. Very often these CRC errors are actually Winace errors rather than real errors within your archive set and are due to a mishandling of the compression format.

Scenario 5 represents Winrar's latest default volume naming scheme (as of version 3.xx). Archives compressed using versions of Winrar prior to 2.9 will take the format presented in scenarios 1 - 4. This isn't to say that you have to worry about keeping an old version of Winrar handy for processing older archives, as the latest build is capable of decompressing past and present formats.

Somehow I've managed to make all this sound much more complicated than it really is, but trust me, there's no need to panic. After opening a couple of archives you will be able to recognise and extract these two different file formats as though you're flying on autopilot. All you have to keep in mind is to use Winace for opening ace files and Winrar for opening rar, r01 or 001 files - note that if there is no rar file you will have to open either the 001 or r01 file instead. These function in exactly the same way as any other rar archive, minus the initial double-clickable rar file.

Unless you have specifically associated 001 and r01 files with Winrar they will not open automatically, in which case you will have to open the program first, browse for the file and double-click on it yourself. You may even want to modify your file association settings to allow you to simply double-click on these files to open them in future. The procedure goes a lot like this: browse for the file you want to associate with Winrar and right-click on it. Now choose 'open with' and select Winrar from the list in the ensuing dialog box, tick the "always use the selected program to open this kind of file" check box and click 'OK'. The icon representing your newly associated file will change to the default one used by rar archives and you will then be able to double-click it to delve inside. Even I'm not sure if any of that makes sense anymore, but we'll carry on regardless. I'm doing my best, honestly!

The initial rar, 001 or ace file actually represents the first file of a compressed, spanned archive. You have probably already noticed that double-clicking on a c??, r?? or a 0?? file will achieve absolutely nothing unless you have previously modified your file association settings. This is because they are not designed to be opened individually (with the exception of 001 files). Instead they will automatically be processed when you double-click on the rar or ace file.

Similarly, when you choose to extract an ace or a rar archive, all the dependent files will be extracted in one go without any further intervention from you. Whenever you do this, depending on the way in which your file associations have been configured, either Winace or Winrar will spring into action and open the archive set in a new window. All you have to do now is choose 'extract' from the menu and select a folder to store the files in, remembering to tick the 'extract with full path' option to ensure that the files end up in the correct folders.

If when you decompress these files you encounter CRC errors it means that one or more of the files have become corrupt during the transfer process. This is usually because they have been transferred too slowly, because they have been resumed too many times or because you are downloading too many files at once and this is causing bytes to be lost or to be incorrectly allocated. It is also possible, however, that the way in which you downloaded them had absolutely nothing to do with the corruption - the files could have been damaged during the initial upload stage instead, in which case there isn't a great deal you can do about it.

If your files are corrupt they will need to be either repaired or downloaded again. You can attempt to repair a corrupt archive using the built-in repair tools of Winrar or Winace (click on 'archive' and then 'repair'), but be warned, the majority of damaged archives are beyond help and will need to be re-downloaded instead. If on your second download attempt the files still don't work it is likely that they were damaged to begin with, in which case you are best advised to delete them and start afresh downloading from an alternative location.

Digital safety nets

Finally you will need a firewall to protect yourself from malicious net intruders. Having your computer hacked into and trashed by a bored, spotty thirteen year old living on the other side of the world can be a tad frustrating - especially if you discover after the event that it is easily avoided. You don't have to lurk in undesirable areas of the web to fall prey to such attacks. It could happen while you're emailing your granny, searching for a job or chatting to a friend using Yahoo messenger.

Inevitably the more time you spend online, the greater is the likelihood of you becoming a target. Well, 'target' is perhaps too strong a word. If someone hacks into your computer it's unlikely that their motivation stems from a personal vendetta. More likely they're just scanning a range of online computers to see whose 'door' has been left wide open to intruders. If you don't install an efficient firewall this is tantamount to leaving a welcome mat on your porch as an open invitation to whatever malevolent forces may be skulking in the vicinity. To discover more about firewalls try searching my blog for the key phrase 'Zone Alarm'.

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How can I download files from servers that make referrer checks before permitting access?

Whenever you initiate a download using Flashget you are given the option to enter a referrer URL into the properties menu associated with the file. The space where you enter this information is located directly below the file location URL box. If you enter the URL here, you can trick the server into thinking that you are downloading the file directly from the web page where you found the link.

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My game backup CD image is 700mb in size, but when burnt to a CD it only occupies 400mb. Where did the extra 300mb go?

When there is a very large discrepancy between the initial image size and the final size of your burnt CD, it is usually because the image file also contains the game's audio sound track. Because the space occupied by audio tracks isn't represented in the same way as ordinary computer data it appears as though there is much less data on the final CD than there really is.

To witness this effect with your own eyes, try inserting an audio CD into your CD drive and see if you can find out how much space is being utilised by the tracks using the properties menu.

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