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Is There A Faster Way to Download Images
on AOL?
Written by: Dan
Daily
Hi Gang!
***An email from a webmaster sent to me;
This tip was sent in by a member.. lol and before I'd do something like this,
I asked Dan how safe this was.. and had he heard of it.....
* A little download help tip!!!!!!!!!
From her original email:
Passing along a tip that was given by an AOL
tech to a member of another list I am on. I did it, it works... and so far the feedback has been very positive.
Download times fix.
<< Go into your START>Find>Files&Folders and type in MAIN.IND
where it says NAMED. Make sure you're in C drive when you do this and OFFLINE
as well. When the search begins and it finally stops, you should have
just one file showing named MAIN.IND. Now don't be afraid, but
highlight the file and hit your Delete key on the keyboard and make sure it is gone.
Sign
back onto AOL and VOILA! Downloading images should go much faster for
you.
Is this a good idea Dan?
.
This is a good question, I was about to
do an article on it.
According to the email this was passed on by an
AOL tech? First of all, I'm sure there are techs at AOL that are really are good
at what they do: That said; I've never met one. I've never met anyone who has met one.
I think they should really worry about AOL and not deleting Windows files,
or files the programmers thought enough about to include in AOL.
These techs can't even get AOL right. I like that, now they decide you
don't really need control files? I
think not. I find this claim of authorship, to be suspicious at best.
The first thing to realize; there is no such thing as a quick fix. If this
claim, and the many hundreds of other "tips," were in fact legitimate.
This
file would not even exist in the first place.
"Speeding" up your Internet connection is big business. Many programs
that "do" this, are available commercially. Some actually work to a certain
extent. But there is always a trade off. As it is, AOL with IE5 already
has
the fastest download speeds on the Internet. If there was an easy fix to
make it even faster, I guarantee, Microsoft or AOL would have already incorporated
it in their software.
As far as the issue of downloading images faster is concerned; I, and AOL,
for that matter, recommend un-checking the compressed images box in
"My AOL/preferences/www/web graphics. Art files are the "compressed" images, they are
also the smallest image files available as far as server space goes. And, they also take by far, the longest
to load. They are used to save server space. This option dates all the way
back when AOL was being used on 486 computers, and video boards had
all of 256k of ram.
In today's computers, the video board does most
of the image building for your screen. By using compressed graphics in a
fast computer, you are telling the processor to process the graphic.
Your
video board is basically out of the picture. This will actually slow down
a newer computer. If the processor has to "uncompress" the graphics, the
video board is taking a free ride. This can have serious effects on load
speed. New computers are designed to share the load. We won't
even get into the fact that AOL is the only entity out there that even
supports ART files.
Now, To Your Question;
This is not a fix for faster download speeds. What the main.IND files
rumor, and many like it do, is, go around the Internet for years a thousand
times; sent from someone's 7th removed cousin, who you don't know, and they're
telling you to delete Windows files, AOL files, and any other files they
can talk you into..
The Main... files are the online art files for AOL. These files have nothing
to do with loading images on the Internet. These have to do with AOL screens
that you commonly use. You can purge these files if you find your AOL screens
loading slowly, but that is seldom the case.
To purge them, go to "My AOL/Preferences/graphics." make the cache
1 meg. When you exit AOL, you'll get a message that AOL is purging the Art
Files. After it purges them, restart AOL and make the setting 15 megs.
If you delete these files, your AOL screens will have to constantly reload
every time you start AOL. In essence, these files are the temporary
Internet files for your AOL screens. And like the temporary Internet
files, if they get too big, AOL will spend more time looking for the
screen, than it would have spent loading it. If you only use a
couple of AOL screens, a setting of six megs, is more than enough.
Now I ask you, how is forcing AOL to reload all of it's
screens speeding up download time? And they've tried it and it
works? Bull Sh*t!
There are two other Windows files that are supposed to do the
same thing. I won't name them, but it begins with Host; I don't ever encourage
anyone to go into their Windows control files: Especially if you don't go to
www.microsoft.com and
learn what the
file is. To me, that's just plain stupidity! These two files, however, regulate how long Internet Explorer
searches for a site. Some complain, that they get too many time out errors.
By deleting this file, some, can erase chronic time out errors.
If you really want to experiment with these and other files; The best thing to do is to rename the file.
It is possible that you can screw up associations that other programs that
use I.E. Example: Say you have an old program that will automatically log
on the web, these are quite common for programs that automatically look up
updates on the web; and say it's URL, or web association is old and outdated.
I have a virus program like this. If Internet Explorer encounters a loop,
or an error, it will only try for so long, than it will time out, or error
out. Without these files, it is conceivable that IE can run the loop forever,
locking out command control of the search, thus forcing a power on reboot.
(which is,
by the way, why those files are there in the first place).
Anyway; by renaming the file, if errors or problems are encountered, one
can always change the name back and reboot. What
ever you do! Don't just delete them! Especially if some
stranger told you to. This can cause more damage then a VIRUS!
Some knowledge of how a browser does what it does is in order. When you go
to a web site, your browser sends a "document" requesting a call on a certain
URL. Example; My old Easter page's URL was
http://www.danplays.excelland.com/easter The call being sent
by your computer first starts at excelland.com; it progresses to danplays,
further progresses to Easter, than finally to the actual document
index.html. (which is the automatic default whenever just a directory is
called for. The actual URL would be
http://www.danplays.excelland.com/easter/index.html
Causing much more typing. Today, on my servers
it's http://www.dannysdailys.com/easter)
As you know, some timeouts happen right away, and some take a long time.
A short timeout in this case would be if excelland was having problems,
and the search went no further than that. A long time out would be if the
search progressed all the way to the easter.html file, and say it was buried
in traffic. Internet Explorer will only wait so long.
I find chronic "timeout" and "can't show the page" errors to be in the
Internet adapters, more than anything else. I renew my adapters about once
a month. It seems, the more time you spend on the web, the more prone you
are to "weakening" the adapters. AOL has quite a few problems in this area.
In beta testing, I have had copies of AOL lock up when I was on the web,
forcing a power off reboot. This usually wipes out the adapters completely,
making web access impossible.
Replacing the adapters is your first line of defense when web performance
reaches noticeably slow levels consistently, all other factors such as modem
speed, purging your Temp. Internet files, etc., being equal.
Fortunately, they are easy to replace. Go to Control Panel/ Network.
And
delete all the adapters that say AOL on them. The next time you start AOL,
it will sense that they are missing, and automatically rebuild the adapters
with fresh new ones. Or, click on the AOL box on the system tray,
choose system information, then choose utilities, and finally choose,
uninstall the AOL adapters. The next time you start AOL, it will
automatically rebuild your adapters. See? It's simple.
I
hope this helps you on your road. Your Road? Yes,
Your Road To Computer Sanity
Danny
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