Object Desktop Tips

- by Alexander Antoniades

How to make Object Navigator behave like the old Norton Navigator

There's an undocumented feature in Object Navigator that Stardock created for one of our corporate clients. In order to activate this feature you have to add the following statement to your CONFIG.SYS:

SET OBJD_AUTOTILENAV=1

Once you've done this, Object Navigator will automatically horizontally tile any new instance of itself after the first one in the same window space that the original occupied. For example, if you have one instance of Object Navigator loaded and then you launch a second, the window area that the first occupied will now be shared by two instances of Object Navigator, so that you can copy files easily between the two.

There is one caveat to this approach and it is that you may run into problems if you launch additional copies of Object Navigator while in another virtual Desktop besides the one in which the first instance was launched. If you usually do this, enabling this option may not be for you.

The Tech's (Stardock Tech Support) Files: The case of the Oversized Package

An Object Desktop Professional user was complaining when it seemed that his hard drive space was being eaten up on an almost daily basis so that regardless of how much free space he would have one day, the next day it would gone. The culprit, he noticed, was an increasing number of oversized package files created by his daily backups which we're created by the Desktop Backup Advisor.

Agent Ford Mulder was immediately suspicious when he saw how big the individual package files were, over 9 MBs each. "A package file, even one containing a Desktop, should never be that big unless that Desktop contains actual files," he stated matter-of-factly. He asked the user whether he normally kept any actual files (not shadows) on his Desktop, which is always something to be avoided.

The user vigorously denied doing this and Agent Ford could tell by the tone in his voice that this wasn't some corrupt, rogue agent telling lies to protect "the cause." Luckily the user had a Desktop utility on hand to analyze the size of his Desktop directory. The result of 9 MB confirmed Agent Ford's suspicions that there were files on the Desktop that were causing the package files to be so huge. He advised the user to change to his Desktop directory from an OS/2 Command Window and type

DIR /S /P

As the directory structure was revealed, Agent Ford's jaw dropped in amazement as the true scope of the problem was revealed. It turned out that somehow the user's shadows of multimedia objects had somehow become copied complete with actual multimedia files to the Desktop. After returning the data files to their original homes in the MMOS2 directory, the Desktop was slimmed down to a more reasonable 500k and the package files would doubtlessly be slimmed down as well. The user thanked Agent Ford and quickly hung up to phone to enjoy his now cavernous hard drive.

After all this Agent Ford leaned back in his chair and pondered. Someday, he thought, we will understand all of the subtle intricacies of how OS/2 operates and how it can vary so much from system to system. Until that time, however we'll just have to keep searching and doing the best we can. After all, the truth is in there.

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