Tech Tips
By Doug Lamb
Those of us on the Internet realize there is a wealth of information available right at our fingertips. Whether it’s researching a term paper, finding a favorite recipe, comparing new car prices, or troubleshooting computer problems, the Net provides access to almost any information we want to find (and then some).
If you’re using Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 3.x, you can increase the speed of your search. IE 3.x allows you to perform an auto-search by typing "go" (without quotes) followed by a space, then your keywords in the address bar. The default search uses Microsoft’s search page, but if you prefer to use a different search engine, you can change this by making a small modification to the Windows 95 Registry.
NOTE: BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES TO THE REGISTRY, IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD PRACTICE TO MAKE A BACKUP! A CORRUPT REGISTRY FILE CAN EASILY CRASH YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM! See last month’s Tech Tips for more info on this.
To make this change, first run RegEdit, and go to the following Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl
Double-click on the (Default) value under Toolbar, and type the text from the list below that corresponds to your preferred search site.
AltaVista www.altavista.digital.com/cgibin/query?pg=q&q=%s
Excite www.excite.com/search.gw?search=%s
Infoseek guidep.infoseek.com/Titles?qt=%s
Lycos www.lycos.com/cgibin/puruit?query=%s
Magellan searcher.mckinley.com/searcher.cgi?query=%s
IE default home.microsoft.com/access/autosearch.asp?p=%s
Yahoo! Search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=%s
The next time you use Internet Explorer’s auto-search function, you’ll be using the search engine you like best, and speeding up access to the information you need.