                           
                            Getting Started

If you are a new OS/2 user or are not familiar with INI Files and
Extended Attributes, then you should first review the various Help
entries that are listed under the See Also category for the Help item. 
These General Help entries will give you an overview of UniMaint and
the environment in which it operates.

One of the biggest concerns of those who are not knowledgeable about
OS/2 is that they do not want to do something that will damage their
Desktop.  If this is your primary concern, then you should start with
UniSafe.  This has all of the menu items that the main program has. 
However, all menu entries that could make any change to the INI Files
or Extended Attributes have been disabled.  Therefore, it is not
possible to make any changes with this program.  You can use UniSafe to
explore the contents of the various INI files and Extended Attributes
and can play with all of the menu items without worrying about causing
a problem with your Desktop.

Once the user is ready to use the fully capable program, they should be
sure that they have a good backup of their Desktop. The user should
make a backup of his Desktop and be sure to create a Restore CMD file,
so that a Restore can be done if a problem occurs with the Desktop. The
backup is recommended because there are many things which can cause
problems with a Desktop and, as time goes on, the ways that a Desktop
can be damaged will change. No one should be without a plan to recover
from any kind of damage that might be done to their Desktop. It takes
but a minute to make the Backup and having it can save many hours of
work. If you already have a Desktop backup, you should be sure you have
a current backup and make a new one anytime you make significant
changes to your Desktop.

One warning about making sure the backup is a current one.  Much of the
information about those Desktop items that are represented as files,
which includes all folders, is kept in the Extended Attributes of the
Desktop Directory structure.  Currently, the Extended Attributes for
the Desktop are not updated except during a shutdown of OS/2. 
Therefore, if you have made significant changes to the folders, the
contents of folders or have rearranged the  folders on the Desktop, it
would be a good idea to do a shutdown and reboot before making a
backup.

A word about the warnings that you will see both in the documentation
and when you are about to perform certain INI File or Extended
Attribute changes. They are there because it is a good thing for any
user to pause and make sure that they really want to do what they are
attempting and to be sure that they understand what is happening.  If
any user finds themselves at one of these warnings and is not sure
about what is going to happen, then they should Cancel.  The purpose of
the Help file is to explain things to the point that each user will
understand each function before they use it.

Once the backup of the Desktop is safely done, each user should use the
Repair INI Files entry on the Recover Menu to do a Repair of both the
File Handles and the WPS Entries.  The best way to do this is to leave
the Type of Repair at the default, Report Only, and ask for a Repair of
the File Handles and then the WPS entries.  Once the user is
comfortable that all of the listed items should be Repaired, the Do
Repair button can be selected and then click on Execute to actually
perform the Repairs.  These two Repair functions will remove any
entries in the OS2.INI or OS2SYS.INI files that represent files or WPS
Objects that no longer exist on the Desktop.

While the items discussed above are the primary Repair items, there is
a long list of other kinds of Repair.  The best way to get more
information on a specific type of Repair, simply highlight one of the
Repair Types in the Drop Down Combobox and hit the F1 key, this will
give you the Help for that specific Repair Action.

Aside from the above and lacking a specific problem, it is suggested
that users might want to go through both the OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI
files, just to review their contents.  Simply looking at the names of
the Applications, Key Names and the values will give any user a lot of
information on how OS/2 works and the purpose of the INI files.

It is worthwhile to View the Extended Attributes for the Desktop
Directory, all of its sub directories and files.  This will make the
structure of OS/2 much clearer and will help the user to understand the
real power and utility of the Extended Attributes.

On the WPS menu, there is an item for Selected Object Settings. If you
select this Menu item, you will see an empty Window. Simply Drop any
Object or Folder on this window and you will be able to View and or
Change all of the WPS Settings for all of the Objects.
