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It is maybe a good idea to download this mIRC FAQ and read it off-line?

If you need mIRC5.7 CLick Here To Download 

This FAQ attempts to answer the most frequently asked questions about the Winsock IRC client mIRC, developed by Khaled Mardam-Bey. This FAQ will only answer simple questions on IRC itself since lots of info is already available on that. (Eventually read the IRC Intro included in mIRC). Not all functions and features of mIRC are explained in the FAQ; it merely serves as a good starting point. With the FAQ I hope to help you to get all possible basic problems solved, and to give you lots of good ideas about mIRC's scripting capabilities. I'm not the author of mIRC but I've spent quite some time beta testing it. I love mIRC for its small size, speed and useful tools... in particular, the popup menus and the new remote section are really great! Thanks Khaled, for an excellent proggie !

This FAQ as well as mIRC is still a work in progress! Most subjects in this file were prompted by questions in the Usenet newsgroups alt.irc.mirc and alt.irc.questions. Please continu to post your questions there (and answers as well), as those newsgroups are my learning place as well. ;-) This FAQ might not be totally complete yet, but to the best of my abilities I try to be correct. Do not hesitate to provide additional information or corrections for the FAQ.

The first part (Sections 1 - 6) of this file is the actual FAQ. The last part (Sections 7 + 8) consists of a tutorial or reference manual for mIRC’s "programming" features. If you want to learn the 'what and how' of creating Aliases, Popups and Remote Commands and Events in mIRC, check out the last part of this file. I can highly recommend these sections to you all!

Thanks to all the people who voluntarily contributed to this FAQ. In particular Mookies, Bryan and Li0nheart for making additional parts and html-ing. Shorty, Keyman and Qasimtoep, thanks for fixing a lot of spelling and grammar bugs! Thanks to Junyor for his contributions from the alt.irc.mirc FAQ.

You can e-mail me with FAQ related remarks at: tjerk@mirc.com
Questions about mIRC are best asked in the Usenet newsgroup alt.irc.mirc or at help@mirc.com
As usual, direct all mIRC bug reports to Khaled at: khaled@mirc.com

If you have further questions about mIRC, please visit the IRC channel #mIRC on EFnet, IRCnet, Undernet or Dalnet. BUT, if you ask a question that is really well handled by this or other FAQ's, then please accept that you be pointed back to this or other help files.

The latest info on mIRC will always be found on the mIRC Home and FAQ www pages or one of the mirror sites in:
http://www.mirc.co.uk/,
http://www.geocities.com/~mirc/,
http://www.conesul.com.br/mirc/index.html,
http://www.nip.nl/mirc/,
http://mirc.kems.net/,
http://www.mirc.co.za/,
http://www.mirc.queen.it/,
http://mirc.eon.net.au/,
http://www.mirc.com.ar/.

Copyrights - You are allowed to provide and distribute the mIRC FAQ -as is- by or on any medium as long as you make it available for free. You are not allowed to change anything in the file or charge any amount of money for your services. If you want to copy only certain parts for whatever use, make sure to mention my name and the FAQ as the source of information with every single quote whenever you publish it. © copyright 1995-2000 Tjerk Vonck tjerk@mirc.com

SECTION 1: What is mIRC? SECTION 2: Latest news on mIRC. SECTION 3: what do you need to run mIRC and where to get it? SECTION 4: Short introduction to IRC. SECTION 5: Some short notes, tips and tricks. SECTION 6: Features, tips and Answers to Questions.

• 6-1 : How do I run the 32-bit mIRC on win 3.1 or WFW311?
• 6-2 : How do I run the 32-bit mIRC on Windows95?
• 6-3 : Is there a version for Windows CE, WebTV, Mac or Linux?
• 6-4 : How do I solve the "Can't Resolve Local Host Name" error?
• 6-5 : How do I solve the "Unable to resolve IRC server name" error?
• 6-6 : How do I solve the "Not enough user parameters" error?
• 6-7 : How do I solve the "You haven't registered" error?
• 6-8 : Why am I unidentified and what does it matter?
• 6-9 : I can't get mIRC to DCC send or initiate a DCC chat!
• 6-10 : I can't get mIRC to DCC get!
• 6-11: How do I Copy and Paste?
• 6-12: How can I customize the colors in mIRC?
• 6-13: How can I customize the fonts used in mIRC?
• 6-14: How can I see mIRC's 3-D dialog boxes?
• 6-15: What is a script?
• 6-16: How do I make a script?
• 6-17: How do I specify people correctly in the auto-op, protect and ignore list?
• 6-18: What is the best script?
• 6-19: What are trojans? What are script.ini and dmsetup.exe?
• 6-20: How can I make mIRC react to Remote Commands?
• 6-21: How can I make mIRC react to Events?
• 6-22: How do I specify my friend Bill correctly in the User list with an access level of 2?
• 6-23: I get disconnected after the /LIST command.
• 6-24: How can I protect myself agains flooders?
• 6-25: Running multiple copies of mIRC.
• 6-26: How do I make myself invisible to other users?
• 6-27: How does the new sound command in mIRC work?
• 6-28: How does the WWW support in mIRC work?
• 6-29: What is the built-in finger server for?
• 6-30: How can I easily serve my collection of shareware to others, using mIRC?
• 6-31: How do I use mIRC's built in support for Text To Speech by Monologue?
• 6-32: What is a Firewall ? How can I use it?
• 6-33: How do I use mIRC's built in DDE support?
• 6-34: I switched to a new provider but mIRC keeps using the old one!

• SECTION 7: Some notes on 'Programming' in mIRC.
  • 7-1 : The Aliases section.
    • 7-1-1 Creating Aliases.
    • 7-1-2 String definitions.
    • 7-1-3 Identifiers.
  • 7-2 : The Popups section.
  • 7-3 : The Remote Scripts section.
    • 7-3-1 Remote Users.
    • 7-3-2 Remote Scripts - CTCP Commands.
    • 7-3-3 Remote Scripts - Events.
    • 7-3-4 Various flags you can use in front of Command or Event lines.
    • 7-3-5 Variables.
    • 7-3-6 Remote Scripts - Raw processing
  • 7-4 : Advanced use of commands; Multi-line commands.

  ---

  1-1 What is mIRC?

  mIRC is a shareware IRC Chat client for Windows. It is developed and copyrighted by Khaled Mardam-Bey. For those of you new to the Internet, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. The IRC network is a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk (well, type). On IRC you meet others on "channels" (rooms, virtual places, usually with a certain topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately. There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC. As a user you run a "client" program like mIRC which connects to a "server" in an IRC network. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients. If you need more information on IRC go to mIRC's www Homepages where a lot of additional information is given.
  mIRC attempts to provide a user-friendly interface for use with the IRC network. It has a lot of features some of which are :

• A powerful dynamic /help command.
• Netscape, Mosaic and MS Internet Explorer support .... surf the www waves !!
• An 'off you go' Toolbar.... and even Tooltips !
• A very handy Switchbar.
• A user programmable menu bar.
• A simple and smart CTCP commands and Events handler.
• Support for wav and midi sound files.
• Colored text to ease reading.
• Simple, fully configurable aliases.
• Configurable popup menus.
• Full DCC Send/Get/Chat support.
• Full configurable fonts and colors and support of bold, underline and reverse text.
• Built in Ident and Finger server.
• A simple but powerful and safe built-in File server.
• Programmable Function keys.

  The various parts of the program have been designed with the aim of simplifying and speeding up your IRC sessions. mIRC is made to be very configurable... there are a lot of simple switches you can use to personalize mIRC to your needs. And unlike a lot of other IRC programs mIRC still gets more and more mature every new version. You can define your own commands and implement your personal reactions to commands others give to your client. All this does not make mIRC a bot program, and it doesn’t even support IRCii scripting and possibly a large number of other things... But it has much of the same functionality, thanks to the Remote Commands and Events and various other features... and what do you need a war script for, anyway? I think mIRC will help you to focus on the main point ; IRC is for Chatting ....

  Return to the table of contents.

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  2 Latest News on mIRC... (What is new in version 5.71)

  mIRC's new version 5.71 fixes most, if not all, of the small but nevertheless anoying buggies found in the previous version 5.7. mIRC's new version 5.71 has far too many improvements and new features and functions to mention here in detail. I'll point to some of the simple ones here - these are the ones you might encounter right away;
  

  • Support for dual monitor displays (in the 32bit mIRC) has been improved by a new option in the Display/Options/ dialog.
  • The 32 bit mIRC now supports .JPG and .PNG image files next to the older bitmap support for backgrounds etc.
  • To prevent you from getting flooded the CTCP Version requests are now queued by mIRC, and the replies are sent once every few seconds.
  • When clicking the "Connect" button to connect to a server, you can now hold down the Control key to force mIRC to use the next server in the list. mIRC has lots of handy functions like this. They are explained in the help file. Some need a little practise, others will come to you by nature.
  • Several things in the Channel window interface changed. The number of users in channel is now shown in the channel titlebar, you can now resize the nicknames listbox in channel windows, you can add colour to the nicknames that are talking (the "Highlight nicknames" option) and to complete things you can now prefix nicknames with their mode on the channel (.@%+) by the "Show mode prefix" option in the IRC dialog. This allows quick insight in the users status.
  • After manual support for the Microsoft Agent was added in version 5.7 (see http://www.mirc.co.uk/agents.html) built in support has now been added to mIRC in the options/Sounds/ dialog. You can easily enable agent events for channels, messages etc. without any scripting knowledge. It has never been easier to listen to IRC!
  • An important change was made to the DCC "ignore file types" feature in DCC/Options/. It now works as an "ignore all except.." filter. This will prevent you from downloading unknown but malicious files from strangers. A simple ignore timer, allows you to turn off the ignore for a small period after which mIRC auto-activates it again.
  • When using wildcards the highlight method now matches the wildcarded text against individual words separated by spaces, instead of against the whole line.

  Scripters can now have unlimited controls per tab section in a custom dialog and the custom dialog tab control now automatically adds a scrollbar if the tabs don't fit the width of the tab control. mIRC now maintains an internal banlist for each channel and several related strings have been added. Check out the $banlist for instance! Apart from these lots of other variables and identifiers have been added. Have fun exploring them!

  mIRC's new version 5.71 has far too many new features and functions to mention here in detail. Dont forget to read the versions.txt when you want to get fully informed of all changes.

  What was new in version 5.7? (February 2nd, 2000).

  • A new, fresher interface, cute buttons - brighter colors!
  • Support for the Microsoft Agent has been added to the 32 bit version of mIRC under Windows95 or greater. An agent is an animated character that can speak text and perform actions. With a little fiddling and tweaking you will be able to have this agent speak to you, warn you about things happening on IRC, or even read-up entire discussions to you! See http://www.mirc.co.uk/agents.html for more info. Also, if you have Speech Recognition software installed, mIRC can be made to listen to voice commands!
  • A network listbox has been added to the connect dialog. You can now easily select a network and then quickly select the desired server within that group of servers. By default a selection of all random servers is shown. It is now also possible to specify a range in the Ports settings of an IRC server, eg. 6660-6669. This will spread the load on the IRC servers ports a lot more, thus giving faster access!
  • The mIRC Installer now sets up support for .chat files in your registry file. Tooo many new users had difficulties in setting this up, we do it for you now :)
  • You can now right-click on the alias, popup, remote and DCC toolbar buttons to pop up the new Quick Access menus. This will improve access to frequently used settings a lot.
  • The channel central dialog (/channel) now uses a tabbed dialog to accomodate support for the new +e (ban exeption) and +I (invites) channel modes as found on IRCnet. With the new 'Display' tab in this dialog you can redirect or disable all sorts of channel event messages. This allows you to see the join, part, quit, mode and other messages exactly where you want them, or not at all!
  • Yiihoooo - you can now completely disable the "ping? pong!" messages in the File/Options/IRC dialog.
  • mIRC now allows you to select a font script for a font in the font dialog. This is needed to support arabic, cyrillic and chinese characters. People who speak these languages will understand how this works :)
  • When you're DCC Sending a lot you might like the new option that sets the "max cps per user" in the File/Options/DCC/Fserve dialog. This allows you to limit the send speed used by a DCC Send to a user in a Fileserver, but is also applied to /dcc sends initiated in a remote script.
  • We changed the Identd server behaviour back to how it worked before version 5.61. Not all IRC servers liked the (correctly implemented) new communication and considered you un-idented.
  • Various other small changes have been made; you can automatically sort incoming files by nickname into folders, restart logfiles per day, week or month, and set a completely custom timestamp format for all messages, logs, etc.

  • Really lots and lots of scripting things have been added. A bulkload of Identifiers, Dialog improvements and a lot more. Dear Scripters; READ the versions.txt included with the new mIRC for all info and crawl through the help file for the details. Watch out for the new %helper mode, it is easily confused with variables since % is also the %variable prefix! Enjoy the support for while loops that has been added. (This repeats a loop while some expression is true) Multiple while loops can be embedded. You can use /break to break out of the current loop. You can also use the /continue command to jump to the beginning of the loop. Have fun! Oh, and beware of old scripts; We finally removed support for the very old $parm and *N identifier format!

  What was new in version 5.61? (September 23rd, 1999).

  • The lock feature, with which you can disable functions in mIRC and limit its use to certain channels, is improved and a small problem in the lock dialog password routine is fixed. You can for instance use this feature to allow kids access to trusted IRC channels only. Or to disable the /run and /dll commands. Also lock 'error' messages for items locked in the lock dialog are now more informative, eg. when trying to join a locked out channel, etc.
  • The support for IRCX servers has been improved. IRC is a constantly evolving medium and lots of changes to mIRC are made with every new version to keep in track with new IRC server code and network specific changes. Don't forget; we dont write or maintain the IRC Networks :) In this version we also improved the support for !#channels on IRCnet and listing channels on DALnet servers works a lot better now; the *wildcard* method mIRC was using before wasn't being recognized, so the entire channels list was being sent.
  • You can now roll/unroll windows if you hold down the shift key when right-clicking on the window titlebar. This is a fancy way to clear up your desktop in an instance.
  • Tooltips now pop up over incomplete switchbar button names.
  • You can now use the Control+Q key combination to cycle through all open Query windows. And cycled windows are automatically minimized when you cycle out of them.
  • You can now customize the time-stamp format to about anything that fits you.
  • A right-click popup menu is added to DCC Send/Get windows for extra functions.
  • The RAW event can now handle unknown NAMED events. You can use this to script with server events not yet defined internally in mIRC.
  • A $lock(item) identifier is added. It returns $true or $false if an item is locked, where item can be: send, get, chat, fserve, run, dll, or channel. For the channel item, you can also use $lock(channel,N) where N returns the Nth channel in the list, or you can specify a channel name instead of N.
  • You can now use the on INPUT in dcc chat/fserve windows to process your own typing.
  • The $chat, $fserv, $send and $get identifiers are extended to $chat(nick,N), $fserv(nick,N) etc for nicks with mutliple dcc sessions open. The old format is still supported.
  • You can now create tabs in custom dialogs.

  What was new in version 5.6? (June 3rd, 1999).

  You might like to know about the new features mIRC 5.6 came with?
  

  • A "Track Urls" option is added to the System menu in Channel/Query windows. This option auto-opens websites as they are mentioned in a conversation in those windows.
  • Your away status is now shown in the Status window titlebar.
  • The date logfile names option now uses the full 4-digit year.
  • The line "Session Time:" is now output to log files at midnight as marker for log files that are open for a long time.
  • You can easily ignore specific file types with a new option in the DCC/Options dialog. This makes mIRC ignore any DCC Sends which match the specified filenames/types, like *.exe, *.com or *.ini files.
  • A new "Lock" section is added in the File/Options/General dialog. It allows you to lock mIRC, disable various features, etc. If you hold down the Control key when you minimize mIRC, it will ask you for a password when you try to restore the window.
  • The message highlight feature is highly improved. It is now possible to add individual highlight matches each with its own settings. You can specify the highlight colour, add sounds, and add a flash message.

  Several small bugs are solved in this new mIRC version. What you might want to know about right away is the fixed bug in the URL hotlink function (when hoovering over nicknames beginning with non-alphabetic characters which matched other nicknames on the channel.

  Some notes for scripters. Several old syntaxes in the scripting language are no longer supported. We can not drag these old buggers around for ever! Apart from that lots of new scripting possibilities are introduced and old ones improved. The most important things to look for are the following;

  • The backward-compatibility for the old format of $left, $mid, $nick, $right, $snick, $str, where N was specified first is removed.
  • The syntax of the $nick() identifier is extended to $nick(#,N,aohvr,aohvr), to replace all of the other $opnick/$nopnick/etc. identifiers. Both aohvr parameters are optional. The first specifies which nicks you'd like included, and the second specifies the nicks you'd like excluded. a=all, o=ops, h=helper, v=voiced, r = regular Note: the old identifiers are still supported for now.
  • An on PING event is added. It, for instance, allows you to hide the PING PONG server message.

  Since IRC is a constantly evolving medium lots of changes to mIRC are made with every new version to keep in track with new IRC server code and network specific changes. This version we added support for !channels for IRCnet, support for IRCX %#channels, and for owner .nicks in the channel nick listbox, as well as /mode +q. Also the channels list window popup menu now allows you to stop listing channels in mid-list when on DALnet servers.

  Return to the table of contents.

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  3 What do I need to run mIRC? Where do I get it? How to register?

  Besides running MS-Windows you need to have an Internet account and a properly installed Winsock. If you can use FTP, E-mail, News or other Internet programs from within Windows already, you can safely assume you have both. If you do not have your Internet access properly configured on your PC you should deal with that first.

  mIRC is spread over the world by advanced distribution schemes of primary and mirror FTP sites, which makes it available from hundreds of places all over the world. Some of the major download sites with mIRC are :

  Papa.indstate, 32 bit mIRC
  Papa.indstate, 16 bit mIRC

  Stroud's CWSApps list
  CNet's Download.Com
  TUCOWS
  ZDnet

  USA: ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/irc/
  USA: cs-ftp.bu.edu
  FI: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/msdos/networks/irc/windows/
  USA: papa.indstate.edu
  USA: ftp://ftp.undernet.org/pub/irc/clients/windows/
  USA: ftp://ftp.winsite.com/pub/pc/win3/winsock/
  USA: ftp://www.windows95.org/pub/win95/mirc/
  USA: MyDesktop

  The most up-to-date list of places where you can get mIRC is the Download page on the mIRC Homepages... You could also join the IRC channel #mIRC to get the latest version or to ask all remaining questions... (But: be very sure this FAQ doesn't answer your question)

  Shareware - mIRC is a shareware program. This system of distributing programs, as shareware, shows the true spirit of the Internet. You can download mIRC for free and give it a try. If during or after the 30 days evalution period you decide to continue to use mIRC, you're asked to pay a small registration fee. This will allow Khaled, mIRC's author, to go on developing and supporting mIRC with the same spirit and enthousiasm as he has in the past. Your registration of mIRC will allow the existance of mIRC's www pages for help, hints and support and further development of mIRC, its help files and the FAQ. :-) Once you registered one version of mIRC, you're allowed to use all future shareware versions for free. The mIRC help file and these www pages give you all information needed to register mIRC. You can send a personal cheque to Khaled and you can even register on-line!

  Return to the table of contents.

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  4 Short Introduction to IRC.

  (Read more in the IRC Intro file included in mIRC (!) and available on the mIRC www pages)

  What is IRC - IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat". It was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has been used in over 60 countries around the world. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people meet on "channels" to talk in groups, or privately. There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients. Several larger and smaller IRC networks exist.

  On IRC several people can join the same channel and see each other. Depending on its topic and time of the day a channel can be VERY crowded. Channels can also be quite chaotic, or calm. Channels can be open to everyone but also closed and private and only open to friends. On the large IRC networks (EFnet) as many as 20000 channels can exist, on smaller networks there will be fewer channels. Channels on IRC are dynamic in the sense that anyone can create a new channel, and a channel disappears when the last person on it leaves.

  Language - The most widely understood and spoken language on IRC is English. However, as IRC is used in many different countries, English is by no means the only language. If you want to speak some language other than English, (for example with your friends), go to a separate channel and set the topic to indicate that. Similarly, you should check the topic when you join a channel to see if there are any restrictions about language. On a non-restricted channel, please speak a language everybody can understand. If you want to do otherwise, change channels and set the topic accordingly.

  Greeting - It is not necessary to greet everybody on a channel personally. Usually one "Hello!" or equivalent is enough. Also, don't expect anybody to greet you back. On a channel with 20 people that would mean one screenful of hellos. It makes sense not to greet everyone, in order not to be rude to the rest of the channel. If you must say hello to somebody you know, do it with a private message. The same applies to good-byes. Also note that using your client's facilities to automatically say hello or good-bye to people is extremely poor etiquette. Nobody wants to receive autogreets. They are not only obviously automatic, but while you may think you are being polite, you are actually conveying yourself as insincere. If some body wants to be autogreeted when they join a channel, they will autogreet themselves.

  Behaviour - Remember, people on IRC form their opinions about you only by your actions, writings and comments, so think before you type. If you use offensive words, you'll be frowned upon. Do not "dump" (send large amounts of unwanted information) to a channel or user. This is likely to get you kicked off the channel or killed from IRC. Dumping causes network "burps", causing connections to go down because servers cannot handle the large amount of traffic. Other prohibited actions include:
  * Harassing another user. Harassment is defined as behavior towards another user with the purpose of annoying them.
  * Annoying a channel with constant beeping. (Therefore most clients cannot beep at all)
  * Any behavior reducing the functionality of IRC as a CHAT medium.

  How to join IRC - The first time you run mIRC you have to fill in some information about yourself (your real name, email address, nickname, IP address and Local Host name) under File/Setup/IRC_Servers and Local_Info, as well as the IRC server with which you want to connect. It's usually best to connect to a geographically close server. When you're new to IRC just pick a server from the prefab list. On IRC you are known to others by a nickname. You are free to choose any nickname you like, up to 9 characters long. Do not use spaces and avoid unusual ASCII characters in your nickname. It is possible you find people that use the same nickname and you may be asked to switch nicknames to avoid confusion.

  Getting started - To join conversations, send private messages, and to handle and control mIRC you need to learn some simple commands. All commands start with a forward slash, the "/". Anything that does not begin with "/" is assumed to be a message to someone and will be sent to your current channel, or to the person you are chatting with in a private chat (see below). A list with the most used commands on IRC is given in the mIRC help file.

  Finding your way on IRC - To join a channel, type /join #channelname. Try "/join #irchelp" or "/join #mirc" to give it a try... That's it! Once you get to the channel, you will see people talking. It will probably look like this:

  {John} Hello Pat, are you new to IRC too ?
  {Jake} I dont agree there :-(
  {East-r} Can sb give me that too ?? I couldnt find it before
  * East-r smiles
  {Pat} Nope, I just have a simple question... I think...
  Note that you will often come in during the *middle* of a conversation. Unless you're familiar with the channel you may want to sit and watch it for a minute or two to see what the conversation is about. Often the channel name (for instance, #Twilight_Zone) has nothing to do with what conversation goes on on the channel (#Twilight_Zone does *not* have discussion about the TV show "Twilight Zone"). So if you join #baseball, don't be surprised if you hear about the SuperBowl picks or even the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame Museum! To start talking, just type! And when you're done saying what you have to say, just hit the [return] key. You can start with something simple like "hello!". You don't have to type hello! because IRC will insert before all of your channel messages. In the channel's title bar you will see the channel's name and perhaps its topic. If you choose to leave a channel, just type /part #channelname

  In the channel window that opens once you join a channel you'll see an alphabetical list of people that are on the channel on the right side of the window. Some of them have a @ in front of their name to indicate they are the channel operators. A Channel Operator is someone who has control over a specific channel. A Channel Operator can also decide if control is shared or not. The first person to join the channel automatically receives Channel Operator status. Channel operators are the 'rulers' of a particular channel. This means they can kick you out of their channel for any reason. If you don't like this, you complain to them or start your own channel and become a channel operator there yourself.

  Read the help - As soon as you joined your first channels and spent some time on IRC you will see there are a lot more commands and possibilities for you to discover on IRC. You might want to read the full version of this IRC Intro on the mIRC www pages. Almost all specific capabilities of mIRC are explained in the help file that came with the package. You just have to do the reading. :-)

  Books about IRC and mIRC. - There are several good books available that give a fairly complete introduction to IRC. Mind you; the IRC Intro included in mIRC tells you about the same for free, ...and this FAQ tells a lot more on mIRC! Please read our special books section for more information.

  Return to the table of contents.

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  5 Some short Notes and Tips on mIRC.

  1. Protect yourself from viral infections on IRC by never ever accepting files from strangers, and by never ever opening executables, scripts or other files that could contain macro's. And use a good virus scanner for every file people sent to you!

  2. The Channels List dialog has improved a lot. Full Channel Name and Topic search is supported in an easily understood dialog and you can now make mIRC filter away all unwanted channels by simply setting search and suppress keys. Parents can easily filter away offensive channel list items and password protect their filtering ! But if you need better kid-safety dont rely on mIRC and check out Kidlink IRC, Netnanny or Cyberpatrol.

  3. The /uwho command provides you with an improved interface with information on the person. You can store and fetch user info and addresses and view all kinds of ctcp information in it.

  4. The help menu has been made dynamic to display all .hlp files in mIRC's directory, as well as the text files like the readme.txt, versions.txt, and update.txt files, for quick access. Also internal aliases are added that match the help filenames, so if you have the file "ircintro.hlp" in mIRC's directory you can type /ircintro ! (like /help ) You can add whatever help files you like to mIRC's help menu! Besides the mIRC FAQ, the IRC Intro file is also available in windows help file format from the mIRC www pages.

  5. You can protect yourself against people who are flooding you with the new automatic anti-flood system. Look under File/Options/Flood/. A server usually disconnects you for sending too much data to it in a certain period of time, *or* if you try to send it data when it hasn't finished processing your previous data. The new flood protect makes sure -others- cant make you to send tooo much data to the server. Usually a server has a buffer of about 512 bytes. mIRC therefore counts the number of bytes you've sent to a server and if this exceeds a certain number, mIRC waits for the server to be ready again, before it continues sending data. In the mean time it nicely buffers unsend lines. This should protect you properly from all sorts of ctcp floods and so on... You set the amount of bytes mIRC may safely send (for instance 450 bytes), the amount of lines it may buffer (like 20), the amount of lines it may store maximal per user (like 3) and how long the flooder should be ignored (like 15 secs) by the command /flood 450 20 3 15 This flood control method *only* works for messages being triggered by other users. So you can still flood *yourself* off the server. (like with the /list command)

  Return to the table of contents.

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  In the next part of the FAQ you will find the actual mIRC FAQ with features, tips and answers to questions about mIRC.