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How to Add the Windows Resource Kit Help File's Contents to the Standard Windows Help Contents List

Note: This only works for help files that don't use a chm (Compiled HTML Help file). This means that the reskit help can be added to the Windows 95 help, but not the Windows 98 help file contents.

To save having to create shortcuts to a range of help files (or hunting them out with Explorer) and then needing to search each one individually for a snippet of information you can chain them together. For example, you can link the resource kit help file to the standard windows help file to vastly expand the information available from the Start button Help icon.

To achieve this does need you to modify some configuration files (for the help files) so the standard Save a copy in a safe place first! warning applies. What is needed is a few changes to the help file's contents file (the one ending .cnt). These list what is available to each help file and by opening the c:\windows\help\windows.cnt file in Notepad you will see that it references several other files already. If you want to add the resource kit help file too here's how to do it.

For Windows 95 copy the win95rk.hlp and win95rk.cnt files from the D:\Admin\Reskit\Helpfile folder of your Win95 CD (where D: is the CD's drive letter). Put these files in the C:\Windows\Help folder.

For Windows 98 copy the win98rk.hlp, win98rk.cnt and rk98book.chm files from the D:\tools\reskit\help folder of your Win95 CD (where D: is the CD's drive letter). Put these files in the C:\Windows\Help folder.

Now open the Windows.cnt file in Notepad (You did save a copy didn'y you?) and add a new index entry for the Resource Kit file - put it just before the existing licensing one, e.g:

:Index Plus! Help =plus!.hlp
:Index Resource Kit Help =win95rk.hlp
:Index Microsoft Licensing Policies =license.hlp

Now go right to the end of the file and add a new line as follows:

:include win95rk.cnt

Save the file.

If you now open Windows Help you'll see the resource kit entries in the Contents list. Unfortunately they're at the top level and really sould be under a Resource Kit book title. We'll do this next:

Open the win95rk.cnt file. You'll probably need to use Wordpad for this as its too big for Notepad (you could use WS if you want as long as you save it as a text file afterwards - I used Aedit).

Now comes the fun bit! You need to increment the number at the start of most lines by one! If you search for 4 and replace avery instance with 5 then repeat with 3 & 4, 2 & 3, 1 & 2 you'll achieve the right result. Do start with the highest number first or you'll end up with all the numbers the same!

Once that's done you need to add a new level 1 item near the start of the file. This will be the new Chapter/Book title (2nd line in e.g., below):

:index Windows 95 Resource Kit = win95rk.hlp
1 Windows 95 Resource Kit <------ This is the new line!
2 Copyright Notice = CP_0_

Once you've added that, save the file (plain text with the .cnt extension).

Restart Windows Help if its still open and you should now see a new Windows 95 Resource Kit book, inside which will be the reskit topics. If you now use the Find you'll find that the help file will regenerate its word list (.gid file) to include the reskit word list.

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