This is FAQ version 62, revision 0

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 scripting 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. Recently some mIRC dedicated message boards have been added to the mIRC website who offer more support and contribute to the FAQ in a great way! Please continue to post your questions there (and answers as well), as those places 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 message boards 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/ (United Kingdom),
http://www.mirc.com/ (USA),
http://mirc.kems.net/ (Kuwait),
http://www.mirc.co.za/ (South Africa),
http://www.mirc.queen.it/ (Italy),
http://www.mirc.com.ar/ (Argentina),
http://mirc.eon.net.au/ (Australia).

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 1995-2007 Tjerk Vonck tjerk@mirc.com

• SECTION 1: What is mIRC?
• SECTION 2: Latest news on mIRC.
• SECTION 3: What do I need to run mIRC? Where do I get it? How to register?
• 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.x or WFW311?
  • 6-2 : How do I run the 32-bit mIRC on Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, NT etc.
  • 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 select custom backgrounds in mIRC?
  • 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 against 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.

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.

• UTF-8 support with font linking.
• 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 including passive DCC.
• 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 ....

This version of mIRC offers full Vista compatibility with support for limited user accounts, U3 support, support for tips (those small text balloons that pop up near the Windows tray) to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC, support for positioning the Treebar at top/bottom of the mIRC window, and a feature that allows you to switch between Normal and Compact modes. Compact mode makes mIRC behave like a messenger with the treebar filling the main window, all windows opening on the desktop, and so on.

mIRC 6.3 fixes some buggy that made it stick to using a secure port if the last connection was a secure one. And when connecting to an ip address from a round robin dns pool, the original connect address is now remembered and the connect message now has "dns pool" appended to it. By popular request Khaled changed the logging method back to the simple plain old method, so mIRC no longer uses the name.N.log filename format. Also a reload logs bug where mIRC was loading logs in wrong order is fixed.

• Full Vista compatability, among others, means that new installations of mIRC now save all settings in the User's "Application Data\mIRC" folder by default. However, if the installer or mIRC find an old installation with a mirc.ini in the same folder as mirc.exe they will use the mirc.exe folder for all settings. If you are installing a new mIRC over an old version you should see no change in behaviour. The installer is now also aware of administrator and standard user accounts and installs mIRC accordingly. Under an Administrator account, the installer will create icons for "All Users". Under a Standard account, it will create icons only for the current user. When run under Vista mIRC now checks for a corresponding virtual store folder at startup. Vista creates virtual store folders for older non-Vista compatible applications, such as older versions of mIRC. If mIRC finds such a folder, it displays a dialog box allowing you to retrieve your old mIRC files and settings.



• With the U3 support in mIRC we should be able to make an U3 package available for mIRC with which you can take your mIRC wherever you want! U3 is a specification for applications to run from portable storage devices (ie. flash drives) without leaving any settings/traces on the host system. Look on U3.com for more info.



• The support for traytips can be used to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC. The tips only appear when mIRC is not the active application and are hidden the moment mIRC becomes active. Tips can be fully configured and scripted to show exactly what you want, even in combination with mIRC's highlight function. and of course you can completely disable the tips ;-)

As always this new version of mIRC addresses many, if not all, of the issues reported since the last release. A lot of time was spent tweaking new features, fixing bugs, and a handful of other things. In total there are over 100 changes in this version, making this a great new mIRC! We encourage you to explore the versions.txt file for all changes. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to - please take your time to play with them and see how they work.

What was new in version 6.21? (November 23, 2006).

As always this new version of mIRC addresses many of the issues reported since the last release. A lot of time was spent tweaking features and fixing bugs. We worked on the installer, logfile handling, script error handling, as well as a handful of other things. Only a few new features and functions have been added, making this mainly a bugfix release.

The mIRC installer has improved a lot! The installer now offers several pre-defined modes that allow you to choose between an Upgrade, Full or Custom install. It ensures that backups of old files are successful, reports error and aborts the installation if it failed for some reason.

The IRC Servers dialog now uses a treeview to display the servers list. In response to this change the format of the servers.ini file has changed to accommodate for a larger amount of servers. The DNS routines have changed so that on connect the retrieved pool of IP addresses is randomised to spread the load across connections.

Preparing for a fully Vista (the new Windows) compliant version of mIRC several changes have been made. These include minor cosmetic issues, icons, a new help file in .chm format, etc. Also a command line option has been created that makes mIRC avoid all use of the registry. If this switch is used, mIRC stores registry information in the mirc.ini file in a [user] section, and does not modify registry to support irc:// links etc. This comes handy when you want to run mIRC from a memory stick or similar device.

A lot of changes have been made to the way mIRC names and stores logfiles. This is mainly done to prevent file corruption and loss of data when you open multiple server connections. mIRC tries to name and rename logfiles as smart as possible. Also, when settings are changed in the logging dialog, the logging state of windows and any open log filenames are now immediately updated to reflect the new settings. In previous versions new settings were only applied when a new window was created.

We hope to have smashed the confusing 'flash' and 'beep' options by adding a "Default" menu item to System Menu Flash/Beep items, allowing channel/query/chat windows to use the default settings as set in the Options/Sounds dialog. And disabling sounds in the Sounds dialog now does actually disable -all- sounds, even those using /splay or /beep. ;-)

For experienced users and scripting enthusiasts this new version has heaps of fixes, changes and other little thingies to play with. Some of the more useful changes for scripters are: an extension to the /toolbar command that allows you to customize your toolbar, it now has a new switch that makes mIRC remember your current toolbar settings and reload them automatically the next time you run mIRC; the /window -h behaviour has been fixed so that you can hide Status windows from the switchbar; the on WAVEEND event now triggers as it should; Regular expression support has been improved and resolves gpf and speed issues in the previous version; script $error handling should work better now; and /drawrot is now much faster. We encourage you to explore the versions.txt file for all changes. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to - please take your time to play with them and see how they work.

What was new in version 6.2? (July 28th, 2006).

Of course this new version addresses the buggies and most of the other comments and remarks we received after the previous release. Apart from that Khaled spend lots of time on the UTF-8 support that was added in the previous version. As you might know UTF-8 is a font encoding system that allows you to use fonts with strange, international characters. That of course helps a lot if you want to chat in your own language!

mIRC's default toolbar is now customizable through a /toolbar command. You can add, move and delete buttons, add your own icons, and of course, attach your own commands to them.

By popular demand also a treebar has been added. This lists network connections with channels, queries and other open windows, much like the switchbar. It behaves like the switchbar in many ways as well. You can expand and collapse trees, just like you would expect. Right-clicking on an item pops up the usual menu for that window. Right-clicking in an empty area of the treebar pops up a menu with various display options. The treebar width can be set by dragging the border with the mouse, and jsut as with virtually all other windows the background and text colors can be set in the colors dialog. Just like the toolbar the treebar can be repositioned to the top/bottom/left/right of the main mIRC window!

In this version several UTF-8 related bugs are fixed, including bugs with text wrapping and copy/pasting from UTF-8 "display" or "encode" enabled windows, and bugs relating to the order in which SJIS/JIS and UTF-8 encodings are applied. Much more important is that UTF-8 support has been greatly enhanced in this version of mIRC to allow people all over the world to chat in their own languages, with their own fonts, with a lot less hassle then ever before. To do so support for font substitution/font linking has been added. This allows mIRC to display all characters needed, regardless of the font you are using, assuming you have the required fonts on your system, somewhere. mIRC will try to match font sizes etc. To speed up the process Khaled has implemented his own caching routines to enable fast font/character referencing.

Various other changes include:

• better support of XP and classic themes,
• faster re-wrapping of text,
• a fix for various $regsubex() and $regsub() parsing bugs, for a flood protection bug, some agent speech bug, and for a bug with the find dialog in desktop windows,
• and mIRC now stores servers that were connected to successfully to prioritize future server connection attempts, ...and a lot more.

For experienced users and scripting enthusiasts this new version has heaps of changes and other new thingies to play with. We encourage you to explore the new or improved identifiers, and the new events that have been added.

You'll have to dig through the help file in mIRC and the whatsnew.txt on the Web to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to - please take your time to play with them and see how they work.

May we invite you to visit the Message Board on the website with all questions you might have? The board offers great help with everything related to mIRC! Thanks for using mIRC, lots of fun on IRC.

What was new in version 6.17? (February 17th, 2006).

In this new version Khaled added support for displaying UTF-8 text as unicode to mIRC. This works in status, channel, query, and other windows, and in nickname listboxes, window titlebars, switchbar, and tooltips. The display of UTF-8 can be enabled by default for all windows in the Options/IRC/Messages dialog, or individually for any window you like via the Fonts dialog. Use the /font command to open the Fonts dialog. Make sure you select a font that contains the characters or script (hebrew, arabic, greek, cyrillic,...) you want to see!

The Fonts dialog also has an "Encode" option that encodes outgoing text in UTF-8 based on the script/codepage selected for that window. The Encode feature is selective, ie. it only encodes the parts of an outgoing message that are not already in UTF-8 format. It also takes into account if the IRC server is fully UTF-8 enabled or not.

Various other changes:

• mIRC now has a 'check for timed out connections' option in connect/options dialog. When this is set mIRC pings the server every so often if it hasn't heard form the server for a while to test your connection.
• Support for initiating passive dcc send/chat connections has been added.
• Changing the default font for a window type now affects all open windows of the same type immediately.
• Most file dialogs are now resizable.
• You can disable the $decode identifier (and various other "dangerous" commands) in the Lock options dialog. (The $decode is of course disabled by default.)
• Lots of SSL things have improved and mIRC now also supports SSL connections for sockets

What was new in version 6.16? (July 7th, 2004).

With this release we hope to address the most important comments, and remarks we received after the release of the previous version. We tried to focus on fixing things like the (few) freeze/gpf issues relating to SJIS/JIS and while/continue/break statements in scripts, as well as a handful of others - making the mIRC 6 series very stable. Only a few new features and functions have been added. You'll have to dig through the help file in mIRC and the whatsnew.txt on the Web to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact.

What was new in version 6.15? (June 3rd, 2004).

With this release we hope to address the most important comments, requests and remarks we received after the release of version 6.14. The new version fixes quite a few small bugs found in the previous versions. We tried to focus on fixing things, making the mIRC 6 series more an more sturdy, and only few new features and functions have been added.

With this release we hope to address the most important comments, requests and remarks we received after the release of version 6.14. The new version fixes quite a few small bugs found in the previous versions. We tried to focus on fixing things, making the mIRC 6 series more an more sturdy, and only few new features and functions have been added.

• SJIS/JIS support and various multi-byte display/mark/copy issues have improved,
• the 'reload' logs feature has improved to make sure it reloads the correct log files,
• support for SSL has improved to make sure mIRC always uses an SSL port when reconnecting if it was using one in the prior connection, and some issues with SSL key files and SSL root certificates have been solved,
• a small memory leak has been plugged, port selection for DCC and other connections works more smoothly, and issues with random port selection, the /fserve maxgets limit, and DCC Get via http proxy/socks are solved.

What was new in version 6.14? (March 3rd, 2004).

With this new release we think to address the most important comments, requests and remarks we received after the release of version 6.12. The new version fixes lots of the small but nevertheless annoying buggies found in the previous version. Among them the much discussed tooltip gpf bug and a daylight savings time offset bug.

While we tried to focus on fixing things, of course some new features and functions have been added. Although some of these new things, like the SSL support, might have to mature a bit over the next versions, we think it is fun to play with them already! A few items I'd like to mention as useful changes:

• Lots of work has been done on the support of multi-byte character encodings and the sjis-jis support. Khaled has added a "Multibyte editbox" option to the Messages dialog, which makes mIRC use a richedit editbox in all mIRC Windows for entering text. mIRC was using the standard Windows editbox before. The richedit editbox displays complex scripts properly. The Sjis/Jis and Multibyte options are now automatically enabled if mIRC detects a Multibyte version of Windows the first time mIRC is run. Khaled also fixed various multi-byte display/mark/copy bugs and improved sjis-jis support.
• An option to 'reload' logs has been added to the /IRC/Logging/ dialog. It will make mIRC load the tail of a logfile into your channel and chat windows. Seems to work fine. However, various line attributes, such as color, are not (yet) saved in the log files, so the reloaded log is displayed in the normal text color.
• Support for SSL has been added. You'll have to download some DLL's of OpenSSL 0.9.7c separately from mIRC and place them in the mIRC folder for this to work. mIRC will load the dll's automatically if it finds them, after which you can initiate a secure connection to an SSL capable IRC server. SSL settings can be found in the Connect/Options dialog, and are visible only when openssl dlls are loaded. Read more on http://www.mirc.co.uk/ssl.html.
• A Sort dialog has been added to the Window Menu. It allows you to specify the sort order of Switchbar buttons and Window types. Buttons are always sorted into groups. With the /View/Options/Display/ sort option turned off, Switchbar buttons are sorted according to creation time within groups as opposed to alphabetical sorting.
• By popular request Query/Chat windows now remember their individual font settings. We also
  - moved the port range options, which now applies to all connections, to a /Connect/Advanced/ dialog,
  - added a /cnick -sN switch, sorts item into Nth position,
  - made the switchbar to allow up to eight lines in height and displays scroll buttons when it is vertical,
  - fixed $com() dispatch pointers bug,
  - added an :error goto point, by which script errors can be caught, and
  - improved the find dialog in the script editor a lot.

As you see there are heaps of changes and improvements. Lots of little and larger changes to smoothen your IRC experience. You'll have to dig through the help file in mIRC and the whatsnew.txt to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Some are obvious, some need getting used to - please take your time to play with them and see how it works. If you have questions, may we invite you to the Message Board on this website? The board offers great help with everything related to mIRC!

What was new in version 6.12? (October 13th, 2003).

mIRC v6.12 has been released to address a remote vulnerability found yesterday, capable of crashing your mIRC. The vulnerability affects versions of mIRC from v6.0 onwards, so it is highly recommended that you upgrade to mIRC v6.12. You can do so by downloading the new mIRC from the download page on mIRC's website!

This version is merely a bugfix version. Although no new features have been added it is very important that you upgrade as soon as possible. If you have questions, may we invite you to the message board on mIRC's website? These discussion forums offer great help with everything related to mIRC and its features.

What was new in version 6.11? (October 10th, 2003).

With this new release we hope to address the comments, requests and remarks we received after the release of version 6.1. Of course this new version fixes lots of the small but nevertheless annoying buggies found in the previous version. Details of all changes are available on the news page. Have fun and download and try mIRC 6.11!

Several commands have been fixed or improved, like the /fwrite, /hdec, /mkdir, /qmsg, /qme, /color, /hload, /hsave and /server not using the specified port. Lots of identifiers have been fixed, among them $duration(N,3), $base(), $os, $comcall(), $dllcall(), $md5() and $mask(). This also fixes a possible /userhost exploit problem.

A channel folders join bug where mIRC wasn't setting focus on a channel window properly was fixed, as well as a a small problem with the red dot in remote toolbar button, bugs with binary variables, duplicate separators in popup menus and a menu handling bug that affected the favorites popup menu as well as various other menus under Windows 95 and NT. Over 40 thingies, all fixed :)

While we tried to focus on fixing things, of course some new features and functions have been added. Among them

• the language selection option that has been added to the MS Agent speech dialog. You must of course have the required language component installed. Read more on http://www.mirc.co.uk/agents.html,
• the Favorites folder that now allows multiple selection. You can now join multiple channels, or folders with channels!, at a time,
• a nifty new feature that has been added to allow you to auto-hide the list with nicknames in a channel. See the nick list options in the System Menu of each channel...

As you see - heaps of changes and improvements. Lots of little and larger changes to smoothen your IRC experience. You'll have to dig through the help file and the whatsnew.txt on the Web to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Information on changes in older versions is available in the versions.txt. If you have additional questions, may we invite you to the Message Boards on this website? The boards offer great help with everything related to mIRC!

What was new in version 6.1? (August 29th, 2003).

Lots of things have been fixed. Like the default browser issue, a /background bug, an editor dialog bug that most likely was the cause of odd script problems, a memory bug relating to registry handling, a /whois related memory bug, a problem with background pictures, and a popup menu resources bug.

Lots of other things have improved; All Socks5 firewall error messages are now displayed correctly, double-clicking on web/ftp hotlinks now displays a warning dialog before the site is opened, and an important change was made to the way files are created, opened, read, etc. for window logging, dcc sends/gets, and the list channels dialog. The amount of files opened for logging, sends/gets, etc. is no longer limited to a maximum total of 50 or so open files. DCC commands, such as /dcc send, ignore, etc. are now also handled in the form /dccsend, /dccignore, etc. and should also allow /dccallow etc.

Khaled is now using Visual C++ .NET 7.0 to compile mIRC. This also means nicknames are sorted a bit different, nicks beginning with certain non-alphabetic characters eg. _ ' etc. are being placed above normal nicks. This appears to be the standard sorting method in Windows, which Visual C++ abides by consistently. It now applies to the whole of mIRC. Support for the .jpeg extension has been added, custom file-handling commands and identifiers which allow you to open multiple files for reading and writing. A file type ignore warning explains why a file transfer is ignored, with a direct link to the options dialog, dcc ignore section. Also a new section was added to the servers.ini file from which mIRC will select an initial network to connect to. mIRC no longer defaults to DALnet.

Lots of interface changes this time; Check out the visual styles and new buttons, dialogs, menus etc. A single toolbar button replaces the previously separated aliases, remotes and popups button. The red light is now on when any of ctcp/event/raw are enabled, and off when they are all disabled. A right-click on the toolbar button displays a most recently used files list. At first this looks a bit odd, but it will just take some getting used to. With the color scheme option you can switch between different color schemes easily.

And scripters, there is lots of fun for you; with the $ event prefix the matchtext section of a remote event definition can now contain a regular expression! Binary variables no longer have an upper limit on the number of bytes that can be stored. And $compress() and $decompress() functions have been added that compress/decompress files and binary variables. The result is raw compressed data. Khaled managed to load a multi-megabyte file into a binary variable and compress, encode and write it to a new file, and then reverse the process. Fun stuff eh!

• The "enable" sounds option in the sounds dialog now affects most sounds, including highlight, notify, window/icon flashing, etc. Sound requests and Agents still need to be enabled/disabled individually. This does not affect the use of sound-related commands in scripts.
• Pressing Control-C while marking text in a window now copies the text and cancels the mark process. It took eight years to think of that. It's all about quality you know ;)
• Remember how you can 'collapse' all windows you have opened on a network into their status window with Alt+F1? The status window switchbar button now displays the highlight state of all associated windows hidden with Alt+F1.
• Disconnecting via the file menu/toolbar/disconnect command now results in a soft disconnect, allowing any pending server info to be displayed. Incoming data will not trigger scripts, etc. during this time. Eg. if you connect to EFnet, and then disconnect, EFnet sends a "Closing Link" message to the client. Past versions of mIRC wouldn't display that since they were performing a hard disconnect.

Since this version has far too many improvements, new features and functions to mention here in detail you'll have to dig through the help file and the whatsnew.txt on the Web to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Information on changes in older versions is available in the versions.txt. If you have additional questions, may we invite you to the Message Boards on this website? The boards offer great help with everything related to mIRC!

What was new in version 6.03? (August 16th, 2002).

With this new release we hope to address most, if not all, of the comments, requests and remarks we recieved over the past weeks. We tried to focus on fixing the few but annoying buggies found in the previous version, but of course added quite a few new features and functions.

The 'perform on connect' sorting mistake has been fixed, also the numeric 330 bug, the flickering menubar and toolbar, the ! on INPUT processing bug, the $read and a similar freeze bug with invalid filenames, a switchbar multi-line display bug, dcc ignore bug, a /timer bug, and a bug in the highlight feature are fixed. The $ticks has changed back to the old method because of a bug in Windows' high performance timer... *mumble*

Other fixes are the /load command that could trigger multiple on load events, a proxy authentication bug, the $asctime() bug, a small dcc server ignore bug, and an important memory bug in script parser, where mIRC checks if a script has been loaded/unloaded while a script is running.

mIRC now supports several IRCX events on any server that sends them, not just for IRCX servers, it will (again) try to rejoin a channel even if it was +i or +k, we improved the way mIRC determines what default web browser you use, rewrote the mark/copy routine, and added a $nick().idle property that returns the idle time for a person on a channel. You can also use this idle time feature in the nick color list dialog in the addressbook!

Since this version has far too many improvements, new features and functions to mention here in detail you'll have to dig through the help file and the whatsnew.txt on the Web to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Information on changes in older versions is available in the versions.txt. If you have additional questions, may we invite you to the Message Boards on this website? The boards offer great help with everything related to mIRC!

What was new in version 6.02? (June 6th, 2002).

With this new release we hope to address most, if not all, of the comments, requests and remarks we recieved after the release of version 6.01. Several changes are initiated by the multi-server features introduced in mIRC 6.0. You might want to check out how the 'perform on connect section' has been moved to the connect section, near the server settings, and allows you to specify a different set of commands for different networks, and how basic features as the /aop /avoice /protect and /ignore commands now allow you to specify a network name.

The multi-line switchbar options in the display dialog have been extended, mIRC no longer closes a channel window on reconnect to a server if you have keep channels open enabled, no longer attempts to rejoin a channel on reconnect if the channel was invite only or if it was locked and mIRC didn't have the key.

Changes scripters will like include the $ticks which does no longer wrap around every 49.7 days, custom dialogs that no longer require an ok or cancel button, and new events like on CONNECTFAIL that triggers when a connection attempt including its retries has failed.

Fancy new things have been added like the Alt+F1 key combination that hides all windows associated to a status window switchbar button 'in' that button. Try it and you'll see what I mean!

Several more or less annoying bugs have been fixed;

• A memory handling bug which may have caused mIRC to crash in situations where it wasn't able to allocate memory,
• a bug with mIRC not saving certain settings on exit, including /notify command line changes, as well as server settings, ignore thingies, etc,
• a tab key nick completion bug,
• a window tiling bug when a maximized window was closed while auto-tile/cascade was enabled,
• the on keydown/keyup events in custom @windows not handling some keys,
• editboxes that limited the amount of text that could be entered,
• the "* Disconnected" message not being displayed in channel window in some situations,
• a problem where mIRC was not using the system default for browser/email programs,
• a small problem where the nick in a channel/query window titlebar not being updated on a nick change if the "Show nick in channel/query titlebars" option was enabled,
• ...and lots of other things are improved or fine-tuned after user feedback, your feedback!

What was new in version 6.01? (February 10th, 2002).

mIRC 6.01 addresses most, if not all, of the comments, requests and remarks we recieved after the release of version 6.0. We'd like to emphasize the new visual style dialog that allows you to set and change frame styles (borders, lines and bevels), switchbar buttons, and a new option to disable support for irc:// chat links.

Several more or less annoying bugs have been fixed; a socket bug which that very likely caused the crashes some of you have been reporting, a connection retry bug which may have resulted in wrong nicknames, channel prefixes and nick mode prefixes, etc. Other fixes are;

• an /ignore -u bug with multi-server support,
• Agent support,
• IRCX support for MS servers,
• the on NOSOUND event not triggering,
• the notify list that got lost if you used command line parameters,
• the password editbox,
• dcc send/get windows not showing "transfer incomplete",
• and lots of other things are improved or fine-tuned after user feedback....

May I remind you how in version 6.0 multi-server support was added? With this feature mIRC allows you to connect to multiple servers at the same time. You'll notice the 'Multi-Server' button that provides a couple of new options supporting this new feature. If you hadn't upgraded yet to version 6.0, this is the moment to get 6.01!

What was new in version 6.0? (February 3rd, 2002).

You'll notice lots of little and larger changes to smoothen your IRC experience. Lots of 16bit-specific code has been removed from mIRC's routines. 16 bit related memory issues, kludges and bugs are solved. The new multi-server feature required major internal changes to mIRC's code and forced improvement of code in many areas which has undoubtfully resulted in an even more stable mIRC! Working on this important new feature we focussed on keeping mIRC as it always has been; no-nonsense, robust, -working- :-) We tried to keep the changes to the scripting language etc, as clean as possible. Upgrading should be fairly painless. We really recommend you to download and try mIRC v6.0!

Changes, improvements and new features:
As usual the new MIRC offers heaps of changes and improvements. Lots of little and larger changes to smoothen your IRC experience. Since mIRC 6.0 is no longer available in a 16 bit issue all references to the old 32 and 16 bit distributions have been removed. Lots of 16bit-specific code has been removed from mIRC's routines. Lots of 16 bit related memory issues, problems, kludges and bugs are solved. All dialogs in mIRC should now use standard dialog fonts for the version of Windows you are using. When running XP, mIRC now uses your XP theme for dialogs, buttons, etc....
Some of the many many improvements, changes and fixes in this new mIRC are;

• The max cps fserve option now allows a dcc send to use up the full max cps if no other dccs are using the bandwidth.
• You can now create a second editbox on channel windows, via the channel window system menu, the right-click menu in the editbox, or the Alt+Q shortcut.
• mIRC will no longer rejoin an open channel window if you disconnect and then connect to a different network.
• Added WMA/OGG support to sounds dialog, /splay and /sound commands, and added several new new identifiers to support it. (Note: these new identifiers replace several old ones that are still supported -for now- but no longer documented.)
• Added 'Trusted Users' list to DCC Auto-get options dialog.
• Firewall support can now be enabled separately for server and dcc connections.
• When running under XP, mIRC now uses your XP theme for dialogs, buttons, etc.
• mIRC now processes incoming server messages rather strict, ignoring corrupted or malicious lines, and treats ctcp messages that use an invalid format as plain text.
• Added "Queue own messages" option to flood dialog, applying to your PRIVMSG and NOTICE messages.
• The connect retry options (including a new retry delay option) in the File/Options/Connect/Options dialog now have their own button.

1. Enable the 'new server window' checkbox in the connect dialog, select a server, and hit the 'connect to IRC Server' button,
2. Hold down shift key when selecting a server from the right mouse-click popup menu of the 'options' button in the toolbar (reread that ;),
3. Use the new /server -m command.

The new multi-server feature required major internal changes to mIRC's code and forced improvement of code in many areas which has un-doubtfully resulted in an even more stable and robust mIRC! Working on this important new feature we focussed on keeping mIRC as it always has been; no-nonsense, robust, -working- :) We tried to keep the changes to the scripting language etc, as clean as possible. Upgrading should be fairly painless.
Still a multitude of ID's, identifiers and commands has been changed and added to support the new parallel connections. Everything in mIRC now has an unique id number; all windows, server connections, dcc sends/get/chats, etc....

You know by now that you have to dig through the help file and whatsnew.txt to get hold of the complete list of changes and their impact? Don't forget that ;-) Information on changes in older versions is available in the versions.txt btw. If you have questions, may we invite you to the Message Boards on this website? This discussion platform offers great help with everything related to mIRC!

What was new in version 5.91? (June 15th, 2001).

As usual the new MIRC offers heaps of changes and improvements. Lots of little and larger changes to smoothen your IRC experience. Although this version is merely a bugfix version, several functions and features have been added or improved.

Among the bugs you might have noticed is one that messed up the merging of popup menu's. In this new mIRC complete menu's from different scripts will merge properly. Also fixed are bugs in $eval(), $var() and small thingies in the 16 bit mIRC. A problem with the /whois on query option not working in single message window is solved. Overall there aren't many things you'll notice but all together enough to make your upgrade worth the trouble.

Scripters should note that $null has been completely removed as a value. This has some potential to break your scripts. When you use $null in a script, mIRC now converts it to an empty value, instead of the value "$null"!

• The flood protection has been improved with options to take your own ctcp's and 'whois on query' settings into account. You can even make Op status related commands (like /kick) to bypass the anti-flood queue.
• Since IRC networks don't provide a consistent method of telling an IRC client the name of the network it's connected to, mIRC now supports the numeric 005 NETWORK=name token. Hope that helps?
• When you have the "keep channel open" option enabled, mIRC now clears the nicklist if a channel window is open but not joined.
• A "Blink icons" option is added to the Display dialog. With this option the switchbar icons of channel/query windows will blink if there's a message/highlight or flash event.
• Notify no longer triggers on a nick change if nick has only changed case.
• A $+(n1,...,nN) identifier that combines parameters has been added.
• The notify options to show address and time are re-added.
• The Hash commands are extended to allow storage of binary variables.
• The variable types dispatch and unknown are added to $com(). These allow you to pass dispatch/unknown pointers as parameters in a $com() call, or to retrieve dispatch/unknown pointers from a $com() call, by reference.
• You can now pause and resume a timer with the /timer -pr switches.
• mIRC now waits 30 seconds before a re-connect attempt if the server says that you were throttled for connecting too fast.

What was new in version 5.9? (April 26th, 2001).

• Something you should really take a look at is the new and improved Address Book. It still offers an easy interface to addresses and related info of other IRC users but now also includes your notify list, Op, Voice, Ignore and Protect lists and a new feature to color all nicknames around that match a certain format. You wanted all ops blue? your friends green? target and enemy red? You got it!
• A smart "Keep channels open" option has been added to the IRC/Options dialog. It keeps channel windows open after you're kicked so you can read the last part of a conversation.
• Built-in ctcp flood protection for ctcp version, ping, finger, and time has been added. It will ignore (groups) of users for up to 10 seconds.
• In the display section you can now enable transparency support for desktop windows under Win 2000.
• The dcc send/get windows interface has been redesigned. You can now easier open folders and resend files straight from the dcc send dialog. Also a small error in the DCC Send/Get cps calculation was fixed and the maximum bandwidth use by outgoing DCC's is better limited now.
• Agent support no longer strips out high-ascii characters used in non-english languages.

All you mIRC scripters will love this version for its load of new features. You know by now that you have to dig through the help file and versions.txt to get hold of the best among them? Don't forget that ;-) You should note that several Strings and Identifiers have been changed! Most of them have more options or parameters or are changed to fit better to the standard.. No worries; most old formats are still supported but you -should- update your scripts to prevent problems in the future!

We think most of you will be happy with the simple things like $input(), $read() instead of $read, and $style() for popups. Also $eval() is nice, and please note the parser change for [brackets]'s!

• The script editor editbox can now handle 64k of text in the 32bit mIRC.
• Things might get a little tricky when you try the new support for regular expressions (regex), COM objects and SendMessage() to communicate with mIRC. This really is something for the hefty scripter...

What was new in version 5.82? (December 14th, 2000).

• The 32bit mIRC will no longer work under Windows 3.1x with the Win32s 32-bit extentions. Since the 16 bit mIRC offers exactly the same as the 32 bit mIRC this makes no real difference to users of old Windows versions. Simply use the 16 bit mIRC. This change shaved 100k off the exe size and makes mIRC faster since no internal fixes are being used any more.
• The support of the irc://address.or.server and .chat file formats has improved a lot. It will use DDE again so if a mIRC is already running on your PC, it is used. If no mIRC is found via DDE, a new mIRC is opened. It pops up a confirmation dialog if mIRC is already running and connected to a server. Read more on http://www.mirc.com/mirclink.html.
• By popular request the Names button is added back to the Channels Folder.
• Try the new Control+L key combination. It will enable a line that marks the last line in the scrollback buffer of a window that you most probable have read. The line is updated if mIRC isn't the active window. Control+L turns the line on/off if it's currently visible.
• Mousewheel support for microsoft mice is fixed. Some small thingy blocked its use in previous mIRC versions. A small bug in the DCC ignore settings dialog is fixed. Also the channel central, that was trying to set topic even if you didn't have ops, is fixed. You can open the channel central with the /channel command btw.

What was new in version 5.81? (November 9th, 2000).

This version has far too many improvements, new features and functions to mention here in detail. I'll point to some of the simple ones here - the ones you might encounter right away;

• Remember how mIRC now uses it's own internal beep sound for event beeps? By popular request the internal beep is now only played for event beeps. mIRC uses the default windows sound for errors etc. and a "pc speaker" option has been added overriding both of them. Happy?
• Another looong awaited feature is a built-in uninstaller. I wouldn't know why that is needed but next time you clean up your PC, mIRC is easily removed by the control panel add/remove dialog! It also removes all registry changes btw.
• An important change has been made to the socket connection routines. mIRC was binding the connect socket, even if it wasn't necessary. This may have prevented mIRC from connecting through a DSL or network environment.
• The Flood protection has been improved by sending a NOTICE instead of a PRIVMSG to the server every now and then. As you might know mIRC will wait for this notice to get back from the server before it resumes sending any queued lines.
• A small problem with the .chat files that unloaded all of your remotes has been fixed. More important is the complete integration of .chat file support into the mIRC executable. The mlink helper applications are no longer needed! mIRC will also set up the .cha and .chat associations in the registry.
• With mIRC 5.81 we're experimenting with support for URL's of the irc://irc.undernet.org:6667/mIRC format. This makes it very easy to add a link to your website leading to your favorite IRC channel! Give it a try? Please note however that this only seems to be working for MS Internet Exploder -not Netscape- we're still working on this :)
• The new /anick command no longer changes your current nickname, unless the alternate nick is the active one. /nick will try to prevent nick and altnick from becoming identical nicks.
• By popular request you can now either disable, or ignore all except certain known file types, or ignore only certain known (and often malicious) file types in the DCC Ignore feature.

Buggies fixed:
mIRC's new version fixes most, if not all, of the small but nevertheless annoying buggies found in the previous version 5.8. Some prominent ones are;

• A small change in the Channel Central (use the /channel command) blocked the use of control characters in the topic editbox. This blocked the use of colors etc. Sorry.
• The /splay command will now accept long file names even if they're not enclosed in quotes and error messages are now also wrapped.
• A little bug that emerged if you double-clicked URL's under Windows ME is fixed.
• Another buggy in the Agent wasn't allowing you to turn agent on/off on a per channel/query window basis.

Scripters:
All you mIRC scripters will love this version for its load of new features. You know by now that you have to dig through the help file and versions.txt to get hold of the best among them. Some things you might miss there are the old /closemsg command since the /close handles closing query windows a-ok. Also gone from the documents are the $sdir, $file, $hfile, and $dir identifiers that are still supported but are no longer documented in the help file. Please remove their use from your scripts and use their new alternatives! In the future mIRC will no longer support them.

What was new in version 5.8? (September 5th, 2000).

Buggies fixed:
mIRC's version 5.8 fixed most, if not all, of the small but nevertheless annoying buggies found in the previous version 5.71. Some prominent ones are a bug in the Agent support that made Agents speak channel actions even if only private actions were enabled, a bug in the highlight feature which was matching against nicknames incorrectly in some cases, and a small bugger in the flood protection.

Improvements and new features:
This version has far too many improvements, new features and functions to mention here in detail. I'll point to some of the simple ones here - the ones you might encounter right away;

• mIRC now uses it's own internal beep sound for event beeps. To several users it was very annoying that some setting in windows messed up the most simple beeps in mIRC. This should be solved now.
• The URL's you can click on in mIRC now have their own right-click popup menu.
• The "No such nick/channel" message is now immediately shown in query windows. You won't be chatting into empty space anymore if somebody decided to leave without telling you.
• A new channel central dialog displays the ban, exept and invite lists a lot clearer. Also an Edit button has been added for on the fly editing of an address.
• mIRC now supports mp3 files through the /splay command. Several related events and identifiers are available. With the $mp3(filename) identifier you can look up all kinds of properties like title, artist, length, bitrate, sample mode, etc..

Scripters will love this version for its load of new features. You might like to know mIRC can now be run as a service under 95/98, you can change the rgb value of a color, use identifiers to mime or uu-encode/-decode text, use the improved support for DLL's, use hash tables.... I'm sure you will have a lot of fun! Apart from these thingies over hundred other features, variables and identifiers have been added. Have fun exploring them!

What was new in version 5.71? (May 7th, 2000).

mIRC's new version 5.71 fixes most, if not all, of the small but nevertheless annoying 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 color 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!

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!

Requirements - 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.

Distribution - 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. 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)

Registration - 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 evaluation period you decide to continue to use mIRC, you're asked to pay a small registration fee of $20. This will allow Khaled, mIRC's author, to go on developing and supporting mIRC with the same spirit and enthusiasm as he has shown in the past 6 years. Your registration of mIRC will support the future of mIRC's www pages for help, hints and support and encourage the development of mIRC, its help files and the FAQ. :-) Once you registered one version of mIRC, you're allowed to use all future versions for free!

The mIRC help file and the registration page give you all information needed to register mIRC. You will see mIRC can be registered online with a credit card. If you feel uncomfortable about using your credit card online, mIRC can also be registered by faxing your credit card information. If you don't have a credit card, you can also send a cheque or money order by postal mail.

(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...

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.

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 unsent 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)

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