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ACCOUNTING FOR WINDOWS XP USERS Everyone who uses Windows XP needs a user account. A user account is like a cocktail party nametag that helps Windows recognize who's sitting at the keyboard. Windows XP dishes out three types of user accounts: Administrator, Limited, and Guest. Each type of account gets to do different functions on the computer. If the computer were an apartment building, the administrator would be the manager, the limited accounts would be the tenants, and guests would only get to drop by and use the bathroom in the lobby. In computer lingo that means the administrator controls the entire computer, deciding who gets to use it and what they can do on it. Limited accounts can use most of the computer, but they can't make any big changes to it. And guests, well, they can use the computer, but because the computer doesn't recognize them by name, their actions are tightly restricted.
WINDOWS XP USER ACCOUNTS Windows XP enables an entire family or small office share a single computer. Because everybody has a user account, Windows keeps track of everybody's settings. In fact, the same computer acts like five different computers for a family of five. Best yet, the computer keeps track of everybody's programs while different people use the computer. Switching users is fast and easy. While holding down the Windows key (it's usually between your keyboard's Ctrl and Alt keys), press the letter L. Wham! The Welcome screen pops up, letting another person use the computer for a while. After you finish using the computer, hold down the Windows key and press the letter L. Wham! The Welcome screen pops up again, letting a different user log on.
USING MULTIPLE-USER ACCOUNTS IN WINDOWS XP Windows XP allows bunches of people to work on the same computer by doling out a separate account to each user. For this reason, it seems like every person in the house has his or her own computer, set up the way he or she likes it. For example, Harry's desktop is packed with icons that load his favorite games, while Adrien's desktop contains Internet links to her favorite finance and cooking Web sites. Getting started is simple -- log on and introduce yourself by clicking your user name. A few seconds after you click, Windows XP shows you your desktop, ready for you to make a mess.
WINDOWS XP ACTIVATION FEATURE When you install Windows XP, an annoying Window pops up, asking you to "activate" your version of Windows. When you click the Activate button, Windows XP takes a "picture" of your computer's components, links them to the serial number on your copy of Windows XP, and sends that information to Microsoft over the Internet. Then, if you or anybody else ever tries to install that same version of Windows on a different computer, Windows XP says you're using somebody else's version of Windows XP, and it won't work.
AVOIDING EVIL ADD-ONS AND HIJACKERS Microsoft designed Internet Explorer to let programmers add extra features through add-ons. By installing an add-on program -- toolbars, stock tickers, and program launchers, for instance -- users could wring a little more work out of Internet Explorer. Similarly, many sites use ActiveX -- a fancy word for little programs that add animation and other flashy tricks to a Web site. Unfortunately, dastardly programmers began creating add-ons and ActiveX programs that harm users. Some of these can spy on your activities, bombard your screen with additional ads, redirect your home page to another site, or make your modem dial long-distance numbers to porn sites. Worst yet, some renegade add-ons can install themselves as soon as you visit a Web site -- without asking your permission. For instance, some sites send a barrage of pop-up windows to Internet Explorer. As you struggle to close them all, you may accidentally click an OK button, allowing the site to install its evil add-on. Windows XP's Service Pack 2 packs some new guns to combat these troublemakers. First, if a site tries to sneak a program onto your computer, Internet Explorer quickly blocks it, sending a warning across the top of Internet Explorer's screen. Clicking the warning reveals your options, which are basically to allow the download or software install, or to get more information about it.
MORE ABOUT ADD-ONS AND HIJACKERS Last week's tip told you about some of Windows XP Service Pack 2's new ability to stop Web sites from sneaking software onto your computer. But unfortunately, Internet Explorer can't tell the good downloads from the bad, leaving the burden of proof to you. But if you see a message that Internet Explorer has blocked a program and you haven't requested a download, chances are the site's trying to harm you: Don't try to thwart the warning and download the add-on or ActiveX program. If a bad add-on creeps in somehow, you're not completely out of luck. Internet Explorer's Add-on Manager lets you disable it. To see all the add-on programs installed in Internet Explorer (and remove any that you know are bad), follow these steps:
Not all add-ons are bad. Many good ones let you play movies, hear sounds, or view special content on a Web site. Don't delete an add-on simply because it's listed in the Add-on Manager.
USING THE ADDRESS TOOLBAR You can open any program on your computer by simply typing its name in any folder address bar or at the Run dialog box. So, why not put an address bar on your taskbar? Then you can open any program directly from your Desktop without wading through a bunch of menus. Right-click your taskbar and choose Toolbars, Address to display an address bar on your taskbar. The Address bar is a toolbar whose main purpose is to call up Internet Explorer when you type or paste a URL. It looks and works just like the Internet Explorer Address bar. Despite its name, the Address bar is also a command line processor, which means that you can type a filename into it and the associated application will open and display the file. You have to type the complete pathname as well as the filename, and there is no Browse button, as there is in the Start, Run dialog box.
ADMINISTRATORS HAVE ALL THE FUN Windows XP gets really picky about who gets to do what on your computer. The computer's owner gets the Administrator account. Everybody else gets a Limited account. What does that mean? Well, only the administrator can do these things on the computer:
Most other people have Limited accounts. Those accounts, usually bearing the person's name, are created by the administrator especially for those individuals. People with limited accounts can do these things:
DOUBLE-CROSSED BY DOUBLE-CLICKS? In an effort to make things easier, Windows lets you choose whether a single-click or a double-click should open a file or folder. But if you're not satisfied with the click method Windows Me uses, here's how to change it:
Don't like to follow steps? Just click the Folder Options' Restore Defaults button, and Windows will bring back double-clicking.
I CLICKED THE WRONG BUTTON (BUT I HAVEN'T LIFTED MY GINGER YET) Clicking the mouse takes two steps: a push and a release. If you click the wrong button on-screen and haven't lifted your finger yet, press the Esc button and slowly slide the mouse pointer off the button on-screen. Then take your finger off the mouse. The screen button pops back up, and Windows Me pretends nothing happened. Thankfully.
QUICK BASIC MATH WITH CALCULATOR Do you have numbers to crunch, and you can't remember where you put your calculator? All versions of Windows offer several calculator functions built right in. First, start the Calculator by clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, Calculator. Now, take a look at performing a simple calculation:
It's that quick and easy!
CHEATING AT THREE-CARD DRAW On Solitaire's Game menu, click Options. Make sure the option Draw Three is selected. Configure the other options any way you want. After clicking the deck with your mouse, turning over three cards at a time, you can click Game, Undo. Then press and hold the Ctrl+Shift+Alt keys to turn over only one card at a time until the card you need is at the top of the deck.
SHARING A CD-ROM DRIVE If you share a CD-ROM drive with other co-workers, there's a catch to accessing it from a remote computer on a LAN (local area network). When you insert a CD that starts automatically, for example, the program starts on the local computer only. If you want to install a program from that CD on a remote computer, you need to open the drive's icon within My Network Places to get to the disk's contents. Optionally, you can right-click the icon and choose Explore to view the contents of the CD.
SAVING CHATS At work, you may often need to take notes on a conversation you have with a co-worker or client. If you use MSN Messenger to chat with that person, you don't need to scribble down notes as you type -- something that would be quite difficult to do unless you had a third hand! Instead, you can save a copy of an entire conversation with someone in MSN Messenger, in case you ever need to refer to some important information within that conversation later. To save a conversation, follow these steps:
The chat is placed in a text file. To review the conversation later, just navigate to the folder containing it and open the text file.
DISCOVERING THE CHARACTER MAP Windows's Character Map lets you add weird foreign characters, such as a, [sterling], or even ß, into your document. Character Map makes it so easy to give your documents that extra shine a la belle étoile. To get there, click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map and follow these steps to put a foreign character in your work:
The symbols in the Character Map box are easier to see if you hold down the mouse button and move the pointer over them.
TIME FOR THE ANNUAL CLEAN-A-FEST Should old acquaintance be forgot . . . But over the course of a year many computer acquaintances can be forgotten. Or dropped. Or misplaced. Or whatever. Creating an annual checklist to keep your Windows system lean, mean, and clean is a good idea:
CLEANING UP BEFORE A REINSTALL Sometimes removing a program and reinstalling it isn't sufficient. The problems may persist; and in some cases, pieces of the old program get left behind, even if the uninstaller tells you that it got everything. If you believe that remnants of an old program are hampering your attempts to get it to reinstall correctly, try this:
GETTING RID OF THE DOUBLE-CLICK Everyone who uses Windows is used to the venerable convention of single-clicking an item to select it and double-clicking to open it. Everyone who uses the World Wide Web is used to the convention of pointing at an object to select it and clicking once to open it. With the interface changes added to Windows 2000, NT, and XP, you can adopt the point-to-select, click-once-to-open convention -- and you don't have to use the Active Desktop. Just follow these steps:
CHANGING YOUR COMPUTER'S SETTINGS The Settings tab of the Control Panel allows you to change the color quality of your monitor between Medium (16 bit) and Highest (32 bit) used by Windows XP, and select a new screen resolution (the higher the number of pixels, the smaller the items and fonts appear on the desktop, enabling Windows to display more stuff on-screen). You can also click the Advanced button to open a dialog box for your monitor in which you can tweak your computer monitor and screen adapter card settings. Click the Troubleshoot button to open a diagnostics screen in the Help and Support Services window that can suggest things to try if you're experiencing screen display problems. To reach the Control Panel, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, Display. The settings tab is the last of five tabs, following Themes, Desktop, Screensaver, and Appearance.
REDUCING CLUTTER IN YOUR CONTACTS LIST If you use Outlook Express as your default email program with Windows XP, it can be overly paternalistic. Case in point: Whenever you send a message to someone (even if it's a reply to a message that was sent to you), the person you send the message to is automatically added to your Contacts list. More than that, if you add someone to your Windows Messenger Contacts list, and you open OE with Windows Messenger running, Outlook Express scarfs up the name and puts it in the Contacts list, too. That might be well and good if OE had a way to identify and eliminate duplicates, or tell if you really wanted to keep a specific reply-to e-mail address. But it doesn't. To tell OE that you don't want it to add names to your Contacts list automatically:
You probably want to go through your Address Book and get rid of the duplicates. Choose Tools, Address Book, and be braced for some hard work. Any time you want to add someone who has sent you a message to your Contacts list, simply right-click the person's name at the top of the message (or in any list of messages, such as the Inbox or the Deleted Items list) and click Add to Address Book.
CONSIDERING THE CONTENT ADVISOR It's no secret that the Internet is a bit dangerous, especially if you have kids. You can use the Content Advisor to limit the online locations that your computer can visit.
If you want to view sites that you don't want others to see, you can do that, too. On the General tab of the Content Advisor dialog box, make sure that the Supervisor Can Type a Password to Allow Viewers to View Restricted Content check box is selected, and then click Create Password. In the dialog box that appears, enter the password, confirm it, and then enter a hint and click OK. Now if you're logged on as the system administrator, you can get to any restricted site by using this password.
LOOKING FOR SPY COOKIES ON YOUR PC Are you worried about spy cookies on your PC? Don't be overly concerned: Almost everybody has them, and if the spy cookie cow is already out of the barn, there isn't a whole lot you can do. How's that for a mixed metaphor? If you want to see spy cookies on your machine:
Not all cookies are bad. But the bad ones -- spy cookies in particular -- can be very irritating. You can end up on spam lists. Your personal information could go to somebody you've never heard of. Your Web surfing habits could be tracked. Not good. Beat this by installing a bad cookie catcher. The best is a product from Lavasoft called Ad-aware Standard Edition. It's free for noncommercial use. Just go to www.lavasoft.nu [ http://www.lavasoft.nu ] and in the Software category on the left, click Ad-aware. Then click Download. Follow the instructions to download a copy of Ad-aware Standard. When the installer is finished, double-click the Ad-aware icon that is automatically placed on the Window desktop. Immediately click Check for Updates Now, then click Connect, and then click Scan Now. From here, before you proceed with a scan, click the Settings button (the one that looks like a gear, at the top of the page). Ad-aware offers to let you change the settings. In general, Lavasoft recommend that you not run Ad-aware automatically when Windows starts.
TURNING OFF COOKIES Some people like cookies. Others avoid 'em. But like them or not, Internet Explorer likes to create secret cookies -- files on your hard drive that contain information about Web sites you've recently visited. Although Internet Explorer lets any site create a cookie, if you don't like the concept of cookies, you may turn it off: Click on Internet Options from Internet Explorer's Tools menu and click on the Security Tab. Click on the Globe icon and click on the Custom Level button. From there, you can Disable cookies, Enable them, or make a site ask you for permission before creating a cookie.
CHANGING THE CURSOR If you think the default cursor is boring (or difficult to see), Windows gives you the option of changing it. Just be careful not to change it to another standard cursor (for example, changing the Normal Select cursor to the Busy hourglass cursor). This could prove slightly confusing for you and completely baffling to anybody else who works on your computer. If you make a choice and decide it was a mistake, click the Use Default button on the Pointers tab in the Mouse Properties dialog box to return a selected cursor to its default choice. To change the cursor:
DATA RECOVERY It's not impossible to recover data from a crashed hard disk. But the process requires a clean room and highly specialized skills. In other words, it's darn expensive. Furthermore, there's no way of knowing in advance just how much data, if any, can be recovered from the drive. So you may have to shell out a good deal of money to recover little, or nothing, of any real value. Still, sometimes that's a chance you'll just have to take. Data recovery services, as they're called, are few and far between and not always easy to find. Your best bet is to use your favorite search engine on the Web to search for the phrase data recovery. If you can't find one locally, you'll need to remove the hard drive from your system and ship it to the service center. Bonus tip: If you work in a company with an Information Systems department, then become good buddies with a few of the techs. They may be able to help you with any personal computer emergencies that may crop up.
SECURING YOUR DATA The buzz about security these days is all about the Internet. Everyone is worried about all the nefarious programs that can be delivered right to your system via the Internet. Problem is, the Internet is not your biggest security problem. The biggest threat you face is to your local machine -- security issues would exist even if you unplugged the network cable that leads to the Internet. This is not to say that you shouldn't pay attention to Internet-related security; you should. You just need to be aware that if you don't make your system secure from non-Internet-related threats, you're missing the most likely source of security problems. Consider these, as examples:
If you give your system away or sell it to someone else, they can use software to access your deleted data. Make sure you use a secure deletion program like Drive Scrubber or Digital Shredder to remove all traces of your data before the old system leaves your hands.
DON'T FORGET TO DEFRAG When writing information to your hard disk, Windows isn't the most careful shelf stocker. It often breaks files into pieces, stuffing them into different nooks and crannies. When rummaging around for all the parts, Windows subsequently takes longer to retrieve the files. To fix the problem, choose the Control Panel's Performance and Maintenance category and select Rearrange Items on Your Hard Disk to Make Programs Run Faster. When the Disk Defragmenter window appears, click the Analyze button. Windows inspects your computer's hard drive and reports back. If it says your hard drive doesn't need defragmentation, click the Close button, close the program, and move on. But if it says you should defragment, click the Defragment button. The Disk Defragmenter does its job in the background as you work, sometimes finishing in a few minutes, other times working through the evening. When it's finished, your computer runs more quickly when opening and closing files.
DEFRAG FUN When writing information to your hard disk, Windows isn't the most careful shelf stocker. Sometimes, it breaks files apart, stuffing them into nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, Windows then takes longer to retrieve the files. To speed things up, use the Disk Defragmenter: Use the Rearrange Items on My Hard Disk task that pops up when you choose the Control Panel's Performance and Maintenance category. Feel free to run Disk Defragmenter every few weeks, especially if your computer seems to be running slowly or you can hear your hard drive making frantic rummaging noises.
UNDELETING A FILE Sooner or later, your finger will push the Delete key at the wrong time, and you'll delete the wrong file. A slip of the finger, the wrong nudge of a mouse, or, if you're in southern California, a small earthquake at the wrong time can make a file disappear. Zap! Scream! When the tremors subside, double-click the Recycle Bin, and the Recycle Bin box drops down from the heavens. The files listed in the Recycle Bin can be brought back to life simply by dragging them out of the Recycle Bin box: Use the mouse to point at the name of the file you want to retrieve and, while holding down the mouse button, point at the desktop. Then let go of the mouse. Windows moves the once-deleted file out of the Recycle Bin and places the newly revived file onto your desktop.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SHORTCUT AND AN ICON An icon for a file, folder, or program looks pretty much like a shortcut, except that the shortcut has an arrow wedged in its lower reaches. And double-clicking on a shortcut does pretty much the same thing as double-clicking on an icon: starts a program or loads a file or folder. But a shortcut is only a servant of sorts. After you double-click on the shortcut, it runs over to the program, file, or folder that the shortcut represents and kickstarts that program, file, or folder into action. You could do the same thing yourself by rummaging through your computer's folders, finding the program, file, or folder you're after, and personally double-clicking on its icon to bring it to life. But creating a shortcut so that you don't have to rummage so much is often more convenient.
DISPLAYING THE TRADITIONAL DESKTOP ICONS Older versions of Windows had a few icons that always appeared on the desktop:
Of these five, only the Recycle Bin appears on the Windows XP desktop by default. If you want to display any of the other icons, follow these steps:
The icons you selected should be visible onscreen, along with all the others you have.
KEEPING YOUR ICONS STRAIGHT Don't be confused by a program's icon on your desktop and a program's button on the taskbar along the bottom of your screen. They're two different things. The button at the bottom of the screen stands for a program that has already been loaded into the computer's memory. It's already running, ready for immediate action. The icon on your desktop or in Windows Me Explorer stands for a program that is sitting on the computer's hard disk waiting to be loaded. If you mistakenly click the icon in the Windows Explorer or desktop rather than the button on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, you load a second copy of that program. Two versions of the program are loaded: one running as a window, and the other running as a taskbar button waiting to be turned back into a window. Running two versions can cause confusion -- especially if you start entering stuff into both versions of the same program. You won't know which window has the right version!
ADDING WEB CONTENT TO THE DESKTOP You can add Web content, such as regularly updated weather maps, stock tickers, news wires, and sports scores, to your Windows 2000 desktop. However, you need an Internet connection that is either constantly active or at least fairly frequently connected. To add Web content, follow these steps:
MY DOUBLE-CLICKS ARE NOW SINGLE CLICKS! In an effort to make things easier, Windows XP lets people choose whether a single click or a double click should open a file or folder. But if you're not satisfied with the click method Windows XP uses, here's how to change it:
Don't like to follow steps? Just click the Restore Defaults button in Folder Options, and Windows brings back double-clicking.
DISK DO'S AND DON'TS Floppy disks, or floppies, primarily come in handy for storing a backup copy of a few important files, installing new software, or moving files between a laptop and desktop computer. Keep the following in mind the next time you work with floppy disks:
THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER If you're accustomed to earlier versions of Windows, you may be surprised to discover that your My Documents folder in Windows XP is no longer in the root folder of the C: drive, where it used to be. The My Documents folder is actually now under C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername. This little change is so transparent, and so well hidden, that you may not even discover it for quite a while after upgrading to XP. The reason for the change has to do with the improved support for multiple users in Windows XP. Each user has his or her own folder within the Documents and Settings folder. That folder, in turn, contains Cookies, Desktop settings, Favorites, a My Documents folder, and more, for each user. Exactly which of those folders actually comes into play while Windows is running is determined by the user's name.
SHOWING RECENT DOCUMENTS Some people love the recent documents feature. Most people hate it. That's why Microsoft turned it off in the final, shipping version of Windows XP/Home. Heaven only knows why it's present in Windows XP/Pro. In most normal circumstances — with well-behaved programs that don't crash — Windows keeps track of which documents you've opened. You can have Windows show a list of those documents on the Start menu, just under My Documents. Folks who like the feature appreciate being able to retrieve documents quickly and easily, without spelunking for the program that created them: Click a Word document in the My Recent Documents folder, and Word comes to life, with the document open and ready to rumble. Folks who hate the feature would just as soon open the application and use the application's most recently opened file list (typically on the File menu) to retrieve their documents. Some don't particularly want to leave (yet another) record of what they've been doing lying around for prying eyes. Follow these steps if you want to turn on My Recent Documents:
Note that you can return to this location to clear out the list. But clearing the list here does not clear similar lists in your applications, such as Word or Internet Explorer. For those, you have to refer to the application itself.
FIDDLING WITH DRIVERS Windows comes with drivers needed to install almost anything you want to attach to your computer. However, sometimes you want to install something that's either too new for Windows XP to know about or too old for it to remember. In that case, it's up to you to track down and install a Windows XP driver for that part. The driver is simply a piece of software that lets Windows communicate with the part. The best drivers come with an installation program that automatically places the software in the right place. The worst drivers leave all the grunt work up to you. If Windows XP doesn't automatically recognize and install your newly attached piece of hardware after it's turned on, follow these steps to locate and install a new driver:
SHARING DRIVES Disk space is always at a premium. Graphics and image files, large application files, and data files are getting larger and larger. You can use a network drive or server for storing both your large and small files. In addition to sharing hard drives, you can share file storage devices -- tape drives, Zip and Jaz drives, CD-RW drives, and even floppy drives. If your computer doesn't have a Zip or CD-RW drive, for example, but someone else on your network does, you can save files to that drive if sharing is enabled.
TOO MANY NEW FEATURES TO LIST Windows XP Professional, by Microsoft, is the advanced Windows version specifically designed for large businesses. This advanced version offers many new features to include an easier to use interface, the ability to run applications faster, quicker system start-up, a more reliable operating system allowing it to recover quicker and easier from system problems, enhanced protection from viruses due to common types of Internet attacks, and more. Check out Microsoft's Windows XP Professional Features
SIMPLIFIED FILE MANAGEMENT Files and folders may appear in a window in the following views:
SEEING MORE INFORMATION ABOUT FILES AND FOLDERS Whenever you create a file or folder, Windows scrawls a bunch of secret hidden information on it: its size, the date you created it, and even more trivial stuff. Sometimes it even lets you add your own secret information: lyrics and reviews for your music files and folders, or thumbnail pictures for any of your folders. To see what Windows is calling your files and folders behind your back, right-click on the item and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. Choosing Properties on a Jimi Hendrix song, for instance, brings up bunches of details. Click the General tab and Windows shows that the Jimi Hendrix song is an MP3 audio file of the song "Hey Joe." The song is 3.27 MB in size, and it opens with Windows Media Player. (If you want a different MP3 player to play the song, click the Change button to select a different player.) Click the Summary tab and click the Advanced button for the real fun. Windows displays the song's ID Tag information: the Artist, Album Title, Year, Track Number, Genre, Duration, and technical information. Windows lets you see more information about files as they sit in a folder, too. Choose Details from a folder's View menu. Instead of just displaying icons, Windows displays detailed information about your files. Folders usually display files sorted alphabetically. To sort them differently, right-click inside the folder and click the Arrange Icons By menu. Choose Sort by Size to place the largest files at the list's top. The Sort by Type option groups together files created by the same program. Choose Sort by Date to keep your most recent files at the list's top. When the excitement of the Arrange Icons By menu wears off, try clicking the little buttons at the top of each sorted column. Click the Size button, for instance, to quickly place the largest files at the list's top. Click the Date button to quickly sort by date, instead.
FILES AND SETTINGS TRANSFER WIZARD The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard makes it easy to copy your personal preferences, favorites, taskbar options, Internet and e-mail settings, and personal documents from one computer to another. It's also a handy tool for backing up those items, in case you ever have a major system crash that causes all those items to be lost. There are two ways to get to the wizard:
YOUR FRIEND, THE FLATBED A flatbed scanner has a top that lifts up, just like a copy machine. The sensor head moves in a flatbed scanner while the material that you're scanning remains motionless on top of the scanning glass. Comparatively, with a sheetfed scanner, the material that you're scanning moves through a system of rollers while the sensor remains stationary. Printer manufacturers typically use sheetfed scanning hardware in all-in-one or multifunction devices, which combine the functionality of a printer, a scanner, a fax machine, and a copy machine in one svelte case. Sheetfed scanners aren't recommended, though -- despite the fact that they take up far less space. But here are the top three reasons why you should pick a flatbed scanner:
If you've already invested in a sheetfed model, don't despair; there's no reason to scrap your hardware. However, you'll have to limit yourself somewhat in your material . . . unless, of course, you don't mind cutting pages out of books and magazines to scan them. Here are other specialized types of scanners:
MAKING A FOLDER PRIVATE You can only make your own My Documents folder Private. That's true for all users, all the time, even on a PC that's not connected to a network, and it doesn't matter how many accounts are on the PC. You can't do it to any other folder; nobody else with an Administrator account can do it to you. After you make your My Documents folder Private, you can't make any subfolders "un"private. It's an all-or-nothing deal. If you make My Documents Private, you'd better put a password on your account. Otherwise, anybody who walks up to the machine can get into the folder. The minute you put a password on your account, you need to make a password reset disk so that you can retrieve this private data if you ever forget your password. (Worry not, this will be the subject of next week's tip!) To make My Documents Private, follow these steps:
If you have an Administrator account and you add a password to it by using the Control Panel's User Accounts dialog box, you're asked if you want to make your My Documents folder Private. It's the same setting as the Make This Folder Private setting.
MOVING FILES AND FOLDERS When using the cut and paste commands to move files or folders, you don't have to keep open the first window in which the files or folders were originally located after you cut them. Just be sure that you paste the cut files or folders in a location before you choose Edit, Copy or Edit, Cut again in Windows Millennium Edition.
BUILT-IN HANDLING OF ZIP FILES Compressed Zip files are treated as compressed folders in Windows XP. To add files to a compressed folder, select the files, right-click, and choose Send To, Compressed (zipped) Folder. The Zip file appears as a manila file folder icon with a zipper on it. To copy and decompress files, right-click the compressed folder icon and choose Extract All. Caution: If you install a third-party Zip program, the "compressed folders" feature disappears. You'll need to use your third-party program to manage Zip files.
FIRING UP THE FIREWALL Windows XP comes with its own Internet Connection Firewall, which is there mainly to protect home and small office users of XP. Don't use Internet Connection Firewall if your corporate network already has a firewall or proxy server. And don't use it in an existing network that uses Windows 2000 or XP domain controllers, DHCP servers, DNS servers, gateways, or static IP addresses. If your network uses a remote exchange server to handle e-mail, a firewall will prevent the server from automatically sending e-mail message notifications to Microsoft Outlook 2000 users. That's because the remote procedure call (RPC) that sends the notification has been initiated outside the firewall. Outlook 2000 users can still send and receive e-mail messages normally. However, they need to manually check for new messages from their own computers so that the process begins within the firewall.
CAN THE SPAM WITH THE FIREWALL If you have a cable modem or other ISP that's constantly connected to the Internet, you're especially vulnerable to spam and hackers. See, the Internet assigns your computer a special number whenever it connects. Whenever your modem dials the Internet and connects, your number changes. But if you're constantly connected to the Internet with a cable modem or other 24-hour connection, your number never changes. That makes it easier for hackers to find your computer and, if it's vulnerable, to spread its number around to other hackers. That's where a firewall comes in. Firewall software sits between your computer and the Internet, acting as a door. It enables you to decide what software can access your computer, and when. Windows XP comes with a built-in firewall. To install it, follow these steps:
If you're running a network and using the Internet Connection Sharing to let all the networked computers share the modem, the firewall should be activated only on the host computer -- the computer that's actually connected to the Internet. It doesn't need to be activated on the client computers -- the computers that share the host computer's modem.
MAKING ALL FOLDERS BEHAVE THE SAME WAY It can take days - even weeks - to adjust folders so that they open up showing just the view you like: all large icons arranged by name, for example, or a more detailed view spilling over with information about the file.
If things don't work out - you don't like that current folder after all - return to the Folder Options window and choose the Reset All Folders button.
UNDERSTANDING FOLDER HIERARCHY The Windows Explorer enables you to view the contents of any part of your computer system. As with the My Computer and Internet Explorer 5 windows, you can then use the Windows Explorer to open files (and their associated application programs); start programs; or even open Web pages on the Internet or your company's intranet. The Windows Explorer, however, is most useful when you need to move or copy files to different disks on your computer -- or even to networked drives, if you're on a network. To open the Windows Explorer, click the Start button and then choose [P]rograms, Windows Explorer. Windows opens an Exploring window for your disk drive (C:) that is divided into these two panes:
To select a new part of your system to view in the Contents area pane, simply click the icon for that component in the All Folders pane. An icon in the All Folders pane, with a plus sign connected to it, indicates a sublevel within that icon. When you click a plus sign, Windows expands the outline, showing all the subfolders within the next level. Note also that when you click the plus sign, it turns to a minus sign, and the next level in the item's hierarchy is displayed. Clicking the minus sign collapses the sublevel to which it is attached, thus condensing the outline. When the expanded folder/subfolder outline in the All Folders pane (or the icon arrangements in the Contents pane) becomes too large to view in its entirety given the current Explorer window size, vertical and horizontal scroll bars appear as needed, to help you navigate your way through the lists of folders and system components.
VIEWING YOUR COMPUTER'S FONTS Sure, you see the names of the fonts in your word-processing program. But how can you tell what they look like before choosing one? To find out, choose the Control Panel's Fonts icon. From there, you see what fonts come with Windows Me, you install additional fonts, and you delete the ugly ones you don't like anymore. To be on the safe side, don't delete any fonts that come with Windows Me; only delete fonts that you've installed yourself. Windows programs often borrow Windows Me fonts for menus. If you delete those fonts, your menus mysteriously vanish. And for goodness sake, don't delete any fonts beginning with the letters MS. (Don't delete the fonts that have red lettering in their icons, either.) Double-click any font icon to see what that particular font looks like. For example, if you double-click the icon marked Impact font, Windows Me brings up an eye chart displaying how that font would look on the printed page. (Click the Print button to see what it really looks like on the printed page.)
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR COMPUTER FREEZES UP SOLID Every once in a while, Windows just drops the ball and wanders off somewhere to sit under a tree. You're left looking at a computer that just looks back. Panicked clicks don't do anything. Pressing every key on the keyboard doesn't do anything - or worse yet, the computer starts to beep at every key press. When nothing on-screen moves except the mouse pointer, the computer is frozen up solid. Try the following approaches, in the following order, to correct the problem:
CHECKING A HARD DISK FOR ERRORS Today's hard drives rarely have errors, so you probably don't need to check for any. But if you think your hard drive's acting strangely, and defragmenting it doesn't fix the problem, tell Windows XP to check it for errors. Open My Computer, right-click on your hard drive, and choose Properties. Click the Tools tab and click the Check Now button. (Leave the two options blank.) Click the Start button, and you hear your hard drive whirring away as Windows probes it for problems. If it finds any, follow the Windows instructions for making repair attempts. Also start saving your cash and backing up your data -- repeated errors mean your hard drive may be on its last legs.
THINKING ABOUT AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE In the old days, hard drives were large and couldn't fit into the computer case. Many hard drives were external, out of necessity. Then drives started getting compact, and storing them inside the computer case became the norm. With the advent of FireWire and USB 2.0, drives are crawling back out of the computer case. External drives can be found on any computer retailer's shelves. The price for an external drive ranges from $150 to $400, depending on its capacity. The interest in external drives is driven by two primary reasons: easy backups and easy data transfer. As the amount of data on a typical PC gets larger, the ease of doing backups -- even on CDs -- gets harder. CDs can handle just over 600MB of data, but most hard drives are now at 40GB or more. That's a lot of CDs to use for backup! An easier and faster solution is to use an external hard drive. Plug it in -- normally via a USB or FireWire cable -- and Windows XP recognizes it as just another hard drive. You can copy your files to the hard drive, unplug it, and store it in a safe place. The process is much faster than using either CD or DVD solutions. Recognizing that external hard drives are being used for backups, Maxtor recently came out with a line of external drives geared toward doing them. The drives have a capacity of anywhere from 160GB to 350GB. (That's a lot of data.) The drive enclosure even has a button that can be programmed to do the backup for you. Plug in the drive, push the button, and the backup automatically occurs. Pretty cool! Regarding data transfer, suppose that you work part time at an office and the rest of the time at a client's location -- or even at home. If you work on the same projects in both places, synchronizing data between locations quickly becomes a big chore. The solution is an external drive. If you store your data on the external drive, you can take it with you and plug it into all the systems. When you do, the data is immediately available and ready to use.
NO HARD-DRIVE SPACE TO BURN A CD? Burning a CD in Windows XP takes a lot of room on your hard drive because Windows Media Player 9 (WMP9) has to convert the songs into a format that works on audio CDs. If you don't have an extra 700 to 800MB of free space on your main hard drive to accommodate the process, here's how to get it. Click Start, My Computer, right-click your CD-R drive, and click Properties, Recording. The CD Drive Properties dialog box appears. Change the drive where Windows can store an "image." This space on the new drive is used only temporarily. It has to be on a hard drive, because the CD burning process can't be interrupted. If you have to copy a bunch of files to another computer on your network, or even compress some files to make room for the temporary image area, go ahead. You can always move them back later. Oh. And while the recording session is under way, don't edit that home movie or print 200 vacation pictures, okay? The CD burning routine needs a little room.
FINDING HELP AND SUPPORT If you do not know how to perform a task in Windows, you can use the Help feature to find information about the task. Here's how:
HOW TO REALLY GET HELP You use the Help and Support Center when you need help and support, right? Well, yes. Sorta. The Help and Support Center works best when
The Help and Support Center won't do much for you if you have only a vague idea of what's ailing your machine, if you want to understand enough details to think your way through a problem, if you're trying to decide on what hardware or software to buy for your computer, or if you want to know where the XP bodies are buried. If you can't find the help you need in the Help and Support Center, expand your search for enlightenment in this order:
WINDOWS XP'S HELP AND SUPPORT CENTER When you choose Start, Help and Support Center, Windows XP presents you with a wide array of choices. Many of the top-level choices "drill down" to the same bits of information; by giving you many different ways to get to that information, Microsoft hopes to make finding what you need easier for you, even if you don't know the answer to your question in advance. Windows Help morsels fall into several categories:
BEFORE YOU CREATE THAT WORD INDEX... Except for the table of contents, the only way to find information in a long document is to look in the index. User manuals, reference works, and reports that readers will refer to all require indexes -- and a good index is a thing of beauty. An index entry can be formatted in many ways. You can cross-reference index entries, list a page range in an index entry, and break out an index entry into subentries and sub-subentries. Writing a good index entry is as hard as writing good, descriptive headings. As you enter index entries in your document, ask yourself how you would look up information in the index if you were reading it, and enter your index entries accordingly.
WHAT'S AN INSTALLATION PROGRAM? Installing a program can be a long, tortuous process. So programmers handled the chore the best way they could. They wrote a second program designed specifically to install the first program. Known as installation programs, these programs handle the chores of copying the main program to the computer's innards and making sure that it gets along with Windows.
VIEWING YESTERDAY'S SITES IN INTERNET EXPLORER HISTORY In the Internet Explorer History, if you know you visited the same Web site yesterday, click View, By Date, and then click the page that represents yesterday. The folder will expand to show all the sites you visited that day, arranged in alphabetical order. (Domain names do not include the www in a Web address.) Click the link to see a list of all the pages in the site that you visited. Then, simply click the link to the page to return to the site.
NEW IN XP: COPY AND MOVE HYPERLINKS Folder windows (such as My Documents and My Computer) are now equipped with copy and move hyperlinks that appear in the navigation panes when you select one or more files or folders. These links, which appear in the File or Folder Tasks sections of the respective navigation panes, change depending upon what items you've selected:
ICONS TO AVOID You probably won't come across these icons unless you've chosen the Windows XP Control Panel's lay-the-cards-on-the-table approach: the Classic View. But if you come across these icons, here's why you shouldn't click them.
CLEANING UP OLD ICONS Your desktop is a great place to park things for short periods of time, but a lousy place for organizing anything long-term. Start by cleaning up the mess that's there right now.
HIDING INACTIVE ICONS A new one for Windows XP, this option lets you hide those little icons -- like the volume control, printer button, RealPlayer, the desktop cleanup program, and other doodies -- that begin hanging out by your clock. Click the Customize button to choose which icons should show up, which should hide, and which should appear only when they're being used. For example, you can click the Customize button and choose Restore Defaults to hide everything except the sound volume. Choose Always Show for that one.
RUN, IE RUN! In general, if you want IE to run faster, you need to get a faster Internet connection. But if you're stuck with a slow connection, and you're a bit desperate, there's one trick that will speed up IE -- but at a price. You can turn off graphics. When you tell IE to load a page without the graphics, the browser displays an empty box where the image would be. That's a bit like going to the Louvre and seeing only empty picture frames, but if you want to get through quickly, it may help. Here's how:
DRAG AND DROP IMAGES If you are displaying a Web site or HTML document in your Internet Explorer, you can drag an image on the Web page to the title bar or Address bar to display the image by itself. This is not the same as a Web page thumbnail, which is a small version of an image that leads to a larger, more detailed version when you click it. This doesn't work if you are viewing a page constructed using the Microsoft HTML format (MHTML), which includes graphics in the same file as the text file that makes up the Web page. These files have the .mht extension. You can also drag links or mail addresses from the displayed page onto the title bar or Address bar as a way to command Internet Explorer to go to the linked page or to open your default e-mail client. Of course, you can also just do this by clicking the links on the Web page.
FINDING SNIPPETS OF STORED INFORMATION Remember how much your husband loved that wine you had on your anniversary? So you stealthily typed the wine's name into your computer, but at Christmastime, you don't remember the name of the file where you saved the wine's name. You don't remember the date you created the file, or even the folder where you stashed it. All you remember is describing the wine's biting bouquet as "an alligator snap from behind a barge." Luckily, that description is all Windows Me needs in order to find your file. Click the Start button and choose For Files or Folders from the Search menu. After the Search program pops up, click in the box marked Containing text, and type barge. The Search program searches the computer, looking for files meeting your specifications.
DELETING JUNK Because the whole purpose of working on computers is to create junk, you need to know how to get rid of unneeded files and folders to free space on your hard drive. To delete files or folders, follow these steps:
Windows puts all items that you delete in the Recycle Bin.
CLEANING YOUR KEYBOARD Keyboards are pretty delicate and can be easily damaged through improper cleaning techniques. So when you can't stand the dust bunnies and food crumbs between the keys any longer, try this: Turn off your system and use a handheld vacuum cleaner to gently remove any dust. Then dampen a rag and lightly wipe the tops of the keys. (Use plain water to lightly dampen the rag -- solvents or too much water will damage the keyboard.)
RUNNING XP PROFESSIONAL ON A LAPTOP Microsoft designed Windows XP Professional to run on laptop or notebook computers. The Professional version works better with battery-driven computers and offers more wireless Internet connection options. Laptops should be beefed up with the following to run Windows XP Professional:
Remember, each copy of Windows XP may be installed on only a single computer. No longer can you install the same copy on both your desktop and laptop computers.
REMOVING PREVIOUSLY TYPED WORDS FROM ONLINE DROP-DOWN LISTS As soon as you begin to type something online -- a Web site address in Internet Explorer, for instance, or a name into an online form -- Windows XP often races in to help. It sends down a little box, listing items you've typed previously. A quick point and click lets you retrieve a word or phrase from Windows XP's handy AutoComplete list, sparing you the effort of typing it in yet again. Some people, however, don't like Windows XP looking over their shoulder as they type. And it's especially annoying when Windows XP keeps listing your typographical errors. To delete a word or phrase from most AutoComplete drop-down lists, press the down-arrow key to highlight the entry and then press the Delete key. Unfortunately, this trick doesn't delete individual Web addresses you type into Internet Explorer. You must delete Internet Explorer's History to remove those. To make Internet Explorer stop listing your previous entries, follow these steps:
It's convenient for Internet Explorer to store the passwords you use for your Web site. But that makes it convenient for anybody who sits at your computer to log on to password-protected sites. Even if you enjoy AutoComplete, consider removing the check mark from the User Names and Passwords on Forms box in Step 3.
LOGGING ON TO WINDOWS XP Windows XP allows bunches of people to work on the same computer, yet it keeps everybody's work separate. To do that, it needs to know who's currently sitting in front of the keyboard. The solution? It makes you log on and introduce yourself by clicking your user name. A few seconds after you click, Windows XP shows you your desktop, ready for you to make a mess. When you're through working, or you just feel like taking a break, log off. Later, when you log back on, your newly created mess will be waiting for you, just as you left it.
PLAYING MEDIA FILES WITH ONE PLAYER Each time you load a new media player on your machine, you must decide which player will handle each file format by default (that is, which player is called up automatically when a song is selected). This can get confusing when you're working with common file types, like MP3 or WMA. Unless you're careful when you set up a new player, it could take over the playback of all the media files, even if you want to keep certain files associated with your original player. When you're setting up a new player, be careful to specify which player handles which file formats. You can always reset these preferences using your favorite media player. For example, in Windows Media Player, you can reset your options by following these steps:
Your choices are finalized, and Windows Media Player handles only what you want it to.
ADDING SKINS TO MEDIA PLAYER Today's generation wants to play with its toys. So, Microsoft added a whimsical feature to Media Player. The program normally rests on your desktop like a big wet towel, covering everything in its path. Through skin technology, users can change that ugly wet towel into something much more hip. Skins are new interfaces for Media Player that make it less imposing and more friendly. Here's how to put new clothes on Media Player:
Choose the Miniplayer skin when listening to music and still working on the computer. A nice small player, it fits into the background nicely. (Miniplayer won't play videos, though.)
NEW WINDOWS XP MEMORY PROTECTION Memory, of course, is where programs and data reside in your system. Some newer hardware systems allow memory to be protected by the operating system. Windows XP Service Pack 2 offers this protection -- it can mark different blocks of memory so that the computer itself knows whether they contain data or executable code. This is a big deal because it prevents certain types of malicious intrusions into your system. Before, a Trojan program was potentially able to place itself into a data area of memory and then execute itself by modifying some code in your program. Now, if the Trojan program is placed in a memory area marked as "data only," it cannot be executed, and your system is protected.
PINNING TO THE START MENU In Windows XP, the left side of the Start menu displays quick access to recently used programs. You may have noticed that items above the thin gray line within that menu never change. In Microsoft-speak, those items are "pinned" to the menu. Items below the gray line change quite frequently to reflect programs you've used recently. You may want to put some different programs above the gray line so that they're always available on the menu. Or you may want to remove a program that you used recently, but don't intend to use again for a while. These things are easy to do. If you right-click on any program name in that menu, you see several options. Here's a rundown of the main options:
SPEEDING UP THE MENUS Windows XP sometimes sacrifices speed for looks. Menus fade in and out of place, for instance, looking cool, but slowing down the job. To dump the fashion and bring back the speed, try this: Right-click the My Computer icon, choose Properties, and click the Advanced tab. Click the Settings button in the Performance area and select Adjust For Best Performance. Click OK and enjoy that burst of speed.
GETTING THE MESSAGE ABOUT WINDOWS MESSENGER Why do so many people use Windows Messenger to type little messages back and forth to each other? Messenger fans cite several reasons:
Windows Messenger is far from problem-free, however. Its far-reaching features make it somewhat complicated to figure out for the first time. And although Yahoo! and AOL offer instant messaging software, they're not compatible: Windows Messenger can't send messages to AOL's Instant Messenger, for instance. Also, because people can swap files easily, instant messaging software provides yet another roadway for traveling viruses. Many corporations ban them at work, fearing that employees are either revealing trade secrets or talking about last night's Desperate Housewives episode. Finally, instant message conversations aren't as secure as e-mail.
RETRIEVING E-MAIL VIA WINDOWS MESSENGER You can use Windows Messenger in conjunction with Hotmail to send and retrieve regular e-mail messages. By using your Hotmail mailbox, you can retrieve your e-mail messages from any computer that has Internet access. To use Windows Messenger to send or retrieve e-mail through the Microsoft Hotmail service, click the More hyperlink in I Want To section of the Messenger window and then click Go to My E-mail Inbox on the pop-up menu. Doing this connects you to the Internet and opens the Inbox page for your Hotmail account on the MSN Hotmail Web site. You can then read your e-mail messages, reply to messages, and even compose new e-mail, using the buttons at the top of the page. When you're logged onto Windows Messenger on your computer, Windows Messenger lets you know when new e-mail messages arrive in your Hotmail inbox by beeping at you and displaying a ScreenTip message (saying that you have new e-mail) above the Messenger icon on the Windows status bar.
GETTING STARTED WITH WINDOWS MESSENGER Windows Messenger is a great way to keep up with people. But before you start flinging messages around the world, you'll have to sign up for a Microsoft .NET Passport. The easiest way is to sign up for a free Hotmail [http://www.hotmail.com/] account. Fill out the short questionnaire, and Microsoft assigns you a Hotmail e-mail address. Log in to Windows Messenger using that address, and you're set. And here's a tip that you don't see every day: It's completely ethical to lie when filling out Microsoft's .NET Passport questionnaire. Your personal information is none of Microsoft's business. Let Microsoft fill its databases with information from credit card companies, like everybody else does.
KILLING THE MESSENGER Many people think of Windows Messenger as an intrusive time sink, only marginally more annoying than having a swarm of killer bees take up residence on a motherboard. Bosses hate it because somewhere between 70 and 99 percent of all the Windows Messenger traffic on business computers consists of vapid personal time-wasting conversations. This is a perfect lead in to one of the most frequently asked questions about Windows XP: How do you get rid of Windows Messenger, completely, so that it doesn't start itself automatically, announce to the world at large when you're online, and start going garururump at the most annoying times? Although it's true that you can turn off most of Windows Messenger's most annoying attributes by choosing Tools, Options and deselecting most of the check boxes on the Preferences tab, many people want to get rid of Windows Messenger completely. While you can't get rid of Windows Messenger entirely -- Windows XP keeps vestiges of it around no matter how hard you try -- it's easy to take the program off your Start menu and basically drive a stake through its heart:
If you change your mind and want Windows Messenger back, follow the same three steps, but in Step 2, select the Windows Messenger check box.
MULTIPLE MONITORS Plug a second video card into your computer, plug in a second monitor, and Windows XP will probably be able to spread its display across both monitors -- or even three, if you install yet another card and monitor. It sounds kind of frivolous, but this new Windows XP feature can be kind of handy, actually. For example, you can run your Internet browser on one monitor while keeping your desktop handy for other work. Or you can spread your work out, making it easy to cut and paste between bunches of open windows. A few words of caution, however: This two-monitor stuff is relatively new in the Windows world, so not all programs can handle it. Also, TV viewer cards can display TV shows only on the primary monitor -- your first monitor. The TV show simply disappears if you try dragging its window to the second monitor.
IT'S THE END OF THE MONTH ALREADY! The months click by. You turn a page on the calendar. You reconcile your checkbook with the bank statement. You pay your mortgage or rent. You rake the gravel in your front yard (if you live in Arizona.) Add a few tasks to your monthly routine and your computer system will remain clean and tidy:
MOUSE PADS A mouse pad provides a smooth surface for you to move your mouse across. It also reduces the amount of dirt that gets into the mouse and protects your desk from scratches. Hard plastic mouse pads attract less dirt and provide a smoother surface than fabric mouse pads.
MY MOUSE DOESN'T WORK RIGHT Sometimes, the mouse doesn't work at all; other times, the mouse pointer hops across the screen like a flea. Here are a few things to look for:
WHY CAN'T WINDOWS XP CREATE MP3 FILES? The company that engineered the MP3 file technology charges royalties for its MP3 codes, known as codecs. Microsoft didn't include the DVD codecs for playing DVDs, and left out the MP3 codecs, as well. So, when you tell Media Player to create digital sound files from your CDs, it lists two options: WMA (Windows Music Audio, Microsoft's sound format), and MP3. However, the MP3 option is grayed out and can't be selected. Windows XP can create MP3s in the same way that it plays DVDs: It borrows the codec from other software. If you install MP3-creation software that Microsoft approves of, Windows XP borrows that software's codecs, letting you select the MP3 option in Media Player. Then, and only then, will Media Player let you create MP3s.
MAKING YOUR MULTIMEDIA EDITING PROGRAMS RUN FASTER Everything these days is digital -- digital video cameras, digital still-shot cameras, digital audio recorders, digital mixers, and so on. All that digital equipment stores tons of information and can plug into your computer. Everyone wants to store, edit, play, and share all that digital information. New software is appearing all the time, promising the ability to slice and dice multimedia information 12 ways to Sunday. The problem with having all that digital information on your computer, of course, is that the files created for digital multimedia are huge, huge, huge! Many things can affect the size of multimedia files, including quality, resolution, and audio or video speed. CD-quality audio can take 50KB of disk space per second. Video throws the storage needs through the roof: every second of video can require 6MB of file space. That is huge! Say that you shoot two hours of digital video of your parents' 50th anniversary. You get everything -- the grand entrance, the arrival of the siblings, the arrival of your aunts and uncles, the arguments, the food fight. Hmmm... Let's see; that's 7,200 seconds, or anywhere from 36 to 44GB of data. Ack! Just for a single event! As you can imagine, programs that allow you to fold, spindle, mutilate, and otherwise process such huge files can place quite the burden on your computer system. Top-notch programs push the envelope, trying to squeeze all the performance out of your system that they can. The following points are the best two ways to speed up those programs:
WHAT'S IN A NAME? Each filename in Windows consists of two parts: a main filename and a file extension. The file extension, which identifies the type of file and what program created it, consists of a maximum of three characters that are automatically assigned by the creating agent or program. Typically, these file extensions aren't displayed in the lists of filenames that you see. Whereas the creating program normally assigns the file extension, Windows XP enables you to call the main part of the filename whatever the heck you want, up to a maximum of 255 characters (including spaces!). Keep in mind, however, that all pre-Windows 95 programs, and even some that run on Windows 98, don't support long filenames. These programs allow a maximum of only eight characters, with no spaces.
NETWORK CONFIGURATION WITH WINDOWS XP Windows XP Professional not only includes the software you need to set up your network, but it also automatically configures itself to work on a TCP/IP network. All you have to do is install a network card and power up a Windows XP Professional computer; the program locates other computers on the network and configures itself to join the workgroup or domain automatically.
NETWORKING WITH WINDOWS XP The network client is the software that enables your computer to become a member of a network. Each network type -- Windows peer-to-peer, NT Server, Novell NetWare, and so on -- has its own specific client. You install the client software for the network type to a computer to allow the computer to communicate over the network. Microsoft supplies clients for Microsoft networks, plus clients for NetWare. You can also add a network client. Novell NetWare also supplies clients for its network operating system (NOS). If you set up a client/server network with NetWare, you may want to use Novell's client because it offers more features on that particular network than the Windows NetWare client. However, the NetWare client also has more compatibility problems with Windows.
STEP 1: ENABLING WORKING OFFLINE Working offline requires that the Faster User Switching feature of the user accounts be disabled. To check that feature, click Start, Control Panel, and click the User Accounts icon. Choose Change the Way Users Log On or Off and clear the Use Fast User Switching check box, if it's selected. Click Apply, and then close the User Accounts dialog box. Next you need to enable synchronization on the standalone computer and choose some related options. Here's how:
STEP 2: MAPPING NETWORK DRIVES The second step to working offline in Windows XP is mapping a network drive to any shared resource on the LAN that contains files you want to be able to work with while you're offline. Here's how:
An icon for the shared resource appears under Network Drives in My Computer. Repeat these steps for any other network drives you want to map to. STEP 3: MAKING THE FOLDER AVAILABLE OFFLINE For each network drive you created in yesterday's eTip, you need to follow these steps to make the share resource available for working offline:
The wizard copies the files from the shared resource to the Offline Files folder of your local computer. You're done!
JOTTING DOWN NOTES WITH NOTEPAD Use WordPad for letters that you want other people to see. Notepad works best for stuff you're going to keep for yourself. Like its name, it's designed for typing notes to save on the fly. To nudge Notepad into life, choose All Programs from the Start menu, choose Accessories, and click on Notepad. Unfortunately, Notepad tosses you into instant confusion: When you start typing, the sentences head right off the edge of the window and out of sight. To turn those single-line, runaway sentences into normal paragraphs, choose Word Wrap from the Format menu, as shown in Figure 5-12. Windows XP remembers your preference and wraps the lines to fit the page the next time you reach for Notepad. Another warning: Unlike most word processors, Notepad doesn't print exactly what you see on-screen. Instead, it prints according to the margins you set in Page Setup from the Format menu. This quirk can lead to unpredictable results. Stick with WordPad for documents you want to print. Turn Notepad into a logbook by typing .LOG as the first sentence of your file. Whenever you open that file, Notepad jumps to the bottom of the file and inserts the current time and date before you start typing.
PARTS REQUIRED BY WINDOWS XP Microsoft touts the following parts as required in order to run Windows XP:
OTHER COMPUTER PARTS YOU'LL PROBABLY NEED In order for Windows XP to reach its full capacity, you may want to invest in additional computer parts. For instance, in order to hear anything from your computer, you need a sound card and amplified stereo speakers with a subwoofer. (If you choose USB speakers, your computer needs USB ports.) If you plan on connecting several computers with a network so they can share files, printers, and a modem you'll need a network adapter card for each computer, as well as their corresponding cables. To watch TV on your monitor, you need a compatible TV tuner card. (Check your cable TV connection, too. Most TV tuner cards don't pick up much without cable TV.) If you plan on watching DVDs, then you'll need your own DVD-playing software before Windows XP's Media Player will be able to show the DVDs. To dump pictures from your digital video camcorder into Windows XP's Movie Maker, you need an IEEE 1394 (FireWire) port.
PICKING YOUR PASSWORDS Passwords are the cloak-and-dagger part of the network business because keeping out unauthorized folk is a security focus for most institutions. Passwords are also the bane of both network users and administrators, and here's why. The administrator wants you, the user, to change your password frequently in case other people discover it and use it, to refrain from writing it down, and to choose something that's hard for other people to guess. On the other hand, you, the user, want an easy-to-remember password that never has to be changed. Those two different goals can create a slight conflict, but not one that's impossible to deal with. A good password is
Bad passwords are
One good method is to turn a catch phrase or family joke into an acronym. For example, pick a password like Wk?Wc?, which only you know is short for "Who knows? Who cares?" Or do the same with a song or a book title. (Don't use the title of the book that's on your desk next to the computer.) Passwords, unlike usernames and filenames, are always case-sensitive. If your password is Wk?Wc? and you type in WK?WC?, the password won't be recognized. On a network, overall password policy is set by the administrator. So passwords may be required to have a minimum length, and you may have to change your password at regular intervals.
CREATING A PASSWORD RESET DISK The minute you turn on password protection for an account, you should create a password reset disk for that account. Why? Because any administrator who can get on your PC can switch your password! Unless you're using a Big Corporate Network, a password reset disk is a defensive maneuver. It guards you against the slings and arrows of others who use your PC. Follow these steps to make a password reset disk:
No matter how many times you change your password, the last password reset disk created for that account still works. There's no reason to update the disk when you change your password. Store the disk in a safe place. Anyone who gets the file can log on to your PC without knowing your password.
TO PATCH OR NOT TO PATCH Microsoft periodically releases security patches for Windows XP. Most of the time, on most machines, the patches perform as advertised -- they fix a defect in the product. Fair enough. Beats a product recall, right? Sometimes, though, the patches don't work right. The infamous UPnP patch debacle, starting in November 2001, saw Microsoft patching, re-patching and re-re-patching a hole in the part of Windows that listens for new items as they're attached to a network. The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center followed along after Microsoft like a kid cleaning up after his dog: NIPC issued a warning about the security hole, an update, another update, and ultimately an advisory that Microsoft had finally solved the problem. If you used the old Windows Update for any amount of time at all, you've no doubt witnessed first-hand how the old Update program would fail to find important updates, or urge you to install the same updates twice, lock up, quit mysteriously, or insist on installing such "critical" updates as the one that removed the swastika symbol from a wayward Microsoft Office 2003 font. Critical? Worse, many of those updates can't be uninstalled, so the old bugs in the Windows Update installer left you with unstable patches that were inconsistently applied. Microsoft's new Windows Update doesn't suffer from the most egregious problems of its (many) predecessors. Microsoft spent tens -- maybe hundreds -- of millions of dollars to make sure that's so. But those of us who lived through the earlier versions won't soon forget the nightmares. Microsoft promises that Windows Update will be fixed real soon now. Believe it when you see it.
WHAT'S ALL THIS PATH STUFF? A path is merely the file's address, similar to your own. When mailed to your house, a letter travels to your country, state, city, street, and finally, hopefully, to your apartment or house number. A computer path does the same thing. It starts with the letter of the disk drive and ends with the file's name. In between, the path lists all the folders the computer must travel through to reach the file. For example, the path to your My Music folder might be like this: It starts from the computer's C: hard drive, travels through the Documents and Settings folder, and then goes through your user folder (which is named however you established it to be, Kate, for example), and then goes into the My Documents folder. And only then does it reach the My Music folder. The file's name (say you've saved the song Girl from Eponema on your PC) comes last. In a path, a disk drive letter is referred to as C:\. The disk drive letter and colon make up the first part of the path. All the other folders are inside the big C: folder, so they're listed after the C: part. Windows separates these nested folders with something called a backslash, or \. The file's name comes last. Put it all together, and you get C:\Documents and Settings\Kate\My Documents\My Music\Girl from Eponema. That's the official path of the Girl from Eponema file in Kate's My Music folder. Windows XP automatically puts together the path for you when you click folders. Thankfully. But whenever you click the Browse button to look for a file, you're navigating through folders and showing Windows the path to the file.
ADDING YOUR PICTURE TO YOUR USER ACCOUNT Adding a picture of yourself to your User Account isn't tough, provided that you have a digital image of yourself stored on your computer. Don't have a digital image? Find a friend with a digital camera, have her snap your picture, and store the picture in your My Pictures folder as a JPG file. Then follow these steps to put that picture on your account.
BURNING PICTURES ON A CD Do you have about a hundred gajillion pictures on your PC eating up hard disk space? If you have a CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW drive, burning those pictures onto a CD, where they'll last for decades, is very easy. A CD certainly lasts longer than your hard drive, providing you don't gum it up with one of those sticky CD labels.
BURNING PICTURES COULDN'T BE EASIER:
Chances are very good that they're in excellent shape. Oh, and don't forget to label the CD with a Sharpie marker.
SEEING PREVIEWS OF YOUR PICTURES Windows Me and XP have made it easier than ever to peek inside your graphics files. Instead of displaying a folder full of bland icons, Windows Me transforms each icon into a thumbnail-sized preview of the file's contents. That makes it a lot easier to find the picture of Kitty eating the bamboo leaves after you dump 63 cat pictures into the same folder. To turn on the previews, open the folder with the pictures, click View from its menu, and choose Thumbnails from the drop-down menu. Windows Me immediately replaces the icons with previews of your graphics and photos.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLAYER AND PLAYBACK DEVICE A playback device is any device that's capable of playing audio or video such as a VCR, a video camera in VCR mode, a CD player, or a Web cam. The "Out" port(s) of the playback device need to be connected to the "In" ports of the capture card on your computer. Unlike playback device, the term player generally refers to some kind of software that can display content on a computer. For example, Microsoft Media Player is the player for movies that you create in Movie Maker. So anyone who has Microsoft Media Player can view (but not necessarily change) the movies you create.
ADDING A NETWORK PRINTER TO YOUR MACHINE If a new printer is placed on the network and shared with everyone, you'll be able to use it -- but only after you tell your computer about it. To add a networked printer to your Printers folder, follow these steps.
Even if a printer actually exists, you may not be able to see it on the network because you haven't been granted access to it. The administrator is the only one who can fix that for you. But if you can see it, you probably have the right to use it, so go ahead and try.
PRINTING WITH SEPARATOR PAGES If you share a departmental printer, using a separator sheet with your print jobs is a good idea. This makes dividing up a stack of print job easier. Here's how to choose a separator page:
To set up separator pages, you must have the Manage Printers permission.
POWER SCHEMES If you're on the road a lot for your job and you always travel with your laptop, then power conservation has to be one of your main concerns. Windows XP comes to your rescue with several predefined "power schemes" that will help you preserve your laptop's battery life. You can also create your own power scheme if none of the predefined schemes meet your needs. To access the power schemes, just choose Start, Control Panel. If the Control Panel opens in Category view, choose Performance and Maintenance, and then click Power Options. In Classic view, open the Power Options icon.
CHECKING THE PRINTER QUEUE When you click on the Print button in a Windows program or use the menu to send something to the printer, a little picture of a printer appears in the bar that runs along the edge of your screen. Double-click on the picture of the printer, and you can see a list (known as a queue) of all the files waiting to be printed. (The longer the list, the longer you have to wait for your own file.) (In Windows NT Workstation 4, double-click on the taskbar's little printer icon, and you see the print program in all its glory.)
CHANGE PRINTING ORDER You can change the order in which documents print by changing their order in the print queue. To do this, open the Printers and Faxes folder, double-click the Printer icon to open the Print Queue window, and simply drag the documents into the order you want. You can do this only for documents that haven't started printing yet. Windows doesn't let you move documents from one printer's queue to another. This is because the documents have already been translated into RAW format for that specific printer. Instead, you must remove the document from the old print queue and print it again to the other printer.
PRIVACY REPORTS Internet Explorer 6, which comes with Windows XP, includes a new tool that tells you about the cookie settings for a particular Web site and how the site measures up against your cookie settings. For example, if your cookie settings prohibit third-party cookies, the report tells you about any violation that the site attempted. You can easily get this Privacy Report by accessing the desired Web site using IE, and then choosing View, Privacy Report. A single window appears, based on the page and linked information. You see a note at the top of the page telling you if any cookies were restricted or blocked.
INSTALLING AND REMOVING PROGRAMS IN XP Installing and removing programs is generally easy in Windows XP. Here's a quick lineup of the various ways you can install and uninstall programs:
WINDOWS XP AND OLDER PROGRAMS Windows XP can still run on some of your older programs, thank goodness. So after upgrading to Windows XP, you won't have to buy expensive new software immediately. It runs almost any program that worked under Windows Me, Windows 98, and Windows 95. Since Windows XP is based on the big-business-based Windows NT and Windows 2000 software, Windows XP runs most of those types of programs as well. However, you can't install Windows XP on your 5-year-old computer and expect it to run well. You'll probably have to buy a new computer or add a faster CPU chip, more memory, a larger hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive to your old computer. In this instance, upgrading usually costs more than adding a new PC.
TAKING PROGRAMS OFF YOUR COMPUTER Windows XP includes an uninstall utility that takes the pain out of removing unneeded or obsolete versions of a program from your computer. To uninstall a program, follow these steps:
Use the Windows XP uninstaller to get rid of any unwanted program that you've installed with the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel. Using this utility to remove a program (rather than just deleting the program folder) ensures that all vestiges of the program are removed from the system and that you get back every byte of storage space to which you're entitled. To remove unneeded Windows components, click the Add/Remove Windows Components button in the Add or Remove Programs dialog box and then locate and remove the check mark from the components you want removed before you select the Next button. Remember that if you remove the check mark from a category of components rather than from a particular component within that category, Windows will remove all the components.
WHAT IS WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL Windows XP, the most powerful of Microsoft's Windows software, comes in two basic versions: Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional. Larger businesses need the more advanced version, Windows XP Professional, to handle their more powerful computing needs. It includes ho-hum features such as corporate security, advanced group policy settings, roaming user profiles, Kerberos Extended Errors facility, and other indigestible buzzwords. The Professional version can be installed over Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP Home.
LISTENING TO THE RADIO ON WINDOWS Who doesn't love music? It sets our toes tapping and puts a song in our hearts. But did you know you can use Windows XP to find some new favorite radio stations?
RESIZING THE RECYCLE BIN The Recycle Bin is a flexible place, willing to enlarge itself, as necessary, to accept your recently deleted files. By default, the space allocated by Windows for the Recycle Bin is up to 10 percent of your hard-drive space. If you think about it, that's a ton of space. The Recycle Bin is constructed so that it keeps whatever ends up there until you manually delete it (or until the allocated disk space fills up). If the disk space fills up, then the oldest files in the Recycle Bin are deleted to make way for the newer items. If you have 8 GB (or more) set aside for the Recycle Bin, the sheer size of the allocated area means you're wasting a lot of disk space. The solution is to change the amount of disk space allocated to the Recycle Bin:
How does resizing the Recycle Bin help unclutter your system? Simple: When Windows doesn't need to track as many deleted files, the operating system is more responsive.
USING REMOTE ACCESS You're working on a project with a tight deadline and your computer starts to do really funky things. What did you do wrong? Luckily, your IS department is only a phone call away. When you call and explain the problem, suddenly the cursor on your screen starts to move by itself, opening menus, clicking buttons, and causing all kinds of voodoo-like havoc. What's going on? Odds are, your IS tech has used Windows XP's Remote Access to hack into your computer to fix the problem -- and hacking in this case is a good thing. Remote Access allows someone else to log on to your computer and control it, just as if they were sitting in front of it. They can tweak your computer, setting up what needs to be done, and your computer will run as good as new. (At least that's the concept.)
WINDOWS XP REMOTE ASSISTANCE Remote Assistance is one of the best timesaving features of Windows XP. It does, however, have its limitations: (1) Both you and your consultant-friend must be running Windows XP; (2) If the person requesting assistance has a dial-up connection, he has to stay connected continuously from the time the invitation goes out until the Remote Assistance session ends.Remote Assistance may or may not work with home- and small-office DSL and cable modems. It doesn't work if either you or your consultant-friend is running the free version of ZoneAlarm (although you can configure the for-pay version of ZoneAlarm to open up port 3389). There's nothing magical about port 3389; it's just the hard-coded port that Remote Assistance always uses to communicate between two PCs. As more small offices and homes use fast Internet connections with DSL and cable modems - and the number of firewalls increases - the chances of being able to get Remote Assistance to work has sadly decreased. The problem isn't fast connections; RA works very well indeed over a fast Internet connection. The problem is the proliferation of firewalls. Most firewalls block port 3389.
CHANGING YOUR SCREEN'S RESOLUTION You chose your designer day planner, glow-in-the-dark gel pens, and solid maple inbox for your real-world desktop, right? Why shouldn't the Windows desktop give you the same flexibility to make things look the way you like?
CREATING A RESTORE POINT When your computer's ailing, System Restore provides a magical way to go back in time to when your computer was feeling better. System Restore works by taking a daily snapshot of your computer's settings as well as an automatic snapshot before you install a new computer part (just in case the newcomer causes problems). The problem is finding that one, magic restore point that makes everything better. Windows XP simply slaps a date onto its automated System Restore points along with the boring name System Checkpoint; it doesn't say, "This restore point is just after you installed Berzerkeroids -- and everything still ran fine!" To maximize System Restore's potential, create your own restore points with your own labels. Here's how:
By creating your own restore points on good days, you'll know immediately which ones to use on bad days.
THE ETHICS OF RIPPING CDS First, understand one thing: you can't copy a song and give the file to another person. There's no question about the ethics of illegally pirating music. You can make copies of music on CDs that you bought for your own private use. People try to hem and haw and weasel their way around the legalities, but these justifications are self-serving. The bottom line's pretty simple. In the U.S., you can make copies of any music that you bought in order to
You also can loan the original CD to a friend, and your friend can listen to it. But your friend can't make a copy of the CD. That's it. The ethics and legalities of pirating are quite straightforward. The real ethics question is whether you trust Microsoft to control the future format of your music. If enough people use Microsoft's proprietary WMA format, Microsoft will have a great deal of influence on the future direction of digital music.
LEAVING SCRAPS ON THE DESKTOP DELIBERATELY The Clipboard is a handy way to copy information from one place to another, but it has a major limitation: Every time you copy something new to the Clipboard, it replaces what was copied there before. What if you want to copy a bunch of things from a document? If you are cutting and pasting over a real desktop, you can leave little scraps lying everywhere, ready for later use. The same scraps concept works with Windows Me: You can move information from window to window, using the desktop as a temporary storage area for your scraps of information. For example, suppose that you have some paragraphs in a WordPad document that you want to copy to some other places. Highlight the first paragraph, drag it out of the WordPad window, and drop it onto the desktop. Poof! A small Scrap icon appears on your desktop. See another interesting paragraph? Drag it onto the desktop as well: Another Scrap icon appears. Eventually, you'll have copies of your report's best paragraphs sitting in little scraps on your desktop. To move any of the scraps into another document, just drag them into that other document's window and let go. Any remaining, unused scraps can be dumped into the Recycle Bin or simply left on the desktop, adding a nice, comfortable layer of clutter. To make a scrap, highlight the information you want to move, usually by running the mouse pointer over it while holding down the mouse button. Then point at the highlighted information and, while holding down the mouse button, point at the desktop. Let go of the mouse button, and a scrap containing that information appears on the desktop. Note: Not all Windows Me applications support Scraps. In fact, WordPad is probably the only program in the Windows Me box that makes good use of Scraps. Other programs, such as Microsoft Office 2000, let you use scraps, though, so you haven't wasted your time reading about them.
FINDING A WINDOWS THAT'S OFF THE EDGE OF THE SCREEN Even a window at the top of the pile can be nearly invisible. A window can be moved anywhere on the Windows Me desktop, including off the screen. In fact, you can inadvertently move 99 percent of a window off the screen, leaving just a tiny corner showing. Clicking on the window's name in the taskbar won't be much help in this case, unfortunately. The window's already on top, but it's still too far off the screen to be of any use.
SCREENTIPS: HELP OR HINDRANCE Windows XP extensively uses ScreenTips to provide a way of adding commentary or footnotes to features. When you run your mouse pointer over a certain part of the screen, a little black-outlined, pale-yellow rectangle pops up with some more or less informative text. In some cases, such as with some Internet search results, this text can amount to a paragraph's worth of context-sensitive material.
SEARCHING WITH AN ANIMATED CHARACTER When you open the Search Companion for the first time, Windows XP asks whether you'd like to search with or without an "animated character." Cartoon lovers can choose the character option: a little doggy, a gal in a spaceship, a surfing alien, or Merlin the Wizard. The joyful little character subsequently watches your moves, blinking, barking, or twitching when you click it. (It doesn't do anything more helpful than that.) When you tire of the barks, blinks, and twitches, turn off the animated character by choosing the Change Preferences option. When that menu appears, choose Without an Animated Screen Character to purge the little goofball. (Or choose another character from the same page.)
SEARCHING FOR PICTURES, MUSIC, OR VIDEO The Windows XP search feature lets you restrict your file search to picture or photographic files, sound files, or video files. To search for files containing these kinds of media, you open the Search Results window (by clicking Start and then clicking Search) and then click the [Pictures, Music, or Video] hyperlink at the top of the Search Companion Explorer bar on the left side of the window. Click the check box for the type of files (Pictures and Photos, Music and Sound, or Video) that you're looking for and then enter the complete or partial filename in the All or Part of the Filename text box. Remember that you can use the wildcard characters ? (for single missing characters) and * (for multiple missing characters) when entering the name of the file(s) to locate. After you finish selecting the type of files to locate and the name of the file(s) to locate, click the Search button. Windows then lists all the files of the specified type that match the specified filename on the right side of the Search Results window.
TURNING BACK ON THE SHORTCUT KEYS Older versions of Windows had underlined letters in their menus. Instead of clicking the mouse on menu items, you could press Alt and the underlined letter to activate that menu item -- a shortcut key, if you will. Although Windows XP leaves them out, here's how to turn them back on: Right-click the Desktop, choose Properties, and click the Appearance tab. Click the Effects button and remove the check mark from the line, Hide Underlined Letters for Keyboard Navigation Until I Press The Alt Key. The underlines all appear, ready for shortcuts.
CREATING A FAST SHUT DOWN ICON IN WINDOWS XP Buried deep inside Windows XP lurks a little-known program called shutdown that shuts down your system in a very fast - but orderly - way. Here's how to put an icon on your desktop that'll shut down your machine quickly:
To test the new, fast shut down icon, make sure no programs are running, and double-click it. On a typical machine, you see the log-off screen in about three seconds, and after another two or three seconds, you get the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message. This isn't a leisurely process. Windows gives you a short period of time to save changes in your Office documents, and other applications quit in an orderly way.
SHUTTING DOWN A NON-RESPONSIVE APPLICATION What do you do when your system just freezes up? If you're trying to shut down a non-responsive application, press and hold down Ctrl+Alt+Del, which brings up the Task Manager and lets you close the non-responsive software. If you still can't close out of the problem application, press Ctrl+Alt+Del once again and Windows reboots. Sometimes this solves the problem, and you can get right back to work. Note that some applications use an Auto Save feature that keeps an interim version of the document that you were working in and you might be able to save some of your work by opening that last-saved version. Other programs don't have such a safety net, and you simply lose whatever changes you made to your document since the last time you last saved it. The moral? Save, and save often.
SHUTTING DOWN WINDOWS Although the big argument used to be about saturated and unsaturated fats, today's generation has found a new source of disagreement: Should a computer be left on all the time or turned off at the end of the day? Both camps have decent arguments, and there's no real answer (except that you should always turn off your monitor when you won't be using it for a half hour or so). However, if you decide to turn off your computer, don't just head for the off switch. First, you need to tell Windows about your plans. To do that, click the Shut Down command from the Start menu and then click the Shut Down button from the box that appears. Finally, click the Yes button; that click tells Windows to put away all your programs and to make sure that you've saved all your important files. After Windows has prepared the computer to be turned off, a message on the screen says that it's okay to reach for the Big Switch. The Windows Shut Down menu offers several options now, as you can see by the following list:
The Hibernate command takes all of your currently open information and writes it to the hard drive in one big chunk. Then, to re-create your desktop, it reads that big chunk and places it back on your desktop. It's not as safe as shutting down your computer. Don't ever turn off your computer unless you've first used the Shut Down command from the Start button. Windows needs to prepare itself for the shutdown, or it may accidentally eat some of your important information.
GETTING RID OF PREINSTALLED SOFTWARE One of the things (among many) that drives a lot of computer users crazy is preloaded software. You buy a computer from Dell, Gateway, or any number of other retailers, and they throw in a boatload of software, already installed on the computer. The problem is that most of the software is of very little value. Sometimes all of the software is of no value. It's easy to fill up a computer with no-value software and tout what a great deal you're getting. Hogwash! Did your computer come with lots of software preinstalled? If so, take a few minutes to figure out how much of it you actually use. Take a look at what was installed when you got your system and add the unused software to your list of removal targets. Don't worry; removing preinstalled software won't make your computer stop working, void your warranty, or subject you to criminal prosecution. (Unlike that stupid little tag on mattresses that you might still be scared to remove.)
SPEECH AND HANDWRITING RECOGNITION Speech recognition enables you to type text or choose menu commands by speaking into a microphone. Handwriting recognition can convert handwritten text to typed text. Although Windows XP itself doesn't provide for speech and handwriting recognition, it does enable you to centrally install speech and handwriting recognition engines. When you open a program that does support speech and/or handwriting, the Language bar appears, enabling you to dictate text, bark orders, or scribble on a tablet. Versions 6 of Outlook Express and Internet Explorer, which come with Windows XP, both offer some speech and handwriting recognition. Programs in the Microsoft Office XP suite offer speech and recognition engines and also support recognition.
GET STARTED AGAIN To open the Start menu on the Windows taskbar with the keyboard, press Ctrl+Esc. If you want to see the underlined command letters for navigating Windows menus and dialog boxes at all times, follow these steps:
WHY YOU CAN'T JUST SWAP OUT THE GUTS In geekspeak, swapping out the guts means moving the hard drive from one system to another system. The hard drive, after all, has the operating system, program, and data that you used on your old system. Moving the hard drive from one system to the other could save quite a bit of time -- or not! There's an interesting thing that happens when you install Windows. The operating system takes stock of its surroundings and writes information about your system into its Registry (and a couple of other places). This includes information about your process, memory, and peripherals. Change out your peripherals, no problem. Change the amount of memory, no problem. Change the processor? Big problem. If you're running with a Windows edition older than XP, the only way to fix the problem is to wipe the hard drive, reinstall the operating system, and start fresh. Windows XP is a little smarter -- but only a little. If you have Windows XP on the hard drive, you can move the drive to a new system but still need to do a system reinstall. Your data and programs remain intact, but stick XP on the system so it recognizes the new processor. Of course, the ironic part of this whole scenario (moving the hard drive) is that if you were able to do it successfully, you would also be moving all the clutter from your old system to your new.
USING SYNCHRONIZATION MANAGER Windows XP Professional offers Synchronization Manager, a tool that helps you work with shared resources on a LAN even while you're not connected to the LAN. If you have a notebook computer running XP Pro and you often use it on the road, you can use Synchronization Manager to synchronize the files on your notebook with the files on the LAN each time you reconnect to the LAN. A few buzzwords go with the synchronization process. A computer that's occasionally disconnected from the network is called a standalone computer, whether it's a full PC or a notebook. The specific shared files that the standalone computer can access are called offline files. The process of working with those offline files is called working offline. After you make changes to the offline files, and then reconnect to the network, the process of bringing the original files up-to-date with the changes you made offline is called synchronization. A shared resource or share on a LAN is some file of folder that other computers in the LAN can access. Offline files need to be shares, or stored within a shared folder. The Shared Documents folder on a Windows XP computer is shared across the LAN automatically. So that folder, or any subfolder within it, is a good candidate for working offline. To work with offline files, you first need to go through three steps to enable that capability.
PERFORMING TASKS WITH YOUR PERSONAL FOLDERS The My Pictures and My Music folders offer several specialized options that you can select to work with your pictures and music. Here are some tasks you can perform. My Pictures:
My Music:
GETTING INTO A SONG'S TAGS Inside every music file lives a form containing the song's title, artist, album, and similar information. When deciding how to sort, display, and categorize your music, Windows Media Player reads those tags -- not the songs' filenames. Most portable music players, including the iPod and Dell DJ, also rely on tags, so it's important to keep them filled out properly. It's so important, in fact, that Media Player normally fills in the tags for you when it adds files to its library. Many people don't bother filling out their song's tags; other people keep them meticulously updated. If your tags are filled out the way you prefer, stop Media Player from messing with them. Just click Options from the Tools menu, click the Library tab, and clear every box in the Automatic Media Information Updates for Files category. If your tags are a mess, leave those boxes checked so Media Player will clean up the tags for you. To edit a song's tag manually in Media Player, right-click on it in the library and choose Advanced Tag Editor.
USING THE TASK MANAGER The Windows Task Manager keeps tabs on your system and how it's running. You can use the Task Manager to get an overview of what programs and processes are running on your computer. You can also use it to switch programs and to end programs that have stopped responding (in other words, that have frozen up on you. Arrgghh!). To open the Windows Task Manager, right-click the taskbar at a place where there are no buttons and then click Task Manager on the shortcut menu. (You can find the Windows task bar at the bottom of the screen -- the bar with the Start button.) To switch to another program from the Windows Task Manager, click the program in the list box on the Applications tab and then click the Switch To button. Windows will then minimize the Task Manager and display the program window on the desktop. To end a program that has frozen up on you, click the program in the list box on the Applications tab and then click the End Task button. Note that you will probably get an alert dialog box indicating that the program has stopped responding. Click the End button in this dialog box (as many times as you have to) to get Windows to kill the program. When you click a program in the list on the Applications tab, the status bar of the Windows Task Manager shows you statistics on the number of processes running under the program, the percentage of the CPU (central processing unit, the big chip at the heart of the computer), and the memory usage of the program. If you like to look at schematics, click the Performance tab in this window to see a dynamic charting of the total CPU and memory usage on your computer (and to discover real useful stuff like the number of handles, threads, and processes that are being run).
SETTING THE COMPUTER'S TIME AND DATE Many computer users don't bother to set the computer's clock. They just look at their wristwatches to see when it's time to stop working. But they're missing out on an important computing feature: Computers always stamp new files with the current date and time. If the computer doesn't know the correct date, it stamps files with the wrong date. Then how can you find the files you created yesterday? Last week? Also, Windows Me sometimes does some funny things to the computer's internal clock, so you may want to reset the date and time if you notice that the computer is living in the past (or prematurely jumping to the future). To reset the computer's time or date, double-click the little clock Windows Me puts on the taskbar that lives along the edge of the screen. Windows Me brings up the Date/Time menu for you to make adjustments.
DISPLAYING IE'S TIP OF THE DAY If you're new to this whole browsing thing and you want to have a little help along the way, you can turn on IE's Tip of the Day feature. The tips appear in the bottom portion of your screen, which takes up a little real estate, but they provide simple suggestions that you can try as you work. To display the Tip of the Day, follow these steps:
WINDOWS XP SYSTEM TOOLS A bunch of utilities for keeping your computer system in tip-top shape are located under the System Tools option on the Accessories submenu. Following are just a few of the powerful utilities you'll find on the System Tools continuation menu:
TRAY CHIC The little indented area on the right edge of the taskbar is called the tray. Some applets (mini-applications) that start up when Windows starts up put their icons in here. The idea is that by putting small icons in the tray, applets that are always running don't take up as much space on the taskbar as bigger applications, which run only when you choose to start them.
KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR FAVORITE TUNES IN XP You can use Windows Media Player to record and organize your music as well as to play your favorite tunes. Windows Media Player in Windows XP makes it easy to copy music from audio CDs or from the Internet radio stations to which you listen. You can then organize the music that you copy onto the hard drive into play lists that you can play in Windows Media Player or copy onto portable devices, such as a portable MP3 player. If your computer has a CDR (CD recordable) or CDRW (CD rewritable) drive, you can even copy the music files onto blank CDs that you burn. You view Windows Media Player in one of two modes: full mode (Ctrl+1) and compact mode (Ctrl+2). Full mode is the default.
CHECKING OUT TUTORIALS Confused by something in Windows? Ever wish you could watch a demonstration or follow a wizard to solve your problem step by step? Wait, you can!
Tutorials are played by using the Macromedia Flash Player. To modify the way the player works, when a tutorial first begins, right click the tutorial screen and choose Settings. These settings control privacy, microphone recording volume, camera settings, and how much storage space is used on your hard drive to play the tutorials. To adjust playback volume, click the volume control on the Windows taskbar and move the sliders up and down to make the sound louder or softer.
LOOKING TO UPGRADE TO WINDOWS XP? Windows XP comes in two versions, Home and Professional. There's not much difference in the way the two versions look or behave. Part of the difference is mechanical. Windows XP Professional can use two central processing unit (CPU) engines inside your computer, making it run faster and more powerfully. Much of the remaining difference centers on networking and security. Windows XP Professional includes the features of Windows XP Home, plus it adds a backup program, higher-level of security in networking, multi-language support, and more advanced features. If you buy XP Home and decide its networking features aren't powerful enough for your needs, feel free to upgrade to XP Professional. That version installs over XP Home without problems. You can't go the other way, though: You can't install Windows XP Home over Windows XP Professional. You need to free your hard drive of Windows entirely by formatting it and then start over with a spotless, Windows-free slate.
UPGRADING TO WINDOWS XP Thinking about upgrading to Windows XP? Microsoft touts the following parts as required in order to run it.
UPGRADING TO XP If you're upgrading Windows from an earlier version, Microsoft gives you a price break. In fact, most of the boxes you see on store shelves are for the upgrade version of Windows XP. You don't need to have an older version of Windows running on the machine in question in order to take advantage of the upgrade. If there's no older version of Windows hanging around (perhaps you deleted it in order to perform a clean install of Windows XP), all you need to do is insert an old Windows CD (Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4, or 2000) for a moment at one specific point early in the installation process. There's no check to see if the old version of Windows has been registered properly — on this or any other machine. All the upgrade requires is that old CD.
ASSIGNING A PASSWORD TO A USER ACCOUNT You can assign a password to your user account to prevent other people from accessing the account. You will need to enter the password each time you want to use Windows. If you have a computer administrator account, you can assign passwords to all accounts. If you have a limited account, you can assign a password only to your own account. To assign a password to a user account:
WHAT'S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA Even if Windows XP is running fine on your PC, Microsoft hopes the following improvements in Windows Vista will push your hand toward your credit card.
ADJUSTING VISUAL EFFECTS TO SPEED UP YOUR COMPUTER As it frantically crunches numbers in the background, Windows XP tries to project a navel-gazing image of inner peace. Its menus and windows open and close with a slow fade; aesthetically pleasing shadows surround each menu and the mouse pointer. When a folder opens, Windows automatically chooses its appropriate task pane. Windows also organizes the Control Panel's icons into neat categories instead of presenting one folder crowded with icons. All these extra visual decisions require extra calculations on Windows's part, however, slowing it down a bit. To change Windows' attitude from peaceful to performance, head for the Control Panel's Performance and Maintenance category and choose Visual Effects. For fastest action, choose Adjust for Best Performance. Windows quickly strips away all the visuals and reverts to Classic Mode -- a faster way of working that mimics earlier, no-frills Windows versions. Choose Adjust for Best Appearance for a prettier, but slower, Windows. To let Windows XP examine your computer's processing power and choose a balance between aesthetically pleasing and physically overburdened, select Let Windows Choose What's Best for My Computer. Bored? Experiment with each visual setting by choosing Custom. Choose Apply after making each change; if you notice an unwelcome change in Windows XP's behavior, reverse your change and click Apply again.
CHANGING THE VOLUME Although Microsoft designed Windows XP to be easier than ever to use, the programmers stubbed their toes when it came to changing the volume. Here's how to put the volume control back where it belongs -- right next to the little clock in the bottom right corner of the screen:
Now, if you need to turn the sound up or down in a hurry, click the little speaker by your clock. A volume control appears, enabling you to turn the sound up or down by sliding the control up or down. Or, to turn the sound off completely, click the Mute box. Whew!
MORE ABOUT YOUR PCS WALLPAPER OPTIONS What can there possibly be to know about wallpaper? Read on, you might be surprised.
COPYING A WEB ADDRESS Sometimes, clicking on a Web address doesn't take you to the page. For example, if a friend e-mails you an address, you may need to type it in by hand. But here's how to avoid any misspellings: Highlight the Web address by holding down your mouse button and sliding the pointer over the address. Then hold down the Ctrl key and press C. (That copies the address.) Now, click in your browser's address box and, while holding down the Ctrl key, press V. By doing so, you paste the address in the address box. Press Enter, and your browser should whisk you off to that new site.
ONCE A WEEK SHOULD DO IT All across America, in offices large and small, people start watching the clock at about 2:00pm on Fridays. Time seems to slow down as the weekend beckons. But Friday afternoons are a great time to do a few Windows-related clean-up tasks every week.
After you get good at completing these weekly tasks, they won't take you long at all. Plus, your system will be cleaner and your data more secure. Don't you feel better now? Is it quitting time yet?
FINDING WEB SITES Do you want to find a specific Web site? In an Internet Explorer window, click in the Address bar, type go, find, search, or ?, type a space, and then type the name of the company or organization whose site you want to find. If the name has a space in it, forget typing the go, find, search, or ?, and just put double quotation marks around the name. On Yahoo!, typing this information in the Address bar will automatically start a search for the company or organization. You can set which search site is accessed by using TweakUI. You'll find the option in the General tab. What Internet Explorer won't do is go to a Web site when you just type the Web site's name without the www and the .com, unless you press Ctrl+Enter after you enter the name.
PLUCKING A LOST WINDOW FROM THE TASKBAR In the 1940s, a huge rolltop desk was the epitome of office organization -- dividers and cubbyholes kept all your office needs in order. Flash forward to the computer age, and that desktop shrinks to the size of your monitor. In a way, Windows works more like those old-time spike memo holders than like an actual desktop. Every time you open a new window, you're tossing another piece of information onto the spike. The window on top is relatively easy to see, but what's lying directly underneath it? If you can see a window's ragged edge protruding from any part of the pile, click on it. The window magically rushes to the top of the pile. But what if you can't see any part of the window at all? How do you know it's even on the Windows desktop? You can solve this mystery by calling up your helpful Windows detective: the taskbar. The taskbar keeps a master list of everything that's happening on your screen (even the invisible stuff). If the taskbar isn't squatting along one edge of your screen, hold down your Ctrl key and press the Esc key. The taskbar pops into view. See the list of programs stamped onto buttons on the taskbar? Your missing window is somewhere on the list. When you spot it, click on its name, and the taskbar instantly tosses your newfound window to the top of the pile.
MAKING A WINDOW FILL THE WHOLE SCREEN Why can't you just put one huge window on-screen? Well, you can. To make any window grow as big as it gets, double-click on its title bar, that topmost bar along the top of the window. The window leaps up to fill the screen, covering up all the other windows. To bring the pumped-up window back to normal size, double-click on its title bar once again. The window shrinks to its former size, and you can see everything that it was covering up.
WHAT IS WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL? Windows XP comes in two basic versions: Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional. Larger businesses need the more advanced version, Windows XP Professional, to handle their computing needs. The Pro version includes features such as corporate security, advanced group policy settings, roaming user profiles, Kerberos Extended Errors facility, and other indigestible buzzwords. The Professional version can be installed over Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP Home.
WRITE PROTECTION AND WINDOWS XP Write protection is supposed to be a helpful safety feature, but most people discover it through an abrupt bit of computer rudeness: Windows XP stops them short with the following threatening message: Cannot copy Ouch!: The media is write protected, while they are trying to copy a file to a floppy disk or CD. If you encounter this write-protect error, wait until the floppy drive stops making noise. Remove the disk, unwrite-protect the disk, and put it back in the drive. Then, repeat what you were doing before you were so rudely interrupted. |