Remember that if you accidentally delete something, you can always go into the Recycle Bin and undelete it there. Simply highlight the deleted item, go up to File, and select Restore.
An example of a standard drive-letter scheme might look like this:
| A: Floppy Disk | |
| B: Second Floppy Disk (optional) | |
| C: Primary Hard Drive | |
| D: Secondary Hard Drive (optional) | |
| E: CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW |
You can use as many drive letters as there are letters in the alphabet, if you'd like. You can also customize your computer by assigning a letter to a CD-ROM, CD-R, or CD-RW drive, if that letter isn't already assigned elsewhere.
To assign a drive letter to your CD-ROM drive, follow these steps:
This brings up a list you can easily print out.
For example, if I want a list of every file in my Windows directory, I would type: COMMAND /C DIR C:Windows>PRN.
If you're running out of storage space or can't get a favorite webpage to display correctly, try cleaning out the temporary folder. Here's how:
To auto hide the taskbar, follow these directions:
You just selected to auto hide your taskbar. This will make your taskbar disappear until you mouse over its location.
To change the name of the Recycle Bin desktop icon, open Regedit and go to:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
and change the name "Recycle Bin" to whatever you want (don't type any quotes).
Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance area > Settings
button Visual Effects tab "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the Desktop"
10 things you didn't know about Windows XP - Part 2
You've read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational changes. Now it's time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP's secrets.
11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As... and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.
12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.
13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run... from the start menu and type 'control userpasswords2', which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.
14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.
15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can't see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You'll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.
16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.
17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By... Show In Groups.
18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks -- if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn't, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.
19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.
20. The next release of Windows XP, codenamed Longhorn, is due out late next year or early 2003 and won't be much to write home about. The next big release is codenamed Blackcomb and will be out in 2003/2004.
Click the dial–up, local area network, PPPoE, or VPN connection you want to share, and then, under Network Tasks, click Change settings of this connection.
If you want other network users to enable or disable the shared Internet connection, select the Allow other network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection check box.
Under Internet Connection Sharing, in Home networking connection, select any adapter that connects the computer sharing its Internet connection to the other computers on your network. The Home networking connection is only present when two or more network adapters are installed on the computer.
On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
In Proxy Server, clear the Use a proxy server check box.
The Search companion in Windows XP searches for hidden and system files differently than in earlier versions of Windows. This guide describes how to search for hidden or system files in Windows XP.
Search for Hidden or System Files By default, the Search companion does not search for hidden or system files. Because of this, you may be unable to find files, even though they exist on the drive.
To search for hidden or system files in Windows XP:
Click Start, click Search, click All files and folders, and then click More advanced options.
Click to select the Search system folders and Search hidden files and folders check boxes.
NOTE: You do not need to configure your computer to show hidden files in the Folder Options dialog box in Windows Explorer to find files with either the hidden or system attributes, but you need to configure your computer not to hide protected operating system files to find files with both the hidden and system attributes. Search Companion shares the Hide protected operating system files option (which hides files with both the system and hidden attributes) with the Folder Options dialog box Windows Explorer.
•Open My Computer
•Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive (C:), unless you have more than one drive on your computer).
•If the contents of the drive are hidden, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive.
•Double-click the Documents and Settings folder.
•Double-click your user folder.
•Right-click any folder in your user profile, and then click Properties.
•On the Sharing tab, select the Make this folder private so that only I have access to it check box.
Note•To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer.
•This option is only available for folders included in your user profile. Folders in your user profile include My Documents and its subfolders, Desktop, Start Menu, Cookies, and Favorites. If you do not make these folders private, they are available to everyone who uses your computer.
•When you make a folder private, all of its subfolders are private as well. For example, when you make My Documents private, you also make My Music and My Pictures private. When you share a folder, you also share all of its subfolders unless you make them private.
•You cannot make your folders private if your drive is not formatted as NTFS For information about converting your drive to NTFS
You've read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational changes. Now it's time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP's secrets.
1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).
2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type 'gpedit.msc'; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).
3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.
4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.
5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating and watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and 'schtasks' for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options -- they're all far too baroque to go into here.
6. XP has IP version 6 support -- the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type 'ipv6 install' into Run... (it's OK, it won't ruin your existing network setup) and then 'ipv6 /?' at the command line to find out more. If you don't know what IPv6 is, don't worry and don't bother.
7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using 'taskkill /pid' and the task number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot about what's going on in your system.
8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you've got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'.
9. XP has ClearType -- Microsoft's anti-aliasing font display technology -- but doesn't have it enabled by default. It's well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.
10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who's using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum's real IP address -- they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com -- and get them to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.
Gmail has been quite a success story, and lot of users have moved from yahoo and hotmail to gmail. For non techie's the most important task while switching over from yahoo to Gmail is importing contacts from yahoo to Gmail.
Well if you are planning to move from Yahoo mail to Gmail here is how you import contacts to your new gmail in 10 easy steps.
1. Login to your Yahoo Mail first.
2. Click on options on Right hand top. 
3. Click on Address Book in left hand Panel.
4. In the management tab click on Import/Export
5. At the bottom of page Click on Yahoo CSV! Export now button
6.Save the CSV file to your desktop.
7. Login to your Gmail account.
8. Click on contacts in Left hand panel at bottom.
9. On the Top Right hand side of page click on Import
10. Browse for the CSV file you downloaded to your Desktop and click Import Contacs.
11. Once the Import is complete you will see a confirmation message.
With this you can create and invisible folder that you can put on your desktop or withing another folder. You can’t see it but if you know where it is you can double-click it and view its contents.
1. Right click where ever you want the invisible folder to be, go to new, then click on folder.
2. Turn numlock ON, select the name, and hold Alt and press 0160, then release Alt. This should make a character that looks like a space, but it isn’t.
3. Now right click the folder you just made and go to properties. Then go to the Customize tab. Then press the Change Icon button. Scroll through the icons until you find one that has no image (a blank space in the icons, any one will do).
4. Hit OK and you have an invisible folder!
Now you can put anything you want in there… If you can’t find it, just select the entire folder/desktop and there will be a little blue rectangle below the invisible icon (the folder).
If you put it on your desktop it might show the folder for a second or two upon startup. For this reason I recommend putting it inside another folder.
SPEED UP BOOT TIMES I
This tweak works by creating a batch file to clear the temp and
history folders every time you shutdown so that your PC doesn’t
waste time checking these folders the next time it boots. It’s
quite simple to implement:
1. Open Notepad and create a new file with the following entries:
RD /S /q “C:\Documents and Settings\”UserName without quotes”\Local Settings\History”
RD /S /q “C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History” RD /S /q “D:\Temp\” <–”Deletes temp folder, type in the location of your temp folder”
2. Save the new as anything you like but it has to be a ‘.bat’ file e.g. fastboot.bat or deltemp.bat
3. Click ‘Start’ then ‘Run’
4. Type in ‘gpedit.msc’ and hit ‘ok’
5. Click on ‘Computer Configuration’ then ‘Windows Settings’
6. Double-click on ‘Scripts’ and then on ‘Shutdown’
7. Click ‘Add’ and find the batch file that you created and then press ‘Ok’
SPEED UP BOOT TIMES II
When your PC starts it usually looks for any bootable media in any floppy or cd-rom drives you have installed before it gets around to loading the Operating System from the HDD. This can waste valuable time. To fix this we need to make some changes to the Bios.
1. To enter the bios you usually press ‘F2′ or ‘delete’ when your PC starts
2. Navigate to the ‘Boot’ menu
3. Select ‘Boot Sequence’
4. Then either move your Hard drive to the top position or set it as the ‘First Device’
5. Press the ‘Escape’ key to leave the bios. Don’t forget to save
your settings before exiting
Note: Once this change has been made, you won’t be able to boot from a floppy disc or a CD-rom. If for some strange reason you need to do this in the future, just go back into your bios, repeat the steps above and put your floppy or CD-rom back as the ‘First Device’
SPEED UP BOOT TIMES III
When your computer boots up it usually has to check with the network to see what IP addresses are free and then it grabs one of these. By configuring a manually assigned IP address your boot time will improve. To do this do the following:
1. Click on ‘Start’ and then ”Connect To/Show All Connections’
2. Right-click your network adapter card and click ‘Properties’.
3. On the ‘General’ tab, select ‘TCP/IP’ in the list of services and click ‘Properties’
4.I n the TCP/IP properties, click ‘Use the following address’ and enter an IP address for your PC. If you are using a router this is usually 192.168.0.xx or 192.168.1.xx. If you are not sure what address you could check with your ISP or go to ‘Start/run’ and type ‘cmd’ and then ‘ipconfig/all’. This will show your current IP settings which you will need to copy.
5. Enter the correct details for ‘Subnet mask’, ‘Default gateway’ and ‘DNS Server’. Again if you are not sure what figures to enter use ‘ipconfig/all’ as in stage 4.
Adding Horizontal Dividers in Word
To add a variety of horizontal dividers in Word, type three characters and press enter.
| Hyphens ( - - - ) |
| Underscores ( ___ ) |
| Equal Signs ( === ) |
| Hash Signs ( ### ) |
| Asterisks ( *** ) |
| Tildes ( ~~~ ) |
Type Out a Table in Word
You can create tables in Microsoft Word by simply typing out a string of PLUS SIGNS (+) and MINUS SIGNS (-).
Start the row with a PLUS SIGN (+) and then type MINUS SIGN (-) until you have the column width you want. If you want to add a new column, type PLUS SIGN (+) again. When you’re done type a final PLUS SIGN (+) and press ENTER. Word turns your text into a table. To add more rows to your table, move to the last cell in the table and press TAB.
Filling Word Documents with Pretend Text
If you want to fill a page(s) with text to test something like printing, but don’t want to spend time pasting the same phrase over and over,
Type in =rand(x,y) and press “enter“ .
Where x and y are replaced by numbers.
X would be the number of paragraphs.
Y would be the number of sentences in a paragraph.
The text that gets generated is ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’
Select a vertical block of text
Press Alt + drag
Quickly Replicate Text or Graphics in Word
Here’s a quick way to make copies of text or graphics in Word:
A copy of the original item is made right where you want it. This is helpful when you’re creating a document that will include a lot of repeated text or images.
Quickly Change Font Size in Office
To quickly change the font size in your Office application (Word, Front Page, Publisher or PowerPoint):
Use your keyboard to quickly change the case of text in Microsoft Word
Select the text you want to change and press SHIFT+F3. Each time you press the F3 key, the text case switches between Title Case, UPPERCASE, and lowercase.
Insert Current Date and Time in Word
You can insert the current date or time in a Word document using keyboard shortcuts. Here’s how:
To insert the date, press ALT+SHIFT+D.
To insert the time, press ALT+SHIFT+T.
Close all word documents without closing Word
Shift + click the File menu then select Close All
Shift + clicking on the File menu give one more option Save All
Return to the last place you were working
Return to the last place you were working or the place before that or before that.
Press Shift + F5 repeatedly to return to last 5 cursor positions (even if one of those positions is in another open document).
This one’s even cleverer, when you first open a document, press shift + F5 to jump to the last place you or someone else edited before closing the document.
Cycle through all open documents
To cycle through all open documents press Ctrl + F6 +F6 +F6….
It works for Photoshop and others applications as well.
Whether you’re saving a file or opening a file try these shortcuts
Alt + 1 Go to previous folder
Alt + 2 Go up one folder level
Alt + 3 Search the web
Alt + 4 or Delete deletes selected file
Alt + 5 Create a new folder
Alt + 6 repeatedly Cycle through all views
Alt + 7 Display the Tools menu
Determining the Formatting in Word
To determine what formatting is applied to a particular paragraph in Word:
Reducing the File Size of Word Documents
If you have make documents using MS Word and you make many formatting changes for the paragraph, fonts, page etc., you will see your file size gets bigger. Microsoft Word saves files by blocking, so any change you made for your document it will create a new block with the new formatting and disappear the old block without deleting it from the file.
You can solve this problem.
There is, however, a much easier way.
This makes Word rewrite the entire document file from scratch each time it is saved. The save command takes slightly longer, but your files can be drastically smaller (especially if you’ve done lots of formatting changes).
For all you people who have been looking for a way to get Windows Vista’s Aero glass effect in Firefox, look no further. Here is an extension for Firefox 3 that will do it. The extension is still in the early stages, but it work well.
Here’s are the steps:
You may need to alter or change Microsoft Office 2007 (aka 2007 Microsoft Office System programs and suites) product license key or volume license key (VLK) which also known as serial number or CD key.
You can modify or change product key for 2007 Microsoft Office programs or suites by first uninstall or remove Microsoft Office and then reinstalling the business productivity suite. However, you can follow the following steps in order to reset and change the Microsoft Office 2007 product serial key without the need to uninstall or reinstall 2007 Office system suites.
Note: The following steps involve modification of registry key values, which may corrupt your Windows if done incorrectly. Backup registry first before performing the workaround.
1. Close all Microsoft Office programs.
2. Click on Start button, then click on Run.
3. Type “regedit” (without quotes) in the Run text box, and click OK or press Enter.
4. Locate and then click the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration
Inside, you will find another subkey that resembles the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration\{30120000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}
5. Optional: Backup this registry branch by exporting the Registration subkey to a file, just in case the new product key does not work and you have to restore back the old product key. To export the registry, right click on the Registration subkey and click on Export, and follow the on-screen prompt to enter a file name for the registry file and choose a location to store it.
6. Under the Registration subkey, there may be several Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID) subkey that contain a combination of alphanumeric characters. Each GUID is specific to a program that is installed on your computer.
If you find additional subkeys that reference Microsoft 12.0 registration, then click and open each GUID subkey to view and identify the Office product version by the ProductName registry entry in the right pane. For example:
ProductName=Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
7. After you find the GUID subkey that contains your Office product or program which you want to remove the existing product license key or registration details, delete the following registry entries by right clicking on the registry entry in the GUID subkey, click Delete, and then click Yes:
• DigitalProductID
• ProductID
8. Exit Registry Editor.
9. Run or open an Office application program, such as Microsoft Word or Excel or Outlook. Office 2007 will prompt you to enter a new 25-character product key.
10. Type in the valid and genuine product key, and then click OK.
11. Then when prompted to choose your preferred type of Microsoft Office 2007 installation, press on “Install Now”.
12. Microsoft Office 2007 will be updated with new product CD key or volume license key, and ready for activation (if it’s a non-VLK serial) or use.
Note: If you’re having problem with your new Office 2007 product key, simply double click on the backup registry .reg file created at the optional step above to restore the registry settings of the Registration subkey so that the original value can be imported back to the registry.
You may need to reset to change Office 2007 product key with the above steps if you don’t want to uninstall or reinstall Microsoft Office 2007 again in many scenarios, such as you have just bought a retail version of Office 2007, or receive Office 2007 as a gift, or win MS Office 2007 as a prize, or just get your MSN product key for Office 2007, or having problem with activation process online or via phone, or unable to step-up or convert evaluation copy of Office 2007 to full-use version, or having problem with Office Genuine Advantage (OG) validation.
On the other hand, if you manage to find a valid and genuine volume license key or VLK, you can change the product key of Microsoft Office 2007 with the VLK serial in order to bypass the Office 2007 activation process (as Office 2007 still using WPA 1.0 where corporate users need not to activate), without the need of crack or hack for Office 2007, for full use for unlimited period as long as you’re not caught by OGA.
Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. We're not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.
The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. Join our community and this effort by pledging today.
.
If you want to see what goes behind the Windows Startup Screen, you have to disable the Windows boot screen.
Right click “My Computer”. Select “Properties”. Select the “Advanced” tab. In the “Startup and Recovery” section, click “Settings”. In the “System Startup” section, click Edit to open the boot.ini file in Notepad. You will see a line that looks similar to the one below:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect
To disable the Startup Screen, change the line as below:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect /sos.
Note that there is a space between 'fastdetect' and '/sos'.
Close Notepad, click Yes when Notepad asks if you want to save your changes. Exit System Properties. Reboot computer and the Startup Screen will be gone.
Microsoft has made Windows XP SP3 available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers today. Earlier it was announced to be available later on May 02, 2008.
Just login to TechNet/MSDN account and check “Top Subscriber Downloads” section.
The ISO file size is 544.86 MB.
Standalone EXE file size is 316 MB.
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