Cool Windows XP tips & tricks
Cool blog full of useful how-to's and tutorials about windows XP. |
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Articles from Cool Windows XP tips & tricks |
How to show "Hibernate" on the shutdown menu
2008-02-29 11:06:00
For some reason, this isn’t enabled by default.To be able to view the hibernate option, just press shift in the shutdown menu and Standby will be replaced by hibernate. To switch back to standby, release shift.
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How to make your XP look like Vista: Transformation packs (update)
2008-02-28 07:19:00
If you are not satisfied with just a Vista theme, installing a transformation pack will completely transform the computer. Your startup will look like vista, logon will look like vista and all the icons will be transformed into vista too.
Of course you will want the Vista theme as well, because the transformation pack doesn’t change the theme.
A free Vista transformation pack for Windows XP
The original article covering themes and icon sets
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How to rename the Recycle bin.
2008-02-25 12:03:00
If you want a totally customized Windows XP, then renaming the Recycle Bin can be quite useful. You could rename it to trash, garbage [or pretty much anything you can imagine ].
Follow these steps to rename the Recycle Bin:
1. Open up the Registry editor by typing regedit into the run box from the Start Menu.
2. Locate HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
3. Change the registry value “Recycle Bin” To anything. (Remember to exclude the quotes!)
And you’re done!You may have to restart your pc to see the changes…
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Cool Windows XP tips & tricks: How to enable fast user switching.
2008-02-22 08:59:00
User switching is the fastest way to switch to a different user account.This lets you have several accounts logged in at the same time, but only one of them interacts with the keyboard, mouse, etc. and is open, while the rest continue to run open programs.
To enable fast user switching:
1. Go to Control Panel and click on user accounts.
2. Click the User accounts icon in the Control Panel icons section to open the User accounts window.3. Click “change the way users log on and off”
4. Check the box “Use Fast User Switching”
And you’re done! To Switch users, open log off from the start menu and click “switch user” or just press Windows Key + L.
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Cool XP tips & tricks: Disabling the Welcome screen
2008-02-20 15:59:00
This feature is very useful if you have only one user account on your computer. The bad thing is that you can’t have it ask for a password.
To disable the welcome screen:
Open the Start Menu and select run. Type “control userpasswords2″ into the box.In the user accounts window choose the users tab and clear the box “Users must enter a name and password to use this computer”.Click OK and type your user name and password in the dialog box.
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Cool Xp tips & tricks: Set sound to events
2008-02-20 15:59:00
It’s fun to have a customized sound scheme. You can change the sounds that xp plays when you start your computer, log on, receive an error, etc. You can even record your own sounds.
To change the sound scheme:Go to Control panel from the Start menu and click on Sounds, speech and audio devices.Click on change the sound scheme.Save your previous scheme if you want to and click on any event in the Program Events box to choose its sound.
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Cool Windows XP tips & tricks: How to find out which XP service pack you have
2008-02-18 11:00:00
A service pack (SP), a term used by IBM and Microsoft, is basically a collection of updates, bug fixes and improvements. The latest service pack for Windows XP is SP. You can update to SP2 here: Service pack 2 for Windows XP.
Finding out which Service Pack you have is very easy.Press the Windows key and Pause|Break at the same time and look in the System part of the System Properties Window.
Updating to Service Pack 2 has many advantages: several fixed security issues, better operation and various bug fixes.
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Cool XP Software Reviews: Firefox vs. Internet Explorer
2008-02-15 10:34:00
Internet Explorer has started to lose its popularity to Mozilla Firefox, as so many security holes and risks have been discovered. Mozilla makes an effort to update often solving new security issues. Firefox’s vast amount of plug-ins as an open source program is also useful.Firefox is much safer and more user-friendly and it is recommended by most experts.More info about Mozilla Firefox
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Cool XP tips & tricks: 20 things you didn’t know about your XP
2008-02-06 06:33:00
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 i ...
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Cool XP tips & tricks: What to do when your desktop freezes.
2008-02-03 04:01:00
Often when your desktop freezes, or the taskbar disappears when you close a program, you don’t normally have to restart your computer, as often this just the case of explorer not responding. To fix this, open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Click on the Processes tab and look for explorer.exe. End it if it’s there and go back to Applications. Click on New Task and type explorer in the box and run it. Your desktop should reappear in a few seconds.
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Cool XP tips & tricks: How to assign scheduled tasks and automatically wake your computer.
2008-01-30 09:50:00
Assigning scheduled tasks and automatically waking your computer is very useful, especially if you want your computer booted and virus-scanned before you arrive at work. There are various programs to do this, but it’s not that hard to do it manually.
1.First go to Control Panel and choose Performance and Maintenance. Click the scheduled tasks icon.
2.Next click on Add Scheduled task to open the Scheduled Tasks Wizard.
3.Browse for the program you want to run or select it from the list. Type the name and select how often you want it to run.Press next and choose the time to run it. You might need to enter the username and password from where you want to run it. Check the settings in the final window and click on Open Advanced Properties for this task when I click finish, and click finish.
4.When the advanced properties window opens, click the Settings tab and choose Wake computer to run this task if you want.
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Cool XP tips & tricks: Automatically defrag drives
2008-01-30 08:49:00
I found an article on the web the other day about automatically defragmenting drives and thought that I might just as well post a tutorial about it here. Basically, this allows you to defrag any drive by right-clicking on it and choosing “defrag.”
To enable this, open notepad and paste the following code:
; context_defrag.INF
; Adds Defrag to the right click context menu in Windows XP
[version]signature=”$CHICAGO$”
[DefaultInstall]AddReg=AddMe
[AddMe]
HKCR,”DriveShellDefragcommand”,,,”DEFRAG.EXE %1″Next save it as context_defrag.inf onto your desktop or basically anywhere… (Note: be sure to save it as All Files and not Text Documents!)
Right-click on it, choose Install and you’re ready to start defragmenting!
I believe the original article by Paul Thurrott is here.More cool XP tips & tricks HERE!
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Cool XP tips & tricks: How to make your XP look like Vista
2008-01-29 09:25:00
Tired of your XP? Want to buy Vista? Well, don’t. Vista is still full of bugs and not reliable yet. So what’s so good about it? Most people like the new and pretty looks.It’s a great idea to mix together the good things from both Windows systems: the reliability of XP and looks of Vista.
To do this we need to change the boring XP theme to match the design of Vista, which is not exactly as straightforward as copy-paste, as XP only allows its own handful of themes which are all mostly dull. We need to modify the uxtheme.dll file in your system directory. The easiest way is to download a patched up version and replace it with the original. You can get one here:service pack 1 or service pack 2 .
It’s a good idea to use replacer, which also backs up the original file if a problem occurs.
To replace uxtheme.dll go to the System32 folder in C://WINDOWS and look for it.Drag it into the replacer window. Next drag the replacement file which you downloaded also into th ...
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Cool XP Tricks: Keyboard Shortcuts
2008-01-28 09:07:00
Keyboard shortcuts are one of the fastest ways to perform actions and commands.Your XP has several shortcuts. You probably know some, like Ctrl+C (copy) and Ctrl+V (paste), but are you aware of the more advanced commands such as minimizing all windows (WinKey+M or WinKey+D) when you need something from your desktop, or Winkey+E when you need to open My Computer fast?
Here are some of the shortcuts you are likely to need:
Delete- Del (Note: to permanently delete a selected item, press Ctrl+Del.)Copy - Ctrl+CCut - Ctrl+XPaste - Ctrl+VUndo - Ctrl+ZRedo - Ctrl+YSelect all - Ctrl+A
Search - F3Open START menu - Ctrl+EscRefresh - F5Help - F1Show desktop - WinKey+DMinimize all windows WinKey+MSwitch users (or lock computer if you are connected to a network) - WinKey+Lshow the system properties - WinKey + Pause/Break
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