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 http://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.
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
