XP Hints, Tips and Tricks

**Lex** · 04 February 2002, 14:19 Monday

Well, one feature I found was when my cursor locks up, hit the power off button to fix the problem.

Another nice feature? pressing like 4 keys just to log out, having to sit there for 20-30 seconds for the next prompt. How stupid is that? Then he doesn't shut down all the way sometimes after you go through all this.

Sorry to be a downer, but so far, these things aren't making XP the CATs meow for me.

Lex

**Andrew Pratt** · 04 February 2002, 15:43 Monday

Doug check out the link in the MP3 thread there's a section in there about making switching users faster...and getting it to log on automatically for you which is what I do on both our machines.

**Brewer** · 04 February 2002, 17:06 Monday

XP is Crap sorry to say unless you have a 850 processer or faster dont try to use it .Only buy the up grade if the only operating system thats on your pc has been the full version of ME thats the only way it will work right ....windows 2000 is the best still and the most stable i can leave my pc on for days and days and i wont have to reboot when i come back or can install software with out rebooting .....Your Dammed if you Do and Dammedif you Don't

Kevin A Brewer

**Bing Fung** · 04 February 2002, 22:06 Monday

Kevin, on what are you basing your opinion on?

I have ran both XP and W2k and I find XP is much more stable by far, as well the driver support has been a lot better in XP.

I had a ton of games that would not run in W2k, this required me to run a dual boot system of ME and W2k. When I set up XP I also set up a dual boot system of ME again. What I have found is I don't really need this dual boot system anymore, for XP will run all the games that W2k would not.

The logon welcome window is a nice addition and allows my family to log on with out logging me off, or quiting any applications I may have running.

The handling of digital images from my CCF card is totally slick. It will rename all the generic DSCN files to what ever I want in a batch. Then the thumbnail viewing of them is a nice feature, as is the quick photo edit features. Another nice feature is the way I can resize the images to for it's intended use. Publish to the net? It prompts me to size them accordingly and then saves the picture file as another version. Same goes for e-mailing them, I just right click, send to, mail receipent and it asks if I would like to resize.... can't be any easier than that.

The built in image viewer alone is worth having XP. Using my MS Explorer mouse I just click forward or back on the mouse to view the image I want. sure I still use PaintShop Pro 7 and Adobe Photoshop 6, however most times I use the built in viewer & editor.

Driver roll back is a cool feature that I have used on many occasions. The help files are alot more usefull as well.

USB support and recognition of hot plugged devices is much more consistant and reliable in XP. With W2k, many times it would do nothing when I plugged in a device. My CCF card reader was a total pain to use with W2k, now with XP it is like another removable drive.

A lot of people comment on the look of XP, personally I like it a lot more than W2k. It's has an updated look that is broken from the Windows 3.1 era that I find appealing. And if you don't care for it, it has the classic skins as well.

IE 6 forever crashed and dumped in W2k on my system. This was a real downer for I really liked the features of IE 6. However I had to use IE 5.x in W2K. IE 6 is an intregal part of XP and I wouldn't want to use anything else.

Those are the features that I use the most and find is more than worth the jump to XP.

Lex, com'on, it takes 3 clicks to shut down XP, and it boots way faster than W2K. I have yet to experiance the long shut down times like that of W2k. 3 clicks is all it takes, sure W2k does it in 2, however I found a lot of times W2k will just sit there thinking about shutting down as its "saving your settings" That is your main deciding factor? :roll: I like the power button tip :LOL:

XP Tip courtesy Dick Matthews.

Windows XP reserves 20% of total available bandwidth by default. This is designed for office environments which will reserve 20% for real work, while giving resourses to the other people downloading MPEG files for fun.

To unreserve the 20% go to Start and select Run. Type gpedit.msc and press enter. Expand Computer configuration then go to Administrative templates. then Network and select the QoS Packet scheduler. Double click the Limit reservable bandwidth key, and check the enabled item on the settings tab. Change the bandwidth limit % to 0, then click apply and exit gpedit.msc, this will free up that 20%.

Don't know if it has made a difference, but at least I know I have every available amount.

Bing

**Trevor Schell** · 04 February 2002, 22:19 Monday

Well, one feature I found was when my cursor locks up, hit the power off button to fix the problem.

ROTFLMAO :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

**Brewer** · 04 February 2002, 22:42 Monday

Dick

My opinion is base on pcs that are useing full 98 then they install the me upgrade then try to install XP and it dont work or there trying to put it on 750 processer or less then have problem with it locking up and the bs you have to go threw to install a cdburnner ....
I run a dual boot system as well with ME and win2000 as well but i have a hard drive for each operating system...All i was saying is that XP was made for new pc and to upgrade a old pc causes a lot of conflict...Kevin

Kevin A Brewer

**Bing Fung** · 04 February 2002, 23:02 Monday

Fair enough Kevin, however to say XP is summarrily crap based on just those issues, does not make it factual.

Whenever I install a new OS, I will start from a freshly formatted HD, ALWAYS. I know that it is not always feasible for everyone, however you are only asking for problems by not doing otherwise. In that respect you may be correct that XP is not the best choice to install over another OS, but that doesn't mean it's a crap OS with all finality.

Cheers

BTW, it's Bing, not Dick

Unless of course you were insinuating something else... lol

Bing

**SiliGoose** · 05 February 2002, 01:05 Tuesday

LOL!!

I have a request for an XP tweak:

How do I get rid of those annoying message bubbles that pop up all over the place? For example, after installing new software these bubbles pop up every time you press the Start button. They obscure the shut-down options.

If I could get rid of those I'd be a happy camper.

Brewer,

Try a clean install. That way, any issues that arise are either your fault or bad hardware.

-Sili

**Brewer** · 05 February 2002, 01:46 Tuesday

Bing

Sorry about the name nothing ment by it just took the wrong name off your post.i do agree with you crap may have been to strong of a word .. But the last 5 years microsoft have gave us 3 new os and 2 nt os when are they going to perfect one product and not try to make people move to a new one and make more money like the xp plus for the home edition i ,i got one for 98 the with ME they made plus part of the os .Then to make you buy it all over with XP .Id rather buy updates for whats working for me right now then buy another os ...Kevin

Kevin A Brewer

**Jariten** · 05 February 2002, 02:48 Tuesday

Uh :roll:
Installed on a Celeron533 with 128MegRam No problems

Installed on a Dual AMD 1800XP ..no problems...

Installed on a AMD K6 with 256Meg ram Laptop (SOny VAio)
No problems

Installed on 650Mhz Durons machines (4 of them) no problems...
Where is the problem?

WinXP is very stable win2k is nice too..

Humm hints and tips....

Anyone checked www.techimo.com

**Bing Fung** · 05 February 2002, 09:06 Tuesday

Kevin, no problem at all. I thought it was funny :LOL:

I agree, that plus jazz should be part of the original OS, not some further money grab. I have plus for both XP and 98, it certainly is not worth the $55 asking price.

Bing

**Jeremy Santos** · 05 February 2002, 14:08 Tuesday

I think XP is the most stable OS I have used, but you do need a fairly powerful PC to run it with all of the features on. If you are having problems with drivers, or can't find any for XP, it is usually a safe bet that you can use W2K drivers.

I don't know if W2K had this feature, but for XP you don't even have to go through the "start" button to shut down your machine. With XP, you can now just hit your power button on your tower case and it will shut down for you. And I can defenitely say that XP starts up and shuts down so much faster than W2K.

Jeremy Santos

My Software
Santos Theater

Play It Loud, Play It Clean!!!!!

**Andrew Pratt** · 05 February 2002, 15:22 Tuesday

I have XP running on my Celeron 950 and Celeron 450 machines and both are running 100 percent stable. The 450 machine was an upgrade from 98SE while the 950 machine was an upgrade from win2K...both have been rock solid. Like Bing mentioned above there are so many useful features in XP that its really a big step forward from the users point of view and it finally gives us the driver support that 98 had only with NT's stability. Calling XP crap on machines that have had a questionable upgrade cycle isn't justified IMO.

**Brewer** · 05 February 2002, 16:25 Tuesday

Well what may work for you dose not work for everyone...I own my own PC doctor Co. I work with people who use there pc for home use.Ever Since XP has came out most of my calls lately have came from people who install XP Home Edition then there pc locks up or wont start up or shut down.All of the problems that iv list in the above post have been the main problem.You can never base what works for you will for everyone else there are to meny factors to figure in.Im most of the cases iv repalced the processer and mother board and ofcorse more ram and it works fine..and i only did that after i reformatted there hard drive and try reinstalling the os and it did not work for me......

Kevin A Brewer

**Jeremy Santos** · 05 February 2002, 16:50 Tuesday

So you have had most of your problems with the "Home Edition"? I am using the corporate version and I am now wondering if that could be the difference. I know Andrew is using the corporate version as well.

Jeremy Santos

My Software
Santos Theater

Play It Loud, Play It Clean!!!!!

**Brewer** · 05 February 2002, 18:10 Tuesday

yes only the Home edition....... thats what i do is go to the clients home ..most my bus is based around Dumb rich people who know nothing more about PC then AOL.but the got aol they know everything ...lol I should not make too much fun thats how i make my bread and butter...and the house calls to the nice looking ladies is not bad either, better when they forget your comeing ....lol

Kevin A Brewer

**Lex** · 05 February 2002, 21:33 Tuesday

LOL Kevin.

Bing, don't be a dick. haha.

Well, my XP is on my laptop, and for now, that's the only place I will have it. Sure, it's novel and new, but I am not convinced it's the ticket over W2K. However, I do have the Home version, not the corporate version...

Lex

**Bing Fung** · 06 February 2002, 18:00 Wednesday

Dick-Will?? :LOL: :P :LOL:

Bing

**Chip** · 15 February 2002, 09:23 Friday

I have an XP question.... My buddy just installed it on his 450 PII Gateway box. How do you "Find Files" on XP? I know it's a dumb question, lol but, i haven't sat down with it at all yet.

Chip

Chip Engle

"Concrete ain't a spectator sport"

<a href="http://www.htguide.com/bilder/index.cfm?fuseaction=arkivbilder&userid=0&selected userid=336" target="_blank">My HT

**JonMarsh** · 15 February 2002, 11:13 Friday

Pretty much the same way as for 98, 2K, etc.

By menus, START, FIND, FIND Files

The Find Files folder will come up, which has a lot of options and subtasks in the pane on the left.

(now, I'm running WINSTEP on top of XP, so I don't have all the XP UI START menu features, but most of the menu menu is perserved; but then I do have four windows systems I have to do "work" work on, two running NT, two running XP, which in most matters behave identically on a UI basis) (that is convenience, since it adds a lot of functionality to NT's often austere behavior. See below ).

Re stability, I have to concur with Bing. I'm running XP on four systems right now (two are still 98SE; an audio test computer, and the bedroom gaming rig); XP is VERY tunable regarding OS resources and with little effort can be made to run quite nicely on a 450 MHz Celeron; the key is having 256 MB of RAM or more. 98 hardly knows what to do with more RAM; not the case with XP.

Driver support is MUCH better in XP; while WIN2k shipped without driver support for most current HP Inkjet printers (and HP didn't have the drivers, either!), XP had support built in for my HP855, HP1000, and HP990. In fact, all you have to do to install a printer is plug it in and boot up. For me, in 100% of cases so far, XP deteced the printer and installed the drivers automaticlaly.

Disclosure:
Conflict of intereset statement: I was an XP beta tester, so I'm probably not exactly unbiased, having "grown up with it" through an evolutionary process. But, in my opinion, it is by far the MOST complete OS Micro$oft has ever shipped. And for me, it has been more reliable and stable than WIN2K, which, usually struck me as being an incomplete and unfinished melding of NT and 98. Which it was.
Cheers.

Jon

Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

**Bing Fung** · 15 February 2002, 11:49 Friday

Jon, that's a nice looking desktop. Winstep allows you to set-up like that?

Chip in the default XP, the search is in the left column of file explorer. It provides a little brown dog to help sniff out files. Apperently this dog cannot be removed unless you have something like the program Jon is using. I'm not sure if using classic desktop will disable him, however he doesn't really bother me as much as he may others

Bing

**SiliGoose** · 15 February 2002, 12:01 Friday

Whoa! Is that the 'Dock' from OSX on your WinXP desktop?

h:

-Sili

**JonMarsh** · 15 February 2002, 13:06 Friday

Sure looks like it, doesn't it?

I like this overall interface a lot; it's easy to access all kinds of functions. I have the start icon in the upper left; my "task bar" is the strip of translucent icons on the left, starting just under the start icon.

This system is running XP. What weirds out our IS guys, is when they see my desktop or company laptop at work, running NT, and it looks just like this, too!

There are a variety of "skins" available (for free) for Winstep; it comes with about a dozen and a half. I've used the NextStep clone also, but I think I like this one, "H20 Pro" the best. It's very customizable within a particular "skin", also. The clock is cool; you can sync it to an atomic clock standard (and set your PC time) with two clicks.

Take a look at it here

-Jon

Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

**Burke Strickland** · 16 February 2002, 19:26 Saturday

One XP tip -- if you have used Network Ice's "Black Ice Defender" (BID) as your personal firewall (with cable modem or DSL) DON'T use it with XP. Even though their site says the latest update is XP compatible, it is not -- unless you consider random, unannounced reboots every few minutes a sign of compatibility. :>)

A while after installing BID on my new computer which uses XP, I started experiencing the reboots, and it didn't seem tied to any particular application so at first i assumed maybe my hardware was starting to malfunction since I had left the PC running for several days. But looking around various software forums with Q/A about XP and BID, I discovered that other computer users had experienced the same problem when they installed BID, and that it stopped immediately when they uninstalled it.

So that is what I did, (uninstall BID) and sure enough, no more reboots (unless I inititate them). So will I wait for word from Network Ice on an update? No -- I need firewall protection, now so I'm looking at other options. But it sure is aggrevating for a vendor to assert that their product is compatible with an operating system only to discover that it truly isn't.

Burke

**Bing Fung** · 23 February 2002, 12:14 Saturday

Windows Tips Balloons

Here's how to get rid of them...

Click Start, Run then type regedit Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVe rsionExplorerAdvanced and create a DWORD key named EnableBalloonTips. set the Value to 0. and reboot. That should take care of them.

Bing

**SiliGoose** · 25 February 2002, 01:21 Monday

Thanks Bing!

I saw that in MaximumPC last week...didn't think to post it here.

I'd rather not mess around with my registry. I've found that Microsoft's PowerToys for WinXP performs this task automatically. PowerToys is currently unavailable but a new version is coming soom.

-Sili

**Bing Fung** · 25 February 2002, 16:01 Monday

That's good Tweak XP does it for you Sili. I have installed Teak xp, but did not notice the balloon delete feature

Note that Tweak programs are just a registry hack in it's self that modifies the registry, only you don't know how or what it has modified.

Reg Edits are great, I like working in there, however one of these days I may get burned!! Always back up the registry before editing :P

Bing

**Andrew Pratt** · 26 February 2002, 12:47 Tuesday

Thanks Bing for that hack i hate those silly things. Silly don't worry to much about hacking the registry just do a backup (export) it before you make any changes. If you want to get comfortable making keys etc but don't want to upset the stability of the machine use the HKEY>Current User area since it only affects settings for the person logged in and you can't screw up the OS in there

**Land Shark** · 06 March 2002, 17:21 Wednesday

Per Andrew's request...

www.winsupersite.com - Nice layout and easy to read directions on XP tips and tweaks

www.tipsdr.com - Kinda slow and not too pretty to look at, but some great tips

www.dougknox.com - Most tips and registry fixes are already in .VBS scripts for you to download

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp - I couldn't forget Microsoft's own contribution

Have fun.

Brian

**Land Shark** · 06 March 2002, 17:37 Wednesday

Burke,
I had the same type of problem with Black Ice in XP so until I get the update I'm using the free version of Zone Alarm.
Works like a charm and I even past the Sheilds Up test at www.grc.com. (Go to the Sheilds Up link and run both tests.)
Basically you want all your ports to show up with a "Stealth" reading.

I'm not sure about the home version but XP Pro comes with a built-in firewall that you will have to enable which you could also use.

Brian

**Jon** · 18 March 2002, 16:08 Monday

I have a machine at work that's a Cyrix 6x86MX PR200+ (187mhz) with 128MB Ram, 6.4GB HDD, Windows XP. I wouldn't try to tell you it runs great or anything, but it does run acceptably. All I use it for is testing and logging onto servers, and to see how XP would run on it. But its actually not all that slow, really.... my 2 cents.

XP Hints, Tips and Tricks

XP Hints, Tips and Tricks

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