Owner: Cool Windows XP tips & tricks URL:http://coolxptricks.blogspot.com Join Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:46:47 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Cool blog full of useful howto's and tutorials about Windows XP. Site statistics:Click here
How to speed up your PC: Display settings 2008-03-07 23:57:00 By disabling unneeded visual effects, you can speed up your windows xp pretty much.How to change display effects:Go to control panel from the start menuOpen performance and maintenanceChoose adjust visual effectsIn the window that appears, uncheck any effects that you don't consider necessary, or just choose "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer"Hit OK and you're done!Come back tomorrow for the next part, themes and backgrounds.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Display
Speeding up your XP: Disabling unwanted programs at startup 2008-03-07 08:12:00 You probably need only half the programs that have been set to be loaded at startup. Having too many programs drastically slows down your startup. It's very easy to specify which ones you want to start automatically. It's wise to leave all the anti virus and system tools.Here's what you need to do:Go to Run from the Start menuOpen "msconfig" (without the quotes!) and click OKIn the windows that opens, choose the Startup tabMake your choices by unchecking the programs you don't need to load at startupHit OK and restart your PC.After starting a box appears. Check the option that the dialog box won't display at restart.That's all!Check back tomorrow for the next part, display settings.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Speeding
News: Internet Explorer 8 BETA released! 2008-03-06 12:41:00 A new beta version of Internet
explorer was released this week at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas. According to Microsoft, the browser will render the Acid2 browser test correctly and supports CSS 2.1. It also has various other bug fixes and improvements. In addition to IE8, Silverlight 2 and Expression Studio 2 (all in beta) were released.DownloadMore Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Explorer
, Internet Explorer
How to cheat in Windows Solitaire 2008-03-06 10:02:00 Open up Solitaire
from Start -> All Programs -> Games1. When clicking on the stack in the top-left of the game, three cards will come. To have them come one-by-one, press down Ctrl+Alt+Shift while clicking on the stack.2. Instantly Win: Alt + Shift + 23. Illegal move. Drag any card anywhere and press Escape before you release it.4. All cards up. Ctrl + A will move any cards up that can move to their suit deck.Happy cheating!More Cool Windows
XP tips & tricks HERE
Software Review: TuneUp Utilities 2008 2008-03-03 11:25:00 This is a very useful all-in-one computer performance and speed enhancing program. The interface is simple and easy to use, and it has basically everything you need to speed up your computer. It includes: defragging, registry cleaner, disc cleanup, repair wizard and much more. This definitely helped to speed up my pc and freed up a lot of hard disk space.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Software
, Utilities
, TuneUp Utilities
What is the difference between Windows XP Home and Professional editions? 2008-03-02 11:10:00 The difference
s are not very big and casual home users will find XP Home Edition sufficient.Windows
XP Professional Edition has the following differences:Administrative Tools in the Start Menu and Control PanelAutomated System RecoveryBoot Configuration ManagerDriverQueryGroup Policy Refresh UtilityMulti-lingual User Interface (MUI) add-onNTFS Encryption UtilitiyOffline Files and FoldersOpenFilesPerformance Log ManagerRemote DesktopScheduled Tasks ConsoleSecurity Template UtilityTaskkillTasklistTelnet AdministratorXP professional also provides support for multi-processor systems (several CPUs), Dynamic Disks and Fax.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
Design your own icons 2008-03-01 12:50:00 This is very easy and gives your PC a customized look.1. Fire up Paint from Start-All Programs-Accessories.2. Press Ctrl + E and set the image size to 32 x 32 px.3. Draw your icon or minimize a picture4. Save as filename.ico5. Right-click on a folder and open the properties window. Click on the customize tab an the Choose Picture button and locate your icon.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
Toggling autoplay. 2008-02-29 11:35:00 Autoplay is very useful, but can also be a security risk.To turn it on or off:1. Open gpedit.msc from the run box from the start menu.2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System3. Find Turn off autoplayMore Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
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.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks Read more:Hibernate
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 XPThe original article covering themes and icon setsMore Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Transformation
, packs
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...More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
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.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks
HERE
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.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks
HERE Read more:Welcome
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.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks
HERE Read more:events
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.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks
HERE
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 FirefoxMore cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE! Read more:Internet
, Internet Explorer
, Software
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 Read more:tricks
, things
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.More cool XP tips & tricks
HERE!
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.Whe Read more:tricks
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,"Drive\Shell\Defrag\command",,,"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 tip Read more:tricks
, Automatically
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 replac Read more:tricks
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+ASearch - 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 - Win Read more:Shortcuts
Welcome to Cool XP tips and tricks. 2008-01-28 08:39:00 Welcome to Cool XP tips and tricks
. Here I will show you how to make your Windows XP function better, look better and feel better. Be sure to send any questions about cool XP tips and tricks to xp.tricks@hot.ee. Read more:Welcome
How to capture a screenshot 2008-03-17 03:51:00 I'm surprised that many people don't actually know this, and reach for their camera to take a picture of the current screen image.Most keyboards have a special button Prt Scr / Sys Rq on them. It's just to the right from F12. When pressed, it capture
s the current screen into a bmp image which can be pasted (Ctrl + V) into any image editing software. Even Paint will do.The only problem is that you can only take one screenshot, if you take another, the previous one will be erased. The .bmp file also takes a lot of space and compressing to .jpg is better.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
Shortcut of the week: Changing text size in browser 2008-03-16 11:02:00 Tap Ctrl and + to make text larger or Ctrl and - to make text smaller.PS: Sorry for no posts the last few days, my internet was down.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:Changing
, browser
5 tips to surf faster in the web 2008-03-28 08:18:00 These tips will show you how to surf the internet a lot faster.1. When typing a web address into the address bar, just type the website and press Ctrl + Enter to add to the beginning and .com to the end. E.g. you want to go to google: type google and press Ctrl + Enter. It's as easy as that!(Note: this only works with .com addresses.)2. Use tabs instead of separate windows. This is a lot faster and doesn't mess up your taskbar.3. Use Firefox. Firefox is a much safer than I.E. and is also a little faster. It has many useful plugins.4. Press Ctrl and + to zoom in the text and Ctrl and - to zoom out.5. If you can't find what you're looking for on google and yahoo, try a metasearch engine such as dogpile, which compiles results from most popular search engines.Happy browsing!More Cool Windows
How to change your IP adress 2008-03-27 15:25:00 If you get your IP blocked somewhere and you don't like it, then this can be pretty useful.One way is to just turn off your router for some time, but most people don't have static IP routers and this won't help.If that didn't help, then you have to renew your IP using windows' command prompt.1. Type cmd into the run box from the start menu.2. Type ipconfig into the command prompt. This will show you basic info about your IP address.3. Type ipconfig /release. This will remove your current IP.4. Type ipconfig /renew, and you will be presented with a new IP address!You can also make a .bat program to execute these commands when opened.To do this, open notepad and write all the commands on a separate line and save it onto your desktop as ip_renewer.bat. Make sure you choose All files when savi Read more:adress
How to make an older program run in Windows XP 2008-03-30 02:16:00 When you want to run a program designed for a previous version of windows, right click on it, open properties and choose the Compatibility tab. Check the box for run this program in compatibility mode and choose the operating system it was made for. If you aren't sure, try them all and see which one works best.More Cool Windows
XP tips & tricks HERE Read more:older
How to increase your internet speed 2008-03-30 01:08:00 By default, most systems have some bandwidth reserved for nothing. You can change this the following way: (Note: this only works in Windows XP Professional)Open gpedit.msc from the run box in the start menu.Navigate to: Local Computer Policy > Computer configuration > Administrative templates > Network > QoS Packet SchedulerOpen Limit Reservable BandwidthCheck the enabled box and change the Bandwidth Limit to 0%.Depending on your system, this might need a restart to start working.More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE
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