|
BOOT CAMP 234 (16/07/02)
WINDOWS XP TIPS
Last week we looked at how to switch off or disable some of
Windows XP’s more annoying features; this week, XP customisation plus several
performance and productivity tips, so without more ado…
XP has a wealth of alternative mouse pointer and cursor
schemes. Go to Mouse in Control Panel and click the Pointers tab then the
Scheme’ drop down Menu. (If you are in Category View click Appearance and Themes
then Mouse Pointers). If you are using XP Pro have a look at Dinosaur or if you
are of a musical disposition try Conductor; in XP Home you should also find
Ocean and Sports schemes.
Windows Explorer has several new features for displaying and
sorting files and folders. One of the most useful is Show In Groups, which is
enabled on the View menu. You can now select the type of grouping that you
require, if you click on the Name header the groups will be alphabetical, click
on ‘Type’ and they will be sorted so that documents, images and spreadsheets
etc. are grouped together. As a further enhancement you can enable Show In
Groups in Details, Icons, Tiles and Thumbnails Views.
The security features in XP are obviously a welcome change to
Windows 9x, which is about as a secure as a wet teabag, however, forgetting your
logon password could be a major inconvenience. You could write it down somewhere
but that rather defeats the object, however, XP does have a recovery utility
that you should make use of if you are prone to forgetfulness. With a blank
formatted floppy to hand go to Control Panel, click on User Accounts then your
account name. In the Related Tasks pane on the left select the item ‘Prevent
Forgotten Password’, pop in the floppy and follow the on-screen instructions. If
you forget your password XP will give you the option of using your recovery disc
to help you to reset your password so keep it in a safe and secure place and
don’t for heaven’s save label it ‘Password Recovery’…
Sooner or later XP, like all incarnations of Windows, slows
down as it becomes overloaded with redundant files and Registry entries so if
your machine is starting to get a bit sluggish try this quick and simple trick
that should help to speed it up a bit (or maybe even a lot…). Go to User
Accounts in Control Panel and create a new account, make sure it’s an
Administrator type and this will allow you to copy across and export all of your
data files and settings from your old account in to the new and hopefully much
livelier one.
Here’s a useful tip if you want to make sure your children
switch the PC off at a particular time, or even limit your own usage to prompt
you to go home/get to bed at a reasonable hour. XP has a built-in utility called
Shutdown that can be programmed to switch the PC off after a predetermined
delay. To use Shutdown go to Run on the Start menu and type ‘cmd’ (without the
quotes) and this will bring up a DOS type window. Now type the following
command: ‘shutdown.exe –s –t xx’, where
–s is the shutdown ‘switch’, -t
is the time switch and xx is the delay in seconds. So, if you want the PC to
shutdown in 15 minutes, say, the command would be: ‘shutdown.exe –s –t 900’.
When the Enter is pressed the countdown begins, with a dialogue box on the
screen showing the time left and warning the user to save their work. For a full
list of the switches available for this utility just type shutdown.exe at the
command prompt.
This tip is mainly for advanced uses and it should help XP
boot up a little faster and improve performance. Like previous versions of
Windows a large number of programs and utilities are loaded during boot up, not
all of them are necessary and they can gobble up memory and resources. One quick
and easy way to find out what they are is to go to Run on the Start menu and
type ‘services.msc’. This will bring up a list of all of the programs that can
run or are presently running in the background. To find out what each one does
simply right click on it and this will display a dialogue box with a description
and a ‘Start Type’ drop-down menu with Automatic, Manual or Disable options.
Here are some Services that you may find, these are not usually needed by
non-networked home PCs and can be safely disabled:
Alerter
Clipbook
Computer Browser
DHCP Client
Distributed Link Tracking
Client
DNS
Client
Fast User
Switching
FTP Publishing Service
Human
Interface Access Devices
IIS Admin Service
IPSEC Policy Agent
Indexing
Service
Messenger
Net Logon
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Remote Registry Service
RIP Service
Run As Service
Server
SSDP Discovery Service
TCP/IP NetBIOS
Helper
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Upload Manager
Windows
Time
Wireless Zero Configuration
World Wide Web Publishing
Service
Workstation
NB. Only disable one Service at a time and if you run into
problems simply switch it back on.
Next week – Shareware
Top Ten
JARGON FILTER
DOS
Disc
Operating System, in Windows 9x a program that runs independently of Windows
responsible for controlling disc drives, organising data and memory resources.
In Windows XP DOS is a background utility that allows access to some of the
computers inner workings
SWITCH
Extra
functions (or instructions) added to the end of DOS command
THUMBNAIL VIEW
Option in Windows Explorer to display picture files as small
‘thumbnail’ sized images
TOP TIP
The internal clocks in most PCs are usually fairly accurate
but they can drift by a few seconds a week. XP has a useful facility that allows
you to synchronise your PC to an atomic clock when you are connected to the
Internet. The next time you are online double click on the time display on the
taskbar and select the Internet Time tab, check the item ‘Automatically
Synchronise…’ and click the Update Now button. If the time-server web site
selected by default is slow to respond or busy you can find a list of alternate
servers at: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/%7Emills/ntp/clock2.htm
|