Windowsxptricksforu

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2009-06-06T21:22:00.000+05:30

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Improve Performance By Disabling Indexing Service

2008-07-14T22:42:00.001+05:30

The Indexing Service in Windows XP Indexes your files presumably to shorten the time needed to search your hard drive if you are looking for a specific file or part of a phrase inside a file.

By default, this service is set to manual (so it won't start), but when you do a search on your computer, there's that little question asking you if you want to make future searches faster.... so you could have enabled it (it will tell you that you are going to enable the Indexing service when you choose this). Anyway, having run it for a while, it was one of the first things I decided switched off, and I haven't noticed any delay when I do my searches (and I presume that with my C:\ drive holding in excess of 106,000 files in over 2,700 folders I'm not a typical user!), but I did notice the improvement of having more CPU cycles available at all times. Don't you just hate it when you're playing a game of Hearts and your system decides that you are doing "nothing", so it can start indexing your files, thereby slowing down your game to a crawl.

To disable the Indexing service, open Computer Management from Administrative Tools (on the Start menu if you enabled this, or from the Control Panel), select Services and Applications, double click Services, and find the Indexing Service. Double click to bring up the Properties window, and click Stop to let Windows stop the service. Then from the Status type drop down box select Disabled.

Remove Shared Doc’s from My Computer

2008-07-14T22:37:00.001+05:30

Under My Computer you will notice a new folder called shared documents. Microsoft has made it easy to share files and folders over a network by dragging icons into it. If you wish to remove this folder from My computer all you have to do is delete a key from the windows registry.

Start regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\DelegateFolders.
Locate the key {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}.
Right click on it and select delete.
Reboot may be required to complete!

Remove Shared Documents Folder from My Computer

2008-07-14T22:27:00.000+05:30

If your computer is part of a Workgroup, you will notice that a Shared Documents folder appears in My Computer. This folder lets you share files with multiple users easily. If you want to remove this folder you can:

Start the Registry Editor

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer \

Right-click an empty space in the right pane and select New > DWORD Value

Name the new value NoSharedDocuments

Double-click this new value, and enter 1 as its Value data

Close the registry editor

Log off, or restart Windows for the changes to take effect

To reverse this process, change the Value data to 0, or delete the NoSharedDocuments Value.

How to track the original location of an email via its IP address

2008-07-09T14:12:00.002+05:30

Here’s a quick how-to guide on how you can track email to it’s originating location by figuring out the email’s IP address and looking it up. I have found this to be quite useful on many occasions for verification purposes since I receive lots of emails daily due to my blog. Tracking the IP address of an email sender does require looking at some technical details, so be ready to dig your heels in!

There are basically two steps involved in the process of tracking an email: find the IP address in the email header section and then look up the location of the IP address.

Finding the IP address of an email sender in GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Outlook

Let’s go ahead and take a look at how you would do this for Google, Yahoo and Outlook since those are the most popular email clients.

Google’s Gmail

1. Log into your account and open the email in question.

2. Click on the down arrow that’s to the right of the Reply link. Choose Show Original from the list.

Now here’s the technical part that I was telling you about earlier! You need to look for the lines of text that start with “Received: from“. It might be easier to simply press Cntrl + F and perform a search for that phase. You’ll notice that there are several Received From’s in the message header. This is because the message header contains the IP addresses of all of servers involved in routing that email to you.

To find the first computer that originally sent the email, you’ll have to find the Received From that’s farthest DOWN. As you can see from the above image, the first one is from a computer called “aseem” with the IP address 72.204.154.191. Then it was routed to my ISP’s server at eastrmmtao104.cox.net and so on and so forth till it got to your email server.

The computer aseem is my personal home computer and that’s my public IP address for my house! I’ll go through Yahoo and Outlook before talking about tracking the location of that IP address.

Yahoo Mail Beta

1. Log into your account and open the email (if you’re using Yahoo Mail Beta with the new preview interface, make sure you double-click on the email so that it opens in a new tab)

2. At the top right, you’ll see there is a drop-down option where Standard Header is selected by default.

3. Click on it and choose Full Header.

Again, you’ll see the same information as before, just in a different window:

Microsoft Outlook

1. Open the email in Outlook by double-clicking on it

2. Go to View at the top menu (the menu options for the email, not the main Outlook window) and choose Options.

You’ll get a dialog box where you can set the message options and at the bottom you’ll see the Internet Headers box. For some silly reason, the box is very small and you have to scroll a lot, so it’s best to simply copy and paste the text into Notepad to view it more easily.

Tracking the location of an IP address

Now that we have our originating IP address of 72.204.154.191, let’s find out where that is! You can do this by perform a location lookup on the IP address. My favorites are IP2Locator and GeoBytes IP Locator.

GeoBytes gave me a big map of New Orleans, LA along with a bunch of other information about the location itself.

IP2Location also gave me the same information pretty much, including the ISP (Cox Communications). Of course, this is correct since I live in New Orleans!

If you want more information, you can do a WHOIS database search also. My favorite one is theARIN WHOIS Database Search. This will give you information on who hosts that IP address and their registration information. You can always contact them to try and find more information on that particular IP address.

Have fun tracking down those emails! Questions, comments, or suggestions? Post a comment!

Physical Installation of the SATA Hard Drive

2008-07-08T00:37:00.005+05:30

Find a free 3.5" drive bay in your case. Most computer cases will have a row of covered 3.5" drive bays directly below the floppy drive. If there is no floppy drive, they should be below the CD drive bay. Note that many 'big box' retailers like dell place hard drives in alternate locations, so your experience may vary.

If you are installing a second hard drive, it's a good idea to leave a space between your old drive and your new one if you can afford to. Hard drives can get rather hot while operating, especially 7200 RPM drives, and this can affect their lifespan. If you are nervous about heat, or you do not have a free 3.5" bay, you can purchase a 5 ¼" adaptor kit at any computer store. This is simply a pair of metal plates that screw on to the sides of the drive and widen it to fit the larger bay size.

Slide the drive carefully into the free bay with the connector end of the drive facing into the body of the computer, and screw it in tightly on both sides. Hard drives generally use larger-threaded case screws like the ones pictured above. These are identical to the screws used to secure the body panels of most computer cases.

Now it's time to plug in the SATA power and data cables. Connect either end of your serial ATA data cable to the corresponding plug on the back of your new drive. The cable is keyed to only fit one way.

Now connect your SATA or Molex power connector to the back of the drive. Again, the cable is keyed to only fit one way.

Finally, plug the other end of the SATA data cable into one of the SATA connectors on your motherboard. That's it, there are no master or slave settings to fuss with for SATA drives since each hard drive has its very own cable.

Physically Installing an IDE Hard Drive

2008-07-08T00:33:00.001+05:30

Modern IDE hard drives use an 80-pin UDMA cable, while older hard disks and most optical drives use the 40-pin cable. If you are installing a hard disk that was made within the last eight years, you'll want to use the 80-pin cable. Note that the 80-pin and 40-pin names denote the number of wires in each type of cable, though both types still physically connect to the motherboard through a 40-pin connector.

Each IDE cable (both 40-pin and 80-pin types) can support two IDE devices, either hard disks or optical drives or a combination of the two. Depending on how your computer is currently configured, you may have an available space on an IDE cable that you can attach your new drive to, or you may need to add a second cable.

IDE cables connect to the motherboard through the IDE (Integrated Disk Electronics) controller interface, which provides the means to transfer data to and from the drives. An average PC will have a pair of IDE controllers, of various colours, each represented by one 40-pin connector (see picture).

Power down your computer, look inside and locate your existing hard drive and the IDE connectors on your motherboard to determine where you can add your new hard disk. Remember that each cable supports two drives, and each connector on the motherboard holds one cable.

Once you have figured out where you can attach your drive and whether you will need a new cable to do it or not, it's time to prepare your IDE hard drive for installation.

svchost error correction...it works.

2008-07-08T00:26:00.003+05:30

Thanx to Slees, we no longer have to worry about those so-called “Generic Host for Win32 Process” and “svchost.exe” errors that haunt our Windows XP almost daily (If not cured). Below i will explain what are the symptoms of this evil problem and how easily it can be fixed: :)

Symptoms:

* You are surfing the internet or are engaged any type of Internet activity when suddenly all your Network activity goes to hault. You can still see the Internet connected icon in the tray but you cannot surf, browse or do anything.
* You get an error message something like “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
* Error message reporting about faulting netapi32.dll and svchost.exe.
* You try to disconnect your Internet because of no activity observed but the Internet icon wont disappear.
* You recieve an error message something like “Your PC has recovered from a serious problem” etc.

Solution:

Follow these simple steps and your Windows will be fully cured of this menace :D

Close Port 445:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) by clicking Start menu, and then click the Run icon.
2. In the small box that Opens, type: regedit then click the OK button. The Registry Editor will now have opened.
3. Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters
In the right-hand side of the window find an option called TransportBindName.
Double click that value, and then delete the default value, thus giving it a blank value.

Close Port 135:

1. Then you must now navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\OLE
2. You will see there is a String Value called: EnableDCOM
Set the value to: N (it should currently be Y)
3. Close the Registry Editor. Shutdown and Restart your computer.

Well thats all :) but if you want you can disable NETbios.

svchost error correction...it works.

2008-07-08T00:26:00.001+05:30

How to apply password and compressed feature in windows XP?

2008-07-08T00:18:00.001+05:30

In windows XP, you can store your data on hard disk using less space than normal size. There is no need to install any third party software to compress or decompress your data, you can use windows built-in data compression or decompression feature to manage disk space issue.

I think many users are worried about the security of their file and folder also, so another benefit of this feature, you can protect your compressed file and folders with password.

Follow the given steps to implement the compression and password feature to mange data:

First double click on "My Computer" and locate the disk where you want to create compressed (zipped) folder. For example, if you want to create this compressed (zipped) folder on C drive, then open C drive.

Here open the "File" menu, go to "New" then click on "Compressed (zipped) Folder" option.

Rename this folder according to data information and press "Enter" button.

Now you can move (drag and drop or copy and paste) your files and folders to this compressed (zipped) folder then compression feature will implement automatically on that data.

When you want to open these compressed files, simple right click on compressed folder and click on Extract All. This extract wizard will automatically extract all these files to location you choose.

Now if you want to protect this compressed folder with password, simply open the compressed folder and go to "File" menu then here click on "Add a Password" option.

A small dialog box will appear with title "Add Password", type password in "Password" box and confirm password also then press Ok button.

Now when you will try to open your compressed files, system will prompt you a dialog box to enter password to open this file.

Beware of fake security warnings!

2008-07-08T00:08:00.002+05:30

Sometimes you'll be surfing the web and a window pops up that looks like a legitimate warning from Windows. Before you click, read carefully and you'll find that it's just a pop up ad trying to entice you to a product site by clicking "Yes". I've even seen some with a shield that resembles the new SP2 Security Center logo.

Just click the X at the top of the window to close it and go on your way.

How to enable the Hibernation feature in windows XP?

2008-07-08T00:05:00.001+05:30

In windows environment, the hibernation is a built-in feature used to increases your work performance and also minimizes the windows startup time. For example, if you have to keep open a lot of files and windows applications then you can leave you system in hibernate mode without closing the open programs. When you restart computer after hibernation, all the running files and applications will be restore as you have left them. Windows store the all hibernated information in the Hiberfil.sys file using system root folder. The size of this file is roughly equal to the RAM of your system.

Follow the given steps to activate the hibernation in windows XP:

To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button> Control Panel, click on Performance and Maintenance then click on Power Options.

A new "Power Options Properties" dialog box will appear, select Hibernate tab and then select the "Enable hibernation" check box to enable the hibernate feature.

If you system does not support the hibernation feature then the hibernation tab will not available there.

Now click on Apply button to implement the changes then click on Ok button to end the configuration process.

After enabling the hibernation feature click on Start button then click on "Turn off Computer". In the "Turn off Computer" dialog box, press the "Shift" for some time and click on Hibernate button. Your system will take some time to complete the hibernation process.

Close your non-responsive programs automatically

2008-07-08T00:04:00.002+05:30

Normally you end tasks the non-responsive programs manually using windows task manager with (CTRL + ALT +DELETE) keys. Sometimes these non-responsive programs creates problem to run windows and others programs properly. You can configure your computer to manage these non-responsive programs automatically. Windows has a feature that will close all non responding program automatically. If you have little knowledge about editing windows registry then you can configure your computer for this purpose.

Follow the given steps to configure windows registry for auto end task:

First click on Start button then type Regedit in Run option. Here locate the location to:

Go to Hkey_Current_User\Control Panel\Desktop

Here in right side panel, double click on AutoEndTasks and here its default value is 0. Now change it to 1. Now windows will close your all non-responsive programs automatically.

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

How to connect your home computer from Remote location?

2008-07-08T00:04:00.001+05:30

Using the Remote Desktop feature, you can connect your home computer (host) from any other remote computer (client) and can access all computer resources (installed programs, data and any network resources). You can run any computer application on the remote computer as you were running actually sitting in front of home computer.

Follow the given steps to configure your computer to connect remote computer:

To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

To perform this task, first make sure your both computers are connected to the internet.

First you have to configure the host computer that allows the users to connect it remotely. On the host computer, right click on "My computer" and click on Properties option.

Under the Remote tab, select the option "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" and click Ok button.

Now get the IP address of host computer (type the "ipconfig /all" on the command prompt of host computer to find IP address).

Now make a connection on remote or client computer, click on Start button, go to All Programs> Accessories, and Communications, then click on Remote Desktop Connection, option. A Remote Desktop Connection, dialog box will appear.

Click on Options button for detail configuration, under the General tab, type the IP address of host computer in the Computer box and also type username and password of host computer then click on Connect button to make a connection to remote computer.

If your username and password is correct then a remote desktop windows will appear.

How to prevent users from writing to USB drives?

2008-07-08T00:03:00.001+05:30

Today USB drive also known as keychain drive is becoming the most popular removable storage device to move data to different locations. USB drives are available in the market with different features, for example password protected, compatible with all windows versions and extra storage capacity (up to 65 GB).

A common security issue at organizations is how to prevent their workers to write data onto USB drives using their PCs, because a user can easily move confidential data for other location.

If you have windows XP with SP2, then you can disable the writing option to USB drives.

Follow the given steps to disable the USB writing option:

To edit the computer registry, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button and type "Regedit" in Run option.

Here locate the location to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

Here in right side panel, click right to create a key with the name "StorageDevicePolicies".

Now in left side panel, select "StorageDevicePolicies" key, again right click to create new DWORD value then label it "WriteProtect".

Set its value to "1". But again enable this option set its values "0".

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Windows Update Broke My Machine (svchost.exe -- application error), and How to Fix It

2008-07-08T00:02:00.000+05:30

If you turn on automatic updating for you machine, every Tuesday-ish, Microsoft will send you patches, and they'll quietly install. Amazingly, these patches (at least for me) never break anything. Until now, that is. After a recent update, my machine would spit out the following message every time I would boot.

svchost.exe -- application error the instruction at "0x745f2780" reference memory at "0x00000000". the memory could not be 'read'

Looking into the event log yielded the following:

Faulting application svchost.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, faulting module msi.dll, version 3.1.4000.2435, fault address 0x00012780.

The problem wasn't so much this error message, but the fact then when the dialog with the error was closed, the machine became unusable (no new executables would start). If I left the dialog open, I could use my machine "normally", but it would hang on shutdown.

Something with Windows Update broke something with the Windows Installer. Reinstalling Windows Installer 3.1 didn't solve the problem, but the follow spelunked from Google saved my bacon:

Perform these steps leaving the svchost crash dialog open.

1. Click Start->Run, type "services.msc" (without quotation marks) in the open box and click OK.
2. Double click the service "Automatic Updates".
3. Click on the Log On tab, please ensure the option "Local System account" is selected and the option "Allow service to interact with desktop" is unchecked.

4. Check if this service has been enabled on the listed Hardware Profile. If not, please click the Enable button to enable it.
5. Click on the tab "General "; make sure the "Startup Type" is "Automatic". Then please click the button "Start" under "Service Status" to start the service.
6. Repeat the above steps with the other service: Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)

Step 4: Re-register Windows Update components and Clear the corrupted Windows Update temp folder
================================

1. Click on Start and then click Run,
2. In the open field type "REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL" (without quotation marks) and press Enter.
3. When you receive the "DllRegisterServer in WUAPI.DLL succeeded" message, click OK.
4. Please repeat these steps for each of the following commands:

REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 ATL.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL

After the above steps are finished. Sicne temporary folder of Windows Update may be corrupted. We can refer to the following steps to rename this folder that

1. Click Start, Run, type: cmd and press Enter. Please run the following command in the opened window.

net stop WuAuServ

(note, you might need to reboot before the net stop command will work)

2. Click Start, Run, type: %windir% and press Enter.
3. In the opened folder, rename the folder SoftwareDistribution to SDold.
4. Click Start, Run, type: cmd and press Enter. Please run the following command in the opened window.

net start WuAuServ

UPDATE: This post has received a ton of comments. One, in particular, suggests an easier fix for this problem:

1.Go 2 the start menu
2.Right click "my computer"
3.Click "properties" then the "automatic updates"
tab
4.Choose "turn off automatic updates"
5.Reboot your computer
6.Go back to start menu and in all programs go to "windows update" you have to be connected to the internet.
7.Manually update windows.
8.Turn your automatic updates back on.

I have also had a number of people comment that the problem reappears after some time. The recommended fix, if the problem reappears, is to turn off automatic updates, and just manually go to Windows Update periodically and update your machine.

How to solve low memory problems?

2008-07-07T23:54:00.000+05:30

Normally this warning message shows when you run many programs same time than the RAM installed on your computer is designed to support. Your can solve this problem by increasing the system paging file size also called as virtual memory. Using this virtual memory windows moving information to and from the paging file for fast processing. This will free up enough RAM for other programs to run properly.

To increase the system page file follow the give path:

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Click on Settings (Under Performance) > Advanced > Change

Here under Drive (Volume label), you have option to select any of your hard disk drive, but the best choice is, select any drive other than C drive for virtual memory.

Set the double Initial & Maximum Size of your Virtual Memory. Here set initial size 700 MB and maximum size up to 1000MB; you can change this size according to the free space available on your hard drive.

Show Hidden Devices

2007-05-17T01:20:00.002+05:30

You can show hidden devices in the Device Manager. One way is by making a simple registry change. The other is through a batch file.

Registry Change:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Control \ Session Manager \ Environment
Create a string DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES
Give it a value of 1

Download reg file

Batch File

@Echo Off
Prompt $p$g
set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc
exit

Installing Java Virtual Machine

2007-05-17T01:20:00.001+05:30

If you are getting errors when browsing the web to install Java Virtual Machine,

You can still download it from Microsoft (version 3810)
If this link is removed by MS or is too slow you can download it here

If you need a previous version, you can download 3805

It is now included in Service Pack1

You can also download Sun's version

Corrupted or Missing \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG

2007-05-17T01:19:00.001+05:30

If you get the error:
Windows could not start because the following files is missing or corrupt
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM or \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE

Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
Enter in the administrator password when requested
cd \windows\system32\config
Depending on which section was corrupted:
ren software software.bad or ren system system.bad
Depending on which section was corrupted
copy \windows\repair\system
copy \windows\repair\software
Take out the CD ROM and type exit

NTOSKRNL Missing or Corrupt

2007-05-17T01:18:00.000+05:30

If you get an error that NTOSKRNL not found:

Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
Change to the drive that has the CD ROM.
CD i386
expand ntkrnlmp.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
If WindowsXP is installed in a different location, just make the necessary change to C:\Windows
Take out the CD ROM and type exit

Repair Install

2007-05-17T01:14:00.000+05:30

If XP is corrupted to the point where none of the previous solutions get it to boot,
you can do a Repair Install that might work as well as keep the current settings.
Make sure you have your valid WindowsXP key.
The whole process takes about half an hour depending on your computer
If you are being prompted for the administrator's password, you need to choose the 2nd repair option, not the first.

Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD
At the second R=Repair option, press the R key
This will start the repair
Press F8 for I Agree at the Licensing Agreement
Press R when the directory where WindowsXP is installed is shown. Typically this is C:\WINDOWS
It will then check the C: drive and start copying files
It will automatically reboot when needed. Keep the CD in the drive.
You will then see the graphic part of the repair that is like during a normal install of XP (Collecting Information, Dynamic Update, Preparing Installation, Installing Windows, Finalizing Installation)
When prompted, click on the Next button
When prompted, enter your XP key
Normally you will want to keep the same Workgroup or Domain name
The computer will reboot
Then you will have the same screens as a normal XP Install
Activate if you want (usually a good idea)
Register if you want (but not necessary)
Finish
At this point you should be able to log in with any existing accounts.

Increase DSL Speed

2007-05-06T01:32:00.000+05:30

This tweak is for broad band cable connections on stand alone machines with winXP professional version - might work on Home version also. It will probably work with networked machines as well but I haven't tried it in that configuration. This is for windows XP only, it does not work on win2000.

I use 3 Com cards so I don't know how it works on others at this point. It does not involve editing the registry. This tweak assumes that you have let winXP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks , only, installed. It also assumes that winxp will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try this.
In the "My Network Places" properties (right click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK

1. From the windows XP cd in the support directory from the support cab, extract the file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
2. next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put netcap.exe. then type "netcap/?". It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
3. Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
4. Open up control panel / system / dev man and look at your network adapters. You should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right click on the one without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! you are uninstalling your network adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
5. Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get a wizard just cancel out of it.
6. Now re-start the machine.
7. After re-start go to your connection properties again and you should have a new connection called "Local area connection 2". Highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
8. Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box
9. Re-start the machine
10. After restart enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost.

Why it works, it seems that windows XP, in its zeal to make sure every base is covered installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one loads everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards, this method breaks this "bond" and allows the NIC to run un-hindered.

Install the NetBEUI Protocol

2007-05-06T01:23:00.000+05:30

This tip describes how to install the NetBEUI protocol on a Windows XP-based computer. This may be useful because the NetBEUI protocol is not included in the list of installable protocols in Windows XP even though the files that are needed to install the protocol are included with the installation CD-ROM. It is important to note that the NetBEUI protocol is not supported on Windows XP.

The Netnbf.inf and Nbf.sys files are the files that are needed to install the NetBEUI protocol. To install the NetBEUI protocol:

Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Network Connections.
Right-click the adapter you want to add NetBEUI to, and then click Properties.
On the General tab, click Install.
Click Protocol, and then click Add.
Click Have Disk, insert your Windows XP CD-ROM, open the Valueadd\msft\net\netbeui folder, click the Netnbf.inf file, and then click Open.
Click OK, and then click OK to complete the installation.

Increasing the Folder Cache

2007-05-06T01:16:00.000+05:30

The default setting for WindowsXP is to cache the Explorer settings for 400 folders.
To increase it:

Go to Start >> Run
Type in: Regedit
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam
Change the vaule of BagMRU to whatever size you want (hex):

1000 - 3e8
2000 - 7d0
3000 - bb8
4000 - fa0
5000 - 1388

Disabling the Indexing Service

2007-05-06T01:14:00.000+05:30

Speed Up Windows XP by Disabling the Indexing Service:

The Indexing service can create an index of all the files and the content of many of those files in order to make finding things much faster. While Windows XP's heart is in the right place, this sounds better than it is in practice. The Indexing service is more effective in its ability to slow down your computer than its ability to speed file searches. Here's how to disable the Indexing service:

Click Start and click the Run command.
In the Open text box, type services.msc and click OK.
In the right pane of the Services console, find the Indexing Service. A quick way to get there is to click on the first entry in the right pane and then press the "I" key on the keyboard.
Double click on the Indexing Service entry.
In the Indexing Service Properties dialog box, click the down arrow in the Start type drop down list box and select Manual.
If the service is started, you can stop it now by clicking the Stop button.

You don't need to restart the computer. The next time the computer starts, the Indexing service will not run automatically.

Automatically Ending Non-Responsive Tasks

2007-05-06T01:10:00.001+05:30

You can download the registry file (below) or follow the instruction to do it manually.

Go to Start >> Run, type in: REGEDIT
Drill to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER >>Control Panel >>Desktop >>AutoEndTasks
Set the value to be 1 In the same section, change the WaitToKillAppTimeout to the number of milliseconds you want.

What to do with "the system has recovered from a serious error......" error ?

2007-04-30T19:44:00.000+05:30

Whenever Windows XP encounters a problem (that it thinks is serious even if you did not do anything unusual) it creates a dump file. Next time you reboot, you most likely see this error message. Clicking on more information shows error signature and other clumsy details. Typically minidump would be stored in \WINDOWS\MINIDUMP directory. It is not so easy to decipher this information. Best thing to do is to go to Windows Online Crash Analysis site at http://oca.microsoft.com and submit report ( or check status if you have already submitted the report). You may need to signon with Microsoft .Net Passport and if you don't have you may need to create one by supply some basic information about yourself..
Following are some of actions that you can take to avoid this error from cropping up.

Temporarily disabling error reporting:
Right-clock on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, error reporting button - turn on the "no error reporting" check box and turn off the "but notify me" option.
Disable Virtual Memory:
Right-click on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, performance settings, advanced tab, virtual memory "change" button. Note down the current VM settings (system managed or any customized size. Turn on the "no paging file" bullet, and press the set tab.

Delete the paging file:
Reboot. Verify that the option reads 0 kb for page file. Use folder options on control panel or explorer "tools" pulldown menu & go to "view" tab. Turn off check box to permit viewing of system files. Now explorer on the root of C drive (or what ever drive letter you page file was set to use), should show a pagefile.sys entry. Delete this. You will get a warning message about this being a system file. Since you have disabled virtual memory, this entry is not being used. Delete it. Go empty the trash bin to make sure this entry is cleared.
Re-enable Virtual Memory:
Right-click on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, performance settings, advanced tab, virtual memory "change" button , turn on the system-managed or customized paging file with the same settings as you noted down earlier. Be sure to press the set button. Reboot and verify that the paging file is active. Re-enable error reporting that was disabled earlier. Reboot to verify that the repetitive error message has indeed "left the building"
IMPORTANT NOTE: Microsoft support team should contact you as soon as possible!

Having problem with slow boot time or is it taking long to resume ?

2007-04-30T19:39:00.000+05:30

There are a variety of reasons why your windows XP system would boot slowly. Most of the times it this has to do with the startup applications. If you would like to speed up the bootup sequence, consider removing some of the startup applications that you do not need. Easiest way to remove startup apps is through System Configuration Utility (Go to START-RUN and enter MSCONFIG) and going to Startup tab and deselecting application(s) that you do not want to startup at boot time. If this works, great ! If not you can also look into SERVICES tab and possibly deselect WORKSTATION option and see if that helps.Want to know more about boot time and what Microsoft is doing about it ? Visit Microsoft web site on fast boot /fast resume at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp Go to Download section and you would see a software called Bootvis.exe. It is Microsoft Boot Performance trace visualization tool and has option to optimize your boot sequence. Read my step by step guide to using bootvis.EXE.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you deselect WORKSTATION option from SERVICE tab and reboot, a warning message window may come the very next time which you can choose not be displayed by checking "do not show this message again" option.

have more options in the Add/Remove program list

2007-04-30T18:56:00.000+05:30

All programs that are available on your Windows XP system are not available for removal. For example wordpad. I mean you don't want to remove wordpad from Add/Remove program list, but that serves just as an example. So why are some programs in the list and some not. Its not a game of Random numbers. There many a few unique methods through which we can control what appears on list and what does not. If you have installed Windows in C: drive , Go to C:\WINDOWS\inf (substituting the correct drive letter for your version of Windows) and open the sysoc.inf file. File contents looks like this: See the components that have word HIDE as second last item on the row. This hide tells system to not to display those items/apps in the Add/Remove program list. If you want to have this item in list, simply replace it with blank. I think you understand what am I saying
[Version]
Signature = "$Windows NT$"
DriverVer=07/01/2001,5.1.2600.0
[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7
NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7
iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7
com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7
dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7
IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7
TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2
msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6
ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7
fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp40ext.inf,,7
AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7
IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7
AccessUtil=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,accessor.inf,,7
CommApps=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,communic.inf,HIDE,7
MultiM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,multimed.inf,HIDE,7
AccessOpt=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,optional.inf,HIDE,7
Pinball=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,pinball.inf,HIDE,7
MSWordPad=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wordpad.inf,HIDE,7
ZoneGames=zoneoc.dll,ZoneSetupProc,igames.inf,,7
[Global]
WindowTitle=%WindowTitle%
WindowTitle.StandAlone="*"

remove shared documents folder from My Computer window

2007-04-30T18:52:00.000+05:30

Microsoft has done a fabulous job in the making of Windows XP. But least to say, no two people are alike. Some of the default features that Microsoft thought was good may not be liked by you at all. I have read various newsgroups and chats and one thing I noticed is that some don't like my shared documents folder option. If you are one of that, here is a trick to remove it.Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Once in registry, navigate to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ My Computer \ NameSpace \ DelegateFolders You must see a sub-key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. If you delete this key, you have effectively removed the my shared documents folder.

20 Things that an average person does'nt know about windows xp

2007-04-29T13:02:00.000+05:30

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. 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 make it show 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 the software and you can now uninstall it.

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.

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.

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 alone by typing ‘regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll’ at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can change things back 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 friend’s real IP address — they can find this out by going to 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 go insane 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.

20. Windows XP secretly KNOWS that the average user has no idea what they are doing. Therefore, it doesn’t let you do really stupid things like deleting the windows directory (at least not without spending several hours convincing it that you REALLY want to do this). Oh yeah, and internet explorer kinda sucks, get Firefox

FAT vs NTFS

2007-04-28T19:05:00.000+05:30

To NTFS or not to NTFS—that is the question. But unlike the deeper questions of life, this one isn't really all that hard to answer. For most users running Windows XP, NTFS is the obvious choice. It's more powerful and offers security advantages not found in the other file systems. But let's go over the differences among the files systems so we're all clear about the choice. There are essentially three different file systems available in Windows XP: FAT16, short for File Allocation Table, FAT32, and NTFS, short for NT File System.

FAT16
The FAT16 file system was introduced way back with MS–DOS in 1981, and it's showing its age. It was designed originally to handle files on a floppy drive, and has had minor modifications over the years so it can handle hard disks, and even file names longer than the original limitation of 8.3 characters, but it's still the lowest common denominator. The biggest advantage of FAT16 is that it is compatible across a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows 95/98/Me, OS/2, Linux, and some versions of UNIX. The biggest problem of FAT16 is that it has a fixed maximum number of clusters per partition, so as hard disks get bigger and bigger, the size of each cluster has to get larger. In a 2–GB partition, each cluster is 32 kilobytes, meaning that even the smallest file on the partition will take up 32 KB of space. FAT16 also doesn't support compression, encryption, or advanced security using access control lists.

FAT32
The FAT32 file system, originally introduced in Windows 95 Service Pack 2, is really just an extension of the original FAT16 file system that provides for a much larger number of clusters per partition. As such, it greatly improves the overall disk utilization when compared to a FAT16 file system. However, FAT32 shares all of the other limitations of FAT16, and adds an important additional limitation—many operating systems that can recognize FAT16 will not work with FAT32—most notably Windows NT, but also Linux and UNIX as well. Now this isn't a problem if you're running FAT32 on a Windows XP computer and sharing your drive out to other computers on your network—they don't need to know (and generally don't really care) what your underlying file system is.

The Advantages of NTFS
The NTFS file system, introduced with first version of Windows NT, is a completely different file system from FAT. It provides for greatly increased security, file–by–file compression, quotas, and even encryption. It is the default file system for new installations of Windows XP, and if you're doing an upgrade from a previous version of Windows, you'll be asked if you want to convert your existing file systems to NTFS. Don't worry. If you've already upgraded to Windows XP and didn't do the conversion then, it's not a problem. You can convert FAT16 or FAT32 volumes to NTFS at any point. Just remember that you can't easily go back to FAT or FAT32 (without reformatting the drive or partition), not that I think you'll want to.

The NTFS file system is generally not compatible with other operating systems installed on the same computer, nor is it available when you've booted a computer from a floppy disk. For this reason, many system administrators, myself included, used to recommend that users format at least a small partition at the beginning of their main hard disk as FAT. This partition provided a place to store emergency recovery tools or special drivers needed for reinstallation, and was a mechanism for digging yourself out of the hole you'd just dug into. But with the enhanced recovery abilities built into Windows XP (more on that in a future column), I don't think it's necessary or desirable to create that initial FAT partition.

When to Use FAT or FAT32
If you're running more than one operating system on a single computer (see Dual booting in Guides), you will definitely need to format some of your volumes as FAT. Any programs or data that need to be accessed by more than one operating system on that computer should be stored on a FAT16 or possibly FAT32 volume. But keep in mind that you have no security for data on a FAT16 or FAT32 volume—any one with access to the computer can read, change, or even delete any file that is stored on a FAT16 or FAT32 partition. In many cases, this is even possible over a network. So do not store sensitive files on drives or partitions formatted with FAT file systems.

How to remove Widows XP messenger......

2007-04-28T18:50:00.000+05:30

Theoretically, you can get rid of it (as well as a few other things). Windows 2000 power users should already be familiar with this tweak.

Fire up the Windows Explorer and navigate your way to the %SYSTEMROOT% \ INF folder. What the heck is that thingy with the percentage signs? It's a variable. For most people, %SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows. For others, it may be E:\WinXP. Get it? Okay, on with the hack! In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf (but not before making a BACKUP copy first). Before your eyes glaze over, look for the line containing "msmsgs" in it. Near the end of that particular line, you'll notice that the word "hide" is not so hidden. Go ahead and delete "hide" (so that the flanking commas are left sitting next to one another). Save the file and close it. Now, open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components icon. You should see "Windows Messenger" in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box, and you should be set. NOTE: there are other hidden system components in that sysoc.inf file, too. Remove "hide" and the subsequent programs at your own risk.