Computer Tips

To play DVD's with the Windows Media Player Windows Media Player which is inbuilt in windows XP can play DVD's. To make Windows Media Player as the default DVD player or open DVD files through Windows Media Player, Open Registry Editor and navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ MediaPlayer \ Player \ Settings" and create a new string EnableDVDUI Give it a value of yes The next time you start the Media Player, you can do a File / Open DVD

Opening Files with Other Than the Default Application If you have more than one application you use for the same type of file (media, text, graphics etc.) Use one as your default player, make a shortcut to the other player and put it in the C:\WINDOWS\SENDTO folder. When you want to open a file with the non-default application, right click on the file and send it to the other application

Disable Search from Looking in ZIP Files (make faster search) Compressing files, folders, and programs decreases their size and reduces the amount of space they use on your drives or removable storage devices. Drive compression decreases the amount of space used by all of the files and folders stored on that drive. Windows XP Search can get slow if you have a lot of compressed files on your hard drive. You can speed up your searches by disabling this. Click Start - Run. Type: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /u Click OK. To turn this feature back on: Click Start - Run. Type: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll Click OK.

Hiding All Icons on your Desktop You can hide all icons on your desktop. Start regedit Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer Add a new DWORD value "NoDesktop" Setting for Value Data: 0 or 1 (0 = Enabled / 1 = Disabled) Close regedit and reboot computer. Setting Swap File Size (Pagefile)

When you start your computer for the first time, a swap file will be created. You can speed the boot process by specifying this as the minimum swap file size. Boot your system and don't open any applications Note the size of your swap file (WIN386.SWP) Open the System Properties dialog box (right click on My Computer and select Properties) Click on the Performance tab Click on the Virtual Memory button Check Let me specify my own virtual memory settings If you have a hard drive or partition that is not over used, you can change the location For the minimum size, select the size (or slightly larger) of the swap file when you first booted. Don't select a maximum. Let it default to the rest of your hard drive space.

Change the CHKDSK countdown time Change the CHKDSK countdown time When you schedule CHKDSK to run at the next boot, by default the system will prompt you to press a key within 10 seconds to cancel the CHKDSK operation. You can change this value in the system registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\AutoChkTimeOut The value allowed is between 0 and 259,200 seconds (3 days). With a timeout of zero, there is no countdown and you cannot cancel the operation and the CHKDSK runs immediately. It is recommended not to cancel CHKDSK as CHKDSK is needed to recover from errors that might have occurred on your hard drives.

Easy Way to Share Multiple Folders If you need to share multiple folders, running the program SHRPUBW.EXE at Start -> run, will bring up a simple dialog box to let you: Browse to the folder you want to share Enter in a Share name Enter in a Share description Set permissions. Several choices are available. Restart the process from within the same program

Increasing the Icon Cache Run Registry editor and navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer Create a new string called "Max Cached Icons" Give it a value of 10000 This will increase response time in windows and give the Shell icon cache file more space.

Make your own icon files with Mspaint You can make your own icons with MsPaint, to do this you have to create or open any image in MsPaint and then change the size to 32 x 32 pixels and then save it with the file extension .ico Ex:- .ico

Change Internet Explorer Download Directory You can change the default path which Internet Explorer uses to save downloaded files, to do this, In Regedit navigate to: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" Change the value of the string "Download Directory" to the new path you want to assign as IE's Default Download directory i.e. "C:\IEDownloads"

Common Control Panel Applets The follow are some common Control Panel Applets that are located in the \windows\system32 directory. If you find yourself using any of these frequently, then you can simply make shortcuts

to

them

appwiz.cpl

-

desk.cpl

-

on Add/Remove

-

ncpa.cpl

-

Properties

Firewall

-

mmsys.cpl

Network User

powercfg.cpl

-

Power

-

wscui.cpl

-

Accounts

System

inetcpl.cpl - Internet Explorer Options

Options Properties

Security Automatic

Audio Connections

-

-

Options and

nusrmgr.cpl

wuaucpl.cpl

Settings

Internet Sound

sysdm.cpl

desktop. Programs

Display

firewall.cpl inetcpl.cpl

your

Updates

Center Configuration

Viewing Installed Drivers If you want to see a list of installed drivers, you can run the driverquery program in windows XP There are a lot of available switches to view different types of information. One use can be to export to a CSV file for viewing in Excel An example would then be: Driverquery /v /fo csv > drivers.csv

Rename Multiple files at once in XP It is possible to rename more than one file at a time in windows XP, to do this, select all the files that you want to rename and right-click on any one file and rename it, all other files you selected will be renamed to the same name that you renamed with an incremental number added to it.

Send To Mail Recipient option does nothing sometimes When you right-click a file and choose "Mail Recipient" in the SendTo option, the email window does not open / nothing happens. There are two known causes for this: The default mail client is not set The DLLPath in the registry is missing for your mail client Missing or invalid Registry keys related to .MAPIMAIL First, set the default mail client in the Internet Options, Programs tab. For Outlook Express, type these commands in the RUN box. (The DLLPath will be recreated): MSIMN.EXE /REG regsvr32 "%ProgramFiles%\Outlook Express\msoe.dll" For Case 3: Apply this registry fix. Copy the contents (from Windows Registry Editor....... line) and save the contents to a file named "mapi.reg" using Notepad. Use quotes while saving the file, to avoid double-extensions. Leave an blank line at the end of the file.

Remove Printers and Faxes at start menu If there are no printers installed or if you are not using "Printers and Faxes" in you start menu, you can hide it by stopping or disabling the Print Spooler service. Procedure: Start -> Run -> and type services.msc and Enter, scroll down to find Print Spooler service

Resolving Inability to Add or Remove Programs If a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit to be

done. Open Registry Editor and Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstall and change the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it.

Quick Format Vs Normal Format Whenever you format your partitions, you have two formatting options a partition (Quick and Default). When you first time format the partition, it is recommended to use default method. This is slow and low-level formatting but this removes all data from the partition as well as the partition is scanned for bad sectors and fixed. If you select the quick format method, you can save time but you can remove only data from the partition which does not scan the partition for bad sectors. If you sure about your hard disk health then quick format should be fine to remove data with in short time.