The Right Way To Install Windows XP

Here's a great site offering a very nice detailed study on the right way to install Windows XP. This one goes in my Tech Sites list!

Windows Tip: Give a folder its very own drive letter

This tip comes with some great comments on different techniques for getting folders to mount as drive letters.

Microsoft charges customers for free services

From WindowsSecrets.com:

"Thousands of customers are paying almost $120 USD per year to Microsoft for an Internet subscription service that includes e-mail, security, and other features.

But Microsoft gives away almost identical services absolutely free in Windows Live and the Windows operating system itself, while neglecting to inform those who pay through the nose.

Free Windows Live eclipses MSN Premium

Microsoft's for-pay service, known as MSN Premium, is a collection of broadband features that must be accessed through a special browser: MSN Explorer. Once downloaded and installed, this browser supports Web surfing, an interface for e-mail and calendar programs, and Microsoft's online encyclopedia, Encarta Premium. Other features, such as an included digital image editor, are accessible by launching a separate application."

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Microsoft Virtual Labs

Microsoft Virtual Labs give you great hand-on training by letting you login to a remote computer equipped with the tools you need to try out software before you buy it. It's a great way to get up-to-speed on new technologies. (Something us IT junkies are constantly doing.) Try out Vista, Office 2007, Exchange, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003, SMS 2003 and more at this site. There's also a lot of Developers' Apps to try out! Cool stuff!!

By the way, another great Microsoft resource is the TechNet Library.

Wireless Networks Tab Missing

It's always frustrating when you're on Windows XP and it just isn't performing the way you're used to. One missing tab can screw up your whole morning. For today's handy little tidbit, TRENDNET KnowledgeBase

Fix: USB flash drives won't get assigned a letter in Win XP

I've run into this problem recently at work, where users have numerous network drives mapped to their computer. The flash drives are recognized by the computer, but fail to show up in the drive list under My Computer.

The solution I've found is (with the USB flash drive inserted into a USB port) to use "Manage" under the My Computer "Preferences" right-click menu and then click the Manage Drives icon to bring up the computer drives. Right click on the band that relates to the USB drive and pull down to where it lets you assign a new letter. Try to assign a letter you're not going to need later on.

That's pretty much it. I'm not sure why some drives have this problem and some don't. I have noticed that the drives that have run into problems are formatted with the FAT file system, so this could have something to do with this issue. I hope this is helpful to someone out there. Comments would be appreciated, too.

Type, don't Mouse!

SlickRun is a free floating command line utility for Windows. SlickRun gives you almost instant access to any program or website. SlickRun allows you to create command aliases (known as MagicWords), so C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn.exe becomes MAIL.

Enter a web URL into SlickRun and it will launch your browser and navigate to the specified address. Run multiple programs in a few keystrokes, jot a note, look up a definition... SlickRun is the most natural way to interact with your computer.

It's freeware, but if you like the software, they will gladly accept PayPal donations.

Awesome screen capture freebie

I'm on a cool free tools kick today. Here's another gem that everyone should load onto their PC immediately!!

PrintKey is activated when you press the PrintScreen Key and allows you to capture the entire screen or any portion of it. You can then make changes to the screen capture and save in a variety of formats including .gif, .bmp, .jpeg, .jpg, .emf and .wmf. You can also swap colors, convert to grayscale or black and white, change picture size and send to the printer all from this little freeware program. Tested and works fine with Windows 9x/Me/2000/XP

This description comes from a great PC fan website called New Life Windows 98. Thanks, Harry O!

PageDefrag - Free Windows defrag tool from Microsoft

The words "Microsoft" and "free" are not often used together. So, it's worth noting this software --which I just heard about--which provides some system performance enhancement benefits gratis.

PageDefrag v.32: "One of the limitations of the Windows NT/2000 defragmentation interface is that it is not possible to defragment files that are open for exclusive access. Thus, standard defragmentation programs can neither show you how fragmented your paging files or Registry hives are, nor defragment them. Paging and Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation related to file fragmentation in a system.

PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them. In addition, it defragments event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files (where system memory is saved when you hibernate a laptop).

PageDefrag works on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Server 2003."

Geeky but old Windows Info

I found this page with some old but interesting info. A lot of it is still applicable. (I was searching for info on hacking Windows Explorer.)

Computer Viruses and Parasites - How they work and how to remove them
Windows Explorer configuration - How to make it friendlier
Computer Language Comparisions - C++, Delphi/Pascal, VisualBasic 6.0
Notes on Database Development - MS Access | Delphi | Visual Basic | Java | Firebird
Problems with System Upgrades - Includes a list of suggested debug tools.
Browser Wars - Some children just don't know how to play together
Internet Explorer - Various notes and comments related to Internet Explorer
HTML Examples - Learn by example
Various notes - Just a collection of unrelated technical data

Thanks to Robert Clemenzi for publishing this info!

Cool Windows Search Tool!

Agent Ransack - home: "Agent Ransack is a free tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file!

Agent Ransack provides compelling advantages over similar search tools:

* Regular expressions that allow complex rule based searches.
* Immediate contents results view.
* Various wizards to walk the user through the searching process.

Agent Ransack is provided FREE of charge for the benefit of the Windows community."

Dump file and directory listing to text file (DOS batch)

Ahh, the magical world of ".bat"! Having always used a GUI, I feel like some kid who missed out on years of television. Here's a gem I found that lets you get a directory listing from anywhere on your hard drive, using the "SendTo" directory. That's an invisible folder, kids, so make sure to turn that on in your Windows Explorer--at least for this. (Tools > Folder Options, under the "View" tab)