Windows xp tips

Faster DOS Printing

If you are experiencing slow printing for DOS programs with Windows2000
Go Start Run Regedit Click Hkey_Local_Machine Click on System Click CurrentControlSet Click Control Go to the bottom of this part of the list and click WOW Click LPT timeout and change it to a 3

Decreasing Boot Time

Microsoft has made available a program to analyze and decrease the time it takes to boot to WindowsXP
The program is download from http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/bootvis.exe
Uncompress the file.
Run BOOTVIS.EXE
For a starting point, run Trace / Next Boot + Driver Delays
This will reboot your computer and provide a benchmark
After the reboot, BootVis will take a minute or two to show graphs of your system startup.
Note how much time it takes for your system to load (click on the red vertical line)
Then run Trace / Optimize System
Re-Run the Next Boot + Drive Delays
Note how much the time has decreased
Mine went from approximately 39 to 30 seconds.

WindowsXP Command Line Utilities

While there are a lot of command line utilities in WindowsXP, here are some that I have been using lately.

bootcfg - Configures, queries, or changes Boot.ini file settings.

driverquery - Displays a list of all installed device drivers and their properties.

getmac - Returns the media access control (MAC) address and list of network protocols associated with each address for all network cards in each computer

gpresult - Displays Group Policy settings and Resultant Set of Policy (RSOP) for a user or a computer

netsh - You can use commands in the Netsh Interface IP context to configure the TCP/IP protocol

schtasks - Schedules commands and programs to run periodically or at a specific time

systeminfo - Displays detailed configuration information about a computer and its operating system

Remembering Outlook / Outlook Express Password

On systems, Outlook or Outlook Express will not remember the e-mail password,
which would then need to be entered in each time.

To solve the problem:
Open Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft
Right Click Protected Storage System Provider
Choose the Permissions option
Click the Advanced box near the bottom right hand corner. This should open another box, Towards the bottom of this box there should be two tick boxes, make sure that both of them are ticked. Click Apply, another box will open Click Yes, then Click OK and OK again.
Left Click the + next to Protected Storage System Provider and Delete any sub folder in this tree. (Right clicking and choose the delete option or press the delete key and choosing yes to delete)
Shutdown and Restart Computer.

Renaming the Start Button

To rename the start button, you will need a hex editor.
My preference is UltraEdit
Copy the \windows\explore.exe file to a new name (e.g. explorer_1.exe)
With the hex editor, open that file and go to offset 412b6
You will see the word start with blanks between each letter
Edit it be any 5 characters or less
Save the file
Boot to DOS
Copy the existing c:\windows\explorer.exe to explorer.org
Copy explorer_1.exe to explorer.exe
You will also need to replace the explorer.exe in the c:\windows\system32\dllcache file as well with the new one.

Note: If the partition is NTFS and you can't access the files from DOS:
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon.
Change the value of Shell from Explorer.exe to explorer_1.exe

Logging in as Administrator

If you want to log in as Administrator, but it is not show on the Welcome screen,
Hold the Ctrl-Alt key and press Del twice.
This will bring up the normal login and you can log on as Administrator

To unhide the Administrator account so it does show up:
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon \ SpecialAccounts \ UserList
Unhide the Administrator key by giving it a value of 1

Disabling Error Reporting

By default, WindowsXP will request to report application errors to Microsoft.
To turn this off:
Right click on the My Computer icon on the desktop
Select Properties / Advanced
Click on the Error Reporting tab
Check Disable error reporting