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Some tips for Win 2K & Win XP Users

Edit the Send To Menu When you right-click on a file and choose Send To, menu options let you copy that file to the A: drive, the My Documents folder, or various other places.  You can add a menu item that will send files to any folder you want.  Navigate to C: \Documents and Settings \username \SendTo for Windows 2000 and XP, or C: \Windows \SendTo for Windows 98 and Me.  If you don't see the folder you want, select Folder Options from the Tools menu, click on the View tab, and check Show hidden files and folders.  In a second Explorer window, select the folder in question.  Right-drag it into the Send To folder and choose Create Shortcuts Here.  Rename the shortcut as you want to see it in the Send To menu.

Change Preferences to Speed Searching Users accustomed to the straightforward search feature in Windows 2000 and earlier versions may not want to waste time with the animated Search Companion and separate search categories in Windows XP.  In the Search window, select Change preferences, then Without an animated screen character.  Click on Change preferences again, then Change files and folders search behavior, then Advanced?, and finally OK.  Now searching for files will be straightforward.

Configure the Pre?Log-On Display The screen saver and desktop (along with other appearance settings) that are visible before any user has logged on are controlled by Registry settings.  You can use the Registry editor to make the display settings at log-on match those of the current user.  First, set the screen saver and desktop image the way you want them to be at log-on.  Launch Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER \Control Panel \Desktop.  Select Export from the File menu (or from the Registry menu if you're not running Windows XP).  Export just this key to Fixdefault.reg and then close Regedit.  Open Fixdefault.reg in a text editor and replace all instances of HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ with HKEY_USERS \.Default \.  Save the file as plain text, and then double-click on it to transfer the settings.  Click on Yes and then OK in the two message boxes that pop up.

Control Launch Order You may need to launch multiple start-up programs in order, perhaps to connect to a VPN before launching a program that needs that connection.  Create a new folder called C: \Ordered Launch and drag any shortcuts that currently reside in Start | All Programs | Startup to this new folder.  If the shortcuts don't already exist, create them in the new folder.

Open a command prompt, navigate to C: \Ordered Launch, and issue the command DIR /B /S > ordered.bat.  Enter notepad ordered.bat to open the resulting batch file in Notepad.  Copy and paste the lines in the desired launch order.  Surround each line with quotes and precede it with the start command and a space; for example, start "C: \Ordered Launch \First Program.lnk".

Double-click on the batch file to test it.  The programs will start in the specified order, but if one takes longer to initialize, it may appear out of order.  In that case, insert a delay line after the slow-starting program.  This line will insert a 5-second delay: ping -n 5 127.0.0.1 > nul.  Edit the value after -n to set a different delay.  After testing the file, open Windows Explorer and right-drag it to the Startup folder, selecting Create Shortcuts Here.

Use Hotkeys to Switch Programs If you routinely use a specific set of programs, you can set up hotkeys that will launch or directly switch among them instead of cycling with Alt-Tab.  Find a desktop or Start menu shortcut that launches a program and select Properties.  On the Shortcut tab, click in the Shortcut key box, and press the key combination you want to use.  Be sure to choose key combinations that are not needed by any of your programs; for example, use Alt-Shift-1, Alt-Shift-2.

Create An Auto-Play CD The application CDs that you buy launch automatically, and your burned CDs can do the same.  They can invoke a setup program or display an HTML page that links to the CD's contents.  Use Notepad to create a three-line text file based on the lines below, and name it Autorun.inf.  Place the file in the CD's root directory.

[autorun]
open=setup.exe
icon=icon.ico

Replace setup.exe with the program that should launch when the CD is inserted, and replace icon.ico with the file containing the CD's icon.  In both cases, be sure to omit the drive letter. If you want to launch a nonexecutable item like an HTML file, precede it with start.exe in the open= line.  Note that all file links in the HTML file should be relative ones, omitting the drive letter.

Hide Tabs in Display Properties When children?or, let's face it, some adults?learn how Display Properties can modify their systems' appearance, they sometimes make inappropriate changes to shared computers.  You can suppress certain configuration changes by adding values to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \System.  In each case, find or create a DWORD value with the specified name and set its data to 1.  The Themes, Desktop, Screen Saver, and Settings tabs are suppressed by values named NoThemesTab, NoDispBackgroundPage, NoDispScrSavPage, and NoDispSettingsPage.  The NoDispAppearancePage value suppresses both the Appearance and the Themes tabs.  A value named NoDispCpl will block the Display Properties dialog completely.

To prevent someone from changing the background by right-clicking on an image in IE and choosing Set as Background, navigate to HKEY_ CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \ActiveDesktop and add a DWORD value named NoChangingWallpaper, and set its data to 1.  This setting is specific to Windows XP, and the background must be set to an image, not (None).

Make the Filmstrip View Available Windows XP's My Pictures folder has an extra View option called Filmstrip.  To make this view available for another folder, right-click on the folder and choose Properties.  Click on the Customize tab and pull down the list of folder types at the top.  Choose either Pictures or Photo Album.  If you want, check the box Also apply this template to all subfolders.  Click on OK.  You may need to press F5 to refresh the display.

Move the My Documents Folder Keeping the My Documents folder on a partition separate from the operating-system files can save you pain if you have to reformat the boot partition.  You may also want to store it on a network share that gets backed up regularly.  Right-click on My Documents on the desktop or in the Start menu and choose Properties.  Click on Find Target to select the new location, and click on OK.  In the Move Documents box, click on Yes to move the documents.

Size Columns Perfectly Click anywhere inside the right-hand pane in Windows Explorer in the Details view and press Ctrl-NumPadPlus.  Each column will resize so it's just big enough for the widest item.  This is especially helpful if one or more columns have disappeared because they are set to zero width.

Restore a Lost Status Bar When you open Windows Explorer, the Status bar may be absent even if you previously checked View | Status Bar in the menu.  To make Windows remember that setting, first close all Windows Explorer windows and launch just one.  Size it the way you want and put a check next to Status Bar in the View menu.  Now close the window by holding down the Shift key while clicking on the X icon at top right.  This also works in Internet Explorer.

Specify a Starting Folder for Windows Explorer Windows XP launches Windows Explorer in My Documents by default.  To make Windows Explorer start in another folder, edit the shortcut that launches it.  Right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties.  Click in the Target field on the Shortcut tab and press the Right Arrow key.  Append this text " /e,C:\"?that is, space, slash, e, comma, C, colon, backslash?to the existing command.  You can substitute another folder for C:.

Don't Reactivate XP After Reinstalling If you reinstall Windows XP, you normally have to reactivate it, but there's a way around reactivation.  Windows XP maintains the activation information in the file Wpa.dbl, which you'll find in the Windows \System32 folder.  After you activate, and any time you add hardware to your system, back up the file to another disk.  If you need to reinstall Windows XP for any reason, go through the installation routine, then copy the latest version of Wpa.dbl to the Windows \system32 folder.

Use The Windows Logo Key The Windows Logo key located in the lower-left-hand quadrant of most keyboards (if you can't find this, just look for a key that resembles the Windows Logo) is actually a very quick access point for a number of useful and commonly used Windows commands.  Here's the short list:

• Hit the Logo key once to access the Windows Start menu.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit D to minimize or restore all open windows.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit E to open the Windows Explorer file management application.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit F to launch the File search interface (it will say "Search Results" at the top of the window.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit F1 to access the Help and Support Center.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit R to access the Run dialogue box.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit Break (this key is usually shared with Pause) to access the System Properties box
• Hold down the Logo key and hit Tab to step through taskbar buttons. Repeatedly hit Tab to keep stepping through them.
• Hold down the Logo and Ctrl keys and hit F to search for another computer on your network.
• Hold down the Logo key and hit U to open the Utility Manager.

Synchronize System Clocks If you have several PCs connected to your network, keeping the time synchronized between all of them is a snap.  Designate one system to be the timekeeper.  On the others, create a time-setting shortcut in the Startup folder.  Right-click the Start button, choose Explore, open the Programs folder, and open its Startup subfolder.  In this folder, create a shortcut with the command-line C: \WINDOWS \NET.EXE TIME \\MAIN /SET /YES, replacing WINDOWS with the actual name of your Windows folder and MAIN with the network name of the system that keeps the time.  Works with Win98 SE, too.

Increase Broadband Performance To optimize your system for a broadband connection, apply the tweaks shown below.  Don't forget to back up your registry BEFORE you apply these parameters! I've done these on my WIN2K and WIN XP machines, and they really do make a difference.  It was especially noticeable on my WIN XP/DSL machines - web pages seemed to 'pop' onto my screen! Nice.

All settings (for WIN 2K & WIN XP machines ONLY) are added to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \Tcpip \Parameters

• EnablePMTUDiscovery DWORD 1
• DefaultTTL DWORD 128
• EnablePMTUBHDetect DWORD 0
• GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize DWORD 32767
• TcpWindowSize DWORD 32767
• Tcp1323Opts DWORD 3
• SackOpts DWORD 1

The following settings (for WIN 95, 98 & Me machines ONLY) are added to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \VxD \MSTCP

• DefaultTTL String 128
• PMTUBlackHoleDetect String 0
• PMTUDiscovery String 1
• SackOpts String 1
• Tcp1323Opts String 3