Windows^XP

^{Features & Hidden Secrets}

 Several of you were asking questions about how you do things in Windows XP.  I decided to put this Q&A about Windows XP on the website. As I find new things I'll pass them on to you.

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• Changing Icon's for Shortcuts, Sometimes you may want to change the icon that is displayed for a certain shortcut that starts up a program or a certain website. First, right click on the shortcut and select "Properties". Now select the Shortcut tab on the top if a program or Web Document if it's a shortcut to a website. Click on Change Icon. It should be noted that if the program does not allow you to change the Icon then "Change Icon" will not be available to choose. After you click on "Change Icon" you will see a list of Icons. Either you can pick one of those or click on browse and find another one. There are several different icons under Windows\system32\shell32.dll. An Icon file has an extension of .ico but you can also find icons in .dll files or .exe files. The icons associated with a particular program are in the .exe file. If the program does let you change it's icon please take note where the original icon came from incase you want to change it back. You can also select a .bmp photo file but .bmp's are only available if you change the "Files of type" box under browse and change it to All Files, now look for different .bmp's. Also, if you have a .jpg photo or a .gif that you would like to use then open up Microsoft's Paint program or whatever program you like to use that will let you bring in a .jpg or a .gif and Save As a .bmp and make sure you remember where you save it.  Now right click on the icon to change, go to properties and change icon. Click on Browse, click the drop down box by Files of Type and change it to All Files. Now go to the folder and file you changed to a .bmp and select that file and click Open, then OK and again OK. Viola! your icon is changed.

• Password Protection,  I finally found the feature for password protecting your files & folders in Windows XP. It does come with the program. First of all you will need the Windows zip compression activated because that is the program that has the password protect in it. Right click the desktop or inside a folder. Choose "New, Compressed Zipped Folders. (If it is not under New, go to Send To, and Compressed zipped folder and when asked if you would like to use windows compression, say yes.) If it is under new, continuing will add a new compressed folder in that location. Type a name for the folder, double click the folder to open it and move the files you want password protected into this folder by using Windows Explorer (windows button + E) or My Computer. Now click File, Add a password. Type your desired password, confirm the password and click ok. From now on only those with the password can access the files. But be aware that it doesn’t protect them, they can still be deleted. Always keep a back up of the folders in a safe place. If you add more files to this folder later, the new files will not be password protected. You would have to go to File, Remove password, then go back to file & redo the password. Also when they are password protected, anyone can double click on the zipped folder to see the file/s. But the files cannot be accessed. If you want to make it so no one can see the files also. Then first move the files into one folder, compress that folder but don’t password protect it. Then move the zipped compressed folding into another folder, compress and password protect that folder so the only one that is password protected is the outside one. Now, when anyone else clicks on the first folder to open it, they won’t be able to see the files, only the folder, and the password will stop anyone without it from accessing that inside folder..

• Left Menu Items in My Computer.  When you are in My Computer, all of your options are on the left. When you highlight a file or folder, more options are displayed. Click on the file or files or folders and the options on the left change to copy, move, rename, Publish to the web, email this file.

• Left Menu Items for Music.  When the files you are highlighting are music, you get more options. Copy to an audio CD, play all, shop for music online.  If you want to copy plain files or folders to a CD, put a recordable CD into the CD-R. Highlight the files/folders you want copied and click copy the selected item. Then select the CD-R as the destination. Keep copying files; it will add them all to a list. Watch the amount you are adding to the CD so you don’t go over the amount of the CD.  If you don’t have enough to fill the CD you can save the session and continue later.  It remembers the files you want to copy to the CD.  When you are ready, click Burn the CD.

• Menu Classic  If you liked the old way the start menu was, you can still have it.  Just right click on START, choose Properties, as select Classic Start Menu. And viola`, you have your old Windows start menu back.
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• Shortcut Key for Windows Explorer  To open up Windows Explorer in a hurry, hold down the Windows button and hit the E on the keyboard
  Global Rename.  You'll never guess what I found now. I don't think any of the other Windows could do this.  At least I've never seen it do it.  You know when you take several pictures on a digital camera and you download them into your computer they get assigned a name, something like photo001.jpg, photo002.jpg and so on and you need to rename them.   You usually have to rename each one at a time.  I often wished, especially if there are well over 100 photos, that I could just to a global change. Well Windows XP does just that. Lets say you have over 100 photos of Milwaukee Zoo or a wedding, or whatever kind of files you have that needs renaming. But you don't want to have to go through all of those photos renaming the an elephant, a tiger, a bear, or Milwaukee Zoo001.jpg, Milwaukee Zoo002.jpg. So I found out, if you highlight all the files at once in a single series, like all the Milwaukee Zoo photos. Now right click on the first one and select Rename. In the box that comes up type the name of the series, like Milwaukee Zoo with a .jpg extension. So it would look like this, Milwaukee Zoo.jpg or Malachi's B-day.jpg. Once you have that first name click off and Windows XP will rename all of the rest of the files automatically to Milwaukee Zoo (1).jpg, Milwaukee Zoo (2).jpg, Milwaukee Zoo (3).jpg and so on. And when it gets to 10, 11, 12, it doesn't put the files back by the rest of the 1's or 20 with the 2's and 30 with the 3's like the other windows did. They stay in numeral order. It's great. No more spending hours renaming photo files.

• Print Photo's Windows XP makes it easy to print photos. Just go into My Documents, My Pictures and choose on of the folders that Windows stores the photo's in. You can see what photos are in there by the pictures on the front of the folder. Highlight all the photos you want to print by holding down the control button and click on each photo you want to print or click on the first picture you want and hold down the Shift key and click the last photo in a series and it will highlight all of them. Next click on the left hand side on "Print the selected pictures." and the photo printing wizard will pop up. Click "Next",  then make sure all the photos you want printed have a check next to them and click Next again.  Next is your Printer Preferences.  Make sure you have everything checked you want, including type of paper and special instructions, and click next. Scroll down to the photo layout you want and click the layout also click on how may times you want them to print each photo, the default is 1. After you click next, your photos will start printing.

• Device Manager--In case you haven't found Device Manager yet, it's under Control Panel, System and the Hardware tab. Or just hold down the Alt key and double click My Computer.
  
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• Customize the Start Menu by right clicking on Start, Properties, & Customize. Click the advance tab if you are using Xp's start menu. Now you have options like how the Control Panel looks,  if you still have the new Control Panel up and are displaying it as Links, it's here where you choose to display it as a menu, also displaying My Favorites in the start menu, or My computer, My Documents, My Music or My Pictures. And other options as My Network Places, Help & Support or Printer. You have more control of how you want windows to look.  And then, if you didn't have enough control already, now right click on My Computer or My Documents or My Network Places on the Start Menu, and you have the option to display them on the desktop or not. You can check or uncheck it, it's a toggle to display or not display.

• On Screen Keyboard  My sister found something cute in Windows XP. I'm not sure what you would use it on, Maybe you do.  Click on Start, Then Run, and type OSK. You get a On Screen Keyboard.. Cute. You can also find it under "Start, All Programs, Accessories, Accessibility, On Screen Keyboard.

• Use a CD-RW as you would another drive   In case you haven't found this one out for yourself, with Windows XP it lets you use a CD-RW as you would another drive. When you put a CD-RW into the drive XP brings up a select box that asks you what you want to do: "Open Writable CD folder using Windows Explorer"  "Select Media to copy to the CD", or  "Take No Action". You can then Use it as you would another drive and send anything to the CD-RW.  You just either Right click on the file or folder you want to send to the CD-RW, got to "Send To" and click on your drive.  Or you highlight the file, click on copy or move from the menu on the left and choose your drive that. Or if you prefer you can drag and drop in onto the drive. You can also get a small program called Drag'n Drop CD from DigiOn Inc. This program puts Icons on your desktop that you drag and drop the file/files/folders or just drag Audio or video files to make Audio CD's. It's so simple.

• Audio CD's and Media Player. When you put in a blank CD-R, XP brings up the select box that asks you what you want to do. "Open writable CD folder using Windows Explorer" " Select Media to copy to CD", or "Take No Action". If you click Select Media it will start up the new version 9 series Media Player. Make sure now playing is selected on the left. Now go to file, open and select a group of songs but clicking on the first file, hold down Shift and click the last file, or you can hold down the control key and select several songs from a large list. Make sure you don't go past the 700 mb that the disk holds. The first one will start playing. Just click Stop. Make sure the pane is split that you can see the songs on the right side. Move all the songs around where you want them by dragging them up or down in the list. Now click all the song using the Shift Key. Right click or click "Select Playlist Options" choose Copy to CD or Device.  You can also, after you bring in all the songs you want, .click File, Save Playlist as, then name it whomever the artist is. Now click on Copy To CD or Device on the left side  Then click "Playlist to copy" from the top of the window and choose the playlist you just saved. You will see all the songs there with a check mark in front of each one. Now click copy on the top right corner it will start copying. I did find out that under Tools, Options and the copy music tab you should uncheck "Eject CD when copying is complete". I had a problem with the cd ejecting before it was totally done.  And remember, always disable your screen saver before burning a CD.
  
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• Copying from a CD. That's the easy part. When you put a CD into the drive again the select box comes up and ask "What do you want to do?  Play audio cd using Media Player, Copy music from CD,  Open folder to view files,  Take no Action.. Once you click on Copy music from CD it will open Media play, put all the songs on the list and start copying them to your hard drive. Changing them to the .wma format, that's Windows Media Audio files. You can also click Play audio CD and when it starts playing just click the stop button, click Copy from CD and uncheck or check only the files you want copied. Now click copy music.

• Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition    Windows XP has a Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition that sells for $20.00 just like all it's predecessors. This one can make playing music fun and comes with several features including Party Mode, Plus! Dancer, CD label Maker, Alarm Clock, more skins, and the Crackle and pop eliminator. But the best thing it comes with is Audio Converter. It will take a song that is .Wav or a CD song and convert it to the .wma extension. You can do it right from a folder. Select several songs, Right click on the files and choose Convert Media format. It will convert it to the Windows Media Audio format Only. If you want to convert an Audio file to an MP3 that requires a special program that you can buy either on the internet or at a store. You can also find free converter or demo on the internet if you use your search engine and type MP3 converter or just MP3 if you want to go through hundreds of links. If you want to know which file formats are better, here it is. The .Wav file plays better then any of the other formats although it is a huge file. The file can be as big as 20 mb and go as high as 50 mb or more. Then you have the MP3's which is what they use to download from the internet because they sound good at 128 CD quality and they only use from 1 to 8 mb per song and very seldom go up any higher, although I have seen 11. The .Wma files are a lesser quality file and sometimes are known to skip or crackle. They use Media Player to convert the song but the files are still only 500 kb to 5 mb. One thing, always check songs before you burn to a CD. Some songs may have noise in them or even may not have the whole song.

• File and Settings Transfer Wizard is a step-by-step guide that helps you transfer your personal documents, contents of your Favorites folder, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express Settings, Desktop and display preferences, dial-up connections, and other Windows settings from one computer to another. You can find it under "Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, File and Settings Transfer Wizard
  
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• Speech Properties--This dialog controls the text-to-speech translation (speech synthesizer) feature in Windows XP, used in conjunction with the Narrator utility. The Speech Properties dialog is used to adjust the tone and speed of the "voice" that is used. Try different voices and speeds, using Preview Voice to test them out, until you've found the best combination. You can find it in the Control Panel--Speech. To start the Narrator, go to "Start, All Programs, Accessories, Accessibility, Narrator.

• Subst to creates a new drive letter and actively links it to an existing folder on your hard drive. For example, type:      subst m: c:\downloaded music\oldies\metallica    to create a new drive letter, m: , and link it to the folder, C:\downloadedmusic\oldies\metallica. When you open drive m: in Explorer, you'll see the contents of the linked folder, useful if you access a particular folder frequently but find Windows Shortcuts too limiting. For example, a drive created with Subst allows you to access a file in the folder, like this: m:\astronomy.mp3. To disconnect a Subst'd drive, type subst z: /d. Drive letters created with Subst are forgotten when the computer shuts down. To have drives re-subst'd everytime you turn on your computer, write a batch file or WSH script and place it in your Startup folder.

• System Information is a reporting tool used to view information about hardware, system resources used by that hardware, software drivers, and internet explorer settings. Information is arranged in a familiar Explorer-like tree. Expand or collapse branches with the plus + and minus _ signs, and click any category to view the corresponding information in the righthand pane. Start, All Programs, Accressories, System Tools, System Information.

• System Restore is a feature that runs invisible in the background continuously backing up important system files and registry settings. The idea is that at some point, you may wish to roll back your computer's configuration to a time before things started gooing wrong. By default, System Restore is turned on, using up to 12% of your computer's hard space. To configure System Restore, click "System Restore Settings" in the main System Restore window at "Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore or System Information, Tools Menu, System Restore. Or you can go to Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, System Restore tab.  Warning,  System Restore indiscriminately replace files installed in your computer with potentially earlier versions, resets registry preferences, and in some cases, uninstalls software. While the intention is to solve some problems, it can inadvertently cause others. If you suspect that a particular application is causing a problem, your best bet is to uninstall that single application rather than attempting a system restore. Use System Restore as a last resort only. Or make a restore point before you install a program or do anything you're not sure of and restore immediately after if a problem starts.      
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• Pin your favorite application to the start menu.  The Windows Start menu includes an area where two or more Microsoft applications, usually Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, are permanently positioned for easy access.  You can add your favorite application to this same convenient location.  Locate the application on your hard drive. Right click the application and select Pin To Start Menu in the context menu. To remove an application, locate it on your hard drive, right click it, and select Unpin From Start Menu. Alternatively, you can right click the app in the Start Menu and click Unpin From Start Menu.

• Send Your OS Into Hibernation. WinXP supports Hibernation, the power-saving scheme that shuts down your computer after it copies everything currently in RAM to your HD. The next time you turn your computer on, WinXP restore everything to the way you left it, including any application or document you left open. Oddly enough, WinXP doesn’t show Hibernation as an option when you turn off your computer.  To set WinXP to display the Hibernation option when you shut down , open the Start Menu and click  Turn Off Computer. When the Turn Off Computer window displays, hold down the shift key. The Stand By Button will turn into the Hibernate button. This button to put your computer into hibernation.
• Shortcut To A URL.  If you have a specific home page selection in your browser, everytime you open the browser that page appears. You may sometimes want to get to a different web page quickly without first loading that home page.  You can access any URL (uniform resource locator) from the Start Menu. Click Start and then Run. In the Run dialog box type the URL in the Open Field and press ENTER or click the OK button. Your browser will launch and take you directly to that URL.
• Clock Update.  Do you know that Windows XP has a automatic clock updater.  It updates itself when you are connected to the internet.  It is automatic but you can do it manually. Just be sure you are connected, then click twice on the clock and date in your sys tray. (bottom right hand corner of your screen)  Now click on the Internet time tab and click "Update Now".  It's just that simple.
• Manage your Computer. Right click on My Computer and select "Manage". This will give you the "Computer Management" window. From this you can manage your System tools, including Device Manager, your Storage Manager, including defragmentor and disk management, and it also gives you manage your Services and Applications.
• More about Customizing the Start Menu. 

1. Changing between Windows XP Start menu or Classic Start.  Right click on START, go to Properties and select "click on classic start menu". And customize whichever one you choose. Or to set what you want to display on the menu and how you want it to display. As links, menus or don't display this item.
2. You can also customize how you want the taskbar to display the open program or IE windows. Right click on Start, go to properties and select "Group similar taskbar buttons"
3. You can also choose to Hide the clock or hide inactive icons you don't use all the time. And customize it.
4. You can set if you want large or small icons to display for programs.
5. How many programs display on the menu and whether you want your IE and email program to display on the start menu.

• New way to bring up System Properties.  Hold down the Windows Key on the keyboard and press the Pause Break key in the top right of the keyboard.
• Fast way to bring up "Set program Access and Defaults" Right click on START, go to Properties, click on Customize, and Advanced. Now put a check mark in the "Set program Access & Defaults" and click OK.. Now under Start you will see the new Entry.  Click on Set Program Access & Defaults. It will automatically bring you into the Add & Remove programs were you can change what programs you want to use to do a task or just go into Add & remove programs without going into control panel first.
• Search feature in Windows XP. Click Start, then Search and choose what you want to look for. Pictures, Music, or Videos, or a Microsoft word document, Computers or people, or All files or folders.
  If you don't know were it was saved to or what the name of it is but you just downloaded it today,  click on "When it was modified" and put today's date. It will look for files that were created today.

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