Windows XP Power Hound | O'Reilly Media

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There's more to getting started with Windows XP than just turning on your computer. With XP, the most stable and customizable version of Windows developed so far, you can tweak pretty much every aspect of how your computer looks, starts up, and shuts down—plus a whole lot in between.

The hints in this chapter help you get more out of Windows XP's most basic functions.

Start up and shut down faster, get yourself a new startup splash screen, and get rid of useless error messages. After you read the hints in this section, you'll never again settle for sitting down at your PC and fumbling for the On button.

Windows XP seems to take a few light years to start up. Happily, you can change that. The secret? Don't shut down your computer. Instead, put it on Stand By, a kind of deep freeze your PC can recover from almost instantly. A nice bonus of Stand By is that you can leave your programs running—meaning they're standing at attention when you pull your computer out of hypnosis.

To invoke this handy trance, choose Start → Turn Off Computer → Stand By (instead of Start → Turn Off Computer → Turn Off). In Stand By mode, your computer appears to be turned off, but in fact uses a trickle of power to stay just barely on (the system stores everything in its short-term memory, or RAM). Then, when you use your mouse or keyboard, it springs to life almost instantly rather than going through the normally lengthy startup procedure.

Don't use the Stand By method all the time. When Windows XP shuts down and starts up again, it does various bits of housekeeping that keep it running smoothly—like cleaning out its memory. But it can't perform those chores when your PC is just Standing By, so over time your machine can slow down dramatically. The solution? Every few times, shut your computer down completely.

The downside to Stand By mode is that even though it uses just a smidgen of power, it does continue to suck power. If you use a laptop, leaving it in Stand By for more than 20 minutes or so can dribble you into oblivion. In these cases, set your computer to Hibernate. It'll take your computer a little longer to wake up from Hibernate, but this mode draws considerably less power.

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Start up and shut down faster, get yourself a new startup splash screen, and get rid of useless error messages. After you read the hints in this section, you'll never again settle for sitting down at your PC and fumbling for the On button.

Windows XP seems to take a few light years to start up. Happily, you can change that. The secret? Don't shut down your computer. Instead, put it on Stand By, a kind of deep freeze your PC can recover from almost instantly. A nice bonus of Stand By is that you can leave your programs running—meaning they're standing at attention when you pull your computer out of hypnosis.

To invoke this handy trance, choose Start → Turn Off Computer → Stand By (instead of Start → Turn Off Computer → Turn Off). In Stand By mode, your computer appears to be turned off, but in fact uses a trickle of power to stay just barely on (the system stores everything in its short-term memory, or RAM). Then, when you use your mouse or keyboard, it springs to life almost instantly rather than going through the normally lengthy startup procedure.

Don't use the Stand By method all the time. When Windows XP shuts down and starts up again, it does various bits of housekeeping that keep it running smoothly—like cleaning out its memory. But it can't perform those chores when your PC is just Standing By, so over time your machine can slow down dramatically. The solution? Every few times, shut your computer down completely.

The downside to Stand By mode is that even though it uses just a smidgen of power, it does continue to suck power. If you use a laptop, leaving it in Stand By for more than 20 minutes or so can dribble you into oblivion. In these cases, set your computer to Hibernate. It'll take your computer a little longer to wake up from Hibernate, but this mode draws considerably less power.

To put your computer in this hibernation state, choose Start → Turn Off Computer as you normally would. Then, when the shut down dialog box opens, press Shift to change the Stand By button to a Hibernate button (Figure 1-1). Click it, and your computer appears to go to sleep.

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You spend half your life looking at and listening to your computer. Why settle for lame displays and cacophonous sounds? This section reveals stunning monitor and sound tricks that most people don't even know about. Some are just for fun (like building a customized startup sound), while others are powerful work tools (like attaching additional monitors).

Here's a quiz: You're blasting the latest Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD or your favorite Internet radio station when your phone rings. (You can't hear the phone, but you can see it flashing.) What do you do?

Answer: In the system tray (also known as the notification area), which is in the far right corner of the taskbar at the bottom your screen, click the volume icon—the small, round icon that looks like a speaker. A dialog box, shown in Figure 1-4, appears. When you choose Mute, the sound stops immediately.

Figure 1-4: To mute sounds and music, choose Mute. You can also increase or decrease the volume by dragging the slider up or down.

If you're not a big fan of the squeaks, beeps, and static you hear whenever your phone modem dials, you can nix the screeching. Choose Start → Control Panel → Printers and Other Hardware → Phone and Modem (alternatively, at the command prompt or in the Run box, type telephon.cpl and then press Enter). In the dialog box that appears, choose Modems → Properties → Modem, and then drag the slider in the "Speaker volume" area to Off, as shown in Figure 1-5. Click OK until you're out of the dialog box. The next time you use your modem, you're greeted by blessed silence.

Windows XP plays washy, electronic noises when it wants to alert you to things like the arrival of email or the intrusion of an error message. Who needs more tinny beeps in life? Instead, you can swap in, say, your dog's woof for new email or your mother's voice for errors.

You can easily add any sound you like, as long as your PC has a built-in microphone. Most PCs made in the last several years have them, and if yours doesn't, you can buy a cheap plug-in mic at any electronics store.

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A window is a window is a window...or is it? As you'll see in this section, there's a surprising number of ways you can tinker with how individual windows work.

When you press Alt-Tab at the same time, Windows displays a box with all your open programs and windows. To switch among them, just hold down Alt and keep tabbing until you've highlighted the one you want. This tactic is one of the biggest click-savers in Microsoft history.

But when you use Alt-Tab, you're flying blind: you can't preview a window before switching to it. This behavior becomes problematic when you have several windows open in a program and don't know which you'll be switching to.

Here's a simple solution: the Microsoft PowerToy called Alt-Tab Replacement, which you can download from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. After you install it, whenever you use Alt-Tab, you get a preview of the window to which you're switching. You can also read its title bar, as shown in Figure 1-12.

Figure 1-12: The Microsoft PowerToy Alt-Tab Replacement displays a preview of each window as you tab through. This program takes up much more screen space than the normal Alt-Tab feature, but the preview makes it well worth it.

As you've probably figured out by now, when you have several windows open in a program at once, they group together into a single button on the taskbar when minimized, with a small arrow at the right-hand side. Right-click the button, and a listing of all its open windows pops up, as shown in Figure 1-13 on the top. To switch to any of the windows, click it.

Figure 1-13: Top: When you have several open windows in an application, they group together in a single entry on the taskbar, which you can expand by clicking.
Bottom: Save yourself time and keystrokes by managing open windows using this right-click menu.

Don't settle for the single-window switcheroo, though. The taskbar lets you manage the entire program group and view them all at once, close them all simultaneously, or minimize them if they're open. Right-click the entry, and the menu shown in Figure 1-13 (bottom) appears. You can choose to display them in a cascade, arrange them like tiles horizontally or vertically, close them all at once, or minimize them if they're maximized.

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Windows XP gives you a quite a bit of control over the way you log on and what you can do with user accounts. Here's where you'll find out how to use your own customized picture for your user account, how to make sure you use a password no one can crack, and other insider secrets.

One of the best things about Windows XP is the way you can customize it to reflect your personality, not the collective wisdom of a Microsoft marketing committee. And one of the best ways to customize it is to use your own picture on your user account rather than one provided by Microsoft. Rubber duckies, soccer balls, plastic frogs, and Kung Fu masters are all well and good, but you might want something more personal (and attractive) next to your name. After all, you see that picture not only when you log on to your PC, but also every time you bring up the Start menu.

For your user account, you can use any picture as long as it's in .gif, .jpg, .png, or .bmp format. Once you've decided on the picture, choose Start → Control Panel → User Accounts, then select the account with the picture you want to change. Next, choose "Change my picture" and then "Browse for more pictures." Now navigate to the folder that contains the picture you've selected. Choose the picture, and then click OK. Your new picture appears in the Current Picture area of the User Accounts screen, as shown in Figure 1-14. It also turns up on your logon screen and on the Start menu.

If you have a digital camera or scanner attached to your PC, a button appears on the User Accounts screen that lets you snap or scan a picture and then immediately use that picture for your user account.

Figure 1-14: Windows XP has a set of pictures you can use for your user account. The currently active picture appears in the upper-left part of the screen.

You can quickly get to the screen pictured in Figure 1-14 by going to the Start menu, then simply clicking the picture at the top. (On some systems, there may be no picture available.)

If several people use your PC and each person has a separate account, you can make it easy to snap from one account to another by turning on Windows XP's Fast User Switching feature. It lets several people log on simultaneously and then quickly switch between accounts without logging off the current account.

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Like most operating systems, Windows XP comprises the things you experience as the computer itself—stuff like the desktop, the Start menu, the icons and cursors—in short, what people call the interface (and what geeks call the user interface or UI).

One of the most effective ways to get more out of Windows XP is to make the interface look and work the way you want it to. This chapter includes more than two dozen hints on how to customize your desktop, Start menu, taskbar, Control Panel, icons, cursors, and themes. Basically, you can give your computer a makeover: Think of it as a reality TV show for your PC.

The desktop is the screen you see after your computer boots up. Most people think of it as the place where all those program icons live. But like your actual desk, there's no reason your Windows desktop should be cluttered up. Figure 2-1 shows you how to jump to the desktop, and the rest of this section gives you tips for taking control of it.

Figure 2-1: Most people don't realize that the Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) contains an icon that brings up the desktop and automatically minimizes everything else to the taskbar. If you mouse over this light blue icon, you see the label "Show Desktop." It's indispensable when you want to get to your desktop with just a quick click. (If you don't see the icon, turn it on in the Taskbar and Start Menu control panel.)

It's a no-brainer: If you want to customize your Windows XP settings—including the desktop—download TweakUI, a free utility from Microsoft. TweakUI is part of a suite of utilities from Microsoft called XP PowerToys, and it's far and away the best one. In fact, TweakUI appears throughout this book because of the astonishing number of things you can do with it.

Microsoft supplies XP PowerToys but it doesn't support them, meaning if something goes wrong, the company's tech support agents won't help you out. Fortunately, TweakUI almost always works as it should.

TweakUI works only if you have Windows XP Service Pack 1 or higher installed. To check your version of Windows XP, open My Computer, and then choose Help

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The desktop is the screen you see after your computer boots up. Most people think of it as the place where all those program icons live. But like your actual desk, there's no reason your Windows desktop should be cluttered up. Figure 2-1 shows you how to jump to the desktop, and the rest of this section gives you tips for taking control of it.

Figure 2-1: Most people don't realize that the Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) contains an icon that brings up the desktop and automatically minimizes everything else to the taskbar. If you mouse over this light blue icon, you see the label "Show Desktop." It's indispensable when you want to get to your desktop with just a quick click. (If you don't see the icon, turn it on in the Taskbar and Start Menu control panel.)

It's a no-brainer: If you want to customize your Windows XP settings—including the desktop—download TweakUI, a free utility from Microsoft. TweakUI is part of a suite of utilities from Microsoft called XP PowerToys, and it's far and away the best one. In fact, TweakUI appears throughout this book because of the astonishing number of things you can do with it.

Microsoft supplies XP PowerToys but it doesn't support them, meaning if something goes wrong, the company's tech support agents won't help you out. Fortunately, TweakUI almost always works as it should.

TweakUI works only if you have Windows XP Service Pack 1 or higher installed. To check your version of Windows XP, open My Computer, and then choose Help → About Windows. The window that opens gives you the version of Windows XP you have, including the service pack number.

Figure 2-2: You can also use TweakUI to have Windows XP display either My Documents or My Computer as the first icon on the desktop, in the upper-left corner—the position easiest to hit with the mouse. Choose Desktop → First Icon, and then click the icon you'd like first.

Download TweakUI from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp (it takes just a few seconds). Save it to your hard drive and then run the installer (which takes another few seconds). Open the program by clicking Start and choosing All Programs

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The Start button (in the lower left-hand corner of your screen) is your gateway to just about everything in the operating system. You use it to open programs, customize your computer via the Control Panel, and shut down your computer. In fact, you probably use the Start menu more than any other part of Windows. This section shows you how to reorganize the menu, make it work more quickly, and generally train it to behave the way you want it to.

When you click around the Start menu, you may notice a delay between the moment you select a menu item and the time Windows gets around to displaying it. Since you're not getting any younger, it should come as good news that you can eliminate the delay. Or, if you have slower reflexes (or if you like moldering away in front of your monitor), you can lengthen the delay.

To do it, run the Registry Editor (Section 15.1.2) and then:

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.
This Registry setting controls many aspects of how the desktop works.
Find the string value MenuShowDelay.
This value tells Windows how long it should pause when you highlight an item on the Start menu. It comes set to 400 milliseconds.
Change the value to 100 or 200.
A setting of 100 or 200 speeds up the menu noticeably; anything less is imperceptible. If you want a longer delay, change the value to something greater than 400.
Exit the Registry.
You many need to reboot in order for your new settings to take effect. If the new settings are too fast or too slow, re-edit the Registry.

Windows XP has a lot of bold, new features—including an outsized Start menu that takes up a ton of room. If you're a back-to-basics kind of person and prefer the way the Start menu worked in previous versions of Windows, you can easily switch back to the classic look. Figure 2-10 compares the two.

Figure 2-10: Left: Windows XP's Start menu looks dramatically different from the Start menu in previous versions of Windows. It's larger, more cartoon-like, and takes up a lot of acreage.

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You probably don't pay much attention to the taskbar , the bar across the bottom of your screen that shows what programs are currently running, along with the time, the Start button, and a bunch of other icons you may never have noticed. But ignore the taskbar at your peril—this little powerhouse offers many ways to make your computer time more efficient. This section has all the details.

Memo to speed demons: you can jump directly to Web pages without opening a browser first. Here's the trick: add an address box to the taskbar. Then, whenever you type in the address of a Web site (such as http://www.oreilly.com), your browser opens and heads straight to that site.

To add the address box, right-click the taskbar; in the menu that appears, choose Toolbars → Address. (You may have to select "Lock the Taskbar" to remove the checkmark first.) The word Address appears toward the left end of the taskbar. To the left of the word Address there's a handle—a small dotted line you can grab and drag. Drag the handle to the left to reveal a white box, shown in Figure 2-14. When you type an Internet address in the box, your browser launches and goes directly to that site.

If you want to lock the address box in position, right-click the taskbar and select "Lock the Taskbar."

Figure 2-14: Adding an address box to the taskbar is a big time-saver, since it lets you visit Web sites without opening your browser first. You don't need to click the Go button after entering a Web address; simply press Enter after you type the URL (and you don't have to type http:// either—just start with www).

The Internet address bar you added to the taskbar in the previous hint is a kind of toolbar—in essence, a shortcut that lives on the taskbar. You can create other kinds of toolbars as well, containing things like shortcuts to a specific folder, document, or drive. If you constantly head to Windows Explorer for a particular item, add that item to the taskbar for faster access.

Here's how. Right-click the taskbar and in the menu that appears, make sure "Lock the Taskbar" is turned off (if it's checked, select it to remove the checkmark). Then choose Toolbars

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When you click the Start menu, your ultimate destination is often the Control Panel—a kind of central dashboard that lets you customize many aspects of Windows XP, from your network connections to the date and time display, to your mouse and keyboard. Most people think that when it comes to the Control Panel, what you see is what you get. But the Control Panel earns its name in more ways than you think. This section explains how to tap into your latent domineering instincts.

Getting to the Control Panel's menus and dialog can be an epic clickfest. You have to click the Start menu, then the Control Panel icon itself, and often several other icons and menus to get to the one you need. Your hand could fall off before you reach your destination.

You can speed up the time it takes to get to Control Panel applets—the programs where you actually tweak settings—by having Windows XP display them in a cascading menu when you choose Control Panel from the Start button, as shown in Figure 2-20.

To make Control Panel applets cascade, right-click the Start menu and choose Properties → Start Menu → Customize → Advanced. Under the Control Panel heading, choose "Display as a menu." Click OK, then OK again.

If you're a serious Control Panel jockey, place a toolbar for it on the taskbar. Section 2.3.4 tells you how.

The Control Panel has a bevy of settings you can manage. But the sheer number of icons makes it tough to find the ones you want. You can clean things up by hiding the Control Panel applets you rarely use. When you hide these applets, you don't actually delete them—you just hide their icons at the back of the closet. You can still run them if you need to (Section 2.4.3).

To hide the Control Panel applets, you have to use the Registry. First run the Registry Editor (Section 15.1.2) and then follow these steps:

Go to My Computer → HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → SOFTWARE → Microsoft → Windows → CurrentVersion → Control Panel.
As you might guess from the key's name, it's the one that handles many aspects of the Control Panel.

Figure 2-20: Save valuable time and energy by displaying Control Panel applets as a cascading menu. If there's a particular applet you use frequently, save yourself even more time by dragging it from the menu to the desktop or Quick Launch bar to create a clickable icon for the applet.

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You can make Windows XP into your digital alter ego by choosing your own icons, adding a screen saver, or picking a desktop theme. Read on for hints on giving Windows XP a dash of individuality.

You may not be a star on the big screen but you can be the star of your computer screen, or more precisely, your screen saver. Simply create a screen saver using your own digital photos or pictures you've scanned.

First, put all the photos you want to display on your screen saver in Documents and Settings → [Your Account Name] → My Documents → My Pictures.

Right-click the desktop and choose Properties → Screensaver (Figure 2-21). From the drop-down list, select My Pictures Slideshow. In the preview screen, your photo slideshow begins to play.

Click the Settings button if you want to change the size of the pictures, how long each photo should display, and whether to use transition effects between pictures—say, fading to black after the last shot of your triumphant bike race finish. (Hey, no one needs to know you came in 837th place.) When you're done, click OK until you get back to the desktop. Your screen saver is ready to go.

Figure 2-21: When you choose a folder to be the launching pad for your customized screen saver, Windows turns all the pictures in that folder into a slideshow. If you want to create several screen savers, with different pictures for each, save the photos for each screen saver in separate folders within My Pictures. Then designate each folder as a screen saver's launching pad.

Themes control just about every aspect of how Windows XP looks and sounds, including its background wallpaper, colors, icons, cursors, sounds, fonts, screen savers, and the style of its buttons and windows. Think of it as your computer's personality type, or rather, your personality expressed through your PC.

Say you're a Star Wars fan: You can get a Star Wars theme with scenes from the movie as your background and screen saver, audio outtakes of Darth Vader for your system sounds, and fonts with a Star Wars look. Figure 2-22 shows you another option.

The only problem is that Windows XP comes with just two personalities: the basic Windows XP theme (which some people call "Luna" because that was its code name during Windows XP's development) and Windows Classic, a more stolid-looking theme based on older versions of Windows, which uses rectangular windows and solid colors.

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You probably spend approximately half your life browsing through your hard disk, copying, moving, deleting, and searching for files. On a computer, those tasks ought to be less time-consuming then rifling through paper files and folders, and indeed, Windows XP offers good basic tools for handling electronic paperwork. But that's all they are—basic tools.

The true power hound must master Windows Explorer, the utility that lets you navigate around your hard drive, as shown in Figure 3-1. This chapter teems with ways to turn this basic feature into a major workhorse. You'll learn the most efficient ways to find, open, rearrange, name, and display the files and folders on your PC.

You probably spend a lot of time using Windows Explorer, so why not make it work the way that you—rather than Microsoft's engineers—want it to work? As you'll see in this section, there are many ways to give Windows Explorer more power and efficiency, including keyboard shortcuts that can save you from mouse-related wrist strain.

Tired of clicking menus to get to Windows Explorer? Open it the fast way: Press the Windows key+E and Windows Explorer opens with just a flick of two fingers.

The Windows key (the key with the Windows logo on it) resides in different places on different keyboards. On desktop computers, it often sits between the Ctrl and Alt keys. On a laptop, it could be almost anywhere.

Geeks can also open Explorer by typing explorer.exe at a command prompt or into the Run box and then pressing Enter. And if you want to open Windows Explorer to a specific folder, enter the name of the folder after the command, with the full path to the folder, like this: explorer.exe C:\Windows.

Figure 3-1: To open Windows Explorer, right-click My Computer (either on the desktop or in the Start menu), and then choose Explore. If you don't see the list of folders in the left pane, choose View → Explorer Bar → Folders.

To speed up your pace in Windows Explorer, don't reach for the mouse. Instead, use keyboard shortcuts that let you handle common tasks without having to waste valuable time mousing around. Table 3-1 lists some of the most useful Windows Explorer shortcuts.

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You probably spend a lot of time using Windows Explorer, so why not make it work the way that you—rather than Microsoft's engineers—want it to work? As you'll see in this section, there are many ways to give Windows Explorer more power and efficiency, including keyboard shortcuts that can save you from mouse-related wrist strain.

Tired of clicking menus to get to Windows Explorer? Open it the fast way: Press the Windows key+E and Windows Explorer opens with just a flick of two fingers.

The Windows key (the key with the Windows logo on it) resides in different places on different keyboards. On desktop computers, it often sits between the Ctrl and Alt keys. On a laptop, it could be almost anywhere.

Geeks can also open Explorer by typing explorer.exe at a command prompt or into the Run box and then pressing Enter. And if you want to open Windows Explorer to a specific folder, enter the name of the folder after the command, with the full path to the folder, like this: explorer.exe C:\Windows.

Figure 3-1: To open Windows Explorer, right-click My Computer (either on the desktop or in the Start menu), and then choose Explore. If you don't see the list of folders in the left pane, choose View → Explorer Bar → Folders.

To speed up your pace in Windows Explorer, don't reach for the mouse. Instead, use keyboard shortcuts that let you handle common tasks without having to waste valuable time mousing around. Table 3-1 lists some of the most useful Windows Explorer shortcuts.

Table 3-1: Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcut	What It Does
Alt+Enter	Displays the properties of the selected file or folder.
F2	Lets you rename the selected file or folder.

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Isn't it amazing how today's powerful computers have turned people into . . . their own personal file clerks. Computers were supposed to eliminate this drudgery. Fortunately, Windows Explorer comes with a few built-in tools that give you better ways to manage your files and folders. This section reviews a handful of particularly useful tricks.

Using Windows Explorer to navigate to a particular file or folder can be tedious. Here's a better way to get exactly where you want to go. If you're in the left pane of Windows Explorer (also called the Folder pane), type the first letter or letters of the name of the folder you want to access. Windows transports you immediately to the correct place. If you're inside a folder, type the first few letters of the name of the file you need.

You can also jump quickly to the top or bottom of a list of folders or files. To go to the beginning of a list, press Home; to go to the end, press End.

Hardly anyone knows about one of the most useful features in Windows Explorer: the Send To command, which is like an expressway for moving files. Here's how it works. When you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, one of the shortcut menu options that pops up is Send To. Selecting this option lets you copy or move the file to a list of destinations like your floppy drive or CD burner (Figure 3-5). This method is immeasurably faster than dragging a file across your desktop or mousing through menu commands.

If you use the Send To menu to send a file to a folder or program on the same drive, the file moves to the new location. If you're sending it to a different drive, Windows makes a copy, so you'll still have a version in the original location. But there's a way to override these conventions: If you hold down the Ctrl key while sending to another location on the same drive, Windows creates a new copy instead of simply moving it. If you hold down the Shift key while sending a file to a different drive, Windows moves the file instead of copying it.

You can really amp up the power of Send To by adding programs or locations to the menu or deleting ones you don't need. To make these changes, go to Documents and Settings

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No matter how large your hard disk is, it's never big enough. Sooner or later, you're going to run out of space, which means constantly pruning files or installing an extra hard disk—both of which can seriously carve into your Solitaire time.

Good news: you can create extra hard disk space without spending a penny or deleting files. Simply compress your files so they're much smaller than their normal size. This section offers hints on saving space with compression.

A simple way to get more disk space is to use Windows XP's built-in NTFS compression—a scheme that only works with hard disks that use the NT File System (NTFS). (The steps later in this hint explain how you can find out if yours does.)

NTFS, besides being an intimidating technical-looking acronym, merely stands for the disk-formatting system that Microsoft developed for Windows NT back in 1993. It represented a departure and improvement over the earlier DOS and its descendant, FAT, a system that previous versions of Windows ran on. Windows XP, advanced and versatile, can run on either a FAT or NTFS drive.

NTFS compression can shrink the size of individual files and folders or entire drives. Once you've compressed any of these items, Windows XP automatically decompresses them when you use them, and then compresses them again when it saves them. (Unless you have a slow computer, you won't even notice this process.)

But be careful about which files you compress, because you can slow down your system if you choose the wrong ones, and you may not save much space on your hard disk in return. Here are some tips to keep in mind when deciding which files to compress:

Music files in MP3 and WMA formats are already compressed, so compressing them won't yield benefits—but it can retard your system.
GIF and JPEG graphics files are already compressed as well.
Bit-mapped graphics file formats (like .bmp and .tif) are not compressed, so you can save a lot of space compressing those.

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Sometimes, finding a file on your disk is like hunting for a lost robot on Mars— time-consuming, often futile, and sweaty. Here are tips and workarounds to help you find what you need fast—whether you're looking for a budget document from last year or an MP3 Martian music file you downloaded last week.

Windows XP's search tool, Search Companion, offers some very basic search tools for finding lost files. While Search Companion isn't going to help you find the Holy Grail, it's not bad for quick retrievals of files you know are lurking somewhere on your computer. And if you mix in some of the advanced search tools, described later, you can really beef up your search capabilities.

Section 3.4.1.1: Four ways to launch Search Companion

You can launch the Search Companion in any of these ways:

Choose Start→ Search.
From anywhere, press Windows key+F.
In an Explorer Window, press F3.
In an Explorer Window, choose Search.

Section 3.4.1.2: Selecting or deleting an animated helpmate

Many people find the animated canine companion—dubbed Rover by his creators—more annoying than comforting. To turn off Rover, choose Change Preferences→ "Without an animated screen character." If you're a fan of animated characters, but Rover skeeves you out, choose Change Preferences→ "With a different character," and then choose from a list of other animated alternatives.

Section 3.4.1.3: Types of searches

Search Companion offers four types of searches. You can choose one to limit the files Windows searches, potentially speeding up your search:

Pictures, music, or videos
Documents (word processing, spreadsheet, and so on)
All files and folders
Computers (on your network) or people (in your address book)

These search options all have wizards that can be tedious to click through. The advanced search option is a lot quicker and more effective, since it lets you search directly for all or part of a file name or a word or phrase in the file, rather than walking you through the wizard's multiple steps.

Section 3.4.1.4: Advanced search

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Sometimes the things you notice least in life—your toothbrush, a knife and fork, your shoelaces—play an important role. They're not flashy or earth shattering, but you'd be hard pressed to get through the day without them.

Windows XP's built-in utilities are similar. These often overlooked little programs, like Notepad, Clipboard, and the Backup utility, perform key functions you use all the time—even if you're barely aware of them.

This chapter tells you how to get the most out of these programs, as well as some others you might not even know about, like the utility that sends faxes straight from your computer. You'll also learn about some inexpensive alternatives—perfect for when Windows needs a little more oomph than its built-in tools can provide.

Backing up is like buying insurance: you don't need it until you need it. And then you really need it. Unfortunately, most backup programs are not only expensive, they come with phonebook-sized manuals scary enough to make lost data seem like an appealing alternative.

Windows jumps into the breach: its backup software is free. And while the program is not the easiest to use, the following hints will help get you started. (If you're interested in spending a little bit of money for backup software that's slightly friendlier, skip ahead to Section 4.1.3 for tips on two alternatives to the Windows backup utility.)

If you use Windows XP Home Edition, you may be wondering why you can't find the Windows backup program that came with previous versions of Windows. There's a simple reason: It's not there.

To make matters worse, the Windows XP CD's Welcome screen doesn't give you a chance to install the backup program even if you select "Install optional Windows components." The backup program is nowhere on the list.

Windows XP Professional installs the backup program automatically.

But the phantom program is available, and if you have the Home Edition, you can easily install it manually. To do so, pop the Windows installation disk into your PC, navigate to My Computer → D: → Valueadd → Msft → Ntbackup, and double-click the file NTBACKUP.MSI. An installer launches and installs the backup program.

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Backing up is like buying insurance: you don't need it until you need it. And then you really need it. Unfortunately, most backup programs are not only expensive, they come with phonebook-sized manuals scary enough to make lost data seem like an appealing alternative.

Windows jumps into the breach: its backup software is free. And while the program is not the easiest to use, the following hints will help get you started. (If you're interested in spending a little bit of money for backup software that's slightly friendlier, skip ahead to Section 4.1.3 for tips on two alternatives to the Windows backup utility.)

If you use Windows XP Home Edition, you may be wondering why you can't find the Windows backup program that came with previous versions of Windows. There's a simple reason: It's not there.

To make matters worse, the Windows XP CD's Welcome screen doesn't give you a chance to install the backup program even if you select "Install optional Windows components." The backup program is nowhere on the list.

Windows XP Professional installs the backup program automatically.

But the phantom program is available, and if you have the Home Edition, you can easily install it manually. To do so, pop the Windows installation disk into your PC, navigate to My Computer → D: → Valueadd → Msft → Ntbackup, and double-click the file NTBACKUP.MSI. An installer launches and installs the backup program.

If your CD drive is a letter other than the D drive, use that letter when looking for the backup program. For example, if your CD drive is your E drive, you'd find the backup program in My Computer → E: → Valueadd → Msft → Ntbackup.

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Windows XP's two most popular utilities are Notepad and the Clipboard. In fact, you use the Clipboard countless times every day without even knowing it: every time you cut, copy, or paste something, Windows stashes and retrieves the goods from its trusty Clipboard. And if you edit a lot of text files, you may use Notepad, which is faster and simpler than Word for editing small files. Both programs are more powerful than they appear; the following hints help you tap into their hidden abilities.

When using Notepad, you may want to put a time and date stamp in a file—for example, if you're adding comments to a document and want to show when the notes were made. To insert a time and date stamp at any point in a Notepad file, simply Press F5.

Notepad can also automatically insert a time and date stamp in a file every time you open it. This trick is especially useful if you're using a file to keep a journal or work record: Each time you open your file to compose a new entry, Notepad inserts a fresh time and date stamp. Simply create a blank text file with .LOG as the first line in the file, then press Save and close the file. Every time you open the file, Notepad inserts the current time and date. All you have to do is type away.

Notepad includes a little-known feature that lets you automatically insert headers and footers into your documents when you print them. (A header is text that appears at the top of every page in a document, like the title or your name; a footer is text that appears at the bottom of each page, like a page number.)

To create headers and footers in Notepad, choose File → Page Setup. The Page Setup dialog box, shown in Figure 4-3, appears. In the Page Setup dialog box, use the Header and Footer fields and type in the text you want to appear—or type in any of the key combinations listed in Table 4-1 for Notepad's built-in header or footer commands.

Figure 4-3: Like many fancy word processors, Notepad lets you insert headers and footers. You can't see the headers and footers onscreen, though; they show up only in the printed document. Here, the settings in the dialog will create a header containing the file name, and a footer containing the page number, preceded by the word "Page."

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Backup, Notepad, and the Clipboard are probably the best-known Windows utilities, but Windows XP has a few other gems stored in its utility closet. This section covers them and highlights a few tricks worth trying, like the Fax program and the Calculator.

Although faxes seem archaic in the era of instant messages and email, paper was supposed to become obsolete, too. Reality check: faxing remains a part of life (those perpetual-motion machine sketches are tough to describe in an email). When you're hit with the need to send or receive a fax, Windows XP can come to the rescue. One of its least-known but most useful utilities is the Fax program.

Figure 4-7: Once you've installed Windows XP's Fax utility, you can fax a document directly from your computer. Using the Fax Wizard shown here, you can either type the name and fax number of the recipient or grab it from your Windows Address Book. To use your address book, click on the small Rolodex-like icon and choose a recipient.

Your computer has to have a modem connected to a normal phone line in order to use the Fax utility. It can't send or receive faxes over a cable or DSL modem. And you can't talk on that phone line while you send or receive faxes.

Despite its obvious benefits, Fax isn't automatically installed with Windows XP, so you'll need to dig out your Windows XP installation CD. Once you pop the CD into your computer and the opening screen appears, choose Install Optional Windows Components → Fax Services. That's all there is to installing it.

If you want to fax a document that's on your computer already (for example, a Word document), simply open it, then select File → Print. In the Print dialog box, swap your normal printer for the Fax tool by clicking the drop-down list next to Name, and then choosing Fax. A wizard launches and takes you step-by-step through the process of sending a fax using your modem, as shown in Figure 4-7.

If you have a printed document you want to fax, you first have to scan it into your computer, open the scanned file using a graphics program, and then fax the file using the Print command as described earlier.

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If you've been living on Mars for the past decade or so, you may never have heard of the software bundle called Microsoft Office. But more likely, you have an intimate relationship with at least one of the programs in the package: Microsoft Word (for creating text documents), Microsoft Excel (spreadsheets), and PowerPoint (presentations). Some versions of Office also include programs such as Access (for creating databases) or FrontPage (for creating Web pages).

This chapter offers a grab bag of hints for maximizing the many benefits of Office 2003. It also tells you how to secure a fully working—and fully free—software suite that handles most of the same tasks as Microsoft Office.

The hints in this section apply to all the Microsoft Office programs.

Microsoft's infamous "Clippy"—an overly eager animated paperclip (Figure 5-1) that pops up when it thinks you need help—may well be the single most reviled computer feature of all time. The character is supposed to provide useful tips as you work. Instead, it slows down your work, and even though it's a paperclip, it makes an array of obnoxious facial expressions. You can bump off Clippy from within any Office program by choosing Help → Hide the Office Assistant.

Even if you never use the Office Clipboard, which pastes text into Office files, it may still pop up occasionally, like if you press Ctrl+Insert twice in a row by accident. While some people like using the Clipboard, others find it intrusive. If you're among the annoyed, you can turn off the Office Clipboard so it never pops up. A simply Registry edit is the way to go.

Figure 5-1: Microsoft has come up with a lot of brilliant, incredibly useful tools over the years. Clippy is not one of them.

Close all Office applications and Run the Registry Editor (see Section 15.1.2). Go to My Computer → HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Office → 9.0 → Common → General and create a new DWORD value called AcbControl. Assign it a value of 1 and exit the Registry.

The Office Clipboard no longer pops up, but if you change your mind and want it to appear again, head back to the Registry, and either delete AcbControl or change its value to 0.

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The hints in this section apply to all the Microsoft Office programs.

Microsoft's infamous "Clippy"—an overly eager animated paperclip (Figure 5-1) that pops up when it thinks you need help—may well be the single most reviled computer feature of all time. The character is supposed to provide useful tips as you work. Instead, it slows down your work, and even though it's a paperclip, it makes an array of obnoxious facial expressions. You can bump off Clippy from within any Office program by choosing Help → Hide the Office Assistant.

Even if you never use the Office Clipboard, which pastes text into Office files, it may still pop up occasionally, like if you press Ctrl+Insert twice in a row by accident. While some people like using the Clipboard, others find it intrusive. If you're among the annoyed, you can turn off the Office Clipboard so it never pops up. A simply Registry edit is the way to go.

Figure 5-1: Microsoft has come up with a lot of brilliant, incredibly useful tools over the years. Clippy is not one of them.

Close all Office applications and Run the Registry Editor (see Section 15.1.2). Go to My Computer → HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Office → 9.0 → Common → General and create a new DWORD value called AcbControl. Assign it a value of 1 and exit the Registry.

The Office Clipboard no longer pops up, but if you change your mind and want it to appear again, head back to the Registry, and either delete AcbControl or change its value to 0.

If you want to find an Office file, Microsoft XP's generic search function (accessible by pressing the Window key+F) is not your best bet, because it's designed to search through your entire hard disk. If you're looking for Office-specific files, a better option is Office's powerful built-in Advanced Search function, pictured in Figure 5-2. To use Advanced Search in any Office program, choose File → Search and then in the window that appears, click the link at the bottom labeled Advanced Search.

You can fine-tune your search by specifying a word or phrase, a file type, a file name, the subject of the document, its size, which template you used to create it, the number of characters it contains—even the total time spent editing the document. With Advanced Search, you also can combine criteria. For example, you can search for a document that you created in a specific template, that has more than a certain number of characters, and that you created after a certain date.

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No doubt you've already used Microsoft Word. Love it or hate it, you really can't avoid it; air is less ubiquitous.

But no matter how much you've used Word, you probably don't know all the cool stuff it can do for you. The following section explains a few handy tricks, like how to turn on or reveal text using "invisible ink," use Word as a personal translator, insert special characters, and create keyboard shortcuts for menu commands.

Figure 5-3: You can hide text using this dialog box. To delete hidden text, you first have to make it appear, then you can delete it as you would any other text.

Full-blown office suites with word processors, spreadsheets, and graphics programs commonly cost several hundred dollars—the most popular being Microsoft's Office suite. But if you're willing to sacrifice a few bells and whistles, you can still get a very effective alternative for free.

The 602Pro PC SUITE 2001 includes a word processor that can create files Word can use, an Excel-compatible spreadsheet program, photo-editing software, and a photo album. And it's free. It's available from 602 Software at http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/ . It doesn't include all the features that Microsoft Office has, and it doesn't include a presentation program like PowerPoint. But if you can live without those features, and you're allergic to stuffing Microsoft's coffers, this product is a good choice.

Unbeknownst to many people, Word has a feature that acts like invisible ink—text you can see onscreen, but that doesn't appear on paper when you print. This option is useful if you have a document chock full of comments and notes that you wish to distribute on paper—minus the personal notes. To make selected text disappear in a Word document, first highlight the passage you want to make like Houdini, and then choose Format → Font. In the dialog box that appears, under Effects, select Hidden (see Figure 5-3). The text disappears entirely—in fact, you can't even see it on your screen.

If you want the text you've hidden in a Word document to reappear onscreen, choose Tools

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Table of Contents

Section 3.4.1.1: Four ways to launch Search Companion

Section 3.4.1.2: Selecting or deleting an animated helpmate

Section 3.4.1.3: Types of searches

Section 3.4.1.4: Advanced search