Application Install Guide

Thousands sign online to keep XP alive

More than 100,000 people worldwide have signed a Save XP petition organized by the US magazine Infoworld. The operating system will no longer be available as a shrink-wrapped product after 30 June, though PC builders will be able to pre-install XP until January. A starter edition of XP will be available until mid-2010 in emerging markets, according to Microsoft, which claims Vista sales are heading for 100 million. However, most Vista installs are in machines sold to home users. Business h...

The Blue Screen Of Death

The most infamous error message is the Blue Screen Of Death. It’s so well known that it has crept into the vernacular: “Aw, Fxxk! I was almost finished with my project when I got bluescreened!” The phenomenon is also known by its acronym, BSOD. The conditions that cause a blue screen have changed since the days of Windows 95/98, as has what it means. In either case, chances are pretty good that, if you get bluescreened, any unsaved work will be lost, as either Windows (in NT/2000/XP) or...

Use PrintScreen – At Last

Back in the days of 80-column monitors, dot-matrix printers, and DOS, the PrintScrn key on your keyboard was a way to send the entire contents of the screen to an attached parallel or serial printer. These days, PrintScrn takes a snapshot of your open windows, then sends the file into a hidden temporary buffer as an uncompressed image. Each screen shot for this story was taken by opening the necessary windows, pressing the PrintScrn key, then loading Microsoft Paint by clicking Start -> All P...

Disable Messager

Every time you boot windows, MSN Messenger starts running in the background. You’re not a fan of this IM client? Too bad. You don’t have a Passport account or don’t use the instant messenger integration built into Microsoft Outlook and Exchange? Too bad. You can save a bit of memory and get a little faster boot time by not loading this chat client every time Windows starts. Users of AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, or Yahoo!’s client are also likely candidates for this tweak. First, click...

Put Windows On A Diet

Windows XP is full of helpful applications, but some of them take too much control or have other downsides. MSN Explorer, the Outlook Express e-mail client, and even the Internet Explorer browser may all be mere baggage to you. All of these can be removed, saving you as much as 20MB of drive space in the process. To remove them, navigate to the Control Panel by first clicking Start. Then open Add or Remove Programs and click on Add/Remove Windows Components on the left-hand side of the window...

Improve Your Windows XP – Speed Access

Every time your laptop connects to a Wi-Fi hot spot, whether it’s in your home or down at the coffee shop, it logs the name of the access point that you connected to in the Windows Preferred Network settings. If you accidentally (or maybe even deliberately) connect to your neighbor’s access point, and then find yourself reconnecting again despite your efforts not to, you need to bump that listing down in your connection list and move your router to the top. To do this, click Start and sel...