Windows questions (post yours!)

[Robert Sharp]

Now that this is the hardware forum, I have more questions. I am using Windows XP and I am not sure how to check my system resources. In previous versions, it was in the performance tab of the systems program (in the control panel). But it doesn't seem to be there in XP. I can find a way to try to manually optimize performance, but it doesn't tell me the percentage of resources currently being used. I'd like to check because I think I need more RAM. My machine is getting sluggish, and I only have 384 in it right now.

Second question: What's the program that you use in XP and in WIN 98 (I think they might be different programs) to determine what programs are running in the background? If possible, I want the program that will also allow you to turn them off, so they aren't always running back there if they aren't necessary.

Thanks for the help guys.

[DennyA]

Robert,

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del.

No, I'm not making a "make the noob reboot his system" joke. :-) The app that will appear will answer all of your questions. Show you system resources, show you what's running, etc.

In XP, the program that lets you disable apps in startup is MSConfig. Just go Start/Run/msconfig

The Performance tab is still there in XP. Just make sure you have Control Panel set to Classic View, open System, select Advanced, and choose Performance.

[Kalle]

Pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE in XP will send you to the activity manager (name translated from Swedish) or give you access to a menu from where you can reach it. You can check all programs and processes runing in windows, and it also has a prestanda tab available that could be what you are looking for if you wish to check system resources.

[DennyA]

Now here's one for the rest of you:
I have the Links toolbar in IE set up with my most commonly visited sites. Lately, though, every once in a while my Links bar and my Favorites menu both get put back into alphabetical order, instead of my painstaking reordering. Any idea what could be causing this?

[JeffL]

Just to add to what Denny said, run msconfig and look at the tab called "startup" - you'll see a lot of stuff that loads on startup. Most of it is probably unneeded - you can simply uncheck it, and then if you want to have it run you can always go back in and re-check it.

Also, when looking in msconfig, you'll see a processes tab. A lot of that stuff doesn't need to be running. I don't have a link handy, but you can do a search and find sites that will tell you what most of those processes are and which ones you can safely disable.

[Mike Cathcart]

Now that this is the hardware forum, I have more [Windows] questions.
I suggest you start here (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hardware) ;)

[Stroker Ace]

Robert,

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Ctrl-Shift-Esc will accomplish the same thing in NT 4, 2000, and XP.

[/nerd]

[Stroker Ace]

Just to add to what Denny said, run msconfig and look at the tab called "startup" - you'll see a lot of stuff that loads on startup. Most of it is probably unneeded - you can simply uncheck it, and then if you want to have it run you can always go back in and re-check it.

Also, when looking in msconfig, you'll see a processes tab. A lot of that stuff doesn't need to be running. I don't have a link handy, but you can do a search and find sites that will tell you what most of those processes are and which ones you can safely disable.

the links toolbar and the favorites menu are both represented by actual folders on your system (big surprise). maybe every time you click the "Reset All Folders" or "Apply to All Folders" buttons under Folder Options in windows explorer, it reorganizes those folders too?

This is just a shot in the dark guess.

[Jason McCullough]

More of an answer than a question: it's impossible to force IE to auto-maximize when it creates a new window. Eventually, you'll clck on a window that's starts as less than full size, and no matter what you do you'll have to manually maximize the window the next time you start IE.

The only solution is to either use a different webbrowser or a container application that embeds IE and forces it to maximize (Avant Browser).

[Stroker Ace]

McC, that information is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Window_Placement.

You could, say, run regedt32 and disallow your account's access to the "Internet Explorer\Main" tree of the registry, but then you'd cause yourself some problems. Alternately, you could make a script to update that registry key with the desired value every time you loaded IE, or every 30 seconds, or whatever.

If your point was that IE won't let you *easily* maintain maximization, then I agree with you :lol:

[Robert Sharp]

Now that this is the hardware forum, I have more [Windows] questions.
I suggest you start here (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hardware) ;)


smartass ;). I don't know about you, but my windows program feels like hardware, since MS has pretty much hardwired it into my PC. But, ok, let's change 'hardware' to 'tech support'.


My next new topic will be poll about banning Cathcart! heh!

[Robert Sharp]

Robert,

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del.

No, I'm not making a "make the noob reboot his system" joke. :-) The app that will appear will answer all of your questions. Show you system resources, show you what's running, etc.


Wow. I never new that had so much info. Is all of that new to XP? The system I had before was win98, and I only used ctrlaltdel for rebooting or ending tasks.

[Robert Sharp]

Now here's one for the rest of you:
I have the Links toolbar in IE set up with my most commonly visited sites. Lately, though, every once in a while my Links bar and my Favorites menu both get put back into alphabetical order, instead of my painstaking reordering. Any idea what could be causing this?

Does it happen after any certain action, or just seemingly at random?

[Case]

Robert,

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del.

No, I'm not making a "make the noob reboot his system" joke. :-) The app that will appear will answer all of your questions. Show you system resources, show you what's running, etc.


Wow. I never new that had so much info. Is all of that new to XP? The system I had before was win98, and I only used ctrlaltdel for rebooting or ending tasks.

It's actually a holdover from Windows 2000. Not only that, but in a multiuser environment, you had to press CTRL-ALT-DEL to log on! Thankfully, they changed that in XP.

[XPav]

Ctrl-Shift-Esc will accomplish the same thing in NT 4, 2000, and XP.[/nerd]

Hey, I didn't know that. Cool.

How about this one -- Windows+M will minimize every window on your desktop.

[XPav]

It's actually a holdover from Windows 2000. Not only that, but in a multiuser environment, you had to press CTRL-ALT-DEL to log on! Thankfully, they changed that in XP.

In XP Pro, and all network logon environment, you still pretty much have to. Sure, you can disable it, but you shouldn't, and besides, everyone that used NT and 2000 is used to that behavior by now.

As for the Task Manager, that was in NT also. The XP one is actually better than the 2000 one, as it gives the account that the process was launched under.

[Kalle]

How about this one -- Windows+M will minimize every window on your desktop.

Didn't know that one. Of course, binding a minimize all command to a mouse button works better, but that's not something native to windows as far as I know.

[DennyA]

Now here's one for the rest of you:
I have the Links toolbar in IE set up with my most commonly visited sites. Lately, though, every once in a while my Links bar and my Favorites menu both get put back into alphabetical order, instead of my painstaking reordering. Any idea what could be causing this?

Does it happen after any certain action, or just seemingly at random?
Seemingly at random. I open a new IE window, my toolbars are all rearranged, and my links are alphabetized. Oddly, the Favorites didn't get alphabetized the last two times this happened, just Links.

[XPav]

Seemingly at random. I open a new IE window, my toolbars are all rearranged, and my links are alphabetized. Oddly, the Favorites didn't get alphabetized the last two times this happened, just Links.

Mozilla Firebird will fix that problem. :lol:

[James Gutierrez]

How about this one -- Windows+M will minimize every window on your desktop.

WinKey (http://download.com.com/3000-2344-913626.html?tag=lst-0-1) is a nice little app that lets you bind just about any action to a windows key combination. You can even bind to urls, so for example Windows+Q on my machine brings up the new posts page on this forum.

[Dirt]

Now that this is the hardware forum, I have more questions. I am using Windows XP and I am not sure how to check my system resources.

That's a software question, take it to the Software Forum.

[Mike Cathcart]

That's a software question, take it to the Software Forum.
Tom and Mark need to upgrade to the latest version of phpBB. This one seems to have an echo.

[Case]

In XP Pro, and all network logon environment, you still pretty much have to. Sure, you can disable it, but you shouldn't, and besides, everyone that used NT and 2000 is used to that behavior by now.

As for the Task Manager, that was in NT also. The XP one is actually better than the 2000 one, as it gives the account that the process was launched under.

In our environment, the logon screen simply appears at boot. No CTRL-ALT-DEL needed.

[XPav]

In our environment, the logon screen simply appears at boot. No CTRL-ALT-DEL needed.
Its configurable.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308226

Read that, you have a security hole! HAX0RS AWAY! :lol:

[Bullhajj]

If you're looking to optimize your system, use performance monitor. Enter perfmon.msc in the run menu.

[Jason Becker]

Here's mine. Recently Mozilla(IE too even though I don't use it regularly) isn't remembering my homepage settings. I use Yahoo's. I have to keep signing in with my username and password. I click the remember settings but it "forgets" after a couple of times. Never had this problem before.

[Xaroc]

Here's mine. Recently Mozilla(IE too even though I don't use it regularly) isn't remembering my homepage settings. I use Yahoo's. I have to keep signing in with my username and password. I click the remember settings but it "forgets" after a couple of times. Never had this problem before.

Maybe a spyware issue?

-- Xaroc

[cyborg]

Why the hell does my scroll wheel scroll lines setting revert to 1 every time I start up? It's pissing me off no end.

[Robert Sharp]

Now here's one for the rest of you:
I have the Links toolbar in IE set up with my most commonly visited sites. Lately, though, every once in a while my Links bar and my Favorites menu both get put back into alphabetical order, instead of my painstaking reordering. Any idea what could be causing this?

Does it happen after any certain action, or just seemingly at random?
Seemingly at random. I open a new IE window, my toolbars are all rearranged, and my links are alphabetized. Oddly, the Favorites didn't get alphabetized the last two times this happened, just Links.

Did you try locking the toolbars?

[bago]

Taskman.exe (accessable from the security dialog, taskbar right click, and the old fashioned run the exe manner) lists your processes, memory, etc depending on how you configure it. You can start and kill processes from here too.

How an app starts at launch depends on the WindowStyle paramater passed into WinMain. It's an enum with three values, Normal, Minimized, and Maximized. You can set this when you kick off the process via CreateProcess as an argument, or by creating a shortcut and selecting the launch method via the &Run dropdown in the properties of the shortcut.

[DennyA]

Did you try locking the toolbars?
Yep. Weird and annoying, eh?

[bago]

Also, there is a performance MMC snap-in (most easily accessed via Administrative tools\Performance) that you can use to drill down a lot deeper so that you can see what is happening.

You can drill down to I\O operations per second per process, or Interrupts per second per CPU, to % of time in JIT in the .NET CLR.

You can log it and compare contrast your actions and find bottlenecks if you know what you're looking for. Hell, you can even write your own counters using the WMI interface.

[Jason Becker]

Here's mine. Recently Mozilla(IE too even though I don't use it regularly) isn't remembering my homepage settings. I use Yahoo's. I have to keep signing in with my username and password. I click the remember settings but it "forgets" after a couple of times. Never had this problem before.

Maybe a spyware issue?

-- Xaroc


I run Spybot and Ad-Aware regularly.

[DennyA]

Okay, I *think* I solved the Links re-ordering issue. We'll see.

I opened the Favorites/Links directory in my Documents and Settings folder and it somehow had been set to "auto-arrange" when browsing the drive. I unchecked auto arrange and all is well.

Of course, 1) how the heck did that get set in the first place? I never use auto arrange, and 2) what bonehead on the IE dev team thought it would be a good idea to have folder sorting control the toolbar order?

[Desslock]

[quote="Xaroc"][quote=Jason Becker]Here's mine. Recently Mozilla(IE too even though I don't use it regularly) isn't remembering my homepage settings. I use Yahoo's. I have to keep signing in with my username and password. I click the remember settings but it "forgets" after a couple of times. Never had this problem before.

What are your security settings? If you are excluding all cookies, your password won't be remembered -- some sites, like Yahoo, actually need even lower security than normal (you can specifically designate in your browser to accept cookies from that specific site, so you don't have to open your security more broadly). But check the icon in the bottom right of your browser (at least in IE) to see if you're blocking anything.

[bago]

Denny: Most likely the toolbar queries explorer for a listing of all items in the favorites folder, and the order reported back is used to arrange the toolbar. Remember, favorites is just a folder listing.

[Slothrop]

I have a question, too. In Windows XP, IE 6.0.2800, it will not remember my checkmark next to "Status Bar" in the View menu, and I have to recheck it every time I start IE, or whenever I open a new window to see the status bar along the bottom. Happens to my boss, too, same setup.

[DennyA]

Aargh. It got reordered again. Spoke too soon.

The weird thing is, this used not to happen. I ran with this config for a couple of years. Now that I think about it, the one thing that changes was that I updated to the new Google toolbar that blocks popups. Gonna have to remove that and see if maybe that's the cause.

[Andrew Mayer]

How about this:

For the last year my browsers (firebird and IE) have been crashing, and my system has been rebooting, constantly.

The crash is a virutal memory problem, and seems to be related to the cache.

I have re-installed XP multiple times. Tried every combo of memory possible (including removing sticks) and even switched my hard drives so that the newest drive is now the system drive. I've changed my cache size and location. I've cleared the cache. I've set the cache so it deletes ever time I exit. I've run ad aware, and two different anti-virus utilities (on 2 different installs).

The stability comes and goes. Sometimes it will crash constantly, then become stable for a while, then crash again.

It's a 750 Duron system by Compaq, so it may just inherently suck. I'm getting a new MOBO this week, but I'd love to figure out just what's been screwing me so badly for the past year.

[XPav]

It's a 750 Duron system by Compaq, so it may just inherently suck. I'm getting a new MOBO this week, but I'd love to figure out just what's been screwing me so badly for the past year.

You've run memtest86, right?

[Andrew Mayer]

It's a 750 Duron system by Compaq, so it may just inherently suck. I'm getting a new MOBO this week, but I'd love to figure out just what's been screwing me so badly for the past year.

You've run memtest86, right?


No... Whats that?

[XPav]

http://www.memtest86.com/

[Robert Sharp]

Denny: Most likely the toolbar queries explorer for a listing of all items in the favorites folder, and the order reported back is used to arrange the toolbar. Remember, favorites is just a folder listing.

That's what's wrong with it really. It should be a separate, IE only folder, but instead it's just another folder. Since it is still happening, that doesn't seem to be Denny's problem though. Denny, maybe you installed a plug-in or other program that affects your IE settings?

[bago]

Bah, it makes it easy to back up, sort, and programatically manipulate your favorites.

There's also an advanced option to enable personalized favorites menu that might have some bearing on the subject...

[Andrew Mayer]

http://www.memtest86.com/

I'll be running it tonight.

[hoowahman]

More of an answer than a question: it's impossible to force IE to auto-maximize when it creates a new window. Eventually, you'll clck on a window that's starts as less than full size, and no matter what you do you'll have to manually maximize the window the next time you start IE.

The only solution is to either use a different webbrowser or a container application that embeds IE and forces it to maximize (Avant Browser).

When you resize your window or maximize it you must go to File->Close for it to save when you start it back up again. If you just hit the X it will just revert to what you had when you started it up the previous time.

I just tried it and it works for me.

Also here is a tip that I use all the time ... "Windows Key + E"...opens explorer really fast. 8)

[Jason McCullough]

Except that method is fucking annoying; there's no way to make the setting stay. As soon as you close a sole non-fullscreen one you're fucked.

[Robert Sharp]

Bah, it makes it easy to back up, sort, and programatically manipulate your favorites.



Right, but you could do all that in other ways, without much difficulty. Still, you are right that there are some advantages. I just wish that you could autosort SOME folders and not others. Is there an easy way to do that?

[Andrew Mayer]

http://www.memtest86.com/

I ran it and everything passed.

Honestly, I've tried every tack known to man, and I'm still no closer to discovering the source of my woes.

It is, however, the last time I buy an AMD and/or Compaq product.

[bago]

Your CPU might be overheating and croaking...

Lord known this damned dual P3 does.

[Robert Sharp]

Ok, this is sort of an IE question, but since that is part of windows, here goes. Is there a way to save a password for a site, after you have already told IE NOT to save that password? I know I can reset all the passwords, but that would be more trouble than it is worth. I have a site that I was unsure about (I couldn't remember if the pw was correct or not) so I told it not to save it, but now I know it is correct and I am not prompted anymore. Any way to make it work?

[Tyrion Lannister]

OK, here's my stupid windows 2000 question. Since I installed a new motherboard and fixed windows with the semi-reinstall described by Grand Master Case in another thread I get this hugely irritating message every time I boot up or launch another version of explorer, or do a copy or paste into explorer:

Windows Installer

The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the
installation package 'rds1enu.msi' in the box below.

I then have to click cancel three times. The dialog box also points to a long deleted Freelancer Trial directory.

Registry searching yields nothing.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

[Tyrion Lannister]

In case anyone cares...

I had checked windows update - nothing. I ran Spybot S&D. It got rid of a couple of registry entries. Then I ran RegClean.exe. That allowed me to nuke a bunch of defective entries. Then I went back to windows update again.

Lo and behold, suddenly I had to download 2 service packs. After which my machine behaved.

So basically, I think my machine had been hosed by some spyware that relied on a patched hole in win2000, and the first thing it did was make the machine believe it had already been patched by fiddling with the registry. Nice.

[DennyA]

Found the culprit on my Links bar being reordered: Of all things, it was Eudora. The program has an option to use the IE core engine to render HTML emails more accurately. I'd enabled this recently. Turns out this has the nasty side-effect of occasionally screwing up your Links and toolbars for some reason.

[Tyrion Lannister]

Microsoft have just admitted the windows update can fail because it only checks the registry, and sometimes thinks an update is installed when it hasn't. This is how the army got hit by the msblast worm - and why I was having weird shit happen.

So a proper check can be done with:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/e/e/8ee73487-4d36-4f7f-92f2-2bdc5c5385b3/mbsasetup.msi

Make sure to run RegClean.exe (also downloadable from Microsoft).

Be safe.

[Aleck]

This may or may not be a windows issue, but it's either Windows or hardware, so...

I'm using an Abit Nforce (1) motherboard with an Athlon XP 2400, a few hard drives, and about 512 MB of RAM. I've noticed recently that, when running windows XP, whenever my hard drives are making noise, that noise is also coming out of my speakers. I also have some noise when I move the mouse. It's an annoying whine that's discernable if you listen carefully. I'm using the onboard (Nforce) sound.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Aleck

[Lunch of Kong]

Anyone know how to fix this?


It could be a number of things including a ground loop or inadequate filtering on the supplied voltage.

Easiest thing to do is just buy a PCI soundcard.

[Aleck]

Anyone know how to fix this?


It could be a number of things including a ground loop or inadequate filtering on the supplied voltage.

Easiest thing to do is just buy a PCI soundcard.

Well, the weird thing is that it just started happening recently. I haven't been doing too much fiddling in there, so I don't know why it would have started.

I'm reluctant to drop a PCI sound card in there because, well, I'm tired of problems with Soundblaster cards.

Aleck

[Xaroc]

Anyone know how to fix this?


It could be a number of things including a ground loop or inadequate filtering on the supplied voltage.

Easiest thing to do is just buy a PCI soundcard.

Well, the weird thing is that it just started happening recently. I haven't been doing too much fiddling in there, so I don't know why it would have started.

I'm reluctant to drop a PCI sound card in there because, well, I'm tired of problems with Soundblaster cards.

Aleck

Get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Hurcules Game Theater or one of the other non-Creative sound cards.

-- Xaroc

[Lunch of Kong]

Well, you could use plastic washers to electrically insulate all but one of the mainboard screws that are holding the mainboard to your PC case--the screw closest to the mainboard power connector.

The theory is that if there is interference on the ground, that it will only affect the components between that particular screw hole and the power connector, and hopefully your audio subsystem isn't one of them.

Or you can buy a PCI audio card. :-)

[Denice Cook]

Okay everybody,

How do you change the CDROM cache in WinXP? I used to set it up to the max in Win98 when installing programs so that my installs would go faster, and then lower it down to run programs off of their CDs without as many pauses. I just can't find the setting anymore in WinXP.

And does anybody adjust virtual memory settings in WinXP when defragging and/or in general to keep their hard drives running better? I used to fiddle with virtual memory in Win98 when defragging but I've gotten away from it now. And what's the general rule of thumb? I seem to remember (when using Win98) something about setting virtual memory to zero while defragging, then setting both the minimum and maximum to twice your amount of system RAM (if you have at least 256MB RAM) in between defrags... Oh, I can't remember any more. "I've fallen and I can't get up."

[Tyrion Lannister]

"I've fallen and I can't get up."

That should be the official QT3 forum poster tagline. Its perfect.

[Jason McCullough]

Okay everybody,

How do you change the CDROM cache in WinXP? I used to set it up to the max in Win98 when installing programs so that my installs would go faster, and then lower it down to run programs off of their CDs without as many pauses. I just can't find the setting anymore in WinXP.

And does anybody adjust virtual memory settings in WinXP when defragging and/or in general to keep their hard drives running better? I used to fiddle with virtual memory in Win98 when defragging but I've gotten away from it now. And what's the general rule of thumb? I seem to remember (when using Win98) something about setting virtual memory to zero while defragging, then setting both the minimum and maximum to twice your amount of system RAM (if you have at least 256MB RAM) in between defrags... Oh, I can't remember any more. "I've fallen and I can't get up."

You don't need to do either; the algorithms XP uses to manage those resources work just fine.

[deanco]

I got one,

When you put a CD in the drive under XP a window pops up asking what you want to do with it. Well, I put GTA:VC in and somehow clicked on 'Open with RealPlayer' by mistake. Now every time I put the CD in, RealPlayer pops up and starts playing the sound effects off the CD. It's a minor annoyance, I know, but how can I get it to stop? Thanks in advance,

DeanCo--

[Bullhajj]

I think you can right click and select Properties on the drive, and then use the Autoplay tab to tweak or turn off these settings.

[deanco]

Thanks Tim. I shoulda known, the solution to everything in Windows is, 'right click and choose properties, then...' :)

DeanCo--

[Bullhajj]

Thanks Tim. I shoulda known, the solution to everything in Windows is, 'right click and choose properties, then...' :)

DeanCo--

Heh. So true. What's more, if you right-click and can't do what you want to do, your best bet is probalby to change the focus to some other related object and right-click again.

[Aleck]

Anyone know how to fix this?


It could be a number of things including a ground loop or inadequate filtering on the supplied voltage.

Easiest thing to do is just buy a PCI soundcard.

Well, the weird thing is that it just started happening recently. I haven't been doing too much fiddling in there, so I don't know why it would have started.

I'm reluctant to drop a PCI sound card in there because, well, I'm tired of problems with Soundblaster cards.

Aleck

Get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Hurcules Game Theater or one of the other non-Creative sound cards.

-- Xaroc

Not to beat this one to death, but I thought I'd let anyone who might be having a similar problem know that I found a solution. Apparently my USB mic was getting feedback from the USB mouse (they're both plugged into the USB keyboard) and this was causing the feedback... After turning off Mic boost, the problem went away entirely.

Weirdness. But all's well that ends well...

(and now I can put my Game Theatre XP into my new Dell 400SC server box...)

Aleck

[Reeko]

Anybody know how to make the default printer setting to draft quality with black & white only?

[Brandon Clements]

What kind of printer? The old Lexmark inkjet I've got has management software that allows you to do that.

[Bullhajj]

Not sure about this particular item, but check the local group policy object to define just a ton of stuff about how windows works.

[XPav]

Anybody know how to make the default printer setting to draft quality with black & white only?

On XP, printers control panel, right click on a printer, printer preferences. Smiliar for the other OSes.

[Tyrion Lannister]

Stupid Mozilla question:

When I go to www.viz.co.uk (for example) - I get a pop up in a window called Mozilla. Anyone know how it does this, and what I can do to Mozilla to stop it happening?

[Robert Sharp]

Ok, I have a question. I am trying to run a DOS game but it doesn't want to run out of windows. How do I create a DOS shell in windows XP. I can't seem to find one already created, like I could with Win98 and Win95. Also, once created can I modify it to get extra memory like I could with the old DOS prompts?

[Robert Sharp]

Nevermind. I got it to work. Wow, windows xp is great! I was able to set all the memory and such from within the properties tab. I could even force it to give the conventional memory, so now I can Master of Magic again! Love this game!

[deanco]

Here's an outlook 2000 question:

I am teaching a couple classes this year and want to set up a distribution list for course materials. I told the students to send me an email, and I figured that as I got the emails I could just click on them and add them to the list as they came in. I can't figure out how to do this though. The other solution is to reply to them, which automatically adds them to my address book, then fish through it (it has like 10,000 addresses, 9,900 of them I have no idea who they are), find the kids, and add them to the list. We're talking like 80 students here so it would be cool if I could compile the list as they come in. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

(spelling and clarity edit)

DeanCo--

[XPav]

I don't think there's an easy way to do that in Outlook. Various attempts to drag things to Distribution Lists come up with nothing.

Perhaps you have access to a mailing list server somewhere? Most schools have them.

[Robert Sharp]

Dean,

You can do a search by email with the "find people" button. Since they are students, I am assuming they all use the school email? That will help narrow it down, if you have to do it the hard way. You still have to add them manually though, as far as I can tell, but at least you can separate them out more easily.

If you do that from within the group tab (you can find people while having the select members to add to group tab open) you can do the whole thing pretty quickly. If you are teaching two different classes, you might have a problem deciding which students go in which class list. Otherwise, this should work fairly well.

[XPav]

Dean,

You can do a search by email with the "find people" button. Since they are students, I am assuming they all use the school email?

As a former student and IT guy at the school, the answer to that is -- "not likely". It takes 5 minutes to setup a hotmail account. Do you have any idea how long the lines were to get a school email account? :)

[deanco]

Thanks for the replies.

Xpav is right, their email addresses are all over the place.

Funny you can't just drag and drop. Well hey, there's the new feature for Office 2004! That's worth 500 bucks a pop, don't you think? :)

I think I have a system though. If they send me an email with a specific subject line, and I make a rule that sends it to folder X, then everyone in folder X becomes a group, and the group goes in the dist. list.

Or I could just send it to 1 student, and tell them to download it from Kaaza... :)

DeanCo--

[Kalle]

As a former student and IT guy at the school, the answer to that is -- "not likely". It takes 5 minutes to setup a hotmail account. Do you have any idea how long the lines were to get a school email account? :)

Honestly, that's just crappy administration. Forcing people to stand in line and wait for the IT department to set up their e-mail account (and university net account too I presume?) is ridiculous. Why couldn't it be handled by mail?

Now, I have a question of my own.

How do I get WinXP to stop showing zip files as folders?

[XPav]

Honestly, that's just crappy administration. Forcing people to stand in line and wait for the IT department to set up their e-mail account (and university net account too I presume?) is ridiculous. Why couldn't it be handled by mail?

Because of crappy administration. This was a few years back, so things might have gotten better.


Now, I have a question of my own.

How do I get WinXP to stop showing zip files as folders?

Open a command prompt.

Type

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

or go into Add Remove Programs and remove the "Compressed Folders" component from System Tools.

[Robert Sharp]

Dean,

You can do a search by email with the "find people" button. Since they are students, I am assuming they all use the school email?

As a former student and IT guy at the school, the answer to that is -- "not likely". It takes 5 minutes to setup a hotmail account. Do you have any idea how long the lines were to get a school email account? :)

At Vandy, ours are auto-assigned, and you can modify where they send to online. All my students use the vanderbilt.edu domain, so I can look them all up with the find feature. Sorry if that doesn't work for you, Dean.

[deanco]

"Sorry if that doesn't work for you, Dean."

Yeah, uh, me too. :D That's OK though, I'm resigned to hunting them down by hand.

Win XP: I'm trying to fix this old fellow's internet connection. In a nutshell, his modem works fine, but when he dials out, it says 'no dial tone'. The cable is fine, we tested a brand new one. After 5 hours of work, I traced it to a disabled Administration Tools 'service'. in French it's 'Gestionnaire de connexions d'accès distant'. So I click on it and tell it to start working, and it says 'access denied'. He is the admin and only user BTW.

This sounds like a virus to me. When I first looked at his computer, msconfig had been deleted, and msblast was happily chugging away in the process list, along with some other weird looking stuff. So, does anyone know of a recent virus that will hose a dialup connection in this manner?

(BTW a 'friend' of his installed XP on his PII 366, which hosed his printer and sound card as well, since there are no XP drivers for this old shit. And no internet connection to find new ones, if they exist. If I have no joy here, I'm gonna wipe his HD and put Win95 (yes, Win95) back on.)

Thanks a lot y'all!

DeanCo--

[Jack]

Ok, I have a question. I am trying to run a DOS game but it doesn't want to run out of windows. How do I create a DOS shell in windows XP. I can't seem to find one already created, like I could with Win98 and Win95. Also, once created can I modify it to get extra memory like I could with the old DOS prompts?

Set up a shortcut with the command line "cmd." You can set the compatibility mode by then clicking the properties of the shortcut. You can also mess with the colors of the text and background, if you're feeling wild.

As far as messing with the memory allocation specifics, I don't know if that's possible; I think the "Compatibility Mode" takes care of that. It's effectiveness is another matter. You can do some fooling with buffers in the "Options" tab, but it's not nearly as detailed as the old Win95/98 options.

[XPav]

Win XP: I'm trying to fix this old fellow's internet connection. In a nutshell, his modem works fine, but when he dials out, it says 'no dial tone'. The cable is fine, we tested a brand new one. After 5 hours of work, I traced it to a disabled Administration Tools 'service'. in French it's 'Gestionnaire de connexions d'accès distant'. So I click on it and tell it to start working, and it says 'access denied'. He is the admin and only user BTW.

This sounds like a virus to me. When I first looked at his computer, msconfig had been deleted, and msblast was happily chugging away in the process list, along with some other weird looking stuff. So, does anyone know of a recent virus that will hose a dialup connection in this manner?

Nope. I was helping another "old person" with their computer. The most bizarro things had been done to it (msconfig used to get it to always start in safe mode), and of course, he didn't remember doing them. But he had done them at some point.

[Robert Sharp]

As far as messing with the memory allocation specifics, I don't know if that's possible; I think the "Compatibility Mode" takes care of that. It's effectiveness is another matter. You can do some fooling with buffers in the "Options" tab, but it's not nearly as detailed as the old Win95/98 options.

Actually, it is. Windows XP recognized that I was trying to run a DOS program, so I didn't have to change anything. All I had to do was right click on the program I was trying to run and go to properties. It has a memory tab that actually allows me to mess with the memory in a way that I find much easier than the old DOS way. I was running MoM in no time!

Thanks for the tip on the shortcut though. I may use that for other games.

[Robert Sharp]

Ok, this is a driver question really, but it's also a Windows question because I am getting instabilities.

After I installed ToEE, the disk asked me to install directx 9, which I thought I already had, but it installed something. After that I started getting error messages when I started up windows, but I couldn't really find anything wrong. However, the error said it involved my Geforce3 ti500 card, so I decided to update the drivers. Unfortunately, that not only did not fix the problem but it started causing my computer to restart over and over again. I had to enter safe mode and roll back the drivers.

My question is this: Has anyone else experienced problems with the Geforce drivers and directX 9? I seem to remember Ryan (rywill that is) having some problems with his computer restarting over and over, but I don't know if it was the same issue. Any advice would be welcome.

[mystery]

Funny story related to the thread:

Most bundled flat screens these days come with both mic and speakers. This may happen to you, if you're using Windows XP:

For weeks, I'd get support calls from one of the back offices complaining of mystery characters showing up in spreadhsheets and documents while editing. My first thought was someone compromising the machine or some sort of virus.

I firewalled the boxes on the private network for that additional layer of security, and scanned them with just about every known virus scanner, after the conditions continued to reoccur for weeks after.

Finally, I tried Googling for the problem, as I obviously didn't have a solution.

Turns out that many OEM Windows XP installations come with Voice-to-Text mode enabled. Every time the users would see strange characters being typed into their word processor or spreadsheet application was coincidentally when they had someone in their office, or they were on the phone.

It still makes me cringe to think about it.

[nife2o4]

I just ran into the XP voice recognition thing myself. I was looking through my Processes list and saw a program called sapisvr.exe. I googled it up and found out that it is the voice recognition software.

Now I'm tempted to hook up a microphone here and see how good it is. I'm tired of all of this typing things.

[mystery]

Now I'm tempted to hook up a microphone here and see how good it is. I'm tired of all of this typing things.

As long as you're not in a situation where there's a lot of residual noise (i.e. radio, TV, kids instituting a drive-by poking-daddy policy, etc), it's pretty damn cool. You can train it to understand your voice, even if you've got a thick accent.

The only drawback is that you can get way ahead of it. I don't know if better hardware mitigates this at all. The solution, at present, is to speak in measured tones, so that the computer can keep up with you. In my case, I can type so much faster than I can work with the voice recognition software.

[Don Quixote]

This is in XP? Huh. Speaking of Voice Software, I've got copies of Dragon Naturally Speaking 6 and IBM ViaVoice 'release 8 Advanced Edition' floating around here. Does anyone have any experience with these things? Are they any good? Which is better? I'm running an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB ram. This should be good enough, right?

[Robert Sharp]

Ok, I have a Windows question, or a Word question. I really want it answered for both.

I was writing something when I realized that I wanted a whole line to be in CAPs so that I would notice it when I went back to do some editing. The line was a note, so I wasn't going to have to change it back. Is it possible in Word and/or windows generally to select a block of text and make it all caps or lower case?

[cyborg]

Ok, I have a Windows question, or a Word question. I really want it answered for both.

I was writing something when I realized that I wanted a whole line to be in CAPs so that I would notice it when I went back to do some editing. The line was a note, so I wasn't going to have to change it back. Is it possible in Word and/or windows generally to select a block of text and make it all caps or lower case?

Yep, I've done that in Word before - sure as hell can't remember how since I avoid it as much as possible. I suggest looking in the menu customisation dialogs - you'd be amazed what functions are there.

As to doing it in general I know of no such function.

[Timemaster Tim]

I was writing something when I realized that I wanted a whole line to be in CAPs so that I would notice it when I went back to do some editing. The line was a note, so I wasn't going to have to change it back. Is it possible in Word and/or windows generally to select a block of text and make it all caps or lower case?

I don't beleive it is possible as a general facility of Windows. For Word, I can answer for Word 2002.

Yes.

From the menu bar: Format -> Change Case...

[Bullhajj]

Character formatting is a wonderous thing.

I'm pretty sure Word has had this capability for quite a while, although the change case option may be new. Look at Character formatting options.

[Robert Sharp]

I never knew that change case thing was there. Thanks. It worked fine, and I am still using word 97! Maybe I should look into buying a copy of 2000 or something. It should be cheaper now, right?


Ok, another question. In the latest issue of CGW (I think) they had another windows xp optimizer. One thing they recommended was disabling autoupdate. I have left it on because it seems like there is a new security update every week or less. Are these updates important? I have a firewall (the free zonealarm version) and I don't open exe's that I am not familiar with. Is it safe to turn it off? If I DO turn it off, should I do it manually every now and then (I know I will forget, but the question is whether or not it will be ok if I forget).

[XPav]

Is Automatic Windows Update a huge system killer? Does anyone have benchmarks to show that it is, or is it just "conventional wisdom"?

[Timemaster Tim]

Is Automatic Windows Update a huge system killer? Does anyone have benchmarks to show that it is, or is it just "conventional wisdom"?

Isn't the Automatic Windows Update a scheduled affair that you can set how frequently it checks for updates? I find it is a rather convenient tool. I knwo I'd be hunting the patches manually and installing them so I don't mind being saved the bother. Note that this is for my home machine. Running this in a corporate network is a different story.

[John Many Jars]

I've never noticed any slowdown at all when XP is fetching an update. I like the automatic feature.

[cyborg]

Autoupdate is not a resource hog. However most of the recent security patches are revolved around IE so if you don't want to use it don't use IE.

[Bullhajj]

I find it is a rather convenient tool. I knwo I'd be hunting the patches manually and installing them so I don't mind being saved the bother.

Yeah, that's what I do too.

Note that you can only schedule when to install the updates, not when to seek. I have mine set for every morning because checking e-mail is one of the first things I do everyday.

I think it checks for new updates daily. I can't imagine seeking or downloading updates is giong to impact anything you're doing on the computer.

The real danger is getting an update that bollocks up something on your system, although I have never had that happen and I imagine they test those updates like crazy.

[XPav]

In the past, Serice Packs have broken some applications. I think it was NT Service Pack... er... 4 that broke a bunch of applications, but further investigation showed that the applications that broke were buggy in the first place.

And in the past, people (like Wordperfect) have written code that relies on undocumented behavior. Microsoft releases a new version, Wordperfect breaks, and then Wordperfect sues Microsoft.

Of course, Microsoft gets blamed for all this.

I personally haven't seen any problems since Windows 95 of any application completely breaking on a new version, save for some really strange apps that assumed horrible things about a networking stack.

Its nowhere near as bad as say, Apple. (Yeah, how goes that Combat Mission under OS X?)

[Bullhajj]

Its nowhere near as bad as say, Apple. (Yeah, how goes that Combat Mission under OS X?)

Do you know much about Apple? I know nothing, but I have always wondered if you can get pretty much any linux/unix software and expect to compile and install it on a Mac with OS X? Is the hardware basically the same as X86?

[extarbags]

Its nowhere near as bad as say, Apple. (Yeah, how goes that Combat Mission under OS X?)

Do you know much about Apple? I know nothing, but I have always wondered if you can get pretty much any linux/unix software and expect to compile and install it on a Mac with OS X? Is the hardware basically the same as X86?

The hardware is completely different. The chip, anyway.

[XPav]

Its nowhere near as bad as say, Apple. (Yeah, how goes that Combat Mission under OS X?)

Do you know much about Apple? I know nothing, but I have always wondered if you can get pretty much any linux/unix software and expect to compile and install it on a Mac with OS X? Is the hardware basically the same as X86?

The PowerPC architecture is completely different. However, since most all Unix/Linux code is written in C and distributed in source, the only things stopping software from being ported are things like library availability and the suitability of the code to different architectures.

Programs that rely on GUI libraries like GTK and Qt obviously need to have GTK and Qt on the Mac. GTK is "in progress", but QT is developed by a company that has commercial versions of the library for multiple platforms, Linux/Windows/Mac and others.

So in theory, if your app is written with an eye toward portability (which isn't hard, it just requires some discipline), it can be ported from platform to platform with nothing more than a compilation of the source on the desired platform.

Its probably easier to go Unix/Linux->Mac than Unix/Linux->Windows, as the Mac does have a Unix base to it, and I see that http://fink.sourceforge.net/ has a whole pile of open source packages all ready to go.

[Bullhajj]

Thanks guys. That's interesting.

[Robert Sharp]

So why do these "get more power for gaming" articles always suggest turning off the autoupdate? I've never been able to figure it out, so I have always left it on.

[Duality]

I imagine to save your bandwidth. Most updates that it pulls tend to be about 500k to 1MB, at least. That may only be a few seconds, but can still cause issues.

I don't know of any auto updates that have ever asked for me to reboot (but I suppose its possible). That could also get in the way if you're in the middle of a game.

[Bullhajj]

I imagine to save your bandwidth. Most updates that it pulls tend to be about 500k to 1MB, at least. That may only be a few seconds, but can still cause issues.

Autoupdates can't use your bandwidth like that. It's designed in such a way that it only uses left over bandwidth. So if you're using 60% of the available bandwidth, AU only uses the remaining 40% to get updates.

[Duality]

Neat!

I stand corrected. :)

[Robert Sharp]

I get prompted before it downloads and installs major updates. Also, I almost always have to reboot my machine. Are we talking about the same thing here?

[DavidCPA]

I have a seemingly simple IE question. How do you get the status bar to appear on all IE windows. The status bar shows download status, the little padlock symbol, etc. I just can't get it to stay there all the time. I have to select view>>status bar to get it to appear.

-DavidCPA

[Bullhajj]

I get prompted before it downloads and installs major updates. Also, I almost always have to reboot my machine. Are we talking about the same thing here?

Yeah, some updates need restarts. You can schedule when you want the installations to happen to mitigate this problem. Mine is set to install in the morning, so if it needs a restart it gets it, because I typically shut down when I go to work.

[extarbags]

I have a seemingly simple IE question. How do you get the status bar to appear on all IE windows. The status bar shows download status, the little padlock symbol, etc. I just can't get it to stay there all the time. I have to select view>>status bar to get it to appear.

-DavidCPA

I don't believe there is a way. Kind of like how there's no way to make all IE windows open maximized.

[Jason McCullough]

Yeah, it's either Avant or a replacement browser.

[Robert Sharp]

I have a seemingly simple IE question. How do you get the status bar to appear on all IE windows. The status bar shows download status, the little padlock symbol, etc. I just can't get it to stay there all the time. I have to select view>>status bar to get it to appear.

-DavidCPA

I don't believe there is a way. Kind of like how there's no way to make all IE windows open maximized.

Isn't that a target problem? I mean the maxed windows thing. I always assumed that depended on the html code, specifically the target modifier in the link tag.

[Robert Sharp]

What's the best way to find out what kind of RAM (DDR, etc.) I have in my machine without cracking the case? I am thinking about adding some, thanks to the slowdown I got throughout Gothic 2.

[Robert Sharp]

Ok, here's what happened. My dad, who lives in another state, foolishly allowed some ITT Tech attendee to upgrade his Win95 system to Windows XP. However, this genius of technology didn't bother to do the following: a.) backup all the documents my dad uses for his business, b.)unpartition the harddrive...not sure why it was partitioned, to be honest in the first place. I think he put an older drive into the machine that was mine and removed my harddrive, which was actually bigger. c.)reformat the whole damned thing because he was installing a completely different OS rather than actually "upgrading" anything.

Ok, so the usual problems resulted. The first, of course, is that none of the old programs work because they were installed in 95. They can, of course, be reinstalled, assuming my dad has the disks somewhere. The files (and documents) themselves are missing and/or scattered. However, the biggest problem is that everything is now shadowed. There seem to be, according to him, two or more of most programs and documents. Since the HD is small, and XP takes up some space, he doesn't really have room to reinstall everything and he isn't sure how to get rid of all the old crap that isn't working anymore (uninstall programs are tending not to work since they no longer refer properly). What's the best program out there (freeware, ideally, but he is probably willing to pay if it isn't too much) for getting rid of all these "shadowed" programs and files and any other useless crap that no longer works?

I of course, think he should just reformat and start over, but then he loses all his old stuff, since it wasn't backed up and he isn't sure if he can find it all since everything is such a mess.

[Bullhajj]

Yuck. He needs to just go through it and get what he wants, then reformat the drive. Conventional wisdom holds that one should never take the upgrade option to XP from W95; instead you want to wipe/install as you've mentioned.

There is no software that can determine what files he wants to save and what files he does not want to save. You do not have a shadow problem. It's just the the naming strategy changed slightly from W95 to XP.

If he was using his my documents folder in W95, it ought to all be under c:\windows\my documents. I think. It has been a while. All the new files ought to go in documents and settings\<username>\my documents.

How awful. Mail and address books are going to be in various places depending upon what program he was using. Good luck.

[Robert Sharp]

Thanks, Tim. The real problem is that I am not actually there with him and he doesn't know much about computers. I think I could solve most of his problems given a good full day of work, if I were there. Over the phone, I think it is a lost cause. Maybe he should rent-a-geek!

[Lunch of Kong]

Thanks, Tim. The real problem is that I am not actually there with him and he doesn't know much about computers. I think I could solve most of his problems given a good full day of work, if I were there. Over the phone, I think it is a lost cause. Maybe he should rent-a-geek!

You can coach your dad through the download and install procedure for UltraVNC (I think you might also needhim to turn off Win XP Firewall, but I'm not sure). Then, you can connect to his IP address and have complete control of his computer, just as if you were sitting there.

You can send him notes such as "OKAY, DAD. PUT THE NEXT FLOPPY DISK IN SO WE CAN TRANSFER SOME MORE OF YOUR FILES."

http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net

[Bullhajj]

I suggest you get him to get a new hard disk. Install XP on the new disk. Then add the second disk as a slave. He can get his stuff as he needs it. No risk of instability.

You may need to find someone to help him through the new disk drive and XP install, but this seems like the most sane way out of a situation with a lot of potential for disaster.

Where is your dad?

[Duality]

Another concern I have is that he's running XP on a system that was using 95.

Now, I know I'm jumping to conclusions, but is his computer even to the task of running it properly? He isn't very knowledgable about computers, so its my assumption that he's using a fairly old PC. The last PCs I saw with 95 preinstalled were early P2s.

I'm worried that there was a warning during the upgrade that the tech completely overlooked. Considering the current situation, it wouldn't surprise me.

If he's hard up for tech support, have him contact a local computer shop, see if they will do general tech support for a nominal fee.

[Robert Sharp]

He lives in Texas. The computer itself is not as old as you might think. He had a friend put his old HD into a newer computer, which I had sent him. The newer computer had Win98 on it, IIRC and a MUCH bigger HD. It was my gaming PC a few years back. I told him to transfer the files to my HD, but for whatever reason he didn't. The computer has a ZIP drive, so he should be able to copy large chunks of stuff onto a disk and swap out the HDs.

[Bullhajj]

Well, I can't be of much help if he's in Texas. Sounds like he's going to have to ship it back to you to get out of this jam.