Windows XP : Java Glossary
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logo Windows XP
Microsoft’s successor to Windows 2000. The key features are:
  1. You can’t easily use a device driver unless Microsoft has OKed and digitally signed it. In other words, you can’t write your own device drivers any more. You must pay a fee to Microsoft if you want to write one and sell it to others. The advantage of this big brotherism is that Microsoft can ensure device drivers don’t crash the OS, making the OS as a whole much more stable than now. XP automatically updates drivers and installs them when new versions are released.
  2. There are copy protections on files. For example the OS can prevent you from copying a program file to CD, or downloading a music file to an MP-3 player. The idea is the OS acts as a copyright cop.
  3. It has support for 64-bit Itanium processors.
  4. It boots much more quickly, or more accurately lets you start working even before the boot process is complete.
It is targeted at both corporate and home users. XP as Big Brother (why you probably want to avoid XP and stay with Windows 2000).

XP-64 is a 64-bit version for the AMD Athlon64, AMD Opteron and Intel Itanium processors. It currently supports up to 16 GB of physical RAM and 16 TB of virtual memory. It has an X86 emulator for 32-bit legacy Windows apps.

Where To Find

Here is where to for these features in XP:
account control dialer default IP display
anti-aliasing defrag your disks .keystore
associations disk accessing pagefile.sys
clean junk files off your disks disk sharing printer sharing
clock setting DOS box command prompt program data
colours and fonts drive letters restore point
desktop environment variables run
device manager host/machine name search indexing
dial the Internet IP configuration startup programs
Where Windows Vista Hides Interesting Information
Function Where To Look Notes

account control

 Accounts and passwords:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. User Accounts

Anti-aliasing

 To turn on font smoothing (anti-aliasing)
  1. Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. System
  5. Advanced
  6. Settings
  7. Visual Effects
  8. Smooth edges of screen fonts
Turn on Clear Type antialiasing:
  1. Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. Display
  5. Appearance
  6. Effects
  7. Visual Effects
  8. check “Use thhe following method to smooth edges of screen fonts”
  9. Select Clear Type

Associations
  1. Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. Folder options
  5. File Types
  6. Change.
 You can set up different associations for open, edit and print.

clean junk files off your disks

 To get rid of unnecessary orphaned temporary files:
  1. Click my computer
  2. right click drive
  3. properties
  4. Disk Cleanup (2/3 of the way down)

clock setting

 To set the date and time:
  1. right click time in bottom right
  2. Adjust Date/Time
  3. Internet Time
  4. Change Settings
  5. Update Now

To change the Date/time format:

  1. Click start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. Regional and Language Options
  5. Change the Date, Time Or Number Format
  6. If that does not give what you want click Customise
  7. Date tab
  8. You can select the format or write in your own, e.g. yy-MM-dd.
 Synchronises with Microsoft or NIST atomic clock. If that does not work, try SetClock.

colours and fonts

 To configure the colours, fonts, themes and decoration:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. Display
  5. Appearance
  6. Font Size, choose font size.
  7. Advanced
 Configure colours and fonts used on various window widgets.

desktop

 C:\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop Where desktop shortcuts and folders live.

device manager

 To see what hardware and device drivers are configured:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. System
  5. hardware tab
  6. Device Manager
 What devices are connected? Are there IRQ conflicts? Where do I install new device drivers?

dial the Internet

 To set up a dial-up Internet connection for the first time:
  1. Click Start
  2. Network Connections
  3. New Connection Wizard
 You can set up a connection to a new ISP.

dialer default

 To configure which of several possible connections to use to access the Internet:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Network Connections
  4. right click connection.
  5. enable/disable.
 Which dial up ISP or LAN do you want to use to access the Internet? Disable connections except for the one you want to use.

defrag your disks

 To defrag your disks:
  1. Click My Computer
  2. Right Click disk.
  3. Properties
  4. Tools
  5. Defragment now
 See defraggers for better quality third party tools.

disk accessing

 To access a shared disk:
  1. Click Start
  2. Network
  3. the desired computer
  4. (wait, wait wait)
  5. right click the desired disk
  6. share
 Look at somebody else’s hard drive. Optionally, set up a drive letter so their drive forever after looks to be part of your machine.

disk sharing

 To share your disk, or a folder with others:
  1. Click My Computer
  2. Select drive and directory.
  3. Right click properties.
  4. Sharing and Security
  5. Network sharing and security.
  6. tick share this folder on the network.
  7. give the share a name.
 Share your folder or disk with others on the LAN.

DOS box command prompt

 To bring up the DOS command prompt:
  1. Click Start
  2. Programs
  3. Accessories
  4. Command Prompt
 This is where you can run old DOS programs or BAT files to automate running Windows files. If you use BAT files extensively, you probably should using 4NT instead.

drive letters

 To change the drive letter of a disk partition, CD or DVD drive:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. Administrative Tools
  5. Computer Management
  6. Storage
  7. Disk Management
  8. right click drive. Removable drives are at the bottom.
  9. Change Drive Letter and Paths
 Making your CD-reader always R:, writer always W: and DVD reader/writer always V:. Be careful reassigning disk drives. Registry references will not automatically be adjusted. You may find all programs on that drive stop working. You can’t resetter the system partition or the partition CMOS booted from. This makes it vary hard to clone a system without help from a PowerQuest tools. Your clone has to have different drive letters. E.g. copy of the operating system seems to have its own set of drive letter mappings. However, they are fragile. If you add a drive, swap primary and secondary drives, or change the drive CMOS boots from first, it suddenly forgets its letters and reverts to a default set, and very likely will become unbootable.

You can use subst X: Y:\ to define alias drive letters for existing drives, or subst X: Y:\somedir to create shortcuts to commonly used directories. However, Windows forgets your settings after every reboot. To get around that problem you need to compose a bat file to do the SUBST and install it as the login script. SUBST is quicker and does not fail when other network connections fail. See J Drive for details.

environment variables

 To set environment variables:
  1. Control Panel
  2. Settings
  3. System
  4. Advanced
  5. Environment Variables (bottom left)
 Where you do you SET XX=YYYY controls for BAT files. If in doubt, put your variables in the system section. This way they won’t get lost if the system decides to rename your user directory, which it will do if you change your computer workgroup/name.

host/machine name

 To change your computer’s name on the LAN:
  1. Click Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. System
  5. Computer Name tab
 Computer name and Workgroup for this machine. Only machines in the same workgroup see each other.

IP configuration

 To manually assign a fixed IP:
  1. Settings
  2. Network Connections
  3. Network and Sharing Center
  4. right click connection
  5. Properties
  6. Select Internet TCP/IP properties
  7. Properties
 Configure static or dynamic (DHCP) IP/DNS assignment. This menu item might not exist until your Ethernet card is functioning properly. Check with the device manager if you don’t see the Local Area Connection option.

IP display

 To display the IP automatically assigned to your machine or manually configured:
  1. in a DOS box, type IPCONFIG.
 What IP addresses in this machine using? What has DHCP given me for a DNS server? The full name is C:\WINDOWS\system32\ipconfig.exe. Also shows dial up IPs as well.

.keystore

 C:\Documents and Settings\username\.keystore Java code signing certificates.

pagefile.sys

 To change the size or placement of the paging file:
  1. Start
  2. Settings
  3. Control Panel
  4. System
  5. Advanced
  6. Advanced
  8. Performance Settings
  9. Advanced tab
  10. Virtual Memory
  11. Change
 Set the size of your backing store, usually to 1.5 to 3 times the size of real RAM, e.g. if you had 2GB of real RAM set it to 3000Mb.

printer sharing

 To share your printer with others:
  1. Start
  2. Settings
  3. Printers
  4. Right click the printer you want to share
  5. sharing
 Share your printer with others on the LAN, or access somebody else’s printer on the LAN. For more detail, see the printer sharing entry.

program data

 C:\Documents and Settings\username
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users
C:\Windows		 Where programs tend to keep configuration information.

restore point

 To create a restore point:
  1. Help and support
  2. Undo Changes to your computer with System Restore.
  3. Create a restore point.
 Keep several restore point since the most recent one may already have been corrupted. Restore points are not a substitute for image and file-by-file backups.

run

 To run a program:
  1. Start
  2. Run
 If often use the command line, consider 4NT which offers many benefits.

search indexing

 To tweak the search indexing:
  1. Start
  2. Search
  3. Files and folders
  4. change preferences bottom left)
 The background indexer is so annoying I turned it off by telling it not to index any drives. I am using Copernic instead. You can control which directories are indexed and which file extensions.

startup programs

 To control which programs automatically run (autorun) when you start up the computer:
  1. Start
  2. Programs
  3. Startup
  4. add shortcuts here

Learning More

book_cover recommend book⇒Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks
 paperback
ISBN10:0-596-00876-7
ISBN13:978-0-596-00876-5
publisher:O’Reilly recommended
published:2004-11-16
by:David A. Karp
Problems with Windows XP and what you can do to ameliorate them.
Canadian flag amazon.ca. amazon.com. American flag
Canadian flag chapters.indigo.ca . powells.com American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnesandnoble.com American flag
German flag amazon.de. download O’Reilly Safari American flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk.   
annoyances.org
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