VALUE HAS A VALUE IF ITS VALUE IS VALUED

Now it's time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP's secrets.

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type ' gpedit.msc'; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating and watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and 'schtasks' for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options -- they're all far too baroque to go into here.

6. XP has IP version 6 support -- the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type 'ipv6 install' into Run... (it's OK, it won't ruin your existing network setup) and then 'ipv6 /?' at the command line to find out more. If you don't know what IPv6 is, don't worry and don't bother.

7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using 'taskkill /pid' and the task number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot about what's going on in your system.

8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you've got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'.

9. XP has ClearType -- Microsoft's anti-aliasing font display technology -- but doesn't have it enabled by default. It's well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.

10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who's using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum's real IP address -- they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com -- and get them to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As... and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.

12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run... from the start menu and type 'control userpasswords2', which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.

14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.

15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can't see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You'll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.

16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.

17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By... Show In Groups.

18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks -- if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn't, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.

19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.

20. The next release of Windows XP, codenamed Longhorn, is due out late next year or early 2006 and won't be much to write home about. The next big release is codenamed Blackcomb and will be out in 2003/2007

1. Disable Indexing Services

Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

Go to Start
Click Settings
Click Control Panel
Double-click Add/Remove Programs
Click the Add/Remove Window Components
Uncheck the Indexing services
Click Next



2. Optimise Display Settings

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

Go to Start
Click Settings
Click Control Panel
Click System
Click Advanced tab
In the Performance tab click Settings
Leave only the following ticked:
Show shadows under menus
Show shadows under mouse pointer
Show translucent selection rectangle
Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
Use visual styles on windows and buttons



3. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

Open My Computer
Click on Tools menu
Click on Folder Options
Click on the View tab.
Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
Click Apply
Click Ok
Reboot your computer




4. Run BootVis - Improve Boot Times

BootVis will significantly improve boot times

Download and Run
Select Trace
Select Next Boot and Driver Trace
A Trace Repetitions screen will appear, select Ok and Reboot
Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system’s boot process. When it’s done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System
Reboot.
When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete




5. Remove the Desktop Picture

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.

Right click on Desktop and select Properties
Select the Desktop tab
In the Background window select None
Click Ok




6. Remove Fonts for Speed

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

Open Control Panel
Open Fonts folder
Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.
Hope you find these 10 tips useful please leave a comment below and please share any other tips you may have with other readers.

you can hide your “private” files using a nifty little registry hack that will completely remove an entire drive from your computer. The drive will not show up in My Computer, will not be accessible from the command prompt, and won’t even show up in Safe Mode! Ok, so here’s how to implement the hack: first off, back up your registry as this requires adding a key to the registry. Once you’ve backed up your registry, open the registry editor by clicking on Start, Run and typing in regedit.

Now navigate to the following registry hive shown below:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Right-click on Explorer and choose New and then DWORD Value.

Name the new value NoDrives and then double click on it to open the properties dialog box. Click on Decimal for the Base unit.

Type in one of the following values depending on that drive letter you want to hide.
Code:
A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, F: 32, G: 64,
H: 128, I: 256, J: 512, K: 1024, L: 2048, M: 4096,
N: 8192, O: 16384, P: 32768, Q: 65536, R: 131072,
S: 262144, T: 524288, U: 1048576, V: 2097152, W: 4194304,
X: 8388608, Y: 16777216, Z: 33554432, ALL: 67108863

If you want to hide drive E, just type in the value 16. The really cool thing about this trick is the fact that you can hide multiple drives by adding the numbers of the particular drives together. For example, if you want to hide drive E and drive G, you would type in the number 80, which is 64 + 16.

Restart your computer and your drive will now be hidden! Trying to hide your system drive (C) will not work as Windows has to use this drive to run correctly, so don’t store your secret files there!

When you want to get your drives back, change the value of NoDrives to 0 or simply delete the value altogether. Of course, having to do this everyday can be a pain, so if you’re up for it, you can try and write a registry file that will allow you to insert and delete the value by just double-clicking a file.

This trick also works for mapped drives, so if you want to hide mapped drives, you can do it this way (though it might just be easier to disconnect a mapped drive).

1. Emergency

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

2. Have you locked your keys in the car? Does your car have remote keyless entry?

This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

3. Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.

4. How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone! star-hash-zero-six-hash * # 0 6 # a 15 digit code will appear on the screen.
This number is unique to your handset.

Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones. Not only the above, but also in Parappulli Bazar, your stolen phone is added to a "Stolen Mobile Phone" database, so if your phone is found later on it can bereturned to you.

well this trick is to display symbol 'om',which is a hindu religious word as screen saver-

1.On desktop right click go to properties->screen saver

2.Select ur screen saver as '3d text'

3.Go to settings of screen saver.

4.In 3d text settings check the custom text and write '\' (without inverted commas),and click on choose font

5.Choose the font as Wingdings and click ok

6.Apply the settings and you are done................