Organize your notification area

The notification area is the collection of small icons near your system clock, in the bottom-right corner of your screen. After you’ve used your computer for a few months, the notification area can become cluttered with icons for different programs you may have installed. Each icon takes up space on your Microsoft Windows XP taskbar, which leaves less room for your program buttons.

Fortunately, you can free up space in the notification area by hiding icons that you don’t use very often.

1.
Right-click the system clock, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.

2.
In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, click Customize.

3.
The Customize Notifications dialog box appears. For each icon you want to hide, click the Behavior list, and then click Always hide. For each icon you want to always show, click the Behavior list, and then click Always show.

4.
Click OK twice.

Your notification area will be much less crowded, giving you more room for program buttons on your taskbar. To show the icons you have hidden, click the left arrow beside the notification area.

Move your taskbar to a new spot

By default, the Microsoft Windows XP taskbar, which shows buttons for each of your open windows, sits at the bottom of your screen. That’s fine if you don’t open many windows. If you have more than six or seven windows open at a time, however, the taskbar can become extremely crowded. To make more room for windows, move your taskbar to the right or left side of the screen, where it will be displayed vertically, giving you room for more than a dozen windows.

Tip: If you have a widescreen monitor, placing your taskbar on the right or left side of the screen can make much more efficient use of screen space.

1.
Right-click your taskbar. If there is a check mark beside Lock the Taskbar on the shortcut menu, click Lock the Taskbar to unlock it.
2.
Drag your taskbar to the left, right, or top of your screen. To drag the taskbar, click and hold the mouse button over the taskbar. Then, while holding down the mouse button, drag the taskbar to its new location. When the taskbar is in place, release the mouse button.

3.
Move the pointer over an edge of the taskbar until the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow. Click the mouse button, and drag the edge of the taskbar to widen it. When you can read the window titles, release the mouse button.

4.
Finally, to prevent your taskbar from being accidentally moved, right-click your taskbar, and click Lock the Taskbar on the shortcut menu.

PC Tips

How to Remove Windows XP’s Messenger

Theoretically, you can get rid of it (as well as a few other things). Windows 2000 power users should already be familiar with this tweak.Fire up the Windows Explorer and navigate your way to the %SYSTEMROOT% \ INF folder. What the heck is that thingy with the percentage signs? It’s a variable. For most people, %SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows. For others, it may be E:\WinXP. Get it? Okay, on with the hack! In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf (but not before making a BACKUP copy first). Before your eyes glaze over, look for the line containing “msmsgs” in it. Near the end of that particular line, you’ll notice that the word “hide” is not so hidden. Go ahead and delete “hide” (so that the flanking commas are left sitting next to one another). Save the file and close it. Now, open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components icon. You should see “Windows Messenger” in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box, and you should be set. NOTE: there are other hidden system components in that sysoc.inf file, too. Remove “hide” and the subsequent programs at your own risk.

Set the Search Screen to the Classic Look

When I first saw the default search pane in Windows XP, my instinct was to return it to its classic look; that puppy had to go. Of course, I later discovered that a doggie door is built into the applet. Click “Change preferences” then “Without an animated screen character.” If you’d rather give it a bare-bones “Windows 2000” look and feel, fire up your Registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ CabinetState. You may need to create a new string value labeled “Use Search Asst” and set it to “no”.

How to Upgrade Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition Profiles to Windows XP Domain User Profiles

This guide describes how to upgrade a Microsoft Microsoft Windows 98-based, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition-based client that has user profiles to a Microsoft Windows XP-based client.

The following steps enable the Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) profiles to be retained throughout the process.Your best method to retain the profiles is to join the domain during the upgrade installation process.
Otherwise, you must use a workaround method to transfer the profile information over to the Windows XP profile.During the upgrade installation process, at the networking section, the administrator is offered the choice to join a domain or a workgroup.
If you join the domain at this juncture, you ensure that all the existing profiles are migrated successfully to the Windows XP-based installation.

If you did not join the computer to the domain during the upgrade process, you must use the following workaround method:

Join the upgraded computer to the target domain.

All applicable users must log on and log off (which generates a profile).

Copy the appropriate Application Data folder from the Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me profiles to the newly created user profiles.

How to make your Desktop Icons Transparent

Go to ontrol Panel > System, > Advanced > Performance area > Settings button Visual Effects tab “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the Desktop”

Speed up your browsing of Windows 2000 & XP machines

Here’s a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn’t search for Scheduled Tasks anymore. Here’s how :Open up the Registry and go to :HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpaceUnder that branch, select the key :{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

and delete it.

This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary.

This fix is so effective that it doesn’t require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes.