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Index
Copyright
The Missing Credits
About the Authors
About the Creative Team
Acknowledgments
The Missing Manual Series
Introduction
About This Book
About the Outline
AboutTheseArrows
Figure I-1. In this book, arrow notations help to simplify folder and menu instructions. For example, "Choose StartAll ProgramsAccessoriesNotepad" is a more compact way of saying, "Click the Start button. When the Start menu opens, click All Programs; without clicking, now slide to the right onto the Accessories submenu; in that submenu, click Notepad," as shown here.
About Shift-Clicking
About http://MissingManuals.com
Part I: The Windows XP Desktop
Chapter 1. A Welcome to Windows XP
1.1 What It's For
Figure 1-1. Your Windows world revolves around icons, the tiny pictures that represent your programs, documents, and various Windows components. From left to right: the icons for your computer itself, a word processing document, a digital photo (a JPEG document), a word processor program (Word), and a CD-ROM inserted into your computer.
1.2 Getting Ready for Windows
1.2.1 The right mouse button is king
Figure 1-2. Shortcut menus (sometimes called context menus) sometimes list commands that aren't in the menus at the top of the window. Here, for example, are the commands that appear when you right-click a folder (left) and some highlighted text in a word processor (right). Once the shortcut menu has appeared, left-click the command you want.
1.2.2 Windows wizards conduct a lot of interviews
Figure 1-3. Wizards (interview screens) are everywhere in Windows. On each of the screens, you're supposed to answer a question about your computer or your preferences, and then click a Next button. When you click the Finish button on the final screen, Windows whirls into action, automatically completing the installation or setup.
1.2.3 There's more than one way to do everything
1.2.4 You can use the keyboard for everything
Figure 1-4. Here's how you might print two copies of a document without using the mouse at all. First, press Alt+F, which opens the File menu (left). Then type the letter P, which represents the Print command. Now the Print dialog box appears (right). Press Alt+C to highlight the Copies box, type the number of copies you want, and then press Enter to "click" the Print button. (The Enter key always means, "Click the default button in the dialog boxthe one with a shadowed border.")
1.2.5 You could spend a lifetime changing properties
Figure 1-5. One quick way to find out how much space is left on your hard drive is to right-click the corresponding icon and choose the Properties command (left). The Properties dialog box appears (right), featuring a handy disk-space graph.
1.2.6 Every piece of hardware requires software
1.2.7 It's not meant to be overwhelming
1.3 What's New in Windows XP
1.3.1 Stability
1.3.2 A Cosmetic Overhaul
1.3.3 Pictures, Music, and Movies
1.3.4 Miscellaneous Touch-Ups
Figure 1-6. The new task pane commands are sometimes extremely useful ("Set as desktop background" when you click a picture file). Other times, they're invitations to send money to Microsoft and its partners ("Shop for music online," "Order prints online"). In any folder containing photo or music files, like the MP3 files shown here, controls appear that let you conduct a slide show, or a concert of your MP3 files, right there on the desktop.
1.4 Professional Edition vs. Home Edition
1.5 The Dark Side of Windows XP
1.5.1 Activation (Copy Protection)
1.5.2 Privacy Concerns
UP TO SPEED Windows XP: The Buzzword-Compliant Operating System
1.5.3 Microsoft Data Formats
Chapter 2. The Desktop and Start Menu
2.1 Logging In
2.1.1 Domains vs. Workgroups
Figure 2-1. Top: When your computer is a member of a network domain, you're probably greeted by this message when you start up the PC. To proceed, press Ctrl+Alt+Del (a ritual that may be familiar if you've used Windows 2000). Bottom: This is the Classic Logon dialog box, which appears next. Type your name and password and then click OK or press Enter.
Figure 2-2. If there are several accounts on a standalone or workgroup PCthat is, if more than one person uses it, each with his own accountthe machine presents this screen each time you turn it on. See Chapter 17 for much more on this business of user accounts and logging in.
2.2 The Elements of the XP Desktop
Figure 2-3. Everything you'll ever do on the computer begins with a click on one of these three elements: a desktop icon, the Start button (which opens the Start menu), or the taskbar, which is described in Chapter 3. (The Start menu, now in a new, improved two-column format, lists every significant command and software component on your PC.) Some people enjoy the newly streamlined Windows XP desktop. Others deliberately place additional icons on the desktopthings like favorite programs and documentsfor quicker access. Let your personality be your guide.
2.3 The Start Menu
Figure 2-4. Left: In Windows XP, the Start menu is divided into several distinct sections. The top left section is yours to play with. You can "pin" whatever programs you want here, in whatever order you like. The lower-left section lists the programs you use most often, according to Windows XP's calculations. (You can delete individual items here but you can't add items manually or rearrange them.) The right-side column provides direct access to certain Windows features and standard Windows programs. Right: The All Programs menu superimposes itself on the standard two-column Start menu, listing almost every piece of software you've ever installed. You can rearrange, add to, or delete items from this list.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Restoring the Desktop Icons
2.4 StartLog Off
Figure 2-5. Top: On workgroup computers, if Fast User Switching is turned on, this is what you see when you choose StartLog Off. No matter which button you click, you return to the Welcome screen. The only difference is that clicking the Switch User button leaves all of your programs open and in memory, and the Log Off button takes a few moments to close them. Bottom: On domain-network computers (or any computer where Fast User Switching is turned off), a dialog box like this appears when you choose StartLog Off. If you click the Log Off button, Windows quits your programs and then takes you to the Classic Logon dialog box.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Return to the Old Start Menu
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Turn Off Computer in the Start Menu
2.5 StartShut Down (Turn Off Computer)
GEM IN THE ROUGH Hibernation as a Shutdown Technique
Figure 2-6. Just how down is off? Top: Here's what you probably see if you work in a company with a domain network. Click the command in the drop-down menu that corresponds to the degree of down-ness you wantLog Off, Shut Down, Restart, Standby, Hibernate, or Disconnect. Or type the first letter of the command you want. (For Standby, press S twice.) Bottom: On a workgroup PC, your Shut Down dialog box may look like this instead. As you see here, the secret Hibernate button appears only when you press the Shift key.
2.6 StartAll Programs
Figure 2-7. The StartAll Programs menu may list the actual application (such as Microsoft Word) that you can click to launch the program. But it may also list a program group, a submenu that lists everything in a particular application folder. Some software programs install a folder on the All Programs menu, like the Office Tools folder shown here, that contains commands for launching the software, uninstalling the software, running specific utilities, opening the help files, and so on.
2.6.1 The Startup folder
NOSTALGIA CORNER Restoring the Single-Column Programs List
Figure 2-8. It's easy to add a program or document icon to your Startup folder so that it launches automatically every time you turn on the computer. Here, a document from the My Documents folder is being added. You may also want to add a shortcut for the My Documents folder itself, which ensures that its window will be ready and open each time the computer starts up.
2.7 StartRun
Figure 2-9. Top: The last Run command you entered appears automatically in the Open text box. You can use the drop-down list to see a list of commands you've previously entered. Bottom: The Run command knows the names of all of your folders and also remembers the last few commands you typed here. As you go, you're shown the best match for the characters you're typing. When the name of the folder you're trying to open appears in the list, click it to save having to type the rest of the entry.
2.7.1 Launch a Program
2.7.2 Launch Any Program or Document
2.7.3 Open a Drive Window
UP TO SPEED The Path to Enlightenment about Paths
2.7.4 Open a Folder Window
Figure 2-10. The Browse dialog box, which makes frequent appearances in Windows XP, lets you navigate the folders on your computer to find a file. The five icons at the left side make it easy to jump to the places where you're most likely to find the document you want. If you enter a drive letter and a colon in the Run dialog box before clicking the Browse button (like C:), the Browse dialog box opens with a display of that drive's contents.
2.7.5 Connect to a Web Page
2.8 StartSearch
2.8.1 Finding Files and Folders
Figure 2-11. Left: The basic Search panel. You might expect that Microsoft had learned its lesson about cute anthropomorphic cartoon characters. Microsoft Bob and Clippy the paper clip, for example, have both gone to the great CompUSA in the sky. But Microsoft is at it again, now with Rover, the search-companion dog. He wags and sometimes even barks as you perform your search. Right: If you click the desktop itself and then press F3, or if you click the "More advanced search options" checkbox that occasionally appears, the Search panel may look slightly different, as shown here.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Who Let the Dog Out?
2.8.1.1 Starting a search
2.8.1.2 Pictures, music, or video
Figure 2-12. Left: This panel appears to help you search for multimedia files. Middle: You're all set to search for documents that you've created or downloaded. Right: This kind of search is slower, but more completeit searches for everything, including program files and Windows system files. (It doesn't, however, search for metadata in picture, movie, and music files, as does the first kind of search.)
2.8.1.3 Documents (word processing, spreadsheet, and so on.)
2.8.1.4 All files and folders
Figure 2-13. By clicking the double-down-arrow circle buttons, you can expand the Search panel considerably (shown here scrolled down so far that you can't even see the file names you're searching for). The search shown here will find Word documents created during June 2002 in the My Documents folder.
UP TO SPEED Typing in the File Name
2.8.2 Managing the Found Files and Folders
Figure 2-14. You can manipulate the list of found files much the way you'd approach a list of files in a standard folder window. For example, you can highlight something in the list by typing the first couple of letters of its name, or move up or down the list by pressing the arrow keys. You can also highlight multiple icons simultaneously. Highlight all of them by choosing EditSelect All, highlight individual items by Ctrl-clicking them, drag vertically over the list to enclose a cluster of them, and so on.
2.8.2.1 Using the Search Results panel
2.8.2.2 Using the results list
2.8.3 Searching for Printers
GEM IN THE ROUGH Using Search to Clean Up Your Drive
Figure 2-15. The Find Printers dialog box lets you refine your search criteria using the Printer, Features, and Advanced tabs. Left: The Printer tab lets you enter basic search information. Middle: On the Features tab, you can get more specific in your search for the perfect printer: whether it prints in color or on both sides of the paper, for example. Right: The Advanced tab affords you the most specific search of all. You can use formulas to specify search criteria like the language the printer "speaks" or the minimum print resolution you need.
2.8.4 Searching for Computers
2.8.5 Searching for People
2.8.5.1 Searching your address book
Figure 2-16. Windows assumes that you want to search your address book for a certain name or email address. Enter information in one or more fieldsyou can use partial wordsand then click the Find Now button. All matching entries appear at the bottom of the window.
2.8.5.2 Searching phone books on the Internet
Figure 2-17. A straightforward name search by no means turns up every one of the 200 million Internet citizens, but it's occasionally successful in turning up a few matches for the name you specify.
2.8.6 Searching the Internet
Figure 2-18. Top left: When you search the Internet, don't mind the "Sample question" that appears beneath the search blank; it's simply designed to give you some ideas of the ways you can phrase your search requests. Top right: You get a list of Web pages that contain the text you seek, along with some suggestions on ways to "refine your search" (such as visiting Microsoft's commercial partners to buy books, music, and so on). The best part is the "Automatically send your search to other search engines" link (not shown). If you click it, Windows puts each of the major search pages only one click away. Bottom: From here, you can generally read the first paragraph of text that appears on the Web page, go to the page by clicking its link, and so on.
2.8.7 The Indexing Service
Figure 2-19. Left: To turn on the Indexing Service, open the Search panel and then click "Change preferences." On the next panel, click "With Indexing Service" (for faster local searches)." Right: Click "Yes, enable Indexing Service." The Indexing Service starts and works automatically in the background, creating a file that takes up about 25 percent as much disk space as the documents it indexes. (It tosses out unhelpful words like the, of, and a, and performs other compression tricks to reduce the index file size.)
POWER USERS' CLINIC Indexing Service to the Max
Figure 2-20. Power users have vast amounts of control over what gets cataloged when Indexing Service is set loose. This display, for example, offers Yes and No indicators regarding which folders have been indexed. To get here, choose StartControl PanelAdministrative ToolsComputer Management. In the list, click the + buttons to expand Services and Applications, then Indexing Service, then System.
2.9 StartHelp and Support
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION The View from a Window
Figure 2-21. The My Computer window is divided into two sections on a computer that's a member of a network domain, and three sections on a computer that's a member of a workgroup. Top: The screen you see when your computer joins a network domain. At the top of the screen comes a list of hard drives, followed by a list of removable-disk drives. This computer has one floppy drive, two hard drives (or one partitioned hard drive, as described in Appendix A), and one CD-ROM drive. (If there's a disk in the CD-ROM drive, you get to see its name, not just its drive letter.) Bottom: If your computer is a member of a workgroup, you see an additional section at the very top of the screen, which has an icon for the My Documents folder of each person who has an account on this computer. When you select a disk icon (on either type of computer) by clicking it, the Details pane on the left side of the window displays its file system, capacity, and amount of free space.
2.10 StartControl Panel
2.11 StartMy Network Places
2.12 StartMy Computer
2.13 StartMy Music, My Pictures
2.14 StartMy Recent Documents
NOSTALGIA CORNER Restoring the Traditional Folder Listings
2.15 StartMy Documents
2.16 Customizing the Start Menu
UP TO SPEED The Not-My-Documents Folder
2.16.1 Basic Start Menu Settings
Figure 2-22. Top: The only task you can perform on this first screen is to turn off the new, Windows XP double-column Start menu design to return to the older, single-column Classic Start menu design of Windows versions gone by. The good stuff awaits when you click the Customize button. Bottom: Here's the General tab of the Customize Start Menu dialog box. (The Clear List button refers to the lower-left section of the Start menu, which lists the programs you use most often. Click Clear List if you don't want to risk your supervisor coming by while you're up for coffee, and noticing that your most recently used programs are Tetris Max, Myst III, Tomb Raider, and Quake.)
2.16.1.1 The General tab
2.16.1.2 The Advanced tab
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Opening the Control Panel Window When You Can't
Figure 2-23. Top: When "Display as a link" is selected for Control Panel, you, like generations of Windows users before you, can't open a particular Control Panel program directly from the Start menu. Instead, you must choose StartControl Panel, which opens the Control Panel window; now it's up to you to open the program you want. Bottom: Turning on "Display as a menu" saves you a step. You now get a submenu that lists each program in the Control Panel folder. By clicking one, you can open it directly. This feature saves you the trouble of opening a folder window (such as Control Panel or My Documents), double-clicking an icon inside it, and then closing the window again.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Options for the Classic Start Menu
2.16.2 Adding Icons to the Start Menu
2.16.2.1 The "free" sections of the Start menu
2.16.2.2 Method 1: Drag an icon directly
Figure 2-24. Top: You can add something to the top of your Start menu by dragging it (from whatever folder it's in) onto the Start button to open the Start menu, and then dragging it directly into position. (Once the Start menu is open, you can also drag it onto the All Programs buttonand once that menu is open, drag it anywhere in that list.) Bottom: When you release the mouse, you'll find that it's been happily ensconced where you dropped it. Remember, too, that you're always free to drag anything up or down in the "free" areas of the menu: the circled area shown here, and the All Programs list.
2.16.2.3 Method 2: Use the Add Listing Wizard
2.16.2.4 Method 3: Use the Start Menu folders
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Which One's the Program?
Figure 2-25. Left: What you see in the StartAll Programs menu is a composed of the shortcuts in two Start Menu folders, as shown circled here in Windows Explorer. Note the two different Start Menu folders, as indicated by the arrows: one for All Users, and one for only you. Right: Anything you place directly into one of these Start Menu folders (as opposed to inside the Programs folder) appears above the horizontal line in the StartAll Programs menu.
2.16.3 Removing Icons from the Start Menu
2.16.4 Renaming Start Menu Items
2.16.5 Reorganizing the Start Menu
2.16.5.1 Add folders to hold submenus
Figure 2-26. Some Programs menu items have submenu folders and sub-submenu folders. As you move through the layers, you're performing an action known as "drilling down." You'll see this phrase often in manuals and computer booksfor example, "Drill down to the Calculator to crunch a few quick numbers."
Figure 2-27. The listings on the All Programs menu appear in the right pane. Notice that some of the items have folder icons; these are the folders that hold submenus. If you click Programs (in the left pane) before creating the new folder, you'll create a folder within the body of the All Programs list. To add a folder whose name will appear above the line in the All Programs menu, click Start Menu (in the left pane) before creating a new folder.
Chapter 3. Windows, Folders, and the Taskbar
3.1 Windows in Windows
Figure 3-1. All windows have the same basic ingredients, making it easy to become an expert in window manipulation. This figure shows a desktop windowa disk or folderbut you'll encounter the same elements in application windows.
3.1.1 The Task Pane
UP TO SPEED Scroll Bar Crash Course
Figure 3-2. The task pane is divided into functional blocks: tasks at top, places below that, file and folder info below that. If the pane becomes too long, you can either use the scroll bar or collapse sections of the pane by clicking the round buttons. Middle: When you click a file, you get its specs or a preview of its contents. Right: Depending on the folder template you've chosen, you may get picture- or music-specific tasks.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Hiding and Shrinking the Task Pane
3.1.2 The Explorer Bar
Figure 3-3. The controls here represent the "front end" for playing video clips, audio CDs, and sound files. Don't miss the double-down-arrow circle buttons, which take you directly to the Web sites where you can find music, video, or even radio stations to play. The little "Detach palette" button in the upper-right corner turns this panel into a floating palette that you can park anywhere on the screen.
3.1.3 Sizing, Moving, and Closing Windows
3.1.3.1 Moving a window
Figure 3-4. Creating two restored (free-floating) windows is a convenient preparation for copying information between them. Make both windows small and put them side-by-side, scroll if necessary, and then drag some highlighted material from one into the other. This works either with icons in desktop windows (top) or text in Microsoft Word (bottom). If you press Ctrl as you drag text in this way, you copy the original passage instead of moving it.
3.1.3.2 Closing a window
3.1.4 Working with Multiple Windows
3.1.4.1 Active and inactive windows
3.2 The Desktop Window Overhaul
3.2.1 Icon and List Views
Figure 3-5. The new Filmstrip view (upper left) creates a slide show right in the folder window. Thumbnails view (upper right) is also good for photosor anyone who would like a larger target for clicking each icon. (Tip: If you press Shift as you switch to Thumbnails view, you hide the file names. Do it again to bring the names back.) In the new Tiles view (middle left), your icons appear at standard size, sorted alphabetically into vertical columnswith name and file details just to the right. Icons view (middle right) sorts the icons horizontally in rows, displaying only their names. The List view (lower left) packs, by far, the most files into the space of a window. Details view (lower right) is the same as List view, except for the additional columns of information that reveal the size, the icon type, and the date and time the item was last modified.
3.2.1.1 Changing the sorting order
GEM IN THE ROUGH Folder Templates
Figure 3-6. Show in Groups is a useful new view option (available in all views except Filmstrip and List) that superimposes a set of "filing tabs" on any window, with headings that reflect the date, size, name, type, and so on. It's perfect for scanning a crowded list. These examples show sorting by name (left) and by modified date (right). In the My Computer window, the effect is slightly different: Your folders and disks are listed in headings called, for example, Files Stored on This Computer, Hard Disk Drives, and Devices with Removable Storage.
3.2.1.2 Manipulating the Details view
Figure 3-7. The range of information you can display in the window is robust enough to satisfy even the terminally curious. Some of the characteristics listed here are for specific types of files. For example, you won't need a column for Audio Formations in a folder that holds word processing documents.
3.2.2 Standard Folder Views
3.2.3 Uni-Window vs. Multi-Window
3.2.4 The "Folder Options" Options
Figure 3-8. Some of the options in this list are contained within tiny folder icons. Double-click one of these icons to expand the list and reveal the options within it. For example, you won't see the "Do not show hidden files and folders" option until you have expanded the "Hidden files and folders" folder icon.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Eliminating Double-Clicks
3.3 Window Toolbars
Figure 3-9. Top: The three basic toolbars that you can summon independently for any desktop windowand also in Internet Explorer. Bottom: By dragging the vertical left-side handle of a toolbar, you can make the displays more compact by placing two or more bars on the same row. You can even drag one right up into the menu bar, as shown here, to save additional vertical space.
3.3.1 The Standard Buttons Toolbar
Figure 3-10. The Customize Toolbar dialog box opens in front of the window you were viewing, so you can see the relationship between the window and the dialog box settings. For instance, notice that the right pane of the dialog box lists the current toolbar buttons; the top-to-bottom listing matches the left-to-right arrangement of the toolbar on the window. The Separator is the thin vertical line on the toolbar.
3.3.2 The Address Bar
3.3.3 The Links Toolbar
3.4 The Taskbar
Figure 3-11. When you see nothing but microscopic icons, point without clicking to view an identifying tooltip.
3.4.1 The Notification Area
INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION The Radio Toolbar
Figure 3-12. If you see a < button, Windows is telling you that it has hidden some of your notification-area icons. Click this button to expand the notification area, bringing all of the hidden icons into view (bottom).
3.4.2 Window Buttons
Figure 3-13. Top: The old taskbar wasn't much help in managing a bunch of windows. Middle: Nowadays, a crowded taskbar combines its buttons. Bottom left: Click one of these button groups to see the list of windows it's concealing. Bottom right: Right-click to operate on all windows at once.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Turning Off Notification Area Auto-Hiding
Figure 3-14. When you've cascaded your windows, click any title bar to bring its window to the foreground. After you've clicked a few title bars and worked in several windows, you'll need to choose Cascade Windows again to rearrange all your open windows. (By right-clicking a consolidated taskbar button, you can cascade only the windows of one program. If you want to cascade all windows of all programs, right-click a blank part of the taskbar.)
3.4.3 The Quick Launch Toolbar
3.4.4 Customizing the Taskbar
3.4.4.1 Moving the taskbar
NOSTALGIA CORNER Bringing Back the Old Taskbar
3.4.4.2 Resizing the taskbar
3.4.4.3 Hiding the taskbar
3.4.4.4 Hiding the taskbar manually
3.5 Taskbar Toolbars
Figure 3-15. Top: Make toolbars appear by right-clicking a blank area on the taskbar, if you can find one. Bottom: Toolbars eat into your taskbar space, so use them sparingly. If you've added too many icons to the toolbar, a >> button appears at its right end. Click it to expose a list of the commands or icons that didn't fit.
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT Retrieving a Lost Hidden Taskbar
3.5.1 Quick Launch Toolbar
Figure 3-16. You can add almost any kind of icon (an application, document file, disk, folder, Control Panel, or whatever) to the Quick Launch toolbar just by dragging it there (top); a thick vertical bar shows you where it'll appear. The only challenge is to find the folder that houses the icon you want to add. If it's an application, see Which One's the Program? for hints on finding the actual icon of the program in question.
3.5.2 Desktop Toolbar
3.5.3 Address Toolbar, Links Toolbar
3.5.4 Language Bar Toolbar
Figure 3-17. Top left: The floating Language bar. Right-clicking this toolbar displays its shortcut menu. Middle left: The shortcut menu for the Language bar lets you change Language bar settings, such as transparency, vertical (orientation), and minimize. Bottom Left: When you minimize the Language bar, it shrinks down to the taskbar for easier access. Right: The Text Services and Input Languages dialog box appears when you select Settings from the shortcut menu. Here you can change the current input language, set hot keys for language switching, and so on.
3.5.5 Redesigning Your Toolbars
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION The Not-So-Amazing Disappearing Toolbar
3.5.5.1 Moving toolbars
Figure 3-18. To park a toolbar in a different location, drag upward on the "perforated" handle at the left edge (top). The result is a strange sort of floating toolbar (bottom); it's now an onscreen, perpetually available launcher. (Use tooltips, or choose Show Text from its shortcut menu, to identify the icons.) If you drag the toolbar to an edge of the screen, it glues itself there like a second taskbar.
3.5.5.2 Creating toolbars
3.5.5.3 The short way
3.5.5.4 The long way
Figure 3-19. The major folders of your computer are displayed in the New Toolbar dialog box. Click the + sign to expand a disk or folderand continue to expand disks and foldersuntil you find the folder you're seeking. Or you can create a new folder for your toolbar anywhere on the hard drive.
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT The Disappearing Language Toolbar
Chapter 4. Organizing Your Stuff
UP TO SPEED Directories vs. Folders
4.1 The Folders of Windows XP
Figure 4-1. Top: The My Computer window, shown here on a corporate-network PC, is the starting point for any folder-digging you want to do. It shows the disk drives of your PC. If you double-click the icon of a removable-disk drive (like your CD-ROM drive, Zip drive, or Jaz drive), you receive only an error message unless there's actually a disk in the drive. Bottom: The My Computer window on a workgroup computer (that is, not part of a corporate domain network) includes all the perks included on a network computer with the added advantage of the "Files on This Computer" category.
4.1.1 What's in the Local Disk (C:) Window
Figure 4-2. Top: The C: drive and the Program Files folder may start out looking empty. Bottom: Here's what Microsoft Word actually looks like75 little software crumbs in your Program Files Microsoft Office Office10 folder. Only one of these icons (the one called WINWORD) is the actual program. But don't try to move it, or any of its support files, out of this folder. (It's OK, however, and even encouraged, to drag this icon onto your Start menu or Quick Launch toolbar.)
4.1.1.1 Documents and Settings
4.1.1.2 Program Files
4.1.1.3 Windows or WINNT
4.1.2 Your Account Folder
4.1.3 Navigating My Computer
NOSTALGIA CORNER Turning Off Simple Folder View
Figure 4-3. Front: Windows Explorer offers a treetop view of your computer's hierarchy. When you click a disk or folder in the left pane, the right pane displays its contents, including files and folders. Click the + button to expand a disk or folder, opening a new, indented list of what's inside it. Click the button to "collapse" the folder list again. Back: If you turn off the new "simple folder view" display, the dotted vertical and horizontal lines in the left pane help you keep track of the hierarchical levels.
4.1.4 Navigating with Windows Explorer
4.1.4.1 When the panel is too narrow
4.1.4.2 Viewing folder contents
4.1.4.3 Keyboard shortcuts
4.2 Life with Icons
4.2.1 Renaming Your Icons
POWER USERS' CLINIC Long Names and DOS Names
4.2.2 Icon Properties
Figure 4-4. The Properties dialog boxes are different for every kind of icon. In the months and years to come, you may find many occasions when adjusting the behavior of some icon has big benefits in simplicity and productivity. Left: Two tabs of the System Properties dialog box (which appears when you check the proper-ties of your My Computer icon). Right: The Properties dialog box for a Word document.
4.2.2.1 My Computer
4.2.2.2 Disks
GEM IN THE ROUGH Performance Options
4.2.2.3 Data files
4.2.2.4 Folders
4.2.2.5 Program files
Figure 4-5. By turning on "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and choosing the name of a previous version of Windows from the drop-down list, you can fool that program into thinking that it's running on Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows NT, or whatever. While you're at it, you can also specify that this program switch your screen to certain settings required by older games256 colors, 640 x 480 pixel resolution, and so onor without the new Windows XP look (turn on "Disable visual themes").
4.2.2.6 Shortcuts
4.2.3 Changing Your Icons' Icons
4.3 Copying and Moving Folders and Files
4.3.1 Highlighting Icons
4.3.1.1 To highlight all the icons
4.3.1.2 To highlight several icons
4.3.1.3 To highlight only specific icons
4.3.2 Copying by Dragging Icons
4.3.2.1 The right-mouse-button trick
Figure 4-6. Thanks to this shortcut menu, right-dragging icons is much easier and safer than left-dragging when you want to move or copy something.
4.3.2.2 Dragging icons in Windows Explorer
Figure 4-7. The file Working Outline, located in the Notes to Self folder on the desktop, is being dragged to the folder named The Great Estonian Novel (in the My Documents folder). As the cursor passes each folder in the left pane, the folder's name darkens to show that it's ready to receive the drag-and-dropped goodies. Let go of the mouse button when it's pointing to the correct folder or disk.
4.3.3 Copying by Using Copy and Paste
POWER USERS' CLINIC Secrets of the Send To Command
4.4 The Recycle Bin
4.4.1 Restoring Deleted Files and Folders
Figure 4-8. When you double-click the Recycle Bin (top), its window (bottom) displays information about each folder and file that it holds. To sort its contents in Details view, making it easier to find a deleted icon, click the gray column heading for the type of sort you need.
4.4.2 Emptying the Recycle Bin
4.4.3 Customizing the Recycle Bin
Figure 4-9. Use the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box to govern the way the Recycle Bin works, or even if it works at all. If you have multiple hard drives, the dialog box offers a tab for each of them so you can configure a separate and independent Recycle Bin on each drive. To configure the Recycle Bin separately for each drive, select the "Configure drives independently" option.
4.4.3.1 Skip the Recycle Bin
4.4.3.2 Auto-emptying the Recycle Bin
4.5 Shortcut Icons
Figure 4-10. You can distinguish a desktop shortcut (left) from its original in two ways. First, the tiny arrow "badge" identifies it as a shortcut. Second, its name contains the word shortcut (unless you've renamed it or an application has created its own shortcut on the desktop). The Properties dialog box for a shortcut (right) indicates which actual file or folder this one "points" to. The Run drop-down menu lets you control how the window opens when you double-click the shortcut icon.
4.5.1 Creating and Deleting Shortcuts
4.5.2 Unveiling a Shortcut's True Identity
4.5.3 Shortcut Keyboard Triggers
4.6 Burning CDs from the Desktop
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Nothing to Lose
Figure 4-11. Top left: When you insert a blank CD, this window appears, offering to open the CD "staging grounds" window that will hold shortcuts for the files you want to copy. Top right: The little down-arrows mean, "This icon hasn't been burned yet." Lower left: The first screen of the CD Writing Wizard is your only chance to name the CD (even if it's a CD-RW disc). Lower right: The final screen offers the chance to make a second copy of the same CD.
Chapter 5. Getting Help
5.1 Navigating the Help System
Figure 5-1. When working in the Help and Support Center window, you can use the Back, Forward, Home, Favorites, and History buttons on the toolbar. They may look like the corresponding buttons in a Web browser, but these buttons refer only to your travels within the help system. The Favorites button here represents your favorite help pagesthey're not the same favorites you see in Internet Explorer.
5.1.1 Help Home Page
5.1.2 Search the Help Pages
Figure 5-2. Each document title in the list on the left is a link that opens up a help page on the right side of the menu. (The dark highlighting shows matches for your search phrase.) The results are divided into three different categoriesSuggested Topics (fast but limited), Full-text Search Matches (slower but more complete), and Microsoft Knowledge Base (Internet-based). Click the appropriate category name.
5.1.3 Help Index
Figure 5-3. As you type, Windows XP matches each character by highlighting successive index listings to correspond with the characters you've typed so far. Most of the entries in the index are indentedthese are the links to actual help pages. Don't waste your time trying to double-click the category headings (the entries that aren't indented, but that have indented entries underneath them.) They don't do anything when double-clicked, since you're supposed to open one of the indented subentries.
5.2 "What's This?": Help for Dialog Boxes
Figure 5-4. After clicking the question-mark icon at the upper-right corner, you can click any control in the dialog boxin this case, the Screen Area sliderto read about its function. To make the pop-up box go away, click anywhere within its border. When the pop-up box containing the answer to What's This? appears on your screen, simply right-click in the box and choose Copy (to copy the text of the pop-up to the Clipboard) or Print Topic (to print the help page for that topic).
5.3 Remote Assistance
5.3.1 Remote Assistance: Rest Assured
GEM IN THE ROUGH Troubleshooters
5.3.2 Remote Assistance via Windows Messenger
5.3.2.1 Instructions for the novice
Figure 5-5. Getting going in Remote Assistance is easiest in Windows Messenger (left). Just specify who's going to be the lucky one to troubleshoot your machine (right).
Figure 5-6. Both parties have to be very, very sure that they want this connection to take place. Top (expert's screen): Somebody wants your attention, master! Middle (expert's screen): Click Accept or press Alt+T. Bottom (beginner's screen): You must confirm one last time that you really want a visitation from someone who's technically savvier than you.
Figure 5-7. If the victim's screen isn't exactly the same size as yours, you have two options. If you click Actual Size, the other person's screen is represented at full size, although you may have to scroll around to see all of it. If you click Scale to Window, Windows compresses (or enlarges) the other person's screen image to fit inside your Remote Assistance window, even though the result can be distorted and ugly.
Figure 5-8. Top (beginner's screen): Now the expert wants to touch, not just look. You're not actually relinquishing control of your PCyou're going to share it. Both you and your expert will be able to move the mouse and type simultaneouslya comical, strange, and fairly useless phenomenon. It's probably best to keep your hands off your own machine while the work is being conducted. Bottom (expert's screen): Once you're controlling the other machine, you can cancel at any time, too.
5.3.2.2 Instructions for the expert
5.3.3 Remote Assistance without Windows Messenger
5.3.3.1 Instructions for the novice
Figure 5-9. Speaking of security, you can also set up a password here for even more protection. The guru won't be able to connect to your machine without the password. (Of course, you need to find some way of telling him what the password ismaybe calling on the phone or sending a separate email.)
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT Making Remote Assistance Work
5.3.3.2 Instructions for the expert
Figure 5-10. You, the guru, have just received a .MsRcIncident ticketan invitation to help somebody whose PC needs troubleshooting. Lucky you! And by the way: If the novice, a trusting individual, has sent you a Remote Assistance ticket that doesn't expire for a very long time (99 days, for example), keep it around on your desktop or in your Start menu. From now on, both of you can skip all of the invitation-and-response rigamarole. Now, whenever he needs your help, he can just call you up or email you. And all you have to do is double-click your ticket and wait for the OK from the other side.
5.4 Getting Help from Microsoft
Part II: The Components of Windows XP
Chapter 6. Programs and Documents
6.1 Launching Programs
6.2 Switching Programs
Figure 6-1. Bottom: The taskbar lets you know which programs are running; the darkest button tells you which program is active. Top: Press Alt+Tab to highlight successive icons in the list. When you release the Alt key, the program whose icon you've highlighted jumps to the front.
UP TO SPEED "Multiple Document Interface" Programs
6.3 Exiting Programs
6.4 When Programs Die
Figure 6-2. Top: Click the Task Manager button on the Windows Security dialog box to check on the status of a troublesome program. Bottom: As if you didn't know, one of these programs is "not responding." Highlight its name and then click End Task to slap it out of its misery. Once the program disappears from the list, close the Task Manager and get on with your life. You can even restart the same program right awayno harm done.
6.5 Saving Documents
UP TO SPEED Sending an Error Report to Microsoft
6.5.1 The Save File Dialog Box
Figure 6-3. Top: These buttons vary by application, but the basics always help you navigate and view your files and folders. Bottom: The buttons at the left side of the Save As dialog box provide quick access to the folders where you're most likely to stash newly created documents: the My Documents folder, the desktop itself, and so on. But by using the "Save in:" drop-down list at the top of the screen, you can choose any folder you like.
6.5.2 Saving into My Documents
GEM IN THE ROUGH Why You See Document Names in Black
6.5.3 Navigating in the Save As Dialog Box
UP TO SPEED Dialog Box Basics
6.5.4 Navigating the List by Keyboard
6.5.5 The File Format Drop-Down Menu
6.6 Closing Documents
UP TO SPEED Playing Favorites
6.7 The Open Dialog Box
6.8 Moving Data Between Documents
6.8.1 Cut, Copy, and Paste
Figure 6-4. Suppose you want to email some text on a Web page to a friend. Left: Start by dragging through it and then choosing Copy from the shortcut menu (or choosing EditCopy). Now switch to your email program and paste it into an outgoing message (right).
POWER USERS' CLINIC ClipBook Viewer: The Missing Manual
6.8.2 Drag-and-Drop
Figure 6-5. Click in the middle of some highlighted text (left) and drag it into another place within the documentinto a different window or program (right).
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION When Formatting Is Lost
6.8.2.1 Drag-and-drop to the desktop
Figure 6-6. A Scrap file will appear when you drag material out of the document window and onto the desktop. Its icon depends on the kind of material contained within, as shown here at left. You can view a clipping just by double-clicking it, so that it opens into its own window (right).
6.8.3 Insert Object (OLE)
Figure 6-7. Top: You can insert many kinds of "objects" into a Word or WordPad document: a Paint file ("Bitmap Image"), Image Document (something you've scanned), an Excel spreadsheet ("Worksheet"), and so on. Bottom: You may prefer to slap an entire existing file into the middle of the one you're now editing. Do that using the Create from File tab. Turn on "Link to file" if you want the data to update itself when the source file is edited separately.
6.8.4 Export/Import
6.9 Filename Extensions
Figure 6-8. Each software program you install must register the file types it uses. The link between the file type and the program is called an association. This dialog box displays the icon for each file type and an explanation of the selected listing. In this example, the box tells you that sound files with the suffix .aiff open in Windows Media Player when double-clicked.
6.9.1 Displaying Filename Extensions
Figure 6-9. Windows lets you see the filename extensions only when it doesn't recognize them. Right: If Windows recognizes the filename extension on an icon, it hides the extension (look closely at the filenames). Left: You can ask Windows to display all extensions, all the time.
6.9.2 Hooking up a File Extension to a Different Program
Figure 6-10. Left: Windows is prepared to show you a list of every program that can open the mystery file. Scroll through the list of installed programs to select the one you want. By turning on the checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box, you create a file association that will handle similar files (those with the same file extension) in the future. Right: A shortcut to the dialog box shown at left is the Open WithChoose Program shortcut menu.
6.9.3 Creating Your Own File Associations
Figure 6-11. Left: Sometimes Windows doesn't know what to do with an icon you've just double-clicked. Right: Use this window to select a program for opening the mystery file. It's sometimes useful to associate a particular document type with a program that didn't create it, by the way. For example, if you double-click a text file, and the Open With dialog box appears, you might decide that you want such documents to open automatically into WordPad.
6.9.4 Fun with File Associations
Figure 6-12. Top left: The Advanced box lets you make even more decisions about each file type on your PC, including its auto-downloading behavior, double-click behavior, and (at top right) even its icon. Bottom left: In the top box, type the name for the new shortcut-menu command you want to create. Then click Browse to choose the program file for Photoshop itself. (Alternatively, you could type the path to the Photoshop program into the "Application used to perform action" text box.) Either way, add a space and then %1 to the end of the pathname shown in the lower boxa reference to the file being opened. Bottom right: A doctored shortcut menu at work.
6.10 Installing Software
6.10.1 The Pre-Installation Checklist
POWER USERS' CLINIC Who Gets the Software?
6.10.2 Installing Software from a CD
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Microsoft InstallShield?
6.10.2.1 Installing software using "Add or Remove Programs"
Figure 6-16. Use the "Sort by" drop-down menu to sort the list by Frequency of Use. This view lets you see which programs have been eating up disk space unnecessarilyprograms you hardly ever use. To vaporize a program, click its name to reveal its gray, highlighted panel, as shown here, and then click the Change/Remove button.
6.10.3 Installing Downloaded Software
Figure 6-13. You can find thousands of Windows programs (demos, free programs, and shareware) at Web sites like http://downloads.com, http://tucows.com, or http://computingcentral.msn.com. Top: When you click a link to download something, this box appears. Click the Save button. Bottom: To avoid losing the download in some deeply nested folder, choose Desktop from the "Save in:" drop-down list at the top of this box. After the download is complete, quit your browser. Unzip the file, if necessary, and then run the downloaded installer.
6.10.4 Installing Pre-Loaded Software
6.10.5 Installing Windows Components
Figure 6-14. Most of the optional installations involve networking and administrative tools designed for corporate computer technicians. One in particular, however, can be useful to just about anybody: Fax Services. This optional installation is the software that turns your PC into a fax machine.
6.10.6 Setting Program Access and Defaults
Figure 6-15. Top: Justice at work. Microsoft's settlement with the U.S. govern-ment included giving you the opportunity of hiding non-Microsoft programs. Choosing "Non-Microsoft" completely hides all traces of Microsoft's Web browser, email programs, and so on. They don't even appear in the Start menu. Bottom: Choosing Custom lets you mix and match: Microsoft software for some functions, other companies for others.
6.11 Uninstalling Software
6.12 Running Pre-XP Programs
6.12.1 16-Bit Programs
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION This File Is in Use
6.12.2 DOS Programs
6.12.3 Programs Written for Windows 95, 2000, Etc.
Figure 6-17. If you've successfully installed an older program that doesn't seem to work in Windows XP, fnd its application icon as described in Which One's the Program?. Right-click the icon and choose Properties from the shortcut menu. In the Properties dialog box, click the Compatibility tab, turn on "Run this program in compatibility mode for," and then, using the drop-down menu of past Windows versions, choose the version you suspect will make your program happiest. When you click OK, Windows XP will try to fake out the program, making it run. Your dialog box may differ slightly from the one you see here, depending on the program you are trying to run.
GEM IN THE ROUGH Not Your Father's Keyboard
Chapter 7. The Freebie Software
7.1 The Windows XP Accessories
7.1.1 Accessibility Features
7.1.1.1 Accessibility Wizard
7.1.1.2 Magnifier
Figure 7-1. Top: Open Magnifier by choosing StartAll ProgramsAccessoriesAccessibilityMagnifier. You can drag the large magnified window (top right) around to a more convenient spot on the screen, and even resize it by dragging the lower-right corner. If you like, use the Magnifier Settings dialog box (top left) to choose the Invert Colors optiona color scheme with higher contrast. Bottom: The On-Screen Keyboard may be just the ticket if your keyboard keys (or your hands) aren't fully functional.
7.1.1.3 On-Screen Keyboard
7.1.1.4 Narrator
7.1.1.5 Utility Manager
7.1.2 Communications Menu
7.1.3 Entertainment Menu
7.1.4 System Tools Menu
7.1.4.1 Activate Windows
7.1.4.2 Character Map
Figure 7-2. Top: Double-click a character to transfer it to the "Characters to copy" box, as shown here. (Double-click several in a row, if you want to capture a sequence of symbols.) You may have to scroll down quite a bit in some of today's modern Unicode fonts, which contain hundreds of characters. Click Copy, then Close. Bottom: When you've returned to your document, choose EditPaste to insert the symbols.
7.1.4.3 Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
7.1.5 Address Book
Figure 7-3. Left column: Generally you can ignore this business of identities, a system of separating the address books and email collections of several people who share the same PC. The Windows XP user accounts feature described in Chapter 17 is a far superior method of keeping everybody's stuff separate. Lower right: Right-clicking a name in your address book produces a shortcut menu that offers such useful commands as Send Mail and Dial.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION When Alt+0169 Is Faster
7.1.6 Calculator
Figure 7-4. After ducking into a phone booth, the humble Calculator (left) emerges as Scientific Calculator (right), which contains a hexadecimal/decimal/octal/binary converter for programmers, mathematical functions for scientists, and enough other buttons to impress almost anyone. To learn a particular button's function, right-click it and choose What's This? from the shortcut menu. Don't miss the online help, by the way, which reveals that you can control even the scientific mode from the keyboard.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Clipboard Viewer
7.1.7 Command Prompt
7.1.8 Notepad
7.1.8.1 Notepad basics
7.1.8.2 About word wrap
7.1.9 Paint
GEM IN THE ROUGH Notepad Log Files
Figure 7-5. The Paint tools include shapes, pens for special uses (straight lines and curves), and coloring tools (including an airbrush). The top two tools don't draw anything. Instead, they select portions of the image for cutting, copying, or dragging to a new location.
7.1.10 Program Compatibility Wizard
7.1.11 Scanner and Camera Wizard
7.1.12 Synchronize
UP TO SPEED Text-Selection Fundamentals
7.1.13 Tour Windows XP
7.1.14 Windows Explorer
7.1.15 Windows Movie Maker
7.1.16 WordPad
Figure 7-6. WordPad has menu bars, toolbars, rulers, and plenty of other familiar Windows features. Unlike Notepad, WordPad lets you use bold and italic formatting to enhance the appearance of your text. You can even insert graphics, sounds, movies, and other OLE objects (see Chapter 6).
7.1.16.1 Using WordPad
Figure 7-7. The rightmost buttons make paragraphs flush left, centered, flush right, or bulleted as a list. You can drag through several paragraphs before clicking these buttons, or you can click these buttons to affect just the paragraph where your insertion point is already. The dotted lines in this illustration indicate how each press of the Tab key lines up the text with one of the tab stops you click onto the ruler.
7.2 Windows XP Games
Figure 7-8. It may look like a simple game of checkers, but you're actually witnessing a spectacular feature of Windows XP: instantaneous anonymous Internet gaming. Two Internet visitors in search of recreation have made contact, a game board has appeared, and the game is under way. The Chat window sits below the game board. You can even turn Chat off if you're planning to play a cutthroat game and don't want to fake having friendly feelings toward your opponent.
Figure 7-9. Once the Pinball ball is in orbit around the screen, you twitch the flippers by pressing the Z and / keys. (Put your pinkies therethis feels much more logical than it reads. Even so, you can reassign these functions to other keys by choosing OptionsPlayer Controls.) You can even "bump the table" by pressing the X, period, or up arrow key.
7.3 Everything Else
Chapter 8. Pictures, Sounds, and Movies
8.1 Digital Photos in XP
8.1.1 Hooking Up Your Camera
Figure 8-1. Top left: When you connect the camera, you may be asked which editing program you want to open. Top right: Click "advanced users only" to work with the camera's memory card as though it's a disk. Middle left: The Clear All and Select All buttons can save time when you want to include, or exclude, only a few pictures. Middle right: Windows offers you the chance to create a new folder for the incoming pictures, and also to delete them from the camera after the transfer. Lower left: After the transfer, Microsoft invites you to spend some money. Lower right: Click Finish to open up the folder that now contains your pictures on the hard drive.
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT When the Wizard Doesn't Show Up
8.1.2 Fun with Downloaded Pictures
POWER USERS' CLINIC Bypassing the Wizard
8.1.2.1 Download more photos
8.1.2.2 Look them over
Figure 8-2. In filmstrip view, the enlarged image shows the currently selected photo. You can select a different one for enlargement by clicking another image icon (bottom row) or by clicking the Previous and Next buttons beneath the selected photo. Don't miss the special tasks listed in the task pane at the left sideor the options in the menu that appear when you right-click the central enlarged image.
8.1.2.3 Start a slide show
8.1.2.4 Order prints online
Figure 8-3. The price for prints via Web is usually 50 cents for 4 x 6 prints, and up to $20 for a 20 x 30 inch poster. Be especially careful when you see the red minus symbol shown here. It lets you know that the reso-lution of that photo is too low to make a good quality print at that size. A 640 x 480pixel shot, for example, will look grainy when printed at 5 x 7 inches.
8.1.2.5 Make a printout
8.1.2.6 Install new wallpaper
8.1.2.7 Post the photos on the Web
Figure 8-4. Top: The Web Publishing Wizard offers to scale down your graphics (the Web versions, not the originals) to reasonable dimensions. Bottom: You're a published photographer! You'll find your photos at the lower-right side of the Web page. Click one to open up that photo at full sizecomplete with Previous and Next buttons that let your audience conduct a full-sized photo slide show on the Web.
8.1.2.8 Email photos
Figure 8-5. Top: If you just click OK, the selected photos will get emailed at 640 x 480 pixel resolutionjust right for satisfactory viewing (and fairly speedy transferring) by email. Bottom: Clicking the "Show more options" link offers you the opportunity to specify which reduced size you want.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Grabbing Screenshots
8.1.2.9 Create a photo screen saver
8.1.2.10 View them bigger
Figure 8-6. To learn what each button does, point to it without clicking. The Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons magnify or reduce the image on the screen, and the Delete button deletes the file from your hard drive (or, rather, flings it into the Recycle Bin).
POWER USERS' CLINIC Special Pictures for Special Folders
8.2 Scanning
8.3 Windows Media Player
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Scanning Textand Then Editing It
8.3.1 Windows Media.com
8.3.2 The Lay of the Land
Figure 8-7. Top: Windows politely asks what you want it to do with a music CD. Bottom: In the right pane, Media Player displays the album title and the titles of each track, if that information was encoded onto your music CDor if you have an Internet connection and Windows was able to find the name of your CD on the Internet's massive database of CDs and track names. (If you don't see this list of tracks, click the Show Playlist button, or choose ViewNow Playing ToolsShow Playlist.) Beneath the psychedelic screen saver, you see the name of the current song and the elapsed time. Double-click a song name to listen to it.
8.3.3 Playing Music CDs
UP TO SPEED Which Disks Play Automatically?
8.3.3.1 Fun with Media Player
Figure 8-8. At full size, the Media Player window occupies a large chunk of your screen (Figure 8-7), and shows off Microsoft's fledgling tendency to move beyond the rectangular window. In Skin Mode (left), it takes up less space on your screen and can use any of dozens of radical new design schemes. Skin Mode also produces a small control window (right), which appears in the lower-right corner of your desktop. Clicking this compact window produces a menu that offers, among other commands, "Switch to full mode."
Figure 8-9. Not all skins are, shall we say, masterpieces of intuitive design; it may take you several minutes just to find the Stop button. When you find a skin you like, click Apply Skin (above the list). If you don't like any of the designs or just want to keep looking, click More Skins. Windows sends you to the Internet for a visit to Microsoft's grisly-sounding Skin Gallery. If nothing there strikes your fancy, either search the Web or check back later (Microsoft expands the collection periodically).
8.3.4 Copying CDs to Your Hard Drive
Figure 8-10. Top: Music files take up a lot of space on the hard drive. By adjusting this slider, you can specify how much Windows compresses the song files, with the understanding that you sacrifice sound quality as you make the file smaller. In general, the 96 K setting offers an excellent trade-offthe resulting files sound just like a CD, but the entire CD consumes only about 42 MB on the hard drive. Experiment with the other settings to accommodate your ears and speakers. Bottom: This is what happens when lawyers get involved in software design. Windows is offering you the chance to copy-protect your own music so that you can't transfer the songs to other computers or portable music players. Unless you're a particularly self-destructive person, turn on "Do not protect content" and then click OK.
GEM IN THE ROUGH Filling in Track Names
8.3.5 Organizing Your Music Library
Figure 8-11. Top: Clicking the Media Library button at the left side of the screen reveals a Windows Explorer-like display that lets you access your music in a number of ways: by album, by artist, by musical style (genre), and so on. You can even manage video clips with these controlsif you're one of the six people who collect them. You can add songs to custom playlists just by dragging, as shown. Bottom: Behind the scenes, Windows builds a set of nested folders in the My Documents My Music folder. Within the My Music folder, you'll find a folder for each performer. Within the performer folder, there's a folder for each CD, and within that folder, you'll find icons representing the tracks you copied.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION MP3, Microsoft, and You
8.3.5.1 Playlists
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP You, the DJ
8.3.5.2 Deleting things
8.3.6 Burning Your Own CDs
Figure 8-12. Remember that a music CD can only hold so much music. (Just how much it holds depends on the quality setting you've specified for your music files.) If some of your songs say, "Will not fit," as shown here, turn off some songs (by clearing their checkboxes) until everything fits.
8.3.7 Copying Music to a Portable Player
8.3.8 Internet Radio
Figure 8-13. The left side of the Radio Tuner window lists your preset stations. (Microsoft starts you off with several popular stations in a collection named Featured Stations.) The right side provides search features to help you find stations you want to add to this canned list.
8.3.9 Video Clips
8.3.10 DVD Movies
Figure 8-14. Once the DVD is playing, you control the playback using the standard Media Player controls (at the bottom-left edge of the window). To switch to a different "chapter," use the list at right (choose ViewNow Playing ToolsShow Playlist if you don't see it). To change language or subtitle options, open the DVDView menu, as shown here. When you're playing the movie full screen, a "remote control" appears only when you move the mouse a bit. Then the variable-speed slider appears, along with the Rewind, Play/Stop, and other controls labeled here. It fades away again a few seconds after you stop moving the mouse.
8.3.10.1 Ditching the Remote Control
8.4 Making WAVs with Sound Recorder
Figure 8-15. Sound Recorder (top) lets you capture the sounds of your worlddigitally. Volume Control (bottom) offers left-to-right stereo balance controls and volume adjustments for every sound-related component of your PC.
8.4.1 Recording a New Sound
8.4.2 What to Do with Sounds
8.4.3 Volume Control
8.5 Windows Movie Maker 2
8.5.1 Equipment List
8.5.2 Getting Started with Movie Maker 2
Figure 8-16. Windows Movie Maker 2 sports a new Movie Tasks pane that provides quick access to the most-used menu options. The other major working areas of the program are all identified here. You'll do most of your work in the Storyboard or Timeline view at the bottom of the screen.
8.5.2.1 Capturing footage
Figure 8-17. Top: You select the video capture device, audio device, video input source, and audio input source in the Video Capture Device screen. Second from top: In the Captured Video File screen, you name your captured video and select a folder to store it. Third from top: Select one of three settings you want to use to capture your video in the Video Settings screen, and then verify the selected settings in the information boxes at the bottom of the screen. Bottom: Finally, you and your tape are both ready to roll. Use the Start Capture and Stop Capture buttons to control the transfer of footage to your hard drive. (If you use a digital camcorder, you'll see Play, Stop, and Rewind buttons that let you control the camcorder right from the screen.)
8.5.2.2 Importing pictures and movies
Figure 8-18. The filmstrip at the bottom of the window offers two different views. Switch between them by clicking either the Show Storyboard or the Show Timeline button. In Storyboard view (bottom), there's no indication of the relative lengths of your clips, but you do get a good feel for the overall shape of your movie. In Timeline view (top), you see the relative timing of each clip.
8.5.3 Editing Video
8.5.3.1 Phase 1: Organize your clips
8.5.3.2 Phase 2: Drag them into the storyboard
8.5.3.3 Phase 3: Chop up the clips
8.5.3.4 Phase 4: Add video transitions
Figure 8-19. Microsoft has provided 60 video transitions for your movies. Use them to soften transitions from one clip to the nextbut use discretion. Going hog-wild with different nutty transitions in one movie will brand you as an amateur. Professional filmmakers rarely use anything beyond a simple cut or a cross-dissolve.
8.5.3.5 Phase 5: Add video effects
8.5.3.6 Phase 6: Add titles and credits
Figure 8-20. Top left: The titles and credits option offers several different placements for titles and a way to enter credits for your video. Top right: On the next screen, you're supposed to type up the actual text of the credits. Shown here: an example of final credits for a student film. Middle right: Here's where you choose an animation style for the text: how will it fly onto the screen? Bottom: The result can lookwell, if not professional, then at least familiar.
8.5.3.7 Phase 7: Add background music
8.5.3.8 Phase 8: Save the movie
GEM IN THE ROUGH The Narrator Speaks
Figure 8-21. You choose where you want to save or send your video from the Movie Location screen. You can save the video to your computer, to a recordable CD, email, the Web, or a DV camera. The wizard walks you through the process.
ROUGH IN THE ROUGH AutoMovie
Chapter 9. The Control Panel
9.1 Category View: The Big XP Change
Figure 9-1. Top: This new design is Microsoft's attempt to make the Control Panel look less overwhelming to first-timers. This arrangement groups the existing control panels into functional categories. When you click one of these headings, you're taken to another new screen. Bottom: The next screen lists the corresponding control-panel icons at the bottombut, perhaps more useful to the novice, it also lists the useful tasks that those control panels handle.
9.1.1 Restoring the Old Control Panel
Figure 9-2. If you're used to the old way of accessing the Control Panel programs, shown here, a single click on "Switch to Classic View" (Figure 9-1) does the trick. Even the standard Control Panel list (shown here in Details view) attempts to be helpful, thoughthe Comments column describes the function of each program, and tooltips appear when you point to programs without clicking.
9.2 Accessibility Options
Figure 9-3. Double-click the Accessibility Options icon in the Control Panel to open the dialog box shown here. You start out looking at the Keyboard tab, which offers useful ways to adjust keyboard behavior. Clicking any of the Settings buttons allows you to fine-tune many of these features, making it even easier to accommodate special computing needs.
9.2.1 Keyboard Tab
9.2.1.1 StickyKeys
9.2.1.2 FilterKeys
9.2.1.3 ToggleKeys
9.2.2 Sound Tab
9.2.3 Display Tab
9.2.4 Mouse Tab
9.2.5 General Tab
POWER USERS' CLINIC Keeping a Control Panel Program at Hand
9.3 Add New Hardware
9.4 Add or Remove Programs
9.4.1 Change or Remove Programs
9.4.2 Add New Programs (and Windows Update)
9.4.2.1 Windows Update
UP TO SPEED Trust Microsoft?
Figure 9-4. Top left: Clicking "Scan for updates" makes Windows check to see which updates you've already installed. Top right: Click a category name to see the exact updates Microsoft is recommending for you. Bottom left: Each update bears an Add and Remove button. Bottom right: Click Install Now to launch the update installation for your computer.
9.4.3 Add/Remove Windows Components
9.4.4 Set Program Access and Defaults
9.5 Administrative Tools
9.6 Date and Time
Figure 9-5. To specify the current time, don't bother dragging the hands of the clockthey're just for decoration. Instead, click numbers in the time box, and then change it by typing numbers, pressing the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard, or by clicking the tiny up or down arrow buttons. To jump to the next number for setting, press the Tab key.
9.7 Display
Figure 9-6. Lower right: Here's a tool chest filled with everything you need to change the look of your desktop. In addition to redecorating the desktop, you can even redo the design scheme used for the windows you open as you work. Middle: The Desktop tab lets you choose a picture to plaster onto your desktop backdrop. Upper left: Some screen savers are animated; they move, grow, or appear with fade-in effects. The My Pictures Slideshow shown here, for example, offers an endless slide show.
9.7.1 Themes Tab
9.7.2 Desktop Tab
9.7.2.1 Applying wallpaper
9.7.2.2 Solid colors
9.7.3 The "Customize Desktop" Button
GEM IN THE ROUGH Webby Wallpaper
9.7.3.1 General tab
POWER USERS' CLINIC Check Before You Sweep
Figure 9-7. Windows doesn't actually delete anything when it cleans away shortcut icons for your desktop. It just moves them into a folder called Unused Desktop Shortcuts (also on your desktop). You don't have to wait 60 days to reap the benefits of this little software janitorjust click the Clean Desktop Now button in the Display programDesktop tabCustomize Desktop buttonGeneral tab. (Or, if it's easier, just right-click the desktop and choose Arrange Icons ByRun Desktop Cleanup Wizard from the shortcut menu.)
9.7.3.2 Web tab
GEM IN THE ROUGH Active Desktop for Modem Fans
Figure 9-8. The Control menu of each individual Active Desktop window contains useful commands. To make the menu appear, push your cursor close to the top of the mini-page. The Investor ticker (top) works a little bit differently. Click Custom to type in stock symbols you want to track; click the tiny square to pause the motion of the text. This item doesn't offer the usual mini-menu bar.
9.7.4 Screen Saver Tab
9.7.4.1 Choosing a screen saver
9.7.5 Appearance Tab
Figure 9-9. Left: For the full arsenal of design-scheme controls, choose "Windows Classic style," as shown here, before clicking the Advanced button. Right: As you click parts of the view pane, the Item list identifies what you clicked (such as Desktop, Scrollbar, and so on). Then use the drop-down lists to choose colors and type sizes for the chosen interface element.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Password-Protecting Screen Savers
9.7.5.1 You, the interior designer
9.7.5.2 Effects
Figure 9-10. Using the drop-down list, you can choose a smoothing technology that's new in Windows XPsomething called ClearType. It's designed especially for flat-panel screens, including the ones on laptops. By changing the colors of the individual pixel on the edges of certain letters, it makes the type appear to be smoother than it really is.
9.7.6 Settings Tab
Figure 9-11. All desktop screens today, and even most laptop screens, can make the screen picture larger or smaller, thus accommodating different kinds of work. Conducting this magnification or reduction entails switching among different resolutions (the number of dots that compose the screen).
9.7.6.1 Screen resolution
9.7.6.2 Color quality
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Blurry Flat-Panel Screens
9.7.6.3 Multiple monitors
9.7.6.4 Advanced settings
9.8 Folder Options
9.9 Fonts
9.10 Gaming Options
9.11 Internet Options
9.12 Keyboard
Figure 9-12. How fast do you want your keys to repeat? This control panel also offers a Hardware tab, but you won't go there very often. You'll use it exclusively when you're trying to troubleshoot your keyboard or its driver.
9.13 Mouse
Figure 9-13. If you're a southpaw, you've probably realized that the advantages of being left-handed when you play tennis or baseball were lost on the folks who designed the computer mouse. It's no surprise, then, that most mice are shaped poorly for leftiesbut at least you can correct the way the buttons work.
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT Sharing a Computer Between a Lefty and Righty
9.13.1 Buttons Tab
9.13.1.1 Button configuration
9.13.1.2 Double-click speed
9.13.1.3 ClickLock
9.13.2 Pointers Tab
9.13.2.1 Selecting a pointer scheme
9.13.2.2 Select individual pointers
9.13.2.3 Create your own pointer scheme
9.13.3 Pointer Options Tab
9.13.3.1 Pointer speed
9.13.3.2 Snap To
9.13.3.3 Visibility
9.13.4 Hardware tab
9.14 Network Connections
9.15 Phone and Modem Options
9.16 Power Options
Figure 9-14. The Power Options program is a shape-shifter, meaning which set of tabs it has, and which controls are available on each one, vary from one PC to the next. Some of these tabs appear only if you have a laptop (or an uninterruptible power supply). Others depend on how new the PC is, and which version of the standard power-management circuitry it contains.
9.16.1 Power Schemes Tab
9.16.1.1 Waking up your PC
9.16.2 Alarms and Power Meter Tabs: For Laptops
9.16.2.1 Alarms tab
9.16.2.2 Power Meter tab
9.16.3 Advanced Tab
9.16.4 Hibernate Options
9.16.5 Troubleshooting Standby and Hibernation
9.16.5.1 Standby doesn't save data
9.16.5.2 Your disks don't work right away
9.16.5.3 Computer fails to enter hibernate or standby mode
9.16.6 APM Tab
9.16.7 UPS Tab
9.17 Printers and Faxes
9.18 Regional and Language Options
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP UPS When the Lights Go Out
9.18.1 Regional Options Tab
Figure 9-15. Lower right: The Regional Options tab is a summary of the crazy settings that you can change by clicking the Customize buttonwhich opens the Customize Regional Options dialog box, shown at top left. Top left: The changes you make here are reflected in the date and time stamps on your files located in list-view folder windows, and in Microsoft Excel (in the case of your Currency-tab choices).
9.18.2 Languages Tab
Figure 9-16. Top: After you've added a couple of layouts to the Language tab, specify the one you want by choosing its name from the top drop-down menu. Bottom right: The Language bar is a floating menu bar that lets you know which keyboard layout you're currently usinga useful reminder when your typing seems to be producing only bizarre symbols. It automatically appears on your desktop when you install a second input language. Bottom left: This dialog box appears; change the options, if you like, and then click OK.
9.18.3 Advanced Tab
9.19 Scanners and Cameras
9.20 Scheduled Tasks
9.21 Sounds and Audio Devices
9.21.1 Volume Tab
9.21.2 Sounds Tab
Figure 9-17. The Program Events list box presents every conceivable category in which a sound is played: Windows, NetMeeting, Windows Explorer, and so on. (The installers for some programsAmerica Online, for examplemay add categories of their own.)
9.21.2.1 Program events
9.21.2.2 Sound scheme
9.21.3 Audio, Voice, and Hardware Tabs
9.22 Speech
9.22.1 Speech Recognition Tab
9.22.2 Text To Speech Tab
9.23 System
9.23.1 General Tab
9.23.2 Computer Name
9.23.3 Hardware Tab
Figure 9-18. If you're confident about the hardware add-ons that you installand the stability of their driversinstruct Windows XP to stop warning you every time an unsigned driver attempts to infiltrate your hard drive (click the top option button). On the other hand, if you want to guarantee the continued stability of Windows XP, click the Block option button, so that such software is never allowed to enter your system.
Figure 9-19. Left: The Device Manager dialog box shows you where every dollar of your PC's purchase price went. Click a + sign to see exactly which CD-ROM drive, floppy circuitry, or other hardware you currently have. Right: Double-clicking a component (or right-clicking it and choosing Properties, as shown at left) lets you read about its specs.
9.23.4 Advanced Tab
9.23.4.1 Performance
Figure 9-20. Performance means speed. Depending on the speed and age of your machine, you may find that turning off all of these checkboxes produces a snappier, more responsive PCif a bit less Macintosh-esque. (Leave "Use visual styles on Windows and buttons" turned on, however, if you like the new, softened look of Windows XP.)
9.23.4.2 User Profiles
9.23.4.3 Startup and Recovery
9.23.4.4 Environment Variables
9.23.4.5 Error Reporting
9.23.5 System Restore Tab
9.23.6 Automatic Updates
Figure 9-21. If you turn off Windows XP's new auto-update-installation feature (by turning off the "Keep my computer up to date" checkbox), you can get your updates directly from the Microsoft Web site by choosing StartAll ProgramsWindows Update. If you prefer automatic updates, you can ask to be notified either before the software patch is downloaded (top choice) or after it's been downloaded and is ready to install (middle choice). You can also permit the updates to be updated and then installed automatically, on a schedule that you specify (bottom choice).
Figure 9-22. When Windows finds an update, a taskbar note (top) lets you know. If you click the taskbar icon, a wizard (bottom) walks you through the installation process. Click Details to read about all downloaded files, or Install to proceed with the installation.
9.23.7 Remote Tab
9.24 Taskbar and Start Menu
9.25 User Accounts
Part III: Windows Online
Chapter 10. Hooking Up to the Internet
10.1 Five Degrees of Online Readiness
10.2 How to Get Online
10.2.1 Cable Modems and DSL
POWER USERS' CLINIC Installing a Modem
10.2.2 ISP vs. Online Service
10.3 Establishing a Brand-new Internet Account
Figure 10-1. You can use this same New Connection Wizard to set up a small office network, a corporate network, and so on, but for now, you want the Connect to the Internet option. To sign up for a standard Internet account, just keep clicking the first choice on each wizard screen. At the last step, you'll have to choose between signing up for Microsoft's own Internet service, called MSN, or an independent one like EarthLink or AT&T. In the end, these services are essentially identical, and let you use precisely the same features. The deciding factors should be the price of the service and the presence of a local phone number that your modem can use to dial in.
Figure 10-2. In the U.S., the ISP Signup Wizard starts by calling a toll-free number to retrieve a list of Internet service providers that have deals with Microsoft in "your area" (in general, this means "in your country"). Click one, and then read the details of its deal in the scrolling right-side window. After settling on one, click the Next button to begin the signup process (providing your name, address, credit card number, and so on). Along the way, you'll probably be asked to select a local telephone number (that your modem will call to get online) from an existing list.
10.3.1 The Connection Icon
Figure 10-3. Right: This particularly well-endowed individual has four different ways to get to the Internet. The New Connection Wizard created two of themthe ones represented by the MSN Explorer and EarthLink icons. One of the many ways to go online is to double-click this icon. Left: Double-clicking one of these icons produces this dialog box, where you can click Dial to go online. (Turning on "Save password" eliminates the need to type your password each timein general, a great idea.)
10.4 Manually Plugging in Internet Settings
10.4.1 Via Dial-up Modem
GEM IN THE ROUGH The Windows XP Internet Firewall
10.4.2 Via Cable Modem, Network, or DSL
Figure 10-4. Left: In this dialog box, double-click the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) item that corresponds to your Ethernet card. Right: Your cable or phone company generally configures these settings for you. But if a freak solar eclipse wipes out all of your settings, you can re-enter them here. When you click OK, you should be back online.
10.5 Connecting to the Internet
10.5.1 Manual Connections
UP TO SPEED IP Addresses and You
10.5.2 The Notification Area Icon
Figure 10-5. Top: To make the notification area icon appear, right-click the icon for your connection (Figure 10-3). From the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Bottom: At the bottom of the General tab, you'll see the key feature, "Show icon in notification area when connected." Turn on this option, and then click OK.
GEM IN THE ROUGH Faster Access to Connection Icons
10.5.3 Automatic Dialing
Figure 10-6. Left: "Connect automatically" makes your PC dial whenever any of your programs tries to go online. Right: If you can't seem to get online despite taking this step, open the Internet Options program in the Control Panel (Section 9.7, page 265). Click the Connections tab. Make sure that "Never dial a connection" isn't selected; choose one of the other options. (That's an option for people who like to establish the Internet connection manually before opening an Internet program like a Web browser.)
10.5.4 Disconnecting
10.5.4.1 Disconnecting manually
Figure 10-7. Top: The quickest way to hang up is to use the notification-area icon. Right-click it and choose Disconnect from the shortcut menu that appears. Bottom: You can also double-click the icon to view statistics on your session so far, and to produce a Disconnect button for hanging up.
10.5.4.2 Disconnecting automatically
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Laptop's Lament: Away from the Cable Modem
10.6 Advanced Modem Settings
Figure 10-8. Left: This dialog box has two priorities: to establish rules for dialing out, and to define as many different sets of rules for dialing as you need. If you're setting up dialing properties for a desktop computer, you won't need to change these settings after the first successful call. Right: Setting up a new dialing rule.
10.6.1 Dialing Rules Tab
10.6.1.1 General tab
10.6.1.2 Area Code Rules tab
Figure 10-9. This dialog box can handle any weird and convoluted area code rule in your town. (If there aren't special rules yet in your area, it's only a matter of time.) When your local phone company changes the rules, don't forget to open this dialog box and explain the changes to your modem.
10.6.1.3 Calling Card tab
Figure 10-10. Windows XP already knows about the dialing requirements for most major calling cards. When you choose one from the Card Types list box at top, Windows XP automatically fills in the fields at the bottom with the correct information. On the remote chance you can't find your own card, just type in the necessary dialing codes manually.
10.6.2 Modems Tab
Figure 10-11. The Modem tab of the Modem Properties dialog box. Many people, perhaps thinking wishfully, set a speed higher than the modem's rated speed. Unfortunately, the speed doesn't actually improve as a result.
10.6.3 Advanced Tab (of Phone and Modem Options)
Chapter 11. Web, Chat, and Videoconferencing
11.1 Internet Explorer 6
Figure 11-1. The Internet Explorer window offers tools and features that let you navigate the Web almost effortlessly; these various toolbars and status indicators are described in this chapter. Chief among them: the Address bar, which displays the address (URL) of the Web page you're currently seeing, and the standard set of buttons, which let you control the Web-page loading process.
11.1.1 Browsing Basics and Toolbars
11.1.2 Internet Explorer Toolbars
11.1.2.1 The Standard Buttons toolbar
11.1.2.2 The Address bar
11.1.2.3 The Links toolbar
Figure 11-2. Once you've got a juicy Web page on the screen, you can turn it into a Links icon just by dragging the tiny Explorer-page icon from the Address bar directly onto the Links bar, as shown here. (You can also drag any link, like a blue underlined phrase, from a Web page onto the toolbar.) To remove a button, right-click it and choose Delete from the shortcut menu.
11.1.3 Status Bar
11.1.4 Explorer Bar
11.1.5 Ways to Find Something on the Web
UP TO SPEED More Web Pages Worth Knowing
11.1.6 Tips for Better Surfing
11.1.6.1 Full-screen browsing
11.1.6.2 Bigger text, smaller text
11.1.6.3 Enlarge or shrink online photos
Figure 11-3. Top left: Internet Explorer automatically displays its image toolbar whenever your cursor points to a graphic. One click on its icons can save a graphic, print it, email it, or open your My Pictures folder to manage your collection. Bottom right: If you click the Expand button, you see the graphic at its regularly scheduled size, which may be much too big for your browser window. Click the Shrink button (circled) to make Internet Explorer do its shrink-to-fit favor for you once again.
11.1.6.4 Faster browsing without graphics
Figure 11-5. Peculiar though it may seem, choosing ToolsInternet Options takes you out of Internet Explorer. It opens the Internet Options program in the Control Panel; two of its tabs are shown here. Left: Turning off those annoying blinking animations (highlighted) can save your sanity. Right: On the General tab, you should take a moment to designate a new home page and boost the "memory" of the History feature (to 60 days, for example).
11.1.6.5 Favorites: "Bookmarking" favorite Web sites
Figure 11-4. Top: To edit the Favorites menu, choose FavoritesOrganize Favorites. Bottom: When the Organize Favorites window opens, you can drag names up or down to rearrange the list, as shown. Or click one and then use the buttons at left to rename, delete, or file it in a folder.
11.1.6.6 Viewing Web pages offline
11.1.7 Ditching Pop-Unders
UP TO SPEED What You Need to Know about Plug-Ins
11.1.8 Setting Basic IE Options
11.1.8.1 Designate your home page
11.1.8.2 Set storage options for temporary files
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Missing in Action: Java
Figure 11-6. To change the size of your cache folder, click the Settings button in the General tab of the Internet Options dialog box (Figure 11-5), and then adjust the number shown here. Enlarging the number makes it possible to store more files, enhancing the odds that when you revisit a Web site you've seen before, it will pop up onto the screen quickly. To see the temporary files (if you can even think of a reason to do so), click the View Files button. To view a list of programs you've downloaded, click the View Objects button.
11.1.8.3 Set options to check for changes
11.1.8.4 Configure and view the History folder
Figure 11-7. The History panel (left) appears when you click the tiny History button (the unlabeled button to the right of the Media button) on the Standard toolbar. It offers more details than the History list displayed in the Address bar. Click one of the time-period icons to see the Web sites you visited during that era. Click the name of a Web site to view a list of each visited page within that siteinformation you don't get from the drop-down list on the Address bar. You can sort the sites by clicking the View button in the History pane and choosing one of these sorting schemes: Date, Site, Most Visited, Order Visited Today.
11.1.8.5 Turn off animations
11.1.9 The Content Advisor
Figure 11-8. The Internet represents ultimate freedom of expression for anybody, causing some parents to think of it as a wild frontier town where anything goes. To protect young eyes, you can use the options in the Content Advisor to control what's available to your copy of IE. You can also password-protect these settings so nobody else can make changes to them.
11.1.9.1 Ratings tab
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Cookie Control
11.1.9.2 Approved Sites tab
11.1.9.3 General tab
11.1.9.4 Advanced tab
11.2 Windows Messenger
Figure 11-9. Left: To open Windows Messenger, double-click its icon in your notification area. (This icon's appearance indicates whether or not you're online and signed in.) Right: If Windows Messenger didn't automatically sign you in when you went online, you may have to click the link to do so. (This dialog box may look different in your version of Messenger. Microsoft updates this Windows component, via the Automatic Updates feature, more often than almost any other.)
11.2.1 Getting a .NET Passport
Figure 11-10. Top: The instant you access the Internet for the first time, Windows XP invites you to become a part of the great Passport database. Bottom: The .NET Passport Wizard invites you to provide your existing email addressor to create a free http://MSN.com email account in the process of signing up for the Passport. Either way, you need a .NET Passport to use Windows XP online features like Windows Messenger. If you feel like it, you can also pay a visit to http://www.passport.com to create a Passport wallet, meaning that you can input your credit card numbers and other personal information, to save you time when buying stuff on Passport-compatible Web sites.
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Antisocialites' Corner
11.2.2 Your Buddy List
Figure 11-11. To commence with some high-tech communications, you can proceed in either of two ways. First, you can double-click somebody in your Online list to open up a chat window. From there, you're able to start a voice conversation, window-sharing session, videoconferencing session, and so on. Second, you can click one of the "I want to…" links shown here at bottom and then specify with whom you'd like to do it. Note that if you have a Hotmail account, the top of the window reveals how many email messages you have waiting.
11.2.3 Beginning a Chat
Figure 11-12. Top: You're being invited to chat. (You also hear a chime, and a Windows Messenger taskbar button, shown here, blinks and changes color to get your attention.) Clicking the words in the square invitation box opens Windows Messenger. Bottom: Now you can type away. A chat session is like a teleprompter transcript that rolls down the screen. You type into the bottom box, pressing Enter after each comment, and inserting little "emoticons" (smiley faces, frowny faces, and so on) by choosing them from the drop-down list.
11.2.4 Fun Things to Do While Chatting
11.2.4.1 Screen out the riffraff
11.2.4.2 Grin, sob, or stick out your tongue
11.2.4.3 Duck out for a moment
11.2.4.4 Send a text message to a phone
11.2.4.5 Exchange files
Figure 11-13. You can send a file from your hard drive to your conversation partnera great way to turn this time-wasting feature into a useful collaboration tool. (Your partner will find the file in her My DocumentsMy Received Files folder. She can change the folder location for file deposits by choosing ToolsOptions, clicking the Preferences tab, and then clicking the Browse button in the File Transfer section.)
11.2.4.6 Add another chatter
11.2.4.7 Get help
11.2.4.8 Add features
11.2.4.9 Preserve your brilliance for future generations
11.2.5 PC as Telephone
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT When Video and Phone Features Don't Work
11.2.6 PC as Videophone
Figure 11-14. During the video conversation, don't miss the Options drop-down menu. Use the Stop Sending Video command when, for example, you'd like to pick your nose in privacy. Turn on Show My Video as Picture-in-Picture if you want to see your own image in the lower-right corner of the larger one, in order to see both participants at once.
11.2.7 Sharing a Program
Figure 11-15. Lower right: The Sharing window, where you specify which programs you want your comrade to see, and even control. Back left: Until your chat partner has been given control, she can see precisely what you seebut can't edit it or touch it in any way. The slashed-circle cursor should tell her as much. Asking for permission to take over the driver's seat, however, is as easy as choosing from the Control menu (top left).
11.2.8 Whiteboard
Figure 11-16. The Whiteboard lets you and a colleague mark up a diagram, sketch, or anything else you can paste into this window. It's a lot like Paint, except that you're not editing individual pixelsit's a drawing program. Each shape, text box, or line you draw, and each object you paste in, remains a distinct object that you can drag around, independent of the background. You can also make objects go in front of or behind the other ones using the Bring to Front and Send to Back commands in the Edit menu, and you can edit text at any time.
NOSTALGIA CORNER Microsoft NetMeeting
Chapter 12. Outlook Express 6
12.1 Setting Up Outlook Express
UP TO SPEED POP, IMAP, and Web-based Mail
GEM IN THE ROUGH Checking a Specific Email Account
12.2 Sending Email
Figure 12-1. The four panes of Outlook Express. Click a folder in the upper-left pane to see its contents in the upper-right pane. When you click the name of a message in the upper-right pane, the message itself appears in the lower-right pane. Lower left: your list of MSN Messenger Service "buddies," as described in the previous chapter.
POWER USERS' CLINIC The Mighty Morphing Interface
12.2.1 Mail folders in Outlook Express
12.2.1.1 Composing and sending messages
Figure 12-2. A message has two sections: the header, which holds information about the message; and the body, which contains the message itself. In addition, the Outlook Express window has a menu bar and a toolbar, which you can use to access other available features for composing and sending messages.
Figure 12-3. HTML-based email lets you exercise some control over the layout of your email messages, including text colors, font selection, and text alignment. The HTML toolbar looks and acts like a toolbar that you might find in a word processing program. With it, you can turn plain-Jane email into an HTML-formatted wonderland.
UP TO SPEED Blind Carbon Copies
12.2.1.2 Using the Address Book
12.2.1.3 Attaching files to messages
12.3 Reading Email
12.3.1 How to Process a Message
12.3.1.1 Deleting messages
UP TO SPEED Selecting Messages
12.3.2 Replying to Messages
UP TO SPEED About Mailing Lists
12.3.3 Forwarding Messages
12.3.4 Printing Messages
12.3.5 Filing Messages
Figure 12-4. Before you click OK, be sure to click the name of the existing folder that you want to contain your new one. Most of the time, you'll probably want to click the Local Folders icon before creating the new folder.
12.3.6 Flagging Messages
12.3.7 Opening Attachments
Figure 12-5. Top: One way to rescue an attachment from an email message is to click the paper clip icon and choose Save Attachments. Bottom: Dragging an attachment's icon onto your desktop takes the file out of the Outlook Express world and into your standard Windows world, where you can file it, trash it, open it, or manipulate it as you would any file.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Not Everyone Has the Same Software
12.3.8 Message Rules
12.3.8.1 Setting up message rules
Figure 12-6. Top left: Building a message rule entails specifying which messages you want Outlook Express to look forand what to do with them. By clicking the underlined words, as shown here, you specify what criteria you're looking for. Top middle: Let the rule know which words it's supposed to watch for. Top right: The completed message rule (note the summary at the bottom). Bottom: All mail message rules you've created appear in the Message Rules dialog box. Select a rule to see what it does, and use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to specify the order in which rules should be run. Double-click a rule to open the Edit Rule dialog box, where you can specify what the rule does.
12.3.8.2 Two sneaky message-rule tricks
12.4 Configuring Outlook Express
Figure 12-7. The Options dialog box has ten tabs, each loaded with options. Most tabs have buttons that open additional dialog boxes. Coming in 2006: Outlook Express Options: The Missing Manual.
12.4.1 General tab
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Canning Spam
12.4.2 Read tab
12.4.3 Receipts tab
12.4.4 Send tab
12.4.5 Compose tab
12.4.6 Signatures tab
12.4.7 Spelling tab
12.4.8 Security tab
12.4.9 Connection tab
12.4.10 Maintenance tab
12.5 Newsgroups
UP TO SPEED Newsgroups Explained
12.5.1 Setting Up an Account
12.5.2 Download the List of Newsgroups
Figure 12-8. In the text box at the top, enter the text you want to look for in the newsgroup's title (such as windowsxp, as shown herein cyberspace, there are no spaces between words). If you turn up an appealing-sounding topic in the gigantic list beneath, click its name and click the Subscribe button to subscribe to it. Now Outlook Express will download the latest messages on that topic each time you connect.
12.5.3 Finding Newsgroups and Messages
12.5.4 Reading Messages
Figure 12-9. If you've been using Outlook Express for email, the newsgroup portion of things should look familiar. It uses the same three-pane view: The Folders pane lists news servers to which you've subscribed, the top-right pane lists the names of messages in a selected newsgroup, and the bottom-right pane displays the actual text of the message you've highlighted in the message list. (If a newsgroup name is too long to see in its little panel, point to it without clicking, as shown here.)
12.5.5 Replying, Composing, and Forwarding Messages
Part IV: Plugging into Windows XP
Chapter 13. Printing, Fonts, and Faxing
13.1 Installing a Printer
13.1.1 Existing Printers
13.1.2 USB Printers
Figure 13-1. You got lucky. Windows recognizes your printer, has the appropriate driver, and has put the software into place. Let the printing begin.
13.1.3 Network Printers
13.1.4 Parallel, Serial, and Infrared Printers
Figure 13-2. Top: As the note explains, use the Add Printer Wizard only if your printer doesn't connect to your USB or FireWire (IEEE 1394) port. Bottom: In this window, try the "Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer" option first, as shown here. If Windows can't automatically detect the brand and model of the printer you've attached, return to this screen and turn off this option. You'll wind up in the dialog box shown in the next illustration.
Figure 13-3. The left pane lists every printer manufacturer Microsoft has ever heard of. Once you've selected your printer's manufacturer, a list of all the printer models from that manufacturer (that Windows XP knows about) appears in the right pane. Click the Have Disk button if your printer's driver software is on a disk supplied by the manufacturer.
13.1.5 The Printer Icon
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT If Your Printer Model Isn't Listed
GEM IN THE ROUGH Installing Fake Printers
Figure 13-5. Top: The options in the Print dialog box are different on each printer model and each application, so your Print dialog box may look slightly different. For example, here are the Print dialog boxes from Microsoft Word and WordPad. Most of the time, the factory settings shown here are what you want (one copy, print all pages). Just click OK or Print (or press Enter) to close this dialog box and send the document to the printer. Bottom: During printing, the tiny icon of a printer appears in your notification area. Pointing to it without clicking produces a pop-up tooltip like this that reveals the background printing activity.
Figure 13-4. At first, the task pane in the Printers and Faxes window offers only two commands. But when you click a printer icon, a long list of useful options appears, as shown here. Many of them duplicate the options that appear when you right-click a printer iconsomething you'd be wise to remember the day your right mouse button breaks.
13.2 Printing
13.2.1 Printing from Applications
Figure 13-6. When you choose Properties from the Print dialog box, you can specify the paper size you're using, whether you want to print sideways on the page ("Landscape" orientation), what kind of photo paper you're using, and so on. Here, you're making changes only for a particular printout; you're not changing any settings for the printer itself. (The specific features of this dialog box depend on the program you're using.)
Figure 13-7. The Web page about to be printed uses frames (individual, independent, rectangular sections). The Print dialog box in Internet Explorer recognizes frames, and lets you specify exactly which frame or frames you want to print. If the page contains links to other Web pages (and these days, what Web page doesn't?), you can print those Web pages, too, or just print a table of the links (a list of the URL addresses).
Figure 13-10. Right-click your printer's icon in the Printers and Faxes window. From the shortcut menu, choose Properties, then click the Advanced tab, shown here. Select "Available from," and use the time setting controls to specify when your underlings are allowed to use this printer from across the network. Clicking OK renders the printer inoperable during off-hours.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Printing from a DOS Program
13.2.2 Printing from the Desktop
Figure 13-8. The first document, called "Microsoft WordVoice phones.doc," has begun printing; the second one, you've put on hold. Several other documents are waiting. By right-clicking documents in this list, you can pause or cancel any document in the queueor all of them at once.
13.2.3 Printing from the Internet
13.3 Controlling Printouts
13.4 Fancy Printer Tricks
13.4.1 Printing at 39,000 Feet
13.4.2 Sharing a Printer
Figure 13-9. Top: Turn on "Share this printer," and then give the printer a name in the Share name text box. (No spaces or punctuation allowedand keep it short.) Click OK. The printer is now available on your network. Bottom: Other people, seated at their own computers, can now bring your printer onto their own screens. (If the other PCs aren't running Windows XP, click the Additional Drivers button on the Sharing tab and turn on the checkboxes for the Windows versions they are using.)
13.4.3 Printing to a File
13.4.3.1 Creating a printer file
13.4.3.2 Printing a printer file
13.4.4 Limiting Hours of Access
POWER USERS' CLINIC Color Management
13.4.5 Add a Separator Page
13.4.6 Save Printouts for Later
13.5 Printer Troubleshooting
13.6 Fonts
13.6.1 Managing Your Fonts
Figure 13-11. All of your fonts sit in the Fonts folder (top); you'll frequently find an independent font file for each style of a font: bold, italic, bold italic, and so on. You can tell a TrueType font by its TT icon, or an OpenType font by its O icon. Those marked by an A may be PostScript fonts, which come with a phalanx of the printer font files that they require; others may look fine on the screen, but may not print out smoothly. Double-click a font's icon to see what the font looks like (bottom).
13.7 Faxing
13.7.1 Installing the Fax Software
Figure 13-12. Top: In the Printers and Faxes window, click the "Set up faxing" link on the task pane at the left side of the window. Insert the Windows XP Professional CD when the wizard asks you to do so. Bottom: The Fax icon is added to the Printers and Faxes window, ready to use.
13.7.2 Getting Ready to Fax
13.7.3 Sending a Fax
Figure 13-13. If "Use dialing rules" is turned off, then just type the entire fax number, complete with the area code, the number 1 for long distance, and so on, into the second "Fax number" box. Commas, parentheses, and dashes are irrelevant. But if you turn on "Use dialing rules," you can choose one of the canned dialing setupscomplete with calling card information, bizarre local area code dialing procedures, and so onthat you set up as described in Section 10.6.1.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Cover Page Art Class
Figure 13-14. Top left: The Fax Monitor keeps you posted during faxing. If you click More>>, you can see a log of all your fax activities (top right). The more you use the fax software, the less you may feel that you need this little window in your faceeventually, you may prefer to continue working while Windows does its faxing in the background. In that case, click Hide. Bottom: After you've faxed successfully, you hear a tiny trumpet fanfare and see this message on your notification area.
13.7.4 Receiving a Fax
Figure 13-15. Top: This dialog box offers all of the options for receiving faxes. Getting here, however, is no picnic. Right-click the Fax icon in your Printers and Faxes window; choose Properties. Click the Devices tab, and then click the Properties button. In the resulting dialog box, click the Receive tab. Middle: If you have only one phone line that your telephone shares, this note will appear every time a call comes in. Most of the time, you'll just answer the phone, and this message goes away. If you click it, though, your PC treats the call as an incoming fax. Bottom: Once a fax is safely snuggled into your Fax Console program, this note lets you know.
Figure 13-16. Top: Until you delete them in Fax Console (by selecting them and then pressing the Delete key), your sent and received faxes stay here forever. Some of the toolbar buttons are useful, including Save (turns the fax into a graphics file on your hard drive) and Mail (sends the fax via email). Bottom: Double-click a fax to open it into its own window. Click the little magnifying glass to enlarge your view, or just make the window bigger. Rotate it by clicking one of the two rotate buttons near the center of the toolbar. You can even add notes using the three tools on the far right side.
Chapter 14. Hardware
UP TO SPEED About Drivers
14.1 The Master Compatibility List
14.2 Hardware Connections
14.2.1 Installing Cards in Expansion Slots
UP TO SPEED Message Pathways
14.2.2 External Attachments
Figure 14-1. The back panel of the typical PC. Not every computer has every kind of jack, and the standard assortment is evolving over time. But these days, you can generally count on a basic collection like the one shown here.
14.3 Connecting New Gadgets
14.4 When Plug and Play Doesn't Work
Figure 14-2. Top: You're halfway home. Windows XP has at least acknowledged that you've plugged something in. Click the balloon to proceed with the software installation (if you didn't install the software first, as you should have). Bottom: The Found New Hardware Wizard. You'll rarely use the bottom option, "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install." It's primarily used to override Windows XP's own, preinstalled driver in favor of another onefor example, one that came from the original manufacturer that you've been told offers more features than the official Microsoft driver.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Using Manufacturer's Drivers for Plug and Play Devices
14.4.1 Using the Add Hardware Wizard
14.4.1.1 The search for Plug and Play
14.4.1.2 Add Hardware Wizard searches for nonPlug and Play devices
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Driver vs. Driver
Figure 14-3. Why does the wizard display a list of components you've already successfully installed? Because you can also use the Add Hardware Wizard to troubleshoot PC components you've already installed, using this very screen. Furthermore, Windows may have detected, but not precisely identified, something you've installed. For example, If you just installed a network adapter, and the list contains a generic Network Adapter entry with a question mark and a yellow ! circle, you can select it to install the correct driver.
Figure 14-4. Top left: Specify which kind of component you're adding. Bottom: Scroll down the left pane to find the name of your hardware manufacturer (in this case, a PC card is the hardware). The right pane of the window changes to display all the models the manufacturer offers, or at least the models that Windows XP knows about. If you can't find your model number, check the hardware's documentation to see if selecting one of the listed models would work just as well.
14.5 Driver Signing
Figure 14-5. The most stable and smoothly operating PC is one whose components use nothing but digitally signed drivers. On the other hand, just because a driver isn't signed doesn't mean it's no good; it may be that the manufacturer simply didn't pony up the testing fee required by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs.
14.6 The Device Manager
Figure 14-6. The Device Manager lists types of equipment; to see the actual model(s) in each category, you must expand each sublist by clicking the + symbol. A device that's having problems is easy to spot, thanks to the red X's and yellow exclamation points.
14.6.1 Red X's and Yellow !'s: Resolving Conflicts
14.6.1.1 Duplicate devices
14.6.1.2 Resolving resource conflicts
Figure 14-7. The Resources tab should have all the information you need to resolve a problem. Any resource with a conflict is marked with a red X "not working" icon. Selecting a resource with a problem displays information about the conflict.
14.6.2 Turning Components Off
14.6.3 Updating Drivers with the Device Manager
Figure 14-8. When you double-click a component listed in your Device Manager and then click the Driver tab, you find four buttons and a lot of information. The Driver Provider information, for example, lets you know who is responsible for your current driverMicrosoft or the maker of the component. Click the Driver Details button to find out where on your hard drive the actual driver file is, the Update Driver button to install a newer version, the Roll Back Driver button to reinstate the earlier version, or the Uninstall button to remove the driver from your system entirelya drastic decision.
14.6.4 Driver Rollback
14.7 Hardware Profiles
Figure 14-9. Every computer is equipped with a hardware profile named Profile 1. Creating a new profile is simply a matter of copying the existing profile, creating a new name for the copy, and making changes to it. Use the option buttons at the bottom to specify how long you want Windows to display the menu of profiles at system startup time.
Figure 14-10. Every time you turn on your Windows PC, you'll be shown this listing of hardware profiles. Highlight the profile you want by pressing the up and down arrow keys; press the Enter key when you've highlighted the one you want. Windows loads only the drivers for the hardware you've turned on in the selected profile.
Chapter 15. Joining, Compressing, and Encrypting Disks
15.1 Dynamic Disks
15.1.1 How Dynamic Disks Work
UP TO SPEED Volumes Defined
15.1.2 Converting a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk
Figure 15-1. The Disk Management console is the central toolbox for all of your dynamic diskrelated tasks. This is where you convert basic disks to dynamic disks, and create the dynamic volumes on your disks.
Figure 15-2. Top: To convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, right-click the header box for the drive and choose Convert to Dynamic Disk from the shortcut menu. Don't right-click one of the partitionsyou must click the header box. Bottom left: The Convert to Dynamic Disk dialog box lists the drives that are eligible for conversion to dynamic disks. You can even select and convert several disks at once. Bottom right: The Disks to Convert dialog box lists the dynamic volumes that Windows XP will automatically create on your newly converted drives.
Figure 15-3. Now the header box for your disk says "Dynamic" rather than "Basic," and what used to be partitions on the disk (with blue header bars) are now simple volumes (with red header bars).
15.1.3 Three Uses for Unallocated Space
Figure 15-4. The Select Volume Type screen of the New Volume Wizard displays the dynamic volume types that you can create on your computer. Click one to read a description at the bottom of the dialog box.
15.1.3.1 Creating a simple volume
Figure 15-5. On the Select Disks screen, you specify where you want to get the unallocated space that the wizard will use to create the dynamic volume. When creating a simple volume, you can only select one disk, but for spanned or striped volumes, you can select up to 32.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Extending a Volume
Figure 15-6. Top: On the Assign Drive Letter or Path screen, you specify what drive letter you want to use for the new volume. Alternatively, you can mount it as a folder on an NTFS drive. Bottom: The Format Volume screen lets you format your new dynamic volume as soon as it's created, as well as specify a volume name and turn on disk compression. Because this is a dynamic disk, NTFS is the only file system available for formatting.
15.1.3.2 Creating a spanned volume
Figure 15-7. When you install a new hard drive in your computer, it appears in the Disk Management console as a large block of unallocated space. Of course, you quickly notice that the new drive is a basic drive; therefore, all you can do is create a basic partition on it.
Figure 15-8. Top: When extending a volume to another disk, click its name in the Available column before adding it to the Selected column. Bottom: A dynamic volume extended to another disk appears in the Disk Management console with the same color header bar and the same drive letter. Note, too, that the volume list in the upper-right quadrant of this dialog box identifies this volume as "Spa…" (which, if you could see the whole word, would say "Spanned").
15.1.3.3 Creating a striped volume
15.2 Compressing Files and Folders
POWER USERS' CLINIC Creating a New Spanned Volume
15.2.1 NTFS Compression
UP TO SPEED Data Compression
15.2.1.1 Compressing files, folders, or disks
Figure 15-9. If you don't see the "Compress contents to save disk space" checkbox (highlighted here), then your hard drive probably doesn't use the NTFS formatting scheme.
15.2.2 Zipped Folders
Figure 15-10. Top: A Zip archive looks like an ordinary folderexcept for the tiny zipper. Bottom: Double-click one to open its window and see what's inside. Notice (in the Ratio column) that JPEG graphics and GIF graphics usually don't become much smaller than they were before zipping, since they're already compressed formats. But word processing files, program files, and other file types reveal quite a bit of shrinkage.
15.2.2.1 Creating zipped folders
15.2.2.2 Working with zipped folders
HISTORY CLASS PKZip
15.3 Encrypting Files and Folders
POWER USERS' CLINIC Disk Quotas
15.3.1 Using EFS
Figure 15-11. To encrypt a file or folder using EFS, turn on the Encrypt Contents To Secure Data checkbox (at the bottom of its Properties dialog box). If you've selected a folder, a Confirm Attribute Changes dialog box appears, asking if you want to encrypt just that folder or everything inside it, too.
15.3.2 EFS Rules
GEM IN THE ROUGH Recovering Encrypted Data
Chapter 16. Maintenance, Backups, and Troubleshooting
16.1 System Restore
16.1.1 About Restore Points
Figure 16-2. Top: To change the month, click the < or > button at either end of the calendar. When you click a calendar square containing a bold number, the pane on the right shows the restoration points available for that date. You may find "Manual Checkpoint," which is one that you created yourself; "System Checkpoint," which is one that Windows XP created automatically (a "just in case" restore point); "Update to an unsigned driver," which means you installed software that Microsoft hasn't inspected (as described in Section 14.5); "Automatic Updates Install," which is a Windows patch that XP downloaded and that you approved for installation; and so on. Bottom: After a restart, you're back in business. This message reminds you that you can even rewind the rewinding, if it didn't produce the results you were seeking.
Figure 16-1. To specify how much disk space System Restore is allowed to use (and therefore how many "rolling back" opportunities you have), open the System program in Control Panel. Click the System Restore tab, and then drag the slider to change the amount of disk space you're willing to sacrifice for this feature. (If you have several hard drives, you get a Settings button that lets you individually change the limitor turn off System Restorefor each.) Click Apply and then OK.
Figure 16-3. Left: Disk Cleanup announces how much free space you stand to gain. Click View Files to see the individual file icons in their native folders, for more selective deletion. Right: Links on the More Options tab lead to several uninstall functions, for quick removal of programs, Windows parts, and restore points.
16.1.2 Performing a System Restore
GEM IN THE ROUGH Automatic System-File Replacement
16.2 Disk Cleanup
16.3 Disk Defragmenter
16.3.1 Defragmenting a Drive
Figure 16-4. Windows lets you know whether or not you'll gain anything by defragmenting your hard drive (top). If you're terminally curious, click View Report. A dialog box then appears (like the one here at bottom), listing each individual file on your hard drive and revealing the extent of its fragmentation.
Figure 16-5. A detailed view of the defragmentation process helps you understand what Disk Defragmenter is doing. The color of each little square shows what's going on, as the program juggles software files, system files, and data files to put each file in the best possible place. At that point of perfection, Disk Defragmenter announces victory over fragmentation and asks if you want to close the program. Say Yes unless you have another hard drive that needs defragging.
16.4 Hard Drive Checkups
Figure 16-6. Top: Click Check Now in the Properties dialog box for your hard drive. Middle: Click Start to begin the scan, which checks the file structure, folders, files, and other elements on your drive. Bottom: You may be asked to restart the PC, so that the Son of ScanDisk can do its thing during the startup process. If you click Yes, nothing seems to happen at all. Windows is just holding its breath until you actually restart. During the lengthy procedure, onscreen messages serve up status reports. When it's over, the computer restarts.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION When Good Drives Go Bad
16.5 Disk Management
Figure 16-7. The Drive Management window is part of the much bigger, much more technical entity known as the Computer Management console. You access it by clicking Disk Management (in the left-side pane). Then you can operate on your drives by right-clicking them. Don't miss the View menu, by the way, which lets you change either the top or the bottom display. For example, you can make them display all of your disks instead of your volumes (there's a difference).
16.5.1 Change a Drive Letter
Figure 16-8. Right-click a drive icon as shown in Figure 15-7. From the shortcut menu, choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. Left: In this dialog box, click Change. Right: Then choose a letter that hasn't already been assigned. Click OK, and then approve your action in the confirmation box.
16.5.2 Partition a New Drive
16.5.3 Turn a Drive into a Folder
Figure 16-9. Left: Man, how many CD drives does this guy have? Just one. But through the miracle of mounted volumes, it's appearing in as many different folders as the owner likes. You could do the same thing with a hard drivemake it appear as a folder icon on any other drive. Right: Here's how to do it: Designate an empty folder to be the receptaclea metaphysical portalfor the drive's contents.
16.6 Task Scheduler
Figure 16-10. Top: The Task Scheduler keeps a calendar for Windows XP. Tasks appear in the schedule when you enter them manually, or when other programs (such as the Maintenance Wizard) set them up. You can use the Task Scheduler window to add, modify, or remove tasks. (Make sure your computer is turned on during the time any task is supposed to run.) Bottom: The wizard asks you what you want to open, and how often.
16.6.1 Adding a Task to the Scheduler
16.6.2 Changing Scheduled Tasks
Figure 16-11. Some of the factory settings for scheduled tasks are a bit ridiculous. For example, it's probably a good idea to stop a task if it runs longer than 4 or 5 hours, not 72 hours. In fact, except for defragging the hard drive, most scheduled tasks should take less than an hour. The bottom section of the dialog box applies to laptop computers.
16.6.3 Start a Task Immediately
16.6.4 Pause All Scheduled Tasks
16.6.5 Stop Using Task Scheduler
16.6.6 A Disk Defragmenter Example
16.6.6.1 Programming Disk Defragmenter
Figure 16-12. Disk Defragmenter is ready to roll. You've just told Disk Defragmenter to defrag the E: drive, andthanks to the "-f" switchto run whether it thinks you need it or not.
16.6.7 Interpreting Results
16.7 Microsoft Backup
16.7.1 Backup Hardware
16.7.2 Creating a Backup Job
16.7.2.1 Backup or restore?
Figure 16-13. Top left: Microsoft Backup lets you either back up or restore your files. Bottom right: Expand the listing of drives and folders by clicking the plus signs. Turn on the checkbox next to any folder or file that you want backed up. To deselect a file, turn off its checkbox. Don't forget that you can drag the gray, vertical divider bar to widen the left panel.
16.7.2.2 Create a backup job
16.7.2.3 Select the backup medium
POWER USERS' CLINIC Advanced Backup Types
16.7.2.4 Advanced backup options
Figure 16-14. Of all the Advanced options, this series of screens (click Set Schedule, then Advanced) may be the most useful, because it lets you establish a backup that runs automatically, without your involvement. (Behind the scenes, it creates a task in your StartControl PanelScheduled Tasks window, where you can manipulate it or adjust its schedule.)
16.7.2.5 Click Finish
16.7.3 Restoring with Microsoft Backup
Figure 16-15. The Restore Wizard's What to Restore page is similar in format to Windows Explorer, except that it displays only the contents of a particular backup tape or disk. You can select from the backup tapes, disks, or files you've created, or click Import File to read the contents of a backup file you created on another Windows XP system.
UP TO SPEED Floppy Disk Crash Course
16.8 The Briefcase
16.9 Safe Mode and the Startup Menu
Figure 16-16. The Startup menu (not to be confused with the Start menu) appears only when you press F8 a couple times as the computer is starting up. In times of deep trouble, it can be a lifesaver.
POWER USERS' CLINIC The Recovery Console
16.10 The Registry
Figure 16-17. The Registry's settings are organized hierarchically; RegEdit looks a lot like Windows Explorer. But there's no way to figure out which part of the Registry holds a particular setting or performs a particular function. It's like flying a plane that has no windows.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION "Invalid system disk" Message
Part V: Life on the Network
Chapter 17. Accounts, Permissions, and Logging On
17.1 Introducing User Accounts
17.2 Windows XP: The OS With Two Faces
17.3 Local Accounts on a Workstation
Figure 17-1. This screen lists everyone for whom you've created an account. From here, you can create new accounts or change people's passwords. (Hint: To change account settings, just click the person's name on the bottom half of the screen. Clicking the "Change an account" link at top requires an extra, redundant click.)
17.3.1 Administrator Accounts
17.3.2 Limited Accounts
17.3.3 Adding an Account
Figure 17-2. Top left: If it's all in the family, the account's name could be Chris or Robin. If it's a corporation or school, you'll probably want to use both first and last names. Capitalization doesn't matter, but most punctuation is forbidden. Bottom right: This is the master switch that lets you specify whether or not this unsuspecting computer user will be a computer administrator, as described above.
17.3.4 Editing an Account
Figure 17-3. Top: Here's the master menu of account changing options that you, an administrator, can see. (If you're a Limited account holder, you see far fewer options.) Bottom: You're supposed to type your password twice, to make sure you didn't introduce a typo the first time. (The PC shows only dots as you type, to guard against the possibility that some villain is snooping over your shoulder.)
Figure 17-14. When Fast User Switching is turned on, you can call up the Welcome screen shown here without even quitting your programs and closing your windows. If Outlook Express or Windows Messenger is running, the Welcome screen even shows you how many unread email messages are waiting for you. (Point without clicking to produce a tooltip that breaks down which email accounts they came in on.)
Figure 17-4. Right: Here's where you change your account picture. If a camera or scanner is attached, you get an extra link here, "Get a picture from a camera or scanner"instant picture. And here's a tip: If you like to change your picture with your mood, there's a shortcut to this dialog box. Just click your picture at the top of the open Start menu (left).
17.3.5 The Forgotten Password Disk
Figure 17-5. The screens of this wizard guide you through the process of inserting a blank floppy disk and preparing it to be your master skeleton key. If you forget your passwordor if some administrator has changed your passwordyou can use this disk to reinstate it without the risk of losing all of your secondary passwords (memorized Web passwords, encrypted files, and so on).
UP TO SPEED Passwords Within Passwords
17.3.6 Deleting User Accounts
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Limited Unlimited
17.3.7 The Administrator Account
17.3.8 The Guest Account
Figure 17-6. There's not really much to learn about the Guest account; it's exactly the same thing as a Limited account, except that it requires no password at all.
17.4 Local Accounts on a Domain Computer
Figure 17-7. A Windows XP Professional computer that's a member of a domain has a more detailed User Account dialog box. Instead of creating new accounts on your local machine, these controls let you give other people on your domain the ability to log onto your computer locally (that is, in person, rather than from across the network).
17.4.1 Creating a Local Account for a Domain Member
NOSTALGIA CORNER The Windows 2000 User Accounts Control Panel
17.5 Local Users and Groups
17.5.1 Opening the Console
Figure 17-8. Local Users and Groups is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. MMC is a shell program that lets you run most of Windows XP's system administration applications. An MMC snap-in typically has two panes. You select an item in the left (scope) pane to see information about it displayed in the right (detail) pane.
17.5.2 Creating a New User Account
Figure 17-9. When you first create a new user, the "User must change password at next logon" checkbox is turned on. It's telling you that no matter what password you make up when creating the account, your colleague will be asked to make up a new one the first time he logs in. This way, you can assign a simple password (or no password at all) to all new accounts, but your underlings will still feel free to devise passwords of their own choosing, and the accounts won't go unprotected
17.5.3 Groups
17.5.3.1 Creating a group
Figure 17-10. The New Group dialog box lets you specify the members of the group you are creating. A group can have any number of users as members, and a user can be a member of any number of groups.
Figure 17-20. Type the names of the people or groups in the "Enter the object names to select" box at the bottom, trying not to feel depersonalized by Microsoft's reference to you as an "object." If you're adding more than one name, separate them with semicolons. Because remembering exact spellings can be iffy, click Check Names to confirm that these are indeed legitimate account holders. Finally, click OK to insert them into the list on the Security tab.
17.5.3.2 Built-in groups
17.5.4 Modifying Users and Groups
Figure 17-11. In the Properties dialog box for a user account, you can change the full name or description, modify the password options, and add this person to, or remove this person from, a group. The Properties dialog box for a group is simpler still, containing only a list of the group's members.
17.6 Setting Up the Logon Process
Figure 17-12. The first option here governs the appearance of the user-friendly Welcome screen shown in Figure 17-14. The second lets one person duck into his own account without forcing you to log off completely, as described in Section 17.6.2. Note that these options are relatedyou can't turn off the first without first turning off the second.
17.6.1 Use the Welcome Screen
Figure 17-13. If you turn off the new Welcome screen, you sign into Windows XP just as Windows 2000 fans have for years. You're expected to type in your name and password and then click OK. (By the way, you also see this display if you joined a domain when installing Windows XP Pro.)
17.6.2 Use Fast User Switching
17.6.2.1 How Fast User Switching works
NOSTALGIA CORNER The Double-Thick Security Trick
17.6.2.2 How to turn on Fast User Switching
Figure 17-15. Top: If you choose StartLog Off when Fast User Switching is turned off, you get this limited dialog box. Bottom: When you choose StartLog Off while Fast User Switching is turned on, you get this choice: you can either log off for real (click Log Off), or use Fast User Switching to cede control of the computer to another account holder and put your work into background memory (click Switch User).
17.7 Logging On
17.7.1 Identifying Yourself
17.7.1.1 You zoom straight to the desktop
17.7.1.2 You get the "Log On to Windows" dialog box
17.7.1.3 You get the "Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to Begin" dialog box
17.7.1.4 You get the Windows XP Welcome screen
Figure 17-16. If you can't remember the password, click the ? icon. It produces a balloon that reveals your password hint. And if you still can't remember, it's time to take out the Password Reset Disk (Section 17.3.5).
17.8 Profiles
17.8.1 The All Users Profile
Figure 17-17. Behind the scenes, Windows XP maintains another profile folder, whose subfolders closely parallel those in your own. What you seethe contents of the Start menu, Desktop, Shared Documents folder, Favorites list, Templates folder, and so onis a combination of what's in your own user profile folder and what's in the All Users folder.
17.8.1.1 Whose software is it, anyway?
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT The Missing Security Tab
17.8.2 The Default User Profile
Figure 17-18. Top: To open Profile Manager, open the System program in the Control Panel. Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Settings button in the User Profiles section, as shown here. Bottom: To copy the settings from a person's profile into the Default User profile, highlight the name of the account whose settings you want to copy. Then click Copy To; in the next dialog box, click Browse, and then navigate to and select, the My ComputerLocal Disk (C:) Documents and SettingsDefault User folder. Click OKand the deed is done.
17.9 NTFS Permissions: Protecting Your Stuff
17.9.1 Setting Up NTFS Permissions
Figure 17-19. The Security tab of an NTFS folder's Properties dialog box. If you have any aspirations to be a Windows XP power user, get used to this dialog box. You're going to see it a lot, because almost every icon on a Windows XP systemfiles, folders, disks, printershas a Security tab like this one.
17.9.2 Step 1: Specify the Person
17.9.3 Step 2: Specify the Permissions
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION Allow vs. Deny
17.9.4 Groups and Permissions
POWER USERS' CLINIC Special Identities
17.9.5 When Permissions Collide
17.9.5.1 NTFS permissions travel downstream, from outer folders to inner ones
17.9.5.2 NTFS permissions that have been explicitly applied to a file or folder always override inherited permissions
17.9.5.3 Permissions accumulate as you burrow downward through folders inside folders
Figure 17-21. The Effective Permissions tab for an NTFS folder. Note that you can't turn these checkboxes on or off; this is a read-only screen that tells you what permissions the selected user or group has for the file or folder. You can't modify the permissions here. You can't tell from this display how these effective permissions have been calculated, either (that is, where the permissions have been inherited from).
Chapter 18. Setting Up a Workgroup Network
18.1 Kinds of Networks
18.1.1 Ethernet
Figure 18-1. Top: The Ethernet cable is connected to a computer at one end, and the hub (shown here) at the other end. The computers communicate through the hub; there's no direct connection between any two computers. The front of the hub has little lights for each connector port, which light up only on the ports that are in use. You can watch the lights flash as the computers communicate with one another. Bottom: Here's what a typical "I've got three PCs in the house, and I'd like them to share my cable modem" setup might look like.
18.1.2 Network Hookups
UP TO SPEED Network Devices Have Speed Limits
18.1.2.1 Phone line networks
18.1.2.2 Power outlet networks
18.1.2.3 Wireless networks (WiFi or 802.11b)
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION 802.11b vs. 802.11a
18.1.3 FireWire Networks
GEM IN THE ROUGH Two-Computer Ethernetand Direct Cable Connections
18.2 Installing Drivers
18.3 Sharing an Internet Connection
18.4 The Network Setup Wizard
Figure 18-2. Left: Start the Network Setup Wizard by clicking this link. Right: Select the option that best describes this computer's relationship to the Internet. If the PC will be the gateway to the Internet for other PCs on the network, choose the first option. Otherwise, just choose Other to tell the wizard as much.
18.4.1 "Before you continue"
18.4.2 "Select a connection method"
18.4.3 "Select your Internet connection"
Figure 18-3. Top: Every computer on a Windows network (even a big network in a business environment) must have a unique name. Computer names and workgroup names are limited to 15 characters, without spaces. Hyphens and apostrophes are OK, but most other punctuation is forbidden. Bottom: Tell the wizard how this machine connects to the Internet. See Chapter 10 to find out how these account names got here.
18.4.4 "Give this computer a description and name"
18.4.5 "Name your network"
18.4.6 "Ready to apply network settings"
18.4.7 "You're almost done"
Figure 18-4. If you're using Internet Connection Sharing, the second, third, and subsequent PCs you set up automatically detect the presence of the first one (the gateway computer). Instead of the dialog box shown in Figure 18-2, you get this far simpler versionand in general, you'll want to select the first option.
18.4.8 Testing the Network
Figure 18-5. We have network! Your My Network Places window should reveal the presence of other PCs in your network, complete with the names you gave them when plowing through the Network Setup Wizard. This illustration shows Tiles view for clarity, but Windows starts out in Details view.)
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT Troubleshooting Internet Connection Sharing
Chapter 19. Introducing Network Domains
19.1 The Domain
19.1.1 What's Wrong with Workgroups
19.1.2 The Domain Concept
19.1.3 Active Directory
19.1.4 Domain Security
19.2 Joining a Domain
Figure 19-1. The Computer Name tab of the System control panel displays the name of your computer and the workgroup or domain of which it is currently a member. From here, you can change the computer or workgroup name or join a new domain. The Network ID button launches a Network Identification Wizard, while the Change button displays a dialog box in which a more experienced person can perform the same tasks.
19.3 Five Ways Life Is Different on a Domain
19.3.1 Logging On
Figure 19-2. Joining a domain disables Fast User Switching and the Windows XP Welcome screen, presenting a simple Log On to Windows dialog box instead. If you know Windows 2000, you should feel right at home, because this is the standard Welcome screen for that operating system, too.
UP TO SPEED Knowing What You're Logging Onto
19.3.2 Browsing the Domain
Figure 19-3. When you open a Windows Explorer window and expand the My Network Places and Microsoft Windows Network icons, you see an icon for each workgroup on the network (see Figure 19-4). You can browse through the computers in a domain and access their shared folders (if you have the appropriate permissions) just as you would those of a workgroup. On a large network, you'll just see a lot more computers.
19.3.3 Searching the Domain
Figure 19-4. Top left: Searching for people in your network's Active Directory is like using a phone book. You supply the information you know about the person. Lower right: When you find that person (technically, her user object), you can view the information stored in its attributes. Of course, the usefulness of this feature depends on how much information your network administrators enter when creating the user objects.
Figure 19-5. Searching for a printer in Active Directory lets you find the printing features you need. Network administrators may also record the physical locations of the network printers. This way, when your search uncovers a printer that can handle 11 x 17-inch paper and print double-sided too, you can simply look at its attributes to find out that it's located on the fourth floor on the west side of the building.
19.3.3.1 Custom Searches
Figure 19-6. To perform a custom search, you use the drop-down menus to select an object type and then a particular field in that object. You then specify a condition (such as whether you want to search for an exact value or just the beginning or end of the value) and the value you want to look for. When you click Find Now, a list of the objects matching your criteria appears.
19.3.4 Assigning Permissions to Domain Members
Figure 19-7. When you click the Object Types button, you can specify whether you want to search for Built-in Security Principals (special-purpose groups like Everyone and Authenticated Users), Computers, Groups, or Users. Also, the standard location for the objects is your current domain. You can still click the Location button and select your computer's name (to specify local user and group accounts), or even choose another domain on the network, if others are available.
19.3.5 Logging Off and Shutting Down
Figure 19-8. Top: Logging off on a Windows XP Professional domain computer is simpler than on a workgroup, because you can't switch users. Bottom: Selecting Shut Down on a Windows XP Pro computer that's a member of a domain lets you log off the domain or perform one of the usual shutdown options.
Chapter 20. Sharing Network Files
20.1 Accessing Other Computers
20.1.1 Method 1: My Network Places
Figure 20-1. In Windows XP, all of the shared disks and folders show up automatically in the My Network Places windowincluding shared disks and folders on your own PC, which can be a bit confusing.
20.1.1.1 "View workgroup computers"
Figure 20-2. Top: If you know that the folder or file you're looking for resides on a particular PC, it's often more convenient to start your quest at this window. Bottom: Double-click one of these computers to see a list of its shared resources (folders, disks, and printers), as shown here.
20.1.1.2 Older PCs: Network Neighborhood
Figure 20-3. This workgroup has four computers. The Entire Network icon lets you drill down from the workgroup to the computersbut because you see the networked workgroup PCs immediately, there's little reason to do so.
20.1.2 Method 2: Windows Explorer
Figure 20-4. The advantage of using Windows Explorer to look over your network is that you can simultaneously access folders and files on your own computer from this window, making it easier to copy files between the computers. You get a good overview of the network all at once.
20.1.3 Method 3: Universal Naming Convention (UNC)
20.2 Working with Network Files
20.2.1 At the Desktop
20.2.2 Using StartSearch
20.2.3 Inside Applications
20.3 Shared Folders Online
Figure 20-5. If you've already connected to some network serverwhether on your network or on the Internethere's a very quick way to create a shortcut of it on your desktop for faster access next time. Just drag the tiny folder icon out of the Address bar. (You can put it on your desktop or, if it feels more consistent to do so, into your My Network Places folder.)
20.3.1 Bringing an FTP or Web Server Online
Figure 20-6. Left: The Add Network Place Wizard (top) walks you through setting up a desktop icon for your Web, FTP, or intranet site, including (middle) entering the location of the folder or file for which you want to create a shortcut in your My Network Places windowin this case, an FTP server (bottom). Right: When you double-click the newly created FTP icon (top), you'll be asked for your password (middle). Thereafter, depending on the speed of your connection, the files in the FTP folder might show up on your screen as though they were sitting on a very, very slow floppy disk (bottom).
20.4 Mapping Shares to Drive Letters
Figure 20-7. Top: The "Reconnect at logon" option tells Windows to locate the share and map this drive letter to it every time you start your computer. Bottom: Once you've mapped a few folders or disks to their own letters, they show up in the Network Drives group within your My Computer window. (Note the drive letters in parenthesesin this example, J:, K:, and L:.)
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Automatic Reconnections Can Be Tricky
20.5 Two Roads to File Sharing
Figure 20-8. Left: When Simple file sharing is on, you share designated folders and files with everyone in your workgroup whether you like it or not. Right: In Standard file sharing, this Sharing tab appears. You can click the Permissions button to specify who is allowed to access it on a person-by-person (or group) basis.
WORD TO THE WISE Job Number One?
20.5.1 Turning Simple File Sharing On and Off
GEM IN THE ROUGH File Sharing Without a Network
20.6 Simple File Sharing
20.6.1 Sharing Your Own Folders
Figure 20-9. The Sharing tab for a disk or folder on a Windows XP workgroup computer. (The dialog box refers to a "folder" even if it's actually a disk.) You can turn on "Share this folder on the network" only if "Make this folder private" is turned off. (If a folder is private, you certainly don't want other network citizens rooting around in it.)
Figure 20-10. When you share a folder or a disk, a tiny hand cradles its icon from beneatha dead giveaway that you've made it available to other people on the network.
20.6.2 Notes on Simple File Sharing
POWER USERS' CLINIC Un-Hiding Hidden Folders
20.6.3 Hiding Folders
20.7 Standard File Sharing
20.7.1 Step 1: Turn on Sharing
Figure 20-11. The Sharing tab for a disk or folder on a Windows XP domain system. From here, you can share this folder, specify the maximum number of people who can access it at once, and specify who can access the share and to what degree.
20.7.2 Step 2: Limit Network Access
Figure 20-12. Top: The Permissions dialog box lets you control how much access each person has to the folder you're sharing. Using the top list, specify which people (or groups of people) can access your shared folder over the network. Bottom: When you click Add in the box above, this box appears. Click Find Now to locate a person's name; click the name and then click OK.
20.7.2.1 NTFS permissions vs. share permissions
20.7.2.2 Specify whose freedom you're about to limit
POWER USERS' CLINIC Administrative Shares
20.7.3 Clever Share Tricks
20.8 Offline Files
20.8.1 Phase 1: Turn on Offline Files
Figure 20-13. You must turn on Enable Offline Files to activate this feature. This is also your opportunity to specify when the synchronizing takes place, so that the process is automated and the files are kept up-to-date on both your hard drive and the network.
Figure 20-14. "Never allow my computer to go offline" doesn't actually prevent your computer from disconnecting from the network; it means that you'd rather stop working with offline files when the network connection is lost.
20.8.2 Phase 2: Choose the Files You Want
20.8.3 Phase 3: Log Off
Figure 20-15. Top: Each offline file and folder icon is marked with this double arrow badge for easy recognition. Middle: When your computer disconnects from the network (or when it disconnects from you you), the Offline Files and Local Area Connection icons (the first two pictured here) appear, along with a balloon, to make sure you know about it. Bottom: When your computer reconnects, the Local Area Connect icon disappears, and the little "i" logo appears on the Offline Files icon. You can manually synchronize your offline files by double-clicking the Offline Files icon, selecting the files you want (in the resulting window), and then clicking OK.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Making Files and Folders Available for Other People
20.8.4 Phase 4: Working Offline
Figure 20-16. When you're using the Details view, special information columns show you some useful details about each file: the type of file, whether or not it's been synchronized, where it is, and whether or not the server (or whatever computer stores the "real" copies of the files) is online.
20.8.5 Phase 5: Reconnecting to the Network
20.8.6 Synchronization Options
Figure 20-17. Left: The Logon/Logoff tab lets you specify which files and folders you want to synchronize automatically, and when you want them synchronized (when logging in, logging out, or both). Right: The On Idle tab allows you to specify which files and folders you want synchronized when your computer is momentarily unused. (Note that this dialog box also includes controls for managing offline Web pages, an Internet Explorer feature that lets you grab pages off the Web for reading later.)
20.8.6.1 When synchronization happens
20.8.6.2 A Full and Quick synchronization
Chapter 21. Three Ways to Dial In from the Road
21.1 Remote Access Basics
UP TO SPEED Remote Networking vs. Remote Control
21.2 Dialing Direct
21.2.1 Setting Up the Host PC
Figure 21-1. The New Connection Wizard is the key to setting up two of XP's three remote access features: direct dialing and virtual private networking (VPN). To set it up, you answer its questions once on the host computer, and again on the laptop (or whatever machine you'll use to dial in). Shown here from top: the welcome screen, the all-important "Accept incoming connections" option on the Advanced Connection Options screen (which is what makes your PC answer the phone), and the User Permissions screen (where you indicate which account holders are allowed to dial in).
21.2.2 Setting Up the Remote PC
21.2.3 Making the Call
Figure 21-2. You're ready to phone home. If you click the Properties button, you can invoke one of the dialing rules you prepared while reading Section 10.6.1, which can save you a bit of fiddling around with area codes and access numbers.
Figure 21-3. Top: Congratulationsyou're in. (When two 56 K modems connect, alas, they're limited to the top uploading speed of eitherand that's about 33 K.) Bottom: Disconnect by right-clicking the notification area icon. (The X'ed-out network icon, by the way, represents the office Ethernet cable that's currently disconnected from this laptop, which is in a hotel room somewhere.)
21.3 Virtual Private Networking
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Getting a Fixed IP Address
21.3.1 Setting Up the Host Machine
21.3.2 Making the Connection
21.4 Remote Desktop
21.4.1 Setting Up the Host Machine
Figure 21-4. Turning on the "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" checkbox makes Windows XP listen to the network for Remote Desktop connections. Now you can specify who, exactly, is allowed to dial in.
21.4.2 Making the Connection
Figure 21-5. Type in the IP address or registered DNS name of your host computer. Then fill in your name and password (and domain, if necessary), exactly the way you would if you were logging onto it in person.
Figure 21-6. The strange little title bar at the top of your screen lets you minimize the distant computer's screen or turn it into a floating window. To hide this title bar, click the pushpin icon so that it turns completely horizontal. After a minute, it slides into the top of the screen, out of your way until you move the cursor to the top edge of the screen.
Figure 21-7. By putting the other computer's screen into a window of its own, you save yourself a little bit of confusionand open up some unique possibilities. For example, you can now transfer documents back and forth just by dragging them between the two windows. You can even minimize the remote computer's screen entirely, reducing it to a tab on your taskbar until you need it again.
21.4.3 Keyboard Shortcuts for the Hopelessly Confused
21.4.4 Disconnecting
21.4.5 Fine-tuning Remote Desktop Connections
Figure 21-8. Click the Options button if you don't see these tabs. Once you've made them appear, though, a few useful (and a lot of rarely useful) settings become available. On the Display tab (left), for example, you can effectively reduce the size of the other computer's screen so that it fits within your laptop's. On the Experience tab (right), you can turn off special-effect animations to speed up the connection.
Part VI: Appendixes
A. Installing Windows XP Pro
A.1 Before You Begin
A.1.1 Checking Hardware Requirements
A.1.2 Hardware Compatibility
A.1.3 Checking Software Compatibility
Figure A-2. Top: The Windows XP Setup program is ready for action. Close the doors, take the phone off the hook, and cancel your appointments. The installer will take at least an hour to go about its businessnot including the time it will take you to iron out any post-installation glitches. Bottom: Use this important drop-down menu to indicate whether you want a clean installation or an upgrade installation.
A.2 Upgrade vs. Clean Install
A.2.1 About the Upgrade Installation
A.2.2 Buying Windows XP
A.2.3 About the Clean Install
A.2.3.1 Backing up
A.3 Dual Booting
Figure A-1. When you dual boot, this menu appears each time you turn on your PC, offering you a choice of OS. (If you don't choose in 30 seconds, the PC chooses for you.)
A.4 Choosing a File System
POWER USERS' CLINICUsing FDISK to Partition a Drive
A.5 Installing Windows XP
A.5.1 Preparing for the Installation
A.5.2 Performing an Update Installation
Figure A-3. This screen lists any programs and drivers that Microsoft considers incompatible with Windows XP Pro. You can save any information that shows up in this list to a file by clicking the Save As button.
A.5.3 Performing a Clean Install (or Dual-Boot Install)
A.6 Setup Wizard
WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Using an Image Disk
Figure A-4. Top: Let's activate Windows! During activation, your PC sends Microsoft a list of 10 internal components of your PC. This, ladies and gentleman, is copy protection. If you ever try to install Windows XP onto a second machine, it will notice that the components aren't identical, and you'll be locked out after 30 days (see Section 1.5). Bottom: If you don't have an Internet connection, you can do this process by telephone, although it's less convenient and takes a lot longer.
A.7 Network Identification Wizard
A.8 Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
A.8.1 Phase 1: Backing up the Files
Figure A-5. Top: The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, new to Windows XP, can be a sanity-saving convenience. Middle: It lets you save all of the files and settings into a folder, which can be on your hard drive, for example, across a network cable, or onto a disk. Bottom: After you've installed Windows XP or bought a new Windows XP computer, you can reinstate all of your old files and settings using the same wizard. Just locate the folder that it saved originally.
A.8.2 Phase 2: Restoring the Files
POWER USERS' CLINIC User State Migration Tool
A.9 Backing Out of Windows XP
A.10 Ditching Windows XP
Figure A-6. Whenever you perform an upgrade installation from Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows Me, you actually retain both the old and the new versions of Windows. If, as the months go by, you decide that you'd like to reclaim the disk space being used by the dormant operating system, you can delete it. You can delete Windows XP (top), restoring your older version, or you can delete the older version (bottom), committing to Windows XP forever.
A.11 Ditching the Older Windows
B. Windows XP, Menu by Menu
B.1 File Menu
B.1.1 Open, Open With…, Preview
B.1.2 Print
B.1.3 Explore
B.1.4 Search
B.1.5 Sharing and Security
B.1.6 Run As…
B.1.7 Pin to Start menu
B.1.8 Send To
B.1.9 New
B.1.10 Create Shortcut
B.1.11 Delete
B.1.12 Rename
B.1.13 Properties
B.1.14 Close
B.2 Edit Menu
B.2.1 Undo
B.2.2 Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste Shortcut
B.2.3 Copy To Folder, Move To Folder
Figure B-1. Click the + button to "expand" your drive's contents, so that you can choose a destination folder for the icon you're moving or copying. You can create a new folder inside the selected folder by clicking the Make New Folder button.
B.2.4 Select All
B.2.5 Invert Selection
B.3 View Menu
B.3.1 Toolbars
B.3.2 Status Bar
B.3.3 Explorer Bar
B.3.4 Thumbnails, Filmstrip, Tiles, Icons, List, Details
B.3.5 Arrange Icons By
B.3.6 Choose Details
B.3.7 Customize This Folder
B.3.8 Go To
B.3.9 Refresh
B.4 Favorites Menu
B.4.1 Add to Favorites
B.4.2 Organize Favorites
Figure B-2. Click a folder to see what's in it. Drag a Favorites item up or down the list to reposition it; drag it onto a folder icon to file it away into a subcategory. Click its name once to read, in the lower-left panel, about its origin and when you last looked at it.
B.4.3 Favorites List
B.5 Tools Menu
B.5.1 Map Network Drive
B.5.2 Disconnect Network Drive
B.5.3 Synchronize
B.5.4 Folder Options
B.6 Help Menu
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