XP Tips

This past week has been a challenging week for me when it comes to using my computer. Last weekend my desktop got infected with a Trojan called VirtuMonde (read about it here ) and it took me almost the whole weekend to finally get rid of it. And then today I discovered how my laptop's Windows XP registry got messed up for some unknown reason. That took me another hour or so to get it fixed. And it was only made possible by a stroke of luck. I'll explain as we go along.

If you use Windows XP and have multiple user profile on the same computer, you may experience an issue whereby when a user logs off and the screen will go blank for a long time before it goes back to the welcome screen where you choose the user profile. During that time, there seems to be nothing you can do but stare at the blank screen. The usual Alt-Ctrl-Del combination does not respond either. If you are patient enough you can wait, for several minutes before it will finally return to the welcome screen.

Just this last couple of days, I noticed something that I haven't noted before when I started my Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). After IE was loaded, it just sits there blank, with the word connecting... while trying to load my homepage (which was www.yahoo.com). Eventually the homepage loaded but sure took a long time. Once the page is loaded, clicking any links within the page will load ok just like normal. The same thing happened when I open another tab window. I timed the whole process and it took around 90 seconds before the first page eventually gets loaded.

When you switch on the computer, it goes through a bootup process where it loads up Windows XP and then the startup programs, before you can begin to use it. Quite often when you install a new program on your computer, it will be configured to automatically load itself and runs in the background, during your computer boot up. Some of these programs are necessary to be loaded as such (example anti-virus programs) while others are not required. If you have installed a number of software over a period of time, there will be an accumulated number of startup programs set to be loaded at startup. This causes two problems. Firstly it makes the bootup process slow and painful. Just imagine yourself staring at the screen waiting for the control to return to you. (during this time, typically you may not be able to do anything until everything has been loaded). The second problem is when too many programs are loaded to run in the background, they eat up your computer memory. Computer memory are limited. and hence if you have too many programs running in nthe background, that means less memory for your CPU to work with. And the result is your Windows operating system becomes painfully slow in operation.

Do you use a digital camera? It would be highly unlikely that you don't, especially with the rapid dropping prices of a digital camera. I remember buying my first digital camera in 2001, for a 3MB digital camera it cost me around US$700!! I just saw one listed this week for about $130 with 7MB. You can even get a cheap one for around $50 (on special). So digital cameras are here to replace the traditional ones.

Now if you do use the digital camera, you may or may not encounter the problem of corrupted data on your memory card for one reason or another. If you have never encountered this, good for you but read on anyhow, for who knows when you might be need this one day.

Usually we do not see the importance of doing backups until something happened to our data. By then it may be too late. To help you protect your data if your hard disk fails or if you accidentally delete files, you can use the Windows XP Backup Utility to backup your data. Although the Backup Utility is included in the Windows XP Home Edition CD, it is not installed by default. Which means that the Backup icon is not present on the Start menu in Windows XP Home Edition. To use Backup, you must install the utility manually from the Windows XP Home Edition CD.

If you are like me, you will have many applications installed on your computer. And that means in your Start Menu under All Programs, you will have every imaginable programs listed. If you have a hard time finding applications in your All Programs menu, you can "pin" your favorite applications to the Start menu. By doing that, those application will appear in the Start menu when you click the Start button. No more opening the All Programs menu to to sieve through the whole list to find your often used program.

Windows XP being a graphical Operating System, the mouse typically is the main control point of getting something going. Without a doubt that beats the typing of commands in the DOS command prompt. But using the mouse has its downside, sort of. Your hand must leave the key board for the mouse to execute a command. Not a big deal for most of us, but for the people who really type a lot, it could be a little inconvenient. That's where keyboard shortcuts come to the rescue.

On a Windows compatible keyboard, there is a key with the Windows logo. Most of us are probably already aware that this special key is a shortcut for displaying the Start Menu. But when combined with another key, it becomes different shortcuts for various action. Here is a summary of what these available key combinations are and what they will do for you:

At one time or another you may find yourself in a situation whereby you have just installed a new software on your computer and the next thing you know your Windows starts to act funny or not working at all. "It was working fine yesterday and today it has gone crazy". Sounds familiar? The first thing is to try and remember what changes you have made to your Windows recently. It is possible that the new software or the new driver you installed the day before is not quite compatible with your hardware. The good case scenario might be that whenever you start the new software, it gives you an error message and refuse to continue. The worse case scenario would be that you cannot even start up your Windows anymore and instead you get a "Blue Screen death".

There will always be people who are learning computer for the first time. The young ones learn by jumping right into it, learning the basics on the play. (My three and a half year old son did just that without much coaching from me. He just watched me while I was on the computer and he just imitates my action). And for the not so young ones who may be intimidated by this Windows thing, hopefully the following basics will help get you on the way.

Let's begin with the frequently used terms or jargons that computer users use everyday relating to computing. Mastering these will not get you a degree or anything but at least you won't be staring at the other party with a blank face that says "What on earth are you talking about?"