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Windows XP Tips
Built In Firewall
XP has a built-in desktop firewall, but it's turned off by default. To turn it on: Right click on My Network Places, Properties, right click on your connection (e.g. Local Area Connection), select Properties again, then Advanced, and then click the box for Protect My Computer.
Tune XP's Visual Performance
Depending on how you set it up, XP may have reserved a substantial amount of your CPU horsepower for things like animating various desktop elements, placing shadows under menus and cursors, and rounding the upper corners of open windows. In the aggregate, these visual effects can slow down screen-drawing operations significantly. Also, XP may have selected a "color depth" for your video system in excess of what you really need; this, too, can slow down screen operations.
To adjust the color depth, right click anywhere on an empty portion of your desktop and select Properties/Settings. For most normal business users, the Color Quality setting should be set to Medium (16 bit). Higher settings do matter in photo/video editing and similar applications, but for mundane things like Web browsing, E-mail, and word processing, the Medium setting is fully adequate, and it's faster.
To adjust XP's desktop animations and visual effects, right click on My Computer and select Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings. You can choose to activate/deactivate individual items or use the general "best performance/best appearance" buttons. When you've made a change, click Apply, and you'll see the effects almost immediately. (By the way: Selecting Best Performance makes your desktop look very much like the classic desktop in Win98/Win2K.) Experiment until you've found the mix of speed and visual effects that works best for you.
Improve XP's Folder Views
You can easily change the
folder view to something more restrained, space-efficient, and useful.
Open My Documents. In the View menu, select Status Bar, List, and Arrange Icons
by Name. Next, right click on an empty spot in the My Documents toolbar and
select Customize. Choose any of the Available Toolbar Buttons you wish and click
Add. Exit the dialog.
Now click to the Tools menu and select Folder Options. Under the View tab, tell XP to show you the full path, to show hidden and system files, not to hide any file extensions, and not to hide protected folders--plus any other settings you want. When you have the folder options set the way you desire, click the "Apply to all folders" button at the top of the dialog. This adjusts all windows opened by Explorer, so they'll inherit the visual choices you made for this one window.
Customize the Taskbar
Right click on an empty spot in the Task Bar (the bar next to the Start button). Uncheck Lock the Taskbar. This lets you resize various portions of the taskbar the way you want them. Now, explore the other Taskbar settings to see if any will work for you.
One I always select is Toolbars/Desktop. I place the new Desktop toolbar far to the right on the Taskbar, over by the clock area. Whenever I want access to something on the Desktop that's covered with open windows, I can use this new Desktop toolbar as a shortcut to get to the item on the Desktop without having to close or move any open window.
Just Say "No" To Phoning-Home
By default, XP wants to contact the Microsoft servers to auto-search for patches, downloads, and updates. It also wants to send Microsoft information about any crashes you experience. The former can be an annoyance if the auto-update cycle kicks in at an inopportune time. The latter is a potential security hole, because the crash-reporting information includes a mini-dump of XP's memory contents; it can include snippets of open documents, passwords you've recently typed, and so on.
You can turn off both behaviors by right clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties, and first choosing the Automatic Updates tab. Select either Turn Off or, Notify me.
Now select the “Advanced” tab and click on “Error Reporting”. Check "Disable error reporting," but leave "notify me when critical errors occur" checked
Free Up Space, Control Your Cache
By default, both the Recycle Bin and Internet Explorer's Cache want to consume ridiculous amounts of your hard drive space. Right click on the Recycle Bin, select Properties, and on the Global tab, decide how much space you want the Recycle Bin to consume, either for all drives in your system, or on a per-drive basis. (It's a percentage of the total space. I adjust the slider way to the left, so I'm using "only" a few hundred megs of space for trash.)
Similarly, open Internet Explorer, and select Tools/Internet Options. Under Temporary Internet Files, click the Settings button and select a reasonable size for this cache area. Generally speaking, if you have a fast connection, 5 Mbytes to 10 Mbytes is adequate; 25 Mbytes or so is usually enough with a slower dial-up connection.
Clear the List of Your Recently Opened Documents
Windows XP remembers your recently opened documents and puts those files in the My Recent Documents menu in the Start menu. This is a useful feature because it allows you to get to stuff you recently opened. Odds are that if you opened a file recently, you're going to open it again! Visiting the My Recent Documents menu speeds up accessing those files you open the most. The problem is other people can see what you've been looking at recently, too! Maybe you opened something recently you don't want anyone to know you've opened. Here's how you clear the list:
- Right click on an empty area of the taskbar and click Properties
- In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, click on the Start Menu tab.
- On the Start Menu tab, click the Customize button. Note that there is a Start menu and a Classic Start Menu option. I'll assume you're using the new Start menu and have the first option selected.
- After clicking on the Customize button, you'll see the Customize Start Menu dialog box. Click on the Advanced tab.
- On the Advanced tab, click the Clear List button. This button lies just to the right of the List my most recently opened documents check box. If your computer is like mine, the dialog box will lock up! I hope that your Windows XP computer isn't like mine . Click OK and then click OK again to close all the dialog boxes.
Now when you go to the start menu, you'll see your My Recent Documents folder is gone! Don't worry. It will come back when you start opening documents.
Clear the Page file at Shutdown
The Windows page file is a portion of the hard disk used for virtual memory - that is, swapping information in and out of physical memory (RAM) so the applications have more usable memory than is actually installed. The information in the page file is not needed when you shut down, since information in RAM is lost when the computer is turned off. The page file can be quite large, so if you want to be sure it's cleared at shutdown to save disk space, you can do so in Windows XP Pro by performing the following steps:
- Click Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Local Security Policy
- In the Local Security Policy management console, expand Local Policies in the left pane.
- Click Security Options.
- In the right pane, scroll down to the policy named "Shutdown: clear virtual memory pagefile." This policy is disabled by default. Right click it and select Properties.
- Click the Enable option button.