Service Pack 2
WinXP SP2 may make it more difficult for computer users to keep their machines up-to-date with the latest patches. The problem results from the new Windows Firewall, which will be installed by default when systems get SP2 through Microsoft's update mechanism. Patch management systems that use so-called agentless technology to roll out patches will find themselves powerless to patch newly firewalled WinXP systems. more information.

Sounds
If you find the WinXP sounds irritating turn them off. To turn off sounds, click Start, Control Panel. Double-click Sounds and Audio Devices, select the Sounds tab, click the down arrow under Sound Scheme, and select No Sounds. If you want to use some of the Windows sounds, and drop others, follow the same procedure. For example, to remove the Asterisk sound under Program Events, click Asterisk. At the bottom of the window, under Sounds, click the down arrow and select None. When you have things set up the way you want them, click Save As under Sound Scheme, enter a name for your new sound scheme, and click OK. You can also customize sounds. There are many sound sites on the Internet. If they don't have download instructions for a particular sound, rightclick the sound and select Save Target As. You can save it in any folder. On the Sounds tab, click the event, such as Asterisk, then click

Browse. Navigate to the sound you downloaded, double-click it, and click Apply, OK. You can also record and use your own sounds. A microphone can be used, along with Sound Recorder in Windows (Start, All Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, Sound Recorder). You can also use the free program Audacity.

Start Menu
If your Start menu has gotten large, there are a couple things you can do to reduce its size. Right-click the Start button, select Properties, select the Start Menu tab, and click Customize. In the Customize Start Menu dialog box make sure the General tab is selected. To reduce the size of the icons in your Start menu, click the Small Icons radio button under "Select An Icon Size For Programs." If you'd like to reduce the number of programs that appear in the bottom half of your Start menu, change the number in the "Number Of Programs On Start Menu field." When you're finished making changes, click OK.

System Tray Applets
You can shut down the following system tray applets/icons, or delete or hide them, without fear of disabling a critical Windows function.

• Clock- right-click the Taskbar, choose Properties, and uncheck "Show the clock."
• Microsoft Outlook- right-click the icon and choose "Customize Notifications," select the icon in the current items list, and then choose "Always hide" from the behavior list.
• Mozilla/Netscape Quick Launch- rightclick the icon, select "Disable Quick Launch," and then click OK.
• Musicmatch Jukebox- right-click the icon and choose "Disable QuickPlay."
• Network Status- click the icon once, click the Properties button, and uncheck "Show icon in notification area when connected."
• OpenOffice.org- right-click the icon and deselect "Load OpenOffice.org during System Start-up."
• Power - launch Control Panel's Power Options, click on Advanced, and uncheck "Always show icon on the Taskbar."
• QuickTime - right-click and choose QuickTime Preferences, choose "Browser Plug-in" from the drop-down list, and uncheck "QuickTime in system tray."
• Roxin Drag-to-Disc - right-click, choose "Settings," and uncheck "Show an icon in the system tray."
• Roxin Audto Central - right-click, choose "Options," and uncheck "Enable AudioCentral" icon in system tray.
• Unplug or Eject Hardware- right-click the icon, choose "Unplug or eject hardware," and uncheck "Show Unplug/Eject Icon on the Taskbar."
• Volume control- right-click, choose "Adjust Audio Properties," and uncheck "Place volume icon in the Taskbar."
• WildTangent Driver - click the icon, select "Recent Messages, Welcome to GameChannel," click the Options tab, and uncheck "Keep icon in system tray."
• Winamp Agent - right-click and choose "Disable Winamp Agent."
• Windows Messenger - right-click the icon, select Open, click Tools, Options, select the Preferences tab, and uncheck "Run this program when Windows starts."

Task Manager
There are several other ways to call up Task Manager in WinXP. One is to rightclick on the Taskbar and select Task Manager from the context list. A second is to click on Start, Run and enter "taskmgr" without the quotes. The third is to use the keyboard combination Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

Taskbar Tray The new Taskbar tray in WinXP, which is the "notification area" near the clock, lets you selectively hide items or see them all with the click of a button. To hide icons, you can right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties. Under "Notification Area" on the Taskbar tab, uncheck "Hide inactive icons" to get the old Windows behavior or keep it checked, and then click the adjacent Customize button to control the status of each icon.

Time Limits
If you want to restrict your teenager from using the computer to specific time periods during the day, first, log on to the computer using the Administrator account. Next, click Start, Run, in the Open box, type CMD, click OK and you're no longer in Windows. At the prompt, type "net user teenagername /time:M-F,5pm-7pm" without the quotes and replace "teenagername" with your son's Windows XP username. Now, your son/daughter will only be able to log on to the computer between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Logging him/her off is up to you. You can also set limits per day. For example, look at the line: net user teenagername /time:M,4pm- 5pm;T-F,1pm-3pm. By typing this at the command prompt, your son or daughter could log on to your computer Mondays between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. and Tuesday through Friday 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Troubleshoot Driver
If you're having a problem with one of your drives (hard drive, floppy drive, CD/ DVD drive etc.), open Windows Explorer by right clicking the Start button and selecting Explore. Locate the specific drive, right-click it, and select Properties. Now select the Hardware tab, click the Troubleshoot button, and follow the onscreen instructions.

User Accounts
WinXP enables an entire family or small office to share a single computer. Because everybody has a user account, Windows keeps track of each person's settings. The same computer acts like five different computers for a family of five. The computer even keeps track of everybody's programs while different people use the computer. Switching users is fast and easy. While holding down the Windows key, you press the letter L. The Welcome screen pops up, letting another person use the computer for a time. After you finish using the computer, hold down the Windows key and press the letter L. The Welcome screen pops up again, letting a different user log on to the computer.

Utilities
There are three useful utilities included in WinXP Professional and Windows 2000 Server. Microsoft now includes with WinXP Professional a new utility called Pathping.

It combines the functionality of ping and tracert. It also puts together a targeted series of traffic statistics designed specifically for network troubleshooting. Syntax is simple: just enter "pathping" then "-n" or one of the other seven switch letters and finally "targetname," which is the name of the server.

If required, you can get complete Pathping syntax help from Microsoft's Technet site. Once you've pointed Pathping at a target server, the utility not only establishes basic connectivity with the target device, but it also lists all the IP addresses of every router between you and the target server.

It further fleshes this out with latency and lost packet statistics for every hop in the sequence. Another new utility in Windows XP Professional is TaskKill. It allows you to stop any task that's running, be it on a local machine, or a remote one. You'll need to know either the name of the task, referred to as the ImageName or the PID (process ID) for the task in order to use TaskKill. This information is easy to get using the Task Kill, stopping a task is simply a matter of opening a command prompt and typing in "taskkill" followed by "/IM imagename" or "/PID processed."

This utility also has a large number of additional switches. These include the ability to enter passwords required to access certain tasks, enter filters to include or exclude specific tasks, and forcefully terminate both primary as well as child tasks.

The third utility, Diruse, comes from the Windows 2000 Resource Kit and is aimed at monitoring network directory usage statistics. If you have a few hundred network users each with a personal directory, user guidelines might clearly state that users shouldn't put unnecessary files on the network, but there are always a few immature computer users out there who ignore such edicts.

Finding these culprits, however, can be a real waste of system administration time if it's done inside something like Windows Explorer. Running Diruse will give you not only the location of the directory, but its overall size and the size of all its sub-directories. It can also help determine the actual size of files being compressed via NTFS compression.

You can easily make Diruse part of a Windows management script, basically allowing a periodic polling of your entire directory structure. This information can be dumped into a log file and then manipulated with something like Excel allowing administrators to easily shape their data in order to find trouble spots on the network.

You can find out more about Diruse and download the utility without the Windows 2000 Resource Kit. The combination of WinXP Professional and Win2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 is much more powerful and intricate than Windows NT Server and the older Windows client operating systems.

Volume Control
To put the volume control back where it belongs on your computer screen, which is right next to the little clock in the bottom right corner of the screen, click the Start button, open the Control Panel, and click the Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices icon. Next you must click the Sounds and Audio Devices icon and select the Place Volume Icon in the Taskbar check box. When a little speaker appears next to your clock, click OK to close the window. Now, if you need to turn the sound up or down in a hurry, click the little speaker by your clock. A sliding volume control appears, which lets you turn the sound up or down by sliding the control up or down. To turn the sound off completely, you need only click the Mute box.

Finally, there are many Web sites on the Internet with WinXP tips and tricks such as sympatico.ca. If you are looking for a particular tip/trick, check out this site.