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Some Useful Tips

How to Prepare Your Computer for When Microsoft Ends Support for Windows XP

Microsoft has officially dropped support and security updates for all XP versions through Service Pack 2. The only version of 32-bit XP that still qualifies for Microsoft's security patches and major bug-fixes is the Service Pack 3 edition.

XP has had a long and excellent run, but SP3 is the end of the line. That said, XP is not dead, and it's still the best OS for older hardware designed with XP in mind. If you're still using an XP box by choice (or necessity), there's lots you can do to keep things humming along until you eventually move to new hardware - which will almost assuredly come with the excellent Windows 7 already installed.

Click this link for some key steps you can take to keep your XP system running great!

How to Secure Wireless Network

Today almost every home has a wireless network. Be it for casual home use or serious home office use, it is important to have a secure wireless network in order to protect your personal/business data. A wireless network that is not secure could be open to multitude of attacks. Even if a harmless person trying to share bandwidth with you, that can drastically slow down your network performance.

Click this link for an article on steps you can take to secure your wireless network.

How to Fine-tune your modem/router for maximum security

Once you've run through your router's basic installation (following the instructions provided in the box), it's time to make a few security enhancements. Most routers today come with a URL that allows your browser to talk to it. When prompted, you'll need a username and a password, which should be included the instructions.

When you're signed in to the router's control menus, make the following changes:

Default SSID: It's a good idea to change the service set identifier or SSID from the default label (D-Link, for example) to something unique and more descriptive. Just don't be too descriptive, or everyone will know which router is yours. Be creative: avoid labels such as JoeSmithsBelkin or 123MainStLinksys; try something like nofreeloaders or wodoyouthinkur.

Default password: It's relatively simple for any amateur hacker to find out the default password for any modem/routerm, so change your username and password as soon as possible (and keep that information in a secure place) to prevent someone with bad intentions from taking over your router. If your router won't let you change the username (some Linux routers are hardwired to use root as the username) then be certain to use a long, complex, and difficult-to-crack password.

WPA encryption: You need to use encryption to protect your data as it travels over a wireless network. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is the most-commonly used encryption protocol for small businesses and homes. Check that your router is not set to Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), an older protocol that can be hacked.

For even-better security, you can use the newer WPA2, as long as all your networking devices support it. If you have one device that supports only WPA, you can't use WPA2 for the network.

OpenDNS (optional): Most ISPs tell you what Domain Name System (DNS) address to use. (This is the system that translates the common name of a Web site to its numerical address on the Internet.) Start by making sure you can connect to the Internet. Once you can do that, change the default DNS settings to those provided by OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Why make this change? OpenDNS blocks addresses that are known phishing or botnet sites, and it does so more quickly than most conventional DNS servers.

MAC address filtering (optional):. If you change your home networking devices infrequently, it is recommend using Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering. The MAC address is unique to each networked device. Enter the MAC addresses of your PCs, printers, and other network components into the router's MAC address table, and it will accept only traffic from those devices. If someone gets around your WEP security, MAC filtering will still keep the intruder at bay.

Some routers also allow you to store the MAC addresses of those devices you want to specifically prevent from joining your Wi-Fi (say, the neighbor you suspect is piggybacking onto your network). The router's admin settings will usually let you see who's connected to your network, by listing their IP and MAC addresses.

MAC addresses are made up of twelve characters arranged in sets of two, and there are two ways to find these numbers. First, the router's admin settings should reveal the MAC address of all connected devices. You might have to lower security to let your printer connect. Once you have its particulars, reset security and adjust the settings to let the printer connect securely.

To find the MAC address of a Windows PC to which you have full access, click Start and Run, then type cmd and hit Enter. At the command prompt, type ipconfig /all, then hit Enter again. Within the resulting list of details about your machine, locate the entry for physical address.

Carefully enter those digits onto the router's MAC address table. You will need to do this with each device you want to connect to the network.

These are basic security steps. Take the time to do it now, if you haven't already.

How to Shut Down a Frozen Program

On Windows XP or Vista, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc, which will bring up the Windows Task Manager.
Click on the 'processes' tab to see all the software running on your system.
Click the "CPU" column heading to sort the column in descending order.
This will show apps using the most CPU at the top. Look at the list for 30 seconds or so and if one is consistently using a very high percentage of CPU time, it might be a hung program.
You can click on the process name and then the "end process" button to kill the troublesome app (note, this will instantly shut down the app and you won't have an opportunity to save any files).

The faster way to Start in Safe Mode

Safe Mode is an important troubleshooting tool for all versions of Windows. Safe Mode starts the system with a minimal complement of drivers and services and no auto-start programs, giving you the opportunity to make configuration changes, delete files, or perform tests that are impossible in normal mode.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find it difficult to get Windows started in Safe Mode. The official way, of course, is to press F8 at startup and then choose a Safe Mode option from the startup menu, but timing is critical. Too early and your keystroke doesn’t get noticed. Too late and you miss your window of opportunity and start in normal mode.

The solution? If you’re already running in normal mode, use the System Configuration tool to restart in Safe Mode. In Windows Vista or Server 2008, click Start and type msconfig in the Search box, then click the shortcut that appears at the top of the Start menu. Click the Boot tab and select the check box next to Safe Boot, as shown here. (If you have a multi-boot system, be sure to select the correct entry from the list in the top window.)

msconfig

You don't need to make any other changes. Just click OK and then restart when prompted. The next time you start, you'll go straight to Safe Mode.

In XP or Server 2003, the procedure is slightly different. Click Start, Run, type msconfig in the Run box, and press Enter. In the System Configuration Utility window, click the BOOT.INI tab and select the /SAFEBOOT option.

In all cases, after you're done working in Safe Mode, open the System Configuration utility again, click the General tab, choose Normal Startup, and click OK. When you restart, you'll be back in business.

Thanks to Ed Bott's Windows Expertise for this tip.

Keyboard shortcuts

There are many useful keyboard shortcuts available for use in Windows XP, so if you are "keyboard literate" you may want to consider learning some of these as using the keyboard is still faster than using the mouse and has the additional incentive of saving time and reducing wear and tear on yourself.

For the full list to to this link at Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/personalize/default.mspx

Creating shortcuts

Shortcuts are small files that simply point to the location of another file or folder. They can be created easily in one of two ways -- either right click on the file or folder itself and select 'create shortcut' from the resulting menu, then cut and paste the shortcut to where you want it, or right click an empty space in the area you want the new shortcut to be, select 'new' then 'shortcut' from the menu.

Then once the wizard opens, browse to the file or folder you wish the shortcut to point to.

Backing up or transferring your email manually with outlook express

If you would like to ensure that you always have a backup of your Outlook Express mailboxes available, there is an easy way to do it manually. To do this you must enable viewing of hidden folders in order to successfully view your mailboxes (in Windows Exporer | Tools | Folder Options | View Tab | enable "show hidden files and folders")

Navigate to c:\documents and settings\(your username)\ Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\(some very long and complicated string of numbers and letters)\Microsoft\Outlook Express

You will see a .DBX file for each of your mailboxes. Transferring these to another hard drive or burning them onto a CD at regular intervals will ensure that you can always restore your email records should you be forced to reinstall Windows.

To restore your mailboxes in the event of reinstalling Windows, simply copy them back into the same folder once the install is complete, overwriting the existing files. You will now have access to all your email records.

How to Organize your Programs in the Start Menu (works for Windows XP, ME, W98 and W95)

If you have many programs installed, it can be difficult to find the one you want in the Start | All Programs menu. To make it easier, you can organize them into subfolders and "pin" your most used programs to the top section of the Start menu so they'll always appear there.

To pin a program to the top section, just click Start | All Programs and drag the program you want into the top section on the Start menu. This creates a shortcut there, and does not remove the shortcut from the All Programs menu.

To organize programs into subfolders, do the following:

Right click the Start button and select Explore. Windows Explorer will open with the Start menu folder highlighted in the left pane.

Click the Programs folder. In the right pane, you'll see folders that represent submenus and shortcuts to programs.

Make new submenus by right clicking in an empty space in the right pane and selecting New | Folder. Name the new folder whatever you want the new submenu to be named (for example, Graphics Programs).

You can drag the programs you want into the submenu (for example, you might drag Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw and PhotoPaint into the Graphics folder).

Now when you open the Programs menu, you'll have submenus with your similar programs organized in them, making it easier to find the programs you need and making your Programs menu shorter. Tip from WinXP News.

Set a new home page in Internet Explorer

The easiest way to change Internet Explorer's default page is to go to the web page you wish to use as your home page and then go to Tools | Internet Options and under the 'home page' section, click the 'use current' button to set it. You can also simply type the address of any page you wish to use into the address bar here, then click OK to confirm the change.

Error Messages:

When using a program you get a message ".... has caused an error in Kernel32.dll"

Kernel32.dll errors generally mean that you have a serious stability problem because something is attacking the core of the Windows operating system, so addressing the problem is important.

The Kernel32.dll is a 32-bit "dynamic link library" (dll) file that is found in Windows. Dynamic link library files, in general, are called upon by your programs to address specific components. There are literally hundreds of these files on your system that can be called upon at any time instead of having to be pre-loaded in the system memory.

The Kernel32.dll file handles memory management, input/output operations and interrupts, which are used to address hardware components.

It's an essential core component of Windows that acts as a traffic cop for controlling your primary hardware interface.

Unlike most DLL files, Kernel32.dll is loaded into a "protected memory space" when Windows is started up, because it is called upon constantly and so it can not be disturbed by other programs.

When you get a message that an error has occurred in Kernel32.dll, something has attempted to use the protected memory space it occupies. The portion of the error that comes before the "has caused an error" will point to the offending program.

There is a long list of potential causes of this error that include: viruses, low disk space, third-party software that is damaged or incorrectly installed, registry damage, bad memory (RAM), overheating CPU, bad power supply, bad hard disk controller, failing hard disk, damaged swap files, damage to the file allocation table, improper BIOS settings, incorrect hardware drivers, or a whole host of file corruption issues.

Some third-party (or non-Windows) programs try to force Windows into making system changes that it wouldn't normally make.

If the program named in the error message is not a Windows program, try uninstalling the program to see if the errors go away.

If you recently added a new printer and installed the software that came with it, try uninstalling it or anything that you can recall that was added since the error began.

As you can start to see, the task of tracking down the exact cause can be daunting.

The two most helpful bits of information for beginning your trek are the program name in the error message that caused the error and if you can recall when the problem began.