WINDOWS XP TIPS
Reposition the Taskbar
Right click on the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen to ensure that Lock the Taskbar isn’t ticked. Next, left click on the Taskbar itself and drag to either the left or right side of the screen, or to the top. Release the mouse button and you have repositioned the Taskbar.
Save Search results
If you’ve performed a search for a specific file and you don’t want to lose the search results when you shut down your computer, you can save them. To do this left click File/Save Search. To use the same search again, just open the saved file.
Sounds
Sounds are played when certain actions are performed on your system to help highlight an event which has taken place. To personalise your sounds, go toStart/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices, left click the Sounds tab. Select a Program event and then select the sound you want to use from the drop down arrow at the bottom.
EMAIL ETIQUETTE
How to forward emails
This is an excellent message that
applies to all of us who send emails.
Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Every time you
forward an email there is information left over from the people
who received the message before you, namely their email addresses
and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the
list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it
takes is for some poor person to get a virus, and his or her
computer can send that virus to every email address that has
come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses
and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you
will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.
How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps.
Try the following if you haven't done it before:
1. When you
forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in
the body of the message (at the top). You MUST click the
'Forward' button first and then you will have full editing capabilities
against the body and headers of the message. If you
don't click on
'Forward' first, you won't be able to edit the
message at all.
2. Whenever you send an email to more
than one person, do NOT use the To: or CC: fields for adding
email addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon
copy) field for listing the email addresses. This is
the way the people you send to will only see their own email
address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where
it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address
and choose BCC:.
When you send to BCC: your message will automatically
say 'Undisclosed Recipients" in the 'TO:' field of the people
who receive it.
3. Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You
can rename the subject if you wish.
4. ALWAYS hit your
Forward button from the actual email you are reading. Ever
get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one
page with the information on it? By forwarding from
the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having
to open many emails just to see what you sent.
5. Have you
ever received an email that is a petition? It states
a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward
it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The
email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of
names and email addresses.
Download these handy post-it notes for your desktop -
Post-It notes Lite athttp://www.download.com/Post-it-Software-Notes-Lite/3000-2351_4-10060027.html
A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple
of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid
names and email addresses contained therein. DO NOT
put your email address on any petition. If you want to support the
petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended
recipient.
Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email addresses on a petition. And don’t believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it's not true!
Some of the other emails
to delete and not forward are:
a. The
one that says something like, Send this email to 10 people and
you’ll see something great run across your screen. Or sometimes
they'll just tease you by saying 'something really cute will
happen'.
IT DOESN'T HAPPEN!!!!!
b. Don't let the bad luck ones scare you either.
c. Before you forward an 'Amber Alert?, or a ‘Virus Alert?, or some of the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for a long time.
Just about everything
you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at
Snopes. Just go to www.snopes.com. It's really
easy to find out if it’s real or not. If it's not, please don't
pass it on.
So please, in the future, let's
stop the junk mail and the viruses.
The autorun feature enables CDs to play automatically when inserted in the drive. Removable and thumb drives use the same autorun feature to load files when the drives are plugged into the USB port. Malware relies on this autorun feature to spread from thumb drive to PC. Disable the autorun feature to prevent malware from spreading.
1. If
you use XP Pro, follow steps 1 through 8 only. XP Home users begin
at step 9.
2. Click Start and
then click Run
3. Type gpedit.msc and
click OK
4. The Group Policy window
will open. In the left pane, double-click Administrative Templates
5. In the right pane, double-click System
6. Scroll down the list and double-click Turn Off Autoplay
7. In the Turn Off Autoplay Properties window, select Enabled. From the
dropdown next to Turn Off Autoplay on, select All drives and then
click OK
8. Exit Group Policy by
selecting File, then choosing Exit from the menu.
9. XP Home users will need to make the changes by editing the registry
directly. To begin, click Start and then click Run
10. Type regedit and click OK. The Registry Editor window will open.
11. In the left pane, navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft
\Windows\CurrentVersion \Policies \Explorer.
12. With Explorer highlighted, in the right-pane right click the valueNoDriveTypeAutoRun and select Modify from the drop down menu. The
base value will be set to Hexadecimal. If not, select Hexadecimal.
13. Type 95 and click OK.
Note that this will stop
Autorun on removable/USB drives, but still allow it on CD ROM drives.
If you want to disable autorun on both, substitute b5 for the 95.
14. Exit Registry Editor by selecting File, then
choosing Exit from the menu.
15. You will now need to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.
NOTE: be very careful when editing the registry... if you're unsure, don't do it!
