Restricting Logon Access If you work in a multiuser computing environment, and you have full (administrat or level) access

to your computer, you might want to restrict unauthorized acces s to your "sensitive" files under Windows 95/98. One way is to disable the Cancel button in the Logon dialog box. Just run Regedit and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Network/Logon Create the "Logon" subkey if it is not present on your machine: highlight the Ne twork key -> right-click in the left hand Regedit pane -> select New -> Key -> n ame it "Logon" (no quotes) -> press Enter. Then add/modify a DWORD value and cal l it "MustBeValidated" (don't type the quotes). Double-click it, check the Decim al box and type 1 for value. Now click the Start button -> Shut Down (Log off UserName) -> Log on as a differ ent user, and you'll notice that the Logon Cancel button has been disabled. Disable CD Autorun 1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC 2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System. 3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.

20 things you didn't know about Windows XP You've read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operationa l changes. Now it's time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP's secrets. 1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamin a. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of us eful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > i nfo.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad . (Professional Edition only). 2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type 'gpedit.msc'; then select U ser Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explore r and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Pok ing around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edi tion only). 3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new s hortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user3 2.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if t hat's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same. 4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messe

nger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Ed it, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and re move it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, sel ect Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulne rable. 5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesti ng new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating an d watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsy stems, and 'schtasks' for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options -- they're all far too baroque to go into here. 6. XP has IP version 6 support -- the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Typ e 'ipv6 install' into Run... (it's OK, it won't ruin your existing network setup ) and then 'ipv6 /?' at the command line to find out more. If you don't know wha t IPv6 is, don't worry and don't bother. 7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by usi ng 'taskkill /pid' and the task number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot about what's going on in your system. 8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you've got a fast mach ine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'r egsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'. 9. XP has ClearType -- Microsoft's anti-aliasing font display technology -- but doesn't have it enabled by default. It's well worth trying, especially if you we re there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the e yes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, selec t Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down me nu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HK EY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2. 10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who's using network address t ranslation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attrib ute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum's r eal IP address -- they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com -- and g et them to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwa rded to the errant computer. 11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in ag ain. Right click the icon, select Run As... and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly usef ul if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which ma ny require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times o n the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects. 12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, regist ering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version /Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a valu e of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Ru n... from the start menu and type 'control userpasswords2', which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use. 14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if y ou tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advance d, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Fi les folder when browser is closed. 15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can't see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the deskt op, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dialup connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You'll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic. 16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Des ktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0. 17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set o f files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, A rrange Icon By... Show In Groups. 18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the t racks -- if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn't, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put y our own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it. 19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows ke y + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons . 20. The next release of Windows XP, codenamed Longhorn, is due out late next yea r or early 2003 and won't be much to write home about. The next big release is c odenamed Blackcomb and will be out in 2003/2004.

Boot Defragment A very important new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This basically means that all boot files are placed next to each ot her on the disk drive to allow for faster booting. By default this option is ena bled but some upgrade users have reported that it isn't on their setup. 1. Start Regedit. 2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction 3. Select Enable from the list on the right.

4. Right on it and select Modify. 5. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable. 6. Reboot your computer.

How to Write a Windows XP Driver Source: Microsoft Corporation July 2001 Summary: This document describes the steps you should take to create a Microsoft Windows XP driver for your device. To create a Windows XP device driver: Install the current Windows DDK. Read the system requirements and installation i nstructions in the stand-alone Getting Started HTML file supplied with the DDK. Read Getting Started with Windows Drivers. This document guides you through the planning and decision-making process involved in making a Windows device driver from design through distribution. You should also look through the DDK document ation for device-type-specific information. The DDK documentation set has the following device-type-specific nodes: Battery Devices Display and Print Devices IEEE 1284.4 Devices Interactive Input Devices Modem Devices Multifunction Devices Network Devices and Protocols Parallel Ports and Devices Serial Ports and Devices Smart Card Devices Still Image Devices Storage Devices Streaming Devices (Video and Audio) Devices Requiring VDDs

IDE bus are described in System Support for Buses. Driver development for most d evice types also requires a strong understanding of Windows operating system fun damentals, which are described in Kernel-Mode Driver Architecture. Look through the driver source code provided with the DDK for a sample that repr esents your device type. Use the sample code where possible, modifying it for yo

ur device's specifics. The sample code can enhance your understanding of Windows XP driver implementati on requirements and speed your development time. Compile and build your driver. This should be done using the Build utility and n ot some other compiler, because the Build utility has certain features that are necessary for driver development. Obtain a checked build of Windows XP, so that you can test and debug your driver using free and checked system builds. The checked build of Windows XP provides extensive kernel-mode debugging capabil ities not available in the free build. Create an INF file so that you can install and test your driver. Test and debug your driver. You should use Driver Verifier, a program that puts your driver through a variety of tests, stresses, and deliberate failures in ord er to test its response and reliability in many extreme situations. You should a lso use a debugger. Microsoft provides several powerful debuggers that can monit or and debug kernel-mode and user-mode drivers. Using Driver Verifier in conjunction with these debuggers, on both the checked a nd free versions of the operating system, can be a powerful way to test your dri ver. Provide an installation package so that customers can install devices that use y our driver. Submit your driver and installation package to Microsoft so that it can be digit ally signed. There are many resources available to you while developing your driver. The foll owing sites describe some of the support available to you: http://www.microsoft.com/ddk describes how to obtain the current DDK and provide s other information, such as a driver development reading list. http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev provides information, such as device-type-specifi c white papers and late-breaking news, and a list of resources available to driv er developers. http://support.microsoft.com/support/ddk contains DDK product support informatio n.

How to Use Qfixapp.exe In Windows XP This article describes the Quick Fix utility (Qfixapp.exe) that is included with the Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows XP and Windows .NET. Qfixapp. exe is a tool that includes pre-packaged fixes that provide an easy way to fix a program. Use Qfixapp.exe To Apply Program Fixes

You can use Qfixapp.exe to quickly apply various program fixes (AppFixes, also k nown as "shims") to a program to determine their effectiveness. Qfixapp.exe read s the %SystemRoot%\windows\apppatch\sysmain.sdb database to produce a list of av ailable fixes. When you select an AppFix, you can start the program executable ( .exe) file, and the AppFix will be applied. If a suitable AppFix is found, the t ool eventually helps you to generate and test matching file information. When yo u run Qfixapp.exe, you see the following items: The The application for which to apply the fix(es) check box. This setting disab les existing fixes in the database. The Layer tab with the Choose one of the existing layers to apply to your app bo x that contains the following entries: 256 Color 640X480 Disable Themes Internaltional LUA(Limited User Account) LUACleanUp NT4SP5 ProfilesSetup Win2000 Win95 Win98 The Fixes tab. On this tab you can select the individual fixes that you want to apply. Example of How to Use Qfixapp.exe 1. Start Notepad, and then click About Notepad on the Help menu. Note that the v ersion is 5.1. 2. Start Qfixapp.exe, click Win95, click Browse, and then open the Windows folde r. Note that the Windows\System32 folder is protected by Windows File Protection , so it is not able to use the layers. 3. Click Notepad.exe, click Open, and then click Run. 4. Start Notepad, and then click About Notepad on the Help menu. Note that the v ersion is now 4.0. If you click ViewLog, you could see what AppFix(es) are being used. If you click Advanced, you could see information about the .exe file. You can click Add Matc hing Info, and then select files that are related to the .exe file to identify t hat particular program. After you finish that step, you could click Create Fix S upport to add the layers with the Matching Information (GRABMI) and create an XM L-based database that is named YourAppName.sdb. Note that in the preceding examp le it is named Notepad.sdb, and is in the AppPatch folder.