Ed Bott's Windows Expertise

Serdar Yegulalp and I have exchanged several e-mails this afternoon discussing how Windows Vista handles the logged-on user’s Temporary files folder. He calls it Vista’s Not-So-Secret Garbage Dump and has instructions on how to empty it.
I remember when Carl and Craig and I wrote the first edition of Windows XP Inside Out we concluded in our early testing that [...]

I’ve posted a couple of new entries in the Vista Hands On series over at ZDNet.
Vista Hands On #9: Use Vista for four months, free
You can install an evaluation copy of any Vista edition and use it for a minimum of 30 days without having to activate it. As several publications have already noted, you [...]

My Hands On Vista series continues at ZDNet. Here are the two latest installments:
Vista Hands On #3: Check your disk before upgrading
Before you even think of upgrading to Vista, check the disk you plan to install it on. Here’s why.
Vista Hands On #4: Clean install with an upgrade key
You’ve probably read all about the “Vista [...]

Microsoft’s official definition of a clean Windows install involves booting from the Windows DVD and pointing Setup at a piece of bare hard disk or a freshly formatted partition.
But that’s not the only way to do a clean install. In fact, thanks to the new Setup architecture in Vista you can now do what you [...]

I’ve just launched a new series of Windows Vista tips over at ZDNet, where I’ll be posting a tip a day for the next 30 days.
Today’s installment covers product keys. When you buy a retail copy of Windows Vista, the most important part of your purchase is the product key that comes with it. That 25-character [...]

Using IE7? Go here:
Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7

Click the Google link.
Click Add Provider. (Click the optional checkbox to set this as your default search page if that’s your pleasure.)
There, you’re done.
I’ve also added Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, and CNET to my list.
Took about 15 seconds, total.
I could add a custom search link to this site, [...]

Several people have commented that this site is harder to read now, because of the change in typeface and the white background. One solution is to zoom the page and make everything a little easier to read.
In Internet Explorer or Firefox, select the window or browser tab containing the page you want to zoom, hold [...]

Thomas Hawk is trying a tech support experiment, in which he posts problems with his PC and then requests help. Instead of posting in his comments, I’m going to cover one of his problems here:
Problem number 1. My computer seems to be inexplicably freezing up (yes it’s a Windows machine, I know, I know, get a [...]

Over the past few days, I’ve seen a flurry of posts about someone’s campaign to kill off the Caps Lock key. Dwight Silverman notes, sadly, that the movement is the online equivalent of peasants with pitchforks storming the castle:
Unfortunately, the link goes off to a Google Groups discussion, rather than a reasoned, written argument. The [...]

A few weeks ago, I asked readers to send along their Windows XP questions. Here are some answers.
Jim Konzak had a tech support question:

My question is how to fix what seems to be a corrupted Windows XP (driver?) file related to USB devices. If I plug in a USB drive, it is recognized and functions fine. But [...]