Equal time for Windows XP questions

Tips, Windows 1 Minute

If you’re using Windows XP (including Media Center Edition 2005), post questions, comments, and suggestions for tips here. If I get enough questions maybe I can come up with some new tips for XP. (Be sure you look through the current collection of tips first.)

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Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

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18 thoughts on “Equal time for Windows XP questions”

  1. Perhaps not the comment for which you are looking, but I have had a great experience with Windows One Care. Installation was a breeze. It interfaces well with all my programs. It integrates much better than my previous widely used “brand name’ product.

  2. Ed: 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 when it is removed, an immediate BSOD results with the message

    NO_MORE_IRP_STACK_LOCATIONS

    I have Googled this and posted to several sites, including Dell’s forum (the PC is a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop) to no avail. Thoughts?

  3. Ed, I’ll take you up on your offer. Thanks much, as always.

    You have made me a big fan of task manager. But what do you think about the Performance console? Do you use it to monitor performance on a workstation, and if so what performance counters do you recommend tracking? It seems to yield more detailed information than task manager, but that can be a good thing or a bad thing. [Related question: does Vista have a Performance console as well, and how [if at all] is it new and improved from the XP version?]

    As you can probably tell, I am a workstation user interested mainly in managing processes and workloads to get maximum performance from my computer. I am not an IT guy, nor am I interested in monitoring or administering other computers on a network. [Note: for that reason, I have hardly tried or used Performance Logs and Alerts in addition to System Monitor.]

    Incidentally, I did learn one fascinating thing from System Monitor in XP. When you minimize a program with large working set memory (e.g. Outlook), the system starts paging and the page file size increases sharply. This happens even when you have lots of available RAM. Apparently the memory manager moves modified working set pages to the modified page list, these pages are paged to disk, and then the memory manager moves the pages to the free memory list. You can watch all this on task manager. It’s actually kinda cool. The available memory increases during the paging, but the system cache hardly increases at all.

    This doesn’t strike me as an efficient use of memory. Isn’t this eseentially how those awful “Ram Optimizers” work? It will be interesting to see what changes Vista makes to how the OS manages memory.

    Ken

  5. Hi Ed,
    Is there an easy way to backup the device-drivers used by the system. The manufacturer supplies only exe files to install the drivers (along with all those “helpful programs”). I need those when I reinstall my machine.
    Thanks.

    Kishore.

  6. here are some REAL tip requests:

    1) a powertoy or something that allows previewing the different taskbar tabs/minimized windows (like the “preview” extension for firefox) a la the alt-tab preview powertoy

    [That’s not a tip, that’s a request for a utility. If I run across anything that does that, I’ll pass it along. – EB]

    2) a windows lock icon (something that replicates what the “show desktop” icon does for win+D, except for win+L

    [Done. See this new post for the details. – EB]

    3) ability to drag around taskbar “tabs” (minimized windows) like firefox tabs (to switch order, etc.)

    [See my answer to request #1. – EB]

  7. I have had problems with Windows Movie maker working on HP Media Center machines. Is that normal?

  8. Can this be ‘fixed/changed’?

    When I’m in a folder (let’s call it MUSIC) that contains 400 other folders and I go into one of those other folders (let’s call it PINK FLOYD – THE DARL SIDE OF THE MOON) and then go back out into the MUSIC folder, I want to be where I was when I left that MUSIC folder. That is, looking at the PINK FLOYD – THE WALL folder, not back at top of the folder list looking at AC/DC – BACK IN BLACK where I have to scroll all the way down to to the PINK FLOYD folder again.

    Does this happen in Vista also? It bothers me all the time when I’m seraching through folders I have arranged by date and such.

  9. so, are you going to respond to these? I’m new to your site, and not sure how your tip requests work…

  10. I’ll use some of these for new posts. For this thread, I’m also implementing a new policy. Instead of responding in separate comments, I’ll respond directly within the original comment, with my remarks in bold so they stand out. If you look at your earlier post, you’ll see that I’ve provided a link to the first “by request” tip.

  12. Drew – very nice, unfortunately it doesn’t do real-time (like “preview” does for firefox), but I think this will be as good as it gets – KUDOS!

  14. Hi

    I’m not sure if this is the right forum.

    Need help on this please!!

    Everytime I Exit any game such as NFS Underground/Most Wanted / Medal of Honour, my computer restarts. Im really not sure if this is any memory issue.

    I did not have any such issues while using Windows 98.

    My computer configuration is:

    Windows XP Home Edition SP2
    AMD Athlon 2000XP 2GHZ
    640+ RAM (2 modules – 512 + 128)
    128MB nVIDIA graphics card ..

    Please suggest me fix for this issue…

    Thanks in advance.

    Regards
    Raghu

  15. How can I lengthen the cache in Windows Media Center, for example when I watch a TV show and hit pause, I have about 20-30 mins of cache before the show starts again. I use this cache so when Im watching a show, I can hit pause, run out to the store, eat, misc stuff, then come back in 20 minutes and start watching the show, allows me to fast forward thru the commercials.

    I can record the show and get around this, would rather just lengthen the cache file(s) and time?

    Thanks

  16. I have windows XP and when attempting to install SP2 (it is downloaded, but will not install) I recieve the error message “cannot read from or write to the data base”. I have been trying to install this for about 6 months and can’t get any answers from anyone on what the problem is. I did have SP2 and sent my PC to techs to repair my CD Burner, and have yet to hear from them as when I got my harddrive back, SP2 was gone and will not install. A week ago I started my system in safe mode, just to see if it could complete istallation from there, and noticed that on the log in screen there were 3 users; Administrator, Owner, and my daughters account. On normal start up the Administrator account is not there, and the system froze when I tried clicking it to access it. Does the one have to do with the other, and what do I do?

  17. I have two computers and am trying to network them together for the internet and to share a printer. I have a Linksys router installed. I cannot get anything to happen from my distant computer. What do I need to do? Carol

  18. On an old computer with Windows XP, in My Computer, I opened the list of files on an MP3 music CD. If I hovered the mouse over a filename, I would see song/track information (artist, album, length, etc.). If I single clicked on the file, the song/track information appeared in the status bar. On my new computer with Windows XP, instead of song/track information, all I see is “Type: MP3 Format Sound” and “Size: n.nn MB”. Is there a setting I can change to get all the track info to appear?

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