Tips and Tricks

[tuluvaguy]

Further speedup broadband cable Internet connection

READ DISCLAIMER FIRST AND THEN FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW IF APPLICABLE:
A. In the "My Network Places" properties (right click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK
B. Continue as indicated below steps:
1. From the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
2. Next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put netcap.exe then type "netcap/?". It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
3. Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
4. Open up control panel / system / dev man and look at your network adapters. You should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! On it. Right click on the one without the yellow ! And choose uninstall. YES! You are uninstalling your network adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
5. Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get a wizard just cancel out of it.
6. Now restart the machine and go to your connection properties again and you should have a new connection called "Local area connection 2". Highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
8. Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box
9. Restart the machine and enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost
It seems that Windows XP installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one slows everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards. This method breaks This"bond" and allows the NIC to run unhindered.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This tweak assumes that you have let Windows XP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has TCP/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks ,only installed. It also assumes that winxp will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try This as This may not work.

[tuluvaguy]

Avoid download of file attachments that may have virus infections

Open Group Policy Editor by going to START - RUN and entering gpedit.msc. This one is easy.. Navigate to USER CONFIGURATION - ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES - WINDOWS COMPONENTS - INTERNET EXPLORER. For This on right hand pane (most likely secondly last line at bottom) you should see an item Configure Outlook Express. Double Click on it and enable it and mark check box that says "Block attachments that may contain virus". OK out and close the global policy editor.

[tuluvaguy]

Heard of Atomic Clocks? Or NIST ? Here is a tip on accurately setting your computer clock

Till yesterday I was using a separate third party utility to synchronize my computer clock precisely. I am not a timely person in all other aspects of life (not a good thing but have to be truthful !) to worry about time that too at atomic level but as it is with many things, it sounds like good a good idea to do it anyway! Thanks to National Institute of Standards and Technology, It has become much easier to do that via Internet. And there is no need for third party tool if you have bought WINDOWS XP Operating System. Just click on the time (right side of your START bar or panel) and click on INTERNET TIME tab. Select the time.nist.gov and click update now. Your are all set. Wait a minute your computer clock is still not that advanced. So you many need to synchronize again and again. But hey, we are in the computer world and who has time for This manual work. So I have a solution for you. OPEN registry editor ( I think you know how to open a registry.. Click START-RUN and enter regedit) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Services \ W32Time \ TimeProviders \ NtpClient. In right pane, you would see "SpecialPollInterval". Double click and set a decimal number (unit is seconds) to the frequency with which you want to have the automatic synchronization carried out.
Also you can add many more time servers directly into registry because by default all that you can see is two time servers in the drop down list. List of many other time servers is available at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/. To add any other time servers, get details about the server and then navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\DateTime\Servers] and adding them into the list.

[tuluvaguy]

Do you know there are two command shell environments in XP ? which one is better ?

In Microsoft Windows XP Pro ( I think this must be true for HOME Edition, but don't quote on me), There is not one but two different command shell environment. One is the old one COMMAND.COM and other one is CMD.EXE. Both would do the job but they do it somewhat differently at a lower level. Which one is better ? I have noticed that CMD.EXE is much better in executing your commands. And this is true. CMD.EXE is the new command shell environment. that is better by design.So if you want to try out even your very old DOS apps, try it first in CMD.EXE. There is a very good chance that it will work and will work better than in your old shell.

[tuluvaguy]

Ever wondered how come you get into those HTML error pages ? Want to customize them ?

Some times, I type a webpage address and instead of seeing the page, see an error message. Do you know that all these error messages are stored in a DLL file. That is correct ! All of this message are burned into SHDOCLC.DLL file. Here is the syntax to see all of these error messages . If you want to see server busy error message type in Internet address field, res://c:\Windows\System32\SHDOCLC.DLL/servbusy.htm Similarly If you want to try out any other error message simply replace servbusy.htm by that html file (just the names) Here are some complete examples html files that you can try .
http_400.htm, http_404.htm, http_406.htm, http_410.htm, http_500.htm, http_501.htm, http_gen.htm, servbusy.htm, syntax.htm, navcancl.htm, offcancl.htm, policyerror.htm, policylooking.htm, policynone.htm, policysyntaxerror.htm, privacypolicy.dlg, preview.dlg, printerr.htm, printnf.htm, printnof.htm, printunk.htm, wcee.htm, ietext.bmp, ietext256.bmp, world.bmp, world256.gif, ie.gif, ie256.gif, orgfav.dlg, about.dlg, analyze.dlg, bidifind.dlg, docppg.ppg, error.dlg, find.dlg, findic.dlg, ieerror.dlg, imageppg.ppg, orgfav.dlg, and pstemplate.dlg
If you need to customize these messages, write an error message that you want to see as displayed and store it somewhere on your harddisk, open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and navigate to Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs and changing entries associated with various keys and provide complete path name to your own custom html file.

[tuluvaguy]

If you have a lot of RAM, do you really need swap file?

With RAM prices dropping so low ( I saw 256 MB SDRAM for $34 in COMPUSA on Jan 2nd,2002), more and more people are adding RAM to their computer. This is the best upgrade I would suggested to anyone. Well if you have 512MB or 768 MB or a whopping 1GB of RAM, you do not need a swap file (SWAP FILE is the concept of old dayw when RAM was too costly). Try this out. Go to My Computer and right click on properties and get into System Properties window. Go to Advanced tab and click on the Settings button for Performance group, click again on advanced tab and then click on change and choose NO SWAP FILE. I think you would see an improvement. If you don't like the change, follow the same steps and change SWAP FILE size to whatever you want (typically 1.5 * physical RAM). Also you can further gain by applying following changes in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management and look for DisablePagingExecutive. On my computer default value is 0. Set it to 1. This will stop paging act as well.

[tuluvaguy]

How to boost XP speed by by changing real time clock priority?

Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\PriorityControl]. If you see an entry by the name IRQ8Priority set it to a value "IRQ8Priority"=dword:00000001 if you don't then click on the right pane and add a new dword entry with given name.. IRQ8 is typically reserved for real time clock in most of the computers. Make sure thats the case (by going to device manager -> system devices -> system COMS/realtime clock -> properties -> resources tab , if it is set to another number try adding an entry with that number N as IRQNPriority) . Generally realtime clock priority boosting helps most but you are free to try others as well.

[tuluvaguy]

Reduce IO and increase turnaround which means faster computer !

Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Depending upon how much RAM you have, you can increase your diskcache size by entering a higher value in IoPageLockLimit. Typically your computer won't come optimized for diskcache and you can set to a value which works best for you by trial and error.Rule of thumb is to have a ratio of 1 or 2 for every 64K chuck. But try out various different values as each case would be a little different

[tuluvaguy]

How to avoid password entry at start up ?

Open Administrative tools in control panel and go to Local security policy.Select accounts and within that password policies. Set minimum password length to 0. This should be enough to stop password from being entered at startup.
I have received some criticism for asking users to set their password length to 0 and I agree to some of the potential security risks. Here is one better way to do it.

Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords2" select the user the you would like to have auto logon set to and then uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Ok out. Now you have to do one more thing. Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords" and clicking on “Change the way users log on or off”, and unchecking both “Use the Welcome Screen” and “Use Fast User Switching”.
There is another way to get to the same screen. Try this to auto logon 1. At a command prompt, type: rundll32 netplwiz.dll,UsersRunDll 2. In the User Accounts dialog that appears, clear the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" check box and click OK. 3. Enter the user name and password of the account you want to automatically log on.

Now Reboot and see it happen.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: (Please make sure that you are doing this to user account and not administrator account. If you do this to administrator account or user accounts that have admin privileges and connect to Internet. and do not have a good firewall installed or enabled, your are exposing yourself to potential risks) XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage. *Also note that default user accounts created by XP are in admin group and have admin privileges so be careful.

[tuluvaguy]

How to stop new programs installed balloon from coming up?

Right click on START button and select properties. Click on Customize and go to Advanced tab and deselect check box saying "Highlight newly installed programs". This would help you stop this annoying feature from popping up every now and then.