Win XP Guide
Posted: September 19, 2001
Written by: Sine
Introduction
Windows XP is, beyond doubt, the most anticipated Microsoft
operating system since Windows 95. It is the latest Microsoft OS to be
marketed towards the general consumer, instead of towards power users and
server administrators in the case of Windows 2000. Because of this, there have
been many new changes and features added to Windows XP which even experienced
users may not notice.
I wrote this guide in order to help Windows XP users of any
experience level gain familiarity with the new features that XP adds. It’s not
so much of a tweak guide for performance, but a tweak guide for usability – by
knowing the new features of the OS, you can get up to speed even faster.
So, without further ado, let’s begin!
The New Start Menu
This is something that some people may find shocking – the start menu is completely redesigned! Instead of simply having Programs, Settings, Search, Documents, etc. in the menu, it now has My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures and other shortcuts such as commonly used programs and Control Panel. At the bottom is an “All Programs” menu which brings up the familiar “Programs” menu.
The new start menu. Click for a larger image.
The new start menu is very configurable - right-click on the taskbar, click Properties, pick the Start Menu tab, click “Customize”, and have at it. If you want to switch back to the old Start Menu, pick “Classic Start Menu” under the Start Menu tab.
Due to all the new icons added, if you’re using the new start menu, Windows will remove several icons from your desktop (My Computer, My Documents and My Network Places, to name a few).
You may or may not like the new menu – this one is very dependant on your personal preferences. New users will probably like it, but I expect that old die-hards won’t be too fond of it. Luckily, it’s easy to switch back.
New Visual Effects
One of the coolest new features of XP is that it’s fully skinnable. Users familiar with Gnome or KDE under UNIX know that you can change the appearance of windows, buttons, scrollbars, etc – now Windows can do it too, without clumsy add-on programs.
The default theme for Windows XP is the “Windows XP” theme (surprising!). I think it’s cool, some people think it’s too fruity… it’s a personal preference. It’s pretty easy to switch between different themes, so if you think XP looks revolting, you can switch it back. A theme doesn’t just include the skin; it also includes wallpaper and a screensaver. Keep that in mind when you’re switching between themes, as you probably have a wallpaper preference that will be lost, so you’ll have to set it again.
There aren’t any other themes available yet, though I’m sure Microsoft will publish more, and the user-submitted skins should be fairly exciting. I believe that skins will be the main reason for people to switch to Windows XP. It almost redefines customizability, though other platforms have had the ability for a long time.
Themes are not the only new visual effects in Windows XP – there are a whole lot of new effects. To see the different options, right-click on My Computer, click Properties, choose the Advanced tab, and click on the first Settings button.
If you’ve been using XP, you may have noticed that your start menu, tool tips and some dialog boxes leave shadows behind them. This is neat, but you probably won’t notice them after a month, so I’d recommend turning them off by un-checking “Use shadows under menus”. The same goes for the shadow under the mouse cursor, and the shadows under the desktop icons. Disabling all the fading and sliding effects will make your computer feel more responsive, since menus will just pop up instead of fading or sliding into view.
Drop shadow, or no? Can you tell the difference?
There are “Adjust for performance” and “Adjust for appearance” buttons, so you can set all of them in one fell swoop. I’d suggest leaving a few of them checked, such as “Smooth edges of screen fonts” and “Show window contents while dragging”.
There are even more performance options when you switch to the Advanced tab of this dialog box. Here, you can adjust the priority of applications vs. system cache, and also adjust your paging file settings. I’d suggest leaving these alone for now, although you may need to increase your paging file size if you’re running very low on RAM.
System Restore
System Restore started out in Windows ME and Windows 2000 as a way to protect system files, such as important DLLs and VXDs. With Windows XP, it has evolved into an entire system protection mechanism. Windows XP takes snapshots of your configuration at various key times, such as when you install a new driver. If something goes wrong, you can “roll-back” the changes, and even roll-back specific drivers from Device Manager if they’re causing problems.
All this protection takes a lot of space, however. XP allocates 10% of your partition to System Restore by default, and if you have a large drive, you can be losing lots of space (4gb for my 40gb partition!).
You can change a variety of options for System Restore, though. Right-click on My Computer, click Properties, and choose the System Restore tab. In this window you can completely disable system restore (which I don’t recommend) or change the settings for specific drives (which I do recommend).
Click for larger image
You should turn off System Restore for every drive except for the one XP is installed on. This prevents Windows XP from tying up space on drives that it isn’t supposed to use. You might also want to reduce the amount of space that System Restore will use, depending on the size of your hard drive and how much stuff you have on it.
New users might want to leave this setting alone, since the System Restore features will probably come in handy, but people who know what they’re doing may want to free up their hard drive space.
Automatic Update Settings
The automatic update settings for Windows XP are the same as for Windows ME and Windows 2000. You can access the settings by right-clicking on My Computer, choosing Properties, and changing to the Automatic Updates tab. If you have a permanent and fast Internet connection (DSL, cable or LAN) you would probably be best served by choosing the top button to download updates automatically. Users on slow connections or using dial-up should choose one of the other two settings, though, so your connection isn’t automatically tied up by downloads. You can always disable it altogether and check Windows Update manually.
User Accounts
Windows XP is being marketed towards the consumer, even though it’s built on the Windows 2000 architecture. Because of this, there are a few features that normal users may not be familiar with, and having multiple users on one computer is one of them. Windows XP Professional takes user accounts beyond what Windows 2000 provides, so even those familiar with 2000 may be surprised.
When you install Windows XP, you are asked to create an “administrator” user. This is different from Windows 2000, which automatically creates an Administrator and then creates a normal user of your choice.
Windows XP provides for two kinds of accounts – Administrator and Limited. An administrator user can change any aspect of the computer and generally has full control of the system, whereas a Limited user has control over their own files and settings but can’t mess with the system. (You can change the permissions of Limited users, to provide varying degrees of limits).
Click for larger image
You control all of this through the “User Accounts” Control Panel applet. You can create new users, delete users, change passwords, and modify permissions. One of the neat parts about XP’s users is that each user has a separate picture that shows up on the login screen. Another interesting feature is that you can switch users without logging out of the first user – you can still have programs running on the other user.
The New Folder Settings
Windows Explorer has some new features, as well. Aside from the normal icon, list, detail and thumbnail views, XP includes a tile view which looks somewhat like the normal icon view, but provides more information. Explorer also has the ability to read the ID3 tags from MP3s and can show things like album, artist and song name under tile or detail view (to configure this, click on “Choose Details” under the View menu of an explorer window).
Click for larger image
You still have all the same folder options that came with other versions of Windows. To view these, open an Explorer window and click on View, and then Folder Options. Once you get everything set the way you want it, you can make it the default across the system by clicking on the View tab and choosing “Apply to All Folders”.
The New Control Panel
Windows Millennium first introduced a simplified Control Panel, but this one is much better. Instead of showing all the Control Panel applets all at once in a big menu, it has categories that you can traverse, giving you menus that you can use to change whatever you want.
Click for larger image
I’m sure that experienced Windows users will switch back to the old Control Panel (by clicking on Tools, then Folder Options, and picking “Use Windows Classic Folders”), but some may like the new, less overwhelming Control Panel.
Internet Time Synchronizing
This is a feature that I’ve wanted all along, though I never really noticed. Windows will now automatically update your time via the Internet, using the Network Time Protocol (NTP). You can even run your own time server on a network (using third-party tools) and have all of your computers sync to that one.
The settings are accessed by double-clicking on the time on the taskbar, and switching to the “Internet Time” tab. Windows will use time.windows.com by default, though you can change this to whichever time server you prefer. You can disable the whole thing altogether, but for some reason you can’t change the default interval of two weeks – motherboards with badly drifting clocks may need to be updated more often, and there’s an “Update Now” button just for that.
There are a variety of shareware and freeware programs that will do this for you, and are much more configurable. If you want to see a list of these, you can try visiting http://www.tucows.com/sync95.html.
Zip Files
Usually the first thing I do when I install Windows is to install an unzipper to extract all of my backed-up files, but this is a thing of the past. Windows XP has built-in support for zip files, and they now show up as folders with a different icon. You can’t run a program from inside a zip file, though, so they still need to be extracted before you can do anything useful with them.
Click for larger image
I find that other utilities offer more compression and manipulation options, such as WinZip or WinRar, so you may want to install your own preferred program. Many people will find the built-in support to be sufficient, however, so you should find out for yourself.
CD Writing
One of the more interesting new capabilities of Windows XP is its completely integrated data and audio CD writing. This allows you to write any file to CD, and will even decode WMA/MP3 files and burn them as audio tracks.
Click for larger image
The support is slightly cumbersome, however, since the files for a data CD are automatically rolled into an image before they’re burned. This is a step that no other CD-writing program takes, and takes extra time. It’s still convenient, but your CD writer probably came with another program that you can use if you want to. Other CD-writing programs will work fine in Windows XP.
This is another feature that you may or may not use, depending on your preferences and your emotional bond to your utility of choice.
Tray Icon Hiding
This is something that I didn’t know XP even did until it suddenly started doing it – Windows will hide inactive system tray icons! This is very cool for those pesky programs that insist on adding system tray icons that you can’t get rid of.
Windows will only start doing this after it knows an icon is inactive, though, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I would suggest using Windows normally for about a week, and then you should start modifying its settings. Right-click on the task bar, click Properties, and click “Customize…” at the bottom and then start tweaking.
Sometimes you just don’t want to hide an icon, such as your soundcard’s volume control, so I’d suggest setting those kinds of things to “Always Show.” Other tray icons are almost never useful, such as antivirus programs and other utilities, so you can set those to “Always Hide”.
The arrow indicates hidden icons
When an icon is “hidden”, it doesn’t disappear completely. Instead, you’ll have a small arrow at the left edge of your system tray, which will restore all of your tray icons. Clicking it again will hide the hidden icons again, giving you a smaller tray.
Some Real Tweaking
For more system-level tweaks, you will have to use a third-party utility. This has been true for other versions of Windows, so it's no surprise - Microsoft doesn't include hard-core tweaks in the Control Panel, unfortunately. One that I've tried is Tweak-XP, available here from Electic.
It lets you adjust your cache settings, tweak your Internet connection, and play with some of the visual settings I've mentioned (and it even lets you make your task bar translucent!). I'm sure there will be a ton of Windows XP tweaking programs once XP gains popularity, but this one is already pretty good.
In Conclusion
I hope this guide helps new and old users of Windows alike to use Windows XP’s various features better. XP is definitely the most feature-filled and advanced OS from Microsoft to date, and some people may feel lost.
Microsoft has a very wide list of how-to articles which you can access at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/default.asp.
Good luck, and thanks for reading!
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All Content Copyright ©Dan Kennedy; 1998-2000
