Copy and Paste Format Only Over & Over Again in MS Word, Powerpnt

Do you like the Format Painter in MS Word and MS PowerPoint?

Do you find it frustrating that when you forget to double click the button, it shuts off after just one paste?

Or, have you ever tried to interrupt the process of format painting by editing some text, only to find that the program has "forgotten" the formatting you intended to paint once you were back on track?

If any of this is bothersome for you, but you still like the idea of transferring just the formatting, I have an alternative to suggest.

Next time, instead of the Format Painter button, try Ctrl + Shift + C to copy the formatting.

Once the format is copied, highlight the text to be formatted and use Ctrl + Shift + V.

Did you spot an error?

Want to fix it right now so you don't forget?

Go ahead, and rest assured that when you're done the Ctrl + Shift + V will still paste your formatting over and over again.

I'd call this the best of both worlds... format painting combined with ability to do other tasks in between the pastes.

Talk about efficiency!

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What should u do when Gmail is down ?? Alternative ways...

Alternative Ways to Connect to Gmail

A lot of people all over the world get a little rattled whenever Gmail's services go down. Since So many people depend on Gmail for their daily email needs, today we will learn how to use it when there's an outage.

Gmail operates in three primary modes: standard, HTML and mobile. Sometimes even when the standard version gives you errors, html and mobile are accessible.
In most of the cases it's just the standard Gmail interface which goes down.

Method one is trying out the HTML interface. To access that click on:
http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

It's a quick, plain-clothed alternative to the standard Gmail interface. I suggest you bookmark this link in your browser’s favorite menu for quick access.

The second way out is to access the mobile version of Gmail; the page meant for your mobiles phones. Type in "m.gmail.com" in your address bar and you will have a very bare boned, almost skeletal version of Gmail. As text based as it looks, it loads quick and serves the purpose.

If the look starts to remind you of the great depression then I suggest you try out the iPhone version of Gmail Mobile.

The link for that is:
http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/

Lastly, if you are a iGoogle user, you can read all your mail by going to the Gmail Gadget in your iGoogle. Even if you are not a iGoogle User, you can still access this benefit by logging on to: http://www.google.com/ig/gmailmax. In fact if you select canvas view in iGoogle you can view your full inbox instead of just a feed and even reply to email from right there. iGoogle is a great homepage for people who rely largely on Gmail and Google reader.

These 4 options in more than many ways ensure you access to your precious Gmail inbox. However, if you still encounter problems, then the last way is to use your desktop mail client. Yes, the old fashioned Outlook , Outlook express, Thunderbird, etc. While the web interface of Gmail might fail, your mail client will still be able to connect to gmail servers and download your mail to your local PC.

Visit the following link to go through easy steps to configure your client for Gmail Pop3 access.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12103

With so many alternate ways it’s safe to say - Bye Bye Gmail Troubles!

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Delete vs. Backspace in MS Word

Delete vs. Backspace

Work with MS Word tables?

Ever try to remove cells, rows or columns by highlighting them and then hitting the Delete key?

What happened?

Certainly not what you had hoped for, I'm sure. Instead of deleting the cells, only the data is gone.

Now what?

Well, I suppose you could rehighlight the cells and then use the Table menu, Delete submenu, (or for 2007 users it would be the Table Tools, Layout tab of the Ribbon) but who wants to do all that work?

And, yes, I do realize you could have used the Table menu / Layout tab from the beginning, but that just takes too many steps.

So, if we can't use the Delete key to remove cells, what can we use?

Good question and fortunately, I've got an easy answer: Backspace.

Yep, that's it. Next time, highlight the cells, rows or columns and then hit the Backspace key.

If you've highlighted an entire row or column, poof! They're gone, data and all!

If you happened to have highlighted just a few cells, you'll get a handy little window where you can tell Word how to handle the situation.

Make your choice and then click OK.

So, let's recap:

Delete removes just the cell contents.

Backspace removes the cell and its contents.

Delete? Backspace? Now it's all a simple question of how much you want to remove!

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What is Over-Clocking ?

Q:
What is over-clocking? Is this okay to do to my computer... I mean it won't hurt it, will it?

A:
Overclocking is a popular way to get a little more performance from a system. It is often called pushing or speed margining. Sometimes you can force your CPU to run faster than intended, but it does carry some risks such as over-heating, so you should become familiar with all the pros and cons before you attempt it. You don't want all your crucial data going up in smoke!

Overclocking is possible because reputable companies are conservative in their speed rating. Chip manufacturers want to be sure that the chip will run safely at the advertised speed. Overclockers attempt to exploit this conservatism, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Attempting to operate hardware in a way that it was not designed to is very risky. Your PC's Circuit timing is very delicate and you can cause subtle problems by messing with it. The average person may not even notice the small performance improvements. You may get a 6-10% speed improvement, but will it make any difference?

If you use your PC primarily for games and graphics, then you might benefit from overclocking. However, I don't think overclocking is necessary or recommended for the average user. It should definitely NOT be attempted by a novice.

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Password protect your PenDrive with USB Safeguard

Password protect your PenDrive with USB SafeguardWe often have some personal documents/data in USB stick which we don’t want anybody else to read or access. In this case it is necessary to password protect your sensitive data. This can be done by using the portable USB Safeguard. USB Safeguard is a freeware which can help [...]

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Make Your Blinking Cursor Bigger

Make Your Blinking Cursor Bigger!

Is your cursor a little too slender to see? Do you often times wish that it would eat a cheeseburger or two and gain a few pounds? Well, electronics typically don't eat, so we're going to have to go the traditional route, via the control panel!

For Windows Vista:

Go: Start>Control Panel>Ease of Access Center>Make the Computer Easier to See

Towards the bottom you'll see an option to set the thickness of the blinking cursor. Just set it to the desired width and away you go!

If you're using Windows 7:

Start>Control Panel>Ease of Access>Ease of Access Center>Make the Computer Easier to See

For Windows XP:

Go: Start>Control Panel>Accessibility Options. Choose the Display Tab and then under Cursor Options you can set your width.

Voila! Instant cursor weight gain!

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Ninite – install multiple programs with single file

Ninite – install multiple programs with single file

Ninite – install multiple programs with single fileWe often have to format our PC due to one or another reason and each time we need to install each and every software after formatting the PC. One will have to remember each & every software , download them separately and install them one by one after [...]

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Download YouTube Videos the Easy Way Without any Software

Download YouTube Videos the Easy Way!

This is a real quick and easy one for all our YouTube users out there. Say you really like a video - I mean, like it enough to want to download it. What do you do?

Bookmark it and come back every time you want to see it?

Bor-ring!

How about this:

While on YouTube, navigate to a video you want to download to your computer and up in the address bar of your browser, replace the “Y” in YouTube with a number 3 and hit enter.

Look at this for an example:

WWW.3outube.com/watch/...............

You'll be taken to the 3ouTube site where you'll have the choice of downloading in MP4 or FLV formats!

Time to fill up that hard-drive!

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Introduction to TCP/IP

Many people may not know what TCP/IP is nor what its effect is on the Internet. The fact is, without TCP/IP there would be no Internet. And it is because of the American military that the Internet exists.During the days of the cold war, the defense department was interested in developing a means of electronic communication which could survive an attack by being able to re-route itself around any failed section of the network.They began a research project designed to connect many different networks, and many different types of hardware from various vendors. Thus was the birth of the Internet (sorta). In reality, they were forced to connect different types of hardware from various vendors because the different branches of the military used different hardware. Some used IBM, while others used Unisys or DEC.

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) were the protocols they developed. The first Internet was a success because it delivered a few basic services that everyone needed: file transfer, electronic mail, and remote login to name a few. A user could also use the “internet” across a very large number of client and server systems.
As with other communications protocols, TCP/IP is composed of layers. Each layer has it’s own responsibility:

IP is responsible for moving data from computer to computer. IP forwards each packet based on a four-byte destination address (the IP number). IP uses gateways to help move data from point “a” to point “b”. Early gateways were responsible for finding routes for IP to follow.

TCP is responsible for ensuring correct delivery of data from computer to computer. Because data can be lost in the network, TCP adds support to detect errors or lost data and to trigger retransmission until the data is correctly and completely received.

How TCP/IP works

Computers are first connected to their Local Area Network (LAN). TCP/IP shares the LAN with other systems such as file servers, web servers and so on. The hardware connects via a network connection that has it’s own hard coded unique address – called a MAC (Media Access Control) address. The client is either assigned an address, or requests one from a server. Once the client has an address they can communicate, via IP, to the other clients on the network. As mentioned above, IP is used to send the data, while TCP verifies that it is sent correctly.

When a client wishes to connect to another computer outside the LAN, they generally go through a computer called a Gateway (mentioned above). The gateway’s job is to find and store routes to destinations. It does this through a series of broadcast messages sent to other gateways and servers nearest to it. They in turn could broadcast for a route. This procedure continues until a computer somewhere says “Oh yeah, I know how to get there.” This information is then relayed to the first gateway that now has a route the client can use.

How does the system know the data is correct?

As mentioned above, IP is responsible for getting the data there. TCP then takes over to verify it.

Encoded in the data packets is other data that is used to verify the packet. This data (a checksum, or mathematical representation of the packet) is confirmed by TCP and a confirmation is sent back to the sender.

This process of sending, receiving and acknowledging happens for each individual packet sent over the Internet.

When the data is verified, it is reassembled on the receiving computer. If a package is not verified, the sending computer will re-send it and wait for confirmation. This way both computers – both sending and receiving – know which data is correct and which isn’t.

One nice thing about this protocol is that it doesn’t need to stick to just one route. Generally, when you are sending or receiving data it is taking multiple routes to get to its destination. This ensures data accuracy.

Just the facts:

TCP/IP addresses are based on 4 octets of 8 bits each. Each octet represents a number between 0 and 255. So an IP address looks like: 111.222.333.444.

There are 3 classes of IP addresses:

Ranges starting with “1” and ending with “126” (i.e.. 1.1.1.1 to 126.255.255.254) are Class A

Ranges starting with “128” and ending with 191 (i.e.. 128.1.1.1 to 191.255.255.254) are Class B

Ranges starting with 192 and ending with 254 (i.e.. 192.1.1.1 to 254.255.255.254) are Class C ( You will notice that there are no IP addresses starting with “127”. These are reserved addresses.)

Calculating an IP address

One of the things that always confused me was how to convert IP address to their Binary form. It is quite simple really. IP addresses use the Binary numbers (“1”s and “0”s) and are read from right to left.

Each position in the binary address corresponds to a number, from 1 to 128 and look like this:

128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

To calculate an address, simply add the numbers where a “1” appears.

For example, the following:

00001010 works out to 10. Like this:

0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

You can see that the “1”s line up with the 2 and 8 – when you add 2 plus 8 the answer is 10.

Since an IP address contains 4 of these octets, it can be displayed in binary like:

00001010.00001010.00001010.00001010

Therefore, IP Address 10.129.254.1 would be converted to:

00001010.10000001.11111110.00000001
(8+2) . (128+1) .(128+64+32+8+4+2).(1)

While it’s not important for the average person to know how to figure this stuff out, it is important for someone setting up a small network. That is because TCP/IP also uses what are called subnet masks to determine which addresses are valid.

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Easy Way To Unlock Windows 7 Hidden Themes

Windows 7 had created a special themes for some reasons and it does get activated when we select the region while installing the windows 7, otherwise it just stays disable. But don't worry you can manually activate these themes by following simple 10 steps.

1. Open Windows Explorer

2. Click Organize, and select Folder and Search Options.

3. Go to View tab.

4. Select Show hidden files, folders and drivers and uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). If prompted with confirmation, click Yes.

5. Click OK.

6. Browse to the following folder: \Windows\Globalization\MCT\

7. There are five folders in the name with format MCT-XX (where XX is AU, CA, GB, US, or ZA) which represents globalization settings for each region. Go into the folder that you want to activate its theme.
Note: AU, CA and ZA regions have the same themes.

8. Open the Theme folder inside the selected region folder.

9. Double click on the XX.theme file to apply the theme to the Windows 7 desktop system. Once a theme is ran and activated, the theme will be remembered and saved into Personalization options, so that user can change or select the theme again directly from Personalization settings screen.

10. Now to go to Folder Options to reverse the first 5 steps to hide the hidden and protected system files and folders again.

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Install XP from DOS

If XP will not install from the CD or if you have a new drive with no operating system on it yet try these:


Install Windows XP from the hard drive with Windows 98 already installed:

Boot Windows 98
Insert the XP CD into your CD reader
Explore Windows XP through My Computer
Copy i386 folder to C:\
Go into C:\i386 folder and double click on winnt32.exe to launch the setup from the hard drive

Install Windows XP from DOS (ie. no OS on a new hard drive):

Boot with a Windows 98 Start Up disk
Insert the Windows 98 CD into the CD reader
Run smartdrv.exe from the Win98 directory on the windows 98 CD (file caching)
Type cd.. to back up to the root directory
Insert Windows XP CD into the CD reader
Copy the i386 folder to C:\
Go into C:\i386 folder on C: and type winnt.exe to launch the setup from the hard drive.

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Repair Your system Yourself...

u can repair ur windows XP OS without loosing any setting or data, if u have any missing OS file or any errors, repairing will fix it.

Reboot the computer with first boot device as CD-Rom

Place the Win XP cd in CD-Rom

At the prompt "Press any key to boot from CD" press any key

Setup starts-Here u also see a Repair option but dont use it-Press Enter to continue setup-Press F8 to accept License Agreement

Now setup will search for previously installed Operating systems, a list will be displayed
Note: if u have windows 98 it wont be displayed in the list

Select the Operating system which ur repairing, like "C:\Microsoft Windows XP Professional"

Press 'R' to repair

Setup startup copying files and Restarts

Note: if the file copying process is not done and the system restarts u have to again follow the same as above by booting from CD-Rom, after file copying is done system restarts

Now u have to boot from HDD not from CD, At the prompt "Press any key to boot from CD" dont press any key, setup will continue

U need ur CD key

Warning: If u have downloaded Service Pack 2 and installed it then u have to again download and install it after repair
If u have ur Service Pack 2 inbuit in the XP CD then no need to worry, it will get installed along with Os

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22 Tips for Skin Care

1) Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day.

2) Cut some beet root into small pieces and grind them. Squeeze juice from beet root and massage to your face for 5 minutes. Shower after 10 minutes with mild soap or gram flour.

3) Mix sandalwood powder with rose water and add 4 to 5 drops of milk in it and apply on to your face and body. Shower after 15 minutes with warm water.

4) Mix honey in water and drink daily in the morning to keep your skin shiny and smooth.

5) Warm honey and mix with lemon juice and apply on to face. Wash after it dry.

6) Mix Turmeric, sandal powder and olive oil and apply to body. Shower after 10 minutes.

7) Massage your skin with milk. Milk has moisturizer, it will keep your skin smooth.

Cool Use humidifiers and keep room temperature moderate to keep your skin away from dryness.

9) Hot water blushes your skin and you don t feel fresh unless you have bath with little cold water. If you have shower for a longtime, dead skin will be automatically be removed. Do not rub with towel, be gentle on your skin.

10) Take food which contains more A and C vitamin.

11) Grate carrot and boil. Massage that mixture to body to get fair and smooth skin.

12) For natural bleaching: - mix milk and lemon juice. The milk will break as soon as you mix the lemon juice in it. Use that mixture to massage on your body. It works as natural bleaching.

13) Mix turmeric and cream on the top of milk, massage that mixture to body.

14) If
you go into sun your skin will lost the fair ness. To get your skin color to normal take equal quantities of cucumber juice and tomato juice and apply on to skin. Shower after 10 minutes.

15) Massage mustard oil to your skin for 5 minutes and have shower with gram flour or mild soap.

16) Mix cream on the top of milk and all-purpose flour and apply that paste on to your skin avoid eyes, eyebrows and lips. Shower after 5 minutes. This will make skin smooth.

17) Mix curds (yogurt) with wheat flour and apply to your skin and take shower after 5 minutes.

1Cool Grind rose petals and mix with cream on the top of milk and apply to your body. Shower after 10 minutes.

19) Scaly skin is a result of fluorine deficiency. Fluorine is the anti-resistant element of the human body, the absence of which creates problems in the blood and spleen. Since cooking and heating foods destroys fluorine, it is better to eat uncooked raw fruits and vegetables. Other foods rich in fluorine are goat milk and cheese, rye flour, avocados, sea plants and cabbage, cream whey and cottage cheese.

20) Wrinkle skin is a result of Sodium deficiency and makes skin sticky. Cucumbers are ideal for combating and preventing sodium deficiency because they are not only high in sodium, but also help in keeping the body cool, a great summer s treat.

21) Skin rashes are the result of silicon deficiency. To avoid pus and rashes, eat plenty of sprouts, alfalfa, barley, tomatoes, spinach, strawberries and figs.

22) Skin eruptions are the result of Chlorophyll. And are found in wheat grass and other green leafy vegetables

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How to assign scheduled tasks and automatically wake your computer

Assigning scheduled tasks and automatically waking your computer is very useful, especially if you want your computer booted and virus-scanned before you arrive at work. There are various programs to do this, but it’s not that hard to do it manually.

1.First go to Control Panel and choose Performance and Maintenance. Click the scheduled tasks icon.

2.Next click on Add Scheduled task to open the Scheduled Tasks Wizard.

3.Browse for the program you want to run or select it from the list. Type the name and select how often you want it to run.Press next and choose the time to run it. You might need to enter the username and password from where you want to run it. Check the settings in the final window and click on Open Advanced Properties for this task when I click finish, and click finish.

4.When the advanced properties window opens, click the Settings tab and choose Wake computer to run this task if you want.

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How to: Make 4 fake computer viruses!

Disclaimer: Everything here is for informational purposes only.


Why not have some fun and prank your friends? There are several kinds of fake virus messages you can make. I will discuss 4 of them:

1. Fake error message


This one is by far, the easiest one to make and all you have to do is to make a new text document with notepad, type msg * YOUR MESSAGE and save as anything.bat. As always, make sure that you select All files instead of Text Document.


2. Forced shutdown


This will display a custom error message and start a countdown which will shut down the computer.

Right-click your desktop and create a new shortcut.
Paste the following code into the Location box in the Create Shortcut menu:
shutdown -s -t 30 -c “Your message here“

Replace 30 with the length of the countdown you want (in seconds) and place your custom error message between the quotes. Click next and name the shortcut to something the victim would be likely to click on such as “Internet explorer” or “My Documents”, etc.

Next you’d want to change the icon. Right-click on the shortcut you made and click properties. Find the Change Icon button and click it. Choose a suitable icon for the name you chose earlier.

And that’s all! Now you just have to sneak the shortcut onto the victim’s desktop and run!

Note: to stop it, open Run from the start menu and type shutdown-a.

3. Endless Command prompt windows

This will open up a series of command prompt windows that will never end.
The basic idea is that there are two .bat files that open the other one when opened, so the other one opens the first one again and the windows just won’t stop coming.

How to do this:
1. Fire up notepad and type: start 2.bat
2. Save it as 1.bat (make sure you choose all files when saving it)
3. Make another new text document and type: start 1.bat
4. Save it as 2.bat into the same folder as the other one.

All you have to do to start it is to click on either of them.

The only way to stop it is to wait for the windows to become so numerous that they are a group on the taskbar. Then you can use Close group to get rid of the bastards.

4. Fake Command prompt viruses

These are also a good way to make the victim believe that a worm is gnawing at their hard drive and that they can’t do anything to stop it.

Open up notepad and type @echo off

To make text appear, type it after an echo tag.
To have the the commands wait for the user to press any key type pause
(Note: if you write pause >nul it won’t display Press Any key to continue…)

To have a complete high-speed description of files in the drive of the .bat file, type dir /s
You can also initiate any other command we covered earlier, such as shutdown, error message, etc.
And why no include all of these in one fake virus?

For example:

@echo off
echo Do you want to delete C://Windows ? (Y/N)
pause>nul
echo Are you sure ? (Y/N)
pause >nul

dir /s

dir /s

echo All files deleted.
pause

msg * Windows has encountered a problem and need to close.

Shutdown -s -t 15 -c "Windows file write delayed. Unable to locate System.exe"



I can’t post the batch files here, as sharing .bat files over the internet is illegal.
And remember, everything here is for informational purposes.

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Increase your cable modem or DSL speed in XP

This tweak is for broadband cable connections on stand alone machines with winXP professional version - might work on Home version also. It will probably work with networked machines as well but I haven't tried it in that configuration. This is for windows XP only.

This tweak assumes that you have let winXP 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. 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

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 re-start the machine.

7. After re-start 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. Re-start the machine

10. After restart enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost.

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Mysterious Music

Do you have mysterious music playing from your computer? If you hear "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small Word" emanating from your CPU, this is a signal sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. Waltz on over to your nearest repair shop and get it fixed.

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20 things you didn't know about Windows XP

You've read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational 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 stamina. 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 useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.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 User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking 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 Edition only).

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.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 that'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 Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating and watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsystems, 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. Type '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 what 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 using '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 machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'regsvr32 /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 were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu 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 HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.

10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who's using network address translation (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 attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum's real IP address -- they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com -- and get them to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. 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 useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on 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, registering 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 value of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run... 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 you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files 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 desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up 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/Desktop/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 of 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, Arrange Icon By... Show In Groups.

18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks -- 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 your 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 key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.

20. The next release of Windows XP, codenamed Longhorn, is due and won't be much to write home about. The next big release is codenamed Blackcomb.

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