Category: Windows XP

Jul 31 2011

Learning About Application Compatibility Mode in Windows

Application Properties (Compatibility Tab - Dropdown List)

Yesterday, I wrote about an old game that was a favourite of mine back in school, WinTrek as well as some nostalgia from that time of my life. Anyway, with games written for really old operating systems like Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 you might need to tweak things a little bit to get these …

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Jul 18 2011

MacOS X and NTFS – Will it Blend?

In the Windows world the best file system to be using is NTFS (New Technology File System), hands down. Compared to legacy FAT file systems (including FAT32) the robustness, reliability and scalability of NTFS is undisputed. However, since NTFS is proprietary to Microsoft it is often incompatible with non-Microsoft platforms such as MacOS X. Of …

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Jul 12 2011

Windows XP End of Life in 1000 Days

Just a quick heads up for tonight. We all know that Windows XP is two full versions off the pace set by Windows 7 and with Windows 8 slated to come out next year it does start to make Windows XP look prehistoric in comparison. Still, Windows XP does represent a significant portion of the …

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Jun 23 2011

Safe Mode and Recovery From Windows Registry Errors

Today, I bumped into a colleague at work who reads this blog and we had a brief chat about yesterday’s article and the fact that I could have come off a little too casual in the way I provided the instructions without warning about the potential risks (up to and including nuking your Windows installation) …

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Jun 08 2011

Recover Heavily Infected Computers with Microsoft Standaline System Sweeper

Here’s a quick tip for tonight. Microsoft has quietly developed a tool for use in situations where a computer just won’t start due to the number and/or severity of infections riddling it. Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper (MSSS) is not a replacement for a traditional antivirus which is designed continuously in the background checking for nasty …

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Jun 03 2011

ARM CPUs and Windows 8 – What Does it Mean?

It’s no secret now that Windows 8 is going to be compatible with ARM CPUs. This is an interesting move as the general belief in the technical ranks was that Microsoft would scale up Windows Phone to the tablet form factor rather than have another tilt at shoehorning its desktop operating system into low powered …

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May 09 2011

Easily Resize Images Under Windows Vista and Windows 7

Another quick tip for tonight. Under Windows XP you could install a variety of “Powertoys” that would add extra functionality to the operating system that was missing out of the bo. One such function was the ability to quickly and easily resize images which relied upon a third party solution unless you installed the Powertoy. Unfortunately, since …

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Apr 06 2011

Adjust the Maximum Size of the Recycle Bin in Windows

Leading on from yesterday’s blog entry regarding the practice of emptying the Recycle Bin (or Trash in Mac OS X) I thought it was worth covering how to set the maximum size of the Recycle Bin in Windows to prevent it from growing too large. This is of particular importance on smaller drives in netbooks or more …

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Apr 05 2011

Reclaim Space by Emptying the Recycling Bin or Trash

Here’s a quick tip. While some of us may think this is a very obvious tip others may not have any idea about the concept of the Recycle Bin (or simply “Trash” in Mac OS X) and the fact that stuff that’s in there still chews up hard drive space. Sure, these days with drive …

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Mar 29 2011

Diagnose Dataflow Problems: The Traceroute

Traceroute with Unresponsive Hop

Leading on from yesterday’s post about how to do a ping test we move on to another test which might uncover more information about where dataflow problems may be occurring. In a nutshell, a traceroute shows you all of the various entities (also known as “hops”) on the Internet that sit between you and a …

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