Active Partition

The computer does not start after you change the active partition by using the Disk Management tool

IMPORTANT Before performing the steps listed below, make sure that you have a good backup of your critical data files.

1. To resolve this behavior, use one of the following procedures:
2. Try changing the active partition by booting to a floppy disk and then using disk utilities to manually change the active partition:
3. Boot to a command prompt by using a Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) boot floppy disk.
4. At the command prompt, type fdisk, and then press ENTER.
5. When you are prompted to enable large disk support, click Yes.
6. Click Set active partition, press the number of the partition that you want to make active, and then press ENTER.
7. Press ESC.

Remove the boot floppy disk, and then restart the computer.

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Set Accessibility features for people who are blind or who have low vision in Windows XP

The Start menu Accessibility programs
The Start menu contains visual enhancement utilities that you can select.

To use the Accessibility program, follow these steps:
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Accessibility.
Select one of the following features:
Magnifier
With this feature, you can enlarge the screen display.
Narrator
This feature provides audio assistance about the items that are displayed on the screen.

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Enable/Disable Low Disk Space Message

By default, on a Windows XP system the following messages are displayed. This tweak will prevent the messages being displayed.

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value] // Value Name: NoLowDiskSpaceChecks
Modify/Create the Value Name [NoLowDiskSpaceChecks] according to the Value Data listed above.
Value Data: [0 = NoLowDiskSpaceChecks Disabled / 1 = NoLowDiskSpaceChecks Enabled]
Exit Registry and Reboot

Turn off themes and visual effects.

As ridiculous as that sounds, if you want a very responsive user interface because you are more interested in getting work done than looking at XP's Fisher-Price graphics, then turning off themes and visual effects has got to be the best idea since sliced cheese spread. You might not like what you see, but it will be faster.

You can disable all of XPs visual effects by right-clicking the Desktop and selecting the "Properties" menu item, select the "Appearance" tab. In the dropdown box under "Windows and buttons", choose Windows Classic style.

Processor Scheduling

his tweak is impossible to explain without getting into the technical ins and outs of binary values, bit pairs and bit masks. Suffice it to say, it forces short, variable length processor timeslices to be allocated to foreground processes three times more often than those timeslices given to background processes.

Start regedit and navigate to the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]

Change the value of Win32PrioritySeparation to 26 hexadecimal, which is 38 decimal, save the changes and reboot.

As with the cache tuning tweak (#4), this particular tweak should not be applied to a system that is running either SQL Server or Internet Information Server (IIS) unless you are certain that you want to slow down those background processes.

Disable Last Access Timestamp

Whenever XP reads a file, it stamps the file with the date and time that you accessed it. This feature has its place but is not required for normal use unless you rely on the date of last access for backup purposes, which is a rare requirement for most backups. Putting a timestamp on a file that has just been read means that a write access has to be made to disk, so every time a read is executed, a corresponding write is also executed.

To disable the last access timestamp behaviour, start a command prompt, enter the following command then reboot;

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1

Those of us who read and write Her Majesty's English need to take note of the American spelling of the BEHAVIOR parameter. To turn timestamps back on, repeat the command but replace 1 with 0;

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 0

Speed up web browsing with OpenDNS

When you type in a domain name such as wingeek.com in your browser the computer must resolve the friendly name into an IP address of the server to download the web page and supporting files. Windows uses a DNS (domain name system) server to lookup this information. By default, Windows uses your ISP’s DNS server. Depending on your provider, the performance of their DNS resolving server varies. Some large national providers are known to provide unreliable and slow DNS servers.

The performance of the DNS server you are using is one component that affects the speed of your internet browsing. Since each domain name you type in must be resolved into an IP address, the amount of time that takes will delay the loading of any web page. Some users with overloaded ISP DNS servers can see delays in multiple seconds before web pages start to load.

OpenDNS provides free alternative DNS servers that anyone can use with any internet provider. Unlike many national internet providers, OpenDNS’s DNS servers are very fast and reliable. Using OpenDNS servers instead of your ISP servers will help you speed up your internet browsing by cutting down on the delay between resolving a domain name and getting the IP address so your browser can start loading the web page.

Configuring your computer to use OpenDNS servers instead of your ISP’s is a simple change that works in both Windows XP and Windows Vista:

Click on the Start Button and type in ncpa.cpl and hit Enter. In Windows XP Click on the Start Button, click Run and then type in ncpa.cpl
Right click on your active network connection that you use to connect to the Internet and select Properties.
On the Networking / General tab, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) (version 4 on Windows Vista & 7) and hit Properties.
On the properties screen, select Use the following DNS server addresses and then type in 208.67.222.222 in the preferred and 208.67.220.220 in the alternate boxes.

Hit OK twice and you are finished.

Share Your Screen with SharedView

Microsoft SharedView is a free utility that allows you to share your desktop, applications and documents with up to 15 people online at a time. It is perfect to hold a small meeting or to show a family member how to do something. Best of all it works well through firewalls and routers so you don’t have to worry about connection issues.

Getting Microsoft SharedView up and running requires a Microsoft Live ID, broadband connection and a short download.

Click here to download SharedView

Once downloaded and installed just start up the utility from the start menu and sign in. Then click Start a new session and send your participants the link and details provided. Finally,click the Start button to start your meeting/event.

After the meeting has started you need to share something for your participants to view. Click the Share button on the top of the screen and select the app you want to share. You can also select your entire desktop on the bottom of the list.

Once selected click the Start button to begin sharing.