Girl Geekette

Here is a link I definitely thought was worth mentioning. A List of all the start up programs in Windows XP and wheter or not they NEED to run or are dangerous.

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php?letter=&filter=&count=50&offset=12500

If you are like I am and you are always trying to streamline your XP box to get only the services you NEED running in MSCONFIG or want to see if some programs are adware, viruses, trojans, drivers, etc.. this list has some of the most common, whether they are required and what they are. This has to be one of the most excellent resources I have seen.

To check to see what startup programs you have, Click on START then RUN And type MSCONFIG in the RUN box and hit ENTER. You will see a new window come up and the STARTUP tab on the right has all of the programs that start up when your computer boots. Just check these programs against the list and see if that program is needed or not.

There are times when you want to add a new destination to the send menu. If you have a Drive D or multiple hardrives, or even other drives over a network, this will show you how to add the destination to the start menu.

-Open My Computer.
-Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive C, unless you have more than one drive on your computer).
-If you can’t see the items on your drive when you open it, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive.

-Double-click the Documents and Settings folder.
-Double-click the folder of a specific user.
-Double-click the SendTo folder.
-The SendTo folder is hidden by default. If it is not visible, on the Tools menu, click Folder Options. On the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders.

-On the File menu, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
-Follow the instructions on your screen.

Every time Win2k boots it will check the onboard controller if there is any drives attached. If you don’t have the habit of swapping IDE units in and out or you have none installed at all, then you might want to disable the scanning for IDE units and get a faster bootup.

Go here : Control Panel - System - Hardware-tab - Device Manager-button - IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers-node

There select properties for your Primary- and Secondary-Channel and go to Advanced Settings where you can change the Device Type from "Auto detection" to "None" when there is no IDE Unit attached