Disrupt and save time with 10 Windows XP tips

Windows XP is no longer strange to many computer users today. However, many people do not know that in Windows XP there is a tool available to create special characters for your own sign as well as change the default colors of the Command Prompt command window. In addition, for Windows to run faster, you must remove the unnecessary drivers on the device, but how to know which drivers are no longer used? With these 10 tips, these things become "inevitable" that many people now discover.

Change the display font of Windows Explorer in Windows XP

Windows Explorer and My Computer display the same font that Windows XP uses on the title of the desktop icon: Tahoma font, size 8. If you want to change the font or font size used in Windows Explorer, follow the instructions. steps:

- Access the Display Properties dialog box by right-clicking on the desktop background and selecting Properties .

- Select the Appearance tab and click the Advanced button.

- Select Icon from the Item drop-down list.

- Use the down arrow key in the Font box to select the appropriate font.

- Click 2 times OK - once to close the Advanced Appearance dialog box and once to close the Properties dialog box.

You can see the new font when opening Windows Explorer or My Computer. If you are not satisfied, you can repeat the steps above to select another font.

Quickly get MAC addresses in Windows XP with ARP

To secure a wireless Windows XP network, in addition to using Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption, you can use Media Access Control (MAC) address filters.

When activating the MAC address filter, the wireless access point or wireless router determines that the network card in the computer requires access to a MAC address in the filter list before allowing the computer to access the network. . This means that you must first obtain the MAC addresses of each client. To get this address, the first thought in your mind is to go to each machine and use the Getmac command?

There is an easier way to get MAC addresses:

- From a computer, use the Ping command to check each address of the clients that will connect to the wireless access point or wireless router.

- Enter the ARP statement with parameter -a as follows:

Arp -a

When using the -a parameter, the ARP statement will display the ARP cache, which stores the IP addresses and MACs of the new machines recently accessed to the system - or in this case the computers responding. Ping statement.

Prevent shutdown of Windows XP system

By default, every morning at 3 am, Windows XP's Automatic Updates tool updates to Windows Update and automatically downloads - installs updates to the system. However, this is not possible if the user turns off the computer at the end of the day. Fortunately, you can prevent someone from turning off the computer with a registry trick like the following:

- Go to the Registry Editor section (go to Run type regedit command)

- Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer .

- Right-click Explorer sub-key and select New | DWORD Value .

- Name the key NoClose and press Enter twice

- Enter 1 in the Value Data box and click OK .

To enable this setting, close the Registry Editor and restart the computer. When the system has restarted, you will not be able to turn off your computer by clicking the Shutdown button on the Start menu.

When you want to turn off your computer, just access Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del , then in the Shut Down menu, select the Turn Off command.

Put your name on the system tray

Sometimes you want to tease someone by putting your name on the system clock tray. Following these steps will make it easy to set this up:

- Access to Control Panel from the Start menu

- Double click on Regional and Language Options

- Click the Customize button on the Standards And Formats panel of the Regional Options tab

- When the Customize Regional Options dialog box appears, select the Time tab.

- In the AM Symbol and PM Symbol boxes, you can change the content with your name or whatever content you want (no more than 12 characters long).

- To complete this operation, you must click 2 times OK - once to close the Customize Regional Options dialog box and once to close the Regional And Language Options.

You will immediately see your name appear in the system clock tray.

Create your own special characters on Windows XP

If you naturally want to create a font of your own or maybe it's just a special character (such as the initials of the name to use when you include 'signature' in a text document) you can Easily create it using a hidden Windows XP tool called Private Character Editor. How to do the following:

- Go to the Start menu and select Run to open the Run dialog box

- Enter eudcedit in the Open box in the Run dialog box and click OK

- When Private Character Editor runs, you will see a Select Code dialog box. Click OK .

- A user interface similar to Paint will appear. Here you can use the tools available to create your own character (created on the full screen of the program)

- When you have created your own character, select Save Character from the Edit menu.

To use the newly created character, you can access it via the following Character Map tool:

- Go to Start menu and select Run

- Enter the charmap in the Open box of the Run dialog box and click OK

- When Character Map appeared, from the Font list select All Fonts (Private Characters) .

- Select the character you created then click the Select button and click the Copy button.

Now you can paste the character (Ctrl + V) into any position you want in the text.

Automatically create and assign strong passwords in Windows XP

Computer users often use a simple logic method to set a password. For example, they often choose meaningful phrases, their birth dates or a very common word in the dictionary because they are easy-to-remember passwords. This is also a common cause for many hackers to find the user's password easily.

If you really think about finding a strong password, you can use Windows XP to create and assign a random password to your account. To perform password creation in Windows XP, follow these steps ( Warning : before following these steps, make sure that you will be careful step by step and ready to use a password. In addition, you cannot use this tip in a Windows Server domain)

- Open the Command Prompt command window and enter:

người dùng người dùng Net / màu random (tên người dùng là đăng nhập tên đăng nhập)

- Press Enter . Windows XP randomly generates a secure password and assigns it to your account. Windows XP will also display that password so you can remember it.

If you are cautious, you may need to create a password reset disk right after creating a new password. This disk will be used when you want to access your computer and forget the password. How to create a disk is as follows:

- Open the Control Panel and double-click User Accounts .

- Click on your account icon

- Choose Prevent A Forgotten Password under Related Tasks section

- Follow steps to complete creation.

Return to the monochrome command window color in Windows XP

Before today's users are exposed to an RGB graphical interface and screen now, the ancient screen has only some monochrome colors with a color on the black screen background. Monochrome displays usually show only three main colors: green, amber and white.

When opening a Command prompt in the default configuration, it displays a monochrome configuration with white text on a black background. Located in the majority of users who don't like the boredom of the old color, you may have changed its color scheme from the Color tab on the Command Prompt Properties dialog to create a more novel interface.

However, if you want to return to the original color of the Command Prompt command window, you can change the Color tab settings back to green or amber color as follows:

- Open the Command Prompt command window

- Right-click on the title bar and select Properties

- Select the Colors tab

- Select the Screen Background button and choose black in the palette.

- Select the Screen Text button

- To return to the old green, select the green box from the color palette, then in the Selected Color Values ​​section use the rotate button to set the Green color to 255. Make sure that the settings for Red and Blue are 0.

- To return to the old amber color, select the green box from the color palette, then in the Selected Color Values ​​section use the rotate button to set the Red color to 185, the Green color to 128 and the Blue color to 0.

A completely new look at Windows XP Task

Many Windows XP users often choose to use the Folder browser (on the left) in Windows Explorer instead of the Task pane, which usually appears in My Computer. To switch between these two components to avoid having to open My Computer, simply click the Folder button on the toolbar whenever you need to open My Computer. However, using the Folder browser will prevent you from taking advantage of the built-in paths on the Task pane and ignoring shortcuts can save a lot of time.

For example, how long does it take you to enter Control Panel and access Add / Remove Programs? If you use the Task pane in My Computer, you can simply click Add Or Remove Program in the System Tasks section. Also, if you open the drive from My Computer, you'll find a command in the Files and Folders section of Task pane: Make A New folder - create a new folder.

When selecting a folder, you can copy and move the folder to any location on your hard drive by clicking Copy This Folder or Move This Folder . Then, a browser dialog will appear and you just need to select the location to copy or move the folder to.

When selecting a file, you can also choose Copy This File or Move This File to copy and move the file to another location similar to the above folder.

Remove unused device drivers on the device

When installing a device driver on a Windows XP computer, the operating system will download this driver every time the machine is booted regardless of whether the device is available on the machine - unless you remove the driver. This means that drivers from the device will continue to be loaded and can sometimes damage computer resources until you remove it from the system.

Follow these steps to view and remove device drivers that are no longer needed:

- Press the Windows + Break key to enter the System Properties dialog box

- Select the Advaced tab and click the Environment Variables button

- Click the New button at the bottom of the System Variables panel

- In the New System Variable dialog box, enter devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name box and enter 1 in the Variable Value box.

- Click OK to return to the System Properties section and click OK again

- Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button

- In Device Manager on View | Show Hidden Devices .

- Expand different tree branches and find silver colored icons, which are device drivers that are no longer in use.

- Uninstall these drivers by right-clicking on it and selecting Uninstall .

Use the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility utility

You cannot uninstall applications in Windows XP by selecting the Uninstall option or by using the Add / Remove Programs tool? Try the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility utility. This utility will remove folders, files, registry keys and entries from your system and allow booting with a clean system.

How to do the following

- Download the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility utility from Microsoft Download Center

- Go to the download file location and run msicuu2.exe to install Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

- Go to and launch the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility on the Start menu

- From the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility window, go to the application in the list and click the Remove button

- Once the applications have been removed, click the Exit button to close this utility.