Address Bar removed in Windows XP SP3

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) removes the "Address bar" option as an available Taskbar tool. It's believed that Microsoft removed this option so not to be in violation of certain antitrust rulings, especially in the European Union.

Getting it back -

The file modified by the installation of SP3 is browseui.dll. The trick is to replace this file with the SP2 version of the file. The older version of the file can be found in C:\Windows\System32 on any non-SP3 machine.

Copy this file to the root directory of the SP3 machine or to some other location that the SP3 PC can access.

Here is where it gets a little tricky. The browseui.dll file is a system file and is therefore protected whenever Windows is running. That means you cannot just copy the SP2 version file over the SP3 version file. You will need to start the PC in "Safe Mode with a command prompt" or boot to a bootable CD, i.e. WinPE.

Once there issue the following command:
copy browseui.dll C:\Windows\System32\

Reboot the PC. If all went well, you should now have the option to add the Address Bar toolbar.

IE7 - Enable Third-party Browser Extensions

Manual steps to disable third-party tool bands and Browser Helper Objects

To manually disable the tool bands and Browser Helper Objects, follow these steps:

1. Close all instances of Internet Explorer, click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Internet Options.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Under Browsing, click to clear the Enable third-party browser extensions (requires restart) check box.
5. Restart Internet Explorer.

These steps change the value data for the "Enable Browser Extensions" string value to "No" in the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

Configure Device Manager to show details

How to Configure Device Manager in XP to Display Detailed Informtaion

To configure Device Manager to show details:

1. Click Start, click Run, type: cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
2. Type: set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1, and then press ENTER.
3. Type: start devmgmt.msc, and then press ENTER.

In Device Manager the properties for a device should now provide a Details tab that contains additional information about the device.

You can view the Details tab to see the following device information:
Device Instance ID, Hardware IDs, Compatible IDs, Matching Device ID, Service, Enumerator, Capabilities, Devnode Flags, Config Flags, CSConfig Flags, Ejection Relations, Removal Relations, Bus Relations, Device Upper Filters, Device Lower, Filters, Class Upper Filters, Class Lower Filters, Class Installer, Class Coinstallers, Device Coinstallers, Firmware Revision, Current Power State, Power Capabilities, Power State Mappings.

NOTE: Not all of these properties will be populated for a given device. In other words, although all of these properties are listed, some may not contain information when viewing a particular device.

Disable Search from Address Bar

The default action in Internet Explorer if you type in an address of a web site that can't be found is for the value that you typed in to be passed to the default search engine (usually MSN). This means that if you use the address bar for its intended use of entering web addresses and you miskey an address that you then waste a whole lot of time waiting for the search to run when you didn't want to request a search in the first place. Fortunately a minor settings change can fix this.

To keep the address bar for addressses and use search option when you want to run a search go into:

• Internet Explorer
• Select Tools\Internet Options
• Select the Advanced tab
• Scroll down to the "Search from Address bar" section
• Set it to "Do not search from the Address bar"
• Save setting

Quickly gather MAC addresses with ARP

When securing 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 filtering.

When you enable MAC address filtering, the wireless access point or wireless router verifies that the network card in the computer requesting access has a MAC address in its filter list before allowing the computer to access the network. This means that you must first obtain the MAC addresses of each client computer. To do so, you might think that you have to manually visit each computer and use the Getmac command.

An easier way to gather MAC addresses is to take advantage of the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) command. Here’s how:

1 - From one computer, use the Ping command to Ping each of the other client computers that will connect to the wireless access point or wireless router.

2 - Type the ARP command along with the -a parameter: Arp -a

When used with the -a parameter, the ARP command displays the ARP cache, which stores the IP and MAC addresses of the computers that most recently accessed the system — or in this case, those computers that responded to the Ping command.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Professional.

View non-present devices in Device Manager

When troubleshooting driver problems in Windows XP, one of the first places you may look is Device Manager, which provides detailed information about every piece of installed system hardware. However, with devices such as removable USB drives, you may need information about devices that are not currently connected; Device Manager recognizes these as nonpresent devices. Here’s how to get information about those devices:

1 - Go to Start, right-click My Computer, and select Properties.

2 - In the System Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.

3 - In the Environment Variables dialog box, locate the System Variables panel and click New.

4 - In the New System Variable dialog box, type DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES in the Variable Name text box and type 1 in the Variable Value text box.

5 - Click OK twice.

6 - To view the nonpresent devices, go to Start, right-click My Computer, and select Manage.

7 - Click Device Manager, pull down the View menu, and select Show Hidden Devices.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional.

Windows XP’s built-in image resizing utility

If you’ve ever had to resize a group of digital picture files, you’ve likely launched your image editing program and then resized each image individually — this is an extremely time-consuming task. Windows XP has a built-in image resizing utility buried inside the Send Pictures Via E-Mail dialog box that can quickly and easily resize a large group of digital picture files at once. Follow these steps:

1. Press [Windows]E to launch Windows Explorer.
2. Make sure the Tasks pane is visible. (The Folders button acts like a toggle switch. If the Tree pane is showing, clicking the Folders button will display the Tasks pane. Click the Folders button if the Tree pane is showing.)
3. Open the folder containing the group of digital pictures you want to resize. Select the group.
4. Under the File And Folder Task list, select the E-Mail The Selected Items command.
5. When you see the Send Pictures Via E-Mail dialog box, click the Show More Options link to expand the dialog box.
6. Select a radio button next to one of the available sizes and click OK. A new mail message window containing the resized digital pictures as attachments will appear.
7. Pull down the File menu, select the Save Attachments command, and save all the attachments to a different folder.
8. Close the mail message window and click No in the Save Changes dialog box.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional.