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.

How to change default settings for taskbar grouping

Windows XP will, by default, group open program windows on the taskbar if you have three or more from the same program. This saves space on the taskbar and makes for a more organized look. Some folks, though, want to see each program instance as an individual taskbar icon. You can accomplish that by changing the default setting to a higher number. Here's how:

1. Open the registry editor and navigate to this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
2. In the right pane, double click or create (if it doesn't exist) a DWORD value called TaskbarGroupSize
3. The default setting for the data value is 3. You can change this to whatever number you wish. For example, if you change it to 8, items will not group until you have 8 or more of the same program open.

As always, make a backup of the registry before editing.

Don't display program in Frequently Used Programs list

Don't display program in Frequently Used Programs list (Windows XP)

There's a registry edit you can use to permanently exclude a specific program from appearing on the list. Here's how to do that:

1. Open your favorite registry editor and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ FileAssocation
2. In the right pane, double click AddRemoveApps
3. Add the program you want to exclude to the Value Data box by typing a semicolon followed by the name of the program's executable file (for example: type ;sol.exe for Solitaire)
4. Close the registry editor and reboot. Remember, always make a backup of the registry key before you make changes to it.

If you're super secretive and don't want any of the programs you use to be displayed, you can edit the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties. There you can set the number of entries allowed to populate this section. If you change the setting to zero, this prevents any programs from being displayed.

Test Adobe Shockwave & Flash Players

Click the link to Test Adobe Shockwave & Flash Players

This also provides the installed version information for Adobe Shockwave and Flash Player.

HowTo: Clear XP MRU List

Clearing the Windows XP Map Network Drives MRU List

If you frequently use the Map Network Drive command in Windows XP, you probably have a lot of network paths displaying in the MRU (Most Recently Used) list, which appears in the Folder drop down menu. If so, you may at some point in time want to clear that list — especially if it contains UNC paths that you no longer use.

Here’s how to clear the Map Network Drive’s MRU list:

1. Launch the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe)
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Map Network Drive MRU
3. One-by-one, delete each string value associated with a drive mapping by selecting it and pressing the Delete key. (Each entry will have the name of a letter of the alphabet, e.g. a, b, c, etc.)
4. Double-click on the entry titled MRUList to open the Edit String dialog box
5. Delete the text in the Value Data text box and click OK
6. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows