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

MS .NET Framework

The steps below resolve the following error, or a similar error, when attempting to install Microsoft .NET v2.0 -

Error creating process.
Reason: C:\WINDOWS\system32\advpack.dll

1. Save the .NET Framework setup on your local drive - dotnetfx.exe
2. Extract the package by executing the following: dotnetfx.exe /c
3. You will be prompted to enter a path to extract the files to, i.e. C:\Temp\MS.Net
4. Go that that location and launch install.exe

HowTo: Register OS Files

To re-register Windows XP OS files:

1. Launch a CMD prompt
2. Change directories to C:\Windows\System32
3. Issue "REGSVR32 xxxxx.xxx", where xxxxx.xxx is the name of the file, i.e. comdlg32.oc (issue without the quotes).