CRASH AVOIDANCE

CRASH AVOIDANCE

Windows XP is fairly forgiving but if you routinely have a lot of folder windows open you may find that Windows crashes or freezes when you switch between folders. This is due to the way Windows manages RAM memory; each open folder is allocated the same amount of memory, whether it needs it or not. This isn’t very efficient it puts a big stain on the CPU and memory resources when you switch between folders. You can reduce the chances of a crash by changing the way Windows handles these processes. Go to Folder Options in Control Panel and select the View tab. In the Advanced settings window scroll down the list and check the item ‘Launch folder windows in a separate process’. Click OK and it’s done.



AUTOMATIC UNATTENDED LOGOFF

This tip might interest Windows XP users who work in a busy office and who find that they are occasionally and unexpectedly called away from their desk, leaving their PC’s unattended. Clearly this has security and privacy implications but the good folks at Microsoft have come up with a solution in the shape of a screensaver called Winexit. After a preset period it will automatically exit any running programs then log the user off.



Winexit is free but the only trouble is Microsoft has bundled it in with a lot of other utilities, in the Windows 2000 Resource kit, which you have to download in order to get at it. When the download has completed and it has finished installing open up the Resource Kit folder (you should find it in C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools), right-click on Winexit.scr, select Install and the Display Properties box appears, click Settings and set your timings as appropriate.



PAINT - HIDDEN ZOOM FACILITY

Windows Paint as you know is a handy, though not especially sophisticated image editing program. In amongst the tools there’s a zoom control and if you click on the magnifying glass icon you’ll see there’s a choice between 1x, 2x, 6x and 8x magnification. In fact there is another hidden setting of 10x magnification but it requires some precision mousing to get at it. Open a picture in Paint then click on the Zoom icon to open the magnification selector box, now place your mouse pointer very carefully in the tiny space below 8x and left click the mouse.



REVIVE AN OLD TIMER -- NETMEETING IN XP

Those of you who have been around Windows for a while may remember NetMeeting, a really handy utility that lets PC users communicate over the Internet using live text, webcam and ‘whiteboard’. Sadly it fell into disuse -- it was a swine to configure on a dial-up connection -- and when Windows XP came along it had apparently disappeared. It’s well worth getting to know once again, especially if you have a webcam and broadband. You and a webcam-equipped friend can set up a private one-to-one link simply by inputting each other’s IP addresses (and if you want to find out what your IP address is