THE LIST
A low-tech but ingeniously distributed E-letter by Mr. E
Vol. I, No. 16 — September 4, 2001 — Last Revision March 24, 2005
To read previous issues of The E-List, click here.
Send comments about The E-List to: elist@aumha.org
Please see Legal Notice.

This newsletter tracks new information, and improvements in existing information, on the Windows Support Center, my website supporting Windows desktop systems and leading application software. I also include small, useful items that might not find a permanent place on the site, but that I would like to pass along, and anything else I feel like writing!

Click here to subscribe. If you subscribe, you will receive email notification when there is a new issue of the newsletter. (You will not receive the newsletter itself by email. That’s why I call it low-tech.) My intention is to provide a new and further way to serve the 50,000 people per month who visit my site. Previous newsletters are available online, and their content searchable through this site’s search engine. Enjoy! — Jim Eshelman


UPDATE!

As you may already have read in the lead article in this issue of The E-List, Microsoft has recently posted hundreds of new Windows XP articles on its Knowledge Base. However, as of today, September 5, “Windows XP” is also added to the product field. This makes searching for them even easier than by the method given in the “News & Views” article below.

CONTENTS of this Issue

  1. NEWS & VIEWS
  2. TIPS

    MS KNOWLEDGE BASE Articles:
  3. Commands, Utilities & Files
  4. Fonts
  5. Hardware, Drivers & RAM
  6. Password Problems
  7. Recycle Bin
  8. Windows Registry
  9. Startup
  10. Windows XP

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My employer closed its doors for good in February.
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please view my resume and pass it along to someone. Thank you!
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NEWS & VIEWS


WE’RE MOVING — BUT NOT TOO FAR!

This week or next, this site is moving — but you’ll probably never notice that its address has changed. I’m moving to a different Web host but, since I own the domain, aumha.org will still be the place where you’ll find me.

Why am I moving, and why now? There are lesser reasons and greater reasons. Among the lesser reasons is that this once very fast Web host (which I won’t name out of respect for the fine service they’ve provided me for nine months) has been a little less reliable lately, and performance has been deteriorating. I know they’re having growing pains and, one day soon, they may, in fact, be truly great again. Right now, though, they are becoming really popular, and these growing pains leave them a little less than great.

And, speaking of great, the greater reason I’m moving now is that they just increased their hosting fees to almost double. At the moment, this only applies to new accounts, but I got the word this week that they will be rolling these price increases downhill to existing accounts. (ADDENDUM September 5: They did that today.) And, remember, I’m between jobs right now, and I pay for the site out of my pocket. Be design, I have kept it non-commercial, and I wish to keep it that way; but there was a brief consideration that I might have to shut the site down for a while. I am happy to say that I shook a few bushes, and found a way to keep us going for the long haul, thanks to the generosity of someone who has long been a little-known friend of the Windows user community.

We are moving to a really spectacular new host, partly because they are superb, and partly because someone made my Windows Support Center site an offer we couldn’t refuse. We’re moving over to pair.com. I don’t have to worry about them getting popular, because they already are. Network connectivity is by fiber-optic connections to multiple backbone providers. Their hardware is custom-built state of the art, and runs FreeBSD UNIX. All of this means that they will be able to provide phenomenal service. Every long-time pair.com customer to whom I have spoken has praised pair.com’s sturdy reliability, world class hosting, and top-notch customer support. I am proud to be able to bring this caliber of professional hosting to this site.

This newsletter is a little later than I’d hoped, because I’ve been bouncing between writing it, and working on the site migration. As often happens in projects of this sort, I’m learning quite a lot that I haven’t had to know before. I am expecting a perfectly seamless migration, though life and computers always manage to toss us their little surprises when we expect them least. (I guess that’s why they’re called surprises.) Anyway, by the time you see the next issue of The E-List, it will probably be coming to you from our new hosting platform.

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TIPS

FASTEST ROUTE TO THE KNOWLEDGE BASE

I consult the Microsoft Knowledge Base dozens of times per day (most days). Much of the time, I’m simply able to use article links already created on my Web site. Other times, I have to do it the hard way.

Many of us who frequent the peer support newsgroups often refer people to the Knowledge Base, giving the URL of http://search.support.microsoft.com/kb/c.asp. However, there’s an easier way to do it. All you have to do — at least in Internet Explorer — is to type the four letters “MSKB” (without the quotation marks) in your browser’s address bar. (It won’t work in Netscape — no surprise! — and, strangely, it won’t work in an Address toolbar on your desktop.) This jumps you straight to the correct page!

If someone has given you the article number for the KB page you want, you can also jump there very quickly. For example, if you want article Q293360, just type this — the Q and the six digits — after the four letters:

MSKB Q293360

This will jump you straight to the article itself — again, this presumes you are using Internet Explorer. And it’s a lot easier than remembering the full URL, http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q293/3/60.asp.

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KB ARTICLES: Specific Commands

A List of the Keyboard Shortcuts Available in Windows XP
You’re probably already familiar with MSKB Q126449, which details keyboard shortcuts in Windows 9x. I can’t say that I’ve gone over this new one line by line but, from a more casual read-through, it doesn’t seem to be very different. There are a few extra built-in functions for the Windows key. (I got a surprise when I pressed Win+U — be sure you have your speakers on if you try.) There are also specific keystrokes for the Microsoft Management Console, and for Remote Desktop Connection navigation. These are the real XP jewels in the article. Still, the best use of the article might simply be to read up on the basics, and remind yourself of the convenient mouseless capabilities you may have forgotten were right under your fingertips all along.

How to Install Backup from the Windows XP Home Edition CD-ROM
The word in the street is that the Backup utility doesn’t come with Windows XP Home Edition, but only with Professional. That word in the street is wrong. It’s understandable — Backup isn’t installed by default, and it’s rather buried on the CD. But it’s there, in the Valueadd folder. This article tells how to install it.

By the way, I’m disappointed in the XP Backup utility. Yeah, it seems to work as well as the earlier versions in most respects. But it has two characteristics that make me unhappy. First, its compression ratio sucks — backup files are quite a lot larger than archives of the same files using an earlier version of Windows Backup. This becomes much more of a problem when you combine it with the second feature, which is that no backup file can exceed 4 GB in size. Backing up my entire computer system (except for that which is utterly replaceable, like complete downloads of software CDs) requires just under 5 GB of space. This means I can’t do a single backup of the whole system at a single sitting. That’s bad backup! If MS is looking in as I write this, please accept a vote that this be changed in an early service pack!

Description of the New Command Line DEFRAG.EXE Included with Windows XP
This article is most useful for the commandline switches it documents (though you can also get them by typing defrag /? at a command prompt), and a couple of small technical details.

Quickres Utility Not Available in Windows XP
This title won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of The E-List, nor to visitors of my Windows Support Center’s PowerToys FAQ. A few weeks ago we reported that this useful capability is missing in Windows XP, and we suggested some freeware alternatives. We still recommend them!

Troubleshooting System Restore in Windows XP
Says what it does, and does what it says. The first System Restore article officially for XP. It provides an instructive, step-by-step walk-through of analyzing the most common System Restore problems in Windows XP.

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KB ARTICLES: Fonts

Description of ClearType Font Smoothing Technology in Windows XP
One of the coolest innovations in Windows XP is a new screen font technology called ClearType Font Smoothing, which increases horizontal resolution by as much as 300%. Though originally touted in terms of liquid crystal displays on laptops (where there has long been room for a lot of improvement on font display!), ClearType works perfectly well on full-sized desktop computers also. (The improvement is not as great on CRT monitors as on LCD screens; on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be!)

I love the ClearType look. This article explains how it works.

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KB ARTICLES: Hardware, Drivers & RAM

WINDOWS 9x RAM ISSUES

Computer May Reboot Continuously with More Than 1.5 GB of RAM Win98, Win98 SE, Win ME
Windows 95, and its successors in the Win 9x family, was made possible by the Intel 386 microprocessor, with its 32-bit external data bus and 32-bit address bus. A 32-bit bus makes up to 2-to-the-32nd-power addresses possible — 4,294,967,296 in all, or 4 gigabytes. From the time Windows 95 was released, we have been told that Windows is capable of addressing this 4 GB of memory, of which half — 2 GB — can be physical RAM, and the other half virtual RAM. I have been among those that have recited the catechism, for many years, that Win 9x can use up to 2 GB of physical RAM. We knew there were some problems discovered along the way, in collateral issues — for example, the need to keep VCache below 512 MB, and the fact that some specific hardware freaks out as it approaches 1 GB of RAM. But in general, the 2 GB rule of thumb persisted.

At the time this design was, well, designed, and the rule was enunciated, Windows would run (well, crawl) on 8 MB of RAM. It really needed at least 12 MB, and most users had to make a decision whether to bump that to 16 MB, maybe 24 MB or — if money was a little more fluid for what, at that time, was a much more expensive undertaking — to jump all the way to 32 MB of RAM. They were simpler RAM days. A gigabyte of physical RAM was a pipe dream. Nobody had really ever tested it on Windows, because it wasn’t, at that time, physically possible.

Well, it turns out that the underlying theory doesn’t quite pan out. Windows 9x didn’t die quite fast enough. RAM availability has shot upwards, and RAM costs have plummeted downwards, so that we actually have the chance to test at or near the theoretical limits of Win 9x’s RAM management — before the OS is completely buried in history. As it turns out, the estimates were about 25-50% too high. Microsoft is now reporting that more than 1.5 GB of RAM may cause a Windows 98 or ME computer to reboot continuously at startup, or otherwise to misbehave. “Windows ME and Windows 98,” Microsoft now says, “are not designed to handle more than 1 GB of RAM. More than 1 GB can lead to potential system instability.”

Ignoring the rewriting of history that is apparent in the claim that, “This behavior is by design” (someone in marketing really should have written that a little better), and sticking to the technical issue, there is a work-around for this problem. The work-around is a small change in the SYSTEM.INI file that causes Windows to only access 1 GB of RAM. I might add that a second work-around would, in fact, be to remove any RAM over 1 GB! It would have the same effect.

So, the word on RAM limits in Win 9x has changed. The word, now, is that more than 1 GB is not recommended, and that problems have been definitely identified beyond the 1.5 GB level. (I have rewritten my Win 98/ME Memory Management article accordingly.)


Specifying Amount of RAM Available to Windows Using MaxPhysPage Win95, Win98, Win ME
The fix recommended in the previous article, is a modification of the MaxPhysPage entry in SYSTEM.INI. This is a way of limiting the amount of physical memory available to Windows, without physically removing the RAM. (Another way is to use the memory-limiting features on the Advanced button of MSCONFIG in Windows 98 or ME.) This article describes the use of the MaxPhysPage setting, and is given as background for the issues raised in the previous article.


VIDEO & MONITOR ISSUES IN WINDOWS XP

Hardware Requirements for Multiple-Display Support in Windows XP
Description of DualView in Windows XP
By now, everyone probably knows about multiple display support. The first of these two articles describes the hardware requirements for this. Something less familiar to most people is DualView, an extension of multi-monitor support which some higher end video cards (and many portable computers) support. It differs from earlier multi-monitor systems because both monitors draw off of a single video adapter.

The one strangeness in this generally helpful, brief second article is that it only states that it applies to Windows XP Professional. However, according to the Windows XP Comparison Guide, DualView is a feature of both the Professional and Home Editions of Win XP.


WINDOWS XP HARDWARE & DRIVER ISSUES

Each of the four Windows XP articles listed below has a title that is fully self-explanatory. Add these to your arsenal of useful, instructive articles lardered away for when you need them.

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KB ARTICLES: Password Problems

You Are Not Prompted to Create a Password When You Create a New User Account on a Win XP Home Edition-based Computer
This isn’t a serious problem. In fact, the described behavior is by design. But it will probably throw a few people for a loop if they don’t know what to expect, so it’s worth mentioning.

The title pretty well describes it. On Windows XP (Home Edition only), when you create a new user account, you are not prompted to create a password. This isn’t required for a Home Edition user account. Instead, you can create a password later.

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KB ARTICLES: Recycle Bin

Positioning the Recycle Bin Icon in Windows XP
This is a minor factor but, again, one that some users may find strange if they have no explanation of it first. On a clean install of Windows XP (but not on an upgrade), the original position of the Recycle Bin icon is in the lower right-hand corner of the screen — quite a different location than in previous versions of Windows. You can move it around, of course. Changing screen resolution can create some irregular behaviors in its positioning, though normally all will be well. The article describes a couple of characteristics of its positioning.

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KB ARTICLES: Windows Registry

Registry Size Limit Has Been Removed From Windows XP
Someone at Microsoft has learned the fine art of titling these articles — for, again, the title nearly says it all. There is no longer a Registry size limit in Windows XP, in comparison to its predecessors, Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000. The latter two operating systems had a somewhat complex set of rules for the Registry’s maximum size; you can read about those here.

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KB ARTICLES: Startup

How to Configure Windows XP to Automatically Log On a User Account
Just because Windows XP has a much more attractive user login than its predecessors doesn’t mean that you actually want to see it all the time. Maybe you want (as I want) to have Windows bypass this step and automatically log you on en route to the desktop. For this to happen, four conditions must be met: (1) The Welcome screen must be available. (2) Guest account access must be turned off. (3) There must be only one user account on the computer. (4) The user account must not have a password. This article walks you through ensuring that each of these four is done correctly.

How to Edit the BOOT.INI File in Windows XP
The BOOT.INI file does many of the things in Windows XP that MSDOS.SYS did in Windows 9x. If you search on BOOT.INI in Health & Support (Win+F1 is the fastest route to this), you will get a single main article — on Bootcfg — that explains these capabilities in detail. BOOT.INI is quite easy to edit through a feature of the Advanced tab of System Properties. This article walks you through it.

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KB ARTICLES: Windows XP

Buckle your seat belt, and get comfortable. There are a lot of these to plow through, and I’m not sure I have them sorted in any particular order. The purpose of this particular collection — in fact, of this special issue of The E-List — is to introduce readers to a wide ranging selection of the Windows XP articles suddenly emerging this week. (And, we’re likely to see more and more over the next couple of months.) In many cases, the titles tell the tale below. I’ve tossed in just enough comment to whet your appetite.

Description of the Start Menu in Windows XP
If you’ve seen it, you know that this has changed a lot!

How to Create & Configure User Accounts in Windows XP
Though this applies to both Professional and Home Edition, you can’t make user accounts on a computer that is a member of a Domain. But, for all other multi-user machines, this simple explanation should prove helpful.

Terminal Services Service Appears in All Versions of Windows XP
A short list of which services rely on the Terminal Services service, in each version of Win XP.

Description of Simple Folder View in Windows XP
Simple Folders view is a new Windows Explorer view option in Win XP. This short article describes its behavior, and tells how to turn it on and off.

Windows XP System Requirements
We’ve seen inconsistent reports on what hardware is required for Win XP. Personally, I’d never want to use a computer that just barely met the minimal requirements for its operating system. Go with the “recommended” figures on this table, not the “minimums.” Also, I suggest — especially for an upgrade — that you count on needing twice as much hard drive space as this table suggests.

How to Install Windows XP on a Computer with Less Than 64 MB of RAM
Microsoft provides the crack! (Why anybody would want to do this, though, is beyond me. I’ve run Win XP on a 64 MB computer, and it wasn’t fun!)

Policy Settings for the Start Menu in Windows XP
Oh, the things you can do to the Start Menu with Group Policy Editor! It’s a tweaker’s dream. Close to four dozen individual customizations.

How To Upgrade Win98 or Win ME Profiles to Windows XP Domain User Profiles
It’s easier if you do it during the upgrade installation of Windows XP, than if you wait until later.

Description of the Low Disk Space Notification in Windows XP
Error messages are your friends! But, sometimes, this particular gadfly is a pain in the DB-25. Yes, it’s good to have Windows alert us when a partition is getting so full that it could create problems; and yes, it’s also good to be able to turn this off at will! (This article is also destined to become a classic, because it lays out the time schedule of exactly how often Windows will pester you, and in what way.)

How to Enable the Personal Firewall Feature in Windows XP
I recommend a third party personal firewall. But, while the native XP firewall may not be as good, it’s a lot better than not having one!

Program Compatibility Check List for Windows XP
This is mostly for the programmers, not the end-user. However, it does provide a great list of what sort of behavior you can rightly expect from a program deigned to be fully compatibile with Windows XP. A fascinating, if tedious, read.

How to Script Compatibility Layers in Windows XP
Win XP has very strong software compatibility features. This article explores the job of applying compatibility patching through a script or batch file.

How to Troubleshoot Program Compatibility Issues in Windows XP
Man o’man, if they’d only had an article like this when Windows 95 first came out! Hotcha!

How to Use QFIXAPP.EXE in Windows XP and Windows .NET
“Quick Fix” is a new Win XP tool that makes it easy to apply compatibility and other fixes to programs.

How to Enable or Disable the New Windows XP Interface Components
Many of the new user interface components in Windows XP aren’t optimum for performance. Higher-powered computers don’t notice this too much, but slightly older ones might. You need to be able to decide whether you want the snazzy UI details, or better performance. This article is all about choice!

Description of the On-Disk Structural Enhancements in Windows XP
This should have been called “Structural Enhancements to NTFS in Windows XP,” because that’s what it’s about. A lengthy, somewhat technical, fairly interesting article.

How to Determine If Hardware or Software is Compatible with Windows XP
Everybody wants to know the answer to this one, right? The article gives you a Web link with the answers. (So, I’m giving you a link to their link to the answers, and you’re providing a link to the link I’m giving you to anyone you tell about The E-List, and they will then....)

Overview of Remote Assistance in Windows XP
How to Configure a Windows XP-Based Computer to Receive Remote Assistance Offers
Third-party technology has been introducing remote assistance methods over the last couple of years. Microsoft now has it packaged in Win XP. To me, this is definitely 21st Century computing!

How to Search for Hidden or System Files in Windows XP
Windows XP’s search feature takes a little getting used to. For example, by default it doesn’t search for hidden or system files. This short article tells how to fix that, if you want.

How to Disable Windows Messenger in Windows XP Professional
Oh, yeah! I’ve been wanting to get rid of that stupid little chess piece since I first saw an XP desktop! Maybe you like utilities like this — I consider them gross invasions of my privacy. (The title says it’s just for Professional, but the article is actually for Home Edition also.) One more reason to love the Group Policy Editor.

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Happy computing, everyone!

Jim Eshelman


THE NECESSARY LEGAL STUFF
DISCLAIMER: Any information given in this newsletter, or on any other part of the Windows Support Center website, is researched by me and believed to be accurate. However, I cannot guarantee, and do not guarantee, that all the information provided will work on all computer systems, for all users, all the time. Also, I sometimes make mistakes (that’s life!), and it is possible I made one or more of them here. All information herein is offered as-is and without warranty of any kind. In other words, I rely on the best information sources I can, and do my best to get it to you accurately; and, thereafter, you take your life in your own hands if you trust me on it. Neither James Eshelman, this site, outside contributors to this site, people quoted on this site, nor my cat is/are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from application of any information presented here.

The E-List. Copyright © 2001 by James A. Eshelman. All Rights Reserved.

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