Windows XP includes built-in support for creating and opening ZIP files, but it’s capabilities are nowhere near as robust as third-party ZIP management tools like WinZIP, Filzip and other popular compression programs.
While there’s technically nothing wrong with leaving both XP’s built-in ZIP capabilities and a third-party tool installed simultaneously, some performance improvements can be had […]

When you right-click on a file or folder, Windows XP displays a shortcut menu that includes options like Open, Delete, Rename, Properties, and so forth. More than likely, you’ve noticed that this menu also includes an option called Send To, which when expand displays different locations to which you can send the item. For example, […]

Everyone has their own ideas as to what constitutes their “perfect” Windows desktop. Some prefer the clean and crisp look, where shortcut icons are kept to an absolute minimum. Others deem substance more important than style, and prefer to use their Desktop real estate as a placeholder for shortcuts to all of their most commonly […]

If you’ve enabled a screen saver on your Windows XP system and set it to prompt for a password (or display the Welcome screen on Windows XP Home edition) to re-enter your user session, then you may be aware that you have a “grace” period between when the screen saver first appears and when a […]

With XP’s Welcome logon screen enabled, users will be presented with a list of their unread email messages when the screen is displayed. This list of unread messages is generated for users individually and takes into account unread messages from programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, and so forth depending on a user’s setup.
While this […]

Windows XP makes it easy to browse through images stored in folders on your system by way of its “thumbnail” view option. When thumbnail view is selected for a folder (by clicking View > Thumbnails in My Computer), Windows XP displays images as miniature thumbnails rather than as traditional file icons, making it easier to […]

Chances are good that the mouse connected to your PC includes a scroll wheel between the right and left mouse buttons. Using the scroll wheel to navigate up and down within programs like Microsoft Work or your web browser is certainly helpful, much easier than grabbing for the vertical scroll bar at the right-hand side […]

Tired of Windows XP displaying those warning balloon messages on your taskbar? While they do help to keep less experienced users a little more informed about the state of their Windows XP system than they might otherwise be, they can get annoying, especially for experienced users who would rather not be disturbed.
As with most system […]

Running out of hard disk space? When Windows XP detects that a drive has 200 MB or less free disk space left, it begins alerting you to the situation by displaying the following message:
You are running out of disk space on X (where X is the drive letter in question). To free space on this […]

One of the more annoying “features” of Windows XP is its insistence on launching AutoPlay when you insert or attach certain types of media to your PC, like CD discs or USB thumb drives. While AutoPlay can be temporarily disabled by holding down the Shift key after inserting a CD, for example, you may want […]