Tips for Microsoft Windows XP

No More "100_1202.jpg"
You don't have to live with the meaningless numeric filenames your digital camera assigns to the pictures it stores, and you don't have to rename each one by hand in My Pictures. Instead, you can rename a whole photo shoot with a few strokes. In Windows Explorer, highlight the range of photos you want to rename, right-click, and choose Rename from the pop-up menu. Type in a new filename (such as "Holidays 2006"), and XP will apply that name to all the photos you've selected, adding a parenthetical number after each—"(1)," "(2)," and so on—to distinguish among them.

Windows With the Same View
Windows XP tries to anticipate the preferred way to display files listed in Windows Explorer (thumbnails in My Pictures, simple filenames in My Documents, and so on). If you prefer that all folders be displayed the same way (for instance, showing full details of each file), setting these preferences for each folder can be a drag. But XP lets you set your preferences globally. Go to Start > My Documents, click on the Views icon (to the right of the Search and Folders icons), and select your desired view. Then click on the Tools menu and scroll down to Folder Options. Select the View tab, then click the Apply to All Folders button.

Keep XP to Yourself
On your XP-based system, you can grant limited access to someone who needs it for a brief time. Do this by setting up a Guest User account. In Control Panel, double-click User Accounts, then click on Guest (under "pick an account to change") to enable a guest account. The person won't be able to access password-protected files, and won't be able to install or delete programs. When the guest is finished, go through the same steps, but this time select "Turn off the Guest account."

Remember the Alphabet
It's hard to believe, but as you add programs to your PC, Windows XP doesn't automatically alphabetize the list of apps it shows when you select All Programs from the Start menu. But you can tell XP to sort them alphabetically by simply right-clicking on a program or folder name in the All Programs list and selecting Sort by Name in the pop-up menu.

Keep Your Drive Tidy
Windows XP has a handy disk-defragmentation utility to keep your hard drive humming at optimal speed. You can schedule XP to run it automatically. Choose Performance and Maintenance from the Control Panel and select Scheduled Tasks. Double-click on Add Scheduled Task to launch XP's Scheduled Task wizard. Select Next, click on the Browse button, enter %systemroot%\system32\defrag.exe in the "File name" field and click Open. Select the frequency (weekly is fine) and time of day (when your PC will be on, but ideally when you won't be using it). Make sure the "Open advanced properties"¦" box is checked, and click on Finish. In the Run box of the advanced properties pane, add the drive letter you want to defrag to the end of the command in the window (be sure to include a space before the drive letter), and click OK.

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