[tweaks]

Here I will place little goodies that have helped me get WinXP to perform the way I want it to work. Most of them can be found in various spots in the resource list. Others came from friends. More will be added so that I can remember what I did and in hopes that they might help someone else with the transition. It's mostly silly stuff, but silly things can irritate me when I am trying to get some work done.

The 1st three weeks [late Sept - Oct 15, 2002]

• Right off the bat I hated the "grouping" of windows from the same program that were open. I just didn't know it was called grouping taskbar buttons yet. I have heard some love it, but the way I work it was driving me nuts. Once I found out what it was called, I could find out if it was removable. [and *put-backable* if I change my mind ;-]
  
  Left Click Start -> Right Click the Start Button Menu -> Properties -> Taskbar Menu -> UN-check group similiar taskbar buttons -> Okay
  
  
• Val had to help me find the clock settings to change from military time to a plain old 12 hour clock:
  
  Start ->Control Panel -> Regional & Language Options -> Customize Button -> Time Tab [set as you wish then Click Okay]
  
  I also found the reason some of my software had tried to install in German here...seems I was set for German instead of English. LOL, go figure. I don't know what I did to cause that, but it wasn't that way with the first few things I started adding so I can't blame it on the original install. I changed back to English and all was well.

• Drop shadows on things like the cursor were irritating me. [grumpy aren't I??] Here's where you can fix that the way you like alongs with some other appearance features:
  
  Rite Click My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced [Visual Effects opens first] -> Performance Options box -> Check or UN-Check options as desired
  
  

[October 18, 2002]

I have been reading about enabling and disabling services at the black viper site today. [Rather odd looking site, but full of helpful info.] Many of the ones he listed as mostly useless had been turned off by the tech(s) who originally installed XP on this system. I tried disabling a few more and want to list them here in case something goes whacky and I want to remember what I did. [I am actually trying to be at least a little organized, ya'll...haha]

Services I disabled today:

• Indexing Service
• Messenger
• Fast User Switching
• Themes
• Upload Manager
• Web Client
• Windows Time
• Wireless Zero Configuration

Some of these services I may need later, but not now.

Additional notes of interest on services that I may need for reference:

• If when I finally get around to rearranging my work area [physical] and hookup to my UPS I find that it does not work, try enabling it in services. This was diconnected when I purchased the machine. It was noted that most UPS devices do not require this service but some may.
  
  
• If install problems occur, try manually enabling Windows Installer. There may be problems with Office installation if this is off. And possibly some games. It can safely be disabled again after the install is completed.
  
  

Hopefully, I have speeded up some things and not caused problems...we shall see. One thing I do need to track is the NIC card enable/disable as I am not using it at this time. I've been experiencing an extremely slow boot up speed and this was suggested on one of the message boards I was reading to someone with a similiar problem:

"If you have a network card and no network, sometimes that will slow down your bootup time. It sounds like something is trying to load but can't and the machine sits there waiting until it times out."

That's all for this exciting installment in the continuing adventures.

[more tweaks]