Windows XP Basics

Connecting old HDD via Caddy
I've just connected an old HDD to an XP PC via a caddy. It recognised it straight away (whilst my newer Vista machine wouldn't). It won't let me into my user fold though I can get into other user folders. Presumably this is because it would have had a password when in it's original machine? Is there a way to a... 23 Mar 2010 21:47

Trouble starting Windows XP
Problem began on Saturday. When PC got to the black screen with Windows logo, and the marque goes to the right, it never progressed past this screen. I notice the display flickered once, like it was trying to launch, but nogo. So I forced system to shutdown, restarted and got the safe mode start screen and selecte... 22 Mar 2010 23:02

windoze explorer blue font
Have wondered for a long time, never bothered to find out. Why are some files listed in a blue font, others in a black font, in Windoze Explorer? Thanks! ... 24 Mar 2010 11:12

Browsing for file now asks for program
Hi, I hope this is the right ng for this question. I am a novice user of Windows XP (and happy to remain novice!) I learn how to do simple things but sometimes the simple things change. Just now I wanted to look for my most recent additions to a certain folder. I do this in a very simple way: Click on My ... 22 Mar 2010 06:05

taskbar
items in the XPpro with SP3 taskbar RH with the clock. question is, why does the cursor when placed on an icon, the info is shown behind the taskbar,? ... 22 Mar 2010 11:54

Booting Progress Indicator
Hi All..... Windows XP pro, SP2 here. Concerning the animated progress Indicator that shows up on the screen while Windows is booting. Talking about the small one near the center of the screen, not the one that runs all the way across the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it runs through smoothly several time... 21 Mar 2010 23:16

speed up the boot
I am looking for some suggestions. I have Vostro with a dual core processor & 4 g ram. I have a substantial amout of software installed which makes booting a 15 minute process. I was wondering if I could create a small network where the main computer would access a server for the software. I know most softwar... 22 Mar 2010 20:41

i know it's not ms, but maybe a similar situation has happened in the ie
until i can get firefox working like i want, i went back to opera. now, arbitrarily, on any tabbed site, when i open it, be it yahoo, or facebook, each & every ico the cursor goes over, a blue line highlights said icon & it leaves the site useless. was using facebook earlier & all was fine. i went to check ma... 19 Mar 2010 01:40

Re-partitioning external drive?
I just installed a slightly used WD 500 GB drive from an old computer in an Antec enclosure as an external USB drive. Everything works except that only 55 GB of the disk is partitioned. The remainder is shown as unpartitioned. How do I recover the full capacity? In DOS days I would have used FDisk but it seems ... 19 Mar 2010 15:32

Microsoft caught pirating somebody's patent again!!!
Before OS/2 I liked MS. I had an MS-DOS-Generic (no-bitmap, no IBM compat) 80186 and Microsoft went out of their way to be helpful. I also ran Multiplan on that Ampro 2210 with an HP2621a terminal. I joke about it, but it feels like this is true: when MS did biz with IBM on OS/2 it was almost like IBM body snatch... 19 Mar 2010 09:19