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Windows Tips Galore
Active Windows offers a first rate combination of tips and tutorials along with some useful reviews. The PCStats site features an excellent collection of Windows tips taken from the PCStats forums. I particularly liked the registry patch for removing those annoying entries in the "Add/Remove programs" menu that hang around long after the program has been uninstalled.
http://www.activewin.com
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1190&page=3
Tweaks for XP Freaks
We've mentioned this excellent collection of free Windows XP registry tweaks before but on a recent visit I noticed that it's now bigger and better than ever. Each tweak can be downloaded as a .reg file to save you the task of editing your registry.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm
Windows XP Tips from Microsoft
Dozens of XP Pro tips including a sneaky way to bulk rename files. I didn't know you could do that in Windows. Guess you learn something every day.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/tips/default.asp
How Fast do you Really Surf?
The high data rate you get when downloading a big file is not a
reliable measure of how quickly you can surf. This site offers a
free test that measures your connection speed to 40 different
sites worldwide. Be prepared to have your ego deflated ;>)
http://www.numion.com/
Mysterious Startup Programs Explained
If you've ever looked at your Windows startup folder you're bound to find a number of odd-named executables. Check out exactly what each program does at this valuable resource site:
http://www.sysinfo.org/startupinfo.html
Find Email Addresses
If you are looking for someone's email address, the bad news is there's no central directory. However this site offers a meta search engine that will search many possible sources. Quite to my surprise, I found my own personal email address.
http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/
Commercial Software for Free
Many commercial software products started life as freeware. You can still locate many of these original free versions at the Internet Archive, which has captured snapshots of the web at different points of time for research purposes. Just enter the software vendor's web site address and with a bit of luck, you may be able to locate and download a free version.
http://www.archive.org/
BIOS Optimization Guide
Want to tweak your BIOS for maximum speed or stability? Like to understand the meaning of some of the obscure settings in your BIOS setup? If so, head straight to this site.
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=1
Organize Your Partitions Correctly
What's the best way to organize the partitions on your hard disk? Now that's a question that would take a long dinner and two bottles of red wine to sort out. For those who don't like wine or simply want a quick introduction to the issues, check out the following article.
http://aumha.org/win4/a/parts.htm
Optimizing the Windows XP Paging File
This is one of the best articles I've yet seen on this subject. It dispels many myths including setting the max and min sizes the same and setting the maximum size at 2.5 times the memory size.
http://aumha.org/a/xpvm.htm
Free Windows Networking Help
Got a networking problem? Want a networking tutorial? Need some background on Windows networking technology? Then head straight for this excellent resource site. The content quality is a bit variable but hey, it's free.
http://www.wown.com/
XP Questions Answered
This site offers an excellent collection of Windows XP tips including answers to some of the most common only encountered problems.
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/all-tips.html
How to Make Windows XP Run Faster
This site lists a step-by-step procedure for optimizing the performance of Windows XP. Most of it is good advice but comes at a cost in the form of slightly downgraded appearance and the loss of little-used features and services.
http://www.techreviewer.com/viewpage.cfm/pi/9
Impressive Windows Tips and Tricks Site
More performance enhancing and behavior modification tweaks than you ever imagined.
http://www.mdgx.com
More Networking Help
A couple of issues back I mentioned the excellent wireless networking resources offered by the Practically Networked site. This prompted subscriber Richard Cowper to write in about the Home Net Help site. Nice find Richard. The coverage is wider than just wireless networking too. Well worth visiting.
http://www.homenethelp.com/
Windows XP Tips Galore
The first link is to a site offering a nice list of 101 tips covering ways you can improve performance, increase privacy and more. The second link is another site which, rather cleverly, lists its tips in popularity order. Backing up/restoring/disabling XP activation topped the popularity list.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1494
http://is-it-true.org/nt/xp/index.shtml
Windows XP Myths Exposed
This is a well researched list that debunks dozens of commonly held Windows beliefs such as "Periodically cleaning the pre- fetch folder speeds up boot time." While visiting, check out other sections of the site; they are first class.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
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www.aboutonlinetips.com is my favorite
Great Windows Tips list. Thanks
Google is always the best place to find the tip and trick about windows, basically all the systems administrators are now getting depended on google to find solution to solve a problem.
http://www.megaleecher.net/ and http://www.labnol.org are my daily visits, do have a look at them you will love it.
Here are a few really good sites that havehelped me out alot. They also not only have info for XP but for Vista (which is what I have) and some Win7 stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PCWizKid
http://www.howtogeek.com/
http://www.megaleecher.net/
The PC wiz kid is a very good site with many helpful tips, etc. Hope this helps someof you, especially the Vista folks. Good Luck!
Amazing list for XP
--------------------------------------------------
I speak my mind at Gravity Blue
www.gravityblue.com
Same at http://www.pctipforum.com Come and join us..
Great list, but it seems 80%+ apply specifically to XP. What about those of us who use Vista? (and actually prefer doing so!)
Exactly... I'm looking for vista tips more than xp tips although this list is really well composed, thank you! I've heard things about switching file indexing off, but I don't know how to do that precisely.
Hungria Bonita
There are people who prefer using Vista?
:O
Yes, there WERE. But now we prefer using Win7.
Thanks for sharing these info with us! I was reading something similar on another website that i was researching. I will be sure to look around more. thanks...
Good work! Your post/article is an excellent example of why I keep comming back to read your excellent quality content that is forever updated. Thank you!
winxpfix.com is not a good site... please remove it as a link.
Thanks-finally got around to deleting that.
Your input was very helpful as we do not want to link to risky sites.
Steve
Yeah I agree, sexy girls and computer help and tips do not mix..What is winxpfix thinking??? Why don't you put http://www.tips4pc.com up there...That site has helped me out on a number of occasions.
I have not really looked around there, but after seeing your post I went there and saw that McAfee gives it a red (bad) rating.
Apparently, some questionable downloads at the site and it links to several other red sites.
McAfee StieAdvisor: winxpfix.com
Excellently written article, if only all bloggers offered the same content as you, the internet would be a much better place. Please keep it up! Cheers.
Agreed! I love all sorts of Windows Tips and Tricks.
try http://www.winvistaclub.com/forum/
Hi there
I think these sites you have mentioned are great, however some are too technical and presume the user knows more than they actually do. I like Tips4pc because it is easy to understand and it is not all computer jargon, and big impressive words. I must say I also love this site for the same reason.
http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com is a great site for Windows users of all abilities
I am glad you mentioned http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm because I cannot believe that site. It has so much there. That was one of the good old originals and now there are hundreds of good computer sites.
Another good one is http://www.tips4pc.com but is not as old as kellys korner but is nearly as big.
Where are WINDOW Vista Tips
Here's a cool new Vista site 100 Vista Tips
Try this...Windows Vista Tips
http://www.techsupportalert.com/search/node/vista
I think this site is the best! I also have another good one Free computer tips Its not too technical and very easy to understand.
personally i found http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html to be quite useful, not just for the tweaks the the whole site altogether is pretty informative.
Wrong, black viper has helped me to improve my startup by at least 2 times. And along with jkdefrag my old clunk PIII gives other badly configured latest PCs a run for their money.
I can't understand. This website (Mr George) said:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-vista-tweaks.htm
"UnlockForUs is a blogspot space by ____________, offering a great collection of Windows Vista tips, tutorials, tricks and software, including this great tweaking tool WinBubble" Anyway Here's the thread:
http://unlockforus.blogspot.com/2007/10/windows-vista-unlocks-news-tips-...
Anyway, great collection!!! Thanks!
I do agree that Black Viper is one of the best sites for windows help. But apart from that there is bleeping computers, and lots more that are truly good.
Plz tell us about them, and give some links.
Hi
I guess Anonymous is talking about
http://www.blackviper.com/
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/
Don't forget WWW.BlackViper.com for all those services that you want to know more about.......I was able to secure a lot of those unneeded items running in the background. He also has additional tech articles.
Zeus
Excellently written article, if only all bloggers offered the same content as you, the internet would be a much better place. Please keep it up! Cheers.
That's nice thanks! I used to love Windows Tips and Windows Tricks in general.
Greetings
I don't disagree that Black Viper's site is valuable, but Ed Bott strongly suggests that attempts to disable windows services in an effort to improve system efficiency are counter productive and probably unsafe.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=448
"Here’s the reality: On an otherwise healthy PC running Windows Vista, disabling most built-in Windows services is extremely unlikely to have any noticeable effect on memory usage, startup or shutdown time, or system performance. On the contrary, you are more likely to create problems by disabling services. Not to mention the amount of time you will surely waste and the productivity you will lose with all that starting and stopping and rebooting and web searching." (Ed Bott)
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