Category: Windows XP

Often when you restart your Windows XP computer, your desktop looks weird and shows an Active Desktop Recovery error. One of the reasons for this error is that your Internet Explorer browser stopped working in the middle or you had to restart your computer because some application crashed. If this error is occurring too often, then you may want to disable the Active Desktop Recovery completely.

When Windows crashes, it shows the dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD). The BSOD shows the error that possibly caused the crash in white foreground and blue background (this is why its called BSDO). If you want to change the foreground and background colors of the BSOD, then you can do so easily.

If many people use the same computer in a family or an institution like school, then it is always a better idea to make separate Windows accounts for every individual. This way everyone can have their own separate settings like browser bookmarks, desktop wallpapers etc. You can create a new user account easily in Windows XP. For creating a new user account, you must have computer administrator level privileges.

If your computer is used by many people, then it is highly advised that you keep your Windows user account password protected. This way nobody else can access your user account except yourself. If you are a computer administrator, then you can change or assign password for any user account. If you are a standard user, then you can change password for only your account.

Windows XP assigns a random picture to your account after you have installed Windows for the first time. Windows also assigns a random picture after you create a new user account. This picture appears on the Windows logon screen and on the Start Menu. You can change this user account picture easily and assign either one of the pictures that come with Windows, or you can use your own custom picture.

Windows XP automatically generates the thumbnail preview for standard images, videos some documents like PDF files supported by the operating system. This media preview is shown in the Details pane on the left side of the Windows Explorer. The preview thumbnails are also generated when the files are viewed in the Thumbnails view.

The modern Start Menu (as compared to the classic style) shows shortcuts of most often used programs. The most often used program is shown on the top and the least used program is shown on the bottom. If you want you can clear the list of these most often used programs. Clearing of this list removes the shortcuts from the most often used programs list in the Start Menu.

If you want to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP, then you have to go through many steps. But you can add the whole series of commands to the right-click context menu so that you can just right-click on a file or folder and choose Take Ownership to take the ownership of the selected item.

It is advised by security experts to normally use computer as a standard user and use the administrator level access only when needed. As a standard user, when you need to do administrative tasks like installing software, you do not have to log off and log on as administrator. But you can just run a program or run a command as Administrator right from your standard account session.