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When you create or copy new files on your hard disk, Windows creates these files one after another on the hard disk wherever the space is available. Sometimes, a file has to be written in fragments in many places as the space is available on the hard disk. Fragmenting can make the Windows slow to respond.

If you get an old computer with many user accounts you might wanna delete all user accounts except the one you want to use. Similarly, when you do not need a user account anymore, you want to delete it. To delete a user account in Windows XP you must be logged in as administrator.

The Windows Disk Defragmenter does not defragment the system files which are being used by Windows. For example, the virtual memory file or the page file. Mark Russinovich of System Internals has made a free utility for defragmenting these files.

If get to work with many computers with different passwords, which is true of you work at a computer related company, then you might forget login credentials of one or more computers. Don’t worry, Windows XP allows you to create a password reset disk, using which you can change the password of your account in case you forget it.

Normal way of shutting down Windows (no matter if it is XP, Vista or 7) is clicking on Start Menu button (or orb in Vista and 7) and selecting to shutdown. This way of shutting down may take a considerable time because it waits for all programs to close. You can create a shortcut on your desktop for a faster shutdown.

You can add or change the OEM logo you see in System Properties window. You can open System Properties by right-clicking My computer icon and selecting Properties. The OEM logo shown in the System Properties window is a bitmap file (.BMP file) with dimensions 120 pixels x 180 pixels (120 pixels height and 180 pixels width).

Whenever you are making changes to Windows’ registry, either manually or through some software, its a nice idea to make a backup of registry. This little step can save you from lots of trouble in future, including from having to re-install Windows all over again. If something wrong happens you can restore Windows’ registry from the backup.

Windows XP Professional edition has a tool called Backup Utility using which you can make backups of files and later restore files from backups you made. You can even backup your entire system creating a recovery disk. You can follow the following general steps to use the Backup Utility

Sometimes you are told by a software (especially the development tools like Python, GCC etc) to add their folder’s path to the system PATH variable. The effect of adding a folder to the system PATH variable is that when you issue a command in the command line window, or in the Run box, Windows would search all the folders listed in the system PATH variable.

In windows explorer, when you choose to view a folder in the Thumbnail or Filmstrip mode, it creates a file Thumbs.db in that folder. This file stores all the thumbnails generated in the folder, so that next time when you open the same folder, Windows do not have to generate thumbnails all over again. This saves CPU power and as Windows do no have generate thumbnails again, opening the same folder would be faster the next time.