By Ray on July 13, 2008 - 5:15pm
Periodically, maybe too frequently, you may have programs hanging up or refusing to end promptly during a shutdown or reboot. You can find the cure here.
Please Note: If you go to the Elder Geek's first location in the Registry and it doesn't look right to you, (mine didn't have the expected data) you'll find what you're looking for by looking in HKey_Current_User\Control Panel\Desktop. Double-click on the word Desktop, and look in the right-hand pane for AutoEndTasks. On my machine, it's the third one on the list. Clicking on that brings up the window to modify the data setting. Change the zero to a one and exit the Registry and reboot. You're done.
And a short 'PS' - If you'd like a little freeware program that can easily move your address book list from your Outlook Express to your Thunderbird email programs, for example, then you can find it by clicking here and it works. It just doesn't work on those mail programs that are on line, like Gmail, unfortunately. But it does what it does very well, and you don't need a user's manual, because it has a Wizard to take you by the hand.
By Ray on February 23, 2008 - 9:44pm
I found this announcement last week, and volunteered to give it my best shot, so this morning, along came a really big download from Automatic Updates, with this new Service Pack. Maybe I should explain: this isn't the final version of SP3, but rather Release Candidate 2, which is more or less like a beta. If we find it OK, then the 'Carved In Stone' version will be released a bit later on.
If you're wondering what happens if you agree to accept this version now, here's the poop -
Automatic Updates will download a rather large file onto your computer. Then, your computer will be scanned to verify its contents, the space available on it, and your key codes. Next, it will take an inventory of everything related to Windows on your machine. Then it creates a back-up of all that. Then, it chooses a conveniently empty part of your drive on which to unpack and install this service pack. Only then does it actually begin to install files, and that process will go on for the best part of three-quarters of an hour. After that, it will do a clean-up of its work, update the Registry, and register the new installation. After all that, you are invited to reboot, and your new Service Pack 3 begins life on your machine.
By Ray on February 23, 2008 - 9:15pm
If you download the file mentioned in this article, the main download will then come from Microsoft's Automatic Updates - and it's a biggie, Folks. Takes about an hour to get it and then wait for it to be installed. But it does make XP run better. I got it this morning.
