After cleaning up my WindowsXP Professional OS (Dell) to give to my son, all of a sudden The nag screen comes up and tells me I have three days to 'activate' my product! I bought the program new years ago, and have legally installed it on three of my Dell machines with no problems. WTF? It appears that I turned off the restore function and automatic updates, I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Any hiv-ers know why this occured? [more inside]
posted by ~Sushma~ on Aug 6, 2009 - 15 answers

I'm in Windows XP. Whenever I manage files in various apps, like "save as" or "open file," there's that stack of location icons on the left such as My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Computer, My Network Places, etc. I want to destroy the My Recent Documents and My Network Places locations and add a custom folder or drive to that stack of location icons--or whatever the heck you call that. There must be a way! (Apologies if this has been asked, but I don't even know what that stack of icons is called so I can't search for it...)
posted by Ky on Aug 5, 2009 - 9 answers

My desktop PC is powering down overnight randomly and I can't figure out why. Windows XP Pro SP3. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Mar 27, 2009 - 21 answers

I just reformatted an XP laptop and installed Service Pack 3. I don't use Internet Explorer for browsing - do I need to upgrade to IE7/8 anyway, just for in-built security? Or can I safely leave it at 6 if I don't use it to browse? Apologies if this question seems really, really dumb.
posted by ravcasleygera on Mar 19, 2009 - 18 answers

A Visual Basic 6 (ugh) runtime file distributed with our internal Access database has been killed by a recent Windows security update. It's hard to gather support information (especially since VB6 is about 8.7 million years old) and so I was wondering if anyone out there can help me track down a more recent copy of the runtime file in question—msflxgrd.ocx—or otherwise fix the problem? [more inside]
posted by bcwinters on Mar 9, 2009 - 8 answers

My laptop's been infected by something that is interfering with all the usual solutions. Please help! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Jan 25, 2009 - 30 answers

Is there any way I can create desktop wallpaper that has a link to a specific web site? [more inside]
posted by Joleta on Dec 17, 2008 - 5 answers

Had to reinstall XP Home. How do I get all my old settings back? [more inside]
posted by dirtynumbangelboy on Apr 14, 2007 - 6 answers

I have a client system that has Vista preinstalled. The client wants XP Pro on the system. It's a laptop, and the manufacturer (HP) only provides Vista drivers. Will the Vista drivers work in Windows XP? Is there a hardware-equivalent HP system that is the Windows XP version that I can get drivers for to use on this one? It's an HP DV6235NR. Thanks!
posted by SlyBevel on Mar 5, 2007 - 12 answers

Why won't my iPod show up correctly on my work PC? [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu on May 11, 2006 - 3 answers

In an emergency situation, facing a serious deadline, Windows decides to stop working. Not knowing what else to do, I reformat the harddrive. Crisis averted. Now, how do I re-connect to my second and third harddrives? [more inside]
posted by panoptican on Apr 5, 2006 - 7 answers

I'm getting a new computer in a few weeks, but I have a TV capture card I want to transfer from my old machine into the new one. Since it's going to be an XP machine, in light of the weird "hardware configuration" key they built into the software, should I install the capture card before I boot the machine for the first time, or should I wait until afterwards? On the one hand, I'd like to make sure the machine works as is before I crack it open, but on the other hand, I would not like to spend a bunch of time on hold with Microsoft to get the damned OS unlocked. How touchy is the XP hardware configuration key? (I know, I know, buy a Mac...)
posted by headspace on Mar 2, 2004 - 3 answers