Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP

Is there a way to display USEFUL info instead of "Running Shutdown Scripts"?

John Kenneth Fisher — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:29:31 -0800

Is there a way to display USEFUL info instead of "Running Shutdown Scripts" on Windows XP? I have a number of Group Policy'd shutdown scripts that run on Windows XP (and some Win7, but mainly XP) and I was wondering if there is something I can put in the batch file that will replace the text that currently says "Running Shutdown Scripts."

So, in pseudocode:

Display "Copying File such and such"
Copy File:/Such/and/such
Display "Copying File this and that"
Copy File:/This/and/That

Best simple Windows backup software?

fishmasta — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:37:05 -0800

Looking for good easy-to-use Windows backup software. I'm looking for a backup solution for my dad that will be as easy to use as possible. He's not very computer savvy so the simpler the better. Basically I'm looking into something similar to Time Machine for OS X that will automatically update his backup drive every time he plugs it in with an option to restore from his backup should anything crash. He's currently on Windows XP, but is looking at getting a laptop (which presumably will have Windows 7 installed), so something that will function well across both would be best. Thanks!

WinXP OEM on a Mac

jrchaplin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:25:10 -0800

I've a WinXP Professional OEM install disc that I'd like to (and tried to) install on VMWare Fusion on my 24-inch iMac (running OS X 10.5). But so far, it's a no-go. Is there some kind of restriction on installing OEM versions of Windows in a virtual environment and/or on a Mac? So far my Google-fu has failed me on this question, but what happens is when I get to the activation key box during install, the key is rejected as invalid. What's weird about this is that attempting to install this same XP Pro disc on an old (circa 2004-05) home-built Windows box works flawlessly.

I bought the disc on Ebay, from a seller who exchanged the first disc I bought from him (It would not load/install on any machine) with a new copy. At first I thought that I got hosed by the seller of the disc; but the subsequent ability to install on a Windows box has me wondering if the problem lies elsewhere.

I had hoped to use the WinXP install on my iMac simply for web development testing; not crazy about spending $200 for Win 7, plus another $40 to upgrade my VMware Fusion install to handle Win 7. I know I could use the old box to do the same, but space is at a premium and I was gonna wipe the old box and donate it to a local non-profit.

How can I use my external hard disk drive to regularly backup my Windows XP laptop?

grouse — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:08:43 -0800

How can I use my external hard disk drive to regularly backup my Windows XP laptop in as simple a manner as possible? Ideally, I would want something that works like Time Machine on the Mac—I would really like something I can set and forget. Free solutions are best, obviously, but I'm willing to buy software for this. I've read some of the previous backup questions, but figured there might be new recommendations by now.

Why-Fi?

Rhaomi — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:17:19 -0800

What's killing my wi-fi connection? The last few days I've been having some odd problems with my wireless network. I'll be browsing on my laptop when all of a sudden things get really slow, as if I lost the connection. But instead of being sent to "This page is not available" or "server not found" pages like when there really is no connection, I just get stuck loading forever. So if I open a tab and go to Google, it will sit and load saying "Waiting for www.google.com" in the status bar for a minute or two, then eventually say "Done" -- even though the only thing that has loaded is a completely blank tab (even the source code of the page is empty) with the raw URL in the title bar.

But throughout all this, there's no indication that I've lost my connection. The wifi icon in the system tray doesn't change, and says I'm connected if I hover over it. When I open up the Command Prompt and enter ipconfig /all, it says all my internet connection stats are normal. The subnet mask, DHCP server, DNS, etc. are all there. The IP address doesn't start with 169. It's all okay.

Weirdest of all, despite the fact that I can see that all the connection info is normal, if I enter my router's IP address into the address bar (which usually takes me to the router's settings page), it just does the same thing. Load... load... load... blank tab. I understand not being able to connect to the internet, but if I can see all my connection and router info in Command Prompt, why can't I connect to the same router with my browser?

The only way to fix it, I've found, is to disconnect from the wireless network and reconnect. It'll then work fine for anywhere from one minute to fifteen, at which point the connection drops again. This is only affecting my laptop, by the way -- iPods and other laptops connect fine.

I've tried restarting my computer, restarting the router, and repairing the connection -- nothing works. It seems that getting closer to the router improves things, but I'm not sure since the problem comes and goes randomly. And besides, the router is in the same place as it's always been, so unless it's suddenly lost broadcasting power I don't see what would cause the problem. And in the "View Wireless Networks" window, it says the network has an Excellent signal when I'm not connected (though that decreases a bar or two once I do).

The only incident I can think of is that a power surge recently burnt out the power supply, and I had to buy a universal one with an adapter to get the router up and running again. But this was a week or two before the trouble started, so that's probably not the source.

Is there anything that would cause a wireless router to lose signal strength like that? Is there something I can do to fix it, or should I just spring for a new one?

Details: I have a Dell laptop running Windows XP SP3. I have a Bellsouth Fast Access DSL internet connection. The router is a 2Wire HomePortal 1700HW. The loading problem happens on Firefox, Chrome, and IE7.

One more detail I remembered: For awhile when the problem first started, ipconfig /all was giving me some weird info. For instance, it said that the "lease" for the connection expired one second after it was obtained. But it's not doing that anymore.

BIOS Schmios

ZackTM — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:16:46 -0800

How can I get XP onto my laptop... if I only have a 3.5inch drive, and my BIOS is one version away from letting me boot by USB? Alright, I'm stuck and I need some ideas. I've bought a cheap laptop from the state surplus auction and it seems to be working fine. Battery charges, screen looks good... but they must have wiped the entire hard-drive completely because I don't have any operating system.

I tried booting w/ a USB boot disk but it hangs on the splash screen because my BIOS has a bug in it that got removed by the next release.

I don't have immediate access to a 3.5in drive/disk to make a bootdisk but I could probably find a way to make one. Problem is I don't have a way to make my Windows XP CD install into a 3.5in disk sized file set.

What's the best step-by-step way to get from no operating system to Windows XP?

Older Gmail Messages Into Thunderbird

davidstandaford — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:42:32 -0800

How do I backup my gmail account and get all of my older gmail messages into Thunderbird on Windows XP? I'm trying to backup gmail using Thunderbird and it's not downloading older messages. When I installed Thunderbird and set it up with my gmail account it downloaded messages going back to 6/22/2009 4:08 AM. I have no idea where Thunderbird got that date from.

I have emails much older than that and when I tell Thunderbird to get messages it only downloads the newer ones. How do I get Thunderbird to backup all of those older gmail messages onto my computer.

If there is any other information I can provide that would help I'll update in comments.

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

WinXP Corrupt (this is news?) ...Desktop Disaster in Process

FauxScot — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:42:02 -0800

Win XP corrupted system and SAM files... disaster in process, need expert input and recommendation for a data recovery service I can trust. My backup strategy is to clone my hard drive periodically. Last time I did it in April, Windows told me I had changed hardware configurations too often and made me 'reauthorize' my installation, which I did, but with some trepidation.

This month, prior to installing some new development software, I went to do my normal tricks and while I am not sure what happened, after Windows asked me to reauthorize, apparently the operation did not complete.

Now, my backup is a broken and faithful version of my hard drive, and neither boot. Windows reports that the file \windows\system32\config\system is corrupt.

If I replace the system and SAM files with the last version I had, I have a computer that is a snapshot of my 4/2009 computer, with all the recent info that I stored on the desktop gone. If I were not in a quite literal frenzy of activity, I would simply tolerate this and go on, but the last four months have been a blizzard of work, and I am thinking that my only hope of recovering a lot of creative work is to send the drive out to a data recovery service.

I've only been experimenting with one of the two drives, so I do have one that has not been tampered with. I don't use restore points, and usually do this backup thing monthly, as it requires disassembly of my desktop machine, and I know I've been living on borrowed time, but that's life. The issue for today is recovery; punishment will come later!

The questions are:

Has anyone else here ever done this and how did you recover?

Who has the best (not cheapest, BEST) recovery service (with bonus points for Boston or NYC),

Secondary question:

In WinXP, where does the 'desktop' live... in the system file or SAM file? (It is there where a bunch of my most valuable files live.) XP needs both the SAM and system files to boot. Any way to extract its content if the OS won't boot?

Thanks in advance for uber tech advice....

Windows xp lockdown

kraigory — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:49:16 -0800

What's a simple way in windows xp to prevent a user from doing anything but using one program? An employee was recently caught playing solitare on the clock at a computer terminal that is used to search an access database. I am tasked with locking the computer. I know I could just delete the games, but I'm looking for something more complete, and I may not be able to log in as the administrator.

So, are there any simple ways I can prevent users from doing anything except using access? They don't need to open the program, just use it. Also, the users aren't terribly computer literate, so if it just appears that they can't do anything else, that might be sufficient. Is there any way to get a program to go full screen and hide the minimize/maximize/close, and keep the start bar from poping up?

Also keep in mind that I don't have the administrator password, although i could get it if I absolutely had to. So, anything that could be done without that would be best, although I would like to know what options there are if I did have the password.

If software is used I would prefer for it to be freeware.

Thanks for any suggestions! I know there are multiple ways to do this, but I'm trying to figure out what would be best.

Know any good mini-spreadsheets for XP?

No-sword — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:03:17 -0800

Can you recommend a mini-spreadsheet program for Windows XP, preferably freeware? It will be running on a tiny laptop in a place with no internet access, so OpenOffice is too big and online solutions are too... online. I'm imagining a sort of super-stripped-down Excel: No macros or fanciness, just the ability to enter numbers and strings in a table, add them up, and export to a real-Excel-readable format for later collation on a desktop PC.

I'm hoping for recommendations of specific software and places to get it from, rather than "Here's the 'spreadsheet' section of VersionTracker, there are hundreds" — I'm an OS X guy, I have no intuitive feel for choosing and obtaining Windows software. Thanks in advance.

Activate Windows AGAIN?

~Sushma~ — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:35:26 -0800

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? I went ahead and updated it three times, once on the phone because the network card didn't work due to the cleanup losing the driver, then after fixing the networking problem I did it again twice online. I have a sneaky suspicion that Microsnoot fubar'd SP3 because I have been getting a 'server too busy' error on the support site for XP.

Those "Save As" and "Open" locations...

Ky — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:17:42 -0800

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...)

Not-so-subliminal messages on a computer near you?

cameradv — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:26:07 -0800

Can anyone recommend a Windows XP screensaver that is (1) easily deployable across an organization (2) serves pictures or text from a central data store, either a URL or a networked folder, that's preferably free? We're a non-profit organization with a few hundred PCs running Windows XP on a Novell network. We'd like to have a "status screen" of some type running on all the PCs, so when they go to the screensaver, it displays text from a central source. I've debated Flash and other fancy players, but I think just serving images is good enough ... the slide show transitions will be attention getting, and the screens displaying information can be generated by any number of programs that make BMP or JPGs.

There are a zillion slide-show screensavers. My current best candidate is Endless Slideshow Screensaver .. but I'm game for additional ideas or sources. This seems like it maybe a bit over-kill for our needs.

Surely, this is a problem solved about 10,000 times already. Just not by our local IT department.

Low Audio on Bootcamp Windows XP

strangememes — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:03:06 -0800

I have a few Macbook Pro systems at work that we've installed Windows XP via Bootcamp on. We've done this with previous Macbook models in the past. This time, however, there is an audio problem: the audio on the XP side is so low it's close to non-existent. Is anyone familiar with this problem? Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it? I've been googling this and checking the Microsoft help but have come up short.

Some pertinent information:

Macbook Pro
Windows XP
Audio Hardware: Cirrus Logic 4206
Current Audio Driver: Cirrus Logic HD Audio

Settings to back-up before wiping machine on Windows Server 2003 domain/network?

chudmonkey — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:28:49 -0800

Can you recommend a guide for and/or some details about backing up all the necessary network settings to get a Windows XP machine back onto a Windows Server 2003 server/domain after a wipe? At work, I have four Windows XP Professional machines and a Windows Server 2003 for Small Business server. The workstations are logged on to a local domain and access shared files and some applications from the server via a few mapped drive letters.

The workstations are all exactly what you would expect a Windows box to be after being used indiscriminately by a rotating assortment of people with no regard for security or maintenance.

I want to wipe one of these machines and use it to build a nice, tidy image that includes all the standard programs and settings we need. But when Windows boots up for the first time after a re-install, I'll need to be sure I can get the machine back on the network and behaving the same way with it without any fumbling.

So, basically: What settings should I be aware of/making note of in order to make sure I can configure a fresh Windows XP install to duplicate the network/server/domain connectivity of an existing install?

I haven't worked with XP in any in-depth way for awhile, but I used to be pretty into it, and I have a lot of (rusty) experience with the control panel, the registry, command line, etc. If you have any tips or advice to share, you can jump right in, I won't need a primer on how to find anything.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Please help me decide where to start fixing my BSOD issue

ClarissaWAM — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:53:41 -0800

Blue Screen of Death hell and I don't know where to start... is it software? Hardware? HDD? RAM? Drivers? Any pointers would be appreciated! Hi and thank you for your time. Here's the story so far:
I started getting BSODs last week - first sporadically and the PC would still run in between, but by now I can basically only boot into safe mode without getting a BSOD pretty much straight away. Here's a blurry example of one.

Potentially relevant information:
- When I upgraded to iTunes 8.2 my PC (esp. Firefox) slowed down to a crawl. As one measure (possibly stupid) I disabled a number of services in msconfig to keep stuff running to a minimum (which I do often, but I was particularly drastic this time. I did not disable any MS services however.).
- After that (I think - might be coincidence, tho unlikely) boot up time increased tenfold. That is, at the very beginning, when all I can see is the silly Pentium logo anyway, so can't determine what is holding it up (or am too stupid to figure out how to get rid of it). It literally takes around 3-4 minutes to get past that stage.
- A few days later (about a week ago) the first BSOD. I first suspected the HDD, but more out of my tendency to expect the worst, for of course I hadn't backed up in ages (have however managed to back up the essentials now, so would be happy enough to reformat & reinstall).
- Now for the odd part. I figured I'd re-enable the services I'd disabled to see if that would help - however I get error (I paraphrase) "you do not have authority to do this for some of the services (won't tell me which one), please log in as admin" - needless to say I am admin.
- When booted into safe mode & trying to get to the event viewer, I get "unable to complete the operation.. the interface is unknown." Calling up the Device Manager, it comes up blank! There are various other similarly baffling errors. It's like I'm locked out of my own system! This of course makes me suspect soft/malware rather than hardware.
- I also did try system restore before the BSODs became all-invasive and it told me it was not possible to restore to any earlier restore point.
- Oh yeah, here is my HijackThis log - one, two (pics, sorry, since I can't get the damn file off the PC). I ran Avira too with no worrisome results.

So.... where do I start? I am prepared to reinstall, replace the HDD, remove all memory sticks one by one, update the BIOS, whatever else you can think of, but I'd be really grateful for some pointers so I don't start at the wrong end and waste hours & hours when it might be something really obvious.

System Specs: Win XP Home SP2 5.1, Build 2600, 3GB RAM, Intel Pentium 4 3GHz, Mobo Medion MD 8088, 2 HDDs & the system one is 120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and reasonably old.

Many many thanks!!!

Can our MRI machine be converted to Windows XP?

humannaire — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:58:17 -0800

Does anyone have any experience with a Philips Marconi Eclipse 1.5 MRI scanner? Can it be run from a Windows-based machine? Presently, our Philips Marconi Eclipse 1.5 MRI scanner is operated using a workstation running Red Hat Linux, and VIA 2.0 Scan Suite software.

The lack of compatibilty with other essential sofwares has become burdensome. The hoops which must be jumped through have become detrimental to routine work patterns, and have doubled related ordinary workloads.

Understanding the "failings and limitations" [sic] of XP, what we want to do now is switch to a Windows XP system, with which the rest of the 20 machines at our office and ALL of our providers are currently using.

Suggestions? Advisements? Recommendations?

Make Windows XP sort by Modified Date automatically... every time?

ZackTM — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:36:12 -0800

Easy Windows XP question, yet hard to google: Is there anyway to set the 'select file' dialog boxes used by virtually every program to sort by Modified Date instead of Name? At work I constantly find myself having to manually change the order in the 'Select File' dialog boxes from being sorted by name to date modified.

My routine is:
Create File in Adobe
Save File
Open a new email to customer
Email File
Receive signed version back from customer
Save new File as "File-SIGNED"
Submit File-Signed

Every single time I interact with my Windows XP file system, it automatically sorts by name which slows me down. I have to switch it to sort by modified and then I just go to the end of the list and my file is sitting there, ready for me to edit it.

I do this almost 10 times a day.

Is there any way to make it sort by modified automatically?

Help me close this can of worms!

siclik — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:11:45 -0800

Trouble reinstalling BootCamp Manager in Win XP SP3. Error 2753. I started having problems getting BootCamp Manager to start, so this morning I decided to uninstall and attempted to reinstall without much luck.

First, I inserted my Leopard disk which has BootCamp Manager 2.0 on it, and I always get an error 2753 stating that the "installation has encountered an unexpected error".

So I pulled out my old BootCamp Manager v1.4 disk, and I get the same exact error.

Then, I went to the Apple website to download the latest version (2.1) but it throws an error at me stating that it's an upgrade and can't be installed without a prior version of BootCamp installed (which is frustrating because, as far as I understand, 2.1 is the only version that can be installed on top of SP3).

I've uninstalled AVG antivirus thinking that was the culprit but no dice.

What should my next move be? I REALLY don't want to have to reinstall Windows today. Is there a full 2.1 installation package out there that doesn't require a previous installation of BootCamp to run?

Thanks for your input!

Navigating folders on windows desktop

long — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:59:17 -0800

Is there a way to navigate folders on the Windows XP desktop? That is, I want to be able to click folder A on the desktop and have the desktop switch to displaying folder A's contents.

BMP to PNG

Dreamcast — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:20:56 -0800

Looking for a free Windows program that will batch convert a bunch of BMPs to PNGs without making the colors darker. I have a couple hundred BMP files I would like to convert to PNG. The problem is, all I've found are programs that either cost money, or ruin the colors (the outputted PNGs wind up being darker than the BMPs). I never encounter this problem when saving PNGs with GIMP (which is the program I generally save my PNGs in -- I don't think GIMP can do batch conversions, though). I've also tried IrfanView, but I encounter the same dark PNG problem.

I'm looking for a program that will run in Windows XP (Windows command prompt programs are fine), is free, can do batch conversions, and won't screw with the colors. Any suggestions?

How can I migrate files/application settings from Windows XP to Windows 7 RC 1?

Nelsormensch — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:12:22 -0800

How can I migrate files/application settings from Windows XP to Windows 7 RC 1? Purchased a new hard drive and installed Windows7 RC 1 on it. It works file, the only bit that's outstanding is user state migration.

I saw this video from MS detailing how to use USMT to migrate file and application links from XP to Win7. Unfortunately, this entire process seems to depend on a "simple" batch file that the video glosses over very quickly.

If it's useful, I have two HDs, each with two partitions. HD 1 has a small partition for Windows XP and large one for user files. HD 2 has a small-ish partition for Win7 and a much larger one for user files.

Is there a more detailed guide on how to actually use the USMT tools to migrate user state from XP to Win7? Or another means to accomplish the same thing? Googling just picks up a ton of links to that same video. Thanks!

Multiple versions of IE

kidbritish — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:29:57 -0800

In Windows XP, what is the best way to keep Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8 all installed simultaneously? This is for the purpose of testing websites.
When I say "best", I mean the browsers should function normally, and it should be unlikely to cause other problems with the system.
I've seen Multiple-IE, from 2006, which doesn't seem to go past IE6, and Internet Explorer Collection which looks promising. But I'm hesitant to install strange hacks until I've had some input from people more knowledgeable. Do any of you have experience doing this?

Make XP speak in Chinese!

almostwitty — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:05:17 -0800

How can I make my old laptop speak Chinese? Properly, to the same standard as a laptop from Hong Kong? My Dad bought a laptop in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it's a Celeron and runs like an old dog.

So I give him my (dual-core) laptop, which runs XP with the Chinese language pack installed. But he still uses the old Hong Kong laptop since it's in proper Chinese, apparently, whatever that is.

So how can I make my American-bought laptop use proper Chinese? Someone's suggested buying Windows XP Chinese, but wouldn't the Chinese language pack do the same thing?

Bonus answers for a Chinese-language anti-virus system that I can also understand (since I don't read/speak Chinese, alas)