Sometimes when setting up computer workstations for company employees and / or family members, you might not want certain default XP applications to be accessible. In this tutorial I will show you how to disable the features Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, and MSN Instant Messenger. Keep in mind that this process does not technically remove these applications but it makes them not available.
Click on Start Run type in Control Panel and hit enter.
Now double click on Add / Remove Programs and in the resulting screen click on Add / Remove Windows Components.
In this screen you want to scroll down through the list of available Windows Components and uncheck the items you wish to uninstall. Another one to get rid of is MSN Explorer which is one of the first items at the top of the list. When your finished click Next.
You will see the progress bar while the items are removed and when everything is done you will get the Completion Wizard Screen. Just click Finish and your done.
When you have a problem with your Windows computer, you’ll usually be told to insert the Windows cdrom and then start the Recovery Console in order to fix the issue. So where did you put that XP disc anyway? Why can’t we just install the recovery console to the hard drive?
Have you ever tried to unzip a file to the Program Files directory in Windows 7 or Vista? You’ll get all sorts of permission denied errors, and generally be unsuccessful. So how do we open up the zipfile as an administrator? For that matter, how do you open any file as administrator?
If you’ve ever tried to copy a file that is locked by another application, you’ve probably seen an error message similar to “The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file”. So how do you copy it anyway?
Let me start by saying that I have no idea why anybody would want to do this, and it’s perhaps one of the most useless articles I’ve ever written. That said, if you’ve ever wondered how to remove the username from the Start menu in Windows XP, this article is for you.
I’ve got a Wacom drawing tablet hooked up to my computer, and ever since I installed Vista’s Tablet PC utilities, I’ve had this obnoxious onscreen keyboard on the welcome screen that just can’t seem to be turned off through any regular settings. So how do I get rid of it?
If you use Outlook and you’ve noticed it being excessively slow or just having errors, you should probably scan and repair your Personal Folders file for any problems. It’s sorta like checkdisk for your email.
In the pursuit for performance, making sure your drive isn’t fragmented is a regular task. The problem is that Windows XP doesn’t allow certain system files to be defragmented without commercial software. What about free solutions?
If you open up a lot of PuTTY windows just to keep connections open, you might be interested in an updated version that supports minimizing to the system tray. I find this very useful for opening tunnels that I wouldn’t otherwise need to interact with on the desktop.
As regular readers know well, I’m a huge fan of using AutoHotkey to automate my entire computing experience… but in Windows 7 and Vista there’s a serious limitation since you can’t run a script as Administrator by default. This means that your hotkeys can’t interact with windows running in Admin
If you can’t figure out how to turn on the Details or Preview panes in Windows Vista Explorer, you aren’t alone. This question popped up on the forum the other day, so I decided to write up the answer for everybody’s benefit.
