Are you having boot up problems and would like to know what it going on behind that Windows Loading Logo? To find out, you can disable the splash screen by making a small change to the Boot.ini file.

Follow these steps (carefully!):

1. Open the "System Properties" dialog box ( Settings - Control Panel - System)

2. On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button in the "Startup And Recovery" section.

3. In the "Startup And Recovery" dialog box, select the Edit button in the "System Startup" section.

4. The Boot.ini file will open in Notepad; locate the line that ends with the /fastdetect switch.

5. Position your cursor to the right after the parameter, press the spacebar, and add the /SOS switch.

6. Save the Boot.ini file, and close Notepad.

7. Click Cancel to close both the "Startup And Recovery" dialog box and the "System Properties" dialog box.

8. Restart the computer to see the effect.

Once the computer restarts you will notice that the Windows Splash Screen is no longer present. Instead you can observe some of the boot up operations that Windows XP performs during the startup stage.

To renable the splash screen, follow the same procedure but remove the "/SOS".

Would you like to use the Windows Update feature without being forced to register with Microsoft? OK then, this is what you can do:

Launch good ol' Regedit.

Go down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.

Look for a value named RegDone. If it isn't there create a new value with that name.

Right click the new value and choose Modify. Make the value 1.

With my post I would like to share with all of you, my resources when it comes to downloading USEFUL things from the internet. Some of these things are useful to chuck on cds/dvds and others are useful to use he he he

Most of your know about P2P using programs such as kazaa, edonkey and what not. This is what everyone uses. (EVEN ME WHEN THE BELOW 3 FAIL or I want old and obscure stuff that only some weirdo in Kazakhistan may have). If you are going to use Kazaa, use kazaalite as it has no spyware

Before you download any files i recommend that you get the K-Lite Coded Pack that contains in a single file all the codecs for most media file types that you are likely to download and use. The address to the site is

CODE

http://doa2.host.sk/codecs/

. The site also contains alternatives to Apple Quicktime and Real Player which run more efficiently and are less annoying, especially Real player and the forcefull advertising.

People that are serious about downloading useful quality stuff usually don't use those sort of programs.

Your 3 best friends are FTP, IRC & Bittorrents and as of lately DC++!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tools which you will need are:

An IRC client:

CODE

www.mirc.com

An FTP client:

CODE

www.flashfxp.com

and a bittorent client:

CODE

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

PART 0

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I highly recommend DC++?? which you can download from

CODE

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/

its basically like kazaa and similar.

In Aussie Land this is the program that you MUST have if you want to leech at big LANs. everyone shares using this program and you search, browse users shared folders and download. Very Handy.

Even more handy is that fact that you can also use it on the internet to connect to various networks (HUBS) and get stuff from ppl that share 300+ gigs of stuff. yeh AMAZING.

I have played around with this program and highly recommend it now. The amount of content you can get from it is astonishing. The only setting up that you need is to allow a certain port to be open with both (tcp (used for file transfers) and udp (used for searching) allowed. You can specify this in your firewall if you have one, otherwise don't worry (note: winxp has a firewall enabled by default). I also recommend that you share, as many HUBs wil not allow you to connect to them otherwise. When you open up a port you run in Active mode ( others connect to you) you can also run in passive mode (you connect to other people). So why not run in passive mode all the time ? because if 2 people are in passive mode, you will not be able to connect to one another.

When you connect to a hub you and do a search, tick display results with open slots only. and thats it. You can also browse peoples share folders, if you right click on one of their results and select "get file list"

For Help, please refer to About, Help / Newbie Help

Please read this file as it is short, and nicely summarises all the options and available commands. Also just click around (right clicking is good) and see what you can do.

typing /fav in the chat window will add the current hub to your favourites (very usefull)

What I do not like about this program is that, you are not able to download the same file from a number of people, or resume the same file from another person like you can in other programs. In the latest version you are unable to limit your upload rate, and can in this way, slow your connection down to a crawl. Lastly you are only able to get one file (or directory) at a time from a single person, without the ability to queue a number of files (or directories).

So if that person has a lot of things that you may want, it could be very annoying to get them from them. However I do like the fact that you can connect to a number of hubs at the same time, and easily search all of them or only one of them (you can select) with a single search.

PS. this program is made for people on broadband only, in fact i don't think any hubs will even let you connect on a dial-up connection. Bad luck to all you turtles.

Thanks to OLI who wrote these guides.

You can add an Internet URL address bar to your Windows XP taskbar. Doing so will let you type in URLs and launch Web pages without first launching a browser. It will also let you launch some native Windows XP applications in much the same way as you would via the Run menu (so you could type in calc to launch the calculator or mspaint to launch Microsoft Paint. Here's how you add the address bar:

1. Right-click on the taskbar, select Toolbars, and then click Address.

2. The word Address will appear on your taskbar.

3. Double click it to access it.

4. If that doesn't work, your taskbar is locked. You can unlock it by right-clicking on the taskbar again and uncheck Lock the Taskbar.

NOTE: You may also need to grab the vertical dotted lines beside the word Address and drag it to the left to make the Address window appear.

Would you like to use the Windows Update feature without being forced to register with Microsoft? OK then, this is what you can do:

Launch good ol' Regedit.

Go down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.

Look for a value named RegDone. If it isn't there create a new value with that name.

Right click the new value and choose Modify. Make the value 1.