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Is the time running too fast or too slow on your Windows XP computer? If so there’s a good chance the Windows Time Service (which keeps your computer time accurate) is broken. Fixing it is just a matter of restarting the service but you need to get your hands dirty and enter some terminal commands.  (click images for full size).

1. Open a command prompt by clicking Start -> Run and typing “cmd” and click the OK button.

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This tutorial explains how to stop Windows Update from automatically restarting your computer. By default Windows XP’s Automatic Update feature is set to “Automatic” so that windows automatically downloads and installs updates. This is good as it keeps your operating system fully patched and secure, however windows will constantly nag you to restart your computer. Read on to find out how to get rid of the nag box forever (Windows XP only).

1. Open the Group Policy editor by going Start –> Run and typing gpedit.msc

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This tutorial explains how to enable or disable Keyboard Number Lock each time your computer starts.

Have you ever entered a phone number via the numeric keypad only to discover nothing has appeared? The most likely cause is Number Lock (or Num Lock as it us usually labeled)  is disabled, and it’s a simple matter of hitting the Num Lock key to get numbers from your keypad. If you have done this enough times however, you will know how much of a pain it is to retype things repeatedly. Luckily a simple registry setting can set the Number Lock Status to your preferred setting.

To enable or disable keyboard numberlock at startup:

1. Stat regedit but going start -> run -> regedit -> OK

2. Browse to HKEY_Current_User\ControlPanel\Keyboard

3. In the right hand pane double click “InitialKeyboardIndicators” and set “Value data:” to 0 to have NumLock disabled, or 2 to have NumLock enabled at startup.

Oddly Microsoft recommends making a  visual basic script to set Number Lock. This seems a litte cumbersome compared to changing a single registry entry, but that is probably a matter of opinion.

Windows XP comes with an instant messaging program called Windows Messenger but there are much better freeware chat clients available. If you decide to uninstall it however, you’ll discover it isn’t listed in Add/Remove programs.  So how can you uninstall it?

To permanently remove Windows Explorer from your computer you need to execute rundll32.exe with some options by going start->run and type

“RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove” (without the quotes)

How to Change the Registered Owner and Organisation in Windows XP

1. Run regedit and drill down to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

2. On the right double click “RegisteredOwner” and “RegisteredOrganization” to change the values. A restart needed for the changes to take effect.

This tutorial explains how to slipstream service pack 3 into a windows installation CD, including screen shots of each step. You can use programs like nLite and Autostreamer to do it for you, but if you’re like me you find it much more satisfying to get your hands dirty and do it yourself. Some might even say it’s how real men slipstream :) [click images to enlarge]

What you need:
A windows XP CD of any flavor.
XP service pack 3 which can be downloaded HERE. Rename the file xpsp3.exe.
IsoBuster which can be downloaded for free HERE.
Nero which isn’t free, but has a trial version HERE.

1. Create a folder called “sp3″ in the root of your hard drive (i.e. C:\sp3) and copy xpsp3.exe to this folder.

2. Create a folder called “xpcd” inside “sp3″ (i.e. C:\sp3\xpcd) and copy your entire XP CD to this folder.

3. Open a command prompt by going start -> run and typing “cmd” in the open window and click OK. Extract the service pack 3 files with this command:
C:\sp3\xpsp3.exe -u -x:c:\sp3\files

4. Integrate sp3 files into your windows cd files by typing this command:
C:\sp3\files\i386\update\update.exe -s:c:\sp3\xpcd

5. With your XP cd in the cd drive, fire up IsoBUster (download here) and select Bootable Disc from the left pane, then right-click the Microsoft Corporation.img file in the right pane and select Extract Microsoft Corporation.img and save the file in C:\sp3.

If you can’t be bothered with this step you can download Microsoft Corporation.img here.

6. Now all you need to do is burn the disc. Fire up Nero 5.5 or higher and choose CD-ROM(boot) from the New Compilation menu. Select the boot tab and then browse to the ‘Microsoft Corporation.img’ you saved at C:\sp3. Select “No Emulation” and change “Number of loaded sectors” to 4.

7. Select the ISO tab and make sure the file name length is set to “Max. of 31 chars (Level 2)”. Also make sure the check box next to “Do not add the ‘;1′ ISO file version extension” is checked then click the “New” button.

8. Now drag all the files in c:\sp3\xpcd from the file browser to the left pane, burn the disc and you’re done!

If you found this article helpful (or found an error) please leave a comment.
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This tutorial explains how to view hidden files like .htaccess with the free open source FTP client FileZilla. These instructions are for version 2 and version 3 of the software.

Filezilla Version 2
To view hidden files in FileZilla 2 you need to digg into the settings. Select “Edit -> Settings -> Interface settings -> Remote file list” then near the bottom of the window select the check box “Always show hidden files” as shown below…

FileZilla Version 3
To view hidden files with FileZilla 3 it is simply a matter of selecting “Server” in the main menu then selecting “Force showing hidden files”…

When you do this you will receive a warning but it is nothing to worry about. Read the warning, click OK and hidden files like .htaccess will now be visible when you connect to your server.

Want to be able to click a button on your desktop to shutdown your computer instead of having to click “Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off” every single time? All you have to do is create a shortcut on your desktop that points to shutdown.exe with the right switches. When you have finished it could look something like this…

or

Creating a Shutdown button:

Right click the desktop and select new -> shortcut and the Create Shortcut wizard will appear. Click the browse button and browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe and click OK…

Now add the switches by typing “-s -t 0″ (without quotes, zero not the letter o, and  spaces between -s & -t & 0) to the end of the text in the location box as shown below…

Now click next and finish. You will now have a functioning but ugly shutdown button on your desktop…

To make it look nicer rename the shortcut then right click, select properties, and select Change Icon to select a better icon.

Create a Restart button:

It might seem a little strange but Windows XP restarts using the same shutdown.exe file. To create a restart button follow the same steps above but use a -r switch instead of a -s switch…

After creating both shortcuts, renaming them and changing the icons, you should have something like this…

or

Shutdown.exe switches: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317371

Want to be able to open Windows Explorer and have it automatically open a certain folder instead of having to drill down through the folders? It’s easy to do with switches that can be used with windows explorer.

Explorer switches:
/n -opens a new explorer window
/e -opens in explorer view
/root, -selects root folder in left pane
/select, -opens parent folder of selected foldername

EG: C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e, /select, c:\

%SystemRoot% is a system wide variable which refers to the path and folder name where system files are located. Typically this is C:\Windows, although you can designate a different drive or folder when windows is installed. you can use %SystemRoot% in place of the actual location of the folder that contains the windows system files.

For example, to identify your system root folder, click Start -> Run, type %SystemRoot% and click OK. This will open windows explorer with your system root folder displayed.

Confusingly if you go Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Environment Variables, then scroll to the bottom of the list and double click windir you will see that %SystemRoot% is actually a “Variable value” of a variable named windir. (see image below)

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A keylogger records keystrokes which is an obvious security threat to sensitive information like your banking password. Some Keyloggers can be very hard to detect as they dont appear as a process and aren’t detected by anti-virus software. Keyloggers work by recording every single keystroke that is entered via keyboard, so a person with access to the keylogger can see those keystrokes including any passwords that were typed. Obviously you don’t want this to happen because it could result in the draining of your bank account.

The goal of this article is to help avoid this happening to you and luckily there are a few simple methods that can be used to defeat a keylogger. Knowing at least one of these methods is critical if you are using a public computer, such as those found at an internet cafe’s which have an extremely high risk of infection with a keylogger of some kind.

Types of Keyloggers?

Keyloggers come in both hardware and software types. A software keylogger can be installed in different ways such as via an infected email message or when installing software, especially software downloaded from the internet. Hardware keyloggers require physical access to the computer and come in both USB or PS2 versions, which look something like this…
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This tutorial explains how to change your windows xp product key / xp serial / xp license without using software or reinstalling. To do this you need to edit the registry to deactivate windows, then run msoobe.exe to enter your new product key.

You can download software to help you do this, but that’s for girls. Real men do it this way…

1. Run regedit and drill down to:

HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\WPAEvents.

Select WPAEvents then on the right double click “OOBETimer” and change at least one digit of this value to deactivate windows.

2. Choose run from start menu and type this command in the run box:
%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a to get the Activate Windows wizard, select “Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows”, click next.

3. In the next screen click the “Change Product Key” button.

4. Now enter your new product key, click the update button, close the wizard and reboot. Please note the XP product key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 in the image below will not work. This is the “corporate” key used by pirated versions of windows and has now been blacklisted by Microsoft.

5. When your computer restarts,  enter the command in step 2 to verify windows is activated and you should see “windows is already activated”.

Changing your xp key is perfectly legal if you have a valid key. You can even automate the process with a visual basic script which you can find on Microsoft’s website.

Update: If you click the link to Microsoft above you will now find the following message:

Warning The steps in the article are effective only on Volume License media. If you try these steps on OEM media or on retail media, you will not change the product key.

But unless something has changed this just isn’t true. I have used the visual basic script they provide to change both OEM and retail media keys and it worked just fine.