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Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 143 • 2008-03-06 • Circulation: over 275,000 |
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Contents INTRODUCTION: Your contributions help us sponsor needy kids TOP STORY: Get yourself an XP system while you still can KNOWN ISSUES: Sizing up your boot drive's pagefile WACKY WEB WEEK: The art of water-balloon tossing WOODY'S WINDOWS: Hackers broke into my site — yours might be next PERIMETER SCAN: Use Process Monitor to find hidden information YOUR SUBSCRIPTION: How to change your address or unsubscribe |
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For links to every topic in this issue, scroll down to the
Index |
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INTRODUCTION Your contributions help us sponsor needy kids
Meet one of the children you're supporting Fred maintains a page of links to pictures and descriptions of more than a dozen kids whom we're sending regular support to. In addition, we've decided that Windows Secrets will send a full year of financial support to a different, new beneficiary each month. 
At left is Souleymane, who we began sponsoring this month. He is seven years old and lives in Kapala, Sikasso Cercle, Mali. A landlocked country in western Africa, Mali ranks 174th out of 177 nations on the U.N.'s list of underdeveloped states.Your support is helping to fund a school health and nutrition program in Souleymane's community, managed by Save the Children, a respected nongovernmental organization. According to the group, 73% of Mali's 11.7 million people live on U.S. $1 or less per day, so contributions go far. In future months, we will select children benefiting from the programs of other respected relief agencies, including Oxfam International and Unicef. We can't save the world, but we can do something. Supporting education and nutrition programs is our focus, but Windows Secrets has also donated to the One Laptop Per Child effort. This contribution will result in one kid-size PC going to a student in a developing country and another being donated by us to a school in the U.S. We very much appreciate your support of our research into the secrets of Windows. To get our paid content for a full 12 months, use the following link: From all of us at Windows Secrets, thanks for your tips and all of your encouragement. Brian Livingston is editorial director of WindowsSecrets.com and the co-author of Windows Vista Secrets and 10 other books. |
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TOP STORY Get yourself an XP system while you still can
An approach to tackling the XP shopping dilemma Microsoft's widely used Windows XP operating system had a stay of execution a few months ago, when the Redmond company announced that it would continue sales of that OS through June 30, 2008. Sales had previously been scheduled to end in January 2008. But the new, June deadline doesn't leave much time for those who don't like Vista, but need to buy new hardware and want XP as their operating system. To be sure, your license to use XP does allow you to remove the OS from an old machine and install it on a new one. But, as hardware manufacturers direct more resources to Windows Vista, it may be harder to find drivers for video, audio, and other computer components that support the older OS. In addition to extending the XP sales deadline, Microsoft has also stated that buyers of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can "downgrade" to Windows XP Professional, XP Professional x64 Edition, and Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, as reported in a Computerworld article and elsewhere. When you buy a new computer, participating companies may (a) include a copy of XP in the box, (b) include a special "downgrade disk," which I'll describe below, or (c) make you buy XP through a completely separate ordering process. It's the manufacturer's choice, not yours. For the moment, however, you do still have some options if you want XP instead of Vista. You can buy a computer with XP preinstalled or make sure that a Vista computer you buy comes with an XP downgrade disk. How to buy a system with XP preinstalled Believe it or not, most major computer manufacturers still offer systems with XP preinstalled. (The only exception, as seen in Table 1, is Gateway.) If XP comes standard on a new machine, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a system with all the necessary XP drivers up and running. If you choose this option, here are some tips I uncovered during my research: • Online shopping offers you a better chance of finding an XP system (or a system that comes with an XP downgrade disk) than going to your local superstore. • It's getting harder to find desktop computers that come with XP preinstalled. You'll have a greater variety of choices if you shop for an XP notebook instead. • In general, a Web site's home-user or small-office computers will not offer the best selection of XP machines, if the site shows any models at all in this market segment. It's very likely that you'll want to shop in the business division of a manufacturer's site.
How to use the 'downgrade disc' option For the best of both worlds, consider buying a system that has Vista preinstalled but comes with a downgrade disc, often called an XP recovery disc. Using a recovery disc wipes out a PC's existing operating system and everything else that was on the boot partition, but that's exactly what many people with Vista aversion want. This is not the same as a manufacturer simply tossing a copy of Windows XP into the box a PC comes in. A truly useful XP downgrade disc is a recovery disc of XP, complete with all the necessary drivers. (Such a recovery disc will probably include some crapware programs, too, which is par for the course.) In many cases, a PC with an XP downgrade disc will also include another disc with an image of the Vista operating system, in case you want to switch from XP back to Vista. If a Vista disc isn't included, make an image backup or a Vista recovery disc before downgrading, as described in a recent TechRepublic article. I recommend avoiding Vista systems that merely come with a vanilla XP install disc (or the option to order one). This is the most you can expect from Dell systems, for instance. Simply having an XP license does not guarantee that drivers are available for all the devices in your new computer. Even if working drivers can be found online, you'll have to go looking for them, as Dell notes on its instruction page for its manual downgrade process. Fortunately for Dell fans, the company still sells a wide variety of machines with XP preinstalled. Some systems — like those from Acer, Fujitsu, HP, and Sony — include a downgrade disc in the box for some qualifying systems. Others, like Lenovo, expect you to order the disc separately for an additional charge. Because downgrade discs that include drivers are specific to a computer system or model series, these discs are generally available only for specific models. Don't expect a company that has downgrade discs to supply them for just any system they sell. Finding out which systems come with a downgrade disc isn't always easy. A few sites, such as Fujitsu's, have a page listing the model numbers that come with upgrade discs. In the case of Acer, you'll have to make an educated guess. You then contact either Acer or an Acer reseller, state the model number you're interested in, and inquire whether a downgrade disc is included. The following table shows the availability of XP on various machines: Table 1. Most manufacturers still have XP options, at least for now. (• = Yes)
Be aware that the information in this article is subject to change by the computer manufacturers at any time. Confirm your desired options before making a purchase, and remember: the clock is ticking. Readers receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending tips we print. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page. Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here's How section of that magazine. |
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KNOWN ISSUES Sizing up your boot drive's pagefile By Scott Dunn My Feb. 28 article discussed ways to save space on your Windows drive when you have multiple hard drives or partitions. You can save even more space by shrinking the Windows pagefile on the boot disk, as long as you don't care about preserving some complex debugging data. On that subject, reader Doug McRae has these observations:
Fortunately, Windows lets you decide how big this file should be. Instead of selecting System managed size, select Custom size. Then enter the initial and maximum sizes and click Set. A bigger question is how large to make this file. Windows needs a pagefile on its boot partition that's large enough for a debugging file called a memory dump. A dump file, however, contains highly technical information that's useful only to system administrators and very advanced users. A 2MB pagefile is enough for Windows to write out the minimum amount of information necessary to help an expert identify the problem. You can create a pagefile this small on your boot partition, and then add a larger pagefile on a different drive for code swapping to improve performance. If you decide to make your boot-disk pagefile this small, you'll need to follow these steps: Step 1. Press WindowsKey+R (Win+R) to open the Run dialog box. Step 2. Vista only: Type SystemPropertiesAdvanced and press Enter. Step 3. XP only: Type control sysdm.cpl and press Enter. Click the Advanced tab. Step 4. In both Vista and XP, click Settings under Startup and Recovery. Step 5. In the Startup and Recovery dialog box, choose Small memory dump (64KB) under Write debugging information. You can also change the path of Dump file to a partition other than c: to save space, if desired. Step 6. Click OK, and then click Yes to acknowledge the warning on minimum pagefile size. Follow any screen prompts as you close the remaining dialog boxes. If you are a systems administrator or advanced user, you can choose another option under Write debugging information, but you'll need a substantially larger pagefile to do the job. Microsoft's advice here is inconsistent. For example, a warning pops up in Windows to advise you that a kernel memory dump requires a pagefile of at least 200MB. But Knowledge Base article 307973 advises a much larger size. For the full scoop on configuring your system for failure and recovery, I recommend reading Microsoft's entire KB article. More ways to save space on your Windows drive Doug's e-mail goes on to point out another way to save space on your system drive if you have multiple disks or partitions. On his triple-boot system, he's changed the location for system temp files to a single location. Here are the steps: Step 1. Create a folder, perhaps named mytemp, on a partition or local drive that all versions of Windows on your computer can access. Step 2. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog box. Step 3. Vista only: Type SystemPropertiesAdvanced and press Enter. Step 4. XP only: Type control sysdm.cpl and press Enter. Click the Advanced tab. Step 5. In both Vista and XP, click Environment Variables at the bottom of the System Properties dialog box. Step 6. In the list at the top of the dialog box, select the TEMP variable and click Edit. Step 7. In the Variable value box, type the path to the new folder you created (for example, d:\mytemp). Click OK. Step 8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for a different variable named TMP. Step 9. If you have more than one version of Windows on your system, boot to the other version and repeat steps 1 through 8. Reader Doug McRae will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of his choice for sending tips we printed. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page. |
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EDITOR'S BOOKSHELF
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WACKY WEB WEEK The art of water-balloon tossing
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INDEX The following topics appear in the free version |
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YOUR SUBSCRIPTION The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. We skip an issue on the 5th Thursday of any month, plus the week of Thanksgiving and the last two weeks of August and December. Publisher: WindowsSecrets.com LLC, Attn: #120 Editor, 1700 7th Ave., Suite 116, Seattle, WA 98101-1323 USA. Vendors, please send no unsolicited packages to this address (readers' letters are fine). Editorial Director: Brian Livingston. Editor-at-Large: Fred Langa. Associate Editor: Scott Dunn. Contributing Editors: Susan Bradley, Mark Edwards, Woody Leonhard, Ryan Russell. Research Director: Vickie Stevens. Program Director: Brent Scheffler. Administrative Assistant: Raef Harrison. Trademarks: Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. The Windows Secrets series of books is published by Wiley Publishing Inc. The Windows Secrets Newsletter, WindowsSecrets.com, LangaList, LangaList Plus, WinFind, Security Baseline, Patch Watch, Perimeter Scan, Wacky Web Week, the Logo Design (W, S or road, and Star), and the slogan Everything Microsoft Forgot to Mention all are trademarks and service marks of WindowsSecrets.com LLC. All other marks are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: Anyone may subscribe to this newsletter by visiting our free signup page. WE GUARANTEE YOUR PRIVACY: 1. We will never sell, rent, or give away your address to any outside party, ever. 2. We will never send you any unrequested e-mail, besides newsletter updates. 3. All unsubscribe requests are honored immediately, period. Privacy policy HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: To unsubscribe from the Windows Secrets Newsletter,
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