Windows XP Tips 'n' Tricks
Make Windows XP work the way you want it to!

These tips work with the final release of Windows XP. Unless otherwise noted, all tips should work with both Home and Professional Editions. Please note that some of these tips may require you to use a Registry Editor (regedit.exe), which could render your system unusable. Thus, none of these tips are supported in any way: Use them at your own risk. Also note that most of these tips will require you to be logged on with Administrative rights.

NEW! Microsoft recently sent along a set of Windows Tips that might also be of interest.

Here's a movie of this tip in action 335 Kbps Windows Media Video format, 404K

Delete files when the Recycle Bin is hidden   NEW!
I actually discovered this tip accidentally recently and thought it was appropriate for the Tips page, even though it's probably been a feature of Windows for years. (UPDATE: Sure enough, it's been around for a while. It's still a cool tip and proof that one learns something every day).

By default, the Windows XP Recycle Bin sits at the bottom right of the desktop, just above the tray notification area and system clock. If you've got a bunch of floating windows open, however, it's possible to obscure the Recycle Bin and make it impossible to drag files and folders there for deletion. However, Microsoft must have thought of this event, because you can automatically hide all of those open windows during a drag operation. The first time it happened, I thought it was a fluke. But it's not. Instead, it's a cool hidden feature of XP.

Here's how it works: Make sure a bunch of windows are open on the screen, with at least one of them hiding the Recycle Bin. Then, find a file or group of files you'd like to drag to the Recycle Bin. Pick up the files with the mouse and move them to the lower right of the screen. As you reach the bottom area of the screen, pass the mouse cursor over a blank area of the task bar, hover there for an instant, and--voila!--the open windows all minimize, leaving the Recycle Bin available to accept the dragged files. Good stuff. This tip also works when windows are maximized, assuming the file(s) you want to delete are visible in one of the available windows.

Dramatically speed up Windows XP networking   (Professional Edition only) NEW!
For some reason, both the Windows XP Professional ships with a new networking service called Quality of Service (QoS) enabled by default, even though this service is only of use in large corporate networks. At home, and in smaller offices, QoS is best left disabled, however, and doing so will speed up networking operations up to 20 percent. Confusingly, turning off QoS in Networking Properties will not actually free up the lost bandwidth. Instead, you must load up the Local Group Policy Editor (see the tip Use the ultimate configuration tool, below, for more information) and tweak some settings to get QoS out of your system for good.

Here's how you do it. Open the Start Menu and choose Run, then type gpedit.msc in the text box and hit ENTER. This will load the Local Group Policy Editor (LGPE). Once the LGPE is loaded, expand the following nodes in the left tree view:

Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Network

Then, select the QoS Packet Scheduler entry and double-click the setting titled limit reservable bandwidth, found on the right side of the window. On the Setting tab of the Limit reservable bandwidth Properties dialog, select the Enabled option. Then enter 0 in the Bandwidth limit (%) combo-box. Click OK, then exit the LGPE. No reboot is required to enable this change.

Note: If you look at the properties dialog for your network connection(s), you should still see the QoS Packet Scheduler listed on the General tab. If this item is not present, QoS is still taking up 20 percent of your bandwith! You need the packet scheduler installed to ensure that no bandwidth is allocated.

Add album art to any music folder
Contributed by Richard Davidson and Brian Donovan
This is easily my favorite tip! One of the coolest new features in Windows XP is its album thumbnail generator, which automatically places the appropriate album cover art on the folder to which you are copying music (generally in WMA format). But what about those people that have already copied their CDs to the hard drive using MP3 format? You can download album cover art from sites such as cdnow.com or amguide.com, and then use the new Windows XP folder customize feature to display the proper image for each folder. But this takes time--you have to manually edit the folder properties for every single folder--and you will lose customizations if you have to reinstall the OS. There's an excellent fix, however.

When you download the album cover art from the Web, just save the images as folder.jpg each time and place them in the appropriate folder. Then, Windows XP will automatically use that image as the thumbnail for that folder and, best of all, will use that image in Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) if you choose to display album cover art instead of a visualization. And the folder customization is automatic, so it survives an OS reinstallation as well. Your music folders never looked so good!

UPDATE: In addition to the folder.jpg file mentioned above, you can also optionally create a smaller version of the image called albumartsmall.jpg, if desired.