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Windows XP Release Candidate Tips 'n' Tricks
Make Windows XP RC1 and RC2 work the way you
want 'em to
Please
note that some of these tips might 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.
NOTE: These tips have been
verified to work with Windows XP build 2505
(RC1) and 2526 (RC2). Older Beta 2 tips--many of which do work
in RC1 and RC2, by the way--can be found here.
UPDATED!
Newer tips can be found at
the bottom of this
page.
Add album art to any music
folder
Contributed by Richard Davidson
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 Windows 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!
Album cover art makes music folder thumbnails
look better than ever!
Change the location of the My Music or My Pictures
folders
Contributed by Larry Samuels
In Windows 2000, Microsoft added the
ability to right-click the My Documents folder and choose a new
location for that folder in the shell. With Windows XP, Microsoft
has elevated the My Music and My Pictures folders to the same
"special shell folder" status of My Documents, but they never added
a similar (and simple) method for changing those folder's locations.
However, it is actually pretty easy to change the location of these
folders, using the following method.
Open a My Computer window and navigate to the location where
you'd like My Music (or My Pictures) to reside. Then, open the My
Documents folder in a different window. Drag the My Music (or My
Pictures) folder to the other window, and Windows XP will update all
of the references to that folder to the new location, including the
Start menu.
Add/Remove optional features of Windows
XP
Contributed by Ong Choon Keong and Hans
Breemer
I first mentioned this
technique in an old Technology
Showcase for Windows 2000, but it still works in Windows XP, and
can be quite useful: For some reason, Microsoft has removed the
ability to specify which Windows components you want to install
during interactive Setup, and when you go into Add/Remove
Windows Components in the
Control Panel, you still don't have the full list of applications
and applets you can add and remove. Thankfully,
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