Windows Tips

Infopackets Reader Brandon 'SpongeBoob' writes: " Dear Dennis, Much thanks for your article on changing paths to the My Documents / Pictures folder -- however, this time I have a new question! Do you have any idea on how to change a login user name ... for Windows XP? For example: I want to modify my user account name in the Documents and Settings folder, as well as the Start menu and logon / log off screen names. Any ideas? " My response: You can change your login screen name, as well as password, picture, account type, and .NET passport options though the Control Panel. To do this: ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Brandon 'SpongeBoob' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have 2 hard drive partitions: the C drive, and the D drive. I always keep my data stuff like music, photos, and other downloaded files onto the D drive. I recently decided to format ... and reinstall Windows on my computer. When I click on start menu, is there a way to link the My Music and My Pictures folders to d:\my music and d:\my pictures (respectively)? I don't seem to be given the choice on whether I can change the targets. Any ideas? " My response: The folders you are referring to are called Shell Folders. ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Russell F. writes: " Hi Dennis! I have two questions that I'm hoping you can help me with. First: I do not have Internet Explorer set as my default web browser, yet any link I click outside of Internet Explorer always launch in ... IE. How can I get the default changed to Mozilla Firefox? And, secondly: about two weeks ago all the links in Internet Explorer quit working. I looked everywhere, but could not find an answer. Can you help? " Side note: Mozilla Firefox is a new streamlined web browser which features tabbed browsing, a built in PopUp blocker, and a google ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Serge R. writes: " Hi Dennis! A few questions: How can I stop program entries from being created in my Start menu? ... Also, I'm not very computer savvy and do not understand all the abbreviations that are used all the time -- do ... you know of a web site that explains frequently used abbreviations? " My Response: Some program installations will ask if you want to place their icons in your start menu, while some installers simply do not. What you often end up with is a mess of entries in your Start menu. But fear not, the contents of the Start menu can be edited. For ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jon M. writes: "Hi Dennis! I recently uninstalled a program called 'RoboPDF' (not related to RoboForm ). Now, I receive an error message that "C:\ Program files \ Microsoft Office \ Office \ Startup \ roboPDF.xlt could not be ... found' every time I launch Excel. I was wondering how to get rid of this from appearing? " My response: I researched some topics in the MS Excel Help File, and found info relating to how Excel starts. Basically, the XLStart folder typically contains a bunch of mini-programs (called macro files) which execute every time Excel starts. A ... (view more)

Infopackets Readers Sid M. writes: " An icon with the word 'Matcli' appears on my task bar at every boot up. As soon as I open a program, Matcli goes away. I did a little research on Matcli and found that it is an acronym which stands for Motive ... Chorus Command Line Interface. The purpose of Matcli is to gather information about your system's identity like your name, email address, city, state, etc, and all of this gets written to a log file. One of the sites I visited told me that in order to remove Matcli, I need to 'uninstall HP instant support'. Unfortunately, I don't have any HP ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Judy P. writes: " I have been having problems loading Simply Accounting 2004 onto my computer. Apparently I need a patch to install it on my machine -- unfortunately, the patch produces a strange error message when I try to run ... it. It states: ' Setup could not Complete. Setup cannot be completed because an error was encountered during setup. Please contact your software vendor for more information. ' Any ideas? " My response: I have a number of theories. Ensure that you have downloaded the correct patch. Disable any download accelerators (if you have any installed ... (view more)

After publishing the article on missing pictures in Outlook Express (the Red X's), Infopackets Reader George W. asked a related question about hearing music through email. " Dear Dennis, I just got done reading your article about missing pictures in ... Outlook Express: I've got a similar problem and hope you can help me. Until a short time ago, I was able to insert background music (MIDI and .WAV files) into my emails and have the recipient listen to the music as they read the email. I did this by creating my email, then clicked Format -> Background -> Sound, and selected my music ... (view more)

Quite a few users contacted me over the weekend after reading last Saturday's article regarding 321 Studios and DVD X Copy. I have decided to follow up this discussion with some Q & A. Side note: To recap -- on February 20th, "a federal court ... ruled that 321 Studios must stop making software that allows users to copy DVDs ... [The] St. Louis-based [company] said it would appeal the ruling ... which has barred 321 from selling its DVD copying software [by February 27th, 2004]. " (Source: Reuters.com ). Infopackets Reader Rafael C. asks: " Regarding your February 21st news ... (view more)