Bullet Points
Disk Cleanup Utility

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• Printing Business Cards w/Logo Using MS Word

  Using Microsoft Word and a color laser printer, you can print your own business cards. Here's how:

  1. In MS Word, select the Tools option from the menu bar at the top
  2. Select Envelopes and Labels from the drop down menu
  3. Click in the Label box at the bottom-right (the one with a mockup of a mailing label)
  4. Select a business card template (the Avery 3612 works well) and click Ok
  5. Click the New Document button to create a full page of business card layout frames
  6. Working in one of the frames, insert your logo file by clicking Insert, Picture and then From File
  7. Navigate to the image file that contains the logo, select it and click Ok
  8. Double click on the logo image, select the Layout tab and click the Advanced button
  9. Adjust the logo's position. You may have to experiment a bit with the settings here. Use relative positions to the Margin or Column, not the page or absolute distance directions, and you must use an In Line With Text fit to keep the image in your card.
  10. Click Ok twice to get back to the document containing the layout frames.
  11. Enter the text you want to appear on your business card (name, firm name, address, etc.) Don't forget to include your email address and URL.
  12. Once you are happy with the layout, select everything in the frame (logo, text) and copy it to the clipboard. Then paste it into all remaining frames.
  13. Save your work and print a test page on plain paper.
  14. Hold the test page up to the light with the actually Avery form and make sure everything fits within the frames.
  15. Insert the Avery forms into your printer and print the document as required.

   

• Adding Programs to XPs Quick Start Tool Bar

  The Quick Start tool bar is just to the right of the Start button on the task bar. To add programs to this tool bar:

  1. Click Start
  2. Click All Programs
  3. Navigate through the menu to the program you would like to add to the Quick Start tool bar
  4. Click and drag the icon, dropping it on the Quick Start tool bar area

      

  5. Adjusting Size of XP's Quick Start Tool Bar

     The Quick Start tool bar is just to the right of the Start button on the task bar. To increase it's width and allow more icons to be visible without having to click the chevron at the right:

     1. Right click on an empty spot on the Taskbar/Quick Start area
     2. Click on Lock (or Unlock) the taskbar.
     3. A slider appears that you can drag with your mouse to re-size the visible portion of the taskbar The double-chevron will still appear when the Taskbar/Quick Start is too small to display all icons.

      

  6. Reversing Case In MS Word

     This comes in handy when you forget to take Caps Lock off before typing a bunch of text:

     1. Highlight the text whose case you want to change.
     2. Click on Format in the menu bar at the top
     3. Click on Change Case in the drop down menu
     4. Choose one of the options from the drop-down menu to change to sentence case, lower case, upper case, title case, or toggle case.

      

  7. Permanently Deleting Files (Not To Recycle Bin)

     If you are freeing up disk space by deleting junk files using Windows Explorer and you are ABSOLUTELY sure you will never want to recover them you can delete them without sending them to the recycle bin.

     1. In Windows Explorer, select the file you want to permanently delete
     2. Hold down the Shift key as you press the Del key

     When deleted in this way, the selected files will not go to the Recycle Bin and thus can not be recovered except by a restore from external backup media.

      

  8. Display Your IP Address

     An IP address is a number that uniquely identifies everything connected to a network. The "network" is often the Internet but it could also be an internal network. Sometimes a device's IP address doesn't change (i.e. its "static") and sometimes it is reassigned when you connect to the network. Here is a convenient way to display your IP address when a technician or a piece of software asks for it:

     1. Run Notepad by clicking Start -> Run. Then enter notepad into the box and click Ok.
     2. Enter (or cut/paste) the following into the Notepad window:
        cmd /k "ipconfig /all && pause && exit
     3. Click File
     4. Click Save
     5. Name it "ShowMyIP.bat" (it must end in .bat, not .txt) and save it to your Desktop

     To display your current IP address and a bunch of other related information, simply double click this icon which should now appear on your Desktop.

      

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The Windows XP Disk Cleanup Utility can determine which files on your hard drive may no longer be needed and delete them. In addition to freeing up space, Disk Cleanup can significantly improve system performance.

You can run this utility by following these steps:

1. Click Start
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. Click System Tools
5. Click Disk Cleanup

Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine the amount of space that can be freed. (This can take a while.) Once the drive analysis is complete Disk Cleanup allows you to review categories of files that can be deleted. Click on any of the categories to display more information about that category in the Description section of the window. If you're unsure if you want to delete files in given category, click the View Files button. A complete list of files scheduled for deletion will be displayed. Use drag and drop to move any files you want to save to a safe location and leave the category selected. If all the files are to be saved, close the window and then remove the checkmark from the file category so it will not be included in the disk cleanup. After all the categories have been reviewed, click Ok to begin the disk cleanup process.

File Categories in Disk Cleanup Utility

There are a number of different types of file categories that Disk Cleanup targets when it performs the initial disk analysis. You may or may not have all the categories listed below. An excellent example of this would be Backup Files from a Previous Operating System. If a clean install of XP was performed then this category will not exist. It pays to click on each of the categories and note that the View Files button can change depending on the category selected.

Downloaded Program Files

These are ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded from Web sites that are temporarily stored in the Downloaded Program Files folder. It's not program files or zip files that you have downloaded from other locations.

Temporary Internet Files

This refers to Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages that are stored on the hard drive for quicker viewing. None of your personal web settings are affected by selecting this category, nor does it delete any cookie files.

Recycle Bin

The main thing to be aware of in this category is that it only refers to the Recycle Bin for the selected hard drive or partition. XP uses an individual Recycle Bin for each drive and partition, not just one as is the case in some Windows versions.

Temporary Remote Desktop Files

These files are the result of using the Remote Desktop utility. If you repeatedly use Remote Desktop with the same computer or group of computers, leaving these files intact will maintain the speed of future connections. Deleting them will necessitate downloading the remote systems icons and wallpaper the next time a connection is established.

Setup Log Files

These are pretty useless unless you have a specific reason to go back and see what occurred during XP setup.

Backup Files For Previous Operating System

If you upgraded from a previous Windows version and selected the option to be able to uninstall XP, this category may exist. It takes some major hard drive space to copy all the files necessary to back up a previous system's core files, drivers, etc. This entry can range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes up to a gigabyte, so unless you are still considering dumping XP this is a good category to select.

Offline Files

Users with slower dialup connections and those using laptops frequently make websites they use often available offline. Depending on how many levels deep you save the sites, they can eat up gigabytes of hard drive space very quickly. Worse than taking up space, the sites often contain outdated information. A good candidate for deletion.

Compress Old Files

Unlike the other categories, Compress Old Files doesn't delete any files from the drive. It compresses files that Windows hasn't accessed for a specified period of time. The files are still available, but there will be a slight increase in access times because the files will be decompressed the next time they are accessed. Note that when Compress Old Files is highlighted an Options button appears. Clicking it will allow you to set the number of days to wait before an unaccessed file is compressed.

There may be other categories that appear in your Disk Cleanup window, but in all cases, highlighting the item will display an explanation of the category in the Description area.

More Options Tab

In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Cleanup tab, the More Options tab offers additional opportunities for freeing up hard drive real estate. There is nothing on this tab that isn't available elsewhere within XP in stand alone fashion, but having them grouped here does serve as a convenient reminder.

In Windows XP there are three choices available on the More Options tab: Windows Components, Installed Programs, and System Restore.

Windows Components

The Cleanup button in the Windows Components section launches the Windows Components Wizard. Select a general category of components and drill down using the Details button to locate the desired Windows component.

Installed Programs

The Cleanup button in the Installed Programs section opens the Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Any installed program can be removed by selecting the individual program and clicking the Change/Remove button. You cannot batch programs together to be removed. Each removal operation must be treated as a separate entity.

System Restore

Clicking the Cleanup button in the System Restore section opens a dialog box where it asks if you are sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. The difference between using this option and going directly to System Restore is that you have no option to selectively delete restore points with this method. It's "all but most recent" or nothing when accessed via Disk Cleanup. Click Yes or No depending on your choice.

Post Disk Cleanup Procedures

Using Disk Cleanup will almost certainly rid your system of a substantial amount of unneeded files. You could stop here and not suffer any ill consequences, but there are a lot of gaps and empty spaces on the hard drive where the files were removed. This would be an excellent time to run Disk Defragmenter to organize the hard drive into contiguous sections. The hard drive heads will spend less time seeking all the pieces of a file and you'll see another performance boost.

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