Easy File Transfers

I created a home network using Microsoft Windows XP, and I like the convenience of moving files directly to, for example, my wife's directory on her computer. But it is a bit of a pain to navigate through Windows Explorer to find the path to the appropriate directory all the time—just to drag and drop a file. Is there an easier way?

Most users don't even think about the Send To menu unless they're copying files to floppy disks, a procedure that is increasingly rare these days, because most files are too large to fit on one floppy disk. But adding entries to the Send To menu is a simple way to transfer files to fixed locations on another computer on your network. Here's how.

Open Windows Explorer. On computers running Windows 2000 or XP, navigate to Documents and Settings, open the folder with your user name and then open the Send To folder within it. If you're using Windows 98 or Me, the Send To folder will be in the Windows folder.

Now right-click within the Send To folder window and select New | Shortcut The Create Shortcut wizard will open, and you can browse through the network structure to find the folder on your other machine where you want files to go. (On Windows 98, you may have to type in the network path, such as \\Other Computer\My Documents\Incoming, rather than browsing.)

Once you've added the shortcut, it will appear in the Send To menu. To transfer files, just locate the file you want to copy, right-click on it, and select Send To from the pop-up menu. Clicking on your new shortcut will automatically send your file to the other computer.

Enable Auto-complete in the Command Prompt

To do this, you must be logged on with Administrator rights. Run Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Command Processor. Right-click on the CompletionChar DWORD and choose Modify. Change its value to 9.

After you reboot, the next time you're in a command prompt, try typing cd followed by the first letter of the folder you're interested in and then hit the Tab key. You'll see the first directory that begins with your letter; continue to hit Tab, to scroll through all of the folders with your designated letter. This trick works with files and folders and various commands, such as rd and copy.

Enable WLAN for automatic wireless configuration

Windows XP ships with a built-in support for wireless local area networks (WLANs), which is compatible with the 802.11b standard. Simply insert a WLAN PC card in your laptop or desktop computer and the OS automatically installs the required software and runs the services.

However, there are times when XP installs the drivers but the WLAN still doesn't work. This typically happens on tuned computers with experienced owners who have disabled services to get more available memory.

Follow these steps to enable WLAN:

1. Open the Services console from the Administrative Tools folder.

2. Browse and right-click on the Wireless Zero Configuration service.

3. Select Properties.

4. Make sure Automatic is selected on the Startup Type drop-down list and press OK.

5. If the service is not started, right-click on it and select Start.

The computer is now ready to automatically configure WLAN. If you're still having problems, check out Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q313242.

Examine the history of the command prompt

In the days of MS-DOS, a special application called Doskey was used to maintain the history of commands executed in the command line environment. A modern version of Doskey is also present in Windows XP.

By default, the command prompt remembers every command that has been entered, which makes them readily available for you to use again. Here are some keyboard shortcuts that will help you navigate the command prompt history:

• Up and down arrows: These allow you to scroll up or down through the history of commands.
• Right and left arrows: These move the insertion point backward or forward, character by character.
• [F7]: This displays the whole command history on the screen. From the list, you can select and run a command by hitting [Enter].
• [F9]: If you remember the number of the command on the list, press [F9] and type the number.
• [Esc]: This clears the prompt.
• [Backspace]: This lets you manually delete characters in the prompt.
• [Alt][F7]: This clears the command history.
• [F8]: This allows you to search through the commands in the history buffer.

Extend security options beyond Simple File Sharing

Simple File Sharing is helpful to inexperienced users, but many advanced users find it too limiting. In fact, you can take advantage of more flexible editors if you disable Simple File Sharing.

Right-click on a file or folder, choose Properties, and select the Security tab. Here are some features available on the Security tab that aren't available with Simple File Sharing:

• Assign individual permissions, such as Read, Write, Modify, and Full Control for every user and/or group.
• See fine-grained permissions for each file.
• Change the permissions on all child objects and prevent the inheritance of permissions from the parent.
• Enable auditing and thus track information, including what's happening with the files and who's changing them.
• Display effective permissions for a user and/or group on each file and/or folder.
• Display and change ownership of files and folders.

• Provide a comment for the share.
• Specify the maximum number of users that are allowed to access the share at the same time.
• Set individual permissions for each user and/or group.
• Configure caching settings for clients using the shared folder from the network.

Extend the command prompt window

Have you ever issued a command at a command prompt window that sent a long listing of output faster than you could read it? One example is the Driverquery command, which commonly produces over a hundred lines of output.

Windows XP's default command prompt window buffers 300 lines of text that you can scroll through. However, the lines after that disappear off the screen and are gone forever. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you need to issue the command several times and monitor the results.

Fortunately, you can increase the size of the buffer to view more than 300 lines of text in a command prompt window. Here's how:

1. Launch a command prompt window.

2. Right-click the control icon in the upper left corner of the window, choose Properties, and select the Layout tab.

3. In the Screen Buffer Size panel, type a larger number in the Height text box and click OK.

4. When the Apply Properties To Shortcut dialog box appears, choose the appropriate option and click OK.

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Fast User Switching

Fast User Switching can be a very handy feature. It lets you switch among users without logging off. To enable it, open the User Accounts applet in the Control Panel, click on Change the way users log on or off, and check the Use Fast User Switching box.

Now when you select Log Off, a Switch User option appears that lets you quickly change to another account without forcing any users to close their programs. (Holding down the Windows key and typing the letter L is a speedy shortcut to the user list on the Welcome screen.)

Beware of the trade-offs, though. You should avoid running system-level utilities when another user is logged on, and if you're looking for the best performance, don't let idle accounts in the background tie up system resources. The feature is best for those times when you simply need to get in and out quickly. Also note that Fast User Switching does not work if your computer is a member of a network domain.

Find and seek computers in My Network Places

One of the biggest problems that users have in home and small office networks running Microsoft OS's is network browsing. This service makes sure you see all the computers on your network in the My Network Places folder. However, what if you don't see other computers?

In these cases, here's what you can do:

• Make sure your network connection is working. Ping yourself and another computer. If this succeeds, the network connection is okay.
• Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP on your network connection. Open the Network Connections folder, right-click your connection, and select Properties. Choose Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. On the General tab, select Advanced. Go to the WINS tab, select Enable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP, and click OK.
• Disable firewalls when troubleshooting.
• Make sure all computers are in the same workgroup. Right-click My Computer and select Properties. On the Computer Name tab, note the Workgroup Text Box.
• Depending on how you start your computer, you may have to wait about 15 minutes before My Network Places is populated.
• If you still don't see any computers in the My Network Places folder, you can connect to them by other methods. One way is to type \\computername or \\IP_address in the Run dialog box on the Start menu. This will directly connect to the remote computer. Another workaround is to use the Map Network Drive option in the Tools menu in Windows Explorer. This option allows you to directly map to a shared folder from a remote computer.

Find Missing Shared Folders

If you have a home or small-office network, here's a problem you've probably encountered. Shared folders and printers that you could see one day are suddenly missing the next. Microsoft claims to have no record of this problem being a real issue or bug, but it's one of our biggest grievances with Windows XP. And many of our readers have expressed similar opinions. Here's how to try to solve the problem.

First, you can check the availability of a shared resource by trying to ping it by name. At a command prompt, enter ping your sharedserver, substituting the machine name of the server for yoursharedserver. If that doesn't work, you can verify basic connectivity using the IP address with ping shared server IP address (for example, ping 100.50.50.10). To find out the IP address, enter ipconfig at the command prompt on the system in question. If it lists more than one connection, find your main network connection. Then look at the line IP Address below it.

If you can ping a shared machine by IP address but not by name, ensure that you have enabled NetBIOS over IP for your current network connection. To do this, go to the Control Panel and click on Network Connections. Select your current network connection by name (for example, HomeConnection), right-click, and select Properties. Next, click on the General tab (on some setups, the tab may be labeled Networking). On certain system configurations, you may need to right-click on the Network Bridge (rather than the actual connection) to access the TCP/IP settings.

Highlight the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option in the list of installed network protocols; click on the Properties button, then click on the Advanced button. Now click on the WINS tab. Make sure that Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP is checked. If you are using DHCP (as many home network users will) you should choose the equivalent: Default: Use NetBIOS Setting from the DHCP server, which amounts to the same thing. To check whether you're using DHCP, go the General tab under Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties and see whether the option Obtain an IP address automatically is selected.

If the above settings are correct, your infrastructure for sharing network resources is likely in good shape. The underlying reason for phantom shares is, we suspect, that your file shares are not updated in the network address table. Fortunately, you can manually force this table to refresh.

The Address Resolution Protocol maps IP addresses to physical hardware. Successful matches are cached in the buffer, so the system doesn't have to send an ARP request every time it needs to get that information. In a Command window, delete all IP addresses stored for the Address Resolution Protocol by entering arp –d *, and type ipconfig/release and ipconfig /renew. These commands flush the ARP buffer and then rebuild it from scratch by renewing your network connection. Chances are, any file share will become available.

You could place these commands in a batch file as well, to automate the steps, if you find that your shares frequently aren't appearing on their own. You can verify the connection to a known shared server with arp –a.This returns an IP address. To get the machine name for that address, enter ping –a IP address; for example, ping –a 192.168.1.1.

If you don't want to run these commands routinely, you can simply create a desktop shortcut to the "missing" file share. Right-click in an empty space on the desktop, then select New | Shortcut. Enter the name of your share; for example, \\mysharedserver \myshare. If you are connected to the shared machine, Windows XP will help you select a known share name by browsing the available shares for each server as you type. Click Next and you can change the names of the shared files for better readability. Click Finish and you're done.

You can also try using the IP address of a shared machine here, instead of its name, for overcoming "invisible" shares. If your file share truly isn't available, you'll find out at this step. In this case, the resolution will require verifying the underlying connectivity options above.

Keep in mind that a software firewall can interfere with letting machines share files, so you may need to go into your firewall's options and give the systems on your network specific rights to one another. This is usually done by specifying safe IP addresses.

Adding a shortcut guarantees that commonly used shares will be readily accessible, regardless of whether they show up in your network neighborhood every time.

Find your IP address

To get basic information about your TCP/IP network connection, you can use the Winipcfg utility in Windows 98 and Me (Start | Run | winipcfg), or use Ipconfig/all from a command prompt if you're running Windows 2000 or XP.

Fix A Mangled IP Configuration

In the days before Windows XP, a corrupted IP installation could often be fixed simply by removing and reinstalling TCP/IP. In most cases, the IP-related files remained intact, but some related Registry keys would be corrupted beyond repair.

You can't uninstall TCP/IP in Windows XP, because there is no Uninstall button for this protocol. According to Microsoft, that is because TCP/IP is an integral part of the operating system, and removing it would cause major problems. You can, however, use the Windows XP command line utility NetShell to reset all IP-related Registry settings to their default values. The result is a brand-new TCP/IP configuration.

The Netsh.exe program is located in the C:\Windows\System32 directory. To use the program, enter the command

netsh int ip reset filename

You must specify a filename, such as Ipstuff.txt. After Netsh.exe runs, the file will contain a detailed log of the Registry keys that were modified.

Fix Corrupted Desktop Icons

To speed up performance, Windows XP caches the icons for all of the items on your desktop. That way it doesn't have to look inside each file every time you boot. But the icon cache can become corrupted, or it may simply be too small.

If your desktop items display the wrong icons or no icons at all, enlarging and refreshing the icon cache should help. The easiest way is to download Microsoft's free (but unsupported) TweakUI PowerToy; there is a tool specifically for repairing desktop icons.

To do this manually, go to Start | Run and enter Regedit to launch the Registry Editor. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explor er. In the right-hand pane, find or create the DWORD value MaxCachedIcons.To enlarge the cache size, double-click on this value and change it to 4096 in decimal. If the problem recurs, try an even larger value.

Next, you must force Win XP to reread all the cached icons. Right-click on the desktop, choose Properties, click on the Appearance tab in the dialog box that pops up, and click on the Advanced button on that tab. Select Icon in the Item list and increase the Size setting by 1 pixel (this will normally be from 32 to 33). Click on OK to dismiss the Advanced Appearance dialog, then click on the Apply button. The desktop will fade and then return back to normal. Now click on the Advanced button again, change the icon size back to what it was, click on OK, and click on OK again.

Fix the Windows XP Search

When you use the Search option on the Start menu to find files containing specific text, the results may not include files of all types. In fact, if you haven't installed any service packs, quite a few file types will be omitted. Microsoft created this situation deliberately, to avoid having you find "irrelevant" files, but in the initial release of Windows XP the software company overdid the limitation. Updating with the latest service pack will allow Windows XP to search several dozen more file types.

The Search function relies on an internal filter to find words; file types that don't have a defined filter won't be searched. If you find that certain file types don't appear in the search results, you can try assigning the plain-text filter to those types. To do this, launch Regedit from the Start menu's Run dialog and navigate to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.??? (where .??? is the extension you want searched). If you don't find a subkey named PersistentHandler, create one. Double-click on the value "(Default)" for that subkey and set its data to {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}. Repeat the procedure for any other file extensions you want included.

You can also change a setting in the Content Indexing Service to index all files. Select Search from the Start menu. Click on the Change preferences link, then on the With Indexing Service link. Scroll down to Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced) and click on it (you don't have to turn on indexing).

Now select Customize from the View menu, check the Console tree box, and click on OK. Right-click on Indexing Service on Local Machine in the left-hand pane and click on Properties. On the Generation tab, check the box Index files with unknown extensions and click on OK. Close the Indexing Service console.

Note that both of these techniques require that you first update your system to the Windows XP Service Pack 1.

Force inheritance after it's been disabled

When you disable permission inheritance, all child folders have to be managed separately. However, if you change your mind, there are two ways you can re-enable permission inheritance.

The first way is to reverse the steps you originally took to disable the inheritance:

1. Right-click on the child folder that has inheritance disabled and select Properties.

2. Go to the Security tab and click the Advanced button.

3. Place a check next to the option that specifies Inherit From Parent The Permission Entries That Apply To Child Objects. Include These With Entries Explicitly Defined Here.

4. Click OK to close all of the dialog boxes.

1. Right-click on a parent folder and select Properties.

2. Go to the Security tab and click the Advanced button.

3. Place a check next the to the option that specifies Replace Permission Entries On All Child Objects With Entries Shown Here That Apply To Child Object.

4. Click OK to close all of the dialog boxes.