... Windows Tips 'n Tricks 24 ...
As he teaches, so he learns.

Use the finder and search for every file with the extension PWL (search all hard drives for *.pwl that's an asterisk, dot, and pwl)

When they pop up, delete them ALL, every single one.

Then reboot. Windows will ask for a username and password. Type in a username (anything you want) and either enter a password of your choice, or simply leave it blank. If you leave it blank, Windows won't ask you for it again.

This procedure simply rebuilds your passwords.

If you don't find them, it is because they are "hidden" files. You must "un-hide" them by going into the "edit" menu from any folder and clicking on "options" check the radio button saying "show all files". This will make the *.pwl files visible to Windows Explorer.

When (not if) your session starts to slow to a crawl, don't reach for the reset button. Instead, do a three-finger salute (press CTRL+ALT+DEL), select Explorer, then press the 'End Task' button. The "Are you sure you want to exit windows?" dialog will pop up immediately; hit the ESC key to cancel, then wait a few more seconds. Soon, a box will pop up saying that "Explorer is not responding." Hit the 'End task' button and your Desktop will refresh. Windows may become more responsive at that point; you've done a pseudo reboot.

On a one-shot rebooting, snip a little bit of the time it takes to restart Windows with this shortcut: click the Start button, choose Shutdown, and select Restart as you normally would, but this time press and hold the Shift key as you click OK. This comes in handy when you need to refresh your registry after installing software but don't want to wait for a full-blown reboot.

If you think your machine takes too long to boot each time, you can remove the built-in two-second delay in the OS's (operating system's) start-up sequence. Here's what you need to do:

1. Under the Start button, select Find/Files or Folders.
2. Enter msdos.sys in the Named box and C: in the Look In box. Then click Find Now.
3. When the file appears, right-click it and select Properties from the pop-up menu.
4. Click to remove the check marks from the Read-Only and Hidden attributes, then click OK.
5. Right-click msdos.sys, select Open With from the pop-up menu, enter Notepad as the opening program, and then click OK.
6. Under Options, enter BootDelay=0 or BootDelay=1 on its own line. (This represents respective delays of zero seconds and one second, both of which are faster than the default.)
7. Close Notepad and save your changes on the way out.
8. Return msdos.sys to its hidden, read-only state.
   (Right-click it, select Properties from the pop-up menu, and check the Read-Only and Hidden check boxes. Then click OK.)
9. Quit and restart Windows.

Warning: Any time you make changes to your SYS files, it's a good idea to back up your important files and have your original Windows disk on hand in case you need to reinstall. If that scares you, then just forget it.

LOGO.SYS is the .BMP image file that displays the Windows ad when you start Windows. Delete it and you'll still see a Windows image, though now it comes from the IO.SYS file. To get rid of that start-up image completely, edit the Logo= line in MSDOS.SYS to read Logo=0. Remember, you can replace the LOGO.SYS file with your own image if you want.

If you like the simplicity of the My Computer file manager, but having a separate window for each folder you open is driving you crazy, you can change the setting that determines how My Computer behaves as you drill down through folders. Choose View, Options from My Computer's menu, and select Browse folders by using a single window that changes as you open each folder. That way, you'll have only one window to deal with.

If you press the Ctrl key while you close windows and those windows should open next time just as you had them -- retaining their configuration. There's a big "however" here: If Windows crashes, those configurations will be lost. A system crash erases most setup changes and reverts to the default, original setup.

Place your mouse pointer in the blue title bar, hold down your left mouse button, and move across the screen. When you release the mouse button, the window will move to it's new location. This is convenient if you want to see what is behind the open window.

Some windows will also allow you to adjust their size. To do so, move your mouse pointer to the edge of the window. It will change from an arrow to double-headed arrow. Now, hold the left mouse button down, and drag the side of the window in or out to make it larger or smaller. You can adjust both height and width at the same time if you point to the lower right hand corner of the window.

To quickly restart Windows without restarting your computer, first choose Shut Down from the Start menu. Check the Restart radio button, then hold down the Shift key while clicking OK in the Shut Down Windows dialog box.

When you install Internet Explorer 5 over Win9x, you'll find a new folder called Windows Update Setup Files in your root directory. This folder is filled with setup files that take approximately 10MB of space on your hard disk. It's a good idea to save them for a while after installing IE5 to make sure it's running properly. That way, you won't have to download the app again if you run into trouble and want to reinstall. After using IE5 for a while without encountering any problems, you can delete these files to regain the disk space.

Want to know which version of Windows you have on your system? Right-click My Computer and select Properties. (Or hold down Alt as you double-click My Computer.) On the General tab of the System Properties dialog box, you'll see the version listed under System.

While you're there, click the Performance tab; look at all the information available to you.

Just put a semi-colon in front of the line you want to knock out and try it. If it works for all your programs then you can either leave it as is or actually delete the line permanently. If it doesn't work, take the semi-colon out to restore it to the way it was. Before you alter it, you might also want to make a copy of the system.ini file. Put it on a floppy or call the copy something like system.xyz (your initials is always a good backup extension to use ... unless your initials happen to be "ini" in this case.)

Go to Start Menu, Run, and type into the command line: "WinIPcfg" (sans quotes, and case doesn't matter). Behold, all the information you'd want to know about your ISP connection, including:

Host Information

Host name, DNS Server, Node type, NetBios scope ID, IP routing, NetBios resolution

Adapter Inforation

Adapter address, IP address, Subnet mask, Default gateway, DHCP server, and Primary/Secondary WINS server.

To make a picture of your screen, press your Print Screen (PrtScn) button. Then open Microsoft Paint, select Edit/Paste, and behold a bitmap of your screen.