AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 33
The 6 Most Common WinXP Annoyances
AUTOPLAY
By default, Windows will automatically
play or open any disc you put into your
optical drive. Either the OS will automat-
ically load media into its preferred play-
er, or it will open a dialog box asking
what you want. It’s one of those neat
features that aims to be convenient but
can actually be extremely annoying.
Thankfully, there’s an extremely flexi-
ble way to fix this little feature.
Microsoft’s TweakUI (conveniently avail-
able as part of Microsoft’s PowerToys
add-on for WinXP, which can be found
on Microsoft’s web site), has tons of
handy tweaks for fixing annoying
Windows quirks just like this one.
In TweakUI , open the Autoplay menu
under My Computer and you’ll find a
set of menus that lets you enable or
disable Autoplay for certain drives, and
even customize your Autoplay choices
for different types of discs.ERROR REPORTING
Windows wouldn’t be Windows with-
out some kind of irritating display
every time a program crashes. In
WinXP, it’s Windows’ offer to report
crashes to Microsoft. You can easily
turn these off. Right-click My Computer
and click Properties. Under the
Advanced tab, click Error Reporting
and you’ll see a menu that lets you set
error reporting for just specific pro-
grams, or turn it off entirely.THE DISAPPEARING INTERNET
EXPLORER STATUS BAR
While you can bring the status bar back
by clicking Status Bar in IE’s View
menu, it’s irritating when you have to
do it with every single window. Here’s a
functional, if somewhat convoluted, fix.
Open Internet Explorer and make
sure the status bar is visible. Hold Ctrl
and close Internet Explorer. This forces
Windows to remember your viewing
settings for that window. Open
Windows Explorer (not Internet
Explorer ) by right-clicking a folder and
clicking Explore. Make sure Windows
Explorer’s status bar is visible by check-
ing it in the View menu. Open the
Folder Options dialog box from the
Tools menu and click the View tab. Click
the button marked “Apply to all folders”
and close the dialog. Hold Ctrl and
close the application. Now any time youopen new windows in
Internet Explorer the status
bar will be there.FILE ASSOCIATIONS
Sometimes file associations
can get mixed up. New pro-
grams often take control of
files, hijacking the associa-
tion to their default, pre-
ferred programs.
Fortunately, you can fix
these fickle file fixations easi-
ly. All you have to do is right-
click any file of the offending
type and click “Choose
Program...” under the Open
With menu. You’ll get a dia-
log box that lets you choose
which program opens that type of file.
Check the box marked “Always use the
selected program to open this kind of
file” to ensure you don’t have to go
through the arduous process again.INCOMPLETE UNINSTALLS
Sometimes—who are we kidding, many
times —programs don’t completely
uninstall. The files are deleted and their
Registry keys are removed, but their
ghosts haunt the Windows Add/Remove
Programs menu. Exorcise these
demons by opening the Registry Editor
(click Run in the Start menu and type
regedit). Go to HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall to find all the
programs listed in the Add\Remove
Programs menu. Delete the keys to pro-
grams you don’t have anymore, and
they will never haunt your menu again.SLOW WINXP BOOT TIMES
Windows can get bogged down when
too many programs load at startup.
Many of them can be disabled by sim-
ply deleting them from the Windows
Startup folder, but some are trickier,
hiding in the depths of the Registry.
Open the Run menu and type mscon-
fi g. This handy little confi guration pro-
gram lets you choose what runs when
Windows boots. nMSConfig lets you tweak the fine details of how Windows boots.You can use TweakUI to customize—or remove—
WinXP’s Autoplay settings.Take charge of your OS with these quick fixes