Toggle Viewing Folder List For A Particular Folder!

When viewing a folder in Windows XP Explorer, you can toggle an Explorer 'Folders' view that can appear in the left pane of the folder. This lets you see where the currently open folder is in relation to other folders on your system. Plus, you can easily navigate the folder tree, move folders around, copy or move files in the current folder to other folders, etc.

To toggle this view for a particular folder, check or uncheck "View" - "Explorer Bar" - "Folders" as desired.

Note that this tip only works for the currently-open folder.

Gary Chambers

Show Or Hide Control Panel In My Computer!

When double-clicking "My Computer" on the Windows XP desktop, you can toggle whether or not a link to the Control Panel appears. Some prefer the convenience; others would rather just see a list of drives and documents.

1. From "My Computer", select "Tools" - "Folder Options".

2. When the "Folder Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the "View" tab.

3. Scroll down to "Show Control Panel in My Computer" and uncheck or uncheck the box as desired.

4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

Gary Chambers

Hide Or Show Protected Operating System Files And Hidden Folders!

Windows XP can be configured to either hide or show protected operating system files and/or hidden files and folders.

- Why hide them? If you are setting up a computer for someone else, you may wish to hide certain files to help prevent the user from accidentally deleting or moving critical Windows files. Or, even if you are an expert user, you may wish to hide files to prevent 'accidents'.

- Why show them? If you are trying to diagnose a problem (virus, spyware, etc.) and are an expert user, you may need to see all of the files on your system to determine if they have been changed.

1. Double-click "My Computer" on the desktop.

2. Select "Tools" - "Folder Options".

3. When the "Folder Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the "View" tab.

4. Scroll down to "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" and check or uncheck the box as desired.

5. Underneath "Hidden files and folders", check the desired radio button to show or not show these items.

6. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

Gary Chambers

Frequent Reboots During Intensive Operations!

Frequent reboots during intensive operations are more likely caused by hardware problems. There are several possible causes. First, your PC may be overheating owing to dust accumulation. Over time, dust can gather inside a PC chassis, layering over heat sink surfaces, memory modules, and circuit boards. You can blow the dust out with canned air. Open the case and check to see where dust has accumulated. Be sure to use short bursts, and get inside the surface of cooling fans mounted on CPU or GPU heat sinks. (Turn the system off before doing this.)

Another possible cause is power-supply problems. For example, if you've recently added a high-performance graphics card, you may have exceeded the power supply's capacity to deliver adequate power. Or it may simply be that the power supply is going south and failing.

Another common culprit is memory that's going bad. You can easily test for this by downloading a free copy of Memtest86+ ( http://www.memtest.org/ ). Run Memtest from a bootable floppy disk or CD. It will run a series of tests on your system memory to see if it's failing.

Gary Chambers