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10 Services To Turn Off To Improve Your XP Performance

2010-01-11T05:49:08Z

Turn It Off To Tune It Up

If your Windows XP system is running slowing and you need to improve the performance of your Windows XP system, one of the major things for you to do is to turn off unnecessary services on your Windows XP system.

Following are the common services we’ll turn off if you are running in a typical network environment. Check them and you’ll be surprised by what is running without your knowledge.

Service Glossary For Windows XP

IIS – Microsoft’s Internet Information Services provide the capabilities of a Webserver for your computer.

NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing — NetMeeting is primarily a VoIP and videoconferencing client for Microsoft Windows, but this service in particular is necessary to remote desktop access.

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager – This service is used by the Remote Assistance feature that you can use to allow others remote access to the system to help you troubleshoot problems.

Remote Registry – The capabilities provided by the Remote Registry service are frightening to consider from a security perspective. They allow remote users (in theory, only under controlled circumstances) to edit the Windows Registry.

Routing and Remote Access – This service bundles a number of capabilities together, capabilities that most system administrators would probably agree should be provided separately. It is rare that any of them should be necessary for a typical desktop system such as Microsoft Windows XP, however, so they can all conveniently be turned off as a single service. Routing and Remote Access provides the ability to use the system as a router and NAT device, as a dialup access gateway, and a VPN server.

Simple File Sharing – When a computer is not a part of a Microsoft Windows Domain, it is assumed by the default settings that any and all filesystem shares are meant to be universally accessible. In the real world, however, we should only want to provide shares to very specific, authorized users. As such, Simple File Sharing, which only provides blanket access to shares without exceptions, is not what we want to use for sharing filesystem resources. It is active by default on both MS Windows XP Professional and MS Windows XP Home editions. Unfortunately, this cannot be disabled on MS Windows XP Home. On MS Windows XP Professional, however, you can disable it by opening My Computer -> Tools -> Folder Options, clicking the View tab, and unchecking the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) checkbox in the Advanced settings: pane.

SSDP Discovery Service – This service is used to discover UPnP devices on your network, and is required for the Universal Plug and Play Device Host service (see below) to operate.

Telnet – The Telnet service is a very old mechanism for providing remote access to a computer, most commonly known from its use in the bad ol’ days of security for remote command shell access on Unix servers. These days, using Telnet to remotely manage a Unix system may be grounds for firing, where an encrypted protocol such as SSH should be used instead.

Universal Plug and Play Device Host – Once you have your “Plug and Play” devices installed on your system, it is often the case that you will not need this service again.

Windows Messenger Service – Listed in the Services window under the name Messenger, the Windows Messenger Service provides “net send” and “Alerter” functionality. It is unrelated to the Windows Messenger instant messaging client, and is not necessary to use the Windows Messenger IM network.
On your system, these services may not all be turned on, or even installed. Whether a given service is installed and running may depend on whether you installed the system yourself, whether you are using XP Home or XP Professional, and from which vendor you got your computer if MS Windows XP was installed by a vendor.

With the exception of Simple File Sharing, all of the above listed services can be disabled from the same place.

How To Turn Them Off?

To turn off any services, just do the following:-

Click on the Start button, then navigate to Settings -> Control Panel, open Administrative Tools, and from there open the Services window.
To disable any service in the list, double-click on its entry in that window and change the Startup type: setting.
In general, you should change services you are turning off for security purposes to a “Disabled” state.
When in doubt about whether a given service is necessary for other services, check the Dependencies tab in the service’s settings dialog.

Windows Services Running On My System

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list of everything running on your computer that you may want to turn off. It is merely a list of ten items that you most likely do not need to have running, and constitute a security vulnerability if left running. Most users will never have need of any of the services in this list, once the computer is up and running. Other services may be disabled without ill effect as well, though you should research each item in the complete services list before you disable it to ensure that you actually do not need it running. Some of them are quite critical to the normal operation of your system, such as the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service.

Every running — but unused — service on your machine is an unnecessary security vulnerability. If a service is not important at all for authorized users and basic system functionality, turn it off.

Tricks For 3D Pinball in Windows XP

2010-03-17T16:03:09Z

Found a cheatsheet for 3D Pinball and thought of sharing with you.

3D Pinball for Windows has nine rank levels, ranging from Cadet to Fleet Admiral. Complete each mission and advance to the next rank, but you go back to Cadet at the beginning of each game. Here are a few secret codes to get more enjoyment out of 3D Pinball. Note that the 3D Pinball window must be active for these codes to work.

Regain your old rank from a previous game by starting a new game and immediately typing rmax. Each time you type this secret command, you’ll advance one rank level.
Get an extra ball while the Awaiting Deployment message displays by typing 1max.
Activate the Gravity Well by starting a new game and immediately typing gmax.
Get an unlimited number of balls and essentially play for as long as you like by starting a new game and immediately typing bmax. Each time you lose a ball, a new one will appear. (While playing with an unlimited number of balls, none of the other tricks will work.)
Control the ball with your mouse by starting a new game and immediately typing hidden test. When you do, you can click the ball with your left mouse button and essentially drag it anywhere you want and rack up an unbelievable number of points.

Keep in mind that there isn’t a text box into which you enter these secret codes — you simply type them.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional.

10 Tips To Speed Up The Performance Of Windows XP

2010-03-17T16:03:58Z

Still Using Windows XP? Why??

If you are reading this article, I suppose you are still using Windows XP at this very moment. I hope you know that Windows 7 is already out and if you have heard of anything bad about Microsoft Windows Vista, fred not, cause Windows 7 is seriously a lot better than Windows Vista.

For us, we still have customers using Windows XP and their reasons are:-

“why spend extra when everything is working fine?”
“it’s working with my current hardware and software, so no reason to introduce unforeseeable problems into our environment”
“we are comfortable with Windows XP so no point wasting time to learn anything new”

As you can see, the bottomline is the inertia to upgrade and the mentality of “don’t fix when ain’t broken”.

If Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

There are actually tonnes of reasons for you to upgrade to Windows 7, which we’ll probably list in another article, but for now, if the users are still comfortable with Windows XP and don’t intend to upgrade any time sooner, the only thing we can help is to improve the performance of Windows XP so that it can run as good as new (new as in the time when they bought their system then…)

So, for those who are still using Windows XP, you can do the following to enhance your Windows XP eXPerience:-

Defragment your hard disks
- Even if you have a fresh installation of XP, you should regularly defragment all your system’s physical hard disks.
- To run the system defragmenter, use the defrag command or run dfrg.msc.
- I recommend doing so at least once a month, however, do note that you should not be running any other program, including your screen saver, when you are running the defragmentation program.
Periodically clear the Prefetch folder
- Found at %Windows%\prefetch, the prefetch folder contains pointers that help the system load programs that you’ve recently run. Over time, the accumulation of little-used entries can degrade system performance.
- Empty this folder about once a month; Do note that cleaning it out much more often will degrade performance.
Disable unneeded services
- By default, XP installs services that many users don’t need. Disabling unnecessary services makes the resources that they used available to other applications.
- You can use the Msconfig utility’s Services tab to disable services.
Get rid of unneeded Startup programs
- Programs that automatically install icons in the system tray and Startup folder are those you need to look out for. Although they usually add no functionality, they do eat away at system resources.
- To get rid of these parasites, run Msconfig, click the Startup tab, and clear the check box for each program you want to disable.
Adjust the Visual Effects setting
- For systems that don’t have a lot of CPU power (less than 800MHz), you can boost screen performance by changing the Visual Effects settings.
- Open the Control Panel System applet, click the Advanced tab, click the Settings button in the Performance area, then select the “Adjust for best performance” option.
Preset the paging file size
- When your system needs more memory than it has, Windows expands the paging file and all other system functions stop until the expansion is complete.
- Setting the maximum paging file size to twice the amount of physical RAM typically lets you avoid that performance hit.
- Open the System applet, select the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Performance. In the Performance Options window, select the Advanced tab, then click Change under “Virtual memory”. Enter the desired maximum paging file size in the “Maximum size” field.
Get a second hard disk
- With today’s high performance systems, the performance bottleneck is almost always the I/O subsystem. Spreading I/O over multiple hard disks relieves that choke point.
- Put your OS on one drive and your applications on the other.
- Adding a drive also helps you keep the recommended 20 percent free space on your system drive.
Use the DMA setting for all your hard disks
- When you add a second hard disk, XP often automatically sets it to the slowest Programmed I/O (PIO) mode. Most of today’s drives are capable of using the far more efficient direct memory access (DMA) setting.
- To change the drive settings, open the System applet, click the Hardware tab, then click Device Manager. Expand “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” and open the properties of the Primary IDE Channel. Select the Advanced Settings tab, and select “DMA if available” from the Transfer Mode drop-down list under both Device 0 and Device 1.
Paging File Location
- If you use a two-drive system, you can enhance performance by moving the paging file I/O to a different disk spindle than the one the OS uses.
- To do so, open the System applet, select the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Performance.
- Select the Advanced tab in the new window, click Change under “Virtual memory,” and select your system’s second drive from the Drive list.
Get more RAM
- Getting an adequate amount of RAM is the most effective way to improve XP’s performance. If you don’t have enough RAM, no amount of tweaking will make your system run faster.
- Every XP system should have a minimum of 512MB of RAM. For power users, 2048MB is even better.

So, this sums up what you need to do to improve the performance of your Windows XP system. If you have any other tips, do feel free to comment below.

A New Government Grant Called Accounting Software Assistance Scheme For Singapore SMEs

2010-03-09T16:22:32Z

If you are in the know, you would probably have heard the latest buzz about the new Singapore government grant called the Accounting Software Assistance Scheme. This grant caters to Singapore SMEs to encourage businesses to implement accounting software for their business operation.

To determine whether you are eligible for the grant, let’s go through the following checklists:-

Are you a GST-registered merchant/trader?
Are you still using Microsoft Excel and NOT using any other proper accounting software for your accounting and book-keeping function?
Are you pondering over the possible purchase of an accounting software but was put back by its high cost?
Do you wish that the Singapore government will help you to fund part of your accounting software purchase in order to lighten up your load?

If you answer ‘Yes’ to every one of the question above, you are in luck!!

Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) has partnered with each other and spearhead a new government grant called the Accounting Software Assistance Scheme.

This scheme will be valid only from July 1st, 2009 to March 31st, 2012 and it is to encourage businesses to implement accounting software so that SMEs can improve their record keeping practises and GST (Goods & Services Tax) compliances.

This scheme will be helping the SMEs to defray the cost of purchasing and setting up of the accounting software, as well as training on the use of the software.

For more information regarding this scheme, please feel free to contact us. We’ll be able to assist you from the initial consultation to the implementation and the final training and application for the scheme.

You may also go to http://asas.sg for more information.

Win Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Lucky Draw From MYOB

2010-03-17T16:05:13Z

All customers please note that we are offering a MYOB Full Pack Lucky Draw for the month of March 2010.
To qualify for this lucky draw, you just need to purchase either MYOB Accounting, MYOB Premier or MYOB Premier Plus between March 1st, 2010 and March 31st, 2010 and you’ll be eligible to participate in this lucky draw, bringing back with you Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition worth S$529.

All current customers or new MYOB customers are eligible for this lucky draw, as long as you buy a new full pack of the MYOB product will do.

Terms & Conditions:-

Qualifying products are MYOB Accounting, MYOB Premier or MYOB Premier Plus
Purchase period is between March 1st, 2010 and March 31st, 2010
Registration of software MUST be done by April 9th, 2010
MYOB will select the lucky customer and send them their copy of the Windows 7 by April 30th, 2010

For enquiry, please feel free to contact us.

Major MYOB Products Compatible With Windows 7

2010-03-17T16:06:55Z

We are happy to announce that on March 1st 2010, MYOB will release MYOB products that are compatible with Windows® 7. MYOB Premier Plus, MYOB Premier and MYOB Accounting have been tested to meet all of the technical requirements to be compatible with Windows® 7. All product collaterals and details will be updated to communicate this message. Look out for the Windows® 7 logo on the product boxes and brochures.

Following are the Windows® 7 products released on March 1st 2010:

MYOB Accounting 18.3.2
MYOB Premier version 12.3.2
MYOB Premier Plus version 12.3.2

The benefits of using a Compatible with Windows 7 product:

Passed Microsoft designed tests to minimize the possibility of crashes, hangs, and reboots.
Represents a commitment that the product will continue to work over the life of Windows 7.
Meets privacy standards set forth by the Anti-Spyware Coalition.
Installs cleanly and reliably.
Eliminates unnecessary reboots.

Following is the message from MYOB to our customers:

“ You have enough to think about with your business – your technology should not be a worry. Save time and money by purchasing “Compatible with Windows 7” applications such as MYOB Accounting and MYOB Premier. Applications that carry the Windows 7 logo have signed executables and drivers for authencity, and have passed Microsoft designed tests to help ensure they install readily and run reliably
with minimal number of hangs, crashes or restarts.”

How To Add Odd And Even Page Headers To Word 2007 Documents

2010-01-07T09:51:24Z

If you want to format the headers so that when you open the document, page numbers on odd-numbered pages appear on the right, and page numbers on even-numbered pages appear on the left, it can be done with ease.

Follow these steps to add odd and even page headers to your Word 2007 documents:

Click anywhere on page 1.
On the Insert tab, click Header in the Header & Footer group.
Click Austere (Odd Page) or any Header formatted for odd pages.
Under Header & Footer Tools, click the Design tab and then click to select the Different Odd & Even Pages check box in the Options group.
Click the Next Section button in the Navigation group.
Click Header in the Header & Footer group.
Click Austere (Even Page).

If your document already has a header that is not formatted for odd and even pages, you don’t have to delete it and start over. You can simply convert it to an odd/even format by following these steps:

Double-click the header area in your document.
Under Header & Footer Tools, click the Design tab, and then select the Different Odd & Even Pages check box in the Options group.
Click the Next Section button in the Navigation group.
Click Header in the Header & Footer group.
Click Austere (Even Page) or any Header formatted for even pages.

You can also create odd and even footers for your Word 2007 documents. Simply follow the steps above, substituting the word footer for header.

How To Change The Shape And Shadow Of A Picture In Word 2007

2010-01-07T09:35:01Z

In Word 2007, you can preview a change you’d like to make to a picture before you actually apply it. For example, suppose you would like to see how your 3″ x 5″ photo will look with rounded corners. Follow these steps:

Click the photo to select it.
Under Picture Tools, click the Format tab.
In the Picture Styles group, click the down arrow once to display Row 2 of the overall visual styles. Point to the Reflected Rounded Rectangle style, which is the first style in the second row. Word displays a preview of the style.
Click the Reflected Rounded Rectangle Style to apply it.

You can also preview a dropped shadow before applying it. Follow these steps:

Click the photo to select it.
Under Picture Tools, click the Format tab.
In the Picture Styles group, point to the Drop Shadow style, which is the fourth style in the first row.
After you see a preview of the style, click to apply the style.
Under Picture Styles, click Picture Effects.
Point to Shadow.
Click Shadow Options.
Move the distance slider to 45 pt.
Click Close.

How To Use AutoShapes In Word To Type Text In Images

2010-01-07T09:29:00Z

While you can use a text box to add a word or two to your Word document pictures, it is easier to position text typed directly onto the picture itself. While Word does not let you type directly onto a pasted picture, it does let you add text to AutoShapes. By turning your picture into an AutoShape, you can type directly on it. Follow these steps:

Right-click any toolbar.
Click Drawing.
Click AutoShapes on the Drawing toolbar.
Point to Basic Shapes and click Rectangle.
Click and drag in your document where you want to position the rectangle.
Click the Fill Color button’s drop-down arrow in the Drawing toolbar.
Click Fill Effects and then click the Picture tab.
Click the Select Picture button.
Navigate to the picture and click Insert. Click OK.
With the shape still selected, right-click the shape and select Add Text.
Type the text you want at the prompt.
Select and right-click the text.
Click Font.
Choose the desired font, font size, color, etc. from the Font dialog box and then click OK.

You can position the text within the shape by adding blank lines, spacing, indents, or any other paragraph formatting you wish.

Let Excel E-mail Your Weekly Reports

2010-02-23T17:15:06Z

If you have to send the same worksheet to a number of people every week, it probably takes you quite awhile to prepare the e-mail. If you have to do this for a number of reports, it can take even longer. Follow these steps to have Excel e-mail the reports for you:

Open the workbook containing the report you want to send.
Press [Alt][F11].
In the Project-VBA Project pane, double-click ThisWorkbook.
Go to Insert | Procedure.
Click in the Name text box and enter WeeklyReportEmail. Click OK.
At the prompt, enter the following code:
- Dim DistList As Variant
- DistList = Array(“name1@company.com”, “name2@company.com”, “name3@company.com”)
- ActiveWorkbook.Sendmail Recipients: = DistList
Press [Alt]Q.
Press [Alt][F8].
Click WeeklyReportEmail in the Macro list.
Click the Options button.
In the Ctrl+ box, enter m. Click OK.

Now when you need to send a report to everyone on your distribution list just open the workbook and press [Ctrl]M.