Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition

Credits

About the Author

Preston Gralla is the author of more than 30 books about computers and the Internet, which have been translated into 15 languages, including Internet Annoyances and Windows XP Power Hound. He has been writing about technology since the dawn of the PC age, and has been an editor and columnist for many national newspapers, magazines, and web sites. He was the founding editor of PC Week; a founding editor, then editor, then editorial director of PC/Computing; and executive editor for ZDNet/CNet. Preston has written about technology for numerous magazines and newspapers, including PC Magazine, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, Computer Shopper, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Dallas Morning News (where he was a technology columnist), and many others. He has been a columnist for ZDNet/CNet and is currently a columnist for TechTarget.com. His commentaries about technology have been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and he has won the award for the Best Feature in a Computer Publication from the Computer Press Association. Under his editorship, PC/Computing was a finalist for General Excellence from the National Magazine Awards. Preston is also the editor of O’Reilly’s WindowsDevCenter.com site. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and two children—although his daughter has recently fled the nest for college. Between writing books, articles, and columns, he swims, plays tennis, goes to the opera, and contemplates the ram’s skull hanging on the wall of his office.

Contributors

The following people contributed their hacks, writing, and inspiration to this book:

• Eric Cloninger was one of the original contributors to the Palm OS, working on tools for software developers. After 15 years in the Real World, Eric decided that living in a small town in Oklahoma wasn’t so bad after all. When he’s not writing software, Eric enjoys spending time with his family, tinkering with his John Deere tractor, and watching tornadoes roll across the plains. While he doesn’t miss the traffic in the Big City, he does occasionally yearn for a spicy tuna roll.

• Rael Dornfest is CTO of O’Reilly Media, focusing on emerging technologies just this side of viability and some beyond the pale. He assesses, experiments, programs, fiddles, fidgets, and writes for O’Reilly in various capacities. Rael is Series Editor of the O’Reilly Hacks series (http://hacks.oreilly.com) and has edited, contributed to, and coauthored various O’Reilly books, including Mac OS X Panther Hacks, Mac OS X Hacks, Google Hacks, Google: The Missing Manual, Essential Blogging, and Peer to Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies. He is also Program Chair for the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. In his copious free time, Rael develops bits and bobs of freeware, particularly the Blosxom weblog application (http://www.blosxom.com), is Editor in Chief of MobileWhack (http://www.mobilewhack.com), and (more often than not) maintains his Raelity Bytes weblog (http://www.raelity.org).

• Jim Foley, a.k.a. The Elder Geek (http://www.theeldergeek.com), owns and operates a small consulting and web design firm in Cambridge, N.Y., that specializes in the integration of Windows XP technology into home and business environments. He is also the creator and owner of The Elder Geek on Windows XP, a web site that strives to provide relevant information related to Windows XP, including a notification service and Windows XP forum to keep readers informed of the latest XP tips, troubleshooting, and update developments.

• Nancy Kotary is a former O’Reilly editor. She spends her time working from her home in eastern Massachusetts, watching herself metamorphose into a soccer mom, and trying not to buy a minivan.

• Thomas Künneth is a senior professional at the German authorities, specializing in database systems and application development. He has a master’s degree from Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in computational linguistics and the German language. Thomas started writing computer programs in the early 1980s. For a long time he was programming in C, and he has been writing Java programs since 2000. You can find out more about Thomas at http://www.moniundthomaskuenneth.de.

• Wei-Meng Lee is an experienced author and developer specializing in .NET technologies. He was awarded the Microsoft .NET Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in 2003. Besides .NET development, Wei-Meng maintains a keen interest in wireless technologies and has coauthored many books and articles on mobile applications development and XML technologies. He is the author of Windows XP Unwired (O’Reilly).

• Kyle Rankin is a system administrator who enjoys troubleshooting, problem solving, and system recovery. He is the current president of the North Bay Linux Users’ Group and the author of Knoppix Hacks.

• C. K. Sample, III maintains the weblog “3650 and a 12-inch” (http://3650anda12inch.blogspot.com), which discusses the use of a 12-inch PowerBook G4 and a Nokia 3650. He is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University, focusing on twentieth-century American and British literature, as well as twentieth^-century world literature, biblical studies, and critical theory. C. K. (Clinton Kennedy; no relation) works in Fordham’s Department of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing as the lab coordinator for Marymount College and the Fordham Graduate Center in Tarrytown, N.Y. His first “computer” was an Atari 400, and his first Mac was a PowerBook 5300CS. Originally from Jackson, Miss., C. K. currently lives in Bronxville, N.Y., with his fiancée, Kristin Landgrebe, and his pet Eclectus parrot, Misha, who is two years old.

• Margaret Levine Young has coauthored many books, including The Internet for Dummies, Windows XP: The Complete Reference, UNIX for Dummies, Internet: The Complete Reference, and Poor Richard’s Building Online Community. She has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Yale and lives in Vermont.

Acknowledgments

Any book is a cooperative venture, and this one was more so than many. Thanks to editor Brian Sawyer, who, in the midst of the birth of his first child, managed somehow to help birth this book as well; I only hope it didn’t cost him as many sleepless nights as did his newborn son. Thanks also to the book’s first editor Nancy Kotary. Thanks to Rael Dornfest for his laserlike focus on making sure that every hack was exceedingly useful and moved well beyond the obvious. Laurie Petrycki and Dale Dougherty offered valuable advice and feedback in the early stages of writing. Many thanks to Tim O’Reilly, who entrusted me with this project, albeit in a very different form than when it was first conceived, and who gave very targeted advice and pointers in the important early phases of writing.

Thanks also to my copyeditor, Audrey Doyle, and to the production team at O’Reilly: Emily Quill, Robert Romano, Jessamyn Read, Jamie Peppard, Claire Cloutier, Reg Aubry, Katherine Pinard, Peter Ryan, Keith Fahlgren, and Lydia Onofrei. And, many, many thanks go to diligent technical reviewer extraordinaire Eric Cloninger, who spent many hours watching reruns of The Sopranos on TiVo and reading way into the early morning hours.

As always, thanks to my family. Lydia put up with my usual diet of late-night deadlines, and Mia let me get my work done when we were on her grand audition tour for college ballet programs. As for Gabe, his advice and recommendations on which hacks to cover was an enormous help. Gabe also wrote the Firefox search engine that provided the core of [Hack #44] , and provided valuable insight into how to write the hack.