Making the [Caps Lock] key sound off in Windows 98!
How many times have you been typing along only to look up and
notice that while you were typing, you accidentally hit the [Caps
Lock] key and everything you've typed since then is in uppercase
letters? Of course, to clean up this mess you have to press
[Backspace] and then retype the words.
Fortunately, I've discovered a feature that helps you avoid this
situation by assigning a sound to the [Caps Lock] key so that it
beeps when you press it. To use this feature, you must have the
Accessibility Options installed.
To assign a sound to the [Caps Lock] key, access Control Panel and
double-click on the Accessibility Options icon. When the
Accessibility Properties sheet appears, select the Use Toggle Keys
check box in the Toggle Keys panel. Then, to enable the setting,
click OK.
Password recovery isn't too painful in Windows 2000 Pro!
Every now and then, a user forgets a password. If it's a local
account password, you're in good shape--as long as you can log on
with the local administrator account, or with another local
account with the privileges necessary to change the user's
password. There are other solutions, such as deleting the SAM
file, replacing Logon.scr with Cmd.exe, and using third-party
tools. However, there's no good substitute for assigning a
hard-to-guess local administrator password, storing it in a secure
database, and never giving the user the account credentials.
But local and domain passwords aren't the only ones that users
tend to forget. In fact, they're probably more likely to forget
passwords for Web and FTP sites, e-mail accounts, and other
nonsystem passwords. It can be a real headache to try to recover
these passwords, but sometimes it isn't just a matter of
recovering a password.
Windows 2000 caches the password and although users might, for
example, be able to access a password-protected Web site (because
the password is cached), they might have forgotten the password
and now need to use it elsewhere on the site. Windows 2000 hides
the password with asterisks, so you can't just look it up.
There are some third-party tools you can use to uncover these
passwords. For example, iOpus' Password Recovery XP lets you
reveal these passwords. Just open the program, drag the cursor
over the hidden password, and the clear-text password shows up in
the Password Recovery window. iOpus provides a free evaluation
copy so you can test it, as well as a Web page where you can test
the program's ability to reveal Web-based passwords.
Increase your desktop real estate by hiding the taskbar (Win XP)
As you know by now, Microsoft's design improvements for the XP
interface included the removal of a lot of icons that appeared by
default on the Windows desktop. The thought process behind this
idea was to make the desktop more streamlined, free of clutter,
and therefore easier to work with. If you subscribe to these
ideals, you might want to consider hiding the taskbar from view as
well. Doing so not only frees up more desktop space, but also
makes it easier to see additional portions of the screen, which
can be helpful when you're working with large images.
Right-click on an empty portion of the taskbar and unlock it, if
necessary, by selecting the Lock The Taskbar menu item to remove
its associated check box. Then, right-click on the taskbar again
and choose Properties. In the Taskbar And Start Menu Properties
dialog box, select the Auto-hide The Taskbar check box. Then,
click Apply and OK.
You'll see the taskbar quickly drop down below the bottom edge of
the screen. To access the taskbar when the Auto-hide The Taskbar
option is selected, simply move your pointer to the edge of the
screen where your taskbar was previously located. When the pointer
nears the edge, the taskbar jumps back into position; when you
move your pointer away from the taskbar, XP automatically hides it
again.
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