It is possible that if you format an NTFS drive that the data still exists and can be recovered. While nothing is guaranteed here, it is a way to possibly get back what you think you have lost for eternity.

XP hides many different devices from you even when the 'show hidden devices' is clicked in the device manager. It will such as a USB stick or a ghosted drive.

Windows has a built in encryption scheme known as EFS. You can put the "encrypt" and "decrypt" entries in the context menu and then encrypting a file is only two clicks away.

When you start Windows, the numberlock (sometimes called NUMLOCK or NMBLOCK) is not activated on your keyboard. So the number pad on the right is being used for scroll keys and cannot be used as a calculator.

Sometimes the OS needs additional files after the OS is installed. It normally gets them off the installation CD. This change allows you to get the files from somewhere else like the hard disk.

When you disable the recycle bin in Windows, everything that is deleted will be completely removed from your system and wont go into the temporary holder name "recycle bin".

Outlook Express starts with a cute page to advertise itself. But to some waiting for it is just a pain; "Yeah, so what. Just get on with it!" and you might want to get rid of it.

If you want to see if Windows firewall is doing its job then logging is the answer. With the firewalls logging capabilities so you can see dropped packets and allowed connections

A slip-streamed XP id a clean copy of Windows XPpro with the necessary service packs, hotfixes, and anything you want already in place. It can be used to make an installation on many computers with the necessary applications already in place, You can use it to reinstall after a bad infection or system crash, or get rid of the useless "free" OEM software.

While most XP installations only use one hard disk and one partition, Windows refers to two different kinds internally: a system partition, and a boot partition.