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.

There are two ways to get to a mini-dump that was previously created. One of them is to use debuging tools like windb.exe or kd.exe.

A small memory dump file is a debugging tool for when your computer crashes. It records the smallest set of useful information that may help. But you need to make some configuration settings to create the minidump.

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.

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.

The following registry edit will put a context menu (right click) item which will drop you into the CLI at the directory you are looking at in Windows Explorer.

Files that are in use by a program are locked from being changed by other programs. Usually this is a good thing but sometimes you have a file that is locked when you don't think it should be. What is using that file? Is it malicious?

You may not want to allow someone to shutdown from the Start-up window or from the command line.