Windows XP Settings - Tip of the Day

[TheOldhamWhisper]

They won't be everyday - just when I find something useful!

With today's monitors allowing higher resolutions and my eyesight not getting any better with age, I tend to find that the icon text is quite difficult to read (especially if I have a bright wallpaper image).

If you bring up Desktop Properties (right click on the Desktop) and go to the appearance tab, there is a button that says advanced. Click on this and from the Item dropdown select Icon. This will enable the Font settings for your desktop items (and one or two other things like the address bar font in your IE Browser). I set mine to 9 point (from 8) and click on the Bold button. Click Apply and if you are happy with it, Click OK and enjoy!

:thumbs

[Win2Win]

Or buy a 22" monitor :)

[TheOldhamWhisper]

Today's 'tip of the day' is inspired by the problems that one of our members is experiencing and, coincidentally, a similar problem that I was called out to 'fix'.

The problem was the dreaded 'blank screen' at startup. Essentially, the computer has just been switched on or restarted and it suddenly stops before Windows begins to load. Often, the only sign of life is a flashing cursor (little white line) in the top left corner of the screen.

First thing to do is to check that there are NO other 'disks' attached or available to the PC. This means flash drives (otherwise known as pen drives), digital cameras or MP3 players. Also, if you have one, check there is no floppy disk in the drive and also make sure there is no CD or DVD in the drawer of your CD/DVD drive. If there is ANYTHING other than your mouse or keyboard attached to a USB port, unplug it before trying to restart the machine. Peripherals can cause conflicts in the system at startup and if a USB keyboard fails, it can stop a machine from booting.

You then need to press and hold the start button until you here the fans stop (or just unplug the PC at the wall - but remember to plug it back in!!). Try to start the system and make a note of any messages you might see on the screen and come and post on the boards if things are still not working.

There are settings you can change in the BIOS to tell you what is going on during the startup process and also to stop the machine from stalling if there is a problem detected but you should NEVER alter settings in the BIOS unless you know what you are doing.

Trying to use a system restore disk is the absolute LAST RESORT! These disks are designed to restore the machine to factory settings and you will lose any and all data on your machine.