WARNING: Using Tips n Tricks on this website incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Operating System. We cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Tips and Tricks can be solved. Use Tips and Tricks at your own risk.

Speed up shutdown times

It's not only start-up that you'd like to speed up; you can also make sure that your system shuts down faster. If shutting down XP takes what seems to be an inordinate amount of time, here are a couple of steps you can take to speed up the shutdown process:

• Don't have XP clear your paging file at shutdown. For security reasons, you can
   have XP clear your paging file (pagefile.sys) of its contents whenever you shut 
  down. Your paging file is used to store temporary files and data, but when your
   system shuts down, information stays in the file. Some people prefer to have
   the paging file cleared at shutdown because sensitive information such as

  
   unencrypted passwords sometimes ends up in the file. However, clearing
  the paging file can slow shutdown times significantly, so if extreme security
  isn't a high priority, you might not want to clear it. To shut down XP with
  out clearing your paging file, run the Registry Editor (click Start > Run,
  then type regedit in the Run box) and go to:
  
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
   

• Change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 0. Close the Registry, and restart your computer. Whenever you turn off XP from now on, the paging file won't be cleared, and you should be able to shut down more quickly.
  
  Note: Please be careful when editing the Registry; you can do a lot of damage here. Don't change or delete anything unless you know exactly what it is.

Help Your Parents with Computer Problems

We know it can be infuriating to help your parents with technology.

But you can't help them install digital camera software if you're impatient or short with them. Teaching the previous generation things that are second nature to you is difficult in any circumstance, even more so when you're dealing with your parents. Here are some tips to bridge the generation gap.

• Do no harm. You might be tempted to help them by tweaking their computer to work the way yours does. Don't. Your parents might have a reason for their different way of doing things, and even if they don't, they might just be used to it. To really help, adapt yourself to their computers and don't force them to work like you do.
   

• Listen and learn. Your parents may do the same things with the computer or the Internet that you do but in a different way. And they may call it different things. Yahoo may be "the Web." Microsoft Word might just be called "Microsoft." This isn't the time to correct them. Learn their lingo and explain things in terms they already use.
   

• Don't think you know more than they do. Age is not a handicap when dealing with computers. You may be surprised how adept an octogenarian is with instant messaging, Quicken, photo sharing, or even Doom 3. Experience and wisdom can breed stubbornness, and it can also breed flexibility. Just try to understand the issue from the other perspective.