NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, August 2002
Windows XP: More "As Good As it Gets"
More ways to take advantage of XP's terrific features

by Steve Bass, Pasadena IBM Users Group
stevebass@earthlink.net
(click to email author)


Have you made the jump to Windows XP yet? At a recent user group meeting, I asked the audience- almost 400 people-how many of them were using XP. Almost 75 percent raised their hands.

Despite MS's greedy licensing policy, the move to XP is a wise one. The product has more stability than previous Windows versions and is imminently more tweakable.

In this month's column, I'll show you two more valuable XP features and if you feel like playing around, two tips you might enjoy.

The Last Good One
Unlike previous Win 9.x versions, XP fortifies its ability to restore your PC to a previous state. In a previous column I mentioned XP's System Restore, a feature that monitors and restores all drives and partitions on your PC.

XP has another way to bring your system back to health, especially if you've messed around and honked up a few drivers.

That happened to me. I foolishly tried installing Peterson Multimedia Guides, North American Birds, a Win95 program. A few video and audio drivers were knocked out of place; three landed on the floor.

Win XP Pro keeps a second set of configuration information safely tucked away. If you modify XP by adding or removing drivers, the changes are saved in the Current control set. When you reboot your PC, the info's copied to the Clone control set; once you logon, the data in Clone is copied to the Last Known Good control set.

Have problems with this next reboot? Restart your PC, press F8 while its booting, and choose Last Known Good configuration. (Crossing you fingers has been known to enhance the process.) Your system configuration will roll back to the last one Win XP used and all should be well.

NTFS, XP's Best Friend
Most of you are familiar with FAT32, the allocation table that first appeared with Win 95. What was terrific about FAT32's introduction was the way it handled hard drive clusters. All of a sudden users regained disk space--or at least didn't waste as much.

NTFS, which stands for New Twisted Font Services (or was that New Turbo Floppy Sequence-I never remember which), brings valuable features to XP. Instead of a FAT (File Allocation Table), NTFS uses a Master File Table (MFT) which maps all the files and directories on the drive. It also stores metadata files which describes file and directory attributes, such as compressed, security settings, and location on the disk.

Below are some of the more important characteristics of NTFS. If you're intrigued and want more details, type NTFS into the Win XP's extraordinarily useful Help and Support Center's Search field.

Recoverability: NTFS uses transaction recovery logging of data to automatically log all file and directory updates. That means you can have a better shot at restoring data if your system fails due to, say, a power failure.

Less Defragmentation: NTFS has data storage smarts. It holds back enough space for the MFT to expand, thereby reducing fragmentation. Compared to FAT32 drives, disk fragmentation isn't a big issue for NTFS-formatted drives. Nonetheless, defragging weekly will keep your NTFS drive in top- notch condition.

Compression: Individual files and directories can be compressed. With astronomical 80- and 100GB drives, it almost feels unnecessary to risk degrading performance by compressing drive, right? Maybe, but compressing rarely used files--such as humongous home videos--is painless. Try it: From Windows Explorer, highlight any file. (No, don't pick the swap file, okay?) Right mouse click, select Properties, Advanced, and check Compress contents to save space.

Security: You can use permissions to restrict access to files and directories; if you're feeling particularly concerned, you can also encrypt sensitive files, reducing your paranoia.

Large Drives: NTFS handles large drive partitions really well. In fact, NTFS supports up to 16 exabytes--16 billion gigabytes. (BTW, Fry's has these drives on sale for $29.95, after rebate.) There's no performance degradation as the drive size increases because of NTFS's better scalability to large drives. The maximum drive size for NTFS is much greater than FAT32, and as drive size increases, performance with NTFS doesn't degrade as it does with FAT32.

Make The Transition
You can convert to NTFS from Fat32 relatively easily, without much muss, fuss, or reformatting. But it's a one-way street; you can't go back to Fat32. Open a DOS box (or, if you've never heard of DOS and you're feeling a little nervous, open a command prompt window instead). Do it from the Start Menu-select Run, and type CMD. In the window, type:

convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

In the above example, typing convert D: /:ntfs would format drive D: with the NTFS format. That's all there is to it. One note: It's a good idea to defrag the drive before and after the conversion. For more details, read MS's support doc at http://tinyurl.com/v7f.

Two Tips You Can Use
Crusty Cursors: If you're using an LCD monitor or notebook, you might have trouble seeing the flashing cursor on some applications. The fix is easy. From Control Panel, select Accessibility Options, choose the Display tab, and change the width of the cursor.

Beeping Caps Lock: While you're in Accessibility Options, choose the Keyboard tab and check the Use Toggles box if you want to hear a beep when you set the Caps-, Num-, or Scroll Lock keys.

Steve Bass is a Contributing Editor with PC World and runs the Pasadena IBM Users Group. He's also a founding member of APCUG. Check PCW's current edition at http://www.pcworld.com/resource/toc/index.asp and sign up for the Steve Bass online newsletter at http://www.pcworld.com/bass_letter.

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