BOOSTING YOUR NETWORK

Boost your network’s reliability and speed by tuning two important network
settings in Windows: RWIN, short for Receive Window, and MTU, or Maximum
Transmission Unit. You can use Regedit to set these values in the Windows
Registry following the instructions from Annoyances.org (find.pcworld.com/46436),
or you can download and run the free DrTCP from www.dslreports.com/drtcp.

The RWIN setting alters the TCP/IP received-data buffering on your PC—the more you have, the faster your downloads, within limits. Most users have found that an
RWIN value of between 32768 and 65536 yields the speediest downloads (if you
don’t set this, RWIN defaults tofour times the MTU value). MTU sets the maximum
size of data packets sent and received, and it must match the type of connection you
have— dial-up, PPPoE (most DSL and cable), or LAN. The standard maximum value
for TCP/IP is 1500, but for dial-up connections it should be 576 to ensure minimal
packet fragmentation. For PPPoE, an MTU of no more than 1492 is
recommended.

Some ISPs and virtual private network connections require a setting as low as 1300 to
allow for the differences in all the networking gear in the system and for data
encryption overhead.
For a little extra oomph, also tweak the number of simultaneous connections your PC
can make to one server. If you have a fast cable or DSL connection, boosting this
setting from its default value of two to four or six can help pages load faster. Some
Web servers limit you to two simultaneous connections, so you won’t see a speed
increase on all sites you visit.

You will have to restart Windows for the changes to take effect.
Determine the settings recommended for your PC and test them using the
Tweak Test at www.dslreports.com/tweaks. It may take some time to find the best
settings for your Internet connection.

USEFUL WINDOWS CMDS (PT1)

ADDUSERS Add or list users to/from a CSV file
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
ASSOC Change file extension associations
ASSOCIAT One step file association
AT Schedule a command to run at a later time
ATTRIB Change file attributes
BOOTCFG Edit Windows boot settings
BROWSTAT Get domain, browser and PDC info
CACLS Change file permissions
CALL Call one batch program from another
CD Change Directory - move to a specific Folder
CHANGE Change Terminal Server Session properties
CHKDSK Check Disk - check and repair disk problems
CHKNTFS Check the NTFS file system
CHOICE Accept keyboard input to a batch file
CIPHER Encrypt or Decrypt files/folders
CleanMgr Automated cleanup of Temp files, recycle bin
CLEARMEM Clear memory leaks
CLIP Copy STDIN to the Windows clipboard.
CLS Clear the screen
CLUSTER Windows Clustering
CMD Start a new CMD shell
COLOR Change colors of the CMD window
COMP Compare the contents of two files or sets of files
COMPACT Compress files or folders on an NTFS partition
COMPRESS Compress individual files on an NTFS partition
CON2PRT Connect or disconnect a Printer
CONVERT Convert a FAT drive to NTFS.
COPY Copy one or more files to another location
CSVDE Import or Export Active Directory data
DATE Display or set the date
Dcomcnfg DCOM Configuration Utility
DEFRAG Defragment hard drive
DEL Delete one or more files
DELPROF Delete NT user profiles
DELTREE Delete a folder and all subfolders
DevCon Device Manager Command Line Utility
DIR Display a list of files and folders
DIRUSE Display disk usage
DISKCOMP Compare the contents of two floppy disks
DISKCOPY Copy the contents of one floppy disk to another
DNSSTAT DNS Statistics
DOSKEY Edit command line, recall commands, and create macros

CONFIGURING YPOPS

Below are just the basic steps to configuring your yahoo mail with Microsoft Outlook.

Select Tools -> Email accounts from the main menu
Select Add a new email account and click o­n Next
Select POP3 as the Server Type. Click Next.
Enter your username and full Yahoo! email address under 'User Information' Enter your Yahoo! Login id and password under 'Logon Information' Enter '127.0.0.1' as your Incoming mail server Enter '127.0.0.1' as the Outgoing mail server Click o­n the More Settings button and select the Advanced tab Increase the Server Timeout to 'Long' (5 minutes).
Select the Outgoing Server tab Enable "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication". Select "Log o­n using" and enter your Yahoo Mail address as the username and your Yahoo Mail password as the password.
Click Ok to close the More Settings dialog Click Next and then Finish

STEPS TO INSTALLING WINDOWS XP ON A PRE-INSTALLED WINDOWS VISTA COMPUTER

The question that’s often asked is "How do I install a dual-boot with Windows XP on my new Windows Vista computer?" The answer is that it's not that difficult, it's just very time consuming, and you need to own a copy of Windows XP. Note that you should not attempt this if you aren't ready to troubleshoot any problems that might occur.

The first issue we encounter is that computers with pre-installed operating systems take up the entire drive. Luckily Microsoft included the Shrink volume feature in Vista, so we can easily shrink the Vista partition down to make room for XP.

Open the Computer Management panel, which you can find under Administrative tools or by right-clicking the Computer item in the start menu and choosing Manage. Find the Disk Management item in the list and select that.
Now we'll shrink our volume down by right-clicking on the main hard drive and choosing Shrink Volume.

Now you can choose the size that you want to shrink, which really means you are choosing the size that you want your XP partition to be. Whatever you do, don't just use the default. I chose roughly 10gb by entering 10000 into the amount.

The next step might be confusing, because we need to change the cd-rom drive that's invariably taking up D: at the moment, because we want to use D: for the Windows XP partition, but it's already taken by the cd-rom drive. If you skip this step than XP will install onto the E: drive, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not quite as tidy.

Right-click on the cd-rom drive in the list and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu. Now we'll change the CD drive to use E: by selecting that in the drop-down.

Now we can create a new partition for XP to live on and make sure that the drive letter is set the way we want. If you do not create a partition now the XP install will do so automatically, but it's easier and cleaner to do it this way.

Right-click on the Unallocated free space area and then select New Simple Volume from the menu. Follow through the wizard and select whatever options you'd like, making sure to use D: as the drive letter.

Now you will need to close out of disk management and reboot your computer. This is because we can't do the next step until we reboot. (you can try, but it won't work)

So we've come back from rebooting… open up Computer from the start menu and then right-click on the D: drive and select properties. Give your partition a meaningful name like "XP". It would be wise to name the C: drive to "Vista" at this point as well.
Now you'll want to pop your XP cd into the drive and boot off it. You may have to configure your BIOS to enable booting off the CD drive, or if your computer says something like "Hit Esc for boot menu" you might want to use that.
Once you come to the screen where you can choose the partition to install on, then choose either the unpartitioned space or the new partition you created. Whatever you do, don't try and install onto your Vista partition!
See how much cleaner it is now that we've labeled each partition distinctly?

We'll assume XP is completely installed at this point, and you will have lost your ability to boot into Windows Vista, so we'll need to use the VistaBootPro utility to restore the Vista boot loader.
Download and install VistaBootPro from www.vistabootpro.org

During the install you'll be forced to install the .NET 2.0 framework. Open up VistaBootPRO and then click on the System Bootloader tab. Check the "Windows Vista Bootloader" and then "All Drives" radio buttons, and then click on the Install Bootloader button.

At this point, the Windows Vista bootloader is installed and you'll only be able to boot into Vista, but we'll fix that. Instead of manually doing the work, we'll just click the Diagnostics menu item and then choose Run Diagnostics from the menu.
This will scan your computer and then automatically fill in the XP version. Click on the "Manage OS Entries" tab and then click in the textbox for Rename OS Entry, and name it something useful like "Windows XP" or "The Windows That Works".

Click the Apply Updates button and then reboot your computer… you should see your shiny new boot manager with both operating systems in the list!
If you get an error saying "unable to find ntldr" when trying to boot XP, you'll need to do the following:
Find the hidden files ntldr and ntdetect.com in the root of your Vista drive and copy them to the root of your XP drive.
If you can't find the files there, you can find them in the \i386\ folder on your XP install cd
This is a critical piece of information: Windows XP will be installed on the D: drive, even in Windows XP… so you'll need to keep that in mind when tweaking your system.
You can share information between the drives, but I wouldn't recommend messing with the other operating system's partition too much.