• Are you blessed with a Macintosh to experience the brighter side of computing but are still trying to forget your Windows XP box?

• Are you a Mac techie who wants to run some software which is released only to Windows XP systems and not yet entered the Mac world?

• Are you wanting to fascinate your friends with showing your skills by doing a dual boot?

Whatever your motive is, if you want to run a Windows XP system along with a Mac OS in a Macintosh computer, then the best possible option for you is Apple's Boot Camp.The Bootcamp lets you install Windows XP on a Macintosh system and do dual boot.

So if you want to install Windows XP on a Mac using bootcamp, then follow the below steps:

1. Download latest version of Mac OSX(currently 10.5.5) and the firmaware updates from the Apple Site .
2. Create a Macintosh drivers CD by running BootCamp Assistant.These drivers are very important.So check once again if the CD has been properly written.
3. Create a hard-disk partition so that Windows can be installed on it.Make sure the partition has a size ideally 10GB.This will provide sufficient storage for windows to install the OS and some required software.
4. Now insert your Windows XP setup CD and start the installation.When asked to select the hard disk partition select C drive.Format it using FAT.NTFS format is not readable by Mac and hence to access the Windows XP drive from Mac , you have to format as a FAT partition.
5. Wait for the XP installation to get on.Once the XP installation is complete, your system will be restarted by BootCamp in Windows XP automatically.
6. Now take the Macintosh Drivers CD created in step 2 and install the Mac drivers.The drivers are extremely essential for your hardware to function properly.

That is all you have to do to get Windows installed on your Mac.The next time you boot you will be booted by default into windows.To boot into Mac press ALT key while booting up.

• 4 comments »

Have you ever wondered How to create Show Desktop Icon on your Windows XP box? Then you have a solution to the problem right here.Follow my favorite step by step approach :)

1. Open your text editor(May be Notepad);
2. Copy the following text into it
   

   [Shell]
   Command = 2
   IconFile = explorer.exe,3
   [Taskbar]
   Command = ToggleDesktop
   

3. Save it as "Show Desktop.scf" and you are ready with the shortcut file.
4. Cut the file and paste wherever you want to :)
   

• 0 comments »

In the last post of the series, I provided you with some advanced tweaks for your system.The tweaks that I am going to present in this part are a bit easier than the previous ones. It's not compulsory for you to perform previous tweaks,to perform these.You can start right away with these.

Optimizing Startup Programs [msconfig]
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MsConfig is a hidden application in Windows XP which allows the user to fine tune the applications that are launched at startup. To disable some of the applications launched at startup perform the following steps.

1. Go to Start->Run and enter msconfig.exe and press Ok.
2. The MsConfig window opens.In this go to the Startup tab.
3. In the startup tab, un-tick the checkbox next to the startup items which you don't want to load at startup and keep the ones you want to load at startup as it is
4. While unchecking, keep in mind not to uncheck any entry of which you are not aware of.
5. After this, press Exit and restart.
   

The nice part of MsConfig is that it does not delete any of the settings.It simply disables them.So you can go back and restart a startup application if you find that you need it.

Bootvis Application
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This program was designed by Microsoft to enable Windows XP to cold boot in 30 seconds, return from hibernation in 20 seconds, and return from standby in 10 seconds. Bootvis has two extremely useful features. First, it can be used to optimize the boot process on your computer automatically. Second, it can be used to analyze the boot process for specific subsystems that are having difficulty loading. The first process specifically targets the prefetching subsystem (discussed in the part I), as well as the layout of boot files on the disk. When both of these systems are optimized, it can result in a significant reduction in the time it takes for the computer to boot

To use the software to optimize your system startup, first start with a full analysis of a fresh boot. Start Bootvis, go to the Tools menu, and select next boot. Set the Trace Repetition Settings to 2 repetitions, Start at 1, and Reboot automatically. Then set the trace into motion. The system will fully reboot twice, and then reopen bootvis and open the second trace file (should have _2 in the name). Analyze the graphs and make any changes that you think are necessary (this is a great tool for determining which startup programs you want to kill using msconfig). Once you have made your optimizations go to the Trace menu, and select the Optimize System item. This will cause the system to reboot and will then make some changes to the file structure on the hard drive (this includes a defragmentation of boot files and a shifting of their location to the fastest portion of the hard disk, as well as some other optimizations). After this is done, once again run a Trace analysis as above, except change the starting number to 3. Once the system has rebooted both times, compare the charts from the second trace to the charts for the fourth trace to show you the time improvement of the system's boot up.

• 5 comments »

It was quite some time since I did not post in this blog.To revive the blog, I am going to make
series of posts to tweak your Windows XP box.Follow this tweaks to improve your windows's functionality.These posts require a bit of time, but once done you will see the change to be awesome.

For each of the following tips,you have to know about Registry Editor.To perform any of these tweaks, first go to Start->Run and type regedit and press ENTER key.Then a window opens as shown in the below picture.


In the Left pane is the tree view.You have to use this to navigate to the key mentioned. Then follow as said.

To start with, in this Part 1, I will discuss the tweaks related to the startup of windows XP.

Windows Prefetcher
******************
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters]

Go to this key and there will be a setting called EnablePrefetcher in the right pane.The default setting of it will be 3. Increasing this number to 5 gives the prefetcher system more system resources to prefetch application data for faster load times during startup. Depending on the number of startup processes you run on your computer, you may get benefits from using settings up to 9. However, I do not have any data on settings above 9.So I cannot verify the benefits of settings above 9.So enter anything above 3 till 9 and test which suits best for your system. This setting will not take effect until after you reboot your system.


Master File Table(MFT) Zone Reservation
**********************************
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem]

If you navigate to this key, there you will see a setting called NtfsMftZoneReservation in the right pane.Its default value is 1. The range of this value is from 1 to 4. The default setting reserves one-eighth of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 2 reserves one-quarter of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 3 for NtfsMftZoneReservation reserves three-eighths of the volume for the MFT and setting it to 4 reserves half of the volume for the MFT. Most users will never exceed one-quarter of the volume. I recommend a setting of 2 for most users. This allows for a "moderate number of files" commensurate with the number of small files included in most computer games and applications. Reboot after applying this tweak.

Optimize Boot Files
*******************
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Dfrg \ BootOptimizeFunction]

Under this key is a text value named Enable. A value of Y for this setting enables the boot files defragmenter. This setting defragments the boot files and may move the boot files to the beginning (fastest) part of the partition. Reboot after applying this tweak.

• 1 comments »