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Get Help With Printing in Windows XP

What printing tasks or problems do you need help with in Windows XP?

Tell us your story in GetHelpWithPrinting in Windows XP.

Compressed (zipped) Folder bug

XP's Compressed (zipped) Folder feature can create .zip files containing > 65536 items (files+folders), but there is a bug in its extract mechanism that results in only some of the files in .zip files containing > 65536 items being extracted.

Specifically, only the first n items will be extracted from a .zip file, where n == remainder of num_items / 65536. For example, if you have 70,000 files (and zero subfolders) in a .zip file, only the 1st 4,534 files will be extracted.

To test this, I placed 1,000 files into each of 70 folders, and then created a Compressed (zipped) Folder .zip file containing these 70 folders. Through 3rd party tools (eg 7-zip, winrar), I verified that the .zip contained 70,000 files + 70 folders (70,070 items total). However, when I used the Compressed (zipped) Folder mechanism to extract the files, it only extracted the following: 4,529 files in the 1st 5 folders (a total of 4,534 items). 3rd party tools (eg 7-zip, winrar) were able to extract all 70,070 items.

Profile Management | Enhanced Run As

Most business users don't actually know how to operate a computer. They rely on something like an IT department to make sure the shortcut to their primary application is in just the right place along their quick launch bar. This may require enabling the bar, resizing it and then copying a shortcut to the correct place. There should be ways to do this for the user without having to login with their credentials or lengthy code based on obscure documentation. One way could be what is effectively an enhanced run as feature - basically allowing an administrator to use something similar to the remote desktop client or VPC to launch a session on the local machine in the context of another user (without that user's credentials given appropriate permissions). Another method could be 'profile diffing' where you take a before and after snapshots of a users profile, use some method to determine the difference and then applying the diff to target profiles - maybe through group policy...

Character repeat

Could you make it possible to turn Character Repeat completely off in Keyboard options?

Edit ID3 Tags from Explorer (My Computer)

I have a large collection of MP3's and have a maticulate way of having them labelled and ID3'd. Now My Computer, in Details view, can show those ID3 tags, however thats not enough. I want to be able to edit thoe tags directly without having to use a 3rd way (i.e. properties box or doing it in WMP). Please include in longhorn or fear my wrath! only kidding 9about the wrath bit) - Jaz

(I don't know about you, but I can edit the ID3 information from within Explorer quite easily... just make sure that "ReadOnly" is unchecked on the first property sheet) - W3bbo

File Dialog Bugs

Anyone notice that the "create directory" button on the common file dialogs (File->Open, etc) is broken in recent versions of Windows XP (SP2)?

Menu Scroll Enhancement

I'd like to be able to navigate scrolling menus (oversized Start menu, oversized Favorites menu) more easily, say, adding a scrollbar to the side? I don't like waiting for the things to scroll at their dainty little pace whilst I hover over the arrow. -Neotom

Notification area resize bug

Sometimes, when clicking an icon in the notification area and the 'hide inactive icons' option is enabled, and the area decides that it will show all the icons and hide the expansion arrow, one of the icons is subsequently missing.

Notification icon tooltips

On Windows XP with the XP default theme, tooltips for notification icons in the system tray sometimes appear behind the taskbar itself in the Z-order. Sometimes this issue cleans itself up, but I've not seen a pattern.

I think I have found a consistent way to recreate this problem: First set the Windows XP control panel to be a menu item in the Start Menu. Go to Start -- Control Panel -- Scheduled Tasks. Now right-click on a scheduled task (doesn't matter which one) and select Properties. Cancel the Properties dialog. Tooltips will now appear behind the task bar. -dcg

Setup

Why, in Setup, do I have to state in five places where I live? Namely, the user default locale, the system default locale, the location (at the bottom of the Regional Options tab), my keyboard layout, and my time zone. I live in the UK. I should be able to say so once (with an Advanced option to configure these settings individually). It's no wonder a large number of machines in the UK are set up incorrectly: with US default locales, since the boxed product we get here is the US English product. Then customers complain that the date layouts displayed by their applications are wrong.

Also, once I've set these options: the date and time dialog in setup still uses US conventions, not the settings I set on the previous dialog!


Moving my family's computer from Windows 98 to XP, I noticed that the installer for XP is text-based whereas the installer for 98 was more graphical. I often joke that "the most graphically advanced OS Microsoft has made goes back to the old yellow DOS-style loading bar," yet I much prefer the XP installer over the one for Windows 98. The XP installer is far more functional with it recovery console, repair, and its built-in partitioner than the 98 installer, which made you create a boot disk (so useless...). Also, I noticed that the boot screen for XP is much more simple than the one used for Windows 98 or 2000 (and I think it looks better, too). I like this because it shows that whoever wrote these cared more about functionality than form. Keep it up! You don't need an ultra-pretty installer or a spiffy splash-screen; leave those to the UI in Windows. Again, I like the way these were done; please continue with this. --The J

Standardization for 3rd Party Components

What I would really like to see is when I install something like a printer or a digital camera, Windows has its own extensible interface that bypasses the Manufacturer's built in settings utility. I have a Compaq A3000 printer and it requires that its settings utility be loaded in order for you to print (which its settings utility is probably the most unreliable piece of software ever created.) It's rather annoying really. Instead, it would be nice if it was sort of like how in XP you can control some routers' features (I use MS MN-500) using Network Connections rather than having to use the Manufacturer's software equivalent.

I don't know, just a thought. -mVPstar

Start Menu

I despise the Start Menu, its too counterproductive... If I want to launch programs I need to click "Start" before I do anything else... its even slower with the "XP" menu, what with the opening delay.

Right now I'm using TrueLaunchBar ( http://www.tsoftcentral.com/ ) to invoke programs, finding it a LOT faster than using the Start Button, can you work something like this into Longhorn or failing that... Blackcomb?

The idea of "collapsing" taskbar buttons was just stupid, but the idea of grouping them was alright... can you create an option to enable grouping but not collapsing? -W3bbo

The "Windows XP Start Menu", which is supposed to be an improvement over the "Classic" menu is anything but! Its slower, unwieldly, hard to use, inconsistent... I could go on

The "Classic" Start Menu with Quick-Launch on the start menu is faster and easier to use, maybe MS should just advertise existing features of products, rather than create new ones that perform worse

Quickstart buttons are less than 0.25 seconds for me to invoke apps from... XP Start Menu "pinned" items can be up to 1.25 seconds to get to

One wonders how many HCI employees Microsoft has....

Transcoding

I record my favorite TV shows using ATI's MMC but would rather use Windows Media Center Edition instead. I plan to in the future as doing so would automate many of the tasks I do manually. I want to have the highest quality video possible but my disk space is limited so I decided to store my recordings using your WMV codec. Unfortunately I can't record in your codec in realtime (especially when using my settings) so I record in ATI's MPEG4 codec and then later manually re-encode the video into your codec using VirtualDub and your WM9 VCM. I didn't realize that this task could be automated until today when I read this article

Therefore I request transcoding (with the customization avaliable in the WM9 VCM; e.g. bitrate, quality slider) be added in a future version of Windows Media Center Edition so I can configure this task to be done for me after I switch.

Wallpaper Managment on Multiple Monitors

I'm using multiple monitors, and I'm wondering- could you please treat their wallpapers as they are- backgrounds to different screens? Instead of rendering one wallpaper at the default screen's resolution, render it for each screen and maybe even allow different wallpapers to be selected? -NeoTOM

Windowing System

I know this is a REALLY big one... but for Blackcomb, can we see a fully 3D Windowing System thats also fully extensible for 3rd Parties to make cool shells and desktops?

I quite like SphereXP's ( http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/ ) concept of the desktop being inside a "sphere" with fully 3D navigation inside, its a near perfect implementation if it weren't for the fact that the windows shown are just screenshots of the programs, rather than the program itself drawn on a 3D surface, Longhorn is based off a 3D Windowing System too, right? So why not release this as on a "strictly power-users only" basis? Be a Microsoft first... release the first ever OS with a decent, functional, AND aesthetically pleasing 3D Windowing System to the mass-market before Sun or Apple do ;) -W3bbo

Windows Update

After applying Windows XP SP2, if you are logged in as a limited user and use Run As to run Windows Update as Administrator, the download succeeds but the installation always fails. The same is true if you use Aaron Margosis' makemeadmin_margosis/archive/2004/07/24/193721.aspx script. You have to log in as an administrator to perform updates.

Also, it would be nice if it would actually automatically install for limited users as well. I thought that it would do so but, guess automatic updates means only automatically downloading the updates, not automatically installing them. -mVPstar

Windows XP already does that for scheduled installation of updates. -- Yuhong Bao

Icon Groups

I would like to see the ability for the user to have one icon for multiple programs. This would lower desktop clutter and make things more organized. How does this work? Let's say you have a music directory that you want to make a shortcut for on the desktop, but you have that subdivided into subdirectories based on genre, such as Rock, Pop, R&B, etc. What you could do instead is create a Music icon group. When you click on the icon, other smaller icons will pop up in a neat circle around or column next to the icon group with shortcuts to the genre directories.

This could also be used for applications, such as Microsoft Office. Have one Office icon group. When you click on it, the icons and shortcuts for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook will appear allowing you to select one. Games with many mods, such as the Unreal Tournament series, will benefit from this as well so that one person can have the main executable and the mod executables all in one group. --The J

No Junk In System Directories

The Windows and the System32 directories are obviously very important. Why, then, are there screen savers in System32 and wallpaper images in C:\Winodws ? That doesn't seem right at all. System directories should have system files in them, not junk. I have a doom3.ini file in Windows and some dbPowerAMP-related bitmaps in System32. Keeping only the necessay files in there would help with organization and possibly even have a slight impact on the speed of Windows (it wouldn't have to wade through screen savers to load that one driver). Microsoft should tell software writers to not put junk in those places; perhaps it could become some development spec for Longhorn (I'm not too experienced with programming or development). That doom3.ini could have been put into the Doom 3 install directory; screen savers could have their own directory; dbPowerAMP images should be...you guessed it, with dbPowerAMP.

I agree with this suggestion. It might be much easier to manage security as well (not that LH isn't already VERY secure) --mVPstar

HTML Help Control

HTML Help Control found in at least 98, 2000 and XP is unable to load CHM files that have a '#' or '%' character anywhere in its path.

Attempting to open a file with the pound sign in the path, an IE style "The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings" error is displayed while a percent sign in the path results in a "The page you are looking for might have been removed or had its name changed" error. --dahat

Easier configuration for different networks using same network adapter

Windows XP allows multiple static IP addresses to be assigned to the same network adapter (even in combination with DHCP being enabled), but real-world testing of this feature on several different networks showed that it didn't work very well. It was necessary to find, qualify, and install a third-party utility to solve the problem (it took several tries to find one that worked well--the one that works the best in our experience is http://www.mobilenetswitch.com, and it also establishes drive mappings, etc.). It would be nice if Windows was better able to handle this on its own.

(One thing that neither Windows nor any utility we were able to find handles at all is the situation where one location has two monitors and another location has one monitor. When moving from one-monitor to two-monitor, we always have to reconfigure the monitor settings. It would be nice if this also was handled automatically. But now we're talking about a general notion of place-specific profiles, which is a broader topic than just the network settings and drive mappings.)

Relative shortscuts in flash disks

It would be fine, if the shortscuts in Windows Vista located on flash drives will be addressed as relative path. On some computer I have flash drive as E: on another as F:. This couses that shortscuts on flash drives don't works.

Windows laptop with external monitor does not set refresh rate properly

Does anybody know ow to instruct Windows XP to restore the correct refresh rate for an external monitor on XP?

I know this problem now for many years. Windows (2000 and XP) does not reinitialize the monitor refresh rate for the video card after

		    * reboot
		    * switch internal/external video on a laptop
		    * plug the laptop in a docking station
	

To clarify, in many circumstances the refresh rate is the same as it was configured before, but only in the display of the dialog (Desktop; right click --> Properties; Settings tab; Advanced button; Monitor Tab; Monitor Settings - System Refresh rate). It shows the rate it remembers, but the video card is set to the default of 60Hz.

How do I know? I can see it flicker. I used not to, but getting past my 30s made me see it.

Using now a tablet PC/laptop as my main computer and plugging it in and out of a docking station multiple times a day makes the procedure to correct this (Go to this very deep place and choose another rate) very annoying.

I was wondering if anybody knows a fix for this or a quick scripting utility that could automate the reset for me.