Okay, most of my experience with XP is on government systems that allow users limited control but now I have a personal laptop with XP Pro. I have three questions:

The first two, how do I get the "ctrl-alt-del" menu that appears on my government system, the one that gives you about six buttons to click that give you options to shut down or go to the task manager, etc, instead of going straight to the bland looking task manager and my other question is how can I stop annoying sys-tray pop-ups such as "wireless connection unavailable" that require you to acknowledge them before fading away?

Lastly, what are some good resources (as in sites) that address this general topic?

Thanks.

http://www.annoyances.org/ is probably where you should check out. I'm an avid Win98SE user though so can't come up with the changes you're asking for for WinXP off the top of my head.

QM

1) Only abvailable in XP Pro, not available in XP Home
2) Go to the properties for that network in Network Connections and untick the checkbox that says Notify me when limited connectivity blah blah.
3) One tool that helps me tweak windows is TweakUI XP (google it, it's on MS' site, along with other Powertools for XP that you might find useful).

Another tool I like to use is X-Setup Pro, but make sure you get the older freeware version. The newest version is trialware.

Thanks for the other tips but you might have missed that I do have XP Pro so maybe you can answer the first one, too.

<3 TweakUI

Actually I get that CTL-ALT-DEL option when I press it on XP Home.

You have to disable the default XP Login screen in the User Accounts control panel applet (start>run>control panel, then "User Accounts" it's one of the options, I don't remember which, and I'm not logged in as my computer's administrator right now to check it.

Someone on Massassi showed me TweakUI and it is the greatest thing on the face of the earth.

on an aside, if you'd like to keep control of your Windows XP system, don't forget to go into Safe-mode <F8> right before the windows load screen comes up, and look at User accounts. There's an Administrator account with no password set, so that anyone who knows about it can create their own admin level account using that Administrator login. That is, if you use a password at all.

Well, I got TweakUI yesterday.. and somehow managed to select that 'Show Administrator on Logon Screen button. A little after i got up this morning my computer decides to randomly reboot for no reason. It gets to the Logon screen.. and I can't log on because Administrator is the ONLY account selectable and I don't know/remember the password. I've googled around by couldn't find anything Free to help me with this. Anything you guys can hellp me with would be nice.

There's a 95% chance the admin password is blank. Just try hitting enter.

i did, it got changed at some point in time

Most otherboards have a built-in work-around for lost passwords. If you open up the case there should be 2 or 3 jumpers on the board. One of them bypasses the password system. Simply move one of the jumpers (should just be a 3-pin) and reboot, and try to log in (blank pass). If it doesn't work, turn the computer off, replace the jumper and try another one. Eventually you should be able to log in, and you can reset the password. After you have it set, turn off and replace the jumper and reboot, and the password should be in place.

Err, what? That's for CMOS passwords. And its not a bypass, it wipes the CMOS so the thing is reset to its defaults (including no password). And this has absolutely nothing to do with CMOS passwords, this is in windows.

Well I've used it before and it's worked no problem.

You can also get boot disks that reset passwords.

Yes. I have a Linux one that'll allow you to reset and change ANY Windows password. I love it... I'll pull it out when I get home and see if I can't remember where I downloaded it from. It's garuenteed to fix that problem though.

Genki: The Administrator password is blank by default. Someone must have changed it.

It's easy enough to do from the command prompt:
net user Administrator *

Also Genki try pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL at the Welcome screen to enable classic login, you might be able to type in your username and password there.

I just blow away computer when this happens.

I got it fixed this morning thanks to help from Mr. Buck.
The password was freaking SHOE.. blaaah