Windows XP and 2000 Tips & Tricks UPDATE, September 30, 2002

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September 30, 2002—In this issue:

1. COMMENTARY

2. FAQS

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS

4. CONTACT US

1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by John Savill, FAQ Editor, [email protected])

This week, I tell you how to save Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to a local computer, how to prevent Microsoft Word in Microsoft Office XP from loading HTTP-linked images, and how to configure IE to view Web sites with multibyte characters. I also explain why a Windows 2000 service pack stops installing when it encounters a small System partition, why you might have trouble changing user identities in Outlook Express after installing Windows XP SP1, and how to configure Windows XP to access ATAPI hard disks larger than 137GB.

I've been following Windows XP SP1 closely since its launch, and so far, the number of downloads for the new service pack has passed the 1 million mark. Microsoft has made the new service pack available for several more international platforms, including Korean, Danish, Norwegian, and Japanese versions. Digital media users will be happy to know that a new beta build of Windows Media Player (WMP) 9 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp . A new version of Microsoft's Instant Messaging (IM) client, Windows Messenger 4.7 (build 104), is also available from Microsoft at http://download.microsoft.com/download/windowsmessenger/install/4.7/wxp/en-us/mmssetup.exe

2. FAQS

A. To install IE SP1, you typically download the installation wizard, which then downloads and installs the required components. Using this process, you must connect to the Web for every installation.

Alternatively, you can save the entire service pack to disk by performing the following steps:

The installation wizard will save the installation files locally so that you can perform network installations without connecting to the Microsoft Web site each time. After the download is complete, a dialog box will ask you to confirm that you want to use ie6setup.exe in the selected folder to begin installation.

A. Office XP can display HTTP images, which might let the hosting site track the image download. Authors have been known to place hidden HTTP images in a document to let them track the reading of a document. To disable the loading of HTTP-linked images in Word, perform the following steps:

To reenable HTTP-linked images, either delete the BlockHTTPImages registry value or set it to 0. To test whether you can view HTTP-linked images, download the testhttpimage.doc at http://www.windows2000faq.com/content/content/26818/testhttpimage.doc . If you can see the ntfaq.com link icon image in this file, you can download HTTP images.

A. To configure IE to connect to Web sites that contain foreign characters, perform the following steps:

A. The service pack installation process estimates the amount of disk space required to apply the updated files and adds 30MB for safety. If the amount of free space on the partition doesn't meet this minimum requirement, the installation will fail. Systems administrators often configure a very small System partition (the partition that contains the ntldr and ntdetec.com files). If this partition has less than 30MB of free space after the installer determines the amount of space required, the service pack installation will fail, even though the installation requires only about 300KB.

To work around this limitation, you can manually update the files (i.e., ntldr and ntdetect.com) on the System partition that the service pack updates by extracting the service pack (type "w2kspx.exe -x" without the quotes) and manually copying the files onto the System partition. When the service pack installation process runs and sees that the System partition is up-to-date, it won't require any additional free space on that partition and will let the installation continue.

A. Outlook Express lets you configure several different identities that have their own mail and news configuration and storage, which is useful for smaller environments if two users share a logon or you want to use different settings for mail and news. Typically, to create a new Outlook Express identity, you open the File menu, select Identities, then click Add New Identity. Likewise, to switch identities, you open the File menu, select Switch Identity, then select the identity that you want to use. However, after you install XP SP1, neither setting takes effect and you remain logged on under the current identity.

To work around this problem, you can clear the option to automatically use a certain user identity by performing the following steps:

When you want to switch identities, you can modify the default identity that you want to use by performing the following steps:

A. XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) adds support for 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) for ATAPI drives, which lets the OS access hard disks larger than 137GB (the current limit). For this change to work, you must have

To enable 48-bit support, perform the following steps:

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS
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4. CONTACT US
Here's how to reach us with your comments and questions:

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