software

Windows XP works quite well with tons of hardware and software. But even the programmers at Microsoft have thought of a bunch of ways to make it better. Enter the PowerToys for Windows XP, a group of freely available extensions to the Windows XP operating system that you can install and use to make your life easier. I especially like the Image Resizer, Command Prompt Here, and Tweak UI which lets you adjust things like menu speed, desktop icon size and spacing.

I also like the "Send to X" powertoy from Windows 95 which lets you copy groups of filenames to the clipboard, send a filename to a command line, or send files to any folder, all with a right-click.

If you suspect something fishy has made its way onto your system and your virus and spyware programs aren't picking it up, download HijackThis , unzip the program to a new location, run the program and produce a log file, then copy and paste its contents into the space provided on this web page: this HijackThis log analyzer.

This process will tell you what experienced people believe about the programs running on your system. If you have any BAD items, search the list of spyware removal strategies found on the same website.