How to find your MAC adress

It is very easy to discover your MAC adress (MAC adress is needed sometimes to make operations on your network or router). So follow these steps and you will discover your MAC adress:

1. Click Start, Run and type cmd in the text box
2. When the command promt window opens, type ipconfig/all

The 12-digit Physical adress is the same as your MAC adress.
You will have multiple MAC adresses if you have both wired and wireless connection on your system.

Create a shortcut to shut down your PC

Did you know that you can log off, shut down or restart your pc with a single click? Here is the way: Right click on the desktop and select create, new shorcut. Write (or browse the path) C:\Windows\System32\Shutdown.exe (where C is the letter of the drive on which Windows are installed to) and click next. Name your shortcut as you want and click finish. Then single click the shortcut you created and select properties. In target field add to the command line -1 if you want log off function for your shortcut, -s if you want shut down or -r if you want restart function. After adding this, you can add also -t x (where x is seconds) if you want a countdown until your system shuts down or restarts. Also you can add -c "text" (where text write anything you want) if you want a text message to appear when you click your shorcut.

How to speed up your computer's boot

As you may have noticed, when Windows boot, a lot of programs start running in the background (you can see these programs alongside with windows's processes in the task manager -processes tab- by pressing ctr+alt+del. Most of them put also an icon in system tray). These programs of course take time to load, which means that Windows take more time to boot! Most of the times, programs that run in the background are not needed, so you can eliminate your system's boot time by disabling them. Lets start:

• Press start and then select run
• Type msconfig and press enter
• In the window that appears choose the Startup tab
• Here is the list of programs that load when you boot your system and continue running in the background. Disable any program that you want, click "apply" and then "ok". Restart your system when you are promt to and enjoy how faster your pc boots!

Notice that it is safe to disable all these applications! They have nothing to do with the services that run also in background. You can leave in the startup list any program you want to load when you boot up your system (for example msn messenger or skype).

Benchmark your pc! Is it stable?

Here is a very simple guide to benchmark your computer and see how it performs. First of all download Cinebench 9.5 and Stability Test (broadand connection required for cinebench. Both of them do not need installation). Close all programs, so the maximum amount of ram and virtual memory is free. Now:

1. Open Cinebench. First we are going to benchmark the cpu.
2. Click the "Rendering (1 Cpu)" icon (if you have a dual core cpu this test uses only the one core).
3. After the test is finished and if you have a dual-core cpu click the "Rendering (x Cpu)" icon. As you see now in the rendered picture, the process takes less time and both cores are used. When the test is fineshed you can see under "Rendering" buttons how faster is your pc when both cores are used. Performances over 435CB-CPU are considered as high.
4. If you have a graphics accelerated card you can run the three graphics tests below.
5. Time for stability test! That means time to burn our cpus. Unrar Stability test and double click the CPUStabTest icon.
6. Select Normal mode and click start. Stability test uses 100% of cpu. To see if your system is stable let the test burning your cpu for about 12 hours. If after 12 hours your system has not restarted and has not crashed, it means that it is stable and that it has no thermal problems.

If your system crashes or restarts, you should pay attention to its thermal behaviour. Check that the air flow in the pc case is ok, and clean the fans (dust does not let them work correctly).

Clean up!

If you notice that your hard disk drive is almost full, try the followings:

1. Go to start-->Programs-->Accessories-->System tools and run a disk cleanup. Decide what you want to delete from the list and clean it.
2. After you cleaned your drive, double click on my computer icon. After my computer is opened, click Tools on the top, next to Favorites, and select Folders Options. Select the Second tab next to General
3. Select show hidden files and folders.
4. Click ok.
5. Now you should be with my computer folder opened if you followed the steps above. Double click your hard drive icon (C: probably)
6. Double click documents and setting
7. There should be three folders: One with your name, one called "Default user" (which is hidden folder) and one called "All users". Double click to open the one with your name.
8. Double click Local Setting (also hidden folder) and open temp folder.
9. Delete everything that is in this folder.
10. Empty your recycle bin and you are ready.
    

Temp folder contains files that are usually used, or installation temporary files. These files could be safely deleted without causing problem to the windows xp installation and stability. Temp folder could contain Gigabytes of data if it is not oftenly cleaned.

Speed up your pc!

If you feel that your pc is slow, you should try the followings: Windows XP use a page file, which is realy big (sometimes it is up to 4GB). The page file is virtual memory. The pc uses virtual memory like RAM, but virtual memory is space on your hard disk, which is much slower than your RAM memory. If you have 512MB-1GB RAM do the followings:

1. Right click on My Computer icon, select properties.
2. Select "for Advanced users" and click the first "options/selections" button
   
3. Select "advanced" and on the Virtual Memory tab click change
4. Select the first button so you can set the capacity of page file and type in both spaces 1024. That means that your page file will be 1024 MB all the time.
5. Click ok and restart your system when you are promted to so.
6. When the system restarts, defrag your hard disk drive using windows defragment tool and you are ready!

If you have 2GB RAM or more you do not need to use page file. To set page file off, follow steps 1-3 and select "Do not use page file". Click ok and restart your system.