Windows XP Common Problems and Gotcha!s

Probably biggest gotcha! is that Windows XP Pro and Windows XP Home are very different products. Lots is missing in XP Home and it is much less stable than XP Pro.

• Acdsee May Cause an Error Message
   
• ACPI Troubleshooting
   
• Admin file ownership in XP Inconsistent
   
• Admin pw : Cannot Change the Password for the Administrator Account in User Accounts in Control Panel
   
• Admin can't install updates? Only happens if your workstation is part of domain it has either reg key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoWindowsUpdate set and/or has changed full control permission from admin on HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate.

   

• Audit accounts: if you have auditing enabled, users may be prompted for a password even if no password is required. If this happens there is nothing you can do except assign passwords. You could try the current SP to see if it resolves the bug. Its actually an odd situation. What environment would had auditing enable and allow auto logon?
• audio or video files don't play - GSpot Codec Information Appliance will tell you what codec are required
   
• Backup utility for XP Home - where is it? On the install CD in \VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP. Double-click the Ntbackup.msi to start the wizard that installs the Backup utility.
   
• Bandwidth : XP needlessly consumes 20% of available bandwidth. The QoS packet scheduler dialogue box in XP Pro has a default bandwidth limit of 20%. Some interpreted this setting to mean that XP will hold back 20% of your bandwidth even if its packet scheduler was turned off. Not true.
   

• CD - when you copy files from a CD to your HD, XP copies them read-only. Need to update them? Remove the read only attrib : attrib -r * /s