Windows Me Annoyances [Paperback]

David A. Karp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2001

In an ideal world, an operating system is a collection of software that handles a computer's "dirty work" invisibly, quickly, and most of all, painlessly. For many of us, however, Microsoft Windows exists outside this ideal world. We are annoyed by "personalized Menus" that keep changing, icons we don't use cluttering up our workspace, periodic crashes, unintelligible error messages, and inadequate documentation to help us figure it all out.

Windows Me Annoyances has the insider information you need for overcoming Windows' many annoyances and limitations. Whether you're looking to finally solve a nagging problem, dramatically improve system performance, or customize the interface to better suit your work habits, the Windows Me Annoyances solution-oriented format makes finding information and implementing solutions easy and pain free. Thanks to the thorough and relevant documentation on the registry, Windows Scripting Host, and Windows' built-in networking capabilities, customizing and improving Windows Me is easier than ever.

Based on the author's extremely popular Annoyances.org web sites, Windows Me Annoyances delivers an authoritative collection of techniques and tools for customizing Windows Me, including:

• Several approaches and hidden tools for working with the Windows registry, the database of system- and application-specific configuration information
• How to bypass Windows roadblocks such as the Home Networking and System Restore wizards, allowing you to take control of the processes quickly and painlessly
• A tutorial and reference on automation with the Windows Scripting Host as a means of eliminating many Windows Me annoyances
• Using third-party software and utilities to handle some of the more complex workarounds and customizations
• Dealing with software that overwrites your file associations and other settings without warning

Windows Me Annoyances is the intermediate and advanced Windows user's best resource for turning Windows into the user-friendly, customizable interface it was meant to be, but doesn't always manage to be on its own.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anyone who's ever administered an operating system knows what happens when you take an operating system that was built over the course of many years for consumer use and supplement it with features for working with multimedia files and communicating across networks. Instability, or at best user confusion, is the prompt result. Windows Me Annoyances documents precisely such an operating system--Microsoft Windows Me--and shows how the system administrator or power user (or any user who's not afraid to get dirty hands, really) can best cope with its foibles. Presumably, it's just a coincidence that this book features a bloated, misshapen frog on its cover.

David Karp evidently set out not to write a how-to book--there are already zillions of those around--but rather a book of Windows wisdom. In explaining how to solve driver-related problems, Karp not only shows how to load a device driver into Windows, but also how to tell whether your machine is using the one that shipped on the Windows Me CD-ROM or a newer one from the manufacturer--and why you'd want to opt to install a driver through Windows rather than through an installer program. This coverage is typical of Karp's work, which would be better only if it had more information about cable modems, digital subscriber line (DSL) links, and satellite Internet connectivity. --David Wall

Topics covered: Solving problems in Microsoft Windows Me via the easiest and most effective methods possible. Techniques for solving hardware conflicts, adding features, and working around poorly designed aspects of the operating system.

Review

'Well written and packed with cures for common Windows Me problems we all suffer, this book also reveals undisclosed Windows features. Great for beginners who want to progress to be experts one day.' Computer Buyer, August 2001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (March 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059600060X
• ISBN-13: 978-0596000608
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,642,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Windows ME Annoyances makes Windows Easier, May 10, 2001

By 

Raymond Angel (Ligonier, Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Windows Me Annoyances (Paperback)

Windows Me Annoyances. In this book you will learn how to fix the most annoying things Microsoft ever included in an operating system. If you have Customized Menu's or the slow loading web view on your system then trash them. With this book you will learn how to do just that.

Inside the book you will learn how to get the most from the Windows Registry with these little known hints and tips. Then want to delete or rename your recycle bin or change major system icons or names? Well inside the book you will learn how to do that plus more such as make your system run faster, even go as far as changing the START menu to have the icon you want and the text you want on it using a simple hex editing technique you learn in the book.

Later on in the book you get into the more advanced stuff, the second half of the book is more helpful for the geek then first half which is targeted more at the new user who wants to make Windows more of their own, because in this part you will learn how to use scripts to make Windows more manageable, how to write CGI scripts for a web server, using MSconfig, and a section many people will find helpful a breakdown listing of all the settings in Windows Me.

The geek or even the new user who just put Windows ME on their machine will probably want to pick up a copy of this book as it contains lots of helpful information, tips, tricks and good old registry hacks.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars readable, few topics in depth, good insight into GUI, August 20, 2001

By 

Robert Nagle "idiotprogrammer" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Windows Me Annoyances (Paperback)

With Windows XP soon upon us, please pity the few hundred thousand ME users who are stuck with a dead-end OS. ME was really only a stopgap solution, a way to implement new features in Win 98 while Microsoft worked on XP. Some of these features included system restore, an image viewer, better multimedia and better hardware support. ME inherited a lot of Win 98 stuff while being new enough to force users to pay for software updates (including Photoshop, Norton Anti-Virus and Home Site).

Typically, a first release of a OS is buggy, and after a few years, it really becomes robust and useful. But after XP is released, it is unlikely that consumers will buy ME anymore or that OEM manufacturers will ship computers with it. It also is unlikely that Microsoft will release a service pack, now that its efforts are focused on XP. That means that the people unfortunate enough to have bought consumer PC's during the intervening year will be using a legacy OS with diminishing support for new hardware and software.

This minority will need to solve problems on their own, using books like this one. This excellent book goes over the differences between ME and 98, ME Secrets and ways to tweak the registry for certain things. The first part is interesting from a usability point of view. It covers the user interface in thorough detail, with shortcuts and insights as to why Microsoft chose a particular solution. ( A good number of these tricks can be found elsewhere, but I found several new ones: such as using Microsoft Family Logon for a security, tweaking the search tool, removing stubborn icons, disabling autorun for CDROMS and stop Windows from randomly checking your floppy drive).

The book contains an excellent appendix on DOS, a fairly thorough guide to what System Restore does and a good troubleshooting guide to hardware installations. It also contains an outstanding discussion of file associations and how to change or preserve them. I also found the section on error messages and general protection faults to be unusually helpful. Several other chapters (which didn't especially interest me) focused on editing the registry and vb scripts to automate windows tasks.

Topics I would have liked to see more coverage on was software installations and plugins. Particularly, removing and reinstalling programs and especially MS Office. Recently I installed and reinstalled Office 2000 and found the error messages from ME and Office very confusing. I realize this is an OS book, not a book on applications, but still it would have been nice to know some procedures for managing software installations. Also, there was not much discussion on Windows Update, which seems to cause a lot of problems.

Perhaps it is unfair to point this out, but the best source of information for ME troubleshooting seems to be news groups and the MS site, not books like these. Although this book was published later than the first dozen or so and seems to be more carefully written, no one can expect it to contain info about the latest bugs and fixes. Newsgroups have informed me about bugs related to Norton AV, Windows Update and helped me figure out the ME doesn't support RAM over 512 MB.(!!!) You wouldn't find solutions to these problems from these books.

Another book I highly recommend is Ed Bott's "Special Edition Using Windows Me," which is a little bigger, a little easier to read, with more more screenshots and a little more thorough treatment of the OS. The Bott book tends to have info about multimedia and extras like msn messenger, while the Oreilly book is more readable and discusses a few topics in depth.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good for help, tips and explanations, September 20, 2001

By 

Justo S. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Windows Me Annoyances (Paperback)

This book will not explain the meaning of all those error messages, but instead will give you solutions for them. It has detailed information on Windows registry, hardware updating, interface customizing and so on.

Maybe one chapter is indispensable to read (the registry), but in most cases, you'll get directly the solution for your problem, without having to read a whole chapter; however, just read it as a textbook and you'll understand a lot about your system.

Most tips and solutions work for the generic W9x (95, 98, 98 2Ed) and some even for W2000. Anyway, the book explains the differences (if any) between WME and the former.

One recommendation: Try one solution or tip at a time, otherwise Windows will not let you know how well are you working.