I want to turn off all the miscellaneous sounds in Windows that make noise when I carry out some action — like the clicks whenever the web browser goes to a web page, or the dings whenever a box appears on the screen asking me a question. I can turn my speakers off, but I still want to be able to play music or watch movies. Can I disable all the annoying Windows sounds, without turning off music that plays through my computer?

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I know how to open a command prompt in Microsoft Windows, but the normal methods for cutting and copying and pasting — like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V — don’t seem to work inside a command prompt window. How can I do copying and pasting with a command prompt?

Dave’s Answer:

It’s possible to copy and paste within a Microsoft Windows command prompt, and to copy and paste text to/from other programs, but the commands and keyboard keys to do so are different from most other Windows programs.

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I took some photos with my digital camera and I want to e-mail them to friends or upload them to my Facebook, but the files are enormous, and uploading them takes forever! Can I make them smaller while still having the photos look the same?

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I just upgraded VMware Fusion from 2.0 to 2.0.2 and now when I try to run my Microsoft Windows XP virtual machine, it doesn’t run, it first tells me that I have an old virtual machine and need to upgrade it, then tells me that VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. What’s wrong and how do I fix it? (more…)

I haven’t seen it yet, but ZDNet’s Ed Bott has - the teaser image below on Microsoft’s home page that, when you click on it, takes you to a section on the website called Windows Vista: Look how far we’ve come.

I’ve been using Vista in one edition or another since April 2007 and did some of the early beta testing. Largely, I’m pleased with it, even in the face of some pretty bad experiences last year, resolved thanks to Dell a few months ago.

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As folks know, I bought Vista to run on VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro. I’d felt it was slow and bloated but I figured I’d give it a good run to really make up my mind. What I like about Vista:

• The UI is nicer than XP. XP always felt like a cartoon and earlier versions of Windows were just… dull.
• The security level actually made me feel more comfortable about the integrity of the O/S. That said, it never alerted me to any suspicious activity or hacking attacks…
• In general, I found the organization of the O/S more intuitive - after the initial learning curve. It felt a bit more “Mac-like” in some indefinable way.
• It is stable. Much more stable than any previous version of Windows I’ve used (and I’ve used every version since 3.1). Apart from reboots for security updates (more on that below), I had Vista up and running for days, even weeks sometimes, just putting the Mac to sleep, switching networks without problems and so on. Rock solid.

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This is a simple question and I used to know the answer. In an office setting, I have many people coming in to ask questions.

What is the keystroke command to darken my computer screen and/or bring up my screensaver. This would prevent some from trying to see what project I’m working on–dealing with human resources, etc. I’m using Windows XP.

The easiest answer is “it depends”. It depends on whether you have a computer with a true Microsoft keyboard: there’s a key on it, “winkey” or the Windows key, that makes everything quite simple. If not, well, it’s a bit more complicated.

If you do have the Windows key, simply press Windows+L and you’ll instantly lock the computer, putting it back to the login / switch users screen. (more…)

Hi Dave, was wondering if you had any advice for me? I’ve been given an old iPod which has been formatted by a Macintosh. Is there any way of reformatting it for Windows XP.

I’ve just downloaded Itunes 4.7 and when I plugged the thing in via firewire it came up with a restore option. However it comes up with “Only windows formatted Ipods can be restored”. Is there a way of changing it over? (more…)