Leo’s Answers #62 – January 26, 2007

Leo's Answers
A Weekly Newsletter From
Ask Leo!
Leo Notenboom

Hello!

*** Contents

• This Week's New Articles on Ask Leo!
• A Word from our Sponsor
• Popular Articles from the Archives
• Thoughts and Comments
• Newsletter Administration

*** This Week's New Articles on Ask Leo!

How do I get a Windows program to always open maximized?

Indeed it would. And while there are a couple of caveats, there's actually a fairly simple way to make this happen for most programs.

Continue reading: "How do I get a Windows program to always open maximized?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_get_a_windows_program_to_always_open_maximized.html

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How do I get a password reset or reminder sent to my alternate email if I can't login to it?

A classic chicken and egg problem. You need your password to receive the reset, but you need the reset in order to get your password.

I see this happen also when people specify bogus "alternate email" addresses, or don't specify one at all.

In a nutshell, you're SOL - severely out of luck.

The best we can do is prevent this situation from coming up again in the future.

Continue reading: "How do I get a password reset or reminder sent to my alternate email if I can't login to it?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_get_a_password_reset_or_reminder_sent_to_my_alternate_email_if_i_cant_login_to_it.html

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How do I send anonymous email?

Sending anonymous email is both easy, and incredibly difficult. It depends on just how anonymous you want to be, and who you're hiding your identity from.

And, of course, how paranoid you want to be.

Continue reading: "How do I send anonymous email?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_send_anonymous_email.html

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What is msmsger.exe?

I believe this is a great example of something we see all the time: malicious programs trying to "look like" other programs so you'll be uncertain about their maliciousness.

And, yes, even though your anti-malware programs don't flag it, I believe it is malware. Which brings up another very important point.

Continue reading: "What is msmsger.exe?"
http://ask-leo.com/what_is_msmsgerexe.html

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How do I move my Windows XP taskbar back to the bottom of the screen? (Video)

It happens, and if you're not expecting it, it can be really disconcerting.

It's an easy fix, best described with a short video (transcript included).

Continue reading: "How do I move my Windows XP taskbar back to the bottom of the screen? (Video)"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_move_my_windows_xp_taskbar_back_to_the_bottom_of_the_screen_video.html

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Malware Using the News

A recent worm is using breaking news to peak your interest. Don't fall for it.

Continue reading: "Malware Using the News"
http://ask-leo.com/malware_using_the_news.html

*** A Word from our Sponsor

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*** Popular Articles from the Archives

You know, I'm still getting questions about Windows XP Service Pack 2. It's been out for, what, two or more years? And yet, there are folks who've yet to install it, and often ask if they should. The answer, of course, is YES, but this article goes into a little more detail as to why, and more importantly, what you need to do to prepare.

Will SP2 Crash my machine?

There's been a lot of press about Windows XP SP2 crashing or hanging machines or applications. The good news is that like most "news", you only hear the bad stuff. In fact, the news reflects only a minority of installations - the vast majority of SP2 installations are working great. The bad news is that if you're in that minority, it doesn't matter to you that it works fine everywhere else.

So what can you do to make sure that you stand the highest chance of success?

Read more... Will SP2 Crash my machine?
http://ask-leo.com/will_sp2_crash_my_machine.html

*** Thoughts and Comments

Yesterday I upgraded the network in my home to gigabit. Instead of 100 megabits per second, machines capable of it can communicate at 1 gigabit (1000 megabits) per second.

A couple of years ago for various reasons I had the house itself rewired, and as part of that effort I made sure to pull Cat-6 ethernet cable to various points in the house. Cat-6 cable is supposed to handle gigabit, and this was my first opportunity to finally give that a shot.

Unfortunately, I only had one machine - my desktop - that had a gigabit capable network card. So I went and picked up a Linksys EG1032 Instant Gigabit Desktop Network Adapter for the machine I consider my "file server". The network "upgrade" by the way, was simply replacing my 10/100mb switch with a 10/100/1000 gigabit switch.

So naturally I started benchmarking ... and suddenly found that my network appeared to be faster than my hard disk's transfer rate! For example, I doubled the copy speed by moving the test file (a 500 megabyte CD image) from an external USB 2.0 drive to the machine's faster internal drive. And while that definitely blew through the 100mbs network speed from before, it still wasn't a gigabit.

Just goes to show. Each time you remove one bottleneck, all you do is expose the next :-)

'till net time...

* * *

The Latest:
Forwarded Funnies:	"Reading Test"
Taming Email:	"One Simple Trick to Getting Less Email"
Leo's MovableType Tips:	"Leaving Breadcrumbs in Movable Type"

*** Newsletter Administration

Do you have a question? A comment, perhaps? Newsletter subscribers can visit http://ask-leo.com/askleosubscriber.html to submit your comments and questions. That page is only mentioned here, so I'll know it's from someone who's taken the time to read this far!

I'll be honest: I'll try to respond, but I get a lot of questions every day - I just can't answer everyone. Rest assured, though, that even if you don't hear from me directly, I read every email I get.

Leo's Answers Newsletter is a weekly publication of Ask Leo! and Leo A. Notenboom. It's also available as an RSS feed at this URL: http://ask-leo.com/newsletter.xml?UD=nl. Archives of previous newsletter issues can be found on the Ask Leo! web site, http://ask-leo.com/newsletter.html.

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Newsletter contents Copyright © 2007, Leo A. Notenboom & Puget Sound Software, LLC.