Windows XP FAQ

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

When a user logs off or when the system is shutdown, Windows XP takes care of the uploading of the user profiles both for remote profiles and local profiles. In the real world, system processes and applications continue trying to make use of the Registry entries associated with these accounts even though that user has logged off. This leads to Windows XP not being able to fully unload the user profile and therefore causing shutdown problems.

L2TP IPSec NAT Traversal Problems After You Install Windows XP SP2

One of the changes with the increased security in Windows XP SP2 is Microsoft have disabled the NAT-T functionality that allows L2TP to work across NAT as default. For a description of this NAT Traversal enhancement Microsoft made availble to Windows 2000/XP that is now disabled as default, see Q818043. To renable the NAT-T fuctionality you need to edit a registry key:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IPSec\AssumeUDPEncapsulationContextOnSendRule

This REG_DWORD will have the default value of "0" that disables the NAT-T fuctionality. A value of "1" will only enable a Client with a public (i.e.non-NAT’d) address to connect to a NAT’d server. The value of "2" enables both public and NAT’d clients to connect to a NAT’d server. The value of "2" is equal to the pre-SP2 behaviour.

Solving Winsock and IP problems with XP SP2

With XP SP2 Microsoft have introduced some new commands to fix problems with Winsock or the IP stack. Various trojans rogue redirectors can corrupt your winsock. If you end with no ability to surf the web yet other IP functions such as ping and windows file sharing still work. Try this new Winsock reset command. First get a catalogue listing of your winosck via:-

This produces text file which we will look at later. Now for the rest fuction itself:-

Assuming the reset works you should then find you can surf and use TCP/IP applications again. Now run the catalog again:-

If you compare the contents of winsock-bad.txt and winsock-good.txt you will see the bad version will have a one or more entires ahead of the Microsoft entries that are at the start in the winsock-good.txt. It will have been the dll's listed in these bad enties only in the winsock-bad.txt that caused the problem.

If that doesn't fix the problem or you have more general TCP/IP problems try:-

Network File Errors After You Install Windows XP SP1

Microsoft have acknowledged a problem opening and closing especially, Microsoft Office files, to a Windows 2000 server, may exist after you install Windows XP SP1 on the clients . It exhibits itself as network path no longer exists or cannot copy files and the hanging of Microsoft office. The problem can effect all windows 2000 servers but particularly those acting as Domain Controllers. The problem is caused by an incompatibility in Server Message Block (SMB) signing between Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP1. To correct the problem you need to install updated (SMB) signing on both the Windows 2000 server and Windows XP SP1 workstations so they both have a compatible version see Q329170 To install this SMB signing patch your 2000 server needs to be SP3. These SMB signing fixes are now distributed in Windows update, so if your system is fully upto date you may already have Q329170 patch installed.

Spelling & Grammar unavailable with Word 97 running on XP

If you're using Office 97 with Windows XP/2000 and users are reporting they can't use spell check or grammer. The options on the Spelling and Grammar tabs in the Tools dialogue box are unavailable or greyed out. The problem occurs with normal users who don't have permission to several Office 97 registry keys:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\Spelling
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\Grammar

To correct the problem, logon as administrator and use Regedt32.exe to navigate to the above keys. On the edit menu click Permissions the Advanced. In the Permissions Entries box, click the Users group, and then click the View/Edit button. Click to select the Allow check box for the Set Value and Create Subkeys permissions. Repeat the progress for the the Grammer key. See Q257643 for full details.

How to Install a Windows 2000/XP Print Driver on a Windows NT4 server print server

If you have Windows XP clients connecting to a NT4 Domain and are trying to print to shared printers on your NT4 servers, you will have no doubted seen XP report the server doesn't have a XP compatible driver available. You need manually install the 2000/XP print driver on the NT4 server using the process defined in Microsoft Knowledge Base Q263090
. Log onto a XP client workstation as administrator for the domain. Install the required printer driver on the Windows XP workstation temporarily to say the LPT1 port. This is to ensure it XP has the driver loaded. Now navigate to the NT4 server and double click its "Printers & Faxes" share, and then right-click the printer you wish to load the driver to and select sharing. You should then see an "Add additional drivers" button which displays a list of the drivers already loaded on the NT4 server and allows you to tick the 2000/XP to add these drivers. XP should then install the driver remotely to the NT4 server if all is well.

How to Troubleshoot Network Printing Problems in Windows XP

If you have Windows XP clients and are experiencing printing problems you will find this Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q314073 invaluable.

XP Home - How to hide an account form the logon screen

Windows XP adds the ability to hide accounts from the Logon splash window dialog. In the case of XP Home edition this also hides the account from the control panel "User Accounts" configuration utility. In the case of XP Home this allows you to hide the account from other users even if they have administration rights, as you don't have the more comprehensive local user manager in the "Computer Management" console in the Home edition. Within the following registry key the UserList normally contains special accounts like the IUSR and IWAM accounts but you can add normal accounts to have them hidden from the Logon dialog list by adding a new entry with the "Name" of the user account logon:

Hive--HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key---SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Name--[logon name]
Type---REG_DWORD
Value--0 = hide the account, 1= display the account

NOTE you can also achieve the same result using Windows XP tweakui, but if you leave tweakui around for other users they will be able to see you have added the hidden account and easily restore it. The setting of an account as hidden does not remove the user profile under "Documents and Settings", but you could remove the profile is you want the account to be really hidden via another administrator account. The profile will be recreated from the default the next time you logon.

Creating Self extracting ZIP arhives with XP's own tools

You're probably already aware Windows XP comes with builtin support for ZIP files and can make and extract them without problem. What you probably don't realise is XP also has a tool for creating self extracting ZIP files. The Windows XP tool is called IExpress but it doesn't appear in the start menus. To run IExpress simply type "Iexpress.exe" in the RUN box. When it starts choose "Create new Self Extracting Directive file" and follow the wizard.

Windows Update problems with proxy servers

If your using a simple web proxy, although you can surf normal web pages you may find the latest Microsoft Windows Updates just hang at the download stage. This is because the download stage of Windows Update uses the WinHTTP protocol. In order to get WinHTTP to use the same proxy server as IE Explorer you need to separately configure WinHTTP using the "proxycfg" in a command prompt. Most people will simply want to set WinHTTP to use the same proxy setting as IE Explorer, to do theis execute "proxycfg -u". If you type "proxycfg" on it's own it displays the existing proxy setting for the WinHTTP protocol. Uses of ISA server in a Windows domain will automatically configure the WinHTTP proxy.

Screen Image rotated ?

Some display drivers especially some from Intel and possibly Nvidia have hotkey's defined to rotate the image on the screen for landscape to portrait screens. The hotkey is defined as (AltGr & arrows). I had reports of users hitting them by mistake and then unaware how to get it back. Use the (AltGr & arrows) key sequence to get it back to normal.

References

The above information was based on the following Microsoft knowledge base documents, I have found this information very useful to my client base.

• Q329170 - Network File Errors After You Install Windows XP SP1
• Q257643 - WD97: Spelling, Grammar unavailable on Windows XP/2000
• Q314056 - A description of Svchost.exe in Windows XP
• Q314073 - How to Troubleshoot Network Printing Problems in Windows XP
• Q263090 - How to Install a Windows 2000 Print Driver in Windows NT 4.O or Windows XP for Point and Print

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Last modified: 25 July 2011

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