Raju Mopidevi 's Blog

Question: I have XP on my laptop. Hibernate is enabled with option enabled to Hibernate when I close lid. Is there any downside to using this routinely to power down or should I Shut Down or Restart periodically?

The theory behind hibernate is actually wonderfully simple. To oversimplify, (of course), when you hibernate the machine writes a complete image of its system RAM to the hard disk and turns itself completely off. There are two advantages to this:

  *

  It's off. It's using no power.
  *

  Turning it back on is faster than a full reboot.

That last point is the big appeal. It's accomplished because (once again, oversimplifying) the computer simply reloads the RAM image, and resumes from where you left off.

It actually is close to being that simple, and in theory it should always just work.
However, theory and practice don't always coincide.

There are actually several flies in the hibernate ointment. While it's definitely been getting better over time, you can still have problems.

The ability to hibernate, and standby for that matter, relies in part on support from the computer's BIOS. The problem is that some BIOS's aren't quite up to snuff when it comes to hibernate. This is, fortunately, one of the areas of greatest improvement in recent years, and is typically an issue only in older machines. Even then, it's not uncommon that a BIOS update can resolve many of the issues.

More common are issues with drivers for the various hardware that might be attached to your computer.

                     **************

Let's take a common sticking point: wireless networking
Just before you hibernate you'll likely have a working wireless connection
. That connection is, of course, terminated when your machine goes into hibernation.

When you wake up or resume from hibernate that wireless connection needs to be restored from being completely powered off to whatever state it was in before hibernation. Normally, when the device is powered in it can assume that it's in a boot situation and can simply start from scratch. Unfortunately, resuming from a hibernate isn't "from scratch". The wireless connection must, if at all possible, act as if nothing happened. In addition, your computer might wake up from hibernate in a completely different location - in which case the wireless driver needs to act as if, well, something happened; something that's not quite a reboot, but certainly ... something.

It gets complicated.

And, in fact, almost every driver for every device connected to your computer somehow needs to deal with all this in ways that are specific to each device. Some, like perhaps a monitor or screen, need very little thought. Others, like network connections that need to act like nothing happened, except that the world they're connected to could be completely different, take a little, or a lot more work.

Which means that every driver is a potential point of failure for a clean resume from hibernation.
This, too, has been getting better over time, but we're certainly not living in a perfect world.

So the first answer to your question is simply this: there's nothing wrong with always using hibernation as much as you like, unless you find that it doesn't work, or that problems result. If it works, it's nifty and faster and as you said, more convenient than opening up all those applications each time you turn on the machine.

The second answer really boils down to how long you can leave Windows running continuously without a problem. Once again in theory, forever. And once again in practice: not so much. This is particularly due to applications that don't release resources the way they should - occasionally even applications that are part of Windows itself - you simply need to reboot to clean things out. How often depends on many, many things including the hardware and software installed and how you use the machine. As one data point, I'll typically leave my relatively active desktop computer running for weeks at a time.

Usually until a Windows Update comes along that requires a reboot and resolves the question for me.

If that update-related reboot doesn't come along you may find that, once in a while, you'll want to reboot .. just because.

when you a select a file in Microsoft windows OS , you can see the option "send to" in right click popup menu. In that popup menu defaulty you have following option 

• compressed (zipped ) folder
• Desktop ( create shortcut )
• Mail Recipient
• My Documents
• DVD/CD-RW drive (F:)

we can remove unwanted options from that menu, and we can also add our favorite folders to that menu.

select your favourite folder

create shortcut using , ctrl + shift + drag.

move that short cut to C:\Documents and Settings\Your account name\SendTo 

By default SendTo is hidden file, you have to enable "show hidden files" in folder options( windows explorer -> tools -> folder options  or control panel -> folder options )

Rename that file to your favorite name.

now send file to your favourite folder easily.

Question: I have a hidden file called MSO Cache on my E drive. Windows XP is installed on the C drive. Msocache is about 200 megabytes but it looks kind of important. I'm sure I didn't make it nor anybody else. Is it a system file or spyware? What does it do and can I delete it safely?

Msocache is another of those "magical" directories (not a file) that somehow just appears one day. Since we're not looking for this kind of thing constantly it's easy to miss exactly when it showed up.

Here's one clue, though - MSO stands for MicroSoft Office.
Yep. Microsoft Office is trying to be helpful.
First, Microsoft does have a Knowledgebase article on this, though the title's not particularly helpful: Local Install Source (Msocache).
The bottom line is that it's simple a local copy of Microsoft Office's installation source. Put another way, it's a copy of portions of the Microsoft Office installation CD. Why? so that you don't have to insert the CD when you add a feature, perform a repair operation, or install service packs and patches.
Msocache is created, quoting the KB article:
...if the following conditions are true:
One of the available hard drives

has more than 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of free disk space available.
The hard disk with sufficient space is not a removable drive or a network drive.
Personally that seems kind of arbitrary, but there ya go.
You can delete the folder, but, that same Knowledgebase article goes on to say, "Never delete the MSOCACHE folder by using Microsoft Windows

Explorer." Why, I do not know. They suggest using the Windows Disk Cleanup Wizard.

When you open the Group Policy Editor in Windows XP Professional, some of the categories under Administrative Templates may be missing. For example when you expand Administrative Templates, the System category may be missing. This article provides information on how to restore the missing folders to the Group Policy Editor.

Add the Missing ADM File
Method 1
1. Open the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)
2. Expand Computer Configuration
3. Right-click Administrative Templates, and click Add/Remove Templates…

4. Click Add…


5. Select the file system.adm and click Open
6. Click Close.
Method 2
Using Windows Explorer, copy the file system.adm from the C:\Windows\INF folder to C:\Windows\system32\GroupPolicy folder. In a standard Windows XP installation, the target folder has the following ADM files by default:
conf.adm
inetres.adm
wmplayer.adm
wuau.adm
system.adm
Copying the missing file from the ADM folder should restore the missing folder in the Group Policy Editor. If that does not work, make sure that filtering is turned off.
Turn Off Filtering
1. Expand Computer Configuration, and select Administrative Templates
2. From the View menu, click Filtering…
3. Uncheck the following checkboxes:
Filter by Requirements information
Only show configured Policy settings
4. Click OK.