A few easy XP tweaking questions, thanks...

[brjoon1021]

I just rebuilt my desktop and I have found a couple of things with Windows xp that I can not figure out. SP2 by the way.

1. The system sounds are loud when you have the volume turned up for music. When I am listening to a CD, I will click on something that causes a thunderous beep. Not really thunderous, but too loud. Do you know how to turn down or even off most of the system sounds ? I googled for this and never found what I really wanted to know.

2. Are any of the free firewalls good. The windows XP SP2 one can be improved upon, I have heard.

3. Most importantly, I want a quick launch bar folder for applications. Stuff like the calculator, wordpad, notepad, certain other apps that if left alone would make for a huge, crowded quicklaunch bar.
What I am wondering is is having the .exe for each application in this folder will slow the computer down as opposed to having a shortcut to the .exe for each application in this folder. The exe would be faster to launch but if windows has to load the app with the desktop all of the time that would be pretty slow I think.

thanks,
B.

[sp_100]

Originally Posted by brjoon1021

I just rebuilt my desktop and I have found a couple of things with Windows xp that I can not figure out. SP2 by the way.

1. The system sounds are loud when you have the volume turned up for music. When I am listening to a CD, I will click on something that causes a thunderous beep. Not really thunderous, but too loud. Do you know how to turn down or even off most of the system sounds ? I googled for this and never found what I really wanted to know.
....

Disable annoying sounds.

[sp_100]

Originally Posted by brjoon1021

...

2. Are any of the free firewalls good. The windows XP SP2 one can be improved upon, I have heard....

- ZoneAlarm
- Sygate Personal Firewall

I would recomend a hardware firewall or router ($$ 20-250):
Computer Shopping.

Also see:
Home PC Firewall Guide.

[sp_100]

Originally Posted by brjoon1021

...

3. Most importantly, I want a quick launch bar folder for applications. Stuff like the calculator, wordpad, notepad, certain other apps that if left alone would make for a huge, crowded quicklaunch bar.
What I am wondering is is having the .exe for each application in this folder will slow the computer down as opposed to having a shortcut to the .exe for each application in this folder. The exe would be faster to launch but if windows has to load the app with the desktop all of the time that would be pretty slow I think.

thanks,
B.

Quick Launch works fine for me ... ... have 12 apps: UT2004, Notepad, Word, Opera, Mozilla, iTunes, iSpeak, etc.