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| The Windows XP/2000 Answer Book by John Savill is an indepth reference based on similar topics at windows2000faq.com. However, it contains a great deal more content than the website. The first 20 or 30 pages contain a categorized listing of each an every FAQ concerning Windows NT, 2000, and XP. The remaining 1200 pages are filled with detailed and insightful answers to a wide array of questions. Most of the FAQ's deal with administrative topics. However, there are enough FAQ's that are of real interest to software engineers to make it worthwhile. |
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| Each FAQ contains step by step instructions and in many cases applicable screen shots. As expected, the author doesn't provide a great deal of background information to the answers given. So, you don't have to weed thru several pages of text to find the answer to your question. Just skim the FAQ listing and your off. This is definitely more of a reference book than a "sit down and read". |
| That being said, I'll provide a listing of a few FAQ's I found useful as an engineer: |
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| FAQ. 6.216 How can I disable the new features of the WinXP/2000 Shell? |
| FAQ. 37.8 What information is shown in the Blue Screen of Death? |
| FAQ. 37.33 Why am I unable to run certain 16-bit applications? |
| FAQ. 37.39 How can I kill an orphaned process? |
| FAQ. 33.1 What commands can I use in a batch file? |
| FAQ. 32.6 What commands can be used to configure the command window? |
| FAQ. 30.5 How do I create a custom MMC configuration? |
| FAQ. 26.1 How do I create a queue to a network printer? |
| FAQ. 25.2 How big and where should my pagefile be? |
| FAQ. 20.2 How can a NTFS partition be converted to a FAT partition? |
| FAQ. 31.23 How do I fly in Excel 97? |
| FAQ. 24.18 How can I modify IE's toolbar background? |
| FAQ. 20.20 How can I delete a file without it going to the recycle bin? |
| FAQ. 9.11 How can I tell which DLL and API calls a program makes? |
| FAQ. 9.12 Why are there so many copies of SVCHOST.EXE on my machine? |
| FAQ. 6.160 Where can I get TweakUI for Windows 2000? |
| FAQ. 6.110 How can I improve I/O performance? |
| FAQ. 6.32 How can I decrease the time my machine takes to shutdown or reboot? |
| FAQ. 3.21 Where can I find Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP? |
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| NullSkull.com directs most of it's content towards software engineers and not necessarily to systems administrators. Thus, I'm not sure whether an engineer would get enough from this book to justify the $49.99 USD to purchase it. Systems Administrators are a different story though. There are a ton of FAQ's that deal with various system lock down requirements that could prove incredible useful especially to junior administrators. If any part of your job deals with sys admin duties, I'd highly recommend John Savill's book. The headaches you'll avoid by preventing users from "doing what users do" will be well worth the price of the book. |