Special Edition Using Microsoft Windows XP Professional (3rd Edition)

The following tricks are two of my personal favorites. The first is helpful if you frequently work with a laptop computer and want to add a serial mouse without closing all your applications and rebooting.

The second tip is especially helpful if you want to deter workgroup users from using the Windows Update feature without first checking with the system administrator.

Adding a Serial Mouse Without Rebooting

Due to the cramped or otherwise uncomfortable position I have to assume to use my laptop keyboard, I very often plug in an external, ergonomic keyboard with a trackpad on it. Then I can sit back in my chair, keyboard on my lap, or even stand the computer up sideways. In any case, I don't always want to power down and then reboot just to plug in the keyboard and mouse.

Now, if the mouse and keyboard were USB devices, this wouldn't be a problem because USB supports hot docking. Keyboards, mouse devices, graphics tablets, and many other external devices such as cameras, printers, scanners, and PDAs are available in a USB-enabled version, but that doesn't mean you own them.

My keyboard plugs into the PS/2 port, which is no problem. Although making PS/2 connections with a computer turned on is not advisable (it can blow the driver chip for the port), I do it anyway, and on my Dell 7000, it hasn't posed a problem. The keyboard is immediately recognized and works fine. But the rub is that the trackpad, which connects to the serial port (a second PS/2 port for a mouse is not available on my machine), isn't recognized. Connecting the mouse doesn't result in anything at all, functionally. For a while, I resorted to rebooting Windows XP. Hibernating or suspending didn't force a hardware redetection. Another approach was to run Add/Remove Hardware, but that's a pain because it takes too long.

I discovered that the Device Manager can scan hardware and see whether anything new is lying around, without its driver. After I had installed the trackpad software, it was part of the Device Manager's list for the computer. But when the mouse is sensed as unplugged, the operating system marks it as not functioning (with an exclamation mark in the Device Manager). To get it going again, no reboot is necessary. I just had to do the following:

This trick works on desktop systems too!

Removing Windows Update from the Start Menu

As good an idea as Windows Update is, unauthorized use of it could be annoying to a system administrator. Corporate system administrators who are responsible for hundreds of PCs need to control what goes on their machines, especially in the way of core operating system updates. It is possible to remove the Windows Update icons that appear in the Start menu, and even prevent the users from accessing the Windows Update site (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) from anywhere within Windows.

By using the Windows XP Microsoft Management Console's snap-in called Local Computer Policy, you can disable Windows Update on the Start menu. Although you can modify and configure MMC to view policies in many ways, the most generic way to configure a new console root is as follows: