Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2

If you select the third option on the Options page, you'll note that you have several options about either sharing out the help content of your own computer, or installing help files from other systems. Figure 5 shows the options available.

Figure 5. Options for installing and sharing help content.

Why might this be significant? It can be very helpful if you're responsible for troubleshooting both XP Home and Professional versions and want to access both sets of help files from a single system (i.e., you are the computer expert of the family).

If you want to make your own help files available to others:

1.

Choose the "Share your help content with others on your network" task.

2.

From the "Share Help" window, click the "Shared" radio button, shown in Figure 6, and then click Apply.

Figure 6. Sharing out XP's help.

That's it! Note that you can share out any installed help content, not just the version that applies for your system.

With the help files shared, you could now use another computer and install these files. To do so, start at the "Install and share Windows help" page. Then:

1.

Choose the "Install Help content from another Windows another computer" task.

2.

Enter the computer name, and then the Help and Support Center contacts that system to determine which help file versions are available. A list is generated in the section previously shown in Figure 14-6.

3.

To proceed, select a help content Name and click Install. When the process is complete, the Status column will change to read Already Installed.

Voila! You can now return to the Help and Support Center at any time and Switch between Help versions with ease. (Use the "Switch from one operating system's help content…" link, but you figured that out already.)

A few caveats in play regarding this help sharing and installation, however:

  • As noted at the bottom of the "Install and share Windows Help" screen, only systems running XP and Server 2003 can cross-pollinate like this. You can't install previous versions of Windows help files onto the XP machine.

  • Previous versions, such as Windows 2000 or 9x, cannot load the shared help files of an XP computer. This is due to the radically different nature of the help files used in previous Windows versions.

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