Note: Vista
Service Pack 1 (SP-1) is now available.
It will be installed as part of the
normal updates if activated or if you
just cannot wait, it can be downloaded
HERE.
The
download is about 445 MB in size as it
contains all the updates for five
languages and all versions of Vista. It
can take up to one hour to install and
may entail several reboots of the
computer. Although the automatic update
is much smaller as it only downloads and
installs the specific files needed for
the particular version installed, it can
take up to one hour to install.
Q.
Sometimes when I open a folder I see 2
or 3 icons that have the same name. Why
are there icons with the same name?
A.
If you see more than one icon with the
name it is because these are actually
representing different files. Windows
does not allow two files in the same
folder to have the same name. The names
look the same because the entire name is
not visible. By default, when Windows is
installed, the file extensions of
“known” or registered file types are
hidden. This means that a file named
myfile.exe could appear to have the same name as myfile.ico, or myfile.txt because the
extension, the .exe, .ico, & .txt is
hidden.
For
some reason that I don’t agree with,
Microsoft thought that it would be less
confusing to the average user if the
extension of known file types was
hidden. (The known here means known to
Windows, not to the user) To me, this
causes more confusion, not less. However
it is easy to set things right and have
all of the file extensions displayed.
The
first step is to double click on the My
Computer icon on your desktop. Here
again, Microsoft, in all their wisdom
decided that with Windows XP, this icon
would no longer be displayed on your
desktop. If you don't have a My Computer
icon on your desktop, right click on the
desktop and choose Properties. Click the
Desktop tab, then the Customize desktop
button. Click the General tab, and there
you can choose to put the My Computer
and other omitted icons on your desktop.
Another option to put the just the My
Computer icon on the desktop is to click
Start, then right click My Computer and
check "Display on Desktop".
Once
the "My Computer" folder is on the
desktop, double click to open it. Click on Tools, then Folder
Options, then the View tab. In the
Advanced Settings window, find the entry
“Hide extensions for known file types”,
and uncheck the box in front of it.
Click the Apply button to set your
choice.
While the window is still open,
look over the other settings you can
effect here. You
may want to change more of them. No harm
will be done and you can always go back
and change anything you want.
There
is another very good reason for these
extensions to be made visible. Security!
Many viruses and spyware are distributed
with a false extension to hide their
true type. It is possible, with most
current versions of Windows, to have
more than one period (.) in a file name.
A name like “picture.jpg.exe” is
perfectly acceptable.
However, if the known extensions were
hidden, this file would appear to be
just “picture.jpg”. ONLY the extension
after the last period (.) would be
hidden by Windows, in this case the
.exe. Now, if one would double click on
this file thinking they were going to
view the picture, they would actually be
executing the file which could be
installing a virus or spyware. This type
of trickery is most often attempted with
email attachments.
