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How long has my PC been running for? Often you want to find out as you need to know if your PC or server has rebooted.

There are a quite a few software tools out there on the net that can do that for you, but you don’t need them. I’ll show you a couple of ways (and I’m sure there is more).

* Open up a command prompt (Start>Run type in cmd and press enter)
* Type the following command: Systeminfo | Find “Up Time” (! Case sensitive)

This will take a few seconds and you will see messages that Windows is loading certain information. Eventually you’ll get an output similar to this:

System Up Time: 1 Days, 0 Hours, 57 Minutes, 18 Seconds

The other way is even simpler.

* Again, open up a command prompt
* Type in net statistics workstation
* you get a few lines of info but the one you are looking for will look something like this:

Statistics since 2/3/2009 7:23 AM

There’s nothing worse than installing your network printer software, and then finding that Windows XP has automatically installed the printers as well.

How do you stop it? When I first came across the problem I found some registry hacks and other methods. But then I found a mcuh easier way to do it.

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Stop auto network printer install XP

When I’m troubleshooting a Windows XP machine, I find myself almost always going into Device Manager to check the status of hardware devices.

But what if you want to find out information about devices that aren’t connected eg USB based devices?

Try this:

1. Go to Start, right-click My Computer, and select Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.
3. In the Environment Variables dialog box, locate the System Variables panel and click New.
4. In the New System Variable dialog box, type DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES in the Variable Name text box and type 1 in the Variable Value text box.
5. Click OK twice.
6. To view the nonpresent devices, go to Start, right-click My Computer, and select Manage.
7. Click Device Manager, pull down the View menu, and select Show Hidden Devices.

Do you have a lot of email clogging up your inbox and have trouble organizing it all? I’ve found this great (and best part free) plugin for Outlook that does it all for you.

It’s called Xobni, and works with Outlook 2003/2007 on XP and Vista Operating Systems.

One of the many features it has is when you open an email, the Xobni sidebar will show you all related emails from the sender, how many emails you send receive the them, and even a trend graph of what time you get emails from him/her.

That is one of many. Check out the Youtube video below for a tour of this plugin:

SP3 have now been added to Windows Update, and from all reports does make a difference in performance. A few people that I have spoken to have all said that boot times are reduced, and overall running seems to be quicker.

If you need to download it manually and/or hate windows update, here is a link to a page that lists the locations of the SP3 ISOs ready to download.

The most common/popular one will no doubt be the English ISO, so here’s the direct link from Microsoft for it.