Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
January 14, 2007

Volume 2, Number 31 — Sunday, January 14, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

3.  Creating an Email Folder in Outlook Express

Do you get a lot of emails? Do you want to keep some or all of them, except the spam, of course?

Hopefully, you get email newsletters like my free Terry's Computer Tips email newsletter.

Outlook Express, like almost every other email program, allows its users to create folders to use in storing new and old emails. You can create a folder to receive and store them, and create a message rule to automatically put new issues in the right folder.

In an article later in this issue, I'll show how to create a Message Rule to automatically put new emails in the folders that you wish.

The first step, though, is to create the folder to hold the emails.

On the menu bar, select File, New, Folder or File, Folder, New — either takes you to the same dialog box.

The resulting Create Folder dialog box lets you do two things. First, you can enter the name for your new folder. I'll call it "Terry's Computer Tips."

Second, I need to select which existing folder will be the parent folder. I want it to be at the same heirarchy level as the Inbox, Outbox, etc, so I clicked on the Inbox's parent — the Local Folders folder.

Then, I clicked OK.

Now, in the main Outlook Express window, we can see that we have a new folder called "Terry's Computer Tips".

Once we have creaated an email folder, we can drag emails from the Inbox (or any other folder) into the new folder.

We can also create a Message Rule to automatically transfer an email into the folder if the email matches the conditions that we set.

In the article Creating an Email Rule in Outlook Express (later in this issue), I'll show you the steps to create a message rule for automatic handling of incoming emails.

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4.  Windows XP Password Problem

Long-time subscriber Ed Pilarczyk wrote to ask about a problem he's having with an XP password:

Terry, I have received your great newsletter for quite a while, now, and enjoy and learn from each one. On your recommendation, I purchased several Sunbelt products and they work great.

QUESTION:

I work at a small not-for-profit organization, which assists people who have developmental disabilities. We recently had a change in personnel and found that the XP (I believe Professional) user password had been changed. After booting, and as windows loads, the "administrator" does not appear, only the user's login icon appears.

To prevent the loss of programs and data, we would like to avoid re-installing windows. I had taken it to out local vo-tech's computer instructors (who help us with our computer and network needs), and they report that there is no way to reset the XP pass words with out accessing "administrator." Is there anything we can do short of re-installing windows?

Thanks for your consideration,

Ed Pilarczyk
Graceville, FL

Depending on which password was changed, it's possible that the fix could be pretty easy.

Normal user IDs show up on the main login screen for Windows XP. Some of those may be "administrator-type" users. I used that wording for a specific reason.

There's another type of administrator user, who shows up at the login screen in Safe Mode. The "Administrator" user in Safe Mode has the administrator password that was set when the Windows copy was first run.

For most Windows XP installations, this Administrator password has never been set. So, if this didn't get reset, you're home free.

If it has been set, you could look into something like Bart's PE (Google search for it), which will let you creatte a bootable XP disk which will then give you edit capabilities to the computer, while bypassing the computer's password system.

I'm pretty sure you can reset the XP passwords from within Bart's PE. There are also some Linux utilities that could help, but they won't be nearly as user-friendly.

On the other hand, since Windows XP Pro will also let you set up an encryption of the entire drive, if that's the situation and you don't know the password, you would be totally out of luck .

I hope these ideas help.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 31 — Sunday, January 14, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.