LOOKING AROUND YOUR WINDOWS MACHINE

As usual, if you have a problem, raise your hand.  When you are done,
come to the TA or instructor and make sure you have your completion
of the lab recorded.  Before you go, always log off your machine.


POKING AROUND

1.  Find the disks attached to your machine and report their sizes.
	These aren't the physical disks, but the "logical" disks.
	There is a difference, and if you look in the "control panel"
	and find the hardware device manager, you can see the physical
	disks.

	Any ideas why your physical disks and logical disks wouldn't
	coincide?  (hint:  ask your TA about partitions and networks)

2.  Start exploring from the top of the C: drive (click on My Computer).  
	Can you find where the Internet Explorer folder is located?

	Is there a faster way for you to know this?
	(hint:  right-click for properties on an IE icon)

	Where are your browser user files located?
	For this, you need to look at Internet Options in
	the Tools menu in IE.  Try finding this folder
	by starting at the C: drive and clicking on folders. 

	What's on your desktop?

	Open IE and maximize the window.  Open four new browser windows
	and maximize each of those windows too.  Now what's the fastest way
	to view the desktop?  Are you sure?  You should be able to do
	it with one click.

	You can switch between IE windows by clicking on the task bar.
	You can change the properties of the task bar so that they are
	grouped or are not stacked.  Do this.  Now see how quickly you
	can switch between IE windows.  Why is it so much slower to do
	the two clicks to switch, when the taskbar uses grouping?
	Is it just the extra click, or is there something else that makes
	things slower?

	Resize your IE windows so that you can view all four at once
	(each window takes roughly one quarter of the screen).
	When is it worth resizing in this way, and when is it better
	to switch between windows using the taskbar?

3.  Press CTRL-ALT-DEL at the same time and look at the processes
	that are running.  Can you kill any of them?

	Launch IE, then look at the processes, then kill it.
	Can you be sure you killed the one you just launched, if
	there are several that are running at the same time?

	Try launching several IE processes and see if you can
	kill them individually.  Try the ctrl-N option in one of
	the browsers to create a new window.  Now kill the IE process --
	it should kill both of the windows.

	How much memory (how many pagefiles) does the operating system use
	when you are not doing anything?  How much memory does the OS use
	when you are using the browser?

	How does the CPU usage vary when you use the browser?
	How about when you are doing nothing on the computer.

	Try doing a google search on some of your processes
	that are running.  This is a good thing to do at home,
	because if there is spyware running, you can sometimes
	identify it this way.

4.  Let's search for files on the machine, using the Find option from the
	Start menu.  Find all the files that end in ".exe" and sort them
	by size.  These are all programs you could conceivably run
	on this machine.  Which are the largest?

	Does this activity require CPU or memory (PF)?

	If it is taking too long to run, how can you kill it?  Try killing
	it.

5.  Did you know you can re-order the items on your Start menu by dragging
	and dropping?

	Sometimes you can drag and drop an item, such as a program, onto the
	Start menu so that it is there the next time.  Try it.

	Can you delete items from the Start menu?

6.  Can you change the time or look at the calendar?  Why not?
	Is this fair?

7.  Make a folder on the desktop.  Copy the hundred largest files
	you can find into that folder.  Name that folder "Big 10".

	Can you think of reasons why computer people are wary of
	giving files or folders names that have spaces in them?
	(Hint:  Microsoft is trying to make you dependent on them.)

	How long did it take to copy those files into that folder?
	How many bytes did you copy, in all?  Can you calculate the
	number of bytes per second that you observed?

8.  Do you have a network drive?  Try copy those hundered largest files
	to a folder on your network drive.

	How much slower was that?

9.  Create a file on your desktop.  Now log out and back in.
	Is the file still there?

	Now create another new file.  Just hit the reset button on
	your computer and log back in.

	Is the file still there?

10.  Try to run the program regedit.  There are several ways to do
	this.  Let's see who knows how and who doesn't.

	This is a program that lets you search and edit the
	"registry".  You won't change anything today, but let's
	search for the word "Adobe".  This should show you all
	the operating system's various stored values relating
	to the company, Adobe.  If there were a company, like
	freequicksearch.com, that installed a search hijack
	program, this is how you could find it and delete it.

	How many entries of Adobe did you find?  Go try this at home and
	search for "search" and you might be very surprised.