Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional in 10 Minutes

By Dorothy Burke and Jane Calabria

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • About the Authors
  • Introduction
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Lesson 1. Navigating Windows 2000 Professional
  • Lesson 2. Working with a Window
  • Lesson 3. Using Menus
  • Lesson 4. Using Windows 2000 Professional Help
  • Lesson 5. Using Dialog Boxes
  • Lesson 6. Working with Multiple Windows and Applications
  • Lesson 7. Copying, Moving, and Linking Between Windows and Applications
  • Lesson 8. Using My Computer
  • Lesson 9. Managing Files with My Computer
  • Lesson 10. Using WordPad
  • Lesson 11. Understanding File Properties and the Recycle Bin
  • Lesson 12. Printing
  • Lesson 13. Using My Network Places
  • Lesson 14. Using the Control Panel
    • What Is the Control Panel?
    • What Can You Accomplish in the Control Panel?
    • Selecting a Screen Saver
    • Configuring Video Options
    • Configuring Sound Options
    • Configuring Multimedia Devices
    • Configuring Your Keyboard and Mouse
  • Lesson 15. Using Outlook Express Mail
  • Lesson 16. Sharing Workstations and Setting Passwords
  • Lesson 17. Using Internet Explorer 5
  • Lesson 18. Web Site and Document Searching
  • Lesson 19. Troubleshooting, Restarting, and Disaster Planning
  • Lesson 20. Customizing the Windows 2000 Environment

What Can You Accomplish in the Control Panel?

The Control Panel contains a set of icons indicating the different areas that you can modify to customize your computer configuration. In this book, we only discuss the most commonly used features of the Control Panel. They include

• Accessibility Options: Some disabilities can make computer operation difficult. Accessibility options provide ways to adjust computer hardware to make computing easier for impaired operators. For example, you can set the keyboard to slow it down, or ignore repeated keystrokes, or play tones when you press Caps Lock, Num Lock, or Scroll Lock. You can set visual warnings to replace sound warnings, display captions for computer speech and sounds, add more contrast to the screen for easier reading, and transfer command of the mouse pointer to the numeric pad of the keyboard.
• Add/Remove Hardware: Windows 2000 detects most new hardware automatically. This capability is referred to as the plug and play feature of Windows. When Windows fails to detect your new hardware, use the Add New Hardware feature to start a wizard. The wizard searches for and identifies the new hardware, so Windows can work with it properly.

  Plain English

  Wizard A program within Windows that helps you perform a specific task. Wizards ask you questions about the task and then automatically perform operations that complete the task for you.
• Add or Remove Programs: Install or uninstall software with the help of a Wizard. Here, too you can add or remove components of Windows 2000 itself, such as games and TV Viewer.
• Regional Options: Although the internal clock of your computer maintains the current date and time, you may occasionally have to adjust it for a new time zone or to turn off Daylight Savings settings when you're in a particular area. Here, too you can change the way numbers and currency appear in Windows.
• Display: Add colors or patterns to the background of your desktop, change the look of the windows, and pick new window themes. Also change your screen area display and colors. Screen savers preserve your monitor quality, and you can select the one you want to use. Learn how to change screen savers later in this lesson.
• Fonts: Add new fonts, remove old fonts, and view fonts with this option.
• Keyboard: You can change the character repeat speed of your keyboard. This is the speed at which a character repeats when you hold down the key on your keyboard. You can also set the length of delay interval before a key repeats, to give you time to move your finger off a key before you get a repeat of the same character.
• Phone and Modem Options: Adjust the settings on your modem and set your dialing rules.
• Mouse: Set the speed of the mouse pointer and the double-click, as well as swap buttons for left-handed users.
• Users and Passwords: Protect your computer from unauthorized people by assigning passwords. You can set or change your password from the Control Panel. To set, or change a password, see Lesson 16, "Security."

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