How to start Windows Media Center without the startup animation?

Sure, it looks nice the first few times, but the startup animation for Windows Media Center in Windows 7 may be a little overly dramatic for everyday use. Besides, it takes up precious time when you want to get right down to watching TV or playing your music. Here's how to edit the shortcut to start up the application without the animated opening:

1. Right click the WMC shortcut on your desktop or taskbar (if you have it pinned there) and select Properties.
2. Click the Shortcut tab.
3. In the "Target" field, you'll see %windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe
4. Leave that there, but right after it, type and space and then add /nostartupanimation
5. Click OK.

How to disable Error Reporting in XP?

We've all seen it: an application crashes and you get a dialog box that pops up and asks you to send an error report to Microsoft. Sure, it's nice that they want to try to keep up with what problems users are having and fix them, but maybe you don't want to bother or you don't particularly want to send information about what programs you're running. You can turn off the error reporting service and do away with those dialogs for good.

Here's how:

1. Right click My Computer.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Select "Disable error reporting."
4. Click OK.

Now wasn't that easy?

How to make Windows XP your default operating system in dual boot with Ubuntu?

Lots of people are trying out Ubuntu, one of the currently most popular distributions of Linux. Why not? After all, it's free. Many are installing it to dual boot with their Windows OS, which is a good idea since many Windows applications that you may rely on to do your work don't run in Linux. However, you may notice that its boot loader takes over and makes Ubuntu the default operating system, and that might not be what you want. To change that behavior, you need to edit the Grub boot loader menu. Here's how:

1. Boot into Ubuntu
2. Click Applications Accessories Terminal to open a command line window
3. At the command prompt, type sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
4. When prompted, type your password
5. In the file, find the following section:
   ## default num
   # Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0,
   and
   # the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.default 0
6. Change the 0 to the number of the Windows boot section, which should be 4 on a typical dual boot system where you installed Ubuntu after XP
7. Save the file with the changes
   

It's a good idea to back up the file before you edit it.