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Your questions: What if I forget my Windows XP password?

A question this weekend: “What if I forget my Windows XP password?”


If your Windows XP computer is a member of a domain, please see this Microsoft KB articles http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305 how to log on to Windows XP if you forget your password or your password expires, and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306214 on how to create and use a password reset disk for a computer in a domain in Windows XP. 


Otherwise, you might want to check a helpful article at… http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=305. I don’t offer any endorsement for the third party method and offer it as a possible solution.


Also, Microsoft provides varying levels of support at http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?gprid=1173.


One of my solutions to make sure that this doesn’t happen: as I medntioned previously, first create a strong password for the administrator account your PC. When I installed the OS on my machines at home, I write the password in the OEM license booklet, along with the name, make and model of the PC to keep the information straight. It’s all stored in a safe, secure place, away from prying eyes. 😉


Hope this helps and good luck.


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Guess what? New Microsoft info for Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007 changes

It’s the end of another work week and guess what: it’s time once again to update our Daylight Saving Time 2007 web page on Microsoft.com. (Please see http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007.) In general, more on Daylight Saving Time can be found also at http://www.answers.com/topic/daylight-saving-time.


As I said previously, this public page on the Microsoft.com site will be revised regularly to include new product updates, compatibility information and links to Knowledge Base articles. This week we have a few new additions, including the details for the update to Windows SharePoint Services (KB article 924881).


And no, I’m not changing this blog to the DST blog.


My the factoid of the day: today, a quick query on Live.com Search for DST in 2007 lists 169,932 results, with 413,239 results for DST alone. My money is that the number will increase between now and March 11, 2007.


Interestingly enough as reported on Bloomberg News, “springing forward may not help save energy, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley.”



“U.S. plans to cut electricity usage by lengthening daylight saving time may backfire, the report said. Lengthening daylight saving time by several weeks was included in energy legislation passed in 2005, with the goal of saving energy equivalent to 100,000 barrels of oil a day.


“Extending daylight saving time may actually result in increased electricity demand as additional usage during morning hours cancels out the reduced demand in the evening, according to the Berkeley study. The paper analyzed electricity usage in Australia, which lengthened its daylight saving time by two months while hosting the 2000 Olympics.


“There is no evidence that extending daylight saving time will lead to energy savings,” said Hendrik Wolff, one of the study’s authors, in an interview. “Actually, there is evidence that it may lead to a little higher energy consumption.” 


Now here’s the really happy news: we may go through this change again as “Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.” This to be decided after the US Secretary of Energy (Samuel Bodman) reports back to Congress on what the impact of the change has been in the US. (That will be an interesting meeting.)


Whether you agree or disagree with the change to DST, what can you do? For starters, write your state and federal government officials and let them know: in the States, you can find more information on contacting your senators and representatives in DC by going to http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Legislative.shtml. The EFF has a website to help you contact US policymakers: http://www.eff.org/congress/.


And remember: even though you may not live in the US or Canada where the changes will be felt, people around the world will be impacted, particularly companies with operations, offices, subsidiaries or connectivity to systems based in the US, Canada or Mexico. This change to US DST has a global impact, so if you live outside the US and Canada, consider contacting your own government officials and tell them what you think.


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Your questions: “What about Mac Office, Entourage and Daylight Saving Time?”

Great to hear from an old friend in Silicon Valley who works for a certain company in Cupertino, who asks: “I read your posts on the impact of the chnages to Daylight Saving Time. What about Mac Office — is it OK with the new DST change?”


Glad you asked. 😉


News from the Mac team WRT Entourage 2004: it was updated in this week’s 11.3.3 release to support DST.  A brief note about this can be found on the MacBU public blog…



“Today’s release of the 11.3.3 update delivers a significant change to Entourage’s time zone support, including support for the new DST dates. Prior to this fix, events in the month of March 2007 (starting 3/11) were off by an hour for the majority of US customers. I highly recommend customers update to this release of Entourage prior to the beginning of Daylight Savings observation in 2007. The update seamlessy ensures that your calendar is updated to reflect the new DST rules and improves overall time zone reliability.” 


As for other Mac Office applications and DST, I believe that current Mac Office applications should not be affected as they derive their date functionality from the OS.  In order to ensure that DST observations are correct, end users should update to the latest version of the Mac OS X (which I think is 10.4.6). More info as it is available. See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303411


My thanks to the MacBU for the update.


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CES: Gates touts the home server (CNET coverage)

I can finally let go the part-time IT administrator at the house (that would be me): Bill Gates is showing off the new Windows Home Server. CNET has coverage today of “a consumer device to serve as a central storage place for digital photos, music and other media. The first products are due out later this year from Hewlett-Packard and others. The goal is to get devices that can cost less than $500.”


CNET has an interview with Bill and asks why people will want (or need) to have a server in their home (or even a small business). One challenge has been that the technology, maintenance and upkeep of a server were beyond the abilities of regular consumers, and CNET digs right into that question:



Click for galleryQ: One of the things you are talking about at CES is a new home server? Why does the average home need a server?


Gates: If you have got multiple PCs, then you want files that are available all the time no matter which PCs are turned on or off, and you’d also like to have a server that when you just add just add storage it automatically takes advantage of that. You don’t have to think about drive names or moving files around.


In fact you get redundancy so that even if you have physical failures you have recoverability.


Does that mean that every home is going to need a server administrator?
Gates: No it’s important to look hard at what the focus of that device has been, which is the easy setup and no ongoing need to worry about it at all. Remote access has been hard to set up. We’ve focused in on that. Making it so that it is all recoverable has been hard. Adding storage has been hard. We feel great about what we’ve done in this product. We think it is a real leadership product. Homes with multiple PCs will find it very attractive.

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“For DST, do I just adjust my clock in the control panel?”

As I mentioned earlier — and just in time for the upcoming changes to daylight saving time that affects many products and services — we have a newly renovated DST 2007 website. (http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007 in case the hyperlink fails.) My posts sparked this question from a reader:



“When I travel, I just change the clock in the Control Panel. So shouldn’t I just change the clock when the new DST rules kick in?” 


No, no, no…


First off, for current Windows XP systems, an update is available for your computer for machines that subscribe to Automatic Update. So your PC will automatically compensate for the new DST changes. (The exception to the rule: older computers with Windows 95/98/ME, where you may choose to not use DST and manually set the clock on the new DST ‘spring forward’ and ‘fall back’ dates.) 


But when you travel, you should change the time zone to the city or area (or country) you’re visiting. If you just set your system clock to the local time, then your actual time will be off (not to mention the jet lag).


For example, let’s say I’m in Redmond, and I fly to New York. My PC is normally set to the Pacific Time Zone (which is GMT -8:00hrs). the Pacific Time Zone (which is GMT -8:00hrs). If I just set my clock to the local time in Manhattan (by right clicking on the clock display, or through the “Date and Time Properties” control panel), which is three hours later than Seattle (GMT -5:00hrs), my clock will appear correct but I’ll be three hours late for all my meetings because my time zone is still set to Pacific.


What’s worse, let’s say it’s 11:00pm Pacific when I make the change: if I move the clock ahead to 2:00am and don’t adjust the date, by clock will be a day behind as I’ve adjucted the clock before the date advances.


If I set just the time zone to Eastern, then all will be fine: my clock will be correct for NYC, and any meetings I have on my computer (or that I schedule in Outlook) will be correct. Here’s more help and tips on time zones, Daylight Saving Time, and e-mail in Windows XP. Now, that won’t fix being late for meetings due to other reasons…


The Office team has a good article describing how to use and set time zones here — you can not only adjust your master time zone when you travel, but you can add a second time zone to be displayed in the Outlook 2007 calendar (handy if you work regularly with a particular international city). From the article…



Dual time zone“You can add and display a second time zone in Outlook, which can be useful when you are scheduling meetings or conference calls with people who are working in other time zones. When you add a second time zone, the current time in the primary time zone is highlighted with a color gradient to make it easier to see.


“If two time zones are shown, the meeting organizer’s time zone is used as the reference point. If you organize a meeting and display free/busy time for invitees from other time zones, their busy times are adjusted so that they are displayed correctly in your time zone. The second time zone is visible only when you view the calendar in day or week view.”


 


The article also notes that start and end times for Outlook Calendar items are stored in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) format… I’ve heard people refer to GMT, UT and UTC all as the same thing, but they’re not. Interestingly enough, it’s Universal Time (UT) which replaced GMT, not UTC. Somewhat depressing, as I enjoy listening to the broadcasters on BBC World News (on NPR, often on my drive home) talk about the current time in GMT: “UT” just doesn’t create the same feeling. 😉


This from the Wiki…



“(UT is) a timescale based on the rotation of the Earth. It is a modern continuation of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), i.e., the mean solar time on the meridian of Greenwich, England, which is the conventional 0-meridian for geographic longitude. GMT is sometimes used, incorrectly, as a synonym for UTC. The old GMT has been split, in effect into UTC and UT1.”


More information:



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