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I can’t tell you how frustrated I was with the “new, improved” Windows 7 Search, particularly when I wanted to “find all of the files with Bob in the file name, but don’t look in Hidden Files”. I found some information on the Web (written by Microsoft, but still confusing and typically not what I needed). Never saw mention of system.filename:~=”secret”. I’d love to know where you found this, or how you figured this out …

Bob Schor

Fred,
I “knew” I didn’t want Homegroups, and thought I’d set all of my Win7 machines as you suggested (though I didn’t know about the 128-bit setting). However, while reading your article using my laptop, I thought “Why not check out the settings, particularly as Fred has shown us exactly where to look?” Surprise — I’d forgotten to set the laptop (I even had Homegroups enabled!), and was curious why it sometimes had “connection issues”. Bravo, and thanks!

If I understand your situation correctly, you have a PC that shows a single C: partition in Windows XP, and as far as you know, has only a single “version” of Windows XP, namely Pro SP2, installed. However, when you boot, you have the option of choosing two OS’s, only one of which actually “works”.

This sounds to me like an inappropriate entry in the Boot.ini file. This is a hidden system file on C: that, among other things, lists all of the bootable operating systems on your machine (and lets you select one of them, if there are more than one, at boot time). To see it, right click My Computer, choose Properties, choose the Advanced tab, choose Startup and Recovery settings, and look at the top section (which controls the OS-to-boot). I’m guessing the drop-down window will show two entries, the “real” one and the “former” OS.

So far, you have only “looked” at things, and hence haven’t done anything “dangerous”. If the default OS that the message shows is the correct one, the safest thing to do is to simply uncheck the box that displays the “Choose the OS” options and always take the (correct) default. Otherwise, you could edit the file by clicking the Edit button. The terminology there is slightly unusual, but it basically “points to” a disk, a partition, and an OS (along with a “friendly name” for that OS). If you are certain one entry points to a no-longer-present version of Windows, you could simply remove that entry and you’d never get prompted again. Take care, however, before you do this, as this is a key step in booting the correct OS!

Suppose you walk away from your desk and leave your PC logged on. I come and put a little program on your machine and start it running. It gives you something that looks, for all the world, like the Windows Login Screen, with the little cursor on “User Name”. You come back, see the logon prompt, put in your user name and password (which, of course, I don’t echo), and hit . My program squirrels away the information, sends a “wrong password” message, then brings you to the real logon prompt (I’m not sure how I manage to log you out, but I’m sure this can be done). You have now given away your password to my nice “Trojan horse” and never know it.

Of course, if you’d hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, you would have gotten the attention of the underlying OS, and either awakened Task Manager (a clue!) or gotten a “real” logon prompt. On a home PC where noone has access to the machine other than yourself, logon security is No Big Deal, and you can choose (though I don’t!) to bypass it. But if you are going to have a logon procedure, you want to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to be sure that you are giving your username and password to your computer, not to someone else!