USING WINDOWS’ HELP AND SUPPORT MENU

TO SOLVE PROBLEMS YOU MAY BE HAVING

(Notes courtesy of Bill Wilkinson, Sun City Summerlin)

The Help and Support Center within WinXP provides help on a variety of subjects, such as downloading and installing software updates, basic Windows features, tech support, and finding hardware that's compatible with WinXP. Going to Start and selecting Help and Support opens what is, essentially, a Web-based help system on your hard drive.

The Windows XP Help file is truly massive, consisting of nearly 10,000 individual topics drawn from more than 200 Compiled Help files.

Most programs, whether from Microsoft or other parties,

have a Help option on the individual program’s menu bar.

Go there first if you are having a problem with that program!

To use the resources of the Windows XP Help and Support Menu, follow these steps:

1.       Click the Start button from the Desktop

2.       Click on the Help and Support button.

3.       When you open the Help And Support Center, your first stop is

always the Home page

4.       The left-hand column lists common Help topics. The links in the two

groups on the right, each identified by a green arrow, lead to tools and support resources. The Did You Know? list in the lower right contains headlines provided by Microsoft support. This area can be customized by third parties as well. For example, if your copy of Windows was included with a new PC, the system manufacturer might have customized the Help And Support Center with links to its support site here.

5.       The toolbar at the top of the Help And Support Center window

provides basic browser-style navigation tools. Back and Forward

buttons move through recently viewed topics. Although the toolbar

icons closely resemble those used in Internet Explorer, note that the Home, Favorites, and History buttons take you to the respective pages within the Help And Support Center. (To modify the toolbar icons, click on Options on the Toolbar, then click on the Change Help and Support Center options in the left column. Modifications can then be made using the options in the right column.)

6.       Before leaving the Options window, click on Set search options in

the left column. The several options appearing in the right column will be discussed during the BKK presentation.

7.       Click on the Home button on the tool bar to take you to the home

page.

8.       Need a refresher on a basic Windows feature or task? Sometimes a

wellwritten, step-by-step tutorial from the Help files is just the thing you need.

9.       DEMONSTRATION OF PICK A HELP TOPIC: Click on Windows

Basics.

10.     Click on the plus (+) symbol to the left of Core Windows Tasks.

11.     In the left column, click on Customizing your Start menu.

12.     In the right column, click on Display a program in the Start menu.

13.     The instructions, plus notes, will appear in the right column. (Note

that there is a Print icon located on the column’s toolbar.

14.     When you uncover a particularly useful topic that you know you’ll

want to refer to later, click the Add To Favorites button just above

the topic window and spare yourself the hassle of searching for it again. By default, each entry in the Help And Support Center Favorites list uses the title of the topic as its name. Use the Rename button at the bottom of the Favorites list to give a list item a name that’s more meaningful to you. (This is especially important with Glossary entries, which are all initially named Glossary in the Favorites list.) Items in the Favorites list appear in the order in which you add them; unfortunately, there’s no way to reorder these items.

15.      Click on the Home button on the tool bar to take you back to the

home page.

16.     Note that you have a search box in the upper left corner for inserting a

keyword or words. (For the purpose of this demonstration, type start menu in the box and click on the white arrow on a green background. This action will take you to a column that will show 30 search results.)

17.     Click on Display a program in the Start menu.

18.     Note that the instructions are the same as those found in step 12

above.

19.     When you have completed using the Help function, simply close the

window(s) to take you back to the Desktop.

Additional Notes:

Search results are broken down into the following three groups: Suggested Topics. This group is based on a comparison between the search terms you entered and keywords defined in the Help files. Because the search is performed against a relatively small index file, this list appears almost immediately; however, the quality of the results depends on the keywords assigned by the Help file authors.

Full-Text Search Matches. This group displays topics where the content of the Help information matches the word or phrase you entered. Although these files are also indexed, the search universe is much larger, and it typically takes longer to display the results.

Microsoft Knowledge Base. This group searches Microsoft’s extensive collection of documentation for bug fixes and technical explanations that aren’t available in the local Help files. The list of found articles matches the search terms and uses settings defined in the Options dialog box. To launch a search that uses the entire Help file, enter the text in the Search box on the home page. Search terms are not case sensitive, and if you enter two or more words, the Search algorithm looks for topics containing that exact combination before looking for topics that contain the individual words. (To set Search options so that results display only topics containing a specific phrase, enclose that phrase in quotation marks.) Search ignores a long list of common insignificant words, such as a, for, from, and like. Using the Help Index If you’re not sure of the exact term you’re looking for, Search can be frustrating. In that case, you might have better results scrolling through the Index, which lists the keyword entries for each topic. To switch to this view, click the Index button. The text box in the Index list resembles the Search box, but it behaves quite differently. As you enter text in this box, the Index selection jumps to the first topic that matches the characters you entered. The comparison is based on the beginning of the description; if you enter networking, for instance, you’ll jump to the group of topics that begin with that keyword, skipping over the Home Networking entry.