Access Help quickly by pressing the Windows key (the one with the logo) and while holding it down, pressing F1.
 

While the default list of topics is fairly extensive, there's plenty more info available that isn't readily apparent. Often you can find what you need in WinHelp by going through the Find (or Search) feature and searching for given keywords. Just go through Start, Help, and click the Find (or Search) tab. Select one of the three options and wait as Windows compiles its list of keywords. Then follow the outlined steps to see if Windows can locate the topic you want.

WinHelp will let you annotate (make notes) its messages: i.e. "See Toejumper's site at http://www.toejumper.net/
speed5/help5.htm for more info." Just right-click a blank area of the box and choose Annotate from the menu that appears. The next time you visit this Help message, a paper clip will show itself. Click the paper clip to see your note. To get rid of it, open the note and click Delete.

Win 98/ME users have a resource called Troubleshooting, available in the Help menu under the Start button. Choose the Troubleshooting link from the display (which varies, depending on whether or not your vendor chose to add their own touches to the Help display). From here, you can choose the area that needs fixing, and you are led step by step through a guide process which eventually determines whether the computer can fix itself, whether you can fix it following the steps given, or whether you need to send up smoke signals for outside help.

What's Assisted Support? It isn't a connection to a helpful person with a friendly voice who can fix the boogerbears plaguing your system, it merely connects you to the Internet. Where it throws you is sometimes problematic -- you may be directed to a user group full of people complaining about irrelevancies, to a Web site which may or may not be helpful, or you might get an e-mail window addressed to Microsoft, whose staff waits patiently around their PCs, just waiting for customers to ask for help so they can spring into action...well, not really. You may eventually be directed to a real person at one or another customer service site; check to see if you're on a site that charges money to help you out.

A lot of users go through Help to find the various shortcut key lists and when they find them, print them out. Not a bad idea.

A terrific resource for Win 95 users is the Resource Kit, available on the Win 95 CD. Pop the CD into your drive and browse to the \ADMIN\RESKIT\HELPFILE file. Double-click WIN95RK.HLP and start cruising. You can also add the Resource Kit to your hard drive by copying the WIN95RK.HLP and WIN95RK.CNT files to your \WINDOWS\HELP folder, and then creating a shortcut to the .HLP file anywhere you like. Win 98/ME users, don't feel left out, your disk has some of these goodies on it, too.

The original hypertext-based Windows Help system was quite useful. However, Microsoft has done its usual thing by taking a good product and ruining it. As mentioned in the intro to this page, the Win 98 and Win ME HTML-based Help systems are clumsier than the original, don't let you bookmark topics, don't let you make your own annotations, or even customize fonts. (MSIE and Office suffer from the same problem.) Here are some rather longwinded and sometimes clumsy workarounds for the newer Help versions' limitations:

• Change the font sizes indirectly by first opening either Internet Options or Internet Properties and choosing either "Large Icons" or "Small Icons" and adjusting within those two ranges. In Win 98 SE, you'll open the Internet or Internet Options applet in Control Panel; in MSIE itself, go through either View, Internet Options (MSIE 4) or Tools, Internet Options (MSIE 5); in MS Office 2000, open the dialog box from within Help by clicking the Options button and choosing Internet Options from the resulting menu. Now that we've gotten this far, make sure the General tab is in front, and click the Accessibility button near the bottom of the dialog box. To choose from a range of large sizes, check "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages;" to choose from small sizes, leave that box unchecked. Now click OK. The ranges of available sizes overlap, but this is a good starting place. You can fine-tune these adjustments by clicking "Fonts" at the bottom of the Internet Options or Internet Properties dialog box. In the Fonts dialog box, choose an option from the "Font size" drop-down box. In MSIE 5 and Win 98 SE, launch IE, select View, Text Size, and choose a size option. Remember, these setting changes may affect the way Web pages are displayed, also.

• You can also change the typeface displayed in the Help messages by going through a similar process to the one detailed above. Get to the Accessibility dialog box. Check "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages" and click OK. Next, click "Fonts" at the bottom of the dialog box. If you're running Win 98 or MSIE 4, you'll choose a typeface from "Proportional fonts;" if you're running MSIE 5, Win 98 SE, ME, or Win 2K, you'll choose from "Web page fonts." Either way, your choice may affect MSIE's display of Web pages.

• The old WinHelp system let you bookmark specific Help topics you found useful. The new systems do not. However, you can create shortcuts to specific Help topics, if you're running MSIE 4 (later versions -- this might not work with earlier versions) or MSIE 5. In a Help window, right-click in the right pane over the topic you want to bookmark, and choose "Properties." In the Properties sheet, position the cursor at the beginning of the text to the right of "Address." Drag down and to the right to select the URL for that topic. Long URLs may not be visible at first, but as you drag, the text should scroll until you've selected it all. Now right-click the selected text and choose Copy. Next, navigate to the folder where you want to store these bookmarks. (If you want to access these files from the Start menu, create a folder from within the Windows\Start Menu folder or the Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder.) Right-click in the folder and choose New, Shortcut. In the Command line box of the Create Shortcut Wizard, type C:\WINDOWS\HH.EXE or a similar path, and follow it with a space. Then, right-click in the space after this text and either choose Paste, or press Ctrl+V to paste the URL you just copied. Click Next and type a name for the shortcut that will help you remember the topic. Click Finish. The next time you double-clck your newly created shortcut (or choose it from the Start submenu), WinHelp will open to the topic you bookmarked.

• Previous versions of WinHelp allowed users to add annotations to specific help topics. Although you can't do this with the new HTML version, you can save topics you want to comment on as separate files and then annotate, edit, or even rewrite them. In any Help window, right-click in the right pane over the topic you want to annotate and choose View Source. The topic will open in Notepad, or whatever program you have designated as your default text viewer. (Choose Edit, Word Wrap for easier viewing.) At this point, you can make any text changes you want. When you're done, don't simply save the file--that will just store it in the folder with other temporary Internet items. Instead, choose File, Save As and select a location for your annotated files. If you want them to be available from the Start menu as with the previous tip, create a folder within the Windows\Start Menu folder or the Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder. In the File name box, type the file name, followed by .HTM. Enclose the entire name in quotation marks (for example, "my_topic.htm") so you can open it in a browser. The next time you want to see your personalized version of this topic, double-click the file or open it from the Start menu if you stored it there. The file will open in your default browser. Most of the links within the file will no longer work, unfortunately, but at least you can consult your personalized version of this topic when you wish.

InfoTips. If you're like me, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's in a particular folder or file. The cryptic filenames don't always help. Wouldn't it be nice to just hold the mouse over the folder or file's icon and get a handy little pop-up box describing the contents, just like the ToolTips provided with Office and other applications? Well, my friend, this too can be yours, with a little tweaking. First, you need to have a relatively uptown version of Windows -- either Win 2000, Win 98, or at least Win 95 with IE 4's Desktop Update feature installed. From here, there are several ways of skinning yonder cat. This is all extremely cool, so bear with me.

• Web View folder annotations. Win 2K users, this tip's for you. If you want to take the easy way out and just create folder annotations in the preview area of a Web View folder, you just open a folder in Windows Explorer, right-click an empty area of the folder, and choose "Customize This Folder" (you may have to choose "View/Customize This Folder"). In the Wizard that appears, click Next. In the next panel, make sure "Customize" is selected, and check the box marked "Add folder comments." Click Next, type your annotation in the box provided, click Next, and click Finish. Side note: don't check the "Choose or edit an HTML template for this folder" option in the Customize Wizard; a glitch in Win 2K causes any HTML template you may choose to override any of your annotations. And, if you've already applied a template, you need to run the Wizard with the "Remove customizations" options, and then restart the Wizard to create or edit your annotations as above.

• Pop-up folder annotations. Win 9x users and 2K users can both use this option. First, open the folder you want to annotate. If you're running Win 9x, choose View, Folder Options, click the View tab, and make sure "Show all files" is selected under "Hidden files." Click OK. If you're running Win 2K, choose Tools, Folder Options, click View, select "Show hidden files and folders," and unselect "Hide protected operating system files (recommended)." Click Yes at the warning prompt and then click OK. From here on out, the instructions are the same for any version of Windows. Press F5 to refresh the folder's contents and look for a file named DESKTOP.INI (the extension won't be visible if you have that option turned off). This file is created inside a folder any time you customize it, such as with a background image. Double-click DESKTOP.INI to open it in Notepad. If you can't find this file, just open Notepad. If you've opened the DESKTOP.INI file, look for the line:

  [.ShellClassInfo]

  At the end of the line, hit Enter. On the next line, type:

  InfoTip=

  followed by whatever annotation you desire: for example, you might type:

  InfoTip=Emails from Mother Bates during her visit to the asylum, 1997-99.

  If you started with an empty Notepad file or can't find the .ShellClassInfo line in DESKTOP.INI, type the .ShellClassInfo line at the top of the file, hit Enter, and type the InfoTip=(whatever you want as an annotation) as the second line. Any way you do it, press Enter at the end of the annotation, and choose File, Save. If you started with an empty Notepad window, save the file as DESKTOP.INI and save it to the folder that you want annotated. In the File name box, type "desktop.ini" and include the quotation marks (so that Notepad won't add its default .TXT extension). Click Save. Now, you're not quite done -- this trick only works with folders that have the System attribute. Change the folder's attribute by locating the folder's icon in Explorer (or on the desktop), and with Explorer as the active window, click Start, Run, and type ATTRIB +S in the dialog box. Leave the Run box open and drag your folder from Explorer (or the desktop) to the Open box of the Run box, and drop it in. The text should look something like:
  ATTRIB +S "C:\MY DOCUMENTS" (your path will, of course, differ)
  Click OK. A DOS box will flash momentarily on screen as it applies the System attribute to your folder. Finally, select your folder and press F5 to refresh the display. Whee!

• Annotate files. You can annotate any folder, but not just any file. Win 98 and 2K users can annotate most files without launching the application. Select the file you want to annotate and press Alt+Enter to display its properties. Click the Summary tab, and fill in the boxes for Author, Title, Subject, and Comments. Depending on what version of Windows you're running, some or all of your input will appear in your annotations. Click OK and you're done. Win 95 users, you can't type comments directly into the Properties sheet, but you can open the file in the associated application, choose File, Summary Info or File, Properties, and enter the info there.

• Seeing the results. Hold the mouse cursor over the folder for a few seconds until the InfoTip you've created pops up. If you don't see it, try clicking in the window or on the desktop to make sure the location is active, or refresh the display by pressing F5. If you're running versions of Windows older than 98 2nd Edition, you may not see any InfoTips in single-pane displays of Explorer; try the two-pane display. Additionally, if the folder is displayed as a Web page, you may not see the InfoTip. Go through View and uncheck the "as Web page" option.

Cool, huh?