If you’re one of the poor souls still using dial-up Internet access, it’s nice to see a little “dial-up” icon on your Desktop or in your taskbar. A quick right-click then let you connect or disconnect at will, handy when you could be racking up long distance or hotel charges.

Here’s how to add that icon in both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Windows XP

1. Click the Start button and choose Control Panel.
2. Click the Network and Internet Connections option.
3. Choose Network Connections.
4. Right-click your Dial-Up Connection icon and choose Properties. (Or, to put an icon right on your Desktop, right-click the icon and choose “Create Shortcut,” and choose Yes.)
5. From the General tab, choose “Shown icon in notification area when connected,” and click the OK button.

Windows Vista

Windows Vista changes that process completely, as many of you have discovered, but reader Larry Jablon writes in with a quick way to place a dial-up shortcut on your Vista Desktop:

1. Choose Control Panel from the Start menu.
2. Choose the Network and Internet category, and select Network and Sharing Center.
3. Select Manage Network Connections from the pane on the window’s left side. (Clicking that option reveals all your network connections, including your dial-up Internet connection.)
4. Right-click your dial-up Internet icon and choose Create Shortcut from the pop-up menu.
5. Click OK to allow the shortcut to be automatically placed on the Desktop.

Ever dragged yourself into bed after a particularly disastrous day, wishing you could wake up the next morning and find everything back to normal?

Although things usually remain the same when we wake up, that doesn’t have to be the case with Windows and its built-in System Restore feature.

System Restore (built into Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7) provides you with an easy way to bring peace back into a troubled computer. Every so often, the System Restore program takes a “snapshot” of Windows’ key internal settings and saves them by date, known as a “Restore Point”. When Windows is behaving badly on your system, call up System Restore, and tell it to return to a Restore Point when everything was working correctly.

Windows quickly loads the settings it used on that Restore Point’s date, and when Windows restarts, it works just as well as it did on that day in the past.

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Q: I recently purchased a Dell XPS420 with Vista. How do I get the desktop icons to a small size? Dell told me the current size is the smallest I can have with my graphics card. But my old laptop that runs with Windows XP is four years old and has a much cheaper graphics card, yet I can shrink its icons to a nice small size. What gives?

A: Vista’s desktop icons are larger than those in Windows XP, and sometimes they hog too much real estate. Vista offers several ways to shrink them to a manageable size, however.

• While displaying the desktop, click one desktop icon. Then, while holding down the Ctrl key, move the wheel on your mouse. The icons will shrink as you turn the wheel one way; they’ll enlarge as you spin it the other.
• No wheel on your mouse? Then try changing back to XP’s “Classic icons” by right-clicking the Desktop, choosing View, and choosing Classic icons.
• If neither of those options satisfy you, switch to a higher screen resolution, by right-clicking the Desktop, choosing Personalize, choosing Display Settings, and sliding the Resolution bar to the right. Click Apply to try see if the resolution works for you.

Q: My friend has lost his “All Programs” button on his Start menu. How can we reactivate it? We tried going to oldest “System Restore” point, but that didn’t work. Since he didn’t have desktop icons for those programs, he’s running on borrowed time. Can you help us?

A: This sounds suspiciously like your friend accidentally switched to XP’s “Classic” view, which makes Windows XP look like some older versions of Windows. Switching to Classic view has a side effect of dropping “All Programs” from the Start menu.

To switch back to the “normal” view, right-click the Start menu and choose Properties. When the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties page appears, shown below, choose Start menu (rather than Classic menu) and click OK.

That should solve the problem.

Q: I keep reading that Microsoft is planning to phase out support of Windows XP later this year. Sad to say my computer is old, and it will need just about everything upgraded to run the most basic version of Vista. The upgrades would cost me more than a new PC with Vista installed.

So, when Microsoft stops supporting XP, what should I do to keep the computer operating without problems?

A: Don’t worry about what you read about Microsoft killing off Windows XP. Sure, Microsoft won’t sell Windows XP after June 30, 2008. But that doesn’t mean they’ll stop supporting it. Microsoft will still support XP until April, 2009. And Microsoft will still offer security patches until April 18, 2014.

Chances are, you’ll be itching for a new PC way before then.

But when that April 18, 2014 deadline looms, think about buying a new PC, if not during the 2013 holiday season, then during the early 2014 post-holiday sales.

After April 18, 2014, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for Windows XP, and your trusty old Windows XP will be a huge target for cyberthieves.