Use the Help and Support Center

The XP Help and Support Center is completely Web-based: it's not all on the Web, mind you, but it relies on a hyperlinked set of content that will help answer many of your operating system questions. It's Web-based in that you actually view the help files in a Web browser, albeit one that bears only slight resemblance to Internet Explorer.

Further, there are two locations from which the Help and Support Center draws content. Most of the initial pages you use are located on the hard drive of the computer. That is, the content is local, or online. The Help and Support Center can also make use of a vast collection of additional help files not stored on your computer. These files are considered offline, but they are easily accessed as long as there's an active connection to the Web. (And, yes, the terminology is a bit weird…you connect to the Interneti.e, go onlineto access the offline help files.)

Access the Help and Support Center by choosing Start | Help and Support. The Help and Support Center home page displays, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Windows XP Help and Support Center.

Upon opening, the Help and Support Center (HSS) tries to connect to and retrieve the latest Did You Know content. In fact, it's fair to say that the Help and Support Center blurs the distinction between your local computer and Microsoft Web servers that store help files. HSS just gathers help resources and places them at your disposal.