Over in the CyberNet Forum, Richard pointed out a post from Download Squad that explained how you could surf the web on a Windows XP Computer by accessing a help file in a Windows application like the calculator. This would be useful for times when you’re in a public place and the administrator disabled the web browser so that you couldn’t surf the web. The only problem is that the trick (which I’ll explain below) only works if you’re on a computer running Windows XP. I figured there had to be a way to do the same thing in Vista and sure enough, there is!
First, here’s how it will work in XP. Open a Windows application like the calculator then click Help > Help Topics. From there you’ll right-click on the title bar (next to the minimize or maximize buttons) and then click “Jump to URL.” From there you can enter in any address that you please!
Next, here’s how it would work in Windows Vista.
- Open the Run Command (windows key + r)
- Type the following: %systemroot%\Help\
- Doing the above will take you to the Help Folder in the Windows Directory
- You’ll be looking for a .chm file and once you find it, double click it
- Right click in the task bar or the title bar and then click “jump to URL”
- From there you can enter in any address!
Whether you’re using Windows XP or Windows Vista, you’ll have a solution for those times when you’re on a public computer and you need to browse the Internet but the browser has been disabled. Cool, huh?
Sweet, I still think the most useful article was how to bypass filters! Hoping for a updated version of that…
NOTE: You said “click” rather than “right-click” when describing the trick in XP.
Wow, that’s pretty cool. I was expecting it to share cookies and all that w/ IE, but to my surprise it didn’t (I tried accessing Y! and it wasn’t already signed in). I wonder what kind of rendering engine it uses?
cool trick… but I think you need to type http:// for every URL to work. For me, if I leave out http:// it gives me page not found error.
Yeah, at first I thought it wasn’t working. Then I added http:// and it worked. I guess it thinks you’ll put in a local directory on your PC or something.
I noticed it made my (very low end) PC run pretty slowly, and it kept running slow even after I exited. I did it thru notepad. I checked the task manager and saw notepad.exe was still running, and using 97% CPU! I killed it and everything worked well again.
huh…. Well, I’ll be… I never knew that. Thanks for the tip.
cool…it’s working…nice tip.
but must type http:// to work.
thnks
Yeah, it is a bit of a bummer that you have to enter in http:// for every address, but I don’t think that anyone would do heavy browsing with this.
There hasn’t been any new techniques since our last article, but we do have an article coming up that will help get around a certain type of filter.
*yawn*
Does the calculator leave a cookie when you use “jump to url”?
That’s a good question, and it probably does leave a cookie.