More tricks on windows

The following tips refuse to be categorised, but that doesn’t make them any less useful. Go on, find something to brighten your day. Fix your folders You may have noticed that Windows can’t always remember how you’ve positioned or size your folder. To get around this problem, open the folder in question, size it as you wish, hold down [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Shift], then close the window by clicking on the X button. Remember that Windows can only remember these properties for a certain number of folders, so be careful about those you choose. Create a new folder with a simple key combination To quickly create a new folder in Windows 98, press [Alt] + [F] + [N] + [F]. View all folder details When looking at a folder in ‘Details’ view, you may not be able to see all of the information in the columns. To reset the columns to their default size, just press [Ctrl] + [+] on the numeric keypad. Put special characters in your documents If you need to use accents or other special characters in your documents, there’s a program that can help. Go to the Start menu and navigate to Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map. Select the font you are using in the document, and locate the character you want. Now double click it and choose Copy, then go into your document and paste it. Toolkit bonanza The Windows 98 CD comes loaded with tools from the Resource Kit sampler. You’ll find their installation files in your CD’s Tools\Reskit folder. Run setup,exe, and the utilities will be installed on to your PC. Access them via the Start menu – you’ll find them under Programs, Windows 98 Resource Kit, Tools Management Console. Re-size the Help text To change the size of text in the Windows 98 Help, you need to modify your Internet browsing settings, because the new Help is based on HTML. Launch the Internet Control Panel applet, click on the Accessibility button and then on the Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages item followed by OK. Now select the Fonts button and pick your choice from the Font Size drop-down menu. Record the time and date in Notepad To make Notepad record the time and date every time you open a file, open a new file, and put .LOG in the first line. Every time you subsequently open this file, the time/date will automatically be logged. Make icons in Paint You can make Icons without any special utility. Just make the icon in Paint, and save it with an .ico extension, making sure to select All files. Keep an eye on startup Want to know what’s loaded into your machine during Windows startup? You have two options. The quick and easy method is to press [Pause] on your keyboard when the line you want to see appears. Booting will continue when you press any other key. The other, more powerful option is to access the Windows Startup menu by pressing [F8] when it says ‘Starting Windows 98…’. Now choose Step-by-step confirmation, and you’ll be able to see each instruction as it’s loaded. You can also choose not to load certain operations – perfect for troubleshooting startup problems. What version of DirectX do I have? If you want to know what version of Direct X you have, just run DXTOOL.exe or DXINFO.exe in your DirectX\Setup folder. When opened, these will display the version number for you. Get the latest version of DirectX from www.update.microsoft.com or www.microsoft.com/directx/ default.asp. Customise Windows Help You can tip the balance in your favour by annotating any Help topic you like. Open the topic in question, then right-click on a blank area of its window and select Annotate. Type your notes into the box that appears, then click Save. The next time you open that topic, just click the little paper clip to read your notes. (To remove a note from a topic, open the note, then click Delete.) Save Find criteria for future use Once you’ve finished a search, stop for a second. Will you need to use that search again in the future? If so, save it. Once the search is complete, select File, Save Search. Switch to the desktop, and you'll see a new icon there with a title based on your criteria. The next time you need to conduct the same search, simply double-click this icon, then click Find Now, and feel free to move it somewhere more convenient. Save Find results for future reference Want to save both your search criteria and the results? Select Options and choose Save Results, then pick File, Save Search. Now when you double-click on the icon, you’ll get both criteria and results popping up in the Find dialog box. Alter the size of the Recycle Bin Right-click the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop and select Properties. In the Recycle Bin Properties menu, adjust the lever to the desired percentage, then finally click OK. Instantly access the Device Manager If you’ve got a keyboard with the [Windows] key on it, you can access Device Manager instantly, just by holding down [Windows] + [Pause/Break]. But that’s not all you can do. It’s also easy to add Device Manager to the Start menu, enabling you to go straight to it with a single click. Right-click the Start button, and from the context menu select Explore. Next, right-click an empty space in the right-hand pane, select New, Shortcut, then type C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE Sysdm.cpl, System,1 into the field labelled Command Line. Click Next, type Device Manager for the name of this shortcut, and press Finish. To change the Icon used by the shortcut, just right-click it, choose Properties and then press the Change Icon button. Add cascading menus to the Start menu We’ve shown you how to add the Control Panel, Dial-up Networking and Printer folders to the Start menu so many times now, but guess what? There’s even more folders you can add, so here’s the the ultimate guide to adding important folders to the Start menu, giving you faster access to them. To add one, right-click on Start and select Explore. Right-click in the right pane of the Explorer window that opens and choose New, Folder. Then type one of the following strings, all on one line, replacing the words ‘New Folder’ with this new line. You must type the period, the curly braces, all four hyphens, and the hexadecimal numbers exactly as shown. After the closing curly brace, press [Return]. J Control Panel Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} J Dial-Up Networking* Dial Up Networking.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48} J Fonts* Fonts.{BD84B380-8CA2-1069-AB1D-08000948F534} J Internet Cache Internet Cache.{7BD29E00-76C1-11CF-9DD0-00A0C9034933} J Network Neighbourhood* Network Neighborhood.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} J My Computer* My Computer.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} J Printers Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} J Recycle Bin Recycle Bin.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} J Subscriptions Subscriptions.{F5175861-2688-11d0-9C5E-00AA00A45957} J URL history URL History.{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000} *These folders will initially be empty – you must manually drag and drop items from their ‘real’ folders into here in order to access them. Remove the shortcut arrow To remove the little arrow that appears on all shortcuts, you need to access Regedit - click on Start, Run, and then type 'regedit'. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile and delete the value IsShortcut, then browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile and delete the value IsShortcut. Close Regedit and restart Windows. Remove the Documents list To remove the Documents folder from the Start menu, open RegEdit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Policies\Explorer. Right-click an open area in the right pane and select New, DWORD Value, then name it NoRecentDocsMenu. Double-click this entry and add the value 1, then exit Regedit and restart Windows. Hide your desktop icons from view One good reason for hiding all the icons from your desktop could be that you’ve created a load of shortcuts on your taskbar, and no longer need the desktop cluttered up by them. To remove icons from the desktop, run RegEdit, then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. From the menu select Edit, New, DWORD value and name it NoDesktop. Double-click this entry and give it the value 1, then close RegEdit and restart Windows. To restore the icons to your desktop, just change the value of NoDesktop to 0. View all hard drive properties  Here’s an easy way to view the properties for multiple hard drives simultaneously. First ,open My Computer and select all your hard drives by holding down [Ctrl] and clicking on each drive in turn. Next, right-click on any of the drives and choose Properties. Windows creates a single dialog box with Properties tabs for each drive. This also works for removable, floppy disk and mapped network drives.