We'll start with a few nifty
tips that can make your desktop more interesting, make it easier to get
around and increase your computer's power efficiency.
A South Africa theme, ready to use.
3. That will install a shortcut to the theme and wallpapers in
the Personalization section of Control Panel.
You can now use them as you would any other theme or background,
by right-clicking the desktop, choosing Personalize, and choosing a
background or theme. They will be listed in their own section.
Shake Your Desktop Free of Clutter
If you frequently run multiple programs simultaneously, your
desktop can get extremely cluttered. This can get annoying if you're
working on one program and want to minimize all the other windows --
in previous versions of Windows you had to minimize them
individually.
With Windows 7's "shake" feature, though, you can minimize every
window except the one in which you're currently working -- in a
single step. Click and hold the title bar of the window you want to
keep on the desktop; while still holding the title bar, shake it
quickly back and forth until all of the other windows minimize to
the taskbar. Then let go. To make them return, shake the title bar
again.
You can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Window key-Home
key combination -- although doing that is not nearly as much fun.
Get a Power Efficiency Report
Have a laptop and want to get more battery life out of it?
Windows 7 includes a hidden built-in tool that will examine your
laptop's energy use and make recommendations on how to improve
it. To use it:
1. Run a command prompt as an administrator. To do this, type
cmd
in the search box, and when the cmd icon
appears, right-click it and choose "Run as administrator."
2. At the command line, type in the following:
powercfg -energy -output \Folder\Energy_Report.html
where \Folder represents the folder where you want
the report to be placed.
3. For about a minute, Windows 7 will examine the behavior of
your laptop. It will then analyze it and create a report in HTML
format in the folder you specified. Double-click the file, and
you'll get a report -- follow its recommendations for ways to
improve power performance.
Modify UAC
The User Account Control security feature was one of the most
reviled additions to Windows Vista, with good reason -- its constant
warning messages asking for permission to continue many operations
drove users around the bend. UAC has been significantly improved in
Windows 7 so that it's not as intrusive as in Vista, but you can
still tweak it if you like.
Here's how to turn UAC on or off, and make it less or more
intrusive than the default:
1. Go to the Control Panel --> User Accounts and Family Safety.
2. Click User Accounts, then click Change User Account Control
settings.
3. From the screen that appears, use the slider to select the
level of protection you want. Here are the four levels and what they
mean:
Always notify me. Think of this as UAC Classic.
It works like Vista's UAC: When you make changes to your system,
when software is installed or when a program tries to make a change
to your system, an annoying prompt appears.
Default -- Notify me only when programs try to make
changes to my computer. This is, obviously, the default;
make a change yourself and UAC leaves you alone. When a program
makes a change, a prompt appears and your desktop goes dark, just
like it does in Vista. Otherwise, UAC sits there silently.
Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my
computer (do not dim my desktop). This setting is identical
to the default setting, with one difference: It won't dim your
desktop so that you only see the UAC prompt asking you to take
action. This presents a slightly elevated security risk over the
default setting, because theoretically a program could allow a
malicious program to interfere with the UAC prompt.
Never notify me when: In this one, UAC is
completely turned off. This is, of course, an insecure option and
not recommended for most users.
After you make the selection, click OK. Depending on the
selection you made, you may need to restart your system for it to
take effect.
Start Menu tips
Many people overlook the Start Menu, rarely using it except as a
jumping off point to run an application or get to the Control Panel.
But there's actually plenty you can do with it.
Search the Internet from the Start Menu
The Start Menu's search box is a convenient way to search through
your PC -- but you can also have it do double-duty and perform
Internet searches as well. To enable this feature:
1. In the Start Menu search box, type
GPEDIT.MSC
and
press Enter to run the Group Policy Editor.
2. Go to User Configuration --> Administrative Templates -->
Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. Double-click "Add Search Internet link to Start Menu," and
from the screen that appears, select Enabled. Then click OK and
close the Group Policy Editor.
4. From now
on, when you type a search term in the Search box on the Start Menu,
a "Search the Internet" link will appear. Click the link to launch
the search in your default browser with your default search engine.
Customize the Shut Down Button
The default action of the Start Menu's Shut down button is to
turn off your PC. If you want to use the button for another action,
such as restarting your PC, you click the arrow to the right of the
Shut down button and select an action from the drop-down menu.
What if you rarely shut your PC down completely but frequently
restart it? You can change the Shut down button's default action to
be Restart -- or Switch user, Log off, Lock, Sleep or Hibernate.
To change your default, right-click the Start button and select
Properties. On the Start Menu tab, click the "Power button action"
drop-down menu and select which action you want to be the default.
Then click OK, and OK again.
Add a Videos Link to the Start Menu
The Windows 7 Start Menu includes links to your Pictures and
Music folders, but not to your Videos folder. If you watch a lot of
videos and want a link to them on your Start Menu, here's what you
can do:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. On the screen that appears, go to the Start Menu tab and click
Customize.
3. In the dialog box that appears, scroll to the bottom, look for
the Videos section, select "Display as a link," and click OK and
then OK again.
If you'd prefer that Videos display as a menu, with links to
files and submenus, instead select "Display as a menu.
Windows Explorer tips
Windows Explorer is the heart and soul of the Windows interface,
and overall it works quite well. But you can make it better.
Use check boxes to select multiple files
In order to select multiple files for an operation such as
copying, moving or deleting in Windows Explorer, you generally use
the keyboard and the mouse, Ctrl-clicking every file you want to
select. But if you're mouse-centric, there's a way to select
multiple files in Windows 7 using only your mouse, via check boxes.
To do it:
1. In Windows Explorer, click Organize, and then select "Folder
and search options."
2. Click the View tab.
3. In Advanced Settings, scroll down and check the box next to
"Use check boxes to select items." Click OK.
4. From now on, when you hover your mouse over a file in Windows
Explorer, a check box will appear next to it; click it to select the
file. Once a file is selected, the checked box remains next to it;
if you uncheck it, the box will disappear when you move your mouse
away.
Open a command prompt at any folder
Command prompt fans will welcome this tip. With it, when you're
in Windows Explorer, you can open a command prompt to any folder.
This tip does exactly what the Windows XP PowerToy "Open Command
Window Here" does.
To use it, hold down the Shift key and right-click a folder, then
choose "Open command window here" from the context menu that
appears. (Note that this tip doesn't work in the Documents folder.)
Protect the privacy of your Explorer searches
When you search through your PC from Windows Explorer, you can
see the most recent searches that have been performed. If you share
a PC and don't want others to see what you've searched for, you can
turn off the recent searches feature:
1. In the Start menu's Search box, type
GPEDIT.MSC
and press Enter to launch the Group Policy Editor.
2. Go to User Configuration --> Administrative Templates -->
Windows Components --> Windows Explorer.
3. Double-click "Turn off display of recent search entries in the
Windows Explorer search box" and select Enabled from the screen that
appears. Then click OK. The recent searches feature will now be
turned off.
Set a New Windows Explorer Launch Folder
When you run Windows Explorer, it always opens to the Libraries
folder. That's fine if you use Microsoft's default file
organization, which designates Libraries as the overall container
for your folders. But what if you don't? You might prefer to have
Windows Explorer open to Computer or any other folder you choose.
Here's how to do it
1. Right-click the Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar (it's the
one that looks like a folder), and then right-click the Windows
Explorer icon from the context menu that appears and select
Properties. The Windows Explorer Properties dialog box appears.
2. You'll have to edit the Target field on the Shortcut tab of
this dialog box in order to change the default location at which
Explorer opens.
If you want Explorer to open to a specific folder, simply enter
the name of the folder, substituting your folder name for
Folder,
below, like this:
%windir%\explorer.exe c:\Folder
So to open Explorer to the folder named Budget, you would type
this in the Target field:
%windir%\explorer.exe c:\Budget
If you want Explorer to open to special, pre-set locations, such
as Computer, you'll need to enter special syntax in the Target
field. Following is a list of three common locations and the syntax
to use, followed by the syntax for the Libraries folder in case you
ever want to revert to the default.
- Computer:
%windir%\explorer.exe
::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
- My Documents:
%windir%\explorer.exe
::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}
- Network:
%windir%\explorer.exe
::{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
- Libraries:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe
3. After you've changed the Target field, click OK. Next time you
launch Windows Explorer, it will open to the new location you've
designated.
Show all Your Drives in Windows Explorer
Depending on your system settings, when you go to Computer in
Windows Explorer, you may be in for a shock -- you may not see all
your drives such as memory card readers if those drives are empty.
If this disconcerts you, there's a simple way for you to see them
even if there's nothing there:
1. Launch Windows Explorer and press the Alt button to reveal the
top menu.
2. Select Tools --> Folder Options and click the View tab.
3. Under "Advanced settings," uncheck the box next to "Hide empty
drives in the Computer folder." Click OK. The drives will now always
be visible.
Build Your Own Internet Search Connector
Windows 7 has a very useful new feature called a Search Connector
that lets you search through a Web site from right inside Windows
Explorer. With it, you type in a search term and select the Search
Connector for the site you want to search; Explorer searches the Web
site without having to open Internet Explorer, and the results
appear inside Windows Explorer. Click any of the results to head
there using your default Web browser.
Normally, you'll need to get each Search Connector from the Web
site through which you want to search, and very few Connectors are
available. Sites normally need to adhere to
OpenSearch standards in order for their Connectors to work.
However, there's a work-around that will let you easily build
your own Search Connector for any site, using Windows Live Search as
a kind of go-between. Don't worry, you don't need to know any code
to write a Connector. Just follow these steps:
1. Copy the following text and paste it into Notepad. The text
you'll need to change is in bold, all-caps text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>NAME YOUR SEARCH</ShortName>
<Description>DESCRIPTION OF SEARCH</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://api.bing.com/rss.aspx?source=web&query={searchTerms}
site:SITENAME.COM&web.count=50"/>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://www.bing.com/search?q={searchTerms}+site:SITENAME.COM"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
2. In place of