... Windows Tips ‘n Tricks 4 ...
As he teaches, so he learns.

Take advantage of your computer's built-in clock and calendar functions with shortcuts that quickly let you access the day's date and current time. The clock is normally displayed by default and appears in the system tray of your taskbar. (If it isn't showing, right-click on a blank area of the taskbar and choose Properties from the context menu. Select 'Show Clock' and click OK). To view the day's date, hold your mouse pointer over the clock until the Help bubble appears displaying the date. To quickly change the date or time, double-click the clock to access those properties.

Story is very simple; it has to be done. Without going into "partitions" and "sectors," think of your hard drive as a house with many rooms. And think of yourself, the user, as a homeowner who works around the house quite often, and has many carpentry tools (those are the files on your hard drive).

If you work like your hard drive does (I hope you don't), whenever you are done working, you'll place your tools individually wherever you find room for them (the hammer in the laundry room, the tape measure in the pantry, the pliers in the bathroom, the screw driver in the bedroom (no pun intended, ha ha), wherever you see room, you'll drop another tool. That's the way the hard drive works; it drops fragments of files wherever it sees room on your hard drive, and there's nothing you can do about it.

And when said homeowner wants to do another job, and retrieve those tools, he/she has to run all around the house gathering them all up (AND THAT TAKES TIME). So to save that precious time, the neat homeowner keeps all carpentry tools in one place, plumbing tools might be someplace else (that's all right, as long as carpentery tools (e.g., docs) are kept together, and plumbing tools (e.g., txts) are kept together).

And when work has to continue, and the tools gathered up (like uploading files), time is saved when they are all together. The homeowner doesn't have to run to all the rooms to load up the tools, and the computer doesn't have to run to all parts of the hard drive to up-load the files. That's the reason for defragmenting. In addition, the more often you do it, the faster it takes.

Another way to look at it is the “shopping analogy” … What if you had to drive to the store to pick up milk, drive home to drop it off; drive drive to another store to the store to pick up eggs, drive home to drop them off; drive to another store to pick up sugar, drive home to drop it off... well, you get the idea. It would be a pretty annoying, inefficient way to get anything done, right?

To run Window's built-in Disk Defragmenter program, go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. Or right-click your C-drive icon, Programs, Tools, Defragment Now. NOTE: It is best to do this with all programs closed, the screensaver disabled, and with a Scandisk done first.

When you delete a file on your hard drive, you're prompted to confirm the action before Windows moves the file to the Recycle Bin. This is a handy safety net feature, but if you'd rather not be prompted, you can turn it off. Right-click the Recycle Bin icon and choose Properties from the context menu. Make sure the Display Delete Confirmation dialog box is not checked. (Note that you'll still be prompted prior to deleting files that aren't sent to the Recycle Bin, such as files on a floppy diskette.)

You can selectively decide to bypass the Recycle Bin by holding down the Shift key before clicking Delete. Again, you will still get a warning window, but your trash bin will not be an option.

Duplicate files, huge space-hogging files, mystery files--- there's one simple way to see if ANY kind of file is OK to delete:

Rename whatever file you're wondering about with an obvious name you can find later. For example, if you were wondering about a file named filename.exe, you could rename it something like filename.exedeleteme. Then reboot and use your system normally. If after a while nothing breaks and you get no error messages about a missing file, you can assume you didn't need the file(s) you renamed. You can then do a search for all files names "*.*deleteme" and erase them.

If it turns out you do need 'em, just rename 'em back to what they were before removing the "deleteme" you embedded in their name: Reboot, and you're back where you were.

Of course, this is made even simpler if you have full, current backups: You can whack files with the certain confidence that if it turns out you need something you've erased, you can just grab the file off a backup.

But even without backups, the "interim rename" method usually does the trick and lets you identify files you really need, versus those that are just needless baggage.

I don't know about you, but after a while my desktop becomes littered with files and folders that I wanted to save for a short period of time, but never got around to deleting.

Fortunately, Windows gives me lots of options when I want to delete a file. Try any one of these next time you want to delete a file.

• Right-click the file or folder, and then click Delete.

• Click once on the file or folder, and then press the DELETE key.

• If you are in "Windows Explorer" or "My Computer", click once on the file or folder, then click the File menu, and then click Delete.

• Drag the file or folder to the Recycle Bin on the desktop.

Have fun deleting.

When you tell Windows to erase a file, Windows essentially does something like say "okay, I am now going to consider this file null and void, and will allow other data writing operations to use the space that it occupies". In other words, no actual 'erasing' of the file occurs until Windows has a need to write over the hard drive space that the file resides on. There are programs, for example, Undelete Plus, and programs like it, that do a thorough scan for files that are 'still there' on the hard drive and/or files that have enough data remaining that they can be salvaged.

Needless to say the sooner you attempt to recover the file the better your chances; also, smaller size files have a higher chance of being salvaged, and disks that have not been defragmented are better candidates for file recovery.

1. Shut down and restart in DOS mode.

   Starting from the prompt (usually Windows directory), go to the directory where the file is. If the file is on your desktop, then type in "cd desktop" (always without the quotes), and click Enter.

2. Type in "attrib -r -a -s -h name of file dot extension. For example, if the file is a MSWord file named xyz, you would type in: "attrib -r -a -s -h XYZ.doc" (note the five spaces in what was just typed), and click Enter.

3. Type in "del name of file dot extension. For example, in the above case you would type in "del XYC.doc (note one space after del), and click Enter.

4. Return to Windows by typing in "Exit"

So you can better understand what we did above, the symbols used have the following meanings:

The "-" sign means "unset" or "turn off"
The "+" sing means "set" or "turn on"
R = Read Only attribute
A= Archive attribute
S= System attribute
H= Hidden attribute

The Open and Save As dialog boxes in most of your applications have a new feature: a View Desktop button in the toolbar. Clicking this button toggles you between the folder you're currently viewing and the Desktop folder on your hard drive.

1. Create a new folder on your desktop.
2. Drag/Drop or create shortcuts in this folder of programs you use.

   In Win 98/ME you can right click a program from the Start menu, drag it to the new folder and when you drop it select copy from the menu.

3. Drag the folder to the edge of the screen and drop it. It will create a program bar.
4. Right click the Title and Select Auto-Hide.
5. Right click the Title again and de-select Show Title in both places.

Anything that you add to the folder on the desktop will show up in the program bar. You can also hide the folder by setting it properties to Hidden.

When your desktop displays many icons in full color, it often takes longer to refresh and reload. To turn up the speed, click on the Display icon in the Control Panel. Click on the Effects tab and look for the box that says "Show icons using all possible colors" If you uncheck the box, you can often speed up the computer.

Reduce the size of your Icons, and reduce the space between them like this:

1. Right click on an empty space on your Desktop.
2. Left click 'Properties'.
3. Left click 'Appearance' tab.
4. Left click 'Item' drop down box.
5. Left click 'Icon'.
6. Reduce the size in the 'Size' box.
7. Click OK. Done.

If you want even more room you can reduce the amount of space between them and get more icons per inch for your money.

1. Go to the 'Item' drop down box again, and open it.
2. Left Click on 'Icon Spacing Horizontal'
3. Reduce the space needed in the 'Size' box
4. Repeat the procedure with 'Icon Spacing Vertical'

With trial and error you'll be amazed at the amount of space you can save this way.

Now you'll have plenty of room on your desktop for your coffee and sandwiches

Want to learn a quick way of refreshing the desktop without going through the process of restarting Windows? All you have to do is click once with the left mouse button on any open area of your Desktop. Then, press F5 to refresh the desktop. That's it.

Forget about posting a "Don't touch" sign; the Background tab (in your Display Properties dialog) can be hidden with a little bit of Registry hacking. Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

and create (or edit) the DWORD value: "NoDispBackgroundPage" (sans quotes). Set its value to 1 and it'll take effect instantly; to reverse this tweak, simply change the value to 0. This won't stop a determined user from changing the Desktop graphic entirely, but it'll sure slow him (or her) down.

Device drivers are also known as VxDs. These are the interface between you and the hardware and Windows. The device drivers installed in your computer are listed in the Device Manager tab of the System Property Sheet dialog box. (Choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, and double-click System.) In this window (Device Manager tab), you can check the age and activity of the drivers and find any conflicts with other drivers.

1. Open the plus box.
2. Double click any device.
3. Note the three tabs (General, Driver, and Resources).

Another way to get there is to right-click My Computer and go to Properties.

The task of inserting diacritical characters, such as foreign letters with accents, in your e-mails and documents can be greatly reduced by using the proper keyboard settings. Rather than having to fumble through symbol sets to select the create character, you can switch to the International keyboard and quickly create diacritical characters on the fly. Click the Start button, go to Settings, Control Panel and double-click the Keyboard icon. Click the Language tab and then the Properties button. Select "United States-International" from the Keyboard Layout drop-down list. Click OK twice to save the new setting. Now, to insert a diacritical character such as an "a" with an umlaut in your text, simply type "a (or 'e for an "e" with an acute accent, or ~n for an "n" with a tilde). When you need to use the actual double quotation mark, type " and tap the spacebar. Although this method will require an adjustment to your typing habits, it should be so slight that you'll quickly adapt.

1. Go to Edit, Preferences, Mail & Newsgroups, Mail Servers, Edit ... Change "Check for mail every 10 minutes" (the default), to "Check for mail every 9 minutes." This fools the Internet Server which is usually programmed to shut you down after a 10 minute quiescence.

2. Another way is to Select "Run" option in your Start menu and type: "Command" and hit Enter. At the prompt type: "netstat -n 10" ... all without the quotes. This will keep you connected, as well as display IP addresses, with a refresh rate of 10 seconds.

Every time you view a web page, the images on that page are downloaded to your computer. This happens automatically. The images are stored in a special group of folders. You can go in there and look at all the pictures.

If you have kids, or want to check up on what someone has been viewing on the Net, this is the place to do it. Be warned... if others have access to your computer, there's no telling what you'll find. To view the images stored on your computer from Web pages, do this:

1. Double Click the My Computer icon to open it.
2. Double click the C: drive.
3. Open the Windows folder.
4. Open the Temporary Internet Files folder.

Inside, you'll find a lot of stuff. Images will be there, and should have the icon of whatever image editor you have installed on your computer. If you don't have an image editor, the icon may look like a blue "e" or Netscape's ship's wheel icon.

Double click the image file, and will open in your image editor, or in your browser, depending on the software installed on your computer.

Also, check the History folder in the Windows folder. It will also reveal a lot of information.

This is just a glimpse into the bowels of your computer. A lot of stuff is stored there. If you want to delete the stuff you find in the Temporary Internet Files folder, just highlight the item, and hit the Delete key. Or highlight one item, and press Ctrl and A keys at the same time. (Ctrl+A). This will select all of the files... then hit the Delete key.

There are many ways to accomplish this task. This is only one. If you know of a faster way to delete files, use it.

Nearly every PC has three different types of disk drives.

• In most cases, drive A: holds 3 1/2-inch removable disks known as "floppy disks" or "diskettes." Most PCs skip drive B:

• Drive C: is a "hard disk" and has a capacity several thousand times that of drive A:. Both of these types of drives are used to store program and document files and are typically available for saving files.

• The third common type of drive is the CD-ROM drive, and this is often designated as Drive D: (but it can be any letter higher than C).

If you are running out of hard disk space, you can add another hard disk to your computer and use it along side of your old hard disk. One becomes the master, and one becomes the slave (seems hard-drives never heard of the 13th amendment).

For whatever it is worth to you, this is the way I configure the display props. Knowing the steps will allow you to change them to suit your personal tastes. First get to the Display Properties window by right-clicking the desktop, and click Properties. Now what do we do there:

1. BACKGROUND Tab a. Pattern ... Field Effect.
b. Wallpaper ... None.2. EFFECTS Taba. Uncheck: "Show icons using all possible colors" (speeds up puter).
b. Uncheck: "Animate windows, menus, and lists"3. APPEARANCE Tab ... Items Box:

1. Active and inactive title bars ... Font size should be 28
2. Active Title Bar Color 1 (dark green #10)
   Color 2 (light green #9)
3. Active Window Border ... Yellow #7
4. Application Background ... Dark green #10
5. Desktop ... Dark green #10
6. Icons Size ... 28
7. Icon Spacing (Horizontal): 30, Icon Spacing (Vertical): 32
8. Menu ... Yellow (color box 7)
9. Selected Items ... Dark green
10. ToolTip ... Dark green background and white font.
11. Window ... Light green (lower left hand corner, color box 17)
12. Screensaver, Energy Star, Settings:
    Set "System standby" to 15 minutes.
13. Web - Uncheck "View my active desktop as a web page"
14. Settings, Advanced, Display - Uncheck "Show settings icon on taskbar"

If you're always coming up with new ideas-big or little-as you work on other projects, don't reach for your pad of Post-It notes to capture the thought. Take advantage of Windows' document scraps instead. Using any program that supports drag-and-drop (Wordpad, Word, WordPerfect, Excel, etc.), type out your idea and then select the text. Drag the selected text to your desktop and drop. Windows creates a shortcut containing the text and, when double-clicked, opens the "scrap" in the originating program. Later, you can organize your scraps by rearranging them on your desktop or by moving them to other folders.

Are there items on your Start menu's Documents list that you'd like to delete? The procedure varies a bit depending on whether you have user profiles enabled

If you don't have user profiles enabled, navigate your way to C:\Windows\Recent and delete any of the items inside. If you do have them enabled, then the address of the Recent folder is C:\Windows\Profiles\\Recent. Again, delete any items inside. Either way, the Recent folder is a hidden folder, so you'll need to make sure you have hidden files displayed (go to Explorer, View, Folder Options, View tab, and click to make all files visible).

(Note: If you have IE 4.x installed on your system--or had it and then upgraded to a later version--you can delete an item from the Documents list by right-clicking it on the Start menu and selecting Delete.)

The simplest way is to right-click a Documents item and select Delete. Another easy way to delete the entire contents is from the Taskbar Properties window. There you select the Start menu tab and under the "Documents Menu" heading, click the Clear button. Users attempting to access your Documents from the Start menu will come up empty handed.

But to disable the "documents" feature, you need to hack around the Registry like this:

1. Back up the Registry.
2. Launch RegEdit.
3. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, select Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer.
4. In the right hand pane, double-click NoRecentDocsHistory. (If there is no such value, create a new binary value with that name.)
5. Edit 00,00,00,00 to read 01,00,00,00.
6. Locate or create the NoRecentDocsMenu value.
7. Edit 00,00,00,00 to read 01,00,00,00 there, too.
8. Save your changes as you quit RegEdit and restart Windows.

When installing an older DOS program, you may encounter a situation where the program insists that it be installed to the "C:\Program" folder, rather than Windows' "C:\Program Files" folder. The problem stems from the fact that the DOS program does not recognize long files names, stumbling over the space in "Program Files". You can, however, instruct the program to install itself in the C:\Program Files folder by using the proper DOS folder abbreviation. When prompted to choose the installation location, type "C:\PROGRA~1\" (excluding quotation marks). The program will install to the Program Files folder without further complaint.

If you are working at a DOS Prompt (command line) from within Windows, you can easily switch between full-screen and Windows mode by simply holding down the Alt key and pressing Enter at the same time.

Double click My Computer (unless you have your desktop viewed as a Web page, then it's a single-click), right-click any drive you are interested in, Properties, and change the name in the "Label" box. Ever see anything so simple?

When you move files from your hard drive to the Recycle Bin, they are stored there until you empty the Recycle Bin. However, files deleted from external drives (such as a network or zip drive), or from a floppy disk never make it to the Recycle Bin. When deleting files from these locations, you'll want to be extra careful.

There are several ways to determine how much available space remains on your hard drive. Let's look at the two easiest ways.

1. Right click on Start, then select Explore. From the big menu that appears, select the drive you wish to look at and right-click in the drive's Icon. Another menu will appear. Click on Properties and voila! A colorful pie chart appears showing your used and free space.

2. On the Windows desktop, double-click on the My Computer Icon. When the My Computer window appears, right-click on the drive you want to measure and the same menu described above may appear. Again, click on Properties. (You might try a single left-click on the drive to bring up a black-and-white diagram showing the same information.)

If you have a DVD drive attached to and properly configured in your computer, try this Registry trick that allows you to play your DVD movies using the Media Player. First, run Regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ MediaPlayer\Player\Settings

Right-click in the right-hand pane and select New, String Value. Name the value EnableDVDUI, then double-click on it and type Yes in the Value data box. Click OK. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

From now on, you can open Media Player the easy way: Click File, Open, then select DVD and hit the Play button.