Thursday, September 24, 2009

How to open Explorer in My Computer instead of in the Libraries

1. First, unpin the existing Explorer icon from the taskbar. To do that, right click it and select "Unpin this program from taskbar."
2. Now make a new Explorer shortcut on the desktop. Right click an empty area, click New | Shortcut and in the location box, type: %windir%\explorer.exe /e
3. Click Next.
4. Give it a name (e.g., Explorer) and click Finish.
5. Right click the new shortcut and select "Pin to taskbar."
6. Delete the one that's on the desktop if you want.

Now when you click the Explorer icon on the taskbar, it will open to Computer instead of to the libraries.

How to disable the sidebar in Windows 7

What? You thought there was no sidebar in Windows 7? Well, you're sort of right. There is no visible bar running down the side of the screen, but sidebar.exe is still there, in the Program Files\Windows Sidebar folder on the drive where Windows is installed. By default it loads at startup and runs in the background to manage the gadgets that you put on your desktop. But if you don't put any gadgets on your desktop, it's just taking up memory for no reason. Here's how to keep it from starting and recover that memory:
1. Click the Start button (or press the Windows logo key) to open the Start menu.
2. In the Search box, type regedit.exe to open the registry editor.
3. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run
4. In the right pane, find the REG_SZ key named Sidebar
5. Right click and select Delete
6. Close the registry editor As always, be sure to back up the registry before making changes to it.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How to change the Control Panel category for an application

Many of us prefer the Classic view for Control Panel, but others like XP's Categories view. But can you move items from one category to another? This especially applies to programs that put their own applets in the Control Panel, sometimes not in the category where you'd expect it to be. Turns out you can do that, if you're comfortable with editing the registry. Here's how:
First back up the registry, just in case.
Open the registry editor and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Control Panel \ Extended Properties \ {305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2
In the right pane, each DWORD value is named after the full path to its Control Panel file. Find the one you want to move and double click it.
In the Value Data field, enter the value associated with the Category where you want to place it, from the list below.

Accessibility Options 0x00000007
Add or Remove Programs 0x00000008
Appearance and Themes 0x00000001
Date, Time & Language 0x00000006
Network & Internet 0x00000003
Other Control Panel Options 0x00000000
Performance & Maintenance 0x00000005
Printers & Other Hardware 0x00000002
Security Center 0x00000010
Sounds, Speech & Audio 0x00000004
User Accounts 0x00000009

Monday, September 14, 2009

How to do a custom installation of Windows 7

This editorial, with screenshots, shows you how to install Windows 7 either from within your current version of Windows or by booting the Windows 7 installation DVD. If you're new to Win7, check it out: Click Here

How to add Quick Launch to Windows 7

1. First, open Explorer and go to Tools | Folder Options | View tab. Scroll down and make sure the option to Show hidden files, folders and drives is selected.
2. Now right click an empty space on the taskbar and select Toolbars | New Toolbar
3. Browse to this folder: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer (Note that AppData is a hidden folder and you won’t see it in the folder if you don’t have Explorer set to show hidden files, folders and drives.
4. Highlight the Quick Launch folder and click the Select Folder button.

This adds a Quick Launch toolbar to the Windows 7 taskbar. Unlock the taskbar if you haven’t already (right click and uncheck Lock the Taskbar). Now you can drag it to make it the size you want, and you can drag additional programs to it.

To get rid of the Title and Text, right click the Quick Launch toolbar and uncheck Show Text and Show Title. If you want the icons bigger, select View and Large Icons.

The advantage to having the Quick Launch bar back is that you can put the programs there that you use less often (but still want them one click away) and use small icons, giving you much more space than if you pinned all of them to the main taskbar.