Windows 7 Tips

Window Management

Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;

Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes.

Globalization

There are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory. Simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country. Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country.

Rearranging the Furniture

The icons in the new taskbar aren’t fixed in-place. You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc.

Quick Launch Toolbar

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar

In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.

Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

Peeking at the Desktop

Just press Win+Space

Specialized Windows Switching

 Another feature that power users will love is the ability to do a kind of “Alt+Tab” switching across windows that belong to just one application.

Focus to Taskbar

Press Win+T to move the focus to the taskbar. Once you’re there, you can use the arrow keys to select a particular window or group and then hit Enter to launch or activate it.

Explorer from “My Computer”

 To change the default starting directory for Windows Explorer so that it opens at the Computer node, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
 %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} 

If you want the change to affect the icon on the taskbar, you’ll need to unpin and repin it to the taskbar so that the new shortcut takes affect. It’s worth noting that Win+E will continue to display the documents library as the default view.

Top Hidden Features in Windows 7

 Windows 7 has its own hidden treasures. And you can access all of those listed here without downloading anything extra. Read on for handy and largely undocumented items in Windows 7 that you probably weren’t aware of..

Ø   God Mode

   Windows 7’s God Mode is indeed omnipresent. It conveniently puts hundreds of settings from all around the operating system all in

one place. 

     To turn on God Mode, create a new folder on your desktop, or anywhere you’d like, and name it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

     The resulting folder will contain 270 items, representing virtually every configurable option in Windows 7.

Ø   Enhanced Calculator

  Windows 7’s calculator has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, which you’ll find under the View menu. It can do myriad unit conversions (temperature, weight, area), and even mortgage

payment or car mileage calculations. It maintains a history of your previous calculations as long as the program is open.

Ø   WordPad's File Support

  The built-in WordPad word processor in Vista is of limited usefulness because it only supports RTF (Rich Text Format) and plain text (TXT) files. In Windows 7, on the other hand,  WordPad isn’t quite as restricted. Although Windows 7’s WordPad still doesn’t work with .doc files from Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier versions, it can open and save ODT (Open Document Text) files used by the free OpenOffice.org word processor as well as .docx files created in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010. Although WordPad can’t understand all the complex formatting (it will warn you of this upon opening or saving a file), it will still let you read the documents without having the native programs installed.

Ø   Reliability Monitor

  When your system is acting flaky and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, the Reliability Monitor may help. Search for “reliability” from the Start menu, and run View Reliability History. You’ll get a graph of your system’s “stability index” over a period of days and weeks (rated on a scale of 1 to 10). 

  It displays which programs, Windows components, or miscellaneous items crashed on a given day, helping you identify problem items.

Ø   Problem Steps Recorder

When you need outside PC help, it’s much better to let them see for themselves what’s happening on your system. But if remote access isn’t an option, the Problem Steps Recorder may be the next best thing.

Search for and run psr from the Start menu. Click Start Record, and the utility will record your activities through a series of screen shots, automatically including captions that show exactly where you clicked. You can also use the Add Comment button to highlight specific areas of the screen and insert custom annotations. When you stop recording, everything will be stitched together and saved as a Web browser-compatible MHTML (MIME HTML) file, conveniently pre-ZIPped and ready for e-mailing to your geek of choice.

Ø   Power Efficiency Report

  If your Windows 7 laptop isn’t getting the battery life you expect, or it experiences power-related issues, such as the inability to go into standby or hibernate mode, the problem usually lies with incorrectly configured power-management settings. Windows 7’s Power Efficiency Report can help you sniff out potential problems. 

  Type search for CMD from the Start menu, run it as an administrator (right-click cmd.exe on the menu and choose Run as administrator).

  From the command prompt, type powercfg -ENERGY (include the space) to scan your system, and after about a minute, you’ll find a file called energy-report.html in your \windows\system32 folder.

  Copy the report to another location and open it (you’ll get a file-not-found error if you try to open it from the system32 folder) for detailed information about what system devices or settings are throwing a monkey wrench into your power management.

Ø   Pin Folders To Taskbar

  You can right-click your favorite programs and pin them to the Windows 7 Taskbar for easy access. There’s no such option for folders, but you can still keep them close at hand on the Taskbar. Rightclick any folder, drag it to an empty space on the Taskbar (or to the Windows Explorer button), and let go when Pin to Windows Explorer appears. Now when you right-click the Windows Explorer button, your folders will be accessible via the Jump List.

Ø   Wipe Free Disk Space

  When you delete files or folders in Windows, they’re not actually erased; the space they took up is simply marked as “available for use,” which allows the files to be recoverable until they’re overwritten with new data. There is a utility built into Windows (even XP Pro and vista) that will overwrite all the free space on a hard drive, insuring any files you’ve deleted stay dead. 

  Launch a command prompt and type cipher /w:X (X is the letter of the drive or partition you want to wipe). be patient; the process can take a long time if you have a lot of free space.