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  • Windows 7 Tips

    Snappier Taskbar Thumbnail Previews by Disabling Animations

    SUMMARY: Prevent Windows 7 from animating the taskbar thumbnail previews. This will also disable other Start Menu and Taskbar animations.

    Depending on your configuration, when you hover your mouse pointer over active icons in Windows 7’s Taskbar, thumbnail previews of folders / applications appear, and they do so with animation. For various reasons such as computer speed, graphics card speed, or personal preference, you might rather have these previews display quicker without the animation “eye candy”.

    1. Click the “Start” button, selecting “Control Panel“.
    2. If you are using an expanded Control Panel, select “System” from the pop-up menu.
    Otherwise when the “Control Panel” window appears, click “System and Security“, then “System“.
    3. In the left pane, select “Advanced system settings“.
    4. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, click “Yes“.
    5. The “System Properties” multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Click the “Advanced” tab.
    6. Underneath “Performance“, click the “Settings” button.
    7. The “Performance Options” multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Make sure the “Visual Effects” tab is selected.
    8. Click the “Custom” radio button if it is not already selected, then uncheck “Animations in the taskbar and Start Menu“.
    9. Click “OK” on the dialog boxes to close them.

     

  • Tune Up Windows 7

    Change Process Priorities to Tune Your System
    SUMMARY: Determine which processes should get the most attention in your Windows 7 system.

     

    Is a particular program or process running too slow on your Windows 7 system? If another program or process is less essential yet taking too much of your CPU time, you can lower its priority and optionally raise the priority of the more essential process.

    1. Right-click on an empty area of the Windows 7 Taskbar.
    2. Select “Start Task Manager“.
    (Or skip steps 1 and 2 and just press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager.)
    3. The multi-tabbed “Windows Task Manager” should appear. Make sure the “Applications” tab is selected.
    4. If the process you need to change is linked to an application, right-click it and choose “Go to Process” from the pop-up menu that appears.
    5. Otherwise, click the “Processes tab” to find a process you need to change.
    6. Right-click a process and select “Set Priority“. If you cannot find the process that needs its priority changed, click the “Show processes from all users” button. You may have to confirm your action via User Account Control.
    7. From here you can select from the following possible priorities (highest to lowest):
    * Realtime
    * High
    * Above Normal
    * Normal
    * Below Normal
    * Low
    8. If you are sure you want to change the process priority, click the “Change priority” button when prompted.

     

  • Windows 7 Tips

    Launch a Folder or All Folders as a Separate Process
    SUMMARY: To prevent a crash in one Explorer folder from taking down other folders and the Desktop, open folders in a separate process in Windows 7.

    Normally when you open folders in Windows 7 via Windows Explorer, the folders are all opened in the same explorer.exe process. While this reduces memory usage, if one folder causes a crash or if Explorer hangs and you have to manually kill the process, all folders will crash and close. Plus, you may lose your desktop icons and the Taskbar. Though this should not normally occur, using many context-menu extensions, memory or hard drive problems, and other issues may cause crashes, and they may occur seemingly-randomly.
    Having this all close simultaneously can be a nuisance. Thus you can open folders in a new explorer.exe process on a case-by-case basis (useful if opening a particular folder always causes a crash), or force all folders to open as a new process.

    Case-by-case
    Hold down the Shift key. Right-click a folder and select “Open in new process“.
    For all newly opened folders
    1. Click the “Start” button, type folder options and click the “Folder Options” link that appears.
    2. When the “Folder Options” multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the “View” tab.
    3. Underneath “Advanced settings“, scroll down and check “Launch folder windows in a separate process“.
    4. Click “OK” to close the dialog box.

     

  • Windows 7 Tips

    Display Downloads on Start Menu
    SUMMARY: Easily access website downloads from the Windows 7 Start Menu.

    By default, when you download applications and most other files on a Windows 7 machine using Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, these files are placed in your “Downloads” directory. This is located at c:\users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Downloads.
    If desired, you can make downloads easier to access by placing a link to this folder directly from your Start Menu. Or, allow the Start Menu to open up to a menu showing each download, allowing you to access or delete them as desired.

    1. Right-click an empty area of the taskbar and choose “Properties“.
    2. The “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties” multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Click the “Start Menu” tab.
    3. Click the “Customize” button.
    4. The “Customize Start Menu” dialog box appears. Underneath “Downloads” click the “Display as a link” or “Display as a menu” radio button.
    5. Click “OK” on the dialog boxes to close them.

     

  • Windows 7 Tips – Administrative Tools

    Add Administrative Tools to Start Menu
    SUMMARY: Make Windows 7 Administrative Tools such as the Event Viewer, Services, and Task Scheduler easier to access from Windows 7‘s Start Menu.

    Windows 7 comes built-in with many Administrative Tools to start and stop system services, manage scheduled tasks, adjust firewall settings, manage hard drive partitions, and more. By default, unless you type the name of a tool or Administrative Tools directly into the Start Menu, the main way to access these tools is via a link in the “System and Security” section of the Control Panel.
    If you frequently access these tools, you might find it easier to add a link to them via the “All Programs” menu of the Start Menu. Or, for even easier access, provide a link directly from the right side of the Start Menu.

    1. Right-click an empty area of the Windows 7 Taskbar and choose “Properties“.
    2. The “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties” multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Click the “Start Menu” tab.
    3. Click the “Customize” button.
    4. The “Customize Start Menu” dialog box appears. Scroll down to “System administrative tools” and choose from the following radio buttons:

    • Display on the All Programs menu
    • Display on the All Programs menu and the Start menu
    • Don’t display this item (default)
    5. Click “OK” on the dialog boxes to close them.

      

  • Windows 7 Tips

    Calculate Fuel Economy

    SUMMARY: Calculate fuel economy, distance, and fuel used in gallons or liters in Windows 7.

    For accounting purposes, it may be necessary to calculate a vehicle’s true fuel economy based on its distance and fuel used. Or, you may need to calculate a vehicle’s expected versus actual fuel usage based on the distance and manufacturer quoted fuel economy. To perform these calculations in gallons and liters (litres) you do not need to visit websites or download additional software – just use the Windows 7 calculator.

    1. Open the Calculator – click the Start button, select “All Programs“, “Accessories“, then “Calculator“.
    2. The Windows Calculator appears. Select “View“, then “Worksheets“, then one of the two worksheets to perform calculations involving miles or liters (litres):
    * Fuel economy (mpg)
    * Fuel economy (L/100 km)

    3. A fuel economy worksheet pane will appear to the right of the main calculator. From here you can perform three types of calculations – click the pull-down underneath “Select the value you want to calculate” to choose:
    * Distance
    * Fuel economy
    * Fuel used

     

    4. Underneath, enter the needed values that will depend on the type of calculation.
    5. Click “Calculate” to display the result. You can select “Edit” – “Copy” to copy the result to the calculator, a Notepad file, or other document.
    For example, if you perform a “Fuel economy (mpg”) calculation, entering in 225 miles and 11 gallons used, the result would be 20.45454545454545.

      

  • Managing Action center : Windows 7

                        In Windows 7 it can get annoying seeing the Action Center icon pop up notifications every time you turn on your computer.  Today we will look at changing the messages that it displays and even completely disabling it.
    New in Windows 7 is the Action Center which is an activity center that allows you to control system notifications.  This is definitely an improvement to previous versions so you can control the amount of annoying messages the OS pops up from the taskbar.  To get to Action Center select it from Control Panel or simply type “action center” (no quotes) into the search box in the Start Menu.


    By default the Action Center notification icon will be displayed in the taskbar and display messages about security and maintenance settings.

    While in Action Center you can view which settings are enabled or not and change them by clicking the different hyperlinks.

    Click on Change Action Center settings to turn messages on or off.

    If you are an experienced user and don’t care to see the Action Center icon in the taskbar at all, here is how we disable it.  Click on Start and go to Control Panel.

    Now in Control Panel select All Control Panel Items and then click on System Icons.

    The Turn system icons on or off window will open and here you change Action Center to Off.  Notice you can also turn other system icons on or off as well.

    Also if you click on Customize notification icons in the screen above you can select the behavior of other tray notifications individually.

    If you are new to computers or Windows 7 you might not want to disable the Action Center entirely until you get a better feel for it.  With these tips you can definitely control the amount of notifications that pop up.

  • Windows 7 Tips

    Stop Highlighting Newly Installed Programs
    SUMMARY: The Windows 7 Start Menu highlights programs recently installed – learn how to disable this behavior.

    As with earlier versions of Windows, the Windows 7 Start Menu highlights the names of newly-installed software. This way it makes it easier to find these applications, assuming that if you install an application you plan on using it soon.
    If you wish to disable this behavior, do the following:

    1. Right-click an empty area of the taskbar and choose “Properties“.
    2. The “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties” multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Click the “Start Menu” tab.
    3. Click the “Customize” button.
    4. The “Customize Start Menu” dialog box appears. Scroll down and uncheck “Highlight newly installed programs“.
    5. Click “OK” on the dialog boxes to close them.

     

  • Features of Windows 7

    Mortgage Calculations

    SUMMARY: Calculate the monthly payment, down payment, purchase price, or years of a mortgage with Windows 7.

    Even in uncertain economic times, some people are still able to purchase condos and houses. These usually require mortgages, and calculating the dollar amounts is a necessity. Instead of relying on web sites or third-party software, let Windows 7 ‘s calculator handle some of the needed tasks.

    1. Open the Calculator – click the Start button, select “All Programs“, “Accessories“, then “Calculator“.

    2. The Windows Calculator appears. Open the “Mortage Worksheets” pane by selecting “View” – “Worksheets” – “Mortgage“.

    3. The Mortgage Worksheets pane appears to the right. Underneath “Select the value you want to calculate“, click the pull-down and choose from the following:
    * Down payment
    * Monthly payment
    * Purchase price
    * Term (years)
    Underneath, enter the necessary information that will depend on the type of calculation desired. Then click the “Calculate” button.

    For example (see the below screenshot), to calculate the monthly payment for a $250,000 mortgage with a $75,000 down payment and a 30-year term at 5% interest, the calculator’s result would be $939.4378402712432 (rounded to $939.44).

    You can highlight the result with your mouse, then select “Edit” – “Copy” (or press Ctrl + C) to copy the resulting value. It can then be pasted into the main calculator pane, Notepad, a word processing document, etc.

     

  • Address Toolbar in Taskbar

    Access Web Sites or Folders via Taskbar with an Address Toolbar
    SUMMARY: Visit a web site or navigate to a folder via the Windows 7 Taskbar by adding a Toolbar.
    In Windows 7, you can click the Start button and type in the name of a web address or folder to open up your web browser or Explorer. However, if you perform these tasks often you may want another way to do so.

     

    If you use a wide monitor or do not frequently have many icons on the taskbar, consider adding an “Address” Toolbar that provides an alternate means of navigating to web sites or folders. Just type in the name of your desired destination and press the Enter key.
    1. Right-click an empty area of the Taskbar.
    2. Select “Toolbars” – “Address“.