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Category: windows support

  • Adding My Computer to Toolbar: Windows 7




                             In this article we are going to learn how to add MY computer location has new tool bar in Windows 7. 

    you like to have the quickest access possible to folders on my desktop, which usually means putting something onto the taskbar if possible. You can add the Computer menu as a folder on the taskbar for the easiest access to your drives. You could also use this tip for any folder you want.

    To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.

    Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we’ll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.

    Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives.


    I always add the Desktop to the toolbar as well.


  • Changing Library icon: Windows 7



                 In this article we are going to learn how to change your windows 7 library icons with easiest way possible. This article gives you steps to change library icons and these steps are easy and simple to perform on our own.


    Have you ever wanted to swap out the Windows default icons with something else? The new Windows 7 library icons can be changed with a hack to a text file, but there’s an easier way. We’ll explain both.
    Not sure what we’re talking about? Open up Windows Explorer, and check out the Libraries.

    For today’s lesson, we’ll teach you how to change those icons with something else. (It’ll also work for your own custom Libraries).
    Change Library Icons the Easy Way
    To change the icons out the easy way, we’ll use a tiny tool called Library Icon Changer from a user over at deviantART. Thanks to Pratik for pointing us towards this tool!
    Once you’ve opened up the tool, you’ll be presented with list of icons and libraries… just click on the Library on the right-hand side, and then choose the icon on the left, and click “Select Icon from dll”. You can also use the Select new Icon from file instead, if you don’t want to use a default Windows icon.

    Note that if you want to restore the icon to default, you have to click on the Library first on the right-hand side, and then click the Restore default icon button.
    Another note is that if you want to change out the DLL, you’ll need to select it, and then hit the Enter key.

    Once you’ve swapped out your icon, it usually shows up right away, or you can Refresh with F5 (though logging off or restarting explorer.exe might be required).


    Change Libraries the Manual Way
    Don’t feel like messing with a piece of software from some person somewhere? You can make these changes manually with nothing more than Notepad. Just paste the following into the start menu search box, or Windows Explorer location bar:
        ” %appdata%\microsoft\windows\libraries “
    Then drag one of the icons from Windows Explorer over to a Notepad window to open up the file.

    Inside the file, you’ll see an iconReference line, or if you don’t see it, you’ll want to add one like so:
        C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll,301
    The data in the middle is the path, either to the icon (.ico) file, or if you are referencing a DLL file, you’ll need to add the comma and number position of the icon in the file.

    And now you’ve learned how to swap out the icons. Awesome, eh? Alright, well it’s not that awesome. But still fun geeky information to have.

  • Disabling system tray: Windows 7

                 In this article we are going to see how to disable the system tray completely  If you are the type of person that never uses any applications in the system tray, you might be interested in this registry tweak to turn it off entirely. I can’t imagine using my own system this way, but we’re all about providing information.


    Note: that you could also use this in reverse… if your system tray is disabled and you don’t know why, you should check this registry key.

    You can even remove the clock if you’d like, by right-clicking on the taskbar and choosing Properties. It’s on the Notification Area tab.
    Manual Registry tweak:
    Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key (Create if it doesn’t exist):
        “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer”

    Create a new 32-bit DWORD value in the right hand pane with these values:
        * Name: NoTrayItemsDisplay
        * Value: 1
    You will have to logoff and back on for this to take effect. To remove the hack, just delete the key, or change the value to 0.
    Note that disabling the system tray doesn’t actually prevent system tray apps from running, it just hides them. You should still disable any applications that aren’t needed.
    Update: Note that the same registry key may exist in more than one location, so if you are trying to reverse this hack, you should search the registry for NoTrayItemsDisplay.
    Note that this tip should work in all versions of Windows like windows XP and Windows 7 or vista.

  • 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.

  • Media center Live TV setup: Windows 7

    If you’re moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, one of the new features you might be interested in is Media Center. In this article we’ll walk through the process of setting up Live TV 

    Unless you happened to be using Windows XP Media Center Edition or Vista and are new to Windows 7, Media Center is probably completely new to you. Let’s take a look at setting it up for the Live TV
    Note: Windows Media Center is only available in Windows Home Premium and above.
    Windows 7 Media Center Live TV Setup: 
    Click on the Start Menu and click on Windows Media Center.

    Windows Media Center will launch…click on the Continue button.

    On the Get Started screen you can select Learn More, Custom setup, or Express. The quickest way to get rolling is to click Express. You can start with Custom setup, but it will take longer, and you want to get started right away. Also, you can change customizations at any time after you have it up and running. 


    Setup Live TV
    If you do have a TV tuner card, another thing you’ll want to setup right away is live TV. Make sure you’re antenna, cable, or satellite cable is connected to the card.From the main menu under TV scroll over to Live TV Setup.

    Verify the Region for your local TV service is correct.

    Enter in your zip code to get the Program Guide for your area.

    Agree to the Program Guide Terms of Service…

    Then you’ll need to agree to the EULA for Microsoft PlayReady.


    Wait while the Program Guide is downloaded and PlayReady is installed.

    After everything is setup you’ll be able to navigate through the Guide to view you’re favorite shows. If you like to use WMC to mainly watch Live TV, a cool trick is automatically starting Media Center in Live TV mode.

  • Media center sleep timer: Windows 7

      
                         Do you make it a habit of falling asleep at night while watching Windows Media Center? we are going to take a look at the Media center 7 Sleep Timer for Windows 7 Media Center. This simple little plugin allows you to schedule an automatic shutdown time in Media Center.

    Note: At this point MC7 Sleep Timer doesn’t work with extenders. If you’re using ClamAV or Panda it may detect this plugin as a virus, we’ve tested it and this is a false positive for these two antivirus apps.
    Installation and Usage


    After the installation is finished, you will find MC7 Sleep Timer located in the Media Center Extras Library. Click on the tile to open the timer and configure your settings.

    The Media Center  Sleep Timer will open in full screen mode. You can choose to shutdown the PC after 30 or 60 minutes, create a custom length shutdown timer at any 5 minute interval, or select the exact time you want the PC to shutdown.  After setting your PC to shutdown, you’ll get an audio confirmation.

    To set a custom timer length, scroll to the “Custom timer” option and click right or left on your Media Center remote or, the right or left arrow keys, to choose how many minutes before shutdown.

    To schedule a shutdown for a certain time, browse to the “Shutdown at time” button, and scroll right or left with the arrow keys on the keyboard or remote. When you’ve chosen your time, hit “Enter” on the keyboard or “OK” on the remote.
    Clicking the “Monitor Off” button will turn off only the monitor and “Cancel Timer” will cancel your shutdown request.



  • Conhost.exe In windows 7

    What is conhost.exe and Why Is It Running?

    You might be wondering what is this process and why is it running in windows 7?

    Well, we have an answer.

    What Is It?

    The conhost.exe process fixes a fundamental problem in the way previous versions of Windows handled console windows, which broke drag & drop in Vista.

    It’s a completely legitimate executable as long as it’s running from the system32 folder, and is signed by Microsoft. Scanning your computer for viruses is never a bad idea, though. 

    Why Do I Need It?

    There was a problem with the way the console process works on previous versions of Windows—they are all hosted under the csrss.exe (Client Server Runtime Process) service. This process runs as a system privileged account.

    Checking out in Process Explorer under Windows 7 shows that the conhost.exe process is running underneath the csrss.exe process.

    The conhost.exe process sitting in the middle between CSRSS and cmd.exe allows Windows 7 to fix both of the problems in previous versions of Windows not only do the scrollbars draw correctly, but you can actually drag and drop a file from Explorer straight into the command prompt

    If you really want to be sure, check out the file properties for the conhost.exe executable, and you’ll see that the description says Console Window Host

    If you look at the details of the process from within Process Explorer, you’ll notice that the ComSpec is set to cmd.exe, a clear indication that it’s hosting the command prompt. 

  • Cascade Multiple Windows in Windows 7

                           If you’ve got loads of windows open, and would like to tile or cascade just a couple of those windows, it’s a pain to minimize them, then unminimize the windows you want to tile, and then choose Tile from the taskbar context menu… but there’s a better way!

    Back in the Windows XP and Vista days, you could just Ctrl-Click on multiple taskbar buttons, and then select “Show Windows Side by Side” or one of the other options to tile just those windows—and it worked with as many windows as you felt like using.

    In Windows 7, this ability was removed in favor of Aero Snap—just drag a window to the side of the screen, and it’ll snap to fill half of the screen. Without a doubt, one of the great features in Windows 7… but what about tiling vertically? Or more than two windows?

    So what you can do instead is simply open up Task Manager via any of a number of routes, my personal favorite being Ctrl+Shift+Esc—and then hold down the Ctrl button while you select multiple applications in the list.


    Right-click on one of the selected windows in the list, and then you can choose to Tile Horizontally, vertically, cascade, etc. That’s it!

  • Windows 7: Quick Network connections list

                         One of the annoyances in Windows 7 or Vista is that you can’t immediately open the Network Connections list to see the list of adapters like you could in Windows XP.

    In Windows XP, you could right-click any network connection and select “Open Network Connections”, but in Windows 7, the only option you have is to open the Network and Sharing Center via the same right-click menu.


    To immediately open the connection list, you can just type ncpa.cpl into the Start menu search box:


    And up pops the network connection list just like I’m used to:



    You can also create a shortcut somewhere to the full file path if you want even easier access.


    Just use C:\windows\system32\ncpa.cpl as the location of the shortcut.

  • Extend Windows 7 Trail Period

    Did you know that you can install Windows 7 without any license key and use it for 30 days? What you might not know is that you can also extend that trial mode to 120 days, without requiring a key.

    The basic way this works is that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll need to run a small command and reboot your computer, at which point you’ll have 30 more days, up to a maximum of 120 days. This trick should work regardless of where you got your copy of Windows 7 from.


    Extending the Trial By 30 Days

    The first thing you’ll want to do is check how many days are left in your trial period. You can do this by right-clicking Computer and choosing Properties

    At the bottom of this window you’ll see how many days are left to activate
    Now to actually perform the hack that will extend the trial mode, you’ll want to find Command Prompt in the start menu (or search for it), and then right-click on it and choose Run as administrator. (very important)

    Next you’ll simply type in this command:

    Within a few seconds you’ll normally see this dialog show up, saying that the command has completed successfully, at which point you’ll want to reboot.

    Checking the system properties again shows that now you have 30 days left to activate.

    You’d normally want to do this near the end, probably on the last day before activation. I’m pretty sure that you can even perform this trick after the 30-day trial expires.