Here’s a question for you dare-devil Windows 7 users: how do you minimise all the windows except the one you want, and un-maximise (or Restore, see also the previous post) the one you want, all with just one mouse click/gesture? No?
Just shake it! Yes, grab the title bar the window, and give it a good shake. Try it!
See this YouTube video for even more Windows 7 tips.
If you’re using Windows 7 (the release candidate or beta) like I am, then here are a few handy tips:
If you're like most Windows users, you have a document on your computer called My Documents that's usually located under C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\ (or C:\Users, if you are a Vista user - in either case, I'm assuming that your default Windows partition is C:\). Long-time Windows users might have spotted this ages ago. What is less apparent, however, is the fact that you can have control over where "My Documents" is physically located on your hard disk, not only to the disk partition where you'd like it to be, but right down to the exact folder under which you want it. But first, an important consideration: why would you want to change this?
Plenty of reasons, but one of the most important ones is protection of data by moving it away from the Windows partition. The Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is not so very uncommon (see this link if you don't believe me), and many a user has gnashed his teeth in anger at having to reinstall Windows to overcome many a mysterious problem that will prove to be intractable. And, as you might know from a previous unfortunate experience, when you reinstall Windows, many system folders, like your desktop, the My Documents folder, and others, get overwritten, munching away your precious files and folders.
Besides this, there are other reasons why you might want to do this. In versions of Windows prior to Vista, you cannot resize your partitions without using specialised partition manager programs. This may mean that you might run out of disk space on your Windows partition, with data loss as a potential risk in the case of some unforeseen failure. Degraded performance would be another reason: if your data is located on the Windows partition, chances are that file fragmentation is heavy, increasing the seek / access times for certain files. So, any which way you look at it, moving your personal data to a different partition is a pretty useful idea.
Before you start, ensure that you have a disk partition that's big enough to hold your current data, and any future additions. A simple rule of thumb is to determine the current size your data folder, and ensure that the partition that should now hold your data be twice as big.
Open Windows Explorer by pressing Win+E. Navigate to the partition that you have decided should contain your data files. Create a new folder, call it something like "<your name>'s documents" or something similar. Now, open the Start Menu, right-click the "My Documents" menu option, and select Properties. Move to the "Location" tab, and click the "Move" button. Navigate to the folder created in the first step above and click the "Select folder" button. Now, click "Ok" on the Properties dialog that you opened earlier, and click "Yes" on the confirmation dialog. Once Windows copies all the files and folders (may take a lot of time depending on how much data you have stored), you're done. You can verify this by checking whether your folders and files are visible under the new folder you created in Windows Explorer. Another way to check this would be to right-click on "My Documents", selecting Properties, and seeing the target folder under the "Location" tab - it should point to your new folder.
Congratulations, you just took the first step towards data protection from a corrupt Windows installation!
If you're not a Windows user (some say "sufferer" is more apt), chances are that you may find the rest of this post irrelevant to you. However, for deriving sheer sadistic pleasure, you may wish to read on. On the other hand, long-time Windows users who would like to make their life a wee bit easier may find this tip a useful one.
Do you find that you constantly keep accessing programs residing on the System Tray? If so, you might have noticed that some of the programs that you like to access often are hidden by Windows (by default; constant tinkerers with Windows settings who have long since nailed this might get an inkling of what I'm about to spout in all my wisdom, so I say to them, "Sssshhh; this post is not meant for you people either, so go away and read some other posts").
A simple solution to make those hidden progams visible is at hand: right-click an empty area on the Taskbar, and select Properties. The "Hide inactive icons" option would be checked by default, so uncheck it. That's it! You will now see all of your system tray icons at once instead of having to click on the left- or right-pointing arrows alternately.
Do you use GMail? What? You've never heard of it? Don't give me any more lame excuses to not do so, go on over to http://mail.google.com, and create your own account now. I mean, NOW!
For those of you veteran GMail users, the benefits of this webmail service are quite obvious: it's fast, it's got terrific spam filters (I'd swear it's the best I've ever seen in a webmail service), the conversation view of emails is an example of superb innovation that the Google guys have become known for and, this tops the list, you can even use the service to read and compose emails when you're offline (though you have to go online again to send mail)! Yes, Google's got the offline Gears too, so all you have to do is click on the link (if you use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox), and install Google Gears (if you use the first-named of the browsers, you don't need to: it comes pre-installed).
Then, head on over to this excellent tutorial to learn how to create your own Labels. This new feature now comes with colour-coding too, so if you've set up filters and labels, you can tell at a glance whether your new emails require your immediate attention. That's what I call helpful.
Have you often wondered why you couldn't select a bunch of files / folders and then send them to a different destination with just a click or two? I have, and have never failed to find a registry trick that can do it, whatever version of Windows I was on. On Windows 95 through 2000, there was PowerToys, and on Windows XP and Vista, there is an equivalent technique which is, alas, not as user-friendly. Nevertheless, here it is (you may also click on the Related Article link at the bottom of this post, or on the title above).
It is tweaks like these that make Windows sometimes indispensable for the average user. Of course, Unix / Linux geeks have always enjoyed the ability to do much, much more with a few lines of well-written shell scripts - that is more a testimony to the maturity of those Operating Systems, in my humble opinion, than to any inadequacy of Windows.
Anyway, have fun with the registry tweak!
You might have noticed that the channel bundles offered by direct to home TV service providers are confusing, to say the least. To make things a little less hazy (for myself), I sat down to arrange their channel subscription packs into neat columns so that a side-by-side comparison is possible. Here's the result. Hope you find it useful.
Since a few of my friends seek my help often on PC-related matters, I thought it'd be a good idea to post tips and how-tos once in a while. This is the first of such posts.
On Windows XP and Vista, partition management is a pretty simple task, thanks to Microsoft's partitioning tools that are, I should say, getting better and better. That, however, doesn't mean that they have become good enough to obviate third-party partitioning software: tools like Acronis Partition Manager, Paragon Partition Manager, and others go deep where Windows' tool only scratches the surface, but that's a topic for another day. In this post, I'll tell you how to use the built-in Windows partition manager to get some basic partitioning tasks done.
First off, here's a list of what you can't do on Windows XP using the built-in tool:
What it does allow you to do are:
I think that there are quite a few good articles that explain clearly how to go about these tasks, and I don't think I have much more value to add there. However, there is one thing that I'd like to point out to make life simpler. That is, instead of opening the Disk Management Console through the usual "My Computer->Manage->Disk Management" or "Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management", you could simply go to Start->Run (WinKey + R on any Windows from Win2k onwards) and type in "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotes).
Now that you're in the Disk Management Console, here's what you should do in Windows Vista if you want to resize a partition.
First off, make sure that you see the main disk. This is usually shown as Disk 0 on most PCs - including laptops - that boot from a hard disk (see Fig. 1 above). If you've got your PC from a vendor like Dell (yes!), HP (avoid them!!), IBM (now Lenovo), Acer (good, though low-end), among others, then it's likely that you have just one partition, though it's also equally likely that you have a "rescue" or "recovery" partition which you'll do well to leave alone if you don't know what you're doing. In my case, the main disk is "Disk 0".
Now, identify the main partition - this will usually be the biggest partition (see picture above), that is, the partition with the biggest size. In my case, the main partition is called "OS (C:)".Congratulations, you've just repartitioned your disk! With the free space you have now, you can follow the instructions in this Microsoft article to create a new volume and format it. Once done, your new partition is ready to use.
