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.
Want to quickly access the currently logged in user's account properties? In Windows Vista (or XP), open the Start menu, and click on your account's picture at the top right hand (or left hand) corner. The account properties window opens up with the properties (log in picture option) of the currently logged in user.
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!
Fast! That's the first word that comes to mind after using Windows 7 for just a few minutes. The OS feels snappy, and things are noticeably quicker. The user interface also seems somewhat, um, smoother.
After trying the whole of yesterday to download the public beta of the latest version of Windows (a first for Microsoft), I finally managed to see something other than the "Due to high volume, blah blah blah" excuse for the absence of the all-important download link at night. And it made sense for me in a weird way too, since my broadband service provider had some server trouble yesterday, and connections were crawling in the afternoon (4 or 5 kB/sec); so, there was no way initiating a download in the afternoon would have been of much use. In contrast, the download kicked off at nearly 220 kB/sec in the night! I started the download and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the download was done, and that my faithful Opera had maintained an average speed of 213 kB/sec. Not bad at all!
I set about installing Win 7 after duly burning the huge ISO to a DVD (yes, the ISO is about 2.5 GB). Installation was relatively painless, and after the initial questions, went about doing its job without bothering me (I took the time to finish my housekeeping chores). After about half an hour or so (I didn't really notice the clock), it was done. One small glitch though: the DVD didn't eject after the installation was complete, and so, had I not been there, another installation would have started.
Setup wasn't finished entirely, however; the initial boot took some time "setting up the computer for the first time" routine that we're all so used to now. To its credit, however, it didn't ask me too many questions, and the questions that it did ask were relevant to me. Like, what did I want the user name to be, which network did I want to connect to, and so on. I was happy to notice that it had managed to install all the necessary device drivers without my intervention at all. All in all, a tremendous improvement from the days of that trusty software steed, Windows XP.
I went about installing my usual bevy of programs and utilities, Opera being the first in the list, of course. I did notice one peculiar thing though: I installed Startup Monitor (a program that runs in the background and alerts you when some program is trying to put itself in the list of programs that Windows starts after a reboot), and yet, it failed to notify me when Adobe installed its user rights-trampling "Acrobat speedup" to run after reboot (it was a Registry entry). Hmmm, curious, and seems to indicate that something in the startup routine has changed in Win 7.
This one blew away Win XP. I'm talking about USB device recognition. It seemed to me that no sooner had I popped in my Flash drive than Windows had installed the drivers for it, and the device was available to me in, like, two seconds! It's all the more amazing when you consider that a. it was a fresh Windows installation and, b. this was the very first USB device that I'd popped into Win 7. Awesome, and this is the right way to go! Note that I haven't transferred anything to and from the USB drive yet, and my future posts would cover it.
One more thing: programs seem to start noticeably faster. There are these icons on the task bar that have replaced the Quick Launch paradigm. In fact, confirming this view is the absence of Quick Launch in the Toolbars menu in the task bar's context menu. Clicking on the Windows Explorer icon opened up Explorer almost instantaneously. Likewise for other programs. Score!
That's it for now, folks. I'll start commenting on the other improvements that I can notice. All without scientific testing, of course :-)
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.
