Center the icons of running applications in the task bar(Windows Vista, 7)

               Windows places the icons of started applications in the task bar just to the right of the ‘Start’ button. You would like to place the shortcuts in the middle for quicker access.
               Windows cannot really display the icons of applications in the center of the taskbar. However, if you tweak it a little bit, you will get what you want through another way. You will need a new folder which you can place anywhere on your hard drive using Windows Explorer. For this, click with the right mouse button in any empty space on the right side of your screen and select ‘New | Folder’. Overwrite the name suggested by Windows with a suitable name like ‘Task bar icons’. In this folder, save links to all the programs which you want to access through the taskbar in the future. Then, click with the right mouse button on a free space on the taskbar and deactivate the option ‘Lock taskbar’ if necessary. After this, again open the context menu of the task bar. However, this time select the menu command ‘Toolbars | New toolbar’, new toolbar with the links you had saved in the folder earlier. Take the mouse pointer to the left edge of the toolbar. As soon as it changes shape, press the mouse button and keep it pressed. Drag the toolbar toward the left until it shows the icons in the center. Release the left mouse button.
                If you find the title and the description in the new toolbar to be irritating, you can remove it by clicking on empty space in the toolbar and in the context menu remove the ticks before the options ‘Show title’ and ‘Show text’. Finally, activate the option ‘Lock taskbar’ that you had deactivated earlier by ticking the corresponding entry in the context menu. The icons centered in this manner work like regular links. If you click with the right mouse button in Windows 7, you will see just the normal context menu and not a jump list.

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Access file properties without context menu(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              In order to see the properties of a folder or a file, you have to first rightclick with the mouse on the symbol and open the context command ‘Properties’. You want to see the information in a quicker way.
              How to get the information you want faster: Select the entry or the icon of the desired file or folder. Then, press the key combination [Alt]+[Enter]. Thereafter, Windows opens the dialogue ‘Properties’, without you having to go through the context menu of the file. If you prefer to work with the mouse, you can still avoid using the context menu by keeping the [Alt] key pressed while you double click on the icon of a file or folder.

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Hide user names while logging in to Windows(Windows 7)

               Windows shows all the user accounts on the welcome screen and in this way gives away the names of the users even to unknown and curious third parties. You want to prevent that from happening.

               In order to prevent unauthorized persons from having to guess just your password, click on ‘Start’ and type ‘regedit’ under ‘Programs’. Windows shows the results of the search directly in the Start menu. Double click under ‘Programs’ on ‘regedit.exe’ to start the registration editor. If you are working under an account without the administrator rights, you will have to first get them. For this, click with the right mouse button on ‘regedit.exe’ and in the context menu select ‘Run as administrator’.
               Navigate in the tree structure on the left side of the application to the key ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System’. Now, on the right side, you will find the value ‘dontdisplaylastusername’ among others. Open this with a double click for editing and in the following dialogue box set its ‘Value’ to ‘1’. Confirm this entry with ‘OK’.
               From now on, you will have to enter the name for the user account in addition to the password on the welcome screen. In this way, you make it harder for unauthorized users to start your system since they would need to know or guess the name of the user account also besides the password.

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Include ‘Run’ in the Windows Start menu(Windows Vista, 7)

           The Start menu earlier had the command ‘Run’. You can start programs via ‘Programs/Search files’ or ‘Start search’, but you also want to execute commands directly.

           Right click ‘Start’ and select the ‘Properties’ command in the next context menu. Then click the ‘Modify’ button in the ‘Start menu’ tab in the ‘Properties of taskbar and start menu’ dialog. Then check the box against ‘Command: Run’ in the list from the ‘Customize’ dialog. Confirm this action with ‘OK’ and exit all dialog boxes with ‘OK’. Now you will again have the ‘Run’ command that you have come to like for direct access in the start menu.

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Open context menus instead of jump lists(Windows 7)

              The new jump lists with frequently used commands and recently opened files appears on right-clicking icons in the taskbar or the superbar.
              To open the traditional context menu, keep the [Shift] key pressed and right click. The familiar context menu will then appear with the ‘Restore’, ‘Move’, ‘Change size’, ‘Minimize’, ‘Maximize’ and ‘Close’ commands, instead of the new jump lists.
              Without using the [Shift] key, open the jump lists as usual and you will see the frequently used commands and last opened files.

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