Set up the start menu in such a way that you have everything at hand (Tips for WINDOWS WINDOWS XP,VISTA,7)

The shareware tool Start Menu 7 offers a good alternative to the standard start menu; this can be downloaded from startmenu7.com. 

                  According to the developers, Start Menu 7 runs on both XP and Vista in addition to Windows 7 as its name suggests. For installation, double-click on the downloaded file in Windows Explorer and follow the instructions given by the setup wizard. You have to have a user account with administrator rights during the process as the setup routine involves accessing important system files. Once the installation is complete start the Program using the command ‘Start I All programs I Start Menu 7 Start Menu 7’.

                Now, when you click on ‘Start’ you will not see the usual start menu provided by Windows, but instead, a

menu that has an extensive collection of links: It has a different visual effect and enables direct access to all the programs and files on your system in an alphabetically sorted sub-menu format, for instance ‘Programs’, ‘My Documents’ or ‘Computer’. In addition to this, the various entries use additional sorting and display tools. Thus, for instance ‘Program’ offers the structure known as ‘All programs’ as seen in the usual Windows Start menu and on the other hand, the ‘Program’ links can be found under headings such as ‘Quick start’ and ‘Autorun’. You can add your own menus and commands using the option ‘Add entries to the menu’.

              Click on ‘Options’ and ‘Configuration’ so as to complete the experience as per your own taste. Use the option ‘System integration’ and remove the tick in front of ‘Start the Start Menu 7 with Windows’ if you do not wish to activate the tool automatically at every system start. You can add more power management buttons in Start Menu 7 using the option ‘Buttons’; this is done to turn off the computer, to restart it, or to enable the use of power management commands in a time-controlled fashion. For this, click on the corresponding button in the Start menu, select the desired function in a menu, for instance ‘Turn off the computer’, and define the period for action in a simple and an intuitive dialog. Finally, click the ‘Start’ button to save the settings.

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Display DLL files with separate icon(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

               As a standard, all DLLs are given a single icon by the system. You would rather like to use a unique icon contained within each DLL file for display in the Explorer.
              With a small change in the registry, you can change the appearance of the standard icons. In order to change the DLL icons, type ‘regedit’ in the search field of the start menu or in the ‘Run’ dialogue and if necessary confirm the query of the user accounts manager with ‘Yes’ or ‘Continue’. Then, navigate to the key ‘HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\defaulticon’. On the right, the character string ‘Standard’ is defined which symbol is used by the Windows system for display. For editing this, double click on this entry. Change ‘Value’ to ‘%1’ and confirm with ‘OK’. Through this parameter, the particular file will itself be referred to for the icon. Then, close the registry and open Windows Explorer.
               In the future, you will immediately recognize in the Explorer if a certain DLL contains any icons at all. All other DLL files will only get an standard empty icon.

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Apply paths and file names in the command line(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

               While navigating in the command line, you have to work your way along the paths or manually enter the complete target path. You would like to simplify this difficult and error-prone work.
               The correct way of applying path and file names in the command line depends on the respective Windows version and other parameters. In Vista and Windows 7, it is recommended, for example, to first navigate in Windows Explorer and then open the command line in the correct folder with the command ‘Open command prompt here’.
                For flexible application of paths and file names for use in the command line, it is already possible in XP to drag and drop the elements from the Windows Explorer to the command line. While Vista does not allow it, this method is again available in Windows7, provided that the command line has not been started with administrator rights. Thus, for example, you can type ‘Type’ and then drag a file from Explorer. Its name will be added correctly and if needed with the quotation marks so that the command can be completed. In Vista, the only way is the more difficult method of copying and pasting. For this, in the Windows Explorer click on the concerned element while keeping the [Shift] key pressed and select ‘Copy as path’. Now, change to the command line and similarly click there with the right mouse button in the window. The context command ‘Add’ will now apply the data.

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See icons in DLL files and extract them(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

                While searching for other program and desktop icons, you should comb through the available DLL files in the system. However, the icons in them cannot be copied easily.
                There are innumerable DLL files in the Windows system folders which contain diverse icons in addition to procedures as libraries that are already used by the system. In order to use such icons yourself, you either have to extract them from the DLL file and save as a separate ICO files, or at least know the serial number of the icon within the library. Both these tasks are easily and quickly done with the help of the NirSoft tool IconsExtract (www.nirsoft.net/utils/iconsext.html). After a short installation or unpacking from the ZIP archive, you can start the tool immediately.
                 The dialogue box ‘Search For Icons’ will appear automatically at the start. Activate the option ‘Scan icons in files’ and enter the complete path to the appropriate file containing the icons under it. Basically, you can also search through folders with subfolders or drives for this. However, it is not recommended for ‘C:’, as this can take a long time. With ‘More Options’ the selection can be limited to certain characteristics. With a click on ‘Search For Icons’, the main window shows all the matches found. They are the assigned the file name of the origin and the index numbers within this file in brackets. You will need this value, for example, to refer in the registry to a certain icon from a file. The index number cannot be determined in other dialogues by counting. All icons can also be exported individually to ICO files. For this, mark one or more, if necessary with the pressed [Ctrl] key. Then open the command ‘File | Save Selected Icons’, change the target folder and the process by clicking on ‘Save Icons’. All icons will then be in individual files which still contain the original file names and the index numbers.

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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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Stop auto suggestions in Word(Word XP, 2003)

             As soon as you type the current year, Word replaces it with the current date. However, you do not want to accept this suggestion.

             In order to change, open the menu command "Tools | AutoCorrect Options". Click on the tab “Auto text” and deactivate the option “Show AutoComplete Suggestions” and confirm with “OK”.

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Sort files automatically by type(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

                When downloading photos, music and programs, you collect all data in a common download folder, and then you normally sort them manually depending on the file type.

                Collecting all files in one common download folder is a good start. You can then easily automate the next step of sorting with the free tool Download Mover. A download of the somewhat old but user friendly tool is available at www.ntworks.net/download-mover. html. Unzip the downloaded file in a new folder. Further installation is not required.
                After starting it, configure the desired rules. Near the combination field ‘watched directories’, click ‘new’, and then navigate to the download folder and activate it with ‘OK’. Basically, any number of folders can be considered. Then click ‘new’ in ‘files to move’. Specify a type e.g. ‘zip’ or ‘jpg’ and click ‘next’. Now navigate to the target folder that must have been already created. Confirm the selection with ‘OK’. In the same way, define the rules for the other data types. This also works when sorting the available folders.
Note: The functionality cannot be integrated into the system. But you can establish a link in the auto-start folder and thus automate the process.

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Make drives invisible in Windows Explorer(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

             You save private data on an extra drive that is supposed to be kept away from nosy people. The optional password protection that you can install is however not sufficient as a security measure. You can make certain drives invisible. This will still allow you to access them, but these volumes are absolutely not visible in Explorer. This can be done via Windows tools via a registry entry.

              For that, enter ‘regedit’ in the search field of the Start menu and press the [Enter] key. Confirm the user account control question with ‘Yes’ or ‘Next’. Navigate to the key ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer’. Then click in the right part of the dialog and generate the entry ‘NoDrives’ with the command ‘Edit | New | DWORD-value’. Then open this entry for editing by double clicking.
               The value required now depends on which drive or drives you want to hide. This basically functions as per a bit pattern, wherein every bit stands for a drive starting with ‘A:’. To hide a specific drive, first determine which letter of the alphabet the drive name is. For the ‘H:’ drive, it is the eighth letter. As the value, you will now require the eighth bit, which decimally corresponds to the value 2(8-1) = 128. You can thus determine a corresponding value for every drive. To hide multiple drives, add all individual values. For example, if you want to hide the B, H and J drives, you will need the following values: 2(2-1)=2, 2(8-1)=128 and 2(10-1)=512. These add up to 642. For that, activate the ‘Decimal’ option in the dialog for ‘Base’ and then enter the calculated value. Confirm your entries with ‘OK’ and close the registry. The drives will no longer be visible when you start Windows Explorer next.
Note: Hiding the drives does not have any effect on the ability of programs to access them. Moreover, it will still be possible to access the hidden drives by directly entering the relevant drive letter in the address bar in Windows Explorer.

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Divide your Windows desktop into functional areas(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You are using up more and more of your time to delete unwanted desktop icons, to group the rest and to move them together in a specific area of your screen.

              For Windows XP, Vista and 7, the program Fences supports you in dividing your desktop into areas and grouping the various icons. Download the tool on your system directly from www.stardock.com. Start the installation by double clicking the file in Windows Explorer and then follow the instructions of the setup wizard. For that, you will definitely require administrator rights. However, if the user account control does not open automatically, right click the file and select the context command ‘Run as administrator’. After the installation, click ‘Start using Fences’. This option will help you in the configuration of the tool. Experienced users can also select ‘I want to create my own Fences’ and configure without help.
               In the next step, Fences offers two choices. ‘Create different Fences’ generates two empty fields on your desktop. The icons will initially be located near the area on the desktop before they can be individually placed in them via drag and drop. For that, the ‘Sort out my icons’ option arranges your icons in the new generated fields. Then give the application the final touch via ‘Open Fences settings’. You can also access this dialog later by right clicking the desktop and via ‘Configure Fences’ context command.
                You can move the icons from the desktop to a field or between two fields via Drag&Drop. You can generate a new field by right clicking on the desktop, keeping the key pressed and dragging the space. Then select the ‘Create new Fence here’ command in the next context menu and give it a name. You can change the position and size of the fields as in Windows dialogs. If you want a different name for a field, right click in the desired area of the desktop and select the ‘Rename Fence’ context command.
                Double clicking any empty area on the desktop will now hide all Fences, and double clicking again will reveal them.

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Providing drive icons with level indicator(Windows XP)

             Since Vista, Explorer immediately shows you a graphical view of how much space has been occupied on the individual drives. You wish you had this optical aid even in XP and look for a setting to get it.

             Windows XP only shows the space utilization of a drive in the context menu. But you can also copy the new design in XP with the small free tool Vista Drive Icon, so that you do not have to execute a command first. That is available at drvicon.sourceforge.net. At the time of installation, follow the steps in the wizard. In the end, start the program.
              A user interface as such does not exist, but the tool can be integrated in the Windows Explorer and started automatically instead. The level indicator is displayed by graduated individual icons for system drives and removable drives. The icons are available by default in the ‘C:\Programs\Vista Drive Icon\Icons’ folder. If you want, you can also change these icons individually with the help of a normal graphic program. To remove the small program, simply use the provided Uninstall tool.

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Upgrade Media Player with useful additional functions(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You use Media Player 11 to play your music files, but you still miss some functions, like the option to edit tags of the individual files comfortably.
              Despite its varied menus and functions, Windows Media Player does lack some useful features. These can be obtained with the free Media Player Plus plug-in. It is available for free download from www.softonic.com.

              To install it, close the Media Player and then start the program file ‘WMPPlus- 2.1.exe’ by double clicking its entry in Explorer. Follow the instructions of the setup wizard and then start Windows Media Player. You will immediately reach the settings of the new plug-in, some of which are already activated by default. In the ‘Library’ category, you will find the activated option ‘Enable find as you type’, with which you can directly type a search query like modern browsers. Besides, activate ‘Disable group headers in the Library Pane’ to view a continuous ungrouped list as in Media Player 10. In the ‘User Interface’ category, the display of the current title is already activated in the title bar, and can be individually configured here via variables. In the ‘Context menus’ field, all elements should be activated. With that, you will have access to an extensive ‘Tag Editor Plus’ in the Media Library in the future via a context menu.
              Furthermore, you can activate the ‘Restore last active playlist’ option in the ‘Restore Media at Startup’ category. The program properties can then be controlled more precisely with the other activated options. With that, the Media Player continues playing the files at exactly that location or a few seconds before the last ending point, when you start it next. This is mainly useful in case of videos and films, but can somewhat delay the start time. ‘Party Shuffle’ finally delivers a party mode with selectable random playing of files. Confirm the configuration with ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’.

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Ascertain the cause of nondeletable files and remove them(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

            When cleaning the hard disk, you bump into files and folders that cannot be deleted. You want to know what is blocking access so you can release the files for deletion.

            Mostly, access by another program is the cause for causing a file to become non-deletable. Windows unfortunately does not provide any information about it. The limit is when you get the message ‘The file is being used by another person or program’. That’s as useless as the message ‘Close all programs that are using this file, and repeat the process’. The free tool UnlockIT (emcosoftware. com/unlock-it) determines the corresponding program and enables deleting the specific file.
             After the quick installation, start the tool. Click the selection arrow under the ‘Browse’ icon and decide whether you want to look into a ‘File’ or a ‘Folder’. Then navigate to the desired entry and confirm the selection with ‘Open’ or ‘OK’. The tool will now show you whether a block exists, and lists the programs that cause it. Check the details so that you do not delete important files. For instance, an open Office document causes even the relevant folder to be blocked. If you want to remove a block, right click the program in the list and try to remove the existing blocks via ‘Close Handles’. This is safe to a large extent as no processes are ended. Only when this doesn’t work should you end the application, which you can do via the ‘Kill Processes’ command in the next step. The element can then be deleted.

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Accelerate the system during the defragmentation process(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              As soon as a defragmentation starts, your system becomes very slow and hardly becomes available for normal use. You want to work faster again.

              During defragmentation, a security program might also be active, for instance a virus scanner. Both processes hinder each other as the security program detects every change made in a file because of the defragmentation and then reanalyzes it. Normally, this is a good precaution, but it costs a lot of computing power and you can be reasonably sure no malware is at work.
              To ensure a safe work environment, first disconnect the PC from its network and Internet connections. For that, you can use the Wi-Fi switch on a laptop or unplug the network cable. You can also deactivate the relevant connection for the time being. As the next step, end the security monitoring by right clicking the applicable program’s icon in the taskbar and select the its stop/pause command. Specify the desired time period, then complete the defragmentation without interruption. You can continue to work in the mean time with Office programs or play local media files. Finally, do not forget to reactivate the security program or to restart the computer.

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Display drive letters before the names in Explorer(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

             Explorer displays the names of drives first followed by the alphabets assigned to them in brackets. Since you identify drive letters better, you want to place them before the names.
            Just like the previous versions, even Windows 7 does not provide any direct option for the display of the drive letters. You thus need to do this via the registry. For this, start ‘regedit’ via the search field of the Start menu.
            Navigate to the ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Explorer’ key and create a new entry ‘ShowDriveLettersFirst’ there via ‘Edit | New | DWORD Value’. Now open this entry for editing by double clicking it, set the ‘Value’ to ‘4’ and confirm with ‘OK’. The default value ‘0’ shows the drive letter after the name and ‘2’ does not show it at all. Now close the registry and restart Explorer.

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Retrieve deleted data from USB pen drive and memory cards(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You have accidentally deleted files from a USB pen drive or photos from an SD card. Since there is no recycle bin there, there is simply no way to restore this data.

             There is no guarantee for data restoration but it is also not impossible that you can recover deleted files. What is of utmost importance is that after the deletion, you should not write anything on the disk in question because that could cause the required content to be overwritten. In order to prevent this, install the free tool Recuva on your hard disk. It is available from www.piriform.com/recuva.
               After a quick installation, a wizard comes up that helps you with the following steps. First select the file type such as ‘Images’ or ‘Documents’ or use the ‘Other’ option for a complete search. Click ‘Next’ and then select the relevant memory location. Then search for a drive or partition, select the option ‘At a specific location’ and then enter the memory location or navigate there via ‘Browse’. You can also select ‘Recycle Bin’ or can search the entire computer with ‘I am not sure’. Then click ‘Next’. In the following dialog box, keep the option ‘Activate deep scan’ deactivated since this analysis can take very long. You quickly get a result after clicking ‘Start’.
             The list shows all the deleted data and highlights files that can be restored. By clicking the ‘Advanced Settings’ button, you can select every rediscovered file, see a preview of it to the right and view detailed status information in the ‘Info’ tab. In case of files marked in red that cannot be restored, you can immediately see what they have been overwritten with. When restoring, activate the checkbox for the required files and then click ‘Restore’. Always select a folder on another drive as the storage location and then click ‘OK’.
Note: The restoration usually works for defective or garbled files as well, but of course the result will also be garbled. In case of a text file however, this can still be of a little help if certain parts of the text become legible once again.

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Assess the condition and service life of SSD drives(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You use an SSD as a super-fast drive. You want to check the status in order to be able to act on time before there are any problems.
              The free tool SSDLife determines the current parameters of an installed SSD drive and forecasts its service life on the basis of your personal typical usage. The tool is available free from ssd-life.com where a premium version is also available for a cost but has additional features.
               Under Downloads, look for the link for the ‘free version’. The scope of functionality of this free version is usually sufficient. You need the paid version only if you want to check the status regularly and on time and want to request additional information or use several SSDs simultaneously.
               In order to install, double click the downloaded file to open it and follow the instructions. Administrator rights are required for executing the program due to which the user account control query must be answered with Yes. In a while after this, the tool identifies your SSD and shows a lot of information about it. In addition to the model and the size, you also see information about how long the disk has been in use and how many times it has been booted. Together with the transfer data in GB, you also get a prognosis of the remaining service life calculated on the basis of this information. The additional SMART parameters are not immediately available in the free version, but can be easily requested. Click the ‘S.M.A.R.T.’ button for this and then click ‘No’ in the following dialog box. The data is prepared as a HTML page and displayed in the default browser.
Note: The values for the data throughput and the expected service life are not yet available for a completely new drive and are displayed only after it has been in use for a while. In case of repeated installations, the expected remaining service life decreases with every subsequent installation, but this gets normalized after a while since the program is based on an average rate of writing processes.

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Check copied files for transfer errors(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              In case of extensive copying activities, you would like to check whether everything has actually gotten copied properly. You are thus looking for a suitable quality control tool.
              With ‘fciv.exe’, Microsoft provides a command line tool that calculates checksums and hash values of files but is not very widely known. The program name stands for ‘File Checksum Integrity Verifier’. You can use it for checking the copying process of files. The tool can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290.

              Start the installation with administrator rights via the right-click context command ‘Run as administrator’. After accepting the license agreement, click ‘Browse’ in the next dialog box and navigate to the Windows folder. There you can unzip the program so that it is available on the system path.
              In order to use it, open a command line window via ‘cmd’ in the start menu. With ‘fciv’, you can get additional information about using the individual parameters. In principle, the tool generates checksums from the output data and saves it in a database file such in the XML format. These values can later be compared with the calculated checksums of the copied files.
              In order to check the files from c:\ data’, type fciv c:\data -r -bp c:\data -xml result.xml. Here, the ‘r’ option ensures that all the sub-folders are also recursively included and the ‘bp c:\data’ option ensures that the basic path ‘c:\ data’ is not taken into account. The results are saved in the ‘result.xml’ file.
              The copied files can later be checked against the database with their checksums. For this, you can use the command fciv v bp g:\data xml result.xml. It checks the folder ‘g:\ data’ that for instance should contain the copied files against the checksums in ‘results.xml’. If this is not the case, you get an error message; else, a confirmation stating that all files have been successfully checked. Moreover, you can also list the checksums of all individual files with ‘fciv list xml results.xml’.

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Show preview images in Explorer as attractive film strips(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You use the integrated image preview of Windows Explorer and ask yourself how you can improve the display.
              Simple built-in Windows tools can help you create individual frames to the image preview in Explorer. You can thus equip the icons with film strips for instance. You can find the setting for this in the registry.

             Enter ‘regedit’ in the search field of the start menu and press [Enter]. In case of XP, go to ‘Run’ and then enter ‘regedit’. Now navigate to the ‘HKEY_CLASSES_ ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\image’ key. Here, ensure that the spellings are accurate. Then in the right side of the window, double click the DWORD value ‘Treatment’ for editing. If it is not present, create it with the command ‘Edit | New | DWORD Value’. Now enter the value ‘3’ and confirm with ‘OK’. Every image now gets a border that looks like a film strip. The border can be completely disabled using the value ‘0’ but even the narrow borders resulting from the values ‘1’ and ‘2’ are hardly visible and thus unsuitable.
            Close the registry and restart Windows Explorer. Individual images now have perforated borders in the Tiles and Thumbnails views, just like classic film strips.

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Close all programs at once(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              You always need to close all open applications when installing new software or if you want to shut the computer down. And you want this to happen quickly!
              The free program Close All Windows saves you the trouble of closing each program individually. The small English tool is available at www.ntwind.com. Unzip the ZIP folder and copy the ‘CloseAll.exe’ file to the desired location. Installation is not required. It is practical to add the program file to the task bar of Windows 7 so that you can access it at all times. The quick launch bar is recommended in case of earlier versions of Windows.
               In future, one click on the icon will be sufficient to close all the open programs properly. In addition to that, you will need to answer all the dialogs with queries regarding the unsaved documents, which would mean just a few more clicks. No data will be lost. There is also an option of eliminating Individual programs from this command. You can exclude something like ‘firefox.exe’ so that an important browser session is not closed by mistake.

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Prevent abortion of automatic logins(Windows XP, Vista 7)

             For a presentation on a computer, you want to ensure that it always comes to a defined initial condition with an automatically signed-in user account even in case of a restart.

             Even in case of automatic log-in, it is usually possible to divert the process by pressing [Shift] if you want to log in with another user name. This method can be effectively blocked with the help of a small registry input.
             Open the command ‘Run’ in the start menu, then enter ‘regedit’, or in case of Vista or higher version enter it directly in the search field, and press [Enter]. Confirm the user account control query with ‘Next’ or ‘Yes’ depending on the system.
              In the registry, navigate to the key ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon’. Then click in the right part of the window and open the command ‘Edit | New | Character String’. Enter ‘IgnoreShiftOverride’ as the name and confirm with Enter. Double click the new entry and open it for editing. Then change its ‘Value’ to ‘1’ and confirm with ‘OK’. Close the registry. Logging in to another user account via [Shift] during the start process will no longer be possible.
               Set the newly created registry value to ‘0’ or delete it in order to restore the default settings later.

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