Windows 7: Tips and Tricks - Page 3

Turn Off ‘Send Feedback’

After you restart the computer, it shouldn’t be there anymore. Also, if you want to turn it on again, set the FeedbackToolEnabled to 3.

Improved Calculator

Also you can choose between Standard, Scientific, Programmer, and Statistic calculator.

Open A Folder In A New Process

So if you feel like that’s a risk you don’t have to take, then you have to open them all in their own processes.

To do this, hold down Shift, right-click the drive and “Open in New Process”. Now you will be safe.

Problem Step Recorder

You can turn it on by pressing the Windows Key, then typing “PSR.exe” and click Record. Now it will record all your moves and save them as a HTML document that you can view or write descriptions to it.

This can help you with troubleshooting or when writing a guidance or
tutorial.

Free Codecs Pack

But with the free codecs pack you can download here
you shouldn’t have any problems.

Start Windows Explorer From My Computer

To change it to My Computer, press the Windows Key, then type “explorer”, select Properties and in the Shortcut tab type “%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}”.

Now you have to right-click the Explorer icon in the Taskbar and hit “Unpin this program from the taskbar” and then drag it back from the Start Menu.

Clear The Desktop

To restore the other windows you have to shake the active one again.

Use Gadgets With UAC Turned Off

But if you want to risk using them, there a simple way to do it, even with
UAC turned off. Press the Windows Key, type ‘regedit’, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE

\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings and create a DWORD value named AllowElevatedProcess and set its value to 1.

Now you should be able to use your gadgets. If not, then reboot your PC and you should be done.

Fix The Media Player & Media Center MP3 Bug

This can cut a few seconds from the beginning of the tracks and can prove really disturbing.

This problem was fixed by Microsoft using the fix located here.

Search Everything In Your Computer

Though it is not recommended, because it’s much slower than normal search, you can give it a try by doing the following: Launch Windows Explorer, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View and check “Try to search the content of unknown file types”.

If you don’t need it anymore, don’t forget to clear it for an increase in speed.

Mouse Gestures

So, instead of right-clicking a Taskbar icon to access the jump list, you
can hold left-click and drag upwards to smoothly call it up.

In addition, clicking and dragging down the address bar in Internet Explorer will open the browsing history. There might be more gestures yet not discovered.

Configure Your Music Favorites

The Media Center creates a list of favorite songs based on how
often you play them, your ratings and date you’ve added them.

If you aren’t comfortable with the way they thought it out, change the way it sorts your favorites by going to Tasks -> Settings -> Music -> Favorite Music.

Turn Off Recent Search Queries Display

No need to stress though because it can be disabled.

Press the Windows Key, type gpedit.msc, then go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Explorer and double click on “Turn off display of recent search entries”.

Advanced Disk Defragmentation

To do it, press the Windows Key and then type CMD.

You can defragment your hard disk from the command line by typing “defrag” and you have the following options: /r will defrag multiple drives simultaneously, -a performs a defrag analysis, -v prints the report, -r treats files with at least 64 Mb of fragments like are not fragmented, -w will defrag everything.

An example is “defrag C: -v -w” to defrag the whole drive C.

Make Internet Explorer 8 Load Faster

You can choose for yourself the ones you can live without and ones that would increase the load speed.

Media Center Automatic Download

To do it, go to Tasks -> Settings -> General -> Automatic Download
Options and you can configure it to start and stop the download whenever you want.

Remove The Sidebar

The easier one is to press the Windows Key, type MSCONFIG.EXE, click the Startup tab and clear the Sidebar box.

The hard way is to press the Windows key, type “regedit”, find and delete the registry key at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

This can save you some RAM consumed with no use.

Volume Tweaking

You can turn off this feature by right-clicking the speaker icon in the taskbar, go to Sounds -> Communications and get rid of it.

Run A Program As Another User

Then you have to select “Run as another user”.

Use Virtual Hard Disk Files

This can allow you to use a live Windows installation on the virtual disk without the need to boot the virtual Computer.

To create a virtual disk you have to press the Windows Key, right-click on Computer, then go to Manage -> Disk Management -> Action ->
Create VHD.

There you can specify the location and size of your virtual hard disk file.

To attach the virtual disk file, press the Windows Key, right-click Computer, then go to Manage -> Disk Management -> Action -> Attach VHD and you have to specify the location and if it’s read only or not.

To initialize a virtual hard disk, press the Windows Key, right-click on Computer, go to Manage -> Disk Management -> Action -> Attach VHD, specify the location, click Ok, then right click on the virtual disk and click on Initialize Disk.

Select the partition style you want to use and then right-click on the unallocated space and click “New Simple Volume” and follow the instructions wizard.

Now, a new hard drive appears in Windows Explorer and you can use it as a real partition.

More Windows 7 Tips>>