Windows 7: Tips and Tricks - Page 5

Set the time zone

Calibrate your screen

And that means a digital photo you think looks perfect might appear very poor to everybody else.

Fortunately Windows 7 now provides a Display Colour Calibration Wizard that helps you properly set up your brightness, contrast and colour settings, and a ClearType tuner to ensure text is crisp and sharp.

Click Start, type DCCW and press [Enter] to give it a try.

Right-click everything

Right-click the icon, select 'Unpin this program from the taskbar', then go install Firefox, instead.

Desktop slideshow

Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold down Ctrl as you click on the images you like.

Choose how often you'd like the images to be changed (anything from daily to once every 10 seconds), select Shuffle if you'd like the backgrounds to appear in a random order, then click Save Changes and enjoy the show.

RSS-powered wallpaper

This isn't fully implemented in the beta yet, but Long Zheng has created a few sample themes to illustrate how it works.

And Jamie Thompson takes this even further, with a theme that always displays the latest BBC news and weather on your desktop.

Recover screen space

And that's fine, except it does consume a little more screen real estate than we'd like.

Shrink it to a more manageable size by right-clicking the Start orb, then Properties > Taskbar > Use small icons > OK.

Restore the Quick Launch Toolbar

Right-click its divider, clear Show Text and Show Title to minimise the space it takes up. Complete the job by right-clicking the bar and selecting View > Small Icons for the true retro look.

Custom power switch

If you reboot your PC a few times every day then that might make more sense as a default action: right-click the Start orb, select Properties and set the 'Power boot action' to 'Restart' to make it happen.

Auto arrange your desktop

But a simpler solution is just to press and hold down [F5], and Windows will automatically arrange its icons for you.

Disable smart window arrangement

We like the new system, but if you find it distracting then it's easily disabled. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set WindowArrangementActive to 0, reboot, and your windows will behave just as they always did.

Remove 'Send Feedback'

If you don't like something, or have a good idea, then click Send Feedback and tell them what's on your mind.

You really could make a difference. But once you've done all that then you might want to get rid of the Send Feedback links on your windows, and this is very easy to do.

Just launch REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set the FeedbackToolEnabled value to zero and restart your PC. (Set it to 3 if you'd like the Send Feedback links back again.)

Display your drives

We think it's an improvement, but if you disagree then it's easy to get your empty drives back. Launch Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View
and clear 'Hide empty drives in the computer folder'.

See more detail

Launch it and you can now define a scale factor and docking position, and
once activated it can track your keyboard focus around the screen.

Press [Tab] as you move around a dialog box, say, and it'll automatically zoom in on the currently active control.

Protect your MP3 files

Its version of Windows Media Player 12 will automatically add missing metadata, including album art, and this can overwrite the first few seconds of the file.

Oops.

Installing an update may fix this (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961367) but it would probably be a very good idea to back up your MP3 files, too.

Customise UAC

Fortunately Windows 7 displays less warnings by default, and lets you further fine-tune UAC to suit your preferred balance between security and a pop-up free life (Start > Control Panel > Change User Account Control Settings).

Use Sticky Notes

Launch StikyNot.exe and you can type notes at the keyboard; right-click a note to change its colour; click the + sign on the note title bar to add another note; and click a note and press [Alt]+[4] to close the note windows (your notes will automatically be saved).

Open folder in new process

This saves system resources, but means one folder crash can bring down the entire shell. If your system seems unstable, or you're doing something in Explorer that regularly seems to causes crashes, then open Computer, hold down shift, right-click on your drive and select Open in New Process.

The folder will now be launched in a separate process, and so a crash is less likely to affect anything else.

Watch more videos

Fortunately the first freeware Windows 7 Codecs package [shark007.net/win7codecs.html] has just been released, and installing it could get your troublesome multimedia files playing again.

Preview fonts

Feeble, really, but Windows 7 sees some useful font-related improvement.

Open the new fonts window and you'll find a little preview for every font, giving you a quick idea of how they're going to look.

The tedium of scrolling through multiple entries for each family, like Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Bold Italic and so on, has finally ended.

There's now just a single entry for each font (though you can still see all other members of the family).

And there's a new OpenType font, Gabriola, added to the mix.

It's an attractive script font, well worth a try the next time you need a stylish document that stands out from the
crowd.

Restore your gadgets

If you've disabled UAC, miss your gadgets and are happy to accept the security risk, though, there's an easy Registry way to get everything back to normal. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE

\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings,

create a new DWORD value called AllowElevatedProcess and set it to 1. Your gadgets should start working again right away.

More Windows 7 Tips>>