Windows 7: Tips and Tricks - Page 7

Multi-Monitor Windows Management.

One refinement of those shortcuts is that you can use Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift +Right Arrow to move windows from one monitor to another – keeping them in the same relative location to the monitor’s top-left origin.

Command Junkies Only.

In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply
hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect.

If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.

It’s a Global Village.

(If you picked US, you’ll see beautiful views of Crater Lake in Oregon, the Arches National Park, a beach in Hawai’i, etc.) In fact, there are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory.

If you’re feeling in an international mood, simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country.

Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country.

(Note that some countries contain a generic set of placeholder art for now.)

Rearranging the Furniture.

You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications.

What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc.

I love that I can quickly fire up a Notepad2 instance on my machine with a simple Win+5 keystroke, for instance.

What’s less well-known is that you can similarly drag the system tray icons around to rearrange their order, or move them in and out of the hidden icon list.

It’s an easy way to customize your system to show the things you want, where you want them.

Installing from a USB Memory Stick.

Not only was it easy to boot and install from the thumbdrive, it was also blindingly fast: quicker than the corresponding DVD
install on my desktop machine.

It’s also worth noting in passing that Windows 7 is far better suited to a netbook than any previous operating system: it has a much lighter hard drive and memory footprint than Windows Vista, while also being able to optimize for solid state drives (for example, it switches off disk defragmentation since random read access is as fast as sequential read access, and it handles file deletions differently to minimize wear on the solid state drive).

I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back!

As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar.

Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you’re after the retro
behavior, you’ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:

• * Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
  * In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
  %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
• * Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
• * Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

If it’s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it’s worth noting that this isn’t something we’re exactly desperate for folks to re-enable, but it’s there if you
really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we’d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn’t suit your needs.

Windows Vista-Style Taskbar.

For those who really would prefer a look more reminiscent of Windows Vista, the good news is that it’s easy to customize the look of the taskbar to more closely mirror the old version:
The Windows 7 Taskbar can be configured for a Windows Vista compatibility view.
To achieve this look, right-click on the taskbar and choose the properties dialog.

Select the “small icons” checkbox and under the “taskbar buttons” setting, choose “combine when taskbar is full”. It’s not pixel-perfect in accuracy, but it’s close from a functionality point of view.

Specialized Windows Switching

For example, if you’ve got five Outlook message windows open along with ten other windows, you can quickly tab through just the Outlook windows by holding down the Ctrl key while you repeatedly click on the single Outlook icon.

This will toggle through each of the five Outlook windows in order, and is way faster than opening Alt+Tab and trying to figure out which of the tiny thumbnail images relates to the specific message you’re trying to find.

Pin Your Favorite Folders.

Hold the right-click button down and drag the folder to the taskbar, and it will be automatically pinned in the Explorer Jump List.

ClearType Text Tuning and Display Color Calibration.

You’d adjust the brightness and contrast settings on that fancy 42” HDTV you’ve just bought: why wouldn’t you do the same for the computer displays that you stare at every day?

Check out cttune.exe and dccw.exe respectively, or run the applets from Control Panel.

ISO Burning

No more grappling for shareware utilities of questionable parentage! You can burn an ISO image to disk with this built-in utility in Windows 7.

Windows Movie Maker

Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we’re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options.

It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version).

It’s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn’t support HD editing, but it’s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing.

Windows Movie Maker 2.6 is compatible with Windows 7. Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from here:
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc

Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon.

If you’re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can
easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone: Windows Live Messenger appears by default on the taskbar.

On the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it’s been for previous releases.

If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior.

To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!

When All Else Fails

Windows 7 now includes the ability to create a system repair disc, which is essentially a CD-bootable version of Windows that just includes the command prompt and a suite of system tools.

Just type “system repair disc” in the Start Menu search box, and you’ll be led to the utility.

Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts >>