Computer trivia

Explorer in Vista does not have the ‘up’ key. Instead the entire path is shown in the address bar and one is allowed to reach the folder required by clicking on it. However this does not work always, say when the window is not in the maximum sixe and when you are pretty deep in the folder structure. In these cases, the entire path cannot be seen and quickly clicked upon.

However, there is a way to get back the ‘up’ button like the one in Windows XP. You will not get the button as such, but there is a key board short cut that works exactly like the ‘Up’ button.

‘Alt + Up Arrow’

This key combination can be used as the ‘Up’ button. So, if you want to quickly jump to the desktop, keep pressing ‘Alt + Up Arrow’ repeatedly.

Other shortcuts:
‘Alt + Left Arrow’     Back
‘Alt + Right Arrow’    Forward

I’ve come across this amazing product and was quite impressed. This is not something to improve the performance, but to make you feel good working on Vista.

It is pretty common to find virtual desktops where the users can switch between the desktops which are completely independent of each other. This was first supported in various Linux flavors and in now also supported for Vista. But ‘360 Desktop’ is a bit ahead.

Unlike the virtual desktops which have the various desktops on a cube, 360 Desktop extends the desktop into a cylindrical structure and you can scroll through this ‘loooonnnnggggg’ desktop forever horizontally. Instead of changing through the different desktops when using a cube, you now have a long desktop and all you need to do is to scroll through horizontally to view different applications.

An amazing ‘feature’ of this product is that it is completely free and is definitely worth a trail if you prefer cool interface while working on your machine.

Website: http:// www.360Desktop. com

Windows messenger is quite popular in the western countries, and is hardly used anywhere in the eastern countries. Yahoo and Google messengers are quite dominant in the eastern countries. However, Windows bundles its messenger with the Operating System and thus most of us have to bear with it eating away the computer resources though it is never used. Unfortunately Windows doesn’t allow its messenger to be removed in the usual method to remove programs.

Here is what you have to do to remove Windows Messenger from your machine.

- Go to C:\Windows\INF

- Locate ’sysoc.inf’ in the above location and open this file with any text editor

- Locate the line containing ‘msmsgs’

- At the end of this line you can find the word ‘hide’

- Delete the word ‘hide’ (after deletion you must find two commas next to each other -  xxx,,xx)

- Save the file and close it

- Now open Control Panel and then ‘Add or Remove Programs’. Windows Messenger can also be found in this list now

- Go ahead and uninstall it as you would usually do

For any file that is created in windows or modified in windows, a lot of personal information is attached to the file. This information includes ‘Computer Name’, ‘Your Name’, ‘Your Company’, ‘Date of creation’, Data of Modification’ etc. All of this information can be used to identify the person.

 There is a way to instruct Windows not to attach any personal information with the files. The steps are listed here.

- Right click the corresponding file and select properties

- Select the ‘Details’ Tab

- Select the ”Remove Properties and Personal Information’ button

- Select the properties that you wish to remove from the file. You can select all properties to remove any kind of personal information.

- Click OK

Now the file will not carry any critical personal data.

In Vista none of the explorer windows will have a title or an icon displayed in the ‘title bar’ (called so in XP). This feature was disabled probably to make Vista look good, but I personally find having nothing at the top makes it look bad compared to XP. Not just for looks, but the title also helps to figure out where exactly we are with ease.

Though Windows doesn’t provide any way to enable the title bar, there is a way to do so by using a third party software. ‘Aerobar’ is a free utility that can show up the windows title bar exactly as it was in Windows XP. Google for Aerobar and download ‘Aerobar.exe’

After downloading rename the executable as ‘AerobarIco.exe’ and run the application to see the title bar. In case you want to revert to the default Vista settings without title bar, just run the application again.

Windows Vista had many security precautions one of which is running the processes at a lower privilege. In Windows XP all programs were given the same privileges as the account under which they are being run which is not the case with Vista. Here the programs are given just the privilege that they require to run successfully. This applies even to ‘Windows Applications’ like Command Prompt (cmd).

So, if you open an application in Vista, it will not have the Administrative privileges even if you are the Administrator. Say, you opened command prompt, you will not be able to start or stop any services because the program does not have administrative privileges.

The solution to this is to open the applications as Administrator. To do this you can right click on the application or its short cut and select ‘Run As Administrator’, which throws a prompt and then opens with Administrative privileges. Now things work exactly as they were working in the Windows XP.

There is a keyboard shortcut to do this quickly. Suppose you searched for some application using Windows start menu search utility. Once the required application is found, press ‘Ctrl + Shift + Enter’ instead of just hitting ‘Enter’. This will open the application with Administrator privileges.

Windows Vista has come with a great feature that allows you to quickly search through all the applications on the system and access them quickly. This gives us a respite from the usual practice of using RUN box or having the shortcuts on the Desktop to quickly access the applications. Though this search is pretty fast there is a way to make it even quicker. When ever the search utility in the start menu is used, Windows, apart from the start menu items, also searches through all the files on the disk. If you are sure that you have all the applications in the start menu, then you can instruct Windows not to search through all the files and limit the search to the start menu items. This greatly reduces the time taken to search through the items.

Follow these steps (as always, regedit is only for advanced users and can cause serious damage to the system if it is not done properly)

- Open Registry Editor (Type regedit in the runbox)

- Traverse to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->Explorer->Advanced”

- In the right pane find the key named ‘Start_SearchFiles’ and modify it (right click and select modify)

- Set the value of this key to 0

(If the key doesn’t exist create a key with this name and assign a value of 0)

Reboot the machine and you will find that the start menu search utility is much faster.

Many a times you find the necessity to destroy certain data on your harddisk, usually when the computer is being sold or discarded. This is especially important as the harddisk might contain a lot of personal information including credit card numbers, adult content etc.

Most people believe that deleting the files and then cleaning up the recycle bin will completely remove the data which is not true. When certain data is completely deleted by us, Windows just marks the space occupied this data for re-writing and this data is actually lost only when the space is re-written. In other words, even if you cleaned up the recycle bin, the data is still recoverable.

Formatting the disk is not a solution either. Even in this case the data is not erased but is just marked for reuse and thus can be recovered. Amazingly, destroying the disk physically is also no good. There were cases where data was recovered from disks which were intentionally destroyed (or thought to be destroyed).

So, if you are really concerned about completely wiping the data on the harddisk, you must get it Degaussed which removes all the magnetism from the disk. However, this is a costly solution. There are certain software solutions which will write ‘0′ on the entire harddisk and thus make the data almost unrecoverable. Try one of these solutions.

Quick Launch is the small list of applications you find just beside the start button, which contains ‘Show Desktop’, ‘Internet Explorer’ and ‘Windows Media Player’ by default. These can be changed very easily and there is no limit on the number of applications that can be added to the quick launch. As the name suggests application shortcuts are place in the quick launch to allow quick access to the corresponding applications.

There is a way to launch the quick launch applications even quicker! I mean a key board shortcut.

Number the applications in the quick launch starting from the left. So, if Firefox is the leftmost entry of our quick launch then Firefox will receive the number 1. The next application will receive the number 2 and so on..

Now to launch any application, press ‘Win + number’, where ‘Win’ is the Windows button (found between Ctrl and Alt keys) and number is the number assigned above.

Thus to open Firefox in the above example you would press ‘Win + 1′. Simple!

However only 9 applications can be opened this way and the 10th one can’t be opened as it will be taken as Application 1 and Application 0.

Windows has removed the RUN box from the start menu in Windows Vista, though RUN box is used by many normal users also. This is probably because of the search option they have provided in the start menu in Vista which can be used to quickly access various programs. However, people who are used to opening programs from RUN prefer to have it and this how you can get back your RUN box.

- Right click on the Taskbar and open ‘Properties’

- Click on ‘Start Menu’ tab

- Click on Customize

- Scroll through the list to find ‘Run Command’

- Select the check box next to the ‘Run Command’

- Click OK

Now you will have the RUN box in the start menu which can be used exactly as it was used in Windows XP