Computer trivia

With a fresh copy of Windows Vista, the Welcome Center will be enabled by default. The welcome center has the links to all the major settings and is very helpful the first time you logon to Windows, but not the second time!. This welcome center is set to start each time Windows starts and soon starts frustrating the users as it is not used any more.

To disable the welcome center to start at startup follow these steps.

- Open Registry Editor by typing ‘regedit’ in the run box

- In the left pane of the registry editor, traverse to the following location

- Now, in the right pane locate the key named ‘WindowsWelcomeCenter‘ and delete it or rename it to any arbitrary name

- Close the regedit and the next time you start Windows, welcome center will not start

Note: Improper editing of registry can cause serious damage to the system and make sure, you take a backup of the registry before making any changes.

Did you ever observe the big arrow mark on all the shortcut icons. Windows, by default places these arrow marks on the shortcut icons to differentiate from the original executable or folder. However, this does not appeal to the eyes and you may want to remove the arrow mark on all the icons on the Desktop. There is a simple registry tweak to do this. Follow these steps.

- Open registry editor by typing ‘regedit’ in the RUN box

- Traverse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile in the left pane

- Now, in the right pane, find the key named  ‘IsShortcut’ and delete the key (You may want to rename it, if you want to get back the arrows again in the future)

- Close the registry editor and reboot the machine.

Arrows are gone!

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At some point everyone of us would have wanted to rename a bunch of files in Windows, at a time. This is especially useful if you have some photos which usually have very weird serial numbers. You would want the name of the photo something meaningful, but changing the name for all the photos will be pretty cumbersome.

Windows allows the renaming of more than one file. To do this select all the files you want to rename at a time (say all the photos taken at a museum) and right click and select rename. Windows will then ask you specify a name for the first file of all the files you selected. Based on this name, it will then rename all the other selected files in order.

Say, you selected the name as museum, the names of other files will be museum(1), museum(2) etc…

Did your keyboard ever stop working? Well, we can use the mouse to do almost everything that can be done with a keyboard, but what about keying in characters. How can you type your name without a keyboard. Windows has a built in utility called On Screen Keyboard to aid you in case your key board doesn’t work (well, actually for people with disabilities).

To launch On Screen Keyboard, open the run box and type ‘osk’. This utility is available in Windows XP also. You will get a small keyboard which will always remain on top of all other open windows to let you see the keyboard all the time.

How about key combinations, say ‘Ctrl+A’ ?

Just press Ctrl and then A. OSK will take it as Ctrl+A, as if Ctrl was held pressed and then A pressed.

After prolonged usage of Windows it might be possible that certain sectors in the hard disk are damaged or that the file system is corrupted. Windows provides a CHKDSK (Check Disk) utility that allows you to check for file system errors and damaged sectors on the harddisk and rectify these errors. Follow these steps to scan the disk.

- Open My Computer

- Right Click the volume that you want to scan and see its properties

- In the properties window, under the Tools tab, under Error Checking, click on ‘Ckeck Now’

- Windows will scan the entire disk and rectify any errors in the file system.

Fixing the file system errors regularly might improve the hard disk performance.

Note that the disk should not be in usage for CHKDSK and thus all other programs must be closed before running this utility. If the volume is in use, Windows will reschedule the scanning to the net reboot and carry out the process, the next time the machine is restarted.

Taskbar - The small thin bar located at the bottom of the screen in Windows which provides access to all open windows and the windows start button.

But should it always be located at the bottom of the screen. There is no reason why you would want to move it to another place, but very people know that it can be moved anywhere on the screen. Well, not anywhere - You can move it to the top, left or right edges of the screen.

To do this the only thing that is to be done is to unlock the taskbar. Right click on the taskbar and uncheck ‘Lock Taskbar’. There should not be a tick mark next to it.

Now just left click on the taskbar and drag it to any edge on the scree. The taskbar will adjust itself on that edge. You can also get it back to the bottom of the screen.

After it is moved to the desired position, you may want to lock it again (check the ‘Lock Taskbar’ option) or you may be moving your taskbar unintentionally.

Recycle Bin stores all the files that are deleted on the system. How about deleting the recycle bin itself.

People rarely use recycle bin. A file is deleted only when it is completely unnecessary and thus most people, usually delete the files permanently (Shift + Del) instead of sending them to the recycle bin. In such a case, what is the point of having recycle bin on the desktop. Follow this registry hack and get rid of recycle bin. Do not worry, it can be restored any time.

- Open RUN box and type ‘regedit’

- In the left pane of the registry editor, traverse to the following location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/explorer/Desktop/NameSpace

- Now, in the right pane look for the key named, ‘Recycle Bin’ and delete it.

That is all. Recycle bin is gone (after you reboot the machine)

Almost all Windows Vista machines come with the hibernate option. But this is not enabled in Windows XP by default. In the shutdown menu, the only options provided are Logoff, Restart and Shutdown. However, there are pretty simple ways in which the hibernate option can be enabled. Note that these methods will work only if the hardware of your computer supports hibernating and there is no way to enable hibernation without hardware support.

Follow these steps.

- Open Control panel and then open ‘Power Options’

- Click on the hibernate tab

- Look for the check box named ‘Enable Hibernate Support’ and check the box

- Reboot the machine to find the hibernate option.

Another simple way is to press and hold the ‘Shift’ key when the shutdown menu is displayed. The Standby button will turn to Hibernate and when the key is released it turns back to standby.

In certain cases you may want to change the drive letter which is assigned default by Windows, staring from C. This may b especially important if you have partitioned the disks on your computer. Follow these steps to change the drive letter.

- Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select  in the menu, select ‘Manage’

- In the computer management window that opens, click on ‘Disk Management’

- In the right pane, right click on the drive you want and select ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths’

From here it is pretty self explanatory and you can set the drive letter to anything that is not in use.

Note that, the drive letter cannot be changed if the drive is a system or boot volume, or has page files (usually the drive on which Windows is installed, the C drive)

Are you bored looking at the same old Recycle bin on your Desktop. Themes change the icon for the Recycle Bin, but not the name of the Recycle bin. You may want to rename your Recycle Bin to say, Trash can or your wife’s name or something more creative. A very simple registry hack allows you to do this. Follow these steps.

- Open registry editor by typing ‘regedit’ in RUN box.

- In the left pane of the registry editor, traverse to the following location.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} 

- Now in the right pane, double click the ‘Default’ key and there you will find ‘Recycle Bin’. Delete that and type in your own name for the recycle bin.

- Close the registry editor and restart the machine to see the changes.

Note that registry editing might cause serious damage to the system if not done properly. Take a backup of the registry before making any changes.