~ A Tip A Day ~ - Page 14

LoneRanger · #**196** 02-25-2008, 05:47 PM

24 February 2008:

Hide the Name of the Last User

I've switched to the classic logon screen, but now the username of the last person who used the computer is shown. From a security standpoint, this is not an improvement!

To hide this username, you must dive into the Windows Registry. Go to Start -> Run, type regedit, and click OK. In the Registry Editor window, expand the branches on the left side to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\NT\Cu rrentVersion\Winlogon.

(Notice that this is in the Windows NT branch, not the Windows branch).

Create a new value in this key: right-click Winlogon and select New String Value, type DontDisplayLastUserName for its name, and press Enter. Double-click the new value, type 1 in the "Value data" field, and click OK.

LoneRanger · #**197** 02-25-2008, 05:53 PM

25 February 2008:

Un-Secure Your Screensaver

Every time my screensaver comes on, I have to type my password to make it go away. Is this necessary?

Other than being a sure-fire way to force you to remember your own password, it's not really useful unless you work in a public environment. The idea is that if you walk away from your desk, an intruder can't poke around your system without knowing your password. If you feel that the likelihood of this happening is small, change this setting by right-clicking an empty area of your desktop, selecting Properties, and choosing the Screen Saver tab. Uncheck the "On resume, password protect" box, and click OK.

There's a second option that does pretty much the same thing when your computer hibernates or goes to sleep. If you don't want Windows to send you back to the Welcome screen each time you "wake up" your PC, open the Power Options control panel (or click the Power button in Display
Properties), choose the Advanced tab, and uncheck the "Prompt for password when computer resumes from standby" checkbox. Click OK, and you're done.

LoneRanger · #**198** 02-26-2008, 01:10 PM

26 February 2008:

Show Folder Tree Lines

Windows Explorer used to have dotted lines connecting the folders in the
folder tree. How can I show these lines in Windows XP?

In Windows Explorer, go to Tools Folder Options, click the View tab, and uncheck the "Display simple folder view in Explorer's Folders list" box. Click OK, and the folder lines will reappear in Windows Explorer, as shown in Figure.

Note: Windows Explorer is typically seen in its two-pane format, with a folder tree on the left and the contents of the currently selected folder on the right. With the " simple folder view" option enabled, Windows Explorer automatically expands a folder branch when you highlight a folder to show all the folders contained therein. Disable this option, and you'll have to click the little plus signs [+] or double-click the folder names to expand branches .

LoneRanger · #**199** 02-27-2008, 11:43 AM

27 February 2008:

Get the Details View Every Time

I like the Details view because it shows all the information about my files at once, but I hate having to go to View Details every time, only to have Windows Explorer forget my preference when I switch folders.
Windows Explorer won't change the default view settings unless you ask it to. Start by customizing a folder view: select the Details view (or whatever view you like), and choose a sortorder by clicking the column headers or by going to View Arrange Icons by. You can even go to View Choose Details or right-click a column heading to choose which columns appear in the Details view.

When you're done customizing, go to Tools Folder Options, choose the View tab, and click the "Apply to All Folders" button. Check the "Remember each folder's view settings" box, and clickOK.

Sooner or later, senility will appear to strike and Explorer will start indiscriminately forgetting your view settings in some folders. To fix the problem, find a folder that still matches your preferences, return to the Folder Options window, and click "Apply to All Folders" again.

Note: Explorer remembers different preferences for single-folder windows and two-pane folder-tree windows. Once you've used the "Apply to All Folders" button in, say, a two-pane Explorer window, go ahead and double-click a folder icon on your desktop (or right click a folder in the tree and select Open) and customize the single-folder window that appears as you see fit. Then repeat the above steps to save those settings as the default for that window type .

LoneRanger · #**200** 02-28-2008, 12:42 PM

28 February 2008:

Remember Settings for More Folders

I turned on the "Remember each folder's view settings" checkbox, as described above, but it doesn't take long for Explorer to forget the settings I've set for a specific folder. Explorer stores folder view settings in the Registry and, alas, not in the folders themselves. This awkward design has two rather silly drawbacks. First, if you move or rename a folder, its view settings revert to Explorer's defaults. Second, by default the view settings can be restored for a maximum of only 400 folders on your system. While this may seem like a lot, this limit can quickly be consumed, particularly since an individual folder eats up an additional slot in the Registry each time it's moved or renamed. To raise the limit, you'll need to mess around in the Registry. Open the Registry Editor (go to Start -> Run and type regedit ), and then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell . Create a new value by selecting Edit -> New -> DWORD Value, and, in the right pane, type BagMRU Size for the name. Double-click the new value, select the Decimal option, type the number of folders you'd like Explorer to remember (e.g., 5000) in the "Value data" field, and click OK. Next, repeat the process for the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell NoRoam key. Close the Registry Editor when you're done.

(●̮̮̃•̃) ѕнαη (●̮̮̃•̃) · #**201** 02-29-2008, 06:14 AM

LoneRanger · #**202** 02-29-2008, 02:03 PM

29 February 2008:

Jump to a Subfolder

I'm trying to get to a folder about seven layers deep, and it's a hassle to have to wait for Windows to update the display as I expand each folder. Isn't there a way to jump to a subfolder without wading through all of its parent folders?

There are a few ways to do this. The easiest is to highlight the top-level folder in the tree and press the asterisk (*) key. This will expand the selected folder, all of its subfolders, all of their subfolders, and so on. Then, type the first few letters of the target folder to jump to it.

Note: Best not to use this trick on a folder with a lot of subfolders, such as the root directory or, say, Program Files. Explorer will take its sweet time reading the whole branch, which should give you a pretty good idea of why they're collapsed in the first place. As there's no way to abort the procedure, you'll be waiting quite a while before you can start navigating to any of those subfolders !

Alternatively, if you know the full path of the folder, just type it into Explorer's address bar and press Enter. Windows will even help you by filling in likely candidates as you type (see Figure ); press the down arrow key to pick a folder from the list.

Yet another shortcut is to press F3 or Ctrl-F to open the Search pane. Click the "All files and folders" link, type the folder name in the "All or part of the filename" field, and press Enter. Double-click the folder when it appears in the Search Results window to open it.

(●̮̮̃•̃) ѕнαη (●̮̮̃•̃) · #**203** 02-29-2008, 11:47 PM

LoneRanger · #**204** 03-01-2008, 12:50 PM

01 March 2008:

Shrink the Address Bar

I have a small screen, and the address bar and the Standard Buttons toolbar take up too much space. I got rid of the toolbar, but I'd like to keep the address bar. Is there a way to make it smaller? With screen real estate at a premium (even on large displays), anything you can do to minimize clutter is helpful. The trick is to stuff the address bar into that unused space to the right of Explorer's main menu (File, Edit, View, etc.), as shown in Figure. Note: If you don't see the address bar in Windows Explorer, go to View --> Toolbars --> Address Bar . Right-click any part of the menu or the gray part of the address bar, and if there's a checkmark next to "Lock the Toolbars," click it to turn it off. Then grab the word "Address" with your mouse and drag the bar to the right side of the menu. Since some folders (such as Network Connections in the Control Panel) have extra menus, make sure to leave a little space to the right of the Help menu to accommodate them. When you're done, right-click the bar and select "Lock the Toolbars" to turn the lock back on.

Acc3ss · #**205** 03-01-2008, 01:39 PM

keep these tips comming

LoneRanger · #**206** 03-02-2008, 12:11 PM

02 March 2008:

Copy a Folder Path to the Clipboard

I want to send someone an email with the location of a file on our network. How do I do this without having to type the path manually?

Go to View --> Folder Options, choose the View tab, check the "Display the full path in the address bar" box, and click OK. Navigate to the folder you want to copy, and the full path of the selected folder will appear in the address bar above. Click the text in the address bar once (it should already be highlighted, as shown in Figure ), and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Then press Ctrl-V to paste the text into your email.

LoneRanger · #**207** 03-03-2008, 01:35 PM

03 March 2008:

Print a Folder Listing

I need a printout of the contents of a folder, but Explorer doesn't have a
Print function. Do I have to resort to the Print Screen key on my keyboard?

In the days of DOS, pressing the Print Screen key would send all the text on your screen to your printer. But in Windows, this key simply takes a screenshot of the entire display and puts it on the clipboard as a bitmap. (Hint: press Alt-Print Screen to snap just the active window.)

Fortunately, there's a better way, but it involves a little preparation. Open Notepad, and type the following:

dir /o:gn "%1" >c:\filelisting.txt
notepad /p c:\filelisting.txt

When you're done, select File --> Save and name the file printfolder.bat. (The .bat filename extension is important.)

Next, in Windows Explorer, go to Tools --> Folder Options, and choose the File Types tab.

Highlight "(NONE)/Folder" in the list, and click the Advanced button. Then click the New button in the Edit File Type dialog. In the Action field, type Print Listing , and below, in the "Application used to perform action" field, type the full path and filename of the printfolder.bat file you just created (e.g., c:\stuff\printfolder.bat ). Click OK and then OK again, and click the Close button when you're done.

Thereafter, right-click any folder and select Print Listing to run the batch file and print an alphabetized listing of the folder contents.

LoneRanger · #**208** 03-04-2008, 12:40 PM

04 March 2008:

Print a File from Explorer

I need to print a variety of documents on a regular basis, but it's a hassle to open each document in its own application just to print it. There's gotta be a faster way.

Depending on the file type, odds are the feature you want is right at hand. In Explorer, just right-click a document and select Print to send it to the printer.

Now, the printing of documents is the responsibility of individual applications, so if you don't see a Print option for a particular file type, it means there's no application configured for this task. To add a Print option to a file type that doesn't have it, go to View --> Folder Options in Explorer, and choose the File Types tab. Select the type in the list, and click the Advanced button. Click New, type Print in the Action field, and then click Browse. Locate the application that opens files of this type (e.g., Notepad for .txt files, Microsoft Word for .doc files), and then click Open. After the path and filename in the "Application used to perform action" field, add a space and then type : /p %1 .

Note: The %1 is a placeholder, which Explorer will replace with the name of the file you've right-clicked. The /p parameter is usually all that is required to instruct the program to print the file, although your application may need a different parameter. Look up "command-line parameters" in your application's documentation for details .

Click OK and then OK again, and click the Close button when you're done. Now, right-click a document that matches the file type you just customized and select Print, and you should get a printout of the file shortly!

LoneRanger · #**209** 03-05-2008, 03:24 PM

05 March 2008:

Show the Folder Size

Explorer shows the collective size of the files in a folder down in the Status bar, but this statistic never includes the subfolders. Why doesn't Explorer show the size of all the contents of a folder?

It does, but not in the Status bar. Right-click a folder and select Properties, and Explorer will calculate the size of the folder and all its contents including subfolders reporting both the total number of bytes and the actual disk space consumed. (The latter is always a larger number because files, no matter how small, consume disk space in discrete chunks called clusters). Of course, this gets rather time-consuming if you want to check the sizes of more than a handful of folders.

To display folder sizes right in Windows Explorer, install the free Folder Size for Windows extension, available at Folder Size for Windows Explorer . Open Windows Explorer, navigate to any folder on your hard disk, and select View --> Details. Right-click any column header (or go to View --> Choose Details), and place a checkmark next to Folder Size. This gives you a new Folder Size heading that shows the sizes of both individual files and the contents of folders (you can turn off the Size column now, since the file size display will be redundant).

Note: Due to a limitation in Windows XP's support for "column handlers" like the Folder Size extension, you won't be able to sort Explorer listings reliably by clicking the Folder Size column header. As a partial fix, a second column, Folder Size Sort, is also included in the package. Although it omits the comma separators and "KB" designation, it can properly sort files by size .

At this point, you can rearrange and resize the columns by dragging them with your mouse.