p take control of windows 7

7/31/2019 p Take Control of Windows 7

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Hi,

Thank you for your interest in Take Control of Windows 7.

I randomly selected 20 tutorials so you'll get the feel of the book, the explanations and the technical level

of it all.

Take Control of Windows 7 has a 7 page index and there are just too many topics and tutorials to just

mention them all here.

However, we divided the book in the a couple of broad sections which are:

The Start-Off Tweaks: In this section I'll show you the most important tweaks of the book. For enjoying a

healthy, fast and stable computer and internet connection, you need tweak your Windows services, you

need to clean up your pc and develop a system for it, and you need to work on your registry.

System Tricks: This section is all about optimizing your system, whether it is with nifty little tweaks or

disabling useless windows features.

Playing with your icons and buttons: Well, the title says it all, I guess. Fun and useful tweaks to make

your system really your own.

And the last section; other Windows Tips and Tricks: This is by far the biggest section. This section is

about personalizing your PC, working in a network, tweaking your menus and folders, how to set up

parental controls, how to properly work with paint, windows media player and all the other Windows

applications.

As you can see, each and every aspect of your pc is covered.

The purchase page of the book can be found here;

http://www.takecontrolofwindows7.com/add-to-cart/

Don't forget to leave your name and contact details because we'll keep updating the book with new

tutorials, applications and tricks.

I hope you'll enjoy the tutorials, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me via thesiteor on

twitter.

Have a great day,

Vincent Sparreboom
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Starting off with disabling the Windows 7 UAC.

One of my biggest aggravations in Windows 7 is the User Account Control Policy and Im not

the only one who thinks about Windows 7s UAC this way. There are many blogs about

Windows 7 and as it turns out on most of these blogs the tutorials about disabling Windows

7s UAC are the most read articles there.

What is User Account Control?

User Account Control (UAC) is a new security component in Windows 7. UAC enables users to perform

common tasks as non-administrators, called Standard Users in Windows 7, and as Administrators

without having to switch users, log off, or use Run As. A Standard User account is synonymous with a

User account in Windows XP. User accounts that are members of the local Administrators group will

run most applications as a Standard User. By separating user and administrator functions while

enabling productivity, UAC is an important enhancement for Windows 7.

I dont want to give Windows 7 permission to continue each time I install a program or

delete something that might be of any relevance.

These are the steps that you need to take for disabling the Windows 7 UAC.

First open your Control Panel via the Start button. Type in the search bar UAC. Click on Change User Account Control Settings, under Action Center.


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This will bring you to User Account Control Settings; don't drag it all the way downbecause you don't want software automatically installing other apps. It's your system

and you need to be in control. Just drag the slider to the second lowest setting sothat the box on the right side shows Don't notify me when I make changes to

Windows settings.

Click on OK. Then the annoying Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to

this computer? window pops-up, choose YES.

Restart your computer and youre done.Now your first tweak is a fact and please dont forget. All the Tips, Tricks, Tweaks, Hot fixes

and software that Ill show you will NOT harm or damage your computer in any way possible.


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Increase your menu speed.

What well need to do is tweak the Windows Registry for this and you can do that by

pressing the Windows Key + R or you can go to Start and enter Run in the Search field.

Type in regedit in the Run window and click on OK.

Then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Right-click on MenuShowDelay and click on Modify.

The standard setting should be 400 or 200 but change the Value data to 1. Click OK, reboot

your computer, and you are done.


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Start your system with Windows 7 ReadyBoost.

Adding system memory (RAM) is often the best way to improve a PCs performance. However,

upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some systems have limited memory expansion

capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.

What is RAM memory?

Random Access Memory (RAM) provides space for your computer to read and write data to be

accessed by the CPU. When people refer to a computer's memory, they usually mean its RAM.

If you add more RAM to your computer, you reduce the number of times your CPU must read data

from your hard disk. This usually allows your computer to work considerably faster, as RAM is many

times faster than a hard disk.

RAM is volatile, so data stored in RAM stays there only as long as your computer is running. As soon asyou turn the computer off, the data stored in RAM disappears.

When you turn your computer on again, your computer's boot firmware (called BIOS on a PC) uses

instructions stored semi-permanently in ROM chips to read your operating system and related files

from the disk and load them back into RAM.

Windows 7 provides a new way to add memory to your system which is called ReadyBoost.

Now you can use a USB flash drive, to improve performance without having to add

additional memory to your system.

The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache, which means that your

computer can access the necessary data much quicker than it can access data on the hard

drive.

Its best to use a USB flash drive that you can spare and then plug it in an empty USB slot,

preferably at the back of your system so that you wont have it in sight. Now you should see

a pop-up with the option Speed up my system, using Windows ReadyBoost.


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If you are not prompted then follow these steps.

Go to start menu and select My Computer. Right-click on your flash drive. Choose Properties and select the ReadyBoost tab

Now check Use this device and tweak the settings, click Apply and youre done. The

minimum requirement for the USB is at least 256mb but I prefer to use a 1GB flash drive just

to be sure.


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If you have a spare USB and a spare USB2.0 slot its a good tweak to use. It works well (and

quickly).

If you dont have a spare USB drive and you want to increase you systems RAM we

recommend this shop. Memory Suppliers is the easiest source on the Internet to findguaranteed compatible memory. Take advantage of their simple, 3-Step Memory Finder Tool

that makes finding the exact memory for your computer or laptop a breeze.

Memory Suppliersoffers FREE Shipping!

Create a shortcut to clear the clipboard.

This next brilliant tweak is something I could have mentioned in the earlier tutorials because

it really will help you to increase your work speed when you are working with large files. I

will show you how to create a shortcut icon to clear to windows clipboard. Working with an

empty memory dramatically increases the speed of your system especially with slower

machines. And this is also a great tool to clear your clipboard if you copied something that

you dont want to leave on there for someone to see.

First youll need to right click on your desktop and select New then Shortcut.

Then type in the following command cmd /c "echo off | clip"
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Click Next and give the shortcut a name then click on Finish.

Now you can give the icon a little bit more flair by giving it another icon and

assigning it a shortcut key.

You can do this by right-clicking on the icon and selecting the icon Properties.

Select Change Icon


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Type %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll and press Enter.Choose any icon then OK and

Applyand youre done.

I now moved (CTRL+C and CTRL+V) the icon to a folder that I use for all my tweaks.

Then right click on the shortcut.

Select Pin To Taskbar


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This way it isnt cluttering up my desktop and I have it handy whenever I want to use it.

Taskbar productivity tips and shortcuts.

The Windows 7 taskbar has features that improve your productivity. In this topic, we will

discuss tips and shortcuts like controlling the position of taskbar icons, previewing contents

of windows without opening and using the keyboard in navigating between windows, and

many others.

Controlling the Taskbar Icons

Changing icon positions within the taskbar -simply drag-and-drop any icon on your taskbar

to change its position. You may rearrange them any way you choose.

Pinning an application to the taskbar to pin an application in the taskbar is simply creating

a shortcut of that application in the taskbar. To do this, open any application and right-click

its icon in the taskbar then clicking on Pin this program to the taskbar.

To remove the pinned application, simply right-click on it and click on Unpin this program

from taskbar.


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Managing Opened Windows

Showing the Desktop click on the rightmost area in the taskbar

which gives you the information (show desktop) if you mouse

over.

Other way of doing this is by pressing: Windows + D.

To revert to the previous state, click on the same area or press the

same keys again.

Show the desktop temporarilyto temporarily view the desktop while opening an

application, press Windows + Space. You may also mouse over the rightmost area in the

taskbar which gives you the information (show desktop).

Live thumbnailsmove the mouse cursor over the applications icon in the taskbar to get athumbnail preview. If you opened five Internet Explorer windows, youll be able to view

them all.

Temporarily show an opened windowjust mouse over a specific window thumbnail in the

taskbar to momentarily display only the window corresponding to the hovered thumbnail


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Cycling Between Windows and Taskbar Icons

The following tips are helpful if you want to use your keyboard to cycle or navigate between

opened windows or with taskbar icons.

Cycling between opened windowspress Windows + T to cycle between opened windows

through thumbnail previews.

Cycling between taskbar iconspress Windows + (1-9) to cycle between taskbar icons. To

open the first icon, press Windows + 1. To open the second icon, press Windows + 2, and so

on. To minimize the opened window, press the same keys again.

Cycling between an application's opened windowsif you opened two or more Internet

Explorer windows, you can cycle between them by pressing on CTRL and then clicking on its

taskbar icon.

Make the text in Windows easier to read.

The normal and default text size in Windows 7 is 96 DPI (dots per inch); that is, 100%. But as

most things in Windows 7, this is pretty easy to adjust. You can do this without changing the

screen resolution of your monitor or laptop screen. This allows you to increase or decrease

the size of text and other items on your screen while keeping your monitor or laptop set to

its most favorable resolution.

Go to Start menu and select Control Panel . Select Display Choose Adjust font size (DPI). Now select Larger Scale.

Click on Apply and OK and after you log off or reboot, your new settings will be active.


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On the DPI Scaling window youll also find an option to manually set them to a custom

percentage (click on Set custom text size (DPI) on the left portion of the above window). I

suggest you just play with these settings until you find the one that you like most.

Open a webpage much faster using the address bar.

Most people open a webpage by double clicking the Internet Explorer (IE) button on their

desktop or via Start. Then when IE starts youll first get your default homepage and then

youll have to open the page that you really want. The same goes for a location on your hard

disk on in your network. As you understand; this takes up unnecessary time. There is a

method in Windows 7 to really speed this up.

First youll need to right click on a blank area of your Taskbar. Select Toolbars and mark/click on the Address.

Now you see the word Address search bar in your taskbar.

Here you can type the Web page address directly (without http:// or www.) and press enter

and your default browser will automatically start with the address that youve typed in the

Address Bar.


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To remove the Address Bar from your taskbar youll just need to do the same thing but then

uncheck the Address Bar in your shortcut menu.

Displaying multiple time zones.

I am currently using Anuko (used to be called ZoneTick) as my world clock and it looks like

this.

But I paid for it because of the extra options the app has. If you dont want to pay for it there

is another option in Windows 7.

If you are interested in trying out Anuko, you can download a free trailhere. If you work a lot

with different time zones, I highly recommend that you give the software a test run. The

software comes with time tables, office opening hours and it's great for converting times.
http://www.takecontrolofwindows7.com/anukohttp://www.takecontrolofwindows7.com/anukohttp://www.takecontrolofwindows7.com/anukohttp://www.takecontrolofwindows7.com/anuko


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Go to Start menu and select Control Panel. Click on Date and Time. Now go to the Additional Clocks tab

CLick Apply and OK.

If you now hover with your mouse over your existing clock your new and additional clocks

will show and if you click on your clock it will look like this.


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Burning a disk image in Windows.

Windows 7 allows you to burn disk images into a CD or DVD without installing any extra disk-

burning software Nero, for example. A disk image is an exact copy of the files and folders

contained in any storage device such as your hard disk, DVD, or CD. The most common diskimage files are .ISO and .IMG, which at the moment, are the only ones supported by

Windows Disc Image Burner. A disk image is very helpful there is a necessity to backup

installation discs, data, and others. If you think that an original installation disc or data disk is

about to give up or might not be working anymore, you can easily copy it to another disk.

Burning an Image

Go to the image file that you want to burn and right-click on it. Select Openwith and then Windows Disc Image Burner.

You will also find Burn Disc Image when you right-click on the

image file under the Open with option if a third-party software with .ISO

and .IMG file association has been installed in your computer.

The Windows Disc Image Burner will then open where you can select disc burner to use (in

case you have two). In case you have a rewriteable disc, you will be seeing a notification if

you want to either delete the existing content (if present) or not.

It will also allow you to check if the you have burned the disc image successfully by checking

on Verify disc after burning.

Click on Burn to start.


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Burning the Image using the Command Line

If you would opt to use the command line instead, you may do so as well and still get the

same output as the result discussed in the earlier process.

Just go to the Start Menuand type in cmd in the search box and pressing on the Enter

key.

To load our image file in Windows Disc Image Burner using the command line, we will be

using this command: isoburn.exe "{drive letter}:\{path to image file}".

So to achieve the same result like I mentioned earlier; we are going to burn the file

PowerQuest PartitionMagic 8.0.iso from drive K: in our K:\Software\PowerQuest\ (path), we

will be tying in the command: isoburn.exe "K:\Software\PowerQuest

PartitionMagic\PowerQuest PartitionMagic 8.0.iso".

After we hit the Enter key, the Windows Disc Image Burner will pop up and then we go

ahead with the burning process using our DVD Writer.


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Burning DVD's with Windows DVD Maker.

Windows 7 allow you to burn different types of video, audio, and picture files. This feature,

known as Windows DVD Maker, was first introduced in Windows Vista. The only difference

from the previous version is the interface.

Windows DVD Maker supports such file types .avi, .mpeg, .wmv, .asf, and .mpg for video,

.mp3, .wma, and .wav for audio, and .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png,and .tif for images. It can burn files

to such DVD discs as DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-ROM as long as your DVD

burner supports them.

Adding Files for Burning and Customizing your DVD

When you first launch Windows DVD Maker, it gives you an overview of what you can do.

You can stop this window from opening each time you start Windows DVD Maker by

unchecking on Dont show this page again. Click on the Choose Photos and Videos button.

The screenshot below is the main window of Window DVD Maker. Here you can add,

manage and organize items that you want to burn, save or open compilations that you want

to burn, and change or update the settings of your DVD menu.

To add videos, pictures or audio files, just click on Add items. Browse and select the files you

want to burn then click on the Add button.

Another way of adding files into your compilation is by dragging and dropping them from

Windows Explorer to the Windows DVD Maker screen. Note that Pictures are kept in a folder


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called Slide show. You can view the contents of the folder by clicking on it. If you want to go

back to the main screen, just click on the folder icon with a green arrow on top of it.

As weve mentioned earlier, you can do the following before proceeding to burn the files

that you compiled.

1. Save the files you compiled for future burning. Just go to the file menu, click on Save, and

select the location where you want to save the file. If you then want to burn the compilation

you saved, just click on file, and then select Open project file

2. Remove files you might have mistakenly included in the compilation. Simply select the file

and click on Remove items or press Delete on your keyboard.

3. Sort the order of files by clicking on it and then click on the up and down arrow icons on

top.

4. Change the DVD Burner if you have more than one.

5. Enter the title of you compilation on the DVD title field.


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You can also choose more settings if you click on the Options link on the lower-right

portion. This will let you choose the playback settings, DVD aspect ratio, video format and

others.

The highly recommended settings when burning DVDs are:

Start with DVD menu this will allow you to select which file to be played firstthrough the menu, which we will discuss later.

16:9 DVD aspect ratio which is ideal if you have a wide screen TV PAL video format this is the format commonly used in European countries. Medium burner speedyou can actually choose either Fastest or Slow but

medium speed is better.


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Customizing the DVD Menu

Before burning your DVD, you first need to customize the DVD menu so you can choose

which files you wanted to play. You can choose your desired menu styles from the right

portion of the DVD maker window.

On top of the DVD maker screen youll see the menus File, Preview, Menu text, Customize

menu, and Slide show. The file menu allows you to save the current compilation for future

burning or open a saved compilation.

If you click Preview, youll see be able to see short preview of your compilation.


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The Menu textlets you change the title of your compilation as well as text for Play and

Scenes. You can also change the fonts of these texts and even add some notes. If you are

done, just click on the Change Text button.

Under Customize menu, you can add a background or a foreground video, choose font type

and color of the menu, add music while browsing through the menu and choose buttons for

the scenes.


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The Slide Show allows you to customize the viewing of pictures that are compiled in your

DVD. You can add background music, change slide show length to match music length, allow

pan and zoom for pictures and choose transition effects between slides. When youre done

selecting the settings, click on the Change Slide Show button.

When youre all set, go back to the main window and then click on the Burn button.

The burning process may take time depending on the size of your compilation. Before the

actual burning process, the compilation is first encoded into the suitable format. Once the

burning is done, you will be prompted if you want to make another copy.

Common Issues

The following are common issues that you might encounter when using Windows DVDMaker:


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Cannot add a background or foreground menu under Customize menu. When you preview your compilation, the video is distorted or appears upside down. There is no audio and video display is black. The program stops responding. Distorted audio or plays too quickly. The audio is good but the video is black.

Such errors are caused by incompatible filter. When this happens, go to Options, as describe

earlier, and on the DVD Options window, go to the Compatibility tab. Unchecked all the

video filters that are running by click on the checkboxes beside them.

Disabling those filters will not affect other program; it will just ensure that they do not

interfere in the burning process. You may then enable them once you are done burning by

checking on the checkboxes.

Quick key to show your lost mouse pointer.

This is a follow up of the previous Tip. From time to time the mouse pointer may be hard to

find especially when you are working on multiple monitors like me. You can display the

mouse trails, but Im not a big fan of this option.

The option which I like a lot more then the trails option is a feature whereby pressing the

CTRL key briefly displays an animated circle around the mouse pointers position. Even if the

mouse pointer is hidden at the side of the screen, this quick key makes it much easier to

spot.


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To do this you need to follow the next easy steps.

Go to Start menu Select your Control Panel and click on the Mouse icon. Now the Mouse Properties should be opened and you should go to the tab Pointer

Options.

Now you can select the option "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key".

Create a backup schedule of your Windows 7 files.

Did your hard disk die, get infected with a virus or was your laptop stolen?? Now you wish

youd backed it up earlier dont you? First you should plug-in your external HD because you

cant keep the back up on your C:\ drive (or you have to work in a network).

For creating a Backup schedule of your Windows 7 files youll need to take the following

steps.

Go to Start menu Type in Backup Press Enter


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In the Back up or restore your files window, click the Set up backup link.

Select a location for saving your backup and click Next.


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You can have Windows choose what to backup or you can choose the files and directories.

Select the files and folders you want to backup checking the boxes beside each of them.

Here you can review the backup job and also change the schedule of the back up by clicking

on the Change schedule link.


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Here you can also schedule the days and times the backup occurs. Make sure you pick a time

that you are not working on your computer. For me thats Monday morning 10am because

Im still in bed around that time. ;). Click on OK and youll see the previous window.

Click on Save settings and run backup and the backup should be running by then.

If you are a heavy computer user like me than I suggest that you do a full System back up

once every 2 months.

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