System Tips N Tricks
This is the page for appearance tips and will updated weekly if we can find loads more for you. This page was set up for beginners, in fact there is no such thing. If you cant spend a lot of time in front of your pc then you don't get the chance to learn the little tricks that we get hold of and have mastered over the years. Some of you advanced user like myself may find this section useful as well as when I was doing the page I came across 2 additions I got hold of from a friend I was not aware of and will be using now. So alas as I say here is a few tips and I hope it is of use to you at some point. Click on the green txt header and it will take you right the part of how to do it.
Check for Corrupt System Files Get rid of the junk in your control panel. A faster way to get to your system properties. Learn how to make windows show you the full file path. Keep the excess junk out of the system tray. Save time rebooting to refresh hardware with this tip. Download and install Tweak UI.
If you have
two hard drives in your computer and your C: drive is about full, you can tell
Windows to use your other drive for virtual memory. In any event, if you want to change the drive Windows uses for virtual memory, here's how: A word of caution first: If you mess something up with virtual memory (you know, like change the amount Windows can use or shut it off altogether), it can stop your system from functioning properly. So be careful! For Windows 95, 98 & ME 1. Right-click My Computer and select Properties from the resulting menu. 2. Next, click the Performance tab and click the Virtual Memory button. 3. By default, Windows manages your virtual memory. Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings". 4. From the "Hard Disk" drop box, select the drive you want to use. That's it. Hit the OK button and you're all set. Again, if you feel the need to mess with any other settings, you do so at your own risk. Windows XP hides the VM adjustment—probably because they don't really want you messing with it. 1. Right-click My Computer and select Properties (or hold down the Alt key and double-click "My Computer") 2. Click the Advanced tab then under Performance, click "Settings". 3. There will be another Advanced tab to select in the "Performance Options" window. Down where it says "Virtual Memory" click Change. You will see a window with available drives where you can select the drive you want (if you have more than one). Notice that it also shows how much space you have available on that drive. You can specify a Custom size, or let the system manage the size for you. After you've made your selection, click Set and OK. Check for Corrupt System Files Did you ever have the suspicion that one of your Windows system files was corrupt? Normally, this problem causes lots of frustration while you try to hunt down the impaired file or do a complete re-install of Windows. Well, hold your Install Disks! There's another way. Prior to Windows 2000 the operating system might overwrite shared system files (for example .dll and .exe files) when you install software. Overwritten system files cause unpredictable system performance, strange program behavior, and operating system failure. If you're using Windows 98 you have a way to repair these files with the System File Checker. Here's how: 1. Click Start,
Programs, Accessories, System Tools,
System Information. That's it. If there's something wrong, you'll be given instructions for repair. One more thing, if the System Information program is not there, you'll need to insert your Win98 install disk, select Add/Remove, and select System Information from the System Tools section. Windows 2000 & XP users: You will not find System File Checker in your system tools, but if you search for it you will find it as "sfc.exe". No need to run it though, because Windows File Protection prevents the replacement of protected system files such as .sys, .dll, and .exe files. If you do run SFC, you will probably see a DOS window flash on your screen for 1.5 seconds. Windows File Protection runs in the background to protect all files installed by the Setup program. Any attempts by other programs to replace or move a protected system file are detected, then the file's digital signature gets checked to see if the new file is the correct Microsoft version. If not, the file gets replaced from the backup stored in the Dllcache folder or from the Windows CD. If Windows File Protection cannot locate the correct file, it prompts you for the location. By default, Windows File Protection is always enabled and allows Windows digitally signed files to replace existing files. Get rid of the junk in your control panel. (NOTE - This tip is probably best suited for our intermediate to advanced users.) Do you ever get "extra" little icons on your control panel from other programs (especially utilities)? You may have noticed that they don't delete all that easily. Well, there's a way around that. Windows gets these icons from CPL files that live in its System directory. Here's how to remove those pesky icons by re-naming CPL files: First, you'll need to have your computer set to view file extensions. If it's not, right-click your Start button, hit Explore. When Windows Explorer opens, hit the View menu, Folder options. From the View tab, uncheck the "Hide file extensions for known file types" box. Hit OK and exit Explorer. OK, the Control Panel item I want to get rid of is FindFast (it's an Office 97 utility). Here's a shot of my control panel with it: 1. Click the Start button and select Find, Files or Folders (In WinME, it's Search, For Files or Folders) 2. In the
Named field ( "Search for Files or Folders Named" in Win ME) type: 3. From the "look in" drop down box, select drive C: or whatever drive your copy of Windows lives on. 4. Hit the "Find now" ("Search Now in WinME) button. You should get a list of CPL files. Now, you'll have to try to figure out which one is which, but they usually correspond to the name of the utility in question. 5. Once you
find the one(s) you want to remove, right-click it and re-name the extension: Why not just delete them? Well, you can, but if you delete the wrong one, you may have to re-install Windows to get it back (or at the very least dig through your recycle bin). Re-naming is much safer since you can always undo your re-naming. That's it. The icon should be gone. If it's not, you probably re-named the wrong CPL file. A faster way to get to your system properties. Need to get to your system properties? Well, you *could* click the Start button, Settings, Control Panel, then open the System icon. Want a faster way? Hold down the ALT key and double click the My Computer icon on your desktop. Learn how to make windows show you the full file path. Have you ever gotten a little lost while using "My Computer"? Before you get buried in another deep directory, tell Windows to show the full path in the title bar. I know, it doesn't sound all that profound, but it really comes in helpful. Here' how: Open My Computer (or any folder) and click the Tools menu, Folder options Click the View tab and check the "Display full path in title bar" checkbox. That's it, you're only a glance away from knowing where you're at in any directory structure. Keep the excess junk out of the system tray. Don't you just hate it when you've installed a program that insists on starting itself when you boot the computer? You know the drill. You install something and it places an icon in your system tray. Now, all those little icons you see in your system tray represent programs that are RUNNING. If a bunch of stuff loads when you start your computer, you may be maxing out your system before you launch your first regular program. So, if you find your computer getting progressively slower as you add more software, it could be that these system tray icons are, at least partially, at fault. In addition, program running in your system tray can cause any (or all) of the following problems: - Sluggish
system speed The more of these programs you have running, the more likely it is that you're going to see one or more of the problems mentioned above. Granted, System Tray programs are not the only cause for the conditions mentioned above, but they are the first place to look. So, how do you keep all these unwanted programs at bay? 1. Click the Start button and select Run... 2. Next, type in: msconfig Then hit OK 3. The System Configuration Utility should run (please note that not all computers have it installed -see note below). 4. Click the Startup tab. 5. You'll see a listing of all the stuff that starts itself when your computer does. Just uncheck the programs you don't want to load and leave the rest alone. Note - If you don't have msconfig on your system (win 95 / 2000 doesn't) then check out Startup Control Panel at: http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml It does basically the same thing. Once you get msconfig or the program above running, you'll probably see more stuff than you bargained for. I would advise exercising caution while unchecking, especially if you're not sure about what program(s) you're suppressing. Stuff like "Scan Registry" and "System tray" are probably best left alone. If you see stuff that you recognize as being non-essential software, than uncheck it. This is one of those do at your own risk things - for sure. If you're not sure which program is being referred to, look at the path. Sometimes the folder just before the ".exe" file can give you a clue as to what program you're dealing with. For example, if I see something like: "C:\program files\real\realplayer.exe" I can guess the program in question is the ever annoying Real Player. In general, don't disable stuff that starts like this: "C:\Windows\" Or stuff like this: SysTray.exe
These are
more likely to be important system files and programs. You may find that your
computer won't run without them and you'll have to go into Safe mode to get
things working again. Finally, note that unchecking this stuff doesn't remove it. The idea behind having these programs start when the computer does is to give you fast, easy access to them. However, having too many of these programs running at the same time can hit you hard in the system resources department. I personally make sure anything I don't need isn't running. If I need it, I'll click on it's shortcut. Save time rebooting to refresh hardware with this tip. Here's a cool way to save yourself some time. If you have any kind of external (non USB) device (like a scanner, tape backup, external zip drive, etc), they probably need to be powered on before you boot up your computer. If not, the computer doesn't recognize them and you need to turn them on and re-boot. Or do you? For example, let's say you forgot to turn on your scanner. Now, normally you would have to turn it on and re-boot the computer. Wait - here's how to get around it. 1. Right-click
My Computer and select Properties from the resulting menu. Windows will now "refresh" it's hardware profile! Once it's done (it shouldn't take too long at all) you'll find your scanner is now part of the hardware profile and you can now use it, no re-booting required! This will (should) work for any device that's attached to your computer and you forgot to turn on. It seems like I need to hit the refresh button twice on some computers to get this to work. Go figure. Please note - if you forgot to attach a device to your computer, it's best to attach devices to the computer ONLY when it's off (Unless is a USB device). Need to re-start Windows (again)? Rather than re-starting the whole computer, you can do a "warm boot", which is usually faster. To do a warm boot, hold down the SHIFT key while you click the OK button on your shut down screen. Windows will restart without re-starting the whole computer. Do you have old disks laying around with important stuff on them? In many cases, the info on the disk(s) seems like it's inaccessible with newer machines. Maybe the software that created it is no longer in existence, or it's just an odd ball format. So, is there any way to transfer your files from old floppies to your new machine? Well, maybe. The first thing I try with an old, unknown file format is to open it with Notepad (assuming it's a document and not a picture or something). You'd be surprised how often that little trick works. If that doesn't work, sometimes MS Word or Corel WordPerfect may have the ability to open the file. Note that with both of the above document opening tricks, you'll need to select "All files" from the File of type drop box on the Open screen. If you don't, you probably won't be able to access the file you're trying to open at all. If the file is a database, this can be harder. Your best bet, believe it or not, may be a spreadsheet program like Excel (or some similar program). You see, most older (and many newer) databases are in a basic text separated format (the values between fields are separated by commas, spaces or tabs with one record per line). Excel and most other spreadsheet programs can handle these types of files with ease. Again, you'll need to select "All files" from the Open screen's Files of type drop box in order to try this. Of course, if you have a good database program, it may be able to open the file for you. MS Access can open just about any database file, if you're lucky enough to have access to Access. Note that if you are successful in getting your file to open, you will probably have to "clean" it up a bit before it's useful again (sometimes the formatting is not quite what it should be). Once it's set though, be sure to re-save it in a current format :-) Finally, if all else fails, you may need to figure out exactly what type of program you'll need to find in order to open the file. Check out this site for a little help in that depth: http://whatis.techtarget.com/fileFormatA/ Do you have problems when the time comes to shut Windows down? Does it try to shut down and just kind of sit there, all confused and locked up? If this happens every time, or most of the time, here's some steps you can take to correct the problem: 1. Programs Not Closing - This is probably the number one reason for Windows hanging at shutdown. When you shut down the computer, Windows tries to shut down all the programs that are currently running (both regular programs and those running in the background / system tray). If one of these programs stops responding, it can cause Windows to hang and not shutdown. So, how do you fix it? Well, the first step is to figure out which program is causing the problem. First, try to make sure everything is shut down before you shut Windows down. I'm not just talking about your regular programs, I'm talking about all that stuff in your system tray. Usually a right-click to a system tray icon will give you an option to shut it down. After you end all the currently running programs, give it another shot. If things go smoothly, then one of the programs you closed is the likely culprit. You'll need to do a lot of re-starting to actually determine which program though. Start by shutting down one of these background / system tray programs and re-booting. Repeat the process with each program until the system no longer hangs. The last program you shut down was the cause of the problem. If you can't get everything shut down (don't worry about the little yellow speaker), you may want to try using MSConfig to keep all these little programs from running in the first place. Just uncheck everything under the startup tab and restart your computer. Then try shutting down again. If that keeps it from hanging, it's likely one of the programs you just unchecked that's the troublemaker. In order to figure out which one, you'll have to run MSConfig again, re-checking one unchecked program at a time and doing a restart. When it hangs, it's the program from two times ago, not the last time since you have to go through a re-boot in order to get it to run. 2. -
Windows Problem http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ A re-install of Windows may also fix the problem, but only use that as a last resort. 3.
Corrupted Sound File 4. New
Hardware Those are the usual culprits. Keep in mind that if these shut down hang-ups happen randomly they are going to be really tough to track down. You may have to use MSConfig to disable certain suspect programs for a week or so at a time in order to figure it out. And never forget - sometimes Windows can act odd (I know, hard to believe), and cause a shut down hang-up every so often. If these system shut down problems are few and far between, I wouldn't worry about them too much. Just shut the power off when that happens and re-boot. You'll probably have to sit through Scan Disk, but that's life with Windows (well, I suppose you could cancel Scan Disk when it start to run...) Download and install Tweak UI. Tweak UI is
a free (unsupported, use at your own risk) add-on from You can use it to tweak a ton of different Windows options. Everything from removing stubborn icons from the Windows Desktop to hiding a disk drive. The hardest thing about using Tweak UI is getting it downloaded and running. So, first the download part: 1. Head to Microsoft's web site at: 2. Next, type this in their search box: tweak ui Hit Enter 3. You should get a Tweak UI search, with a link called "Download for the Tweak UI 1.33 Update" or something similar to that. Click that link then the Download button on the next page. My recommendation is that you save this file to your Windows Desktop; makes it easier to find.
OK, now that you have the file, you need to unzip and install it. To unzip this one, just double-click it (no extra software is needed). I recommend that you place the files in a folder on your Desktop for easier access. Note that this should be good for users of win 95, 98, & ME.Win 2000 users will need to use something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Desktop Note that you need to replace the YOUR USER NAME part with your real user name. Again the above is ONLY if you're using win 2000. You should now have a folder on your Desktop named "Tweak". Open it by double-clicking and look for a "tweakui.inf" file. Note that, depending on how your computer is set up, you may not see the ".inf" part. Right-click that "tweakui.inf" file and select Install from the resulting menu. It will install the components. Note that partway through it will open up a help file. You'll need to close that help file in order to complete the install. That's it. Hit your Start button, Settings, Control Panel and you should see a icon named "Tweak UI". Double-click to start playing. A final note - Tweak UI is NOT supported by Microsoft and is a do-at-your-own-risk deal. So, if you're not sure about something you see within the program - DON'T MESS WITH IT
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