If you expect to be a Windows power user, you must muck about in the registry. (Mere mortals, of course, should avoid the Registry Editor like the plague. Seriously. One slip in the Registry Editor and you can render your system unbootable or worse.)

For experienced Windows users, part of the annoyance of using the Registry Editor is having to expand each branch to find the exact key and value you’re looking for. It’s especially tedious when you keep coming back to the same key while you experiment with a new setting or troubleshoot a problem.

The solution is to use a well-hidden Regedit feature that lets you bookmark a particular location. After highlighting a key in the tree pane on the left side of the Regedit window, click Favorites, Add to Favorites. Change the default name to a descriptive label and click OK. Your saved entries appear on the Regedit Favorites menu, sorted in the order in which you created them. To remove a favorite, click Favorites, Remove Favorite(s). Click one or more entries in the list (hold down the Ctrl key as you click to select multiple items) and click OK to remove those items.

What do you do if your mouse stops responding? How do you close all open programs and restart Windows without losing any data? The secret is to know these keyboard shortcuts, which bypass the mouse. They also come in handy if you have a notebook computer and want a fast way to stand by or hibernate without having to mess with touchpads or other pointing devices.

Continue reading “Tip of the day: Shut down, stand by, or hibernate without a mouse” →

Trying to figure out what a program file does can be a challenge. That’s especially true when the file in question is one of many EXE and DLL files in a folder. When in doubt, right-click and choose Properties. For Windows program files and DLLs, the resulting dialog box contains a Version tab that includes all sorts of valuable information about the program, including the current version number and the developer’s name.

I use this technique all the time. Recently, for instance, I found that a file called Reader_sl.exe was loading automatically at startup. What is this file? A quick search revealed that it was in the Program Files folder, deeply nested in the Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader folder. When I inspected its properties, I found this information:

On my notebook computer, speed is at a premium, and I rarely read Acrobat files. Armed with this information, I looked in the Common Startup folder (%allusersprofile%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup) and deleted the SpeedLauncher shortcut. These details can also come in handy if you’re considering an upgrade to an installed program but aren’t sure exactly which version you currently have installed.

Some of the most useful Control Panel options have shortcuts that are readily accessible from the desktop or the Start menu, although you’d never know it by looking:

• Display – To open this dialog box and change any Display options, including screen saver settings and resolution, right-click any empty space on the desktop and choose Properties.
• System – Right-click the My Computer icon (on the desktop or on the Windows XP Start menu) and click Properties. This gives you quick access to Device Manager and other system tools. (Click Manage to open the Computer Management console.)
• Network – Right-click the My Network Places shortcut (on the desktop or on the Windows XP Start menu) and choose Properties. This allows you to manage your current network connections.
• User Accounts – Click the icon to the left of your user name at the top of the Start menu. Then click Back to adjust any settings for your account, or Home to select another user account.
• Internet Options – Right-click the browser icon at the top of the Start menu and click Internet Properties.
• Date and Time – Right-click the clock at the far right side of the taskbar and click Adjust Date/Time.
• Taskbar and Start Menu – Right-click the Start button and then click Properties.

In Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition (and the expanded Deluxe Edition), we document the command-line syntax to open just about any Control Panel option, including some of the esoteric switches that let you specify which tab of a specific dialog box should have the focus. If you write scripts or batch files and you want this level of control, you’ll want the book.

In its default settings, Windows Explorer conceals two types of files: those with the hidden attribute set, and those designated as system files. Some people, including my occasional writing partner Woody Leonhard, think you should always enable the display of hidden files. I don’t agree – in general, I prefer to keep system and hidden files hidden except when I need to solve a particular problem. To change Explorer’s settings so hidden and system files are visible, open any Explorer window and click Tools, Folder Options (or click the Folder Options icon in Control Panel). On the Folder Options dialog box, click the View tab and select the Show hidden files and folders checkbox. Then scroll down a bit further and clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) checkbox. (You’ll have to click past a warning dialog box to make this change.) When you close the dialog box and return to the Explorer window, you’ll see all the files in that folder, including those marked as hidden and system files.

It is annoying to make this change, and equally annoying to undo the change when you’re finished with the current task. So for Windows XP Inside Out, we came up with a script that automates the process. The script examines the registry to see whether hidden files (those with the Hidden attribute set) are displayed in Windows Explorer. If not, it modifies the registry so that hidden files and super-hidden files (those with the System and Hidden attributes set) are displayed. The script also assumes that you probably want the option to edit file name extensions, so it changes settings to make all file name extensions visible as well. If hidden files are already displayed, the script assumes you want to undo the previous set of changes and modifies these three registry values accordingly.

I’ve made the script file available for download in compressed (Zip) format: Click here to download the file, extract it to a convenient location, and run it whenever you want to toggle hidden files.

If you want to view the script contents first, click here to see the text in a separate browser window. Remember to save the script file with the .vbs extension.

When the script runs, it changes the current settings and displays the results in an information box. If the script won’t run properly on your computer, check to see whether your anti-virus or security software is blocking Visual Basic script files.