It’s annoying to have to hunt around on the desktop or drill through cascading menus to find the programs you use every day. Why not assign keyboard shortcuts to those programs? As long as you follow the rules, these shortcuts can be effective.

This technique works only with Windows shortcuts, which can point to a program, a document file, or a Web address – you can’t assign a shortcut directly to an executable file or a document file. In addition, the shortcut must be stored on the desktop or in the All Programs menu – Windows ignores your instructions completely if the shortcut is stored anywhere else. Finally, the shortcut key combination must consist of a letter or number plus at least two of the following three keys: Ctrl, Alt, Shift.

To assign a keyboard shortcut, right-click the shortcut icon and choose Properties. On the General tab, click in the Shortcut key box and press the key combination you want to use (if you press only a letter or number, Windows adds Ctrl+Alt to the key assignment). Click OK to save your change. In the example below, I’ve assigned the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C to the Windows Calculator; now, from anywhere within Windows, all I have to do is press those keys to pop up the calculator instantly.

Are you tired of trying to hit the tiny maximize/restore button in the top right corner of a window? There’s an easier alternative: Double-click anywhere on the title bar. The entire title bar acts as an oversized toggle. Double-click to maximize the window; double-click again to restore the original window size.

The AutoComplete feature in Internet Explorer allows you to save form data and user name/password combinations associated with Web pages. Firefox offers a similar feature with some important usability improvements. Today’s tip tells you how to work with this feature in IE and Firefox.

Continue reading “Tip of the day: Managing saved passwords and form data for Web sites” →

When you open a dialog box to change a setting in Windows or a Windows program, the buttons often include both OK and Apply. What’s the difference? It’s simple:

• Click Apply if you want to make the selected change without closing the current dialog box. This is the right choice if you’re making several changes in different parts of a dialog box and you want to apply one set of changes before moving on to the next.
• Click OK if you want to make the selected change and close the dialog box. If you’re making a single change, you don’t need to click Apply before clicking OK.

Clicking the Cancel button closes the current dialog box without saving any changes. This is the preferred option if you opened a dialog box to check a setting and you want to be certain you don’t accidentally change it.

When you insert removable media (such as a CD or a flash memory card) into a drive, or when you attach a removable drive to your computer using a USB or Firewire connection, Windows XP checks its AutoPlay settings to see what to do next. That can be annoying if Windows decides to do something other than what you prefer. Fortunately, the fix is easy.

For permanently attached devices that hold removable media, such as a CD/DVD drive or a flash card reader, you can make changes any time, regardless of whether any media is in the drive. Open My Computer and right-click the drive icon under the Devices with Removable Storage category. Click Properties, and then click the AutoPlay tab.

Each time you insert a CD or other media type, Windows analyzes its content and uses the AutoPlay setting for that type of content. (If it can’t figure out what the content is, it uses the generic “mixed content” setting.) You’ll need to define the action for each type of content. You might want a DVD movie to play in one program, for example, and use a completely different program to automatically begin ripping tracks to your hard drive whenever you insert a music CD. (Third-party programs can add themselves to the AutoPlay menu with their own specific actions.)

If you prefer to decide what to do with each new CD, DVD, or flash card on a case-by-case basis, you have two choices:

• For each type of content, select the Prompt me each time to choose an action option and then click Apply. With this setting in place, you’ll see a dialog box listing all defined actions for that type of content. You can pick one or click Cancel.
• For each type of content, select Take no action from the list of available options and then click Apply. This setting tells Windows to do absolutely nothing when it detects a new CD or other media containing the specified content type.

AutoPlay settings apply to removable drives as well, including USB and Firewire hard drives and music players that appear as hard drives. You must attach the device and right-click its icon to set AutoPlay options for it,

Windows XP includes a System Configuration Utility, Msconfig.exe, which is incredibly valuable and often misused. It allows you to see most of the programs that run at startup and selectively disable programs for troubleshooting purposes. To start the System Configuration Utility, type msconfig in the Run dialog box and press Enter.

The Startup tab of the System Configuration Utility is intended for use as a troubleshooting tool (it’s not intended to be a full-time startup manager). By clicking Disable All, you can clear every check box in the list, preventing Windows from starting any programs automatically at startup; then, through an iterative process of restoring one or two programs at a time to the list, you can restart programs and see which one is causing a particular problem.

[Click to see a larger image]

To test whether it’s safe to remove a single program from the list of those that start automatically with Windows, clear the check box to the left of the program’s name on the System Configuration Utility’s Startup tab and restart your computer. After verifying that your system works properly without that program starting automatically, you can safely reconfigure the program so it doesn’t start automatically.

If you’re experiencing problems that start immediately after you start your computer, troubleshoot by clicking the Disable All button to clear every program from the list. Restart and see if the problem goes away. If it does, add a handful of programs and restart (I recommend that you add no more than five at a time). When the problem resurfaces, you can focus your attention on the last batch of programs you added.

Should you use Msconfig as a startup manager? I strongly recommend against it. This tool was designed for troubleshooting, not for everyday use. You’re much better off removing auto-starting programs manually, using one of these methods:

• Look first for an option in the program itself. Most programs that start automatically allow you to change this behavior by clearing a check box in an Options or Preferences dialog box. It might take some digging around, but this is always the preferred option.
• Remove the program shortcut from the Startup folder. Be sure to look in the Startup folder for your profile and the corresponding folder in the All Users profile. This option won’t work if the auto-start option is set in the registry. You can move the shortcut to another location if you think you might want to restore it later.
• As a last resort, edit the registry manually. This technique is messy, risky, and not always successful; some particularly persistent programs will restore the startup values in the registry the next time you run the program.

Easiest of all, use a third-party tool like Mike Lin’s excellent (and free) Startup Control Panel or Autoruns from Sysinternals. Both allow you to temporarily or permanently remove an item from the auto-start list. And if you can’t figure out what each item on the list does, look it up at Paul “Pacman” Collins’ most excellent Start-Up Applications page.

Today’s tip is shamelessly stolen from Jerry Honeycutt, author of the definitive Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide from Microsoft Press:

You can script System Restore to make taking snapshots quicker and easier. Wouldn’t you like to have a script sitting on your desktop that you can run before making changes to the registry? Here’s how to create a script that will create a restore point when you double-click it:

Using Notepad, type the following listing and save it with the file extension .vbs and make sure that you enclose the file name in quotation marks so Notepad doesn’t add the .txt file extension to the name.

Set SRP = GetObject( "winmgmts:\.\root\default:Systemrestore" )
CSRP = SRP.CreateRestorePoint( "Hacked the registry", 0, 100 )

Double-click the script file any time you want to make a snapshot, presumably before opening the Registry Editor to tweak the registry.

Update: If the word “hacked” bothers you, feel free to modify the script. Just change the text within quotes to something more generic, such as “Manually created restore point using script.”