Unlike the earlier Windows versions, the Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has been revamped a bit to make it appealing to the users. Any Windows Explorer window in Windows 7 can have at least 3 panes i.e., Navigation Pane, Preview Pane and Details Pane. For Library folder, there would be an additional pane called Library Pane which would be displayed at the top just below the address bar.
For now, we are concerned about the Details Pane. It is the pane that appears at the bottom of the window and displays the important information about the file or folder selected. While it is enabled by default in Windows 7 and Vista, some may find it missing in their explorer windows. In case it is disabled, this is how you can enable the Details Pane again:
Steps:
1. Open any Windows Explorer window.
2. Click on the Organize button and from the drop down menu, roll over to the “Layout” and select “Details pane”
3. You should now see the Details Pane at the bottom of your Windows Explorer window as shown in the screenshot.
Working on your notebook which is having a pretty high battery life? And wonder why you are being notified even when you have pretty much time left to plug into an AC power supply?
Windows takes into account the average laptops with battery lives around 2-4 hours and Microsoft has accordingly set the battery levels after which the users get notified and eventually pushing Windows into Hibernate mode after reaching a critical stage. But if you consider the case of the users with long battery backups, they would still be having more than enough time to save their current work, get plugin the power supply to the laptop. So if you are once such user, you might want to change the low battery actions on your laptop. Before that, let’s see what are the different battery levels considered by your Windows OS.
>> Low battery level is where you will laptop starts showing the first low battery notification and the low battery level usually lies in the range of 10-12%.
>> Reserve battery level is where your Windows starts acting and gets ready for hibernating, in most cases it will be around 7-8% lying closer to the critical battery level.
>> Critical battery level is where your laptop goes into Hibernation mode immediately and it’ll be around 5% in general.
Now that you have got the basic idea about different battery levels, let’s get into to details of changing the low battery notifications in Windows 7.
Steps:
1. Type “power options” in the Start Menu search and open the first result under the Control Panel section.
2. Now select the power plan for which you want to change the low battery notification settings, and click the “Change plan settings” link found next to the power plan.
3. In the “Edit Plan Settings” window, click on the “Change advanced power settings” link found at near the bottom.
4. Scroll down to “Battery” section in the Advanced settings tab and click the “+” button to expand it.
5. You may adjust the settings for each of the battery levels i.e Low battery level, Reserve battery level and Critical battery level.
Click “OK” once you are done to apply the settings. That’s it.
If you are using Windows 7 you might have noticed the Windows Aero Shake effect. Just hold down a window on its title bar and shake it back and forth and you will notice that all the other windows will be minimized. I’m sure you must have noticed this, but chances are that you might not be aware that this is due to an special Windows 7 Aero effect called Windows Shake. Windows Shake is part of the Aero effects in Windows 7 alongside Aero Peek andAero Snap. Watch the following video to know about Aero Shake.
For some reasons, if you want to disable Aero Shake feature for your Windows, here are the two ways in which you can do it.
Method-1: Using Registry Editor [For All Windows 7 Editions]
1. Press Windows + R button to open the RUN command.
2. Type “regedit” in the text field and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following path:
4. Right-click on the “Windows” main key and choose New > Key from the context menu to create a new key with name “Explorer”.
And it should look like this:
5. Now in the right hand side pane under the newly created “Explorer” key, right-click and choose “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
6. Name it as “NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts” and set its value to 1 as shown:
That is it. Just log off from your account and log back in and you will learn that the Aero Shake has been disabled. To enable the Aero Shake again, just delete the DWORD that you have just created.
Method-2: Using GPEDIT [Only For Limited Windows 7 Editions]
If you are on Windows Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate editions you have access to the Local Group Policy Editor and it is relatively easy to achieve the same settings vis GPEDIT.
Steps:
1. Press Windows button + R to open the RUN dialog box and enter “gpedit.msc” in the text field and hit enter.
2. Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Desktop in the local group policy editor.
3. On the right-hand side pane, find an entry named “Turn off Aero Shake window minimizing mouse gesture”. Double-click on the entry to configure the settings.
4. Select the “Enabled” option and click “OK” to apply the settings.
The changes will be in action immediately and the Aero Shake will be disabled.
If you are on Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic or Home Premium editions, you must use the method-1. If you are on Windows 7 editions other than the above mentioned ones, we suggest you to go with the method-2.
Sticky notes in Windows is a fastest way to quickly take a note or add quick reminders, the easy way. You can easily add a new sticky note by searching for “sticky notes” in the Start Menu and by launching the Sticky notes application.
If you use sticky notes much, you might want to save and backup them so that they can be restored and used on another computer. Follow these below steps to learn how you can do this.
Steps:
1. Navigate to the following folder in your explorer:
Where <username> is the your Windows user account name through which you are logged on.
2. You need to enable the option to show hidden files and folders in order to see the “AppData” folder and StickyNotes.snt file in your explorer.
3. Now you just need to copy the above file to another external media like USB flash drive or external Hard disk, to save the backup and later move it to the same folder (mentioned in step-1) of the target PC where you want to see these sticky notes.
You can use this tip to restore your sticky notes on a new computer or on the same computer when you reinstall your Windows 7 copy replacing the older installation.
Windows 7 has many lesser-known features and “Reliability Monitor” is one such feature. Reliability Monitor, a handy tool for diagnosing when a particular event was first occurred. It usually monitors five types of events:
>> Application failures
>> Windows failures
>> Miscellaneous failures
>> Warnings
>> Information
To see the Reliability History for your Windows, go to Start Menu and type “reliability” in the search box and click “View reliability history” from the results under “Control Panel” section.
You will see a graph divided into weeks (or days) showing the all the different types of events that are recorded.
Critical errors are displayed with icon , Warnings with and information messages with .
While you can safely ignore the information messages, you should look deeply into the critical errors and warnings. If you are encountering any serious issue with your Windows, and decide to trouble shoot it, the first place you should visit is this as you can get an idea of exactly when the problem has started. The monitored events mostly include processes that stopped working, errors when windows was not properly shut down, unsuccessful application installations and driver installations etc.
You can right-click on any critical event to check for a solution for that event. If you are connected to internet Windows will automatically look for a solution and will save it in the Windows 7 action center.
If you view the technical details of the problem, you will get some important details like error code for the issue with which is pretty much useful in troubleshooting the problems.
Reliability monitor and reliability history is also available in Windows Vista.
Do you use this tool much? How far has this tool been useful to you? Do let us know though comments..
Computer names are pretty much useful to distinguish different computers when you are on a network with too many computers connected it. You would normally choose this computer name during the initial installation. Or if your system came with a pre-installed version of Windows 7 or Windows Vista, chances are that your manufacturer might have chosen a crappy computer name. It is always a good practice to have a unique computer name which is more descriptive so that you can easily identify your computer over others in the network.
Changing a computer name was relatively easy in Windows XP. When it comes to Windows 7 and Vista, you need to get through a couple of windows before you can land at the correct settings window. Here are the steps.
Steps:
1. Go the Start Menu, right-click on the “Computer” and click “Properties”.
2. Click on the “Advanced system settings” link on the left hand side pane.
3. Go to the “Computer Name” tab in the System Properties window.
Note: In Windows 7 you can also arrive at the above settings window from the “Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings” from thestep 2.
4. In the next dialog box, you can change your computer name and the workgroup membership of your computer.
Click OK to close the window and apply the changes. You must restart your system for the full changes to take effect.
Microsoft has released the December 2010 Security Release ISO Image containing all the Windows security updates released via Windows Update on the December 14, 2010.
This ISO image file would be ideal for the administrators who need to download the each security update in different languages without using automatic programs such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Download the ISO image file from the direct download link added below. This ISO image contains the following updates in all languages.
The DVD5 image consists of the following Windows updates:
Supported OS: Windows 7, Windows XP Professional x64 & SP 3, Windows Vista (SP1, SP 2 & 64-bit SP 1), Windows Server 2008 (R2, SP 2), Windows Server 2003 (SP 2, SP 2 x64)
Backing up has been made so much easier in Windows 7. Now if you are running a Windows 7 PC, you can create and save a “System Image” (captures the current state of the system as it is) is pretty much simple and you don’t even need any third party tools like Ghost. A Windows system image will let you to quickly revert back to the state when the image was prepared. This is pretty much useful if your system crashes in future. It is always best practice to take create a system image when you install a fresh copy of Windows 7 and customise it by adding some important programs. Don’t try to add too many, as it would finally increase the file size of the system image. Let’s look into the details about how to create a system image in Windows 7.
Important: Before start, make sure that you have a safe external storage device to store your image. Although you can use another drive of the same disk, in case of a disk failure, you might loose this image as well. Also note that Windows 7 can only save system image on a storage device which is having NTFS file system.
Steps:
1. Go to Start Menu, type “backup” in the search box and click “Backup and Restore” from the search results under “Programs” section.
2. In the Back and Restore window, click “Create a system image” link that can be found in the left hand pane of the window.
3. Now Windows will look for the available backup devices and will list them under the “On a hard disk” option.
Here you will realise that you can’t select a drive which is not using NTFS file system. An error message will be shown up, “This drive cannot be used to store a system image because it is not formatted with NTFS”.
Also make sure that you have enough space on our backup drive. The system image will consume space which is equal to the total amount of used spaces in the drives selected for the creating an image.
4. Choose the appropriate drive and click “Next” to proceed to the next step.
5. In the next step, you can choose the drives which you want to be included in the backup. By default, all “System” drives will be selected and you have an option to include or not to include other drives. And of course, you can not choose the drive which you are using to save the backup.
Select the drives and click “Next’ to go the next step.
6. The next window will show the backup location and the drives that you are backing up. Click “Start backup” to confirm the backup settings and start the backup process.
7. Wait for few minutes for the backup process to get completed. You can stop the process at any time by creating the “Stop backup” button in the window.
8. Once the process is over, you will be asked to whether to create a system repair disc. It is your choice but we highly recommend that you go ahead and create one.
Congrats! You have now successfully backed up your Windows 7 using a system image.
You can use “Advanced recovery methods” found under the “Recovery’ section of Control Panel to restore your computer to an earlier state using the system image that you stored.
Aero Peek is another nice Windows 7 feature that makes use of the “Aero” effects along with Aero Snap and Aero Shake. When you hover your mouse over the small rectangle found at the right extreme of your taskbar, you will see the desktop with the outlines of the active application windows s shown above. However, if you don’t use it much, you would like to disable it. Here are the two simple ways in which you can do it,
Method-1:
1. Right-click on the Taskbar and choose “Properties”.
2. Under the “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties” window, uncheck against “Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop”.
Click “OK” button to save the settings and close the window.
The “Aero Peek” effects should now be disabled. There’s another alternative away you can achieve the same.
Method-2:
1. Right-click on the Computer link on your Start Menu and choose “Properties”.
2. A new window will open up. Click on the “Advanced system settings” in the left side pane.
3. In the new “System Properties” window, click on the “Settings” button under the “Performance” tab.
4. Under the “Visual Effects” tab in the “Performance Options” window, scroll down until you find “Enable Aero Peek” option. Uncheck against and click “OK” to apply the settings and close the settings window.
That is it! You have now disabled the Aero Peek in your Windows 7. To enable it again, just check the option back again in method 1 or method 2.
If you own a multi-user computer, you will always feel the necessity to password protect your important data so that other users will not have a direct access to it. If you want to lock or password protect your folders, consider using this free software (Secure Folder) to do it. It is easy to configure and use. However, if you are one of those who thinks you get all these sort of things worked on your Windows with tweaks, here is a classic (has been around since the days of Windows XP!) trick which allows you to lock (using a password) and make the folder invisible in Windows 7, Windows Vista and of course Windows XP. Follow these steps:
Steps:
1. Open notepad and type the following code saved in this text file.
2. Replace “ENTER YOUR PASSWORD” with your own password in the following line.
if NOT %pass%== ENETR_YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE goto FAIL
3. Save the file as a .bat (batch) file (you can name it whatever name you want)
4. Now double-click on the .bat file that you have just saved. A new “Private” folder will be created.
5. Copy and paste all your private and important data to this “Private” folder.
6. Now again double-click on the batch (.bat) file. A command prompt window will ask you for confirmation. Press “y” to continue.
7. The “Private” folder will go missing this time and you can only find the .bat file.
If you have enabled the “Folder Options” to show the hidden files, you will an empty “Control Panel” system folder.
8. To get the folder back, double-click the .bat file again and you will be asked to enter the password that you have set in the step 2.
The “Private” folder re-appears again!
You can see that the trick actually works but there’s a small catch. Anyone can open the above batch file in a text editor and can actually see the password that you had entered. Hence we’ll try to convert this batch file to an .exe (executable) file so that it can’t be opened it in text editor.
To workaround this issue, download this Batch to Exe file converter and convert the above .bat file to an .exe file. That is it!
icon , Warnings with 
and information messages with 
.
