tips

If you are using Windows 7, you might well be knowing by now that you can easily start any program from Start Menu by simply searching for it there. The problem here, which many of us aren’t aware is that when you a program in this fashion, it doesn’t start with administrator rights. There may be times where in you need to start a program for instance a command prompt with elevated rights, otherwise you might receive errors such as “The requested operation requires elevation” etc. Thankfully, there’s a little lesser-known trick available in Windows 7 to execute a program directly from the Start Menu search or quick search run box as administrator. Here is how you can do it:

1. Go to Start Menu, type the name of the program that you want to run in the search box. I’m going to run Command Prompt window as administrator so, in my case, I need to type “cmd” in the search box.

2. Now, when you see the required program in the search results, you tend to hit enter to run it.

Instead, press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to run the program with elevated (administrator) rights. Click “Yes” when you are asked by UAC to run the program. That’s it! The program runs in administrator mode:

Note: You can always right-click on the search box results and choose “Run as administrator” to run the program as an administrator as well.

Also learn how to Always Run A Program As An Administrator By Default.

If you were used to Windows XP for long time and then shifted to the newer versions of Windows like Windows Vista or Windows 7, one thing you will find a bit annoying the default big size desktop icons that eat most of your computers desktop. Fortunately Windows has made it easier for the users to choose the size of the icons on your desktop. There are plenty ways available to resize the size of the desktop icons in your Windows 7 and Windows Vista based PCs. We’ll discuss a few of them here:

This the easy and hassle free way to resize your desktop icons which many of us aren’t aware of. Just hold down the CTRL button on your keyboard, press left button on your mouse initially and then move the scroll button of your mouse to resize the desktop icons as well as icons inside any folder.

2. Usual Method: Right-click Context Menu

Right-click on your desktop, under “View” list, you can choose resize your desktop icons to small, medium and large icons.

The second method is most common and  majority of the Windows 7 users might be aware of this. However the first method is pretty much simple and handy, highly recommended !!

What do you do when you want to select multiple files at once in Windows ? Traditionally, we have been accomplishing this task by holding down CTRL or SHIFT keys while selecting the files to select multiple files at once. Even though we have got used to this, yet there can be instances when we accidentally click on the blank space resulting in deselecting all the items that you gathered with much effort. Our hand or keyboard may tease you at times, causing these type of annoyances, but a mouse cannot. That is why many people prefer to use mouse over keyboard particularly when doing this kind of multi-selection.

Keeping this in mind, the folks at Windows 7 development team included a pretty nice option to select multiple items using check boxes (this kind of selection method is incrementally getting popular with smartphone devices now!) using a mouse without needing to hold any key on the keyboard. By default, this options would be turned off in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Follow the steps to learn how to select multiple items all at once in Windows 7 (and Vista)  using the check boxes:

Steps:

1. Open Windows Explorer (Or use Windows + E shortcut).

2. Click on Organize button to expand it’s dropdown menu items. Select Folder and search options.

3. Go to View tab in the Folder Options window. Scroll until you find “Use check boxes to select items”. Just check against this option.

4. Click OK to apply the changes to Folder Options and close the window.

5. Now go to any explorer window and you will now be able to select multiple files using the check boxes:

Windows 7 Navigation pane shows Favorites folder, which contains links to your favorite folders on the computer. You can add any folder to the Favorites simply by dragging the folder to the Favorites in the Windows 7 explorer or even by placing the shortcut to that particular folder in the following locations:

C:\Users\(Username)\Links

However, if you don’t use them much, you might want to remove this from the Windows Explorer.

Steps:

1. Press Start button + R to open the run dialog box. Type “regedit” in the text filed and press OK to open the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to the following path in the Registry Editor:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}\ShellFolder

3. Right-click on “ShellFolder” and select Permissions [Since you need special permissions to change the DWORD value of “Attributes”].

4. A new window will open up. Select Administrators from the user names and check against the Allow option on the right to the Full Control click OK to apply changes and close the window.

6. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.

7. Restart the Windows Explorer (Go to Task Manager, end explorer.exe, then go to File > New Task, type explorer and click OK).You should now see the change, the “Favorites” in Navigation pane would disappear from the explorer.

If you want to get “Favorites” back, just go back to the step 5 and change the DWORD value data back to a0900100.

Related: You might also want to disable the entire Navigation pane in Windows 7 explorer.