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[How To] Tweak The Low Battery Notification In Windows 7

December 31, 2010 by bharath

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%.

low battery in Windows 7

>> 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.

reserve battery level

>> Critical battery level is where your laptop goes into Hibernation mode immediately and it’ll be around 5% in general.

Critical battery in windows

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.

Edit power plan settings in Windows 7

4. Scroll down to “Battery” section in the Advanced settings tab and click the “+” button to expand it.

Battery advanced power plan settings

5. You may adjust the settings for each of the battery levels i.e Low battery level, Reserve battery level and Critical battery level.

Low battery notification settings

Click “OK” once you are done to apply the settings. That’s it.

[How To] Create And Enable Mobile Version Of A Blogger Blog

December 30, 2010 by bharath

With the growing usage of iPhones, Android devices and other smartphone devices around the world, the number of people who access the internet from their mobile devices. Considering this, it is now very essential that you create a mobile version of your website or blog just to make sure that it fits perfectly on the screens of such devices. If you are a blogger and using WordPress, it’s pretty much easy to setup a mobile version of your blog with plenty of plugins serving the purpose. But what about Blogger? If you still don’t know, the answer is Yes! now you can. Blogger has recently announced the mobile templates for Blogger. But this now is available as an opt-in functionality on Blogger in Draft.

Here’s how you setup and active a mobile version for your blogspot blog without using any hacks:

1. Log in to Blogger in Draft.

Blogger in draft

2. Click on the “Settings” link for you blog

Blog settings link on Blogger dashboard

3. Go to the “Email & Mobile” tab under “Settings”.

4. Under the Mobile Template, choose the first option (Yes, On mobile devices, show the mobile version of my template).

5. You can click on the “Mobile Preview” button to see a preview of how your blog will look on a mobile device

Blogger mobile preview

6. Click the “Save Settings” button at the bottom once you are done.

You have successfully enabled the mobile template for your blog now. Test it by visiting your blogspot blog from a mobile phone or use the QR code found in the mobile template settings to directly go your site on your mobile device.

techrena QR code

[Tip] Sort A List Alphabetically In MS Office Word 2007 & 2010

December 30, 2010 by bharath

Microsoft Office 2010

Recently I was working on a big list of words that are to be sorted alphabetically for easy use. I was checking various online sources . Yes, there are online tools available to just to that. But if you have Microsoft Office Installed on your Windows, it’d be a better way to accomplish this task. Microsoft Word can sort data according to various criterion and here we’ll just try to know how to sort the data alphabetically. Advanced users of Microsoft Office should well be aware of this but if you are a starter probably you should read the following guide to learn how you can do it in Microsoft Word 2010 or MS Word 2007.

1. Open the Microsoft Word application.

2. Paste the list that you want to sort in the new document.

3. Select all the words using CTRL + A

Select the whole list in Office 2010

4. Now find a small sort icon in the Paragraph group under the “Home” tab. Click on the icon.

5. A new dialog box will appear inside the Word application window. Choose “Text” option from the dropdown list under the Type and choose “Ascending” radio button. Click OK.

Sort Text Dialog box in Word 2010

That is it. Your list is now sorted alphabetically as you can in the screenshot below:

Sorted list in Word 2010

[How To] Disable Aero Shake In Windows 7

December 27, 2010December 27, 2010 by bharath

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 and Aero 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.

regedit run command

3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows

4. Right-click on the “Windows” main key and choose New > Key from the context menu to create a new key with name “Explorer”.

Create a new sub key under Windows main registry key

And it should look like this:

New Explorer sub key in regedit

5. Now in the right hand side pane under the newly created “Explorer” key, right-click and choose “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value”.

Creating a new DWORD in regedit

6. Name it as “NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts” and set its value to 1 as shown:

Registry setting to disable Aero Shake

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.

Gpedit from RUN command

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.

[Tip] Disable ‘Recently Closed Tabs’ In Firefox

December 25, 2010 by bharath

Firefox recently closed tabs

Firefox lets users to quickly reopen few of the recently closed tabs for quicker access. Even though the users can go to the history and access all of the webpages that were accessed or closed previously, the “Recently Closed Tabs” that appears under the “History” menu item is surely a timesaver for many of us. But yes, there are people who don’t like this feature. You can always configure Firefox to not to remember any of your recently closed tabs or manually configure it to remember certain number of the recently closed tabs. Here is what you have to do:

1. Type about:config in the address bar and hit enter.

2. A warnings message will be shown, accept that you would be careful while working the about:config entries.

about:config firefox warning

3. In the “Filter” filed, type the following text code and look for an entry which exactly matches with it.

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo

About:config settings in Firefox

4. Double click on the entry. By default it will hold a value “10”, meaning that it will remember and show the last ten recently closed tabs. Here we want none. So change the value from 10 to 0.

Change number of tabs closed undo setting

That is it! Firefox will no longer remember your recently closed tabs. If you have entered any other non-zero value, Firefox will let you see that many number of the most recently closed tabs.

[How To] Backup And Restore Windows 7 Sticky Notes

December 24, 2010 by bharath

sticky-notes-windows-7

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:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\StickyNotes.snt

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.

Sticky-notes-folder-windows-7

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.

[How To] Use The Reliability History In Windows 7

December 22, 2010 by bharath

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.

Check solution for a critical event

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.

Checking for solution in Windows 7

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..

[How To] Change Computer Name In Windows 7

December 20, 2010 by bharath

Computer name domain and workgroup settings

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.

System settings in control panel

3. Go to the “Computer Name” tab in the System Properties window.

Computer Name in System Properties

Note: In Windows 7 you can also arrive at the above settings window from the “Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings” from the step 2.

change settings in system control panel

4. In the next dialog box, you can change your computer name and the workgroup membership of your computer.

Computer name and domain changes

Click OK to close the window and apply the changes. You must restart your system for the full changes to take effect.

[Tip] Restore Accidentally Deleted Contacts In Gmail

December 15, 2010December 15, 2010 by bharath

Have you accidentally deleted any contact in Gmail while syncing the contacts between various devices that you possess? Have you ever mistakenly deleted a wrong contact that had almost similar name to the contact that you wished to delete?

Yes, these sorts of things do happen now and then! But Gmail think-tank seems to be wary of these accidental deletions that happen to users like us. Gmail has announced highly useful “Restore Contacts” feature that lets you quickly recover contacts that you had previously deleted. With this, you can restore any deleted contact information deleted from your Gmail account in the past 30 days.

How To Use?

To use “Restore Contacts” feature in Gmail,

1. Login to your Gmail account.

2. Go to the Contacts page inside your Gmail.

3. Click the “More Actions..” drop-down button and choose “Restore Contacts”.

restore contacts link under more actions in gmail

4. In the new “Restore Contacts” dialog box, choose the time stamp to where you want to restore your contacts. You can restore the contacts to any point within the past 30 days.

Restore contacts in gmail

When you restore the contacts to an earlier time frame, all the contacts added since then will be deleted. All the contacts that you had deleted will be back.

[Via] Official Gmail blog

[How To] Create A System Image Backup In Windows 7

December 13, 2010 by bharath

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.

Backup and restore in windows 7

3. Now Windows will look for the available backup devices and will list them under the “On a hard disk” option.

Backup devices for the system image

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”.

Error with non-NTFS formatted backup drives

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.

Create a system image select drives to 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.

Confirm baackup settings for system image

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.

Windows is saving the backup for creating system image

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.

create a system repair disk after system image

Congrats! You have now successfully backed up your Windows 7 using a system image.

backup completed 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.

restore backup