Tutorials

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.

Windows explorer in Windows 7 looks great, showing the drives and other devices on the most prominent right side pane and quick links to important locations on your computer in a relatively thinner pane, known as “Navigation Pane”. This Navigation Pane contains the following icons in general:

• Favorites
• Libraries
• Homegroup
• Computer
• Network

While it is highly handy to have quick access to different locations through this navigation pane, there are few people who might like the Windows 95 version of the Windows Explorer, where we don’t have such a pane in the left sidebar. Follow the steps mentioned below to disable or enable the navigation pane in your Windows 7.

Steps:

1. Open any Windows explorer window (or use Start button + E shortcut).

2. Click on Organize dropdown menu button. Expand “Layout” options as shown:

4. And once you have done that, the Windows 7 Navigation pane would be disabled (or hidden):

To enable the Navigation pane again, just check the “Navigation pane” option in the step 3.

Windows 7 lets you change the font in any part of Windows including menus, Active Title Bar, Icon, Inactive Title Bar, Message Box, Palette Title, Desktop, Selected Items etc. Please note that changing these Windows fonts doesn’t change any program fonts, which means that these are the settings for changing the outer view of any program window rather than the look that we see inside the program which depends on the fonts and styles adopted for that particular program.

Follow these steps to change the default Windows 7 fonts

Steps:

1. Go to Start menu and type “window colors” in the search box:

2. Click on “Change window colors and metrics” link from the search results in “Control Panel” section:

3. A new “Window Color and Appearance” window opens up *:

4. Choose the part of the Windows for which you want to change fonts in the Item list.

Once you select the item from the list, you will be able to change its fonts and color settings:

You can change the fonts parameters like the font type, size of the font, color etc.

Click on B icon to make the font bold or click on I icon to italicize the font as shown:

Repeat these steps for each item in the list for which you want to make changes.

5. Click OK to apply the changes and close the window.

You are done!

[*] Alternatively, you can launch the Window color and Appearance settings from these steps:

Right-click on vacant space on the desktop and select Personalize.

Click on the Window Color link found at the bottom of the Personalization window.

It will open the same Window Color and Appearance Settings window as shown in the step 3.

SFC (System File Checker) is a very useful command to check the integrity of all the protected system files in Windows 7 and Vista and replaces any corrupt, changed or missing system files (including DLL files) to correct versions (undamaged versions), if possible.

Even though there are several switches available under the SFC command, the sfc scannow is the most used command. If SFC can’t fix the corrupted system files, then you need to consider other options like using a recovery, reinstalling  Windows, restoring from backup, or restoring to an earlier system restore point.

Here is the step-by-step guide on using the SFC /scannow command tool in Windows 7 or Windows Vista:

Steps:

1. Click Start button, type “cmd” in the start button, right-click on the “cmd.exe” and select “Run as administrator” to run the command prompt in elevated or administrator mode.

2. Type the following command in the command prompt and hit enter:

sfc /scannow

3. Now the toll will run a verification of integrity of every protected operating system file. Wait until the system scan is finished. This usually takes 5-10 minutes.

4. When the scan is finished, you will “Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations” message when it doesn’t find any corrupted files.

On the other hand, if it does find any corrupt files, it will automatically (if it’s possible) repair them. Restart your computer once the repairing process by the SFC tool gets over (as indicated in the command prompt). Please note that if the System File Checker (SFC) finds any integrity violations and fixes them, you should restart your computer immediately even if you are not prompted to do so.

Run the sfc / scannow command once again (after restarting your PC) to see if all the corrupted system files have been repaired.

The SFC command writes the log to CBS.log file found in C:> Windows > Logs > CBS.

When To Use The SFC Tool ?

When any Windows Resource Protection (WRP) file goes missing or corrupted, your Windows behaves in an odd manner. Windows functions may not work or entire Windows may crash unexpectedly. Run the SFC tool in such situations to repair any missing or corrupted system files.

Windows 7 can show desktop shortcuts for any program (you can add as many as you can), but by default shows the following:

Computer, User file’s folder, Network, Recycle Bin (full), Recycle Bin (empty)

Windows shows some default icons for “My Computer” (Computer in Windows 7) and “Recycle Bin” and other shortcuts on the desktop as shown:

If you want to change these icons and add your own icons, follow these instructions:

Steps:

1. Right-click on empty space and choose “Personalize”:

2. A new Personalization window opens up. Click “Change desktop icons” link in the window.

3. Select the item for which you want to change the desktop icon (example; Computer, Recycle Bin etc., ) and click on “Change Icon”.

4. In the next step, choose an icon from the list of the icons available already or you can even browse for icons in your computer. You can also create your own icon using the many freeware software available on the internet.

You are done! Check the desktop icon back and it should reflect the change as shown:

You can change desktop icons for the any of the five items discussed at the beginning of this post. Mean while if you are facing problems with broken icons on your desktop, read this post to fix the broken icons.

Windows 7 hides the extensions of the files by default to keep t simple. However you can easily know the extension of any file just by looking at its icon. However, it may sometimes can get as bad as it can, suppose an attacker copies an .exe file to your computer and renames it as something catchy like “sensational-pic.jpg.exe”, now as Windows 7 doesn’t show the file extensions, all you will see is “sensational-pic.jpg” (.exe part would be hidden!)which might falsely lead you to think it as a picture and click it all just to run the whatever code the attacker has injected into the program.

And I guess I have convinced to find out a way to show the file extensions in your Windows 7 . That’s why I’m writing a step-by-step tutorial to explain to show the file name extensions that had been set to be hidden by default.

Steps:

1. Open My Computer (Use Alt + E button).

2. Click Organize button, select “Folder and search options from menu”.

3. In the Folder Options window, go to “View” tab.

4. Under the View tab, uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”.

5. Click Apply to save the settings and then click OK to close the window.

Alright, you have now changed the settings to enable the file extensions. Here is what the change would be like:

Before:

Guess what type of file it is?

After enabling file extensions:

It is an image file! It is evident after changing the settings to show the extensions for file types. The only problem that you might face is during renaming the file, except that you shouldn’t be having too many issues with these settings enabled. To hide the file extensions, just check against “Hide extensions for known file types” in the step 4.

To begin with, why would anyone want to disable the startup sound (also known as welcome sound) in Windows 7? Well, I don’t have an exact answer, but I’m sure somebody wants to do it just for the sake of experiment or just to learn how to do it. If you are bored of hearing the routine sound everyday when you start your PC, you might either want to disable the start up sound or you might want to change the soundtrack that Windows plays during startup. While we cover the changing start up sound part in another post, let us guide you through the details about how to disable (turn off) Windows startup tone in Windows 7.

Steps:

1. Go to start menu and type “Sound” in the search field.

2. Open “Sound” item from the results in “Control Panel” section.

3. Go to “Sounds” tab in the sound settings window.

Uncheck against “Play Windows Startup sound”.

4. Click Apply and then click OK to close the settings window.

That is all you needed to do. Windows 7 startup music will no longer be played while booting your Windows 7 from now on. To enable the startup sound playback during the system boot again, just check against “Play Windows Startup sound” and save settings.