Windows 7

[Tip] Show Additional Windows Clocks

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Mutiple clocks in windows 7

Windows by default shows one clock next to the calendar, based on your location in the world. Sometime you might want to see the what’s the time in your best pal’s place located somewhere in other part of the globe. This tutorial explains how you can show multiple or additional taskbar Windows clocks.

Steps:

1. Open the Windows calendar by, click on “Change date and time settings..”.

Windows 7 clock

2. Under date and time settings, click on “Additional Clocks” tab. Here you can select one or more additional clocks from different cities across the world. You can also name the clocks as you would want them to be.

Additional clocks in date and time settings

3. Click OK and close the window. Now you can see the additional clocks popping up when you click on the date and time area in your Windows taskbar.

That’s it. Please note that this tutorial also applies to Windows Vista.Find out for more how-to tutorials from us on Windows 7, or subscribe to our RSS feeds via email.

[How To] Disable Firefox Taskbar Tab Previews

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Multiple tasbar tab previews

Taskbar tab previews is a great feature introduced in Windows 7, with the help of which you can access any opened tab right from your taskbar without opening the browser. This feature was first meant for Internet Explorer only, but later it was adopted by almost all the browsers.

Even though this is a great feature, however it may sometimes annoy you particularly when you open a lot too may tabs in the browser. That’s why we posted a tutorial on how to disable the multiple taskbar tab previews in IE, Firefox and Google Chrome. Now that Firefox 4 is coming with this taskbar tab previews feature enabled, we thought we’d revisit and bring to your attention if you are looking for a way to get this feature disabled in your Firefox. Follow the steps carefully:

Steps:

1. Type about:config in the Firefox address bar.

2. Accept the warning message and proceed (Click “I’ll be careful, I promise) to the configuration page.

Firefox about:config warning

3. Type

browser.taskbar.previews.enable

in the filter and look for the entry with the same name as shown in the following screenshot.

Firefox 4 taskbar previews config
4. Change the value to “false” by double-clicking. That’s it. You will only see a preview of the one (active) tab preview instead of the multiple taskbar tab previews.

Firefox taskbar tab previews disabled

You might also want to read our tutorial on how to enable All Tabs Preview in Firefox.

Turn Off Your Laptop LCD Monitor Screen Manually With A Single Click

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Laptop LCD screen

As all of us are quite familiar with desktop computers, where we can turn-off the monitor just by pressing a button. But when it comes to a laptop, we know that you can always close the lid to turn off the LCD screen automatically. But wouldn’t life be simpler if we had a button to turn off the LCD screen of the laptop ?

Here is a simple program that can be used on windows based systems (including Windows 7 and Windows Vista) to manually turn off your laptop’s LCD screen.

This is pretty much useful when you want to just listen to the music on your laptop keeping its lid open. This also saves some energy, knowing which some manufactures do offer this kind of option on the laptop while most of the others don’t. (Sadly, my HP Pavilion notebook also lacks this feature).

A million thanks to Taimur Asad of Redmond Pie, who has developed this simple program called “Turn Off LCD” based on his experience with HP DV2799 Special Edition notebook that he owns. He wrote this application in C# with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. It makes use of a DLL (User32.dll) file from Windows using System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace which then calls the required function.[ More tech info at Redmond Pie post]

Turn Off LCD shortcut

Just download the zip file from the following link and run the Turn Off LCD.exe (85 KB in size). That’s all you need to do, you can now observe your laptop’s LCD screen being turned off. Just hover the mouse or press any key to turn on the LCD screen again. If you have liked this, then you might want to add similar shutdown shortcut to your notebook also.

Download Turn Off LCD (v1.01, 68.5 KB)

Photo credit

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile For Windows 7

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Microsoft .Net logo

Microsoft’s latest .NET Framework 4 Client Profile is available on Windows Update (WU) as “recommended update”  KB982670. It provides a subset of features from the .NET Framework 4.0.

The client Profile is released as an recommended update for Windows 7 and Windows Vista and as an “optional update” for Windows XP (you need to run the WU manually and select the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile to install it).

Issues:

Many Windows users have reported that they are getting Windows update error 80200053 while installing this particular update (also KB982526) on their machines. If you are getting the same error, just restart the computer and try installing afterwards, or boot in Safe Mode with Networking and install the update. You may also try to install the standalone version of the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile from the link given below:

Download Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile (Web Installer)

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Update June 2010 For Windows 7 & Vista

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Microsoft .Net logo

Microsoft has released two important updates KB982526 (.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 update) and KB982670 (.NET Framework 4 Client Profile) for the Microsoft .NET Framework.

[Tip: You may first want to find out which version of .NET is installed on your Windows]

KB982526 update rollup addresses issues with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (also available as updates KB956250 and KB982525 for Windows Vista

Some users have reported errors while installing these updates (error code 80200053), if you are not able to install these updates, do a restart and try installing.

KB982526 Download:

Windows 7 x86 x64
Windows Vista x86 – KB956250 x64 – KB982525
Windows Server 2008 R2 x86 x64

Cumulative Update For Windows Media Center For Windows 7 And Windows Vista

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Windows Update

Microsoft has released two important updates for Windows Media Center(WMC) running on Windows 7(KB981078) and Windows Vista (KB982480) operating systems on June 21, 2010.

Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows 7 KB981078 addresses the following issues:

1. A “Copy Prohibited” or a black screen is displayed when the Windows Media Center is used to play protected content with a revoked version of the PlayReady PC Runtime is installed don your computer.

2. Mcupdate.exe crashes when the guide database in WMC is corrupted.

3. Schedule data getting disappeared in regions that use in-band guide data.

4. WMC crashes if you use an invalid path for a recorded TV.

June 2010 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista KB982480 fixes the following issue #2 (in addition to various “Hotfixes”) of the issues listed above.

Download:

Windows 7 (KB981078) 32-bit (4.8 MB) 64-bit (6 MB)
Windows Vista (KB982480) 32-bit (10 MB) 64-bit (10.7 MB)

[How To] Configure Parental Controls In Windows 7

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computer lock

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Are you worried about your kids misusing your PC ? Want to impose some restrictions on how they use the computer, when they use it and what programs they use ?

Windows 7 has some excellent in-built parental controls under the control panel settings. Here is a tutorial on how to configure and use the parental controls in Windows 7 to the perfection to control your child’s activity on the computer. You must first set up another account (Type: Standard user) .

Steps:

1. Go to start menu and type “Parent’ in the search bar. Click on the first result under the “Control Panel” section.

Parental controls in start menu search result

2. Click on the account for which you want to setup parental controls. Please note that you can’t apply parental controls to an administrator account, so that’s why you need to create a new account of “standard user” type to perform this step.

Parental controls home screen

3. Select the first radio button (“On, enforce current settings”). Now you have enabled the parental accounts for the user account.

Enforce parental controls
Now you can configure the parental controls for various categories:

Setting Access Time Limits:

You can set the time of the day during which the user (your kid) can access the computer from “Tome limits” section. You can check or uncheck the time blocks (as hours) in the time grid under this section to allow or block the access during particular time of the day. Usually you may restrict the access to the PC during school hours and night times as shown in the screenshot below:

Time restrictions in parental controls windows 7

Game Controls:

You can either restrict the user account from playing all the games or you may also specify which games can be played using that account. Click on “Games” to set these controls. You can block games based on their rating (Early childhood, every one, everyone 10+, teen, mature etc.)

Game controls under parental controls windows 7

game restrictions in parental controls

Block Specific Programs:

Click on “Allow and block specific programs” to set which programs can be run by the user. You can select from the list of applications installed on the computer.

application restrictions under windows 7 parental controls

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How To Stop Internet Explorer To Stop Asking You To Remember Passwords ?

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AutoComplete passwords

Microsoft Internet Explorer has a default “AutoComplete Passwords” feature that lets you save passwords for different login pages while browsing the internet. But if you are using a shared public computer with many users working on it, you might want to disable this feature for privacy concerns. Follow the steps below to make Internet Explorer stop asking for you to remember passwords.

Steps:

1. Go to Tools > Internet Options, switch to “Content” tab. Click on “Settings” under “AutoComplete” section.

ie content settings

2. Uncheck the “Ask me before saving passwords” option in the AutoComplete settings window.

AutoComplete settings

3. Click OK and close the settings window.

From now on, your Internet Explorer will not offer you the AutoComplete passwords dialogue. To re-enable this feature at any later time, just check the same option in the third step.

[How To] Hide The Windows 7 System Tray Icons

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Windows 7 logo

Notification area or system tray icons in Windows 7 has been enhanced when compared to the earlier Windows versions like Windows XP. However, for some reasons if you want to disable the notification area and save some space (?) on your taskbar, here is what you need to do:

Registry hack:

Follow the registry path given below: (Registry code for hiding tray icons )

registry key notepad screenshot

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\>>Software\>>Microsoft\>>Windows\>>CurrentVersion\>>Policies\>>Explorer  and set  “NoTrayItemsDisplay” DWORD value to 1.

NoTrayItemsDisplay in windows 7

Third-Party Software:

If it’s looks complicated for you, just try this small app Hide SysTray to hide the notification area automatically.

Hide Systray

If you run the app, you can disable your notifications area like this:

notification area disabled

Note: You need to have .NET Framework version installed on your computer to run this application else you’ll end up with the following error.

Hide systray .net error

Tip: Always Run A Program As An Administrator By Default

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Windows 7 as a security measure doesn’t allow you run any program as an administrator by default. But sometimes you might need to run a program a program far too many times that requires elevated privileges, and it’s really annoying if to see that you are being asked to run it as an administrator each and every time you run it. However, there is a way to run the program as an administrator by default in Windows 7 (and Vista) that many of us aren’t aware of. Here is how you can do it :

Steps:

1. If you wish the program to run as an administrator by using the shortcuts of a program, you need to right-click on the shortcut, select “Properties”,

Windows 7 right click context menu on shortcut

2. Now click on the “Advanced..” button under the “Shortcut” tab of the properties window.

Windows_7_advanced_properties_shortcut

3. Select “Run as administrator” option under “Advanced Properties” window and click OK. Apply the settings and close all the properties window.

advanced_properties_exe

4. Now run the program again and you will see that it’s running as administrator (See the screenshot of the Windows Command Prompt, and observe the string “Administrator” in the title of the program)
CMD as administrator in Windows 7

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