Windows 7

Windows 7 has enhanced search feature that enables users to search for files and folders present in the computer efficiently. The search is faster, more accurate and fetches the results in seconds. Windows Explorer saves and remembers these search terms along with locations of the files and visitors for future use.

These items will be shown when you start typing the part of the search term of location of a file or folder.While this is pretty useful you might also want to have a choice to delete them when you don’t want them to show up in the Windows Explorer location bar on in the search bar.

The Easy Way:

In the Windows Explorer window, right-click on the location bar or address bar when it is out of focus and choose “Delete history” from the context menu. This will delete all the files and folders search terms history that were typed in the location bar and search bar. This should delete the file history in your Windows 7.

Alternate Method:

The same can be achieved using Registry Editor as well. Type regedit in the Start Menu search and open the Registry Editor from the results or press Windows button + R to open the Run command and type “regedit” and hit OK to open the Registry Editor.

In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery

and delete all the entries (each one corresponds to a search term) present inside this sub key. That is it. Now all your history related to files and folders would be deleted.

Connecting to a wireless network in Windows 7 is pretty much simple and straightforward compared to the days of Windows XP and earlier operating systems. However if you have more than one wireless network available at your home or workplace, you might want to assign priority to these networks to tell your windows to which it should try to connect first. Al though you can choose to a wireless networks from all of the available wireless networks that appear under the network icon in the taskbar, it would be better if your computer connects to your favored networks automatically. This tutorial explains how you can change the priority or order of wireless networks in Windows 7.

Steps:

1. Open the Network and Sharing Center either from link in the network icon in the taskbar or from Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center

Click on the “Manage wireless networks” link found on the left-hand side pane.

2. In the Manage wireless networks window, right-click on the wireless network for which you want to change priority and you can either move it up (giving more priority) or move it down (lesser priority) depending on your usage.

3. Now the order of preference of the wireless networks used by your Windows will be changed.

You are now done with setting up the priority order for your wireless networks. So from now on, Windows will try to connect to the first one wireless network in the priority list. If it isn’t available, then it will try the next connection and so on. You can also change the settings to not connect to a particular wireless connection automatically.

If you are looking to change the order of priority among the various wired and wireless network cards on your computer, read our popular post on changing the network cards priority order in Windows.

Maintaining is a Windows PC isn’t a cakewalk. You often need to take time to remove all the clutter from your Hard drive in order to make the Windows run more smoother and efficient. PC experts often advise that you should do such maintenance tasks in a regular manner to get the most out of your current operating system.

In this post, we are going to talk about the Windows log files. Windows log files keep a record of various activities of your PC.  These include list of errors/exceptions, internet browsing history etc. Even though they don’t create a problem but with time these logs grow bigger in size and thus reducing the amount of free space on your hard disk. Most of these logs are not essential and you can safely delete them manually or using clean up utilities. Windows 7 has inbuilt utility “Disk Cleanup” to delete these log files. You can also make use of third party programs like “CCleaner’ to perform the same task. However, even after performing clean ups, there would still be some traces of these log files left on your disk. In such cases deleting the log files manually would be a better option. Let’s see how to delete the Windows 7 log files manually.

>> Go to your Windows folder (usually at C:\ Windows, that’s where all the logs are stored!, where ‘C’ is the Windows installation drive) in the windows explorer and type “*.log” in the search box at the top right corner of your window and hit enter. The results comprise of all the log files stored in the “Windows” folder. Delete the all the log files by selecting them.

>> This can also be done using a command prompt. Type cmd in the Start Menu search box and use CTRL + SHIFT + Enter to open the command prompt with elevated rights (administrator mode).

By default, command prompt would start from “C:\Windows\system32”. We need to go one folder down to C:\Windows. For this type “cd..” hit and press enter.

Now that we are in the “Windows” folder, we are just one command away from deleting all the log files. Type


Del *.log /a /s /q /f

in the command prompt and press enter. Now all the Windows log files will be deleted in few minutes.

In the command, “a” stands for selecting all the log files,

“s” for deleting all the files inside sub folders

“q” for skipping the Yes/No prompts before deleting the files

and        "f” for forcibly removing the files

What do you do to remove your plugged in USB device like flash drive? You need to move your mouse to the system tray and locate the small USB icon “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” (in case of Windows 7 and Vista) and click on it and confirm that you want to remove or stop a particular USB device.

But even though it is simple, it is often tiresome as you need to expand the arrow in the tray and locate the small icon (Windows 7). This where you wish you had a shortcut at some other easily accessible place. A desktop shortcut for this “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog would be much more handy. If you are like me, get to know how to create a Safely Remove Hardware shortcut in Windows 7 and Vista by following these steps.

1. Right-click on your desktop, choose New > Shortcut.

2. In the next window, paste the following code in the “location of the item”

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Click the “Next” button to continue to the next step.

3. Give the shortcut a meaningful name and click the “Finish” button to complete the setup.

4. The new shortcut icon appears on your desktop.

If you have plugged in the USB flash drive, double-click on the shortcut icon to see if it works. It should open the Safely Remove Hardware window, showing you the list of currently plugged in devices (USB and non-USB as well).

Select the particular device that you want to unplug or remove and click the “Stop” button to stop the device.

The advantage with this kind of shortcut trick is that you can choose to have a shortcut key setup for even more quicker access.

To assign a shortcut for the Safely Remove Hardware shortcut, just right-click on the shortcut and choose a unique keyboard key combination to assign as hotkey.