| Microsoft Windows 98 Intermediate Tips, Tricks, Hacks, and Tweaks... |
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| Hiding Start Menu Folders | ||||||||||||||||
It is surprisingly easy how you want the some certain folders in the start menu (the StartUp menu for example) hidden up nicely. All you need to do is to right-click the StartUp folder on the start menu. Right-click it and when a pop-up menu appears, choose Properties. Change the attribute to hidden. Since the start-menu won't display hidden items, it won't be displayed. |
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| Using HotKeys on the Desktop | ||||||||||||||||
| This is a terrific tip a lot of people overlooked. You can actually assign hotkeys for all your shortcuts on your desktop. Right-click the desktop shortcut and select Properties. Click on the Shortcut tab. In the Shortcut key text box, choose what is the combination of shortcut key you want. Hold down Ctrl+Alt or Ctrl+Shift combination while selecting another key. Click "OK" | ||||||||||||||||
| Select multiple windows in Taskbar | ||||||||||||||||
| Here's an electric time shaver: if you want to select multiple programs on the Taskbar (to close them all at once, maximize them, etc.), depress CTRL while you left-click each button. When you've finished, right-click on one of your Taskbar selections and select your action (it'll happen to every chosen program.) NOTE: you can reverse an accidental selection by clicking on a selected item. | ||||||||||||||||
| Emergency Recovery | ||||||||||||||||
| You have just finished your assignment or project. Then due to system instability, Windows suddenly won't respond and you haven't saved your application yet. You know that any further doodling will bring up either the blue screen of death or the "Illegal Operation" error. Shut down and your precious assignment is hosed. Now what? If (and this is a big if) the Ctrl+Alt+Del combination will respond, then you are fortunate. Check which program is not responding. Select the faulty program and click End Task. If not, select Explorer and the click on End Task. Wait for about 20 seconds. There will be a dialog box stating that Explorer is not responding. Click on End Task again. Windows will do something like a "full refresh". Chances are, you can now safely save your assignment. | ||||||||||||||||
| Clearing Recent Documents Automatically | ||||||||||||||||
| To clear the list of recent documents, you will need to go to Start menu properties click on Add/Remove and the Clear button and poof! All the documents are zapped clean. Security isn't that good here since others can know which documents you opened recently. You don't want to disable the Documents menu but just want to make them disappear upon the next boot-up, you have a solution. Use Autoexec.bat. Open it up via Sysedit or Notepad. Add the following lines echo Y | del c:\windows\recent\*.* Save and exit. Please note that your path may differ if you install Windows under a different directory. If you are using multiple user profiles, just find your folder in the Windows directory and point to the c:\windows\yourname\recent. You can even choose to clear up only certain user profiles. Clearing Specific File Types Say you just want to clear a specific file type only say your confidential Word Documents and want to leave the rest alone. The trick is the same with a little twist. Again, edit Autoexec.bat and add the following lines. echo Y | del c:\windows\recent\*doc*.lnk This will search your recent documents for shortcuts with DOC registered as an extension. Pretty useful huh? |
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| Creating Custom Logos | ||||||||||||||||
| Windows comes with 3 logos which is logo.sys in your root directory and logow.sys and logos.sys in your Windows directory. Although it is stamped as a system file, it is actually in a graphic format. Open it with your image editing program. The size should be 320x400. Scale it to 640x480. After editing, scale it back to 320x400. The files only support 256 colors so be more lenient on the colors. If you really can't find the files, chances are Windows is actually using the default one from Io.sys. Never mind that, you can create them and with the same names. | ||||||||||||||||
| Set Windows 98 to use year 2000 dates | ||||||||||||||||
| Open the Regional Settings Properties control panel and select the Date tab. Click the arrows under When a two digit year is entered, interpret as a year between to set the ending year. The Year 2000 feature has a 100-year span. The default span is 1930 to 2029. | ||||||||||||||||
| The Handy Undelete Tool | ||||||||||||||||
| Why do you need this tool? Because when the Recycle Bin is emptied, files are longer "recoverable". But there lives the Undelete program from old DOS. So, the question is, how does it recovers files that are already deleted when even the Recycle Bin can't do it? Perhaps a little explanation will do. All deleted files will still exist in your hard drive until you format it. When you delete a file, your computer will erase the first character of the file and mark it is "deleted". That means that any other file can be written over it or replace it. The file can remain forever until another file is copied and takes the location of the file on the hard drive. This means that if you deleted a file and you didn't copy any new files or make major disk alteration, chances are, you can still recover the file. The same applies to Norton's UnErase Wizard but of course, the utility is much better with more advance recovery. But Undelete is free and works in DOS. The first thing to do is to get the utility first. It is available at your Windows CD in a /olddos/ directory. Search for it. Next, you need to copy it in to your c:\windows\command\ directory. Now you are done. To recover a file, type say gone.wav : c:\>undelete gone.wav Specify the full path. You will notice that the first character is not typed. Instead it is replaced by a # sign. You must specify the first character to recover the file. Typing c:\>undelete by itself will give you a list of file to recover. Now, lets say you want to recover the whole bunch of file deleted. If you already know which file to recover and know the first character, type c:\>undelete gone.wav /all and DOS will automatically stick the first character to #one.wav. You can also apply wildcards - like this: c:\>undelete *.wav /all Now, you might find typing the first character a bit tiring. It is ironic that as a computer, won't it just know it? The fact is, it does, if you will just tell it how. Stick the following line to your Autoexec.bat: UNDELETE /TC Once you want to undelete any file, just press Y to resurrect your "dead" file to life. Although the Undelete utility may sound very useful, I'm disappointed to say that it might not work under some Windows systems. Try it to see whether it works on yours. If it doesn't, go kick a small animal to make yourself feel better. |
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| Assigning Hotkeys To Shortcuts | ||||||||||||||||
| If you use shortcuts very frequently, you will want to launch a certain application on the spot and on time. Most of the time, the certain shortcut should be on the desktop (where you frequently reach out for.) But assuming you have a pile of applications in view, a minimizing all applications just to click on the shortcut isn't what we would want to. Now, you can assign a hotkey to your desktop shortcut. That means, no matter where you are and which application you are using - just one keystroke combination and the shortcut will be launched. This can be done by right-clicking on the shortcut and selecting Properties. Click on the Shortcut tab. The key usually prompts you to start with Ctrl+Alt+[key] but you can actually use Ctrl+Shift, Shift+Alt, & Ctrl+Alt+Shift combination. Always make sure that the hotkey combination won't clash with the shortcut key on your application (the keys you use to assign a certain task.) Or else, your shortcut hotkey won't work. |
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| Using Scrap Files | ||||||||||||||||
| In Word 97 or Wordpad, highlight a block of text. Drag it to the desktop. Windows will create this block of text as a Scrap file. Do not underestimate the use of scrap files. Imagine you have 3-5 lines or quotes which you want to keep repeating on several pages. The Copy-Paste won't work so well with multiple selections. All you need to do is to copy out the "scraps" into the desktop beforehand with appropriate names. Resize your word processor nicely so that part of it can show the desktop. When you need a selected block of text, just drag it into the word processor and bingo! If works just in a snap. |
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| Shrink the Size of Volume Control Dialog | ||||||||||||||||
| Ever get annoyed with just how large the Volume Control is? That's the dialog that opens when you double-click the Speaker icon in your Taskbar system tray, next to the clock. This undocumented trick shrinks the size of the open 'Volume Control' on most user's PCs. Just open Volume Control and press Ctrl-S to shrink. Press Ctrl-S again to expand. It will retain whichever size you select permanently. It will retain the smaller state from now on, unless you open the program and press Ctrl-S once again. | ||||||||||||||||
| How to Remove the Startup Screen during Boot Process | ||||||||||||||||
| Either press the ESCape key during bootup, or edit MSDOS.SYS and add the line LOGO=0 to the [Options] section. | ||||||||||||||||
| Check Windows 98 for Registry Errors | ||||||||||||||||
| Win98 comes with a handy way to check your Registry for errors. Launch the Microsoft System Information (MSI) utility from Start/Accessories/System Tools/System Information, then select the Registry Checker from the Tools menu. | ||||||||||||||||
| Transform "My Computer" and "Network Neighborhood" icons into Toolbars | ||||||||||||||||
| The two main hard-wired Win98 Desktop icons, My Computer and Network Neighborhood, will magically transform into toolbars if you drag them to one of the four edges of your screen and let go. You can "stack" the two on the same edge, drag the new toolbars to the taskbar or drag them to the center of the Desktop to create floating toolbars. | ||||||||||||||||
| Associate Correct Application with Correct File | ||||||||||||||||
| Ever encounter an application that designates itself as the default program for a file extension previously owned by another program? The quickest way to get out of this jam under Win9x is to find an example of an incorrectly associated file. Click on the file once to select it, then hold down the Shift key while you right-click on it. Choose Open With. Select the correct program, check the "Always use this program to open this type of file" box and click on OK. Or, if you don't find the program, click on the Other button and navigate to the correct program on your drive. | ||||||||||||||||
| Learn Detailed Information About Your Computer | ||||||||||||||||
| Windows 95 comes with a utility called MS-Info that tells you more about your computer than you'll ever want to know. It lists detailed information on all your DLLs, drivers, fonts, memory, hardware and much more. Just launch the Find utility (Start/Find/Files or Folders) and search for the executable: MSINFO32.EXE. | ||||||||||||||||
| Save Your Ass with ScanDisk | ||||||||||||||||
| If your PC doesn't shut down properly, Windows will run ScanDisk the next time you boot. If it finds lost fragments, it will delete them for you. Before doing that, however, it asks if you want to save them as files. Unfortunately, it doesn't say where it puts them or what the new files are called. Here's how to find them. Open Tools/Find/Files or Folders and search the root directory for file*.CHK. Typically, the files are named FILE0000.CHK, FILE0001.CHK, FILE0002.CHK and so on. If you're looking to free up disk space, you can delete any old files you find. If you suspect one of these files contains critical data, open it in a text editor. If you see anything that looks important, copy and paste into a new document for safekeeping. | ||||||||||||||||
| Save Your Ass "II" | ||||||||||||||||
| Keep a bootable copy of Win98 handy for emergencies. Format a floppy disk with the option to copy system files. Copy C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\SCANREG.EXE and C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS to the disk; add the line DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS to a CONFIG.SYS file on the disk. You'll be able to boot from the diskette and use the command "scanreg/restore" to restore the Registry on an unbootable configuration. | ||||||||||||||||
| Customize the Windows Explorer Shortcut | ||||||||||||||||
| If you get Properties for the Windows Explorer shortcut, the one
that comes on your Start menu, you'll see that the command line reads:
C:\Windows\EXPLORER.SCF. You probably wouldn't notice that or care about it unless you tried to customize the shortcut to
open a folder in a special way using the switches available to the EXPLORER.EXE file. To customize
Windows Explorer, change EXPLORER.SCF on the command line to EXPLORER.EXE. Then
add the customization switches you prefer. The syntax for EXPLORER.EXE
commands is: Explorer [/n] [/e][,/root,object][[,/select],subobject] (For object and subobject, insert a path statement to a specific directory on your PC, such as C:\Program Files.) Here's a table that describes what each switch does. You may want to create multiple instances of the Windows Explorer shortcut to point at specific folders you commonly access on your PC. Please note, the commas shown in the left column are important to the functionality of these commands. |
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| EXPLORER.EXE Switches Explained | ||||||||||||||||
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| Hide Your Files | ||||||||||||||||
| If you want to keep files-or even folders full of files-hidden from prying eyes, just right-click on each file and select Hidden in the Attributes box at the bottom of the Properties dialog. To see the files you've hidden, double-click on My Computer, select Options from the View menu, click on the View tab and select Show All Files. | ||||||||||||||||
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