Computer and Web Articles

Windows XP comes with lovely graphics. You’ve got your shiny, 3-d taskbar running across the bottom of your screen. You’ve got that neat, green, 3-d gel button over in the left-hand, bottom corner. Lots of pretty icons, subtle shines, and drop shadows add an elegant, polished touch to your computer-using experiences.

These graphics do come with a cost, however: they make your computer run a bit slower.

And so it comes down to fashion vs. function. If you’re happy with your computer’s speed and you’d prefer to keep your computer’s graphics looking polished and pretty—don’t change a thing.

If you’re willing to give up your shiny graphics for simple, straightforward ones so that your computer will run faster, here’s what you need to do:

1. Click on Start, then Control Panel.
2. Click on System. (Note: If you don’t see an option called System, first click on “Switch to Classic View” over on the left.)
3. Click Advanced, then click the Settings button underneath Performance.
4. Now just go ahead and select the “Adjust for best performance” option.
5. Click Apply, then OK.

All done.

Your graphics may be a bit boring now, but you should notice your computer seems a bit quicker.

If you don’t like the way things look, simply head back to the spot where we updated your graphics option in #4 above and select “Adjust for best appearance.” Your graphics will revert to their previous (default) states. No harm done!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold assumption: you don’t use your Windows XP built-in search every day, do you? I bet you don’t even use it once a week, right? Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to go ahead and guess that entire months go by without you using that search functionality—yes?

I knew it! My powers of assumption appear to be incredibly on-point today. So now that we’ve confirmed you don’t use XP’s built in search on a regular basis, let’s take advantage of this information to speed up your computer a bit, shall we?

Today we’ll be turning off your Windows Indexing Service, a service that reduces the performance and speed of your computer by constantly, furiously running in the background in an effort to update an index of alllllll the files on your system—just so that your Windows XP searches will execute as fast as possible. You know, those searches you never conduct.

All we need to do to give our Windows Indexing Service a well needed, permanent rest is…

• Click on Start > Control Panel
• Click on Add/Remove Programs
• Look over in the left-hand column of the window that pops up. Click Add/Remove Windows Components
• Uncheck Indexing Service
• [Bonus tip: If you never use Windows Messenger (and it’s very likely you do not), uncheck that box too!]
• Click Next, then Finish.

Now just look how fast your computer is zooming about! All done, great job.

Keyboard shortcuts allow you to do your computer work quickly and more efficiently.

Think about all the poor people who don’t realize they can copy text with Ctrl + C and paste that text with Ctrl + V. Every time they want to copy and paste they select text with their cursor, move their cursors up to the Edit menu option at the top of their screen, click on that Edit menu option, move their cursors down, and select Copy. They then repeat an almost identical process to paste their text. Slow, inefficient, and tedious work.

But of course you already know about Copy and Paste, yes? Let’s look at some other useful keyboard shortcuts you can put to work for you.

• Ctrl + A: Selects everything! In Word this will select every single letter, word, image, etc. that’s sitting in your document. If you’re in a Windows folder, this will select every single file within the folder.
• Ctrl + B: This will bold text in many programs (Word, Excel, etc.).
• Ctrl + D: This allows you to quickly mark a web page as a Favorite when you’re using Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer.
• Ctrl + I: This will italicize text in many programs (Word, Excel, etc.).
• Ctrl + Q: This quits most programs. All done with your Excel spreadsheet? Finished up your Photoshop comp? This will close the program down for you, pronto. (If you’ve not saved your work yet, you’ll be prompted to do so before the program closes–don’t worry.)
• Ctrl + U: This will underline text in many programs (Word, Excel, etc.).
• Ctrl + Z: Undo!! Undo!! Make an error? Typo? Enter the wrong information? This will save you. I use it many, many times a day. (Sadly though, it can’t help you take back emails you shouldn’t have sent.)
• Ctrl + Esc: In PCs, this will pop open your Start menu (no need to click the Start button at the bottom left-hand corner of your screen).

Leaving your PC for a bit? Don’t want to power it down … but don’t want anyone touching your beloved machine while you’re away? No problem. Just lock up your desktop.

It’s simple, really. Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard (try looking to the left of your spacebar – it looks like a little flag) and then hit the “L” key. There you go. You just password protected your computer – just as if you’d logged out or restarted it.

The difference with the Windows key + “L” key trick is that all the programs that were running when you locked up your deskstop will stay open and running until you return, pop in your password, and get back to work. Or play.

No shutting down or restarting required!

Let’s imagine you’ve just moved all your photos from your digital camera into the My Documents folder on your computer. Everything is organized nice and neat – you’ve got all your vacation photos named by location and date, and—wait a second.

Oh no. Oh no no no. You suddenly realize that somehow, most likely in a sleep-deprived fit of senselessness, you entered the filenames of all 58 of your Hawaiian vacation photos so that they each start with “CaboTrip2005 “.

Of course, you have no time to manually change each and every one of those 58 files so that they’re correctly named. “HawaiiTrip-1” . . . “HawaiiTrip-2” . . . “HawaiiTrip-3”. No way.

Before you consider leaving the filenames as they are, and before you pay your kid a few bucks to rename all the files for you—remember that you can rename multiple files at the same time!

The technique we’re learning today works just as well on two files as it does on two hundred files. Once we’re done, we’ll be left with files that are all named the same, but differentiated by consecutive numbers within parentheses. For our example above we’ll end up with “HawaiiTrip (1)”, “HawaiiTrip (2)”, “HawaiiTrip (3)”, and so forth.

Let’s give it a shot, shall we?

Step #1: We first need locate and select files to rename, so go ahead and browse to a location in your computer where you have at least three files with which you can try this technique.

Step #2: Let’s now select all the files we wish to rename. (For instructions on how to select multiple files, checkout the tips at the bottom of this post.)

Step #3: Now that our files are selected, right click on any one of those files.

Step #4: From the menu that pops open, choose Rename.

Step #5: We now have the ability to rename the file we right-clicked on. Continuing with the example from above, we’ll type in “HawaiiTrip”. (Note: if your file ends with something along the lines of .jpg, .doc, .bmp, etc – do NOT touch or rename that part.)

Step #6: Click an empty spot in your folder.

That’s it; you’re done. All your files have successfully been renamed and your computer did all the hard work.

Though you won’t need to simultaneously rename multiple files on a daily basis, this is a great trick to keep in your arsenal for saving time (and headaches) down the road.

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Tips on selecting multiple files at once:
To select multiple files that are all sitting next to one another, you can use your mouse to left-click on an empty spot near the files and—still holding that left mouse button down—move your mouse away from the spot you clicked and draaaaag a box around your files. Release your left mouse key once all your files have been highlighted.

To select multiple files that aren’t near one another, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and then use your mouse to left-click the various files. Let go of the Ctrl key when you’re done selecting the files.

If you need more help or would like to learn about additional methods for selecting multiple files, visit http://tinyurl.com/opghbq and http://tinyurl.com/qreml9.

Keeping unnecessary programs out of your Startup folder won’t turn your computer into a lightning-fast speed machine, and it most likely won’t make you fitter, happier, or more productive–but it is an easy and quick housekeeping task that can potentially decrease your computer’s loading/startup time. So let’s have a look, shall we?

Whether you knew it or not, if you own a PC running Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.) you’ve got a folder on your computer called “Startup”.

Any programs that are hanging out in your Startup folder are given specific instructions to immediately load every time you turn on your computer. As you can imagine, having a lot of programs sitting in your Startup folder translates into a longer loading time each time you boot up your computer.  Additionally, these programs are then already running and using up a chunk of your computer’s resources before you’ve so much as made one click of your mouse, fired up the Internet, or opened up your email program.

To make matters worse, during your computer’s lifetime, many software programs (both legitimate and malicious) will quietly, discreetly drop themselves into your Startup folder without telling you. This is why it’s smart to take a quick peek into your that folder every so often.  You just want to ensure you don’t have any unwelcome guests.

So let’s go ahead and take that peek into your computer’s Startup folder. Doing so takes minimal effort – I promise!

• Step #1: Click the Start button located in the bottom left corner of your computer screen. (The button may be a green rectangle, or it may be circular with a red, green, blue, and yellow Windows graphic on it.)
• Step #2: Click All Programs.
• Step #3: Hover over the folder called Startup.
• Step #4: Look at the list of programs that shows up to the right as you continue hover your mouse over the folder.

Alrightee; we’ve found your Startup folder and are looking at its contents. Now: what do you see?

If all you see is the word “Empty” inside parentheses, congratulations! Your Startup folder is clean. For you, I suggest checking in on your Startup folder a few times a year to make sure nothing undesirable shows up.

Alternatively, if you see a program or list of programs sitting in this folder, you’ll want to go through the list of items one at a time and ask yourself, “Does this program really need to load itself automatically–without my asking it do so–every single time I start my computer?” If the answer is yes, leave the program there and do not touch it. If there answer is no, hover over the name of the program, right-click your mouse, then choose Delete. (Don’t worry!! This action doesn’t actually delete the program from your system; it only removes it from your Startup folder so that it will no longer load automatically every time you boot up your computer.)

If you see a program with which you’re unfamiliar sitting in your Startup folder, and you don’t know whether to leave it or delete it, chances are good that you can go ahead and delete it as your computer does not place critical files into this folder. However, to be on the safe side, I recommend first Googling the mystery program’s name and doing a couple minutes of online research to learn what the program is and does. (Tip: When searching, adding the words “startup folder” after the program’s name can often bring up more helpful results.)

After cleaning out your Startup folder, the worst-case scenario would be noticing no differences at all—really which isn’t such a bad worst-case scenario, in my opinion.

On the other hand, I’ve seen a few instances where people had seven to ten programs hiding away in their Startup folders – none of which needed to load upon their systems’ startup. After deleting these programs from their Startup folders, these people immediately noticed significant decreases in their computers’ loading/startup times. I hope you’re able to see similar results with your computer!

Here’s an easy step-by-step walkthrough for all you Windows XP users who would like to make a screen saver from your favorite photos in your computer.

Let’s begin.

• Step #1: Make sure all the photos you’d like to have in your screen saver slideshow are sitting in one folder in your computer. It doesn’t matter what folder they’re sitting in, as long as you know where they are!
• Step #2: Now go ahead and right-click on an empty spot on your desktop.
• Step #3: From the menu that pops up, click Properties, then the Screen Saver tab.
• Step #4: In the Screen Saver dropdown box, select My Pictures Slideshow, then click the Settings button.
• Step #5: Set the speed at which you’d like your photos to transition, as well as what folder your slideshow’s photos should be pulled from.
• Step #6: Click OK to exit, and you’re all done.  Enjoy!

Now wasn’t that easy?

I’m a huge fan of clearing out clutter whenever and wherever possible–hence my interest in Stickies. Stickies 6.7a is a little PC program that eliminates Post-It clutter while still allowing you to scribble down errant thoughts, phone numbers, and notes as you go about your work day.

The program is nothing more than digital, yellow rectangular windows onto which you can type your notes. Once created, they then “stay on your screen until you taken them away.” Simple as that.

And though Stickies may be simple, the program is also packed with useful features, including the ability for the Stickies to:

• have alarms attached to them
• be transferred from one machine to another
• snap to each other
• snap to the sides of your screen to keep them lined up nice and neat, and
• have their appearances customized

Stickies is a free program that won’t cost you a dime. Interested yet? If so, you can learn more at http://tinyurl.com/77fvz.

If you’re using Windows XP, a system called Prefetch often runs in the background while you work, organizing and preloading some of the data necessary to run the applications and files you use on a regular basis.  Prefetch stores this data in a folder called – yep, you guessed it – prefetch.

After weeks of constantly storing information, your prefetch folder can clog up, and this can sometimes decrease your computer’s performance. This is why it’s smart to empty out older files from your prefetch folder at least every other month or so.

To access your prefetch folder, simply go to My Computer, then C drive, then Windows, then prefetch. Once there, delete all the .PF files you see that are more than a couple weeks old. Doing so helps keep your computer happy and healthy!