Windows Tips

The other day a visiting relative asked if he could use my laptop to check his Facebook account. He couldn't make it past the desktop. "Hey, don't you have Firefox on this machine?"

"Press the Windows key, type f, and press Enter," I told him.

I had been using Windows 7's Start menu search box to launch Firefox and other apps for so long I neglected to add a Firefox shortcut to my taskbar. (I prefer to keep my desktop clear of icons by placing my desktop shortcuts on a menu that pops out of the taskbar, … Read more

Microsoft has made it easier to browse for help when one of its products acts up. The revamped Fix It Solution Center boils troubleshooting down to three steps: pick a product (optional), choose a fix in one of eight categories (and handful of optional subcategories), and then view or run one of Microsoft's many proposed solutions.

Of course, the real test is whether these auto-repair tools actually do any good. I haven't done enough testing to form an opinion one way or the other. However, the online Fix It tools differ from the troubleshooting utilities built into Windows … Read more

A recent Windows security update failed to install on my Windows 7 laptop. The Windows sign-off indicated the operating system was installing an update before shutting down, but the patch never installed.

The next time I started the machine, I clicked Start > Windows Update to determine which update was failing. The Windows Update warning message offered a link to "get help with the error," but the link led nowhere useful.

I found the remedy described by Microsoft Support's Srinivas R on the Microsoft Answers site: click Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features, select Microsoft .… Read more

No one is a bigger fan of freeware than I am. Yet I have to admit that for some purposes, free software comes up short. One of those purposes is Windows system maintenance.

If you rely solely on the tools built into Windows to keep your PC running safely and smoothly, trouble will find you soon enough. It may even find you if you rely on a single commercial package for protection. This point was driven home for me when I tested the new version 10 of Iolo Technologies' $40 System Mechanic utility package (a fully functional 30-day free trial … Read more

There aren't many of us left who remember using PCs before Windows arrived. While I don't pine for the good old days of DOS, I was comfortable operating those old machines from the command line.

Back then, I frequently had to print a list of the files in a folder. Doing so was as easy as copying the list to a text file that I opened in my text editor and printed from there. This trick still works via the command prompt built into Windows.

Instructions for using commands to print the contents of a folder--including various command … Read more

It makes sense that having the files you access most often closest to your hard drive's read-write head will improve your system's performance. Unfortunately, programs tend to store files in various noncontiguous clusters spread across your drive (and occasionally other storage media).

To open or otherwise access a single file, Windows or one of your applications may have to retrieve data from several drive clusters. That's why you need to defragment your hard drive regularly to prevent your system from bogging down.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 claim to defragment your hard disk automatically in the background. … Read more

Windows 7 is an unqualified hit, but it's not perfect. Here are five easy ways to make a good operating system better.

Show the selected folder in Explorer's left pane The first time I realized Windows 7's version of Explorer wasn't showing the active folder in the left pane, I thought I discovered a bug. In fact,  Microsoft disabled automatic folder tracking by default in Windows 7. To see the selected folder in Explorer's left pane, click Tools, Folder options,  and check "Automatically expand to current folder" under "Navigation pane&… Read more

It's no surprise that using multiple monitors lets you get more work done in less time. As Farhad Manjoo reported in the New York Times last year, the consensus of the ergonomics experts is that using more than one monitor makes computer users much more productive.

Unfortunately, monitor expansion is not always an option, as anyone who has used a laptop computer on the road knows. A serviceable alternative is use of a screen-expander utility that lets you extend your desktop space virtually.

(These programs differ from Windows' built-in Magnifier utility, which enlarges the contents of the desktop but … Read more

Windows 7 has done wonders for Microsoft's reputation, which was seriously tarnished by the ice cold reception that greeted Vista, Windows 7's predecessor. That's the conclusion of the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index, which is compiled annually by the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, the American Society for Quality, and the CFI Group.

According the ACSI results released Tuesday, Microsoft's customer satisfaction score jumped 8.9 percent in the past year to 76 (on the survey's 100-point scale). That's higher than Microsoft has scored on the survey in the last … Read more