Larson's Wintips Page1

Windows Vista System Requirements

More Tips for Windows . . .

Write a "Batch File" to automate this process, "Click" on Graphic above

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New Tip - for those of us, who need glasses!
Right Click your Empty Desktop, click "Properties", Goto "Appearance"(in XP-click "Advanced" 1st)
Open small window where it says "Desktop", click on the phrase "Icon", below it says "Font"
Goto "Size"(right side)input a larger font size, Click "Apply". Windows Fonts -
have now changed to make your Viewing much easier on the Eyes!

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New Info for "INSTALL/RE-installing Windows - EASILY

An Install/Reinstall Tip & Make OS reinstallation much easier,
can be adapted to any version of Windows, any time:

Here's what you do..
If it's a reformat/reinstall. Identify all the hardware on your system
then copy the INF files for each piece of hardware to a floppy disk.
Ever have windows "Not" find your modem? The idea is to collect all of
the actual setup files,either from the INF folder itself - Windows\inf\other folder,
or locate them on the floppy or CD from the manufacturer...If you are not certain which
ones to copy from the floppy or CD, copy them all to a properly formatted floppy disk.

Then do your format and reinstall with this little twist. When you get to the
"Setup needs to restart. Remove all Floppies." Leave the boot disk in and restart.
When you get to the dos prompt switch to the A:\ prompt and type copy *.* C:\windows\inf
where C is the letter of the drive you installed windows. When done remove the floppy
and restart so that setup will resume...The twist is that now windows has the setup files
for the actual hardware installed on that system,(including the modem ;~)
and when it looks for the hardware it can identify all and use the manufacturer's setup.

You may be asked for the CD's with drivers on it and you get a really solid and trouble free
install with this method - Plus you don't get countless entries in the registry
for hardware installs that were not correct.(0000. 0001, 0002 etc.)

For a new system that you may have built or rebuilt you can use the same technique, you just
need access to the original setup disks for the "newest" hardware that you have installed.
This works especially well on a new system, with the latest and greatest -
hardware and saves literally hours of hardware troubleshooting!

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NOTE: SOME CHARACTERS like the LEFT & RIGHT Arrow brackets, HAVE been changed
to the Parenthesis brackets, ie: "( )", since HTML uses them for it's language. (Tip 23, Line 6 & Tip 39, Line 4)

** I found this useful file - when searching the internet - thought it would be helpful **

Tips & Tricks
For
Windows 95(&98)

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Here's one to remember - Go Directly to the Windows Start-Up-Menu
Just Hold Down the (Ctrl-Key) when Machine Boots Up

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Windows 95 Tips, Tricks and Undocumented Features

Here it is. The FIRST Win95 Tips & Tricks help file on the scene
If you have a tip or a trick for Windows 95 that is not included in this file, please send
it to eneuman@haddock.cd.chalmers.se and you will be added to my mailing list
and receive a update of this file as soon as there is one ;)

I DONT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBLITY FOR WHAT THESE
TIPS & TRICKS MIGHT DO TO YOUR COMPUTER.

If you have any suggestion or FeedBack please email eneuman@haddock.cd.chalmers.se

Here we go ..

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Tip No #1
For maximum DOS memory in an MS-DOS session, add the line
LocalLoadHigh=1 to the [386Enh] section of system.ini.

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Tip No #2
To get Explorer to show a two directory view similar to File Manager just open two
instances of the Explorer, right-click on the Task bar, and select
"Tile Vertically". Win95 will retain both if you leave them running when you shut down
so that they're instantly available the next time you boot up.
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Tip No #3
You can have the icon of all your BMPs a small picture of the actual bitmap.

Open regedit
Find Paint.Picture (or whichever program BMPs are registered to)
Add a New Key under Paint.Picture DefaultIcon
In the right pane,change the Default Value (by Double Clicking it) to %1.
%1 tells windows the default icon for this file type is in the file itself-since
there is no icon in a BMP file, Windows 95 makes a small preview image of the BMP
for the icon.Makes sorting and viewing BMPs super easy.

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Tip No #4
To speed up the Program tree accessed from the START button ,open the Registry Editor,
expand the HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then Control panel. Inside of Control Panel you'll
find Desktop, highlight it w/o expanding it.

In the right pane make a right click and choose New-String value.
The name of the string is "MenuShowDelay" w/o the quotes, give it a value of 10 or less.
This value is the time in milliseconds that the popup will wait before showing.

When you restart WIN95 you'll see that the Start menu opens it's popups almost instantaneously.

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Tip No #5
If you hold down shift while dragging items into the Recycle Bin they will be DELETED
immediately rather than being placed in the bin. Just be careful not to accidently multi-select
more files than you wanted. Similarly, pressing Shift-Del gives you the same effect.

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Tip No #6
I installed Win95 into a new directory. Is there a way, now,to get back my WfW 3.11 groups?
I copied all the .grp files to the win95 directory, but how can I now tell Windows to use
or convert these files? -Run the program grpconv.exe in your Windows directory.
It will allow you to convert your Program Manager groups to Win95 folders in the Start Menu.

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Tip #7
Even if Win95 recognizes your video card it often requires an entry in AUTOEXEC.BAT
to set the correct refresh rates. For instance a Stealth 64 card requires
a ref to S64MODE in AUTOEXEC.BAT.

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Tip #8
Have you played with the SENDTO feature in Explorer?It's a hidden folder in C:\WINDOWS.
You can add folders to it and be able to quickly move things around
(right click on file - use Send To).
You can also put WINZIP in there to make quick ZIP files.

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Tip #9
In Explorer you can set up different actions to be performed on a document in addition to just
the standard 'open' command that will be available to you when you right click on your icon.
Go to an Explorer window and choose - View Options, and then the tab 'File Types'.
In the list you see, find the association for the file type you want to add an action to,
e.g BMP. Double click on it to bring up the edit window.
You should see that there is already at least one action here, probably Open, maybe Print, etc.
Click on the New . . . button and type in a new command, like Edit or View or whatever you want.
Then select the application you want to use to Edit your Bitmap, as opposed to just viewing it.
Then when you right click on a BMP file you will see your new command there and you can easily
choose to View, Edit, Open, Print . . . .whatever you want with whatever app you want to do it with.

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Tip #10
There's a magical little program that is automatically installed by Win95 that you can use
to make Win 3.x programs more compatible under 95.It is called MKCOMPAT.EXE and is in the
Windows\System directory. Just run MKCOMPAT.EXE - Select File/Open - Open the EXE file
that you are having problems with - Start highlighting things that seem like they may make
a difference. - Select File/Advanced for more control options - Select File/Save to save
the new configuration. There is no online help - so some trial and error is in order
until you find the optimal settings.

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Tip #11
To turn off the Logo put the following in your CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS
[options]
logo=0

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Tip #12
To turn off the Auto Load feature of Windows 95 Put the following in your
CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS...
[options]
BootGUI=0

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Tip #13
To have the option of booting your old DOS everytime you boot up put
this in your CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS...
[options]
BootMenu=1

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Tip #14
I always forget my PIN code to my creditcards. Now i use Schedule+ from Office for
Windows 95, where I put them in as an "TO DO" that never will be checked, Then they, or it,
will automatic be transfered to my Timex DATA LINK Watch for Windows, when I daily update
my calender. That means, when I have my watch and my creditcards, I can always use the cash
dispensers if needed. You can put in the digits in reverse order, or scramble them
in another way. Simple - but very usefull :-)

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Tip #15
Ever have too many programs open, and the taskbar has a bunch of "icons" that you can't
read the title in? Make it bigger! This should have been obvious, but I just came across
it one day. Just move your mouse cursor to the top of the task bar (if it's on the bottom)
and drag it up. Win95 remembers position as well.

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Tip #16
Here's a simple trick that saves a bit of time.
When you want to rename a file, folder or desktop item do you find it a hassle to right click
the item, choose Rename etc, etc before you can type in the new name?

Well, try this ....

1) LEFT click on the file, folder, or desktop item as you normally would to select it.

2) Wait a moment, long enough for Windows to know that you aren't double clicking it, and LEFT click again.

3) The file, folder or desktop item is now ready for a name change.

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Tip #17
You can drag icons into your documents... This will create a static link to that icon,
just drag 'My Computer' onto a new Wordpad doc, and double Click to see!

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Tip #18
I just stumbled to this one on my hard drive. With release 490, there is a wonderful file
called Tips.Txt in the windows directory! If you're running 490 (or above) and installed Win95
in your C drive, read the file.

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Tip #19
Want to make your single or double speed drive perform like a quad+ speed drive in Win '95 ?
It's easy.. Go to My Computer / Properties / Performance / File System / CDROM
and set the supplemental cache speed to its maximum and the access pattern to 'Quad speed or
higher'. I was shocked to see my little 'ole single speed drive play the previously
choppy avi's on a Bugs Bunny CDROM I have.

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Tip #20
Spell Checking in Exchange
If you can't understand why there is no spell check in MS Exchange then read on. It is
because MS Exchange requires a 32bit Spell Checker. MS Word's 16 bit spell checker won't
cut it with MS Exchange. This is what you do to get a 32bit Spell Checker, call MS and ask
for MS Office NT sidegrade. (Assuming you already have MS Office). The CD-ROM sidegrade
will cost about 15 bucks. This will allow you to sidegrade your current MS Office to
NT MS Office (Which is 32bit). Not only will your spell checking now work in Exchange,
but Word will now support long file names....all for 15 bucks! If you don't want to install
the whole sidegrade and are just interested in the spell checking....just install Word and
select spell check as the only option to install.
This will only add Spell Check to your system rather than the whole Word package.

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Tip #21
Windows 95 allows you to do some strange things with audio CDs. Try some of the following:
(1) Go into Explorer and click on your CD drive with an audio CD in it.
(2) In the right panel you will see Track01.cda through Track??.cda.
(3) If you right-click on a track, you can play it automatically,
by choosing Play from the Quick Menu.
(4) If you double-click on a track, it will play automatically.
(5) Try dragging a track onto your desktop
(you can copy it or create a shortcut, it doesn't matter).
Rename the track's copy/shortcut to the song's real name. Whenever you have the
CD in the drive, you can now double-click on it on the desktop to play it.
(6) You can also drag tracks to your hard drive and put them in your Start Menu,
or create a directory with CD tracks in it.

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Tip #22
Try this tip if you are using The Internet Explorer that comes with Plus!
The Explorer has it's favorite (bookmarks) menu. Click on open favourites then a window
will appear with all your favorites. Right click, then select "New" then "Folder" now you can
create several folders and name them accordingly to your links! This is one easy way
categorizing your links into several groups or folders. The folders will appear in the menu
when you click on "Favorites" with your links within them..

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Tip #23
If you hate going through the NetHood to find a computer or hate searching through
My Computer or explorer when you know right where you want to go, here is a solution.
Click on Start...Run... and then type in your path.
i.e
Start... Run...C:\win95 > will open a window of the Win95 directory. This works great with
UNC's. Like Start... Run... \\ (server name) \ (share name) or you can just use the server name
by itself. If you're looking for a computer, this is a lot faster.

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