In this chapter
No, tweaking the GUI doesn't mean anything lascivious. This chapter describes the graphical user interface and some interesting, useful, and fun stuff you can do with it—changes to help increase your computing efficiency and perhaps even make your computer more fun to use.
As you know, the GUI is the translator that interprets human input into commands the computer can interpret. It's also responsible for displaying output from computer programs and the operating system so that you can understand the results. The Windows XP GUI is set up with factory defaults that 90 percent of users will never touch, despite its being highly programmable and easily modifiable through the Control Panel, Folder Options, Properties sheets, and so on. If you're a GUI hacker, you know who you are, and if all you want to do is get your work done, well, more power to you because you're the one who's going to get the raise. But playing with the GUI can be fun.
Most folks won't modify their GUIs, but it's a shame they don't. Often, not even knowing there is a recourse, users develop headaches from screen flicker, come down with eyestrain from tiny screen fonts, or they live with color schemes they detest. With a little effort, they can rectify these problems. Likewise, means for managing zip archives, altering the right-click Send To options, and handling numerous other functions users have to deal with every day are just a few clicks, Net downloads, Registry hacks, or Properties sheet settings away. Just for fun, you can choose from hundreds of desktop themes, screen savers, wallpaper images, and so on.
Some of this chapter deals with standard display options. Other portions deal with deeper GUI tweaks and tricks. Just skim for the part that interests you.
Note
→ This chapter doesn't cover multimonitor support because it's related more to hardware upgrades than the GUI. See “Installing and Using Multiple Monitors,” p. 1187 for coverage of multiple monitors.
The default Start menu of Windows XP is much improved over the classic style (in my opinion). I dread returning to Windows 2000 or earlier OSes for whatever reason simply because of the now-old-fashioned Start menu. For those of you who like the classic view, you can get back to it in a flash. But, for those willing to give the new look and feel a solid go, there are many nifty improvements you can take advantage of and even customize.
Accessing properties for the Start menu involves a right-click over the Start button to select the Properties command from the pop-up menu. This reveals the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box. The Start Menu tab is selected by default (which is strange since it's not the first tab of the dialog box). This tab offers the selections of Start menu and Classic Start menu. The Start menu option is the new Luna visual stylings of Windows XP. The Classic Start menu is that of Windows 2000. A quick click and you can be back in the land of Windows 2000 out-of-date fashion before you can say baggy jeans.
For those of you sticking with Windows XP's new classy stylings, slam the Customize button to see all the options available to you. From the Customize Start Menu dialog box, you can choose between large (default) and small icons, the number of recently accessed applications to be displayed (5 by default), and which Internet (IE by default) and email (Outlook Express by default) application shortcuts to display.
The Advanced tab (see Figure 23.1) of the Customize Start Menu dialog box controls the following:
Whether to open submenus on mouseover (default) or only when clicked.
Whether to highlight newly installed programs (enabled by default).
Which items to include on the Start menu: Control Panel (enabled by default), Favorites menu, Help and Support (enabled by default), My Computer (enabled by default), My Documents (enabled by default), My Music (enabled by default), My Network Places, My Pictures (enabled by default), Network Connections, Printers and Faxes, and Run command (enabled by default). Some of these can be normal links or displayed as submenus themselves (see “Cascading Elements Off the Start Menu” later in this chapter).
Whether to list the most recently opened documents (and to clear out this list).
With a bit of experimentation, you'll find the combination of features that best suits your preferred Start menu population and function.
The taskbar itself has configurable options; these are contained on the Taskbar tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box. The taskbar can be locked so stray mouse actions won't alter its placement or configuration; it can be auto-hidden to maximize desktop area; and it can be set to always appear on top of other maximized windows. You'll probably recall these controls from previous Windows OSes. The latest taskbar feature is the automatic grouping of similar taskbar items. Instead of listing task buttons in their order of launch, they are grouped by similar interface. For example, if you have Control Panel, My Computer, and Windows Explorer open, they can appear as a single button. This single button displays a number indicating how many applications are accessed through it (I just love the grouping feature). You can elect to show or hide the clock and even hide inactive system tray icons.
If you're experienced with previous Windows OSes you might be familiar with how quickly the system tray (next to the clock) can fill up with icons. I've had systems with more than a dozen. Windows XP manages its system tray much more intelligently by allowing inactive icons to be hidden. Plus, instead of displaying a long stream of active icons, only two or so are displayed with a double-arrow button, which can be used to access the hidden icons. By enabling Hide inactive icons (which is the default) you can also customize which icons are hidden or displayed.
As with previous versions of Windows, you can still drag the taskbar to any edge of your desktop: top, bottom, or sides. You can also still expand the thickness of the taskbar to allow multiple rows of task buttons. Just hover the mouse pointer near the edge of the taskbar so that it turns into a double arrow, and drag it up or down.
As new applications are installed, the All Programs section of the Windows XP Start menu can become horribly cluttered. Almost every application will create its own Start menu submenu and propagate it with numerous shortcuts—often to worthless documentation or sales promotions. I rarely let an installed application dictate the state of my Start menu, and I'll tell you how you can take control too.
The Start menu is little more than a folder hierarchy full of shortcuts. Changing the layout of the Start menu (or at least the All Programs section) is just a matter of folder and shortcut manipulation—easy. Just right-click over the Start button and select Open or Explore. You'll be dropped into a My Computer or Windows Explorer interface pointing to the …Documents and Settings<username>Start Menu folder. Any item you add to this folder (that is, at the same level as the Programs folder) will be displayed above the dividing line within the All Programs submenu. Any item you add within the Programs folder or any of its subfolders will appear as you expect in the Start menu hierarchy. Be sure only to create shortcuts within this folder hierarchy.
You also should be aware that there are actually two Start menus for every user. There is the Start menu which is associated with your user profile (the one stored in the …Documents and Settings<username> folder, where <username> is your user account name), and there is the Start menu stored in the …Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart menu folder. The latter Start menu includes items that appear in every users' Start menu. When you need to make a change for everyone on this system, make it within the All Users area. If it is for only one user, make that change within their personal Start menu.
The most obvious means for altering your GUI display settings is the Display Properties dialog box. From there, you can reach a multitude of GUI settings, mostly affecting visual stylings rather than GUI functionality per se:
Screen saver settings
Desktop background
Colors and fonts for GUI elements
Active Desktop setting
Color depth and resolution
Special GUI effects such as menu sliding
Energy-saving settings
Device drivers
Advanced properties such as hardware acceleration
You can most easily reach the display properties by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Properties. The resulting dialog box is shown in Figure 23.2.
Figure 23.2. You can alter a multitude of display attributes from the Display Properties dialog box (Themes tab shown). Programs such as virus protectors or video drivers may introduce additional tabs to this dialog box.
NOTE
You also can get to the display properties from the Control Panel. Click Start, Control Panel, Appearance and Themes, and Display.
I'll briefly describe this dialog box tab by tab. You've probably used it before, so I won't belabor it; however, I will point out the basics and mention any specifics you should be aware of.
To quote the dialog box itself, “A theme is a background plus a set of sounds, icons, and other elements to help you personalize your computer with one click.” That just about sums it up, I think. All the settings you make on the other tabs of the Display Properties dialog box can be saved to a theme file on the Themes tab (see Figure 23.2). Windows XP includes a few themes, such as the default Windows XP scheme (a.k.a. Luna) and the classic theme (similar to the default theme of Windows 2000). Microsoft offers several other themes for download, and many third parties have created themes for Windows XP as well. To download additional themes from Microsoft, select the Mode Themes Online option from the Theme pull-down list, and Windows XP will take you to the online theme stash.
The desktop is used to express your inner personality. “Hanging wallpaper” (a picture of your kids, your car, a sunset, a nebula, and so forth) on your desktop gives the environment a more personalized feeling. Microsoft includes dozens of options for you. These include small tiles (a.k.a. patterns) that are repeated across and down your screen to make a pattern as well as larger single images centered on the screen (some of which are quite stunningly beautiful). If the image is too small to fill up your desktop, you can always set the Position control to Stretch.
NOTE
Stretching takes a picture smaller than your screen resolution and enlarges it so that it fills the screen. Stretching can distort the picture or cause it to pixelate, so if you want it to look good, make sure to shoot the picture at, or convert it to, a size roughly matching the resolution setting of your display. Then choose the Center option.
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If the image is larger than the screen's resolution, stretching actually shrinks the image to fully fit on the desktop. If stretching is turned off, and the image is larger than the screen, you'll only be able to see the center portion of the image that fits within your display.
By the way, if you don't want a pretty picture (or you need to hide the image of the sultry pin-up before your spouse returns), you can select None in the list of backgrounds to view a solid background color. That solid color can be altered on this tab, using the Color button on the Desktop tab, or via the Appearance tab's Advanced button. The color setting will be hidden if you use a tiled image or a full-screen size image. But it will show up as the background color for the names of shortcuts populating your desktop.
If you don't like the images offered by default, you can always add your own spicy image. Just click the Browse button to find images elsewhere. You can select .BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .DIB, and .PNG images, or even entire .HTM Web pages. In addition to files already on your local system (or accessible over your local network), you can grab any image from a Web site by right-clicking over it and selecting Set as Background from the pop-up menu.
Clicking on the Customize Desktop button at the bottom of the Desktop tab opens the Desktop Items dialog box (Figure 23.3). On the General tab of this dialog box, you can select from four common shortcut icons to appear on the desktop: My Documents, My Computer, My Network Places, and Recycle Bin. You can also manage the icons used for these desktop shortcuts using the Change Icon and Restore Default buttons.
Another interesting feature of Windows XP's new user experience is the Desktop Cleanup Wizard. By default it is launched every 60 days to prompt you to remove items you've not been using. If you elect to remove items from the desktop, they are moved into an Unused Desktop Items folder which is added to the desktop by this wizard. You can disable the 60 day launch by clearing the check box (that's one of the first settings I change!). You can also force a desktop cleanup by clicking the Clean Desktop Now button.
The Web tab of the Desktop Items dialog box is used to configure the Web components on the desktop (this used to be called Active Desktop). From here you can add new Web components or remove existing ones. Desktop Web components are miniature Web browsers which can be resized and moved around, plus they actively update their content as long as an Internet connection is available. To add a new Web page item, click the New button. From the New Desktop Item dialog box, click Visit Gallery to see a collection of Microsoft pre-selections, enter your own URL, or click Browse to add a locally stored image or HTML document. After you've added all the items you wish, you can close this dialog box and drag the components around on the desktop to arrange them as you desire. Once you have the components arranged as you please, reopen the Desktop Items dialog box to lock the desktop items so a stray mouse click won't re-arrange them.
After you've added a Web component (via a URL) to the available items to display on your desktop, you can customize the schedule and download restrictions through their Properties dialog box. Desktop Web components can be synchronized automatically on a custom defined schedule or manually. You can also specify what to download, such as everything, only the front page, or only up to a specific number of kilobytes. All of these configuration settings are very self-explanatory, so take a few minutes and explore them.
We all know what screen savers are. On the Screen Saver tab of the Display Properties dialog box, you can choose from several supplied screen savers and perhaps others that you have installed from other sources. In the old days when phosphors would “burn,” screen savers actually did something useful. They prevented a ghost of the image on the screen from being burned into the screen for all time, no matter what is being displayed. Most modern CRTs don't actually need a screen saver to save anything because the phosphors are more durable. Also, LCD monitors don't need them either because they don't have any phosphors on the screen at all.
So, what good is a screen saver nowadays, you ask? Well, some older monitor/card combinations go into low-power states when the screen is blanked, so if you choose Blank Screen, there could be some advantage.
Because far too many people leave their computers on all the time (it's not really true that they will last longer that way), efforts have been made by power regulators and electronics manufacturers to devise computer energy-conservation schemes. Some screen savers will turn off the video card instead of displaying cute graphics. And, of course, some screen savers are fun to watch. The 3D-Pipes screen saver that comes with Windows XP is pretty mesmerizing actually.
Some screen savers are mindless; others are more interesting. Some, such as the Marquee, have additional options, such as font, size, and color. You can check out each one as the spirit moves you. Just highlight it on this tab, and click Preview. Don't move the mouse until you're ready to stop the preview. If a particular screen saver has configuration elements, click on the Settings button.
If you're looking to find the actual screen saver files on your hard drive, most of them have an .scr extension and are stored in the windowssystem32 folder. Most files are 100KB or smaller in size. Double-clicking a screen saver runs it. Just press a key or click the mouse to stop it from running.
The Web is littered with screen savers. Just do a search. The following are some sources:
Screen Saver Heaven:
Screensaver.com:
Between those two sources alone, you have access to more than 2,500 screen savers. Plus, most of the screen savers designed for Windows 3.x, Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 will work on Windows XP.
In addition to selecting the screen saver du jour, you should also define the length of time the system must be idle before the screen saver is launched, as well as whether to display Welcome screen or return to the desktop when the system is resumed (that is, when the keyboard or mouse is activated by a user).
Note
→ The Energy Star settings for monitors are covered under the Power applet discussion. See “Working with Power,” p. 881.
If you are working from a portable system or are an energy conservationist (why do you have a computer in the first place?), the Screen Saver tab also offers quick access to the power saving properties of Windows XP via the Power button. This opens the Power Options Properties dialog box, which is a Control Panel applet in its own right. The Power Options applet is discussed a bit later in this chapter.
From the Appearance tab (see Figure 23.4), you can radically alter the look of your entire Windows machine. You can do some serious mischief here, creating some egregious color schemes that will attract the fashion police. Or you can design or choose schemes that improve readability on screens (or eyes) with certain limitations. If, perchance, you're using a monochrome monitor (no color), altering the colors may still have some effect (the amount depends on how you installed Windows), so these settings are not just for systems with color screens.
In most cases your desktop is set to the Windows XP style by default, which is fine for most screens and users. If you prefer the stylings of Windows 2000, you can go retro by selecting Windows Classic style from the Windows and buttons pull-down list.
The Windows Classic style offers all of the color scheme pre-defined options you remember, such as Desert, Eggplant, and Wheat. But even if you stick with the new XP styling, there is the default, Olive Green, and Silver color schemes, and even these can be customized through the Advanced button.
The final pull-down selection box on this tab is Font size. I bet you can guess what it's for. So, if you have trouble reading the names of icons or dialog boxes, increase the size of the font!
The Effects button opens the Effects dialog box. From here, you can set the following:
Whether menus and ToolTips are animated or not, and whether the animation is fade or scroll. Set to Fade effect by default.
Whether screen fonts are smoothed using the standard Windows method, or using ClearType. ClearType often improves the visibility range on older LCD displays. The Standard method is selected by default.
Whether to use large icons. Not selected by default.
Whether to show shadows under menus. Enabled by default.
Whether to show the contents of a window while dragging. Enabled by default.
Whether to hide the underlined letters for keyboard shortcuts until the Alt key is pressed. Enabled by default.
The Advanced button opens the Advanced Appearance dialog box, which is used to alter the color settings, component size, and fonts of each individual component of a windowed display. By using the various pull-down lists or clicking in the preview area, you can fine-tune the color and font scheme.
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If you spend considerable time creating a color, component, and font styling, be sure to save it as a theme on the Themes tab. Otherwise, if you switch to another view, even for a second, you'll lose all of your previous settings.
Choosing a color called Other brings up the Color Refiner dialog box (this is true on the Desktop tab as well). You work with two color mix controls here. One is the luminosity bar (which looks like a triangle arrow pointing left), and the other is the color refiner cursor (which looks like a set of crosshairs).
You simply drag around these cursors one at a time until the color in the box at the lower left is the shade you want. As you do so, the numbers in the boxes below the color refiner change.
Luminosity is the amount of brightness in the color.
Hue is the actual shade or color. All colors are composed of red, green, and blue.
Saturation is the degree of purity of the color; it is decreased by adding gray to the color and increased by subtracting gray.
You also can type in the numbers or click the arrows next to the numbers if you want, but using the cursors is easier. When you like the color, you can save a color for future use by clicking Add to Custom Colors.
On the Settings tab (see Figure 23.5) of the Display Properties dialog box, you can tweak the video driver's most basic settings—screen resolution (desktop size) and color quality (color depth).
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Unless you have a very fast computer or an intelligent co-processed AGP video card, you will find that running in true color at a high resolution, such as 1280x1024, can be annoying if you have Show window contents while dragging turned on. When you move a window, it moves jerkily across the screen. If you play videos such as QuickTime, MPEG, or RealPlayer movies, you'll also notice that these higher color depths can slow down the movies or make them play jerkily. Try using a setting of 16-bit color depth (aka “high color”) for movies and photos. If you don't view movies and photos but only do non-photographic tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, and so forth, you might even want to try 256 colors.
Assuming that Windows XP has properly identified your video display card and that the correct driver is installed, the Color Quality drop-down list box should include all the legitimate options your card is capable of. Your color depth options are limited by the amount of video RAM on the card and the resolution you choose. The higher the resolution, the more memory is used for pixel addressing, limiting the pixel depth (number of colors that can be displayed per pixel). With many modern cards, this limitation is no biggie, and it's likely that many Windows XP users will not have to worry about it except in cases when they have large monitors displaying 1600x1200 and want 32-bit color and a high refresh rate. If you find that setting the color scheme up to high color or true color causes the resolution slider to move left, this is the reason. All modern analog color monitors for PCs are capable of displaying 16 million colors, which is dubbed true color.
You must click the Apply button before the changes are made. When you do, you are warned about the possible effects. The good thing about the no-reboot video subsystem, first introduced with Windows 98, is that the driver settings should revert within 15 seconds unless you accept them. So, if the screen goes blank or otherwise goes bananas, just wait. It should return to the previous setting.
The Screen resolution setting makes resizing your desktop a breeze. Obviously, we all want to cram as much on the screen as possible without going blind. This setting lets you experiment and even change resolution on-the-fly to best display whatever you're working on. Some jobs, such as working with large spreadsheets, databases, CAD, or typesetting, are much more efficient with more data displayed on the screen. Because higher resolutions require a trade-off in clarity and make onscreen objects smaller, you can minimize eyestrain by going to a lower resolution, such as 800x600 pixels (a pixel is essentially one dot on the screen). If you find the dialog box doesn't let you choose the resolution you want, drop the color palette setting down a notch and try again.
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All laptop and notebooks and an ever-increasing percentage of desktop computers have LCD monitors these days. Unlike their more-versatile yet clunky CRT-based progenitors, these energy- and space-saving displays are optimized for one resolution, called their native resolution. On LCDs, I don't suggest changing the setting from the native, (sometimes called suggested), resolution. Although choosing a lower resolution will result in making screen elements larger (and thus easier for some people to see) it will also produce a blockier, fuzzier display. This effect is mitigated somewhat on more intelligent displays by engineering that provides anti-aliasing. Trying a higher resolution than the native one typically will not work. There is a discrete number of pixels on the display, and these are of a predetermined size. Trying to jam more pixels on the screen, if it works at all, does so by creating a “virtual” screen that is larger than the actual one. This will require you to pan and scroll the screen image. Check the computer's or monitor's manual if you're in doubt about which external monitor resolutions are supported.
If you are experiencing any problems with your video system, from pop-up errors blaming the video system, to a flickering display, to even trouble resetting the resolution and color, click on the Troubleshoot button. This button launches the Video Display Troubleshooter. It's a Q&A type of wizard that helps you discover solutions to problems. Overall, I've found the Windows XP troubleshooters worth their weight in gold.
Windows XP boasts the Dual View feature. Dual View allows Windows XP to display the same desktop view on two or more monitors. On a notebook where it was common to display the desktop both on the LCD panel and an external monitor, this is nothing new. But, on desktop PCs equipped with multiple video cards, you can now use multiple monitors. The screen resolution of each monitor is controlled from the Settings tab. Just select the monitor to set the context for the screen resolution and color quality controls.
The Advanced button on the Settings tab opens the Monitor and Adapter Properties dialog box. This dialog box has five tabs—General, Adapter, Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Color Management.
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Contrary to some advertising accompanying flat-panel monitors, LCDs don't give a hoot about high refresh speed. In fact, they don't like high speeds. LCDs use a completely different technology, typically with a transistor for each pixel. The dots don't have to be refreshed as they do in a CRT. I noticed a blurry display on a desktop LCD screen once and tracked down the problem to a 72Hz refresh rate on the video card. I lowered it to 60Hz, and the image cleared up. This advice applies only to LCDs that are attached to analog display cards. Some outboard LCD monitors are driven by their own digital adapter cards, and refresh settings don't affect those cards.
The General tab is used to alter the display's DPI setting and how display changes are handled. The DPI or Dots Per Inch changes the size of items displayed on your screen. The Handling of display changes option simply sets the system to restart before applying, apply without restarting, or ask about restarting whenever changes are made to the display settings.
CAUTION
If you specify a refresh rate that is too high for your monitor, it could damage the monitor. Also, trying to expand the desktop area to a larger size might not work. You just get a mess on the screen. If you have this problem, try using a setting with a lower refresh rate, such as 60Hz or “interlaced.” The image may flicker a bit more, but at least it will be visible.
The Adapter tab displays information about the video card and offers access to configure, uninstall, update, or rollback the video driver through the Properties button. The List All Modes button is used to view the color, resolution, and refresh rate combinations supported by this video adapter.
The Monitor tab offers access to configure, install, upgrade, or rollback the monitor driver and to set the screen refresh rate. Use the screen refresh rate with caution as it can damage older monitors or render your desktop unviewable. Higher refresh rates reduce the flickering of the display.
The Troubleshoot tab is used to set the hardware acceleration rate, anywhere between None and Full. Basically this indicates how much video processing is offloaded to the video adapter instead of being performed by Windows XP on the CPU. The more you can offload processing to the video card, the more smoothly your system will function. If you have problems with jitters or lockups, you may need to reduce the amount of hardware acceleration.
The Color Management tab is used to set the color profile used to manage colors for your adapter and monitor. If you are performing high-end image processing you may want to investigate this feature in the Windows XP Resource Kit.
Note
→ If you have a new driver for your display card or monitor and want to install it, see or “Add Hardware,” p. 913.
The Power Options applet is the tree-hugger's dream. Well, it's at least a necessary feature for users of portable systems, and increasingly handy for desktop users over the last few years as those larger machines have evolved to become more miserly with electricity. This applet is designed to help the computer consume electricity at a more modest pace. This conservation is accomplished by powering down the monitor and hard drives after periods of inactivity. Several pre-defined power schemes are included, but with just two controls (one for the monitor and one for the hard disks) its not hard to define your own.
In addition to turning off the energy guzzling components, the Power Options applet also manages standby, hibernation, APM, and UPS.
Standby is a feature of most notebook systems that allows the system's state to be saved to RAM and the monitor and hard drives to be powered off. A system can return to fully active state from standby at any point before the batteries are drained. Once power is lost, the system state is lost as well, because it is only stored in RAM. The Power Options applet's Advanced tab offers a single control relative to standby—whether to require a password to resume from standby.
Hibernation is a feature that is a cross between standby mode and shutting down a system. With hibernation, the system state is saved to the hard drive, and then the system is powered down. Once the system is powered back on, the system state is restored. Since the system state data is stored on the hard drive, it is not dependent on constant power to be maintained, and you can return days later and jump back into working right where you left off. The Power Options applet's Hibernate tab offers a single control to enable or disable hibernation. Keep in mind that no passwords are required to resume from hibernation, so it is not a secure feature. Also, take note that this tab displays the amount of drive space required to save the system state. If the required space approaches your available free space, you might lose data or be completely unable to reboot from hibernation.
If your system supports APM (Advanced Power Management) and virtually all modern PCs do, the APM tab allows you to enable or disable APM. APM allows for finer tuning of power consumption by your system and its components. It also supplies battery power status information so you can keep track of your portable juice. APM is typically available on portable systems and some “green” desktops or server systems.
You might have a UPS tab. This offers control and interface configuration for uninterruptible power supplies. These wonderful tools are an essential part of any production environment where computers are used. The nation's power grid is not always up to par. Blackouts, brownouts, spikes, dips, and even noisy electricity can damage or destroy computer equipment. Just ask residents of California! A UPS conditions the incoming electricity so a consistent regulated flow reaches its delicate circuits. You may already know that a shock from static electricity can destroy your system; just think what a surge from a nearby lightning strike will do. UPSes can be integrated into Windows XP by a serial or USB cable. These connections feed data about the power levels of the UPS's battery to the computer and allow the UPS to inform the system when the power is out. When the city electricity goes out, the UPS will supply the computer with power from its battery. If properly configured, the UPS can instruct the system to automatically shut down or hibernate after so many minutes of battery supplied life force. That way, the system will have a graceful shutdown instead of an abrupt loss of power.
NOTE
When no one is logged into the system, what power saving settings does Windows XP use? When no one is logged in, Windows XP automatically uses the power saving options set for the last user who logged in with computer administrator privileges. So, when the next computer administrator level user logs in, their power options settings are stored as the global defaults on the log in screen, overwriting any previous settings.
If you can't reduce your power consumption through the Power Options applet to suit your needs, then you need to turn off the computer and go chop some wood instead.
Many Windows experts have become fond of an unsupported Microsoft product called Tweak UI, which is available and freely downloadable from the Microsoft site. Tweak UI is one of the Microsoft “Power Toys” developed by programmers at Camp Bill in Redmond, Washington. Tweak UI works fine on Windows XP as it did on Windows 2000 and Windows 98. Version 2.10.0.0 of Tweak UI is the newest available for download as of the time of this writing, and it has been fully optimized for usage on Windows XP.
Tweak UI enables you to make more than 100 changes to the Windows XP user environment. For example, you can do the following:
Scroll smoothly in Windows Explorer
Enable the mouse wheel for scrolling
Speed up the display rate of menus
Add special folders to your operating system that have mouse setting refinements
Add more types of “New” documents when you right-click a folder and choose New
Add or remove installed programs from the list of available programs through the Add or Remove Programs applet.
Repair Start menu and desktop hotkeys, font folders, and icons
Cover your tracks by erasing temp files, document lists, and history files
Control whether CDs play automatically when you insert a disk
Configure auto-logon
You can download the Tweak UI Power Toy from the Power Toys home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Double-click on the TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe file.
Click Next to dismiss the opening page, acknowledging that you are about to install the Tweak UI power toy.
Accept the licensing agreement and click Next to continue.
Provide your username and organization information, and then click Next to continue.
The default installation type is Complete (which is really the only type since there are no installation options); click Next to continue.
Click Install to start the installation.
Click Finish to end the installation process.
You can now access the Tweak UI power toy from the Power Toys for Windows XP folder located on your Start menu.
When you run it, you see the dialog box displayed in Figure 23.6.
The following are issues with Tweak UI as it pertains to Windows XP:
If you do not have permission to alter the list of drives that appear in My Computer, the My Computer tab is not shown.
Depending on the security permissions granted to the current user, some Tweak UI features may not have any effect. For example, if the current user doesn't have permission to edit the part of the Registry that contains the desktop, then changes to the desktop don't have any result.
You might want to check out the other Power Toys too, not just Tweak UI. The following tools that tweak the user interface are available:
Open Command Window Here | This PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder. |
Alt-Tab Replacement | With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open. (See Figure 23.7.) |
Virtual Desktop Manager | Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy. |
Taskbar Magnifier | Use this PowerToy to magnify part of the screen from the taskbar. |
Windows XP offers lots of new features and capabilities. But you don't have to settle for the out of the box defaults; you can customize to your heart's content. In the following sections, we provide you with several tips to help you soup up your Windows XP installation.
If you've ever tried to see what a font looked like before you printed it, you know how frustrating it can be. But, getting a preview of a font is now easier than ever before. There are actually two ways to view the output of a font through the OS itself. The first method is enabled by default on the system. Just open the Fonts applet through the Control Panel, and then double-click on any listed font. A dialog box displays details about the font, a sample of most characters, and several sizes of characters (see Figure 23.8).
The second method for viewing a font sample requires that your system be configured for single-click mode. This is done through the Folder Options applet from the Control Panel. Once single-click mode is enabled, open the Fonts applet. The View menu will now have a Preview command. When Preview is selected, you will see a small sample of each font as you position your mouse cursor over its icon. It only displays the line “The quick brown fox” in the selected font. I don't like the single-click mode, so I don't use this feature.
If you're dual- or multi-booting between Windows XP (using the classic interface style) and other Windows products, you may sometimes wonder which operating system you're running at any given time because the GUIs of the post-Windows 95 OSes are often virtually indistinguishable. Yes, you'll see a few giveaways, such as My Network Places versus Network Neighborhood (assuming your desktop is visible), but in essential look and feel, the similarities easily outweigh the differences.
To determine what's running, you could open the Control Panel, open the System applet, and read the dialog box. But that's a pain. Instead, you can use these techniques to remind yourself.
Although many people like to turn off large icons on the first level of the Start menu, leaving them on displays the operating system name when you click Start. You can locate this option by right-clicking the taskbar and clicking Properties. Then select the Start Menu tab and click Customize.
Executing
winverfrom the Run command or a Command Prompt opens a dialog box that displays the OS name, version, applied Service Packs, and the amount of physical RAM installed in the system.Click Start and right-click the My Computer icon. From the menu that appears, click Properties. The first set of information on the General tab is labeled System, and names the version of Windows you're currently using.
You can put your company's name or abbreviation on the taskbar next to the clock, or even an identifier if you have different machines, different operating systems, or different departments. Here's how you do it:
Select the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options applet in the Control Panel and select the Regional and Language Options icon.
On the Region Options tab, click Customize.
Click the Time tab.
Set the time format as h:mm:ss tttttttt (each t is a placeholder for one character in your message, with eight characters max).
Set both AM and PM symbols to your message (leave the AM/PM text in place if you want them to remain in the clock display).
For example, I have mine set to AM- LANW and PM- LANW respectively, because LANW is the name of my company (see Figure 23.9). Because you have only eight characters to work with, you might end up obliterating the display of AM or PM, so you might want to change your time code to 24-hour format. Don't worry about time stamps being messed up in other programs, however. Windows internally uses 24-hour time codes, and even though Outlook Express mail might appear to go out stamped 8:07 LANW, for example, it really goes out with 24-hour time. The options you are setting on the Time tab of the Regional Options really affect only the display.
Because this tag also affects programs that have an “insert time stamp” function, you could use it to your benefit, for example, to track not only when a file was opened or edited, but from what department.
Windows XP is designed as an end-user operating system. Thus, most of the system-level management tools are not made readily accessible by being placed in plain sight on the Start menu. Instead, they all are contained within a subfolder of the Control Panel known as Administrative Tools. Open the Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and choose Administrative Tools to open a folder containing these management tools.
Other than manually creating a shortcut to the Administrative Tools folder, there is no easy way to add this item to the Start menu's top level. Well, that's true as long as you are using the new Luna display styling. If you revert to the Classic Start menu, you'll be able to enable the display of the Administrative Tools item within the Start menu through the Start menu's Properties, Start menu tab, Customize button.
However, there is a bit of a back-road method which can allow you to gain access to Administrative Tools without having to open the Control Panel first. By setting the Control Panel to Display as a menu (Start menu's Properties, Start menu tab, Customize button, Advanced tab), whenever you select the Control Panel item in the Start menu, it will display a fly-open menu of all the applets it contains, thus offering you quick access to all of the tools there, including Administrative Tools.
This is a very cool tip. As you know, many applications default to saving or opening files in the My Documents folder. If you are like me, you employ your own organizational scheme for saving documents and files, which does not include the My Documents element. Having every Save dialog box default to My Documents is a huge annoyance! It's almost enough to make you throw up your hands and surrender to saving your documents where Microsoft wants you to. In fact, that location may be pretty well hidden. In a multi-user system, XP creates the My Documents folder under the user's name, like this
C:documents and settingsobmy documents
If you're the only person using the computer, this is particularly annoying, since having to “drill down” through those folders every time you want to open a document is a pain. Well, fret no more. In earlier versions of Windows, you had to hack the Registry to change the location of the My Documents folder, but now changing the location is much simpler.
All you have to do is the following:
Right-click the My Documents icon on the desktop or through My Computer or Windows Explorer.
Choose Properties.
Click Move, and then select the new destination.
This action doesn't move the original My Documents folder; it just redefines where the My Documents variable actually points to. In other words, it lets you declare another pre-existing folder as the default Save As and Open folder. If you already have documents stored in the original location, you'll need to copy or move them to the new location of the My Documents folder.
Cascading is the ability to expand certain folders right off of the Start menu. These expanded menus are also called fly-open menus. The native Windows XP interface can be configured to add cascading menus for the Control Panel, My Computer, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and Network Connections. This is the same feature we discussed earlier to gain direct Start menu access to Administrative Tools.
The process is simple: Just open the Properties for the Start menu (right-click over the Start menu button and then select the Properties command from the pop-up menu). Select the Start Menu tab, click Customize, and then select the Advanced tab. Scroll down the list of Start menu items and change the settings for the desired items to display as a menu.
If you find yourself running out of space on your sole monitor and you've already maxed out the resolution, there is still more room to be had. Cool Desk from ShellToys, Inc., brings the acreage of nine virtual desktops to your fingertips. Switching between virtual desktops occurs with a mouse click. You can even move applications from one virtual desktop to another. This simple tool can greatly expand your workspace. It's like having nine monitors stacked on your computer desk.
You can grab this nifty tool from http://www.shelltoys.com/.
AutoPlay is the feature of Windows which automatically launches or plays a CD once it is inserted into the CD-ROM drive. Under Windows XP, you have more control than ever over AutoPlay. By opening the Properties dialog box of a CD-ROM drive from Windows Explorer or My Computer, you'll be able to access the AutoPlay tab. From here, you can define for each type of CD (music files, pictures, video files, mixed content, or music CD) whether to take no action, play, open folder to view files, print, launch slide show, and more.
If you are frustrated by the location of the Ctrl and Caps Lock keys, there is a way to move them. Microsoft has created a document which describes the complex process of editing the Registry to alter the locations of keys on the keyboard. They provide an example of switching the left Ctrl and Caps Lock keys, but they provide instructions on how to switch around any key on the keyboard. Since Microsoft did such a great job of writing this one out, I'll leave it up to them to explain it: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/w2kscan-map.mspx.
Do you have a three-button mouse and wish you had a wheel mouse to make it easier to scroll your Web pages? Don't bother coveting your neighbor's wheel mouse because Internet Explorer and your three-button mouse can do the next best thing. When you're working in an Internet Explorer window, just click the center mouse button. The cursor changes to a two-headed arrow shape. Now move the mouse away or toward you, and the page scrolls. Click again or click another mouse button, and the scrolling function is terminated.
Windows XP offers a wide range of options for customizing how files are displayed through the My Computer and Windows Explorer utilities. The View menu (see Figure 23.10) offers the following controls:
Toolbars—. This control is used to display or hide the standard buttons, Address bar, and links bar. You can also lock the bars (so stray clicks don't alter your layout) or fully customize the button toolbar.
Status bar—. This control enables the display of an information bar at the bottom of the utility which shows object details, file size, free space, and so on.
Explorer bar—. This control sets the folder item to be displayed in the right-hand pane. No selection displays the context-sensitive quick access menus of File and Folder Tasks, Other Places, and Details. Selections in this control include: search, favorites, history, contacts, and folders.
Views—. This section allows quick change of the view used to display file objects: thumbnails, tiles (default), icons, list, and details.
Arrange Icons by—. This command is used to sort file objects by name, size, type, or modification date. There are also settings for show in groups, auto arrange (maximize layout starting from upper left corner), or align to grid.
Choose Details—. This command sets the details that appear in ToolTips, details, and Tile view. The defaults are name, size, type, and modification date. Among the 33 options included are attributes, owner, subject, company, and file version.
Customize this Folder—. This command is used to define custom attributes for the selected folder (see next section).
Go to—. This menu is used to navigate back, forward, up one level, to the home page, or to recently visited locations.
If you have a complex organizational structure to your personal files, you might find this feature quite intriguing. Customizing folders allows you to select from six templates designed for a specific type of file (document, image, or music) or collection of files (all, one artist, one album). These templates set how the contents of these folders are displayed as well as the context for the menu commands. Additionally, you can define a custom image for thumbnails and a unique icon for the folder. All these customizations can help you keep track of what you've got stored where.
Folder Options should be seen as more of a superset of controls over all folders on a system, while folder customization is on an individual or parent and sub-folder basis. Folder Options is a Control Panel applet that can also be accessed from the Tools menu of My Computer and Windows Explorer. This applet is used to set a wide range of file system features.
The General tab of the Folder Options dialog box defines whether common tasks are shown in folders or whether only classic Windows folders are displayed; whether folders are opened in the same or a new window; and whether single-clicks or double-clicks are used to open items. If you make changes to this tab, you can always return to the default by clicking the Restore Default button.
The View tab (see Figure 23.11) performs two major functions—folder view management and advanced settings management. For folder view management, all folders can be reset to their default views, or the currently selected folder's view can be applied to all folders. Advanced settings management contains a long checklist of settings.
NOTE
The common tasks view or the view which displays the File and Folder Tasks, Other Places, and Details context panels is an interesting and useful feature of Windows XP. However, in the releases since Beta 2 of Windows XP, the common tasks pane disappears whenever you select any other item from View menu's Explorer Bar submenu. I find this highly frustrating because I want both the common tasks pane and the Folders pane. Perhaps someday Microsoft will release an update to Windows XP that re-enables this functionality. So far, even in SP2 this is not the case.
Because I like seeing every file on my system, I always enable Show hidden files and folders, and disable the Hide file extensions and Hide protected OS files. You need to make your own choice on what you want the OS to show you and hide from you. If you want to return to the defaults, just click the Restore Defaults button.
NOTE
If you've tried to delete a folder that looked like it was empty but an error message states the folder still contains files, you are probably dealing with hidden files. To see what's not being shown, go change the Hidden files and folders Advanced setting. I've run into this issue a few times with downloaded applications that must be extracted to a temporary folder before being installed. They sometimes include files pre-marked as hidden.
The File Types tab (see Figure 23.12) is where the registration of file extensions or file types is managed. All registered file types are listed. Because changing a file type is just defining which application is used to open or view the file type, you can alter these settings as you see fit. The Advanced button is used to manipulate more advanced features of file type registration, such as displayed file type name, icon, and actions (such as open, play, display, install, and so on). New file types can be created manually. Existing file types can be deleted. In most cases, the registration of file types is managed by the OS and by applications as they are installed.
In some instances you'll discover that one file type can be opened or accessed by more than one application. And nine times out of ten, the application you don't want will be the one launched when you double-click on the file. To associate the file with the tool of your choice, modify the file type's application association through the Change button.
If you want to learn more about file type management, consult the Windows XP Resource Kit.
The Offline Files tab configures the caching of network content on the local system in order to maintain access to cached files while disconnected. This feature is discussed in Part IV of this book.
The Recycle Bin holds recently deleted files to provide you with a reasonable opportunity to recover them. As we talked about in Chapter 4, the Recycle Bin will hold the last deleted files that fit within its size restriction. That restriction by default is 10% of the drive space for each partition or volume on the system. However, you can and should customize the Recycle Bin for your specific needs.
The Recycle Bin's Properties dialog box (accessed by right-clicking over the icon, and then selecting Properties) has a Global tab and a tab for each partition/volume on the system. The Global tab offers a control that allows you to configure your drives independently or to use one setting for all drives (the default). If you've never deleted a file by mistake and don't think you ever will, you can elect to delete files immediately without storing them in the Recycle Bin. If you'd rather just limit how much space Windows uses to store deleted files, you can set a maximum size for the Recycle Bin as a percentage of drive space. A final control on the Global tab enables a deletion confirmation dialog box—I think this should be left enabled.
Remember, if you select to configure the properties for each drive independently, you must use the provided tabs labeled for each drive on your system. Each drive will display the size of the drive and the space reserved for the Recycle Bin along with the other controls we just discussed.
When limiting the amount of space to use for deleted files, the default percentage is 10%. This is usually a good size, but as hard disk sizes increase, you may want to reduce this to 5%. Keep in mind that files moved to the Recycle Bin are not actually deleted. Instead, their path information is removed from the normal interfaces and moved into the Recycle Bin. Deleted files still remain on the drive exactly where they were before the deletion operation. This means they take up space on the drive. So, if you leave the default percentage setting at 10% on a 20GB hard drive, you can have up to 2GB of deleted files still sitting on the drive slowing down the drive's seek time.
In addition to the controls we've already mentioned in the Display applet, there are additional visual effect controls in the System applet from the Control Panel. On the System applet's Advanced tab, click on the Settings button in the Performance area. This opens the Performance Options dialog box. The Visual Effects tab (see Figure 23.13) can be set to allow Windows to manage effects, set for best appearance, set for best performance, or set with your own custom settings.
When Custom settings is selected, you can then enable or disable a long list of effects. These effects include animate resizing of windows, fade ToolTips, show shadows under menus, and use visual styles on windows and buttons.
Unless your system is low on physical RAM, uses an old non-AGP video card, or uses a video card with less than 8MB of native RAM, there is little need to modify the default settings for these controls in respect to performance. However, if you think no shadows or no animation looks better, you can customize the look and feel of the user environment all you want.
My CRT is flickering and annoying me. How can I change it?
Increase the refresh rate of the display subsystem to at least 70Hz. Right-click the desktop, choose Properties, and then choose Settings, Advanced, Monitor. Finally, change the refresh rate.
I changed the screen resolution, and now I can't find items off the edge of the screen and I have windows I can't close.
You might have this problem when you switch to a lower resolution from a higher one. Theoretically, Windows is good about relocating desktop icons, but some applications might not do the same. For example, the small AOL Instant Messenger dialog can be off the edge of the screen somewhere, and when it is, you can't get to it. Closing and rerunning the program doesn't help. One trick is to switch to the application by pressing Alt+Tab. Then press Alt+spacebar, and press M. This key combination invokes the Move command for the window. Then you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the window (typically to the left and/or up). When you have the title bar of the window in view, press Enter. If this trick doesn't work, switch back to the previous higher resolution, reposition the application window in question closer to the upper-left corner of the screen, and then switch back to the lower resolution. It may help to remember that your screen is always decreased or increased in size starting from the lower-right corner and moving up or down diagonally.
I want to use an external TV monitor, but the output text is illegible.
Some video cards and laptops can be plugged into a TV monitor or regular TV that has video input. But displaying computer output on a TV monitor is problematic for a couple of reasons. For starters, some video display cards don't let you run the TV at anything higher than 640x480 resolution. Also, TV sets (as opposed to professional TV monitors) often overscan, pushing the edges of the image off the edge of the screen. The following are a few points to remember when you're using a TV or video projector; whether you're doing presentations, playing games, or giving your eyes a break by moving your focal plane back a bit:
If your computer and TV have “S” (Super VHS) inputs, use them. They increase the clarity a bit. Don't expect miracles, though. If you're using a video projector and the computer and projector have DVI (Digital Video Interface) connectors, use those. The image should be very much clearer.
Use Display Properties to switch to 640x480 resolution.
Check to see whether your Display Properties dialog has buttons to center the image on the TV. It's most likely off center or needs resizing when you first try it. Some drivers such as those from ATI have advanced properties for fine-tuning TV display.
Your application may have a “zoom” control for easily increasing the size of text onscreen, without the hassle of reformatting the entire document. MS Office tools such as Excel and Word, for example, have such a feature. Try bumping up the zoom size to increase legibility.
I seem to accidentally run programs and open documents with a slip of the finger.
You probably have Single-Click selection turned on. As a result, one click (or tap, if you're using a touch pad) runs the program or opens the document that is highlighted. Change to Double-Click selection mode by opening a folder window, choosing Tools, Folder Options, and selecting Double Click to Open an Item.
I changed my resolution or refresh rate, and now the screen is blank.
Normally, you shouldn't have this problem because Windows XP asks you to confirm that a screen resolution works properly and switches back to the previous resolution if you don't confirm. If somehow you changed color depth and resolution, and the system is stuck with a blank screen, you can reboot, press F8 during boot, and choose Safe Mode. Access the Device Manager on the Hardware tab of the System applet. The System applet is accessed either through the Control Panel or by opening the Properties dialog for My Computer. Select the video display, and reset the properties to what the computer was running at before the change. Be sure to reset both the screen resolution and the color depth. In the worst case scenario, start with 640x480 and 16 colors. After you've booted successfully, then right-click the desktop, choose Properties, click Settings, and increase the settings one step at a time. Don't change resolution and color depth at the same time, though. Increase one first and then the other.
I increased the resolution, but now the screen updates slowly when I drag windows around.
Unless you're doing high-resolution photographic-quality work, you don't need the high-resolution 24-bit or 32-bit color depth settings. These settings just serve to slow down screen redraws when you move windows about. On the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog, try dropping to 16-bit color or even 256 colors, and enjoy the speed increase.
I switched to an LCD screen, and the image is blurrier than I expected.
Unlike CRTs, LCDs do not benefit from higher refresh rates. Don't try to use anything above a 60Hz refresh rate for an LCD monitor. Also, check the LCD monitor's internal settings (check its manual) for a “phase adjustment” or focus adjustment to help clear up fuzziness on small text.
I set up a picture for my desktop wallpaper, but it looks blocky.
You're stretching a small bitmap. Either use a larger image, or turn off the Stretch setting for the image. See the Display Properties, Background, Picture Display option.