Customizing Windows

Removing items from the context menu

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:31:00 +0000

What is the context menu? This is the menu that pops up when you right-click a file on your computer. Over the years, these menus have become more and more useful. However, with the extra entries in the context menu, they often become cluttered with options and features thatyou just don’t need. These next few sections will show you how to get your menus backunder control as well as how to take advantage of the new features to make your own contextmenu entries. We will start off by removing items from the context menus and will then move on to adding and customizing the components of the menus.

Removing items from the context menu
Over time, your context menus can become cluttered with program entries from old programs that you may not use any more. Sometimes, you may experience programs that take over all of your context menus. Compression apps such as Winzip or Picozip always end up adding program entries to all of the context menus. I have Picozip installed on My Computer and every time I right-click any file or folder, I see five entries from Picozip giving me different compression options. This can be a convenient feature, but if you don’t compress and extract ZIP files very often, then you might not need the added convenience. Instead you could remove these entries from your context menu, which will give your system a cleaner interface as well as a
small performance boost if you have a lot of extra entries in your context menu.

Caution: Before editing your registry, you would be wise to create a system restore point by using system restore. Doing so will provide an easy method to revert to your original configuration before you made any changes just in case you accidentally delete or modify something that hurts your computer.

Actually removing these programs from your context menus can be a little tricky, because they are spread in different places in the registry. Also, the easy-to-use context menu editor that you used in the last section to change the icon and default launch app for certain file types is not robust enough to allow you to remove entries from programs that take over all context menus such as Picozip. The only way to remove these types of entries is to edit the registry directly. If you want to remove an entry on a context menu that does not appear on every context menu and just appears on one or a few other file types, then you can still use the easy-to-use editor. Because of that, I have provided you two different sets of steps depending on what you want to do.When you are ready, follow these steps for the corresponding type of entry to remove it for good.

Removing entries that appear in all context menus
This set of steps will show you how to remove entries in the context menu that appear in all menus for all file types that were put there by programs such as Picozip.

1. Start up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start button and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.

2. When the Registry Editor appears, expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder. You will now see a list of every file type that is set up on your computer.

3. If the entry that you want to remove from the context menu appears in all context menus, such as the preceding Picozip example, you will have to expand the * folder.

4. Now that you have the correct folder expanded, expand the Shellex and ContextMenu Handlers folders. Your registry path should look like
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ shellex\ContextMenuHandlers.

5. Look through the list until you find the entry that you want to remove. Right-click the folder of the entry and select Delete. You will find that identifying some of the programs is easy. For example, Picozip is labeled Picozip. However, you may run into some items that are listed using their application ID number or a vague name. If that is the case, copy (Ctrl_C) the application ID, which is formatted like this—{XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX- XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}—to the clipboard. You may have to expand the folder to see the ID. Then, once you have the ID copied to the clipboard, press Ctrl_F to bring up the Search box in regedit and paste the ID in the box. Next, just click Find and you should be able to find some other references to that same ID in your registry that also might give you some clues to what it is. If that does not work, try doing a search on Google to see if that turns up anything.

6. Once you are finished removing all of the entries from your context menus, just close Registry Editor and you are finished. Your changes will be in effect immediately.

Removing entries that appear only under certain file types
If you want to remove an entry on a context menu that appears on just one file type or a few different file types, this section will show you how to easily remove it by using the context editor in Folder Options.

1. Open up My Computer by clicking the icon on the desktop or by clicking the Start Menu.

2. Once My Computer appears on the screen, click the Tools menu and select Folder Options and click the File Types tab.

3. Scroll through the list of file types and select the extension that you would like to modify.

4. Click the Advanced button to bring up the Edit File Type window, where you will see a list of all of the different entries that will show up in the context menu.

5. Select the item that you want to remove and click Remove.

6. Click OK and you are finished.

If you ever want to revert to your original context menus, you can just restore your computer to an earlier checkpoint. Or, if you didn’t create a system restore checkpoint, you can just reinstall the app and that should take care of it.

Changing the icon of any file type

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:41:00 +0000

So far, you have learned how to change the icons of the desktop icons. This next section will show you how you can change the default icon that is displayed for any file type on your computer. Changing the icons is actually very easy; the most difficult part of the process is trying to figure out what icon to use. Additionally, keep in mind that you can use any of the new high resolution icons that you can download from the sites mentioned in the Changing the Desktop Icons section in Chapter 3.

To get started changing your icons, you are going to want to use the Folder Options feature you used in the last section. Follow these steps to begin:

1. Open up Folder Options again by clicking My Computer. Then when it launches, click the Tools menu bar entry and select Folder Options.

2. Inside Folder Options, click the File Types tab to reveal the list of all of the different file extensions on your computer.

3. Browse through the list and select the extension for which you want to change the icon.

4. Once you have the entry selected, click the Advanced button.

5. On the Edit File Type screen, click the Change Icon button.

6. The Change Icon screen will be displayed. Here, you will be shown various system icons from which you can choose. If you do not find any that you like, just click the Browse button and select an icon that you downloaded on your computer.

7. Once you find the perfect icon, click OK to select the new icon.

8. Then click OK once more to save your changes. You don’t have to reboot after you make your changes, because you will see your changes immediately after you click OK to save them.

Changing the default launch app

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Every time you click a file,Windows looks up what the default program to open for the file is from the registry. Then,Windows loads that application and tells the app what file to open up. This is something that we encounter almost all the time when we are using our computer. Often, when you install many programs on your computer, programs start to compete over which is going to be the default program to open up a file.

This commonly occurs when you install various music applications on your computer. I used Winamp to place CDs and MP3s on My Computer almost all the time. But when Apple released iTunes for Windows, I switched to that right away because of the cool library. Once I installed iTunes on My Computer, it took over all of my music files.Whenever I would insert a CD into my drive, iTunes would automatically load and start playing it.When I would click a MP3 file on my hard drive, the same would occur. What happened to My Computer when I installed iTunes is not always a bad thing. However, there are situations when I wanted to use Winamp to play my MP3 files. One big reason for this is that when I click an MP3 file and it plays in iTunes, it is automatically added to my library.When I am sorting through my collection of songs that I ripped from my old CDs, I don’t always want to add all of the songs to my library in iTunes because there are usually just two or three clicks on a 14-track CD. One easy solution to this problem is to change the file association back to Winamp so that when I click a file, it will be played in Winamp. Then if I like it, I can always add it to my library later within iTunes.

These next two sections will show you how to customize the default launch application for all of the different file types on your computer, as well as how your file types look.

Changing the default launch app
The information that Explorer looks up to find which program should be used to launch specific file types is stored in the System Registry under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT section. Using the Registry Editor, it is possible to browse to that key and then find the file type that you want to change and edit some keys, but there is a much easier way in Windows XP to accomplish the same task.

Hidden away in Folder Options within any Explorer window resides a useful utility to change the default application easily without having to worry about application IDs and file association structure. Just follow these steps to change any File Types default launch app:

1. Open up My Computer by clicking the desktop icon or on the icon in the Start panel.

2. When you have My Computer displayed on your screen, click the Tools menu bar item and select Folder Options.

3. Once the Folder Options window appears, click the File Types tab.

4. Navigate through the list of file extensions until you find the extension of the file for
which you want to change the default app. Because I want to change my MP3 player
default launch app, I am going to select the MP3 file extension.When you find the file
extension that you want to change, select it by clicking it.

5. Click the Change button once you have your extension selected. The Open With properties window will load, asking you what program to load it with. It will show a list of common programs that you can choose from, but you are not limited to just those programs. Click the Browse button to navigate to any executable file on your computer to specify exactly what program you want to use if it is not on the list.

6. Once you have the application selected that you want to use, just click the OK button to save your changes. You are now finished with changing the launch app.

Your changes to file launch apps are activated immediately after you click OK to save your changes. Now you will no longer have to worry about applications taking control of your files.

Using and Installing WindowBlind

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:18:00 +0000

Before visual styles were a part of Windows, only one way existed to change the way Windows looked. That was accomplished by using a program called WindowBlinds, which is made by Stardock (www.windowblinds.net).WindowsBlinds is a classic Windows program. Back when it first came out, it transformed the boring gray interface of Windows into an attractive and colorful experience. Now that Windows XP includes its own skinning engine, products like WindowBlinds, which have their own skinning engine, become less necessary. So why am I even mentioning this application? Because there are some things that it brings to the table that visual styles do not.
Because WindowBlinds is a completely independent skinning engine from the Microsoft visual style engine, it has some features that the native engine does not have. One of these features is the ability to skin parts of the operating system that the native skinning engine cannot. The most talked about application that has this problem is the Command prompt in Windows. For some reason, Microsoft’s engine just does not apply visual styles to this window. Instead, it is displayed using the classic Windows interface.WindowBlinds will allow you to skin this app as well.

WindowBlinds has a very strong skin base. A lot of very talented people have created XP skins for WindowBlinds that just look great. One benefit of using WindowBlinds to change the way your computer looks is the set of additional features that it provides, one of which is the ability to “roll up” a window so that just its title bar is shown. This is a great feature that can be activated by just double-clicking the title bar on skins that support the feature.

Another benefit of using WindowBlinds is its ability to skin applications that were not made to be skinned. This is a nice feature, but can also result in some applications looking a little strange because their buttons and other visual elements are replaced, which often throws off the spacing and placement of controls.

The one controversial topic about WindowBlinds is its effect on system performance. Because it runs on top of your computer’s visual system and uses special system calls to change the way the computer looks, it takes up more system resources compared to the native visual style engine. Some users have a fast experience with WindowBlinds, although others do not. It really depends on your computer’s hardware.

My personal experience with WindowBlinds has not indicated that they have set any recordsetting speeds. I have run WindowBlinds on my computer a lot and have only noticed a decrease of performance in certain situations when I have used it with slower hardware. But my experience does not mean that you too will notice a slowdown. The speed of its operation seems to depend a lot on the specific hardware configuration of your computer, such as your video card and CPU. Also, even if you do notice a slowdown, it might be worth it if you find a really cool skin for WindowBlinds. Either way, I suggest that you give WindowBlinds a shot.

Using WindowBlinds to change the way Windows XP looks
WindowBlinds 4.2 is the latest version of this skinning app that will help you change the way
Windows XP looks. Follow these steps to get that version of WindowBlinds set up on your computer so that you can start experimenting with it:

1. Visit www.WindowBlinds.net or http://download.com.com/3001-2326-10251037.html for a direct link to download a copy of WindowBlinds. Proceed to step 2, when you have finished installing it.

2. The best way to get to WindowBlinds is by right-clicking the desktop and clicking the Appearance tab when Display Properties loads. Then, click the WindowBlinds button.

3. The WindowBlinds Advanced Configuration will load. In this window, you can change the active skin. Browse through the skins that came with WindowBlinds when you installed it by scrolling the horizontal scrollbar. Click a skin to see it in the Preview box.

4. Just like visual styles for the native skinning engine,WindowBlinds skins include slight variations of a specific skin in one file. This can be thought of as the different color schemes that you worked with earlier. Not all WindowsBlinds skins have different versions included, but those that do can be changed by selecting the version from the drop-down box.

5. Once you are satisfied with a particular skin, click the Apply This Skin Now button.

6. WindowBlinds will then load the skin and apply it to the whole user interface. If you
are happy with the way it looks, close the configuration editor and you are finished.
Otherwise, select a different skin and try it again.

WindowBlinds may be a good alternative to the built-in visual style engine if you like the skins better and the extra features that it adds. Stardock has a more advanced version of WindowBlinds, called WindowBlinds Enhanced, which offers even more features and control over the themes. However, that version is not freeware, so the decision as to whether or not to use it is up to you. The question really boils down to whether or not you would use the extra features that WindowBlinds Enhanced provides.

If you ever decide that WindowBlinds is not for you, just go to the Control Panel and select Add Or Remove Programs. Then uninstall WindowBlinds by selecting it from the drop-down list that appears. This method provides an easy way to completely remove WindowBlinds from your computer if you decide that it is just not working out for you.

Installing additional Windows XP skins for WindowBlinds
One of the benefits of using WindowBlinds is how easy it is to add and use additional skins. Stardock operates an excellent Web site for thousands of WindowBlinds skins called WinCustomize, located at www.wincustomize.com. To get started, open up your Web browser and visit www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library_1 for a list of all of the skins available.

Once you see the list of skins, to install one just hit the Download link and it should automatically start to download.When it is finished,WindowBlinds will automatically load it and will prompt you by asking if you would like to apply it. Once the skin is installed, you will be able to go back into the Advanced Configuration Editor to browse through the different versions and colors of the skin (assuming, of course, that the skin has multiple versions).

Making your own visual styles

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:15:00 +0000

You now know how to install and use custom-made visual styles, but did you ever wonder how other people make visual styles? This next section will take you through the process of creating your own visual style as well as the history of how people started making them.

It all began before people could actually use the visual styles. Curious users snooping around their Windows XP files discovered that Windows XP had a skinning engine just like many other applications that had the whole look of the operating stores in a file on the hard drive in the themes folder called luna.msstyles. This file contains all of the data for the new Windows XP look.

Then, just as with the boot and logon screens, people started to use resource hacking tools such as Resource Hacker to open up luna.msstyles and replace the bitmaps stored within the file with image files they made. Additionally, you could use programs like Resource Hacker to edit the settings files stored within the visual style as well to edit all of the sizes of the different Windows components.

The possibilities that applications such as Resource Hacker gave users were unlimited, except for the fact that there still was no way to test and use the new user-made visual styles becausethey were not digitally signed by Microsoft. Eventually, that all changed, as you know from the last few sections, and users were able to use their own visual styles.

Now there are several different ways that you can make your own visual style. You can use the Resource Hacker approach and manually open up your luna.msstyles file and replace bitmaps in the file with ones you made yourself. This process can be a very long and difficult one when you are trying to design a completely different visual style. This method would really only make sense to use if you just wanted to replace one part of a visual style, such as the green Start button.

If for some reason you just don’t like the green Start button, then you can open up the file in Resource Hacker and look for the bitmap on which to work. First, you will probably want to extract the bitmap from the file so that you can work on it in your favorite image editing program. Then, once you are finished, just replace the bitmap in the file with your modified version. Hit Save As, give the file a new name, and you are finished once you create a new folder for the name of the visual style.

If you want to make a completely new visual style with a new look or modify an existing one beyond changing one little component, then using a commercial editor is a must.TGT Soft, the company that brought you Style XP and the first patch for the visual style engine, has come out with an editor known as StyleBuilder.

StyleBuilder is an amazing program that TGT Soft created after they found out how the visual style file was compiled. It provides the user with an easy-to-use visual front for editing the visual style files. Instead of using a resource hacker and searching for a specific bitmap to replace, you can just navigate through the menus and click the object that you want to replace within the editor. This saves a lot of time and makes it feasible to create a whole visual style from scratch.

To get started, download a copy of StyleBuilder from TGT Soft’s Web site, located at
www.tgtsoft.com/download.php. Sometimes, the best way to learn something is to start by modifying a visual style. Once you download and install a copy of StyleBuilder, perform the following steps to learn how to import an existing visual style, make changes to it, and then save it for use on your computer and distribution on the Internet:

1. Start up StyleBuilder by navigating though the TGT Soft folder in the Start Menu and selecting StyleBuilder.

2. Say that you’d like to import the iBar 4 visual style that you use on your computer and want to make some changes to it.When StyleBuilder is starting up, click the File Menubar item and select the Import .msstyle file.

3. Next, you will have to fill in the two boxes on the import window. Specify the .msstyles file of the visual style that you want to import to modify. Then specify the folder that you want all of the settings and images to be extracted to so that StyleBuilder can edit the files.

4. When you are finished filling in the two boxes, hit the OK button to start the import
process.

5. After a few seconds, the import should be done and you will be notified if the import has been successful or not. If it has, you will have the option to open up the newly created StyleBuilder files to edit the visual style. Click the Yes button so that you can edit the files.

6. StyleBuilder will now open up the imported visual style for editing. First, get familiar with the interface. On the left-hand side of the screen are the buttons that you use for navigating between different parts of the visual style to edit, such as the Task Bar, User Pane, and Tracker & Progress. Also, you will see different section header buttons that indicate the current color scheme of the visual style that you are editing.

7. Editing the different settings and images is easy with StyleBuilder. Just click the object that you want to edit with your mouse in the preview window. Alternatively, you can navigate through the setting tree to easily get to a specific items settings.

8. To edit an image, just right-click it and select Edit. If you want to use a specific program, you will have to set up your graphic editors in StyleBuilder by right-clicking an image and selecting Edit With from the menu. Additionally, you can specify a different image file by clicking the ImageFile entry on the list and then hitting the Choose button.

9. Once you have your images replaced, you can play around with the settings for the visual style, such as the object sizes, borders, and fonts. All of these settings can be adjusted by selecting an object from the list on the Properties tab and editing the values on the right in the textboxes.

10. As you are working on your visual style, you may want to test it to see how it looks, as the Preview window doesn’t always give you an accurate depiction of how it will look on your computer. You can do so by clicking the Apply button on the toolbar. Included is also a cool test feature that will allow you to view the current visual style applied on a window that has every possible window object that you can think of so that you can see how your visual style will look in all varieties of applications.

11. When you have finished modifying a visual style, and have created your own custom style, you are ready to compile it and, if you want, export it for distribution on the Web. Click the Actions menu bar item and select Compile. You will be asked to name your visual style; once you name it, it will be compiled and placed in your documents folder. If you would like to distribute your visual style on the Web to share with your friends or the rest of the world, click the ZIP file from the toolbar on the top and specify what you want to include and click OK. Then, you can e-mail your friends this ZIP file, which, by default, is saved in your documents folder, or you can submit it to Web sites such as themexp.org.

Making your own visual style from scratch requires a lot of graphical and artistic skills. But if you just want to tweak your favorite visual style, then you will have no problem doing so with the help of StyleBuilder.

You have now mastered the world of visual styles. You have discovered how you can make your system accept non-Microsoft visual styles so that you can take advantage of the new skinning engine built into Windows XP. And now you also know how to modify and make your own visual styles.

Tweaking the visual styles

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:13:00 +0000

Now that you have finished changing the visual styles using one of the two methods that I described, you can customize the look of your computer a little more by tweaking the visual style. One thing that I always like to customize after I change the visual style is the title bar height. You can easily do so by changing the window metrics:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Properties.

2. Then, click the Advanced button on the Appearance tab.

3. Click either the active or inactive title bar of the preview image and then adjust the Size setting next to the Item drop-down box.

4. While you are changing the size, you might want to also customize the fonts. You can do so by clicking the text for which you want to change the font, and then selecting the font.

5. Click OK to save your changes.

6. Click OK once more to close Display Properties and activate the new changes.

Customizing the way a visual style looks is always refreshing. Usually when you install any system, you find a few things that you wish were just a little different. Now you know how to refine your desktop to look its best.

Installing new visual styles

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:06:00 +0000

Currently, you can use new visual styles on XP in two different ways. Both options work around the requirement that visual style files must be signed. First, I am going to explain how to use, as well as the benefits of using, TGT Soft’s Style XP to use new visual styles. Then, I am going to show you how to use patcher XP as well as the benefits of using it. But first, I am going to show you where to download visual styles that can be used on your computer.

Downloading visual styles
Many cool sites on the Web offer thousands of visual styles to download. Unlike boot and logon screens, you do not need to worry about the version of a visual style because they are not system-critical files and their format does not change when service packs are released. This capability makes downloading them even easier, because you don’t have to worry about screwing up your computer.

Check out the following list of my favorite sites from which to download visual styles. I think you will find them very helpful.

_ ThemeXP.org (www.themexp.org) offers well over 1,100 visual styles for Windows XP. It is, by far, the leader in the XP visual style world.

_ XPTheme (www.xptheme.info) offers over 300 visual styles.

_ NeoWin (www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showforum_36) offers a great theme forum that has a lot of quality visual styles.

_ deviantART (browse.deviantart.com/skins/windows/visualstyle/) is another good site for visual styles that has an easy to use navigation system that shows 24 thumbnails of visual styles at once.

_ TSS2000 (www.tss2000.nl) is a great site from which to get quality visual styles.

Although they require you to register on their site to download a visual style, this
requirement is worth it. They also have a large collection of Apple OS X-looking visual styles.

I personally like the look of the Apple OS X visual styles but do not like trying to make my PC look like a Mac. My favorite visual style is called iBar 4 set on the WinFlag color scheme. It is a nice blend between the OS X look and a Windows visual style. The iBar 4 visual style can be downloaded from www.deviantart.com/deviation/ 4650418/.
Many more sites are available from which you can download visual styles, but the sites mentioned previously will give you plenty of styles, more than you are likely to ever go through or use. Once you have downloaded a few visual styles that you would like to use from the Web, you are ready to extract them and place them in the appropriate place on your hard drive.

Windows stores the default Windows XP-style visual style at C:\Windows\Resources\
Themes on your hard drive. This is also where you should extract all of your visual styles that you downloaded inside a folder that has the same name as the .msstyles file. If the folder is not named correctly,Windows XP may not recognize the visual style. Also, you will find that when you extract some ZIP files where there was a visual style, there may be a folder called shell. This folder contains other visual style data and should be put in the same folder as the visual style file. If you also have a .theme file included with the visual style download, you should place that in the themes folder instead of inside the visual style folder.

When you have finished installing all the visual styles that you have downloaded to the themes folder, you are ready to set up your computer so that you can use the visual styles. The next two sections will show you how to install them using the two different approaches already mentioned: using the shareware Style XP and using freeware patches such as UXTheme Multi-Patcher.

Using Style XP to use non-Microsoft visual styles
Style XP, which is made by TGT Soft, was the first program that allowed Windows XP users to use non-Microsoft visual styles. Style XP and the free patch that TGT Soft also released are responsible for creating the visual style world on the Web. In this section, I am going to show you how to use this interesting app to install and use all of the thousands of visual styles available on the Web to transform the way Windows XP works.

Style XP 2.0 offers a lot of new features, such as icon packages, as well as logon and boot screen management. However, we are just going to focus on the visual style feature because that is what made this program famous.To get started, you will need to get a copy of Style XP 2.0 from TGT Soft. Visit www.tgtsoft.com/download.php to get a copy of Style XP. Once you are on their site, you will notice that they offer a couple of different download packages.
Make sure that you download Style XP 2.0 full install. They offer two different versions of this install, one for men and one for women. The two versions are the exact same version of Style XP except they have different visual styles included as a convenience if you have not already downloaded other visual styles. But because you have already downloaded some visual styles, you don’t really have to worry about that.

Once you have Style XP 2.0 downloaded and installed, you are ready to get started using it. Follow these steps to get Style XP up and running:

1. Click the Start button and navigate to All Programs, then look at the top of your Start Menu when all programs are expanded by Windows Update. Expand TGT Soft to run Style XP.

2. When Style XP loads, click the Visual Styles button and Style XP will search your
Theme folder for new visual styles.

3. You will see a list of all of the different visual styles on your computer in the middle of the window. A preview will be shown when you click the different visual style names.

4. Once you find the visual style that you want to use for the whole user interface, click the Apply Style to Current Theme button.

5. Your new visual style will now be applied. If you are satisfied with the new look, close Style XP and you are finished. If you’re not satisfied, go back to Step 3 and start over. As you can see, Style XP provides a very easy mechanism to change the current visual style that the Windows XP skinning engine is using. If you decide to download more visual styles, just install them and restart Style XP so that it can detect the new visual style. Then you will be able to change the visual style just as you have done previously.

Using UXTheme Multi-Patcher to enable use of non-Microsoft visual styles
Style XP 2.0 is not a free program. It provides an easy way to change the visual style, as well as a bunch of other features such as the ability to use visual styles without having to modify any skinning engine to accept non-Microsoft signed visual style files.With this convenience comes a price that you have to pay, if you want to use the program for more than 30 days.

If you would like a free solution to using non-Microsoft signed visual styles, then the best option is a program called the UXTheme Multi-Patcher, which will allow you to patch the visual style engine. This patch will remove the code in the engine that checks for a Microsoft signed file, which will then allow you to use any visual style that you want.

Another program that will also patch the visual style engine is known as Patch XP. However, there are various versions of XP, such as Original, Service Pack 1, and Service Pack 2. Each of these versions has a slightly different visual style engine, and that requires a program to bewritten for each specific version. I like to use the Multi-Patcher because it can patch different versions of Windows XP, unlike Patch XP, which requires a specific version for each Windows XP version.

UXTheme Multi-Patcher is developed by an XP user known as Windows X and can be downloaded at their Web site located, at www.windowsx.org/enhance/myvs/uxtheme.html.
Download a copy now and perform the following steps to patch and change the visual styles on your computer without having to use Style XP:

1. Once you have downloaded the latest copy of the Multi-Patcher, double-click the Exe to start up the program.

2. When the Patcher loads, you will see the main program screen. Hit the Patch button
.

3. The OS Detection screen will pop up, asking you to confirm the Windows XP version that you are running. If the information is correct, click OK to continue.

4. When the patch is complete, you will be prompted with a screen asking you if you want to restart. Click Restart, if you want to restart now, or you can always restart at a later time. However, the visual style engine needs to be reloaded in order to accept non- Microsoft visual styles.

5. Shortly after the restart screen is shown, a Windows File Protection window may show up.Windows XP has detected the change in the system file and wants to replace the system file with an unpatched version. Click the Cancel button so that Windows XP does not replace the patched file with the original file.Windows will make you confirm your decision by popping up another window; click Yes so that you keep the patched version of the file.

6. Once you reboot, you will be running the patched version of the visual style engine.To change the active visual style, right-click the desktop and select Properties.

7. Then, click the Appearance tab and adjust the visual style by changing the Windows and Buttons drop-down box.

8. After you change the visual style, also consider adjusting the color scheme. Many of the visual styles that you download have different versions stored as different color schemes.

9. Once you are finished changing the visual style, just hit the OK button to save your changes and view the new visual style.

If you have problems with the UXTheme Multi-Patcher after running the patch, you can always revert to your original system file by running the Multi-Patcher again. Doing so will display an option that allows you to revert to the original visual style engine file.

Modifying the Visual Styles

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:54:00 +0000

Windows XP includes a new skinning engine built into the operating system, which it uses to display its own skin format, known as visual styles. Visual styles are responsible for transforming the boring old Windows classic look into the colorful and visually pleasing Windows XP look. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to keep the format of visual styles secret and builtthe skinning engine to only accept Visual styles that are digitally signed by Microsoft. This decision puts a big roadblock in the path of creating your own visual styles. On top of that, Microsoft decided that they were not going to release any more visual styles, so we are all stuck with the default Windows XP look.

This presented a problem to the Windows XP tweaking community. Everyone wanted to take advantage of the new visual styles engine that was built into Windows XP and create his or her own visual styles.When I first started to use Windows XP, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to create my own visual styles. I tried using Resource Hacker on the visual style file that came with Windows XP to replace the bitmaps inside the file. I was sure that this attempt would work, but when I tried to view the visual style in Display Properties, the rendering was very strange in the Preview window, and when I tried to apply it, the computer would revert to the classic Windows interface. After spending some time browsing the Web and reading forums, I found out that the reason why my new visual style was not working was because the file was not digitally signed by Microsoft. Apparently, even if you modify a file that was signed by Microsoft, the signature is broken because the checksum of the file changed when you replaced the bitmaps.

What would be the next step? Well there were two options: either try to fake a digital signature on the theme file or just remove the digital signature requirement from the visual style engine. Faking a digital signature is very difficult, if not impossible, so removing the digital signature requirement was the only plausible choice. This was the limit of my skills. I had no clue how to remove the requirement other than opening the file up in the hex editor and starting to delete random bytes.

Thankfully, someone else figured it out. A company called TGT Soft (www.tgtsoft.com) released a program called Style XP, as well as a free patch that you could use. All you would have to do is run the patcher on your computer and let it go loose on your uxtheme.dll file, which is the heart of the visual style engine, and it would remove the digital signature requirement. You’ll soon learn how to use the Style XP shareware for making lots of interesting changes, in the section entitled Installing New Visual Styles.

The development of Style XP and its runaround of the Windows XP signatures created shockwaves in the skinning community. It would now be possible to use different visual styles to take advantage of the new skinning engine. Sites such as ThemeXP.org sprung up, offering hundreds of visual styles that XP users all over the world made. Everyone was happy, except for Microsoft.

Eventually,TGT Soft found itself in a little trouble when Microsoft found out that they
released a program that bypassed the requirement. Microsoft could have blown this company
out of the water, but they were very generous and allowed TGT Soft to continue to develop its product and helped them write a service that ran in the background so that they would no longer have to hack the system file.

Nowadays things have changed a little bit.TGT Soft still offers its Style XP application that can be used to unsign visual styles, but it is still shareware. Thankfully, there is an application called the UXTheme Multi-Patcher, which will patch the skinning engine just like the old TGT Soft patch. More will be discussed about the patchers shortly, in the section entitled Using UXTheme Multi-Patcher to enable use of non-Microsoft Visual styles.

Note: It is a little unclear what Microsoft thinks about users of Windows XP bypassing its digital signature requirement for the visual style engine, using applications such as UXTheme Multi-Patcher. Taking a look at the whole situation, they really do not have a reason to be upset because it is not like the Multi-Patcher is contributing to software piracy. Additionally, the ability to use thousands of visual styles available on the Web with the fast native visual style engine is a great reason
to upgrade to Windows XP. From a marketing standpoint, Microsoft should just forget about the stupid protection. It would make users of Windows XP happier because they would be able to customize their computers easier.

So, you’ve now learned a brief history of how one of the best new features of Windows XP became unlocked. These next few sections will show you how to install and use new visual styles on your computer to completely transform the way the user interface looks.

Using the wallpaper PowerToy

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:49:00 +0000

Using the wallpaper PowerToy
We all like changing our wallpaper every once in a while.We get tired of staring at the same old photo or pattern and like to select a new image that we downloaded on the Web or made ourselves. Back in April of 2003, Microsoft released a series of creativity fun packs that included all sorts of neat things, such as different types of themed templates as well as a few new PowerToys. One of those PowerToys was called the Wallpaper Changer. This PowerToy is an application that will automatically rotate your wallpaper over a given period of time that you set. Additionally, you can specify a folder of images to use so that you can control which images are rotated.

I like to use the Wallpaper Changer to change my wallpaper weekly, although it is possible to set it up to change your wallpaper every 15 minutes. If the Wallpaper Changer is something that interests you, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/experiences/downloads/ create_powertoy.asp to download a copy yourself. Then, follow these steps to configure it.

1. Once you have installed the Wallpaper Changer PowerToy, you can start it up by clicking the Start Menu, navigating to All Programs, expanding PowerToys for Windows XP, and then selecting Wallpaper Changer.

2. When the Wallpaper Changer has loaded, select the folder that you want to use as your source of the images using the browsing box.

3. Then, just set the interval between wallpaper changes by sliding the marker across the line.

4. Once you have the interval set, just click OK and your settings will be saved.

The Wallpaper Changer will allow you to customize your desktop like never before. Now you will always have a nice-looking desktop that is always new.

Using the Virtual Desktop Manager PowerToy

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:43:00 +0000

Customizing the Behavior of the Desktop
The desktop is a pretty simple part of Windows XP. You really can’t do much to customize its looks besides changing the wallpaper. However, several different tools are available that you can use to add features to the desktop and to take advantage of some of its lesser known features. These next few sections will show you how you can use these tools to do cool things such as use multiple desktops or create a special Web page that will display live data, such as a weather report, from the Internet on your desktop.

Using the Virtual Desktop Manager PowerToy
Throughout my computing career, I have used several different computing platforms that run all sorts of different window environments. Of all of them, KDE, which is a window environment for Unix and Linux, has become my favorite because of its implementation of the virtual desktop feature. If you are like me and do several different things at once on your computer, you can use virtual desktops to switch between groups of open programs rather than relying on the taskbar.

A couple of months after Windows XP was released, Microsoft released a Virtual Desktop Manager PowerToy. I was extremely happy to be able to get this feature on Windows XP. Although it is not exactly the same as the KDE version because it does not show a preview of what is going on in the window, it allows you to switch between desktops. The Windows XP Virtual Desktop PowerToy works by adding a new toolbar to the taskbar.

You can easily switch between your desktops by clicking the numbered buttons. Also, you can click the Preview button to see a four way split-screen of all of your desktops so that you can view what is open on all of them at once. Let’s get started with setting up the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) on your computer. First, download a copy of the Virtual Desktop Manager from the Windows XP PowerToys Web site, located at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/ powertoys.asp. Once you have a copy of the PowerToys installed, follow these steps to get it up and running:

1. Once you have installed the PowerToy, you will want to unlock your taskbar so that you can place the Virtual Desktop Manager on it. Right-click your taskbar and select Lock the Taskbar Item only if there is a check next to the text. Otherwise, your taskbar is already unlocked.

2. When you have your taskbar unlocked, right-click the taskbar again, in the general location that you want the Virtual Desktop Manager to appear, and select Toolbars and then Desktop Manager.

3. This will make the Virtual Desktop buttons appear on your taskbar. I always like to get rid of the label to the left of the buttons.To do this, right-click the Virtual Desktop Manager and select Show Title to disable the label. This will only work when the taskbar is unlocked.

4. Now that you have the Virtual Desktop Manager set up on the taskbar, customize the way it works. Set up the background for your different virtual desktops so that you can easily determine which one you are on.To do this, right-click the Virtual Desktop toolbar and select Configure Desktop Images. Then, on the MSVDM Settings window, just select the desktop number with your mouse and then select the background image you want to use. Click OK when you are finished to save your changes.

5. The next feature of the Virtual Desktop Manager that I always like to customize is the shared desktop feature. This allows you to access the same taskbar on every desktop. There are times when it is nice to have this feature disabled so that your taskbar on the different desktop is nice and tidy, but that makes moving windows that you already have open on one desktop to another impossible because there is no way to right-click a window and send it to a specific desktop like with other Virtual Desktop Managers in different window environments. You can easily enable or disable the shared desktop feature by right-clicking the Virtual Desktop Manager and selecting Shared Desktops. I suggest you experiment with this feature to find the best setting for your personal taste.

6. The last feature that I like to modify is the animation feature of the preview screen.
Every time you click the preview screen, your screen will slowly shrink up into the fourway split-screen preview. Then, when you select a desktop, it will slowly expand to full screen. This is a nice feature, but unfortunately the quality of the animation is not very high. On computers that have larger monitors, the animation looks pretty bad and just becomes a delay that you have to wait for every time you want to use the preview screen. One easy way around this is to simply disable animations by right-clicking the Virtual Desktop Manager and selecting Use Animations.

The virtual desktop feature is now set up on your computer. Have fun playing around with the feature. Once you get used to it, you will find that it can help you when you are doing several things on your computer at once.

Changing the icons on the desktop

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:57:00 +0000

Changing the icons on the desktop
The new icons that come with Windows XP provide a much-needed change from the boring low-resolution icons of previous Windows versions. The new icons have started a whole breed of icons, known as the XP-style icons. There are now hundreds of Web sites started by artists where you can download their personal XP-style icon creations. My favorite site is www.foood .net, which offers hundreds of very well-designed XP icons for free. Now that there are so many cool XP icons floating around on the Web, why not replace your desktop icons for a fresh new look?

Changing the desktop icons is very simple in Windows XP. The most difficult part of the process is finding good XP icons.To help you out on your hunt for cool XP icons, I have created the following list of some of my favorite icon Web sites:

_ Iconica: www.marvilla.us
_ I heart NY: www.iheartny.com/xicons
_ WBC Icons: www.wbchug.com
_ Foood’s Icons: www.foood.net
_ I-cons: http://i-cons.tk/
_ xIcons: http://xp.xicons.com

Now that you have a few good sites to start your search, it is time to actually change the icons on the desktop. As already noted, changing the icons is easy. But if you want to change the icon of one of the system shortcuts, such as the My Computer, My Documents, and My Network Places icons, as well as the Internet Explorer and Recycle Bin icons, then you have to follow a special procedure. Follow these steps to change any of the system icons:

1. Right-click the Desktop and select Properties.

2. When Display Properties loads, click the Desktop tab and click the Customize Desktop button at the bottom of the window.

3. Just click the icon that you want to change, and then click the Change Icon button.

4. When the change icon screen shows up, click the Browse button and navigate to the icon that you want to use.

5. Once you have selected the icon that you want to use, just click OK and your icon should change in the preview box.

6. When you are finished changing all of the icons, click OK to save your icon modifications and return to the Display Properties window.

7. Now, just click OK once more to save your changes.

Changing the system icons is pretty simple, but changing other icons on your desktop, such as program shortcuts and folders, is even easier. Just follow these steps:

1. Right-click the item for which you want to change the icon and select Properties.

2. If you right-clicked an application shortcut, then you will see the Change Icon button at the bottom of the window. If you are trying to change the icon of a folder on your desktop, you will have to click the Customize tab first and then you will see the Change Icon button at the bottom of the window as well.

3. Once you are finished changing the icon, click OK to save your changes.

Tip: If you want to change other system icons, such as the Internet Explorer icon, Drive icons, or the Folder icons, you will have to use a special utility. Many programs on the Web will allow you to do so, but the two that I like to use are called Microangelo (www.microangelo.us) and Icon Packager (www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager/). Now you will be able to benefit from all of the cool icons that are available for free on the Web. Because you have now finished customizing the look of your desktop icons, let’s move on to customizing the desktop.

Removing the shortcut arrow from icons on the desktop

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Removing the shortcut arrow from icons on the desktop
One thing that I always hate about Windows is the shortcut arrow. Sure, it is good to be able to tell if a shortcut is actually a shortcut, but I think I know that the applications that I put on my desktop are already shortcuts. This feature can be annoying as well as problematic. One example of this is when you use the large icons. Any icon that is a shortcut has a stretched version of the arrow in the lower-left corner of the icon, making the icon look pixelated.

A number of different solutions to the shortcut arrow problem are available. You can replace the big white square with a smaller semi-transparent arrow, use your own icon file, or you can disable it completely. The best way to change the shortcut arrow setting is to use the most popular Microsoft PowerToy,Tweak UI. You should already have a copy of Tweak UI installed on your computer, if you followed my suggestions and instructions from Chapter 2. But just in case you don’t, you can get a copy of it from the PowerToys Web page, located at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. Follow these steps to change the shortcut arrow settings:

1. Click the Start Menu and expand All Programs, PowerToys for Windows XP, and then select Tweak UI to start it up.

2. Once Tweak UI is started, expand the Explorer entry and select Shortcut.

3. You will now see four different icon Shortcut Overlay options. I recommend you try using the light arrow options first. Then if you still don’t like it, click None, to remove the shortcut arrows.

4. Once you have made up your mind and selected the Overlay option, click OK to saveyour changes.

You may now close Tweak UI. Your changes will show up after you reboot.

Renaming the Recycle Bin

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Renaming the Recycle Bin
The Recycle Bin is a great feature of Windows, but it is very difficult to customize the name. Unlike other system icons on the desktop, you cannot just right-click it and select Rename. The only way to rename the Recycle Bin is to hack the Registry. This is not as simple as the method for the other icons, but you can easily get through it.To get started, let’s assume that you want to rename the Recycle Bin as Trash Compactor:

1. Click the Start button and select Run.

2. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.

3. When the Registry Editor is started, you will want to expand the HKEY_CURRENT
_USER, Software, Microsoft,Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer, CLSID, and {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} folders.

4. When you have expanded the last folder, you should see an entry called (Default) that has no value. Right-click that entry and select Modify.

5. Next, just type Trash Compactor, or any other name, in the box and click OK. If you want to hide the text under the Recycle Bin icon, you will still have to specify a name. Instead of typing in a word, just click the spacebar once and then click OK. You do not have to worry about entering in the ASCII code for a space when editing the registry.

6. Close the Registry Editor and press F5 when viewing your desktop to see your changes. If that does not work for your computer, then you will have to log out and log in to activate the changes.

Now your Recycle Bin is no more. Hello Trash Compactor!

Removing the text below the icons

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Fri, 29 May 2009 06:50:00 +0000

Removing the text below the icons
Icons and text always go together. Every single icon on your desktop has to have a label below it. If you have a lot of icons on your desktop, the text under the icon is very valuable. However, if you have few icons on your desktop, you can get away with just using the icons alone. Doing so will result in a much cleaner interface. Amazingly, your desktop will look much simpler and cleaner without the labels below the icons.

How is it possible not to display the text? Well, it is actually just a trick. You are not really removing the text under the icons. Instead, you are replacing the name of the icon with some characters that the computer will not display. Renaming the icons would be very easy if all that was involved was clicking the name and pressing the spacebar a few times. Unfortunately, that is not the case, because Windows does not allow you to enter in a space with the spacebar. Instead, you can use the ASCII code for a space. Every character that is used in the computer is stored in the PC as a code for a character. For example, the ASCII code for an s is 0115, the ASCII code for a copyright sign is 0169, and so on. You will be interested in the ASCII codefor a character that shows up as a blank space, which is 0160. Now that you know the basics ofASCII, let’s rename some files.

1. Start with the first icon that you want to rename: right-click it and select Rename.

2. Select all of the text, and erase it with the Backspace key.

3. Now, enter in the ASCII code for the space, so make sure your Numlock is on, and just press and hold the Alt key while typing in 0 1 6 0 on the numpad on the right of the keyboard.

4. When you have finished typing in 0 1 6 0, let go of the Alt key and the blank space will be inserted.

5. Then, just press Enter to save the new name.

If you want to remove the text of multiple icons, then you will have a problem with the instructions because each shortcut or item must still have a unique name. One easy workaround is to enter in the ASCII code as the previous directions indicate, and then add a space using the spacebar after it. The first icons will have the ASCII space code + one space, the second icon will have the ASCII space code + two spaces, and so on.

Removing the text below the icons also allows you to do some fun things with the placement of your icons.Try removing the name of several icons. Then, turn on large icons, if you have not already done so, and line them up just above the taskbar. This will give you a setup that is similar to the bar on Apple’s OS X. Although your icons won’t be animated and bounce around, you will be able to set up your interface so that it looks like the OS X setup.

Enabling large icons on the desktop

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Enabling large icons on the desktop
Windows XP has support for larger and more colorful icons than any other previous Windows version. The support for high-quality graphics is one of the reasons why Windows XP looks so much better than previous versions of Windows. This section will show you how to take advantage of the new graphical enhancements to make your desktop look cool.

Two different sizes of icons are used on the Windows XP desktop. The normal size for icons in Windows XP is 32 _ 32 pixels.Windows XP also has support for larger icons, which are 48 _ 48 pixels. Figure 3-3 shows the difference in size between the two icons. Use of the larger icons will not only help your vision but will also make your desktop look more visually pleasing, because the larger icons are more detailed.

I recommend that you turn the large icons on, to see how you like it. If you have a large monitor, chances are that you will love the large icons. Some of you, however, may not like them because they take up more space than the smaller icons and decrease the amount of icons that can fit on your desktop. Although this is a tradeoff, I feel the high-resolution icons are worth it.To get started, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Properties.

2. Click the Appearance tab and then click the Effects button.

3. Check the Use Large Icons box.

4. Click OK to save your changes.

5. Click the OK button again to close display properties.

The large icons should be displayed immediately after the change. You will notice that some other icons will also enlarge. This is a side effect of using this tip, because it is impossible to adjust just the size of the icons on the desktop. However, only the icons that you see when you browse your computer and use the Control Panel are slightly larger. None of the other icons are changed.

To revert to the normal-sized icons, just repeat the preceding step and uncheck Use Large Icons.

Displaying the traditional Windows icons

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:47:00 +0000

Displaying the traditional Windows icons
Now that Windows XP includes the new Start panel with shortcuts to My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and Internet Explorer, the shortcuts on the desktop are less important and Microsoft decided to remove them. If you are a user that doesn’t like clutter on your desktop, then this feature is great for you. But if you like the old way of using Windows, and like the desktop to be the center of your navigation instead of the Start panel, then you are out of luck.

However, just as with other new features in Windows XP, with the desktop you can revert to the old way of doing things.Turning the desktop icons back on involves a little more effort than just switching back to the classic Start Menu, but doing so still is not very difficult. Follow these steps and you will be able to select which icons you want back:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Properties.

2. Click the Desktop tab and then click the Customize Desktop button at the bottom of the window.

3. Then, on the General tab, just select the check box next to the icons you want to display.

4. Click OK to save your changes.

5. Click OK once more to close display properties.

You will see the icons on your desktop immediately after you complete the steps.

Customizing And Removing Icons Desktop

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:41:00 +0000

Studies have shown that customizing your desktop will result in a 64 percent increase in productivity as well as a 248 percent increase in happiness levels of computer users. I was unable to contact the institute where these numbers purportedly came from to confirm this information, but even if these numbers are slightly off (or completely made up), customizing the desktop is still very beneficial.

This chapter will show you some cool tricks and tools to make your desktop look and work much better so that you can also benefit from a customized desktop. Starting with the icons, it will show you how to remove, enlarge, replace, and adjust the special effects, such as the drop shadows. Then, it will move on to customizing the way your desktop behaves and operates by using Active Desktop and a cool desktop PowerToy.

The desktop seems like a pretty simple part of the operating system, but there is a lot you can do to it to make using your computer more efficient as well as fun.

Customizing Desktop Icons
The first time I started up Windows XP, I was shocked to find only the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop.Where were the rest of the icons? Did the install screw up? Microsoft is starting to transition away from the desktop that we are all used to with previous versions of Windows.With the introduction of the Start panel, the same icons on the desktop are just not needed. Now, the desktop looks much cleaner and more visually appealing because there are not 50 icons on the screen blocking your view of the wallpaper.

I have to admit, I like the clean interface, but I miss some of the icons that used to be on the desktop. Thankfully, you can do a number of different things to customize the desktop to bring back some of the old icons and also customize them so that you can preserve the clean look while restoring functionality. The next several sections will show you how you can get your desktop looking the way you want it to by taking advantage of hidden features and tricks.

Removing all icons from the desktop
No matter how hard I try, I always end up with a lot of junk on my desktop. From programs that I download and documents that I was too lazy to save elsewhere as well as new program links that seem to pop up from nowhere, there is never an end to the war that I fight with my desktop to keep it clutter-free. I like to be able to see my desktop wallpaper and not have my view of the wallpaper blocked by useless icons. One great way to win the never-ending desktop war is to just disable the desktop’s ability to show the icons and instead place the most common desktop icons, such as My Computer and the Recycle Bin, on the Quick Launch bar.

Disabling the icons on the desktop is actually a very simple task. Most people never know about this feature, because it is placed where you would really never expect it.To get started, just right-click Desktop. Then expand Arrange Icons By and select Show Desktop Icons to unselect it. After a few seconds, the icons will disappear.

Don’t worry, the icons and folder on your desktop were not deleted. If you ever want to turn the icons back on, just repeat the preceding steps once more.

This is a very simple way to quickly clean up the desktop. It’s sort of like sweeping the dirt under a rug. The desktop clutter is still there, but you just can’t see it.

Customizing the icon drop shadow effect
One cool new feature of Windows XP is the Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on the Desktop. This new effect really makes the icons stand out from your wallpaper and makes them much easier to read when you are using a background, such as a photo, that has both light and dark spots. Unfortunately, depending on your computer’s hardware configuration, you may or may not be able to experience this cool new effect. If you have a newer computer that has an average graphics card, you will have no problem using this feature. But if you have an older graphics card, then you may be out of luck.

The Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on the Desktop can be turned on or off. Depending on the wallpaper that you are using, you may like or dislike the feature. I really like the new effect, but if you like having a clean and crisp interface, I recommend disabling the effect. Follow these steps to turn the feature on or off:

1. Click the Start button, and select Run.

2. Key in sysdm.cpl and click OK to launch system properties.

3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Settings button under the Performance
section.

4. While on the Visual Effects tab, scroll down to the bottom of the box.

5. Locate Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on the Desktop and check or uncheck the value, depending on what you would like to do.

6. Click OK to save your changes.

7. Click OK once more to close the System Properties window.
If you enable the effect by checking the box and the effect still does not show up after you reboot your computer, this is a sign that your computer does not support the feature.

Removing notification area and Clock

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Mon, 25 May 2009 06:39:00 +0000

Removing the notification area
The notification area is the right side of the taskbar, where all of the little system tray icons are located. This item is not critical to the operation of the system and can be removed if you want more room for your open programs and other toolbars. However, any program such as an instant messenger program, that might minimize itself to the notification area will be a little more difficult to get to. The only way to remove the notification area is to use the Group Policy Editor. Unfortunately, this will only work if you are using Windows XP Pro. If you are running Windows XP Pro, then follow these steps to remove the notification area:

1. Launch the Group Policy Editor by clicking the Start button and then selecting Run. Type gpedit.msc in the box and click OK.

2. Once the policy editor has loaded, expand Administrative Templates, and then select Start Menu and Taskbar.

3. Locate and select Hide the Notification Area. Right-click it and select Properties.

4. Then, just click Enable and click the OK button to save your changes.

The next time you log on, your notification area will be gone. If you want to free up even more room, consider removing the clock by reading the next section.

Removing the clock from the taskbar
The clock can be very useful if you don’t have any other clocks in the same room as your computer. Otherwise, it is just taking up space. After all, how many clocks do you really need? If you want the maximum amount of space for your toolbars and open programs on the taskbar, I suggest that you also remove the clock.

Removing the clock is extremely simple. Follow these quick instructions:

1. Right-click the system clock and select Properties.

2. Then, under the Notification Area on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window, uncheck Show the Clock.

3. Click OK to save your changes and the clock will be gone.

Using the Taskbar Magnifier PowerToy

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:36:00 +0000

Using the Taskbar Magnifier PowerToy
Microsoft has released many different PowerToys, some of which we have already used (Tweak UI). Another PowerToy that is pretty cool is the Taskbar Magnifier. The Taskbar Magnifier turns the mouse into a magnifying glass.When you activate the Taskbar Magnifier, a new bar will be displayed in your taskbar that is like a little TV screen. It will display a magnified image of what the mouse is currently over. If you know someone whose eyes are not as good as they used to be, the Taskbar Magnifier is a good aid for them. Also, if you do a lot of graphic work and care about the details of your work, instead of having to zoom in all the time, you can use the Taskbar Magnifier to see a zoomed-in view that will reveal details.

Getting the Taskbar Magnifier PowerToy setup is easy; just download it from Microsoft’s PowerToys Web site, located at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/ powertoys.asp and follow these steps:

1. Once you have the PowerToy installed, you just have to enable the toolbar on the taskbar. First, you will have to unlock your taskbar.

2. Next, right-click an open part of the taskbar and expand Toolbars and then select Taskbar Magnifier. This will cause the Taskbar Magnifier to show up on the taskbar.

3. You may want to resize the taskbar a little, such as dragging the t of the bar up to make it a little larger so your magnifier screen is bigger.

4. Also, you can remove the text next to the magnifier by right-clicking the magnifier object on the taskbar when the taskbar is unlocked and selecting Show Title to unselect it.

If you ever want to remove the Taskbar Magnifier, just right-click an open part of the taskbar and expand the toolbars menu again and select Taskbar Magnifier to uncheck the item.

Modifying the taskbar location

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Sat, 23 May 2009 06:34:00 +0000

Modifying the taskbar location
You always see the taskbar appear on the bottom of your screen. That does not always have to be the case. It is possible to move the taskbar to every side of the screen. This allows you to really change the look of Windows XP.

Moving the taskbar is very simple. There are just three basic steps:

1. You will want to unlock the taskbar if it is already locked. Right-click an open part of the taskbar and select Lock the Taskbar, if there is a check next to the entry.

2. Click and hold your mouse on any part of the taskbar where there are no icons, such as the system clock, and drag the taskbar to different sides by moving your mouse in the general direction.

3. When you have the taskbar where you want it, you may want to readjust your toolbars inside the taskbar, such as the Quick Launch bar. Then lock it back up again by rightclicking it and selecting Lock the Taskbar.

Hacking the Start button to replace the Start text

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Hacking the Start button to replace the Start text
One of my favorite hacks for Windows XP is the Start button hack. It is possible to use resource editing tools such as Resource Hacker as well as a bunch of other adjustments to replace the Start text to anything that you want. I changed my Start Menu button on Hacking Windows XP.

You can edit the text on the Start button in a number of different ways. The most popular method is to use a hex editor. First, open up the Windows Explorer file and edit the string (a string is computer lingo for text), if you can find it in the file. Then, you will have to make some changes to the system file protection to allow you to run a hacked version of Explorer. After you have made those changes, you have to boot into Safe mode and swap the Explorer file with the version that you hacked. Additionally, with that method, you are limited to only five characters on the Start Menu button.

That method is just too complicated and has a lot of unnecessary steps. After experimenting with several different ideas that I came up with, I discovered an even better way to change the Start button text. Using my method, you will not have to mess with the system file protection at all, boot into Safe mode, or even be limited to five characters on the Start button. Sound good? Okay, let’s get started:

1. First, you will need to start up the Resource Hacker that you used in Chapter 1. If you no longer have a copy of Resource Hacker, you can download another copy from www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker. Once you have Resource Hacker started up, go to the next step.

2. You are going to want to open up the Windows Explorer main file, called explorer.exe. This file is stored in the C:\Windows directory.To open the file up, click the file menu bar item and select Open, then just navigate over to the Windows directory and select explorer.exe.

3. When explorer.exe is loaded, you should see a bunch of folders on the left side of the screen. Expand the String Table folder and then expand the 37 folder and select 1033.

4. You will not see a bunch of text on the right side of the screen. Locate where it says Start, and replace it with the text that you want to use. I am going to replace it with “Hacking Windows XP.” Make sure that you only enter your text between the quotes;

5. Next, you will have to click the Compile Script button.

6. Now, you have to save the file that you just edited and recompiled. Click the File menu bar item again and this time select Save As. Then save the file with a name other than explorer.exe. I suggest you call it “ExplorerHacked.exe.” Make sure that you add the .exe to the end of the file name or else it will not work.

7. You are now finished hacking the Explorer file. You can close the Resource Hacker. Now
you just have to tell Windows to use your new Explorer file the next time you log in.To do this, click the Start button and select Run.

8. Type regedit in the box and click OK.

9. Next, when the Registry Editor is loaded, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,
SOFTWARE, Microsoft,Windows NT, CurrentVersion, and Winlogon.

10. Inside the WinLogon folder, you will want to look for the Shell entry. Right-click it and select Modify.

12. Type in the name of the file that you saved in Step 6. I used “ExplorerHacked.exe,” so that is what I will replace all of the text with.

13. When you are finished, click OK to save your changes. You may now close the Registry Editor because you are finished with the hack.

Just log off and log back on or restart to see the new changes in effect. If you did not edit the registry correctly, such as specifying the exact correct file as the value for shell, you will not be able to use your computer properly because Explorer will not load. If that is the case, after you log on, eventually you will be shown just your background image. You will need to start up Explorer manually by pressing Ctrl_Alt_Delete to bring up the Task Manager. Once the Task Manager is displayed, click the New Task button on the Applications tab and type in regedit. This will launch the Registry Editor again so that you can edit the shell entry again.

Go back through Step 9 to get back to the shell entry. Make sure that you type in the full correct file name with the extension as the value. If you want to revert to the original Windows Explorer with Start as the text on the Start button, just change this value back to explorer.exe. Then just log off your computer by using the shutdown menu bar item in the Task Manager and you will be back to normal when you log back on.

Quick Launching your programs

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:27:00 +0000

Quick Launching your programs
The Quick Launch bar is a great way to start up your programs. You can completely bypass the Start Menu and launch your programs with just one click. By default, the Quick Launch bar is not enabled. This section will show you how you can enable the Quick Launch bar and how you can make it very useful. First, enable the Quick Launch bar and then customize it by doing the following:

1. Right-click an open space on your taskbar and expand Toolbars and then select Quick Launch. This will make the Quick Launch bar appear.

2. By default, there are three icons on it: Internet Explorer, Show Desktop, and Windows Media Player. You can easily add more icons to the Quick Launch bar by just dragging them onto the toolbar. You can even specify where you want the icon to be placed by dragging the icon between two icons. The best way to add programs to your Quick Launch bar is to browse through your Start Menu and drag icons to the bar while holding down the Alt key. Holding down the Alt key will ensure that you create a copy of the shortcut in the Start Menu to be placed on the Quick Launch bar. Otherwise, when you drag a shortcut from the Start Menu, it will be removed from the Start Menu and placed only on the Quick Launch toolbar. I like to add my drives from My Computer to my Quick Launch bar as well for easy access. Just open up My Computer and drag them on down to the toolbar.

3. Once you have all of the icons set up on your Quick Launch bar, have some fun changing the position of the bar.To do this, you will have to unlock your taskbar. Right-click an open part of the taskbar and select Lock the Taskbar only if there is already a check next to it. If there is not a check, then your taskbar is not locked and you are ready to proceed.

Now that you made sure that the taskbar is not locked, you are ready to move the bar around. Let’s expand the taskbar up so that you can have one row of Quick Launch icons and then your open programs will be listed below. You can do this by placing and holding down the left mouse button on top of the taskbar, and moving the mouse up, while still holding the button down on the mouse, until the taskbar expands upward.

Once the taskbar moves up one notch, you can move the Quick Launch bar up. You can do this by grabbing the left side of the menu on the dotted vertical line with the mouse and moving the mouse up while holding down the left mouse button.When you are finished. Notice that when you have expanded your taskbar up one notch, the system clock expands to show the date as well as the day.

4. When you have the taskbar unlocked, you can easily change the size of the icons that are placed on the Quick Launch bar. This can be done by right-clicking somewhere on the bar that is taken up by an icon, and selecting View. You will then see two choices: large and small icons. By default, the Small Icons are shown. The Large Icons look pretty cool because they make your taskbar look very different. I suggest you play around with this feature and get your icons looking the way you like them best.

5. Once you are finished making all of your changes to the taskbar, I suggest that you lock it again so that you won’t accidentally move things around the taskbar.

Now you have customized your Quick Launch bar and have greatly improved your navigation by creating your own list of programs. This will speed up the amount of time it takes to start up any program.

Using and adjusting program grouping

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:20:00 +0000

Customizing the Taskbar
The Windows XP taskbar has many new features, such as the ability to group programs and the new system tray that automatically hides icons that are not active. On top of these new features, there were enhancements such as new animations and graphical refinements that make the taskbar look so much better.

The taskbar normally is used to switch between active programs and provides some system information, such as the current time and other system events in the system try. Now it can be used for so much more, as you will see in the next few sections.

Using and adjusting program grouping
The program grouping feature can be very useful, or it can be an annoyance.When you have more than just a few programs open, the taskbar can become cluttered.To fight this, as the taskbar fills up, programs that have more than one window open are grouped together. If you have a bunch of Internet Explorer windows open, they will all be grouped together into one entry on the taskbar. Then, if you want to switch between them or close one, you have to select the entry on the taskbar and a new menu will pop up showing you all of the different windows open for the specific application.

One great feature of grouping is it gives you the ability to close several windows at once.When all of the Internet Explorer windows are grouped together, you can just right-click the entry on the taskbar and select Close Group. Doing so will automatically close all of the browser windowsat once.

The downside to this is it takes an extra step to navigate through the grouped program items. Some people do not like this option very much and would rather have a taskbar that is more cluttered, because they will be able to switch between programs faster.

You can do a number of different things to customize this feature. Using a program called Tweak UI, which is a PowerToy released by Microsoft for Windows XP, you can easily change the behavior of how programs are grouped. But first, I am going to show you how to enable program grouping, if it is not set up on your computer. You’ll also find out how to disable it, if you do not like it. Follow these steps to enable/disable program grouping:

1. Right-click a blank part of the taskbar and select Properties.

2. This will bring up the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window that you used previously. This time, you are going to be concerned with what is on the Taskbar tab. Locate the Group Similar Taskbar Buttons item in the taskbar appearance section.

3. Check the box to enable this feature and uncheck to disable.

4. Click OK to save your changes.

Now that you have the feature turned on, you are ready to use Tweak UI to customize the way
it behaves. First, download a copy of Tweak UI from Microsoft’s PowerToys Web site, located at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. Make sure that you download the normal version of Tweak UI and not the version for Itanium-based systems unless you have a 64-bit system.When you have Tweak UI installed, follow these steps:

1. Launch Tweak UI by clicking the Start button, selecting All Programs, and then PowerToys for Windows XP.

2. When Tweak UI is started, expand Taskbar and Start Menu and select Grouping.

3. You will be shown three different options that determine the behavior of the grouping feature. Group Least Used Applications First will group the applications that are the oldest on the taskbar and have more than one window open. Group Applications With The Most Windows First will just group programs that have the most windows open when the taskbar starts to become cluttered. Group Any Application With At Least X Windows is the setting that gives you the most control over grouping. Select this behavior and then enter the number of windows an application must have open before they are grouped. I personally prefer this feature and set it to a value of 4 so that when I have a lot of Internet Explorer windows open, I can still switch between them quickly when I have a few open, but it groups them when I have a lot open so my taskbar is not all cluttered.

4. Once you have selected the behavior you prefer, click the OK button on the bottom of the window to save your changes.

Once you log off and back on or reboot, your changes will be active.

Removing pop-up Help for users of both the Start panel and Menu

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:16:00 +0000

Removing pop-up Help for users of both the Start panel and Menu
Ever notice that when you hover your mouse over a program listing in the Start Menu, a little yellow Help box will pop up? This Help feature is called balloon help. If a user does not know what a program does, she can hold the mouse over the program for a second or so and a little message will fade in telling her what it is, if the programmer has set up this feature of the user’s program. For other programs that do not have this feature set up in their shortcut, it will just tell the user where the program is located on her computer.

This feature can be very useful for a beginning computer user. Sometimes the pop-up Help can become an annoyance and just blocks your screen. If you do not need this feature, why not disable it? Follow these steps to get rid of this feature:

1. Click the Start Menu and select Run and then type regedit in the box and click OK.

2. Once the Registry Editor is loaded, navigate though HKEY_CURRENT_USER,
Software, Microsoft,Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer, and Advanced.

3. Right-click the entry called ShowInfoTip and select Modify.

4. Set the value equal to 0 to disable this feature, and click OK.

5. Close the Registry Editor and log off and back so the feature can be removed.

You are now finished with the last section on customizing the Start Menu and program listing. Now on to customizing the taskbar.

Customizing the Start Menu/Panel Program Listings

freeshared20@gmail.com (FreeForShared) — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:12:00 +0000

Customizing the Start Menu/Panel Program Listings
Now that you have selected what you want your Start Menu to display as well as customized it to suit your needs, you are ready to move on to customizing the way the programs are listed. There are a variety of features that will impact the way the programs are listed on the screen.

These next few sections will help you get rid of some of the new annoying features, such as the personalized menus and the scrolling program listings.

There are basically two slightly different program listing methods.When you are using the new Start panel, the programs listing is slightly different in the way it looks and acts when compared to the classic Start Menu listing. Follow the corresponding sections below for the menu option that you are running.

Changing program listing display options for users of the Start panel
As I mentioned earlier, the Start panel All Programs listing works a little differently than its classic counterpart. The new program listing has some features that the classic version does not and that is why it is necessary to have two different sections. In the following sections, you will find two very common topics that users are interested in changing.

Disabling new program highlights
One of the features I thought was a great idea when I first started to use Windows XP was the program highlight feature. This feature will automatically highlight any new programs that you install so that you can easily find them on the Start Menu the first few times that you want to run the application. After I started to use XP for a few months, I noticed that this feature did not always work correctly. Some programs that I install never get highlighted, although others seem to be highlighted for weeks after I have installed them.

After a while, I decided that I had enough of this highlighting, so I decided to turn the feature off. Thankfully, Microsoft has made turning off this feature fairly simple. Just follow these steps to get rid of those annoying highlights:

1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.

2. Click the top Customize button for the Start panel.

3. Click the Advanced tab.

4. Uncheck Highlight Newly Installed Programs.

5. Click OK to save your changes.

6. Click OK once more to close the Properties window.

Now you will not have to worry about the programs that sometimes seem to be highlighted randomly.

Fun with the Scroll Programs feature
Some people love the program scroll feature, and others hate it. Personally, I don’t like this feature that much. I like to see all of my programs installed on my screen at once instead of having to move the mouse to the bottom of the list and clicking the down arrow or waiting for the list to move up automatically when the feature is enabled.

If you do not like having your menus take up a lot of space on your screen, enabling the scroll programs feature will cut your programs list down in size dramatically if you have a lot of programs installed. Some computer manufacturers ship their machines with this feature automatically enabled; other don’t have it enabled. So if this feature sounds interesting to you, feel free to try it out by following these steps. If you hate this feature, then follow these steps to remove it:

1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.

2. Click the top Customize button for the Start panel settings.

3. Next, click the Advanced tab.

4. Locate the Start Menu items scroll box in the middle of the window and scroll down all the way to the bottom until you locate the Scroll Programs entry.

5. Check the box to enable; uncheck to disable.

6. Click OK to save your changes.

7. Click OK once more to exit the Start Menu settings.

Now you will have full control over your scrolling program list.