12 More Windows 7 Tips & Hacks

In the previous article, we looked at some basic tips and tricks to unleash the power of the new Windows 7 user interface. In Part 2, we’re going to cover additional tips to improve usability, enhance the performance, and help secure Windows 7.

Some tweaks available on the web (like opening Explorer at My Computer or using PC Safeguard) are now obsolete because of the updates from Beta to RC. All the tips here work with Windows 7 RC (Build 7100), and most, if not all, will work with the final release.

1. Add Search Providers to Windows 7

Windows 7 allows you to search remote website databases from your desktop, using open standards like Open Search and RSS. Here are some of the popular and useful search providers you can add to Windows 7:

• Bing (via Chakkaradeep)
• Flickr (via Long Zheng)
• Twitter (via Chakkaradeep)
• YouTube
• eBay
• Google News
• Digg
• Deviant Art

You can install these and additional connectors from Windows 7 forums, or get a pack with multiple search providers here.

These search connectors work even within Windows Common Dialogs, such as the Insert Picture dialog from PowerPoint or any other application. You can even drag and drop Flickr images from Explorer search results to copy them to your desktop, without opening any web browser.

2. Single Click Screen Lock

You can lock your computer using the Win+L keyboard shortcut. Here’s another way to do it with a single mouse click. Right-click on your desktop, select New, Shortcut. In Type the location of the item, enter rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation. Click Next, name the shortcut “˜Quick Lock’, and Finish.

If you wish, you can make it look pretty by giving it a lock or keys icon: Right-click, selectProperties, click Change Icon, enter shell32.dll, and select any icon you wish. Drag this shortcut and pin it to the taskbar, after which you can delete the desktop shortcut.

3. Customize Sticky Notes

You can format your Sticky Notes, by selecting text and using different keyboard shortcuts as shown in this screen capture:

4. Use New Accessories

Don’t forget to use the revamped accessories in Windows 7. With WordPad, you can open and save Office 2007 .docx and Open Document .odt documents.

The improved Calculator can convert units, and calculate dates, fuel economy, mortgage and lease payments.

Paint has new brush strokes, shapes, and grid support. Paint and WordPad have Print Preview and the Ribbon UI, which brings customizability and live formatting previews.

5. Use Check Boxes in Windows Explorer

You can select non-adjacent files in Explorer using Ctrl-click, but there is an easier way using check boxes. In Explorer, click Organize, then select Folder and search options.

On the View tab, under Advanced Settings, scroll down to select Use check boxes to select items. Now you can easily select multiple items using only the mouse.

6. Shortcut to Run Program as Administrator

You can Ctrl+Shift+Click on a taskbar icon to run the application as an Administrator with full rights (provided your account has permissions). Simply Shift+Right-Click on any program shortcut to run it as a different user, if for example you need higher privileges when logged in with your child’s account.

7. Boost performance with ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost improves your system performance by using faster USB Flash Drives instead of slower hard disks for system operations. It works best using flash drives with at least 1 GB of storage. Simply insert your flash drive, and if it meets certain performance benchmarks, Windows 7 will ask you if you want to use it for ReadyBoost and recommend the size to reserve.

8. Tweak Windows Search/Defender Services

By default, Windows indexes all files appearing under all your libraries, email, and offline files. You can reduce the time and resources spent in indexing by tweaking this to your actual needs.

Go to Control Panel, then Indexing Options. Windows 7 shows a list of locations currently being indexed. Click on Modify to choose only those locations where you perform frequent searches.

You can also disable Windows Search and Windows Defender services, which can take up system resources. If you do not search for files, images, documents, etc. using Windows Explorer, or use another search/indexing program, then you should disable Windows Search service. If, and only if, you use a third-party anti-virus program that is also anti-malware (the best ones are), you can also disable the Windows Defender service.

Go to Start, enter and run msconfig. From the Services tab, uncheck the box for the service you wish to disable, and reboot for the changes to take effect.

9. Secure USB Drives with BitLocker

Secure your USB flash drives using BitLocker encryption. Right-click on your USB drive inMy Computer, select Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions to protect sensitive data on your thumb drives.

The next time you use your USB drive on another computer, it will prompt you for the password before allowing you read-only access to your flash drive. You can even use the drive on older computers running Windows XP/Vista.

10. Create a System Recovery Disc

A system recovery disc helps you in situations where Windows cannot start successfully. Your Windows 7 installation disc also serves as a recovery disc. When Windows 7 comes pre-installed on computers, you will need to create a system recovery disc.

Click Start, enter and run recdisc.exe. Insert a blank CD/DVD in your burner, and clickCreate Disc.

11. Faster Thumbnail Previews

The taskbar shows thumbnail previews of opened windows when you hover the mouse over the program icon. By default, it takes a little time for the preview to appear. Make the previews appear faster with this registry tweak:

Go to Start, enter and run regedit. Navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse. On the right, open the MouseHoverTime key and reduce its value from the default 400 to around 150.

Be careful, as decreasing it further may cause problems.

12. Faster Shutdown

Start regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.Find the WaitToKillServiceTimeout key on the right, double-click to edit and change it from the default 12000 (12 seconds) to 2000 (2 seconds) or above.

This setting tells Windows how long to wait before prompting you that a service is not responding to the shut down request. This may help speed up your shutdown if you have any such services running.

These are some of the best Windows 7 tips we found. Did we miss any of your favorites? Share with us in the comments!

Download Microsoft Office 2010 Beta for Free

Microsoft have now released the latest version of Office 2010 for free for download to the public. This beta 2 release of the product has updated versions of all the office products which now all have the office ribbon fully implemented. Microsoft has also applied the very successful development process they used for Windows 7 to Office 2010 which has resulted in a very high quality product even for this beta release. I have been using the product for about 2 months now and with exception of just a few icons the product is pretty much looks finished and is very usable for day to day use.

Microsoft is also offering Office 2010 as free web based version now that you will be able to run in almost any browser (including Firefox and Safari) with any file you have in your Windows Live SkyDrive. This will allow you to make changes to your documents even when you don’t have office installed on the computer. Having this web based offering means you can now work with office documents on virtually any OS including Google’s Chrome OS and Linux.

Another cool new feature of Microsoft Office 2010 is the Outlook Social Connector that shows you to view social networking feeds. While this might not seems like a very work related feature it does allow you to automatically synchronise update contact information when they make updates to their social network profiles such as Linked-in.

Word 2010 also offers multiuser co-authoring which allows more than two people to edit the same word document at the same time. This is very handy feature if you have multiple people co-authoring the same document as you no longer have to manage multiple copies of the documents at the same time.

Another big change is that there will also be a new 64bit version of the product for people with system with more than 4gb of ram. While it might be a bit pointless to have a 64bit version of Word, having a 64bit version of Excel (and Access) means that users can actually take advantage of the extra ram to really crunch those enormous databases.
If you want to donload the beta right now of you want to check out more information about Office 2010 then go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010

Get License Key Of This Software HERE

Tweak the Windows 7 taskbar with Taskbar Overlord

The Taskbar Overlord is a Windows 7 application that changes the functionality of the taskbar in two ways that may result in increased productivity.

Change 1:

By default, left clicking on a taskbar icon would bring up thumbnail previews if multiple windows of that specific application is open. Since the same action can be triggered by simply hovering your mouse over the icon, the software developer has changed the functionality of left click so it automatically opens your last opened window instead.

Change 2:

By default, middle-clicking on a taskbar icon opens a new instance of that application. This app changes that by having windows close when you middle-click an icon on the taskbar.
Taskbar Overlord was created by a Lifehacker reader and is an AutoHotkey script.

Download Taskbar Overlord Here

If you want variations of Taskbar Overlord (only the left-click effect, or only the middle-click effect), you can also download those as well on the developer’s page.

Windows 7 Themes

This page will be used to collect all the great Windows 7 themes we find on the Internet(56K warning!). Every time we post about a certain group of themes, or if we stumble upon anything worth noting, we’ll post it here. Themes for turning Windows XP or Vista into Windows 7 are at the very bottom of this page. Download links are shown below picture previews.
We don’t create any themes so all the themes presented here link to a third-party site. Please note that we are not responsible for any damage or effect these themes may or may not cause on your system. Please always handle theme files with care.
Last Updated: April 11, 2009

Windows 98 Retro themes for Windows 7:

Download here

IthinkDiff.com Windows 7 Themes:

Download here

Mike Swanson’s Macros Theme Pack:

A light nature-theme with 20 stunning nature wallpapers hand picked by Microsoft Technical Evangelist Mike Swanson.

Download here

Windows 7 themes by Intowindows.com

Download here

WinSupersite Windows 7 Themes

Download here

Turn Windows Vista into Windows 7 theme:

Download here

Turn Windows XP into Windows 7 theme:

Download here

Burn DVDs and CDs for free with Windows 7

One feature that was sadly lacking in Windows before Windows 7 was the ability to burn DVD and CD’s directly from ISO images. This became a huge frustration whenever Microsoft released a beta or release candidate operating system to the public, since it would force you  to insall a third party utility to burn the ISO image to disk. Thankfully, Microsoft has now made burning ISOs a built-in feature of Windows 7.
To launch the tool all you need to do is right-click on the ISO image file you want to burn and then click on the “Burn disc image” option.

You then get the following dialogue box that allows you to select which burner (if you have multiple burners) you want to write the image to and if you want to also verify the image once it is burnt.

Then it is just a simple case of clicking on “Burn” and waiting.

Once you are done click “Close” and your disc will be ready.

Now this process will also work on CD and Rewritable media however if you want to erase the disk just right click on the drive with the disc in it and click “Erase this disk”.
Note: This option will only be available on drives that have rewritable media in them.

This will launch the erase disc wizard where you just click “Next”


Wait for the erase to complete


and then click “Finish”


So now you will be all ready to start burning Windows 8 beta ISO images