Windows 9X Tips #18


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*1. Return Filched File Types

Ever encounter an application that designates itself as the 
default program for a file extension previously owned by another 
program? The quickest way to get out of this jam under 
Win9x is to find an example of an incorrectly associated file. 
Click on the file once to select it, then hold down the Shift 
key while you right-click on it. Choose Open With. Select the 
correct program, check the "Always use this program to open this 
type of file" box and click on OK. Or, if you don't find the 
program, click on the Other button and navigate to the correct 
program on your drive.


*2. Take a Snapshot of Your Screen

The easiest way to create a full-screen capture in Win95, 98 
or NT 4.0 is still by pressing the Print Screen key. That 
action sends a copy of the screen to the Clipboard. To view 
the capture, select Start/Run, type mspaint and press Enter. 
Once Paint opens, select Edit/Paste to paste the image from 
the Clipboard into the Paint window. Choose File/Save As to 
name and save it as a BMP file. (If Paint isn't installed on 
your PC, you can use another image program, or install Paint 
from the Add/Remove Programs applet. Open the Windows Setup 
tab, double-click on Accessories, select Paint and 
click on OK.)


*3. Explore a Different Folder

The Windows Explorer normally opens to your C: drive, but 
you can make it launch with the contents of any folder you 
want. Go to your Windows Explorer shortcut, right-click and 
select Properties. Open the Shortcut tab. Edit the entry in 
the Target field to read 
explorer.exe /n , /e , (drive:\path\folder) , 
where (drive:\path\folder) is whichever folder you want to 
first see when Explorer launches.


*4. Whither the ScanDisk Files?

If your PC doesn't shut down properly, Windows will run
ScanDisk the next time you boot. If it finds lost fragments,
it will delete them for you. Before doing that, however, it
asks if you want to save them as files. Unfortunately, it
doesn't say where it puts them or what the new files are
called. Here's how to find them. Open Tools/Find/Files or
Folders and search the root directory for file*.CHK. Typically,
the files are named FILE0000.CHK, FILE0001.CHK, FILE0002.CHK and
so on. If you're looking to free up disk space, you can delete
any old files you find. If you suspect one of these files contains
critical data, open it in a text editor. If you see anything
that looks important, copy and paste into a new document for
safekeeping.


*5. Hot, Hot, Hot Keys

Create shortcuts for your most frequently used programs.
Bring up the Properties dialog for each by right-clicking on
it and selecting Properties. Click on the Shortcut tab, and
click once in the Shortcut Key field. Do the hot-key
combination you want to assign, then click on OK. Assigning
a hot key will allow you to switch to the program if it's
already running on your desktop.


*6. Familiar Faces

Print out all the fonts on your system by opening Control Panel,
double-clicking the Fonts icon, then on the font of your
choice and clicking on the Print button.


*7. Forget Your Password?

If you forget your Win95 password, just press Escape at the
password box, bring up the MS-DOS Prompt and enter dir *.PWL
at the WINDOWS folder to find your .PWL files. Delete the one
with your name in front of it. Restart your system and enter a
new password when prompted.


*8. A Quicker Quick View

Quick View is an underused, under-appreciated feature of 
Windows; it lets you quickly and safely see the contents 
of documents without opening their associated applications. 
To make it even quicker, create a shortcut to it,
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VIEWERS\QUIKVIEW.EXE, and then drag 
and drop a file onto the icon to view it.


*9. Add Your Printer to SendTo

Print documents without opening them by adding your printer 
to the Win9x SendTo menu (accessed when you highlight and 
right-click on any file in a Windows Explorer or My Computer 
window). Open C:\WINDOWS\SENDTO and create a shortcut there 
for your printer. Your printer will now appear the next 
time you access the SendTo menu.


*10. Boost CD-ROM Performance

In Control Panel/System/Performance, select File System 
and the CD-ROM tab. Move the Supplemental Cache Size slider 
to the right to allocate more RAM for caching data from 
the CD-ROM drive, or to the left to allocate less. Multimedia 
programs perform better with a smaller cache because they 
seldom reuse data. For reading continuous data, such as 
AVI files, use a higher setting for Optimize Access Pattern. 
For reading random data, increase the Supplemental Cache 
Size and decrease the Optimize Access Pattern.