... Windows Tips 'n Tricks 14 ...
As he teaches, so he learns.

If you have the Windows Desktop Update installed, you can use one of its convenient toolbars for quick access to an Internet site. To display the Address toolbar, right-click on the Taskbar, point to Toolbars and select Address. A new toolbar opens in the Taskbar. To access a website, simply type its URL in the box. Your default browser will launch, if necessary, and open the URL you entered.

Need a calendar quickly? In Windows, double-click the time in the lower right-hand corner of the task bar and a clock and calendar will appear. This is also where you can reset the computer's time and date, if necessary.

With any number of applications open, if you need to quickly return to your desktop, the quickest way is with the Windows logo key and D. This combination also toggles to return to applications open at the time.

Move the QuickLaunch bar from one end of your taskbar to the other by positioning your mouse pointer over the thin vertical bar just to the left of the QuickLaunch bar, and then clicking and dragging it to its new location. You can also resize the bar by dragging the vertical bar to the left or right.

Go down to an open spot on the taskbar at the bottom and right click. One of the items will be toolbars. Highlight that and make sure that the quicklaunch is checked. Once thats checked, your quick launch will be back.

Quick View is a terrific utility that lets you view the contents of a file without having to open, or even install, its originating program. QV is an underused, under-appreciated feature of Windows; and what does it do? It lets you quickly and safely see the contents of documents without opening their associated applications. Don't see a Quick View command? Maybe it isn't installed yet. It's there; let us see what we can do.

To see if Quick View is installed, right-click any *.txt file, and you should see a Quick View command. To install Quick View, open the Control Panel (choose Settings, Control Panel from the Start menu).

1. Double-click Add/Remove Programs, click the Windows Setup tab.

2. In the list under Components, double-click Accessories.

3. Click the check box next to Quick View and click OK twice.

4. Now you can access Quick View by right-clicking a file and selecting it from the context menu.

Another way to access it, however, is to add a shortcut to Quick View on your desktop for drag-and-drop access. To create the desktop shortcut:

1. Right-click on a blank area of the desktop and choose New, Shortcut from the context menu.

2. Type X:\Windows\System\Viewers\Quikview.exe (notice, no "c" in Quikview) in the Command Line (where "X:\Windows" is the drive letter and folder where Windows is installed on your system), and click Next.

3. Give your shortcut a meaningful name (such as "Quick View") and click Finish.

4. Now to view a file in Quick View, simply drag and drop the file to the new shortcut icon to view it.

Windows is full of radio buttons, but most of them won't ever carry a tune. When you open the Radio button toolbar in My Computer, though -- choose View, Toolbars, Radio -- you get a chance to connect to Internet radio stations and listen to music, talk, or other sounds of the cybersphere. The Radio toolbar has a volume control, a Radio Station selection drop-down list, and a simple Play button.

You know that Windows has a limited supply of resources -- areas of memory it sets aside for tracking program and window use. How can you know if resources are running dry, other than waiting for a crash? Use the Resource Meter.

If you're debating whether your computer needs more RAM to operate more efficiently, keep an eye on your Windows resources with the help of the Resource Meter. Once activated, this Windows utility displays and updates the current system, user, and GDI resources available to your applications.

To activate the this applet, click the Start button and go to Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and select Resource Meter. If you have rearranged your Start menu, then just use the Find applet. (Click OK at the message informing you that Resource Meter uses resources too). The Resource Meter appears as an icon in the system tray of your task bar, using green, yellow and red lights to indicate the status of your system resources (green means resources are available; red means little or no resources are available). Positioning your mouse pointer over the icon will display a bubble listing the exact percentages of free resources remaining (or right-click on the icon, choose Details from the context menu).

If System, User, or GDI resources are more than 90 percent used (or only 10% free), you should close windows and programs to avoid a crash. To deactivate the Resource Meter, right-click on the icon, and choose Exit. The icon will disappear.

CTRL+X is cut, CTRL+C is copy, and CTRL+V is paste. For the most part, these are universal shortcuts; you'll save time by using them regularly. Easy enough, but there's a clippy spin you may not be aware of. The clipboard resides in system memory; whenever you cut or copy data, that much [RAM] is being used. No big deal for smaller stuff (like text), but imagine what kind of strain you're putting on your system with larger objects (like images). Long story short: flush the clipboard when you're finished with it. How? Just copy a something small.

Protect your most important files from accidental (or even intentional) editing by marking the file 'Read-Only'. Use My Computer or Windows Explorer to locate the file, then right-click on it and choose Properties from the context menu. In the General tab under Attributes, mark the 'Read-Only' check box and click OK. Once marked, you and other users can open the file and even edit it, but cannot save the changes over the original contents.

Note that this isn't a fool-proof security measure--there's nothing to prevent someone else from removing the read-only attribute if they know how. But it can prevent accidental overwrites when reaching absent-mindedly for the Save button.

Thank you, Barry Aronson of PCWorks, for sending me this information. This is a problem that always bothered me, and finally, you've come up with the research. And now other readers can benefit from it; thank you, Barry.

"New Windows users may not be aware of this, but advanced users know this problem. After extended use of Windows, your free system resource memory decreases over time, even if you haven't run any programs

To prove this, we launched a fairly full-featured, best-selling brand PC with Windows 98, and then monitored system resource memory over several 24-hour test periods. For example, on one occasion Windows reported having 84% free system memory directly after startup, but 24 hours later, it was down to 46%. Obviously, there was a memory leak: it could have been in Windows, in some of our apps, or both.

For those who've never heard about a the memory-leak problem, here's the scoop. Windows applications, drivers, and utilities, as well as other software - authored both by Microsoft and third parties - grab memory when they start up. The problem starts when they fail to release it when they exit. When this occurs, it can lead to your computer system's resources becoming so low that your PC becomes unstable and/or unusable. One way to recover from this memory problem s to restart your PC and Windows. (There are others which require third party memory recovery utilities, but they are never 100% reliable).

We were able to determine several hypothetical reasons why our system resource memory deteriorated, even when not being used and with no applications running. For example, if you launch a program and abruptly quit the application before it has completely started, you will lose system resource memory. In fact, here are few things we learned from our tests:

1. Poorly written commercial screen savers accessed memory during operation. When the screen saver was stopped, system resource memory did not recover.

2. Our anti-virus software was in active detection mode and launched several times during the 24-hour tests to check for viruses in memory, the root directories, and on hard disks. It then proceeded to scan for any new files installed or downloaded. Each 24 hours of a-v activity resulted in a drop of 25% in system memory, without any other applications being run.

3. Websites with java applets can cause problems no matter whether you're using Netscape, AOL 5/6, or Internet Explorer. Find a website that requires a large Java applet to be downloaded and executed automatically, and then allow your browser to remain on that site for an extended period of time. Then, exit out of your browser. You'll find your system memory resources reduced and unrecoverable. More than half of the java application websites we tested produced this result."

Looking for a quick way to restart Windows without a time-consuming "cold" or "warm" reboot? Select Start, Shut Down (or place the focus on the desktop and press Alt-F4). In the resulting dialog box, select Restart The Computer, then hold down the Shift key while clicking the Yes button. Windows restarts without shutting down and rebooting the entire system.

To make your machine reboot from a desktop icon this is what you do.

1. Right click on the desktop anyplace there is a blank spot.

2. Select New, then select Shortcut. Type exactly this in the first active:

   c:\windows\rundll.exe ser,exitwindowsexec

3. I would suggest you copy/paste the above. Then click on Next

4. Give it a name; something like "Reboot NOW" ... The next time you double click on the icon your machine should reboot.

5. To make your machine do a fast shutdown from a desktop icon you do exactly what it says for the "Reboot" with the exception that you do NOT put the exec at the end of to command ... that's it.