Cycle Your Laptop Battery
Always Cycle your laptop battery by allowing it to charge down to 10% at least one a month to maintain maximum life.
Keyboard Shortcut for Locking Windows
By holding down the Windows Key and the "L" key, your screen will lock and require and a Ctrl-Alt-Del and a password to log back in, allowing the user to keep his or her work private while at lunch or away
Quick Launch Toolbar
You can use the Quick Launch Toolbar to add your most commonly used items to help speed things up for you.
Get used to your Keyboard
Try using only your keyboard without the mouse to get used to shortcut keys, thus, speeding things up with having to change over to the mouse.
Keep your UPS battery strong
Make sure your battery in your UPS power supply is good. If the battery is weak or dead, It can cause real problems with your system being unstable.
Refurbishing harddrives
Modern harddrives include thousands of spare sectors. If yours has started showing many (over 100?) bad sectors and/or corrupted files, one way to "fix" it is to use Sysinternal's SDELETE program to "clean" the drive. Since, for an empty drive, that writes to every sector of the drive, all the bad sectors will be replaced by spares. Problem solved!
Create a window image graphic
Alt+PrtSc (print screen key) copies any window to clipboard. Ctrl+V to paste into any text area such as an email or Word.
Answers to new PC users questions open to Public
Attend the New Users Q&A tutorial at 5:45-6:30pm before our main meeting on the third Wednesday of each month at 2300 Howe Ave, Sacramento CA 95825. Public is welcome and there is no fees. Stay for the main SPCUG meeting and learn how PC users help PC users by sharing knowledge.
Enlarge browser text and graphics
Use the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to enlarge or reduce the browser screen image.
Use Magnifier to zoom view under your mouse
Open Magnifier by clicking the Start button, select All Programs and Accessories. Click Ease of Access, and then clicking Magnifier.
Limit Browser Search Terms
In your web search queries use a minus sign (-) in front of terms that you want to exclude
IE9 Show Menu Bar
IE9 Show Menu Bar keyboard shortcut: ALT key press will temporarily show or hide the menu toolbar. After you make a selection, the menu bar goes away
IE9 Show Home Page
IE9 Show Home Page keyboard shortcut: ALT+HOME - Go to your homepage
IE9 Show Favorites
IE9 Show Favorites keyboard shortcut: ALT+C - View your favorites, feeds, and browsing history
IE9 Download Manager
IE9 Download Manager keyboard shortcut: CTRL+J - Open Download Manager
IE9 Select Address Text
IE9 Select Address bar text keyboard shortcut: CTRL+L - Highlight the text in the Address bar
IE9 Add Webpage to Favorites
IE9 Add Favorites keyboard shortcut: CTRL+D - Add a webpage to your favorites
IE9 Organize Favorites
IE9 Organize Favorites keyboard shortcut: CTRL+B - Organize your Favorites
Add a shortcut to your Start button
To add a shortcut to y our Start button just Left or Right click and hold on a shortcut icon and then drag onto the Start Button, hesitate briefly while the Start list pops up and drag to place anywhere within your Start Button list.
Keyboard shortcut to minimize all active windows
Minimize all active windows by using the keyboard shortcut of WindowsKey+M. All active windows will minimize down to your taskbar ready to re-activate when selected.
Clean out the Recycle Bin
To free space on your computer, you’ll need to empty the Recycle Bin periodically. To empty the Recycle Bin, right-click the icon on your desktop, and then click Empty Recycle Bin.
Increase or decrease Icon sizes
Right-click the desktop, point to View, and then click Large Icons, Medium Icons, or Classic Icons (classic icons are the smallest) to quickly make just the icons on your Windows 7 or Windows Vista desktop larger and easier to see or smaller to minimize space required.