Category: Windows 7

Whenever you open a file using the Open dialog box or by double-clicking on it in Windows Explorer, it is recorded in the Windows Recent folder or the Windows Registry. If you want to know which files you recently accessed then you can use the RecentFilesView from Nir Sofer. This utility display the list of all recently opened files, and allows you to delete unwanted filename entries. You can also save the files list into a text, html or xml file.

If you have made changes to your Windows Registry so that it requires you to log off and log back on, but you do not want to log off, then you can just kill explorer.exe process and restart it. This way the current user section of the Registry is loaded again along with the changes that you made. Although you can kill explorer.exe using the Task Manager, but there is a hidden option in Windows 7 to exit explorer.exe safely.

In the older versions of Windows (before Windows 7), you could easily hide or minimize the Windows taskbar to free up extra working space on the desktop for Windows. Usually, the extra space makes surfing the internet or watching movies a better experience. Unfortunately, this sometimes does not work in the Windows 7. But you can hide or minimize the Windows 7 taskbar using a third party tool called ShellWin.

For the security reasons, it is a great idea to lock your computer before you get up from your desk. You do not want anyone else to access your computer behind your back. But even better is the idea to automatically lock your computer after it is idle for a specified number of minutes. If you have set your computer to lock automatically, then you do not have to worry – it gets auto-locked!

When you start your Windows 7 computer, a logon screen is presented to you where you can enter your login credentials. For extra security, you can enable the requirement of pressing the key combination Ctrl + Alt + Del before a user can see the logon screen. Not having to press Ctrl + Alt + Del leaves users susceptible to attacks that attempt to intercept their passwords.

When you start your Windows 7 computer, it asks you for your login credentials. This is essential for system security to protect your files and other data in a multi-user environment. But if you are the only person physically accessing your computer, then you do not have to worry too much about anyone trying to access your data. In this case, you may want to automatically logon to Windows.

When you start your Windows based computer, you see a Windows logo while Windows boots. This splash screen can lengthen the boot up time for a few seconds. If you do not like to see this splash screen when Windows is booting and want to make the booting process a little faster, then you can disable this splash screen.

Microsoft has released the first service pack SP1 for Windows 7 this month. After you have installed the SP1 update on your Windows 7 machine, you are left with around 530MB of backup files on the 32-bit edition of Windows 7 and around 960MB of backup files on the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. If you have no future plan for uninstalling the SP1 update (like most of Windows 7 users), then you can safely get rid of these backup files and reclaim this hard disk space.

Microsoft has finally released the first service pack SP1 for Windows 7. If you want, you can slipstream (integrate) this service pack on the Windows DVD itself. The benefit of the slipstreaming is that you do not have to separately install it after installing Windows. When you install fresh copy of Windows 7, the SP1 would be installed by itself.