Category: Windows 7

Windows 7 has so many features and if you may not know how to make use of all of them. To know quickly about a Windows 7 feature, you can resort to Windows Help and Support Center. Here is how you can access and use the Help and Support Center.

In Windows 7, Microsoft completely removed the classic Start Menu of Windows 2000. In Windows Vista, you could change the settings to show the classic Start Menu but not in Windows 7. But you can still change the settings to show the Programs sub-menu in the Start Menu of Windows 7.

Windows 7 automatically downloads updates from time to time and keeps your Windows up to date. But these update files are stored on your computer even after they are installed. You can claim some hard disk space by deleting these update files.

Windows 7 taskbar does not show the name of open windows in the taskbar, but it combines all the same type of windows into a single icon. You can choose to stop this behavior and make Windows 7 show all open windows icons in the taksbar separately. This would make the Windows 7 taskbar look and behave like the Windows Vista taskbar.

When you open an unknown file type in Windows, it shows you a dialog to use web service to find a suitable program to open that file. Many users do not like this dialog and want to go straight to the list of installed programs to choose from. You can disable this dialog by following the instructions below.

We have seen that how you can put a shortcut to the Recycle Bin in the taskbar in Windows 7, just like in Ubuntu Linux. Once you have the Recycle Bin in your Windows taskbar, you no longer need the main icon on the desktop. You can remove the Recycle Bin icon from the desktop.

Windows 7 has a Windows Sidebar which has various gadgets inside it. By default, Windows 7 has no gadgets pre-added. You have to add the gadgets that you want. If you want to add gadgets to the Windows Sidebar then you can follow the steps given in this article.

Windows 7 has a sidebar feature which contains gadgets. You can add or install more gadgets to this sidebar. If you do not like a gadget you can remove that gadget as explained in this article.

User access control (UAC) is a feature of Windows 7 that controls the level of access given to various programs. When you turn UAC off, Windows refuses to show the non-Microsoft sidebar gadgets because of security. But you can show these sidebar gadgets too, if you want to.

Sometimes, as an administrator, you want to run a program as a different user. The reasons may be that you want the program to save the settings in that users profile or you may want to install a program only for that user etc. Here is how you can run a program as a different user.