Helpful Little Tricks
 

Use this thread to post little tricks you use that could be helpful to other TFPers. Even if you think it may be kinda old, maybe someone hasn't seen or thought of it yet.

Winamp Trick:

You know when you got a nice playlist set up and you forgot to save it, and then you click on a song blindly in Explorer and erase the whole damn thing? Actually it isn't erased until winamp is closed again. Just go into Task manager and kill winamp.exe and your playlist will be saved. Now don't forget to save the damn thing next time. ;)

Good thread, Holo!

I think my favorite "trick" is in Windows. You can press F2 after a file is highlighted and it'll go into rename mode. That way, you don't have to click the file again and wait, or do a right click -> rename. That trick also works for individual cells in Excel.

i only have 4 icon on my desktop and they dont have any labels, just icons. looks much cleaner. to do this highlight the shortcut > press f2 > hold alt, press 2, 5, 5 and there you have it! no icon labels. if your gonna do another icon, you have to do alt + 255 twice.. 3rd icon, three times and so on

man, being devoid of a mouse for a few weeks...

I learned about space to scroll down, shift space to scroll up, tab, shift tab... Delete to go back, shift delete to go forward...

Enter "http://www..com" with the touch of two keys.

Type the name of the site you want to go to in the address bar of your Web Broser (For example, type: google) >
Press 'Ctrl+Enter' >
The complete web address will be entered (http://www.google.com).

*This works with IE & Avant. Haven't tested any other browsers.

Works with Firefox as well :)

That's a good idea. I hate clutter on my desktop as well. I choose to get rid of icons completely (Right click desktop | Arrange Icons By | Show Desktop icons), and use the Quick Launch bar instead. I have shortcuts to all of my frequently used programs in my quick launch toolbar. I have it setup so well that I rarely even use the start menu anymore. To make room for all of my shortcuts, I made my taskbar twice as high (two rows of icons in my quick launch bar).

A couple more useful shortcuts I use often are:
Winkey + D - Minimizes everything open, hit it again, restores everything back to the way it was.
Winkey + Pause|Break - Opens system properties

URLS for other trick threads I've made.

Windows Key Tricks

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=52407



Deleted Pic Recovery

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=47027



Screencaps in WMP9

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=50172

Windows key + r brings up the run box. From there, if you know the system name of the program ( the one that shows in processes) you can run virtually any windows program from it. after getting used to it, it is faster than using the mouse.

Here are the ones I use reguarly:
winword, excel, iexplore, explorer, notepad, calc, dreamweaver, aim, outlook, vncviewer.

To add to this, you can also specify a directory location in the run box for direct access. ex: "c:\mp3"

another one.. being the desktop neat freak i am
dont you hate it when you change your resolution and then your icons get all messed up. well, download http://www.pcnineoneone.com/tweaks/layout.zip , extract layout.dll to \Windows\System32 and double click on layout.reg. now arrange your desktop icons to your liking, right click on your recycling bin and click save desktop icon layout. so now if your icons get moved again, right click on recycling bin and restore desktop icon layout.

and another one i always do...
determine the irq of your System CMOS/Real Time Clock in device manager. now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl in regedit. make a new dword IRQxPriority, x being the irq number of your System CMOS/Real Time Clock and set the value to 1. should give your system a boost!

Yep, works in Firefox 1.0 as well. Thanks for the tip :-)

The Alt+Tab Toggle (Windows XP)

This is a trick I use more than any other. I usually work with a lot of different windows open and my hands are usually on the keyboard. Instead of reaching for the mouse to clink on a different window, hold down Alt and then press the tab key. If you keep holding the Alt key down, it will show you all of your open windows and allow you to toggle to another one. The window title will show at the bottom of this screen so you are not toggling blindly. Once you get used to this, you will be alt+tabbing like crazy!

What exactly does this do?

That would be a great tip if i could get it to work!

the handiest tip i have is to use mozilla firefox and download mouse gestures, makes browsing really quick and easy...

tandem.. that tweak is just in a lot of tweak guides. google it up for some info. it seems like people are saying that it doesnt really work but what the hell.. if it doesnt mess anything up, why not. maybe its just me, but it does seem a little faster on my comp. just know how to use the registry editor

dnd.. i dont know why it isnt working for you. while renaming an icon, press and hold Alt, then press 2, then 5, then 5 on the num pad, then let go. i have my icon label text set to arial btw.

Or download <a href="http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/">Strokeit</a> and get system-wide mouse gestures!

Awesome, thanks for that one

Very Interesting thread.

Appreciate all the tips being shared. Now to try some of them......

To add one more I use frequently but didn't see mentioned - ALT-F4.

I use this to close those dam full screen windows that pop open in IE with no menu bar.

Windows key + E brings up my computer
Windows key + D minimizes all the windows and goes to desktop

[QUOTE=dnd]That would be a great tip if i could get it to work!

It may be that you're not using the keypad numbers - it will only work with 255 on the right side of the keyboard. You're essentially creating a filename with an invisible letter (placeholder) so you need to enter the ALT code for it.

Thanks to people in a various thread:
WindowsKey + L locks the computer.
Nice feature, at first I thought it logged you off, but all background programs still run which is perfect for me (AIM, Bearshare)

run, msconfig to kill pesky startup programs.

run, gpedit.msc to customize security/many other options in windows.

make a shut down shortcut- create a new shortcut to "Shutdown -s -t 00" for shutdown

make a reboot shortcut - create a new shortcut to "Shutdown -r -t 00" for restart

notes: dont use qoutes, and you can change 00 to how many seconds you want a warning for
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DMA
in your device manager, make sure your primary ide and secondary ide channels are set to run at DMA if available. PIO only is slower than IDE. My dvd drive went to PIO only for some reason and dvds started to skip and such. So set to DMA if available.
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CTRL-W will close just the one window without closing all of you IE windows.