Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

 As I said before, I don’t use the desktop to store files.  I keep just one shortcut on my desktop.  This doesn’t stop Windows from running the Desktop Cleanup Wizard every couple of months.  That’s when this screen pops up and tries to remove anything I have not used “recently” from my desktop.  The killer thing… it wants to create a new folder on my desktop called “Unused Desktop Shortcuts” and place all the “unused” icons in there.

For all I know, after another 60 days it might ask to remove the folder it created to hold the icons I don’t use.

1 – Don’t use your desktop to store files.
2 – If you break rule #1, you don’t want to be bothered by this utility that is continuously running in the background waiting to pounce on the 60th day.

Here are instructions to turn it off.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320154

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I have never been able to understand why the default setting in Windows is to turn off all file extensions.  File extensions are the three letters at the end of a file name that let you know what type of file you have.

.DOC is a Word document
.XLS is an Excel spreadsheet
.TXT is a plain text document (no formatting)

Here is an exhaustive list.

Out of the box, Windows hides the last three letters.  Apparently, it is just too technical for people to see and would confuse everyone.  As a result, I get a lot of files from people with double extensions: assignment01.htm.txt

When you double-click a file, Windows will open the application associated with the three letter extension.  The problem is that you can’t see the three letter extension.  Here is where it causes problems.

picture.jpg
picture.gif
picture.png

All three of the above files would appear as “picture” if the file extensions were turned off.  All are graphical (bitmap) formats.  If you need a select a specific format, there is no way to distinguish the three files.

This is an easy thing to fix.  Open up Windows Explorer.  Click the Tools menu and select Folder Options.  The window below will open.  Click the View tab.

Uncheck the “Hide extensions for known file types” box.  Click OK.

Here is something that can speed up your Windows login.  It’s called auto-login and you may already be using it. It is the default setting on a Windows machine with just one configured user account.

When you boot Windows, it has the ability to automatically login with user credentials that have been preset.  To make these settings, click Start, Run and type

control userpasswords2

This will open the User Accounts window.  Uncheck the box in front of “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.”

As soon as you click OK, you will be prompted for the user credentials to use for auto-login.  Enter your username and password.  The next time your computer reboots, it will automatically login using this user account and password.

This is an efficiency tip I don’t use very often.  To me, it is more important to have a secure computer where someone cannot get to the files without knowing a username and password.  Good security is rarely efficient.

I have a computer that is a build-it-yourself Tivo that I use to record television so that I can watch programs on my computer.  I have login scripts that handle the scheduling of what gets recorded.  I setup auto-login on this machine because it gets rebooted a lot and does not have a keyboard, mouse or monitor.  Any configuration is done via VNC.  The auto-login is useful on a machine like this.

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