Customizing Your Windows Treatment

By LAWRENCE J. MAGID

Oct. 20, 1997 12 AM PT

Readers of this column certainly aren’t shy when they feel I’ve made a technical error. A couple of weeks ago, in my article about Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4.0, I pointed out that the new IE can change the way you navigate folders on your Windows 95 desktop by adding back and forward buttons on all sub-folders (folders within other folders).

That, as I pointed out, lets you navigate between a main folder and a sub-folder the same way you navigate the Web. It also reduces screen clutter by letting one folder replace another, rather than cluttering your screen with lots of open folders.

Though I was correct in saying that you need IE to get the back-and-forth buttons, several readers pointed out that you don’t need IE to modify the way Windows 95 folders open and close.

The letters started me thinking about all the other tips and tricks for changing the way Windows 95 behaves. I can’t describe them all in one column, but I can get you started on the road to customizing your machine.

Before you proceed, I do have a warning. Though none of these tricks are difficult, mastering them does put you into the fraternity of geeks, nerds and tinkerers. Tinkering with a PC can become habit-forming.

First, there’s that folder trick. Normally, Windows 95 opens folders inside of folders. Eventually, your PC’s desktop starts to look as cluttered as your regular desk. You can avoid this by double-clicking on the My Computer icon, selecting Options from the View menu and clicking where it says “browse folders by using a single window that changes as you open each folder.”

What isn’t obvious once you do this is that when you’re inside an open folder, you can move back to the previous folder by pressing the backspace key.

Windows 95 gives you lots of ways to start programs. Most people use the Start menu in the lower left corner, but lots of people don’t know that it can easily be customized.

By default, there is a sub-menu called Programs, which contains pointers to your installed software. For programs you use often, it’s more convenient to place a shortcut in the main area of the menu so you don’t need to hunt through sub-menus.

There are several ways to do this. One way is to right-click on the Start button and select Explore to look at the folder that contains all the shortcuts in your start menu. To add a new one, you can select New from the File menu, select Shortcut and browse until you find a program you want to add.

You can also delete items from the Start menu by deleting their shortcuts from this folder. If you delete anything, be sure you’re deleting a shortcut and not the program itself. A shortcut has a little up arrow on the left side of the icon.

While you’re in this window, click on Programs and then click on Start-Up. Any icons you see in this folder represent programs that will start automatically when you run Windows. If there are programs that you don’t need to run, you can remove them and the program will no longer start automatically. Conversely, if there’s a program you want to load automatically, you can place a shortcut to it in this folder.

Another way to add to the Start menu is to single-click on any program or folder and just drag it to the Start button. Unlike most dragging operations, it doesn’t move the file, but creates a shortcut to it inside the Start menu. This isn’t limited to programs. If you have a data file you use frequently, you can drag it to the Start menu and load it and the program that created it by selecting it as if it were a program.

My wife shares a computer with our 11-year-old son, and he has put so many icons on the desktop that she has trouble finding the programs she needs. So I created a new folder called “Patti” and put shortcuts in that folder to just the programs she uses. I then dragged that folder to the Start menu, so now Patti can find her programs by simply selecting her folder from that menu.

Speaking of screen clutter, it’s possible to minimize all your windows so you can actually see the Windows 95 desktop. One way is to right click in the gray area at the bottom right of your screen and click on minimize. An easier way, if you have a relatively new PC or a new keyboard with the Windows key (it has the Windows logo on it and is usually near the space bar), is to hold down the Windows key and press M (for minimize). Your programs are still running and you can display them by clicking on the tab or pressing the alt and tab keys.

The most obvious way to display the files on your disk is to click on the My Computer icon and double-click on the C drive. It’s easier, however, to launch Windows Explorer from the Programs sub-menu in the Start menu. You can quickly locate any file on your hard drive.

If you want to move a file from one directory or disk to another, just launch a second instance of Explorer and drag the file from one folder to another. If you want to copy the file instead of moving it, drag it down with the right mouse button and you’ll get a menu that lets you choose whether to move the file, copy it or make a shortcut.

To make things simple, Windows displays only the first part of the name of files, but most files have an extension that tells you what program they’re associated with. Not everyone needs to know the extension, but I find the information useful. So I turn it on by clicking on My Computer, selecting Options from the View menu, clicking the View tab and removing the check mark from “hide MS-DOS file extensions for file types that are registered.”

One problem with the way Windows stores files is that you can sometimes lose track of a file. But the Find command (on the Start menu) can locate almost anything. Make sure that it’s looking in C and that “include subdirectories” is checked. Type in all or part of the file name.

If you don’t know the file name, click on the advanced tab and type in any text that may be in the file. Play with the other options and you’ll soon master this powerful search tool.

As I said at the start, there are plenty more tips where this came from. One simple way to learn more about Windows 95 is to explore the help system that you’ll find in the Start menu. Another is to explore the Microsoft Knowledge base on the Web. You’ll find links to it and other sources of information on Windows 95 at https://www.larrysworld.com/wintips.htm

Lawrence J. Magid can be reached via e-mail at magid@latimes.com. His World Wide Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com

Top 10

WinZip, a program that lets computer users compress and decompress files, tops a CNet list of the most popular Windows 95 shareware:

Rank: 1

File name: winzip95.zip

Description: WinZip version 6.3 for Windows 95

Rank: 2

File name: v95i311e.zip

Description: McAfee’s Virus Scanner for Windows 95

Rank: 3

File name: quake106.zip

Description: Addresses general problems Quake game players encounter