Windows 7 general tips

Just got your hands on Windows 7 and want to bend it to your will? No problem. We've got plenty of tips, hacks and secrets to keep you busy for a long time, including automatically opening Windows Explorer to a folder of your choice, speeding up taskbar thumbnails, finding hidden desktop themes, forcing User Account Control to act the way you'd like, keeping your Explorer searches secret from others, and more.

So check out these tips. If you like them, we'll keep more coming.

General tips

We'll start with a few nifty tips that can make your desktop more interesting, make it easier to get around and increase your computer's power efficiency.

TIP 1: Shake Your Desktop Free of Clutter

If you frequently run multiple programs simultaneously, your desktop can get extremely cluttered. This can get annoying if you're working on one program and want to minimize all the other windows -- in previous versions of Windows you had to minimize them individually.

With Windows 7's "shake" feature, though, you can minimize every window except the one in which you're currently working -- in a single step. Click and hold the title bar of the window you want to keep on the desktop; while still holding the title bar, shake it quickly back and forth until all of the other windows minimize to the taskbar. Then let go. To make them return, shake the title bar again.

You can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Window key-Home key combination -- although doing that is not nearly as much fun.

TIP 2: Get a Power Efficiency Report

Have a laptop and want to get more battery life out of it? Windows 7 includes a hidden built-in tool that will examine your laptop's energy use and make recommendations on how to improve it. To use it:

Problem Steps Recorder - Send information to tech support

Problem Steps Recorder: A way to become a professional

You can use Problem Steps Recorder to automatically capture the steps you take on a computer, including a text description of where you clicked and a picture of the screen during each click (called a screen shot). Once you capture these steps, you can save them to a file that can be used by a support professional or someone else helping you with a computer problem.

Notes

• When you record steps on your computer, anything you type will not be recorded. If what you type is an important part of recreating the problem you're trying to solve, use the comment feature described below to highlight where the problem is occurring.
  Some programs, like a full-screen game, might not be captured accurately or might not provide useful details to a support professional.

The next time you find yourself trying to describe a complicated computer problem to a friend or tech support, give Problem Steps Recorder a try. You can record a series of screen shots, add notes, and email them directly to whoever is helping you. For tips on using Problem Steps Recorder

To record and save steps on your computer

1. Open Problem Steps Recorder by clicking the Start button , and then typing psr. In the list of results, click psr.
2. Click Start Record. On your computer, go through the steps on your computer to reproduce the problem. You can pause the recording at any time, and then resume it later.
3. Click Stop Record.
4. In the Save As dialog box, type a name for the file, and then click Save (the file is saved with the .zip file name extension).
   To view the record of the steps you recorded, open the .zip file you just saved, and then double-click the file. The document will open in your browser.