Windows Tricks

Are you having trouble when you try to highlight text? Put your cursor at the point where you want to start highlighting (selecting) the text.


Next hold down your SHIFT key and use your up / down arrows. You’ll find when you hold down an arrow that the text scrolls (and highlights) by at a much more manageable rate.


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Have you ever tried to shut your computer down, only to have it hang on the shut down screen? Or maybe it’s locked up beyond any CTRL-ALT-DEL help. You may find that hitting the power button doesn’t seem to do anything.


If you really need to force a shutdown via the power switch, press it in and hold for 6 seconds. That should turn the computer off.


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Need to get to your system properties? Well, you *could* click the Start button, Settings, Control Panel, then open the System icon.


Want a faster way?


Hold down the ALT key and double click the My Computer icon on your desktop.


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Here’s a cool trick for the scroll wheel mouse users out there… if you are in a web browser (Explorer, Firefox, Netscape) or reading an email in Outlook Express, hold down your Ctrl key and spin the wheel. It makes the text larger or smaller depending on which way you spin. For users of the Opera browser, it magnifies both the images and the text.


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Do you ever need to make your Favorites side bar disappear or appear? With Internet Explorer and Fire fox just type Ctrl+B. With Netscape Ctrl+B opens the Bookmark Manager.


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To get a new browser window in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Netscape just type Ctrl+N.


For a new tab in FireFox or Netscape type Ctrl+T.


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When you print digital photos do the colors look different than what you saw on the monitor? Not way off, but just a little (and you have enough ink)? If you print a lot of pictures then what you can do is print out a picture, let the ink dry over night, then adjust your screen to match. By synchronizing your settings you should get what you see on the screen.


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Every time you visit a web site, your browser stores the site address (and all the pages visited on that site) in a history file. This comes in real handy when you’re trying to remember the cool site you were visiting the other day, or if you wanna check up on what sites were visited by your kids.


In both Netscape and Internet Explorer you can hit CTRL+H to view history.


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If you go to a site that should have updated content but it seems like it didn’t change, that could be due to a cached version coming up. To make sure that you are getting the most recent version of a page, hold down the Ctrl key and click the Refresh button in your browser.


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Ever go to a site for information that you need, but the animations and stupid music are so annoying. Wait till the page loads, then hit the “Stop” button on your browser. All the insanity on the page should cease, making your visit more bearable.


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Want to stop your computer from connecting to the internet without your permission?


With Internet Explorer go to Tools / Internet Options, then under the “Connections” tab select “Never Dial a Connection”. Now when trying to dial out you will be prompted before it happens.