Bring up a command prompt, pointing to any folder

Slowly, as each new version of Windows debuted, it seemed the venerable Command Prompt kept getting shuffled closer and closer to the exits, resigned to submenus or deep into obscure context menus and kept breathing only with the help of add-on software like Microsoft’s Power Toys. If you’ve still got a space in your heart for the stark prompt, though, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s at least holding its own in Windows 7.

Without installing any special software, you can launch a Command Prompt from any folder, and the prompt will emerge automatically pointing at that folder. (This was possible in Vista, too.) All you need to do: Find the folder in Windows Explorer or on the Windows Desktop, hold down the Shift key, and right-click the folder. In the context menu that unfolds, select the option Open command window here. (This option only appears when the Shift key is included in the action sequence.) You’ll get that comforting old monochrome window ready for your “DIR” command:
 

 
This isn’t the only way to launch a prompt, of course. You can still find the familiar Command Prompt launcher option in the Start menu, under All Programs > Accessories, which you can pin to the taskbar if you’re a real command-line aficion. (To pin it, right-click Command Prompt in the Start menu, left-click on Pin to taskbar.) And if you really use the prompt enough to make a desktop shortcut worthwhile, too, navigate in Windows Explorer to C:\Windows\System32, find the file cmd.exe, right-click on it, choose Send To from the pop-up menu, and select the Desktop (create shortcut) option to make a discrete icon happen.

See expanded Send To menus in Windows Explorer

Now here’s a head-scratcher of a Windows 7 shortcut. The puzzling part is why Microsoft even made it necessary! 

Many of us are familiar, from earlier versions of Windows, with the Send To command in Windows Explorer. In a nutshell: If you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, one of the options in the menu that pops up, Send To, lets you move the file to certain locations, such as to a zipped folder or onto a local/network drive. 

Simple enough. But in Windows 7 you have the option to see an extended list of Send To destinations by using a shortcut.

In 7, before you right-click on that file, hold down the Shift key. Once the context menu pops up, release Shift and left-click on the Send To menu item as you normally would. You’ll likely see, depending on your PC, that the number of Send To items has increased substantially versus if you hadn’t held down Shift. Here's what we saw, with the expnded Send To menu at left, and the "normal" one at right:
 

 
On our test system, we saw the former “My” folders (Documents, Music, and so on) now appear in the list. The Windows Desktop itself is also given as a possible destination for your file.
Our big beef here is why we need to hold down Shift at all; the extra Send To menu items are handy, but there’s not a whole lot of reason for Microsoft to have required an extra step to access them, that we can see. Well, at least there’s room for improvement in Windows 8.

Speed up Windows 7 shutdown

At least in our early experiments with Windows 7, we’ve had no complaints about general speed for most basic Windows tasks. That said, there’s always room for improvement, and one of the areas in which some users will wish for some is in the shutdown and restart process. Especially if you do a lot of software installs and uninstalls, waiting for Windows to shut down in an orderly fashion can leave you tapping your fingernails on your desk for precious seconds. 

There’s not a lot you can do about startup times, but shutdown is, to an extent, governed by settings in the Windows Registry. Tweaking these can accelerate shutdown a bit. As always, proceed with caution where the Windows Registry is concerned. Before you start tweaking, back up your data files, and, for safety’s sake, back up your Registry, too. (You can do this via the regedit command: Type regedit in the Start menu search box, then choose File > Export from the resulting Registry Editor window. Make sure All is selected under Export range.)

All set? In the Start menu, type regedit into the search box and hit Enter. You’ll launch the Registry Editor, if you’re not already there from your Registry backup. Proceed with caution! All changes take effect in realtime, so here’s not the place to experiment. Don’t poke around in places in the Registry if you’re not 100 percent sure what you’re doing.

In the left pane, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control. One of the options that should pop up in the right pane once you’re there is called WaitToKillServiceTimeout. You’ll want to change a value in this Registry entry, so right-click on it and choose Modify. You'll get an Edit String box:

 
The default value you see may vary; on a Windows 7 desktop and laptop we tried this with, we saw a value of 12,000 (that’s in milliseconds); on a Vista laptop, we saw 20,000. We suggest changing it to 10,000, for starters. We definitely wouldn’t get too aggressive (i.e., don’t try “0” if you value stability), but work your way down slowly.
And that’s it! Next time you restart and then shut down, you should see the faster result.

Install Control Panel submenus in the Start menu

If you’re any kind of PC tweaker, like we are, you spend way too much time inside the Windows Control Panel. One of the quibbles we’ve had with past versions of Windows was the several layers of clicks you’d have to negotiate to get into the depths of Control Panel—especially with the Category as opposed to Classic view of the panel that was the default with Vista.

In Windows 7, you can set up the OS to allow you direct access to individual Control Panel items straight from the Start menu. To set this up, right-click the Start button in the taskbar, and choose Properties from the resulting context menu. In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box that pops up, click the Start Menu tab, then the Customize button. Under the subcategory named Control Panel on the ensuing screen, choose Display as a menu. It's here:

Now, when you click Control Panel in the Start menu, you’ll get a selection list that shows all the same Control Panel sub-items that you’d get if you launched the Control Panel into its own window. It looks like this:

Miss your old taskbar buttons? Revert ’em

For the first few weeks we spent with Windows 7, we stumbled around the new default taskbar like we were lost in a corn maze. Don’t get us wrong—we like most of the changes to it. But the big graphical icons signifying programs, as opposed to the horizontal-tiles-with-text that we were used to from Windows XP and Vista, made us think twice every time we approached the taskbar region. Was the app launched, or merely pinned to the taskbar?
We’re sure we’ll get the hang of the new taskbar yet, but in the meantime, we poked around and discovered that you can revert things to the way they used to be. (That’s comforting, since that can be said of so few things in life.)

Right-click on the taskbar, and choose Properties. This launches the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box. (We’ll be coming back to this box more than a few times in this story.) On the Taskbar tab, you’ll see a drop-down menu called Taskbar buttons. We've circled it here:

Windows 7’s default installation has this menu set at Always combine, hide labels. Change the setting to Combine when taskbar is full or Never combine, as you see fit. (Never combine prevents the taskbar from grouping a given program’s multiple windows together when the taskbar gets crowded.) Voila: You’ll see the familiar taskbar buttons of old, replete with text labels.

Instant, Windows-wide screen zoom within Windows 7

If you spend much time browsing the Web at a high screen resolution (we’d classify that  as anything above 1,280x1,024) on a relatively small screen, you’re intimately familiar with browser-window zoom shortcut keys. (In Internet Explorer, for example, that’s the Ctrl key combined with the plus or minus key.) This shortcut quickly boosts the size of onscreen text. But wouldn’t it be handy to have that functionality available Windows-wide?

Windows Vista did have a system-wide magnifying tool, and that tool also appears in Windows 7. (The easiest way to access it: Go to the Start menu and type Magnifier into the search box.) But 7 is the first Windows version to natively include a browser-style magnification shortcut key at the operating-system level. In 7, try it: Hit the Windows key, combined with the plus or minus key.

This is an overarching zoom control that you can use in most normal programs or windows. (It doesn’t, for example, work in Windows Media Center, as you might guess.) By default, though, the zoom stepping is pretty large, with the zoom going from normal-size screen to elephantine with one key press. To adjust the zoom scale, go to the Magnifier tool (as described above), and click on the little, faint gear icon to see the Magnifier Options dialog. (It took us a while to find that one.) In the slider bar that you see at top, reduce the zoom level as appropriate:

We pushed ours all the way down to 25 percent, so each press of the key combination zoomed in baby-elephant steps.

Discover advanced Windows 7 touch functions

Chances are, if you’ve seen an iPhone commercial (and definitely, if you own one of the devices), you get the gist of touch-screen tech. Multi-touch capability, which involves using more than one finger to execute a touch task, is integrated much more seamlessly into Windows 7 than into earlier versions of Windows. So if you jump into Windows 7 by buying a new PC, and happen to get one of the increasingly common laptops or all-in-one desktops with touch-screen capability, here are a few touch tricks your documentation may not tell you about.

In addition to the familiar rotating, zooming, and swiping functions, we suggest learning three more: the two-finger tap, press-and-hold, and the flick.

Two-finger tap: Tapping on the screen with two fingers simultaneously zooms in by the system’s default zoom increment. The area that zooms depends on where you tap; the feature will try to focus in on the center of the gesture. Not all apps will do this, but we’ve found it particularly helpful for making precise clicks on links on a Web page.  

Press-and-hold: If you press and hold with one finger, you can launch a right-click context menu on an icon or the desktop. The same is true if you press one finger and then tap with a second.

The flick: Just like some mice have forward and back buttons for browsing the Web, you can use a flick gesture to do the same. Do a quick, light up or down swipe of your finger to scroll up or down a page, or swipe left or right to navigate forward or back through a browser. It sure beats all those buttons.

Unhide hidden non-U.S. Windows 7 wallpapers

When you install Windows 7 (or buy a PC based on it), you’ll find a set of wallpapers installed that correspond to the country that was specified at install time. Assuming you’re in the United States, you’ll get the U.S. great-outdoors treatment, replete with national-park eye candy and other scenic shots. All well and good, but you can uncover some international wallpapers in Windows, if you feel like dressing up your Windows with foreign flair.

The wallpaper files reside in a directory you can’t see unless you know where to look, however. Look in C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT, if the folder is visible in Windows Explorer. (It may not be; if not, skip ahead to the end of this tip to learn how to uncover it.) There, you should see several folders. On our install, the folders were labeled AU, CA, GB, US, and ZA, containing image sets for Australia, Canada, Great Britain, the United States, and South Africa. Inside each of these folders is a folder called “Theme”; to import one of these national theme sets, open the theme folder and double-click on the file inside ending in a “.theme” extension.

Doing so will make the theme available in the Personalization dialog box. To access it, right-click on an empty area of the Windows Desktop, and select Personalize from the pop-up menu; you should see the new theme under My Themes. Double-click on a theme to make it live. Note: You can right-click on the Windows Desktop and choose Next desktop background to cycle through different wallpapers in the theme set.

It’s possible, though, that you couldn’t see the MCT folder where we specified. If so, hit the Windows key + R key combination, which will bring up the Run box. In the box, type (or paste in) the following text, and then hit Enter:

%systemroot%/Globalization/MCT

This should launch the hidden folders in a new Explorer window. If still nothing appears, though, you need to, in the resulting window, hit the Organize button, select Folder and search options, and click on the View tab. In the ensuing list, you’ll need to do two things: uncheck the box next to Hide protected operating system files and click the radio button next to Show hidden files, folders, and drives. Hit Apply, then OK, and the folders should show up.

Incidentally, you can also download other themes at Microsoft’s Personalization Gallery. It was a bit scanty when we looked at it (just before Windows 7’s official release date), but the company says that it should offer more themes with the full release of the operating system.

And a bonus! You can go to the Microsoft Musings blog (not affiliated with Microsoft itself) to download a huge ZIP file of lots of other official Windows wallpapers, compiled by this blogger. A lot of genuinely striking sample backgrounds have come and gone through the various Windows 7 builds and release candidates, including some psychedelic ones and many, many more international themes.

Use a hidden Windows 7 report to monitor your laptop’s power efficiency

One of the biggest complaints about Vista was that it tended to drain laptop batteries with greater abandon than XP. While we don’t expect Windows 7 to offer huge improvements in that department, Microsoft is putting more of that control in the users’ hands.
In Windows 7, you can observe your PC’s power efficiency and tweak settings to get the most out of your battery and the best balance between performance and endurance. Doing so is a little techie, but it’s not hard.
In the Start menu, type in cmd. Then, when the cmd.exe icon appears, right-click it, and choose “Run as an administrator.” At the command line that pops up, type powercfg –energy and hit Enter. At this point, Windows 7 will scan your system (it will take a minute or two) and publish a report in the folder indicated by the command line. Follow the path indicated to the file—it’ll be an HTML document—and look through the suggestions. Here's what we saw:

In our report, for instance, we got a handful of pink error messages stating that our power settings weren’t set for optimal battery life. Those are pretty easy to fix: Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options, then select which plan you’d like and click Edit Plan Settings. From there, you can tweak to your heart’s content. We also got a handful of yellow warning messages, such as “Power Policy: Disk timeout is long (On Battery).” Our hard drive was set to turn off after 1,000 minutes, but this warning suggests keeping that time to less than 30 minutes so that if the hard drive doesn’t need to be spinning, it can turn off after a given amount of time. The trade-off (and yes, there’s always a trade-off) is that when you choose a task that requires it to spin back up again, it can be slow in doing so.
This is a good report to run, so that, at the very least, you can get an idea of which settings affect power consumption. Once you have that knowledge, tweaking those settings is pretty simple.

Create a System Repair Disc in Windows 7

The new version of Windows seems to be a lot for stable than previous releases, however you never know when a malfunction might occur. Today we take a look at an option in Windows 7 that lets you create a System Repair disc in case you need to boot from it to recover your OS.
Create System Repair Disc
Type system repair disc into the search box in the Start menu.

The dialog box opens where you select the right drive and click Create disc. A CD will be fine as it only takes up 142MB of space.
 
Using the Disc
If you are having problems with your machine just pop in the recovery disc and boot from it and enter into Windows Setup [EMS Enabled].

After it boots up you can access recovery tools or restore the computer back to a system image.

Now you can choose from different recovery options to help you get your machine back up and running.

You never know when an Operating System disaster might occur, but having a System Recovery Disc to boot from should be part of your backup and recovery toolbox in case it does.

How to Downgrade Windows 8 Pro to Windows 7

The Professional edition of Windows 8 comes with “downgrade rights.” If you’re not happy with Windows 8 on a new computer, you can downgrade it to Windows 7 for free – as long as you have Windows 8 Pro.
This isn’t as easy as it should be: Microsoft designed this procedure for businesses, and individual users will have to jump through a number of hoops to downgrade their Windows 8 Pro systems.

Downgrade Rights vs. Other Ways to Downgrade

This article is about exercising downgrade rights on a computer that comes with Windows 8 Pro. Downgrading to Windows 7 is simpler in other situations:

• If your computer came with Windows 7 and you upgraded it to Windows 8, you can revert your computer to the Windows 7 system it came with.
• If you have a retail copy of Windows 7 you aren’t using, you can install it on a new computer that came with Windows 8. (Ensure the new computer has hardware drivers that work with Windows 7.)

How Downgrade Rights Work

Downgrade rights are intended for businesses. When buying new computers, businesses purchase computers that come preloaded with Windows 8 licenses and install a previous version of Windows without buying separate licenses.
Downgrade rights can be a bit confusing. Here’s how they work:

• Downgrade rights are only available on computers that come with Windows 8 Pro. Upgrade copies of Windows 8 Pro don’t include downgrade rights, so you can’t purchase the Windows 8 Pro Pack to get downgrade rights.
• You can only downgrade to Windows 7 Professional or Windows Vista Business, not Windows XP. (For the purpose of this article, we’ll assume you probably want to downgrade to Windows 7.)
• After downgrading, you can reinstall Windows 8 at any time.

Before Downgrading Windows

If you have a new computer that came with Windows 8 Professional and are itching to get Windows 7 Pro on it, there are a few things you should do first:

• Ensure the computer actually supports Windows 7. Manufacturers may only provide hardware drivers for Windows 8, preventing you from using your hardware to its full capabilities. Check the manufacturer’s website for Windows 7 drivers for your computer.
• Create a recovery drive that contains a copy of your new PC’s recovery partition. This will allow you to restore the original Windows 8 system if you wipe the recovery partition.

How to Downgrade Windows 8

If you’re using a new computer that came with Windows 8, you’ll probably have to enter your computer’s UEFI settings screen and enable the Legacy boot option, not the UEFI boot option. Consult your computer’s manual for more information.
To downgrade Windows, you’ll need a Windows 7 Professional installation disc and a valid license key for it. Neither Microsoft nor your computer manufacturer will provide this disc or key for you – you’re on your own when finding it, although Microsoft insists you should find a legitimate copy instead of downloading one from an illicit website. Downgrade rights are intended for businesses, who will likely have a disc and key on hand.
Once you’ve found the disc, insert it into your new computer and restart into the Windows 7 installer. Install Windows 7 Professional as you normally would, providing the legitimate Windows 7 Pro key during the installation process. Note that you can use this same key to downgrade multiple Windows 8 computers – you’ll just need this key to get past the mandatory key check during the installation process.

After Windows 7 finishes installing, the online activation will fail because your product key is already in use. If you don’t see an “activation failed” message, you can press Start, type Activate, and click Activate Windows. You’ll need to activate by phone. Call up the phone number displayed in the activation window and explain that you’re exercising your Windows 8 Pro downgrade rights. Have your Windows 8 Pro key ready; you’ll need it to prove your PC has downgrade rights.
After explaining this, you’ll be given a long, single-use activation code. Enter that activation code into the window and your Windows 7 Professional installation will be activated.

To downgrade multiple computers, you can use the same installation disc and Windows 7 product key. However, you’ll need to call up Microsoft each time to receive an activation key.

How to Import Contacts Into and Export Contacts From the Windows Contacts Folder

In Windows 7 and 8, there is a Contacts folder in your user directory. This folder can be useful if you have your contacts in a single .vcf file and want to move them into a .csv file for importing into programs like Outlook 2013.
To import contacts from a single .vcf file into your Contacts folder, open the Contacts folder at the following location in Windows Explorer.

C:\Users\%username%\Contacts

On the toolbar, click Import. If the Import button is not visible on the toolbar, click the >> button and select Import from the drop-down menu.

The Import to Windows Contacts dialog box displays. Select vCard (VCF file) from the list and click Import.

On the Select a vCard file for import dialog box, navigate to the folder containing your .vcf file. Select the file and click Open.

The Properties dialog box displays for each contact in the .vcf file. This allows you to change information in or add information to each contact as needed. When you are ready to import each contact, click OK.

Once you have gone through the Properties for each contact in your .vcf file, you are returned to the Import to Windows Contacts dialog box. Click Close to close the dialog box.

Each contact displays in the Contacts folder as a .contact file.

Now, you can export all your contacts into a .csv file for importing into programs such as Outlook. Click Export on the toolbar in the Explorer window. Again, if the Export button is not visible, click the >> button and select Export from the drop-down menu.

On the Export Windows Contacts dialog box, select CSV (Comma Separated Values) and click Export.
NOTE: You can also create separate vCard files from one vCard file by selecting the vCards (folder of .vcf files).

On the CSV Export dialog box, click Browse.

Navigate to the location where you want to save the .csv file. Enter a name for the .csv file in the File name edit box and click Save.

The path to the .csv file is entered in the Save exported file as edit box. Click Next.

In the Select the fields you wish to export list, select all the fields you want to include in each contact in the .csv file. Click Finish.

A dialog box displays telling you the process was successful. Click OK to close the dialog box.

The Export Windows Contacts dialog box is not closed automatically. Click Close to close it.

Your contacts are now available in .csv format.

You can use the .csv format to import your contacts into programs like Outlook and Excel.

Change Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or Vista

If you’ve ever bought a new computer with the operating system already installed, you might be annoyed by the default name of the computer when you start trying to connect different computers together. I like to use more descriptive names than HP382811UX… for example, I called my new desktop SUPERFAST and my old computer SOSLOW.
Changing this in XP was extremely simple, but in Windows 7 or Vista it’s buried behind a few more menus. Here are three routes you can take to open up System Properties:

• Type sysdm.cpl into the start menu search box (quickest)
• Right-click on the Computer option on the start menu.
• Open Control Panel, and go to System and Maintenance, and then System.

If you chose one of the last two options, then you’ll need to click on Advanced System Settings on the left menu:

Now you’ll finally be on the right screen, which should say System Properties.

Click on the “Change” button to rename the computer, which will pop up this dialog:

Now you can finally change the name of the computer. You could also change the name of the workgroup to something more descriptive as well. You’ll have to reboot after you make this change.