Windows 95 Tips, Tricks and Undocumented Feature ------------------------------------------------ 1) For maximum DOS memory in an MS-DOS session, add the line LocalLoadHigh=1 to the [386Enh] section of system.ini. 2) To get Explorer to show a two directory view similar to File Manager just open two instances of the Explorer, right-click on the Task bar, and select "Tile Vertically".Win95 will retain both if you leave them running when you shut down so that they're instantly available the next time you boot up. 3) Want to see a .bmp picture before you open it? This hack will make the icon of the .bmp file the actual picture! Save this as "bmpicon.reg" and double click it! **start of bmpicon.reg** REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture] "DefaultIcon"="%1" **end of bmpicon.reg** 4) To speed up the start menu you can use the regedit. Open Regedit. In the right panel click on H_KEY_CURRENT_USER the click on Control Panel. Find desktop, right click on it and pick NEW String Value. Call it MenuShowDelay, all one word. Now in the left panel you shold see on the bottom a value called MenuShowDelay. Double click on it to bring up the value dialog box. Give it a value from 10 to 1, 1 being the fastest. Exit regedit and restart Windows, and take a look at how fast you can access your Start menu Items! 5) If you hold down shift while dragging items into the Recycle Bin they will be DELETED immediately rather than being placed in the bin. Just be careful not to accidently multi-select more files than you wanted.Similarly, pressing Shift-Del gives you the same effect. 6) I installed Win95 into a new directory. Is there a way, now, to get back my WfW 3.11 groups? I copied all the .grp files to the win95 directory, but how can I now tell Windows to use or convert these files? Run the program grpconv.exe in your Windows directory. It will allow you to convert your Program Manager groups to Win95 folders in the Start Menu. 7) Have you played with the SENDTO feature in Explorer?It's a hidden folder in C:\WINDOWS. You can add folders to it and be able to quickly move things around(right click on file - use Send To). You can also put WINZIP in there to make quick ZIP files. 8) In Explorer you can set up different actions to be performed on a document in addition to just the standard 'open' command that will be available to you when you right click on your icon.Go to an Explorer window and choose View | Options and then the tab 'File Types'. In the list you see, find the association for the file type you want to add an action to, e.g BMP. Double click on it to bring up the edit window. You should see that there is already at least one action here, probably Open, maybe Print, etc. Click on the New . . . button and type in a new command, like Edit or View or whatever you want. Then select the application you want to use to Edit your Bitmap, as opposed to just viewing it. Then when you right click on a BMP file you will see your new command there and you can easily choose to View, Edit, Open, Print . . . .whatever you want with whatever app you want to do it with. 9) There's a magical little program that is automatically installed by Win95 that you can use to make Win 3.x programs more compatible under 95.It is called MKCOMPAT.EXE and is in the Windows\System directory. - Just run MKCOMPAT.EXE - Select File/Open - Open the EXE file that you are having problems with - Start highlighting things that seem like they may make a difference. - Select File/Advanced for more control options - Select File/Save to save the new configuration There is no online help - so some trial and error is in order until you find the optimal settings. 10) To turn off the Logo put the following in your CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS [options] logo=0 To turn off the Auto Load feature of Windows 95 Put the following in your CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS... [options] BootGUI=0 To have the option of booting your old DOS everytime you boot up put this in your CONFIG.SYS -or- MSDOS.SYS... [options] BootMenu=1 11) Click start with right mouse button click explore Point cursor anywhere on right side of explorer and then click right mouse click create new folder type exactly: Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} This will create a neat Control Panel icon and submenu on start button 12) Ever have too many programs open, and the taskbar has a bunch of "icons" that you can't read the title in? Make it bigger! This should have been obvious, but I just came across it one day. Just move your mouse cursor to the top of the task bar (if it's on the bottom) and drag it up. Win95 remembers position as well. 13) Here's a simple trick that saves a bit of time. When you want to rename a file, folder or desktop item do you find it a hassle to right click the item, choose Rename etc, etc before you can type in the new name? Well, try this .... LEFT click on the file, folder, or desktop item as you normally would to select it. Wait a moment, long enough for Windows to know that you aren't double clicking it, and LEFT click again. The file, folder or desktop item is now ready for a name change. 14) OK... This is nothing special, but curious (I have yet to find a use for it). But I'm sure that someone will. :) You can drag icons into your documents... This will create a static link to that icon, just drag 'My Computer' onto a new Wordpad doc, and double Click to see! 15) Want to make your single or double speed drive perform like a quad+ speed drive in Win '95 ? It's easy.. Go to My Computer / Properties / Performance / File System / CDROM and set the supplemental cache speed to its maximum and the access pattern to 'Quad speed or higher'. I was shocked to see my little 'ole single speed drive play the previously choppy avi's on a Bugs Bunny CDROM I have. 16) Windows 95 allows you to do some strange things with audio CDs. Try some of the following: (1) Go into Explorer and click on your CD drive with an audio CD in it. (2) In the right panel you will see Track01.cda throuhg Track??.cda. (3) If you right-click on a track, you can play it automatically by choosing Play from the Quick Menu. (4) If you double-click on a track, it will play automatically. (5) Try dragging a track onto your desktop (you can copy it or create a shortcut, it doesn't matter). Rename the track's copy/shortcut to the song's real name. Whenever you have the CD in the drive, you can now double-click on it on the desktop to play it. (6) You can also drag tracks to your hard drive and put them in your Start Menu, or create a directory with CD tracks in it. 17) Right click in a Win95 application's file open box for new, copy,delete, arrange, etc. Most of Explorer's functions except half the toolbar and no pull down menus. Try it. 18) However, it's a good tip. I wanted to have a directory named "New Downloads" in Win95, but have the short file name be just "DOWNLOAD" instead of "NEWDOW~1" which is less than helpful. This is the response I got back: 1. Train users to start LFNs with the short version they plan to use. In your case, that would mean naming the folder DOWNLOADS-NEW, which would resolve to Downlo~1. 2. You can get rid of the tildes with a simple registry hack. Add the value NameNumericTail = 0 in the following Registry key: Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem And the above example (assuming there wasn't already a DOWNLOAD directory) would resolve to the correct eight-character name. 19) The "Send To" quick menu shows only the floppy drives as a destination. You can add any other disk area or folder as a destination by adding short cuts to the "Send To" folder. You must add a short cut or a ".LNK" file to that folder; ie: a short cut to to "Recycle Bin" is great as it will avoid the prompt dialogue "Do you want to send to Recycle Bin?". Alternatively, any other directory such as a temp directory. Here is a bonus, if you have different places to send file to but are related such as: "Customers" Customer1 Customer2 etc... You can place in the Send To folder an additional "folder" (not a short cut) called "Customers", then open that folder and place short cuts to all your customer's individual folders and name them appropriately. Then when you right click a file icon, your "Send To" quick menu will show the new "Customers" "Sub menu" and then move to it and you will see a submenu of all your customer's short cuts. (You may want to remove the "short cut to" text from the icons in the "Send To" folder). 20) Dual Boot Setup for Win95/Win 3.1-WfWG A text file describing a step-by-step procedure I developed to install a dual-boot menu function for my DOS 6/Win 3.11 and Win95 systems. This way, I can choose which system I want to use at boot-up. Doublespace and Drivespace drives can also be handled with this configuration. Use this method to continue running your critical programs under your old DOS/Win system while you're testing Win95. *********************************************************************** I wanted to install a dual boot with Win95 & WFWG 3.11 so I could try out Win95 without sacrificing my old system setup. Here are the steps you can take to duplicate my dual boot installation: *********************************************************************** 1. Copy (duplicate) the whole Windows directory and all it's sub directories to another directory, like \WIN31. Copy the \DOS directory to another one as well, like \DOS6. 2. Edit all the INI files in the WIN31 directory and change all references from \WINDOWS to \WIN31. The "find and replace" command in most word processors makes this easier, but be sure you save them as text files. 3. Boot up your PC and install Win95 SETUP through windows program manager "FILE-RUN". As you install WIN95 it will rename your CONFIG.SYS AND AUTOEXEC.BAT files to CONFIG.DOS and AUTOEXEC.DOS. (When you dual boot it renames them back to CONFIG.SYS AND AUTOEXEC.BAT....and then backups the WIN95 versions as .W40). 4. After Win95 finishes installing and you are on the desktop, use notepad with "select all files *.*" to edit the CONFIG.DOS and AUTOEXEC.DOS files and change all \WINDOWS references in them to \WIN31, and all \DOS references to \DOS6. 5. In order for the dual boot menu to work, the following lines must appear in the [Options] section of your MSDOS.SYS file: (If you use Doublespace or Drivespace disk compression you must change both MSDOS.SYS files - one on the boot drive and one in the compressed drive) [Options] BootGUI=1 Network=0 BootMulti=1 BootMenu=1 BootMenuDefault=7 (original DOS as default. Use 1 for Win95 default) BootMenuDelay=5 (number of seconds to select something else) To add these lines, first, open "My Computer" and use the menu bar to VIEW - OPTIONS - VIEW - Show All Files, and also unclick "hide MS-DOS file extensions". Then double-click on the MSDOS.SYS icon and look. If it doesn't have all the above lines, you'll need to edit this file and put them in. Since the MSDOS.SYS file is "read-only-hidden" you'll need to first change the file attributes and then use the notebook editor to insert the new line(s). Then you'll have to change the attributes back to their original states when done to protect the file. To change the attributes, click on the MSDOS.SYS icon using your RIGHT mouse button. Select Properties and uncheck the attribute blocks. Exit and make your text changes, then save the file. Then put the attribute check marks back where they were. 7. Now, exit Win95 and re-boot. You should now see the boot menu and be able to select which mode you want to boot into. Remember, any programs you install after this will only appear in the system you were running at install time. For example, if you install MS Word under Win95 you will have to install it again under old DOS/Windows if you want to run it both ways. You can install the program to the same directory both times and you'll simply overwrite the files and avoid having two sets of the new program on your hard drive. 21) Here is a little tip on how to install PC Speaker on a computer with Win95. Go to Control Panel, then "Add New Hardware", then "Sound, Video, Game Controller." Don't let Win95 search for new hardware. Select "Have Disk". Browse to where you have your PC Speaker .drv file. Install !!! Presto...your mute PC will now have sound. To modify the settings for PC Speaker go to Control Panel, Multimedia, Advanced Tab, In Audio devices you will see PC Speaker. 22) If you want to have another start-logo place a file named logo.sys in your root directory. logo.sys must have the same format as logow.sys and logos.sys (320 x 400,256) bitmap. 23) Drag and drop files or desktop objects with the RIGHT mouse button instead of the left, and when you drop them on the target, you get a little pop-up menu giving you options like Move Here, Copy Here, Create Shortcut Here. Also, to drag a file from one folder to another, using only one explorer window, drag the icon near the top or bottom of a scrolling pane, and "nudge" to scroll. 24) If your system clock accidentally gets set to after 01-Dec-1996 (the expiry date of Windows 95 Beta version) Windows 95 will fail to boot on subsequent attempts, stating that your licence has expired. To overcome this problem simply boot from your rescue disk (or any valid boot disk) , set your system time back to before 01-Dec-1996 and then copy the hidden file IO.SYS from a Windows 95 boot disk to the C:\ directory. Windows 95 will once again boot OK. 25) Do you have a Logitech mouse? This hack will let you use the middle mouse button as a doubleclick! Save this as "midclick.reg" and double click it! **start of midclick.reg** REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Logitech\MouseWare\CurrentVersion\SerialV\0000] "DoubleClick"="001" **end of midclick.reg** 26) Click on start... shutdown... click on restart computer. Now hold down the shift key and click on yes. This will only restart Windows 95, NOT the computer (warm boot). This is a lot faster than a normal reboot (warm or cold). 27) Create a new folder on your desktop... rename it, call it "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" Now is should look like the normal Control Panel icon you see in My Computer (not a shortcut). Now do a right click on start (taskbar), click on open. Move the new folder we just created tothe start menu folder. Close the start menu folder.Now when you click on start, you should see conrol panel on it... click on it and it will expandand show all the items! You can do the same with the printers folder and dial-up networking...here are names that you need to name your folders.. Dial Up Network Dial Up Net.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48} Printers Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} 28) If you're browsing through folder windows, it's usually nicest to have Windows 95 set so that it uses a single window that changes when you open a new folder. However, if you want to copy or move files around, it's nice to be able to quickly open a separate window for a folder. This can be done by holding "CTRL" as you double-click, but it would be nice to have this option on the right-click menu, next to "Open" and "Explore". To add this to the menu, you need to change the registry a bit. Run the Registry Editor and find the entry for "Directory" under the "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT" branch. Under, "Directory", you'll find "Default Icon", "shell", and "shellex". The one we want is "shell." Under "shell", add a new key called "opennew". Modify its (Default) value to say "Open New &Window". Then, add another key under "opennew". Call this one "command", and set its (Default) value to "explorer %1". And that should do it. One side effect is that "Open New Window" now also appears when you right-click on the Start Button, which is completely pointless because it does that anyway. Oh well. 29) Ever want to open an object with a different application than the one it is already associated with and the right mouse menu no longer let's you choose Open With...? Just hold down the SHIFT key when you right mouse click over the object, and the Open With... command will now appear in the menu. 30) If you want to "permanently" delete a file instead of sending it to the recycle bin, hold down the SHIFT key and press the DELETE key, or right mouse click then hold down the shift key before selecting DELETE from the menu. 31) Object dragging with SHIFT and CONTROL: Hold down the following keys for different actions: NO SHIFT, NO CTRL Same Drive: Move Different Drive: Copy Unless the objects selected are *ALL* .COM's or .EXE's in which case: Same Drive: Create Link Different Drive (Non-Removable Storage): Create Link Different Drive (Removable Storage): Copy SHIFT, NO CTRL: Always Moves NO SHIFT, CTRL: Always Copies SHIFT, CTRL: Always Creates Link Certain folders do no allow objects to be dropped (i.e. Control Panel, and Printers), others always Move To regardless of SHIFT/CTRL status (i.e. Recycle Bin). 32) Want to "Explore" a folder instead of it's icon view? You could open Explorer, click here, click there, finally get to where you want. A quick solution: Hold down the shift key and double click on the folder/drive. This will bring up an Explorer window of that folder. 33) Here's how to add file types to the New submenu on the mouse menu. To add file types to the New menu item on the mouse menu you must edit the Registry. First, find the extension of the data file for the program in question (i.e. .doc for Word) under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Below the files extension you need to add a new key with the value 'ShellNew'. Once that key is in place you have two options: One is to start with a null file (one with no preset styles, etc), the other is to start from a template file. For a null file, in the ShellNew key insert a new string value named 'NullFile' and leave the value blank. To use a template file, insert a new string value named 'FileName' and set the value equal to the path of the template document. The default is in the hidden ShellNew directory beneath your windows directory. When you use the New feature of the button menu, Win95 either copies the template file or creates a null file. 34) Do you hate that you can't control the directory or even the drive where Explorer opens? You CAN control it. Create a shortcut to the Explorer with the following command line to open it at the root of C:\ c:\windows\explorer.exe /e,root,c:\ where the syntax is: explorer [/e][,root,] Actually there is even more to this ... you can use subobjects, but I don't want to type it all out. Perhaps you have this info anyway. 35) You can change those lovely screens you see as you exit Windows95! Simply start up paintbrush and load up the files LOGOS.SYS and LOGOW.SYS and change them to whatever you want...they're just bitmaps with a different extension! 36) You can drag scraps from your documents to the desktop or to folders and create Document Scraps. With these Scraps, you can archive bits and pieces of your documents to use later or to share with another person. To try it: Open Wordpad Type some text Select the text Put the cursor over the highlighted text and drag to the desktop It creates a scrap with some of the actual text in the name of the scrap. 37) Did you know that FONT SMOOTHING and FULL WINDOWS SIZE/MOVE are available on the preview version? In the win.ini file, add the following line to the [WINDOWS] section (really!): ILOVEBUNNY32=1 Restart Windows 95, then right click on the desktop. Choose properties, then settings. You will notice 2 new check boxes! Windows 95 Tips for Better Performance -------------------------------------- Must get products: - WinZip This is the fastest way to zip/unzip files. Many options and drag and drop make this the best zip'r I've seen. - Mcafee Scan The virus scanner. And a good one at that :) - Windows 95 Resource Kit Many improvements to Win 95 - Power Toys for Windows 95 Many improvements to Win 95 How to get the most out of Win 95: - For dos app's put idle sensitivity to low. This can make it run faster then it would under dos even! - Set it to Always Suspend if you don't need it to work in the background. This free's up cpu resources for other programs. - Make shortcuts for everything you need to get to fast. Just drag and drop directorys and files to the desktop to make shortcuts. --- Thats all from the desk of Geoff Rivell ---