Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Windows 7 Tips - Customize Your Start Menu Options

Windows 7 provides excellent control to customize your Start menu options.

You can choose which commands appear on the Start menu and how they are arranged. You can add options for Control Panel, Devices And Printers, Network Connections, and other key tools. You can also enable or disable personalized menus on the All Programs menu.

To change the Start menu options, follow these steps:

1. Right-click Start on the taskbar, and then click Properties. The Taskbar And Start Menu Properties dialog box is displayed with the Start Menu tab selected by default.

2. On the Start Menu tab, use the Power Button Action list to select the action to use when the power button is pressed. Options include Switch User, Log Off, Lock, Restart, Sleep, and Shut Down. In a 24x7 environment, or when multiple users log on to the same computer, switching users, logging off, or locking the system may be preferable to shutting down the computer. If you change the default action, you can shut down the computer by clicking Start and then clicking Shutdown.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Microsoft Issues Fixes for Windows Quirks

Microsoft this week issued four specialized fixes for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 products.

The updates were released on Jan. 25 and 26 at the Microsoft Download Center. Most are targeted at Windows idiosyncrasies, and might or might not be included in Microsoft's upcoming monthly patch cycles. Users typically shouldn't install the updates unless they are experiencing problems highlighted in Microsoft's associated Knowledge Base articles.

For those in the peculiar position of having problems with software updates actually working, Microsoft re-released its "system update readiness tool" for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, as well as Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Versions of the tool were released late last year, but Microsoft republished them this week.