Book II: Setting Up Your Laptop 154 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 154 Book III Running Basic Windows Operations 14 140925-pp03.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 155 Contents at a Glance Chapter 1: Opening Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Deconstructing Windows 158 Uncovering Your Desktop 159 Working with Desktop Icons 161 Exploring the Taskbar 166 Chapter 2: Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets . . . .177 Inspecting Your Gadgets 177 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 183 Manipulating Images 197 Who Knows Where the Time Goes? 208 Chapter 3: Windows Maintenance Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 Maintaining Windows and Applications 212 Taking Inventory 214 Checking Your Hard Disk for Errors 223 Managing Your Disk Drives 225 Using Third-Party Maintenance Programs 241 Chapter 4: Honk, Honk! Windows Backup and Restore Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 Backing Up Before You Go Go 243 Using an Automated Windows XP Backup Program 246 Curing Some Evils with System Restore 251 14 140925-pp03.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 156 Chapter 1: Opening Windows In This Chapter ߜ What you see is what you want ߜ Becoming a pop icon master ߜ Taming the taskbar ߜ Out to launch O nce upon a time, life was simple. In my first “real” job, I showed up for work to face an inbox on one side of the desk and two outboxes on the other. In between was an empty patch of desk. On the floor was a black rubber trash can. My assignment was to take the top piece of paper from the inbox, examine it to see that all questions had been answered properly, add up the numbers (using a mechanical adding machine the size of a sewing machine), and deface it with my rubber stamp that said “Approved.” Sometimes I had to use a differ- ent stamp; this one put a large red “Disapproved” mark on the page. Next step: Move the paper to the proper outbox: winners, losers, and the occasional trash. Once or twice a day, someone from the mailroom would come by pushing a rumbling old cart. All of the approved papers would go in one large con- tainer and the disapproved into another; and then the clerk would refill my inbox with a stack of new forms. At night, the janitor would take away the trash; sometimes I imagined the garbage was being recycled into the inbox of the next desk to mine. My job was very clearly defined. One paper at a time. Every question was either correct or incorrect. Everything progressed in one direction, from inbox to outbox. Garbage went in the trash can. And the computer? That would be me. Today even the most basic of jobs bears almost no resemblance to my old job. First of all, regardless of what you think of your own native intelligence, when it comes down to it you’re a computer operator. And though you may have lots of pieces of paper spread around your work area, most of the real labor takes place on that computer’s screen. The cable or wireless connection is your inbox and outbox. And your desktop is virtual, a box of glowing dots. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 157 Deconstructing Windows 158 Deconstructing Windows Even though it usually stands upright facing you, the work surface of Windows is called the desktop. Here you choose programs, open files, move folders, and otherwise perform your work. It’s been like that ever since the dawn of Windows time, even though the desktop has become fancier and more sophisticated with each new version of the operating system. Windows is designed so you can get where you want to go in any number of ways. For example, you can click a program and then open a file from within the application, or you can locate a file in a folder (or on the desktop) and double-click it to open the file within the program that created it. The same sort of wonderfully loosey-goosey logic applies to most Windows configura- tion controls; you can go to the central collection in the Control Panel or make adjustments from several other places within the operating system. Now consider two appendages to the desktop. Think of them as electronic versions of remote controls: the Start menu and the taskbar. The Start menu is one of several doorways that gives you access to your installed programs: ✦ You can click any program to open it and create a file or load one you’ve saved to your hard disk. You can also jump directly to a selection of commonly used major folders that hold documents, pictures, music, or other specific types of files. See Figure 1-1. ✦ You can hop to the Computer folder (called My Computer in earlier ver- sions of Windows). From there you can burrow your way down to any inter- nal hard disk, any folder on any disk, or any other attached storage device (including external hard disks, flash memory keys, and memory located within attached devices such as music players and digital cameras). ✦ A one-click connection to the Network folder lists any other computers and linked devices (such as printers) that are part of a wired or wireless network. ✦ From the Start menu you can also gain quick access to the most important customization and adjustment tool of Windows: the Control Panel. Now consider the taskbar, which is a customizable list of programs and files you’re currently working on. (With the arrival of Windows Vista — and only on those machines that have the horsepower to show off advanced features — hovering your cursor on one of the taskbar items displays a thumbnail image of what’s going on in each program.) You can set up the taskbar to display all the time or only when you take the cursor down to its location. And you can anchor it at the bottom of the screen or along the sides of the desktop. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 158 Book III Chapter 1 Opening Windows Uncovering Your Desktop 159 And then — only in Windows Vista — you have the sidebar, which you can equip with your own selection of gadgets. Do you need to know the temperature in Whapmagoostui at all times? Do you need to know — right now — the current currency conversion between Icelandic Krona and Estonian Krooni? How about live feeds of traffic on I-5 in Seattle? I discuss gadgets in Chapter II, Book 3. Uncovering Your Desktop Whether it’s upright or laid flat, the desktop is the metaphorical surface that presents your work. You can place things on the desktop (individual files or folders that contain many files) and you can place shortcuts to commands (icons that, when clicked, start a program or initiate an Internet connection, for example). You can assign colors and styles to the desktop, use a drawing or a photograph as the background, and enable automated features such as screen savers. You can arrange the location of the files, folders, and shortcuts as well as the taskbar. Want a peek at my desktop? See Figure 1-2. Figure 1-1: The opening screen of the Start menu under Windows Vista. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 159 Uncovering Your Desktop 160 In my office, the top of my desk is sometimes invisible; it gets covered with books and mail and sheaves of paper covered with notes that seemed very important at the time I placed them there. A similar situation occurs with a Windows desktop. It’s there, although most of the time you have it com- pletely covered with your Internet browser, a word processor, or something really important like Spider Solitaire. You can restore your view of the desktop three ways: ✦ The fastest, all-in-one zippy solution is to bring the onscreen cursor to your taskbar (usually at the bottom of the screen) and find the little icon called Show Desktop. If you don’t recognize the icons by their design, just hover the cursor over them for a moment; the name appears. Clicking Show Desktop nearly instantly minimizes all open programs and folders and displays your desktop. ✦ The slower way to accomplish the same thing is to minimize each open program, file, or folder. To minimize something that’s open on the Windows desktop, click the – symbol in the upper-right corner of the program, file, or folder. ✦ Close any open programs, files, or folders by either clicking the X symbol in the upper-right corner or clicking Close. You can quickly restore minimized items by clicking their icon in the taskbar. Shortcut arrows Figure 1-2: A Windows desktop personalize d with a photo from my travel collection. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 160 Book III Chapter 1 Opening Windows Working with Desktop Icons 161 Working with Desktop Icons You’ve got this desktop. What do you do with it? Just about the same things you do with a horizontal plank of walnut. You open up folders, you spread out files, and you apply intelligence to your work. But the nice thing is how the computer can help you keep a neat workplace. All your folders and all the files within them represent the real thing; you can move them around, organize them almost any way that makes sense to you, and put them away in a secure place. The Windows desktop is populated with icons, which are tiny, usually mean- ingful, pictures or symbols. A folder with a digital camera icon most likely means photos are contained within; the commonly used Microsoft Word uses a stylized W. Windows comes equipped with a large supply of icons that it automatically applies to many popular programs and file types. Your laptop maker may have added some other icons for utilities and special features, and many applications you install on your computer come along with their own icons. Here’s the first and most important thing to know about an icon: Icons aren’t just pictures. They represent an active zone on your desktop. Double-click- ing a desktop icon starts a program or opens the folder represents. And if the icon marks the presence of a file, double-clicking it opens the document within the program with which it’s associated. Adding, removing, and moving On the desktop itself you see icons, the small pictures that represent an item, program, or action. The standard set of desktop icons usually includes the Recycle Bin (to hold files that you’ve “deleted,” although that is an imprecise term; I explain how the recycle bin works in Book III, Chapter 3). Depending on choices made by you, your machine manufacturer, and the maker of software you install on your laptop, your desktop may come fes- tooned with other items. Typical icons include shortcuts to commonly used programs such as your word processor, a Web browser like Internet Explorer, and an e-mail client such as Outlook Express. Icons that represent programs also are usually shortcuts. The shortcuts are linked to the location of the program itself. You can create shortcuts to fold- ers or files. Once again, the shortcut isn’t the item itself, but a pointer to its location. Shortcuts look similar to other icons, with the addition of an arrow. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 161 Working with Desktop Icons 162 See Figure 1-1 earlier in this chapter, which points out a couple of shortcut arrows. The arrow tells you that the program’s located elsewhere, but that you can still get there from here. Some users like a clean and simple desktop; call it the “cluttered-desk-is-the- sign-of-a-cluttered-mind” mentality. Others choose to fill up the desktop with icons for all their current assignments and essential programs. There is no right or wrong methodology. Whatever works for you is fine. I do, though, recommend devoting ten minutes or so every few days to cleaning up your desktop. Giving a desktop icon the boot To clear an icon off your desktop, follow along: 1. Use your cursor to highlight the icon. 2. Right-click with your pointing device. 3. Click Delete. Windows Vista users have another way to add or remove common (not custom) desktop icons: 1. Right-click anywhere on an empty area of the desktop, and then click Personalize. 2. In the Personalization window’s left pane, click Change Desktop Icons. 3. Click next to the common desktop icons you want to appear or delete. Selecting or deselecting the icon makes it appear or disappear, respectively. 4. Click OK. You can add or remove these common desktop icons with this method: Computer (or My Computer) Network (or My Network) Recycle Bin Control Panel Internet Explorer Personal folders set up to hold your documents An alternate way to remove any icon from the desktop is to right-click it and then choose Delete from the menu that appears. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 162 Book III Chapter 1 Opening Windows Working with Desktop Icons 163 Adding a shortcut to the desktop Follow these steps to leave a shortcut: 1. Locate the item. The item you want to shortcut can be a file, a folder, or a program. You may find the item in the list of programs accessible from the Start button, or by burrowing through the folders on your hard drive using the My Computer (Windows XP) or Computer (Vista) or My Documents (Windows XP) or Documents (Vista) mega-folder. 2. Use your cursor to highlight the item, then right-click with your point- ing device. 3. Click Send To ➪ click Desktop (Create Shortcut). You can remove shortcuts from your desktop by dragging them to the Recycle Bin or by highlighting them and pressing the Delete key. If you delete a short- cut you remove only the pointer to a program or piece of data, not the item itself. You can still start the same program other ways: from the taskbar, from the Start button, from the folder on your hard drive, or by double-clicking a file created using the program and set up to be associated with it. Putting icons where you want them If you allow Windows to do its own thing, it stacks icons in columns that build out from the left side of the desktop. You can, however, change that and move icons around yourself. Do this to tell Windows to automatically arrange icons on the desktop: 1. Right-click an empty area of the desktop. 2. Click View ➪ Auto Arrange. To turn off that instruction, deselect the Auto Arrange check box. Windows tries to keep your desktop as neat as possible, placing icons along the columns and rows of a grid; the lines exist only in the computer’s inter- nal map of the screen — you can’t see them. If you want a more free-form arrangement or want icons closer together, turn off this feature. To turn on or off the icon grid, do these things: 1. Right-click an empty area of the desktop. 2. Click View ➪ Align to Grid. If a check mark is already there, clicking Align to Grid turns off the grid (and removes the check mark); if the box is empty, clicking turns on the grid. 15 140925-bk03ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 163 . users like a clean and simple desktop; call it the “cluttered -desk- is-the- sign-of-a-cluttered-mind” mentality. Others choose to fill up the desktop with icons for all their current assignments. Whatever works for you is fine. I do, though, recommend devoting ten minutes or so every few days to cleaning up your desktop. Giving a desktop icon the boot To clear an icon off your desktop, follow. II, Book 3. Uncovering Your Desktop Whether it’s upright or laid flat, the desktop is the metaphorical surface that presents your work. You can place things on the desktop (individual files or folders