Post by Doreen on May 20, 2010 22:55:35 GMT -5
Lesson #14 Working With Windows:
Windows uses files to store information on your computer. A file can be a program, settings for a program, a shortcut to a program, a document that was created in a program, an audio file that can play in your iPod or MP3 player, a picture that you took with your digital camera, or a video that you downloaded from YouTube or imported from a video camera.
A program file is the main part of an application. some examples would be Microsoft Word, or Internet Explorer.
The Microsoft Word Program File
A data file is one that you create using a program. They contain information that you can view using the program that created it, or another compatible program. A good example is that you can create a Microsoft Word document in Word, but you can open the document in any program that is capable of opening Word documents, the free program, Open Office, for example.
A file created in Microsoft Word.
You can view the files and folders on your computer using a program that is part of Windows Vista called, Windows Explorer. You can open Windows Explorer several ways, in the start menu, you can click on any of the user folders in the top, right hand portion of the menu to open Windows Explorer with the contents of the folder that you clicked on displayed. Once you open a Windows Explorer window, you can easily navigate to any other folders on your computer.
You can also open Windows Explorer in the start menu, either by typing Windows Explorer in the search box, or navigating to “All Programs” and then “Accessories”.
The computer identifies what type a file is by the three letter ending at the end of the file name. For example, program files end with .exe.
Data files have a three letter extension that indicates the type of program used to create the file. Files that end with .doc are Word documents, .xls are Excel spreadsheets. Files that end with .txt are plain text files and can be opened on any computer running Windows. Don't worry if you can't see a three letter extension on your files right now, I will show you how to change some settings so you can see the entire file name of all your files.
The files on your computer are organized into folders. When Windows Vista was installed on your computer, it created some folders for you to use, and you can create additional folders of your own. A folder is simply an organizational tool that you can use to store your files, and other folders. Let me give you an example.
In my computer, I have a "Pictures" folder. Vista created that documents folder for me to store my pictures in. If I just kept all my pictures in that one folder without any sub folders, I would have to search through all the pictures to find the one that I want. A better way is for me to make sub folders inside my pictures folder. I can make a folder for each year, then inside that folder, make more sub folders for each month of that year. This way if I want to find pictures of our summer vacation last year, I would go to the year, and look in the folder for the month that we went on vacation.
Let's take a closer look at the Windows Explorer window. You should remember the parts of this window from our earlier lesson on windows, today we will take an even closer look. If you have your Windows Vista computer nearby (or you are reading this on your Vista computer) you can follow along with the steps that I outline for opening and exploring our files and folders.
Open Windows Explorer to your user folder by clicking on the "Start Orb" and then click on the folder at the top of your start menu on the right hand side. I can't tell you the name of this folder, because it will be different for each person. Mine is named "Computer Lady" yours might be named Tom, or Sue, or something more generic like "User". Whatever the name, the folder listed at the top of the right hand column in your start menu is your user folder.
On the left side of the Windows Explorer window is the navigation pane. This pane contains icons for every folder inside your user folder. You can quickly open any folder listed there by clicking on it.
If the navigation pane is not visible in your Windows Explorer window, you can display it by clicking on the "Organize" button in the command bar, pointing to "Layout" in the menu, and then click on "Navigation Pane" in the submenu. This will display the Navigation Pane if it was not visible, and hide it, if it is already visible.
The top of the navigation pane has a "Favorite Links" section which contains links to some of the most commonly used folders on your computer. You can add folders to this section if you think they would be useful to you, just drag any folder from the right side of the window to the favorite links section. If the Favorite Links section has an icon that says "More" at the bottom, this means that there are more folders
in this section than you have room for. You can access them either by clicking on the "More" icon, or use your mouse to drag the lower border of the favorites section down so that all the folders will be displayed.
You can also adjust the width of the navigation pane. Point your cursor to the vertical line that separated the navigation pane from the rest of the window until it turns into a double sides arrow, and then drag to make the navigation pane either narrower or wider.
One very useful folder in the favorites section is the "Recently Changed" folder. It displays all files and folders that have been changed or created recently. Click on "Recently Changed" and after a brief search, Vista will display all the files and folders that have changed or been created in the past month. The most recently changed files will be at the top, with the oldest at the bottom. To go back to your user folder, click the "Back" button in the title bar.
The "Searches" folder in the Favorite Links section gives you a list of predefined searches that you can use.
The "Public" folder in the Favorite Links section gives you quick access to folders that are shared by all users on the computer.
Don't worry if you see the same folder listed twice in the navigation pane, once in the Favorite Links section, and again in the "Folders" section. These are simply two shortcuts to the same folder, not two different folders.
Beneath the Favorite Links section of the Navigation Pane is the "Folders" section. You should see a list of the folders inside the folder you are currently viewing. If you don't see a list, but instead there is a "Folders" button at the bottom of the Navigation Pane, click on it to display the Folders List. Take a moment to look through this list, and explore the folders. Every folder that contains subfolders has a small triangle to the left of it (Point your mouse to a folder to view them). If the triangle is pointing to the right, clicking on it will display the subfolders in that folder. If the triangle is dark and pointing down and to the right, it means that the folder is already open, clicking on it will hide the subfolders again. This is similar to the tree pane in earlier versions of Windows that had either a plus or minus sign. If you don't want the folders list displayed, click on the "Folders" button again to hide them.
Quick Steps:
To Move a link in the navigation pane:
Using your mouse cursor, hold down the left mouse button and drag the link to the new position.
To add a folder to the navigation pane:
1. Using your mouse cursor, hold down the left mouse button and drag the folder from the main window to the place in the navigation pane where you want it to appear.
2. You can also drag a folder from the folders list at the bottom of the navigation pane to the favorites list at the top of the navigation pane.
To rename a folder or saved search in the Navigation pane.
1. right-click on the folder you want to rename.
2. Click on "Rename" in the context menu that appears.
3. Type the new name for your folder, and press the Enter key on your keyboard.
To remove an item from the navigation pane:
1. Right-click on the item.
2. Click "Remove Link" in the context menu that appears.
note: only the link will be removed, not the original folder
To put the default links back in the Navigation pane:
1. Right-click a blank area of the navigation pane.
2. Click "Restore Default Favorite Links" in the context menu that appears.
To access the menu bar one time:
1. Tap the "Alt" key on your keyboard. The Menu bar will appear.
2. Use the menu item that you were looking for, and the Menu bar will be hidden after you click on the menu item.
To always display the menu bar:
1. Open your explorer window
2. Click on the "Organize" button in the command bar.
3. Point to "Layout" in the organize menu.
4. Click on "Menu Bar" in the layout menu.
Repeat the above steps to hide the menu bar again.
Vocabulary:
Navigation Pane: The area on the left side of a folder window. It displays an expandable list of folders that are contained within the current folder, as well as favorite links and saved searches.
Program: A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform a specific task, such as word processing, accounting, data management, image editing, playing music or movies. Programs are sometimes called applications.
Folder: A file that contains other folders and files for the purpose of organization.
File: A set of related information on a computer that is assigned a unique name.
Windows XP
Add & Remove Windows Features
Let’s blame it on digital cameras, shall we? They make it so easy to snap a pic, and then a follow-up pic, and then a follow-up to the follow-up . . . all at maximum image quality and file size, of course. Yes, digital cameras are definitely a prime reason why our laptop hard drives always seem to be running out of space.
Then there are the video clips, the music files, and the gargantuan software suites we can’t live without. Desktop users can install a second or even a third drive to get more capacity, but notebook owners have to endure the hassle of migrating their data to (and installing) a replacement drive.
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The Add/Remove Windows Components utility is accessible through Add Or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
Moreover, laptop drives top out at half the capacity of hard drives sized for desktop PCs. Sometimes, depending on the amount of time, money, and skill you have, it’s better to simply pare down the data on your laptop hard drive to make more room. That means archiving media files you seldom access, running Disk Cleanup, and uninstalling applications you rarely use. It also can mean eighty-sixing Windows features you never use.
As far as desktop computers are concerned, maybe we can ironically assign some of the blame for data congestion to the drives themselves. Hard drives are incredibly inexpensive these days for the capacity you get. At this writing, we found 1.5TB (terabyte) desktop drives for less than $90 including shipping. With storage space so cheaply abundant and room inside most tower cases for additional drives, many of us have fallen out of the habit of trimming the fat, so to speak. If there is superfluous data, such as Windows components we know we will never use, we often just let them be.
SSDs (solid-state drives) have changed that paradigm, at least for some forward-looking upgraders. These ever-evolving flash storage drives can radically speed up many of your PC’s operations, especially when they’re used with newer OSes (operating systems) such as Windows 7. From bootup to media encoding to launching multiple applications at once, one of the better SSD models can turbocharge your computer in a way that even the best hard drive never could.
On the downside, SSDs are still quite expensive per gigabyte. That’s why users on a budget are starting to buy 30 to 40GB SSDs to use only as boot drives. That is, they spend $90 to $165 on a small C: drive that is large enough for a Windows installation, and then they maintain a separate, secondary hard drive with a drive letter such as E: for their applications and personal data.
Because the OS spends a good deal of its time reading and writing small files, it’s the best software to put on an SSD with limited space. The day will come when SSDs with hundreds or thousands of gigabytes will become affordable, so that you can have a fast, completely solid-state PC with enough capacity for everything. At the present time, of course, you could easily damage your retirement account trying to buy this much flash.
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As Add/Remove Windows Components applies the changes you’ve specified, you’ll see this progress dialog box.
Should you want to install a few key applications on your small SSD boot drive alongside WinXP, such as your antivirus software and graphics card control software, every megabyte will count when it comes to trimming unused features from your OS. The days of browsing system folders looking for individual files to delete are long gone.
Instead, it’s more productive to safely get rid of Windows components you don’t need—“safely” being the key word. To do this in a reversible way that’s approved by Microsoft, you need to use a utility in Windows itself. In WinXP, it’s called Add/Remove Windows Components.
Yea Or Nay
By default, WinXP installs plenty of items you may never use, such as MSN Explorer, Windows Messenger, and Freecell. Along the same lines, there might be a feature or two that didn’t make it into the original installation but sound like features you would like to have onboard. Some examples on our test PC are File Transfer Protocol Service, Fax Services, and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) User Interface.
To get started, click Start, Control Panel, and Add Or Remove Programs. Along the left edge, click the Add/ Remove Windows Components icon.
Here, you’ll see a scrolling menu of OS features with checkboxes. Click a component to highlight it, and WinXP will display a short Description of it under the list.
If the Details button appears when you select a Windows component, it means that it’s a category with one or more subitems within it. Click Details or double-click the item to see its subcomponents and/or subcategories in a new window.
A white checkbox with a check in it means that a component or category is installed on your PC as a part of WinXP. A box without a check mark indicates a feature that isn’t currently installed on your system. And a category that has a gray checkbox with a check mark in it tells you that some of its subitems are installed but others are not (or you’ve just selected them to be uninstalled).
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If you’re adding a feature, Add/Remove Windows Components may ask you for your WinXP CD. Click OK if you don’t have a disc, but you do want to point the utility to another file location, such as a recovery partition.
You can mark items for installation/uninstallation by clicking their checkboxes. If you’ve decided to add one or more features, be aware that Add/Remove Windows Components may ask you for your Windows installation CD or the location of the relevant files, such as on your hard drive’s recovery partition.
Be sure that you know what a particular feature is should you choose to get rid of it. Try to look up any unfamiliar items before you tap them for removal. Also note that Add/Remove Windows Components can’t really remove a couple of items, such as Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. All it will do is delete these apps’ shortcuts from the Start menu and Desktop.
When you’re ready to apply the changes you’ve made, click Next. If the wizard asks you for your WinXP CD, insert it in your optical drive and click OK. If you don’t have an installation disc, click OK and then click Browse to try to locate the relevant installation file(s) on your computer’s recovery partition or media. Should the WinXP disc menu appear, click its Exit icon to close it. Finally, click Finish.
The next step is to run Windows Update in case there are any patches available for the component(s) you just installed. In the Add Or Remove Programs panel, click the Add New Programs button and Windows Update. (You can also reach Windows Update by clicking Start, All Programs, and Windows Update. A third method is to launch Windows Explorer and then click Tools and Windows Update.) Click Custom and then follow the directions to install any High Priority or appropriate Software, Optional updates. Lastly, close Add Or Remove Programs and the Control Panel.
Down The Road
Later, if you find that WinXP can’t do something it used to do, you might have deleted a Windows component you didn’t know you needed. Return to Add/Remove Windows Components, recheck the component’s box, and finish the wizard. If you can’t determine just which item you need to reinstall, it might be simpler to roll your computer back to an earlier state using System Restore (click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and System Restore).
