How to Turn On and Enable Aero in Windows 7

In some scenarios, Windows Aero may not be turned on, or is having problem to enable. The scenarios include no supported video driver been found during installation, and after updating the VGA graphic display card driver, Windows 7 does not automatically enable Aero Glass effect. Or, Windows 7 is installed on a computer which barely meets the minimum requirement, and Windows 7 has a hard time deciding that it’s indeed able to run Windows 7 Aero without problem.

To display Aero effects such as transparency in Windows 7, follow these steps:

1. Make sure that Windows Experience Index has been calculated and computed.
2. Click on Start menu.
3. Type the following text into the Start Search box:

   Aero

4. Click on a search result listing under Control Panel group that named as the following:

   Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects

    

   Trick: If you don’t see “Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects” in the search results, click on Control Panel to see all Aero related items in Control Panel.

5. An “Aero – Troubleshoot computer problems” wizard dialog will appear. Click on Next button.

 

The troubleshooting wizard will try to detect any problem by running a series of checks against various components required to make Aero works and running, such as video memory, Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) service, color depth, theme, power settings and etc. At the end of the analysis, the wizard will attempt to fix the issues related to Aero service and restart the Aero feature.

If there is still items that are marked with red cross which indicates is the problems that prevent Aero from working properly, fix the issues and then rerun the “Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects” troubleshooting wizard again.

How to Add the Copy To and Move To folder commands to the Windows Explorer context menu in Windows 7

Adding 'Copy To' and 'Move To' folder command in Windows 7 is little tricky.

In Windows XP it was easy.  All you had to do was right-click the standard toolbar, select the Customize command, scroll through the Available Toolbar Buttons list, and select either the Move To or Copy To item.

But in windows 7 its little tricky. We have to resort to regedit for this.

NOTE: Please, create a confirmed backup of the Windows Registry file before you perform any edits.

Step 1: To launch the Registry Editor, click the Start button, type Regedit in the Start Search box, and press [Enter].

When the UAC dialog box appears, respond appropriately. When the Registry Editor appears, navigate to the following folder:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

Step 2: When you get there, right-click on the ContextMenuHandlers folder and then select the New | Key command, as shown

Right click the ContextMenuHandlers folder and select the New | Key command.

Step 3: When the new value appears, type in the following code including the brackets:

{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

press [Enter] and the Copy To Folder command will be added to the context menu.

Step 4: Right click on the ContextMenuHandlers folder and select the New | Key command again. This time when the new value appears, type in the following code including the brackets:

{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Step 5: Press [Enter] and the Move To Folder command will be added to the context menu.

Your ContextMenuHandlers folder should look like this. To complete the operation, close the Registry Editor.

Figure B

Simply adding these two keys to the ContextMenuHandlers folder is all that is needed to add the Copy To Folder and Move To Folder commands to the context menu.

Last Step:  Close the Registry Editor,and you are done. Rebooting after reg editing is always a good idea.

How to solve 'Your System Is Low On Virtual Memory' Problem

Warning: If you are not facing problems with your Page File (i.e your system is not giving warning about low virtual memory) DON'T CHANGE IT. And under no circumstance do not assign lesser memory than what Windows has automatically assigned. It may result in FATAL error.


Windows XP

Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.


In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

In the Performance pane, click Settings.

In the Performance Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

In the Virtual memory pane, click Change.

Change the Initial size value and the Maximum size value to a higher value, click Set, and then click OK.

Click OK to close the Performance Options dialog box, and then click OK to close the System Properties
 
Windows 7
 
Open Computer


up and hit the System Properties button, or Right Click on computer and hit Properties, or even still, go to the Control Panel and open the System button

Then on the left hand side, there’s a button marked Advanced System Settings

On the popup that opens, make sure you’re on the Advanced tab, then hit the button marked Settings under the Performance subsection

After that, hit the Advanced tab on that new popup, then hit the Change button for the Virtual Memory sub-section

Finally, once here, uncheck the “Automatically Manage Paging” option and increase the size manually.

How to Defrag your Harddisk with Kaspersky installed

Now whats so great about defragging your hard drive?? Nothing. You install any defragging software or use Windows inbuilt defragger and rest is automatic. But the problem with Kaspersky is that with self defence 'ON', it doesont allow defragger to access its files. So the defragger skips kaspersky files and defrag the rest. For some people it may be annoying that even after defragging, the disk is still showing some fragmented files. For them there is one solution:
1. Right click on the system tray icon of Kaspersky and select 'setting;.
2. Click on the option on the left pane.
3. Uncheck 'Enable self defence'.
4. No need to stop kaspersky. You can defrage the hard drive now and after that check "Enable self defence' again. thats it.

How to Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007

We’ve all been hearing about the new IMAP support in Gmail, but how do we access that from Outlook? Those of you that have been waiting patiently will be happy to know all the instructions are on this page.

Using IMAP we can synchronize email across multiple devices, since the mail stays on the server. You already stopped reading this part and skipped down to the instructions, didn’t you?

Enable IMAP in Gmail Settings

Open your Settings panel in Gmail, and then click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

Now click the Enable IMAP radio button, and click Save Changes.

Add Account to Outlook

Use the Tools menu you to open the Account Settings panel.

Add Account to Outlook

Use the Tools menu you to open the Account Settings panel.

If this is your first account you’ll be prompted for the wizard, otherwise you’ll need to click the New button under the E-mail tab.

Now select the “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP” option and hit next.

Select the checkbox for “Manually configure server settings” and everything on that page will gray out. Hit the next button again.

Now select “Internet E-mail”  (Didn’t we just do this? This wizard is taking too long…)

Finally we can enter some settings! Add in all your personal information here.

Note: If you are outside of the US you may need to use imap.googlemail.com and smtp.googlemail.com instead of imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com.

Note: for Gmail Apps accounts, you’ll need to put in your full email address wherever you see an @gmail.com above. For instance, if your account was geek@howtogeek.com you would put that in the E-mail address field as well as the User Name field.

Click on the “More Settings” button and find the Outgoing Server tab, where you’ll need to check the box for “My outgoing server requires authentication”

Now choose the Advanced tab, and enter the following values (Very important)

• Incoming Server: 993
• Incoming Server encrypted connection: SSL
• Outgoing Server: 587
• Outgoing Server encrypted connection: TLS

Note: If you are having an issue with your sent email not showing up in Gmail, you can use the Folders tab, and then select the [Gmail] \ Sent Mail folder.

Note: Only do this step if your mail is not showing up, otherwise it will duplicate the sent mail.

Now that you’ve closed out that dialog, you can click the Test Account Settings button to make sure everything is going to work.

If all goes well, you should see a success message.

Note: Some ISPs restrict outgoing mail, so if you have a problem sending a test message you’ll need to consult with their documentation.

Accessing Your Mail

Now that everything is working you’ll notice a new set of folders for your Gmail account. (I’m using Gmail apps, which is why you don’t see an @gmail.com email address)

All of your labels will show up as separate folders, and the built-in “folders” in Gmail will be under the new [Gmail] folder.

Outlook Flags = Gmail Stars

If you want to star a message in Gmail, you just need to flag it in Outlook. When I flagged this message from Mysticgeek…

It shows up in Gmail as a starred message. (And it works the other way too)

Sending Email from Outlook

To send a new email from your Gmail account, just change the “Account” drop-down to your Gmail address before you send a message.

Note that if you only use Gmail, you won’t have this drop-down and it will default to your Gmail.

Final Thoughts

Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Gmail Labels = Outlook Folders. To label a message, add it to a folder.
• Gmail Stars = Outlook Flags.
• Do Not move spam messages to the “Junk E-mail” folder in Outlook, move them to the [Gmail] \ Spam folder.
• Outlook has a built-in Search Folder for “Large Mail”, which will let you easily find messages with large attachments.

Now that you can access your starred and labeled messages, you can start using Outlook’s excellent Search Folders to find messages more easily.

How to Set a language to a style in Word

 

If your work requires typing blocks of non-English text within your English-language Word documents, then you know how annoying it can be when Word continues to proofread the non-English text using its English dictionary.

Word automatically proofreads your document for the language version installed on your system. So, if you purchased your copy of Word in the United States, it will mark all the text as English (U.S.) and will proof the non-English text against the English (U.S.) dictionary. When you add a block of foreign phrases, Word's spelling and grammar checker will flag them as incorrect rather than proof them against the appropriate foreign language dictionary. You could set up Automatic Language Detection; however, this method is not foolproof for smaller blocks of text.

To let Word know which dictionary to use to proof the text, you should mark it for proofing in its own language by assigning a language style. Follow these steps:

1. Type the foreign language text.

2. Select the text.

3. Go to Tools | Language | Set Language.

4. Scroll to and select the language from the Mark Selected Text As list.

5. Click OK.

6. Go to View | Task Pane.

7. Click the Getting Started arrow and select Styles And Formatting from the list.

8. With the text still selected, click New Style.

9. Enter a name for the style (such as French) in the Name box.

10. Click OK.

Now when you want Word to proof your text in French, highlight the text and select French from the drop-down Style box in the Formatting toolbar. This new style will be available to the current document only. If you want it to be available to the template the document is based on, click the Add To Template check box in the New Style dialog box after step 9 and before clicking OK.