CUSTOMISE THE PLACES BAR

CUSTOMISE THE PLACES BAR

The Places Bar is the left hand panel in the Open and SaveAs dialogue boxes used by Windows and most Windows applications. It contains a set of icons for frequently used locations and folders on your hard drive including Desktop, My Computer, My Documents and so on. But what if you want to change them or include your own folders, let’s say you keep all you images in a folder on the C: drive called ‘Pix’? There is a way to customise the Places bar to show your Pix folder and that’s using our old friend Tweak UI for XP. Tweak UI is a freeware utility from Microsoft, download the file and open the program. Go to Common Dialogues > Places bar, click the ‘Custom’ button and either make a selection from the drop down menu of Windows presets or enter your own by typing in the drive letter and path, which in the case of our example would be C:\Pix.



SHOWING HIBERNATE ON SHUTDOWN

Hibernation mode in Windows XP is useful for putting your PC to sleep for extended periods, and quickly reviving it in the state that you left it, with the programs that you were using still open. However not all PCs display the Hibernate option when you click the Turn Off Computer button on the Start menu. This could be because Hibernate mode isn’t enabled or supported. To find out open Control Panel, double-click Power Options then the Hibernate tab (if displayed) and check ‘Enable Hibernation’, then OK. If Hibernate still won’t appear on the shutdown dialogue box try pressing the Shift key and the Standby button should change to Hibernate. After a few shutdown and boot-up cycles the Hibernate button should become a permanent fixture and you will need to press Shift to make the Standby button appear.



ADDED PROTECTION FOR YOUR PROGRAMS

You might think you are well protected with your anti-virus software, firewall, malware scanner and all of the other bits of software designed to protect your PC but the fact is malicious programs can still slip past your defences but there is something more you can do to safeguard your programs. Windows XP has a built in facility called Data Execution Protection that keeps a watchful eye on System files but its coverage can be extended to monitor for suspicious activity in all of the programs on your PC. To switch it on open System Properties by pressing Winkey + Break (or right-click My Computer on the Start menu and select Properties) Next select the Advanced tab, under Performance click the Settings button then select the Data Execution Protection tab and check the option ‘Turn on DEP for all programs and service…’ Click OK and after a restart it’s done.


QUICK ROUTE TO DEVICE MANAGER

If you are anything like me and an inveterate tinkerer, then you’ll be a frequent visitor to Windows Device Manger, to fiddle with configuration settings or undo all the damage you keep doing to drivers and so on. The quickest way I know to get to it is to use the keyboard shortcut Winkey + Break then click Hardware and the Device Manager button. Now I’ve got an even faster way, a one-click desktop or Quick Launch shortcut. It’s dead easy, right click on an empty portion of your desktop and click New > Create Shortcut. Use the Browse button to work your way to the file ‘devmgmt.msc’, which you should find in C:\WINDOWS\system32, select the file, click Next, give the shortcut a name click Finish and the deed is done.



CHECKING SYSTEM FILES

If Windows XP has been misbehaving recently - crashing or slowing down -- then there’s a chance that one or more of your critical system files may have been changed, possibly by malware or a virus. It’s easy enough to check and eliminate from the list of possible causes. Just go to Run on the Start menu and type ‘sigverif’ and this will start the Windows File Signature Verification utility. It takes a few minutes as it cross-checks files against its database and at the end you will get a report showing any files that haven’t passed the test, along with the date they were modified, which might point to a program or application you’ve installed that’s behind the problem.