Windows
Tips 'n' Tricks
These tips work with the
final release of Windows XP. Unless otherwise noted, all tips should work
with both Home and Professional Editions. Please note that some of these
tips may require you to use a Registry Editor (regedit.exe), which could
render your system unusable. Thus, none of these tips are supported in any
way: Use them at your own risk. Also note that most of these tips will
require you to be logged on with Administrative rights.
Delete
files when the Recycle Bin is hidden
Actually discovered this
tip accidentally recently and thought it was appropriate for the Tips page,
even though it's probably been a feature of Windows for years. (UPDATE:
Sure enough, it's been around for a while. It's still a cool tip and proof
that one learns something every day).
By default, the Windows XP Recycle Bin sits at the bottom right of the
desktop, just above the tray notification area and system clock. If you've
got a bunch of floating windows open, however, it's possible to obscure the
Recycle Bin and make it impossible to drag files and folders there for
deletion. However, Microsoft
must have thought of this event, because you can automatically hide all of
those open windows during a drag operation. The first time it happened, I
thought it was a fluke. But it's not. Instead, it's a cool hidden feature of
XP.
Here's how it works:
Make sure a bunch of windows are open on the screen, with at least one of
them hiding the Recycle Bin. Then, find a file or group of files you'd like
to drag to the Recycle Bin. Pick up the files with the mouse and move them
to the lower right of the screen. As you reach the bottom area of the
screen, pass the mouse cursor over a blank area of the task bar, hover there
for an instant, and--voila!--the open windows all minimize, leaving
the Recycle Bin available to accept the dragged files. Good stuff. This tip
also works when windows are maximized, assuming the file(s) you want to
delete are visible in one of the available windows.
Add
album art to any music folder
This is easily my
favorite tip! One of the coolest new features in Windows XP is its album
thumbnail generator, which automatically places the appropriate album cover
art on the folder to which you are copying music (generally in WMA format).
But what about those people that have already copied their CDs to the hard
drive using MP3 format? You can download album cover art from sites such as
cdnow.com or amguide.com, and then use the new Windows XP folder customize
feature to display the proper image for each folder. But this takes
time--you have to manually edit the folder properties for every single
folder--and you will lose customizations if you have to reinstall the OS.
There's an excellent fix, however.
When you download the album cover art from the Web, just save the images as
folder.jpg each time and place them in the appropriate folder. Then,
Windows XP will automatically use that image as the thumbnail for that
folder and, best of all, will use that image in Media Player for Windows XP
(MPXP) if you choose to display album cover art instead of a visualization.
And the folder customization is automatic, so it survives an OS
reinstallation as well. Your music folders never looked so good!
UPDATE: In addition to
the folder.jpg file mentioned above, you can also optionally create a
smaller version of the image called albumartsmall.jpg, if desired. This is
the image used to display album art in MPXP when its sized so that the
display area is smaller than 200 x 200 pixels, and in the folder thumbnails
for folders that contain album folders. If you don't create
albumartsmall.jpg, however, Windows XP will automatically scale folder.jpg
in these cases.