10 more great tricks you can do with Windows

Windows holds a lot of secrets. Some of them are truly hidden away completely and some are just obscure. But few users know about them no matter which kind they are. Most of us don't spend much time learning how Windows works. It could be a lifelong pursuit if you gave it a chance. So we're all probably better off with little delights like the ones here. They can make your windows computing more interesting or easier and maybe even more fun. Here are 10 of my favorites things you can do with Windows.

1. Hold down the Shift key when the PC is booting up to keep programs from starting up with Windows.

Programs in the Startup folder will be ignored when you hold down the Shift key during bootup. This is a great way of booting up more quickly, of booting up without a pesky program that is causing you trouble or of getting Windows going without some of the baggage of extra programs. (Windows will love you for it.) Keep in mind that this Shift key trick won't bypass programs that start up in other ways -- those that don't use the Startup folder, in other words.

2. Find out what Windows is doing when it starts up.

Windows would be happy to write down every step it takes when it boots up. All you have to do is ask politely. Do that by turning on the log function hidden away in the startup menu. That startup menu is itself hidden away. Get it to show up by pressing the F8 key as soon as you see "Starting Windows ..." -- reboot and try again if you're pressing the key too late -- and then choose the option that creates a boot log. The boot log is stored in the main directory of the C: drive, not in any folders. To view it, click the Start button, choose "Run," then type "c:(backslash)bootlog.txt" and press the Enter key.

3. Find out what Windows is doing when it crashes.

Fed up with crashes? How often have you felt like complaining, "Why can't Windows figure out what's going wrong"? If you have Windows 98, Windows already can do just that. But you wouldn't know it from the look of things. The program that helps Windows figure things out is hidden away.

It's called Dr. Watson. (Yes, it's named after the character in the Sherlock Holmes stories.) You might be familiar with the Dr. Watson program if you're an old-time Windows user, because it was an essential tool in the version of Windows that was popular in the old days, Windows 3.1.

Microsoft left it out of Windows 95, but snuck it back into Windows 98 without making a point of it. That was dumb, because the current version of Dr. Watson is outstanding. It will tell you all kinds of things about what was running and what was acting up each time your PC crashes or acts up.

Just click Start, then Run. Type "drwatson" and press Enter. Look at the menus and choose the kind of reporting you want. Dr. Watson will pop up whenever things go wrong. You can then look at the report to see the details.

4. Have a file you can't figure out? Here's a way to get around that pesky "Open as" window that always seems to come up when you try to view or open a strange file.

"Open as" is one of the dumbest things in Windows. If Windows doesn't know how to deal with a file, it throws up its hands and tells you to figure it out. How would you know? You paid good money for a computer, and it's supposed to be able to figure these things out.

So when it can't -- when it shows you the old I-give-up "Open as" dialog box -- you have good evidence of two wonderful things. First, you know right away that the computer is dumber than sheep dip. Second, you know a quick way of dealing with that file -- you just drop it on your browser.

Open your Web browser and position it so it doesn't take up the entire screen. (In other words, leave some space on one side or the other.) Find the file you want to open -- use the Find function in the Start menu if necessary -- and click on it with the left mouse button and hold the button down. Drag the file over to the browser window and let go of the button. If the browser is able to do anything with the file, it will. If it's a picture or image of any kind that browsers can figure out, it will show it. If it's a text, chances are you'll see it just fine. If the browser can't figure it out, nothing else probably will either. Remember that out of all the different files on your computer, only some of them are supposed to be viewable or openable. Most files are just made to be used by Windows or Windows programs in their own way. If you try to view them or open them you'll just waste your time.

5. Make your own launcher -- inside your document.

You can't launch a program from inside a document -- right? No, wrong. So wrong it will make you dizzy. Windows has been able to launch programs from inside documents for years, but Microsoft has been afraid to tell you about it. Maybe the company that made Windows didn't want to confuse you. (Come to think of it, if Microsoft didn't want to confuse you it wouldn't have made Windows in the first place.) I know it sounds loony, but it's not. You can launch programs from any modern Windows document, and that means if you always run the calculator or Excel or your browser while working on a certain document, all you need to do is embed a shortcut to the program you want to launch right in that document. I'll tell you how. First, you need to understand something. You can't do this with just any old document. It has to be what Microsoft calls an "OLE" document. No, that's not a Spanish bullfight manifesto; it stands for Object Linking and Embedding. With an OLE document in an OLE program, you can put pointers to other items inside a document.

A quick digression. If you're paying close attention you should be jumping up and waving your hand. "Teacher, teacher! I know what an OLE document is! It's a Web page! It has items in it that point to other items!" But Web pages are not OLE documents. Web pages are hypertext documents. Hypertext makes OLE look terribly old fashioned, and someday OLE will disappear into the garbage can of history. For now, however, OLE is alive and kicking. So forget Web pages for a minute and think of Microsoft Word pages. Or, if you don't have Microsoft Word, Microsoft WordPad pages. Don't look for a third choice; everyone who has Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 has WordPad. If you can't find it -- it's listed under Accessories in the Start Menu -- that's because you didn't install it. Get out your Windows setup CD and install it.

Now run Word or WordPad. Create a document. Type a few words in it. Forget the menus for what we are about to do next. There are menu items that cover what we'll do, but if you use the menus you will never be able to connect what you are about to do with OLE. It just won't jell. It's the difference between throwing a softball and asking someone to throw and softball. You just have to do this without using a menu.

Ready? With the Word or WordPad window open, click Start and then Find. Type "calculator" (without quotes) and press Enter. You'll see an entry for Calculator. Click the left mouse button on the Calculator entry and hold the button down while dragging the Calculator entry over to the Word or WordPad window. Let go of the button. You will see an icon inside the word processor window.

The icon represents the Windows calculator. It should look like a calculator, in fact. Save the document. From now on, any time you open that document you'll have a quick-launch icon for the calculator. Just click it to run the calculator.

The launch icon doesn't have to represent something simple such as the calculator. It can stand for a large program such as Quicken. It can also be something other than a program. It could be a document shortcut, a folder shortcut or something like a sound-file shortcut. Try it. When you're used to how it works, try the next trick. It's just as neat.

6. Send your own launcher to someone else.

In the last part I showed you how to make a launcher for the Windows calculator inside a document. The instructions within the document (hidden away, of course -- keep in mind that this in Windows) told Windows to launch the program identified with the icon you dropped into the document.

That program was just the calculator. It's called CALC.EXE and it's located in the same place on just about all the Windows computers in the world. Think about this for a minute and you'll see something really mind-bending: You can create a shortcut to your own computer's calculator and send that shortcut to someone else, in a document you attach to an e-mail message, and that person can click on that shortcut icon and launch the same program you launched.

If this seems like ho-hum to you, think again. Imagine calling your sister-in-law in Phoenix and telling her to imitate every move you make for five minutes. You turn to the right and take two steps and you're at the sink. Turn 180 degrees and you're facing the stairs. Walk to the right three steps, twist a little to the left, reach out your hand at waist height, stretch out your index finger and press forward. Your microwave turns itself on.

If she did the same exact set of movements in her kitchen, would her microwave turn on? You bet it wouldn't. Your sister in law might end up poking the parrot. (On second thought, keep this as an intellectual exercise. Don't let her try anything rash.)

Isn't it amazing, then, that you can send the exact instructions for launching YOUR calculator to someone else and they get THEIR calculator to show up?

I think it is. I think it's amazing. It's one of the strengths of Windows. Things are the same in PC after PC. Programs are in the same locations. Documents are, too, in many cases. Many of them have the same names. That makes it easier to run programs and easier to find out what's happening when things go wrong.

7. Explore your world with a few hidden features.

Windows uses the name "Explorer" for the program that deals with files and folders on the Internet ("Internet Explorer") and on your own computer (just plain "Explorer"). Tastes vary, but it's fair to say that Internet Explorer has a lot of fans for its easy-to-use Interface. That's too bad in a way, because it distracts attention from the regular Explorer. It has some great and hidden tricks of its own.

Explorer is what Windows opens up for you when you double click My Computer. You can also get Explorer to open from the Start Menu. It's called "Windows Explorer" there. My favorite -- and one of the best features of the Windows interface, I'd say -- is the way you can instantly switch views in Explorer. I didn't say I liked the way you can switch views. (That's just a nice feature.) I said I liked the way you can INSTANTLY switch views. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, you're proving my next point. I'm sure someone at Microsoft went to a lot of trouble to create this part of Explorer only to be sabotaged by someone else higher up the corporate food chain. The high-up muckymuck hid the feature away. As a result, most Windows users never know it's there. (A feature that is hidden is practically never used. Don't you wish Microsoft could realize this?)

The hidden feature is the quick-reverse buttons at the top every Explorer window. These buttons never show up unless you choose "Details" from the "View" menu at the top of the Explorer window. There are four buttons, but you might not see all of them unless your Explorer window is wide enough. (Just double click the title bar to make it as wide as possible. Double click it again to return the window to the previous size.)

The four buttons are "Name," "Type," "Size" and "Modified." (What's the file named? What's its type? What size is it? When was it modified?) The four buttons show real engineering elegance. Click the "Size" button once, for example, and the list in the Explorer window quickly takes on a new sort order: It's sorted by size, from smallest to largest. Click the "Type" button and the list becomes sorted by file type (not filename extension, but file type, as determined by the Windows Registry). They're sorted alphabetically by type, with "Application" coming before "Text Document," for example. Likewise, the "Name" and "Modified" buttons do the same kind of thing, sorting by name or by modification date.
But things get better. Clicking one of the headings the first time tells Explorer to sort the list by that subject, as we've just seen. But clicking again on the same button reverses the sort order. Each button has a double function. Microsoft could have used two buttons, with the second labeled "Reverse," I suppose), but that would have wasted space. But more importantly it would have taken away some of the elegance in the way those buttons work. Microsoft created a user interface in Explorer that works almost perfectly, at least in regard to the four quick-reverse buttons at the top of the window. (We could argue about some of the other interface functions in Explorer for days, but let's skip that part of the discussion for now.) It's as if the company that engineered your house found a way to combine the door bell and the door knob, or as if the people who engineered your Toyota discovered a combination accelerator and brake pedal. The Explorer buttons are simple, they do two things instead of one and they work well. Microsoft should be saluted for the design.

8. A real favorite of mine among all the hidden features in Windows 98 -- not in Windows 95, as I'll explain shortly -- is an amazing way to view most Microsoft Word documents.

Of course, if you already have Word 97 or Word 2000, you don't need this feature. But everyone else who got the junior-league software called "Works" from Microsoft instead of "Office" should be jumping up and down with the news that a Microsoft Word viewer is included in Windows 98.
Actually, it's also included in Windows 95, but the one in Windows 95 can't handle Word 97 documents. The viewer in Windows 98 can.
And it's not a viewer at all. Nowhere in Windows, no place in the Start Menu or Help files, will you find this feature called a viewer. That's because it's also a word processor that just happens to be able to open Microsoft Word documents.
What I'm talking about, as you might already suspect if you're an accomplished Windows user, is WordPad. Few users ever discover the hidden power of the version of WordPad that's included in Windows 98. They might have tried WordPad in Windows 95 and discovered that it had no way to deal with Word 97 documents -- and then assumed that WordPad behaved the same way in Windows 98.
No so. Microsoft improved WordPad when it created Windows 98. The version that comes with Windows 98 is a gloriously fast Word 97 document viewer.
Did I say "viewer" again? Didn't I mean to say "word processor"?
Not really. Yes, you can do work processing on Word 97 documents using WordPad in Windows 98. But you can't save them as Word 97 documents. You have to save them as Word 95 documents, also called Word 6 documents. (They used the same document format.) So you have a dilemma: Use WordPad to view Word 97 documents or use it to edit them, realizing that the documents will change -- they won't look the same, in some cases -- after you save them in the Word 95 (Word 6) format.

I think that's an acceptable kind of choice. As a viewer, WordPad is MUCH faster than Microsoft Word is. It might be three times as fast on some computers. As a word processor, it does OK. You don't have a spelling checker and you can't make the text justified left and right. But otherwise it's a perfectly acceptable word processor. Just remember that saving Word 97 documents in the format used by the older versions of Word can alter the look of the text.

9. Program shortcut keys aren't actually hidden in Windows -- they're right out in plain view once you know how to look -- but they might as well be locked in an Egyptian tomb for all the good they do most users.
If ever there were a function that does as much for so few people as the Windows shortcut keys, I don't know what it could be. Shortcut keys are simply marvelous. Shortcut keys are keys you press to get a program to run, a document to load or a folder to open. It's almost impossible to create a shortcut key wrong because of the way Microsoft crafted the menu that lets you assign them. It's literally fool proof.

But there's a secret. Shortcut keys only operate on shortcuts that are in the Start Menu or on the desktop. They don't work anywhere else. If you have a shortcut on the desktop that works with a shortcut key and then you move that shortcut to some other location -- one that is not in the Start Menu -- that shortcut key won't work any more. Got it so far? Then go ahead and try out the shortcut key function. Find a file or folder shortcut on your desktop and click your right mouse button on it. Then choose "Properties." Choose the "Shortcut" tab and then choose "Shortcut key:" in that window. Type the combination of keys you want to use, then close the window.
That's all there is to it. Pressing those keys will do the same thing as double clicking the shortcut icon.

To create shortcut keys in the Start Menu in Windows 98, right click any Start Menu icon and follow the same prompts as you did with the desktop shortcut. To create shortcut keys in the Start Menu in Windows 95, right click the Start button and choose Open, then navigate to the shortcut you want to work with and do the same thing as I mentioned earlier.

10. Share everything with your family.

Judging from the letters I get from Windows users, I'd have to guess that most casual Windows users have no idea that they can connect their home PCs together in what is called a peer-to-peer network. Even the Network Neighborhood icon on the desktop seems to leave no clue. I don't blame them; I think Microsoft should have engineered Windows as a networked operating system in the first place, and that would have encouraged most of us to connect our computers at home and in small offices just as readily as we connect extension phones already. Alas, hooking up that second PC to the first one is not quite as simple as plugging in that other telephone. But it's not much harder. All you need is a network interface card, also called a NIC, in each PC, a network hub to handle interconnections and a bunch of cable. Network cards cost $12 on up each -- sometimes even less if you shop around -- and hubs start at about $30. Networking cable is not expensive. The best way to buy all these components is to get them all at the same time from a store that knows what a home or small office network is. (Test the sales personnel by asking if they have "NICs for peer-to-peer networking." If they ask you to repeat what you said, try it one more time. If you still get blank stares, shop somewhere else.) I'm not writing a tutorial in this article on how to get Windows networking going -- it's not that hard anyway -- but I do want to explain something that many users are missing when they think about networking. PCs that are networked can share their files, of course -- that's the basic idea behind networking -- but they can also share printers and modems. Sharing a printer is absurdly easy. Once your network is up and running and you have File and Print Sharing active (by checking it off in the Network Neighborhood icon's properties), all another user on the same network needs to do to use someone else's printer is to click on it in the Network Neighborhood. Windows will ask if that user wants to install the printer. Once it's installed, it works just like any other printer. Many people can use the same printer at the same time -- Windows handles that kind of contention very well -- and if something happens to the printer or to the network (or if, for example, the PC that has the printer is not turned on), Windows lets everyone else print but saves the printing jobs until the networked printer is working again. It's all very smart. Sharing a modem is almost as easy. Everyone on a Windows peer-to-peer network can get onto the Internet through the same modem, at the same time. They can all use the same account, and that, of course, saves a lot of money. (There's not very much of a slowdown, either. Most of the time you're on the Internet, your computer isn't doing much, so putting four or five or even a dozen other users onto the Internet through the same modem connection doesn't slow everyone down by as much as you might think.) You can also share a more advanced Internet connection. For example, if one computer on your network has a cable modem connection, all the others can connect through that single connection (with almost no loss in speed). Likewise, networked computers can share ADSL and DSL connections and other high-speed modem hookups the same way. What makes this possible is proxy software or NAT software, two methods that do the same thing -- allowing computers inside a private network to connect through a single computer that has a doorway, so to speak, to the outside world. Both methods masquerade the other connections as a connection made solely by the first computer. NAT32 and Nshare are two of my favorite software methods of doing this. Both are NAT (network address translator) programs and cost very little.