Until last week I was thinking that increasing the taskbar thumbnail window size is not possible natively in Windows 7 (and Windows Vista). Well! Windows 7 supports the ability to increase the thumbnail preview size natively, through registry edits which I’m covering in this article.
This is how the taskbar thumbnail preview window appeared prior to applying the following edit.
When logged on to an administrator account in a Windows Vista or Windows 7 PC and attempt to merge a .REG file, you’ll see the User Account Control (UAC) prompt asking for your consent to allow the process to start. Regedit.exe uses the highestavailable execution level (as specified in its manifest) and thus it prompts for consent to launch with the highest available privilege.
Recently when browsing a Compressed (zipped) Folder containing some JPG images, I observed that the preview pane displayed the message "No Preview Available" when selecting an image file. However, preview worked fine if the files were extracted to a folder and then viewed from there.
Fig 1: Compressed (Zipped) Folder View
I extracted the images to a folder, and preview works just fine. (more…)
I’m writing this article specifically for Windows 7, because the FullRowSelect registry key that you used in Windows Vista, doesn’t work in Windows 7. (REF: Enable or Disable Full Row Select feature in Explorer in Windows Vista). After some of our readers reported that setting FullRowSelect to 0 doesn’t do anything in Windows 7, I decided to have a look at this issue. Playing with different bitmask values, I finally got what I wanted – to disable full row select feature in Windows Explorer (Details mode) in Windows 7, but with a minor side-effect which is explained in the later part of the article. (more…)
In Microsoft Knowledgebase article KB978980 Microsoft states that when there are more than four broken shortcuts on the desktop, the System Maintenance troubleshooter automatically removes all broken shortcuts from the desktop. It implies that it only removes "broken" shortcuts.
Well! Look at this screenshot. (more…)
As we recently saw the Aero Shake feature can be disabled by enabling the Turn off Aero Shake window minimizing mouse gesture option in the Group Policy Editor, or by creating the NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts registry value. I found another way to disable Aero Shake, and this is a different registry edit. (more…)
Desktop Background Slideshow is a neat little feature in Windows 7 which helps you shuffle your desktop background from a image file store folder, at predefined intervals. But, as Windows doesn’t show the file name of the currently displayed wallpaper, it becomes a problem if you have thousands of images in a store folder and you need to find the file name and the directory location of the currently displayed wallpaper.
Here is a small script which adds the Desktop Background File Location option in the Desktop context menu, which opens the current wallpaper file’s target folder and selects the file. (more…)
Aero Shake is a feature introduced in Windows 7 using which you can minimize all other open Windows, by clicking on the title bar of an application and shaking it using the mouse. This causes all other applications (except that application window) to minimize automatically. This feature is available in Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions of Windows 7. If Aero Shake has stopped working in your PC all of a sudden and you’ve tried running the Aero Troubleshooter, here are some other things that you can try. (more…)
Most users customize the right-click menu by adding additional verbs in the registry in order to launch programs or scripts. Windows 7 lets you add the UAC Shield icon for static context menu items as well. If a verb you add to the right-click menu launches a program which runs elevated by default, then it’s a good idea to add the UAC shield icon so that users know that the task requires elevation. (more…)
Windows saves the desktop icon layout when the user logs off, and the setting is read during logon. Recently I came across a case where the desktop icons rearrange to their default positions after a restart or logoff/logon cycle. This turned out to be a Permissions issue with a registry key, which kept Windows from writing to it. Are you experiencing the same problem in your Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 PC? If so, here is a solution that you can give it a go. (more…)
