A Clear View Of Windows 95

Finding files, deleting temp files, & DVD ... by Tom S. Bair Jr.

Many users have written to me complaining that a file they created just a few days ago has disappeared among the four thousand or so files on their hard drive. How can they find it? Here's how:

1. Left-click on the Start button.

2. Place your mouse cursor on Find (thereby highlighting the word), and slide it to the right to highlight Files or Folders. Now left-click.

3. A Find menu will pop up on your desktop. Left-click on the Date Modified tab.

4. Left-click on the option button to the left of Find all files created or modified:.

5. Now you have a choice. You can select the between option, and enter two dates. You can select the month(s) option and enter the number of months you wish to search back on, or you can choose the day(s) option and enter the number of days. Select the time option you would like to use.

6. Left-click on the Find Now button.

The Find menu will expand downward to display the results of your search. You have now discovered how to find a needle in a haystack.

Disable Your Screen Saver

Windows 95 requires you to disable your Screen Saver before running the disk defragmenter in System Tools. Most of us find it rather annoying to navigate to Start | Control Panel | Display| Screen Saver, and selecting None as our Screen Saver in order to disable it. Worse yet is having to do it all over again to enable it.

I've got great news for you. Run your Disk Defragmenter, minimize the window, and left-click on the Start button to bring up the Start menu. As long as the Start menu is up on your screen, your screen saver will not activate. After Disk Defragmenter is finished running, just left-click on any unoccupied area of your desktop to return your system to normal status.

Clearing Your Run Menu

Have you ever used the Start menu's Run command to launch programs that you use frequently? If so, then you have noticed how the drop-down list continues to grow quite large, making it time consuming to find a particular program's name. Even though Windows 95 does not have a graphical user interface element to clear the "Most Recently Used" (MRU) list, by using the 14-step registry edit below; you can clear the RUN commands MRU list. This will give you a fresh start with your drop-down list.

Warning: This tip involves modifying the Windows 95 system registry. Do not modify your registry unless you are experienced in making backups of your registry and understand the process of recovering the registry should a problem occur.

1. Left-click the Start button.

2. Left-click on Run.

3. From your keyboard, type in regedit and press the Enter key.

4. Left-click on the "+" sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

5. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Software.

6. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Microsoft.

7. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Windows.

8. Left-click on the "+" sign next to CurrentVersion.

9. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Explorer.

10. Double left-click on the RunMRU folder to expand it.

11. On the right side of the registry editor, left-click on any key value except the "Default" at the top.

12. Press the Delete key on your keyboard. A Confirm Value Delete window will pop up asking, "Are you sure you want to delete this value?" Left-click on the Yes button.

13. Repeat steps 11 and 12 until "Default" is the only key value remaining.

14. Left-click on Registry in the tool bar, and left-click on Exit.

Reboot your computer. Now when you select Start | Run, you will see that your drop-down list is empty.

Control Panel Menu

Do you grow tired of navigating all the way through Start | Settings | Control Panel just to get to that one control option you need to use in a hurry? Try this simple undocumented Windows 95 feature that will speed up your access to your display, modems, system, etc.

1. Right-click on the Start button.

2. Left-click on Explore.

3. Left-click on File, highlight New, and slide your mouse pointer to the right to highlight Folder. Now left-click on Folder.

4. Give your folder the following name. Make sure you type this name exactly as it appears below. You will notice there is a period "." after the L in Control Panel, and the parameters are within braces (not parentheses or brackets): Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

5. Press the Enter key.

6. Go to File | Exit.

Take a look at your Start Menu by left-clicking on the Start button. See the Control Panel with the little black arrow to the right of it at the top of your menu? Highlight it with your mouse and you will get a drop down menu of all the control options that are stored in Control Panel.

Deleting Temp Files

Here's a tip that a beginning computer user can try. Windows 95 likes to create a lot of temporary files when it opens documents and data files. It saves these temporary files in the c:\windows\temp folder, with the intent of deleting them when the application is finished using them. However, we all know that Windows 95 is not perfect, and sometimes these temp files become permanent files. So delete them yourself.

1. Make sure that no programs or applications are running.

2. Navigate to Start | Programs | Windows Explorer, and open Explorer by left-clicking on it.

3. Using the left pane of Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Windows\Temp. Any existing temporary files will be displayed in Explorer's right pane.

4. Left-click on a file and press the Delete key on your keyboard. A Confirm File Delete window will pop up asking, "Are you sure you want to send 'FILENAME' to the Recycle Bin?" Left-click on the Yes button.

5. Repeat step four until all files in the Temp folder have been deleted.

6. Left-click on File | Exit to close Windows Explorer.

This process is even easier for Windows 98 users. All you need to do is run your Disk Cleanup Utility. You can find this wonderful application in Start | Accessories | System Tools. It is configurable, allowing you to delete standard file types: .BAK, .OLD, .TMP, etc. It will not only clean out your Temp folder, but also your Internet cache, along with any specified file types found anywhere on the hard drive.

Not Falling Back

Windows 95 automatically adjusts our computer to Daylight Savings Time (DST), saving us the trouble of changing the clock twice a year. Some of us, however, don't need or want Savings Time: maybe we run our computers on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for business reasons or we live in Arizona, where we don't ever change to DST. So how do we politely instruct Windows 95 to "knock it off" with the twice-a-year time changes? Just follow the three steps below.

1. Double-click on the time display on the right of your Task Bar.

2. Left-click on the Time Zone tab and uncheck the box next to "Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings changes."

3. Left-click on the OK button.

Disable Windows Animation

When you minimize an active window, the title bar will flash for a brief instant, and then it will animate as it shrinks down to the minimized state on the task bar. If you have several active applications, this can be annoying and slow you down a bit. By making a simple registry adjustment, you can turn the animation off.

1. Left-click on Start | Run.

2. From your keyboard, type in regedit and press the Enter key.

3. Left-click on the "+" sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

4. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Control Panel.

5. Left-click on the "+" sign next to Desktop.

6. Left-click on the "+" sign next to WindowMetrics.

7. Right-click on any blank area in the right-hand pane. This will pop up a window with New in it.

8. Left-click on New, and again on String Value. Now type in "MinAnimate" and press the Enter key.

9. Right-click on the MinAnimate key you have just created.

10. Left-click on Modify from the pop-up window.

11. Type in 0 (zero) under Value Data, and left-click on the OK button.

12. Left-click on Registry in the tool bar, and left-click on Exit.

Reboot your computer to have the new settings take effect. Try minimizing a full screen window and observe how fast it is now. Nice, huh?

DVD in Windows 98

Windows 98 comes with a Digital Video Disk (DVD) player application that lets you play full motion videos on your computer. Now you can watch a great movie while running another application on your computer -- assuming, of course, you've got a DVD drive. Unfortunately, the DVD Player application does not automatically install when you first put Windows 98 on your computer. Follow the instructions below and you will be watching movies in no time.

1. Navigate to Start | Settings | Control Panel.

2. Double left-click on the Add/Remove Programs icon.

3. Click on the Windows Setup tab.

4. Select the Multimedia component, and left-click on the Details button.

5. Left-click on the box next to DVD Player, a check mark will appear in the box.

6. Left-click on the OK button.

Wrapping It All Up

I have received several e-mail messages from Computer Bits readers asking how I decide which tips/tricks to use in my article series. With the exception of one, all the tips above were selected from e-mail requests made by a classroom of students in an Oregon school. They obviously have a teacher who knows a quality magazine at an affordable price. And so do you.

About the Author

Please feel free to email the author with your comments about this article: Tom Bair