Windows 7: The Top 10 Hidden Features
1. God Mode
It may be hyperbolically named, but Windows 7's God Mode
is indeed omnipresent. It conveniently puts hundreds of settings from
all around the operating system all in one place.
To turn on God Mode,
create a new folder on your desktop--or anywhere you'd like--and name it:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.
Don't include the final period. The resulting folder will contain 270
items, representing virtually every configurable option in Windows 7.
What is the importance of God Mode in Windows XP?
God Mode is a Windows OS feature that further enhances the ‘ease of
use’ characteristic for all Windows XP users. God Mode is a folder that
collects a comprehensive list of customization settings allowing you to
change all your settings from one place. It is very simple to be enabled
and pretty useful too, provided you tweak around things to suit your
requirements. As you may have already guessed from its name, the mention
of the God Mode actually creates a lot of anticipation for a user, and
you actually start expecting grander features to explore. To meet up to
your expectations, Microsoft has set this hidden feature, the ‘God
Mode’, with a facility to access all of the operating system’s control
panels from within a single folder. By creating the new folder in
Windows XP and by renaming it with a certain text string at the end, you
will be able to have a single spot to take care of multiple things
including changing the look of the mouse pointer and creating a new
hard-drive partition.
Following are the important roles of the God Mode in Windows XP:
Better multitasking
Avoids issues from cropping up
Frees up memory space
Better multitasking
Multitasking is the process of executing more than one task at a
time. The God Mode in Windows XP helps you to multitask. Since you can
do multiple things in one go, you save time, efforts and also increase
your productivity. After you have enabled this mode, you will be able to
access all the different settings from one place, this one common
folder. You don’t require accessing the different folders every time you
require a file stored in them. You reach this one place and you get
everything here, neatly organized and settled.
Avoid issues from cropping up
The God Mode in Windows XP helps you to avoid the chances of issues
cropping up in the system. Since this folder contains all the security
options in the Control Panel, you could access all of them from this
single folder. In the event of a situation wherein you are prevented
from accessing particular files, folders, or an application, you can
easily access this folder and reach the required files and folders.
Since this folder contains all the settings in the system, you could
free up memory space by deleting the settings from its other locations.
You don’t need to store all those settings in separate folders; easy
access to just one folder will definitely do the trick here. You will
further be able to speed up the system by organizing files in a single
place. The processor does not need to access those settings from
separate folders and thereby uses up less memory space.
How to enable the God Mode in Windows XP
To enter the ‘God Mode’, you will need to create a new folder and
then rename the folder as: God
Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. Once that is done, the
folder’s icon will change to look like a control panel and will contain
all the control options that you generally require! That’s it.
Isn’t this hidden Windows XP feature impressive? Enable your own God
Mode in Windows XP today and see how you increase your productivity
instantly. Dial our toll free number to let iYogi tech experts set up
the God Mode in your Windows XP PC. We are available 24x7 and you can
contact us as per your convenience?
2. Enhanced Calculator
Windows' built-in calculator hasn't really changed much
over the years, but Windows 7's calculator has a few extra tricks up its
sleeve, which you'll find under the View menu.
It can do myriad kinds
of unit conversion (temperature, weight, area, and eight others),
interesting date calculations, and even has worksheets to calculate a
mortgage payment or a car's fuel mileage. It maintains a history of your
previous calculations as long as the program is open.
3. WordPad's File Support
The built-in WordPad word processor in Vista is of limited
usefulness because it only supports RTF (Rich Text Format) and plain
text (TXT) files. In Windows 7, on the other hand, WordPad isn't quite
as restricted.
Although Windows 7's WordPad still doesn't work with .doc files from
Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier versions, it can open and save ODT
(OpenDocument Text) files used by the free OpenOffice.org word processor
as well as .docx files created in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010. Although
WordPad can't understand all the complex formatting (it will warn you
of this upon opening or saving a file), it will still let you read the
documents without having the native programs installed.
4. Reliability Monitor
When your system's acting flaky and you're trying to
figure out what's going on, the Reliability Monitor may help. Search for
"reliability" from the Start menu, and run View reliability history.
You'll get a graph of your system's "stability index" over a period of
days and weeks (rated on a scale of 1 to 10). It displays which
programs, Windows components, or miscellaneous items crashed on a given
day, helping you identify problem items.
5. Problem Steps Recorder
When you need outside PC help, it's much better to let
them see for themselves what's happening on your system. But if remote
access isn't an option, the Problem Steps Recorder may be the next best
thing.
Search for and run "psr" from the Start menu. Click Start Record, and
the utility will record your activities through a series of screen
shots, automatically including captions that show exactly where you
clicked. You can also use the Add Comment button to highlight specific
areas of the screen and insert custom annotations. When you stop
recording, everything will be stitched together and saved as a Web
browser-compatible MHTML (MIME HTML) file, conveniently pre-ZIPped and
ready for e-mailing to your geek of choice.
6. Power Efficiency Report
If your Windows 7 laptop isn't getting the battery life
you expect—or it experiences power-related issues, such as the inability
to go into standby or hibernate mode—the problem usually lies with
incorrectly configured power management settings.
Windows 7's Power Efficiency Report can help you sniff out potential
problems. Type search for CMD from the Start menu, run it as an
administrator (right-click cmd.exe on the menu and choose Run as
administrator). From the command prompt, type powercfg –energy
(include the space) to scan your system, and after about a minute,
you'll find a file called energy-report.html in your \windows\system32
folder.
Copy the report to another location and open it (you'll get a
file not found error if you try to open it from the system32 folder) for
detailed information about what system devices or settings are throwing
a monkey wrench into your power management. Get more details on the PowerCfg utility.
7. Pin Folders to the Taskbar
You already know that you can right-click your favorite
programs and pin them to the Windows 7 Taskbar for easy access. Right?
Although there's no such option for folders, there is another way to
keep them close at hand on the Taskbar. Right-click any folder, drag it
to an empty space on the Taskbar (or to the Windows Explorer button),
and let go when "Pin to Windows Explorer" appears. Now when you
right-click the Windows Explorer button, your folders will be accessible
via the Jump List.
8. Wipe Free Disk Space08
It's no secret (or at least, it shouldn't be) that when
you delete files or folders in Windows, they're not actually erased—the
space they took up is simply marked as "available for use," which allows
the files to be recoverable (with the right software) until they're
overwritten with new data.
There is a utility built-into Windows (even XP Pro and Vista) that will
overwrite all the free space on a hard drive, insuring any files you've
deleted stay dead. Launch a command prompt and type cipher /w:X
where X is the letter of the drive or partition you want to wipe. Be
patient—the process can take a long time if you have a lot of free
space.
9. "Virtual" Wi-Fi
If you check out the network connections of most
Wi-Fi-equipped Windows 7 systems (except those with Starter Edition),
you'll notice an adapter called Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter.
This virtual adapter can act as a software-based access point; it takes
a wired or wireless network connection and makes it available a
separate wireless network.
This lets you create your own hotspot from whatever network you're
connected to, which can be handy in many different scenarios, including
when you want to connect multiple devices to a Wi-Fi network that
charges for access. (Note: to take advantage of this feature, you'll
need a copy of the free Connectify software.)
10. Hotkey a Window between Monitors
Want an easy and mouse-free way to move windows around a
display or, better yet, between multiple monitors? When you press the
Windows key + the left or right arrow key, the active window will move
from its original position and anchor itself to the edge of the screen
in the direction of the arrow, and it will do so across every monitor
you have. Similarly, if you press Windows + SHIFT + left or right arrow,
the active window will jump over to the same position on the adjacent
monitor (so if you only have two monitors, it doesn't matter which arrow
key you use).
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