Some handy Windows basics

The following little bag of Windows tricks is courtesy of readers who suggested that I cover some more Windows basics. Thanks to Raymond in Holland and other readers for their suggestions.

Opening a new browser window

I'm told that not everybody seems to be aware of the Shift+click trick. When you are reading a web page and you come across a link, say to http://www.emulators.com, and you wish to read that new page but not lose your spot on the current page, what I do is open the link in a new window. i.e. I create a second browser window to the linked page in.

The quickest way to do this in Internet Explorer is to hold the Shift key while you click on the link. That's it. Shift and click. The other way is to right click on the link and then click on Open in New Window. Either way, you get the link opening in a second window.

Remember, if you ever find yourself clicking on a link and then wishing you had saved your previous spot, just press the Backspace key to return to your original page, then use the Shift+click trick to open the link in a new window.

Deleting temporary files

I've mentioned that turning off System Restore can stop a lot of disk space from being wasted by preventing a lot of unnecessary temporary files from being created. But what do you do to clean up unneeded files already on your hard disk?

The easiest (but not the most thorough way) is to run the Disk Cleanup wizard. From the Start menu, click on Accessories, System Tools, then Disk Cleanup. You will need to do this for each hard disk partition (i.e. C:. D:. etc) on your PC's hard disk. Select a partition to clean up, for example C:, and click the OK button. After a few seconds, you will be presented with a list of possible methods to clean up disk space, as shown below:

Typically it is OK to select all of the methods listed and then to click OK. This will then clean up the space on that hard disk partition. Repeat the processed for each drive letter.

This wizard will not free up all unneeded files on your hard disk, but is a very quick way to find many of them without having to poke around your hard disk much.

If you are feeling brave, you can manually clear out files in your personal Temp folder. In older versions of Windows, this is simply the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder. Quit all programs and then using the Explorer you can navigate into that folder and delete any files you find there.

On Windows 2000 and Windows XP, each user has a private Temp folder located in the Documents and Settings folder located on the boot partition. The quickest way to find your Temp folder is to bring up the Run dialog (Win+R), type CMD, and then type CD LOCAL*\TEMP. Now type del /s /q *.* to delete any remaining temporary files.

"Spring Loaded Folders" in Windows Explorer

A popular feature in Mac OS 9 (which sadly, was left out of Mac OS X) is a feature called spring loaded folders. This feature allows you to navigate into folders while dragging and dropping files without opening each folder in advance.

A similar such feature exists in the Windows Explorer when the Folders view is enabled. Let's say, for example, that you've opened the Windows Explorer by double clicking the My Computer icon. You navigate into your CD-ROM drive on drive F: by double clicking the F: icon. Now you wish to drag a picture file from the CD to the My Pictures folder on the hard disk. You click and start dragging, and then realize that you have not opened the My Pictures folder yet! In Windows XP, the My Pictures folder is nested inside the My Documents folder, which you have also not opened.

So what to do? Do NOT let go of the mouse button!!! If you do, you will end up randomly copying the file to whatever the mouse pointer happens to be hovering over. Instead, you can safely abort the drag operation by pressing the Esc key on your keyboard, then letting go of the mouse button.

But that would be be boring. The smart Windows user knows that if you drag and hover the mouse over a folder in Folder view, the folder will expand to show up the sub-folders. As shown in the partial screen shot below, I can drag and hover the mouse over the My Documents icon, and about one second later, the folder will expand to reveal that My Pictures folder.

At this point I can safely drop the picture file into the My Pictures folder as I intended. Not quite spring loaded folders, but pretty close. By the way, this same trick works in Outlook and any other program that displays the "tree view" of folders.

And there you have it. Three very simple tricks that come in very handy when using Windows.