• When typing an EMail message do not use all CAPITAL letters. On the Internet and other on-line services writing a message in capital letters is considered shouting. Remember this if you ever go on-line and it will keep you from being flamed (i.e. yelled at).

• If you want to bypass your startup group when you enter Windows 3.x, hold down the right <Shift> key while Windows is loading.

• To edit the Start menu in Windows 95 right-click on the Start menu and choose Explore.

• If you want to save your Program Manager settings without exiting Window 3.x make sure that the Save Settings On Exit parameter is checked under the Options menu. Then hold down the left <Shift> key and choose Exit off the File menu.

• Here's a shortcut for closing all your open folder windows in Windows 95. Hold down the Shift key and click on the close button (the x in the top right hand corner of the window) to close all open windows.

• If you want to restart Windows 95 without rebooting your computer hold down the left <Shift> key and choose Shut Down off the Start menu and then Restart the computer.

• Still need some icons to complete your perfect desktop. Windows 95 provides a number of new icons in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. You can find some of these new icons in cool.dll, shell32.dll, and pifmgr.dll.

• Windows 95's autorun feature automatically assumes you want to play a CD when you insert it. If you want to bypass the autorun feature, hold down the left Shift key when you insert a new CD.

• If your PC is on a UPS, you can increase performance by selecting the network server performance profile. This profile aggressively buffers data in memory, which could cause data loss if a power failure or other crash occurs, and should only be used if you have a stable configuration with a UPS. To change the profile, Right-click My Computer and select Properties, then click the Performance tab. Click the File System button and change the Typical Role of This Machine to Network Server.

• Windows 95 always asks for confirmation when you delete a file or drag it to the Recycle Bin. If you're tired of having to confirm every file deletion Right-click on Recycle Bin/Properties and turn off delete confirmations.

• If you rename a file in Windows 95 and then change your mind about it, press Alt+Backspace.

• If you're not using a monochrome VGA monitor with Windows 3.x (and who is?) you can free up conventional memory by using the MONOUMB.386 file. In the SYSTEM.INI add device=c:\dos\monoumb.386 to the [386Enh] section and save the file. Restart your computer and run MemMaker by typing MEMMAKER at the DOS prompt. Choose Custom Setup and on the Advanced Options screen answer Yes to the question "Use monochrome region (B000-B7FF) for running programs?" Then follow the instructions on your screen.

• If a modem is placed near a fluorescent light, the modem connection will experience intermittent line failures and data losses. If you have a fluorescent desk lamp position it several feet away from your modem.

• Here's a tip for you Road Warriors. Never, ever plug your PC card modem into a PBX phone line. PBX lines carry an electrical charge which can fry your modem if you plug your modem directly into the wall. If you don't have access to an analog line use an acoustic coupler designed for PBX lines.

• Logow.sys and Logo.sys are graphic screens shown during Windows shutdown. The former is the "wait" screen, and the latter is the "It's Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer" screen. These files are standard bitmaps you can modify with a bitmap editor. Make a backup first, then make your system look the way you want when it's shutting down.

• You can bypass the Windows 95 Logo at startup. Just press the Esc key during start. For a permanent fix, edit the MSDOS.SYS file. Add the line LOGO = 0 to the Options section. If you ever want the logo back, change the 0 to 1.

• Teach Windows 95 to leave the words "Shortcut to" off the title of shortcuts. Create several shortcuts in a row and delete "Shortcut to" each time. After five or six times, Windows get the hint and stops putting the words "Shortcut to" under the icon.

• By default, Windows opens a new window for each folder you open. If you don't want to leave a trail of folders as you navigate your system, hold down the Ctrl key when you double-click on folders. New folders will then open in the same window.

• Windows 95 introduces a new feature called AutoPlay that automatically runs a CD-ROM when you put it into your drive. This feature may cause severe performance problems for some PCs, particularly if there's no CD in the drive. Windows 95 checks the drive every second to see if you've put in a disk, and that can slow your PC. If you notice that your system occasionally slows down and has jerky operation, put a CD into the drive to see if that solves the problem. You can also disable AutoPlay completely by right-clicking on My Computer, select Properties, and click on the Device Manager tab. Select the CD-ROM drive (the specific drive name) and click on the Properties button. Under the Settings tab, uncheck the Auto Insert Notification box.

• Tired of the eight line help message that appears every time you start a DOS session in Windows? Turn it off by adding the line DOSPromptExitInstruc=Off to the [386Enh] section of your SYSTEM.INI file.

• Increase the number of screen lines from 25 to 50 for the DOS box by placing SCREENLINES=50 in the [Non-WindowsApp] section of SYSTEM.INI.

• One of the major problems I have with the Windows 95 interface is the way submenus appear and disappear on the Start Menu. Clicking the Start Menu and moving your mouse vertically causes submenus to automatically pop out. On a notebook computer this can make navigating the Start Menu extremely difficult. Here's an easy way to have your Windows 95 menus work like Windows 3.x menus.
  1. Run C:\WINDOWS\REGEDIT.EXE
  2. In the Windows that appears click the plus sign to the left of Hkey_Current_User, then click the plus sign to the left of the Control Panel subfolder. In the items that appear underneath the Control Panel, click the Desktop folder to select it.
  3. Right-click a blank space in the right-hand window of RegEdit. In the pop-up menu that appears, click New then click String Value.
  4. Type in the variable name MenuShowDelay. Press
  5. Right-click the word MenuShowDelay in the right pane, then click Modify. In the dialog box that appears, type in the value 65534. This sets the maximum delay before submenus pop out. The default value is 250 if you ever want to set it back.
  6. After you've set the variable to 65534, click OK, then exit RegEdit.
  7. You must restart Windows 95 for your change to take effect.

• You can use the right mouse button to drag and drop objects to Win 95 applications, Explorer, and the desktop. It works just like dragging and dropping with the left mouse button, but when you let go of the button, a context menu pops up asking you how to drop the item. What list of actions you can perform depends on the type of object you're dragging and its destination. For folders you get Move Here, Copy Here, and Create Shortcut Here.

• The easiest way to copy files between overlapping windows on the desktop is to drag the file from the source folder (the foreground) to the button representing the target folder on the Taskbar and hold it there. After a short delay, the target folder gains the focus and comes to the foreground, where you can easily drop your file. With this method, there is no need for jockeying to try to keep part of both folders in view.

• You can run Windows apps from a DOS window and avoid navigating through menus to find the program. Enter the executable name at the DOS prompt, and if the file is in your path, the app will load into a new windows.

• The Windows 95 Explorer provides a keyboard shortcut that can expand the entire contents of a disk drive or folder. Hold down the Alt key and press the Asterisk key on the numeric keypad. Explorer will read and display every subfolder of whatever object you've selected.

• Want to create and name a document quickly without having to start the application and save your document? In Windows 95 it's as simple as right-clicking on an empty spot in the folder of your choice, click on New, and choose one of the listed registered document types. You will instantly see a new document of that type in the folder you clicked on. The new document's filename will remain highlighted so you can change it. Double-click on the filename to load the associated application and open the file.

• Windows 95 lets you add comments to help topics. Bring up a topic and right-click on it. Choose Annotate, type in your comments, and click on Save. You'll see a paper clip icon at the top of the topic; click on it to return to the annotation screen.

• For a simple screen capture in Windows 95 hit the Print Screen on your keyboard. This will save an image of your desktop to the clipboard. To capture only the active window, hold down the Alt key when you press Print Screen.

• Unlike Windows 3.x and DOS, Windows 95 doesn't automatically synchronize your system's clock with that of the network server. But the Net Time command included with Windows 95 will allow you to synchronize with your preferred server. You can either run it at the DOS prompt or in batch files (e.g. autoexec.bat), but you must run it after you load your network drivers. If you're on a Novell network, place this line in your personal login script or in the system login script: #C:\WINDOWS\NET TIME \\SERVER /SET /YES. Replace SERVER with the name of your preferred server.

• The Windows 95 Explorer provides a keyboard shortcut that can expand the entire contents of a disk drive or folder. Hold down the Alt key and press the Asterisk key on the numeric keypad. Explorer will read and display every subfolder of whatever object you've selected.

• You can delete the My Documents folder that Office for Windows 95 created as an undeletable system folder. Run REGEDIT.EXE and click on My Computer. Choose Edit|Find and type my documents. Press Enter to locate the first instance of my documents. Then double-click on the "ab" icon to edit the default document's folder pathname. Press F3 to locate other instances of my documents. Now you can close the Registry Editor and kill that folder for good.

• When you're dragging a file between folders in Explorer, you might not know whether you've copied or moved it. To make sure that you're copying a file, drag it to the destination folder and when that folder is highlighted press the key before releasing the mouse button. A plus sign will appear beside the file to indicate that you're copying it. To move a file, drag it to the destination folder and when that folder is highlighted press the key.

• Ever feel the need to clear the last-opened files list under the File menu in Microsoft Word ? Choose Options from the Tools menu, click on the General tab, clear the check box in front of "Recently Used File List" then click OK.

• If you right-click on the Windows 95 desktop or explorer window, it brings up the New submenu which gives you an option to create a new folder or file of a selected type. Unfortunately after you've installed a number of new applications, this menu can become cluttered with file types you don't need. The only way to remove the file types you don't need is by editing the Windows 95 Registry. Follow these instructions and only try this if you're comfortable with editing the registry:
  1. Start the Registry Editor (c:\windows\regedit.exe)
  2. Follow the Explorer-like tree to MyComputer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.
  3. Expand this branch and you'll see others named for the default extensions of different file types.
  4. Expand the one showing the extension of the file type you want to remove from the New submenu.
  5. If you want to remove the option that creates a new Excel (.xls) document, find the Registry entry MyComputer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\xls.
  6. Expand it, highlight the ShellNew entry underneath, and press Del to remove it.

• If you upgraded to Windows 95 after installing Quarterdeck's QEMM 8.0 on your Windows 3.x PC, starting Windows 95 in Safe mode can cause a crash. The fix:
  1. Restart your computer
  2. Press the F8 key when you see the "Starting Windows 95" message
  3. Choose Safe Mode Command Prompt Only
  4. Edit the SYSTEM.INI file
  5. Locate the [boot] section and place a semicolon at the beginning of the line: DRIVERS=RSRCMGR.DLL to disable it.
  6. Add the line: DRIVERS=MMSYSTEM.DLL below the line you disabled.
  7. Save and close the SYSTEM.INI file and restart your PC.

• If running CorelDraw5 for Windows results in "Invalid Dynalinks" errors, one of CorelDraw's DLL files have been overwritten or damaged. Copying all the DLL files in the \REDIST directory of the CorelDraw CD-ROM into your hard disk's \COREL50\PROGRAMS directory should fix the problem.

• If you run a DOS program in Windows 95 by clicking on its icon you have the ability to set the amount of conventional memory it uses. Open the DOS program icon, right-click on the icon, choose Properties, and click on the Memory tab. Indicate the total conventional memory the program requires in the appropriate box, and click on OK.

• If your system has multiple hard drives moving the swapfile to your fastest drive can improve its performance. Be very careful when changing virtual memory settings in Windows 95. You probably don't want to try this if you're just starting out. For those of you who are more experienced follow these steps:
  1. In Control Panel choose System, then System Properties.
  2. Click on the Performance tab, and from the Advanced Settings option, select Virtual Memory.
  3. Select Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. You can then choose the new disk from the list in the Hard Disk box.
  4. You'll need to restart Windows 95 before the new settings will take effect.

• Microsoft has confirmed that the only way to uninstall Microsoft's Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) Add-In for Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 is to uninstall Internet Explorer first. Straight uninstallation results in a "ThunkConnect32 Failure!!" error message.

• If the e-mail you send with Windows 95 Exchange is in the Microsoft Exchange rich text format, it can arrive with an equal sign (=) at the end of each line. To fix the problem follow these steps.
  1. Select the Start menu.
  2. Choose Settings and then Control Panel
  3. Double-click Mail and Fax and then click on Internet Mail.
  4. Click on the Properties button and on the General tab, click the Message Format button.
  5. Click on Character Set and change the option from ISO 8859-1 to US ASCII and confirm the change. Close the Control Panel.
  6. Open Microsoft Exchange, select Tools and then Address Book.
  7. Right-click on the recipient's address. In the menu, click Properties and then disable the "Always send messages in Microsoft Exchange rich text format option.

• Here's an easy way to launch a DOS session from any folder.
  1. Open any folder and select View|Options from the menu.
  2. Click on the File Types tab in the Options windows, then scroll down the list of Registered File Types and choose Folder.
  3. Double-click on Folder and then select New.
  4. Type "Shell to DOS" in the Action line and type c:\windows\command.com /K cd" in the Application used to perform action" line.
  5. "Shell to DOS" will now appear as an option on the right-click menu for folders.

• Have you ever clicked Shutdown and remembered something else you wanted to do on your computer? You don't have to wait for the PC to power back up and go through self test. When you get the screen that says "It is now safe for you to turn off you computer" just type "win" and hit enter to restart Windows 95. If you want to be in the DOS mode type "mode co80". The Windows 95 system shutdown closes the registry, and drops you back to a DOS session, but displays a graphics message for you to turn off your computer. Behind the scenes, your PC is really sitting at the familiar C: prompt!

• Have you ever wanted to use long directory or file names at the DOS command line in Windows 95. You can enter long directory or file names, even those with spaces in them, by enclosing them in quotes (e.g. dir "Cool Windows Utilities").

• There is a memory leak in Windows 95 that occurs whenver a user runs a WinSock application. Microsoft has released an update to the 32-bit kernel that fixes this problem. You can download the patch at Microsoft's site.

• Microsoft's Windows 95 kernel development team have released a collection of four applets called KernelToys. The four applets are: Keyboard Remap; Conventional Memory Tracker; MS-DOS Wizard Tool; Win95 Time Zone Editor. You can get krnltoys.exe (54 kb) at Microsoft's site. Each applet has its setup or install routine, so you'll have to read the accompanying text files to learn the best way to install them.

• Microsoft's Frontpage has a hidden wizard that helps you to create HTML frames. To access the Frames Wizard from the main menu choose File|New to open a new document and then choose Frames Wizard. The Frames Wizard offers six preset, but customizable, framesets, or you can create your own using the wizard.

• Did you move up your system clock an hour for daylight savings? Then a bug in Netscape Navigator 2.0 could be delaying the reloading of certain Web pages, such as those providing real-time updates of sports scores and stock prices. Web bulletins that used to be updated every minute or so may now be taking an hour. This has reportedly been fixed in Navigator 2.02 which you can download by clicking on the icon.

• A number of Hewlett-Packard PCs require an updated BIOS to run Windows 95. HP Vectra VE series computers need BIOS version GL.05.08 or later. HP Vectra VL3 computers need BIOS version GK0509 or later. HP Vectra XM3 computers need BIOS version GK0503 or later. You can download the Vectra BIOS upgrades free from Hewlett Packard's Web site at http://www.hp.com/cposupport/personal_computing/vectra_support.html.

• Some people prefer the two-pane look of the Explorer, which is a much more informative view of My Computer's resources than the bland Folder View. To make the My Computer icon default to Explorer View, rather than Folder View edit the Registry entry for My Computer. Warning: Only attempt this if you are comfortable using the Registry Editor. You can cause major damage to the Registry if you don't know what you are doing.
  1. Run regedit.exe, choose Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\CLASSES\Clsid\{20D04FE0- 3AEA-1069-A2D8-080022B30309D}\Shell\ and select [highlight] the Shell key. Right-click the right-hand pane; then click New, Key. Create a key called Open that branches from Shell.

  2. With the Open key selected, right-click the right pane, click New, Key and create a key called Command.

  3. With the new Command key selected, right-click the (Default) key, click Modify, and set the (Default) value of Command to Explorer.exe. You can use any of the Explorer start-up switches or substitute the fully qualified pathname of any other program. Norton Navigator users would probably want to specify the path to the Navigator file manager.

  4. Close regedit.exe. The change takes effect immediately.

• If you use Windows95's Dial-Up Networking to connect to your ISP (internet service provider), you've probably made a shortcut by dragging the session icon onto the desktop or Start Menu. Unfortunately the Connect To box still pops-up to make sure you want to connect. To get rid of the Connect To box download and install Dunce. Dunce is a freeware program that also has the ability to redial when disconnected and can launch any program when a connection has been established. I've been using it for the past four months and it is a great time saver.

• Most mail programs allow for the use of a signature, a file that is automatically added to the end of every email you send. This file can contain your name, contact information, or just a meaningless quote. Unfortunately Microsoft didn't feel it necessary to include this feature in Exchange. To add a signature file to your messages in Exchange, download and install the freeware program Internet Idioms (12 kb).

• To make Internet Explorer (IE) load without taking you to a particular Web page, right-click on the IE Shortcut on the desktop (or in the Start menu), choose Properties, and click on the Shortcut tab. In the Target field, add a space to the end, then type -nohome. Now click on OK and reload IE for the change to take effect. Note this will only work with a Shortcut to IE, not the IE icon that is placed on the desktop when you install the program.

• Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator 3.0 both let you replace your current wallpaper with any graphic on the Web. Simply right-click on the image you want and choose Set as Wallpaper.

• When you install Win95 over Windows 3.x, a utility called GRPCONV.EXE (located in your WINDOWS folder) converts all your Program Manager program groups into cascading menus on your Start menu. You can use the same utility to restore the default configuration of cascading menus by launching Start/Run and typing GRPCONV /S and pressing OK, or to manual convert Win 3.x program groups by typing GRPCONV /M. picking the program group files and pressing Open.

• Sometimes you need to dash off a quick e-mail message but don't want to load the whole bloated Exchange program. Here's how to open only a Create Message window: Make a shortcut on your Desktop (or wherever you want it) and type in the path to the file EXCHNG32.EXE, followed by a space and /n. Give the shortcut a name, and voila! (Note that the message won't actually be sent until you launch Exchange.)

• Win95 ships with a free Internet utility called IP Configuration that lets you check out your Internet setup's vital stats. Launch Start/Run and type in WINIPCFG, then click on the More Info button to get the whole picture.

• Win95 pauses for about two seconds during bootup to give you the opportunity to press a startup key such as F8. But you can remove the pause and make bootup faster by opening the file MSDOS.SYS in Notepad and adding the entry BootDelay=0 to the [Options] section.

• If you mess with the Registry, make sure you have a good backup first. Fortunately, the Windows 95 CD comes with a free Registry backup utility. Create a folder on your hard drive called Registry Backup, select and copy CFGBACK.EXE (and its help file) in the OTHER\ MISC\CFGBACK\ folder of the Win95 CD, then paste it into the new folder. Create a shortcut to the file for easy access.

• There's a new PowerToy in town called DeskView that lets you select any item on your desktop from the Tray (the area in the taskbar where the time is displayed) with a single click. Download DeskView from the WINDOWS Magazine Free Win95 Software page.

• If you use the Inbox, you might want to run the Inbox Repair Tool once in a while to prevent lockups and problems in the future. The file looks for errors in the document that stores all of your Inbox messages. You can find the file on your Start menu (Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) or by launching the Find utility and searching for SCANPST.EXE. Warning: If you've got multiple megabytes of messages, it will take a while to scan and repair them.

• Here's a tip that lets you put Start menu items in the order you want and also launch them with keystrokes. Right-click on the Start button, then select Open. Rename each item by placing a number in front of it. Now you can open the Start menu by pressing Ctrl+Esc. Launch the program of your choice by simply pressing the associated number.

• Documents are usually associated with a single application. Normally, when you double-click on a document type, the system tells Windows to open a specific application, then open the document in that application. Expand your options by double-clicking on My Computer. Select View/Options/File Types. Choose the document type you'd like to open in other apps in the Registered File Types list. Click on Edit/New. Type something like "Open in " in the Action field. Click on the Browse button to find the application. Click OK. Now, whenever you right-click on that document type, you'll see the option you typed in.

• If you'd like to take a sneak peek at your messages before you open them (or to decide whether you really need to read them), just select Columns from the View menu, choose Item Text from the list on the left and click on the Add button and then on the OK button. (You can try various alternatives in the Columns dialog box for column width and placement.) This will give you as much of the first line of the message as can fit in the space allocated.

• The Win95 Find utility sports some unique--and undocumented--wild-card capabilities that you can use in the Find dialog's Named box. For example, putting a question mark before a character or string finds the character or string anywhere in the filename (except at the beginning). A question mark after the character or string does the same thing, as long as the character or string is not at the end of the filename. Also, if you type in characters without an accompanying asterisk, question mark or period, Find will search for folders and files that contain those characters in the order you typed them in.

• Batch files in Win95 leave a telltale DOS residue--the open MS-DOS Prompt window. To close it, create a shortcut to the batch file, right-click on the shortcut to bring up the Properties dialog, select the Program tab and click on the Close on Exit item at the bottom.

• DOS veterans know that typing two periods after the Change Directory command (CD ..) brings you to the parent directory of the current directory. The Win95 MS-DOS prompt improves on this by the use of three periods and four periods to bring you to the parent directories once and twice removed, respectively.

• Win95 comes with a few options designed to make it more accessible to handicapped or injured users. One of these options is MouseKeys, which lets you move your mouse pointer with the numeric keypad on your keyboard. This is useful if you're recovering from a repetitive strain injury caused by overly vigorous use of your mouse, or you have a notebook on which you don't want to install a mouse. Turn on MouseKeys by double-clicking on the Accessibility Options icon in the Control Panel; then click on the Mouse tab and select Use MouseKeys.

• You already know that double-clicking on the speaker icon in the Win95 taskbar tray launches the volume-control dialog, which includes controls for volume, CD, MIDI and .WAV files. But if you drag and drop the speaker icon anywhere on your desktop, you get only the master volume control. It's placed where you drop it and vanishes when you click on anything else.

• If you use the ERASE *.* command in DOS or in an MS Command Prompt window, it asks you if you're sure, and you have to answer "Y" or "N." Here's an undocumented Win95 feature: By omitting the period and simply typing ERASE **, it deletes the contents of the folder, no questions asked. This is great for batch files or whenever you don't want to be bothered by questions.

• Restarting Win95 is normally a four-step process (click on the Start button, select Shut Down, click on the "Restart the computer?" button and then click on OK). You can make it a one-step process by creating an icon on your desktop that restarts Win95. Open Notepad and type @exit. Close the document and give it a name with a .BAT extension. Now stash the file somewhere on your hard disk. Create a shortcut to the file by using the right mouse button to drag it to the Desktop and then selecting Create Shortcut(s) Here. Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties. Click on the Program tab and select the Close on Exit box. Now click on the Advanced button and make sure "MS-DOS mode" is selected and "Warn before entering MS-DOS mode" is not selected. Click on the OK button twice. Give your new shortcut a unique icon and name. From now on, whenever you double-click on the icon, Win95 will restart, no questions asked.

• Here's a quick way to add addresses to your Personal Address Book in Exchange: When you get a message, right-click on the address in the From: field and select Add to Personal Address Book.

• The items on your Documents menu (Start/Documents) are really just shortcuts in your C:\WINDOWS\RECENT folder. You can selectively delete items there by opening the folder and deleting the shortcuts you don’t want.

• When you open the Control Panel, you are presented with numerous icons that allow you to control many aspects of the Windows environment. To make these applets more accessible create a new folder in your Start Menu, and name it "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"

  This will give you a cascading menu of the Control Panel applets on your Start Menu. You can also do the same with the following virtual folders:

  • URL History Folder.{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000}
  • Internet Cache.{7BD29E00-76C1-11CF-9DD0-00A0C9034933}
  • Dial-Up Networking.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}
  • Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
  • Inbox.{00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
  • My Computer.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
  • Recycle Bin.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
  • Network Neighborhood.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
  • Desktop.{00021400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
  • Briefcase.{85BBD920-42A0-1069-A2E4-08002B30309D}
  • Fonts.{BD84B380-8CA2-1069-AB1D-08000948F534}

• If you forget your Win95 password, just press Escape at the password box, bring up the MS-DOS Prompt and enter dir *.PWL at the WINDOWS folder to find your .PWL files. Delete the one with your name in front of it. Restart your system and enter a new password when prompted.

• Restarting Win95 is normally a four-step process (click on the Start button, select Shut Down, click on the "Restart the computer?" button and then click on OK). You can make it a one-step process by creating an icon on your desktop that restarts Win95. Open Notepad and type @exit. Close the document and give it a name with a .BAT extension. Now stash the file somewhere on your hard disk. Create a shortcut to the file by using the right mouse button to drag it to the Desktop and then selecting Create Shortcut(s) Here. Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties. Click on the Program tab and select the Close on Exit box. Now click on the Advanced button and make sure "MS-DOS mode" is selected and "Warn before entering MS-DOS mode" is not selected. Click on the OK button twice. Give your new shortcut a unique icon and name. From now on, whenever you double-click on the icon, Win95 will restart, no questions asked.

• Here's how to turn the Run command dialog into a neat Web launching pad. Create a batch file called GO.BAT with the following line: start http://www.%1.com and put it in your WINDOWS folder. Now, whenever you want to go to a Web site, simply bring up the Run box from the Start menu, type GOand hit the Enter key. For example, if you want to go to the WINDOWS Magazine Web site, just type GO WINMAG.

• If you edit HTML files regularly, you can add an Edit function to the context menu of Web documents. Selecting that Edit option will launch your favorite HTML authoring tool and load the file you want to edit. To set it up, go to Windows Explorer. Select Options from the View menu and click on the File Types tab. Select Internet Document from the list, then click on the Edit button. Click on the New button, type Edit in the Action box, click on the Browse button and select your favorite HTML authoring tool. Click on OK, then on OK again, then on OK one more time.

• The Exchange client that comes with Win95 has a bug that causes the .PST file, which holds all your Exchange folders and messages, to become bloated beyond belief. (Note that this doesn't happen if you've set up Exchange to wipe out all messages in your Deleted Items folder when you log out.) Fortunately, Microsoft built in a crash diet. Just select Services from the Tools menu, click on Personal Folders, then on Properties and then on Compact Now.

• Most people mouse their way through the Web, but keyboard surfing is faster. In Navigator 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0, the Tab key takes you from link to link (even within image maps); pressing Enter is like clicking on the link. Ctrl+D puts the current page in Bookmarks or Favorites.

• Here's how to tell any application where to look for documents and where to save them by default: Find the shortcut to the app on your Desktop or Start menu (for the Start menu shortcuts, right-click on the Start button and select open, then drill your way to the shortcut). Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties. Click on the Shortcut tab. Now type the path to the folder of your choice in the Start In box.

• Most of us use the Start menu to find ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter or Backup. But there's a better way. In My Computer, right-click on a drive and select Properties. Click on the Tools tab. Here you'll get information on the last time you performed each of the three disk operations, with launch buttons for each.

• You may already know how to resize columns in Exchange, Find and Explorer (when you select View/Details), but here's a twist you may not know. If you double-click on the border, Windows will automatically resize the column to the narrowest width that will still show all the data in the column.

• Icon Type Too Big or Tiny? Wish you could make your icons just right? Right-click on the desktop and choose Properties, then the Appearance tab, then the Item menu. Scroll down and select Icon from the list, and then choose the font and size you wish from the pick lists.

• You could change the name of everything on your Desktop except the Recycle Bin-until now. Launch the Registry Editor by selecting Run from the Start menu, typing REGEDIT in the Run dialog and clicking on the OK button. Drill down the following path: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, CLSID, {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} and change the Default value from "Recycle Bin" to the name of your choice.

• Here's how to put top-level Start menu items in the order you want and also launch them with keystrokes: Right-click on the Start button and select Open. Rename each item by placing a number in front of it. Now you can open the Start menu by pressing Ctrl+Esc, and launch a program by pressing its associated number.

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