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Windows Tips

Does Your Wallpaper Fit?

One tip that has evaded us over the years is sharing the magic of making wallpaper fit your screen. Wallpaper personalizes your computer and makes your desktop yours.

If you use Windows 98 and above, you can add any photo you want to your desktop as wallpaper. But often the picture doesn’t quite fit well on the screen leaving space around the picture. If you want to get rid of the space around your wallpaper, try this:

1. RIGHT Click on your desktop (not on an icon)
2. Click on Properties from the menu
3. Click on the Desktop or Background tab
4. In the position box, click and choose “Stretch”

CTRL+ALT+DEL in Windows XP

With all previous versions of Windows, save Windows 2000, pushing Ctrl+Alt+Del on a keyboard would bring up the Close Program dialog box.

 

In Windows XP, pushing this combination of keys brings up the multi-tabbed Windows Task Manager. A much more ominous looking version of the former Close Program box. The only tab where you will want to occasionally end a program is the "Applications" tab. The programs listed here can be safely terminated using the End Task button.

The processes tab can be a little more touchy. The cryptic descriptions there are hard to decipher. My advice is leave it alone unless there is something obvious to you that you would like to delete.

Control Your Recycle Bin

Just to get all of us on the same page, remember that when you delete a file from your computer (like a photo or Word document for example), the file does not leave the computer, it gets moved to the Recycle Bin. If you want to free up the space used by the file, you must delete it from the recycle bin.

However, did you know that you can control how much space can be used by the recycle bin, stop the “are you sure” prompt, or completely bypass the recycle bin? Read on and learn…

To gain control of these functions, simply right click on the recycle bin and click properties.

Changing Shortcut Icons – Video Tip

Lately many of our tips have focused on Internet and computer safety and security. As important as these topics are, computers still do have a fun side. In fact, Adam and I often refer to computers as the ‘hot rod’ of the new millennium…you can customize it to your own liking. In today’s tip, you will learn how to customize boring old shortcuts on your desktop. Since Windows 95, Microsoft gave users the ability to change icons to suit their own tastes, but this feature doesn’t get practiced very often.