Way #1: using a dummy executable file to fool Windows 7

We have covered this before but here are 3 steps in brief.

1. Create a dummy.exe file on desktop.

2. Pin this dummy.exe to the taskbar.

3. Change the pined dummy.exe file’s property to point the Target textbox to the folder you want to pin.

Way #2: a smart use of Explorer.exe

Thanks to the reader Dan who commented on our Way #1 post about a much easy way that smartly uses built-in Explorer.exe. Here is the steps in detail.

1. Create a shortcut on desktop by right-clicking on blank area on desktop, New, and Shortcut.

2. Type in the following command in the location box.

explorer.exe c:\folder\to\path

Note that you can replace “c:\folder\to\path” with a real path to the folder you want to pin.

3. Type a name for the shortcut.

4. Right-click on the shortcut just created, and pin it to the taskbar.

Way #3: use 3rd party tools to make it prettier

There are also tools out there that can even make a pined folder much prettier. We covered 2 tools before, 7Stacks and StandaloneStack 2. Both tools can pin a specified tool on taskbar with stacking the content inside the folder. We recommend the latter one because it seems to be running a bit smoother and looks a bit nicer as well.

Way #4: a tricky use of toolbar

Well, this isn’t really a way to pin a folder to the taskbar that has all the fancy features that come with it like jumplist. It’s just a tricky use of toolbar to make a folder appeared on taskbar.

Right-click on the blank space on taskbar, go to Toolbars, and New Toolbar…

Browser to the folder that contain the folder you want to pin, and select that folder.

See, I just “pined” a folder named Tools to the taskbar and this is what it looks like.

What’s my choice?

Personally, I like and use way #4 most of the time. However, it’s just my own opinion that only represents my own choice. What’s yours?

You may also like:

• StandaloneStack 2 Makes Leopard Stack on Your Taskbar in Windows 7 (5)
• 7stacks Stacks Your Icons on Your Taskbar in Windows 7 [Tool] (7)
• 7 Tips on New Taskbar in Windows 7 (4)
• Dexpot With SevenDex Plugin Combines an Excellent Virtual Desktop Tool for Windows 7 (1)
• 2 Ways to Make Your Windows 7 Taskbar Icons Align Center (4)

Basically, you are able to change that only when the Keyboards and Languages tab in Region and Language setting looks like below.

To change the default language on welcome screen

Go to Administrative tab in Region and Language window, which can be launched from Control Panel, and click on Copy settings button.

You will see what the current language settings on Current user, Welcome screen, and New user account.

To make the default language setting on Welcome screen the same as your current user account, simply check the option “Welcome screen and system accounts” at the bottom.

Click OK to save the setting, and reboot the computer for the change to take effect.

Most Popular Posts

• What is hiberfil.sys and how to delete in Windows 7 free up hard drive space (20)
• How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 (70)
• How to create custom Open Search in Windows 7 (2)
• [How to] extract .SDC file from MSDNAA (51)
• How to get Official Windows 7 beta RC activation code product key for free (5)

Yes, it’s Segoe UI font at size 9 for normal text, like blue color ones in the picture.

According to Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines, a 800+ pages free guideline from Microsoft.

Segoe UI is an approachable, open, and friendly typeface, and as a result has better readability than Tahoma, Microsoft Sans Serif, and Arial.

Segoe UI is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in Windows. With ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is an elegant, readable font. Without ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is only marginally acceptable. This factor determines when you should use Segoe UI.

So yes, because of the population of LCD monitors and the wide-adopted ClearType on Windows, it seems no reason why you shouldn’t be using this Font. Indeed, it’s a Windows Font intended for user interface text strings.

You may also like:

• 7 New Font Features in Windows 7 (7)
• How to install Font in Windows 7 (2)

StandaloneStack 2 is a free tool developed by Chris’n’Soft that brings a Leopard Stack style of looking to Windows 7 taskbar.

The tool is pretty easy to use, as simple as almost 123.

1. Simply download the tool and extract it to your local computer.

2. Launch the program by double-clicking on the application file standalonestack2.exe.

3. Create a New Stack by simply pointing to a folder that contains applications you want to stack on the taskbar. For example, I pointed a folder called Tools on my desktop that contains most of the applications I use on daily basis to the tool. And click on Create Stack button once you are finished.

4. You will need to Create Shortcut to your desktop after a Stack has been created so that you can easily launch or pin to the taskbar.

5. Once you have a shortcut on your desktop, pin it to the taskbar.

6. And done.

The nice thing about this tool is that it offers a few options that make the stack quite fancy. Not only does it offer two modes for displaying the icons, but it also provides you more options like open direction, sorting options, and a permanent location for the popping up stack as well.

Here is what it looks like opening in Grid mode:

And here is in Stack mode:

Impressed yet? If so, what are you waiting for?

Comparing the other tool 7Stacks we covered before which does pretty much the similar thing, StandalongStack 2 looks nicer and runs a bit smoother.

You may also like:

• 4 Ways To Pin A Folder on Taskbar in Windows 7 (0)
• 7stacks Stacks Your Icons on Your Taskbar in Windows 7 [Tool] (7)
• Dexpot With SevenDex Plugin Combines an Excellent Virtual Desktop Tool for Windows 7 (1)
• 2 Ways to Make Your Windows 7 Taskbar Icons Align Center (4)
• Monitoring Your Windows 7 Resources Right From the Taskbar (0)

your Windows 7 probably is in a corporate domain network environment where a central patching system like Windows Server Update Services is in charge for managing all windows update needs.

If that’s the case, the Windows Server Update Services hasn’t been upgraded to the latest for quite a while. I believe only the WSUS 3.0 SP1 or later supports Windows 7.

If you are the IT guy who is in charge, please do yourself a favor and upgrade your WSUS right away. If you are not, please forward this post and inform your IT guy to upgrade so that you can get your Windows 7 automatically patched.

However, if upgrading isn’t an option, you are left no option buy have to remind yourself once a week or two to go to Windows Update manager and click on “Check online for updates from Microsoft Update” to manually update your Windows 7.

In any cases, the windows update status on your Windows 7 should be always like:

You may also like:

• How To Prevent Windows 7 From Automatically Rebooting After Windows Update (2)

System Restore Point is a nice feature that is part of the System Restore in Windows 7. Doing every so often will save you a day or two down the road. And here are 3 ways that make you no excuse for not doing so.

Method –1: Windows 7 way

That’s the official way of doing so.

1. Right-click on My Computer and select Properties to open a Windows System Window, and click on the System protection link on the left panel.

2. Click on the Create… button at the bottom of the window to create a system restore point.

3. Type in a name for easy remembering the point, and hit Create button.

4. After a short little while, a system point has bee successfully created.

Method – 2: The easier way

The guys at The Windows Club have created a simple tool called “Quick Restore Maker” that easies the whole task. Simply download the zipped file and extract them to a place in your Windows 7. And double-click on the QuickRestoreMaker.exe executable file to launch the process.

Type in the name that helps you remember what you want to restore and hit “Create Restore Point” button.

The tool doesn’t require you to install it first before using it. So it comes quite portable and handy.

You can make the task even easier for you by simply pin the executable file to your taskbar.

Method – 3: the manual way

Here comes the manual way for those who like something different.

1. Create a new text file, changing the extension to .vbs.

2. Pasting the following code in to the file via notepad or any text editor you like.

‘use WMI moniker and SystemRestore class
set SRP = getobject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:Systemrestore")
CSRP = SRP.createrestorepoint ("My New Restore Point", 0, 100)

Note that, you will have to launch it as administrator in order to run the code.

That’s it. And hope it helps.

[via Download Squad]

I love keyboard shortcuts in any versions of systems that I use, which is why we have covered many of them separately in different topics here. But that’s still far from the whole sets of shortcuts covered in Windows 7.

Now, thanks to Nitin Aarwal who have composed a complete Windows 7 keyboard Shortcuts eBook and have published up on The Windows Club for you to download for FREE.

This 43-page of eBook comprises of more than 200 keyboard shortcuts covering pretty much every aspects of areas in Windows 7, including its default programs such as Paint, WordPad, Calculator, Help, Media Player, etc. etc.

The eBook is bookmarked-ready, both in PDF and XPS format, with a fully linked content index.

So, if you love the keyboard shortcuts, what are you waiting for?

Go and download the free eBook here.

Being a big fan of iPhone, I am actually not impressed about the new announced iPad at all. Quite disappoint actually. It’s nothing more than a big size version of iPhone, less actually because it lacks of a camera. It’s also less than what a normal Windows 7 powered netbook because it lacks of the flash support, USB, SD slots, and multitasking.

Well, actually with a larger screen at 9.7’ with resolution at 1024×768, you can have quite fun running Windows 7 on it, virtually via Remote Desktop Protocol.

Yes, of course you can’t really install Windows 7 on an apple product like iPad but what you do can is to remotely use Windows 7 via RDP through many already existed Remote Desktop Apps on App store.

Anyway, it’s still interesting to see what Apple finally comes up with the final version of iPad when it’s released.

LookINMyPC is another useful tool that helps you understand about your computer by providing you a very complete comprehensive PC profiling and diagnostic report that includes information on installed hardware and software, as well as a lot of system diagnostic information such as running processes, installed services, and startup programs.

The report is generated and saved in HTML format which can be opened and viewed in any type of web browser. Because it includes so much information about the computers you can definitely use it as a information resource to help you troubleshoot any problem you may have with your computer.

While the report is so much in detail, I do have a complaint about the HTML coding in the report. It just doesn’t seem right to me. It could have been coded better both on screen and printout with a CSS type of style sheet.

It’s a completely free tool for both personal and commercial use, and seems to be working on both 64-bit and 32-bit of Windows 7 as well.

[via AddictiveTips]

Windows 7 is awesome. It’s so awesome that I was ready to fight when I saw these 7 reasons to stick with Windows XP on ZDnet by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.

But it turns out these ARE quite valid reasons that I can hardly argue with. So in stead of fighting with him, I am actually sharing them here because these are the good points that should be considered pretty much every time when you decide to upgrade your computer, more particularly, your Operating System.

1. Stick with what you know

2. Certainty

3. Cost

4. XP is still supported by Microsoft until April 2014

5. Developers still support XP

6. Upgrade components to stay secure

7. Do you really need to upgrade?

See, you can apply most of the reasons to other operating systems too.

[update on Feb 15, 2010]

Here also comes 7 reasons to move on in responding to this 7 reasons to stick with XP, from ZDnet as well.

And also check out the comments to see the 7 reasons not to use XP.