Customize Your Computer
Internet Computer Training

Quick launch group
Welcome to the computer-adviser internet computer training hints and tips.

The quick launch group is the small group of icons just to the right of the start menu, if you have nothing there this means it’s not enabled.

The quick launch group can be a big help especially if you have a lot of applications installed or you want to be able to launch applications quicker.

To begin with right click on the bottom of the screen, the blue bar you should see a small menu, select properties you can also access this from control panels & "Taskbar & Start Menu icon

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You have a number of options here, most of them are pretty much self explanatory such as the clock.

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The one we are interested in though is the quick launch group, so if you make sure " show quick launch group is checked " also make sure " Lock the task bar " is not checked,

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this will enable you to stretch the quick launch bar depending how many applications or files you wish to have on it.

click ok and you should now see the quick launch group

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the icons you have will be different from mine, but you can easily add more to it.

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To do this find the file, directory or application you wish to add to it, and right click and hold the button down, drag the file onto the menu,

it will now as you if you wish to Copy here, Move here or create shortcut here, you select create shortcut here, and hey presto you now have the application added, well done.

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Please note though when creating shortcuts you must make sure you right click and not left click , left clicking will move the application icon.

Favourites homepage

A really great little thing you can do to help with your browsing is to create your own internet favourites home page, this is easy to do and makes browsing from your favourites a synch.

The first thing to do is launch internet explorer, go to the file menu select " import & export " , this will bring you to the import/export wizard , select " next " ,

now choose " export favourites " , as a default it will select them all for you, now select " next " again, it will then specify a location for the export , this will be some thing like

" C:Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/bookmark.htm " make a note of this location. select " next " yet again and then finish.

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Now to set this as your home page from Internet Explorer go to the " Tools Menu ", select internet options and where it says " home page " type in the location. click apply, now go to your home page or just restart Internet Explorer and you should see



All of your favourites as a home page.

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Customizing the look and feel

Windows is very flexible when it comes to customizing the look and feel of the graphics interface, there are a lot of choices,

but before we proceed, one point to bare in mind, the more options you have enabled on your pc the slower it will run, I just run mine with the bare minimum enabled so it runs as fast as possible and still looks like Windows xp.

If you are looking for speed I would recommend you have a look at our articles on speeding up your computer, which includes the interface.

you can go directly to here from " computer speed up " , if your looking to make the desktop look flashy the first thing is to go to the control panel, you can find this from the start menu.

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Now select display , " Display " from here the first tab is labelled " Themes" from here Windows has a few built in Themes,

but you can find many more through one of the major search engines if you so wish " a computer theme generally changes the complete look of your system, this includes the wall paper, icons and sometimes even the screen saver" .

The next tab " Desktop " from here you can give your computer a nice background picture or wallpaper, windows already has a few built in but you can add your own, it accepts the following graphic formats , Jpeg "jpg" , Bitmap "bmp" , or Gif .

The next tab screen savers , again you can select one of the Default Windows savers or you can download a third party type,

there are millions around, once installed they will appear in the list appearance from here we can change the colours of the buttons and windows, I'm pretty happy with default blue, "boring I know" but you can really tailor your screen colours to your own taste.

Ok we've covered the graphics , now we move onto the effects , from control panels, double click the " System " icon, select " Advanced " under performance click " settings "

from here you can let windows judge what is best for you computer, select them all and see how slick Windows Xp can be or maybe go for pure performance.

If you want to have a go at customizing yourself, your not going to mess anything up, if you get stuck , just select none and start again.

User Accounts

Adding user accounts, have other people using your computer, maybe you've lost some files or they have, the answer is to setup individual user accounts, this way everyone gets there own personal file area and preferences such as Internet favourites.

To implement Individual user accounts , go back to Control Panel, select user accounts and create a new account, type a name, click next, now decide if you want them to have computer administrator access or limited ,

the difference being, if you have a limited account it prevents you from doing certain things like installing applications or seeing other peoples files.

If you have a computer administrator account then you can do anything, see all files on the computer, install applications, so the it's really up to individual when it comes to permissions. From personal experience;

I've always given children limited access, this way nothing gets deleted, and they can only install what you know about, after installing the few games they play, it all seems to work very well for everyone.

Creating shortcuts

To create a shortcut it's very easy once you've done it once.

Find what you would like to make a shortcut of, be it a file, folder or application. Once you've done this right click on it,

you'll get the little menu, now select copy. Once you've done this, go to the location where you would like to have the shortcut placed, this can be anywhere from the desktop to the quick launch group. Now select " Paste Shortcut "

told you it was easy ..

Task manager and Processes

What is running on my computer, how can I quit applications, it's definitely worth knowing what is running on your computer,

if you find it running slow or sometimes you'll have an application that says no longer responding and it's very easy to check and quit such applications.

We use a Windows application called task manager. This can be accessed in two ways either by using the keys " Ctrl, Alt, Del " all together or by right clicking on the bottom blue bar and selecting task manager.from here under the "Applications Tab" we can see all open applications,

if you need to quite any of them, just highlight the one and simply click "End Task"

Next we have processes, processes refer to anything running on your computer, and not just the foreground applications such as Word or Excel,

but the behind the scene types such as windows components and anti-virus software. Processes can be very useful for seeing how applications are running on your computer, for instance if your computer is running very slow,

from here you can click the CPU sub heading and it will show you any applications or processes that are using a lot of the processors power and it can also show you how much memory is being used.

The Performance tab, this is great for seeing how your computer is running,the CPU usage history ,shows how hard the processor is working, the higher the line is the more harder the processor is working,

next we have the page file usage history, this shows us much much memory or hard disk space the page file is using.

" the page file refers to the amount of memory that is being used from a hard disk for operating memory"

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts serve a major purpose, they save time,

you are not as dependant on the mouse and it really looks like you know what you are doing.

It may seem a little difficult to remember at first, when I first started I printed them all out and pinned them to my wall behind the computer,

after a week or so if you use your computer a lot, it will seem like second nature.

Switching Applications ALT & TAB Hold down the ALT KEY , now press the TAB key, keep holding the ALT key, Press the TAB key again and hey your switching between Applications,

if you want to cycle the other way " useful if you have a lot of applications open" just keep the Shift key pressed as well.

My Computer, to quickly load " My Computer " use the Windows Key & E

Run , to bring up the Run command Windows key & R

Utility manager Windows Key & U "note if you have narrator enabled your pc will talk to you"

Minimize all windows , Windows Key & D

Minimize all windows apart from dialogue boxes , Windows Key & M

Restore Window , Windows key & Shift & M

Find , Windows Key & F

Lock Computer , Windows Key & L

Speech recognition setup , Windows & V

Start menu , CTRL & Esc

Help , Windows Key & F1 key

I've included the most useful keys but for a full list please

click here " Windows Shortcut Keys " more on internet computer training

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