Computer Tips & Tricks! [Pg.2]

Select your Monitor
Windows might not always detect your Monitor accurately. This affects display and refresh rates. To select your monitor manually:

Right-click on the Desktop.
Choose Properties from the context menu. On the Settings tab press Advanced button.
Select the Monitor tab. If your monitor is not listed (correctly) here, click on Change. Select your Monitor form the list, or if you have a driver disk for your monitor, select have Disk. Click Apply, and follow any other instructions on screen.

Redialing
Dial-Up Networking provides for automatic redial.

Open Dial-Up networking.
Select your connection.
From the menu select Connections > Settings.
Enable, Redial, select the number of times to redial and click OK.

A clean Run!
To remove unwanted items form the Run menu:

Start the Registry Editor.
Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU.
Delete the entries that you do not want on Run menu.
Close the Registry Editor and Restart Windows. Note: Do not delete the (Default) or MRUList values.

Bitmap as icons
You can preview bitmaps (.BMP files) as icons in Explorer instead of the default icon of the application it is associated with. Open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_ CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture\DefaultIcon. Double-click the Default string and change it's value to '%1' (without quotes). Close the Registry Editor and restart windows.

Window and menu Animations
One of the desktop enhancements built into windows is the animation displayed when you minimize and maximize windows or when displaying menus. Disabling this makes navigating Windows a lot faster. Open the Desktop Properties dialog by right-clicking any blank area of the desktop and clicking on Properties. Disable Animate windows, menus and lists form the Effects tab.

Smooth Screen FontsYou
may find that the fonts in your Internet Explorer and other windows seem jagged as you
increase the font size. To make them smooth and thus, beautiful.

Right-click anywhere on the free space of the Desktop and click properties
Select the Effects tab from the Display Properties
In the Visual effects frame, enable Smooth edges of screen fonts

Change the Refresh rate of your Graphics Adapter
Refresh rate of your monitor determines how fast the screen if updated. Generally, the higher refresh rate monitor can support, the better. Optimum refresh rates can be set manually for a flicker-free display. If Windows hasn't already configured it. Right-click on the Desktop, click on Properties and open Settings > Advanced > Adapter. Depending on your graphics card and monitor, you will get different choice for the refresh rate. Click on Apply after setting the appropriate refresh rate. Click through the warning message to change the refresh rate. If, for some reason the display becomes garbled, don't do anything, Windows will restore the original refresh rate.

Speed-up your connecting time
To speed-up the time it takes for Dial Up Networking to establish a connection with your ISP:
Open Dial-Up Networking.

Right-click your connection and choose Properties.
On the server types tab, under Advanced Options, make sure that the check-box for Log on to network is unchecked.
Under Allowed network protocols select only TCP/IP and uncheck NetBEUI & IPX/SPX