Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Wake Up with Windows XP
  • Hour 1. Taking a Bird's-Eye Look at Windows XP
  • Hour 2. Getting Started with Windows XP
  • Hour 3. Managing the Windows XP Interface
  • Part II: Morning Windows Desktop Exploration
  • Hour 4. Working with the My Computer Window
  • Hour 5. Navigating Files with Windows Explorer
    • Introducing the Windows Explorer
    • The Explorer Options
    • Managing Documents with a Right Mouse Click
    • Right-Click to Copy and Move Documents
    • Using the Explorer's Task Pane
    • Where Do the Deleted Files Go?
    • Making Windows XP Easier to Use
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 6. Calling for Help
  • Hour 7. Improving Your Windows Desktop Experience
  • Part III: Early Afternoon Windows Exploration
  • Hour 8. Installing Programs with Windows XP
  • Hour 9. Finding Files, Folders, and Friends
  • Hour 10. Using the Desktop Accessories
  • Part IV: Late Afternoon Internet Integration
  • Hour 11. Surfing the Web with Internet Explorer
  • Hour 12. Tying Windows into the Web
  • Hour 13. Networking with Windows XP
  • Hour 14. Managing E-mail and Newsgroups with Outlook Express
  • Part V: An Evening with Advanced Windows
  • Hour 15. Exploring Your Hardware Interface
  • Hour 16. Understanding Printing and Fonts
  • Hour 17. Using Windows on the Road
  • Hour 18. Giving Windows XP a Tune-Up
  • Hour 19. Managing Your Hard Drives
  • Hour 20. Tinkering with the Advanced System Tools
  • Part VI: Having Fun at Nighttime
  • Hour 21. Using Media Player
  • Hour 22. Picturing Windows XP Graphics
  • Hour 23. Making Movies with Windows XP
  • Hour 24. Advanced Windows XP Tips
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Differences Between the Windows Home and Professional Edition
  • Appendix B. Glossary
  • Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes

Making Windows XP Easier to Use

There are numerous ways to make Windows easier for your day-to-day work. Three time-saving techniques are as follows:

• Changing the Start menu
• Adding single-key access to programs
• Shortcuts

After you create single-key access to a program or a shortcut or you change the Start menu, those time-savers stay in effect, making work inside Windows XP much more efficient.

These time-savers might not help everyone, but they often help users of Windows XP. You have to experiment with the techniques until you find the ones that help you the most. Practice using the time-savers by following this To Do item.

To Do: Saving Time with Windows

1. You can add programs to the top of the Start menu by dragging a program from Explorer or My Computer to the Start button. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Click the Windows folder. The folder's contents appear in the right window.

3. Scroll down the window to locate a game called FreeCell (the extension is .exe). FreeCell is a solitaire card game.
4. Drag the FreeCell icon to your Start button. The icon stays in place, but an outline of the icon moves with your dragged mouse cursor.
5. Release the icon over the Start button. You've just added the FreeCell game to the top of your Start menu.
6. Close Explorer and click your Start button. Your Start menu now includes the FreeCell game, located directly beneath your user account name, as shown in Figure 5.8. You can now start FreeCell without traversing several Start menu layers for those times when the boss is away for a short while. (Other recently-used programs will be there with FreeCell and they are all as close as your Start menu.)

Figure 5.8 Your Start menu now includes the FreeCell game.

7. Remove FreeCell from the Start menu (you can add it later if you really want it there) by right-clicking on the menu entry and selecting Unpin from Start menu.
8. Select More programs and then open the Accessories menu folder to view the contents of the Accessories group. The Calculator program's icon appears in this folder group.
9. Right-click the Calculator icon to display a pop-up menu.
10. Select Properties to display the Calculator program's Properties tabbed dialog box.
11. Press Alt+K to move the cursor to the Shortcut key text prompt. Type C at the prompt. Windows XP changes the C to Ctrl + Alt + C on the screen. Ctrl+Alt+C is now the shortcut for the Calculator program. If you run a program that uses a shortcut key you've added to Windows XP, the program's shortcut key takes precedence over the Windows XP shortcut key.
12. Click OK to close the dialog box.

13. Select File, Close to exit Explorer and then close the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.

    Whenever you now press Ctrl+Alt+C, Windows starts its Calculator program. This single-key shortcut (actually a simultaneous three-key shortcut) enables you to start programs instantly, from virtually anywhere in the Windows system, without having to locate the program's menu or icon.

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