Windows XP question

I've searched high and low for this and can't find the answer.

Since Windows95 (I think) when you do Alt-TAB you get a small window that appears with the icon of each running app and then, if you keep the Alt key down you can cycle through them to switch to another app. So far so easy, everyone knows that.

Well, in the office in London we've just got new machines with XP on them and the Alt-TAB window, instead of just displaying the icons of the running apps, displays a miniaturised ,version of the app window of each app as you cycle through them, pretty cool but I can't for the life of me find out how to enable that option. Anyone else know?

The version of XP we use is customized for us by Microsoft but I find it hard to believe that we'd have asked for that feature or that Microsoft would have done it specially for us!

Michael.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

Second item.

Paul

 

Excellent - Thanks Paul. Obviously my "high and low" searching didn't include the Microsoft site :shame:

Michael.

 

Installed it and....first attempt to use it resulted in an instant blue screen and non-optional reboot On reboot the standard task switcher was back.

The other teaks work OK though

Michael.

 

Re-installed it again, rebooted, and now it seems to be working fine. No idea what happened before...

Michael.

 

I dunno about anyone else but i prefer the icons, the powertoys one is a bit sluggish in comparison.

 

I prefer the icons too - much faster.

 

Yeah. Everyone

Anyone any idea how to delete the list of past items stored in the taskbar? (right click taskbar/properties/customize)

Also, can't figure out how to get XP to show the total size of the contents of the Recycle Bin.

 

Open the recycle bin (double click on it) and then make sure the status bar is visible (View / Status Bar). Status bar tells you total size of the contents.

On the other one I don't know but it will be in the registry somewhere. Does it really matter though?

Michael.

 

Cheers. I had the status bar set to hide.

Nope neither of them "really matter" just little things I've noticed. No one seems able to find how to sort the taskbar thing though.

 

OK, you made me look for it It's not pretty though

In the registry, key name:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify

There's a REG_BINARY value called "PastIconsStream" and another one called "IconStreams"

They are largish chunks of binary data holding all that info in the form of a binary stream. Probably wouldn't take a lot to reverse engineer the format but that really wouldn't be worth it.

I imagine if you deleted both values you'd reset everything though :MILD: If you try it, let me know if it works

Now, if you thought Control Panel was where it's at for changing Windows settings then you aint seen nothin yet...: from the start menu choose "Run" and then type "gpedit.msc" which will bring up the Group Policy Editor. A whole nother bunch of settings to play with. User discretion is advised

Michael.

 

That made no sense to me sorry Mike

Well it did a little, but not sure how to get to the first part

In the registry? Not sure what you mean by that.

 

talking of XP. We use Office/XP pro at work as a recent upgrade from 98se. Most of our stuff is on Excell spreadsheets. I've noticed that when you cut/copy something an annoying little clipboard pops up and invariably sits right on the square you wish to paste into , how do you turn this off. With widows 98se the copied cells would just be highlighted with no clipboard.
Also does anybody know if there are any superscript characters in Excell such as the 2 in 'Squared' or Co2 ?

 

oops!

was simple as run regedit

then:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify

Then as you said, deleted "IconStreams" and "PastIconStream"

I followed the instructions on THIS LINK (found by trying to paste "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify" into the address bar in explorer ).

They also tell you to close explorer and reopen it through task manager (took me ages to figure out taskmanager was the thing you get from ctrl/alt/del :lol: ). I guess that's just an alternative to restarting the computer???

Anyhow, yep appears to have worked with no prob's.

I'll try and find some MOre little things to test you now

 

I'm not familiar with office so can't really help you, but as you'll obviously know better what it is you wish to do, try searching here http://www.tweakxp.com seems to have loads of stuff on it. Might be something to help you there.

HTH

 

You can also get taskmanager up by right clicking on the task bar and selecting "Task Manager" from the context menu. The Ctrl-Alt-Del method is handy to know aswell though in case Explorer.exe (the shell) dies becuase it's then the only way you have to start another program (including a new copy of explorer.exe)

Michael.