Where are the games in the Vista Business edition?

By DustinPosted on

In the Business version of Vista, games are not included by default. This helps to keep the guys in suits busy all day without wasting time playing Solitare! Here’s how to get your games back.

1. Go to the Start Orb | Control Panel | Programs and Features

2. On the left pane, click Turn Windows features on or off

3. Scroll down until you find Games. You can check the Games or click the (+) sign and select only the games that you want. Click OK and the games will install and you are in Solitare heaven!

Where is the Run command on the Start menu?

By DustinPosted on

Windows Vista and 7 do not include the Run command in the Start Orb this time. To find it you can go to All Programs, Accessories, and Run will be in the list.

To make the Run command appear in the Start menu, you can right click the start menu, go to “Properties”, Click “Customize”, Click “Advanced” and find the “Show Run Command”. Check that option, click “Ok”, and the option to select the run command is now in the Start menu.

How To Pin Recycle Bin To Taskbar

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 has the new Taskbar, but there isn’t anyway to move the Recycle Bin to the new bar. Here’s how.

Some people like a nice and clean desktop. Others like a huge mess, but still organized. Here is a solution so that you don’t lose your Recycle Bin among the mess of other icons.

First item of business is to create a new icon on the desktop for the Recycle Bin. Right click anywhere on an empty part on the desktop and select New Shortcut. A small wizard opens. For the location, enter

%SystemRoot%explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder

And click Next.

For the name of the shortcut, call it Recycle Bin.Then click the Finish button to place the new shortcut and icon on the Desktop.

The shorcut is created, but it still does not look like the Recycle Bin, does it? Easy fix. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Next, you can select Change Icon. Change the location for “Look for icons in this file” to %SystemRoot%system32imageres.dll. Click OK, and scroll until you see the standard recycle bin icon and select that. Then click OK again.

Lastly, drag the new shortcut to the taskbar. Now your Recycle Bin is in the taskbar, and will show the empty icon when empty and the full icon when full. Great work!

Add a Shortcut to Troubleshooting and System Maintenance Wizard

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 is a big step in making computers easier to use. It also has several wizards that can help a beginner troubleshoot, repair and maintain their PC. The System Maintenance wizard can check your system to see if it can make repairs to “fix” common problems. The System Maintenance program is located in the Control Panel. However, some people like having shortcuts, either on their desktop or in a folder dedicated to maintenance and support. Here is how to create a shortcut to the System Maintenance wizard.

1. Right click on the desktop and select “New Shortcut“.

2. For the location of the item, type in %systemroot%system32msdt.exe -id MaintenanceDiagnostic.


3. You can name it whatever you’d like, I used System Maintenance to make it easy to understand what it was.

4. Double clicking the shortcut invokes the System Maintenance wizard, as if you had launched it from the control panel.

Change Taskbar Window Selection Behavior to Open Last Used Program with a Single Click

By DustinPosted on

When you have your icons combined and have multiple programs on your taskbar, you might minimize your program to go to a different program or to look something up in a different window. When you want to return to your previous program, you click on the icon and get a selection of which one you want to switch to. Sure, you can press CTRL and click to open the last window you were working on, but you can change the default Windows behavior to automatically switch to the last window using a single click. Here’s how.

1. Open regedit (Start, type regedit.exe and press enter).

2. Navigate to HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced


3. Create a new DWORD (32-Bit) and name it LastActiveClick and modify the value to a “1”.

4. Restart Explorer, or reboot. To restart explorer, open Task Manager (Right click taskbar, click “Start Task Manager”. Right click the explorer.exe process, and select “End Process”. Then click File, then New Task… type explorer.exe and press enter.

5. Now when you click on your window, it will go to where you were last working. This is great for us that have multiple windows open doing a lot of multitasking, and looking for shortcuts to make it easier and more efficient.

Create a Flip3D Quicklaunch button

By DustinPosted on

Once you upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista, there are a few little quirks. First off, the QuickLaunch is gone, replaced with Jump Lists. But, if you use Flip3D in 7 using your mouse, you’ll notice that icon is now missing. Here is how to get your one click Flip3D shortcut back to your Taskbar.

1. Right click on your desktop, and click New > Shortcut.

2. For the location of the item, type “C:WindowsSystem32rundll32.exe DwmAPI #105” (without quotes).

3. You can leave the name as rundll32.exe, and click Finish.

4. You’ll now have a simple shortcut on your desktop that runs the Flip3D feature. But, we need to pretty it up a bit and put it on the taskbar.

5. Right click the shortcut, and click Properties. Then click on the Change Icon… button.

6. At the top, it says “Look for icons in this file”, change the location to “C:Windowsexplorer.exe”. You’ll notice a few icons show. You can actually choose your own (and there are many other icons available, check our other FAQ for more). We want to choose the stock Flip3D icon now.

7. Now that your icon looks better, we can put it on the taskbar. Right click the icon and select “Pin to Taskbar”. You’ll notice that your Jumplists now have the Flip3D icon there, and it works just as well as in Vista.

8. You can remove the shortcut from your Desktop, if you’d like.

Disable Thumbnails on Taskbar

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 has a live preview thumbnail of your running programs when you hover over the icon on your taskbar. Some people love it, like I do, and others don’t care for it so much. Here is how to disable the thumbnails on your taskbar.

1. Open regedit (Start > type regedit and press enter).

2. Naviate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer

3. In the right pane, right click and select “New” and “DWORD (32-Bit)”. Give it the name TaskbarNoThumbnail.

4. Right click the new name and select “Modify”. Change the value to “1“.

5. Close regedit, reboot (or log off and back on). You will no longer have the taskbar thumbnails. To reverse it and get your thumbnails back, just delete the new key you created or change the value to “0“.

How to Disable Aero Shake

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 has a new feature that lets you shake the active window and make all the other windows minimize instantly. I find it is a quite useful feature, but if you don’t like it, here is how to remove it.

1. First, type REGEDIT in the Search Box in the Start Menu, or at the RUN box. This may require you to elevate your privledges, depending on your UAC options

2. Next, navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftWindows

3. Create a new key called “Explorer” under the Windows key. You can just right click the Windows key in the left pane and select “New Key”.

4. Make sure that Explorer is highlighted in the left pane, and right click the right pane and make a new DWORD value (it can be either 32 or 64 bit) named “NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts”. Then right click the new key and select “Modify”. Change the value to to “1” to disable Aero Shake.

Regedit screenshot

5. Reboot your computer for the changes to take effect!

Increase Thumbnail Size on Taskbar

By DustinPosted on

The live thumbnail view when you hover over the icons on your taskbar is a very nifty feature, and is very handy. I use it very frequenty to get to the window and browser tab that I need right away. But, for those that want larger thumbnails than what Microsoft offers, here’s how.

1. Open regedit (Start > type regedit and press enter)

2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerTaskband

3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) and name it MinThumbSizePx

4. Change the value to the size in pixels that you want your thumbnail to be (use the Decimal value). I used 400.

5. Restart the computer (or log off and log back in). Start a program, and hover over the icon on your taskbar. Larger thumbnail!

Unlock New Themes in Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 has a few default themes, one of which is for your specific country to show off the nice scenery. Microsoft has made the other countries themes available, but hidden. Here’s how to enable these themes, and view some of the great world scenery.

1. Go to the Control Panel. If you have the basic view, click on Appearance and Personalization. Then click Folder Options. If you have the advanced view, you can just click Folder Options.


2. Click the View tab, scroll down and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).

3. Click OK.

4. Browse to the path C:WindowsGlobalizationMCT. You will have 5 folders in there. You can open each one and browse to the “Theme” directory, and double click the theme file in there to install and switch the themes (once it is installed, it will be available in Themes, you don’t have to go to the directory each time).

Available themes: Australia (AU), Canada (CA), Great Britain (GB), United States (US), South Africa (ZA).