Widescreen monitors are great for watching movies and organizing windows side by side, but much of the time all that screen space goes to waste. Even if you don’t have a huge monitor, you can still get a great benefit by adjusting the Taskbar.

Why not move the Windows taskbar to the side of the screen? This may sound crazy at first and you’ll need a few days to get used to the results, but since web pages, Word documents, and the like run top-to-bottom, the more vertical space you can give them, the easier it will be for you to read them and the better it will look.

By relocating the taskbar to the left side (or the right, if you prefer), you’re freeing up vertical space for the stuff you use every day while making smarter use of wasted horizontal space, and you may even speed up your work by doing so.

To try this, right-click an empty area of the taskbar and clear the check mark next to Lock the taskbar.

Next, left-click and hold on an empty area of the taskbar, and then drag it to the left or right side of the screen. Once you get close, you’ll see it lock in, at which point you can release the mouse button.

You can also extend the width of the taskbar by clicking and dragging the right edge to make it wider and to better see the labels for the programs which are currently running.

If you remember the annoying User Account Control notifications which kept coming up in Vista, then you may be pleased to know that it is still there in Windows 7. Why pleased?

Because now you can actually change the settings of UAC so that it only notifies you when you want – i.e. when programs really try to make changes and not when you make changes yourself to Windows.

Although this feature was something that everyone bitched about with Vista, it is there to do a job and that’s to keep your machine safe from running dangerous software programs or making unwanted changes to your performance pc.

Here’s how to change the settings:

- Click ‘Start’ & type in ‘account’

- Select Change User Account Control settings

- Adjust the slider to your desired setting

If you really want to remove all the messages, then set it to ‘Never Notify’ and it will be as if it’s turned off.

One word or warning though, making changes to any security levels can be dangerous so be sure you know what you are doing beforehand, and get professional advice if you are not sure.

Better Safe Than Sorry!

With Windows 7 you can make a recovery CD or DVD with these simple steps:

• Insert a blank CD or DVD into your CD/DVD burner drive

• Click ‘Start’ & type in ‘Repair’

• Select the ‘Create a System Repair Disc’ option

• Follow the instructions given to you  on screen

• When it’s been completed, write a label on it (with time & date helps)

If you one day find you have a problem starting your pc, insert the repair disc and start your system. You will be presented with a recovery menu which offers you several recovery and diagnostic tools and will also allow you to select a System Restore point to go back to a point where your pc worked correctly.

As it’s only a 10 minute job, go do it now before you regret not doing it.

Windows has it’s own power management functionality which can help you save energy and that’s a good thing. But, you shouldn’t do it at the expense of speed and productivity unless you absolutely have to.

You can also do this with any version of Windows.

Also, I added this video as it is gives you a guide around Control Panel and is one of my favourites – you will see why when you watch it. Please do let me know what you think of it.  

A quick and easy way to make your Windows XP computer start faster.

Here’s How:

• Find the ‘My Computer’ icon on your desktop and Right Click on it.

• Click on ‘Properties’ from the menu box.

• Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab on the top right side.

• Click ‘Settings’ under the lower ‘Startup and Recovery’ section.

• Change the time from it’s default (normally 30 secs) to 5-8 secs. Or whatever time you prefer.

• Click OK.

• Click OK again.

That’s It. Job Done – your computer will now start a lot faster than before.

Cheers

Disconnect Unused Network Drives

If you’ve ever used a computer on a network, you probably found it useful to share files and folders between the computers using a mapped network drive. Network drives allow one computer to read and write files to another computer’s hard disk as if it were directly connected. I use network drives a lot and discovered that on some of my computers, they were the biggest source of slowness.

The problem with network drives is that Windows XP will attempt to connect to the network drives when Windows starts. If the remote computers don’t immediately respond then Windows will patiently wait and wait and wait. Also you may find that some programs attempt to connect to these network drives when you browse for files and folders. If you’ve ever tried to open a file and had to wait several seconds (or minutes), it’s probably because the program was trying to establish a network connection — even if the file you are opening is really on your local computer.

1. Open My Computer (found on your desktop).

2. On the Tools menu, click Disconnect Network Drive.

3. Select the undesired network drive(s) and then click OK.

After I disconnected three network drives from my computer, it started on average about 30% faster than before.

Hope it helps.

Speed PC Up Quick Tip List

Here is my quick list of things you can try to speed up the start up process of your pc if you are frustrated with your slow windows computer.

1. Detecting & removing viruses and cleaning your registry – this is probably the most important thing you can do! Getting rid of viruses and repairing broken registry files can help in many ways including faster start times. Try some of the best free and safe programs here.

2. Harddisk maintenance – start by defragmenting the hard disk. This makes your computer access the data on the disk faster as it is arranged much closed together. When your harddisk is fragmented, data is stored in many areas and this means it has to be searched for and found before being used. You can use Windows’ own "Disk Defragmenter" option in the System Tools or you can try a program which I use called UlitmateDefrag. Also, harddisks can over time develop bad sectors and this can cause slow access or even lost data, therefore it’s a good idea to scan for them and repair them regularly – again using Windows’ own ‘Tools’ which can be found when you Right Click on your C: drive and select ‘Properties’.

3. Install more RAM for the cheapest way to instantly speed up your pc. Memory is so cheap nowadays that this is the best start you can make to improving pc performance. .

4. Remove unwanted start up programs – there will probably be several programs that automatically are set to load up when the computer boots. Removing unwanted ones can seriously speed up your machine.

This is just a quick check list. For more help, check the blog for other helpful tips and tricks.

Cheers

Clear out those old temporary files.

As you install and run programs on your computer, they automatically leave behind temporary files which take up space and are not used. If you delete these temporary files on a regular basis from your pc it will cause the applications and your machine to run faster. I recommend you do this at least monthly if not more often.

You can do this by following these steps:

• Click on Start, Run, type %Temp% in the dialog box and click "OK".

• You will see an open folder with many files and folders.

• Click on the Edit menu, click on Select all, then click the File menu and click Delete.

Note: Before deleting double check that the folder which is opened has a Temp on the top of menu bar which tells you that it is a temporary folder.