1. Open your Control Panel from the start menu.
2. View your control panel with “Large Icons” which can be changed on top right.
3. Choose Power Options in the Control Panel, which should be somewhere in the middle of fourth column.

4. Click Change plan settings next to the Balanced power plan.

5. Adjust all the 6 drop-down menus to where you feel comfortable with your settings and then click Save changes.

It’s very easy to turn on the military time Windows 7 or even Vista, but the setting isn’t in an obvious place, so you probably did not find it.

To change this setting, we will need to get to the Regional and Language Options screen. The easiest way to do so is just enter intl.cpl into the Start menu search box and hit enter. Otherwise, type region into the Control Panel.

From the Regional and Language Options dialog, click the “Customize this format” button, and then select the Time tab.

Change the time format dropdown as shown:

You’ll notice from the key that the capital letter H means 24 hour time, and a single letter means that it won’t display the leading zero.

Windows 7 Military Time

It’s even easier in Windows 7 – just change the drop-down as shown:

Hit Apply and then OK, thats it your done! Enjoy Windows 7 Military click.
Thanks HowToGeek for the article.

Windows 7 Parental Controls

Parental Controls feature in Windows 7 is a valuable tool for controlling the amount of time your children spend on the computer and the programs they’re using. We will take a look on how to use Parental Controls in Windows 7.

Click here to Download Windows Live Family Safety

Parental Controls in Windows 7:
Open the Start Menu and type parental controls into the Search box and hit Enter to access Parental Controls.

You may also open Control Panel and click on Parental Controls.

When in Parental Controls panel, click on the child’s account that you want to set up.

Don’t forget to password protect your Administrator account, otherwise anyone can turn off Parental Controls and use the computer with no restrictions.

If you see a password hasn’t been set when you go into Parental Controls, click on the message and you’ll be prompted and Ensure Administrator Passwords.

Below Parental Controls, mark the radio button next to On, to enforce current settings. Then you can go through and control their computer time, games, and programs.

How to Set Time Limits:

Click on Time limits to control when your child has access to the computer. If you want to only allow a few hours each day, it’s easiest to left-click and drag the mouse across all of the time slots to block them. Then allow the time blocks when you want to make the computer available.

How to Control Games:

Click on Games to control the type of access your child has to games on the computer. You can completely block all games or select games by ratings and game names. These game ratings are based on the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

You may also select different game rating systems if it’s more appropriate for your location or if you like a certain system better than another.

You can also block games based on the type of content it contains, and it gives you many choices.

How to Control Programs:

If you want to restrict certain programs on the machine, click on Allow and block specified programs then scroll through the list of installed programs and block them.

Additional Controls:

Windows 7 doesn’t have a Web Filter included like Vista did. If you want additional controls like Web Filtering and activity reports, you’ll need to install Windows Live Family Safety which is part of the Window Live Essentials suite. With it you can block access to certain sites and also get access to an activity report that shows you what sites your children have been visiting.

Everything can be controlled online which makes it nice if you want to access a report or change settings while at work.

The Parental Controls feature is easy to use and helps you administer how your children use the computer. Of course nothing is perfect or foolproof and the Parental Controls won’t replace good old fashioned “real parenting” but it makes it easier. Please Visit HowToGeek.com

Windows 7 How To Help Guide

If you are tired of seeing the pop up balloon message come up every time you plugin a flash drive into your Windows 7, here is a guide to show you how to disable the message! You know the message, the one that pops up when you put in an older USB drive and it tells you it can perform faster. Click on the balloon pop up message to see a list of available USB 2.0 ports.

At the bottom of the This Device Can Perform Faster window, uncheck the box Tell me if my device can perform faster then press Close.

Thats all folks, wasn’t that hard, was it? Now you are not going to be annoyed by the message when you’re using an older flash drive or other device.

Using ClearType Tuner in Windows 7

In XP there was an important Power toy created to enable ClearType for users of LCD screens. Now it’s standard in Windows 7, but you may not know about it. So let’s take a look.

Access Clear Type in Windows 7

Click the Start Menu and type “cleartype” into the search box and press Enter.
By default, it should be enabled, but if not just check the box to enable it.

You can enable it for 2 or more monitors. Or you could select an individual one if it works best for one but not another. Some people might want it turned off if they have a CRT and a LCD monitor for example.

Go through the wizard and choose the resolution that works best for your monitor.

Pick the text that looks the best.

Almost done here!

Above is a neat setting that you may not knew about that already exists in Windows 7, and it can definitely help you get the best look of the text on each screen if you’re using different monitors! You may have to experiment with some different settings to get what works best for you.

When clicking the Windows Explorer icon on the Windows 7 Taskbar, it’s set to open to the Libraries view by default. You might not use the Libraries feature, or want to set it to a different location that is more commonly used.

Setting up Windows Explorer Startup Location

If you want to change the default startup location for the Windows Explorer Taskbar icon, if you have no Explorer screens open, hold down the Shift key, right-click the Explorer icon, and select Properties.

Else, if you have Windows open, right-click on the Explorer icon to bring up the Jumplist, then right-click on Windows Explorer and select Properties.

Windows Explorer Properties opens up and you’ll want to click on the Shortcut tab so we can change the Target.

A common place you might want it to default to is your Documents folder. So to do that we need to enter the following into the Target field.

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}

Now when you open Windows Explorer from the Taskbar it defaults to My Documents..

If you use the Start Menu to access Windows Explorer, open the Start Menu and go to All Programs \ Accessories and right-click on Windows Explorer then select Properties. Change the target path to where you want it to go.

In this example we want Windows Explorer to open up to My Computer so we entered the following in the Target field.

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

When click on the Explorer icon in the Start Menu it defaults to My Computer.

Conclusion

This showed you a couple of commonly used locations that you might want Windows Explorer to open to instead of Libraries. You can set it to other locations if you know the GUID (Globally Unique Identifiers) for the object or location you want it to default to. For more on using GUIDs check out The Geek’s article on how to enable the secret “How-To Geek” mode in Windows 7.

Actually it’s just a play on the so-called “God Mode” for Windows, but there is some good information, and a list of some locations you might want to have Windows Explorer open to. Check out howtogeek.com

What is conhost.exe

Your probably wondering.. what is this conhost.exe process doing in Task Manager, and why it’s running on your shiny new Windows 7 PC. Here you will find the answer.

What it is:

The conhost.exe process fixes a fundamental problem in the way previous versions of Windows handled console windows, which broke drag & drop in Vista.

It’s a completely legitimate executable as long as it’s running from the system32 folder, and is signed by Microsoft. Scanning your computer for viruses is never a bad idea, though.

Tags: what is conhost.exe,conhost.exe,conhost,proccess,windows 7,windows 7 themes

So why do you need it?

Sometimes, there’s a problem with the way the console process works on previous versions of Windows they are all hosted under the csrss.exe service. This process runs as a system privileged account.

If you take a look at the command prompt on Windows XP, you’ll probably notice that the window doesn’t use the active theme at all. This is because the CSRSS process doesn’t have the ability to be themed.

If you take a look at the console in Windows Vista, it looks like it uses the same theme as everything else, but you’ll notice that the scrollbars are still using the old style (look closely). This is because the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) process handles drawing the title bars, but underneath it still works the same way, and the scrollbars are part of the window itself.

You might also notice that Windows Vista broke the ability to drag and drop files from Explorer straight into the command prompt. It just flat out doesn’t work, because of security issues between the CSRSS process running with a higher level of privileges.

Windows 7 is different

Checking it out in Process Explorer under Windows 7 shows that the conhost.exe process is running underneath the csrss.exe process.

The conhost.exe process sitting in the middle between CSRSS and cmd.exe allows Windows 7 to fix both of the problems in previous versions of Windows not only do the scrollbars draw correctly, but you can actually drag and drop a file from Explorer straight into the command prompt. And it’ll paste in the path onto the command line. (of course this example isn’t very useful).

Still Aren’t Convinced?

If you want to be sure, check out the file properties for the conhost.exe executable, and you’ll see that the description says Console Window Host:

If you look at the details of the process from within Process Explorer, you’ll notice that the ComSpec is set to cmd.exe, a clear indication that it’s hosting the command prompt. So now you know what the conhost.exe process does, and why you should never attempt to delete it. Ever.

Remove Lock from a Folder in Windows 7

Want to change folder sharing or security options? Then you probably seen a lock icon on a folder. Here you will learn how to get rid of that icon.

Windows 7 lock icon indicates that the file or folder can only be accessed by you, and not any other user on your computer. If this is desired, then the lock icon is a good way to ensure that those settings are in place. If this isn’t your intention, then it’s an eyesore.

To remove the lock icon, you have to change the security settings on the folder to allow the Users group to, at the very least, read from the folder.

Right click on the folder with the lock icon and select Properties. Switch to the Security tab, and then press the Edit… button.

A list of groups and users that have access to the folder appears. Missing from the list will be the “Users” group. Click the Add button.

The next window is a bit confusing, but all you need to do is enter “Users” into the text field near the bottom of the window. Click the Check Names button.

“Users” will change to the location of the Users group on your particular computer. Hit OK.

The Users group should now appear in the list of Groups and Users with access to the folder. You can modify the specific permissions that the Users group has if you’d like at the minimum, it must have Read access. Click OK.

Press OK till you are back at the Explorer window. You should now see that the lock icon is gone from your folder! It may be a small aesthetic nuance, but having that one folder stick out in a group of other folders is needlessly distracting. Fortunately, the fix is quick and easy, and does not compromise the security of the folder!

How to replace notepad in Windows 7.

It used to be that Notepad was a necessary evil because it started up quickly and let us catch a quick glimpse of plain text files. Now, there are a bevy of capable Notepad replacements that are just as fast, but also have great feature sets.

Before following the rest of this how-to, ensure that you’re logged into an account with Administrator access.

Note: The following instructions involve modifying some Windows system folders. Don’t mess anything up while you’re in there! If you follow our instructions closely, you’ll be fine.

Choose your replacement

There are a ton of great Notepad replacements, including Notepad2, Metapad, and Notepad++. The best one for you will depend on what types of text files you open and what you do with them. We’re going to use Notepad++ in this how-to.

The first step is to find the executable file that you’ll replace Notepad with. Usually this will be the only file with the .exe file extension in the folder where you installed your text editor. Copy the executable file to your desktop and try to open it, to make sure that it works when opened from a different folder.

In the Notepad++ case, a special little .exe file is available for the explicit purpose of replacing Notepad.If we run it from the desktop, it opens up Notepad++ in all its glory.

Back up Notepad

You will probably never go back once you switch, but you never know. You can backup Notepad to a special location if you’d like, but we find it’s easiest to just keep a backed up copy of Notepad in the folders it was originally located.

In Windows 7, Notepad resides in:

• C:\Windows
• C:\Windows\System32
• C:\Windows\SysWOW64 in 64-bit versions only

Navigate to each of those directories and copy Notepad.

Paste it into the same folder.

If prompted, choose to Copy, but keep both files.

You can keep your backup as “notepad (2).exe”, but we prefer to rename it to “notepad.exe.bak”.

Do this for all of the folders that have Notepad (2 total for 32-bit Windows 7, 3 total for 64-bit).

Take control of Notepad and delete it

Even if you’re on an administrator account, you can’t just delete Notepad – Microsoft has made some security gains in this respect. Fortunately for us, it’s still possible to take control of a file and delete it without resorting to nasty hacks like disabling UAC.

Navigate to one of the directories that contain Notepad. Right-click on it and select Properties.

Switch to the Security tab, then click on the Advanced button.

Note that the owner of the file is a user called “TrustedInstaller”.

You can’t do much with files owned by TrustedInstaller, so let’s take control of it. Click the Edit… button. Select the desired owner (you could choose your own account, but we’re going to give any Administrator control) and click OK.

You’ll get a message that you need to close and reopen the Properties windows to edit permissions. Before doing that, confirm that the owner has changed to what you selected.

Click OK, then OK again to close the Properties window. Right-click on Notepad and click on Properties again.

Switch to the Security tab. Click on Edit….

Select the appropriate group or user name in the list at the top, then add a checkmark in the checkbox beside Full control in the Allow column.

Click OK, then Yes to the dialog box that pops up.

Click OK again to close the Properties window.

Now you can delete Notepad, by either selecting it and pressing Delete on the keyboard, or right-click on it and click Delete.

You’re now free from Notepad’s foul clutches!

Repeat this procedure for the remaining folders (or folder, on 32-bit Windows 7).

Drop in your replacement

Copy your Notepad replacement’s executable, which should still be on your desktop.

Browse to the two or three folders listed above and copy your .exe to those locations. If prompted for Administrator permission, click Continue.

If your executable file was named something other than “notepad.exe”, rename it to “notepad.exe”. Don’t be alarmed if the thumbnail still shows the old Notepad icon.

Double click on Notepad and your replacement should open.

To make doubly sure that it works, press Win+R to bring up the Run dialog box and enter “notepad” into the text field. Press enter or click OK.

Now you can allow Windows to open files with Notepad by default with little to no shame! All without restarting or having to disable UAC! Original article

Probably the worst thing that can happen to a Windows 7 user is to get a BSOD or blue screen of death. This is when your computer suddenly flashes a blue screen and displays some text then either reboots, hangs up or shuts down. You will not get to save any of your work and anything you have been doing goes up in smoke.

In reality, the Windows 7 blue screen is an essential safety measure. It acts as protection against further damage to your computer by halting error-prone software and hardware and restarting it before the issue gets worse. Here are a few quick things you can do to fix your Windows blue screen blues.

• Cool down your computer. BSODs are often due to heating issues inside your computer. For desktops, try investing in a better cooling and fan system. For laptops, a cooling pad will do wonders in reducing the temperature of your system.

• Add some RAM. Some programs need more memory space to run so adding RAM not only gives your computer a much needed boost, it also helps keep the dreaded blue screen at bay. For certain Windows 7 machines, you can also use the system’s ReadyBoost and add memory by just plugging in a USB 2.0 flash drive.

• Fixing the Registry. The registry is essentially your operating system’s index for your PC. One wrong entry in it will cascade into catastrophic failure. There are some readily available registry cleaners on the market and some even have robust scheduling and automated repair features that will help keep your registry clean at all times.

Again, we cannot stress enough that fixing your registry manually is both dangerous and difficult. Any mistake in editing it by yourself can cause some of your programs to stop running or worse, it can permanently render your computer inoperable.

Your best bet is to use a reliable and trusted registry cleaner to do the job for you. Not only will it automatically fix the Windows 7 blue screen, it will also speed up your computer considerably.

If you have experienced a Windows 7 black screen of death, then you might be facing a serious problem. When this happens, all you see is a black desktop on your monitor, nothing else. It would seem that all your programs, shortcuts and files are gone but they aren’t. They are just sitting in your computer. The problem is the interface can’t load properly due to errors in your system.

What made your Windows 7 screen black are some invalid registry keys, possibly due to malware tinkering with your system files. It might also be cause by some obsolete software you have that replaced your registry entries with older versions. Before you grab that Windows 7 disc from your cabinet and reinstall, read this short guide that will help you fix black screen problems on your PC.

• Restart the computer and log on. Wait for the black screen to show up.
• Connect to the Internet. The black screen problem does not seem to affect your Web connection as far as we know, but do check if you can connect.
• Hit Ctrl, Alt and Del at the same time to bring out the Task Manager.
• Click the Application Tab and select New Task.
• Enter this command: ”C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”"http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX”  - This command will use Internet Explorer to download the fix.
• Click OK and wait for your browser to launch.
• When prompted, click on Run and the fix should automatically download and run on your computer.
• Restart to check if your PC is fixed.

If the above procedure doesn’t seem to get your computer going, try getting a registry cleaner to put your system registry back in its place. As said earlier, the problem stems from incorrect registry entries so once the cleaner files and sorts your registry and fixes all the errors, your system should be back to normal.

Now you know how to fix black screen issues in your computer. Even if you are lucky enough to have not yet experienced the dreaded Windows 7 black screen of death, better pack a registry cleaner in your system and have it scan your computer regularly to avoid getting your Windows 7 screen black.

How to Add Extra Clocks in Windows 7

Windows 7 includes an enhancement to the system clock that lets you display 2 additional clocks when you hover your mouse over the system clock.

Adding these additional clocks is extremely easy. First right-click on the clock in the system tray, and choose Adjust Date/Time:

Click the Additional Clocks tab, and select the options and time zone as shown:

You can enter a friendly display name. I entered “London”, but you could put something relevant to you, like the name of a family member living elsewhere.

The Windows Explorer click sounds are enough to drive you crazy after a while. You’d think that the configuration option to turn them off would be a checkbox saying “Stop Annoying Me”, but that’s just not the case.

To open up the sounds configuration panel quickly, just type in mmsys.cpl into the start menu search box, and hit enter. You could also go to the Sounds and Audio devices in Control Panel, or even type Sound into the search box.

Click the Sounds tab and then browse down in the list to “Start Navigation”

You’ll see that the dropdown box has “Windows Navigation Start.wav” selected. Change this to (None) at the top of the list. Hit OK and your annoyance is over with.

Note: Remote desktop is only included in the Professional, Business, or Ultimate versions of Windows. Home editions do not have remote desktop. This should work for both Windows 7 and Vista.

To get to the configuration page, you can either right-click the Computer icon and choose properties, or you can type in system into the start menu search box, and then find the entry for System.

Now you’ll want to click the Remote Settings link on the left hand side:

Now you can finally turn it on:

To connect from another Vista / Windows 7 PC on the same network, click the bottom radio button. If you need to connect from an XP/2k machine, click the “Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop” radio button. Don’t worry about setting up firewall rules, Vista or Windows 7 does that for you automatically. Credits go to the original author of this article.

Note: Keep in mind Windows 7 is just being released and there could be bugs, crashes, etc.. and you won’t be able to restore your system if disaster strikes!

Disable System Restore

Now with all that being said.. Open Control Panel, switch to all items view and click on System. In the next window click on the System Protection link.

The System Properties dialog box opens where you will want to select your system disc and click the Configure button.

Under Restore Settings select “Turn off system protection” and click Apply.

You will get a confirmation warning screen to verify you want to turn it off…so it is not too late to change your mind.  Click Yes to save all the space possible if you still like living on the edge.

Adjust System Restore Space

With the large capacity hard drives in today’s computers there is really no reason to completely disable System Restore, however you might consider limiting the amount of space it takes on the disk if you need it.  When you limit the amount of space it uses then older Restore Points will be deleted.  There will be fewer points to restore from as well.

After decreasing the amount of space it uses you might want to Create A Restore Point right away.

This is where SharpKeys comes into the picture: It’s a small utility that will let you easily map one key to another key easily, or even turn the key off, without having to enter the registry at all.

For instance, I used the key mapping to just turn off my Caps Lock key, since I never use it.

You can click the Add button to bring up the Add New Key Mapping dialog, where you can either select the keys to map from the lists, or just click the Type Key button and press the key manually (which I find much more intuitive)

Once you are done, click the Write to Registry button and you’ll be told to log off or reboot for the changes to take effect. Download SharpKeys.

Note: This process uses Local Group Policy Editor which is not available in Starter or Home versions of Windows 7.

Disable Shutdown, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate Buttons in Windows 7

To open Local Group Policy Editor, click on Start and type in gpedit.msc and hit Enter.

In Local Group Policy Editor navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Start Menu and Taskbar and double click on Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands.

Now you want to enable this setting and click Apply and Ok. You can leave a note to yourself in the comment box, which I find comes in handy when changing a lot of settings in Group Policy.

Now when you look at the Power options in the Start Menu, the only options available are Log off, Switch user, and Lock.

The setting goes into effect right away for all users of the machine. The button to turn off the computer if the user hits Ctrl+Alt+Del will be gone as well. Original article found here.

Windows 7 doesn’t have a default setting to allow for disabling the key, so what we have to do is re-map the key to something non-existent so as to completely disable it.

Here’s the format of the binary data, with the important parts in bold and various colors:

00000000 00000000 02000000 00003A00 00000000

Here’s how it works:

• The first 16 zeros are just there to waste space.
• The “02″ in bold represents how many keys you are going to re-map plus 1. (It really represents the length of the data, but whatever)
• The orange bolded “0000″ is the key we actually want Windows to map TO, which in this case is nothing, or 0.
• The blue bolded “3A00″ is the key we are mapping from, in this case the caps lock key.
• The next 8 zeros are there to waste space as the null terminator.

You can map between multiple keys by incrementing the “02″ and then adding another of the colorful bold blocks in the middle. The 3A00 in the mix is the scan code.  For example, if you wanted to disable the caps lock key and then change scroll lock into a caps lock key:

00000000 00000000 03000000 00003A00 3A004600 00000000

Now that you’ve learned how these things work internally, you can download and extract the zipfile which contains the following files:

Once you’ve applied one of these registry files, you’ll have to reboot your computer for it to work. To uninstall, you can use the uninstall registry tweak, or you can simply delete the Scancode Map key entirely.

Download Keyboard Mappings Registry Tweaks

This should work in any version of Windows, including XP. Originally posted by its owner here.

Thankfully, there’s a way that you can get around this. You need to take ownership of the files, and then assign yourself rights to delete or modify the file. For this, we’ll use the command line.

Warning: Do not delete system files. This can damage your PC.
Note: This also works with Vista.

Open an administrator command prompt by typing cmd into the start menu search box, and hit the Ctrl+Shift+Enter key combination.

To take ownership of the file, you’ll need to use the takeown command. Here’s an example:

takeown /f C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui

That will give you ownership of the file, but you still have no rights to delete it. Now you can run the cacls command to give yourself full control rights to the file:

cacls C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui /G geek:F

Note that my username is geek, so you will substitute your username there.

At this point, you should be able to delete the file. If you still can’t do so, you may need to reboot into Safe Mode and try it again. For the filename in the example, I was able to overwrite it without safe mode, but your mileage may vary.

Many people recently started having an issue with Google’s Chrome browser. I myself have experienced this problem. One day all of the sudden Chrome had no internet, I checked my internet connection and it was perfectly fine.

So I decided to open FireFox which had no problem surfing the web. Being frustrated over the whole situation I started doing some research and found a solution to all the Chrome fans!

Here it is:

• Open IE and on the menu: Tools -> Internet Options
• Hit the Connections tab, then hit the LAN Settings button
• UNCHECK “Use a proxy server for your LAN“, then press OK for both windows.
• Refresh the browser and both Chrome & IE should work.