Hints & tips

Top tips

How do I recover from my computer freezing?

If you hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and tap the Delete key, select Applications and you can zap a frozen (“Not responding”) program. If that doesn’t work click the Start button then Turn Off Computer then Restart. That solves a lot of problems. If all else fails a lot of computers will turn off if you lean on the power button for a few seconds. On a laptop/netbook that might work or you might have to unplug it and remove the battery.

How do I get advice when I'm stuck?

Friends, family and colleagues are the best source. After that there’s always searching via Google, reading magazines or buying a ‘how to’ book if you want to delve deeper. In some cases you might need to pay for advice.

How do I keep my computer safe when I'm online?

There are a lot of criminals trying to make money from you so take the basic precautions of having an active firewall, up to date antivirus software plus anti spyware detection. Leave Windows Update on Automatic. Just as important is being sensible with dodgy emails or web sites. If something looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.

Be particularly wary of emails asking you to click on a link and key in login and password details; most are sent by people who want to steal from you and have set up a plausible looking fake web site:

Another thing to be wary of is that sites that let you download illegal copies of music tracks, DVDs etc are notorious for leaving your computer an infected mess.

How do I remember all those passwords?

Keep your most sensitive passwords, eg the PIN on your cash or credit card, totally secret. You can use them for online banking but not for other sites that require you to log in. For them, eg when shopping online, use different, less sensitive passwords.

The best method is probably to write down a clue that means plenty to you but nothing to anyone else. Eg "Argentina" could be a clue for the hotel Huentala in Mendoza to you but how could any stranger guess that? Then vary the password per site you use it for, eg just write down "Argentina975" so you know the password is Huentala975. Note that some sites are case sensitive with passwords.

I have a password hints text file that I email to my gmail account periodically - so I can get at online backups, banking etc from anywhere.

How do I find what I’m looking for on the internet?

There are just two key things which will transform your ability to find what you’re searching for on the internet. In your Google search box use double quotes to enclose phrases. Night bare comes up with many millions of inappropriate hits and night on the bare mountain with over a million, many nothing to do with the composer Mussorgsky. "Night on the bare mountain" comes up with far fewer and they are mainly the right sort.

The other transformation is do not click on the links. Right click instead and choose Open in New Tab or Window. That launches the site in another tab or another copy of your browser. Close that copy when you're finished with that site and you're back to your Google list. The same applies to other search engines. If you've got a proper mouse you can just press the scroll wheel to open a link in a new tab/window.

How do I find what I'm looking for on my computer?

Windows (not Internet) Explorer is a well kept secret (because it never announces itself in the bar at the top of its window) and is the key to finding out where everything is on your computer. One way to launch it is to right click on the Start button and choose Explore. Here's a Windows 7 example:

Generally it’s OK to keep your documents in the places Microsoft decrees (eg My Documents in XP, Documents in Vista/7) but it really helps to have plenty of sub folders to keep things organised. Beware the fact that Microsoft hides locally stored emails (eg in Outlook) in very odd places that are difficult to back up.

Avoid putting files on the desktop – they’re hard to find (they are really stored in a weird place such as C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Desktop) and if you delete the desktop icon the underlying file is gone too, unlike when you use a desktop icon as a shortcut to a file stored under (My) Documents.

Personally I always reject the Microsoft schemes and have all our data, incl. locally stored emails in much simpler places such as E:\OurData. That makes backups so much easier.

How do I do this copy and paste thing?

Your computer’s transient memory (a.k.a. the Clipboard) can be used to copy or move all sorts of things, files, chunks of text, pictures etc, within and between different places and programs, one at a time. The usual way to copy something is first highlight (select) it then Edit, Copy or Ctrl C. Use Edit Cut or Ctrl X to move items. You can also copy an image of the entire screen into memory with the Print Screen (PrtScn) key or just one window with Alt PrtScn.

Then go to where you want the item that you stored in memory and Edit, Paste or Ctrl V. Sometimes it’s a bit different, eg File, New image from Clipboard to paste a screen image into Photoshop Elements.

How do I improve my digital photos?

One good way is to take lots of photos then transfer them to a folder on the computer and be ruthless about deleting the less brilliant ones. The free Faststone Viewer is great for this job. Rename the remaining images – if they’re worth keeping, they should surely not be called something like IMGP0237.jpg. Then you need some decent image handling software.  If the software that came with the camera doesn’t let you do things like zoom into a photo and airbrush out a spot on someone’s face then junk it and get some software that will.

You need to be able to crop to various aspect ratios (eg depending on what size you want to print the best photos), resize (eg make copies suitable for emailing), adjust colour balance, levels and contrast (not with just crude one-shot buttons), get rid of red-eye and have the control to do things like brush out a stray power line in a lovely blue sky.

Photoshop Elements is great at editing images and its levels control can quickly bring a poorly exposed picture to life – just drag the side diamonds to where the ‘mountain’ starts. But I avoid its organiser - too bossy.

How do I switch between different things on my computer?

You can minimize an application you’re using (eg a browser) by clicking on the third button in from the top right corner. It then goes down to the strip at the bottom of the screen and lets you see something else, eg a word processor or email program. Here's the Windows 7 taskbar as I was assembling this page (eight applications to switch between):

Alt tab is a much better way of switching, especially with XP or Vista. You leave everything open (not minimized) and switch between them by holding down the Alt key and tapping the Tab key. When you let go, you switch to whichever program is selected at the time. With Vista/Win7, if the Aero interface is active the Windows key + tab gives a 3D view as shown to the right. With Windows 7 the taskbar, as shown above, is a good way of switching applications as long as you don't pin unused programs to it.

What are all those mouse buttons & wheels for?

You don't properly get them on a laptop touchpad so I always insist on a real mouse, preferably wireless with a laptop. The left mouse button is the one you normally use to choose something or to grab it to drag it across the screen (that's when you hold it down and move the mouse). You single click it on menu items and web links and only need to double click where the first click could lead to a number of different actions. Eg if you click a desktop shortcut once you might then want to rename it. A double click opens it, the default action.

The wheel in the middle lets you scroll up and down long pages (like this one) very easily. If you click it down on a link in a Google search it opens it in a new tab/window.

The right mouse button is for extra options - everything from a pie chart of space used on a hard disk to a menu of extra options:

Try right clicking all over the place in Windows and you'll be surprised at how many new options you find.

How do I do repeated things faster?

Fluency comes with practice.  But I find a fair bit of my speed at getting things done on a computer is down to keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl Z is undo and the classics (which also work on Macs) are Ctrl C, X and V for copy, cut and paste of anything you have selected. When using Photoshop Elements I find the keyboard shortcuts make me 10x faster, eg for repeated hand crafted red-eye removal I switch colours with X, resize the clone or brush tools with [ and ] and so on.

Quite often keyboard shortcuts are shown on menus. There's a Word 2003 example to the right. I even find that Word 2003 shortcuts such as Alt AIB in a table (tAble Insert row Below) even work in Word 2007, which is generally not so shortcut-friendly as earlier editions. The underlined characters on menus generally mean you can hold down Alt and tap the keys rather than wearing out the mouse.

How do I make shortcuts?

XP used to be a bit clunky - right click, create shortcut, drag it off to the desktop, rename it.  Vista and Win 7 are much easier - just right click an application via the Start button and send the shortcut to the desktop.

Personal shortcuts on the desktop are great but tend to proliferate. I tend to keep a lot of shortcuts I don't use often within desktop folders. Just right click on the desktop then New folder then you can drag shortcuts into them, eg I have shortcut folders for music apps, photo apps etc and a very clear screen (here it's featuring the Dali house in Cadaqués):

With Windows 7 I tend to keep the taskbar for programs I'm actually running - the ones I just might run some time I keep in the Quick Launch area (which is a bit hidden in Win 7).

Why do some files open with the wrong program?

Many Windows programs are incredibly greedy and grab as much of your viewing and listening experience as they can. So you install an innocent little free pdf generator and suddenly pdfs no longer open in the standard Acrobat Reader. Music and video programs are even worse, including those from big boys Microsoft, Apple & Adobe.

Be careful when installing software (but some installs make a land grab without asking anyway). If an application takes ownership of files wrongly it is quite easy to solve. In Win XP, Vista or 7 you just right click a file (music, image, video or whatever) then choose Open with - then you can choose a different program just this time or go via the Default program option to change the default.

I try to keep Windows Media Player and iTunes at a distance - if I want them for something, fine, but they are so big and slow and anxious to be in charge that I much prefer apps such as VLC and Songbird which don't try to tell me what to do.