Microsoft on its blog, today announced a new feature with SkyDrive. The new feature will allow users to create Excel based surveys which can be useful to plan events or projects.
Click on create button at the top and select “Excel Survey” from the dropdown.
Name the survey and create a questionnaire.
The file can then be shared with anyone via a short URL. All the data entered and collected through the survey is neatly tabulated into a excel file.
Google Drive (previously Docs) also has a similar option of creating questionnaires and collecting information in a feature called ‘Forms’.
I have personally not been able to test out Excel Survey completely for all its features as Microsoft will be rolling it out over the day. If I find something, I will surely update it here or in a new post.
Windows 8 the next operating system in queue from Microsoft, boasts of an entirely new user interface called the Metro UI. Metro UI is the default Start screen on Windows 8 which sports a set of tiled boxes on a green background. These tiles are Live and they fetch news / mails / current status depending on the application.
Finally there is a one-stop solution for tweaking Windows 8 Metro UI and other features on Windows 8 explorer. In fact it can be called as a ‘live’ replacement for the old Start menu and the taskbar. The following screenshot gives us an idea of how the Metro UI looks like.
For this all you have to do is to run the Metro UI Tweaker ( portable EXE file in Download link at the bottom) and select the applicable options.
How to Customize Metro UI
Disable Metro Start menu to get back Windows 7 like Start Menu( screenshot below)
Windows 7 start menu in Windows 8
Disable the Explorer Ribbons to get back normal Windows 7 like explorer (screenshot below)
Add Log Off / Sleep / ShutDown / Lock / All application shortcuts to Metro UI (screenshot below)
Add any file or application to the Metro Start Menu.
Hope the tutorial answers all questions about partially or completely customizing the Windows 8 Metro UI, Windows 8 explorer. Do drop in your comments.
If you are running a lot of software on your Windows platform, it must be irritating to see some of these software running once the computer is started. Some of them are useful, like Anti-Virus or Firewall applications, but most other applications are useless. I thought that the only way to do it is to uninstall that software, Windows 7 has a nice feature that allows removing some applications form running at start up.
Unselect / Select Applications with msconfig
Click on start (the windows icon), in the search column, type in ‘msconfig‘ and select the ‘msconfig’ program that appears. It’s a configuration option that microsoft had made to help users.
It will open a new window. If you want to disable all the start up item, you can deselect the ‘Load startup Items‘, in the general -> Selective Startup -> Load startup items ( see the image). I don’t actually recommend it, because there will be several useful startup programs like security softwares and all. So, navigate to the tab ‘Start up‘
Under the startup tab, you can see a list of all the programs that are designed to load at the Startup. You can individually stop these services by unselecting them.
Doing this can help you to stop those irritating startup programs like Gtalk, PC suites etc, which you might not use all the time and hence want it not to run by default every time you start the computer.
If you are using laptop then reducing this load on your computer will see a good increase in your computer’s speed along the battery lasting a lot longer. 😉
Many a times our printer just won’t print and it happens all the time for me. My printer is of HP Deskjet series 3940 and the frequent problem I encounter in it is that it suddenly goes offline in the middle of printing. The Printer Offline Error is quite frustrating. Thankfully I have found a couple of solutions helpful and thought I will share them with you.
Check your Printer
Make sure your printer is switched on.
Ink cartridges are installed correctly(refilled cartridges may cause some problems ).
See that the printer is not out of paper.
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If you are still getting “Printer Offline Error” then there is a chance that there is a communication problem between your Printer and the computer. This is managed by the Spool service in Windows and we need to restart it.
How to Restart Printer Spool?
Click on Start button and Click on Run.
In the Run window type “services.msc” without the quotes. Press Enter.
A services window will pop up, scroll down and find a service called Print Spooler.
Click on it and two options (Stop / Restart the service) will appear on the left top corner.
Click on ” Restart the service” or “Stop” and then ” Start” the service any one.
The Printer Spooler will Restart and the frozen printing will resume.
This method should work 9 times out of 10 when you get the Printer Offline Error while using Windows and a HP Printer. Do drop in your comments any more quick tips to resolve this issue.
Ever since I was not happy about my Laptop’s performance, I started looking for a small handy tool (software) for utilizing the maximum of my RAM efficiently. And that lead to the discovery of a really neat app (really, its just 332 KB) namely – “Free RAM Optimizer XP”. Though you will usually mis-understand the name and will think that its meant for the Windows XP operating system, however I have been using it on my Windows 7 Professional version and it has never given a problem.
The software is a small window which silently sits on your Taskbar’s Notification area and automatically keeps optimizing your system’s RAM usage. However you can easily disable the Automatic optimization and just keep doing it manually whenever you feel like doing so.
Don’t forget one thing that it just optimizes your available RAM, it cannot increase the RAM memory available. So be cautious while changing any settings otherwise it may lead to your system going dead slow.
My Personal Advice
If you are using the manual setting, don’t clear more than 1% of your total RAM at once.
nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as “CON”.
This is something pretty cool…and unbelievable… At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn’t answer why this happened!
TRY IT NOW !!
This is not the first time I got this mail, and I’m sure most of you must have received it too. If you try creating a folder named CON, as the mail claims, it’ll get renamed automatically to New Folder. But there is no mystery behind this, and the team at Microsoft very well knows the reason for this. 🙂
Why is it not possible to create a folder named CON?
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Before we proceed further, let me tell you a small secret you can’t even create a folder named PRN, AUX, NUL and many others.
The reason you can’t create a folder with these names is because these are reserved keywords used by DOS. The below screen-shot taken from Microsoft’s website shows a list of reserved keywords in DOS.
If you try creating a folder with any of these names, the name automatically changes back to the default “New Folder”. And this is what has caused the confusion. Instead of automatically renaming the folder, had an explanatory warning message popped up, we would have had one less hoax mail to deal with. 🙂
You can actually create a folder named CON !!
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There is actually a way to create a folder named CON, or any other name from the above list of reserved keywords. This can be done through command prompt. But it is advisable not to do so, as it might result in your system becoming unstable.
To create a folder named CON, go to command prompt and type “MD .D:CON” (without quotes). This will create a folder named CON in D:. See the screenshot of my machine.
You cannot delete this folder by normal delete. To delete the folder, again go to command prompt and type “RD .D:CON” without quotes.
I’ll again recommend you not to try this on your system, as it might become unstable. In case you can’t stop yourself, don’t do it on a drive on which Windows is installed (generally C:).
Next time when you get such a mail, reply to the sender and direct him or her to this page. 🙂
Have you ever come across such hoax mails? Do let us know what do you do to tackle them through your comments.
Restart, is the function that which makes us to start our computer again by clearing any pending errors, or to bring system to normal position in controlled manner, or after finishing downloads few of the software or drivers etc asks for restarting the computer and there are many other reasons for us to restart our computer.
Being such an important aspect which brings system to back normal condition, every PC user will use this restart button. For high configured system, this is not such an important function, but for low configuration systems, it is such an important function which helps the system to return back to its normal condition.
It would be really helpful for us to have Restart Icon on our Desktop to restart our computer with just a single Click.
Note : This trick is tested only with Windows XP Operating System.
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This tricks enables you to set the time at which your PC will start the restart process. With just a single click on the Restart icon will terminate the entire running applications and starts the restart function after a predefined time.
Lets jump into the procedure for Creating Desktop Icon for Restart Function :
To creat the New Shortcut icon, right-click at any empty area on your desktop and proceed to New and then to Shortcut.
This creates a small widnows dialog box which will appear with name “Create Shoutcut“. In “Create Shortcut” window, type “SHUTDOWN -r -t 30“. This command begins with a 30 second count to restart your computer.
In the above command “t 30″ means “Time in seconds“. This command restarts our computer automatically after half minute.
Then click on Next Button and then type the name of Shoutcut “Restart” and click on Finish.
This creates a Shortcut Desktop icon for Restart function.
If you click on it, then a window dialog box will appear as “This system is shutting down. Please save all work in progress and log off. Any unsaved changes will be lost. This shut down was initiated by administrator”.
Benefits :
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Saves Time.
Saves Power as well.
Efficient in process. (100% safe)
In order to stop the times if once you click on the Shortcut icon, Open “Run prompt” and type “shutdown -a” which terminates the timer as well as stops the system from restarting.
Express your views after trying this Trick out, this is a valid trick for Windows XP, if possible just try it out on Windows 7, Vista and comment about your experience.
System Restore is a very useful feature in Windows Vista and Windows 7 which enables users to automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. It allows you to restore you system and files to the previous state if something goes wrong with the installation of any software or drivers.
