Home Feedback Search Links TipsTricks Quotes

 

Home

  

 

Tips & Tricks

Q: How can I stop Internet page links from opening in my Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) session?

A. If IE is open on your system and you click a hyperlink to a Web page from another application in Windows (for example, from an e-mail message, from the Run command), Windows will attempt to open the Web page in your existing IE session. To prevent this behavior and force Windows to open a new IE session, perform the following steps:

  1. Start a registry editor (for example, regedit.exe).
  2. Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main registry subkey.
  3. Double-click the AllowWindowReuse value or create this value (of type REG_DWORD) if it doesn't already exist.
  4. Set the value data to 0 to force Windows to open a new IE session, and then click OK (setting the value to 1 will let Windows use an existing IE session).
  5. Close the registry editor.
  6. Log off and log on for the change to take effect.

Less Typing to Enter www.[name].com addresses

Here's a handy hint for saving on keystrokes when typing in URLs in the .com top level domain that start with "www." In Internet Explorer, you can just type the domain name (for example, if the URL is www.microsoft.com, just type "microsoft") and hold down the CTRL key while you press ENTER. This only works on URLs in the .com domain.

Would you like to navigate quicker using Internet Explorer?

While in Internet Explorer, go to Help - Contents and Index.  Go to the Index Tab and type "shortcut keys".  Highlight the item "shortcut keys" and click on the Display button (or double-click the item).  You will find that there are quite a few.  This shortcut key combination is my favorite:

Ctrl+Enter = Add "www." to the beginning and ".com" to the end of the text typed in the Address bar.

P.S.  It's OK if you never knew these existed.  I've been using the browser since it's inception and I just found them a couple of months ago... Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees...

Change the Title Bar in Internet Explorer

Want to customize your IE title bar (for instance, I can have it read "Deb's Web" instead of "Microsoft Internet Explorer")? Here's how:

  1. Click Start | Run and type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
  2. Navigate to the following registry key:
    HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main.
  3. In the right pane, double click the value called "Window Title."
  4. In the data value box, type whatever text you want to display in the title bar.
  5. Close the registry editor and open a new instance of IE. Your new title bar text should be displayed.

 

Clearing Saved Auto-Complete E-Mail Addresses In Outlook

Thanks! A whole lot of you pointed me in the right direction regarding turning off the auto-complete of email addresses. Justin Herrick sent this to me, and it's pretty complete. The link below (where this originated) has an FAQ with more similar good stuff. Here goes:

"When typing an address into the To:, Cc: or Bcc: lines of a new message in Outlook, Outlook will use auto-complete and automatically suggest an address based on addresses it has cached.

"To turn off this feature, so that addresses are never suggested:

  • Go to the Tools pull-down menu, choose Options.
  • Click the E-Mail Options button, and the Advanced E-mail Options button.
  • Uncheck the box for "Suggest names while completing the To, Cc and Bcc fields".

"To remove one address from the list so that it won't be suggested again, open a new message and begin typing in the address. Use the up and down arrow keys to select the address to be removed from the addresses suggested. When the address to be removed is highlighted, hit the Delete key.

"To correct a single auto-complete entry add a second entry that uses the same first three letters as the original, and then delete the incorrect entry. In a new e-mail message, in the To box, type the correct name (the first three letters must be the same as the old incorrect one). In the CC box, type the first three letters of the recipient to reveal the auto-correct name list with both entries now showing. Use the arrow keys to move the selection to the incorrect entry, and then press the Delete key.

"To remove all the saved addresses, delete the .NK2 file where Outlook stores them. The file is normally located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder for each Outlook profile. Some of these folders are hidden so you will need to turn on the unhide file feature to in Windows Explorer to see them (Click Tools -> Folder Options and select the View tab)."

How to Add More Options to the "Send to" Menu

The "send to" function in the right context menu is handy; it lets you right click a file and send it to the floppy drive, the desktop, the My Documents folder, a mail recipient, etc. But there might be other places you'd like to be able to quickly send files (for example, to a folder you've created or a network drive). You can add more locations to the Send to menu. Here's how:

  1. Right click Start and click Explore to open Windows Explorer.
  2. Navigate to the drive on which XP is installed (where the WINDOWS folder is located) and expand the Documents and Settings folder.
  3. Expand the folder for your XP account name.
  4. Expand the Send to folder (this is a hidden folder, so you might need to modify your Explorer options settings to show hidden files and folders first).
  5. In Explorer, right click the folder or drive you want to add and drag it into the Send to folder. Select Create shortcut here.

To show hidden files and folders, in Explorer click Tools | Folder Options, click the View tab, and check the box that says Show Hidden Files and Folders.

How to Remove Applications from the "Open With" List

When you right click a file and select "Open with...", you'll see a list of programs that can be used to open that particular file type. You can edit this list by following these steps:

  1. Open your favorite Registry Editor.
  2. Navigate to the following key:
    HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts
  3. Locate the file extension for the type of file whose list you want to edit. Click the + sign and click "OpenWithList."
  4. In the right pane, you'll see a list of entries labeled a, b, c, etc. in the "Data" column, the name of the program to which the entry corresponds appears.
  5. To delete a program from the list, click it (the letter under "Name," not the program name under "Data") and press the delete key.

When all else fails...

How to Start System Restore from the Command Line

Sometimes when you install a program or driver, it might render XP unbootable. If your computer won't boot into the operating system normally, you might be able to boot into Safe Mode and use System Restore to go back to a previous restore point to fix the problem. But what if you can't even boot into safe mode? Then you need to start the System Restore tool from the command line. Here's how:

  1. When booting your computer, press F8 to bring up a boot menu
  2. Select Safe Mode with Command Prompt
  3. Select the operating system to start (if you have multiple operating systems installed)
  4. Log on with an account that is a member of the administrators group
  5. At the command prompt, type %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
  6. Press Enter
  7. This will start the "Welcome to System Restore" screen. Go through the steps of the Wizard and follow the instructions to restore your system to a previous restore point

 

[ Home ]

Hit Counter

Send mail to Main@RGTek.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2003 RG Technology Solutions, Inc.
Last modified: 05/18/04