Girl Geekette

Windows firewall may be great for may users, but it seems to do nothing for me more than being something annoying and possibly stopping a program from wanting that I want to run.

So, for me, I like to turn it off. This is how I turn it off:

Set the Control Panel to Small Icons. If you need a quick idea of how to do this, see Set Control Panel View.

Click on Windows Firewall

If Windows Firewall is on, you will see a screen similar to this one:

Windows Firewall - On

To Turn it off, Click on “Turn Windows Firewall on or off” on the left hand side of the screen

You will then see a screen similar to this:

Turn Windows Firewall On or Off screen

Click on Turn off Windows Firewall (not recommended) And Click OK

Windows Firewall - Off

User Access Control is Microsoft’s way of dimming the monitor and sending a pop up message to notify you that something is being changed in your computers configuration. This can get annoying. So, turn it off.

Set the Control Panel to Small Icons. If you need a quick idea of how to do this, see Set Control Panel View.

Choose User Accounts (Icons will be in alphabetical order after setting the control panel view to Small Icons)

Control Panel User Account Settings

Click on Change User Account Control settings

This is the default: Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer

UAC Default

To Turn off the pop ups that occur each time you make a change to your computer slide the bar down to Never Notify

UAC Never Notify

That will keep the screen from dimming and the pop up displaying that wants you to make sure you know something is being changed.

Getting tired of clicking through the default Category settings for the Windows 7 Control Panel? Change it to where you can see all of the Control Panel icons at once.

Windows 7 by default shows the control panel as:

Windows 7 Default Control Panel: Category View

For me, I have no idea where they put what I am looking for offhand. So to make it easier, I would rather see all the icons. To do this I click where it has Category and a drop down arrow in the top right hand corner of the control panel

Control Panel - Default Category View

Next step is to pull that arrow down and click on Small Icons (Or Large Icons if you prefer)

Menu - Small Icons

And the result is something more similar to what I am used to working with.

Control Panel - Small Icon View

Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen.

Snap

Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a…well, you get the picture.

To arrange windows side by side

• Drag the title bar of a window to the left or right side of the screen until an outline of the expanded window appears.
• Release the mouse to expand the window.
• Repeat steps 1 and 2 with another window to arrange the windows side by side.

To return the window to its original size, drag the title bar away from the top of the desktop and then release.

Snipping Tool captures a screen shot of anything on your desktop, like a picture or a section of webpage.

Snipping Tool

Snip a whole window, a rectangular section of the screen, or draw a freehand outline with your mouse or tablet pen (or your finger, if you’re using a PC with a touchscreen). Then you can annotate, save, or e-mail the image using buttons right in the Snipping Tool window. Snipping Tool is available only in the Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions of Windows 7.

Sniping Tool

With Windows 7 comes yet another new feature for the taskbar. But, though most people find it even more useful, I find it more ANNOYING. So, I want to turn my taskbar back to what I am used to.

Here is an example of the new Windows 7 taskbar

Windows 7 Taskbar

So to change this, right click on any open part of the taskbar and choose Properties from the menu

Task Bar Properties

From the Taskbar buttons drop-down menu, you will want to choose “Never Combine” which will make every window show up as a separate button, or you can choose “Combine when taskbar is full” which will only combine buttons when the taskbar gets full. And, click Use Small Icons.

Task Bar Properties

Now, after pressing OK, you should see the taskbar look like the way it did before – but we are still not finish.

New Old Taskbar in Windows 7

The only problem is that the “pinned” icons are still sitting on the taskbar. You can easily remove them by right-clicking and choosing “Unpin this program from taskbar”

Unpin this Program from the Taskbar

Now to add the Quick Launch Bar back to the Windows 7 Taskbar. Right click on the taskbar and click on Unlock the Taskbar and -> Toolbars and New Toolbars

New Toolbar

Paste the following into the locations bar

%appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Folder Paste

And hit enter. The Folder Location at the bottom will say quick launch and your Taskbar will show a quick launch bar in the right which you can click and drag over to the left.

Quick Launch

The normal Quick Launch that we’re used to doesn’t have text, so right-click on the dotted lines and uncheck “Show Text” as well as “Show Title” from the menu.

Uncheck

Now, this might look much better to you –  a new quicklaunch bar and the taskbar back to the vista/xp way.

New Old Taskbar

Enjoy!