It also has action buttons that allow you to perform certain tasks quickly like switching to tablet mode, creating a note, connecting to a VPN, etc. In this article, I will talk about how you can customize the taskbar, notification area, and action center in Windows 10. If you’re only interested in one section, just skip down to the appropriate header.

Windows 10 Taskbar

Start Menu

So what’s new in the Windows 10 taskbar? Quite a few things actually. Firstly, we have a functioning Start button again with links to apps, settings, etc., which has made many people very happy.

The Start menu is a whole different beast, so I’ll be writing a separate post on how to customize it. Basically, it’s a combination of the Windows 7 start menu and the Windows 8 start screen. It’s actually fairly useful and I like it more than the standard start menu in Windows 7.

Cortana & Search

Right next to the start button is a new search box that also integrates Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant software. You’ll see the I’m Cortana. Ask me anything. message if Cortana is enabled.

When you click in the search box, you’ll be asked if you are interested in enabling Cortana or not. If you click on Not interested, Cortana will be disabled, but you can still search the computer and web.

If you want use Cortana, click Next and follow the instructions. Note that you give up a lot of your privacy when you enable Cortana. Before you click the Use Cortana button, you’ll see a list of items that gets sent to Microsoft from your computer including location, searching history, calendar details, voice input, browsing history from Edge, and lots more. Many people have complained that way too much info gets sent to Microsoft and it’s probably true.

In order to use Cortana, you also need to sign in with a Microsoft account. If you want to change Cortana settings, just click on the gear icon at the left and you can turn it off or on, enable or disable Bing search, etc.

If you don’t like how much space the Cortana search box is using up, just right-click on the taskbar, go to Cortana and choose from Hidden or Show Cortana icon.

The first option will remove it entirely and the second one will simply use a search icon.

Task View

The next new item on the Windows 10 taskbar is the Task View button. It’s basically like Mission Control on OS X if you have ever used a Mac. If you click on it, it will show you all the open apps on the current desktop and it will also show you any other desktops.

In Windows 10, multiple desktops are finally an built-in feature. You can hide or show the Task View button by right-clicking on the taskbar and clicking on the Show Task View button option.

You can also get into task view by using the hotkey Windows Key + TAB. I’ve already written a detailed post on how you can switch between programs and desktops in Windows 10, so be sure to check that out. Overall, it’s an excellent feature and works very well.

Taskbar Properties

If you right-click on the taskbar and choose Properties, you can customize a few more settings related to the taskbar.

This screen is very similar to older versions of Windows: you can lock the taskbar, set it to auto-hide and use small taskbar icons. You can also adjust the location of the taskbar to the left, right or top. Lastly, you can choose how you want to combine icons in the taskbar. By default, multiple windows from the same app will be combined.

At the very bottom, you can also enable Peek to quickly preview the desktop when you move your mouse over the Show Desktop button. The Show Desktop button is still at the very far right of the taskbar and is now a tiny slice you can barely see.

Windows 10 Notification Area

Now let’s talk about the notification area in Windows 10. It’s pretty similar to the notification area in Windows 7, but it also has the Action Center icon, which is the icon at the farthest right that looks like a piece of paper with text on it.

To configure the notification area, you can either right-click on the taskbar, choose Properties, and click on the Customize button next to Notification area or you can click on Start, go to Settings, click on System and then click on Notifications & actions.

On this screen, you can actually customize both the notification area and the Action Center. First, let’s talk about the system tray and icons.

Click on Select which icons appear on the taskbar to choose all the different app icons you would like to have appear in the main area of the taskbar.

Note that if the value is set to Off, the icon will appear in the “extra icons” section that shows up when you click on the little up arrow. If you switch it to On, the icon will move from the extra icons section to the main taskbar.

It’s worth noting that you can also move icons yourself by just clicking and dragging an icon between the taskbar and the extra icons section. That’s actually easier than going through the settings.

If you click on Turn system icons on or off, you can choose which system icons will appear in the taskbar. You can pick from Clock, Volume, Network, Power, Input Indicator, Location, and Action Center.

So from here, you can even turn off the Action Center, if you don’t find it useful. If you go back to the main Notifications & actions page, you’ll see the Notifications section. This section controls which notifications you get, from which apps and where they appear.

If you disable the first two options (Show me tips about Windows and Show app notifications), you’ll pretty much stop getting any notifications from Windows other than system messages. App notifications are the most common notifications you’ll see in Windows.

You can also choose whether or not you want notifications on the lock screen. For privacy purposes, some users might want to disable notifications on the lock screen. Lastly, you can enable hiding of notifications while presenting.

Directly below this section is the individual notification settings for each app. If you get a lot of notifications from a particular app, you can turn just that one off and still get notifications from other apps.

Windows 10 Action Center

Lastly, we have the Action Center. If you click on that little icon in the taskbar, you’ll see a windows slide in from the right hand side of the screen.

Here you will see a scrolling list of all notifications from the system and from apps. At the bottom of the screen are the quick actions I was talking about earlier in this article. You can change which icons appear here by clicking on the icons at the top in Settings and picking a different icon.

On desktops, you’ll pretty much see all the possible actions listed, but on laptops, you may only see one row of four icons. Currently, you can pick from All Settings, Connect, Project, VPN, Note, Quiet hours, Location and Tablet mode. Some of these only really apply to laptops or tablets and won’t make much sense for a desktop.

So that’s basically all there is to customizing the taskbar, notification area and action center in Windows 10. It’s a big improvement over Windows 8 and has enough new features to make the switch from Windows 7 seem sensible. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Enjoy!

The post Customize Taskbar, Notification Area and Action Center in Windows 10 first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

You’re probably reading this because you’ve tried changing the power plan settings to Never for everything and your monitor still turns off! This can be very frustrating and usually occurs with new installs of Windows 7, though I’ve seen it happen on older installs too.

In this article, I’ll go through the different ways you can fix this problem. Note that if your computer is on, but the screen is showing No Signal or No Input, you should read my post on fixing blank or black screens. Now let’s go through the possible solutions.

Power Options – Control Panel

First, we need to make sure everything is set correctly in Power Options. Click on Start and type in power options or go to Control Panel (icon view) and then open Power Options from there.

Click on Start, then Control Panel and then Hardware and Sound, and then click on Power Options.

Click on the Change plan settings link that is next to the plan that is currently selected. In my case, the High Performance plan is selected, so I’ll click on the link next to it.

First, make sure that Put the computer to sleep is set to Never. Next, change the Turn off the display setting to whatever value you desire. You don’t have to set it to Never if you don’t want to. After this, click on the Change advanced power settings link.

Expand Hard disk and then expand Turn off hard disk after. Reduce the value till it gets to Never. Click OK and then click Save Changes on the Edit Plan Settings page.

Screen Saver – Control Panel

The second setting you want to check is the screen saver. Go to Control Panel, click on Personalization, and then click on Screen Saver at the bottom right.

Make sure the setting is set to None. Sometimes if the screen saver is set to Blank and the wait time is 15 minutes, it’ll look like your screen has turned off.

BIOS, Graphics Card, Monitor

The two methods above are the most common reason why your display will turn off after a set amount of time, however, there can be other possible causes.

BIOS – On some computers, the BIOS can have power saving settings that determine how the computer sleeps. These are called sleep modes (S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5). On some computers, you’ll see an option called Deep Sleep Control. You may need to disable this in order for the computer to wake up faster.

Graphics Card – If you have a high-end graphics card installed, make sure you have the latest driver and management software installed. If you go through the settings, you may find an option that puts your graphics card into lower power mode or something similar.

Monitor – Lastly, some monitors have power saving features themselves. Usually, the monitor is supposed to go into power saving mode if it doesn’t detect any input (HDMI, VGA, DVI, etc), but sometimes it happens unexpectedly.

You’ll have to press the buttons on the monitor to get access to the monitor settings. Those are about all the reasons I could think of for your display turning off when it shouldn’t. If you have any other questions or solutions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

The post Does Your Windows Computer Display Turn Off Every 15 Minutes? first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Unfortunately, most people never mess around with network settings because they don’t understand what everything means and are afraid to mess something up. However, once you understand the settings, you can fix problems on your own, increase your privacy, and quickly setup file and printer sharing between multiple computers.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the different aspects of the Network and Sharing Center and show you certain features you can use on a regular basis to make yourself more productive.

Opening Network & Sharing Center

The first step is to open the Network and Sharing Center. The quickest way to get to it is by clicking on Start and typing in network and. This will instantly bring up the app in the list.

In all versions of Windows, the app is located in the Control Panel. In Windows 7, just click on Start and the Control Panel is listed on the right side of the Start Menu. In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, just right-click on the Start Menu and choose Control Panel from the list.

In the Control Panel, you can click on the Network and Internet category and then click on Network and Sharing Center. If you are in icon view, just click directly on Network and Sharing Center.

Private or Public Network

The first thing you’ll see when you open the Network and Sharing Center is your current connection to the network and to the Internet. Windows 7 has a little bit more information and also a couple of more options.

In Windows 8 and Windows 10, they cleaned up the interface by getting rid of a couple of items and combining other items.

At the top, you’ll see the active network or networks, the network type, the type of access, HomeGroup info and the connection info. The first thing to understand about this info is the network type, which is listed directly below the name of the network.

In the above examples, one has Home network listed and the other has Private network listed. This is very important because when you are connected to a private or home network, there are a lot of sharing settings that are set by default to be trusting. This means others can find your computer on the network, possibly access shared folders, stream media from your computer, etc.

Windows will normally try to figure this out for you automatically so that when you connect to a public WiFi network, it will use the Public profile and not the private one. Sometimes, Windows will ask you if you want to enable sharing or find devices once you connect to a network and if you say yes, it will make the network private. If you choose no, it will make the network public.

You can also manually change the network type to Public or Private depending on what kind of privacy you want. This can be useful, for example, if you are visiting someone and you want to make sure no one can access any data on your computer while you are connected to their network. Change the network type to Public and no one will be able to discover your computer on the network.

You can read my post on how to switch between public and private for the currently connected network. So what exactly does switching do? Well, you can see all of the different sharing settings when you click on the Change advanced sharing settings link, which I explain in detail in the next section below.

To the right of the network name and network type, you’ll see HomeGroup and Connections. Next to HomeGroup, you’ll see a link that says Available to join or Ready to create depending on whether a HomeGroup already exists on the network or not. A HomeGroup allows you to easily share files, printers and more between computers. I talk more about it in the Advanced Sharing Settings section below.

Next to Connections, you can click on the name of the WiFi or Ethernet network to bring up the status info dialog for the current connection. Here you can see how long you have been connected, the signal quality for WiFi networks, the network speed, etc. You can also disable the connection and diagnose the connection if there is a problem.

For WiFi networks, this screen is useful because you can click on Wireless Properties and then click on the Security tab and view the WiFi password. This is really useful if you have forgotten the WiFi password, but still have a computer that is connected to the network.

Lastly, if you click on Details, you can get more info about the current network like the Default Gateway (router IP address), MAC address, and computer IP address.

Advanced Sharing Settings

The advanced sharing settings dialog is main place for managing how your computer communicates with the rest of the network. In Windows 7, you have two profiles: Home or Work and Public. Only one profile can be active at a time. All the settings are the same and repeated under each profile.

In Windows 8 and 10, you have three profiles: Private, Guest or Public and All Networks. Basically, it’s the same settings as in Windows 7, but just split up more logically. Let’s go through the various settings:

Network Discovery – This setting is turned on for private networks by default and it means that your computer can be seen by other computers and vice versa. What this means in practice is that when you open Windows Explorer, you might see the name of another computer connected to your network under Network Locations.

File and Printer Sharing – This setting will allow others to access shared folders and printers on your computer. I always turn this to Off even on private networks unless I need to use it in a specific situation. There are so many times when guests come over to my house, connect to the network and then could possibly browse my system. Only shared folders can be viewed, but you’d be surprised how folders can become shared without your knowledge.

HomeGroup connections – If you really do need to share files and folders, you should just setup a HomeGroup, which is more secure and a lot easier to configure. If you do run into trouble, just read my HomeGroup troubleshooting guide.

Now expand out All Networks if you are using Windows 8 or Windows 10. There are a couple of more settings here.

Public Folder Sharing – I recommend turning this off unless you specifically need to share data with another computer. The reason is that it’s very easy to accidentally save files into these publicly shared folders without realizing it, which will then be accessible by anyone on the network. A very useful feature when you need it, but a big privacy risk otherwise.

Media Streaming – This is another option you should keep disabled until you need to use it. This basically turns your computer into a DLNA server so that you can stream music, movies and pictures to other devices on the network like an Xbox One, etc. When enabled, it opens up quite a few ports in your firewall also.

File Sharing Connections – This should always be set to Use 128-bit encryption unless you need to share files with Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 computers.

Password Protected Sharing – I highly recommend turning on password protected sharing because it will force users to enter a username and password for an account on your computer in order to access any data.

Setup New Network & Troubleshoot Problems

The next part I want to talk about is the section under Change your networking settings. In Windows 10, you can either setup a new connection or troubleshoot problems.

For setting up a new connection, you only have four options in Windows 8/10: Connect to the Internet, Setup a new network, manually connect to a WiFi network or connection to a VPN. Note that creating an ad-hoc network is no longer possible in Windows 10.

If you click on Troubleshoot problems, you’ll get a list of troubleshooting links for the Internet, network adapter, HomeGroup, Shared Folder, Printers, etc.

These are not just troubleshooting guides, they are actual programs that run and fix issues with various networking related services. I have found the Internet Connections and Network Adapter troubleshooting fixes to be the most useful.

Change Adapter Settings

Lastly, let’s talk about the Change adapter settings link on the left-hand side. You probably won’t use this too often, but it does come in handy when troubleshooting network problems.

Here you will see a list of all the network adapters on your computer. If you have an Ethernet port and WiFi card, you’ll see both items listed. You might also see other network adapters, but they are usually always virtual, meaning they are created by a software application like a VPN client or virtual machine program.

If you’re having connection problems, you can simply right-click on the adapter and choose Diagnose. This will usually fix any problem with a misconfigured network adapter. If you right-click and choose Properties, you can configure your computer to use a static IP address rather than obtaining one from a DHCP server.

As mentioned, this is not something you’ll need to do often, but it’s good to know for troubleshooting purposes. For the technically savvy, there are a lot of other advanced settings you can modify here, but this guide is meant for newbies.

Hopefully, this article will help you navigate the Network & Sharing Center settings without feeling overwhelmed. It’s the easiest way to fix network problems and to make your computer more secure by disabling a lot of the automatic sharing enabled by default. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!

The post Guide to Network and Sharing Center in Windows 7, 8, 10 first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

This feature stuck around in Windows 7 also and it can be activated by using the Windows Key + TAB combo as opposed to the standard ALT + TAB combo. If you liked this feature a lot, it got removed in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

The key combo still works, but it does something different in Windows 8 and something else in Windows 10! Yes, thanks Microsoft for changing features in every version of Windows!

Anyway, in this article, I’ll explain to you how Aero Flip 3D worked in Windows 7 and how the Windows Key and ALT combos now work in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Aero Flip 3D

In Windows 7, if you press the ALT + TAB key combo, you get the following display for your programs:

Basically, you get small little thumbnails for each program or window that is on the taskbar. If you use the Windows Key + TAB combo, you get the cool looking flip 3D stack look:

By the way, if your computer does not support hardware acceleration, then when you press ALT + TAB, you’ll see small icons instead of previews like shown below:

If Aero Flip 3D is not working in Windows 7, it could also be that you are not using an Aero theme. Right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize. Then select one of themes under Aero Themes.

Windows 8 Switching Between Apps

So what happened in Windows 8? Well, firstly, flip 3D was removed in favor of the new sliding bars that come out from all sides in Windows 8. You remember the Charms bar on the right hand side?

In Windows 8, if you press ALT + TAB, you get a similar thumbnail view of all open programs, which includes desktop apps and the new Windows Store apps that were introduced in Windows 8.

This is logical and makes sense, right? However, if you press the Windows Key + TAB, you end up getting this sliding bar from the left side of the screen:

Firstly, I don’t use that many Windows apps to justify this annoying sliding bar on the left side of the screen. I much preferred the 3D flip of Windows 7. On top of that, it doesn’t list out desktop apps, but instead has one tile called Desktop. This is one of the many reasons why people simply hate Windows 8.

Windows 10 Switching Between Apps

Thankfully, Windows 10 has fixed a few of those problems. You’re still not going to get any 3D flip action in Windows 10, but I don’t mind that as much anymore.

Firstly, when press ALT + TAB in Windows 10, you get the same thumbnail previews as older versions of Windows, but the thumbnails are huge compared to preview versions of Windows, so it looks really nice.

As with Windows 8, ALT + TAB will show you desktop apps and Windows Store apps. Thankfully, in Windows 10, Store apps are inside windows and can be used like desktop apps, rather than going to full screen and being really annoying.

So what does Window Key + TAB do in Windows 10? Well, now that Windows 10 supports multiple desktops, like OS X has for a while, this key combo will allow you to switch between desktops. What’s nice about this key combo is that you can also let go of all the keys and it doesn’t disappear.

Here is where things get a little interesting. When you are in this mode, pressing tab will not switch you between apps in a particular desktop. Instead, it will switch you from the bottom part of the screen, where it lists out all the desktops, and the top part of the screen, where it lists out all of the apps and programs on a particular desktop.

If you press the left or right arrow keys, it will let you switch between the different programs on that desktop like shown below.

You’ll see a little white box around the app that is currently selected. You can then press Enter to select that app. While in this mode, if you press TAB, then you will activate the lower section and now you can move through the desktops by pressing the left and right arrow keys. As you can see below, two desktops are showing brighter because one was active one when I pressed Windows Key + TAB and the other one I used the arrows key to highlight.

Now if you just press Enter when selecting a different desktop, then it will simply load that desktop and show you whatever the active window was previously for that desktop.

However, to show all the windows that are active for another desktop, you have to press the SPACEBAR key. Then you can press TAB again to get back to the top part of the screen and arrow around to which app you want to select. Then press Enter and you will load that app from that desktop.

Since I use multiple desktops quite a bit, these new key combos are pretty useful and everything makes much more sense. The SPACEBAR trick wasn’t intuitive, but once you learn it, it makes a world of difference navigating between desktops and apps. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of an idea on how these shortcuts have changed over time. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

The post What Happened to Aero Flip 3D in Windows 8 & 10? first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

With the Math Input Panel, you can write well-formed mathematical expressions and then have those inserted into other programs that support MathML or Mathematical Markup Language.

A couple of programs that support MathML are OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Calligra Suite and Microsoft Office. The web browser with the best support for MathML is Firefox. All the others either require a plugin or don’t support it at all (Chrome). So don’t plan on trying to embed MathML code in your web pages!

The Math Input Panel supports lots of high-school and college-level math like functions, numbers, letters, arithmetic, algebra, sets, geometry, probability and statistics, etc.

The best way to use the Math Input Panel is to have some kind of writing tablet or pad connected to your computer. Trying to write an equation with your mouse is a pretty frustrating experience. The best writing pads I have used for Windows are from Wacom, which has been around for ages.

Using Math Input Panel

Now let’s take a quick look at how you can use the Math Input Panel. The easiest way to load it is by clicking on Start and typing in Math. The first result should be the Math Input Panel.

When you first open the program, you’ll just see a blank screen with a graph paper type background that says Write math here. If the window size seems too small, don’t worry because the screen automatically grows in height and width as you get close to any particular edge, which is pretty neat.

Secondly, when you start writing an equation, another small window pops up to the right of the main math input screen. These are some tools you can use to erase or correct your equations.

Now just start writing your equation and don’t worry if you see that the preview window is showing something different. For example, after I wrote x=, the preview window was showing something else. However, once I wrote the letter a, it figured out that it should be x = a.

Once you have finished writing your equation, there may be a few items that were not correctly recognized by the input panel. In these cases, we can use the correct tools at the right. The best one to start with is Select and Correct.

As you can see above, I wrote a horrible a, which the program recognized as an n. To correct it, I could erase and rewrite it, but the easier option is to click on Select and Correct, then click on the letter a so that it is highlighted in red and then choose the correct letter or symbol I want. The second choice in the list is what I want.

To erase something, just click the Erase button and then click and drag on the input panel to erase anything you like. Now that you have your equation completed in the input panel, it’s time to insert it somewhere useful.

You can do this by first opening the program you want to insert the equation into. In my example, I’m going to use Word, so I will open it and move my cursor to the point where I want to insert the equation.

Then click on the Insert button and your equation will be dropped into the document. Note that you can adjust the size of the font for the equation by simply selecting it and then increasing or decreasing the font size.

Again, you always want to write out the whole mathematical expression first before you start making corrections. The more of the expression you write, the more likely the program will be able to figure out what you are trying to do. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post Geekiest Windows Accessory: the Math Input Panel first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Luckily, there are a couple of things you can do to rectify this problem in Windows 7. I’ll walk you through the different methods, starting with a simple little trick in Windows 7 which won’t require you to install any third-party software. The rest of the options are freeware or commercial applications.

Method 1 – Create a Larger Image

If you have multiple monitors that are using the same resolution, then you can actually create an image that is the width of all the monitors combined and use that as your wallpaper. For example, if you are using two monitors with a resolution of 1600×1200, then you can create an image that is 3200×1200 and load that up as the background.

The only thing you have to do is to choose Tile and it will span the image across the screens. If you have three monitors, then you would create an image that is 4800×1200 and so on.

Now if you have monitors with different resolutions because the monitors are different, then you can use a similar technique, but you’ll have to play around with the alignment to get it right. You’ll still stitch the images together, but you’ll have to leave some black or white space at the bottom of one to get them to align correctly.

A cool site that helps you find wallpapers for multiple screens is InterfaceLift.com. Or you can find wallpapers for the exact resolution that you need. It’s a very help site in this regard.

Method 2 – Dual Monitor Tools

A free and open source program called Dual Monitor Tools works really well for using different backgrounds in Windows 7.

You can use it to spread one image across multiple monitors or you can use a different image for each monitor. The program lets you adjust the images and preview the changes before you actually set the wallpapers. It can also handle if one monitor is landscape and another is portrait.

The program also has a bunch of other features like swap screen for managing windows using hotkeys and dual launcher, which lets you open applications with hotkeys and have then open on specific monitors at specific positions.

Method 3 – DisplayFusion, UltraMon, MultiMon

There seem to be only a couple of players in the multi-monitor software camp and those are namely DisplayFusion, UltraMon and MultiMon. Both DisplayFusion and MultiMon come with free versions that can accomplish the goal of setting different wallpapers in Windows 7. If you want all the extra features that they include, you can buy the paid versions, but for our purposes it’s not necessary.

Luckily, I already wrote a review of these three programs: Best Dual Monitor Software. It’s really hard to say which one is better since they all do a really good job.

Of course, like I mentioned before, in Windows 8, you no longer have to worry about this problem. Now you can just right-click on the image and choose which monitor you want that background to apply to.

If you know of another way or use a different program for setting different backgrounds in Windows 7, please let us know in the comments. Enjoy!

The post Setup Different Backgrounds for Dual Monitors in Windows 7 first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Learn how to enable and use the integration features of an XP Mode Virtual Machine.

Why Enable XP Mode Integration?

An XP Mode Virtual Machine uses your physical computer’s resources to run a fully licensed copy of Windows XP right from within Windows 7 Professional.

Part of your computer’s RAM, processing power, and other components are used by the Virtual Machine to allow XP to run.

Using XP Mode’s integration features, you can also share other resources such as drives, audio, and printers to increase the functionality of XP running in the Virtual Machine.

Enabling and Using XP Mode Integration Features

Click on Start>All Program>Windows Virtual PC>Windows Virtual PC to open the Virtual Machine folder.

Right click on the Windows XP Mode Virtual Machine and select Settings from the menu.

In the Windows XP Mode – Windows Virtual PC Settings window, click on the setting labeled Integration Features.

Note that the right hand side of the window changes to show you the integration settings available for your XP Mode Virtual Machine.

On the right side of the window, you will notice several options. Below is a description of each and some hints on how to use them to make your XP Mode Virtual Machine more integrated with your physical computer.

Enable at Startup – This option allows you to specify whether the integration features are available each time you startup XP Mode. Unless you want to manually integrate each feature when you use XP Mode, leave this option checked.

Audio – XP Mode can use your PC’s audio to add sound to your Virtual Machine sessions. Keep in mind that integrating audio adds one more component that can go wrong. If you really have no need for sound while using XP Mode, leave this option unchecked.

Clipboard – Integrating the Clipboard with XP Mode means that text, images, or other elements can be cut, copied, and pasted between your physical PC and the Virtual Machine running XP Mode.

This is one of the most useful integration features. Consider enabling it if you need to share documents quickly and easily between your PC and XP Mode.

Printer – If you plan to print from within XP Mode, check this option. Using printer integration, XP Mode will treat your printer as if it were connected directly to it rather than to your physical PC. Most people find that integrating the printer is essential to get the most from XP Mode.

Smart Cards – If you have any smart cards connected to your PC and you want to use them in XP Mode, you must check this option. If you have no smart cards, leave this one unchecked.

Drives – This option lets you specify whether all drives or only the ones you choose are integrated with XP Mode. At the very least, make sure you integrate the drive on which Windows 7 Professional is installed (C drive for most people). This way, you have access to your user account, desktop, My Documents folder, etc. while in XP Mode.

For drives you know you will never use with XP Mode, leave them unchecked. This saves you the trouble of having to wade through drives you’ll never use while opening and savings files to your PC while in XP Mode. When done, click the OK button.

Windows 7’s Virtual Machine technology allows you to integrate and share the resources of your physical PC with XP Mode.

By doing so, you can gain access to the drives, printers, smart cards, Clipboard, and audio features of your PC. Luckily, the Virtual Machine lets you select which components to integrate so you can make your XP Mode sessions more streamlined and less complicated.

The post Enable Integration Features for an XP Mode Virtual Machine first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Rather than giving administrative accounts complete and unbridled access to everything on the PC, these accounts operate as normal user accounts until an action requiring admin privileges pops up. At this point, the account enters Admin Approval Mode so the user can approve the action.

Much improved over Windows Vista’s handling of admin approval, Windows 7/8/10 strikes a balance between security and usability. Fortunately, Microsoft makes it possible to further customize how Admin Approval Mode operates on a PC.

Depending on where your computer is located and who uses it, you can upgrade or downgrade your PC security by changing how Windows 7/8/10 uses Admin Approval Mode. You can also read my post on how to turn off Admin Approval Mode.

Note: In order to access Local Security Policy on a Windows computer, you have to be running a Pro version or higher. This will not work for Windows Home, Home Premium or Starter editions. 

Changing How Admin Approval Mode Works

To make changes to how Admin Approval Mode works on a Windows 7/8/10 PC, begin by logging into the operating system using an account that has administrative privileges. Click on Start – All Programs – (Windows) Administrative Tools – Local Security Policy.

You should now be looking at the Local Security Policy options window.

In the left hand pane, click on the folder titled Local Policies and then on the folder labeled Security Options. Locate an option in the right hand pane titled User Account Control: Behavior of the Elevation Prompt for Administrators in Admin Approval Mode.

Right click on this option and choose Properties from the menu.

You will notice that you have six options in the drop down menu in the properties window.

Below is a description of each option for Admin Approval Mode elevation.

Six Admin Approval Mode Options

Each of the six Admin Approval Mode Options forces Windows to operate differently when it comes to elevating approval for applications and functions that require approval to run in the operating system.

Note that secure desktop is when the entire screen dims until you accept or deny the request in the UAC prompt. Check out my other post to understand how UAC works.

Elevate Without Prompting

This is the most convenient option, but also least secure option. Whenever an application or function tries to run that would normally require approval from an administrator, the application or function will run automatically as if it were already given permissions to run.

Unless your PC is in a super secure location isolated from networks, this is not a wise choice.

Prompt for Credentials on the Secure Desktop

This option is more secure than the default setting. Whenever an action pops up requiring approval from an admin, Windows will actually prompt the user for a username and password on the secure desktop.

Prompt for Consent on the Secure Desktop

Rather than prompting for a username and password like the option above, Windows will simply ask the user to approve the action on the secure desktop.

Prompt for Credentials

This option operates similarly to the option above titled Prompt for Credentials on the Secure Desktop, except that the user types in the username and password without the added security of the secure desktop.

Prompt for Consent

Like the option above titled Prompt for Consent on the Secure Desktop, this option simply asks the user to approve the action but does so without the added security of the secure desktop.

Prompt for Consent for non-Windows Binaries

This is the default Admin Approval Mode option. With this option, users are required to consent to an action only if it requires approval and is not a verified Windows action or executable.

Binaries are simply compiled executable code synonymous to applications or programs. Second only to the Elevate without Prompting option above, this is one of the most liberal Admin Approval Mode options.

Windows strikes a good balance between security and an uninterrupted computing experience, but still allows you to further customize how you consent to actions that require admin approval.

By altering the Admin Approval Mode options, you can create a customized operating system environment allowing you to increase or decrease security depending on your personal need for administrative security.

The post Change How Windows Prompts for Admin Approval Mode first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Even though the new Paint has some new features and uses the new Ribbon UI that Microsoft is using across all its Windows and Office products, they have also removed a lot of cherished features.

In this article, I’m going to go through some of the features that have been removed and others that have been added. After using the older version of Paint and the new version, I can see how newcomers to Paint may find the new version to be just fine, but veterans will be fairly disappointed.

I’ll also write about how you can get the old version of Paint and use it in Windows 7 and higher. If you just want to do that, skip down to the Install Old Version of Paint in Windows 7/8/10 section.

First, let’s take a look at the GUI interface differences. As you can tell from the images below, the Windows 7 Paint interface is completely different than the XP and Vista version of Paint.

What’s Good in Windows 7 Paint?

Unfortunately, there aren’t many aspects of the newer Paint that are that great as compared to older versions, however, here is what I could come up with.

Windows 7 Paint has a cleaner and more modern look

In terms of the GUI, the new version of Paint certainly looks better. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is easier to find the tools or options you want, but the interface is clean and modern.

I’ve been using newer versions of Office for the last couple of years and have gotten used to the ribbon interface, so that’s not a big deal seeing buttons rather than menus.

Also, Windows 8 and Windows 10 use the same ribbon interface across the OS, so everything is going in that direction.

Thankfully, you can still use the CTRL and + to increase the size of the line thickness when using the various drawing tools.

In the dropdown, there only four sizes to choose from, which is pretty useless, so it’s essential to still have the ability to adjust the thickness to any size using the hotkeys.

Another positive is that you can still paste an object and use transparency to remove the white parts to reveal what is underneath. I thought they had gotten rid of the transparency feature, but it’s just hidden under the Select button.

The only other positives I can think of are the inclusion of some more brushes and shapes. Paint was always meant to be a very simple tool, so there aren’t a whole lot of tabs, buttons or options to start off with.

What’s Bad in Windows 7 Paint?

Lots of stuff in my opinion! Most of these complaints are minor, but they all add up to a very frustrating experience for veteran users of Paint.

Let's start off with one of my biggest problems: automatic anti-aliasing on everything.

Some people will love this feature, but a lot of people will simply hate it. For casual users, anti-aliasing makes everything look smooth and nice, but if you are a graphic artist, you may not necessarily want everything smoothed out automatically. An option should have been added for this to turn on or off.

Second annoyance: Paint auto-selects any line or object after you draw it

In the older versions of Paint, you could start drawing a line and then continue drawing another line immediately after releasing the mouse button. This made it really easy to do point-to-point drawing using Paint.

Now whenever you draw a line, it selects the line and you can’t continue drawing from that point. This is really annoying and makes drawing in Paint a lot more difficult.

Third problem: drawing solid colors with the brush doesn't work with paint bucket

What I mean is when you draw solid colors using the brush and then try to fill it will a different color, the new Paint leaves an outline around the brush stroke.

In Windows XP and Vista Paint, this was not an issue. You could just fill the brush stroke with another color and it would fill the entire stroke without any outline. Again, minor change, but makes a big difference to certain types of designers.

There is a way around this and that is by using the Pencil tool, drawing the line and then using the paint bucket. When using the pencil, there is no black outline.

Fourth mistake: removal of solid pixel brushes

If you did a lot of pixel by pixel editing in Paint, the older version let you really make edits on a pixel level using the solid pixel brushes. Now you have all these newer brushes like airbrush, crayon, etc, which are just fine, but the older ones should not have been removed.

There are other issues, but I won’t waste too much time on that. Some stuff is just really hard to find, whereas it was obvious in previous versions.

For example, inverting colors in the older version was easy: just click in the menu or use the hotkey. In the new version, you have to right-click on the object and then you’ll see the option. Not a big deal, but takes some time to get used to if you came from the older version.

Install Old Version of Paint in Windows 7/8/10

If you can live with the new version of Paint, then congrats. If not, it might be worth reverting back to the older version.

Luckily, there is an easy way to get the older Paint in Windows 7 and higher. Actually, there are two ways: download a program or manually replace the Paint in Windows 7. The first method is easier for sure and less risky.

Paint XP is the standard old MS Paint that you can run on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

When you run the EXE file, make sure to click on Custom Installation then uncheck the extra junk software that it wants to install. As long as you do that, you’ll only get the Paint program and nothing else.

The second method is more technical, but thankfully someone has written a detailed tutorial. Hopefully, one of those two methods work for you. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post Windows 7 MS Paint Review first appeared on Online Tech Tips.