iPad Quick Mute

Did you know that there’s a quick way to mute all sound on your iPad? All you need to do is press and hold the Volume Down button on the side and it’ll mute the sound completely in two seconds!

It’s much faster than rapidly pressing volume down, lowering the volume one tick at a time. So next time you’re playing a game or watching a movie and someone comes up and starts talking to you, you have a quick fix for silence! Now if only humans had that same option…

-- Nishad S S

I purchased a Keyboard that has no “Sleep” button. How can I setup a button to be a “Sleep Button”?

If your keyboard does not have a sleep button, there are a few ways to put your computer to sleep. The easiest is to click the start button, click the arrow next to shut down and click Sleep. This will put your computer in to sleep mode.

The second way is a bit more difficult, but still not that hard. The first step is to open Notepad and type the following line:

rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

Now click File>Save as and change the name to sleep.bat. Also, make sure to change the file type from text document (*.txt) to All Files. Choose your desktop as the location and click save.

Next, right click on sleep.bat on your desktop and click “Create Shortcut.”

Now, right click on Sleep – Shortcut and choose properties. Click in the shortcut key box and hold down a key combination to turn on sleep. Make sure that key isn’t used for something else in windows or it’s a combination of keys (my example is holding down Ctrl and holding down Alt and pressing S).

Click OK.

Next time you press the key combination you set the system will go into sleep mode.

--- Nishad S S

A reader named Travancore Restoration asked how to block Facebook posts regarding games and game requests. Could you please give me a detailed description of where to go on Facebook to turn these apps off please? Thanks for all the great hints, they are very much appreciated, Karen.

I know exactly how you feel! I hate getting all of those game requests, too. Read below to solve this problem.

1. Click on Home to get to the main page of Facebook. This will take you to the page where you see what your friends’ are posting (in the center) and you see ads (on the right).

2. Look to the top right. The first thing you will probably see is the Ticker. This is the list that shows you the actions of your friends. Right below that is an area that lists both the events you are invited to and any app requests. In the picture below, I have my ticker minimized (see the grey arrow right above the 12th Annual Integrit… item?). In the yellow box are my outstanding apps–and like you, I’ve just been ignoring them.

--- Nishad S S

Change the Windows Explorer Default Folder

Windows 7 users know that when they go to their Windows Explorer, the first window that opens up is for Libraries. Well, that’s fine and dandy, but what if I want to start off someplace else? What then?

Today we’re going to learn how to change all that. So locate your Windows Explorer icon on your taskbar, or click Start and type Windows Explorer into your Search Box. Either way, you’re going to want to right-click the Windows Explorer icon and select Properties.

Under the Shortcut tab, focus your attention to the text input box next to Target:

Simply type the address of the folder you want Windows Explorer to start in after the %windir%\explorer.exe. So, for example, mine would look like this:

Note: An easy way to select a new default location is to browse to the location, right click in the address bar, selectCopy address as text and paste in the Target box.

After your new default folder location is in, click Apply then OK.

Now open up Window Explorer again and take a look at where you’re at! If you ever want to go back to the original location, simply follow the same steps and delete just the location address you inputted.

--- Nishad S S

8 Features That Changed In Windows Explorer in Windows 8

Microsoft has recently rolled out Windows 8 Developer Preview that can be downloaded from the developers’ official website here. We will shed more light on the much awaited operating system in the coming days. However, here is a quick tour about the major changes the new operating system has made in the Windows Explorer.

1. Enriched Explorer Pane:

The new OS has a full featured Windows explorer pane with buttons for almost every action that a user may need to perform for a folder or a file. The tasks range from the most basic copy/paste operation to the more pro uses like editing Advanced Security permissions. If you want to hide/unhide the options in the explorer pane, double-click on any of the tabs to hide/unhide it.

2. One Click Action:

As I had pointed out previously, there are buttons for almost everything. Some of them (that you may find useful) are cut,copy,paste,copy path,file history, add as email attachment, file properties, hide/unhide items, create zip archive etc.

3. The Up Button Restored:

This discontinued feature (present in XP) is restored back and this serves the job. However, with the address bar showing present folder directory quite prominently the Up button seems redundant.

4. Pause Option For Copy/Paste/Delete Operations:

Yet another addition that might be a great lifesaver for all Windows users. You can now pause any ongoing file transfer or deletion process.

5. Tabbed Grouping:

The all-at-hand explorer pane would have been more cluttered if there were no grouping. The developers have taken care of that in a nice way. You have tabs which groups containing buttons for related tasks. Also when you select a file you will get a file specific tab which lets you open the file with the default app.

6. Trendy “Open With” Menu:

Until now, the files with extension not linked to any application used to come up with a boring Open With dialog. The newer one, look wise, is what I would term a trendy one.

7. Edit File Details:

Select any file, go to the View tab and select the Details Pane. You will now be able to see the details of the file to the right of the Windows explorer window (previously this was at the bottom). But that’s just a styling change. What impressed me is that you can edit the details of the file right from there without firing up the file Properties dialog.

8. Title Bar Shortcuts:

Last but not the least, Windows Explorer has made the title bar even more useful with an option to add your favorite buttons (from the Explorer Pane) to the title bar of the Windows explorer window.

True that more is always complicated. But to me the blend seems fine. Also, I find the interface more productive if considered the fact that you no more need to do a right click (or use keyboard) and then choose some option to do all these tasks. That’s atleast two clicks. A click saved each time makes the count a million a year for even the most lazy Windows user. That’s my view. We would love to hear about yours.

-- Nishad S S 

To remove a virus, I had to download a file and rename both the filename and the file extension. Windows 7 won’t let me change the extension. How can I do that?

There are a couple of ways to do this, so I’ll show you the easier Windows-based way of turning on file extension editing. I highly recommend once you’ve edited the file extensions to turn this feature back off, as turning “mydocument.doc” into just “mydocument” can have some bad results – such as the file not being able to be opened by regular double-clicking.

So, open My Computer or Computer by clicking Start then Computer. Now hold down the Alt key on the keyboard and press the T key. This should bring up the tools menu. Click on Folder options.

Click on the View tab, then scroll down to “Hide extensions for known file types” and uncheck the box. Click Applythen OK.

Now you can navigate to the file you need to change and you will see both the file name and the extension. You can right click on a file and left click Rename to change the name and extension.

Once again, when you’ve completed the changes I highly recommend going back into folder options and rechecking the “Hide extensions for known file types.”

-- Nishad S S

Restoring Open Folders on Restart

What was I doing? This is a question all too often facing me when I fire up the computer (or get up from the couch, start the car, or…well, you get the picture). Unfortunately, only a solution to the computer thing was found, so confusion still reigns on the other issues.

Windows offers a method to automatically return to a location in the computer on restart, reopening folders from earlier work sessions. Of course, this can also be a help to those not suffering from memory lapses, but who just want to return to where they were at the end of their last session. A couple of keystrokes and mouse clicks is all it takes to set it up.

Open Windows Explorer. A quick way to do that is to hold the Windows key and tap the E key (Win+E). Or, just click onDocuments, Computer, etc. from the Start menu.

From the Tools menu at the top of the Explorer window, select Folder Options. In Vista or Windows 7, if the Tools menu isn’t visible, tapping the Alt key will bring it up temporarily. If you’d like Windows to permanently display this menu, please take a look at the tip, Setup Classic Menus in Vista and Windows 7.

Under the View tab, scroll down to Restore previous folder windows at logon and add a check mark.

Now, any folders that are open when the computer is shut down will reopen on startup. However, the following is an example (one of many) of “don’t do what Kevin does”. I have always manually closed everything before shutting down the computer. So, in testing this, restarting the computer didn’t reopen folders because, by force of habit, they’d been closed prior to shutting down. At first, I thought maybe a step had been missed. After a few minutes, the light bulb clicked on, and I realized that was not the case. Occasionally, stuff processes pretty slow with me, which may be why I so often find myself wondering, “What was I doing?”.

---- Nishad S S

Which mode do you understand XP or Win 7

I am on Windows XP Pro and am very used to it, but I want to upgrade to 7. I understand that 7 has a “XP mode”, so if I upgrade how do I put it into “XP Mode” – and which version do I need to have?

Windows XP mode is a feature of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition, and allows a virtual instance of Windows XP to be opened inside of Windows 7 to run programs that are not naively compatible with Windows 7.

What XP mode does not do is change your Windows 7 interface to look like Windows XP. Windows 7 will still be there; you’ll just have the ability to open a Windows XP program which will contain a virtual copy of Windows XP. This is really good if you’ve tried to install software made for Windows XP that will not run in windows 7, but is not intended to be used if the program runs in Windows 7.

You can download and get more information about Windows XP Mode from Microsoft by clicking here.

-- NIshad S S