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Windows XP PowerToys
//www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/downloads/powertoys.asp
PowerToys are usually released for Microsoft's operating systems shortly after
the launch, but my contention has always been that they should have been
included as options in the first place. This latest collection adds a few familiar
items, such as TweakUI and Open Command Window Here, but there are
new goodies like the Super-Fast User Switcher, Virtual Desktop Manager,
Image Resizer and the Webcam Timershot that lets you periodically snap
images from a connected webcam and save the files to a destination of your
choice. It doesn't provide a direct way to save to an FTP site, but you can
add such a destination to My Network Places and choose to save files there.
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As promised, Microsoft released an excellent new version of the
Tweak UI powertoy, called version 1.33. The new Tweak UI runs on
all versions of Windows since Windows 95. That means Windows Me,
Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows
95. And it's a chameleon because it automatically detects the
version of Windows you install it on and sprouts different
options and tabs specific to that Windows version. You can
download the 111K file directly from Microsoft:
//www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp
Before you install this new version of Tweak UI, please
uninstall any previous version you have installed on your PC and
then restart Windows. If you run into difficulty installing Tweak
UI, please see this Winmag.com story, which walks you around some
of the oddities of the Tweak UI installation process (Note: Skip
right to Step 1):
//www.winmag.com/help/sbs/2000/tweakui/default.htm
---- Bugs in Tweak UI 1.33 ----
Long-time Insider readers may recall that Insider wrote the book
on solving a minor side-effect of all past versions of Tweak UI
under Windows 9x: Grayed out "Open" and "Explore" context menu
items for the Start button. A lot of people use those menu items
as the fastest way to edit the Start Menu and its submenus, so
this was an annoying problem. Insider has shown literally
thousands of people how to fix that problem in a special August
18, 1999 issue of the newsletter:
//www.winmag.com/columns/insider/1999/081899.htm
So, quite naturally, I wondered whether the latest shipping
version of Tweak UI fixed the problem. The answer is Yes, and No.
The problem is fixed under Windows Me, but if you make any
changes to Tweak UI 1.33's "My Computer" tab under Windows 98 or
98SE (I haven't tested Win95 yet), you will find that your Start
Button's right-click menu Open and Explore items are grayed out.
Another bug (well, I guess it's a feature), which I reported
on last time:
//www.winmag.com/columns/insider/2000/34.htm#tipadaweek
... is still in effect. It's a setting under Tweak UI 1.33's "IE"
tab called "Show Control Panel on Start Menu Settings." This
setting only appears on Windows Me PCs. If you remove the check
beside this setting, you won't be able to run Control Panel or
any individual Control Panel applets, including TWEAKUI.CPL, the
one required to get back into Tweak UI to reverse the settings.
(See the link above for how to reverse the setting using System
Registry Editor. One quick way to launch Registry Editor is to
click Start, Run, then type "regedit" without the quotations, and
press Enter.)
I had an e-mail recently from Scott Danesi who wondered why
I didn't direct people to "simply use the Find applet to locate
C:\Windows\System\TWEAKUI.CPL, and then double click it (or right
click it and select "Open with Control Panel" -- instead of
editing the registry. Good thought, but no cigar, Scott. You
*really* can't run Control Panel under Windows Me with this
setting in vogue. It doesn't just remove access, it disables
Control Panel entirely.
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