Change and customize Windows 7's Logon screen wallpaper

While experimenting with several Microsoft Windows 7 systems recently, I spent a lot of time staring at the Logon screen. During that time, I began to think about changing the Logon screen wallpaper. Now, I have changed the Logon screen wallpaper in just about every version of Windows I’ve used, so I knew that there had to be a way to do so.

However, when I began to investigate the procedure in Windows 7, I discovered that changing the Logon screen wallpaper in the newest version of the Windows operating system is easy, once you know the steps — and you don’t even need any third-party software to do it.

In order to make it easy for OEMs to customize Windows 7, Microsoft built the ability to change the Logon screen wallpaper right into the operating system. Read more.

The TaskList Gadget makes it easier to troubleshoot running processes

When you’re troubleshooting problems in Windows, one of the tools you’re likely to use is the Task Manager. It’s designed to provide you with detailed information about the programs and processes that are running on a system. However, Task Manager doesn’t really give you the full picture when it comes to the running processes. For instance, what if you suspect that a DLL is at the root of a problem and want to find out what DLL modules a particular process is using?

To get the information you need, you can shell out to a Command Prompt window and use the TaskList command-line utility, along with a couple of special parameters. But working from a Command Prompt can get fairly tedious. So I created the TaskList Gadget, which automates the TaskList command. Read more.

Be a power user: Customize the file management features of Windows Explorer

While the new Libraries features is notably the biggest enhancement to Windows Explorer, Microsoft did indeed make many other standard file-management enhancements in Windows 7. Over the past couple of months I’ve uncovered and begun to use many of these to enhance my productivity. While some of them are obvious, many of them are a bit tricky to find and harness. Read more.

Take full advantage of the new font features in Windows 7

Microsoft made some pretty dramatic improvements in Windows 7’s graphics subsystem in order to improve performance for the entire spectrum of usage scenarios, from the day-to-day desktop displays to the extreme CAD and game graphics. However, what you may not know is that Microsoft has also made some pretty dramatic improvements in Windows 7’s font system. Read more.

Put the Classic Start menu in Windows 7 with Classic Shell

On more than one occasion, I’ve looked through the discussions for the Windows 7 blog posts that I have written here at TechRepublic and found messages from angry Windows users that go something along the lines of “Because Microsoft took away the Classic Start menu in Windows 7, I am not going to upgrade!”

When I see these types of messages, I imagine curmudgeonly folks sitting in front of an old Pentium II computer running Windows NT. Of course I know that is not a fair assessment, because many people I know who have either Windows XP or Windows Vista installed also use the Classic Start menu feature.

Still I have a hard time imagining anyone wanting to forego all the underlying advances in the Windows 7 operating system just because of a dislike of the Start menu and other user-interface features. However, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.

In any case, those die-hard classic Start menu fans have a champion out there. At SourceForge.net, which claims to be the world’s largest open source software development Web site, a fellow by the name of Ivo Beltchev has created a wonderful program called Classic Shell. In addition to bringing the Classic Start menu to the Windows 7 user interface, Classic Shell brings a number of other classic features to Windows 7, such as the Windows Explorer toolbar, complete with the Up button. Read more.

Investigate Internet TV in Windows 7 Media Center

Over the holidays, one of the old television sets in my home suffered a catastrophic failure. To maintain the entertainment equilibrium in our household, my wife and I decided to shuffle the remaining sets around and add a big screen HDTV to the mix. While configuring and setting up the new TV, I connected my laptop running Windows 7 to the TV set and began experimenting with Windows Media Center’s Internet TV component.

I discovered that it was a really neat feature and provided a very nice way to access all sorts of streaming media from the Internet. As I began espousing the features of Internet TV component to my friends and family, I also discovered that not many people were familiar with this feature of Windows Media Center. In fact, most folks that I talked to assumed that in order to take advantage of Windows Media Center you must have a TV tuner card installed in your system. However that’s not the case.

In the Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate) version of Windows Media Center, the enhanced Internet TV lets you watch videos from a variety of providers via the Internet right in Windows Media Center. This new version of Internet TV features enhancements to the UI and now provides more content from a variety of content providers, such as CBS, MSNBC, MSN, Zune, and more. Read more.

Peek behind the GodMode curtains to reveal useful canonical names and GUIDs

In last week’s blog post, “Exert Your Control with GodMode Folders in Windows 7,” I discussed a few of the so-called “GodMode” folders in Windows 7. As I mentioned in that post, Windows 7’s GodMode folders are simply special folders that are hidden until you enter a special, secret code.

Well, it turns out that the latter part of that sentence is only half true. The special folders are indeed hidden until you enter a special code, but the codes aren’t really secret.

Apparently all Windows 7 and Windows Vista Control Panel items have what is called a canonical name and an associated GUID (the infamous “special codes”). In this context, Microsoft describes a canonical name as being a nonlocalized string that the Control Panel item declares in the registry. A GUID, or Globally Unique Identifier, is a special type of identifier that is unique in any context, which Microsoft uses to provide an internal access point to Control Panel items.

In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll discuss the Control Panel canonical names in more detail and show you how to use them to create shortcuts to your favorite Control Panel items. I’ll then present the text file and script and show you how to use them. That way you can instantly create these canonical name shortcuts on your Windows 7 system and be able to easily conduct your own investigation to discern which of these shortcuts will be helpful to you and delete those that won’t. What could be easier