Tweaking Windows Explorer

Most of us will agree to the fact that while Windows Explorer (In Windows XP, click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer) is a very useful tool that displays folder hierarchy efficiently, the default Explorer behavior of showing the 'My Documents' folder isn't very conducive. After all, working with several different network folders at one time and constantly having to navigate to the required folder to see a particular hierarchy can be quite cumbersome. Fortunately, by means of a simple tweak, you can instruct Windows Explorer to open specific folders of your choice and have shortcuts in place for easy access to them.

Assuming the required folder is called Test' and is located in the root directory of drive X, as a first step, create a shortcut to this folder on your desktop. To do so, right-click on the folder and select Send To > Desktop (create shortcut). Next, locate the folder on the desktop, right-click on it and select 'Properties'. The key to changing the default Windows Explorer behavior for a specific folder or directory lies in the box labelled Target'. Now, simply change the Target box by entering the following text (without the quotes): C:\Windows\Explorer.exe /n, /e, x:\test

Remember to change the folder name and drive letter to reflect the actual ones you have on your system. Repeat this process for as many folders as you want. Additionally, you can change their icons and even move the shortcuts to a new toolbar altogether.

Books on the go

Q.

Although I have quite a large collection of e-books on my computer, I do not find the idea of sitting in front of a computer for extended periods appealing. Could you please recommend a portable device, such as a mobile phone or a multimedia player that can double up as a capable e-book reader?

A.

You can pretty much use any Java-based mobile phone for occasional reading purposes, thanks largely to the development of applications such as the free Tequila Cat Book Reader (www.tequilacat.org/dev/br/index~en.html). However, in order to get the best reading experience possible and added functionality, such as the full-text search feature and i dictionary lookups, consider investing in popular mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone 3G and Nokia S60 third edition devices (such as N and E Series mobile phones); Windows Mobile devices by HTC, Samsung and l-Mate or Blackberry devices. Not only do these offer large, high-resolution screens and expandable storage, but they also support an extensive catalogue of applications which include feature-rich e-book readers. An example is that of the Mobipocket Reader (www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN), which is one of the most acclaimed cross-platform e-book reading applications around today. Moreover, an increasing number of these devices now come with out of the box support for Adobe PDF files. Alternatively, you may wish to consider some hardware devices dedicated for reading e-books, such as the popular Kindle 2 by Amazon that uses an electronic paper display and can even be used without a computer.

An option too many

Q.

I have Windows XP running on my machine and recently tried to install another copy of it on a separate partition of my hard drive, but the installation process was interrupted midway. Now, whenever I boot up my PC, I see a menu which lists two separate Windows XP installations, out of which only one works. How do I get rid of the invalid reference?

A.

To remove the reference which points to the corrupted Windows XP installation so that it no longer appears when you boot up, you have two options. Of these, the first simply prevents the boot menu from appearing every time at startup and lets you boot directly into Windows XP, while the second lets you actually remove the invalid entry.

To disable the boot menu, right-click 'My Computer' and select 'Properties'. On the tab labelled 'Advanced', click the 'Settings' button under 'Startup and Recovery'. Now, in the section labelled 'System Startup', simply uncheck the option that says Time to display list of operating systems'. Alternatively, you could go a little further and manually edit the Boot.ini file to purge the invalid entry. To do so, under the aforementioned 'System Startup' section, click the button labelled 'Edit'. This will open the Boot.ini file in Notepad, ready for editing. However, before making any changes, as a precautionary measure, backup this file by clicking 'File', followed by the 'Save As' option in Notepad. As an example, a sample Boot.ini is provided below:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)

rdisk (0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partiti on(l)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(O)partiti on(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition" /fastdetect

A cursory examination of the file above reveals that the bottom reference is false and the system will automatically load Windows XP present on partition 1 after the 30 second timeout. So you can safely delete the entire second reference (shown in bold). Note that the actual contents of the Boot.ini file may vary from this slightly, so proceed with caution. Once you are done, save the changes, exit and restart your system to boot directly into Windows.