What is it?

The Windows Registry is the main place were windows and program settings are stored on your computer, if you have worked with previous versions of windows you might be familiar with windows ini files which had a .ini file extension these were used to store windows and programs settings but this information is now stored in the registry apart from a few bits of information for compatibility with old programs that still may be in use

Some types of information that the registry include are:

• Hardware
• User information
• Critical system information
• Installed Programs

The Windows registry is as important to the Windows operating system as Heustons NASA Control Centre is to NASA.

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Widnows 7 is the latest version of Microsofts operating system due for release on the 22^nd of October 2009, in this version microsoft have added loads of new features and inproved loads of existing ones.

This article will outline some of the key features and improvments.

Improvments

Start Menu Search

The Start button search facility introduced with Windows Vista has been revamped. Instead of just searching filenames and applications, this is improved so that it displays apllications, control panel applets, documents and files all seperatly categorised as seen below:

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Windows 7 comes with allot of usefull keyboard shortcuts, ive listed the main shortcuts below:

Desktop

• Win+Tab:

  Aero - press Tab to cycle between Windows

• Win+D:

  Show/Hide Desktop


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In Windows 7, applications on your taskbar are shown as small icons this is known as the Super Taskbar. Its notifications area has also bin cleaned up which looks pretty good, but one problem is that applications like Windows Live Messenger and other IM clients load with two icons on the taskbar and no longer minimizes to the notification area. Here is a simple "hack" to get around this problem and make Windows Live Messenger to act like Vista by minimizing to the notifications area.

1. Make sure Windows Live Messenger is not running then go to your Messenger folder. This can normally be found at: C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger
2. Right click msnmsgr.exe and select Properties




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As i've mentioned before Windows 7 comes with allot of new features one of which is the improved Notification Area, this has been cleaned up to provide a better look and feel, but as i mentioned in my previous article Minimize Windows Live Messenger to the system tray notifications area in Windows 7 certain programs that would normally minimize to the tray in previous versions of Windows no longer will with Windows 7, Windows Live Mail is one of these programs that will not so i have created this small article to describe how to get it to minimize to the system tray.

1. To do this you will first need to set Windows Live Mail to run in Vista Compatibility mode, to do this Right click on the Windows Live Mail icon and then click Properties.


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