Showing tag results for Tips/Support

Commenter Kevin Dente asks, "Is it possible to put a folder on the Start Menu Pin list and have it cascade?" No. The last time I checked (which was back in Windows XP), the Start menu pin list was a list, not a menu. (Specifically, a list view in tile mode.) When you click on the icon, it launches. There is no code to say "Oh, if this flag i...

We occasionally get customers who ask, "How do I disable drag and drop?" This is an odd request, so we ask the frequent follow-up question, "What are you really trying to do?" For many of these customers, the answer goes something like this: We've found that our employees often accidentally move or copy items around on the desktop and in Explorer...

When you view a folder for the first time, Explorer arranges the items in a nice default pattern. And when items are added to the folder, they get added to the end. And when you delete an item from the folder... the other items auto-arrange to close the gap? But wait, if you look at the View options, the Auto-Arrange option is not set. So are we ...

The Favorites menu in Internet Explorer shows the user's favorites. And stuff in the is visible to all users. Therefore, Internet shortcuts placed into the directory should show up on the Favorites menu of all users, right? So why doesn't it work? Because features don't exist by default. It's true that there are a few highly-visible cases w...

When you view the properties of a file and go to the General page, there are some check boxes at the bottom for file attributes. There's one for Read-only and one for Hidden, and then it gets weird. Sometimes you get Archive and sometimes you get an Advanced button. What controls which one you get? It depends on whether there is anything interest...

The process goes by the name COM Surrogate and the only time you're likely even to notice its existence is when it crashes and you get the message COM Surrogate has stopped working. What is this COM Surrogate and why does it keep crashing? The COM Surrogate is a fancy name for Sacrificial process for a COM object that is run outside of the proce...

Phil Taylor gives another few reasons why machine with 4GB of RAM doesn't show up as such. (Here's my earlier posting on this subject, for reference.) These articles about possible reasons for memory not showing up are not intended to be comprehensive. It is entirely possible that the problem you are experiencing is not one described here.

When you visited a computer on the network by typing into the address bar, Explorer showed you a Printers folder if the computer had printer sharing enabled. But starting in Windows Vista, the Printers folder is shown regardless of whether the remote computer is sharing any printers. Why did this change? Communicating with the remote compu...

Here's a trick one of my friends taught me. The Zune has two styles of audio playback, one for music, and another for podcasts. For music, clicking right and left move you by song, and when you switch to another album, then come back to the first album, it starts you over at the beginning of the album. On the other hand, for podcasts, clicking r...

To change the directory Windows uses for user profiles (by default, the directory), set the setting in your unattend file. This setting is available only via the unattend file. There is no GUI interface for this, nor can it be changed after Windows has been installed. Sorry.