Control your Control panel

You sent me lots of email last week with things to ask and tell. Keep the email coming!

I’ve got answers to some of your questions, and you have answers to some of mine.

Windows 7 Games still work with Windows 10

If you miss the old-style Solitaire, FreeCell, and Mahjong games from Windows 7, you can get those games back again in Windows 10. (Unfortunately, I don’t know how to get back your high scores.)

Visit The WinAero site, here to get a zipped file with all the games. Unzip the file, install only the games you want (and decline the extra Tweaker program, unless you really want it), and you’re good to go.

Quite a few people wrote me to say that the Windows 10 Anniversary Upgrade broke those games, and they were right.

But the WinAero people have updated them.They will work fine now once you reinstall them.

Control your Control panel

Recently, I mentioned a utility that would display the Control Panel icon in This Computer on Windows 10.

If you prefer simply displaying the icon on your Desktop, there is a way to do that in Windows 10; you don’t need a utility. A reader named John pointed out:

The icons for THIS PC and CONTROL PANEL can be placed on the Desktop by

• Open Setting
• Open Personalization
• Open Themes in the left column
• Open Desktop Icon Settings under the Related Settings Heading
• Select Computer and Control Panel
• Click on Apply and then OK
• Exit Settings.

Seems simpler than downloading something from the Internet.

Thanks, John!

For those of us who prefer a Desktop devoid of icons, there’s still the Ultimate Tweaker 4.

Fix problems by managing your trackpad

Readers and customers present lots of variations on a similar problem:

• “When I type an email, the font gets really small on my screen, but it looks normal to the person reading the email.”
• “When I type in Word, the cursor jumps around randomly and I end up with Word Salad.”
• “When I’m looking at Facebook, suddenly the page zooms in all by itself!”

What these people all have in common is that they’re using laptops, and while they are typing and/or scrolling, their hands or wrists touch the trackpad.

That trackpad acts like a mouse. Unless your hands are perfectly positioned over the keyboard (and even sometimes when they are!) it’s easy to activate the trackpad. The cursor jumps or the scrolling or zooming starts.

There are two good fixes for this. If you are using Windows 10, you can adjust a setting.

• Click on Start | Settings | Devices | Mouse & Touchpad
• In the Touchpad section, select a delay interval.

This changes the time between when you press on the trackpad and an action takes place. If you type fast, you can set a short delay.

If you type slowly, set a long delay to give you more time to press the next key before mouse actions happen. If this makes no sense, just experiment with it until you find the setting that works for you.

If you are not running Windows 10, you can try a utility called Touchfreeze. Touchfreeze disables the trackpad when you are typing and enables it when you are not.

It works beautifully … when it works. I’ve installed it on some laptops without any problems and on others where it just didn’t work. It didn’t hurt anything; it just didn’t work.

There seems to be no way to predict. If you want to give it a try, visit this (very sparse!) page.

Download and install the utility.There’s only one thing to configure, and I suggest you allow Touchfreeze to start with Windows so it’s always doing its job.

Links

WinAero Windows 7 Games for Windows 10 

Ultimate Tweaker 4 for Windows 10 

Good and Bad Utilities 

Touchfreeze 

VirusTotal results for Touchfreeze 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.