It’s Halloween, and time for the annual “Trick or Treat” column. Impress your friends with these tricks, and enjoy the treats.

Trick: Detect and Repair Stalled Printer Jobs

Jason Von Ruden over at FantasticFreeware.com (http://www.fantasticfreeware.com) has cooked up a great little utility that will get you out of a jam one day, take my word for it. Sometimes when we tell something to print, it just gets stuck, and that means every other thing you try to print just gets in line behind it, and until you fix that first stuck job, nothing is going to print. I once visited a customer with over 50 print jobs queued up. I was glad to have Jason’s program handy.

Stalled Printer Repair detects stalled print jobs and purges them, freeing up your printer so you can finally print again. It’s a free program that will work on Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Jason created 32- and 64-bit versions. Read more about this program and download the appropriate version here: http://www.fantasticfreeware.com/?s=stalled+printer+repair.

Treat: Zombies in Plain English

Halloween is high season for Zombies, and the folks at Common Craft want to help us identify Zombies and survive a Zombie attack, including how to kill the UNdead. What if that doesn’t work? Well, they’ll tell you what to do in case of a Zombie bite. Be prepared! Check out the video here: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/zombies.

Photo: Contributed

Trick: Change the Picture on the Windows Logon Screen

When you start up your Windows 7, Vista, or XP computer, you probably see the Welcome screen, where you click on a picture to get into your Windows account.

You do not have to be a daisy, a dog, a kitten, a chess piece, an airplane, or a soccer ball. It’s especially disconcerting if you have more than one user account on a computer, and all of them have a daisy as the logon picture.

You can change that picture to another of the included pictures, or you can choose another picture entirely.

In Windows 7 and Vista:

• Click on the Start Orb

• In the Search box, type User Accounts and select that from the search results

• Click on Change your picture

• Choose one of the included pictures, or click on Browse for more pictures

• Navigate to the picture you want to use

• Click on Open

Now you’ll see that picture on the Welcome screen and on the Start menu.

In Windows XP, you can access the settings by clicking on Start | Control Panel | User accounts.

Treat: Windows 7 Trick or Treat Theme

Windows 7 users can take advantage of a bazillion themes, and yes, there is a Halloween theme. A theme is a combination of pictures, colours, and sounds that include a desktop background (“wallpaper”), a screen saver, a sound scheme, and sometimes custom window border colours. (See a brief video here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/what-is-a-theme.) Themes can safely be obtained from the Windows 7 Personalization Gallery, here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize.

Want to dress up your computer for Halloween? Grab the Trick or Treat theme from the Personalization Gallery here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize.

Still using Vista or XP? You can get Halloween desktop backgrounds that include some of the images in the Windows 7 theme from this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize/wallpaper-desktop-background.

Vlad Studio is still the home of my favourite Halloween desktop backgrounds. They are still free, and available in several sizes, here: http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpapers/?kw=halloween.

Have a safe and happy Halloween. Leave your body at the door. (http://youtu.be/_UbGtjnluyY)

Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along!

Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna (http://computercarekelowna.com/) a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to help@computercarekelowna.com.

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