Getting Along With Your Computer

Missing In Action By Cate Eales

Last week we talked about how to recover a missing Taskbar. This resulted in a flurry of correspondence asking about how to recover various other things. I can’t help you with lost car keys or sunglasses, but here are a few tips that might come in handy when working on your computer.

Somehow, people seem to lose windows, right on the Desktop. Windows get pushed off the screen somehow, and all or part of them disappear, leaving behind a frustrated user.

To fix that:

• Place your mouse cursor on an empty spot on the Taskbar
  
• Right-click on the empty spot
  
• Select “Cascade Windows” from the context menu
  
• Click on it. That’s going to display all your open programs in a cascade, including any windows that had been pushed off the screen.
  
• Close or rearrange the windows to recover the one(s) that vanished. If you only had one window open before the vanishing act, the Cascade command will display that one where you can get at it.

Icons in the “System Notification Area” (called “System Tray” in pre-XP versions of Windows) sometimes disappear, seemingly without warning. These icons, located on the lower right-hand side of the screen near the clock, represent running programs. You might see an envelope icon there, advising you of unread mail. Or, the volume control icon or printer icon might be there. I sincerely hope you are seeing your anti-virus program’s icon in the Notification Area!

But why do some of them only show up sometimes if the program is always running? In Windows XP, there’s a feature that tells icons when to hide away. If you right-click on a vacant portion of the Taskbar (yes, again…) and then click on Properties and the Taskbar tab on the resulting menu, you’ll see that you can check a box called “Hide inactive icons.” If you do that, some icons will only show up when the program is actually doing something instead of just standing by.

If you now click on “Customize” you’ll see that you can change the behaviour of any of the icons in the Notification area. I tell Windows to “Always show” my anti-virus and firewall icons, because I want to know if something’s wrong with either of those programs. I also “Always show” my volume control, because otherwise I can never find it when I need it. (Clicking on the left-facing carat on the left side of the Notification Area “<<” will reveal hidden icons. Clicking it again will hide them. But I’m lazy, so I “Always show” the volume control.)

One last tip: Have you ever had to change the resolution of your display, or start in Safe Mode? While that usually solves whatever problem you were having, it also usually creates a problem where the icons on your Desktop are rearranged or missing. I hate it when that happens. Iconicity is a free program that will let you save the Desktop arrangement, and then restore it when you need to. The link is here: http://users.adelphia.net/~mkelly2002/. Remember, you have to SAVE the desktop now in order to restore it in future!

Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric, and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions, helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware eradication personal computer training and management digital image management music transfer and website design, hosting and management. Email Cate with your comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit the Real Life Internet Solutions website.

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