What’s This All About?

A simple way to find hidden and off-screen windows using a tiny freeware program and a quick way to move “visible” windows back on screen.

Why Do You Need to Know?

Sometimes Windows just disappear off of your computer monitor. There are several reasons why this may occur:

• Changing Screen Resolution
• Using a Single Monitor after using a Dual Monitor Display
• Corruption of Registry or “ini” file data
• Programming Errors
• Program Conflicts

When this happens you need a simple and reliable method to get them back onto your screen.

Using Windows Standard Move Function

Sometimes you will see the “lost” window in the Taskbar and right clicking will allow you to carry out the normal windows functions. What has happened is that the coordinates the system has for the window (for whatever reason) make the system think the window should be displayed somewhere off of your actual monitor screen.

This standard Move function tip is available from many sites offering advice, hints and tips – this is what you need to do:

Right Clicking on the Taskbar Icon

This displays the standard windows controls and in this instance we are interested in Move

Click on Move and the move cursor will be displayed in the middle of the title bar for the window (although obviously you can’t see it on an offscreen window).

The important thing now is to press one of the cursor (up/down/right/left arrow) keys on the keyboard to attach the window to the mouse. If you don’t do this you can move the Move cursor onto the visible screen and click with the mouse but nothing happens (Why? It would have been simple and obvious for MS to have programmed it to work this way )

When you click on any one of the arrow keys it attaches the Window to the mouse cursor and you can drag it back to the visible area. Of course if you don’t know where it is and it is a long way off your actual screen this can be a bit of a hit and miss process.

Actually when you hit the arrow key it also moves the window in the direction of the arrow so you can use the arrows to get the window back but this can be even more long winded and frustrating if you don’t know where the window is in relation to your screen.

What is clear is that this solution works but can be difficult when you don’t know where the window is. Also if the window is “hidden” it will not show in the taskbar so you can’t use the above method,  so what is a better solution?

Useing ForceWindowsVisible

This is a very simple, very small portable executable file which will list all the windows currently created on your PC by the operating systema nd the programs you are running.

However a word of caution. Windows and the programs you run may create many “hidden” windows that you are never meant to see. Take care if you display these windows, which may not have any visible information, as closing them may cause problems or crashes of programs and the system.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Displays a list of all current windows
• Displays or hides the window
• Moves the window to the top left of the monitor
• Resizes the window to fit on the screen

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 30% [?]

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What’s This All About?

Neutron is a tiny portable utility to synchronize your computer with “Atomic Clocks” through various Internet servers.

Why Would You Want It?

While you probably don’t need the time on your computer to be accurate to the second you will often want it to be correct to the minute. Things like scheduled reminders or recordings of programmes are obvious examples. It is also useful to have reasonably accurate time “stamps” on the creation and modification of files.

I have had occasions where a computer has been years out due to corruption of the bios information on a power failure and then the system restarts with the bios reset to the base date or some other completely wrong time. If this goes unnoticed you can have hundreds of files with the wrong dates and (perhaps) even worse restore points that are incorrect. Trying to sort duplicates where files have incorrect dates or synchronising files across your local area network can be made far more difficult if different machines don’t have the same time.

So a simple, tiny utility that will make sure you don’t have this problem is well worth while.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Looks up the exact time on Internet Servers
• Synchronises the local computer either manually or automatically
• Syncs at Startup (Optional)

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 26% [?]

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What Is It?

The Wonderful Icon (TWI) is a small utility that sits in your system tray (windows notification area) and gives you access to numerous system commands, Windows manipulation/placement functions, hotkey options, sounds options, shutdown options and a user defined Start Menu. This is an amazing little application that has been around for a long time and never seems to have gotten the recognition it deserves.

Why Would You Want It?

If you want a simple, single click system tray icon that gives you access to all sorts of system commands using the mouse or hotkeys, combined with all sorts of user definable options then this is the one for you!

Don’t be put off by the lack of development in recent times and lack of a fancy GUI with icons - this is simplicity and functionality defined

It appears that The Wonderful Icon even works with Vista despite it the fact that it hasn’t been updated since Vista was released. N.B. I haven’t tested it on Vista, I am relying on comments posted elsewhere.

Why Do I Want It?

Because it gives me access to so many different functions in a system tray menu that I can define myself as well as defining items to be activated by Hotkeys. In fact I thing the most amazing thing about The Wonderful Icon is that it hasn’t been more widely recognised.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• System Tray Menu
• Hotkey Functions
• Select Sounds
• Access Common Tasks
• Access Common System Commands

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 28% [?]

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What Is It?

A wonderfully simple utility that safely removes (ejects/unmounts) USB disks from a Windows system in the way that the MS Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility should but doesn’t.

Why Would You Want It?

Because the inbuilt Windows Safely Remove Hardware utility is a triumph of obscurity and poor design. Why? – I will tell you.

Left click on the Windows Safely Remove Hardware tool icon is the system tray and what do you see:

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

Now unless you have previously assigned drive letters to particular USB drives and then can remember those assignments you have no idea which drive is which.

Or you can right click-

Then left click on the Safely Remove Hardware menu item

(Why – As it is the only item wouldn’t it be a triumph of the programme developers art to have it open the program window straight away?)

This shows the Safely Remove Hardware Window

Well this is even less helpful until you click on the “Display device components” checkbox

and now you get far more information, in fact enough to be confusing but not enough to easily work out which device is which!

Compare this with the USB Disk Ejector utility window:

Now this isn’t perfect (See What Could make this Better? at the end of this post) but it certainly is a lot less cluttered and far more informative.

Why Do I Want It?

I use several different USB drives often at the same time. These include portable drives, memory sticks and flash card readers. Trying to “Safely Remove” one of these often requires opening “My Computer” to help determine which drive is allocated to each drive letter before running the Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility. Finally getting totally fed up with this process I searched for a tool that would do the job more efficiently and found USB Disk Ejector.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Lists the currently mounted USB drive devices.
• Allows these devices to be ejected (unmounted )

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 27% [?]

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What Is It?

A utility that monitors the files accessed by any specified process or program. For the selected process it provides the filename and extension, last handle, last error, Opening module and address, the number of times that the file was opened and closed, number of read/write calls, total number of read/write bytes, the dll that made the last open-file call.

Why Would You Want It?

Ever wondered why a particular process is reading or writing to files so often or wondered what all the disk activity is about. Using Windows Task Manager and selecting the Read, Write and Other columns will show the overall activity but not which files or where they are located. This utility allows you to find out this information quickly and easily.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides details of files accessed by a selected process

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 26% [?]

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What Is It?

A POP3 and IMAP4 email viewer and manager. It will allow you to review emails on your email servers for multiple accounts in a tabbed interface. You can then choose to view the full text (but not HTML*) or delete the emails without full download.

*You can view the text portion of the HTML code.

Why Would You Want It?

To check, monitor and delete emails on your email account servers without having to download the complete email or using your email client. This can reduce the load on your Internet connection which can be useful if you are on a capped package or having to use a limited connection, particularly when travelling.

Why Do I Use It?

I use it mainly for quickly monitoring emails when I am away from home. The fact that I can carry it on a USB stick or removable drive or transfer it to another PC/Laptop makes it very useful to me. As removal of SPAM by ISP’s and the major web based mail providers is so good I don’t bother with defining rules, I simply delete manually anything that gets through.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides access to email on servers
• Allows email text to be viewed
• Allows emails to be deleted on the servers

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 29% [?]

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What Is It?

Zonesize is a simple utility whose sole purpose is to predefine window sizing templates on your monitor. These zones can be defined by pixel position or as a percentage of the screen size and they can overlap which is what makes the utility really useful. You simply drag the window over the zone and it automatically resizes to fit. It is one of the many “1 Hour Software” utilities from Skrommel at DonationCoder.

Why Would You Want It?

There are often times when you need to have 2 or more windows displayed on the same screen where you are using both programs at once. For instance you may be viewing a browser window while writing to another document. In these situations you may also want to drag and drop text or graphics from one window to the other. Zonesize allows you to have a predefined set of window sizes or zones to suit your working pattern

How Do You Use it?

Having defined the zones you wish to use you simply drag the window over the zone and allow it to resize automatically within a predefined time (user definable). You can drag the window from one zone to another to suit your required working arrangements.

Why Do I Want It?

I generally manage quite well with a 2 monitor “multi-monitor setup but there are times when I need access to more windows. Zonesize not only allows me to predefine some windows sizes for my working area across both monitors, it also allows for overlapping zones and zones within zones as you will see later. The benefits of overlapping zones, as is demonstrated in the example below, is the ability to quickly make windows active by clicking on the non-overlapped areas. Using a utility to keep windows “always on top” such as DeskPins - Help to Stop Other Windows Stealing Focus further enhances the use of Zonesize so that you can keep a smaller windows always on top within another larger window.

Note: In carrying out this review I have also come across:

Auto Window Manager from Eusing Software

Gridmove from JGPaiva at DonationCoder

which may be even better,I will check them out shortly.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Resizes Windows to predefined “Zone” sizes by dragging

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 30% [?]

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A ProReviewer Mini-me Review

What Is It?

Laptop Alarm is a simple application that emits a loud sound when certain actions are taken with an unattended laptop.

Why Would You Want It?

Are you concerned about the security of your laptop? Laptop Alarm provides a useful way of deterring casual theft or interference and snooping by co-workers, fellow students etc. when you leave your laptop or PC unattended. However it is easily and quickly turned off and should be considered only as a simple deterrent and not a solution to such problems.

However there are also some other simple steps that you can take to prevent such things.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Emits a very loud sound when:

• The mouse is moved
• The mouse is removed
• The power supply is removed
• Shutdown/Suspend
• Requires a password to deactivate*

*See Cons below

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 43% [?]

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What Is It?

CCleaner is essentially a system optimisation tool removing unwanted and temporary files from the system along with a registry cleaner. It also removes traces of your PC use on web browsers and opened documents history.

My recent post My Current XP OS is Dying (and Holiday Weekend in the UK) outlined problems with my current XP installation. This is part of the normal cycle for a Windows OS which becomes overloaded with all sorts of files and registry entries over a period of time. Particularly for my type of use where lots of programs are installed/uninstalled and all sorts of changes are constantly being made to the system to se how things work. I though that as I am about to reinstall the system this would be an ideal opportunity to experiment with some system and registry cleaning utilities.

This will be the first post outlining the main features of CCleaner in the same way as a normal review. I will follow this up shortly with my experience in using CCleaner on the system to see what improvements it makes and any problems that result.

Why Would You Want It?

Essentially to try and get your Windows Operating System into a state where it runs more efficiently. This can be partly achieved by removing invalid entries from the registry and deleting unused temporary files. It also will remove your web browsing and opened documents history along with the associate cookies, files, shortcuts, registry entries, etc. if this is important to you. As many of the files and entries are hidden or not obvious to the average user this is almost impossible to achieve without an application such as CCleaner.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Registry Cleaner
• Removes Temporary Files
• Removes Web Browsing Traces/History
• Removes unneeded System and Application Files

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware
• Portable (+ Installed option)

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Popularity: 51% [?]

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