Winextra » tips

A little Zune Desktop tip that will save you from looking silly, like I am now.

Steven — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:41:47 +0000

Yesterday I had a little bit of a rant about a couple of the irritating things that Zune Desktop does, or doesn’t do right.

One of those things was the listing of songs being a bit of a mess, especially for those of us that are picky and want them listed by track number. Well, it turns out I was a little off base with that one.

Thanks to @JaycobC on Twitter I was nicely pointed to the error of my ways – I wasn’t clicking on the right thing.

In my defense I didn’t think of clicking on the column header text but rather checked, doubled checked, triple checked the options part of Zune Desktop for sorting options.

It turns out that simply clicking on the header text will cause the list to be sorted by different views.

As you can see here it is set to the alphabetical sorting style – apparently the default – and the one I was complaining about.

Now, thanks to @JaycobC giving me a bit of a virtual slap upside the head I clicked on the column header and watched as it changed to “By Album” and displayed the songs by track number.

Granted I feel a little foolish after yesterday’s bit of a rant, which I deserve to, but the fact is that changing the display isn’t intuitive at all, and I’ve been doing this computer thing a long time.

That said the problem is solved and I apologize to the Zune Desktop team – to a point – now if they could just fix the podcast listing problem.

If you have any tips when it comes to use Zune Desktop do us all a favor and leave them in the comments to this post. If I get enough tips I’ll pull them all together into one post at a later date.

A little Zune Desktop tip that will save you from looking silly, like I am now. is a post from: winextra
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Top picks from a honkin’ big list of Windows Phone 7 tips

Steven — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:39:13 +0000

I don’t have a Windows Phone 7 handset yet but I am really hoping for one in the new year so I’ll be bookmarking this list of 72 tips from Pocket-lint for future reference.

In the meantime though here’s my top picks of their tips.

5. Removing apps from the Start screen
You like the app, but you don’t really want it on your Start screen anymore. No worries. Hold your finger on the tile in question for a couple of seconds and when it highlights press the no pin icon in the top right-hand corner.
7. Rating and reviewing apps
You really love the new app you’ve downloaded, so much so that you want to rate and review it so anyone else interested knows whether it’s any good or not. With Windows Phone 7 you don’t have to wait until you delete it to rate it, you can rate and review it at any time. Press and hold down on the app in question until that contextual menu appears and then choose “Rate and review”. It will bring up another page allowing you to have your say and give it a rating out of five. Easy peasy.
12. Turning off the key press sound
Click, click, click, click. Yep, it’s annoying isn’t it? Great thing is you can turn off the noise Windows Phone 7 makes when you tap on your keyboard in the ringtones and sounds area within settings.
22.Turning location off to save battery
Location services are great, but they will eat your battery. If you aren’t fussed about geotagging your photos or finding out where you are on Bing maps, nip into the Location option in Settings and slide that toggle to the left. No more Big Brother for you.
28. Turning on the “Find my Phone” function
Windows Phone 7 comes with some really natty features, one of them being the, “Find my Phone” feature that lets you find your phone again if you’ve lost it or had it stolen. Trouble is, it’s not on as default so you’ve got to do that yourself if you want to take advantage of the feature. In the Settings, Find my phone page, you can opt to have the phone save your location periodically for better mapping and to get results faster.
40. Bookmark your favourite websites to your start page
We know you love Pocket-lint, that’s why you are reading this, but you can pin a link to our website by going to Internet Explorer, visiting the site, and then hitting those three dots we told you about in tip 8. That brings up a menu and in that menu are the words “pin to start”, press it and you’ll get a new tile on your start page.
63. Accessing Zune controls outside of Zune player
You don’t need to be in the Zune player to access the music on Windows Phone 7. Tap the volume buttons on the side of your phone and down pops a miniature player window that gives you access to the play and skip buttons. If you’ve not got your headphones in, the music will start playing through the phone’s speakers.
69. Setting up a conference call
Windows Phone 7 lets you bring in another person to your call at the tap of a button. Dial your first friend, then when you have them on that call, tap the down arrow displayed on screen, then press “Add call” and phone another friend. Now tap “Merge calls” and the word conference appears near the top to show you that you are on a conference call.

Make sure to drop by Pocket-lint’s page for the full list of 72 tips.

Top picks from a honkin’ big list of Windows Phone 7 tips is a post from: winextra
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Shooting down Windows Phone 7®

peirre2 — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:21:06 +0000

Don’t take me wrong, I like Windows Phone 7 and my Samsung handset. Which is why I feel free to point out all its foibles (the ones I’ve found so far, anyway). After a week battling its shortcomings and finding a few workarounds, let me present my findings and solutions:

No copy & paste: this has been publicized so much that I feel obligated to mention it, but it’s really anecdotal. Microsoft has, by and large, promised a WP7 patch in early(?) 2011 to add this function.

No Microsoft Outlook local synchronization: according to Microsoft, WP7 is not (yet?) for the business market, but for the consumer market. If you’re a “normal” consumer, you can synchronize your handset’s contacts and calendar with a Google account or a Live account or a Yahoo account or an Exchange account (that’s consumer?)
But if you don’t have any other email account than the one provided with your Internet connection, even if you have Outlook on your PC (after all, it comes with most versions of Office, doesn’t it?), you’re left hanging.

And even if you do have an online account, you can only synchronize the handset with the account’s contents. Unless you have a way to synchronize Outlook on your PC with the online account, you’re still up the proverbial creek. And, contrary to Google and Yahoo!, there is currently no way to synchronize Outlook’s calendar and contacts with Live Mail’s! Never mind the tasks and notes…

You have to install the Zune software to synchronize your WP7 handset with your PC (à la iPhone/iTunes), but Zune only synchronizes the multimedia contents. Its current version isn’t aware of any other Microsoft product. Hey Microsoft! Even Apple lets you synchronize an iPhone with Outlook locally!
According to the Microsoft forums, it will come… Real Soon Now^©

No way to change an email account’s settings: other than the password and the displayed account’s name, you cannot change any of an account’s settings unless WP7 detects an error and presents you with a pop-up where it asks you to correct the parameter it thinks is wrong – which may or may not be the real cause of the error.

Only when creating a new email account through the “advanced settings” option can you specify the detailed settings of the account – once. Better double-check before you press the “finalize” button… While this choice may be OK for the below average non computer-savvy user, the lack of an “expert mode” is really a PITA.

That’s it for now. I have found a roundabout way to have my Outlook calendar and contacts on the handset, but it’s not for the faint-hearted and it requires a lot of footwork (figuratively speaking). First, you need a Live Mail account (not just a “Live ID”, you need an actual HotMail or Live Mail address). Declare the Live account on your WP7 handset.

Then you need to install Outlook Connector and connect to your Hot/Live Mail account. In you contacts, you now see “contacts from Live Mail”. You now need to copy your contacts from the Outlook address book to the Live mail contacts. This will make them available on your WP7 handset after a few minutes.

For the calendar, it’s even more complicated: first, you need to export your Outlook calendar to an ICS file. Make sure you export your whole calendar, not just the current day. Then you go online and log in to your Live ID. Display the Live Mail calendar, and select “subscribe”. On the next screen you can import the ICS calendar into the Live Mail calendar. This will make the calendar available on your WP7 handset.

From then on, you must take care to copy any modification to the contacts or calendar to its local or online counterpart. This can be done “easily” in Outlook, but it isn’t automatic by any stretch of the imagination.

Be warned…

Shooting down Windows Phone 7® is a post from: winextra
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Remove Test Mode Watermark From Windows 7

Paul — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:15:15 +0000

Sometimes Windows acts a little funky for no apparent reason and some people have been discovering that even thought they have fully legal, licensed and activated versions of Windows 7, it sometimes enters test mode for no apparent reason.

You’ll know if your machine has entered test mode as you’ll see a watermark appear in the bottom right corner that reads:

Test Mode
Windows 7
Build 7600

It can be annoying to have the watermark in place and likely disturbing the harmony of your perfectly placed icons and desktop wallpaper, but fret not as there is an easy way to remove the watermark.

There are solutions out there that involve downloading and running patches but this way is much easier and quicker and doesn’t require patching any system files.

Click Start menu and type “cmd” (without the quotes) in the search box.

CMD should be the first result, Right click on it and and select “Run as Administrator”.

Type the following in the command prompt that appears

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions ENABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

Press Enter to execute the command and then type:

bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING OFF

Press Enter, then type exit and press Enter again

Finally reboot your PC and all should be well.

Remove Test Mode Watermark From Windows 7 is a post from: winextra
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[Win7 Tip] Make Gmail your default email client

Steven — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:12:47 +0000

Now personally I haven’t had any need for this since I don’t use Gmail but given that a lot of people do this tip might come in handy for those of you using Windows 7.

The tip come from Billy and was originally posted in the WinExtra Community Forums and reposted here:

Note: This tweak involves messing with the registry and should only be used by those of you that know what you are doing. As always when it comes to dealing with the registry you are on your own and neither WinExtra nor the person offering the tweak can be help responsible if something goes wrong.

I wanted Windows to open a Gmail browser window/tab when I clicked on an email link or such. I googled for quite a while, discovered that MS MVP’s were telling people this cannot be done.”..you CANNOT force Win 7 to use Gmail as your default email program because it isn’t a program..it’s a website.” They’re telling people to install Windows Live Mail, or Outlook, and get Gmail through that.
Bullsh*t.
A bit of registry editing:
1. in the start menu search bar type regedit and hit enter.
2. navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command\” using the folder structure on the left.
3. right click on the name field (should say “default”) and click “modify”.
4. copy the text in there and save as a temporary backup should anything go wrong.
5. paste “C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\
Application\chrome.exe”https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1” in the box (with quotes on both sides).
6. edit *username* to be your username on your computer this name can be viewed at “C:\Users\”.
7. click “ok” and close regedit.
NOTE: this is set up to open in the Chrome browser if you use another browser the “Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” will have to be replaced with the other browsers file path.
Just thought I’d share

Thanks Bill.

[Win7 Tip] Make Gmail your default email client is a post from: winextra
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[Windows 7 Tip] What the hell happened to the Pin to Taskbar option?

Steven — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:22:05 +0000

One of the default features in Windows 7 is the ability to Pin a program (well actually a shortcut) to the taskbar. It a rather handy little feature and one that I have used quite a lot except the other day the option disappeared from the right click context menu on my system.

Besides being a little on the frustrating side I found out just how much I missed the option. So hopping onto Bing I did a little bit of a search and found out that the problem is connected to the removal of the shortcut overlay arrow. Also affected is the ability to drag and drop applications to the Taskbar, which was another thing that was causing me to do a lot of head scratching.

The cause is actually pretty simple once you understand what has happened. One of the most used tweaks when it comes to Windows, and is a staple of tweaking programs, is the removal of that ugly shortcut arrow overlay. Unfortunately with Windows 7 there are some definite unforeseen consequences of using this tweak.

The fix though is equally easy as long as you are comfortable using the Registry Editor. From the Start Menu type in regedit and then click on the link to regedit.exe which should be the only entry.

Once the Registry Editor is open navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile

Then right click on the right pane of the editor and select New -> String Value (REG_SZ) to create a new value.

Name the new registry value as IsShortcut. You don’t need to give it any value data.

Then reboot your machine.

Hopefully that should fix the problem and you will find that the shortcut arrow overlay has returned but so has your Pin to Taskbar option. I’m not sure if this is a bug or not but it would be nice to see a more elegant solution for those people who get hives at the sight of the shortcut arrows.

Thanks to the team at My Digital Life for the tip.

[Windows 7 Tip] What the hell happened to the Pin to Taskbar option? is a post from: winextra
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