Don't Lose Your Focus

The Annoyance: So there you are, minding your own business, typing a document, e-mail, or instant message on your computer. You glance away from the screen for a moment. When you look back, you realize you haven't really entered your last lines of text. Without your knowledge, a new window or dialog box has popped up, and some of your text has been entered there--or nowhere.

Applications that steal your PC's focus are more than just annoying: They can be disastrous if the focus-stealing dialog box asks to perform a potentially harmful operation and you happen to press <Enter> or type y, which the dialog takes as a "yes" before you even see the request. You may also have dismissed an important scheduling alert without realizing it.

The Fix: No bulletproof solution exists, but the following may help you maintain your focus in Windows XP and 2000.

If it isn't already on your system, download and install Microsoft's free Tweak UI utility. In Windows XP, open Tweak UI (either by clicking its shortcut on the Start menu or by choosing Start, Run, typing tweakui, and pressing <Enter>), and use the tree pane on the left to navigate to General, Focus. In Windows 2000, double-click the Tweak UI icon in Control Panel and click the General tab. In both versions, make sure 'Prevent applications from stealing focus' is checked (see FIGURE 1). You can also specify whether the taskbar button should flash (and how many times) when the would-be focus grabber wants your attention. Click OK.

Some Tweak UI settings get changed back when a program subsequently modifies the Registry. To make sure the focus lock is in effect every time you start Windows, start Notepad or another text editor. On the first line, type Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 and press <Enter> twice. Type [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] and press <Enter>. Finally, type "ForegroundLockTimeout"=dword:00030d40 (no spaces) and press <Enter>. Select File, Save As, name the file with the .reg extension (for example, focus.reg), and save it to a location of your choice. Make a note of the path to the file.

Next, choose Start, Programs (or All Programs), right-click the Startup menu, and choose Open. In an empty area of the Startup folder, right-click and choose New, Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut wizard, browse to your .reg file, select it, and click OK. Place quotes before and after the entry, and then press <Home>. Type regedit.exe /s followed by a space in front of the first quotation mark in your entry. When completed, the entry should read something like this: regedit.exe /s "C:\Registry files\focus.reg" (your path may differ). Click Next, type a name for your shortcut, and click Finish. Now every time you log on, this shortcut will reinstate the anti-focus-stealing setting.

Regrettably, even this technique won't stop all the focus stealing. If you find that one application in particular is doing most of the attention grabbing, consider replacing it with an equivalent program.

Prevent Pop-Ups

The Annoyance: A text balloon repeatedly pops out of the system tray on Windows XP's taskbar to warn you that an update is ready to install, or to provide some other nugget of information you don't really need to address at that instant.

The Fix: This is another job for Tweak UI (see the previous tip). Open the program and select Taskbar and Start menu in the left pane. Then uncheck Enable balloon tips on the right, and click OK.

Give an App Oomph

The Annoyance: Out of nowhere, the application you're working with slows to a crawl because some other less-important app or background process has gobbled up Windows resources.

The Fix: In Windows XP, you can allocate more resources to the program by changing its priority in the Task Manager applet. Right-click the taskbar and choose Task Manager. Click the Processes tab and right-click the executable file that corresponds to the poky application. Click Set Priority, and choose a level--for instance, AboveNormal or High (see FIGURE 2). Click Yes when you see the warning. Note that changing the priority of one process can affect the speed of others. The Realtime choice, for instance, gives your application the highest priority of all, but it can bring the rest of your system to a standstill, so it's best to avoid this option. Regardless, if you're having problems burning CDs, for example, you may want to increase the priority of your CD-burning software. And if you have an app doing some low-urgency work in the background, you might consider setting it to a lower priority. The changes you make will apply only to the current session; the priorities will return to their former state the next time you start Windows.

To see the priority of all processes currently running on your system without having to right-click each one, choose View, Select Columns in the Task Manager window. Check Base Priority and click OK. You will then see a column that lists each process's priority information.

See the Details You Need

The Annoyance: Windows Explorer's Details view (choose View, Details) lists much information about your files, but sometimes you have to scroll to see it, or what you want may not be there at all.

The Fix: To get the details you need, right-click anywhere in the column headings and uncheck items to remove their columns, or check items to add them. Click the More button to see additional choices. To reorder your columns, drag a column heading (for example, Date Modified) left or right to drop it on a column boundary. To resize a single column, double-click the right boundary of its column heading. To resize all columns to the best fit for the Explorer or folder window, press <Ctrl>-+ on the numeric keypad.

Cut Folder Clutter

The Annoyance: When you open a folder in Thumbnails view (choose View, Thumbnails in Explorer or any folder window), Windows XP creates a Thumbs.db file in that folder to cache the thumbnail images for quicker viewing next time. You won't see it unless your folder options are set to reveal hidden files (click here for instructions). But this cache file may be doing little more than adding unnecessary clutter to your hard drive.

The Fix: Once you've reset your folder options, search for and delete Thumbs.db files you don't want. To keep the files from coming back, open any Explorer or folder window and choose Tools, Folder Options. Click the View tab, and then check Do not cache thumbnails (see FIGURE 3). Click OK.

Avoid Menu Disorder

The Annoyance: When you use the Start menu in any version of Windows, you may accidentally--and frequently--drag items out of the positions you prefer.

The Fix: If you're a little sloppy with your clicks and drags in the Start menu, you can turn off the ability to drag and drop menu items. First, make sure items on the menus are in the order you want. Then right-click the Start button (XP) or the taskbar (other versions) and select Properties. In XP, click the Customize button next to either the 'Start menu' or 'Classic Start menu' option. Uncheck Enable dragging and dropping in the scrolling list of options (you may need to click Advanced to see this option). Click OK twice.

List More Documents

The Annoyance: In XP Pro, you access recently opened documents by choosing Start, My Recent Documents (or Start, Documents in the Start menu's Classic view)--but the list shows only 15 files from all the many programs you may have used recently.

The Fix: Click Start, Run, type gpedit.msc, and press <Enter>. In the tree pane on the left, navigate to and select User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Explorer. Double-click Maximum number of recent documents in the right pane. Select Enabled, and then set the 'Maximum number of recent documents' to something higher than the default of 15 (see FIGURE 4).

In versions of Windows other than XP Pro or 2000, you'll have to settle for a slightly less elegant solution. See instructions from Steve Bass's "50 Fixes for the Biggest PC Annoyances" feature from the October 2003 issue (you'll need to scroll down a bit to the "Show All Recent Docs" section).

Can the Cleaner

The Annoyance: Every couple of months, Windows XP pops up a message stating that you haven't used some of your desktop icons in a while. The OS even offers to put these icons in a separate desktop folder for you.

The Fix: I have news for Microsoft: If I'm not using shortcuts that are in plain sight on my desktop, sticking them in a folder sure isn't going to make me any more likely to click them. If they're really useless, I'd rather just delete them. Either way, maybe Windows should mind its own business, good intentions aside. To turn off the unused-icons nag, right-click the desktop and click Properties. Select the Desktop tab and click Customize Desktop. At the bottom of that dialog box, uncheck Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days and click OK twice.