1. Open up regedit and go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Create a new String Value called MinWidth and set the value to -255.

2. Right click on the taskbar, and click properties, tick ‘Group Similar taskbar buttons’ and click OK

3. Install Visual Task Tips from http://www.visualtasktips.com/ and log off/on again.

Here’s a Screenshot of your resulting Windows XP Super Taskbar in action:

The Windows 7 bar also allows programs to show up little submenus with actions. This feature has been much talked about as a brilliant new addition to the taskbar in Windows 7, but it is already possible in XP. Not many apps seem to support it, but it can be done, as demonstrated by the lovely J River Media Jukebox:

One Missing Feature

The first screenshot above is showing two instances of chrome, rather than two tabs in chrome. This is one advantage windows 7 has over this. Until someone writes an XP util that duplicates this functionality (which, lets face it, will likely never happen) then we’re stuck with only showing window instances.

One Unfortunate Side Effect

Windows minimized in Photoshop CS3 (and probably other versions) seem to inherit the width from the MinWidth value, so you may come across this problem:

 
I can’t find a way around it except to access these windows via the window menu, if anyone comes across a fix let me know.

As you can see I’ve applied a hack which removes the text from each item on the taskbar, similar to the Windows 7 super bar (or whatever its called). It’s a registry hack. The thing I love about registry hacks is that they’re overhead free. I didn’t have to install any extra program to make this work. Here’s what you do:

1. Go into Regedit and find the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

2. Create a new String value, name it MinWidth and set it to -255

3. Restart (or log off and log on again)

Simple!

Although we’ve installed nothing, we could now install VisualTaskTips (http://www.visualtasktips.com), which would give us a windows 7 style preview of any item we hover over in the taskbar.

Coincidentally, I’ve been experimenting with using Taskbar Shuffle to colour code my taskbar icons during particularly long sessions.

I know it sounds daft, but I have this theory that when we look for an icon for a program, we identify by colour first. Thus, if we need firefox, our eye is drawn to the orange / red hues at the end of the taskbar, and we find it faster. It also looks way better:

Transferring lots of files, however, is a different story. by the time your on the 5th or so file, you'll be getting fairly tired of right clicking on tray icons.

I put the following command in my autohotkey script, using WIN + SHIFT + B as the shortcut key.

%windir%\system32\fsquirt.exe -receive

Now if I want to transfer ten photos, I hit WIN+SHIFT+B ten times, ten dialogs spring up, and I can fire away all my photos from the phone end.

PS: fsquirt? Who thinks up the names for these things?

I used to use this app all the time a few years back, and I thought I no longer needed it until yesterday.

Picture the scene: You have a pile of windows open, working on lots of stuff, some saved, some not. Suddenly, your PC locks up. nothing will respond. The mouse barely moves. Windows will not redraw. CTRL + ALT + DEL seems to offer help, but once you click on 'Task Manager' the whole process just repeats, and we lock up again.  So what do you do? Sit there and hope for the best? Restart?

Well if you've already installed ProcessTamer, this might not happen at all in the first place. Process Tamer simply watches for system processes (programs) which are hogging too much of the CPU and reduces their priority.

In the early days of Firefox memory leaks, I found this hugely useful. Ever since firefox 3, I haven't had a need for it. But yesterday, I downloaded a piece of software to interface with my Sony Ericsson phone which completely crapped out and hung my system. Only through patient clicking and waiting did I manage to kill the process, and even then it took over 10 minutes to do.

Process Tamer is a tiny piece of software, with a tiny memory footprint, which you may never have to use in your entire computing life. However, if you ever do need it, you'll be very thankful for it.

PS: Just an additional tip here, on the same subject. I've seen a lot of people complain that their system is running slow because something called 'System Idle Process' is at 99%. People wrongly assume that these are background windows tasks hogging all the resources. In fact, System Idle Process is a process who's only job is to keep the CPU running when nothing else needs it. I don't know the exact technical reasons, but the CPU needs to be kept working constantly, if not intensely. If you ever see System Idle Process running at close to 99%,
it means that your system resources are almost 100% available, and nothing else is using them.

Update:

Looks like I already posted about ProcessTamer back when I started this blog! Whoops…

If you've spent any time messing with default actions for file types or folders (in my case, trying to add "play this folder with 1by1") you'll inevitably end up with your default folder action screwed up, often searching a folder on doubleclick instead of opening it. Well, relax, because theres a very simple solution.

I came across a vbs file during a google search for a solution to this problem. The file is by Doug Knox, and available on www.dougknox.com. You can go there and download it, or you can just copy the source below into notepad and save it as whatever.vbs and run it. Et voila – your folders are fixed.

'folder_open.vbs – Fixes problem where Search opens on a double click
'© Doug Knox – 03/13/2002
'Downloaded from www.dougknox.com

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

p1 = "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\"
p2 = "none"

WshShell.RegWrite p1, p2

p1 = "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\"
WshShell.RegWrite p1, p2

X = WshShell.Run("REGSVR32 /I /S SHELL32.DLL",4,True)
Set WshShell = Nothing

MyBox = MsgBox("Folders will now Open when double clicked", 4096, "Finished!")