OT: Windows questions

[Tim Streater]

Having some work to do this a.m. in a small local office, and therefore having suffered exposure to Windows, I have some doubtless simple questions to which I'd appreciate answers.

1) Where does it say which version (of Windows) it is ?

2) As I open a folder window, and do nothing ruder than move the mouse over the contents, little "helpful" thingies pop up with e.g. info about the name of the file, etc. How do I disable all such junk, including some sort of highlight that follows the mouse pointer around inside this window, highlighting which file I'm over. I don't want that either. I expect the file to be selected when I click on it. All the other stuff is just visual distraction that gets on my wick.

3) I had some stuff in a folder off c: but the other machine in the office there couldn't see it. Eventually, I had to move it to the MyDocuments folder of the logged in user on "my" machine so it was visible from the other one. How can I make more of c: visible, in particular f'rinstance c:\somefolder ??

4) Does Windows come with any built-in backup software that I can just turn on and tell it what disk to back up to? Ideally it'd be able to use e.g. a USB drive I just plug in and be able to exclude e.g. all the system stuff from the backup if desired. Incremental backup on a regular basis is what's needed.

5) I was using Word 2003 to do a mailmerge. I had the MailMerge toolbar to use. Why was it that after adding one merge field, I then had to dismiss the panel so I could move the cursor in the main document to where I wanted to add the next merge field and then invoke the merge field panel again? Any way round this? Seems incredibly clunky for the panel to be modal in this way.

[Huge]

Depends which version of Windows it is. :o)

It ought to say on the bootup screen. Mine says "Windows 7 Enterprise", my wife's "Windows 7 Home Premium".

Somewhere, there should be a "My Computer" icon (or an icon named after the machine). Right click on it and select "Properties". The screen that pops up will tell you.

[16 lines snipped]

Yes.

Click on the thing in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen (Either a "Start" button or a Microsoft logo). Type "backup" in the search box that appears. One of the list of things that appears should be "backup & restore" - click on that, which will run the backup software.

[Martin Brown]

Control panel > System and Security > System

Move a bit quicker or disable the eye candy if it annoys you. From the above continue Advanced System Settings (left hand border) then Advanced > System Properties > Performance Visual Effects

Right click on folder and "Share with"

Yes but I'd use a third party backup software myself. YMMV.

No idea. Using MS Word for any length of time makes me want to pull the software developers fingernails out one by one. WYSINWYG.

If it is any consolation 2003 was a good vintage. 2007 was much much worse. Fun to watch experienced users struggle with the ribbon though!

[Tim Streater]

This. Is. *typical*.

Roger that.

OK ta I'll check into that one on Monday.

[The Natural Philosopher]

While you are at it, Roger the whole fscking disk and install linux

[newshound]

But it is something like a standard. If you need references and cross references to work across versions it is no good going open source!

Agreed

2007 was much much

Agreed

Fun to watch experienced users struggle with the ribbon though!

Don't get me started. I am just beginning to get the hang of it (but I agree it is awful). However I have been using Equation Editor for the first time today and was quite pleasantly surprised. Had to use Office

365 rather than 2003 though.

Never had access to TeX, but it seems to get good reviews.

I used to really like IBM Script, you had to write markup on the screen and you didn't know if you had it right until you printed hardcopy. But that would do *magnificent* equations.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I got talked into 2007 and should not have listened.

[Robin]

Command line then systeminfo[.exe] will give you Windows version/SP and hardware info. in XP, 7 and 8

[Mike Barnes]

Lots of places.

• Find the Windows logo key (usually between left Ctrl and Alt).

• Find the Pause/Break key (usually above the number pad).

• Press both keys at the same time.

If this is going to be a brief exposure to Windows, I'd advise you just to put up with it, and concentrate on getting the job done, rather than trying to bend the system to your will at every turn.

[Andy Wade]

Just type winver at the command prompt, or powershell, and it will tell you. Windows have a CLI you know :~)

[Tim Streater]

It'll probably be a longer exposure. Hmmm, come to think of it, I could try some of these things on the Win7 I've got in a VM.

[Huge]

*Now* he says!

And after I powered up 2 machines to try and answer his questions.

:o)

[Tim Streater]

Arf arf.

Well, what I was using at the office was not Win7, near as I can tell. And Win7 seems to have next to no options for stopping all the flashing and flickering shit I was experiencing earlier today. I don't have Office on there so I can't look for ways round the modal grief it gave me.

[cl]

... and they always work across versions of Word?

[Huge]

For doing anything more complicated than agendas, memos and shopping lists, Word sucks the big one. In fact, for anything large, complicated or technical, WYSIWYG sucks, no matter whose.

[dennis]

Have you looked under cp,system,advanced,performance or are you just moaning about windows?

[Chris French]

In message , Tim Streater writes

to turn off the pop up tooltips you want folder options

Control panel > folder options > view tab. (or via the tools menu in Windows Explorer)

Have a look in the advanced settings.

For the highlighting, on the General tab in Folder options if you select double click to open, then I just get a light outline round the item rather than a the more obvious highlighting.

If you change to a classic windows theme then it will stop any highlighting at all until you click on it, and make it look like Win2k

Right click on the desktop > personalise.

The above is for Win 7, but AFAICR, it's pretty much the same for XP

[Tim Streater]

Thanks! That helps calm things down quite a lot. I'll try those on the office machine, too, tomorrow.

[GB]

For the average user setting up the very occasional mailmerge document, it works. The users can see what they have to do, and it's kind of obvious. That's probably more important than anything else.

I agree, though, that it could be better in the way you suggest. I stuck with 2003 and never downgraded.

[Tim Streater]

Mailmerge is a nice feature of Word, but I'm sure when I was using it

10 or so years ago it wasn't modal. This would have been whatever was running under Win98. The Mac version (I use Office 2008 at home) isn't modal either. That's why I felt sure I must have been doing it wrong with 2003, somehow.

Today I was able to apply changes suggested here when I went off to the office using what I think is Win7 (looks like it but I didn't check). Makes it a much better experience, so thanks to all who gave me some clues.