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Folder Options and File Listing

Another thing you could do to speed up Windows is manage how Windows displays all those files in, well, windows. If you're new to Windows XP, you'll find Windows XP is easier and splashier, the files listed as icons that's arranged neatly to look good and in logical order or groups. You can even preview what's inside those files if you choose to display them as thumbnails. But once you're over the bells and whistles, you don't really need that much 'user friendliness'. Viewing images and videos as thumbnails may look cool and somewhat easier, but it makes your PC slows to a crawl and may be even more confusing if you have 100 or more images to squint at. Caching the thumbnails makes this process faster, but will quickly eat up your hard drive. And since these icons are larger and takes more screen space, you have to scroll or click more than before.

All is not lost for those of you who don't need all those 'user friendliness' and wants your PC to be faster. These simple steps will allow you to get the speed back from your PC.

• Open your 'My Documents' folder, or any folder in your hard drive with lots of files.
• Now depending on your preference, you could choose to display the files either as thumbnails, tiles, icons, list or (file) details. Avoid thumbnails and filmstrip if you can, these modes take up the most screen space. I think the best ones are list and details, since they fully display the filenames without too much clutter. The difference between them (besides the file details displayed) is you have to scroll sideways in list mode, while in details mode you scroll up and down. Scrolling up and down is easy to do with a ordinary wheel mouse, so this is the setting I recommend.

• If you choose the details mode, you'll notice that there are several columns displaying various details about these files. You could select what details you want to be displayed, just right click on the columns and select what you want. The ones I recommend you choose are: name, size, type, date modified and date created. Try to use no more than four or five columns. A neat trick for this mode is that you can quickly sort the list just by left clicking on one of the columns - the list will be sorted by that detail. The small grey arrow next to the column name will indicate if the list is in ascending or descending order. This way, you could quickly find any file by alphabet, by type and by date. Another neat trick is to select one file and then type the first three characters of the file you're looking for - this will 'jump' the list to the first file which uses those three characters.
• Now, you could customize the icon bar so it will show icons concerning file and folder management - a replacement for the 'Common Tasks' sidebar if you will. To do this, choose the menu item 'View' then choose 'Toolbars' which will bring up a cascaded menu. In this cascaded menu, choose 'Customize'. This will bring up another window. To save space, let's choose to use 'Small Icons' in the icon options drop down list and 'No text labels' in the text option drop down list. Don't worry, if you forgot which icon does what, move the cursor on top of the icon and leave it there for several seconds - a tool tip will appear displaying what the icon does.

• Next, we will choose the icons we want. I recommend choosing: Back, Forward, Up (a folder). Search, Folders, Delete, Undo and Views. Optionally, you may also want to choose Cut, Copy and Paste. Search will bring up the Search file window, while Folders will change the single pane window you're looking into to the two pane window (the Windows Explorer view) and vice versa. Delete will delete a folder or file you've selected and Undo will undo the last action you did. Just like what the name states, Cut, Copy and Paste will cut, copy and paste the files or folders you've selected. Don't worry - cut, copy and paste doesn't mean that Windows will literally cut, copy and paste your files. Rather, Windows will pick these files and folders so you could either copy (copy then paste) or move (cut then paste) them from one folder to another. You could also do this by pressing the shortcut keys (CTRL + C to copy, CTRL + X to cut, and CTRL + V to paste). The reason I'm recommending these icons because if you prefer using the shortcut keys, you don't need them on the icon bar. OK, now close this window (by left clicking 'OK') and go back to the original window.

• To bring up a list of other folders that shows up in the 'Other Places' list of folders (Desktop, My Documents, Shared Documents, My Network Places, My Computer), you could left click on the drop down icon part of the address bar.

• Click on 'Tools' in the window's menu bar and then choose 'Folder Options'. This will bring up another window with a lot of settings. These are the settings we want to change.

• Let's get the ol' Windows back - choose 'Use Windows classic folders' on the 'Tasks' section. This will hide the 'Common Tasks' part of every window opened and in so doing, allow more area to be used for the file list. Next, choose 'Double click to open...' on the 'Click as follows...' part. So next time we want to open something, we don't have to wait for Windows to select that file, just go ahead and double click it.

• Next, choose the 'View' tab. Of course, the settings we want to change is in the 'Advanced Settings list. These are the items i have checked:
• • Display the full path in the address bar
  • Do not cache thumbnails
  • Do not show hidden files and folders
  • Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)
  • Launch folder windows in a separate process
  • Show Control Panel in My Computer

• Everything else is off (unchecked). Now, since we want these settings for every window we're going to open, left click on the 'Apply to All Folders' button. These settings and the icon bar settings we've applied to this window will be applied to all window. Nice, huh?

OK, we've just customized how your copy of Windows XP displays files. This way you could see more of the list and the changes we've made makes navigating the list and working with files and folders easier and faster. Since Windows XP doesn't have to read the additional file details and displays the thumbnails of the file contents, the list will be displayed faster. We also save some of your hard drive space since Windows XP doesn't have to cache the thumbnails. Of course, these are big changes but once you get used to them you wouldn't want to go back to the 'new and improved Windows XP look' again.

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