Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Computers are not good at predicting your intentions.  Any time you insert a CD, DVD or USB drive, the operating system looks at the content on the media and gives a “best guess” as to what you want to do.  Then a window pops up listing of things you probably don’t want to do. 

I would say my computer selects what I want about one time out of a thousand.  The computer takes my valuable time to give me a list of things I don’t want to do.  If the computer were not trying to calculate my every move, I could be doing what I want to do.

This is why I turn Autorun OFF.  Here is a Microsoft link that tells you how to do this.

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/126025

Personally, I use TweakUI to turn off the Autorun “feature” of Windows.

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When you drag a file from one folder to another, what happens?  Does the file get moved?  Does a copy of the file get placed in the new location?  The computer will automatically decide for you if you do the standard drag and drop.

There are two basic rules the computer will follow.  If the initial and final locations of the file are on the same drive, the file is moved.  If the initial and final locations of the file are on different drives, the file is copied.  As long as you can remember those two rules and you never need to move a file to a different drive or copy a file from one folder to another folder on the same drive… you will be ok.

Have you already forgotten the two rules?

Here is a way to always get what you want without remembering any rules.  Instead of a normal drag, use the right mouse button.  When you right-click and drag, Windows will present you with a drop-down menu that lets you select Move, Copy or Create Shortcut.  The default operation will be in bold, but you can select anything from the list.

Here’s an extra tip that will help you control the NTFS permissions on your files.  When you move a file, the permissions go with the file.  When you copy a file, the file’s permissions are changed to those of the destination folder.  That’s something you will have to remember because there is no right-click menu to help you out.

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Back in Tip #3 I talked about using Windows Explorer.  Here is an extra tip that will help you locate what you are looking for even quicker.

In addition to using the Folder button, also select the Detail view.  This will list all the critical properties of your files: name, size, type and date modified.

By clicking the column heading (Name – Size – Type – Date Modified), all files will be sorted by the selected column.  A second click will reverse the order first/last or last/first of the column.

Using the Details view can help you quickly find the newest file (sort by date) or the biggest file (sort by size).  You can even make sense of the files on your Desktop with this view using Windows Explorer.

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