The Windows 7 Explorer has a couple of annoyances. Launching Computer will no longer display system folders like Control Panel or Recycle Bin, for instance. And if you’re drilling down through a complicated folder structure in the right-hand pane of Explorer, the left-hand tree won’t always expand to follow what you’re doing, which can make it more difficult to see exactly where you are. Fortunately there’s a quick fix: click Organize > Folder and Search Options, check “Show all folders” and “Automatically expand to current folder“, and click OK.

Popularity: 18%

Some Internet Explorer add-ons can take a while to start, dragging down the browser’s performance, but at least IE8 can now point a finger at the worst resource hogs. Click Tools > Manage Add-ons, check the Load Time in the right-hand column, and you’ll immediately see which browser extensions are slowing you down.

Popularity: 17%

Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts.

Alt+P
Display/ hide the Explorer preview pane

Windows Logo+G
Display gadgets in front of other windows

Windows Logo++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where appropriate

Windows Logo+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where appropriate

Windows Logo+Up
Maximise the current window

Windows Logo+Down
Minimise the current window

Windows Logo+Left
Snap to the left hand side of the screen

Windows Logo+Right
Snap to the right hand side of the screen

Windows Logo+Home
Minimise/ restore everything except the current window

Popularity: 16%

If you have multiple windows open on your desktop and things are getting too cluttered, it used to be a time-consuming process to close them all down. In Windows 7 you can use the Aero Shake feature to minimize everything in seconds, using a cool mouse gesture. Grab the title bar of the window you wish to keep open and give it a shake, and have fun in a clear desktop environment.

Popularity: 18%

Originally Windows 7 opens folders in the same process. This saves system resources. If one folder crash can bring down the entire shell. If your system seems unstable, or you’re doing something in Explorer that regularly seems to causes crashes, then open Computer, hold down Shift, right-click on your drive and select Open in New Process. The folder will now be launched in a separate process, and so a crash is less likely to affect anything else.

Popularity: 17%

Launch StikyNot.exe and you can type notes at the keyboard; right-click a note to change its colour; click the + sign on the note title bar to add another note; and click a note and press Alt + 4 to close the note windows All notes are automatically saved.

Popularity: 17%

If you prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray, where it’s been for previous releases, just close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode.

Popularity: 17%

Click Computer in Windows 7 and you might see a strange lack of drives, but don’t panic, it’s just Microsoft trying to be helpful: drives like memory card readers are no longer displayed if they’re empty. We think it’s an improvement, but if you disagree then it’s easy to get your empty drives back. Launch Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and clear ‘Hide empty drives in the computer folder‘.

Popularity: 18%

If your Windows 7 desktop has icons scattered everywhere then you could right-click it and select View > Auto arrange. A simpler solution is just to press and hold down F5, and Windows will automatically arrange its icons for you.

Popularity: 18%

If you dislike the new taskbar, you can actually restore the old Quick Launch Toolbar.

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars > New Toolbar, type “%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch” (less the quotes) into the Folder box and click Select Folder.

Now right-click the taskbar, clear ‘Lock the taskbar’, and you should see the Quick Launch toolbar, probably to the right

Popularity: 16%