SimplyGold

Windows XP Only.

Creating thumbnails out of screenshots is possibly my most mind-numbingly boring and time-consuming task when writing a blog post. I recently found a neat trick to make this mostly painless: 1. Open the folder where you saved your image. 2. Right-click on the image and select Resize Pictures from the context menu.

1. Choose the size (you can specify a "custom size" as well) you want and click OK.

The clarity of the resized picture is surprisingly clear.

**Update: ** Actually, to be able to do this, you need the ImageResizer PowerToy from Microsoft.

Download the icons

One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to transform a Windows icon file into a Mac and a Linux icon file, but until that time...

Enjoy! :-D

I’m a converted iTunes junkie. The last time I’ve opened Windows Media Player was, like, in the Dark Ages. Nothing wrong with the player, but its user interface is horrendous, especially when compared to the simple elegance of iTunes.

But I just might get converted back to Windows Media Player. Microsoft finally released the Windows Media Player 11 Beta, and I have to say, I’m impressed. :-)

Source: Microsoft

Here’s a link to the Windows Media Player 11 Beta download for those of you who want to play with it.

Today, we’re going to learn such vitally important things as changing the folder icons in Windows XP. And no, you don’t actually need to install 3rd party applications to tweak your icons. You just need to know where to go to change most of the icons; changing the default folder icon, however, is a bit more complicated, but not much.

Let’s start with the easy part:

Changing Desktop Icons

Right click on your My Computer icon and select Properties. Go to the Desktop tab and click the Customize Desktop button (below the list of wallpapers you can choose for your background). As might be self-evident from the screen, you basically click on each unhappy icon in the middle, click the Change Icon button and point the file browser to the proper location of your new happy icon.

Changing Other Icons

What if you want to change the Microsoft Word Document icon or your mp3 icon or maybe even your open folder icon? It’s very easy. Double click on your My Computer folder (or practically any other folder, for that matter). Go to Tools » Folder Options » File Types. Once again what you need to do is rather obvious. If you scroll down the list of the registered files, you find that there’s practically everything in there, including the open folder one and the normal folder one. To change the icon, you basically do the same thing you do above: click the icon that you want to change, click the Advanced button, click the Change Icon button in the dialog that pops up and point to your new icon.

Changing the Default Folder Icon

If you tried to follow the method mentioned just above this paragraph to change the default folder icon, you might have noticed that the method…err, failed. For some odd reason, Windows doesn’t give you an easy way to change the default folder icon, which kind of sucks, because I rather dislike the default folder icon. It looks particularly ugly when compared to all my new icons. So, after some researching and much head-banging, I found out that there was a pretty easy way to change the default folder icon.

Open up your registry editor(Start » Type in "regedit" in the textbox of the dialog that pops up). Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Windows / Current Version / Explorer / Shell Icons. Find the registry file called 3. Right-click on it and select Modify in the menu. Type in the path to the location of your new icon, click OK, and restart the computer. That’s it! You have a new default folder icon. (Sometimes, though, you might need to refresh the icon cache for your new icon to turn up.)

Repairing Corrupted Registry File (If It Gets Corrupted, That Is)

As I was doing this, however, I encountered a strange problem — whenever I double-clicked on a folder, instead of opening the folder, Windows opened the search page instead?? Bizarre. I thought I had unrepairably screwed my operating system until I found out that sometimes the responsible registry gets corrupted. The site provides a fix [.vbs file] and how to go about using said file, but in case you don’t want to run the file, you can also repair your registry file manually:

Open up your registry editor (Start » Type in "regedit" in the textbox of the dialog that pops up). Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Directory/shell. Now right-click on the Default registry file you can see in the right panel and select Modify from the menu. For the Value Data, set the value to be none. This worked for me.

Now, if this tutorial means that you’ve run out of excuses to not go icon-hunting…