Q:
I've been using Internet Explorer 7 for quite some time now and I think I'm getting pretty good at working my way through it. So, I was wondering if there were any keyboard shortcuts you knew about that I could start using. I'm ready to make my IE 7 time even easier!

A:
That's the perfect attitude to have! Yes, it's hard to get used to new things (Web browsers, operating systems, etc.), but if you have a positive outlook on them, they can be pretty easy. I would guess that the person who asked today's question downloaded the new Internet Explorer 7 when it first came out and just worked at learning it. Eventually, as you all can see, they were able to get a pretty good handle on it and now, they're looking for more!

Well, either way you look at it, if you're on a hunt for some IE 7 keyboard shortcuts, you've come to the right place. I've been keeping a few up my sleeve just for this special occasion! So, shall we take a look at them? I thought you might enjoy that. Here we go!

Now, most of these shortcuts deal with using tabbed browsing. That's one of the main features that came along with Internet Explorer 7. If you're not too familiar with tabbed browsing, these shortcuts may not be very useful to you, but I would suggest hanging on to this tip anyway. Once you do get the hang of tabbed browsing, you can refer back to it and you'll be all set!

1.) Ctrl + T – Opens a new tab in the foreground.

2.) Ctrl + Click – Opens links in a new tab in the background.

3.) Ctrl + Shift + Click – Opens links in a new tab in the foreground.

4.) Alt + Enter – Opens a new tab from the address bar.

5.) Alt + Enter – It also opens a new tab from the search box.

6.) Ctrl + Q – Opens up quick tabs, which are thumbnail views.

7.) Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + Shift + Tab – Allows you to switch between tabs.

8.) Ctrl + N – Switches to a specific tab number. In this case, N can equal anything between the numbers one and eight.

9.) Ctrl + 9 – Switches to the last tab.

10.) Ctrl + W – Closes the current tab.

11.) Ctrl women taking viagra + Alt + F4 – Closes other open tabs.

12.) Alt + F4 – Closes all the tabs.

Now, here are a few mouse shortcuts for you as well.

1.) Click the middle mouse button (if your mouse has one) on a link and it will open that link in a background tab for you.

2.) Double click any empty space right next to the last tab you have open and it will open a brand new tab.

3.) If you click on the middle mouse button on one of your tabs, it will close the tab for you.

How does all that sound? Pretty cool, huh?! Now, you might want to start memorizing these shortcuts if you think you'll use them a lot. Or, just print them out so that you'll have them right by your computer when you're ready to use them. Either way, these simple shortcuts can make your IE 7 experience so much easier!

Do you sometimes use complicated MS Excel formulas? You know, where a formula references cells that, in turn, reference other cells, which can lead to a big chain reaction of values. One wrong or inadvertent change to a cell's value and you could cause a multitude of errors with the reported values.

Ever find yourself wondering just where that value really came from? I mean, which cells in the worksheet actually contribute? It'd be nice to see how it's all connected, especially when you're trying to solve a problem.

Well, to get a visual, all you need to know are the right buttons to click.

In older versions of Excel, you're looking for the View menu, Toolbars submenu, Formula Auditing choice.

By Dennis O'Reilly A better way to clear out temp folders, a great all-purpose Windows cleaner, and more free online storage top your suggestions for giving XP a new lease on life. The question remains: Who benefits when Microsoft's only real competition is with itself?

Reports of XP's demise are greatly exaggerated

Last week's Top Story by Scott Dunn on keeping XP fresh until Vista's successor is released was one of the most popular articles the newsletter has ever published. Clearly, a great number of Windows users see no need to trade in XP for Vista.

Responding to Scott's request, several readers offered their own techniques for teaching the old OS new tricks. David M. Deitz points out that you can empty XP's temp folder for all users by replacing the login name. "On Rule 7, 'Clear the clutter from XP's many cubbyholes,' " he writes, "the batch file could be more generic by using the userprofile variable." This would look as follows:

del /s /q "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"

Windows substitutes the userprofile variable with the actual location of information for all users of a machine. The quotation marks in the command are required because the command line includes a space.

The freeware cleanup alternative

Several readers echoed Ezra Riner's recommendation for a free cleanup utility.

• "I never use Microsoft's Disk Cleanup where to buy viagra tool. I find the free CCleaner [from Piriform] does an excellent job of clearing caches, temp files, and the like. [The program] integrates into your Recycle Bin for ease of use and total control."

Even more free storage available online

Scott recommended several online-storage services that offer as much as 2MB of space for your files for free. Hitman Howler wrote in to tell us about two services that trump those offerings.

• "The [services] you mention are about 1GB to 2GB free. Allow me to show you two sites that offer 5GB totally free: Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive and 4Shared."

I don't often think of Microsoft as the kind of company that does its customers a favor, but the only two programs that really compete with Vista are the OS's predecessor and eventual successor. Perhaps that's some consolation for the company as it attempts to fabricate a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is Vista.

Know of any other ways to get more use out of XP (or Vista, for that matter)? We'd love to hear about them via the Windows Secrets contact page.

By Scott Dunn Installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 can cause your anti-malware programs to report the presence of Trojans and keyloggers that aren't there. The false positives have blocked important system files in some cases, and in others they have misled users into reinstalling XP.

SP3 causes some malware scanners to cry "wolf"

Comments on a PC Tools forum confirm customer reports that the company's Spyware Doctor program generates a false positive on systems with Windows XP SP3.

Similarly, at least one site claims that Symantec's Norton Internet Security software identifies a common system file as a keylogger.

ReviewSaurus reports that XP SP3 causes Norton Internet Security to identify ctfmon.exe as a keylogger (a kind of malware that records your keystrokes to capture passwords and other important data).

In reality, the ctfmon.exe file in your Windows\System32 folder is a Microsoft system file that enables alternative input methods such as speech, tablet, or on-screen keyboard.

A spokesperson for Symantec was not immediately available for comment.

In the case of Spyware Doctor, the popular antispyware tool from PC Tools detects Trojan-Spy.Pophot.WX in RunDLL32.exe even if the system is uninfected. RunDLL32.exe is a system file that Windows uses to run code in dynamic link library (DLL) files.

The scan may also implicate other related system files, according to a report on the blog A Healthy Fear of Botulism.

By default, Spyware Doctor prevents any files it identifies as infected from running. If an important system file such as RunDLL32.exe is flagged incorrectly, the result can be disastrous for your PC. For example, users may be blocked from opening Windows Control Panel or using System Restore, among other operations.

One user who contacted us noted that blocking RunDLL32.exe created "an endless loop of scanning to remove the file, rebooting, finding the file again."

"I've lost more than two days trying to fix something that was never broken," he adds. "As far as mistakes go, this is pretty major."

Other Spyware Doctor customers just gave up: "I had the same problem today," reported Dave (screen name doz3r). "I got tired of fighting with it and just reinstalled the OS."

For its part, PC Tools claims that a patch is in the works. "We are implementing a fix immediately," wrote Super Moderator Anthony Chen on the PC Tools forum.

As of Wednesday evening, PC Tools has yet to make a fix available through the company's Smart Update feature.

Until there's a fix, there's a workaround

In the case of the Norton Internet Security, ReviewSaurus advises users to ignore the false warning about ctfmon.exe.

Until a fix is available from PC Tools, Chen advises customers to add RunDLL32.exe to the global action list manually. The workaround consists of the following steps:

Step 1. In the Spyware Doctor window, click the Settings button on the left.

Step 2. Click Global Action List to the right of that.

Step 3. At the bottom of the window, click Add.

Step 4. In the New Rule dialog box, choose "File on disk" from the "Select data type" drop-down list.

Step 5. To the right of the text box below, click the … button to browse for a file. Locate and select RunDLL32.exe in the Windows\System32 folder.

Step 6. Make sure "Always allow" is selected in the drop-down list at the bottom and click the Add button.

Other XP SP3 compatibility problems may yet loom

This is not the first problem created by Microsoft's latest (and last) service pack for Windows XP. Earlier this month, some HP PCs with an AMD processor experienced endless reboots after SP3 was installed.

These and other issues are documented by Windows Secrets columnist Susan Bradley's Patch Watch column in the paid section of this week's newsletter, as well as in her May 15 column. Bradley also where to buy viagra without a prescription provides advice on preparing for SP3 in the paid section of the May 1 issue.

If you are concerned about the effect the collection of patches that comprise XP SP3 will have on your PCs, wait a while before downloading and installing the service pack.

Check the support sites of the vendors of your most important products for news of compatibility issues with SP3. As the problems experienced by users of these anti-malware programs show, a collection of patches as large as SP3 may require some patches of its own.

After the release of Windows XP SP3 there are thousands of people who are facing various problems. The problems are from installation of SP 3, to post installation problems. All these problems occur because people really don’t follow the correct way of installing the service pack :

In order to ensure that you don’t face such a problem please follow these steps –

1. Download the service pack 3 from here (official microsoft download) (direct link).
2. Restart the computer and boot the computer in safe mode.
3. Install the SP 3 from there.

Note : If you don’t know how to boot in safe mode, then simply exit all the third party software and especially antivirus, firewall, anti-spyware etc.

Please note : Some people who are using Norton internet security are reporting that it’s giving false positives after they install SP3. It’s telling ctfmon.exe as a keylogger. It’s just a false positive and you should ignore that alert from Norton internet security.

Date: May 7th, 2008

Author: Mark Kaelin

The venerable Web browser continues to evolve. No longer just an application for displaying HTML, the Web browser now has to handle JavaScript, PHP, Java, Active X controls, loosely coupled Web services, plug-ins, multimedia, XML, RSS feeds and more. The Web browser has become an integral part of the total computer experience. All of those expectations make choosing a preferred browser more important than many ever thought it would or should be.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Mozilla Firefox 2 are the latest Web browser contenders for your attention (apologies to fans of Opera and other Web browsers, but these are the two that garner the most attention). Many of us have tried both and made a decision about which is the browser of choice.

If you have chosen Firefox 2, then you may want to uninstall IE7. But this brings up two questions: Can you uninstall IE7 and if you can how do you do it? The answers are: Yes, you can and here’s how.

This blog post is also available in PDF format in a TechRepublic Download.

Uninstall IE7

If your installation of IE7 was successful and uneventful, then uninstalling it is relatively simple process. The following steps will uninstall IE7 and restore IE 6.

If where to buy viagra online for some reason Windows Internet Explorer 7 does not appear in the Add or Remove Programs, you should:

• Open Windows Explorer
• Click Tools | Folder Options
• Click the View tab
• Make sure the radio button next to Show hidden files and folders is on
• Click OK
• Click Start, and then click Run
• Type: %windir%\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe into the text box and click Enter

Specified user account

In some cases, you may get an error message when you try to uninstall IE7 that says you cannot uninstall from a specified user account. To get around this check you will have to edit the Windows Registry.

Warning: Editing the Windows Registry incorrectly can cause the Windows operating system to stop functioning completely. This is an advanced operation and you are encouraged to back up the Windows Registry before you attempt any editing of the file. You have been warned.

Bypass the user account check with this Windows Registry edit:

• Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer.
• Right-click the Internet Explorer key, click New, and then click DWORD value.
• Type InstalledByUser as the name, and then press ENTER to finish creating the new registry value.
• Try to uninstall Internet Explorer 7 again.

More help

If you find yourself still needing help uninstalling Internet Explorer 7, check out the IE7 release notes found on the Microsoft MSDN Web site.