Customise Windows XP and Vista

To set up a screensaver, click the Back button and then click the Screen Saver link. Audition each screensaver by selecting it and then clicking the Preview button. Click OK when you’ve found the best one. XP offers very similar wallpaper and screensaver features – get to them by
right-clicking the Desktop and choosing Properties, then choosing from the tabs at the top of the dialogue box that appears. You can make your own screensavers too. See the link at the end of this article.

Movable types
Sometimes Windows programs sneakily nominate themselves as best suited to open photos or play digital music, edit documents and so on. Let them know who’s boss by choosing which program you prefer to use. In Windows XP open the Control Panel and choose Folder Options.

To make sure that all JPEG pictures are opened by, for example, Microsoft Paint, click the File Types tab, scroll down the list to find the entry for JPEG images and click it once to select it. Click the Change button then either select a program from the list or click Browse and pick one from the hard disk – we chose Paint from the System32 folder, which can be found inside the Windows folder.

To do the same thing in Vista, open the Control Panel and choose Programs, then find the Default Programs heading and click ‘Make a file type always open in a specific program’. Scroll through the list of file extensions (we’ll choose JPEG again) and click the Change Program button. As in Windows XP, choose a program from the list or the hard disk to make that program open this kind of file.

Return to Send to
The ‘Send to’ menu is one of the handiest parts of Windows XP and Vista. It makes it possible to send any file to any location on the computer, such as the My Documents folder, with just a couple of mouse clicks. If there’s a folder that you often want to move files to, adding it to the Send to menu can be very helpful, but it’s not immediately obvious how to do this.

To add a folder, click Start and then select Run. When the dialogue box opens, type sendto in Windows XP or shell:sendto in Vista. This will open the Send to folder. Now open another Windows Explorer window (pressing the Windows key and E is a quick way to do this) and find the folder that you want to add.

Right-click on that folder and choose to create a shortcut, then drag and drop that shortcut into the Send to folder that you opened a moment ago. From now on, a shortcut to the folder will appear in the Send to menu.

Theme on
Themes are visual styles for Windows that change the way most of the operating system looks. They can alter the look of windows, icons, dialogue boxes, the Desktop wallpaper, screensavers and so on in one go. Windows XP has two standard themes: Windows XP, which is the usual blue and green design, and Windows Classic. To switch between them, right-click on the Desktop, select Properties, then choose from the dropdown menu.

Although it’s possible to find, download and install more themes manually, this can involve some technical shenanigans. If you don’t mind paying a little money, though, there are programs that can quickly and easily change the way Windows looks. Windows XP users should visit www.tgtsoft.com, home of StyleXP, an inexpensive theme manager, where there are links to hundreds of free themes. The program is free to try, but costs $20 (around £10) to purchase.