In
versions of Windows before Windows 95,
there was easy user access to the
clipboard so its contents could be
viewed. Since Windows 95, the clipboard
still exists, but it no longer is easy
to view. But to take a look at it on
versions before Vista, Click
Start, then Run, and enter clipbrd and
click OK. That will open the clipbook
viewer, which is really the clipboard
and you can see what it contains.
Although there is a clipboard function installed
with Vista, there is no easy way to view
its contents, at least one that I have
discovered. But, if you copy the "clipbrd.exe"
file from the C:\Windows\System32 folder
of XP to the C:\Windows\System32 folder
on Vista, it appears to run
just fine allowing you to view the
clipboard contents.
Q. In
XP, I used Tweak UI to stop my shortcuts
from always having the words "Shortcut
to" stuck on the front of their name.
Vista doesn't have a Tweak UI so is
there a way to eliminate it in Vista?
A.
Vista doesn't add "Shortcut to" in front
of the shortcut's name like previous
versions of Windows, but it does
tack the word "Shortcut" to the end of
the shortcut's name which can be just as
annoying. In XP, if you deleted the
"shortcut to" enough times, XP learned
that you didn't want it and stopped
putting it there. It doesn't
appear that there is a similar learning
curve present in Vista to stop adding
it. There is,
however, a registry hack that can turn
this shortcut thing off.
There are a couple of steps
required to change this default behavior. Since this requires
modifying the registry, don't try it
unless you are confident you can do it
right. For all those that are reluctant
to manually modify the registry, I have
written a little program that will allow
you to toggle this feature on or off. It
is called "shortcutoff.exe" and can be
downloaded
HERE.
For
all you brave ones that like to manually
modify the registry, open
regedit, and go to the HKEY_Current_User/Software/Windows/Current
Version/Explorer\Link. The value there
will probably be hex 1d 00 00 00, the
default value that automatically appends
the word "Shortcut" to your shortcut
name. Change the
value to hex 00 00 00 00 to prevent the
addition of the word "Shortcut", and close regedit.
Whether you have used my little program
to modify the registry, or done it
manually, you will have to close Windows
Explorer and re-start it to make the
change active. (Don't confuse Windows
Explorer with Internet Explorer. They
are two different applications.)
This
can be done by rebooting the computer,
or in lieu of rebooting, you can do it
manually. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open the
Task Manager. Highlight Explorer.exe,
and click the "End Process" button. When
asked if you want to end the process,
click the "End Process" button. Explorer
will be closed and disappear from the
list. Click File, then "New Task (run)",
enter explorer.exe and click OK.
This will restart Explorer and complete
the change without having to reboot the
computer.
After
this modification has been done, Vista
will no longer automatically add the
word "Shortcut" to the end of user
created shortcuts. Note that this
behavior is user specific, meaning it
will only be changed for the user
currently signed on.
