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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
May 11,
2008
Q.
After hiding or removing some icons from the
notification area in the tray, I see a list
of Past Items. How can I delete them?
A.
This is a follow up to last week's column. Microsoft
has a method for doing this as shown in
their
Knowledge Base
article. However, this
covers only Windows XP Home and XP Pro, and
requires editing the registry. Vista stores
this information in a different place than
XP. To make this process easier, I have
written a little program that will
accomplish this for all versions of XP and
Vista. It is called
"ClearPastList.exe"
and can be downloaded from the
download section of this site. Before it
will take effect, either closing and then
re-starting Explorer, or re-booting the
computer is required.
Q.
I am using Vista and Windows mail for my
email program. But, whenever I click on an
email link, I get a message that wants me to
install Outlook. I don't want to use
Outlook, so how can I make it open Windows
Mail?
A.
What is required is for you to change the
program associated with the file type from
Outlook to Windows Mail. When Microsoft
Office is installed, Outlook is usually
installed with it. And, if Microsoft Outlook
is installed, it pretty much tries to take
over, assuming that you are just dying to
use it. Well, for a lot of us, this just
isn't the case.
In XP,
changing the association was a pretty
cumbersome process. Here is that process as
listed in Microsoft's
Knowledge
Base article:
"To change which
program starts when you double-click a file
whose file type is associated with a
particular program, follow these steps:
1. Open My
Computer or Windows Explorer, right-click a
file for which you want to change the
program that opens that file type, and then
use either of the following methods to
change which program starts:
• Click Open With
to choose the program that you want.
• Point to Open
With, and then click Choose Program to
choose the program that you want.
2. Notice that the
Open With dialog box appears. Use one of the
following methods to select the program that
you want to use to open this kind of file:
• In the Programs
list, click the program that you want.
• Click Browse,
locate and then click the program that you
want to use, and then click OK.
• Click Look for
the appropriate program on the Web to browse
the Internet for the program that you want.
3. Click to select
the Always use the selected program to open
this kind of file check box if it is not
already selected.
4. Click OK."
To do the
same thing in Vista is considerably easier.
Open the Control Panel, click on "Classic
View" on the left of the dialog box. Find
and click on the "Default Programs" icon.
Click on "Default program settings". You may
have to wait a few while the list is
propagated. On the left side, highlight
"Windows Mail". At the bottom of the dialog,
click on "Set this program as default".
Click OK, and it's done.
From this
Default Programs dialog, there are many
other default settings that you can change.
File associations can be easily changed and
auto play settings can be changed.
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