Random Findings as a Developer

Archive for the ‘Microsoft Windows’ Category

Recently when playing with LogMeIn’s remote desktop service, I installed a display driver for them which was supposed to shield my screen from being viewed while being viewed remotely.  Little did I know that there was a side effect to this.  The side effect was that the brightness display stopped working.  This meant that my laptop’s monitor was always at 100% brightness.

To remove this, I just had to uninstall the driver (after about an hour of searching the internet about what could be causing it).  The steps to remove:

1. Open “Device Manager”
2. Open “Display Adapters”
3. Right click on “LogMeIn.com Mirror Driver”
4. Click Uninstall
5. Restart computer

After that, I was able to change the brightness of my screen.

Apparently I’m not the only person who experienced this issue.  Click the link below for a forum post on it.

http://community.logmein.com/t5/Free-Pro-User-to-User-Support/Mirror-Driver-Issue/td-p/12741

I started using Windows 7 a lot more recently (due to work) and I found that my system would go down every so often after installing a Windows update (the most recent happened today, the day after I installed the update).

The only saving grace now is Windows Backup. I have set it to run every Sunday night and it basically takes an image of all modifications to my C:\ drive and backs it to my secondary drive. Now when a Windows update chooses to have it’s way with my computer, I am able to pop in the recovery CD and have it restore. Yes, it takes a while to run, but I don’t need to format and re-install everything again (a few days worth of installing different versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server).

• Windows + Down Arrow – Minimize Window (if not maximized) or Restore Down (if maximized)
• Windows + Up Arrow – Maximize Window
• Windows + Left Arrow – Dock window on left hand side of the screen (if already docked, it moves it to the next screen)
• Windows + Right Arrow – Dock window on right hand side of the screen (if already docked, it moves it to the next screen)
• Windows + Shift + Left Arrow – Send window as-is (i.e. Maximized) to Left Monitor (if already on the left window, it will move to the rightmost window)
• Windows + Shift + Right Arrow – Send window as-is (i.e. Maximized) to Right Monitor (if already on the right window, it will move to the rightmost window)

I hope this makes using multiple monitors a little more convenient in Windows 7.

So I need to have Microsoft Outlook open at all times to make sure I am getting my emails, but keeping it on the start menu is a bit of a pain because it takes up valuable screen real estate.  I have done the googling and found the answer to my problems … Minimizing to the System Tray.

How do you do this?

• Right-click on the Outlook icon in the System Tray
• Click the “Hide When Minimized” option

And presto, it no longer appears on my task bar.