The Windows 7 desktop background slide show is available through the Personalize menu (right click desktop – personalize) and is available for a geographic region. In Australia you will find only the Australian slide show background. There are others for various regions including USA and South Africa.

It is possible to add images to your regions folder and extend the slide show, even add your own holiday photos to the regional folder or create a new folder.

To access the folders and add your images:

1. Choose start >R
2. In the run box type “C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT” without the quotes
3. Choose your destination folder
4. Prepare your images in a photo editing program to be 1920X1200 with a DPI of 96 if possible.
5. Remember when taking pictures to set your camera’s resolution for the optimum screen resolution.

You can also type “change desktop background” in the Windows 7 search box and browse for the photos you want to use. I find method above a lot easier to use.

In Windows 7 Professional you can encrypt either files or folders and keep specific information private from other users. Encrypted files may become unexpectedly decrypted so it is best practice to encrypt folders which hold the files you want to keep private and secure.

To encrypt a folder:

Encrypting sensitive data, bank account or credit card details, also helps keep your data safe if your computer is hacked or stolen. For example, if your hard drive is removed and installed as an external drive in another computer your encrypted data is still safe – well sort of.

EFS is Microsoft software designed to work in the NTFS file system. Encrypted files will stay encrypted as long as the data is on a NTFS formatted drive. If the EFS folder is copied to a USB thumb drive formatted in the FAT file system the folder loses its encryption properties.

Managing EFS recovery keys and certificates.
If the hard drive on your PC becomes damaged and you need to recover data outside of your usual profile you will need to have “recovery keys and certificate” available. You will need to store this information off the drive with the EFS such as a thumb drive.

To backup your Recovery Keys and Certificate in Windows 7 Pro

An Alternative to EFS shortcomings is Bitlocker
Another more secure way to encrypt data is with Bitlocker to secure the entire drive. Bitlocker-to-Go is available in Windows 7 Pro for encryption of USB drives, but Bitlocker for drive encryption is only licensed to Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise editions, just as EFS is limited in versions other than Windows Prof.

If you are experiencing low battery life on your Windows 7 powered laptop a good place to start looking for reasons is component hardware set to wake-on-LAN.  If your laptop is waking by itself after going off to sleep this could be draining your battery. Also, if the laptop is forced to wake by a hardware component or task the laptop could become very hot in a confined space like a bag, especially if that bag is inside hand luggage in the overhead locker!

The steps to check your wake-on-LAN settings are:

• start menu, type “cmd” (without quotes)
• right click cmd to run as administrator (Windows 7)
• in the command prompt type “powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
• when we query the power configuration settings we will see any devices set to wake prompts
• if one of the devices is a network or wireless network adaptor navigate to (start >r) to open a run box
• type in “devmgmt.msc” to list your network adaptors
• right click, choose properties, choose power management
• adjust your wake on LAN settings.

In the first of our neat tips for Windows 7 you can use an external monitor with the lid closed on your laptop.

Just configure advanced power options

1. start. Type “Power options”

2. on the left hand pane click on what to do when lid closes

3. choose the option to do nothing

Enjoy your external monitor.