WyzGuys Computer Tutors  Computer Instruction. Web Design Instruction,  and Web Hosting

Operating System

Related Sites

Site Navigation

See our store on

Working in Windows

This section will show you some concepts of Windows and Windows based software programs including how to use the mouse and how to work with windows.  You may want to supplement this section with the Microsoft Windows Online Tutorial and the Getting Started guide that came with your Windows software. At any time you want more information about a topic, remember to use the Windows Help system. For more information about using Help, see the end of this section.

Windows will help you work better by making your computer run faster and more reliably. Windows supports the latest multimedia and communications technologies. With a fully Web integrated user interface; it brings the global community to your business or home.

It might seem ironic, but one of the first things to know about Windows is how to exit Windows and shut down the computer when you are finished using it. Your shut down options are available from the Start menu. Depending on how your computer is set up you may have the following options:

• Log Off—choose Log off if you want the computer to remain on but don’t want other users to have access to your personal user profile.

• Shut Down—choose Shut down when you want to completely turn off power to your computer.

• Stand by—an option available with computers that have Advanced Power Manager (APM) or ACPI built in. Stand by saves energy and lets you come right back to where you were working.

• Hibernate - This option became available with Windows 2000 and XP, and allows you to save your open desk top, while turning off all power to the computer.  When resuming from hibernation, the computer goes through an abbreviated start-up process.

• Restart—choose Restart when it is necessary to exit Windows, but when you want to keep using the computer. For example, when you install new hardware or programs, you will often be prompted to restart the computer for certain settings to take effect.

Class Exercise - Exiting Windows and shutting down the computer

If the computer is not shut down properly, Windows will automatically run the ScanDisk program at the next startup to help prevent hard drive errors.

• Save any documents you have been working in and then close any programs that are running. (If you are using Stand by, save your documents, but you can leave your programs running.)

• Click the Start button to open the Start menu.

• Click Shut Down to turn off or restart the computer. Or, click Log Off if you want the computer to remain on but don’t want other users to have access to your personal user profile. (For more information about user profiles, see section two, “Introducing the Windows  Desktop.”) The Shut Down Windows dialog box opens.

• Choose Stand by, Shut down, Hibernate, or Restart , and then click OK.

• If you chose Stand by, the computer will appear to shut off.

• If you chose Shut down, wait for Windows to show the message “It is now safe to turn off your computer,” then you can turn off the computer.

• If you chose Restart or Restart in MS-DOS mode, Windows will exit and then automatically start again. You may be prompted to log in again if that is part of your system’s configuration.

Sometimes, due to system or program errors, your computer might “hang,” that is, it will be running but you will not be able to use any commands, you might not even be able to use the mouse pointer. If this happens and you are unable to shut down Windows as explained above, try pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete. This will open a dialog box that can help you shut down the program that is causing the error, or shut down the computer if necessary. Be careful, by shutting down the computer in this way, you can lose any unsaved information your were working on. This should only be done if you are unable to shut down Windows from the Start menu.

Exploring Windows

As a participant, you might believe that sometimes the best way to learn something is to explore.  As you are getting to know the Windows  operating system, feel free to do just that. The following pages explain some of the things you will find in Windows.

The Desktop

In Windows , the main screen is called the desktop. This is your work area. Just like the top of a real desk, this one changes depending on what you are doing. You can also customize it to fit your needs and personality  The following illustration shows the Windows  desktop.

Icons - Double-click one of these icons, or shortcuts, to open a program or folder.

Start button - Click to open the Start menu, your one-stop access to many of the features of Windows XP.

Quick Launch toolbar - Use these icons to start Internet Explorer, start Outlook Express, minimize all open windows, or view channels.

Taskbar - When a window is open but not active, an icon for the window appears here. Quickly switch between open windows using the icons.

Tool Tray - Programs that are running in the background, like your anti-virus program, will show up here.  Hover over an icon to find out what program it is for.  Double click any icon to launch it's program.

Clock -Displays the current time set in the computer. Change the time and date by double-clicking here.

Cursor - The arrow shows where the mouse is pointing.  If the computer is busy, the arrow will be replaced with a rotating hourglass.

Windows

When you open something on your computer like a program, a document, or a Web browser, it appears on your desktop inside a window. There are two types of windows—program windows which contain a program, such as Microsoft Word, and document windows which contain documents inside a program window. You can have several documents open in one program window.  The following illustration shows the parts of a typical window.

Moving, Sizing, and Organizing Windows

Once you are familiar with the parts of a window, it is easy to use several windows at once so that you can accomplish more than one thing at a time. You can search the Internet and import text or pictures into a Word document; or, you can figure grades with an Excel spreadsheet, and write memos in Word Pad all while you are reading your e-mail. The following are some tips for moving, sizing, and organizing windows that you have open on your desktop at the same time:

• Move—Use the Title Bar to move a window around on the desktop. Click on the title bar, and while holding down the mouse button, drag the window to a new location on the desktop. This is helpful when you are using more than one program at a time and need to see them both simultaneously, such as when you are editing a picture in Paint and then want to import the picture into a Word document.

• Resize—Customize the size of a window with the resize pointers. You can drag the window’s borders to make the window larger or smaller. To try this, open Notepad from the Accessories submenu (on the Programs menu). Move the pointer over to the right edge of the window. The pointer will change to a resize pointer, a short line with arrows at both ends. Hold down the left mouse button and drag any part of the window's edge to make the window wider. Or, drag the window from the corner to resize the height and width at the same time.

• Organize—When you right-click on the taskbar, a menu appears. This handy menu contains commands for cascading and tiling windows, and for minimizing all open windows. To try out these features, open a few accessory programs such as Word Pad, the calculator, and Paint, and then right-click an open space on the taskbar and choose Cascade Windows or Tile Windows Horizontally.

Dialog Boxes

Dialog boxes pop up on your screen when Windows or a Windows based program needs information, requires you to confirm an action (such as deleting), or has an alert or other information. Dialog boxes look a bit like windows, but don’t have all the features of windows. For example, they have title bars, but not toolbars. You can move them but not resize them. You can close them but not minimize them. Most dialog boxes are intuitive, usually asking for a simple Yes, No, or OK. Some are more complicated, especially those used for changing settings.

Several Windows  dialog boxes you use to change system settings are subdivided into tabbed categories, like a "real" file folder or card file. This allows you to make multiple changes from a centralized location on your computer. Each tab has a heading, which categorizes the information on that tab. Click on the tab to change from one to another. The following illustration shows the Date/Time Properties dialog box.

Identifying File Box Features

Another typical dialog box is the file box. This box opens when you choose the Open or Save As command on the File menu of most Windows programs.

By default Windows will save everything to your My Documents folder.  We will learn a little later how to create folders of our own so we can organize our files for logical and easy retrieval.

Working With Menus and Commands

A menu is a list of commands or instructions that tell your computer to perform an action (such as opening a program or saving a document). The main menu associated with Windows is the Start menu. Most software programs will have their own menus that you will become familiar with as you use the program. You will usually find these menus at the top of the program window in an area called the menu bar. In Windows you will use menus, cascading menus, submenus, and shortcut menus. The following illustrations show some of the kinds of menus and their parts.

Later you will learn how to add items to the Start menu, such as other programs or documents you use every day. The following are descriptions of the commands on the default Start menu:

• The Left Pane shows frequently opened programs on top, and the programs you worked with last below.

• All Programs—opens the Programs menu which contains shortcuts to the software programs on your computer or that are available on your computer network including Windows Explorer and the Windows  Accessories.

• My Documents—quick access to the files that you have created.

• My Pictures - the default location for all your pictures and images

• My Music - an easy way to keep your music collection together.

• My Computer - Here is a bunch of information about your computer, what version of the operating system you are using, the amount of physical memory, and so on.  Plus, you adjust the operational setting of your computer to enhance its performance.

• My Network Places - if you are part of a network, this will provide information about it you can use to find resources.

• Control Panel—opens a cascading menu with commands to change a wide array of computer settings.

• Help and Support - allows you to access the Help files on your computer.  If you need to find out how to do something, this is the place to start.

• Search - Allows you to search for files and folders on your computer.

• Run—opens the Run dialog box. You can type in the name of a program, folder, document, or Internet resource and Windows will open it for you. There is also a Browse button to help you find what you want to open.

Command Menus

There are some other symbols, called indicators, that you will sometimes find on menus. The following is an illustration of the View menu in Microsoft Word 97 showing the kinds of indicators you will find on program menus.

Context Menus

In Windows and software programs that run on the Windows operating system, there are also shortcut menus which you open by right-clicking an object or area on the desktop or in a program window. The commands available on a shortcut menu depend on the location of the pointer when it is clicked. For example, the Windows desktop shortcut menu allows you to create shortcuts and arrange shortcut icons as well as customize your Active Desktop.

Benefiting From Search & Help

Windows includes several tools to help you find things you need on the computer and an excellent online Help system that has information for all levels of users, from those exploring Windows for the first time, to those who need access to detailed technical support.

Using Search

If you need a file or program located on your computer or network, but you cannot remember its name or location, use the Search command. Click the Start button, point to Search, and then click Files or Folders. When you choose this command from the Start menu, the Search dialog box opens.

From this dialog box, you can find the file or program based on several types of search criteria, such as the file format (type), a partial file name, or words in a file. The more specific you can make the search, the faster the search results are displayed. For example, if you know the document you are looking for is a Microsoft Word document, it contains the word "vitae," and it is on your computer, you could choose "*.doc" from the dropdown list for the Named field, type "vitae" in the Containing text field, and select your hard drive in the Look in field before pressing Find Now to start the search. When the search is completed, a list of files & folders matching your criteria appears in the field at the bottom of the Search dialog box.

Open the files or folders in this field by clicking on the file or folder (double-click if you are using Classic style). You can also right-click the file or folder for more options, such as printing it (for files), moving or copying it, or deleting it.

The following options are also available from the Search command on the Start menu:

• Pictures, Music, or Video

• Documents

• All Files and Folders

• Computers or people

• Help and Support

• Search the Internet

Using Help
When you have questions about Windows, you can quickly and easily find the answers in the Windows online help file on the Start menu. Once you have chosen the Help command, the Help dialog box opens:
In the Help dialog box, you can search for information using one of three tabs:

• The Contents tab—Use this tab to find information as you would in a book's table of contents. This tab displays Help information that is organized to look like chapters in a book. Each "chapter" appears with a book icon next to it. If you click the book icon, the pane displays the subheadings in that chapter.

• The Index tab—Use this tab to find information as you would in a book index. As you type a keyword or part of a keyword, the one in the list that is closest to what you are typing is highlighted. You can continue typing more of the keyword to define it more specifically, click the selected keyword in the list to display it, or click one of the keyword subentries (if they exist) in the list to display it. If you click a keyword and more than one topic uses it, a list of the topics appears. When you choose one, its contents are displayed in the right pane.

• The Search tab—Use this tab to search for information on a broad topic.

The Help window also contains a toolbar with the following buttons:

• Back and Forward—like the back and forward buttons on the Web style standard toolbar and the Internet Explorer Web browser, moves back or forward through topics you have recently visited.

• Index - This opens an index of frequently asked questions.

• Favorites - This allows you to catalog help topics you frequently refer to.

• History - This options allows you to look back at help topics you've reviewed in the past.

• Options—a menu of commands including Refresh, and Print.

• Web Help—opens a topic from which you can link to Microsoft’s Online Technical Support Web site.

Another great feature of the Windows  Online Help system is the troubleshooting wizard. Troubleshooting wizards walk you through a problem you might be having one step at a time by asking you questions and offering information and possible solutions. You will find the Troubleshooting Wizards on the Contents tab. Click on Troubleshooting and then click Windows Troubleshooters and select from the list of available wizards. The following illustration shows the first screen of the print-troubleshooting wizard.

Using Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is the comprehensive organization and management tool for Windows files and folders. Using this tool, you can view all the files and folders on a selected drive (such as your hard drive, your floppy disk drive, or a network computer), open the file or folder, move and copy them, rename them, delete, print, and use files on other locations on the network.

You may want to display the Windows Explorer icon on your office toolbar or your desktop for easy access to this tool, which you will probably use often. However, you can also access Windows Explorer by clicking Start, pointing to Programs, and clicking Windows Explorer. My favorite way is to right click on START, and then select Explore form the context menu.  The following illustration shows the Explorer window.

With Windows Explorer it is fast and easy to open, move, create and organize your files and folders.

This is the end of Day One.

Curriculum developed by WyzGuys Computer Tutors

All Rights Reserved

Hosted by WyzHost.com

contact support@wyzhost.com