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Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP

Get your free Microsoft goody bag: Kai Chandler reports on Powertoys for Windows XP.

Collect your free Microsoft Goody bag here!

They’ve already taken enough money from you but did you remember to pick up your Powertoys ‘free gift?’  It’s a set of tools ranging from calculators to tweakers to set some of the more hidden Windows settings.

Powertoys are available for most, if not all, versions of Windows but here we look at Powertoys for Windows XP. They are written by Microsoft primarily for internal use and as such are unsupported.

Here’s a list of what’s available:

Open Command Window Here

This PowerToy adds an "Open Command Window Here" context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder.

Alt-Tab Replacement

With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.

Power Calculator

With this PowerToy you can graph and evaluate functions as well as perform many different types of conversions.

Image Resizer

This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.

CD Slide Show Generator

With this PowerToy you can view images burned to a CD as a slide show. The Generator works downlevel on Windows 9x machines as well.

Virtual Desktop Manager

Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.

Taskbar Magnifier

Use this PowerToy to magnify part of the screen from the taskbar.

HTML Slide Show Wizard

This wizard helps you create an HTML slide show of your digital pictures, ready to place on your Web site.

Webcam Timershot

This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.

Tweak UI

To get you started, let’s take a look at Tweak UI Tweak which gives you access to User Interface settings not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Tips - gives you over twenty handy tips on using Windows and Explorer.  It’s worth a download just for these.

General – Focus - allows you to stop applications stealing focus ie. taking over your screen. You can set it so the tab flashes indefinitely or a finite number of times.

Mouse – here, you can set the menu speed, mouse sensitivity ability to hover and how the mouse selects items. This section may be of particular interest for people with disabilities.

Explorer – about 20 settings such as whether to include Help on the start menu. There may be something here for you!

Taskbar – you can disable those annoying balloon tips.

Control Panel – hide control panel icons.

Download the entire set of Powertoys for Windows XP from here  remember they are unsupported. Also, Microsoft warn that they only work with US-English regional settings but I’ve not found any problems with English (United Kingdom) settings.