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Windows 2000 Secrets: My Computer

Windows 2000 contains a myriad of secrets, tips, tricks, and little-known workarounds. Revealing his first cluster of secrets, Dave Cook gets the most out of My Computer.

Microsoft’s My Computer folder and file management tool has been around since Windows 95. Few users think My Computer is more powerful than Windows Explorer for managing files. And yet, by default in Windows 2000, Microsoft has placed it in a far more prominent position on the desktop. In fact, My Computer can be as powerful as Windows Explorer - and we’ll show you how to make it so in just a little while.

But first, who wants to give their computer a proper name? After all, labelling the My Computer tool “My Computer” is about as boring as yours truly calling the fruit of my loins, “My Child”. Thankfully, changing the name of a computer is far easier than changing the name of an offspring!

Here’s how:

• Right-click the My Computer icon, and select Rename from the context menu. You’ll see the “My Computer” text beneath the icon is highlighted in blue.

• Type in a replacement name, and then press Enter for the changes to take effect.

Note that if you only want to make a small change to the name, you can edit the name instead. To switch into Edit mode, press the Home, or End key, or simply click within the existing name with your mouse.

What You See

When you start My Computer (or whatever you’ve decided to call it) by clicking its icon, you open a window that displays icons for all of your hard drives, removable drives (including your floppy drive), and your CD-ROM drives. You’ll also see the Control Panel, the important folder that lets you customise most of your computer’s settings without having to delve into the Registry.

By the way, you won’t see any Printer or Network/Dial-Up folders when you first open the Windows 2000 version of My Computer. That’s because both folders have been moved one step down, to the Control Panel.

Changing Rooms

Although the default view for My Computer appears much the same as it does in Windows 98, for example, it’s possible to transform it into a Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer look-alike with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Let’s start by clicking the View menu in order to display additional information about your drives. From here there are options to show Large Icons, Small Icons, List, or Details. Select Details. Click View again, Choose Columns, and ensure Name, Type, Total Size, and Free Space are selected. Click OK. Now when you click on a drive you’ll see a lot more information, including the capacity of the drive as well as the amount of free and used space it contains.

In fact, transforming it into the Windows Explorer look-alike we mentioned earlier is just moments away. Simply click View again, and move down to the Explorer bar. Select Folders, and look – there’s the Windows Explorer look-alike we promised.

New Shortcut

Our final tip involves dragging and dropping the My Computer icon from the desktop onto the Start button. Not only does this create a handy shortcut to My Computer, much as it does in Windows 95 or Windows 98, but it’s also expandable. In other words, each drive icon takes on its own menu entry. Select one of the drives and it will expand to reveal the files or folders it contains. Select one of the folders and it too will expand. The result is that everything on the computer is now accessible from the Start Menu.

Coming Up

That’s it for now. In our next look at Windows 2000 secrets, we’ll show you how to customise the look and feel of Windows Explorer. 

Read part two