My open windows all suddenly minimized. How do I get them back? - windows

Sometimes when dragging a window around on the Windows 7 desktop, all of my other open windows will suddenly minimize. I can go to the task bar and reopen them, one by one, but is there a way to get them all back at once? And is there a way to turn off this annoying behaviour?
Thanks.

That will be Aero Shake.
You can shake the window that you were moving and your windows will be restored.
You can also disable Aero Shake, following instructions here:
Go to Run (Windows+R) and type gpedit.msc
Navigate to User configuration > Administratives Templates > Desktop
Search for "Turn off Aero Shake window minimizing mouse gesture" and enable the policy.

If you shake a window (left-right rapidly or another direction) then it minimizes all windows except that one. To get them back, shake the first window again.

This is what worked for me.
Open Windows Explorer.
Maximize and close it with Shift pressed.
Windows Explorer should open maximized.

Related

windows taskbar and open programs

Is there any way to place the taksbar icons of all the open apps in Windows 8.1 next to each other automatically?
Say I open an app whose icon is on the far left, next to the start button, and I want said icon to appear to move to the far right of my string of icons, next to all my other open programs, automatically.
Is there any way to do that?
Do you mean, for applications that you have already pinned to the taskbar, you want them to move over to the end of the line of open programs? I don't think it is possible to set this option automatically. However, you can manually move them to where-ever and they will remain pinned. For other taskbar settings, just search Taskbar and the settings box will come up.

Disable " Stay on top" features on photoshop CS2

Photoshop CS2 always stay on top, even when I click another app from the windows taskbar (right of the start button).
It's completly annoying me. Always need minimized, click the other app, reclick again on photoshop, re-reminimized.
I only have 1 screen at work so I can't let photoshop on one screen and work with the other app on the other screen.
I look in all photoshop menu, find nothing
I googled the problem, and find a adobe page explain this problem is a "feature".
I only want photoshop cs2 work all other app on windows and loose focus, let new app appear on top.
Thank you.
I had this problem and somehow solved it. But my solution may be just as fickle as why the problem occurs in the first place. But here's what I did:
On the layers palette (F7) I clicked on the small arrow just below the close "X" button, on the right. Then I selected "Pallete Options"
Didn't change any options but just clicked OK.
Now the entire window remained on top, not just the palettes. So I restarted Photoshop and it seemed to fix the issue.
I found that if you open up "edit > preferences > Memory & Image Cache" and set your memory usage up then it will fix it. I am on a Windows 10.
See this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshop/comments/35lmtu/photoshop_keeps_putting_itself_in_front_of_my/
Go to Edit > Preferences > File Handling > Uncheck Enable Version Cue Workgroup File Management
I literally JUST found this on accident and fixed it after having issues with all my toolbars being hidden behind stuff, and not being able to minimize without clicking on the PS window first etc. Seems to have worked!
Topmost Toggle will help you: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Other-Desktop-Enhancements/TopmostToggle.shtml
Works for CS2 even in Win8
Try Topmost Toggle. Works on Window 7, Window 8 and even Windows 8.1. I use it for disabling Photoshop CS2 and when Firefox bug out. Works like a charm and it's pretty easy to use:
Download and extract Topmost Toggle
Run the program - you will see that it minimize on tray
Ctr + Right click on your program and click
Enjoy!
Big thanks to user2761076
I am having same issue with CS2 on Windows 7 64 bit. To work around, I hit tab on keyboard when photoshop window is active, that makes all pallets invisible, then I can switch to any window I need to work on.
As per this article there seem to be issue with Microsoft update https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2142314

IIS 7 manager not opening but working

I have windows 7 home premium. I have turned on IIS .Confirmed if its running by typing localhost on my address bar. It show IIS welcome message, showing its working.
However when I try to open IIS manager, nothing happens. I want to deploy my asp.net mvc 3 application on it. How do I solve this issue?
For me helped focusing on the window via Alt-Tab, then pressing Alt-Space and select Move in the drop-down menu. After that, either drag the mouse or move with keyboard buttons. By the way, works with all windows.
Update for Win 10
There is another easier solution for such windows for Win 10. You can pull any available window to the left edge of the screen. Windows will expand the window to half of the screen and prompts you to choose any opened window to fill the second half. Choose the window you can't access and you're good.

How can I disable / permanently hide the taskbar in Windows 7?

I would like to completely remove the Windows 7 taskbar, including tray and start-button, so that the user can not reactivate it by pressing the Windows-key on the keyboard. however, all other explorer functionality (i.e. starting an explorer Window using Windows+E) should remain.
Is it possible to permanently hide the complete taskbar? Maybe there are some registry values on could change in order to make that behaviour selectable using a powershell script?
Thanks a lot
Here be my solution (it hides rather than replaces or removes the native taskbar - this allows it to work with programs that have a dependency on the native taskbar, such as display fusions taskbar).
disable-taskbar-always-top
Still to solve: [HALF SOLVED]
Eliminate the stupid line that auto-hide leaves with some maximized applications, such as Google Chrome
HALF SOLUTION -
If you move the taskbar to the left or right edge prior to doing the above steps, you don't get the stupid auto-hide line at the top or bottom of Google Chrome. Since the native taskbar is not mouse sensitive anymore, it won't impact your use of hot corners, or multi monitors (for instance I have the native taskbar on the left of my middle monitor, and it does not popup when moving between monitors using the steps in this post).
Okay, I think I have finally - finally - got a workaround that:
Keeps the native Windows 7/8 taskbar hidden for your session (you do have a couple of steps you need to do on start-up each time, or if you manually un-hide the taskbar).
Prevents the native Windows 7/8 taskbar from opening with popups or programs seeking attention (flashing taskbar thing).
Prevents the native taskbar from being mouse sensitive (i.e. despite auto-hide, it will not appear when you mouse over the hidden taskbar anymore).
Allows you to use the screen area that is occupied by the native taskbar (this is the problem of not combining Taskbar-Hide with the autohide setting; you can't use that screen real-estate).
Allows you to run alternative taskbars that are dependent on keeping the native taskbar functional (for instance Dislay Fusions Multi-Monitor Taskbar + [Settings >> Advanced Settings ?> 'Show On All Montiors'])
One Time Steps:
1) Download and run this registry edit to prevent balloon notification popups from the native taskbar/system tray:
Notifications - Enable or Disable Message Balloons - Windows 7 Help Forums
(You can open this in notepad to see what changes it will make prior to installing it, if you want).
2) Download and run Taskbar-Hide from here:
Hide Taskbar: Hide Taskbar in Windows 8 | 7 with a hotkey
3) Set the taskbar to auto-hide
Optional:
3) B) Add a shortcut to Taskbar-Hide.exe in your startup folder, to have it launch automatically with windows on startup (you still need to use the Ctrl+Esc hotkeys to activate the functions of taskbar-hide - though you could also script this if you were really keen).
Startup Folder:
C:\Users{User Name}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Steps to hide taskbar after each start-up or manually un-hiding using Taskbar-Hide
4) Make sure Taskbar-Hide is running.
5) Make sure the taskbar is in its auto-hide state (i.e. you'll have to look at any programs that are currently seeking attention).
6) Once the taskbar is 'auto-hidden', press the hotkeys for Taskbar-Hide (Ctrl+Esc)
[This should mean that the native taskbar area is no longer sensitive to mouse activity]
One way is to replace the explorer shell with your own shell. This is the a common method done in Windows 7 Embedded.
In older versions of Windows (such as XP) it was possible to specifiy a shell for each user via regedit. I am not sure this is easily possible in Windows 7.
See https://superuser.com/questions/352865/how-do-i-change-the-windows-shell-for-only-one-user
Make an empty exe file and use it as the file to use in your "Custom User Interface" group policy. Additional information here.
I have found another solution that works nearly perfect for me, by just hiding the Taskbar and the Start button by simply sending both the WM_HIDE message:
Handle = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", "");
...
ShowWindow(Handle, SW_SHOW);
The only problem I have with that solution is that the taskbar is not hidden permanently, i.e. as soon as one element is activated that does not have the focus, which on the taskbar leads to the item flashing in yellow, the taskbar gets visible again.
I'm not sure if there is a way to prevent Windows from re-enabling the visible flag of the taskbar in some way, or a method to hook to the SW_SHOW in C# though.

Vista window appears at the top and cannot be deleted

I have no idea how he did it but on my dad's laptop, which is running Vista, there is a window at the top; you can only drag it down but not remove, minimize or maximize it as those options do not appear. I restarted but it's still there.
Here's a screenshot of what I mean:
How do I remove it? It used to be my laptop but I've never seen that when I used it.
It's a deskband. You can move it around with the little grippy thing on the left. You should be able to right click the Taskbar, select toolbars, and uncheck whichever one is that one.

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