Adding Desktop Shortcuts
The desktop, of course, is always a handy place to put a shortcut. To add a shortcut to a file, folder, or
other location to your Windows desktop, use Windows Explorer to get to the original folder or file icon to
which you want to create a shortcut. To create a shortcut to My Pictures or My Music, for example, open
My Documents to view the original icons. To create a shortcut to Shared Documents or a particular
drive on your computer, open My Computer.
When you can see the icon to which you want to create a shortcut, make sure the Explorer window is
small enough so that you can at least see some portion of the desktop. Then, using the secondary
(right) mouse button, drag the icon out to the desktop and drop it there. From the menu that appears,
choose Create Shortcuts Here. A new icon titled “Shortcut to” followed by the original icon name
appears. The new name is already selected, so you can enter a new name if you like. For example, I
usually delete the “Shortcut to” part of the name, because I can already tell the item is a shortcut by the
little curved arrow.

Tip You can rename a shortcut icon at any time by right-clicking the icon and choosing
Rename.
Remember, you can always tidy the desktop icons by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Arrange
Icons By Name.
As is typical of Windows, you can create desktop shortcuts in other ways as well. And as usual,
choosing one method or another is simply a matter of personal preference or convenience. For
instance, you can right-click the desktop and choose New Shortcut. A Create Shortcut Wizard
appears, with a Browse button that you can use to locate the item to which you want to create the
shortcut. Within Explorer, you can right-click on any icon and choose Send To Desktop (create
shortcut).

Tip
You can run a program’s installation program in Compatibility mode as well. Just right-click the
installation program’s icon, choose Properties, and click the Compatibility tab. See Chapter 16 for
information about how to locate those icons.
If the program still refuses to run, you may be able to get some information or updated drivers from the
Internet. Assuming you’ve already set up your Internet connection, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start button and choose Help and Support.
2. Click Find compatible hardware and software for Windows XP.
You can use options in the left pane, such as Software Lists, About Compatible Hardware and Software,
and Program Compatibility Wizard to look for appropriate information. If all else fails, you may need to
contact the program’s publisher and ask what’s needed to make the program run on Microsoft Windows
XP.
Summary
What you’ve learned in this chapter should help you to run any program on your system. You’ll also be
able to open any document, whether it’s something you created yourself or one you downloaded or
received as an e-mail attachment. Remember these main points:
To start any program that’s installed on your computer, click the Start button. If you don’t see
the program’s icon on the Start menu, check the All Programs menu.
Windows XP Bible
page 67
You can get help in just about any program by selecting Help from its menu bar.
When you use a program to create or edit a document, it’s important to remember to save your
work before closing the program or shutting down your computer.
To print a document, choose File Print from the program’s menu bar.
To You can open documents via the My Recent Documents item on the Start menu, Windows
Explorer, or the File option on the program’s menu bar.
Chapter 4: Shortcuts and Other Cool Tricks
With all the knowledge you have gained so far, you will be able to get around in Windows, as well as in
many different programs you will use. With practice, you will be able to find and use anything you need,
when you need it. You might eventually discover that you’re going through a fairly long series of clicks to
perform routine tasks. This chapter shows you ways to reduce the process to a single a click by creating
shortcuts.
What Is a Shortcut?
A shortcut is an icon that provides easy access to any program, document, folder, or nearly any other
resource on your computer. A shortcut icon looks like the original icon, but it has a small arrow in the
lower-left corner. If the shortcut is in a folder, and you’re currently viewing that folder in the Tiles view,
the word shortcut appears beneath the file name, as shown in Figure 4-1.
Figure 4-1: The Shared Documents icon on the left, and a shortcut to Shared Documents on the right
Clicking (or double-clicking) the shortcut has the same result as clicking the original icon — it opens the
program, folder, or document that the icon represents. However, you can place the shortcut anywhere
you want. The Windows desktop and the Quick Launch toolbar are prime candidates because they are
so readily accessible at all times.
One important technical difference exists between the original icons and any shortcuts you create. The
original icon represents the actual underlying file or folder. So when you delete that icon, you delete
what it represents. You don’t ever want to do this by accident, because you’ll lose whatever the icon
represents. If you were to delete the original Shared Documents icon — which is visible within My
Computer — you delete the entire Shared Documents folder and every file and folder within it. Not
good!
The shortcut icon, on the other hand, just contains the location of the actual underlying file or folder. So
when you delete the shortcut icon, you’re simply deleting the icon itself. The file or folder that the icon
represents is not deleted or altered in any way.
Incidentally, you might notice that the size of the shortcut icon back in Figure 4-1 is 1K. In reality, it’s
probably much smaller than that — Windows just tends to round sizes off to the nearest kilobyte. The
Shared Documents folder itself might be huge, containing many megabytes of information. But because
a shortcut contains information only about the location of the Shared Documents folder, it is always tiny,
no matter how much information is actually in the Shared Documents folder.

Dealing with Troublesome Programs
Not all programs run perfectly in Windows XP. Some programs just won’t run at all. Others may run
poorly or require you to change some settings to get the program to look right on the screen. Windows
XP offers a new Compatibility mode that can greatly simplify the task of getting these errant programs to
run correctly. To use the Compatibility mode, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start button and navigate normally to the menu option that you normally use to
start the program. But don’t click on the option for starting the program. Instead . . .
2. Right-click the option for starting the program and choose Properties from the menu that
appears.
3. Click the Compatibility tab in the Properties dialog box that opens to get to the options
If you know that the program ran properly in some earlier version of Windows, select the Run this
program using compatibility mode option, and then choose the appropriate earlier version of Windows
that the program ran under, such as Windows 95. Optionally, you also can choose any combination of
the following options:
• Run in 256 colors: Allows older programs designed to run on 256-color displays to run
properly (and more quickly) in Windows XP.
• Run in 640x480 screen resolution: If an older full-screen program’s window fills only a
portion of your screen, select this option to allow the program to run in true full-screen size.
• Disable visual themes: If fancy screen features of Windows XP make your older program
look weird on the screen, select this option to disable those features while the program is
running.
After making your selections, click the OK button and try running the program again. You may have to
experiment with different combinations of settings to get the program to run to your liking.