My Six Favorite (and Free) Windows Annoyance Busters

I get lots of e-mail asking if I have a smart fix for a dumb computing hassle. Boy, do I--times six. Here are my freebie favorites.

The Hassle: My PC crashes abruptly, up to a dozen times a week. I've tried every troubleshooting trick I can think of. Any ideas?

Save keystrokes by typing the first few letters of the name of a program and then letting Launchy find and open it for you. The Fix: Your PC's memory modules might be failing. Check them with Microsoft's Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. Burn the program onto a CD (Burnatonce is quick and easy) and then boot from the CD.

The Hassle: The context menu that appears when I right-click a file in Explorer or on the desktop is full of items I never use.

The Fix: Why don't you give FileMenu Tools a try? The program lets you customize the context menu By removing unused commands that other programs have added; ditto for entries on the 'Send-to' submenu.

The Hassle: My Start menu is jammed with shortcuts I don't need, and I can never remember where the ones that I do use are hiding. I spend more time shortcut-hunting than working.

The Fix: Quick, get a copy of Josh Karlin's Launchy, a clever little keyboard-shortcut maker. Press <Alt>-<Space> to open Launchy (you can change it to another combination if you like), tap the first few letters of the program you want to open, press <Enter>, and Launchy will launch it (see the screen shot above). If you use several files In a specific folder--say, Adobe PDFs or Word docs--just add them to the list of folders that you want Launchy to monitor.

The tool has more cool tricks. For example, you can send a search request to Google, MSN, or Yahoo. To search Google, type google, press <Tab>, type your search query, and press <Enter>. Launchy displays the search results in your browser. This trick also works with Amazon, Netflix, Wikipedia, and the IMDB movie database. You can even add your music folder to Launchy for quick access to your favorite songs.

To open a Control Panel applet, type the first few letters of its name--mouse, sound, or add-remove, for instance. For fast access to a Command box, add cmd To Launchy's Runny plug-in. The Weby plug-in automatically loads Firefox bookmarks and keywords.

The Hassle: It's a small issue, but it bothers me: The files I import from my camera are all uppercase. I want them all lowercase.

The Fix: Recase to the rescue. Highlight one or all of the files--whether upper-, lower-, or mixed case--and Recase will change them to the case that's just right for you.

The Hassle:I need a quick way to bring my audience's attention to a specific spot on a slide during my PowerPoint demos.

The Fix: With ZoomIt, you can highlight any spot on the screen. This sweet utility also enables you to use your mouse to draw on a specific area or type a short message.

The Hassle:I have hundreds of files with cryptic file names. No surprise that I can't remember the contents of half of them.

The Fix: I use AnnotSX (Annotator Shell Extension), a gem that lets you jot unlimited notes for any file. Just highlight the file, press <Alt>-<Enter> to access its Properties, choose the Annotations tab, and start typing your notes.

Play MP3s on Your Phone

I have a brand-new cell phone with multimedia capability. The good news: It plays WMA files. The bad news: All of my recordings are MP3s. NBX Audio's NBFree MP3 to WMA Converter does the trick. The app's interface isn't great, and I had to fool around to find the right frequency and bit rate when converting to make the WMAs play on my phone. But now I can play music from my phone--and it didn't cost me a nickel.

Wayne Sheffield, Cumberland, Virginia