Quick Command
Quick Defrag
Quick Install
Quick Name Change
Quick Double Pane View
Quick Start-Up
Quicker font installations
Quit Windows in a flash
Quick Command
To access the Command Prompt quickly, simply press Start, Run, then type COMMAND and hit OK.
Quick Defrag
Have Multiple drives or multiple partitions? Create a Quick Defrag Menu on your right mouse click context menu. Here's how: Goto Explorer, View (on Menu) / Options.
Click on File Types Tab and scroll down to Drives. Click Edit, Then New. In the Menu Line Print Quick Defrag! In the Command Line Print "c:\windows (or win95)\defrag.exe "%1" /noprompt.
This will immediately invoke the Disk Defragmenter with no prompts and will exit as soon as it is done. Then goto My Computer and right mouse select a drive and select the Quick Defrag! and it will begin automatically! It's great if you have several real or DriveSpace Drives on your computer.
Quick Install
If you are always installing new software, make it easy on yourself by creating shortcuts on your desktop to A:\SETUP.EXE and A:\INSTALL.EXE. Now when you have a new program, you can now just click on the appropriate short cut.
Quick Name Change
Press F2 to change the name of a selected file or folder.
Quick Double Pane View
In Explorer, if you click on a folder once, then hold down the Shift key and double click on it, you will open the folder with a two-pane Explorer view.
Quick Start-Up
If you want your computer to start up a little faster, simply hold down the Shift key as Windows loads. This will prevent the applications in the start-up folder from loading
Quicker font installations
You can go through the Fonts folder in Control Panel, and select Install New Font from the File Menu. Then, up pops the Add Fonts dialog, basically just like it did in Windows 3.1 and 3.11. But, in Windows 95, there is a new rub.
Font installation is fully supported by Drag and Drop, so all you need to do is open up your Fonts folder, and drag whichever font(s) you wish to install. The neat thing with this is that the font(s) that you have just dragged into the Fonts folder immediately appear in all of the applications that use True Type fonts!
If you have allowed Windows 95 to install the default FONTS folder inside the Windows 95 folder, then you'll need to hold down the SHIFT key while dragging the file into the Fonts folder. This prevents it from being copied into the Windows 95 System sub-folder, which would needlessly double the amount of disk space consumed.
Quit Windows in a flash!
Because of the Registry, Windows 95 is extremely methodical about shutting itself down. To make sure that it is done right, the GODS of GUI have even included the "soon to be infamous" Shut Down on the Start Menu. You have to click on the Start button and select Shut Down from the menu.
A dialog box appears, giving the user the choice of either; shutting down completely, restarting the PC, exiting to MS-DOS "mode" or, if you have a network configured, to log on as a different user.
The "restart your PC" option cycles completely through the boot process; self test, memory countdown, anti-virus scanning, CD-ROM drive configuration,
Hold down the SHIFT key when selecting the OK button to restart your PC, when selecting that choice from the Shut Down dialog.
This next one works even better (and FASTER!)
Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to bring up the Close Program dialog box. In this dialog, select "Explorer" and click on End Task. Explorer is the Windows 95 "Shell" so the system assumes you are trying to quit and displays the Shut Down dialog. Click on NO. Then, another box will pop up, and there you select End Task.
This will shut down the Explorer "Shell". But, what actually will happen is you will see your Desktop rebuild itself in a matter of a handful of seconds (literally). Windows 95 cannot properly run without Explorer, so it automatically restarts Explorer, rereading the entire Registry in the process.