Broken Control Key - Now What?

So, the Control key on my laptop keyboard is dead. Not dirty, dead, D-E-A-D. I'm a keyboard person. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?

How to get the Task Manager? Right click on the Task Bar (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and choose Task Manager. Or, do Start > Run > taskmgr.

Copy? You can use the mouse to highlight and then choose Edit/Copy, and the same to then paste it. Puleeeze! Too slow. Highlight, right click choose Copy, and then the same to paste it. A tiny bit better.

I am waiting anxiously for my next credit card cycle so I can get this keyboard replaced. Meanwhile, I've can at least limp along until I have Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V back!

Using Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is a very handy application that I often forget about using. I thought if I reminded you about it, it would help me remember too!

Any computer with Windows XP or 2003 has it installed. In Windows Vista it has been replaced with the similar Windows Photo Gallery. It is not software for editing, but just an easy way to see the images in a folder, at a decent size, without opening editing software.



You can view the images in any folder which contains images. Acceptable formats include jpg, gif (including animated), bmp, png, wmf, emf, ico, and tiff. Open the desired folder. It doesn't matter what view is selected (eg. thumbnails, list, etc). Select any image and right click, then choose Open With/ Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. The viewer will open and you can scroll through the images that are in that folder.



There can be files in the folder that aren't images, and the viewer will ignore them. In the screen capture here you can see that I'm about to view any images that are lost on my too-busy desktop- an easy way to find an image.

Within Windows Picture and Fax Viewer you can view pictures with the best fit to the screen, make them full size, or zoom in and out. You can rotate images. You can print, save with the same or a different name, and delete images. Another choice is to close the viewer and open the image with your default image editing software.

Supposedly, in the My Pictures folder if you simply double-click on a photo file the viewer will automatically open. This may not be true. For me, a double-click just opens my photo editing program. But you can always do the right-click and Open With option.

See Microsoft Documentation for the Picture and Fax viewer.

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Using the Quick Launch Task Bar

Did you know that you can easily change which little icons show at the bottom left of the screen, and their order? That section of the Task Bar is called Quick Launch.

It's as easy as drag and drop! From My Computer or Explorer, you can drag any program icon to that area of the task bar. And you can drag them around if you don't like the order they are in, since only 3 will display without expanding the menu.

If Quick Launch doesn't show, right click on the Task Bar, scroll to Toolbars, and make sure that Quick Launch is checked.

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Using Microsoft Image Properties

You can help organize your pictures without purchasing any fancy software if you make use of the Image Properties functions on any Windows PC. A great deal of information about the picture will already be embedded with it, but you can add descriptions, title, author (photographer), and most interestingly keywords which will tag the photo in a search.


From any file folder that contains images chose one and right click, then select properties. The list I am showing is in text, but you might have the thumbnails displayed. That doesn't matter.


On the General tab you can change the name of the image in case you haven't already named it something other than the camera-assigned number. Don't forget to leave the extension, this will not be added automatically! Notice all the information held here- when the file was created, its size and any time it was modified or accessed.


On the Summary tab, things get interesting! Add another title if you like, subject and author. These are all optional. Sometimes I do this, sometimes not.

The part I really like is keywords. This is like having the ability to place one image in several file folders or categories. Let's say you have a picture of a stunning scarlet maple leaf. Keywords might be red, trees, autumn, color, maple, leaves. Sometime, months later you would like to find all your pictures of maples. From the Windows start menu, click "Search," and then photos. Add the word "maple" to your search field, and all the photos that you have tagged with the keyword "maple" will be located!

In the Comments field you can give more detail. I like to use this to include more specific information about a picture. To continue to maple leaf example I might say "Tree in the SW corner of Mr. Smith's field." If I have two or more shots that I want to keep of the same thing I might add something like "full leaf" or "closeup of veins." Information like this is useful when it's hard to tell two thumbnail images apart and you don't want to bother to open the image to full size.


Finally, if you click the Advanced button from the General tab, you can see lots of detailed information about the image such as f-stop, shutter speed, resolution, and much more.

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