Windows OS Basics

by Lee Alexander

Turn on the Computer

What's the big deal? You flip a switch, right? Well, not usually. Most computer hardware is powered through a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) or a “surge strip.” These devices are designed to prevent inappropriate electric power to the computer components. Many setups use the device as a master switch to turn components on and off. If that be the case, you should wait a moment or two for the monitor to warm up (for a CRT display, LCDs are instant ON) before you hit the Power button on the case. Some older computers have two buttons on the case front: Power and Reset. The single button is a Power/Reset combination. To turn OFF the power, you must hold the button in for about 5 seconds. Is this the normal way to turn off the computer? No, no, no – you turn off the computer by mouse clicking on the Start button and selecting Shut Down. That begins a series of housekeeping steps by the Operating System to close applications smoothly and save settings for the next session.

Why dwell on the alternate shut down? I believe we should know from the beginning what to do when things do not go as planned. Like driving a car – what if the brakes do not function normally – now what? There are times when the computer may not shut down smoothly, more common with older OS's than Windows XP. You may even get the BSD – the Blue Screen of Death – where everything locks up and you have no recourse except to “pull the plug.” Why not just shut off the surge strip? Some peripherals need to be shut down via their own power management – ink jet printers, for example. Their power off routine parks the ink cartridges so as to cover the print head nozzles, preventing ink from clotting in them. Other devices may require fans to run for a cool off period before shut down.

The ON Process

When you first turn on your PC, you may get a black screen with white characters. This is the POST (Power On Self Test). One of the Self Tests is check out your RAM (Random Access Memory). If all is okay with this memory, the PC's internal speaker (not your fancy 5.1 or 7.1 external ones) will sound a single beep. More than a single beep means trouble and probably a trip to your favorite repair shop. When all is well, you'll get a splash screen indicating Windows OS is being loaded from the boot up device (usually the Hard Drive).

Troubleshooting

It is unusual to put possible problems up front in an article meant for beginners; however, sooner or later, you are may have to contend with cranky hardware or software. When Windows gets uppity and refuses to start, one of these two modes can give you a peek behind the scene.

You must be quick on your toes to enter the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or boot up in Safe Mode. As soon as the message, “loading Windows” appears- hit the appropriate key repeatedly to enter either Setup or Safe Mode. Typically Set Up is <F1> or < Del >. Entry to Safe Mode is usually via <F8>.

Since our theme is Basics, I will not get into the many phases or usefulness of these “un-normal boot-ups.” Suffice it to say, use Set-up primarily to change the order of boot devices for re-installation of Windows. If you have to do a re-install from a CD, you will want to boot up from the CD and not from your hard drive – the default device to start loading Windows OS.

You may have heard the term, “Flash the BIOS.” This is a job you hope never to have to do. The BIOS is a hunk of code stored on a non-volatile EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory). The term “flash” harks back to the days when PROMS were written to through a transparent window on the IC (Integrated Circuit), by a special machine. Cavorting in the BIOS is as dangerous as that other quagmire, the Registry.

Safe Mode, on the other hand, is a benign procedure for trouble shooting Start Up problems. It bypasses all those pesky utilities and programs that clutter up your Taskbar and slow the time to a crawl as you wait to actually get to work on your important stuff – like Solitaire. You will note the distinctive look of Safe Mode when it finishes its fast boot: very low resolution of the screen, pale colors, and the Safe Mode logo on the desktop's four corners. The “safe” part is only those programs required for a basic running of the operating system are loaded – drivers for the monitor, the keyboard and mouse, etc. What's a driver? It is a software program that acts as interpreter between the OS and your hardware.

Beyond the devices mentioned, you need particular drivers for advanced video cards, sound cards, printers, and scanners. Drivers can be particular to a manufacturer's specific model of a device or they can be generic. An example of the later is Windows' built in drivers for a general class of monitors.

The Screen

It would be nice to simply talk to your computer and tell it what to do. They are working on it but we are still a bit away from HAL's or the Star Trek level of sophistication. The combination of video and the mouse is your WINDOW into the working of the PC.

You now sit facing the top level of the file system's hierarchy known as the Desktop. The screen is populated with a flotsam of small images known as icons. They were put there by software impressed with its own self importance. Most of them you can simply delete (they are just shortcuts pointing to working applications) or move to other areas. Some, like the Recycle Bin (a politically correct named temporary holding area) are more persistent and will resist being pushed around.

What you are looking at is a Full Screen Window. It contains a nested window – usually a narrow strip at the bottom of the screen – that is the Taskbar. In the left corner there is a button marked Start – hallelujah! Now we're getting somewhere. As mentioned earlier, one of the primary functions of the Start button is to shut down the computer. Not to worry, it has other functions. Position your mouse's cursor (the slanted arrow) over the button and click the left button of the mouse. Up pops a list known as a menu, similar to a restaurant's bill of fare. It allows you to choose your next step. Did you make a mistake and click the mouse's right button? No sweat, you get the lunch menu instead of the breakfast menu.

Most of my comments will refer to Microsoft's latest OS, Windows XP. The company says XP stands for eXPerience; most pundits say it stands for eXPerimental. XP comes in two flavors – Home and Professional. The difference (besides $100) is the Professional version is geared to business and multiple users with the ability to put considerable restraints on classes of user accounts. For the single user or small family there is no real advantage in spending the additional money. The Home version allows a good deal of control by the Administrator (a high level account). She has the power to grant and refuse permissions, so be respectful, children.

Alternate ways to do the same thing

If you were confused by earlier versions of Windows OS's in the choices offered to do similar tasks, XP will drive you bonkers. Let's start with (what else?) the Start button. Right-click on it and choose Properties. Note this works almost everywhere – no matter where you find yourself, try a right-click for a varying (context sensitive) pop-up menu. Back to the Start properties – first thing you will see is a choice between the new Start menu and the Classic menu of yesteryear. My advice is go with the new – it may take some getting used to but I found it easier to navigate, once I got familiar with it. While you are there, hit the Customize button and in the ensuing dialog box (most call it that as it invites a “conversation of choices') select those options you think will appeal to you. You can always go back and deselect them - this leads me to believe there are quite a few women on Microsoft's programming teams.

On the subject of selecting choices, there are two types of buttons: check boxes and radio buttons. Check boxes allow for multiple preferences while radio buttons (named after early car radios that changed pre-set stations, pushing one button popped out the previous one) allows for a single choice among the options presented. Be sure to scan the Advanced tab for even more choices.

Quick Launch

Just to the right of the Start button on the Taskbar is a region that CAN be the Quick Launch area. I say - can be, as it is not typically turned on by default. What does it do? It allows you to launch applications with a single mouse click and serves to replace shortcuts on the Desktop. The drawback is the reduction of the Taskbar area showing which applications are open. However, you can adjust the area to show more or less of the icons there. If you do not normally work with multiple programs, this is of little consequence. You can turn on this feature by right-clicking (see how fast we get back to the mighty mouse's ambidextrousness!) on an empty area of the Taskbar and selecting Properties.

Under Taskbar appearance, check Show Quick Launch. To populate the handy feature, simply drag and drop shortcuts from the Desktop or Windows Explorer into the area. Whoa! Drag and Drop – what's that all about? Like a rodent scurrying off with a piece of cheese, you use your mouse left button to capture and move an item to another location. This is the big draw of a GUI (pronounced gooey) OS (Graphic User Interface Operating System). The item can be anything selectable – you know it is selected when the elements are reversed, as in a negative of a photo or white text on a black background – examples are the icons of shortcuts, the names of files or folders, drawings, etc.

You Drag by clicking on the item with the left button of the mouse and, holding down the button, move it on your screen to the desired target area and then – bombs away – release the left button to Drop it in its new location. What about doing it with the right button?

Aha, even better! When you release the right button you get – what else? – A popup menu with a choice of Copy, Move, or Cancel. It means an extra click but if you are not sure you really want to do it, you can practice mouse control to your heart's content and never mess up the works.

Notification Area

The right hand end of the Taskbar is the Notification area. It used to be called the System Tray, but when you get a new version of a program is has to have new things even if it is only a name change, right? The most prominent item here is, usually, the clock. The clock is a good thing to have in a computer – it puts a date/time stamp on files you save. Then if you cannot remember what you called a file saved yesterday, you can search for it by date/time. Win XP, by default, will synchronize your clock periodically while you are on the Internet. Right-click on the clock (if it is not there, right-click in the area and select Properties; under the Notification area tab there is a check box to Show the Clock) and select Adjust Date/Time. Under the Internet time tab you will see the option to turn on clock synchronization.

File Management

What are files? A file is the smallest entity the OS can save. What do we mean by save ? A computer saves data by writing it to a non-volatile recording medium: the Hard Drive, a floppy disk, a CD, tape and other devices – both internal and external. Files come in an almost never-ending array of flavors. Back in the days of DOS (Disk Operating System), a convention was established for naming files: a filename could be only 8 alphanumeric characters, followed by a period, and then the filetype restricted to 3 characters. An example could be --- MYLETTER.TXT --- not very informative, is it? It was not until Windows 95 that long filenames (up to 255 characters) were allowed. We occasionally run into this restriction. You might come across a filename such as Letter~01.TXT, whereas you had named it LetterToJohnSept_1.TXT

It is still a convention to use filetype designations of 3 characters. The purpose of the filetype is to associate the file with an application. For example, when you double-click on a file named MEMO.TXT, Windows knows to open its simple word processing application, Notepad, and display the contents of the file in a format legible to the user. If the file is a JPG (Joint Photography Experts Group) it will open in a graphics viewing application.

The other element of file management in Windows is the folder, named after the ubiquitous folded manila containers found in most offices and homes. Consider the analogy of the computer to an office (after all, Microsoft calls its big suite of applications, Office). The hard drives or partitions may be looked at as drawers in a file cabinet. Into those drawers you put folders and those folders can have sub-folders within them. Without this concept or something similar, your storage area would resemble an enormous shoebox. Everything you saved would be in there, but how would you ever find it?

The application to manage your files and folders in Windows is Windows Explorer. Note that Microsoft, in its infallible wisdom, called its browser Internet Explorer – a completely different program in all aspects. To create more confusion, the Windows Explorer is a file simply called explorer.exe. The .exe filetype is for ‘executable' – double-click on it and it jumps up and runs.

What do we mean by “managing your files?” There are two major factors. By applying the correct registered file type, you specify the application that will open to view and edit the file. For a document, you typically want to work on it in a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. If it is a simple memo or informal letter to a friend, Word could be overkill. A greatly reduced (in size) file would be created by using Notepad or Word Pad; the filetype extensions are .txt and .wri, respectively.

Windows OS's come with a multitude of default folders. One of them is named Windows and within this folder is a subfolder called System. For the most part, you should consider the Windows folder and all its sub-folders off-limits. They are dynamic in that many new programs and/or add-ons will write to them upon installation. Primarily they will be used to store DLL (Direct Linked Library) files, shortcut icons stored on your Desktop, and such.

HELP

Once upon a time, when you acquired a new computer or program it came with a publication generally referred to as a User's Manual. This usually meant a new shelf in your bookcase to store an arm's length of books. The old mainframes, such as IBM's 360 model, needed a new BOOKCASE – not just a shelf. Beyond a rudimentary pamphlet and wall chart, the bulk of information required to run the computer and its applications is buried in Help Files within the computer, on-line. They are called “context sensitive” as they are broken up into files associated with the application of the moment. You'll find them via the Title Bar menu item – the button marked Help.

Help files come in a wide variety of formats. Windows and other Microsoft applications have a proprietary format, .hlp, along with a popular Adobe format .pdf, which stands for Portable Document Format. The big advantage of PDF files is their compatibility in different environs. You can download a free PDF viewer from many sites. Another format, developed for Web pages and now very popular, is HTM – Hyper Text Markup Language.

The problem with this new approach, especially to those used to the printed word (aka “seniors”), is the difficulty of “scanning” a narrow view on your monitor as opposed to flipping pages of a book back and forth. Windows Help typically presents three tabs in its window: Contents, Answer Wizard, and Index. Do not rely too heavily on the Answer Wizard. For example try typing in “What's the meaning of life?” or “How much is 2 + 2?” You will get “answers” in the form of topics but how useful they will be is debatable.

‘Contents' is essentially a table of contents in an expandable tree yielding broad categories. The ‘index' tab presents you with a dialog box to enter predefined keywords to search. PDF help files are better; they usually contain an index of almost every significant word in the document along with an intelligent search function that recognizes derivatives. There is an old adage, finding the solution begins with finding the question; most of the time we simply do not know what to ask.