CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [54]
Right-Click
Windows, being a graphical user interface OS, covers your monitor with windows, menus, icons, file lists—all kinds of pretty things you click on to do work. Any single thing you see on your desktop is called an object. If you want to open any object in Windows, you double-click on it. If you want to change something about an object, you right-click on it.
Right-clicking on an object brings up a small menu called the context menu, and it works on everything in Windows. In fact, try to place your mouse somewhere in Windows where right-clicking does not bring up a menu (there are a few places, but they’re not easy to find). What you see on the little menu when you right-click varies dramatically depending on the item you decide to right-click. If you right-click a running program in the running program area on the taskbar, you’ll see items that relate to a window, such as move, resize, and so on (Figure 4-59). If you right-click on your desktop, you get options for changing the appearance of the desktop (Figure 4-60). Even different types of files show different results when you right-click on them. Right-clicking is something techs do often.
Figure 4-59 Right-clicking on a program
Figure 4-60 Right-clicking on the desktop
Figure 4-61 Right-clicking on My Computer
One menu item you’ll see almost anywhere you right-click is Properties. Every object in Windows has properties. When you right-click on something and can’t find what you’re looking for, select Properties. Figure 4-61 shows the results of right-clicking on My Computerr—not very exciting. But if you select Properties, you’ll get a dialog box like the one shown in Figure 4-62.
Figure 4-62 My Computer properties
Control Panel
The Control Panel handles most of the maintenance, upgrade, and configuration aspects of Windows. As such, the Control Panel is the first set of tools for every tech to explore. Select Start | Settings | Control Panel to open the Control Panel in Windows 2000 and Windows Vista. In Windows XP, the Control Panel is directly on the Start menu by default.
The Control Panel in Windows 2000 opens in the traditional icon-littered view. In Windows XP and Vista, the Control Panel opens in the Category view, in which all of the icons are grouped into broad categories such as “Printers and Other Hardware.” This view requires an additional click (and sometimes a guess about which category includes the icon you need), so most techs use the Switch to Classic View link to get back to the icons. Figure 4-63 shows the Windows XP Control Panel in both Category and Classic views.
A large number of programs, called applets, populate the Control Panel. The names and selection of applets vary depending on the version of Windows and whether any installed programs have added applets. But all versions of Windows share many of the same applets, including Display/Personalization, Add or Remove Programs/Programs and Features, and System (all versions)—what I call the Big Three applets for techs. With Display/Personalization, you can make changes to the look and feel of your Windows desktop and tweak your video settings. Add or Remove Programs/Programs and Features enables you to add or remove programs. The System applet gives you access to essential system information and tools, such as the Device Manager, although Microsoft wisely added Device Manager right on the Control Panel starting with Vista.
Figure 4-63 Windows XP Control Panel in two views: Category (left) and Classic (right)
Every icon you see in the Control Panel is actually a file with the extension .CPL. Any time you get an error opening the Control Panel, you can bet you have a corrupted CPL file.