Tips on Tricks in Windows 95/98 Silly Stuff All Staff
Bring Back That Ol' DOS Feeling
If you're tired of Windows 95's colorful, appealing and intuitive interface, you can make it as dark and forbidding as DOS. Right-click on your wallpaper and choose Properties to bring up the Display Properties dialog, then select the Appearance tab. Select each of the items in the Item box and make everything black (except for the typefaces; make them all white, using the font option). Also, reduce the size of everything that's adjustable to minimize buttons and scroll boxes.
You can also give Win95 the limited functionality of DOS. Put the DOS Prompt in your Startup group so all your applications are just a DOS command away.
Cheating At Hearts
Some of you might know this, but while playing both local and network Hearts it is possible to see the cards of your opponents by changing the following values in the appropriate files.
Open the registry editor (from the start menu choose RUN then enter REGEDIT, Open the HKEY_CURRENT_USER, SOFTWARE, MICROSOFT, WINDOWS, CURRENTVERSION, APPLETS, HEARTS key. Now enter a new string value called ZB and set that value to 42. Close REGEDIT and start Hearts! Press the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-F12 keys at the same time and your opponents hands will be visible!
Deafening Silence
Here's how to keep the peace. Click on the taskbar's speaker icon and move the volume slider to the bottom, then click anywhere on the desktop. When your friends try to play their favorite tunes on your computer's 6X spin CD-ROM drive, they won't hear a thing; they won't even get an error message.
Don't Play Nice with Your Coworkers
Don't want to share that expensive color laser printer with others? From the Start menu, select Settings, then Printers. Double-click on the Printers icon and select Network Printer. When the Add Printer Wizard asks you for a name for that new $10,000 printer you're supposed to be sharing with your peers, throw them off the track by typing in something like 'Bob's 9-pin dot matrix.'
Flying Windows with Turbo Power
Make Windows really fly by choosing the Display icon from Control Panel and selecting Screen Saver/Flying Windows. Click on Settings and go to warp speed by moving the slider all the way to the right and setting the density, or number of windows, to 75. Then click on OK twice. On a 600 MHz P!!! with 4+ MB of VRAM, these Flying Windows will make your head spin.
My Computer's Flipped!
Want to drive a co-worker crazy? Find an unattended computer and open the Start menu. Select the Run option, type program in the Open box and click on OK. When Program Manager opens, adjust it to fill one-half to three-quarters of the screen. Press Alt+Print Screen to save the freshly configured Program Manager window to the Clipboard. Then open Paint and paste the Clipboard image into the applet's window. Flip all or part of the image horizontally, vertically or both. Then save the flipped-out file and use it as wallpaper.
Protect Your Data With Long Filenames
Use Windows 95's support of long filenames to create multiple documents with the same first eight letters. Then pass them to your technologically challenged friends who still run Win 3.x. When they open your files, your meaningful screen name is reduced to hash and underlines.
