Newsletter Archives

PC Tips & Tricks
November, 2007

In this edition:
A Smaller Recycle Bin
Trouble Loading Web Sites?
Gmail Emoticons

A Smaller Recycle Bin

Although a 250GB drive is mighty big and you might not be struggling to find space on it, if you have a smaller drive, free space might be more of an issue since programs seem to be getting bigger by the day.

To see how much space your Recycle Bin is taking away from you, right click on it and then choose Properties. In the Global tab, you'll see the percentage of your hard drive allocated to your Recycle Bin. As mentioned, Windows uses a default of 10%.

To free up some of that space for files you want to keep, simply drag the slider to the left. If you have more than one drive, you can see how much of each drive will be reserved for the Recycle Bin by clicking on its tab.

What happens if you delete something that's bigger than the amount of disk space reserved for the Recycle Bin or if the bin's full and you delete another file? Windows will permanently delete the file rather than moving it to the Recycle Bin. (Of course, you could still recover the file with Media Investigator if you needed it back.)

If you want some drives to have more or less space reserved for the Recycle Bin than other drives, you can select the "Configure Drives Independently" button and then set each drive's percentage within its tab.

Trouble Loading Web Sites?
If Internet Explorer is having problems loading some web sites, it may be that it isn't configured correctly to handle active content. This problem is usually easy to fix. Below are four possible solutions which we recommend you try one at a time. That is, try one, then try to visit the web site. If you still have a problem loading it, try the next solution and try to visit the site again. Still having problems? Try the third solution.

1. Disable scripts from running automatically. Go to Tools > Internet Options and select the Security tab. Select the Internet icon and then click the Custom Level button. Under the Settings box, scroll down to the Scripting section. Disable both "Active scripting" and "Scripting of Java applets". Click OK twice to save the changes.
2. If you've done the first solution and the site still doesn't load, try this next step which is to configure Internet Explorer so it doesn't automatically use items that show active content. To do this, go to Tools > Internet Options and select the Security tab again. Select the Internet icon and then click on the Custom Level button. Under the Settings box, select Disable for each of the following: "Download signed ActiveX controls", "Download unsigned ActiveX controls", "Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe", "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins" and "Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting". Click OK twice to save the changes and try to load the site again.
3. If that didn't work, try disabling Internet Explorer's internal Java Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler. To do this, go to Tools > Internet Options and select the Advanced tab. Uncheck the box that says "JIT compiler for virtual machine enabled (requires restart)," under the Java VM section. Click OK.
4. As a last resort, you can ensure that Internet Explorer doesn't run Java programs automatically. Go to Tools > Internet Options and select on the Security tab. Select the Internet icon and click the Custom Level button. In the Settings box, go to the Java Permissions section and select Disable Java. Click OK twice.

One of these should resolve your problem. Remember to try one at a time. If the web site still doesn't load after trying each of the above, it's time to contact that web site's administrator and ask them for help.

Gmail Emoticons
If you want to add those cute little smiley faces to emails you send from your Gmail account, you may be interested in a program called Gmail Emoticons which you can find at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9372. Instructions can be found on that page but here's a quick summary:

• Install the script by clicking on the "Install this script" (black) button in the top-right of the page.
• After installing the script and logging into your Gmail account, you can add the emoticons by two methods.
• The first way is to simply drag & drop the emoticon into your email's compose box.
• The other way to add an emoticon is to click the Emoticons link next to the Check Spelling link. Select the emoticon(s) you want as you would if you were highlighting text, then right-click and select Copy. Go back to the compose window, right-click and select Paste.

That's all there is to it. Now you can add as many of those smiley faces as you want.

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