Saving Searches

Anytime you are performing a search, you can click on the Save Search button in Explorer.

Now when you are in Explorer you will see the save searches under Favorites.

Another way to save a search is dragging the search icon in the address bar into your listed favorites list. Like in this example where I searched for “type:flac” and drag the icon to the list.

You might also want to create shortcuts to the searches on your desktop for easy access.

If you have a lot of files on your machine and need a way to access them quickly, saving searches is a great way to increase productivity.

Note: Q-Dir is available in regular install and portable versions.

Installation

The install process is extremely quick and easy with Q-Dir…there are only two windows to go through. The first window lets you choose the language version that you prefer by clicking on the appropriate flag symbol and has the EULA for Q-Dir.

The second window asks if you would like to install for all users or just for the current account, the Program Group that you would like Q-Dir in, after-installation preferences, shortcut preferences, desired Target Directory, and an option to create a portable install (nice!).

What Q-Dir Looks Like

Once you have finished installing Q-Dir and started it for the first time, it will open with all four viewing panes active. You can definitely get some file access going here!

Q-Dir Menus & Window Style Toolbar

Here is a quick look at the Menus…the Extras Menu will give you quick and easy access for customizing Q-Dir.

And to the right side of the Menus, you will find this toolbar. You can select the viewing pane style and number of active viewing panes easily here.

Options

Q-Dir has an easy to navigate tab system for the options. In the first tab you can select the options that you like for Q-Dir Design and Context Menu inclusion, the Address Bar, System display, Forward and Backward Navigation, and Media Previews.

Choose custom colors and/or font styles for file types if desired…to activate this feature select “Use Color-Filter” in the lower left corner.

Select the settings for Columns, View Settings, Tree-View, and Column Settings Transfer that best suit your needs.

Add any custom File Filters that you desire…

Make adjustments to or add Program Shortcuts.

Like Quick-Links? Modify or add the links that you like.

Need any special file associations? Add them in here!

Conclusion

If you love (or need) to access multiple hard drive and folder areas at the same time, then Q-Dir can help you keep it all contained in a single window.

Links

Download Q-Dir (version 3.95) – Exe File & Portable Versions

Works On: Windows 98 – 7 (32 & 64 bit)

Installed On: Windows Vista (32 bit), Service Pack 2

Here’s a good example of the problem… almost all of the folders under my picture library are showing the Windows Media Player icon. How does that even happen? Sometimes they start showing the right image, but then they’ll randomly revert back, and forget about using one of the other views.

The problem is that all of the preview thumbnail images used in the icons are stored in a cache file, which sometimes goes all wacky and gets corrupted, and requires some cleanup.

Fix the Problem with Disk Cleanup

To fix the problem, simply open up Disk Cleanup by typing “disk cleanup” into the start menu search, or find it under the accessories area. You can run a full disk cleanup if you want, but if you just want to quickly fix the problem, scroll down until you see Thumbnails and make sure that one is checked.

You’ll want to click the “Clean up system files” button, wait for it to finish, and then probably log off and back on.

Everything should be looking good now. Did it solve the problem for you?

Note that all the screenshots are from Windows 7, but we’ve used the same technique on Windows Vista as well.

In case you’re wondering, 7-Zip is our file archiving utility of choice around here. It’s awesome.

Using 7-Zip File Manager

You can quickly find the 7-Zip File Manager under the start menu by just typing “7″ into the search box.

The default view is a simple details view, that doesn’t go out of whack every time you browse into another folder. It just works. You can even browse down into any archive (zip, rar, iso, etc) file as if it was a folder.

Using the View menu, you can enable a dual pane mode, so you can drag/drop files back and forth between the panes.

For quickly accessing folders, you can setup Favorites that even have hotkeys associated to them… makes finding that deeply nested folder a breeze.

Inside the options panel are a couple of really useful options that aren’t enabled by default: You can show the real file icons the same way Explorer does, enable the regular explorer system menu, and set full row selection.

Ever browse to a folder, but then forget which one it was? Using the Alt+F12 shortcut key (or through the View menu) you can bring up the Folders History dialog, which saves everywhere that you browsed. Very useful!

The context menu for files already has powerful capabilities embedded… we already have a hack to add the Copy To / Move To options to Explorer, but it’s something that should just be there in the first place.

You’ll notice in the screenshot that there’s also a very useful option to create a new folder with a hotkey… something you can only do in Explorer with a plugin.

Create a Shortcut to Open a Specific Folder in 7-Zip

You can also setup an icon to open up 7-Zip already set to a specific folder. Just right-click anywhere and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

Use the Browse button to navigate down to the following path (adjusting if you installed elsewhere).

“C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7zFM.exe”

Make sure to include the full path in quotes, and then pass in the path that you want to open as a parameter (with a space between). In the example above, the shortcut will open the C:\ folder.

Now you should have an icon that will open 7-Zip directly to the C: drive.

It’s simple, easy, and useful… it’s a Stupid Geek Trick. Got any tricks of your own? Share them in the comments.

Download 7-Zip from z-zip.org

For this task we’ll use a small freeware called Belvedere that can move or delete files based on custom rules you can easily setup in the interface. To get the full benefit of automated cleanup, you should also setup the great system-cleaning application CCleaner to automatically run each night.

Using Belvedere

After downloading the executable and saving it to a safe place, you can simply launch it and get right to work (no install required). If you want the application to run automatically when you login, you can create a shortcut in the shell:startup folder.

The first thing you’ll want to do is click the plus symbol on the bottom left to add a new Folder to watch.

Next you’ll want to select the folder in the logically named “Browser For Folder” dialog.

Once you’ve added the folder, you’ll want to first select it on the left-hand side…

Then click the plus symbol below the Rules box to create a new rule, giving it a relevant name like “Cleanup Old Downloads”. The interface will let you create multiple conditions to match files, but since we’re trying to clean up old downloads you can choose “Date last opened” and “is not in the last” x “days”, which is pretty easy to understand.

You’ll probably want to send the file to the recycle bin rather than just deleting it, and you can refine the filter further by adding a new rule with the plus icon, and specifying “Extension” and “matches one of”, and then put your file extensions into the box, separated by a comma (don’t use the period).

The Test button will show you what files are going to match so you don’t make a big mistake.

Once you are done with that rule, you can create a completely different rule to match different files… for instance I created a rule to move all downloaded images to my Pictures folder.

Once you’ve created all of your rules, you can minimize the application to the system tray, and it will work silently in the background, cleaning up after you. It’s not a perfect app and definitely has a few bugs (so use the recycle bin option instead of delete), but overall it’s a great application for keeping your system cleaned up.

Download Belvedere from lifehacker.com

The Magic Folder is actually just a Windows Sidebar gadget that you can drag files to, and it can automatically sort them into the proper folders, based on rules which you can configure easily.

Using the Magic Folder

Once you install the gadget, you’ll probably need to add it by right-clicking on the sidebar somewhere and choosing “Add Gadgets” and then dragging it to the desktop or the sidebar.

The first time you add the gadget to your desktop you’ll be prompted with a quick start screen… I would leave the checkbox alone, and click on the green button at the bottom.

Now you’ll want to open up the settings by clicking on the little wrench icon that floats next to the gadget.

The first thing we’ll do is head over to the Visual tab and change the settings to whatever style you like. I prefer the Default style, but you might like the “Magic” one too.

If you aren’t a fan of giant gadgets, you can make it smaller and stick it in the corner… it’s barely noticeable next to my Mario wallpaper.

Without further configuring, we can start to use the gadget… just drag a file onto the magic folder…

And you’ll be prompted for a folder location to move the files to, from a list of favorite folders (which we can configure).

Once you’ve selected the folder and clicked the green check button, the file will be moved and you’ll get a confirmation (which we can also turn off).

Back in the settings panel, you can take a look at the Folders tab to customize that list of folders from the drop-down above.

The first thing I did was turn off the “file move confirmations”, which I found really annoying. You can also choose to move files based on their extensions by checking the top box, which will cause the Extensions tab to be enabled.

Now you can use the Extensions tab to choose different file extensions and where they should be moved by default. Most of the common extensions are already configured for you… for instance Word documents will be moved to your Documents folder by default.

Note that once you enable the option to move files automatically, you won’t be prompted at all… the files will simply be magically moved.

There’s another option that can be very interesting… the “Watched Folder”, which will create a new folder where the rules are automatically applied…

If you turn this option on, you’ll see a new folder in your User directory called “The Magic Folder”. Anything moved to this folder will be processed and moved into the automatic folders without requiring any user intervention.

Another note: If you click on the folder you’ll be prompted to open a folder from the drop-down, which is a rather easy way to access your favorite folders without making a bunch of extra icons.

This is definitely one of the best Vista Sidebar gadgets I’ve come across. Think it’s enough to keep you from disabling the sidebar?

Download The Magic Folder Vista Sidebar Gadget

This ability has existed in Windows via the subst command for quite a while, so this will also work for you XP users as well.

Map a Drive Letter the Easy Way

The easiest way to assign a drive letter to a folder is to use a simple utility called Visual Subst, which gives you a nice graphical interface to assign drive letters, but also does something that the command line version can’t… you can set your virtual drives to apply again at startup.

You can download and run the utility without needing to install it, and then simply use the Browse button to select your path, and click the green plus symbol after choosing the drive letter.

At this point you should see the drive letter show up in the list. (Note that you can delete it by highlighting and choosing the red X icon, or change the path / letter by using the Save button.

If you want to save the drives, you’ll want to select the “Apply virtual drives on Windows startup” option.

Now when you open up your Computer window, you should see the new drive show up in the list.

The contents of the new M: drive will actually be the contents of my desktop folder.

Download Visual Subst from ntwind.com

Assign Drive Letters from the Command Prompt

If you are more the keyboard ninja type, or just want to know how to use the command line version, you can use the subst command to map drive letters the same way by using the following syntax:

subst <driveletter> <folder path>

For example, to map the M: drive to my desktop folder I would use the following command:

subst M: c:\users\geek\desktop

If you just want to see which drive letters are assigned, you can use subst without any arguments, as shown here:

To delete a drive letter you can use the /D switch instead of a path… for instance, to delete the M: drive that I just created, I would use the following syntax:

subst M: /D

Now when you use the subst command to see the current drives, you’ll see nothing in the list.

I’ve found the subst command to be very useful, not just in shortening folder paths but also in one instance where I wanted to delete my second partition… I just reassigned the D: drive letter to point to C: and copied all the data over. That way the application shortcuts still worked without having to reinstall the application.

Installation

Installing WinDirStat is as easy at it gets… the one thing to point out is that if running on legacy systems you want to make sure to check ANSI as a core component.

Using WinDirStat

When first launching WinDirStat you get the option to select All or Individual drives, you can even choose to scan a single folder.  For this example I will go ahead and scan my local drive. 

While scanning you can view the progress.  Check out the cool Pac-Man animations!  I am such a sucker for geek nostalgia =)

The scan tool a bit under a minute, and you end up with a nice graphical representation of the files on your hard drive.

WinDirStat has three sections the Directory List, Extension List, and the graphically crazy colored Treemap. The colors on the extension list correspond with the location of the type of file on the Treemap.

Use different view options to change the look of the utility or amount of data shown in the Treemap.  When you mouse over a certain section on the Treemap you can choose to clean that file up, look at its properties, or open the directory it is in via Windows Explorer.

Of course there are customizable settings, here is an example of changing the Treemap color patterns.

Conclusion

The Treemap provides the ability to easily go to each directory or individual file on a hard drive.  It is also a very nice graphical representation of each type of file extension.  If you have ever wondered what files are taking up so much space this will neatly show you the culprit and allow them to be cleaned directly from the GUI.  WinDirStat will work on all versions of Windows from 95 up to Vista.  This is great for legacy systems still operation that need maintenance. 

Download WinDirStat For All Versions Of Windows

Note: If you aren’t interested in installing any additional software but still want to speed things up, make sure that you have Vista Service Pack 1 installed, and then try the autotuning tweak.

Using TeraCopy

TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek time as well as asynchronous copy to speed up the transfer time.

For this example I am transferring one of my mp3 collections to my local C: drive from my external.  The size of this folder is 56.1 GB and would take quite a while copying over by using the drag and drop method.

There are a couple ways to go about using TeraCopy.  The first is to open the TeraCopy user interface and drag the files or folder you want to copy into TeraCopy. From there you can copy them over by clicking the Copy or Move button and selecting a location.

Another way to use TeraCopy is right click on the folder you want to transfer then select TeraCopy from the menu.  This will open up the TeraCopy user interface and copy all files into the application.

You will see progress indicators in the user interface while the files are copying, and you can pause, resume, or cancel the process.  In the instance of an error TeraCopy will only skip the file after trying several times to correct the issue. If nothing can be done, TeraCopy will only skip the file and not cancel the entire process.  This is a huge advantage compared to relying on a Windows transfer.

Opening up the Options and Preferences you can integrate TeraCopy into the Windows and use it as the default copy handler.

Another cool thing to mention is that TeraCopy Portable is available and is compatible with PortableApps.  TeraCopy completed the 56.1 GB file transfer in under an hour.  While the transfer was being executed I noticed no lag time on any of the other things I was doing on my computer. It was as though it was not running at all.

I highly recommend using TeraCopy for large file transfers!

Download TeraCopy

The answer is a great little freeware utility called DriveSpacio that helps you find out where all that free space has gone, similar to the more well known WinDirStat utility. The benefit of using this one is that it integrates directly into the Explorer shell and has a lot more reports.

Using DriveSpacio

Once you’ve downloaded and opened the utility, you’ll see a screen with the hard drives in your computer. For instance, if you look in my Computer dialog, you’ll see 3 hard drives and some other USB drives.

So the Drives tab in DriveSpacio will show you a graphical view of all drives on your computer, with all sorts of great charts and graphs.

Different views are offered, such as pie charts or the bar graph view seen below:

DriveSpacio integrates into Windows Explorer so you are able to right click on a drive and analyze it. You can also launch the application and open a specific drive, or even just a specific sub-folder if you want. I find this to be helpful because I can choose to only look in my user folder.

After scanning you really get a nice chart of the folders and files on the drive and exactly how much space they are taking up. 

The interface has an explorer type feel and you can go through each folder and directory to get statistics, and the graph on the right-hand pane will change based on where in the tree you are.

You can also right-click on anything and choose to delete it right from the DriveSpacio window.

The Folders tab gives a great in-depth look at what folders are hogging space. You can toggle between either a bar graph or a pie chart, and choose to alternate between showing Kilobytes, Megabytes, or Gigabytes.

Another benefit of using this application is that there’s a portable version that doesn’t require any installation. Very useful for adding to your portable USB flash toolkit.

Download DriveSpacio for Windows