TeaCh your <Windows> key new tricks, capture video screens, and lock your drive letters.
SOMETIMES WINDOWS ACTS like an OS on life support. Can the patient be saved? I don't know about that, but I can help with triage.
Supercharge the <Windows> Key
The Hassle: I use the <Windows> key on my keyboard early and often, but it can do only so much. How can I get more use out of it?
The Fix: I know of a freebie that turns your <Windows> key into a super shortcut. Clavier (www.pcworld.in/india/downloads/Utilities/ Desktop/1494/1499), a small utility, lets you create <Windows>-key combinations for opening virtually any program, pasting short strings of text, and performing other operations, For instance, I created custom shortcuts that can start my e-mail program and turn my PC's volume up or down,
Bonustip#l: If you want your hands to stay on the keyboard, you have options, See "Keep Your Hands Off the Mouse" (pcworld,in/
ind ia/how .to/Hardware/Keep. Your .Hands.OfUhe.Mouse/3866691/1 0) for a list of useful keyboard shortcuts that you probably don't know about. The article's ancient, but the shortcuts work.
Bonus tip #2: If you have a child that occasionally taps on your keyboard, use the free ToddlerTrap utility (pcworld.in/india/down¬loads/Utilities/Peripherals/1494/1504) to Reshuffle Your Keyboard
The Hassle: My Lenovo ThinkPad laptop's keyboard has no <Win¬dows> key-a key I use often on my desktop Pc. Am lout of luck?
The Fix: You need KeyTweak (pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/ dsecId=1494/dsubSecId=1497/type=M), a no-cost keyboard-remapping tool that arranges the keys in whatever way makes you happy. I suggest converting the <Ctrl> or <Alt> key on the right side of your ThinkPad's spacebar into a <Windows> key.
I used KeyTweak to swap the <Esc> key with the slant-apostro-phe/tilde key. If you're a gamer and want to avoid the disaster of accidentally pressing the <Windows> key during a game, use KeyTweak to disable it temporarily. To use KeyTweak in Vista, you must be logged in as an admin.

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The Hassle: I need to grab screens from videos running in Windows Media Player. But when I try, all I scrape is a black screen. The Fix: Use a capture-friendly player, such as VLC Media Player; click Video•Snapshot to capture a video frame, Or you can modify Windows Media Player's settings: Select Tools•Options•Performance• Advanced, uncheck Use Overlays, and click OK. Disabling overlays can hinder your playback performance, so you may want to re-enable overlays once you've captured your screen.

Freeze Your Drive Letters
The Hassle: When I mapped a network drive, Windows assigned it to the next available drive letter on my PC. When I plugged in a USB flash drive, Windows inexplicably gave it the same drive letter as the networked drive. Now I can't access either one.
The Fix: Congrats! You've uncovered an ancient Windows bug.
One quick trick is to assign the network drive to a back-of-the-al¬phabet letter, such as Y: or Z:. If you're constantly plugging in flash drives and mapping and unmapping networked drives, however, use USBDLM, a very geeky freebie that runs as a Windows Service and automatically resolves drive-mapping conflicts by checking to see whether the letter is already in use, and assigning the next available letter if it is.