To aid their development of Windows 7 beta versions, the Microsoft engineers built in a diagnostic tool called Problem Steps Recorder that combines screen captures with mouse tracking to record your actions. You can launch this program from the Start Menu by typing psr.exe in the search field. Hit the Record button and the applet tracks your mouse and keyboard input while taking screenshots that correspond with each new action. When you stop recording, your session is saved to an HTML slide show recreating your steps, to which you can add comments and annotations. This tool is insanely useful if you need to create a tutorial for a computer-illiterate relative.

One of the nicest things about the taskbar is that when you hover your mouse over the icons in it, you can see thumbnail previews of all open windows for each of those applications. When you do so, there is a slight delay before the thumbnails appears. But you can make the thumbnails display more quickly by using a registry hack.

1. Launch the registry editor by typing regedit in the start menu  search box and pressing enter. Do not select as ‘Run as Administrator’

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse

3. Double click MouseHoverTime. The default value you’ll see is 400 –> which means 400 milliseconds. Type in a new , smaller value –> let’s say 100 is good bet. Then click OK and exit the registry editor. You’ll have to log off or restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

When you search through your PC from Windows Explorer, you can see the most recent searches that have been performed on a particular user account. If you share your user account and don’t want others to see what you’ve searched for you can turn off that recent searches feature:

 1. Click on the Start Button  and type gpedit.msc and right click the gpedit.msc icon to select ‘Run as Administrator’

 2. Provide Administrator password or user consent to open Group Policy Editor.

 3. Go to User Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Explorer.

 4. Search for the entry ‘Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box’ and select Enabled from the screen that appears. Then click OK.

If you have a program that doesn’t run in native mode in Windows 7, you can try:

Right click on the icon
Select Properties
Click on the Compatibility tab
Check Run this program in compatibility mode for:
Select one of the options such as Windows XP (Service Pack 3).
You can try other options if Windows XP with SP3 doesn’t work for you.

As a power user, you may be concerned with power consumption, making the command-line utility powercfg.exe a must-see. To create a report on your PC’s energy appetite, press the Windows key and type cmd in the search box. Right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator. Now, select the box and type powercfg –energy at the command-line prompt, and hit Enter. Powercfg will run for about 60 seconds, then generate a report called energy-report.html in C:\Windows\system32. This report will notify you of anything in your computer that is keeping the CPU cycling, thus burning power and sucking notebook batteries dry. After you run the report, you’ll likely find that USB devices never entered Suspend state. While you might think the power consumption of a USB key is pretty insignificant, if it prevents the CPU from cycling off, that device can really hit where it hurts—in your battery’s nards.

If you are a fan of using a keyboard rather than your mouse whenever possible.  You can move your mouse whenever possible, you can move your cursor from icon to icon in the taskbar without a mouse –> and still see thumbnail previews. Press Windows key  + T, and you will move focus to the left most icon on the taskbar. Then, while still pressing the Windows key, press T key again to change the focus to the next icon to the right. You can keep doing this as long as you like.