Matt Refghi's Blog » windows 7

Video Wallpapers With VLC Media Player

Matt Refghi — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:00:43 +0000

When I originally bought Windows Vista, I was really excited about the DreamScene feature. It allowed videos to be used as wallpapers in Windows, something that I had never seen before. To use it, you had to buy Windows Vista Ultimate, the most expensive edition. I was happy to do this, given that Windows was the foundation of all the work I did in my career. Unfortunately, the extras included with Ultimate weren’t really worth the extra money, in the end. I’m sure they had their applications, but they really didn’t enrich my life, personally. DreamScene, in particular, turned out to be a disappointment. It was an interesting idea, but I found that if I played a game, and returned to Windows, the video wallpaper would often be gone. This problem was enough to stop me from using it. As of Windows 7, they removed video support, though some people managed to get it working.

For those of you who are curious about having video wallpapers, I recently read that you can have VLC Media Player play a video directly to the Windows wallpaper. In case you never heard of it, VLC is a free, open-source media player that is available for most platforms. Though the interface is nothing special, it is the only media player I know that can play pretty much any file I throw at it, without me needing to manually download the proper codecs. I highly recommend it.

Once you have it installed, here’s how to get the video wallpaper working:

Considering backing up your existing wallpaper, just in case.
Launch VLC.
Click Tools > Preferences in the menu bar.
Click Video in the left sidebar.
In the Display section, you’ll find an Output field. It will most likely be set to “Default”. Change this value to “DirectX video output”.
Restart VLC.
Open a video file. In my case, I tried an .AVI, and Windows automatically switched to Windows 7 Basic. This is normal – when you close VLC, your previous theme will return.
Right-click the video output you’re seeing in VLC, and select Video > Direct-X Wallpaper.

You should now be seeing the video instead of your wallpaper. VLC will be looking fairly strange during this, so I suggest minimizing it. If that interrupts the video, you can try making the window as tiny as possible. Either way, the VLC window needs to remain open. It is powering your wallpaper, and is still useful for the video controls. When you’re finished, repeat Step 7, or simply close VLC.

I initially discovered this trick by reading a Lifehacker article: Set a Video as Your Wallpaper with VLC.

Open Command Window Here in Windows 7

Matt Refghi — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:00:29 +0000

Despite the numerous graphical advancements introduced in Windows 7, the Command Prompt has remained largely unchanged. Yet, it has always remained a useful, lightweight tool for interacting with the file system. I remember using it often in Windows XP, which was really when I was getting serious about Computer Science. In fact, I looked for ways to improve the command prompt experience. I eventually discovered a power toy for Windows XP titled “Open Command Window Here”. When installed, it would add an extra option to the context menu, which simply said “Open Command Window Here”. It would typically be visible when you right-clicked a folder, and, once selected, would make a new Command Prompt window would appear. This new window would have current location automatically set to the folder you right-clicked. This was particularly useful when you want to access a folder that is deep in the folder structure, and were already seeing it in Windows Explorer.

Unlike Windows XP, Windows 7 ships with this feature; however, it isn’t immediately visible to the user. To access it, you have to hold SHIFT, and then right-click. This will make numerous additional options appear, among them, “Open Command Window Here” can be seen.

In general, I suggest experimenting with the SHIFT modifier – some of the “hidden” contextual options are very interesting.

Changing Drive Letters In Windows

Matt Refghi — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:16:29 +0000

At home, I use multiple external hard drives; however, I don’t always leave them on. I usually have just one of them running at a time. Today, when my turned on my main external hard drive, it was assigned the drive letter I by Windows, whereas it usually used F. This caused some problems – some of my shortcuts expect it to be the F drive.

When I look at my drives in Windows, here is what I see:

My drives. Notice how "F" is actually free?

Looking at the drives, I don’t quite understand why Windows thought I would be a good idea. I’m guessing it remembers another drive that had F, and wants to reserve it. Why it didn’t do that before, is beyond me.

To correct the shortcuts, I had to change the drive letter of the drive – which would make the paths valid again. I only had to do this once before, so I thought I’d offer the steps here, in case someone else would find it useful. The change is made using the Disk Management tool that comes with Windows.

In Windows 7, either:

Search for “Disk Management” in the Start menu, and select the “Create and format hard disk partitions” option.

In a “Run Command” window, enter “diskmgmt.msc”.

You’ll be presented with the Disk Management screen:

Once there, simply right-click the disk you wish to change, and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.

You’ll be presented with the following dialog:

Select the drive letter, and press “Change”.

When the dialog opens, select the letter you want to use. In my case, I changed the “Assign the following drive letter:” field value from I to F.

After that, press OK. You’re get a warning saying:

Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue?

Just press “Yes”, and you’re all done.