Windows 7 Tips #2

Preview your files

You can open the preview pane in a window by pressing Alt+P. Items such as photos and PDF files will be previewed in this area when you click them.

Clean up Live Essentials

 If this causes problems later, or you just decide you don't need it, then Choice Guard may be removed by clicking Start, typing :
msiexec /x {F0E12BBA-AD66-4022-A453-A1C8A0C4D570} 
and pressing [Enter].

Recover locked-up apps 

When the lockup occurs, click Start, type RESMON and click the RESMON.EXE link to launch the Resource Monitor. 

Find your frozen process in the CPU pane (it should be highlighted in red), right-click it and select Analyze Wait Chain.

If you see at least two processes in the list, then the lowest, at the end of the tree, is the one holding up your program. If it's not a vital Windows component, or anything else critical, then save any work in other open applications, check the box next to this process, click End Process, and your locked-up program will often spring back to life.

Fault-Tolerant Help

Windows 7 includes a new feature called the Fault Tolerant Help (FTH), a clever technology that looks out for unstable processes, detects those that may be crashing due to memory issues, and applies several real-time fixes to try and help. If these work, that's fine - if not, the fixes will be undone and they won't be applied to that process again.
While this is very good in theory, it can leave you confused as some applications crash, then start working (sometimes) for no apparent reason. So if you'd like to check if the FTH is running on your PC, launch REGEDIT, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\FTH - any program currently being protected by the FTH will be listed in the State key.
Experienced users may also try tweaking the FTH settings to catch more problems, and perhaps improve system stability. A post on Microsoft's Ask The Performance Team blog (bit.ly/d1JStu) explains what the various FTH Registry keys mean.