Navigating Your Computer (CONT)

My Computer

After mastering the Start Menu and Desktop, you should really get familiar with My Computer. There are several ways to get there, but the easiest is to once again click the Start button, and then click on the text that says "My Computer". (It should have a picture of a computer to the left of it). Once you do this, a window that says "My Computer" should come up. In this window you can see a fairly representative look of all the drives and devices that are connected to your computer. You can see CD/DVD-ROM drives, hard drives, flash drives, and even network drives amongst other things. It's also important to note that if you click on a hard drive, and look towards the bottom of the screen, often you can see how much space is currently being used versus how much free space is on that drive. So now that we have our drives staring us straight in the face, it should be apparent that we're now only a step away from finding all the files we want to!

Checking Out the Files on a Drive

To begin traversing a drive, simply double click it (or select the drive by clicking it once, and then push the Enter key on your keyboard). Once the drive has been entered, you will typically see files, folders, or a combination of the two. And really, that's about it. If things are setup on your computer correctly, you can open files from this view by again, double clicking the file or clicking it once and pushing the Enter key on your keyboard. Now that you know how you can find and view files and folders on your hard drive, you should also probably know which are the important ones.

Important Folders on Your Hard Drive

Arguably, the most important folders on your hard drive will be the Program Files and Windows folders. The Program Files folder is important because it is often where all the files comprising your installed programs will be. So if you were ever to need to get at any of the files for a certain program, this is where you would find them.

The Windows folder is so important because it generally contains all the files that make up Microsoft Windows. If you haven't already figured it out, be careful of what you do when inside this folder! Deleting or changing the name of the wrong file could wreak havoc on your system! But aside from all the critical files in this folder, it also contains the files for your wallpapers and your screensavers. So if you want to add a new wallpaper to windows, all you have to do is copy the file to this directory!

And there you have it! The most basic, (and we mean basic), introduction to getting around your computer. But don't stop here! After you feel comfortable with navigating your computer, you should spend some time getting it organized. For where to start, check out Getting Organized!

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