Solutions: Getting rid of the Windows Magnifier

Windows 7 Home Premium comes with a feature that magnifies a portion of the page. I find this feature to be useless and often open it inadvertently. I would like to disable it.

The Windows key pressed with the + key is one way to activate the Windows Magnifier. Maybe that's how you are inadvertently turning it on. There is not a straight-forward way to turn Magnifier off. Since it is considered a system file, you have to jump through a few hoops, but it's still doable. Here's how: Using Windows File Explorer, navigate to c:\windows\system32. Find file magnifier.exe. Right-click this file, go to Properties, Security tab, click the Advanced button then the Owner tab and then the Edit button. Choose to make yourself owner under the "Change owner to" section. Click OK to go back one screen to the Advanced Security Settings dialog. Click the Permissions tab, then the Change Permissions button. Select your user name and then click the Edit button. Click to check the Full Control option. Click OK all the way back out. Now you can rename the file (right-click, Rename) to anything other than what it is (i.e. magnifyOLD.exe).

I did a backup to an external disk. Everything went well. Next day I tried to restart my system and received a boot error of a corrupted file. I tried several times with no success. I used a Windows 7 repair disk I made and got it to work. Now I receive a message at startup that shows Windows 7 recovered. I can push F8 and it will give me a series of actions to do from Safe Mode to start Windows normally. How can this step be eliminated?

Try running MSCONFIG (Start, Run, type MSCONFIG). Click the Boot tab and check the Safe boot settings. Clear any that may be set and change the Timeout setting from 30 to 5 seconds. Reboot and see if that solves the problem.

When I receive an email with a URL or hyperlink in it and click on it, nothing happens. I have hunted for a solution and tried what was suggested at numerous sites. Nothing works. I am running XP with IE8 and get my emails thru Outlook Express 6 and have AVG for security. All these programs are up to date. What needs to be done?

Try holding down the Ctrl key while clicking the link. If that doesn't work, try going to the Outlook Express Option menu, Security tab. It has been awhile since I've seen Outlook Express 6, but the virus settings section may have an option disallowing links and/or attachments. If so, try changing it.

When I try to open a Word document on my computer, I receive the error message "There was a problem sending the command to the program." The document will still open however. My laptop had Word Starter 2010 on it and then I installed Microsoft Word 2007. I wonder if that is creating the conflict. Should I delete Word Starter 2010 because all of the documents open with that instead of Microsoft Word 2007?

I think you are correct in that there is mixed file extension/association program settings. Try uninstalling Word 2010 Starter. You may also need to register the Word 2007 settings again as follows: Click Start, Run and type winword.exe /r and click OK. Make sure you leave a space between the winword.exe and the /r.

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