Working the Keyboard w/o Mouse

[Dean Huster]

As a teacher, learning this new-fangled computer stuff along with the students, I'm in constant need of help. We have commercial curriculum installed which needed several pages printed from the screen and Jenni was fabulous in her help there. Now I have a similar problem and wonder if it is surmountable.

I want to deliberately invoke a "Mouse Not Found" error by unplugging the little rodent and then firing up the computer. All does what is expected. BUT ... at this point, I'd like to print this screen for use as an illustration, but of course, Mr. Mouse is dead in the water. As Jenni mentioned, I assume that I can ALT+PrintScreen to save the display image -- at least, I assume that the keyboard wasn't locked up by the disconnected vermin. After that, I'm lost, for how can I invoke MS Paint? Once I get it up (MS Paint, that is), I assume that I can CRTL+V to suck the image off the clipboard and then CRTL+P to print the thing.

But without Mr. Mouse, how do I get to MS Paint? And then how do I shutdown Windows so that I don't have to deal with Scandisk on the next power-up?

Dean

[RJ]

Well, all you need to know are standard windows shortcuts:

WINDOW-Key: Opens/Closes start menu
CURSOR LEFT: Closes submenu
CURSOR RIGHT: opens submenu
RETURN: selects item
With any letter key you can navigate from one alphabetical order to another.
Example: To go to paint, press WINDOWS, P, Z, P and paint will open (unless you don't have another items beginning with P). And the Z stands für Zubehör (german version). In english I think it's called accessories, so press A.

ALT+F4: Closes active Window (also pops up shutdown menu).

If you don't like scandisk at every faulty startup, you can deactivate it. Go to START > RUN, type in MSCONFIG, go to MORE OPTIONS, enable the checkbox "DISABLE SCANDISK AFTER FAILED SHUTDOWN".

Hope this helps.

RJ

[Statica]

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q126/4/49.asp

[Dean Huster]

I'm certain that your information is going to help me out a lot. In time, I'll learn this stuff, I'm sure, but I had to skip back out of sequence to Chapter 127 to take care of this little problem. Again, thanks! You guys are great!

Dean

[Charliey]

Wow, theres some stuff i didnt know in that MS KB article.
Check it out!

[Lord Prism]

I was always kind of proud of not being 'mouse-dependant' by mastering keyboard commands, but I learned some more new tricks by going to the link above...

You too can be more efficient! Don't be "mouse-dependant!"

:-)

[Dean Huster]

I was one of those who was proficient on Wordstar 3.3, 4.0, 5.0 (yuk!) and 6.0 (had 7.0 but hated it) to the point that I was the resident guru at school. Gotta love their advertising which lauded their superiority over WordNotSoPerfect as "the touch typist's word processor". Do all your marking, copying, bold-facing -- all of it -- with your eyes never leaving the screen. And a lot of other engineer-oriented programs (assemblers, cross-assemblers, etc.) used the WordStar command set.

Again, thanks from a guy who deep down hates computers because of the inefficient Windows-based software that requires gigaHertz processors to run Word as fast as a PS/2 ran WordStar 6.0 under DOS. Maybe I'll grow to accept them as I learn more about them.

Dean