Windows Vista How To's
Increase the size of the DNS cache in Vista
A larger DNS cache will mean fewer trips to the nameserver and faster overall performance.
07-October-08 | Windows Vista
Stop Sharing Scheduled Tasks in Vista
Sharing Sheduled Tasks makes network browsing slower. The problem is that sharing Scheduled Tasks slows network browsing considerably. Follow these steps on every PC in your workgroup to stop sharing Scheduled Tasks and increase your network performance considerably.
07-October-08 | Windows Vista
Prevent Users from Shutting Down Vista
Among the restrictions you may want to impose on others who use your computer is that of shutting down Windows. For instance, if you're logging in remotely, you'll want to make sure that your PC is always on.
05-October-08 | Windows Vista
How To Convert your drives from FAT to NTFS in Windows Vista
If you've upgraded your PC from an earlier version of Windows, there's a chance you're still using the FAT32 filesystem. Assuming you don't need to keep FAT32 for compatibility with other operating systems, you should convert your drive to NTFS. The process is easy, relatively quick, and won't harm your data (although you should back up beforehand just to be safe).
04-October-08 | Windows Vista
How To Hide Unwanted Control Panel Icons in Vista
You can hide certain types of icons in Control Panel's Classic View with a quick Registry hack. Just open the Registry Editor, and expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\don't load\.
04-October-08 | Windows Vista
Make a “Show Desktop” Button in Vista
By default, the Quick Launch toolbar comes with a Show Desktop button, which allows you to quickly hide all open windows and access stuff on your desktop, and then quickly bring them all back when you’re done. But what if your Quick Launch toolbar doesn’t have one?
03-October-08 | Windows Vista
Limit automatic login in Vista by number of boots
It's possible to limit the automatic login feature, so that the Log On dialog (or Welcome screen) reappears after a specified number of boots.
03-October-08 | Windows Vista
Control or change the space between desktop icons
As any green grocer will tell you, the most efficient way to stack oranges is the face-centered cubic arrangement, wherein each piece of fruit is placed in the cavity formed by three adjacent oranges in the lower plane. Sadly, Windows Vista doesn't have this option, but if you're content with Windows rectilinear arrangement, you can fine-tune row and column spacing on the desktop.
03-October-08 | Windows Vista
How To Make Shortcuts to Control Panel Pages in Vista
Many windows are buried several levels deep in Vista's Control Panel, so it can be a bit of a pain to make your way around the program. If you find yourself returning to the same spot often, there are several ways to make shortcuts and save yourself some time in the future.
02-October-08 | Windows Vista
How Malware Spreads on Windows
Once they've infected a system, viruses and the like can be very difficult to remove. For that reason, your best defense against them is to prevent them from infecting your computer in the first place.
02-October-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Understanding Hard Disk Cluster Sizes
Clusters are the smallest units into which a hard disk's space can be divided. A hard disk formatted with the traditional FAT system, found in Windows 95 and an ancient operating system called "DOS," can have no more than 65,536 clusters on each drive or partition. This means that the larger the hard disk, the larger the size of each cluster.
01-October-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Advanced NTFS Settings
The following settings allow you to fine-tune NTFS to squeeze the most performance out of your NTFS drive; experiment with these settings to find the configuration that works best for you.
01-October-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
How to make Vista menus open faster
Ever noticed the half-second or so delay between the instant you move the mouse over a menu item and the moment the menu is opened? By default, Vista waits 400 milliseconds (just under a half-second) before opening menus, but if you eliminate the delay, menus will open instantaneously, and your PC will feel a little more alert.
01-October-08 | Windows Vista
Manage IRQ Priority in Windows Vista
Most components directly attached to your motherboard - including PCI slots, IDE controllers, serial ports, the keyboard port, and even your motherboard's CMOS - have individual IRQs assigned to them. An interrupt request line, or IRQ, is a numbered hardware line over which a device can interrupt the normal flow of data to the processor, allowing the device to function.
30-September-08 | Windows Vista
Force Explorer to Remember Its Own Settings in Vista
One of the most common annoyances with Windows Explorer is, well, annoying, because it should've been so simple for Microsoft to get it right. How many times have you selected the Details view in Explorer, only to find that it has reverted to the Large Icons view the next time you open the folder?
29-September-08 | Windows Vista
What Is svchost.exe and what does it do?
Svchost.exe and services.exe are responsible for launching the processes associated with the behind-the-scenes programs controlled by the Services window (services.msc).
22-September-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Reset a Forgotten Administrator Password in Vista or XP
Forgot your password? No problem. There are two ways to get into your PC: the easy way and the hard way.
22-September-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Description of the Visual Effects in the Performance Options Window in Vista
Windows Vista animates almost every visual component that makes up its sparkling new interface. While these affectations may be cute, they create two performance problems. For one, they slow down the motion, causing windows, menus, and listboxes to take longer to open and close, all of which makes your PC feel sluggish. Second, they consume CPU cycles that would otherwise be used to handle processor-intensive tasks like virtual memory and gameplay.
19-September-08 | Windows Vista
What is the Creator Owner Account in Vista?
From time to time, you'll see a reference to Creator Owner in the Permissions window, but if you try to find the account by that name in one of the user account tools, you’ll come up empty handed.
18-September-08 | Windows Vista
Description of the folder options settings in Vista
When you select Tools > Folder Option in an Explorer window. The View tab contains settings that affect how much information Explorer shows you, arranged in alphabetical order.
15-September-08 | Windows Vista
hiberfil.sys What is it?
To avoid some of the drawbacks of Vista's Sleep power-saving mode, you can hibernate your PC. hiberfil.sys saves a copy of everything in your PC’s memory (RAM) onto your hard disk before it shuts down.
14-September-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Descriptions and Fixes of Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crash errors
There are a whole bunch of possible BSoD messages; probably more than a hundred. However, only about 20 happen frequently enough that they might imply that an actual problem exists. More than likely, you've seen atleast one of the following stop messages on your own system.
13-September-08 | Windows VistaWindows XP
Stop Plug and Play from detecting devices in Vista
One of the problems with Plug and Play (PnP) is its tendency to detect and load drivers for devices you don't want to use. Although there is a way to turn off Plug and Play to prevent Windows PnP feature from detecting and installing drivers for some devices, you can also disable most devices that may be causing conflicts.
13-September-08 | Windows Vista
What Does 64-Bit Vista Get Me?
More bits gets you access to more memory. The processor inside your PC communicates with your system memory (RAM) with numeric addressing. Thus the maximum amount of memory a 32-bit processor can address is 232 bytes, or 4 gigabytes.
12-September-08 | Windows Vista