Privacy features such as InPrivate browsing in Internet Explorer 8 and similar features in Chrome and Firefox promise to protect your privacy by not keeping track of page history, temporary files and cookies. This may be enough to hide your tracks from a beginner computer user but there are still traces of what sites you visit within the local DNS cache. An advanced user can run the ipconfig /displaydns command to view the most recent sites visited.

For example, when you start InPrivate browsing in Internet Explorer and visit Bing.com.

The DNS Cache shows where you have been.

The best way to improve the privacy of your InPrivate browsing sessions is to also clear the local DNS cache after closing the browser. Open up an administrative level command prompt and type ipconfig /flushdns and hit Enter. ]]> http://www.vistacompanion.com/make-private-browsing-more-private/feed/ 0 http://www.vistacompanion.com/close-all-open-applications-with-one-click/ http://www.vistacompanion.com/close-all-open-applications-with-one-click/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:28:15 +0000 admin http://www.vistacompanion.com/?p=78

At the end of the day I always like to close the open applications to prepare my computer for the next day. Since I rarely reboot my desktop, I manually close each application. Depending on the number of open applications this can be a waste of time.   The people at NTWind Software have a perfect utility for this situation aptly called Close All Windows. Instead of manually closing each application just click the Close All Windows button on your taskbar.

In this article I will show you how to install and configure Close All Windows on your computer for easy access on the taskbar.

To get started head over to NTWind Software and download the latest version of Close All Windows.

After the file is downloaded extract the CloseAll folder to a permanent location on your computer.  Since Close All Windows is an application I extracted the folder to C:\Program Files\ where applications are typically installed.

For easy access it is best to pin the application to the taskbar. Drag the Close All Windows application from the CloseAll folder onto the taskbar.

Congratulations, you are now more efficient.

1. Go to the Start Menu, type netplwiz in the search box, and press Enter
2. If you have UAC active (which you should), you’ll need to give permission for the program to start.
3. The User Accounts window will open. Notice the option Users must enter a name and password to use this computer, uncheck the box and click OK.
   
4. You will be prompted for the login name and password of the user that you want automatically logged in. Enter the information for a user account that already exists and click OK.
   

That’s it! A couple things to keep in mind:

• You should always have a password assigned, even if you are automatically logging in, to help prevent remote access to your machine
• If your machine is physically accessible to others, setting your machine to automatically login will allow them the same access that you have, not recommended for work!

1. Open the Start Menu and click on Control Panel
   
2. Click on System Maintenance
   
3. Notice under Power Options there is a link directly to Change what the power buttons do. Click on it.
   
4. You get the option for When I press the power button:, which has a drop-down containing Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate and Shut Down. I, of course, choose Shut Down.
   
5. Then, just click Save Changes, close the open windows, and your finished!

1. Right-click on your desktop and choose Personalize
   
2. Click on the Change Desktop Icons link in the upper left hand corner
   
3. In the Desktop Icons Settings window, uncheck the Recycle Bin box and click OK
   

Your Recycle Bin is gone!

There is actually an even easier way to do this.

1. Select your Recycle Bin by clicking once on it’s icon and then hit the Delete key on your keyboard
   -OR-

   Right-click on your Recycle Bin icon and choose Delete
   

2. You’ll get a confirmation window asking if you’re sure you want to delete the icon from your desktop, click Yes
   

Once again, Recycle Bin gone!

When automakers program your cars computer, they are fairly conservative, choosing settings that will work for most people, but that also sacrifice performance in favor of good mileage, smooth running on cheap gas, or longevity of parts. Some would gladly buy premium gasoline, or replace parts a little more frequently in exchange for the increased performance. Windows is similar. Microsoft chose default settings that are ’safe’ for the ‘average’ user. If you’re reading this, you are probably not the average user.

It should be mentioned that you will need to modify your registry, and doing this can be dangerous. If you modify the wrong setting in the wrong way, you could prevent something from working correctly, or even make Vista unable to boot, so proceed with caution! To help avoid trouble, and to simplify your task, instead of using Regedit to directly modify your registry, we’ll instead create a batch file that will do it for you.

Open Notepad, or any other text editor that can create a simple text file. Copy the following text, and paste it into the Notepad window:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="20000"

Save the file with the name WaitToKill.reg (or any other name you like, as long as it ends with .reg). You’re not done yet. As it stands, this file won’t do anything because the value you see there, 20000, is the default value that you are currently using. The value 20000 amounts to about 20 seconds. Change that value to something smaller to shorten the wait time (don’t forget to save after changing the value).

Once the file is saved, double-click it and you’ll be prompted by UAC to allow it to run.

Then you’ll be warned about the dangers of modifying the registry, click Yes to allow it to run.

You’ll then be told that the modification was successfully made to your registry.

A reboot will be required before the change will take affect.

So what should you set this to? Browsing around some forums suggests that 3000 to 5000 (3 to 5 seconds) seems to work OK for most, and though some claim they’ve had no problems with 1000 (1 second), others have said it made their computer ‘unbootable’ after a few tries. So why not set it to zero? If you set the time too short, there is a chance that a service might not shutdown properly, and could loose data. Of particular concern would be services that write to the registry (as I mentioned above, messing up the registry can make for a very bad day!). So, keep in mind that with this change comes the benefit of a faster shutdown, but also a degree of risk should you set the time to short.

1. That post was right, I don’t want to be a flower! Open your ‘Start’ menu and click on the evil flower icon
   
2. In the User Accounts window, click Change your picture
   
3. Now you could simply pick one of the stock icons and then click Change Picture. Do I want to be a kitty? NO! I want to be me! So, click on the Browse for more pictures… link.
   
4. Browse for a picture you’d like to use. I happened to have one of me in my Pictures folder that I’ll use. Click on the picture and then click Open
   
5. That’s it! Look in your ‘Start’ menu and you’ll see the new picture. Logout or restart and you’ll see it on your login screen as well.
   

1. When you’re ready to restart or shutdown, if you have any windows open press + D which will take you to your desktop. If you don’t have any other windows open, you can skip this step.
2. Press the ALT key and while holding it down, press F4, this will close the active item, or exit the active program, which is why we had to get to the desktop first, otherwise it would just close whatever window you were in. You could also just keep pressing ALT+F4 until all your windows are closed, but if you work like me, that could be a lot of times.
3. With the Shut Down Windows window open, type R if you want to restart, S if you want to switch users or shutdown (each time you type it it toggles between the two), or L to logoff. I’m going to restart, so of course I type R (not cap sensitive).
   
4. Finally, press Enter to activate the OK button, which will restart, shutdown, switch user, or logoff.

So, +D then ALT+F4 then R then Enter will restart your Vista machine, a few more keys than in XP, but at least it’s still an option.

1. Right-click on your flash drive icon. In my case, mine is the E: drive. From the menu that appears, choose Properties
   

1. In the Properties window, select Use this device. If you want to change the suggested amount of space to use, move the slider or type in the amount you desire. Mine suggested 4GB, which is fine for now.
   
2. Click the Apply button, or just click OK and ReadyBoost is activated.
   

You’ll now see a file called ReadyBoost.sfcache (it will just display as ‘ReadyBoost’ if you have your extensions hidden on your flash drive that takes up the amount of space that was set in the Properties window. If you want to free up that space, just return to the Properties window and disable ReadyBoost.