Some people don’t like any icons on their desktop. If this is you, simply right-click your desktop, choose View from the menu, and choose Show Desktop Icons, which will turn them off if they are currently on. Other people don’t mind the icons, they just would prefer not to have the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop. In that case, here’s how to turn it off:
What good is a computer without some games to waste time with? What better game to waste time with than Solitaire? Well, Vista has Solitaire, and it’s improved from previous versions. Nice graphics, sounds, and even animation, the effects will make you feel like you’re really there, with yourself, playing cards.
As you can see from my game above, they still haven’t fixed it so you can win every time, but there is a cheat. If you’d prefer to draw just one card from the deck, instead of the default of three, the Realtime-Vista blog suggests you press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT while clicking the deck for a new card. I also tried their other suggestion, ALT+SHIFT+2, which is supposed to automatically win the game, but found that it doesn’t work.
When I shutdown my computer, I tend to walk away, so it really doesn’t matter how long it takes. If there is some reason that you hang around and wait for it to shutdown (perhaps waiting to close the lid on a laptop), then you may want the shutdown process to be a little faster. When Vista, like older versions of Windows, is told to shutdown, there is a set amount of time that it waits for things like services to properly shutdown. You can control how long it waits through a simple registry setting.
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.
Just recently I got a laugh out of a post called “But I Don’t Want to be a Flower!“, a funny title that I associated with Seinfeld. The post actually has a nice, quick tip on how to change that ‘flower’ icon you get on your Vista login screen and in your ‘Start’ menu. Here’s how I changed my icon, not just to one of the stock icons, but to me!
I recently got a 8GB flash drive to move around my portable apps, as well as some music, and simple data files. It’s bigger than I probably need for now, but I figure I’ll grow into it pretty quickly. Since I currently have a lot of free space on it, I figured why not put that space to use, and speed up my computer at the same time, so I turned on ReadyBoost. It’s simple, here’s how to do it:
IIS 7.0 is a commonly used internet web server and is included with Windows Vista, however, when you first install Vista the IIS 7 Web Server is not installed or turned on by default. The new IIS7 is the merging of ASP.NET and IIS web technologies. ASP.NET is already implemented as an ISAPI extension for IIS, but in the new IIS7, that changes. Now, HTTP pipelines, handlers, modules, XML files and more are all natively built into the server platform.
Installing IIS 7.0 creates a Web site server to which users can connect via HTTP or HTTPS protocols. For increased security IIS7 is now almost completely modular. You can use the Windows Vista Web Server to develop and modify your websites and web applications development and web design.
Lets create a partition with Windows Vista. Right click on the My Computer icon and select Manage then Disk Management.
Find the drive that you have freed up some space on and right click on the free space and select New Simple Volume.
When Vista was launched the biggest problem faced by many user is compatibility of there current version of software, as vista do not support all the software,and people were made to but new software’s which is compatible with vista.
but with a simple trick you can make all Windows Software to run on vista.
This Is as simple as piece of cake,
Follow the simple steps:
Tired of your same old Aero look? The good news is that within Aero there is a built in color mixer so you can get the exact color that you want to use. This means you are not limited to the predefined color palettes.
You can make it as pink as a rose or purple as an eggplant. Whether you prefer ornamental plants or botanically classified “berries” as a Windows interface color, the steps below will guide you to achieve the look that you want.
NOTE: Windows Aero is not included in Windows Vista Home Basic. If you have this version, you won’t be able to enable Aero and use it. You must upgrade to at least Windows Vista Home Premium.
Choose Windows Vista AERO as color scheme. Right click the desktop and choose Properties to go to the appearance settings:
Using two monitors with a single PC has become a necessity for many advanced PC users. With more than one monitor, you can handle more tasks and increase your productivity.
1. We will use a laptop and an ordinary monitor as an example, we will label laptop monitor as monitor 1 and ordinary monitor as monitor. You may use the same steps on a desktop as long as it has more than one VGA or DVI ports.
2. Connect the VGA cable of monitor 2 to the VGA socket of your laptop. The VGA socket is usually a blue color and has 15 pin holes. And almost all laptop have a VGA socket. You can do this while your laptop is turned on.
