Fix Windows Vista Errors

OK so if you are using Windows Vista, you have probably noticed by now that “My Documents” from the old XP days is now called “Documents”. I love it when everything changes for no other reason than to be confusing.

Anyway, if you want to edit the location of where “Documents” points, you can do so by right-clicking and selecting properties.

However, you may want to do this via the registry, it can come in handy for certain situations. So here is the Registry Key you will want to edit for changing the default location of the “Documents” folder in Vista.

Open the registry editor in Vista, just type in “regedit” in the run box.

Browse to Registry Key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal

You can then alter that value to point to a different folder/location.

Have Fun!
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Fix Vista Errors and Improve Performance – Free Scan

I have talked about the ReadyBoost feature in past posts (the ability in Vista to use a USB drive to add extra RAM to your PC), but what I didn’t realise till recently is that there is another method of boosting RAM through ReadyBoost.

The one problem I had with ReadyBoost and from what I read of you comments many of you have the same issues is that the flash drive can be annoying, it sticks out and you may also keep forgeting to add it everytime you jump on your PC.

What I found recently is that if your PC has a SC (Secure Digital) slot you can use this instead of a flash drive for ReadyBoost. This will be great in that it boosts your RAM using the ReadyBoost feature but also useful in that you don’t need a bulky flash drive sticking out the side of your PC.

With all the news lately of the upcoming Windows 7 and preview builds expected to be shown as early as October at the developers conference in Vegas, you might be wondering whether or not you even need to upgrade to Vista.

Well the expected release date for Windows 7 is sometime in 2010, possibly early 2010.  So that is less than 2  years away, and the years go by pretty fast. So many businesses still on XP and working fine, might be thinking what is the point of upgrading now to Vista, only to have to upgrade again a few months later.

The argument for the upgrade is difficult and it will depend on different situations. If you have relatively new hardware and still on XP, it might be a good option to sit tight. However, if you are due for an upgrade, have old hardware, then it becomes a bit more difficult. It is increasingly difficult to purchase systems with XP and you probably don’t want to have some users on XP and some users on Vista – not to mention the support for XP will soon be ceased by Microsoft.

However, even with a Windows 7 release date of 2010, it will probably take a couple of years to iron out the bugs and you wouldn’t want to jump into it immediately on release anyway. So it is more likely that upgrading to this OS won’t happen until 2012. In the meantime we think that Vista is worth moving into and will provide a better long term solution than a mixed environment or holding back with old equipment.

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Free Download – Fix Errors and Optimize Vista/XP

If you are an old school Windows user like me, you might be missing the Run command that we all came to love.  The good news is that you can add this back in Vista with this quick little tweak.

• Right click on your taskbar
• Select “Properties”
• Click on the “Start Menu” tab
• Tick Start menu entry and click on “Customize”
• Check the “Run command” box
• Click “OK”

You are done. Now you have the “Run” command back!!

It is a good idea to know the state of health of your hard disks. If you have alot of important data, you wouldn’t want your drive to fail unexpectedly (even though you do have backups right?).

You can use a variety of automated tools to check things like disk errors, but in Windows Vista it is pretty easy to do a quick manual check of your drive(s).

• Select Start -> “Computer”
• Right click on the drive you wish to check
• Select “Properties”
• Click on the “Tools” tab
• Click the “Check Now” button
• Check both of the options: Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attemtp recovery of bad sectors
• Click “Start”

You may not be able to check a disk that is in use. That is no problem, you will be given the option to schedule a disk check. This can be done on next bootup etc.

Scanning can take a bit of time, depending on disk size and the amount of data on there. So be patient!

The sidebar feature in Windows Vista is probably my favorite new feature to Vista over XP (just cause I use it way more than any other new feature!). But I kept on having problems accessing my gadget when I had a bunch of windows open, and I’m known to have numerous windows and tabs open at once.

So I figured out today an easy way to set the sidebar so that it will always show above all Windows, just follow these points and you will have it done in a minute;

• Open control panel
• Click appearance and personalization
• Click windows sidebar properties
• Check on sidebar is always on top of other windows
• Click apply and OK

One of the nice new features in Windows Vista is the ability to store user names and passwords.

If you have to connect to different fileservers, websites or anything that requires authentication, you might get annoyed with having to type in the username and password all the time. Well Vista now allows you to add and store these credentials so that you don’t need to type them in every time.

To access this feature:

Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Select manage your network passwords (left column).

From here you will see all of your stored logons and you can then add/remove.

To add a new username/password, just click the “Add” button. You will then see the screen below. Here you can specify what you will log on to (eg: fileserver, network drive). Then just add your username and password and specify if it will be a Windows or non Windows logon.

This should save you some time and hassle but note – this feature does have some bugs. There were some problems connecting to Linux file servers such as Samba.

Windows Vista has a neat feature called Shadow Copy. This is basically a file protection mechanism that can save you alot of headaches.

For example: Have you ever been working on a file and then done some edits or accidentally deleted something, but hit the save button? This happens to me all the time and it is extremely frustrating. Generally when this happens you have to go back and redo the work.

However, with Vista Shadow copy it automatically creates point in time copies of files as you work, so if you do make a mess of something, it is very easy to retrieve previous versions.

If you need to restore an earlier version of a file, here is how you can do it:

- Click on the file or folder you want
- Select “Restore Previous Versions”
- Click and select the version
- Click “Restore”

I talked in previous posts about the Vista ease of access center and features designed to help people with disabilities to use their PC easier. Today I will talk about the narrator feature which can assist people with vision problems use their Vista computer.

Microsoft Narrator is a program that uses a voice to narrate out what is seen on your PC, so if you do have trouble with vision you can hear what is on the screen.

To get started using Microsoft Narrator just follow this;

• Open control panel
• Click ease of access
• Click ease of access center
• Click start narrator
• A narrator box will now open like this

You can change the voice settings by;

• Click on voice settings
• You can select the type of voice (male or female), it should come standard with just Microsoft Anna
• Select the voice speed
• Select the voice volume
• Select the voice pitch
• Click OK

You should here in the background your PC talking out everything you do and all pages you visit. You can also use the quick help function to learn more about narrator.

In some instances, Vista installs may not have a properly working offline files folder. In this case, you may need to re-initialize the cache.

So if you find that the activate offline files is not available in control panel then you may want to apply this fix.

To fix the missing offline files in Vista you need to create the following DWORD in the registry and give it a value of 1.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters\FormatDatabase

Note: Any edits to the reigstry are at your own risk and you should always take caution when editing the registry. You may also lose any unsynchronized changes when re-initializing the cache.