Fix Windows Vista Errors

Microsoft has plans to deliver the first release candidate of the newest version Internet Explorer on Monday.

“We’re about to release [IE8 RC1] for Windows Vista and Windows XP,” said Microsoft’s Frank Olivier, a user experience program manager. “Over the past months, our compatibility team has been hard at work, finding and fixing bugs that cause site rendering issues,” Olivier wrote. “Due to the different release schedules for Windows 7 Beta and IE8 RC1, some of these bug fixes didn’t make it into Windows 7 Beta.”

Microsoft originally had hoped to release the final version of IE8 before the end of 2008 but the release date had to be pushed back

You can download the Internet Explorer 8 RC1 here.

In another blow to Vista the SP2 will be out later than expected.

Microsoft has annonced it will delay the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) by at least a month, and the company will now ship it to manufacturing sometime in May or June.  SP2 was originally intended to be released this February, with the Release to Manufacturing (SP2 RTM) scheduled for April.

The first beta of SP2 was made available in December of last year. Right now, Microsoft is undoubtedly rushing to get Vista SP2 out well ahead of the release of Windows 7, its next major operating system.

One of the things I personally find very annoying and apparently so do our users is the tapping that happens on notebook touchpads. On these touchpads, you can imitate a mouse click by tapping the pad with your finger. However, the problem with this is that quite often when just trying to move the mouse pointer a tap is initiated. This is annoying when using the internet because you can accidentally click links.

I have many times clicked logout links by accident or some other link and lost work online due to this. So anyway, lets look at how you can disable the tapping feature on notebooks with Vista.

To turn off tapping:

• Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Mouse
• Click the Device Settings tab -> Tapping
• Uncheck the checkbox “Enable Tapping”
• Note: this may look slightly different depending on your touchpad

———————————-
Speed Up Vista by 300% - Free Download

Do you need to access a list of what services are running on your Windows Vista PC, well here is a run through of how you can get that list;

• Click start
• Right click on computer and select manage
• Click Services and Applications
• Click Services
• Anything on the list that is marked with started is running

If you need to configure any of the services you can do it easily by right clicking on the service and selecting properties. You can also stop and restart services in this section.

Are you having issues with a specific driver or you need simply to update a driver, then you can do it easily in Vista through your device manager. To get started just follow this;

• Open control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Open device manager (you need to be logged in as administrator to do this)
• You will now find yourself in the device manager

Now that you are in your device manager you can update a driver;

• From the list locate the driver you want to update and double click it
• Click the driver tab in the device properties box
• Click update driver
• You now have 2 options to choose from;
  • Search automatically for updated driver software - This will search your computer and the internet for the latest driver software
  • Browse my computer for driver software - This will locate the driver on your PC

Do you need to resize your Windows Vista partition size? Here is a quick tip for you so that you can extend or shrink the partition size of a drive, just do the following;

• Click start
• Right click on computer
• Click manage
• Select disk management
• Right click on the drive you want to change
• Select extend or shrink
• Enter the size you want to change it
• Click shrink or extend
• Done

You can easily set or unset a password so the user has to type a password when they enter Vista, but you may find that anyone running on a network has to (no matter what) type in a password to enter.

There is a quick tweak you can perform that you will let anyone on a network enter Vista without a password, just follow these steps;

• Open run (start - run)
• Type in gpedit.msc
• You need to navigate to this location
  • Computer Configuration
  • Windows Settings
  • Security Settings
  • Local Policies
  • Security Options
• Double click on this policy;
  • Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console login only
• Select disable
• Click apply and OK
• Done

Here is a simple but effective security measure you can activate that will prevent people from ‘guessing’ your password to open up your PC. You can set Vista so that if someone attempts to enter your password more than a set amount the PC will shutdown for a certain amount of time.

Hopefully by activating this it will annoy any potential ‘other’ user so much that they will just give up on trying to access your computer. To set up the Vista lockout policy just do this;

• Click start then all programs
• Click administrative tools
  • If administrative tools is not there you can add it by right clicking on your start button, click properties, click customize on the start menu tab and activating it.
• Select local security policy
• Select account policies
• Select account lockout policy

Now you will have three options in the right column to select and change the settings;

• Account lockout duration - You can set the amount of time your PC will lockout after unsuccessful password attempts
• Account lockout threshold - Here you set the number of times you can try the password until your PC lockouts (I suggest 3-4)
• Reset account lockout counter - Here you can reset your account lockout counter after a set number of minutes

Do you need to check to make sure your version of Windows Vista is authentic and has been activated? Well here is a quick link to where you can check the activation status of your Vista;

• Open control panel
• Click on systems and maintenance
• Click on system
• At the bottom of this page will be your windows activation information

You will notice that on your start menu in Vista it shows all your links to major programs etc, but it also shows recently opened files and programs. Personally I have used this very often when I log back onto my computer and want to re-start whatever I was doing quickly, but only I use this computer.

If you are running a PC with other people and do not want them to see what you have been up to you may want to disable this feature. To disable the ‘latest’ list on your start menu just do this;

• Right click your taskbar and click properties
• Select the start menu tab
• Uncheck store and display a list of recently opened files
• Uncheck store and display a list of recently opened programs
• Select apply and OK