Fix Windows Vista Errors

Do you want more features on your Vista? Does your version of Vista not come with what you need? Then you will need to upgrade to a better version.

Vista makes it very easy and fast to upgrade to a better version of Vista and can be done without searching the web. You can do this through your control panel (you need to be online);

• Open your control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click Windows anytime upgrade
• You will be now sent to a Microsoft webpage
• Here you can purchase an upgrade and then upgrade your PC

There are a few different options for you to upgrade, these include;

• Home Premium to Ultimate
• Business to Ultimate
• Home Basic to Home Premium
• Home Basic to Ultimate

Read through the options about the different upgrades and work out the one suitable for yourself.

Fix Windows Vista Errors - Free Download

It is being reported on various sources that the release of Windows Vista service pack 2 and updates for Windows Server 2008 are not far off.

The candidate build for Vista sp2 and ws 2008 is currently being tested but a date for the public release is unknown yet.

We will have more news as we get it.

I’ve done a few posts on how to speed up Vista etc but I havn’t gone into detail on how to make your desktop run faster and not freeze/stick/stop/blah blah.

Remember when you do these tweaks that the overall speed of your PC will depend on numerous things so sometimes these tweaks may not perform as good you hoped, that would mean there could another more damaging problem with your PC.

Sidebar

I know people out there love the new sidebar full of the gadgets, but did you know the sidebar can slowdown your interface. Remove it by;

• Right click your sidebar
• Select properties
• Uncheck Start Sidebar When Windows Starts

Visual Effects

I’m not even going to go into detail here, visual effects can slow down your PC;

• Open control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click performance information and tools
• Click adjust visual effects
• Now you will see a big list of all the visual effects running, uncheck the ones you don’t need

Transparency

The transparency effect can look really ‘cool’ but it also slows things down;

• Right click your desktop
• Click personalize
• Click windows color and appearance
• Uncheck enable transparency

Aero Theme

I guarantee for the first few week you use Vista you will run the Aero theme but after a while you may find it just becomes slow and you need to change it back to the basic theme;

• Open personalize again
• Open windows color and appearance
• Select Windows Vista Basic
• Click apply

Personally I don’t use the sidebar on Vista (except for a nice clock), but I do know of people that have gone through hundreds of those stupid little gadgets that do anything from play music to show you different currencies.

One question I recieved from someone with a massive list of gadgets was how to remove the unwanted ones, well it is easy;

• Right click on your sidebar
• Click add gadgets
• Find the gadget you want to uninstall
• Right click and select uninstall
• Click uninstall
• Done

You may have noticed in Windows Vista underneath icons and mouse pointers there is a slight shadow, to most people they have no care about this slight graphic but some may find it annoying.

You can easily disable this effect in Vista by doing this;

• Open control panel
• Click system (system and maintenance - system)
• Click advanced system settings
• Click the advanced tab
• Under performance open settings
• Scroll down to show shadows under menus/mouse pointers
• Uncheck these
• Click apply and ok

Note: You can also play with other visual effects settings in this area.

Microsoft has ceased allowing downloads of Windows 7 Beta.

Unless you have started downloading the beta version before tuesday you cannot access it, and those who have started the download have untill thursday to finish downloading.

“We’re sorry, but downloads are no longer available,” Microsoft says when users click through from the download page.

“Special thanks to everyone who is beta testing Windows 7,” wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger.

You can easily restore lost or missing files in Windows Vista using the backup and restore center. To restore a lost or missing file just follow this;

• Open control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click backup and restore center
• Go down to restore files on your entire computer
  • Click restore files
• Now select files from either the latest or an earlier backup
• Now select the file/s you want to restore
• Select the location where the files are to go
• Click start restore

Here is a quick registry edit you can perform that will enable you to lock your taskbar that will prevent any user from moving or resizing it.

• Go to this location
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
• Add this new DWORD
  • LockTaskbar
• Set the value to 1
• Done

Remember to always backup your registry before attempting any major edit, and if you need to repair your registry then run this scan - free registry scan.

Google has just upgraded their popular Google Earth to include an undersea view.  The undersea view will include maps, photographs and videos of the ocean floor from all over the world.

Here is a video demonstrating the new Google Earth Undersea;

You will probably notice that the default blinking cursor in Vista is really small, so small that people have dificulty actually seeing it.

You can perform a quick and easy tweak that will ‘beef’ up the blinking cursor and make it much easier to see, just follow these points;

• Open control panel
• Click ease of access
• Click optimize visual display
• Scroll down to ‘Make things on the screen easier to see’
• Now find the section that says ‘Set the thickness of your blinking cursor’
• Select a number from the drop down menu, there is a preview section for you to review
• Apply and done