Fix Windows Vista Errors

You can easily change the registered owners name of your Windows Vista computer by doing either one of these two methods. This can come in handy if you enter wrong owners name info when you setup your PC, or maybe you have bought a second hand PC with someone else’s registered info.

Using Software

This software is the easiest way to change registered name info on your Windows Vista computer, it does require you to edit your registy or do any other complex things. To run the software just click the link below to run the software, it will then go through all the steps with you so you can easily change all details.

Change your Microsoft Windows Vista Registered and Organization Name

Editing Your Registry

If you are experienced enough to be able to edit your registry then this method will work for you. Start off by going to this location;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

• Find the key RegisteredOwner
• Change the value to your new registered name
• Done

You can make sure the name has been changed by typing winver.exe into your start menu, it will give you all the details.

The Vista Transformation Pack (VTP) is a program that transforms your Windows XP into Windows Vista.  It emulates most of the Vista appearance including taskbar, menus and even the cool sidebar widgets.

The VTP is a popular product and for good reason. It does an excellent job in mimicking Vista, but you can still retain the performance of Windows XP, which relies on less hardware and resources.  The latest release of VTP does have many new and improved features which we found quite impressive. Some of great new features in VTP 9:

• New “Vista Rainbar”
• Improvements to the transparency/glass effects
• Improved file explorer with glass toolbar + built in search
• Improved versions of ViStart and ViOrb
• and tons more

If you have never used a Vista Transformation Pack, then you are missing out. This is a cool program to either emulate Vista appearance or just for something different to play around with on XP. The latest version is Windows XP SP3 compatible and should install smoothly and easily on any XP system.

Download Vista Transformation Pack 9

Here is a cool little Windows Vista secret for opening your quick launch items.

Just press the “Windows key + x”, where x is the number identifying the quick launch icon.

So in the example below, to open up the Thunderbird application, the user would press the Windows key and the number 2 on their keyboard. To fire up Firefox, it would just be a matter of pressing the Windows key and 1.

You will obviously need quick launch items for this to work. You can easily add items to your quick launch bar, just by dragging them in there.

Yes, Windows Vista still has the command prompt and it is a useful tool. Many functions done via the command prompt are much much faster. The command prompt also has many cool utilities that can’t be found anywhere else.

In the following article we have compiled a very comprehensive list of all the Windows Vista command line functions. This list isn’t fully complete but it does cover the majority and includes everything you will probably ever need.

Windows Vista Command Line Reference

Feel free to send through any other important commands that we might have missed.

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Free download - Fix Vista errors and speed up your computer

If you are getting bored with the plain ol’ boot screen you get on Windows Vista then you can change it through a simple settings change. You will change it from the basic boot screen to the Aurora boot screen.

This is what you will see normally on boot up;

Now this is how you can change you Vista boot screen;

• First open up msconfig (start and type msconfig in start search)
• Click on the boot tab
• Check No GUI Boot
• Apply and OK

• You will now have to restart your computer
• On restart you will see the new Aurora boot screen

A huge issue with any parent nowadays is making sure their children are safe and secure on their computer, and not seeing or hearing any internet “nasties”. Parental controls are very important to most parents so I thought I’d discuss today some parental control features in Windows Vista.

The parental controls built into Windows Vista are designed to help parents manage what their children can do on the computer. It means any parent can control and view the amount of usage their child uses. The parental controls will let you;

• Restrict computer use to specific times
• Control games their children can play
• Control programs they can use
• Restrict websites they can visit

To get started on the parental controls you firstly have to make sure your account has administration privileges. Once you have done this you can now setup a new account for your child and to add parental controls to it.

Add a New Account

• Select control panel
• Click Add or Remove User Accounts
• Click Create a New Account
• Create a new account making sure that the standard user button is on

Now Setup Parental Controls

• Select control panel
• Click Set Up Parental Controls
• Select your child’s user account
• Click the On button

You have now setup parental controls for your child’s account, you have the following options to control exactly what your child see’s and does on their Vista computer.

Time Limits
You can control the amount of time your child spends on the PC each day

Games
You can control the type of games your child plays

Web Filter
1. Click on the Vista Web Filter option
2. Check that blocking is enabled
3. Edit the Allow or block list and enter the websites that are accessible to your child
4. Click the “Only allow Web sites which are on the allow list” check box

Programs
You can select what programs your child does and does not get access to. So if you are really against them using word you can select that Word is a no go program.

All you have to do is to control and monitor your childs computer habit. You can view the hours used by your child as well as what they have done so you can decide how they use their computer appropriately.

Have you performed a search in the box in the start panel and found it to be rather slow, well so have many others. This is due to a feature in Vista that whenever you perform that search it actually searches through your entire file index, and that is huge!

The best way to speed up this search is to set it that whenever it searches it does not search through the files on your hard drive, to do this just;

• Right click on the start button
• Click properties
• Click on customize
• Uncheck search communications
• Set Search Files to Don’t Search for files
• OK

Do you ever get the urge to have you home directory icon accessible from your desktop? Your home directory is the folder that contains these items for each account on your computer;

• AppData
• Contacts
• Desktop
• Documents
• eng
• Favorites
• Links
• Music
• Pictures
• Saved Games
• Searches
• Videos

You can easily set it up so that you will get an icon on your desktop linking you to your home directory, to do this just;

• Click start
• Right click on your user name
• Select show on desktop
• Done

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.

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!