Fix Windows Vista Errors

If you have ever tried to download large amounts of data on a USB stick you will have noticed just how long it takes, well this is a tweak that will improve the speeds that you can download things onto your USB drive.

Warning: If you take your USB stick out of your PC a lot you may lose data if you perform this tweak.

• Click start
• Right click on computer and select manage
• Select device manager
• Expand disk drives and select your USB drive
• Right click and select properties
• Select the policies tab
• Select optimize for performance
• Select OK
• Done

Here are a couple of tweaks you can perform that should increase the speed of your hard drive, just take note of some of the warnings before you perform these tweaks.

Low Disk Space Warning

• You need to disable your Low Disk Space Warning
• Open regedit
• Navigate to this location
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer
• Select a new DWORD and call it NoLowDiskSpaceChecks
• Set the value to 1
• Done

Enable Advanced Performance

• Open your control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click device manager
• Expand disk drives
• Double click on your drive
• Select the policies tab
• Check enable advanced performance
• Click OK, done

Do you run multiple screens from your one PC and get rather annoyed all day at looking at multiple versions of the one wallpaper, then you can set the wallpaper so it stretches over both displays.

Before you set the wallpaper over both displays you have to make your image large enough and of the right resolution so that basically it doesn’t look funny.

So if you want to stretch an image over more than one screen then do this;

• Right click on your desktop
• Select personalize
• Click desktop background
• Select the image you want
• Underneath you will see the option for how should the picture be positioned
  • Select tile (the middle one)
• Select OK, done

The Superfetch feature on Vista machines is a nice little application that essentially tries to make opening applications faster. What SuperFetch does is preload your system memory with all the applications you use often so that when you launch these applications they should open faster.

Now we all remember back in the days when you could open an application, then go make lunch to come back and find it just opened.  Now things aren’t that bad nowdays but you may still want to open applications faster and that is what SuperFetch does.

SuperFetch is automatically enabled on a Vista computer but if you want to disable it you must do the following;

• Open up services (type services.msc in start menu)
• Scroll down and double click on SuperFetch
• Click the general tab
• Scroll down to the startup type dropdown
• Select disabled
• Click apply and ok

Recently we have had some users complaining about their default printer changing in Windows Vista. They would set their default printer, then everything would be fine for a while, but once in a while the default printer would change, or there would be no default printer set anymore.

There was no apparent reason for this to be happening and we couldn’t really identify why the default printer was changing, but we now have a solution.

It seems this particular problem was being caused by the remote desktop connection. If a user connects remotely to their Vista PC and has the local printers option set (under the Local Devices and Resources tab), this causes the default printer on the Vista PC to change. See the screenshot below.

To view your remote desktop settings:

• Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Remote Desktop Connection
• Click on the Options button
• Click the Local Resources tab
• Uncheck printers

So if your default Vista printer has been changing and you use remote desktop, try the above and the problem should go away. However, don’t do this if you actually do want to use local printers in your remote session.

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Speed Up Windows Vista – Free Download

What does that title mean? Basically it means that are you looking at removing the ‘shortcut’ text link from all of your shortcuts, it is automatically added everytime you add a shortcut.

Removing them manually is possible but just annoying, so here is a registry edit for you to try that will remove the shortcut text (this will remove all ones you do in the future, not shortcuts already done);

• Go to this location
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
• Find the key called link
• Change the value from 1e 00 00 00 to 00 00 00 00
• Done

You will notice in the Vista start menu that your name will be at the top of the right hand column, with it linking to your documents. If you want to remove your name then follow these points;

• Right click somewhere on your taskbar
• Click properties
• Click the start menu tab
• Click customize (notice: your name should not show if you are running the classic start menu)
• Scroll down to don’t display this item under personal folder
• Check it
• Click ok
• Done

This option is for people who may be having trouble finding their mouse cursor on the desktop (or those who just think it looks cool). Basically it is a setting that leaves a trail at the back of your mouse whenever it moves, comet style.

You can select whether you want a long or short trail, depending on your need. To setup a pointer trail on your mouse just do the following;

• Open control panel
• Go to mouse settings (hardware and sound > mouse)
• Click on the pointer options tab
• Check on the box display pointer trails
• Select the length of your trail
• Click apply and ok

You know I always just thought that the sidebar in Vista always just stayed on the right hand side of your desktop, but you can also move it to the left hand side.

To move your sidebar just do the following;

• Find the sidebar icon in your taskbar
• Right click on the sidebar icon
• Select properties
• Scroll down to display sidebar on this side of the screen
• Select left
• Click apply and ok
• Done

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