Fix Windows Vista Errors

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.

I have been fiddling around with the new fax sender in Vista and I can say I am rather impressed with this version over the XP one. I had a bit of fun and sent some of my old workmates a few emails from my laptop (although they weren’t too impressed as they were still at work!).

To get started sending a fax in vista you need to;

• Click Start
• Click All Programs
• Click Windows Fax and Scan
• You may need to use the Fax Setup Wizard here if you have not been here before
• Now click Tools
• Click Fax Accounts and click Add
  
• Here you will need to add your details to create a fax account

Now that you have setup a fax account you can start sending a fax, all you need to do is;

• Select New Fax from the top left hand side
• Enter in the recipients details (very similar to sending an email)
• Click Send and you have just sent a fax through Vista

If you are a new user to Microsoft Vista or just have not noticed yet, there is a space to the right of your desktop for some gadgets.

Microsoft Gadgets are light-weight single-purpose applications that can sit on the user’s computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page. According to Microsoft, it will be possible for the different types of gadgets to run on different environments without modification, but this is currently not the case.

According to Microsoft there are three types of gadgets;

1. Web gadgets - run on a web site, such as Live.com or Spaces.Live.com
2. Sidebar gadgets - run on the desktop or be docked onto, run on the Windows Sidebar.
3. SideShow gadgets - run on auxiliary external displays, such as on the outside of a laptop or even on an LCD panel in a keyboard, and potentially mobile phones and other devices.

I have to say the gadgets are a interesting and useful addition to Vista over XP. Currently I have running a few gadgets (in fact my sidebar is full), they are the weather, the clock, notepad, feeds reader and a media player.

All these gadgets apart from the media player come standard with your version of Vista, you have to go to the downloads area of Microsoft to get any additional gadget. I advise you read the reviews before downloading any new gadget, there are a lot of quality ones out there but also some dodgy ones.

So far no serious errors or faults have been recorded in the gadgets (not sure about the downloadable ones).