Fix Windows Vista Errors

Automatic startup programs in Windows Vista can be annoying and they can hog alot of resources. There is no point in starting up a bunch of programs if you are not going to use them anyway.

So this little Vista tweak will help increase your startup time and will optimize your sytem. You will also have less processes running after startup, so you should get some better overall performance.

Disable Unwanted Startup Programs in Vista

• Click start
• Type “msconfig” into the search box
• Click on the “startup” tab
• Uncheck the services you don’t want to startup. Just be careful here, don’t uncheck vital services or things you are not sure of.
• click “OK”
• You can always add the services back in by following the same process.

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Free Download – Fix Vista Startup Problems

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

With this cool little hack, you can unlock the secret administrator account that is hidden in Windows Vista.

Windows Vista has a few built-in default accounts. These include the Guest account and the Administrator account. The Guest account you would have seen, and this can easily be activated. The Administrator account is a bit more tricky. By default this is not activated and it is also hidden. So lets look at how you can unlock and use this account.

You need to open the command prompt, type “cmd” from the search box. Then type the following into the command prompt window: “net user administrator /active:yes”. Now the default administrator account will show up when you log in. This account has supreme power in Windows Vista and you wont need to worry about UAC annoyances.

Note: if you wish to turn this off, just run “cmd” again and this time enter: “net user administrator /active:no”.

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

If you want to improve performance of your SATA hard drive, here is a quick little tweak in Vista that should give some improvements over the default settings.

Speed up SATA performance in Vista:

• Open the device manager: click start -> right click computer -> click properties -> click device manager in left column
• Goto the disk drive section
• Right click your hard disk
• Click the policies tab
• Check the box “Enable advanced performance”

Your SATA drive(s) should now run faster!!

OK so if you are using Windows Vista, you have probably noticed by now that “My Documents” from the old XP days is now called “Documents”. I love it when everything changes for no other reason than to be confusing.

Anyway, if you want to edit the location of where “Documents” points, you can do so by right-clicking and selecting properties.

However, you may want to do this via the registry, it can come in handy for certain situations. So here is the Registry Key you will want to edit for changing the default location of the “Documents” folder in Vista.

Open the registry editor in Vista, just type in “regedit” in the run box.

Browse to Registry Key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal

You can then alter that value to point to a different folder/location.

Have Fun!
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Fix Vista Errors and Improve Performance – Free Scan

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.

If you are an old school Windows user like me, you might be missing the Run command that we all came to love.  The good news is that you can add this back in Vista with this quick little tweak.

• Right click on your taskbar
• Select “Properties”
• Click on the “Start Menu” tab
• Tick Start menu entry and click on “Customize”
• Check the “Run command” box
• Click “OK”

You are done. Now you have the “Run” command back!!

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!