I have talked in previous posts about disabling the Windows Vista Aero desktop to increase the overall speed of your PC, so today I thought I’d give 2 quick tweaks you can perform to speed up the Aero desktop if you wish to keep it.
Transparent Glass Effect
The Transparent Glass Effect can be a really cool looking effect for your desktop but it can also slow down your PC, to disable it just;
Apple has released a commercial poking fun at the amount of money Microsoft spends on advertising rather than fixing Vista (the ad wasn’t free Apple!).
Most users are only starting to learn about Windows Vista Serivce Pack 1, but now Microsoft is already getting ready for Vista Service Pack 2.
Well we don’t have a great deal of information about Vista SP2 yet, but the rumours are that some lucky (unlucky?) customers are already testing a beta version.
There is also a planned service pack 2 for WIndows Server 2008. Nonetheless, we will keep you informed of any updates relating to the service pack 2. Here is the official Microsof Support page: Vista Service Pack 2
Here are two new tweaks I have discovered that should boost the performance of your Vista PC, remember if you do use these features don’t disable them!
Windows Hibernation
Hibernate is a feature seen in many operating systems where the contents of RAM is written to non-volatile storage, such as the hard disk (as either a file or on a separate partition) before powering off the system. Windows hibernation background services can use a large amount of system resources thus can slow down the performance of your PC so if you don’t use this service you can disable it;
Select Control Panel
Click hardware and sound
Click Power Options
Click Change when the computer sleeps
Click Change Advanced Power Settings
Expand the Sleep selection
Expand the Hibernate After selection
Crank the selector down to zero
Click Apply
Remote Differential Compression
Remote Differential Compression (RDC) allows data to be synchronized with a remote source using compression techniques to minimize the amount of data sent across the network. By constantly checking for file changes RDC can potentially slow down your system performance, to turn RDC off just do this;
Select Control Panel
Switch to Classic View
Select Program and Features
Choose Turn Windows features on and off
Scroll down and uncheck Remote Differential Compression
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.
It has been officially announced today that the next Windows operating system will be called Windows 7. Mike Nash (VP of Windows Product Management) said on his blog;
“The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We’ve used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or “aspirational” monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista.
And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new “aspirational” name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.”
As we have blogged about previously Windows 7 will still be released some time in early 2010.
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.
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;
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