Fix Windows Vista Errors

If you are into a flash looking Vista and don’t care at all about speed/performance then you may want to try enabling the avalon effects.

Before you turn on avalon you need to turn on the Aero desktop.

Once you have enabled Aero then you can turn on avalon;

• Open regedit
• Navigate to this location
  • HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer
• Create a new DWORD and call it
  • MILDesktop
• Set its value to 1
• Create another DWORD and call it
  • MILExplorer
• Set its value to 1
• Reboot your computer

Some of you will know it as the F3 search button and some of you will know it as the ctrl+f button but whatever you use it does the same thing, search the page in IE and explorer for certain letters/words.

Now personally I love this feature and use it daily (I’m still a ctrl+f man), but I have heard that some people want it gone due to security and privacy reasons.

This is an easy tweak to perform but as usual whenever you perform a registry edit it is a good idea to backup your registry.

• Open up Regedit
• Navigate to this location
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions
• Create a new DWORD
  • NoFindFiles
• Set the value to 1
• You will need to reboot to see it active

There are so many types of tweaks you can perform on your computer that will speed it up, and some are more unknown than others.

Here are a few of these type of tweaks, they don’t involve RAM or drivers but every small tweak you make can improve the overall performance of your PC.

Remove Unwanted Fonts

Believe it or not, the more fonts you have installed the slower your computer will perform. It may not be a drastic slowness but everything help, so you should go through and delete any unwanted fonts.

Note: Windows uses many fonts for menu bars etc. so don’t go deleting all your fonts, just ones you know are useless.

• Open control panel
• Click appearance and personalization
• Open fonts
• Find the fonts you want to delete, right click and delete
• Done

Disable System Sounds

I didn’t believe this at first, but turning off your system sounds can make a slight improvement of your PC’s performance.

• Open control panel
• Click hardware and sound
• Open sound
• Select the sounds tab
• Under sound scheme in the drop down select no sounds
• Apply and OK

You should all now know about the cool new Vista power options feature where you can use very low power to sleep your PC and wake up ready to go at a moments notice. But what we are hearing from many of our users is that quite often they will come back to their computer to find it on, burning electricity.

There are a few things that may be causing Vista to wake up out of a nap, hopefully these tweaks should let your Vista PC sleep well and not burn up energy.

A Device is Waking Your PC Up?

Your PC may be getting woken up by a device that is set to wake up your PC. To check what devices are waking up your computer and how to fix the problem just read the following;

• Open cmd (run as administrator)
• Type this at the command prompt;
  • powercfg –devicequery wake_armed
• This will show you a list of devices that will wake up your PC

You can disable a device from waking up your PC by doing this;

• Open device manager
• Find your suspect device
• Right click and press properties
• Click the power management tab
• Uncheck ‘allow this device to wake the computer’
• Click OK

Stop Your Network Card From Waking Up Your PC

Just like your devices your network card can also wake your Vista machine up, you can disable this feature by doing this;

• Go to device manager
• Expand network adapters
• Right click on your network card and click properties
• Make sure ‘allow this device to wake the computer’ is unchecked
• Click OK

Edit Multimedia Power Options

You may want to perform this tweak so your multimedia features won’t wake up your PC;

• Type power options in your start bar
• Click change plan settings on your power plan
• Click change advanced power settings
• Scroll down and expand multimedia settings
• Expand when sharing media
• Choose allow the computer to sleep (you can decide if you want this on battery, plugged in or both)
• Done

Microsoft has finally released the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 after releasing the beta version late last year.

The Vista SP2 update includes new support for recording Blu-ray discs straight from the Vista OS, updated support for Bluetooth v2.1, and bug fixes that address slow shutdowns and mysterious crashes.

Vista SP2 can now be downloaded from Microsoft’s Download Center. However, anyone who had been running the beta of the service pack, which was released late last year, will have to remove it before proceeding with the install.

“Over the weekend, some of you may have received an e-mail from us reminding you that the Windows 7 Beta expires on Aug. 1, 2009,” Brandon LeBlanc, a spokesperson for Microsoft, wrote on the official Windows blog.

The release features support for five languages: English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese.

I was playing around with some settings in Vista today trying to find anything ‘new’ to tell you guys about, I didn’t have too long so I didn’t find the ultimate tweak but I did find 2 useful shortcut tweaks.

They both involve the start menu;

Add Run Command to Your Start Menu

• Right click in your task bar
• Select properties
• Click the start menu tab
• Click customize
• Scroll down and check run command
• Click ok
• Your run command will now be in your start menu

Add a Regedit Shortcut to Your Start Menu

• If you are like me and love regedit then you will love this tweak
• Click on your start menu and type regedit
• On the regedit.exe program right click
• Select pin to start menu now reopen your start menu and you will see the shortcut

The Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature on Windows Vista helps to prevent dangerous external threats from running themselves on your PC, this should help stop things like viruses and other threats.

Some people do not like DEP running on their system but personally I would just leave it enabled. If you do want to disable it or just want to let DEP run just on the programs you want then just follow these tweaks.

Disable Data Execution Prevention

• Click start
• Type CMD in the start bar
• Type in the following command
  • bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
• You will now need to reboot
• To turn DEP back on type the following command in CMD
• bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOn

Edit Data Execution Prevention

• Open control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click system
• Click advanced system settings
• Click the advanced tab
• Under performance click settings
• Click the Data Execution Prevention tab
• Turn on Turn on DEP for all programs and services except for those I select
• Now click add and select the applications you want DEP turned off on
• Click apply and OK
• You will need to reboot to see the effects

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