Fix Windows Vista Errors

Remember those commercials for Windows Vista with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld that were supposed to help rejuvenate the brand?

You have probably long forgotten, so here are the commercials in case you want to see them again:

http://fix-vista-errors.com/blog/2008/09/09/gatesseinfeld-shoe-commercial/
http://fix-vista-errors.com/blog/2008/09/16/second-seinfeld-commercial/

Well this was a 300 million dollar ad campaign and personally I think the money could have been better spent and so do most other people that were surveyed. In a recent survey which appears on Advertising Age here, the Seinfeld and Gates commercial was rated as the worst commercial (or best worst ad).  However, Apple was rated as no 1. I think its time for Microsoft to hire a new ad agency.

————————
Fix Vista Errors - Free Scan

You will find that if you need (for what reason?) to open multiple windows of your registry editor (Regedit) you will notice that basically you can’t. Every time you try to open the second Regedit window the first one only shows up.

You can open two Regedit windows by this simple but easy hack, just type these two words into your start menu and you will be able to open more than one Regedit window (remember to press enter after each word);

• Regedit -m
• Regedit /m

Fix Windows Vista Registry Errors - Free Download

The Welcome Center you see when you log into your Vista computer is a fairly handy tool with features such as computers details and internet connections, but some people must just find it annoying!

I have had a few email regarding the welcome center, with questions regarding just how to stop it showing up when you log in. This tweak is very simple and should take you a whole 5 seconds to do, here is both methods you can try to disable your welcome center;

In the Welcome Center

• Open your welcome center either;
  • When you login
  • Type welcome in your start menu
  • Control panel - systems and maintenance - welcome screen
• At the bottom you will find a box saying ‘Run at startup’
• Uncheck this
• Done

Through Your Registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

• Find WindowsWelcomeCenter
• Right click on it
• Select delete
• Done

There have been numerous cases of people unable to change their desktop wallpaper on their Windows Vista computer, you should be able to change this with a quick tweak. Here is both the control panel and registry edit for this tweak;

Control Panel

• Open control panel
• Open ease of access
• Open make the computer easier to see
• Make sure ‘Remove background images (where available)’ is unchecked
• Click apply and OK

Registry Edit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Policies

• Create a new key
• Call the key ActiveDesktop
• Create a new DWORD in the new key
• Call the DWORD NoChangingWallPaper
• Set the value to 1
• Done

This is a pretty common question we get regarding Windows Vista and we havent yet addressed it on our blog, so here is a full post for all you new users on how to turn off the User Account Control (UAC).

User Account Control is considered by many to be a very annoying feature in Vista. If you are new to Vista, UAC is the annoying prompt that you get whenever you try to do something. There are a few ways to disable this, but we will do it via the control panel.

• Open the control panel
• Click on “User Accounts and Family Safety”
• Click on “User Accounts”
• Click “Turn User Account Control on or off”
• Uncheck the UAC option
• Click “OK”
• You will then be prompted for a reboot

OK, when shifting to Vista one of the things I personally found really annoying was the new start menu and program listing. I thought it was just me….until I started receiving emails from other users and friends complaining about the list structure, instead of the expandable trees.

Well the list down does seem less accessible than the old XP expandable tree style menus and for those of you that can’t stand it, here is how you can change it. After the change, the program listing will behave just like it did in Windows XP. Don’t worry, you can always change back.

Change to the Vista classic start menu:

• Right-click on the Vista start icon
• Select “Properties”
• Click on the “Start Menu” tab
• Select “Classic Start menu”
• Click “OK”
• Enjoy the better start menu

———————
Free Download - Fix Vista Errors and Speed Up Your PC

You can easily change the registered owners name of your Windows Vista computer by doing either one of these two methods. This can come in handy if you enter wrong owners name info when you setup your PC, or maybe you have bought a second hand PC with someone else’s registered info.

Using Software

This software is the easiest way to change registered name info on your Windows Vista computer, it does require you to edit your registy or do any other complex things. To run the software just click the link below to run the software, it will then go through all the steps with you so you can easily change all details.

Change your Microsoft Windows Vista Registered and Organization Name

Editing Your Registry

If you are experienced enough to be able to edit your registry then this method will work for you. Start off by going to this location;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

• Find the key RegisteredOwner
• Change the value to your new registered name
• Done

You can make sure the name has been changed by typing winver.exe into your start menu, it will give you all the details.

The Vista Transformation Pack (VTP) is a program that transforms your Windows XP into Windows Vista.  It emulates most of the Vista appearance including taskbar, menus and even the cool sidebar widgets.

The VTP is a popular product and for good reason. It does an excellent job in mimicking Vista, but you can still retain the performance of Windows XP, which relies on less hardware and resources.  The latest release of VTP does have many new and improved features which we found quite impressive. Some of great new features in VTP 9:

• New “Vista Rainbar”
• Improvements to the transparency/glass effects
• Improved file explorer with glass toolbar + built in search
• Improved versions of ViStart and ViOrb
• and tons more

If you have never used a Vista Transformation Pack, then you are missing out. This is a cool program to either emulate Vista appearance or just for something different to play around with on XP. The latest version is Windows XP SP3 compatible and should install smoothly and easily on any XP system.

Download Vista Transformation Pack 9

Here is a cool little Windows Vista secret for opening your quick launch items.

Just press the “Windows key + x”, where x is the number identifying the quick launch icon.

So in the example below, to open up the Thunderbird application, the user would press the Windows key and the number 2 on their keyboard. To fire up Firefox, it would just be a matter of pressing the Windows key and 1.

You will obviously need quick launch items for this to work. You can easily add items to your quick launch bar, just by dragging them in there.

Registry tweaks are a very easy and simple way you can change settings etc in your Windows Vista computer, you can even perform some task not available in your control panel. If you need to know how to access your registry to edit just go here;

• Open start and type run
• In the run box type Regedit
• Your Regedit box will open, it is here that you can edit your registry

Before you do any edits to your registry you should make a backup so if you do make a major mistake you can just restore this good version of your registry. To make a backup of your registry to this;

• Click the Start button and type systempropertiesprotection in the Start Search box
• Wait for Windows to search for available disks and most recent restore points
• In the System Properties dialog box on the System Protection tab click Create
• After the restore point has been created successfully click OK two times

Now here is a link to a list of a bunch of common registry edits for Windows Vista, we will be adding more to this list in the future so make sure you bookmark it.

Windows Vista Registry Edits