Fix Windows Vista Errors

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

I have written a few posts before about editing your task bar so I was suprized when I found out I had not said anything about resizing it.

This is a quick tweak you can perform that will make your task bar larger, enabling you to access more shortcuts etc from your task bar.

• Right click in your task bar
• Uncheck lock the task bar
• Use your mouse and at the top of the task bar drag the bar up to your desired height
• Now lock the task bar again
• Done

All of Windows Vista’s drives use the newer NTFS partition system rather than the old FAT32 system, but what you might not know is that Vista still supports the ancient (DOS, early windows) 8.3 file-name convention.

If you still run old DOS programs then you need to keep this feature active, but if you don’t you should disable this feature and speed up your file access.

To disable your 8.3 file-name convention just follow this;

• Open regedit
• Navigate to this location
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
• Find this key
  • NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
• Change the value from 0 to 1
• OK

If you are running a public machine or many people use your PC you may want to stop anyone from accessing the control panel where they could change settings etc.

I know of people who have had trouble in the past with ‘idiots’ changing all sorts of settings on the computers at places like libraries and were rather happy when I gave them this tweak.

To restrict control panel access just do this registry edit (remember to backup first);

• Open regedit
• Navigate to these locations
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Policies\Explorer
• Create a new DWORD value
  • NoControlPanel
• Set the value to 0
• Close regedit
• Reboot
• You should find the control panel can no longer be accessed

You will notice in your start menu under ‘all programs’ that any newly installed or upgraded software will be highlighted, now this just indicates the new programs but you can stop it highlighting.

Just copy these points;

• Right click in your task bar
• Select properties
• Select the start menu tab
• Click customize
• Uncheck highlight newly installed programs
• Click OK and apply
• Done

We all like the windows sidebar don’t we? It’s just something about all those stupid gadgets which we all love!

I personally do use the sidebar for a couple of useful gadgets (notepad, exchange rate) so it was good when I found this tweak that will set the sidebar to a low priority. Basically what it does is stop using recources on the sidebar when you are not using it, and of course not using resources makes your whole computer run faster.

So if you want to set your sidebar to low priority just do this tweak;

• Disable your sidebar – you can find how to do that here
• Open up computer (start – computer)
• Press alt and select tools
• Click folder option
• Select the view tab
• Select show hidden files and folders and click OK
  • Note: this may already be selected
• Now exit tools
• Navigate to this location
  • C:\users\(your username)\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\startup\
• Right click and click new shortcut
• In the shortcut wizard put this in
  • C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start “sidebar.exe” /LOW “C:\Program Files\windows sidebar\sidebar.exe”
  • Note: If you do have Vista installed on a different drive that C just change it
• Done – The next time you open Vista the sidebar will show up just in low priority mode

Microsoft will not dump Vista when Windows 7 launches and plans to keep selling it to computer makers, system builders, volume licensees and consumers at retail until at least January 2011.

Microsoft also confirmed that the company would stop supporting all versions of Vista in April 2012. However, Microsoft will allow enterprise customers to downgrade to Vista from a pre-installed version of Windows 7.

Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 on April 28, 2009.

Microsoft says that Vista SP2 is a unified service pack with a single installer for both Windows Server 2008 and Vista computers. SP2 is expected to be available in Q2 2009.

This second release candidate includes Windows Search 4.0, Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack, the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista, the addition of Windows Connect Now for simpler Wi-Fi configuration, and an exFAT file system that supports UTC timestamps.