We showed you in a previous tip how to increase performance with USB drives in Vista by enabling write caching. By default this option isn’t turned on because of the “removable” nature of these devices, so you could lose data if you pull out too quickly (the drive that is… ). Internal SATA hard drives are alot more [...]
Archive for Category: "Windows Tips"
Who Disabled My Task Manager?
I recently became the victim of a trojan virus… it was my own fault, and I have only myself to blame. This virus wasn’t a true “virus” per-se… it just exploited alot of dirty tricks in an attempt to preserve its existance. One of the first things that many trojans do is to disable use [...]
Fix Vista’s Wasteful Shadow Copy (VSS)
As storage has gotten more expansive, Microsoft has gotten very good at unnecessarily using up this extra space. One of the biggest storage hogs is System Restore, which was rather easy to modify in Windows XP. In Windows Vista, there is no easy way to change the amount of space that System Restore uses, so [...]
Unleash the Address Bar
If you’re a power-user, then you like to execute tasks in the quickest way possible. One of Vista’s tools that is greatly under-used is the Address bar, and it can do alot more than just search Indexed locations. It can be used as a Run dialog, Search, as well as a browser. If you have [...]
Generate a Blue Screen of Death (on purpose!)
Microsoft claims that Windows Vista is the most stable version of their OS yet… so stable that you may not ever see the dreaded BSOD (or Blue Screen of Death). Some of the development staff may have been so nostalgic over their lost Blue Friend that they included a hidden way to raise it from [...]
Get a List of Vista’s Drivers from the Command Prompt
If you’ve had your PC running for any length of time, then you’ve no doubt added and removed hardware since Windows was first installed. Even if you uninstall the hardware, there may still be traces of the drivers on your system, and possibly even multiple versions that could cause conflicts. Even if you have a “semi-closed” system [...]
Solve File Copy Problems: Tweak Vista’s auto-tuning Network
Once again, Microsoft thinks it can solve all of your problems by being smarter than you are. Unfortunately, some of the “automatic tuning” features of Vista can yield in lower performance (read our article on how SuperFetch may actually decrease performance). One of Vista’s features tries to change the network’s receive window on-the-fly to adapt to changing [...]
Run System Restore from the Command Line
It sometimes happens that you install some new hardware or program which then wreaks havoc on your computer. You may experience unusual program crashes or error messages, and they can sometimes be difficult to diagnose. Usually the easiest option is to run System Restore and return your computer to a state prior to the offending [...]
Clear IE7 Browsing History from the Command Line
There’s lots of little files accumulating on your computer… like bacteria. Every time you browse the interenet, little bits of data are saved onto your hard drive. There’s several reasons you need to clean these files out periodically. For one, there’s the privacy issue: do you really want your browsing history available to anyone who [...]
Add ‘My Computer’ to Your Vista Taskbar
Many of us like to have the quickest possible route to our commonly used folders. Even though nearly everything is accessible via the Start Menu, I like to have one-click access to commonly used items, such as Internet Explorer and My Computer. The Vista taskbar comes with some neat pre-defined Toolbars (like Quicklaunch and Windows [...]
Speed up Internet Explorer
According to industry standards, your web browser is only allowed to download two files at a time from any server. By default, both Firefox and Internet Explorer follow this guideline. If you visit a web page with lots of images (and supporting files like CSS styles and Javascript), then you can have a slower browsing [...]
Just Say No To SuperFetch
If you’re using Windows Vista, then you’ve probably noticed the new memory requirements. In Windows XP you could get away with 1GB of memory, with 2GB making it run much smoother. To get the same smooth experience from Vista, you really need to double the memory, due in part to some of the new services that Vista [...]
Fur Elise on Windows?
Grant found this interesting bit of info on Microsoft’s support site: http://support.microsoft.com//default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;261186 SUMMARY <script type=text/javascript>loadTOCNode(1, ‘summary’);</script> During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play “Fur Elise” or “It’s a Small, Small World” seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer’s BIOS that the CPU [...]
Enable 4GB of memory on Vista
Four Gigabytes is a lot of RAM for a workstation or gaming machine, but the industry has pretty much forced us into using this much (especially if you’re a heavy user of Virtual PC). Most applications today are 32-bit and only address 2GB of RAM at a time (like Photoshop), but we need more memory [...]
How to prevent CHKDSK from starting upon bootup in Windows
Sometimes you need to check the health of your hard drives by running a diagnostic on them, but you cannot fix any problems because “the system cannot get exclusive access to the drive”. This problem occurs more frequently on the drive in which Windows is installed. So, you schedule CHKDSK to run before boot (or [...]
Trim Vista’s Bloated Window Borders
There’s no doubt that Windows Vista’s visuals are a huge improvement over XP, but it seems like Microsoft wanted to show it off a little too much… at the cost of some screen real estate. They want to show off the new transparency of the window borders, but how can you truly appreciate them new-fangled [...]
Always Start an Application in Administrator Mode on Windows Vista
Older utilities that aren’t Vista-aware may not run in Administrator mode when running on Windows Vista. Therefore, when you go to run a program (an installation program, for example), the Operating System may tell you that you are not authorized to do so. Many utilities need to be run in Administrator mode in order to [...]
Resize a Partition for Free in Windows Vista
Windows Vista includes a built-in functionality in Disk Management to shrink and expand partitions. No more 3rd party utilities needed! To get to this utility, open up Control Panel, and type in partition into the search box.. you’ll immediately see the link show up: Shrink a Partition In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on [...]
Print IE7 Pages Without Headers or Footers
The headers and footers that always print along with the page when printing a page can be irritating. I know very well what page it was I printed, so it’s not useful to me to show the URL at the bottom of the page. If you want to turn the headers off just for a [...]
Print Only Selected Text From Web Pages
When surfing the internet you undoubtedly will come across great information you want to print out. When printing from the internet you don’t have to waste paper and ink printing out the entire site page with images and advertisements. Just print out the information you want. Highlight the specific information you want to print out [...]
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