Most of the problems you might get using any version of Windows is unsigned drivers. Drivers are basically bits of software which enable your operating system to see your hardware in your computer, and get the most out of it, such as brilliant graphics, high network speeds or really crisp sound. Badly written drivers don’t get signed by Microsoft because they won’t pass certain quality control measures, and unsigned drivers can cause the Blue Screen of Death, crashes or really bad performance.

Using a tool in Windows Vista, lets you check your drivers to see whether they are signed or not, and for advanced users lets them see much more detail.

1. Click Start and type in the Search box, verifier then click the Verifier application in the list.
2. For standard users, click the first option then click Next (see screenshot).
3. Again, for standard users, click the first option and click Next (see screenshot).
4. It may take a few minutes for Windows to detect all of your drivers, so be patient.
5. The next screen will give you a list of all the unsigned drivers needing to be verified. This gives you an idea of which drivers you need to get from manufacturers websites in order to get fully working drivers (see screenshot). Click Finish.
6. You may need to restart your computer - but this dialog (see screenshot) won’t mean that your computer will restart just this moment, so no mad panic to save your work.

Source: TweakVista

Microsoft have updated the Knowledge Base article (KB931619) and offers some hotfixes which aren’t actually available. This is because the hotfixes haven’t been tested properly and need to go through more thorough testing, and those seriously affected by this can still ask for the patch.

Some people find that when you click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area, and try and safely remove a device, the device doesn’t get released as you might think it would, and also doesn’t tell you that it hasn’t been released.

The reason the knowledge base article has given, is that there’s a timing issue in which your USB device’s memory may be released from the system whilst the system is trying to remove the device, thus causing the computer to not actually find the device information (as it’s just removed it) and doesn’t realise that the device isn’t connected and just ends up freaking out and getting confused. Bless!

You could waste your time waiting for the Microsoft Support people to get back to you, but I saved you the hassle and offered up downloads for you.

Please note: these are saved on my SkyDrive because they password-protected and timebombed the files they sent me. I extracted them and saved them so that they’d always be available. They are the same patches from Microsoft and are still digitally signed.

               Vista 32-bit version                                   Vista 64-bit version

Do you have a SATA disk drive in your computer? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk.  This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by enhancing write caching. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop, your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let’s get started:

1. Click on  Start and type in in “Device Manager” in the Search bar and hit Enter.
2. Expand Disk Drives.
3. Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.
4. On the Policies tab, check Enable advanced performance.
5. Hit OK and close Device Manager.

Source: TweakVista

Sick of having a computer which is 2.0 or 2.5? Well I’ve got a high-spec computer and it only runs at 2.2 which is to my dismay. However, you can easily change that… either get better hardware, or just hack the Windows Experience Index!

1. Go to your desktop, and double click Computer.
2. Navigate to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore.
3. Open up the most recent file in that folder. Make sure that your account has write access to that file. If not change the file permissions (right click - Properties - Security tab - Edit)
4. Search through the file looking for the WinSPR entry. These are the items you want to edit.  The maximum value you can use is 9.9.

   

5. Save the file and you just turned your 2.1 system into a supercomputer.  

Some of you might have heard about a “wonderpill” equivalent in form of a few updates from Microsoft for Vista which were leaked last week from the beta testing community. Microsoft has now made these updates public and are available for all versions of Windows Vista, and for x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) machines.

 We at VistaBase recommend highly that you update your system with these hotfixes. Although they may not make your computer more secure, you should notice a great deal in performance after the patches are installed - even if you have a super fast computer.

 Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938979)
This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

 Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938194)
This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

 Update for Windows Vista (KB938194) 
This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.
  
 Update for Windows Vista (KB938979)
This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

This update resolves the following issues:

• The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base 932539. The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver on a Windows Vista-based computer 
• The computer stops responding, and you receive a “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” error message. You can restart the computer only by pressing the computer’s power button.
• The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations.
• The Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) stops responding when the computer is under heavy load or when very little memory is available. This problem prevents diagnostics from working.
• The screen goes blank after an external display device that is connected to the computer is turned off. For example, this problem may occur when a projector is turned off during a presentation.
• A computer that has NVIDIA G80 series graphic drivers installed stops responding.
• Visual appearance issues occur when you play graphics-intensive games.
• You experience poor playback quality when you play HD DVD disks or Blu-ray disks on a large monitor.
• Applications that load the Netcfgx.dll component exit unexpectedly.
• Windows Calendar exits unexpectedly after you create a new appointment, create a new task, and then restart the computer.
• Internet Connection Sharing stops responding after you upgrade a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP to Windows Vista and then restart the computer.
• The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly.
• You receive a “Stop 0×0000009F” error when you put the computer to sleep while a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection is active. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 931671 - Error message when you put a Windows Vista-based computer to sleep while a PPP connection is active: “STOP 0×0000009F”.

For more information regarding these hotfixes, please visit the Knowledge Base article relating to these downloads.

Thanks to Bink for the posting.

The Reliability and Performance Monitor is a little tool embedded within the Performance Information and Tools section of the Control Panel. It scans your system over 60-seconds to see what’s going on inside your computer. It then produces a diagnostic report that flags performance bottlenecks and trouble-spots and hopefully shows you how to resolve them. As ever with this kind of tool, your mileage may vary: “The device driver for <unknown> has not been installed” is not exactly helpful. There is a lot to get your teeth into but this is fairly advanced territory.

Once you see this screen, you’re well on your way. After the screen changes and you no longer see the green bar, this is the report that it’s been generating. There are plenty of sub-tabs which you can click on and expand but this contains a lot of advanced information and isn’t easy to read unless you know what you’re looking at. However, the parts that are already open are fairly easy to understand and should help you along your way to computer-recovery.

To access the Reliability and Performance Monitor:

1. Go to Start, select Control Panel then click on Performance Information and Tools.
2. In the left hand pane, select Advanced tools.
3. Second option down should be the option to Open Reliability and Performance Monitor.
4. The monitor will begin automatically - sit back and wait for a report to be generated.

Thanks to Windows Vista Magazine.

The Performance Information and Tools section of the Control Panel is a nice handy way you can check how Windows is doing compared to your hardware. Here you can:

• manage startup programs - see what’s running when you first turn on your computer and the ability to turn programs off if you don’t need them, thus saving on memory.
• adjust visual effects - turn off the Glass effects or transparency if you don’t feel like you need or want them.
• adjust indexing options - uncheck the places you don’t need to search and supress the indexer if you don’t use it.
• adjust power settings - enabling you to turn off your monitor and other hardware when you’re not using it.
• Disk Cleanup - get rid of all those temporary Internet files and those files and folders which aren’t quite deleted.
• and other advanced tools such as the Disk Defragmenter.

As most people have seen, the Performance Information and Tools is where you have the numbers telling you the Windows Experience Index score, but with the tools in the left hand pane of the window, you can adjust those tweaks simply and comfortably.

More details of the second coming surfaced yesterday when Mary Jo reported a few tips she had received about the upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta to be released later this month, including a very basic list of functionality and performance improvements. However a day prior, a Microsoft employee silently outlined a critical flaw in Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost feature and mentioned SP1 would include the fix - a rare occasion under the new Gorbachev Sinofsky administration.

Robert Hensing, a security engineer at Microsoft, wrote on his blog about a performance flaw in ReadyBoost which severely hindered the responsiveness after resuming from standby (S3) or hibernate (S4) due to an architectural bug. The problem causes irregular and unnecessary hard-disk thrashing after resume which can take up to 8 minutes to settle down - ironically the outcome is the exact opposite of ReadyBoost’s purpose to increase responsiveness by caching. The cause is a simple yet stupid oversight in the design of ReadyBoost’s security system which encrypts all cache-data with an AES-128 encryption key, a great idea badly implemented.

You see, Vista ‘forgets’ the key after resuming from sleep which invalidates all the ReadyBoost data already held in the memory device forcing it to flush and start over. Yes that’s right, gigabytes worth of good and otherwise usable cache-data which could actually be used to improve system responsiveness, down the drain. Mind you, this is all happening seconds after you’ve opened your lid or pressed the power button, a time when all processor cycles should be focused on getting the system back and running, not wasted to something as stupid as this.

Source: istartedsomething.com

There are basically two ways to recover a damaged Windows Vista system: the installation DVD or the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

All you have to do is locate your installation DVD and use it to boot up your damaged system. This launches the Windows Vista installation. (Don’t worry, you’re not going to reinstall Vista. All you want is to get to the “Install now” screen.)

The process begins by launching the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), a simplified version of Windows that runs in memory only and is designed to replace DOS. Then it presents a screen which asks for three things:

1. Language to install
2. Time and currency format
3. Keyboard or input method

Making a selection and clicking Next will bring you to the “Install now” screen.  What you’re looking for is the two options in the lower left corner of the screen:

• What to know before installing Windows
• Repair your computer

Clicking “Repair your computer” will move you to another screen that lets you choose your existing system partition. When you click Next, you’ll get a series of choices for system repair. From there on, just follow the prompts. Use the WinRE console to diagnose and repair the problem.

The problem with using the installation DVD is that you might not always have the disk on hand. If you want to make sure your system is always running, but don’t want to depend on the installation media, then you can use WinRE. The WinRE console is new to Windows Vista and is specifically designed to support the recovery or repair of a system.

It is based on WinPE  and offers features such as automatic diagnosis and repair of boot problems with the Startup Repair tool and a centralised platform for advanced recovery tools. You can even use WinRE to reinstall Windows without damaging your data, since the image-based setup Vista uses protects data during an upgrade process.

The ideal way to install WinRE is to create two disk partitions as you install Vista on your system: one for Vista and one for WinRE. This way, WinRE will be accessible if you run into system disk problems and Vista won’t start. The WinRE partition only requires 1GB of space, since WinRE is a very small system. Both partitions must be primary and active.

To install WinRE, you have to create a system image that you can install on your system. For this, you’ll need the Windows Automated Installation Kit, which kit gives you the tools you need to customise a WinPE image and turn it into a WinRE image.

Once the image is ready, you simply apply it to your WinRE partition. Full instructions for this operation are located in this step by step. Once you’re done, you’ll never be caught off guard if things go wrong on your Vista PC.

Source: ITNews

According to McThePro, there is a new process which slows down the moving or copying of files. This process is called Remote Differential Compression, but can easily be turned off and disabled.

1. Go to Start then Control Panel.
2. Go to Programs and Features, and in the left hand pane select Turn on or turn off Windows features.
3. Search through and uncheck the box with Remote Differential Compression.
4. Apply and OK.

You may need to restart your machine for this to kick in.

There are two parts to this which you need to complete; one in Windows Defender and the other in the services menu. This ensures that nothing about Windows Defender works and that even the background tasks are disabled and turned off.

VistaBase does not recommend that you alter these settings as Microsoft Update provides your computer with important updates that make your computer safer and more secure.

1. Go to Start, All Programs, then Windows Defender.
2. Select the Tools option at the top of the screen.
3. Under “Settings”, click the Options button.
4. Untick the “Automatically scan my computer” checkbox, the “Use real-time protection” checkbox, untick the “Use Windows Defender” and the “Allow everyone to use Windows Defender” checkboxes.
5. Click the Save button. If prompted for administrators access, click Allow or enter in the password.
6. Close Windows Defender. If the icon remains in the taskbar, right click it and select Exit, then click Yes.
7. Go to Start then Run (or press the Windows key +R).
8. Type in services.msc then press OK.
9. Scroll all the way down the page, then double click on Windows Defender.
10. Under the startup type, select Disabled.
11. Under service status, make sure the service is stopped.
12. Apply then OK, then close the Services console.

You may need to restart for full effect, but this will stop Windows Defender from scanning anything on your machine and should save you a good chunk of memory.

What’s the largest amount of flash that I can use for ReadyBoost?
You can use up to 4GB of flash for ReadyBoost (which turns out to be 8GB of cache with the compression)

Why can’t I use more than 4GB of flash?
The FAT32 filesystem limits our ReadyBoost.sfcache file to 4GB.

What’s the smallest ReadyBoost cache that I can use
The smallest cache is 256MB. After Beta 2, we have dropped it another 10 MB or so.

OK… 256MB-4GB is a pretty big range… any recommendations?
Yes. We recommend a 1:1 ratio of flash to system memory at the low end and as high as 2.5:1 flash to system memory. Higher than that and you won’t see much benefit.

Isn’t this just putting the paging file onto a flash disk?
Not really - the file is still backed on disk. This is a cache - if the data is not found in the ReadyBoost cache, we fall back to the hard disk.

Aren’t hard disks faster than flash? My hard disk has 80MB/sec throughput.
Hard drives are great for large sequential I/O. For those situations, ReadyBoost gets out of the way. We concentrate on improving the performance of small, random I/Os, like paging to and from disk.

What happens when you remove the drive?
When a surprise remove event occurs and we can’t find the drive, we fall back to disk. Again, all pages on the device are backed by a page on disk. No exceptions. This isn’t a separate page file store, but rather a cache to speed up access to frequently used data.

Isn’t user data on a removable device a security risk?
This was one of our first concerns and to mitigate this risk, we use AES-128 to encrypt everything that we write to the device.

Won’t this wear out the drive?
Nope. We’re aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support.

Can use use multiple devices for EMDs?
Nope. We’ve limited Vista to one ReadyBoost per machine

Why just one device?
Time and quality. Since this is the first revision of the feature, we decided to focus on making the single device exceptional, without the difficulties of managing multiple caches. We like the idea, though, and it’s under consideration for future versions.

Do you support SD/CF/memory stick/MMC/etc.?
Mostly. In Beta 2, we added support for a small number of SD/CF cards on internal USB2 & PCIe busses. RC1 has a much broader support range.

Why don’t you support SD on my USB2.0 external card reader?
We unfortunately don’t support external card readers - there were some technical hurdles that we didn’t have time to address. In general, if a card reader shows a drive without media in it (like a floppy drive or CD-ROM does), we can’t use it for ReadyBoost.

Will it support all USB drives, regardless of how they are ID’d to the OS (”hard disk drive” or “Device with Removable Storage”)?
We have no way to tell what is on the other end of a USB cable so we do some basic size checks (since no one has a 200GB flash device ) and then perform our speed tests. HDD will not, however, pass our speed tests, and there is no benefit to using a USB HDD for ReadyBoost.

Can you use an MP3 player to speed up your system?
Not currently. MP3 players use the ‘plays for sure’ interfaces to expose themselves to Windows. We require that the device appear as a disk volume. These aren’t currently compatible.

How much of a speed increase are we talking about?
Well, that depends. On average, a RANDOM 4K read from flash is about 10x faster than from hard disk. Now, how does that translate to end-user performance? Under memory pressure and heavy disk activity, the system is much more responsive; on a 4GB machine with few applications running, the ReadyBoost effect is much less noticable.

I can’t get my device to work with ReadyBoost… can I lower the performance requirements?
Unfortunately, no. We’ve set the perf requirements to the lowest possible throughput that still makes your system faster. If we lowered the perf requirements, then there wouldn’t be a noticeable benefit to using ReadyBoost. Remember, we’re not adding memory, we’re improving disk access.

Which manufacturers support ReadyBoost?
Well, I hope that all of them do, eventually. Right now, we’re working with manufacturers to create a program that will allow them to identify ReadyBoost capable devices on their packaging.

Source: Tom Archer’s Blog

When in Windows Explorer, a few shortcuts like holding down a key on the keyboard whilst clicking can save time.

Shift + Double click = opens the folder in an Explore view in a new window
Ctrl + Double click   = opens the folder in a new window
Alt + Double click     = opens the properties for that file or folder

To “copy to path” basically means, to copy the full address of a file or folder. A file might be in C:\Users\Jeremy\Documents\Work\document.docx and there isn’t really an easy way to find the address of this. Sure you can navigate through Windows and find it… but what if you need the full file address (or the “path”)? Then you might struggle.

Having said that, Windows Vista includes this feature in, but it’s not so easy to find it. To copy to path:

1. Find the file you want to “copy to path”.
2. Hold the Shift key down, right click on the file, and choose Copy as path from the menu.
3. Paste in your destination.

Highly useful when pasting links to upload them somewhere or opening them from a remote window.

With the new operating system just out for release to buy and download, here are 10 reasons why you should upgrade to Windows Vista from existing operating systems.

1. Minimise security threats and system vulnerabilities
   Enhanced online protection with Windows Internet Explorer 7 - including protected mode and the anti-phishing filter to help protect your identity and data. The protected mode mitigates threats from malicious software such as spyware, viruses and root kits. UAC (User Account Controls) makes it easier to implement standard user-privilages on your computer; you can create a separate account for each user and control websites, programs, downloads they can use and install whilst all reducing the attack surface of your company or home computer
2. Help reduce the time and cost of troubleshooting and resolving system issues
   Advanced Group Policies manage critical usage scenarios and corporate machines. With enhanced security and management features on each desktop, you can reduce the time spent responding to help calls.
3. Increase user productivity by simplifying the way people organise and search
   Powerful integrated search capabilities help save people time by helping them to find just about anything on their computers. With a new user interface provides better stability, improved user experience, richer visualisation and easier navigation.
4. Help reduce the time to configure and deploy a new computer
   Tools such as System Image Manager have the potential to make installations faster, more manageable and less error prone. System Image Manager uses the modular architecture of Windows Vista, and it’s XML based; unattended format to enable better servicing and language independance.
5. Reduce the complexity of image configuration and the number of images managed
   A new imaging format in Windows Vista allows for hardware and language independence, reducing the number of desktop images needed when deploying to corporate PC’s with a variety of hardware and language settings.
6. Increase mobile worker productivity by enabling remote access and syncronisation
   Your people can collaborate better with teams, partners and customers, regardless of whether they are on the road or in the office. Sync Center manages data syncronisation between PC’s, devices and wireless connections with enhanced security to help protect your mobile workforce.
7. Minimise the time of supporting mobile and remote systems and people
   Remote Assistance is a collaborative help tool that lets IT professionals remotely view and share control of the user’s computer to assist in diagnosing and resolving computer troubles.
8. Help prevent the loss of critical/sensitive data from lost or stolen machines
   Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption (in Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions) securely protects and manages your data if a laptop or computer is lost or stolen.
9. Increase team productivity by making it easier to share ideas without a network
   With Windows Meeting Space feature, your teams can hold peer-to-peer ad hoc meetings to share ideas in real time, without the need for a wireless network or projector.
10. Help facilitate corporate compliance
    Granular event logging, auditing and tracking enable compliance throughout your network.

The search bar in the Start Menu searches through a lot of things - applications, file types, your files, system files and folders, and of course the Start Menu items. If this is making your Start Menu go really slowly, then a simple registry tweak can improve your performance tenfold when it comes to the Start menu.

1. Go to Start and Run (or press Windows key + R) and type in regedit then press OK.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > Advanced..
3. In the right hand side, search for Start_SearchFiles, then double click on it and set the value to 0.
4. Restart the computer.

Once you boot up again, the Start Menu will load up so much faster.

Want to actually turn your computer off and not have it “sleep” all the time? Well it’s easy to do. In the Start menu, you have the power button which hibernates your computer. Now you have the power to turn it off for good.

1. Go to Start , then Run.
2. Type in powercfg -H off then press OK.
3. The command prompt window will flash up for a second then go - it’s now turned off!

Having a mobile computer with Vista can be tricky. The wireless facility might drain your battery, maybe you don’t want Windows Aero to show in your presentations, or maybe you’re giving a presentation and your screensaver kicks in. All the mobile “gadgets” in here suit your device - and some of the mobile “gadgets” in the Windows Mobility Center are provided by your laptop manufacturer.

Please note, the Windows Mobility Center is only available for laptops. It won’t appear on desktop computers.

With the Windows Mobility Center, you can turn on wireless facilities and off instantly, check your battery status, rotate your screen so that you can fold up your laptop and display it with the screen the right way up, check the status of external screens connected to your device, and turn on presentation settings of which change your wallpaper to blank (or customise it so it’s not your more “personal” of backgrounds), stop notifications from Messenger and such programs, and stops your screensaver kicking in.

 To view the Mobility Center:
1) Go to Start , then Control Panel.
2) Select Windows Mobility Center and it’ll appear.

With Windows Vista’s Network Map feature, enabling you to see a visual represenation of your network, it only picks up Windows NT 6.0 machines (basically Windows Server “Longhorn” or Windows Vista machines”. Microsoft have provided a download which enables Windows XP SP2 users to be seen on a Network Map on Windows Vista.

 Download the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder from Microsoft.

I knew someone would ask me this one day and I can’t really find the easy way of explaining it. Windows Vista eats memory like a fat person in a cake shop. After before you finish first installing Vista, it starts to put safe-guards in place and security procedures in hand - UAC, NAP, Firewall etc. This means the minute you turn your computer on for the first time, it’ll be secure so you don’t get a bad first experience.

Then there are other things which munch memory - the Windows Aero and transparency in each window takes up loads of memory and not to mention the Search Indexer which saves you time searching for your files. But even after you turn these off and the eye candy disappears, there’s still loads of memory being used. Windows Vista is a lot bigger than Windows XP and there are loads of back-end things going on - services and processes running to make things easier for you, supposedly.

However in essence, unless you have a really mega fast computer with 1.5GB of RAM or more, it’s actually running those services and processes to make things easier for itself. Sorry to break it to you so harshly, but check out which services and things you can disable which might hopefully bring your memory usage down a bit.

The Windows.old folder (including Windows.old.000 folder) only appear in Vista when you’ve performed an installation from an older operating system. Even if you do a clean installation or an upgrade, you’ll still get the folder which retains your old settings, Program Files and usually your My Documents folder as well. However, deleting it can sometime pose a problem… here’s how:

 Solution 1

1. Ensure that simple file sharing isn’t enabled - go to Start , Control Panel, Tools menu (at the top of the window), Folder Options, the View tab, Use simple file sharing needs to be unticked, Apply, OK.
2. Right click the Windows.old folder, then select Properties. Click the Security tab, and click the Advanced button.
3. Click the Owner tab on the new dialog that’s appeared. If you are an administrator, then select Administrators. If your username appears in the list, select your own username. Ensure that the tick box labelled Replace owner on subcontainers and objects is ticked as well. Apply then OK.
4. Apply and OK the folder properties, then proceed in deleting the folder.

 Solution 2

1. Go to Start , then Run, then type in cmd then hit OK. If UAC kicks in, then allow the program.
2. Type in at the command line: del c:\windows.old - then hit Enter. It may ask you to confirm this.
3. Go into Computer, then your C: drive and ensure it’s been deleted.

 Solution 3

1. Boot into Safe Mode, then login as the Administrator (this will appear as Administrator on the Welcome/Login screen)
2. Go into your C: drive, right click the folder and select Delete. It may take a while to delete as there’s a lot of stuff in there, but it should work.

If you still can’t delete it… then just forget it, hardly anyone has to worry about 2-3GB in a folder on their hard drive anyway. Just be thankful that Vista’s kind enough to salvage your files for you.

The power button in the Start menu , the default option is to send the computer to sleep. This means that the computer retains its memory but puts the computer in a state of using very little power, yet the computer can be woken by simply moving the mouse or tapping the keyboard.

 To change the default setting from Sleep to either Shut down or Hibernate:

1. Go to Start , Control Panel, then select Power Options
2. Select from the left hand pane, click on Choose when to turn off the display.
3. Under the selection boxes, click Change advanced power settings.
4. In the new dialog presented, select the power plan you wish to change from the selection box, then scroll down to Power buttons and lid and expand the selection.
5. Expand the selection of Start menu power button, then click the setting and change.
6. Click Apply, OK, Save Changes, then close the Power Options.

Some people have experienced a random crashing of the SearchIndexer.exe application in Windows Vista 5365. The application provides content indexing and caching of files, emails and other content, and also controls Virtual Folders and causes the Windows Search to run super-fast as it does.

 The known work around is the following:

1. Go to Start , and click Run (or hold the Windows key + R) and type in services.msc then hit OK
2. If UAC kicks in, make sure you allow the Microsoft Management Console.
3. Scroll down to Windows Search, right click and select Properties from the menu.
4. In the Startup type, ensure this is selected as Disabled, then underneath click the Stop button to stop the service.
5. Click Apply then OK, then close the console.

After this, the problem should not arise again, however please note that Virtual Folder’s will not work, and that searching will be much slower. You can continue with the Windows Search service running and get the occasional message about it needing to close, but this won’t harm your computer in anyway, it’s just annoying that’s all.

Update for Vista RC1
This has now been fixed, hurrah!

Although the new interface for sharing files on a network in Vista may seem confusing and bewildering, the Classic sharing dialog is still there for you to use. There is however a new sharing wizard of which takes precedence over the Classic file sharing, and this article shall show you how to use both.

1. Right click on the folder you wish to share and select Properties.
2. Click on the Sharing tab in the folder’s properties, and then click the Advanced Sharing button with the shield. The shield denotes administrative privileges only, so you may have to authorise.
3. On this new window, firstly you will have to select the first check box labelled Share this folder and all the other options will be editable.
4. To change different users’ access to your shared folder, click the Permissions button and change accordingly.
5. You can also configure the Offline Settings accordingly so that when the shared folder goes offline, then you can still access it.
6. Click OK, then Apply and OK to set the sharing folder.

The Windows Experience Index (WEI) is a simple yet effective tool to measure your computer’s power and performance. It works on different levels and narrows all types of computers into one of 5 different categories. It’s also designed to work inline with Windows Marketplace to help you buy software online that works well with your system and won’t lag in performance. The simple scale ranging from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest, will differ depending on hardware categories such a processor, how much memory your system has, video card, hard drive and monitor resolutions.

Although those on earlier builds of Windows Vista it was slightly unreliable and many different people got totally wrong estimations, it’s starting to improve. With the Windows Update Advisor which will be available as an update in Windows XP, it will tell you what you need or indeed what you have to have on your machine to ensure Vista will run well on it. Microsoft have said that this will be most likely to recommend upgrades of graphics cards, memory and sound cards as these are the easiest parts of a computer to upgrade.

 There is a demonstration relating to this article. Click here to view it.

The superfetch feature in Windows feature is a performance technology which helps make applications load faster. As we’ve seen previously in Windows XP, sometimes an application will start itself as a system service and appear in Task Manager, which helps it load up much faster.

However, this new technology can use devices such as USB memory sticks as separate memory device attached to the computer. The technology works ahead of time and works out what you need on the system - such as useful DLL files, applications used a lot such as Microsoft Word executable files and core files, and other things like that.

Some people have said however, that USB 2.0 ports (the fastest USB port available at the moment) are much much slower than a hard drive and therefore wouldn’t be as effective. However, speed doesn’t necessarily have to come into it when files and applications are prefetched.

Just as the Start menu comes up with a list of applications you’ve recently used, Windows Vista will pick up a similar list and find large or difficult to handle files and prefetch them, so that it becomes easier to read them later on. It could mean that previously, Microsoft Word taking 7 seconds to load up, with prefetching turned on… 3 seconds!

In the latest builds of Vista, some people have had trouble activating their evaluation beta copy and therefore slip into problems after 14-days of not activating… there computer stops working and Vista refuses to load up. However, something I’ve found tucked away may help with problems such as these, and others of which programs do not let you use them.

1. Go to Start and select Control Panel. From here, open the Add or Remove Programs option.
2. In the left hand pane, click on the Advanced Options, and then Windows Features.
3. Select the features that you wish to turn on and off (ticked means it’s on and unticked is off).  

You can enable all sorts of things from here - Games, Network File System infrastructure settings, IIS server components, all types of connectivity, multimedia features and applications and administrative settings like Windows Foundation Components.

Flip3D is a new feature in Vista, and indeed Longhorn Server which enables users with Windows Aero running, to use a new task switcher menu to scroll through your open windows in a three-dimensional vision. This is not a replacement for the Alt+Tab feature, which is still there and enables you to scroll through your programs giving a small thumbnail screenshot of the open program. Without Windows Aero enabled, you will just have the standard Alt+Tab that you had in Windows XP.

 To use Flip3D: (you MUST have Windows Aero enabled)
On your keyboard, with more than 2 applications running in the taskbar, press the Windows key + Tab to enter the Flip3D mode. Press left and right cursor keys to scroll through the windows, and press Esc to return to the normal view.

 To use Flip (Thumbnail Switcher):
On your keyboard, with more than 2 applications running in the taskbar, press the Alt + Tab keys, holding down Alt still and tapping Tab to scroll between the windows. Letting go of Alt will return you to the normal screen.

 There is a demonstration relating to this article. Click here to view it.

Below is a simple guide to what the numbers mean, and how you can achieve such performance rating.

 There is a demonstration relating to this article. Click here to view it.

There are many new services in Windows Vista that support some of the new technologies and applications. However on some slower computers, reducing the amount of running services can dramatically improve performance and free up some memory for other applications.

 To disable or stop a service

1. Go to Start , Run and type in services.msc to open up the Windows Services console.
2. Double click on a service to view its properties
3. Under Startup type, either select it to “Automatic” to start on startup, “Manual” to start when you need it or “Disabled” to never use it.
4. Click on either the Start or Stop buttons to either stop or start the service, depending on what you want to do.

If you have problems with a service or you get an error message stating that “the service cannot be started”, simply open back up the Services console, and start the relevant service again to sort the problem out.

 Application Layer Gateway Service - Manual, Stopped
This service doesn’t need to be running unless you have Internet Connection Sharing actually running from that computer which enables other people to share the connection directly from that machine. I don’t have it running, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

 Block Level Backup Engine Service - Manual, Stopped
This service is for backing up and recovery of data - although it’s not very important if you definitely won’t be using the Backup and Restore function in Windows. Remember to back up your files every few weeks though! Certificate Propagation - Disabled, Stopped
This service is there to propagate certificates from smart cards. If you don’t use smart cards to gain access to the system, just disable this one.

 CNG Key Isolation - Manual, Stopped
Basically to do with public/private key isolation and keeping keys that last a while in the memory. It’s not really needed to be honest.