Vista Key Alarms

In Vista, go to Start, Control Panel and click on the Ease of Access link. This is the same as the Accessibility Options in XP. From there, click on the link that says “Change how your keyboard works.” Once you’re in that window, go down to the middle of the page and checkmark the box that says “Turn on Toggle Keys.” This will then activate a beeping sound every time you hit the Caps Lock, Num Lock or Scroll Lock keys on your keyboard.
Go ahead and give your keyboard a try. Hit the Caps Lock key and you’ll hear a beeping noise. You can then do the same for the Num Lock and Scroll Lock keys. These are keys that we all accidentally hit every once in awhile, but with this alarm, you won’t have to worry about messing up what you’re working on (typing in all caps, for example). This gives you a simple warning and you can then go and undo the key you hit. After that, you can just go on with your day and all will be perfect!

Windows Vista Keyboard shortcuts

ALT+TAB
Switch between open items

Windows logo key +TAB
Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Windows Flip 3-D

CTRL+Windows logo key +TAB
Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Windows Flip 3-D

ALT+ESC
Cycle through items in the order in which they were opened

F6
Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop

Windows logo key
Open or close the Start menu

Windows logo key +BREAK
Display the System Properties dialog box

Windows logo key +D
Display the desktop

Windows logo key +M
Minimize all windows

Windows logo key +SHIFT+M
Restore minimized windows to the desktop

Windows logo key +E
Open Computer

Windows logo key +F
Search for a file or folder

CTRL+Windows logo key +F
Search for computers (if you are on a network)

Windows logo key +L
Lock your computer (if you are connected to a network domain), or switch users (if you're not connected to a network domain)

Windows logo key +R
Open the Run dialog box

Windows logo key +T
Cycle through programs on the taskbar

Windows logo key +SPACEBAR
Bring all gadgets to the front and select Windows Sidebar

Windows logo key +G
Cycle through Sidebar gadgets

Windows logo key +U
Open Ease of Access Center

Windows logo key +X
Open Windows Mobility Center

Add another time zone to your clock

One nice addition to Windows Vista is the ability to display the time in other time zones.

Click on the clock.

Click Date and Time Settings

Click on the Additional Clocks tab.

Check the box labelled Additional Clock, and from the drop down menu choose a time zone.

Give the clock a name, such as Texas, Germany, Paris, Chicago or anything You want.

Press OK.

You can repeat this for the second additional clock as well.

How To Change the Windows Vista Product Key Code

Changing the Windows Vista product key may be necessary if you discover your current key is pirated or illegal but you don’t want to reinstall Windows Vista to activate your new legal key.

1. Click on Start and then Control Panel.

Tip: In a hurry? Type system in the search box after clicking Start. Choose System from the list of results and then skip to Step 4.

2. Click on the System and Maintenance link.

Note: If you’re viewing the Classic View of Control Panel, you won’t see this link. Simply double-click on the System icon and proceed to Step 4.

3. Click on the System link.

4. In the Windows activation area of the View basic information about your computer window, you’ll see the status of your Windows Vista activation and your Product ID number.

Note: The product id is not the same as your product key. To display your product key, check out the guide on how to find the Windows Vista product key code.

5. Next to this information, you should see a Change product key link. Click on this link to start the process of changing your Windows Vista product key.

6. When the Windows Activation window appears, enter your new product key in the Product Key: text box.
Click Next to continue.

7. Wait on the Activating Windows… message until the progress bar is complete. Windows Vista is communicating with Microsoft to ensure that your product key is valid and to reactivate your Windows Vista installation.

8. The Activation was successful message will appear after your product key has been validated and your copy of Windows Vista has been activated.

9. That’s it! Your Windows Vista product key has been changed!
Click Close to close this window. You can now also close the System window.

Enable and Disable Hibernation in Vista via Command Line

If you hate waiting for Vista to load when you start your computer, hibernation is one way to significantly speed up boot. It basically copies your memory to disk and then shuts down. When you start the computer again, it just loads your RAM from disk, and you're up and running where you left off previously. The downside of this is that a file must be created on your hard drive to hold this memory, and the file will be as large as the amount of RAM you have. On my computer that's 2GB, and if you've got 4GB of RAM, well, you do the math! If you don't use hibernate, you can turn it off and save yourself this disk space.

Disable Hibernation in Vista

To disable hibernation, simply click on your Start menu, and type powercfg.exe /hibernate off in your search box. Then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter, which will run the command line you typed in as an administrator. If you have UAC active, it will prompt you to approve the elevation of privileges, and you'll probably see a quick flash of a command line window appearing and then disappearing. Your work is done!

Enable Hibernation in Vista

To enable hibernation, simply click on your Start menu, and type powercfg.exe /hibernate on in your search box. Then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter, which will run the command line you typed in as an administrator. If you have UAC active, it will prompt you to approve the elevation of privileges, and you'll probably see a quick flash of a command line window appearing and then disappearing. Your work is done!

Disable Automatic Disk Defragmentation in Vista with dfrgui

By default Windows Vista will automatically defrag your hard drive (defrag: reorder files on the physical hard disk and not to make them easily accessible / re-organising your file cabinets).
The default is that Vista itself schedules the best time for this to do, while this could decrease real-time performance it might be better if you choose when to defrag yourself. An easy way to disable this scheduled defragmentation is as follows.

1) Click START, type dfrgui and hit ENTER. (see figure 1)

Figure 1: Start the Vista Disk Defragmenter

2) Then uncheck Run on a schedule (see figure 2) and click OK.

Figure 2: Uncheck Run on a schedule

Note: While the above is a lot faster :) you can also do this by browsing to Control Panel, System and Maintenance, choose Defragment your harddrive.

Speed up your computer with Windows Readyboost

Windows Vista has a new feature called Readyboost that allows you to plug in your removable media, such as your USB flash device or Smartcards, to store commonly used files for quicker access. Often mistaken for RAM replacement, keep in mind that RAM is much superior than the USB device you use with Readyboost.

Rather than let you decide, Windows Vista makes the decision on whether to enable Readyboost on your device. So before you run outside and get yourself a USB, you’ll want to know the requirements for your USB flash device or Smartcard for Readyboost to be enabled.
2.5 MB/sec for 512KB random writes across the device
3.5 MB/sec for 4KB random reads across the device
A minimum of 230 MB space

If you’ve disabled the Readyboost service, you’ll want to enable it now. Plug in your USB device and you’ll receive a prompt:

Choose Speed up my system and you’ll be taken to the Readyboost properties of your device. You can then use the slider to reserve a certain amount of space for Readyboost.

When using Readyboost, I recommend that you use this in conjunction with Superfetch.

How to change the power buttons function in Vista

The default operation of the power button in Windows Vista is to send the computer into a new sleep mode that means the pc is not completely shut down, in order to actually shut down you have to click on the arrow near the shutdown button and select Shut Down.
To make sure that your pc always shuts down when you click on the power button you will have to go to the power options settings box which can be found through the control panel, then hadrware and sound, then power options.
Select advanced power settings.
Now expand power buttons and lid.
Now expand power button action.
Now select the action, in this case to Shut Down.
You can also change the action of the power button through the task pane on the left of the control panel. When you see the power options section, look to the left and you will find: Change what the power button does - you can select the option very easily through this method.

Dress Down For Speed

The default Windows XP visuals look pretty but they do nothing for system speed; in fact some of them can slow your PC down quite noticeably. Not all of the fancy fripperies are bad, though, and you can still keep the XP look and feel without sacrificing too much performance. Here’s how, go to Start > Control Panel > System, select the Advanced tab then click the Settings button under Performance. For the best compromise between speed and appearance uncheck everything except:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons
Click Apply and OK to exit the dialogue box and your new visual settings will be applied.

Automatic Defrag

As you know over time the Windows filing system can become disorganised and this will eventually lead to a slow down and a reduction in performance. ‘Defragging’ the hard drive can restore order but most of us forget to do it regularly and leave it until the system has started to slow down. Here’s a way to program Windows to automatically Defrag your drives once a month or every few weeks.
Go to Start > Control Panel and click Performance and Maintenance then Scheduled Tasks (or just go direct to Scheduled Task in Windows XP) and double-click Add Scheduled Task. This will launch the Scheduled Tasks Wizard.
Click Next then the Browse button to C:\WINDOWS\system32, click defrag.exe and select Open. Now you can give it a name and set the timings for defrag to run and when you have finished check the box ‘Open Advanced Properties …’. If there’s more than one User Account on your PC you may want to set up a Password, otherwise leave the fields blank.
To finish off in the Run line add n the drive letter for the disc you want to defrag after the command, so it should look like this: C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe c: click OK and it is set.

Speed Up Windows XP Boot (SLIGHTLY)

Here’s another tip for speed demons, determined to shave the last few nanoseconds off their Windows XP boot up times. Truth be told this one probably won’t save more than a second or so but every little helps. The idea is that XP wastes time and resources checking to see if there are any devices connected to empty IDE slots on the PC’s motherboard. To stop this happening open Device Manager (Winkey + Break > Hardware > Device Manager) and click on the plus sign next to the IDE ATA/ATPI listing to expand the tree. Right click on Primary IDE Channel and select Properties then the Advanced Settings tab. If either Device 0 or Device 1 is ‘Device Type’ box is empty (not greyed out) change the drop down menu setting for this box to ‘None’ and click OK.Repeat for the Secondary IDE Controller listing. Note that if you add a new IDE device you will have to go back and change the Device Type drop down menu back to Auto Detect.

How To Auto-Logon To A User Account At Startup With Vista

One of the annoying features of Vista is that because you have to create an account and a password for every other PC or device that you want to share files with. Because of this, everytime Vista all of these accounts are displayed, even if you don’t actually use them on the PC, and you also have to login everytime.
I spent sometime yesterday looking for a way to auto-logon to Vista, as having to login was really getting annoying on my Vista Media Center PC where I just wanted the PC to boot straight into MCE so that I could access my media. Having to login, meant I had to keep getting the keyboard out just to type in a password . I eventually found a way to setup Vista to automatically login to a selected account at startup.
1. Click on the Start button and type in ‘netplwiz‘. This will open the Advanced User Accounts menu2. In the Users tab, highlight the account you want to login to Vista automatically with, and then ‘must enter a username and password to use this computer’3. Click on ‘Apply’. A new window will now popup asking you to enter the password of the account you’ve just highlighted. Do this, and then click ‘Ok’4. Click ‘Ok’ on the Advanced User Accounts menu to finish
Now, whenever you boot up, Vista will login automatically to your chosen account which is great if you are using a HTPC like me.