How to resize a partition in Windows Vista

Because programs such as Partition Magic don’t work on Windows Vista, some of you may be wondering how to resize partitions without losing any data. The good news is that you probably won’t be needing those programs because Windows Vista can manage your partition resizing.

To resize a partition with Windows Vista, follow these steps:

Be sure to back up any valuable information, because there is a slight chance that data can be lost when dealing with partitions.

1) Click on the Start menu

2) Right click on Computer and click on Manage

3) You may get a User Account Control dialog here; just click Continue

4) In the left pane, open up the Storage category and click on Disk Management

5) Here, you will find your partitions for your disks. Right click on the partition you’d like to modify.

6) Click on Extend Volume or Shrink Volume to extend or shrink the selected partition.

If this doesn’t work for you because some options were greyed out, you can check out this post for an alternate method.

Add Internet Explorer Icon to Windows Vista Desktop

I know what you are thinking. Can't I just make a shortcut? Of course you can. But using this tweak you can recreate the native Internet Explorer icon the way it used to be in prior versions of Windows.

The native icon gives you two benefits: First, you can right-click and get directly to the Internet Options panel, and secondly it doesn't have the shortcut icon arrow.

Manual Registry Tweak

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]

Find the key named "{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}" on the right-hand side, and then set the value to 0. If the key does not exist, then create a new 32-bit DWORD value with the same name. To remove the icon, you could set the value to 1 instead.

Note that if you are using the classic start menu, you should create this value under the ClassicStartMenu key instead of the NewStartPanel key.

Download Registry Hack

Even easier, you can just use one of the registry files I've prepared. Just unzip and double-click to enter into the registry.

Add IE Icon to Desktop

Remove IE Icon from Desktop

Show Your Name In Vista Taskbar

go 3D

Windows Vista Repair Options

Windows Vista does not contain a Recovery Console, therefore doing a repair install like that we are familiar with in Windows XP is not possible. Instead, if you need to replace the operating system, you either have to re-install Vista from scratch, or else re-image the drive from a backup source created using the Windows Vista Backup Status and Configuration application. this then effectively replaces the current copy of Windows Vista with a shadow copy you backed up previously.

This backup option is the only one provided by Windows Vista. of course there are other ways of imaging your hard drive, but these require the user to purchase a third party application.

Of course, re-imaging is one option. If, however, you are simply experiencing startup problems or perhaps you cannot readily access your system and need to do a system restore, then you need to look at Windows Vista's Repair Your Computer options.

How you access the repair options will depend upon whether you have a Windows Vista installation disk or whether your operating system came pre-installed by your PC manufacturer.

Windows Installation Disk

NOTE

With the Complete PC Restore Option you must have made a backup of your system, either on your hard drive or on a set of DVDs, in order to use this option. If you don't have a backup then don't use this option

1/ make sure your PC can boot directly from the Vista DVD. Obviously, most modern PCs can. With older machines you may need to check the PC's BIOS

2/ Start the PC

3/ Immediately insert the Windows Vista DVD into the DVD drive

4/ A Black screen will appear with the words 'Press any key to boot from CD or DVD'

5/ Press Any key to start the booting process

6/ A new screen will now appear with a progress bar. The legend say's 'Windows is loading files'

7/ After a few minutes the Microsoft copyright window ill appear and another small progress bar will be visible

8/ You will next see a Blue curtained screen

9/ After a short while the Language option screen will appear

10/ Select your language and keyboard language and the Click the Next button

11/ At the bottom left of the next screen - the Install screen, Click on the Repair Your Computer option

12/ The System recovery options will now search for your Windows Vista installation

13/ Once the Vista installation has been located, Highlight it and then Click the Next button

14/ You are now presented with the following set of recovery options

• Startup repair - This automatically fixes problems that are preventing Windows from starting
• System Restore - This will Restore Windows to an earlier point in time
• Windows Complete PC Restore - This will completely restore your entire PC - programs, system settings and files - from a back up that you have previously created (Available in Windows Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions only)
• Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool - This checks your computer's memory hardware for errors
• Command Prompt - This opens a Command Window

15/ Click on the Option you require and follow the onscreen prompts

Pre-Installed Options

NOTE

If no repair options are available your PC manufacturer may have replaced the tools or customised them. Check your Computer Manual before proceeding.

1/ Start your PC

2/ If your PC has one operating system Press and Hold the F8 key as your PC starts. If the Windows Logo appear you will need to start again

3/ If you have a dual boot system a Boot option menu will appear. Highlight the Vista operating system and Press the F8 key

4/ In both cases, if all has gone well, an Advanced options screen will now appear

5/ Highlight the repair Your Computer option and Press Enter

6/ Select a keyboard layout, and then Click the Next button

7/ Next select your user Name and Enter your Password, then Click OK

8/ The recovery options should now appear

Make menu load faster

A simple registry tweak will allow you to speed up the menu. First load the registry editor by launching regedit from the Run menu (Press WINDOWS KEY + R to access the run menu).

Then, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop in the side panel, then right click on MenuShowDelay and select Modify.

Now, enter the menu delay time in milliseconds (1 is near instant, do not enter 0!) and press OK

Once you have restarted your menus will slide at near instant speeds. The default setting is 400 should you wish to restore the default menu setting.

Vista Task Manager

Loading the task manager in Windows Vista is a little different to Windows XP(where pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL would load it). Pressing this key combination now brings you to a task screen where you can perform a few system commands, including loading the task manager.

Simply press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC to load it instantly, much easier than right clicking on the taskbar to load it.

Disable Hibernation & delete the Hibernation file

Windows places a file on your hard drive that it uses when your computer goes into hibernation mode. If you do not use hibernation mode, or your computer does not properly support it, you may want to disable hibernation and clear the file off your hard drive to free up some space (the file will use as much space as you have in physical memory, so if you have 1GB of RAM, it’s going to use 1GB of your hard drive space).

Disable Hibernation:

1. Click Start, All Programs, and then right click on "Command Prompt".

2. From the context menu click on "Run as administrator".

3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.

4. In the command prompt window, type "powercfg –h off" (without the quotes).

5. Close the Command Prompt window.

Delete the Hibernation File:

1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click "Disk Cleanup".

2. If prompted to choose a drive, select the drive in which Windows Vista is installed on to and press OK.

3. Disk Cleanup will scan the hard drive and present you with a list of options.

4. Check "Hibernation File Cleaner", and then click OK.

5. When asked "Are you sure you want to permanently delete these files?" click on the Delete Files button .

This and more articles can be found at: http://blog.symbiancentral.com

Verify the Integrity of Windows Vista System Files

Windows Vista includes a utility that will scan your system for corrupt, changed or missing system files. Running this from the command prompt is much easier than booting off the dvd into repair mode. To run this utility, you will need to open a command prompt in administrator mode. You can do that by right clicking the Command Prompt in the list and choose "Run as Administrator" Once you have an administrator command prompt open, you can run the utility by using the following syntax: SFC [/SCANNOW] [/VERIFYONLY] [/SCANFILE=] [/VERIFYFILE=] [/OFFWINDIR= /OFFBOOTDIR=] The most useful command is just to scan immediately, which will scan and attempt to repair any files that are changed or corrupted. You can run that command with this command: sfc /scannow

Using System Restore in Windows Vista

There are two places that you can use the system restore feature from. From within Windows, you can just type restore into the Start menu search box, and you’ll immediately see System Restore at the top of the start menu, or you can type rstrui into the search box and hit enter. Your choice. You will immediate see a screen where you can choose to roll back the system to the last restore point. You can select “Recommended restore”, and just click next, or you can choose a different restore point. If you do choose a different restore point, you will see a list of restore points that you can choose from. Click one of them, and you will have to confirm and then restart your computer to roll the system back. If your system won’t boot If you can’t even get into windows, you can boot off the installation dvd, and choose the “Repair your computer” option on the lower left hand side. Click next on the next screen. Now choose System Restore from the System Recovery dialog. It will take a few seconds to come up, and you will see the same screen that you would see in Windows. Click next, and on the next screen select the drive that your copy of Windows Vista is installed on. Click Finish, and Vista will roll back to the previous restore point. Really pretty simple stuff. I absolutely recommend keeping the system restore feature on in Vista !

Using Windows Vista System Restore

Windows Vista has a feature called System Restore that automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. This feature is useful when you install evil software that makes your computer run really slow. But don’t worry, System Restore won’t remove Windows Vista.

Disable User Account Control(UAC) For Administrators Only

If you can’t stand the User Account Control prompts, but you’d still like to retain a little bit of security, you can disable it for Administrator accounts only. What we’ll be doing is actually changing Windows Vista to automatically elevate the privilege level for administrators without prompting. The nice thing about doing it this way is that regular users as well as Internet Explorer still run as regular users, and would still use the normal security mechanisms. To configure this setting on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration.

• Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.
• Now browse down to Local Policies Security Options
• Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.
• Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done.

This is an easier method that you can use to do the same thing from the GUI interface.

• Open up Control Panel, and type in user account into the search box.
• You’ll see the link for “Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off”. Click it.
• Uncheck the box, and reboot your computer. You should be done with obnoxious prompts!

Emptying Windows Vista Temp Files Directory

Windows Vista Disk Cleanup wizard is really not all that bad, but I did find a small problem with it… It doesn’t fully empty your temp folder. It only allows you to delete temporary files that haven’t been modified in a week. If you’ve recently done a lot of editing or something that generates large temporary files, you may want to manually clean up. Just type in %TEMP% into the start menu search box, and hit enter. You’ll immediate be taken to the temporary files folder, where you can delete whatever you feel like.

Stop an Application from Running at Startup in Windows Vista

Back in the old days, there were a lot of places an application could hook itself to run at startup. You had to check the registry in more than one place, as well as your start menu. With Windows Vista, there’s a built-in panel that handles all that for you. To quickly get to this panel, you can open Control Panel, and then type “startup” into the search box. The link for “Stop a program from running at startup” shows up immediately. You could have also opened Windows Defender and fooled around with the menus until you find the right spot, but this seems quicker to me. Now you can see the Windows Defender screen that lets you manage the startup programs. You can choose to Remove or just Disable any startup item using this panel, as well as lots of other useful information so that you can see what each item is.

Fix for COM Surrogate Has Stopped Working Error in Vista

If you’ve been getting the error COM Surrogate has stopped working whenever you browse folders containing Divx avi files, it looks like the latest Divx update to codec version 6.5 fixes the issue, but it also seems to remove the thumbnails. If you want to upgrade, just use the divx update checker to grab the new version. Looks like it’s finally fixed, at least the error message is now gone, although I really wish they would have just gotten the thumbnails working instead.

• If you are using Nero, you will need to update to version 7.7.5.1 to fix the problem. I think this is the source of the error for most people.
• If you’ve upgraded Nero and Divx and still have the problem, you can try renaming the file C:Program FilesCommon FilesAheadDSFilterNeVideo.ax to NeVideo.ax.bak This will break Nero Showtime, however.

Enable Hidden BootScreen in Windows Vista

The Windows Vista BootScreen is pointless, but Microsoft decided to hide a more visually appealing boot screen that can easily be enabled with very little trouble. I’m not sure why they didn’t make the boot screen better.

1) Press Win+R, type msconfig and press Enter.

2) If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.

3) In the "System Configuration" window, click on the Boot tab.

4) Select your Windows Vista installation and under "Boot options", check "No GUI boot". Press OK.

5) In the dialog that appears, check "Don’t show this message again", and then click on Restart.

6) Your computer will now reboot, and you will see the Aurora boot screen with text that says "Starting Windows Vista".

Note: You may get a Windows Defender error on the next startup. You can enable the system config utility using the tray icon and this error will go away.

Hide Desktop Icon Text on Windows Vista

Some icons are just obvious enough that nobody should need text below them to tell them what the icon is for. A good example of this is the icon for Internet Explorer. We’re all really used to it by now, and the text just makes it ugly. Just right-click on the shortcut, and choose Rename. Now hold down the Alt key and type in 255 on the keypad to the right of the keyboard. You can’t use the number keys right above the keyboard, they won’t work. If you have a laptop, you can turn on numlock and then use the little number keys next to the regular letters. (You know you always wondered what they were for)

For the first shortcut on the desktop, a simple Alt+255 will do. For the next shortcut, you’ll have to enter the combination twice (Alt+255, Alt+255). For the third, 3 times… you get the idea. The way this works is that the Alt+255 character is blank, so the shortcut filename is actually just named with a character that is completely blank. Since you can’t have two shortcuts or files named the exact same thing, the second shortcut will have to be named with two blank characters.

Now we have a sweet looking icon on the desktop, with no bothersome text beneath it. If you use this tip to rename a folder, you will not be able to rename the folder back using the right-click rename. I’m not sure why this is. What you’ll have to do is open a command prompt and change directory into the containing folder (For instance, the desktop folder), and run this command: ren “Alt+255” “NewFolderName” You will need to actually type the Alt+255 characters where illustrated in the command. It will appear as a space. Note that the Recycle Bin icon won’t work this way.

Power button default action

The default action for the Power button on the start menu in Windows Vista is Sleep, which isn’t necessarily useful for everybody. You can configure this setting easily by using the advanced power settings panel, which is a little tricky to get to normally, but we’ll take the shortcut. Open a command prompt (type cmd into the start menu search bar), and then type in the following: powercfg.cpl,1. You could also take the long route (Control Panel Power Options Change Plan Settings Change Advanced Power Settings) Once you get to this dialog, browse down as shown to “Power buttons and lid”

From here, you can change the options:

• Power button action - Changes the hardware power button action
• Start menu power button - Changes the power button on the Start Menu

You can change the power button to either Sleep, Hibernate or Shut Down, or even nothing for the hardware power button.

How To Kill Windows Processes That Won't Die

Ever have an application that just hangs and never returns to normal or terminate?

So you open up Windows Task Manager, find the application process, right click on it and select End Process.

Nothing happens! The process is still running and the dead application continues to cause high CPU utilization to the point where you can't do much with your computer.

You repeat the process. Nothing again. One more time…that process just won't terminate and die.

Now what?

Well, having pesky processes, that refuse to terminate and continues to hog CPU cycles, can be frustrating to the point where you just want to hit the power button and shut down. But that's too risky and more times than not will cause loss of data or system boot problems.

What you need is a utility that can kill and terminate stubborn processes, the first time, using PsKill from Microsoft Sysinternals.

PsKill requires no installation and is a stand alone executable that is run from the command line. It can kill process locally or remotely. PsKill is bundled with Sysinternals PsTools which is a collection of command line tools for Windows computers.

To use PsKill, you want to get things setup first:

• Download PsTools from Microsoft site, and unzip to your desktop.

• Open the PsTools folder and copy pskill.exe to your System32 folder. The reason for this is that pskill will be in your executable environment path so you can just type the command, with out specifying the full path to the folder and file location.

• Next open Task Manager (right click on the taskbar then select Task Manager ) and make sure the PID column is visible (may need to use horizontal scroll bar to scroll to the right to see PID column).

If it is not visible, click on View \ Select Columns… and make sure PID (Process Identifier) is checked and select OK.

• Now the next time you have an application that is hanging, and it's process will not end from Task Manager, make note of the process PID number in Task Manager.

• Then open up a command prompt (click on Start \ Run and enter cmd in the run box) and type the following command:

pskill 1680

(just substitute 1680 with your PID number that you want terminated).

The process WILL terminate freeing your computer from application hell.

You should be able to re-open the application again. But be careful, killing processes this way may cause data loss with the application that was terminated (such as if you were using a text editor or Microsoft Word).

At least you won't have to reboot

Control And Monitor Your Child's Activities With Parental Controls

The Parental Controls in Windows Vista lets you easily control what your child can or cannot do, and monitor his/her activites using the built-in reports.

Step 1: Create A User Account For Your Child
Parental controls work by placing restrictions on a user account. Creating an account for your child so you can apply controls to his/her account without restricting yours:
1. Click on the Start Button and select Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove User Accounts under the User Accounts and Family Safety area.
3. Select Create a New Account.
4. Create an account for your child and ensure that Standard user button is selected.
5. The new account will now appear in the User Accounts window.

Step 2: Setting Up Parental Controls
Next, enable parental controls for the account you just created:
1. Click on the Start Button and select Control Panel.
2. Under the User Accounts and Family Safety option, click Set Up Parental Controls.
3. Select your child's user account to set up the controls.
4. Clicking the On radio button to enable parental controls.


Step 3: Configuring The Options
Configure the options to control what your child can and cannot do:

a) Windows Web Filter
1. Click the Windows Vista Web Filter option.
2. Check that blocking is enabled (turned on by default).
3. Edit the Allow or block list and enter the websites that are accessible to your child.
4. Click the "Only allow Web sites which are on the allow list" check box.

Block Web Content Automatically
You can apply automatic restrictions for your child here - a High or Medium level works best. Click on the radio buttons for a summary of what is blocked. If you'd opted to allow only websites that are on the Allow list above, this entire section is unavailable because site access is completely controlled by the Allow list.

Block File Downloads
This control restricts your child from downloading files from the Internet. For younger children, this is a good setting to enable because it prevents the possible download of information you may not want to them to have.

b) Time Limits
Selecting this option brings up a calendar where you can control when your child is allowed to use the computer. Simply click and drag to turn the desired hours and days blue in order to block these times.

c) Games Your Child Play
Select the Games option in the Parental Controls window to allow or disallow game playing by setting game ratings and allowing/blocking specific games on the computer.

d) Programs
You can allow or block specific programs on your computer, i.e. you have programs installed that you do not want your child to use. Choose this option in parental controls, and then click the radio button that appears to allow your child to only access programs that you have selected. You'll see a listing of all the programs installed on your computer - check the boxes of the programs that are accessible by your child.

Step 3: View Your Child's Activities
If you open parental controls for your child's account, you'll find an option to view his/her activities. This feature lets you review what your child's activites on the Internet, system changes that have been made, applications used, games played, e-mails that have been sent/received, instant messaging activities and many more. Click the report option, then use the categories on the left side of the window to see your child's activity.