Windows Vista® Tips
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How to Disable UAC Prompts in Vista
In addition to the many readers who told us they have disabled
UAC prompts in Vista, we got a ton of mail from those who want
to know how to do so. Denis D. said, "I used Vista for about 2
days. Besides being slow even on an AMD FX-60, the UAC was
unbearable ... If you tell me how to disable the UAC, I might
try Vista again." If you're running Vista Business, Enterprise
or Ultimate edition, here's what to do:
1)
Logged on as an administrator, click Start and in the Search
box, type Local Security Policy
2)
Click Local Security Policy under Programs in the list of found
items that are displayed
3)
You'll get a UAC prompt; click Continue to open the Local
Security Policy in the Group Policy Editor
4)
In the Group Policy Editor's left pane, expand Local Policies
and click Security Options
5)
In the right pane, scroll down to User Account Control: Behavior
of the elevation prompt for Administrators in Admin Approval
Mode and double click it
6)
On the Local Security Setting tab, select Elevate Without
Prompting and then click OK
Don't confuse this with turning off UAC altogether (which is
done with a different policy or via the User Accounts applet in
Control Panel or via the command line). We don't recommend
turning off UAC completely as it will disable UAC for all users
and cause administrative accounts to run with administrative
privileges all the time, even when elevated privileges aren't
necessary. When you perform the steps above, your administrative
account still runs as a standard user unless a process requests
elevation, and those with non- administrative accounts still get
the prompts and have to enter credentials.
If you run Vista Home Basic or Premium, alas - there is no Group
Policy Editor. However, you can accomplish the same thing by
editing the registry (be careful!). For instructions, see
http://www.vistanews.com/OGC1CC/080501-Disable-UAC
Another way to silence the prompts without completely turning
off UAC is to use the "quiet mode" option in the TweakUAC
utility, which you can download here:
http://www.vistanews.com/OGC1CC/080501-TweakUAC
Copyright Sunbelt Software
Some messages may be stuck in
the Outbox when you use Windows Mail.
You cannot send or delete these messages.
On a computer that is running Windows Vista, some messages may
be stuck in the Outbox when you use Windows Mail. You cannot
send or delete these messages. Additionally, every time that you
close Windows Mail, you are prompted that there are unsent
messages in your Outbox.
This problem occurs when the stream entries for the messages are
inaccessible before Windows Mail deletes the messages from the
Outbox.
RESOLUTION
To resolve this problem, apply the following update. After you
apply the update, you can delete the messages that are stuck in
the Outbox.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941090
How to disable the Delete Confirmation in Vista
How to turn it off:
Right click the Recycle Bin
Select Properties
Uncheck the box that says "display delete confirmation
dialog."
Click OK.
If you uncheck this box, you should not enable the option
labeled:
"Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files
immediately when deleted."
That combination would make it extremely easy to lose
important data by accidentally deleting it.
Deleted my Recycle
Bin in Vista - how do I get it back?
Open Control Panel and click on the Personalization
options:
Near the top left: Click "Change desktop icons"
Click the Recycle Bin checkbox, click OK, and your Recycle
Bin should reappear on the desktop.
How to enable the hidden administrator account in Vista
In earlier versions of Windows, the built-in administrator
account is enabled by default. In Vista, it's disabled. This
is a better security practice. However, there are times when
you might need to enable it (for instance, if you
inadvertently removed administrative privileges from all
user accounts and now can't perform administrative tasks).
Here's how to enable it:
Click Start and type cmd in the Search box to find the
cmd.exe program.
Right click cmd.exe and click Run As Administrator.
At the command prompt, type net users administrator /active:yes
Press Enter
Log off and now you can log back on with the Administrator
account. When first activated, it will not have a password.
You should assign the Administrator account a password
and/or deactivate it when you've finished using it. To
deactivate it, repeat the steps above but type net users
administrator /active:no
Source:
http://www.vistanews.com/
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Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista
User Account Control - Image management - Display Driver
Model
Search - 64 bit architecture - From Microsoft
From Microsoft,
Here or
Here
How
to connect a Windows Vista and XP computers over your
network to share files.
Both must be useing the NTFS files system.
If you run Windows XP Professional, open "My Computer" and
select Tools and then Folder Options. Under the View tab, go to
the advanced setting window. Scroll down until you see the
option to "Use Simple File Sharing." Uncheck it, if it is
checked, Now, click Apply, then OK, otherwise the change will
not occur. Go to your Start menu, select Control Panel. Find the
Network and Internet connections button. In the Network
Connections panel, right-click your Ethernet card (usually
referred to as "Local Area Connection"). Under the General Tab,
make sure that "File and Printer Sharing For Microsoft Networks"
is clicked.
Now, you’ll go back to the main Control Panel and select
Performance and Maintenance, and select System (if you are using
Classic View, select System). In the window that opens, select
the "Computer Name" tab, and down three-quarters of the way,
click on the Change button. From here, make sure that the
Workgroup name is the same for all computers. Windows XP Home
uses MSHOME, while XP Pro uses WORKGROUP. I’d leave it as
WORKGROUP, but you could switch it to your last name or anything
else, so long as you use the same workgroup name on all the
systems. You will need to reboot the computer now to make the
changes.
For Windows XP Home Users: From this point, pick which folder
you want to share and right-click on it. From the menu, select
Sharing and Security. You’ll get a box that will show the folder
sharing options. Click the box that says, "Share this Folder on
the Network". For ease of use, also select the box next to
"Allow Network Users to Change my Files." Do this to all drives
or folders you want to share. From there, Windows XP Home is
ready to share files with other computers that are connected to
the same network.
For Windows XP Professional Users: From this point, pick which
folder you want to share and right-click on it. From the menu,
select Sharing and Security. You’ll get a box that will show the
folder sharing options. Click on the box that says "Share this
folder," the share name will be the folder name itself. On the
Permissions button you can allow Read, Change or Full Control.
Make sure to click Apply then OK once you have picked which
permissions you want for your shared folder.
On the Vista computer, you’re going to click on the Start menu
and type "system" in the Search Box. Click on System when it
appears in the menu. In the Computer Name Domain and Workgroup
Settings, you’ll see the name of the workgroup that Vista has
set up already. Change that name to whatever you’ve set on the
XP systems. To change it, simply click on Change settings. Vista
will pop up the now familiar (or obnoxious) UAC (User Account
Control) warning. Select Continue. From here, change the
workgroup name to the one you’ve selected. Make sure you’ve
picked the Computer Name tab. Click on Change next to the words
"To rename this computer or change its domain or workgroup,
click Change..." At the bottom of the system properties window,
you will find an option called "Member of." Choose Workgroup.
The default name should already be WORKGROUP. You can change it
to the one you want to use. Click OK. Now, reboot the computer.
Do not choose Domain. That is mainly in use in corporate
environments or if you are running a Windows server in your
house with a domain controller. That, of course, is not a likely
scenario for the average home user.
Reboot the Vista machine, then proceed to pick the folders you
want to share from Vista.
Go to the Network and Sharing Center (find it by typing
"sharing" in the search box on the Start Menu). Turn on Network
Discovery and File Sharing. To share from the Vista folder
C:\Users\Public, turn on Public Folder Sharing. Turning on
Password Protect Sharing can also turn on an increased level of
security when you share files. You can also turn on Media
Sharing (to share files in Windows Media Player).
To share a folder on Vista, right-click on the folder in
question, select Properties followed by clicking on the Sharing
tab. Under Advanced Sharing, click on the Advanced Sharing...
button, and a new Advanced Sharing window will appear. Put a
check mark in the Share this folder box, same as with Windows XP
Professional, choose Permissions and select the access
permissions for this folder as appropriate. "Read" gives the
user ability to open a file but not change it. "Change" gives
them the ability to edit it. "Full Control" allows them to do
anything to it.
Once Vista is configured, and all of the other computers are on
the network, they should be able to see each other. To check on
XP, go to "My Network Places" in the Start Menu. From Vista
you’ll also be able to see the XP computers in the Network
folder. Just select the "Start Menu" button and click on
Network. From here, the folders and drives you selected should
be visible and accessible.
How to connect to a non-broadcasting wireless network with Vista
Many owners of wi-fi networks set their wireless access points
not to broadcast the network's name or Service Set Identifier
(SSID). In XP, the auto configuration service wouldn't let you
make a non-broadcasting network your preferred network; it would
try to connect to broadcasting networks first, which could be a
pain.
With Vista, you can set a non-broadcasting network as
your preferred network.
Here's how:
Click Start | Control
Panel and in classic view, double click Network and Sharing
Center.
In the left Tasks pane, select Set Up A Connection
Or Network.
Then choose Manually Connect to a Wireless
Network.
Enter the name (SSID) of the non-broadcasting
network and the security key if it's encrypted.
You can
check a checkbox to start the connection automatically when the
network is in range, and to connect even if the network isn't
broadcasting.
| We highly recommend using the
programs shown below.
*** Slow
computer, Scan it for registry errors free.
This is a very good scan and repair program.
Here!
***
Repair XP Pro - (Great program)
XP Repair Pro 2007 edition is fully Vista
compatible
The most comprehensive system repair tool on the
market.
*
Scan your PC for errors absolutely Free (Very good)
*
Evidence Eliminator - Erase your surfing history
total "privacy protection".
*
KeyLogPro - Want to know what other people type
on your computer when you are away?
|
How to block SP1
for one year. Download the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool
Don't want SP1? Here's how to block it.
If you have reason not to update to Vista Service Pack 1 and you
have automatic updates enabled, you can download the Windows
Service Pack Blocker Tool to prevent it from being installed
(this works for 12 months after the Service Pack becomes
available):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb927794.aspx
How to get
rid of the Vista system tray.
Backup the registry.
To remove your system tray, Open your registry editor and
navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \
Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer
Right click in an empty space in the right pane and select New >
DWORD value.
Name the new value NoTrayItemsDisplay
Double click it and in the dialog box, assign it a data value of
1 and click OK
Close the registry editor
Log off and log back on so the change will take effect
If you decide you want your system tray back, repeat the steps
and in step 4, change the value to 0.
The location for email folders
and Contacts for Vista's Windows Mail:
C:/Users/(YourName)/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows Mail/Local
Folders
The Outlook Express *.dbx files are non existant in Vista. Each
individual message is now saved as a separate .eml file.
The contact lists are there also under the User Name.
Error message: "COM
Surrogate has stopped working."
COM objects are often defined in Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL
files). The Program file for COM Surrogate is actually dllhost.exe that can load a DLL and make its objects available
to other programs.
The COM Surrogate error message is often related to codecs and
other COM objects that aren't fully compatible with Vista. These
are installed by other programs. The most common culprits are
DivX and Nero. The first thing you should do is upgrade to the
latest versions of these to see if that fixes the problem.
Another possible fix is to disable thumbnail previews in
Explorer. To do that:
In Windows Explorer, click Organize, then select Folder and Search Options
Click the View tab
Check the box that says "Always show icons, never thumbnails"
Click OK
To help troubleshoot which codec(s) might be causing the
problem, you can use a free tool called
InstalledCodec. You can
use it to disable individual codecs one at a time.
You can
download it at
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/installed_codec.html
Change The Location Of The Windows Mail Folder Store
Windows Mail stores all of its database files in a folder on
your C: drive.
By default this is:
"C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail"
We typically move mail folders to drive D: for easy backup
as D contains created files from all programs.
To move the Windows Mail database files to another
location,
proceed as follows.
1- Open Windows Mail
2- Click the Tools option on the main toolbar
3- From the Drop Down menu, Click Options
4- In the Options Window, Click the Advanced Tab
5- In the Advanced Tab window, Click the Maintenance Button
6- In the Maintenance Window, Click the Store Folder button.
7- When the Store Location window appears, Click the Change
button
8- The Browse Folder window will now appear. Select the Folder
or Drive that
you want to change the location to and then Press the OK button.
If a folder
doesn't exist where you want to move the files to, you can
always create a
folder by clicking the Make new Folder button
9- The New Location will now appear in the Store Location
window. To finish, Press the OK button
10- Files will not be copied to the new store location until
after you have
closed down Windows Mail.
Error
when you try to install Adobe Reader 8
If you have disabled UAC, you might find that you're not able to
install Adobe Reader 8 on your Vista computer. When you try, you
get an error message that says the Temp folder is on a drive
that is full or inaccessible, even though this is not the case.
To complete the installation, you may need to turn UAC back on.
For more info, see KB article 936645 at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936645/en-us
Connect to a non-broadcasting wireless network with Vista
Some wi-fi networks set their wireless access points not to
broadcast the network's name or Service Set Identifier (SSID).
In XP, the auto configuration service wouldn't let you make a
non-broadcasting network your "preferred network"; it would try
to connect to broadcasting networks first, which could be a
pain.
With Vista, you can set a non-broadcasting network
as your "preferred network".
Click Start | Control Panel and
in classic view, double click Network and Sharing Center.
In
the left Tasks pane, select Set Up A Connection Or Network.
Then choose Manually Connect to a Wireless Network.
Enter
the name (SSID) of the non-broadcasting network and the security
key if it's encrypted.
You can check a checkbox to start the
connection automatically when the network is in range, and to
connect even if the network isn't broadcasting.
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* Repair XP Pro -
(Great program for Vista also)
The most comprehensive system repair tool on the market. We use this program.
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