Speedup Secrets of Windows Vista

One of the great strengths of Windows Vista is its flexibility, but because it can do so much, you may miss out on time-saving features, useful utilities and other goodies because you just don't know they're there. As we'll discover over the next three web pages, it's easy to eliminate irritations, speed up everyday tasks and prevent the kids from seeing things they shouldn't – if you know where to look. Whether you want your PC to start more quickly, to squeeze more power from your laptop battery, or just make your PC a more pleasant tool to use, you'll find the answers in our selection of Windows Vista secrets. Bypass the log-on screen: If you're the only person who uses your computer, it's easy to get shot of the log-on screen when Windows Vista loads. You'll need to be an administrator to do this one: click Start and type netplwiz in the Start Search box, press Enter and clear the Users must enter a username and password to use this computer box. When you click OK, you'll be asked to enter your password and then confirm it. Once you've done that, Windows Vista will log you in automatically the next time you start your PC. Change the Start Menu: You don't need to stick with the default options if you don't want to. Right-click the Taskbar, click Properties > Start Menu and then click Customize. This enables you to add and remove items (including bringing back the old Run command) or change how they are displayed, so for example you can display the Pictures link as a menu that shows the contents of Pictures when you click it. Check boxes to select files: In addition to keyboard shortcuts – Shift-clicking to select a group of files and Ctrl-clicking to select individual files – Windows Vista has secret check boxes to use when selecting things. In Windows Explorer, bring up the menu bar by pressing Alt then go to Tools > Folder Options > View. In Advanced Settings, tick Use check boxes to select items then click OK. When you return to Windows Explorer, hovering the mouse over a file or folder reveals a check box to the left of its name. Create quick shortcuts: Do you find yourself using the same folders or Control Panel features again and again? Drag their icon from the left of the Address Bar and drop it over the Desktop or the Quick Launch bar. Sort out start-up items: Can't stop programs from launching every time you boot? Here's how to banish them... 1 LAUNCH MSCONFIG It couldn't be easier to see what programs run every time you switch on your PC. Click Start, and in the Start Search box, type msconfig. Press Enter and OK the User Account Control dialogue that pops up. 2 EXAMINE STARTUPS If you click the Startup tab, you'll see a list of every program that runs at system startup – it's often surprising to see how many programs there really are. Media players in particular are persistent offenders. 3 BLOCK IT To prevent a program from launching at startup, without having to actually uninstall it, simply clear the box next to it. Click OK and the changes will take effect the next time you restart your computer. Save time with previews: The preview pane in Windows Explorer does more than show you a pretty picture of a file. It enables you to see the contents of the file, too – so if it’s a photo you can see the picture, if it’s an Excel spreadsheet or Word document you can read its contents, and if it’s a video you can watch it. To display the preview pane, click Organize > Layout > Preview Pane. You can resize it by dragging its left-hand edge with the mouse to make it bigger or smaller. Turn off thumbnails: If you find thumbnails slow down your PC, turn them off. Go to Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Folder Options and select the View tab. Now, select Always Show Icons, Never Thumbnails. You can use this tab to turn off the Preview Pane, too. Tweak your power plans: If you’re using a laptop, Windows Vista knows when it’s plugged in and when it’s running on the battery, and it adjusts the system performance accordingly. The defaults are pretty good, but you can tweak them to make them even better, squeezing even more minutes from your battery or just reducing your PC’s energy use. To change your energy settings, go into the Control Panel and choose Hardware and Sound > Power Options, select the plan you want to change and click Change Plan Settings. You can also use these settings to change how your PC behaves when you press the power button or close the laptop lid, and you can get Windows Vista to ask for a password when your PC is woken from sleep mode. Top tip for laptop users: if you change the power plan so that Windows Vista cuts the display brightness to 50% when you’re running on battery, that alone can give you around 20 more minutes of battery life. Shortcuts to working faster: Launch programs and scale icons at top speed 1 QUICKER LAUNCH: The Quick Launch bar is a handy place to put applications you use all the time, but you don’t need to use the mouse to launch them. Just hold down the Windows key and hit the number keys. Win + 1 launches the first application in your Quick Launch bar, Win + 2 the second, and so on. 2 ENLARGE THE BAR: You don’t need the icons in the Quick Launch bar to be visible when you’re using keyboard shortcuts, but if you don’t have a good memory, it’s a good idea to expand the Quick Launch bar so you can see the order in which the icons appear. 3 SCALE ICONS: One of our favourite things about Windows Explorer is that you can view icons in sizes ranging from tiny to absolutely massive, but there’s a faster way to resize them than by using the Views menu. Simply hold down Ctrl and use your mouse wheel to change the icon size. Display RAW images: Got a fancy digital SLR? Wish you could view RAW files in the Windows Photo Gallery? Click File > Update and you can download the necessary converters for the RAW files already on your PC – or just download the converter for your camera from www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/codecs.aspx. Tame the pop-ups: If you’re using your laptop to deliver a presentation (and you’re not running Home Basic), you don’t need to waggle the mouse to stop the screensaver kicking in or worry about Security Center pop-ups distracting your audience. The Windows Vista presentation settings (Control Panel > Mobile PC > Windows Mobility Center > Presentations) can disable such interruptions when connected to a projector or external monitor. Enable Parental Controls: Windows Vista includes some excellent features to stop the kids seeing things they shouldn’t or going glassy-eyed in front of a screen, but many people don’t know they’re there. The best way to use them is to create a separate account for each family member, log in as the administrator and go to the Control Panel and choose User Accounts and Family Safety. Here, you can set options for each person, so you can block or allow programs, filter the websites they use, or even prevent the PC from being used at specific times. Silence the Security Center If Security Center is a little too keen to tell you every little thing it thinks about, launch it via the Control Panel then look at the left-hand side of the window. If you click Change The Way Security Center alerts me and select Don’t notify me, but display the icon, you’ll still know when things need your attention, but you won’t get pop-ups. Tweak User Account Control Change how User Account Control behaves without sacrificing security 1 LAUNCH UAC: The User Account Control can stop nasties from getting on to your PC. However, if you’d like to reduce the frequency of its ‘are you sure?’ messages, click Start and type Local Security Policy in the Start Search box. Press Enter and OK the warning prompt. 2 EXAMINE OPTIONS: In the left-hand pane, go to Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options. In the righthand panel there are lots of options. We want User Account Control Behaviour of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode. 3 DISABLE PROMPTS: This option is responsible for the ‘Windows needs your permission to continue’ messages, and it’s safe to disable them if they’re getting on your nerves. To do that, right-click the option and select Properties. 4 NO MORE POP-UPS: You’ll see three options: Elevate Without Prompting, Prompt for Credentials and Prompt for Consent. If you select Elevate Without Prompting you won’t get the UAC messages when you try to run administrative tools. Encrypt your hard drive If you have Windows Vista Ultimate, you can encrypt your hard disk so that ne’er-do-wells can’t access your data if they pinch your PC. In Control Panel > Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption click Turn On BitLocker. Have a USB flash drive handy; you need it to store the encryption key that lets you into your protected PC. Split your hard disk There are all kinds of reasons to partition your hard disk. You might want one drive for system files and one for data, or you might want to dual-boot your system. In the old days you needed a dedicated disk partitioning program, but Windows Vista has one built-in. To use it, click Start, right-click Computer, then click Manage. In the left hand panel, click Storage > Disk Management, and right-click the box that corresponds to your hard disk. Choose Shrink Volume and enter the size you’d like to shrink your primary partition to; once done, right-click the Free Space box and select New Simple Volume. Windows Vista creates a new volume from the remaining space on your drive. Choose a drive letter, choose a format – NTFS is the default – and you’ll have a new, blank partition that your PC sees as an extra drive. As with all disk management jobs, make sure you’ve backed up your important data before even thinking about repartitioning your hard disk. Rename multiple pictures Fed up with endless images with meaningless names such as DSC001.JPG, DSC002.JPG and so on? Select them in Windows Photo Gallery, right-click and select Rename. Type the new name in the box and Windows Vista will rename all of them. So if you type ‘baby pic’ they’re renamed baby pic (1), baby pic (2), and so on. The same trick works in Windows Explorer for any kind of file, provided they’re all the same type, so you can rename a bunch of Word documents, text files or anything else. Search in plain English The Start Search box understands plain English, but you need to enable the feature in the Control Panel. Go to the Control Panel and choose Appearance and Personalization > Folder Options then click Search. Select the Use Natural Language Search box and you can now use terms such as ‘music radiohead or portishead’. File names only tell you so much, but if you add tags to things, they’re much easier to find in the future. For example, you might tag work documents with the name of the project you’re working on, or you might tag a photograph with the names of every person in the picture or the location at which it was shot. Once you’ve done that you can search for those tags, quickly locating everything to do with a project or all the photos of a particular subject. Add tags in the Details Pane of Windows Explorer (or for photos, in the Info Pane of Windows Photo Gallery). Bring back Start > Run Remember the Run command? It’s still there but hidden… 1 START RUNNING: If you’re a longterm Windows user, you’re probably used to running applications and utilities by clicking Start > Run, but there’s no Run command in the Windows Vista Start Menu. Adding it couldn’t be easier, though. Right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties. 2 BRING IT BACK: In Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, click Start Menu. You can use this tab to revert to the Classic Windows Start Menu too, but we’re quite happy with the new version. Click the Customize button to bring back Run. 3 ENABLE RUN: There are stacks of check boxes that allow you to enable or disable links on the Start menu, and you can also specify whether particular items should appear as links, menus or not at all. To add the Run command, tick the Run Command box. Click OK and then click Start. It’s back!