Windows Vista Tips and Tricks

Windows Vista : Ways to conserve your Laptop’s battery power

France — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:00:36 +0000

the QuickStop Project gave us tips on How to Conserve our Laptop’s Battery Power With these simple steps

Using Windows Vista can bring a total strain on your laptop’s battery power. Because of the new features of Vista, it’s a total power hog. First of all you need decent specs to run Vista and all that power and performance is putting a strain on my poor laptop. When running on battery mode here’s what I do.

Lower down your laptop screen’s brightness

one thing I noticed and always tried when using my laptop, when running on battery power I always lower down the brightness its really simple but if works quite effectively. Approximately 10 to 12% of your notebook’s power consumption goes to just running the backlighting on your screen. By lowering down the screen brightness, you reduce the power consumption and ease the load on the battery. My laptop has keyboard controls for dropping and raising the screen brightness. Yeah I know it’ll be a dark a maybe harder to see, but still you’ll see everything. It’ll improve your laptop’s battery power for about 15 minutes.

Turn off AERO Theme

The first time I booted up on Vista, it made me drool… my initial reaction was “wow”, but after a day or two. The shimmer of the new AERO theme, just wasn’t there anymore. Sure it’s pretty, but that’s just what it is… a pretty theme.

The new Aero interface and its zooming windows and Glass transparency effect is cool but it has an impact on your overall laptop battery power.

To do this, right-click on the Vista desktop, select Personalize from the menu and select Windows colour and appearance from the list. Now choose Open classic appearance properties for more colour options. From the new Appearance settings window, select Windows Vista Basic from the list of colour schemes. Click apply and this will turn Aero off.

Turn off Wi-Fi /Bluetooth

When your not using your Wifi it’s better you turn it off, it will ease the strain on the battery and be able to divert the power to other parts of your laptop that needs power. Even our mobile phones / PDAs consume a lot of power when USing WiFi or Bluetooth. So when not needed it’s important to turn it off, so it won’t automatically search for WiFi hotspots or other bluetooth devices within it’s range.

Set a lower harddrive power-down time

If you’re not accessing your files from your harddrive it’s better to set it down to a lower number of minutes, set it down to 10 minutes. that should be enough, reducing the down-time on your laptop’s harddrive will allow it to power down sooner.

To do this, click on the Start orb go to Control Panel click on Power Options. Click the PowerSaver power plan option and then click Change plan settings. Then click Change advanced power settings. When the new Advanced settings windows comes up, scroll down the list until you find Hard disk. Double-click on it and again on Turn off hard disk after. Next to the new Settings option that appears, you’ll see a time rating next to “on battery”, typically 20 minutes. Drop this down to 10 minutes.

Reduce CPU performance

A new feature built into Windows Vista. You can now set the maximum and minimum performance levels of your Laptop’s CPU. By dropping the maximum performance percentage down to as low as you can afford, you’ll be reducing the amount of power it requires. The faster a CPU runs, the more power from the battery it needs so if you’re working on word processing, email or any application that really only uses a sniff of processing power, dropping the maximum performance level is like putting a brick under the accelerator pedal of your car, it just makes sure you can’t use up too much gas all of a sudden.

To do this, click the Start orb go to Control Panel click on Power Options. Choose Change plan settings next to your chosen power plan and click Change advanced power settings. This time when the new Advanced Settings window appears, scroll down to Processor Power Management. Double-click on Minimum Processor State and you’ll see two entries “on AC” mains and “on battery”. Double-click on the on battery option and check the setting. This will set the processor’s minimum CPU usage percentage. The lower this setting, the slower the effective speed of the processor and the less power.

Next, click on maximum processor state and again you’ll see two entries “on AC mains and on battery”. Click the On battery option and again change the percentage setting. How low you set it is up to you but it should be higher in value than the minimum setting.

But when on AC power, you could unleash HELL and turn on all the cool features of Vista…hahha!

Introducing Windows Vista Tips & Tricks

France — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:41:58 +0000

Now if you’re using a vista the information here will give you all the tools that you will need to become more efficient and productive on the Windows Vista right away. In “Microsoft greets Vista users. From that very Moment, the two sheets for download: the Windows Vista Tip Sheet and Windows Vista Top 10 Tips & Tricks is providing by the Redmond Company.

Service Pack 1 is here!

France — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:01:16 +0000

Finally. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is here and already available for download from Microsoft’s official site. You can simply head on to Microsoft Download Center. There are different downloads for the 32-bit (435MB) Vista edition and the 64-bit (727MB) one. Alternatively, you can download and update automatically via Windows Update.

Before updating, be sure to back up important information and be sure to close all apps properly, lest you want to have problems later on. For some insane reason that something bad happens, Microsoft has a free tech support to get you up and running again.

Secure your PC with Windows Defender

editor — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Make your Windows Vista well secured with Windows Defender. Windows Defender is installed by default on Windows Vista. Windows Defender will defend you from spywares, viruses, worms and other malicious softwares. You must first check if Windows Defender is working on your personal computer properly. You can do so by doing the following:

• Go to the Security Center
• The Malware Protection should be ON (indicated by a green color)

If you want to scan your computer you must click “SCAN” while on the Windows Defender window. You can choose what type of scan you want (full scan, custom scan, automatic scan).

Image source: www.windows-vista-tips-and-tricks.com

Extending the Trial

France — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:03:16 +0000

Many know of Microsoft’s strict licensing policy that prevents indefinite use of trial software they gave out for free. You could start by using an install disk that is designed for upgrading only without entering a license key. This way you get the free 30-day trial period as allowed to properly evaluate the functionality of your computer with that specific OS. Need more time, well the developers know this and Vista has a built in license manager that would allow you to extend the trial period for up to three times before the system locks out till you enter a valid license key for full activation.

Got Windows Vista… Got a Gamercard

France — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:52:25 +0000

You got Windows Vista… Now you can display your Xbox Gamertag on the Vista Sidebar with this cool sidebar gadget…

This Gamercard Gadget includes the ability to:

Change which Gamertag is displayed

Change the size of your Gamercard

Change how often it gets updates

Can be fit into the sidebar by reducing size to 70%

Can have multiple cards on screen at once in multiple sizes

I’ve found 10 different Gamercard gadgets currently available. With the exception of Slain’s Mulitple XBox Live Gamercard Gadget, none of them used the official Gamercard. 6 of them use the MyGamercard.net, which is nice until you try to click on an icon and want it to link back to XBox.com. So I decided it was time to make my first ever gadget.
I figured out how to change the background image allowing some skinning. If people are interested in this or other features, please give me some feedback!

Try it… oh crap i haven’t made a pic of my sidebar to show to you but oh well
Check it out here at WidgetsLab

Now this page goes directly to the Sidebar gadget author so you can download it : Click Here

Via [XboxDream]

Security and more Security

France — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:59:18 +0000

So you may have killed the annoying UAC plague but this does leave your system vulnerable to some of the most tenacious modes of attack on the internet since Vista was released. Should you have the OS installed on a vital computer, you may want to get third party encryption software that would not only render a stolen or broken into system useless without the password, it adds a layer of security even you would appreciate.
Having your files/data stolen from right under your nose whether physically or through malware that got through is a nasty pill to swallow so heed these tips for your security and peace of mind.

BitLocker Drive Encryption without TPM chip

France — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:26:36 +0000

Windows Vista has a hard drive encryption feature called BitLocker Drive Encryption.

BitLocker is a very useful security feature because

“BitLocker encrypts the data stored on a computer running Windows Vista even if the computer is tampered with when the operating system is not running. Protects against “offline attacks,” attacks which is made by disabling the operating system, and also by physically removing the hard drive to attack the data separately.”

But the drawback is that, BitLocker Drive Encryption by default requires a Trusted Platform Module (TPM Chip) version 1.2 or later installed in your computer. But If you have Windows Vista Business, Ultimate or Enterprise but do not have a TPM chip, you can still use BitLocker Drive Encryption.

There’s a hidden trick in local group policy is a setting that will allow you to turn on the ability to use a USB storage device instead of a TPM key to store the encryption key. This is a great feature for users that don’t have the latest high-end hardware because you can still use hard drive encryption. However, every time you turn on your computer, the USB storage device that has the encryption key located on it must be plugged in. Without it, your computer will not boot up. Talk about securing your PC right. basically the USB becomes the key to your computer, which is freaking cool on my part

Use a USB storage device with BitLocker Drive Encryption on hardware that does not have a TPM device.
Here’s the steps :

Click on the Start Orb and Type gpedit.msc on the search field and press Enter.
Go to Computer Policy, then Administrative Templates, then Windows Components and finally BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Right click on Control Panel Setup: Enable advanced startup options and select Properties, Put a check on Enabled and hit OK.

That’s it! You’re Done!

Taming UAC – Installment 2

France — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:58:14 +0000

Another way to tame UAC is to disable the secure desktop feature on UAC which blacks out the screen while it waits for the popup window to appear. Should you feel to make shortcuts that can in fact bypass UAC without having to disable it totally you could create admin mode shortcuts without UAC Prompts that would allow you to run admin programs or processes several times a day without the annoying popup.
To make everything simpler in terms of managing UAC, you could install SP1 which may have all necessary updates needed in taming the nasty and annoying popup

Free Themes, Icons, Wallpaper & More for Windows Vista

editor — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:53:20 +0000

One of the nicest things about Windows Vista is that there are a lot of free resources that you could download on the Internet. In fact if you google “Windows Vista themes” you will be greeted by plenty of websites that offers free Windows Vista Themes, Icons and other tweaks. One of the websites I stumbled upon is www.myvistathemes.com. They offer free Windows Vista themes plus shortcut icons too together with wallpapers, screensavers and others.

With these free websites, personalizing your Windows Vista personal computer has never been this easy! All you have to do is to download them and follow the instructions indicated and you are good to go!

Enjoy customizing and personalizing your Windows Vista!

Image source: www.myvistathemes.com