Want to know what’s going on behind the surface of your Windows Vista PC–and how to make it run better? Beyond the eye candy of the Aero interface lie some new tools that will help you monitor and maximize the performance of your system.

We got a look at some of these tools from one of Microsoft’s own übergeeks, Mark Russinovich, at the recent Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). If you’ve been serious about digging into the inner workings of Windows, there’s a good chance you’ve used a tool created by Russinovich. He founded Sysinternals, a company that developed Process Explorer, a much more powerful version of Windows Task Manager, as well as a slew of other utilities. Sysinternals was bought by Microsoft last year.

Here are a few of Russinovich’s favorite Vista tools:

Performance monitoring: Russinovich uses Vista’s Resource Overview, a nicely upgraded utility that provides at-a-glance system performance charts for CPU, disk, network, and memory usage. Clicking any of the four charts provides detailed information on how much each resource is being used by currently running tasks. Preston Gralla has written about it for PC World, along with the companion Reliability monitor tool, which can quickly show all program, hardware, and OS failures, as well as software installs and uninstalls. The Reliability Monitor can show, for instance, how many times a particular program has crashed. You can reach both monitoring tools through the Reliability and Performance Monitor toolset by clicking Start and typing perfmon in the Start Search box.

CPU cycle usage: One thing you won’t see in these built-in monitors is Vista’s new ability to measure and report a program’s processor usage based on CPU cycles over the entire time the program has been in use. Russinovich says such a report can provide a more accurate view of the drain on CPU resources than you can get in XP, whose Task Manager only shows how much of the CPU a process is using at that moment.
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To see the new data, download and unzip the Process Explorer utility. Right-click one of the column headings (such as ‘Process’) and click Select Columns. Choose the Process Performance tab, and then CPU Cycles. You can sort the display by that column and see which programs have eaten up the most CPU resources.

SuperFetch RAM usage: If you do keep an eye on Vista’s system performance stats, don’t be surprised to see the reported amount of free RAM drop steadily over time, even if you’re not opening new files or programs. This trend can sometimes indicate a memory-guzzling program bug, but Russinovich says you’ll also see it as a result of the beneficial SuperFetch feature, which attempts to learn which tasks you’ll perform at certain times and preload that task’s data into available physical memory for faster performance.

Multimedia prioritization: If you use Windows Media Player in Vista, you won’t need to worry as much about your music or videos skipping if you weigh down your computer with other, resource-intensive programs. Vista prioritizes Media Player to give it precedence over other tasks so that your tunes and movies play smoothly even when the PC is busy. Other apps should be able to take advantage of this functionality as well, but I haven’t yet heard from Apple whether iTunes does. You can read my blog for more on this new feature.

Network open cancellation: In XP, if you tried to access files on servers on your work or home network that were temporarily unavailable, your system would seize up, and you’d have to twiddle your thumbs until Windows decided it wasn’t going to hear back from the down server. Vista allows you to interrupt these network access attempts by clicking the Cancel button in file-open dialog boxes, or by pressing -C if you’re a serious techie and can run things from the command line.
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Rearranging the taskbar: This last tip isn’t specific to Vista, but I noticed it on the Vista laptop Russinovich used for his second talk. You already know you can right-click the taskbar on XP or Vista, deselect Lock the Taskbar, and bump up its size to two rows. What I didn’t know is that you can then set it so that your Quick Launch icons get a whole taskbar row to themselves. To do this, position your mouse cursor over the dotted Quick Launch border (the cursor will change to the resize arrow). Click and hold the left mouse button, and then drag the Quick Launch region below the task list. Getting it into the right position can be a bit tricky and may take a few tries, but it works best for me to pull it down and to the right.

Quick Photo Editing in Windows

Vista’s Photo Gallery program is handy for more than just viewing photos–it also serves as a quick-and-dirty photo editor. To get started, open an image in the app and click Fix to adjust its color and exposure, remove red-eye, and perform other actions; or click Auto Adjust to apply the fixes instantly (see FIGURE 7).
Search Windows Media Player

If you have a big media library, finding specific files can be difficult. Windows Media Player 11 lets you more easily search for tracks by album, artist, and other criteria through search modifiers. For instance, to find Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” type Title:Rolling Stone into the search box to keep the similarly named band out of the results. To see what other fields are available, right-click a column heading and select Choose Columns. Or right-click a track, choose Advanced Tag Editor, and make your selection.

For more on Windows Media Player, see our chart of WMP keyboard shortcuts.
Snip Your Screens

Capturing screens just got a lot easier: Vista’s Snipping Tool makes snagging all or part of your screen images–and adding annotations–a breeze. Click Start, All Programs (or Programs on the Classic Start menu), Accessories, Snipping Tool (or just type snip in the Start Search box and press ).

When the Snipping Tool box appears, drag the pointer around the area you want to capture and click the New button to choose the kind of snip; you can grab a freeform or rectangular area, capture the active window, or take the entire screen. You can save the image to a file, or click the Copy button to add it to the Clipboard for pasting into another application. Choose the Options button to include a URL with the snip if you’ve captured it from the Web, set the program to copy snips directly to the Clipboard, and perform other actions.

Fix Vista-XP Network Glitches

If your network has both Vista and XP machines, the PCs might not get along very well. One problem is that by default Vista and XP use different workgroup names: ‘Workgroup’ in Vista and ‘Mshome’ in XP. As a result, the systems may not be able to find one another.

To rename the workgroup on the XP PCs, right-click My Computer, select Properties, Computer Name, Change, and type Workgroup under ‘Workgroup’ near the bottom of the screen. Click OK twice.
Map Your Network

Vista’s Network and Sharing Center shows info about all of the devices on your network, including their MAC and IP addresses. Click Start, Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network and Internet, Network and Sharing Center, View full map. Hold the mouse over a device to see its IP and MAC addresses (see FIGURE 5).

Non-Vista PCs take forever to show up, if they appear at all, and even then they’re listed at the bottom of the page, off the map. The new protocol that Vista uses to map the network will eventually be available for XP, but Microsoft isn’t saying when.
Add VPN to Any Hotspot

When you’re at a public Wi-Fi hotspot, anyone with the right software can monitor everything you do online. To protect yourself, connect via a virtual private network, which establishes a tunnel of sorts through which your data travels. My favorite VPN service is HotspotVPN, which works with the VPN features built into XP and Vista. The service costs $9 a month, or you can obtain one-, three-, or seven-day access for $4, $6, or $7, respectively. A version of the service with an added level of encryption costs between $11 and $14 per month.

When you subscribe, you get a user name, a password, and the IP address of a wireless VPN server. Enter this information when you run the Windows network connection wizard: In XP, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network Connections, Create a new connection, Next, Connect to the network at my workplace, Next, Virtual Private Network connection, and complete the wizard.

In Vista, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), View network status and tasks (Network and Sharing Center in the Classic View). Select Set up a connection or network, double-click Connect to a workplace, choose Use my Internet connection (VPN), and complete the wizard.
Set Wireless Encryption

Every home or small-office wireless network needs Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption to keep would-be interlopers out. If your network doesn’t support WPA, it’s time for an upgrade. The steps for setting up WPA vary from router to router; these instructions are for the Linksys WRT54GX4.

First, log in to your router administrator screen, click the Wireless link, and choose Wireless Security. Select WPA as your encryption method in the drop-down list, type in an encryption key, and write the key down on a slip of paper; you’ll need to enter it when logging in to the network from other PCs. Click Save Settings.

Afterward you’ll have to set up encryption on each of your PCs, using the same key as you used in the router. On each Windows XP PC, click the wireless-connection icon in the system tray and choose Properties. Select the Wireless Networks tab, highlight your network, click Properties, and choose the Association tab. In the Network Authentication drop-down menu, select your encryption method. In the ‘Data encryption’ dialog box, choose TKIP. Uncheck The key is provided for me automatically. Enter your WPA key in the ‘Network key’ box, and type it again in the ‘Confirm network key’ box. Click OK twice. The PC can now connect to your network.

In Vista, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network and Internet, Network and Sharing Center, Manage Wireless Networks. Right-click your wireless network connection, select Properties, and click the Security tab. In the ‘Security type’ drop-down menu, choose WPA2-Personal, and in the ‘Encryption type’ drop-down, choose TKIP. Enter your WPA key in the ‘Network security key’ box and click OK.

Change Your Search Provider…

To add Google or another search engine to Internet Explorer 7’s Search bar, click the down arrow to the right of the Search bar, choose Find More Providers, select a provider, and click Add Provider (see FIGURE 6). Then check Make this my default search provider, or keep your current engine and choose your new provider by selecting it on the down-arrow menu prior to entering your search term.
…Or Roll Your Own Provider

If you’re not satisfied with the meager selection of search engines in IE 7’s Find More Providers list (see above), building an engine to your own specifications takes just a few seconds: Click the down arrow to the right of the Search bar and choose Find More Providers. Open a new tab and browse to the provider you want. Do a search for TEST (in all capital letters), and copy the URL in the results page’s address bar. Paste the URL into the first text box under Create Your Own in the ‘Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7′ window. Enter a name in the box beneath it, and click Install.
Supercharge Your Browser

Whenever you click a Web link or type a URL into theaddress bar, your browser sends the request to a DNS server on the Internet, which then looks up the IP address and sends it back to your browser–a process that can take some time. To eliminate the delay, add the IP addresses and host names of the sites you visit most often to your Hosts file. Your browser looks for addresses in that file first, skipping the slower DNS server if the address is there. In Vista and XP Home, the file is at C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\HOSTS. In XP Pro, it’s at C:\Winnt\System32\Drivers\HOSTS. Double-click the file to open it in Notepad or your default text editor. Enter the IP addresses and host names of your commonly visited sites (each entry should be on its own line). List the IP addresses in the first column, and the corresponding host names in the next column; separate the two columns by at least one space, and list each pair on a single line. (To find the IP address, click Start, Run, type cmd, and press ; then type ping, a space, and the host name, and press .) When you’re done, save the file with the same name to its existing location.
Browse in Secret

Your browsing activity is an open book. To surf without leaving a trail, use an anonymous proxy server, which sits between you and the sites you visit. (File downloads can be a problem when you use a proxy, however.)

First, go to Atom Intersoft’s proxy list; the site lists information about each server, including its uptime percentage. Write down the IP address and the port used by the server of your choice. For example, in the listing 24.236.148.15:80, the IP address is 24.236.148.15, and the port number is 80. (To find a site’s IP address, open a command prompt as described in “Switch From FAT to NTFS” above, type ping www.sitename.com, and press . The reply will include the site’s IP address.)

In Internet Explorer, select Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings. Check Use a proxy server for your LAN, and in the Address field enter the IP address of the proxy server. In the Port field, type its port number. Check Bypass proxy server for local addresses, and click OK twice. Now when you surf, the proxy server will protect your privacy. Browse to tor.eff.org for information about the TOR anonymous-networking initiative supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Use Offline Files

Vista’s Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions let you bring network files with you. Open Windows Explorer and right-click the network files or folders that you want available offline. Choose Properties, Sharing, Share, Share, right-click the folders you’re sharing, and select Always Available Offline (on some PCs it’s just Offline Files, Always available offline). The files will sync automatically.

Bring Back Classic Menus…

One of the most disconcerting changes in Vista compared with previous Windows versions is the switch from menus to toolbars in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. If you prefer to order off the menu, simply press the key to bring the menus back. Press again to make them disappear. To keep menus around in Windows Explorer, choose Organize, Layout, Menu Bar. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, Menu Bar.
…And the Run Command, Too

XP’s Run box is a quick and easy way to open programs and run DOS commands, but Vista’s new Start menu has replaced it with the Start Search box. If you’re a fan of the Run box, you’ll be delighted to learn that it’s easy to bring back. Right-click the Start button, choose Properties, Customize, check Run command, and click OK. The old favorite will be back on the Start menu, where it belongs.
Create Your Own Icons

Windows’ icons aren’t much help in finding important files and folders at a glance. It’s easy to create your own icons to help you spot last year’s tax return (skull and crossbones?) or your résumé (double dollar signs, perhaps). You don’t need to be an artist to design an icon; but if you’re willing to spend $50, Microangelo Toolset 6 (21-day free trial) can make you look like a digital Picasso.

First, open Microangelo Studio and follow the steps to create a new icon. For Windows XP, your icons should measure 16 by 16, 32 by 32, or 48 by 48 pixels. For Vista, you can choose any of those sizes or go all the way up to 256 by 256 pixels. You can use the program’s pens, paintbrushes, and other drawing tools to make icons, but I rely on its import tool to work with graphics created by others. The program lets you import files in several formats, shrink or expand the images to the appropriate size, and then save them as icon files (.ico). Google Image Search offers a nice collection of downloadable images, but make sure the one you choose is royalty-free. To replace an existing icon with the one you just created, right-click the old one and select Properties, Shortcut, Change Icon. Browse to and select the new icon, and click Open.
Hack Vista’s Bubbles Screen Saver

Vista’s screen savers are inexplicably devoid of options. For example, if you’d like to make the bubbles in the Bubbles screen saver shinier, you’re out of luck–unless you know this Registry hack, that is. By adding three new values to the appropriate key, you can make your bubbles metallic, give them shadows, and display them against the desktop or a solid black background.

Click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista’s menu), type regedit, and press . Navigate to and select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Bubbles. Right-click in the right pane, select New, DWORD (32-bit) Value, and type MaterialGlass. Double-click the new key, enter a value of 1 to give your bubbles a transparent look or a value of 0 for metallic bubbles, and click OK.

Follow a similar set of steps to create a DWORD in the same right pane named ShowShadows. Enter a value of 1 to display shadows below the bubbles, or a value of 0 to go shadowless. Now make a DWORD called ShowBubbles and give it a value of 1 to show the bubbles on the desktop or 0 to display them on a black background.
Adjust Aero’s Glass Borders

To change the size and color of the borders around XP’s windows and dialog boxes, and make other display alterations, right-click the desktop and choose Properties, Appearance, Advanced. Vista, meanwhile, permits you to customize many features of its Aero interface. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize, Window Color and Appearance; to tweak the transparency of the window borders, adjust the sliding ‘Color intensity’ control (see FIGURE 4). Choose Open classic appearance properties for more color options and click Advanced. To give your dialog boxes a new look, select Border Padding in the Item drop-down menu, and type in a new size (the default value is 4). When your borders are the right size, click OK twice.

Switch From FAT to NTFS

Windows’ NTFS file format offers a number of performance, security, and other benefits over the older FAT and FAT32. You’re asked if you’d like to convert your drive to NTFS when you upgrade from XP to Vista, but to switch a drive manually from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista’s menu), type cmd, and press to open a command prompt. Type convert x : /fs:ntfs (with x being your hard drive’s letter) and press .
Right-Click for a Command Prompt

Sometimes the fastest way to get something done in Windows is via the command prompt. And the fastest way to get to a command prompt is through your right-click menu. To do so, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista’s menu), type regedit, and press to launch the Registry Editor. Navigate in the left pane to HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/shell. Right-click in the right pane and select New, Key. Name it Command Prompt. Select the new key in the left pane, and double-click (Default) in the right pane. In the ‘Value data’ field, type Open Command Prompt, and press . Right-click in the right pane, select New, Key, and type Command. Choose this key in the left pane, and double-click (Default) in the right pane. In the ‘Value data’ field, type cmd.exe /k pushd %L. Press . After you exit the Registry Editor, an Open Command Prompt entry will appear whenever you right-click a folder. Select this option to open a command prompt with that folder preselected.

Clean Your ‘Open With’ Menu

When you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, you see the Open With option, which lists the programs that you can use to open the file. For certain file types the list can be long, because as you install new programs, they add themselves to this list. Unfortunately, some of the programs listed may not be able to open the file in question. Do you really want to open a bitmap graphics file (.bmp) with, say, Microsoft Word?

To clean them out, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista’s menu), type regedit, and press to open the Registry Editor. Navigate in the right pane to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\FileExts, and choose the extension whose Open With list you want to edit. For example, to remove Word from the list of apps for bitmaps, choose .bmp and then OpenWithList.

In the right pane you’ll see an alphabetical list of keys, each of which represents an entry on that file type’s Open With list (’winword.exe’, for instance). Delete any entry you want to remove from the list. Now double-click the MRUList and delete the letter of the application you just removed. For example, if winword.exe had the value ‘a’, delete that letter from the MRUList.
Add Folders to the Search Index

Vista’s new search tool is much faster than its XP equivalent, but by default it indexes only a handful of folders–so it may miss a broad swath of files on your PC.

You can manually add folders to the index by selecting Start and typing any term in the Start Search box (or click Start, Search, For Files or Folders in the Classic Start menu). When the results appear, click Search Tools and select Modify Index Locations. Choose Modify, and then click Show all locations to open the Indexed Locations dialog box. The top window displays your storage devices. Check the box next to one of them (or double-click the entry to see a list of subfolders), select the locations you want added to the index, and click OK and Close to return to the search window (see FIGURE 3).
Save Searches

To save and update your Vista searches, select Start, Search (or Start, Search, For Files or Folders in the Classic Start menu) and type your search term. Then click Save Search to open the ‘Save as’ dialog box, and then choose Save. Your saved search will appear in the Searches folder of the Search window’s left pane. Bonus tip: For a different way to find files in XP, try the free Tag2Find utility.

Start With a Backup

All PC tweaking begins with a backup, even if you simply create a new restore point. To set one in XP, click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, choose Create a restore point, click Next, and step through the wizard. In Vista, click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Maintenance, Backup and Restore Center, select Create a restore point or change settings, choose System Restore, click Next, and then follow the on-screen instructions.

Restore points won’t solve all your problems. That’s why one of the most welcome new tools in Vista is Complete PC Backup, which creates a snapshot of your machine, including all of your applications, settings, and data files. Later, if (when?) your hardware fails, you can restore the entire system, not just your files. (Note that Complete PC Backup is not available in Vista Home Basic or Home Premium.)

To create a backup, click Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Back up your computer (in Classic View, double-click Backup and Restore Center). Choose Back up computer and follow the steps. I recommend making a backup at least once per month if you use your PC for work, and a minimum of once every six months no matter how much or little you use it.

Always back up before you make any big changes to your PC’s configuration (note that Windows creates a restore point automatically prior to every new software installation and any other significant system change).
Stop Unnecessary Startups

Whenever you start your PC, various services and programs start up in the background, often without your knowledge. Most of them are programs or services you need, such as your firewall and antivirus software. But some, such as instant messaging apps that you rarely use, do nothing but squander system resources and slow down your PC.

The simplest way to remove the autostart apps you don’t use is with the System Configuration utility: Click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista’s menu and type in the Start Search box), type msconfig, and press . Select the Startup tab to see the programs that start with Windows. Uncheck those you don’t want to run (see FIGURE 1). Next, click the Services tab to see a list of all the services running on your system. Think twice before you uncheck a service, however; many are required to keep your hardware and software operating. The Process Library describes thousands of Windows services and programs, and tells you whether they’re necessary. If you’re not sure whether you want to run a service or program, enter its name in your favorite Web search engine and look in the results for a description.
Keep an Eye on Performance

The best way to find out how well your system is performing is to run a diagnostics program. The counters in XP’s System Monitor utility provide insight into your PC’s operation, but they can be difficult to decipher. To run the program, click Start, Run, type perfmon, and press . Select System Monitor in the left pane, and click the plus sign in the toolbar on the right to add more performance measures.

Vista’s Reliability and Performance Monitor is a big improvement over XP’s System Monitor. Click Start (or Start, Run on the Classic Start menu), type perfmon, and press to open it. The utility is actually several tools in one, but its most useful feature is the Resource Overview, which provides a graphic representation of your current CPU, disk, network, and memory use, as well as historical usage stats (see “The Best of Vista’s New Tools”). The program provides exceedingly detailed information about each measure; for example, in the CPU section you can see every service and application running, how many threads each is using, and the CPU use of each.

Click Reliability Monitor in the utility’s left pane to view a day-by-day history of your machine’s stability, including itemization of any system crashes and hardware or software failures. You can even drill down for more details about any individual event. The tool also computes an overall reliability index, which changes every day to reflect whether your system or applications have crashed.
Restore Files via Shadow Copies

Another of my favorite new features in Vista Ultimate and Business is Shadow Copies, which backs up your files automatically and makes restoring previous versions of files gone bad a breeze. To revert to a previous version of a file, open Windows Explorer, right-click the file, and select Restore previous versions. Click one of the listed versions to open it.

Keep a couple of things in mind about this feature. First, Vista doesn’t maintain a shadow copy of every version of the files you open; instead, each time Vista creates a restore point, it generates a shadow copy. Also, some of the versions you see listed may have been created when you used Vista’s Complete PC Backup program.
Tweak Your Associations

By default, Windows associates certain files with certain programs: When you double-click the file, a specific application opens to run it. But why stick with Windows’ choices? To change the program associated with a specific file type in XP and Vista, right-click the file in Explorer or any folder window, and select Open With to produce a list of programs that can run that file. Select Choose Program in XP, or Choose Default Program in Vista. In the resulting dialog box, click the program you want to use as the default, and make sure to check Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. Then click OK. If the program you want to use as the default isn’t listed, click Browse, locate and select the program you want, click Open, and then click OK.

Turn on ReadyBoost

One of the simplest and least pricey ways to speed up Vista is by enabling ReadyBoost, which uses a USB flash drive to supplement your computer’s RAM. A 1GB flash drive costs as little as $15, and a 2GB device is a little more than twice that amount.

How do you figure the appropriate thumb-drive capacity for your PC? The smallest cache that ReadyBoost can use is 256MB, and the largest is 4GB. Microsoft recommends a flash-memory-to-system-RAM ratio of between 1:1 and 2.5:1. For example, if you have a PC with 512MB of RAM, purchase a flash drive with 512MB to 1.25GB of space. A system equipped with 1GB of RAM should use a drive with a capacity of between 1GB and 2.5GB.

The tricky part involves ensuring that your USB flash drive is ReadyBoost-ready. Be sure to check the minimum requirements and other ReadyBoost information. Before purchasing a specific drive, search the Web for information on whether it has been tested with ReadyBoost.

To use ReadyBoost, first plug the drive into a USB port and choose Speed up my system on the screen that appears. On the next screen, select Use this device, and click OK. On the ReadyBoost tab of the device’s Properties dialog box, you can either go with the amount of space that Vista suggests reserving for the tool or replace it with an amount you prefer by using the slider control (see “The Best of Vista’s New Tools”).
Manage Partitions Easily

Vista’s disk-partitioning utility lets you easily create, delete, resize, and format partitions. To access these tools, select Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), System and Maintenance, and under ‘Administrative tools’, click Create and format hard disk partitions. (In Category View, double-click Administrative Tools and choose Disk Management in the left pane.) Use the Disk Management menu under Actions on the left to access your maintenance options. You can also right-click an existing partition and select an action from the menu that appears.

Your best bet for managing disk partitions in XP is to use a third-party program such as the $45 Partition Expert from Acronis.
Generate a One-Stop Diagnostic Report

Vista’s built-in troubleshooting tool scans your PC, identifies problems, and generates a diagnostic report, complete with suggestions for fixing the difficulties. To use it, click Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), System and Maintenance, Performance Information and Tools, Advanced tools, Generate a system health report. (In Category View, first double-click Performance Information and Tools, and then click Advanced tools, Generate a system health report.) The system diagnostics utility takes about a minute to run before it issues a report