While the discussion pertains to Vista particularly, the same applies to Windows in general too ! For a general user the first three are usually more than sufficient to make your Vista faster. The remaining are some more which a tweak enthusiast may wish to consider. Utilities like WinPatrol or Tune-Up Utilities can help you in most of the cases.

1. Restrict the no. of start-ups. Why have programs starting up when you dont really use them. Even those you use can always be started manually by clicking on the. I personally prefer not to have ANY starups. I click on my Internet Defense Suite manually, before connecting to the Internet. So decide for yourself which one’s you really need as start-ups.

2. Disable services which one may not require. For example, if your pc is a stand-alone one, there may be sevral services which you can disable or switch over to manual mode. Auto-starting and closing down of services takes time & resources. These can be saved. BlackViper’s Vista Service Configurations Windows Vista Service Configurations by Black Viper is an excellent guide to follow.

3. Reducing visual effects (eye candy). Right-click on “My Computer” > Properties > Advanced > Performance-Settings > Visual Effects > Adjust for best performance > Apply > OK.
To allow the themes and the glass effects, you may have to check on the boxes : enable transperant glass and use visual styles; this way atleast the spirit of Vista will be preserved- else be prepared for a really bland Vista ! Use your discretion. I know disabling all can actually negate the purpose of ‘eye-friendly’ Vista.

4. Ensure that boot defragmentation is enabled, so that files used during start-up are clubbed together.
Start Regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction . Select Enable from the list on the right.
Right Click on it and select Modify. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable. Reboot.

5. Disable : “clear page file on shutdown” option. Cleaning the page-file on every shutdown means overwriting the data by zeros, and it takes time.
To clear/not clear page file you can apply this reg tweak. Back up registry before trying this.
Start->run->regedit [enter]
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
Modify (if not present, rt click in open space and create) the Value Data Type/s and Value Name/s :
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value]
Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Setting for Value Data: [0 = Clear Page File Disabled / 1 = Clear Page File Enabled]
Exit Registry and Reboot.

6. Defragment your System Disk & Fine Tune your Registry. If you find the Vista’s in-built defragger slow, you can try SysInternals Power Defragmenter Download Power Defragmenter 2.0.125 - Power Defragmenter takes defragmentation process to a whole new level - Softpedia which works on Vista too ! Use the freeware CCleaner to clear up your PC Junk and clean up the Registry. Compacting the Registry occasionally is a good idea too !

7. Generally people also recommend emptying the Prefetch directory once in a while. But Windows uses this directory to speed up launching
applications. It analyzes the files you use during startup and the applications you launch, and it creates an index to where those files and applications are located on your hard disk. Using this index, Windows can launch files and applications faster. Nevertheless clearing the Prefetcher say once a month is what I do !

8. Go to BIOS settings, by pressing del key during boot-up, and disable ’seek floppy drive’ option. This saves time for those who do not use floppy drives. There are also some BIOS hacks like Enabling Quick Post, Disabling Boot Daly, etc but best to refrain from these.

9. Change Boot-Order Sequence : Normally, the bios is set to boot from floppy first, then CD and then Hard Disk. Changing the Boot-Order to be: Hard Disk first, then maybe CD/Floppy, could possibly “shave” a second, I guess !

10. Disable windows startup/shutdown/logon/logoff sounds. Go to control panel, sounds & audio devices, sound tab, in program events select ‘no sound’ for these events.

11. Disable the ScreenSaver if you dont need it. Rt-Click desktop>ScreenSaver>None>OK.

12. Fonts take time to load. Removing some can save on resources. But one must be careful in deciding which fonts to remove. If you delete some system fonts, you may b in for trouble. Tweak VI Pro is a good shareware to manage fonts. It uninstalls fonts without physically removing them. Open its help file. It lists down the system fonts which must not be deleted ! use the list; and then decide what to delete and what to keep.

13. To REALLY reduce your shutdown time.
Start Regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
Click on the “Control” Folder. Select “WaitToKillServiceTimeout”
Right click on it and select Modify. the default value is ( i think) 12000.
Setting it to a lower 4 digit value,( say 1000) will make your PC shutdown faster, but you could end up losing data, so use this tweak judiciously.

14. Get rid of all the extra programs Windows Vista installs. You may not be using some like WLM, Calculator, Games, Meeting Space, Fax, etc. Go To Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features > Turn windows On or Off and do the needful.

15. Go To Control Panel\System and Maintenance\Performance Information and Tools. On the LHS you will see options to Adjust Indexing options, visual effexts, power Settings, etc. These all help directly and indirectly.

Ever since Apple switched over to Intel processor, the same processors that are used in some PCs, it has been possible to run Windows on the Apple hardware. Why would you want to do this? While OS X is a pretty OS, Windows applications will not run on it. The only way to run Windows applications on a Mac is to run Windows in a VM. With the Intel based Macs that changed. It is now possible to dual boot OS X and Windows so that you can simply reboot and startup in Windows. Removing the need for the VM by natively running Windows has a big performance benefit. It also makes it possible to do things that were not possible with virtualization software such a 3D gaming.

To dual boot Windows Vista and OS X without destroying OS X you will need to use Boot Camp that is only included in OS X 1.5 Leopard. To get started, you will need to follow these steps on your Mac: (more…)

3d gaming, apple, apple hardware, boot camp, dual boot windows, dual boot windows vista, installer application, intel processor, leopard, Mac, mac 1, ntfs 6, os x, partition, reboot, vista, Windows, windows applications, windows drivers, windows installation

If you do not have a web hosting account yet and you wish to test various email-related scripts, such as contact forms, webmail, autoresponders and more, you can setup a free mail server on your home computer. This alternative will give you more freedom to understand the mechanism of email transport across the internet.

Mercury Mail Transport System is a mail processing tool which is available on many operating systems. It is also integrated in XAMPP, which represents an Apache distribution. In order to be able to test your scripts, first you must configure Mercury application and then an email client. (more…)

email client, email server email scripts, free mail server, mail, mail transport system, mercury mail transport system, Windows

Some time ago, I looked at two ways of reimplementing
the dialog procedure
( method 1 , method 2 ).
Commenter “8″ wondered why we have a DefWindowProc function at all .
Couldn’t window procedures have followed the dialog box model,
where they simply return Read More……(read more)

Some people might call me a patent scavenger, but I prefer the term “opportunist”. I sift through dozens of new Microsoft patents every week so you don’t have to. And trust me, I’m doing you a favor. A recent set of patents filed by Microsoft reveals a pretty innovative idea that I think is worth realizing. Whilst the patents refer to it indirectly, it doesn’t take a lot to fill in the blanks. They call it “metapaper“, I call it “paper Outlook”.

Personal information manager (PIM) software like Outlook to schedule events, manage tasks, contacts and communication can be extremely helpful. In fact so helpful people often carry devices such as laptops with them just to have access to this information. Sometimes this can be an inconvenience in certain locations. Which is why some people will print out their schedule and tasks list to take with them instead. This is where these patents come in.

By utilizing a printer and scanner, metapaper enables a new way to interact with PIM software. Instead of just an output with your schedule and to-dos, the paper also becomes an input.

The main difference between your current Outlook printout and metapaper is a printed indicia in the corner of the page, as shown by the datamatrix barcode (1103). Now when you annotate this page and scan it back to your computer, the printer will automatically recognize the identifier and send the contents to your PIM software for OCR processing. The example above has a new appointment (1403) and task (1405) annotated which will be automatically added to the user’s schedule.

Whilst this example is as far as the patent goes to describe the functionality available, I can easily imagine a few more. For example, you could complete tasks by annotating a tick next to the task, or even a strikethrough. You should also be able to reschedule events by drawing an arrow from the event to a new day. There’s also plenty of uses for this technology beyond just PIM software, like tracking changes in Word.

In addition, the patent also describes new capabilities on printers, specifically wireless printers, where it can request print jobs instead of just receiving them. Instead of dealing with the software on the computer, the user could instead press a button on the printer for a predetermined print job which the printer will then request from the computer. Theoretically, multiple users should be able to print a range of preconfiguered metapapers (ex. weekly, monthly schedule) from the one device.

Paper-less office? Hold that thought.

Even after you have deleted a file, and emptied the Recycle Bin, you may still be able to recover the file. This is because the data in the file has not been removed, at least until the drive is defragmented, rather Windows just ignores the data that is there, treating it as if it was empty space.

The great advantage of this system is that you may be able to recover files that you accidently deleted since the last time that you defragmented, however, you will need a piece of software that will enable you to reconstruct the file from the raw data. My preferred software for this task is PC Inspector’s File Recovery. Whilst free to download and use, it is still a fully featured and powerful piece of software. It is not the most intuitive piece of software ever written, so I will be writing a tutorial later this week explaning how to recover a file using it.

As an alternative, FreeUndelete, is more user friendly, but because I have not used it as often as PC Inspector’s File Recovery I cannot vouch for how well it works.