Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc. A window opens and presents you with six tabs. As most Windows administrators already know, you’ve just opened the Windows Task Manager, which presents a graphical display of open programs, processes, and services that are currently running on your computer. It’s been available for many years on various Windows operating systems, and has now been updated with a few new features for the release of Vista.



The Applications tab
The Applications tab is one of the simpler tabs visually; it displays a list of any open applications in alphabetical order, and it includes a Status column to indicate whether the application is running or, worse, not responding.

The following three buttons appear at the bottom of the Applications tab:

End Task. This is the most commonly used command on the Applications tab, and it’s used for just what the button name suggests.

Switch To. This button can act as the equivalent of Windows Flip or Windows Flip 3D.
Simply select the application in the program list and click the Switch To button.
The selected app becomes active.

New Task. This lets you launch a new application using a dialog box called,...

Hidden in the bowels of Windows is a super-secret Administrator account. Here’s how to unlock it, in case you ever need to use it.

Deep inside Windows, there’s a secret Administrator account, and it’s different from the normal administrator account you most likely have set up on your PC. Oddly enough, this Administrator account is not part of the Administrator group. (Note the differentiation between the secret Administrator account, and the administrator account you’ve set up. In describing this hack, we’ll always use the capital “A” for the secret account, and a lowercase “a” for an administrator account you’ve set up.)

What’s the difference between the secret Administrator account and a normal administrator account? On Vista, the difference is more than the name: the Administrator account is not subject to User Account Control. So the Administrator can make any changes to the system and will see no UAC prompts.

For this reason, you may want to unlock the Administrator account, and use it only for those times when you want to make a series of system changes and don’t want to be bothered by UAC. True, you could instead simply disable UAC on your system, but it’s...

Vista’s User Account Control is one of Vista’s new security tools—and is without a doubt, Vista’s most annoying feature as well. Here’s how to bend it to your will.

Quick, answer this: What’s the most maddening feature of Windows Vista? If you’re like 99% of the world, you’ll probably answer User Account Control (UAC). When you try to make any one of a variety of changes to Windows Vista, a UAC prompt appears, and you have to click the Continue button or enter a password before you proceed.

There’s some method to this madness. UAC is designed to stop your system and its files from being tampered with. If malware gets loose on your PC, the thinking goes, UAC will help stop it from doing damage because the malware won’t be able to click a Continue button or type in a password. You’ll get some warning before you try to make a change that will launch a UAC prompt.

The kind of UAC prompt that appears—either one that asks you to continue or one that asks you to type in your password—depends on whether you’re logged in as a standard user or an administrator. If you’re logged...

Just like Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer keeps track of the applications that you run and files that you open. It does this so that it can tailor your computer to your personal use with features such as the frequently run programs list on the Start panel. Features like this are designed to speed up the use of your computer. However, the side effect of the convenience is a loss of privacy.


Clearing Frequently Run Programs and the Open files list
One of the great new features of Windows Vista can also be a pain when you are concerned about your privacy. The capability to select the programs that you use frequently directly from the Start panel instead of having to navigate through the entire Start menu can save you some time. However, over time, this list can become cluttered with programs that you do not want to be there. Additionally, anyone who uses your computer can easily see what programs you use.

Windows Vista also does something similar with the files that you open. Every time that you open a Word document, a digital image, or any other file, an entry is created in the Recent files...

Internet Explorer is one of the most difficult parts of Windows to clean because it stores data all over your drive, which makes clearing the data more difficult than just deleting one folder. Every time you want to clean all your Internet Explorer history, you need to clear recent addresses, remove history files, erase temporary Web files, and remove cookies. The below are some suggestion:

Removing address bar suggestions
Windows Vista, like other versions of Windows, includes a feature called AutoComplete that is always activated for the address box. This can be a convenient feature because it can help you when typing in an address by presenting you with various suggestions you already used. The suggestions are based on your address box history. Although this feature offers a great convenience, it also will risk your privacy. When I start typing http://www.Twea in my address bar, it automatically suggests http://www.tweakvista.com because I have visited that site. Anyone who uses my computer and starts typing addresses in manually can see sites that I have visited. If they just type in www.s or www.t, they will be presented with a small list of all the sites that I have visited that have...

When you hover your mouse pointer over something such as a button on the taskbar and text materializes, often explaining what you’re about to click. But is there a way to turn that off? Turns out that there is. It’s a registry edit, but as long as you follow these instructions carefully, you should be OK. We’ve edited the registry plenty of times together with no ill effects, right?

Follow these instructions to remove Vista’s tool tips:

1. From the Start menu, type regedit and then launch the corresponding application from the Program list.

2. From the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. Now, set the DWORD value called ShowInfoTip to 0 (i.e., off). Exit the Registry Editor. You must now reboot Vista for the changes to take effect.

To reenable the tool tips, set the ShowInfoTip DWORD value back to 1.