The more stuff that Windows has to start up during boot, the longer it will take to complete.

So, with that in mind, the first thing you need to do is start unloading programs which are set to start automatically when you boot Windows. There are two places, primarily, that you want to look at:

1. Look in the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu. Anything in that folder is set to start automatically. To remove a program from this folder, simply navigate to the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu, right-click on the item you want to remove, and choose “Delete” from the menu. This will not delete the program…only the shortcut to it. (more…)

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The original Vista Bootscreen is very similar to Windows 2000, and is very bland and boring (you know, with the little catepillar bar scrolling from left-to-right). But did you know that Vista comes with a much better highly visual bootscreen? Did you know how easy it is to enable it? No?

Microsoft may not have enabled this by default because of potential hardware issues, but that doesn’t make sense because the minimum video card requirements to even run Vista should handle the new bootscreen without any problem. In either case, here is how to make Vista look that much cooler with the “Aurora” bootscreen… (more…)

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Tired of the old Windows Vista default Boot Screen? Well then, there is a simple alternative solution involving nothing more than your copy of the operating system. And just a tad of tweaking, but nothing extensive, and certainly nothing that would cause Vista to become instable or unusable. The fact of the matter is that you will only have to make use of one of the system maintenance tools that ships by default with the platform. And of course that the first tool coming to mind is the System Configuration Utility, or msconfig.

In order to access the System Configuration Utility all you have to do is enter “msconfig” in the Search Box under the Start Menu. Then right-click the highlighted search result and from the contextual menu choose Run as Administrator. The second tab of the utility involves the boot configuration of the operating system or the operating systems installed. From here, you will be able not only to change the default Windows Vista boot screen but also to alter the way in which the platform starts. (more…)

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Super fast user switching is a powertoy which makes it easy to switch the active user. But you must be a member of the administrator group to see other users! Quite useless for normal users, but this is done on purpose. I contacted Lou, the programmer of fast.exe, and he said (quote):

“It actually has to do with permissions. As a regular user, you don’t have access to the (InteractiveLogon) service. This is because I didn’t want to open another hole in Windows. This is unavoidable.”

The solution opens a hole, but makes super fast user switching usable. (more…)

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Booting to Safe Mode can be a very effective method of troubleshooting a system. Safe Mode allows only essential files and drivers to be used. An example of why you would need Safe Mode is; If you have installed a new hardware device and upon rebooting your system it will not start. If you can get into Safe Mode you will be able to remove the offending hardware device from your system and allow your system to boot normally.

If there are damaged, deleted or corrupt system files involved, Safe Mode may not be an option. You may need to use the Recovery Console for help. (more…)

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When troubleshooting any version of Windows, learning what applications and processes are loading on startup is a critical step. To this end, the old and faithful MSCONFIG application is a great help, and it’s definitely present in Windows Vista too. Just go Start, Run, MSCONFIG and you’re there.

However times change, and while MSCONFIG is a very useful little utility, there are better options available. Enter Autoruns. Developed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell of Winternals (now Sysinternals and owned by Microsoft), Autoruns is a fantastic freeware app which does a full scan of your system and presents you with a total rundown of everything that happens on system startup and system logon. (more…)

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