Nicholas Rayner pointed out (via Twitter linking back to his blog) a new article available for download on Microsoft.com looking at 5 misunderstood features in Windows Vista today.

Download: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Those 5 misunderstood features include:

• User Account Control (UAC)
• Image Management
• Display Driver Model
• Windows Search
• 64-bit architecture

The article looks to clear up some confusion IT Pros might have with these features. This article is part of the Springboard Series on TechNet offering a collection of resources, tools, and monthly articles to address your questions on Windows Vista based on community feedback and feedback from early adopters.

We blogged about a Springboard Series Live Roundtable event in February in which Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich took part of addressing Windows Vista Deployment and Adoption. You can watch the recording of the session here.

Thanks Nick (a.k.a "aussienick") for pointing this out!

Many people think Windows Defender as a waste and its true ;).I have seen any people searching ways to disable/remove/uninstall Windows Defender from there system.There are two ways you can do this :

Through Windows Defender:

1.Open Windows Defender.2.Click on tools>option>Scroll down to Administrator options.
3.Uncheck Windows Defender and Save.Click Continue if UAC prompts

Through services.msc

More at {Hacks} Daily

Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface Pack (MUI) is language packs for Windows Vista that provide a translated version of most of the user interface so that users can change the display language on Vista computer and view wizards, dialog boxes, menus, Help topics, and other items in Windows in a different language.

Select and download your Vista Ultimate x86 x64 MUI Language Pack

Download : Vista MUI Tools v5.5 (x86 & x64)

Logout and login again using administrator user account, and with UAC turned off.
Administrator account is disabled by default in all clean installations and upgrades of Windows Vista.
UAC is enabled by default.

• Enable/Disable Built-in Administrator Account in Windows Vista

• Disable/Enable User Account Control

• Change Language Manually:

1. Run Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

2. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\MUI\UILanguages\xx-YY

Where xx-YY is the original system user interface language locale string, such as en-US for English edition.

3. Rename the xx-YY to aa-BB, where aa-BB is the locale string for the new system language that you want to set

(such as...

During the betas, one of the few new functionality Windows Vista Service Pack 1 added was the ability to create a Windows recovery CD with an easy-to-use GUI interface. Up and until then, it was slightly harder but still possible to do so through a command line. Update: To avoid confusion, this is not the type of recovery discs you find in prepackaged computer systems. This recovery disc does not reinstall Windows, it merely offers tools to fix it if it ever becomes unbootable.

For unknown reasons, the functionality was then pulled out of the final release of SP1. If you look inside your system files, you can still find recdisc.exe which is the utility’s executable, but clicking on it does not launch anything. The shortcut in the Start Menu was also removed, indicating it was removed on purpose.

Out of curiosity, Long Zheng (from where I got this article) decided to find out if by copying a version of recdisc.exe from a beta build of Vista SP1 and placing it in SP1 RTM would work. Thanks to Chris123NT for digging up a copy, it did work. If you also want to make it work, there’s

...

Windows Vista has a new syntax for opening Control Panel item through command line.
Say if you want to open Default Programs panel you could run the below given command from either the command line or the start menu search box:

control.exe /name Microsoft.DateAndTime

There are many names,but some few are given below

Microsoft.Personalization
Microsoft.AdministrativeTools
Microsoft.UserAccounts
Microsoft.WindowsUpdate
Microsoft.WelcomeCenter
Microsoft.AddHardware
Microsoft.PowerOptions
Microsoft.BitLockerDriveEncryption
Microsoft.DateAndTime
Microsoft.DefaultPrograms
Microsoft.DeviceManager
Microsoft.SecurityCenter
Microsoft.FolderOptions
Microsoft.WindowsDefender
Microsoft.WindowsFirewall
Microsoft.ParentalControls

1. Turn off Windows Search Indexing
Windows Vista search indexing is constantly reviewing files on your system to make their contents available for quick searching. This is handy, but can severely impact system performance.

To disable constant indexing:

* Click Start then Computer
* Right Click the C: Drive
* On General Tab, Uncheck Index this drive for faster searching
* On the subsequent dialog box, Select Include subfolders and files

2. Turn off Remote Differential Compression
Remote Differential Compression measures the changes in files over a network to transfer them with minimal bandwidth rather than transferring an entire file that has previously been moved. By constantly checking for file changes, this service can hinder system performance.

To disable this service:

* Open Control Panel
* Switch to Classic View
* Select Program Features
* Choose Turn Windows features on and...