Improve your experience in Windows Vista with my FREE TOP 10 recommended downloads.

1. MZ Vista Force is a system tweaker. Use it to accelerate performance, juice your browsing speed, clean up your hard disk, clear out bandwidth-wasting startup programs, and even fine-tune Windows Media Player and Explorer. Many of the settings here are exceedingly fine-grained. Want to change the speed at which the Start menu search displays? With Mz Vista Force, you can. Download Mz Vista Force.

2. Vista Boot Logo Generator allows you to change it easily your boot screen with one that you created yourself or with a graphic that you find online. You’ll have to create or find the image in two sizes: 1024 by 768 pixels, and 800 by 600 pixels. Both must be in .bmp format, at 24-bit color depth. Once you have them this utility replaces your boot screen with them. Download Vista Boot Logo Generator.

3. EasyBCD is a bootloader modification tool for Windows Vista with many advanced options for beginners and power users alike. It gives the user full control over everything that happens during Vista startup and can boot into Ubuntu (Linux),

Microsoft Security Advisory: Update to improve Kernel Patch Protection

Microsoft has released a security advisory to announce that an update is available for the Kernel Patch Protection feature that is included with x64-based Windows operating systems. The fix has been made available for those with x64 bit OS here.

Microsoft says “the update does increase the reliability, performance, and resiliency provided by Kernel Patch Protection.” The question is, why and what is really the problem for this high priority update? Allegedly there could be a vulnerability in the x64 kernel which is why this patch update may be so important.  For example PatchGuard keeps 64-bit Vista safer from unsigned code so that when you install a driver from a 3rd party any malicious code does not affect the Kernel.

If you cant wait for the official Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, there are some recent alternatives. Just 2 days ago Microsoft released a reliability and performance update. Download each update individually directly from Microsoft right now. These updates are not available in the automated windows update, so get these while their hot!

If you want the Reliability update get here:
Windows Vista 32 bit version
Windows Vista 64 Bit version

If you want the Performance update get here:
Windows Vista 32 bit version
Windows Vista 64 bit version

Here are a few obvious and not so obvious tweaks you should be doing to your Windows Vista if you are finding performance to be a problem. If you dont want to install 3rd party tweaking utilities or want to just do things manually then follow these suggested tweaks.

Explorer Performance Tweaks

1. Click Start, right click on Computer, and click Properties.
2. Click Advanced System Settings.
3. Click on the Advanced tab. Under Performance, click Settings.
Uncheck these options:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide tooltips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Close the Performance Options & System Properties dialogs.

Disable DEP / NoExecute Protection

DEP, otherwise known as NoExecute, is a piece of technology in Windows that prevents processes from being altered in live memory. This lowers the frequency of certain attacks, but it can also have some adverse effects and cause certain things not to run.

Due to the way Windows Vista™’s boot editor has been created, it is

Microsoft has released for its windows users Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, a free download. Before you run off to get it lets review the desktop virtualization capabilities of this tool, you decide if its for you. First off ask yourself these questions and see if you agree with any or all.

[Read my review on the tool]