Vista Tweak 1: Turning off User Account Control

  • June 28th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

User Account Control is probably the most annoying new ‘feature’ in Windows Vista and while it provides a good protection against unwanted programs it can become bothersome quickly when many applications have to be installed. I recommend to leave UAC turned on unless you have enough reason to turn it off. To turn off UAC [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 2: Turning off Security Center completely

  • June 28th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

The Security Center is one of the most annoying things in Vista. It not only wastes valueful memory but also sits in your taskbar tray all the time. To turn it off and let it’s tray icon disappear follow these steps … [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 3: Turning ’show File Extensions’ on

  • June 28th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

Why this is turned off by default is beyond me but Microsoft must be thinking this is useful to users. It is not! There are still people who actually don’t know how make the file extensions visible and there are people who don’t even know that filenames normally have an extension. Displaying file extensions has [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 4: How to make the Vista Experience rating appear again if it disappeared

  • June 28th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

Some people found that the link to rate the Vista Experience Index was gone on their system so they weren’t able to re-measure the Experience Index again after for example hardware changes were made. The following steps show how to repair this. Note that this requires making modifications to the system registry! I recommend to [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 5: Autologin on Vista

  • June 29th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

Despite there seems to be no visible option to turn Autologin on in Vista it is still possible to activate it. The feature is a bit hidden and not directly accessible through the Control Panel. If you ever are the only person using your computer there is no purpose in always having to log into [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically

  • June 29th, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

By default Vista adds installed games to the Vista Games Folder when they are started for the first time. However there are many games that are not added automatically. It is possible to drag and drop a shortcut icon of a game onto the Game Window but only the icon is displayed then without any [ READ MORE ]

Vista Tweak 7: Disabling the secured (dimmed) desktop during UAC consent prompt

  • July 2nd, 2007
  • Posted in Misc

Normally when Vista’s User Account Control (UAC) asks the user for a consent when launching an application that is deemed insecure, the desktop will fade dark while the consent window is shown. While I recommend to always leave UAC turned on, this desktop dimming can get annoying very quickly. Fortunately this behavior can be disabled [ READ MORE ]