How to Create Exceptions in Windows Vista Firewall

Windows Vista Firewall acts like a fence between your computer and the outer world, but since any fence needs a gate, you have to let some data get in and out by setting exceptions. While some exceptions are set up automatically by Windows Vista, others have to be configured manually, so let’s see how.

Setting a manual exception for a certain program.
# Click Start and enter the Control Panel
# Here, access the link called "Allow a program through Windows Firewall" (bellow the Security).

Go to the General Tab, and make sure that the option "On (recommended)" is selected. If not, enable it (this will enable the firewall).

# Go to the Exceptions tab at the top.
# To add a program you to your exception list click Add Program (near the bottom).


A list with the programs on your computer is displayed. Locate the program, highlight it and click OK.



Be sure that the check box besides your program is checked, then click OK


Other tips

The most powerful addition to the Vista Firewall is the excellent Rules system. This allows you to enable traffic only in certain conditions, just like opening a gate only for people dressed in white, but they will only be allowed to enter.

* to specific computers and users
* to many different protocols (not just TCP and UDP)
* to both local and remote ports
* to specific interface types: location area network, remote access, or wireless
* to specific Vista services

Despite the vulnerability claims, a well configured Vista Firewall is much more capable than all its predecessors, and despite the fact that nothing is perfect, everything starts from you, the user behind the screen. So make sure you know how to properly configure your Windows Vista Firewall.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Make Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent Order

If you have a lot of tabs open at a time, it's sometimes quicker to have Ctrl+Tab switch to the most recent tab instead of the next one to the right. This is the default setting in the Tab Mix Plus extension for Firefox, so a lot of you are probably used to it.

To make Internet Explorer use this behavior, go to Tools \ Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab.


Check the box for "Use most recent order when switching tabs with Ctrl+Tab". You'll need to restart IE7 for this change to take effect.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

$103.15 Bounty(Paid!) for Increasing Windows Vista Taskbar Preview Size

Ever since Windows Vista came out, I've been trying to figure out how to increase the size of the tiny Windows Vista taskbar preview windows. I've scoured the registry, used process monitor to try and find hidden registry keys, and looked at every setting I could find anywhere with no luck.

So I've decided in honor of us hitting the 10k subscriber mark, I'm going to offer $103.15 to the first person that can figure out a way to increase the size of the native preview windows shown here.




Here's the rules:

* Solution can be a registry hack or an application, but must utilize the built-in previews or if it's a replacement, it must at least use the new window compositing engine.
* Solution must allow the user to choose the size, either in specific or relative proportions.
* If the solution is an application, it must be open source so we can all truly enjoy it.
* If it's a registry hack then it can't be published somewhere else first. How-To Geek readers should get to read it first.
* I don't want to hear about VisualTooltip or Visual Task Tips. While they are both fine applications, they are made for XP and don't use the compositing engine, so they are much slower than the built-in previews. Hint: You should be able to watch a video in the preview like you can with the built-in previews.
* Payment will be either amazon gift card or visa gift card… I have no idea how that works, so I'll look into it.
* Submit any entries to me via email.

I'm very interested to see what the community comes up with. Why $103.15 exactly? I dunno, it just felt right. If anybody else would like to pledge money towards this cause, let me know.

Update: Reader Shawn won the bounty by writing in with a link to Vista Thumbnail Sizer, a utility written by Andreas Verhoeven. More details after the jump…

Print Pages in Internet Explorer 7 Without Headers or Footers

The headers and footers that always print along with the page when printing a page can be irritating. I know very well what page it was I printed, so it's not useful to me to show the URL at the bottom of the page.

If you want to turn the headers off just for a one-time print, you can use the Print Preview window, and then click the button to "Turn headers and footers on or off", shown below.


If you want to permanently turn these options off, you can use the Page Setup option instead.


Just click on Page Setup, and then you should see this dialog.


You can just remove the text in the textboxes completely in order to get rid of the headers and footers, or you can change the options to display page numbers at the bottom, or really any combination you want.

Here's a full list of the options that you can use (You could also find these in the Vista help files, or possibly the IE7 ones)

You can combine these in any format you want. For instance you could do this:

Which would give you something like this:

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Disable Aero on Windows Vista

The Windows Vista Aero glass interface will only work if you have a high-powered video card. For the select few of you that do, you can also disable it so you can act like you don't really care about cool stuff. (But you do)

You might also have some performance reasons for disabling it… to do so, just right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize. Click the "Window Color and Appearance" link:


Then in the next screen, click the link near the bottom for "Open classic appearance properties for more color options"



Now you should be able to disable Aero altogether by choosing Windows Vista Basic in this screen:

Quickly Open Network Connections List in Windows Vista

One of the biggest annoyances for me in Windows Vista is that you can't immediately open the Network Connections list to see the list of adapters like you could in XP.

In Windows XP, you could right-click any network connection and select "Open Network Connections", but in Windows Vista, the only option you have is to open the Network and Sharing Center via the same right-click menu.


To immediately open the connection list, you can just type ncpa.cpl into the Start menu search box:


And up pops the network connection list just like I'm used to:



You can also create a shortcut somewhere to the full file path if you want even easier access.



Just use C:\windows\system32\ncpa.cpl as the location of the shortcut.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Disable Flip3D in Windows Vista

Flip3D is pretty much the most useless feature in Windows Vista. It's slower than Alt+Tab and pretty much completely worthless in every way. You'd be much better off using one of the Expose clones out there (Switcher, MyExpose, SmartFlip, etc) or you can completely disable this feature with a simple registry patch.

Note: For those of you unaware of what it is, you can use Win+Tab to bring up Flip3D to see what the fuss is about. It looks like this:



Disable Flip 3D

Extract the zip file to your hard drive and then double-click on DisableFlip3D.reg to enter the information into the registry.

Next, you will have to open an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt and selecting Run as Administrator. Run these commands, which will restart the desktop window manager service.



Re-Enable Flip 3D

Extract the zip file to your hard drive and then double-click on EnableFlip3D.reg to enter the information into the registry.

Follow the steps above to restart the desktop window manager service.

http://www.howtogeek.com/geekers/Ena...ableFlip3D.zip

Remove PartyPoker (Or Other Items) from the Internet Explorer Tools Menu

My friend made the huge mistake of downloading PartyPoker onto a laptop from work - even after he uninstalled it, the menu item still showed up. He was worried about getting caught by the IT people, so he asked me how to get rid of it.

It seems like every worthless application out there feels the need to infest the Tools menu in Internet Explorer with unwanted entries, and uninstalling the application almost never removes the menu item.


To get rid of this entry, and potentially any others in the list, we'll have to venture into the registry. Open up the registry editor by typing regedit into the run box.

Browse down to the following key:

Under this key, you will see a lot of subkeys with really long names. Click on each one of them, and if you look in the right hand pane, you will see the menu text from the offending menu item. For instance, you can see in this screenshot that I've selected the key that contains the PartyPoker menu item.



Just right-click and Delete the keys that you don't want to show up. Restart Internet Explorer, and the menu item should be gone.


This tip should work for either IE6 or IE7.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Enable Slow-Motion Aero Animations in Windows Vista

This tip really isn't very useful, but it's an interesting hack to show your friends. You can enable a "Slow Motion" animation that will only activate if you are holding down the Shift key while you minimize/restore/close/open a window.

To start with, you should note that this will only work if you are already able to run Windows Aero glass theme.

To activate this hack, you'll need to first download and unzip this registry file, and then double-click it to add to the regisry. It will add two new values to the registry.

Now you can reboot to see the effect…

…or you could just open an administrator mode command prompt by typing cmd into the start menu search box, and then using the Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcut to launch it in administrative mode. We'll want to restart the Desktop Window Manager with these two commands:

Now you can see the slow motion animations by holding down the Shift key while minimizing or restoring a window. It's a pity there's no way to configure the speed of the animation.

I wish I had a picture or video to show here, but I don't have the right setup yet to do that. I'll probably update this article once I do.

Turn on Remote Desktop in Windows Vista

Remote Desktop is disabled by default in Windows Vista, but it's easy enough to turn it back on. If you need to access your Vista PC from another box, it's an essential thing to turn on.

To get to the configuration page, you can either right-click the Computer icon and choose properties, or you can type in system into the start menu search box. It'll be the 4th item in the list, as you can see here:


Now you'll want to click the Remote Settings link on the left hand side:



Now you can finally turn it on:


To connect from another Vista PC on the same network, click the bottom radio button. If you need to connect from an XP/2k machine, click the "Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop" radio button.

Don't worry about setting up firewall rules, Vista does that for you automatically.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer