Pick your Vista version:

A single Windows Vista DVD contains the code for every version. Normally, you unlock the version you plan to use by entering a product ID that is specific to that version. If you leave out the product ID, the Setup program has no way to know which version you own. So you get to choose your version. This is an ideal way to test different versions for up to 14 days, after which you have to either enter a product ID or do another clean install.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Upgrade at your own risk:

You have three choices when you run Vista setup:
# Boot from the DVD and do a clean install to a fresh partition. Your new installation is assigned drive letter C: when you boot into Vista

.
# Launch Setup from Windows XP and do a clean installation. Your new copy of Windows Vista is assigned the next available drive letter and your existing Windows installation keeps drive C:.
# Launch Setup from Windows XP and choose the Upgrade option. I don't recommend this option unless you have a full image backup to restore as needed.

If you're planning to evaluate Windows Vista in a dual-boot setup, be sure to use a separate partition or physical disk, and allow at least 20GB for testing purposes. Allow more, much more, if you intend to really use Windows Vista.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Add "My Computer" to Your Vista Taskbar

I like to have the quickest access possible to folders on my desktop, which usually means putting something onto the taskbar if possible. You can add the Computer menu as a folder on the taskbar for the easiest access to your drives. You could also use this tip for any folder you want.

To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.



Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we'll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.


Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives.



I always add the Desktop to the toolbar as well.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Add an Application to the Quick Launch Menu in Vista

The Quick Launch menu is one of the most useful features in Windows, and Vista makes it even easier to add a program to the menu.

For those of you that are total newbies, the quick launch menu is the little icons by the start button:


You can either drag an application to the quick launch bar… or you can right click, and choose Add to Quick Launch:



Note that you could also use Pin to Start Menu…

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Add Copy To / Move To on Windows Vista Right-Click Menu

There's a registry hack for Windows that will let you add a Copy To Folder or Move To Folder to the right-click menu, which can be very useful when you want to move a file but don't have the other folder open already.

Right-click on a file:



And up pops a nice dialog that you can use to easily drop a file into the right directory.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Blocking Spam from International Senders in Windows Vista Mail

I don't personally use the Windows Mail client that comes with Windows Vista, but while I was researching how to use it to access my Gmail locally, I discovered a nice option in the Junk Email Options pane.

A large amount of the spam that I get consists of mail coming from all sorts of international domains. Since I don't have any close friends that live in other countries, I really don't need to see any email from anywhere else.

To block all of that spam mail from hitting your inbox, open Windows Mail and go to the Tools \ Junk Mail Options item. Click the International tab, and you should see this screen:



There are two seperate ways that you can block international spam: First, you can block the domains themselves by selecting them here. If you do the Select All option, you should be warned that .US is also in that list.



You can also choose to block message encodings. I blocked all of the asian message encodings, because I definitely can't read those languages, and about 1/10th of the spam I get these days is encoded in one of those types. Again, be careful about doing the Select All option or you will end up blocking all email from everybody.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Change Internet Explorer in Windows Vista to Search Google by Default

Windows Vista includes Internet Explorer 7, and on a new install it defaults to Microsoft's Live Search, which is just terrible. Here's the easy steps to make Google the default search engine instead.

First, open up Internet Explorer, and then click the little search dropdown:



You should see a page with Google Web Search on it:



Click Google as fast as you can!


Make sure you check the default search provider box.

This will also work in IE7 on XP as well.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Display your Google Calendar in Windows Calendar

Windows Vista includes a built-in calendar application that's pretty slick, but as an addict to Google Calendar, I'd like to just view my Google calendar in a desktop client. This is where Vista's "Subscribe" to calendar feature works out pretty well.

To subscribe to your Google Calendar, you'll first need to get the iCal link to your calendar. In Google Calendar, go to Settings \ Calendars and then click on your calendar in the list.

You should see a "Private Address" section:


Right click on the ICAL link, and choose Copy Shortcut to copy the link to the clipboard.

Now open Windows Calendar, and click the Subscribe buttton on the toolbar:


Paste the URL into the textbox, and hit the Next button:


After what seems like far too long, you'll see the next screen:

The key thing that you'll want to choose on this screen is the Update interval, which will keep the calendar automatically sync'd up. I also chose a friendlier name.

That's all there is to it. Notice the blue appointments are the ones that came from Google Calendar:

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Fix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in Vista

The New Contact Group button wasn't showing up when i went into his Vista Contacts folder.
Turns out the problem is that Vista thought my Contacts folder was a picture folder for some unknown reason.

Notice how the button is completely missing from the toolbar.



To change the folder so that Vista realizes it's a contacts folder, right-click anywhere in the folder, and then choose Customize This Folder from the menu.



Now from the Customize tab, change the "Use this folder type as a template" to Contacts instead of Pictures, or whatever it was set to.



Now when you look at your Contacts folder, you'll see the New Contact Group button as well as the other relevant buttons.


There should really be some better logic to determine the folder type.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Fix Problems With Copying Large Files in Windows Vista

If you've been having problems copying large files over mapped drives, network disconnects, or having to reboot your router a lot more often than normal, then you can try out this fix to solve the problem.

The problem stems from the new auto-tuning network, which changes the receive window on the fly. Thankfully we can easily turn it off from an administrative mode command prompt.

Open Administrative Mode Command Prompt

Either type cmd into the start menu and use Ctrl+Shift+Enter or right-click the Command Prompt shortcut and choose Run as Administrator.

Turn Off Auto-Tuning


You'll have to reboot your system, but once you do, the problems should be resolved. If they are not you can always turn auto-tuning back on.
Turn On Auto-Tuning

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

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