Speed up External USB Hard Drives in Windows Vista

If you have an external hard drive that is always plugged into your computer, you can enable write caching to speed up performance significantly when writing to the disk.

Write caching isn't enabled by default for external drives because removable devices could lose data if you unplug them too quickly, so take care when using this setting.

To change this setting, just type Device Manager into the start menu search box, and hit enter.



Browse down to the external hard drive that you wish to enable write caching on, and double click it to open up the properties screen.



Just change the setting to "Optimize for performance" and hit OK to continue. You'll have to reboot for the setting to take effect.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Windows Vista

I've previously written about a way to enable or disable UAC from the command line. This is an easier method that you can use to do the same thing from the GUI interface. To recap my earlier article, UAC is ANNOYING.

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned.

Open up Control Panel, and type in user account into the search box.



You'll see the link for "Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off". Click it.



Uncheck the box, and reboot your computer. You should be done with obnoxious prompts!

Disable Security Center Popup Notifications in Windows Vista

If you decide to turn off automatic updates, you'll be annoyed to death with popup messages from the Security Center that tell you to "Check your computer security" or "Check your Firewall status" if you disabled the firewall. It's a good thing you can turn those messages off.

Before we begin: I'd definitely recommend keeping the firewall enabled at all times.



To disable the popup messages shown above, right-click on the little red shield icon and choose Open Security Center from the menu. You could also open Security Center from the start menu.



Now you'll see a dialog with three choices. Choose the bottom one if you don't want the notifications anymore.






Click the link for "Change the way Security Center alerts me"

Show Keyboard Shortcut Access Keys in Windows Vista

Since moving to Windows Vista, a lot of the keyboard shortcuts that I was used to just don't work quite the same anymore. As a keyboard junkie, I find it imperative to learn the shortcut keys, so it's good that there is a quick way to enable underlining of all shortcut keys.

When you underline the shortcut keys, it helps reinforce them in your mind every time you start to do any task that could be done with the keyboard instead. This is why I enable this option when I first start learning a new version of Windows.

To turn this on, open up Control Panel, and type the word "underline" into the search box. You'll be presented with a link for "Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys", which you'll want to click.



In the resulting screen, scroll down until you see "Make it easier to use keyboard shortcuts", and check the box there.



Now you'll notice that the menu options have the access key underlined by default:



The more keyboard shortcuts you learn, the easier it will be to get around in Vista.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Windows Vista

I've previously written about a way to enable or disable UAC from the command line. This is an easier method that you can use to do the same thing from the GUI interface. To recap my earlier article, UAC is ANNOYING.

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned.

Open up Control Panel, and type in user account into the search box.



You'll see the link for "Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off". Click it.



Uncheck the box, and reboot your computer. You should be done with obnoxious prompts!

Enable Ctrl+Alt+Delete for Vista Logon Screen

In older versions of Windows, you had to use the Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination to login to the system. This was supposed to provide a higher security login, although I don't know how. You also might be used to using that combination to login, and there's a way to turn it back on.

Open the Advanced User Accounts panel by typing in netplwiz into the start menu search box, and hitting enter. Then click the Advanced tab, and you'll see

this:

Just check the box, and the next time you login, you'll see the old familiar prompt.

Enable or Disable UAC From the Windows Vista Command Line

If you've used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is.. it's the obnoxious, nagging popup window that will be your life for the next 3-5 years unless you switch back to XP in frustration, or to a better OS like… OS X, Suse, Ubuntu, or even XP.

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned.

Windows need your permission to annoy the crap out of you:


There's a quick way you can enable or disable this annoying window from the command line:

Disable UAC

Enable UAC
After you enable or disable UAC, you will have to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

You can also enable or disable this from the Control Panel if you choose.

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.

1. Click Start and enter the Control Panel
2. 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)



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.

Share Your Windows Vista Experience Index Score

ShareYourScore.com is a site where you can upload your Windows Vista Experience Index assessment and share it with the world. You can also take a look at other people's top scores, and even see average scores for a particular component. This site could be useful for troubleshooting, since you can see what other people with the same components scored. I'm hoping they expand the site's functionality in the future, but it's a good start.

If you are unfamiliar with the Windows Experience Index, just open Control Panel, and type in performance into the search box. You should already see your score, calculated when you installed Vista for the first time.



Once you've uploaded your score, they will even give you the html so that you can put the score as a badge on your own site:



Looks like my computer is really not too bad, I just need a faster processor. So how well did my video card stack up? Here's my performance information from Windows Vista:



And here's what ShareYourScore has to say for the average scores on my video card:

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Sudo for Windows Vista

As a command line junkie, I end up doing almost everything from a command prompt. The problem is that Windows Vista doesn't have a built-in command to launch an application in administrator mode.

Thankfully Brandon Paddock has created an extremely useful tool called Start++ that has a built-in sudo command. If you're thinking it sounds familiar, it's because we've covered it before, but it's worth downloading for this one feature alone.

To launch a command in "sudo" mode from the start menu, just preface it with "sudo", which will launch the application in administrator mode.



It even works from the command line:

Using Password Phrases For Better Security

Did you know that Windows supports using passwords of up to 127 characters? I don't use passwords anymore, and I haven't for years. I've switched to using password phrases instead.

Why do I use password phrases?

* Why would you want to remember a password like 2%d7as$d when you could just remember a sentence like "nsync sucks giant monkey balls" or "I hate my ex-wife!" or "Holy hell does this job suck!"
* You can use uppercase, lowercase, special characters, or even spaces… but you are using them in context, which makes it much more natural to remember.
* Post-it notes on your monitor are not secure. Sorry.
* Even the most efficient forms of password cracking, using pre-computed rainbow tables, will never be able to crack a password with 20 or more characters.

These days, windows passwords can be cracked in no more than a few seconds. If somebody can get physical access to your machine, they can boot off one of the hacker tool cds available all over the internet, and they will typically have your password in seconds, if they know what they are doing.

Even with brute force cracking, there is no possible way that you can crack a password that long. Even if somebody had the super computing power to do so, hopefully you change your password every few months or so.

It may be difficult to use password phrases on other operating systems, or especially on websites, because they don't properly handle spaces in the password, or have a small password length limit. One of the tricks that I usually do is use a password phrase without the spaces, if I possibly can.

So go change your password now.


Note: For more information on this topic, you can check out Robert Hensing's blog over at Technet.

Make Windows Vista Log On Automatically

If you are just running a home computer for gaming or something unimportant, you might not want to have to log in every single time you reboot your computer. There's an easy tweak that will let you autologin.

First, we'll need to get to the Advanced User Accounts Control Panel to get to this setting. I think there's a registry tweak as well, but that seems like too much work.

Type in netplwiz into the start menu search box, hit enter, and you'll see this screen:



Uncheck the box that says "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer", and then hit Apply. You'll see a username and password box. Enter in the appropriate information here and hit OK:

Save 1-4% More Battery Life With Windows Vista Battery Saver

Quite a few people have written in asking me if it's possible to turn off Aero when on battery power to save a few precious minutes of battery life. While I dispute the claim that Aero drains the battery life, there is now a utility that will automatically turn off Aero when in battery mode so you can test it for yourself.

The Windows Vista Battery Saver utility will turn off Aero and/or the Windows Sidebar when on battery, or only when battery life is low. The author claims it saves 30% of your battery life, but the Windows Vista Blog says only 1-4%, so your mileage may vary.

Once installed, there's a small icon in the system tray that will bring up the following settings dialog:



If you are wondering why the screenshot is so blurry, it's because the fonts on the dialog were actually blurry on my screen for some reason. (no idea why).

Personally, this utility seems like it would be useful only for using the "Deactivate when battery level is less then …" Once your battery life is down to critical levels, it's probably helpful to turn off anything that could cause extra processor cycles, and the sidebar is a good candidate for that.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Registry Hack to Disable Writing to USB Drives

A common security concern at organizations is allowing users to plug in a usb flash drive, because they could so easily copy corporate data.

Since Windows XP SP2, you can disable writing to USB devices altogether using a simple registry hack. Here it is:

You can also just download one of the following registry tweaks to enable or disable writing to USB drives.
Once you use the registry hack, you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect. One should also note that if you are using this trick, you should make sure that the users are not administrators on the computer, because they could easily change this setting back.

This works on Windows Vista as well. Here's the window you'll get when you try and write to a USB drive:

Remove the Java Icon From the System Tray

Why does every single application insist on installing a completely useless icon into the system tray? It would be one thing if it performed some function, but it doesn't do anything that you can't do from your control panel. The least they could have done is have a dialog during the setup process that says "Would you like a useless icon in your system tray?"

Anyway, let's get to removing that Java icon… if the icon is currently visible, you can just right-click it and open the Control Panel from there, but you'll get a warning dialog when running Vista.



If the icon isn't currently visible, you can still get to the Java control panel by going to the Vista (or XP) Control Panel and looking for the Java icon. On Vista, you'll have to first click on Additional Options:



And then click on Java:



Now go to the Advanced tab, click on Miscellaneous and then uncheck "Place java icon in system tray"



Much better.

Note that the currently displayed icon won't go away immediately, you'll have to right-click and choose Hide.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove the Built-In Search Bar on IE 7

If you use a toolbar such as the Google or Yahoo toolbars, you probably won't want to see the built-in search box in Internet Explorer 7. There's a quick registry fix that you can do to enable / disable this.



This registry fix works by adding in the DWORD value NoSearchBox, with the value set to 1, to the following registry key:

Hide Search Box

Download Hide Search Box Registry Fix

Show Search Box

Download Show Search Box Registry Fix

Here's what it looks like in action, with the search box hidden

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove Synaptics Touchpad Icon from System Tray

In my quest to get rid of every useless tray icon wasting memory, I was very annoyed when Vista's automatic updates installed a new driver and the icon for the touchpad ended up in my system tray again. There's almost no benefit to this icon, so it needs to go.

The icon comes in two varieties that you've probably seen.


Just right-click the icon, and choose Pointing Device Properties from the menu.



On the Device Settings tab, you'll find a Tray Icon section. Choose the Remove tray icon from taskbar radio button, and it'll immediately be gone.



I realize this is very simple for most of you, but it's good to cover everything that can save some memory.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove QuickTime Icon From System Tray

It drives me crazy when applications install themselves into the system tray without giving me a choice during setup. QuickTime has no good reason to be in the system tray, but it's there anyway after you install iTunes.

To remove it, all you have to do is right-click on the icon in the system tray, and choose "Quicktime Preferences" from the menu.



Click on the Advanced tab.



Near the bottom, uncheck the checkbox for "Install QuickTime icon in system tray"



If you are using Windows Vista, you will get this message when you close the dialog window.



Just click the "This control panel works correctly" button, and the icon should be gone forever.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title Bar

We've all seen it at some point or another - Some company full of pointy haired bosses feels the need to insert their company name into our Internet Explorer title bar.

It can happen when you install ISP software, or if you get a pre-built computer from somewhere. You'll see something like the next screenshot (Notice the "Some ISP Title" in the title bar)



To remove this ridiculous nonsense from either IE6 or IE7, you can just open up the registry, and browse down to the following key:

Once there, you should see a string value called "Window Title" in the list, with the offending text.



Just hit the Delete key to remove it, and spend some time cursing the company that made you go through this trouble. You'll have to close all open Internet explorer windows, but when you reopen them, that text should be gone.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer