Re-Enable Sleep Mode in Windows Vista

If you've found that your Sleep mode menu is dimmed out in Windows Vista, it's most likely because Media Center disabled the option when it feels that media is being shared. This is an easy setting to fix, but it's a little tough to locate without some assistance.

First, you'll need to open Control Panel. To make things easier, type in "power" into the search box, and then click on "Power Options". (for command line hackers, you can just type powercfg.cpl,1 in an admin mode command prompt and get right to the good stuff)



In the resulting screen, click the "Change plan settings" link underneath the currently selected plan.



In this screen, click "Change advanced power settings".



Now you'll need to browse down to Multimedia settings \ When sharing media.



Change both of the options to "Allow the computer to sleep". The menu item for Sleep should be back to normal.

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Re-Enable Hibernate Option in Windows Vista

If you've found that your Hibernate option is missing from Windows Vista, it might be from running the disk cleanup wizard and removing the hibernate files. This is due to a known bug in Vista that might not have been hotfixed already.

Turning it back on is very simple, however.

Type cmd into the start menu search box, and use Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open in administrator mode. You can also right-click the item in the menu and choose Run as Administrator.



From the command prompt, type in the following command:



You'll have to restart your computer before it will take effect.

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer

The question I am asked most often is "How do I install a dual-boot with Windows XP on my new Windows Vista computer?" The answer is that it's not that difficult, it's just very time consuming, and you need to own a copy of Windows XP.

Note that you should not attempt this if you aren't ready to troubleshoot any problems that might occur.

The first issue we encounter is that computers with pre-installed operating systems take up the entire drive. Luckily Microsoft included the Shrink volume feature in Vista, so we can easily shrink the Vista partition down to make room for XP.

Open the Computer Management panel, which you can find under Administrative tools or by right-clicking the Computer item in the start menu and choosing Manage. Find the Disk Management item in the list and select that.



Now we'll shrink our volume down by right-clicking on the main hard drive and choosing Shrink Volume.



Now you can choose the size that you want to shrink, which really means you are choosing the size that you want your XP partition to be. Whatever you do, don't just use the default. I chose roughly 10gb by entering 10000 into the amount.



The next step might be confusing, because we need to change the cd-rom drive that's invariably taking up D: at the moment, because we want to use D: for the Windows XP partition, but it's already taken by the cd-rom drive. If you skip this step than XP will install onto the E: drive, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not quite as tidy.

Right-click on the cd-rom drive in the list and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu.



To Be Continue....

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer

Continuation...

Now we'll change the CD drive to use E: by selecting that in the drop-down.



Now we can create a new partition for XP to live on and make sure that the drive letter is set the way we want. If you do not create a partition now the XP install will do so automatically, but it's easier and cleaner to do it this way.

Right-click on the Unallocated free space area and then select New Simple Volume from the menu.



Follow through the wizard and select whatever options you'd like, making sure to use D: as the drive letter.

Now you will need to close out of disk management and reboot your computer. This is because we can't do the next step until we reboot. (you can try, but it won't work)

So we've come back from rebooting… open up Computer from the start menu and then right-click on the D: drive and select properties. Give your partition a meaningful name like "XP". It would be wise to name the C: drive to "Vista" at this point as well.



Now you'll want to pop your XP cd into the drive and boot off it. You may have to configure your BIOS to enable booting off the CD drive, or if your computer says something like "Hit Esc for boot menu" you might want to use that.

Once you come to the screen where you can choose the partition to install on, then choose either the unpartitioned space or the new partition you created. Whatever you do, don't try and install onto your Vista partition! See how much cleaner it is now that we've labeled each partition distinctly?



We'll assume XP is completely installed at this point, and you will have lost your ability to boot into Windows Vista, so we'll need to use the VistaBootPro utility to restore the Vista boot loader.

To Be Continue.....

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer

Continuation.....

Download and install VistaBootPro from VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager

During the install you'll be forced to install the .NET 2.0 framework. Open up VistaBootPRO and then click on the System Bootloader tab. Check the "Windows Vista Bootloader" and then "All Drives" radio buttons, and then click on the Install Bootloader button.



At this point, the Windows Vista bootloader is installed and you'll only be able to boot into Vista, but we'll fix that. Instead of manually doing the work, we'll just click the Diagnostics menu item and then choose Run Diagnostics from the menu.



This will scan your computer and then automatically fill in the XP version.. click on the "Manage OS Entries" tab and then click in the textbox for Rename OS Entry, and name it something useful like "Windows XP" or "The Windows That Works"



Click the Apply Updates button and then reboot your computer… you should see your shiny new boot manager with both operating systems in the list!



This is a critical piece of information: Windows XP will be installed on the D: drive, even in Windows XP… so you'll need to keep that in mind when tweaking your system.

You can share information between the drives, but I wouldn't recommend messing with the other operating system's partition too much… it might get angry and bite you. Or screw up your files. What I do recommend is that you store most of your files on a third drive shared between the operating systems… you could call that partition "Data".

Thanks....

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Mount an ISO image in Windows Vista

The freeware utility from Microsoft to mount ISO Images doesn't work in Windows Vista. Thankfully there's another utility that does.

The utility that we will use is called Virtual Clone Drive. This utility will let you mount .ISO, .CCD, .DVD, .IMG, .UDF and .BIN files. Download the utility and start the setup process.



Select Yes or OK at the hardware prompt and continue. You might have to restart your computer. Now you should be able to mount any ISO image by just double-clicking on the file. Note: If you are going to reinstall this utility, make sure you uninstall it first, or you'll BSOD yourself repeatedly.

This utility does not work on Windows Vista 64 bit edition. I'll try and find a utility that does work on 64-bit. (On a side note, 64 bit Vista is pointless at this point in history, since half the software doesn't work on it)

Alternatives

* Virtual CD-ROM (Microsoft) - This utility does not work in Windows Vista
* MagicDisk - This is a nice, free utility, but it isn't very easy to install in Vista64. (I'm working on an article)
* Alcohol 52% - Free version of Alcohol 120, but it bundles a browser toolbar that they claim isn't spyware. It's unacceptable.
* Daemon Tools - Well known tool, but the latest version installs spyware on your computer, and the old version doesn't work in Vista.

At this point, Virtual CloneDrive is by far my favorite free utility.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDrive

I've previously written about mounting an ISO image in Windows Vista using Virtual CloneDrive, but I thought I'd go a step further and explain how you can mount more than one ISO at a time.

The thing I love about this application is how simple it is to mount an ISO… you just double-click it, and it's mounted.

To add an extra virtual drive, go to your start menu, and launch Virtual CloneDrive from there. Change the dropdown for the number of drives to the number that you want.



When you double-click on an ISO image, it will always mount it in the first drive. If you want to mount a particular ISO in one of the other virtual drives, you need to open My Computer and right-click on the drive.



Choose Virtual CloneDrive from the menu, and then Mount. You'll be prompted to pick the path to the ISO image.

If you want to unmount a drive, you can do the same thing but choose the Unmount option.

Note: This software does not work in Vista 64 bit edition.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Make Windows Vista Shut Down Services Quicker

The more applications that you install into Windows, the longer the computer takes to shut down. This is especially true for applications that install a service that runs when the computer starts, and even more true for services that refuse to shut down quickly, or time out when being shut down.

To change Windows to shut down the services quicker, open the registry editor, and browse down to the following key

You should see a key in the right-hand window called "WaitToKillServiceTimeout", with a default value of 20000, which represents 20000 milliseconds, or 20 seconds. You can change this to a value of 5000 for 5 seconds.



You won't want to make this value much less than 5 seconds.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Make Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player Mode

Windows Media Player has an interesting option that will let you open files in the Mini Player mode instead of the full player window. This is especially useful for opening music files where you really don't need the full-size window.

To set this option, go to the Options page (linked off the Now Playing button) and look at the first tab, which should be "Player".



You'll see a textbox titled "Start the mini Player for file names that contain this text". The default value in this field is "voiceatt.wav", obviously designed to use the mini mode for voicemail attachments.

If you want to make all mp3 files open in the mini player, just type .mp3 into the window:

Or if you have all your music stored on a single drive like I do, you can type the drive letter, or even the folder path to your music collection:

If you want every single file to always open in the mini player, just type a single colon : character into the field. This doesn't work quite as well for videos, though…

Now when you double-click on a file in Windows Explorer, it will open in the mini player by default. On to the screenshots!

Windows Media Player 11 on XP (Mini mode)



Windows Media Player 11 on Vista (Mini mode)



The Vista version is definitely cool with the transparency, but I almost like the XP version better.

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Make Trillian on Vista Open Links in Firefox

When I switched to Vista, one of the biggest annoyances was that Trillian started opening links in Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, even though Firefox is set as my default browser and works everywhere else.

Turns out it's an extremely simple setting. Just open Trillian Preferences and click on Text Conversations.



In this dialog, uncheck the option for "Open links in a new browser window"



I have to assume that Trillian uses some sort of built-in "new browser" mechanism that isn't compatible with Vista.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Keyboard Ninja: Pop Up the Vista Calendar

Everybody knows that you can pop up the system clock in Vista by just hovering the mouse over the clock. What you might not know is that you can also do the same thing with the keyboard.

Example:

First, hit Win+B and notice that the cursor is focused on the first icon.



Now hit the Left Arrow key and the cursor will be focused on the clock, which will cause it to pop up.



You can go one step further by hitting the Enter key to pop up the calendar.



Ahh, I love the keyboard.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

How to Play .OGM Video Files in Windows Vista

So you've got a bunch of .OGM video files and they won't play in Windows Vista… relax, you just need to install the right codecs in order to play them from within Windows Media Player.

This is where the Combined Community Codec Pack comes into the picture. All you need to do is download and install, although for best results you might want to read on.

Launch the setup process, and you should come to the "Select Components" dialog.



Here's where you want to uncheck Windows Media 9, as well as remove the checkboxes for the two items under "Players". We're trying to play this under WMP11, afterall.

Hit next, and you'll come to a screen where you can choose the file types you want to use the Haali Media Splitter for. This is the component that actually will help you play your OGM files.



Just installing the codec pack doesn't set OGM files to Windows Media Player though. You need to double-click on your video file, select to pick from a list of installed programs, and then select Windows Media Player in the list. Make sure you've checked the option to always play in WMP.



And there we are… OGM files playing in Windows Media Player.



Download Combined Community Codec Pack

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Bring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)

If you've ever hooked up your laptop to a secondary monitor and then disconnected without remembering to move the windows back to the primary desktop, you've probably encounted this problem:

The application is running. You can see it in the taskbar, but you can't see it on the screen, because it still thinks it's running on the secondary monitor. You try and use right-click, Move, but that doesn't do anything, and the window doesn't move anywhere. You end up rebooting and cursing Microsoft.

There's a simple trick to get around this. First make sure you've alt-tabbed to the window, or clicked on it once to bring it into focus. Then right-click on the taskbar and choose Move

At this point, you should notice that your cursor changes to the "Move" cursor, but you still can't move anything.

Just hit any one of the arrow keys (Left, Right, Down, Up), move your mouse, and the window should magically "pop" back onto the screen.

Note: For keyboard savvy people, you can just alt-tab to the window, use Alt+Space, then M, then Arrow key, and then move your mouse.

This should work on any version of Windows. It's really amazing how many people are not aware of this little trick.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Fix Sleep Mode Randomly Waking Up Issue in Windows Vista

I've been having a very frustrating issue with Windows Vista on my HP notebook: I put the computer into sleep mode, close the lid, and then unplug the network cable… and the computer wakes back up, typically when it's already safely in my laptop bag, so I don't notice until I get to my destination and the battery is nearly dead.

Turns out there's a very easy fix for this problem: Disable the Wake on LAN feature. Essentially, the computer is set to automatically wake up from network traffic, which seems to include pulling out the cable.

To change this setting, type in Device Manager into the start menu search box, and then browse down to "Network Adapters" and find your network adapter. In this case, mine is "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet".



Right-click it and choose Properties from the menu. In the resulting dialog, choose the Power Management tab.



Uncheck the box next to "Allow this device to wake the computer" to solve the problem. You'll notice that there's a warning about having the option enabled in the first place.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Still Useful in Vista: Startup Control Panel

Anybody that has been a geek for a while is already aware of the greatness of the tiny Startup Control Panel written by the legendary Mike Lin, but I'm here to tell you that it's still just as useful today as it was 8 years ago.

Sure, there's a utility built into Windows Defender that can help you manage your startup items (just type startup into the control panel search box) and click the link for "Stop a program from running at startup".



The Software Explorer feature in Windows Defender allows you to select items and then disable them if you choose, although you'll need to click the "Show for all users" button for most of the functionality to work.



So what's the problem with the Windows Defender version?

* You can't get to the Software Explorer if you don't have Windows Defender enabled. If you are using another anti-spyware tool then this is most likely the case.
* Takes way too many steps to get to Software Explorer.
* It's big and clumsy.

Compare that to the simple and easy to use features in Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin:

* A single executable of only 76k.
* Easy to access - just unzip it wherever you want and it's available. I put mine in the Quick Launch bar.
* You can see which startup section the items have been added in.
* You can switch startup items between common and your user account only.
* Doesn't require a resident process that slows down your computer.

To disable an item, all you have to do is uncheck the box, and that item is now gone. You can restore items from the Deleted tab. (It doesn't close running applications, you'll have to do that yourself or just restart)



The only issue in Windows Vista is that you need to run the utility as administrator. You can do it each time by right-clicking and choosing Run as administrator.

Or you can set it to always run in Administrator mode by right-clicking, choosing properties and then the Compatibility tab. Check the box for "Run this program as an administrator".



I'll stick with the trusty Startup Control Panel.

Download Startup Control Panel from mlin.net (And notice that he's got a donate button)

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove Winamp Context Menu Items from Vista

I get very tired of every application adding items to my Windows Explorer right-click menu and making it difficult to remove them. Winamp has an easy preferences panel to let you configure which items show up, but sadly it doesn't seem to work in Windows Vista.

The problem is caused because the Winamp installer runs in administrator mode, which has access to add global menu items, but running Winamp as a regular user prevents you from modifying the items that are added by the installer.



Find Winamp in the start menu, and then right-click the entry and choose Run as administrator. This is the most important step!



Open the Winamp preferences from the system tray icon or otherwise, and then browse down to General Preferences \ Jump To File \ Shell Options.



Here's where it gets interesting… if nothing is selected in this dialog, you should select all of the items and then de-select the ones you don't want. This will "reset" the context menu items.

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Reset Open/Save Choice for Internet Explorer Downloads in Vista

If you've removed the checkbox from the "Always ask before opening this type of file" on the downloads window and now you no longer get the dialog that says "Do you want to open or save this file?" then you are in luck, because I've got the answer for you.

There is a registry setting that controls the list of which files you've chosen to automatically open, which means if you uncheck this box the default will be to always open the file, which is why you don't get the option to save the files anymore.



Manual Registry Hack

To manually make this change, we need to open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following search key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell \
AttachmentExecute\{0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

Once there, you'll notice keys in the right-hand pane for each file type. To reset the setting for each, just delete that particular one from the list. The changes will be immediate.



Downloadable Reset All Download Choices Hack

If you want to just reset all of the choices, I've provided a registry hack file that will reset all of the choices for all file types. If you want more granular control you should use the manual method outlined above.

Note: Using this registry hack will delete information from your registry that isn't easily recoverable. You should consider doing a registry backup before doing this. Of course, if you are in the registry doing a backup, you may as well use the manual method.

ResetAllDownloadChoices.zip (334 Bytes)

Attached Files

ResetAllDownloadChoices.zip (334 Bytes, 1 views)

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Enable "Pin to Start Menu" for Folders in Windows Vista / XP

The Start menu in Windows Vista and XP allows you to "Pin" items to the top for quicker access to your favorite applications. The problem is that you can't pin folders to the start menu, even though that would be very useful.

There's a registry hack that you can do to add this capability for folders as well… it's not new, but still very useful.

Manual Registry Hack

To manually set up this context menu item, we'll need to add an item to the right-click context menu. Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandle rs\

Once there, you'll need to create a new key called {a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8} with no value.



That should be the only thing you need to do. If you want to disable this, just delete the key.

Downloadable Registry Hack

You can choose to just download and use the registry hack files I've provided at the bottom of this article. Once you unzip the file, you should see two registry files:

* EnablePinToStart.reg - Enable the menu
* DisablePinToStart.reg - Disable the menu (deletes the key)

Using Pin to Start Menu

Find the folder you want to pin to your start menu, hold down the Shift key, and then right-click on the folder. You'll notice the new item for Pin to Start Menu.



Now your folder should be pinned to the start menu…



I've found this to be very useful if you want to use the start menu for quick access to folders.

Note: This tip will not work if you are using the classic start menu.

Attached Files

EnablePinToStart.zip (616 Bytes, 0 views)

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Disable/Enable Lock Workstation Functionality (Windows + L)

As everybody knows, using the Windows+L keys together will lock your workstation running XP or Vista. Did you realize that you can also disable this function by using a registry hack?

I suspect that this article will be much more useful to those of you who can't lock your workstation, but either way we'll show how to configure this setting.

Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following key, creating it if it doesn't exist:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\System

On the right-hand side, create a new DWORD 32-bit value named DisableLockWorkstation and give it one of these values:

* 1 - Disable Lock Workstation
* 0 - Enable Lock Workstation

The changes should be immediate, no need to restart anything.

Downloadable Registry Hack

I've provided the hack in a downloadable registry file. Just unzip and then click on the Enable or Disable script, depending on which action you feel like taking.

Attached Files

DisableLockWorkstation.zip (646 Bytes, 0 views)

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Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer

Remove Shortcut Text From New Shortcuts in Vista

A source of annoyance for many Windows users is the " - Shortcut" text that is added to the name of newly created shortcuts, and every time you have to manually edit the shortcut and remove that text. Wouldn't it be great if there was a registry hack for this?

Most long-time geeks will remember that there was a hack for Windows XP, and probably already know that the same hack works in Windows Vista as well.

Notice the " - Shortcut" added to my pidgin icon.


Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer



On the right-hand side you'll find a key that is just called "link", with a default value of 1e 00 00 00. Open this key up and change the 1e to 00 instead, leaving you with 00 00 00 00.

You'll have to log off and then back on to make this change take effect. Please note that this won't affect existing shortcuts, only shortcuts that you create from now on.

To change the setting back, just change back to the 1e value, log off and back on.

Downloadable Registry Hack

I've provided these tweaks in a couple of registry hack files.

* RemoveShortcutText.reg - Removes the shortcut text from new shortcut
* RestoreShortcutText.reg - Restores the setting back to the default.

Attached Files

RemoveShortcutText.zip (504 Bytes, 0 views)

__________________
Prasanna Vignesh
MCPD | Web Developer