Tweaking Windows 1. Page 1. 3 of 2. 1Miscellaneous Tweaks. Turn Off App Recommendations. Settings > Devices > Pen & Windows Ink. Turn OFF Show recommended app suggestions. Turn Off Autoplay. Autoplay is a security risk. I do not use it. Settings > Devices > Pen & Windows Ink. Turn OFF Use Auto. Play for all media and devices. Remove Ads From Windows Explorer. 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. System Performance Tweaks #1– Disable Hibernation. Disable Hibernation – Command Line. This is the only guaranteed way to disable Hiberation on Windows Vista. 10 top Vista tweaks, part 2. As I noted in the first installment of this series, some of my favorite productivity-enhancing techniques don’t involve custom code or. Open Explorer (Windows + E keys). Go to View > click Options, Change folder and search options > Uncheck the box Show sync provider notifications > click Apply. For some users the ability to hibernate their PC instead of shutting down is disabled on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. All modern PC hardware supports. Power Options Power Options This section is new to the tweak guides because I’ve found so many people do not have. Tweaking Windows 7. Tweaking Windows Vista. Tweak UI, one of the best OS tweaking tools around, is finally coming to Vista. Ok, maybe not, but at least Windows Vista users still have hope of getting the useful. 10 Tips for SSD Optimization SSD in Windows 7. How to disable hibernation/sleep mode? These two technologies have been widely used on XP and VISTA. Disable Hibernation. Unlike other versions of Windows Hibernation is part and parcel of the shutdown options of Vista. Tips & Tweaks. Turn off Windows Hibernation Windows hibernation background services can use a large amount of system. Home > Think Tank > Top 10 Windows Vista Speed Tweaks (Part II). Vista Tweaks For PerformanceWindows Defender. Windows Defender Security Center. I’m not going to get into this too much. Microsoft has provided good information including a video here: Microsoft – Introducing Windows Defender Security Center. Virus & threat protection – Info on either Windows Defender or your 3rd party antivirus. For Windows Defender you can: do manual scans, adjust protection settings, and update protection definitions. Device performance & health – “provides a single view of your latest Windows updates, drivers, battery life and storage capacity.” Also lets you Refresh Windows. Firewall & network protection – Firewall and Network info. You can adjust Firewall settings here too. App & browser control – This is where you can view and adjust Smart. Screen settings. I see no need to mess with this. Family options – Provides links to all your Family Options. Kinda lets you control what kids do and see on the computer. At least until they find a way around it. Because they do, and they will. To open Windows Defender Security Center, right- click on the taskbar icon and click Open. Block Adware With Windows Defender. German website Heise Online shows a great little tweak that allows you to block adware with Windows Defender. The tweak, add this registry key. If you are an enterprise user, and you are running System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP), or Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP), it’s good to know that your infrastructure can be protected from PUA installations when you opt- in to the PUA protection feature. If enabled, PUA will be blocked at download and install time. Vista tweaks, part 2. Missed Part 1? Read it here. Instead, they involve learning how the basic building blocks of Windows work, and then rearranging those components to cut steps out of the tasks you perform most often. I also explain the inner workings of volume shadow copies and how you can make better use of these automatic backups with System Restore and the Previous Versions feature. I show how to get quick access to your local and network data files by combining shortcuts in a single, easy- to- reach location, and I explain why hybrid sleep should be the default on every desktop PC. I’ve also put together a gallery of instructions, each one annotated with step- by- step instructions so you can follow along. The two pieces are a matched set for each entry in the list; if you look only at the text or only at the gallery, you’re missing the complete picture. Save your favorite searches. The Start menu search box works just fine for quick, ad hoc searches. To really tap into the power of Windows Search, though, spend a little time to create searches that bring together the types of files you use most often (Word documents modified this month or last month, e- mail messages from Fred or Rick, and so on). Then save those searches so you can reuse them later or copy them to another computer. Fine- tune your search settings. Speaking of Windows Search, did you know that there are three separate areas where you can tweak settings that control search behavior? Use these tweaks to make Start menu searches more useful, simplify the complicated advanced search syntax, and add IFilters to search inside types of files that aren’t supported by a default Vista installation. Make the most of System Restore and shadow copies. Did you know that System Restore in XP and Vista use completely different techniques to save snapshots of data? In this tweak, I explain why you might want to increase the amount of space set aside for volume shadow copies. I also introduce a free utility that lets users of Windows Vista home editions find and restore files from automatically created backups. Bring network files closer. The fastest way to get to files in any network location is via a shortcut. And the best place to save those shortcuts to network locations is in the Computer window. You can add shortcuts to shared folders, FTP sites, or websites where you publish files. Master power management. In XP, you have standby and hibernate. Vista adds a third power state, called hybrid sleep. Here’s what you need to know and how you can tune a desktop system to take advantage of this useful mode. Save your favorite searches. As I’ve argued previously, Vista's built- in search tools are its killer feature. And although Windows Search works well out of the box, a handful of minor tweaks can improve its performance and usability and make it more likely you’ll find the file or e- mail message you’re looking for when you need it the most. When you do so, your search criteria, including the location, search terms, file types, and Windows Explorer sorting/grouping options, are saved as an XML file in %userprofile%\Searches. With a library of saved searches, you can make short work of repetitive tasks. My collection of saved searches, for example, includes shortcuts to display all the Word documents I’ve created this year, grouped by date; all the e- mail messages I’ve received this month; all the blog post drafts I’ve started; all digital pictures I’ve taken this year; and so on. If I open any of these saved searches, I can further refine it by entering additional search terms in the Search box or filtering with the lists available from Windows Explorer column headings. Start by choosing the search scope – the location (or locations) where you want to search. You can combine locations from local storage and network shares. Next, enter your search criteria. You can do this by entering a simple search term in the Search box in the upper right- hand corner of the Explorer window, or use the advanced search syntax, or display the Advanced Search pane and choose criteria from the boxes there. Select the type of data to be displayed in the search results, using one of the six choices in the Search pane. The default option is All, which does not filter the results at all. You can choose E- mail, Documents, Picture, or Music to restrict the results to those types of files (adjusting the available column headings ot match). Or click Other to display folders and files that don’t match any of those four groups. Sort, group, and filter the search results using column headings. Click Save Search and supply a descriptive name. The search criteria are saved as an XML file. Because these are simple XML files, you can copy them to other computers and use them as well. You can also create shortcuts to any saved search and use them wherever you prefer, including the Favorite Links bar, the Start menu, the desktop, or the Quick Launch toolbar. Fine- tune your search settings. As I noted in the final installment of my Fixing Windows Vista series, the most important tweak you can make is to install Windows Search 4, a major update to the engine that powers Windows Search (the update makes no noticeable interface changes). With that task out of the way, tweaking Search capabilities means going to three different dialog boxes, each of which deals with a completely separate aspect of search. In the illustrated step- by- step instructions for this tweak, I explain where to find each of these settings and what you should and shouldn’t do with each one. When you click Start and begin typing in the Search box, your search results include programs first, but they also include just about anything else that matches what you’ve typed. The full list includes e- mail messages, Internet Explorer Favorites and history, and files and folders stored in your user profile. To change these options, right- click Start, click Properties, click the Customize button on the Start menu tab, and scroll down to the block of Search options. You can exclude any of these groups by clearing its check box. You can also expand the search to the entire index instead of just the files in your profile. Folder Options. The default settings on the Search tab are correct for most users. The one exception? Select Use natural language search if you want to be able to create and save complicated multi- field searches without having to use the strict search syntax. With natural- language search enabled, you can type email from Fred or Rick received this week instead of the more daunting kind: email from: (Fred OR Rick) received: this week. The strict syntax is more useful if you want perfect control over results, but the more relaxed natural- language syntax is slightly easier to use. In either case, you’ll want to learn the ins and outs of the search syntax to get best results. Advanced Indexing Options. Windows Search can search for file names and properties such as date and size for any sort of file, but it can only find content inside those files if you’ve installed an IFilter that understands how to open the file and unlock its contents. I’ll discuss IFilters in more detail in the rest of this post. To check that the file contents are being indexed properly, open Indexing Options in Control Panel, click the Advanced button, and click the File Types tab. For each important file type, be sure that Index Properties and File Contents is selected and that the correct IFilter is listed. The IFilter format has been around for years, powering Microsoft’s search capabilities on servers and workstations, including the full- text search services in Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Share. Point Portal Server. An i. Filter written for any of those servers should work just as well on Windows Search. Many IFilters are installed automatically along with programs such as Office 2. Adobe Reader or Acrobat version 7 or later. If you don’t have those programs installed, you can download alternatives, usually free, such as the Microsoft- supplied IFilter pack for Office 2. Foxit PDF IFilter. There are also IFilters for Star. Office and Open. Office document files, and Word. Perfect 1. 2 Service Pack 2 reportedly includes an updated IFilter that should work fine with your WPD files. Others are at Columbia. Soft, at IFilter. Shop, and at IFilter. Some IFilters are available through Citeknet as well, and their offerings also include an IFilter Explorer that allows you to examine and tweak the IFilters installed on your system. The Citeknet website appears to have been abandoned in late 2. I used the Contact form to send a message. Make the most of System Restore and shadow copies. System Restore may be the single most misunderstood feature in Windows Vista. Although the name and basic interface are the same as the System Restore feature in Windows XP, the technical underpinnings have changed dramatically. If you’re following advice originally written for XP, you might want to rethink some of your decisions. In Windows XP, the primary purpose of System Restore was to help you recover from problems caused by incompatible drivers, bad DLLs, and registry errors. To help you roll back those changes, the system took regular “snapshots” of the system state, each of which required a relatively small amount of space. As a result, on a Windows XP system you could easily have access to System Restore snapshots going back weeks or months. At regular intervals, the system makes a block- level comparison of every change made to the volume (that’s Windows- speak for a drive or partition identified by a drive letter). Those changes are stored in the extraordinarily well- hidden System Volume Information folder, with default permissions that allow access only to the System account. Shadow copies ignore large system files that don’t require backup, such as the pagefile, hibernation file, and offline message stores for Exchange accounts. But it tracks changes for just about every other kind of file.
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