A right-click on a partition and the selection of Shrink Volume will display the option to shrink the volume of the selected hard drive. It happens quite frequently that the partitioning program is offering the volume by a low amount. Some users reported that they could not shrink the partition at all even through they had lots of free Gigabytes hard drive space on the partition.

This is caused by system files that are located at the end of that Windows partition. These system files are practically blocking the ability to shrink the volume of the Windows partition beyond that point.

Below is an image of the shrink volume option on a Windows Vista notebook. The hard drive had more than 80 Gigabytes of free space but Vista offered to shrink that volume by less than 4 Gigabytes.

The only viable option is to run a hard drive defragmentation software that will move the files at the end of the partition to an earlier position. This is only possible before the operating system is loaded. One software that can do that is Perfect Disk. The software is not free but it can be used as a 30 days trial version which is sufficient for the purpose.

This can be done by clicking on the System Files button in the disk partitioning program. This will schedule the partitioning to start before the next Windows Vista start.

The effect can be seen below:

There are alternatives for the commercial software like Easeus Partition Manager or gParted

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A good suggestion would be to backup the Windows Vista Registry before starting to apply the changes. Windows saves folder information in two Registry keys that need to be deleted prior to applying the changes to reset already stored settings and making it easier to identify the Registry key that needs to be changed.

Open the Windows Registry by pressing Windows R, typing regedit and hitting enter. Now navigate to the following two keys and delete them:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU


Logout from the computer system or restart it so that the changes can take effect. Now right-click on the Windows desktop and create a new folder. Open that folder afterwards and resize it the way you want the default folder to look like. You can also change the default view and other settings. Close the folder afterwards and open the Windows Registry again.

Go to the key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\

and notice that there is only one subkey now that should show up as a number. Expand that key, then the Shell subkey and the guid name afterwards so that the structure looks like the one on the image below:

The digit and the guid will most likely be different from the ones shown in the screenshot. Right-click the guid name and Export that key to the hard drive. Name it anything you want. Now locate the exported key on the hard drive and edit it with Notepad.

There should be a line looking like the following:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\4\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}].

The digit 4 corresponds to the digit under the Bags Registry key, remember that it might be different on your computer system.

Replace the digit with AllFolders so that it looks like the following:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}].

Save the edited key and double-click it to import it to the Windows Registry again. Now open up any folder in Windows Vista and see that it will be displayed in the the default size and view mode that you picked up earlier.

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Users who want to change the language of their Windows Vista operating system will soon realize that it is not as easy as they thought it would be. Especially Vista Home users are left standing in the rain because there is no official way of changing the language of the operating system.

The Windows Vista Multi-language User Interface Hacker (via Raymond)is a third party software that was specifically designed for the purpose of changing the language of a Windows Vista operating system. It works by downloading the program files, the selected MUI language pack and a lengthy conversion in the software application that can take between 5 and 60 minutes depending on the computer’s performance.

After that is is simply a matter of selecting the installed language in the program’s interface and restarting the computer.

Download links to all available language packs are provided in the software program so that the user can simply download it right away. Switching back to the original language is not a big problem either. It is simply a matter of downloading the right MUI and applying the same procedure to the file.

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This hidden setting works in all versions and editions of Windows Vista. All that needs to be done is to execute a single command to execute the screensaver as the Vista wallpaper. The best method is to test run the feature with the default screensavers that are shipped with Windows Vista and use custom ones after making sure that everything is still working properly.

Open a command prompt by pressing Windows R and typing in cmd. Now execute the command aurora.scr /p65552. It can take a few seconds before the changes become apparent. What you should see is the screensaver as the new wallpaper in Windows Vista.

The above screenshot is a snapshot of a Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium edition running the pc screensaver Analogy as the background image. The screensaver can be killed anytime in the Windows Task Manager where it appears as a process that uses roughly 10 Megabytes of computer memory.

The only side effect of the procedure is that all desktop icons will be hidden for as long as the screensaver is running as the background image.

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To change the Vista audio output users have to right-click the speaker icon and choose Playback Devices from the options. There they have to right-click on the playback device that they want to use right now and set it as the default audio device in Windows Vista. They also have to close and reopen any program that was using the old audio output if they want to hear the sound on the new output.

Vista Audio Changer steps in and provides an easier way to change the default Vista audio output in just two clicks. It provides a list of all audio devices which can be easily selected from the program interface.

It still misses a few features that would make it even more handy, like placing shortcuts on the desktop or providing hotkeys to select the default vista audio device faster.

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Some users have more than 5000 folders on their system and they will experience that the folder view is resetting itself whenever the limit is reached. It works like a first in first out cache once the limit has been reached.

Here is what you need to do to fix it (via Redmond Pie): Open the Windows Registry by pressing Windows R, typing in regedit and hitting enter. Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Classes \Local Settings \Software \Microsoft \Windows \Shell and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it BagMRU Size. Double-click the entry and give it a value of 10000, double the default amount.

Work with your system for a while and see if all folder view settings are remembered. If it is not enough increase the number a second time to 15000 or even 20000. The same can be applied to Windows XP, the limit in XP seems to be 8000 though.

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Windows Vista users can either see the old five locations on the left side of Windows Explorer if an application makes a call to the function of the old Api which was left in for backwards compatibility or something that is called Favorite Links which provides access to way more folders and resources.

A location on the hard drive is being used to store shortcuts to all folders and special folders that are shown in the Favorite Links panel. That location is by default C:/Users/username/Links. It can vary depending on your setup.

The easiest way however to add links to the Favorite Links is by dragging and dropping them right into the Windows Explorer window. Another possibility would be to open the location on the hard drive and drag and drop shortcuts into it. You can naturally remove any shortcut in the folder to remove the link from the Favorite Links panel.

That panel can be deactivates as well. If you do not need the Favorite Links panel and prefer a full screen Windows Explorer view without a side panel you can deactivate it by pressing the Organize button and choosing Layout > Navigation Panel from the menu.

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Hank (thanks a lot) send a tip via email that explained who to enable or disable the Windows Vista Firewall with a simple shortcut, or better two shortcuts. He was using this approach to disable the firewall at home where a hardware firewall was protecting the PC and to enable it while on the road with his notebook.

To create the shortcuts right-click the desktop in Windows Vista and select to create a new shortcut. Name the first shortcut Firewall OFF and the second Firewall ON. Use the following two commands to enable or disable the firewall.

Windows Vista Firewall OFF:

%systemroot%\System32\netsh.exe firewall set opmode disable

Windows Vista Firewall ON:

%systemroot%\System32\netsh.exe firewall set opmode enable

A click on Firewall OFF would turn the Windows Vista Firewall off immediately and a click on Firewall ON would enable it again. To get rid of the command line window in the background right-click the shortcut and select to run the command minimized like in the screenshot above. The default setting is normal window.

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The fix is rather straightforward, you need to run several commands in the command line as an administrator. Start with netsh interface tcp show global which displays the TCP Global Parameters. One parameter listed is called Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level which can be restricted, disabled, normal or highlyrestricted and probably several other that are not that important for the solution.

The command netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled disables auto tuning which should lead to a speed increase if your computer experienced slowdowns and connection errors. Setting autotuning=normal returns to the default state for the autotuning parameter. Some suggest to set autotuning=restricted before disabling it fully or to autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted.

I would begin with restricted, if that does not help I would change to highlyrestricted and if that does not have the desired effect I would disable the feature completely.

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Have you ever asked yourself for instance why it is not possible to resize the Vista sidebar ? Microsoft creates additional layers if you fill the sidebar with to many applications which are only accessible if you click on the arrows that appear in that case. Not very user friendly in my opinion.

The Sidebar Styler lets you resize the sidebar at will, you can increase and decrease the width of it. This disables the page navigation however which means that you won’t be able to see all gadgets if you have a lot of them in the sidebar. Most users however won’t notice this at all.

Since this application is called Vista Sidebar Styler it is able to customize the appearance of the sidebar as well.

Custom styles allow for resizing and customizing the appearance of Windows Sidebar so that it fits other UI elements, such as the Aero Glass colorization or an actual third party theme.

download: Windows Vista Sidebar Styler
source: Cybernet News

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You could probably live with the search function only which can find files as well and displays them in a list. Clicking the file would have the same effect as entering it in the run box. It can however take some time until the search finds the filename and the run box is just a little bit faster to work with. So, to add the run box to the start menu do the following:

• Right-click the taskbar and select Properties
• Click on the start menu tab and select customize
• Find the Run Command and select it
• Hit ok until you left every menu and are back in Windows
• The Run Box should be there immediately

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