Web Talk

As you know, or you should by now, when you open Windows Explorer in Windows Vista, you can get different previews of folders and files located in your operating system. As a matter of fact you can have the following views: extra large icons, large icons, medium icons, small icons, list, details, titles. Starting from medium icons and up Vista also gives you  the chance to preview the content by showing you a  preview thumbnail in the folder’s icon using the stuff contained inside it. If you want to change this preview thumbnail to show something more representative, here is a simple trick to follow.

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search Bar type: Windows Explorer and hit Enter.
3. Right click on the folder you want to change the preview thumbnail of.
4. Click Propierties.
5. Click on the Customise tab.
6. Under Folder Picture click on Choose File.
7. Now choose the picture or the files  you want to be shown as preview thumbnail and click Open.
8. Done! You should be able to see the picture or the file in the preview thumbnail of the folder’s icon.

Users coming from old Windows versions know what I am talking about pretty well. As a matter of fact the Classic Menu Bar is available (and it is one of the main features) in all of the Microsoft operating systems. It is recognizable because it contains a lot of drop-down menus labeled: File, Edit, View, Tools etc. In Windows Vista, if you want, you can use (or you can disable) the Classic menu by clicking: Organize — Layout — Menu Bar. Anyway this menu might originate a little issue. As a matter of fact, if  users try to disable or hide it, they could face the fact that it just refuses to obey and  will continue to stay in the Windows Vista theme. To solve this issue follow these tricks here.

A possible cause because the Classic menu refuses to disappear is that the user turned the classic folders visualization on to get the classic style. To ensure that Classic Menu is not enabled follow this procedure:

1. Click Organize.
2. Click on Folder and Search Options.
3. In the general tab, under Folder Options check the Show previews and filters radio button.

If the above trick didn’t work for you, try to apply this little hack.

1. Close all of the windows in the computer desktop.
2. Once the desktop is clean, press Start.
3. In the Search bar type regedit and hit Enter.
4. Locate the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\ Toolbar\ ShellBrowser
5. Delete the following subkey: ITBar7Layout
6. Turn off and on your computer.
7. Now open Windows Explorer and you should see that the Classic menu has disappear. If it is still there unselect the Menu Bar on Layout and turn on the showing of previews and filters.

If you are a hard gamer and you like playing on your Windows Vista with games which change your screen resolution when they are launched, you should know only too well that, once you close your games and the screen goes back to its original resolution, all of your desktop icons are switched and relocated in different sections of the desktop. At this point the only way out you have got to put them back to their original positions, is to drag them one by one. Let’s learn how to save and restore your desktop icons’position with this simple hack.

1. Download this file for Vista 32-bit or Vista 64-bit.
2. Open the zipped file and extract all of its content in  C:\Windows\System32 directory
3. Double click on the Layout.reg file. This file will modify your Windows registry.
4. Now, click Start.
5. Right click on Computer.
6. In the Computer menu, you should be able to see 2 new options: “Save Desktop Icon Layout” and “Restore Desktop Icon Layout”.
7. Arrange the icons on the desktop the way you like and save their position by clicking on “Save Desktop Icon Layout”.
8. Done! Next time your icons will be all messed-up just click on “Restore Desktop Icon Layout” and they will go back to their original position.
9. To uninstall the registry hack delete the layout.dll file. After that  download this zipped file, open it, double click on the registry file, turn off and on your computer and you are done.

There are a lot of ways to personalize your Windows Vista. In fact, you can create a custom control panel, you can get a nice personalized desktop, you can tweak the operating system in many ways, or have a nice boot-screen and start-up. Now, with this article you will also be able to personalize the clock in the system tray, by writing whatever you want. Something unique to let everybody using your computer know that you know your way when it comes to tweaking and hacking your machine.

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search bar, type regional and hit Enter.
3. In the Format tab, click the Customize this format button.
4. Select the Time tab and, in the AM symbol and PM symbol option, add whatever you want (e.g. your name).
5. Click OK.
6. Keep in mind that by using this trick, you will change more than the displayed clock. As a matter of fact, from now on, whenever you add the time on your documents, you will see the custom writing you added next to the AM/PM symbol.

A few weeks ago I spoke about how to have a neat system tray without all of its icons. The solution I wrote was to permanently disable the system tray itself by using a little hack. But what if you need some icons because, for example, you have to keep an eye on some applications or you want to access certain programs’ options quickly? The solution here is to select the icons to hide from those to keep. Here is a step-by-step trick to follow.

1. Right-click on a empty space on the System Tray.
2. Click Properties.
3. Under Icons check the box Hide inactive icons.
4. Now click the Customize button.
5. A list of all the active icons in the system tray should appear.
6. On the right side of each icon you should see the behaviour you want for that particular icon. Click on it and a dropdown list with different options will appear.
7. At this point you can choose to: Hide when inactive, Hide, Show.
8. Select Hide to permanently hide the icon you wish to remove from the system tray.

By default, Windows Vista uses large icons in the Start Menu. They are very nice and all, but they look un-professional and bulky, without grace! If you want to use small icons in order to show more of them and, at the same time, have a neater Start Menu, here is a little trick to follow.

• Right-click on the Start Menu.
• Click Properties.
• In the Start Menu tab, click on Customize… button.
• Scroll the list of option down, to the bottom and uncheck the box Use Large Icons.

I have already spoken about how to reset a user password in Windows Vista. The procedure is quite simple and it is embedded into the operating system itself. In fact, as you might guess, it is quite common to forget  a sequence of numbers and words in an world where everything is managed and regulated by  passwords or  keys to remember. Read how to reset a user password here. But what happen when you forget your administrator password? A simple but not very “satisfying” way is to reinstall your whole operating system. Anyway, formatting everything is not the ideal solution since you erase all of your data. Offline NT password is a very simple tool that avoids a lot of pain and lets you reset the administrator password of any user that has a valid (local) account on Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista. Here is a list of its most important features:

• You dont need the old password to set the new one.
• It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD or another system.
• Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts.
• There is also a registry editor and other registry utilities that works under linux/unix, and can be used for other things than password editing.

If you want to know more or you want to download it, click here. Edit: Keep in mind that resetting an Administrator’s password may result in data loss.

If you don’t have any issue related to Windows Vista SP1, then you may consider to make the SP1 installation permanent. But what are the benefits of doing this? By default, Vista SP1 has got a lot of files which are needed in case you want to uninstall it. If you decide to make SP1 permanent you are going to gain a lot of free space by deleting the aforementioned files. Here is the trick.

1. To make SP1 permanent you need a small file called vsp1cln.exe (Vista SP1 Cleaner). You don’t need to download such a tool anywhere since it is already installed in your system. As a matter of fact it is located in Windows/System32 folder.
2. Let’s get vsp1cln.exe (Vista SP1 Cleaner):
3. Click Start.
4. Type CMD in the Search Bar and hit Enter.
5. In the Command Prompt type: vsp1cln.exe
6. At this point the system should ask you the following question: Would you like to continue (Y/N)?
7. Hit Y as Yes and wait for clean-up