This post talks about some tips from Mark Russinovich, a Microsoft ‘?bergeek’. Keep reading →

A decent five minute video showing a number of Vista’s features. Wasn’t crazy about the background music, but the mute button quickly solved that issue.

A 248 page book in PDF form that has tips covering all aspects of Vista. A ton of material here! Keep reading →

The Notification Area is next to the clock in the Taskbar. It’s where you’ll generally find icons for different Vista tools, as well as additional software you may have installed. Some of the icons may not be useful to you, and there is a way to choose which are shown, while having others hidden. Some may not want any icons, and if this is the case, there is a way to simply disable that area. Keep reading →

Do you have a problem with certain websites loading verrrry sloooowly? Google around a bit and you’ll find you’re not the only one. Microsoft’s new network stack has had a number of different problems, most of them caused by the rest of the world not being completely up-to-date with the latest standards (backwards compatibility, who needs it!). This problem is no exception. Keep reading →

The typical non-technical computer user doesn’t want to see extra information about what the computer is doing as it will probably just confuse them. That’s why modern OS’s hide most of what’s going on underneath and just show pretty pictures and allow users to point and click on things. The more technical users, often called Geeks (I put myself in this category) like to type in commands, and see what is going on behind the scene. What better way to display your Geekness, and impress your friends with your technical prowess than to have your computers boot screen scrolling all kinds of technical information? Keep reading →

I‘ve always got the Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic CD lying around. Anytime a computer acts unpredictable, it’s a quick way to rule out RAM from the equation. If you don’t have it, you can certainly download it, extract it, and burn it to a CD, but now you don’t have to. You’ve already got the latest Memory Diagnostic on a disk, ready to boot, and you probably didn’t even realize it. Keep reading →

When I shutdown my computer, I tend to walk away, so it really doesn’t matter how long it takes. If there is some reason that you hang around and wait for it to shutdown (perhaps waiting to close the lid on a laptop), then you may want the shutdown process to be a little faster. When Vista, like older versions of Windows, is told to shutdown, there is a set amount of time that it waits for things like services to properly shutdown. You can control how long it waits through a simple registry setting. Keep reading →

In my last tip, I showed you how to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk, which might be necessary if you upgraded from Windows XP Pro to Windows Vista Home Premium (or Basic). The huge drawback to the method I described was that it erases all of the data on the disk. I also mentioned that there is a hack that might allow you to get around this nasty side effect. Keep reading →

In my article “Dynamic Disc: Microsoft’s Bastard Child?” I noted how you might upgrade a computer from Windows XP to Vista, only to then find that you cannot access a dynamic disc. This is most likely due to your version of Vista not supporting dynamic disk, which would require upgrading, probably to Ultimate, to be able to read the disc. If you’re not prepared to do that, but still want to be able to use the disk, you can convert it back to a basic disk. The draw back is that you will loose all of your data, since the process is to first delete the volume, then recreate it from scratch. The next tip will include instructions on how to hack your dynamic disc back to a basic disk, which may save your data, but only if your dynamic disk doesn’t span multiple disks. Keep reading →