Yesterday I posted a tip on how to access Vista’s On-Screen Keyboard. If you have the Business, Enterprise, Home Premium, or Ultimate versions of Vista, then you have another option to the On-Screen Keyboard that Vista offers. Called the Tablet PC Input Panel, this program is designed to allow tablet PC users to input information in a few ways, including writing words or characters by hand, or by tapping on an on-screen keyboard. You don’t have to be running a Tablet PC to use it, the functionality is now built into Vista (instead of being a separate version of Windows as XP Tablet PC Edition was). Keep reading →

Your keyboard has stopped working for some reason, and you need to do something before restarting that requires the keyboard. What do you do? Well, Vista has an on-screen keyboard that you can use by just clicking with your mouse (of course this assumes that your mouse is still working). I saw a related tip over at Tweakvista, but their solution was to make a shortcut ahead of time. Great if you’re the type that plans ahead for unlikely situations, but I was more interested in the “didn’t plan ahead, I’m screwed now” scenario. Keep reading →

When you work in IT, you’re usually not just just dealing with data files. I need to work with application files, system files, profile files, etc. every day. By default, Vista, like XP before it, hides many of those files. One of the first things I do when I setup a machine that I’ll be working on is ‘unhide’ all of the files (and the extensions on the filenames). Keep reading →

In Windows XP I always used Nero to burn CDs and DVDs. I can’t count the number of times a user asked for help with their CD they brought from home. They dragged the file to the disk, which added it to the index, but they never did the final Burn process to create the CD, so of course the files don’t end up on the disk. With Vista I figured I’d give it another try and see how the built in burning facilities work. Here’s an area that Vista hasn’t improved. It’s virtually identical to how it works in XP. Yes you can burn discs with this feature, but there are better alternatives. Keep reading →

Vista has a feature called The Forgotten Password Wizard. With it, you can create a special disk to reset your password if you forget it. For it to work, you need to act now, while you still know your password! Keep reading →

My first tip was how to change the behavior of the power button. The default is to Sleep, but I prefer to actually Shut Down. It’s only seven tips later, and I’ve already got a different way to do this, mostly because it’s a few steps quicker. Keep reading →

For those that are big fans of the command prompt, it often saves time to be able to open a command prompt from a folder you are currently browsing. There are a few ways to do this, and as Toby and Martin suggest at the 64 Bit World Forums, both are very easy. Keep reading →

Tip number 2, “Notice any Mud on Your Vista Desktop? Here’s How to Clean It” dealt with how your desktop looks. Since the desktop plays a big part in what you’ll be seeing right away, and every day on from there, here’s another desktop tip that I spotted at The UsefulTechnology Blog. Keep reading →

I‘m used to having my home computer automatically login when I start it since I’m the only user. In Windows XP I used TweakUI to set this, but how do I do it in Vista? A little searching turned up this tip from Spooky on the MSFN.org forums: Keep reading →

While the old ‘Prnt Scrn’ still works in Vista to capture the entire screen to the clipboard, you then need to paste that image into a program so you can grab the part you want, and save it to disk. Vista’s new Snipping Tool simplifies this task.
Keep reading →