Grupenet

I’ve been using Windows Vista since it was first released and have enjoyed using it much more than XP. Almost all the applications I use daily work on Vista without many problems. But there’s one exception, and it’s iTunes. Even after the many updates Apple has released since February, nothing has seemed to fix the constant problems I have with iTunes. The best way to describe the problems I am having is with pictures.

This is what I am greeted with every time I launch iTunes. I have to resize the window to get the interface to show up correctly.

Then after I have been listening to music for around half an hour and I go back to the iTunes window to change the song the interface goes completely whack and is sometimes even unresponsive to me clicking the close button.

Now I know it’s a bad idea to even be using Vista. But I got the Vista Business Edition for free from a campaign Microsoft ran. I’m getting really fed up with the crappy Vista support in iTunes and hope my experience is better on my Macbook once I purchase it.

So Apple, when are you going to fix iTunes for Vista? It’s been out for half a year already. It takes that long to fix a few bugs?

The first time I booted into Vista I was very disappointed by the boot screen. Luckily there’s a quick and easy way to enable a much more visually appealing boot screen in Vista called “Aurora” that is not enabled by default. Here’s what the Aurora boot screen looks like and a quick how-to on enabling it.

Firstly, open your start menu, type msconfig into the search box, and press enter. In the window that pops up, go to the “Boot” tab. Check the box next to No GUI boot and Make all boot settings permanent. If you do not check “Make all boot settings permanent”, Windows Defender will bother you each and every time you boot into Windows.

You’re done! Just restart your computer and you should see a much better-looking boot screen.

Ever notice those little arrow overlays over every shortcut in Windows? Do they bother you as much they they bother me? Glad we’re on the same track. Thankfully I recently discovered a great little application which will get rid of those little arrows. The program I’m talking about is called FxVisor.

After you’ve downloaded and installed FxVisor, launch it and you will immediately be given the choice of removing any arrow overlay from shortcuts or replacing the overlay with a different style which isn’t as much of an eye sore.

If you have removed the arrow overlay, FxVisor will also allow you to re-enable the default overlay. All in all, FxVisor is a great little application which will be of much help to any users who use desktop shortcuts to launch their applications, though I still recommend using differents methods for application launching.

Update
Apparently this will only work on Windows Vista. For those of you using Windows XP, the TweakXP Tweaking Utility will allow you to remove the arrow overlays, supposedly.

Windows Vista has a really cool disk caching feature called ReadyBoost which, when enabled, can use almost any USB 2.0 flash memory to cache system tasks. Unfortunately, ReadyBoost will only use USB sticks it considers fast enough. The upside of this is that ReadyBoost can easily be tricked into thinking your slower USB stick is in fact lightning fast.

If you haven’t already, plug in your USB stick. Open your Start menu and click “Computer”. From here you should be able to see your USB stick.

Next right-click on your USB stick and select “Properties”. Go to the “ReadyBoost” tab and make sure “Stop testing this device” is checked. If there is no checkbox, your USB stick already works with ReadyBoost and you shouldn’t even be reading this tutorial. Click “OK” and unplug your USB stick.

Now comes the fun part where you have to dig around in the Windows registry. Open your Start menu, type regedit in the search field, and press enter. After accepting the UAC dialog, the Registry Editor should open up.

Using the left folder pane, navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > EMDMgmt. In the left pane you should now see a list of USB devices that Vista has tested. Find the one for the USB stick you’re using and click on it. A list of values concerning your USB stick will be displayed.

Double-click the DeviceStatus entry, change the value to 2, and click OK. Use the same method for the entries ReadSpeedKBs and WriteSpeedKBs, but change their values to 1000. Go ahead and close the Registry Editor. Phew! You’ve made it through the toughest part!

Pop in your USB stick, go to the Start menu, and click Computer. Open up the Properties for your USB stick once again and click the ReadyBoost tab. Select “Use this device” and adjust the amount of reserved space for ReadyBoost to whatever you want. Click OK to save the changes.

That’s it! You’re done! Now Windows Vista will use your USB stick to run system tasks in the background.

The Windows Sidebar is a greatly welcomed feature of Windows Vista. But how do you stick all your gadgets (more commonly known as widgets) on your desktop and do away with that sidebar? Apple’s Mac OS X operating system also has a widget application named Dashboard and will only display widgets on the desktop. If you’re a Mac addict but stuck using Vista at work, this trick may help you feel more at home with the Windows Sidebar.

First you’ll need to drag all the gadgets off of the sidebar and onto your desktop. You can do this by hovering your cursor over a gadget and using the dotted area to the right of the gadget to drag it.

Once you have all your gadgets on your desktop, right click the plus (+) at the top of your sidebar and select “Close Sidebar”. That’s all there is to it. To unhide the sidebar, just right-click the Windows Sidebar icon in your system tray and select “Open”.