Category: Vista Shortcuts

Michael Jackson Malware on the Rise

Paul

In the last 24 hours the spammers and scammers have begun to distribute spam with the guise to:

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  • Harvest Email Addresses —  This seems to used to ask users to respond to the email to get “top secret” information about how he died.  Security experts believe this is an attempt to verify email addresses for future spam attempts.   Although it isn’t wise to reply to people you don’t know about it at least has very little risk with your computer for the time being.

  • Fake Codecs and Hidden Trojans —  Seems this is the main thing they are doing right now to get personal computers on their networks.   So you should never visit a site you don’t know about without having an Anti-virus software and A firewall to better protect your system.

  • Extortion Ware — This one is very interesting, and According to Webroot.  You should avoid sites that you don’t know anything about.   With News of anything major you should keep with the trusted news sites.  This one looks to be the bad guy type.

These seem to be a common ploy with scammers and spammers who want to get money from you in one way or another.   I have been watching the Google searches and haven’t seen any malicious sites but I could of missed one here and there.

You should always have an [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] available to help protect your system from these types of attacks.   If you had some kind of protection to better protect your computer.  Remember no one can stop computer infections but you.

Tips and Tricks to Shut down Windows Vista!

Paul

Yes we will be talking about why Vista won’t shut down properly.  It is a common problem in all models.   It has been know to cause some issues with boot up.  In the past, Vista when you hit the shut down or you did the short cut Windows key>Right Three Times>Enter, it wouldn’t shut down instantly.  I’ve recently found out how to fix this problem and why it comes and goes.  Here are some great ways to get Vista to shut down properly

    • Boot into Safe Mode —  Yes booting into safe mode will fix the problem to a point.  Here is what you need to do at start up of computer.  Press F8 as soon as you see the screen flicker black and you will be given a choice.  Choose Safe Mode.  Once done booting into safe mode.  Log into you user name.  There you will want to check with Msconfig. Make sure you aren’t loading up anything that might stop shut down from happening.  Once done they do the shut down procedure.  By doing it in safe mode you have vista reset all procedures to shut down.  This sometimes resolves the issue.
    • Don’t Shut down Vista improperly — having seen this from time to time.  If you do a hard shutdown, which you drop power or remove the battery.  This has been know to cause a issue with shutting Vista down properly.  There seems to be a correlation with vista and hard shutdowns.  I do not know how or why, I just seen that with my current Vista machine.
    • Make sure you exit out of legacy programs before you shut down — legacy programs are programs that aren’t designed for vista but are designed for Windows XP, 2000, 3.1, 3.0.  I don’t recommend using programs that are designed for Windows NT and nothing else.  If it’s in the list when you buy a program.  NT and Vista are siblings, they both use the same kernel.  Microsoft has said that in the past and I believe it.  So it only comes with reason that NT programs can work with Vista.  I’ve not tried but I’d be willing to say it could be done.
    • Let it think about shutting down — I find if I tell it to shut down and walk away it will eventually shut down.  I think it has a long wait time before shutting down.  Some program has to time out before it can shut down, or it has to tell vista that it needs to unload a program from memory.
    • Try using the registry hack — I’ve not tried this one but some say they get Vista to shut down properly and quickly by cutting the wait time out protocol in the registry.  I’ve seen it done on some Windows XP, it will shut down almost instantly because it doesn’t wait for the program to say anything.  It forces the program to quit.  So it could very well help you with shutting down Vista if your in a hurry.  Also try this: Faster Shutdowns using the Run Dialog
    • Don’t put the computer in sleep mode — This is only good for those who have laptops.  It seems putting the system in sleep mode slows down Vista when you are ready to shut down.  It seems to have a conflict in the system and has been know to cause interference with other shutdown procedures, so I recommend if you are done with your system to either leave it on, or shut it down but not to put your system into hibernation.

If you follow these steps you will find that Vista stops having this shutdown issue.  I had the same problems as others but after doing these steps myself, I’ve found Vista to shutdown faster and quicker and not hang during shutdown.  If you have any other ideas feel free to email me or make a comment on how to get Vista to shutdown quicker. If you like what you’ve seen by all means click on one of my ads to show support to my site.

Turn Aero OFF at will!!

Paul

Turn Aero ON/OFF at Will

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A site talk about this really cool Regedit. To Do this you will need to do some things.   Check out the full article at  PC Heaven for the Reg Hack.  I did the hack and it worked.  I know have a way to turn off and on Aero when I’m on the road.  I don’t have to worry about battery life for my Vista laptop.  This should increase my battery life and extend my time on the system without slowing me down!!

Customize Vista Open/Save Shortcuts

Paul
Whenever you open or save a file in Windows Vista, you typically get the standard dialog box which has shortcut locations on the left side. You can easily customize these locations to add or remove locations to best suit your needs. Here is how:

  1. Open a dialog box (either a Save As or Open dialog will work).

  2. Right click on some white space in the locations on the left pane and select Open Favorite Links Folder. The folder: “C:\Users\Your Name\Links” should open.

  3. Add or remove shortcuts as needed.

  4. Your changes should take effect immediately.

Once you take a few minutes to configure your locations, this trick should save you quite a bit of time.

[Via PcMech]

Thought people would like this little tip that I found on PcMech and I wanted to let people know. What do you think?

Turn Vista into a Power Tool!!

Paul

I’ve been thinking of some other cool things you can do with Vista and here are some of them!!

As you see, this little program can make command line shortcuts. All you have to do is go to the start menu search bar and type in a shortcut command and it will run a nice little script. It is a real nice shortcuts.

Snipping Tool

If you need something to capture a portion of a screen in vista. You have a nice little capturing program. It’s call snipping tool, and it isn’t readily available. You can get to it by hitting the start Menu and typing “Snip” in the vista Search bar. It is really nice not to have to download a program for making screen shots.

Super Root Administrator

Now if you’re a Linux user your understand the value of this little secret. Vista has a Super Root Administrator available to use but deactivated and if you use this you must be understand this is for people who need to have an Admin Account that can do more than just an Administrator, so Here is how you do it. Type Cmd in the search bar, (star menu), and right click on cmd.exe and run as Admin, then you type this in prompt. “Net user administrator /active:yes” in the command prompt. Now after you activate, you will need to make it unprotected by selecting a password for this after wards. If you want to disable this account you do the same stuff first then this : “Net user administrator /active:no” on the Command line. That will turn it off. I hope this helps you out when you use Vista.