Create Screensaver Icon

Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

In order to launch the screensaver, you'll need to enter the full path to the screensaver file, followed by "/s"

%systemroot%\system32\Bubbles.scr /s

You would want to substitute the name of the screensaver where you see "Bubbles.scr" above. Also note that I used %systemroot% instead of C:\windows because not every install uses the C: drive.

If you don't know the filename, you can browse down to your system32 folder and then search for ".scr" using the search box:

You should see all of the names of all the screensavers installed on your system, which you can use in the location field.

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Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key (Create if it doesn't exist):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a new 32-bit DWORD value in the right hand pane with these values:

• Name: NoTrayItemsDisplay
• Value: 1

You will have to logoff and back on for this to take effect. To remove the hack, just delete the key, or change the value to 0.

Note that disabling the system tray doesn't actually prevent system tray apps from running, it just hides them. You should still disable any applications that aren't needed.

Update: Note that the same registry key may exist in more than one location, so if you are trying to reverse this hack, you should search the registry for NoTrayItemsDisplay.

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The default action for the Power button on the start menu in Windows Vista is Sleep, which isn't necessarily useful for everybody. You can configure this setting easily by using the advanced power settings panel, which is a little tricky to get to normally, but we'll take the shortcut.

Open a command prompt (type cmd into the start menu search bar), and then type in the following:

powercfg.cpl,1

You could also take the long route (Control Panel \ Power Options \ Change Plan Settings \ Change Advanced Power Settings)

Once you get to this dialog, browse down as shown to "Power buttons and lid"

From here, you can change the options:

• Power button action - Changes the hardware power button action
• Start menu power button - Changes the power button on the Start Menu

You can change the power button to either Sleep, Hibernate or Shut Down, or even nothing for the hardware power button.

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Windows Vista uses large icons by default in the start menu, and it hides the setting for small icons pretty well. No matter, we've located it.

Right click on the start button, and select Properties:

Then click the Customize button:

Now scroll down all the way to the bottom. You should see a checkbox for Use large icons, which you'll want to uncheck:

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Windows Vista lets you use hotkeys for the first 10 items in the Quick Launch menu. These hotkeys are assigned automatically, so there's no need to do anything other than understand how they work.

For each icon in the Quick launch bar, the hotkey Win + number is assigned. These are assigned from left to right, 1-9 (and 0 for 10).

For instance, in the following screenshot, you'll see that the first 4 icons are:

1. Show Desktop
2. Flip3D
3. Windows Media Player
4. Internet Explorer

That would mean the automatic hotkeys are assigned like this:

1. Win + 1 - Show Desktop:
2. Win + 2 - Flip3D:
3. Win + 3 - Windows Media Player
4. Win + 4 - Internet Explorer

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Windows Vista includes a screen capture/screenshot tool that is actually pretty decent. You can take region captures or full screenshots and easily save them using this tool.

Note: The snipping tool doesn't exist on every version of Vista. To turn it on, you'll have to go to "Turn Windows features on or off" in Control Panel, and check the box for the Tablet PC utilities.

The only problem with this tool is that there's no hotkey to bring up the window. But we'll fix that…

Bring up the Start Menu, and then click on All Programs. Click the Accessories folder, and you'll see the Snipping Tool.

Right click it and go to the Properties screen. You'll see a Shortcut key text box:

The only annoying thing with this trick is that you can't use the PrintScreen key… but no big deal. I assigned Ctrl + F12 because that's something easy to remember that I don't use for anything else.

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The main benefit to using this icon instead of a shortcut is that you can quickly get to the Internet Options page by right-clicking and choosing Properties.

You'll notice that you can also use "Start Without Add-ons", which is helpful for troubleshooting problems.

To add this icon back, we'll need to use a registry hack. You can either follow along and manually create the registry entries, or you can skip down further and just download the registry file.

Manual Registry Hack

Open regedit.exe using the Start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel

In the right-hand pane, add a new 32-bit DWORD value with the following name and value:

Key Name: {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}

Value: 0

You should be able to right-click on the desktop and choose Refresh, and the new icon should show up.

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Normally when you want to access the Disk Cleanup tool, you usually have to either find it through the start menu, or open up the drive properties window. Instead of going through all that, we can use a simple registry hack to add a menu item to the drive right-click menu.

If you are using Windows Vista, you'll be asked whether you want to clean up your files or all files…

And then disk cleanup will begin:

Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell

Create a new key called "diskcleanup" and set the default value to "Disk Cleanup". Then create another key underneath it called "command" and set the value to the following:

cleanmgr.exe /d %1

The change should be immediate, just right-click on the drive and you should see the new menu item.

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The Quick Launch menu is one of the most useful features in Windows, and Vista makes it even easier to add a program to the menu.

For those of you that are total newbies, the quick launch menu is the little icons by the start button:

You can either drag an application to the quick launch bar… or you can right click, and choose Add to Quick Launch:

If the option for "Add to Quick Launch" does not show up, you can hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on it to make the option show up. Note that you could also use Pin to Start Menu…

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To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.

Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we'll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.

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