Just a quick tip today. If you bought or received Windows Vista Home Basic you probably have noticed that you cannot activate the Aero interface and wondered why that is the case.  If you did not know, Windows Vista Home Basic does not ship with the Aero interface. That is at least what Microsoft wants you to believe.  There is however a way to activate the Aero interface in this operating system.

To do that you need to edit two registry keys and restart your computer afterwards. You find both keys in the registry under Hkey_Current_User \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ DWM \ Change the values of the entry Composition to 1 and the value of CompositionPolicy to 0 and restart your computer afterwards.

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Did you notice that Windows Vista drains notebook batteries pretty fast on some notebooks ? I was able to identify two causes for this behavior. The first is the Aero Glass Interface which somehow seems to drain batteries faster while the second are the Wireless Power Saving Settings.

If you disable the Aero interface batteries last much longer. My advise would be to disable the Aero interface when the notebook is not connected to a power source. To do this right-click on your desktop and select Personalize from the menu. Choose Windows Color and Appearance and click on Open Classic Appearance Properties for more color options. Select a different theme from the list (non Aero) and click on Apply.

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You normally do not run into troubles when you only install or run Windows Vista on a computer. If you run a multi-boot system however you might face some serious problems depending on the order of installation that you choose. I for one had a problem on my triple boot system that was running Windows XP. I decided to install Ubuntu and afterwards Windows Vista.

There was not a problem with only Ubuntu installed. I was able to load Windows XP and Ubuntu. Once I installed Windows Vista the bootloader was not able to load Windows XP anymore. After looking around for a way to fix this I found the free software Vista Boot Pro which is able to manipulate the entries in the bootloader of Windows Vista. (There is no such thing as a simple boot.ini file that you can edit like in Windows XP).

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In case that you want to change your Windows Vista key you do not have to reinstall Windows Vista but can use the command prompt to change it internally. You will have to activate the new key of course which can also be done by using the command prompt. To change your Windows Vista key do the following:

• Open the command prompt as an Administrator. You can do this by searching for command prompt and right-clicking the shortcut and selecting run as administrator from the menu
• Type “slmgr.vbs -ipk” followed by the new product key
• Type “slmgr.vbs -ato” to activate the new key

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Windows Vista might report less RAM than you have installed on your computer. This can happen if you run a 32-bit version of Windows Vista and have 4 Gigabytes of RAM installed on it. The incorrect amount of RAM is shown in the System Properties and System Information. Many users do not know why this is reported incorrectly and demand an explanation for this behavior.

The maximum amount of RAM that can be handled by a 32-bit system is 4 Gigabytes. Memory may be relocated to make room for addresses that the basic input/output system (BIOS) reserves for hardware. A 32-bit version of Windows Vista is able to address 4 Gigabytes of RAM if the so called Physical Address Extension (PAE) is supported by the CPU.

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If you want to optimize your computer and disable services that you either do not need or think are a security risk you are in for some hours of pain. The information that Microsoft provides in the services menu aren’t that useful to decide on the fate of some services. I was able to turn off many services from my experience with Windows XP which I used before. Most services are similar to Windows XP which made it easy for me.

But what if you never took a look at the services before, how would you know which services are relevant and important and should not be disabled ? One site that can help you is the SpeedyVista website which contains a list of all services that could be runnning in Windows Vista with recommendations on how to set them. It also displays the default settings for all versions of Windows Vista in case that you want to revert the changes back to the default values.

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Many applications in Windows Vista need to be run in Administrator Mode to work correctly. Especially older softwares require this and it soon becomes a burden to always go the extra mile so to speak to run the application as an administrator. The How To Geek found a workaround for this. All shortcuts in Windows Vista  have apparently a function to always run them in administrator mode.

To enable this do the following: Right-click a shortcut and select properties from the menu. Click on the Advanced button and open the Advanced Properties from there. You will find a checkbox “Run as Administrator”. If you do check this box the application will from now on be run in administrator mode without the need to do this manually. You should not confuse this with the user account control  which probably will ask if this application should be run if it is activated.

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I do remember Black Vipers Internet site from the time when I first installed Windows XP on one of my computers. His site was my number 1 resource to find information about all services of Windows XP and it helped me tremendously to disable unneeded services. The same guy did publish his “Black Viper’s Top 9 tweaks for a faster (and less annoying) Vista PC” about a month ago which is a very good read if you are new to Windows Vista and want to make the most out of it.

He addresses all the common problems starting with the User Account Control which he suggests to disable, goes on with information about System Restore and Indexing, the Windows Vista Sidebar, Remote Assistance and Remote Dekstop, Vista Aero, Updated Drivers, Lighten the System tray, Adding and removing unneeded programs to Services. If you do follow his tips to make Windows Vista faster you should very soon see some changes in speed and hard drive space.

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Tweak Vi is another Windows Vista Tweaking Tool that is available in three different versions. The so called basic version is free for everyone and has a reduced functionality compared to the premium and ultimate version. Tweak Vi is using plugins to tweak Windows Vista. The basic version offers 13 free plugins while the premium version offers 8 additional plugins and the ultimate version another 7 additional plugins compared to the premium version.

You can access many tweaks even in the basic version which makes the download worthwhile. Tweaks are divided into several different categories such as System Tweaks, Internet Tweaks and Visual Tweaks. Accessing those categories displays the available plugins and the ones that are not available. If you click on Visual Tweaks for instance you have access to three of the five plugins listed in that category.

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Instead of searching dozens of websites to find updated or working drivers for your Microsoft Windows Vista operating system you could as easily visit the Radarsync website which has a large database of Windows Vista drivers which can be directly downloaded from that website. This is a very convenient way to download drivers without having to search for them by yourself.

The site has drivers from many big manufacturers such as Logitech, Ati, Nvidia, Intel, Via and Dell. There is of course no guarantee that the drivers that you are looking for is available in the database but I think there is a very good chance that it is. All drivers seem up to date after cross checking some of them. I personally think that this is a great way to download drivers for Windows Vista without the hassle to search the Internet for them.

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