AdventuresInVista
Hints, Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Windows Vista

Free Vista Ultimate Helpful Hints PDF from Microsoft
17 July 2008 in Help & Tips & vista ultimate | Comments (0)

Microsoft recently released a Windows Vista Ultimate Helpful Hints PDF, free of charge! According to the cover, it’s…

Your guide to mastering the Windows Vista Ultimate operating system

Personally, it feels more akin to the sort of flimsy manual you might have got with Windows 95, giving you vague information on lots of things you’ll probably end up not using.

Still, worth a read if you’re new to Vista Ultimate. You can download it free of charge here.

Sidebar Sunday - Downloading Sidebar Gadgets
13 July 2008 in Help & Tips & Sidebar Sunday | Comments (0)

In response to some email conversations regarding the Windows Vista Sidebar and it’s possible uses, I’ve decided to launch a new regular feature here on AdventuresInVista called “Sidebar Sunday”.

The idea is simple - to give you a heads up on some of the latest and most useful gadgets for your Vista Sidebar, available across the web.

This week, I thought I’d give a brief introduction to downloading and installing Sidebar gadgets from the Windows Live Gallery.

Tuesday Tweak - Stop Vista pinching your bandwidth!
20 February 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (1)

By default, both Windows XP and Windows Vista like to reserve some of your internet bandwidth for themselves. The idea is that the operating system can carry on doing stuff in the background (downloading updates, etc), while you enjoy a fast, responsive, internet experience.

That’s all well and good, but by default it reserves a whopping 20 percent!!!

The good news is that you can control the amount reserved, and even set it to 0, by following these simple steps…

Tuesday Tweak - Faster boot-up on a dual-boot installation
29 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

Does your PC have a boot menu on startup? Perhaps because you’ve got Windows XP and Windows Vista installed side-by-side?

You can speed up your startup by shortening the length of time the boot menu appears, as follows…

Tuesday Tweak - Password Free Logon
22 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

If you’re the only user of your PC, having to enter your password each time you logon can be a bit of a pain. The good news is this can be fixed!

Tuesday Tweak - Adjust your font size!
15 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

I’ve decided to start a couple of regular slots here on AdventuresInVista to group together posts of a similar nature, and provide short sharp tips.

The first of these is the ‘Tuesday Tweaks’ series - every Tuesday I’ll post a little trick or tweak to improve your Vista experience.

This week, I’m going to show you how to increase the fonts size in Windows Vista - great if you find some of text hard to read.

How To Guage Defragmentation Time in Vista
19 July 2007 in Help & Tips & Maintenance | Comments (1)

So yesterday I needed to unistall some software from one of my machines. SQL Server wouldn’t work with Visual Studio so I decided to uninstall everything, scandisk, defrag and reinstall.

A simple job, 3 hours tops. Or at least that was the theory…

Turns out the new version of Defragmenter doesn’t tell you anything useful. It doesn’t even give you a percentage bar or anything. So it’s just sitting there, making a noise…

Internet Explorer 7 Keyboard Shortcuts
6 July 2007 in Help & Tips & Internet Explorer 7 | Comments (0)

Continuing the series on the vast collection of keyboard shortcuts in Windows Vista, I thought I’d take a look today at the shortcuts available in Internet Explorer 7.

IE7 is of course available to users of other versions of Windows, and these keyboard shortcuts will work whichever version of Windows you are using.

Windows Vista Keyboard Shortcuts
4 July 2007 in Help & Tips | Comments (1)

There are many keyboard shortcuts available in Windows Vista. A keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press to perform a certain action within the operating system or a running program.

Many users (especially trained typists) find keyboard shortcuts easier than using the mouse because they are used to not having to move their hands very far on the keyboard. For the same reason, geeks are also very familiar with keyboard shortcuts!

Below is a list of the many keyboard shortcuts available in Windows Vista. I’ll cover shortcuts in Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Mail and Internet Explorer 7 in seperate posts – they have as nearly as many each!

Are you getting a “mapfile1: access is denied” error?
24 April 2007 in Compatibility & Help & Tips | Comments (0)

The chances are the answer to the above question is “Yes!” if you have…

• An ATI Graphics card
• You’ve recently upgraded to Windows Vista

It normally occurs when trying to run Internet Explorer or Windows Mail, and is caused by the software/drivers for ATI graphics cards.

To fix this problem, you should try and locate new drivers for your graphics card (visit the ATI website, or try DriverGuide.com).

If you can’t find a Windows Vista driver for your specific card, you can download a generic ATI driver here. Remember to unistall the old driver before installing a generic driver, using Add/Remove Programs.

You can of course also try Windows Update.