Windows Vista Tips

Well, I think Vista sucks. Many things are more difficult, obtuse, use more memory, and are slower.

Also, many settings are rearranged into different places... 

Re-enabling hibernation

Yes, for some reason, Microsoft thinks that your new computer, which needs twice the ram and twice the processor power can live in the "sleep" mode forever... or the "hybrid sleep" is good enough. Hibernation does a snapshot of your complete running environment, saves it to disk and shuts off completely, no battery drain.

But when you try to use it, or set you power settings to hibernate when the battery goes dangerously low, it's often not there!!

The easiest way is to run a command prompt (as administrator) and execute  powercfg /hibernate on  from the command line.

Creating a dos window with administrator privileges 

Right click on the desktop and "Create shortcut". When it asks you for the program, just put in "cmd", like every version of Windows NT (ahh, you did not know you were running Windows NT?)

After you have created the shortcut, right click on it, and select properties, and then advanced, and tick the check box "run as administrator".

Adding / customizing control panel tasks

There is a way to create/show some hidden control panels.

There is a list following of GID's (numbers in curly braces).

Go to an open spot on the desktop, create a new folder, and make the folder name the name you want, followed by a period, and the GID (including the curly braces)

 For Vista there are about 25 of these!

Administrative Tools
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All .NET Frameworks and COM Libraries
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All Tasks (Control Panel)
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AutoPlay
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BitLocker Drive Encryption (Ultimate edition only)
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Computer Folder
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Default Programs
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}

Ease of Access Center
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Font Settings
{93412589-74D4-4E4E-AD0E-E0CB621440FD}

Get Programs
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}

Manage Wireless Networks
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}

Network and Sharing Center
{8E908FC9-BECC-40f6-915B-F4CA0E70D03D}

Network Connections
{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}

Network Folder
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}

Parental Controls
{96AE8D84-A250-4520-95A5-A47A7E3C548B}

Performance Information and Tools
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}

Personalization
{ED834ED6-4B5A-4bfe-8F11-A626DCB6A921}

Power Options
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}

Programs and Features
{7b81be6a-ce2b-4676-a29e-eb907a5126c5}

Sync Center
{9C73F5E5-7AE7-4E32-A8E8-8D23B85255BF}

System
{BB06C0E4-D293-4f75-8A90-CB05B6477EEE}

User Accounts
{60632754-c523-4b62-b45c-4172da012619}

Windows Firewall
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}

Windows SideShow (Warning, caused my system to slow down briefly)
{E95A4861-D57A-4be1-AD0F-35267E261739}

Windows Update
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