PCTips Box

Tired of the old Windows Vista default Boot Screen? Well then, there is a simple alternative solution involving nothing more than your copy of the operating system. And just a tad of tweaking, but nothing extensive, and certainly nothing that would cause Vista to become instable or unusable. The fact of the matter is that you will only have to make use of one of the system maintenance tools that ships by default with the platform. And of course that the first tool coming to mind is the System Configuration Utility, or msconfig.

In order to access the System Configuration Utility all you have to do is enter “msconfig” in the Search Box under the Start Menu. (more…)

Windows Vista includes an extremely useful utility called Mobility Center, designed for laptop users to give you lightning quick access to all functions that a mobile user would need.

Open Mobility Center

Use the hotkey Win+X to quickly launch mobility center. You could also find it in the Start menu. (more…)

By default Windows Vista will automatically defrag your hard drive (defrag: reorder files on the physical hard disk and not to make them easily accessible / re-organising your file cabinets).

The default is that Vista itself schedules the best time for this to do, while this could decrease real-time performance it might be better if you choose when to defrag yourself. An easy way to disable this scheduled defragmentation is as follows. (more…)

The default Windows XP visuals look pretty but they do nothing for system speed; in fact some of them can slow your PC down quite noticeably. Not all of the fancy fripperies are bad, though, and you can still keep the XP look and feel without sacrificing too much performance. Here’s how, go to Start > Control Panel > System, select the Advanced tab then click the Settings button under Performance. For the best compromise between speed and appearance uncheck everything except: (more…)

By default, Windows Vista is the OS you will boot up in if you decide not to push anything at the boot-selection screen. However, this setting is changeable for those who would much rather have their earlier version of Windows become the default OS. You might be wondering why someone would want to do that? For instance, my brother is a very hardcore gamer but unfortunately, there is no driver support for my video card on Vista. Because he uses this computer more often than I do, the default OS on this particular PC is set to XP.

Now, let’s modify the default OS to start at bootup. First, go to Start Menu, right click on my computer, and choose properties. (more…)

The indexing service in Windows Vista is responsible for making those search boxes all over the operating system lightening fast. By default Windows automatically indexes all files in your user profile folders, start menu and any files you have setup for offline access. If you have a lot of files in these locations and the files change often you can be putting a heavy load on the indexing service. For maximum performance when using Windows Vista I recommend disabling indexing for all other locations other than the Start Menu. This will lessen the background work that Windows Vista has to do. It will also slow down your searches of other locations but that is the price you must pay for this performance benefit. (more…)

After you have run Windows XP for a while, you may receive this message when you log on: “Your password will expire in 14 days…..”. By default, Windows XP is set up with passwords which will expire after 42 days. And 14 days in advance, Windows will start warning you of this fact.

1. Go to Start > Run > type control userpasswords2
2. Select the Advanced tab in the User Accounts window.
3. Press the Advanced button below the Advanced user management header.
4. Select Users in the Local Users and Groups.
5. In the right pane, right-click the user name for which you want to change the setting, and select Properties.
6. On the General tab, check Password never expires.
7. Click Apply and OK (all the way out).