PCTips Box

Microsoft has increased both the power and complexity of its popular Windows operating system with the release of Windows Vista. The TweakVista™ tweaking utility helps you configure Windows Vista to meet your personal needs by improving performance and customizing system settings.

Unlike other power tools for Windows, TweakVista™ automatically prompts enhancement recommendations, offering easy “one click” updates to otherwise complex configuration changes. TweakVista™ is also safe to use. By utilizing Microsoft’s system-restore technology any changes you make can easily be rolled back. You can freely experiment with different settings without disabling your computer. (more…)

Windows Vista is a rather heavy operating system with many neat features, but unfortunately they all come at a price. Right out of the box it requires a pretty hefty system to run (arguably). Before you run out and buy a new computer just so you can run your base operating system, check out these 10 Simple Ways To Speedup Windows Vista tips to lighten the load. This is just the first in the series, so many of them may be very apparent to those experienced in tweaking. If you’re still using Windows XP, then check out 10 Simple Ways To Speedup Windows XP.

This article details the following 10 tips: (more…)

Bulletproofing Internet Explorer 7 on the desktop is a process that can be customized in accordance with specific deployment scenarios. The level of personalization comes inherent with the flexibility of the security settings available in the browser. Although IE7 delivers by default a secure configuration, there is always space for tweaking security in order to either relax or increase restrictions. Always bear in mind that an equilibrium is necessary between limitations and usability. Microsoft is even offering a whitepaper designed to guide users in building an enhanced IE secure environment for the desktop.

“As more and more enterprises adopt Internet Explorer 7, we’ve been getting more questions about deploying and securing IE7 on the desktop. (more…)

Now that we all know the hidden pages in Firefox, it’s time to go a bit deeper into tweaking your browser for optimal use. All of the operations will be made in the about:config page, so save your important stuff, open up a new tab, write about:config in the address bar and be prepared. I have gathered four tricks that will improve your Firefox experience, and here they are.

1. Fetch only pages that you click
Firefox mostly resembles to Google from this point of view. It has a built-in feature (enabled by default) that will pre-download the pages behind the links it thinks you MIGHT click. (more…)

We all know how annoying UAC can get, especially when you’ve just installed Windows Vista and you have a dozen of programs and security apps ready to install. A small program called TweakUAC gets rid of this annoyance by putting UAC into “quiet mode.” What it actually does is without turning off UAC,

it doesn’t display any prompts for administrators when attempting to do an administrative task. However, (more…)

Many visitors ask me how I find new tweaks that I post on this site. One of the main tools I use is a free utility from Microsoft called Process Monitor. Process Monitor helps you by monitoring both registry and file activity generated by any process. You can see what files a process is opening and what registry keys it is reading values from. Using filters, you can even isolate registry and file writes. This can be very helpful when trying to identify a specific registry key to tweak and experiment with. (more…)

Many people online are wondering if Microsoft will be releasing a TweakUI for Windows Vista or not. While we cant answer that particular question, we can help get TweakUI running on Windows Vista - and suggest a decent, Vista-specific alternative along the way.

TweakUI is a popular system configuration utility made by Microsoft since late Windows 95, and it provides quick and easy access to configure certain features in Windows without resorting to reshacking, registry editing, or other more dangerous tactics. Its not the most brilliant piece of code ever created, but its a nifty tool to have. You can download it at these links for Windows XP/2k3 x64 and x86. (more…)

It can be used to prevent a beginner computer user from making changes to their computer by restricting them from accessing or even saving any changes to critical areas. UAP is also helpful against Spyware and other malicious software because it will require the user to consent to the action, before any system changes are made.

UAP is a good feature but sometimes it is necessary to tweak it a little so that it is less annoying for more experienced users. For example, an advanced user may be overwhelmed by the number of pop up authorization they receive. By tweaking the settings they can reduce the number of those they see as well as completely disable UAP. Although I do not recommend you completely disable UAP, you can fine tune it to be easier to get along with.
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Those guys at ExtremeTech continue to pump out some really good stuff lately, today’s link, is an article where they tested if Windows Vista would run his current crop of games. All he did was he installed Windows Vista, installed all the latest updates and drivers, and he changed the resolution and the background image, no special tweaking was applied, and luckily, video card vendors have been updating their Vista drivers recently, so this will be better than it would have been a few weeks ago.

Windows has been the best OS for gamers for years, and Vista takes that to the next level. That’s all well and good for games made with Vista in mind, but what about your existing game library? Last May, when Vista was at the Beta 2 milestone, I wrote a feature in which I installed around 15 games on the unfinished OS, describing how well each one worked. Now that Vista is “done” (inasmuch as any OS is ever actually finished), it’s time to do it again. This time, I’m going to use the final Vista release, a DX10 video card (not that it really matters with no DX10 games), and all the drivers available upon Vista’s launch. I’ll also take a look at a lot more games, around 25.
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PCWorld did some testing and the end of the year, comparing Windows XP and Windows Vista running on the same machines, from an older Pentium 1.8Ghz notebook to a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 and Radeon X1600 graphics card. As always Microsoft has said Vista will run faster, but they have always said that in the past, and everytime, you usually had to have better hardware to run the same speed. Things to note, at the time of the testing, graphics card manufacturers were still testing and tweaking their drivers, so expect some improvement there, and they used an updated version of Photoshop for Windows Vista, so, it wasn’t exactly the same.
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