Windows Vista (EN)

Make a Shortcut Icon to Create a System Restore Point in Windows Vista

One of the best features in Windows Vista is the updated System Restore feature, which saves people from certain destruction on a nearly daily basis, judging from the feedback on our forums. The only problem is that it takes far too many steps to manually create a new restore point. Can’t we just make a shortcut icon for it?
Naturally, we can. It’s as simple as a little vbscript that creates a restore point.
Create a System Restore Point Shortcut Icon
If you want to manually create the script, create a new file named something.vbs and paste in the following. Otherwise the downloadable scripts are provided at the bottom of the article.

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You’ll notice that there’s a shellexecute line with a “runas”, which will automatically re-launch the script as administrator in order to create the restore point.
Once you have the script file saved somewhere, you’ll likely want to create a shortcut that you can customize. Just right-click / drag the file to where you want the shortcut… and choose “Create Shortcuts Here” when prompted.





Now you’ll have a shortcut icon that can be used to create a restore point. Note that you could change the icon in the shortcut properties if you want, or even assign a hotkey.





The downloadable script contains two different scripts, the default one will prompt you to type in a description for the restore point (very helpful when restoring), but there’s also a CreateRestorePointSilent script that will simply create the restore point without the prompt.





If you want to verify that the restore point is created, you can open up System Restore through the start menu search or control panel, and then choose the option to “Choose a restore point”, at which point you should see the new item in the list:





Remember to create a restore point whenever you are making changes to your system that you aren’t confident about… like installing questionable software.


Download CreateRestorePoint Script for Manually Creating Restore Points

Make a Shortcut to Start Task Manager in Minimized Mode

This morning an email came in from the very friendly reader Gordy, who asked if it was possible to automatically start up Task Manager in minimized mode when booting the machine… so this article is for him, and hopefully it’ll help somebody else as well.
Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut.





In the location box, just type taskmgr and hit next. If you are using XP or this doesn’t work, you can also use the full path to task manager:

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Now that you have a shortcut, right-click and choose Properties.





Now change the drop-down menu under Run to say “Minimized” and then close the dialog.





If you want this shortcut to launch when you start up your computer, right-click on the Startup folder in your start menu and choose to Open, and then drag the shortcut into that folder. (Note that you could also just drag it into there)





Now when you use the shortcut, Task Manager will start up in minimized mode, and you can see the CPU usage meter in the system tray.





Hopefully this will help somebody else as well.

Make Aero Enabled Windows Run More Smoothly in Vista and Windows 7

One of the more annoying actions with the Windows Aero interface is how it opens and closes new windows. They show the contents when minimizing and maximizing which seems unnecessary and is just a sort of “wow” factor. Here we show you how to easily turn the features off and make the UI run snappier.
First type advanced system settings into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter.





The System Properties window opens and from here click on the Settings button under Performance.





In the Visual Effects tab select Custom and uncheck the box next to Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing and Show window contents while dragging then click Ok and close out of the System Properties window.





Now you’ll notice windows opening quicker and just an outline of a window while dragging it around on the screen.





Of course if you want to entirely disable Aero it will make the entire interface run more quickly, but isn’t as cool looking. Disabling these two features allows you to run through the interface smoothly while still enjoying the the nice look of Aero goodness. When I’m setting up or using a new Windows 7 or Vista machine, these are one of the first settings I disable.

Make Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent Order

If you have a lot of tabs open at a time, it’s sometimes quicker to have Ctrl+Tab switch to the most recent tab instead of the next one to the right. This is the default setting in the Tab Mix Plus extension for Firefox, so a lot of you are probably used to it.
To make Internet Explorer use this behavior, go to Tools \ Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab.





Check the box for “Use most recent order when switching tabs with Ctrl+Tab”. You’ll need to restart IE7 for this change to take effect.

Make Explorer Show Window Titles in Windows Vista

Nobody is really sure why Microsoft decided that explorer windows shouldn’t have a title anymore, but that’s the way things are. You can still look in the address bar to see what folder you are looking at, but there’s another option.
This option comes in the form of a small utility called AeroBar which does nothing else other than add titles to your Explorer windows based on the current folder.
You can see the utility in action here:





All you need to do is download and run the executable, and if you like the effect then add the utility to your startup group.
If you want to stop this application from running you will need to use Task Manager, find the Aerobar.exe process in the list, and then click on End Process.
Note: There’s no reason to install every single utility we write about, just install the ones that fix your pet peeves.


Download AeroBar.exe from psscript.net [direct download]

Make Firefox Look Like Internet Explorer 7(mostly) on Windows Vista

One of the complaints that I’ve heard quite often lately about Firefox is that the default Firefox theme in Vista just doesn’t feel like it belongs with the rest of the eye candy. After doing some browsing around today, I’ve figured out some repeatable steps to make Firefox look a lot like IE7.
On to the eye candy! =)
Here’s some screenshots of Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 running under Vista. The main difference between the two is that IE uses transparancy for the top toolbar and Firefox doesn’t.





In order to achieve this look, the first thing we’ll need to do is install a few addons to Firefox. The first add-on is the great theme called “myFirefox”… the author did a really great job. Then we’ll need to install the “Personal Menu” extension, which will allow us to hide the menu bar.


myFirefox

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Personal Menu

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Update.. Even better theme: Vista-Aero

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Once you have those both installed, and have restarted Firefox, we can move on. The first thing you’ll notice is that the menu bar has moved. It’s now in the same location that the menu bar on IE7 is when you hit the Alt key. You should note that the shortcut keys will still work normally (Ctrl+S, Ctrl+T,O, etc)
If you want to hide this menu using the Personal menu extension, then just right click somewhere on the top bar (the home button is a good choice).





You should see a new item in the menu called “Menus Toolbar”. This will let you hide the menu. It will also give you an informational dialog telling you the shortcut key (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S) should you want to show the menu again. You can change this key if you install the keyconfig extension.





In the right-click menu used above, you should also notice a new item called Menus \ Edit This Menu. If you select that, you will see this dialog, that will let you show the menus via the same right-click menu.





This will let you get to the menus if you really want to. (Or you could use the shortcut key)






Alternatively, you can add a “Personal Menu” button to your toolbar, and customize a couple of frequently used items on it. Just right-click \ Customize on the toolbar, and choose the shiny new “Menu” button shown on the left hand side of this screenshot, and drag it to your toolbar somewhere.





Now you can edit the menus on that button, and choose whatever items that you would like to have appear.






That was a fairly long explanation, hopefully it helped you out. I personally just use the shortcut key to show the menu, and don’t bother with all the other stuff.
Warning: Make sure that you do not have the “Menu” menu hidden if you want to disable the Personal Menu plugin. If you do, the only way to get the menu back will be to install a new extension (so that it will pop up the add-ons window again), re-enable the personal menu extension, re-enable the “Menu” menu, and then disable the extension

Make Microsoft Security Essentials Scan Faster by Excluding Certain File Types

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is the free anti-malware utility of choice here at How-To Geek because it is light on system resources and effective. Here we have a quick tip which will allow your MSE scans to execute more quickly by excluding certain file types.
Exclude File Types
Open MSE and click on the Settings Tab. Then on the left hand list select Excluded file types then add the file formats to exclude from the scan. Multimedia files are a good place to start with if you know yours are not infected with any goofy malware. For example, I have 12GB worth of drum loops that I used for home recording, it’s just a waste of time for MSE to scan those files every time. You can type in specific files and their extension or use the wildcard (*) character and the extension to exclude all files types. Shown in the following examples.

• • *.MP3
  • *.AVI
  • *.FLAC

Keep in mind that by using the wildcard, it applies to ALL of those file types. So, I would just stick with certain media file types that you know aren’t infected.






If you download media files from less than reputable sites, you may want to scan them to make sure they are malware free. To do that, just right-click the file and select Scan from the context menu.





Using these tips you’ll be able to save time during malware scans, and have more time for your TPS Reports.

Make MSE Create a Restore Point Before Cleaning Malware

Everyday Malware is continuing to evolve to be more deviant and cause damage your system. Before making any changes to your computer, it’s always a good idea to create a restore point in case the changes break another app or make Windows unstable. Let’s take a look at making Microsoft Security Essentials create Restore Point before removing any infections.
Open MSE and click on the Settings tab, then Advanced on the left side. Now place a check in the box next to Create a system restore point and click on Save Changes. Now a Restore Point will automatically be created before MSE cleans any infection it finds on your computer.





This is helpful in case MSE were to remove a false positive or a difficult virus needs removed in a specific sequence to not make your computer unstable.

Make New Folders in Your Vista User Directory Use Matching Greenish Icons

Have you ever noticed that new folders that you create inside of your Home directory in Vista just look out of place? All the built-in folders have those stylish greenish icons, and your folders are ugly and yellow.
Fixing this is a really simple process… all we need is to know where to find the nice looking icons.





Changing Folder Icon to Match
The beauty of this tip is that you don’t need to download anything at all. Just right-click on the folder, choose Properties:





Choose the Customize tab, and then click on the Change Icon button:






Now here’s the trick… instead of the default shell32.dll file, we’ll change that to use the icons in imageres.dll. You can paste in the full path if you’d like (or just find the imageres.dll file with the Browse button)

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Once you’ve changed the text in the box, use the Enter key to update the list, and then if you scroll all the way to the right you’ll find an empty green folder icon that matches perfectly.






And there we go… now we have nice matching folders:





Of course you could choose one of the other icons in the file if you want… it’s all up to you. You can even use the Restore Defaults button to switch it back to the ugly yellow folders.

Make the Mouse Pointer Stay Away from What You’re Typing

If your mouse pointer seems to constantly get in the way while you are typing, you aren’t alone… you click in the middle of some text and start typing to insert more, but the cursor stays in the way. There’s a tiny utility called MouseAway that will solve this problem for you… it’s not new, but it still works on Vista.
An animated picture would be better here, but you click in the middle of some text…





And then when you start typing, MouseAway moves the mouse a short distance away from the cursor:





Quite a useful little utility, and since it barely takes any resident memory it’s not too bad to keep it running all the time.
Short rant: With all of the zillions of small utilities to customize this and that, installing them all at the same time might be a little silly. We just try and find software that can help your particular pet peeves about Windows, so pick and choose wisely for the best experience.


Download MouseAway from geocities.com/mtetrode/