It’s quite easy to select an image that can be associated with your user account and also be displayed on the start menu and welcome screen.
How to choose an image for your user account and welcome screen
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel
- Click User Accounts and Family Safety
- From the User Accounts category click Change your account picture
- Select the picture you want to display and then click Change Picture or click the Browse for more pictures… link and then browse to an image that you want to use.
- Click the image and then click Open.
Your chosen image will now show up on the welcome screen, start menu and other screens that display your account name.
Following on from the tutorial How To Add Desktop Icons on Windows Vista I will now show you how to change the background.
How to change the desktop background
- Right click on the Desktop and select Personalize
- Click Desktop Background
- Choose a desktop background from the list or click Browse to select your own
- Click OK
Whenever I’ve finished installing a fresh copy Windows, whether it’s on Windows XP or Vista I always disable Remote Assistance. This is primarily for security purposes and to disable a service that will never get used.
How To Disable Remote Assistance on Windows Vista
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel
- Click System and Maintenance
- Click System
- On the left side of the Window under the Tasks category. Click Remote settings
- If prompted by the User Account Control. Click Continue
- De-select Allow remote connections from this computer
- Click OK
Following on from the tutorial How To Uninstall A Program I will now show you how to reclaim some disk space and hopefully gain some additional performance by turning select Windows Features Off.
How To Turn Windows Features Off
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel
- Click Programs
- Below the Programs and Feature category click Turn Windows features on or off
- If prompted by the User Account Control click Continue
- Clear the featured check box that you want to turn off
- Click OK
- Wait while Windows makes the necessary changes
- Windows will prompt you to restart your computer. Click Restart Now
You can also enable Windows Features by following the above steps and selecting a check box instead of clearing it.
After a fresh install of Windows Vista the desktop icons seem to be missing. How do I get them back?
Some people prefer to have an uncluttered desktop and others like their icons to be exactly where they should be. As an IT Administrator I’m with the latter.
Add Desktop Icons to Windows Vista
- Right Click on the Desktop and select Personalize
- On the left hand side of the window click Change desktop icons
- Select the Icons that you want to appear on the Desktop
- Click OK
The icons will now be on the desktop.
*Note: To align the icons. Right click the Desktop > View > Auto Arrange.
There may come a time when you need to uninstall software from your computer. This could be because the application is old and no longer needed or it’s taking up valuable disk space.
How To Uninstall Software On Windows Vista
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel
- Click Uninstall a program which is below the Programs category
- If you are in Classic View double click Programs and Features
- A list of installed software will appear
- Right Click the software that you want to Uninstall
- Select Uninstall from the drop down menu
- Click Yes
- If Prompted by the UAC click Allow
*Note: When the software has been removed you maybe asked to restart your computer. Click Yes.
If you run in to a problem after upgrading a hardware device driver then you may need to roll the device software back to a previous version.
How To Roll Back A Driver on Windows Vista
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Device Manager
- If Prompted by the UAC. Click Continue
- Double Click the category that contains the device driver
- Double Click the device that you want to roll back
- Click the Driver tab
- Click the Roll Back Driver button
*note: If no previous driver is available the Roll Back Driver button will be greyed out.
Following on from the tutorial how to disable system system restore I will now show you how to disable offline files.
Disabling Offline Files
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Control Panel > Network and Internet > Offline Files
- Click the Disable Offline Files button
- If prompted by the UAC, Click Continue
- You will then be prompted to restart your computer. Click Yes.
When your computer has restarted Offline Files will be disabled.
This will make searching slower but it will reduce disk thrashing whenever the index is being updated (at every boot).
How To Disable Search Indexing
- Click Start (Windows Orb)
- Click Computer
- Right click the hard drive and then click Properties
- Uncheck Index this drive for faster searching
- Click OK
- Select Apply changes to drive C:\, subfolders and files
- Click OK
If prompted by the UAC (User Account Control) click Continue or follow the steps on how to disable UAC.
In this tutorial I will show you how to boost hard drive performance on Microsoft Windows Vista.
Firstly you’ll need to go to Device Manger. Finding Device Manager on Microsoft Windows Vista is a little trickier than in earlier versions of Windows.
How to find Device Manager on Microsoft Windows Vista
- Click Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System
- On the left side pane click Device Manager
How to Enable Advanced Disk Performance on Microsoft Windows Vista
- In Device Manager, navigate down to Disk drives
- Double click Disk drives
- Right click the hard drive and then click Properties
- Click the Policies tab
- Select Enable advanced performance
- Click OK
Take note of the warnings before enabling this feature and as always back up your data first.
