Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies

by Leonhard, Woody

• ISBN13: 9780470053683
• ISBN10: 0470053682
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-02
• Publisher: For Dummies

Summary

Speed up your PC, search smarter, and secure your data * Customizing Vista for the way you work * Launching your most-used programs and finding files fast * Making the most of the new interface and search functions * Taking advantage of Internet Explorer? and Firefox? * Installing and securing a wireless network * Protecting your PC with Vista's improved security features

Author Biography

Woody Leonhard is a well-known Windows and Office guru and author of the bestselling Windows Vista All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
About This Book	p. 1
Foolish Assumptions	p. 2
What's in This Book	p. 2
Making Windows Work Faster	p. 3
Convincing Windows to Work Your Way	p. 3
Packing Programs and Files	p. 3
Making the Most of the Internet	p. 3
Cranking Up Your Audio	p. 3
Having Fun and Saving Time with Visual Media	p. 3
Networking at the Speed of Light	p. 3
Fast Security Techniques	p. 3
Keeping Your PC Alive	p. 4
Fast (Nearly Painless) Disaster Recovery	p. 4
The Scary (Or Fun!) Stuff	p. 4
Conventions Used in This Book	p. 4
Icons Used in This Book	p. 4
Where to Go from Here	p. 5
Making Windows Work Faster	p. 7
Experiencing the Windows Experience Index	p. 9
Problems with Performance Benchmarks	p. 10
Analyzing Benchmarks	p. 10
Calculating the WEI	p. 11
Maxing out the WEI	p. 12
Breaking down components	p. 12
Assembling a base score	p. 14
Analyzing the WEI	p. 14
Digging Deeper	p. 16
The Most Important Benchmark Score	p. 18
Tracking Performance and Reliability	p. 19
Watching for Redliners	p. 19
Trolling the Task Manager	p. 20
Bringing up the CPU Meter	p. 21
Starting with the Task Manager	p. 21
Interpreting the CPU monitors	p. 22
Monitoring Resources	p. 23
Monitoring Performance Your Way	p. 25
Reading the Reliability Report	p. 26
Generating a System Health Report	p. 27
Slogging through the Event Log	p. 28
Keeping Programs from Starting Automatically	p. 30
Recognizing That You Have a Problem	p. 30
Finding and Eliminating Auto-Starting Programs	p. 31
Understanding where auto-starting programs hook into your computer	p. 32
Detecting and deleting auto-starters	p. 33
Getting the Junk out of Internet Explorer and Firefox	p. 36
Escaping the endless add-on cycle	p. 36
Removing rogue toolbars in Internet Explorer	p. 38
Removing rogue toolbars in Firefox	p. 38
Preventing New Auto-Starters	p. 39
Getting Your Drives Up to Speed	p. 40
Cleaning and Defragging Your Hard Drive	p. 40
Understanding fragmentation	p. 40
Cleaning unnecessary files	p. 41
Running a manual defrag	p. 43
Defragmenting - the advanced course	p. 43
Expanding Paging Volumes	p. 45
Changing Partitions on the Fly	p. 46
What about Drive Accelerators?	p. 47
Making the Screen Run Faster	p. 49
Understanding Aero Glass	p. 49
Running Aero	p. 49
Superimposing Glass	p. 52
Tweaking the Display for Speed	p. 53
Reclaiming Automatically Zapped Visual Elements	p. 54
Scheduling a Nightly Reboot	p. 55
Hibernating with a Hot Key	p. 55
Using Other Shutdown Switches	p. 57
Restarting Overnight	p. 57
Convincing Windows to Work Your Way	p. 61
Streamlining the Start Menu	p. 63
Navigating the Start Menu	p. 64
Pinning and Unpinning	p. 64
Unpinning your Web browser and e-mail program from the Start menu	p. 64
Pinning what you like to the Start menu	p. 65
Reining In the All Programs Submenu	p. 67
Where All Programs comes from	p. 67
Rearranging the All Programs submenu	p. 69
Cascading to Save Time	p. 72
Introducing the options	p. 72
Choosing the options you want	p. 73
Building a Power Desktop	p. 76
Desktop Brevity: The Soul of Wit	p. 77
Adding key icons	p. 77
Cleaning up old icons	p. 78
Aligning icons	p. 80
Moving icons so you have more room on the desktop	p. 81
Getting the most from the Sidebar	p. 82
Generating One-Click E-Mail	p. 82
Setting up the e-mail	p. 82
Improving one-click e-mail	p. 83
Opening Multiple Documents at Once	p. 85
Arranging Multiple Windows Side by Side	p. 88
Shooting a Picture of Your Desktop	p. 88
Tricking Out the Taskbar	p. 90
Customizing the Taskbar	p. 90
Making the taskbar taller	p. 90
Changing taskbar settings in one fell swoop	p. 91
Grouping Windows	p. 93
Blitzing the Address Bar	p. 95
Navigating from the Taskbar	p. 97
Using Built-In Keyboard Shortcuts	p. 98
Shortcuts Everybody Needs	p. 99
Important Windows Key Combinations	p. 100
A Grab Bag of Application Shortcuts	p. 101
Odds 'n' (Sometimes Useful) Ends	p. 102
Making Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts	p. 103
Putting Custom Hot Keys to Work for You	p. 103
Knowing What You Can't Do with Hot Keys	p. 104
Creating and Organizing Hot Keys	p. 104
Starting a program with a hot key	p. 105
Opening a folder with a hot key	p. 106
Surfing to a Web site with a hot key	p. 107
Sending e-mail with a hot key	p. 108
Opening a file with a hot key	p. 111
Running presentations with a hot key	p. 112
Undoing hot keys	p. 113
Using ActiveWords for Expanded Hot Keys	p. 114
Packing Programs and Files	p. 115
Launching Your Most-Used Programs Quickly	p. 117
Using the Quick Launch Toolbar	p. 117
Making the Quick Launch Toolbar Appear	p. 118
Adding Programs to the Quick Launch Toolbar	p. 118
Making Room for More Programs on the Quick Launch Toolbar	p. 118
Changing Quick Launch Screen Tips	p. 119
Opening Documents Quickly	p. 121
Opening Web Pages Quickly	p. 121
Adding a Blank E-Mail Message to the Quick Launch Toolbar	p. 121
Making Programs Run Your Way	p. 123
Running a Program When Windows Starts	p. 123
Allowing Other Users to Run Your Programs	p. 125
Bringing Back Word's Last Document	p. 126
Removing and Reinstalling Programs	p. 129
Removing Programs Thoroughly	p. 129
Cleaning Up before a Reinstall	p. 131
Adding Windows Components	p. 132
Removing Windows Patches	p. 133
Using Non-Microsoft Replacements	p. 134
Exploring Effectively	p. 136
Making Windows Show Filename Extensions	p. 136
Customizing Explorer for Speed	p. 138
Seeing all your files and folders	p. 138
Seeing pathnames in Explorer	p. 139
Choosing the Right View	p. 140
Working with Details view	p. 141
Sorting files by group	p. 143
Setting Folders' Behaviors	p. 143
Copying Files Quickly	p. 145
Changing Filename Associations	p. 146
Renaming Files En Masse	p. 147
Finding the Files You Want Fast	p. 149
The Cardinal Rule of Searching	p. 150
Building an Index	p. 150
Setting index file type options	p. 151
Adding locations to the index	p. 152
Rebuilding or moving the index	p. 154
Engaging Your Brain Before the Search	p. 156
Searching from the Start	p. 156
Searching Simply	p. 158
Modifying a simple search	p. 159
Searching with OR and AND	p. 160
Changing Simple Search parameters	p. 161
Searching Advanced	p. 163
Saving and Reusing Searches	p. 165
Finding Files That Got Lost	p. 166
First, don't panic	p. 167
Second, get determined	p. 167
Listing Files Quickly	p. 169
Showing Directory Listings	p. 170
Writing a program to show directory listings	p. 170
Adding the program to the right-click menu	p. 172
Embellishing the File Listings	p. 173
Listing files by filename extension	p. 173
Printing a file list automatically	p. 175
Making the Most of the Internet	p. 177
Customizing Internet Explorer and Firefox	p. 179
Using IE and Firefox Together	p. 179
Hardening Internet Explorer	p. 180
Tweaking Firefox	p. 184
Getting used to tabs	p. 184
Put the Close button on the active tab	p. 185
Squeeze more tabs on the screen	p. 186
Speeding Up Your Browser	p. 186
Choosing a fast home page	p. 187
Showing placeholder pictures	p. 188
Bumping up the cache	p. 189
Speeding Up Yourself	p. 191
Feeding on RSS	p. 192
Using important shortcuts	p. 195
Unhijacking the Back button	p. 196
Creating custom shortcuts from the Address bar	p. 197
Keeping Your Browser Under Control	p. 197
Removing "saved" passwords and usernames	p. 197
Checking for add-ons and parasites	p. 199
Choosing Antiphishing Technology	p. 199
The Internet Explorer approach	p. 200
The Firefox approach(es)	p. 201
Comparing the two	p. 202
Saving Time with Google	p. 203
Using Google Effectively	p. 203
Saving time with search terms	p. 204
Using Advanced Search	p. 206
Posting on the Newsgroups	p. 206
Finding Images, News, and More	p. 208
Refining Browser Choices	p. 208
Downloading from the Newsgroups	p. 211
Understanding Newsgroups	p. 211
Working with newsgroup limitations	p. 212
Spreading messages around	p. 212
Legally speaking	p. 213
Using Newsgroups	p. 213
Breaking up and posting files	p. 214
Assembling files	p. 215
Connecting to a news server	p. 215
Setting up a good news reader	p. 216
Instant Messaging with Microsoft and Trillian	p. 221
Saving or Shooting the Messenger?	p. 221
Choosing a Messenger	p. 222
Using Windows Live Messenger	p. 223
Messaging in a Microsoft World	p. 223
Installing WLM	p. 224
Getting the skinny on user IDs	p. 225
Setting up your Messenger account	p. 226
Adding contacts	p. 229
Making contact	p. 231
Using the fancier features	p. 232
Using Trillian	p. 232
Weighing Trillian against the competition	p. 233
Installing Trillian	p. 233
Using Trillian	p. 233
Using Windows Live Mail Desktop - Or Not	p. 237
Counting Microsoft's E-Mail Programs	p. 237
Choosing an E-Mail Program	p. 238
Starting Windows Live Mail Desktop	p. 239
Mauling Windows Mail	p. 242
Arranging Your Windows Mail desktop	p. 242
Making Windows Mail wait to send and receive	p. 243
Dealing with read receipts	p. 244
Using signatures the smart way	p. 244
Dealing with e-mail attachment security	p. 245
Zapping Junk Mail	p. 247
Understanding Spam	p. 247
Phishing Phor Phun and Prophit	p. 250
Avoiding Spammeisters and Phishers	p. 251
Lurking in Web Beacons	p. 251
Crawling and Trawling	p. 253
Unsubscribing - Not!	p. 253
Fighting Back	p. 253
Taking spam action	p. 254
Biting the phishers	p. 254
Don't add to the problem	p. 255
Surfing Anonymously	p. 256
Understanding Anonymous Surfing	p. 257
Using Anonymous Sites and Toolbars	p. 258
Hooking into Anonymous Proxy Servers	p. 259
Routing the Onion Way	p. 261
Cranking Up Your Audio	p. 265
Fighting for Your Musical Rights	p. 267
What's Going On Here?	p. 267
What You Need to Know about CRAP	p. 268
Comparing Music Formats	p. 268
Making Your Own MP3s	p. 269
Sorting through the Stores	p. 270
Using Windows Media Player	p. 272
Getting the Right Media Player	p. 272
Running WMP for the First Time	p. 273
Making Media Player Improvements	p. 276
Running WMP	p. 278
Controlling WMP from the Keyboard	p. 279
Working with Codecs	p. 279
No-Nonsense Music Gathering	p. 282
Adding Music to the Media Library	p. 282
Ripping CDs You Own	p. 284
Ripping ethics	p. 284
Choosing a file format and sampling rate	p. 285
Ripping from A to Z	p. 286
Looking for Music in All the Right Places	p. 288
Creating Your Own Music CDs and DVDs	p. 289
Choosing the Type of CD/DVD to Burn	p. 290
Picking Songs and Burning the CD	p. 291
Picking Up Podcasts	p. 294
Understanding Podcasts	p. 294
Finding Worthwhile Podcasts	p. 295
Rolling Your Own Podcast Quickly	p. 297
Transferring Music to iPods and MP3 Players	p. 299
Choosing an MP3 Player	p. 299
Copying Files to an MP3 Player	p. 301
Getting Music Off Your iPod	p. 304
Disabling the iPod's Automatic Sync Feature	p. 304
Copying iPod Music to Your PC	p. 306
Restoring Missing Information	p. 307
Having Fun and Saving Time with Visual Media	p. 311
Organizing the Photo Gallery	p. 313
Coping with Photo Gallery Limitations	p. 313
Futzing with the Photo Gallery	p. 314
Scanning into the Gallery	p. 316
Touching Up Photos Quickly	p. 318
Changing Pics	p. 318
Bringing Back the Old Version	p. 321
Managing Pictures from a Digital Camera	p. 324
Transferring Pictures to Your PC Automatically	p. 325
Using a Camera's Memory Card as a Storage Device on Your PC	p. 329
Editing Your Home Movies	p. 331
Understanding the Limitations of WMM	p. 331
Importing and Combining Clips	p. 332
Trimming Clips	p. 334
Using Transitions and Effects	p. 334
Adding Titles and Credits	p. 336
Saving the Movie	p. 337
Doing More with Your Pics and Videos	p. 339
Putting Your Pic on the Desktop	p. 340
Using Your Pictures and Videos for a Screen Saver Slide Show	p. 341
Burning Pictures on a CD	p. 342
Burning a Slide Show on a CD	p. 343
Recovering Deleted Pictures from Your Camera	p. 345
Decreasing Picture Download Times	p. 347
Understanding digital pic file sizes	p. 347
Changing the resolution of pictures	p. 348
Posting Pics on Flickr and MySpace	p. 351
Sharing with Flickr	p. 351
Gabbing in MySpace	p. 355
Going for the Yahoo! Groups	p. 356
Networking at the Speed of Light	p. 357
Installing a Small Network	p. 359
Putting the Pieces Together	p. 360
Choosing the right hardware	p. 360
Pulling cable through your office or house	p. 361
Locating the hardware	p. 361
Preparing for Vista Networking	p. 362
Cranking Up Vista Networking	p. 362
Checking the Pieces	p. 365
Understanding Addresses	p. 366
IP addresses on the Internet	p. 366
IP addresses on your local network	p. 367
Assigning local IP addresses	p. 367
Securing Your Wireless Network	p. 370
Running the Wireless Router Setup Wizard	p. 371
Propagating Changes	p. 374
Adding and Configuring a New User	p. 376
Grasping User Accounts	p. 376
Recognizing account types	p. 377
Working with account types	p. 378
Increasing security with passwords	p. 379
Using simple, common-sense protection	p. 379
Creating a New Account	p. 380
Modifying an Account	p. 381
Hobbling the Guest Account	p. 382
Sharing Drives and Folders	p. 384
Sharing the Vista Way	p. 384
Opening Up the Network	p. 385
Sharing Folders	p. 386
Meeting with Meeting Space	p. 389
Setting Up Meeting Space	p. 390
Holding a Meeting	p. 391
Collaborating	p. 392
Controlling Your PC from Afar with LogMeIn	p. 394
Installing LogMeIn	p. 395
Starting, Stopping, and Disabling LogMeIn	p. 396
Using LogMeIn	p. 396
Fast Security Techniques	p. 399
Updating Vista Cautiously	p. 401
Reining In Windows Update	p. 402
Downloading the Big Updates	p. 405
Checking for Small Updates	p. 406
Retrieving and Installing a Declined Update	p. 406
Protecting Your PC from Viruses	p. 408
Understanding Viruses - and Hoaxes	p. 409
Dissecting a Virus	p. 410
Discerning Whether Your PC Is Infected	p. 413
Dealing with Your Infected PC	p. 414
Protecting Yourself - Quickly	p. 416
Installing AVG Anti-Virus Free	p. 417
Plugging and Unplugging Windows Firewall	p. 419
Understanding Firewalls	p. 420
Coping with Windows Firewall	p. 421
Checking out the inbound firewall	p. 422
Watching a program poke through the firewall	p. 423
Making your own firewall exceptions	p. 425
Closing the Inbound Firewall Fast	p. 426
Getting at the Outbound Firewall	p. 427
Zapping Scumware	p. 429
What Is Scum?	p. 430
Knowing When You've Been Slimed	p. 430
Using Windows Defender	p. 430
Understanding the problems with Defender	p. 431
Removing scum with Defender	p. 431
Running the other parts of Defender	p. 433
Checking Your Security Perimeter	p. 435
Approaching Your Security Perimeter	p. 435
Running Steve Gibson's ShieldsUp!	p. 436
Running Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer	p. 437
Keeping Your PC Alive	p. 439
Running Disk Chores While You Sleep	p. 441
Fragging Fragmentation	p. 442
Running a Disk Cleanup	p. 442
Scheduling Disk Cleanup	p. 445
Checking Up on Scheduler	p. 447
Adjusting the Timing of Defrags	p. 447
Running Periodic Maintenance	p. 449
Making Your Maintenance Shopping List	p. 449
Weekly Cleaning	p. 450
Vacuuming strategies	p. 450
Dusting tips	p. 450
Cleaning screens	p. 451
Ungunking the mouse	p. 451
Checking the floppy drive	p. 452
Monthly Cleaning	p. 452
Fixing Components As Needed	p. 453
Cleaning CDs and DVDs	p. 453
Recovering from spilled coffee or soda	p. 453
Pulling out a stuck disk	p. 454
Pulling out a stuck CD	p. 455
Requesting Remote Assistance	p. 456
Using Remote Assistance Wisely - Quickly	p. 457
Coping with Remote Assistance Limitations	p. 457
Requesting Remote Assistance	p. 458
Sending a Remote Assistance SOS Using IM	p. 458
Fine-Tuning Remote Assistance	p. 460
Getting Help Fast	p. 462
Exploring the Help and Support Center	p. 463
Using Help Effectively	p. 465
Saving and Retrieving Help Articles - Quickly	p. 466
Using Other Help Sources	p. 467
Fast (Nearly Painless) Disaster Recovery	p. 469
Making Backups - Fast	p. 471
Using Different Types of Backup	p. 472
Understanding Vista File Backup	p. 473
Running a Quick File Backup	p. 473
Restoring Backed Up Files and Folders	p. 475
Using ZipBackup	p. 477
Restoring Your System after Calamitous Change	p. 478
Understanding System Restore's Limitations	p. 479
Turning on System Restore Everywhere	p. 479
Creating a Restore Point	p. 481
Deleting Restore Points	p. 482
Restoring to a Restore Point - Quickly	p. 483
If Windows isn't running and won't start	p. 483
If Windows runs	p. 483
Recovering a Lost Password	p. 486
Creating a Password Reset Disk	p. 487
Using Your Password Reset Disk	p. 488
Getting Around Your Own Password	p. 489
The Scary (Or Fun!) Stuff	p. 491
Changing the Registry without Getting Burned	p. 493
Don't Mess with This?	p. 493
Understanding the Registry	p. 494
Backing Up Data the Registry Way	p. 496
Making Changes Safely	p. 497
Running My Favorite Quick Registry Tweaks	p. 497
Making Screen Shots with the Snipping Tool	p. 502
Using Fast Keyboard Shortcuts	p. 503
Cranking Up the Snipping Tool	p. 504
Making Paint Behave Itself	p. 506
Going Beyond the Basics	p. 507
Fast, Easy, and Safe Online Shopping	p. 509
Searching for Reliable E-Tailers	p. 509
Paying It Safe	p. 511
Choosing a payment method	p. 511
Getting what you pay for	p. 511
Using reputable Web sites	p. 512
Handling credit card fraud	p. 513
Keeping private information private	p. 515
Complaining Effectively	p. 515
Mastering eBay	p. 515
Create Your Own Desktop Theme	p. 517
What's in a Theme?	p. 517
Creating a Theme	p. 518
Distributing Your Theme	p. 520
Saving Time (And Your Eyes) On-Screen	p. 522
Applying Basic, Vision-Saving Tactics	p. 522
Understanding How Characters Appear On-Screen	p. 523
Adjusting Resolution Settings	p. 524
High-Resolution Tricks	p. 526
Fine-Tuning ClearType	p. 527
Top Ten Tiny Timesaving Tweaks	p. 529
Bring Back Menus	p. 529
Show Filename Extensions/Hidden Files	p. 530
Adjust Power Settings	p. 531
Use Trillian	p. 532
Bring on the Eye Candy	p. 532
Get AI Roboform	p. 533
Run Webroot Spy Sweeper	p. 533
Dump Your AV Program	p. 533
Get More Gadgets	p. 534
Use Firefox	p. 534
Top Ten Tiny Timesaving Tips	p. 535
Watch Autostarting Programs	p. 535
Get a USB Drive for Backup	p. 536
Learn How to Run	p. 536
Change Icon Sizes Quickly	p. 536
Use Quick Launch Quickly	p. 537
Check Your Experience Index	p. 537
Plug into the Grid	p. 537
Turn Off Automatic Updates	p. 538
Don't Buy Crap Music	p. 538
Get a Faster Internet Connection	p. 538
Index	p. 541
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