The top ten Windows Vista irritations: solved! Part One

Digital Studio | Guides | 11/05/2009 16:02pm
2 Comments

1 UAC is always getting in my way

There’s nothing worse than having your progress slowed right down when the User Account Control security prompt pops up, but it happens a lot of the time. You can easily disable it, however, provided that you’re confident that you won’t accidentally uninstall something (you might want to reconsider if younger, less savvy members of your family have access to your computer).

To do this, open the Control Panel, click User Accounts and Family Safety > Turn User Account Control on or off. Then, in the window that opens, clear the Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer box and click OK.

2 The Start menu power icon doesn’t shut down Windows Vista

When you want to shut down your PC, you click on the Windows Vista Start button, then at the bottom of the menu you see three icons – a power symbol, a padlock and an arrow. Now, it looks as though the power button would shut down your PC, but it actually puts it to sleep instead. It’s quite easy to change what this button does, however, so you can make it shut down your computer if that’s what you would prefer. To do this, click the Start button and type cmd to open up a command prompt. Now type powercfg.cpl,1 to open up the advanced power settings. You’ll see an item called Power buttons and lid. Click the + symbol to expand it, then click the + symbol next to Start menu power button. It should say Sleep. Simply click on this and change it to Shut down instead.

3 My computer keeps waking when I’ve put it to sleep

Sleep mode in Windows Vista is a real boon when you want to save energy (and money) but don’t want to waste time shutting down and starting up your computer every time you stop using it. The majority of the time it works just fine, but occasionally your USB devices will wake it unnecessarily or – conversely – they won’t wake your computer when you want them to. If it’s the latter, type device manager in Start Search. Expand the tree for the device that won’t wake up your computer (such as a mouse or a keyboard), right-click it and choose Properties. Under Power Management, ensure Allow this device to wake the computer is ticked. If your computer immediately wakes up after going into sleep, unplug all devices connected to your PC, then plug them back in one at a time until you find the one responsible. Try plugging the offending device into a different port, and if this doesn’t work, open the Device Manager again and clear the Allow this device to wake the computer box.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION USB devices can wake your PC when you don’t want them to, so sort it out!

4 My PC makes annoying clicking sounds

You may not have even noticed this – it depends on whether you have any speakers installed on your PC – but when you click a link in Internet Explorer or make a selection in Windows Explorer, it makes a clicking sound. If you’re listening to music and your speakers are turned up quite high, this can eventually become quite irritating. To fix the problem, right-click the speaker icon in the right-hand corner of the Taskbar and select Sounds. In the window that appears next, scroll down the list until you get to Start Navigation and click it. In the drop-down Sounds menu just below, select None from the list to get rid of the clicking sounds.

5 My preferred folder view keeps getting changed

1 REVERTING SETTINGS One thing that really annoys us in Windows Vista is when you go into a folder, make the size of the icons bigger – such as thumbnails – and when you come back to the folder at a later date, all the icons have reverted back to their standard small size.

2 REMEMBER SETTINGS It’s easy enough to fix this so it doesn’t happen again. Launch the Control Panel and click Appearance and Personalization > Folder Options > View, then scroll down and check the Remember each folder’s view settings option. Windows Explorer won’t even try to save your folder settings until this is checked.

3 FIX CORRUPT SETTINGS Sometimes, however, folder settings get corrupted. Click the Start button and type regedit, then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\Shell. Click Bags and select Edit > Delete > Yes. Delete the BagMRU key as well, then restart.

4 FUTURE-PROOF THEM To avoid problems in the future, increase your folder view cache by navigating to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Shell, then double-click BagMRU Size, select Decimal, and set it to 10000. This uses more RAM, but should prevent future memory loss.

Part Two

You might also like

Ten annoying Windows Vista problems: SOLVED

The secret of the 30 second start

19 essential get-started tips for Windows Vista

Get more stories like this delivered straight to your inbox

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.