The top ten Windows Vista irritations: solved! Part Two

Digital Studio | Guides, Windows Vista | 11/05/2009 16:02pm
One Comment

6 I can’t tell what’s happening when I do a disk defrag

The Disk Defragmenter tool keeps your hard drive running at its best, which in turn makes your PC run faster, but it’s been simplified since the days of Windows XP. Before, you knew roughly how long you had to wait until it had finished, but now you simply have to wait because there’s no way of telling.

One solution to this annoyance is to use a third-party application, such as Power Defragmenter (downloadable from tinyurl.com/pz2d7). Once you’ve unzipped the file, double-click the Power Defragmenter icon to run the program. You’re given four options; choose Defragment Disk. Select the disk you want to defragment and press Defragment. Not only will you be able to tell when your defragmentation operation will finish, but it will be a little bit faster, too.

DYNAMIC DEFRAG Keep track of a disk defragmentation’s progress with a third-party application

7 I’ve accidentally deleted desktop icons and I want them back

We’ve all done it before – you know, when you’re having a little tidy up and you decide to give your desktop a bit of a spring clean. It seems like a good idea at the time, but a couple of weeks later you regret it because every time you want to empty the Recycle Bin or look through your files, you have to find the relevant link buried somewhere else. Life was so much easier when they were easily accessible, so how do you get them back to your desktop? It’s easier than you think – right-click anywhere on the desktop and select Personalize. In the window that opens, click the Change desktop icons link in the left-hand area under Tasks. If you want a system icon back on your desktop for good, just click the check box next to the icon you want to restore and then select OK.

ICON HUNT When you’ve deleted desktop icons, it’s easy to get them back

8 I don’t know why my PC keeps crashing

The most common type of crash your PC will suffer is when an application shuts down unexpectedly and you get a message from the application or Windows Vista telling you that this has happened. System crashes or BSODs (Blue Screens of Death) are rare, but still happen and are almost always caused by bad drivers or failing hardware. For either type of crash it’s best to start by enabling and examining the reporting tools and then using the information you find to get to the solution.

This can be seen in the Reliability and Performance Monitor as Application, Windows or Miscellaneous failures, marked with a cross. If you’re seeing regular crashes, go to Problem Reports and Solutions and select See problems to check > Check for new solutions to report the issue. Some of the issues are diagnosed here and a solution recommended. In these cases, following the instructions will end your crashes.

If you need to do more digging, look at the problem history and see if the crashes have anything in common. Failing hardware often causes random and disparate failures, so if the problems are consistent, it’s more likely to be caused by software. Go to the Problem Reports and Solutions section and look at Problem History. Here you can see each crash, which you can examine by double-clicking. By looking at the signatures, you should be able to see if the problems are consistent. If not, try doing a memory and disk scan.

9 Windows Update keeps interrupting me

Whenever Windows Vista installs updates, it asks you to restart your PC once it’s done. This is fine in normal circumstances, but when you’re hard at work and don’t want to restart, it’s an annoying interruption, especially when it keeps popping up every five minutes to askyou again. You can postpone it for anywhere from 10 minutes up to four hours, but if you want to get rid of it altogether, you need to be a little more creative. Click the Start button and type cmd into Start search – but don’t press Enter as usual; hold down Ctrl + Shift, and then press Enter. Now type net stop “windows update”. This will disable the restart while you’re on your PC.

10 Logging in takes ages

Whenever your PC starts up, you have to type your password on the log-in screen so you can get into Windows Vista. This is fine if you share your PC with other people and you want to stop them from accessing your files, but if you’re the only person using it, then you don’t really need it. To get rid of this and speed up the log-in process dramatically, click the Start button and type control userpasswords2. Then, simply remove the tick against Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer and click OK. You’ll now have to enter your current password, confirm it and click OK. Now, whenever you start your PC, the log-in screen will be bypassed.

Part One

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Guides, Windows Vista. 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.