Work It!

Power users will surely want to avail themselves of these advanced Vista tricks

1. Get ready for Bitlocker

If you use Windows Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, you can protect your system drive’s contents from being viewed by laptop thieves or after-hours hackers with BitLocker, which encrypts the system drive. To use BitLocker on your system, you must configure the drive properly. You’ll need to have two partitions: a 1.5GB partition used to start the system, while the remainder of the hard disk will comprise a second partition and be encrypted using BitLocker. Both partitions must be formatted with the NTFS file system.

In order to enable BitLocker, you’ll need to perform a clean install of Vista on your system. First, boot your machine from the Windows Vista DVD and run the Recovery Environment. Open the command prompt, start Diskpart, and perform the following commands (Warning! This will format your hard drive!): select disk 0 (selects first hard disk); clean (deletes partition table); create partition primary size=1500; assign letter=S; active (creates 1.5GB partition s: and sets it to be bootable); create partition primary; assign letter=C (uses remainder of disk for c:); list volume (displays disk information); exit (closes Diskpart); format c: /y /q /fs:NTFS; format s: /y /q /fs:NTFS (formats partitions created with Diskpart); exit (closes command prompt). When you install Vista, install it to the c: drive.

Before you run the BitLocker setup program, you need to determine if your system includes a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip; if it does, enable it in your system BIOS. On TPM-equipped systems, BitLocker uses a PIN number stored on the motherboard (or on a USB key) to decrypt your drive, so you won’t be able to decrypt your data using another machine. You can also use BitLocker without a TPM chip (a USB flash drive is used for credentials), but you’ll have to tweak some settings in the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc). Open Computer Components, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, BitLocker Drive Encryption, Control Panel Setup and then click Enable Advanced Startup Options. Select the option to allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM. To complete the preparation process, click Apply and then OK to close the Group Policy Object Editor. Once you’ve done that, you can run the BitLocker setup program in the Control Panel.

2. Get around in Vista

Windows Vista enables you to go almost anywhere in your system right from the Start menu without the Start menu taking over your screen. The right side of the Start menu provides shortcuts to the current user’s folder hierarchy, as well as direct links to the user’s document, picture, music, and game folders. Each link opens a customized Windows Explorer view. For example, click Games, and the Games Explorer displays installed games, including ESRB ratings and package art. Click Music, and the Music Explorer provides buttons for playing and burning music.
You can find any type of file by clicking Search and entering text that matches the file name, extension, or file contents. Click Computer to view all your connected drives and get access to system properties, drive mapping, and other tools. Click Network to view network connections and shared resources. Click Connect To to connect to a network—dialup, wired, or wireless.
Fast search even found its way into the Start menu. To find and launch a program quickly, type its name into the search tool above the Start button and press Enter.
On the right side of the screen, the new Windows Sidebar displays a customizable list of utilities (“gadgets”), perfect for making use of the extra space available in a widescreen display. However, you can also hide the Sidebar or adjust the transparency level of the gadgets to make them less noticeable (click a transparent gadget to see it in normal mode). The Power button on the Start menu actually puts your system into sleep mode, but you can change that functionality by going to Power Options, clicking Change Plan Settings, and selecting “Change advanced power settings.” Then expand the Power buttons and lid section and change the Start Menu power-button action.