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20 Essential Tweaks and Tips Every Firefox User Should Know

Norman Chan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

Firefox may be your default browser, but that doesn’t mean you really use it to its full potential. Mozilla’s browser is a big threat to Microsoft not because it’s fast and full of unique features, but because it’s also extremely customizable. Add-ons, style scripts, and hidden preferences let you personalize your Firefox experience to meet your tastes and needs. Sure, you may know about hidden easter eggs like the about:robots page, but we’re going show you the 20 most essential tips, tricks, and tweaks to this super browser.

Undo Closed Tabs and Windows

This is actually a feature that has been around since before Firefox 3, but we’re often surprised by how many people don’t know about it. Firefox stores a record of every open and closed tab in all windows for each browsing session. So if you accidentally closed a tab, you can bring it back by pressing Ctrl + Shift + T. The restored tab retains its surfing history as well, and you can bring back old tabs even after you’ve opened several new ones since the initial close.

Speed Up Browsing

Firefox 3.5 is fast at loading pages, but its operational speed can get bogged down by overloading extensions. But you can add further optimizations to the browser by making a few tweaks behind the scenes. Load up the about:config page (by typing about:config in the location bar), and make the following changes:

Set network.http.max-connections to 96 – This sets the total number of HTTP connections Firefox can make to a web server. The default value is 30 (raised for the previous default of 24), but if you have ample bandwidth, increase the number speed up the loading of multiple-tab bookmarks.

Set network.http.max-connections-per-server to 32 – The default is 15, but you can raise it to increase the number of connections made to a single server. This is useful if you’re planning on browsing a site while downloading many files from it at the same time.

Set network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server to 8 – Raising this setting from 6 to 8 improve performance when working through multiple pages of a site. We don’t recommend setting this value to anything higher than 8.

Set network.http.pipelining to true – Pipelining is an application of the HTTP 1.1 protocol where multiple requests can be sent to a web server before any responses are received. Not all servers support it, but this will improve your browsing speed if you’re on a high-latency (slow) connection.

Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true – Same as the setting above, but only applies if you’re using a proxy connection.

Set network.http.pipelining.ssl to true – If you’re encountering problems with pipelining enabled, the root of the problem may be a broken proxy server sitting between you and the target server. SSL (secure) sites don’t have this problem, so this setting will let you turn on pipelining for those sites only, regardless of the other pipelining settings.

Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8 – With pipelining enabled, this preference specifies the maximum number of requests to make to a server at once. Raising the default value from 4 to 8 will speed up your requests to a server, but will cause a small delay if one of the requests fail.

Use Gmail as Your Default Mail Application

When Firefox 3 was first released, one of the new features was the option to associate html protocols with web applications, such as launching a webmail service when clicking a “mailto:” link. Unfortunately, at the time of launch, only Yahoo’s mail client was officially supported, and users had to either use extensions or manipulate some javascript code to enable Gmail as the primary mail handler. The current iteration of Firefox has included Gmail in the web app client list, and here’s how you turn it on.

Go to Tools-> Options, and select the Applications tab. This is a list of protocol and content associations, with their respective plug-ins for each type of content (ie. Mp4 video). In the search field, type “mailto”. Then, in the Actions drop down menu, select Gmail as your default client. That’s it! The next time you click on an email link, Firefox will open up Gmail in a new tab to send an email. Bonus tip: download and install the Better Gmail 2 add-on to add extra UI features if you’re planning on using Gmail as your primary mail client.

Disable the Awesome Bar

We think that the Awesome Bar lives up to its name – its auto-complete feature lets us get to our favorite websites even if we don’t remember the exact URL. But not everyone wants Firefox to auto-complete location bar text, especially if you visit sketchy or embarrassing sites that share common URL characters (ebay and piratebay, for example). You can disable the Awesome bar by turning off the XUL richlistbox widget that powers it.

First, open up the about:config page. Type browser.urlbar.matchBehavior in the Filter field, and right click the sole resulting entry. Click Modify, and change the value of the setting from 1 to 2. Now, whenever you start typing a URL in the location bar, you only get suggestions from websites that start with that text, not just any with those string of characters.

Now, if you want to make the Awesome Bar to not show any suggestions for pages that you have visited or bookmarked, and only show suggestions for URLS that you have manually typed, go to the browser.urlbar.default.behavior preference in about:config and change its value from 0 to 49.

3 Quick Location Bar Style Fixes

Always show the GO button

By default, the GO button the far right of the location bar only shows up if the bar is empty or if you’ve typed in something new. To make the button stay visible, go to your user Profile directory (C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in Windows XP), navigate to the Chrome subdirectory, and create a new blank file called userChrome.css. This file lets you make stylesheet changes to Firefox. Open up the file with Notepad and type the following at the end of the file:

#go-button { visibility: visible !important; }

Restart Firefox to put this change into effect.

Disable the RSS Feed Button

If you’re not a fan of web feeds, you have no need for the RSS button at the end of the location bar. Disable it by opening up the Chrome.css file you created before in your Profile directory, and add the following line:

#feed-button[feeds] { display: none !important; }

Restart Firefox to put this change into effect.

Use Small Location Bar Icons

The location bar itself isn’t terribly tall, but every pixel counts when you’re using a tiny screen netbook or have stacked additional toolbars like the Booksmarks bar or a StumbleUpon bar. Shrink the Location Bar by right clicking the any toolbar and clicking the “customize” option. At the bottom of this screen, check “Use Small Icons.”

Reasonably Cut Ram Usage

Firefox is generally good about memory management, so we don’t normally recommend memory allocation tweaks because of the performance tradeoff. But there is one setting in Firefox that may be useful if you tend to have many browser windows and tabs open but minimized at the same time.

Open up the about:config page, and right click anywhere in the window. Select New->Boolean to create a new preference setting, and type “config.trim_on_minimize” in the pop up box. Next, choose True as the default value. This preference will offload memory using from RAM to virtual memory on your hard drives when windows are minimized. The only caveat is that “waking up” this minimized window will take a little longer than usual, since Firefox will need to transfer its state back to physical memory.

Additionally, we recommend that you try the RAMBack add-on, which gives you notifications when and how much memory can be freed up from RAM.

Browse Privately on a Public Computer

A feature actually first introduced in IE 8, Firefox’s private browsing mode lets you surf the web without retaining any URL history, form and search fields, passwords, cookies, or web cache on the local machine. This is particularly useful for surfing at work or on a friend’s computer, when you don’t want them to snoop around your shameful habits. Turning on private browsing is as simple: just hit Ctrl + Shift + P. Firefox will save your existing windows and open a new session (unfortunately, you can’t have both private and non-private mode windows open at the same time). In the privacy options settings, you can even set Firefox to start in private browsing mode by default.

Customize the New Tab Page

One thing that Chrome and IE 8 do better than Firefox is the new tab page. When you open a new tab in Firefox, it defaults to about:blank, which, appropriately, is a blank page. Mozilla actually acknowledges this shortcoming, and has been experimenting with various new types of new-tab landing pages in their Mozilla Labs department. The latest prototype shows you a page with Frequently Visited Sites, and a “You Might Want to” suggestion based on what’s in your clipboard.
You can download and install it here.

6 Essential about:config Tweaks

About:config is amazingly powerful – it lets you change almost every aspect of how Firefox functions. Going through and explaining what every preference does would not only be an impossible task, but also unnecessary since most people are happy with the default settings. There are, however, a few settings that we think are essential to change. Make these tweaks first when you encounter a fresh install of Firefox.

browser.urlbar.autoFill = True
Enable auto-complete for URLs when typing into the location bar.

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo = 15
Increase the number of closed tabs that firefox has stored in its cache to 15.

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75
Show more tabs in a single window by narrowing the minimum width of a tab.

browser.search.openintab = True
Automatically open new search results in a new tab

middlemouse.paste = True
Use the middle mouse button to paste text from your clipboard.

browser.blink_allowed = False
Disables annoying text with the Blink tag.

Make Smart Bookmarks

A really sweet feature in Firefox 3 is the ability to program your own smart bookmarks. These are dynamic bookmark groups that change depending on your browsing history. For example, you can have it set to show the 10 most popular pages you’ve visited within a certain domain, or the 15 most popular sites you’ve visited that contain a specific keyword in its title.

Open up your Organize Bookmarks window by typing Ctrl + Shift + B. Choose the folder you want to create your new smart bookmark, and create a new bookmark with the Organize menu. In the location bar, enter a string using the following syntax:

place:queryType=A&sort=B&maxResults=C&domain=D&terms=E

Replace A, B, C, D, and E with whatever you choose, based on these rules:

Querytype= 0 to only search your history, 1 to only search your bookmarks, 2 to search both

Sort = 1 for A to Z, 2 for Z to A, 3 to sort by most recently visited, and 8 to soft by most often visited

Domain = the domain you want to show results for, such as “maximumpc.com”

Terms = the word or words you want to show results for.

For more syntax options and explanations, visit Mozilla’s reference page.

Back Up Your Bookmarks

Keep your bookmarks backed up and synchronized across multiple computers using the popular Xmarks add-on. Formerly known as Foxmarks, this extension securely stores your bookmarks (and even passwords) on their servers, and can even analyze your saved links to give website and tagging suggestions. It’ll even sync across multiple browsers, in case you use both Firefox and IE (Chrome support eventually coming).

Know the Location of Your Profile and Settings

What if you accidentally delete your bookmarks or profile settings before storing them in the cloud? Not to worry – Firefox makes periodic backups of your bookmarks, safely backing them up in a hidden folder. You can find and retrieve them in Windows easily. First, open up Windows explorer, go to folder options, and enable viewing hidden files. If you’re using Windows XP, your Firefox profile backups will be located in the following directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

Just replace USERNAME with your Windows user account name, and sort the .json files by date. Copy and save the desired backup file to your Desktop, open up Firefox, and choose the Import and Backup option under the Bookmarks menu. Locate the .json file on your Desktop, and open it to restore your bookmarks.

In Windows Vista and 7, the backups are stored in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Application Data\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

4 Scroll Wheel Secrets

Open a link in a new tab by hovering over it and clicking the middle mouse button.
Close a tab by hovering over the top of the tab and clicking the middle mouse button.
Hold Shift and scroll your mouse wheel to move forward or backward through your history.
Enlarge or shrink the size of text on a page by holding Ctrl and scrolling up or down.

Advanced Spell Checking

Firefox’s built-in spell checker is useful for using web content management systems like Wordpress for blog entries or Google docs, but the default setting only spellchecks fields that are bigger than one line. Enable single-line spellcheking (like for Google searches) by changing the following preference in about:config: layout.spellcheckDefault = 2

Additionally, you can add different language dictionaries to the spell-check database by picking and installing the right packages from Mozilla’s language packs page. Right click any multi-line text field and you can choose to alternate between different languages for spell checking.

And in case you’ve ever unintentionally added a word to the Dictionary, you can remove the entry by opening the persdict.dat file stored in your user Profile directory. Using a text editor like notepad, delete the line containing your unwanted word, and save the file.

14 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts

Ctrl+T – Open a new tab
Ctrl + Tab – Next tab
Ctrl + 1-9 – Jump to a specific tab
Ctrl+W -- Close the current tab
Ctrl+N – Open a new window
Alt+Home – Go to your home page
Ctrl + R – Refresh the current page. F5 also works
Ctrl + Shift + R – Refresh the current page after flushing its current cache
Ctrl+F – Find specific text in the current page. You can also use /
Ctrl+D – Bookmark the current page
Spacebar – Scroll a page down
Shift+Spacebar – Scroll a page up
Ctrl+K – Put the cursor in the search field
Ctrl+L – Put the cursor in the location bar

Make Websites Work and Look the Way You Want

Browse websites the way you want. Use the Greasemonkey add-on with user-created scripts to automate and customize the way the way websites behave and look. You can make MP3 file links play with an in-line MP3 player, or make Google display Twitter search results at the top of all search pages. There are thousands of Greasemonkey scripts that you can use, and they’re all free to download.

Stylish lets you easily employ themes (called Styles) for any website without having to mess with CSS code. Like Greasemonkey, there is a sizeable database of preconfigured styles that users have created for you to try.

Disguise Firefox as Internet Explorer or an iPhone

Even if you don’t want to run Internet Explorer, there are some web services that only work if you use Microsoft’s browser (such as web outlook or Windows Update). IE Tab gives you the option to render pages using Internet Explorer or open new tabs using the IE engine. You can make specific sites always open with IE Tab as well.

User Agent Switcher is an add-on that doesn’t change the rendering engine, but allows you to make Firefox pretend to be a different browser when it retrieves information from a server. For example, you can have Firefox pose as an iPhone to view mobile-specific pages.

Make use of the Favicon

The favicon -- a website’s shortcut icon – is pretty to look at, but for the most part is pretty useless. Firefox lets you click the favicon next to a site’s URL in the location bar to display identity information, but most sites don’t utilize this feature. However, you can use the favicon as a quick way to access and manage stored cookies for specific websites. Just hit the “more information” button after clicking a favicon to open up that site’s page information window. Here, you can view and delete individual cookies for just this site, and even access saved passwords stored for users. It’s a really sneaky way to steal someone’s email password if you’re using their computer.

Manage Auto-Complete Suggestions

Forget to turn on private browsing mode and leave an embarrassing site in your URL history? You can delete individual auto-complete suggestions by hovering your mouse over the suspect URL and pressing the Delete key (not backspace) on your keyboard. The same trick also works for stored search history in your search bar, or any other auto-complete forms like user login.

Download like a Pro

From our power downloading guide: The Alpha and the Omega of downloading extensions, DownThemAll! is as simple to use as its name implies. When you activate this add-on for a page you're surfing, DownThemAll gives you a list of every potential downloadable item on the page--everything from ZIP archives to JPEG images. You can grab the entire page's contents and dump them in a folder, or you can selectively filter for only the file extensions that you're actually interested in. Never before has pilfering the entire contents of a Web site been quite so easy.

Ultimate Router Guide: How to Optimize Security and Performance

Justin Kerr — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Home broadband routers are remarkably complex devices that few ever take the time to truly understand. As long as the lights are blinking, and webpages load, most people are inclined to leave them be. The few brave souls who venture into the firmware are often rewarded with a maze of menus that betray the true complexity of these underappreciated appliances. Wireless channels, security modes, and even port forwarding can be frustrating concepts for those without a networking background, but are absolutely critical to understanding how to optimize your home network. In this guide we will teach you the finer points of security, as well as give you surefire ways to boost your router's wireless range and optimize performance.

image credit: pceasycare.com

Why are Routers so Important

When most people think about online security, they often assume virus scanners, spyware detectors, and even firewall software are the most important weapons to level against those who would seek to exploit their machines. In reality, the router is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, and it rarely gets the credit it deserves. If you actually took the time to look at the raw data coming in through your broadband connection, you would be shocked at just how much background noise is constantly bombarding your machines. Unpatched PCs from around the world form sprawling bot nets designed to spew forth exploits both old and new in hopes of finding vulnerable targets.

Prior to the days of Windows XP SP2, machines plugged directly into the internet would often fall prey to these exploits, and would become infected simply because they were left on, and were connected to the internet. With the introduction of the firewall in SP2 the world literally changed. Windows now comes with this feature on by default, and drops unsolicited traffic coming into your connection. The Windows firewall isn’t perfect, but it was still a huge improvement.

Think of your router as an upgrade on this basic concept, and in reality, it makes for one of the most powerful firewalls money can buy. Forming an invisible barrier between you and the net, routers drop incoming packets that you weren’t expecting, and is much less vulnerable to exploits that would seek to poke holes in your defenses. A good router not only drops incoming packets, but it also refuses to acknowledge that an active connection even exists. This simple, but powerful difference between routers, and many software firewalls, provides that extra bit of security that can mean the difference between a virus poking around on your machine, or moving on. The Windows firewall is still important, but these days it should only be used as a secondary line of defense.

Let's Start with the Basics: Terminology

MAC Address

This string of letters and numbers is a unique identifier applied to all networking components. Think of it like a serial number that can be used to identify machines or devices on a network, even if their physical location or connection point changes.

IP Address

This is essentially your phone number within a network. An IP address doesn’t necessarily only come from the Internet, each and every device that connects to your home network also has a unique IP address within the routers network. This is how a router is able to share a single Internet IP address, but share it with multiple devices across its various connections.

DHCP Server

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol servers are built into every router, and provide each device with IP addresses, default gateways, domain names, DNS servers, etc. The most important thing to know about DHCP is that this is how your router manages IP addresses.

Latency

PC gamers might know this better as ping. It is a measure, usually in milliseconds, of how long it takes your data to get from your machine to its destination and back.

How Do I Access My Router's Settings?

Every router is going to be a little bit different, but most can be accessed from your web browser by entering in 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into the address bar. Once done, you will be prompted to enter your user name and password, which if you don’t know it, is probably just the default. Many routers come stamped with this information on the bottom but if not, here is a link to your one stop shop for all the login info you’ll need. Generally your user name will always be either “admin” or “administrator” and your password will either be the same, or try leaving it blank.

Know your password? Skip ahead to the next step.

If you’re still locked out of your router and are unable to login, examine the hardware itself, often times you’ll find a manual reset button on the device that will restore it to factory defaults. This is a great way to unlock your device, but beware, more often than not this step will also clear all of the routers settings as well. Here are a few tips to make sure you do the reset properly.

1.) Always hold down the reset key for at least 30 seconds, or until the indicator lights give you the impression that the reset has taken place.

2.) Some routers require you to unplug them prior to trying a hard reset.

3.) Always wait at least 30 seconds after plugging in your router before trying to reconnect.

Security – The Basics

The first thing you should do if your working with a new router is to change the default user name and password. Leaving the defaults in place is like leaving the front door open, and anybody within range of your router can gain access to your network, no matter how strong your wireless encryption password is. Some routers also give you the option to “remotely configure” or “remotely access” your router. You’ll want to make sure that these are disabled. Basically this feature gives you the ability to access your router configuration via the Internet. Sounds innocent enough, but I honestly can’t think of a circumstance where this would be useful, and you simply expose another surface for attack.

It is also a good idea to change your routers SSID (Wireless Network Name). Broadcasting to the world that you are using a Linksys for example might not be a problem if you’ve changed the default passwords, but the trick to security is to always keep your attackers guessing. Many routers give you the ability to make the wireless network invisible, but don’t bother with this feature. Setting your network to invisible might keep people from accidentally latching on to your connection, but anyone using the right tools can find it easily. A very common security mistake with wireless routers is to set them to “invisible” and then run with no security. All of your data is still being transmitted in the clear and don’t kid yourself, the bad guys won’t be fooled. Security through obscurity alone isn’t enough to protect your wireless network.

Security – Wireless Basics & How To Safely Isolate A WEP Network

Plugging devices in using the RJ-45 Ethernet connectors on your router is the safest way to setup your home network, but let’s face it, its rather inconvenient. Wireless networking has made it possible to roam around the house and connect devices no wire could ever reach, but its important to remember that it comes with a slew of security considerations. Everyone has heard the terms WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc tossed around, but what is the best option? When it comes to wireless security, WPA2 is always the way to go, but WEP is still better than nothing at all. Here is a summary of the most popular options.

Pros & Cons of Each Security Method

No Security

Connecting to an unsecured wireless access point is like having a conversation in public. Anybody within range of your signal can see the information passing through the air “in the clear”. This basically means that when you type in your usernames, and passwords, they can be easily recorded by anyone who feels the need to listen in. The same is true outside of your home when you connect to unsecured wireless hotspots, so beware of what services you login to on open networks. Sessions on open networks can still be conducted safely if you notice an “https://” in the address bar (also look for the lock icon in your browser).

Running with no security on your home router doesn’t just allow your neighbors to share your Wi-Fi, but in addition to monitoring and recording your sessions, they can also access shared drives on your machines that are connected to the network. On my last vacation I got a kick out of browsing through peoples iTunes libraries that automatically appeared courtesy of the unknowing souls who were connected to the hotels wireless network. Logging into a VPN will also allow you to safely work on unsecured wireless networks, but if you don’t know what a VPN is, you probably don’t have access to one.

WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy might sound like a fancy and secure acronym, but sadly it’s a flawed, and painfully inadequate encryption method. WEP is generally good enough to keep out nosy neighbors, but it can be easily cracked within minutes using freely available software tools, so it’s definitely not to be trusted for your everyday use. Some find themselves using this method to ensure backwards compatibility with older devices such as the Nintendo DS, but anyone who wants to get into your network can do so in a matter of minutes. Some routers offer the ability to enable a “guest mode” and run a separate unsecured or lower security network in addition to something stronger, but these generally still aren’t recommended.

If you absolutely must maintain a WEP or No Security enabled router, the only safe way to go about this is to create a “Y” configuration with one router just for your insecure WEP traffic, and a third for trusted WPA capable devices. To do this you need to have a central router to connect you to the Internet, and then have a WPA access point and a WEP access point. Basically you would be running two wireless networks. One is secure, and one is not. With this configuration, even if someone cracks your WEP protected router, the best they can hope for is to mooch off your Internet connection. Fancier solutions to this problem exist, but with consumer grade routers going for around $20 these days, you won’t find anything cheaper.

WPA

Wi-Fi Protected Access was implemented to replace the much weaker WEP encryption mentioned above, but we now know that it too is vulnerable to attack. The underlying encryption method behind WPA is called TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) and it is now known to be vulnerable to a “key stream recovery attack” that will allow hackers to inject packets onto your network.

For the most part this attack isn’t as serious as those found on the WEP side, because it doesn’t actually review your master key, and they still won’t be able to eavesdrop on your session or monitor your traffic. Of course, once they start injecting code into your connection, the possibilities are endless, but most home users can get away with running this if they have devices that don’t support the newest WPA2 encryption method.

WPA Enterprise

This setting typically isn’t for home users, and is designed to work with a RADIUS server which allows for centralized authorization of clients.

WPA2

Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 replaces the beleaguered TKIP encryption from its predecessor with one of the most powerful algorithms available, AES. Advanced Encryption Standard is a robust, lightweight solution, which only has one known weakness, a brute force attack. Somebody wishing to crack into a WPA2 protected network will need to try random combinations in the hopes of guessing your passkey, that’s why its important to avoid using common dictionary words. The headline “WPA has been cracked” has been in the news recently, but rest assured this applies to WPA, which uses TKIP, and not WPA2, which exclusively uses AES. Some routers will offer the ability to run both WPA and WPA2 encryption on the same wireless connection, but keep in mind your security is only as strong as the weakest link. This approach should be taken only if you have hardware that won’t work with WPA2.

The Bottom Line

Pretty much every new client device I’ve tested within the last five years (except the Nintendo DS) supports WPA2. This offers up unbeatable protection that will allow you to fearlessly do even your banking from any room in the house. Of course, any encryption is only as powerful as the Pre-Shared Key (pass-phrase) that you select as your password. WPA2 is still vulnerable to “brute force” style attacks which attempt to guess your pass phrase, and they often try combinations from various common passwords. Simple word combinations might “feel secure”, but these simply aren’t enough these days to keep out a determined brute force attacker. New GPU assisted crackers have significantly improved the efficiency and viability of brute force, so as a rule of thumb, your password shouldn’t be easy to remember.

Want to grab a random and secure password? Surf over to the passwords section on GRC to get a peek at what a really strong password looks like, or grab one that is randomly generated for you. With one of these passwords protecting your router, a brute force attacker is more likely to die of old age (or get evicted from his parents basement) before he ever breaks in.

How To Maximize Your Router Speed & Strength

1. Location, Location, Location

Its true in real estate, and its true for routers, finding the right location is one of the most important steps you can take to boost your routers performance. Most new consumer grade routers ship with Omni-directional antennas. This means it broadcasts your signal uniformly in a 360-degree radius. If you need to locate your access point in the corner of your house, a large percentage of its capability is being wasted. If you find you have dead spots in areas of your home, you can replace the antenna with a hi-gain version that will focus your signal in a 180-degree radius, vastly increasing your range in the chosen direction.

2. Change Your Routers Wireless Channel

Selecting the right wireless channel, particularly in older routers, can have one of the biggest single impacts on your speed and range. If your router is operating on the same channel as your neighbor, or if your operating two separate routers close by, sharing a wireless channel basically cuts your performance in half. Most of the third party connection tools that ship with laptops or wireless adapters, will show you what channel nearby networks are on, all you need to do is pick a spectrum that isn’t in use. If you’re using the built in plain vanilla Windows tool, you’ll want to download Network Stumbler to help you find a vacant channel.

Some newer routers have an “auto” option which is designed to monitor and change the channel as needed, but more often then not I find this setting doesn’t work as advertised. The D-Link DIR-655 I used for testing locked on to channel 3, even though a second router sitting directly beside it was operating a separate network on the same channel. Your best bet is to manually select the best channel by determining those of other access points within range. Generally it is best to use channel 1, 6, or 11, if they are available, otherwise choose any available free channel. If you live in an apartment building or a condo you might have a hard time finding an open channel, but then again, you probably weren’t having coverage problems anyway. Based on the screen shot shown above, I would most likely configure my new access point using channel 11, since it will encounter the least amount of interference.

3. Update the Firmware For Your Network Adapters, as well as the Router

This might sound like cheesy and obvious advice, but you would be surprised how many people ignore the firmware on their networking equipment. Many advances, particularly in the draft n devices, are leading to vastly improved performance and stability. A simple update to the DWA-552 XTREME N Desktop Adapter in my test system lead to a near doubling in transfer speeds over the original drivers that shipped with the unit, and added two extra bars of connection strength. Make sure to update the drivers both on your adapters, and your router.

4. 802.11N Offers Much Better Range Than 802.11G or B

802.11n includes many new features to improve the quality of wireless connections, and increases both data rate, and range. The most significant new feature introduced in 802.11n is MIMO (multiple in, multiple out), which allows data to be sent out upon multiple streams on different antennas using the same frequency. The more data your router can squirt out, the better the odds your intended device will catch it, and yes, the recent resurgence of the Zune’s popularity has made squirting cool again.

Its also worth noting that even if your client device only supports 802.11g, if your access point is 802.11n, you will still see a great deal of benefit from the upgrade. In addition to the extended range, often times you are able to maintain 54 Mbps connections from much greater distances.

Wireless G routers are cheap, cheerful, and still by far the most common type of Wi-Fi available today, but switching to 802.11n is a major upgrade.

5. Try to Reduce Wireless Interference

If you notice that your signal strength is decent one moment, and gone the next, you might have an interference problem from something else in your home. The most common offender is cordless phones. Most of the new cordless phone systems that you buy today operate in the 5.8GHz spectrum, but for several years 2.4 GHz was all the craze. Unfortunately, your Wi-Fi router is transmitting on this same frequency, and the two might be interfering with each other. Often times the interference, particularly from newer and more powerful 802.11n routers is so strong, you can actually hear a buzzing noise on the phone if you’re near a router that’s transmitting data. You will also notice that your signal strength, and transfer speeds will take a significant dive each time the phone rings.

If you do use 2.4GHz cordless phones your options are limited, but still pretty straightforward. You can spring for one of the newer 802.11n dual band Wi-Fi routers that transmit on the higher 5GHz spectrum, or you can buy 900Mhz, or 5.8Ghz cordless phones instead. Personally I stick to the 900MHz phones because they often give you the best range, and they won’t interfere with your Wi-Fi.

Microwave ovens have also been known to mess with Wi-Fi signals, but since they operate so infrequently, and are typically located far away from your wireless devices, this is usually a non-issue. The interference generated is typically limited to a range of no more than ten feet, but in some situations this might cause an issue for a kitchen PC or other nearby client device.

6. Try to Stick With One Brand

Wi-Fi is all about standards right? Sort of. The Wi-Fi logo ensures that all your hardware from different vendors will be compatible with each other, but many vendors add in additional code or components to try and one up the competition. Linksys for example has SpeedBooster technology that does a very respectable job of increasing the range and speed of devices that all contain this feature. Nearly every vendor offers something above and beyond, but don’t expect to see the benefits if you mix and match.

7. Adjust your Transmit Power

Most routers come configured out of the box to run at 100% power, but just in case, its worth checking. Under certain conditions you might actually choose to decrease your transmit power, particularly if your setting this up in a small office or condo. Turning a router up to full power to blanket your 800 square foot condo isn’t just pointless; it’s inconsiderate to your neighbors who will need to deal with the added wireless interference.

Keep Your Expectations In Check

802.11g claims to offer 54Mbit/s, and in theory 802.11n is capable of speeds up to 600 Mbit/s. In reality, expect these values to be lower, much lower. As you have seen from the tips shown above, everything from walls to Microwaves can wreck havoc on your transfer speeds and range, don’t take it personally. Unless your willing to move to an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere, and run all your wireless devices directly beside you router, be prepared to settle for speeds that are considerably less than what you might have read on the box.

How to Make Your Router Play Nice with Everything from Skype to BitTorrent using Port Forwarding

If you’ve read the previous section you now know routers make excellent hardware firewalls, and do a great job of blocking incoming connections. But what if you want to accept unsolicited incoming connections? This is the case whenever a friend tries to call you on Skype, or you attempt to download the latest World of Warcraft patch or Linux distro on BitTorrent. In the case of Skype, the software will try to work around the fact that you are behind an un-configured router by using “super nodes” to link the two callers together. These “super nodes” are in reality not paid for by Skype, but rather they are simply other Skype users who have configured their routers properly, or aren’t behind any type of Firewall. Think of them as an intermediary that introduces two computers that otherwise would ignore any incoming calls. In the case of BitTorrent, an un-configured router primarily causes low transfer speeds.

Setting up your router properly in both scenarios is not as hard as you might think, but it does involve introducing you to a concept known as port forwarding. Port Forwarding can typically be accessed through your routers advanced preferences pane, and generally looks like the screen shot shown below.

Important Terms

IP Address

This is the network IP address of the computer that requires the forwarded port. In most modern routers, you will be able to select your computers network name rather than specifying an IP address. If it doesn’t allow this, you will need to access your Network Setup preferences pane, and tie the MAC address of your computer to a permanent IP. For those that have never heard of a MAC address before, simply think of it as a unique serial number that identifies your computer. Our goal is to tell the router to bind an IP address to your connections unique MAC, thereby allowing you to use the IP address as a permanent pointer within your network. Make sure the IP address looks something like this 192.168.0.x (where x is anything between 2-255). Going forward, this will be the IP address of your computer on the LAN.

Before you finish and return to the Port Forwarding configuration, it is important that you make sure if your machine has both wired, and wireless networking capabilities, that you connect with each one separately, and assign the IP address for each network connection method. You will need to bind both to fully cover off your machine. The router should tell you what the MAC address of your computer is, but if you can’t find it, click Start then find and launch Command Prompt. Once you see the cursor type ipconfig /all and look for the “physical address”. It is generally a string of six digits (i.e. 48-3F-0A-91-00-BC).

TCP & UDP Ports

Here you will list which port, or which range of ports) you wish to open. In the case of Skype, and most BitTorrent clients one for each is more than enough, but in some cases you might need to open a range of them. An example would be 6159, or 6159-6180. You should always open ports above 6000 to avoid accidentally opening up a port that is assigned to another service. If you accidentally opened port 80 for example (which is used for HTTP traffic), you would be exposing services that are vulnerable to attack.

Inbound Filter

This is generally used to limited access to a group of systems on your network. Its unlikely you will ever need to chance this setting from “Allow All”.

Universal Plug & Play

UPnP was designed for one purpose, to make port forwarding so easy that applications could do it for you, no consent required. If you’re the type of person who is security minded, this explanation should raise a few red flags, if your not, here is why you should be concerned. If any application can request your router to open a port, then malware can do it too.

UPnP offers unparalleled convenience by ensuring you never have to look at your port forwarding options, but is one of the most dangerous settings in the router. If port forwarding isn’t your cup of tea, this might be your only option, but don’t say we didn’t warn you!

1. Go Ahead and Open a Port

Fill in the IP Address or the Computer Name of the machine you will be using the software on, pick a port (preferably one that doesn’t conflict with another service), and click Apply or Save. If your having trouble deciding what port number to use, you can read ahead to see where you enter the values in both Skype and uTorrent. You can simply write down and use the default ports that are shown in each application to make selecting a port easier.

2. Assign Your Newly Opened Port To Skype

Now that you have opened a port on your router, all you need to do is point Skype in the right direction. This can be done by opening up your Options menu, and then selecting the Connection tab. Now simply type in your open port, then click Save to make your changes permanent. You will find it amazing how drastically this will improve the sound quality and performance of your calls. You can also take comfort in the knowledge that because you opened a port that only Skype will access, your network is still secure.

3. Assign Your Newly Opened Port To uTorrent

When it comes to BitTorrent clients, you have literally hundreds of choices available, all of which should allow you to set the port for incoming connections. The screen shot shown above is specific to uTorrent, but simply located the Preferences menu, then look for the Connections tab. Once here, simply fill in the box for “port used for incoming connections”.

Port Forwarding Summary

The two examples shown above are for Skype a VOIP application, and uTorrent for P2P file transfer, but you may need to open ports for all sorts of purposes. The World of Warcraft patch downloader for example requires ports 3724, 6112, & 6881-6999 to be opened for proper operation. As long as you understand the important terms, and how to apply those into opening a port, you should be able to adapt the steps above to open any port you need.

As a rule of thumb, only open up ports you are actually going to use. Don’t simply open up 6000-8000 to make your life easier. When you do this you are opening up a large hole in your network that could become a potential security concern.

How to Improve Transfer Speeds Using QoS and WISH

Quality of Service (QoS)

If you’re a regular follower of tech news, the term net neutrality likely not only rings a bell, but you probably have a very strong opinion on the matter. At issue is the idea that all data on the Internet should be treated equally. ISP’s will argue that traffic shaping is required to maintain the quality of service for everyone, while those on the opposite side of the fence claim it stifles innovation, and can be easily abused to protect the premium services offered by the network providers. No matter which side of the debate you fall on with regards to Internet traffic however, I’m willing to bet you would be in favor of packet shaping on your home LAN. This is done using a service called QoS.

The configuration options that you see when entering the QoS menu will vary drastically depending on the model of your router, but the end goal is to setup a series of rules that will allow latency sensitive data such as VOIP to be prioritized over something less critical such as a file download. QoS requires you to understand all of the terms we have talked about up to this point, but if you find yourself somewhat lost, many routers have pre-sets that you can pick from for popular items such as VOIP, Torrents, and even gaming.

If you’re looking to create your own manual rules, here is a list of information you will need to provide:

Name

You can put anything here; it is simply used to help you remember what this particular rule was created for.

Priority

Here you can tell the router how important the information is. If your creating a rule to prioritize your gaming traffic for example, then you should select 1. You might want to create a separate rule for HTTP traffic, which you could then assign to something higher. People can wait for a webpage to load; your ping in an online game on the other hand can mean the difference between life and death (virtually speaking of course).

Local IP Range

This allows us to set a rule for a single device, or many depending on the range we select. For this to work properly you will need to assign each device to a static IP address if the QoS tool doesn’t support computer names. In the above screen shot, we are only specifying one machine at 192.168.0.1.

Remote IP Range

You probably won’t want to change this unless you specifically know where the traffic you want to prioritize will be coming from. A good example of this would be a Team Fortress dedicated server for example. You could plug in the IP address of your favorite server, and point it to your IP address with a Priority of 1, but giving yourself local priority works just as well.

Local / Remote Port Range

This works just like the IP Ranges, but this time with ports. Remember, many of the tasks you perform on the Internet consistently happen across a single port. HTTP for example comes across on port 80, FTP on port 21, etc. Practicallynetworked.com maintains and excellent list all the common, and even not so common ports you will come across.

QoS Summary

Many newer routers will have presets you can choose from if you don’t want to dive into making your own custom rules. If you do go custom on the other hand, you’ll likely fall into one of two camps.

1.) You use VOIP, and or play online games.

2.) You want your traffic to have the highest priority because you were the only one smart enough to figure out how QoS works.

If the first scenario describes you best, then you will need to map out the IP address or ports that match the game or Skype settings you are using, and assign a high priority to your machine.

If instead the second situation best describes you, the rule is fairly simple. Just create a rule that points to your machine with priority 1. You may get an unfair share of the bandwidth, but knowledge is power is it not?

Wish

Wireless Intelligent Stream Handling is just like QoS, but instead of prioritizing your Internet traffic, it manages the performance of your Wi-Fi connected devices. Certain applications such as streaming video require a fast and stable connection, and WISH allows you to prioritize this type of traffic, allowing for smooth playback, even on a busy LAN. Configuring this works much the same way QoS does, but this time both devices that will be covered by your custom rules will be located inside your LAN.

Many WISH capable routers come with an automatic setting which by default gives priority to VOIP, and streaming video applications. For most people these automatic settings will do, but if you need to prioritize the traffic between two or more devices for something more specialized such as LAN gaming, this is where you do it.

How to Expand the Number of Wired Networking Ports by Stacking Routers

Most modern consumer routers come with 4 wired Ethernet ports to work with, but for the modern geek, that is rarely enough. Adding additional wired ports to your home network is as simple as joining an Ethernet cable between the two routers, but anyone who has tried this in the past might have noticed that it creates a sharing problem. Because each of these routers are setup by default to assign its own IP addresses, computers plugged into the separate routers will have difficulty sharing files across the LAN.

Solving this problem is simple, and should be done on every router except the first. Simply log in to the Administrative Control Panel, click Setup, then disable DHCP on the second, and every subsequent access point. Doing this will allow the first router to manage the assignment of IP address’s, and will allow you to see and share across all your devices.

By daisy chaining together wireless routers, you can also expand the number of Wi-Fi devices you can have attached to your network. Most consumer routers support a total of eight connections, four via Wi-Fi, and four via the wired Ethernet ports.

Additional Terms & Settings

Subnet Mask

A subnet mask doesn’t work like an IP address, nor is it completely independent of it. Instead, subnet masks accompany an IP address. It basically splits your IP into two parts, an extended, and host network address. Generally you can leave this number at 255.255.254.0 for your WAN, and 255.255.255.0 for your LAN.

Default Gateway

A gateway is little more than a node (or router) that serves as an access point between two networks. Your router should automatically default to an ISP supplied gateway that allows you to connect to the Internet. To put it in simple terms, it’s an entry and exit point in a network.

Virtual Server

This option allows users from the Internet to access services on your LAN. This is actually a useful feature if you want to host an FTP, game, or even web server, and allows you to get around the problem of ISP’s blocking ports. It’s important to note however that hosting a server violates the terms of service agreement with the vast majority of home Internet service providers. ISP can, and often do watch for unauthorized dedicated servers being hosted off their IP’s, so make sure you know what your individual provider allows.

Beacon Period

This is the frequency of the synchronization packets router use to keep all your devices communicating properly. Generally a setting of about 100 milliseconds is ideal.

RTS Threshold / Fragmentation Threshold

Tweaking your RTS Threshold can sometimes improve performance on crowded networks that are suffering for heavy packet collision, but if you set this too high or two low, it can have a devastating impact on the routers performance. The same can be said for Fragmentation Threshold which helps to improve performance in the presence of RF interference. Both of these settings should generally be left at 2346 bytes.

WLAN Partition

If you enable this setting, wireless clients will be prevented from communicating with each other. This is a useful setting to enable if you’re hosting a public hotspot.

WMM Enable

Enabling this can help control latency and jitter when sending streaming video over a wireless connection.

Extra Wireless Protection

If all of the devices on your network are 802.11n compatible, then turning this option off will significantly improve the performance of your router.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide gave you a good overview to both how the router works, and how to increase its performance. Each manufacturer's firmware is going to look slightly different than the screen shots above, but if you understand the principals, you should now feel comfortable taking on everything from a Linksys to a Belkin. Have a router or networking tip to share? Let us know in the comments.

21 Essential Steps to Make Your PC Better/Faster/Stronger

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:30:40 -0500

A sucker buys a new PC at the first signs of a slowdown. A savvy power user gives his aged PC a fighting chance for redemption. From tweaking your OS to compressing files to overclocking your videocard or CPU, there are plenty of ways to tune up a computer, and none require a trip to Bob’s House of New PCs. Follow along this step-by-step as we show you 21 of our favorite techniques for making a PC better, stronger, and faster — for free. These essential tweaks and tune-ups range from common-sense caretaking measures to practical adjustments that you'd be foolish to ignore. Combined, they release your PC's untapped potential and breathe new life into your system.

1. Secure Your Applications

You know to update your antivirus definitions and run Windows Update, but did you know about that massive security hole in Acrobat 8.0 or the potential risks of running that obscure unzipping app you favor? Probably not. That’s where Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector (http://secunia.com) comes in. PSI uses its massive database of security holes to monitor all the apps on your machine and let you know which ones need updating. PSI even provides a link to any available patches and is on constant vigilance for new application security holes as they arise.

2. Clean Your PC

Depending on the environment, you can breed an entire warren of dust bunnies inside your PC within a few months. That may sound harmless, but the build-up can easily slow or even jam the various fans in your system and impair performance. Just as you vacuum out the dust from your refrigerator’s condenser on occasion (you do that, right?), you should also clean out the dust that’s jamming the fans in your rig. A vacuum cleaner will work on the larger case fans and filters, but we shudder at the thought of capacitors being sucked off the surface of the motherboard. Instead, bring the PC outside (or inside if you don’t care about your office) and use a can of compressed air to clean out the more sensitive areas.

3. Clean Up Windows

Some of the built-in functionality in Windows is underrated. The Disk Cleanup does a pretty handy job of wiping out junk you don’t need such as Microsoft Office temp files and old error reports. To run Disk Cleanup, open My Computer. Right-click the drive the OS is installed on and click Properties. Under the General tab, you’ll see a Disk Cleanup button. Click it and the app will run an analysis of the machine. You can dump the Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, Offline Webpages, Microsoft Error Reporting Temporary Files, Recycle Bin, Temporary Files, Web Client/ Publisher Temporary Files, Temporary Offline Files, Offline Files, and Catalog Files for the Content Indexer with no ill effects.

4. Compress Your Files

It’s a known fact that hard drive performance plummets as you approach the drive’s maximum capacity. Folks with 2TB drives may never see that day, but for the peeps subsisting on a nearly full 160GB or 250GB drive, it’s a very real and performance-crippling problem. Assuming you don’t have an additional drive to move the content to, your choices are pretty slim. But before you take a machete to your files, you might want to consider simply compressing them.

We don’t mean firing up WinZip and archiving all the files—that would be too much work. Instead, use Windows’ built-in compression tool, which will make accessing the files no different than it currently is. You can access the feature by opening My Computer, right-clicking on the drive you want to compress, and selecting Properties. Click Disk Cleanup and make sure Compress Old Files is checked. Click Options and specify the age of the files you want Windows to compress. Click OK and Windows will compress only the files you haven’t accessed in more than, say, six months. Once Windows is finished compressing the files, you’ll see that the names of those files are colored blue. The names of the untouched files will appear in black.

We’ve found that with even mid-level CPUs, such as a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, the time it takes to decompress a file is minimal. For even older machines, you shouldn’t see too much of an impact as most of the files that are compressed haven’t been accessed in some time. On one of our machines, we went from 8GB free to 30GB free by compressing older files.

5. Take Advantage of ShadowCopy

Windows Vista includes a nifty feature that makes incremental “shadow copies” of your document files. This lets you revert to a previous version of a file if you, say, suddenly realize you screwed up your resume and need to access the one from a month ago. Unfortunately, ShadowCopy is one of those premium features that’s only included with Windows Vista Ultimate (or Business). Home Premium users can go pound sand. Or so Microsoft thought. Apparently, all Microsoft really did was remove your ability to access those previous versions— the documents are still backed up if you have System Protection enabled in Microsoft Vista. To make sure it’s switched on (it is by default), right mouse-click My Computer, click the System Protection link, then the System Protection tab. There should be a check mark for each drive you want shadowed.

To access the previous versions of your file, download the free app ShadowExplorer from ShadowExplorer.com, install it, and voila, you can now browse through the tons of backed-up files. A drop-down on the upper left-hand side of the window lets you view the backups by date.

One more thought: If you’re suddenly a little freaked out that almost all of your documents are secretly being backed up and, for the most part, hidden from you by Vista, you can erase all of those backups by turning off System Restore (right-click My Computer, select Properties, then System Protection, and uncheck the C: drive), or purge all but the last system restore point (go to Disk Cleanup, select More Options, then Clean Up, and delete what’s unneeded).

6. Scan for Updates

You know to keep your drivers updated, but keeping track of them is like trying to remember to change the water filter on the refrigerator. (Did you last do it in 2008 or 2007?) One way to do a quick and easy scan for outdated drivers is to run Phoenix Technologies’ web-based DriverAgent. Just go to DriverAgent.com and click the Web Scan button on the left. The app will run a quick check of your drivers against Phoenix’s database of updated drivers and tell you what devices need updating. You can either shell out for the service, which finds the updated drivers for you, or freeload like us and simply take note of the devices you want to upadate, and go find the updated drivers yourself.

7. Search and Destroy Malware

Malware is a common scourge of computing performance, not to mention the severe security risks that it poses. You could pay some guy in a white shirt and black tie to clean up your PC for $200, but why do that when you can do the job yourself?

First, start with SuperAntiSpyware (www.superantispyware.com). After installing the app, you can opt to have it protect your home page or not. When you get to the General and Startup tab, select “Start SuperAntiSpyware when Windows Starts,” “Use Windows XP Style Menus,” and “Integrate with Vista Security Center.” Also select “Do not scan when SuperAntiSpyware starts” and “Check for updates before starting on startup.” Perform a complete scan and nuke anything that moves.

Now, download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (www.malwarebytes.org). Install it, run an update, and have it conduct
a scan. Again, wipe out anything that moves.

In addition to the antivirus software running on your machine (you do have updated definitions, right?), you’ll want to conduct another sweep using Panda Activescan 2.0 (www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index). This is a web-based scanner that may not fix anything, but it’ll give you an additional level of scrutiny.

If you want a more thorough description of the steps we’ve taken, check out our full write-up here.

8. Decrap Your Drive

Ever wonder how a new PC can be bought for $400 with a new monitor? Part of the answer is the software subsidies. Fire up any low-cost PC and the desktop looks like it got hit with a 12-gauge load of icons. These icons lead to trialware, which when expired, do nothing but decompose on your hard drive and waste space. On some PCs, the amount of trialware has gotten so bad that it takes a few hours just to scrub it off. Now there’s an easier way to zap those apps without spending four hours in front of your parent’s new laptop. PC Decrapifier (www.pcdecrapifier.com) will automatically uninstall and delete the majority of trialware applications that are preinstalled on new PCs. Just download the free app, install, and run it. It will ask you if the PC is new or not. If you select not new, the app will create a system restore point. Otherwise, it will continue to the next step and scan your computer for the various trailware apps. You should then be presented with a list of apps you can uninstall. Once you’re ready to remove the offending trailware, click Next and PC Decrapifier will automatically remove the junk.

9. Archive Your Files

So, you know that hard drives get slower as they approach their full capacity. If you’re lucky enough to have more than one hard drive in your PC (and most power users do), why is your host OS drive so full of crap you don’t need? To improve the overall performance of your PC, move your old documents and games that you don’t regularly use onto the secondary drive.

10. Get S.M.A.R.T

Modern hard drives feature Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T., which can warn you if your hard drive is starting to fail—before it actually does. Unfortunately, the OS doesn’t pay attention to these warnings. So, even though you could have known a few months in advance that your drive was about to go tango uniform, the OS kept it a secret. There are a number of good free tools available that can relay the message, such as SpeedFan (www.almico.com/speedfan.php) and DiskCheckup (http://passmark.com), but their interfaces can be a bit overwhelming for the average Joe or Jane.

For something so simple that anyone can understand it, we run HDD Health (www.panterasoft.com). Install it, configure it to run at launch, and it will alert you (even by email) if enough S.M.A.R.T. errors occur to rate a possible impending drive failure. A simple temperature bar and health bar will also help you decide if it’s time to start doing daily backups of the drive.

11. Revo Uninstaller

Do you have an application that you just can’t get rid of? Think of Revo Uninstaller as a stain remover for software. If some beotch app is dug in like an Alabama tick, Revo Uninstaller (www.revouninstaller.com) will rip it out, head and all. Once you’ve installed and executed the app, you’ll be greeted with a palette of applications you can uninstall. When you choose an unwanted app and click Uninstall, you’re given four levels of uninstall to choose from. The first is the Standard uninstall. The Safe uninstall builds on the Standard uninstaller and searches the registry and hard drive for leftovers. Moderate and Advanced build on Safe by increasing the scope of the search for leftovers from the application. For most apps, Safe is fine. An additional Hunter mode lets you use a sniper-scope view to track down such things as which application is responsible for a toolbar whose origins are unknown.

12. S3 Fixes

Utilizing your PC’s S3 standby state can help make your machine more energy efficient—if only it weren’t such a pain to implement, we could write a whole book on S3 problems. To help you on your way, here are some very common fixes that might solve the S3 standby problems you’re having.

Update the video drivers. If your machine fails to come out of standby, you should obtain the latest videocard drivers directly from the chip manufacturer’s website (Nvidia, ATI, Intel).

Update the BIOS: a motherboard’s BIOS can greatly affect how standby works on a PC, and updating it may fix your problem. Make sure you’re running the latest BIOS from your
motherboard maker.

Insomnia. If your system mysteriously wakes up, it may be caused by the USB devices or NIC. To disable a device from waking your system, go into the Device Manager (right-click My Computer, click Properties, and select Hardware and Device Manager in Windows XP. In Vista, right-click My Computer, select Properties, and select the Device Manager link on the left-hand pane). Double-click your NIC, select the Power Management tab. Uncheck “Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby.” Now go back, select the mouse, and do the same.

Sometimes in XP you’ll find that after installing a new USB mouse or keyboard, your system won’t sleep properly. To correct that, you may have to use regedit to create the following registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usb “USBBIOSx”=DWORD:00000000

If the machine still won’t sleep after entering the registry key, you may have to unplug USB devices one by one until you find the one that’s causing the problem. Alternatively, you can also see if the BIOS lets you disable “USB resume from suspend,” which would prevent USB devices from waking the machine. Not all BIOSes have this flag, though.

13. Optimize Your Startup

Windows Vista features new settings for developers to specify when an app should or should not load. No such thing exists in Windows XP. Instead of applications or applets starting in an orderly manner, it’s more like the front-door bum rush at Walmart for $25 Black Friday laptops. There are two ways to fix the problem. One, simply stop some of those applications from loading; and two, schedule when you actually want those programs to start. We use R2 Studios’s Startup Delayer (www.r2.com.au) to work as the bouncer outside our PC.

First, download and install the app. Once you’ve launched it, you’ll be greeted with a list of applications that are scheduled to run. You can disable apps you don’t want to launch, like the annoying Adobe Updater, by unchecking them. Once you’ve eliminated the things you don’t want launched, you can start to prioritize your other applications. Obviously, you’ll want any antivirus or antimalware applications to have priority, so you can leave those alone. Sun’s Java Update scheduler, however, can be shoved to the back of the line. To do this, double-click the item and you’ll get a window with various options. We’re most interested in the delay setting, which you can specify in hours:minutes:seconds. It’s important that Java polls the mothership to check for updates, but not when you first boot your PC, so we set ours to 30 minutes after the machine boots.

You can do the same for other applications that you feel should be forced to stand in line with such plebes as the
Acrobat Assistant. Once you’ve set up the priorities, you can click the inverted red triangle icon. Select the graphical version if you want to see a display of the countdown before apps are launched, or simply choose the invisible version so it doesn’t get in your face. Reboot and see if the delay order you created works for you or not, and tune to your liking.

14. Ditto

The cut, copy, and paste shortcuts are the most mashed keys on the PC, but sadly, the Ctrl+
function only buffers a single item. Ditto is like Windows Clipboard on steroids. Capable of storing hundreds of copy and paste entries as well as pasting HTML as text (handy when copying and pasting from your browser to Word), the app is one of those little things that make Windows XP (sorry, no Vista support) better. Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ditto-cp/.

15. Tweak It

Windows XP power users should be familiar with Microsoft’s collection of PowerToys, which let you greatly increase Windows XP’s capabilities. Our favorites include Tweak UI for changing dozens of options, from how fast the menus respond to whether to put the My Documents folder or My Computer icon first on the desktop.

Oddly, Microsoft has made no such applets for its current OS, Windows Vista, but as Yoda said, “There is another….”
TweakVI from Totalidea.com contains a wealth of handy little tweaks for Vista. You can change the OEM contact info for Windows, vary the level of transparency, sort the Start menu, shorten the Start menu lag, add or remove icons from the desktop, order Vista to keep as much data in RAM instead of paging it out to the hard disk, etc. There are also a few cache optimization checkboxes for certain CPUs, but we didn’t find any performance boost from them. We’re more interested in the app’s ability to change those annoying little things like which icon appears in the upper-left side of the screen.

16. Defrag Your Drive

We know, being told to defragment your hard drive is about useful as telling you to brush your teeth at least twice a day (and after meals.) It’s not exactly the latest in PC performance tips but it’s a basic step that everyone should take on occasion.
Windows XP’s defragger provides a good base level of defragmentation, but under very heavy fragmentation and with limited space, it doesn’t cut the mustard. Neither do two popular free defraggers, in our experience: Auslogics Defrag (http://auslogics.com) and IOBit’s Smart Defrag (www.iobit.com). For extreme fragmentation issues, Diskeeper 2009 (www.diskeeper.com) aced the three other options and fully defragged our drive. Not everyone will have the fragmentation issues we did, but if you do, sometimes you gotta pay to get the job done.

Windows Vista is a different story. We previously did some testing with Vista’s defragmentation tool and found that it works surprisingly well, even though it’s as communicative as a Trappist monk. Vista quietly works in the background to defragment the drive during downtime but it has one weakness that will irk many users: It won’t defragment files larger than 64MB.

Why not? Microsoft said its tests show that fragments larger than 64MB have a minimal impact on disk access and it’s just not worth spending the disk and CPU cycles to do it. Still, there are times when you will want a full defrag, such as with video, where having pieces of your video spread all over the disk platter could very well impact performance. Fortunately, there’s a way around this. You can order Vista to perform a full defragmentation. You do this by going to Start, typing CMD, right-clicking the Cmd.exe app that it finds, and selecting “Launch as administrator.” Now type defrag c: -v –w. The –v option is for verbose and –w is for full defragmentation. Those are the basics you need to know; to see all of the available options, type defrag /? into the command line.

17. Overclock Your GPU

GPU overclocking isn’t for the faint of heart and doesn’t always give you significant results. That’s because most GPUs, especially high-end ones, are sorted at the manufacturer, so you can bet a bucket of KFC Original spicy thighs and legs that the majority of parts capable of running at hyper-clocked speeds are already being sold that way.

Still, why not take what you can get? As with CPUs, GPU overclocking poses the threat of breakage, but at least you don’t lose data—you just might have to crank the clocks back down, or worse, replace the card.

One of the most popular tools for GPU overclocking today is RivaTuner (www.guru3d.com). Download and install it. You’ll also want to run the latest reference drivers from either Nvidia or ATI before continuing. After you’ve started RivaTuner, select the Customize option in the Main tab and select Low-Level System Settings. Check “Enable driver-level hardware overclocking.” For Nvidia cards, there’s a drop-down menu that lets you set the standard 2D, low-power 3D, and performance 3D. Select performance 3D. Begin increasing the clock speeds of the core clock, which will also increase the clock speeds of the shader clock. Bump up the memory clock, as well. How far you can go will depend on your card and the cooling in your system. Click Apply and fire up a game you like and play for a bit. Look for visual artifacts such as corruption of textures. This will indicate that you’re on the edge of stability. Go back to RivaTuner and back it down a bit and click Apply. Rinse and repeat. For ATI cards, it’s a bit simpler with RivaTuner; simply select your core speed and memory speed overclocks and proceed with the same methods.

Once you’re at a stable speed, you can check the “Apply overclocking at Windows Startup” checkbox. This will overclock your card whenever you start Windows. Again, the bang-for-the-buck proposition of GPU overclocking is debatable, but for some folks, every penny and megahertz counts.

18. Optimize Your RAM

If you paid the kid next store to build your PC, do you really know if he or she built it the right way? One very common mistake is to misconfigure the RAM modules. Phenom II and Core 2 CPUs both support dual-channel modes for the highest bandwidth, while the new Core i7 supports tri-channel mode. The easiest way to tell what mode you’re in is to download CPU-Z (www.cpuid.com). Decompress it and launch the executable. Click the Memory tab. Under Channels # it should list Dual or Triple. If it lists Single and you’ve got two or more DIMMs installed, they’re misconfigured on the motherboard. (If you have only one DIMM, you’ll need another stick of RAM to run in dual mode.)

Go to the SPD tab. You should see a drop-down menu labeled Slot #. It will give you information about every DIMM installed on your PC and their respective slots. To properly configure your RAM, refer to your motherboard manual and read the section on which slots to put your RAM in for dual (or triple) mode, power down your machine, unplug it from the wall, and rearrange the memory modules. Note, this likely won’t give you any kick-in-the-pants kind of performance boost, as the large on-die cache of most new CPUs ameliorate memory-bandwidth issues, but on an older CPU, such as the Pentium 4, going to dual mode would add as much as 10 percent in bandwidth-intensive applications.

You’ll also want to make sure your RAM is running at the correct speed. Most boards will properly configure RAM, but some won’t. Again, go to CPU-Z, click the Memory tab, and look at the DRAM Frequency. This shows the base clock speed. To compute the DDR/DDR2/DDR3 speed, double the number shown. For example, 333MHz is DDR2/667. If you were expecting your RAM to be set at DDR2/800 speeds, you’ll have to reboot, go into the BIOS by hitting DEL, F1, or F2 during boot, and look for a section that will let you specify the memory speed.

19. Change Your Boot Order

Even if you boot your PC just once a day, you can save six or eight seconds of time spent waiting by changing the boot order of the devices in your machine. Instead of the PC checking on an old floppy drive or CD drive to see if it can or should boot from those devices, it will go straight to your hard drive.

To do this, go into the BIOS (hit DEL, F1, or F2 during boot) and search for the boot order. It’s usually plainly labeled as “Boot” or the like. Make the primary hard drive that the OS resides on the first thing to boot. Now, just relish the thought of what you can do with the time you save.

20. The Mother of All Upgrades: Overclock Your CPU

Overclocking your CPU is the surest way to gain PC performance for free — although it comes at a risk

Have you seen this forum post: “There’s a secret Microsoft doesn’t want you to know. The company intentionally slows down the OS at the request of Intel, AMD, and Cyrix so the chip companies can sell faster CPUs. But by adding the setting PC = “go fast” to the speed.ini file, you can increase the speed of your PC by 1,000 percent!!!”?

That’s a crock of Bantha dung. Very few OS tweaks ever guarantee performance gains for everyone. There’s only one guaranteed performance enhancer: CPU overclocking.

It’s dangerous, could corrupt your data, and can kill hardware, but it’s the only way to get “free” performance in just about every application you use. Fortunately, modern CPUs almost always offer some overclocking capability.

Even if you didn’t buy into overclocking previously, you may be more inclined now because a) your system is older and you’re not as protective of it, and b) you just plain don’t have the cash to get performance in a safer way.

CPU overclocking runs the gamut from hyper-complex to stupid-easy. The easiest way to get your feet wet is to use the built-in overclocking tool on your motherboard. Any MSI, Asus, or Gigabyte board worth its salt will include an overclocking applet that runs in Windows. More advanced boards will also feature it in the BIOS.

If your board doesn’t have an app you can use, you can still overclock it from the BIOS (unless you have a standard cheapie PC from HP, Dell, or Gateway, which prevent any form of overclocking).

Go into the BIOS by pressing the DEL, F1, or F2 key during boot. You should be in a DOS-like text environment. Since 95 percent of the world uses locked CPUs, there’s only one way to increase the proc’s clock speed: Pump up the front-side bus (Core 2 / Celeron / Pentium / Pentium 4), the base clock (Core i7), or the CPU Frequency clock (Athlon 64 / Sempron / Phenom / Phenom II).

Find the setting for the FSB / bclock / CPU clock in your BIOS and begin increasing it. Start by overclocking the CPU by around five percent. Remember, the clock speed of the CPU is generated by multiplying the FSB / bclock / CPU clock by the multiplier. For example, an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 has a fixed multiplier of 7.5. This is multiplied by the base clock of the front-side bus, which is 333MHz for an overall speed of 2,500MHz, or 2.5GHz. You cannot change the 7.5, but you can increase the 333. To get a five percent clock boost, you would need to increase the front-side bus to about 350MHz. To get a 10 percent clock bump, you would need to increase it to about 366MHz. The same basic overclocking method applies to Phenom II and Core i7.

How much performance gain should you expect? There’s no guarantee, but it’s safe to say you should be able to gain five percent at a minimum, with 10 percent quite attainable on stock equipment, and many folks reporting much higher speeds. Remember, this is not for the faint of heart, but you will achieve real performance gains in anything that’s limited
by your CPU.

There’s obviously a lot more to overclocking. For details, check out our own Core i7 overclocking guide here.

For other CPUs check out this guide.

21. Use the Cloud

By now, you’d have to be living in a spider hole to not have heard about the “cloud”—a term for sharing resources across the
Internet. There are two really great things about this latest brand of computing hype—it’s free for the most part and some of it is actually very useful. To wit: Here are three free cloud services that can enhance your computing experience.

Dropbox

This handy app lets you store and share files online. With a client installed on your PC, you create a dropbox, to which you can drag and drop files you want shared and synced with other machines. This may seem no different than Yahoo’s failed Briefcase, but it’s far easier to use. It runs in the system tray. Double-clicking it opens a traditional Windows folder where you store files that you can access remotely very easily. The freebie account gives you 2GB. For $10 a month or $99 a year, you get up to 50GB.

Zoho

Think of Zoho as a good version of Google Docs. You get a free browser-based spreadsheet app, word processor, and presentation app, plus a ton of other productivity tools that will probably do just about everything a normal civilian would need. You get 1GB to store your docs online for free. To get 5GB costs about $3 a month, but given the tiny size of office document files, it’s unlikely you’d need that much room.

Quake Live

We can still remember being agape over the system specs required to get a decent frame rate out of Quake III Arena. These days, you can get the same game experience in your browser. Believe it or not, this free version of Q3A plays and feels much like the original.

For our guide on utilizing the cloud, click here!

20 Windows 7 Tweaks & Tips – Every Secret Uncovered to Date

Norman Chan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:00:00 -0600

It's been over a week since the Windows 7 Beta was released to the public. You've read our initial impressions and even followed our guide to installing the OS using a USB key. So what now? Microsoft's post-Vista Windows experience is more than the obvious Taskbar and user interface updates; there are plenty of hidden features and shortcuts that haven't been advertised. But fear not: we've compiled a list of every known Windows 7 tweak and secret. Follow these 20 tricks to make the most out of this beta and become a Windows 7 power user.

Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

Let's kick off with keyboard shortcuts – the first thing every power user must memorize with working with a new operating system. In Windows 7, we’ve uncovered several new sets of essential time-saving shortcuts that will make your mouse jealous with neglect.

Alt + P

In Windows Explorer, activate an additional file preview pane to the right side of the window with this new shortcut. This panel is great for previewing images in your photos directory.

Windows + + (plus key)

Windows + - (minus key)

Pressing the Windows and plus or minus keys activates the Magnifier, which lets you zoom in on the entire desktop or open a rectangular magnifying lens to zoom in and out of parts of your screen. You can customize the Magnifier options to follow your mouse pointer or keyboard cursor. Keep in mind that so far, the Magnifier only works when Aero desktop is enabled.

Windows + Up

Windows + Down

If a window is not maximized, pressing Windows + Up will fill it to your screen. Windows + Down will minimize that active window. Unfortunately, pressing Windows + Up again while a window is minimized won’t return it to its former state.

Windows + Shift + Up

Similar to the shortcut above, hitting these three keys while a window is active will stretch it vertically to the maximum desktop height. The width of the window will however stay the same. Pressing Windows + Down will restore it to its previous size.

Windows + Left

Windows + Right

One of the new features of Windows 7 is the ability to automatically make a window fill up half of your screen by dragging to the left or right. This pair of shortcuts performs the same function without your mouse. Once a window is fixed to one side of the screen, you can repeat the shortcut to flip it to the other side. This is useful if you’re extending a desktop across multiple monitors, which prevents you from executing this trick with a mouse.

Windows + Home

This shortcut performs a similar function to hovering over a window’s peek menu thumbnail in the Taskbar. The active window will stay on your desktop while every other open application is minimized. Pressing this shortcut again will restore all the other windows.

Windows + E

Automatically opens up a new Explorer window to show your Libraries folder.

Windows + P

Manage your multiple-monitor more efficiently with this handy shortcut. Windows + P opens up a small overlay that lets you configure a second display or projector. You can switch from a single monitor to dual-display in either mirror or extend desktop mode.

Windows + Shift + Left

Windows + Shift + Right

If you are using two or more displays (and who isn’t, these days?), memorize this shortcut to easily move a window from one screen to the other. The window retains its size and relative position on the new screen, which his useful when working with multiple documents. Utilize that real estate!

Windows + [Number]

Programs (and new instances) pinned to your Taskbar can be launched by hitting Windows and the number corresponding to its placement on the Taskbar. Windows + 1, for example, launches the first application, while Windows + 4 will launch the fourth. We realize that this is actually one key-press more than just clicking the icon with your mouse, but it saves your hand the trouble of leaving the comfort of the keyboard.

Windows + T

Like Alt + Tab (still our all time favorite Windows specific shortcut), Windows + T cycles through your open programs via the Taskbar’s peek menu.

Windows + Space

This combo performs the same function as moving your mouse to the bottom right of the Taskbar. It makes every active window transparent so you can view your desktop. The windows only remain transparent as long as you’re holding down the Windows key.

Ctrl + Shift + Click

Hold down Ctrl and Shift while launching an application from the Taskbar or start menu to launch it with full administrative rights.

Ctrl + Click

Hold down Ctrl while repeatedly clicking a program icon in the Taskbar will toggle between the instances of that application, like multiple Firefox windows (though not browser tabs).

Calibrate Text Rendering and Color

The first thing you need to do after a clean install of Windows 7 on a laptop is to tune and calibrate CleartType text and Display Color. Windows 7 includes two built-in wizards that run you through the entire process, pain free.

Launch ClearType Text Tuning by typing “cttune” in the Start Menu search field and opening the search result. You’ll go through a brief series of steps that asks you to identify the best-looking text rendering method.

For Display Color Calibration – very useful if you’re using Windows 7 with a projector or large-screen LCD – search and launch “dccw” from the Start Menu. It’ll run you through a series of pages where you can adjust the gamma, brightness, contrast, and color of the screen to make images look their best.

Better Font Management and a New Graceful Font

Font management is much improved in Windows 7. Gone is the “Add Fonts” dialog , replaced with additional functionality in the Fonts folder. First, the folder shows font previews in each font file’s icon (viewed with Large or Extra Large icons). Fonts from a single set will no longer show up as different fonts and are now combined as a single family (which can be expanded by double clicking the icon). You can also toggle fonts on and off by right clicking a font icon and selected the “hide” option. This will prevent applications from loading the font (and therefore save memory), but keep the file retained in the Font folder.

A new font called Gabriola also comes bundled with Windows 7, which takes advantage of the new OpenType and DirectWrite (Direct2D) rendering.

The Gaming Grotto is a Less Ghetto

One of our biggest pet peeves of Windows Vista is the Games Folder, which we not-so-affectionately refer to as the Gaming Grotto. Games for Windows titles and other game shortcuts would automatically install to this directory, which we could only access with a Start Menu shortcut. The concept wasn’t bad except for the fact that it prevented us from starting a game up from the Start Menu search bar. We could call up any other program by typing its name in the Start Menu field except the games installed to the Games Folder. Fortunately, this oversight is fixed in Windows 7.

Become More Worldly with Hidden Wallpapers

Windows 7 Beta comes with the Betta fish as its default desktop wallpaper, but it also includes six desktop backgrounds catered to your region (as identified when you first installed the OS). US users, for example, get six 1900x1200 images showing off famous National Parks and beaches. The available wallpapers for other regions are still included in a hidden folder.

To access these international wallpapers, bring up the Start Menu search bar and type “Globalization”. The only result should be a folder located in the main Windows directory. You should only be able to see “ELS and “Sorting” folders here so far. Next, search for “MCT” in the top right search bar. This will display five new unindexed folders, each corresponding to a different global region. Browse these folders for extra themes and wallpapers!

Take Control of UAC

Despite good intentions, User Account Control pop-ups were one of the most annoying aspects of Vista, and a feature that most of us immediately disabled after a clean install. UAC in Windows 7 displays fewer warnings, but you can also fine-tune its notification habits by launching the UAC Settings from the start menu. Just type “UAC” in the Start Menu search field and click the result. We find that setting just above “Never notify” gives a comfortable balance between mindful security and incessant nagging.

Calculate your Mortgage and Other Maths Tricks

Wordpad and Paint aren’t the only upgraded programs in Windows 7. The reliable Calculator applet has been beefed up to do more than just basic arithmetic. In Vista, the Calculator had Standard and Scientific modes. Now, you can toggle between Standard, Scientific, Programmer, and even Statistics modes.

In addition, the Options menu lets you pull out many new automated conversation tools, such has Unit Conversion (ie. Angles, Temperature, Velocity, or Volume) and Date Calculation (calculate the difference between two dates). More templates give you the ability to crunch Gas Mileage, Lease, and even Mortgage estimates based on any variables you input.

Track Your Actions with Problem Steps Recorder

The primary reason for releasing the Windows 7 Beta was for Microsoft’s developers to get feedback from users. (Notice the glaring Send Feedback link at the top of every window?) In addition, the devs have built in a diagnostic tool called Problem Steps Recorder that combines screen captures with mouse tracking to record your actions. You can launch this program from the Start Menu by typing “psr.exe” in the search field.

Hit the Record button and Problem Steps Recorder starts tracking your mouse and keyboard input while taking screenshots that correspond with each new action. Stop recording and your session is saved to an HTML slide show recreating your steps, in which you can add comments and annotations. It’s particularly useful if you need to create a tutorial for a computer-illiterate relative.

Explore from “My Computer”

Windows Explorer’s default landing folder is the Libraries directory, but some of us are more comfortable with using “My Computer” as the default node, especially if we use multiple hard drives and external storage devices.

To change the default node, find Windows Explorer in the Start Menu by typing “explorer” in the Start Menu search field and right click the first result. Select “Properties”. Under the Shortcut tab, the Target location should read: %SystemRoot% and the Target should be: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe

Paste the following in the Target field: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

New instances of Explorer will open up to “My Computer”. You’ll need to unpin and replace the existing Explorer shortcut from the Taskbar to complete the transition. Just right-click the icon, hit, “Unpin this program from the taskbar” to remove it, and then drag Explorer from the Start Menu back into place.

Burn, Baby, Burn

No more messing around with malware-infected free burning software – Windows 7 comes loaded with DVD and CD ISO burning software. Double-click your image file and Windows will start a tiny program window to help burn your disc. It’s a barebones app, but it works!

Reveal All of Your Drives

If you use built-in memory card readers in a 3.5” drive bay or on your Dell Monitor, empty memory card slots will not show up as drives in My Computer. But that doesn’t mean they’re not still there! To reveal hidden memory card slots, open up My Computer. Press Alt to show the toolbar at the top of the screen, and go to Folder Options under Tools. Hit the View tab and uncheck the “Hide empty drives in the Computer folder” option.

Arrange Your Taskbar (System Tray, Too)

The programs that you pin to your Taskbar can be moved around to any order you want, whether they’re just shortcut icons or actually active applications. We recommend moving frequently used programs and folders to the front of the stack, so it’ll be easily to launch them with the aforementioned Windows + [number] shortcut. The Taskbar, if unlocked, can also be dragged to latch to the left, right, or even top of your desktop. Windows 7 improves side-docked Taskbar support with better gradient rendering and shortcut support. It really works well if you’re using a widescreen monitor.

Just as the Taskbar icons can be rearranged at will, the icons in the System Tray (actually called Notification Area) can be dragged and set to any order as well. Hidden Icons can be dragged back into view, and you can hide icons by dropping them into the Hidden Icon well – which is easier than working through the Notification Area Customization menu.

Bring Quick Launch Back from the Dead

The Quick Launch is superfluous with the presence of the updated Taskbar, but you can still bring it back with the following steps:

•   Right-click the Taskbar, hover over Toolbars, and select New Toolbar.
•   In the Folder selection field at the bottom, enter the following string:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
•   Turn off the “lock the Taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Disable “Show Text” and “Show Title” and set the view option to “Small Icons”.
•   Drag the divider to rearrange the toolbar order to put Quick Launch where you want it, and then right-click the Taskbar to lock it again.

Cling to Vista’s Taskbar

Let’s start with the bad news: Windows 7 eliminates the option to use the classic grey Windows 2000-style Taskbar. You’re also committed to the modern version of the Start Menu. But the good news is that you can still tweak the Taskbar to make it run like it did in Windows Vista – replacing the program icons with full names of each open app.

Right-click the Taskbar and hit properties. Check the “use small icons” box and select “combine when Taskbar is full” from the dropdown menu under Taskbar buttons. You still get the peekview thumbnail feature of the Taskbar, and inactive program remain as single icons, but opened programs will display their full names. Combine this with the old-school Quick Launch toolbar to complete the Vista illusion.

Banish Programs to the System Tray

All active programs show up as icons on the Taskbar, whether you want them to or not. While this is useful for web browsing or word processing, your taskbar can get cluttered up with icons you would normally expect to be hidden away, like for Steam or a chat client. You can keep active instances of these programs hidden away in the System Tray/Notification Area by right-clicking their shortcuts, navigating to the Compatibility tab, and selecting “Windows Vista” under the Compatibility Mode drop-down menu. This only works for programs that would previously hide away from the Taskbar in Vista.

Accelerate your Start Menu

The Start Menu hasn’t changed much from Vista, but there are some notable improvements. The default power button is thankfully changed to Shut Down the system, as opposed to Hibernation, as it was in Vista. This can be changed to do other actions from the Start Menu Properties menu.

Additional customization brings Videos and Recorded TV as links or menus to the right side of the Start Menu, next to your Documents, Music, and Games. Feel free to mess around the Customization options since you can always return to the default Start Menu settings by clicking the “default” button at the bottom.

Fix MP3 Bug

There’s a reason this Windows 7 release is a Beta. The versions of Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player that shipped with the OS have a nasty bug that may damage your MP3 files. By default, Windows Media Player 12 enables a feature that auto fills-in missing metadata on your imported music files, which includes large album art. But filling in this metadata on files that already have large headers will permanently cut away a few seconds of audio from the beginning of the track. Microsoft offers a hotfix on this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961367 in addition to a workaround if you don’t want to install the fix:

Workarounds for the MP3 file corruption issue

If you do not apply this update, the most effective workaround is to set the properties of all MP3 files to read-only on local hard disks, removable drives, and network shares that can be accessed by Windows 7 Beta computers. To do this, follow these steps:
1.   In Windows Explorer, select and right-click your MP3 files, and then click Properties.
2.   On the General tab, click to select the Read-only check box.
3.   We recommend that you back up all the MP3 files before you use Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
A simpler but less complete workaround is to disable metadata automatic updates in Windows Media Player by setting the Windows Media Player options. To do this, follow these steps:
1.   On the Tools menu, click Options.
2.   On the Library tab, click to clear the Retrieve additional information from the Internet check box and the Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files check box.
3.   Click OK.

A possible solution to the MP3 file corruption issue

If some of your MP3 files have already been affected, you might be able to restore the corrupted MP3 files to their pre-edit status. To do this, follow these steps:
1. In Windows Explorer, right-click a corrupted MP3 file, and then click Properties.
2. On the Previous Version tab, select an earlier version in the File Versions list, and then click Restore. If multiple edits were performed, you may have to revert to the oldest version that is available.

A Welcome Gesture

Windows 7 natively supports touchscreen devices and has incorporated a gesture-based system to navigate the desktop with a stylus. Lucky for you, one of these gestures also works with a mouse. Instead of right-clicking a Taskbar icon to access its Jump List (the new program-specific menu that replaces the right-click context menu), you can hold left-click and drag upwards to smoothly call it up. Clicking and dragging down in the Internet Explorer address bar will also unveil your browser history and related favorites bookmarks. Some of the staff here found this especially useful when running Windows 7 on their Macbook Pros (*cough* Will Smith *cough*).

Ctrl + N is so 1995

We’ve already shown you a new way to open new instances of applications on the Taskbar by using the Windows + [number] keyboard shortcut. There are two additional shortcuts to popping open a new window too. You can click the Taskbar icon with your middle mouse button (which also works to launch the app if it isn’t open already), or hold down Shift while clicking the icon with the left mouse button.

Keep in mind that this only works with programs that allow multiple instances, like web browsers. It won’t work with the default Explorer shortcut, since you can only open another instance of Explorer when diving into a new folder (the Explorer shortcut always points to Libraries).

Pin-Up Your Favorites

Explorer’s Jump List shows your seven most frequently visited folders, but you can manually bookmark some favorites to the top of the list by pinning folder locations. Just hold right-click on any folder, either on your desktop or from an open instance of Explorer, and drag that folder icon to the Explorer shortcut on the Taskbar. You’ll see a message that reads “Pin to Windows Explorer” before you release the mouse button. The folder will appear under a “Pinned” section of the Jump List, and you can remove it by clicking the “Unpin from this list” icon on the right side of the panel.

More Resources

Eager for more Windows 7 tricks? Microsoft offers several resources for Windows 7 Beta support. We recommend browsing through TechNet for essential downloads and troubleshooting tips, as well as the official Windows 7 discussion forums.

Maximum PC Essentials: Ultimate BIOS Tweaking Guide

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:00:00 -0500

When man first booted the PC, he saw the BIOS screen: a jumble of monochromatic numbers that made about as much sense as the binary language of load lifters. Sadly, not much about the BIOS has changed since the DeLorean and skinny ties were cool. Decades later, in our modern, visual-based world, we’re still greeted with a screen full of text from machines 1,000 times faster than those that were around when the ol’ BIOS was born.

Most PC lightweights simply ignore the BIOS and wait for their OSes to take over. Power users, however, know that the BIOS can be a friendly and rewarding place to go spelunking.

So just what the hell is the BIOS? Short for Basic Input Output System, the BIOS is a tiny bit of software embedded in your motherboard that gets executed when your PC is turned on. The BIOS is responsible for chores such as sizing up the amount of available RAM, detecting the hard drives, and setting the CPU speed. Once the system house-cleaning is done, the BIOS boots the OS from the hard drive and hands over control.

Even though there are only two BIOS makers for consumer desktops today, AMI and Award/Phoenix, a multitude of BIOS variants exists. In fact, a Gigabyte board using an Award BIOS can bear little resemblance to an Asus board using an Award BIOS.

In motherboards designed for enthusiasts, board makers typically unmask as many controls as possible. Unfortunately, the dizzying array of options includes both safe and unsafe tweaks. While some tweaks will just leave you with a system that refuses to boot, others can do long-term harm.

So if you feel the least bit uneasy about even changing the boot order of your rig’s drives, you may not want to muck around too much in the BIOS. If, however, you’re comfortable with the prospect of a little trial and error, it’s time you dive in and discover the many secrets your BIOS holds.

How do you get into your BIOS? Reboot the system and then hit DEL, F1, or F2 within a few seconds of the machine POSTing. If your machine has a splash screen that doesn’t show anything, try hitting Escape, which should reveal the ugly DOS-looking screen underneath. Only Intel-branded boards still require jumpers to be thrown to access all of the BIOS features. Power down, look for the BIOS Setup Configuration Jumper, set it to 2-3, and power up.

Tweaking Your Memory

The days of just selecting your RAM speed are gone. A modern BIOS exposes enough RAM controls to give even the most seasoned hobbyist a headache. For the die-hard enthusiast though, those knobs and switches also mean something good: control.

Timing Is Everything

Poke around the BIOS of a budget board or an OEM machine and you’ll find it as easy to understand as “The Pet Goat.” Heck, even an enthusiast board from three years ago could be understood by most advanced users, as the memory options were as simple as DDR333 or DDR400. Today, we’re not even sure that the engineers who write BIOSes fully understand all of the options available. Take, for example, DQS Drive Strength or Process On-die Term B. Huh? Both actually relate to the ability to tweak and tune your RAM to higher frequencies, but for the most part, you can ignore them unless you really want to spend an entire afternoon setting, crashing, and resetting your machine.

Fortunately, the fundamentals are still as valid today as they were a couple of years ago: Column Access Strobe Latency (tCL), Row Access Strobe to Column Access Strobe Delay (tRCD), Row Access Strobe Precharge (tRP), Row Access Strobe Precharge and Precharge Delay (tRAS), and Command Rate or Command Per Clock (CMD). In the BIOS, you’re able to tweak the timing for each of these settings to affect RAM performance.

If you think of RAM as a collection of books in a public library, each timing setting relates to an element of the librarian fulfilling your request for a particular tome. The timing is described in clock cycles, so a lower number equals a faster time.

The tRCD setting, for example, describes how much time the librarian has to get to a certain row on a shelving column. Set it too low, and she can’t get to the row where your desired book resides.

Say she reaches the row; the tRAS determines the time the librarian can linger there finding your book. tRP is how much time the librarian has to get from the row she was at to the bottom of the ladder.

tCL is how much time she has to move between the different shelves of books. Setting it too low would be like asking her to push a 30-foot rolling ladder 100 yards in 2 seconds. tRAS is basically how much time the overall operation takes to climb the ladder, get the book, and get off the ladder.

CMD describes the amount of time between one request and the next.

You often have to set performance RAM manually for it to hit its rated speed and timing.

There are two approaches to setting these values: The first is to match them with the timings on your RAM (assuming your RAM provides those settings—commodity RAM doesn’t always list specs). If you paid extra for those fancy high-performance modules, you’re getting more than just a shiny aluminum heat spreader, you’re also getting RAM that’s been tested and binned to run at optimal speeds. If you peer at the label of most enthusiast RAM, you’ll see timing settings of 5-5-5-15-2T.

Translated for your BIOS, that means a tCL of 5, a tRCD of 5, a tRP of 5, a tRAS of 15, and a CMD of 2T. The other method is to let the chipset determine the settings automatically. For example, you could enable SLI memory mode on nForce boards, which would give you optimum settings if the modules support Nvidia’s Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP). Intel has a similar feature call XMP.

There’s more to getting your high-performance RAM to run at its rated speed though. The RAM manufacturer specs for timing require the RAM to run at its rated clock speed (see below) and at a certain voltage (see page 62).

Watching the Clock

Nvidia’s SLI Memory (also called EPP and EPP 2.0) as well as Intel’s XMP profiles
let the BIOS set many of the overclocking modes for you automatically.

To make sure your RAM is set to the correct clock speed in the BIOS, you’ll need to first know your RAM’s overall bandwidth rating. If it’s expressed as PC3200 or PC6400, you can find out your RAM’s clock speed by dividing by eight. So 3200 becomes 400, or 400MHz, and 6400 becomes 800, or 800MHz. Most memory vendors will actually list the module’s overall bandwidth—say, PC8500—along with the rated clock speed—1066MHz, in this case. When it comes to manually setting your RAM’s clock speed in the BIOS, you’ll find the process differs among chipset vendors. On Intel chipsets, where the memory controller is still in the chipset and RAM is tied to the front-side bus, it gets a bit confusing: If you overclock your CPU’s front-side bus, your RAM’s clock speed will be automatically overclocked along with it. This could cause problems if the RAM’s speed is set beyond its rating. (See the North Bridge Strap section on this page to learn how to compensate for this issue.)

With Nvidia’s nForce series chipsets, you can actually unlink the FSB from the RAM. This lets you independently set the clock speed for the front-side bus to, say, 1066MHz, and the RAM to 800MHz. The nForce also lets you run the two in linked mode using traditional ratios of 1:1, 5:4, 3:2, and sync. These set the RAM speed based on a ratio related to the speed of the front-side bus. If you’re running a 1066MHz FSB CPU and a 1:1 ratio, your RAM would run at 1066. At 5:4, the RAM is 853, and at 3:2 it’s 711. Sync would set the RAM at 533. Various vendors pitch linked mode as the best way to set RAM, but we’ve come to settle on getting the highest reliable front-side bus speed with the RAM speed that works best for you. Remember:

Just because your RAM is rated to run at, say, 1100MHz, doesn’t guarantee best results at that speed. Since the interaction between memory, chipset, and CPU will greatly depend on what you’re doing, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Get out the game or application you use the most and tweak the memory settings until you find the optimal solution.

Next: Unstrapping your RAM from your FSB

The North Bridge Strap

By unlocking the FSB from the RAM, you can set the RAM speed and FSB to your liking.

Fairly new to Intel-chipset boards is a feature known generically as the north bridge strap—Asus calls it the FSB Strap to Northbridge and Gigabyte calls it the System Memory Multiplier—and it can throw us old-timers for a loop. The north bridge is actually its own little processor, which, on Intel chipsets, is tied, or “strapped,” to the front-side bus and memory. It’s possible to change the speed of the strap—both Asus and Gigabyte, for example, let you manually select strap speeds from 200MHz to 400MHz.

There are two practical uses for this. First, by manually setting the speed of the north bridge strap, you can change the memory clock speeds available on the board. As mentioned above, simply increasing the front-side bus speed will automatically increase the speed of the memory—perhaps far beyond what your module is rated for. By notching the strap down, you can get your RAM operating within spec while leaving the FSB at its overclocked state. Why not just let you pick the RAM speed you want and be done with it? The theory is that the straps are already preconfigured to offer the best performance ratios, which are preferable to those you set on your own.

Selecting a lower strap but the same RAM speed may help you push the front-side bus speed higher during an overclocking session.

The second purpose of the strap: The internal clock in the north bridge will gradually tick up as you increase the front-side bus of your system. It’s somewhat similar to the gear ratios in a car. As you rev up the front-side-bus speed, the rpms of the north bridge can get out of spec and cause a crash. The strap will adjust the speed of the north bridge clock independent of the FSB. The general rule of thumb for overclockers is to use the lowest strap available that runs your RAM at the speed you need. This should enable higher front-side bus overclocks.

The upshot of this is to run in auto mode if you’re not overclocking and leave it to the board engineers. If, however, you are overclocking and seemingly hitting a front-side bus wall that no amount of voltage will address, try lowering the north bridge strap to see if you can push the FSB even higher.

Ganged Activity

If you’re an AMD user and you’re confused by all this north bridge strap stuff, you can just ignore it. Since Phenom CPUs feature the memory controller directly in the CPU core, there is no memory controller strap to futz with. What is confusing is the ganged or unganged mode available in Phenom boards. Phenom CPUs feature two separate memory controllers that can be run ganged or unganged. Generally, you’ll want to run as unganged to let the controllers operate independently for best performance.

Out of the Skew

Tweaking the skew for RAM lets you compensate for the minute signal distortion that occurs with high-speed parallel interfaces.

Some motherboards have begun offering the ability to tweak the “clock skew” for RAM. In a nutshell, clock skew is the variation in speed of a module’s individual signal paths to the memory controller. Skew is the result of the signal distortion caused by the traces in the motherboard, the cleanliness of the power going to the board, and the RAM that’s in use.

Tweaking the skew settings can help increase stability when you’re pushing the chipset and RAM to its limits by overclocking. It’s a game of trial and error with skew settings, but if you’ve got the time and energy, it could help you achieve the few extra megahertz you were hoping to get out of your system—just be ready to roll up your sleeves and run the POST, crash, reset, POST routine. If you’re not overclocking, however, you can just ignore these timings.

Beyond the BIOS: Exploring the Pre-OS Environment

When the BIOS is finished prepping the hardware, it doesn’t necessarily have to hand control over to the OS. Instead, many companies are now inserting a pre-OS, or preboot, environment on their boards that the PC can boot to before the OS.

These environments are stored on small bits of flash RAM embedded on the motherboard and can contain a basic Internet browser, Skype client, and even the ability to access your Outlook email and contacts. Although referred to as a pre-OS, the majority of these environments are embedded Linux.

The feature has long been found in notebooks, but it’s now migrating to desktop motherboards. Currently, Asus is the primary adopter of the pre-OS and has it in many of its motherboards. In our experience, it’s a novelty that can occasionally be useful—say, for example, you need information from the Internet faster than you can wait for the OS to load. With Asus’s ExpressGate pre-OS you can be in a browser in one minute instead of five. Granted, that’s a rare need, but we can see a pre-OS browser being useful for, say, downloading utilities, drivers, or fixes to a broken or infected OS on the hard disk—though currently, none of the implementations we’ve seen allows you to save files to your machine.

Next: CPU Tweaks

CPU Tweaks

There's more to prepping a rig for a new CPU than just setting the FSB

Power Struggle

If you’re used to poking around the BIOS, you don’t need to be told that the CPU’s overall clock speed is determined by multiplying the CPU’s clock multiplier by the front-side bus. In other words, the overall clock speed of a CPU with an 8x multiplier and a front-side bus of 400 is 3200MHz.

What you might not know is the purpose of some of the more obscure CPU-related BIOS settings. Both C1E and EIST relate to power-saving techniques employed by Intel CPUs. EIST, or Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, is an offshoot of the notebook SpeedStep feature that lowers the CPU speed when it’s not under heavy use. C1E is an enhanced halt state that cuts the clock multiplier in the CPU to a preset value when the OS tells the chip that it has no work for it. Each has pros and cons. EIST is known for greater granularity, ramping up and down depending on load, but it does require driver support in the OS to manage it. Critics say EIST can actually reduce performance since it’s designed to operate the CPU at lower speeds whenever it’s not running at 100 percent capacity. The C1E state is issued by the OS when it’s idle, so C1E doesn’t require quite as much management. But some overclockers prefer to disable C1E since it can interfere with overclocks. We’ve seen older boards feature settings for both, but in our experience, newer chipsets from Intel contain settings only for C1E. Flipping off the features will force the CPU to always run at its maximum clock speed. Phenoms have similar features with Cool’n’Quiet (akin to EIST) and now C1E support. While you’re not supposed to, we’ve run with both settings on without issues, but your mileage may vary.

New CPUs include thermal sensors that slow down the CPU when it overheats. If you’d rather have your machine bluescreen instead of slow down (perhaps for stress testing), you can switch CPU Thermal Control in the BIOS to Off. NForce chipsets actually let you select between lowering the CPU clock speed, or cutting the multiplier and voltage, or both. Since we’d rather lose performance than outright crash, we normally set the BIOS so the clock speeds drop.

Virtually Useless

Some overclockers prefer to turn off virtualization support—not a bad idea if you don’t run any vitualization software.

One CPU setting that can probably be turned off by most folks is VT, aka Vanderpool or Virtualization support. The setting enables virtualization hardware support in the CPU for, well, virtualization. It basically turns on the hardware “acceleration” capabilities when using such applications as VMWare or Virtual PC. If you don’t run virtualization, it’s completely unnecessary. If you do, well, don’t expect miracles since hardware acceleration of virtualization is still in its early phases.

Protective Measures

This BIOS has Execute Disable technology as well as Enhanced Intel SpeedStep and C1E enabled.

The Execute Disable option is a switch in the BIOS that prevents many buffer overflow attacks, whereby malicious programs are able to circumvent security by putting viral code in RAM and executing it by intentionally overflowing the buffer. AMD created the feature and calls it NX. Intel’s clone of it is called XD. Both do the same thing. There’s some disagreement whether it hurts or helps though. Some people have reported problems with overclocking when Execute Disable is on, while others claim it’s not an issue.

Our take is to leave it on unless you’re specifically having problems with it—on the other hand, we’re skeptical whether the feature makes a lick of difference. If it did, wouldn’t it make Windows XP SP2 machines totally secure? Right.

To verify that hardware data execution protection is enabled, go into Windows, hit Start, then Run, and type CMD. Enter the command wmic OS Get DataExecutionPrevention_Available. The response should be “true.” Or simply download Gibson Research’s SecurAble, which will scan your machine to verify protection.

Don't Do It: BIOS Tweaks to Avoid

Just because it’s in the BIOS doesn’t mean you should touch it. Such is the case with PCI Express overclocking. Notoriously finicky and known to cause crashing, overclocking the PCI Express bus in the hopes of getting more GPU performance rarely ends well. In many cases, overclocking the PCI-E bus by even 1MHz beyond its stock 100MHz can cause instability.

Want a really good example? Nvidia made much hay of the Linkboost feature in its 590 SLI and 680i SLI chipsets. Linkboost would automatically overclock the PCI Express slot by up to 25 percent when paired with GeForce cards.

We never could understand the need for Linkboost, as PCI Express bandwidth was so great to begin with. Nvidia must agree now too. The company has removed the feature completely from the newer BIOSes for those motherboards.
You might also be tempted to disable USB legacy support since the feature lets USB keyboards and mice work in DOS mode, and, well, who the hell runs DOS anymore? You do—if you boot into safe mode. With USB legacy support disabled in safe mode, your USB input devices would be rendered useless.

Next: Voltage Tweaks

Voltage Tweaks

They say no pain, no gain. But it’s really no voltage tweaks, no high overclocks. While the risks are great, overvolting can pay some great rewards

A reader recently asked us whether heat or voltage was more dangerous to a CPU. Hands down, we’d say voltage is far more dangerous. All modern CPUs have a built-in limiter that throttles the CPU if it overheats. The same is not true when a chip receives more voltage than it was designed for. Clearly, this is the most dangerous part of mucking around in the BIOS. If you’re faint of heart and don’t like to break things, don’t mess with voltage tweaks. However, if you’re looking for that extra bit of performance, voltage tweaks are often the only way to get there.

Modern motherboards will let you turn all kinds of voltage knobs, but the basics are CPU core voltage, RAM, and chipset.

If you read our sections on memory timing and speed, there’s one very important fact you need to know: You’ll likely need to overvolt your high-performance RAM modules to hit their rated speeds. DDR400 officially tops out at 400MHz, and DDR2 tops out at 800MHz. Anything higher is technically beyond JEDEC specification and invariably requires overvoltage to hit. In fact, you’ll notice that much of the high-performance RAM today will include recommended voltage settings needed to hit the clock speed and timings it boasts.

Most high-performance RAM requires running out-of-spec voltage on the modules.

DDR’s spec’d voltage is 2.5 volts. DDR2’s is 1.8 volts, and DDR3’s is 1.5 volts. To give you an idea of how much additional voltage you need to overclock RAM, consider this: To get a typical DDR2 DIMM to go from DDR2/800 to DDR2/1066, you have to push the voltage to 2.20 volts. To get a DDR3 module to reach all the way to DDR3/1800, you have to push two volts. If you ask us, that’s an awful lot of voltage, and your modules probably aren’t going to last several years at those levels. On the other hand, what enthusiast is going to run the same RAM for five years anyway?

Which bring us to the age-old question: “How much voltage do I run?” For RAM, we recommend that you follow the manufacturer’s settings, as that will be the best indicator of the module’s overclocked speed and voltage needs. For CPUs, it’s chip dependent. One way to judge how far you can push your chip’s voltage is to cruise forums at MaximumPC.com, Anandtech.com, HardOCP.com, or any of the numerous forum boards out there to see what people are running for your particular CPU. One new development we like is the danger gradations in some vendor’s newer BIOSes.

Older BIOSes simply let you select how much additional voltage to add to the CPU without any regard for the risk. Some newer BIOSes will actually indicate by color how hazardous your voltage increase is. Gray is mostly safe while red indicates nuke potential. Since we figure the board engineers are basing their threat levels on lookup tables based on the CPUs themselves, we feel pretty confident cranking up CPU voltage to just below the red zone.

How you change voltage settings will vary greatly from board to board.

BIOSes today also let you increase voltage to the north bridge and south bridge separately, and in most nForce boards, even the HyperTransport link between the north bridge and south bridge can be overvolted. Do you really need to do this? We’ve found that, yes, you do need to goose the north bridge voltage on occasion to get stable upgrades, but like CPU and RAM overvolting, it’s quite risky and can damage the board when done without caution. Take our previous advice: See what works for others before jumping in with both feet.

Odds and Ends

Before you POST your new system to install the OS, you should disable unneeded ports and make your decision to run either AHCI or IDE

When we build a new system, one of the first things we do is flip through the BIOS, turning off things we know we won’t ever use, such as the serial port and parallel port. If your system doesn’t include a floppy drive (some still do), we also flip off the floppy controller in the BIOS. Turning these features off saves some system resources, but it mostly just makes us feel good.

Turning on AHCI mode will require installing drivers via F6 with Windows XP.

If you dig into your BIOS you’ll also see a setting that lets you configure your SATA ports as IDE, RAID, or AHCI. Default should be IDE and most people understand that setting RAID turns on the RAID features of the chipset, but just what is AHCI? It’s the Intel specification dubbed Advanced Host Controller Interface that enables such fancy features as native command queuing and hot-plugging of SATA devices. If you leave AHCI off, your drives will run in an emulated IDE mode.

The rub is that AHCI is not supported in Windows XP natively. You will have to use a floppy drive and F6 drivers or create a slipstreamed version of XP with AHCI drivers just to install the OS. If you already have Windows XP installed, flipping on AHCI will prevent the OS from loading. It’s also not clear what level of AHCI support Vista has, but if you install with AHCI on, you don’t need to install drivers. If you install Vista in IDE mode, however, and then turn on AHCI mode in the BIOS, the OS bluescreens.

Do NCQ and hot-plugging make AHCI worthwhile? For the most part, no. NCQ can actually hurt performance in some situations. Still, there have been online reports of chipsets performing quite poorly unless AHCI is enabled. AHCI is supported only by Intel and ATI at this point and not by Nvidia.

A New Way: UEFI Promises to Make BIOS Tweaks More User Friendly

MSI has already made UEFI available on a limited set of motherboards.

The BIOS is older than many of the people who actually use a PC, so why in this age of 3D-accelerated 64-bit operating systems are we still using a line-based interface and 16-bit real-mode BIOS? That’s a conundrum the industry is hoping to fix with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, which may well replace many of the things the BIOS does today. An obvious advantage of UEFI is that it supports a GUI and mouse controls. UEFI would also be processor agnostic, use higher-level languages such as C++ instead of assembly language, and pretty much make booting your PC more like, well, booting a Mac.

It won’t happen overnight, though. Few desktop motherboard vendors beyond MSI have hopped onto UEFI and only the 64-bit flavor of Windows Vista SP1 supports it. Even if UEFI takes off, the BIOS will not totally go away. It’ll just get a serious demotion to doing very basic power on self-tests before handing over control to UEFI. The difference is that you may access those familiar controls using a UEFI GUI interface, which will also roll in pre-OS applications as well.

Microsoft Releases Springboard Series Newsletter - Vista Performance and Tuning Tips

Justin Kerr — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:30:06 -0500

When Vista launched over a year ago we had many compelling reasons not to upgrade. But as time progressed and Microsoft silently addressed our woes, it seems clear; the Vista of today could be somewhat misjudged. That doesn’t make it perfect however, and Microsoft has owned up to this by releasing a 14 page guide with tried and tested tweaks that improve overall performance and boost notebook battery life. This free and easy to follow PDF guide walks you through native tools built into the OS which allow you to optimize Vista’s performance. The contents are especially helpful if you are new to Vista, having just come from XP, but even Vista veterans are bound to find a few things of note. If you manage to make your way through the Microsoft guide and are still looking for more, a host of other tweaks and tips can be found in both our online archives and Maximum PCs March 2008 print issue.

Improve Battery Life

- Looking for ways to improve your battery life? Microsoft suggests you start in the power options menu. Simply type power options into the start menu and select from either performance, balanced, or power saver modes. These presets will adjust sleep settings, LCD power down frequency, hard drive performance, etc.

- Tweak your indexing options. By having Vista index your commonly accessed folders such as my documents you can improve the speed at which results are delivered to you, and keep the hard drive from spinning up too often for in depth scans of your entire drive.

Improve Performance

- Disable specific aero effects to improve responsiveness. The guide walks you through how to disable individual aero features to make systems with lower end graphics cards feel more responsive.

- Use Ready Boost on computers with limited amounts of RAM to improve performance using a compatible USB key. This is no substitute for adding ram, but it’s the next best thing if you can’t.

- Use sleep mode rather then turning your computer off. While in sleep mode, some laptops draw as little as 1 watt, and can recover from sleep in as little as 5 seconds. This will help overcome the painfully slow boot times of modern OS’s. Just select sleep, instead of shut down from your start menu.

- Prevent programs from loading into the background after boot up by using msconfig or Windows Defender. Enter either of these two options into Vista’s start menu to begin. The Windows Defender interface is slightly more polished and is a better place to start if you don’t have any experience with msconfig.

- Use control, alt, delete’s task manager to view background services that are running on your machine. Found unwanted services? Disable them! Not sure what each service is? Check the Microsoft TechNet to see a list of known services and their function.

- Tweak user account control without disabling it, want to know how? Microsoft’s TechNet is a great place to look.

- Learn to use the task scheduler to enable automatic disk cleanups, and tweak your defrag frequency. Try to setup automatic backups and anti virus scans to run while your away.

- Check your Windows experience index score by right clicking my computer then selecting properties. A 3 is considered average, but 4 or greater means your PC has the right stuff for Vista. Conversely, if your computer scores a 2 or lower, you’d probably be better off with XP (though they avoid telling you that specifically in this guide).

- Think your running out of RAM or CPU cycles? Use the performance tab under ctrl, alt, delete’s task manager to monitor your systems performance. For example, by leaving the task manager open, it will record how much memory your computer is using and document the maximum amount that has been asked for during your session. This allows you to identify if you are running low on resources during normal use. Want more info? Click the resource monitor to see what processes are banging away on each individual category such as CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, or Network. This will give you a clear idea of what services are causing bottlenecks with individual parts of your machine.

Got More Tips or tweaks that you havn’t seen in Maximum PC online or print?

Share them here!

Reinvent the Windows Wheel

Paul Lilly — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:53:37 -0600

There’s an unwritten rule that states, “To be considered a power user, you must tweak every aspect of your PC and assert man’s dominance over machine.” That means not only choosing the right combination of hardware and software to do your bidding but also tailoring Windows to perform the way you want it to, not the other way around. After all, you built your computer, so why should you have the reins pulled from your hands the moment you hit the power button? The answer is you shouldn’t, and we’re going to show you how to fine-tune Windows—from the way it looks to the way it functions, and everything in between.

We know what you’re thinking: What could we possibly show you that you haven’t already seen countless times before? Plenty. And if you think you’ve uncovered every secret there is to know about Windows, think again. These aren’t your garden-variety tweaks that litter every Windows guide on the web. We’ve dug deep to find tips that will surprise and delight even the most seasoned power user. It doesn’t matter whether you use XP or Vista; we cover both camps to bring you a smorgasbord of treats guaranteed to improve your OS experience.

Keep reading this page for Windows XP tips, or skip ahead to tips for XP and Vista users or Vista-exclusive tips!

Windows XP Tips

Brand your PC with a custom logo

OEM vendors often dress up the System Properties screen with a custom logo and support information, giving prebuilt PCs an air of professionalism. Well guess what? You can add the same personal touch to your own machine in just a few easy steps.

Open up any photo-editing program and create a 180x114-pixel image. Save the image as a bitmap and name it oemlogo.bmp, then place it in C:\Windows\System32. Next, create a Notepad file in the same folder and save it as oeminfo.ini. OEM resellers use this file to enter customer-support information, but you can write whatever you wish as long as you use the following format:

[General]
Manufacturer=Maximum PC
Model=Dream Machine

[Support Information]
line1=For even more great tips visit
line2=www.maximumpc.com

If you need more space, just create a new line.

Give Your Hard Drive a New Icon

Grab IconsExtract (free, http://tinyurl.com/2p7c7x) to extract existing icons from your system. When you find one you like, save it to the root of the drive you want to change (for example, C:\Cool_Icon.ico). Next, create a new file with Notepad and edit line one to read [autorun] and on line two write icon=Cool_Icon.ico. Save and name the file autorun.ini and reboot.

Alter the Scroll Bar’s Dimensions

A wider scroll bar can make navigation an easier affair on a touch-screen panel, and power users can benefit from the additional real estate afforded by narrowing the scroll bar. Whatever your objective, open Display Properties in the Control Panel, click the Appearance tab, click Advanced, select Scrollbar from the Items menu, and go hog wild!

Install Google Desktop, then Hack It!

Google Desktop (free, http://desktop.google.com) pounces all over Windows’s built-in search, but to truly kick your search groove into high gear, you need to tweak a couple of settings. Under the Options menu, make sure HTTPS is unchecked to prevent Google from indexing sensitive information. Then click “Add drive or folder to search” and add any networked PCs so you can search for files across your network without ever leaving your chair. Finally, install the TweakGDS plugin (free, http://tinyurl.com/2nwxb9), which will let you designate a different folder or hard drive to store Google’s indexing information.

Uncover ‘No to All’ Option

Whenever you copy multiple files from one location to another, Windows prompts you with an overwrite request if duplicate entries already exist. Selecting “Yes to All” can go a long way in preventing carpal tunnel, but where’s the “No to All” button? It doesn’t exist, but you can force Windows to act as though it does by holding down the Shift key the first time you press No.

Delete an Undeletable File

Windows won’t let you delete a file if it’s currently in use, which is usually a good thing, but that can spell bad news when trying to rid your system of a nasty malware strain. Luckily, there’s a workaround. Click the Start menu, select Run, and type CMD to bring up the Command Prompt. Now hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Task Manager. Under the Processes tab, highlight explorer.exe and click End Process. ALT-Tab your way to the Command Prompt and then navigate to the directory of the file you’re trying to delete using the CD command (cd C:\Program Files\3DSaver). Next, use the delete command to delete the offending file (del 3DSaver.exe). ALT-Tab back to the Task Manager, select New Task under File, and type explorer.exe to bring back the Windows shell. Alternately, try Unlocker (free, http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/) and delete stubborn files through a svelte GUI.

Create Restore Points on the Fly

Uh oh! Did experimenting with beta software thrash your Windows install? Don’t fret—fire up System Restore and revert to the last known good configuration. That is, if you have one. Windows doesn’t always create restore points when it should, and who wants to go through the rigmarole of sifting through menus to manually create one? Now you don’t have to, thanks to a VB script (free, http://tinyurl.com/3rw0) that does the job with just a double-click of the mouse.

Uninstall Hidden Components

Find sysoc.inf in the C:\Windows\inf folder and edit it with Notepad. (If you don’t see the inf folder, click Tools, View, and select “Show hidden files and folders.”) Remove the word HIDE from any entries you wish to unhide, such as WordPad or Pinball, and then save the file. These will now show up in the Add/Remove Windows Components list.

Stay Prepared with a Password Restore Disk

Open User Accounts in the Control Panel and select your account. Click the “Prevent a forgotten password” link in the left-hand pane and follow the prompts.

If you’re on a domain, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the Windows Security dialog box and then click Change Password. In the “Log on to” box, click the local computer, select Backup, and then follow the prompts. Both methods require a floppy disk.

Scan System Files for Corruption

Malware infections and bad install routines are just two of the ways critical system files can become corrupt, but there’s an easy fix to undo damage done by third-party software. Click the Start menu, select Run, and type sfc /scannow to run XP’s System File Checker. Keep your Windows CD handy and insert it when prompted.

Automatically Kill Processes and Shut Down Quicker

Teach Windows how to shut down without nagging you about unresponsive processes. Open the registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Double-click AutoEndTasks and change the value from 0 to 1. Then double-click WaitToKillApp and change the value from 5000 to 1000. Finally, double-click HungAppTimeout and change the value from 20,000 to 3000.

Eliminate Lag and Speed up the Start Menu

A fully loaded rig pays dividends in everything from productivity apps to games, but no matter how fast your machine is, the Start menu still lags. To give the Start menu a much needed speed boost, click Start, select Run, and type regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, double-click MenuShowDelay in the right-hand pane, and change the value from 400 to 5. Reboot and watch your Start menu fly!

Apply One Folder’s View to All Folders

XP allows you to view folders five different ways—thumbnails, tiles, icons, list, details—but what you select for one folder doesn’t apply to all of them. Sure, you can configure each folder individually, but that takes far too long. To apply the same view universally, Go to My Documents, click Tools, then Folder Options, then select the View tab, and click Apply to All Folders.

Install Support Tools for Advanced Diagnostics

To be a true IT ninja, equip yourself with Windows Support Tools (free, http://tinyurl.com/yja7vw), a set of more than 100 troubleshooting utilities aimed at advanced users (view a complete list at http://tinyurl.com/2k42ex). Not all of them are gems, but a few notable standouts include pviewer, for gathering information about running processes on remote computers; msicuu, to remove installer information when a program’s uninstaller gets borked (power outage, for example); and windiff, to compare files and see which is more recent, along with line-by-line code comparisons.

High Score!

Become the new champ at old games.

It’s tough enough getting through the workday unscathed, and to make matters worse, most workplaces aren’t going to let you install Counter-Strike to blow off some steam—oh the tyranny! That means you’re stuck playing Minesweeper or Pinball, only Bob in accounting holds the high score in both and is quick to let everyone know. Here’s how you can stick it to Bob. To freeze time in Minesweeper, minimize the app using the Windows Key + D combination and then restore the window. Then fire up Pinball and type 1max at the start of a new game for additional balls or bmax for unlimited tries and an unbeatable score.

Upgrade to Notepad++

Jotting down notes with Notepad is only slightly more advanced than chiseling in stone, but we still find ourselves using the rudimentary editor for scrawling quick grocery lists and composing HTML code. With Notepad++ (free, http://tinyurl.com/552wn), we can do both at the same time! A tabbed interface is just one of the many features included, along with an almost endless array of coding options, drag and drop documents, multiview features, and much more.

Encrypt and Password Protect Your Files

No sooner was it released than Microsoft pulled the plug on a utility called My Private Folder. The password-protected folder sat on your desktop, encrypting any files you put inside it. So why doesn’t MS offer it anymore? With no backdoor access, IT professionals feared facing the wrath of users who had forgotten their passwords, and parents fretted over what files their kids might be hiding. If you’re OK with those risks, you can still download the utility from http://tinyurl.com/kxdxs.

Enable Hibernate in the Shut-Down Dialog

Putting your PC into Standby conserves power without shutting down your computer, but if there’s a power outage, any open programs and unsaved work will be lost. Using Hibernation tackles this issue by first taking a snapshot of your desktop and saving it to your hard drive before powering down, but Microsoft neglected to include a Hibernate button in the shut-down dialog box. To fix this, first make sure you’ve enabled hibernation under Power Options in the Control Panel. Next, go into the registry and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows and create a new key called System (right-click Windows and select New > Key). Highlight System and create another key called Shutdown (you should now be in HKLM \SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\Shutdown). Now create a DWORD value named ShowHibernationButton and change the Data from 0 to 1. You should now see the Hibernate button in the Shutdown dialog. If not, you’ll need to request a hotfix from Microsoft at http://tinyurl.com/ccbpw.

Goodbye MS Paint, Hello Paint.NET

Capable photo-editing suites are often too expensive if all you’re interested in is the occasional doodle, and the learning curve requires a further time investment. Solve both problems with Paint.NET (free, www.getpaint.net), which combines the ease of use found in MS Paint with enough functionality to release your inner Rembrandt!

Make Your Own Icons

Who wants boring old icons when you can make your own? Fire up any photo-editing program and create a new 48x48 pixel image, or resize an existing photo. Save the image as a bitmap and change the file extension to .ico (e.g., MPC.ico).

To apply your custom icon, right-click a folder on your hard drive, select Properties, then Customize, then Change Icon. Or if you prefer to change system icons, open Display Properties and click Customize Desktop under the Desktop tab. You can change icons for all file types by opening My Computer, clicking Tools, Folder Options, File Types, Advanced, then Change Icon.

Use a Video Clip as Your Background

Dreamscene enables Vista Ultimate owners to set video clips as wallpaper, and with the help of VideoLAN (free, www.videolan.org/vlc), you can get the same effect on XP. Select the video you want to display, right-click while it’s playing, and select Wallpaper. Create a playlist with multiple video clips and then configure VideoLAN to loop your selections by clicking Tools, Preferences, Playlist, and checking Repeat All.

Sync Your Backup Routine

If you don’t have a backup routine in place, then get one. Now. Then install Microsoft’s SyncToy v2.0 Beta (free, http://tinyurl.com/2cu9fh) to back up files from one folder to another on different hard drives, or across a network or an external device. SyncToy even keeps track of renamed files, so you won’t end up with duplicates.

Improve Video Viewing with a Codec Library

Life would be so much easier if all video clips adopted a unified standard, but instead we’re forced to hunt down codec after codec to play an assortment of videos. At least, that’s how we used to do it, until we found ffdshow tryouts (http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/). Ffdshow sports an expansive codec library, several filters, and the ability to display pertinent details about the file it’s playing. CPU-utilization monitoring and the ability to grab screenshots add icing to the cake.

Customize XP’s Boot Logo

Tired of the same old boot screen? Change it up! There are two methods for altering XP’s boot logo—one involves risky system-file edits that put your OS at risk, the other entails downloading BootSkin (free, http://tinyurl.com/358lj). Play it safe with the latter and click your way to a new boot screen with one of the bundled logos. Don’t see one you like? Choose from hundreds more available for download or follow the tutorial at http://tinyurl.com/367khw and make your own!

Three 30-second changes to improve XP

The first thing we do with every new XP install is turn on ClearType to clean up those unsightly fonts. Go to Display Properties and select the Appearance tab, then click Effects. Choose ClearType in the second pull-down menu and make sure the box above it is checked.
Often, we need access to hidden files and folders to apply power-user tweaks, and the second thing we do on every XP machine is make these visible. Under My Computer, click Tools, Folder Options, View, and then click the “Show hidden files and folders” radio button.
We don’t anticipate any BSODs on a new XP install, but if it does happen, we want to be prepared. By default, Windows will automatically restart if it encounters an error, but those blue screens contain key information that helps us decipher what went wrong. To stop XP from restarting, right-click My Computer and select Properties. In the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery, and then uncheck “Automatically restart."

Next: Tips that Work in XP and Vista!

XP/Vista Tips

The following tips don’t discriminate—they will improve your computing experience equally, whether you’re rocking Microsoft’s new or old OS.

Make Your Own Control Panel

We’re willing to bet you never use half the items in the Control Panel, but did you know you can make a Control Panel that reflects your particular habits? Here’s how: Right-click the Start menu and select Explore. Create a new folder and give it a descriptive name, such as Custom Control Panel. Drag and drop only the tools you’ll actually use from the original Control Panel into your new one, renaming as you see fit. Change the icon so it stands out in the Start menu.

Disable Highlighting New Programs

Every new program in XP and Vista gets highlighted in the Start menu as if to say, “Hey, remember when you installed me?” That’s great for those afflicted with extremely short attention spans, but not much use for the rest of us. To rid your Start menu of these unsightly reminders, right-click the Start button and select Properties, select the Start Menu tab, and click Customize. In Vista, scroll down and uncheck “Highlight newly installed programs.” You’ll find the same option in XP under the Advanced tab.

Add Entries to the Send To Menu

Moving files with the Send To command can save oodles of time, but it doesn’t do you any good if the destination you’re looking for doesn’t appear in the menu. To add your own destinations, select Run from the Start menu (type Run in the search box on Vista) and type shell:sendto. Create a shortcut of the folder or program you want to appear and move it to the Send To folder you just opened.

Minimize Windows and Drag Files with Ease

Ever grab a file on your desktop only to realize the destination folder’s sitting behind an open window? To get around this, drag the file to an empty space in the taskbar and all open windows will minimize, allowing you to move the file wherever you want. Using this method, you can hover files over minimized windows to restore them.

Monitor CPU and RAM Usage

We can already keep tabs on our CPU and RAM through the Task Manager, but there’s a better way. CPUMon (free, http://tinyurl.com/363k6f) displays the same information but ups the ante with an adjustable, unobtrusive transparent graph, CPU-speed monitoring, statistics that include the average CPU and memory usage, and a handful of other options.

Enhance the Clipboard with Ditto

Download Ditto (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ditto-cp/) and take Windows’s clipboard to new heights. Ditto retains up to 500 copied entries, including images, and stores the information on your hard drive, so you won’t be thwarted by a power outage or system reboot. Stay productive by exporting saved entries and transferring them to another computer, paste HTML as plain text, perform keyword searches, and apply hotkey shortcuts to the first 10 items.

Build a Button (or Two)

Put your Restart and Shut Down buttons in plain sight—because you can

Forget about mucking around in the Start menu and instead create desktop shortcuts for shutting down and restarting your system. Right-click your desktop and select New > Shortcut. In the pop-up window, type shutdown –s –t 00 to create a shutdown shortcut and shutdown –r –t 00 to create one for restarting. Give your new shortcuts custom icons (see Windows XP tips) and then drag them to the Quick Launch bar for even easier access.

Remove the OS Logo and Improve Boot Times

Until instant-on technology makes a breakthrough in home computing, we’re left to our own devices to reduce system boot times. One surefire way to save a few seconds is by disabling the boot logo. Open the Start menu, select Run, and type msconfig. Under the Boot.ini tab, check the /NoGuiBoot box and apply the change.

Resize Windows to Specific Dimensions

Sizer (free, www.brianapps.net/sizer.html) displays the dimensions of any open window while resizing, making it an invaluable tool for web developers and anyone interested in grabbing screen captures. Manually resize a window to any resolution, or right-click and select a preset dimension, including any custom dimensions you create.

Move Off-Screen Windows Back into View

It’s a shame that SLI and CrossFire still don’t support gaming on multimonitor setups, and to add insult to injury, there’s always at least one open window that gets stuck out of view when in single-monitor mode. You might be tempted to reboot or even uninstall/reinstall the offending application, but you needn’t resort to such drastic measures. Instead, right-click the application in the taskbar, select Move, and then use your arrow keys to bring the window back into view.

Change the Logon Background

Just like our clothes, our PCs are an extension of us, and we should dress them accordingly. Logon Studio (free, http://tinyurl.com/2kuys7) helps in this endeavor. The program lets you choose from a wardrobe of more than 500 logon backgrounds (http://tinyurl.com/mh7eq). Can’t find a style to suit your tastes? Make your own background from scratch or edit an existing background.

Change Dual-Boot Default to XP

Because of the way Vista’s boot loader works, you’ll have much better luck with your dual-boot setup by first installing XP and then installing Vista. By going this route, Vista loads as the default option, but you can change this without any adverse effects. In Vista, right-click My Computer and select Properties, then Advanced system settings, then the Advanced tab. Click Settings under Startup and Recovery and select Earlier Version of Windows from the pull-down menu.

Know Your Common Shortcuts

Many common Windows tasks come assigned with shortcuts; here are five guaranteed to increase productivity:

Shift+Del: Bypass the recycle bin and permanently delete files
ALT+Print Screen: Nab a screenshot of just the active window to the clipboard
Windows Key+M: Minimize all open windows
CTRL+ESC: Bring up the Start menu
Shift+Tab: Tab backward through a form

Assign Hotkeys to Common Tasks

Quick, try to open the Task Manager without lifting your hand from the mouse. Unless you have unusually long fingers or a third hand growing from your torso, you can’t hit the CTRL-ALT-DEL combination without contorting into an unnatural position. Luckily, there’s an easy workaround. Navigate to C:\Windows\System32 and create a shortcut for taskmgr.exe. Right-click the new shortcut, select Properties, and assign a new hotkey combination in the Shortcut tab. Use this trick for any commonly used application.

Add Locations to the Save In Sidebar

On the left-hand side of the Save As dialog box sits a Save In sidebar; in it are common locations where you might want to save a file. To add your own folders to this list, type gpedit.msc in the Run box (or search box in Vista), then navigate to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer, Common Open File Dialog; then, double-click Items Displayed in Places Bar. Here you can add up to five locations, including remote folders residing on your home network (e.g., \\MaxPC-Quad\Pictures).

Next: Tips for Vista users only!

Vista Tips

Vista’s still brand-spanking new, but there are already some things you can do to make it perform better

Generate Problem Reports and Look for Solutions

Vista keeps a meticulous record of every error that’s ever caused a program to stop working or presented a compatibility problem, but even better, you can make Windows check for solutions and save yourself a recurring headache. You’ll find the Problem Reports and Solutions Wizard under System and Maintenance in the Control Panel. In the left-hand pane under Tasks, click “See problems to check” to bring up a list of applications; put a check mark next to any or all of them and click “Check for solutions.”

Access Advanced Options with Tweak VI

Optimize nearly every nook and cranny in Windows Vista through an intuitive GUI by installing Tweak VI (free, http://tinyurl.com/24yz6q). Tweaks run the gamut from the strictly visual to performance boosts—and include everything in between. Setting up a PC for the kids? Configure Tweak VI to hide a bevy of configuration options to prevent them from accidentally mucking up a system, and then password protect Tweak VI to keep curious fingers from undoing changes.

Open Quick Launch Programs with the Windows Key

Using the Windows key in combination with the numbers 0 through 9 will open up the corresponding sequential programs in the Quick Launch toolbar. Make sure the Quick Launch toolbar is visible (if not, right-click the taskbar and select Quick Launch from the Toolbars menu) and then rearrange the first 10 programs however you see fit.

Take Better Screen Captures with the Snipping Tool

Vista’s built-in Snipping Tool does for screen captures what Bruce Lee did for kung fu movies, but without the cheesy sound effects. Just type Snipping into the search box and start taking screenshots like you’ve never taken them before. Draw a perfect box around the area you want to capture or use the free-form tool, then highlight or draw over the capture before saving it as a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or MHT file.

Force the Sleep Button to Function as Shut Down

Vista’s Start menu marks a departure from the familiar theme found in XP, and one such change includes swapping the Shut Down button for a Sleep icon. With a little bit of digging, you can bring back the Shut Down button. Navigate to the Control Panel, then System and Maintenance, then Power Options. Under the selected power plan, click “Change plan settings,” and then click “Change advanced power settings.” Expand “Power buttons and lid” and then “Start menu power button.” Highlight Setting and choose Shut Down from the pull-down menu.

Enable DirectSound3D Hardware Acceleration

Vista giveth DirectX 10 and taketh away DirectSound3D, killing off hardware acceleration and EAX effects for the legacy format. But don’t despair, because Creative came up with a workaround for Audigy and X-Fi owners. Install Creative’s ALchemy software (free, http://tinyurl.com/29ghqj), let it automatically detect any installed DS3D games, and then click the arrow to move them to the right-hand pane, so they’ll be translated into OpenAL.

Enable Check Boxes for Selecting Multiple Files

It never fails: Just as we’ve almost finished highlighting several files while holding down the Control key, our finger slips, instantly deselecting every single file. We thought there had to be a better way, and it turns out there is. Open My Computer and select Folder and Search Options from the Organize pull-down menu. Under the View tab, put a check mark next to “Use check boxes to select items.” Now you can select multiple files by clicking on their check boxes.

Restore the Menu Bar

In XP, we got accustomed to seeing File, Edit, View, Tools, and Help in the menu bar, but in Vista, Microsoft redesigned folders and windows so they resemble IE7’s less than intuitive interface. One way to bring the menu bar back is to click Organize, highlight Layout, and select Menu Bar, which makes the change permanent. For a temporary solution, press the Alt key, which can bring up menus for windows that don’t normally have them.

Holy Hotkeys!

Access everything quicker with Enso.

Think of Enso (free beta, www.humanized.com) as the ultimate hotkey, because that’s essentially what it is. You unlock the magic behind Enso by holding the Caps Lock key (or designate a different key) and typing commands, which range from looking up highlighted words or phrases on Wikipedia to translating text. Load maps into emails, control your media player, check your Gmail, and much more without ever having to open the Start menu.

Quickly Copy a File’s Path to the Clipboard

In the pre-Vista days, copying a file or folder path to the clipboard meant you had to right-click, select Properties, highlight the path, right-click again, and select Copy. That’s more steps than are in a Broadway musical! To perform the same action in Vista, hold the Shift key when right-clicking and select Copy as Path.

Save Search Results and Save Time

There was a time when hard-drive space was considered a hot commodity, but with 500GB and even 1TB drives now the norm, we find ourselves becoming digital pack rats. This also means we’ve developed a dependency on the Search function, but instead of repeating searches for the same sets of files, save the results to a virtual folder instead. After Windows finds the files you’re looking for, click Save Search. Windows will even keep track of any changes to the search results, so you’ll never receive outdated information.