You finally get the color scheme looking just the way you want it, but the next time you use your computer, someone has changed the colors to something else. If your computer is used by other people (such as your children) besides yourself, you can keep them from changing your color scheme so that it stays the way you want it.

By now, I’m sure that you’ve become familiar with the Task Manager, using it to end processes and check cpu usage and network activity. Did you know with the double-click of your mouse, you could make the Task Manager look like a nice desktop gadget for monitoring your cpu usage and cpu usage history or your network activity.

If you wish to access the contents of a VHD file without having to run Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you can do so on Windows XP and Vista by installing only a component of Virtual Server and running a single command from the command line.

Gettng tired of the look of your Vista desktop”? By using MSStyles, a wallpaper change, a simple change to your Sidebar and a small registry change, you can have your Vista looking like the Windows 7 interface.

The Aero interface utilizes a cool transparency effect for the borders of your windows. Unfortunately, the effect is lost once the window is maximized. If you want to enjoy the transparency effect regardless of the size of your window, follow this tech-recipe.

As a follow-up to my popular article exploring 64-bit versus 32-bit versions of Vista, this tech-recipe describes the small subset of users who will receive some benefit from running the 64-bit version of Microsoft’s most recent operating system.

If you are bored with your desktop and want to give it a little style, you can run a screensaver as your desktop’s background to liven it up. The screensaver will hide the desktop icons, but leave your windows and taskbar fully functional.

If you have multiple users on one computer, you might want to prevent them from changing the display settings. By following these steps, you can prevent all users on the computer from changing the screen resolution, refresh rate and color depth as well as the DPI size. This is also great for network admins who […]

If you run into a situation where your icons aren’t displaying correctly, you may need to rebuild the icon cache. The icon cache can become corrupt but is simple to delete the cache so that Vista will rebuild it.

The Quick Launch Toolbar is an area on the Taskbar for giving you quick access to your favorite apps. By default, it uses small icons which can be difficult to see, especially on computers that are set at a high resolution. Using large icons makes them easier to see and even more handy.

If you’re tired of seeing the splash screen for Windows Mail every time you run the application, follow these steps to get around it and be splash screen free.

Want a quick list of installed applications on your Windows PC? By using the Windows Instrumentation command-line interface (WMIC) you can create a quick list or even generate a text file or HTM file for printing.