What and How to Fix System32 Error

Yesterday my brother in law came to me with his laptop complaining that his computer is not booting because the “system” file is missing. He was totally weird with the situation as a presentation for one of his project is due by next Monday and it matters everything to him right now as he have devoted last 7 months trying to grab that.

Finally after a half an hour tooling with his system the problem got fixed and he was the happy fellow. But then I thought why not blog something regarding System32 error right here on my blog today.

What is a System32?

The “system” file is one of many that is stored in windows/system32/config folder and it tells Windows XP how to start your computer and who to log in at startup. If this file is missing, your computer will not boot and you will see an error on a black screen stating: “Windows/System32/Config/System file missing or corrupt.”

There are two scenarios where this can happen. In the first scenario, the system file is simply corrupt or missing and needs to be replaced with Windows XP’s backup copy.

Recovering System32?

The first step in recovering from this problem is to boot into the Recovery Console and replace the missing or damaged system file with a backup copy. To do this, you will need an original Windows XP CD, or a recovery CD from your computer’s manufacturer, or a set of 6 Windows XP boot disks.

Once you have booted from your Windows XP CD or floppy disks, press the letter “R” at the first screen asking you for input. The computer will now ask you “Which Windows installation would you like to log onto.” Each profile is represented with a number. Press the number associated with your profile (usually the number 1) and presses enter. Now you will be prompted to ‘Type in the Administrator Password.” Enter your password and press enter.

After you enter your password you should be at a prompt that reads “C:/windows”. Type the commands below to navigate to your Windows/System32/Config directory and replace the appropriate file:

1. cd system32
2. cd config
3. ren system system.old
4. cd ..
5. cd ..
6. cd repair
7. copy system c:\windows\system32\config

You should now see a message stating that the file was copied successfully. Reboot your computer and you are done with your System32 Fix.

How to perform a repair installation of Windows XP if Internet Explorer 7 is installed

Before you perform a repair installation of Microsoft Windows XP, you must uninstall Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 from the Windows XP-based computer. If you perform a repair installation of Windows XP when Internet Explorer 7 is still installed, Internet Explorer will not work after the repair is completed.

To resolve this issue, uninstall Internet Explorer 7 from the computer, and then install Internet Explorer 6. After Windows XP is repaired, you can reinstall Internet Explorer 7.

INTRODUCTION

Before you perform a repair installation of Windows XP, you must uninstall Internet Explorer 7. If you do not uninstall Internet Explorer 7 in this situation, Internet Explorer will no longer work after the repair installation is completed. Specifically, the repair installation does not restore earlier versions of the files in the Program Files\Internet Explorer folder. Therefore, the Internet Explorer 7 files will be incompatible with the Internet Explorer 6 files that are installed in the Windows\System32 folder.

INFORMATION

If you performed a repair installation of Windows XP but did not uninstall Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer will not run. To troubleshoot this issue, follow these steps.

Verify the version of Windows XP that is installed on the computer

1. Click Start, click Run, type Winver.exe in the Open box, and then click OK.

2. In the About Windows dialog box, verify the version of Windows XP that is installed on the computer.

If Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) is installed on the computer

If Windows XP SP2 is installed on the computer, uninstall Internet Explorer 7. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type appwiz.cpl in the Open box, and then click OK.

2. In the Currently installed programs list, click Internet Explorer 7, and then click Remove.

If Internet Explorer is not listed in the Currently installed programs list, follow these steps:

1.Restart the computer in the Recovery Console. For more information about how to use the Recovery Console, click the following article number to view the article in the Knowledge Base:

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP

2.Type the following commands.

Note Press ENTER after each command.

CD ie7\spuninst

batch Spuninst.txt

If Windows XP SP2 is not installed on the computer

If Windows XP SP2 is not installed on the computer, uninstall Internet Explorer 7. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type appwiz.cpl in the Open box, and then click OK.

2. In the Currently installed programs list, click Internet Explorer 7, and then click Remove.

If Internet Explorer is not listed in the Currently installed programs list, follow these steps:

1. Open a command prompt.

2. Type the following commands.

Note Press ENTER after each command.

cd \Windows\ie7\Spuninst

batch Spuninst.txt

Note ie7 is a hidden folder.

If Internet Explorer 7 cannot be uninstalled, but if the Windows\ie7\Spuninst folder exists, uninstall Internet Explorer 7 in the Recovery Console. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Restart the computer in the Recovery Console. For more information about how to use the Recovery Console, click the following article number to view the article in the Knowledge Base:

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP

2. Type the following commands.

Note Press ENTER after each command.

CD ie7\spuninst

batch Spuninst.txt

3. Insert the Windows XP installation CD into the computer’s CD drive, and then restart the computer.

4. Perform a Repair installation of Windows XP. After the Repair installation process is complete, start Internet Explorer 6, and then make sure that it works.

5. Install Windows XP SP2.

Reinstall Internet Explorer 7

When Windows XP has been repaired and is running correctly, reinstall Internet Explorer 7. To reinstall Internet Explorer 7, you must have the Internet Explorer 7 installation package. This installation package may still be on the computer from the first time that you installed Internet Explorer 7. Locate the installation package in the folder in which you saved the files.

Note This package may be located in the Temporary Internet Files folder.

If you cannot locate the Internet Explorer 7 installation package, visit the following Microsoft Web site to obtain this package:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

To connect to the Microsoft download site, you must have a functional Web browser. If Internet Explorer 6 does not work on the computer after you uninstall Internet Explorer 7, you cannot download the Internet Explorer 7 installation package. Therefore, you will have to use a computer that has a functional Web browser to download the Internet Explorer 7 installation package. Then, use a shared network drive to install the program from the downloaded installation package on this other computer onto the repaired computer. If you cannot use a shared network for this purpose, copy the Internet Explorer 7 installation package onto a CD on the second computer. Then, use this CD to install Internet Explorer 7 on the first computer.

[SOLVED] Unwanted Wake from Sleep on Vista

By Fungi008:

Vista's dumb multimedia sharing option: More complex (and I don't think anyone else has posted it). Do this:
Control Panel -> Power Options -> If "High Performance" is selected, choose something else, like "Balanced" (I don't know why this works) -> Change plan settings (for the chosen power plan) -> Change advanced power settings -> Scroll down to Multimedia settings -> Choose "Allow the computer to sleep"

Thanks, Fungi008!

[SOLVED] Adobe Reader 8.1.2 Freezes Entire Computer

Under Vista, opening some PDF's can crash Adobe Reader 8.1 so badly that the entire computer can freeze up and only a hard reboot is possible. The conflict is threefold: Reader's GPU acceleration, Vista's UAC, and temp folder security.

I fixed it by adjusting the following in Reader's preferences (not all steps may be necessary):

• Automatic Default Page Layout
• Automatic Default Zoom
• Hardware rendering for legacy video cards
• PDF browser plugin, fast web view (irrelevant to this, though)
• Acrobat JavaScript
• Preferred Media Player (.i.e., set to Windows Media Player)
• Multimedia operations
• Verify signatures when opened
• Check spelling when typing
• External content (off by default, I think)

Most importantly, adjust the properties for AcroRd32.exe to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2.

Cross-posted from http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3302386#post3302386

Improving Wireless Networking on Vista (and XP?)

Some commands for the Command Prompt:

• netsh int ipv4 reset
  
• netsh winsock reset
• netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled chimney=disabled autotuninglevel=normal congestionprovider=ctcp ecncapability=enabled timestamps=disabled
• ipconfig /release
• ipconfig /renew

Registry change from Microsoft KB928233:

• DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag 0
  

Microsoft Has Sold 300 Million Windows 7 Licences

We already know that Windows 7 has seen a much more positive reception than its predecessor, Windows Vista. Last summer Microsoft announced that it had shipped an impressive 175 million Windows 7 licenses. So how are sales now that the OS has been available for more than a year?

As part of its quarterly earnings call yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the company has now sold 300 million Windows 7 licenses.

“To put that in perspective, 300 million is roughly the combined number of households in North American and in Europe!” writes Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows blo. “Or, to put it another way, if you lined up 300 million Windows 7 product boxes, they would stretch nearly 1.5 times around the Earth,” he said.

Read full story...

Parallel Port Driver Service Failed to Start

If you don't have a parallel port on your computer, this is easily fixed from the command line:

sc config parport start= disabled

DRM Removal 3.1.9 - Free Your Music from Copy Protection Legally

Convert DRM protected audio and video.

Fast and simple to use DRM protected media converter. Easily converts ALL audio and video files from your PC to unprotected MP3, WMA, AAC, iPod at high speed and preserving original quality. Legally.

With a single click your got your MP3, AVI (or other audio and video) converted and copied directly to iPod without loosing ID3 tags and quality.

The Drm-Removal supports Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008 and Windows Vista.


Download Drm-Removal 3.1.9

New Software Picks

Since moving to Vista, I have switched around my favorite programs. More are forthcoming, but I'm no longer featuring the following since they're better for XP:

1. FolderICO
2. FastStone Image Viewer
3. ToolTipFixer
4. Tweak UI
   

Beware If Taking the AHCI Plunge

With a recent BIOS update, I noticed a new option for AHCI vs. IDE mode. Even though Vista has support for this new supposedly feature-rich disk technology, those drivers are disabled after installation. Vista won't even boot after making the change in BIOS to AHCI unless you first do the following:

To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:

1.	Exit all Windows-based programs.
2.	Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
3.	If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
4.	Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
5.	In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
6.	In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
7.	On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

From KB 922976

Possible Fix for DWM.EXE error?

During shutdown on Vista, I would occasionally get the following error:

GDI+ Window: dwm.exe - Application Error : The instruction at 0x748573f6 referenced memory at 0x748573f6. The memory could not be written.

I was also having problems with a blank taskbar and notification area upon resume from sleep mode.

I believe that this could be related to changing the driver for nVidia graphics or changing disk access to AHCI causing the Desktop Window Manager to no longer be seen as genuine.

Here are the commands that (I hope) has fixed the issue:

cd %windir%\system32
wscript slmgr.vbs -rearm

Then, reboot when prompted.

UPDATE (29 July 2008): That wasn't enough. Try the following if you're still having trouble:

1. Reinstall the license files with wscript slmgr.vbs -rilc (wait for confirmation)
   
2. Reboot
3. Go to Genuine Microsoft Software and click Validate Windows
   

Restore Default NTFS, Etc. Permissions for Vista (and XP)

This was difficult to find online, so I thought I'd write a post about it. Here's the bottom line:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose


More info and instructions for XP: KB 313222

Error 1310 Can't Write to Config.msi Directory During Repair or Uninstall

Error 1310. Error writing to file: C:\Config.Msi\59cb9b6.rbf. System error 5. Verify that you have access to that directory.

This problem seems to especially crop up under Windows Vista with UAC turned off. There is a lot of advice online about adjusting the permissions of the Config.msi folder, but I don't think they work.

The following workaround seems to do the trick, however:

1. First, try resetting Windows Installer by running the following (this might be all you need to do):
msiexec /unreg
msiexec /regserver

2. When installing a program, like from Adobe or Microsoft Office 2007, that demonstrates this problem, run the installer EXE in XP Compatibility mode.

3. Make sure the setup programs that are copied to your Program Files directory are set to run in XP Compatibility mode. Here are a couple examples:
Adobe Acrobat Pro 9: "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Setup Files\{AC76BA86-1033-0000-7760-000000000004}\Setup.exe"

Microsoft Office 2007: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\SETUP.EXE"

4. Make sure that no files are in use when doing a change/repair operation. For example, Copernic Desktop Search keeps Outlook files in use unless it is shut down, and changing the Office installation will fail. Other search programs or backup software might make for the same problem.

Windows Vista Installation Guide

SoftwareTip'sPalace offer you full Guide for Microsoft Windows Vista Installation. First we will explain you few important things which you should know about Windows Vista before you start with Installation. Most important thing you should know is Windows Vista Requirements, so first read which Windows Vista Requirements are than you can start with Vista Installation.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Vista is the new operating system developed by Microsoft. After more than five years of development and several delays this new version arrives from shadow. What it more emphasizes when initiating this new version of Windows is its graphical surroundings denominated AERO. Adored by and criticized by others when saying that it is a copy of MacOS X, which is certain, is that it is a great step if we compared it with the previous versions of Windows. According to Microsoft, Windows Vista is the most important version that they have sent since left Windows 95.

Before anything, you have to know that Windows Vista requires quite powerful equipment so that it can work fluidly. Although Microsoft has given two data:

• Vista Capable (equipment that can run Vista but with the minimum) and,
• Vista Premium (equipment that will take advantage of all the power Vista).

Those of Redmon have created a tool to know if your equipment can or cannot run Windows Vista as well as which is the version that better adapts you computer. This tool can be downloaded from this link.

Note: Before you start with Windows Vista installation please read Requirements for Window Vista.

Start with Windows Vista Installantion

1. Now ignites your computer and put the DVD of Windows Vista in DVD-ROM. If the configuration of the BIOS is correct, the disc will begin automatically. If it does not start from the DVD it proves to enter the BIOS and looks for an option that puts “Default Values” to restore the configuration that brought of factory.
2. When first screen appears you have to select the language in which you are going to install Windows Vista, the format of date and currency and the language of the keyboard. Now press Next.
3. Now click on the button “Install now” to initiate the installation. In order to recover the system it selects the option “To repair the equipment”.
4. Insert the product key which you did get with Windows Vista,
5. If proporcionastes the installation key you will not have to select the version of Windows Vista that you are going to install. Care, selects the corresponding one to your key or otherwise you can lose data. Beam click in “I have selected the acquired version of Windows” and presses following.
6. Now accept the contract of Final License for User (CLUF), you click in “Acceptance the terms of license” and presses next.
7. Choose between a clean installation or an update according to if one settles in an empty hard disk or on an installation of existing Windows, in this case conserve all the data.
8. Select the partition in which you want to install Windows Vista. You can create a new one, format it, erase it, ect… If you do not want to complicate your life just press Next.
9. Now Windows Vista installation will begin. Be patient until last step is completed, it would not have to last more than 15 minutes.
10. Once completed last step, the computer will be reinitiated.
11. Now Windows is going away to prepare to initiate for the first time.
12. Finally the Windows Vista installation will be completed.
13. Again the computer will be reinitiated for the last time.
14. Now you have to write your name and a password. The password can be left in target but he is recommendable to write one. If you need to create more accounts, later you can do it from the Control Panel. It chooses in addition an image for your account, this image you can also change more ahead. After you finish with this step click Next.
15. It writes a name to identify the equipment within a network and chooses the bottom that you want to use. You can change it later. Again press Next.
16. It selects that type of updates you wish to install. I recommend selecting the first option but you are an advanced user. If on the contrary you want to install the updates by your account, selects the third option. Later the Following button presses.
17. Now select your hour zone. If you wish that Windows automatically changes the hour for the summer schedule it marks the square that there is underneath the hour zone. It verifies that the date and the hour are the correct ones and presses the Next button.
18. Thank You screen will appear, select Start button.
19. Windows Vista is the first operating system of Microsoft that adapts to each computer of different form. For it, once finished the installation, Windows equipment will carry out a series of test to determine the agreed optimal configuration to you.
20. Once finalized the test, Windows will begin.
21. The first time that you initiate Windows Vista it will appear the “Welcome Center” in which you will be able to find of fast form information on your equipment as well as the new characteristics of Windows Vista.
22. And finally, you have Windows Vista installed in computer.

Check Your Windows Vista Activation Status

This is an interesting and useful utility that will tell you the status of the computer you are working on that is using Windows Vista. If you are connected to the Internet, the utility will be able to tell you if the Windows Vista version you are using is fully licensed or not.

• Click Start
• Type cmd in the search box and hit ENTER
• Type slmgr.vbs -dli in the command line
• Wait a few seconds for a Windows Script Host pop-up window to display the License Activation Status
• Click OK

The pop-up will also tell you the edition you are using, a description, as well as the license status.

Windows Vista Error Fix:Windows Experience Index Doesn't Work

Sometimes your Windows Experience Index doesn't work on your Windows Vista computer and forwarded an error message.Then do the following steps to solve this problem:

Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT, and look at the winsat.log.This was the error message
you saw in there:

198406 (3144) - winsat\main.cpp:1161: > Running Assessment: media '-input
{winsatencode.wmv} -encode {winsat.prx}'
198828 (3144) - winsat\main.cpp:1430: > Assessment FAILED due to an error

It appears to mean that around the time it tried to play a test media file,it failed.Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT. Try to play the files winsatencode.wmv and winsat.wmv using your default media player in windows vista. Do they Play?If so, try this. In C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT, rename the folder DataStore to OldDatastore, and try running the Update My Score again.

Is Windows Media Player 11 is the default player for .wmv files on your Windows Vista computer?Yes, both files are only about a second long, winsatencode.wmv seems to play even faster than the other, and ends abruptly. As long as Windows Media Player played it, and didn't freeze or crash, things should be okay. To check the file, try running the System File Checker. To do this, right click on Command Prompt (Start Menu\Programs\Accessories), and choose Run as Administrator.Copy the following, and Paste it after the prompt:

sfc /SCANFILE="C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\winsatencode.wmv"

Press Enter. Then do the same for the other file:

sfc /SCANFILE="C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\winsat.wmv"

Press Enter. If things are okay and you are given the text message "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations", or that it found errors and they were corrected, proceed to renaming the folder DataStore to OldDatastore, under C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT, and try running the Update My Score again.

Did you try renaming the DataStore folder under C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT to OldDatastore? If that didn't work, rename it back to DataStore. Open the DataStore folder, and create a New Folder within the DataStore folder. Cut and Paste, or Drag, all the XML Documents (.xml files) in DataStore into the New Folder. Drag the New Folder to your desktop. Then try to update your score. If this doesn't work, move the .xml files back as they were, and delete the empty New Folder. If it does work, delete the New Folder, and all the files in it.

It's a fact that the Windows Experience Index Score doesn't affect how your Windows Vista computer runs. The only caveat I'm aware of is that you can't turn on the Aero theme unless your Windows Vista computer meets a certain criteria of the Windows Experience Index.

INSTALL XP ON WINDOWS VISTA

The question I am asked most often is "How do I install a dual-boot with Windows XP on my new windows vista computer?" The answer is that it's not that difficult, it's just very time consuming, and you need to own a copy of Windows XP.

Note that you should not attempt this if you aren't ready to troubleshoot any problems that might occur.

The first issue we encounter is that computers with pre-installed operating systems take up the entire drive. Luckily microsoft included the Shrink volume feature in Vista, so we can easily shrink the Vista partition down to make room for XP.

Open the Computer Management panel, which you can find under Administrative tools or by right-clicking the Computer item in the start menu and choosing Manage. Find the Disk Management item in the list and select that.

Now we'll shrink our volume down by right-clicking on the main hard drive and choosing Shrink Volume.

Now you can choose the size that you want to shrink, which really means you are choosing the size that you want your XP partition to be. Whatever you do, don't just use the default. I chose roughly 10gb by entering 10000 into the amount.

The next step might be confusing, because we need to change the cd-rom drive that's invariably taking up D: at the moment, because we want to use D: for the Windows XP partition, but it's already taken by the cd-rom drive. If you skip this step than XP will install onto the E: drive, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not quite as tidy.

Right-click on the cd-rom drive in the list and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu.

Now we'll change the CD drive to use E: by selecting that in the drop-down.

Now we can create a new partition for XP to live on and make sure that the drive letter is set the way we want. If you do not create a partition now the XP install will do so automatically, but it's easier and cleaner to do it this way.

Right-click on the Unallocated free space area and then select New Simple Volume from the menu.

Follow through the wizard and select whatever options you'd like, making sure to use D: as the drive letter.

Now you will need to close out of disk management and reboot your computer. This is because we can't do the next step until we reboot. (you can try, but it won't work)

So we've come back from rebooting… open up Computer from the start menu and then right-click on the D: drive and select properties.

Give your partition a meaningful name like "XP". It would be wise to name the C: drive to "Vista" at this point as well.

Now you'll want to pop your XP cd into the drive and boot off it. You may have to configure your BIOS to enable booting off the CD drive, or if your computer says something like "Hit Esc for boot menu" you might want to use that.

Once you come to the screen where you can choose the partition to install on, then choose either the unpartitioned space or the new partition you created. Whatever you do, don't try and install onto your Vista partition! See how much cleaner it is now that we've labeled each partition distinctly?

We'll assume XP is completely installed at this point, and you will have lost your ability to boot into Windows Vista, so we'll need to use the VistaBootPro utility to restore the Vista boot loader.

Download and install VistaBootPro from vistabootpro.org

During the install you'll be forced to install the .NET 2.0 framework. Open up VistaBootPRO and then click on the System Bootloader tab. Check the "Windows Vista Bootloader" and then "All Drives" radio buttons, and then click on the Install Bootloader button.

At this point, the Windows Vista bootloader is installed and you'll only be able to boot into Vista, but we'll fix that. Instead of manually doing the work, we'll just click the Diagnostics menu item and then choose Run Diagnostics from the menu.

This will scan your computer and then automatically fill in the XP version.. click on the "Manage OS Entries" tab and then click in the textbox for Rename OS Entry, and name it something useful like "Windows XP" or "The Windows That Works"

Click the Apply Updates button and then reboot your computer… you should see your shiny new boot manager with both operating systems in the list!

If you get an error saying "unable to find ntldr" when trying to boot XP, you'll need to do the following:
Find the hidden files ntldr and ntdetect.com in the root of your Vista drive and copy them to the root of your XP drive.
If you can't find the files there, you can find them in the \i386\ folder on your XP install cd

This is a critical piece of information: Windows XP will be installed on the D: drive, even in Windows XP… so you'll need to keep that in mind when tweaking your system.

You can share information between the drives, but I wouldn't recommend messing with the other operating system's partition too much… it might get angry and bite you. Or screw up your files. What I do recommend is that you store most of your files on a third drive shared between the operating systems… you could call that partition "Data".

Enjoy.. Be a little careful

Speed Up Windows Vista

Many people have written or asked me questions about problems that Vista has, especially in terms of the speed. Slow computer system is indeed what computer users find annoying really. However, this is what I found when I was surfing to kill my spare my free time last week: WINDOWS VISTA PERFORMANCE AND TUNING.

This is a final advice Microsoft has to help Vista users understand better some ways to speed up the performance of Windows Vista. This 14-page pdf document, will highlight some important issues like:

• Power Settings on Mobile Computers
• Disable Visual Effects
• Adjust Search Settings
• Windows ReadyBoost
• Sleep Option
  
• Disable Unwanted Startup Programs
• Disable Background Programs or Services
• Remove Unused Programs
• Disable Unwanted Services
• Improving Performance on User Account Control
• Clean Things up with Disk Cleanup
• Schedule Disk Cleanup
• Defragment Your Disk
• Windows Vista Experience Index
• Performance with Task Manager
• etc..

To download this pdf, here is the link.

Windows Vista Performnce and Tuning

Here are some shots..


I have not finished reading and experimenting all the tips though (my apology, I am a busy undergraduate ;p). However, i can assure you these tips are absolutely useful! I see some improvements since I applied some of the advice.

Usefull vista tips

Tip #1: Shrink a partition

If you have created one or more partitions on your hard drive and a few months later you think "mmmmh this partition has to be a bit smaller", it is possible in Vista to shrink them. You can do this even with a 'system partition'.

How to shrink a partition?

Step 1:
Click with your right mouse button on 'Computer' and then click 'manage'.
The next screen is shown.



In this screen you click in the left pane on 'Disk Management' below 'Storage'.
Then the next screen is shown.



Now you see all your partitions which you have created. To shrink a partition you simple right click on the partition and in the menu which appears you click 'Shrink Volume'.
The next screen is then shown.



Here you can enter the amount of space to shrink in MB.

If there is empty space available behind the partition there is also the possibility to extend the the partition using the option 'Extend Volume'.
There one thing you can not do. You can not move a partition or extend it with an empty space which is in front of a partition.

Tip #2: Use ReadyBoost to speed up your system!

What is ReadyBoost and what is SuperFetch?
Microsoft introduces, using Windows, these new techniques, which have to speed up your computer which is used for daily usage.

How do these technologies work?
Do you really get a super system when you extend the memory using a USB stick?
The memory in computers increased dramatically since a few years ago. This is logical because there is nothing what makes a computer more stable and faster than extra memory. Microsoft wants to use that new memory maximum and equipped Windows Vista with a few techniques which have to take care of this.

The memory manager of Windows Vista can change the grouping of the memory any time, which decreases the chance of overloading a part of the memory. Microsoft calls this 'dynamic kernel address space'.

The possibility to assign memory dynamically is also used to decide which data have to be loaded into the memory and which data is mend for the virtual memory. Previous versions of Windows did not make any difference between data which is used much and which is used less. Windows Vista does it on another way. SuperFetch doesn't look at the data which is unused the longest, but it predicts which data will be needed as first again and keeps this data stored in the memory.If there will be any free space in the RAM-memory then SuperFetch will fill these spaces with the data of which it predicts it will be needed as first again.

Tip #3:How to disable User Account Control?

To keep your computer safe and clean of viruses that's one thing which is very important for your computer. But you don't want to get bothered with annoying warnings from Windows Vista each time you install a program or when you make a change in Vista's settings?

Without any doubt is Vista's most irritating tool the User Account Control (UAC). The User Account Control takes care that Windows asks permission to several system sources over and over again.
I have to admit that this standard setting helps you to keep your computer clean, but do you really want to give permission for every small setting change, like changing the Windows' standard font?

I think your answer is NO!

Tip #4: How to make screenshot quick and easy in Vista?

Vista has a great tool to make screenshots very easily. This tool is called the 'Snipping tool'.
Using this tool you can make screenshots of your screen or a selection of it very easily.

This tool can be found at:

• Start
• Programs
• Accessories
• Snipping Tool

Using this tool you can make screenshots in several ways, for example you can make a:

• Free-form snip
• Rectangular snip
• Window snip
• Full screen snip

Below you find a screenshot I made using the 'free-form snip'. So if you need to make a screenshot of something on your screen you can use this tool for it.

Enabling Remote Desktop in Windows 7/Vista

In this tutor we guide you, how to allow Windows 7 and Windows Vista Based systems to Enable and test the remote desktop systems.

Though the facility exists in these operating systems it is disabled in it by default(Vista buisness and enterprise editions are exceptions). The procedure to enable in both 7 and Vista are same.

Step by step procedure to Enable Remote Desktop

Step 1. Right-click Computer in the Start menu and then select Properties.

Step 2. Click Remote settings in the Tasks list on the left side of the System window.

Step 3. Select Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop if computers connecting to it will only be from within a local network or are running versions of Windows other than 7 or Vista.

Note: Here select Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication if computers connecting to it will connect from the internet or all computers connecting will be Windows 7/Vista.

Step 4. Click OK to save your changes.

Note: If you’re using the Windows Vista firewall, Remote Desktop will automatically be allowed through it. If you’re using another firewall, you’ll need to open port 3389 to allow Remote Desktop connections.

Selecting Remote Desktop Users

If you have a user account(s) that do not have administrative credentials and you want to use to log in when connecting with Remote Desktop, follow these instructions.

Note: All user accounts with administrative rights are automatically allowed to log in using Remote Desktop.

1. Open the Remote tab in the System Properties window (see instructions above).

2. Click the Select Users button in the Remote tab of the System Properties window.

3. Click Add in the Remote Desktop Users window.

4. Click the Advanced button in the Select Users window.

5. Click the Find Now button.

6. Select the user you want to add to the list of users able to log in with Remote Desktop and then click OK.

7. Click OK in the Select Users window.

Note: Make sure the user you’ve just added is in the object names box.

8. Click OK in the Remote Desktop Users window.

9. Click OK in the System Properties window.