Reveal Vista's hidden context menu power tools

The right-click context menu in Vista has a few hidden surprises if you press and hold the SHIFT key while you bring it up.

When used on a file, the SHIFT key adds the options to pin the file in question to the start menu, add it to the Quicklaunch bar or save its name and directory location as a text path for pasting into documents.

When used on a folder, the copy as text path option is added, along with the handy ability to pop-up a command prompt window in the folder in question.

Be the super user

If you're nervous of the consequences of disabling UAC, but want to avoid all the nagging prompts and keyboard shortcuts that leaving it enabled can entail, there's a better way. You can convince the operating system that you are actually the one true admin with a simple command.

To enable full administrative privileges with a normal Vista user account:

Open an administrative command prompt.

Type 'net user administrator activate:yes' and hit Enter.

Enable verbose shutdown messages (Vista business and Ultimate only)

This is not really a performance tip per se, but it will let you see what is going on when you shutdown Windows Vista, which could help you boost your shutdown speed. With this tip enabled, Vista will inform you of what is going on behind the scenes on the shutdown screen with text messages.

To enable verbose shutdown messages:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'gpedit.msc' in the search bar. Hit Enter.

In the group policy window, navigate to 'computer configuration\administrative template\system' then scroll down in the right-hand pane until you reach the 'verbose vs. normal status messages' option. Double click it and set the option to 'enable'. Hit ok.

Display your backed-up DVD media in Vista Media Center (applies to Vista Home Premium and Ultimate only)

This not a performance tip per se, but it does correct a major annoyance in the Windows Vista Media Centre default settings. By default, Media Center will not find and list DVD media that you have backed up to your hard drive. Fortunately, correcting this can be done with a quick registry edit.

To enable the gallery display for stored DVD media in Media Center:

Start Regedit and navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings'.

Double-click the 'ShowGallery' value and change it to 'Gallery'.

Now the DVD gallery will display in Media Center and enumerate your stored DVD media in the library.

Add administrator account to welcome screen

Vista is designed so that using the default administrator account is not necessary. Unfortunately, the lever for doing this is the ever-intrusive UAC (User Access Control) which we have already talked about. If you would rather go directly to the source to make your changes and use the administrator account, you might be baffled since this account is inactive by default. Let's look at making the default administrator account one of your login options on the welcome screen, so it's available when needed.

To make the administrator account appear on the login screen we need to do two operations; add a password to the administrator account and make it active.

To add a password to the administrator account and activate it:

Open the 'start menu' and type 'cmd' in the search bar but do not press Enter. Right click on the 'cmd' shortcut where it appears in the search results and choose 'run as administrator'.

In the command prompt, type 'Net user administrator (password)' where (password) is the password you want to apply to the administrator account. Do not include the brackets. Hit Enter.

In the same command prompt, type 'Net user administrator /active:yes' and press Enter.

The administrator account will now appear on the welcome screen and can be used.

Add Encrypt / Decrypt to Right Click Menu

Windows Vista contains a built in encryption function that can be used to 'lock' specified files or directories so that only your specific user account can access them. This is not password based, but account based, so that unless you are logged in with your specific username and password, the file is inaccessible. It's kind of tricky and time consuming to get at the encryption option in the default Vista interface though. To make access to encryption easy, put it on the context menu with this little registry addition.

Note: It's always good to be careful with encryption, because it is quite possible to lose access to important files completely. For a solid grounding in the topic as it relates to recent versions of Windows.

To add encrypt/decrypt command to the right-click context menu:

Open Regedit (open 'start' menu and type 'regedit.')

Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced'

Create a new DWORD value named 'EncryptionContextMenu' and give it a value of 1.

Disable 'GUI boot' to speed startup

The little animated bar you see while loading Windows can be disabled, which will actually shave a few precious seconds off your startup time. Try it, it worked for us.

To disable the Vista GUI boot:

Open the 'start' menu and enter 'msconfig' in the search bar. Hit Enter.

When the MSConfig window opens, navigate to the 'boot' tab.

Place a checkmark next to the 'No GUI boot' option. Click 'ok'.

Configure Windows Vista autoplay manually to suit your preferences

The Windows Vista autoplay menu has marginally more useful options than its XP predecessor, but it's still a bit of a pain to click through every time you insert media. Microsoft has included a quick config utility that can make setting your preferred options for each type of media much easier though.

To set autoplay preferences:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'autoplay' in the search bar. Hit Enter.From this screen, you can select what you want to happen when each autoplay-enabled media type is inserted. Leave the 'use autoplay for all media and devices' option at the top checked unless you want to disable autoplay altogether. It is required to use the rest of the options on this screen. When you are done, scroll to the bottom and hit 'save.'

Tweak the mouse scroll wheel

If your finger is getting sore from all the scrolling around you do on web pages and documents, you can actually tweak the resolution of your mouse's scroll wheel in Windows Vista. By default the OS scrolls 3 lines at a time, but if you want faster scrolling and less finger abuse, this is easy to change with a small registry edit.

To increase mouse wheel scroll speed in Vista:

Open Regedit (open 'start' menu and type 'regedit.')

Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop'

Scroll down to the 'WheelScrollLines' value and double click it to edit.

Larger values equate to larger 'notches' on the scroll wheel, but this will require a restart before it's effective.