Restoring BIOS defaults

It's quite possible that during the course of some of our overclocking tips presented later in the Beginners Guide, your motherboard could seize up and refuse to boot. Don't panic. It is easy to restore the default settings of any modern motherboard fortunately.

If this happens, what you need to do is power off your system, open the side of the case and locate the CMOS battery.

This small battery provides the necessary power to store the changes you have made to the BIOS defaults. If you remove the battery or switch the BIOS clearing jumper (generally found next to the battery, but this may vary, consult your manual) the CMOS memory that holds the changes will be cleared and the BIOS defaults restored, along with your ability to boot your system.

To clear the CMOS settings:

Locate and switch the CMOS clearing jumper, then press the power button once (nothing should happen, but the BIOS will be restored) before resetting it in its original position and powering your system on.

Or

Remove the battery with the aid of a flat head screwdriver. Leave it out for about 10 minutes to be safe, then replace it and restart the system.

Or...

Some motherboard makers allow you to load in the BIOS defaults when you boot up, without having to crack open the case and fiddle around with jumpers or batteries. This may not work for every single motherboard, or computer out there, but it is worth a shot.

First power off the PC, then while holding the "Insert" key down, power the computer back up, and don't let go of that key. If things go as planned, the computer should boot up, and give some little warning about "BIOS checksums loaded." From there, you can let go of the key, and go right into the BIOS and reset it completely, or set your own favorite performance settings. Of course if this doesn't work, then go back and follow our directions for how to reset the CMOS as described above.

Disable IPV6 in Windows Vista

Windows Vista is the first Microsoft operating system to feature IP Version 6 as a default networking protocol. This despite the fact that essentially nothing uses it. Since each of your network interfaces is running both IPV6 and standard TCP/IP by default, wouldn't it be a good idea to disable the unnecessary protocol? i think so.

To disable IPV6 in Windows Vista:

Start Regedit and navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip6\Parameters\
Right click on an empty area of the right-hand pane and choose 'new\DWORD value'.

Name the DWORD 'DisabledComponents' and give it the value '0xFF'

You will need to restart your system for this to take effect.

Update Vista's DirectX9 files for better game compatibility

One of the fixes for getting games to run in Vista that do not normally (such as FEAR and 3Dmark06 as two examples) is relatively simple. These games require the latest version of Directx 9. Vista does not actually contain a full installation of Directx 9, just some elements for compatibility purposes. So, install Directx 9.

To install Directx 9c on Windows Vista:

Unzip the file into a folder on your desktop or in your documents.

Run the DXSETUP file.

You can delete the folder after the install has finished.

Poor game performance? Try DirectX 9 mode

If you own some of the newer DirectX10-capable games like Bioshock or Crysis, but you are disappointed with the performance you are seeing when you run these games in their full DX10 glory, there's an option which you'll probably want to try. Navigate to the games folder ('start\games') and right click on the icon that starts your directX10 game. You should see a 'play DirectX 9' option. You may sacrifice a few of the visual bells and whistles, but your frame rates are almost guaranteed to be better.

Fix large file copying problems in Windows Vista

Out of the box Vista can have some issues with large file transfers over a network. This is because of a new Vista feature called 'receive window auto-tuning'. In a nutshell, this allows Vista to automatically scale the size of each packet of data it requests and receives over a network connection to suit the available bandwidth. This is a good thing. However, older networking hardware may have issues with this newfangled technique and refuse to co-operate, leading to dropped file transfers, slow performance and other weirdness.

If you are experiencing network issues with large file transfers and occasional connection problems with applications like Messenger, we recommend that you restrict or disable the receive window auto-tuning feature.

To do this, open a command prompt window with administrative privileges.

Type 'netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted' and press Enter.

If this fixes your issues, relax. If you continue to have networking problems, open another administrative prompt and type 'netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled'.

Enable more simultaneous Downloads in Firefox

If you prefer to use Firefox (which, like IE7 defaults to only two persistent connections to a given server), here's the Firefox-approved version of the above tip:

Open Firefox and type 'about:config' in the address bar.

Scroll down to the 'network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server' entry.

Double click the entry and change the value to anywhere from 4 to 10.

Restart Firefox.

Enable more simultaneous downloads in Internet Explorer 7

As was the case with Windows XP, the version of Internet Explorer bundled with Windows Vista is limited to just two simultaneous connections to the same Internet server. This is generally fine, but it can mean that large complicated websites can take longer to open than they should, and it also means that you cannot download more than two files simultaneously from the same location. Fortunately this is easy enough to change.

To increase the number of simultaneous downloads in IE 7:

Open Regedit and navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings'

Create a new Dword value called 'MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server' and give it a decimal value between 3 and 5.

Create another new Dword called 'MaxConnectionsPerServer' and give it an identical decimal value.

Close Regedit and restart IE to take better advantage of your bandwidth.

Customize Vista desktop performance

Whether or not you use the Aero 3D interface, you can tweak a whole range of factors to customize your Windows Vista desktop, or drop features to gain speed on lower-end computer systems. All these options are available in one handy menu which can be found In the advanced properties of the 'computer' option in the Start menu.

To adjust Vista desktop performance settings:

Open the 'start' menu and right-click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

Click on 'advanced system settings' on the left-hand pane.

Go to the 'advanced' tab and under the 'performance' heading, Click 'settings...'

In the 'visual effects' tab, you have a whole range of settings you can disable to boost desktop performance, or you can choose the 'adjust for best performance option' if your system is having great difficulty with Vista.

The ultimate Vista performance tweak (not really)

The Windows Experience Index (WEI) score is generated by the WinSat program. WinSat stores its results in an XML file on your hard drive, which is then read by the WEI in order to generate your 'score' as displayed in the performance information and tools window.

Wouldn't it be nice to have this instead though?Open the 'start' menu and type 'wordpad' in the search bar. Right click on 'wordpad.exe' in the results and choose 'run as administrator.'

When wordpad opens, go to 'file\open' and navigate to 'c:\windows\performance\winsat\datastore'. Change the file types dropdown box to 'all files...' .

Open the file with the most recent date. Edit lines 12 through 19 and add whatever value you would like to see (in the format #.#). Save the file.

Now open the performance information window ('start' and type 'performance info') and click 'update my score.' When the update is finished, your new score will appear!

(Please note that this tip has absolutely no effect on how your computer actually performs, but it looks good!)

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.

Disable security notifications

If you've made one or two of the changes in this article, like disabling UAC for example, and are getting fed up with the Windows security center notifications popping up in the taskbar and nagging you about what you've done, here's how to disable them.

To disable Windows Vista Security Center notification:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'service.msc' in the search bar. Do not press Enter.

Mouse up to the 'services.msc' search result, right-click it and choose 'run as administrator' (this is assuming you have not already disabled UAC, in which case the run-as is not necessary).

In the services window, scroll down to the 'Security Center' service, right click it and hit 'properties'.

In the 'startup type' dropdown box, change the value to 'disabled', then click the 'stop' button below to stop the service immediately. Hit 'ok.'

Using the new 'resource overview' monitor in Windows Vista

The Windows performance monitor has received a considerable facelift with the release of Vista, and now offers a whole host of monitoring information about your computer, once you've learned how to configure it for easy use. The most obvious and useful new feature is the resource overview window. This screen handily centralizes your CPU, memory, network and hard disk % at use information and allows you to track which files and processes are using your system resources in real-time. Let's take a look at how to use it.

To open the resource overview screen:

Open the 'start' menu and type 'monitor' in the search box and hit Enter.

Welcome to the new and improved resource overview screen. As you can see, the four windows correspond to the four major hardware areas of your system, and show you essentially how hard they are working over the last 60 seconds of time. Now, let's dig a little deeper.

If you double click on any of the four displays, you'll notice that the corresponding heading on the lower part of the screen will expand, offering you more information. For the CPU, we can see exactly which processes have been taking up CPU time over the last minute, and what percentage. For the hard drive, the files that have been read from and written to and how much. For the network which processes are accessing network connections and how much data are they transferring (very useful for identifying possible spyware/trojan virus problems), and for the memory you can see how much memory each running process is consuming and what percentage of that can be shared with other applications or is fully reserved. All-in-all a very useful overview of the activities of your entire computer system right at your fingertips.