Windows Tips for Everyone

Whether you've jumped to Vista or are sticking with XP, our tips will make your computing faster and safer--and even a little more stylish.

Right out of the box, Windows is just a so-so operating system. It doesn't really reach its potential until you've cracked it, hacked it, and otherwise bent it to your will.

Whether you want to speed up XP, customize Vista's Aero interface, manage your disk partitions, or do quick-and-dirty photo editing, our Windows projects will show you how. We start off with some performance boosters, and then move on to cover file management, interface tweaks, network and browser options, and Windows Media Player.

The work isn't done until you plug Windows' many holes, which we cover in "Tweak Security Settings in XP and Vista." If you're switching over to the new OS, see our tips in "Make the Move to Vista," and then try our Vista alterations in "Change Vista's Defaults."

All PC tweaking begins with a backup, even if you simply create a new restore point. To set one in XP, click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, choose Create a restore point, click Next, and step through the wizard. In Vista, click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Maintenance, Backup and Restore Center, select Create a restore point or change settings, choose System Restore, click Next, and then follow the on-screen instructions.

Restore points won't solve all your problems. That's why one of the most welcome new tools in Vista is Complete PC Backup, which creates a snapshot of your machine, including all of your applications, settings, and data files. Later, if (when?) your hardware fails, you can restore the entire system, not just your files. (Note that Complete PC Backup is not available in Vista Home Basic or Home Premium.)

To create a backup, click Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Back up your computer (in Classic View, double-click Backup and Restore Center). Choose Back up computer and follow the steps. I recommend making a backup at least once per month if you use your PC for work, and a minimum of once every six months no matter how much or little you use it.

Always back up before you make any big changes to your PC's configuration (note that Windows creates a restore point automatically prior to every new software installation and any other significant system change).

Whenever you start your PC, various services and programs start up in the background, often without your knowledge. Most of them are programs or services you need, such as your firewall and antivirus software. But some, such as instant messaging apps that you rarely use, do nothing but squander system resources and slow down your PC.

The simplest way to remove the autostart apps you don't use is with the System Configuration utility: Click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista's menu and type in the Start Search box), type msconfig, and press <Enter>. Select the Startup tab to see the programs that start with Windows. Uncheck those you don't want to run (see FIGURE 1). Next, click the Services tab to see a list of all the services running on your system. Think twice before you uncheck a service, however; many are required to keep your hardware and software operating. The Process Library describes thousands of Windows services and programs, and tells you whether they're necessary. If you're not sure whether you want to run a service or program, enter its name in your favorite Web search engine and look in the results for a description.

The best way to find out how well your system is performing is to run a diagnostics program. The counters in XP's System Monitor utility provide insight into your PC's operation, but they can be difficult to decipher. To run the program, click Start, Run, type perfmon, and press <Enter>. Select System Monitor in the left pane, and click the plus sign in the toolbar on the right to add more performance measures.

Vista's Reliability and Performance Monitor is a big improvement over XP's System Monitor. Click Start (or Start, Run on the Classic Start menu), type perfmon, and press <Enter> to open it. The utility is actually several tools in one, but its most useful feature is the Resource Overview, which provides a graphic representation of your current CPU, disk, network, and memory use, as well as historical usage stats (see "The Best of Vista's New Tools"). The program provides exceedingly detailed information about each measure; for example, in the CPU section you can see every service and application running, how many threads each is using, and the CPU use of each.

Click Reliability Monitor in the utility's left pane to view a day-by-day history of your machine's stability, including itemization of any system crashes and hardware or software failures. You can even drill down for more details about any individual event. The tool also computes an overall reliability index, which changes every day to reflect whether your system or applications have crashed.

Another of my favorite new features in Vista Ultimate and Business is Shadow Copies, which backs up your files automatically and makes restoring previous versions of files gone bad a breeze. To revert to a previous version of a file, open Windows Explorer, right-click the file, and select Restore previous versions. Click one of the listed versions to open it.

Keep a couple of things in mind about this feature. First, Vista doesn't maintain a shadow copy of every version of the files you open; instead, each time Vista creates a restore point, it generates a shadow copy. Also, some of the versions you see listed may have been created when you used Vista's Complete PC Backup program.

By default, Windows associates certain files with certain programs: When you double-click the file, a specific application opens to run it. But why stick with Windows' choices? To change the program associated with a specific file type in XP and Vista, right-click the file in Explorer or any folder window, and select Open With to produce a list of programs that can run that file. Select Choose Program in XP, or Choose Default Program in Vista. In the resulting dialog box, click the program you want to use as the default, and make sure to check Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. Then click OK. If the program you want to use as the default isn't listed, click Browse, locate and select the program you want, click Open, and then click OK.

One of the simplest and least pricey ways to speed up Vista is by enabling ReadyBoost, which uses a USB flash drive to supplement your computer's RAM. A 1GB flash drive costs as little as $15, and a 2GB device is a little more than twice that amount.

How do you figure the appropriate thumb-drive capacity for your PC? The smallest cache that ReadyBoost can use is 256MB, and the largest is 4GB. Microsoft recommends a flash-memory-to-system-RAM ratio of between 1:1 and 2.5:1. For example, if you have a PC with 512MB of RAM, purchase a flash drive with 512MB to 1.25GB of space. A system equipped with 1GB of RAM should use a drive with a capacity of between 1GB and 2.5GB.

The tricky part involves ensuring that your USB flash drive is ReadyBoost-ready. Be sure to check the minimum requirements and other ReadyBoost information. Before purchasing a specific drive, search the Web for information on whether it has been tested with ReadyBoost.

To use ReadyBoost, first plug the drive into a USB port and choose Speed up my system on the screen that appears. On the next screen, select Use this device, and click OK. On the ReadyBoost tab of the device's Properties dialog box, you can either go with the amount of space that Vista suggests reserving for the tool or replace it with an amount you prefer by using the slider control (see "The Best of Vista's New Tools").

Vista's disk-partitioning utility lets you easily create, delete, resize, and format partitions. To access these tools, select Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), System and Maintenance, and under 'Administrative tools', click Create and format hard disk partitions. (In Category View, double-click Administrative Tools and choose Disk Management in the left pane.) Use the Disk Management menu under Actions on the left to access your maintenance options. You can also right-click an existing partition and select an action from the menu that appears.

Your best bet for managing disk partitions in XP is to use a third-party program such as the $45 Partition Expert from Acronis.

Vista's built-in troubleshooting tool scans your PC, identifies problems, and generates a diagnostic report, complete with suggestions for fixing the difficulties. To use it, click Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), System and Maintenance, Performance Information and Tools, Advanced tools, Generate a system health report. (In Category View, first double-click Performance Information and Tools, and then click Advanced tools, Generate a system health report.) The system diagnostics utility takes about a minute to run before it issues a report (see FIGURE 2).

Windows' NTFS file format offers a number of performance, security, and other benefits over the older FAT and FAT32. You're asked if you'd like to convert your drive to NTFS when you upgrade from XP to Vista, but to switch a drive manually from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista's menu), type cmd, and press <Enter> to open a command prompt. Type convert x : /fs:ntfs (with x being your hard drive's letter) and press <Enter>.

Sometimes the fastest way to get something done in Windows is via the command prompt. And the fastest way to get to a command prompt is through your right-click menu. To do so, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista's menu), type regedit, and press <Enter> to launch the Registry Editor. Navigate in the left pane to HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/shell. Right-click in the right pane and select New, Key. Name it Command Prompt. Select the new key in the left pane, and double-click (Default) in the right pane. In the 'Value data' field, type Open Command Prompt, and press <Enter>. Right-click in the right pane, select New, Key, and type Command. Choose this key in the left pane, and double-click (Default) in the right pane. In the 'Value data' field, type cmd.exe /k pushd %L. Press <Enter>. After you exit the Registry Editor, an Open Command Prompt entry will appear whenever you right-click a folder. Select this option to open a command prompt with that folder preselected.

When you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, you see the Open With option, which lists the programs that you can use to open the file. For certain file types the list can be long, because as you install new programs, they add themselves to this list. Unfortunately, some of the programs listed may not be able to open the file in question. Do you really want to open a bitmap graphics file (.bmp) with, say, Microsoft Word?

To clean them out, click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista's menu), type regedit, and press <Enter> to open the Registry Editor. Navigate in the right pane to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\FileExts, and choose the extension whose Open With list you want to edit. For example, to remove Word from the list of apps for bitmaps, choose .bmp and then OpenWithList.

In the right pane you'll see an alphabetical list of keys, each of which represents an entry on that file type's Open With list ('winword.exe', for instance). Delete any entry you want to remove from the list. Now double-click the MRUList and delete the letter of the application you just removed. For example, if winword.exe had the value 'a', delete that letter from the MRUList.

Vista's new search tool is much faster than its XP equivalent, but by default it indexes only a handful of folders--so it may miss a broad swath of files on your PC.

You can manually add folders to the index by selecting Start and typing any term in the Start Search box (or click Start, Search, For Files or Folders in the Classic Start menu). When the results appear, click Search Tools and select Modify Index Locations. Choose Modify, and then click Show all locations to open the Indexed Locations dialog box. The top window displays your storage devices. Check the box next to one of them (or double-click the entry to see a list of subfolders), select the locations you want added to the index, and click OK and Close to return to the search window (see FIGURE 3).

To save and update your Vista searches, select Start, Search (or Start, Search, For Files or Folders in the Classic Start menu) and type your search term. Then click Save Search to open the 'Save as' dialog box, and then choose Save. Your saved search will appear in the Searches folder of the Search window's left pane. Bonus tip: For a different way to find files in XP, try the free Tag2Find utility.

One of the most disconcerting changes in Vista compared with previous Windows versions is the switch from menus to toolbars in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. If you prefer to order off the menu, simply press the <Alt> key to bring the menus back. Press <Alt> again to make them disappear. To keep menus around in Windows Explorer, choose Organize, Layout, Menu Bar. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, Menu Bar.

XP's Run box is a quick and easy way to open programs and run DOS commands, but Vista's new Start menu has replaced it with the Start Search box. If you're a fan of the Run box, you'll be delighted to learn that it's easy to bring back. Right-click the Start button, choose Properties, Customize, check Run command, and click OK. The old favorite will be back on the Start menu, where it belongs.

Windows' icons aren't much help in finding important files and folders at a glance. It's easy to create your own icons to help you spot last year's tax return (skull and crossbones?) or your r&#233;sum&#233; (double dollar signs, perhaps). You don't need to be an artist to design an icon; but if you're willing to spend $50, Microangelo Toolset 6 (21-day free trial) can make you look like a digital Picasso.

First, open Microangelo Studio and follow the steps to create a new icon. For Windows XP, your icons should measure 16 by 16, 32 by 32, or 48 by 48 pixels. For Vista, you can choose any of those sizes or go all the way up to 256 by 256 pixels. You can use the program's pens, paintbrushes, and other drawing tools to make icons, but I rely on its import tool to work with graphics created by others. The program lets you import files in several formats, shrink or expand the images to the appropriate size, and then save them as icon files (.ico). Google Image Search offers a nice collection of downloadable images, but make sure the one you choose is royalty-free. To replace an existing icon with the one you just created, right-click the old one and select Properties, Shortcut, Change Icon. Browse to and select the new icon, and click Open.

Vista's screen savers are inexplicably devoid of options. For example, if you'd like to make the bubbles in the Bubbles screen saver shinier, you're out of luck--unless you know this Registry hack, that is. By adding three new values to the appropriate key, you can make your bubbles metallic, give them shadows, and display them against the desktop or a solid black background.

Click Start, Run (or just Start on Vista's menu), type regedit, and press <Enter>. Navigate to and select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Bubbles. Right-click in the right pane, select New, DWORD (32-bit) Value, and type MaterialGlass. Double-click the new key, enter a value of 1 to give your bubbles a transparent look or a value of 0 for metallic bubbles, and click OK.

Follow a similar set of steps to create a DWORD in the same right pane named ShowShadows. Enter a value of 1 to display shadows below the bubbles, or a value of 0 to go shadowless. Now make a DWORD called ShowBubbles and give it a value of 1 to show the bubbles on the desktop or 0 to display them on a black background.

To change the size and color of the borders around XP's windows and dialog boxes, and make other display alterations, right-click the desktop and choose Properties, Appearance, Advanced. Vista, meanwhile, permits you to customize many features of its Aero interface. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize, Window Color and Appearance; to tweak the transparency of the window borders, adjust the sliding 'Color intensity' control (see FIGURE 4). Choose Open classic appearance properties for more color options and click Advanced. To give your dialog boxes a new look, select Border Padding in the Item drop-down menu, and type in a new size (the default value is 4). When your borders are the right size, click OK twice.

If your network has both Vista and XP machines, the PCs might not get along very well. One problem is that by default Vista and XP use different workgroup names: 'Workgroup' in Vista and 'Mshome' in XP. As a result, the systems may not be able to find one another.

To rename the workgroup on the XP PCs, right-click My Computer, select Properties, Computer Name, Change, and type Workgroup under 'Workgroup' near the bottom of the screen. Click OK twice.

Vista's Network and Sharing Center shows info about all of the devices on your network, including their MAC and IP addresses. Click Start, Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network and Internet, Network and Sharing Center, View full map. Hold the mouse over a device to see its IP and MAC addresses (see FIGURE 5).

Non-Vista PCs take forever to show up, if they appear at all, and even then they're listed at the bottom of the page, off the map. The new protocol that Vista uses to map the network will eventually be available for XP, but Microsoft isn't saying when.

When you're at a public Wi-Fi hotspot, anyone with the right software can monitor everything you do online. To protect yourself, connect via a virtual private network, which establishes a tunnel of sorts through which your data travels. My favorite VPN service is HotspotVPN, which works with the VPN features built into XP and Vista. The service costs $9 a month, or you can obtain one-, three-, or seven-day access for $4, $6, or $7, respectively. A version of the service with an added level of encryption costs between $11 and $14 per month.

When you subscribe, you get a user name, a password, and the IP address of a wireless VPN server. Enter this information when you run the Windows network connection wizard: In XP, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network Connections, Create a new connection, Next, Connect to the network at my workplace, Next, Virtual Private Network connection, and complete the wizard.

In Vista, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), View network status and tasks (Network and Sharing Center in the Classic View). Select Set up a connection or network, double-click Connect to a workplace, choose Use my Internet connection (VPN), and complete the wizard.

Every home or small-office wireless network needs Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption to keep would-be interlopers out. If your network doesn't support WPA, it's time for an upgrade. The steps for setting up WPA vary from router to router; these instructions are for the Linksys WRT54GX4.

First, log in to your router administrator screen, click the Wireless link, and choose Wireless Security. Select WPA as your encryption method in the drop-down list, type in an encryption key, and write the key down on a slip of paper; you'll need to enter it when logging in to the network from other PCs. Click Save Settings.

Afterward you'll have to set up encryption on each of your PCs, using the same key as you used in the router. On each Windows XP PC, click the wireless-connection icon in the system tray and choose Properties. Select the Wireless Networks tab, highlight your network, click Properties, and choose the Association tab. In the Network Authentication drop-down menu, select your encryption method. In the 'Data encryption' dialog box, choose TKIP. Uncheck The key is provided for me automatically. Enter your WPA key in the 'Network key' box, and type it again in the 'Confirm network key' box. Click OK twice. The PC can now connect to your network.

In Vista, choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu), Network and Internet, Network and Sharing Center, Manage Wireless Networks. Right-click your wireless network connection, select Properties, and click the Security tab. In the 'Security type' drop-down menu, choose WPA2-Personal, and in the 'Encryption type' drop-down, choose TKIP. Enter your WPA key in the 'Network security key' box and click OK.

To add Google or another search engine to Internet Explorer 7's Search bar, click the down arrow to the right of the Search bar, choose Find More Providers, select a provider, and click Add Provider (see FIGURE 6). Then check Make this my default search provider, or keep your current engine and choose your new provider by selecting it on the down-arrow menu prior to entering your search term.

If you're not satisfied with the meager selection of search engines in IE 7's Find More Providers list (see above), building an engine to your own specifications takes just a few seconds: Click the down arrow to the right of the Search bar and choose Find More Providers. Open a new tab and browse to the provider you want. Do a search for TEST (in all capital letters), and copy the URL in the results page's address bar. Paste the URL into the first text box under Create Your Own in the 'Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7' window. Enter a name in the box beneath it, and click Install.

Whenever you click a Web link or type a URL into theaddress bar, your browser sends the request to a DNS server on the Internet, which then looks up the IP address and sends it back to your browser--a process that can take some time. To eliminate the delay, add the IP addresses and host names of the sites you visit most often to your Hosts file. Your browser looks for addresses in that file first, skipping the slower DNS server if the address is there. In Vista and XP Home, the file is at C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\HOSTS. In XP Pro, it's at C:\Winnt\System32\Drivers\HOSTS. Double-click the file to open it in Notepad or your default text editor. Enter the IP addresses and host names of your commonly visited sites (each entry should be on its own line). List the IP addresses in the first column, and the corresponding host names in the next column; separate the two columns by at least one space, and list each pair on a single line. (To find the IP address, click Start, Run, type cmd, and press <Enter>; then type ping, a space, and the host name, and press <Enter>.) When you're done, save the file with the same name to its existing location.

Your browsing activity is an open book. To surf without leaving a trail, use an anonymous proxy server, which sits between you and the sites you visit. (File downloads can be a problem when you use a proxy, however.)

First, go to Atom Intersoft's proxy list; the site lists information about each server, including its uptime percentage. Write down the IP address and the port used by the server of your choice. For example, in the listing 24.236.148.15:80, the IP address is 24.236.148.15, and the port number is 80. (To find a site's IP address, open a command prompt as described in "Switch From FAT to NTFS" above, type ping www.sitename.com, and press <Enter>. The reply will include the site's IP address.)

In Internet Explorer, select Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings. Check Use a proxy server for your LAN, and in the Address field enter the IP address of the proxy server. In the Port field, type its port number. Check Bypass proxy server for local addresses, and click OK twice. Now when you surf, the proxy server will protect your privacy. Browse to tor.eff.org for information about the TOR anonymous-networking initiative supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Vista's Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions let you bring network files with you. Open Windows Explorer and right-click the network files or folders that you want available offline. Choose Properties, Sharing, Share, Share, right-click the folders you're sharing, and select Always Available Offline (on some PCs it's just Offline Files, Always available offline). The files will sync automatically.

Vista's Photo Gallery program is handy for more than just viewing photos--it also serves as a quick-and-dirty photo editor. To get started, open an image in the app and click Fix to adjust its color and exposure, remove red-eye, and perform other actions; or click Auto Adjust to apply the fixes instantly (see FIGURE 7).

If you have a big media library, finding specific files can be difficult. Windows Media Player 11 lets you more easily search for tracks by album, artist, and other criteria through search modifiers. For instance, to find Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," type Title:Rolling Stone into the search box to keep the similarly named band out of the results. To see what other fields are available, right-click a column heading and select Choose Columns. Or right-click a track, choose Advanced Tag Editor, and make your selection.

For more on Windows Media Player, see our chart of WMP keyboard shortcuts.

Capturing screens just got a lot easier: Vista's Snipping Tool makes snagging all or part of your screen images--and adding annotations--a breeze. Click Start, All Programs (or Programs on the Classic Start menu), Accessories, Snipping Tool (or just type snip in the Start Search box and press <Enter>).

When the Snipping Tool box appears, drag the pointer around the area you want to capture and click the New button to choose the kind of snip; you can grab a freeform or rectangular area, capture the active window, or take the entire screen. You can save the image to a file, or click the Copy button to add it to the Clipboard for pasting into another application. Choose the Options button to include a URL with the snip if you've captured it from the Web, set the program to copy snips directly to the Clipboard, and perform other actions.

If you're listening to music in Windows Media Player 11, don't reach for your mouse. Instead, use these quick keyboard shortcuts.

The new Aero interface may get most of the attention, but the new version of Windows adds some first-rate tools to its repertoire of utilities, as well. Here are three of our favorite Vista additions.

See your PC's health at a glance in the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

Vista's ReadyBoost option lets you use a USB flash drive to improve your system's performance.

Get creative with your screen captures by using the options in the new Snipping Tool application.

Good security doesn't have to bug you constantly. Here's how to stay safe without having to click through a warning every 30 seconds.

Switch to free antivirus: Tired of spending a bundle on annual subscriptions to antivirus software? Alwil Software offers the excellent Avast antivirus application free for home, noncommercial use. The program works with both Windows XP and Vista.

Another benefit of Avast is that the program uses very little RAM and other system resources, unlike infamous processor hogs such as Symantec's Norton AntiVirus.

Bounce account controls: Without a doubt, the most annoying thing about Vista is User Account Control (UAC), which causes Windows to ask you for permission before accessing various system resources. True, this setup will help to keep your PC safe, but do you really need to see yet another pop-up and click through yet another prompt before doing something as simple as changing the size of Windows' main font?

Luckily, you have an easy way to turn off UAC: Choose Start, Control Panel (or Start, Settings, Control Panel on the Classic Start menu) User Accounts, and then click Turn User Account Control on or off. At the UAC prompt, select Continue; when you move on to the next screen, uncheck Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer. Then click OK. After you restart your computer, you will no longer be bedeviled by those insistently feckless UAC prompts.

Elevate your command prompt: When you run certain commands from Vista's command prompt, you receive an error message declaring that you can't run the command because you don't have the proper administrator rights. This occurs even if you're logged in as an administrator.

To evade this limitation, you have to elevate your privileges. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories (or Start, Programs, Accessories on the Classic Start menu), right-click Command Prompt, and choose Run as Administrator. At this point the command prompt will launch, but you'll be operating in special administrator mode; you can tell by looking at the title bar, which will start with the word 'Administrator'. Bonus tip: If you want to open a command prompt without using your mouse, press <Ctrl>-<Shift>-<Enter> after you type cmd.

Turn off file-deletion prompts: UAC can be helpful should you ever inadvertently try to delete a system file. This misstep will generate two pop-ups: one from UAC, and a separate delete-file confirmation box. To retain the UAC prompt but eliminate the confirmation box, right-click the Recycle Bin, select Properties, uncheck Display delete confirmation dialog, and click OK.

From now on, no matter what file you want to delete--system files or regular files--you'll have one fewer dialog box to click through. If you try to delete a system file, however, you'll still see a UAC prompt (unless you've turned it off, as explained in the "Bounce account controls" section above).

We recommend a clean install of Vista, but we know that many folks prefer to upgrade from XP to avoid having to reinstall their apps, files, and settings. In most cases you can switch from XP to Vista without preparing at all, though we recommend that you back up your files in case something goes wrong.

An upgrade merely installs Vista directly over XP, retaining all of your applications, files, user accounts, and other settings. For safety's sake, before you do an in-place installation, back up all your files, just in case something goes wrong. Conversely, a clean install wipes out all traces of XP and of your applications, files, settings, and user accounts, deleting everything from your hard disk (including all the problematic Registry entries your system has accumulated) once the fresh copy of Vista is in place. Windows Easy Transfer, Vista's version of XP's Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, lets you move your settings, files, and apps to a clean Vista install via a direct cable connection or over a network.

Why do a clean install instead of an in-place upgrade? Not every version of XP can be upgraded to every version of Vista. For example, upgrading from XP Professional to Vista Home Premium requires a clean install. At Microsoft's site you can view XP and Windows 2000 upgrade options.

One final note: Before upgrading from XP, confirm that your PC can run Vista by downloading and running Microsoft's Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. It will tell you which versions of Vista your system can run, and it will make recommendations for hardware upgrades if it determines that your PC isn't up to snuff.

You probably won't be happy with everything about the way Vista looks or works when you install it. Here are the five customizations that most Vista users will want to make as soon as they get the new OS rolling.

Customize the desktop: It's easy to adjust nearly every aspect of the Vista desktop. Right-click the desktop and choose Personalize to change the background, screen saver, sounds, and mouse pointer. You can also choose a theme, alter your monitor's resolution, or change your icons and fonts. If you use Vista's Aero interface, you can assign custom colors to your windows by choosing Windows Color and Appearance and picking a color, or click Show color mixer to mix a custom color.

Rework the Start menu: Right-click the Start button and select Properties, Start menu. To revert to the days of Windows 98 and 2000, click Classic Start menu. To tweak Vista's Start menu, keep it selected and click Customize. You can choose the items that you want on the menu, change how submenus display, and reset your search options, among other settings. Click the Taskbar tab to alter the appearance of your taskbar, and select the Notification Area tab to do the same to your system tray.

See all of your files and folders: By default Vista hides system files and folders, and it doesn't show the extensions of common file types. This keeps you from knowing exactly what's on your system. To see all that you can see, open Windows Explorer or any folder window and choose Organize, Folder and Search Options, View to see options for changing which files your system displays and how they appear. For example, you can choose to display file icons as thumbnails, and whether to show drive letters. Select Show hidden files and folders, and then uncheck Hide extensions for known file types.

While you're there, click the Search tab to change search settings; in the General tab, tweak your folder options, such as whether a folder opens in the same window or a new one.

Reset your default programs: Vista will probably be using Microsoft programs for browsing, e-mail, and other applications (depending on how your PC vendor configured the machine, or whether you're upgrading from Windows XP). For instructions on how to change the application that opens automatically when you double-click a specific file type, see "Tweak Your Associations."

An appealing addition to Vista is the ability to change the defaults for an entire group of programs at one time. Click Start, Default Programs (or Start, Settings, Control Panel, Default Programs on the Classic Start menu). In the Default Programs applet, choose Set program access and computer defaults. Select Microsoft Windows from the list of configurations to use Microsoft software as the defaults--in other words, Internet Explorer for browsing, Windows Mail or Outlook for e-mail, Windows Media Player for audio and video files, and so on. Select Non-Microsoft if you have software from other vendors that you would rather use for all of these purposes. If you want to pick and choose from among available Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps, select Custom and then choose the individual applications you prefer.

Bounce the Sidebar: Some people like the Sidebar mini-apps on the Vista desktop, but for other folks they're useless. To dump them, right-click the Sidebar icon in the system tray, select Properties, and uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts.

Preston Gralla, PC World

Preston Gralla is the author of Windows Vista in a Nutshell (O'Reilly Media). He is based in Massachusetts.