If you’ve used Windows Vista for any length of time, you probably already know that using the Win + Space key combination will bring the Sidebar and all the gadgets to the front… but how do you send it back behind your open windows? This was the question reader Kyle asked me earlier tonight, and after some research I discovered that there wasn’t one… so I wrote a utility with this functionality, assigned to the Ctrl+Win + Space key combination....

I guess I will continue this week’s theme of media players by introducing you toJ River Media Jukebox. I have to say I am quite impressed so far with this player. One of the cool features of Media Jukebox is its ability to support basicallyevery portable playerout there including phones. The UI is very customizable and of course there are skins aplenty. Very cool 3D visualizations. Sound quality is great as well....

So how exactly do I remove this icon I’ll never use? This icon is a shell folder used to share files between your friends that also use Windows Live Messenger. Hit refresh in Computer and you’ll see that the icon is gone. The icon should now be gone. To restore, just use the RestoreMessengerSharingFolders.reg file instead.Download RemoveMessengerSharingFolders Registry Hack

What is this Web Folders icon, and how do I get rid of it? Hit refresh in Computer and you’ll see that the icon is gone. The icon should now be gone. To restore, just use the RestoreWebFolders.reg file instead.Download RemoveWebFolders Registry Hack

A reader wrote in this week asking why his folder pane in Windows XP wasn’t working… it didn’t display anything other than a gray background with nothing else. This is actually a common problem that I’ve personally experienced before, which I luckily knew the solution to. The issue is that there’s a corruption in the registry, and the specific key is either missing or somehow not correct, and a simple registry hack is required to fix the problem....

I’ve always wondered why Windows doesn’t allow you to set an arbitrary size for the filesystem cache. What if you have a slow hard drive in your laptop, but loads of available system memory? Shouldn’t you be able to maximize that memory to speed up hard drive access? Settingmemoryusageto2raises the limit of paged pool memory. This might reduce overall system performance. This setting also works in Windows Server 2003.

So how do we hide that other account from the login screen? Create a new DWORD value with the same name as the user name that you want to hide. To unhide the account, simply delete the registry key that you created. Just right-click and choose Delete.

The book moves further into the area of backups, using Windows backup and system restore.

Windows Vista has another way to do the same thing that you might not be aware of. Also, it’s fun to know these hidden tricks =)

It’s nearly trivial to add your iGoogle page to Outlook and make it the startup page. You’ll see a setting for “Startup in this folder” with a Browse button next to it. Click that button and choose the iGoogle folder as your startup page. Thanks to our excellent reader Tim who wrote in telling me to write about this.

I can’t imagine using my own system this way, but we’re all about providing information. Note that this tip should work in all versions of Windows. To remove the hack, just delete the key, or change the value to 0. You should still disable any applications that aren’t needed.

The start menu … Also included is a Rocket Dock which emulates OS X. A view of the Desktop Icons With this package there are two themes. Vista and Vista Inspirat 2 of which I prefer the later. A view of the Vista like folders. I just installed this system 30 minutes ago and have yet to tap into all the tweaks available. Also, the pack includes a bunch of new sounds for XP....

Open up Control Panel and go to the Programs and Features section. Depending on the version of Vista you are running you might not see everything in the list. ActiveX Installer Service No Do you really want anything to do with ActiveX? Games Why Not Your productivity can only increase with Spider Solitaire on your box. Indexing Service This is the old indexing service that is no longer needed in Vista....