Bitlocker, the new security scheme in Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7, helps encrypt the entire system drive. This security feature requires an extra hard disk partition of about 1.5 GB of free space for the installation of unencrypted boot data, to enable booting from the encrypted system drive. If you overlooked this and installed Vista without creating this additional partition, you can follow this article to get Bitlocker installed. I assume that you have some experience with Windows installation. If not, it is recommended to have a technically knowledgeable person near you.

In previous articles we've shown how to use the Sync Center to synchronize your files with mobile devices or across network locations. When this tool is used, you will see either a Sync Center icon in your taskbar or a mobsync.exe process running at each Windows Vista startup. However, if you stop using it Sync Center will continue to run at each startup. In order to free up memory for other processes, it is best to disable it when no longer used. In this article I will show you how to do this and optimize your Windows Vista startup.

Windows Vista's launch was a very troubled one with plenty of issues which quickly created a very negative image for this operating system. Six months after its launch, we ran a survey to identify the top problems users were confronted with. The results were very clear. Our readers said that the top issues were the lack of proper drivers (36% of votes) and application compatibility issues (36% of votes). These two, combined with a very weak offering of security solutions seriously impacted their user experience.

In this article I will go through each of these areas and share with you the current status on Windows Vista plus the outlook for the upcoming Windows 7 launch. Will Windows 7 share the same issues at launch?

The Sync Center is a very useful tool which can be used to synchronize files between your PC and network locations or mobile devices such as portable music players, USB memory sticks or cellphones. In this article I will show you where to find this tool, how to setup and modify a sync partnership between your PC and a mobile device, how to view or delete already defined partnerships and how to view sync results and conflicts.

DPC Latency Checker is a free tool that shows in real-time how quickly your system reacts to the tasks it has to complete. DPC stands for Deferred Procedure Call, which is a Windows mechanism that allows high-priority tasks to defer lower-priority tasks for later execution. For example, device drivers are high-priority tasks that need to be processed right away before any other task. If a device has an improper driver this operation is going to take more time than usual and it's going to slow down the system which will lead to interruptions in real-time audio and video streams. In this article I will show you how you can use DPC Latency Checker to find out if you have a device driver problem and, if any, how to fix it.

When you heavily tweak different aspects of Windows Vista, liken when transforming it's looks to be like a Mac OS X chances are that, if you are not careful, some of your system files will become corrupted or get deleted and lost in the process. This can sometimes lead to Windows Vista not working properly. In such scenarios, you either use System Restore or System File Checker to restore your system files.
When using System Restore you will restore not only your system files but also your settings to a previous state. If you want to restore only your corrupted or deleted system files, it is better to use System File Checker. In this article I will show you where to find this tool and how to use it.

One of the things that I liked about Ubuntu (or any other Linux distribution) is the centralized software manager that you can use to search, download, install and update applications. The same software manager notifies you when there are updates available for any of the software installed on your system. I always wanted such a feature for Windows Vista. After a bit of research I found Update Notifier, a freeware application which does exactly what it says, it notifies you when there are updates available for the software that you have installed. In this article I will show you where you can find this tool and how to use it.

One of the problems with Windows Vista's Backup and Restore Center is the fact that it provides different functionality based on the Windows Vista version you have. For example, Windows Vista Home (Basic and Premium) users cannot make a complete backup of their PC. They need to purchase Windows Vista Business or Ultimate or go for a third-party solution which offers all the backup and restore features they need. The good news is that these users no longer need to spend money on a complete solution. A company called GFI has launched GFI Backup 2009 Home Edition, a software tool which offers all the backup and restore features you need, free of charge. In this article I will review this tool and summarize its main features and how well they work.

Many of our readers asked us via e-mail if we know any free tools which work on Windows Vista that can be used to convert movies to the format(s) supported by iPhone. Therefore, we decided to test some free video converting applications and then make a tutorial on how to use the best tool we could find. In this article I will give you a step by step guide for a tool called Handbrake. At the end, I will also give you a list of other possible alternatives.