After years of using Windows XP, most people (including myself) got bored with the standard startup sound. This is the reason why, after a while, I chose to disable it. With the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft wanted to bring a new startup sound. So they hired a team of 20 composers, sound designers, engineers, and developers to create the new Windows Vista startup sound. It took them 18 months and 500 entries from which the final sound was picked and embedded in Windows Vista.

Even though the new startup sound is pretty good, just like with any other new thing, it will become old after a while and people will get bored with it and will probably choose to disable it.

Nowadays, SATA hard disk drives are very common. They offer a series of advantages compared to older models, one of them being the improved performance. Windows Vista not only offers built-in support for SATA hard disks, but it also allows you to squeeze a little more performance from them.

So... how do you increase the performance of your SATA hard disk?

Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool is a very useful troubleshooting application included in the Windows Vista operating system. There are times when your computer might start to fail and freeze or reboot on its own. This tool can help you to detect if these problems are caused by memory errors or not. It tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer and reports the errors that are found.

In this guide we will show you how to use this tool for troubleshooting memory problems.

In the last few days Creative quietly released new versions of their Windows Vista drivers for their line of sound cards. We rushed to the download page and installed the new versions. After testing the drivers on our Audigy 2 ZS sound cards and reading the release notes we noticed that there is little improvement compared to the old beta versions.

All modern processors have built-in power management features that allow you to lower the costs of your power bills. For their latest processors, AMD developed a technology called Cool'n'Quiet and Intel another one called SpeedStep. Both of them dynamically adjust the voltage and the core frequency of your processor, decreasing the average power consumption and average heat production.

Our systems are based on AMD processors and, after we installed Windows Vista, we tried to find Cool'n'Quiet drivers for it. We were surprised to see that there are none available on the AMD site. That's because Windows Vista has built-in power management features that do no require additional drivers.

To enable these features you must create or select an appropriate power plan. Just follow these steps:

The old Volume Control from Windows XP was replaced in Windows Vista by the Volume Mixer. The new application brings to Windows Vista much more flexibility regarding the sound management of the different applications you have installed on your PC. In Windows XP the only feature of the Volume Control was to increase or decrease the general system sound level. In Windows Vista, the Volume Mixer is capable of managing sound settings for each multimedia application installed on your PC.

If you have a digital photo camera it is very likely that you will want to save your pictures on your PC. In this tutorial we will show you how to do that on Windows Vista.

Before we begin you should look at your photo camera's battery status. If you have low batteries, you should change or recharge them. If your camera will remain without power during the importing process, your memory card might get damaged.

In today's guide we will show you how to connect a video camera to your Windows Vista PC and save your movies in a digital format. As you will see for yourself it is a simple procedure. Just follow these steps:

When you press the power button of your Windows Vista PC, you will see that it doesn’t shut down by default. Windows Vista makes the system enter into sleep mode. This mode allows you to restart your PC and log back to Windows Vista very quickly.

However, there are people who prefer to shut down their systems when pressing the power button. In this tutorial we will show you how to change what the power button does.