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?

As many other people, I installed Windows Vista on my system but I decided to keep Windows XP for gaming and other tasks which, at least for now, work better on XP. When you have multiple partitions and hard disks, one of the challenges of having a dual boot system is keeping the same drive letters in both operating systems.

When I installed Windows Vista for the first time I did not pay attention to this detail and had them assigned in a confusing way. In Windows XP, the "cinema" partition had the letter G: and in Windows Vista "H:", while the "lavoro" (work) partition had the letter "D:" in Windows XP and "E:" in Windows Vista.

That confused not only myself but also the other users that worked on the same computer. So... what can you do to avoid such a scenario?

Tweak VI Basic is one of the few tweaking solutions that were designed for Windows Vista. It was also the first to be available for free. As its name says, this solution allows you to tweak and optimize your Windows Vista operating system.

Tweak VI Basic includes a set of 11 plug-ins that deliver a core set of tweaks split into the following categories: System Information and Tweaks, Miscellaneous Tweaks, Visual Tweaks, Internet Tweaks and Utilities.

If you need additional tweaks you can upgrade to Tweak VI Premium or Tweak VI Ultimate. The first costs 29.99$ and offers 8 additional plug-ins while the second costs 39.99$ and includes another 15 plug-ins for even more advanced configuration options.

One of the good things about Windows Vista is the fact that, compared to Windows XP, it incorporates a set of really good troubleshooting tools. You no longer have to buy third party tools or go to a specialist to learn what is wrong with your system.
Now everybody can easily check the health status of their systems. All you have to do is to use the Reliability and Performance Monitor included in Windows Vista.

Recuva is a free Windows utility that allows users to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from their computer. This includes file emptied from the Recycle Bin and files deleted by bugs, crashes or viruses.

It supports all versions of Windows including the new Windows Vista operating system. The setup file has a size of only 200KB and the application itself is very light on resources consumption. Also the interface is very clean and easy to use.

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.

According to Windows Help and Support, a restore point is a representation of a stored state of your computer's system files. Restore points are created by System Restore at specific intervals and when System Restore detects the beginning of a change to your computer. If no important system changes are made, restore points are created once per day.

However, there are cases in which you might need to change the creation of restore points frequency on your computer. To do that, you need to use the Registry Editor and edit the value of a key called RPGlobalInterval that can be found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore.

If you are not very familiar with the Windows registry and you are not very sure on what you are doing, you might have problems when changing settings in the Windows Registry. This is why we created a tool called CSRF (Change System Restore Frequency).

System Restore is a very useful feature of Windows Vista but it has one main drawback. After running for a few weeks, it can use a lot of your hard disk space. With the default settings turned on, System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. For example, if you have a 250GB hard disk drive, System Restore might end up using 37,5GB of it. That is a lot of space.

What can we do to limit the amount of space used by System Restore? In Windows XP making this kind of configuration was pretty easy. You had a slider in the System Properties window that you could move left or right to the desired percentage. Unfortunately this slider was removed from Windows Vista.

In order to configure the amount of space used by System Restore, you need to use a tool called Volume Shadow Copy Administrative Command-Line Tool (or vssadmin.exe).

System Restore is a feature that allows users to restore their system to a previous state. It offers a way to undo all the changes in the system files, registry keys, installed programs, etc, to a previous state, without affecting personal files such as documents, photos or e-mails. It was first implemented in Windows Me and since then it was included in both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

By default, Windows Vista creates the so called "restore points" every day. The restore points are created automatically, before any significant system event such as the installation of a program, device or system update. Also, restore points can be created manually by the user.

When something goes terribly wrong with your system you can restore it to a previous state and you will be able to use it again. In this tutorial we will show you how to do that using System Restore.