When Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was released in March, many users were not able to install it via Windows Update due to the fact that it wasn't included in the list of available updates. That happened because of several reasons, the most common of them being incompatible drivers with SP1. Even though the list of incompatible drivers was relatively small, Creative drivers for Audigy or older models of sound cards were on it. So, if you are the owner of an older Creative sound card this is most likely the reason why SP1 is still not available as an update via Windows Update.

The bad news is that even after two months since SP1 is available, Creative has not yet launched updated drivers. The good news is that a passionate modder - Daniel Kawakami (Daniel_K) from Brazil - has released his own version of drivers which work on Windows Vista SP1 (32-bit and 64-bit). In this article you will learn what drivers you need to download and where you can find them.

A while back, we decided to remove our Links section and start reviewing the best How-To destinations on the web. We thought this would bring more value to both our readers and the sites we choose for reviewing. I would like to initiate this series with one of the sites I read regularly via my RSS feed reader: the How-To Geek. On this site you will find plenty of tutorials, the blogs of the people who write most of the site content, a freshly started How-To Wiki and a pretty active forum.

Note stickers are one of the most useful things ever created. We use them to remind ourselves or others of future chores, ideas that are worth remembering, etc. The problem people might have when using note stickers is that the working space can become rather messy and finding a previous note can become time consuming. This can be easily fixed with the help of virtual note stickers programs. Shock Sticker is a free virtual note sticker application. This program helps you easily create note stickers, memos and can also be used as a scheduler. It also has some other additional functions such as: alarm, password, and hiding features.

When sharing the entire content of a partition with other computers on your network, you might see that it is listed as shared but in fact it cannot be accessed. Other users trying to access your partition might receive the following error message: '\\ComputerName\Partition is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied.'

In this tutorial we will show you how to solve this problem.

In my previous tutorial, I have shown you how to install a local printer in Windows Vista. As promised, now I will show you how to install a network printer. As you can see, the procedure is very similar. The main difference consists in the fact that a network printer is not directly attached to your PC and you will need to know details such as: the name of the PC on which it is installed, the printer name and/or the IP address.

In this short tutorial I will show you how to share your local printer with other computers from your network. As you will see, the procedure that needs to be followed is very simple and easy to understand.

In this tutorial I will show you how to make your printer work with Windows Vista. It doesn't matter if it's a brand new printer or an old one - by the end of this tutorial you will have a working printer. In this tutorial I will talk only about local printers. Network printers will be covered in a separate article.

Local printers are those which you have at home/office, connected directly to the computer on which you are working. After installing the local printer, you can share it with other people that are in your network. They will be able to print but will have to come to your printer to get the pages they printed.

In one of my previous tutorials I have shown you how to set your default programs for files of different types. By setting a default application for a certain file extension it means that when double clicking a file with that extension, it will always be opened with that program. However, there are cases in which you want to open a certain file with a different program than the default one. To do this, you have to use the Open With option.

In this quick tutorial I will show you how to access and use this option.

Many of our readers reported having problems with their Windows Contacts application. It seems that depending on how you configure Windows Explorer, it might happen that the traditional Windows Contacts buttons disappear. If you notice that you no longer have any of the following buttons: New Contact, New Contact Group, Import and Export, continue reading this tutorial and learn how to put them back on your toolbar.