In this tutorial we will show you how to use the Windows Sidebar - a new application included in the Windows Vista operating system. You will learn how to tweak it, how to add or remove gadgets and where to find them on the internet.

Windows Sidebar is situated by default on the right side of your screen and initially it has three gadgets: Clock, SlideShow and Feed Headlines. It offers the following customization options: it can be hidden, kept on top of other windows, you can add and remove gadgets from it or detach gadgets to place them on your desktop.

Sticky Notes is a very small and easy to use application that allows users to create short handwritten or voice notes. The notes are arranged in a stack on the desktop, similar to paper sticky notes.

It was first included in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and it also made it to the Windows Vista Tablet PC list of components. To find it go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Tablet PC.

Windows Sidebar is one of the new applications included in Windows Vista. Basically, it is a long, vertical bar displayed on the right side of your desktop. The Sidebar contains mini-programs called gadgets which may be used to display useful information or provide easy access to different tools. The gadgets can be run inside the Windows Sidebar or separately, on the Windows desktop.

Windows Vista includes a list of eleven Sidebar gadgets: Calendar, Clock, Contacts, CPU Meter, Currency conversion, RSS Feed Headlines, Notes, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Stocks, and Weather. You can add new gadgets to the Windows Sidebar from the Windows Live Gallery site. There you can find a big list of additional gadgets that can be added to your Windows Sidebar.

For this article we have tested most of the gadgets available on the Windows Live Gallery and prepared a list of seven gadgets that you might consider adding to your Windows Sidebar:

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.

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.

Lots of people have the tendency to install their applications using the default installation options. When they have to choose between a "Typical" installation and a "Custom" one, they always choose the first option. Typical installations are easy and require less input from the user but they also install lots of additional modules and settings that are not needed.

The most common problem caused by the use of typical installation options is the fact that you have a big chance of having a bloated system that loads lots of useless programs at every startup. Even if you have powerful hardware, your system will become slower and less responsive with each new program added to the startup list.

However, this problem can be solved easily. If you look carefully in the configuration options of your installed applications, you might find an option that enables you to remove them from the programs startup list. If you don't, all you need to do is to edit the startup list manually using the System Configuration utility.