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.

In 2007 we published an article about how to uninstall Windows Vista when you have a dual boot configuration. In that article we were using VistaBootPro to remove the boot entry for Windows Vista. However, this tool is no longer free and many of our readers requested another alternative. In this new guide, we will show you how to do the same using EasyBCD, a tool which works just as well and it is free.

One of the most popular extensions for Firefox 3 is Adblock Plus. This extension allows users to block ads and banners from the sites they navigate to. Even though Internet Explorer 7 & 8 both have add-ons such as Firefox, there is no free Adblock Plus for them. Fortunately for Internet Explorer 8 fans, now there is a way to build your own adblock filters. In this article I will show you where to find those filters and how to import them into your Internet Explorer 8.

The right-click context menu is one of the most helpful interface elements in Windows, but sometimes, especially when we have lots of applications installed, it can be slow and filled with shortcuts we don't actually use. I always wanted to simplify it so that it would include only the options I want to use. After a bit of research, I found three freeware tools which allow you to clean up and customize the right-click context menu and have it as you want it to be. In this article I will show you where to find them, what they do and how to use them.

Offline Files is one of the less known features in Windows Vista, even though it was introduced with Windows 2000. Since then it has undergone many changes and improvements. The Windows Vista version is better than ever as it features several improvements such as the ability to force the transition to offline & online modes. Also the synchronization process has been streamlined and it now transfers only the blocks which were modified while offline, which translates into improved synchronization speed.

In this article I will show you the following: what are Offline Files, how this feature works, how to enable it, how to make files available offline, how to access them, how to delete an offline copy and how to change the amount of disk space used by offline files.

Since Internet Explorer 8 has been launched we have written a lot about its features and how to use them. Recently we have also created a search accelerator which allows you to search for tutorials on our site directly from Internet Explorer 8. The accelerator is called Search on Windows Vista 4 Beginners and can be found in the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery. In this article I will show you how to install it and use it.