Vista tips...

[Bobbias]

I thought it would be a good idea if we had a thread dedicated to little tips and tricks in vista (or maybe even just a generic "little tips and tricks" thread) in here.

Then we can share the different tricks or tips we might have found (or even just bits of useless information). I figure it's a lot easier than trying to go around the internet looking for tips and tricks that would actually be useful or apply to us (since a lot of stuff I find like that tends to cater more towards corporate environments, rather than single people).

Sadly, I'm gonna start things off with a question, instead of a tip. Spectere's likely the only one who'll know, but I've gotta ask, why is it that if I leave a video paused in Media Player Classic, at some point, Aero gets disabled, and it reverts back to the default vista colors? And it won't let me change it back till I close MPC, either. It's not an immediate change though, just playing a video in MPC doesn't trigger it, you need to let it sit for a while.

[Leorina]

Sadly, I'm gonna start things off with a question, instead of a tip. Spectere's likely the only one who'll know, but I've gotta ask, why is it that if I leave a video paused in Media Player Classic, at some point, Aero gets disabled, and it reverts back to the default vista colors? And it won't let me change it back till I close MPC, either. It's not an immediate change though, just playing a video in MPC doesn't trigger it, you need to let it sit for a while.

Although I have a vista, I have not done everything I can possibly have done with it so this may be wrong but it might be right in a sort of way.

It might have to do with your settings for appearance and backgrounds as well as like sleep timers and wether or not you have to put your password in when you bring it back up after that little bit.

My other idea is that your computer hates you and it has a diabolical plan to torture you with its evilness (I am Killgore!!!)

My last idea is that the video card may have something wrong with it (not anything too severe, just like a wrong setting).

But then again, I am not the resident Vista dude so I turn the floor over to you now Spec.

[Bobbias]

Thing is, i'm not having to log back in, or anything. I see no possible settings that would make it do that over time, otherwise I would have changed them right away.

I've tried to change it back when it makes the switch, and it has no effect (the system goes black and white like it would normally do, but when it returns, it hasn't changed.).

So I'm pretty sure it's either a setting buried somewhere deep in vista (only accessible through the registry?), or something that vista just does in certain situations.

[Leorina]

So I'm pretty sure it's either a setting buried somewhere deep in vista (only accessible through the registry?), or something that vista just does in certain situations.

There may be something to that...I don't remember how I accessed it but I got to all the encrypted files once and it had literally all of my settings that I used/created and I was able to alter them and the one was about movies and the sequences that the programming must follow and I think I remember the setting relied on:

1) Computer not being active for a certain amount of time
2) The readablility of the CD/DVD
3) Having precedence of keeping the CD/DVD from overheating and frying both your harddrive and the CD/DVD

But, like I said in my first post, I'm not the Resident Vista guy so I'm just waiting for Spec to get here.

[Bobbias]

This isn't DVDs or anything, this is playing video files in media player classic. Specifically, these are 720p H264/AAC encoded MKVs.

It's nothing to do with playing CDs, though my system does have some sort of program/setting designed to try to get rid of some of the noise my CD player makes, since it's loud as fuck (it was one of those pre-installed vendor programs, and I only saw something for it in the tray once).

I know vista has a registry, like the other windows versions, but even if there were some setting buried in there, I'd never know where to look. And this isn't about power saving or anything. I know that, because I know all my power saving settings, and none of them remotely mention movies, let alone changing the visual theme.

I think the setting is possibly related to some sort of compatibility setting, or something. I'm not sure what's triggering it, but it sounds an awful lot like having set "disable visual themes".

I just did a quick check, setting uTorrent for a couple different things. "Disable visual themes" did nothing, but "display in 256 colors" did. It forced my system into 256 color mode and automatically switched my visual theme to Vista Basic instead of Vista Aero. It switched back when I closed uTorrent.

[Spectere]

Sadly, I'm gonna start things off with a question, instead of a tip. Spectere's likely the only one who'll know, but I've gotta ask, why is it that if I leave a video paused in Media Player Classic, at some point, Aero gets disabled, and it reverts back to the default vista colors? And it won't let me change it back till I close MPC, either. It's not an immediate change though, just playing a video in MPC doesn't trigger it, you need to let it sit for a while.

I've never seen that happen on my system, so I dunno.  Generally, Vista only disables Aero when your system is running an accelerated application in full screen or when you set Vista to do that using the compatibility settings for a particular application.  MPC might be just doing something wonky that's causing Aero to turn itself off.

I just did a quick check, setting uTorrent for a couple different things. "Disable visual themes" did nothing, but "display in 256 colors" did.

You'd need to select "disable desktop composition" for it to have any affect when you're using the full Aero interface.  That drops it down to Vista Basic.  If you use that in addition to the "disable visual themes" option, that should bring it down to Windows Standard -- yes, the Windows 2000 interface.  One difference between the two options is that "disable desktop composition" temporarily disables Aero for all applications.  "Disable visual themes" only disables theming support for one application, like XP.

The reason that the "256 colors" option drops you down to Vista Basic is because PC 3D cards can't do 3D rendering (which includes desktop compositing) in 8-bit color modes.

Speaking of compatibility settings, here's a very useful tip for this thread that's related to that.

If you have an OpenGL application that you need to run in a Window and you're running Aero, odds are the application is not going to run too well.  This is very dependent on your video card drivers, but generally you are going to see a significant slowdown compared to both Direct3D and, for that matter, a full screen OpenGL application.  The reason that this happens is because Aero renders your entire desktop as a Direct3D surface.  In order for OpenGL applications to work in such an environment, the calls generally all have to be translated to D3D calls.

To get around this, edit the shortcut for the application that you want to use, click over to the "compatibility" tab, and select "disable desktop composition."  Your windowed OpenGL application will now run as fast as it would in XP.  You will miss out on Flip 3D, live previews in the ALT-TAB screen, and taskbar window previewing, however, but that only lasts until you exit your application.

Speaking of taskbar window previews, here's a fun thing to try.  Make sure that you're running Aero.  Now, start up StepMania in windowed mode (make sure to edit the StepMania.ini and force it to use Direct3D as the video renderer, otherwise it may lag!).  Drag it off the screen, hold your mouse cursor over the StepMania entry on the taskbar, and play the game using the preview window.  It's good fun, I assure you.

[Bobbias]

I wasn't sure what Desktop compositing was, but now that you mention it, MPC may have triggered that somehow. Thing is, It wasn't running full screen, it was just running in a window when I left it.

[Bobbias]

So, I just noticed something. Apparently Vista did away with that whole "underline the keyboard shortcut key in menus" thing. I was wondering why things just looked a bit off, in context menus, and in regular menus, then I noticed that none of the letters I expected to be underlined were any more.

Why would they do that? I do actually use those. If I'm trying to automate something, like deleting a bunch of crap from my "recent documents" so I can see the ones I want, or making a whole bunch of new folders to rename and organize something. But since they no longer have those shortcut keys, I have to guess at the ones that aren't there that I don't remember, which is bad, because some of them aren't the most intuitive shortcuts.

[Spectere]

No, they never disabled that nor did they ever take them out.  Why would they do that?  One of Windows' biggest strengths is that you can actually use it effectively without a mouse.

All they did was hide the underlines by default; tapping ALT will bring them back temporarily.  It's been like that at least since XP; I believe even 2000 and Me hid them by default.

If you want to turn the underlines back on without having to press ALT, go to Control Panel -> Ease of Access Center (alternatively, press Win+U), click "make the keyboard easier to use," and enable "underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys."

[Bobbias]

I didn't mean to say they took it out entirely, because I know the shortcuts are there, but I'm gonna take your suggestion and turn them on permanently. In XP they were always there, so I could see what key I need to press without doing anything extra.

[Spectere]

No, they were never always enabled in XP.  Like I said, I'm pretty sure they defaulted to off as early as 2000/Me.

They default on in certain situations.  If you use a keyboard shortcut to open things (like Win+E for Explorer) the shortcut lines will automatically appear.  Other than that, a stock XP installation has them disabled.

[Bobbias]

Weird, considering I'm pretty damn sure my XP has them enabled all the time, and I know for a fact I never went anywhere to turn them on. Whenever I right click a file, I always see the m in rename underlined, and all the rest of them. Same with opening any other menu.

[Spectere]

If you have an nLite'd installation you might have enabled it at some point.  Otherwise...yeah, it was definitely enabled at some point (it's under Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects in XP, I believe...and yes, its location in earlier versions of Windows doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense) because I know it's not enabled by default in a standard XP installation.

Speaking of the nonsensical location of it in XP, that's the biggest problem that I think people have with Vista.  A lot of the stuff that didn't make much sense or were overly convoluted in XP were changed and made more logical, like the cluttered accessibility control panel applet (which is now the task-based Ease of Use applet), the scattered personalization settings (i.e. wallpaper in display properties, mouse pointer in mouse properties -- all of which is now available in the personalization applet), the user profile directory structure (lack of a downloads folder, pictures/videos/music lumped in with documents, application data folders split between two different sections, etc), that fucking "My" prefix on EVERYTHING, and countless other things.  The problem with this is that people are so used to the old layout that was with us since Windows NT 3.1 (and kept snowballing into the mess that it was in with XP).  After using Vista on my main system for *checks calendar* six months I find myself saying "goddamn XP" far more than I say "goddamn Vista."

It kind of makes me wonder what Microsoft is going to do with Windows 7.  Vista is already a pretty radical departure from XP as it is.

[Bobbias]

Yeah, XP really is fucked up, if you think about it, lol.

I'm really interested in Windows 7 as well.

[Spectere]

The worst part about XP, and the thing that typically causes me to rage the most, is some of Explorer's behavior.  XP has that long-standing issue where it'll overwrite whatever's in the Explorer address bar with the currently displayed folder from time to time if the system is loading something.  There's nothing worse than starting up my laptop and typing "\\phoenix\d$" only to look at the bar and see "$" staring back at me because it kept overwriting what I typed in.  Ugh.

Or how about that "feature" in SP2 and below that caused Explorer to basically lock up for a while if you tried to map a network location that didn't exist or connect to a nonexistent share/computer?  I'm glad they at least fixed that for SP3.

And, of course, symlink support = WIN.  I think NTFS has supported it for quite a while but Vista is the first OS to actually support making them.  Vista's really the first Windows OS to make creating links fairly simple in the command prompt, too.  It's possible to create hard links in XP without installing any thiry-party software (like the wonderful NTFS Link) but you have to use the not-so-intuitive fsutil command (fsutil hardlink create <link name> <target>).