PaulSpoerry.com

I rarely use network shares on my computers. Ok, I have a few setup for the family to use if they need to copy something from one computer to another and a share for our network storage. Other than that I have always favored using admintrative shares. These don’t show up in network neighborhood, but can be accessed by using \\computername\C$. The “$” at the end of a share name makes it invisible to network browsing, but otherwise it is a regular share. As the name implies, administrative shares are only available to those in the Local Administrators security group. This is turned off by default in Vista. Bummer, it’s so handy… I guess that’s part of the big security push. *shrug*

To enable administrative shares you gotta make a registry change. Click on the orb and in the search box type ‘regedit’ and hit enter. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System. Add a new DWORD called “LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy” and give it a value of 1. Reboot and yer done!

System restore is never anything I found particularly useful… in fact I don’t know that I’ve ever even used it. However, I’ve always left it enabled just in case. In Windows XP you could configure the amount of drive space System Restore uses via a slider control. No such control exists in Windows Vista and by default the sucker is configured to use up to 15 percent of your available drive space! Ok… 15% for something I don’t think I’ve ever used… I don’t think so.

To store restore points, you need at least 300 megabytes (MB) of free space on each hard disk that has System Protection turned on. System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. As the amount of space fills up with restore points, System Restore will delete older restore points to make room for new ones.

My laptop currently has a 60g drive and it’s allocated 5.136g of space. Of course this isn’t visible via the interface but to find out you can open a command prompt. Click on the start menu (or the orb as it seems to be called nowadays) and in the searc box type ‘command’, right click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run as Administrator. You’ll then see a DOS command prompt open up… type the following to see the current settings:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

What you’ll see is something like the following:

The command to set the amount of space used follows this syntax:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

So to configure your drive to only use 2 gigs of space on your C: drive you’d to the following:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

That’s it! You’ve recovered some space. If you find system restore useful I’d recommend not touching this setting, or at least not reducing it too much. But if you’re somebody like me who’s never used it you can easily reclaim some space.

Holy crap, this is a hidden gem. With the massive size of hard drives nowadays you’re bound to lose some stuff and end up relying on Windows search to find it. But what if you run a certain search often, wouldn’t it be handy if you could SAVE a previous search? You can in Vista, it’s called Virtual Folders. Press the Orb (previously called the start button) and click search in the right hand of the popup. Alternatively, just hit Windows-F.

After you’ve refined your search (be sure to check out the Advanced Search drop down) and gotten the results you want hit the Save Search icon in the middle of the search screen. Assign it a name and any tags you want to associate with it (I found the tags useful for photo’s). Once saved a new Virtual Folder appears in your Searches folder and you can use it any time you want. What’s most slick about this is that they virtual folder gets updated on the fly! So any files that get changed, added or removed are updated in the search automagically!

Vista’s start menu search box is one of the nicer touches to the new OS. In fact I rarely use the programs menu’s anymore and instead just start typing the name of the program I want to run. I’ve always been big on keeping my start menu clean. I create logical categories like Media for DVD burning software and graphic programs, System for antivirus and compression utils, Games for… duh… games, etc. For most users, their start menu is a nightmare.  You know who you are, you have folders that pop out under all programs that scroll out 2-3 levels deep.

With Vista you have Instant Search and you are never more than a few keystrokes away from whatever you’re looking for. This feature, which is available almost anywhere you are in Vista, enables you to search for a file name, a property, or even text contained within a file. It’s uber slick. Instant Search is also contextual, optimizing its results based on your current activity—whether it’s searching Control Panel applets, looking for music files in Windows Media Player, or looking over all your files and applications on the Start menu.

So with all this power, what is there to do? Tweak it! The biggest detraction from the search is that by default it searches an index of all files on your computer. Seriously, how often are you going to do that? Probably never, the search box isn’t a good use of searching for a file on your PC.

To change the settings right click on the Orb (previously called the start button) and click properties. You’ll see a dialog like the one to the left (click to see full size image), scroll down to the search options. I’ve disabled search files. As I said above, I don’t think the start menu is the right interface for searching for files across the entire pc. If you don’t use Windows mail and contact you can disable Search Communications. If you favor FireFox over IE, you can disable Search favorites and history too. If you are an IE user, you might wanna leave this on. I personally find this a LOT easier to find a webpage that I wanted to go to, but couldn’t remember, than the IE history. I suggest leaving Search Programs on… as that’s the seriously cool feature of Instant Search.