Fast PC Mods » vista

Vista Power Management

ztr3ngth — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:22:52 +0000

The power management options on Vista laptops is a very broad and useful tool that allows you to select your required power / performance ratio and manage different power plans amongst many other things.

To begin editing Vista’s Power Management Options, left click the battery icon typically found on the bottom right of your toolbar.

In the Power Management pop-up, you are able to choose between 3 separate power plans, we will explain these further on. For now, click “More Power Options” to display the full Vista Power Management window:

The Power Management window allows you to switch between 3 different power plans, change the plans settings and also to create your own.

To change the settings of a currently existing plan, click on “Change Plan Settings” underneath the respected plan. In this example, I have chosen to edit the power management settings of the “High Performance” plan:

The “Edit Plan Settings” window allows us edit the display sleep time, computer sleep time and to adjust the screen brightness both whilst your laptop plugged in and unplugged. If you want to revert back to the default settings for a plan that you have accidentaly edited, just click “Restore Default Settings For This Plan” towards the bottom of the window.

Clicking “Change Advanced Power Settings” will bring up the following window which allows you to control how your laptop reacts when its lid is closed, whether a password is required after the laptop has been in sleep mode and many more settings.

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Disable Windows Error Report

ztr3ngth — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:27:40 +0000

When a program crashes in Windows, by default a message box appears asking if you would like to report the error to Microsoft. 99.9% of PC users never do and never will which therefore makes this feature unnecessary and time consuming. Windows Error Reporting’ (also known as ‘Problem Reporting’) can be disabled in a few simple steps:

Go to the Start menu > Control Panel
Click System and Maintenance
Click Problem Reports and Solutions
On the left hand panel, click Change Settings then Advanced Settings
Under “For my programs, problem reporting is:” select Off
Click OK on both screens then exit the Control Panel

You may also be interested in our article on Disabling Vista’s User Account Control and Disabling Vista’s Sidebar.

How To Disable Vista’s SideBar

ztr3ngth — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:53:18 +0000

Most Vista users tend not to notice the sidebar that lurks on their desktop 24/7, but this is a huge mistake. For the sake of a few ‘Gadgets’, the Sidebar uses way too much system memory. Just like User Account Control, the Sidebar is yet another pointless and power hogging application thrown into Vista.

To disable the Sidebar:

1. Right click on the Sidebar and select Properties

2. Uncheck the “Start Sidebar when Windows starts” box

3. Click Ok and Restart

You may also be interested in our article on Disabling Vista’s User Account Control