HackyourWindows[dot]com

Determine what process keeps your hard drive busy

Sometimes you notice your hard drive doing some intense work for apparently no reason. This makes your computer respond and perform slowly. Isn't that annoying?! This is how you can find out exactly what process keeps the hard drive busy so you can shut it down or whatever!

Disable Windows Vista's startup sound

In Windows Vista you can hear the startup sound even if you disable the Windows Sounds. In earlier beta version of Windows Vista this sound was mandatory, from marketing point of view.

From users point of view, after a while, this was a nightmare. But after hearing the community's complaints, Microsoft gave users the ability to disable that sound. This is how you do it.

Add or remove search providers from Internet Explorer

In this video tutorial you will learn how to get rid of that boring Live Search engine from Internet Explorer and unleash the real power of Google or any provider you want.

As example in this video I added Google, weather.com and wikipedia.org, but you can add a wide variety of providers, even custom ones!

Hack the Windows Vista Experience Index score!

Windows Vista Experience Index is a feature of Windows Vista that allows you to rate you computer by it's hardware performance. This is how to hack that rating and brag with the highest score!

Vista's Experience Index is intended to help you choose the best software solution, based on your hardware capabilities. So if you have a low score, that means you shouldn't install resource intensive programs. Enjoy!

Always show extension for known file types!

A recent study showed that over 60% of virus or worm infections are caused by the users negligence when opening files received as attachment to an email, by some instant messaging client or a download software. It's a very old method that still works! A virus renames itself as "picture.jpg.exe", use a picture icon and some unsuspected user is fooled!

The Windows history - from Windows 1.0 to Windows Vista

This is a super video about the Windows history and a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse on how Bill Gates and Microsoft built Windows along all these years.

You will see how this OS grew and from a simple window to a smashing Windows Vista.

Enjoy!

Add additional clocks in Windows Vista

You can have up to three clocks in Windows Vista: the default one and two additional ones.

So if you like to know what time is in London or ... say... China (LOL!), this is how you can do it.

Change Windows registered owner name

If your name was misspelled, written wrong or simply because you want to change it, follow this tutorial!

The Registry location is located in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ WindowsNT \ CurrentVersion" and the keys you must modify are "RegisteredOwner" and "RegisteredOrganization"

Caution! Registry editing is dangerous! Please review this tutorial a couple of times if you're not sure about what you are doing!

Internet Explorer - overview of internet settings

Nice video from BetaFlux about Internet Explorer and its settings. Also contains some useful settings you can make to improve browsing speed.

How to enable RUN command in Windows Vista

If you don't have it and miss it, this is how you can enable it :)