One (more) thing tht Vista didn't change...

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

It's still fiendishly easy to knock the task bar off the bottom of the screen into the side, but a nightmare trying to drag it back!

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I'm sure you still have to grab it at a point where there is NO program.

Vista is more like XP than, I'm sure, M$ would like to admit. But why it has to be so HUGE is beyond me. It's the 800 pound Gorilla in the room!

But fortunately, it WILL run my cleanup batch file which I put in the Startup folder.

Setting all menu's and screens to "Classic" makes Vista look and run a lot more like XP, which is a GOOD THING. Wink

Cheers Mate!
The Doctor Cool

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

Oh yes, if you can remember to find a bit that has no programme icon on it you can almost do this. But with Vista, as with XP, first of all, any unknowing user can, and will, get the damn thing to move by accident, but won't know how it happened. And even an experienced user can forget how to get it back.
And even if you do know what to do, it will magically try to jump to any of the other two edges, but not the bottom. There's plenty of ordinary users that have given up trying to get it back.
Could MS have made this easier to handle. Of course they could.
Did they? Did they F***.

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2636

I managed to click something without realizing I did it on my eeepc. Suddenly all my forums came up with no words - anywhere! I shut down FF and restarted nd got the same thing. I rebooted the computer and got the same thing. I fired up a window computer just to be sure it wasn't a glitch with my ISP or router. It wasn't, the windows computer looked fine. I was just getting ready to reinstall (it is very easy on the eeepc; you press the F9 button and in about two minutes, the computer is back to factory condition) when I notice a tiny icon at the bottom of the FF status bar was showing 0%. I have an addon called nosquint, which lets me enlarge text size on webpages and remembers what I chose so the next time I get there, the text size is proper for me. Well i must have clicked it and set the text size to 0%!!! Yikes! That's one lesson I won't soon forget. if the text disappears, chek the nosquint text size.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Hardly a week goes by that either I or some piece of crap software doesn't screw up my desktop.

A "System Restore" fixes it every time.
That's what system restore if for, those little "Oooops" that come along from time to time.

My reliance on "System Restore" is why I run a little script in my Startup folder to force a new restore point on every boot.
I may get several new restore points every day, but hey, that's OK.....I sure as heck have a fresh restore point when I need one.
I delete them all, with a simple batch file, when I do my regular Ghost Backup. (Usually, about twice a week)

For those really BIG "Awshitz!", where something has trashed windows, I always have a Ghost Image of C:, not more than three or four days old, stored somewhere for a quick restore. I seldom have to use that, but it sure is nice to have it when I do.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor Cool

EDIT:
I just fired up my Vista PC and tried moving the task bar to the right side, then to the top, then to the left side and back to the bottom. It works exactly the same as it did in previous versions of windows. No sweat!

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

The thing is, you're pretty obviously pretty swish at moving the task bar around.
But saying that it's exactly like previous versions of Windows is correct. i.e it's not improved: And to many users, that's a problem.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Only a real Klutz would drag and drop his/her taskbar to somewhere else on the screen. Twisted Evil

Anyway, I wanted to give another example of something that's NOT really changed in Vista.........the "Registry".

It's larger, yes, and contains some new entries, yes, but overall, it's the same format as in XP and probably ME and 98 too.

A registry cleaner program, like "Easy Cleaner" that worked so well on 98 and ME, also works as well on XP and Vista. I use it regularly.
NTREGOPT works well on Vista too.

And, many of the Registry Tweaks I've used on XP , work equally well on Vista. A few don't! Rolling Eyes

Some registry entries, like the one to shut down UAC, have no counterpart in XP.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor Cool

12quidkidinnit

I've had a couple of goes on a vista pc recently, and it seems to work much the same way as XP does. But can anyone tell me how to add a destination to the Sendto menu ? In XP, you can click Start, Run, type in Sendto, and go from there. I tried this on vista and it didn't want to know.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Kid,
It's amazing, how you can run one of these dang'd things for years and miss some simple tips and routines.
You just told me something I didn't know.
That you could type "Sendto" into the run box and open the sendto folder.

I've been having this terrible problem editing batch files that were not on C:.
Wordpad would open up a little error box saying that it couldn't find the file.

Using your tip, I just copied a shortcut for Wordpad into that Send-To folder.
Now if I want to edit a file that's not on C:, I just right click it, then "Send To" Wordpad and there it is......easily edit'able.

This day has NOT been wasted.

Thank you for the tip,

The Doctor Cool

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Kid,
I went to another computer that I have set up with Vista Ultimate and tried the SendTo thing. I got an error message that the folder was unavailable, access denied. CRAP!!!!

OK, I finally found it under C:\Users\MyUserName\SendTo

I clicked on properties and found that ALL permissions were NOT set.
I reset the permissions, to allow everyone ALL permissions.

Now I can open the folder and drag a shortcut for WordPad into the open folder,,, which I did.
Works like a charm. Wink

Vista does that to a lot of folders.....comes in with such high permission levels that most people can hardly even use Vista.

One more thing that Vista allows as did all versions of Windows clear back to 3.1, you can right click on START, then click "Open", then click the Programs folder, then open any other folder, like the Startup Folder, to read it or add things to it or delete things from it. I use this trick a lot.

Later!

Doc Cool