Create Icons to Start the Screensaver on Windows Vista

Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

In order to launch the screensaver, you’ll need to enter the full path to the screensaver file, followed by “/s”

%systemroot%\system32\Bubbles.scr /s

You would want to substitute the name of the screensaver where you see “Bubbles.scr” above. Also note that I used %systemroot% instead of C:\windows because not every install uses the C: drive.If you don’t know the filename, you can browse down to your system32 folder and then search for “.scr” using the search box.

Change the Number of Recent Items Shown on the Vista Start Menu

The default value is set to show 10 documents, but you can increase that with a registry tweak. What we are changing here is the amount of documents shown in this menu.

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then navigate down to the following key, creating it if it doesn’t exist.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.

Add a new DWORD 32-bit value named MaxRecentDocs into the right-hand pane, and then double-click to open it up.

To set the value, you’ll first need to change Base to Decimal, and then you can enter any value you want. For instance, if you want to set it to 20, enter that into the Value data field.

Change Start Menu to Use Small Icons in Windows Vista

Windows Vista uses large icons by default in the start menu.Right click on the start button, and select Properties.Then click the Customize button.Now scroll down all the way to the bottom. You should see a checkbox for Use large icons, which you’ll want to uncheck.

Assign a Shortcut Key to the Snipping Tool in Windows Vista

Windows Vista includes a screen capture/screenshot tool that is actually pretty decent. You can take region captures or full screenshots and easily save them using this tool.

The snipping tool doesn’t exist on every version of Vista. To turn it on, you’ll have to go to “Turn Windows features on or off” in Control Panel, and check the box for the Tablet PC utilities.

The only problem with this tool is that there’s no hotkey to bring up the window.

Bring up the Start Menu, and then click on All Programs. Click the Accessories folder, and you’ll see the Snipping Tool.Right click it and go to the Properties screen. You’ll see a Shortcut key text box:The only annoying thing with this trick is that you can’t use the PrintScreen key.  you can assign Ctrl + F12 because that’s something easy to remember that don’t use for anything else.

Add Home Directory Icon to the Desktop in Windows Vista

One of the new changes in Windows Vista is that each user has a “Home” directory that is actually accessible and meant to be used.

Some of the new features, like the Downloads directory, are only accessible through your Home directory, which is why it makes sense to put an icon for it right on the desktop.

To do this, click the Start button, and then right click on your User name. Choose the Show on Desktop option.Now your home directory icon should show up on your desktop.