Vista Reboot No Password Prompt

Vista is still prompting me to reboot on most updates which is quite annoying. So I decided I wanted at least to skip the ...waitey... password prompt. I typed "vista reboot no password prompt" in the search box, and got two pieces of advice. The first was to simply remove the password from my administrator account. That didn't fly well with me... what about the network risks? So the second had an answer. I quote from http://jsbi.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-easily-bypass-windows-vista.html:

Additionally, even if you are the sole users, you still might have set up a password just to have access to added functionality like remote connections. You wouldn't be able to connect remotely to a Windows Vista account that is not password protected.

Anyway, if you were expecting a hack I have to disappoint you. This is nothing more than simple account management. You will have to click the Start sphere, then enter “cmd” in the search box. In the Command Prompt window write “control userpasswords2” and hit enter. Windows Vista will now ask you to elevate the privileges of the process so do it and you will be face to face with a window for User Accounts. Toward the top you will be able to see the option “users must enter a username and password to use this computer.” Select the account you wish to alter and then uncheck the option. You will then be prompted with an Automatically Log On window, in which you will have to enter your name and password.

There, shaved up to a minute from the lenghty signon procedures... let me know if that help ya, leave a comment.

firefox 4 search box not working -suggestions -searchbox -drop -map

This is the exact search I did to find out what to do when my search bar in new firefox 4 was not operating. The solution was, for me, for now:

cor-el: You can try to delete search.sqlite and search.json in the Firefox Profile Folder See also: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Search_Bar ... Read more... 2 out of 2 people found this reply helpful

Taken straight from http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/763904 The location of your firefox profile folder may vary, but it usually ends with .default Comment below if this helped ya.

Zune Slow On Vista, Win 7, Cursor Slow When Zune Up [SOLVED]

Are you wondering why your Zune is slow on Vista? I was wondering why my Zune causes slow cursor movement whenever I bring Zune up. I read up on the subject, and, if you have current Zune software, and your Zune is still running slow, on Windows 7 even, and with a quad processor, know this:

"Zune design was future thinking"

"Zune design was future thinking"

There is a whole bunch of graphics effects, etc. So what helped me (thanks for the tip on one of the Vista forums), is the following. Start up Zune and go to

SETTINGS/DISPLAY/SCREEN GRAPHICS section

Then change the slider from the middle (where it was for me) to leftmost position, toward BASIC.

This was counter intuitive as the left most position is no-frills WITHOUT graphics acceleration, and a bit to the right is no-frills WITH graphics acceleration, and acts like a hog.

Must be my old graphics card!?
 
Anyhow, having slided this all the way to the left, Zune software became really really swift, and I have not seen any loss of functionality, go figure!


Zune, I was told, is one of the best music management software, better than iTunes. I could believe that as I uninstalled iTunes soon after I installed it. It was awkward back then.

With this tweak, it became usable for me again. Yay!

Please COMMENT if this helped you too. Follow my blog for more revelations!

Vista, Windows 7 Taskbar Wont Hide, Successful Workaround

Suddenly, my trusty taskbar on Vista, which was set to auto-hide (very handy for saving space on laptops), has stopped to auto-hide. Checkout for a brilliant workaround...

Suddenly, my trusty taskbar on Vista, which was set to auto-hide (very handy for saving space on laptops), has stopped to auto-hide. It just sticks, regardless of the other settings under Taskbar Properties/Taskbar/. Even tried checking and unchecking "Auto-hide the taskbar" several times, to no avail.

Having recently played with placing making my second display a primary display inside Control Panel/Appearance and Personalization/Personalization/Display Settings, this might have been the cause. Dunno.

I first found the solution to be TaskbarSlapper (downloadable program, works fine, no spyware as far as I know), but that only worked one time, and now, it doesn't work anymore.

So I dug deeper, and here is an inelegant solution that, however, worked for me: From: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winvista/1189550818.

To solve your problem: Open Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc), select the ^Processes page, highlight 'explorer.exe' and click the 'End Process' button.

The Taskbar will vanish.

Now go to the ^Applications page and click the 'New task...' button. Type "explorer" and click OK.

The Taskbar will return and behave correctly. Until the next time.

One downside of this fix: some apps which insert their icons into the Systray at boot time may not do so again. The app will still be still running -- it's just that it will have no Systray icon. 

As I say, it worked for me, with the above mentioned side effects. Beats rebooting Vista, at least for me.

If this works for you, or not, leave me a comment.

If you have a better solution, leave me a comment below.

Firefox 4 Status Bar Restored

Frustrating when upgrading to Firefox 4 and, for simplified user interface/other reasons, suddenly the status bar is missing. Find a brilliant solution below...

[UPDATE: The next day... see below]

Frustrating when upgrading to Firefox 4 and, for simplified user interface/other reasons, suddenly the status bar is missing.

Especially critical when you are using Firefox for work!

Fortunately, there is a solution Firefox addon status-4-evar. (let me know if the link doesn't work for you, it is a https)

*** STATUS-4-EVAR !!! ***

A rave review by Noodnik @ addons.mozilla.org:

Yessss!!!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars by Noodnik on April 7, 2011 #

Thank you a lot, I was really missing the status bar!

[UPDATE, The next day...] Unfortunately, the very next day I saw something unusual on the bottom right of the Firefox 4 window, and it didn't look like status-4-evar at all. Status-4-Evar statusbar was gone. As were all my visual results that I saw there. Disable/Enable status-4-evar did not work. Neither did uninstall/reinstall status-4-evar extension work... Oh well... Come to think of it, upgrading Firefox is not much different from upgrading Microsoft Windows. MS will change the default locations of documents, user data, etcetera... and Firefox will change the things that I like... Come to think of it, Firefox 3.?.15 was the last version that worked good for me.. I can still downgrade! [UPDATE, The same day...] Found out that for some reason, probably related to the RAM disk I am using, most of my extensions were wiped out, but not status-4-evar. So that is why I thought status-4-evar did not work. It apparently did, if there simply was something to stick in it?! Backed up my settings from a few days back. Lost a few tabs, but gained my beloved status bar, as well as some much missed buttons... So far so good. The saga may continue. Stay tuned. Comment, subscribe to the blog for more! COMMENT if you have similar issues. We'll find the solutions somehow.