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Vista Folders Always Start at 800-by-600
One user just wants every window to be the same size, and for that size to be larger than the default. Can the default be changed?

That technique breaks down if the shortcut is a special one like Computer, Network, or Documents. But never fear; you can still prevail. Drag the shortcut in question onto the desktop (even if it's already on the desktop) using the right-hand mouse button. When you release the button, choose Create Shortcuts Here. You now have an ordinary shortcut that opens the same location, and you can set this shortcut to open maximized.

Make Vista Show Picture Thumbnails
Here's how to show thumbnails of the picture files in your Vista picture folder.
by  Neil J. Rubenking
Q: How do I get Vista to show thumbnails of the picture files in my picture folder? Right now they all show the same generic picture icon.—Bergeron Gano, Jr

A: If this were an older version of Windows, I'd suspect that some image editing program had configured the image file types to display its own icon. A simple Registry tweak fixes that problem.
In Vista, the source is most likely a hard-to-find setting that's accidentally turned off. Right-click Computer and choose Properties. Click the Advanced system settings link at left. Click the Settings button in the Performance pane. On the Visual Effects tab, be sure the option Show thumbnails instead of icons is checked. If not, check it and click OK—problem fixed!

So why was it unchecked in the first place? It's possible that you selected the Adjust for best performance option while solving some other problem. Choosing that option turns off all the special visual effects in the list. Or your computer may be low-powered enough for the default Let Windows choose what's best option to have disabled it. Whatever the reason, turning that option back on should bring back the thumbnails.

Vista Icons Lose Their Filenames
Only seeing icons with no filenames in Vista? You can restore the settings easily to get them back.
by Neil J. Rubenking
Q. I have a question for you concerning something odd that's happened on my Windows Vista Home Premium computer. My account is Administrator type. I have an Administrator account and a Family account, but as far as I know, this has happened only in the Administrator account. I don't know if someone used the computer and accidentally changed a setting somewhere or not, but I've never seen this before, not even in XP. The problem occurred in my Documents folder (the one labeled with the account username) and also in the Control Panel folder: All the icons are still there, but they don't have names. The icon labels are simply gone!

I tried changing the icon size, but same thing, there are no names for the icons. In the Details and Tiles views, the names appear as they should, but in the medium-to-large Icon views, they are missing.—Quentin Waldner

A. Both Windows Vista and Windows XP have a well-hidden ability to display thumbnail images with no labels. This feature is probably most useful in a folder containing just pictures. When you invoke it by accident, it can definitely make life difficult.

To display the contents of a folder as thumbnails with no filenames, simply hold down a Shift key while switching the folder from Details view to Thumbnails view in XP or to one of the several Icons views in Vista. In my experience, this action is a bit less responsive in Vista—you may have to try several times. But clearly it wouldn't be hard to invoke this feature accidentally.

So how do you get back the filenames? First, make sure the problem folder is currently set to display in one of the filename-free thumbnail views. Now click on some other folder, hold down a Shift key, and click back on the folder whose filenames you want to recover. Here again I found that in Vista I sometimes had to try several times. Now that you know how to turn this feature on and off at will, perhaps you'll find it's actually useful.

Send Faxes and Scan Documents
The odds are good that your PC has an integrated fax modem. Take advantage of it.
by  Cisco Cheng
The odds are good that your PC has an integrated fax modem. Take advantage of it by using Vista's built-in Fax and Scan utility (found in Vista Business and Ultimate editions). This same utility can also take advantage of that old scanner to image documents without purchasing new, Vista-compatible software.

What to Do with an Iso File
For those who have an .iso file and can't seem to make it work: The answers are here.
Q: I downloaded Vista from the Microsoft Web site, and I can't find installation instructions. The file extension is .iso, so it's not an executable. I tried using the Run command and the install from Add/Remove Programs, but they won't run it. — Don Boudreaux
A: An ISO image is like the disk drive image backup created by Ghost or DriveImage. It holds the exact contents of the CD or DVD, byte for byte, without regard for the way those bytes are organized into files, folders, and so on.
You need to burn the file to a physical DVD, or you could use a program that lets you open the ISO image directly as a virtual DVD. Daemon Tools (www.daemon-tools.cc) is a free example of the latter. But you're probably better off burning a physical DVD so that you can simply boot from it to install. You can use just about any commercial DVD burner to do that.

Search Folders
Vista has improved the history functionality of Windows Explorer.
by  Sarah Pike
In the left-hand pane of Windows Explorer, sitting quietly among your regular folders, you'll find the Searches "folder." I put folder in quotes because it's really a pointer to dynamic search results, but Microsoft calls it a folder, and who am I to question?

Clicking the standard Searches folders will lead you to such useful places as recent documents, e-mail, or media; recently changed items; shared files; and more. The Searches are wildly convenient, and both faster and more powerful than the old Recent Documents item from the Microsoft Windows XP Start menu, but they become even better when you create and save your own Searches. We'll look into custom Searches in the next issue.

Copy as Path
A new feature of Vista allows users to copy folder paths.
by Anton Galang
Right-clicking on a file or a folder usually brings up a menu with basic choices such as Open or Copy. But if you hold down the Shift key when you right-click, the menu will also include an option labeled Copy as Path. This copies the entire path of the file or folder to your clipboard, free for you to paste wherever you please.
This can be useful when you've located a file in Windows Explorer and you want to upload it to a Web site, to give just one example; instead of browsing for the file through the site, just copy and paste the path directly.

Compact Folders in Windows Mail
Tweaking defaults in Windows Mail can help you free up more space and keep your e-mail organized.
by  Neil J. Rubenking
Q. I get a lot of e-mail. I keep some for a long time, delete some, and move some into folders. When I used Outlook Express, I would choose the Compact All Folders option every month to keep it efficient and reduce the space required to store my messages. Now that I'm using Vista and Windows Mail, I can no longer find the option to compact folders. Please help! —W. Smith
A. Both Outlook Express and its descendant, Windows Mail, take an old-school approach to deleting messages within their data files. When you delete a message from a folder or even move it to a different folder, the space previously occupied by that message remains in use. It just gets a marker indicating the message is deleted. So the data files representing your message folders get bigger and bigger and bigger. The process of compacting a folder means making a new copy of it with all the deleted items squeezed out. I've advised my readers to choose File | Folders | Compact All Folders periodically, to save space and make Outlook Express work more efficiently.
Try that in Windows Mail and you'll fall flat—there is no Compact All Folders menu item. That's because Microsoft decided to handle the task differently, compacting folders automatically every 100 times you close Windows Mail. But there's still a way to make the app compact messages right away. Select Tools from the Options menu, click the Advanced tab, and click the Maintenance button. Find the line that says Compact the database on shutdown every [100] runs. Make sure that option is checked, change it from 100 to 1, and click OK, OK. When you shut down Windows Mail, it will offer to compact messages; click OK. Unless you want it to make that offer every time, the next time you launch Windows Mail, go back into the Maintenance dialog and set the interval back to 100—or to another interval, if you prefer.

Can't Create Groups in Windows Contacts
It's dead simple to group specific contacts in the Windows Contacts folder in Vista.
by  Neil J. Rubenking
Q. I have been looking for a way to group specific contacts in the Windows Contacts folder in Vista, so I can send an e-mail to a group with one or two clicks rather than each contact one at a time.—Columbarini
A. It should be dead simple. You just click the New Contact Group button in the toolbar at the top, and then add the desired contacts to the group. I'm guessing, however, you have a problem that I've seen before: There isn't a New Contact Group button, or any other contact-specific toolbar buttons. So do this: Right-click the Contacts folder itself and choose Properties. Click the Customize tab. Where it asks What kind of folder do you want? select Contacts and click OK. If it already says Contacts, choose something else, maybe Documents, click Apply, then choose Contacts and click OK. Now you should see that handy button.

Find the Cookies Folder in Vista
Oh where, oh where can the Cookies folder be?
by  Neil J. Rubenking
Q: Where can I find the Cookies folder in Windows Vista? When I ran Windows XP, I put a shortcut to the Cookies folder on my desktop. When I went to a Web site, I could quickly see how many cookies a site was putting on my computer and delete them if I wanted to. I've tried searching in Vista but haven't had much luck. Please help!—Walter Nowak

A: To find just about anything in Vista, you simply start typing its name at the Start menu. When you type cookies, it points you to C:\Users\username\cookies—great! Great, that is, until you click on the link and get an "Access Denied" slap in the face. In actual fact, that path is just a kind of pointer. The cookies are stored in a completely different location.

Open Windows Explorer, press F10 to see the menu, and choose Tools | Folder Options. Click the View tab. Find the option to Show hidden files and folders and check it. Find Hide protected operating system files and uncheck it (Vista will gripe). Now you can navigate to the actual location, which is twofold: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies and C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low.

If you like, you can put shortcuts to these on the desktop or elsewhere—just right-drag the folder, let go, and choose Create shortcut(s) here. These shortcuts will work even if you change the Windows Explorer options described above back to their default values.

Going Up
You might have noticed a familiar button missing from Vista's Windows Explorer: It's the Up button, which used to take you to the previous level in the path.
by  Anton Galang
You might have noticed a familiar button missing from Vista's Windows Explorer: It's the Up button, which used to take you to the previous level in the path. Instead, Vista expects you'll use the address bar at the top of the window to jump back to different levels, or use the Back button to return to your previously viewed folder. But if you absolutely must use the Up function, you can hit Alt-Up Arrow to go up one level. Alt-Left Arrow/Right Arrow still moves you back or forward in your history, as it did in Windows XP.

Those Aren't My Favorites
Vista's version of Windows Explorer has a few key navigational changes from Windows XP.
by  Sarah Pike
Vista's version of Windows Explorer has a few key navigational changes from Windows XP. In addition to the standard folder view, at the top of the left-hand pane you'll find Favorite Links. Well, my most-often-used folders aren't Documents, Pictures, or Music, and frankly I'm too grumpy to delve into Recently Changed. What I do have is a pretty complicated hierarchy of frequently used folders, some local and some network. Vista actually makes adding and rearranging these Favorites quite easy: Just navigate to the folder in question and drag it to a position in the Favorites list. If your real favorites drop down the list (annoying!) and become obscured by the Folders list, just click More and drag 'em back.

Expanded Shortcut Menu
You can add useful options to the right-click menu on any file or folder in Vista.
by  Cisco Cheng
You can add useful options to the right-click menu on any file or folder. By holding down Shift as you right-click an item, you can add any file to the Start menu or Quick Launch toolbar, copy the entire path of the file or folder to the clipboard, or open a command prompt window

Compatibility Files
To keep legacy apps running, Vista lets them pretend to write to their familiar file locations. But when you go to look for those files, you won't find them!
by  David Cardinal
To keep legacy apps running, Vista lets them pretend to write to their familiar file locations—often under their installation folder in \Program Files or in \Windows itself. INI files, data files, templates, or even music might wind up there.

But when you go to look for those files, you won't find them! Vista actually stores the files in a "Virtual Store" under the AppData store in your user folder. Fortunately, you don't need to hunt around for the files, just turn on "Compatibility Files" in Explorer. When you browse to a folder that has these hidden files, you'll see a Compatibility Files toolbar button. Clicking it will show the virtual files for that folder. Keep in mind, though, that the files won't show up in Open and Save dialogs.

Remove Metadata from Pictures
Remove hidden details from pictures and documents.
by  Cisco Cheng
Picture and documents have hidden data about the type of equipment used, as well as personal information about you. You can remove these details by right-clicking the file icon and selecting Properties. On the Details tab, click Remove Properties and Personal Information. You can remove several properties at a time or all of them by the check boxes next to a property.

Raw Images
Vista's new Photo Gallery is powerful and flexible, but out of the box, it works with JPEG and TIFF images only. If you're hooked on RAW files, you'll be dismayed when you first open your Photo Gallery and don't see your images.
Fortunately, Microsoft has a solution. Camera vendors can provide a codec (much as video and audio vendors have been doing for years) that lets Vista view, open, and annotate proprietary formats such as RAW files.
Choose File | Update from the Photo Gallery menu and you'll be directed to a Web site for each type of RAW image Vista has found on your system. When you download the codec, you'll be able to see your RAW images alongside JPEGs and TIFFs.
— David Cardinal,

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