If you don’t love the shiny new Aero Glass look of Windows Vista or you find it to be totally distracting and a big waste of your precious computer resources ,follow these steps to get rid of the ritzy glassy look and go back to the old clunky opaque view of yesteryear:

1. Right-click anywhere on the Vista desktop and then click the Personalize item on its shortcut menu.

2. Click the Window Color and Appearance link in the Personalization Control Panel window.

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Windows Vista, like all versions of Windows before it, relies on a structure of Explorer windows that display all the document files and subfolders stored within it. The big difference in Windows Vista is the appearance of an entirely new type of folder called a virtual folder that can appear in these windows. Virtual folders are quite a bit different from the ones you create manually by actually moving and copying particular document files and subfolders into them. Instead, virtual folders are created from some type of search. Because of this, they can contain files that are not actually stored in the same folder (directory) and their contents are dynamically updated (as you add new files that fit a virtual folder’s search criteria, they automatically appear in that virtual folder). The best examples of virtual folders are found in the Documents window (opened by clicking the Documents link in the right-hand column of the Start menu). When this window opens, you see a list of Favorite Links in the Navigation pane on the left side of the window that includes links to two virtual folders: Recently Changed and Searches.

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1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Theme.

or

Right-click an empty area of the desktop and choose Personalize > Theme.

2. From the Theme drop-down list, choose an existing theme as a starting point for creating a new one.

3. Choose the desired settings in Control Panel to change the theme.

4. When you’re finished making changes, click Apply in the Theme Settings dialog box.

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If  Windows Vista’s default appearance and sounds aren’t to your taste, you can change them with a different desktop theme– a stored set of colors, icons, fonts, sounds, and other elements that redecorate your desktop. You can pick a predefined theme or create your own.

To set a theme in Windows Vista:

1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Theme.

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Windows Vista has efficient methods to backup your data. Back up (copy) files from your hard drive to a CD drive, DVD drive, removable storage device, or another PC or drive on a network for the purpose of safeguarding or archiving your data, or for saving your computer configuration so that you can restore it in the event of a crash.

The Backup and Restore Center, new in Windows Vista, offers tools for backing up data as well as creating a restore “image” of your computer, which can be used to re-create the state of your PCincluding the operating system, applications, and settingsin the event of a hardware failure. It fixes a variety of shortcomings in the backup program built into Windows XP, such as not being able to back up across a network. On the other hand, it’s less flexible than the XP backup program because it doesn’t allow you to customize it to a great extent. You can’t, for example, choose specific folders, or files from specific folders, to be backed up. Instead, you have to back up all files of a particular file type, such as documents.

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The Registry has thousands of keys and values, which makes finding a single key or value rather laborious. Luckily, there are a few alternatives that will greatly simplify this task.

First, you can simply search the Registry. Start by highlighting the key at the top of the tree through which you want to search, which instructs the Registry Editor to begin searching at the beginning of that key. (To search the entire Registry, highlight “Computer.”) Then, use Edit -> Find, type in what you’re searching for, make sure that all the “Look at” options are checked, and click Find Next.

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When Windows Vista is installed, a user and company name are entered. Unfortunately, there is no convenient way to change this information after installation. Surprise – you can do it in the Registry! Just go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersion

RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization are the values you need, and you can change both to whatever you’d like. You may notice that the Registry key containing these values is in the Windows NT branch, rather than the more commonly used Windows branch. Don’t worry, both branches are used in Windows Vista. The less-used Windows NT branch contains more advanced settings, mostly those that differentiate the Windows 9x and Windows NT lines of operating systems.

Inexplicably, Windows Vista screensavers such as the Ribbon screensaver don’t allow you to change how they work. For example, to change the number or width of the ribbons. But you can change their options, using the Registry. Here’s how to change the Ribbons screensaver to make it use a larger number of ribbons, and make each ribbon much thinner.

In the Registry Editor, go to:

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