Windows understands a bunch of common image and movie formats out of the box, and can produce thumbnails for your files in Medium, Large, and Extra Large Icons views. To get Windows to recognize a new format, though, you need to install the appropriate Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codec.
Windows is basically just a collection of components, and at any given time, some of those components may be loaded into memory and listed as running processes in Task Manager. In fact, you'll probably see more programs running than you expected, especially after you turn on Task Manager's Show processes from all users option.
Like the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer found in Windows XP, Vista's own Windows Photo Gallery application is not easy to get rid of. You can install a new application that makes itself the default for your image files, and in some cases, the Windows Photo Gallery will still appear when you double-click image files.
If you assign a password to your account, or if you add a second user account in Control Panel, Vista will show you the Welcome screen when Windows first starts.
A larger DNS cache will mean fewer trips to the nameserver and faster overall performance.
Sharing Sheduled Tasks makes network browsing slower. The problem is that sharing Scheduled Tasks slows network browsing considerably. Follow these steps on every PC in your workgroup to stop sharing Scheduled Tasks and increase your network performance considerably.
If you've upgraded your PC from an earlier version of Windows, there's a chance you're still using the FAT32 filesystem. Assuming you don't need to keep FAT32 for compatibility with other operating systems, you should convert your drive to NTFS. The process is easy, relatively quick, and won't harm your data (although you should back up beforehand just to be safe).
You can hide certain types of icons in Control Panel's Classic View with a quick Registry hack. Just open the Registry Editor, and expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\don't load\.
By default, the Quick Launch toolbar comes with a Show Desktop button, which allows you to quickly hide all open windows and access stuff on your desktop, and then quickly bring them all back when you’re done. But what if your Quick Launch toolbar doesn’t have one?
It's possible to limit the automatic login feature, so that the Log On dialog (or Welcome screen) reappears after a specified number of boots.