Anilrgowda

We’ve covered several utilities in the past that can be used to tweak Vista: TweakVista, TweakUAC, and Vispa. All of those provide some nice functionalities when it comes to tweaking Vista, and there is a new one that was just released called VistaTweaker (Download Mirror). And despite what the name leads you to believe, this will also work in Windows XP even though some of the settings won’t apply. VistaTweaker contains many options that I’m sure you’ve seen before, but the purpose of it is to give you one central place to adjust them all. There are many application-specific settings for things like Notepad, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player that prevent you from actually having to open the respective application in order to change the options. I didn’t really find much that I hadn’t already changed, but this would save some headaches after a fresh installation of Vista.
The nice thing is that the program is lightweight and doesn’t require any installation. I’m sure you’re probably wondering everything that it does do, so I took the time to provide plenty of screenshots as well as a full typed out list of all the options. It took me a little while to type all of that out, so hopefully you enjoy it!
VistaTweaker 0.1 Beta (Download Mirror)
–System–
File Extensions:

• Register/Unregister DLL Context Menu entry
• Register/Unregister ActiveX Controls Context Menu entry
• Copy to Folder Context Menu entry
• Move to Folder Context Menu entry
• Open with Notepad Context Menu entry
• Directory List Context Menu entry

Security:

• Disable UAC
• Just prevent UAC prompts for Admin account
• Set AutoUpdate to notify before installing updates
• Disable Security Center notifications
• Don’t display the Username at logon
• Enable unsigned drivers

Miscellaneous Settings:

• Enable Verbose Status

–Windows UI–
Windows Explorer:

• Disable autocomplete in file dialogs
• Show hidden files
• Show hidden system files
• Show file extensions
• Disable File Tooltips
• Disable online lookup for unknown file extensions

Desktop:

• Remove shortcut arrow overlay
• Disable auto hide system tray icons
• Remove "Shortcut to…"

Start Menu:

• Disable notifications for new programs
• Show the Run box
• Show Control Panel as a menu
• Hide Recent Documents

Miscellaneous:

• Enable Clear Type

–Internet Explorer–
Main Settings:

• Disable automatic image resizing
• Disable checking the default browser
• Disable all installed browser extensions
• Turn off the Autocomplete feature
• Don’t notify when a download is completed
• Save session history on exit
• Enable Smooth Scrolling
• Hide the Discussion button
• Lock the toolbar

Page Printing Features:

• Disable Header printing
• Disable Footer printing
• Enable background images

Tabs:

• Open new tabs in the foreground
• Disable Pop-ups in a new window
• Don’t warn when closing multiple tabs
• Open new tab at the end
• Don’t load homepage on new tabs

Miscellaneous Settings:

• Disable Information bar notification
• Don’t ask the user to use Autocomplete
• Disable Internet Connection Wizard

Feeds:

• Disable Feed Discovery sound
• Disable Auto Mark as Read feature

–Software–
Notepad:

• Enable Status bar
• Enable word wrap
• Save window size
• Disable Header printing
• Disable Footer printing

Windows Media Player:

• Disable Usage Tracking
• Disable first time run
• Disable automatic updates

–Network–

• Increase maximum connections per server

–Miscellaneous–
User Information:

• Registered Owner
• Registered Company