Category: Windows Vista » Page 4

Exit and Restart Explorer.exe Cleanly in Windows 7 and Vista

Last Updated on: June 19, 2021 by Ramesh

To restart Explorer to test a registry setting without a reboot, we usually terminate the Explorer shell (explorer.exe) using Task Manager. The Task Manager method is like forcibly killing the process instead of terminating it cleanly.

Jeff, a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft, posted a great tip on how to cleanly start and stop explorer.exe in Windows XP.

Quote:

If you are running Windows XP and want a cmd prompt with no strange environment variables set, do the following: Ctrl + Shift+Esc → File → Ctrl + New Task (Run…)

This will open a cmd window with only the basics. This is useful if you have killed Explorer and need to restart it. Explorer will keep the environment of the cmd window that started it.

If you want to cleanly shutdown Explorer without having it automatically restart: Start → Shutdown → Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Cancel.

Although the above method (originally written for Windows XP) would work for the Classic Start menu in Windows Vista and Windows 7, not everyone uses the Classic Start menu.

This article tells you how to exit explorer in Windows Vista and Windows 7 using the New Start menu.

How to disable Windows Parental Controls reminder

Last Updated on: May 31, 2021 by Ramesh

Q: I enabled Parental Controls in all of the standard user accounts in my Windows Vista computer. Whenever I log on to Windows, I’m always getting a balloon popup in the Notification area which tells me to look at the Parental Control activity report. How do I disable this notification?Read more

Fix for Windows Security Center Service Error 1075

Last Updated on: October 22, 2022 by Ramesh

Here is a question from one of our readers: When I access the Security Center on my computer, it says The Security Center is currently unavailable because the “Security Center” service has not started or was stopped. I ran the Services.msc command from Start – Run. but I can’t get the service started. I got the following error:Read more

Error 0x80070032 when creating a System Restore point in Windows Vista

Last Updated on: May 12, 2019 by Ramesh

When you try to create a System Restore point in Windows Vista, the following error may occur: Could not create the scheduled task for the following reason: The request is not supported. (0x80070032) This happens if the Windows Event Log and the Task Scheduler services are disabled. Follow these steps to fix the problem. 1. … Read more

Fix for Gadgets Not Showing Correctly in Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Last Updated on: June 25, 2019 by Ramesh

Have you come across the problem where some of the Gadgets that you added to the Sidebar/Desktop are not displayed correctly? For example, the clock gadget may be displayed as a black square containing only the “seconds” hand. Other gadgets may show up as white rectangles with an information (i) icon and a plus sign. … Read more

Unspecified error when adding a link to Favorites in Windows 7

Last Updated on: May 31, 2021 by Ramesh

After reading the post Folder Redirection for Favorites on the Same Machine at the IE Team blog, I relocated my Favorites folder to a different drive. After the relocation, when I tried to add a URL to Favorites, I received the following error:Read more

PreviewConfig tool registers file types for the Preview Pane in Windows 7/Vista

Last Updated on: October 15, 2021 by Ramesh

Windows Vista introduces the Preview pane in Explorer, which shows the contents of the currently chosen file. You can also play multimedia files from the Preview pane, without opening Windows Media Player. This article explains how to use the PreviewConfig utility to register a custom file type for the Preview pane in Windows Vista and Windows 7.Read more