Review: Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Vista v1.1
Don Bradbury seeks reliable interfacing software for adjusting those Vista settings that generally require a visit to the Windows Registry
There's a range of applications designed to let you adjust settings within Windows without you having to know the location of the Registry keys that govern them. They are generally for Windows XP and Vista, but we have one here that's specifically designed for 32-bit and 64-bit Vista only. Freeware, this program was developed for WinVistaClub by Ramesh Kumar.
Windows Vista is more powerful than XP, but it's reputation for annoying habits, foisted onto the long-suffering public by the virtual monopoly position of Microsoft, means that those with the technical bent have gone to work to enable easy routes to tweaking many of these settings in order to ensure lasting sanity among PC users.
Ultimate Windows Tweaker (UWT) is freeware, but we think it still offers most of the tweaks that you'll be interested in. It provides more than 150 adjustments you can make at the click of a mouse button and a reboot. What's more, besides being very easy to use, it requires no installation. You just download the 235K executable to your Desktop, or even to a USB drive, and you can run it directly from there.
Separated into eight sections, these cover: System Information, Personalisation, User Accounts and UAC, System Performance, Security Settings, Network Tweaks, Internet Explorer, and Additional Options. They are in part illustrated in the graphics, and we apologise that space restrictions have made it necessary to show only part of the options in some cases.
The first section is just a basic statement of the spec of the machine, reporting on your Windows version, service pack, and build number. Your CPU is identified, the amount of installed RAM, and the type of operating system, together with the current user name, computer name, and Domain and Workgroup name. However, there's a 'change settings' key that lets you redefine some and investigate others.
User Accounts and UAC is for those who want to tweak the administrator or guest accounts, plus four other aspects of User Account Control. You can also modify when you want to be notified about changes to your computer. This is done via a slider that extends from 'never' to 'always'. This is perhaps the most difficult section to understand, but conveniently it lets you create a System Restore Point directly from the screen so that you can undo any changes that turned out to be not what you intended.
You have to click on the 'Apply' tab to ensure that changes you make on any of these screens are followed through. Not the most convenient feature of the program, this, as you lose any changes you make if you move on to a different section without clicking on 'Apply' first. Generally, it's a reboot that brings your changes into play.
System Performance is for adjusting things like the dreaded waiting time for non-responding applications and so on. With 'Fast' to Slow' sliders for making the adjustment, you can also tweak the waiting time to kill applications during shutdown, and similarly for services. What's perhaps needed here is some comment on the advisability of making such changes, but more easily understood system adjustments deal with such features as Superfetch and Readyboost, the Aero interface, Data Execution Prevention (DEP), unloading DLLs from memory and, interestingly, enabling support for more than 4GB of RAM in Vista x86 using "the PAE.PAE addressing strategy that uses a page translation hierarchy". In some of the sectors you get pop-ups giving basic rationale such as this. Worth a look, this section.
Security settings you can adjust range from disabling the Registry Editor itself, Task Manager, Control Panel, and the annoying (for some) Autoplay for removable devices, among others. There's also control of folder options and so on, and many Windows applications like Windows Mail, Media Center, Sidebar, and Defender, again among others. You can even disable Windows Update - though you probably shouldn't - and more wisely, the annoying and dangerous automatic restart after updating which can lose you open data. We always make a point of personally attending to Windows' update sessions until they are complete, ie controlling the sessions manually.
Network tweaks include things like hiding the entire network, disabling desktop sharing, and setting global network/interface offline. You can also limit reserved bandwidth for the QoS scheduler service. It lets you choose bandwidth settings according to your Internet connection.
In the Windows Internet Explorer section you can tweak tab browsing, switch off RSS feed discovery, enable the crash detection feature, enable smooth scrolling, or even give standing permission for the running of invalid signature executables. Here you can also delete your history, purge the DNS cache, and turn off the phishing filter among many other things.
Additional Options is for those who want to control ownership of drives and folders and so on, adding useful context menus, plus disabling NTFS encryption and compression, and disabling Hibernation. You can also enable the facility for the self-healing capability of the NTFS file system here, and also encryption of the Pagefile.
In conclusion
We haven't tried all of the many tweaks this little program offers, but those we tried have worked fine. It's worth backing up your system and setting a Restore Point before having a play with some of these otherwise quite difficult to control settings in Windows Vista. First, you have to know that they are available; then you have to know how to make the changes. Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Vista can do it for you at the click of a mouse button and, generally, a reboot. Worth a look, then, especially with it being a free-standing app that requires no installation.
