Are you tired of the standard cover sheets in Windows Vista Fax? Add your own. You can either create your own, or start with one of the cover sheets included for Windows Vista Fax. To find these sheets:

1. Hold down the Windows key and press R.

2. Type %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Windows NT\MSFax\Common Coverpages

This will show all of the included cover sheets. You can edit these in any program that will edit bitmaps. Photoshop, MSPaint, Paint.NET or the include Cover Page Editor will all do this for you.

When you’re finished creating or editing your coversheet, simply save your bitmap file under a new filename in the Common Coverpages folder. Then whenever you print to the Windows Vista Fax driver you will have the option of selecting your customer cover sheet.

Also see:
How to Send a Fax with Microsoft Vista

Want to insert a registered trademark or copyright symbol or other type of character in your Windows document? You can use the Character Map. It works with almost any Windows application allowing you to add characters into your Word document, email message, etc. Here’s how.

1. Place the cursor where you would like the character to appear in your document.

2. Click Start > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.

3. The Character Map appears. Select the Font you wish to use at the top of the window. then you can select any of the different types of characters, logos and symbols including the copyright © and trademark ® symbols.

4. Double-click on the character you would like to insert into your document. The character will be added to the Characters to copy box.

5. Click the Copy button.

6. Close the Character Map and in your document you can Paste the character into your document. Usually you can do this by clicking Edit > Paste or holding down Ctrl while pressing V.

One bad thing about this feature is that I didn’t find the Artist Formerly Known as Prince logo.

Shadow Copy allows keeps previous copies of files. It enabled you to rescue data in the event that you totally messed something up or removed data from a file that you want to get back. To use this feature, you must be using the Ultimate, Business, or Enterprise version of Windows Vista.

Access a previous version of a file by performing the following steps:

1. Find the file and right-click the filename and click Properties.

2. Click the Previous Versions tab.

3. Select the version of the file you wish to open.

A feature that gets often overlooked is the ability to limit the hours that a printer is available to users. Let’s say you don’t want Al in Accounting to be able to print out flyers for his party on the high quality color printer after hours. You can lock down your printer during certain hours in Windows XP and Windows Vista. You will of course need administrator rights to do this.

1. Click Start > Control Panel > Printer.

2. Right-click on the icon for your printer and select Properties.

3. Click on the Advanced tab.

4. Select the option for Available from and you can set the hours you would like to keep the printer available to other users.

5. Click OK when done.

1. Right-click a blank area on the taskbar and select Properties.

2. Under the Taskbar tab, check the box for Auto-hide the taskbar.

3. Click OK.

Disabling the Aero transparency can greatly increase system performance in Windows Vista.

1. Click on the desktop and select Personalize.

2. Select Windows Color and Appearance.

3. Uncheck the box for Enable Transparency to disable transparency. Check it to enable it.

I enabled the Narrator feature in Windows Vista, but I couldn’t find a way to turn it off. Finally I found a way to disable the setting.

Many thanks to the forum post: How to disable Windows Narrator.

Here’s a tip for those who like to keep their Windows Vista computer super-secure. You can encrypt your pagefile so that data can’t be easlily extracted from it.

fsutil behavior set encryptpagingfile 0

Did you try to find the Windows Vista Snipping Tool and find that it’s missing? Here’s what you can try to bring it back.

2. Check to see if Tablet PC Options is checked.

You may get the following error when trying to install Windows Vista on your computer:

If you can boot to Windows, you can find out who makes your BIOS by clicking Start > Run and typing msinfo32. Under System Summary there is a BIOS Version/Date area that should provide you with the information you need.

When you print a document to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer you may get the following error message:

The location of the setting where you enable the single-click of icons to open them always escapes me. I can never find it when I want to change it on my Mom’s computer. Single-click irritates me, but here’s how to enable or disable it in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

3. Check the option for Single click to open an item to enable single-click to open items. Check Double-click to open item to disable the single-click feature.

How to limit the ability to view DVD’s with a certain rating.

5. Click OK, then OK again.

If you want to add a font to Windows Vista to make it available in your applications, perform the following steps:

2. If you have any fonts you wish to add, you can drag and drop them into this window. Fonts usually have an extension of .ttf or .fon.

How to synchronize the time on your computer with an internet time server.

6. Click OK, then OK again to save the setting.