Windows Tools, Help & Guides

FreeSnap is designed to take the pain out of resizing and moving windows by providing convenient keyboard shortcuts to do the job. If you are someone who likes keyboard shortcuts, you’ll know how much of a pain it is to resize and move windows with the keyboard alone.

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FastAero is a freeware program, which you can download and run to enable Aero-like effects in Windows XP. Download the 7z file, extract it (you can use 7zip), and run the exe. FastAero does not need to be installed; the program sits in your system tray.

Note: I didn’t think it was working at first, but all currently open windows should be closed and opened again to enable the Aero effect.

Download FastAero (Mirror)

Windows Vista Ultimate comes with a feature called Dreamscence, which allows you to play videos as your wallpaper. Other versions of Vista and all versions of XP do not come with this by default.

XP Scene creates an HTML file, which you can use as your background (XP only) and display your video as your wallpaper. Just follow the three simple steps the program takes and you’ll be up and running.

Download XP Scene

You may have heard or read about disabling Windows services to improve performance, but may be unsure of which services to disable. You can try an understand the technical jargon from some websites and manually disable them yourself; however, you may find you make a mistake and cause problems on your computer. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Vista Services Optimizer, which safely disables unnecessary services on your computer.

Vista Services Optimizer

Vista Services Optimizer takes the guess work out of disabling services and does the hard work for you. The program has a fairly clean interface which guides you through the features of the program.

Vista Services Optimizer will ask you some questions and determine which services you need and then let you disable the ones you don’t need.

Download Vista Services Optimizer

Winstep Xtreme from Winstep Software Technologies, is a single, easy to install package featuring the following desktop enhnacements:

NextSTART

The world’s first easy to use, skinnable Start Menu/Task bar replacement.

WorkShelf

A powerful, multi-paged desktop replacement, program launcher and document organizer that can be used as an alternative or supplement to the normal Windows desktop. Also features handy modules such as a talking clock that can synchronize your system time with the atomic time servers on the Internet, an Email Checker, Weather monitor, CPU, RAM and Net Meters and more!

NeXuS

A super fast program launcher, allows you to organize your most frequently used applications and put them into docks.

Start Menu Organizer

The Winstep Start Menu Organizer is an application designed to help you organize and clean your Windows Start Menu. The Organizer allows you to quickly group your Start Menu shortcuts into a specific set of categories (e.g. Utilities, Internet, Office, etc…) thus making finding what you are looking for a lot easier and much, much, faster!

FontBrowser

A simple font browser with an easy to use interface. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Download Winstep Extreme (Link removed after complaints of not being free)

UPDATE: V 1.1 is now available with 20 more tweaks! Howard Lo, Microsoft’s Regional Team Manager (APAC) released Ultimate Windows Tweaker, a Tweak UI for Windows Vista at the South Asia MVP Meet 2008. Windows Guides readers can get their hands on a copy, which does not need installation and is only 370kb. The program lets you apply over 130 tweaks without using the registry once!

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