Vista-TipsChristmas is over. Many of you have gotten new PCs for Christmas I know. With your new PC, I’m pretty sure many of you are using Windows Vista for the first time. Guess what, some things will not work. Vista has gotten a lot better when it comes to software and drivers, but there are still issues. While I cant help you with drivers and software incompatibilities as they are up to the individual software and hardware manufacturers to make their product compatible, there are some things that can ease your new Vista acclimation.

1. Update Vista, through Windows update.

The first thing you will want to do is make sure your copy of Vista is up to date. To do that all you have to do is go to Start > Control Panel > Windows Update, or simply type the word "Update" in your start search bar. There you should make sure you update at least all of the critical and recommended updates that are listed. Also, if there are any hardware driver updates listed, make sure you do that also. the rest you can leave unchecked and come back to them at your leisure.

2. Turn Off UAC

One thing that you will notice in Vista is when you try to do a lot of things, you will get a message asking "are you sure you want to do this" or something similar. Those messages are a part of Vista’s new User Account Control. Vista’s UAC is actually a pretty good feature. The purpose is to make sure you know about certain changes that are being made to your computer and give you the option to stop those changes, in case they are changes that could be harmful. The downside is the annoyance factor. Getting those messages a million times a day can start to get on your nerves. While I recommend that you leave UAC on, if you feel confident that you can be safe on your own, you should disable it. To do so, just go to Start > Control Panel > User Accounts, and click "turn User Acount Control on or off". There you can just uncheck the box and click ok. No more messages. For more detailed information on how to do this, check here.

3. Get your Codecs to play all of your Media files.

Im not sure if Vista now comes with all of the necessary Codecs installed, now. but when I first started Using Vista, there were a lot of videos and other media I couldn’t play. The best thing you can do is find one of those Codec packs that are made to be used with Vista. The one I like is the  K-Lite codec pack. This pack is one install file that will install all of the necessary Codecs and filters needed to play all media files, like Xvid and Divx. Everything except Apple’s file formats. You can get the K-lite Codec pack here.

A good alternative download would be the Vista Codec pack, which you can get here

4. Update your video drivers

This is one thing that isnt such a big deal for people that are getting desktop PCs, as drivers for your Nvidia and ATI video cards are easily available at either the card manufacturer website or at Nvidia or ATI website. But with the growing popularity of notebook or laptop PCs, you will find times where the video drivers installed on your notebook pc may need to be updated. Of coarse this will only happen for people trying to play games. But when you go to find updates for your notebook video card drivers, youd notice that the options are slim to none. There is an answer, you can download and install modified drivers that will work with your notebook PC. Most of the modified Nvidia and ATI drivers will be better updated than the drivers available to you at your notebook’s manufacturer website. If that is something you want to do, check here for more information on getting it done.