Customizing Windows Vista with the Control Panel

Anybody who’s seen a science-fiction movie knows that robots come with secret control panels, the best of which include an emergency Off switch. Windows Vista’s Control Panel lives in plain sight, thankfully, living one click away on the Start menu. Inside the Control Panel, you’ll find hundreds of switches and options that let you customize Windows’ look, feel, and vibe. This article explains the switches and sliders you’ll want to tweak, and it steers you away from the ones to avoid. I also list shortcuts that whisk you directly to the right Control Panel setting, bypassing the long, twisting corridors of menus. One word of caution, however: Some of the Control Panel’s settings can be changed only by the person holding the almighty Administrator account — usually the computer’s owner. If Vista refuses to open the Control Panel’s hatch, call over the PC’s owner for help. System and Maintenance Like a ’67 Mustang, Windows Vista needs occasional maintenance. In fact, a little bit of maintenance can make Windows Vista run so much more smoothly that I devote the best of Article 12 to that subject. That article explains how to speed up Windows, free up hard drive space, back up your data, and create a safety net called System Restore. Like most Control Panel categories, the System and Maintenance section is jam-packed with options. To find things more easily, double-click the Control Panel’s menu bar to make it fill the screen. Also, if necessary, scroll down the window to see the entries hiding below view along the menu’s bottom. User Accounts and Family Safety I explain in Article 13 how to create separate accounts for other people to use your computer. That lets them use your PC, but limits the amount of damage they can do to Windows and your files. Here’s a refresher if you don’t want to flip ahead to that article:

Choose Control Panel from the Start menu. Then, in the User Accounts And Family Safety section, click Add Or Remove User Accounts. That opens the Manage Accounts area, where you can also create accounts and change existing ones, including their name, password, or Start menu picture. The Control Panel’s User Accounts And Family Safety category also includes a link to the Security section, where you can place Parental Controls on what your kids do with the PC. I explain Parental Controls in Article 10. Security The Control Panel’s Security category contains a full brigade of soldiers. I’ve written field manuals for them all in Article 10: Windows Firewall, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and Vista’s new Parental Controls. Changing Windows’ Appearance (Appearance and Personalization) One of the most popular categories, the Appearance and Personalization area lets you change Vista’s look and feel in a wide variety of ways. Open the category to see the following six icons:

- Personalization: For many people, this icon is pay dirt. Choose this to splash a new picture or digital photo across your desktop, choose which screen saver kicks in when you’re away from your PC, change the colors of Vista’s window frames, and change your monitor’s screen resolution — a nifty way to pack more information onto your screen.

- Taskbar and Start menu: Ready to add your own photo to that boring picture atop your Start menu? Want to customize the taskbar living along your desktop’s bottom edge? I cover both these things in Article 2’s Start menu and taskbar sections, but those same settings are available here, as well.

- Ease of Access Center: Designed to help people with special needs, these settings make Windows more navigable by the blind, deaf, and people with other physical challenges. Because the Control Panel offers Ease of Access as its own category, I describe it in its own section later in this article.

- Folder Options: Used mainly by experienced users, this area lets you add subtle tweaks to how folders look and behave.

- Fonts: Here’s where you install new fonts to spruce up your printed work. I cover fonts where they belong, in the printing article (Article 7).

- Windows Sidebar Properties: This area lets you add gadgets to Vista’s Sidebar, that thick strip along the desktop’s right edge. I explain the Sidebar and its gadgets in Article 2, but here’s the trick: Add gadgets by right-clicking a blank part of the Sidebar and choosing Add Gadgets. In the next few sections, I explain the tasks in this category that you’ll reach for most often. Changing the desktop background A background, also known as wallpaper, is simply the picture covering your desktop. To change it, follow these steps: Right-clicking your desktop, choosing Personalize, and selecting Desktop Background jumps you quickly to Step 3.

1. Click the Start menu, choose Control Panel, and find the Appearance and Personalization category. Its icon appears in the margin.

2. Choose Change Desktop Background from the Personalization section.

3. Click on a new picture for the background. Be sure to click the drop-down menu, to see all the available photos, textures, paintings, and light auras that Vista offers. To rummage through folders not listed, click Browse. Feel free to search your own Pictures folder for potential backgrounds. Background files can be stored as BMP, GIF, JPG, JPEG, DIB, or PNG files. That means you can use nearly any photo or art found on the Internet or from a digital camera. When you click a new picture, Windows Vista immediately places it across your desktop. If you’re pleased, jump to Step 5.

4. Decide whether to stretch, tile, or center the picture. Not every picture fits perfectly across a monitor. Small pictures, for example, need to be either stretched to fit the space or spread across the screen in rows like tiles on a floor.

5. Click OK to save your currently displayed background. Did you happen to spot an eye-catching picture while Web surfing with Internet Explorer? Right-click that Web site’s picture and choose Set As Background. Sneaky Windows copies the picture and splashes it across your desktop as a new background. Choosing a screen saver In the dinosaur days of computing, computer monitors suffered from burn-in: permanent damage when an oft-used program burned its image onto the screen. To prevent this burn-in, people installed a screen saver to jump in with a blank screen or moving lines.

Today’s monitors no longer suffer from burn-in problems, but people still use screen savers because they look cool. Windows comes with several built-in screen savers. To try one out, follow these steps: Right-clicking your desktop, choosing Personalize, and choosing Screen Saver jumps you quickly to Step 3.

1. Open the Control Panel from the Start menu and select the Appearance and Personalization category. The Appearance and Personalization category opens to show its offerings.

2. Choose Change Screen Saver from the Personalization area. The Screen Saver Settings dialog box appears.

3. Click the downward-pointing arrow in the Screen Saver box and select a screen saver. After choosing a screen saver, click the Preview button for an audition. View as many candidates as you like before making a decision. Be sure to click the Settings button, as most screen savers offer options, letting you specify the speed of a photo slide show, for example, and the direction the photos should travel across the screen.

4. If desired, add security by selecting the On Resume, Display Logon Screen check box. This safeguard keeps people from sneaking into your computer while you’re fetching coffee. It makes Windows ask for a password after waking up from screen-saver mode. (I cover passwords in Article 13.) 5. When you’re done setting up your screen saver, click OK.

If you really want to extend your monitor’s life (and save electricity), don’t bother with screen savers. Instead, click Change Power Settings in Step 3. The resulting Select a Power Plan window lets you choose the Power Saver plan, which tells Windows Vista to turn off your monitor when you haven’t used it for 20 minutes or so. (Tailor any plan to match your work habits by clicking Change Plan Settings.) Changing the computer’s theme Themes are simply collections of settings: You can save your chosen screen saver and desktop background, for example, as one theme, letting you switch easily between them. If you haven’t created any themes on your own, then you won’t find much in here. Windows Vista comes with very few prebuilt themes to slip on. To try one on, right-click your desktop, choose Personalize, and choose Theme.

- My Current Theme: If you’ve somehow messed up Windows Vista’s appearance settings — but haven’t yet saved them — choose this command to revert to your last saved theme.

- Windows Vista: This setting reverts to the “stock” Windows Vista theme, the one it wore when first installed.

- Windows Classic: Retro users choose this setting to bring back the lean, mean, and lightening-fast look of the venerable Windows 98.

- Browse: Click here to grab a Theme you’ve saved in a specific folder. (Vista normally saves Themes in the Program Files folder.) Choose any of the themes, and Windows Vista automatically slips into the new clothes. To preview a listed theme’s look, click its name and watch the Sample window. Instead of choosing from Vista’s pre-assembled themes, feel free to make your own by changing Vista’s background, colors, the screen saver, and other details.

- Vista’s basic tools for creating themes wear thin after awhile. If you’re really into creating Windows themes (called skinning by aficionados), pick up a third-party program like WindowBlinds (www.windowblinds.net). You can download Themes created by WindowBlinds aficionados at WinCustomize (www.wincustomize.com).

- Before you begin downloading themes from the Web or e-mail attachments, be sure that you’re using an updated antivirus program. Viruses sometimes masquerade as themes.

- To change themes quickly, right-click your desktop and choose Personalize. When the Control Panel’s Personalization area appears, select Theme and choose your new theme. Changing the screen resolution One of Vista’s many change-it-once-and-forget-about-it options, screen resolution determines how many things Vista can cram onto your monitor at one time. Changing the resolution either shrinks windows to pack more of ’em on-screen, or it enlarges everything at the expense of desktop real estate. To find your most comfortable resolution — or if a program or game mutters something about changing your screen resolution or video mode — follow these steps:

1. Choose Control Panel from the Start menu and choose the Appearance and Personalization category. The Appearance and Personalization area lists the main ways you can change Vista’s appearance.

2. In the Personalization area, choose Adjust Screen Resolution. The Display Settings dialog box appears. Doubling your workspace with a second monitor Blessed with an extra monitor, perhaps a leftover from a deceased PC? Connect it to your PC, place it aside your first monitor, and you’ve doubled your Windows desktop: Vista stretches your workspace across both monitors. That lets you view the online encyclopedia in one monitor while writing your term paper in the other. To perform these video gymnastics, your PC needs a video card with two ports, and those ports must match your monitor’s connectors— technical topics all covered in my article Upgrading and Fixing PCs For Dummies, published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.

3. Change the number of colors your monitor displays, if desired. Vista lets you select several settings from the Colors drop-down menu. To fully experience the rain forest in your digital camera photos, make sure that Windows Vista displays the highest number of colors as possible. Highest, or 32-bit mode, paints your photos with up to 16 million glorious colors. Medium (16-bit mode) displays only up to 65,000 colors, which makes a surprisingly large difference.

4. To change the screen resolution, use your mouse to drag the little bar in the Resolution area. Watch the little preview screen change as you move the mouse. The more you slide the bar to the right, the larger your monitor grows. Unfortunately, the more information Vista can pack onto your monitor, the smaller that information appears. There’s no right or wrong choice here, but here’s a word of advice: Most Web sites won’t fit onto your screen well at 640 by 480 pixels. A setting of 800 by 600 is better, and 1,024 by 768, Vista’s favorite, will accommodate just about any Web size you visit.

5. View your changes by clicking the Apply button. When Windows Vista switches to a new resolution, it gives you 15 seconds to click a button approving the change. If the new resolution leaves your monitor blacked out, you won’t see the on-screen button. After a few seconds, Windows notices that you didn’t click the approval button and reverts to your original resolution.

6. Click OK when you’re done tweaking the display. After you’ve chosen the highest color setting and a comfortable screen resolution, you’ll probably never return here. Unless you plug a second monitor into your PC, of course, which I describe in the sidebar. Changing Network and Internet Connections Vista normally reaches out and touches other PCs and the Internet automatically. Plug an Internet connection into your PC, and Vista quickly starts slurping information from the Web. Plug in another PC, and Vista tries to create a network. But when Vista can’t handle the job by itself, turn to the Control Panel’s Network and Internet category: Choose Control Panel from the Start menu and choose the Network and Internet category. I devote Article 14 completely to networking; the Internet gets its due in Article 8. Setting the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options Microsoft designed this area mostly for laptoppers who frequently travel to different time zones and locations. Otherwise, you touch this information only once — when first setting up your computer. Windows Vista subsequently remembers the time and date, even when your PC’s turned off. To drop by here, choose Control Panel from the Start menu and click the Clock, Language, and Region category. Two sections appear, Date and Time, and Regional and Language Options. Those sections let you perform these tasks:

- Date and Time: This area is fairly self explanatory. (Clicking your taskbar’s clock and choosing Date and Time Settings lets you visit here, as well.)

- Regional and Language Options: Traveling in Italy? Click this task, and choose Italian from the Current Format menu. Windows switches to that country’s currency symbols and date format. While you’re there, click the Location tab and choose Italy — or whatever country you’re currently visiting. Bilinguals also visit this area when working on documents that require characters from different languages. (Foreign characters occasionally require installing another font, which I cover in Article 7.) Hardware and Sound Vista packs oodles of icons into its Hardware and Sound category. It’s a virtual warehouse of switches that control your PC’s hardware: its mouse, speakers, keyboard, printer, telephone, scanner, digital camera, game controllers, and, for you graphic artists out there, a digital pen. You won’t spend much time in here, especially coming in through the Control Panel’s doors. Most settings appear elsewhere, where a mouse-click will bring you directly to the setting you need. Whether you arrive at these pages through the Control Panel or a shortcut, this section explains the most popular reasons for visiting here. Adjusting Vista’s volume and sounds The Sound area lets you adjust your PC’s volume, as well as connect seven speakers and a subwoofer to your PC, a feature much loved by World of Warcraft enthusiasts. To turn down your PC’s volume knob, click the little speaker by your clock and slide down the volume. No speaker on your taskbar? Restore it by right-clicking the taskbar’s clock, choosing Properties, and adding a check mark to the Volume check box. To mute your PC, click the little speaker icon. Clicking that icon again removes the gag. Vista one-ups Windows XP by letting you set different volumes for different programs. You can quietly detonate explosives in MineSweeper, allowing Windows Mail to loudly announce any new messages. To juggle volume levels between programs, follow these steps. Double-clicking the little speaker icon next to your clock jumps you ahead to Step 3.

1. Choose Control Panel from the Start menu and choose Hardware and Sound. The Control Panel’s Hardware and Sound area displays its tools.

2. Find the Sound icon and then click Adjust System Volume. Vista’s Volume box appears, listing each noisemaker on your PC.

3. Slide any program’s control up or down to muzzle it or raise it above the din. Close the Volume box by clicking the little red X in its corner. Installing or setting up speakers Most PCs come with only two speakers. Some PCs today come with four, and PCs that double as home theaters or gaming rigs sometimes have up to eight. To accommodate the variety of setups, Vista includes a speaker setup area, complete with a speaker test. If you’re installing new speakers, or you’re not sure your old ones are working, follow these steps to introduce them properly to Vista.

Right-click your taskbar’s Speaker icon and choose Playback Devices to jump to Step 2.

1. Click the Start button, choose Control Panel, and select the Hardware and Sound category.

2. In the Sound area, choose Manage Audio Devices. The Sound dialog box appears, open to the Playback tab, which lists your speakers.

3. Click your speaker or speaker’s icon, and click Configure. 4. Click the Test button, adjust your speaker’s settings, and click Next. Vista walks you through selecting your number of speakers and their placement and then plays each one in turn so that you can hear whether they’re in the correct locations.

5. Adjust any other sound devices and then click OK when you’re done. While visiting, feel free to check your microphone volume by clicking the Recording tab in Step 2, as well as tabs for any other gadgetry you can afford.