The Case of the Broken Window Sometimes you just have a sense that something’s wrong. The computer makes quiet grumbling noises, or Windows Vista starts running more slowly than Congress. Other times, something’s obviously gone haywire. Programs freeze, menus keep shooting at you, or Windows Vista greets you with a cheery error message when you turn on your computer. Many of the biggest-looking problems are solved by the smallest-looking solutions. This article may be able to point you to the right one. Vista Keeps Asking Me for Permission! When it came to security, Windows XP was fairly easy to figure out. If you owned an Administrator account — and most people did — Windows XP mostly stayed out of your face. Owners of the less powerful Limited and Guest accounts, however, frequently faced screens telling them that their actions were restricted to Administrator accounts.

But with Vista, even Administrator accounts get the nag screens, and often for the most innocuous actions. Vista’s more secure than Windows XP, so you’ll constantly brush up against Vista’s barbed wire fence. As you work with your PC, Vista pokes you with a message. Standard account holders see a slightly different message that commands them to fetch an Administrator account holder to type in a password. Of course, with screens like this one popping up constantly, most people will simply ignore them and click Continue — even if that means they’ve just allowed a piece of spyware to latch onto their PC. When Vista sends you a permission screen, ask yourself this question: Is Vista asking permission for something I did? If your answer is yes, then click Continue to give Vista permission to carry out your command. But if Vista sends you a permission screen out of the blue, when you haven’t done anything, click Cancel. That keeps the nasties from invading your PC. If you don’t have time for this bothersome security layer and your PC’s well protected with a firewall and an up-to-date antivirus program, you can find out how to turn off Vista’s User Account Permissions by reading Article 10. Restoring Calm with System Restore When your computer is a disaster, wouldn’t you love to go back in time to when Windows worked right? Just as with Windows XP, Windows Vista’s builtin time-traveling program, System Restore, lets you turn back the clock with a few clicks. It works like this: Every day or so, Windows takes a snapshot, known as a restore point, of Windows’ most important settings and saves them by date. When your computer begins acting up, tell System Restore to return to a restore point created when everything worked fine. System Restore won’t erase any of your files or e-mail, but programs installed after a restore point’s date may need to be reinstalled. System Restore is also reversible; you can undo your last restore point or try a different one. To send your computer back to a restore point, when it was working much better, follow these steps:

1. Save any open files, close any loaded programs, load System Restore, and click Next. Choose Start, click All Programs, and begin weaving your way through the menus: Choose Accessories, select System Tools, and click System Restore. Click Next to move past the opening screen.

2. Choose a Restore Point and click Next. Windows XP made you guess which Restore Point to apply. Vista assumes that you’re here because something happened recently, so it highlights the most recently created Restore Point for you to choose. If you’re running these steps a second time, because Vista’s recommended restore point didn’t supply the magic fix, choose a Different Restore Point and click Next.

3. Make sure that you’ve saved any open files and then click Finish. Your computer grumbles a bit and then restarts, using those earlier settings that (hopefully) worked fine. If your system is already working fine, feel free to create your own restore point: In Step 1, click the words, Open System Protection. When the System Properties window appears, click the Create button along the window’s bottom. Name the restore point something descriptive, such as Before Letting the Babysitter Use the PC. (That way, you know which restore point to use if things go awry.) These tips help wring the most fix-it power from System Restore:

- Before installing a program or any new computer toys, load System Restore and create a restore point in case the installation is a disaster. Create a restore point after successfully installing something, too. Returning to that restore point will keep your successful installation intact. (I describe how to create restore points in Article 12.)

- You can save quite a few restore points, depending on your hard drive’s size. You’ll likely have room for a dozen or more. Windows Vista deletes the oldest restore points to make room for the newer ones, so make your own Restore Points frequently.

- If you restore your computer to a time before you installed some new hardware or software, those items may not work correctly. If they’re not working correctly, reinstall them. Also, as described in the “Removing infected restore points” sidebar, be sure to erase your existing restore points if your computer contracted a virus. Using an infected restore point can reinfect your computer. Reviving Messed Up or Deleted Files Everybody who’s worked on a computer knows the agony of seeing hours of work go down the drain. You’ll mistakenly delete a file by accident, for example, or change one for the better — only to realize that you’ve messed it up rather than improved it. System Restore won’t help here, as it memorizes your PC’s settings, not your files. But Vista offers ways to not only retrieve deleted files but to dig up their earlier versions, the two tasks described in this section. Undeleting accidentally deleted files Vista doesn’t really delete files, even if you tell it to delete them. Instead, Vista slips deleted files into your Recycle Bin (shown in the margin), which lives on your desktop. Open the Recycle Bin, and you’ll find every file you’ve deleted in the past few weeks. Click the file you want back and click the Restore This Item button from the Recycle Bin’s menu bar. The Recycle Bin places the file back in the place where you deleted it.