With previous Microsoft operating systems, disabling hibernation is easy. With Windows Vista/7, you can probably guess that it’s a little trickier. If you don’t ever use the hibernation feature, you might as well disable it and save some space (the size of your system memory) on your hard drive, or to get rid of that laggy delay due to hibernation start up. With Windows Vista/7 you’ll need to jump through loops before you can disable its hibernation feature though.

To disable the hibernation feature in Microsoft Vista/7, press the Windows key and type “cmd” into the “Start Search box” however do not press the “ENTER” key. Right click on the letters “cmd” and select “Run As Administrator” Continue through the UAC prompt then type “powercfg -h off” and press the “ENTER” key.

That will disable Windows Vista/7 ‘s hibernation so you won’t have to worry about putting your system to sleep.

Worried about what programs your children are running on the computer? If games are taking over when homework should be, perhaps this tip will help. Windows XP/Vista/7 has a very simple way to lock most applications from starting up, except for whichever programs you specify. Before making any changes, allow administrative rights to your kids’ account, and once the changes are made be sure to remove those administrator rights. To lock out certain programs, log into your kids’ account on the PC, and go to “Start” -> “Run” and type “GPEDIT.MSC“. From there scroll through “User Configuration” -> “Administrative Templates” and click on the “System” folder. In the right hand window double click on the “Run only allowed Windows applications” option.

At this point you will need to change the radio selection box from “Not Configured” to “Enabled“. Next, when the “Show” button is available click on that. Type in the applications that you will allow this user account to run, and click the “OK” button twice. From now on your kids’ user account will only have access to the programs that you allow. =) Don’t forget to disable those temporary admin privileges.

Are you having problems with Windows Services when Windows boots up? If so, you can find out the error code with a little command prompt switch. After Windows XP/Vista/7 has loaded, click the “Start” button then go to “Run” from there type “cmd” and press the “OK” button.

Once the command prompt opens up, type “sc query xxx” where xxx is the service name (as written in the Services control panel). From here look at the “WIN32_EXIT_CODE” value and note it down, you’ll need that code for the next step.

To find out what the code means, type “net helpmsg xxx” at the command prompt (replace xxx with the “WIN32_EXIT_CODE” value) and press enter. The result will tell you what the error means, which should help you find source of the problem. If the Microsoft description doesn’t illuminate the problem well enough, enter the “WIN32_EXIT_CODE:xxx” into Google and run a search. Chances are high that Google will spit out the most likely cause of the problem. Figuring out why certain Services don’t run properly can be a huge hassle, but with the proper tools and a bit of know how, getting things up and running is much less painful.

Have you ever reinstalled Windows XP only to have it complain about ownership of a certain folder, giving you an access denied error when trying to open a user’s directory? Ownership of folders is important so other users cannot access your folder unless they have proper administrative rights. This is done by default by the operating system in an effort to keep individual user data safe.

Luckily, reclaiming ownership of the folder is an easy task. First thing to do is reboot the computer and load the operating system in “Safe Mode“. Do this by pressing the F8 key as the computer boots and select “safe mode” from the pre-boot menu screen. In safe mode, login with a user account that has administrative privileges and go to the location of the folder in question. Right click on it and select “Properties“, click the “Security” tab and find the “Advanced” button. Click on the “Owner” tab. Find your name or account name then click the “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects“, click the “OK” button then “Yes“. After that’s done reboot the computer and load Windows XP normally. The user in question will now have access to that folder once again.

The integrated Windows Event Viewer (right click on the “My Computer” icon and go to “Manage“) can be a handy tool for diagnosing problems with your computer, but how do you read what it says, and what are you to do with the errors? First identify potential problems; the white dialog box with an “i” in it simply tells describes operations that have completed successfully. The yellow warning sign indicates there were non critical problems during a process. The red circle with the big “X” indicates a complete program or service crash. To read what happened, double click that process event and a window full of information will display.

To use this newly found information, you’ll want to look at the Microsoft Windows Knowledge base ( http://support.microsoft.com ). Input the error code (something like “0x800401F0″) and put any other relevant information like the application name into the search box. The next place to look for information is Microsoft’s Events and Error Message Center ( http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/ee_basic.aspx ). To get information from this utility, type in the “Event ID:” along with the name of the application that’s causing the problem. What you have to do next is carefully screen the search results to find an instance that matches yours, once you do open it up and find/follow the fix.

If neither the Microsoft Knowledge base or Event and Error Message Center can help you, there’s always Google. You might not get an exact fix for your situation, but it usually has a wealth of information that allows you to figure out your particular issue.

To clear all event notices, go into one of the four Event Viewers (ACEEventLog, Application, Security, System) then “Action” and select the “Clear all Events” option. After that’s done, reboot the PC or restart the application causing errors to see if there are new event logs to view.