If you like the way Ubuntu requires you to enter your username and password instead of clicking on an icon, you can enable the same thing for Windows Vista in a somewhat similar style logon process. This is really most useful for home users, as domain users should already see this screen.
It’s not precisely the same style as Ubuntu, but it’s the closest we’re gonna get.
Warning: Don’t make this change unless you are sure of what your username is, because you’ll have to type that in manually in order to login.
Manual Registry Tweak
Open regedit.exe through the start menu search box and navigate to the following key, which you might have to create.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Create these two new 32-bit DWORD values, giving them both a value of 1:
- DisableCAD
- DontDisplayLastUserName
To remove this tweak just delete the two keys.
Note: It’s not a requirement to use the DisableCAD key. What this does is prevent the “Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete” screen, which is really quite ugly in Vista. If you’d rather use CAD you can omit that key.
Downloadable Registry Tweak
Download and unzip, and then double-click on UbuntuLogonVista.reg in the file. There’s another registry file to remove it.
Download UbuntuLogonVista Registry Tweak
Warning: Don’t make this change unless you are sure of what your username is, because you’ll have to type that in manually in order to login.
Extra Credit
To actually make it look somewhat similar to Ubuntu you could customize your logon screen.
The blank tab page in Firefox is just a plain white boring nothing – until now. Using the Stylish extension for Firefox, we can set a custom style for the page, and even embed images into the style to make it really look great.
The same programmer that created yesterday’s Tabbed Explorer plugin also has another add-in that will give you Vista-style breadcrumbs in Windows XP. This application should be really helpful for those of you that aren’t ready to switch to Windows Vista yet, but want to get some of the new features.
A popular feature in previous versions of Windows was the ability to dock a toolbar to the side of the desktop. Most people used this for an auto-hiding quick launch or address toolbar, or both.
One of my immediate thoughts when I used a Mac for the first time was: How do I add icons to the top menu? After doing some digging, I found a great application that lets you not only add icons to the menu bar, but also assign hotkeys and even run scripts.
Most of us already know to update Windows OS’s on a regular basis, either manually or by turning on Automatic Updates. One of the more overlooked Microsoft updates however is Office. One way to do this easily from an Office 2007 Word document is to click on the Office Button Word Options.
This isn’t exactly an easter egg, because it’s actually documented in Microsoft’s knowledge base, but it’s one of those features that you just weren’t expecting so it still qualifies.
I’ve been hoping for a Tabbed explorer add-on to Windows Vista ever since I made the switch, but what most of you have been talking about is the lack of an Up button like XP used to have. Reader Shawn wrote in with a solution for both of our problems: QTTabBar, an add-on for Explorer that gives you
One of the most popular topics among our readers is installing Windows XP on your new Windows Vista computer – sometimes for compatibility reasons, but also because a lot of people just don’t like Vista very much.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could add search plugins for any search form to the Firefox Search Bar, instead of having to create the plugin yourself or wait for the site owner to stop being lazy and make one?
In part one of this tutorial we stored our files and settings on a network drive. Now let me show you how to transfer them to your new computer.