I’m astonished at how many tweaking utilities have been released for Vista thus far. We’ve got TweakVista, VistaTweaker, TweakUAC, Vista Sidebar Styler, and Vispa. Now we’ve got one more that we can append to that list: XdN Tweaker. This one is a little more unique than the others, and the reason for that lies in its cross-compatibility.
This tiny app has customization tweaks that work in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista, Server 2003, and XP. There’s nothing to install…just download and run the tweaker. After you’re done you can safely remove the program, and your changes will remain in place.
There are quite a few different things that you can do with this, but my favorite is the option to disable the black "faded" background that appears behind a UAC prompt. It takes just one click to remove that background, and I actually think the prompts appear faster by having that disabled.
Here’s a mixture of the things that you can customize on both XP and Vista:
- Changes the number of Folder views Windows saves.
- Resets the folder views Windows has saved.
- Add/Remove classic Windows 2000 user control panel icon.
- Disable/Enable ATI Catalyst Control Center right click on Desktop (only for use if you have an ATI video card and have the Catalyst Control Center installed).
- Disable/Enable ‘SendTo’ right-click menu.
- Allows you to adjust and tweak TCP/IP settings.
- Disable/Enable ZipFolders.
- Disable/Enable the Outlook Express/Windows Mail splash screen.
- Put the File menu above the Back/Forward buttons in IE7.
- Remove or Replace the Search box in IE7.
- Disable/Enable User Account Control prompts under Vista.
- Disable/Enable the “- Shortcut” text under Vista.
- Attempt to force Vista to better save folder views.
- Disable/Enable Windows Media Player Explorer context menus.
- Add/Remove “Take Ownership” to right-click menus under Vista.
- Disable/Enable the Documents item on the Classic Start Menu.
- Changes “Delete” to “Search…” on Recycle Bin.
- Turn off the annoying full screen “black” UAC prompt.
- Add/Remove the Network Connections icon to Control Panel
XdN Tweaker Homepage
Source: Lifehacker
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Tags: Freeware, Software, Customize, Settings, Tweaks, Windows Vista, Windows XP
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I use X-teq X-setup to tweak my windows XP machine. I Think i should also try this one.
Yeah, I would go ahead and give it a shot. It’s nice that this doesn’t require any installation.
Out of all the options to tweak Vista, which one would you recommend?
I would say VistaTweaker and this program are the two best. VistaTweaker has a lot to offer, but most of the options can be configured without needing the app. It just puts everything in one convenient location.