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If you use the built-in file encryption in Windows Vista, you might be interested in adding an option to the right-click menu to more easily encrypt and decrypt your files, rather than having to use the file properties dialog.

Adding this to the menu couldn't be simpler - there's only a single registry key to add.

In the right-hand pane, create a new 32-bit DWORD value called EncryptionContextMenu and give

it a value of 1.

Now when you right-click on a file, you'll see a new option called Encrypt.

When you choose this option, you'll receive the following dialog, asking if you want to encrypt just the file,

 or also the parent folder. You can also choose just the file as the default.

Once the files are encrypted, you'll notice that the title of the file is now green, indicating that it's

been encrypted. The right-click option will also now change to Decrypt. 

Definitely much simpler… makes me wonder why this wasn't a built-in option.

Download AddEncryptionMenu.zip Registry Hack

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Windows Vista has a built in menu delay setting so that it waits a certain length of time when you hover over a menu item before expanding the further options. For most users this is fine, but power users may find the wait rather annoying and would rather have instant menu opening speeds on mouse over.

A simple registry tweak will allow you to speed up the menu. First load the registry editor by launching regedit from the Run menu (Press WINDOWS KEY + R to access the run menu):



Then, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop in the side panel, then right click on MenuShowDelay and select Modify:



Now, enter the menu delay time in milliseconds (1 is near instant, do not enter 0!) and press OK:



Once you have restarted your menus will slide at near instant speeds. The default setting is 400 should you wish to restore the default menu setting.

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Enjoy.

Windows Disk Defragmenter is a handy tool that may help you gain some extra performance from your PC. When Vista writes to your hard drive the bits of information that make up a file can be spread all over the disk (this is called fragmentation). The "defrag" tool will try to join up all of the parts that makes up files so that they are in the same location, decreasing the time it takes to find all of the parts.

To load Windows Defrag, run dfrgui.exe from the run box (Press WINDOWS KEY + R to load this). In this window you can choose to "Defragment Now" if you wish to perform this operation now, or alternatively you can schedule a time for your PC to defrag automatically (ideally when you are not using your PC):



If you click the button to defrag immediately, you will be informed that this is in progress but there is no graphical indicator like in previous versions of degrag.

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