Windows Vista Build 5270 Tips & Tricks

The long awaited 3rd CTP of Windows Vista™ has finally arrived. We got around to installing it Monday evening and began testing out the build, putting it through its paces. Everything seems to be coming together now, the user interface looks more polished, there are a lot of new features included, and driver issues with NVIDIA graphics card causing STOP errors and lockups are no longer present.


Some of the new features include:
• Aero colorization (8 presets to choose from: Aero, Frost, Smoke, Seafoam, Heritage, Sky,
Heart, and Candy). You can also create your own by using an advanced color slider; modify
hue, brightness, saturation, and intensity (opacity) as well.
• Windows Media Player 11 user interface improved.
• New icons throughout the user interface.
• “Places” bar improved.
• Flip3D has been improved.
• The Start menu has been overhauled, and now includes the ability to disable the search box,
and whether to link to a folder or a library for the Documents, Music, and Pictures selections.
• Most of the control panel applets have been overhauled and are now embedded in a Windows
Explorer view.
• Control Panel has been improved.
• Windows Audio has been improved yet again, the audio controls are now more fully featured
and work without crashing.
Overall, this build is impressive to say the least. While it is not beta quality, this build is more
stable over the last two interim builds, and is showing a lot of improvement. We are also
beginning to see a glimpse of Beta 2 with this CTP.
Unlike our previous tweaking and optimization guides, this one will not require disabling any of
the features in Windows Vista; instead we will be focusing on tweaking the interface and
guiding you through some of the new features that you may not normally find.
This way you will be able to experience the operating system at its full potential.
Now that we got all that out of the way, lets get down to it, shall we?
Published on December 20th, 2005 by Chris123NT.
Written by Kristan Kenney (Nighthawk) and Chris Holmes (Chris123NT)
Last Updated on December 21st, 2005