Vista Tweak

Reduce start menu opening delay

If the Vista interface seems sluggish to you, this tip may help things feel a little more frisky by boosting the speed of the start menu.
To reduce start menu opening time:
Open the 'start' menu, type 'regedit' and hit Enter.
Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop'
Double click on the 'MenuShowDelay' value and change its value to 150.

Disable mandatory thumbnail previews

By default, Windows Vista renders nearly every directory in thumbnails, which can be a good thing, but can also be a pain if you've got a lot of files and little memory. If you'd like to go back to the XP-centric explorer where thumbs where an option not a mandate, it's easy enough to do, fortunately.
To disable automatic thumbnail previews:
Go to 'start/computer.'
open the 'organize' menu and choose 'folder and search options.'
Choose the view tab and place a check next to the 'always show icons, never thumbnails' option at the top. Hit 'ok.'

Create desktop shutdown and reboot icons

If you're fed up with the arcane operations of the new Vista start menu shutdown dialog and want a simple way to restart your system, consider creating shutdown and restart icons right on the desktop.
To do this:
Right click on an empty area of the desktop and select 'new\shortcut'.
In the location text box, type 'Shutdown.exe -s -t 00' for a shutdown icon or ' Shutdown.exe -r -t 00' for a restart icon. Hit 'next' and give the new shortcut an appropriate name like "shutdown".