Actually staindadict my favourites are already in quite a few folders I've organized them that way.

The problem is personalized start menue keeps turning itself on. This option, instead of organizing things by foldergives you a small list of your most recently visited stuff and you have to wait for the full favourites list to show.

This is a pest, sinse I don't want my most recently visited stuff ordered that way, i prefer to organize things myself.

i know exactly what option this is, it's the "personalized menues" option, but as I said, even though I turn it off it keeps getting turned on again which is irritating.

As I said, that's where I keep turning it off and it keeps turning itself on again.

Ah, didn't know about that one, I'll give it a try.

I've used the accessibility settings in the control panel to disable stuff like sticky keys (very annoying wen playing games), but I didn't know the wizard had other options as well.

Funny, I didn't kknow jaws had issues with reading system recovery and such, that's how I was able to get around some of the nastier user account issues, sinse Hal didn't have that problem.

For safemode, I'm lucky in that I can see by the colour of the screen whether it's on or not, which has proved useful in the past.

For general stuff though, while I see all the mac advantages, I'm just not certain sinse a good many of the principle things I do with my computer I do with windows specific programs. For instance, my entire phd thesis is written using ms word, and winamp is my favourite music and audio program.

Games have similar issues too, there are deffinately games I couldn't run on  a mac and while I have heard that systematically their better, I'm more concerned with what I personally use a computer for, than which is a better system overall.

This is also why I got an xp laptop, sinse as well as program compatibility with older software, I really! don't like the windows 7 interface.

As I said, I like to organize my favourites, shortcuts and such how I! want them, not with most recent this or recommended that.

For example, I have on my programs  menue folders for  various sorts of games such as audio games and text adventure games, then within those folders I have subfolders for each developer with individual links for their games.

this makes them far easier to find, and means that if I suddenly have an urge to play shades of doom I know just where it is even if it's a good few months sinse I last played it.

this is also why i dislike personalized menues.

When this desktop (or my new laptop), dies, I'll probably have to go to windows 7, though I will certainly be looking around for ways to make the display as personal as possible.

Ah, that makes more sense.

funnily enough, for registry cleaning or restoring, as well as removing errors, defragging, and for deleting restore points created by system restore, I stil rely on (yes, you've guessed it), avg pc tune up, sinse these are some of the useful things it does too.

That windows ree business sounds a pain in the proverbial, and is just another reason I'm glad I stil have an xp laptop to play with, but as we all know, ms are only updating windows primarily to force people to buy more software, not for anything much better.

As I've mentioned user accounts being annoying, that's another thing I don't look forward to, though I'm hoping that at whatever point I will have to get windows 7 (hopefully not for several years), things will be stable enough to provide a good number of fixes to these various shenanigans.

Dark,
The Windows Vista/7 interface has its advantages. Just being able to type in your program name into the search box is a big! bonus, not to mention the fact that you no longer have to worry about windows categorizing your start menu by the most recent items; it should be correctly alphabetized. The one thing I really do not like is the control panel; that is a mess to navigate.

Hayden,
If you are running windows 7, you might try using godmode instead of the control panel, this is what I generally tend to stick to as it not only sets everything in a list in one folder, but gives you access to other items not quickly and obviously accessible.

From anywhere on your c drive, preferably somewhere you will remember it later or from a place you can easily access it such as your desktop, create a new folder.  Call it whatever you like, literally if you like.  Once you've done this, rename it as follows:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Note: this will also work on windows vista, though I've heard that it crashes the 64bit versions of this OS.  In vista, you need not do this as you can simply switch back to the clasic view of control panel.

As far as media players goes, FOOBAR FTW! If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you do so as practically every aspect of the player is configurable, and I'm always willing to share my config with anyone who wants it.  Keys are global and will work anywhere in the system so long as the player is up and running.  When the player is closed, the config is as well, and none of the keys shall conflict with other programs.  Foobar takes first priority when it comes to keys, and so will not allow any other program to use the key asignment while it is running.  I like this especially, since ctrl p which is what I use as my play option would normally bring up a print dialogue from many places, and ctrl s, my stop command... Well, you get the point.

I have a few friends here and there who use macs and love them.  I figured I'd give them a shot because I've been using computers for the better part of my life, all running some version of windows or another, and haven't expanded to any other OS.  Again, as I said, nothing is wrong with sticking to an OS, and its possible that I will not like what apple provides, but as I do a lot of general poking around, I'll know why I don't like it and will either set about customising it or will give it up with good reason.

One thing that caught my eye is the way apple has its OS's set up.  Instead of having a centralised database like the windows registry, its settings are scattered throughout the machine, upsides and downsides to that, though I'm willing to bet the thing is harder to break just because of that.  On the other hand, I've heard quite a few horror stories about how the machines are poorly manufactured and break easily, so that's something to think about and consider, though at this point, it's all hearsay and nothing I've confirmed.

Hey, to each his or her own.  Since you can set which keys you want to be global versus which ones are not, you have little to lose.  What's more, none of your keys have to be anything that would conflict with any other program.  The reason I set my keys up the way they are is simply that I prefer them that way and they work.  There's very little chance of running into any other conflict other than the print dialogue and the save dialogue as the rest of my keys take place on the numbpad, such as numb 1 to skip to previous track, numb3 to skip to next, numb4 to rewind by five seconds, numb 6 to fastforward by that much, seven and nine do the same by one min, and f3 and f4 will accomplish the same by ten.  Numb5 mutes foobar, numb 8 and numb2 raise and lower volume respectively.

That's a roughly put together description of my keybindings.  I have a few others but I won't go into detail here as that would make for a much longer post that most people probably don't want to read and would go beyond the original point of this post, which in case anyone happened to forget as I almost did was that anyone and everyone should have personal preference.  Foobar is not superior in anyway to winamp, it just works better for me.  Its functionality allows me to take control of my music much more quickly and with the added benefit of almost never having to access its window... Almost never.  The two instances I can think of when I've had to do so are changing its preferences and adding internet radio stations.

Dark,

the oly other suggestion I have at this point is to switch the start menu to xp mode instead of classic, as the xp start menu doesn't have the personalized settings option.  However, a source of mine informs me that in order to accomplish what you are talking about you need not only turn off the "personalized start menu" option, but also the  "Scroll Programs" option.  When in xp mode, you would still need to uncheck the "Scroll Programs" option in order for such behavior to take effect.

Hope this helps, let me kno.

Hi.
In the accessiblity wizard you might want to make those settings the difalt ones. At the end of the setup there's a option. before the end of it actually,I want to set administrative options. check that box,and as you go on through the setup before the end of the setup you will get something like would you like to make these settings your difalt? should windows save these settings after loging on or something like that. I hope that you were able to understand something from my nonunderstandable post.:d.
That should do the trick for you.
HTH,Grryf.ps. I know that I have spelled difalt wrong. But since my spellings are so good...