turn off | AddictiveTips

How To Permanently Disable Search Indexing In Windows 8 [Tip]

by Fawad Mir on May 23, 2012

Windows

Whenever you create, copy or move a file or folder, Windows Search Indexing feature scans the location in order to index all the contained items. The indexed items help speed up the search process. Once search index is built for all locations and saved items, Windows can provide you with search results instantaneously, as it no longer has to manually find the item from the specified location. The Windows search is basically responsible for retrieving and displaying the search results from the list of indexed items. The search index keeps running in the background as a Windows service named WSearch. Although it significantly speeds up the search process, it may consume significant system resources. While people who are using high-end PCs do not care about processes that consistently consume physical memory resources, users with slower computers can feel a difference in the response time while performing even routine tasks. Another reason for disabling the service is that if, for some reason, the indexed items are not being displayed correctly, turning it off and performing a cold reboot of your system can fix the issue. Read on to find out how to disable the search indexing service in Windows 8. Read More

Disable Windows Update Device Driver Search Prompt In Windows 7 / Vista

by Nakodari on December 14, 2008

Windows

Do you get annoyed every time Windows asks you to search for the latest driver using Windows Update? It is great way to update the device driver, but if you have the driver on a CD or you want to download it manually from the company’s website, then you can turn it off. Read More

How To Disable/Turn Off User Account Control (UAC) In Windows Vista

by Asad on October 11, 2008

Windows

UAC or User Access Control is a new feature of Windows Vista that is meant to enhance the security of your system. Each time an application is installed or whenever an important system change is made by the user or by a running process, the screen is blacked out and temporarily disabled and a dialog is shown with the choices to allow or deny the action. If the logged user is not an administrator, Windows Vista will also ask for the administrator password. While this helps keeping your system safer from threats, it can also be very annoying and sometimes confusing. UAC does clearly improves the security on Windows Vista, under some scenarios you might want to disable it, for example when giving demos in front of an audience. Some home users might be tempted to disable UAC because of the additional mouse clicking it brings into their system, however it is recommended not to immediately do so, and try to get used to it instead.

How To Disable Error Reporting In Windows XP

by Nakodari on September 23, 2008

Windows

Does your program keep crashing your computer every time and then ask you to report this error to Microsoft? Once my Opensource Photo Editing Tool crashed, I got a pop-up message from Windows asking me to report this error to Microsoft. Let me be straight here, I don’t understand how Microsoft will help improve this software which it has no idea about. I find such error reporting totally useless.

For the past 2 years I have been reporting such errors to Microsoft every time they popped up, and still they didn’t improve anything(I think error reporting feature has been made to make people believe that Microsoft is listening to everyone). If you are sick of such error reporting messages just like I am, it is time to turn it off.