Through the Appearance and Personalization menu there are several options to choose to customize your pc. These include Changing the desktop background, Customizing colors, Adjusting the screen resolution, changing the screen saver and changing the theme. Clicking on the green link labeled Personalization goes to the next level of the menu that has the links listed below it but with descriptions.

If you look at the window above, there is a pane on the left called the tasks pane. There are two options below, the first is to Change desktop icons. This will bring up a window with several options, seen below. You can choose to display icons that are not usually present on the desktop by default on Vista such as displaying a shortcut icon for the control panel or Network, to select particular icons just tick the box next to the icon and they will be displayed on the desktop or un tick them and they will no longer be displayed. you can also select an icon that you wish to change, so you may have downloaded an icon pack and wish to change the Computer icon. Click on the Computer icon in that case and then click the Change Icon.. button below the icons, now you can browse for the icon file that you wish the Computer to use.

The next task you can choose from is to Adjust font size, this can be done by clicking on Adjust font size which is located below the Change desktop icons link.

You can choose to have your text to less Dots per inch in order to fit more information in the screen or in your windows, this would make the text appear smaller, you can also choose a larger scale which makes the text easier to read but will not fit as much into the screen. To choose an option just click in radio button next to the option that you require, so if you wanted a larger scale font size, click the radio button next to Larger Scale (120) DPI - make text more readable. You can also choose a custom DPI so if you want the text to be smaller or much larger this is possible by clicking on the Custom DPI.. button.

From the Personalization window, the first main link is to personalize the window color and appearance. Click on the link and you will see the window displayed below.

Through the Window Color and Appearance configuration you can change the colors of all the windows in Vista. There are 8 choices including transparency settings to choose from, or you can click on Show color mixer to be able to choose your own color settings and adjust brightness settings for those colors.

The next configuration item under the Personalization window is the Desktop Background item. You can choose the desktop background here from items in your windows folder or pictures folder, or you can browse through your computer and choose your own photos or backgrounds. To do this, select the picture that you like from the thumbnails or click on the drop down box next to Picture Location and select the location or for specific files or folders containing your pictures, click on Browse.. and then select the location of the file and select ok. Once you have selected the background picture, select how the picture should be positioned, this can be done by maximizing the picture or by tiling the picture or just displaying the picture on the desktop. Once you have finished your selections, click OK.

The next configuration option is the screen saver option. You can choose which screen saver you would like to appear when you leave your computer idle for a certain period of time or you can choose not to have a screen saver. To choose a screen saver, click on the drop down box underneath the thumbnail. You can select from a few screen savers installed in Vista or your own screen savers that you may have downloaded from the internet or from a file on a cd, etc. You can also change settings for the screen saver by clicking on the Settings... button. These options usually include visual settings such as the speed of the screen saver or color. You can even preview the screen saver in full screen by clicking the Preview button next to Settings. Another option you can find is how long to wait before displaying the screen saver. Click on the box next to Wait: and select either the up arrow to increase the value or the down arrow to decrease the value. As default the setting is at 10 minutes. You can also display the logon screen when you resume using windows, so you would have to enter your password for logging in to windows to unlock the computer. Once you have finished configuring screen saver settings, click Apply or OK to accept settings and leave the screen saver configuration.

Note: using a screen saver can sometimes affect running applications as it does use up system resources to display the animations or sounds, you may want to disable it if you are running critical applications to ensure that maximum cpu can be harnessed by that application.

The next configuration option is the Sounds option. You can select different schemes for sounds in windows, so when a certain action occurs in windows, you will hear a sound such as when you connect a device to the computer. There are some selections to choose sound collections by clicking on the drop down box underneath Sound Scheme: and selecting the sound scheme that you would like to choose, you can also select a specific event in the event section and then click Browse.. at the bottom of the window to specify a custom sound that you have on your computer for that sound event.

If you are choosing a custom sound you should make sure that the sound file will not be deleted or moved as it will not play if you move or delete the file. Once you have selected the sound scheme you want to use click OK. You can also select no sounds if you do not require any sounds to be played from events.

The next configuration option is Mouse Pointers. You can choose the style of mouse pointer from a selection of schemes or you can install your own mouse pointers downloaded from the internet. To choose a scheme click on the drop down box under Scheme and select the scheme you like. You can view this scheme in the box below under Customize and you can also select a particular pointer and then click the Browse.. button to select a specific pointer for that pointer event. Once you have finished selecting the pointers click Apply to accept the configuration or Ok to accept the configuration and to close the mouse properties window.

The next configuration item is the Theme settings. There are a few themes already saved onto the computer in the folder: C:\Windows\Resources\Themes - where C:\ is the drive where your windows folder is located. You can use themes settings to either choose from these pre defined themes or you can save the current theme that you are using for windows. Themes are what windows describes all the sepcific settings for colors, backgrounds, mouse pointers, sounds, screen savers and display preferences. You may wish to save your theme more than once as you change settings on your computer through control panel as every time you change the settings your theme will change and if you want to have more than one custom theme you should save the theme when you change settings. To save the theme, click on Save As.. You can then change the theme by selecting a different one from the drop down box and if you wish to get back to your theme you can select that too. One you have finished saving or changing your theme, click Apply to apply settings or OK to apply the settings and leave the theme settings window.

The next setting option is the Display Settings option. Through display settings you can select a resolution for your monitor that you wish windows to be displayed in. As you can see from the screenshot above, you can also choose multiple monitor display options here. If you graphics card has two ports, which almost all the latest graphics cards have nowadays, then you can link up 2 monitors with that one graphics card so your desktop can be the width of these two monitors This is very useful for productivity and can also be useful for certain games that are compatible with multiple monitors. You may have to use a monitor with a DVI port with some graphics cards as most may only have one VGA port for use with older style monitor connections, you can get around this by using a simple port adaptor that will enable your VGA connector for your monitor to connect into DVI connections.

You can change the resolutions separately if you have more than one monitor connected to the graphics card. If you have the same size monitor you can also select the same resolution to have a more consistent desktop. In the case above the two monitors are of different sizes and both have different display capabilities, as you can also see the second monitor can be dragged around so that when you drag application windows from one monitor to the next, the window can end up at the top or bottom of the next monitor instead of right next to it. You can also have two monitors stacked one on top of the other and reflect this with the display options. Other settings include choosing the colors represented by your graphics card as well as the advanced settings button which has specific settings for your graphics card including setting up custom display drivers as well as updating older display drivers. There are many other advanced options also available.

For changing the resolution on one monitor, just move the scroller option horizontally either for a higher resolution or a lower one. Most computers nowadays can support a resoltion around 1280 by 1024 pixels and it would be reccomended to use this resolution as many websites and applications would require it for optimal viewing. You can select resolutions usually down to 800 by 600 if you wish to, which may be required if you want fonts and windows to appear much larger on the screen. You may also have more than 2 monitors connected to your pc with the use of another graphics card, either a standard extra PCI card or the latest PCIe style dual graphics card configurations. There are other ways to have many monitors linked u to your pc that are not discussed here though, however these are some popular options if you require more monitors. You can connect your pc to a TV also nowadays with most graphics cards and with HDTV resolutions being a standard on most TVs, this is useful if you wish to view your desktop or watch a film on a larger screen, say in your living room. This can be done through the display settings in a similar manner as adding another monitor and display resolutions can also be set here.

When you click the back button you will see the window above again. This has more Appearance and Personalization categories. The Taskbar and Start Menu category brings up various options relating to the Taskbar and Start Menu that are mentioned in a separate section, this configuration window can be opened up simply by right clicking on the tasbar at any time and selecting Properties. The Ease of Access Center is also mentioned in a separate topic where specific items are discussed such as the magnifier, Microsoft Narrator, the on screen keyboard, etc. Click on the Ease of Access Center link to get to this specific page. The Folder Options is discussed below as well as the Fonts and Windows Sidebar Properties.

Folder Options relates to the specific options to folders that can be set globally (for all your folders) to view items in folders. Some options you can configure includes the Single-click option that allows you to open files and folders with one click such as links on a web page.

The first option allows you to either Show preview and filters or to Use Windows classic folders; Windows classic folders do not display the details and preview panes in all your folder windows and were used in pre XP versions of windows, they provide a much simpler view of your folders but not as powerful in the amount of information presented, this can be useful if you want to maximize the amount of space in your folders, however.

The next option is to either Open each folder in the same window or Open each folder inna separate window; the default option ensures that whenever you open folders they always are displayed in the window in which you browsed to that folder, where the second option opens every new folder in a new window, which can be useful although you may have many windows open if you browse through alot of sub folders.

The final option under the General tab is how to click on items - The option to Double-click to open an item (single-click to select) is configured by default and means that every time you click on a folder in Windows Explorer you only are selecting this folder but not opening up the folder to splay its contents, to display the contents you therefore have to double click it. The First option which is to Single-click to open an item (point to select) allows you to single click an item as you would in a web page and this item will be opened, you also just have to hover the mouse over the item in order to select it, which is also similar to a web page. There are 2 sub options also where you can change the way the links to the folders and files are displayed - the first option is to Underline icon titles consistent with my browser, which means icons are always underlined, where as the second option is to Underline icon titles only when I point to them.

The next tab is the View tab, and you have two buttons, the first button is to apply your changes to all folders and the second is the reset all folders back to the default configuration.

Selecting Always show icons, never thumbnails will always show the static icons of files and never show the thumbnail previews of files. This is useful if you do not want your system to be slowed down by displaying thumbnails as this can use up system resources, especially in folders with many picture or video files.

Selecting Always show menus will always show the menu above the toolbar, other ways to enable this are discussed in the Windows Explorer section.

Selecting Automatically search for network folders and printers enables your computer to search your network for shared forlders and printers at periodic intervals. This is useful in a network with shared folders and printer changing occasionally and will save time by automatically picking up these changes and displaying them in the network folder.

Selecting Display file size information in folder tips shows the file size information automatically when you leave the mouse pointer over a folder without having to click on the folder.

Selecting Show hidden files and folders will display files in folders that have the hidden file attribute. This can be useful if you deal with hidden files or are looking for specific hidden files in folders such as the Windows System folder. If you select this option you need to be careful with the hidden files as they usually are needed for the normal running of windows and other applications and should not be modified, deleted or moved unless you are familiar with those files.

Selecting Display simple folder view in Navigation pane will allow you to see folders connected to subfolders.

Selecting Hide extensions for known files types will hide the extensions for filenames that are associated with programs, so a file called document.txt will be displayed as document because it is associated with notepad, so if you uncheck this box you can see it as document.txt which can be useful if you want to see what exactly the file you are opening is.

Selecting Hide protected operating system files will hide system files or unchecking the box will display these files. This is useful again if you are familiar with dealing with system files, however you should usually keep these files in the same location as you found them as they are usually nescessary for the operation of windows or other applications and must not be edited, moved or deleted in most cases.

Selecting Launch folder windows in a separate process allows your computer to devote separate memory resources to opening each individual folder. This can be useful if you have had problems opening certain folders due to explorer crashing and could stop explorer from crashing in those situations, this would use up more memory than if it were to be turned off however.

Selecting Remember each folder's view settings will remember the settings for every folder you specify custom settings for. You can have all folders use the default settings by unchecking this box.

Selecting Restore previous folder windows at logon will open the folders that were open before you shut down your pc so you can get back to folders you were browsing through easily.

Selecting Show drive letters will show each drive in the Computer folder's drive letter. Unchecking this box will only display the custom name for each drive instead.

Selecting Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color will represent encrypted files in a specific color and compressed files in another color. This can be turned off by unchecking this box.

Selecting Show pop-up descriptions for folder and desktop items will show the extended information bubble when you hover the mouse pointer over files, unchecking this box will turn this feature off.

Selecting Show preview handlers in preview pane displays the contents of files in a preview pane, unchecking this box will not display thse previews. This can be useful if you are finding that explorer is slowing your pc, as displaying the preview can slow down your pc.

Selecting Use check boxes to select items will add a check box next to files so you can select multiple files much easier than using the CTRL+ clicking method.

The fonts folder is basically a folder shortcut to \Windows\fonts where your font files are located. This is a collection of all the fonts that are currently installed in Windows. These are the default fonts that come with the Windows vista operating system. You can install more fonts by clicking on a blank area of the window and selecting Install font. You can get collections of fonts from the internet that can be installed within the operating system although other pcs viewing files written with those fonts will have to have the particular font you used for the document as well. You may install many fonts by just copying or moving the font files over to this folder instead of going through the Install fonts procedure.

Control Panel: Appearance and Personalization