WARNING! The following tip WILL lower the security level on the PC.
Windows Vista only accepts NTLMV2 for network security. At this default level you cannot access hidden shares on previous versions of Windows and can also prevent access to print servers and possibly cause OWA issues. It can also prevent samba from seeing shares on a Vista machine. To get around this you can implement the following registry change.
Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA
Name: LMCompatibilityLevel
The default level of Windows XP is 0 if you set the LMCompatibilityLevel of your Vista machine to 0 you will be able to access hidden shares on your XP machines and also be Samba compatible. You can also set your XP machines to level 3 which is the default of VISTA This is not compatible with samba so if you are running Linux 0 is a good choice.
The following is the different levels that you can set LMCompatibilityLevel to
Value: 5 : DC refuses LM and NTLM responses (accepts only NTLMv2)
Value: 4 : DC refuses LM responses
Value: 3 : Send NTLMv2 response only
Value: 2 : Send NTLM response only
Value: 1 : Use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated
Value: 0 : default - Send LM response and NTLM response; never use NTLMv2 session security
Some things you can read on this.
Q147706 - How to Disable LM Authentication on Windows NT
Q175641 - LMCompatibilityLevel and Its Effects
Vista UAC
WARNING! The following tip WILL lower the security level on the PC.
Vista driving you mad, with constant pop ups? Constantly having to answer stupid questions when your trying to do something? Well you can turn the questions off. but are you sure you want to do that? Are you positive? Absolutely sure? Iif you shut it off you will miss out on lots of mindless clicking. To shut UAC down click on the the button formerly known as start (the vista orb) and type “msconfig” into the start, search field and hit enter. The system configuration app should open. Choose the tools tab and find disable UAC , then click launch. A dos window should open up and when its done restart the PC. No more annoying pop ups, well until you launch IE, did you notice the information bar?
USB removable drive issues
USB Flash drive or removable storage device does not show up in Windows Explorer, but the computer recognizes that the device is there.
Go into control panel
Choose administrative tools
Choose computer management
Click on disk management
Find your flash or removable drive, right click and choose “change drive letter and paths”
Change the drive letter on the device to one that is not in use.
After you click ok on the dialog box that comes up you should be able to see the drive in Windows explorer