Windows Vista, Sleep to Shut Down

Ever wondered how to change the default behaviour of the Sleep button found in the Windows Start Menu to a Shut Down button? If so just follow these instructions...

• Press the Windows key then type in 'pow' and press enter (this should open the power options control panel)
  
• Click 'Change plan settings' on the power plan you currently have selected
  
• Click 'Change advanced power settings'
  
• Expand 'Power buttons and lid'
  
• Expand 'Start menu power button'
  
• Now change the setting 'sleep' to 'shut down'
  
• Click 'Apply' and 'OK'

Now the yellowish sleep button in the start menu has become a red shut down button.

CA Anti-virus + Windows Vista = Poor Performance

I've been meaning to post this information, but just haven't gotten around to it until now (slack I know). Anyway my point to this post is, don't run CA Anti-virus (formally Vet for some users) if you're running any version of Windows Vista (including SP1).

I've personally run into problems on both AMD and Intel based computers where the explorer process will start using 100% of the available CPU power (on the active core), which can last a few minutes at a time. I found this was caused by the CA Anti-virus real-time scanner and the only way to get around the problem is to disable it. BUT if you do disable the real-time scanner then you have to remember to manually scan every download and email attachment otherwise you could get infected (because nothing is being scanned automatically any more). Some good news is that CA Anti-virus still works perfectly fine if you are running 2000 or XP.

As an alternative to CA Anti-virus I'm now testing Avast! and I'm impressed (apart from the voice alerts). Some other anti-virus packages that I haven't yet tested on Windows Vista but I would still recommend are NOD32 and Kaspersky.

Scrollbar Behaviour for Director 10 & 11

I posted this on the Director Mailing List the other day but thought I should also get it online elsewhere so that everyone has access. What I've created is a scrollbar behaviour that emulates the scrollbar object found in the now dead OSControls Xtra. So all properties, methods and events from the old #OSscrollbar object are now supported by this new scrollbar behaviour. For more information see the following links...

View example movie (Shockwave 11 required)
Download example source code (Director 11 only)

Download the Scrollbar Behaviour for Director 10
Download the Scrollbar Behaviour for Director 11
Download the Scrollbar photoshop CS3 template

Current Version: 1.0b8-19Jun08

If you need help with the Scrollbar Behaviour just leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.