For some reason, you involuntary delete the files in hidden recovery partition in your system, and you are not able to delete that partition through "Disk Management" like other partitions. You then try to reformat the entire hard disk and reinstall fresh copy of Windows Vista to your PC. Windows Vista stops running during the installation process when partitioning your hard disk. 
What should you do to delete that hidden partition? It is a tough question, isn't it?
My co-worker tried to reformat his HP-DV6000 system and reinstalled Windows Vista without deleting the protected recovery partition in the hard drive. He could not complete installing process due to the above problem. 
To delete the hidden parition, you need to access to "diskpart.exe". Some of you may not know how to run "diskpart.exe" in Windows Vista. Follow these steps to get it done:
Load Windows Vista CD or Recovery Disc to your system and start booting up from that CD. Select "Repair your computer" when Windows asks you to.
Click on "Command Prompt" to open MS-DOS screen.
Type "diskpart" at command line to access "diskpart.exe" of Windows.
Enter lisk disk to see how many hard disk listed in your system. Continue typing "select disk 0" to let Windows getting in the disk that you wish to find the remaining partition to delete.
Type "list partition" to list all partitions in your main hard disk. Then enter "select partition x". Where x is the recovery partition you wish to delete ( I assume it’s 1), you can replace x with the recovery partition number and press enter.
Finally, type in "delete partition override" or "clean all" to completely wipe the drive to zero. Reboot your PC with Vista CD or your Recovery Disc to install fresh copy of Windows Vista. 
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Delete the protected recovery partition in Windows Vista
Stop a program from running automatically at startup process in Windows Vista
My friend purchases a preinstalled Windows Vista laptop that has lots of software installed. He doesn't how to stop an unwanted program from running automatically when Windows Vista starts. This also slows his laptop down from booting up 
. To speed up and improve your computer's performance, you need to disable or remove unnecessary programs loading at boot process. Here's how:
Windows Vista comes with an installed AntiSpyware program, Windows Defender. This is not only an AntiSpyware application, but also having lots of useful tools that you can find the right one when fooling arount with its menus. To manage your startup programs, you need to access to Software Explorer panel in Window Defender.
Open Startup menu and type "defender" in search box to quickly open Window Defender popup window.
Select "Tool" icon and click on Software Explorer hyperlink to switch to Software Explorer screen. You then see the category is set to Startup programs by default. The list of currently loading programs is displayed in the left panel.
Scroll it down until you find the program that you'd like to disable (or remove). Click on that program and you'll see the details of chosen program are displayed on the right panel.
Read carefully that info to make sure whether it is the unnecessary program or not before making any change.
Click on "disable" button to stop loading it at startup or choose "remove" to completely remove that program out of loading list. Select "yes" to save your change.
Repeat these steps to disable all programs that you wish to stop. Reboot your PC and those programs will not launch automatically at booting up process. Enjoy your faster machine!
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Automatically defragment your hard drive with Smart Defrag 1.0
Disk fragmentation is generally main cause of slow and unstable computer performance. There are many defragmenters on the market such as Defraggler, JKDefrag, Auslogics Disk Defrag, Diskeeper Professional, PerfectDisk Professional... and you may not know which one is the best for you to maintain your hard disk.
Smart Defrag has the world’s fastest defragmenting engine. It’s been specially designed for modern, large hard drives, so it eliminates long waiting times.
In my opinion, Smart Defrag provides best features and strongest defragmentation than others. It not only defragments computer deeply but also optimizes performance. It streamlines your file system, places the frequently used files and directories into the fastest area of the disk, enabling your computer to run at top speed with the most stability.
The best feature of S.D that I’d love is "Install it and forget it". It works automatically and quietly in the background on your PC, keeping your hard disk running at its speediest.
Smart Defrag uses the commercial-level standard to move data and does not damage any file in your disk. Besides, unlike other "Automated" Defragmenters, Smart Defrag does NOT constantly perform analysis and defragment, which does damage your hard drive and shorten its life. Smart Defrag has a "Safe Intelligence" technology that can assure the health of your disk by deciding When and How to start defragmentation.
Smart Defrag is 100% free for home, organization, and business. It suppports Win 2K/03/XP and Vista. This cool soft was released by IObit.com on September 9th 2008.
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How to partition a hard drive in Windows Vista?
My friend asked me how to partition a hard drive in his laptop that has Windows Vista preinstalled. It's pretty easy! Just follow this direction step-by-step to create a new partition (it's called "Volume" in Vista) in your existing hard drive:
Open Start Menu and type "diskmgmt.msc" in the Start Search box then press "Enter" to open the Disk Management utility.
Right click an existing hard drive (volume) and choose "Shrink Volume" to create space for a new volume.
Windows Vista will caculate the amount of space you can regain and will open a dialog box to display the total size before shrink, the maximum shrink available, and the size of the old volume after the shrink. You must enter the amount of space of your new volume in the right box.
After shrinking, you will see a new unallocated volume in the Disk Management window. Right click on new space and select "New Simple Volume".
Follow the wizard's step to create name and format your new volume (You can shrink only volumes that use the NTFS drive format and your new PC's drive is almost certainly NTFS).
Click "Finish" to complete the process and your new volume will be represented in Disk Management's graphs.
It works like a charm, doesn't it? Don't forget to give me some feedback about this tip!
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Providing Network Security
The network infrastructure, services, and the data contained on network attached computers are crucial personal and business assets.
Consequences of a network security breach could include:
. Network outage that prevents communications and transactions occurring, with consequent loss of business
. Misdirection and loss of personal or business funds
. Company intellectual property (research ideas, patents or designs) that is stolen and used by a competitor
. Customer contract details that become known to competitors or made public, resulting in a loss of market confidence in the business
There are two types of network security concerns that must be addressed to prevent serious consequences: network infrastructure security and content security.
Securing a network infrastructure includes the physical securing of devices that provide network connectivity and preventing unauthorized access to the management software that resides on them
Content security refers to protecting the information contained within the packets being transmitted over the network and the information stored on network attached devices. When transmitting information over the Internet or other network, the content of the individual packets is not readily known to the devices and facilities through which the packets travel. Tools to provide security for the content of individual messages must be implemented on top of the underlying protocols which govern how packets are formatted, addressed and delivered. Because the reassembly and interpretation of the content is delegated to programs running on the individual source and destination systems, many of the security tools and protocols must be implemented on those systems as well.
Security measures taken in a network should:
. Prevent unauthorized disclosure or theft of information
. Prevent unauthorized modification of information
. Prevent Denial of Service
Means to achieve these goals include:
. Ensuring confidentiality
. Maintaining communication integrity
. Ensuring availability
Ensuring Confidentiality
Data privacy is maintained by allowing only the intended and authorized recipients - individuals, processes, or devices - to read the data.
Having a strong system for user authentication, enforcing passwords that are difficult to guess, and requiring users to change them frequently helps restrict access to communications and to data stored on network attached devices. Where appropriate, encrypting content ensures confidentiality and minimizes unauthorized disclosure or theft of information.
Maintaining Communication Integrity
Data integrity means having the assurance that the information has not been altered in transmission, from origin to destination. Data integrity can be compromised when information has been corrupted - willfully or accidentally - before the intended recipient receives it.
Source integrity is the assurance that the identity of the sender has been validated. Source integrity is compromised when a user or device fakes its identity and supplies incorrect information to a recipient.
The use of digital signatures, hashing algorithms and check sum mechanisms are ways to provide source and data integrity across a network to prevent unauthorized modification of information.
Ensuring Availability
Ensuring confidentiality and integrity are irrelevant if network resources become over burdened, or not available at all. Availability means having the assurance of timely and reliable access to data services for authorized users. Resources can be unavailable during a Denial of Service (DoS) attack or due to the spread of a computer virus. Network firewall devices, along with desktop and server anti-virus software can ensure system reliability and the robustness to detect, repel, and cope with such attacks. Building fully redundant network infrastructures, with few single points of failure, can reduce the impact of these threats.
The result of the implementation of measures to improve both the quality of service and the security of network communications is an increase in the complexity of the underlying network platform. As the Internet continues to expand to offer more and more new services, its future depends on new, more robust network architectures being developed that include all four characteristics: fault tolerance, scalability, quality of service, and security.
Source: Cisco Networking Academy
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Providing Quality of Service (QoS)
There are some constraints on network resources that cannot be avoided. Constraints include technology limitations, costs, and the local availability of high-bandwidth service. Network bandwidth is the measure of the data carrying capacity of the network. When simultaneous communications are attempted across the network, the demand for network bandwidth can exceed its availability.
In most cases, when the volume of packets is greater than what can be transported across the network, devices queue the packets in memory until resources become available to transmit them. Queuing packets causes delay. If the number of packets to be queued continues to increase, the memory queues fill up and packets are dropped.
Classification
Ideally, we would like to assign a precise priority for each type of communication. Currently, this is neither practical nor possible. Therefore, we classify applications in categories based on specific quality of service requirements.
To create QoS classifications of data, we use a combination of communication characteristics and the relative importance assigned to the application. We then treat all data within the same classification according to the same rules. For example, communication that is time-sensitive or important would be classified differently from communication that can wait or is of lesser importance.
The characteristics of the information being communicated also affect its management. For example, the delivery of a movie uses a relatively large amount of network resources when it is delivered continuously without interruption. Other types of service - e-mail, for example - are not nearly as demanding on the network. In one company, an administrator might decide to allocate the greatest share of the network resources to the movie, believing that this is the priority for his customers. This administrator may decide that the impact will be minimal if e-mail users have to wait a few additional seconds for their e-mail to arrive. In another company, the quality of a video stream is not as important as critical process control information that operates the manufacturing machinery.
Quality of Service
QoS mechanisms enable the establishment of queue management strategies that enforce priorities for different classifications of application data. Without properly designed and implemented QoS mechanisms, data packets will be dropped without consideration of the application characteristics or priority. Examples of priority decisions for an organization might include:
Source: Cisco Networking Academy
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