At least, if you have a 64 bit machine. Found the answer to how to get around this buggy feature at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/exchangesvrclients/thread/791aa00d-6e2c-43c9-9e7b-a57aeb71ada9:
In Vista 64, I just found an icon “View 32-bit Control Panel Icons” in Control Panel. And than I found “Mail” inside.
Over in my old blog, I recently had an entry about cleaning up the context menu in XP with PowerToys to fix a problem where Windows Exlplorer was even slower than usual.
Alas, Power Toys are not available for Vista, and even cleaning out the context menu will not speed it up. But, cleaning up the context menu does make it easier to use simply by narrowing down the choices by eliminating those you don’t use.
One habit I am trying to get into is adding a link to my Google query so folks can a) point out how I could have got better results and b) teach the less sophisticated Googlers how to improve their own results.
For the curious (and those who have not done much with Windows under the hood), there is a good summary of why your context menu may be annoying in an article at My Digital Life. The article includes a link to a ShellExView v1.37 by NirSoft. ShellExView is a cool tool if you are computer savvy, but not something I would recommend for your grandmother.
Of course, you can always do it the old fashioned way, i.e., regedit. Instructions on where to make the changes can be found at The WinVista Club.
On a related note, there is a good article at Computer World on how to manage your context menu in the “normal” way.
You can get a slight improvement by going to Control Panel >Programs and features > Turn on or turn off Windows features and uncheck “Remote Differential Compression”. Reboot and it will take much less time than before to copy files and still more time than XP.
The manual and the set up screens did not make this clear to me when I made the mistake of buying and installing Vista two years ago:
# Upgrading a 32-bit operating system to a 64-bit operating system If you purchase a 64-bit upgrade version of Windows Vista with the intention of installing on a computer that is running a 32-bit operating system, you must install Windows Vista by starting the computer from the 64-bit Vista installation DVD.
Important Do not remove the previous operating system before you start the Windows Vista installation. This is because Windows Vista Setup has to verify that your current operating system license supports the installation of a 64-bit upgrade version.
# “N” versions of Windows Vista The “N” versions of Windows XP and of Windows Vista do not include Windows Media Center. You cannot perform an upgrade installation of an “N” version of Windows. Instead, you must perform a custom installation.
Bold italics mine. Without these explicit instructions, one gets the impression that they cannot install the upgrde with any other choice than the 32 bit upgrade process. This note is buried in the middle of KB932795.Dang, the one thing Microsoft was originally really good at was documentation. Instead, I have spent two years running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit machine.