Wired networks > wireless networks. You really can’t deny it. I have no idea why Microsoft puts the wireless network adapter above the wired adapter in the priority list. Some of you may have changed this in Windows XP, pretty easy finding the Network Connections folder, going to Advanced -> Advanced Settings and reordering the adapters in there. It’s the same way in Vista…once you find the Advanced menu. Windows Vista made a lot of changes to some of the control panel, so it takes some time finding everything.

I’m sure there is a way to actually click on a menu item to open the Network Connections folder, but I think it’s easier to go to the Start menu and type in ncpa.cpl and hit enter.

The Network Connections window in Vista looks almost the same as in XP, just a few little things. One of them is the lack of a menu bar. To get the menu bar showing, you need to click on Organize and then click on Layout which expands a menu and then click Menu Bar. Now the menu bar should be showing.

Now you can setup the connection order the same way as in XP. Go to the Advanced menu, click on Advanced Settings and you can highlight network adapters and click the up and down arrows to move the order around.

You should be good to go now. Also, if anyone knows how to get to the Network Connections window without typing in ncpa.cpl in Start menu, please leave a comment.

I have Vista Business installed on my desktop at home and love it so I decided I would install it on it’s own partition on my IBM T60p because I wanted to keep XP around just in case some of our school software didn’t work with it, I’d have the option to reboot into XP. I’m sure most of you might want that too so you’d also be going the dual boot route. The annoying problem I faced when I was done setting up Vista on its partition was when the boot menu comes up after POST, the two options are Microsoft Windows Vista and An Earlier Version of Windows. I found that annoying and then found out I couldn’t access boot.ini through msconfig or the System Properties so I did a little searching. What I found was there are two options: an easy one and a hard one. In case you’d like to do more research, the hard option is opening a command prompt (Start -> type in cmd and hit enter) and running BCDEDIT. It’s all command line and pretty confusing.

The easy way around this is downloading EasyBCD by NeoSmart Technologies. Once installed, you simply run it and click the Configure Boot button:

In the bottom half on the right, select An Earlier Version of Windows in the Choose an OS to change the associated settings drop down menu. You can then change the name in the Name text box. Hit the Save Settings button, reboot and your boot menu will now have the new name and Windows Vista!