Windows Vista has a lot of new visibility settings that help the user interact with the operating system. Indeed, both graphics and user interface functionality have changed considerably from Windows XP. Customizing these settings, or ‘personalizing it’ as it is called in Windows Vista, can help the user tune the Vista user interface to their own liking. But not all settings can be changed that easily.

Whenever you install a new piece of software on your program, Vista  highlights the new program in the Start menu. All new entries are highlighted in the menu using a dark yellow bar as shown in the image.

In itself this is a nice reminder to the user, so you remember what is installed and make sure to use the new software. Once you have executed the newly installed software, the highlighting disappears.

If you have a lot of programs installed, it is easy to overlook a new program in the start menu if it is not clearly visible so in this scenario, the highlighting is beneficial.

But what if you do not want Vista to highlight newly installed programs in the Start menu? Come on, you just installed the software, so why would you need reminding, right? Maybe if some software was installed that was not supposed to be installed, the highlighting will help you identify that program, so you can uninstall the unwanted program. But this should be an exception rather than the rule.

Furthermore, there have been reports that having this highlighting feature ON slows down your PC. So chances are, removing it will speed up your PC tremendously.

You can remove this feature via the Start menu itself in Vista but you can also, but it is also possible to make this change via the Windows registry. Make sure to make a backup of the registry before you make any changes to it, as the Windows registry is a very critical part of Windows Vista, and if things go wrong you want to be able to restore the previous configuration.

So to disable the automatic highlighting of newly installed programs in Windows Vista, follow these steps:

1) Start the Windows Registry Editor by typing “regedit” in the Start -> Search box and press Enter . Click on continue if you see user Account Control dialogue box.

2) In the Windows Registry Editor, locate the key called:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

This can be done by clicking on the + sign near each item as mentioned above and select Advanced key

3) In the right-hand pane, look for the value called “Start_NotifyNewApps”.

4) If the value does not exist, then right click on the right pane and select New and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value. Then type “Start_NotifyNewApps” (without the quote) as the name of the new DWORD Value, and press Enter.

5) Right-click the “Start_NotifyNewApps”, and in the popup menu select Modify…

6) Change the Value data to a zero (0), and click OK.

7) Now close the Registry Editor.

After rebooting, Vista will no longer highlight newly installed programs in the Start menu. Be aware that this is a user level setting, so if you want to disable highlighting for another user, log in as the other user and repeat these steps.

If you want to revert back to the original setting, use the same steps, but change the value to one (1) instead of zero (0).