Tired of looking at that lousy orb and progress bar waiting for Vista to load? How about accessing that hidden ‘Aurora’ boot screen that was readily available when Vista was still called Longhorn. It bears that funky lights effect thing as background and a message “Starting Windows Vista.” Want to access this screen?

• Fire up the start search bar (Windows Key) and type msconfig.exe
• Hit enter to launch System Configuration. Just in case the UAC dialog bugs you just click ‘Allow’.
• In the window, click on the “Boot” tab
• Make sure that the your Windows Vista installation is selected. In the Boot Options section, check the No GUI Boot option.
• Click OK. If a dialog bugs you again, just check “Don’t show this message again” and hit “Restart”
• Wait for the system to restart and ogle at that Aurora boot screen.

A note though, a Windows Defender warning might pop up when the desktop finally becomes accessible but it didn’t happen to me so I guess this is a case-to-case thing.