Lifestyle 48 home entertainment system
Our finest Lifestyle® DVD home theater system digitally stores and organizes up to 340 hours of music. Enjoy movies with a progressive scan DVD/CD player. Jewel Cube® speaker arrays and Acoustimass® module deliver thrilling 5.1 surround sound. ADAPTiQ® system customizes sound to your room's acoustics.
Overview Features Photos Specifications Accessories Expand It
Lifestyle 48 home entertainment system
Learn more about Bose ADAPTiQ audio calibration system
Learn how proprietary
ADAPTiQ technology customizes sound to your room's unique characteristics.
Learn more about Bose uMusic intelligent playback system
Learn how Bose
uMusic intelligent playback system digitally stores and organizes your CDs.
Learn how you can expand your Lifestyle system and enjoy music throughout your home. View demo
The Bose® Lifestyle® 48 DVD home entertainment system will change the way you think about movies, music ... even your CD collection. Digitally store and organize up to 340 hours of music in the media center, featuring a progressive scan DVD/CD player. The ADAPTiQ® audio calibration system analyzes your room and adjusts your Lifestyle® home theater audio system's sound for great performance. Tiny, award-winning Jewel Cube® speaker arrays and a horizontal center-channel speaker fill your room with thrilling 5.1 surround sound. The VS-2 video enhancer simplifies your system's integration with other sources, including those with HDMI. And there's more. Bose® link allows you to connect your Lifestyle® 48 DVD home theater system to compatible Bose products in as many as 14 additional rooms.
Your room is unique. So is this home theater system.
The hidden beauty of the Lifestyle® 48 DVD system lies in the Bose technologies that make enjoying music and movies intuitively simple. Start with your main room—the size, shape, textures and other elements that affect the sound you hear. The ADAPTiQ system, found only in Lifestyle® DVD systems, was developed to analyze your room and then adjust the Lifestyle® system for a consistent, high-quality performance each time you listen.
No need to move furniture, speakers or anything else to get the best possible sound in your room. Just sit in up to five of your preferred listening spots, and allow the ADAPTiQ system to automatically make the necessary adjustments.
Meet your digital DJ
Consider the hassle of managing your treasured, but unwieldy, CD collection. The Lifestyle® 48 DVD home theater audio system changes all that with unique Bose technology that stores up to 340 hours of music. The uMusic® intelligent playback system actually listens to your music and learns your preferences, then makes selections based on what you like. No more searching for CDs or deciding which tracks to listen to. Whatever mood you're in, the uMusic system is ready with just the songs you want to hear.
And you can hear them almost anywhere. Bose® link enables quality sound in as many as 14 additional rooms, even outdoors. Just add compatible Bose products, and you can have independent volume control in each room, as well as access to two different audio streams from the same Lifestyle® system.
Fill your room with sound, not equipment
The Lifestyle® 48 DVD system features award-winning Jewel Cube® speaker arrays—measuring only 4½" high—for dramatically lifelike sound. These are our smallest and most powerful speaker arrays, yet they deliver sound you'd expect from speakers many times their size. And a sleek horizontal center-channel speaker locks dialogue on screen while making a nice match with flat-panel televisions.
The proprietary Acoustimass® module produces resounding low notes that bring action sequences to life and add fullness to music. Place it out of sight, and all the sound seems to come from the smaller speakers.
Simplicity for your video sources
Simplify the integration of a Lifestyle® DVD home theater system with your video sources—including those with HDMI—and get the best picture possible. The new VS-2 video enhancer automatically synchronizes the audio and video you want at the touch of a button. You'll receive the highest video resolution your TV can accept, all the way up to 1080p over HDMI. And you'll reduce the wiring to the back of the television to just one connection.
The Lifestyle® 48 DVD system puts it all together with innovative approaches that let you easily customize your listening experience. All with the performance, elegance and simplicity you expect from Bose.
Key Features
Bose Jewel Cube speakers
Jewel Cube® speakers Just 4½" high, our smallest Direct/Reflecting® speakers contain over 40 different innovations and breakthrough technologies. You enjoy the highest level of Lifestyle® system performance from speakers that fit effortlessly into your room.
Bose Acoustimass module
Acoustimass® module Hear the clarity of pure, low-frequency reproduction, even at the loudest levels. This Bose breakthrough works in concert with the small speakers to deliver the full range of sound. When the module is placed behind a curtain or chair, all of the sound seems to come directly from the small cube speakers.
Bose horizontal center-channel speaker
Horizontal center-channel speaker Enables acoustic and aesthetic synchronization with your TV. Keeps dialogue focused on the screen, and complements the dimensions of flat-panel displays.
Bose Lifestyle media center
Lifestyle® media center Enjoy today's most popular audio and video content with this elegant control center, featuring a built-in progressive scan DVD/CD player and AM/FM tuner. You'll have high-quality playback for the latest media formats, including: DVD, DVD-R, CD, CD-R/RW, VCD, PCM, digital 5.1, MP3 files and MPEG-2.
Bose VS-2 video enhancer
VS-2 video enhancer Simplifies the integration of a Lifestyle® system with other video sources, including those with HDMI. Connect just one wire from the VS-2 video enhancer to the back of your TV, and receive the correct audio and video with the press of one button.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Windows tweaks and problem solving
General Windows Tweaks & Problem Solving
These tweaks don't specifically speed up anything in Windows, but they're likely to solve annoying little issues you've lived with for years.
Determine if you need more RAM. There are people who say, "You can't have too much RAM." These people must also say, "You can't have too much money," and have cartloads of it lying around for every PC in the house. The rest of us must find a balance between money and RAM, and that usually means only buying the amount we need. An easy way to find out how much RAM you really need is to use your system normally without restarting for at least a day. At the end of the day, open the Task Manager (pressing CTRL- ALT-DELETE opens it, for example) and click the Performance tab. Compare the value for "Commit Charge - Peak" to the amount of RAM you have. If the value is higher then your RAM, then you'll see a benefit to installing more memory. If it's less, then you're probably doing just fine, RAM-wise. To be sure, check this value over the course of several days. Note that if you've manually changed the size of the Paging File, you'll need to adjust it again after adding RAM. If you've told Windows to manage the size of the Paging File automatically, it will still do so after adding RAM.
Disable auto-reboot to help solve problems. When you encounter a significant crash and get a BSOD, WinXP normally displays it for a moment and then reboots the machine. This is probably the right action for an unattended server, but it makes diagnosing the error on a normal workstation/gaming PC rather troublesome. There's not enough time to write down the error, and if the crash occurred while you were away, you might not even realize there was a crash (and restart) to begin with. (Honestly, how often do you really check your error logs?) 60 April 2007 / www.computerpoweruser.com spotlight To keep the BSOD open indefinitely, open System from the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Then click the Settings button under Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck Automatically Restart in the System Failure section. This will take effect after a restart.
Boost Internet Explorer 7
Love it or leave it, IE is the world's mostpopular browser, and version 7 introduces new wrinkles that need attention.
Change the default search provider. If you want to change your search provider from, say, MSN to Google, click the down arrow icon next to the magnifying glass in the search field and choose Change Search Defaults. Choose your preferred search engine, click the Set Default button, and then OK.
Add or remove toolbars. IE7's sparse interface, complete with its lack of conventional toolbars, has frustrated a lot of experienced users. Right-clicking any empty area next to the tabs lets you add or remove toolbars, including a conventional menu bar (File, Edit, etc.). Be sure to unlock the toolbars (click View, point to Toolbars, and uncheck Lock The Toolbars) before you try to drag them to your desired locations.
Return to Internet Explorer 6. If you've hung with IE7 for as long as you can and you just don't like it (or if you frequent Web sites that don't play nice with IE7), you can go back to IE6. Just open Add or Remove Programs from the Control Panel and choose Internet Explorer 7. Windows will warn you that this may break certain security patches that you've downloaded after installing IE7, but most of those patches relate to IE7 itself. The process takes longer than you'd think (as does the first reboot afterwards) but in the end, you'll be greeted with the familiar IE6 you've come to know and, um, love.
Boost FireFox 2.0
With all of its extensions and themes, entire books have been written about getting the most from Mozilla Firefox. As such, we'll limit ourselves to just two.
Backup your Firefox "everything." You have probably accumulated a large Internet Explorer 7 might be the future of Web browsing for Microsoft, but it's far from perfect for everyone. Rolling back to IE 6, that trusty old mare, is fortunately not a difficult task. collection of themes, extensions, bookmarks, and passwords for Firefox. All of these things are gathered together into Mozilla Profiles, which are sometimes susceptible to corruption. A freeware tool, MozBackup (mozbackup.jasnapaka.com), can backup and restore your profiles with just a few clicks and makes the task of moving a Firefox installation from one computer to another a breeze. If you use Thunderbird for email, it also backs up and restores your mailstore.
Speed up browsing. This next set of modifications exemplifies what's possible Firefox has a host of configuration options to boost your browsing experience. Just type about:config in its Address Bar to access the goodies. CPU / April 2007 61 spotlight with Firefox, but it can be controversial. You can set Firefox to use multiple connections to a Web server to retrieve multiple files instead of just one. Some consider this approach as inconsiderate to Webmasters, because their servers must spend more effort serving you a page than someone else. That said, this can boost performance considerably and illustrates how to modify technical settings in Firefox. First, open Firefox and type about:config in the Address Bar and press ENTER, which displays the equivalent of Firefox's Registry. Next, type HTTP into the Filter field, which displays only those entries that have "http" within them. Then, do the following:
1. Change network.http.pipelining to true by double-clicking it;
2. Change network.http.pipelining. maxrequests to 8 by double-clicking it and entering 8 in the pop-up window;
3. Change network.http.max-persistant connections-per-server to 8;
4. Change network.http.max connections to 48;
5. Change network.http.proxy. pipelining to true;
6. Change network.http.max-persistant connections-per-proxy to 8; and
7. Right-click anywhere in this screen, and choose New Integer from the popup menu. Enter the Preference Name as nglayout.initialpaint.delay, and its Value as 0. Restart Firefox to enable the changes.
Boost iTunes & iPod
It stands to reason that if the iPod is the world's most popular MP3 player, then iTunes must be pretty darn popular, too. As an Apple product, it doesn't require a ton of internal tweaking, but various third-party utilities add a lot of functionality that Apple either forgot to add or didn't want to. Combined with just a few internal tweaks, iTunes can be almost anything you want it to be.
Import to MP3 for portability. If you have another device capable of playing MP3s, such as a DVD player, car stereo, or another MP3 player, you can have iTunes rip music into MP3 files directly instead of AAC files. Click Preferences from the Edit menu. Then, click the Advanced tab and the Importing subtab. Change the Import Using drop-down menu to MP3 Encoder and set the bit rate to whatever you prefer. Within the Importing subtab, you can also alter the way iTunes names your MP3 files. The raw MP3 files are stored in the iTunes music folder.
Hierarchical playlists. ITunes 7 can organize hundreds of playlists by arrang- ing them into collapsible folders—much the same way the Explorer lists directories—along the left pane. To create one, click File and New Folder. A new folder, named "Untitled Folder" appears, and iTunes selects it by default. Rename it and either drag existing playlists into it or leave the folder selected and click the Create A Playlist button to create a new playlist within that folder. Unfortunately, these folders don't appear within your iPod: All nested playlists appear the same as top-level playlists.
Add album art en masse. Although iTunes does a fair job of adding album art to the songs already in your library, a free utility called TuneSleeve (tunesleeve .googlepages.com) does it much better, allowing you to drag-and-drop graphics directly from Web pages into every song in an album at once. If given enough time, it also searches for art on the Internet by itself, assigning artwork to all songs in a playlist or your entire library. It is also able to find alternative artwork or multiple versions of the same album and lets you replace artwork iTunes has already found.
Use Your iPod without iTunes. YamiPod (www.yamipod.com) is a free- ware iPod manager and media player that's available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux—just copy the executables to your iPod and plug it into whatever com- puter you have. Yamipod will do the rest of the work for you. With it, you can play music, create playlists, add or extract songs directly from the iPod to your computer, remove duplicate tracks, find "lost" music files, import and export playlists in M3U format, and a lot more. In short, YamiPod lets you use your iPod the way you want to, rather than the way Apple does
Posted by Jonathan at 8:33 AM 0 comments
Friday, September 14, 2007
10 Things You Need to Know about Deploying Windows Vista
You've deployed Windows XP in the past, and now you're thinking ahead to Windows Vista. Whether you'll be deploying to 10, 100, or 100,000 computers, just knowing how the process has changed from Windows XP will make the deployment run much more smoothly.
So here are 10 deployment differences between Windows® XP and Windows Vista™ that you'll be glad you discovered when it's time to make the move.
1. Windows Vista Images Are Bigger
With Windows XP and Windows 2000, it was possible to create images that would fit easily on a single CD (less than 700MB). Even organizations that added applications, drivers, and utilities to their image typically ended up with an operating system image in the 1GB to 3GB range.
With Windows Vista, image size begins at about 2GB—compressed. Once this image is deployed, the size is often around 5GB or more, and there's no way to reduce it. If you add additional applications, drivers, or other files, this image obviously grows even larger.
So how will you deploy the image? Does your network have the necessary capacity? (10MB networks or non-switched networks are not sufficient.) If you want to use CDs, how many can you deal with? You'll need three or four. DVDs (with a capacity of 4.7GB each) are now easy to create, so you can deploy using DVD drives if you have them. (If not, consider adding DVD drives when buying the next round of PCs.)
With USB memory keys growing in size (as large as 4GB or more) and shrinking in price, it would be quite easy to use one for deploying Windows Vista, since you can make a bootable key as long as the computer's BIOS supports it.
Finally (though this doesn't relate to image size), take note that there is no longer an I386 directory. Instead, all components, whether installed or not, reside in the Windows directory (although not in the standard SYSTEM32 directory). When installing a new component, the necessary files will be pulled from this location.
2. Security Is Enhanced
A number of Windows Vista security enhancements will impact deployment. For example, configuring Windows Vista to support "low rights" users, where the logged-on user does not have administrator rights, is easier. Some applications failed to work on Windows XP when users did not have administrator access because they assumed they would have full access to the C: drive and all parts of the registry. With Windows Vista, applications that attempt to write to restricted areas will have those writes transparently redirected to other locations in the user's profile.
The second big change here is that non-administrators can load drivers. This lets users attach new devices without needing to call the help desk in tears.
The third difference you'll find is that Internet Explorer® can automatically install ActiveX® controls using elevated rights. A new service can perform these installations on the user's behalf (if, of course, the IT administrator allows this via Group Policy).
Some of you may currently be using Power User rights on Windows XP, but this really does not offer many benefits (in terms of restricting user rights) over simply granting full Administrator privileges. Because of this, the Power Users group in Windows Vista has been removed, although it can be put back if required using a separate security template that can be applied to an installation of Windows Vista.
Sometimes you will need administrator rights, but this doesn't mean you want to run with admin rights all the time. So Windows Vista adds User Access Control (UAC), which causes most user applications—even for Administrators—to run with restricted rights. For applications that require additional rights, UAC will prompt for permission, asking either for permission to run with elevated privileges or for other user credentials that can replace the logged-on users.
There are also enhancements to the firewall built into Windows Vista. The new firewall can now control both inbound and outbound traffic, while still being fully configurable via Group Policy.
Finally, BitLocker™ full-volume encryption, which is included with Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, allows the entire operating system volume to be encrypted. The volume can then be read only from within Windows Vista and only when the right keys are provided, either from the computer's built-in Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 chip, a USB key, or typed into the keyboard. (Note that only TPM 1.2 or later is supported
3. Windows Vista Is Componentized
One of the biggest architectural changes in Windows Vista is that it is now a completely componentized operating system. This affects deployment in the following ways.
Configuring which Windows Vista features should be installed requires configuring the components to be enabled. New tools, like the Windows System Image Manager, shown in Figure 1, assist with this.
Security updates, language packs, and service packs are simply components. Tools such as Package Manager (PKGMGR) can be used to apply these to Windows Vista.
Figure 1 Windows System Image Manager (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 1 Windows System Image Manager
In addition, all servicing can be performed offline or online. You can even apply changes to Windows Vista or a Windows Vista image when Windows Vista is not currently running. This is ideal for deployments: the operating system can be patched before it boots onto your network for the first time.
Drivers are also treated as components, so they can be added and removed easily—even offline. This means you can add drivers to existing images, even just-in-time (as the machine boots for the first time) during the deployment process. And this applies to mass-storage drivers as well; no longer do you need to create a new image just to add a new mass storage driver.
Windows Vista exposes more settings, with most components providing configurable options, so it's easier to set installation defaults that can be managed on an ongoing basis using Group policy. For a rundown of new tools in Windows Vista, see the sidebar
"Tools You Need; Tools to Forget."
Here’s a rundown of the tools you’ll be using when you roll out Windows Vista, followed by a list of the tools you can retire for good once Windows Vista arrives.
USE THESE:
*
SYSPREP This is the updated version, modified for Windows Vista.
*
SETUP A new installation tool for Windows Vista, replaces WINNT and WINNT32.
*
IMAGEX The new command-line tool for creating WIM images.
Windows System Image Manager A tool for creating and modifying unattend.xml files.
*
PEIMG The tool for customizing Windows PE 2.0 images.
Windows Deployment Services The new version of RIS, which adds the ability to deploy Windows Vista and Windows XP images, as well as Windows PE 2.0 boot images.
*
PNPUTIL This is the new tool for adding and removing drivers from the Windows Vista driver store.
*
PKGMGR Also new, this Windows Vista tool is used for servicing the operating system.
*
OCSETUP This replaces SYSOCMGR and is used for installing Windows components.
*
BCDEDIT A new Windows Vista tool for editing boot configuration data.
Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 This updated tool lets you assess whether your applications are compatible with Windows Vista.
User State Migration Tool 3.0 An updated tool for capturing and restoring user state, supports Windows XP and Windows Vista, as well as all versions of Office including 2007.
BitLocker The full-volume drive encryption capability included in Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
FORGET THESE:
* Remote Installation Services RIS has been replaced by Windows Deployment Services (WDS) but still offers legacy support on Windows Server 2003; RIPREP and RISETUP are not possible with Windows Vista.
* Setup Manager/Notepad Use Windows System Image Manager instead for editing unattended setup configuration files.
* WINNT.EXE and WINNT32.EXE Use SETUP instead.
* SYSOCMGR Replaced by OCSETUP, PKGMGR.
* MS-DOS Boot Floppies Forget them. Use Windows PE!
4. Text-Mode Installation Is Gone
The basic process used to install Windows XP has been unchanged since the earliest days of Windows NT®. This time-consuming procedure involved an initial text-mode installation step in which every operating system file was decompressed and installed, all registry entries were created, and all security was applied. Now with Windows Vista, this text-mode installation phase is completely gone. Instead, a new setup program performs the installation, applying a Windows Vista image to a computer.
Once this image is applied, it needs to be customized for the computer. This customization takes the place of what was called mini-setup in Windows XP and Windows 2000. The purpose is the same: the operating system picks the necessary settings and personality for the specific computer it was deployed to.
The image preparation process has also changed. With Windows XP, you would "Sysprep" a machine to prepare the reference operating system for deployment. With Windows Vista, you'll still run Sysprep.exe (installed by default in C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep), which will "generalize" the machine for duplication.
Windows Vista (any version) is provided on the DVD as an already-installed, generalized (Sysprepped) image, ready to deploy to any machine. Some customers may choose to deploy this image as-is (possibly injecting fixes or drivers using the servicing capabilities described earlier).
5. Boot.ini Is History
That's right, the Boot.ini file is not used in Windows Vista or in the new Windows PE 2.0. Instead, a new boot loader, bootmgr, reads boot configuration data from a special file named BCD. A brand new tool called bcdedit.exe (or a separate Windows Management Instrumentation or WMI provider) is used to maintain the contents of the BCD. A Windows PE 2.0 boot image can be configured in BCD too, making it easy to boot into either Windows Vista or Windows PE without making any other changes to the machine. This flexibility can be useful in recovery or maintenance scenarios.
6. Settings Are Configured in XML
With Windows XP (and previous versions of Windows PE) configuration information was stored in various text files. These text files have been replaced with an XML file.
* Sysprep.inf, which was used to configure how a Windows XP image is customized when deployed to a machine using a mini-setup.
* Wimbom.ini, which was used to configure Windows PE.
* Cmdlines.txt, which was used to specify a list of commands to execute during mini-setup.
Unattend.txt, which was used to configure how Windows XP is installed, has been replaced by unattend.xml. Unattend.xml also replaces three other files:
An example of unattend.xml can be downloaded from TechNet Magazine at microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/code06.aspx.
You may still use separate files if you want, though. You don't need to put all configuration items in a single unattend.xml file. The high-level schema of the new XML configuration file is well defined, with each phase of the deployment process represented. The actual configuration items are specified on the appropriate operating system components and these items are dynamically discovered from the components themselves.
With Windows XP, most IT professionals used Notepad to edit the various configuration files. You can still do that, but the Windows System Image Manager tool I discussed earlier can be used to inspect the Windows Vista image, determine what settings are available, and allow you to configure each one.
Another tool to aid deployment is the User State Migration Tool (USMT) 3.0, which is expected to be released at the same time as Windows Vista. It will also use XML configuration files in place of the .inf files that were used in previous versions. See "Migrating to Windows Vista Through the User State Migration Tool" for more information.
7. No More HAL Complications
With Windows XP, technical restrictions prevented the creation of a single image that could be deployed to all computers. Different hardware abstraction layers (HALs) meant you had to maintain multiple images. (For more on this see the Knowledge Base article "HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup") Most organizations needed two or three images per platform (x86 and x64) and some chose to have even more—though each image brings added costs and complexity.
In Windows Vista, those technical restrictions are gone; the operating system is able to detect which HAL is required and automatically install it.
8. Windows PE Rules
Windows PE 2.0, the new version that will be released with Windows Vista, is a key part of the deployment process. Even the standard DVD-based installation of Windows Vista uses Windows PE 2.0, and most organizations will be using it (often customized for the organization's specific needs) as part of their deployment processes.
Compared to MS-DOS®-based deployment, Windows PE 2.0 brings numerous benefits, including less time spent trying to find 16-bit real-mode drivers. (It's not even possible to find these any more for some newer network cards and mass storage adapters.) Better performance from 32-bit and 64-bit networking stacks and tools, as well as large memory support are also advantages. And don't forget support for tools such as Windows Scripting Host, VBScript, and hypertext applications.
Windows PE has been available for a few years (the latest version, Windows PE 2005, was released at the same time as Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1), but not all organizations could use it; it required that you have Software Assurance on your Windows desktop operating system licenses. With Windows PE 2.0, that's no longer the case. All organizations will be able to download Windows PE 2.0 from microsoft.com and use it freely for the purposes of deploying licensed copies of Windows Vista.
Like Windows Vista itself, Windows PE 2.0 is provided as an image that is componentized and can be serviced both online and off. As with Windows PE 2005, several optional components can be added, although Windows PE 2.0 includes some new ones: MSXML 3.0, Windows Recovery Environment, language packs, font packs, and so on. New tools like peimg.exe are provided for servicing Windows PE 2.0. Peimg.exe can also be used for adding drivers—including mass storage devices, which no longer require any special handling.
For more information on Windows PE 2.0, see Wes Miller's article in this issue of TechNet Magazine.
9. It's All about Images
With Windows XP, some companies used the image creation capabilities of the Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack or third-party image creation tools. There was no generic image creation tool available from Microsoft. That's changed with Windows Vista: new tools have been created to support the Windows Imaging (WIM) file format. Unlike many other image formats, WIM images are file-based, enabling them to be applied to an existing partition non-destructively. This has great advantages in deployment processes, since user state can be saved locally instead of on a network server, eliminating what is frequently the largest source of network traffic during a deployment.
Because WIM files are file-based images, they (obviously) are not sector-based, so there are no issues around different-sized disks or partitions. A WIM image contains only the contents of a single disk volume or partition, so if you have multiple partitions to capture, you create a separate image for each one. But each of these images can be stored in the same WIM file, since the WIM file format supports multiple images per file.
The WIM file format also supports single-instance storage, so duplicate files (even from different images) are automatically removed. Between this and the advanced compression techniques employed, WIM images are typically smaller than images created by other tools. However, because of the extra processing, they do take longer to create. This size versus performance trade-off is fair enough; since you typically capture the image only once and then deploy it many times, the network traffic savings can be substantial.
The IMAGEX command-line tool interfaces with the lower-level WIMGAPI API (which is fully documented for use in custom tools too), and is used to create and manipulate WIM images. It also provides a mechanism for mounting a WIM image as a file system. Once mounted, the image can be read and modified using standard Windows tools since it looks like a normal removable media drive. This facility opens up whole new servicing opportunities.
10. Deployment Is Language-Neutral
Windows XP supported different languages in two ways. You could either deploy localized versions of Windows XP, requiring a different image for each language, or you could deploy an English Multilanguage User Interface (MUI) version with added language packs. There were advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but in most cases organizations that needed to support multiple languages took the MUI route, dealing with the limitations of running with an operating system that was effectively English at its core. Organizations that worked only with one language typically chose to use only the localized versions.
Now with Windows Vista, the entire operating system is language-neutral. One or more language packs are added to this language-neutral core to create the image that is deployed (although only some versions of Windows Vista support multiple languages).
Servicing of Windows Vista is also language-neutral, so in many cases only one security update is needed for all languages. And configuration is language-neutral, so one unattend.xml can be used for all languages.Help Is Available
The changes I've described mean that the image creation and deployment processes you've been using for Windows XP will need to be updated. In some cases, these updates might be minor; in others (such as an MS-DOS-based process using cmdlines.txt), significant changes may be required. To help, Microsoft has created new tools, guidance, and step-by-step procedures. These are included in the Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007.
BDD 2007 breaks down the deployment process into more manageable pieces, with different teams managing each component. Guidance, checklists, and tools are provided for each team to help with the tasks they need to perform (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 BDD 2007 Breaks the Deployment Process into More Manageable Tasks (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 2 BDD 2007 Breaks the Deployment Process into More Manageable Tasks
BDD 2007 is currently available for download from connect.microsoft.com after you sign up for the open beta program. Contained in the download are all the required Windows Vista deployment tools, including Windows PE 2.0, ImageX, Windows System Image Manager, and USMT 3.0, along with documentation explaining how to use them in an end-to-end process. The final version of BDD 2007 will be released at about the same time as Windows Vista. For a look at BDDWorkbench, see Figure 3.
Figure 3 BDDWorkbench Helps You Manage Multiple Deployment Scenarios (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 3 BDDWorkbench Helps You Manage Multiple Deployment Scenarios
The goal of BDD 2007 is simplification. Even if you don't have an existing image creation and deployment process, you should be able to use BDD to set one up quickly. Two deployment methods are provided:
* Lite Touch, which was completely rewritten, requires user interaction to start deployment. It doesn't require any special infrastructure although it can utilize Windows Deployment Services, the next version of Remote Installation Service (RIS).
* Zero Touch, which requires no user intervention, is layered on top of the SMS 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack.
The new features in BDD 2007 include driver repository and injection, full computer backup processing, integration of all the Windows Vista deployment tools, and more. BDD 2007 will include all the source code for all of its automation tools, so you can modify it to meet your specific needs or copy and paste it into your own solutions. The source code is provided without restriction.
For more information on BDD 2007, see the TechNet Desktop Deployment center.
Posted by Jonathan at 4:38 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 7, 2007
How to download YouTube video?
How to Download YouTube Video? Orbit Downloader is a free YouTube video downloader which can help you to download FLV video from YouTube easily with great speed. Also Orbit Downloader can download and manage FLV videos from almost all of video-sharing websites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Myspace, Google, Yahoo, Metacafe, iFilm
You can download orbit dowloader here http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
Here's a sample on how to use the orbit downloader:
(1) Hover your mouse on the YouTube Video, making 'NBA Finals Lebron Etch A Sketch' for example, you will see a small button appeared near your mouse, like this:
(2) Click the button, Orbit Downloader will pop up a dialog to fetch the YouTube Video URL. It will need about 2 seconds.
(3) Soon, the "Create new download" dialog pop up. Click "OK",then the YouTube Video is being downloaded.
Posted by Jonathan at 5:20 PM 1 comments
Thursday, September 6, 2007
New Credit Card Scam
New Credit Card Scam ... Snopes.Com says this is true. See this site- http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/creditcard.aspThis one is pretty slick since they provide YOU with all theinformation, except the one piece they want.Note, the callers do not ask for your card number; they already have it. This information is worth reading. By understanding how the VISA&MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam works, you'll be better preparedto protect yourself.One of our employees was called on Wednesday from "VISA", and I was called on Thursday from "Master Card".The scam works like this: Person calling says, "This is (name), and I'mcalling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge numberis 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card which wasissued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Devicefor $497.99 from a Marketing company based in Arizona ?" When you say "No", the caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit toyour account. This is a company we have been watching and the chargesrange from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to(gives you your address), is that correct?"You say "yes". The caller continues - "I will be starting a Fraudinvestigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask forSecurity.You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then givesyou a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?" Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works. The caller then says,"I need to verify you are in possession of your card". He'll ask you to"turn your card over and look for some numbers". There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the next 3 are the securityNumbers' that verify you are the possessor of the card. These are thenumbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the 3 numbers to him. Afteryou tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, "That is correct, I justneeded to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?" After you sayNo, the caller then thanks you and states, "Don't hesitate to call backif you do", and hangs up.You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the Card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called backwithin 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did! The REAL VISASecurity Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card.Long story - short - we made a real fraud report and closed the VISAaccount. VISA is reissuing us a new number. What the scammers want isthe 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master card directly forverification of their conversation. The real VISA told us that theywill never ask for anything on the card as they already know theinformation since they issued the card! If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by thetime you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn'tmake, and by then it's almost too late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report.What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a"Jason Richardson of Master Card" with a word-for-word repeat of theVISA scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are takingseveral of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody weknow that this scam is happening.Please pass this on to all your family and friends. By informing each other, we protect each other.Aide SanchezOCTFCUFraud Investigator714.258.4000 x8160714.258.4229 fax
These tweaks don't specifically speed up anything in Windows, but they're likely to solve annoying little issues you've lived with for years.
Determine if you need more RAM. There are people who say, "You can't have too much RAM." These people must also say, "You can't have too much money," and have cartloads of it lying around for every PC in the house. The rest of us must find a balance between money and RAM, and that usually means only buying the amount we need. An easy way to find out how much RAM you really need is to use your system normally without restarting for at least a day. At the end of the day, open the Task Manager (pressing CTRL- ALT-DELETE opens it, for example) and click the Performance tab. Compare the value for "Commit Charge - Peak" to the amount of RAM you have. If the value is higher then your RAM, then you'll see a benefit to installing more memory. If it's less, then you're probably doing just fine, RAM-wise. To be sure, check this value over the course of several days. Note that if you've manually changed the size of the Paging File, you'll need to adjust it again after adding RAM. If you've told Windows to manage the size of the Paging File automatically, it will still do so after adding RAM.
Disable auto-reboot to help solve problems. When you encounter a significant crash and get a BSOD, WinXP normally displays it for a moment and then reboots the machine. This is probably the right action for an unattended server, but it makes diagnosing the error on a normal workstation/gaming PC rather troublesome. There's not enough time to write down the error, and if the crash occurred while you were away, you might not even realize there was a crash (and restart) to begin with. (Honestly, how often do you really check your error logs?) 60 April 2007 / www.computerpoweruser.com spotlight To keep the BSOD open indefinitely, open System from the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Then click the Settings button under Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck Automatically Restart in the System Failure section. This will take effect after a restart.
Boost Internet Explorer 7
Love it or leave it, IE is the world's mostpopular browser, and version 7 introduces new wrinkles that need attention.
Change the default search provider. If you want to change your search provider from, say, MSN to Google, click the down arrow icon next to the magnifying glass in the search field and choose Change Search Defaults. Choose your preferred search engine, click the Set Default button, and then OK.
Add or remove toolbars. IE7's sparse interface, complete with its lack of conventional toolbars, has frustrated a lot of experienced users. Right-clicking any empty area next to the tabs lets you add or remove toolbars, including a conventional menu bar (File, Edit, etc.). Be sure to unlock the toolbars (click View, point to Toolbars, and uncheck Lock The Toolbars) before you try to drag them to your desired locations.
Return to Internet Explorer 6. If you've hung with IE7 for as long as you can and you just don't like it (or if you frequent Web sites that don't play nice with IE7), you can go back to IE6. Just open Add or Remove Programs from the Control Panel and choose Internet Explorer 7. Windows will warn you that this may break certain security patches that you've downloaded after installing IE7, but most of those patches relate to IE7 itself. The process takes longer than you'd think (as does the first reboot afterwards) but in the end, you'll be greeted with the familiar IE6 you've come to know and, um, love.
Boost FireFox 2.0
With all of its extensions and themes, entire books have been written about getting the most from Mozilla Firefox. As such, we'll limit ourselves to just two.
Backup your Firefox "everything." You have probably accumulated a large Internet Explorer 7 might be the future of Web browsing for Microsoft, but it's far from perfect for everyone. Rolling back to IE 6, that trusty old mare, is fortunately not a difficult task. collection of themes, extensions, bookmarks, and passwords for Firefox. All of these things are gathered together into Mozilla Profiles, which are sometimes susceptible to corruption. A freeware tool, MozBackup (mozbackup.jasnapaka.com), can backup and restore your profiles with just a few clicks and makes the task of moving a Firefox installation from one computer to another a breeze. If you use Thunderbird for email, it also backs up and restores your mailstore.
Speed up browsing. This next set of modifications exemplifies what's possible Firefox has a host of configuration options to boost your browsing experience. Just type about:config in its Address Bar to access the goodies. CPU / April 2007 61 spotlight with Firefox, but it can be controversial. You can set Firefox to use multiple connections to a Web server to retrieve multiple files instead of just one. Some consider this approach as inconsiderate to Webmasters, because their servers must spend more effort serving you a page than someone else. That said, this can boost performance considerably and illustrates how to modify technical settings in Firefox. First, open Firefox and type about:config in the Address Bar and press ENTER, which displays the equivalent of Firefox's Registry. Next, type HTTP into the Filter field, which displays only those entries that have "http" within them. Then, do the following:
1. Change network.http.pipelining to true by double-clicking it;
2. Change network.http.pipelining. maxrequests to 8 by double-clicking it and entering 8 in the pop-up window;
3. Change network.http.max-persistant connections-per-server to 8;
4. Change network.http.max connections to 48;
5. Change network.http.proxy. pipelining to true;
6. Change network.http.max-persistant connections-per-proxy to 8; and
7. Right-click anywhere in this screen, and choose New Integer from the popup menu. Enter the Preference Name as nglayout.initialpaint.delay, and its Value as 0. Restart Firefox to enable the changes.
Boost iTunes & iPod
It stands to reason that if the iPod is the world's most popular MP3 player, then iTunes must be pretty darn popular, too. As an Apple product, it doesn't require a ton of internal tweaking, but various third-party utilities add a lot of functionality that Apple either forgot to add or didn't want to. Combined with just a few internal tweaks, iTunes can be almost anything you want it to be.
Import to MP3 for portability. If you have another device capable of playing MP3s, such as a DVD player, car stereo, or another MP3 player, you can have iTunes rip music into MP3 files directly instead of AAC files. Click Preferences from the Edit menu. Then, click the Advanced tab and the Importing subtab. Change the Import Using drop-down menu to MP3 Encoder and set the bit rate to whatever you prefer. Within the Importing subtab, you can also alter the way iTunes names your MP3 files. The raw MP3 files are stored in the iTunes music folder.
Hierarchical playlists. ITunes 7 can organize hundreds of playlists by arrang- ing them into collapsible folders—much the same way the Explorer lists directories—along the left pane. To create one, click File and New Folder. A new folder, named "Untitled Folder" appears, and iTunes selects it by default. Rename it and either drag existing playlists into it or leave the folder selected and click the Create A Playlist button to create a new playlist within that folder. Unfortunately, these folders don't appear within your iPod: All nested playlists appear the same as top-level playlists.
Add album art en masse. Although iTunes does a fair job of adding album art to the songs already in your library, a free utility called TuneSleeve (tunesleeve .googlepages.com) does it much better, allowing you to drag-and-drop graphics directly from Web pages into every song in an album at once. If given enough time, it also searches for art on the Internet by itself, assigning artwork to all songs in a playlist or your entire library. It is also able to find alternative artwork or multiple versions of the same album and lets you replace artwork iTunes has already found.
Use Your iPod without iTunes. YamiPod (www.yamipod.com) is a free- ware iPod manager and media player that's available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux—just copy the executables to your iPod and plug it into whatever com- puter you have. Yamipod will do the rest of the work for you. With it, you can play music, create playlists, add or extract songs directly from the iPod to your computer, remove duplicate tracks, find "lost" music files, import and export playlists in M3U format, and a lot more. In short, YamiPod lets you use your iPod the way you want to, rather than the way Apple does
Posted by Jonathan at 8:33 AM 0 comments
Friday, September 14, 2007
10 Things You Need to Know about Deploying Windows Vista
You've deployed Windows XP in the past, and now you're thinking ahead to Windows Vista. Whether you'll be deploying to 10, 100, or 100,000 computers, just knowing how the process has changed from Windows XP will make the deployment run much more smoothly.
So here are 10 deployment differences between Windows® XP and Windows Vista™ that you'll be glad you discovered when it's time to make the move.
1. Windows Vista Images Are Bigger
With Windows XP and Windows 2000, it was possible to create images that would fit easily on a single CD (less than 700MB). Even organizations that added applications, drivers, and utilities to their image typically ended up with an operating system image in the 1GB to 3GB range.
With Windows Vista, image size begins at about 2GB—compressed. Once this image is deployed, the size is often around 5GB or more, and there's no way to reduce it. If you add additional applications, drivers, or other files, this image obviously grows even larger.
So how will you deploy the image? Does your network have the necessary capacity? (10MB networks or non-switched networks are not sufficient.) If you want to use CDs, how many can you deal with? You'll need three or four. DVDs (with a capacity of 4.7GB each) are now easy to create, so you can deploy using DVD drives if you have them. (If not, consider adding DVD drives when buying the next round of PCs.)
With USB memory keys growing in size (as large as 4GB or more) and shrinking in price, it would be quite easy to use one for deploying Windows Vista, since you can make a bootable key as long as the computer's BIOS supports it.
Finally (though this doesn't relate to image size), take note that there is no longer an I386 directory. Instead, all components, whether installed or not, reside in the Windows directory (although not in the standard SYSTEM32 directory). When installing a new component, the necessary files will be pulled from this location.
2. Security Is Enhanced
A number of Windows Vista security enhancements will impact deployment. For example, configuring Windows Vista to support "low rights" users, where the logged-on user does not have administrator rights, is easier. Some applications failed to work on Windows XP when users did not have administrator access because they assumed they would have full access to the C: drive and all parts of the registry. With Windows Vista, applications that attempt to write to restricted areas will have those writes transparently redirected to other locations in the user's profile.
The second big change here is that non-administrators can load drivers. This lets users attach new devices without needing to call the help desk in tears.
The third difference you'll find is that Internet Explorer® can automatically install ActiveX® controls using elevated rights. A new service can perform these installations on the user's behalf (if, of course, the IT administrator allows this via Group Policy).
Some of you may currently be using Power User rights on Windows XP, but this really does not offer many benefits (in terms of restricting user rights) over simply granting full Administrator privileges. Because of this, the Power Users group in Windows Vista has been removed, although it can be put back if required using a separate security template that can be applied to an installation of Windows Vista.
Sometimes you will need administrator rights, but this doesn't mean you want to run with admin rights all the time. So Windows Vista adds User Access Control (UAC), which causes most user applications—even for Administrators—to run with restricted rights. For applications that require additional rights, UAC will prompt for permission, asking either for permission to run with elevated privileges or for other user credentials that can replace the logged-on users.
There are also enhancements to the firewall built into Windows Vista. The new firewall can now control both inbound and outbound traffic, while still being fully configurable via Group Policy.
Finally, BitLocker™ full-volume encryption, which is included with Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, allows the entire operating system volume to be encrypted. The volume can then be read only from within Windows Vista and only when the right keys are provided, either from the computer's built-in Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 chip, a USB key, or typed into the keyboard. (Note that only TPM 1.2 or later is supported
3. Windows Vista Is Componentized
One of the biggest architectural changes in Windows Vista is that it is now a completely componentized operating system. This affects deployment in the following ways.
Configuring which Windows Vista features should be installed requires configuring the components to be enabled. New tools, like the Windows System Image Manager, shown in Figure 1, assist with this.
Security updates, language packs, and service packs are simply components. Tools such as Package Manager (PKGMGR) can be used to apply these to Windows Vista.
Figure 1 Windows System Image Manager (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 1 Windows System Image Manager
In addition, all servicing can be performed offline or online. You can even apply changes to Windows Vista or a Windows Vista image when Windows Vista is not currently running. This is ideal for deployments: the operating system can be patched before it boots onto your network for the first time.
Drivers are also treated as components, so they can be added and removed easily—even offline. This means you can add drivers to existing images, even just-in-time (as the machine boots for the first time) during the deployment process. And this applies to mass-storage drivers as well; no longer do you need to create a new image just to add a new mass storage driver.
Windows Vista exposes more settings, with most components providing configurable options, so it's easier to set installation defaults that can be managed on an ongoing basis using Group policy. For a rundown of new tools in Windows Vista, see the sidebar
"Tools You Need; Tools to Forget."
Here’s a rundown of the tools you’ll be using when you roll out Windows Vista, followed by a list of the tools you can retire for good once Windows Vista arrives.
USE THESE:
*
SYSPREP This is the updated version, modified for Windows Vista.
*
SETUP A new installation tool for Windows Vista, replaces WINNT and WINNT32.
*
IMAGEX The new command-line tool for creating WIM images.
Windows System Image Manager A tool for creating and modifying unattend.xml files.
*
PEIMG The tool for customizing Windows PE 2.0 images.
Windows Deployment Services The new version of RIS, which adds the ability to deploy Windows Vista and Windows XP images, as well as Windows PE 2.0 boot images.
*
PNPUTIL This is the new tool for adding and removing drivers from the Windows Vista driver store.
*
PKGMGR Also new, this Windows Vista tool is used for servicing the operating system.
*
OCSETUP This replaces SYSOCMGR and is used for installing Windows components.
*
BCDEDIT A new Windows Vista tool for editing boot configuration data.
Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 This updated tool lets you assess whether your applications are compatible with Windows Vista.
User State Migration Tool 3.0 An updated tool for capturing and restoring user state, supports Windows XP and Windows Vista, as well as all versions of Office including 2007.
BitLocker The full-volume drive encryption capability included in Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
FORGET THESE:
* Remote Installation Services RIS has been replaced by Windows Deployment Services (WDS) but still offers legacy support on Windows Server 2003; RIPREP and RISETUP are not possible with Windows Vista.
* Setup Manager/Notepad Use Windows System Image Manager instead for editing unattended setup configuration files.
* WINNT.EXE and WINNT32.EXE Use SETUP instead.
* SYSOCMGR Replaced by OCSETUP, PKGMGR.
* MS-DOS Boot Floppies Forget them. Use Windows PE!
4. Text-Mode Installation Is Gone
The basic process used to install Windows XP has been unchanged since the earliest days of Windows NT®. This time-consuming procedure involved an initial text-mode installation step in which every operating system file was decompressed and installed, all registry entries were created, and all security was applied. Now with Windows Vista, this text-mode installation phase is completely gone. Instead, a new setup program performs the installation, applying a Windows Vista image to a computer.
Once this image is applied, it needs to be customized for the computer. This customization takes the place of what was called mini-setup in Windows XP and Windows 2000. The purpose is the same: the operating system picks the necessary settings and personality for the specific computer it was deployed to.
The image preparation process has also changed. With Windows XP, you would "Sysprep" a machine to prepare the reference operating system for deployment. With Windows Vista, you'll still run Sysprep.exe (installed by default in C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep), which will "generalize" the machine for duplication.
Windows Vista (any version) is provided on the DVD as an already-installed, generalized (Sysprepped) image, ready to deploy to any machine. Some customers may choose to deploy this image as-is (possibly injecting fixes or drivers using the servicing capabilities described earlier).
5. Boot.ini Is History
That's right, the Boot.ini file is not used in Windows Vista or in the new Windows PE 2.0. Instead, a new boot loader, bootmgr, reads boot configuration data from a special file named BCD. A brand new tool called bcdedit.exe (or a separate Windows Management Instrumentation or WMI provider) is used to maintain the contents of the BCD. A Windows PE 2.0 boot image can be configured in BCD too, making it easy to boot into either Windows Vista or Windows PE without making any other changes to the machine. This flexibility can be useful in recovery or maintenance scenarios.
6. Settings Are Configured in XML
With Windows XP (and previous versions of Windows PE) configuration information was stored in various text files. These text files have been replaced with an XML file.
* Sysprep.inf, which was used to configure how a Windows XP image is customized when deployed to a machine using a mini-setup.
* Wimbom.ini, which was used to configure Windows PE.
* Cmdlines.txt, which was used to specify a list of commands to execute during mini-setup.
Unattend.txt, which was used to configure how Windows XP is installed, has been replaced by unattend.xml. Unattend.xml also replaces three other files:
An example of unattend.xml can be downloaded from TechNet Magazine at microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/code06.aspx.
You may still use separate files if you want, though. You don't need to put all configuration items in a single unattend.xml file. The high-level schema of the new XML configuration file is well defined, with each phase of the deployment process represented. The actual configuration items are specified on the appropriate operating system components and these items are dynamically discovered from the components themselves.
With Windows XP, most IT professionals used Notepad to edit the various configuration files. You can still do that, but the Windows System Image Manager tool I discussed earlier can be used to inspect the Windows Vista image, determine what settings are available, and allow you to configure each one.
Another tool to aid deployment is the User State Migration Tool (USMT) 3.0, which is expected to be released at the same time as Windows Vista. It will also use XML configuration files in place of the .inf files that were used in previous versions. See "Migrating to Windows Vista Through the User State Migration Tool" for more information.
7. No More HAL Complications
With Windows XP, technical restrictions prevented the creation of a single image that could be deployed to all computers. Different hardware abstraction layers (HALs) meant you had to maintain multiple images. (For more on this see the Knowledge Base article "HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup") Most organizations needed two or three images per platform (x86 and x64) and some chose to have even more—though each image brings added costs and complexity.
In Windows Vista, those technical restrictions are gone; the operating system is able to detect which HAL is required and automatically install it.
8. Windows PE Rules
Windows PE 2.0, the new version that will be released with Windows Vista, is a key part of the deployment process. Even the standard DVD-based installation of Windows Vista uses Windows PE 2.0, and most organizations will be using it (often customized for the organization's specific needs) as part of their deployment processes.
Compared to MS-DOS®-based deployment, Windows PE 2.0 brings numerous benefits, including less time spent trying to find 16-bit real-mode drivers. (It's not even possible to find these any more for some newer network cards and mass storage adapters.) Better performance from 32-bit and 64-bit networking stacks and tools, as well as large memory support are also advantages. And don't forget support for tools such as Windows Scripting Host, VBScript, and hypertext applications.
Windows PE has been available for a few years (the latest version, Windows PE 2005, was released at the same time as Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1), but not all organizations could use it; it required that you have Software Assurance on your Windows desktop operating system licenses. With Windows PE 2.0, that's no longer the case. All organizations will be able to download Windows PE 2.0 from microsoft.com and use it freely for the purposes of deploying licensed copies of Windows Vista.
Like Windows Vista itself, Windows PE 2.0 is provided as an image that is componentized and can be serviced both online and off. As with Windows PE 2005, several optional components can be added, although Windows PE 2.0 includes some new ones: MSXML 3.0, Windows Recovery Environment, language packs, font packs, and so on. New tools like peimg.exe are provided for servicing Windows PE 2.0. Peimg.exe can also be used for adding drivers—including mass storage devices, which no longer require any special handling.
For more information on Windows PE 2.0, see Wes Miller's article in this issue of TechNet Magazine.
9. It's All about Images
With Windows XP, some companies used the image creation capabilities of the Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack or third-party image creation tools. There was no generic image creation tool available from Microsoft. That's changed with Windows Vista: new tools have been created to support the Windows Imaging (WIM) file format. Unlike many other image formats, WIM images are file-based, enabling them to be applied to an existing partition non-destructively. This has great advantages in deployment processes, since user state can be saved locally instead of on a network server, eliminating what is frequently the largest source of network traffic during a deployment.
Because WIM files are file-based images, they (obviously) are not sector-based, so there are no issues around different-sized disks or partitions. A WIM image contains only the contents of a single disk volume or partition, so if you have multiple partitions to capture, you create a separate image for each one. But each of these images can be stored in the same WIM file, since the WIM file format supports multiple images per file.
The WIM file format also supports single-instance storage, so duplicate files (even from different images) are automatically removed. Between this and the advanced compression techniques employed, WIM images are typically smaller than images created by other tools. However, because of the extra processing, they do take longer to create. This size versus performance trade-off is fair enough; since you typically capture the image only once and then deploy it many times, the network traffic savings can be substantial.
The IMAGEX command-line tool interfaces with the lower-level WIMGAPI API (which is fully documented for use in custom tools too), and is used to create and manipulate WIM images. It also provides a mechanism for mounting a WIM image as a file system. Once mounted, the image can be read and modified using standard Windows tools since it looks like a normal removable media drive. This facility opens up whole new servicing opportunities.
10. Deployment Is Language-Neutral
Windows XP supported different languages in two ways. You could either deploy localized versions of Windows XP, requiring a different image for each language, or you could deploy an English Multilanguage User Interface (MUI) version with added language packs. There were advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but in most cases organizations that needed to support multiple languages took the MUI route, dealing with the limitations of running with an operating system that was effectively English at its core. Organizations that worked only with one language typically chose to use only the localized versions.
Now with Windows Vista, the entire operating system is language-neutral. One or more language packs are added to this language-neutral core to create the image that is deployed (although only some versions of Windows Vista support multiple languages).
Servicing of Windows Vista is also language-neutral, so in many cases only one security update is needed for all languages. And configuration is language-neutral, so one unattend.xml can be used for all languages.Help Is Available
The changes I've described mean that the image creation and deployment processes you've been using for Windows XP will need to be updated. In some cases, these updates might be minor; in others (such as an MS-DOS-based process using cmdlines.txt), significant changes may be required. To help, Microsoft has created new tools, guidance, and step-by-step procedures. These are included in the Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007.
BDD 2007 breaks down the deployment process into more manageable pieces, with different teams managing each component. Guidance, checklists, and tools are provided for each team to help with the tasks they need to perform (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 BDD 2007 Breaks the Deployment Process into More Manageable Tasks (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 2 BDD 2007 Breaks the Deployment Process into More Manageable Tasks
BDD 2007 is currently available for download from connect.microsoft.com after you sign up for the open beta program. Contained in the download are all the required Windows Vista deployment tools, including Windows PE 2.0, ImageX, Windows System Image Manager, and USMT 3.0, along with documentation explaining how to use them in an end-to-end process. The final version of BDD 2007 will be released at about the same time as Windows Vista. For a look at BDDWorkbench, see Figure 3.
Figure 3 BDDWorkbench Helps You Manage Multiple Deployment Scenarios (Click the image for a smaller view)
Figure 3 BDDWorkbench Helps You Manage Multiple Deployment Scenarios
The goal of BDD 2007 is simplification. Even if you don't have an existing image creation and deployment process, you should be able to use BDD to set one up quickly. Two deployment methods are provided:
* Lite Touch, which was completely rewritten, requires user interaction to start deployment. It doesn't require any special infrastructure although it can utilize Windows Deployment Services, the next version of Remote Installation Service (RIS).
* Zero Touch, which requires no user intervention, is layered on top of the SMS 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack.
The new features in BDD 2007 include driver repository and injection, full computer backup processing, integration of all the Windows Vista deployment tools, and more. BDD 2007 will include all the source code for all of its automation tools, so you can modify it to meet your specific needs or copy and paste it into your own solutions. The source code is provided without restriction.
For more information on BDD 2007, see the TechNet Desktop Deployment center.
Posted by Jonathan at 4:38 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 7, 2007
How to download YouTube video?
How to Download YouTube Video? Orbit Downloader is a free YouTube video downloader which can help you to download FLV video from YouTube easily with great speed. Also Orbit Downloader can download and manage FLV videos from almost all of video-sharing websites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Myspace, Google, Yahoo, Metacafe, iFilm
You can download orbit dowloader here http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
Here's a sample on how to use the orbit downloader:
(1) Hover your mouse on the YouTube Video, making 'NBA Finals Lebron Etch A Sketch' for example, you will see a small button appeared near your mouse, like this:
(2) Click the button, Orbit Downloader will pop up a dialog to fetch the YouTube Video URL. It will need about 2 seconds.
(3) Soon, the "Create new download" dialog pop up. Click "OK",then the YouTube Video is being downloaded.
Posted by Jonathan at 5:20 PM 1 comments
Thursday, September 6, 2007
New Credit Card Scam
New Credit Card Scam ... Snopes.Com says this is true. See this site- http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/creditcard.aspThis one is pretty slick since they provide YOU with all theinformation, except the one piece they want.Note, the callers do not ask for your card number; they already have it. This information is worth reading. By understanding how the VISA&MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam works, you'll be better preparedto protect yourself.One of our employees was called on Wednesday from "VISA", and I was called on Thursday from "Master Card".The scam works like this: Person calling says, "This is (name), and I'mcalling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge numberis 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card which wasissued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Devicefor $497.99 from a Marketing company based in Arizona ?" When you say "No", the caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit toyour account. This is a company we have been watching and the chargesrange from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to(gives you your address), is that correct?"You say "yes". The caller continues - "I will be starting a Fraudinvestigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask forSecurity.You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then givesyou a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?" Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works. The caller then says,"I need to verify you are in possession of your card". He'll ask you to"turn your card over and look for some numbers". There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the next 3 are the securityNumbers' that verify you are the possessor of the card. These are thenumbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the 3 numbers to him. Afteryou tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, "That is correct, I justneeded to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?" After you sayNo, the caller then thanks you and states, "Don't hesitate to call backif you do", and hangs up.You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the Card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called backwithin 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did! The REAL VISASecurity Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card.Long story - short - we made a real fraud report and closed the VISAaccount. VISA is reissuing us a new number. What the scammers want isthe 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master card directly forverification of their conversation. The real VISA told us that theywill never ask for anything on the card as they already know theinformation since they issued the card! If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by thetime you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn'tmake, and by then it's almost too late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report.What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a"Jason Richardson of Master Card" with a word-for-word repeat of theVISA scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are takingseveral of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody weknow that this scam is happening.Please pass this on to all your family and friends. By informing each other, we protect each other.Aide SanchezOCTFCUFraud Investigator714.258.4000 x8160714.258.4229 fax
increase your internet connection bandwidth by 25%
Increasing your Internet Connection Bandwidth By 25%
For some reasons by default upon installation of your Windows XP Win 2000 Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC, etc.
Well you can have the option to override the default setting "Break the Rules" , If u change it to 0 then the 20 % incrase in your bandwidth.
Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor, then go to:
1.Local Computer Policy
2.Computer Configuration
3.Administrative Templates
4.Network
5.QOS Packet Scheduler
6.Limit Reservable Bandwidth.
7.Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth.
It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO "0". This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20% (It works on Win 2000 as well.)
Posted by Jonathan at 3:43 PM 1 comments
Disable and Turn Off Windows Vista Search Indexer and Indexing Service
Windows Vista has greatly enhanced its search algorithm where the search process is now not only faster, but users can also easily search for almost all kind of files, documents, pictures, videos, emails and contacts in Outlook 2007, and even commands or application programs’ executables. To achieve the fast searching speed, indexing service plays a pivotal role. Windows Vista starts to crawl and index files on hard disks right after installed with a low priority background process. If you notice that your hard drive activity LED light is constantly flashing even if computer is idle, this is probably due to indexer at work.This is supposedly the case - indexing at system idle period in order to minimize the performance penalty affected on normal usage. However, this may not be the case in Vista, as the search indexing related processes such as SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost and SearchIndexer actively running even though computer is processing other more critical tasks or running important applications, effectively slow down overall computer performance by sucking up important CPU, memory and other system resources.
So to speed up Vista, users may want to turn off and disable the search indexer and indexing service. You can and should also disable the indexing of files if you’re using other desktop search utility such as Google Desktop Search and etc. If you don’t mind the slower searching speed when performing searches, the indexing has no meaningful use to you too. There are several ways to do this, as listed at the guide below.
Disable Windows Search Service
This method effectively stop and disable all search indexing processes, and is the recommended way.
1. Click on Start button, then select Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools, and double click on Services applet. Alternatively, simply type “Services” (without quotes) in Start Search box.
2. If User Account Control asks for permission, click Continue.
3. Locate an service named Windows Search. Right click on Windows Search, and then select Properties on contextual menu.
4 Click on Stop button to stop the indexing service immediately.
5 O the Startup Type dropdown box, select Disabled.
6. Click on OK button.
To re-enable the Windows Seearch, simply change back the Startup Type.
Disable Indexing on Drives
This method allows users to selectively disable indexing on certain drives which rarely used or searched. However, it may take a long time to apply new attributes to all files, folders and sub-folders to exclude them from indexing.
1. Open Windows Explorer from Accessories.
2. Right click on the drive (or drive letter) that you want to turn off the indexing.
3. Select Properties on the contextual menu.
4. Unselect (untick) the Index this drive for faster searching option.
5. Click Apply or OK button.
To re-include the drive, simply select the option again.
Indexing Options Remove or Exclude Indexed Locations in Control Panel
This method does not turn off indexing service. Instead, it just excludes deselected folders from search index, or deselect folders from included list. The indexer processes may still run after you remove or exclude everything.
1. Click on Start button.
2. Click on Control Panel.
3. Click on System and Maintenance.
4. Click on Indexing Options.
5. To remove an Included Location, simply click on Modify button, and then untick the checkbox for respective folders under the “Change selected locations” box. To remove indexing on Start Menu and/or Users folder, click on “Advanced” button at Indexing Options dialog or “Show all locations” in Indexed Locations dialog. UAC access request continue required. Click on Start Menu and Users once at “Summary of selected locations” box if you do not see the checkbox for them.
To re-enable, simply tick back the folders.
Posted by Jonathan at 9:54 AM 0 comments
10 Ways and Secrets to Improve Vista Performance
Windows Vista has some new security and functional features with superior, elegant and beautiful visual experience, such as Windows Aero Glass Transparency effect, Flip 3D and etc. But to have and enable all these features, there is price to be paid, as there is limitation to the capability of computer on how fast it can run. However, if you feel that your Vista performance is below par and slow, there is some tricks that can help Vista to run faster, other than applying various updates such as performance and reliability updates and Service Pack 1 (SP1).
1. Add More Memory (RAM)
Undeniable, Windows Vista consumes a lot of memory. Windows XP can run and fly under system with specification of only 512 MB, but Vista will crawl with this ‘low’ specs. In fact, 1G is not enough, and 2G is probably considered just a ‘entry level’ memory level for Vista. To enable and turn on all special visual graphical effects, it’s recommended to upgrade to 4GB of memory. Luckily, the RAM module is getting cheaper and cheaper nowadays. Money to buy additional memory for faster speed and better experience will surely worthwhile to spend without regret.
2. Use ReadyBoost
If you own a notebook or laptop computer, or your computer no longer has any extra memory slot available, or already hit the maximum RAM supported by motherboard. In this case, Vista has another feature, called ReadyBoost, which allows the system to use ReadyBoost compliant USB flash based memory (USB flash drive, pen drive, memory key, USB key, thumb drive, flash memory all belongs to this category) to expand the memory. It also has the added advantage where the speed to retrieve data from flash memory is faster than virtual memory files stored by physical hard disk drive. If you have a USB flash memory drive (or you can buy one as it’s even cheaper than RAM, but make sure it’s high speed and support ReadyBoost), and use it to turn on ReadyBoost feature, you can control the space used by ReadyBoost. This is useful to keep certain amount of space free to store your own data.
3. Use a Good Video Accelerator Card or GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) Display Adapter
Just not a long while ago, hard disk drive (HDD) still spinning at slow 5400 RPM with no cache, and together with CPU and RAM, are thought to be the bottleneck for a performance driven computer. However, this trend has changed. With more and more graphics intensive application, especially on Vista with outstanding visual affect, the bottleneck is actually due to graphics card or display adapter and Video RAM (VRAM). The built-in on-board video card which integrated in the motherboard, such as Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) or Extreme Graphics, is simply not good enough. The lower throughput performance of on board graphics card is caused especially by performance penalty imposed as both the CPU and GPU have to access to main memory over the same bus, as the video card is sharing the computer’s main memory for storage. Thus a good high end video card is necessary with large amount of dedicated VRAM. And, if you want to play games in Vista, the video card must support DirectX 10.
4. Delete and Disable Extra Unnecessary Startup Programs
When you buy a computer system pre-installed with Windows Vista, you will find that there are a lot of extra, additional, unnecessary, and worse useless programs automatically run themselves on startup. These applications include, but not limited to, drivers and software provided by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer), anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, instant messaging program and many many more. These programs, most are not used or little used, not only take up memory resources when they’re running silently in background, but will also slow down the computer start up speed. So, for the startup items that you not using, it’s best to disable them from starting up. To do so, use System Configuration Tool (MSConfig) that comes with Vista.
5. Turn Off Appearance Visual Effects
Windows Vista provides a lot of appearance improvement visual effects such as animated controls and elements inside Windows, transparent glass, desktop composition, window animation when minimizing and maximizing, smooth edge of screen fonts, show window contents while dragging, menu fading and shadow effect, shadow on mouse pointer and etc. All these features will use memory and CPU resources. Turning off and disabling these visual effects in System Properties’ Performance Options (select “Adjust for best performance”) will allow system operation to run faster.
6. Adjust Indexing Options
Unlike previous operating system, Vista has done tremendous improvement to hard disk search function, but the searching depends greatly on full indexing done on files and programs stored on the HDD hard disk drive. The index allows files, folders and programs can be found faster, and almost immediately when searching is done. When indexing process is running, it will affect and slow down the speed of other running program. The workaround to this problem is to enable indexing only on folders or drives that contain documents you will search, and exclude the rest of the area from indexing. To adjust which place you want to include or exclude in indexing, open Indexing Options under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. Using this trick, overall computer performance can be improved without disabling indexing.
7. Disk Cleanup and Defragmentation
An old trick to tune up Windows system. Fragmented data on hard disk will slow down the computer operation. Vista provides two utilities, namely Disk Cleanup to delete and remove unused files, files in recycle bin, log files, dump files, downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, hibernation files, thumbnails and other temporary files, and Disk Defragmenter to defragment the disk drivers. Both tools can be found by clicking on Start button, then go to All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools. You can also schedule the defragment program to run automatically periodically to tune the performance of system. Using third party defragment tool is possible too.
8. Change the Power Plan Setting
Adjust and change the preferred power plan setting to “High Performance”. This setting can be set in the Power Options applet under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. By default, Vista will set preferred power plan option to “Balanced”, restricting amount of power supply it can consumes to 50% under normal circumstances. Of course, you have to be prepared for higher electricity bill.
9. Turn Off Windows Sidebar
Windows Sidebar is cool, but if you’re not using it, or not fully utilize sidebar, turning if off will save some system resources. To close Sidebar permanently, right click on Sidebar icon on notification area (system tray), and select “Exit”, then answer “No” if prompted whether want to start Sidebar automatically when Windows starts. You can also right click on sidebar itself and then select Properties to adjust whether to start Sidebar on Windows boots up setting. If you don’t want to disable Sidebar, remove as much as possible unnecessary gadgets and plugins.
10. Turn Off Windows Aero
If you still feel your system is not fast enough, turning off and disable Windows Aero theme will likely to make the system flies and run a lot faster. Windows Aero Glass effect is one of the most attractive feature in Vista, and one of the main reason people is migrating to Vista. So it’s up to your choice of performance, or visual effect. To disable Aero, right click on desktop, select “Personalize”, then click on “Windows Color and Appearance” link. Next click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link. In the Appearance Setting dialog window, set Color Scheme to anything other than Windows Aero in the drop down menu. “Windows Vista Classic” is a natural choice.
Posted by Jonathan at 8:46 AM 1 comments
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Speed Up Windows
If the early reviews of Windows Vista tell us anything, it's that many people will continue using Windows XP for a very long time. As such, now may be the best time to review some of the very best tips, tweaks, and utilities that keep WinXP running at peak efficiency, along with some of the most popular Windows applications, such as Word, iTunes, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. These tips are squarely aimed at power users, so we'll be working directly with the Registry and infrequently used Preferences screens at times. We'll avoid beginner's tips, so check out our Web site to cover the basics. Also, be sure to check out our "Backup! Backup! Backup!" sidebar before proceeding.
Speed Up Windows
Who wouldn't want a faster Windows? Better yet, you can apply any of these tweaks independently from any of the others.
Reset the Icon Cache. If you're experiencing a stutter or lag as you browse through your Start menu which can become huge over the years), or your Desktop icons disappear and reappear regularly, our Icon Cache might be corrupted and/or filled with old icons. Refresh the Icon Cache by deleting the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually C:/Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data). WinXP will automatically re-create it.
Kill the Indexing Service. The Windows Indexing Service lets you perform "advanced searches" on local directories and network stores, which sounds good in theory. In practice, the process of indexing files seems to occur at the worst moments, and the searches it performs aren't nearly as good as similar tools, such as Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search (both free). You can disable it from the Services window; click Start and Run, type services.msc, and press ENTER. Right-click Indexing Service, click Properties, and set Startup Type to Manual. Remove it permanently by opening Add/Remove Programs, clicking the Add/Remove Windows Components button, and unchecking Indexing Service.
Speed up all Explorer windows. When you open My Computer or an Explorer window, you may notice all your icons first appear as generic Windows icons before slowly filling in. You could also see the "wagging magnifying glass" icon appear before anything else. This is Windows automatically searching for network printers and stores. If you aren't on a LAN or would prefer to manually search for network resources, stop the automated process by opening My Computer and clicking Folder Options from the Tools menu. Click the View tab and uncheck Automatically Search For Network Folders And Printers.
Speed up Explorer's Detailed View. Explorer's Detailed View (choose Details from the View menu) displays information about your files in columns. If you have column headings such as "Pages" or "Bit Rate," then Windows must "peek into" every file to populate those columns, which can take a lot of time. To speed things up, turn off any columns you don't really need to see by right-clicking a column header and unchecking anything you don't want. Click More at the bottom of the pop-up menu in order to see the complete list of available columns. 56 April 2007 / http://www.computerpoweruser.com/
Make menus appear faster (or slower). You may think Windows works as fast as it can to display menus (including the Start menu). In reality, there's a built-in delay between when you click your mouse and when the menu appears. Reducing or eliminating the delay makes Windows "feel" much faster. After running Regedit, find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\Desktop\ and select MenuShow- Delay. Next, right-click the entry and select Modify and reduce the number to around 100. Experiment to find a number that suits your system and mood. Increase the number to slow menus down.
Speed up folder access by disabling the Last Access Date. Windows updates the time and date a user accessed a file or folder, and, needless to say, because Windows accesses lots of files and folders all the time, updating these stamps can significantly tax your system. If you don't need to know when you (someone else) last accessed a file or folder, you can disable this feature with a Registry edit. Open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL _MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENT CONTROLSET\CONTROL\FileSys tem. Right-click anywhere in the right pane, point to New, and click DWORD Value. Create a new DWORD Value called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate; then right-click it and click Modify from the pop-up menu. Finally, change the Value Data to 1.
Reduce CPU usage when selecting AVI files. Similar to the Explorer's Detailed View, when you select an AVI file in Explorer, Windows attempts to determine the file's width and height to properly display it in its Properties dia- log box. Unfortunately, if the file is bro- ken or if this information isn't stored in the AVI's header frames, Windows scans the entire AVI file (consuming nearly 100% of the CPU time all the while) looking for the information. And if that AVI file is hundreds of megabytes (or more), then you're in for a long wait. If you can live without this information, tell Windows to stop searching with this Registry edit: Go to HKEY_CLASSES _ROOT\SYSTEMFILEASSOCIA- TIONS\.AVI\SHELLEX\PropertyHandler.
Speed up a sluggish Start menu by axing personalized folders as one of your options. This only works with the Classic Start menu. The Startup And Recovery dialog box offers a couple of useful tweaks to assist with crashed programs and dual-boot systems. Here, you can prevent your system from automatically restarting after a BSOD or hurry through the boot menu if you have two Windows OSes on the same machine. Track down the Default value, which should be {87D62D94-71B3-4b9a- 9489-5FE6850DC73E}, and delete it. Microsoft has also addressed this issue with a hotfix if you'd prefer to avoid rooting around in the Registry for this specific problem. Open a Web browser and go to support.microsoft.com/kb /822430 for more information.
Speed up shutting down. When you choose to shut down from the Start menu, Windows attempts to close any open programs and windows. Although this usually works well, a stubborn pro- gram or error condition may leave Win- dows hanging for a full minute before shutting down (or restarting). By chang- ing four Registry keys, you can speed the process up significantly. After you
open Regedit: Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000; Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\ HungAppTimeout from 5000 to 1000; Change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\ CONTROL\WaitToKillServiceTimeout from 20000 to 1000; and
Change HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000.
Reloading Registry changes without restarting. If you're experimenting with changes to the Registry, restarting your system every time you want to see changes take effect may become annoying and consume a lot of time. Shutting down Explorer.exe and relaunching it, however, rereads the Registry. There are a lot of ways to do this, but here's our favorite method: First, close any open applications and files. Next, bring up the Windows Task Manager (pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE is the fastest way), and click the Processes tab. Select Explorer.exe and click End Process. Click Yes to accept the Task Manager Warning if you receive one. (Your Desktop icons should disappear at this point.) Next, click the Task Manager's File pull-down menu and click New Task (Run). Finally, run Explorer; the Desktop icons will return and the Registry changes should be in effect.
Load Windows faster with a static IP address. Most wireless and wired Ethernet cards are, by default, config- ured to receive an assigned IP address via CPU / April 2007 57 spotlight If Windows is automatically searching for networked folders and printers, it can make icons display dreadfully slow the first time you open My Computer. Disabling this feature can speed things up. DHCP at boot time. This usually only takes a second or two if your DHCP server is working properly, but if there's ever a problem—the DHCP server is down, a network cable is unplugged, or you have a slow/cheap router—Windows can sit around for a long time, waiting for that IP address. Most of the time, in a home environment, you'll always have the same IP address assigned to you, so why not cut out the DHCP wait altogether and assign a static IP address to your PC? Assuming you're behind a router, load its configuration utility and note what IP addresses the router is assigning via DHCP. Open Network Connections in the Control Panel, right-click your network card or Local Area Connection, and click Properties. In the dialog box that opens, select Internet Prototol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. Click the Use The Follow IP Address, assign yourself a static IP address (such as 192.168.1.10), and set the DNS server address to the IP address of your router. Reboot and try to access the Internet. If you can't, simply reset your connection to DHCP.
Disable automatic media speed sensing on network cards. Although this doesn't frequently happen, Windows occasionally takes a moment to check the Ethernet speed of your NICs during these times, CPU utilization can zoom to nearly 100%, causing a hiccup. You can stop Windows from checking the connection speed by manually specifying it yourself. Open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click Device Manager. Expand the Network Adapters entry, right-click your NIC, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the dialog box that opens, click the Advanced tab and choose Link Speed & Duplex, select the speed of your LAN (for example, 100Mbps/Full Duplex) from the Value drop-down menu.
Convert FAT32 volumes to NTFS. Most benchmarks show that NTFS is faster than FAT32, but other NTFS benefits include better security, fewer fragmentation issues, and general stability improvements. Although any new system that came with WinXP almost certainly used drives formatted with NTFS, you might still have a FAT32 drive if you upgraded your system from an earlier version of Windows.
To make the jump from FAT32 to NTFS, follow these steps:
1. Back up the drive's data.
2. Click Start and Run, type cmd, and press ENTER to open a command prompt window.
3. Type vol c: and press ENTER to find and note the volume label of partition. (This assumes you're converting the C drive; change the drive letter approprimately here and in step 4.)
4. Type convert c: /fs:ntfs and press ENTER.
5. When prompted, enter the volume name you noted in step 3.
6. Answer "y" to the remaining questions.The system will reboot and convert the volume. The first reboot after conversion may take a few minutes longer than usual, but this will only happen once.
Disable redundant 8.3 file names. As long as you're removing vestigial file systems to increase speed, why not remove vestigial file naming conventions? WinXP saves each file with two different file names. One is nice and long and corresponds to what you see in the File Explorer and command prompt. The other still conforms to DOS' old 8.3 convention and, for the most Fiddling with the Registry can even be a time-consuming process for an expert if you have to restart after every change. Instead, close Explorer with Windows' Task Manager and restart it to make Registry changes without a full system restart. 58 April 2007 / www.computerpoweruser.com spotlight part, stays hidden to everything but old DOS and pre-Win95 programs. You can disable these old filenames and save resources with an easy Registry edit. Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\FILESYSTEM\NtfsDisable8dot3 NameCreation to 1 and restart.
Speed searching by disabling ZIP files. The default Windows Search func- tion peeks inside compressed ZIP files, which can take forever. If you don't want Windows to search ZIP files, unregistering a DLL takes care of the problem. In an open a command prompt window, type regsvr32c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /u and press ENTER. You can restore this feature by simply rerunning the command without "/u."
Speed up the Classic Start menu. If your Start menu is taking forever to open and you're using WinXP's Classic Start menu, you can dramatically speed it up by disabling Personalization. Right-click the Start button and click Properties from the pop-up menu. Click the Start Menu tab, and, if necessary, the "Classic Start menu" radio button. Then, click the Customize button, scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Start menu options list, and uncheck Use personalized Menus. Click OK to dismiss the open dialog boxes.
Speed up dual booting. If you have a second Microsoft OS on your PC, you probably have Microsoft's Boot Menu staring at you for 30 full seconds during each boot, which quickly grows tiresome. You can reduce this time to few seconds. Window XP's file extraction tool is great if you don't have a program such as WinZip, but it can be a drag if you do. Fortunately, disabling a DLL is all you need to do to clear up the problem. This will speed along the boot process when you want to boot to your default OS but leave plenty of time to select the other OS when necessary. You can use Notepad to manually change Boot.ini's timeout setting, but there's a less well-known way to use a friendly dialog box to change the timeout with virtually no chance of making a mistake. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Then click the Startup And Recovery Settings button. Use the drop-down menu to choose your default operating system and set the Time To Display List Of Operating Systems value to a shorter amount of time that still affords you the opportunity to select the OS you want to boot. Changes take effect with the next boot.
Use hardware profiles to safely experiment with Windows. Wouldn't it be great to have two (or more) totally different Windows configurations on the same computer? As it turns out, Microsoft envisioned this scenario years ago, although it originally intended hardware profiles for notebook users who had different docking stations connected to different networks. A great use for everyone else is to have different collections of settings (both hardware and software) on the same computer. But first, you need to set the profiles up. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click the Hardware Profiles button. If this is the first time you've ever tinkered around with hardware profiles, you should already have one profile, called either Profile 1 (Current) on a desktop PC or Undocked Profile (Current) if you have a notebook without a docking station; this Profile contains your current settings. Next, click Copy, which creates a duplicate of your current profile, and name it something else (such as Experiments). You may also want to select your current profile, click the Rename button, and name it something like "Original" or "Working." Finally, individually select each Profile and click Properties. From the resulting If you know your NIC's speed, you can manually set it to prevent Windows from randomly checking during an inopportune moment, causing your CPU usage to dramatically spike. dialog box, check the Always Include This Profile As An Option When Windows Starts checkbox. The next time Windows boots, it will present you with a menu that lists your different profiles. Select one with your keyboard to change hardware settings and enable or disable Windows services; the changes you make in one profile won't affect others.
Create a gaming profile to boost frame rates. After reviewing the hardware profiles tip, consider creating a special profile just for gaming. With it, you can disable unused or troublesome hardware, turn off unneeded Windows services, and reduce the number of autostart programs. With a reduced CPU and memory load, you'll have more resources available for your highend game, which can reduce stutters and pauses. When you're finished fragging folks, reboot and select your "normal" profile, and your bells and whistles will return to their previous state. SaveWindowsResources&DriveSpace Windows dedicates a lot of hard drive space to features that many power users would never use or uses default space calculations that don't make a lot of sense in the era of 500GB hard drives. Changing CPU / April 2007 59 spotlight these settings is relatively simple and saves tons of space.
Reduce Recycle Bin storage space. By default, Windows reserves a whopping 10% of each drive volume for storing files you've deleted. But how often do you really need to recover a 50GB file from the Recycle Bin? To put some of that space back into the general storage pool, right-click the Recycle Bin and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. If you only have one drive (or if you have multiple drives and want them to all have the same setting), just slide the slider to the left until you get the percentage you think is appropriate. (For a 500GB drive, 2%, or 10GB, is not an unreasonable number.) If you have multiple drives and you want a different percentage of space reserved for each drive, click the Configure Drives Independently radio button. Then, click each drive's tab at the top of the dialog box and move the slider for each drive.
Do your own backups and disable System Restore. Windows has its own on-the-fly backup and restore system called System Restore. Although Restore Points can be useful, if you have your own backup system in place, there's no need to tie up all that space with redundant backups you'll never use. Fortunately, you can completely disable System Restore, and, as a bonus, save some CPU and memory resources. To disable System Restore, open System in the Control Panel, click the System Restore tab, and check the Turn Off System Restore checkbox. Reboot for the changes to take effect. To free up the space that System Restore used to use, open Explorer (if necessary, make hidden and system files visible), and delete the System Volume Information folder on each drive.
Turn off Hibernation options. Do you ever use the Windows Hibernation feature? It's actually pretty neat, storing the entire contents of your RAM in a temporary file before sending your PC into an almost-off, low-power mode. When you wake up your system, it copies the temporary file back into RAM, and you're off and running. Still, Setting a static IP address is another network tweak that can add a boosting to a lagging system. System Restore might come in handy if you don't have a dedicated backup utility, but you might as well disable it if you have better options. if you never use Hibernate, Windows still keeps a hidden file on your hard drive—exactly the same size as your amount of system memory—waiting to dump stuff into it. If you're not ready for a hard drive upgrade and space is really tight, you can reclaim that wasted space by turning off the Hibernation feature in Windows. Just open Power Options in the Control Panel, click the Hibernate tab, and then uncheck the Enable Hibernation checkbox. When you restart, Windows deletes that hidden file (named Hiberfil .sys, incidentally), and you reclaim your space
For some reasons by default upon installation of your Windows XP Win 2000 Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC, etc.
Well you can have the option to override the default setting "Break the Rules" , If u change it to 0 then the 20 % incrase in your bandwidth.
Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor, then go to:
1.Local Computer Policy
2.Computer Configuration
3.Administrative Templates
4.Network
5.QOS Packet Scheduler
6.Limit Reservable Bandwidth.
7.Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth.
It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO "0". This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20% (It works on Win 2000 as well.)
Posted by Jonathan at 3:43 PM 1 comments
Disable and Turn Off Windows Vista Search Indexer and Indexing Service
Windows Vista has greatly enhanced its search algorithm where the search process is now not only faster, but users can also easily search for almost all kind of files, documents, pictures, videos, emails and contacts in Outlook 2007, and even commands or application programs’ executables. To achieve the fast searching speed, indexing service plays a pivotal role. Windows Vista starts to crawl and index files on hard disks right after installed with a low priority background process. If you notice that your hard drive activity LED light is constantly flashing even if computer is idle, this is probably due to indexer at work.This is supposedly the case - indexing at system idle period in order to minimize the performance penalty affected on normal usage. However, this may not be the case in Vista, as the search indexing related processes such as SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost and SearchIndexer actively running even though computer is processing other more critical tasks or running important applications, effectively slow down overall computer performance by sucking up important CPU, memory and other system resources.
So to speed up Vista, users may want to turn off and disable the search indexer and indexing service. You can and should also disable the indexing of files if you’re using other desktop search utility such as Google Desktop Search and etc. If you don’t mind the slower searching speed when performing searches, the indexing has no meaningful use to you too. There are several ways to do this, as listed at the guide below.
Disable Windows Search Service
This method effectively stop and disable all search indexing processes, and is the recommended way.
1. Click on Start button, then select Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools, and double click on Services applet. Alternatively, simply type “Services” (without quotes) in Start Search box.
2. If User Account Control asks for permission, click Continue.
3. Locate an service named Windows Search. Right click on Windows Search, and then select Properties on contextual menu.
4 Click on Stop button to stop the indexing service immediately.
5 O the Startup Type dropdown box, select Disabled.
6. Click on OK button.
To re-enable the Windows Seearch, simply change back the Startup Type.
Disable Indexing on Drives
This method allows users to selectively disable indexing on certain drives which rarely used or searched. However, it may take a long time to apply new attributes to all files, folders and sub-folders to exclude them from indexing.
1. Open Windows Explorer from Accessories.
2. Right click on the drive (or drive letter) that you want to turn off the indexing.
3. Select Properties on the contextual menu.
4. Unselect (untick) the Index this drive for faster searching option.
5. Click Apply or OK button.
To re-include the drive, simply select the option again.
Indexing Options Remove or Exclude Indexed Locations in Control Panel
This method does not turn off indexing service. Instead, it just excludes deselected folders from search index, or deselect folders from included list. The indexer processes may still run after you remove or exclude everything.
1. Click on Start button.
2. Click on Control Panel.
3. Click on System and Maintenance.
4. Click on Indexing Options.
5. To remove an Included Location, simply click on Modify button, and then untick the checkbox for respective folders under the “Change selected locations” box. To remove indexing on Start Menu and/or Users folder, click on “Advanced” button at Indexing Options dialog or “Show all locations” in Indexed Locations dialog. UAC access request continue required. Click on Start Menu and Users once at “Summary of selected locations” box if you do not see the checkbox for them.
To re-enable, simply tick back the folders.
Posted by Jonathan at 9:54 AM 0 comments
10 Ways and Secrets to Improve Vista Performance
Windows Vista has some new security and functional features with superior, elegant and beautiful visual experience, such as Windows Aero Glass Transparency effect, Flip 3D and etc. But to have and enable all these features, there is price to be paid, as there is limitation to the capability of computer on how fast it can run. However, if you feel that your Vista performance is below par and slow, there is some tricks that can help Vista to run faster, other than applying various updates such as performance and reliability updates and Service Pack 1 (SP1).
1. Add More Memory (RAM)
Undeniable, Windows Vista consumes a lot of memory. Windows XP can run and fly under system with specification of only 512 MB, but Vista will crawl with this ‘low’ specs. In fact, 1G is not enough, and 2G is probably considered just a ‘entry level’ memory level for Vista. To enable and turn on all special visual graphical effects, it’s recommended to upgrade to 4GB of memory. Luckily, the RAM module is getting cheaper and cheaper nowadays. Money to buy additional memory for faster speed and better experience will surely worthwhile to spend without regret.
2. Use ReadyBoost
If you own a notebook or laptop computer, or your computer no longer has any extra memory slot available, or already hit the maximum RAM supported by motherboard. In this case, Vista has another feature, called ReadyBoost, which allows the system to use ReadyBoost compliant USB flash based memory (USB flash drive, pen drive, memory key, USB key, thumb drive, flash memory all belongs to this category) to expand the memory. It also has the added advantage where the speed to retrieve data from flash memory is faster than virtual memory files stored by physical hard disk drive. If you have a USB flash memory drive (or you can buy one as it’s even cheaper than RAM, but make sure it’s high speed and support ReadyBoost), and use it to turn on ReadyBoost feature, you can control the space used by ReadyBoost. This is useful to keep certain amount of space free to store your own data.
3. Use a Good Video Accelerator Card or GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) Display Adapter
Just not a long while ago, hard disk drive (HDD) still spinning at slow 5400 RPM with no cache, and together with CPU and RAM, are thought to be the bottleneck for a performance driven computer. However, this trend has changed. With more and more graphics intensive application, especially on Vista with outstanding visual affect, the bottleneck is actually due to graphics card or display adapter and Video RAM (VRAM). The built-in on-board video card which integrated in the motherboard, such as Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) or Extreme Graphics, is simply not good enough. The lower throughput performance of on board graphics card is caused especially by performance penalty imposed as both the CPU and GPU have to access to main memory over the same bus, as the video card is sharing the computer’s main memory for storage. Thus a good high end video card is necessary with large amount of dedicated VRAM. And, if you want to play games in Vista, the video card must support DirectX 10.
4. Delete and Disable Extra Unnecessary Startup Programs
When you buy a computer system pre-installed with Windows Vista, you will find that there are a lot of extra, additional, unnecessary, and worse useless programs automatically run themselves on startup. These applications include, but not limited to, drivers and software provided by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer), anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, instant messaging program and many many more. These programs, most are not used or little used, not only take up memory resources when they’re running silently in background, but will also slow down the computer start up speed. So, for the startup items that you not using, it’s best to disable them from starting up. To do so, use System Configuration Tool (MSConfig) that comes with Vista.
5. Turn Off Appearance Visual Effects
Windows Vista provides a lot of appearance improvement visual effects such as animated controls and elements inside Windows, transparent glass, desktop composition, window animation when minimizing and maximizing, smooth edge of screen fonts, show window contents while dragging, menu fading and shadow effect, shadow on mouse pointer and etc. All these features will use memory and CPU resources. Turning off and disabling these visual effects in System Properties’ Performance Options (select “Adjust for best performance”) will allow system operation to run faster.
6. Adjust Indexing Options
Unlike previous operating system, Vista has done tremendous improvement to hard disk search function, but the searching depends greatly on full indexing done on files and programs stored on the HDD hard disk drive. The index allows files, folders and programs can be found faster, and almost immediately when searching is done. When indexing process is running, it will affect and slow down the speed of other running program. The workaround to this problem is to enable indexing only on folders or drives that contain documents you will search, and exclude the rest of the area from indexing. To adjust which place you want to include or exclude in indexing, open Indexing Options under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. Using this trick, overall computer performance can be improved without disabling indexing.
7. Disk Cleanup and Defragmentation
An old trick to tune up Windows system. Fragmented data on hard disk will slow down the computer operation. Vista provides two utilities, namely Disk Cleanup to delete and remove unused files, files in recycle bin, log files, dump files, downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, hibernation files, thumbnails and other temporary files, and Disk Defragmenter to defragment the disk drivers. Both tools can be found by clicking on Start button, then go to All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools. You can also schedule the defragment program to run automatically periodically to tune the performance of system. Using third party defragment tool is possible too.
8. Change the Power Plan Setting
Adjust and change the preferred power plan setting to “High Performance”. This setting can be set in the Power Options applet under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. By default, Vista will set preferred power plan option to “Balanced”, restricting amount of power supply it can consumes to 50% under normal circumstances. Of course, you have to be prepared for higher electricity bill.
9. Turn Off Windows Sidebar
Windows Sidebar is cool, but if you’re not using it, or not fully utilize sidebar, turning if off will save some system resources. To close Sidebar permanently, right click on Sidebar icon on notification area (system tray), and select “Exit”, then answer “No” if prompted whether want to start Sidebar automatically when Windows starts. You can also right click on sidebar itself and then select Properties to adjust whether to start Sidebar on Windows boots up setting. If you don’t want to disable Sidebar, remove as much as possible unnecessary gadgets and plugins.
10. Turn Off Windows Aero
If you still feel your system is not fast enough, turning off and disable Windows Aero theme will likely to make the system flies and run a lot faster. Windows Aero Glass effect is one of the most attractive feature in Vista, and one of the main reason people is migrating to Vista. So it’s up to your choice of performance, or visual effect. To disable Aero, right click on desktop, select “Personalize”, then click on “Windows Color and Appearance” link. Next click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link. In the Appearance Setting dialog window, set Color Scheme to anything other than Windows Aero in the drop down menu. “Windows Vista Classic” is a natural choice.
Posted by Jonathan at 8:46 AM 1 comments
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Speed Up Windows
If the early reviews of Windows Vista tell us anything, it's that many people will continue using Windows XP for a very long time. As such, now may be the best time to review some of the very best tips, tweaks, and utilities that keep WinXP running at peak efficiency, along with some of the most popular Windows applications, such as Word, iTunes, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. These tips are squarely aimed at power users, so we'll be working directly with the Registry and infrequently used Preferences screens at times. We'll avoid beginner's tips, so check out our Web site to cover the basics. Also, be sure to check out our "Backup! Backup! Backup!" sidebar before proceeding.
Speed Up Windows
Who wouldn't want a faster Windows? Better yet, you can apply any of these tweaks independently from any of the others.
Reset the Icon Cache. If you're experiencing a stutter or lag as you browse through your Start menu which can become huge over the years), or your Desktop icons disappear and reappear regularly, our Icon Cache might be corrupted and/or filled with old icons. Refresh the Icon Cache by deleting the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually C:/Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data). WinXP will automatically re-create it.
Kill the Indexing Service. The Windows Indexing Service lets you perform "advanced searches" on local directories and network stores, which sounds good in theory. In practice, the process of indexing files seems to occur at the worst moments, and the searches it performs aren't nearly as good as similar tools, such as Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search (both free). You can disable it from the Services window; click Start and Run, type services.msc, and press ENTER. Right-click Indexing Service, click Properties, and set Startup Type to Manual. Remove it permanently by opening Add/Remove Programs, clicking the Add/Remove Windows Components button, and unchecking Indexing Service.
Speed up all Explorer windows. When you open My Computer or an Explorer window, you may notice all your icons first appear as generic Windows icons before slowly filling in. You could also see the "wagging magnifying glass" icon appear before anything else. This is Windows automatically searching for network printers and stores. If you aren't on a LAN or would prefer to manually search for network resources, stop the automated process by opening My Computer and clicking Folder Options from the Tools menu. Click the View tab and uncheck Automatically Search For Network Folders And Printers.
Speed up Explorer's Detailed View. Explorer's Detailed View (choose Details from the View menu) displays information about your files in columns. If you have column headings such as "Pages" or "Bit Rate," then Windows must "peek into" every file to populate those columns, which can take a lot of time. To speed things up, turn off any columns you don't really need to see by right-clicking a column header and unchecking anything you don't want. Click More at the bottom of the pop-up menu in order to see the complete list of available columns. 56 April 2007 / http://www.computerpoweruser.com/
Make menus appear faster (or slower). You may think Windows works as fast as it can to display menus (including the Start menu). In reality, there's a built-in delay between when you click your mouse and when the menu appears. Reducing or eliminating the delay makes Windows "feel" much faster. After running Regedit, find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\Desktop\ and select MenuShow- Delay. Next, right-click the entry and select Modify and reduce the number to around 100. Experiment to find a number that suits your system and mood. Increase the number to slow menus down.
Speed up folder access by disabling the Last Access Date. Windows updates the time and date a user accessed a file or folder, and, needless to say, because Windows accesses lots of files and folders all the time, updating these stamps can significantly tax your system. If you don't need to know when you (someone else) last accessed a file or folder, you can disable this feature with a Registry edit. Open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL _MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENT CONTROLSET\CONTROL\FileSys tem. Right-click anywhere in the right pane, point to New, and click DWORD Value. Create a new DWORD Value called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate; then right-click it and click Modify from the pop-up menu. Finally, change the Value Data to 1.
Reduce CPU usage when selecting AVI files. Similar to the Explorer's Detailed View, when you select an AVI file in Explorer, Windows attempts to determine the file's width and height to properly display it in its Properties dia- log box. Unfortunately, if the file is bro- ken or if this information isn't stored in the AVI's header frames, Windows scans the entire AVI file (consuming nearly 100% of the CPU time all the while) looking for the information. And if that AVI file is hundreds of megabytes (or more), then you're in for a long wait. If you can live without this information, tell Windows to stop searching with this Registry edit: Go to HKEY_CLASSES _ROOT\SYSTEMFILEASSOCIA- TIONS\.AVI\SHELLEX\PropertyHandler.
Speed up a sluggish Start menu by axing personalized folders as one of your options. This only works with the Classic Start menu. The Startup And Recovery dialog box offers a couple of useful tweaks to assist with crashed programs and dual-boot systems. Here, you can prevent your system from automatically restarting after a BSOD or hurry through the boot menu if you have two Windows OSes on the same machine. Track down the Default value, which should be {87D62D94-71B3-4b9a- 9489-5FE6850DC73E}, and delete it. Microsoft has also addressed this issue with a hotfix if you'd prefer to avoid rooting around in the Registry for this specific problem. Open a Web browser and go to support.microsoft.com/kb /822430 for more information.
Speed up shutting down. When you choose to shut down from the Start menu, Windows attempts to close any open programs and windows. Although this usually works well, a stubborn pro- gram or error condition may leave Win- dows hanging for a full minute before shutting down (or restarting). By chang- ing four Registry keys, you can speed the process up significantly. After you
open Regedit: Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000; Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\ HungAppTimeout from 5000 to 1000; Change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\ CONTROL\WaitToKillServiceTimeout from 20000 to 1000; and
Change HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000.
Reloading Registry changes without restarting. If you're experimenting with changes to the Registry, restarting your system every time you want to see changes take effect may become annoying and consume a lot of time. Shutting down Explorer.exe and relaunching it, however, rereads the Registry. There are a lot of ways to do this, but here's our favorite method: First, close any open applications and files. Next, bring up the Windows Task Manager (pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE is the fastest way), and click the Processes tab. Select Explorer.exe and click End Process. Click Yes to accept the Task Manager Warning if you receive one. (Your Desktop icons should disappear at this point.) Next, click the Task Manager's File pull-down menu and click New Task (Run). Finally, run Explorer; the Desktop icons will return and the Registry changes should be in effect.
Load Windows faster with a static IP address. Most wireless and wired Ethernet cards are, by default, config- ured to receive an assigned IP address via CPU / April 2007 57 spotlight If Windows is automatically searching for networked folders and printers, it can make icons display dreadfully slow the first time you open My Computer. Disabling this feature can speed things up. DHCP at boot time. This usually only takes a second or two if your DHCP server is working properly, but if there's ever a problem—the DHCP server is down, a network cable is unplugged, or you have a slow/cheap router—Windows can sit around for a long time, waiting for that IP address. Most of the time, in a home environment, you'll always have the same IP address assigned to you, so why not cut out the DHCP wait altogether and assign a static IP address to your PC? Assuming you're behind a router, load its configuration utility and note what IP addresses the router is assigning via DHCP. Open Network Connections in the Control Panel, right-click your network card or Local Area Connection, and click Properties. In the dialog box that opens, select Internet Prototol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. Click the Use The Follow IP Address, assign yourself a static IP address (such as 192.168.1.10), and set the DNS server address to the IP address of your router. Reboot and try to access the Internet. If you can't, simply reset your connection to DHCP.
Disable automatic media speed sensing on network cards. Although this doesn't frequently happen, Windows occasionally takes a moment to check the Ethernet speed of your NICs during these times, CPU utilization can zoom to nearly 100%, causing a hiccup. You can stop Windows from checking the connection speed by manually specifying it yourself. Open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click Device Manager. Expand the Network Adapters entry, right-click your NIC, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the dialog box that opens, click the Advanced tab and choose Link Speed & Duplex, select the speed of your LAN (for example, 100Mbps/Full Duplex) from the Value drop-down menu.
Convert FAT32 volumes to NTFS. Most benchmarks show that NTFS is faster than FAT32, but other NTFS benefits include better security, fewer fragmentation issues, and general stability improvements. Although any new system that came with WinXP almost certainly used drives formatted with NTFS, you might still have a FAT32 drive if you upgraded your system from an earlier version of Windows.
To make the jump from FAT32 to NTFS, follow these steps:
1. Back up the drive's data.
2. Click Start and Run, type cmd, and press ENTER to open a command prompt window.
3. Type vol c: and press ENTER to find and note the volume label of partition. (This assumes you're converting the C drive; change the drive letter approprimately here and in step 4.)
4. Type convert c: /fs:ntfs and press ENTER.
5. When prompted, enter the volume name you noted in step 3.
6. Answer "y" to the remaining questions.The system will reboot and convert the volume. The first reboot after conversion may take a few minutes longer than usual, but this will only happen once.
Disable redundant 8.3 file names. As long as you're removing vestigial file systems to increase speed, why not remove vestigial file naming conventions? WinXP saves each file with two different file names. One is nice and long and corresponds to what you see in the File Explorer and command prompt. The other still conforms to DOS' old 8.3 convention and, for the most Fiddling with the Registry can even be a time-consuming process for an expert if you have to restart after every change. Instead, close Explorer with Windows' Task Manager and restart it to make Registry changes without a full system restart. 58 April 2007 / www.computerpoweruser.com spotlight part, stays hidden to everything but old DOS and pre-Win95 programs. You can disable these old filenames and save resources with an easy Registry edit. Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\FILESYSTEM\NtfsDisable8dot3 NameCreation to 1 and restart.
Speed searching by disabling ZIP files. The default Windows Search func- tion peeks inside compressed ZIP files, which can take forever. If you don't want Windows to search ZIP files, unregistering a DLL takes care of the problem. In an open a command prompt window, type regsvr32c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /u and press ENTER. You can restore this feature by simply rerunning the command without "/u."
Speed up the Classic Start menu. If your Start menu is taking forever to open and you're using WinXP's Classic Start menu, you can dramatically speed it up by disabling Personalization. Right-click the Start button and click Properties from the pop-up menu. Click the Start Menu tab, and, if necessary, the "Classic Start menu" radio button. Then, click the Customize button, scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Start menu options list, and uncheck Use personalized Menus. Click OK to dismiss the open dialog boxes.
Speed up dual booting. If you have a second Microsoft OS on your PC, you probably have Microsoft's Boot Menu staring at you for 30 full seconds during each boot, which quickly grows tiresome. You can reduce this time to few seconds. Window XP's file extraction tool is great if you don't have a program such as WinZip, but it can be a drag if you do. Fortunately, disabling a DLL is all you need to do to clear up the problem. This will speed along the boot process when you want to boot to your default OS but leave plenty of time to select the other OS when necessary. You can use Notepad to manually change Boot.ini's timeout setting, but there's a less well-known way to use a friendly dialog box to change the timeout with virtually no chance of making a mistake. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Then click the Startup And Recovery Settings button. Use the drop-down menu to choose your default operating system and set the Time To Display List Of Operating Systems value to a shorter amount of time that still affords you the opportunity to select the OS you want to boot. Changes take effect with the next boot.
Use hardware profiles to safely experiment with Windows. Wouldn't it be great to have two (or more) totally different Windows configurations on the same computer? As it turns out, Microsoft envisioned this scenario years ago, although it originally intended hardware profiles for notebook users who had different docking stations connected to different networks. A great use for everyone else is to have different collections of settings (both hardware and software) on the same computer. But first, you need to set the profiles up. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click the Hardware Profiles button. If this is the first time you've ever tinkered around with hardware profiles, you should already have one profile, called either Profile 1 (Current) on a desktop PC or Undocked Profile (Current) if you have a notebook without a docking station; this Profile contains your current settings. Next, click Copy, which creates a duplicate of your current profile, and name it something else (such as Experiments). You may also want to select your current profile, click the Rename button, and name it something like "Original" or "Working." Finally, individually select each Profile and click Properties. From the resulting If you know your NIC's speed, you can manually set it to prevent Windows from randomly checking during an inopportune moment, causing your CPU usage to dramatically spike. dialog box, check the Always Include This Profile As An Option When Windows Starts checkbox. The next time Windows boots, it will present you with a menu that lists your different profiles. Select one with your keyboard to change hardware settings and enable or disable Windows services; the changes you make in one profile won't affect others.
Create a gaming profile to boost frame rates. After reviewing the hardware profiles tip, consider creating a special profile just for gaming. With it, you can disable unused or troublesome hardware, turn off unneeded Windows services, and reduce the number of autostart programs. With a reduced CPU and memory load, you'll have more resources available for your highend game, which can reduce stutters and pauses. When you're finished fragging folks, reboot and select your "normal" profile, and your bells and whistles will return to their previous state. SaveWindowsResources&DriveSpace Windows dedicates a lot of hard drive space to features that many power users would never use or uses default space calculations that don't make a lot of sense in the era of 500GB hard drives. Changing CPU / April 2007 59 spotlight these settings is relatively simple and saves tons of space.
Reduce Recycle Bin storage space. By default, Windows reserves a whopping 10% of each drive volume for storing files you've deleted. But how often do you really need to recover a 50GB file from the Recycle Bin? To put some of that space back into the general storage pool, right-click the Recycle Bin and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. If you only have one drive (or if you have multiple drives and want them to all have the same setting), just slide the slider to the left until you get the percentage you think is appropriate. (For a 500GB drive, 2%, or 10GB, is not an unreasonable number.) If you have multiple drives and you want a different percentage of space reserved for each drive, click the Configure Drives Independently radio button. Then, click each drive's tab at the top of the dialog box and move the slider for each drive.
Do your own backups and disable System Restore. Windows has its own on-the-fly backup and restore system called System Restore. Although Restore Points can be useful, if you have your own backup system in place, there's no need to tie up all that space with redundant backups you'll never use. Fortunately, you can completely disable System Restore, and, as a bonus, save some CPU and memory resources. To disable System Restore, open System in the Control Panel, click the System Restore tab, and check the Turn Off System Restore checkbox. Reboot for the changes to take effect. To free up the space that System Restore used to use, open Explorer (if necessary, make hidden and system files visible), and delete the System Volume Information folder on each drive.
Turn off Hibernation options. Do you ever use the Windows Hibernation feature? It's actually pretty neat, storing the entire contents of your RAM in a temporary file before sending your PC into an almost-off, low-power mode. When you wake up your system, it copies the temporary file back into RAM, and you're off and running. Still, Setting a static IP address is another network tweak that can add a boosting to a lagging system. System Restore might come in handy if you don't have a dedicated backup utility, but you might as well disable it if you have better options. if you never use Hibernate, Windows still keeps a hidden file on your hard drive—exactly the same size as your amount of system memory—waiting to dump stuff into it. If you're not ready for a hard drive upgrade and space is really tight, you can reclaim that wasted space by turning off the Hibernation feature in Windows. Just open Power Options in the Control Panel, click the Hibernate tab, and then uncheck the Enable Hibernation checkbox. When you restart, Windows deletes that hidden file (named Hiberfil .sys, incidentally), and you reclaim your space
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