I'm not yet a big fan of Windows Vista, but unless I go to some form of Unix it
is in my future whether I like it or not. The machine I am building will support the fanciest operating system that Microsoft makes, which is 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.
It would certainly also support Windows Vista Business, which is about $50 cheaper than Ultimate, but Ultimate has two things I might want that are not in Business:
- Media Center stuff - I could become interested in this, and
- Windows BitLocker, drive encryption.
So I ordered Windows Vista Ultimate, full, not upgrade or OEM, from
VioSoftware for $253.22. Note: VioSoftware has two prices for this software package, one if you go to PriceGrabber first and a higher one if you go directly to VioSoftware. There is a $27 difference.
Written by Don on October 11th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on 64-bit and Contributors and vista.
ISO files are images of physical CD and DVD ROMS. You can use to burn them to disk. Microsoft now distributes many of their DVD, and CD ROMs from their website in this format.
Many times you just want to pull a few files off the ISO without burning it to physical media. Microsoft has a little known tool for doing this.
You can
download it from hereIt is not the most user friendly application, but it is free, and it works well. Let me walk you through mapping an ISO file.
The name of the program is the Windows XP Virtual CD Control panel. Download the file, and extract to the folder you want to run it from.
If you want to map an image file, simply launch the program called VcdControlTool.exe
The first thing we need to do is install a driver. When the program is launched, click on the "Driver Control" button.
We need to install the driver, so click on the only button that is enabled - "Install Driver"
It will open a file browse dialog. It should default to the same folder you installed all the other files for this program....if not you will need to browse back to it and select VCdRom.sys
Once you have selected the driver, the "Start" button will be enabled. Click on it. Now click OK.
We need to add a drive before mounting the ISO. Click "Add Drive" and a drive letter will show up in the window.
Finally we can map the iso by clicking on the mount button. It will allow you to select an ISO to mount. Select your ISO, and click OK.
You will be presented with special mount options. You may need to check these if you are having trouble mounting an ISO. Usually when I first try to mount an ISO I leave them all unchecked. If I run into trouble, then I experiment and try each option.
Once you have mounted the ISO, it will look just like a standard CDROM. If we browse to My Computer and look...
Now I have access to my ISO file, without ever burning it to a disk.
A few last things to note:
1. You don't need to keep this application open after mounting the ISO. It will stay mounted until you unmount it.
2. If you reboot your system, you will need to remount the drive again
Written by Steve Wiseman on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
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Apparently in some cases it even hurts performance.
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Ballmer gets to defend Vista after a mother first installs, then uninstalls it for her daughter.
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If you manage Vista machines with GPOs, the Group Policy Team Blog has packaged all of the .admx/.adml files that shipped with Vista and have them available for download.
Written by Joe on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on GPO and News and PR and Policy and ReadyBoost and review.
Today, Windows Live SkyDrive has received some updates to the service - including everyone now having 1GB of storage. That's double what was previously there. Along with increased storage, the SkyDrive Team has included a few more things worth taking note of:
RSS Feeds on Public Folders: Users can now subscribe to an RSS feed for their Public folders. This allows folks to keep track of each other's public files and stay up-to-date with what is uploaded. You can subscribe to our Windows Vista Team Blog's Public SkyDrive folder here.
See who uploaded a file: you can now check out and see who has uploaded specific files to your shared folders in SkyDrive. I have quite a few shared folders which are shared out to large groups of friends - it is great to be able to see which files were uploaded by whom.
Add a contact directly within SkyDrive: you can now add a friend via Windows Live SkyDrive instead of having to go to Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail.
Expect to see fixes and tweaks across the board. You'll also notice that the UI around to Windows Live header has also been tweaked to include easy access to Windows Live Spaces (such as your Friends List and Photos).
I've noticed a bunch of small things myself - such as the fact with this release they have added an icon for .XPS files (check out our Public folder to see).
For more information on the updates to Windows Live SkyDrive, be sure to check out their team blog here.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Cloud Storage and Featured News and Windows Live and Windows Live SkyDrive.
By now you probably know that Vista SP1 Beta is available to a select few testers. If you’re somewhat savy, you may know how to find it on the P2P sites, where it is available for download. But did you know that you can get it directly from Microsoft, through Windows Update, with only a very small, simple hack?
Nero, from the Nero’s Club website, posted instructions on how to trick Windows Update into thinking you are supposed to get the Beta SP1. It’s just two registry settings that need modifying, after which Windows Update will begin feeding you the components required for SP1 beta. Here’s an easy way to do it.
- Open a text editor like Notepad, and paste the following text into it:
@echo off
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSp1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSP1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f
echo Vista SP1 registry key has been set. Please check for updates in Windows Update.
pause
Save this file as a ‘.cmd’ or ‘.bat’ file, any name is fine, I chose sp1beta.cmd. Make sure there isn’t a ‘.txt’ extension at the end or it won’t work (changing the save as file type to ‘all files’ will help with this). You can save it to any location you like, I simply saved mine to the desktop.
- Once you have the file, right-click on it and choose ‘Run as Administrator’ (if you have UAC disabled, you can simply double-click). A command prompt window will open, and should show you the following:
If you see the same, the settings have been added to your registry. You’re ready for the next step.
- Go to Windows Update. A quick way to do that is to click on the Start menu, type
update in the Search Box, and hit the Enter key. Click ‘Check for Updates’, and after a minute you should get a new update, KB935509. Install the update, and allow the computer to restart when it is finished.
- Once logged back in, go to Windows Update again and you should have update KB937287 waiting (if not, click ‘Check for Updates’). Install it.
- Once KB937287 is done installing, click ‘Check for Updates’ and KB938371 should become available. Install it and allow the computer to restart when it is finished.
- Once logged back in, once again go back to Windows Update and ‘Check for Updates’. I had to wait about five minutes before mine would find the next update, which is Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta!
- Install and enjoy…
Written by Joe on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
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http://vixta.sourceforge.net/
Forget about Windows Vista! Introducing Vixta, an open source, Linux-based, copy of Vista.
>>SCREENSHOT OF VIXTA!
Generally speaking, Linux, open source, Microsoft and Windows are by no means aligned concepts. In fact, with the exception of the Linux and Windows technical interoperability efforts derived from the Microsoft and Novell agreement focused on heterogeneous environments, the two platforms don't mix. Not even by far. Additionally, Microsoft's latest Windows Operating system,
Windows Vista was regarded as a window of opportunity for Linux to increase its foothold on the client side. Almost nine months into the general availability of Vista, and the various distributions of the open sourceplatform are still situated under the 1% market share milestone, according to statistics provided by net Applications.
At the same time, Vista grew past the 7% market share mark, indicating that from January 30, 2007, Microsoft shipped in excess of 70 million copies of the operating system. In this context, a part of the open source community decided to find inspiration in Windows Vista.
Vixta features the KDE based Desktop Environment and is essentially a Fedora-based distribution. But on top of it all, Vixta is nothing more than a Vista copy. Of course the open source and the Microsoft proprietary operating systems are not identical. In fact, under the hood, Vixta is still Linux, all the way. But on the surface, the similarities between the two operating systems are evident.
"Vixta.org Release 095 very soon! Goals: absolutely free, in every sense; spread linux to the "masses"; ABN - AbsolutelyNo Config; User-Frendly; Eye-catching and familiar look and Feel," are the promises Vixta developers made to users. Vixta brings to the table a graphical user interface that is a knock-off of Windows Aero in Vista.
And the GUI copying is also illustrated in the name of the Linux distribution, as the difference between Vixta and Vista is almost inexistent. Microsoft failed to comment in any manner on the promised delivery of Vixta, but the Redmond company will undoubtedly tackle the Linux distribution through its legal department if the name and the GUI similarities will survive. Just click on the screenshots below in order to get an idea of the visual style of Vixta.
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Original source http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Is-Copying-Windows-Vista-68160.shtml
Written by computerboom on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Linux and News and freeware and vista.
Looks can be deceiving, especially a two-dimensional JPEG image of a three-dimensional object. Sheridan Jones, responsible for group marketing in the Microsoft Mac Business Unit wrote a great comment in response to the Office Mac 2008 packaging image I had blogged about a few days ago. I’m glad she did because she corrected a lot of assumptions I had. It appears the dull brown box is actually an environmentally-friendly metallic silver box. 
She writes and I quote,
I think you’ll find the boxes are really beautiful in person, and very Mac-like - for example - the brown color you see is actually metallic silver. The white boxes are actually a deep pearlescent. The blind emboss of the logos adds depth that is hard to show online. The design is very simple, elegant, with more attention to user experience and detail than you can really pick up from the RGB images shown. We’ve tried to take out everything that was superfluous (you won’t find flap after flap of extraneous information on these boxes.) The size will fit perfectly on your bookshelf - the boxes are about the same size as a mid-sized book.
MUCH more important, and what I’m much prouder of, is how much more environmentally friendly these boxes are than our previous boxes, which were thermoformed plastic. Our new boxes are much smaller, and made from recyclable paper rather than the plastic of Office 2004 or Office 2007 for Windows. For every 1000 boxes, we’ve reduced our carbon footprint from Office 2004 substantially. I’ll be talking about this is a future blog posting on http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo.
For those who aren’t loving the new boxes yet - check ‘em out when they’re in stores on January 15th - you may change your mind (or not, we’re all entitled to our own sense of design. 
For those who already like them - I think you’ll LOVE the finished product.
I can’t wait to see exactly how much carbon footprint these boxes save compared to the clamshell Vista-generation boxes.
Written by Long Zheng on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
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Here is how to prevent Backup Exec to fail on jobs that back up corrupt files.
This involves editing the registry and might harm your computer proceed with extreme caution.
Start regedit.
Locate the Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VERITAS\Backup Exec\Engine\Backup
Find the dword: Fail Jobs On Corrupt Files you'll notice it is set at 1. modify it to 0.
Thats it now your job will say completed with exeptions much better that failed (since the item was already corrupt to start with so there is no need for backup exec to fail)
Hope this helps you.
Written by Teus on October 11th, 2007 with comments disabled.
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It would certainly also support Windows Vista Business, which is about $50 cheaper than Ultimate, but Ultimate has two things I might want that are not in Business:
