Spooky

Someone sends you an executable file, your antivirus tells you its safe and you were expecting the file, but when you try to run the file you receive the error: "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." do the following if you actually wish to run the file: Right click on the file and choose properties. At the bottom of the General tab look for a section that says "This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer." Click the Unblock button.

You can create your own keyboard shortcuts in Vista by doing the following: 1. Create a shortcut to the program you want to apply a keyboard shortcut to.. Right click the program, then click Create Shortcut, or use your mouse’s right button to drag the item to your desktop and select Create Shortcut Here. 2. Right-click the shortcut you just created and click Properties. 3. Click the Shortcut tab then click the Shortcut key box. 4. Using your keyboard, press the key that you want to use for your shortcut. 5. Press Apply and OK to close the dialog box. When you click the Shortcut key box it will display None until you select. Keep in mind that the keyboard shortcut you are creating automatically starts with Ctrl + Alt keys.

You sound like me...those are my main points of consideration also. There will always be security issues, anything thats 'tangible' meaning in this case any OS in which anyone has access to the code in any aspect will always be able to introduce a security issue. When you stop and think about it for a few minutes and consider that the windows series of OS's are the most widespread its seems only natural that the most likely sucess in exploiting any vunlerability will be aimed at windows. Well...yes theres a vunlerability but considering there are millions of lines of code its almost a cretainty some exploit will be coded in without realizing it, is it something that could have been prevented, was it left in on purpose, did someone know about it before it was pointed out? So...in the end, security vunlerabilities don't become vunlerabilities until someone tries to purposely target and exploit them as a means to compromise someones system. Is someone more likely to exploit a Windows OS than a Linux or Apple system? Of course they are simply because the likelyhood and method of exploit has more targets and has the most chance of sucess for them to achieve their goals and in some perverted way the people who exploit these want them to be found out because they reap some type of personal satisfaction either through fame as having discovered the exploit or what ever they get from the compromised system. Consider for example the guy who turned almost a million computers world wide into a zombie network, his goals were selfish, monetary, and the sense of perverted achievement he got from doing it. Does this mean that the OS manufacturer was at fault? No, of course not even if they could have done something to keep it from happening before it happened, its not their fault the exact same as its not the fault of a car manufacturer if people get into car accidents by not paying attention to their driving and doing things that are wrong on the road (running red lights, 'forcing' into a turn lane instead of waiting, speeding, etc...). What can be done about that? What can be done to prevent that? Nothing at all, and its the same with software vunlerabilities, you don't know until it happens and when it does something is done about it. So in the end it doesn't do any good to worry about what vunlerabilities will or will not occur because as long as there is that tangible item, that physical file or path, someone somewhere is going to exploit it. Personally, i'm glad that there are 'watchdogs' that keep us abreast of these as they occur, and MS has acted responsibly in doing so here as well. You are never, ever-never-never, going to have a OS or server that is 100% secure, and thats a fact, so just use what you have and secure it the best you can then keep up to date on the new things that come to light and take the necessary steps to compensate. In my opinion, those that seek to exploit these along with the virus and trojan producers should be taken out back and shot. Oh Yeah, lets not forget to include the spammers also.

The video is not a fake, its an actual install....but...parts of the video are time compressed to make things look faster then they really are. If you watch the whole thing, at the end you will see the statement "This screencast shows you the process involved in installing Windows". Its just to show the process and some parts were time compressed to move the video along. Nakatomi2010: It takes you 2 to 3 hours to install Vista? WoW! The longest its taken me with some builds was 27 minutes flat, RC2 build 5744 installs in 22 minutes for me.

You guys do know that those pics are not from the real RTM build...right?

dAbReAkA; use: CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to get task manager to open up directly, or right click on the Taskbar and select "Task Manager" from the context menu. But as far as changing ctrl+alt+del to do it I don't know of anything right now, but if I come across something i'll post it.

If your dual booting Vista with WinXP and your planning on migrating to just Vista save your self some time with transfering your stuff. Boot into WinXP as the administrator and you will have full access to the Vista partition. Since not everything needs to be transfered with a fancy built in transfer wizard you can simply copy over things like your Favorites for example.

Tool Tips! Irritate the heck out of me. These are those little tips that pop up when you put your mouse pointer over something. I usually like to have them turned off when my un-attended installs complete, I use a registry entry to do this. You can get rid of them by using a registry entry too: Start up Regedit and change the below ShowInfoTip entry value to '0' as shown: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;get rid of tool tips [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "ShowInfoTip"=dword:00000000 You'll need to re-boot after the change is made. If you wish to have tool tips again simply change the ShowInfoTip value to 1.

Creating gadgets is easy, theres some good beginner information located at: http://microsoftgadgets.com/Sidebar/DevelopmentOverview.aspx

Why is it needed to replace native Vista files when you can create your own theme without doing so?

Why is a boot screen so important? The basic element of the boot screen is there, that little bar to the bottom. The rest of the boot screen was just a pic anyway, so why do you think the product isn't finished just because of the lack of a pic? Why don't you just add your own? Personally I think the choice of colors for the whole thing is not to my liking but they are changeable so the color choice, other then being concerned that MS has hired some color blind people , is not a real big concern. The scroll bars? Yep, they could have been improved some to look a little more like whats traditionally been in MS OS's, but...then again maybe a personal preference as they don't bother me because I already know they can be changed by plugging in a new theme of my own choice. Oh, yeah, BTW...those pics from Thurrot and others? Mine don't look anywhere like that, all mine are nice, neat, clean, and crisp looking.

If you have a need to show Super Hidden files and folders in Vista just change the "SuperHidden" reg key to '1' as indicated in the registry entry below: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "SuperHidden"=dword:00000001 Or...you can use the .reg file I attached to this post. No re-boot is necessary. To see the effect you will need to open a new instance of explorer. BTW, while your looking at that registry area you will notice a bunch of things that you can change here that will be useful for an un-attended set-up when you want to have these items configured when install is complete. show_super_hidden.reg

A "mysterious" problem concerning USB drives appeared in the WinXP beta 5 years ago and when it first hit the public. Suddenly, after installing WinXP, people were having problems with their USB drives not remaining active even if the power options were set to never turn off a hard drive. It seemed as if the USB drives would just go to sleep (some drives needed a lenghty wakeup period to work properly). People were complaining about it. This same "mystery" also happens in Vista. Actually there is no mystery at all and Vista (and winXP) are functioning as intended. The solution to the mystery is quickly revealed by a quck trip to the Device Manager and doing the below. 1. Expand the 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' branch in the Device Manager. 2. Find the items called 'USB Root Hub' and right click on it, then select 'Properties' 3. Then click on the 'Power Management' tab. 4. Uncheck the box for 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' 5. Click the 'OK' button. 6. Repeat 2 - 5 for each 'USB Root Hub' found. there ya go...mystery solved. (Of course this is not a cure all for other problems that may be present)

The next MS OS scheduled for delivery is 'Vienna' which is scheduled in 2012. In the interim we have the Longhorn Server (in late 2007) .... and SP1 for Vista (code named Fiji, which is not just an update or service pack but a major overhaul for Vista) which is scheduled in late 2007 also. So, until we have roughly 5 years (2006 is almost over) until we see a new one (unless your counting the SP1, or if your using Longhorn Server).

Last Access Time (this is often confused with the Last Modified Time, which is only updated when the file changes) in Windows Vista has been disabled by default to improve NTFS performance. However, a very minor issue with this is some applications rely on the Last Access Time. If you have one of these applications you can re-enable the Last Access Time by using the 'fsutil' utility in a command prompt. The command will be: "fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0" (without the quotes). You will need to re-boot for this change to take effect. (There is also a registry entry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate that can be changed)

For those having problems with File and Printer sharing in Vista, or if you just want to learn more about whats different or how to set it up properly theres a good link for this at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutio...e/vista_fp.mspx

OK, this one belongs in the 'Tip' category rather than a tweak, maybe aimed at developers and the sort. Some people think Telnet has been removed from Vista, it hasn't. Its just one of those many things in Vista that is not really visible until you do a couple of things. So if you use Telnet; 1. Go to Start - Control Panel - Programs and Features 2. Turn Windows Features On or Off (on the left) 3. Scroll down, and check the box next to "Telnet Client" Now while I like using putty also I just can't do away with the handy telnet client. Telnet is handy for lots of things: telnetting to port 110 to delete 'bad' messages from your POP3 server that Outlook can't cope with; telnet to port 80/119 to check HTTP/NNTP servers are working; telnet to port 25 to send an email from a system without setting up an email client; telneting to an HTTP server you're developing to check if the headers are being sent without any problems; test Exchange servers to make sure they are not relaying; very handy to test remote connectivity to a specific port, for example: "telnet <host> 1723" to see if the PPTP server is listening ... the list goes on and on...

Yeah, just looked at that. Kinda cool, but also how often would you use it? I guess it would depend on how you operate.

Well, I want to use the 'Protected Mode' without UAC. The prompts drive me crazy. Haven't found a way yet so my short term solution is to keep UAC enabled and supress the prompts. I posted the reg tweaks to disable the prompts while keeping UAC on in the Vista Tweaks and Tips section on the third page in case anyone wants them.

If you want to keep User Account Control (UAC) on, for example to keep Protected Mode in IE running, but don't like the constant prompting from UAC (really annoying) you can keep it turned on and supress the prompts using the reg entries below: ; Switch UAC to quiet mode - keeps it on but supresses prompts for admin [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:00000000 "EnableLUA"=dword:00000001 ; Switch UAC to quiet mode - keeps it on but supresses prompts for user [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "ConsentPromptBehaviorUser"=dword:00000000 "EnableLUA"=dword:00000001

OK, got it, two possible likely answers: 1. Its a MAC emulation. heres a link for a guy thats working on a MAC emulatator that uses a task switcher that might produce this: http://blogs.labo-dotnet.com/simon/archive...0/06/11250.aspx or... 2. It looks like the Window Switcher that is part of the new Intellipoint suite. Both of the above will produce what your seeing. I knew i'd seen this somewhere before.

To optimize the performance of your hard drive(s); 1. Go to the Disk Drives section in Device Manager (Control Panel - System - Device Manager) and expand it. 2. Right-click on each hard drive, select Properties, and under the Policies tab make sure "Optimize for Performance" is selected. If its available, also tick the "Enable Write Caching on the disk" and "Enable Advanced Performance"options. This allows hard drives to use a cache (a small area of memory set aside for the hard drive) to speed up reading and writing to the drive.

Vista is normally fast to shutdown, takes maybe 3 seconds on my beta machine. Some configurations however may lend their selves to a longer shutdown period, some of the time the longer shutdown is due to waiting for Vista to kill some services. If your affected by this the following might help. Start up Regedit and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control] On the right pane look for the "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" string and change its value to 1000 by right clicking the string and selecting Modify. However, to make sure its going to work OK for you modify the value to WaitToKillServiceTimeout=5000 first and try it out. Modified value WaitToKillServiceTimeout=1000 (1000 is a bit much for this one so be careful) 3000 seems to work just about right but try the 5000 first. (The default value for WaitToKillServiceTimeout=20000 in case you need to change it back)

Yeah,,,like Fizban2 said, use DHCP. Man, i'd go nuts having to do static for a large deployment. I'm shocked that anyone would still use static IP's for a large deployment. Thats partially the reason why DefaultGatway and SubnetMask are depreciated now because the trend is towards DHCP.