We all know that the much awaited Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has finally gone RTM (Released To Manufacturing) and every single Vista user is drooling for it. But Microsoft is still not giving it for public download, since they have recieved some issues regarding some drivers of certain hardware devices which cause the SP1 installation to fail repeatedly, during the beta and RC (Release Candidate) phazes of SP1 development. The Redmond company will only release it to public download when all the listed problemetic devices get updated device drivers. Microsoft is working hard to get these drivers from its partners as soon as possible. Because of these reasons, general users won't be able to get SP1 from Micorosoft untill 18th march and users who would like to recieve it through Automatic Windows update will start getting it around 4th April. These are the official release dates as of now.
But in-between all this, due to high demand, Microsoft released SP1 to its 'Technical' users a.k.a Connect and MSDN subscribers early in february, just 4-5 days after its RTM date. As reports say it (and so is my personal experience :-) ), A copy of this MSDN special release of SP1 is leaked over the net and available as a torrent download on a very well known pirated torrent site (cant give the name or link, sorry :-) ). There are thousands of users who have downloaded it and found no problem in it. Althought the file's MD5 checksum cannot be verified, sources say that the file is same and is not tampered with. The version no of file is confusing, and shows it as a RC2 version, but the files inside it all have the x.xx.18000 version which is same as RTM release. One of my friend who is a MSDN subscriber, has also confirmed that this is also the case with the file they have got from Microsoft.
A word of caution: Although, there are some torrents which have the original file, there are many possibilities of Viruses, worms, trojans or other malicious contents bundled with it. Also some torrents, while claiming that they have the RTM version still carry the RC release of SP1. Beware of these, and if you can, i would recommend you to download it only from Microsoft.com after it is released. Also, if you have been updating your system till now regularly, there is not much speed gain you'll notice. Speed gain is there in file copying process though, and it is huge. :-) you decide!
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Showing posts with label Vista. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vista. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Some Nifty New Features of Windows Vista Task Manager
Hey Guys!
I am a die hard fan of Vista Operating System, as it has completly changed my life and my working with my laptop. Its stable, its feature rich and for me, its less irritant than previous versions of windows. Now there are many features of it that have been given quiet a thought at Microsoft and what i have found is one of those gems that atleast system admins and developers, like me, will appreciate.
Vista task manager, we all know that is by all means an advance task management tool that has been refined to have greater power than it had in previous versions of Windows. Here are some cool features that certainly help to simplify task management:
1. Two of the most visible enhancements to the task manager are the new Services tab which quickly allows you to start and stop Windows Services, and, The Resource Monitor button which lets you keep a watch on your critical system resources. Whats more, you can create a data collection set of your data and them generate comprehensive performance reports based on it.
2. The right click menu on the Processes tab has beed enhanced with many new options that include:
a) Open File Location option : Lets you quickly browse the directory where the selected applications executable file is stored. This was a biggest feature missing in XP task manager. In that you cant find out from where the process is running.
b) Virtualization : This option lets you turn on or off the new Virtualization feature for a particular process. In Vista, when UAC (User Account Control) is enabled, every process runs in a low privilege mode that doesn't allows it to perform harmful activities. It is due to this fact, USB drive based viruses are not effective under Vista by default. A process can be run with full admin rights only by user's interaction. Now in the low privilege mode, when a program with bad habits (which it inherited due to the nature of previous windows os where once ran from an admin account it was free to do anything :-) ) tries to access a restricted system resource, it is given a safe, virtual set of directories and other resources that it can use. In that way, the system remains secure and working even when this bad boy behaves according to its nature :-D.
c) Create Dump File : When we run a program it gets loaded into RAM and that RAM loaded representation of the program is called process. Now each process, while running has a working set, which is nothing but the area of RAM where it keeps its data while running. This option creates a file on the hard disk that contains complete contents of the select processe's used memory areas. This is very useful for people who are involved in debugging of applications. Previously system only created dump of process memory when it crashed, or maybe when OS itself crashed.
d) Properties : Opens the standard properties dialog of the file that this process started from.
e) Go to Services : Now thats what i really liked. This option, when selected takes you to the service that this process is running under. You may ask, whats so special about that. Well, this may not be useful where a single process is running under a single service excutable, but there are some processes like the svchost.exe which show up multiple times in Task Manager. Ever wondered why so? When Svchost.exe is the Generic host for Services executable that works as a host for many different services. there are some more like that too. What that means is that under the name of Svchost.exe, many services run. Even more than that, a single svchost.exe file can run multiple services under it. It uses the concept of Application Domains, which .NET programmers i think will better understand. Now in this situation without any external tool you cannot know what services are running under a particular svchost.exe. Here this option comes into play. When you click on it, it takes you to the services tab and highlights all the services that are running under it. Now thats what i call a real sysadmin tool.
Apart from that you can also quickly go to any service's process bu right clicking on it and selecting Go To Process...
So that's all. Hope someone will find it intresting and of use.
Have a nice day :-)
I am a die hard fan of Vista Operating System, as it has completly changed my life and my working with my laptop. Its stable, its feature rich and for me, its less irritant than previous versions of windows. Now there are many features of it that have been given quiet a thought at Microsoft and what i have found is one of those gems that atleast system admins and developers, like me, will appreciate.
Vista task manager, we all know that is by all means an advance task management tool that has been refined to have greater power than it had in previous versions of Windows. Here are some cool features that certainly help to simplify task management:
1. Two of the most visible enhancements to the task manager are the new Services tab which quickly allows you to start and stop Windows Services, and, The Resource Monitor button which lets you keep a watch on your critical system resources. Whats more, you can create a data collection set of your data and them generate comprehensive performance reports based on it.
2. The right click menu on the Processes tab has beed enhanced with many new options that include:
a) Open File Location option : Lets you quickly browse the directory where the selected applications executable file is stored. This was a biggest feature missing in XP task manager. In that you cant find out from where the process is running.
b) Virtualization : This option lets you turn on or off the new Virtualization feature for a particular process. In Vista, when UAC (User Account Control) is enabled, every process runs in a low privilege mode that doesn't allows it to perform harmful activities. It is due to this fact, USB drive based viruses are not effective under Vista by default. A process can be run with full admin rights only by user's interaction. Now in the low privilege mode, when a program with bad habits (which it inherited due to the nature of previous windows os where once ran from an admin account it was free to do anything :-) ) tries to access a restricted system resource, it is given a safe, virtual set of directories and other resources that it can use. In that way, the system remains secure and working even when this bad boy behaves according to its nature :-D.
c) Create Dump File : When we run a program it gets loaded into RAM and that RAM loaded representation of the program is called process. Now each process, while running has a working set, which is nothing but the area of RAM where it keeps its data while running. This option creates a file on the hard disk that contains complete contents of the select processe's used memory areas. This is very useful for people who are involved in debugging of applications. Previously system only created dump of process memory when it crashed, or maybe when OS itself crashed.
d) Properties : Opens the standard properties dialog of the file that this process started from.
e) Go to Services : Now thats what i really liked. This option, when selected takes you to the service that this process is running under. You may ask, whats so special about that. Well, this may not be useful where a single process is running under a single service excutable, but there are some processes like the svchost.exe which show up multiple times in Task Manager. Ever wondered why so? When Svchost.exe is the Generic host for Services executable that works as a host for many different services. there are some more like that too. What that means is that under the name of Svchost.exe, many services run. Even more than that, a single svchost.exe file can run multiple services under it. It uses the concept of Application Domains, which .NET programmers i think will better understand. Now in this situation without any external tool you cannot know what services are running under a particular svchost.exe. Here this option comes into play. When you click on it, it takes you to the services tab and highlights all the services that are running under it. Now thats what i call a real sysadmin tool.
Apart from that you can also quickly go to any service's process bu right clicking on it and selecting Go To Process...
So that's all. Hope someone will find it intresting and of use.
Have a nice day :-)
Windows Vista - The Wow is showing up Now :-)
Well, a lot of has been said in last few months about Windows Vista. Forums on Internet are flooded with comments, both positive & Negative, about it. And it was bound to happen, because of the amount of hype that was attached with this new OS. Microsoft was touting its features everywhere possible, Radio, Television, Newspapers, you name it. For the first time, i have seen so much publicity from Microsoft.
But after it hit the market, the response was a little unexpected, at least for me (Don't know about MS guys :-)). People are shouting everywhere that its slow, buggy etc etc. There are positive feedbacks also, but they are rare.
I am one of those people who love to give every piece of technology its fare share of chance. I don't believe in criticizing pointlessly. So i decided to test it out myself on my laptop which is a bit old. Its a 1.6 GHZ Celeron with 1280 MB of ram (256MB+1GB), 40 GB HDD and a Intel 915 graphics chich (it sucks!).
I must say, my experience with it was not as bad as i thought. After downloading some drivers and installing a fe known performance updates, my laptop is rocking. the interface is clean and looks very good. The new start menu works great with integrated search. UAC (User Account Control) is a bit annoying, but i like it coz its the secure way to do things. I don't have the AERO interface on my laptop, but have it on Desktop at office. It looks amazing although i am not much fascinated by the Flip 3D effect. Taskbar thumbnails are good, if you have 2 windows with same title open, its a good way to distinguish them. Overall the interface aesthetics are pleasing, and its functional too.
The thing that surprised me was that on many forums people said that it was a memory HOG. I would like to say that using these terms is a bit ambiguous. If a software is not giving the features and performance after using more memory, then you can call it a hog. But Vista! I am sorry but it runs 10 times faster than XP, at least in my experience. For the benefit of others, i would like to explain it fully.
First of all, Vista is a new operating system and Microsoft has touted the system requirements right from the beginning. Why are people so surprised, i don't know. Its got so many features that at least software developers should understand, that it requires more memory.Secondly, Using the AERO interface is not a requirements. Its a luxury and for that you must have the hardware to enjoy it. I think people should accept the fact. Nothing comes for free in this world and the tag attached with vista is improved hardware. The Basic interface is also very functional and quiet fast also.I've been using it for a month and found no problem. I think most of the people who are having problem with Vista's performance are using low end machines and trying to run AERO on it. That won't work.Another thing that surprises me is that people count on the MBs of3memory free and say its a memory HOG. For everybody's information, Vista has a feature called SuperFetch which analyses your usage patterns over time and then preloads software into memory to give the faster experience. And all this memory used like cache is never pushed into pagefile. If a program wants more memory, like a game, it instantly free up the memory and fulfill the program's requirements. How can anyone use the term Memory HOG for that. 1 GB memory is a basic requirement for running vista, and after that there is no need to look at numbers. It manages everything. Internet Explorer and all the other programs startup so fast in vista. Even firefox runs more smoothly. The problem with file system performance has been coped up with in performance updates. I play GTA San Andreas and Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix on my laptop with a little performance boost on Vista then on XP. So in the near future, when Direct X 10 games will become mainstream, it will outperform XP for sure, no doubt along with right kind of Hardware.
So all in all, there are issues in Vista, but its certainly not a failure as an OS. Its got great features along with some glitches here and there, but hey, that's true with every piece of software.
Oh yes, no offences guys! :-)
But after it hit the market, the response was a little unexpected, at least for me (Don't know about MS guys :-)). People are shouting everywhere that its slow, buggy etc etc. There are positive feedbacks also, but they are rare.
I am one of those people who love to give every piece of technology its fare share of chance. I don't believe in criticizing pointlessly. So i decided to test it out myself on my laptop which is a bit old. Its a 1.6 GHZ Celeron with 1280 MB of ram (256MB+1GB), 40 GB HDD and a Intel 915 graphics chich (it sucks!).
I must say, my experience with it was not as bad as i thought. After downloading some drivers and installing a fe known performance updates, my laptop is rocking. the interface is clean and looks very good. The new start menu works great with integrated search. UAC (User Account Control) is a bit annoying, but i like it coz its the secure way to do things. I don't have the AERO interface on my laptop, but have it on Desktop at office. It looks amazing although i am not much fascinated by the Flip 3D effect. Taskbar thumbnails are good, if you have 2 windows with same title open, its a good way to distinguish them. Overall the interface aesthetics are pleasing, and its functional too.
The thing that surprised me was that on many forums people said that it was a memory HOG. I would like to say that using these terms is a bit ambiguous. If a software is not giving the features and performance after using more memory, then you can call it a hog. But Vista! I am sorry but it runs 10 times faster than XP, at least in my experience. For the benefit of others, i would like to explain it fully.
First of all, Vista is a new operating system and Microsoft has touted the system requirements right from the beginning. Why are people so surprised, i don't know. Its got so many features that at least software developers should understand, that it requires more memory.Secondly, Using the AERO interface is not a requirements. Its a luxury and for that you must have the hardware to enjoy it. I think people should accept the fact. Nothing comes for free in this world and the tag attached with vista is improved hardware. The Basic interface is also very functional and quiet fast also.I've been using it for a month and found no problem. I think most of the people who are having problem with Vista's performance are using low end machines and trying to run AERO on it. That won't work.Another thing that surprises me is that people count on the MBs of3memory free and say its a memory HOG. For everybody's information, Vista has a feature called SuperFetch which analyses your usage patterns over time and then preloads software into memory to give the faster experience. And all this memory used like cache is never pushed into pagefile. If a program wants more memory, like a game, it instantly free up the memory and fulfill the program's requirements. How can anyone use the term Memory HOG for that. 1 GB memory is a basic requirement for running vista, and after that there is no need to look at numbers. It manages everything. Internet Explorer and all the other programs startup so fast in vista. Even firefox runs more smoothly. The problem with file system performance has been coped up with in performance updates. I play GTA San Andreas and Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix on my laptop with a little performance boost on Vista then on XP. So in the near future, when Direct X 10 games will become mainstream, it will outperform XP for sure, no doubt along with right kind of Hardware.
So all in all, there are issues in Vista, but its certainly not a failure as an OS. Its got great features along with some glitches here and there, but hey, that's true with every piece of software.
Oh yes, no offences guys! :-)
Installing and Using Visual Studio 6 on Windows Vista
Hi Everyone,
I recently upgraded to Vista and after a few updates, my system was running awesome. But the real pain begun when i tried installing Visual Studio 6. I still use VB 6 for some reasons, along with VS.NET 2005. The setup failed straightforwardly. After many tries and searching on MSDN forums, i have found a way to do it.
Here you go...
Note: First thing to note is that Visual Basic 6 and Visual FoxPro 6 are the only components of VS 6 that are supported on Vista. For Visual C++ 6 and Visual Interdev 6, Use the Visual C++ 2005 and Visual Web Developer features of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008.
1. Right click the file setup.exe in root of Visual Basic 6 CD and choose "Run as administrator.
2. Setup will run the java virtual machine setup and restart windows.
3. After returning, setup may not run automatically. In that case run it again as in step 1.
4. Go through the first few pages as usual.
5. On the last setup page just before installation begins, setup it asks for installation folder. click custom.
6. First click 'Select All'. Now uncheck
a) Visual C++ 6
b) Visual Interdev 6
c) Under Tools, Uncheck VC Error Lookup, Self installing EXE redistributable File, OLE/COM Object Viewer, WIN32 SDK Tools, MFC Trace Utilities.
Out of these, only OLE/COM Object Viewer is important, its incompatible with the new Visual Studio 2005 Tools. So it will give you problem if you are installing both VS 6 and VS 2005.7. Continue installing. Setup will complete and restart system.
Congrats!
------------------------------
One more thing, to use vb, right click its shortcut and click properties. On the compatibility page, check the 'Run in compatibility mode' check box and choose Windows XP SP2. Also check the 'Run as Administrator' checkbox. Click OK and double click the shortcut to begin.This last step is important or you wont be able to use any Active X components or set any references, since VB would not be able to access the Registry.
Cheers!
I recently upgraded to Vista and after a few updates, my system was running awesome. But the real pain begun when i tried installing Visual Studio 6. I still use VB 6 for some reasons, along with VS.NET 2005. The setup failed straightforwardly. After many tries and searching on MSDN forums, i have found a way to do it.
Here you go...
Note: First thing to note is that Visual Basic 6 and Visual FoxPro 6 are the only components of VS 6 that are supported on Vista. For Visual C++ 6 and Visual Interdev 6, Use the Visual C++ 2005 and Visual Web Developer features of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008.
1. Right click the file setup.exe in root of Visual Basic 6 CD and choose "Run as administrator.
2. Setup will run the java virtual machine setup and restart windows.
3. After returning, setup may not run automatically. In that case run it again as in step 1.
4. Go through the first few pages as usual.
5. On the last setup page just before installation begins, setup it asks for installation folder. click custom.
6. First click 'Select All'. Now uncheck
a) Visual C++ 6
b) Visual Interdev 6
c) Under Tools, Uncheck VC Error Lookup, Self installing EXE redistributable File, OLE/COM Object Viewer, WIN32 SDK Tools, MFC Trace Utilities.
Out of these, only OLE/COM Object Viewer is important, its incompatible with the new Visual Studio 2005 Tools. So it will give you problem if you are installing both VS 6 and VS 2005.7. Continue installing. Setup will complete and restart system.
Congrats!
------------------------------
One more thing, to use vb, right click its shortcut and click properties. On the compatibility page, check the 'Run in compatibility mode' check box and choose Windows XP SP2. Also check the 'Run as Administrator' checkbox. Click OK and double click the shortcut to begin.This last step is important or you wont be able to use any Active X components or set any references, since VB would not be able to access the Registry.
Cheers!
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