Microsoft is known to shell out OS that power more than 90% of the personal computers across the globe. Everything Microsoft does makes the news. Whenever they announce a new product, huge hype and anticipation builds around the release. Same was the case when Vista was launched in January last year. Everybody was so anxious to see the new ground breaking operating system by the king in the same(OS) market.

Though it dint go down all good with everyone (i think its almost impossible to make “everyone” happy), it won the hearts of many because of its features and ease of use which are key points in evaluating a software.

I used XP for a long time (like everyone else) before switching over to Vista. Actually, at first, i was dual booting XP with Vista as at that time not every software of daily use was compatible with Vista. So even though i loved every bit of my Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, i could not make a full switch to Vista. But as time passed more and more software and hardware became compatible with Vista and today, i cant recall a famous software hardware not compatible with Vista. As a result, i have now switched over to Vista completely.

Vista is available in 6 version viz Windows Vista Starter,Windows Vista Home Basic,Windows Vista Home Premium,Windows Vista Business,Windows Vista Enterprise,Windows Vista Ultimate.

I have been running Windows Vista from almost since its launch now. And i must say so far the journey has been amazing.
Earlier i used to face many annoying problems like BSOD for no reason(duh!), system crash, security problems. All of them when i least wanted them to happen. That was very frustrating for me.But none like that happened with Vista. I can work carefree without any fear of any crash or intrusion or attack.
I loved Vista mainly because of its features, which most of them are, still unique to Vista.

The Vista is the most safe and secure operating system from Microsoft’s stable till date. It offers many safety feature like UAC ( User Account Control), UAC makes it difficult for malware to gain control of the system by restricting privileges. Encryption of files with EFS or Encrypting File System, Bitlocker Drive Encryption for encrypting entire drives. Even the IE 7 that comes natively embedded in the OS is one of the most secure browser if compared without any add ons. IE 7 has phishing filter, can work in “protected mode” which makes it very safe browser. Windows Vista also offers a built-in anti-malware tool in “Windows Defender” which works pretty well.

On the general features list, Vista scores an ace. You name it and Vista has it, and has it better than what you could have imagined. Some of the important features i feel important discussing about are “Instant Search” which is very very effective,time saving, convenient way of finding your files. “Instant Search gets you your search results “as you type” and delivers accurate results. Very impressive i should say. Sidebar is another neat feature added to Vista. Sidebar lets you add useful widgets to your desktop adding increased functionality to your desktop. Very handy feature. Multimedia centred features such as a revamped Windows Media Centre, WIndows Media Player 11, Windows DVD maker, Windows Photo Gallery are all top notch in functionality and performance. You can even set “Parental COntrols” on your machine.

There is even more in store for you if you use “Windows Vista Ultimate version” in form of Windows Ultimate Extras like BitLocker, EFS, Windows Dreamscene (animated desktop background).

One thing for which Vista is so famous and which can not be ignored is AERO interface which stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. Use AERO once and you will be blown off by the eye candy it has to offer. On XP i used Windows Blinds to make it look cooler, but Vista is already much higher, in premium league when it comes to appearance and eye candy stuff as compared to other OS in the market.

Have a look at AERO interface:

With features like “Ready Boost”, you can use your compatible USB drives as RAM for your Windows Vista powered PC.

As Microsoft has already announced that it will stop officially supporting XP, you will need to eventually upgrade to Vista if you have not done that already.If you are worried about the incompatibility issues, bugs etc then, let me inform you that many of the problems have been fixed in the Vista SP1 release.
If still you face any problems and you run Vista Ultimate or Vista business you can get support from Microsoft under Windows Vista Small Business Assurance Program. You can get free support over phone from July 1 to September 30.
So get your Windows Vista now, if you have not already!

The wait is finally over. The much awaited version 3 of the award winning web browser is finally here. Firefox 3 (final version) was released on 17th June.

There are as many as 15,000 improvements over the previous version. It is safer,faster and smarter than ever before.

Download Firefox 3 from here or you can also download by clicking the firefox icon in the sidebar of this web page.

Features:

• Safer and faster internet:

  Avoid suspicious sites and internet frauds with simple and instant site identification. You will get a full browser screen size warning message when you you visit a web page attempting phishing or trying to inject malware into your PC. Web pages load faster than before.

• The “Awesome(location) Bar”:

This awesome bar is so awesome that nothing in business compares to it. Suppose you visited a website some time ago and want to visit it again but dont/vaguely

remember its name, type in whatever you remember about the site’s name and Firefox will find it for you. Now thats innovation.

It also lets you bookmark by a single clicking the “star” at the end of the bar. If you click the “start” twice, you can save it in desired folder and add a tag it.

• Tag:

You can tag a site with different keywords. Suppose you label 10 sites with keyword “games”. Now when you type games in the location bar, all the ten sites will

be shown. You can also add multiple labels to one site.

• Improved Search:

Search the Web in record time with smart keywords. With a few clicks you can assign keywords to search engines, and then simply enter your key and search words in

the location bar. With this feature, typing “book home building” can search Amazon.com, and take you right to books about home building without ever pausing at the

homepage.

• Better memory management:

The only issue that irks Firefox lovers is the amount of RAM it eats when you use much of its own USP, the add-ons.  The new version promises to be lighter faster in

the same regard.

• Full zoom:

Zoom into any picture on a web page you want seamlessly.

Its not even a week old and look at the response!

Mozilla also organized a Firefox 3 download day to set a world record of the most number of software download in a single day. The response was huge, i mean HUGE. Total downloads exceeded 8 million mark, 8,349,074 to be exact. It got a whopping 4% share in web browser market in just 24 hours of its release.

[Graphic SOURCE]

Total downloads have now reached 14789671 (as on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:04:26 GMT) and download per limit at the same time was 1015. Good going.

If you still havent downloaded it, download from here or you can also download by clicking the firefox icon in the sidebar of this web page.

Then, “Defraggler” is just made for you.

Defraggler is a free software that is capable of defragmenting individual files and folders(ofcourse it can do the job on the whole drive as well).

Its very very useful when you dont have free space(15%),or means of emptying your hard disk or you just need a file you just downloaded or a folder(of songs lets say) you got from your friend.

Its so easy to use that i dont think there is even need to tell how to use it.Try it and you will know it your self. Im posting a few screen shots from the parent website.

Get “Defraggler” from “HERE“ .

Screenshots:

It saved my life a week ago.Actually i had “Disk Keeper Pro” installed to take care of my hard disk. But unexpectedly, my pc’s performance deteriorated by considerable extent. Im a lazy bone and never bothered to check until one day when i checked and found my “Disk Keeper Pro” has expired(ahem…). I had my 160 GB full so couldnt use the windows defragment tool and since my optical drive was faulty,i could not empty the hard disk by burning a few DVD’s. But in the analysis report i came to know that some of the new files i downloaded were heavily fragmented ( fragmentation as high as 6500for a single file!). I googled and found this tool and expirienced a considerable increase in performance without formatting the system.

Happy de fragmenting.

Ciao

Is this thing safe?

This is the exact way how the Microsoft’s Beta testers download and test the Vista Service Pack1. It was given by Microsoft to beta testers on Connect on Jan23rd. So you don’t need to worry about Microsoft catching you.

Source

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it saw no reason to overturn the jury’s finding that Microsoft’s Windows XP and Office products breached patents held by z4 Technologies, a Michigan based company.

The Z4 Technologies holds the patent that governs the use of product activation codes for preventing software piracy. The court observed “substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdict.”

The court rejected Microsoft’s claim that one of its older products, Brazilian Publisher ‘98, contained so-called prior art that should have invalidated z4 Technology’s patents. Microsoft failed to meet “the burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence” that BP ‘98 constituted prior art, the court said.

The court also nixed Microsoft’s argument that the product keys users need to activate its software are not protected by z4’s patents.

Microsoft also claimed that the jury, in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, did not receive proper instructions from the lower court. The appeals court rejected the claim.

The court also dismissed Microsoft’s request that the amount of the jury’s award to z4 Technologies be reduced by 50% because it was in part based on overseas sales. Microsoft cited a recent Supreme Court ruling that patent infringement awards should be based only on sales within the U.S. The court said the issue is not subject to appeal because it was not raised during the original trial in the Texas District Court.

SOURCE

LOL

The list of all problems covered in this thread:

1. Task Manager/Registry Editor/Tools -> Folder Options disabled.
2. Search window opens while double-clicking on drives.
3. “Cannot find copy.exe” Error while double-clicking on drives.
4. Folder opens in a new window?
5. A sub-folder with the same name is created under parent folder.
6. My Documents/My Computer opens automatically at windows startup.
7. “NTLDR missing” Error at system startup.
8. “Hal.dll is corrupt or missing” Error at system startup.
9. “Windows\System32\config\system file missing or corrupt” Error at system startup.
10. Not able to boot into Windows 2000/XP/2003 after installing Windows 98.
11. Windows XP Boot loader related problems, like adding/removing entries.
12. ScanDisk starts running at windows startup.
13. “CMOS checksum error. Defaults loaded.” Error at system startup.
14. How to reset system BIOS password?
15. “Stand By” option is greyed out in shutdown dialog box and I can’t use it.
16. Windows Login Screen has changed to “Classic Logon Box\” automatically.
17. A strange process “ctfmon.exe” running in background.
18. How to recover lost Firefox bookmarks?
19. How to reset the corrupted windows icons?
20. How to make Desktop icons text background transparent?
21. How to get Windows XP Common tasks (Left-side pane in explorer) back?
22. “Copy To””Move To” dialog box opens automatically while right-clicking on Start -> Open.
23. Can’t set “Show Hidden files & folders” option in “Tools -> Folder Options”.
24. Accidentally deleted “mspaint.exe””notepad.exe”etc. file, how to get it back?
25. Taskbar is showing only icons in opened application buttons not showing text.
26. Orkut.com, Youtube.com and Firefox is blocked in the system.
27. I have forgotten my Windows Administrator password. How can I reset recover it?

Visit following links for solutions:

Frequently Asked Problems with Solutions Part -1:1-10
Frequently Asked Problems with Solutions Part -2:11-20
Frequently Asked Problems with Solutions Part -3:21-27

These applications can be run easily through a command prompt or from
the Run command (Click on Start and Run and type the shortcut command
for the utility).

1. Windows Media Player classic (mplayer2.exe):
Yes, apart from Media Player 8, an aesthetically pleasant player,
Windows XP do have the classic version of media player. It is the most
basic version of media player.

2. ClipBoard Viewer (clipbrd.exe):
Clipboard viewer can be used to view the contents of Windows
clipboard. It stores the copied items.

3. Dr Watson error notifier (drwtsn32.exe):
The prompt to send error report to Microsoft is handled by this little
utility.

4. DirectX diagnosis (dxdiag.exe):
To diagnose the functionality of the DirectX.

5. Synchronization manager (mobsync.exe):
Useful while you are in a network. It synchronizes files on your desktop
with a file server.

6. Object packager (packager.exe):
Object Packager is a tool you can use to create a package that you can
insert into a file.

7. Character Editor (eudcedit.exe):
This tool is used to edit the fonts of Windwos XP. In order to use this
tool you need admin priviledge as you ned to have write access to font
folder.

8. Driver Verifier manager (verifier.exe):
Verifies the integirty of the drivers.

9. Iexpress wizard (iexpress.exe):
This wizard helps to create a self-extracting self-installing package.

10. System Monitor (perfmon.exe):
This utility shows the performance of your computer in real time. Nice
graphical interface.

11.Character map (charmap.exe) and Disk Clean up utility (cleanmgr.exe):
Though this can be accessed from All programs>Accessories>System
Tools, I thought it is worth mentioning here in order to tell about the
shortcut to run this program from Run command.

12. Remote Access Phonebook (rasphone.exe):
A storage for phone numbers you use for remote access.

13. Registry editor (regedit.exe or regedt32.exe):
No need to mention about this. Do not use this unless you are advanced
PC user !

14. Network shared folder wizard (shrpubw.exe):
Utility to configure shared folder in a network.

15. File Signature verification (sigverif.exe):
The system files are digitally signed and need not be changed. This tool
will verify if the critical system files have been modified.

16. Volume controller (sndvol32.exe):
Windows sound volume controller utility.

17. Syskey (syskey.exe):
It encrypts the SAM database which holds local passwords. You can
use the SysKey utility to additionally secure the SAM database by
moving the SAM database encryption key off the Windows-based
computer.

18. System Configuration editior (sysedit.exe):
Editor for changing win.ini, system.ini, autoexec.bat and config.sys.
Require admn rights to edit.

19. Windows chat (winchat.exe):
A LAN chat utility with a very basic interface.

20. Narrator (narrator.exe):
It is a text-to-speech utility for vision impaired users. Windwos will read
the text through this utility.

21. Windows Version (winver.exe):
To find the version and some general information about your Windows
installation.

22. [b]Windows Address Book (wab.exe):
The free adderss book provided in Windows and which Outlook Express
use to store addresses.

23. Compress files (compact.exe):
Command based utility to compress files and folders.

24. Encryption tool (cipher.exe):
It is used to encrypt and decrypt files and folders. This also detects if
files on NTFS partition are encrypted. In order to run this go to Start
and Run, type cmd.exe and in command prompt type cipher. To get help
put cipher /? in command prompt.

Never knew your windows had that much stuff?
And well about its source,its from a site( torrent site) which i can not mention.