PCTips Box

Like busses you wait ages for a Windows Service Pack, then two come along at once. Hard on the heels of Vista SP1, which mostly went without a hitch, we can now look forward to XP Service Pack 3, the last for the operating system, which is now heading towards retirement, probably next year.

If you were around when MS unleashed SP2 you are forgiven for a brief shudder of trepidation, but I think this one should go quite smoothly. Unlike XP SP2, which re-wrote a lot of the operating system’s code, this one focuses on rolling up all previous security updates since the release of SP2, and a reported 1074 fixes and upgrades. Most of them are anonymous behind the scenes things that you’ll be happier not knowing about (because they are mostly deathly dull…), but there are a few interesting bits and bobs. (more…)

My tips explained how to set up a Vista machine to dual-boot between that OS and Windows XP.

But booting to XP on a dual-boot system has the negative side-effect of deleting any Vista restore points, in addition to all but its latest backup file, and a Registry workaround is required to prevent this.

XP dual-boot is not system-restore friendly

Ian Brown was the first to describe an unfortunate fact of dual-booting XP and Vista: (more…)

Unlike Windows XP, which was sent barefoot into the world, Windows Vista comes in the context of a mature anti-piracy infrastructure courtesy of the Windows Genuine Advantage mechanism, and with the Reduced Functionality Mode limitations. Reduced Functionality Mode in Vista is delivered in two distinct flavors: out-of-grace and non-genuine. The first is associated with operating systems that have not been activated in the initial 30 days grace period while the second is a result of the detection of a potentially pirated copy of the platform.

“Windows Vista may enter reduced functionality mode if one of the following conditions is true: you do not activate Windows Vista within the specified activation period; (more…)

Some of the more recent Firefox customizations I’ve examined are ways to speed up the rendering of Web pages. The settings to do this are a little arcane and not terribly self-explanatory, but with a little tinkering, you can often get pages to pop up faster and waste less time redrawing themselves.

Start rendering pages faster
Creating an nglayout.initialpaint.delay integer preference lets you control how long Firefox waits before starting to render a page. If this value isn’t set, Firefox defaults to 250 milliseconds, or 0.25 of a second. Some people report that setting it to 0 i.e., forcing Firefox to begin rendering immediately causes almost all pages to show up faster. Values as high as 50 are also pretty snappy. (more…)

If you have installed a Microsoft Windows operating system in the last few years, you are familiar with the concept of product activation. Product activation helps the vendor, in this case Microsoft, to ensure that the software being installed is a legally licensed copy. After installing the product, you will continue to receive messages and alerts reminding you that the clock is ticking to activate the product. If you do not activate the product in time, it will cease working until you do so. Some users find product activation to be a tremendous nuisance, (more…)

To tell you the truth, I have never understood what the big deal is with product activation. The fact of the matter is that software piracy is fairly rampant and that Microsoft is the target for a large percentage of the piracy due to their dominance in the operating system and office productivity software markets. They have a right to try to stop or at least control that privacy and the product activation seems to be a fair way of ensuring that only legitimate software owners get to benefit from using it.

All that said, I know that there are many users who abhor the process. It may be because they have had problems activating and have had to call the toll-free number and wait to talk to a Microsoft support agent who then read them some 278-character long (okay- it’s a slight exaggeration) activation code. (more…)

ActiveSync is no more for Microsoft Windows Vista and is getting a face lift called the Windows Mobile Device Center.

Currently it is available as a Release Candidate 3 (RC3) for download.

Windows Mobile Device Center is the new name for ActiveSync in Microsoft Windows Vista, and provides overall device management features for your Windows Mobile-based devices in Windows Vista, including smartphones and pocket PCs. All of the features previously available in ActiveSync are available in Windows Vista, including synchronization and setting up your partnership. (more…)

When we launched Windows Vista® in January 2007, we identified Windows Ultimate Extras as a unique series of add-ons that would be available to Windows Vista Ultimate customers. To date, we have released four sets of Extras Windows Hold’Em, 16 Language Packs for the Windows multi-language user interface, Secure Online Key Backup, and Windows BitLocker™ Drive Preparation Tool. We want to let our Windows Vista Ultimate customers know that we are actively working to deliver the remaining Extras that we identified in January. Our goal is to provide the highest-quality, most secure and reliable offerings, and as a result we are continuing our work on these offerings. We apologize for taking so long to provide a status update to customers. (more…)

With the release of Windows Vista comes a surprising change to the way the upgrade version works.

Unlike previous version of Windows, you can no longer wipe out your existing Windows installation and install a fresh install of Vista with the upgrade DVD. Instead, your upgrade version on top of the previous version of Windows you have.

This change will help cut down on the number of people buying the wrong version of Windows Vista but creates a huge annoyance for any power user that wants to start fresh with a new Windows operating system. (more…)

Although it seem unlikely virus writers and hackers are going to give up looking for and attempting to exploit loopholes in Microsoft products, it seems some of them may be turning their attention to other popular applications. According to security experts at Symantec the defences on one of its PC’s, used as bait to attract and trap virus writers, was breached through known vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime and WinZip. (more…)