Tag: Format
January 22, 2010 by
Jason
Uninstalling and reinstalling inbox audio driver repeatedly on Windows 7 or Windows Vista might not be the best thing to do, as Microsoft has warned that users could leave their platforms incapable of playing audio. The Redmond company does not specify the exact number uninstalls/reinstalls needed for some DirectSound output to be rendered unable to play audio, but apparently, just several such actions are sufficient.
Here is the scenario described by the software giant: “You use software to render/play audio via the DirectSound API (for example: DDK tool Graph Edit). On Vista or Windows 7, via a driver testing tool (or manually) you uninstall and then reinstall audio drivers such as “High Definition Audio Device” (HDAudio) several times. You attempt to render/play the audio stream again to a non-default DirectSound device (for example – DirectSound:Speakers as opposed to Default DirectSound device).”
Provided that users managed to reproduce the situation exemplified above, Microsoft indicates that no audio will be produced as a result of the stream leveraging a non-default DirectSound device for rendering. In addition, Vista and Windows 7 customers will receive the following error message: “These filters cannot agree on a connection. Verify type compatibility of input pin and output pin. Cannot play back the audio stream: no audio hardware is available, or the hardware is not responding. (Return code:0×80040256).” Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
December 15, 2009 by
Jason Want to know just how easy it is to hack Windows 7? It actually takes only a few actions on behalf of the end users to literally hand over a computer to an attacker, in spite of the fact that the computer in question is running the final version of Windows 7, along with security software. The antivirus is useless from the get go, as it is incapable of detecting a zero-day custom hack, let alone prevent or block it in any manner. At the same time, the mitigations of Windows 7 in the default security configuration are also by passed.
But better yet, do you want to witness a Windows 7 RTM yourselves? Then just have a look at the video embedded at the bottom of this article. You will be able to see a hack put together by a non-Microsoft security researcher and demoed at TechEd. And of course, you’ll also be able to find out the steps you need to take in order to protect your environment against this type of attack.
“Marcus Murray, security consultant at TrueSec, shows us a hacking demo he created of Windows 7 using Excel over the internet. After this he explains what security features in Windows 7 you could have used to prevent this hack from occurring. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
This tips helps you enable or disable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) for Office applications.
To enable or disable DEP automatically, click the Fix it button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.
Note this wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
Note if you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.
Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Read More»
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To uninstall Windows 7, you must determine your specific installation scenario from the scenarios that are listed in this section, and then follow the steps for that scenario.
Scenario 1: You installed Windows 7 on a Windows-based computer
You installed a version of Windows 7 as a new installation over Windows XP, Windows Vista, or another version of Windows 7. You used the Windows 7 installation media to install Windows 7 to the same hard disk drive as the original operating system.
In this scenario, the Windows 7 installation will have created a Windows.old folder that contains your previous operating system and personal files. This Windows.old folder is in the root of the Windows partition. To revert to this previous operating system, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
971760 How to restore a Windows 7-based computer to a previous Windows installation by using the Windows.old folder.
Read More»
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Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7. Here’s a quick look at the process:
* First, you’ll need the DiskPart utility on the system you will use to prep the thumb drive. This is a free disk partitioning utility that is likely already installed on your Windows system. If not, you can download DiskPart here
* Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.
* Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.
* Now run select disk 1 where the “1″ is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
Downloads of the Open XML Compatibility Pack have passed the 100 million mark, Microsoft revealed. The Redmond-based company is offering the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats for users of Office releases prior to Office 2007 in order to enable them to not only open, but also edit, and even save documents, workbooks, and presentations in Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats, namely the Open XML ISO standards. The software giant indicated that the number of Open XML Compatibility Pack downloads was illustrative of the increase in adoption of the OOXML standards introduced with the advent of the Office 2007 System.
“The compatibility pack is a manual download. It is not pushed through any update channels. In order for an end user to obtain it, they must visit the Microsoft download center, select one of the 35 available languages, and download the 26MB installer. To say it differently, more than 100 million people have had cause to seek out and download the compatibility pack for Open XML; likely due to their encountering a document stored in one of the formats,” explained Gray Knowlton, Microsoft Office Group Product Manager. Read More»
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You can minimize file-compatibility issues by standardizing on the most common file formats. By default, OpenOffice.org saves files in Open Document Format (ODF). Microsoft’s by-the-book support for ODF, unfortunately, breaks some spreadsheet files, according to a recent ZDNet blog post.
OpenOffice reads and writes Office 2007’s default .docx and .xlsx XML file formats. But the older .doc and .xls formats are still the ones most often used. I suggest that you make the classic Office formats your defaults in OpenOffice. To set .doc as the document default, for example, open any OpenOffice program and do the following:
Step 1. Choose Tools, Options;
Step 2. Select General under Load/Save;
Step 3. Click Text Document under Document type in the Default file format and ODF settings section; Read More»
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At the end of April 2009, Microsoft unveiled to the world a new service that it referred to as societal networking. A few days over a month later, the Redmond company is allowing testers of Microsoft Vine to access and download the Microsoft Vine Diagnostic Tool. The label is self-explanatory, and the new tool can be used to harvest diagnostic information on the users’ Microsoft Vine installations. Vine comes with a client that needs to be installed locally on the users’ machine. The Diagnostic Tool is designed to streamline the troubleshooting process associated with resolving eventual Vine-related functionality issues.
“The Vine diagnostic tool (vinediag.hta) collects diagnostic information of your installation of the Microsoft Vine beta, and stores it in a file on your computer. When you are discussing a problem in the Vine beta on the discussion forum, the support team might ask you to run this tool and share the file it creates. The information in the file could help the support team identify the issue and propose a solution,” Microsoft explained. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
USB flash drives have become really handy in storing different files of various sizes including, backups, personal documents, music, pictures, portable applications and more. Flash drives turned out to be so convenient that people start pouring in files of any kind without sorting them.
Because of these habits, flash drives end up getting real messy quickly and it becomes difficult to figure out how to clear up disk space to accommodate more files.
Deleting unnecessary files is a good solution, but can be tough to do when files aren’t properly organized. If you want to clear up disk space the fastest way possible, the best problem solver to this is by formatting your USB flash drive directly.
The advantages of doing this is that your flash drive is wiped completely clean, removing all files regardless of their attributes (including hidden files). Here are the basic steps in reformatting your USB flash drive: Read More»
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February 05, 2009 by
Jason
Although a PC used for writing doesn’t need to be a high-performance computer, its performance can be improved by a good partitioning scheme. The biggest boost comes from my Paging partition on drive H, which is found on my second physical disk. I use this partition to boost performance in the following ways:
Move the paging file there. A well-known method for improving performance on a Windows-based computer is to move the paging file (pagefile.sys) from its usual location on drive C to its own separate partition on a separate physical drive.
Keep the Paging partition small (4 GB). By default the initial size of your paging file is 1.5 Ă— RAM and its maximum size is 3 Ă— RAM. So if your computer has 1 GB of RAM, which is pretty good for a desktop productivity computer, then setting your Paging partition to 4 GB gives you more than enough room for your paging file without wasting disk space that could be used for other purposes like storing data. Read More»
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