1. Microsoft uses patch channel to install Firefox add-on
2. Microsoft Vine Diagnostic Tool for Windows 7
3. Turn On Inbox Games in Windows Vista
5. Uninstall or Reinstall Any Version Of Internet Explorer
6. Windows 7 RC Training Kit for Developers
7. Vista SP2 and XP SP3 June 2009 Patches ISO
8. TOP10 – May 2009 Popular Tips
9. One-click troubleshooting process
10. Vista SP2 RTM Crashes on Repeated Hot-Unplugs of USB Devices
Windows Vista, just as previous Windows releases, ships with a range of pre-installed games. Users are undoubtedly familiar with such titles as Minesweeper, Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider Solitaire and Hearts. Windows Vista adds to these casual games such as Chess Titans and Mahjong Titans. However, even though these games ship as default components of the operating system, some users might notice that they
are in fact missing or inaccessible. Microsoft explained that this scenario implied that the Inbox Games were not in fact fully installed on the platform. It is a situation that users of the Vista Business edition, for example, are more likely to come across, although other SKUs are not excluded from this. Resolving it is a matter of turning on Inbox Games.
“Users need to navigate to Start Menu, Control Panel, “Programs,” and choose the “Turn Windows features on or off” option in the left hand side pane. “Turn off Games by clicking the box next to Games. This will remove the check from the box. Select “OK”. Select Restart to reboot your system. From the Start Menu select Control Panel. In the Control Panel select “Programs”. Next select “Turn Windows features on or off.” Turn on Games by clicking the box next to Games. This will add the check to the box. Select “OK”. Select “Restart” to reboot your system,” Microsoft explained. Read More»
There has always been a gap between computer gamers and console gamers. Generally because of the impossibility of a console gamer to play computer games or a PC gamer to play console–only games. Luckily for us, some people just don’t understand when to quit and keep on trying to create a bridge between consoles and computers as far as gaming is concerned.
Those people are the ones behind console emulators for the PC allowing PC gamers to play titles that appeared in a console-only format. This is how emulators such as Chankast for the Sega Dreamcast, Dolphin GameCube emulator, ePSXe PlayStation One emulator and many more appeared. Next generation consoles, however, seemed to be impossible to emulate on a modern computer mainly because their architecture is pretty different from that of a computer. Although it is said that console manufacturers have created emulators, there are no real facts confirming these speculations.
There are numerous teams working on Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii emulators, and one has just succeeded in making the first emulator to play PlayStation 2 video games. Read More»
What, exactly, are supercomputers? The clue is in the name, really: they’re powerful computers capable of calculating many millions of floating operations per second (FLOPS) essentially, they’re very, very fast.
While any array of powerful computers, such as a modern-day web server which consists of several motherboards (the main circuit board of a computer) running in parallel can be considered a supercomputer, generally the term is reserved for machines that dedicate their entire hardware to one complex task at any given time.
Take the NEC Earth Simulator in Japan, for example, which was created specifically for modelling weather problems associated with global warming. Or the world’s fastest computer, BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, which simulates the behaviour of biomolecular structures and protein folding. It’s capable of 600 trillion FLOPS (tera-FLOPS or TFLOPS), whereas, the six-year-old Earth Simulator is only capable of 36TFLOPS. BlueGene/L won’t hold the top spot for long, though. Supercomputers twice as powerful will be online soon. Read More»
Update Vista’s DirectX9 files for better game compatibility
One of the fixes for getting games to run in Vista that do not normally (such as FEAR and 3Dmark06 as two examples) is relatively simple. These games require the latest version of Directx 9. Vista does not actually contain a full installation of Directx 9, just some elements for compatibility purposes. So, install Directx 9.
To install Directx 9c on Windows Vista:
step 1: Download the latest DirectX 9 redistributable file from Microsoft.com here.
step 2: Unzip the file into a folder on your desktop or in your documents.
step 3: Run the DXSETUP file.
step 4: You can delete the folder after the install has finished.
Read More»
With Windows 7 pre-Beta Build 6801 out of Redmond, it was only natural that DirectX 11 would follow. And this is precisely what happened. Having served Milestone 3 Build of the next iteration of the Windows client, Microsoft is also moving forward with the graphics technology included by default with the operating system. The transition from Vista to Windows 7 is synonymous with the evolution from DirectX 10.1 (in Vista SP1) to DirectX 11. At this point in time, the first taste of the next version of the DirectX suite of multimedia application programming interfaces (APIs), namely DirectX 11, is available for download via the November 2008 DirectX Software Development Kit.
“Included in the November 2008 DirectX SDK is a technical preview of Direct3D 11 and associated components and tools. Direct3D 11 is an update to Direct3D 10.1 enabling new hardware features as well as improving the breadth of configurations supported by Direct3D. As such, Direct3D 11 enables developers to create applications and games that work on Direct3D 10, Direct3D 10.1, and Direct3D 11 hardware when it becomes available. With the addition of WARP and Direct3D 10 Level 9, Direct3D 10.1 and Direct3D 11 have the ability to target fast software rasterization and Direct3D 9 hardware,” Microsoft revealed. Read More»
The Games for Windows Branding tool is one of the evolved aspects of the DirectX software development kit launched on November 5, 2008 for a variety of Windows releases, including Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The November 2008 DirectX SDK delivers the Runtime, along with the additional software (updates to tools, utilities, samples, documentation, and runtime debug files) set up to enable developers to create content compliant with DirectX. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows are covered by the DirectX SDK update.
The November 2008 DirectX SDK has taken the Games for Windows Branding tool (offered initially in the August 2008 release of the SDK) to the next level. “This tool helps developers and publishers test their compliance against the Games for Windows technical requirements and test requirements,” revealed Microsoft. Read More»
The Windows Experience Index measures the capability of your computer’s hardware and software configuration and expresses this measurement as a number called a base score. A higher base score generally means that your computer will perform better and faster than a computer with a lower base score, especially when performing more advanced and resource-intensive tasks.
Each hardware component receives an individual subscore. Your computer’s base score is determined by the lowest subscore. For example, if the lowest subscore of an individual hardware component is 2.6, then the base score is 2.6. The base score is not an average of the combined subscores.
You can use the base score to confidently buy programs and other software that are matched to your computer’s base score. For example, if your computer has a base score of 3.3, then you can confidently purchase any software designed for this version of Windows that requires a computer with a base score of 3 or lower.
The base scores currently range from 1 to 5.9. The Windows Experience Index is designed to accommodate advances in computer technology. As hardware speed and performance improves, higher base scores will be introduced. However, the standards for each level of the index stay the same. For example, a computer scored as a 2.8 will remain a 2.8 unless you decide to upgrade the computer’s hardware. Read More»
New DirectX downloads are available for a range of Windows operating systems, including Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. The August 2008 DirectX Software Development Kit and DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer went live on the Microsoft Download Center this past week. In addition to the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista RTM, SP1, as well as XP SP2 and SP3, x86 and x64 versions of DirectX End-User Runtime and SDK Available (August 2008) have also been delivered for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.
“The Microsoft DirectX End-User Runtime provides updates to 9.0c and previous versions of DirectXÂ the core Windows technology that drives high speed multimedia and games on the PC. Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs,” Microsoft revealed in the description of the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer. Read More»
A couple of days ago, I met an old friend of mine who just got his hands on a brand new Mac and, after about half an hour of showing the ins and outs of the machine, he asked me why the Mac community has so few free applications. If he had known that I would start writing down every piece of free and/or open source software capable of running on a Mac and keep talking about them for a whole hour, I think he wouldn’t have asked me that question in a million years.
To be fair, I kind of slowed down about 30 minutes after I started writing the list but still got pretty far to cover two pages. Those were the apps that I could remember at the moment, while still trying to write down other apps in no particular order.
The exact same question seems to haunt a lot of Mac switchers out there and thus, I decided to put up a list of the most important free applications I would install on my own Mac after performing a clean install.
Because I do want to give the list some type of order, I have put the apps in six categories, again, in no particular order: Internet, network, audio/video, graphics, games, editors and miscellaneous. The content in the first five categories is pretty obvious. In the sixth, I have included the programs that wouldn’t fit in any of the first categories. Read More»
Loading ...
