Tag: Maintenance
Save energy
Leaving your PC on wastes both energy and cash: running it overnight could cost you more than £100 a year. It’s time to stop sinning and make some savings.
Step 1: Click Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Power Options. If your system uses the High Performance power plan then you can save a little energy by selecting Balanced.
Step 2: Selecting Very low power delivers a real energy cut, but mainly by limiting the work your CPU can do, so it’s best used on laptops or PCs that aren’t running anything too intensive.
Step 3: Click Change plan settings for your plan. Windows Vista normally turns the display off after 20 minutes of inactivity; cut this to 10, perhaps set the PC to sleep after 20 minutes or so. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
Volume Licensing is just one of the modalities to acquire Microsoft software, but perhaps, as customers are concerned, it is also the most appealing because of the cost savings it implies. In contrast to the retail copies of Windows Vista, the main benefit of the Volume Licenses is that it takes the cost of the packaging and of the media out of the price equation of the product. And this, of course, is not valid just for Vista, now complete with Service Pack 1, but also for additional Microsoft solutions that make the object of Volume Licensing. In the Redmond giant’s perspective, one of the most relevant benefits for volume license customers is the ability to acquire Software Assurance.
“Software acquired through Microsoft Volume Licensing is a software license only. A software license provides the right to run a Microsoft software product. Savings above retail boxed software prices can be realized by participating in a Microsoft Volume Licensing program. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows Vista | No Comments »
Registry Cleaning and PC maintenance software has got a bad name with so many ‘scareware’ products popping up on websites, telling you that your computer needs attention and offering to put it right. Woe betide anyone who takes up the offer and more often than not you’ll end up with a infected PC, or a bill for a piece of useless software. The other problems is that maintenance software often makes little or no difference, and don’t be misled into thinking they will somehow restore the performance on a terminally sluggish or cluttered machine, that just doesn’t happen in the real world. On the other hand, running a decent cleaner every so often can help to avoid problems later down the line, by removing redundant files and Registry entries, and one freeware utility I have been trialling recently seems to do a pretty good job. Read More»
Posted in Software | No Comments »
Microsoft Windows Installer is a component of the Windows operating system. Windows Installer provides a standard foundation for installing and uninstalling software. Software manufacturers can create the setup of their products to use Windows Installer to help make software installation, maintenance, and uninstallation straightforward and easy.
New and improved features in Windows Installer 4.5
* Multiple package transaction
* Embedded UI handler
* Embedded chainer
* Update supersedence resiliency
* Custom action execution on update uninstall
Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
Ever had the feeling that Microsoft is scrambling to salvage what little it still can out of Windows Vista? While continuously claiming that its latest Windows client is not a failure, and pointing to the 140 million licenses sold as of March 2008, the Redmond company seems keen on demonstrating that it can pull the operating system out of the sinking sands of public opinion. In this regard, Service Pack 1 is indeed used as a floating device, but a tad of marketing on the side can’t possibly hurt, can it? The focus for the time being, as far as Microsoft is concerned, is business users. Traditionally slow to upgrade to a new Windows release, corporate clients are now looking at Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 as alternatives to Vista upgrades. The software giant is working to push Vista SP1 down their throats even if XP SP3 continues to work, and despite the proximity of Windows 7. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
Windows Sysinternals is a collection of advanced system utilities accompanied by technical information, designed to streamline maintenance, management, diagnosis and troubleshooting tasks under the hood of the Windows operating system. The resources are offered as free downloads by Microsoft since 2006, when the Redmond giant acquired the project put together by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. As of May 28, Microsoft has enabled alternative access to the utilities via Live Sysinternals, which is still in tests.
“We’re excited to announce the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as live.sysinternals.comtools or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser,” reads the announcement from Microsoft. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP | No Comments »
February 22, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft constantly collects information about Vista from users. When a problem occurs, Vista usually asks whether you want to send information about the problem to Microsoft and, if you do, it stores these tidbits in a massive database. Engineers then tackle the “issues” (as they euphemistically call them) and hopefully come up with solutions.
One of Vista’s most promising new features is Problem Reports and Solutions, and it’s designed to make solutions available to anyone who goes looking for them. Vista keeps a list of problems your computer is having, so you can tell it to go online and see if a solution is available. If there’s a solution waiting, Vista will download it, install it, and fix your system. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
February 22, 2008 by
Jason Few computer problems are as maddening as those related to physical memory defects because they tend to be intermittent and they tend to cause problems in secondary systems, forcing you to waste time on wild goose chases all over your system.
Therefore, it is welcome news indeed that Vista ships with a new Windows Memory Diagnostics tool that works with Microsoft Online Crash Analysis to determine whether defective physical memory is the cause of program crashes. If so, Windows Memory Diagnostics lets you know about the problem and schedules a memory test for the next time you start your computer. If it detects actual problems, the system also marks the affected memory area as unusable to avoid future crashes.
Windows Vista also comes with a Memory Leak Diagnosis tool that’s part of the Diagnostic Policy Service. If a program is leaking memory (using up increasing amounts of memory over time), this tool will diagnose the problem and take steps to fix it. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
January 05, 2008 by
Jason Many errors in Windows are caused by corrupt files. Those files could have become corrupt because of errors on your hard drive. The Check Disk tool checks for errors and attempts to fix any it finds.
Use Check Disk at your own risk. On rare occasions I’ve experienced problems when using check disk in Windows Vista. Here are a few things to watch out for: Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 5 Comments »
