February 25, 2009 by
Jason
1. Find bottlenecks
From what we’ve seen so far Windows 7 is already performing better than Vista, but if your PC seems sluggish then it’s now much easier to uncover the bottleneck. Click Start, type RESMON and press [Enter] to launch the Resource Monitor, then click the CPU, Memory, Disk or Network tabs. Windows 7 will immediately show which processes are hogging the most system resources.
The CPU view is particularly useful, and provides something like a more powerful version of Task Manager. If a program has locked up, for example, then right-click its name in the list and select Analyze Process. Windows will then try to tell you why it’s hanging – the program might be waiting for another process, perhaps – which could give you the information you need to fix the problem.
2. Keyboard shortcuts
Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts.
Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
January 07, 2009 by
Jason
If you need to make firewall settings repeatedly on a single computer as conditions change or, perhaps, on a fleet of computers you’ll find working with Windows Firewall (the Control Panel application) or Windows Firewall With Advanced Security to be a bit cumbersome. The Netsh command, using its Firewall or Advfirewall context, provides an alternative way to view or modify all manner of Windows Firewall settings. For example, you can enable Windows Firewall with this command:
netsh firewall set opmode enable
The Netsh Firewall context can be considered the basic context, where you can find current firewall settings at a high level. It’s roughly comparable to the Windows Firewall application in Control Panel. From the command prompt, you can see the basic configuration by typing:
netsh firewall show config
Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
Both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 include the next-generation of Windows Firewall, which has become a standard aspect of Microsoft’s client and server operating systems. Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, although not marketed as a replacement for more complex solutions designed to manage network traffic, has the advantage that it ships as a default component integrated with the platforms. On top of this, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security is not as simplistic as it might appear. This is why Microsoft has made available for download a complex design guide of the product.
Windows Firewall with Advanced Security “can filter the network traffic permitted to enter the computer from the network, and also control what network traffic the computer is allowed to send to the network. Windows Firewall with Advanced Security supports IPsec, which enables you to require authentication from any computer that is attempting to communicate with your computer. When authentication is required, computers that cannot authenticate cannot communicate with your computer. By using IPsec, you can also require that specific network traffic be encrypted to prevent it from being read or intercepted while in transit between computers,” revealed Microsoft’s Dave Bishop. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 5 Comments »