Tag: windows xp
October 19, 2008 by
Jason
The Visual Round Trip Analyzer was initially an internal Microsoft tool, which the Redmond company is now offering as a free download. Designed as a webpage performance visualizer and analyzer, according to the software company, Visual Round Trip Analyzer runs on top of Network Monitor 3.2 and is set up to offer a comprehensive perspective over the download of a specific webpage. The Redmond giant indicated that VRTA comes with support for Windows Vista RTM and SP1, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
“The Visual Round Trip Analyzer tool helps web developers and testers visualize the download of their page, identify best practices and changes that improve performance. The Round-Trip between the client and server(s) is the single biggest impact to web page performance - much greater than server response time. VRTA examines the communications protocol, identifying the causes of excessive round-trips, and recommending solutions,” Microsoft informed. Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
October 14, 2008 by
Jason Network Access Protection is designed to permit a high degree of control over client computers across a network. A critical feature of Windows Server 2008, NAP is now also supported by Windows Vista
RTM and Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. But deploying NAP is not exactly an effortless task. However, Microsoft is offering the necessary resources to help network administrators, infrastructure specialists and system architects. An illustrative example of this is the Network Access Protection Design Guide available via TechNet.
“The Network Access Protection Design Guide, authored by our very own technical writer and NAP Forum hero Greg Lindsay, is now live! The NAP Design Guide explains the advantages, disadvantages, requirements, recommendations, and design considerations for deploying NAP for the IPsec, 802.1X, VPN, and DHCP enforcement methods. (…) Huge thanks to Greg for his authoring efforts over the last year and to many NAP product team reviewers for helping to ensure that the content is technically accurate and complete,” revealed Joe Davies, NAP Senior Program Manager. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP, windows vista | 1 Comment »
October 12, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft gave computer makers a six-month extension for offering Windows XP on newly-shipped PCs. While this doesn’t impact enterprise IT because volume licensing agreements will allow IT to keep installing Windows XP for many years to come the move is another symbolic nail in Vista’s coffin.
The public reputation of Windows Vista is in shambles, as Microsoft itself tacitly acknowledged in its Mojave ad campaign.
IT departments are largely ignoring Vista. In June (18 months after Vista’s launch), Forrester Research reported that just 8.8% of enterprise PCs worldwide were running Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have put Windows 7 on an accelerated schedule that could see it released in 2010. That will provide IT departments with all the justification they need to simply skip Vista and wait to eventually standardize on Windows 7 as the next OS for business.
So how did Vista get left holding the bag?
Let’s look at the five most important reasons why Vista failed. Read More»
Posted in windows vista | 2 Comments »
October 06, 2008 by
Jason If you’re upgrading a computer running Windows XP, you can save money by opting for an upgrade rather than the full version of Windows Vista.
However, you can’t necessarily perform an ‘in-place’ or ‘over-the-top’ upgrade; sometimes you have to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista, which means backing up and reinstalling all your current programs, folders and files. The table shows where an over-the-top upgrade is possible.
In practice, a clean install means a fresh start; anything short of this can carry over problems from your old, cluttered version of Windows XP. Strictly speaking, when Windows Vista installs itself over Windows XP, it actually does perform a clean install and then imports all the old settings.
This should help prevent problems and can even, in principle, carry through hardware drivers that can’t be installed under Windows Vista itself, thereby preserving the working life of older devices. However, we’d recommend a truly clean install whenever possible. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
October 06, 2008 by
Jason
If you wish to install Windows XP on a computer that comes with Windows Vista already installed then you will have to create a separate partition on your hard drive to install Windows XP onto. This effectively splits the hard drive into two, and keeps the different versions of Windows separate. To do this you need to open up the Computer Management screen by going to the Start menu and then right-clicking on Computer and selecting Manage.
From the Computer Management screen select Disk Management, right-click on your main hard disk where Windows Vista is installed and then select Shrink Volume. This opens up a window where you can choose how large you want the new drive partition for Windows XP to be. You need to select the size of the new partition carefully, as you will need enough space to be able to install Windows XP successfully (around 10 gigabytes) whilst leaving enough space for Windows Vista. After you have selected the appropriate amount of space click on the Shrink button to begin the process, and once that has completed you should be able to right-click on the new partition (which should be labelled “Unallocated free space”) and select New Simple Volume. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP, windows vista | 3 Comments »
October 05, 2008 by
Jason Are you experiencing problems with your computer network? Are these error messages appearing?:
- Unable to clear the DNS cache
- Unable to renew your IP address
- An operation was performed on something that is not a socket
- Unable to clear the ARP cache
If so, here are some potential solutions for Windows XP/Vista.
1. Check to make sure your computer is on and is connected to a network.
2. Be aware that Windows has a built in function to repair a network connection. This function can give valuable information in the form of an error message if you know what you are looking for. Some common error messages given are:
Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
October 02, 2008 by
Jason At the start of September 2008, Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich revealed that he was cooking a major update for Process Monitor, one of the components of the Sysinternals suite. As of September 30, version 2.0 of Process Monitor became available for download. The
description of the tool authored by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell reveals that Process Monitor 2.0 is designed to integrate seamlessly with both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 2000 SP4 with Update Rollup 1, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista.
“Process Monitor v2.0: this major update to Process Monitor adds real-time TCP and UDP monitoring to its existing process, thread, DLL, file system and registry monitoring. You can now see the TCP and UDP activity processes performed, including the operation (e.g. connect, send, receive), local and remote IP addresses and DNS names, and operation transfer lengths. On Windows Vista, Process Monitor also collects thread stacks for network operations,” revealed Curtis Metz, Program Manager, Microsoft Sysinternals. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP, windows vista | No Comments »
September 17, 2008 by
Jason On September 16, the Redmond company went live with the second wave of IE8 Beta 2 releases, offering the browser in no less than 21 localized versions. The fresh IE8 Beta 2 releases covering 21 additional languages on top of the original four are supported only on the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista RTM and Service Pack 1, Windows XP SP2 and SP3 and Windows Server 2008.
“The IE team is pleased to announce the availability of Internet Explorer Beta 2 in 21 additional languages. The languages released today are fully localized versions of the IE8 English Beta 2. The Complete List of IE8 Beta 2 Languages: Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish,” explained Vishwac Sena Kannan, International Program Manager.
Microsoft is currently gearing up for the availability of the gold build of Internet Explorer 8. The Redmond giant has not confirmed a deadline, except to say that it expects to deliver the final IE8 two years after the general availability of Internet Explorer 7 considered by the company to be January 30, 2007, the Windows Vista launch day. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 4 Comments »
September 17, 2008 by
Jason You may ask yourselves, why should this article be any different from all those tweaking tutorials around the Internet or, better yet, why should you read this when you can install a program that does it all for you? Here’s why: this article will help you make important changes to your system with just two windows opened: this one and a notepad. That’s all! No need to click your way through dozens of windows, no need to go through the risk of pushing the wrong button and crashing your operating system.
Furthermore, you don’t have to pay a single cent! Why pay for a program to do what you yourselves can do in just a few seconds? And last but not least, you will be able to choose from a list only the tweaks that you’re interested in and then apply them on any computer, at any time with just a double-click. Tweaking can hardly get any easier than that! Think how cool that would be, especially after reinstalling Windows.
Let’s start by creating the file that will do all the magic. Right-click on your desktop, create a new text document and name it tweaks.reg. Windows will ask if you’re sure that you want to change the file extension – click Yes. Right-click the file and choose Edit: a blank notepad window will appear. There are two things you must keep in mind: first of all, for the magic to work your text document must start with ‘Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00′. Secondly, later on, be very patient when copying something to paste it in your document. If you copy an incomplete text, the tweak will not work and you might alter other system settings. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 3 Comments »
September 14, 2008 by
Jason
Despite all its quirks, Windows does do some things for a good reason. Some files need to be locked down when they are in use, otherwise you risk damaging the file or harming the Operating System. Unfortunately Windows XP seems to be plagued by files that cannot be deleted. These are frequently simple files like videos (AVI), MP3s or other seemingly harmless files. You try to delete the file, Windows waits a few seconds before announcing that access is denied, the file is currently in use and cannot be deleted. However, you know it’s not in use and you just want it deleted.
If you have encountered this problem, here is a step-by-step process for trying to purge the files you can’t delete. It starts with the basics for Windows XP and moves on to more involved tricks. The process will work for all recent Windows releases, but Windows XP has been causing the most the problems, so we will focus on it. Please note: we are assuming that the file is not crucial to the operation of Windows - deleting important system files can cause havoc. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 1 Comment »
