Archive for the ‘Vista’ Category

Upgrading to Vista

Posted: August 18, 2009 in System Information, Vista
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With all of the new features of Windows Vista, there’ll be a mighty temptation for you to

buy a copy of the operating system in a store and immediately install it over your existing

instance of Windows XP, 2000, Me, or 98.

Before you do, you should consider some of the following cautions:

_ Your old PC may not be up to the challenge of running Vista. You may need substantial

investments in additional RAM, a more capable video card, a larger hard

drive, or all of the above to get adequate performance from Vista.

_ Some of your hardware, such as printers and networking adapters, may not work

at all after you install Vista—unless you update the drivers they need to versions

that are Vista-compatible.

_ Even if you find that one or more of your drivers needs to be updated, the vendor

of your hardware may not make a Vista-compatible version available for months,

years, or ever. (It’s happened before with previous versions of Windows.)

Avoid Installing Vista over Another Version of Windows

We do recommend that you get Windows Vista preinstalled when you’re buying a

new PC. But you may be surprised to learn that we don’t recommend that you install

Vista over XP or an older version of Windows.

The reason is that installing Vista on top of another version of Windows may cause

incompatibility problems that you might not be able to easily fix. When you buy a PC

with Vista preinstalled, it’s almost certain that the components in the PC will have

been selected for their compatibility and will have the latest driver software. If you

install Vista to an older machine yourself, however, you may find that your printer,

networking adapter, or some other vital component no longer works because the

version you have of its driver is incompatible.

In general, you shouldn’t consider installing Vista over an older version of Windows

unless the following conditions are true:

• You need a feature of Vista that you can’t add to XP; or

• You need an application that requires Vista; and

• You can’t afford even the least expensive new PC that comes with Vista preinstalled

Even if one of the above cases is true, you may be better off burning your old data to

a CD, formatting the old PC’s hard drive, and doing a clean install of Vista. This avoids

the possibility that some components of the old OS will hang around to cause conflicts.

If you’ve never before backed up and formatted a hard drive, however, don’t try

to learn how on any PC that’s important to you.

A clean install, however, isn’t a panacea. Your old PC may not have enough memory,

disk space, video performance, or CPU performance to run Vista satisfactorily.

If you do decide to install Vista over an older version of Windows, at least run

Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor, described in this chapter, to see which drivers you

may need to update first.

Dual Windows Installation Truths

Posted: August 18, 2009 in Vista
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On a typical PC with two hard drives or partitions, one dedicated to Windows XP, and

one dedicated to Windows Vista, you will typically end up with XP on the C: drive

and Windows Vista on the D: drive when you initiate Windows Vista’s Setup routine

from within Windows XP. But when you reboot the system and boot with the

Windows Vista Setup DVD, something magical occurs. After both operating systems

are installed, Windows XP will be on C: and Windows Vista will be on D: while you’re

using Windows XP. But when you’re using Windows Vista, the system will report that

Windows Vista is on C: and Windows XP is on D:. This is vastly preferable to the former

method, because most people are used to seeing the operating system partition

located on the C: drive. For this very simple reason, we recommend that you always

install Windows Vista in a dual-boot scenario by booting the system with the Vista

Setup DVD and launching Setup from there.

I’ve been referring to Windows Vista’s dual-boot capabilities throughout this chapter,

but the reality is that Windows Vista (and previous NT-based Windows versions

like Windows 2000 and XP) support multi-booting. That’s right: With the right partitioning

scheme, gobs of hard drive space, and plenty of time on your hands, you

can configure your PC to boot between two, three, four, or more operating systems.

Such a setup is conceptually interesting but of little use in the real world, at least for

most people. As the saying goes, people who are dual-booting aren’t getting anything

done.

We’ve been referring to Windows Vista’s dual-boot capabilities throughout this chapter,
but the reality is that Windows Vista (and previous NT-based Windows versions
like Windows 2000 and XP) support multi-booting. That’s right: With the right partitioning
scheme, gobs of hard drive space, and plenty of time on your hands, you
can configure your PC to boot between two, three, four, or more operating systems.
Such a setup is conceptually interesting but of little use in the real world, at least for
most people. As the saying goes, people who are dual-booting aren’t getting anything
done.

Which Versions of Windows can Upgrade to Vista

Posted: August 18, 2009 in Vista
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Which Versions of Windows can Upgrade to Vista

RAM Limitations of Vista Versions

Posted: August 18, 2009 in Vista
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The Home versions of Vista suffer from some stricter limitations on available main memory

and peer-to-peer networking than the non-Home versions. We’ll summarize these

limits as follows:

_ 32-bit Vista versions will always be limited to 4 GB of RAM, due to limitations of

x86 processors.

_ 64-bit Vista versions have dramatically different limitations in the various editions:

• Home Basic is limited to 8 GB or RAM.

• Home Premium is limited to 16 GB of RAM.

• Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate can access over 128 GB of RAM.

Thinking of Cheating at Solitaire in Vista?

Posted: August 18, 2009 in Vista
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Unfortunately, Vista’s new Solitaire code seems to have broken one way that ne’erdo-

wells have cheated at the game for years. This scandalous behavior was first

revealed in Windows 3 Secrets all the way back in 1991. As that book explained it,

you could click Game➪Undo when playing a Draw Three game, and the last three

cards you turned over from the deck would go back on the pile. If you then held

down the Shift key while clicking the deck, only one card at a time would turn over,

allowing you to pick up a crucial card that wasn’t originally on top of the stack.

Whether by omission or design, that trick no longer works, and you’ll just have to win

at Solitaire the good old-fashioned way. (You can still, however, undo the turnover of

your last three cards if you suddenly see a move on the board that might benefit.)

Encrypt Entire Drives with BitLocker in Vista

Posted: August 18, 2009 in Vista
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Screaming headlines in recent years have made the public aware of stolen laptops and

desktop computers that contained the personal records of thousands of millions of individuals.

These thefts might not have exposed anyone’s personal data if the hard drives in

the stolen computers had been encrypted and protected by strong passwords.

Various third-party solutions have long been available to encrypt sensitive data folders

and entire hard drives. With Vista, Microsoft now enters this market with BitLocker Drive

Encryption.

BitLocker has some advantages over competing encryption products because, integrated

as it is into Windows, it can check the integrity of a computer system before the Windows

user interface is ever loaded. BitLocker can tell when a hard drive has been moved to a

different computer—as would be the case if a drive had been stolen—and can defend

against brute-force attacks.

BitLocker also integrates with Microsoft’s Active Directory domain service scheme. The

remote storage of digital keys that can unlock or restore data if a user forgets a password is

a difficult and labor-intensive chore for IT administratrors. BitLocker handles this by using

Active Directory to escrow the keys securely, while still being able to help an authorized

(but forgetful) user access crucial data that’s stored in a password-protected drive.

BitLocker is available only in Vista Ultimate Edition, which can be purchased separately

or upgraded to from the Home and Business Editions, and Vista Enterprise Edition, which

can be purchased separately or upgraded to from the Business Edition.

Vista can send you emails!

Posted: August 17, 2009 in System Information, Vista
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The Computer Management tool can still be accessed by right-clicking “Computer” and selecting “Manage” from the menu. However, now you can attach a task to any event. Try navigating through System Tools / Event Viewer / Windows Logs / Application. Now, go ahead and select an event – then look to the rightmost pane and click “Attach Task to This Event.” Name it whatever, describe it however, click through the next step, then in the Action step, you’ll see the “Send an e-mail” option

Disabling Automatic Startup Programs in Vista

Posted: August 17, 2009 in System Information, Vista
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Disabling Automatic Startup Programs
If you don’t want certain programs or applications to run automatically on startup,

there’s an easy way to disable them.

  • Click Start
  • Type msconfig in the search box
  • Click Continue in the User Account Control to continue
  • Click on the Startup Tab
  • Uncheck any boxes in the “Startup Items” that you wish to disable or
  • click the Disable All button (not recommended)
  • Click OK

If you need to re-enable any of the programs, go through the same process and

check the boxes of programs you wish to run automatically on startup.
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